Maya and Joel sat in the chairs in front of Bob’s desk. These were visitor chairs.
Staff normally stood - on account of it making their exit from his office faster when they were dismissed.
Joel glanced at Maya, and decided to step in. “Mr. August, we’re here because we believe you’re in danger.”
Bob looked nonplussed. He waved his hand. “I’m always in danger - if I’m doing my job right,” he added.
Joel nodded in agreement. “Perhaps. But this is different. And Maya is involved.” Joel’s tone was respectful and commanding at the same time.
Bob sat back in his chair, some of his bravado fading away. “I’m listening,” he told the former space-marine.
Joel realized something, and stopped talking. He tapped two fingers to his ear.
Bob took a second to realize, and then suddenly started getting up, nodding.
Joel stood up with him.
Maya looked at them, wondering what was going on. Bob reached for his atmosjacket off the back of his chair. “Well, it sounds like this is something best discussed over a drink.”
Joel bobbed his head. “You don’t hear any arguments from me. Where did you have in mind?”
Maya caught on, and got up, too.
Bob had his jacket on, and was opening his office door for his visitors. “Quaint little place across the street. Shall we?”
Maya grinned at the cunningness, not believing for one second they were actually going to show up at O’Neil’s across the street. “Yes. Good thinking, boss.”
She led the way out of the office, closely followed by Bob and Joel.
* * *
The three of them arrived in the abandoned parking lot that Bob used on occasion to meet sources who were especially sensitive about being seen with him.
The place was ideal, as it had two entrances; both of which were blocks from where the actual meeting place was. No one watching from outside could possibly track where they were going.
“We shouldn’t be heard here,” Bob told them.
Joel looked around him. “How about followed?” he asked.
Bob shook his head. “Too convoluted; plus you need key card access to get here from the street. No way they could have followed us.”
Maya looked around. “This place is creepy,” she grimaced, wrapping her arms around her as if she were cold, rather than just creeped out.
Bob grinned. “Which just adds to the clandestine feel when you’re meeting sources,” he winked. “Whistleblowers love it,” he told her, tapping the side of his nose; still teaching her.
He turned his attention back to Joel. “Okay. So what’s going down?” he asked.
Over the next twenty minutes, the three of them stood talking in hushed tones, their voices drowned out by the sounds of water pipes and ventilation units from the restaurants above.
When they were almost done, Joel made his final suggestion. “We should have this wrapped up by tomorrow, but we don’t know what the fallout might be from their lackeys.” He looked seriously at Bob. “You’re a good man. You don’t need to get caught up in this. Get out of town for a few weeks, and let this cool off. You’ll be able to return when it settles.”
Bob opened his mouth to argue, but then realized he’d had this very same discussion more times than he could count. Normally he was on the other side of the conversation, though. Sometimes he had been right, and the person didn’t heed his warning. Sometimes he’d been wrong. But given the decision matrix, and the number of times he’d wished he hadn’t been right, he knew the smart thing to do was to take Joel’s advice.
He yielded, and nodded affably. “You’re right. I’ll have someone fill in for me, and I’ll stay off-grid for a little while.” He looked at Joel with genuine gratitude and respect. Then he turned to Maya. “I suppose this means you’ll be heading off-world indefinitely, then?” he asked.
Maya nodded sadly. “Yes. I think I have things to do, being a part of this team.”
Bob nodded his understanding, and looked down at his feet. Maya touched his arm gently. “You’ve been an incredible mentor to me Bob,” she told him.
He looked up and met her eyes.
She smiled, her eyes still sad. “Thank you. For everything. I wouldn’t be who I am today without your support.”
Joel could see a tear forming in Bob’s eye. He turned and walked a few paces away, letting the two have their moment. He kept one eye on their surroundings, and the other on the two, making sure they were safe.
Eventually they had said everything they needed to, and Bob led them back through his secret entrance in the back of another car park. He left them on the street as he headed back to his office to wrap things up.
* * *
Maya was quiet on the ride back to the base.
Joel spoke to her gently as they both watched the starscape whizzing past their window. “It’s always hard moving on. You won’t be lonely, though. You’ve got a team who have got your back now, and you’re going to help a lot of good people in this new life.”
Maya glanced up at him, and then back out of the window. “I know. It will be fine,” she agreed.
Chapter 4
Gaitune-67, Safe house, Molly’s conference room
Joel and Sean were deep in conversation as they made their way into the conference room for the meeting of Molly’s “generals,” as she called them. This was the inner circle she was developing, the next tier of leaders for her expanding team.
Joel allowed Sean to step through the doorway first. “So, are your reflexes enhanced, too, then?” he asked Sean.
Sean grinned a toothy smile and turned, walking backward around the table for a few paces. “That is need-to-know, mate,” he told him.
Joel didn’t miss a beat. “And lemme guess. I don’t need to know.” His voice was tinged with resignation as he followed Sean around to a couple of empty seats.
Sean slapped Joel on the arm. “You’re getting it,” he told him, pulling out a chair and sitting down.
Maya and Molly were already sitting at the table, chatting idly as each worked on their holos.
Molly looked up at the group when Sean sat down next to her. “Okay, let’s get started,” she said.
She glanced over at Sean. “You have some intel?” she prompted.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “I was in touch with Garet through our secret server, and it seems that The Syndicate have a meeting tomorrow. We have a location, too.”
Joel breathed deeply, looking a little uncomfortable. “How do we feel about his intel?” he asked, catching Molly’s eye and then glancing at Sean.
Molly shook her head. “You mean, do we trust Garet?”
Joel nodded. Sean looked down at his own hands clasped in front of him.
Joel tilted his head to one side. “I dunno. If it wasn’t our only option, I’d be recommending that we don’t touch his intel.” He sucked air through his teeth. “But, at this point, we’re running short on options.”
Molly nodded softly and made a note on her holo to remind her to think if there were any other options. Then she glanced at Sean. “Sean?” she asked. “You’ve been working with him all this time. Thoughts?”
Sean started speaking, still looking at his hands. “When I was assigned to him, it was as his… handler, as it were.” He looked up, trying to judge Molly’s reaction. Molly didn’t bat an eyelid. He continued. “My interactions with him were brief, and sometimes I was relaying the General’s orders to him. Sometimes, though, he was making a request of me, mostly for protection or getting messages to the General… But I never could tell if he was just playing both sides.”
Molly hung her head, processing what she had just heard. Sean seemed to have said what he needed to. Or at least, all he was ready to divulge at this point.
Molly looked sideways to their new investigator before looking back at the table to listen intently. “Maya?”
Maya sat ba
ck, and took a breath. “I’m also in two minds about it. On the one hand, I don’t think I trust him; but on the other hand, given our time constraints, and the risks we and the General population face if we leave them in power as we move forward, I can’t in good conscience vote to do nothing.”
She pulled her mouth to one side. “Though, like Joel said, all other things being equal, it would be good to not have to rely on his intel. I just don’t think we have that luxury.”
Molly was still looking at the table. “Looks like we’ve got ourselves a Gemini,” Molly commented. “Either way, we’ll have to reevaluate our relationship with Garet going forward. He’s potentially a weak link.”
She shook her head, looking a little defeated. “But it sounds like this is a risk we’re going to have to take. Let’s just look at how we mitigate that risk.”
She looked to Joel. “Want to talk us through some scenarios, based on the intel Garet has supplied? The first scenario assumes his intel is accurate. Then we want to look at variables assuming it’s a trap, or that he’s tipped off one or all members, and anything else we can think of.”
Joel sat up and shifted in his chair. “Sure. It’s a bitch, though,” he glanced at Sean, briefly before continuing. “The meeting is taking place at the Senate House.”
Maya’s mouth dropped open.
Joel noticed but kept talking. “This just means that we’ll be dropping in with the pods in the center of the city, probably with the most well-protected airspace.”
Maya started to say something, but Joel held up a hand. “It’s okay. We can do it. Oz and Crash are able to hold air traffic control at bay. They have a plan. But that’s just obstacle number one. We then need to get into the building, with government security and staff. Plus, they’ll have their own personal guards. Let me show you how this will work, though.”
The meeting ran for several hours, with various breakout times for the necessary research, and conferencing with individual team members. Maya even raised the questions of how soon they might find another opportunity to take them down, and what the odds were of being able to get to them in a less risky environment. Sean assured them that this was going to be both a long time and unlikely.
Eventually, they all agreed this was their best option. They had their plan, complete with contingencies in case it was a trap.
Molly brought the meeting to a close. “Okay, folks. This has got to be as slick as possible. We can’t afford to make one wrong move. Remember, we don’t want any casualties on the government front. These are the people we’re trying to help. They’re not our enemy. The Syndicate is. So that means fast in and out; and, if nothing goes wrong, the only casualties will be Syndicate members.”
Maya raised an eyebrow, and glanced down the table at the team. “And their bank balances,” she added dryly.
Had the others not been so focused on the task in hand, they may have chuckled. As it was, no one at the table thought that this was going to be a walk in the park. The fact that they were going to have to hit The Syndicate in the Senate House, the very place they would normally want to protect, didn’t help them feel any better about it.
Gaitune-67, Hangar deck
The next morning, the assault team was assembled on the hangar deck, ready to go. Crash, Joel, Jack, Sean, and Molly were suited and booted, locked and loaded; ready to take The Syndicate out, while leaving the rest of the inhabitants of the Senate House stunned, at the most, and hopefully, otherwise unharmed.
Pieter stood by, holo open, checking on details they had available. “I haven’t got a live feed, obviously, because of the distances, but Oz and I have been through the shift patterns and so on for some time. The meeting lands in the middle of a shift, so there’s no getting around that.”
Molly was finishing buckling up her holsters as Pieter briefed them on the final details he had found. Sean stood with his arms folded. “Weapons set to stun, then, I guess,” he said, resigned to the task they faced.
Just then, Brock came jogging up to them carrying a bunch of tiny canisters. “Hold up, folks. I got something that may help!” he called.
The group looked around to see. He started handing out the canisters a couple at a time to each team member on the mission.
“What’s this?” Joel asked.
Brock smiled. “A present.” He finished handing them out, and held onto one. “Okay, these contain a simple knockout gas. It becomes inert within forty seconds, but anyone who inhales it will be knocked out for a good fifteen minutes. The worst they’ll have when they wake up is perhaps a bit of a headache. That’s it.”
Molly grinned. “Excellent work, Brock!” She paused, examining the canister. “Where did you get these?”
Brock smiled brightly. “Well, yesterday when you guys had finished talking to Crash about the mission, I wondered if there were a way to distribute something that would help you avoid casualties. Turns out there was just a simple recipe from some of the med supplies we’ve accumulated with the research we’ve been doing with Eugene.”
He bent his knees dramatically, and then swung his hips as he held up his canister. “Aaaand,” he told them, “the delivery canisters, I found in the armory.” He held it in one hand, then gestured with the other as if to say “ta-da!”
The group chuckled. Joel tapped Brock on the top of his arm. “Good man. And thank you!” he exclaimed.
Sean punched Brock lightly on the front of his shoulder, and Jack held one of hers up and nodded. “Thanks!” she said, trying to be more friendly than commando. She’d already tucked one into her atmosuit leg pocket, and was looking for a way to stow the other one.
Molly looked around at the warriors. “Okay. I think we’re looking good to go. Any last questions?” She scanned the faces in front of her. No one raised a hand or spoke.
She glanced at Joel. “Okay. Your mission,” she told him.
Joel circled his finger in the air at shoulder height. “Okay, folks. Let’s wrap up and move out.”
The team clambered into their pods, and was out of the hangar deck before Pieter or Brock could say “jumping jacks”.
The pair stood watching the pods disappear out the open door and out of the forcefield.
Pieter sighed. “If I were a gambling man,” he said, eyes still on the opening in the hangar, but turning his head slightly to Brock, ”which I’m not, anymore… I’d say not to trust that Garet.”
Brock nodded grimly. “I bet you’re right.”
One mile out from Senate Building
Molly watched her pod’s heads-up display and listened to the chatter on the inter-pod channel. Crash and Oz were negotiating with air traffic control.
Crash was running interference. “Roger that, Control. It seems my nav is off by twenty degrees.”
“Correct your course and reduce your altitude, or else we will fire,” came their steely response. Molly’s heart was beating faster than she had expected.
Oz continued to drop the pods, keeping them in close formation and behaving like a rogue car that had gone off course from the strato highway. They must only just have been picked up on the city radar, as their shape would be deflecting most of the radiation.
They dropped another twenty feet, and the city appeared beneath them. “Almost there,” came Crash’s voice over the private channel. Molly could see Jack and Sean in the next pod over. She didn’t have a visual on Crash and Joel, but imagined Crash doing his usual thing with absolute composure. The anxiety and personality he was putting into his voice was purely to sell it to Control.
Another few moments and Control reported back. “Mr. Ashworth, you are now clear of our airspace. Please get your nav system seen-to by a registered mechanic. This incident has been recorded, and we will be in touch.”
Sounds like he’s managed to get himself another ticket.
Molly rolled her eyes. Old habits die hard.
Want me to get rid of that off their system while I’m in there
?
No. I need you to focus on getting us in and out of the building as swiftly as possible. Are you into their camera feed yet?
Yes. They have their full staff at their normal places.
Molly pursed her lips. She hated to change the plan at the last moment, but…
Oz, can you tell if there is another entrance that has fewer security personnel on it? Include upper levels in your sweep.
Okay.
Molly hit the buttons to talk to all pods. “Folks, we’re reassessing the entry point. Stand by,” she told them.
She knew from the training manuals she’d been reading that shifting plans would put her people under more stress than is necessary. But this might be their way of getting their results and risking fewer casualties in the process.
Oz came back with the results, and put a three dimensional map of the building onto the display.
Looks like the second floor is most vulnerable, on account of the windows being reinforce-fielded. They have fewer people there.
And you can deactivate the forcefield?
Building-wide would take too long. But I can do one segment, and get you through the window to an office. You’ll have to blast through the window, though, causing damage that we wanted to avoid.
Molly made a command decision. Breaking a window is preferable to shooting government employees who are just doing their job. Relay the new plan to the others.
She checked her pockets.
I have a charge like we used to free the hostages. I only have one, and you’ll need to get me close enough…
Roger that.
The team each acknowledged the change in their breach point, and Oz took the pods up against the side of the building. Keeping them close to the walls to avoid being spotted, he then swung Molly’s pod close to the window.
Molly was already out of her seat, charge in one hand, the other hanging on to the seat harness, as Oz gently drew the pod a little closer and opened the front door section for her.
Forcefield down?
Affirmative. You’re good to go.
The window was one of the secure, atmosphere-resistant ones that she’d seen in many a building. They were impervious to normal force. But against an explosive charge? Probably not.
The Ascension Myth Box Set Page 73
