by Terry Mixon
Peter was growing concerned. It had been five days since Jomos had slipped onto the orbital, and he hadn’t sent back a word. There’d been no indication that his lieutenant had taken any action against the target or that he’d been discovered.
It was mildly vexing because now that he’d committed to doing the murder, Peter wanted it to be finished.
It was unlike Jomos to be so quiet. Yes, the man was thorough and knew that communications would be problematic, yet he could’ve gotten some word back. Something was wrong.
Once he couldn’t take it anymore, he summoned Lucinda to his office to brainstorm what they did next. He was lucky she was in the city, since she’d spent the last few days working on her plan near the marine base.
She came in with a scowl and closed the door with just a little extra force.
“Is something wrong?” he asked, an eyebrow raised.
“Yeah, something’s wrong,” she said belligerently. “I got word that the damned woman is asking around about hiring some side muscle. So far, I’ve been able to warn anybody that’s been inclined to accept her offer, but it’s only a matter of time before she makes a connection that I’m not aware of with someone too stupid to know better.
“This has gone on long enough. We need to end her. She and this job have both become liabilities.”
He sighed. “More than you realize, probably. I haven’t heard from Jomos in almost a week, and I’m getting anxious. Even if he isn’t able to act, he should’ve sent word by now. His silence makes me wonder what’s going on.”
“You think they caught him?” she asked as she took a seat on the other side of his desk. “If the marines got their hands on him, he’s not going to tell them anything, but he might lead them back to us once they identify him.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think they have him. It wouldn’t take them this long to link him to our organization. Still, I’m not sure what’s going on, and it’s got me concerned.
“I understand that he probably wants to do things carefully, and that is his nature, but it’s been five days. Even if he couldn’t directly act at this point, there’s no reason he shouldn’t be able to get word back to us. Whoever smuggled him onto the station has to have the ability to send a message to us.”
“Do we know who that is?”
“No. Jomos has always been very protective of his contacts, and I can’t blame him. In our line of work, everyone has their secrets, and his contacts have always been reliable in the past. I’m not certain what’s going on, but his plans have gone off the rails. We have to come up with something new, or we’re going to miss this opportunity.”
Lucinda considered his words with a frown. “I’ve been working on direct action once the girl is back on the planet, but I don’t have the necessary resources to get me onto that station. It might be best to wait until she comes back down on her own. If Jomos wasn’t able to act, my shooter could take her out.”
That was the plan that his junior lieutenant had come up with. Part of marine training was working in the wilds of the base to learn how to operate without advanced support.
While they were out there, the girl was vulnerable because it was easy to slip someone into an area like that as long as one took the proper safeguards. There wouldn’t be any security checks preventing someone from crossing the base perimeter as long as one made certain that the monitoring and alarm systems weren’t triggered.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to try to attack her on the station,” he agreed. “Proceed with your plan. How certain are you that they won’t detect your sniper? They will have advanced military gear that can find a person using infrared in environments like that. Setting up sentries to look for intruders is likely one of the tasks that they’re going to be training in, and we don’t want to accidentally stumble right into them.”
“I’ve already taken that into account. There are certain fabrics backed by technology that can block infrared and other scanners. Our sniper will use all of that to get into place and take the shot. Once that’s done, he’ll use the ensuing chaos to slip away.”
He considered that and slowly nodded. There would be risks, but if their man was cool, calm, and collected, there was no reason why he shouldn’t be able to avoid detection.
“I’ll still be worried until this is over,” he continued. “Have your contacts heard any specific timeframe for their return?”
She shook her head. “They’re just getting into the meat and potatoes of vacuum training, so it’s going to be slightly more than a week, based on what I’ve heard. We won’t know for certain until they actually move the platoon, so we’re going to have to be flexible.
“But what about the woman?” she demanded. “We need to take care of her. Wouldn’t it be better just to eliminate her now and not deal with trying to take out the girl?”
“Don’t I wish. I agreed to this contract, and we’ll carry it out, but don’t sweat it. I’ve already contacted someone to make sure that she has an accident on the way back to wherever she calls home. He’ll shadow her on whatever liner or ship she takes. As long as it isn’t a private ship, he’ll be able to get on board.
“Hell, he might even be able to get on board a private ship. He’s that good. In any case, she won’t make it home, and her death won’t be linked to us.”
Lucinda nodded. “Good. I still wish we could take her out first, but knowing that she will be gone when we’re done will have to be good enough. Who did you pick to take her out? That guy you have at the port?”
Peter shook his head. “No. I decided that we needed somebody with a bit more skill, so I contracted it to Adrian Bolívar. He’ll make the magic happen and get paid well for his trouble.”
Adrian was an independent contractor, and that kind of deniability would be worthwhile if things went badly. The man wouldn’t rat out his employer even if he got caught, but Peter didn’t expect him to get caught. He really was that good.
“He’s a good choice,” Lucinda said with an approving nod. “He’ll get it done.”
“Yes, he will. Now, get back to work so that we can get this damned job done.”
Once she’d left, he turned in his chair and gazed out the window, brooding. Something was going on up there, and he didn’t like being in the dark. What the hell was Jomos doing?
Andrea wanted to facepalm, but she couldn’t because she was in a vacuum suit. She settled for shaking her head sadly as Claudio and JR fumbled trying to maneuver around the depressurized small craft bay aboard the station.
Unlike the docking tubes, the bay was meant to service pinnaces and cutters in an open environment that could be accessed from the outside via a large hatch that would slide aside after the bay had been depressurized.
The gravity could also be turned off, which had led to the current hilarity. She’d taken her eyes off of them for two seconds, and now they were both floating free of the deck, tangled in their own safety lines.
Unlike the rest of the recruits who had no experience in zero gravity, she could handle herself in the environment. She could also use a thruster pack, which meant that she didn’t have to be tied down to anything in particular, so she used it to float into the general area around her wayward squad leaders, making sure to steer clear of their flailing limbs and the twisting lines. She had absolutely no desire to end up tangled in their mess.
“Stop moving,” she ordered. “Seriously. Just stick your arms directly out and stop moving so that I can stop your rotation and try to untangle you. What the hell happened?”
“Genius over here decided that he could jump to the cutter,” Claudio said, his tone accusatory. “Only he didn’t figure out that his line was going to hit my legs, and that yanked me off the deck too.”
“Well, you’re both lucky that we’re in the bay and not floating around on the outside. Something like this could’ve gotten you yanked off of a ship and out into open space, even with a safety line. Those connectors are made to be tough, but you
shouldn’t risk jumping because the odds are good that you’re going to miss. Save that for the experts.”
“You mean like you?” he sneered.
“No, I mean like fully trained combat marines. Somebody who’s gone through doing that kind of thing over and over for months at a time. I know just enough to make sure that I know when I’m about to screw up. Nothing that I’ve learned makes me an expert on anything. That will come when I’ve been a marine for a while.”
She had to unclip their lines to get them clear but used a temporary line to secure them to one another. That would keep them from floating off separately, at least.
All of that took time, which meant that they’d floated up to the overhead by the time she’d finished getting them in order. There was still plenty of time to gently reorient them so that they all landed on their feet rather than their heads.
“Try to take the impact on your feet and collapse to the overhead,” she ordered. “That way you’re not kicking us back off. Once we’ve stopped moving, I’ll get us headed back toward the deck.”
To her surprise, they managed to land without bouncing. Looking down on all the secured small craft below and the rest of the platoon, who were slowly making their way out to the craft they were supposed to be working on, gave her just a hint of vertigo.
Luckily, she had enough training that it was only just a hint. Up and down were just suggestions in zero gravity, after all.
“You know, you’re not nearly as much of a jerk as I thought you’d be,” Claudio said.
Andrea had to stop what she was doing to make sure that she hadn’t suffered some kind of stroke. “What? Who are you, and what have you done to Claudio?”
He laughed. “Don’t get me wrong, I still don’t like you, and I don’t think that you’re marine material, but I expected you to come into this with a real chip on your shoulder, being superhuman and all. I was wrong.”
She bit her tongue to avoid snapping back at him. After all, if anyone had come into basic training with a chip on their shoulder, it had been Claudio. Still, this was a little bit of a thaw in their relationship, and she didn’t want to screw it up. She was going to have to work with people like him for years to come, and the fewer of them that thought she was an enemy to the Empire, the better.
“My tattoos don’t define me,” she said with a sigh. “I hate what they represent even more than you. If I could be sure that having my skin peeled off would get rid of them, I’d do it.”
He didn’t answer, but maybe that was a positive thing. Claudio wasn’t exactly known for holding back on negative comments, after all.
“I think there’s a hydraulic leak,” JR said in an offhand tone.
Andrea turned to look at him and saw that he was looking at the maintenance access panel just off to their left. Some kind of reddish fluid slowly leaked out from under the panel’s edge where one of the fasteners wasn’t fully latched down.
“Good eye,” she said. “Float here while I check it out. Once I identify exactly what’s going on, I can let Fleet maintenance know.”
She used her thruster pack to slowly edge to the affected panel. While she wasn’t familiar with all of the markings, she thought that the barcode printed on the panel indicated it was used for the exterior hatch’s mechanical parts. She hadn’t realized that Fleet used hydraulics for something like that, though. That seemed awfully old-school.
Because the recruits were supposed to be doing maintenance work on the cutters—or at least popping open some hatches to check the gross appearance of some of the mechanical items—she had a tool that would open the panel on her belt.
It only took a few moments to loosen the panel enough to open it on its hinges so that she could look inside to see how bad the leak was.
The panel popped open, but instead of seeing a leaking hose, she was confronted with a far grimmer sight: the mottled face of a dead man. The maintenance compartment’s interior was coated in blood. The “leak” was blood boiling from his slit throat in the vacuum.
The shocking sight caused her to violently flinch, and she spun away from the ceiling before she righted herself.
That elicited a derisive laugh from Claudio. “What’s the matter, pumpkin? Fingers slip on the controls?”
She almost snapped at him but clamped her mouth shut. This wasn’t the time for them to be sniping at one another.
Should she tell him what she’d found? Probably not.
“That’s exactly what happened,” she said in the calmest tone she could manage. She closed the access panel but only secured one of the latches.
“The damage in there is a lot worse than I thought it was going to be. Let’s get back down to the rest while I report it. Frankly, I think it might be bad enough that they cancel our little outing today.”
Even as she got them started slowly back down toward the floor, she changed her com to the command channel on which the drill instructors communicated. As the acting platoon leader, she had access, though they knew when she was patched in.
“Drill Instructor Page,” she said in a flat tone, “we have a situation.”
34
Page floated just beneath the maintenance panel in the boat bay and stared at the dead man. At first he hadn’t believed Tolliver when she’d said she’d found a murder victim, but the evidence was irrefutable. Someone had killed him and then stashed his body here.
Recently, based on the amount of still-liquid blood when the body had been discovered. The vacuum conditions—which no longer applied since they’d pressurized the bay—had acted to draw much of it out from the body through the wound, and it had foamed over everything.
Gunnarsdotter floated next to him. “Do you think the cover story is going to hold?”
“I don’t see why it shouldn’t, at least in the short run,” he said. “Other than Tolliver, nobody saw anything. If she keeps her mouth shut—which I see no reason that she wouldn’t—then no one else will realize that something happened here.
“This guy doesn’t look like Fleet or a marine. I can sense that he’s got implants, but that’s about it. They’re shut down now that he’s dead, but maybe the investigator they’re sending up can dig more information out of him. At this point, I think it has to be something related to Tolliver.”
The other marine rotated gracefully in place with the touch of a single finger to the ceiling. She stopped herself as soon as she was facing him and hovered there in the open space.
“That girl really has someone hot and bothered.”
He didn’t disagree.
The man was wearing what looked like a plain jumpsuit under all the blood. Maybe he was some kind of contractor.
“How long until the specialist gets here?” she asked.
“They said they were sending him express, but I’ll check and see exactly what that means. No matter how long it takes, we’re going to have to wait until he gets here to do anything else. Fleet was told to stand down and let him do the investigating, which has them hot and bothered.”
Page brought up his internal com and sent a message to the Fleet control center, asking the investigator’s ETA. A few seconds later, the response came back that a cutter was going to dock in less than ten minutes.
Whoever it was, they’d been in a damned hurry to get here.
Once they docked, he expected it would take the specialist at least twenty minutes to find their way to the bay.
He was wrong.
After just fourteen minutes, a young man in a marine utility uniform came through the airlock with a bag over his shoulder. He crossed the zero-gravity line smoothly and launched himself toward them without bothering to hook a line.
Page immediately recognized him as Sophia’s brother, the one that worked for Imperial Intelligence. He supposed that meant he’d definitely have the necessary experience to do what needed to be done.
The young man floated through the air with a grace that only came from long experience operating without gravity. He came to a stop
about half a meter from them with a gentle touch of his hand against the ceiling.
“My name is—” he started.
“Riggio Gomez,” Page said. “We’ve never met, but I work with your sister.”
The young man raised an eyebrow. “You must know her pretty well if you know me. Do you know what I do for a living?”
“I do, but my associate does not. This is Senior Sergeant Ingrid Gunnarsdotter, the lead drill instructor for the other marine platoon here on the station. Even though you’re dressed in that uniform, I think we need to start off with the fact that you’re not a marine these days.”
Riggio grinned. “I happen to disagree. Once a marine, always a marine. I’m a retired senior sergeant, but don’t let appearances fool you. I might work for Imperial Intelligence these days, but I’m not one of their lapdogs.
“I came from a combat platoon, and I’m a tech expert that’s seen his share of dead bodies. I also happen to be assigned to help keep watch over Andrea Tolliver.”
Gunnarsdotter shook her head. “How many people do they have watching that kid?”
“More than you’d guess, Senior Sergeant. And considering the number of dead people turning up, I can’t exactly say they’re wrong.”
“Your sister is pissed that you’re working on this and didn’t tell her,” Page said. “She saw you in the barracks feed, and I think she’s going to want some words with you about not being up-front with her.”
“Sophia is always looking for something she can yell at me about. I’ll deal with her when this is settled. Right now, we need to focus on this guy.”
Page gestured for the young man to continue. “I think this is probably a stupid question, but do you think the two incidents are connected?”
“Undoubtedly. I don’t know who this guy is, but people don’t just get killed and stuffed into a maintenance area by happenstance. I have no idea how he’s connected to Andrea, but he is.”
The young man brought out a small device and held it next to the man’s head. “His implants are still active, but they aren’t Fleet or marine versions. They’re some kind of hopped-up civilian gear that’s illegally encrypted. I might be able to get in, but I’m not going to be able to do it quickly. I might have better luck getting his identity through DNA, fingerprints, retinal patterns, or facial recognition.”
