by P. R. Adams
A bright red countdown timer overlaid the giant display screen, and the helm officer twisted around, revealing a hard profile, pale eyes, and short-cropped blond hair. “Entering Gulmar Union space in ten…”
The timer counted down from ten to nine.
Benson pushed aside worries about budget cuts and promotions, staffing and training. Petty recriminations would have to wait.
They were reaching the edge of Gulmar space, a point where the Valor’s sensors should be able to detect the forces waiting for them. Would it be the promised group of destroyers, or would there be more? Or would the Gulmar not show up at all? Their idea of a military was still tentative, a loosely aligned group of security groups that might show loyalty or might leave their comrades to hang high and dry. The bulk of their fleet were privateer boats like the Rakshasa, people who had no reason to love the nation they’d been born to and were just as likely to sell out to the Azoren as not.
Or the loose alliance of corporations might have come undone in the month since the agreement to meet to begin preliminary negotiations about peace.
Can even a peace treaty with the Gulmar save Zenawi’s career?
As soon as the counter dropped to zero, the weapons officer hunched over his section of the station. “Scanning, Captain!”
He was a short man, shorter than the XO, and heavier. But the work had already begun to get into shape to the point that his dusky cheeks were no longer round and his brown eyes no longer might be described as beady.
Chopra turned to watch the crew, cheeks puffed out. “I have fifty on them not even showing.”
Benson chuckled. She’d committed fifty credits to the welcoming fleet being larger than promised but not being under a single command.
The weapons officer straightened. “Captain! No ships!”
Those words put a smirk on Chopra’s face.
Until the weapons officer turned. “Debris!”
Benson’s heart skipped a beat. “Debris?”
“Radiating out from the rendezvous point, Captain. Heated. Spinning. Debris.”
“Go to general quarters!” Benson checked the scan on her station, hoping the debris was just chunks of asteroid that had been blasted to pieces but knowing better.
The dream of peace was dead. Someone had attacked the Gulmar negotiation team, and it was going to look like it was her.
Deep beneath the GSA headquarters building, Lieutenant Stiles traced the path her captors must have taken when they’d come to remove her from her prison. The halls were unlit; the doors she’d forced were wedged open. Her movement was softer than a ghost’s, necessary in the crypt-like quiet. Walking back from the parking lot, she’d located the showers and their heavy detergent soap dispenser, the prison cell and its freezing floor. She’d eventually put together the exact route that had been taken that day.
But now she had a chance to locate the operations center of Sanitation. Quality Control.
The people who had decided to turn her over for torture and death.
A final door was ahead, pitch black in the dark underbelly of the sprawling building. She tested it, found it locked like the others. There were rooms behind her that she hadn’t thoroughly searched. They were dormitories, bathrooms, supplies, a shooting range, storage.
Sometimes, a room was just a room. What she wanted…
She picked the lock and pulled the door open. There were offices on the right and left, doors open, darkened, empty. A sunken area was ahead, steps leading down to bays—cubicles.
It was all abandoned, powered down, dusty.
There were twelve stations, which she assumed meant there had been at least as many “cleaners.” Their work areas were mostly bare: workstations, data tablets, drawers that would probably have held their weapons.
At the tenth station, she found a small object—glass, shaped like a bird.
A raven.
She powered the workstation on, letting the pale blue light of the interface flicker for a few seconds before powering it back down. Hacking the system was probably beyond her capabilities.
Booted steps from the hall outside brought her to her feet. She had a pistol in her hand, held just out from her hip.
A flashlight beam arced through the air, then down to the floor of the upper area, and a minute later, the steps went silent.
“Brianna?”
She relaxed but didn’t put the gun away. It was McLeod. “In here.”
The steps grew closer, and McLeod’s tall form resolved from the darkness. He wore a dress uniform, which he apparently preferred.
She held up a shielding hand as he tracked the light across to her. “Here.”
“Oh! Sorry.” He lowered the light, then headed down the steps, shoes scuffing loudly. “Found Quality Control, I see.”
“I’ve been searching.”
“I know. You’re hard to track in that stealth getup, not impossible.”
“You knew about it? Sanitation?”
“I was part of it. But that was a long time ago.” He kept the light on the floor in front of her. The reflection would be enough for him to see her. “I wasn’t cut out for it, even as a young man.”
“But you operated. As a ‘cleaner’?”
He winced. “For a couple years. I’m not proud of it.”
She plucked the glass bird up and handed it to him. “Owls and Ravens.”
In the flashlight beam, the bird acted as a beautiful kaleidoscope. “I guess they never told you about all of that when you were a…child?”
“No. It runs counter to my training. We’re loyal. We follow the law and regulations.”
McLeod handed the bird back. Not everyone’s like that.”
“I’ve seen that. But these people?”
“Well, a leader might feel that things aren’t moving fast enough. They need a little bit of a shove to get moving.”
“Ravens?”
“Yes. And then there are those who feel that their job is to watch over everything, to make sure everyone follows the long-term strategy.”
“Owls?”
“Owls. They’re not really a problem. Most of the time.”
“But the Ravens are.”
He swept the flashlight across the sunken room. “This was almost all Ravens. The members, the people who thought it up—Ravens, most of them.”
She nodded toward the terminal. “Their systems are still online.”
“Until we figure out how to get inside. We need to know what they were up to. Speaking of which, the devices you took from the Patels and Penn?” The colonel dug something out of his coat pocket and held it out to her, each move slow and careful. “They’ve cracked most of it. There are going to be some more resignations soon. Your, um, elimination of Penn was on there from his viewpoint.” McLeod looked away and cleared his throat. “Removed from the record.”
His modesty was authentic. She took the data storage device. “Thank you.”
“That was a slick thing, checking the pistol for a charge. Rai’s blaster.”
“Those have a problem with the capacitors holding a charge when they show empty. Penn should have known that. He was overconfident.”
“He was human.” McLeod smiled, embarrassed. “We all have our failings. I have to get back to work.”
She waited until she couldn’t hear his steps or breathing, then put the data device into her tablet. There was so much data, so many different things ongoing. Fortunately, someone had indexed and labeled the various bits.
Penn’s records were the most intriguing to her, no doubt a treasure trove of insight into SAID operations in Azoren space. She started at the end—the abruptly edited sequence where he made his way to the head she’d been showering in—and played back, stopping when she found Penn and Rai in the Rakshasa infirmary.
She played that back, listening to the privateer’s words and analyzing his actions. It really did seem as if the privateer might have thought the weapon was drained. But then she saw it, the disappointment i
n his eyes when Penn grabbed the laser.
The SAID agent had been good. He’d been convincing enough that Rai had hoped…
There was a sadness in his eyes and a…relief?
She stopped the video and played it again, listening to his dying words.
“The…great…con…”
Penn seemed genuinely hurt. “No con. Just the job.”
“The…great…” Rai’s eyes closed. “Con.”
Stiles drilled down closer on what Rai had pulled from inside his shirt: a necklace. The medallion was…
“The…great…con…”
Oh. No.
Penn hadn’t understood, or he would have alerted her. He hadn’t seen what was right in front of him.
She replayed the video again and listened.
“The…great…con…”
Easy to misunderstand, but with the medallion, it was so obvious.
Rai hadn’t been working for the Azoren. He hadn’t been working for the Gulmar.
He had been a spy for someone else all along. Someone supposedly long past relevance but once believed to be the greatest threat of all to Kedraalian survival.
Not the great con but the Great Khan, the ruler of the Khanate.
She had to get the word to someone she could trust before it was too late. If it wasn’t already.
Acknowledgments
Shadow Strike is the third chapter of The War in Shadow. As with the first two books, Shadow Strike explores a combination of space opera and military science fiction in a way that I hope you found entertaining.
This series draws from multiple influences—history and current events, entertainment fiction, and my own story ideas over the years. The intent is to create a believable tale about the horror of war and the failures of the humans who should be protecting us from it.
Sometimes the failure is with the people tasked to watch for threats. Sometimes the failure is with the leaders who should be listening to those tasked to watch for threats. Sometimes it’s both.
With Shadow Strike, one influence that I’d like to call out is “Das Boot,” a German U-boat movie starring Jürgen Prochnow. The suspense generated by the shadow technology that plays a part in this book has its roots in the tricky combat sailors face in the depths of the ocean where submarines operate.
If you enjoyed this series, I hope you’ll consider posting a review of the books and letting friends know about it. Word of mouth and reviews are pure gold.
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For updates on new releases and news on other series, please visit my website and sign up for my mailing list at:
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http://www.p-r-adams.com
About the Author
I was born and raised in Tampa, Florida. I joined the Air Force, and my career took me from coast to coast before depositing me in the St. Louis, Missouri area for several years. After a tour in Korea and a short return to the St. Louis area, I retired and moved to the greater Denver, Colorado metropolitan area.
I write speculative fiction, mostly science fiction and fantasy. My favorite writers over the years have been Robert E. Howard, Philip K. Dick, Roger Zelazny, and Michael Crichton.
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