by Dan Moren
“Back at NICOM? Out of the field?”
“It comes with a promotion to full commander. One more step up the ladder. We both knew the secondment was only temporary. This is best for everyone.”
The conversation was spinning away from him. “Nat, wait–”
“I’m going to make sure our new team member is feeling at home.” She turned on her heel and strode towards the ship, leaving Kovalic standing in the hangar.
Brody cleared his throat. “Sooo, you want me to prep for takeoff or… you know what, I’m going to go prep for takeoff.” He slowly backed up the ramp, leaving Kovalic alone in the middle of the hangar.
Oh, yes, this was going to go well.
While not cramped, the ship was definitely close quarters. Addy had located the bunk rooms, and though the lockers weren’t labeled – not so much as a piece of tape to identify their owners – there was one that was unlocked. There were four racks between two small rooms, but given the nature of the outfit it seemed unlikely that all five personnel would be sleeping at the same time. Irregular schedules, keeping watch, hot bunking, that sort of thing. Nothing new for her.
She dropped onto one of the bunks, staring at the barren cabin. No decorations, no personalizations. On the one hand, the more elite units often tended to have more leeway when it came to breaking from the traditional rank and file; on the other, this was clearly a working ship and, in the eventuality that someone other than the team was onboard, it was probably prudent to not have anything that was too easily identifiable.
Still, not exactly the most friendly of places.
A sharp rap at the door got her attention and she looked up to find the blonde woman, Taylor, leaning against the doorframe. While her expression hadn’t gained much in the way of warmth, it at least didn’t seem out-and-out frosty as it had been earlier. And there was something else in her eyes now – appraisal.
“Not the most comfortable of quarters, I know.”
“I’m used to it. Slept in plenty of worse places than this.” Let her appraise away.
“Where was your last billet, specialist?”
“Before the School? C Company, 37th Infantry.”
Taylor raised a slender eyebrow. “Infantry? Didn’t think we had many of those left.”
“Somebody’s got to fight the ground war while you lot are dropping the heavy stuff from upstairs.” Addy pulled a few fatigues from her duffle and jammed them into an empty locker with somewhat more force than was probably required.
“You like it there?”
“Like it? Not sure that was a requirement.”
“Why’d you get into this line of work, then?”
Addy glanced up from her empty duffle, which she folded up and stowed in the locker along with her clothes. “Due respect, commander, but what is this? Some sort of head-shrinking exercise?”
Cocking her head to one side, Taylor’s eyes narrowed. There’s that appraisal again. “Just trying to get a feel for the personnel I’m responsible for, specialist.”
Addy snorted. “Most XOs I’ve met aren’t big on chatting.” Unless they’re chewing you out.
“I think you’ll find that we don’t do things the way that most people do, specialist. For better or worse.”
Rocking back on her heels, Addy frowned. “The major… Kovalic. What’s his deal? He make it a habit of going around dragging burnouts out of the gutter?”
Something flickered across Taylor’s expression, almost too fast to catch, but Addy was as familiar with it as she was her own features. Pain and regret.
“Not a habit…” she paused, frowning and glancing back out the corridor in the direction of the ship’s cockpit. “Major Kovalic is one of the best officers I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with.” Whatever she was going to say after that was swallowed as she glanced at Addy and seemed to remember who she was talking to. “The unit’s a bit, let’s say ‘unorthodox.’”
Yeah, that’s the impression I’m getting. If I can’t make it here, I can’t make it anywhere…
“Well,” said Addy, rising to her feet and brushing her palms off on the thighs of her trousers, “I guess I’ll get acquainted with the rest of the ship. Good chat, commander.” She made for the doorway, but Taylor didn’t shift aside. The blonde woman placed a hand on her shoulder.
Addy tensed at the hand but she pushed the feeling down and forced her gaze to meet Taylor’s. The blue eyes had frozen over again.
“We might be unorthodox, specialist. And the major likes to play things fast and loose. But just remember, underneath all of that, we’re still a team. We need to be able to count on each other to get the job done. And like it or not, you’re a part of that team now. Understood?”
Addy tilted her head in acknowledgement and Taylor dropped her hand, then turned and strolled down the corridor towards the fore of the ship.
Like it or not, thought Addy, watching her go. Somehow she didn’t think the commander had been referring to her.
CHAPTER 5
At least I’m not stuck in the car this time. Eli Brody dutifully took his seat in the ballroom, trying not to rub at his left eye, which was feeling increasingly itchy by the moment. A wash of murmurs and chattering rolled over him as he surveyed the crowd. For a secret black market auction, this place is pretty packed.
There were close to two hundred people in the ballroom of the Citadel Hotel on Tseng-Tao’s Divide, more than Eli had expected, given that the auction was invitation-only. They wouldn’t even have gotten in the door themselves without Kovalic reaching out to Zaina Vallejo at the Bayern Corporation and reminding her that his team had been all that stood between their planet and Imperial occupation, so a few invitations to an exclusive event were hardly too much to ask in return.
Most of the attendees had dressed for the occasion: finely tailored suits, elegant dresses, and attire somewhere between the two. Others had taken a decidedly more casual approach – the truly wealthy didn’t need to flaunt it. And then there was the third group, arrayed around the perimeter of the room: half a dozen extremely visible security personnel, provided by the auction firm, wearing matching black suits. The event’s rules had required weapons and personal security remain outside, to avoid any… misunderstandings, though Eli imagined some of latter might have made their way in under other pretenses.
For his part, Eli had decided to try and blend with the elite as best he could, digging out one of the suits he’d kept from his Elias Adler cover identity – the one that wasn’t too much worse for wear after the events on Bayern. Taylor, meanwhile, had chosen a smart suit: chic, but with no compromise to mobility.
Their new recruit, Sayers, was wearing the same clothes in which she’d appeared at the hangar: casual, close-fitting trousers, a loose shirt, and a lightweight jacket. Her dark, short hair was brushed back from her forehead, and her brown eyes tracked the room on high alert.
Tapper and Kovalic had hung back; the sergeant was ostensibly running point, and the major had made noises about being too recognizable in this crowd. But Eli had a sneaking suspicion that he was trying to give Taylor some space to operate. Not to mention seeing how Sayers handled herself in the field.
Eli, for his part, wasn’t quite sure what to make of their latest addition. He couldn’t help but overhear some of Taylor and Kovalic’s… “discussion” on Sayers’s relative merits. As far as he could tell, she seemed a bit tightly wound. But then again, coming into a group as close-knit as theirs was bound to be a challenge for anyone. Anyway, with three months of experience under his belt, he was hardly an expert on what made a great covert operative.
Taylor’s voice came through his earbud. “How’s the view, Hotshot?”
Ugh. Another terrible codename. I’m sensing a theme. He’d expected comms to be jammed in the ballroom for security, but Taylor had explained that many of the attendees would be proxy bidders who might need to take instruction from their remote clients.
“I guess everything’s fine?”
/> “Remember, you and Bullseye are just here to watch the crowd. See who else is bidding on the lot we’re looking for and try to get a clear image.”
Right. Eli tried not to rub at the contact in his left eye. Putting it in had been one of the most uncomfortable moments in his life, and after being almost killed in a space battle, locked in a military prison, and having had to scrub toilets for four years, that was saying something.
But the camera embedded in the contact would let them capture the faces without looking too much like they were doing, well, exactly what they were doing.
He blinked twice in rapid succession and watched as the bright heads-up display flared into existence. Turning to his left, he smiled at the person next to him – a woman in her forties with light brown skin and inky hair – and nodded politely in greeting.
The camera isolated the face and sent it to his sleeve, which started to run it against Commonwealth databases. After a moment, a matching image came up on his HUD: Elena Avastrios. Employed by Gemini Collections, a shell corporation that traced back to a prominent Novan business.
“Trieste van Sant’s company,” said Taylor, who was seeing their feeds routed to her own HUD. “She’s a hardcore collector – never one to let legality stand in her way.”
OK, sure. Rubbing elbows with the rich and famous had never particularly been on his bucket list. And, after Bayern, he’d had about enough of the upper classes.
The reminder of that mission’s end sat uncomfortably in Eli’s gut. Or at least what he knew of it. Kovalic had said little, other than that the taciturn lieutenant wasn’t coming back, leaving the rest of the team to read uncomfortably between the lines. And every time Eli thought he’d worked up the nerve to confront the major about it, he found himself coming up with some excuse not to push the issue.
But sometimes, when Eli closed his eyes, he could still see the gun that Kovalic had taken to his meet with Page, and the empty holster upon the operative’s return, pointing him towards one obvious and inescapable conclusion.
As “evidence” went, it would hardly hold up in any court of law, but more importantly, try as he might, he just couldn’t square it with the man he knew. Kovalic had been hard on Eli, sure: dragged him from his self-pity on frozen Sabaea, forced him to confront his past, and thrust him into a life he wasn’t particularly ready for. But physically threatening? Never.
Not that Eli had any doubt Kovalic was capable of killing. The man had been a covert operative for years, and a soldier in a shooting war before that. But there was a difference between taking a life in the heat of battle and the cold-blooded murder of a teammate.
Wasn’t there?
And if that wasn’t what had happened, then why hadn’t Kovalic said so? Didn’t he owe them that much? They were a team, after all.
Eli found himself glancing over his shoulder at Addy Sayers, a half a dozen or so rows back on the other side of the room. It was strange not being the freshest face on the team anymore. He felt responsible somehow. Someone had always been looking out for him; now it was time for him to pay that forward.
But what was he supposed to tell her? Watch your step? Do a good job or you might get whacked? Paranoia and veiled warnings weren’t exactly the image of confidence he was hoping to project.
A voice over the public address system interrupted his thoughts. “Please be seated. The auction will begin shortly.”
Settle down, Brody. He had a job to do, and worrying about Kovalic and Page and a mission that was already over wasn’t going to help anything. He focused back on the task at hand.
Auctions turned out to be a lot more boring than Eli had hoped. The first several lots went by quickly. There was a Grecian urn, followed by a painting by a Dutch artist that he was pretty sure he remembered having been stolen from a museum on Earth, and a twenty-second century abstract sculpture that looked like somebody’s impression of a body that had gone through a black hole.
Each of them went for more money than Eli had ever seen in his life.
He’d almost started to drift off, lulled by the comforting monotony of the auctioneer’s calls for higher and higher bids, when the numbers he’d been listening for percolated into his brain.
“…lot 2187,” the auctioneer was saying. “I have the honor of presenting this, the most singular item that we at Brougham & Weng have ever had the privilege of bringing to auction. It has recently been released from a private collection, and this marks the first time it has ever been available at an open sale. I give you… the Aleph Tablet.”
A hush, appropriately unearthly in nature, fell over the room. Kovalic had briefed them on the objective, but even so, Eli felt the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck going up. He’d heard the stories of course: a little more than a century ago, surveyors on a moon in the Trinity system had uncovered a mysterious, featureless slab – perfectly rectangular in shape – about the size of the top of an end table and supposedly made of a never before seen ultra-durable yet incredibly light material. Sure, human history had its fair share of mythical artifacts, but the Aleph Tablet was unique, because it was believed to be the work of an intelligence that wasn’t human.
Legends and whispers held that the tablet was somehow the key to unlocking the knowledge of whatever advanced civilization had left it behind, though Eli had never been sure exactly how one got information out of a blank slab of metal. Even the alien origin of the tablet had never been certifiably established. The relatively few pictures and videos of the tablet that had made the rounds had only contributed to its mystique: they were all of dubious quality, with believers arguing that whatever unique material the tablet was supposedly composed of couldn’t be imaged, while skeptics pointed out just how convenient that was.
All of this was complicated by the fact that the tablet had never been subjected to rigorous scientific study – at least not publicly – in large part because it had never spent long in the hands of any legitimate owner. Instead, it had circulated amongst less reputable collectors, many of whom kept their ownership so quiet that the tablet often seemed to disappear for long stretches.
Many of those owners had also died under mysterious circumstances. That, in turn, had spawned additional conspiracy theories: that the tablet was cursed, or that whatever strange material it was composed of emanated deadly radiation, or even that a secret society had sworn themselves to protecting it by assassinating everyone who possessed it. As far as Eli was concerned, the deaths were more likely the result of people in dangerous lifestyles owning something that a lot of other people – many of them dangerous – also wanted.
“While the provenance of this item is… unique and somewhat difficult to ascertain,” the auctioneer continued, “its radiological signature is consistent with the attested location where the artifact was discovered.” He looked around the room, his gavel waving in a lazy figure eight. “As such, I’d like to begin the bidding at 275 million Commonwealth credits.”
Eli’s mouth dropped open. It was the highest starting bid so far – an outrageous price no doubt out of the range of all but the wealthiest people in the galaxy. Several of whom were probably represented in this room. The kind of people who, even if they couldn’t conclusively prove it was actually an alien artifact, would still buy it just to say they had.
Around him, he heard the murmurs and tapping as the proxies whispered to or messaged their patrons. Most of them had clearly had advanced warning on this item, saving their pennies for the moment it came up.
Taylor’s voice cut through the hubbub. “Hotshot, Bullseye, start tagging the bidders.”
Right. Right. Eli tried to steer his attention back to the job. Hands were flying up everywhere, and no sooner was one bid accepted but another quickly topped it. The numbers being bandied about could have covered the costs of a couple luxury space yachts. Hardly pocket change, even for the richest of the galaxy’s rich.
He focused on a bidder, a scrawny pale man with a sheen of sweat on his bald head, and blin
ked to run the facial ID scan, watching as a name appeared on the screen. Blinking again, Eli turned his attention to another: a woman with long, gray dreadlocks, who was identified as a broker with ties to the Harani government. Marking them as possible persons of interest, he caught sight of a hand flashing up from the middle of the room. As his eyes slid over the crowd towards them, his vision blurred suddenly, as if he’d teared up. He tried to blink it away, rubbing at his eye with the back of a hand, and frowned. The HUD itself was still crystal clear. His eyes scanned over the crowd again, and once again, his vision got cloudy as it passed over one specific section of the room.
Breath caught in his throat. “Uh, Peregrine, Bullseye, are you seeing this?”
“Shit,” said Taylor. “That’s an ocular diffusion field. Not exactly something you wear unless you’re up to no good.”
Out of the corner of Eli’s eye, he saw Sayers was already moving with purpose down the aisle, everything about her carriage screaming combat-ready.
Taylor evidently had seen her as well. “Bullseye, do not eng–”
A high-pitched squeal suddenly interrupted Eli’s train of thought and he slapped the cutoff switch on his sleeve. Jamming field. All around the room, there were yelps of surprise as the feedback took all the proxy bidders by surprise, and people started rising to their feet in alarm.
“It, uh, appears we are having some technical difficulties,” the auctioneer was saying, trying to maintain control. People were looking around, getting to their feet, just a few steps shy of panic. This whole place is about to go up. Where the hell was the security? More than half of the guards who had been standing around the room’s edge had conveniently vanished; the two that were left were trying valiantly to calm the crowd, but without much luck. Here and there, a few assistants had taken up protective positions around their principals – seems some folks had indeed brought in bodyguards, despite the rules. But none of them were conspicuously armed.
