by Kal Spriggs
“You offering to back me up?” Marcus asked.
Lace looked him over, “I'm not sure you could afford my services. As Malekith said, I'm here until you leave. Anything after that is on the clock.”
Mel waved a hand at that as she glared at Marcus. “Seriously? You couldn't tell me that little tidbit earlier? Am I the only one here who doesn't have the ability to walk away from this?”
Everyone in the room was silent. Mel fought to take a deep breath. Marcus looked conflicted and when he finally spoke his voice was tight, “Look, Mel, I just didn't want you to think you were alone...”
“Great job,” Bob muttered loud enough for everyone to hear.
“You just stay out of this,” Marcus snapped.
“He's right,” Mel said sharply. “You should have told me. Hell, that's information we could have used already. It certainly factors into this plan.” She shook her head. “From here on out, I want everyone to be honest with me, I'm tired of being kept in the dark.” She glared around the table, “Does anyone else have anything else they'd like to share, now?”
Swaim raised his hand, “Uh, my first name is Jerimiah, you guys keep calling me Swaim...”
Mel rolled her eyes, “Anyone else?”
Brian shrugged, “I've contacts within the Mutant Liberation Front.”
Mel blinked at that. She had never heard of the Mutant Liberation Front. “I'll give that one a pass. Anything else?” She glared at Bob who sat calmly, “How about you?”
“I work for a secret organization,” he shrugged, “you already know that. You wouldn't know who they were any more than you know about the Mutant Liberation Front. So let's move on, eh?”
Mel rubbed her face. She felt a headache coming on. “Fine. Now, anything else about the plan?”
Swaim shrugged, “I'm not really sure I understand the part about...”
“You don't need to understand anything,” Brian said dismissively, “Fenris can do your part of the job. If I'm going in ahead of time, I want minimal failure points, because this is my life on the line.”
“I thought you were here for the challenge?” Mel asked.
“Yeah,” Brian said, “but just because I like a challenge doesn't mean I want to face the entire security of that place on my own if the rest of you aren't able to come through.”
“We'll iron out all the individual positions,” Mel said. “But let’s look at the main operation. If you and Marcus are going in early, we're going to need some additional people to pull this off. I'd guess two to four?”
Bob nodded, “An engineer, an explosives expert, a medic, and someone to do the talking.”
“I know some people who can foot the bill,” Marcus said. He sounded subdued, though whether that was because the others were angry with him or because he didn't want to go to any of his old contacts, Mel didn't know.
“Right... and we'll need some of the bodies we have in storage,” Mel said with a moue of distaste. She looked at the others, “Let's hash out the details.”
***
“Mel, are you busy?” Fenris asked as she closed the hatch on her room. The small, cramped space wasn't much, but it housed the little bit of what she had saved from her previous life. Most of it was what Rawn had snagged from the Kip Thorne before the freighter fell out of orbit in the Dokota system.
Of course, any good feelings I might have towards him for that are negated by the fact that he sabotaged the family ship to get pulled into the mission to hijack Fenris, she thought.
“I was just about to rinse off, but I can talk,” Mel said.
“I am... bothered by the activity in me,” he said. “I have been alone for so long that having so many people inside me feels uncomfortable.”
Mel smiled, “I can't imagine how that must feel. Still, they're upgrading your systems. You knew it would require some people working on you, right?”
“Yes,” Fenris growled. His voice always fascinated her, it was a deep baritone growl, emotive and raw. There was something primal about it, like it came from a weathered mountain. “But I didn't realize how it would feel. They're cutting physical pieces of me out. I can feel it, and it frightens me a bit.”
Mel winced at that. She could only imagine how it must feel, like having surgery without anesthesia. “Does it hurt?”
“I have nothing like pain receptors,” Fenris growled. “But I can feel it. As new systems come online, it feels good, but part of me misses the old, the familiar.”
“That's very human of you,” Mel said with a slight smile. “Nostalgia.”
“I wasn't programmed for that,” Fenris said, his tone musing. “It does make some sense. Yet it doesn't explain my... unease.”
“Does something specifically bother you?” Mel asked.
“It is hard to describe,” Fenris said. “I feel... I feel as if there is something moving through my systems that I can't, quite, see. It started when they removed the bodies.”
“Oh?” Mel asked. Brian, Bob and Marcus had gathered up the remains of most of the Guard Free Now terrorists who had been killed aboard the ship. Some had not been recoverable, mostly because they had been vented to space. “Did that bother you?”
“The ones that I killed bothered me somewhat, yet most of them deserved it by human penal codes,” Fenris said clinically. “Many of them had murdered, some were rapists, with more than enough proof to be found in ship's files as well as their admissions. I also killed the Guard Intelligence Agent, Roush, and I tried to kill you and the others. That bothers me more.”
“I killed Giles,” Mel said. “I know how you feel.”
Giles had been a pirate, but she had not meant to kill him. Fenris had been driven insane by the morality scalpel that Colonel Frost had used on him; it was a wonder that they had managed to restore him. She sighed, “What about the remains bothered you?”
“There were not as many as I thought there would be,” Fenris said. “I identified several as missing, including the pirate that you killed.”
“What?” Mel leaned forward. “You can't be serious.” She remembered her nightmarish encounter in the dark corridor, when Fenris had cut power to many of his secondary systems, when she had come face to face with Giles' floating corpse.
“I am relatively certain,” Fenris said. “Unless his body and that of several others killed later in the foundry were disposed of in some other way, I am not certain what happened to them.”
“Maybe that's it,” Mel said. “I think I remember Colonel Frost ordering his men to dispose of bodies in the foundry, maybe Giles ended up there, too.”
“Perhaps,” Fenris said. “Yet my sensors in that area were damaged and I don't have any evidence that they might have. Humans typically treat their dead with great respect, so it bothers me that we cannot find their bodies. I understand many spacers are particularly superstitious about that.”
“Some of the stories are that the dead cannot rest until their bodies are properly dealt with.” Mel shivered a bit as she thought about Giles' corpse walking about the ship, perhaps standing in the shadows as men went about their repairs on the vessel. That's just a superstition, she thought, yet as she thought about her encounter with Giles's corpse, she couldn't quite dismiss the old stories.
“Well, I will check to see if I can find data to corroborate that they were laid to rest,” Fenris said. “I understand that the shipyard offered to remove the others and put them to rest.”
Mel nodded. Most stations provided for that for a small fee. From the nonchalant fashion that the station had handled the task, she had the feeling that the Mercenary's Guild did that kind of business on a fairly regular basis. It seemed that everything here had a price, including body disposal. They had taken them up on the offer for some of the bodies, but not all of them.
“Let me know if there's anything else that comes up,” Mel said.
She finished rinsing off and was almost ready for bed when she heard a tap at her hatch. She knew who it was even before she answere
d.
“Marcus,” she said as she toggled the hatch open.
“Look, Mel,” he said, “I wanted to apologize...”
“No you don't,” Mel said. “You want to gloss over the fact that you didn't trust me with information. You want to move on, to continue to treat me like a child.” Her angry glare bored into him as she dared him to refute what she had said.
Marcus looked away first. “It's just that I didn't want you to feel like you didn't have anyone to depend on,” he said. “And I thought that if you thought we both needed new identities, then you would take the matter more seriously.”
His words didn't match his tone and Mel wondered, not for the first time, if everything he did, every action he took was some form of premeditated manipulation. I don't think he can help it, she thought, it's part of his nature. That didn't mean she had to like it.
“Take it more seriously?” Mel asked. “How could I not? I'm a ghost in the system, Marcus. I don't really exist. I'm dead to my surviving family and friends. If I were to appear, Guard Intelligence would throw me into an interrogation cell as fast as they could lay hands on me. I've taken the matter very seriously, which is why we're about to launch a near-suicide mission against a maximum security facility... and it looks like I'm the only one that we're doing this for.”
“Me too,” Fenris said from overhead.
“This doesn't concern you, Fenris,” Mel snapped. “This is between Marcus and I, so butt out.” She turned her glare back on Marcus. “Everyone has different reasons they stuck around, Marcus. I'm here because I have no choice. Maybe once this is over, that will change. You, apparently, are here to watch over me because of the guilt you feel... but you can't continue to keep me in the dark, Marcus. I need to know this kind of thing. Our lives are at stake.”
Marcus sighed, “I know. It just didn't seem that important, not until it came up.”
“Fine,” Mel said. “But what else don't I know about you? What other secrets are you hiding?”
“I'm hardly the only one with secrets,” Marcus said gingerly. “Bob works for his agency, I'd call Brian a sociopath, but I'm not sure that term could apply to him since he's not even human... even our cute and cuddly lost puppy of a hacker has secrets he hasn't shared yet.”
Personally, Mel thought that Swaim's secrets would be about as dangerous as wet tissue paper, but she didn't say that. “How can I judge things clearly when you won't share things with me? How can I trust you? You said before that we were making a new start of things... but we've both got too much damned history to do that.”
“What are you saying?” Marcus asked with a pale face. She could see the worry in his eyes, the fear. He was afraid she was going to send him away. He was afraid that he wouldn't be there to watch over her. In some ways, she appreciated that... but right now it made her want to strangle him.
“I'm saying that I'm all grown up so stop treating me like a child,” she grimaced, “Let me make my own choices, decisions based off of all the information, not off of the little bits that you feel you can share.” She kept her eyes on him until he met her gaze.
“I'll try,” he said. He took a deep breath, “If you want that level of honesty... I'm not sure I can do this.” She heard his voice break a bit at the end, as if he didn't even want to think about the situation.
Mel took a step back and folded her arms. “What do you mean by that?”
He waved a hand through the air, “This. Mercenary work. I'm not sure I can watch you do this. You walked away from a career of killing people once before. I don't want to see you turned into a jaded merc.”
“Thank you for your low estimation of my morals,” Mel said dryly.
He shook his head, “That's not what I mean. Sooner or later, you're going to have to make decisions that get people killed. This plan, it's smart and devious... but if things go wrong, people are going to die. You may not have realized it, but Brian likes this plan because if things go really wrong, his plan will be the only viable one. Think about it, he's every reason to blow the plan... what do you do then?”
“I've thought about that,” Mel said, “and I don't really see any alternatives to trusting him. He may come off like he doesn't need any of us, but he's still here, isn't he?”
Marcus scowled. “For now. I think he's here more from a sense of minor curiosity than anything else. I'm warning you, Mel. If this goes wrong, I'm going to walk away. I have to... I've lost everything, I couldn't stand to watch you be torn down, dragged in the muck like the rest of us. You're a decent person, the only decent person on this ship.”
Mel sighed, “Then give me the credit to make some good calls, okay?”
He nodded, but it was halfhearted, as if he thought this was an argument he had already lost. He needs to worry about this mission, she thought, not what it is going to do to me. She had considered Brian's willingness to kill, but she also knew that her plan would get them out alive and whatever Brian felt about the others, his life was important to him, she knew.
Marcus just gave her another nod and left.
She almost called out to him, invited him to stay, maybe even for the night, but he was gone before she could even open her mouth. Mel closed the hatch and then sat down on her narrow, hard bunk. Note to self, she thought, ensure that we spend some of that money making these quarters a bit nicer. Somehow, that didn't make her feel any less alone.
CHAPTER THREE
Time: 1000 Local, 12 August 291 G.D.
Location: Guard Intelligence Headquarters, Harlequin Station
“Director Feinstein will see you now,” the gorgeous secretary said. She was tall, buxom, with long legs and naturally platinum blonde hair. She was also probably one of the deadliest people in the building, Senior Agent Scadden knew. If that hadn't dissuaded him from any attraction, her cold, blue eyes would have. She's proven her absolute loyalty to the Director, Scadden thought, in the only way that matters to our organization.
Senior Agent Scadden gave her a nod and a polite smile and stepped up to the inner office door. He adjusted his tie slightly before he stepped through the doors. His gaze went first to the exquisite carpeting on the floor and then to the man who sat behind the desk.
Feinstein was a gaunt, hunched man, who resembled nothing so much as a vulture. Scadden gave him a polite smile as he walked forward. Well, he thought, at least he doesn't have the plastic sheeting down. That was generally the sign that he had taken an agent's failure personally.
“Scadden, wipe that damned smirk off your face,” Feinstein said. “Your first mission as a Senior Agent and you've already fucked it up.” He waved a hand, “Do you have any idea how costly this will be to us if those idiots on the UN Guard Security Council have their way?”
Scadden straightened, “I'm sorry, sir. Might I respectfully state that I haven't failed, yet? I have a contingency in place and I'll be headed there to deal with the situation in person.”
“You had better!” Feinstein shook his head. “You know the dangers, here. The UN Guard Security Council wants 'transparency'! As if that bunch of buffoons could handle the information even if we gave it to them.” He fixed a baleful eye on Scadden. “If you fail, Parisian Sector Headquarters is going through with the purchase. You can bet your ass they'll be using it to watch us. Every one of our dirty deals will be theirs to blackmail us... starting with that near-fiasco at Vagyr.”
“I'll take care of it, sir,” Scadden said.
“I've got a lot riding on this, but if you think you can walk away if this goes down, think again,” the Director said. “Shit rolls downhill here. You know that, you've seen that.” Feinstein shook his head and his gaze went to his broad aquarium with its colorful fish. “You know, they don't even know how much they need us.”
Scadden wasn't certain where the conversation had gone. Does he mean the fish...
“The human race would fracture in a couple of years without our quiet manipulations. Guard Fleet is strained to the limits as it is,” Feinstein sho
ok his head in disgust. “That business at Vagyr bought us some time and with the Drakkus Empire, we've got a bit more of the stick to keep people in line, but Harlequin Sector is a powder keg. The UN Guard Security Council refuses to see that... which is why they would condemn my decisions, if they knew about them.”
Scadden wasn't certain that the director hadn't given the politicians and appointees on the UN Guard Security Council too much credit. They were all from powerful and wealthy families in the Parisian Sector, their orders and the bureaucracies that carried them out commanded the entirety of Guard Fleet and the Guard Army. It was common enough knowledge that they often directed for planets and systems to be invaded solely to make their families’ private fortunes grow still further or on occasion to settle a grudge or feud. Any complaints they had over Director Feinstein's tactics was more likely to stem from the fact that they weren't bribed as a part of the process.
Still, it wouldn't do to say something like that. So he stood, silent and respectful as Feinstein glared at the fish tank. After a moment, the vulture-like man looked up. “Right. You know what you need to do... and the less I know about what you plan, the better at this point. Results are the only thing that matter, understood?”
“Of course, sir,” Scadden said. In this, at least, he felt complete agreement.
Time: 0830 Local, 04 September 291 G.D.
Location: Danzig, City of Neuhaven, Neu Emshaven System
The cold, blustery wind that howled outside didn't reach past the glass windows that looked out on the city. On any other world, the icy weather would have brought most activity to a halt. Here on cold and dreary Danzig, it was just another fact of day-to-day life.
Chief of Operations Lindsey Bader watched the people of Neuhaven go about their morning commute with some idle interest. Not for me, she thought, their pitiable lives. She had left her rooftop penthouse by skimmer and landed on her private pad attached to the Odin Interstellar building, never once having to step outside in the foul weather. In fact, never once in her life had she ever had to commute through traffic, a benefit of being born to a powerful corporate family.
