by Rick Partlow
This was where it could get tricky, especially if Lee lost his nerve.
“CSF shuttlecraft,” the Fleet officer transmitted again, his voice taking a hard edge, “I must warn you, you need to break off pursuit and leave the area immediately. We will use force.”
“I have my orders, Fleet Command,” the female pilot snapped at him. “I don’t recognize your authority to supersede them. If you so much as paint us with a targeting laser, you’ll be brought up on charges.”
“Shit,” Bobbi muttered, and I had the same thought. Lee was between a rock and a hard place.
And the DSI’s a pretty big fucking rock.
Starships with atmospheric capabilities, especially smaller ones like our converted missile cutter, were hybrid beasts. They had to have turbines for operation in an atmosphere, plasma drives for outside of it and the Teller-Fox warp unit to jump to T-Space. That made them terribly versatile, but not terribly good at any one thing. Which meant that those damn shuttles, which were not that much smaller than our ship and were built to operate in atmospheres and in orbit, were a hell of a lot faster in the soup than we were. Add to that the fact that their pilots and crew were probably wearing g-suits and could push nine gravities of acceleration without losing consciousness, and they were catching up to us way too quickly.
“Lt. Lee,” Bobbi cut in, her voice strained by the elephants sitting on our chests, “take them out. That’s a direct order.”
The shuttles were closing in, just a few kilometers away now, and we were still a good two minutes from leaving the atmosphere, much less getting far enough away to Transition. I was fairly certain they had proton cannons, and even though the Nomad had military-grade EM shield projectors, they wouldn’t last more than maybe one shot from a proton accelerator.
“Now, God damn it!” Bobbi exploded.
Then lightning struck from above in an actinic white flash of super-ionized atmosphere and the lead shuttle simply ceased to exist. Where it had been, there was nothing but a cloud of vapor, still traveling in the same direction and only gradually losing velocity. The second shuttle immediately banked away from its pursuit course and began a slow arc back the way it had come, towards the Johnny City spaceport.
“Thanks, Lieutenant,” Bobbi said, her voice more subdued.
“Good luck,” Lee responded, perhaps with some bitterness in his tone. “Whoever you are.”
“Yeah,” Sanders muttered, still staring at her with suspicion in his eyes. “Whoever you are.”
Chapter Eleven
I lifted the plastic tote with a grunt of effort and stacked it on top of the others I’d already loaded onto the hand-truck, then smacked dirt and dust off my hands and sucked in a deep breath. The damned things were packed with hand-made, cold-cast bronze sculpture pieces and each weighed probably seventy or eighty kilos. And of course, there was no machinery here to lift it because physical labor brought us closer to the purpose of the Ancients…
“Do you need a hand, Brother?”
I turned and saw the man I knew only as Anshar walking over from the other side of the workshop, his pale face and the front of his simple, white robe smeared with the same dirt and grime that stained mine.
“No, I have it, thanks,” I assured him, waving him away.
I’d only been here a few days, and I was already getting tired of the man who’d been assigned as my personal mentor. He was young, close to my age I thought, but his face was weathered and lined from working outside and lacking access to modern health care for the last few years that he’d been a Dedicant to the Church. I’d initially thought it was odd that someone so young would be put in charge of a fresh convert like me, but that was before I’d been brought inside the compound and got a sense of the raw number of converts they had here.
Aphrodite was the home of the first established Church of the Ancients commune, and it was also the biggest by a large margin, bigger than it had looked even from the aerial recordings we’d taken when we’d overflown it with the Nomad on the way to the Kennedy spaceport. The compound was a good three kilometers on a side and surrounded by security fencing that was a good deal more high-tech than any of the equipment that Dedicants like us were allowed to use. Apparently, you had to grow closer to the spirit of the Predecessors before you were considered ready to be trusted with anything as complicated as a powerlifter or a pallet jack.
I wiped sweat from my forehead with the sleeve of my robe and grabbed the business end of the hand-truck, leaning it back towards me and wincing with the load I was balancing precariously on its two large wheels. I rolled it out the open door of the shop and into the sand-covered pathway between the wattle huts they used for making the handcrafts to sell in the local markets and via the net to collectors as far away as Earth. Kennedy was right on the edge of the northern desert, and this compound was a few kilometers south of Kennedy, and the white glow of Tau Ceti beating down reminded me that it was mid-summer here. There were water buckets with dipping cups hanging from posts set in the edge of the walkway every fifty meters or so, but I’d still seen three or four newbies keel over since I’d arrived, from working too hard and forgetting to hydrate.
“Do you remember where the sculptures are stored, Brother Aguragus?” Anshar asked, following me outside. “The warehouse is…”
“The large building the third path on the left,” I finished for him, forcing a smile as I looked back. “The sculptures go in the third door from the center against the wall to the right. I have a very good memory, Mentor Anshar.”
“Of course, Brother,” he acknowledged, chuckling ruefully and brushing blond hair out of his eyes. He was actually a very nice guy, not at all the wild-eyed fanatic I’d expected. “I’m afraid I’ve grown too used to new Dedicants who are unaccustomed to doing a day’s labor and are only here because they wish to rebel against their parents.”
“I’m sure we all know what it’s like to rebel against our parents,” I mused with some sympathy. “Eventually, though, you have to make peace with your past.”
“Is that why you’re here, Aguragus?” He wondered. “To make peace with your past?”
I fought to keep from wincing at the name. The first thing the Cult did when you came to one of their church communes and took your vows was to give you a new name. For some reason having to do with a cockeyed conspiracy theory that the Predecessors were the gods of the oldest Earth religions, all those names were Babylonian, and mine sounded like some Italian pasta dish.
“I’m here because all I see in my day-to-day life has been lies and deception,” I answered him, trying to sound sincere. “Here, you speak the truth.”
That seemed to satisfy him and he let me go as I pushed the dolly arduously along the path. Other new Dedicants in their sweat-stained robes passed me carrying sacks of fertilizer for the gardens or bags of freshly-picked vegetables to the kitchens for the afternoon meal. Some of them still had their mentors walking doggedly behind them, bending their ears with the gospel of the Ancients, just as I had. It had taken me most of my time here, parroting everything he said and making all the right noises and wearing these damned scratchy robes and eating their undercooked food just to get him to let me take a load of kitschy tourist crap to a warehouse full of that same kitschy tourist crap without him making himself my human shadow.
But I needed to get into that warehouse alone because it was the only building big enough to hide the Predecessor corpse without Dedicants stumbling across it, and I didn’t figure they’d want anyone they didn’t already trust knowing they had the thing. It hadn’t been easy, and it had involved eating a lot more metaphorical shit than I was comfortable with, but I had honestly believed that I was the only one of the crew who could pull this off. There was absolutely no way to smuggle anything into this place; one of the rituals of entry was to throw everything you brought with you, including your clothes, into a constantly-burning fire pit. The only way to get a cracking module or a ‘link into this place was to use the ones inside my h
ead.
Getting Bobbi to agree with that hadn’t been easy. Hell, nothing about Bobbi had been easy on the trip here from Johnny…
***
“What the hell do you mean you work for Fleet Intelligence?” Sanders demanded, hands spread out in front of him as if he was groping for comprehension. “Since when? How long?”
The ship had jumped to T-space a few minutes ago and we were under the on-board gravity field, which made it more convenient for him to pace in the confines of the cockpit. Of all of them, Sanders had taken it the hardest. Vilberg was blasé about the whole thing and Victor and Kurt seemed a bit stunned, but they hadn’t said much.
“Since before I met you, Eli,” she told him, her tone gentle, her eyes downcast. “Since before I started the group counselling with you.”
I blinked at that. I hadn’t known either one of them had been in Veterans’ Services group counselling. Not that it was a huge shock; lots of combat vets went to it. I just hadn’t pictured Bobbi ever attending a session.
A muscle in Sanders’ face spasmed and I thought for a second he was going to cry. And I understood completely.
“Were you ever really my friend, Bobbi, or was that just part of your cover?”
The words punched me in the gut, so God knows how they affected Bobbi, but from the look on her face it was much worse. She pushed up from her seat and took a step towards Sanders. He put up a hand to ward her off, but she powered through it like she was going to punch him in the throat, and I thought for a second I’d have to break up an assault.
Then she pulled him into a hug, squeezing his arms tight against him, not letting him fight free.
“Of course I’m your friend, you stupid asshole,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “You’re all my friends…the only real friends I have.”
Gradually, Sanders relaxed, and his arms went around her, hugging her back. But the look on his face still showed the hurt, and I didn’t think that was going away any time soon.
***
That hadn’t been the end of it all, of course, not by a longshot. But by the time we’d reached Tau Ceti, things had at least calmed down enough that I felt like I could leave the others to their part of this operation without worrying they’d kill each other. Which was good, because I had enough to worry about.
I pushed the hand-truck over the poured-concrete ramp up into the warehouse, squinting as its steel walls reflected the harsh glare of the mid-day back into my face, and then blinking to wait for my eyes to adjust as I entered the comparative gloom inside. The floors were thick with sand, despite the constant sweeping of Dedicants. I’d tried to trade for that job, but no one who’d drawn it would give it up; work in the shade was priceless. I’d been able to get transferred from the vegetable gardens only by giving up my small ration of meat at mealtimes for two days in a row. Meat was precious here because they raised the animals by hand, slaughtered them by hand and gutted, skinned and cleaned them by hand. And that was a job no one would trade for.
I found the corner of the warehouse where my load of crates should go…and passed by it, eyes darting back and forth as I looked for signs of where they might be concealing the artifact. The warehouse was divided by cement block interior walls, and between our sensor scans from overhead and my observations, there was no section of the place blocked off from the rest of it that was large enough to hide anything significant. But what we had detected was a funky thermal reading from beneath the foundation; something under the ground was using a lot of power.
If there was a basement to this building, and a bunch of heavy equipment drawing power, there had to be an elevator.
I tried to look like I knew where I was going and like I was authorized to be there, which is usually ninety percent of not being questioned. Of course, I didn’t know where I was going, so I had to look around without looking like I was looking around. My headcomp helped with that, analyzing the echoes of my footsteps and the thermal signatures my enhanced optics contact lens was picking up and suggesting the most likely locations for an elevator shaft based on the interior structure of the building.
It led me around the turns of a maze created by stacks of inventory, further and further away from where I was supposed to be and from the crowds of Dedicants moving antlike from one task to another. Finally, it took me too an isolated alcove formed by the gap between a pair of interior walls. Unlike any other available space in the warehouse, it was devoid of the omnipresent plastic crates, and set into the wall at the very back of it was a large set of double doors. In front of them stood a man who was quite obviously not a Dedicant or a mentor. He was almost two meters tall, muscular, impossibly square-jawed, blond, and blue-eyed. He was an Acolyte, someone who’d gone to the next level of the faith and pledged himself to the Church for life, submitting himself to the bodysculpting they used to achieve their concept of what the Predecessors had intended for the ideal human form.
Apparently, the ideal human form wasn’t considered enough of a defense, because his outsized clone-tissue musculature was squeezed into an armored vest and he had a pulse carbine slung over his shoulder. He alerted at my presence, stepping away from the wall where he’d been leaning idly and planting himself in front of me.
“What are you doing here?” His voice was unnaturally deep, impossibly sonorous. For a religion that thought humans were perfectly designed, they sure did a lot of modifications. It kind of made their feud with the Skinganger cyborgs seem even more pointless and ironic. “This area is restricted to Acolytes and above. No Dedicants are allowed here.”
“My apologies, Master,” I said, bowing my head and carefully using the proper honorific for one of my rank addressing someone of his. “I was told that these items were urgently needed below.” I motioned at the closed lid of the top crate.
I was spit-balling now, just letting my mouth work independent of my brain while I watched him, waiting for an opening. His too-perfect face twisted in a skeptical frown and he took a step closer, leaning over and pushing his carbine back so that he could pull open the hinged lid halves of the crate and check inside. The skepticism turned to outright hostility when he saw the sculpted bronze figures stacked inside the box and he was just starting to straighten when I hit him.
My headcomp had tried to help, highlighting just the right spots for a single blow to kill or incapacitate, but I already knew, and I’d known since I was a kid being taught unarmed combat by my great-grandfather. The knife-edge of my right hand lashed out across my body and caught him on the carotid artery running down the right side of his neck. He grunted softly and his eyes rolled up as he began to collapse, stunned by the sudden loss of blood pressure to his brain.
Before he could stumble, I was behind him, wrapping my arms around his throat in a choke-hold, cutting off the arteries on both sides. He was too out of it already to fight the hold and I sank it in as deeply as I could, holding it for a long count to make sure he was completely out. I dragged his limp form out of the alcove and around behind a stack of crates, out of sight. I quickly stripped off his armored vest, strapping it tighter to fit my slightly skinnier frame, then grabbed his carbine and slung it over my shoulder.
For just a second, I debated killing him, but decided against it; he’d been just like Anshar once, just an earnest young kid looking for direction. Maybe he still was. I ripped the sleeves off his hand-sewn robes and used them to tie him up and gag him, hoping it would hold. Then I headed back to the double doors, glancing around carefully to check for witnesses, either biological or electronic.
I saw neither, and my implanted ‘link didn’t detect any transmissions from security cameras, unless they were hardwired. I’d have to take that chance because the only alternative was to run away and forget about the whole damn thing. I stepped over past the doors to a security lock, a biometric ID plate with a DNA scan. My headcomp used my ‘link to find the wireless frequency it used to communicate with the main security system and began squeezing past its firewalls with the cra
cking software I’d uploaded.
That had caused almost as big of a stink with the others as finding out that Bobbi was a spy.
“You had that shit put inside your head?” Victor had nearly gasped at the thought. “What if someone, you know, like, hacks into it and takes you over?”
“Nobody tells me anything,” Vilberg had whined. And it had gone downhill from there; it had been a long flight.
The computer inside my head finally came to an understanding with the one controlling the door and the panel lit up green. It took another few moments before the doors rumbled open to reveal a large lift car about three meters on a side. The interior was blank, featureless metal except for a single button just inside the doors. I began to step through, but then had a thought and went out to retrieve the hand-truck. If nothing else, it was camouflage. I pushed it in ahead of me, then hit the control.
I tried to keep my breathing under control as the doors shut, but all I could think was that I was descending into the unknown in the middle of enemy territory, with a good chance of getting killed, purely on the basis of the promises of a spy, and I wasn’t wearing any pants.
“I’ve found it,” I transmitted over my ‘link. “I’m heading down.”
“Good luck. We’ll be waiting for your signal.” It was Bobbi. She was still my XO, still my strong right hand, no matter who she’d worked for originally. I had to believe that.
The elevator lurched abruptly into motion, nearly throwing me off balance. It moved with an unnerving metallic grinding that vibrated the floor beneath me and made me wonder just how much effort a bunch of religious fanatics would put into construction safety standards. I wasn’t certain how far down it went, but the ride took a good twenty seconds, depositing the car and me with an equally violent shudder. I licked my lips nervously and waited for the doors to open, one hand on the dolly’s cross-bar, the other on the pistol grip of the laser carbine.
