by Rick Partlow
Recon
Book 2:
A Wolf in the Fold
Copyright 2017
By Rick Partlow
Chapter One
The wet grass at the crest of the high hill coiled beneath us, a carpet of discomfort that soaked through my shirt in the chill dampness of the autumn morning. I tried to ignore it, tried to keep the camera steady as I panned across the breadth of the massive herd of elk. They covered the rolling hills below us, shifting this way and that at the insistent bugling of their horned lord, the brawny bull with a fire in his eyes and wickedly curved antlers arching over his shoulders like sabers.
“You think we’re far enough away?” I asked Sophia, not whispering but speaking in a normal, low tone that carried much less distance. “He looks crazy with the rut.”
“We’re just under a hundred meters,” she responded in the same tone, shrugging slightly, not looking away from the binoculars. “He won’t notice us.”
Sophia’s dark brown hair was pulled back into a long ponytail, gathered away from the soft curves of her high cheekbones except for a few strands that had escaped and clung tenaciously to her ears. I caught the corner of her mouth turning up slightly. “Besides, he’s going to have other things to worry about in a couple minutes.”
She tapped me on the arm and pointed off to the left, where the trees skirted the river. I turned the small camera in that direction, just now noticing the black, white and grey shapes slinking up between the trees.
“Four greys, a white and three blacks,” Sophia listed off, almost in a mnemonic chant. “That’s the Twisted Creek pack. They had twelve until this last winter, when the Round Hills killed their old Alpha Male and three of the females went over to the White Crest pack.”
“You know,” I said, not for the first time, “you could have the drones take footage of this instead of making me run the camera.”
“I sure could, sweetie,” she agreed, smile broadening. “But then I wouldn’t have an excuse for bringing you along, would I?”
“Good point,” I acknowledged, leaning over to kiss her on the cheek. “Between your job and mine, we don’t get much downtime, do we?”
“No one said you had to go work for the planetary constabulary, love,” she reminded me. “I know the Demeter Ecological Survey would have let me hire you as a strong back. It’s been almost three years since the war ended and we’re still understaffed.”
“What I know about genetics, zoology, and ecological engineering could fit in a pamphlet,” I said. “Carrying a gun and being intimidating, that I know how to do.”
“Shhh,” she hushed me, lowering her binoculars, and pointing again. “Here they come.”
The wolves went straight for a calf only a few months old, born in the late spring. The mother tried to run them off, but their packmates circled back around to corner the young animal while the other elk edged away like a school of fish scattering before a shark. I looked over the top of the camera’s display screen, wanting to see it through my own eyes and not through the filter of the device. This was too real, too raw for that. This was why I loved living here. The Revenant Forest on Demeter was like stepping back in time tens of thousands of years and watching an Earth before humans built their cities.
Here, animals that had been extinct for millennia, mastodons and saber-tooth cats and megatherium and dozens more, stalked and grazed and lived alongside wolves and elk and deer, all of them engineered and incubated here for the Revenant Project. Demeter was one of the oldest colonies in the Commonwealth, and when we’d found it, it had very little in the way of complex life. There was enough of an ecology of fungi and lichen to keep the atmosphere breathable, but not much more. It had been the perfect place to introduce Earth life without worrying about destroying an existing ecosystem, and it had been the perfect place to start the Revenant Project.
DNA samples had been harvested decades before and preserved and later duplicated; and here, they’d come to life. The Revenant Forest had been the first area they’d been reintroduced, and was still the densest concentration on the planet, but the ecosystem had been spreading across the temperate zones of this world for decades now, and there had been other introductions in the polar zones. If we didn’t screw it up and the Tahni didn’t invade again and force us to eat a bunch of the herd animals again, this place would be even cooler in a century or so.
And it was all playing out in front of me. The bull elk was rushing in now, but three or four wolves were snapping at him, trying to keep him distracted while the others finished off the calf. The poor thing was bleating in terror, blood running down its flanks from the wolves hanging off its haunches, sinking in their teeth. It was ugly and brutal and depressing, but I’d seen worse. I’d done worse.
In the year I’d been trapped here during the Tahni occupation, I’d done a lot worse. Left for dead in a failed attempt to take the colony back from the enemy, the rest of my Marine Force Recon platoon ambushed and slaughtered, I’d joined up with Sophia and what was left of the human resistance and did what I could to fight the Tahni with what we had. By the time the Commonwealth military had come back into the fight and given us hope we could win this thing, I’d developed an affinity for those wolves and the merciless efficiency they showed towards their prey.
“You ever see this before,” Sophia asked me softly, leaning into my arm and settling in to watch, “back on Earth, before the war?”
“I saw wolves a few times with Gramps,” I told her, eyes still locked on the sight of the cow and the bull trying to chase off the pack, wearing themselves out as the wolves dodged away nimbly. “In the Canadian Rockies, and again in Arizona. Different sub-species in Arizona, the Mexican wolf. I was never around when they made a kill, though.”
“Gramps?” Sophia repeated. “That was your great-grandfather, right?”
I nodded, realizing I hadn’t thought about him, or any other part of my former life, for most of the last three years. “Master Gunnery Sergeant Cesar Torres,” I said proudly, “old United States Marine Corps, back when there was a United States.”
“Jeez, how old was he?” She blurted, actually looking away from the kill.
“He’ll be 203 in a month,” I said, “if he’s still alive.” I shrugged. “Mom seemed to think he was.”
“You haven’t heard from him since you joined the Marines?”
I snorted at the understatement. “I haven’t seen him since the night my mother sent an assassin after her own grandfather,” I corrected her, “and I killed the guy, then changed my identity and went on the run to the Marine Corps.”
“I was trying to be judicious,” she said. Then she frowned, her eyes narrowing. “Do you ever miss that life? I mean, your mom was at the top of the Corporate Council totem pole. You guys were on top of the world, almost literally. This,” she waved around us, “seems like a pretty big comedown.”
Down in the river valley between the hills, the calf was kicking fitfully as the life ran out of it, the wolves hanging on patiently.
“No,” I said flatly. “I don’t miss it at all.”
After the feeding began, we started making our way back to the rover; we’d been there to capture the hunt. The road back to the main research facility was muddy and treacherous this time of year, but the utility vehicle was built for it and Sophia had driven these trails since before I met her. I didn’t even look up when the wheels lost traction for a heartbeat or I felt the rear end slide.
It was getting late in the morning and my stomach was growling; I was digging in the center console for a protein bar when my ‘link chimed for attention from my jacket pocket with the tone I’d assigned to my boss, Constable Nunez.
“Shit,” I muttered, fish
ing for my ear piece and pushing it into place. “This is supposed to be my day off.”
“Maybe Amity’s being hit by yet another crime wave,” Sophia murmured sarcastically. The tourist town was just getting back on its feet as the post-war recovery began to make its way out to the colonies little by little, and street crime wasn’t a major problem.
“Munroe,” I answered tersely.
“Munroe,” I heard Nunez’ deep bass rumble vibrate in my ear, “we got a…situation here.” He paused as if he wasn’t sure how to say it.
“What’s up, boss?” I asked him, frowning curiously.
“We had a registered bounty hunter land at the port,” he told me. “Big guy named Roger West, landed in his own private ship. Got all his clearances from the Patrol and everything.”
I felt the corner of my mouth curl into a sneer. Bounty hunters were a nasty reality of our interstellar civilization. There were too many jurisdictions, too many places to hide, and too few Patrol ships to keep track of all the criminals. The only way to ensure that people didn’t kill someone or steal a ship in one system and run to another with impunity was to allow licensed bounty hunters to bring them in for profit. No cop I knew liked it too much, though.
“What’s he want here?” I asked. Did we have a fugitive hiding out in town?
“You,” Nunez said and I felt my blood run cold. “He wants to talk to you.”
***
I fidgeted, tightening the chest fastenings of my uniform vest and checking the looseness of my pistol in its chest holster over and over as I watched the muddy road slide underneath the wheels of the rover. The pistol was comforting; it was the same model I’d carried in the war as a secondary weapon. We’d stopped at our house---Sophia’s house, really, the one the Ecological Survey provided---and picked the gear up on the way into town.
“Are you sure you’re not overreacting, Munroe?” Sophia asked me, eyes darting away from the road to watch me play with my weapons and armor yet again. “It might be nothing.”
“And it might be that my mother has put a bounty out on my head and this guy tracked me down,” I said, more harshly than I’d intended. I sighed, reaching out a hand to squeeze hers where it was tight on the wheel. “Either way, the uniform reminds him that I’m local law enforcement, and maybe the armor and the gun will keep him from trying anything.”
“I’m going in with you,” she said.
“I’ve got the Constable with me and…”
“I’m going in with you,” she cut me off with a look that many a Tahni soldier had seen just before he died, and I stopped objecting.
“Did you bring a gun?” I asked her instead.
She shot me an annoyed glance. “Of course I brought a gun. Why the hell would I go in with you if I wasn’t armed?”
I couldn’t help it; I laughed. She chuckled too, the tension broken for just a moment.
“We’ll get through this, Munroe,” she said.
Some of our friends thought it was funny that she called me by my last name, but the false identity the street surgeon in Vegas had picked for me all those years ago was Randall Munroe. I’d gone into the Marines immediately after and nearly everyone there, including your friends, called you by your last name. I sure as hell didn’t want anyone calling me “Randy,” so Munroe it stayed.
Amity came into view once we’d cleared the Revenant Forest. The city had been rebuilt since the war, and it had grown past its original boundaries as new hotels and restaurants had opened up to cater to the reinvigorated tourist industry. They were growing a little too fast in my opinion, and I’d begun to worry about the new resorts and vacation villas eating into the preserve’s land.
I let my eye wander to the sonic fences designed to keep wildlife out of the city, noting they were almost a kilometer farther out than they’d been when I arrived here, on that ill-fated mission four years ago. Just past them, a small herd of deer wandered, grazing on the lush grass and taking advantage of the greater discomfort the sonic barrier caused for predators.
There wasn’t much traffic this morning; it was a holiday, technically, Founders’ Day. It was a century and change on this day, local time, since the first Commonwealth Survey ships had passed through the wormhole jumpgate into the Cronus system and landed on the one habitable, Demeter. The resorts were still open because tourists didn’t take holidays from their vacations, but government offices were closed, other than emergency services. The Constabulary was an emergency service, of course, but I’d had the day off anyway since I had seniority over the rest of the deputies by all of three weeks.
The Constabulary was near the center of town, across the street from the offices of the Colonial Governor. Those had been rebuilt since the war; there’d been too much blood spilled in and around the old offices. I knew, because I’d been responsible for much of it. I was of the opinion that the new offices had less character than the old ones and tried too hard to look anachronistic, but Sophia assured me that was just me being prematurely curmudgeonly. The Constabulary was a utilitarian building that didn’t pretend to be anything but a police station, boxy and plain with a garage for a half dozen rovers and a couple ducted-fan hoppers. We really needed a flyer, but VTOL jets were still pretty expensive out in the colonies and Constable Nunez hadn’t been able to convince the Governor to approve it.
Sophia parked the rover just inside the Constabulary garage, in a space for visitors. She pulled a compact handgun out of the center console and tucked it into the pocket of her jacket before she slid out the driver’s side door. I steeled myself with a deep breath and got out of the car.
Mother knew about this identity. She’d found me at the military base on Inferno when I’d returned from Demeter after the Fleet and the Marines had freed it, and it had only been some very quick thinking by my Company Commander, Captain Yassa, that had kept me from a quick flight home to Earth. It wasn’t at all unlikely that she had people looking for me still, despite the deal I’d made.
I took Sophia in through the employee entrance to avoid the weapons detectors at the front door, walking through a narrow hallway that led up through the break room and into the offices. The station wasn’t fully staffed today, but there were a couple other deputies in the break room when we passed by and they mumbled hellos, barely looking up from the administrative work they were doing on issue tablets. Sophia was a regular fixture around here, and neither of the deputies was paying enough attention to notice I was strapped.
Constable Nunez was sitting on the edge of my desk in the main office, dressed in our everyday blue utility fatigues, with his rank on his sleeve and the Constabulary seal on his breast pocket. He was a short, thickly-built man probably twenty years older than me, with forearms as thick around as my calves. No one fucked around with Esteban Nunez twice, which came in handy in our line of work.
He looked me up and down, his bushy, black eyebrows shooting up at my load-out.
“There something you want to tell me, Munroe?” He asked, deadpan, not getting up.
I glanced around the room, seeing that all of the other desks were empty and we were alone. I wondered if that was on purpose.
“Boss,” I said, trying to work up some moisture in my mouth, “there’s a possibility this guy might be after me.”
“Are you telling me you’re a fugitive from justice, Deputy?” He was half joking, but I could see a hint of concern in his dark, hooded eyes.
“Not from justice,” I clarified. I hesitated, wondering how best to say it. “It’s a family thing. I left on pretty bad terms, and my mother has enough connections to maybe set someone like this bounty hunter on me.” That was honest enough to not make me feel bad about lying to Nunez.
“You want me in there for backup?” He stood from the desk, hand going automatically to the spot on his belt where his gun would be if he’d been carrying it.
“I got his back,” Sophia said, hands in her jacket pockets. Nunez grinned at her, but with respect. He was a post-war immigrant, but
everyone knew what Sophia had done with the Resistance during the war.
“He’s in interrogation,” he told us, jerking a thumb over his shoulder at the door leading out of the offices. “He was strapped, but I made him store it in a locker.”
“Thanks, Boss.”
I clapped him on the shoulder as I passed.
“What if I have to run?” I asked Sophia very quietly as we passed into the broad corridor that led out of the offices, past the interrogation room and the holding cells and up to the lobby. “What if she’s found me and I have to leave?”
“I always wanted to travel,” she said, grabbing my hand and squeezing it tight for just a moment before she let it go.
Then we were at the interrogation room. I thought for just a moment about slipping into the adjoining observation room for a second and observing this Roger West on video before I confronted him, but I shook the idea off. Might as well get it over with. I put my right hand over the grip of my pistol, then palmed the ID plate of the door and stepped through.
The bounty hunter was sitting on the table, arms crossed. He was a big man, tall and rangy, wearing vat-grown leathers and heavy spacer’s boots. He had shaggy, light brown hair and a drooping mustache and gunmetal grey eyes with faint lines at their edges that showed the weathering of a life spent outdoors. He grinned at me and saluted casually with two fingers.
“Nice to see you again, Munroe,” he drawled with a strong Southwest accent.
“Shit,” Sophia breathed softly, her eyes going wide.
I let my hand drop away from the gun; it wouldn’t do any good against him.
I nodded to him, shutting the door behind us.
“Hi Cowboy.”
Chapter Two
Three and a half years ago, on Loki:
I had my helmet off; even with the cold, I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to breath in fresh air, not recycled shipboard crap. That’s why I didn’t register the ship coming in until it nearly landed on top of me. It was quiet for a ship the size of an Attack Command missile cutter, maybe a hundred meters long and half that wide, but this was no missile boat. It was flat black with mind-bending curves and no markings at all, and I’d only seen the like of it once before; it belonged to the Glory Boys.
