Clawing Back from Chaos: Book 9 in the Cat Among Dragons Series (A Cat Among Dragons)

by Alma Boykin

  Khan had been counting to twenty in Punjabi as the security specialist read from Sheep’s tablet. “Commander Na Gael will receive medical treatment as per the applicable security protocol. If you wish to dispute this, you will need direct and personal authorization from the Prime Minister, the Minister of Defense, and Lt. General Eszterházy. Shall I have my aid start dialing for you?”

  Completely at sea, and severely outranked, the security officer yielded. “No, sir.” He handed the tablet back to Capt. Cluj before making one last effort. “I will be notifying my superiors of this interference with our investigation.”

  “Do so with my blessing,” Khan snarled. He spun on his heel, his officers stepping aside as he led the way into the building where the joint simulation exercise was to be held. Col. Glazier spoke quickly to the senior police officer before trotting after the others, catching up with the GDF soldiers at the door.

  As soon as everyone entered the lobby, Khan pulled his people aside. “We are going to proceed with the exercise.” He held up a hand, forestalling the protests. “One, it keeps things simple for the police and Army, who’ll be doing their investigation and clearing the scene. Two,” and he took a deep breath, making sure he was fully under control. “Two, in a true urban combat situation, who are the first targets?”

  The men exchanged glances and Major Thorsten Sigurdsson rumbled, “Senior officers, medical personnel, and technical personnel, sir.”

  “Correct. As far as I’m concerned, we are in a combat situation and will proceed accordingly. Other things will come later. Is that clear?” Khan accepted their nods—he really couldn’t ask more at this point.

  The original schedule put the simulation in the morning, with de-briefing and lectures in the afternoon. For once Commander Na Gael’s role had been limited strictly to that of adviser, making her absence at least a little easier for the GDF soldiers to deal with. Regimental Sergeant Major Sheldon Smith passed a message to Capt. Cluj, letting him know when First Sergeant Lee, Corporal “the other” Lee, and Sgt. Navarette reached Headquarters. No one said anything else about Rachel’s absence, although several times Rahoul caught himself turning to ask her something, and he noticed the others having similar problems.

  As they drove out of Lincoln late that afternoon, Rahoul considered the day’s events before finally taking time to call Headquarters. The meeting had gone very well, all things considered, and both the GDF and the Army officers finished the day with a better understanding of their mutual capabilities and needs. Getting their communications equipment to work together made a vast difference, and Rahoul made a note to add commendations to Major de Alba’s and Capt. Cluj’s files. Then he phoned the office.

  Lt. Col. Desta Selassie picked up on the first ring. Rahoul heard the confusion in his second-in-command’s voice and imagined Desta Selassie frowning, shaking her head as she spoke. “Something strange happened in the lab, sir, but Sergeant Lee isn’t making sense and he won’t explain what he saw.”

  “What do you know about the Sangre Protocol, Selassie?” Rahoul asked, guessing at the problem.

  “The what, sir?”

  She’d never been briefed and this wasn’t the moment to do it, the general decided. “I’ll brief you when I return. Trust Sergeant Lee and don’t push him. Is there anything else I need to know about?”

  “Well, sir, I’m not sure. There’s a little note on the television news that a groundskeeper found a member of the staff of the Royal Observatory’s Shetland Islands facility dead. I presume it will be considered homicide, because the body had been stuffed into a gap between a hedge and the wall of an electrical equipment building.”

  Rahoul made a note. “All those details were on the news?”

  “Ah, no. I had Maria make a few phone calls when I saw the location, since Rachel has contacts there.”

  “Good thought. We should be back in,” he glanced up and noted the scenery, locating himself, “oh, half an hour.”

  “Very good sir.”

  After ringing off, Rahoul sat back against the seat, closed his eyes. The officer hoped—oh, how he hoped—that he’d arrive to find his friend, confidant, and perennial pain-in-the-ass xenologist recovering in her quarters and grousing about medical technology and snipers with lousy aim. Rahoul couldn’t bring himself to think about the other possibility.

  As soon as his vehicle pulled to a stop at the entrance to the motorpool, Rahoul threw the door open, protocol and dignity gone to the winds in his rush to get to the lab. He hoped against hope that he’d been wrong somehow, and whispered prayers as he cut through the gardens. The lab door opened and Tony Lee ducked out of the way as Rahoul bustled in. “Report,” he demanded.

  The tall NCO tried to speak, then shook his head and pointed to the storage room where Rada’s ship hid. The door panel stood partly open, and Rahoul’s heart plunged as he looked inside. He saw nothing, not even a dust bunny, and turned back to Lee, who’d managed to regain his composure.

  “It disappeared, sir. Five hours after we got back, Captain Oldman heard a funny noise, felt her ears pop, and called me. I looked and,” he spread his hands helplessly, brown eyes full of confusion and unshed tears. “It was gone and her with it.”

  Rahoul swallowed very hard, trying to force down an enormous lump. “Rada, that is, Commander Na Gael told me that when she died, her ship’s navigation program would take it away from Earth so that the self-destruct mechanism wouldn’t cause us any problems.”

  The sergeant turned away, fighting to control himself. “So we were too late,” he whispered.

  Rahoul put a hand on Lee’s shoulder. “You did your best, Tony. She,” it was his turn to fight for control. “She was not immortal. You know that better than most.”

  “Yes, sir,” the sergeant choked out.

  Rahoul squeezed the taller man’s shoulder. “Have you written up what happened?” Lee nodded and the officer continued, “Go home Tony. We’ll survive without you for a week.”

  The ordinary-looking younger man straightened up, “No, thank you, sir. I want to be here for—”

  The general cut him off. “We can’t have a memorial service for at least a week, Sergeant. There are matters that come first. Go home to your family. I’ll let Capt. Oldman know that you went on emergency personal leave starting at 1700 today. You are dismissed.”

  Rahoul’s tone left no room for argument and Lee didn’t try.

  “Yes, sir.” He walked quietly out of the lab, leaving General Khan alone with the empty storage closet.

  The officer took one last quick look in the concealed chamber, shaking his head that Rada had managed to shoehorn anything besides cleaning supplies into the odd space. After a moment, he shut the door. It failed to latch and he frowned. Her ship powered the lock, he remembered, then clenched his teeth against memories. Not now. I promise, I’ll let myself feel, but now is not the time. Selassie’s words about the murdered astronomer had made Rahoul uneasy, and he needed to find out why. He glanced around, automatically making sure that nothing hazardous was in progress, then departed the lab, switching off the lights as he went. I’d better send out a memo that no one is to water the plants in the glasshouse unless they’re already assigned to do so. Otherwise, those rose starts will probably drown, he decided before turning his thoughts to more important matters.

  As Brigadier Khan braced for the storm that would follow the official announcement of Commander Na Gael’s death, Home Secretary Arnold Winston leaned back in his desk chair and frowned at his executive assistant while tapping his watch. Winston detested anything that disordered his schedule and plans. But someone in the Global Defense Force had gotten done in and the Home Secretary was supposed to know about it. “Who was it, exactly?”

  Abdul Zina opened a plastic folder and handed it to his boss. “A special adviser to our branch of an international security group, apparently. Something called the ‘Global Defense Force,’ specializes in debunking claims about aliens and sea monsters.” He shook his
head a little and chuckled, disbelief obvious as he added, “She was purported to be some sort of alien herself, according to the dossier.”

  Secretary Arnold Winston looked at the photograph of the murdered intelligence asset with a mixture of distaste and curiosity. He didn’t care for seeing blood or dead bodies. The woman’s red-flecked, blind eye stared up into the camera, and Winston wondered fleetingly why she hadn’t had the hideous orb replaced with a glass prosthetic. But curiosity warred with revulsion, and Winston continued looking at the images, a trifle disappointed. A supposed alien should look more, well, alien—not like a small woman with ugly facial scarring. He did note her lack of ears, but nothing else that stood out as unusual. Winston glanced up at his assistant. “Any clue as to who killed it?”

  “Not yet, sir. She was shot in the back with some kind of combined energy and metal projectile. If it did not kill her instantly, then the blow to the head as she fell finished her by breaking her neck. There was no trace of the shooter when security got up to where they’d probably been.”

  Winston grunted, then closed the folder and handed it back. Well, Bill had said that there were other Outsiders who could pass for human, and apparently Bill’s specialist had flushed one. “Very well. I have been briefed. Anything else?”

  “No, not unless the police find something odd about the woman from the Royal Observatory’s facility in the Shetlands who killed herself.”

  The middle-aged bureaucrat rocked a little before getting out of his very comfortable chair. “Have you ever spent much time in the Shetlands?”

  “No, Secretary, although from what I’ve heard, it’s a miserable, cold backwater—and that’s in the summer.” Winston nodded his agreement, and the younger man held the office door open for his boss. The sooner Secretary Winston left, the sooner Abdul Zina could meet his friends and see if what they said about the new girl was true.

  Half an hour later, Arnold Winston arrived at a very nice restaurant in a quiet side-street in Mayfair. Bill preferred not to be seen at more popular venues, and Winston agreed. He hadn’t realized how completely becoming Home Secretary would disrupt his favorite routines, including eating at prominent restaurants and cafés. Well, they say that power has its costs, he reminded himself. “Yes, I have a reservation. Mr. William Smith is waiting for me,” he told the maître d’.

  “Yes, sir. This way please.” The Italian-looking man led Winston back to a quiet corner table. “Your server will be with you momentarily, gentlemen. Buon appetito.” He left, and Wilson took one of the two remaining seats, angling so that he could see the rest of the room. Bill nodded, but didn’t speak until Winston had ordered a glass of wine.

  “So. How is business?” Winston asked.

  The person he knew as Bill Smith nodded again, more slowly, and sipped what looked like a cocktail. “It goes smoothly. We are on schedule and my specialist does not foresee any difficulties developing, although,” he smiled, revealing a few too many sharp-looking teeth. “One never puts complete faith in consultants or self-described experts.”

  “No. They tend to miss the larger picture,” Winston agreed. “Speaking of which, one of the Army’s contract scientists had a fatal incident this morning.” He raised an inquiring eyebrow but left the rest of the question unsaid as a waiter arrived. Winston ordered the soup of the day and smoked-salmon-stuffed ravioli with a white wine sauce. Bill selected fettuccini carbonara with an additional chicken breast. After the waiter left, Bill set what appeared to be an electronic book on the table and slid a tab on the side. The hair on Winston’s arms and neck rose, as if he’d touched a static electricity generator.

  “Yes, I heard about it from my consultant. She was not the intended target, but her death served the same purpose.” Bill’s words flowed without inflection or rhythm, forcing Arnold to concentrate very hard to follow the strange language. “Yylsavi,” Bill called the language. It formed an unbreakable code, and the “e-reader” on the table garbled it further, should anyone walk too close, so that passers-by only heard English-language commonplaces. “They hear what they expect to hear, just as most humans only see what they expect to see,” Bill had explained. Which also explained why Arnold Winston, with a little help from a being called Bill Smith, had worked so hard to become Home Secretary.

  Winston knew what his world needed, and Bill could make it possible. Oh, Winston thought as he sipped his wine, if only more people really thought before they did things, if they considered the need for order and structure in their lives, his own life would have been so much better and easier. But no, the vast majority of humans acted without thinking, failing to recognize their own best interests, and even their real needs at times. Winston knew better. He had disciplined himself until he knew exactly what would be best for himself—and, over time, he’d learned what would be best for others as well. His inability to convince more people of this wisdom had frustrated him until Bill came along.

  “Bill, I had a spot of difficulty blocking the information about the Carrington Event last month,” Winston reported, after Bill failed to elaborate on the scientist’s death. “There have been questions in Parliament. However, no one has commented on the domestic unrest that followed.”

  Bill raised a long, thin finger and stopped his dinner guest, then turned off the language mask. Their waiter set their plates on the table and poured each of them a glass of water. After he left Bill switched the masking device back on. “Are you surprised at their oversight?”

  Winston cut open one of the ravioli as he snorted, “Not in the least.”

  “You really cannot expect anything but blindness and disorder from people so willing to let anyone and everyone, even their self-avowed enemies, take up residence in the seat of their power.” Bill cut his fettuccini into even lengths, minced the chicken breast, arranged everything into orderly rows within the deep plate, and only then began eating. “However, that shall not last much longer.”

  The rich, smoky fish and light pasta melted on Winston’s tongue, complimented by the tart sting of the wine sauce. He savored the complex flavor, taking his time with the excellent dish. Bill matched his companion’s slow pace. There was, after all, no need to rush. The day’s work had been done, and if it had not been precisely what “Bill” desired, well, it had still accomplished a necessary step.

  Two days after Commander Rachel Na Gael’s death, Tony Lee managed to smile at his mother’s teasing. “Tony, you must be a changeling,” she declared yet again, looking up at him. Her own grandfather had not exactly lacked in stature, but Mrs. Major Luke (Annabel Travers) Lee barely reached 160 centimeters tall. Lean like her son, she patted his arm. “Your Da’ won’t be back for a few hours yet, Tony. Here.” She pressed a five-pound note into his hand. “Go to the local and get a pint. But come straight back when you’re done!” She wagged her finger at her only child, who managed a weak smile. He didn’t want a pint, but he didn’t want to stay in their small semi-detached house, either. The lack of constant activity made him restless, and the house seemed to shrink as the hours passed.

  “Thanks Mum. I shan’t be long.” He stepped outside. The low, dark skies threatened rain, and he ducked back into the house for an umbrella before setting out. He turned the corner, as if going to the King’s Arms, but continued for another block, then turned south. Tony walked briskly, alert and ready for trouble. This neighborhood clung fiercely to working class respectability, and seemed to be winning the battle, but the soldier took no chances. Any yob who tried to challenge him would discover that Tony possessed the escape skills of a buttered eel and the ability to fight back if cornered. The gray weather and early hour seemed to work, however, and no one gave him a second glance as he walked along.

  Once he reached the slightly shabby city park, Tony found a bench and sat, hard. He couldn’t explain to his parents that he’d come home on unexpected leave and he felt a touch guilty about it. Neither could he let himself grieve, at least not where they could see and hear. He loved his parent
s, but he needed to be doing something, preferably tracking down the people who’d killed his mentor and friend. There was so much that he still wanted to ask Commander Na Gael, so many questions. She’d traveled the stars, and he wanted to know what they looked like, what sort of worlds and things were out there.

  After listening and looking around to ensure that he was still alone, Tony put his elbows on his knees and rested his head in his hands, umbrella leaning against his leg. She couldn’t be dead. He knew that she was, but his heart refused to believe it. Without a body you could never be sure, that was a GDF mantra. But every time he started to hope, he heard Brigadier Khan’s words in his memory, saw the terrible disappointment and sorrow in the officer’s eyes. Tony knew Brigadier Khan, knew that he never, ever lied about serious things. The dark clouds seemed to grow lower as Tony mourned.

  He heard footsteps and sat up as an old woman walked past the bench. Her shabby but clean dark gray coat and dark kerchief matched both his mood and the low sky. The woman limped a little and Tony noted her oddly still right arm and the slight tilt of her head. Stroke probably, he decided, or a palsy of some sort. She continued past his bench to the next one and sat carefully. Tony didn’t stare, or obviously watch her, but he nodded a little to himself as she took a white paper bag out of her pocket and started tossing bits of bread. Harmless old women turned up to feed the birds in most parks in Manchester, despite the posted park rules. He returned to his thoughts, not emerging again until the old woman very carefully folded the bag and tucked it into her pocket, just like his grandmother had always done. The woman tried to stand up, but she seemed to have difficulty leaning forward without losing her balance. Tony got up, walked over, and offered her his hand. First Sergeant Lee’s heart all but stopped as she looked up at him and smiled. “Thank you, young man.”