by Blaze Ward
He pulled the flashlight out of his pocket again and leaned into the first open doorway.
Nothing moved, so nothing got shot on reflex.
Vo had a thing about dogs.
He palmed the flashlight and flicked it on/off, on/off. The human eye does a wonderful job of retaining a sudden image. It was what made movies possible, where a still image flickered seventy–two times per second.
Library. Research style. Heavy on big books. The leather–bound kind that libraries and college professors preferred. Couple of talking chairs and a side table. Everything well organized.
Clean.
Nothing on the floor like a satchel. Or a dog.
Vo stopped and breathed.
Seriously, there wasn’t any smarter way to do this?
He shrugged to himself and his twin consciences, and rotated in place.
He moved steadily across the carpet with his weight. Smooth, deliberate strides to the other side.
Darkness.
Again with the flashlight, on/off, on/off.
Office.
Workspace.
Messy.
Piles of books, papers, crap. File cabinet that looked serious. Knick–knacks you accumulate in your private space. Personal trophies. Leftovers. Swag.
Desk on the right with a chair.
Vo stepped into the room, past the half–open door, and pushed it to the frame, but not closed.
There was a window, but he didn’t want to have to Tarzan his way out, or worse, through it. That was a good way to break a leg.
Three steps in, he struck paydirt. Maybe.
The satchel. A satchel. Hopefully the only satchel.
Next to the chair, just beyond, almost hidden from sight. About where you would drop it if you had just collapsed into the chair.
Vo took two quick steps and leaned over to look. He did not touch.
It looked like the same satchel. The top was open. Eight centimeters of file folders inside, old school paper and binder clips.
That made sense. Anything not electronic was nothing that could be accessed, except by someone as willing to be here as he was.
Anyone willing to black–bag a place like this probably already knew what they would find, but electronic files were different.
Those had to be stored somewhere, transmitted across someone else’s networks, were subject to random intercept by the sorts of smart filtering systems that Security folks played with. Not old–school Sentiences, like Suvi had been, but pushing right up against the limit of what Republic law would allow.
He fidgeted for a second, before putting the flashlight in his mouth and turning it on. Putting down the taze–pistol seemed like a dumb idea, and he needed a hand free to work.
Vo lifted the bag and set it on the chair. The flashlight tasted like wet dog, but that was probably just him sweating all over the cheap plastic earlier, and not any feeling of impending doom.
Nothing like that.
One meaty paw pulled out the thick stack of papers and carefully laid them flat on the desk.
He shifted his head so the light centered the pile.
It was already bad.
Arlo, Vojciech. Yeoman, RAN. Anameleck Prime.
And that was just the top folder.
He set the flashlight down where it cast a good reflection on the space and got to work.
Vo flipped the folder open and looked at a copy of the paperwork he had submitted when he enrolled at Quinta Colonial Institute. Under that, character reference letters from Navin the Black and Command Centurion Jessica Keller.
Wow? They really said that? About me?
Past that, notes of his class schedule, family, upbringing, and psychological profile. Everything anyone might want to know about the man that was public record, or easily accessible.
And a few things that weren’t.
Nothing about sealed Court records from stupid youthful errors. Small wonders.
Vo felt his teeth start to grind, stopped them.
You knew this already, Arlo. This is confirmation. Now you can hopefully rescue the girl. Where’s her file?
There were six more folders under his. He closed his up, put it to one side, and started to look at the next one. The name was nobody he knew.
The door to the room had opened silently.
He was face–down in papers and had lost track of his space.
The overhead light coming on blinded him, physically, mentally, and metaphorically.
“Do not move,” a woman’s voice snarled harshly at him. “Vo?”
His body froze. His brain went into overdrive.
Phoebe?
Vo tuned his head very slowly.
She was standing in the doorway, wearing something his brain called a linen shift, a word dredged up from whatever monster–hiding depths there might be down there.
From the way light rendered the material translucent, there wasn’t anything under it.
She had a gun in her hand.
It was pointed at him.
“Arlo, you stupid son of a bitch,” she acknowledged him with a rueful shake of the head. “It didn’t have to end like this.”
Yeah, yeah, it did, little girl.
Vo remained silent and still. His right side was towards her, but any sudden movements would get him shot. She had picked up archery quickly for a newbie. He suspected her small arms skills were probably much better.
Fish in a barrel time, at his end of the room.
“Did you find what you were looking for, Mister Arlo?” a man’s voice inquired.
Vo could just make out Demir past Phoebe’s shoulder. He was wearing a fluffy gray robe remarkably like the one at Phoebe’s apartment.
Casually, Vo stood slowly upright, keeping his body faced towards the desk, but shifting his weight backwards as he tried to look defeated and harmless.
Harmless enough. Republic of Aquitaine Marine here, pal.
“No, Demir,” Vo replied. “I did not. I found my file. I was looking for hers.”
“Mine?” Phoebe was perplexed. “Oh my God, you really are a clueless one, aren’t you?”
Vo watched her take an unconscious half–step forward, out of the hallway and into the doorframe space. He would have never done that, but those instincts had been knocked out of him by experts, years ago.
Always retain freedom of movement in all three dimensions.
“You don’t get it, do you, you dumb lug?” she asked.
Vo still couldn’t get to her without getting shot, he knew that, but Demir couldn’t see anything over her shoulder without getting up on his tiptoes.
Vo shook his head mutely.
“I guess not,” he replied quietly.
“He wasn’t blackmailing me, you oaf,” she sneered. “I’m his partner.”
“Sorry I misunderstood, then, Phoebe,” he observed quietly, letting things turn sour in his head, and his voice. “I thought you wanted a gentleman in your life.”
Vo figured that the chances of her shooting him for that comment were pretty low. After all, she hadn’t thrown the lemonade in his face earlier today, so she had self–control when she was angry.
Still. Stick the knife in, twist it, break it off.
The enemy is the enemy.
Her eyes did narrow angrily at his words, before softening some.
“And you were, Vo,” she said in a quieter, warmer tone before the angry returned. “But this is about power, something you wouldn’t understand, you Republican poodle. About building an entire network of people willing to pass me secrets. The kinds of money and favors that the Fribourg Empire pays us for access to all of it.”
Vo nodded. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he had suspected.
Pretty girls and dragons.
At least it cleared up where everybody stood.
Now he had to get out of here alive.
“So now what?” he asked her simply.
It was the first time those words had come out of his mouth with this woman. The other opp
ortunities had potentially opened too many risks. Dangerous ice.
It couldn’t get any thinner right now.
“Now?” she snarled quietly. “You’re going to come out of there quietly. We’ll take you down to the basement and tie you up while we figure out what to do with you.”
In his head, Vo silently translated. We’ll kill you and then find a vehicle and friends big enough to drag your sorry ass out into banjo country for the coyotes to eat.
She had that mad dog look in her eyes.
Vo had a thing about dogs.
He let go of a defeated sigh and nodded before he slowly pivoted to his right, watching her eyes.
Phoebe was sharp. She was keyed up. She was almost good enough.
She took a step backwards and bumped the doorframe as she moved.
Her eyes blinked off his unconsciously as she stumbled, ever so slightly.
Vo brought his left hand up as he moved forward, towards the desk.
Her shot went wide. She had been expecting him to lunge away from the desk to get space to maneuver. It was a slug–thrower of some sort. Loud and with a tongue of flame as long as his hand.
The window behind him exploded.
Vo shot her dead center with the taze–pistol.
It was supposed to be able to take down a man his size. She was half his mass. Sudden muscle contraction put two more bullets into the wall and the ceiling as she collapsed backwards.
Vo sprang across the space as she fell. He had no idea if Demir was armed and didn’t want to give the man any chance.
Again, owl and vole.
Vo was on top of him before the pudgy professor realized what was happening. Phoebe’s pistol hadn’t even landed on the carpet yet. Demir was unarmed.
Vo lashed out and punched the little professor as hard as he could, closed fist to the forehead. Exactly what you weren’t supposed to do in melee combat, but he wanted the man down, not dead.
There were at least five other ways to hit the little professor from this position if he wanted the little man dead.
The vole went down twitching. Not out of it, like her, but stunned. Probably severely concussed. No longer a serious threat, if he ever had been.
Not like Phoebe.
Vo leaned over and hit Demir again, fist to the hard forehead bones. Just in case. And just because.
The floor echoed like a drum from Demir’s skull bouncing off of it.
Vo pivoted and grabbed the girl’s pistol from the floor where it had fallen. Slug–thrower. Internal box clip. Ambidextrous safety.
He wasn’t familiar with the exact model, but it felt like it still had a half dozen more bullets inside. Vo set the safety and tucked it into his side pocket.
He grabbed the unconscious, twitching girl and dragged her into the open. With nothing better at hand, he pulled the linen shift over her head and used it to tie her wrists in front of her, where he could see them as he talked to her.
There really was nothing under that thin piece of cloth.
Then he moved on and used the belt from Demir’s robe to tie him as well. The professor had nothing on underneath, either.
The robe reeked of Phoebe’s perfume.
That was what he had smelled earlier.
Her. Here. The last place he had expected her.
Blind. Just like all the rest of the dumb marines.
The dangers of pretty girls.
Sirens calling sailors onto the rocks to crash and drown.
For a moment, he nearly let his anger get the better of him. He considered just shooting them both, right here, right now. Haul them into the woods and feed them to a pack of hungry coyotes.
Vo pulled out Phoebe’s pistol and considered the cold, lethal weight in his hand.
Life and death. Eyes for eyes. Shooting them would be nicer than letting the experts at Fleet or Republic Intelligence get hold of these two.
At least, a cleaner way to die.
Navin’s voice snapped him cold.
By the book, punk. It exists for a reason. Use it. Understand it. Master it. Then we’ll talk.
He moved a little off and watched instead.
Phoebe stirred.
Her eyes opened, found him, focused.
The mad dog was back.
Vo considered punching her as hard as he could. There was a lot of anger sitting handy, just waiting for an excuse.
Any excuse.
By the book, punk. It exists for a reason. Use it. Understand it. Master it. Then we’ll talk.
“So now what?” she sneered at him from some grand, intellectually–superior distance.
Vo felt that same distance engulf him as well.
“Now?” he answered quietly. “Now you discover what it means to lose, little girl.”
“Is that supposed to frighten me, Arlo?” she hissed. “Because you’ve been a failure so far. But I guess you’re always a failure around girls, aren’t you?”
Vo shrugged.
You didn’t argue with mad dogs.
From his back pocket, he pulled out his personal comm and dialed one of those emergency numbers they made you memorize without ever writing down.
A woman answered on the second beep.
“Whiskey,” she said.
Nothing more. No emotional loading behind the word. Just two syllables.
Vo answered with a very specific sequence of apparently random gibberish. He took a breath and repeated Demir’s address.
“Very good, Mr. Arlo,” she replied. “ETA six minutes.”
And the line went dead.
He stared at Phoebe. Her body was still the most utterly magnificent thing he had ever seen. Those brilliant green eyes were closer to normal. Maybe the mad dog was on a leash.
There was some confusion in there now.
Uncertainty.
The beginnings of fear.
Silence stretched.
“What’s happening?” she whispered, after a spell.
He saw her glance over at the squishy professor, but the man was out and unlikely to recover his senses for a very long time. A good concussion did that to the brain. What was coming for him next would be the icing and the cherry, at least as far as Vo was concerned.
It was just the two of them.
“Some people are coming,” Vo replied calmly, quietly.
Talking to the mad dog in those eyes.
“They’re going to take you away, Phoebe,” he continued. “Eventually, you are going to tell them everything they want to know. How much pain that requires will be entirely up to you.”
His jaw hurt from not grinding it.
“Kill me,” she pleaded at him quietly. “Please, Vo. Do you have any idea what this will do to my parents?”
The voice was different. She sounded like the tired, scared girl who had crawled up into his lap and fallen asleep, once upon a lifetime ago.
“No. No, I don’t, Miss Akkersdijk,” he said, feeling that emotional gulf in his head, that great space between them, turn into a moat filled with red lava.
Silence filled the hallway.
“You could have taken me, you know,” she whispered. The voice was still soft and innocent. “Had me.”
Fragile.
Frightened.
He kept his counsel as the silence stretched.
“We could have gone away,” she continued, picking up as if the conversation hadn’t lagged at all. “Left Quinta and never looked back. Vo, please?”
He just shrugged.
“If I hadn’t been your mission, little girl,” he snarled quietly back, “You would have never even noticed me. Pretty girls don’t ever see monsters like Arlo, except when they need something.”
He bit back the rest of the tirade in his head.
She wasn’t listening.
There was nobody home.
Her eyes had gone unfocused. They had that glassiness that happened when true shock sets in.
Maybe she never had been beaten, at anything.
His comm c
hirped.
“Arlo,” he answered.
“Contact,” a man’s voice replied.
“Second story hallway,” he stated flatly. “Two prisoners. Building has not been secured.”
“Acknowledged.”
The line went dead again.
Vo counted five in his head.
Downstairs, the back door exploded inward. A Rapid Response Team made remarkably little racket as they poured through the flaming wreckage and began to go room to room.
Vo set the pistol down and lifted his hands up so he didn’t get accidentally shot. Demir was still out and the girl had retreated so far inside herself it might take drugs to blast her mind loose and bring her back to reality.
But she wasn’t his problem anymore. Republic Intelligence would take her and the vole away now.
Then they could find out how many other fools had been compromised, had been turned by her pretty face and twisted into being spies for the Fribourg Empire.
Vo’s jaw hurt from clenching.
A siren on the rocks, calling sailors like him to their doom.
At least he finally knew why the pretty girl had noticed him.
Also read Auberon, volume one of the Jessica Keller chronicles.
Jessica Keller has a reputation as a maverick commander. It almost got her court martialed. Now it has gotten her a new command in an obscure sector, with orders to ignite a new front in the eternal war.
But her old nemesis, Imperial Admiral Emmerich Wachturm, stands in her way.
Worlds will fall before their feud ends, but only if she can forge her crew of strangers into a weapon. Otherwise, disaster looms.
Available at your favorite retailers.
Also read Queen of the Pirates, volume two of the Jessica Keller chronicles.
If Jessica Keller wants to advance in the Republic of Aquitaine’s Navy, she must become more than just Aquitaine’s best fighting commander: she must learn diplomacy.
The First Lord sends her to a safe backwater ally, Lincolnshire, to learn.
However, Jessica finds herself neck deep in an Imperial conspiracy to over throw the King of the Pirates and ignite the entire border.
Jessica and Auberon must go to the very edge of the galaxy and far beyond mere diplomacy to stop them.
Available at your favorite retailers.
