by M. R. Forbes
“So they needed a professional.”
“Yes.”
“One who was easy to get control over.”
“Who they thought would be easy to control. And who had already started working on the problem.”
“Did you make any progress?”
“Not much, but I eliminated a lot of possibilities. That’s a start. What do you know about Kett, Killshot?”
“I know the Republic thinks he’s a traitor.”
“Do you? As the head of the OSI?”
“The evidence suggests he is. Ferrying contraband?”
“What would you do, if you knew there was a threat to the Republic, but you couldn’t tell anyone about it? If you couldn’t ask for help? If you knew your chain of command was compromised?”
“I’d break an elite team of soldiers out of incarceration.”
Abbey smiled at that. “I assume General Kett didn’t have that option. Maybe he did the next best thing?”
“I’m open to the idea after everything else you’ve just told me. I’ll see if I can dig anything up on Thraven. You stay the course, but be careful. Drune may be a trap.”
“You don’t want to pull me off the team?”
“Why would I do that?”
“To find out what Thraven did to me.”
“You were already a weapon. If you’re harder to kill, then you’re a stronger weapon. Why the frag would I pull you out? We need all the help we can get.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you starting to feel a little better about the situation?”
“The one I should never have ended up in? Not at all. But if Thraven has designs on the Republic, he has designs on Earth. I’d rather he didn’t have those ships to field in support of that. I have a daughter to protect.”
“Good enough for me. Thank you for trusting me, Queenie.”
“Don’t make me regret it.”
“I won’t. Mann out.”
Ruby’s eye dimmed, the projection vanishing. Abbey closed her eyes for a moment, hopeful that she had made the right decision. Mann wasn’t going to tell the Republic about her. What was he going to do with the intel?
“Ruby, how long until we reach Drune?”
“Forty-two hours, Queenie.”
“Good. I need some time to unwind.”
“I am skilled at massage,” Ruby said. “Along with many other relaxation techniques.”
“I can imagine,” Abbey said. “You know what I do want?”
“I can provide many services.”
“Nothing like that. Something to eat. I just realized I’m starving.”
45
Olus sat behind his desk, in his quarters on the Driver. It had taken nearly three days for him to resync with the battleship after Usiari had been delayed by the Republic ships that arrived in orbit around Hell.
Ships that Warden Lurin had summoned.
Ships that were obviously not as loyal to the Republic as they might have thought.
Not that Olus trusted Usiari, either. After all, the Captain of the Nebula had allowed the Driver to leave without questioning her Commander too intensely. Because they knew he had given the gag order? Or because Usiari was helping to keep him in check?
He considered his conversation with Lieutenant Cage. He wasn’t surprised that she had taken control of the mission. He knew from the moment he had decided he wasn’t leaving without her that she was going to be vital to their success. He knew from the moment he had figured out that Lurin was a lying piece of shit, and the Republic was deep in it.
Even so, the future looked more and more like a black hole, gathering mass and threatening to swallow everything it neared. At the center of it, someone named Thraven, who had not only orchestrated the theft of the Fire and Brimstone but who had also been taking prisoners out of Hell and using them to bolster a secret army. More than that, he was experimenting on them. Olus still remembered how Cage had thrown him across the isolation room with nothing but a gesture, even if it seemed she couldn’t remember it herself.
And now she was virtually bulletproof? He would never have believed it if he hadn’t seen it. The thought worried him more than he had let on. Super soldiers had been a long dream of the Republic Armed Services. At one time, they had believed that bots and synthetics would be those soldiers until counter AI technologies had relegated them to peaceful servants. Then the battlesuits were supposed to be the next evolution of infantry warfare. While they had enhanced the combat effectiveness of a single soldier, making one as powerful as twenty or more used to be, they were still mortal. Still flesh and blood. Still able to feel pain, and to be killed.
If Abbey was right, and he had no reason to doubt her, all of that was going to change. Which would have been acceptable if it were the Republic who had made the leap. It wasn’t. Gloritant Thraven was a step ahead of them. Maybe two or three.
Where the frag had he come from?
A short chirp indicated that someone was trying to communicate with him. Olus didn’t hesitate, opening the link.
“What do you have?” he asked.
“Sir. I’ve completed the analysis of the lifestream you sent over,” Ensign Klar said.
“Let me guess, no leads.”
“Actually, sir, we may have something for you. I’m transmitting the results now.”
Olus sat up straighter in his chair. He hadn’t expected his investigators to turn anything up. He opened a second projection of the data the Ensign was sending him.
It was a single frame, a shot he had emblazoned in his memory. The inside of the starship that had picked up Eagan and her abductors. He watched as it zoomed in, from one hundred percent to one thousand, focusing on a small area behind Mars. The pixels were still relatively sharp at the high resolution, and they grew sharper as inferencing filters were applied.
“What am I looking at, Ensign?” he asked.
“Sir, there’s a serial number on that power conduit.”
“I assume you’ve already traced it?”
“Yes, sir.”
He moved through the data to the report on the conduit. He wasn’t overly surprised to discover it had been produced by Eagan Heavyworks, or that it had vanished from inventory two years prior.
Not stolen. Vanished. As though it had simply disappeared.
It was the kind of thing he might not have given a second thought under other circumstances. A company like the Heavyworks produced so many parts that losing a few thousand of them per year wasn’t all that suspicious. To have that part turn up here and now? It was a piece of a puzzle he felt comfortable lowering into place.
“Ensign, delete everything you have on this immediately,” Olus said. “Full wipe.”
“Sir?”
“Local copies, and from the OSI datastore. If I could erase your memory of it, I would. Does anyone else know about it?”
“Lieutenant Platt,” Ensign Klar replied.
“Give him the same orders, and watch your back, Ensign. This information is as volatile as it gets.”
“Yes, sir.”
Her voice was less confident, slightly shaken. Good. He needed her to be alert.
“Mann, out.”
He closed the link, sitting back for a moment. He hadn’t trusted Mars Eagan that much before. He trusted her even less now.
“General Iti Soto,” he said, directing the communication system to send a signal out to her. He had been trying to reach her for days, frustrated and increasingly concerned with the lack of a response.
A Fizzig appeared, projected onto the desk. Short and wide, with big, heavy bones and thick, gray skin.
“General Omsala?” Olus said, recognizing him.
“Captain Mann,” Omsala replied.
“Where is General Soto?”
Omsala cast his small, dark eyes downward. “I’m sorry, Captain. General Soto is dead.”
Olus felt the chill run from the base of his feet, up along his entire body. For a moment, he could barely breathe. He
had to compose himself. He could mourn later. Cry later.
“Dead? How?”
“An accident, Captain. A simple, stupid accident. A malfunction in a passing taxi caused it to veer out of control. It struck the shuttle she was riding in, damaging its stabilizers. Both vehicles crashed. There were no survivors.”
He paused, waiting for Olus to speak. When he didn’t, he continued.
“I’ve been put in charge of General Soto’s responsibilities while a new General is sworn-in to the Committee. I haven’t had much time to review her notes to this point, but I understand you’ve been assigned to investigate the theft of the Fire and the Brimstone from Eagan Heavyworks on Feru?”
“That’s right, sir,” Olus replied, his voice a whisper. Did Omsala know anything about Hell? Would he say so if he did?
“What is your status on that front?”
“I have a few leads, General.”
“Such as?”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss them at the moment, sir.”
“Did that sound like a request, Captain? I know the OSI is accustomed to operating independently from the Committee, but you still ultimately answer to it. I want a complete, detailed debriefing on your work and whereabouts since the Fire and Brimstone were taken. I expect it transferred to me by zero eight hundred Earth Standard tomorrow.”
Olus stared at the General for a moment. He had told Lieutenant Cage he was good at reading people, and he was. He didn’t like what he saw from Omsala, and he was beyond certain General Soto’s death was no accident. He could feel the pain of it deeper down, waiting for the right moment to expose itself. Maybe he and Iti hadn’t done that well as husband and wife, but he had always maintained his respect and admiration for her, and she for him.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
Omsala cut the link without another word.
“Commander Usiari,” Olus said.
“Aye, Captain?” the Driver’s commander replied.
“Take me back to Feru.” Would he?
“Aye, sir,” Usiari said.
Olus closed the channel. Maybe Usiari would take him, but would he send a message out to Director Eagan to let her know he was coming?
Olus changed the view in the projection, digging into the Driver’s onboard systems and tagging the communications subnet. If anyone sent anything externally, he wanted to know about it.
Omsala wanted a report delivered in sixteen hours. It was a report Olus had no intention of providing. He had to get to the root of this in a hurry and pass whatever he could glean on to Lieutenant Cage.
He could only hope she would stay on the mission whether or not he made it back off of Feru.
46
“Gloritant,” Trin said. “I’ve reached Mamma Oissi’s. The Rudin is dead.”
Gloritant Salvig Thraven observed his assassin kneeling ahead of the bloody mound of flesh that had once been Mamma Oissi. He considered the further reaching implications of the informant’s death for a few seconds before speaking.
“And the Breaker?” he asked.
“Honorant Defay reports that a fugitive matching Lieutenant Cage’s description was seen boarding a shuttle which evaded four of our Shrikes and boarded a larger, unmarked starship.” She paused, hesitant to deliver the bad news. As if he would ever harm his finest Evolent. “The starship escaped.”
“On the back of the skills of the escaped criminal Bastion Merrett, no doubt,” Thraven said. “I knew Captain Mann was resourceful. This approach was unexpected, and is working well for him.”
“So far,” Trin said. “Most of the fugitives were in Hell for a reason. They also weren’t selected for Conversion for a reason.”
“Chaos can be a powerful weapon,” Thraven replied. “Almost as powerful as subtlety.”
“Was it a mistake to bring Captain Mann into this?” Trin asked.
Thraven stared at her for a long moment, until she shrank back slightly. “Mistake? No. Mann is a wild card in this endeavor. A man of power and morality, despite his shadowed past. That is precisely the type of adversary to keep on a short leash. The mistake was in trusting the word of the fools who promised they could get into Kett’s mainframe. Lieutenant Cage should never have been implicated with the Fifth Platoon. She might have cracked the wipe by now and unwittingly given us what we are after.” He could feel the muscles in his jaw clenching, and he got to his feet, his hands curling into fists. “Instead, we’re chasing her around the universe.”
“If she learns to control the Gift-”
Thraven lifted his hand, and Trin crumpled to the ground. “She only has half. Even if she learns to control it, she can never be as powerful as I have made you.”
“Yes, Gloritant,” Trin said.
He lowered his hand, letting her up. He didn’t want to harm her, but sometimes she needed to be put back in her place.
“Is Mamma Oissi’s gray matter still in one piece?”
“Yes, Gloritant,” Trin replied.
“Good. I want to know what she said to Lieutenant Cage. Can you extract it?”
Trin smiled. “Of course.”
She reached out to Mamma Oissi, her fingers elongating slightly as she reached for the dead Rudin’s eye. She dug into the edge of it, her hand vanishing behind it before clawing it away. There was a large cavity through the soft skeletal structure in back of the eye socket; a direct path to the brain. Trin reached into a tightpack on her back, removing a single glove from it. Thousands of small, sharp protrusions lined it, and when she put it on, they began to glow softly.
She reached in with the gloved hand. Thraven couldn’t see it once it vanished into Mamma, but he knew the procedure well. The glove was a conduit between the Gift and the flesh; a means to manipulate more than physically.
Trin closed her eyes when her hand touched the brain. She started speaking a moment later.
“There you are,” she said. “They tried to kill her. Oh. She’s fast. Very fast.”
“The Gift,” Thraven said.
“She used it. I don’t know if she knows she did. Impressive. I can see why you want her.”
“Where?”
Trin was silent for a few seconds. “Yalom?” she said.
Thraven recognized the name. He never forgot a name. “The Skink? Your husband’s mechanic?”
“Former mechanic,” Trin replied. “He left shortly after I introduced Ursan to you. He was afraid of you.”
“We have been looking for him. He has reason to be afraid of me.”
“It appears he sold what he knew about the operation to Mamma Oissi to pay for his escape.”
“To where?”
“Drune. Cage is headed to Drune.”
Thraven almost let himself smile. “Go.”
Trin removed her hand, pulling off the glove and putting it back in the tightpack. “It will be done.”
“Make every effort to meet her there. Show her the potential of what we have given her. Show her how she can become more than what she ever imagined. Show her the glory of the new Covenant.”
“And if she refuses the glory?”
“None refuse the Gift in the end.”
“And if she does?” Trin pushed.
“Kill her.”
“As you command, Gloritant. I’ll require additional resources, to take care of the other fugitives while I deal with Cage.”
“Inform Honorant Defay that he is now under your command, on my order. His ship and support units are yours.”
“Thank you, Gloritant.”
Thraven closed the link, the projection vanishing. He lifted his head, turning it and looking out of the large transparency to his left. The massive open fields of Kell stretched beyond it, littered with thousands of pieces of heavy equipment being operated by many more thousands of his followers. A sea of starships, many near completion, rested among the machinery, waiting only for the final integration of the technologies proven by the ship docked at the head of the line.
The Fire. One of the keys
to the glory of the Covenant. The beginning of the Great Return. How long had he waited to herald the next coming? How long had they been cast aside?
Too long.
Much too long.
He turned away from the view, heading to the rear of the chamber and passing through. A pair of guards stood stiffly on either side of the door, their dark armor making them nearly disappear against the equally dark alloy of the wall. They didn’t as much as twitch as he passed them by, falling into lockstep behind him while he crossed the corridor to his private room. He entered without slowing, the hatch rising at his command. The guards turned on their heels, regaining the same waiting position with unmatched precision.
Thraven continued to the back of the room, where a dark pool of liquid rested, still but unreflective in the dim light. He shed his cape, his uniform, his boots, and the skin-tight layer of enriched cloth beneath until he was standing nude in front of the pool. His skin was mottled and scarred, beaten and battered. They were old wounds. Ancient wounds. He barely remembered them anymore.
He stepped into the pool. The thick liquid barely moved aside as he entered it. He could feel the charge in it. The energy. It soothed him. It eased the feeling of motion along his skin, as though something else was living just beneath it. He continued until he was submerged to his head.
As he had said to his assassin, none had ever refused the Gift once they had learned the true potential of it. Once they knew the truth about the past. Lieutenant Cage had surprised him twice already, something that was very, very difficult to do. Her command of the Gift seemed to be accelerated beyond any who had been fortunate enough to receive it, and without training.
“Let us see if you’ll accept the glory of the Covenant,” he said to himself. “Let us see if Trinity can defeat you if you refuse. If not?” He smiled now, his teeth growing into sharp points, more monster than man. “It has been too long since I had a protege. Much too long.”
He lowered himself further, completely submerging himself in the liquid. He took a breath, letting it enter his mouth and soak into his lungs. He continued to breathe, feeling his energy returning, his body calming.
