by Rick Partlow
Damiani let loose the stored-up wave of ki, launching into a jump sidekick that caught his opponent on the tip of the chin, snapping his head back and throwing him a good three meters, straight out of the ring. Smoothing out the material of his gi, Andre bowed to the judge and was awarded the match.
Smiling once more, he mused that modern technology had allowed him to become something of a Renaissance man of the Twenty-Third Century---physically, professionally, mentally, spiritually complete. Complete enough to make these decision easy.
Kill her.
Chapter Two
"I'm only going to ask this once, Captain McIntire," I said in my best "tough-cop" voice, "and if I don't like the answer, I'm handing you over to the resident Patrol officer in the orbital complex. What connection do you have to the Predecessor Cult, and why would they be trying to kill you?"
Kara McIntire seemed to think the question over, slowly sipping her coffee. I'd made it as easy as I could for her: we were in a soundproof, bugproof room in a corner of the Constabulary Headquarters building, just me, her and Jason Chen. I'd even let her take a shower and change into a spare set of police utility fatigues---hell, I'd wanted to get cleaned up myself, anyway. But it was time to get down to business.
"How do I know I can trust you?" McIntire finally asked.
"Feel free not to. But keep in mind that I'm required to defer to Commonwealth authority on any joint investigation, and since I've been coordinating with the Patrol for the last four months on our probe into the cult, I should have handed you up already. The fact that I'm risking a charge of obstruction of a federal investigation should give you some clue as to whose side I'm on. And if that doesn't do it for you, look at it this way: what other choice do you have?"
"I suppose you're right." Downing the last of her coffee, she set the cup on top of my desk. "It all started back about nine months ago. My partner and I were out on Hermes, taking some downtime. I got a priority message from the Corporate Council Headquarters back at L-5 ordering me to proceed to an unsurveyed system on the inner frontier. Apparently, some amateur astronomer had picked up a sublight radio signal, must have originated centuries ago. It was gone by the time we arrived---I don't know why. Maybe electromagnetic interference.
"We landed, went to the projected source of the signal, a cave deep in the mountains. The minute I walked in, I knew we'd hit paydirt. It wasn't natural; someone had carved it out with an energy beam. My partner stumbled upon an antigravity transport tube, still working after all that time." She shook her head. "It took him down to some kind of...storage facility. It was full of equipment---I think it was some kind of machinery, and it looked like it was still functional."
"Predecessor technology?" I interjected. "That's what this is all about, isn't it?"
"The technical crew the Council sent out thought so," McIntire said. "They rushed the two of us out of there like we were poor in-laws, told us not to say a word about the find to anyone. I was pissed at first. I'd imagined the two of us becoming famous, going down in the history books. But they wanted to keep the whole thing hushed up. We went back to Hermes to finish our leave. That's when it started. I guess they were more serious about hushing it up than we thought."
Jase leaned forward in his chair. "Captain McIntire, you're telling us that someone in the Corporate Council wants to kill you because of what you found on that planet."
"I can't think of any other reason," she confirmed.
I stood, pacing restlessly across the room. "But where do the cultists come in? Assuming we believe you, what do the cultists have to do with the Council?"
"I can't help you there," she said. "I've never had any problems with the Cult before."
I looked at her hard, trying to judge the truth. My augment sensors couldn't detect any undue rise in her pulse rate, respiration or body temperature---but if she was augmented herself, that might mean nothing. I wanted to believe her; it surprised me just how much I wanted to.
"If you'd excuse me for a moment," I said to her, turning to Jase. "Could I talk to you outside for a second?"
He followed me out of the corner office, closing the door behind us. I beckoned him farther down the hall, wary of any possible hearing amplification the Captain might be equipped with, finally ducking into a bathroom. We stared a young deputy out of the room, then checked the rest of it out before we were ready to talk.
"What do you think?" he asked me.
"In other circumstances," I sighed heavily, "I'd call a psych counselor. But a platoon of cultists with military weapons..."
"There's no saying if they were after her," Jase pointed out. "They could just as easily have been after you."
"Yeah, I've thought about that," I admitted. "The thing is, I want to believe her, and I'm not sure if it isn't just because of the way I feel about the Corporates." I leaned forward over the sink, staring at my reflection for a second. I still had those dark circles under my eyes that I got after coming down from the biochemical high of combat mode. I needed some sleep. "We know where the cultists do their business. We could hit them, try to dig up some more dirt on this."
"If she is telling the truth," Jase said softly, "then there's something really big going down. Maybe too big for just us."
"You want to kick this upstairs?" I stared him in the eye.
His gaze flickered away from mine, staring at the floor. "Hell, Cal, you know damn well I'll follow your lead. Let's just try to play it safe, okay?"
I looked down at my hands, clenched them into fists. I'd been constable for a long time, and seen a lot happen to my home. I'd been forced to kill a few times, a few more than I'd liked. But not like this. Not since the war had I cut a man open with those Goddamned claws they'd put in me like I was some kind of fucking trained animal. It used to make me feel mean to use them---used to make me feel like a god. Now, it just scared the living hell out of me.
"Yeah," I muttered. "We'll play it safe."
* * *
"Caleb, my son." Chief Justice of the Church Court Raina MacLeod nodded her noble, grey head solemnly, as if she were meeting me in Sabbath services instead of staring at a grainy, holographic representation.
She'd been old as long as I could remember, but she was as tough and resilient as anyone I'd ever met---she was the only member of the Court to survive the Tahni Occupation, despite spending over six months in an interrogation cell.
"Sister Raina," I said, returning the nod courteously. "I have need of the Court's permission for a constabulary action against the Predecessor Cult compound."
"As I recall, Caleb, we have had this conversation before," her expression darkened. "You know the feelings of the Church Council about undue harassment of the Predecessor Cultists."
"Only too well, Sister." I couldn't keep the grimace off of my face. I'd had to pull every trick in the book just to get them to allow me to cooperate with the Patrol's investigation into the cultist's activities, and God forbid if we ever had to make any arrests.
"I know their proselytizing in town is considered blasphemous by some of us and annoying to nearly everyone," she acknowledged, "but as long as they keep their lodging and their business outside the cities, the Council has shown a willingness to live and let live. And their yearly contribution to the Council's general fund is greatly appreciated, as I'm sure you're aware." She sighed, settling back into her seat. "What is the purpose of the proposed action, Caleb?"
"We have proof," I told her, struggling not to show the sense of urgency I felt, "that the Cult is responsible for the attack in Skintown today. We also have reason to believe that they are stockpiling weapons for other illegal actions. I need to get in there and investigate."
"Well," she began, running a hand through her short-cut, severe bangs, "I may be setting myself up for some strident criticism from Chairman Vingh, but I've always relied on your judgement, Caleb. Do as you think is best."
And that was that. No petitions, no hearings, no writs. Before I'd joined the military and expe
rienced a little more of the Commonwealth, I'd never realized just how dictatorial a system Canaan had: the Council was elected, but our only Constitution was the Church Charter, a document which gave total power to the Council and the Church Court. Good thing for us our religion valued individual responsibility.
I was about to head out of my office when I thought about Rachel and hesitated on the other side of my desk. I tapped my finger on the com console, wondering if it was better to call home and worry her or not call and risk wasting what could be one last chance to tell her I love her. Ah, hell, I've always been a hopeless romantic anyway. I punched in our house number. The hold tone beeped annoyingly for a few moments before a hologram sprang to life above the commo panel. It was just a head-view---our department was too cheap for a full-body projector---but it was enough to give me that old breathless feeling, just like I was a teenager again.
When I was fourteen, Rachel Lowenstein had been the most beautiful girl in the world, and through all I'd been through in all the time since, nothing had changed. You could see the hint of laughter in her sparkling blue eyes, the smile threatening to break out at any second. If I closed my eyes, I could almost see her long, auburn hair in a pony tail again.
"Hi, honey," I said softly.
"You okay, Cal?" she asked, concern in her face. "You look tired."
"I'm fine," I shook my head. "I just wanted to let you know that the operation I'm working on is going to run a little longer than I thought. I probably won't be home for a few hours."
"Okay," she smiled. "Give me a call before you leave...I'll be out checking the autoharvesters for a while."
"I'll call," I assured her. "I love you."
"I love you, too, Cal," she gave me that look that always managed to melt me. "Promise you'll come home to me, okay?"
"I promise," I nodded.
Then I cut the transmission and her image flickered away. I stared at the space where it had been for a long moment before I turned and headed back to the ready room, where the STAT team was arming for the assault. Jase and Pete were nearly finished tooling up, and it almost hurt to look at them with the ceiling lights flashing off their reflec armor's millions of microscopic mirrors. For normal ops, we would be using standard duraweave, but the cultists had military laser weapons, and the reflec was our best defense against them. It wasn't the stealthiest stuff in the world---it made you look like a damn Christmas tree, in fact---but this was a straight-up raid, not a snoop-n-poop operation.
I stepped past them to my locker and pulled on my own armor---a duraweave vest under a full reflec suit---buckling my Gauss pistol around it, then grabbed a disruptor rifle off the weapons rack. We were looking for information, so we'd try to take as many as we could alive. Sonic accelerators would be safer, but the hitters they'd sent into Cutter's chop-shop had been wearing sonically-shielded helmets and non-conductive armor, so it would have to be masers. The Church Council wouldn't cry any tears for the cultists anyway; they considered any Offworlders intruders at best, and the cultists were heretics to boot.
"Did you notify Inspector Kurisawa about the raid?" Pete asked me.
I shook my head. "`Fraid it slipped my mind."
"He'll raise holy hell about that," my brother whistled softly, holstering his Gauss machine pistol.
"Extreme circumstances. He can take me to court."
"Constable Mitchell." I turned at the voice behind me to see Kara McIntire standing in the doorway.
"Yes, Captain?"
"I'd like to go with you if I could," she said, stepping into the room, purposefully ignoring the other STAT team members milling around in various states of undress.
"Not a chance," I declared flatly. "You're the target here, remember? You want to give them another shot at you?"
"Look, Constable, I've tried hiding in so-called 'safe' places," she said with a voice hard enough to make everyone in the room turn and stare at her. "All it's done is nearly get me killed. I want to take the fight to them." Her tone softened, became almost pleading. "You saw me back at the chopshop. You know I can handle it."
I scratched my head thoughtfully, shooting a quick look at Jason.
You mind looking after her? I asked him over my neurolink. I saw his eyes narrow, a slight hint of a frown.
All right. I could almost hear his shrug as he subvocalized into the communicator implanted on his mastoid bone. If you'll vouch for her.
"Draw some armor," I told her. "And a helmet---I want you anonymous out there. You'll stick with Deputy Constable Chen, and you will do exactly as he says. If you disobey any direction he gives you, I'm authorizing him to have you stunned and restrained. Is that clear?"
"Crystal." She nodded, started to turn toward the armor lockers, hesitated, turned back. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me yet," I warned her. "If I find out you're lying to me, I'll personally hand your ass to the Patrol and forget I ever saw you."
* * *
The Cult compound squatted in feudal ugliness at the flattened apex of a foothill of the Mount Zion Range. Reminiscent of some ancient Celtic hill-fort, hand-built stone walls ran along the contour of the slope, surrounding the odd assortment of prefab, buildfoam hemispheres and hand-assembled timber A-frames. It was a mystifying mixture of high-tech augmentation labs and Iron-Age goat pens, hazed over with the smoke of open cessfires and strong with the smell of human and animal offal.
The Universal Church of the Ancients made a practice of keeping itself separate from the "degenerate" humans in the cities. Only their priests could come into town to proselytize, with a couple of senior acolytes for protection. The rest of the faithful remained in a fortified compound as far away from everyone else as possible. I think they would have stayed in an orbital station if it wasn't so expensive to build one in the outer colonies.
I'd been against letting them build the compound in the first place, but they'd paid a hefty impact fee, and the Church Council had been desperate for funds at the time. So, in return for a couple hundred thousand in corporate scrip, we let them construct what was basically a military fortress less than a hundred klicks from Harristown. Brilliant.
So there was something in the way of perverse gratification running neck and neck with adrenaline through my veins as I scrambled out of the hopper into the middle of the compound, with a STAT squad at my heels. This was battle as I remembered it, laserpulses impacting all around us, flaring off our reflec in halos of red; the only aberration was the PA speakers from the hoppers blaring a demand that they surrender to the appointed constabulary of the planet Canaan.
Unfortunately for them, they didn't pay too much attention to the surrender requests. Seemingly unprepared for our assault, the cultists were rushing headlong around the compound, some firing weapons wildly, while my men moved in a carefully planned encirclement maneuver. Our masers cut down the unorganized opposition, the microwave blasts set to disable them temporarily through the selective destruction of oxygen-bearing hemoglobin in their blood.
I brought up the middle of the First Squad wedge, coordinating the assault with Jason and Pete over my neurolink with a part of my brain and headcomp while I lent the other portion to watching out for my squad. It was like a dream, in a way---like I was experiencing the whole thing through the eyes of three or four different people. I could see the view from Pete's helmet sights, see him spin sharply around, the beam emitter of his weapon coming up to send a young, female cultist into panicked convulsions. I could hear Jase ordering his squadleader into a barracks, hear the crack-snap of laserfire in his ears. And yet I fully felt and experienced everything around me, from the way the compressed, reddish soil crunched under my boots to the strong, heady smell of ozone in the air from the beam ionization.
The shouts and screams from the cultists rang in my ears, their white robes flashing across my vision, their faces blurring into one perfect, restructed mask: universally young, flawlessly beautiful, and about as autonomous as a cleaning robot. They parted before us like cattle,
most of them overawed by our numbers and the very sight of us: flickering firelight glittered off of our reflec in polychromatic coronas, a terrifyingly beautiful effect that cast us as otherworldly rainbow warriors, untouchable by mere mortals.
We paused only to clear the small storage buildings that seemed to be scattered throughout the compound with little rhyme or reason. A stun grenade in each, followed by a hosing of maserfire before one of the squad stuck a head in to declare it empty. Then we were at our assigned target: the temple itself, where, as far as we knew, the local High Priest of the Predecessor Cult made his dwelling. It was a bigger and more ostentatious building than the other buildfoam structures, made instead of solid duralloy in the general shape of an ancient Terran ziggurat, a stepped pyramid. It was about four stories tall and forty meters at the base, with no exterior windows and only one entrance, a tall archway set with heavy double doors polished mirror-bright. Had they been closed, we would have been in for a long fight to get them open, but panicked cultists were blocking them from closing, trying desperately to get in and find shelter against our raid.
A long maserburst from my squadmembers laid out three of the cultists in the doorway, and we rushed forward, throwing in a pair of sonic stun grenades before we entered. The hallways were narrow and dimly-lit, decorated by holos of dual star systems and strange, hazy lights moving among the stars. It made it hard to see down the corridor, even using infrared, so I switched to thermal and caught sight of a human heat signature near the end of the hall. I was about to blast it, but my point man beat me to it, and a young male acolyte dropped his pulse pistol, crashing down into the middle of the hall, gasping for breath.
Our dragman---last in the formation---checked him out as we moved up to cover anything coming from around the corner. This was, if anything, proving to me that McIntire was telling the truth---if they'd been after me with the attack on Cutter's, they would surely have been much better prepared for our raid.
