by Rick Partlow
"That's it for the collective brass," Bulldog said, smiling thinly. "Now I'd like to familiarize all of you with the few people intimately familiar with the little problem we've been having with the Corporate Council."
After the General had introduced each of us and gave a brief description of our parts in the whole affair---I noticed a few eyebrows rising when he got to Secarius---he opened the meeting for any questions the officers might have for us.
"I'd say there's only one real question that needs to be asked," Admiral O'Brien spoke up, "and it needs to be asked of you, General Murdock. If you have told us the truth, and the situation is as it seems, what do you expect us to do?"
"There is only one path we can take on the short term," the Bulldog declared. "We must find out where this place called 'the Rock' is, and hit it immediately with a commando raid. It is imperative that we find proof that the Corporates are behind this hoax, and expose their machinations to the Senate and members of the media we can trust." His face clouded over. "And if we can prove it, we have to be prepared for a violent reaction by the Corporate Security Force and their allies in the Predecessor cults. If we're unprepared for it, we could be facing a massacre."
"We'll handle that when it comes," Leo Sikorsky rumbled with a voice like boulders crashing on a field of gravel. "For now, do any of you have an idea where this place called 'the Rock' is?"
There was a long silence, and I felt an emptiness in my gut as our only lead slipped away. But then...
"I might have an idea." The answer, spoken in a laconic drawl, came from West. "Back in the war," the bounty hunter told us, "there was a place I heard rumors of, a weapons development center for the Corporate Council. I had a few friends in the R&D end of the Fleet, and they always called it 'Petra.' I didn't make the connection till just now, but that's Latin for 'the Rock.' All I know is that it was supposed to be somewhere within a week's jump from the Tau Ceti base."
"That gives a start," Murdock said. "Computer," he said to the room's pickup, "display a GI map of the area of space within a fifty light-year diameter of Tau Ceti." A holographic display snapped into existence over the conference table, showing a series of star systems connected by red, dotted lines representing the gravitoinertial pathways along which Transition drive ships travelled.
"Now," Murdock continued, "highlight any systems without habitable planets." That needed no explanation---we were all sensible enough to realize that the Council wouldn't put a secret research base in a system with habitables. The computer complied, and over a dozen of the star systems displayed were suddenly glowing brighter than the others.
"Might as well take out any that have mineral surveys on them," Kara pointed out. "They wouldn't want prospectors or freelance scouts nosing around."
When that condition had been applied, there remained only three highlighted systems, broadly separated by at least twenty light-years.
"Now what?" Deke wondered.
"Computer," the Bulldog ordered again, "bring up any information available from civilian or military database on the three indicated systems."
"THD-2307 is an M type star," the computer's saccharine voice reported, "with no planetary bodies. It is orbited only by a thick dust cloud composed of hydrogen and silicon. No further information is recorded.
"MRS-341 is a G-type star. No further information is recorded.
"KHG-987 is a K-type star with two planets, both gas giants..."
"That's enough, computer," Murdock snapped, cutting it off. "Bring up a close-up view of MRS-341."
The system enlarged into a representation of a burning star with an outlying belt of large asteroids, possibly debris from a failed planet.
"If there's nothing recorded about the system," Kara said, "then why's that asteroid belt in the icon." It wasn't a question.
"Sloppy," Murdock commented. "They managed to erase the databank's file, but they didn't think to change the icon."
"I can have a team out to take a look in forty hours," Sinclair offered.
"It'll take too long," I cut in, not caring if I was speaking out of turn. "Three weeks round trip. By then, they'll be recalling Patrol Units and the takeover by the Council Security Force will have already started. Once they have their people in place, it'll be impossible to get them out without civilian casualties." I looked around at the officers, and at my friends. "Whatever we're gonna' do, we'd better do it now."
There was an awkward silence, and all of them looked to General Murdock.
"Mitchell's right," he said. "We'll do our reconnaissance when we get there."
"Recon by fire," Deke muttered, snorting ruefully. "My kind of mission."
"I'm afraid not, Captain Conner," the General said, and I got this bad feeling that something ugly was about to happen right in front of me.
"Pardon me, sir?" Deke frowned, the hint of hostility in his tone giving me a clue that he knew what was up.
"I'm sorry, Deacon," Murdock said, shaking his head. "It's not that I believe you're a traitor, but in my position, I just can't take that kind of risk."
"Listen, I didn't ask to be dragged into this," Deke snapped stridently, rising from his chair "Cal came to me! How the hell can you turn me out and let this loose cannon," he demanded, waving at Cowboy, "just waltz in and take a seat?"
"To be honest," General Murdock admitted, unfazed by Deke's outburst, "I wasn't totally sure about allowing Major West to participate in this operation until he gave us the Rock...if it weren't for him, we'd be stuck without an objective. A rather unlikely action for a traitor, wouldn't you agree?"
"So that's it, then?" He snorted in obvious disgust. "What about you, bud?" He fixed me with a glare. "Are you just going to sit there and let him get away with this?"
"I don't want to," I told him, feeling tired, helpless and very, very sad. "But I've got to be there for Rachel, Deke. I don't have a choice." I was talking to him, but my eyes were on Murdock, not trying to disguise my disappointment.
Deke nodded, swallowing hard. "Well, I guess there's not much else to say, then." Without another word, he turned on his heel and left the room.
I'd read the term "awkward silence" before, but I'd never before found such a perfect example of one in real life. The military among us slouched in their seats or tried to look the other way, while West tried to appear unconcerned and Pete and Jase were unabashedly confused. I felt Kara's comforting hand on my arm and patted it gratefully.
"I apologize for airing our dirty laundry in your presence," Murdock told the brass. "Now that the more unseemly matters are behind us, can I count on your support in this matter?"
There was a silent chorus of nods, some of them more hesitant than others. "Then all that remains is what we'll need from each of you..."
* * *
My hand hovered in front of the door, hesitating in the midst of the act of knocking. What could I say to him? What would make things go back to the way they were? I lowered the hand and started to turn away, but a host of memories blocked my way, forcing me to go back and knock firmly on the door.
"Yeah?" The answer was more dejected than hostile.
"It's me, Deke," I said. "Can I come in?"
There was no answer for a long moment, but then the door slid aside and I suddenly stood facing him. His expression was impassive, but I could see the hurt at the corners of his eyes. Glancing behind him into his room, I saw his bags open on his bed, nearly full with his clothes and gear. Several empty whiskey bottles lay scattered about on the floor, glittering harshly in the morning sunlight filtering through the window blinds.
"Whatcha' need, Caleb boy?" he mumbled, his voice a bit slurred, the distinct odor of alcohol washing over me.
"Mat told me you were leaving today," I said, trying to find something to do with my hands to keep them from fidgeting.
"Sure as hell am!" He pounded a palm against the doorjamb. "Pretty obvious I'm not wanted around here, isn't it?"
"Uh..." I glanced around the hallway, saw Fleet o
fficers walking here and there. "Mind if I come in?"
"Don't matter to me," he replied, backing up from the door. "In a couple hours, won't be my room anymore."
I stepped inside, hitting the control to close the door behind me while he went back to packing. I stepped over to the window, kicking a stray bottle out of the way, and opened the blinds, taking a long glance at the high walls of the spaceport, clearly visible in the distance. As I watched, the angry wedge shape of an Attack Command cutter swooped out of the sky, turbines screaming, to light down somewhere inside the walls of the port.
"Those boys've been coming in pretty regular," Deke commented, not looking away from his task of trying to fold a recalcitrant jacket small enough to fit in his shoulder bag. "Hard to get a good afternoon's sleep around here lately."
"Mission's a 'go' in sixty hours." I left the window, leaning back against a dresser to watch his efforts. "I'm kind of surprised Murdock's letting you go at this point---doesn't make much sense, if he really didn't trust you."
"Naw, he's got it all figured out," Deke shook his head in bitter admiration. "He's going to have me escorted far enough away that I wouldn't be able to get to an Instel station soon enough to cause any trouble." He jammed a pair of wadded-up pants into his suitcase, then forced the overloaded piece of baggage closed. "At least he's giving me my ship back. I'd hate to lose the Dutchman."
"I wish there was something I could do to change Bulldog's mind," I told him. "If there was, I'd do it."
He regarded me levelly for a moment, with a very unintoxicated, serious expression, but it passed, and he laughed drunkenly, slapping me on the shoulder.
"I believe you, Caleb, I believe you. God knows, if I was you, I'd do the same thing." He turned back to the bed, closing his other bag. I stood there uncomfortably, realizing the time and cursing the lack of it.
"I've got to get to the final mission brief," I confessed. "I just didn't want to let you leave without..." I trailed off, shrugging mutely.
"Wouldn't want to get you in hot water with the ol' Bulldog, Cap'n Mitchell," Deke said, offering me a hand. "Good luck."
"To you, too." I shook it, feeling like I'd probably never see him again, however this all turned out. I gripped his hand for a lingering second, then let it slip free of my grasp. I felt like I should have said something more, but no more words would come.
"We'll cross paths again," he assured me with that crooked grin, reading my expression. "You go give 'em hell."
"I'll do that, Slick." I turned and left the room. At least, I figured, he would be safer than we would. Truth to tell, I'd been having a strong premonition that none of us would come back from Petra alive.
Interlude: Trint
The Tahni looked at the device in his hands, made with those same hands. How ironic, he thought---a machine made by another machine to save the life of a machine. How ironic for a machine to think it had a life. How very ironic for a machine to think it understood the nature of irony.
But, if this machine had done his work correctly, the small piece of equipment he held, barely the size of one of his finger-joints, would be able to jam Damiani's signal to the bomb implanted in his cortex for at least a half an hour. Plenty of time to kill the little bastard. He stuffed the gadget in his coverall pocket and hit the control to open the cell.
Rachel Mitchell rose from her seat at the exercise machine, sweeping sweat-matted hair out of her eyes as she stepped up to meet the cyborg.
"What is it?" she asked him, fear and hope mixed in her eyes.
"They're coming," he closed the door behind him. "The assault team should arrive in less than one hundred hours."
"They'll be waiting for him," she said softly, wiping her hands on the front of the loose sweatshirt she'd been provided with.
"There's an entire attack wing waiting for them," Trint confirmed. He sounded, he realized, very cold and mechanical, but he didn't want to give her false hope. "They're to be captured intact, if possible. The ships they intend to use in their plan to fake the destruction of the Commonwealth armed forces. The troops will be given the chance to defect---including your husband. Damiani is particularly interested in recruiting your husband; he feels that anyone who can cause him this much trouble should be working for him."
"Cal would never join him," Rachel declared with fierce conviction.
"He may," Trint countered, "if your life is in the balance."
"Oh, God," she moaned, cradling her head in her hands. She looked back up to him. "Is there anything you can do?" He regarded her silently for long seconds.
"There may be," he replied finally. "I may have found a chance. Not much of one...but perhaps enough to override my programming and ensure a possibility for survival. But I can do nothing until after the attack. Then I might be able to count on your husband for help."
"What can I do?" Rachel asked.
"Just try to stay alive, Mrs. Mitchell." Trint hesitantly reached out his hand, touching her gently on the arm. She began to flinch, but stopped herself. She'd expected something cold and lifeless, but his hand was warm---warmer even than a human's. "If I am to end this odd existence of mine, I'd rather it meant something."
"Trint," she said, putting her hand over his and squeezing it gently, "you try to stay alive, too, okay?"
The Tahni tried to reply, but the answer caught in his throat. She was the first human---the first sentient being---to ever show concern for him. The feel of her skin against his was strange, yet pleasant at the same time.
"I will," he promised.
He slipped his hand from hers and exited the cell. Suddenly, he no longer felt like a machine.
Chapter Fourteen
I came out of hibernation slowly, as I always did, with a haze of scattered memory: a flash of sunlight off of the transport carrying Deke away as Kara and I watched from the street outside the spaceport.
"It's for the best," she told me, squeezing my arm, trying to be supportive.
I shook my head. "If he went with us, at least we'd know. Now...I'll never know."
A glare of harsh Eridani-light, and a segway to...
"I don't like it," Pete grumbled again, walking between Jason and me to the final mission brief. The halls of the Intel Center were packed with military personnel from every service except the Patrol, and it seemed like every damn one of them was trying to get to the same conference room. "Jase and me come all this way, and now we don't get to go along on the operation, but that freak Secarius does?"
"Not my decision, Pete," I assured him, secretly grateful he and Jase would be out of harm's way. "The General decided the final roster, and he wanted Chang because of his previous Cadre experience...not to mention his obvious physical assets."
"Well, I don't trust him," my little brother declared. "Anyone that would do that shit to themselves has to be a psych burnout. God, he's hardly human anymore..."
I didn't answer him; I just stared at my hands, his words ringing in my ears. Hardly human anymore...
Light again, this time so intense it had to be real, and I squinted reflexively, even as my corneal implants polarized to accommodate it until my pupils constricted. My skin was sticky with biotic fluid, my tongue felt like I'd swallowed a cat, and my head was pounding in rhythm to my pulse.
I really hate hibernation.
Shaking away the cobwebs, I levered myself up to a half-sitting position in the clear plastic coffin that had been my resting place for our twelve-day long flight to MRS-341. The chamber's lid had popped open automatically a good half-hour before the computer woke me up, and the shipboard air felt cold on my naked skin as I rose out of the device.
The passenger hold of the cutter was packed to the gills with hibernation chambers---necessary as the burden of carrying so many people conscious and breathing on a ship this small for this long would have overtaxed the command cutter's life support system---and I had to struggle to squeeze my way through the lines of open "coffins" to the recovery room. It would be a bit easier to ge
t around once the artificial gravity cut off, but we were still in T-space, and military pilots have this thing about wanting to keep the gravity on "from jump to jump." It's kind of a superstition, I think.
There was only one other person in the recovery room when I stepped in...not surprisingly, it was Cowboy. He had already showered and was sitting on a dressing bench, pulling on one of the suits of byomer Reflex Armor from the combat lockers.
"'Mornin', Cal." He waved to me with one hand, sealing the suit's fasteners around his neck with the other. "Have a nice nap?"
"Hell," I replied, grinning wryly, "I feel like I slept for a week."
I padded groggily into one of the 'fresher stalls, hit the controls on the inner wall, and was instantly bombarded by a fusillade of hot water. I closed my eyes and let the pounding shower massage the kinks out of my hibernation-tightened muscles, using the calming relaxation to review the details of the plan we were about to execute.
It wasn't too complicated. A pair of stealthships, not unlike the ones we'd piloted during the war, had probably already jumped insystem and were taking a careful look around. When the main assault force jumped in, the Scouts would signal us with a high-speed burst to our navigational computers that would send us on the correct course and also give us a good idea of how much opposition to expect.
The assault force was in four sections. At the lead were three full squadrons of Attack Command missile cutters, which would spread out to counter space-to-space threats and cover the ground forces; behind them were a pair of dropships, each carrying a platoon of battle-suited Marines. They would be dropped in to secure a landing area for the incursion force, who were in the last wave of Ranger stealthships, each carrying a company of powered-armor Ranger assault troops. The Rangers would actually penetrate the installation and attempt to secure it, while we---Kara, Cowboy, Secarius, Mat, myself, and three squads of Intell Special Ops commandos---would go in quietly ahead of them and try to find the evidence we needed before anyone could destroy it.
