by Rick Partlow
Trint, however, seemed to regard the restructed assassin as nothing more than a nuisance. The Tahni lunged toward the hulking thing and then they were both moving faster than the eye could follow again, just for a few moments. A splash of blood spattered against Pete’s left jacket sleeve and he recoiled instinctively, starting to brush at it but then thinking better of that and clenching his hands into fists. Then both Trint and the augmented human stopped moving…only the assassin was lacking his head.
The elongated head dropped to the floor and rolled across the room, trailing a stream of red droplets, coming to rest against the support for a gaming table. The thing’s body stood on its own for a long span of two or three seconds and Pete felt a sense of dread go through him at the thought that the thing was somehow still alive; but then it collapsed to the floor with a heavy thud.
A human---even a regular Tahni, Pete thought---would have relaxed after the victory. Trint simply stepped past the corpse and approached him, face impassive.
“Are you injured, Peter?” he asked.
“Not that I know of,” Pete said, his voice breaking slightly as he sagged with relief. “Are you okay?” He gestured at the superficial wounds that covered the cyborg.
“They’ll heal,” Trint assured him, with a tilt of his head that Pete had learned was the Tahni equivalent of a shrug, or a nod or something. “I’ve tried to get in touch with your brother, but our communications seem to be jammed.”
“What should we do, then?” Pete asked him. “Go find him or…”
That was when the station security troops stormed in through the front entrance of the casino, yelling over their armor’s public address speakers for Trint and Pete to drop their weapons and get on their knees. Pete watched the heavily armored men and women pound across the casino floor with the hollow impact of their boots on the tiled floor, his eyes wide and his brain frozen. He felt a hand pressing on his shoulder and blinked, turning his head to see Trint going down to a kneeling position as ordered. With a shake of his shoulders, he joined his friend on the floor, interlacing his fingers behind his head.
“Hopefully,” Trint said quietly as they waited for the security officers to take them into custody, “these people will take us to your brother.”
“You think he ran into trouble, too?” Pete wondered.
“We are speaking of your brother, are we not?” the cyborg asked dryly.
“Good point,” Pete muttered as the security swarmed around them and he felt his wrists jerked into restraints.
Maybe Deke and Kara had been luckier.
Chapter Eight
Conner:
The office of Belial’s Chief of Security was nowhere near as antiseptic and intimidating as Deke had expected. In fact, it was somewhat homey, he had to admit as he and Kara were escorted through the broad doorway into the office suite. Rather than sterile white or pretentiously expensive holograms, the walls were a warm earth tone decorated with actual hand-crafted paintings. There were no heroically imposing sculptures littering the room, just a couple of potted flowering plants. Even their uniforms weren’t menacingly dark and militaristic; they wore well-tailored business suits with a small shield at the breast and otherwise seemed more like corporate professionals than leg-breakers.
The Security Chief herself was…well, matronly was the word that first came to mind. Not that she appeared old; not too many people did who had any sort of real money, or had lived on Earth or one of its major colonies or had served in the military. But she had an air about her that made him remember the woman who had watched him and his sister while his parents were at work, the aura of a caregiver. Again, not someone he would imagine as being chief of security for a huge and unruly place like Belial.
“I’m Danielle Manning,” she said, rising from her desk and extending a hand first to Kara then to Deke. Her hand felt soft and fragile in his. “I understand you work with General Murdock?”
“Yes,” Kara told her, taking a seat across the desk. “And we’ve had some trouble contacting him since he visited your station recently. We were hoping you might be able to help us.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Manning said, the concern in her voice sounding genuine or at least well-rehearsed. “I’m afraid he didn’t leave any messages here for you on any of the private accounts he’d set up with us.”
“Nor on any of ours,” Kara acknowledged. “We were hoping you might be able to give us some idea of his activities while he was on Belial.”
“You mean,” Manning inferred, raising an eyebrow, “you want access to our security monitor records.” She shook her head firmly. “I’m sorry, but we maintain our unique position among all human habitations by a complete and non-negotiable guarantee of the privacy of our clients. The security feeds are only viewable by myself and the CEO of Belial Enterprises LLC.”
“I understand that your reputation is vital to your continued success as a business venture, Ms. Manning,” Kara said, “but there’s no reason anyone has to know anything about this. It would strictly remain between us…”
She was trying to be smooth, Deke thought. She didn’t do it well.
“Oh, Major McIntire,” Manning said in the way his nanny had spoken when she’d found him watching porn on the entertainment console, “that would violate the basic principles upon which we swear to operate when we accept employment with Belial. There’s simply no way we can allow those videos to be viewed by anyone else.”
“Ms. Manning…” Kara began, her voice raising and obtaining a harder edge as she leaned forward in her seat. Deke put a hand on her upper arm and her head snapped around, violence in her eyes.
“Easy,” he said softly before he turned to the Security chief. “Ma’am,” he said carefully, trying to remember the mannerisms that would get Ms. Blake to let him slide on his homework for a night, “how about this? All we need is to get an idea of how General Murdock left the station. We don’t really have to see it for ourselves…maybe you could review the last footage you have of the General and give us an idea of what we’re dealing with?”
The look she gave him was dubious…actually, the look both women were giving him was pretty damn dubious. Manning hesitated, her eyes thoughtful as she seemed to consider his suggestion.
“Give me a moment,” she said, rising from her chair and stepping out of the room.
Kara watched the older woman leave before her eyes speared Deke once again.
Did I miss the memo that put you in charge of this operation, Captain Conner? she asked him via her neurolink transmitter.
Just relax, he said, replying the same way. She was about to shut you down and you admitted it yourself: you’re not good with people.
Kara didn’t reply, but the anger in her eyes didn’t diminish.
Tell ya what, he offered, let’s put a bet on it.
What sort of bet? she asked, curiosity replacing irritation in her look.
Deke grinned sidelong at her. I was thinking sex.
She barely contained a snort of amusement. And what do I get when I win? she wanted to know.
Deke affected a confused expression. That is what you get when you win, he replied.
A sputter of laughter, barely audible, escaped her lips before she clamped them down again and Deke smiled. Sparring with Kara was becoming his favorite sport.
Manning stepped in from behind them and Kara and Deke rose from their chairs at her approach. Even her walk seemed reserved and conservative, Deke observed.
“I have spoken with my superiors,” Manning said, waving them back into their chairs as she sat down behind her desk. Her face seemed troubled, as if she were about to do something she considered morally questionable. Deke found that encouraging. “They have allowed me to review the logs during the period just prior to General Murdock’s departure.”
Kara leaned forward in her chair, hands clasped together in her lap. “Could you tell if he was taken away by force?”
“If he was,” Manning told her, “it
was not evident by his words or actions. In fact, he seemed to know the individual with whom he left. He did not, as you know by now, depart on his own vessel. He made mention during his conversations with the individual that he would return to claim it at a later date.”
“Can you give us some idea of who the individual was,” Kara asked, her patience seeming strained, “or where he might have gone?”
“No indication was given with regards to a possible destination,” Manning answered carefully. “I’m afraid our privacy policies will not allow me to divulge any details about the other person.”
Deke could see Kara’s pulse beating in the vein at her temple and he braced himself for the explosion that he was sure was imminent, but then Manning’s head tilted slightly and her eyes lost focus. Deke knew the look: the woman was receiving a transmission on an implanted comlink. She nodded slightly to herself, then focused on the two of them once again, this time with a look of grim concern.
“There’s been some trouble,” she told them. “Forgive the intrusion, but those involved arrived around the same time that you did and in a very similar ship. Do you happen to know these people?”
Manning flicked a finger from her desktop upward and a hologram snapped to life above it. In the projection were the faces of Cal, Rachel, Pete and Trint: security photos taken as they’d entered the station. Deke felt his stomach drop.
“Oh, shit,” he muttered, slumping in his chair.
“Yes,” Kara told the Security chief, not appearing nearly as worried as Deke felt. “Those are our…colleagues. Are they injured?”
“Not to my knowledge,” the older woman shook her head. “They have, however, managed to kill all ten of the people who attacked them: professionals, according to my investigators.” Her eyes glazed slightly again and Deke surmised she was reading off of a report being projected in a retinal implant or perhaps even straight to her optic nerve via an implant. “The two groups that attacked them did so in a coordinated fashion and carried very expensive jamming devices that they somehow managed to smuggle past our security.” She speared Kara with a glance. “All of them were physically augmented and armed, yet somehow your friends managed to kill each and every one of them, despite being outnumbered more than two to one.”
“You sound surprised,” Kara commented, seeming more relaxed now for some reason. Maybe, Deke thought, she’d been waiting for the other shoe to drop and was relieved now that it had. “Someone in your position is surely aware of General Murdock’s history.”
“Yes, I surely am,” Manning said quietly, her tone and her gaze hardening and becoming decidedly less friendly and matronly. She placed her palms flat on the desk in front of her and used them to push herself briskly to her feet. “Major McIntire, I will have you taken to the holding area where your colleagues are being detained. Then, I think it would be best if all of you took your leave of this station.”
“Certainly.” Kara was cool and professional in her tone and her movements as she stood. Deke followed suit, sighing under his breath. He’d just been getting comfortable.
Deke was relieved when he saw Cal and his family step out of the holding cell. True, Manning had told him they hadn’t been harmed, but he wasn’t sure he trusted the lady all that much. Trint was cut up some, and he was wearing a generic jumpsuit probably given to him by the security guards to replace his own blood-soaked clothes, but Deke knew that the superficial injuries probably bothered the cyborg about as much as a scraped knuckle would him.
“They were waiting for us,” Cal told Deke, one arm wrapped protectively around Rachel’s shoulders. She looked fine, not even a bit shaken…mostly angry, if he was any judge of expressions. She was cute, Deke had to admit it. Too short and stocky for his tastes, but then he hadn’t been raised in 1.68 gravities his whole life. But she was tough, too, especially for someone with no military training. “They jumped us in the docking bay before they had to hit the security checkpoint.”
“We were attacked in the casino,” Trint said in that creepily melodic voice he had. You just didn’t expect to hear a voice like that coming from something as big and ugly as the Tahni cyborg. “Clearly, they had an interest in preventing us from finding out with whom General Murdock was meeting.”
“And they fucking succeeded,” Deke remarked, shaking his head. “This has been a disaster and we don’t know anything more than when we got here.”
Deke noticed Cal glance suspiciously over at Danielle Manning, who was watching their little reunion with disapproval in her eyes.
Not necessarily, he transmitted via his neurolink. We found something. Tell you more when we’re away from here.
Deke saw Kara’s eyes narrow and knew Cal had included her in the message.
“Let’s get out of here,” Kara said perfunctorily. She scowled at Manning. “We’ve obviously worn out our welcome.”
“El Dorado,” Kara repeated softly, as if tasting the word.
“Yeah,” Cal replied over the ship’s communications network, his image projected above the console in the Dutchman’s cockpit. “I think I read a threat briefing about it during the war, but other than that I don’t know a damn thing about the place.”
“There’s not that much to know,” Kara told him. “There’s nothing there worth having other than a habitable biosphere and your normal gas giants. It’s at the ass-end of the Centauran Transition Line so it’s not on the way to anywhere else, and the system’s asteroids are small and very scattered, not worth the effort for anyone but locals to mine them. San Sebastian is the only real city and it’s really more of a town.”
“So what’s worth the Naga sending a hit team there?” Deke wanted to know. He was slightly less pissed off than he had been a few hours ago when they’d departed Belial. At least Cal had come up with a possible destination. If only they could have stuck around to get the video that bartender had promised Pete…
“Your source said the Naga was hunting down those connected with the events surrounding Director Damiani’s conspiracy,” Trint observed. “Who among us would have sought refuge in San Sebastian?”
“I can’t think of anyone,” Kara admitted. “Not any of the people immediately involved. And I can’t think someone is hunting down every single Special Ops trooper or pilot who went out to Petra with us.”
“Maybe it was bait,” Deke suggested, “to draw the General there.”
“Maybe,” Cal agreed. “If that’s the case, he might be dead already.”
For some reason, the thought of that bothered Deke. Not that he held any special love for General Murdock, but to Deke he was always like a force of nature. Him being dead would be like the Sun burning out.
“There’s no use building a mountain out of everything we don’t know,” Kara cut off that line of thought quickly. “If we don’t follow this lead, we have nowhere else to go.”
“Agreed,” Cal said, a bit of a sigh in his voice.
“It’s 220 hours in T-space to El Dorado,” Deke announced, pulling the information off the navigation computer. “Hope y’all are a close family.”
“At least I don’t have to worry about Trint hogging the bathroom,” Pete chimed in from somewhere behind Cal, off-camera. Cal chuckled at that, Deke noted. That was a good sign. He didn’t need Caleb brooding and pessimistic. It was bad enough dealing with Kara’s brooding…at least he could have sex with her. That almost made up for it.
“No use wasting any more time, then,” Kara said, as if on cue. “Prepare your ship for Transition, Captain Mitchell. We jump in ten.”
“Roger that,” Cal acknowledged, cutting the commo feed.
Deke glanced at Kara sidelong as he used most of his concentration to set the navigation computer for their jump.
“What is it?” she asked him, noticing his look.
“’Captain Mitchell’?” he repeated, cocking an eyebrow. “Little formal, aren’t we?”
Kara didn’t seem inclined to answer at first, but finally she sighed almost inaudibly and
tapped a finger on the console.
“His wife is uncomfortable with me,” she told him. “I’m trying to be a bit more…professional about things, not seem too personal.”
“You think Cal told her?” Deke asked. Kara glanced at him sharply, and Deke had to laugh. “You think no one else knew?”
She closed her eyes, letting out a breath. “Wonderful,” she rasped.
“Don’t sweat it,” Deke said, putting a hand on her shoulder. She eyed it balefully, but he ignored the look. “If she hasn’t killed you yet, she probably won’t. Honestly, if I know Cal, he probably hasn’t told her because he doesn’t want to hurt her.” He grinned. “So she probably just hates you because you got her arm blown off and her friends killed, not because you were banging her husband.”
Kara rubbed a hand across her face tiredly. “You’re such a comfort, Deke,” she muttered. “You should look into becoming a psych councilor if the whole smuggling thing doesn’t work out for you.”
“Seriously,” he said, squeezing her shoulder, “it’s not a big deal. Cal doesn’t blame you and deep down, I doubt Rachel does either.”
“What about you, Deke?” she asked him, her expression losing some of the hard edge that seemed to be permanently etched into her features. “Do you blame me?”
“Honestly?” Deke shrugged. “This is probably the most fun I’ve had in the last fifteen years.”
She smiled at him, then surprised him by reaching out and pulling him into a kiss.
“Thank you, Deke,” she said earnestly.
“For what?” he asked, confused.
“For not letting me push you away.” She let herself hang limp against the zero-g restraint web. “I tend to do that to people.”
