by Rick Partlow
"Whoa!" Pete looked from the gun to his brother and back again. "Are you going to shoot it?"
Cal almost laughed at the expression on his younger brother's face. "Thermal detonators are handy because they don't require a constant charge and you can leave them laying around for years, but they're not as reliable. You can overload them with a thermal pulse...like from a laser."
"And that works?" Pete's voice was nearly a squeak and now Cal did laugh.
"It's not normally recommended," he admitted. "But I'm not a Normal, right?" He clapped Pete on the shoulder, trying hard to sound reassuring. There was little alternative since Pete wouldn't leave. "It'll be okay. Just pull that case out the second I say, and don't fuck up."
Cal saw Pete steel himself, a slight tremor leaving his hand as he took a deep breath.
"Okay, I'm ready."
"When I say 'go,' yank it and get clear," Cal instructed, lining up his pulse pistol at a downward angle into the hidden compartment.
Pete's fingers hovered above the case's handle, almost touching it.
"Go."
From the time Cal spoke the word to the time Pete pulled the case clear of the hole in the wall less than a second and a half passed; but to Caleb's heightened senses and boosted perceptions, it seemed like it took interminably long minutes for the plastalloy container to break free of the opening, trailing a spray of buildfoam fragments and dust behind it that tumbled through the air in slow motion like a volcanic eruption. Then the mechanism of the booby trap was visible, low-tech and ingenious in its simplicity and thankfully just as easy to understand and target.
Cal didn't consciously remember touching the gun's trigger pad, but as time snapped back into gear it was firing. A cartridge---molded from the same kind of HpE as the bomb---detonated in the pistol's reaction chamber and the self-consuming shell's 20 kilojoules' worth of heat energy was channeled through the lasing rod in one precise pulse of visible light. Cal could see it clearly in the dust and haze of the darkened chamber, a flash of red-tinged white as the laser heated the air to plasma, then a thunder crack that echoed off the walls and shook loose more dust as air rushed to fill the superheated, evacuated corridor the pulse had burned.
It was a tricky shot: he had to graze the edge of the block of HpE close enough to chop through the tops of the detonator pins where they protruded without hitting the mass square enough to set it off. Fortunately, the researchers in the Commonwealth Spacefleet Intelligence lab responsible for his recreation had given his headcomp targeting software worthy of an assault shuttle. The detonators disappeared in a brief and harmless flash of vaporized chemicals and a puff of smoke that drifted up anticlimactically.
Cal found himself holding his breath, staring at the block of HpE, waiting to see if he'd screwed up and they were both going to die.
I shouldn't be so afraid of it anymore, should I? he thought, still anticipating the explosion that would end him. He'd been on a first name basis with death for over fifteen years, long enough that he didn't get nervous every time the Reaper walked into the room.
"Is it gonna' go off?" Cal heard Pete ask a bit hesitantly behind him.
"No, I don't think it is," he said, engaging the safety on his pistol and sliding it back into its holster. He glanced back and saw Pete letting out a deep breath, clenching the dust-covered case to his chest like a baby. "Let's head up. I'll hold that for you." He reached out a hand for the case and Pete handed it over---a little reluctantly, Cal thought, as if the weight of it was some comfort to him.
Cal looked the box over as Pete ascended the ladder. The case had a simple latch in the front without any sort of high-tech lock; he flipped the catch and levered off the lid. Inside was rack after rack of stacked data crystals, each about the size of his little finger. There were dozens of them, each engraved with an alphanumeric code. It was definitely a solid-state backup for the holographic computer storage, though probably not a complete one. Even this many data spikes didn't represent enough storage to hold over forty years' worth of a human life.
Hopefully, it would be enough.
Cal resealed the case and tucked it under his arm as he climbed back up the ladder. Sunlight glared as he came closer to the top and he glanced away, squinting, hand searching for the next rung. Another hand grabbed it and Cal accepted the boost it gave him, getting a purchase with one foot and then levering himself up to the surface.
He'd known who it was before he'd grabbed the hand, so he was unsurprised to see the lean, sharp-edged face of Jason Chen staring back at his. Jason towered over him with the height of someone born to lower gravity---an Offworlder; and like all Offworlders on a parochial world like Canaan, mistrusted when he and his family had arrived working for the Commonwealth government. Jason had one companion among that close-knit group of neo-Quakers, one boy who hadn't cared that he was different. That had been Caleb, his closest friend and, for a while, his only friend. That was before the war, though.
After the invasion and the occupation, attitudes had changed and "us" suddenly became a larger enough word that it meant any man who'd fought the Tahni, not just the members of the New Society of Friends, and now Jason Chen was the well-respected Chief Constable for the colony...Cal's old job. He wore the new position well, Cal thought.
"I'm sure there has to be some good reason you didn't stop by and let me know you were back on-planet," Jason said, disapproval in his voice.
"Sorry, Jase," Cal replied, his tone contrite as he shook his old friend's hand. "This was supposed to be quick and quiet and the fewer people who knew about it, the better." He shrugged. "Orders."
"Orders, huh?" Jase repeated, eyebrow arching skeptically. "Since when do you take orders from anyone anymore?"
"How did you know we were here?" Cal asked, changing the subject with little subtlety, not least because he was genuinely curious, given the counter-measures he'd used to avoid detection.
"Well, whoever's giving you orders," Jase said dryly, "you can tell them that even when you spoof the surveillance drones with computer generated loops, you can't anticipate the daily foot patrols we send out here." He snorted. "I always check on them via the drones and when I was able to contact them on their 'links but couldn't see them on the visual feed, I knew something was up."
Pete laughed, sitting down on a loose block of aggregate. "Yeah, nothing gets by you, Jase," he said, sounding a bit manic after the close call down in the hidden lab. "By the way, you might wanna' get some bomb techs down that hole. There's a shitload of HpE down there that someone needs to take care of."
Jason's blasé, vaguely annoyed manner shifted abruptly to alarm as he stepped back involuntarily, staring down the open shaft.
"Seriously?" he asked, looking back to Cal for confirmation.
"Seriously." Cal slapped the side of the plastalloy case. "This is the intelligence we were after and it was rigged to blow." He looked around, eyes narrowing. "To be honest, we need to get this out of here before the wrong people see it."
"Shit," Jason breathed. "I'll get a team down here ASAP." He glanced sharply at Cal, a bead of sweat rolling from his short-cut dark hair and nearly into his eyes before he swiped it away. "Is the reason you're here connected to the attack?"
"What attack?" Cal asked, shaking his head, expression blank.
Jason blinked. "You didn't hear? It's been all over the TCN Instell reports the last hour."
"I'm not getting automatic updates," Cal told him, "because I've been blocking my ID codes from the net." He shrugged. "I'm not here, remember?"
"Well, you know the Spacefleet Garrison Station in orbit around the Tahni homeworld?"
"Yeah," Cal acknowledged. "What about it?"
Jason shook his head grimly. "It's not there anymore."
Chapter Two
Hesperides sparkled like a jewel set in the surface of Eden's southernmost continent, reflecting the afternoon light of 82 Eridani. The oldest and most densely populated of all the Commonwealth's extrasolar colonies, Eden was
home to nearly half a billion people; over half of them lived in Hesperides, the capital. From where he stood at the apex of Armstrong Street, at the top of a glorified hill the locals called Mount Dilmun, Deke Conner could see most of the city laid out before him in all its intricate and carefully designed splendor. Every street, every neighborhood was pre-planned according to a computer-generated plan and built by automated construction 'bots on the bones of the original colony.
The buildings were interconnected and accessible from efficiently designed public transportation, the housing blocs convenient to everything the people there needed, and the city ended where it ended, with a minimum of sprawl. The idea had been to do things right from the beginning, to minimize the impact that humans had on the planet's finely-balanced ecosystem. In practice...
In practice, the whole place gave Deke the creeps. The people here were like ants, and he knew it was the same in most of the megacities back on Earth. He'd grown up in an old city, untouched by the ravages of the Sino-Russian War and the chaos left in its wake, not rebuilt into one of the interconnected hives that housed most of Earth's population. The thought of living cheek-by-jowl with tens of thousands of people as your next-door neighbor made his skin crawl, even though he knew on an intellectual level that the arrangement was crucial to energy efficiency and preserving Earth's biological diversity.
Screw the bears, he thought irreverently. I need room to move.
He turned away from the lights of the city and back toward the largest structure outside Hesperides' cyclopean walls. The Commonwealth Military Recreation Facility at Eden was run by the Fleet, and Deke had often thought they kept it separate from the city proper as much to protect the mindset of the military personnel from corruption by the mundane as to protect the citizens of the city from the ravages of sailors and Marines on leave after months cooped up in a ship. The Rec Center, as it was known colloquially, looked like a luxury resort from the outside: well-manicured fields that offered golf courses, horseback riding and hang-gliding; kilometers of hiking trails that led into the surrounding mountains; and access to a very natural-looking artificial lake for sailing and swimming.
The main building reminded Deke of a 200 year old casino he'd seen preserved in the Trans Angeles West Historic District on a trip his family had taken back when his parents had still been together. It was ornate and un-self-consciously anachronistic, a refuge from the present and from the technologically intensive life aboard a starship or on a garrison station.
He watched as a transport landed on the main pad on the other side of the Rec Center, a boxy tiltrotor coming in from the spaceport with another load of troops on leave from Inferno, Eden's less hospitable sister planet and the home of Fleet Headquarters. Two dozen men and women in blue fleet jumpsuits or grey camo Marine fatigues filed down the ramp, rowdy enthusiasm in their energy of their gait, ready to blow off some steam and party. He remembered being one of them, a long time ago.
And now he was one of them again, in a way. He smoothed down the dress jacket of his Fleet Intelligence black uniform and smiled thinly.
Deke stepped away from his personal flyer and followed the group of new arrivals into the main building. The entrance hallway greeted him with a wash of overpressure to keep out insects and a quiet, automated announcement over his neurolink communicator that his military ID and leave orders had been confirmed and "have a wonderful time at the Commonwealth Military Recreation Facility."
"I'll do my best," he murmured to himself.
The main lobby was devoted to lodging, and the group of enlisted fresh from the spaceport headed there in a loud gaggle; Deke bypassed it and waved off the human attendant who glanced at him with a "can I help you with anything?" look. He headed straight through the red-carpeted lobby and strode purposefully into a richly-appointed corridor lined with reproductions of classical sculptures. The automated guidance system tried to inform him via neurolink that he was about to enter the Justin Throneberg Memorial Lounge before he cut it off with an order to his headcomp to filter any other system messages based on importance.
The lobby had been gaudy and brightly lit, while the corridor had become gradually dimmer as he traversed it; by the time he reached the lounge, it was darker than the approaching night outside. People could and did come here at any time of day; the place catered to those whose bodies were still on a different time schedule from Hesperides. The lounge was already crowded, with most of the tables occupied and half the bar full as well.
They had human bartenders here, he noted with instinctive approval. None of the damned automated drink dispensers that cheaper joints would have. People didn't come to bars just to get wasted, they came to lower their inhibitions while they braved human contact, even if the contact was just with the man or woman handing out the drinks.
He pulled a stool out from the bar and perched on it, waiting patiently for the long-haired blond woman busy behind the drink dispenser to notice he was there.
"Hello Captain Parsons," she said after a few moments, rewarding him with a genuine-seeming smile. "Nice to have you back again. The usual?"
He returned the smile, knowing she probably had a feed from the facility's computer system running to a contact lens that provided her with his name, the last time he'd visited and what he'd ordered.
"Sure, Sandi," he replied. She had a name tag, but he already knew her name. His memory had been pretty good before he'd had a bleeding-edge headcomp wedged into his skull near the brain stem. "Make it nice and strong for me."
"Of course."
He nursed the drink quietly for a few minutes, less patient now than he'd been with the bartender. He knew for a fact that he'd timed his visit perfectly; someone should already have been on their way. He absently ran a hand through his brown hair, cut shorter than it had been in fifteen years, and his fingers brushed the cold metal of the 'face jack behind his right ear and another at his temple. The feel of the computer interface jacks seemed like some cancerous growth and his stomach rebelled for a moment in a sudden twist, as if he'd woken up in someone else's body.
There she was. He could sense her thermal signature and heartbeat before he saw her and he worked the right expression onto his face before she could speak.
"Good evening, Captain Parsons." The voice was silky smooth, just like the woman behind it. He turned and took her in, such a lovely combination of business and pleasure in one tall, delightfully proportioned package. Her hair was short and dark, her eyes an impossible shade of grey that had to have been a product of genetic tinkering by her parents, and her cheekbones were miracles of either nature, her parents' aesthetics or perhaps a surgical restructure. She was dressed in an exquisitely tailored business gown that he could tell had been grown as a single piece in a nanite bath.
"It certainly is now, Director Xiang," Deke returned, raising his glass to her in greeting.
"I've told you before," the woman said with a t'sk. "Call me Illyana."
"Sorry, Illyana," he acknowledged, buying a strategic moment with a sip of his drink. "Just have some other things on my mind today."
"That's why you're in my facility, Captain Parsons," she said, a hand falling on his arm, "to forget about work for a while, right?" She smelled like a gentle hint of flowers, he thought.
"If I'm supposed to call the Director of this whole place by her first name," he countered, putting a bit of nervousness into his grin, "then you could at least call me Loyce." He shrugged. "After all, I'm just a lowly Captain."
"Loyce, you are the one who is keeping the Commonwealth safe," she said with more sincerity than he thought even he could fake. "I'm just doing my best to make the lives of our military men and women a little bit better."
"I wish you could actually do that for me," Deke said, affecting a depressed sigh. "But I'm not sure anyone can at this point."
"Oh Loyce," Illyana said with a sympathetic tilt of her head, "is it your wife?"
"Officially former wife now." He nodded, taking a long drink an
d looking away from her as if he were uncomfortable discussing it. "The marriage contract is up and Raina sent me notice that she's not going to renew it this time."
"I'm so sorry," the woman told him, her hand squeezing his upper arm. "I know you were hoping she might change her mind." She cocked an eyebrow. "Perhaps I can arrange for some companionship to take your mind off things?"
Deke fought back a chuckle as he thought about how Kara would react if he took Illyana up on that offer. But he knew that Illyana figured that wasn't why he'd come, and he had a part to play.
"No, thanks," he said a bit sadly. "I'm afraid it wouldn't help right now. I don't know what would." He paused, frowning. "Well, I do know, but I can't..." He shook his head as he trailed off.
Illyana glanced around as if checking to see if anyone was listening, then leaned in close to his ear. "Come with me somewhere we can talk."
Deke made his face grim and mildly conspiratorial as he followed the woman out of the bar, leaving his drink behind: Loyce Parson's account would be charged for it. Illyana led him behind the bar, through a door marked "Authorized Personnel Only" and past a couple of puzzled glances from employees in the narrow hallway. The route took them down a short set of stairs and then to an isolated freight elevator that opened to her palm print on an ID plate. He opened his mouth to say something as the doors closed, but she shushed him and chose a floor.
They descended at least three levels before the doors hissed open and they stepped out into a dimly-lit hallway on what seemed like an unoccupied floor somewhere below ground. The hallway beyond the elevator looked unfinished, the walls bare and buildfoam-white.
"Where are we?" he asked, hearing the elevator doors shut behind them.
"This floor is under construction," she explained, turning to face him. "Now we can talk." She sighed, clasping her hands in front of her. "Loyce, you know that what you want, besides being illegal and against military regulations, is potentially very dangerous and addictive."
