by Rick Partlow
“If you know what’s going on,” he asked, panting a bit, “why didn’t you just bust it up yourselves already?”
“Two reasons…one, as you may have guessed by now, it goes beyond some dissatisfied Guard officers who want to pull a stunt, and we don’t know how far yet. Two, you Fleet boys don’t trust us and Kage figured the best way to get your help was to let you see it for yourself. Who the hell do you think started the rumors so you’d pick up on this?”
“Well shit,” he commented bitterly. Not only had he been played, the whole Intelligence Service had been played. “And now Lee knows about me too.”
“Those hitters didn’t work for Lee,” she told him. “Lee doesn’t take a shit without us knowing what he had for dinner. He’s as happy as a pig in slop to have someone like you…like Mo…here.”
“So who the hell did send them?” Ari wanted to know.
“I don’t know,” she replied, “I spotted them when you left the room-I’m not that sound of a sleeper, you know. I tied into the security cameras with my ‘link to see where you were going and I spotted them head out about five minutes after you did, going the opposite way on the perimeter trail. They tried to look like joggers, but no one wears that much clothing to run here in summer, not even before dawn. I thought about calling security, but I decided to see if I could handle it myself.”
“And I appreciate you saving my life,” he told her. “Thank you.”
“I like you, Ari” she told him, and he could see her smile even in the dark. “Even when you’re pretending to be Mo. So don’t take this the wrong way, but the real reason I saved you is that we do need you Fleet boys’ help and we can’t wait for them to send your replacement. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen soon.”
“You think I can still maintain cover?” he asked her, surprised. “Whoever sent those hitters must know I’m not who I say I am.”
“Oh, they may try again,” she agreed. “But that just gives us an opportunity to find out who they are. What? You afraid?” she asked, teasingly. “You did pretty well, for a guy in skimpy running shorts.”
He couldn’t help it…he laughed, a coughing, breathless laugh. “As long as you’ll be there to watch my back, Alida…or whatever your name is.”
“Alida will do for now,” she told him. “Wouldn’t want you to slip and call me something else. If we live through this, I’ll tell you my real name.” She sighed. “I hadn’t intended to come out of cover with you so soon…but I suppose it does simplify things if you know we are both working to the same end.”
“No more need for a cover,” he smiled ruefully, “so I suppose you’ll be moving back to your own room.”
“Don’t be silly, Mo,” she grinned back at him as they came within sight of the OQ. “As I said…I like you. Now let’s get a shower and get to work.”
“I like you too, Alida,” he murmured, shaking his head. “I like you too.”
Chapter Seven
“Have I mentioned,” Vinnie groaned, “just how much I hate g-sleep?”
“Yeah,” Jock muttered, sitting up in his open hibernation chamber, rubbing his eyes. “You’ve whined like a little bitch about it every trip the last three years. Sir.”
“So, how long have you two been married?” Lt. Commander Villanueva asked dryly as she rose stretching from her own chamber across from theirs. Jock cocked an appreciative eyebrow as her stretch did interesting things to the tank top she was wearing, still damp with the oxygenated biotic fluid they’d been breathing as it cushioned them from the crushing pseudo-acceleration of the stardrive.
“Since Basic Training,” Vinnie grunted, rolling out of his chamber. “But I’m considering a divorce.”
“But what about the kids, honey?” Jock said in a plaintive falsetto, climbing out himself. “Sir.”
“I can’t take you two anywhere,” McKay shook his head, walking past them towards the showers. They were still decelerating into the system at a one-gravity warp analog, but that would end soon, and everyone was rushing to get cleaned up before the pseudo-gravity was gone. “Shuttle launches in two hours, Vinnie,” he reminded over his shoulder as he grabbed a towel from the locker.
“Yeah, yeah,” the former Marine NCO muttered, falling into a pushup position next to his g-sleep chamber and cranking out a quick fifty to get the tingly, pins-and-needles feeling out of his muscles.
“So, Captain Mahoney,” Lt. Commander Villanueva asked as he came to his feet, “you were on the Protectorate flagship during the Battle for Earth.”
“Yeah…err, yes, ma’am,” Vinnie replied, quickly calculating her Fleet rank and converting it to the Marines/Intelligence equivalent of Major. He bit off his well-rehearsed follow-up of “what? You want an autograph?” that had become his standard reply to the question.
“You met Antonov, didn’t you?”
“I guess you could call it that,” he shrugged, wishing she would get to the point so he could get a shower. “He mostly told us what suckers we were, until Colonel McKay got tired of it and the shooting started.”
“That’s right, he set a trap for you,” she recalled. “Does that worry you?”
“You mean do I think this is a trap?” He thought about it for a moment. “Could be. Doesn’t really matter. We still gotta do what we do, and I’m not sure I could be any more cautious than I already am and still do my job. Let me tell you something, Commander…there’s nothing like getting shot to make you grow eyes in the back of your head. Anyway,” he shook the thought off, “we gotta go collect ourselves a former Protectorate Colonel turned cattle rancher, so if you wouldn’t mind, ma’am.”
“Go right ahead, Captain,” she smiled, “I had better go get cleaned up myself.”
“I think she likes you,” Jock stage-whispered to Vinnie as they entered the men’s showers. “Sir.”
“Jesus Christ I wish you’d taken a commission,” Vinnie snarled. “Then I could tell you exactly what I’m thinking without breaking regulations about abusing lower ranks.”
“Why the hell do you think I stayed a sergeant?” Jock cracked. “Sir.”
Jason McKay stepped off the shuttle and into a chilling wind that whipped mercilessly through the grassy valley and across the landing pad, making the hood of his jacket flap like an ensign.
“Isn’t it supposed to be spring?” He asked, squinting up at the orange glow of Epsilon Eridani in the harshly blue sky.
“Hell yes,” Vinnie said, beside him. “You should see this shit-hole in winter, sir…you spend a couple days in Beacon Pass in winter and you’ll wonder why Loki is classified as habitable.”
“It’s not that bad,” Jock shrugged, staring off at the high, craggy mountains in the distance beyond the port city. “I’d rather have the cold than the heat.”
“Here comes our ride,” McKay nodded towards a boxy all-terrain rover rumbling down the dirt road that connected Beacon Pass to the landing pad. Behind the three men, Captain Minishimi’s XO Commander Duncan stepped off the boarding ramp with their pilot Lt. Commander Villanueva at his heels. Duncan wasn’t, McKay recalled, Minishimi’s usual First Officer; Jack Durant had been badly injured in an accident while rock climbing just before the end of their last leave.
“We’ll ride into town with you, Colonel,” Duncan said, pulling on a watch cap. He was a pale man and his cheeks were already turning red from the cold wind. Villanueva withstood the weather stoically, her short, dark hair waving slightly like the fields of grass in the distance, her face impassive. “If you wouldn’t mind picking us up at the Colonial Governor’s office on your way back.”
“Not a problem, Commander,” McKay assured him. “Hopefully we won’t be too long. But I guess that depends on how reasonable our friend Podbyrin wants to be…”
“Are you absolutely fucking nuts?” Colonel D’mitry Grigor’yevich Podbyrin demanded. The Colonel, late of the Russian Protectorate Space Force, was a thin, sallow man with a shaved head and dark, sunken eyes. He looked as if he were in
late middle age, but McKay knew him to be over one hundred and eighty years old, his life extended by organ transplants done on the Protectorate home base. Right now, his pale face was red, old broken blood vessels in his nose lit up like neon signs. “Let me tell you something, McKay,” he said, shaking his finger in the younger man’s face, “this is not an easy place to make a living.” He stomped away across the porch of his cabin, waving a hand at the wind-swept plains beyond his homestead. “In the winter, I cannot leave my house without a thermal suit that preheats the air I breathe. A regular cow would die in five minutes…only those things can survive here in the cold.” He jerked his head towards a gaggle of genetically engineered cattle grazing contentedly on the other side of a plank fence beyond his house. They were a lab-created mixture of American bison and musk ox, huge and ornery with long, shaggy fur and padded hooves.
“And besides the cold, I have to protect those things from the predators…those damn hafgygr that look like something from a nightmare; and the grab-worms that tunnel under the dirt and dig traps for the cattle. I’ve almost been worm food more than once. And all for a profit margin that barely pays back my loan and gives me enough trade credits to live on. But you know what…at least I am living! And now you want me to go running after the General, to give him a chance to settle up with me for betraying him during the war!”
“You didn’t exactly betray him, D’mitry,” McKay said soothingly. “You were pumped full of truth drugs.”
“I betrayed him by not killing myself before you captured me!” Podbyrin yelled, his hands going up in frustration. “That is how he will see it, and he will have me gutted like a Christmas lamb! Strangled with my own intestines!”
“What a drama queen.” Jock muttered to Vinnie. The two of them were standing farther down the porch, Jock leaning lackadaisically against the railing, out of earshot of McKay and the Russian.
“At least his English has improved,” Vinnie shrugged.
“D’mitry,” McKay went on, “Antonov will never know you’re there. It’s not as if I’m asking you to come along on an infiltration mission, I just want you to help me get a feel for what he’s after.”
“And who will watch my cattle while I am gone?” Podbyrin demanded. “Or do you just assume I need not worry about losing everything I’ve built because you think there’s such a slim chance I’ll live through the trip?”
“We will be stopping by the Governor’s office on the way to the port,” McKay told him. “He is going to arrange to have three of his best wranglers watch your ranch until you return. And,” he raised a hand to forestall any further objections, “I have been authorized to pay you for your time as well…you can either accept a payment equal to three times your profit last year, or we can, if you like, relocate you to the colony of your choice and set you up with a homestead or a business there. You don’t have to make up your mind now, either.”
That seemed to take Podbyrin by surprise. He frowned thoughtfully, hooking his thumbs in his broad leather belt. “Anywhere?” he asked.
“Anywhere outside the Solar System,” McKay nodded.
“I must think on this,” he murmured, half to himself. He glanced up at McKay. “Do you give me your word I will be protected?”
“Colonel Podbyrin,” McKay replied, “I will tell you this: I will not even ask you to leave the ship unless it is absolutely necessary. I just want you available to consult with.”
The Russian sighed, looking around at his house and land as if he might never see them again. “How long do I have to get ready?”
D’mitry Podbyrin, McKay reflected, looked like a condemned man as he sat strapped into the shuttle acceleration couch, eyes staring straight ahead at the bulkhead, not even bothering to look at the curve of the planet passing beneath them. McKay felt guilt stir within him…whatever his gripes about the hardships, the man had been content here. He shook his head. It didn’t matter. Antonov’s last attempt at invasion had cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars. If he had to upend Podbyrin’s life to prevent another attempt, he’d do it.
“Colonel McKay,” Commander Villanueva’s voice came over the cabin’s PA speakers. “There is a call for you. I am having it transferred to your ‘link.”
“Thanks Commander,” he said, knowing the overhead pickup would catch his words. He pulled his ‘link from a pocket, took the ear bud off of its mount and put it in place, then hit the “connect” button on the screen. “This is McKay,” he said.
“McKay, this is Minishimi,” the Captain’s voice sounded in his ear. “You need to tell your pilot to re-route to a new course.”
“Why’s that, Captain?” He frowned. “What’s going on?”
“We have an unexpected visitor,” she said and he could almost hear the smile in her face. “And he’d like to have a chat…”
The man waiting for McKay in the Flag Cabin of the RSS Sheridan was short and wiry, with a deceptive grace to his movements and a gravity in the lines of his high forehead and short, black hair. Every inch of his office and his uniform were a tribute to followed regulations, right down to the textbook cut of his thin mustache and the neatly tucked sheets of his bunk.
“Admiral Patel,” McKay said, coming to attention as much as was possible in zero gravity and saluting.
“Oh, at ease, McKay,” Arvid Patel saluted, smiling. “For God’s sake, it’s not as if I outrank you by that much anymore. Come on in and close the door.”
“Sir,” McKay shook Patel’s extended hand, “it’s great to see you again, but if I might ask…how did you come to be here? Last I heard, you were scheduled for a run out to Eden for a conference with the 82 Eridani Governors’ Council.”
“Oh, I still am,” the smaller man waved a hand dismissively. “But they aren’t going anywhere and one of the benefits of being the highest ranking officer in the Fleet is the ability to go where I think I’m needed. We were stopped at the Outer System Refueling Station topping off the antimatter stores when I received an encrypted report from the President’s office.”
“Ah, so you already know then, sir,” McKay nodded. He felt vaguely annoyed, though he knew that was irrational. There was no way President O’Keefe was going to keep this from Admiral Patel. But the Intelligence officer in him had an innate distaste for sharing secrets beyond those with an absolute need to know.
“Yes and I didn’t fly out several light years just so you could say ‘I told you so,’ either,” Patel said with a smirk. He and McKay had argued incessantly five years ago about the need to search for Antonov versus the need to concentrate their resources on securing the colonies from the unrest following the war. “I came here to put this ship at your disposal. The President didn’t say I had to, but he didn’t say I couldn’t, either.”
“That’s very good to hear, sir,” McKay sighed. “Frankly, I’ve been worried about how long this is going to take with just one ship available.”
“Well, I’ve just doubled your capabilities…where do you want us?”
“We’re…the Decatur that is, going to be investigating the system where the attack occurred, then moving inward to the next system on the list of possible locations that I showed President O’Keefe…I assume he shared that with you?”
Patel nodded and used the controls on his desk to call up a hologram of the sector in question. McKay nodded, indicating the system they’d be checking after their investigation on Peboan. “If you could start here…” he pulled the picture around to the system furthest out from Peboan, “and work your way back towards us, we could meet at the last location and compare notes once we both arrive insystem.”
“What if we spot them?” Patel frowned. “Activity on a planet, ships? On the one hand, I don’t want to chance losing them, especially if it’s a force small enough for us to overwhelm, but on the other hand the point of all this is to find Antonov and if we attack prematurely, we might make him go even deeper into a hole.”
McKay considered the question for a moment before
answering, hand rubbing the back of his neck thoughtfully. “Sir, I’ll leave that to your discretion. We could be weeks away if and when you spot anything. I think it would be prudent if you do see anything to launch a beacon with a message set to go off when the Decatur arrives. That way, no matter what happens, at least we’ll have some idea of what’s going on.”
“Sound thinking,” Patel nodded. “Well, as much as it would be nice to shuttle over and say hi to Joyce in person, I think we’d all be best served in getting under way as soon as possible.”
“I agree. I have a sense that Antonov wouldn’t have risked this attack unless something important was going on and it was imminent.”
“Then we meet again in a few weeks,” the Admiral offered his hand. McKay shook it, greatly relieved by the man’s offer of help.
It’s nice, he reflected as he left the cabin, to have friends.
Chapter Eight
Ariel Shamir was not comfortable. He knew Alida was right, that he had to keep going to work as if nothing had happened, but as he sat in the back of the open utility rover, following his class of officer candidates driving their troop transports over the dirt tracks through the training area, he felt as if he were sitting in the crosshairs. Whoever had tried to kill him-and Alida’s people still didn’t know who it had been after two weeks of investigation-they could attempt it again any time, any place. He had taken to wearing full body armor in the field-“sharing the burden of the troops,” he’d said, since the candidates were also required to wear it at this stage of training-and carrying a loaded sidearm, but no one seemed to have noticed. The only difference was that he was sweating his ass off in the late-afternoon sun.
More frustrating than the tension, though, was the fact that Colonel Lee had yet to contact him again. But he had an idea on how to change that…
