by Rick Partlow
“God in Heaven,” O’Keefe breathed. He looked up at Shannon, then back and forth between her and Valerie, disbelief in his eyes. “You can’t be saying…I can’t believe…” He shook his head, trying to come up with something coherent to say. “What proof do we have of any of this?”
“Well sir,” Shannon ticked off on her finger, “we have first-hand testimony that the Colonial Guard mutiny is real, and we have eyewitness evidence that it is connected to the multicorps via this Lone Star Security, where Hellene D’Annique works. Colonel Lee was told by D’Annique that there would be an assassination attempt on you via an orbital strike timed to coincide with the return of the Decatur-well, let me clarify, we think he meant the Decatur, we have no names or specific ships. We also know that the merc who murdered Glen Mulrooney and tried to kill Valerie was hired by a shell company with ties to Lone Star Security, and we know he was only hired to do this after Glen began asking his friend the journalist to look into the background of Vice President Dominguez.”
She shook her head. “As for the rest…we only have Mr. Bryant’s testimony under chemical interrogation to say that Antonov was involved with this or that this story about…” She searched for a word. “…duplication, I suppose, is true. Investigator Kovach vouches for the accuracy of information obtained through the combination of drugs, but there is no psycho-medical study that confirms that those memories are real and not fantasy. Still sir,” she pointed out forcefully, “something happened on that trip to Aphrodite. Bryant was on it and immediately developed psychological problems. D’Annique was on it and immediately quit the Fleet and is now working against your government. And Vice President Dominguez was on it and is, we know, at least tangentially involved in all this.”
She shook her head. “Once is happenstance,” she quoted, “twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.”
“If Antonov isn’t behind this,” Valerie said thoughtfully, “someone has gone through a lot of trouble to make us think he is. If the attack on the outpost was staged to draw away Jason or you, Shannon, and to get some of the Fleet out of the way…there has to be involvement by some of the top officers in the Republic Spacefleet.”
“Jesus,” O’Keefe murmured, burying his face in his hands for a moment. When he looked back up, his eyes were haunted, his face pale. “So either a sizable percentage of the military and the multicorps are conspiring in an elaborate plot to assassinate me and overthrow our elected government, or Antonov has access to technology that can duplicate people and has foisted a copy of the Vice President on us and brainwashed the entire crew of a starship, including Admiral Patel and possibly General Kage.” He laughed a bit maniacally. “I can’t honestly say which of those possibilities I find worse.”
Still chuckling, he stood from the desk and went to the bar against the far wall, pulling out a bottle of Scotch and pouring himself a tall glass of it. He downed half of it in one gulp, then closed his eyes and took a deep breath to steady himself. “I used to feel sorry for Greg Jameson, you know,” he went on, refilling his own glass and pouring one for each of them. “He had to handle Antonov’s invasion, being a prisoner, almost dying, the war…and of course the economic aftermath.” He set the glasses in front of both of the women at the desk, then retrieved his own and sat back down with them. “I used to think it wasn’t fair that all that was dumped on his head. Now…” He shook his head. “Now I wish that son of a bitch were back in office so he could deal with this.”
Valerie picked up her glass and took a long sip from it. “Daddy,” she said, “we…you have to make a decision. We have to do something and you have to be the one to make that call.”
O’Keefe caught Shannon’s eye. “You wouldn’t have come here without some ideas, Stark.”
“Yes, sir,” she confirmed, taking a long gulp from her own glass. The Scotch was old and smooth. “The most obvious course of action is to bring in D’Annique for interrogation and follow her trail up the line.”
“I assume there’s a downside to that other than the Constitutional and legal issues,” O’Keefe said dryly, “since that hasn’t stopped you so far.”
“The downside is that her disappearance would be noticed,” Shannon explained. “Which would give her superiors time to go to ground. Right now, so far as we know, whoever is behind this in the Fleet and the multicorps has no reason to think we’re onto any part of their plan beyond the Guard mutiny. If we grab D’Annique, they’ll know for sure, and whatever we did get from her might not be enough to make all the connections.”
“I see. So what are the alternatives?”
“Well,” she said, reluctantly, “there’s one that appeals to me on a visceral level but I doubt I can get you to approve.”
He looked at her and smiled shrewdly. “You want to put Xavier Dominguez in a hotbox and sweat him, don’t you, Major Stark?”
Shannon chuckled despite herself. “Yes, sir, I surely do. He’s the key to all this. None of it will work without him in place. If we take him off the board, we may remove the threat entirely.”
“That certainly makes sense,” O’Keefe admitted. “The problem is, we have no legal justification to do it; and unlike some psych burnout junior Fleet officer, we can’t make the Vice President disappear without raising more questions than I can answer and still stay president. No, barring an actual state of civil war, I don’t think kidnapping the Vice President is on the table.”
“Then there’s only one other option, sir,” Shannon told him. “We keep watching D’Annique and hope she leads us to someone bigger…and we wait for the other side to make their move and hope we can get you through it alive when it comes.”
O’Keefe slumped back in his seat, rubbing the back of his head tiredly. “If this isn’t Antonov,” he began uncertainly, “if it’s just a home-grown coup attempt…I wonder if I should approach Dominguez myself and try to make a deal.”
“Mr. President?” Shannon’s eyes went wide.
“Daddy, you can’t deal with these people!” Valerie exclaimed. “They murdered Glen!”
“Look, Major Stark, Valerie,” O’Keefe held up his hands palms-up in a helpless gesture, “I’m not sure if either of you realizes just how tenuous a position our economy is in right now. It can’t take another war, particularly not a bitter and bloody civil war. The economy will collapse, the Republic government will collapse and we will have one would-be warlord after another vying to take over what’s left. Millions of innocent people will die, maybe tens of millions. Nuclear weapons, kinetic kill weapons from space, biological weapons…if there’s a protracted civil war, any of those can and will be used.”
“What sort of a deal would you propose?” Shannon asked quietly, the wheels turning behind her eyes.
O’Keefe shrugged. “Whatever it would take. I would step down, let Dominguez take power peacefully.”
“He’ll start the forced emigration again,” Valerie reminded him. “Worse than before, since he’s in the multicorps’ pockets. And I doubt he’ll be willing to sit back and let the voters decide if he stays in office when the elections come up. You’ll be dooming the whole world…and many others…to dictatorship, Daddy.”
“And if the choice is between that and death, chaos, starvation and possibly the end of our civilization, honey? What do you think those who are forced to go to the colonies would choose, death or exile?”
“They should have the right to choose that for themselves!” She insisted, leaning over the desk towards him.
“Yes they should, sweetheart,” he agreed. “But if I can’t keep them safe any other way…”
“Mr. President,” Shannon interrupted, “I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. We don’t know that Antonov and his forces are not involved, and if they are, there really is no choice of stepping aside. Antonov will smash the Republic and install a dictatorship with him at the head and I think we both agree that is not something that is preferable to war, don’t we?”
“Yes,” O’Ke
efe nodded reluctantly. “If it is Antonov, we have no choice but to fight.”
“Well, sir,” she pointed out gently, “you’ve told us we can’t interrogate the Vice President. I’m not sure D’Annique would know even if we did grab her. So, we won’t know if it’s Antonov or not until after the conspirators make their move, will we?”
O’Keefe shook his head, grinning ruefully in admiration. “McKay always reminds me that you’re the brains of the operation, Major Stark. So, my noble sacrifice is put on hold. It seems we don’t have a choice but to wait this out.”
“Hold on,” Valerie said, eyes narrowing in thought. “You know, Daddy, maybe you should talk to Dominguez after all.”
“Val?” Shannon shot the other woman a questioning look.
“You were right, Shannon, we can’t surrender. And daddy, you’re right, we can’t kidnap and interrogate the Vice President.” Val grinned the grin of a shark that had just smelled blood. “But there’s no reason that Dominguez needs to know he’s being interrogated…”
* * *
Xavier Dominguez cut quite a figure, Roza Kovach admitted to herself as she watched the man step out of the flyer flanked by security agents. He was tall and trim with a look of whipcord strength beneath his perfectly tailored Italian suit, and his face was lean and sculpted, his dark eyes showing just the right touch of compassion and sympathy for a politician…or a salesman. Not that there was much difference between the two professions, she reflected cynically.
Right now, though, she could see in those salesman’s eyes a hint of the annoyance he must feel at being called away from Capital City out to President O’Keefe’s family home outside Calgary. The estate was large and well-tended, the house a multistory Tudor built over a century ago and pretty in a quaint sort of way. Roza had never been there before, of course, but she’d become very familiar with it in the last two days of preparation. She still felt hideously out of place, however, in the expensive designer business suit that Major Stark had insisted she wear.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Vice President,” she greeted him as he approached the back patio of the house, the security agents taking up their positions at its edge. “I’m Rachel Kosar from President O’Keefe’s Calgary office. He’s waiting for you in his office, if you’ll follow me.”
“He’s inside,” Ari told Shannon, watching Dominguez over a security monitor in a small office in a far corner of the house. It had been previously used as a guest room, but two days of frantic effort had filled it with monitoring equipment and various other high-tech gadgets brought in from the Special Operations training center by Tom Crossman.
“Get a baseline on his biometric readings,” she told him, pacing the small room behind him. She seemed, Ari thought, as nervous as he had ever seen her, and he couldn’t blame her. This was extremely risky, not only to their lives and careers but to the future of…hell, of humanity, he realized.
“I’m recording his bio readings,” Ari confirmed. He worked his mouth after he said the words…his face was still sore. He’d taken advantage of the time it had taken to get the equipment in place to see a restruct surgeon and get his old face back and it was still healing.
Watching Roza lead the Vice President through the house, he thought of how she had reacted when he’d returned from the surgery. “We have a strange relationship, my love,” she’d remarked. “I feel like I’m cheating on you…with you!”
He could see a reflection of himself in an inactive monitor at the edge of the display and it almost seemed to strange to him to have his own face back. But he’d decided that if they were facing imminent disaster, he’d rather go out with his own face than a borrowed one.
“Mr. President,” he could hear Roza saying as she knocked on the office door. It was real wood, with a brass knob, no intercom or any other electronics.
“Come in,” O’Keefe said in a subdued voice that barely carried through the door.
Roza pushed the door open and gestured to Dominguez to enter, then quickly retreated and closed the door behind her. O’Keefe was sitting at his antique oak desk, leaning back in a comfortable chair, his cowboy boots propped up on the desktop, hands folded across his chest. He made no move to get up.
“Have a seat, Xavier,” O’Keefe told his Vice President, waving at the very expensive leather-upholstered chair on the other side of the desk.
“Daniel,” Dominguez began, sinking into the chair and looking decidedly uncomfortable, “things are not good right now. You shouldn’t be all the way out here in Calgary, much less both of us. What the hell is going on?”
O’Keefe swung his legs off the desk and reached behind it to a low shelf, grabbing a half-empty bottle of bourbon and two glasses. He poured two fingers into each of them and set one in front of Dominguez.
“Have a drink with me Xavier,” he said, picking up one of them.
“Daniel, I don’t want a drink,” the other man insisted, shaking his head. “I want to know why you’re hiding here in Canada and I definitely want to know why you dragged me out here. The press is eating this up, you know that, right? I know you’re worried about your daughter, but the police are doing everything they can to find her…I’m sure she’s going to be all right.”
“Xavier, I’m asking you as a friend…have a drink with me in memory of my son-in-law.”
Dominguez sighed, then picked up the glass. “All right, Daniel,” he gave in, matching the other man’s toast and downing the bourbon with a barely-concealed look of distaste.
“Are we looping the bio readouts?” Shannon asked Ari back in the spare office, her eyes locked on a monitor that was showing Dominguez’s vital signs, a spectroanalysis of his breathing and skin temperature.
“We’ve jammed the signal from his implant,” Ari confirmed. “I’m rebroadcasting the loop from earlier.”
The President and Vice President and the Senate Majority Leader, uniquely among all Republic officials, were outfitted with health monitor implants that broadcast their biological readouts to the Security Service so that they could be treated immediately in the event of a health emergency. Circumventing this was the reason for all the equipment that packed the little office. More was hidden in the house’s attic and basement…and Ari hoped to God that none of the Security agents stumbled onto it…
“All right, Daniel,” Xavier said firmly, setting his glass on the desk. “Tell me why I’m here or I’m leaving right now.”
“I promise I will,” O’Keefe told him. “And I promise you, Xavier, it is important. There have been things happening lately, things I never would have believed could happen. Like Glen’s murder.”
“Yes,” Dominguez said slowly. O’Keefe looked at the other man closely, saw that he was blinking his eyes irregularly, leaning back in his chair a bit more heavily… “Yes, I understand that, Daniel,” Xavier said, voice a bit softer and slower than it had been. “But we have the whole Republic to think about. God,” he rubbed his eyes, “I didn’t realize how tired I was. Shouldn’t have had that drink.”
“Xavier,” O’Keefe continued, “I’ve had an investigation going on. I’ve found out who killed Glen Mulrooney, and why.”
Xavier’s head snapped up and his eyes tried to focus on O’Keefe but failed. “I thought…I thought the target was the journalist.”
“They were both targeted,” O’Keefe corrected him. “Glen had asked Fuentes to look into someone. They were killed to keep what he found out quiet.”
“Who?” O’Keefe could see that Dominguez wanted to say more but didn’t trust himself to do it.
“You, Xavier,” O’Keefe told him. “They were investigating you. And what happened to you on that mission to Aphrodite five years ago, just after the war.”
Dominguez’s eyes went wide, his self-control compromised by the drugs that had coated the interior of the glass from which he’d drunk the bourbon. “Jesus, Daniel, you can’t know this,” he shook his head, trying to lever himself out of the chair but somehow lacking the strength. “Th
ey’ll kill you when they find out you know.”
“They’re planning to kill me anyway, Xavier,” O’Keefe reminded him. “And when they do, do you think that it’s going to be easy? That the military and the government are going to follow you because you’re the Vice President?”
“They said there wouldn’t be any other choice,” Dominguez agreed, his eyes seemingly horrified at what his mouth was saying. “They’ll be looking for a leader and I’ll be there to lead them.”
“And who’s ‘they,’ Xavier?” O’Keefe demanded. “Who made you all those promises? Who’s your contact?”
“Lobbyist for Republic Mineral Resources multicorp,” Dominguez told him. “Guy named Fourcade.”
“How shocking,” O’Keefe muttered dryly. “And who else does Mr. Fourcade say is involved in this?”
Dominguez shook his head. “He says it’s better that I don’t know. The fewer people who know, the better. Hell, I didn’t even have to do anything. Just wait for you to die, then take office and we could start undoing the damage you did with your emigration policies.”
“You supported those policies too, Xavier,” O’Keefe snarled at him, leaning across the desk. “You were elected as Senator because of your support for them! When did you change your mind on that?”
“I..,” Dominguez’s face went slack and he looked as if he were about to fall unconscious, but then he shook himself. “I don’t remember ever feeling like that. I know I did. I’ve seen the voting records, the speeches. I know I did…but I can’t remember why.”
“What happened on that trip to Aphrodite, Xavier?” O’Keefe asked him, elbows resting on the desk as he studied the man, as if he could discern the truth if he watched him closely enough.
“I don’t know,” Dominguez replied.
“What happened on the trip to Aphrodite?” O’Keefe repeated, slamming his fist on the desk.
“I don’t know,” Dominguez insisted sullenly. “I can’t remember any of it. I just have this weird…divide in my memory. Like everything that happened before the trip is…muffled somehow. Not real, or less real. Like I had been sleeping my whole life and just woke up after that trip. Fourcade said something happened on the trip, too…he said it was key to what we are going to do, but he wouldn’t tell me. I don’t think he trusts me.”
