by J. N. Chaney
The cursor began to move again as more words appeared.
Jack Burner. Formerly of Union Intelligence. Two medals for acts of heroism beyond the scope of duty and more than a dozen commendations. Now a drifter, doing whatever he pleases.
The response gave Burner two vital pieces of information. First, his captors were definitely watching and listening to him. And second, they had access to classified Union intel. While Burner’s employment with Union Intelligence was a matter of record, the details of his time there were highly confidential, including his awards.
“You know, there are easier ways to get my attention than drugging me and locking me in a dark room.”
You will get on a ship and travel to Dobbulla UX8.
Deep Union space. Burner would rather travel in an unarmed transport ship through the Deadlands.
While Burner wasn’t technically a wanted man, and his departure from Union Intelligence was, on record, an honorable discharge, in actuality it had been, behind the scenes, a messy, destructive affair. He had embarrassed many in the leadership and earned himself the disdain of the entire agency. Apparently highlighting the corruption of the upper echelons of the institution wasn’t what was intended when he was given the “root out corruption” assignment. Since then, he and the Union had an unspoken agreement: he kept his head low on the outskirts of the Deadlands, and he didn’t have to worry about being hauled out of his bed in the middle of the night and dropped into some black site to never be seen again.
“And what’s on UX8?”
A weapon store called Hell’s Reach. You will find the owner and use the code phrase: “Rick sent me for a good time.” You will then be provided with a rifle.
An assassination mission, then. “Look, I don’t know what you think you’ve heard about the work I do these days, but I’m not a gun for a hire.”
The cursor continued to blink.
Feeling was starting to come back to his legs, but he didn’t want his captors to know that. Not yet. “Not that I have any interest in doing it, but who’s the target?”
A moment passed.
You will receive further instructions nearer the time. If you do not comply, action will be taken.
The cursor blinked away and was gone. The screen switched off again, plunging him back into darkness.
That was all he was getting for now.
The short conversation ended with a vague threat; not enough for Burner to deduce the identity of his captors, but his mind was already rushing to produce a profile.
The operation was a complex one. Many moving pieces. Digging into his classified Union files, breaking aliases, setting up this whole facility for the purpose of communicating with him without revealing their faces, they all pointed to a mid-size or large cell, highly organized and intelligent with a degree of individual specializations.
Military backgrounds. At least, whoever is calling the shots is military. The protocol of receiving the target later, preventing Burner from going rogue and sending a warning to the potential victim, was a dead giveaway.
The setup here was highly sophisticated, but they wouldn’t have wanted to risk exposure by hiring an outside contractor, which meant they must have set it all up themselves.
The target was probably a prominent individual—a politician or highly ranked military figure were the most likely candidates, but if his captors were motivated by money instead of cause, then influential business leaders were not off the table. It was someone with the kind of resources that made getting to them a problem if they were aware of a threat on their lives; hence, the level of secrecy.
As to why they picked Burner, that much was clear. Part of it was certainly his skill set, particularly if they had access to his records and saw the kinds of things he was capable of. But Burner felt a more insidious reason underlying the obvious one: they needed a patsy. And who better and more believable than someone already on the Union’s shit list?
Just as Burner was finishing drawing those conclusions and preparing his next move, his honed senses noticed ambient sounds around him. It took his conscious brain a few more seconds to figure out the cause: the recycled air was no longer being pumped into the room.
Everything was very still, and for a moment Burner was worried that they might have decided he was too much trouble and to just suffocate him in here. Then the vents turned back on, no longer a faint whirl but a determined whistle. Instinctually, Burner knew that was not air they were pumping in this time.
He scrambled to his feet. Despite still being unsteady, he managed to shift into an upright position and hobble toward the wall opposite the screen. It was still darkest there and the most likely place for the door. He held his breath as he stumbled toward it, trying not to inhale whatever toxin was flooding into the room.
It couldn’t have been more than fifteen meters across the room, but in Burner’s debilitated state it felt like a kilometer. His lungs were burning by the time he reached the wall, demanding he take a breath. He pushed the impulse down as he felt for a door or a panel or any grooves that indicated the wall slid open.
There was nothing. He had gambled on a direction and lost.
His lungs wouldn’t be ignored any longer and he involuntarily sucked in a breath. A sickly sweet odor filled his nose and lungs. His body relaxed despite his mind fighting it, and he felt himself go limp. His body collided with the floor. Then Burner’s consciousness followed and submitted to blissful slumber.
3
Undisclosed Location
Cypher let out a relieved sigh as the monitor showed Burner finally submit to the gas and collapse. His own body had tightened as he watched the former spy make a beeline for the door. If their captive had hit that wall just a bit to his left, he might have found it. He might have even been able to disable the lock and escape before the gas took him.
Not that he would have posed an immediate danger. Cypher was smart enough to ensure his base of operations was far removed from where they had taken their new hitman. However, there was still the risk Burner might have returned after the gas cleared and done a more thorough sweep of the room, looking behind the panel the screen was connected to and using the receivers to figure out where they had been communicating from. Cypher would have had to abandon this base and their entire operation would have been stalled.
That was the kind of risk you took working with a man like Jack Burner. All those skills that made him such a perfect candidate for a job like assassination also made him incredibly dangerous to the handler. That’s why Cypher had ordered that everyone keep their distance. At no point was anyone to be in the same geographical area, much less the same room, as Burner. Ever. He had read through Burner’s records—stories so outlandish that he would have believed he was reading cheap pulp fiction if it wasn’t for the official Union encoding on every page. While plenty of members of Cypher’s organization had military experience and could be counted on in a fight, he cringed when he tried to imagine what Burner would do if he ever got his hands on them.
Without Cypher even having to give a command, the base flew into a flurry of activity as they proceeded on to the next phase of their plan. The level of structure here would make even the Union jealous. Calls were made. Cameras were brought online. An extraction team, fully geared, made their way from the ready room to the garage.
As Cypher watched with pride as his men performed their tasks with speed and efficiency, he felt his second-in-command sidle up to him. “Is everything ready on your end, Killington?” he asked, without even looking up.
Killington was the paragon of a modern Union soldier: tall, muscular, with short cut hair and a clean shave, and a jaw that seemed sturdy enough to smash rocks on. It seemed even ten years out of the service were not enough to take that from him, which was odd considering he had only served about six years before taking an early retirement. Only now were the first hints of age beginning to show on his chiseled features, cracks around his eyes and mouth and the first wisps of gray in
his hair.
It sometimes made Cypher feel older. He had once looked not too dissimilar from Killington, but his hair had gone gray long ago. Now it had begun to thin to the point where he had decided to shave the top of his head bald. He thought it lent him an air of gravitas, particularly when combined with a neatly trimmed salt and pepper beard and his tortoise shell glasses. He had learned long ago that appearances were everything, which is why he always kept his clothes pressed and clean even when he had to work in the dirt. Cypher would never show an ounce of weakness or give his men the slightest reason to question his authority.
Killington’s face was carefully expressionless. “Everything will be as it needs to be. Assuming the information we have received is correct.”
At a nearby console, a weasel faced man nearly jumped out of his seat. “What? Of course it’s correct! What are you implying?”
Killington did not respond, he just turned to the smaller man and stared. The target of his stare shrunk down into the seat again, visibly shriveling.
Cypher glared at Killington. “If you had a problem with the information Stack was giving, Killington, you could have voiced it earlier. We will not question it now.”
His second in command gave a small shrug. “As you say, Cypher.”
Stack muttered under his breath and sat up straighter in his seat. Like Killington, Stack had military experience, but you never would guess it from looking at him. Stack wasn’t particularly fit, or tall, or anything notable, really. Instead, he looked like the typical salaryman, the kind of faceless drone you could find working at one of a hundred small cubicles pushing numbers for an uncaring corporate entity until the day they died. He, like the rest of those gathered here, had chosen a different fate for himself.
An alert on the console let them know that the extraction team had reached the garage and activated the elevator. Cypher noted that he would have to give a bonus to their tech guy for his fantastic work with this set up. Nothing happened anywhere on the base without one of the systems being alerted to it. With the hijacking software, the feed of any monitor could be changed to any camera, all with just a few taps. A sifting program dug through the news feeds of hundreds of planets in Union space for certain keywords and furnished them with notifications based on an algorithm that determined how critical the information was.
Killington turned his attention back to the monitor that was currently showing Burner’s unconscious form sprawled across the hard floor. Readouts at the bottom of the screen showed the gas concentration in the room and Burner’s vital information. A program running in the background automatically adjusted the gas to keep Burner out without endangering his life. “He’s going to be a problem.”
Cypher looked at the monitor, trying to see what Killington saw. “What do you mean?” he asked.
The former soldier crossed his arms. “I could see his mind working while we were talking. Drawing conclusions, trying to figure us out. It’s what he was trained to do. I worry he’ll expose us before we can get him to do what we need him to do.”
Stack twisted around in his chair. “He looked more like a deer caught in the headlights to me. I’d be more concerned that he’s going to just try and disappear once we cut him loose. I mean, that’s what I’d do if a group of scary guys kidnapped me and tried to send me on an assassination mission.”
Killington frowned. “Well, you’re a coward.”
The weasel-faced man shrugged. “I prefer to think of it as pragmatic. I know, I, for one, would hate to be caught in a room with this Burner guy. You read his files, too, didn’t you? He’d probably tear me apart before I could even draw a weapon.”
The stony-faced Killington shifted uncomfortably. “Being forced to engage him directly would be… unfortunate. All the more reason it is concerning that he might deduce our identities.”
Cypher couldn’t let doubt take hold in his organization. They had spent months narrowing down their candidates, cross-checking public records with Union files and psych evaluations to find someone who had both the right set of skills and the right personality type to do this job. The final decision hadn’t been close. Burner was a kilometer ahead of all the other possibilities.
“He’s our man,” Cypher declared. His voice was commanding, steady, shutting down any further dissent. “He’ll go where we want. Once he’s there, our contingencies will kick in to make sure he goes through with the mission. We just need to stick with the plan. As long as we stick to the play book, it won’t matter what he can deduce. He’ll do what we need him to do.”
His words were met with silent nods. There was a reason they were all here, working for him. A common mission, certainly, but their loyalty went beyond a just sharing a cause. They followed him, because he had the plans, the force of personality, and the willpower to see it all through. If he told them, with that level of certainty, that the plan would work, they would not question him. Even Stack, who was somewhat new to the organization, seemed to understand that.
He had never let them down before.
A low tone signaled an alert in Cypher’s ear com. One of his men in the field was sending a signal to him.
“Go ahead,” he gruffed.
The voice in his earpiece sounded as if the speaker had a mouthful of gravel. “We have the dentist. Waiting for your signal to proceed.”
Cypher didn’t consider himself an evil person. He was simply a man with a mission, a cause he was willing to fight for. To die for, if necessary. In his mind that made him noble, a man that history would remember as a hero who had brought about change, while hopefully glossing over the kinds of things he had to do in order to make that happen.
Sacrifices were inevitable. It was the cost of war, and this was a war, whether the Union was aware of it or not. “Clear to proceed.”
There was a click as the connection was cut off.
Everything was falling into place. Soon, the extraction team would reach Burner’s chamber and the former spy would be seemingly cut loose. Cypher knew Burner’s type, though, and he had no doubt that however much he might try to resist it, by the end of the day he would be on a ship to Dobbulla UX8. And after that, it would be too late for him to stop the chain of events they were setting into motion.
Jack Burner would prove to be the ultimate weapon.
4
A city park, Firstlanding, Zanpus C145, the Deadlands
The beating of sunlight on his face, the boisterous sounds of a living city, the heavy foot traffic, the electronic beeping, the shouting intermingled with bits of music that grew louder as it got close and then faded into the background… the smell of grass and fresh air. Burner was outside.
He opened his eyes, squinting against the light, and found he was lying on a park bench. With a groan he pulled himself to a seated position, shaking his head to try and clear his mind. He came face-to-face with an advertisement for a local legal firm promising fair compensation for accidental injuries.
People walked past on the nearby sidewalk, occasionally casting a brief glance at him as they passed. He knew how he must look, waking up on that bench. Like a vagrant, a broke drifter, maybe even a down on his luck renegade. Certainly not the kind of person you would expect to find in the upper levels of a big city, where the sun shines down on the businesses and homes of the most affluent. They must be wondering where Security was right now and why they hadn’t dragged him away to the lower levels yet.
There was something eerie about the sudden return to normalcy. He had been drugged, dragged into a dark hole somewhere, given orders by a faceless entity, knocked out again, and then left on a park bench in the middle of broad daylight. And yet despite all that, people just continued about their daily lives. The sun continued to shine, and lawyers continued to milk the suffering of others for extortionate amounts of credits.
Assess.
It was still daylight, which confirmed his suspicion that he could not have been moved particularly far. A glance at the closest street told him that he w
as just a block removed from the dentist’s office where he had been abducted this morning. Wherever he had been held could only be a few hours away.
Additionally, his captors had managed to move him in broad daylight without being stopped by any civilians or Security. That meant they either looked official enough that no one gave them a second glance or intimidating enough that people would actively pretend to not see them. Either way, he’d be unlikely to find a witness able and willing to recall who dropped him off there.
There was a possibility that one of the cameras on the street had picked up something, but he had the impression that whomever he was dealing with was too intelligent to make that kind of rookie mistake. He would wager that they either knew how to avoid the cameras or could mess with the feeds to ensure they didn’t show up.
Burner had one lead he could follow, a place he knew his captors had been at least once where he could look for clues to their identity: Tooth-30 Dentistry. If Dr. Suffolk was still around, he had some explaining to do. And if he wasn’t, there was a possibility that his kidnappers had left something behind Burner could use.
He got up from the bench and made his way to the nearest public restroom to clean himself up. It wouldn’t do him any good to get arrested for loitering before he found answers. He finger-combed his hair to make it look like he hadn’t just slept on a park bench for most of the afternoon and made an effort to straighten the creases in his shirt and pants. As he was rinsing his face with cold water, he noticed a dull throb at the back of his head. It was the start of what promised to be a truly terrible headache, perhaps a side effect from the drugs. One more inconvenience to deal with.
When he felt he was somewhat presentable, he headed back out to the street and took the short stroll back to the dentist’s office. It was a mild day on the surface of the planet, so there was a lot of activity. Joggers running by at a brisk pace, couples strolling hand-in-hand in front of the park, and window shoppers taking a peek into every store that ran down the other side of the street. Nobody stood out as behaving unusually to Burner, and that, in itself, was strange.
