by J. N. Chaney
Burner nodded. “One of them, probably the mole, took off in one of the parked vehicles right after, too. Those two must be up to something. Something they don’t want the rest of the group to know about.”
“And I’m guessing it’s not a surprise party.” She turned back in the direction of the door. “Maybe he’s gone to set the bomb?”
“Didn’t sound like that.” Burner went back to scanning the room with his light. “Besides, why would they want to keep that secret from the others?”
She thought about it for a moment. “Maybe he’s going ahead of schedule? Guess it is unlikely. We can be positive and hope that the two of them have had a change of heart and he’s going to disable the bomb, but that also seems unlikely.”
Burner was finding nothing but rot and rust in the barn. “Their goals might not align with the rest of the terrorists. They might see the bomb threat as a good chance to get a ransom from the Union.”
Sara crept toward the door to keep a lookout. “They sounded like true believers to me. I don’t think they’d throw that away for a few creds.”
“What about power?” Burner picked up something that glinted in the light, which just turned out to be a less rusty nail. “They might be positioning themselves to gain power and influence in the wake of the chaos the terrorists are going to cause. Might have even convinced themselves that it would be the best if they were in charge. You see it all the time in group dynamics—criminal mobs, political circles. Some of the underlings get their own idea of their own how things should be run and make a play for power.”
“Maybe.” Sara peeked out in the night through the crack in the door. “Or maybe it has nothing to do with the terrorist plot. They are criminals, after all, and some have their hands in any number of illicit activities. Cypher doesn’t seem like the type who would appreciate moonlighting, so it wouldn’t be a surprise they would want to keep something like that a secret from him.”
In the end all they had were theories and no way to confirm any of them. Sara voiced the idea that they might split up, one heading after the mole to see what he was plotting and the other staying with the rest of the terrorists. They both decided against it, agreeing that the bomb threat was the biggest concern and both of them together gave them the greatest chance of stopping it.
Burner’s examination of the barn didn’t yield any new clues, though that didn’t mean there wasn’t anything there. It was just too dark to do a proper search without alerting the farmhouse. They regrouped near the entrance to compile intel and discuss theories. Burner revealed what he had deduced about the terrorist’s true goals from what he had overheard between Cypher and Stack.
“They’re going to frame it as a retaliatory strike by the Union.” Sara didn’t really need Burner to confirm her words. She just needed to say it out loud to make it real. “That’s insane.”
Burner nodded. “The difference between insanity and brilliance is often measured by success. I wish we could just dismiss their plot as insanity, but they’re too close to succeeding.”
Sara’s eyes widened. “Wait, for their plan to work, Admiral Thiel needs to actually be assassinated. When it comes out that the admiral is still alive, they can’t spin a story about the station being destroyed in revenge. They’re going to have to make another attempt on him.”
Burner exhaled slowly, his eyes darting as he made the connections. “Where is the admiral now?”
“Last time I was able to get a message to my handler was right after I got the new comm. He told me the admiral was back on his ship.”
He checked his own comm, which still showed no signal. “We need to get word out to him. He needs to know it’s not over.”
Sara looked at her comm again and shook her head. “Still no signal. We will have to wait until we leave the area. Or I can head out and see if I can find a signal.”
Burner considered it for a moment before shaking his head. “No, it’s too dangerous. We’d risk tipping them off that we’re here and have them accelerate their timeline. Intel is the key right now.”
That answer didn’t satisfy the Constable. “Are you forgetting that a five-star admiral’s life is on the line right this minute? Even if we stop the bombing, Thiel’s death alone would be enough to destabilize things for who knows how long. Or do you not care about the lives of Union officers since you retired?”
He cocked his head. “As a rule?”
That earned him a glare from Sara that said choose your words wisely. He held up his arms defensively. “Look, I get it. Don’t forget I went well out of my way to keep the admiral alive. Obviously, I want to keep him from getting assassinated. But at the same time, the stakes have gotten so much higher than the life of one man. If it came down to it, and I had to choose between admiral and a station full of innocent people, I would pick the station. We can’t risk blowing this lead.”
Sara’s eyes blazed. She shook her head and glanced around the darkness for a moment. “You’re right,” she said eventually. “It’s a shitty situation, but we have to work with what we’ve got. I’ll follow your lead. For now.”
With a nod, Burner tapped off his light and took a seat on a nearby bale of hay. “I suggest we get some rest. Let’s give the terrorists a chance to go to bed or get good and wasted. I overheard something about a celebratory bottle. Once it is likely that they are down for the night, we’ll go in and poke around. Until then, we should rest.”
Burner lay back, closed his eyes, and relaxed his muscles. Unbeknownst to Sara, he maintained a full awareness of his surroundings, despite looking like he was settling in to fall asleep. This was one of the final tests you took when training to become an Intelligence operative: the ability to get rest while deep in enemy territory. The job required all your senses and your mind working at peak performance, and it was all too easy to work yourself into a state of exhaustion. And a tired operative is often a dead operative.
You learn how to grab what little rest you can in situations that aren’t necessarily safe, but reasonably secure for a moment’s shut-eye. The body gets to recover, perhaps not to the same extent as a real night’s sleep, but enough to take off that dull edge of sleepiness.
The trick was to leave just enough of yourself conscious, on alert, to allow you to be on your feet in a moment’s notice if your secure resting spot was suddenly disturbed. It was that part of Burner’s mind that was aware of Sara taking a spot on the opposite side of him and settling down for a brief rest herself.
Burner rested his body and mind for the first time since arriving on the planet. Soon he would need every bit of both.
The final confrontation was coming.
23
Farm House, Unknown Location, Trion City Outskirts, Demeter
Cade was a fan of good food and drink. He had been spoiled the first time he got to try a slice of pizza, real pizza. Since then, one of the focuses of his life was getting to enjoy as much of the finest food and drink he could get his hands on. He thought by this point he was something of an expert.
That’s why he could say, without a doubt, that Eggie had been absolutely scammed by whoever had passed off this bottle of cheap swill as fine liquor.
To spare the man’s feelings, Cade plastered a smile on his face as he forced himself to swallow the bitter liquid. “That’s some good stuff there, Eggie. Thanks for sharing.” He passed the bottle back, already thinking up excuses to turn it down the next time it came around to him.
The others didn’t have Cade’s taste for the finer things, so they took Eggie at his word that the bottle was rare and expensive stuff. It would have just been rude to break up their good time, particularly since they had such a big day ahead of them tomorrow.
It was nice to be able to sit back again and relax. They were safe here. Well, safe as they could hope to be with a man like Burner hunting them. Cade had set up the farmhouse’s security himself. Despite its humble appearances from the outside, inside it was a technological marvel. The setup was more adv
anced than most Union installations.
Of course, the Union had been given its chance to make use of his exceptional talents. But the kind of real food that Cade enjoyed was not cheap. Union salaries were pathetic, and they did not make exceptions even for someone with Cade’s skills.
The private sector, on the other hand, had more than enough people willing to pay Cade what he was worth. The highest bidder just happened to be a criminal group that was bent on overthrowing the empire.
An alert on a nearby console let them know that the front entrance had been opened. Killington’s face popped up with a green border surrounding it, the sign that the system has successfully identified and cleared him. Oddly, Stack wasn’t with him. Even odder, his entrance was followed by the sound of a vehicle taking off.
Killington came into the room, his face as unreadable as ever.
Reginald, sitting closer to Eggie than most normally would care to in order to be closer to the bottle, also noticed the absence of the mole. “Where’s Stack?”
Cypher was seated by himself on a large, comfortable sofa that was positioned to have a clear view of the door. His eyes narrowed as Killington appeared. “Was that a car just leaving?”
The big guy had a talent for not flinching even when directly under Cypher’s intense scrutiny. “Don’t worry about it. I have Stack running a quick errand.” He walked calmly to Eggie and took the bottle from his hand. To his credit, he grimaced when he took a chug of the foul-tasting brew.
For the next few hours, they relaxed together, trading stories, updating each other on their personal lives, sharing their commiseration at how Admiral Thiel had somehow avoided their attempt on his life. The words “miserable old bastard,” and “the luck of gods,” were used a lot.
Inevitably, the conversation turned back to Burner and his impressive array of threats. Cypher’s earlier warnings stuck with them, so no one would bring it up in a panicky or worried way. Now they mentioned it in jokes, repeating Burner’s words in satirical tones and mocking him for being all bark and no bite. They dared him to try to find them. Their escape from Dobulla had gone perfectly, and even Burner was never going to guess they were hiding out here on Demeter. It was a nowhere planet in the middle of the Deadlands, the last place anyone would think to look. He was probably halfway back to Zanpus by now.
At least, that’s what they said, but Cade could hear the uneasiness in their words, the flatness of the laughter in their jokes. No one wanted to confess it in front of Cypher, but Burner was still a concern to everyone. Despite the improbability that he would ever find them out here, it was hard to shake the imagery that Burner had painted into their minds.
Cade noted that Cypher didn’t join in on the conversation. He just sat and watched, as if daring anyone to voice true concern in his presence.
As Eggie again lamented their poor luck in failing to assassinate the admiral, a question again popped into Cade’s head that had been bugging them ever since they learned that Burner had deceived them. “How was Burner able to pull that off, anyway?”
All eyes fell on Cade, including the intense stare of Cypher. Cade was used to getting away with speaking his mind, though, so it didn’t bother him. “I’m just saying, pulling off what he did would have required an open line with the Union. Even if we assume that Burner deduced the target well before we gave it to him, how was he able to ensure the admiral was ready to fake his own death?”
“Burner’s ex-Union,” Reginald suggested. “Maybe he still has contacts.”
Cade had his own ideas. “I think it was the woman, the blonde with all the names who we could never narrow down. We know he still had her in tow when he left Dobulla space port. She was the big unknown in all this, right? The variable we didn’t predict. And ever since they got together, Burner has been interfering with our plans.” He looked toward Cypher and began to think out loud. “She must have contacts. After all, they were able to warn the Union about the assassination and then go right on their merry way and not be taken into custody, and the Union loves taking people into custody. No booking forms. No official reports of the incident. It’s almost like it was set up by a single individual of notable rank. I think this rules out her being a Deadlands rogue after all. Only other reason I can think of is that she’d have so many aliases—she might be a professional.”
Cypher’s expression did not shift. “Professional what?”
He shrugged. “Professional spook.”
Their leader’s fist clenched hard, quietly tearing into the fabric of the sofa. “For who? The Union? Another organization? A group like ours?”
Cade held up his hands defensively. “I don’t know. It’s going to take more work to figure that out.” Without waiting for the order, he got up, taking one more swig of Eggie’s poor excuse for liquor, and settled back down in front of his pad. His work on collating data on her aliases had been put on hold as they neared the time the assassination was going to take place, but it seemed like figuring out this woman’s true identity was going to be the key to everything.
Once he learned who she was, he would know her connection to Burner, and how they’d been able to thwart their plan.
And then he would figure out how to hurt her. That part was going to be especially important.
THE BARN, UNKNOWN LOCATION, TRION CITY OUTSKIRTS, DEMETER
Burner rose from his resting place when the first light of dawn began to stream into the barn. He decided instantly that the small amount of light was going to allow him to see things he would have missed last night. He stretched and then started back on the task. Sara rose as well and helped him with digging around the back.
It didn’t take long for them to stumble across something that Burner had missed in the dark. Hidden behind some old farm machinery, they found a crack in the wooden flooring that stood out amongst the rest of the rotten wood. The cracks traveled in the opposite direction of the natural rot. When they pulled up the board, they found several heavy, steel crates. They were locked, but Burner made quick work of the first lock and swung it open.
A weapons cache. Jackpot.
There were enough semi-automatics here for every terrorist they had seen to have two. Older models, military surplus would be Burner’s guess, but reliable. Popular among the criminal element in the Deadlands due to their availability and the low cost of maintenance.
There was more. Stacked neatly beside the weapons was a pile of charges. High explosives.
Carefully, Burner extracted one to take a closer look at them. He recognized them as a popular model among the Union special ops. They were known to be stable, meaning they wouldn’t detonate by accident in the kind of turbulent situations they often found themselves in. They were also easy to rig for remote detonation. For someone who knew what they were doing, they could be deployed in just moments. This had earned them the reputation of being the ideal tactical detonator.
Apparently, they were also considered the ideal explosive for terrorists. Burner opened up the other chests, did a count of the total number of charges, and estimated in his head the amount of damage that could be done with them. The answer made him blanche for a moment.
He could see that Sara was coming to a similar conclusion, as she examined one of the piles in another chest. While she was distracted, Burner picked up a few of the charges and slipped them in his leg pocket. It wasn’t exactly the proper way to transport them, but he’d seen the things in action and knew some jostling from his leg wasn’t going to set them off. They were designed to survive high speed vehicle crashes without an accidental detonation.
Plus, you never knew what might come in useful in a fight.
FARM HOUSE, UNKNOWN LOCATION, TRION CITY OUTSKIRTS, DEMETER
Cade continued to tap his way through the night, never taking a break even as the others eventually crashed out on the sofas around him. He had always been something of a night owl, so these kinds of all-nighters didn’t affect him. Though he felt that he wouldn’t be able to sleep even if
he wanted to with this mystery over his head.
The only other person who had denied himself sleep was Cypher. His attention was fixed on the windows the entire time, watching with a fierce concentration for Stack’s return. Throughout the night he would periodically question Killington about Stack’s location, and while Killington never gave a direct response, he continued to insist that Stack would return soon.
Eventually, their leader’s patience wore thin. He rose and jostled Killington awake from where he had been napping. “Outside.” His voice was gruff but low.
The two of them tried to slip out quietly, but Cade saw them. He noticed Killington looking uncharacteristically nervous, and Cypher’s lips were set firm like stone.
Cade decided whatever drama was going on didn’t involve him. He had his own project, and it was an important one.
He was sure the leadership would sort itself out. One way or another.
24
Barn, Unknown Location, Trion City Outskirts, Demeter
Shouting outside made Burner worried that they had been discovered and that someone was barking orders to surround the shed. He froze and listened for a few moments and was relieved when he realized that the shouting wasn’t getting any closer to the barn.
What was going on? He didn’t think the Union could have found this place already. The internal discord must be among the terrorists.
Only one way to find out. He exchanged a look with Sara that said Wait here, I’ll check it out. She nodded and continued her assessment of the goods they had uncovered.
It was still mostly dark when Burner slipped outside. It made concealing himself easier. He slowly circled the barn, watching every step with the greatest of care to make sure he didn’t disturb so much as a single twig on the way. As he got closer to the source of the disturbance, he could start to make out what was going on. It was only two voices, he determined, not an entire platoon as he might have guessed from inside. One of the voices, which he identified as Cypher’s, was so loud it was easy to mistake it for a whole crowd. The other became clear as Killington’s when he reached the back of the barn.
