by Dan Koboldt
“What a strange name. Who are you?” Blackwell demanded.
Mendez grinned. “I’m the one who burned your keep.”
Blackwell’s casual sneer twisted into a feral snarl. He attacked. Julio parried once, twice. Then went on the offensive himself. His sword was a shining blur. He backed the admiral against the wall of the alley. Slammed back his sword so that sparks flew from the stone. Kneed him brutally in the crotch. Blackwell grunted and doubled over. Julio took a step back and brought his sword down with both hands, severing the admiral’s head in a single stroke. It thumped wetly to the pavement, followed by a heavier thud from the rest of him. Julio crouched down to clean his sword on the admiral’s jacket, then sheathed it in a single, fluid movement.
“This is the guy who almost beat Logan?” He shook his head. “The old man must be getting soft.” He stalked over and pulled Veena to her feet.
She tottered and would have fallen if he hadn’t held her up. “What are you doing here?”
“Following a hunch.” He released her wrist and looked away. “Didn’t want to believe it, but here you are.”
“Julio—”
"I thought you were dead, Veena. Or should I call you Dahlia?”
The look on his face broke her heart a little. “It was the only way. I’m so sorry.”
“You made your choice.”
I chose wrong, she wanted to say. But that was half a lie. She didn’t regret what she’d done for Valteron. For Alissia. “How did you find me?”
He nodded back toward Blackwell’s body. “I followed him. Figured he’d make a play like this, with Holt gone.”
With Holt gone. The words hit her like a hammer. She threw her arms around him and held him tight. Then the tears came, unbidden but uncontrollable once they started. She cried for Richard, and for Belladonna, but most of all for Julio.
Veena wasn’t certain how long she cried in Julio’s arms. At last, he’d gently insisted that she return inside the palace walls. Somehow he talked his way in as well, and told the Tukalu of what happened to Belladonna. Suddenly a phalanx of the warrior women had taken up positions around where Veena sat in the midst of the garden, while Alethea led yet another contingent to secure the alley.
All the while, Julio stayed with her, his mere presence a comfort until she recovered herself enough to speak.
“I can’t believe you came back,” she said. Her voice sounded as raw as her throat felt.
“What can I say? I have a thing for powerful women.” He looked at her face, and smiled. He had a wonderful smile, all warmth and affection. She missed it more than she’d realized.
“You can call me either, but it won’t make me powerful.”
He snorted as if amused.
“Well, it won’t,” she said. “I’m nobody, now that he’s gone.”
He smiled again. “You don’t get it, do you?”
“Get what, exactly?”
“Everything I heard in the streets and the common rooms was about you. Dahlia brokered the new alliance with Valteron. Dahlia kept the city fed while the Prime was away.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“And then there was the part where Blackwell tried to assassinate you, and you killed him instead.”
She narrowed her eyes. “That was you.”
“Me? Oh no. I was just an eyewitness. In fact, you saved my life.” His smile faded. He took her hand in his own. “You really did save me, you know.”
“I feel like I’m getting credit for too many things other people did.”
He laughed. “Welcome to politics. Lucky for you, I can stick around for a while to help out with what happens now.”
She sighed. “I don’t know what’s going to happen now.” Nothing was certain with Richard gone.
“You’re going to be the next Prime of Valteron,” Julio said.
“What?”
He shrugged. “The people have pretty much already decided. And with the admiral dead, no one will dare to oppose you.”
“Oh my God,” she whispered.
“I think you mean gods,” he said.
“Veena Chaudri, the Valteroni Prime.” She smiled and patted his hand. “You know what? I think I like the sound of that.”
Chapter 37
Successions
“How many magic users are there? How do they learn it? And most importantly, what are their full capabilities? Let us hope we never find out.”
—R. Holt, “Questions on Alissian Magic”
Without his training, Logan might never have gotten out of the air lock, much less out of the room that CASE Global had built around the gateway. His old drill sergeant used to number off the lessons.
Lesson one. Keep your cool, soldier.
He knelt and gave his name. “Sergeant Major Logan. Alpha Team.” Gave his passcode, too. Kept a stony face on when the controllers went through his security identification questions over the two-way speaker box.
“What are the make and model of your first car?”
“Chevy Corsica.”
“How long was your deployment to Kandahar?”
“Which one?”
“The first one.”
“Nine months.” The second tour, they got the job done in six. Of course, done was a gray area. No job in the Middle East was ever truly done.
Lesson two. Do everything by the book.
He tugged off his filthy leather boots, then stripped off all his outer clothes. Those went into one air lock compartment. The borrowed sword went into another. He waited for all the seals to turn green, then stepped forward for scans and sanitation. Standard procedure. As much as he wanted to barge through the doors and burn a hot path to his family, he followed standard procedure. So did the guys on the other side of the Plexiglas, to their credit. It took a lot of training not to hit the mic button and shout what the hell happened over there?
The final gate slid open. The two guys in the room, Mathias and Goldberg, were half of Charlie Team. Also known as the cleanup crew. They only went in to clean up messes that Alpha and Bravo teams left behind. Generally after the danger was long gone. Mathias was forty-five, Goldberg close to fifty. Family men with kids in college who wanted the paycheck but not the hazard pay.
Damn, it’s good to see them, though. At least a couple of friendly faces had gotten back to this side of the gateway before it disappeared. Leaving Bradley on the other side, where he’d never have to answer about a hundred questions Logan would’ve liked to ask him. Can’t think about that now. He waited for the buzzer to give them a rueful smile. “Am I clear?”
“All clear,” Goldberg said. He hit a button on a control console, probably to notify the execs that Logan had returned. A response beep came back almost instantaneously. “Briefing room one.”
“Roger that.”
Mathias pulled out the bins and loaded them on a cart to bring down to processing. He gave Logan an eyebrow-raise, like what the hell happens now? Logan answered with a shrug. He didn’t know what to say. That problem was above his pay grade. He and Mathias were just a couple of jarheads trying to keep their helmets pulled low while the crap hit the fan above them.
Lesson three, deal with the problem in front of you.
The way Bradley had immobilized him in the cave with his goddamn hand. That strange priest’s chanting. The gateway flickering and turning to stone. All of those were problems, but not in front of him. Not things he could change. Hell, not things he could even explain. He’d have to come up with something, though. The executives wanted answers, and he was the only one who could give them.
For now, he had a simple, practical problem: getting through the two levels of steel bunker and miles of red tape that separated him from his girls. That meant keeping his cool. Doing the debrief. Acting like the very idea of CASE Global threatening his family didn’t make him blind with rage. No, he had to play this just right. The small Logan family and the massive Mendez clan all needed him to deliver.
You know who’d be good at this? Goddamn B
radley, that’s who. Talk about a guy who could keep winning cards close to his chest and play them at the perfect moment. Even though it eventually got Logan home, it still burned that Bradley had gotten the drop on him.
“How long do I have?” he asked.
Goldberg checked the console. “Ten minutes.”
He spent the first eight in a steaming-hot shower, and it was glorious. He dressed in clean clothes, hustled down to the briefing room, and yanked open the door with ten seconds to spare. He’d never been in briefing room one himself before; this was where the lieutenant used to come to brief the executives. Part of him expected to see the suits right there in the room. But no, there was a small conference table with chairs on the near side, all of them empty. A videoconference screen lined the far wall, and showed the live image of another conference room—this one far more luxurious—with five suits seated around a wide mahogany table. Three men and two women, all staring at him like a panel of judges. And guessing from their facial expressions, all of them were beyond pissed.
This is going to suck. He pulled out a chair and took a seat.
The suits all looked behind him at the closed door, waiting. When no one came, their faces grew grim.
The woman in chair two finally broke the silence. “Where’s Kiara?”
“Lieutenant Kiara is dead,” Logan said.
They frowned and muttered at one another, but betrayed no hint of surprise. They already suspected.
“How?” asked the guy in chair three, a silver-haired fox who was tan as a surfer. A Californian, probably.
“Holt’s navy ambushed them at sea.” Whereupon Kiara spotted her long-lost sister on the long-lost ship, and decided to force a little family reunion, he didn’t add. I couldn’t save her from herself. What if he’d kept sailing south, though, instead of taking a two-day R & R at Port Morgan? What if he’d warned her about the Valteroni fleet while there was still time to run? There were so many what-ifs.
None of which actually mattered anymore.
“You were supposed to take care of Holt,” said the silver fox.
Yes, let’s talk about that. Logan leaned forward and put his elbows on the table. “Are you referring to the part where you ordered me to kill a civilian in cold blood?”
“Alissia is not Earth. Ordinary laws don’t apply.”
He couldn’t resist a little jab. “Neither does the technology ban, apparently.”
“Necessary precautions. We had to protect our investment.”
“I don’t know if you’ve looked in the gateway cavern this morning, but your investment’s gone.”
“Charlie Team says the gateway disappeared right after you entered. What did you do?”
Lost a fight with Bradley, that’s what. He cheated like hell, but he beat me.
Logan could throw him to the wolves right here, right now. All he had to do was say the word. It’s not like the magician could turn up to dispute it. The suits would love to make him a scapegoat for this whole debacle. They’d make good on their vague threats to the magician’s distant relatives. Pile the blame on him. Smear the name he’d started to make for himself in Vegas, out of pure spite. It would make Logan’s life easier. But there was no honor in it, and honor was about all he had left.
Besides, he wanted to remember his friend the way he was. Friend. That’s what Bradley had called him, at the end. Weirdly enough, Logan felt the same way. I’m definitely too soft.
What would Bradley do, if he were in Logan’s shoes right now? He’d probably just rewrite the story and make himself the hero.
“I followed protocol,” Logan said. “There was an earthquake, and the whole mountain started to come down. The tunnel collapsed on top of me.” He stood, turned around, and lifted his shirt to reveal the nasty bruise on his back, from when Bradley had thrown him into the air lock.
“Oh my God,” the woman in chair one whispered.
“I put my ass on the line to get back here and make my report. That’s what I did.”
“We … we appreciate your service, Sergeant Major Logan,” said the Californian, who seemed to be in charge.
“You’re welcome. Now, who’s in charge of the Gateway Project?”
The suits looked at each other. It was hard to read their faces. Then the man in the middle looked at him and said, “You are.”
“I’m in charge,” Logan said, in a doubtful tone. Maybe I heard wrong.
“You’re the highest-ranking soldier we have left, and there’s a lot of work to do.”
Logan shoved back his chair, stood, and walked to the door. “Find someone else to do it.”
“Wait!”
He paused and looked back, irritated. “What?”
Their eyes had whites showing, and they whispered back and forth with an air of desperation. The woman in chair one looked at him. “We need you, Logan. Name your price.”
“I’m not doing anything until I see my family.”
“Go ahead. They’re up at the resort, enjoying a free vacation.”
Free vacation, my ass. “They fly home as soon as they want. The Mendez family, too.” Logan pointed right at the guy’s face. “And we don’t pull that crap ever again.”
The man looked left and right to his colleagues, then said, “Agreed.”
Logan walked back to his chair. “I have a few more conditions.”
If anyone had told Logan the amount of paperwork that awaited him on Kiara’s desk, he’d never have taken the job. He should have known by how quickly the execs agreed to his conditions. Should have asked for more. A lot more. Too late for that. Now he had two months of work to come through for a project that no longer served a purpose. The reports began to shed a light on the extent of CASE Global’s incursion into Alissia. The horses, weapons, and siege engines alone must have cost millions, and that didn’t include the salaries for four hundred highly trained mercenaries.
Salaries, and now death benefits as well. Logan had insisted on that, as one of his conditions. Those men weren’t coming back, and their families needed taking care of. It was only right, since the company had put them in harm’s way. These were military families. They knew the risks. That didn’t make it any easier not to have a loved one come home. The money would help.
There were also reports he had to verify and sign out. Every I dotted, every T crossed. The executives wanted nice complete records. Why, he couldn’t figure. Considering that they’d probably shove them in a records building somewhere made it even more ridiculous, but they still wanted them.
So he worked through the older stuff first—the last few weeks before he’d come back were still too painful to relive—and did the best he could. Sometimes the numbers didn’t line up, and usually the people responsible had ended up on the wrong side of the gateway when it closed. But no one was really around to dispute his reports, and Logan learned he was a fairly decent fiction writer.
That only took care of those who weren’t on Earth anymore, which wasn’t the case for the Charlie Team. Logan read the mission report twice just to make sure he wasn’t mistaken. Then he brought up the comm panel on the closest projection screen and made a call. Someone answered on the first ring.
“Mathias here.”
“It’s Logan. How’s the great disassembly going?” Goldberg and Mathias, by simple merit of being on duty when Logan came back through, won the dubious honor of getting to disassemble the equipment in the gateway room.
“The big money stuff’s already crated up. We’re about to demo the workstations.”
The air lock and its integrated scanners still represented state of the art in travel security. CASE Global would find a purpose for them somewhere. The computers, not so much. They got the hammer and magnet treatment on their way to the landfill.
“Got a question for you about your last recovery mission. The one for Bravo Team.” The sting of those losses had faded a little, but not entirely. Logan trained Bravo Team himself, and always figured they’d step up when he was ready to
retire. Instead, they’d been wiped out almost to a man by Raptor Tech mercenaries. He’d seen the aftermath, and left a beacon for the cleanup crew to do a recovery.
“What about it?” Mathias asked.
“Says here you didn’t recover Magrini’s body.”
“Right.”
“You want to tell me why?” They never left anyone behind. That was part of the deal. At least, it had been when they still had a functional gateway. Which Charlie Team did for the mission he was discussing now.
“Couldn’t find him,” Mathias said.
“You obviously found the box canyon.”
“And recovered the others, yes. We did a half-mile sweep, found nobody else. I figured you got the location wrong.”
“You sure he was completely gone?”
Mathias paused. “You sure he was completely dead?”
Pretty damn sure. “I was the one who found him.”
“It’s a magical world, man. Anything can happen.”
Logan snorted. “So what the hell am I supposed to put in the final report?”
“Fudge it.”
“You know, I’m starting to understand why you never got promoted.”
“Just trying to help, boss.”
“Enjoy the sledgehammers. Logan out.”
Mathias had a valid point about Alissia. Anything could and did happen in that place. Logan had seen Magrini’s body; he could have sworn he’d checked for vitals, but now he didn’t know. Who knows? Maybe Hank the Tank lives after all. He changed the soldier’s status from KIA to MIA and moved on.
An hour later, the comm panel lit up. Intercom from the woman working the island’s reception desk. “Sergeant Major? I have Lieutenant Kiara’s attorneys for you.”
Well, that was fast. “Transfer them to legal.”
“Sorry sir, but he’s actually here.”
“On the island?”
“Affirmative.”
“How the hell did they find the island?”
“They filed a request to pick up Lieutenant Kiara’s personal effects last week.”
Logan had approved it, too. He must have missed the part about them coming in person. “All right, give them whatever they need.”
