Her brother was the foodie in the family, always going on about “real” food. Esther was fine with fabricator food and was a little queasy at the thought of actual animal flesh. She picked up her spoon and poked at the tiny eggs.
“You can leave the appetizer for our three friends,” the commander told the server, pointing at the three empty seats.
The server nodded, deftly placing the tiny plates at each seat, then whirling away from the table, once again at the exact same time as the other waiters left their tables. The Brotherhood was big on classical dance: ballet, hip-hop, and neurosynch. Evidently, their love of dance spilled over to serving food.
As the server left, the commander said, “They made it for us, so no use letting it go to waste.”
Esther looked up to the head table. She’d been given her etiquette lessons after she’d first reported in, and she knew she had to wait until the guest of honor took a bite, and he seemed to be deep in conversation with his table companion. Finally, he looked up and saw the waiting room full of people, and with a half-wave and a smile, picked up his appetizer and popped it into his mouth.
Esther turned back to her plate and hesitantly picked it up. She wanted to scrape off the caviar, if that was what it was. It could still be fab caviar, not real, but even that put her off. She took a deep breath and took a bite, cutting the small dish in half. She could taste the toast, the shrimp, and mustard in the sauce. There was also a salty something, tiny globes that popped in her mouth. She took a quick drink of water, washing it down.
“You want one of the extras?” the commander asked her.
“No, no. How about our guests?” she said, pointing at the Brotherhood couple.
“To be accurate, I think you are our guests,” the woman said. “Please, help yourself.”
Esther held up her remaining half bite and gestured to the rest.
“Well, I’m not shy,” the commander said, taking one of the extras.
You’re welcome to it, Esther thought, quickly finishing hers and washing it down with more water.
She drained the second glass when the servers came out again, this time leading trundlecarts full of juices and other non-alcoholic drinks. She could use a cider, but she had to acknowledge a clear head was better, so she asked the server for something only found in Brotherhood space, and he poured her a glass of some red-orange fizzy liquid that was surprisingly good.
Over the next half-hour, Esther tried to resist checking the time as two more courses were served and removed. She began to feel the consequences of drinking so much water, though. The pressure on her bladder was getting intense, and she wondered if she’d made a tactical mistake.
She checked the time—six more minutes.
Esther laughed at something Sandra said, not that she knew what was funny, only that everyone else was laughing. Between her nervousness and her bladder, she wasn’t really listening.
Get a grip, girl! You’ve faced down Legionnaires. This is nothing.
And then, at last, it was time.
“Excuse me,” she said to the table. “I’ve got to use the head. The ladies room,” she added to the civilians.
She got up, moved to the wall, and made her way back and out the doors into the passage.
Left. Then to the second head, she told herself.
If she was being watched, bypassing the first one might seem odd, but she had her instructions. As she reached the first one, though, there was a temporary sign blocking the entrance, on which was written, “Cleaning in Progress. Pardon the Inconvenience.” Once she saw the sign, she acted as if she’d been planning on using it, made a show of noticing the sign, and then turned and looked around as if wondering where to go next. She shrugged, then continued, eyes searching for the next set of restrooms.
A woman in an evening gown walked towards her, saying, “If you’re looking for the loo, it just around the corner.”
“Oh, thanks.”
“A nice hotel like this and they can’t keep the closest one to the banquet open?” the woman said as she passed Esther, obviously put out by having to walk another 30 or 40 meters.
And then there is was. Esther entered, ready to primp in the mirror if the fifth stall was occupied. Luckily, it was empty. The entire restroom was empty. She almost ran into the stall and started to undo her blues. She barely made it to the can before gloriously letting loose. If there was surveillance in there (and that was a creepy thought), she was sure doing her part for verisimilitude.
Nature taken care of, she bent forward and reached around and below her, running her hand under the curve of the bowl, feeling for any imperfection. Her heart jumped when almost immediately she felt something. She slipped a finger under the edge of the tiny bump, hoping it really was her drop and not some natural toilet detritus, and pried it loose. With it under her fingernail, she brought it up to eye level. There was something there, something manmade, about the size of a grain of rice.
Her heart jumped. This was real spy stuff here, and Esther was part of it.
The tiny object had information that the Federation wanted. Esther didn’t know what that information was. And her excitement was tempered by the fact that she was merely a mule, not part of the gathering of the information. But still, this was an experience that was new to her, and there was a certain allure to it all.
Of course, this was the easy part. The Federation and the Brotherhood might be friendly rivals in the political, military, and economic spheres, but they were also allies in the fight against the Klethos, pirates, and splinter groups such as the SevRevs. Each was also the largest trading partner of the other. As such, the Brotherhood worlds were not closed societies, and millions of Federation citizens were in the Brotherhood at any given time. A simple pass would be child’s play. But Brotherhood scanning was the gold standard, and anything, even something as small as the little speck under her fingernail, packed with data, could be picked up.
Esther had to get the intel back to the Federation. Tomorrow morning, before leaving for the spaceport, she was going to drink a specially-prepared concoction that would supposedly screen anything in her stomach. And just before leaving the hotel, she would swallow the databank.
Why does all of this have to screw with my digestive system, she wondered, looking at herself, still sitting on a toilet.
As part of an official party, Esther was not subject to the same screening as regular citizens. They’d be surreptitiously scanned, of course, but those scanners could never be as effective as the normal spaceport systems.
And if despite the stomach screen, despite the tiny device’s shielding, despite not going through standard screening, if they picked up the databank, Esther had diplomatic immunity. She might have to give up the device, which would take as long as it needed to get through her gut, but she could not be charged with anything. And, as her briefer informed her, they might not do anything as doing so would be to admit they had screened the first minister’s party. Which everyone knew they would. Which they still wouldn’t want to admit. Which the Federation knew they wouldn’t want to. Which they knew the Federation knew, so there would probably be intel going out with the party. And more “which they knews,” on and on. It all made Esther’s head spin.
Esther lifted her medals up and took a tiny shielded case out of her dress blue’s left breast pocket and carefully slid the databank into it. Letting the medals back down, they would give a little bit of cover should anyone give her a direct scan, but she was assured that the chances of that were minimal.
And that was that. She put her blues back in order and stepped out and up to the mirror. It would be natural for her to check her uniform alignment in the mirror, but her focus was on the pocket and if it seemed natural.
There wasn’t much else she could do, so she left to go back to the banquet. She’d try to put everything out of her mind until she drank the shielding in the morning. For now, though, a tiny smile creased her face.
She may be a mule, but playing s
py was still pretty freaking copacetic.
MARS
Chapter 5
Mr. Byzantine slid the plastisheet printout over the desk towards Esther. She already knew what to expect, but still, she reached over, picked it up, and scanned it. There was her name, her identity number, the reporting period, the billet: all the normal heading data. What was missing were the entries in the descriptive part of her fitness report. Every single category, from Initiative to Discipline, from Courage to Flexibility, were marked as “Non-observed.” The narrative, which was the meat of the report and usually described both her duties and how well she performed them, was blank.
The first six months of her tour might as well never have happened. Winsted never happened. Arrival never happened. Cornūcōiae never happened. Heck, even her time compiling shitter reports never happened. Her service had been a black hole.
She looked at the bottom of the form. It was signed by one Alexander J. Hastings, Colonel, UFMC. Esther didn’t know a Colonel Hastings, and evidently, Colonel Hastings didn’t know her.
Promotions in the Marine Corps were based on fitness reports. There was wiggle room for interpretation of those reports, but the bulk of what was given to the promotion boards were numbers crunching and statistical analysis. The promotion AIs took into account scores, trends, descriptive words choices, and even the past reporting history of the reporting senior. All of this went into the “whirlpool” and was spit out in a relative ranking of all those eligible for promotion. That wasn’t set in stone; if it were, there would be no reason to have real Marines sit on a board. But while the board members could move candidates around, the initial basis was the whirlpool ranking.
And while her contemporaries were acquiring more personal data, Esther was at a standstill. One non-observed shouldn’t matter, but Esther was staring six of them in a row, six where she should be developing as an infantry Marine. She couldn’t be officially penalized for a non-observed report, but the board members were humans, and they tended to read into anomalies.
On the one hand, such a period of non-observed reports could mean just what it did in this case, that she was on a special assignment of some sort. On the other hand, it could mean she’d been spending that time in drug rehab or in psychiatric treatment. Either case would show up reading as the same.
And being Ryck Lysander’s daughter wouldn’t make any difference. Jersey Quillion, whose father was the Commanding General of the Outer Forces, had failed selection for major the year before.
“Not much to this, is there?” she asked.
Mr. Byzantine didn’t respond to the question but said, “If you have no questions, can you validate it?”
Esther brought the bottom of the sheet to her face, stared at the optiscan until the tiny light turned from red to green. Immediately, the sheet was flashed into public record. She folded the physical copy and put it in her pocket.
She knew what she was getting into when she accepted the orders. That didn’t mean, however, that it didn’t suck.
COPIA 2
Chapter 6
Esther pulled the GE Bumblebee to the side of the dirt road and took her foot off the accelerator. Unlike hovers, it didn’t sink down to its skirts when stopped. It didn’t have skirts. The Bumblebee was a half-track, and as the first non-hover vehicle she’d driven in her life, it had taken her a good 30 minutes back at the assembly point to get used to having tracks and wheels in direct contact with the ground.
I don’t know how you do it, Noah, she told herself, not liking the feel of the Bumblebee at all.
As a tanker, her twin would have had no problem with the little vehicle, but without experience, she’d frustrated her local handler while she insisted on getting a feel for the small vehicle. Esther could be rather anal in her preparations, and that had kept her alive so far.
She turned off the engine, and with a sputter or two, it died, leaving her in silence. The planet’s sun was sinking towards the horizon, and the trees surrounding the open field were just beginning to throw shadows.
“We’ve got seven personnel, 200 meters at your 290,” an unnamed voice said into the tiny earbud that had been implanted deep within her ear.
“Roger that,” Esther subvocalized.
That was more people than had been agreed upon, but it was hardly surprising. These were not the most honorable people in human space, after all.
Esther lowered the window and simply listened for a few moments. At 200 meters, she was well within range of a sniper, but she doubted they’d take a shot now. They might not want her to survive the upcoming encounter, but to simply take her out before they started served them no purpose.
At three minutes before the hour, Esther opened the door of the Bumblebee and stood up, looking across the field for any sign of movement. There was none.
OK, Lysander, this is it.
Slowly and deliberately, Esther removed first her shirt, then her bra, throwing them on the seat. She bent down, pulling off her gym shorts and panties, tossing them on her shirt. She contemplated keeping her shoes on—the field was overgrown with vegetation, and she didn’t relish going barefoot, but the terms had been clear. They wanted the courier to be fully naked, so she kicked off them off. Opening the rear door, she reached in and pulled out the transparent case containing 500,000 Maria Teresas.
And then she simply stood there beside the car, staring off into the trees on the other side of the field, waiting.
“Go,” the voice inside her head passed at the top of the hour.
She started walking.
Esther didn’t have any nudity taboos. She’d been naked with fellow Marines at the Kentville resort on Tarawa, and she’d started her recon final exercise on Prime Davis stark naked until she and Sven Luger had managed to score some clothes from a Goodwill donation bin. But as she walked across the field, she felt naked—not naked as in nude, but naked as in exposed. She had no armor, no protection, as she walked into a dangerous situation. She tried not to glance down at the little roll of fat around her waist.
She knew full well why she was naked. Ostensibly, it was to ensure that she was not armed. But the Kalebites wanted a show, and for the Federation to send a naked woman into a life and death situation played to their base who would feel that no righteous government would ever stoop to that. Not that the Kaleb leadership cared one way or the other. They were a for-profit organization, bandits, pure and simple. But many of their soldiers were recruited from the more conservative, reactionary, and religious sectors of society. They claimed to want to return to the “old ways,” and as has been the case throughout recorded history, that claim struck a chord with many.
Ahead of her, in the trees, would no doubt be some of those soldiers, men who thought they were on the side of right against the corrupt governments of man. They would see nothing wrong with what they were doing.
Their own prejudices would be working against them, however. They did not believe women to be their equals, so they wouldn’t be concerned that Esther, especially naked, could possibly pose a threat.
Esther vowed that she’d disabuse them of that notion.
She kept walking, trying not to wince when she stepped on something sharp. She had to look passive, just a courier sent to make the exchange.
Behind her, hovering over her half-trac, were three newsdrones, their network logos prominently displayed. This was also part of their demands. They wanted the entire galaxy to see how they could force the almighty Federation to do their bidding.
The Kalebites were small potatoes, very small, in the grand scheme of things. They preyed on the outskirts of humanity, taking tiny bites of what they could grab. This was their first foray into the big time, and they undoubtedly felt they could use this as a recruiting tool. There were more than enough disenfranchised people in the galaxy, all looking for a cause.
Fifty meters before the tree line, a large circle had been cleared. Esther stepped onto the short grass and stopped. Within a minute, five people came o
ut. Two of them, a man and a woman, dressed in paper-like full-length parkas, were being pushed forward by two men in military-type fatigues. Another man in the same uniform had his attention focused on Esther, his Confederation Hasta 21 aimed in her direction.
The male prisoner was Kristian Dymond, the female was Keenah Tokiyashi-Jules. Dymond was the head of the FAID mission to Copia 2, and Tokiyashi-Jules was an intern from the University of Hiapo, working on her doctorate.
Copia 2 was a member of the Alliance of Free States. But with the Alliance’s economy in shambles, the United Federation Agency for Intergalactic Development, FAID, had sent a mission, headed by Dymond, to assist in developing potable water systems for the planet’s mining communities. A Kalebite snatch cell had killed Dymond’s security team and taken him and Tokiyashi-Jules as hostages, demanding 500,000 Maria Teresas or they would execute the two prisoners. They demanded a female courier, who would deliver the money naked at a time and place to be revealed.
Enter Captain Esther Lysander as the courier.
And now, she stood 20 meters away as they came to a halt, and the two prisoners were forced to their knees. Dymond, an older man with graying hair at his temples, looked resigned to his fate. He must have realized that his chances of survival were minimal. He’d probably lost comrades, killed by the very people they’d been trying to help. Tokiyashi-Jules, on the other hand, looked petrified, and when the two guards standing over them took out matching 20-centimeter knives and held them to their throats, she gave out a squeal of fear and started to slump down. Her guard grabbed her by the hair to hold her upright.
“Turn around so we can see you,” the Kalebite on Tokiyashi-Jules ordered.
Esther raised her hands, then slowly rotated, letting the men check her out for weapons.
“So, is that the money?” the guard asked when she was finished, pointing with the tip of his knife at the bag before returning the blade to the girl’s throat.
The United Federation Marine Corps' Lysander Twins: The Complete Series: Books 1-5 Page 79
