The United Federation Marine Corps' Lysander Twins: The Complete Series: Books 1-5

by Jonathan P. Brazee

  MARS

  Chapter 28

  Esther hit the center of the battle-eye, and locked onto the major, it sent the small, 40-gram squash ball out at him at 135 KPH.

  “Shit, Lysander! That’s the fourth time,” Lent said, rubbing his chest where the ball had nailed him. “I should never have agreed to battle squash.”

  “Battle squash,” or any of the “battle” court games, was simply a modification of the existing game, one favored by Marines, troopers, and drunks. A simple target, called the “battle-eye,” was fixed anywhere on the forecourt wall. If a player hit the red center of the battle-eye with a ball, shuttlecock, or whatever, the target’s AI tracked down the opposing player and fired the ball right back at him or her. A player could possibly dodge out of the way, but not often. To make things more interesting, if the player hit the blue ring outside the center bullseye, the same thing happened, but the player hitting the ball was targeted. The blue ring kept players from targeting the battle-eye continuously, only attempting when a good opportunity presented itself.

  “My serve,” Esther said, picking up the ball.

  She was being a little rough on the major, she knew, so she fed him an easy return, and sure enough, he pounced on it—and hit the blue “ego ring.” He didn’t have enough time even to attempt to dodge when the battle eye nailed him in the chest again.

  “Son-of-a-bitch,” the major muttered, rubbing the spot. “What’s with you today? Anything to do with your new hairstyle?”

  After getting her debrief, Esther had reported to the government clinic in Brussels before catching a hop back to Mars. She hadn’t been damaged enough for regen, so a nano-boost had been enough to close off her wound. But nanos didn’t grow hair, so unless she gave in and shaved everything or spend the big credits needed for an acceleration at a salon, she was going to look more than a little shaggy. And maybe that had put her in a bad mood, one she was taking out on the major.

  “All the rage in Brussels, sir. Haven’t you heard?”

  “What I did hear was that you caught yourself a fish on your mule mission,” he said, looking out of the corner of his eyes at her.

  Esther shrugged. Their missions were supposed to be secret, even from each other, but secrets were hard to keep.

  “I can neither confirm nor deny, sir,” she said, the rote answer.

  “Kind of hard to deny something interesting happened. Ambrosia Line issued a blanket apology for failing to keep passengers safe while at the same time protested the Glenn Station police for boarding one of their ships.”

  “You know how it is, sir, with those commercial lines.”

  “Yes, I do. I’ve been on the Ambrosia Cloud twice myself. Helluva nice ship, huh?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said with a smile, giving in. “Helluva nice ship—for all we get to see of her.”

  She didn’t know why she was being so aggressive with the major. Her nose felt fine, and her scalp was only slightly sore. The trip to Earth hadn’t been that bad. She reached a truce with her prisoner, taking off the tape over his mouth and even letting him pick a flick to watch, a horrendously sophomoric teen comedy. Pretty gracious of her, she’d thought, for someone who’d tried to kill her.

  She’d actually been thanked during her debrief, something that had never happened to her before. Most of all, she was alive when she should have been killed. So, she wasn’t sure why the pent-up emotion, and why she was trying to kill the good major with death-by-squash-ball.

  “If you want to take off the battle-eye, sir, I’m down with that.”

  “What, and let you get off scot-free, your tender skin unbruised? Au contraire, mon capitaine. Serve it up.”

  You can always tell a Marine, she thought to herself. You just can’t tell them much. Ba-dum-dum!

  She was killing him, but Marine pride wouldn’t let him back down.

  “Your choice, major, and your body,” she said, sending a wicked serve into the corner of the court—which he somehow reached and sent right back at the battle-eye.

  She’d have thought the slower man would never have reached the ball, much less hit the battle-eye, so when the red center flashed with a hit, she hadn’t even tried to dodge by the time the ball smacked her in the shoulder.

  Esther didn’t know what was worse: the pain in her shoulder or the surprised, but satisfied smile on the major’s face.

  “Your serve, Major,” she said grimly, getting in position.

  Game on!

  Chapter 29

  “Hi, Helen-Lee. Is he ready for me?”

  “Go right on in.”

  Without a Break-the-Glass for almost a month, Esther had been bored out of her skull. She’d even welcome another mule mission, just to get off Mars and away from her reports. And this would be her 2oth mission. Back during Earth’s WWII, bomber pilots would stencil images of bombs on the fuselages of their planes, and Esther had cut out a crude stencil of a cartoonish spy head and shoulder, and after getting the message, she’d gone ahead and put up another spy on the wall, completing the fourth row of five. She didn’t know how many more she’d have before getting her next set of orders, but a nice round 25 had a solid ring to it. She was probably breaking some sort of security regulation by doing it, but given her artistic skill, or lack thereof, she had to admit that no one would probably recognize the figure as a spy. A woodchuck, possibly, or even a pig, but not a spy.

  “Yes, sir,” she said as Mr. Byzantine looked up upon her entry.

  “Captain, as you can surmise, I’ve got your next mission,” he said, pulling out his PA. “You’ll be working with the Third Ministry.”

  “The Third, sir?” Esther asked, surprised.

  The Third Ministry handled public works, education, and health within the Federation and, under the auspices of the Second Ministry, to other governments. The Marine Corps had very little to do with the Third Ministry. The Navy Seabees worked in conjunction with them quite often and had a fairly robust liaison effort, but not the Marines.

  “Yes, the Third,” he said, motioning to her PA.

  She took it out, and they tapped, sending the secure file over to her.

  “You and one other will be accompanying an FAID medical team to Lorton-Delos AD. There’s been an outbreak of a yet-unknown virus on the planet, and the Chairman has offered Federation expertise to help identify and create an anti-virus and vaccine, an offer which the CEO of Delos AD has accepted for the planetary administrator.”

  Esther scrolled through the background material. She knew what Delos AD was, of course. One of the 50 largest corporations in human space, its reach was significant. The brief gave her some background on the planet. Lorton-Delos AD had been first surveyed and claimed by a Cecelia Lorton, a noted pax-anarchist of her time. Evidently, she was not so adverse to big business as to refuse Delos’ offer to help finance the terraforming, however. As with many of Delos’ projects, it was done on the cheap, and there were many delays, but the planet was opened to immigration almost 20 years prior.

  The planet was an autonomous associate member of the Federation, which was not uncommon for planets terraformed by Federation corporations or other planets. Without the tax burden of full member planets, the huge terraforming investment could be recouped earlier while still under the treaty-protection of the central government. And technically sovereign, they could follow whatever laws and regulations they themselves made.

  FCDC troops were only allowed to operate on Federation planets if invited, but with the associate status, Esther thought that if FAID needed security of some sort beyond their own teams, the troopers could fill that role. They wouldn’t need a Marine presence, not that two Marines could really offer much in the way of security. That made Esther’s assignment even more puzzling to her.

  “Sir, why me?” she asked.

  “You’ve made a name for yourself with the director,” Mr. Byzantine said.

  “I have? How?”

  “Copia 2. I shouldn’t have to tell you that, Captain.�
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  “But I was Robin McShay on that mission,” she protested.

  The condescending look on Byzantine’s face was all he needed to do to convey his opinion on that statement.

  OK, maybe I’m being naive. I guess ministers can find out what they want to. Still, I was supposed to be anonymous.

  “As I was saying, you’ve been specifically requested by the Director, and from him, through the Third Minister. And so it goes.”

  Yes, so it goes.

  Esther officially worked for the Chairman, but as she’d discovered, she, and the others like her, were simply Break-the-Glass tools for any of the ministries. They were all convenient resources to be used.

  “You’ve got four hours to acquaint yourself with the overall mission, draw your gear, then report to your shuttle. I suggest you get started.”

  Esther realized she was being dismissed. Mr. Byzantine had zero social graces, but she’d long accepted that. She nodded, stood, and left his office.

  She’d hoped for something a little more exciting, but it was what it was. FAID did some good things, she knew, good for the Federation and good for humanity. A semi-independent agency within the Third Ministry, it was the arm that focused outside the Federation boundaries. It covered many of the same broad areas as the Third Ministry covered within the Federation such as health, education, and infrastructure, but as it also covered more diverse areas such as agriculture and nation-building, there was significant cross-pollination with Second, Third, and Fifth Ministry personnel.

  What they did not do was take sides in conflicts, and they were never armed as a matter of policy. So, while Esther gave grudging respect for what they did, they were not warriors, and so she was pretty sure this mission would be as boring as most of hers had been.

  EARTH

  Chapter 30

  Director Nunez-Akhmetov was a short, florid-faced man who was already striding out from around his desk, hand out to shake by the time Esther had passed through the door and into the office.

  “Welcome, welcome, Captain Lysander,” the director said, taking her hand with a firm, but not bone-crushing grip.

  Initially, Esther was going to have an alias for the mission, but the director had requested that she serve under her real name. Despite pushback from the security goons in Fourth, she was there as herself. As he shook her hand, she could tell he was excited to be meeting her, and she half-expected him to launch into a story about when he met her father at some point in his career.

  “Thank you for making the trip to Brussels to see us, Captain, especially on such short notice. But I thought it would be good for all of us to meet up here, first.”

  Like I could ignore a Director? That’s only one step below a minister.

  “No problem, sir. I’m here at your service.”

  “Good, very good,” he said, finally letting go of her hand. “Yes, very good. Well, let me introduce you to the leadership of our little project,” he continued, taking her arm in his as if they were a married couple going on a stroll through the park, and turning her around to where three people sat, one of them being another Marine.

  “Captain, this is Dr. Bao Bingwen, our project head.”

  “Please to meet you, Dr. Bingwen,” Esther said, hand out to shake with the tall man with just the right touch of gray at the temples to give him gravitas.

  “Oh, I’m a traditionalist, Captain. I’m Doctor Bao. Bingwen is my given name,” he said with a high-pitched, but infectious laugh, which totally wiped out that gravitas. “But after saying all of that, please call me Bing, if you would. We don’t stand much on pomp here.”

  “Uh . . . sure . . . Bing,” she said. “And you can call me Esther, if you want,” she added, knowing it had been expected.

  “And this young woman here is Security Specialist Three Michelle Jeanmard,” the director said, giving her a nudge to move in front of the security specialist.

  “Young” was relative. The woman probably had five years on Esther. On the trip over from Mars, she’d looked up as much as she could about FAID, and the security specialists were in-house FAID personnel, tasked with both passive and active security. Esther got the idea that they were something like jumped up jimmylegs hired to check IDs and walk empty buildings at night.

  “Captain Lysander, I’ll be looking forward to sitting with you to discuss our procedures on the way out, if you please.”

  I guess there’re no first names with her, Esther thought, a bit relieved.

  After so many years in the Corps, she was comfortable with defined levels of command and responsibility, and first names, along with the implied familiarity, could blur the lines. Dr. Bao, no, Bing, was the project manager, but Esther still wasn’t quite sure as to where she fell in with regards to command and control of the “project,” as they termed the mission.

  “And do you know Captain Aylsworth?” the director asked. “James Aylsworth?”

  “I’m afraid not,” she said, reaching out a hand.

  Captain? Isn’t he a little young for that?

  Esther was only 29 herself, but the Marine captain standing in front of her looked to be barely out of his teens.

  “Captain, please to meet you. Jim Aylsworth,” the captain said, taking her hand.

  “Esther Lysander.”

  “Well, with introductions out of the way, let’s sit at the conference table,” the director said, once again, taking Esther by the forearm and leading her to . . . the conference table?

  In front of a plush-looking orange couch was an oddly-shaped low table. A number of mismatched chairs surrounding the other three sides. As she got closer, she could see it was made from highly polished wood, but not from a nice circle or rectangle. It looked like someone had taken a slice out of one of the twisted bristlecone pines that grew in the American southwest. Those trees were protected, so she knew it couldn’t have been made from that, but she couldn’t think of anything else that would have such an irregular shape.

  She took the proffered seat and sunk down deep. This was like going to some chic house for tea or drinks, not a meeting with a director-level bureaucrat. The others were nonplussed, though, as the director asked if anyone wanted a drink. She asked for a tea, and as he found out what the others wanted, she looked around the office. Almost every square centimeter was covered with plaques, pics, and loop camcordings. She swept her eyes across them, and one caught her attention. Focusing on it, she almost laughed. She knew the director wanted to talk about her father, and there, in a flat pic, was a younger Dr. Nunez-Akhmetov in some sort of field clothing. Standing next to him, his arms around the director, was her father. She wasn’t close enough to see it well, but it looked like it was taken when her father was a major general.

  “Well, while we wait for our drinks, time is short, so let’s get this going. I know you have better things to be doing, but I think it’s important to set the tone for this project.

  “First, from a humanity prospect, I don’t need to tell you how vital it is that you isolate the virus and manufacture an anti-viral and vaccine.

  “Captain Lysander, you have been briefed on what you face, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  What she didn’t know was why she was there. Yes, she saved two FAID workers on Copia 2, but that didn’t qualify her for this mission. She wasn’t a doctor. And at the moment, of the four people being briefed at the director’s conference table, only one of them was a doctor. The other three, herself included, seemed to be more security-oriented.

  “OK, good. Above all, we need to save lives. Too many have been lost already, and Bing, you’ve got a good team with you, some high-powered people. Dr. Housa’s team is already working on the DNA scans, and we’ll keep you updated on everything that happens back here, but you’re going to be at ground zero, so it’s probably going to fall on you.

  “For you three, most of this has already been discussed with the medical team, but I wanted you to be fully on board with what’s at stake.”


  Which explains this meeting. The science-types already met and are doing whatever science-types do before a mission—I mean, a project.

  “What I want to talk to the four of you is ground zero itself. None of you have been on a project like this before.”

  The director wasn’t asking a question. He knew that already.

  “And it is imperative to remember that these are real people you are dealing with. They’re afraid, and rightly so. For every extra hour it takes you, more of them will die, and from all accounts, die horribly, their bodies turning into liquid as they watch.

  Liquid? Esther wondered, her stomach fluttering. What have I got myself into?

  She’d been so concerned about learning FAID’s modus operandi that she’d pretty much ignored the reason for the mission. She was going to rectify that the first free moment she had.

  “The situation on the ground will be dangerous, and not just because of the Schleizen Virus.”

  Who’s Schleizen, Esther wondered, but didn’t voice the question aloud.

  “The people will praise your arrival, but the longer it takes, the more they’ll panic, and the more they’ll resent you. Very, very quickly, you’ll fall from being guardian angels to become the perpetrators of their suffering. They will accuse you of having a cure, but that you won’t use it for nefarious reasons. Even your local security will fall into the trap, and either run away or join the crowd.”

  He was quiet for a moment, lost in his thoughts, until he softly said, “On Manteo’s Grace, back before the Evolution,” he said, giving Esther the tiniest of glances, “I was part of a project. The population of one of the towns was suffering from rampant heavy metal poisoning, and the treatment they were given exacerbated the situation. We had 11 filtering stations set up, but treatments were taking an hour simply to stabilize the patients. Meanwhile, people were dying.

  “Quickly, we were accused of withholding treatment of the rest. The unrest built up, and the dam broke. Our local security fled before the flood.