And there it was. By crediting Yachi with the success, Rin Zhou was cementing her position within her fledging regime, all but assuring her own career path.
On its heels came a troubling thought.
But am I witnessing history repeat itself?
Asher Dent’s own father, the man who’d held the office prior to Rin Zhou, had thought to attempt an equally daring gambit. He’d failed, and the woman before him had been instrumental in his removal from office. And yet….
“What kind of operation?” he found himself asking.
“The Alliance has been experimenting with the samples brought back from Luyten’s Star. I have a team working to acquire them.”
Che nodded, unsurprised. He waited while Rin Zhou took another sip. When she didn’t continue, he asked, “What do you intend to do with the samples, Minister?”
“I intend for you to put them to good use. Make me a weapon. Conscript scientists, conduct experiments to optimize its tactical effectiveness. Document their work. It must be swift, and it must be deadly.”
Che jerked his head in a nod of obeisance, unable to do more at the moment. His mind was swimming. He had so many questions, all vying inside his head to be the first posed, but he waited to see what else she would say.
“One thing.” Rin Zhou’s words had him raising his brows in silent question.
“If we are to defeat Asher, we must proceed with great caution. He has informants everywhere. No whisper of this can reach him.”
Che considered this. It would be difficult indeed to bury such an operation while using Akkadian resources. Even within the ranks of the Junxun, his own formidable army, there was a robustly healthy rumor mill. There was no way to guarantee he could keep it from them, and still make use of their vast resources.
He nodded slowly, thoughtfully. “You’re saying this would have to be completely off the books.”
Rin Zhou’s gaze never left his face. “A black operation, yes. Select a handful of your most skilled warriors, but be very careful who you choose. You must be very sure they can be trusted. Outside of those people, the rest must be sourced from outside Akkadia. Nothing of this operation can be traced back to this ministry.”
They sat in silence for long minutes, Che turning the problem over in his head. “I’ll need to secure a laboratory for the research and experimentation,” he murmured.
Rin Zhou lowered her chin. “It cannot be housed within Akkadia’s borders.”
Che inclined his head, acknowledging that truth.
“There is a place,” he murmured finally. “An abandoned laboratory, deep in the dust belt of Proxima Centauri.” He knew his eyes held warning as he added, “Even though it is several dozen AU from Shang, it’s still squarely within An-Yang territory.”
“Then I suppose anyone using that facility would need to proceed with care to ensure they are not discovered,” she said mildly.
She set her cup aside and rose in one smooth motion. She waited for Che to join her before continuing.
“You have fifteen days. Once you have achieved your objective, contact me. I will make sure arrangements on this end are ready.”
He paused before braving a final question. “Fifteen days, Citizen Minister?”
Rin Zhou’s look froze him in place. “You have your orders. I trust you can meet the deadline without any problem?” Her tone held censure.
“Of course, Minister,” he hastened to reply. “I live to serve.”
* * *
Rin Zhou stood motionless until the doors slid shut behind Che Josza. She ordered the SI inside her head to bring up the security feed as she moved to her desk.
She watched as Che was escorted from the State Security grounds. The citizen general’s demeanor was impeccably proper, rendering the required salute to a former peer, despite the other man’s subtle rebuff.
Her mouth tightened. She understood better than most what necessitated the rebuff; none who served the premier dared to be friendly with those whose names were under a cloud, for fear the association might reflect poorly on their own careers.
Rin Zhou hated that she’d had to demote Che, one of her most brilliant and capable generals, and yet the situation had dictated no less. It was why she’d chosen him for this particular operation. Che had always done as ordered.
Given his current situation, he was more motivated than most. The opportunity to redeem himself was one he would not refuse.
He would deliver the weaponized material, meet the deadline. And fifteen days from now….
She dismissed the feed as Che disappeared into the crowded streets below, and returned her attention to the intelligence report that had put today’s events in motion.
Coalition Defense Summit, October fifteenth. Host: Geminate Alliance, Hawking Habitat.
Her eyes scanned the list of high-ranking military and intelligence personnel that would be attending. They were all key people from powerful governments, including one Asher Dent.
A strike at that event would not just eliminate her own personal threat. It would bring the rest of the settled worlds to their knees.
REPORTED THEFT
National Security Agency
St. Clair Township, Ceriba
Myr (Procyon B)
Geminate Alliance
The playback of the feed sent by the agent on Leavitt Station ended abruptly.
Duncan Cutter, director of the Alliance’s National Security Agency, turned from the holoscreen to regard the woman seated across from him. They were in a Sensitive, Compartmentalized Information Facility—a SCIF—beneath Parliament House.
“Pilot’s body was found. No trace of the Akkadians.” Colonel Tala Valenti turned from the frozen image on the holo to meet his eyes as she added, “Our agent’s been found, too.”
The economic spate of words was classic Valenti. The woman had a lean, muscled warrior’s build, as befit the head of the Special Reconnaissance Unit.
“Alive?”
The question came from the only other person in the room. Admiral Amara Toland led the Navy’s Advanced Research Agency. Her presence here was at Valenti’s request.
The colonel’s lips compressed into a thin, hard line. “No,” she told Toland.
“Who was it? Ladue?” Duncan asked.
Valenti nodded.
Duncan’s jaw tightened. Ladue was one of Valenti’s best men, highly skilled at technical surveillance and sensitive site infiltration. He’d supplied the images they had just seen, of the pilot passing the vials to a known enemy.
“He was a good agent.” Duncan scraped his hand across the stubble lining his jaw and swore softly. “I’ll get in touch with his family. Damn, but I hate those conversations.”
“He died under my command.” Normally taciturn, Valenti’s voice held rare emotion. “I can do it.”
He shook his head, giving her a brief, non-smile.
“I know you can, and I appreciate the offer. It’s ultimately my responsibility, though.” He nodded toward the frozen image on the screen. “How did this happen?”
“The pilot, or Ladue?” Valenti asked.
Cutter lifted a hand. “Either. Both.”
Valenti’s eyes returned to the screen. “Pilot was listed AWOL a week ago.”
“Akkadian asset?” Duncan asked sharply.
It was Toland who answered. Shaking her head, she said, “I don’t think so. He had a known gambling problem, and I think they blackmailed him into it. He certainly paid for his sins,” she added, with a glance toward the frozen image of the dead body, its throat slit.
“And Ladue?” Duncan’s gaze shifted from Toland to Valenti.
The colonel nodded to the SCIF’s holodisplay. “Takeko,” she ordered, “display file Leavitt Three-Five.”
Duncan kept his expression neutral as Valenti addressed the Synthetic Intelligence implanted inside her head. He wasn’t entirely comfortable with the concept of SIs being embedded within active military personnel.
“We’ll wal
l the SI off,” the Navy’s chief scientist had assured the intelligence subcommittee when the initiative was first proposed. “Think of it as being confined to a miniature SCIF inside the brain.”
The argument was a persuasive one.
Duncan sent a quick glance around the secured room where they sat. This particular SCIF was not only secure, it was fortified. A foreign agency would have to overcome insurmountable obstacles to breach it.
The analogy resonated with the subcommittee, and they’d approved limited deployment within the Alliance’s defense command. The SI implants had been green-lighted just a handful of weeks ago. Colonel Valenti was one of the program’s first recipients.
{Image Leavitt Three-Five.} Valenti’s SI projected its voice over the SCIF’s audio feed, and the holoscreen lit up once more.
A different visual appeared on the display, this one, with the watermark of NCIC, the Navy’s Criminal Investigation Command.
{This was taken today by NCIC investigators, at oh-two-forty-seven, local time. Leavitt Station, concourse D.}
All thoughts of SCIFs and SIs fled when Duncan realized what he was looking at. The camera panned across the downed agent’s slumped form, his slack hand resting beside a partially disassembled sniper’s scope.
The recording changed angles, and suddenly, Duncan was looking at the crosshatched surface of the catwalk where Ladue’s body lay. He could see a pool of reddish-brown staining its surface.
Ladue’s blood.
Beside it was a small, round object. Valenti reached out, and with a gesture, highlighted it. That portion of the image sprang forward, revealing the object in greater detail.
An assassin’s bead.
“They found him,” Duncan stated heavily.
“It would seem so.”
Valenti did something more with the display, and the feed reverted back to what Ladue had sent to NSA headquarters. She scrubbed through it until she came to a closeup of the case held in the pilot’s hand.
“I suppose it’s too much to hope there was nothing of value in those metal cylinders,” Duncan murmured. “What did they steal?”
Toland took up the narrative. “Those cylinders are protective vaults. Each one holds a glass vial with material from the CID. They were reported missing earlier today.”
Her gaze shifted from the case and its contents back to Duncan. Her expression was grave. “Those vials belong to Major Moran.”
Duncan felt the blood drain from his face. His eyes jumped back to the frozen visual. “Project Rufus?” he asked.
“Yes,” Toland confirmed. “Those vials contain chiral material, held in suspension.”
Duncan whispered a low curse. Chiral material.
Few outside those involved in the first exploratory mission to Luyten’s Star knew what had been found there. The star system annexed by the Alliance a few years earlier was uninhabited and boasted a lone planet.
Vermilion was a super-earth, orbiting the red dwarf in a 3:2 resonance just inside its goldilocks zone. It also harbored a secret so shocking, the Alliance had immediately interdicted the system.
That secret was naturally occurring chiral life.
The concept of chirality dated back to pre-diaspora Earth, when scientists first realized that the building blocks of life all had a certain molecular structure. Each molecule had a mirror-image twin, but just as a right-handed glove would not fit on a person’s left hand, none of these mirror-image molecules could sustain life.
The preference biology had for one ‘handedness’ over another became known as chirality, based on the ancient Greek word kheir, meaning ‘hand’. The phenomenon was present in every living organism.
In the twenty-first century, chiral molecules were found in interstellar space. Humanity expanded into the solar system, and their exploration of other worlds revealed the same thing: native organisms everywhere all shared the predilection for left-handed life.
By then, it was understood that cosmic rays interacting with a planet’s atmosphere induced a magnetic polarization in early developing biological organisms, forcing the dominance of left-handed life. Still, scientists hoped to one day stumble upon a sector of space that had been spared the influence.
The red dwarf that was Luyten’s Star proved to be just such a breeding ground. The star had a history of emitting circularly polarized flares.
The right-handed photons that bombarded the system’s lone habitable planet influenced its developing life in much the same way cosmic rays had done elsewhere in the explored galaxy. They created chiral life.
Such a discovery had rocked the scientists at the Navy’s Advanced Research Agency, and they had rushed to study the world teeming with mirror organisms.
DeGrasse torus, one of three black-site research stations under NARA’s umbrella, had been relocated to Vermilion so that Geminate scientists could study it. Amara Toland, a scientist in her own right who held degrees in both condensed matter and materials physics, commanded all three.
The torus had been subsequently destroyed by an Akkadian agent, virtually all hands lost. The admiral had been away from the torus at the time; it was the only reason she was still alive. Duncan knew survivor’s guilt still haunted her.
“How did this happen?” he asked quietly.
“The chiral material was on its way from our facility in Montpelier to the Hawking Habitat for a series of planned experiments,” Toland said. “It never arrived.”
Montpelier was one of the research centers under the admiral’s command. This one, unlike deGrasse, was planet-bound, a few hundred kilometers away from their current location.
“Go on.”
“The vials were logged out of Level Two containment three days ago. They were supposed to arrive on Hawking today.” Her voice turned grim. “Someone swapped packages.”
Duncan ripped his gaze from the vials resting inside the case to spear Valenti with a look. “Have you notified the team?”
He knew he didn’t need to clarify which team. There was really only one capable of handling a chiral situation, and they all knew it.
Duncan had given Valenti carte blanche when he’d ordered her to create Task Force Blue. She’d assigned Captain Thad Severance to lead it, and had stolen Gabriel Alvarez from NCIC to be his second. Severance had brought along two people from his former recon unit to complete the fire team. Boone was TF Blue’s sniper, and Asha, its medic.
In addition, rather than rely on the Navy’s Shadow Recon teams to ferry the task force to and from its covert missions, Valenti had retained Jonathan and Micah Case for the job. After a bit of negotiating with Major Snell, the man in charge of Shadow Recon, they’d brought in the remainder of the flight crew as well: Will, Nina, and Yuki filled the roles of crew chief, gunner, and copilot, respectively.
She nodded in response to his question. “Ladue’s intel came in at about the same time the admiral contacted me,” the colonel said with a nod toward Toland. “I sent Captain Severance a recall message right after. He should be getting it shortly.”
“Getting it shortly?” Duncan repeated, feeling a bit confused. “I don’t recall them being on an active mission right now.”
She shook her head. “They’re not. Thad brought Micah and the rest of the crew planetside.”
He felt his brows rise. “I can’t think of many places where they’d be unreachable here on Ceriba,” he murmured, “and I know for a fact you have priority override on their wires.”
“I do.” Valenti’s response was short and to the point. Her next words, however, were a bit mystifying. “Let’s just say things are getting a bit hot where they’re at right now.”
LIBERTY
Huntington National Forest
Ceriba
Geminate Alliance
The aircraft pitched, slewing sideways, the controls in Micah’s hands shuddering under the tumult of the superheated air that enveloped them. He held them loosely, riding the currents that gripped the decommissioned military craft, and not fighti
ng them as updrafts and microbursts tossed the armored fighting machine about like an angry toddler flinging his toys.
The sudden displacement was met by a crazed whoop from the man seated to Micah’s left.
“Hell of a ride, Navy! Bet you don’t have this much fun in that fancy-ass Helios you fly, am I right?” The big man’s grin was infectious, flashing bright white in his dusky face.
Micah’s mouth twisted wryly, and he shot his friend a quick look before returning his attention to the aircraft’s SyntheticVision feed.
“Cannot confirm or deny that one, Thad, and you know it,” he responded, his eyes sweeping the SV’s feed, its enhanced, full-spectrum sensors doing their best to pierce through the smoke-clogged terrain before them.
Thaddaeus Severance the Third. Micah grinned. With a name like that, the man should look like some college professor, or a high-credit lawyer. Instead, he was a hulking Marine who barely fit into the co-pilot’s seat.
The leader of the Unit’s newest special operations team had a side gig that few outside the close circle of Task Force Blue knew about. During fire season, he volunteered with the Ceriba Forestry Service to help fight fires.
Normally, Thad would be high above the flames, working with the firefighters’ air attack command, instructing aircraft where to most effectively release their loads. In turn, pilots like Micah would be flying over the conflagration, low-slung belly tanks and cargo bladders filled with nano-laced smart fire retardant, ready to drop at Thad’s direction.
Today, Thad had dragged Micah and the rest of TF Blue’s flight crew into converted Novastrikes for search-and-rescue missions. The Firestrike, as it was now called, was smaller than the ship Micah flew for the Navy. It had been modified for atmospheric flight, its fuselage aft of the cockpit reconfigured. Where once it carried a fully-kitted-out fire team, now it was rigged with an inflatable bladder. The ship could either carry half a dozen firefighters, or deploy five thousand liters of red goo over a swath of burning land.
The Chiral Protocol – A Military Science Fiction Thriller: Biogenesis War Book 2 (The Biogenesis War) Page 3
