by Rick Partlow
Laurent tapped the edge of her tablet against her chin, brow furrowed in thought.
“Maybe,” she ventured, “it’s time we intervened.”
23
One more jump.” Captain Kamehameha-Nui Johansen stared at the main screen, impatience writ across the broad canvas of his face.
Logan wasn’t used to seeing it there. Usually, the big man was a seated Buddha, the embodiment of calm and fortitude. Now, though, and for the past three weeks, he’d been stewing in his own juices, watching the image of the Concepcion on the main screen with growing and obvious disgust.
“We should have been there by now,” Kammy added. He leaned closer to where Logan stood by the bridge railing, lowering his voice so the rest of the crew wouldn’t hear him. “I still don’t know why we brought that slow-boat along.”
“You’re about to find out,” Logan assured him. He checked the time on his ‘link, wondering how much longer the others would take to get here.
“Stop clock-watching, boss,” Valentine Kurtz drawled from behind him, “we’re here.”
John Lee said nothing, just nodded to him as the two men came down the few steps to the bridge from the entrance hatchway. The Ranger commander seemed as tight as a coiled spring. They all did, the whole bridge crew, even Tara Gerard, who almost never lost her cool.
Then again, maybe they have every right. We’re deep into Jeuta territory now and we could run into the bastards any time, Alvar’s guarantee of safe conduct notwithstanding.
“So, what’s the deal?” Kammy asked. “And why have you been so close-mouthed the whole trip?”
“I’ve been kicking this around in my head,” Logan explained, “trying to make sure I wasn’t putting too many of your lives at risk for something that’s really a personal matter, when you get right down to it.”
“Begging your pardon, sir,” Lee cut in, “but I disagree. The Jeuta have designs on Sparta as a whole, and this is just part of their strategy. Stopping it is part of defending Sparta.”
“I’m glad you feel that way, John,” Logan said. “But hopefully, we won’t have to test the ethics of the argument.”
“Do you want me to get Captain Perez on the horn for this meeting?” Kammy wondered. “The Concepcion is less than a light-second away, there won’t be any appreciable lag.”
“No, that’s all right,” Logan told him. “I’ll brief her myself in a few minutes when I transfer over there.”
“When you what?” Kurtz blurted. “Sir?” he added as an afterthought.
“I’m going to transfer to the Concepcion, and you guys and the Shakak are jumping into the system ahead of us, hopefully unobserved, and take up a patrol position. Minimal signature.”
“I thought the Jeuta dude said just one ship,” Kammy pointed out.
“He did, and the Concepcion is going to be that ship. You’re my insurance. I’m going down in a drop-ship to make the exchange, and once the shuttle takes back off with Katy in it, the Shakak is going to move in and dock with it as quick as possible.”
“Yeah,” Kammy prompted, “and what do you want us to do then?”
“There’s nothing you can do.” Kammy wasn’t going to want to hear this part, but it had to be said. “Even with the Shakak, just the two ships can’t take on the whole Jeuta fleet.” He raised a hand to stop the big man’s protest. “I didn’t give up the Guardianship and come all this way to find Katy just for her to die in some futile last stand. You need to get her out of there and take her back to Sparta.”
Kammy was scowling, a bull elephant digging in his heels, which was another reason he hadn’t shared the plan before now. He hadn’t wanted to spend what was likely the last three weeks of his life arguing with his friends.
“And what happens,” the big man demanded, “if the Jeuta don’t live up to their end of the bargain? What if they don’t have any intention of letting her go?”
“I have no doubt they’re lying,” Logan admitted. “But I have a plan for that, too.”
He didn’t mention how much of his plan depended on the word of a Jeuta prisoner who had no reason to tell him the truth.
No use worrying the big man any more than he already was.
Donnell Anders didn’t like the feel of the Guardian’s private office, didn’t care for the experience of sitting behind the big desk. This was someone else’s office, someone else’s chair and he was an intruder. Jaimie Brannigan glared in silent disapproval from his portrait, hanging over the desk, as if asking Anders what the hell he was doing sitting at the desk instead of Logan.
Good question.
He’d thought long and hard about telling Shupert and the Council no. He’d never even spoken with Chief Councilor Tarzarian, not seen the vote they took. It didn’t seem fair after the show Logan had put on for them that his own election would be so perfunctory.
He was so uncomfortable in the office, he hadn’t even completely closed the door when he’d entered, as if somehow leaving it partially open meant he wasn’t fully occupying the position. It was the only reason the commotion outside made it through to the interior of the office past the soundproof door.
“I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t let you in there.” He didn’t know the woman’s name, but it was one of the Ranger guards. At least Lee hadn’t taken them all with him and, so far, the remainder hadn’t quit en masse the way they had under Hale.
“Then tell him I’m here! This is important!” That was…he frowned. It had been far away and angry and he couldn’t tell despite the familiarity of the tone.
“Sir, he’s asked not to be disturbed. I’m going to have to insist you leave. If you wish to meet with the Guardian, you can contact his support staff and set up an appointment…”
“Damn it, this is urgent! I don’t have time for this shit, just let me through!”
“Back off before I have you stunned and arrested, Mr. Brannigan!”
Brannigan? It’s Terrin.
“Hold on!” Anders shouted, hoping his voice would reach the guard.
He pushed out of the chair and jogged across the office, ducking out into the hallway. Terrin’s face was flattened against the wall, arm bent behind him, and the Ranger captain had her stunner half out of its holster before she noticed Anders.
“Sorry, sir,” she said. “This gentleman was trying to…”
“It’s all right, Captain,” he assured her. “You can let him go. I’ll see him right now.”
The woman scowled, slowly letting Terrin go. The young man shook out his wrist and looked as if he wanted to say something to the Ranger, but let it go and followed his gesture back into the office. Anders was shutting the door behind them when he noticed Terrin staring at the painting of his father.
“Logan trusted you, General,” Terrin said, so soft it was barely audible.
A dull knife worked its way into Anders’ chest as the boy put into words the guilt he’d been feeling.
“If I didn’t take the job,” he pointed out, the words sounding weak in his own ears, “they would have put someone else in, someone who might have wanted the position for the power of it. I didn’t…”
“That’s not what I meant,” Terrin corrected him. He turned back to Anders with no anger in his face, only desperation. “He trusts you.”
Anders hadn’t noticed it before, but the young man looked exhausted, face pale and drawn, dark circles under his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept in weeks. Terrin stumbled across the office, barely able to keep his balance, finally catching himself on the small sofa against the wall and falling into it.
“Are you all right, Terrin?” Anders asked, suddenly more concerned about the boy’s health than he was his emotional state. “I haven’t seen you in weeks.”
“I’ve been busy,” he said, rubbing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Been keeping myself going on Stim Tabs, and it’s catching up with me. Doesn’t matter now.” He waved the concern away as if swatting at a bug. “Look, General, I never knew you that well. You were p
art of Logan’s world, part of a world I was trying my best to stay away from. Not like Lyta or Nicolai, who were almost part of the family. I didn’t even think of them as military until all this started.”
He frowned, his features scrunching up in concentration, as if he knew he was drifting and was trying to focus.
“What I’m trying to say is,” he said, enunciating each word clearly and carefully, as if it was the most important thing in the world, “I don’t know if Logan was right to put so much faith in you, to think he could trust you to do what needs to be done. It’s his call and maybe not the one I would have made. All I can do is hope he was right, hope you’ll do the right thing and help him. Because this is bigger than just him, bigger than just Katy. If he’s right, this is the beginning of a major Jeuta incursion into Dominion space, and Spartan is just the bridgehead.”
“What can I do?” Anders demanded, shaking his head in utter helplessness, feeling even more lost in the job than he had a few minutes before. “I mean, assuming I could make an end-run around the Council, which is not a sure thing considering what they’ve done the last few weeks, even if I sent our whole fleet to this Tarpeia place, it would take them three weeks to get there even at max acceleration, and the Jeuta would see them coming light-minutes away. This Alvar bastard would kill Katy then take his forces and un-ass the area before we even started decelerating.”
Anders sighed and leaned against the front of the Guardian’s desk. It felt sacrilegious, disrespectful, but he was dead tired.
“I’m afraid Logan took the only ship we had that could help with him to Tarpeia.”
The exhaustion fell away from Terrin’s face, replaced by something burning bright, almost manic in his blue eyes.
“As it turns out,” he said, leaning forward with a conspiratorial whisper, “that’s not strictly true…”
Gareth McKenzie was hiding. He could have made excuses, said he was behind on his simulator hours and really needed to stay in practice, but that was all bullshit. He’d been running battalion and company exercises against the computer system for hours now, just him in the one active bay and the outer doors locked from the inside.
He sipped at the nipple of the water bladder connected to his easy chair, taking small, careful swallows to try to put off having to leave to use the bathroom. It was hot in the bay, simulating the heat buildup of combat, and his sweat had dried and crystallized into salt at the small of his back and his underarms, staining his fatigues white even through his neural contact suit. He figured the water exchange from the sweat should keep in here without having to retreat to the bathroom down the hall for at least another two hours.
Unless he passed out first, which was always a possibility.
He could live with the thought of someone finding him unconscious in the bay easier than he could with having to sit around in the battalion area or in his office—which he’d had for a grand total of about a month and still hated—and answer one question after another from his officers and senior NCOs about whether they were still in the service of Wholesale Slaughter or if they were Spartan soldiers again and serving under Donnell Anders.
How the hell could he answer them when he didn’t have the slightest idea?
No one had come to brief him or the other officers about it, and the ones who might have were in deep space right now heading for Jeuta space. He felt hurt and slightly insulted that he hadn’t been asked to go along, though he knew he was being ridiculous. There’d been limited space on the Shakak and, from the scuttlebutt he’d heard, General Brannigan… No, wait, should it be Lord Guardian? Or no, I guess he’s not that anymore, either. Goddammit, this is so confusing. Anyway, from what he’d heard, Logan had been on the run from the Home Guard and had very little time to load the drop-ships and get to the Shakak before he was arrested.
Colonel Kurtz had gone with him and Bohardt and Salvaggio had already been on the Concepcion and no one else knew a damned thing or could tell him anything useful. That didn’t stop the flow of people into his office, though. They all wanted to know. And he’d rather slowly dehydrate to death in this damned simulator bay than have to tell them over and over that he didn’t know, and that they’d have to wait just like he was.
I’m a colonel, damn it. Colonels are supposed to know everything. At least that’s how it seemed to me when I was a captain.
He tried to shut down all the doubts and worries and concentrate on running the same scenario for the tenth time, taking his battalion into an enemy stronghold on some Mithra-forsaken, barely-habitable moon. At least his simulated troops didn’t ask him questions he couldn’t answer. He’d nearly managed to submerge his consciousness into the simulation when the whole thing went black and the door to his pod swung open, letting in air so cold it made him shiver.
“What the hell?” he blurted, snatching off his helmet and scrambling out of the pod. “I told the maintenance crew I didn’t want to be disturbed and if this is anything less than a fucking invasion…”
“Don’t be too hard on them, Colonel,” the recruiting-poster face outside the pod told him, his tone mild, his stance relaxed. “They were slightly outranked.”
McKenzie froze for just a second as he realized who the man was, then he began scrambling out of his seat, trying to come to attention.
“Relax, Colonel McKenzie,” Donnell Anders told him, offering a hand. “If I wanted spit and polish, I wouldn’t have ambushed you in the training bay.”
McKenzie took the hand and let the Lord Guardian of Sparta pull him out of the simulator pod. Anders was tall and powerfully built and he supported McKenzie’s eighty kilograms like it was nothing. McKenzie felt unsteady on his feet, swaying slightly when the taller man let go, probably from spending so long in the pod.
“Thank you, sir,” he said, putting out a hand to find the pod and maintain his balance. “What can I do for you?”
“I need to ask you a question, Colonel,” Anders said, hands on his hips, feet shoulder-width apart as if he was getting ready to spar in the unarmed combat ring. “And I need an answer immediately. Normally, something like this, I’d give you more time to think about it, but time is a luxury we don’t have.”
“Yes, sir?” McKenzie winced at the dull, inane tone of his voice, but he was woozy and dehydrated.
“You’re a good man, McKenzie. I like what I’ve seen of your record. If you want to stay on here with the Spartan military, you’ll be a battalion commander immediately, and I can pretty much guarantee you a brigade of your own if you don’t fuck up royally.”
“Thank you, sir. I didn’t…”
“But,” Anders interrupted him, then smiled thinly. “There’s always a ‘but,’ isn’t there? But you abandoned your post and risked treason to follow a man you believed in, Logan Brannigan. I am the Guardian now, but I’m not Logan Brannigan. Would you still follow him, even if it meant giving up a chance of a career in the Spartan military?”
“Sir,” McKenzie said, trying to shape his words carefully despite his exhaustion, “all my life, as long as I can remember, all I wanted to be was a soldier. A mech-jock. I’ve served Sparta my entire adult life, but…” He grunted, almost in physical pain. “I gave all that up to follow General Brannigan because I thought it was the right thing to do. I still think so.”
“In that case, Colonel, I want you to get your battalion ready to ship out immediately. As in within the next three hours.” Anders laughed. “I think I have a mission that will suit you just perfectly.”
24
If you’re a girl,” Katy said softly, hand caressing her stomach, “I think we should name you Margaret, after Logan’s mother.” She leaned her head back against the wall of the cell, shifting the blankets behind her, trying to get comfortable. “Maggie’s a good nickname. I think Logan would like that. But what if you’re a boy?”
There was a kick and she laughed with delight, moving her palm to the place where she’d felt it, as if she could touch her baby through her stomach.
/> “Does that mean you are a boy or you’re mad I thought you might be one? I don’t suppose you know Morse code…” Another kick. “Oof,” she grunted. “Was that a dot or a dash? But okay, boy names…” Her eyes glazed over as she tried to let them see out from the confines of the cell, from the four walls that had held her captive for over a month now. “The obvious one would be to name you after your father, but I don’t think Logan would want that. Maybe we could name you Kyle, after my father. Would you like that? Kyle Brannigan has a nice flow to it. Have to see what Logan thinks about it.”
If I ever have the chance to see him again. If the Jeuta don’t just kill me even if he does come.
She wouldn’t say it out loud, wouldn’t let herself be anything but happy and positive out loud. Maybe it was stupid, but even if her unborn baby couldn’t understand what she was saying, there was the chance he or she might understand the tone, the emotions behind it. She’d taken to refusing to even think negative thoughts for too long, afraid of what effect it might have on the baby.
She couldn’t control much at the moment, but she could sure as hell control her attitude and how she reacted to her surroundings. She couldn’t do anything to get herself out of this yet, but she had faith. She’d told Alvar faith was powerful and she hadn’t been lying to him. She’d always believed so strongly in her ability as a pilot, and maybe she’d let the faith she had in herself overshadow her faith in God.
What had Nicolai said to her and Logan? That the Zoroastrianism of the Empire was a warrior’s religion, a faith for the strong who lived by the sword. Christianity was a faith for the weak, the enslaved, the imprisoned. Being weak and imprisoned had surely driven that home.
