“Whoa…” The big man reached out with his free hand and wrapped that massive grip around the general’s upper arm, straightening him and holding him up. “Don’t want you gettin’ hurt now. That wouldn’t look to good for me.” He was concerned as he scrutinized Hanson’s forehead.
Gulping air, Hanson implored, “No, wait, you don’t understand, Sergeant. I could get life in prison for this.” He thought about Swan and added, “Maybe the death penalty. Why would I risk that if I didn’t think it was critical?”
Hanson could not believe the words that had just tumbled from his mouth, but despite his guilty confession, it seemed to have an impact on the man. Amio paused for a second, thinking about that, but then resumed his actions. “You took the chance, I guess you gotta pay the price. I don’t know why you’re here, you could be up ta’ no good, for all I know. Not for me ta’ say.”
Hanson committed further down his one-way path. “Listen, I think the admiral may be up to some illegal activity, that’s why I was looking at this message, it’s been tampered with in a strange way.”
“What’s it ta’ me? Maybe I don’t wanna hear it? You’ll just get me in trouble too.” Amio slid his hold on Hanson’s arm down to his wrist, then pulled his arm behind his back. Heat and pressure of his captor’s other hand wrapped around general’s opposite wrist, and an immobility strap braceleted his hands together.
From the corner of his eye he saw the screen go blank as the sergeant did something with his hand. “Let’s go.” The general gave up with a sinking feeling. It felt like a long march to his death.
* * *
As he floated in his cell, boots confiscated, the indomitable hum of Toroid Station permeated. Hanson wasn’t normally given to noticing the subtleties around him, but here in the cell the dead quiet was nerve-racking. Sound dampers were being used, a security measure, no doubt, but he could feel the subsonic life of the station coming off every surface: the ever-spinning ring-platform of the gravity deck, the Slices, running past above and below, encircling.
His mind took the sensation and wrapped it into the self-regrets that he rotated through: “Why did I do something so stupid? …How can I, a General, be in this position? …This is the end of my military career. But who cares? I’m a dead man; I wish I had a poison pill. …I could be out there now, free, ignorant, smart! How could I be so stupid?” And so it went, time crawling, every ten minutes feeling like an hour.
* * *
Amio pondered what the unusual prisoner had said to him. As much as he did not want to think about it, he couldn’t stop himself. There had been a question in his mind since all this had started with Taylor Jest, and then Bartell.
From nowhere, the eye of command had come to rest upon him. He didn’t question the reason of his superiors for giving him the opportunity for promotion—he jumped at the chance for an end-run around the stigma of his size—the thing that had served him to a point, and then held him back. For some time he’d believed that his career would never move past Sergeant, bumping against the prejudice of the officer classes.
It started with an order to meet with Admiral Swann aboard Dock Toroid Alpha. Amio knew little about him, only the rumor that he was credited for a certain ship-design that allowed interspatial transit. Amio had assumed the meeting would have to do with his witnessing of events in Earthside Center Comm. Instead, the admiral had been interested in his relationship with Ms. Jest.
The admiral’s request had been simple: arrange for a Captain Garrison Bartell, a former SBMMP officer with a certain skill set, to go out on the exploratory mission surrounding the comm loss with Pirate Patrol One.
Swan pointed out the heretofore unknown fact that he, Sergeant Amio, was dating Bartell’s girlfriend. Amio was put off. He hadn’t dated the girl more than once prior to the admiral’s summons, but she had failed to mention that she was already into it with some other guy. He wasn’t surprised though; the woman was hot.
The sergeant had kept his game face on, saying nothing to the admiral of his irritation, as well as surprise at the scrutiny of his off-duty activities. Those feelings were secondary to moving up the chain of command.
The reason given for this request: Captain Bartell had a skill set that was needed for the mission. Amio didn’t need a reason for following orders, but this made sense in any case.
From a romantic standpoint, Amio didn’t have a fix on Taylor just yet. He was more the type to go for a monogamous partnership. Monogamy out-ranked promiscuity in modern culture, but Taylor was obviously of the latter persuasion. With the hard-wired genetic safeguards bred in during the twenty-first century, and sex no longer being targeted by moralists, the polyamorous attitude was common. While she had not been completely upfront with him, she seemed to really like him. Besides, he had misled her also, using her to get to Bartell at the admiral’s bidding.
Seeing her jealousy at the news that Bartell would be co-piloting with Astra gave him both hope and concern. It might mean she would break it off with the captain, or it might mean that she really cared for him, and didn’t want to lose him.
Amio’s mind had wandered. He brought himself back to the thing he was avoiding: he had been roped in as an unwitting participant in a plan that began to have the feel of illegality, or at least, immorality.
The imprisoned general brought forward the thoughts that had been haunting his subconscious: Why had it been necessary that he be the one to ask Bartell? Why hadn’t the admiral just asked directly?
Maybe it was a posturing thing. An admiral coming to a former captain—one who headed a crew in USUCC, no less—it wasn’t a likely meeting. Just the same, Amio thought there was more to it than that, considering the admiral’s instruction that his name be left out of the conversation.
He had pushed down the sensation that something was wrong, chalking it up to his annoyance with the over-amped oversight that he’d been under. That had really left a bad taste in his mouth; he continued to wonder why, and if that level of snooping was still being levied upon him.
He’d transferred his allegiance over to this Admiral Swan blindly, as was so often the way of the military. Respect for a CO was a mandate and was assumed. But for Amio, there was no track record, yet, for true respect and understanding of how this man was wielding his power.
Amio had never been involved in any undercover work or espionage but it seemed he was thrust into the middle of something that he needed to resolve, one way or another.
His new station commission was supposed to be in the field of his present Comm training. Title pending. So far, it was generally a security position, Military Slice and Military Docks jurisdiction. It gave him additional oversight in Center Comm on Dock TA—he could observe the workings of the Comm center. It did not feel like the reward of promotion that it was said to represent. It was not a difficult assignment, in fact it verged on boring. Too easy for his liking. When he added everything together, it felt like he was simply being kept close.
It all forced another salient memory to surface; thoughts of a certain person.
Just less than a year ago, before Amio had changed his career focus and transferred to Center Comm on Earth, a scientist had been sent down from this LEO Dock to the Nexus holding facility. There had been talk, at the time, of the man being placed in the brig, Amio’s jurisdiction. The nature of his crime was classified. Ultimately, he’d instead been assigned semi-sequestered quarters in a nearby EBMMP housing facility.
Lamb remembered his name, Bridge Cooper, an interesting, tall man with a vacant look in his eyes. Not one of stupidity; rather, as if he lived in another world and his body was doomed to inhabit a more mundane reality. There was no doubt that the man must be smart, still retaining his acumen; BUMP kept him around for some reason. And he had the appearance of intelligence, despite his air of remoteness.
The sergeant wasn’t sure why, but he suspected that this man could tell him s
omething about his present conundrum, something that might help him know what to do. Everything military that passed through or affected the station would cross the desk of Admiral Swan at some point, being the station head. The transfer and confinement of this odd man would have been at the top of the stack, or even a direct action by the admiral.
Amio’s pondering disquiet, during his station-pacing rounds, had spurred him to make a risky decision. He decided to hold off on immediately logging the details of the incident with his unlikely prisoner.
Though his promotion to Major was still pending, in his new appointment, the sergeant had enough privilege to arrange a trip back to Earth on his next off-duty break, without further requisitions. He needed to see this Cooper. And he had an excuse to go planetside, sort of. He planned to take the general with him. Hanson had alcohol in his blood, and that helped here.
A “Drunk and Disorderly” on-duty, station-side was cause for transfer off-station with Earthside brig time. If it was an off-duty infraction, then a little station brig time was the only punishment. The sergeant’s plan had to do with the fact that Hanson had not clocked out at the appointed time his duty shift had ended. The general had gotten uncomfortable when quizzed about this fact; apparently Swan had requested him to be available.
Swan would normally need to sign off on something like this. Amio would be taking some heat for a misunderstanding, but his efforts would seem committed and altruistic, performing his duty, as he understood it, in his off-duty hours.
On his duty-break he would escort the man off-station. Once planetside, they would correct his misinterpretation and send him and Hanson back up—but not before Amio took advantage of his mistake to see a friend.
He would need to be back before his next duty cycle at 1100, or it would bring him under immediate scrutiny. He hoped that his odd shift hours would give him an advantage. Off at 0300, he could get this done and be back in time.
On his last round through the brig, Amio sat down and logged a report on his “prisoner General,” citing the reason for his arrest as drunk and disorderly. A review of the vid surveillance would not disprove that reason; intoxication fit with the man’s behavior. The audio portion was another matter. Why couldn’t the man have kept his mouth shut? Amio was using official channels and gambling on timing to avoid raising suspicion and catching the admiral’s attention.
With luck, Amio’s little adventure would turn up some plausible, benign reason for Admiral Swan’s strange behavior, and no one would see the need for any review of the record.
He took a blank zephyr vellum, dropped it on the receiver and sent hard copy to it. He then added something special to it and, with the vellum in hand, in the remaining minutes of his duty cycle, he returned to the prisoner’s holding cell.
* * *
Something in the air changed. Hanson looked up from the sticky-bunk to see the hulk of the sergeant framed tightly by the rectangle of the doorway; it no longer shimmered with its modified field.
He was still feeling miserable, and waited for the Goliath to speak; instead, he was handed a zephyr. It was an official record of arrest, with his name at the top, but what pulled his attention was a hand-made scrawl, in light-purple z-ink, at the bottom. It was an ink he had not seen before: fuzzy and irritating to look at, like an ultraviolet light. As he slowly deciphered the writing, a tingle of hope and relief spread down his neck and across his shoulder blades. He visibly shuddered.
I might believe you. Trust me and do as I say.
Then the scrawl disappeared.
He looked up at his captor, who maintained his unnerving stare. Without a word between them, he put on the geckos that Amio handed him, stood up, maintaining the poise of a prisoner, and walked out of the cell.
His captor fell in behind.
CHAPTER 46
EVENT: DAY 14, 2330 UT
They were following an easy-to-miss ion-stream trace.
On the trail of the escape pod, the mission excitement had died down for the moment. An emergency pod was designed to make for the best safe-harbor, if available, leaving a breadcrumb trail to be followed by rescuers who knew how to find it. The pods didn’t have faster-than-light capability; it wouldn’t be too far.
A nearby system fit the safe-harbor parameters, just barely. It had two possibilities for landings, or the ship could be orbiting. The faint ionic spoor was leading them straight to the planet Eighre Masc. Even if the pod made planetfall, whoever was in that pod would likely still be in it—that was a cold, forbidding place.
Garrison had fabricated a transcript of a conversation with Dominique; he hoped to mislead Center about those brief moments of sanctuary in the suits. He was now trying to focus on the important mysteries that had been raised. The suspicions between him and Dominique had been relieved for the second time, and the tensions had ebbed once again. It was back to an easy connection, and his co-captain continued to be distracting.
He posited, “You know, I’m thinking about those Gravity Rejectors that we saw inside that vessel-within-a-vessel. I never saw them used aboard ship before. As I understand it, their fields interfere with the normal function of the radiation shields. There must have been a dozen of those ansible-like insertions. If they truly were Rejectors, then they would’ve had to set them up to cancel out any field overflow onboard. That arrangement might do it. That’d be my guess anyway.”
Dominique got up from the flight couch, the ship following its own instructions. “If you’re right and those are Rejectors, then I agree; they should cancel. But what was being contained in that chamber?” She moved and twisted her body to stretch her back in the confined space behind her couch.
Garrison admired her anatomy and flexibility, feeling stimulated as she bent double. “Yes… well, assuming by process of elimination that we’re talking engine technology, it’s clearly beyond standard A-M or fusion. And I guess we know it’s something that needed to be compressed in a sphere of gravity. Fascinating.” He went on. “Did the thing we are chasing break those chambers open? Are we assuming too much? These ships have been floating out here for,” he checked the logs, “about two weeks now. Could there be more than one of these pirates?”
Dominique was confident. “I think we can rule that out for more than one reason; but for starters, no other looting or scavenging is apparent. No other damage… except for what happened to the humans.”
He replied, “So our mystery force wanted that technology. That’s how it looks to me. And that smacks of intelligence.”
“So, what are we saying? That this bogey is some sort of alien that wants BUMP’s secret engine technology? Doesn’t that make us a similar target?”
“Might be. Depends if the primary targets were the humans or those scavenged engine components because, based on the shape of those containments, it’s obvious that no such drive is a part of this ship. We don’t have enough information though. I’d love to have seen the vid download off that scow.” Garrison’s mind went to Taylor on the Medallion. They would be collecting that data. What would her role be? He couldn’t imagine her having any kind of access to the mission data. She was just along for the ride. But who had arranged her commission on such a potentially ill-fated and dangerous assignment?
Of course, that’s why she wanted to go. The danger thing. She was all hot and bothered by the fear-factor. Still, someone with authority had to agree to allow a civilian on a hazardous mission.
He and Dominique were being pitted against each other at the same time that they were up against a dangerous, hostile unknown, like sucker bait. Were they pawns in a larger game? Was Taylor also a pawn? But why? Or was it personal? Had Taylor done something to upset someone?
As quickly as the question occurred to him, a list of possible offendees began to roll in his mind. It was pretty long.
I’m asking the wrong question. Maybe Taylor was the only pawn, just a means to an end, get
ting Garrison back under the thumb of BUMP. The thumb of someone he had pissed off. He hit a dead end at that; he had been a “good soldier.”
He rolled the thoughts over in his head, and voiced aloud, “You know, I have a friend onboard the Medallion.” As quick as the words left his mouth, he regretted them.
Dominique did not respond straightaway. He realized he had done two things: he may have pushed Taylor back into the sights of their eavesdropping adversary—considering that she might have been out of them, her part played. And more immediately, he’d just brought Taylor aboard their little ship, energetically speaking. He waited to see what would happen.
“Is this the girl that you were talking about taking a break from?”
She hadn’t forgotten their earlier conversation. Dominique’s tone was carefully neutral, but something in Garrison’s psyche signaled caution. “Well, I wouldn’t really say ‘taking a break’; we are just friends. We’ve fooled around a bit, but nothing serious.” He hoped that Dominique wasn’t the type to have jealousy issues. He really had no clue where this relationship might go from here, but he wanted to enjoy the hard-won connection between them, as much as possible under the circumstances. He did not wish to add further disharmonies.
“What kind of rank and position does she hold on the Medallion?” Dominique sounded skeptical and cautious but, to his relief, not jealous.
“She’s not in BUMP.” His voice had an unintentional conspiratorial edge. He adjusted to a more disinterested vocalization. “She’s just a thrill-seeker who lucked into this, if you can call it that. She got me involved, actually.” In truth, he could think of no advantage to SBMMP by having Taylor on that ship.
Parallel Extinction (Extinction Encounters Book 1) Page 25
