The Belt Loop (Book Two) - Revenge of the Varson

by Robert B. Jones

  The other man nodded and looked at the body on the floor. “But what if someone comes out to this dwelling looking for him? Those unanswered calls might alert one of his friends.”

  “You worry too much. We’ll have him out of here in another few minutes. While Teeluur is finishing up, why don’t you run back out to the road and bring the ground-car around.”

  Yaneel started to say something but held his tongue when Paarit curled his top lip and revealed his teeth. he pounded his chest with his left fist and left the bedroom.

  When the bathroom door opened, Paarit looked around. The figure in the doorway reached behind him and doused the lights. Thin fading twilight from the high windows in the bath suffused the man in purplish shadows. He finally stepped forward.

  “Did Yaneel go for the car? You should leave this place now,” Nood Teeluur said in perfect Elberese. “Make sure you’re not seen getting him aboard our skiff.”

  “Yes, sir. The boat is hidden at a small civilian airdrome south of here. The money we paid will assure our privacy,” the Malguurian said.

  Teeluur stepped closer, his face becoming illuminated by the light from the bedside lamps. He was tall, clean shaven and was bald by choice. It was not his choice, it was Bale Phatie’s choice. He was just following orders.

  He looked just like David Yorn. Commander Davi Yorn of the Third Colonial Navy Fleet out of Elber Prime.

  Paarit heard the motor from the ground-car and motioned for Teeluur to help him with the body. He was amazed at how perfect Teeluur’s impersonation was. He looked like Yorn, talked like him, and even moved like the human officer.

  “You guys get on the move. There have been calls and I must check in with my captain. The longer I delay, the more suspicious he’s going to get. I don’t want him coming down here to check on me. That is his way, always the ‘mother hen’ I think the expression goes.”

  Paarit grunted. The relevance of most of the silly human expressions escaped him. “I say let him come. We could end this thing before it even starts.”

  The doppelganger Yorn looked at this countryman. “That kind of talk will get you executed, Paarit. Colonel Inskaap has ears everywhere. Shut your fucking mouth and let’s get this done. I have work to do.”

  After the ground-car left, Yorn’s double retreated into the house. He had calls to make. The first part of the Vanuuiad — the Decimation — was done.

  PART THREE: Bayliss Can Wait

  Chapter 16

  “Keep your shirt on, captain. I was down at the lake doing a little fishing.”

  “Okay, I’ll buy that. Next time you go wandering off, take your VOX with you. I was just about to send a detachment of marines your way,” Haad scolded.

  He laughed. “Okay, sir, I’ll remember. What’s got your hair on fire if I might ask.” Teeluur strained to remember as many human phrases as he could. He hoped his syntax in this guttural language would not trip him up.

  “Just wanted to let you know a few things, Davi. About my meeting with Admiral Paine.”

  Teeluur looked down at his reader and slid a few pages across the screen. When he found the information he was looking for he said, “And how is your friend Vinny doing? He still as cantankerous as ever?”

  “Like a Bayliss bulldog. But, he had some interesting news to share.” Haad went on for ten minutes describing his meeting with Paine. At the end of his recap, he announced, “Congrats, Davi. You’re getting a ship. And if the Christi survives the refit, she’ll be your first command!”

  Uh-oh. This was unexpected. A change in the plans was not fortuitous at this early stage in the Decimation. Inskaap had counted on Haad and Yorn being shipmates for at least the next few years. But he thought about it. Maybe this was a blessing in disguise. If he had the bridge on a Colonial Navy warship and could do with it as he saw fit, that command could lead to further decimation of the enemy fleet. He had to get this information to Inskaap as soon as it was practical.

  “Hey, Davi, you still there?”

  Shit. He had to say something, but he didn’t know how to respond! That’s it, he thought, plead bewilderment. “I, I don’t know what to say, Uri.”

  “Well, you better think of something. You’ll be wearing your eagles when we get back from Bayliss.”

  Something else unplanned. “Bayliss, sir?”

  Haad went on to tell him about the upcoming trip to Bayliss and what Admiral Paine expected them to do there. “Before we return to Elber, Paine is going to let me decorate you at the War College. Sounds like fun, huh?”

  Teeluur was starting to feel the pressure. This latest turn of events would upset a lot of carefully laid plans. He wondered if the Vanuuiad could tolerate any more good news from Captain Haad. “So, you pushed my name forward, captain?”

  “Sure as shit did. Davi, you’re ready for your own ship. You’ve proved that time and time again. Personally, I think this will help you put the Mobile Bay behind you. Help you move on.”

  Teeluur knew from his studies of the man anytime the captain said anything ‘personally’ it meant only one thing. “Have you been drinking, Uriel?”

  Haad laughed out loud. “You know me too well, Davi. As a matter of fact, I have had a couple. If you were up here right now, you could say the same thing.”

  “Maybe later. I have a lot of things to do to my place. I’ll probably dismiss the maintenance company and interview another firm. These guys have let my house deteriorate some. I’m not happy about that,” he lied, trying to buy some time away from Uri Haad and the Navy. Yorn’s digs were in reality immaculate and well kept.

  “Well, don’t waste too much time on it, we’ve got orders coming down in the next couple of days. Keep that goddamned VOX on you, too. I have the feeling we’re gonna have to make sail before week’s end.”

  The two officers exchanged a few more minutes of small talk and Haad finally broke the connection after Yorn thanked him for the third time. He paged up the information on the NAVVOX on his reader and digested it quickly. A simple voice activated paging system used by senior officers to communicate travel orders and ship movements while ashore. Secure frequencies protected by 132-bit encryption algorithms. Easy enough. But since they had to put the real Yorn down in a hurry, there was no way they could figure out his personal code for the device. It would have to be a simplex device for Teeluur; he could only receive messages and not send them. He slipped the device in his pants pocket and left the bedroom.

  Next he had to figure a way to get a message to Inskaap in a hurry. Things were moving fast.

  * * *

  “Bayliss? What am I going to do on Bayliss?”

  “Relax, commander. It’s more of a dog-and-pony show than anything else. Admiral Paine wants us to be ambassadors of good will for the Colonial Navy. All we have to do is give a few presentations to the graduating senior class, inspire some of the underclassmen, shake a lot of hands and come home in time for the launch of the new ship.”

  Milli Gertz held her tongue. The last thing she wanted to do right now was cruise to Bayliss. “So, why me, captain?”

  “Why not you, Commander Gertz? Your experiences in the Belt Loop should make for some high-spirited exchanges with the next wave of cadets to come out of the military school. Who knows, maybe some of the cadets will be inspired enough by your tales to enter a technical field. Go on to an advanced degree in science or biology,” Uri Haad said.

  He had been talking to Gertz for over ten minutes and it was obvious she wanted no part in his little promotional tour to Bayliss. He had to select a group of six officers from the Corpus Christi to accompany him and he wanted to get a good representation of rankings to help highlight the diversity available to incoming recruits. Not all of them would survive the rigors of OCS — Officer Candidate School — and most would probably wind up in the enlisted ranks serving as construction, deck, administration, weapons, or engineering ratings. Six years of active duty was a long time and these students had to be shown what a great life they had
in store for them in the Navy. If he could inspire just a few of them, propel a handful of graduates to stick around after their mandatory enlistments were finished, he could come away satisfied and Admiral Paine would be pleased.

  “Well, sir, I don’t think I make such a good spokesperson right now. My hand? What do I tell them about that?”

  Haad considered this. In the back of his mind he thought it was a good thing to present a true picture of the perils of serving in an expeditionary force. Her scrape with the alien birds would further bolster his planned oratory about the adventurism and the challenges of service. “But, don’t you see, Milli, that’s exactly what they need to see! You represent what’s positive and exciting about cruising the Loop or the Fringes. How one can come away with a lifetime of experiences in service to the colonies and live to talk about it.”

  “You’re joking, right? As soon as I take my glove off half of those cadets are gonna bolt for the door. Have you really thought this through, Captain Haad?”

  “Yes I have. And so has the admiral. Milli, don’t make me have to order you to do this.”

  They were seated in the open mess at the BOQ. Haad had sent a staff car for her at 0800 hours and his earlier call had indicated something important was in the works. She felt a little disappointed that this was the thrust of his conversation. With all of the things popping over at the base medical labs and all of the work she had piling up on her relating to the two new species they had recovered from the derelict worm, this trip to Bayliss was, in her mind, nothing more than a supreme annoyance.

  “Why can’t you take Isaacs with you, sir? Wouldn’t a ship’s surgeon make a more credible ambassador?” she said while avoiding eye contact with Haad.

  “Isaacs is done, Milli. I’m sure he’s going to retire before we sail again.”

  She looked around the mess hall. Officers and NCO’s moved through her line of sight as they carried their trays from the serving line to various tables around them. Occasionally men would pause as they passed her and Haad. The captain nodded a few times at some of the passers by. Not once were they interrupted even though she felt their table was the focus of a lot of unspoken attention.

  “Alright, then. Count me in.”

  Haad finished his coffee and leaned back slightly. “Good. I knew I could count on you,” he said. “I do have an ulterior motive in all of this, Milli. I don’t know if the scuttlebutt has reached the Base Hospital but I am recruiting for my next command. I’m getting a destroyer when we get back from Bayliss.” He went on to tell her most of what Admiral Paine had shared with him the previous day. “I want you to crew with me, Lieutenant Commander Gertz. I want you to sign up for the advanced school while you’re on Bayliss. After a year you would come to the Hudson River as my XO. Would that interest you?”

  She stopped looking at the other tables and made direct eye contact with her captain for the first time in ten minutes. “I, you mean, me on the line?”

  “I need people that can think on their feet, people that know their way around the Navy, people that I can count on not to turn tail and run when there’s a fight. I think you’re that kind of officer, and it wouldn’t be the first time a staffer made the jump to an unrestricted line officer.” What he didn’t share with her was the fact he would be moving ahead to a Fleet Command position himself in the near future. He was trying to line his pockets with the most competent members of his old crew so once he had his own fleet assembled at least some of the various ship captains and executive officers would be men and women he could count on.

  “But what about Commander Yorn? What about the Christi? Is she going to sail again, sir?”

  He rubbed his hands together and smiled. “The word I got this morning from the Canton drydock chief was encouraging. He thinks she’ll survive. Hull repairs and a new electrical system will right the ship in a hurry.”

  “And Davi?”

  “He’s getting the Christi. I plan to decorate him while we’re on Bayliss. The recommendation has gone forward and Admiral Paine has given it his personal endorsement. I know he’ll make a fine captain, Milli. Do you agree?”

  She hugged herself and smiled. Just thinking about Davi Yorn seemed to release a little carbonation into her otherwise flat drinks of life. A tall senior officer approached their table and shot the shit with Haad for a few minutes and that interruption gave her time to think.

  Things were happening fast in her world. The captain was giving her the opportunity of a lifetime. Her only reservation was the thought of losing control of the work she had ongoing with the alien worms — the Kreet they were being called now — and the still basically unknown alien birds. Did she want to trade her cloistered life in a laboratory for the high-tension job of commanding men and women on the bridge of a starship? Had she toiled enough as a junior officer for the Navy and now was her time to advance into the higher echelon of commander?

  The alien birds could become her lifetime work if she stayed the course in exobiology. There were so many unanswered questions about that species and she could make a career out of coming up with solutions to the nagging inconsistencies in the bird genus, with the apparent illogical eclosion from the pods, more insectile than —

  “So, what say you, Commander Gertz? Are you all aboard for this?” Haad asked.

  She looked up in time to see the other officer walk away from the table. Did she need time to think it through? Hell no! “I’m in, sir,” she said. “And thank you for your confidence in me. I won’t let you down.”

  He reached across and grabbed her hand, the one in the latex glove. “I know you won’t, Milli. I know you won’t.”

  Chapter 17

  Max Hansen couldn’t decide what to wear. She had been in uniforms for so long that when presented with the option of wearing civilian clothes her mind just shut down. She had two outfits spread out on her bed and she had to select one of them. She just didn’t have any more to choose from. At least, none as nice as these two. Har just stared at her from the doorway.

  “The red or the black one, Har?”

  He gave his usual “Idunno” mumble and moved away. Har didn’t seem pleased that his mother was meeting a man for lunch. He thought it was stupid. Some guy named Paxton had called for her early this morning. He knew the name. It was the captain of that other ship, that Pearl Harbor ship they had sent out to rescue them. If they hadn’t screwed around with those aliens right from the start, there would’ve been no need to call for help, Har thought.

  Max settled on the red outfit, a nice flowing synthetic that should show her slim figure well. She really had mixed emotions about the lunch date. Date? Perhaps that was too strong a word or she was reading more into it than was actually there. Captain Curton had said he got her information from Captain Haad and had wanted to have lunch with her as a show of gratitude for her work on the derelict ship. Said he appreciated innovative officers and ones that showed upward mobility. Sounded like so much bull to her, but, she’d agreed anyway. Before the Christi had limped out of the Loop she had ferried over to the Pearl to assist Lieutenant Mols on a communications interface problem she was having with the ship’s mainframe. Pax Curton was gentleman enough to escort her around his huge ship and seemed like a nice enough officer. He had promised her a meal if they ever wound up in port together.

  Today he was making good on that promise. Max finished dressing and gave Har a few simple instructions as to how she expected him to behave in her absence. One thing for sure, she told him, under no circumstances was he to leave the base. Not for any reason. He dutifully agreed and told her that he was going to walk over to the base theater and maybe watch a holo-vid or play some arcade games. She gave him a twenty-credit note and kissed him on the forehead.

  Pax Curton was right on time and she walked out to the street and looked at his transportation as he got out and ran around to open the door for her. She didn’t know beans about ground-cars but this one was definitely not from the base motor pool. The car was low and wid
e, had studded tires and the multicolored fairings surrounding all four wheels gave it the look of a competition racer.

  “Wow,” Max said as she appraised the vehicle. “Is this yours?”

  “Hello, lieutenant. Yes, it is mine. I keep it in storage for my infrequent visits to port. You like?”

  “Very much, captain. Very much.” He was dressed in all black and wore a pair of highly polished aviator sunglasses that punched two silverized holes in his rugged face. He looked even more dashing in his civvies than he had strutting around the bridge of the Pearl Harbor in his uniform, she thought.

  He smiled and bowed to her. “If it’s all the same to you, just call me Pax. Hey, we’re off duty and I don’t think the Navy’ll mind if you don’t.”

  Max turned her head to the side and smiled. “Okay, Pax, and you should return the favor. Call me Max.”

  Once she was in the car, he returned to the operator’s side and closed the door. “Max and Pax. That makes it easy enough.”

  “Where’re we going, Pax? You know more about Nova Haven than I do.”

  “How about some sea food? I know of a nice little place down the coast. That alright with you?”

  He started the car. For some reason she allowed the hem of her red skirt to remain just above her knees. “Sounds good, as long as it’s not too far away. I have a twelve-year-old to worry about leaving alone for too long.”

  Pax laughed out loud as he pulled away from the building. “I know about Harold. As a matter of fact, I think the whole Third Fleet knows about your son, Max. Word gets around, you know.”

  “That’s what I was afraid you’d say.”

  “Come on, he can’t be that bad, can he?”

  She turned toward him, her lithe body sliding effortless on the leather seat. “He’s not really a bad kid, it’s just he has his own way of looking at things. He loves to think of his world as one of adventure and danger and he can see conspiracies behind every bush. Alien conspiracies.”