Duty, Honor, Planet: The Complete Trilogy

by Rick Partlow

  “I’m all right, Daddy,” she assured him, patting his arm. “I promise, I’ll be okay.”

  “Christ, I forgot why I came in here!” O’Keefe slapped himself on the forehead. “We just received a transmission from the satellite control center outside Capital City! They’ve done it! The Fleet has arrived! They’ve destroyed the Protectorate ships!”

  “Thank God,” Glen sighed, his shoulders sagging with relief.

  “Then it’s all over,” Valerie said.

  “Well, hardly over,” her father replied, coming to his feet. “After all, aside from President Jameson and myself, there is no Republic government to speak of. Most of the cities have had their power feeds cut. There are still Protectorate troops on the ground on the North American continent, and God only knows what’s happening in the star colonies. No, we have a lot of work to do still.” He leaned down and kissed Valerie on the cheek. “I’m very sorry about your baby, honey. But maybe now when you and Glen decide to have another child, you’ll have a better world to bring it into.”

  Valerie glanced at Glen, saw him looking at her and quickly looked away.

  “Well,” Senator O’Keefe smiled, “I’ll leave you two alone---try to get some rest, honey.”

  “I love you, Daddy,” she said.

  “I love you, too, honey.” Then he was gone.

  “If you want to go,” Val told Glen, “I’ll understand.”

  “I’ll stay till you go back to sleep,” he said, slipping an arm around her.

  She snuggled into his shoulder, arms going around his waist.

  “What about after that?” she whispered so softly he could hardly hear her.

  “After that,” he sighed, finding a smile creeping across his face, “I’ll stay a while longer.”

  Val hugged him tighter.

  Epilogue

  “Perhaps the best thing about the future is that it only comes one day at a time.”

  ---Dean Acheson.

  Jason leaned back in his chair and watched the construction pods flit to and fro on his office’s holographic viewscreen, slowly rebuilding republic Spacefleet Headquarters from the inside out. He glanced around his office, at once incredibly large and incredibly confining, and wondered for the hundredth time what the hell he was doing here.

  All right, it had made sense. With the Snake dead, along with most of the Fleet officer corps, he was the logical choice to head Fleet Intelligence. But Colonel? For Christ’s sake, he wasn’t even thirty!

  He checked his watch again. He had an hour till his ViR-conference with the Joint Chiefs and nothing at all to do till then. Was this what the Snake had done when no one was around? Sat back and looked out the window?

  He nearly jumped out of his seat when his intercom beeped.

  “Sir,” the young Lieutenant outside announced, “Major Stark to see you.”

  “Send her in,” he blurted, straightening up in his chair and smoothing down the front of his uniform.

  Shannon strode in, her Intell blacks impeccable as always, the smile on her face a beacon that lit the dreariness of his office. She stiffened into a salute as the door closed behind her.

  “Major Stark reporting for duty, sir,” she clipped off, her smirk belying the crispness of her words.

  “Stop that,” Jason admonished her, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her into a kiss.

  “Aren’t you going to return my salute?” she asked as they parted slightly.

  “I think I am,” he replied with a wry grin. He shook his head. “God, I’ve missed you.”

  “Aren’t you going to decorate this place?” She looked around at the vast emptiness of his office. “You’ve been here what? Three weeks?”

  “I still can’t get used to having an office,” he admitted, shaking his head. “I think I’ve risen to the level of my incompetence.”

  “The President has the utmost confidence in you,” she reminded him, kissing him to punctuate the statement. “And so do I.”

  “How’s the recruiting coming?” he asked her, slipping out of her arms to sit on the edge of his desk. “Does Ari have a team together yet?”

  “He’s getting there,” she told him. “It’s slow going, with so many holes to fill in the military. We picked up a couple recruits from that Cleveland Police emergency response team, and Ari brought in Clarke and a couple others from his platoon.” She sighed. “I think he still misses Gunny Lambert.”

  “We all lost a lot,” Jason said quietly, a frown descending over his face.

  Shannon stroked his arm in silent understanding. Jason had taken the loss of Valerie’s baby hard, harder than she would have thought.

  “Have you talked to her since...?” she asked him awkwardly.

  He shook his head. “I called the Senator yesterday. He said she and Glen are taking a long vacation at his house in Canada. I guess they’re going to try and make things work.”

  “I’m happy for them.” Shannon took his hand, squeezed it. “And I’m happy for us. So,” she asked him, ”does our fearless leader have time for lunch with his executive officer?”

  “Oh God, I wish,” he moaned. “But I have the Joint Chiefs in an hour.”

  “What now?” she wondered. “Still arguing about the search project?”

  He nodded, letting out a deep breath. “Antonov got off that ship,” he declared. “I know he did. We still haven’t found that wormhole in the belt, and even with Podbyrin’s cooperation, we may never locate it. We have to get scoutships out there and find that system.”

  “There’s a lot of problems in the colonies,” she pointed out, “and we don’t have enough ships to cover them all.”

  “That’s what Admiral Patel keeps saying.” Jason grimaced. “God, I already hate this job.”

  “Well,” she laughed, “there has to be a downside to being the youngest Colonel in Republic history. Look,” she went on, straightening his collar, “you are probably the most respected---hell, revered---officer in the Republic military, you have the President’s ear anytime you want it, and I can get you a meeting with the Senate Majority Leader with one call.” She fixed him with a glare. “If there’s something you think should be done, don’t let Patel and Minishimi or any of those stuffed shirts in the Joint Chiefs push you around---go over their heads and get it done.” Her expression softened. “That’s what the Snake would have done.”

  He regarded her seriously for a long moment before his face finally cracked into a smile.

  “You’re right, as always,” he admitted. He looked around him and laughed softly. “Sometimes I think all this is the Snake’s ultimate revenge.”

  “Well,” Shannon said, checking her watch, “you’d better get ready for that meeting. But I’ll tell you what---after you get out of here tonight, what do you say we take the shuttle to McAullife,” she ran her fingers through his hair, arching an eyebrow suggestively, “get a nice little suite and enjoy the weekend?”

  “You got a deal, Major. I’ll meet you at my quarters in three hours.”

  “I can hardly wait, Colonel.” She pushed gently away from him and headed for the door.

  “Hey, Shannon,” he called, halting her as she reached for the door control. “I seem to recall,” Jason reminded her, “that you once told me you thought you should be in charge.”

  “Jason,” she said, smiling broadly, “I am in charge.”

  The door closed behind her, and Jason regarded it in bemused silence.

  Duty, Honor, Planet 2:

  Honor Bound

  By Rick Partlow

  “The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.”---R. Buckminster Fuller

  Chapter One

  Jason McKay adjusted his grip on the pistol, the tacky surface of his gloves holding it secure despite the sweat that soaked his palms beneath that material. The interior of the old storehouse was like a darkened broiler and his battle utilities were soaked beneath his body armor, rivulets of perspiration running down his face as he crouched behind the con
crete solidity of a support pillar. This had gone on too long…the heads-up readout in his helmet was counting up past fifteen minutes since he’d entered the building and there was still at least one target inside, armed with an assault rifle. He was running out of time.

  He winked his right eye and the shadowed recesses of the warehouse interior brightened into a two-dimensional, green-tinted maze of stacked cargo containers, each of the square, plastic boxes labeled with some arcane numeric designation next to their computer code. None of them showed anything on thermal and he saw no heat sources visible anywhere other than a few glowing power outlets. But he knew they were here…and they knew he couldn’t wait forever.

  Drawing in a deep breath, McKay threw himself from behind the support column and rolled forward across the aisle as a burst of automatic fire cratered the pillar in a spray of concrete, then drilled into the floor inches behind him. He took cover behind a line of cargo boxes, flinching as the rifle fire tore into them just above his head. But now he knew where the gunman was: the fire had come from above, from the landing of the stairs up to the loader control room.

  Getting to the stairs would mean crossing twenty meters of open ground…and that would be suicide. McKay glanced above him, then holstered his handgun and leaped upwards to grab the next shelf of cargo containers. Grunting with the effort of lifting his own eighty kilos plus another ten of body armor, he pulled himself hand over hand to the top shelf, then levered himself onto the topmost cargo container. Scrambling forward onto his belly, he drew his pistol from its drop holster and high-crawled down the line of boxes, their hard, ridged surfaces clunking awkwardly against his leg armor and elbow pads.

  Now he could see a thermal source…human-shaped, through the window of the control room, part of the elbow sticking out the doorway as it aimed the rifle downward, waiting for McKay to show himself again. McKay cursed silently…he had no good shot from this angle. The doorframe shielded the shooter’s torso and head and he wasn’t sure his handgun rounds could penetrate the wall material. He looked around him, then felt at his belt, fishing a spare magazine from the pouch at his waist. Rising up on his right elbow and right knee, he threw the magazine as hard as he could across the room to the right. It clattered noisily against the far wall and he was already on his feet as the gunman turned the barrel of his rifle and his attention to that direction. McKay jumped from one cargo crate to the next with broad strides until he reached the end of the row, only three meters from the suspended claws of the cargo loader arm hanging from the ceiling.

  Gritting his teeth, McKay threw himself across the gap, catching the upper mandibles of the loader arm with his left hand, while his feet found purchase on the lower pair, his knees flexing to absorb the shock. The Gomer with the rifle heard the metallic clank as the loader arm wobbled under his weight and he swung the short-barreled bullpup weapon around, but McKay was still moving, leaping off the loader onto the stairway landing, firing his outstretched handgun in midair.

  The targeting reticle in his helmet HUD was connected to the sight of his pistol, but there was no time to focus on it; instead, McKay aimed by instinct, the large-caliber auto bucking in his hand as the floor of the landing swiftly came up to meet him. McKay took the landing in a shoulder roll, coming to his feet over the falling body of the gunman and pumping two more rounds into him before he fell into a crouch in the doorway, scanning for more targets. Before he could turn the whole 360 degrees, a blast of gunfire sounded from behind him and he spun around, throwing himself to the floor.

  He saw a rifleman in the mottled grey armor and dark-visored helmet of the enemy slumped to the ground, his carbine clattering on the hard floor. Behind him stood a slim, curved figure in the darker fatigues and armor that he shared, a handgun similar to his own held outstretched in a classic tactical stance. It was obvious that both the shooter and the victim had come in on the other side of the control room through a now-open door that led to the outside, a moonlit sky barely visible through it.

  “Thanks,” McKay said, breathing heavily as the adrenaline began to flow out of him. Before the word was out of his mouth, the counter in his HUD ran out and an alarm horn went off above them…

  “Simulation ended, time has expired,” a voice sounded through his helmet speakers. “Colonel McKay and Major Stark have successfully completed Scenario Seven. Congratulations, sir, ma’am.”

  The lights of the room came up and McKay sighed with relief as the climate control kicked in, bringing the temperature and humidity down. He pulled off his helmet and the illusions it had sustained abruptly ended: the “night sky” outside the open door had changed into a blank wall in the middle distance, the dilapidated look of the “warehouse” disappeared along with the bullet-holes in the walls and cargo containers, and the wounds on the downed enemies---and the pools of blood around them---faded away even as the two men rose to their feet, laughing.

  “Damn, Colonel,” the one he had shot said, chuckling ruefully. “That was an awesome move…but you could have broken your neck!” He pulled off his helmet, revealing a sharp-angled, freckled face and a scalp-short brown buzz cut.

  “You fight how you train and you train how you fight, Vinnie,” Colonel McKay reminded him, unfastening his body armor and letting it drop to the floor. Aside from cushioning you from impacts, it had the detrimental effect of immobilizing you if you were shot in the simulation. A small swarm of enlisted personnel came out from behind previously-invisible doors to collect the armor and the special simulator weapons.

  “Is that why I got the drop on you, sir?” the other man cracked in a strong Australian accent, running a hand over his sweat-matted blond hair as he rose to his full meter-nine height.

  “I wasn’t worried about you, Jock,” McKay said, smiling. “I knew she had my back.”

  She was a tall, athletic woman, with shoulder-length golden-red hair, green eyes and a strong-chinned, high-cheekboned face that still took his breath away after six years. She smirked as she tossed her armor on the floor next to McKay’s.

  “Yeah,” she said with just a hint of her native Irish accent. “We planned it that way…but you’ll note that my part of the plan didn’t involve jumping off any freight-loaders, Jason.”

  “Shannon, I know better than anyone that no plan survives contact with the enemy.” McKay cocked an eyebrow. “Even when the enemy is our friends.” He slapped Vinnie on the shoulder. “Hell, especially when it’s these guys. They still get paid to do this stuff…you and I spend most of our time in meetings or buried in scout reports. Thanks,” he nodded to a Technician Second Class as the young man handed them water bottles. He downed about half the bottle, and then poured the rest over his head, sighing deeply.

  “Well, even though you’re the youngest full-bird colonel in Republic military history,” Shannon reminded him between gulps from her own water bottle, “you’re still a desk jockey running the Intelligence Service…that generally doesn’t involve much field work.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed with a dissatisfied scowl. “This wasn’t quite what I envisioned when Colonel Mellanby transferred me out of the Marines back when.”

  “Sir,” one of the technicians, a Lieutenant, approached him, looking a bit hesitant. “I hate to rush you, but we do have three more training groups coming through this afternoon…”

  “Yeah, I get the hint, son,” he nodded. Son…hell, he’s only about seven or eight years younger than me. “We’ll do our jawing elsewhere.”

  The other three followed McKay out the main exit to the simulator bay, past rows of monitors that had displayed their session to the technicians. He was sure it had been recorded…he had already seen one of his and Shannon’s previous training runs on the ‘net. He shook his head slightly…it wasn’t always convenient being a living legend. Beats being a dead one though.

  “So, Vinnie,” he went on as they headed for the locker rooms, “how goes the recruit training?”

  “Oh, about as well as I could expect,” the younge
r man shrugged. “This latest class has a couple that show some promise. Tom…err, Master Sergeant Crossman, that is…tells me there’s one guy who’s even better at hand-to-hand than he is, if you can believe it.”

  Shannon smiled, having noticed the slip. “Tough being an officer, isn’t it, Vinnie?”

  “Sometimes I’d rather go back to being ‘Sergeant Mahoney’ instead of ‘Captain Mahoney,’ ma’am,” he admitted. “But it’s important work, and someone’s gotta do it.”

  “See you boys on the other side.” Shannon waved, heading into the women’s locker room.

  “You’ve got the job I was supposed to have,” McKay commented a bit wistfully to Vinnie as the three of them stripped out of their battle utilities in the men’s locker room. “And don’t think I don’t wish sometimes I were still Captain McKay, First Special Operations Command instead of Colonel McKay, Fleet Intelligence.”

  “Well I am damn glad,” Jock proclaimed, stepping under one of the showers, “that I stayed ‘Sergeant Gregory’ when you blokes tried to talk me into OCS!”

  “One of ‘you blokes’ was the President of the Republic,” Vinnie reminded him.

  “And he lost the next election, didn’t he?” Jock shot back. “Shows how good his advice was.”

  The three men had just finished showering off and were beginning to get dressed when the ‘link clipped to the collar of McKay’s black uniform shirt chimed for attention.

  “McKay,” he responded tersely as he tucked the shirt into his trousers.

  “Colonel McKay,” a voice he recognized as that of his aide de camp, Lieutenant Franks came over the microphone, “I’m sorry, sir, I know you left instructions not to disturb you, but sir, it’s General Kage again…he keeps calling back and insists on speaking with you today.”

  “Oh great,” Jock sighed, listening in on the conversation. “What does that…” he stopped in mid-sentence at a quelling look from Vinnie, “…fine Colonial Guard officer want now?” he finished, rolling his eyes.