Duty, Honor, Planet: The Complete Trilogy

by Rick Partlow

  “Surely I do, Lieutenant,” he smiled in return. “I would be most grateful if you would be willing to show me this place.”

  “I have a flitter on call in the motor pool,” she told him. “Meet me there at 1800 hours…sir.”

  “So, Lieutenant Hudec,” Ari said conversationally between bites of lamb, “tell me…how did you wind up as a trainer here?”

  “We are away from the base,” she took a sip of wine. “Is it permissible to call me Alida?”

  Ari watched the shadows of the candlelight play across her face, not conventionally beautiful but still alluring. “Yes, Alida,” he savored the name as it came off his lips. He was a bit surprised that he had to remind himself not to ask her to call him ‘Ari.’ “I would tell you to call me ‘Mohammed,’ but no one calls me that. My full name is Mohammed Abed Al-Masri, so back home they call me ‘Abed.’ But when I joined the Fleet Marines, my fellow officers all called me ‘Mo.’ This is not something a Muslim would do…you do not shorten the name Mohammed, it is disrespectful.” He shrugged. “I am not so religious as my parents, or especially my grandparents. Which is, I suppose, why I am here rather than in charge of the family fortune, as my elder brother is.” He smiled and lifted his wine glass, inclining it toward her. “You can call me ‘Mo.’”

  She nodded, returned the toast and took a sip. “To answer your question, Mo, I came to be here because I embarrassed the hell out of my parents.”

  He laughed sharply. “Ah, a direct woman. So, what did you do to scandalize the Hudec family?”

  “I was a silly, teenage girl, in my first year at university, rebelling against my parents, who are career diplomats. I was smitten with a boy, who was a neo-Marxist.” She sighed. “I knew nothing of politics other than that he horrified my parents. Unfortunately, he had friends who were not hesitant to use violence to further their beliefs, and I was a convenient pawn. They attempted to kidnap me, to use me as a tool against my parents. It…did not end well for them. While young and stupid, I was not a helpless waif. I disarmed one of them and killed them all.”

  “Khara,” he swore softly. It was Arabic for “shit.”

  “It was a huge story for a while, and my parents suggested that I might consider going off to college somewhere far away from there. I saved them further mortification by joining the Guard. I finished my schooling in my off time, and went through this course myself only two years ago. Then…” She hesitated, taking another sip of wine. “I was on Kali when the Moro People’s Army attacked the capitol at Pithapuram.”

  “Blood of the prophet,” he hissed. “That was a nightmare.”

  “Only four of us survived,” she said softly, staring somewhere past him. “We held out in the armory for three days until reinforcements arrived.”

  “Well, I suppose that answers why you are here,” he raised an eyebrow. “Yet, I wonder, Alida, whether anything we can teach them will be enough.” Seemingly casually, he glanced around at the dark, cozy restaurant, its walls decorated with colorful mosaics. There were only a few other people eating and they all seem deeply involved with their own conversations. “Things are bad out there, and they are going to get much worse. O’Keefe is a bloody fool, and our troops are going to be the ones to pay the price.”

  “So you are not a fan of the new emigration policies, Mo?” She asked him, her mouth curled into a sarcastic smirk.

  “History shows us that revolutions happen in times of increased expectations. That moron is creating the perfect atmosphere for revolution, and then trying to tie our hands and keep us from preventing it. And it’s not just the colonies I worry about,” he expanded. “Without the ability to remove troublemakers and provocateurs from the population, we will be faced with violent uprisings right here on Earth, the same sort that led to forced exile in the first place.” His expression grew dark. “I tell you truly, Alida, I feel that our whole civilization is in danger of burning. And I do not know what I can do to stop it.”

  “You are not the only one who feels that way,” she said quietly, eyes flickering to meet his as she hid her mouth behind a sip of wine.

  “I am certain of that,” he shrugged. “But unless they wish to get drunk together, I do not see what good it does.”

  “You should talk to them,” she suggested. “Then you can judge what good they can do.”

  “If you think well of them, I would be happy to, of course,” he said, trying mightily not to show the eagerness he felt. “Though I should tell you, I have little experience speaking with politicians.”

  “These men and women are not politicians, Mo. I think you will find them easy to relate to. But I will tell you more once I have had the chance to talk to them. For now…” She cocked her head to the side and grinned. “The night is young. Let us speak of more pleasant things…”

  Ari felt his heart beat a bit faster as she laid a hand on top of his.

  There were some advantages, he realized as he grinned back at her, to being married to your job…

  Chapter Six

  Shannon Stark stepped out of the flitter and onto the soft loam of the clearing. The valley and the lake at its center were remnants of the glaciers that had swept through northern Minnesota 12,000 years before, but the cabin and the dock behind it were more recent, dating back only three hundred years. The bass boat floating next to the dock could have been a year old or a hundred…the design for such things didn’t change much. The man dressed in casual clothing, fishing off the dock could have been from anytime in the three hundred years the cabin had existed, though he had definitely changed in the years she had known him.

  Glen Mulrooney still had the same wavy, blond hair and the same youthful look to his rounded, pleasant face, but that face seemed less driven than when she’d first met him and more at peace with himself. As she came closer, Glen reeled in his line and dropped the pole into the boat, then turned and strode over to meet her.

  “Hey Shannon,” he smiled, taking her hand. “You’re looking good.”

  “So are you, Glen,” she said. “Nice place you have here.”

  “Isn’t it?” He looked around, as if appreciating it himself for the first time. “Val loves bringing Natalia out here…there’s no roads, no one around for a hundred miles.” He laughed. “I’d never gone fishing before, you know that?” His eyes went thoughtful. “I wonder how many people go fishing. Probably not a lot...most people live their whole lives in the cities.” He shook his head clear. “But I don’t think you flew out all this way to talk about fishing.” He waved at the cabin. “Let’s go inside.”

  The interior of the cabin was more modern than the outside; a full holographic communications hub occupied one corner, appropriate for the getaway vacation house of a Republic Senator. Glen gestured to the kitchen table and sat across from her. Running a hand across its smooth surface, she noticed that it was real wood.

  “Val said you wanted to talk someplace private,” he said. “I couldn’t think of anyplace more private than this.”

  “I’ve had people investigating the rumor Val told us about,” Shannon began without any further preamble. “But it’s brought up some questions…some things that need to be looked into. But I can’t do it, and neither can my people, not without raising some red flags.”

  “So you want me to do it,” he deduced. “All right…what is it?”

  “Vice President Dominguez. If they want to take out your father-in-law, there has to be a reason. Unless they expect things to be different if Dominguez is in charge, it doesn’t make any sense.”

  “You think he’s involved?” Glen seemed surprised.

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “The alternative is, they have something on him they think they can use to control him. Either way, we have to know.”

  “I don’t know him that well,” Glen said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “But I know President O’Keefe trusts him. They’ve been friends for years.”

  “Can you do some digging for us? Or is this too high up the food
chain? I don’t want you or Val to get burned in this.”

  “I’ll dig around the edges, see if I turn up anything that could point toward him being compromised,” Glen said, wheels turning behind his eyes as he spoke. “There are a few journalists I could talk to, people I trust, that have systems for connecting this kind of thing. That way, if something does pop up, Dominguez couldn’t keep it quiet just by…silencing me.”

  “Glen,” she cautioned, “if you think you’ve gone too far, back off. You have your family to think of. Ask your journalist friends, but that’s it…keep your involvement in this untraceable.”

  “I’ll stay quiet,” he assured her. “I wouldn’t do anything to put Val or Natalia in danger. Besides,” he shrugged, “it might all turn out to be nothing.”

  “Let’s hope. If you find out anything and need to reach me, send a message to this address…let me see your ‘link.” He handed the device over and she tapped a name into his address book file. At his raised eyebrow, she chuckled. “It’s safer and harder to trace than if I’d sent you the name electronically.”

  “Well, you’re the spymaster,” he shrugged, pocketing the ‘link. “So, tell me…how are you and Jason doing?”

  “Great,” she sighed, “except for all the time we have to spend apart. But that’s just part of the job.”

  “You two ever think about having kids?”

  “We’ve talked about it. But we’ve both agreed we want to wait until we’re ready to retire from the military. Having both your parents shipping around different star systems for months at a time is no way for a kid to grow up.”

  “Somehow I just can’t imagine you retiring, Shannon,” Glen laughed.

  “I expect to live a long time,” she grinned, knocking on the wood of the table, “barring enemy action. People change. Ten, twenty years down the road I might be ready to change diapers and read stories.”

  “Well, don’t wait too long,” he warned her. He glanced out the window at the lake, his face peaceful. “Because you’re right…people change.”

  * * *

  “People never change, Captain Al-Masri,” Colonel Lee Jun-hwan declared forcefully, punctuating his statement with a jabbing finger. “Daniel O’Keefe was a bleeding heart populist as a senator, before the war with those Russian jasig.” Bastards, Ari mentally translated the Korean word. “His idiot daughter is nearly killed by peasant scum on Aphrodite and does it bring him to his senses? No, he’s just as big of a fool now that he’s president.”

  Colonel Lee, Ari thought, reminded him of one of his college drinking buddies commenting on politics…if that drinking buddy had been a high-ranking military officer responsible for training and deploying men and women to other star systems. When Alida had come to him after the end of training Friday and suggested that it was the time to meet the people who thought like him, he had expected someone lower on the food chain. Lee was Kage’s XO, his second in command. They were ensconced in Lee’s private room in the base Officers’ Club, lounging on real leather couches and sipping well-aged bourbon: Lee, Alida, Lee’s aid Captain Hassan Ali and himself. It had taken an hour of pleasantries and feeling out and several glasses of bourbon before Lee had warmed up to him; now he was worried about how to get the Korean officer to cut to the chase without encouraging another hour of political bluster.

  “He is indeed a fool,” Ari nodded. “But he is indeed the president and we but soldiers. And alas stuck here on Earth when the problems are months-long journeys away. What can we possibly do, other than train our troops to the best of our ability?”

  “There are things that can be done, Mohammed Al Masri,” Hassan spoke, hiding his words behind a sip of bourbon. He was a young man with a dark, narrow face and close-cropped hair. “The question is, are you the man to help us do them?”

  Ari considered his reply, staring at the drink in his glass for a long moment.

  “Hassan Ali,” he finally said, “there are words and there are words. Some words are empty bluster, while some are made of solid steel. I respect you, Colonel Lee, and I respect your authority, but if these are empty words, if this is more of the talk I have heard of a strike or a political campaign, I am not your man. I am a direct man, not a politician.”

  “We are all politicians, my friend,” Hassan smiled. “For is not the end move in politics always to pick up a gun?”

  “And have we come to the end move?” Ari asked, fixing Hassan’s stare with his own, unwavering.

  “We have indeed,” Lee answered him as if he had been speaking instead of his XO. “It will be very soon, and it will happen all across the colonies…as well as here. We need someone like you, a proven leader in combat, a man who is not unwilling to get his hands dirty. But I will also tell you that if things go wrong, it could cost you not just your career this time, but your freedom and possibly your life. Is this a risk you are willing to take?”

  “If I were unwilling to risk my life,” Ari responded, “I would never have become a Marine. What I am not willing to do, Colonel Lee, is throw it away. There must be a chance of success, a plan worth carrying out. Noble gestures and martyrdom are fine for stories to tell children, but not something to which I aspire.”

  “Ha!” Lee barked, smiling thinly. “You did not lie when you said you were a direct man. I cannot tell you all you wish to know yet, Captain. I am sure you understand the concept of operational security. But I will tell you that we are not interested in martyrdom either. I and the others involved have every expectation of success.”

  “You know me,” Alida interjected. In the Biblical sense anyway, Ari thought, forcing down a grin. “Do I strike you as someone who wishes a symbolic death above accomplishing the mission?”

  “No, you do not,” Ari answered truthfully. Which was worrisome. Whatever the plot was, it would have been much easier to defeat if the plotters were resigned to martyrs’ deaths and a glorious failure. “But I would feel more comfortable if I knew what my role was to be.”

  “Eventually, your role will be to do what you do best,” Colonel Lee informed him. “You will lead men in combat. But for now, what we need you to do is to recruit others, from among your trainees. Those who show skill and promise and recognize the dangers we all face.”

  “Sir,” he said slowly and firmly, his own dark eyes locked with Lee’s, “I am willing to be part of your cause, for I certainly agree that we have to act. But I cannot in good conscience persuade young men and women who trust me to become involved in this unless I know we can succeed. I know you can’t share everything with me…but if we have some edge, something that I have not thought of, that will give us the victory, I must know before I can convince others to follow me.”

  Lee steepled his fingers thoughtfully, considering Ari carefully. Then he glanced at Alida with a question in his eyes, and she nodded. “I can tell you this, Captain,” he said. “What keeps us isolated and unable to coordinate with our brothers and sisters who share our cause is communications lag. It takes months for messages to be passed back and forth to the colonies from Earth and back, secreted on Eysselink Drive starships. That is no longer the case…for us.”

  Ari felt a tingling up his spine as the repercussions of what the Colonel had just said echoed through his mind.

  “I see,” he replied very carefully. “Very well, sir. You can count on me.”

  “Good,” Lee smiled broadly, satisfied that he had made the right decision. He leaned forward and extended his hand and Ari shook it firmly. “Start feeling out the students you wish to recruit. But don’t take too long…by the time their class ends, we need to know which ones are with us.”

  “If you need to contact us,” Hassan put in, “go through me. Leave me a message about morale issues and I will find you.”

  Ari and Alida rose as the Colonel came to his feet.

  “It has been a pleasure, Captain,” Lee returned Ari’s salute.

  “Sir, the pleasure and the honor have been mine,” Ari told him.

  As the Co
lonel and his aide exited the suite, Ari exhaled a sigh and sagged against Alida.

  “Were you worried, Mo?” she asked, seemingly amused. He felt a stirring of desire as he stared at her smile, feeling her warmth against him.

  “Alida my sweet,” he eyed her balefully, struggling to remain in character, “I was just conspiring with the second-highest ranking Guard officer here to commit treason against our government. I was worried then and I am still worried now…perhaps more worried.”

  “Do not be troubled,” she patted his arm affectionately. “I would not have involved you if I did not think you could handle it.”

  “And you know so much about me, eh?” He snorted doubtfully.

  She turned his head toward her with a gentle finger on his cheek and kissed him passionately. Ari felt his breath catch in his chest. “Everything. kedves.” “Darling” in Hungarian, he knew. “And don’t you forget it.”

  As he followed her out of the club, Ari couldn’t shake the feeling that he was in way over his head. He knew one thing for sure, though…it was time to call the boss.

  Slowly, carefully, Ari disentangled himself from a sleeping Alida and slipped silently out of bed. As he changed into his running shorts and T-shirt, he couldn’t help but spare another glance to the curving landscape of milky skin visible where the sheet had slipped down. He frowned thoughtfully. He had cultivated their relationship these past few weeks because it had made it easier for him to infiltrate, but he had to force himself not to think about the endgame…about having to arrest her, or God forbid, kill her. This was getting too complicated.

  Sighing, he put on his shoes, then clipped his ‘link to the waistband of his shorts and eased out the door. He waved to the guards at the entrance of the Officers’ Quarters; nothing more natural than an officer going out for a pre-dawn run before duty hours. He broke into a slow, warm-up jog down the main path and then when he reached the perimeter trail that circled the whole complex, he began to run. No telling if there were any security cameras watching him, so he had to make it look real…he did one full loop around the complex, a full ten kilometers, then began another and kept it up until the track again wound through an arboretum at least three kilometers away from the main training complex.