by Rick Partlow
Roza wouldn’t even remember hearing it. She dimly registered Sobawale’s body falling to the side, didn’t hear the shriek of fear and disgust from Hassan Ali as he suddenly found his face covered with the Major’s blood and brain tissue. Her focus was on Captain Fillon, who was trying to run for the door while simultaneously clawing at his holster, trying to get his handgun free with hands that suddenly wouldn’t stop shaking. He finally ripped the pistol out and swung it around one-handed as he side-stepped toward the door, jerking the trigger over and over as he swung the gun.
A strobe-effect of muzzle blasts lit up the bunker but the rounds came nowhere near the target; the ceramic jackets shattered harmlessly on concrete walls and ceiling, the tantalum penetrator fragments within burying themselves in the rock. Roza took her time, shutting out the fear and the sounds and flashes of his gunfire as she put two rounds in his chest and a third to the head. Fillon collapsed back against the wall next to the doorway and slid down it to the floor, coating it with a red swathe of his blood.
Hassan Ali was still screaming when Ari came up behind him and snatched his handgun from its holster, then slammed it into his temple. The Guard Captain went down in a heap, moaning and clutching his head and Ari came down on his back with a knee, pinning him to the ground as he fastened a zip-tie handcuff around his wrists, then another around his ankles. He left him there and went back to Colonel Lee, who was still barely conscious, struggling for breath; more temporary cuffs secured him as well. Ari came to his feet and darted out of the bunker, Ali’s gun in his left hand as he drew his own with his right.
There had been a driver, as he feared. It was a woman, one of Lee’s trusted NCOs---he thought he remembered hearing her referred to as Sergeant Paakannen. She was running towards the bunker, a rifle in her hands. Ari didn’t have time to think, but his body reacted as he’d been trained. Even as the Sergeant raised her rifle to her shoulder, he stepped to the side, using the bunker entrance’s blast shield as cover, leaving only one eye and his gun hand revealed. She was wearing armor but no helmet; no doubt she’d been relaxing in the car and charged out without bothering to grab it. That left one target vulnerable to a handgun.
Ari’s 10mm bucked in his hand twice in quick succession and Sergeant Paakannen’s head snapped back in a spray of blood, bone and brains. She fell face first to the ground, feet kicking in one last, frantic firing of nerves before she went motionless.
Ari stayed behind cover for a long moment, making sure there was no one else out in the darkness, before he stepped out and pried the rifle from the dead woman’s hands. Slinging it over his shoulder, he grabbed her by an arm and dragged her through the door to the bunker, letting her body fall down the steps and roll to a rest next to Captain Fillon’s.
Roza gave him a nod. “Sit those two up,” she instructed, gesturing at Colonel Lee and Captain Ali.
“Yes ma’am,” he grunted, tossing aside the rifle and two pistols he’d collected.
Lee had managed to get his breath back, and was using it to curse them both in Korean at the top of his lungs as Ari dragged him by the collar of his uniform jacket across the room to the concrete bench. Ari didn’t respond to the tirade, just sat the officer against the bench, then went back for Ali. The Captain was still lolling from the blow to the head: Ari judged that the man probably had at least a light concussion. At any rate, he didn’t say a word or resist being moved next to the Colonel.
“Colonel Lee,” Ari said, “please allow me to introduce myself. I am Captain Ariel Shamir of Republic Spacefleet Intelligence Service, Special Activities Division. Formerly of the Fleet Marine Corps.”
“You…” Lee stuttered, recognition coming into his eyes. “You were on the Protectorate flagship in the war…”
“Yes, I’ve seen the movie,” Ari said dryly. “I am telling you this because I want you to know who you’re dealing with. This woman,” he gestured at Roza, “has specific orders from General Kage to make you go away. You’re an embarrassment to the new Colonial Guard he’s trying to build. She is very willing to kill you to make you go away. I am the only hope you have. I have the authority and the ability to allow you to disappear somewhere comfortable. And I am willing to do so, if you give me your contacts in this conspiracy. I want to know who from Spacefleet and who from the multicorps is in this with you.”
“You have me,” Lee said defiantly, “but this cause will go on without me. The word will still go out…the colonies will be ours!” Ari interrupted his rant with a quick, sharp slap to the face.
“Let’s be clear about something, Colonel,” Ari snapped, “we do not need your fucking cooperation to pull this off.” He looked to Roza and she pulled a small syringe from a thigh pocket and held it up. “This will have you babbling like a baby in seconds. You’ll tell us everything you know. If we need your face, we’ll use a computer simulation. If we need you to meet someone in person, I can have restruct surgery done on my face,” Again, he moaned inwardly, “and I will be you. The only thing you have to offer us is saving us time and trouble, and for that service we will give you your life and a comfortable place to live it in anonymity.” He grabbed Lee’s jaw in his hand, yanking the man forward to stare in his eyes. “If you decide that your ‘honor’ is too precious to allow you to save us this time, then my dear Roza here will use the truth drugs on you. You’ll tell us what we want to hear, and when you’re done, Roza will follow her orders and put a bullet in your brain. You and the others,” he jerked his head toward the corpses that littered the area around the bunker entrance, “will die in a training accident.”
“I…” Lee swallowed hard. “I do not believe you would kill me in cold blood…”
He hardly had spoken the words when Roza’s gun fired only inches from his face and Captain Ali jerked back and collapsed against the bench, half his skull blown off. Lee screamed as blood splashed into his face, blinding him.
Ari shot Roza an annoyed glance. “That was extremely loud,” he said plaintively, wiping blood drops from his tactical vest. Calmly, he turned back to Lee, slapping the man across the face to stop his screaming. “Colonel, trust me when I say, Roza wants to kill you. She’s been ordered to kill you. General Kage wants you dead. The only reason you have a chance to leave this bunker alive is because I am here.” Ari glanced at his ‘link. “The cleanup team will be here in less than an hour. You have one minute to make up your mind.”
“All right, all right,” Lee could hardly speak from hyperventilating. “I will do what you want, I will do it!”
“Good.” Ari said with a smile. “Roza, let us begin.”
Without a word, she pulled the safety cap off the syringe and jabbed the needle through Lee’s trousers and into his thigh, drawing a gasp from the man.
“What are you doing?” Lee asked in a panicked voice. “I said I would cooperate!”
“And you will, and I will keep my word to allow you to live.” Ari nodded to the Colonel as the older man began to blink his eyes and fall into a stupor. “That does not mean we trust you.”
“Now, Colonel Lee,” Roza began, “you will tell us who your contact is and how we can get in touch with him…”
Chapter Sixteen
“Well, doesn’t this inspire déjà vu?” McKay commented wryly, looking around the table at Admiral Patel, Captain Minishimi and their staffs, as well as the surviving Marine officers, Vinnie Mahoney, Commander Villanueva and Konstantin Mironov. They were gathered in the spacious conference room on the Sheridan, located conveniently in the ship’s gravity drum, to discuss their next move.
Patel and Minishimi shared a laugh at the thought: the last time the two of them and McKay had sat down in a situation like this was during the war, when what remained of the Fleet was gathered in the asteroid belt and the Protectorate forces had taken control of Earth.
“Well, at least things aren’t quite as dire this time as they were then,” Minishimi pointed out. “We’re on their doorstep instead of the other way around.”
> “The question is,” McKay said, “where do we go from here? As I see it, we have two priorities: we need to get the information that Konstantin has given us back to Fleet HQ, but we also need to follow through on that information before Antonov has a chance to react.”
“We also have an issue with fuel,” Minishimi spoke up. “The Decatur dumped her antimatter and we weren’t able to recover much of it. If we distribute the Sheridan’s stores evenly, we won’t have enough for either ship to go into combat, if need be. Hell, we don’t have much of a margin for error just to get both ships back to Earth. I don’t know that we can follow through, unless you want to leave the Decatur here.”
“I had a thought on that, Captain,” McKay said. “What if the Decatur didn’t need any antimatter to get back to Earth?”
Patel looked back and forth between McKay and Mironov. “You can get the ship back to Earth using the wormholes?”
“Of course,” Mironov said with a shrug, his English halting. “The route from here to Earth is easy…just a few jumps and the systems are not normally monitored. You need a way to trigger a fusion explosion though…it is necessary to open expand the gate, you see. You need the…the, what’s the word? The burst of electromagnetic energy, focused in the right place, it opens the way.”
“You know the precise amount?” Minishimi asked.
“Yes of course, it is my job,” he told her. “You know, it might even be possible to use your gravimetic focusing technology to do this…we could try it.”
“Hmmm…” Admiral Patel mused. “Let’s do that, but with this ship. Here’s what I’m thinking: Mr. Mironov here shows Captain Minishimi’s engineering crew how to navigate the wormholes and gives here the coordinates to the gates that will take her back to Earth. But he comes with us and we scout out what we can reach using the gate locations he has memorized and working out a way to use the Eysselink field to open the gates.”
“I think I see where you’re going with this, sir,” McKay said with a trace of excitement in his voice. “If we can actually find Novoye Rodina, by the time we return, Captain Minishimi could have the Fleet marshaled and ready to move.”
“And when they do move, Colonel,” Patel confirmed, “they’ll be able to make it in days instead of weeks or months, using Antonov’s wormhole matrix against him.” He looked around the table. “Comments? Additions? Objections?”
“Sir,” Commander Villanueva spoke up, “will my birds be going with you or with the Decatur?”
Patel considered the question for a moment, unconsciously cracking his knuckles as he often did when he was thinking. “Unless Captain Minishimi has any objection,” he finally answered, “I’d like to keep your squadron with me, Commander. We are bearding the lion in his den, as it were. The extra firepower might come in handy.”
“No objections from me,” Minishimi said, raising her hands palm up in acquiescence. “We still have our landers; that should be enough for the trip back to Earth.”
McKay saw Commander Villanueva grin with satisfaction. “Thank you sir, ma’am,” she said. Then he saw her glance quickly---so fast he almost missed it---at Vinnie, and saw Vinnie wink at her surreptitiously.
Damn, he thought, amused, didn’t see that one coming. But then, he never would have imagined Tom Crossman as a family man, yet there he was, still married to the emigrant household maid he’d met on Aphrodite at the governor’s mansion six years ago.
Hell, for the first few months he’d known Vinnie and Jock, he’d have sworn they were a couple…he remembered how hard they’d laughed when he’d finally asked them about it. And how hard Shannon had laughed when he’d told her.
“Also,” Patel went on, “I want the Marine reaction platoons with us, and of course your Special Operations squad, Captain Mahoney.”
“Hoo-rah, sir,” Vinnie said, impressing McKay by managing not to sound ironic while being both cool and gung ho at the same time.
“Mr. Mironov,” Admiral Patel said to the Russian, “how long will it take you to get the Decatur’s engineering crew up to speed on how to use the gates?”
Seeing the look of doubt in Mironov’s eyes, McKay quietly repeated the question to the man in Russian and he smiled with comprehension. “No more than…perhaps a day, maybe two to put together the fusion triggering devices, Admiral.”
“Excellent. Captain,” he said to Joyce Minishimi, “prepare your crew to launch for Earth in 72 hours. I’ll send over my chief engineer and navigation officer to sit in while Mr. Mironov is explaining things to your people…that should save some time. Commander Villanueva, see to getting your shuttles, equipment and personnel transferred to the Sheridan. I will also leave it to you to liaison with the Marines and Special Operations units to transfer them over here as well, if you don’t mind.”
“My pleasure, sir,” she assured him.
“Captain Minishimi,” Patel said, “if you need any supplies or personnel to help ready your ship, please let me know and I will see personally that you get them immediately.”
“Thank you, Admiral,” she replied with a nod. “We’ll get it done.”
“Then if there are no further questions,” he stood and the others all stood with him, “this meeting is adjourned and you are all dismissed to your tasks.” As McKay turned to leave, Patel put a hand on his arm. “Colonel, if I could speak with you for a moment alone…”
“Yes, sir,” McKay said, standing aside as the others began to file out of the room.
“Have a seat,” Patel invited once the last of them was out and the door closed, sitting back down at the head of the table. McKay sat kitty-corner to him, waiting patiently. Patel looked him in the eye, a frown crossing his face. “Jason, I need to know: do you trust this Konstantin?”
“To a point,” McKay responded with a shrug. “We slipped him a tranquilizer with his dinner and then fed him the truth drug and an amnesiac. Under the drug, he confirmed what he’d said and that he had no loyalty to Antonov. He’s scared shitless of him.” McKay looked uncomfortable. “I felt kind of bad doing it, but it’s all our lives and millions more…and he doesn’t remember any of it. I think it would be wise to check the wormholes with a shuttle before bringing the cruiser through, though.”
“It’s your job to be paranoid, Jason,” Patel commented with an appreciative chuckle. “Don’t feel guilty about it.”
“Yes, sir. To answer your question, I trust Mironov to the point where I’m willing to test his trustworthiness. Beyond that…well, to game the drugs, he’d have to be hypno-imprinted pretty deeply. And while I wouldn’t put anything past Antonov, it would take a damned psychic for him to know that particular guy would get captured.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Patel acknowledged. “At this point, we don’t have much choice. It’s either trust him or head straight for Earth…or leave the Decatur here and hope we can get fuel back to her eventually. Neither of those options appeals to me, and since I’m the admiral, they don’t appeal to any of you either.”
McKay laughed. “Not that they would have anyway, Admiral. But I’ll keep an eye on him.”
“We’ve waited five years for this, Jason,” the Admiral said with a sigh, sitting back in his chair. “Let’s not fuck it up.”
* * *
“Assault One, this is Decatur,” Esmeralda Villanueva heard the transmission from the cruiser over the cockpit speakers. “The fusion device is in place and the countdown has begun. You may commence your burn.”
“Roger, Decatur,” she responded in her professional, clipped tone. “Commencing one gee burn…now.” She hit the control and was pressed back into her acceleration couch by the acceleration from the shuttle’s boron drive. “Assault one will cross the event horizon in 32.5 minutes.”
“Copy that, Assault One, ignition in exactly 30 minutes.”
“Jesus,” Vinnie said quietly from the seat to her rear right, between her and the copilot. “That’s awful damn close to be flying behind a fusion bomb going off.”
&nb
sp; “Ground pounders” the copilot muttered with a snicker. Vinnie glared at him. He was a young Lieutenant named Orton with all the cockiness you’d expect from an assault shuttle pilot and blond hair a millimeter from being longer than regulation. It was bad enough that Vinnie already felt out of place and constrained wearing the same armored space suit as the two pilots, its helmet secured to the side of his acceleration couch.
“There’s no shockwave in a vacuum,” Villanueva reminded him. “All we have to worry about is radiation, and this is a very ‘clean’ bomb. Plus we’re pretty well shielded in here, anyway.”
“You know,” Lt. Orton commented, “I know why they’re here.” He nodded back toward the trio of armory techs who occupied three of the six acceleration couches in the passenger compartment behind the cockpit. “They have to place the bomb to get us back through the wormhole. But why are you here, Captain Mahoney?”
“Let me ask you something, Lt. Orton,” Vinnie bit off, “let’s say this is all a trap and when we get on the other side, there’s a shitload of Protectorate warships waiting for us…what do you plan to do?”
“Fight them,” Orton replied, looking at him as if it were a stupid question.
“Well, once they blow out your drives and disable your weapons, Lt. Orton, someone is going to have to hit this control,” Vinnie fished a small remote trigger out of his pocket, showing it to the copilot, “and blow up that fusion bomb back there before the Protectorates can get their hands on us and figure out what we know.” He smiled. “That’s why I’m here.” What he didn’t tell him was that he had volunteered for the job, mostly because of Esmeralda. You’ve got it bad, Vinnie boy, he admitted to himself.
Scowling, the younger man turned back to the viewscreen, where the starfield was overlaid with a computer map. The twin bulks of the Decatur and the Sheridan hung in space in the gravitational shadow of the system’s largest gas giant, balanced between the pull of the Saturn-sized planet and its largest moon, concealed from passive sensors in case the whole experiment was a Protectorate trap. The wormhole was represented on the map by a stylized whirlpool nearly half a million kilometers from where the star cruisers were hidden; while a blinking red icon positioned next to it represented the jury-rigged fusion trigger.
