by Rick Partlow
“Of course,” Nunez said, waving an impatient acceptance. “But Colonel…we have bigger problems than that! The fucking Vice President! We have to get home…we have to tell people about this!”
“If they don’t know already, Commander,” McKay said with a grim nod. “If they don’t know already…”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Shannon Stark slept fitfully in the unfamiliar cot, unable to get comfortable and also unable to shut down her conscious mind. It was unusual and frustrating for her. She had always been able to grab sleep whenever it was available, even strapped into an acceleration couch. But here, in the sparsely furnished Intelligence Service safe-house in Houston, she simply couldn’t shut out everything that was happening.
She knew that Ari and Roza were in the next room, Val and her daughter were down the hall and that the operatives that Tom had assigned to her were standing watch, some inside near the front door and some surreptitiously patrolling outside. Despite that, however, she felt utterly alone in a way she hadn’t since the War.
Dammit, she thought, rearranging her pillows once again, how did I wind up in this position again? Wasn’t it enough to have to save the world once?
Theoretically, she should have handed the whole thing off to the Republic Investigative Service, the agency in charge of domestic law enforcement; but they were a joke, notoriously inefficient and inept, and with the Vice President corrupted and the money of the Multicorps Executive Council behind the scheme, she just couldn’t trust anyone else.
Up to now, it hadn’t seemed real, somehow…it had the cognitive plausible deniability of being in the shadows, invisible to the rest of the world. But Wednesday would change all that and she wasn’t sure she was ready for the ramifications.
She tried to force it all down, to bring on needed sleep with an old mantra she’d used as a child, repeating “silence, darkness” to herself in her head till it drowned out all other thought. Finally she felt herself being drawn into the dark embrace of sleep…and then her ‘link beeped for attention. Swearing softly, she pushed the ear bud into place.
“Stark,” she answered abruptly, trying not to snap in frustration.
“Ma’am, it’s Lt. Franks,” the voice in her ear announced, a tinge of excitement in his usually steady voice. “We received a tightbeamed pulse message about ten minutes ago from somewhere out in the Belt. It’s the Decatur, ma’am…they’re back!”
“Jason…I mean, the Colonel is back?” Shannon bolted upright in bed, relief flooding into her suddenly, highlighting an ache deep inside her that she had hardly noticed with everything else that had happened.
“I don’t know, ma’am,” Franks told her. “It’s encrypted and it’s for your eyes only. I’m sending it to your tablet.”
She disconnected without another word and lunged across the bed for her tablet.
“Please be okay,” she muttered urgently in half a prayer.
The message was encoded biometrically and she obediently pressed her finger to a port in the side where a small needle pricked it and took a DNA sample from her blood. A few minutes passed as a progress bar showed the status of the decryption and then she was looking at an image of Joyce Minishimi. The woman was in a medical bay bed in zero gravity, held lightly in place by padded straps across her chest and hips and she looked gaunt and pale; and Shannon fought back a rising sense of doom.
“Colonel Stark,” Minishimi said a bit hoarsely, as if she couldn’t draw in a full breath, “this is Captain Minishimi. We’re in the asteroid belt. We’re intact but we’re deadlined on antimatter. How we got here…well, I hope you’re sitting down…”
“Well, now I really don’t know what in the fuck is going on,” Shannon admitted tiredly, running her hands over her face, elbows on the table of the safe-house’s kitchen.
“I was almost ready to believe that the Protectorate wasn’t involved at all,” Valerie said, nodding, from where she sat opposite Shannon. The young senator looked drained, her normally styled hair hanging limply and circles under her eyes. She’d left her daughter sleeping in her room when Shannon had woken her.
“At least we know the boss is okay,” Ari interjected. He and Roza shared a rumpled but satisfied post-coital glow but were businesslike as they had viewed the recorded message with the others. “Sailing into the teeth of the enemy,” he amended with a shrug, “but he was alive when she left him. And he’s got Admiral Patel there, too.”
“Admiral Patel,” Shannon said, nodding in grim counterpoint, “who was also aboard the Patton when it was hijacked.”
“You think Admiral Patel was…copied?” Ari asked her, eyes narrowing. “But she said he saved their ship, destroyed Protectorate spacecraft…why would he do that if he were on their side?”
“I hope he isn’t,” Shannon told him earnestly. “But Commander Duncan didn’t show any sign of having been copied or brainwashed or whatever until he tried to destroy the Decatur and kill Captain Minishimi. We can’t take anything for granted.” She frowned. “The worst part is, Jason won’t even know that it’s a possibility…he still thinks this is purely an external threat.”
“If Antonov is involved,” Roza said thoughtfully, “the question I have is, how did he and Fourcade---or whoever Fourcade represents---come to be in contact? It’s not as if they could meet each other in passing at the local bar.”
“I think the more important question,” Shannon countered, “is what Antonov has to gain by allying himself with Fourcade and his people? It’s not like the multicorps are going to hand over the planet to him…and I don’t know he would settle for less.”
“He can’t have replaced all of them,” Ari figured, shaking his head. “If he could get away with that, he wouldn’t have to be this subtle. So they have to have something to offer him. You’re right though, ma’am, I can’t figure what. This was simpler when it was a home-grown insurrection.”
“We’re missing some piece of the puzzle here,” Valerie declared.
“Or several pieces,” Shannon granted, “but we can’t sit back and wait for them to fall into place. The enemy isn’t going to sit on their asses and we can’t either.” She tapped a code into her ‘link. “Franks, this is Stark. The area where the transmission came from…what do we have out there that can deliver a load of fuel-grade antimatter in the next 48 hours?”
She listened for a reply, then nodded to herself in satisfaction. “Excellent. Get them out there immediately and, Franks, no one can know about this. Make it clear and see to it that it’s done. Also, I need a tightbeam pulse sent back to the Decatur letting them know that refuel is coming. And tell them to put a relay in place in line with the wormhole so they can intercept any transmissions back through to Sirius and decrypt them with Duncan’s ‘link. Once they’re refueled, they’re to hold and wait for further instructions. Get it done now.” She disconnected from the ‘link and let out a relieved breath. “Well, at least there’s that. Damn, I wish I had more of an insight into the multicorps’ politics: maybe then I could get more of a handle on who was backing this. The problem is, anyone I could ask could conceivably be involved.”
“There’s someone we could ask,” Valerie suggested quietly, a small grin lighting up her weary countenance. “Someone we could trust, who knows the multicorps inside and out.” She shrugged. “The only tough part will be figuring out how to contact him without attracting too much attention…”
* * *
Shannon leaned tiredly against the window of the flyer, her eyes narrow slits against the late morning sun, looking down every now and then when the vast, nearly unbroken plains of Oklahoma were interrupted by the swiftly moving dots of pronghorn antelope or the lumbering masses of elephant herds. Once, she was sure she saw the tawny bulk of a pride of lions slinking through the tall grass near the edge of a clump of bison.
“I’ve never been to the Preserve before,” Ari commented idly from the pilot’s seat, glancing back at Major Stark. “Always meant to check it out one of the
se days.”
“My parents brought me here when I was twelve,” Shannon told him, her voice sounding rough and hoarse to her own ears. She hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in days. “For a year after, I wanted to be a park ranger or a wildlife biologist.”
“My family never had the money to take all of us that far,” Ari said wistfully, “what with five kids, and my folks weren’t taxpayers or anything.”
“Maybe you should take a vacation one of these days, Ari,” she suggested. “I personally plan to take one when all this is over, assuming we live through it and don’t wind up conquered by the Protectorate or exiled to a star colony by a new government.”
“That’s what I’ve always liked about you, ma’am,” Ari said with a grin. “You’re so upbeat and optimistic.”
The flat grasslands and gently rolling hills of the Great Rewilding Preserve that covered millions of acres of America’s Great Plains gradually gave way to clusters of support and control buildings and living quarters that ran along the edge of the park, then to the infrastructure that was the outskirts of Oklahoma City.
“There it is.” Shannon nodded at a long fence-line that ran along the cracked and neglected length of an ancient surface road “Follow that fence-line and it’ll take us to the ranch house.”
“Flying this thing on manual, it feels like I’m out on a colony world somewhere,” Ari commented, “instead of the middle of the United States.”
“Well, we can switch back to satellite control if you like,” Shannon replied dryly. “Then we could go on Republic HoloNet and announce to the whole system what we’re doing, just to put a cherry on top.”
“Well, when you put it like that, ma’am…” He chuckled. “I see the house. We should be there in a minute.”
Ari traced the route of a dirt track that turned off the main road and then followed it to the crest of a low hill, where a single story ranch house sprawled comfortably in the dry, brown grass of summer as it had since the early 1900s. He landed the flyer on the side of the house, between it and a much newer garage, not far from a rugged-looking all-terrain rover suitable to travel the untended roads as well as the rolling grassland.
Shannon was unstrapping even as Ari powered down the turbines, and when she looked up from unfastening her safety harness, she could see the lone figure stepping out the side door of the house to meet them. He was tall and powerfully built, still intimidating in his early 70’s, though looking strangely incongruent to her in a short sleeved shirt, jeans and boots. He had skin the color of café-aux-lait; close-cropped, tight-curled hair with no grey in it and a face that had been sculpted from the side of a granite cliff. He halted a few meters from the flyer and waited for Shannon and Ari to climb out of the vehicle.
“Welcome to my home away from home, Major Stark,” he said with a thin smile, his voice a modulated earthquake.
“Thanks for agreeing to meet, Mr. President,” Shannon said, extending a hand.
Gregory Jameson, former President of the Republic, took her hand in his and shook it warmly.
“From the method you used to contact me, I assume this isn’t a social call.”
“No, sir,” she admitted, “unfortunately it’s business.” She waved a hand back at Ari. “You remember Captain Shamir, sir.”
“Yes, a most capable Marine,” Jameson declared. “And quite the Intelligence officer in the last few years, I understand.” Shannon actually thought she could see Ari blushing.
“Thank you, sir,” he said. “It’s an honor to meet you again.”
“Come on in,” Jameson invited them, waving at the open side door. “My wife is back in Capital City for a conference, so it’s just me today.”
“How is Janice, sir?” Shannon asked politely as they stepped into the house. She’d met the woman once, just after the wedding five years ago and couldn’t remember a thing about her.
“She’s doing well,” Jameson said, closing the door behind them. The side door led into the house’s old-fashioned kitchen; from the layout, Shannon could easily imagine it as it had been three hundred years ago, fitted with a wood-burning stove and an ice-box instead of the modern food storage and processing equipment it now held.
A drowsy English sheepdog padded into the kitchen from the living room and shoved its head under Jameson’s hand. He paused to kneel and scratch the dog’s ears affectionately before turning back to the two officers.
“Please, sit down,” Jameson motioned to the kitchen table. “Can I get either of you a drink?”
Shannon started to say no reflexively, but smelled coffee brewing and changed her mind. “I’d love a cup of coffee, sir,” she said. “I feel like I haven’t slept in a week.”
“You, Captain Shamir?” Jameson asked as he stepped over to the counter and grabbed a cup for Shannon.
“I’m good, sir,” Ari assured him, shaking his head.
Jameson sat across from them and the sheepdog draped itself contentedly across his feet on the floor beneath the table. “So, how can I help you save the world this time, Major Stark?”
She took a careful sip from the cup he’d handed her before she answered. “Sir,” she began, “we’ve come to you because we have a problem with the Executive Council and we know you have some connections there since...”
“Since I lost the election and had to get a real job,” Jameson finished for her, a smile quirking across his lips. “Yes, I’ve done some lobbying for Brendan Riordan the last couple years, both for the Council and for Republic Transportation. What’s Brendan done now?” He shook his head ruefully and leaned his elbows on the table. “I know he wasn’t happy with Daniel’s emigration reforms…is he trying to bribe the colonial governors again?”
“Not quite, sir,” she replied carefully. “He’s ah…”
“He’s trying to cut out the middleman, you might say,” Ari interjected, earning a baleful glance from Shannon.
“We have reason to believe,” Shannon told him, “that Director Riordan is part of a coup attempt against President O’Keefe.”
“What?” Jameson’s eyes widened and he jerked upright, startling the dog, who glanced up at him curiously. “Are you serious?”
“That’s not the worst of it, Mr. President,” she went on. “The coup attempt may involve an alliance with Antonov and the Protectorate.”
“Perhaps,” the former President said slowly, “you should start from the beginning.”
“Yes, sir,” she said. “You have to understand that this is incredibly sensitive and strictly need-to-know; you can’t repeat this to anyone without clearance and honestly, the only reason I can tell you any of this is that we’re basically desperate and President O’Keefe has dumped this whole thing in my lap.”
“Teach your grandma to suck eggs, Major,” Jameson commented dryly and she had to chuckle. Jameson had been well known for playing things close to the vest as president.
“It started a few weeks ago, sir, when…”
A half hour later, her coffee cup was empty and Jameson was sitting back in his chair, a stunned expression on his face. The sheepdog had laid her head across his thigh and he was petting her reflexively. Shannon had told him most of the story, but she had left out the fate of Glen’s assassin and also, from gut instinct and natural paranoia more than anything else, she had omitted the fact that the Decatur had returned.
“If anyone,” he said slowly and quietly, “and I mean anyone other than you or Colonel McKay had told me that story, I would have laughed them out of my house. Unfortunately, I believe you. Jesus Christ,” he moaned softly, rubbing his eyes. “How did it ever come to this? What could Riordan be thinking working with Antonov?”
“Actually sir,” Shannon said, “I was wondering the opposite: why would Antonov work with the Council? What could they offer him?”
“Perhaps it’s as simple as the promise to leave him alone?” Jameson wondered. “After all, he knows we’ve been trying to hunt him down for the last five years.”
“An
tonov would never be satisfied with that,” Shannon disagreed. “He spent over a century dreaming and planning to take over Earth, he wouldn’t be satisfied reigning in some alien hell.”
“That doesn’t mean he hasn’t let them believe that’s what he wants,” Ari pointed out thoughtfully. “If they’re desperate enough or greedy enough, they might buy it.”
“They’re likely both,” Jameson confirmed grimly. “Things are going badly, as I’m sure you both know. It hasn’t filtered all the way up to the level of the Council, but it will and they know it. Half the time I’m in Capital City, I spend trying to force Senators to face reality: the Republic economy and our government is a house of cards and it’s about to collapse.”
“Damn, another ray of sunshine,” Ari muttered. At Shannon’s quelling glance he raised his hands helplessly. “Sorry, ma’am, Mr. President, but everyone we run into keeps telling us the same thing and I keep wondering why it’s come to this if everyone seems to know it’s going to happen.”
“It’s a fair question,” Jameson admitted. “I’ve asked myself the same thing many nights since the election. Before the invasion, we were pushing our borders out and colonizing every habitable world simply because we were so surprised and delighted that there were habitable planets so close to us. So we came up with reasons to be there: we drilled for oil and found exotic animals and plants and we dumped our political rabble-rousers off far away from home and used them for cheap labor.
“But it wasn’t sustainable. We were pouring money into the antimatter production plants and building Eysselink drive starships and not making enough return to cover our investments. Eventually it would have imploded anyway…but the war pushed things up by years.” He sighed heavily. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to abandon the colonies pretty soon…at the least, we won’t be able to resupply them. Whoever stays will be on their own for years at a time.”
