Duty, Honor, Planet: The Complete Trilogy

by Rick Partlow

  The pounding of his own pulse in his ears was so loud that he almost didn’t hear the whine of the turbines, couldn’t understand Matienzo’s shouted warning…and was totally unprepared when the officer candidate took him and Roza down in a body block. He rolled off of Roza, ready to scream an obscenity at the younger man, which was when he saw the assault shuttle screaming down behind them, anti-personnel missiles dropping free from its hardpoints and rocketing their way.

  Ari threw himself down over Roza, catching a glimpse out of the corner of his eye of Matienzo curling into a fetal position, hands over his head, and then the whole world exploded. A pressure wave lifted him and Roza off the ground, sending them tumbling across the grassy plain, coming to a rest in a rut in the field. When his head stopped swimming, Ari saw a wall of fire where the advancing biomechs had been, the line of fireballs slowly mushrooming into the night.

  The assault lander rose into the sky above them, climbing against the bright stars then tumbling back into a turn that took it down the way it had come, passing back over the next wave of Protectorate troops and letting loose another flight of air-to-ground missiles. Ari watched in awe as the ground erupted with a chain of explosions a kilometer long…and then felt elation as he saw a half dozen more assault shuttles coming in from the west, breaking out of a V formation to split up and split the enemy force into separate sectors.

  Waves of missiles rained destruction down on the Protectorate forces, secondary blasts from their APC’s exploding in antiphonal counterpart. As they expended their missiles, the shuttles opened fire with chin cannons, hovering on belly jets to pour explosive shells into clusters of surviving biomechs.

  Roza sat up beside him, pain etched on her face but satisfaction in her eyes as she clung to his neck for support and, he hoped, just because. Ari worked free the yoke at his neck and pulled his helmet off, feeling the refreshingly cool night breeze drying the sweat on his forehead. He leaned down and kissed Roza gently, savoring the warmth of her, the softness of her lips for a long moment.

  She put her head against his chest and just rested there for a moment. Thinking of her wounds, he patted at the pockets of his tactical vest, but found them empty.

  “Matienzo,” Ari said, “do you have any smart bandages left?”

  “No, sir,” the young man said, shaking his head…then stopped and stared at Ari curiously, seeing him with his helmet off for the first time. “Captain Al-Masri,” he said, frowning, “what the hell happened to your face?”

  Ari laid his head back on the grass and laughed.

  * * *

  Jason McKay stepped down the ramp of the lander slowly, chains of exhaustion and pain dragging at him. His emotions were a roller coaster, taking him from deep sadness to extreme relief and almost giddiness, and it took a concerted effort to keep himself from breaking into sobs. There would be time for that later.

  Dawn was breaking over the trees, the golden light coloring the billowing smoke that climbed into the morning sky and adding a hint of gold to Shannon Stark’s red hair where she stood waiting for him, her helmet held under her arm. She looked as drained as him, but they met somewhere in the middle, falling into each other’s arms.

  “Hi honey,” he whispered in her ear, recalling words he’d spoken to her over five years ago, “I’m home.”

  She snorted, punching him lightly in the shoulder.

  “Easy!” he hissed, wincing. “I think my collar bone is broken.”

  “I told you you should stay behind that desk,” she said, touching lightly at the bandage on his neck, her tone still playful but tears welling up in her eyes.

  “General McKay,” General Kage approached them, clearing his throat. He had stripped off his helmet as well and sweat matted his dark hair. McKay kissed Shannon on the forehead, then turned to face the CeeGee officer.

  “General Kage,” he said, nodding to the man. He didn’t know what to expect from the Colonial Guard commander, but given past experience, he decided to try to defuse the situation preemptively. “Sir, from what I’ve seen and been told, your people fought very well here. Their sacrifice saved tens of thousands of lives.”

  “And you saved our lives, McKay,” Kage acknowledged, surprising Jason with his gratitude. “So I gather from that,” he waved at the other shuttles, which were still patrolling back and forth along the battlefield, hunting stray biomechs, “that our ships in orbit prevailed?”

  McKay’s expression hardened. “Yes, sir, they did. But not without a hell of a cost. The Bradley is disabled, and the Decatur and the Sheridan have both been destroyed. Admiral Patel,” McKay kept his voice from breaking with an effort of will, “sacrificed his life ramming the enemy cruiser with the Sheridan after the crew had abandoned ship.” He nodded at the assault aerospacecraft. “Some of them are on those shuttles.”

  Shannon had looked up sharply when he mentioned Patel’s death, then she closed her eyes, mouth moving in a silent prayer, her hand grabbing his in a tight grip. McKay sighed. “It’s not quite over yet. There are some Protectorate ships still insystem, but our cislunar cutters and the Fleet Headquarters station should be able to stand them off until the rest of our cruisers arrive.”

  “There is one other matter that needs resolving as well, McKay,” Kage reminded him. McKay squinted curiously, but it was Shannon who answered the unspoken question.

  “Antonov,” she said. “I doubt he would put his ass on the line out here in the battlefield, especially not dragging around Fourcade and Riordan. So,” she wondered, “where the hell is he?”

  * * *

  Brendan Riordan had been wondering for days now when Antonov and Fourcade were going to kill him, and now he thought he finally knew. He’d had his suspicions when they’d received the transmission from…well, from someone telling them that the Protectorate cruiser in orbit had been destroyed and that Dominguez was dead. They’d been hiding out in a safe house in the middle of nowhere outside Ottawa when they’d got the news and Antonov had flown into a rage, smashing everything in the place not bolted to the floor and smacking Riordan around a bit before Fourcade had managed to calm him down.

  That was when Fourcade had mentioned the shuttle, and Riordan had begun to suspect that he would shortly be a dead man.

  “We just need to get into cislunar space,” Fourcade had said, trying to mollify a seething Antonov. “Then we get in contact with one of the remaining ships and have it take us back to Novoye Rodina. They still can’t touch us there with the defenses we have in place…and we can add more before they’d be ready to make a run at us. Yes,” he’d admitted, spreading his hands to forestall the outburst he had known would be coming, “we’ve lost a lot of resources, but we have the ability to make more. General…I know you’re a patient man. You waited more than a century to attempt to exact your revenge because you wanted to be ready. We just have to be patient for a little longer.”

  Antonov had still been incensed, but he’d gone along and they’d taken Riordan’s private flyer, the one whose registration had been spoofed so that it would come up as a different vehicle every time it was used, and made a beeline for west Texas.

  Neither of them had spoken to him the entire way, but he’d known why he was being brought along. For years now, he’d kept a private shuttle in an unobtrusive little hangar on a shut-down storage facility just outside the boundaries of the Rio Grande Nature Preserve. It was a just-in-case emergency getaway vehicle; a bit of paranoia that he’d felt was justified by the various pots into which he’d stuck his political spoon. The hangar and the shuttle were only accessible to his DNA and biometric identification, so they would need him alive to access it…and then they wouldn’t have any need for him at all.

  Riordan understood full well by now that he had made several huge mistakes, the biggest of which had been the illusion that he’d ever been in control of this scheme. No, the one who had been in control was Kevin Fourcade. Oh, Antonov was giving the orders, but the one who’d arranged everything, the one who’
d created an army of biomechs that Riordan had never known existed, the one who’d given the Protectorate forces a Goddamned star cruiser as well as many more warships than Riordan had ever agreed to and conveniently left off the fail-safe shut-offs he’d insisted on…that one was Fourcade.

  He’d known Kevin for over fifteen years. How had he gotten the man so wrong?

  He shrugged the thought away and blinked at the blinding morning sunlight reflecting off the sand as he led the other two across the landing pad from his flyer toward the old hangar. It was a simple, cheap, buildfoam structure---from the outside, anyway---with a broad awning covering the office entrance just off to the side from the three-story tall metal doors that would allow the shuttle to roll out onto the tarmac. It was an inauspicious place to spend his last moments alive.

  He sighed with resignation and went to the office door, staring at it for a moment before casting one last look back at Fourcade and Antonov. Fourcade seemed impassive, as if all this were just run-of-the-mill ordinary, another day at the office. Antonov, by contrast, was still livid, his pale skin ruddy and his breath ragged.

  “There’s no need to kill me,” Riordan insisted, deciding he had little to lose by begging. “Nothing I know can hurt you. If you lock me up in here, destroy the communications gear, I couldn’t stop you from getting away, even if I wanted to.”

  He tried to smile, but felt it come out on his face like a grimace.

  Antonov started to speak, from the shape of his mouth it would have been nothing pleasant, but Fourcade interrupted him, his voice smooth and soothing. “Of course there’s no need to kill you, Brendan,” he assured the man. “Now just open the door for us, let us in that shuttle and we can all get exactly what we want.”

  Riordan closed his eyes and felt hope fall away from him. He turned back to the door, wondering if he could try to make a break for it after he got inside…

  “I don’t know about getting what you want,” the deep, booming voice made him jump, “but I do know you’ll be getting what you deserve.”

  Riordan’s eyes went wide as Greg Jameson stepped around the corner from the side of the building closest to the office door. He could have been a workman, dressed in drab, dusty coveralls…except for the 10mm service pistol he held, pointed directly at Kevin Fourcade. Fourcade’s hand had been halfway toward drawing his own pistol from beneath his suit coat when he saw the gun in Jameson’s hand and froze.

  “Greg?” Riordan said inanely. “How…how did you know about this place?”

  “You may have forgotten,” Jameson said drily, not taking his eyes off Fourcade and Antonov, “but I used to be President of the Republic. I had complete files on quite a few important people. Nothing is as secret as you might think, Brendan.” A smile quirked on Jameson’s lips. “I figured that you fellas might wind up here…and since everyone else was way too busy with other things, I took it upon myself to arrange a greeting for you.”

  “President Jameson,” Fourcade said slowly, finally seeming nervous and unprepared, “perhaps we can work out some sort of arrangement…”

  “Oh, I’m sure we can,” Jameson said, his smile getting even broader. Then he shot Fourcade in the chest.

  “Jesus!” Riordan screamed, falling over his own feet as he tried to back away, winding up on his ass on the packed sand, watching Kevin Fourcade stumble backwards, hands pressing at the fist-size hole over his heart as blood spread a huge stain across his shirt and jacket and down the front of his pants. In what seemed to take hours but was only a few seconds, Fourcade fell to his knees, then slumped sideways, his mouth working but nothing coming out of it except a gush of blood.

  Riordan scrambled backwards, trying to stay out of the puddle of blood that spread across the ground beneath the man’s corpse, his eyes flickering back and forth in disbelief between the dead corporate lobbyist and the former President. Jameson’s aim had shifted to Antonov, whose response was much different than Fourcade’s.

  “So, the hostage has grown a spine,” he said with a voice so calm that Riordan thought he might have just witnessed someone stepping on a bug rather than a man being killed. “I have to admit, Mr. Jameson, that I never thought this would be necessary, but at the time I bowed to the greater foresight of those who were interrogating you.” He grinned. “Lodka.”

  Jameson laughed quietly. “Oh, General Antonov,” he said, shaking his head slightly. “I was the President. Don’t you think I had any conditioning you gave me removed years ago?”

  Antonov finally showed desperation then, lunging forward, trying to grab Jameson’s gun. The report of the large-caliber handgun echoed off the building walls and across the landing pad, out into the trackless desert. Antonov’s lunge turned into a sprawl that sent him to the ground face down at Jameson’s feet.

  Jameson watched the Russian for a moment, seeing the rise and fall of his chest cease forever, then he shoved his handgun into a pocket of his coveralls and stepped over to Riordan, offering him a hand.

  Riordan’s mouth was still hanging open in disbelief, the idea that he might not die finally penetrating his consciousness, as he let Jameson pull him to his feet.

  “Greg…” he stammered. “You saved my life…”

  “Brendan,” Jameson said, his expression darkening, his voice harsh, “you’re a fucking idiot. The only reason you’re not lying on the ground bleeding out with those two,” he spat in the general direction of Fourcade and Antonov, “is that I still have a use for you. So you had better do your best to endeavor to remain useful to me if you want to stay above ground and out of penal exile digging up crops on some colony world.”

  “How the hell are you going to manage that?” Riordan wondered. “I’m going to be blamed for all of this.” He waved a hand at the horizon demonstratively. “They’ll use me as a scapegoat…I’ll be publically executed. You can’t stop that, no one can.”

  “Stop whining,” Jameson admonished him, pushing him towards the flyer. “They won’t be thinking about you at all…they’ll be too busy blaming a much higher profile scapegoat.” He grinned. “Ask me how I know.”

  “You…” Riordan cocked his head as realization came over him. “You want to be President again.”

  “I will be President again, Brendan,” he said. “And I won’t be waiting six years until the next election. Now get in that flyer and get out of here. I already called the military and you need to be gone before they get here. I mean to control this narrative, and you aren’t a part of it.”

  Riordan walked up to the open hatch of the flyer, then hesitated and looked back to Jameson, where he stood beside the two bodies.

  “Greg,” he said carefully, “just how much did you know about all this?”

  Jameson was silent for a moment, his face unreadable, and then he repeated: “Nothing is as secret as you think it is, Brendan.” He waved a hand. “Now go home. Let me take care of the rest.”

  Epilogue:

  “…it is my honor and pleasure to award you, Captain Andrew Franks, the Republic Medal of Valor.” President Daniel O’Keefe seemed a bit haggard as he draped the ribbon over the young officer’s head, settling the gold star of the award against the breast of his black dress jacket. As for Franks, he looked stunned and intimidated by the line of cameras that stretched over the stage in the middle of Reagan Plaza and by the crowd of thousands that had braved the grey drizzle to watch the ceremony.

  The camera view panned smoothly to take in those standing at attention on the stage behind the President and newly-minted Captain Franks. There was General Kage, looking very stoic and professional, flanked by Lt. Matienzo and Captain Kovach, with Ari Shamir beside Roza, supporting her as she stood on still-healing legs. Ari had asked for a transfer to a training position and after what he had accomplished, Jason McKay and Shannon Stark were inclined to give him whatever he wanted.

  On the other side of the stage were McKay and Stark, standing close enough for their hands to touch even if they weren’t holding hands at the momen
t. Neither one had been inclined to be apart in the days since he’d returned. Neither, apparently, were Vinnie and Esmeralda so inclined, as they had begged off the ceremony, going on a well-deserved leave together. Josh and Tom had also skipped the ceremony, Tom resting from the beating he’d taken over the course of the last few days of action and Josh because he figured it would be boring and would rather be “trolling for Sheilas on the beaches back home.”

  Tanya Manning was there, newly promoted and already wearing a medal of her own, though not the Medal of Valor. Tom had spoken so highly of her, McKay thought he wanted to give her Vinnie’s job, but she’d have to settle for Sean Watanabe’s instead. Beside her were newly-promoted Admiral Minishimi and Captains Pirelli and Gianeto, all of them newly decorated as well...and all just out of the hospital. Joyce Minishimi's husband stood next to her, a tall, athletic man with long, wavy dark hair and a narrow face made broader by the smile he couldn't contain.

  And then there was the dark-haired teenage boy in the dress uniform of an Academy cadet, a cased Medal of Valor and a folded Republic flag grasped tightly in his hands, his dark eyes brimming with tears waiting to be shed.

  “He looks so much like his father,” McKay said softly, reaching over to switch off the NewsNet broadcast.

  “You should have been getting a medal,” President O’Keefe commented, sipping from a glass of Scotch.

  McKay shook his head, sitting on the corner of the desk in the President’s private office. It was just the two of them now: Shannon was checking in on Valerie and her daughter. “Too much of what I did wouldn’t be wise to make public yet,” he said. His mouth turned up into a smile. “Besides, I already have a Medal of Valor and it’s considered bad taste to wear two at once.”

  “Hell, I should give you two more just for bringing home that map of the wormholes and the technique for opening them up,” O’Keefe snorted. “You may not know it, but you might have just saved the Republic economy.” He sighed. “Not that it’s going to do me much good.”