Duty, Honor, Planet: The Complete Trilogy

by Rick Partlow

  “Yeah, that’s where it all falls apart,” McKay admitted, frowning. “It had to have been a recent breakthrough, from sometime in the last couple years, or he would have used it already. But if it just happened in the last couple years, how the hell did Yuri find out about it?” He rubbed a hand over his face. “Jesus, D’mitry, now I’m the one that feels 200 years old.”

  D’mitry stared into nothing for a second, and when he spoke it was very quietly. “There is one thing. One other possibility, the only other one I could think of.” McKay looked at him, seeing the glint of the light from the kitchen display panel in his eyes. “Perhaps Yuri already had the nanovirus and just needed Antonov for the ability to reproduce it.”

  McKay sat back, feeling as if the bottom had just dropped out. “And that leaves me still trying to figure out where the hell the nanovirus came from.”

  “Look at the bright side, Jason,” Podbyrin said with a shrug, “at least I’ve taken your mind off your other problems…”

  * * *

  “I can’t believe we got out of there,” Abshay Patel said softly, speaking for the first time since he’d landed his suborbital transport at the Fleet spaceport hours ago.

  Franks glared at him balefully but didn’t say anything. They were seated together in a cluster of acceleration couches in the hindmost section of a SpaceFleet Cislunar transport and there was no one else in their compartment, but he still wasn’t certain they weren’t being monitored. From the time he had used his credentials to commandeer the billets on the shuttle to the time it had lifted off the pad, he’d been sure that a Tactical team would swoop in and arrest them at any moment, despite Agent Carr’s assurances.

  “Relax, Lieutenant,” Carr said, her manner as casual as it had been since they’d flown away from the biomech factory. She looked smug and in control. Franks wondered if this was how he came across to people and, if so, why no one had killed him yet.

  She was in a well-tailored, civilian business suit, in contrast to Patel’s black Intelligence fatigues and the casual, tourist wear that Franks and Manning had worn beneath their rented vacc suits. He noticed Manning eyeing Carr suspiciously and suppressed the sigh he felt. Manning didn’t trust Agent Carr still, and he didn’t know yet if he did either. He ran through the conversation they’d had aboard Patel’s suborbital rocket one more time, wondering how much of it he believed…

  “You were following us,” Manning had accused once they’d cleared the biomech facility.

  “I was following orders,” Carr had countered, eyeing Franks pointedly.

  “Is that what you’re doing right now?” Franks had asked. “Following orders?”

  “If I were still following orders,” she’d shot back, “all three of you would be doing a perp walk past every camera Republic NewsNet owns. We don’t have a lot of time; we’re going to be at the spaceport in a couple minutes. The bottom line is, I was put in a position where I could either do what I was told or do the right thing.”

  “How’d you decide that helping us is the right thing?” Franks had asked.

  “I’m still not sure it is,” Carr had admitted, frowning and looking away from him. “But you’re trying to find the people behind these attacks, and that sounds a lot closer to the right thing than arresting you to score political points.” She shook her head. “It’ll take a while before Director Ayrock figures out what happened, but we need to get off Luna ASAP.”

  “McAuliffe,” Franks had told her. “We have to get to McAuliffe.”

  And now McAuliffe Station hung before them, spinning elegantly in high Earth orbit like a celestial coral reef, dozens of shuttles and cargo ships schooling around it in carefully orchestrated precision, bringing in visitors and supplies from Earth, Luna, the asteroid mines and even other star systems. Franks had been to McAuliffe many times, usually on business but once in a while for a weekend’s leave. It was huge, the largest man-made structure in existence; it had started as a research station and been expanded gradually over a century’s time, growing like some floating Jericho with new cities built on the bones of the old.

  After more than a hundred years, it had grown into a huge double wheel connected by a fat center hub that housed hundreds of docking ports that were constantly active. Their shuttle was heading for one, moving on maneuvering thrusters, its main boron drive shut down for safety.

  “What do you want me to do?” Carr asked him, eyes on the compartment’s exterior screen, watching the docking port swell in the view from the nose cameras.

  “We have to track the shuttle that delivered those biomechs to Houston,” Franks told her. “And we have to do it before they have time to cover their tracks. We need to see security footage of the offload so we know how they smuggled in the payload, we need to know who flew it, and we need to know where it went after that.” He paused as the shuttle’s boarding lock extended and mated with the station’s port with a shudder they barely felt.

  “You guys have an office on the station, I assume?” He asked Carr. She nodded and he continued. “Good…it’s better if we don’t use our ‘links for this, to avoid drawing attention to ourselves. You work it from the CIS end, I’ll head for the Intelligence station here and work it from that end and we’ll see where that leads us.”

  He was interrupted by the canned announcement over the shuttle’s speakers that docking was complete and the passengers should disembark immediately. The pressure hatch for their compartment slid open invitingly in concert with the announcement.

  “And I’m going to do what?” Manning asked as they unstrapped from their acceleration couches, a hard edge to her voice. “Stand around and look pretty?”

  “No,” Franks assured her, “that’s Patel’s job. You take Junior with you and find a secure communications link you can use to access the Planetary Defense Network. If we can ID that shuttle, you need to get them looking for it. If it’s still in the AO, it could be they’re going to use it again to deliver something else…something worse than HpE.” He paused in the doorway of the compartment, looking back and forth between her and Patel as he floated there. “Whatever you do, do not use your ‘links: not your private ones, not your issued ones.”

  He turned and led them out of the compartment, throwing one last instruction over his shoulder as he pulled himself through the door. “And hurry.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Is he ready, Vasily?” Yuri asked, stalking into the room, hands thrust into the pockets of his leather jacket. It was real---harvested from a farmed animal rather than cloned in a factory---and thus incredibly expensive, and the extravagance of it usually had a calming influence on him. But right now, there was nothing that could soothe his mood.

  Podbyrin had been taken, Anya had been taken and, worst of all, their production facility was destroyed. Yes, he still had several canisters of the weapon, but there would be no further production from that source and he couldn’t make the trip to get more. He was stuck in the middle of nowhere, unable to even show his face in a city.

  He scowled, thinking once more that he should have taken the shuttle offplanet when he had the chance. But he’d been advised not to do it. He wondered if the one giving him that advice really had his best interest at heart any more…

  Vasily Suslov paled at the tone in Yuri’s voice, his face going as grey as the bare walls of the improvised production studio they’d rigged up in the old, abandoned building. It had once been the visitor’s center of an American national park, but it hadn’t seen use since most of the Alaskan peninsula had been turned into a nature preserve not long after the war. Technically, they were trespassing in the preserve right now, but no one cared about the old buildings…and no one else ever bothered to visit them.

  “Ah, sir,” Suslov replied, trying hard not to stutter, “I’m afraid there’s a bit of a problem.”

  Yuri stopped in his tracks, the look on his face showing exactly what he thought of that.

  “What sort of problem, Vasily?”

 
; “He is…not himself, sir,” Suslov explained, hands clasping helplessly.

  “He’s never ‘himself,’ Vasily,” Yuri snorted in derision. He eyed the heavy, steel-core door set in the opposite wall of the room, the wall with the Protectorate flag draped across it. The old door was solid and the walls were thick and well-insulated, but Yuri could still hear faintly the bass bellow of the man on the other side.

  “Yes, sir,” Vasily agreed, “but I’m afraid it’s getting worse. The doctor has tried a sedative, but it has not been effective and he’s afraid if he gives him more that he will be unable to read the statement.”

  “Damn it,” Yuri sighed, closing his eyes and reining in his temper. He took in a deep breath and opened his eyes again. “I will talk to him.”

  “Yes, sir,” Vasily agreed readily, obviously relieved to have the responsibility shifted.

  Yuri stepped over to the door, palming the newly-installed plate next to it and hearing the old lock slide away. He pulled the door open and a torrent of sound assailed him, a brash, bass voice yelling angrily in Russian. He stepped inside the shadowed office, eyes adjusting to the little light provided by a lamp on the old, rusted desk.

  There were three men in the cramped office: the doctor, looking haggard and put-upon as he tried to calm down the yelling man, hands raised in a placating posture; the guard, a broad-shouldered young man with shaggy hair and a cheap suit, looking both wary and aggressive, if such a thing were possible, as he tried to decide how to handle his manic, screaming charge; and then there was General Sergei Pavlovitch Antonov, former dictator of the Russian Protectorate. Sort of.

  He was a large man, the embodiment of bluff and arrogance, and his outdated white uniform jacket suited his personality. His face was square edges and sharp lines, decorated by a bushy mustache shot with grey, and his eyes…his eyes were wide and on fire with utter madness.

  Damn it. This was not good.

  “You stay away from me with your drugs, you fucking witch doctor!” Antonov yelled at the physician, shaking a fist at the man. “You’re not going to lobotomize me! I’ll shove that shit down your throat!”

  “General Antonov,” Yuri spoke courteously but firmly, closing the door behind him. The General paused in mid-rant, head whipping around towards the bratva boss. “Sir, I’m very sorry for the inconvenience…I deeply regret you’ve been forced to stay in this completely unsuitable place for so long.”

  “You…” Antonov’s rage seemed to fade as he looked at Yuri, eyes narrowing, expression going slack. “Do I know you?”

  “Yes, sir,” Yuri assured him soothingly. “I’m your chief of covert operations against the enemy. Remember? I’m Colonel Yanayev. We have a new strike planned and you were about to record a message to the people to announce it.”

  “We’re hitting the Chinese again?” Antonov asked eagerly, eyes gleaming with interest.

  “No, sir…better than that. We’re going to strike against the Americans.”

  “The Americans?” Antonov grinned a predator’s grin. “Excellent! When will the attack occur?”

  “Soon, General,” Yuri told him, grinning himself now. “Very soon.”

  * * *

  Caitlyn Carr scrolled through the security footage methodically, almost second by second, switching carefully between one view and another. She gritted her teeth and tried hard to ignore it as she felt her ‘link vibrate on her hip again…she’d taken her ear bud out when Director Ayrock’s office had begun overriding the device and yelling at her over it. She wished she could get away with smashing it on the floor, but that would have made Agent Sanoba stare at her even harder than he already was.

  “Is that your ‘link, Agent Carr?” the younger man asked, his nasal voice grating on her nerves.

  “That’s entirely possible, Agent Sanoba,” she murmured, eyes still glued to the display. “But as I told you already: this is urgent, time is of the essence and I am busy.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said nervously, eyes darting back to the small office’s communications console on the other side of the room. “It’s just that…well, we’ve already had two direct calls on the secure line from Director Ayrock’s office demanding that you contact them immediately…”

  “Well,” she said, shrugging, still not looking back at him, “next time, you should tell them that I will call them back just as soon as possible.” She shook her head again, looking at the last possible angle of the shuttle offloading in Houston. “Dammit. Nothing comes off that shuttle except biomechs! That’s just not possible, unless…”

  Her eyes went wide as she considered what she’d just said.

  “Shit, I need to get this to him.” She turned to Sabona abruptly and he nearly jumped back in surprise. “I have to go,” she said. “If the Director’s office calls again, tell them I’m hot on something and I’ll get back with them within the hour.”

  She strode purposefully out the door of the CIS McAuliffe Station office, leaving junior Agent Sabona stuttering a protest behind her.

  “Anything yet?” Franks asked, leaning over the netdiver’s shoulder as if he could see what she was seeing through the links hooked up to her optic nerves through the touchplates embedded under the skin of her temples.

  The woman turned and looked at him in annoyance, her eyes coming into focus as she pulled off the neurolink halo that mated with the touchplates.

  “Sir,” she said, an edge to her surprisingly girly voice, “this isn’t going to go any faster with you asking me every ten minutes if I’ve found something.”

  “Sorry, Lieutenant,” Franks said, abashed and a little embarrassed. “It’s just that there is a little time pressure here…”

  “I understand that, sir,” she said, grinning slightly. She was, Franks reflected, very cute in a pixie sort of way. “Anyway, yes, I did find something: I don’t know where your shuttle is, but I know its registration and ID transponder were spoofed.”

  “Damn,” Franks said with a sigh, “I was afraid of that.”

  “It was using the codes of a cislunar shuttle that went in for a retrofit at the commercial shipyards two weeks prior to the delivery,” the young Intelligence officer went on. “It pops up here at McAuliffe a week before the delivery, then afterward it heads back here and disappears. When it left, it evidently had a new transponder code and registration.”

  Franks chewed his lip for a moment, eyes hazing over in thought. When his gaze refocused, there was a clarity to it that matched his thoughts. “Lt. McGinnis, here’s what I need you to do: run a comparison of all the spacecraft that have entered the commercial shipyards in the last two weeks and see if there are any duplications anywhere in the Earth-moon system that have been recorded any time in the last few days.”

  “Got it,” she put the halo back on her temples and her eyes went out of focus, flicking back and forth nearly at random.

  Franks checked the time in his corneal implant, which was connected to his ‘link. “How long do you think it’ll take?”

  “Done,” she said, eyes refocusing on him. “There’s only one…a short-range cargo shuttle, just left the station two hours ago. Filed a flight plan to the commercial port at the outskirts of the Danube Corridor.”

  “Shit,” Franks said, almost casually, as if his brain wasn’t running at a million cycles per second, trying to calculate the possibilities and what his next move should be…and whether it was worth the risk of arrest to use his ‘link. “Lt. McGinnis, get on the comms and get me a secure line to the Danube Corridor Emergency Services Department. Tell them they need to go on a city-wide chemical/biological lockdown, all citizens to get to the emergency shelters immediately and those that can’t need to shelter in place---and get them to shut down all air circulation facilities right the fuck now!”

  “Yes, sir,” McGinnis hurried to follow the order, all her former playfulness gone.

  Franks hesitated for just a moment before he touched a control on his ‘link to call Tanya Manning.

  “G
o,” she said curtly, all business.

  “Do you have a secure line to Planetary Defense?” he asked.

  “Affirmative,” she said. “I’m on the horn with them now.”

  “We have a probable bogie heading for the Danube Corridor Development Complex,” he told her. “I’m sending its registration and transponder ID to your ‘link. Tell Planetary to take it out immediately.”

  “They’re going to want authorization,” she warned him.

  “Tell them to contact General McKay’s office for authorization,” he said. “But tell them to hurry.”

  “I understand, Drew,” she said. “On it.”

  Franks turned to McGinnis, who was still talking to the Danube Corridor authorities. She nodded to herself, breaking the connection, then looked over at him. “They’re doing it,” she reported. “They aren’t happy about it, but they’re doing it.”

  Franks blew a breath out and leaned back against her desk. “Now we just have to hope it was in time.”

  * * *

  Johan Fuchs loved autumn in Vienna. He loved it anywhere, but particularly in Vienna. The ancient elegance of the city drew him in endlessly, every visit revealing a new, hitherto unexplored facet of the gem that was his city. He was a painter…well, he’d never actually sold one of his paintings and he still lived on the public dole after ten years, but he kept painting anyway. His parents harangued him constantly to get a real career, but they would see. Someday, maybe next year or maybe in a hundred, the people would discover the genius that was Johann Wilhelm Fuchs.