by Rick Partlow
“Sir,” the young police officer said uncertainly, glancing around, “is there anything I should know?”
Good question, Franks reflected. He took a moment to read the man’s name off the tag on the front of his vest.
“Officer Gutierrez,” he said, trying to sound serious and not having too hard a time of it at the moment, “there’s an armed and very dangerous killer loose in this station. He’s involved in the terrorist attack on Houston and I need him alive. I need every exit to this installation sealed off and I need you to access the security monitors in this place and tell me if there are any unauthorized persons still inside. I could do it myself, but I need to keep both eyes open for this guy.”
“You got it, sir,” Gutierrez said with a sharp nod, his dark eyes suddenly full of purpose. He tapped a command into the touchpad built into the armored sleeve over his forearm and his eyes focused on a display projected onto his faceplate. “Sir, from the thermal sensors, there’re only four people left in this level of the station besides you and me. Two of them are custodial and they’re in the staff bathrooms. The other two are civilians but their ‘links are anonymized. I can show you a feed from the cameras…”
He twisted his arm around and the screen on his control pad split into two video displays. On one of them, a barely visible figure crouched in the shadows of what looked like a storage room, huddled behind a pair of partially-disassembled cleaning ‘bots. A hood was pulled over the figure’s head and Franks couldn’t even tell if it as a man or a woman, much less if it was the gunman for whom he was searching. The other screen showed one of the tunnels where the trains entered the station; this one was empty but not yet sealed and a man dressed in dark pants and a checkered poncho was climbing down onto the tracks…
“There,” Franks said, pointing at the screen on the right, trusting his gut like he always did. “What track is that?”
“That’s Track A,” the officer told him. He pointed off to his left, past the line of boarding platforms for a stopped train, its doors sealed, its cars empty; to where an escalator climbed over that track and up to a broad catwalk. “You have to go over Track B to the other side of the station.”
“There’ll be a tactical team outside,” Franks said. “Call them and get some backup, go secure the guy in that storage room. Also make damn sure the other end of that tunnel is sealed and no exits are left unlocked.”
Before the cop could reply, Franks broke into a sprint again, heading off to the left.
Gutierrez, he repeated to himself. He’d have to see if he could do something to kick-start that kid’s career when all this was over. Competent self-starters who didn’t lose their cool weren’t common enough to let one waste away as a street cop in Trans Angeles.
He pumped his legs, running all out across the faded tile floor of the vacant train station, his breath chuffing in his chest as he took the deactivated escalator three steps at a time. Sweat beaded on his brow despite the blast of cold air from the station’s vents, meant to deal with huge crowds of people in a desert city. He had, he reflected ruefully, been out in the field too long; he hadn’t been able to go running for weeks. Or get two good nights’ sleep in a row, for that matter. Adrenaline and stimulants only lasted so long before you crashed.
Franks felt the fire in his legs and his lungs ease as he reached the top of the platform. He glanced around for just one moment to make sure the coffee shops and fast-food stands on the upper catwalk were all unoccupied, then he was across it and heading down the other side, nearly losing his balance as he tried to keep his feet moving faster than gravity was pulling him downward and at the same time keep his head up to watch for threats.
Terminal A was eerily empty, not a living soul in sight, and Franks felt a chill go down his back that wasn’t entirely the overpowering air conditioning. He had a sudden vision of the whole city scrubbed clean of life by the nanovirus and had to work to clear it from his mind.
He jogged to the edge of the train platform, leaning over the railing to peer into the dimly-lit reaches of the tunnel, illuminated only by lines of chemical ghostlights. He needed to know which way the man had gone…
“Tanya?” he tried calling her again. Again, there was no response. He tried not to panic; there could be many reasons she couldn’t answer him, the most likely of which was all those cops he’d seen heading for their position before he’d taken off after the runner.
He dearly wished he could access the security feed himself and check on the fugitive’s location, but that wasn’t practical. He’d have felt awfully stupid if the guy popped up and shot him while he was distracted trying to look at security video. Technology could do wonderful things but it couldn’t give him a third eye or a second brain. Not yet anyway.
Have to do this the old-fashioned way.
The east track, the one that ran to his left, went up to the upper middle class neighborhoods and the more upscale markets; while the one on the right went west into the free housing areas and city maintenance. The hitter was desperate and on the run…Franks bet that he would seek familiar territory. He dropped down onto the track, confident that the maglev center rail had been shut down because of the emergency evacuation, and began jogging to the right, hugging the left wall.
The footing was tricky down there; besides the center rail there were a pair of guide rails that flanked it, all of them sunk deep into the foundation stone, and the space between and around the rails were filled in with rough, gnarled nonconductive buildfoam. Franks kept one hand on the smooth, curving polymer that lined the wall, steadying himself in case his footing shifted, and slowed his pace.
Hope he didn’t go the other way, Franks thought. Hope that cop managed to get the tunnel doors closed, too. Otherwise, the guy could already be gone…
Looking back, Franks wouldn’t be able to remember whether he saw the hint of movement in the deep shadows or heard a scraping of feet on the buildfoam or just had a gut feeling; but whatever instigated it, he threw himself down just before the muzzle flash erupted in the darkness and the blast of multiple gunshots echoed through the tunnel.
He grunted as his side slammed down into the gnarled surface of the buildfoam and his right wrist struck the edge of one of the guide rails; he barely managed to hold onto his sidearm and his right hand suddenly went numb. Franks desperately shifted the 10mm service pistol to his left hand and shoved it out in front of him, firing convulsively at the flares of light blinking in his vision. The gun bucked in his weak hand: two shots and then he rolled to the right, following Tom Crossman’s dictate that movement was life in a fight.
Franks couldn’t see anything between the dim light and the afterimages floating in front of his eyes, but he fired off two more shots, then rolled to the right again. He scrambled to his feet and charged straight ahead just as he saw a barrage of gunfire explode towards the position from which he’d just shot. He threw himself into a low body block just below where he’d seen the muzzle flashes and he felt his right hip and thigh collide with the man’s knees.
There was a strangled curse from somewhere above him and he could feel the gunman tumble across him even as he hit the ground, coming down right across the maglev rail. Franks felt his breath explode out of him with a flare of pain across his ribs and this time his sidearm flew away from him from the impact. He was barely able to breath, but he forced himself into action; he couldn’t take the chance that his opponent had been able to keep hold of his own weapon.
He pushed himself up with his arms, gathered his feet underneath him and leaped onto the back of the other man, slamming an elbow down into the side of the gunman’s right arm. He could hear the bone crack under the impact, could hear the man scream in sudden agony and feel him writhe with pain. He felt for his opponent’s head, managed to wrap his arms around it, digging his right bicep into one side of the man’s throat and his left forearm into the other and squeezing just the way he’d been taught. The gunman thrashed wildly beneath him, but Franks controlled him
with his hips and kept him from rolling over. It was only a few seconds before the man lost consciousness, the blood flow to his brain cut off at the carotid arteries.
Franks waited a moment to make sure the man wasn’t faking it, then slowly let loose the hold and rolled off of the limp form of the gunman. He felt around in his jacket pocket and found a bundle of plastic ties, then used one to secure the fugitive’s hands behind him and another to lock his ankles together. Only then did he sit back and draw in a pained, ragged breath, laying a hand over his bruised ribcage.
“Shit,” he murmured.
“Drew, are you there?” It was Tanya’s voice in his ear bud. Finally.
“Yeah, I’m here,” he croaked hoarsely. “How’s Patel?”
“He’s got a nasty leg wound, but the medics say he’ll be fine,” she told him and he felt a huge surge of relief. “Sorry it took so long...took a while to get things straightened out with the cops and get Lt. Patel medical care. Carr’s okay too…but Arellano’s dead.”
“Well, I got us a prisoner,” Franks told her, looking down at the motionless form of the gunman. Now that his eyes were adjusting, he could see that the man had tossed his hat and poncho at some point and was dressed in black shirt and pants and a black armored vest. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to set him up for this. “He isn’t Arellano, but he’s going to have to do.”
Chapter Twenty Three
“Nothing,” Admiral Joyce Minishimi murmured, peering intently at the Farragut’s tactical display.
The star system projected on the holographic viewscreen that stretched across the curved front wall of the cruiser’s bridge was as unremarkable as it was familiar: a G-class star, two rocky inner planets, a thick asteroid belt, a medium sized gas giant and two outer ice giants, then a cometary halo. The last time Jason McKay had seen this system, he’d been stuffed into the hold of a lander with the rest of his team, ready to abandon ship in case the Sheridan was overwhelmed by the onslaught of the Protectorate defenders that had swarmed them the instant they’d emerged from the jumpgate.
This time…there was nothing; not a defensive base, not a picket ship, not an automated satellite sentry, not a proximity mine. The Republic fleet still emerging from the jumpgate behind them could have been the first human presence in the system.
“We’re three jumps from Novoye Rodina,” Minishimi continued, pitching her voice so that McKay could hear it from where he was strapped into the acceleration couch just to the left of her command station, but low enough to avoid being overheard by the rest of the bridge crew. “Just a few days away at this pace…and we haven’t encountered one trace of the Protectorate.”
“That’s basically what the unmanned probes showed too,” McKay admitted, nodding reluctantly. “I had thought it might be some sort of maskirovka to draw us into an ambush, but now…” He shrugged and only the restraints of his seat kept the motion from lifting him into the air in the null gravity. “Now I think something else is going on. Something I don’t quite understand yet.”
McKay didn’t especially care for zero gravity: it always made his stomach queasy and his sinuses congested no matter what drugs the medics gave him to counter it. But despite the nausea and the stuffed up nose, despite the uncertainty and the trepidation, he still felt more at home joggling the elbow of a starship commander than he ever had sitting behind a desk.
“Did you know,” Minishimi said, still staring at the line of ships powering away from the wormhole with flares of fusion flame, “that this is the largest military operation in the history of space travel?”
McKay glanced over at her, surprised. “Bigger than the second Protectorate invasion?”
“By the number of ships and personnel involved, yes,” she replied. Minishimi’s mouth twisted in a wry smile. “Wouldn’t it be a kick in the ass if we took all this firepower all this way and wound up with no one to fight?”
McKay snorted a bit too loudly, drawing a curious glance back from the Tactical Officer at the station in front of his.
“The last of our ships are through, ma’am,” the young Lieutenant reported---trying not to look nosey, McKay thought. “The gate is closed.”
“Thank you, Mr. Cutler,” Minishimi acknowledged. “Lieutenant Jeffries,” she addressed the Helm Officer, “take us towards the exit gate at one gravity acceleration, if you please.”
“Admiral,” the Communications Officer interrupted from across the bridge, “you have a call coming in from the Bradley. It’s General Kage, ma’am.”
McKay saw a tightening around Minishimi’s eyes as the woman very deliberately did not sigh or curse or even frown, and he knew she very much wanted to. The only way for a ship inside an Eysselink drive field to communicate was via manipulation of another Eysselink drive field, which consumed a not-inconsequential amount of antimatter. If General Kage was using the intership communications system just to bitch about lading again…
“Send the visual to my station, Lt. Moss,” Minishimi said in a carefully neutral voice. “Audio to my ‘link and General McKay’s.”
The projector on the console in front of Minishimi’s acceleration couch snapped to life with a shimmering cylinder of light 18 centimeters high that coalesced into the head and shoulders of Hikaru Kage. The Guard commander was dressed in grey and brown field utilities rather than his usual dress uniform, and it somehow made him look more dangerous. And the man could be dangerous, McKay knew very well.
“Admiral,” Kage said, nodding to the Space Fleet’s ranking officer. He glanced over, seemingly just noticing McKay in the range of the visual pickup. “McKay,” he acknowledged curtly.
“Hikaru,” McKay replied with malice aforethought, enjoying the tightening around the man’s dark, recessed eyes.
“What can I do for you, General?” Minishimi asked with far more patience than McKay could have managed.
“Admiral,” Kage said, “we are very near to the enemy’s stronghold, yet we have come across none of their forces. The likelihood is great, in my opinion, that they know we’re coming and have set up a trap for us at a place more advantageous to them.”
“That’s certainly…possible,” Minishimi admitted. “Did you have a suggestion, General?”
“Yes,” he declared with his characteristic certitude. “We should not risk our whole force by blundering in blindly. My proposal is that we array our main fleet near the exit wormhole and send a smaller scouting force through. This scouting force can drop ComSat relays in each of the next two systems and, if they find the situation secure they can signal the rest of the fleet forward. If they encounter a trap, they can send back a warning.”
“And did you have any particular ship in mind for this scouting force?” Minishimi asked somewhat dryly, the corner of her mouth twitching upward slightly.
“Since the plan is mine, I, of course, would be willing to volunteer for this mission,” Kage said, smiling with what might have been mistaken for humble nobility if McKay hadn’t known him better than that. “I’ve spoken with Captain Lee and she would be very pleased to have the Bradley lead the way in our historical endeavor.”
“Well, General McKay,” Minishimi turned to him, “you’re the operational commander. What do you think?”
McKay studied Kage’s face carefully. What was the man trying to accomplish? It could be as simple as an attempt to rehabilitate his reputation after the debacle in Fairbanks…or it could be something much more complicated.
“That’s not a bad idea, Hikaru,” McKay said, and he could see surprise in Kage’s face as well as Minishimi’s. “Just one thing, though: if we’re looking to spring a possible trap, we should send in our strongest ship so it has a chance to survive it. That’s the Farragut.”
Kage’s face began to curl into a snarl and the effort it took to fight down that emotion was evident in the lines on the man’s forehead. “I don’t think it would be wise,” the Guard commander ground out, “to endanger two thirds of our command group in such a manner.”
>
“General Kage,” McKay said with as much sincerity as he could fake, “I have every confidence in your ability to take the lead and complete the mission should anything happen to us. However, just to make sure we have adequate firepower to deal with any possible threat, we’ll take the Triton and the Tethys along.” Coincidentally, those two cutters held the balance of the Marine Reaction Force platoons they’d brought along, but none of Kage’s Guard troops.
“We will definitely be dropping relays in the next two systems,” Minishimi pointed out, “and if we do run into trouble, I know we can count on you to have our back. If you would be so kind as to put Captain Lee on the line, I’ll fill her in on the plan.”
After a brief conversation with the Bradley’s CO, Minishimi signaled to the Communications Officer to kill the broadcast. She turned to McKay, smiling thinly.
“That was the most fun I’ve had all day,” she confided, chuckling softly. But McKay wasn’t laughing.
“About what you said before, Joyce,” McKay replied grimly. “I don’t think we’ll have any trouble finding someone to fight.”
* * *
Lieutenant Abshay Patel tried not to favor his leg as he walked briskly through the corridors of Fleet Headquarters, heading for the Intelligence section. Intellectually, he knew that the medical nanotech had mended the torn tissue in his thigh---although he could still feel a tug in his quadriceps there---but in his gut he was still dealing with the fact that he’d been shot less than three days ago. Twenty four hours ago, he’d been in the Trans Angeles Medical Center and now he was back on his feet, back in uniform and back at work, with little more than a quickly-healing red scar in his leg and a lingering headache from the concussion.
None of the rest of the team had been there when he’d woken in the hospital. He knew they’d had work to do: Captain Franks had left a message on his ‘link explaining the situation with the prisoner; but he’d still felt very much alone. Here, he felt as if he were on display. It was ridiculous, but he felt as if everyone that passed him in the corridor knew exactly what had happened and was staring at him, thinking what an embarrassment he was to his father’s memory, what a failure he was as a field operative.
