by Rick Partlow
The championship trophy caught the Security agent just below the knee of his lead leg and sent him sprawling forward, his mouth forming a pained and shocked “O” as he fell. The next agent in line, a tall woman with long legs and short-cut blond hair, managed to hop over Proctor with a graceful move worthy of a ballet dancer; but the man behind her wasn’t as agile or as lucky. He tumbled head over heels with a warbling cry of alarm that made the last man in line skid to a halt to avoid a collision.
That left Shannon Stark one on one with the female, for the space of just a few seconds. The agent jabbed forward with the stun baton, but Shannon stepped inside her guard, elbow slashing upward to catch her in the temple as her other hand caught the arm wielding the weapon at the wrist. The Security agent’s head snapped back on impact with Shannon’s elbow and her eyes rolled back in her head. She collapsed backwards, but her stun baton stayed in Shannon’s hand as she spun around to deal with the others.
The agent who’d tripped over Proctor was trying to scramble to his feet and she targeted him first, jabbing the end of her appropriated stun baton into the side of his neck and depressing the trigger for a long second. The man jerked spastically as electricity coursed through him, then he fell back to the floor, insensate, pinning the injured Agent Proctor beneath him.
That left the one male agent who was standing on the other side of the room, eyes wide, looking doubtfully back and forth from his stun baton to Shannon Stark. She eyed him with the same look she would have given a punching bag or a pop-up target. Her heart rate was slightly elevated from the adrenaline spike, but she kept her breath smooth and controlled.
Shannon touched a control on her ‘link, knowing what she had to do.
“Franks,” she heard the Captain’s voice in her ear.
“Stop it, Goddamn it!” President Jameson roared, leaping up from his desk. “What the hell is going on here? What are you people doing?”
“Franks,” she said quietly, eyes still on the agent, “listen close. Jameson is chemically conditioned, don’t know by who. He’s being played and I’m probably about to be taken. Get out, go dark.”
“Sir, we were told there was a threat to you from Colonel Stark…” the last standing agent began, but was cut off when five more agents tried to crowd into the room. These were stuffed into body armor and carrying sonic stunners and looked as if they were about to open fire when Jameson stepped quickly from behind his desk and stood in front of Shannon Stark.
“Stand down now!” he yelled, exercising the full register of his powerful voice for once and echoing the bass bellow off the walls. He was breathing hard, and Shannon thought he looked as if he were about to hit someone. “Everyone stand the hell down!” He rounded on the male agent who’d spoken a moment before. “You were told there was a threat…who told you?”
“Uh…” the man stuttered helplessly, confused, “it was the CIS Director, Philip Ayrock, Mr. President. He hit the emergency alert and said Shannon Stark was trying to kill you.”
“What the fuck?” Jameson blurted, spit literally flying from his mouth as he raged. “Ayrock did this? Get his ass in here!”
“It’s Ayrock…” Shannon hissed urgently to Franks; but before she could say more, a sound that wasn’t a sound screamed inside her head.
She dropped the stun baton, hands going to her ears, but she couldn’t shut out the spikes of pain that pierced through her skull to her brain. Her legs wouldn’t support her and she sank to her knees, fighting to stay conscious. She forced her eyes open and saw Jameson and the Security Detail agent both collapsed on the ground, writhing in pain.
Sonic stun field, she had time to think and then the spike in her head became white hot. The floor was rushing up to meet her, but the darkness took her first.
Shannon Stark awoke to the sound of a cry of pain. It took her a moment to realize it was from her. Her head felt as if someone had set a grenade off inside her skull and even the act of breathing sent fresh waves of pressure against the back of her eyes. She resisted opening her eyes, knowing how badly the light would hurt, but she had to know…
With an effort of will, she pried open eyelids frozen shut by dried tears, then had to blink back fresh teardrops as the harsh light stabbed through into her brain. Her vision slowly cleared and she managed to turn her head away from the light panels in the ceiling, following the dull white ceiling until it met a curved, transplas wall. The wall was unbroken as it enclosed what she slowly came to understand was her cell. As feeling began to return to her extremities, she could tell that she was lying on a padded cot built into the wall. She forced herself to move, rolling to the side, and found herself looking into the recessed dark eyes of Philip Ayrock.
“I see you’re awake,” he said. He seemed calm, and his demeanor was oddly missing the smarmy, whiney mannerisms she usually associated with him.
Her eyes swam out of focus once more from a fresh wave of pain, but she made herself sit up, rubbing a hand across her face.
“You’re controlling President Jameson,” she rasped, her mouth dry. “How did you manage it?”
“Do you know what my first assignment was when I came to the RIS?” he asked her, a hint of a smile playing across his face. He waited a moment, then answered the question himself. “I was an expert in psychological conditioning and counter-conditioning. After the first Protectorate invasion, there was concern that Antonov’s people might have chemically conditioned President Jameson during his captivity. I was brought in to deprogram him.”
“Instead,” she surmised, “you just re-programmed him.” She shook her head, resting her shoulders back against the wall as she tried to regain her strength. “Would have been easy back then…everything was still broken down, we were still rounding up stray biomechs. I bet security measures were pretty lax for a while.”
“Just long enough,” he confirmed with an annoying confidence.
“You didn’t kill me,” she observed, trying to work up some moisture in her mouth. “What do you want?”
“Why would I kill you?” he protested, pacing in front of her cell. “You’ll be so useful in the show trial…the people need a villain, and they just love to tear down their heroes and make villains of them.”
“And I don’t suppose I’ll be allowed to defend myself,” she said, coughing a dry-throated laugh.
“You can say whatever you want,” he waved a hand dismissively. “We’ll simply have computer simulations change it before we put it online. But that’s for later. For now…I need to know what McKay knows.” He stepped closer to the transplas barrier. “What did you tell him before you came to visit Jameson?”
Shannon considered for a moment how to answer him. He undoubtedly had detectors that could tell him whether she was showing any physiological signs of deception, but she’d been trained on how to fool those. He could try chemical interrogation, but he had to expect she’d been conditioned to resist it. She looked around her cell and was surprised to see a cup of water sitting on a table built into the wall. She leaned over and took a sip from it and had to sigh with relief as it soothed her raw throat.
“What?” she asked, playing for time. “No threats?”
“What would be the point?” he countered, an intelligence and understanding in his eyes that made her distinctly uncomfortable. “What could I threaten you with that you don’t expect me to do already? I suppose I could threaten your loved ones…but I know you better than that. If you put anything above the safety of the Republic, well, you wouldn’t be in this position, would you?”
Shannon had to smile at that, but it was a smile tinged in bitterness.
What the hell? she thought. Telling him the truth might actually do some good.
“I told Jason everything,” she informed Ayrock. “Everything we knew, which was that President Jameson and Brendan Riordan were responsible for the arming of the bratva and the raiders. Whatever Admiral Minishimi may have told you, she has no intention of surrendering him to you.” She shook he
r head, wincing slightly at the motion. “You’re looking at a civil war, and at least half the military will side with us.”
“Possibly,” he admitted. “But I still control all the static defenses through Jameson. And my major advantage is that I know Minishimi and McKay won’t intentionally endanger civilians…whereas I don’t give a shit.”
“You really think you can win this?” she asked, curious despite herself. “You’ll destroy half the Republic in a war, Ayrock. You have to know that. And you think Yuri will sit back and let you take power when he’s already made an end-run to get alien technology?”
“I’m a patient man, Colonel Stark,” he told her. He leaned against the transparent wall, casual and unconcerned. “I started this ten years ago, investing a small risk for a large reward. If it takes another ten years to solidify my position, well…” He shrugged. “I intend to live a long time. Yuri can blow things up, kill some people and then what? Will he pull what’s left together into a government?” He laughed. “I don’t think so. He seems more likely to go out in a blaze of glory. I’ll outlast him the same way I’ll outlast you and your patriotic friends. But…” He tossed his head. “He could do a lot of damage that maybe you and McKay don’t want to see done.”
Suddenly she saw it and she almost had to remind herself to shut her mouth before something flew in.
“My God,” she murmured in shocked realization. “You want to use us to take out Yuri.”
“Your reputation is not undeserved,” he allowed, tipping an imaginary hat in recognition. “Here’s the deal: I know where Yuri has gone to ground. He hasn’t shared his plans with me, but I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he’s got some grand endgame concocted. So, I let you make a call to McKay and tell him where Yuri is. He gets to send a shuttle in to take out Yuri…one shuttle, that’s it.”
“And you know he’ll have to do it himself,” she said with bitter admiration. “And if he survives, you can swoop in and take him…or just kill him.”
“There’s always that chance,” he admitted.
“And that’s it?” she prompted. “No quid pro quo? What’s in it for us?”
“The chance to do your duty,” he told her. “The chance to save the lives of innocent people. Isn’t that why you do what you do?” He chuckled. “I don’t even mind if you warn him…hell, that’ll make him more likely to believe I’m on the up and up.” He raised his hands, palm up, a questioning look on his face. “So, what will it be, Colonel?”
She closed her eyes, taking in a breath. Her head still throbbed, and she felt an overwhelming urge to scream.
Where there’s life, there’s hope.
“I’ll send the message.”
Chapter Thirty Six
Jason McKay brooded in the silence of the darkened Situation Room, staring at the animated star map running on the conference table’s holoprojector but not really seeing it. All he could see was Shannon’s face. He slouched in his chair, letting the half gravity pull him deeper into it. They weren’t under acceleration and hadn’t been since they’d arrived in the Sirius system yesterday, but the Situation Room was in the Farragut’s central rotational drum and it was spun up for artificial gravity at the moment, which was just as well. Brooding was more difficult in zero gravity, and it was all he was in the mood to do at the moment.
He didn’t look up as the door hissed open and a shuffling chorus of footsteps made their way inside. He knew who it was.
“Lights,” McKay ordered quietly and the panels in the room’s ceiling gradually came to life. His eyes narrowed at the glare, but he finally looked up, regarding Vinnie, Jock and Tom as they stepped into the room.
The awkward, hesitant looks on their faces told him they’d heard the news, though he knew they hadn’t yet seen the message.
“Have a seat, gentlemen,” he told them, rousing himself from his fugue and straightening in his chair.
“Yes, sir,” Vinnie said, pulling out a chair next to his commander while the two NCOs sat across from them.
“We’ll get her out, sir,” Tom Crossman blurted, his face seeming uncharacteristically earnest and serious. “I swear to God, we will.”
“I know, Tom,” McKay said with an appreciative nod. “But that’s not why we’re here.”
“We got more coming?” Vinnie asked him, glancing back at the door.
“The Admiral,” McKay replied, “plus a few others. We’ll wait till they’re here to get started.”
The term “awkward silence” had been invented for the next few moments. McKay could sense that Vinnie wanted badly to say something, while Jock looked like he would rather have been shooting something and Tom looked utterly miserable. It was a relief when the door slid aside and Marine Captain Muniz stepped through, followed by Captains Lee and Pirelli and, finally, Admiral Minishimi.
Technically, they all could have stayed seated since McKay was the commander of the task force, but he rose from his chair at Admiral Minishimi’s entrance and so did the other three men.
McKay didn’t salute, but he did step forward and shake her hand. They moved to separate ends of the table and let the others fill in the spaces between before they nodded to each other and sat down simultaneously. Minishimi looked to McKay and gave him a nod.
“You’ve all committed to…this,” McKay began, waving around them demonstratively, “based on what we already knew about President Jameson and Brendan Riordan’s connections to Yuri and the Raider ships. Well now we know something else.” His mouth twisted in distaste. “The good news,” he said, barely able to keep himself from snarling it, “is that President Jameson is not a traitor…he’s just a dupe. Here’s the bad news.”
He waved a hand over the table and a holographic recording of Shannon Stark coalesced. She was seated in a government-issue office chair with a government-beige wall behind her. She looked haggard, her hair sticking up in places and circles under her eyes that spoke of stress and little sleep. McKay tried to keep his fists from clenching.
“Jason, things have changed here. I decided to confront President Jameson with the evidence we had. I thought I might be able to convince him it was in his best interests to step down quietly and avoid a scandal, or worse, a civil war.” She scowled. “The only problem was, he had no idea what I was talking about. He had no memory of any of the existence of Project Asatru, much less approving it personally. You see, after the first Protectorate invasion, President Jameson was worried that he might have been chemically conditioned by his captors, so he went to the RIS to get checked out by their resident deprogramming expert…Junior Agent Philip Ayrock.”
“Oh, shit,” Vinnie muttered, under his breath but McKay still heard it.
“Junior Agent Ayrock,” Shannon went on, a bitter sarcasm to her tone, “was a young man but a far-sighted one…and apparently one lacking in the sort of ethics one would hope that a person in his position would hold. Once he had confirmed there had been chemical conditioning, Ayrock took advantage of the spotty security from the damage to Capital City and managed to get the President alone and unmonitored long enough to change that programming. Now, instead of Jameson becoming open to suggestion at the Russian trigger phrase, he would be open to suggestion at Ayrock’s trigger phrase. And one of the first things he did was get his career kickstarted.”
She shifted in her seat, resting her head on her hand. “I think when it became clear that Jameson wasn’t going to win reelection, Ayrock suggested that he get into the business of corporate lobbying so he could still use him as an asset later…and he probably made sure he did what he had to do to become President again. Anyway,” she sighed heavily, “that’s all backstory and the only reason it’s important is to let you know that there is no possibility of negotiating with President Jameson. He’s not the one in charge, although he still thinks he is”
McKay started a moment at that turn of phrase. He hadn’t noticed it the first time, but it sounded significant, somehow.
“The long and the short of it is,�
�� Shannon explained, “Ayrock activated the security measures in the President’s office, stunned me and arrested me. I’m currently in custody, but he allowed me to send you this message because he has a problem with a former asset of his who has recently gone off the reservation and he thinks you might be willing to take care of this problem for him.” She kept her face carefully neutral, but McKay could see the pain and fear in her eyes. She didn’t want to say this, but she knew she had to.
“Originally, Yuri was just supposed to arrange for the creation of the raiders via his connections with the Belt Pirates, and to recruit and chemically condition the pawns they used for the terrorist strikes. Houston was supposed to be the last and biggest, enough to galvanize public opinion in favor of the Daladier Bill and achieve Brendan Riordan’s goals of giving Republic Transportation back its monopoly on interstellar travel and reinstating the policy of forced emigration of political undesirables.
“But Yuri’s not content to play kingmaker. He still has that nanovirus and Ayrock’s instinct is that he means to use it. He didn’t know where Yuri was until yesterday…that’s when satellite coverage caught a VTOL flying out of the Alaskan interior and across the Bering Straits to an old, abandoned Protectorate spaceport in Kazakhstan. It used to be called the Baikonur Cosmodrome and only a malfunctioning Chinese ICBM kept it from being a radioactive crater two hundred years ago. As it is, it’s right on the edge of the wastes and no one has been within a thousand klicks of it since the Sino-Russian War. Until a couple years ago anyway…that’s when surveillance shows that overland cargo trucks began going out there every day for a couple months.” She shrugged. “At a guess, it’s Yuri’s last bolt hole, someplace he can marshal what forces he has left for one last strike using the last of the nanovirus to create as many casualties as he can.”
