by Terry Mixon
Once it finished, she searched for Zane’s name. There were a ton of hits before the attack on Mars, but not nearly as many since. None in the last eight years until Zane had come to Jove Station.
She brought up that latest entry and began reading. Hale wrote about security coming to talk to him about his brother. Not that he’d seen him.
Rachel sat back. He had no expectation that anyone would see this journal. That troubled her, particularly since his take on the Mars incident didn’t tally.
What was really going on?
The buzzer on her door sounded. She hadn’t ordered anything, so this was probably trouble. She locked her comp and looked through the viewer. Hale was standing in the hall.
She opened the door. “Well, this is unexpected.”
“That’s the theme for the day. We need to talk.”
“Come in.” She stepped back and closed the door behind him. “Can I offer you a drink?”
He shook his head. “I’ll pass. Why did you try to kill me?”
That took her aback. “I haven’t.”
“And yet my ship is sabotaged right after you arrived. I’m not an idiot. There’s a connection here. How did I piss in your Choc-O Puffs?”
She smiled a little in spite of herself. “You’re a blunt man. I like that. I’m only here to find your brother.”
Hale threw up his hands. “Christ. He never came to see me. I’m not sure how many ways I can tell people that.”
“That doesn’t mean he wasn’t here. He checked into this hotel, even though they said he didn’t. He left something very important here. Something he wouldn’t have left behind if he’d had a choice.”
Hale stopped pacing and stared at her. “That has nothing to do with me.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. I’m your brother’s partner. You guessed that. It means we both work for the RIS. As you said, we’re spies. That means we do spy shit.”
She considered him a moment. “I’m starting to believe you’re telling the truth, but you have other people that aren’t so sure.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
Rachel unlocked her comp, brought up the images of the bugs and central unit from his place, and spun the screen around so he could see it. “I found these in your shop and living quarters. Someone has been bugging you.”
He stared at the images and then glared at her. “You broke into my place?” His voice dropped to a growl.
She kept her eyes locked on his. “Yes. I’d do even more if it meant finding my partner. These bugs are not RIS issue, so I’m not sure who is behind them.
“So, you never saw him? That worries me. Why would he come here, but not look you up?”
Hale stepped back from the table, visibly reining in his anger. “Because he’s an asshole and I’d punch him in the face.”
The corner of her mouth quirked up. “Succinctly put. Someone doesn’t believe that. I need your help to find Zane, but it sounds like you’ve had a crappy day.”
He turned back toward her. “Someone sabotaged my ship.”
She felt her eyes narrow. “You’re sure?”
“Oh, yeah. Someone worked real hard to make sure I died today. Was it you, spy lady?”
“Killing you isn’t my style. I’d turn you in for all the illegal weapons in your shop and let you rot. Which, you’ll notice, you aren’t currently doing. Even though you deserve to die, it wasn’t me.”
“Is that what I deserve? That probably means you’re a Martian. Interesting. You don’t have the accent and you seem to get around just fine in normal gravity. Why should I believe you?”
She shrugged. “Let’s have a race. You run back to your place to move your weapons and I’ll call security. We’ll see who gets done faster.”
Hale shook his head. “You’re a real piece of work.”
Rachel allowed her wolf smile to creep onto her face. “You killed a lot of my friends on Mars. I want to see you bleed for it. The law says I can’t, so I’ll settle for putting your ass in detention for the rest of your miserable life.
“Before you get all manly, if you come at me, I’ll put a bullet into your head. You might be all GI Joe, but I’m James Bond. Test me. I’d be really happy to kill you right here, right now.”
He smiled without humor. “Looks like you have all the answers. Tell me, who bugged me and why did they presumably try to kill me?”
“Not my circus, not my monkeys.”
They stared at one another for a moment before he spoke. “What makes you think Zane checked in to the hotel? Hell, what makes you think he actually arrived?”
“I searched his assigned room and found his kit hidden right where I’d expect. So the hotel lied to security about him checking in.”
That brought the data chips she’d found in Zane’s kit to mind. Maybe someone who’d known him longer had other passwords to try.
“He had some data chips that I can’t hack,” she said. “Maybe he meant them for you. Or maybe he used a password you’d know. None of the ones he shared with me worked.”
“So he didn’t trust you as much as you thought? Big surprise. He only trusts himself.”
“Are you going to try to unlock them?”
He sat down on the couch, lowering the tension in the room. “That depends. If I do, will you stop trying to get me thrown into detention?”
Rachel considered his offer. She really wanted to see him rot. “If you try, I’ll keep my mouth shut until I leave the station. If you actually open the chips, I won’t say a word to anyone about the weapons.”
“You drive a hard bargain. Why should I trust you?”
“I can call security now, if you’d like.”
“Has anyone ever told you you’re a bitch?”
“I can play nice if I want. Has anyone ever told you you’re a mass murderer?”
The drop in tension reversed itself. The two of them stared at one another until he slowly nodded. “I guess I won’t get a better deal. Give me the chips.”
She moved her comp over to sit in front of him and retrieved the chips. Then she planted herself beside the door. It gave her a view of the screen and kept him from making a break with her only real clues about why Zane had come here.
Hale plugged the first chip in and started trying passwords at the prompt. “I’m running through some we shared back in the day. Then I’ll try some of the older ones he kept to himself, but didn’t hide well enough.”
On the fifth try, the chip unlocked. “Hit it. Madeline Kramer. He called her Mad Red. She was nuts, but he wanted to ask her out real bad. Never did, though.”
She edged closer and looked at the files. “Videos. What are they?”
Hale shrugged. “Damned if I know. The timestamp…”
He straightened abruptly. “The timestamps are from the Mars assault. These are the helmet cam recordings. The ones the RIS agents took away from us.”
That wasn’t what she’d expected. And it wasn’t something she wanted to waste her time on, either. “Is there anything else?”
“Not on this chip. Here’s the one with my armor tag. I’m surprised I still remember it.”
He started it playing and began fast-forwarding through it. Even though she wanted to tell him to shut it off, she also wanted to see his lies with her own eyes.
Only that’s not what happened. They came into the building ready to fight, but didn’t start shooting indiscriminately. On the second floor, one man pulled a weapon and fired at them.
Hale took him out with a controlled burst and led his team past the fleeing civilians and into the movement’s offices.
People were running every direction, and two men she didn’t recognize opened fire on the troops. Two bursts took them down.
Then all hell broke loose. Someone began mowing everyone down. Several shooters. Hale’s helmet cam gave her a good look at them as he tried to get them to stop, and she could tell they weren’t Republican Army. They didn’t have the same kind of gear as the regular troops
had. They looked like embedded RIS agents.
Hale and his men brought the rampaging shooters down physically, but it was far too late to save her friends.
She stared at Hale in shock. Everything he’d claimed from the beginning was true. Everything.
Chapter Eight
“You seem shocked,” Adam said.
“Shut up and let me think.”
She backed up the video and played it again slowly. “Holy shit,” she muttered. “Someone else really did kill all those people.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying all this time. I didn’t have the video to prove it because those RIS assholes took the recordings.”
Part of him was infuriated, but the rest of him was pleased. He could finally make it clear that the RIS had framed him and his men.
Or could he? Doubters would just claim he’d faked it.
Did it really matter? People were going to think what they thought no matter what he did. He was never going back to the Army. So, how did this change anything?
Honestly, it didn’t.
It didn’t change things between him and Zane. Though he had to admit he was wondering why his brother had gone to all the trouble of getting these videos.
And why, once Zane had them, he hadn’t come to him.
“Let me see if I can open any of the other data chips,” Adam said. “There might be something on one of them that explains what the hell Zane came here for.”
Price gestured for him to continue.
He picked up one of the remaining two chips and plugged it in. It also opened to the same password.
This one contained a variety of different file types. He didn’t recognize most of them, but a few stood out. Like his military record.
He opened it and was shocked to see that it wasn’t the sanitized version they released to other agencies. Much less, the heavily edited bits they occasionally allowed the general public to see.
This was the full meal deal.
“Is that your military record?” Price asked. “I had a hell of a time even getting the redacted version.”
“That’s as it should be. Zane shouldn’t have been able to get his hands on this. There’s a very highly placed leak somewhere.”
“May I?”
He pushed the comp over. “Be my guest. I’ll want copies of these. Someone set me up, and while I may never get even, I want to know the truth.”
She nodded slowly, obviously distracted. “Sure. You can hide it with the weapons. I’ll send Zane’s kit with you. None of their bugs covers it directly. If they find your stash, it might add twenty years to your sentence.”
Adam allowed a wry smile onto his face. “Man, you really have a hard-on for me. Even after you saw I didn’t do it.”
Price stared at him, her eyes cold. “I’ve hated you for a decade. I’ve dreamt of what I’d do to you if I could get away with it. That doesn’t go away in ten minutes.”
She reached out and tapped her comp. “As far as I know, this might be faked. Even if it isn’t, we’re not going to hug this out any time soon.”
“Finally, something about you that I can understand. So, Agent Price, what other files are on that thing?”
“I’ll tell you after I finish going over your record. You might want to read along and tell me if someone changed anything important. If I’d framed you, I wouldn’t leave your personnel file untouched.”
He read as she scrolled down his service record. It had been a while, but everything seemed accurate.
She poked around on the chip and found reports on the Mars incident. Those were a bit messier. Not precisely inaccurate, but muddy. His superiors had stuck up for him and his people. That was good to know.
The RIS people had lied their asses off. Their report was completely different, and there weren’t a lot of survivors to clear things up.
They’d redacted the agents’ names, of course. The report noted that the RIS had seized all the helmet video for “security reasons.” An action his superiors strongly protested, though they’d lost that battle.
There were hints that the government would bring him and his men up on charges outside the Army chain of command, but that hadn’t happened. Everything had just gone away.
The last entry was when he’d resigned his commission. His superiors were pretty blunt that even though they’d believed him, his career was over. There’d been no reason to stay.
“That looks about right,” he said. “No obvious omissions or additions.”
She shook her head. “How could my superiors have missed something like this? It’s so damned heavy-handed. They confiscated the helmet videos. Clearly, that should’ve led to an internal investigation.”
After a moment, she took a deep breath and stared at him. “Unless there was some kind of cover-up inside the RIS. Maybe that’s what Zane was looking into. It would explain why he didn’t tell our manager. This sounds completely off the books.”
Adam pursed his lips. “If someone got wind of it, they’d have ample reason to shut him up.”
He looked around. “I assume you swept your room for bugs. If they know who you are—and I assume someone in the RIS would—then they might have eyes and ears on us right now.”
* * * * *
That hung in the air for a moment, and Rachel upgraded her opinion of the man. A little. That was solid thinking.
“I swept for bugs when I checked in,” she said. “I have monitors to tell me if anyone gets into the room, something like the wire you use to tell you if someone accessed your weapons cache, but high tech. Good work, by the way.”
He grunted sourly. “Obviously not, if you spotted it.”
“Call it good for a gifted amateur. I also scan the room for bugs whenever I come back in. That’s just good tradecraft. We’re not being monitored.”
She looked at the other files. They had encryption, but she recognized the format. RIS dossiers and mission files. Not surprising since RIS personnel were involved.
Her comp was able to open them easily enough. Anyone else would’ve had a much harder time.
The first file on the list was about one of the RIS men assigned to the Mars raid. So were the next two. They came from her organization’s paramilitary group. All were ex-Army with experience in units like Hale’s.
That made sense. She’d be out of her depth in a firefight. She could shoot, but not like trained warriors.
But why’d they go off on unarmed office workers? They had to be more discerning than that. They were former pros. A slaughter was completely outside their training.
Interestingly, none of them was with the RIS now. Two had moved on, and one was dead. A suicide, or so the record said.
There were attached notes in what looked like Zane’s writing style. He’d confirmed the details of the suicide, but seemed to think the man might’ve had help.
He’d also followed up on the other two. It seemed they’d left government service entirely. They now worked for the Janus Corporation.
Well, wasn’t that interesting?
Did it explain why Zane had come to Jove Station? Was the RIS involvement why he hadn’t told her anything? Did he distrust her? Or was he protecting her?
She looked at the other files and found Paul Jacoby, her first line manager. He ran dozens of operatives spread all across the solar system. And he’d managed the people on the Mars raid, back in the day.
“Are you going to keep me in the dark?” Hale asked.
She shook her head and looked up. “Sorry. I’m still trying to process all this. There are dossiers for the three RIS agents assigned to the raid with you. Zane was obviously looking into the whole situation.
“He came out here because two of the shooters now work for Janus. The other one blew his brains out a few weeks after the Mars attack. Maybe he had a guilty conscience. Or maybe someone worried he might.”
“You are one paranoid chick.”
Rachel smiled. “Chick. That’s old-fashioned and sexist. Congratulati
ons on the twofer. Zane also has a file on our boss. He assigned these three yahoos to your team ten years ago, so Zane suspects he’s dirty.”
Hale raised his hands in a questioning gesture. “So, what do you do now? Call someone? Have him arrested?”
“You need this thing called proof for that. All we have is enough circumstantial evidence to suspect him. We have no way of knowing if he’s as high as it goes. Or if he’s an unwitting dupe following orders.
“Frankly, with all of the survivors heading out here, I think there’s more to the story. Let me keep looking.”
She brought up the next file. It was a still from one of the helmet cams on Mars. Zane had highlighted and enhanced one of the civilian shooters.
It wasn’t much, because enhancement relied on the details the camera recorded, but some sharpening was possible. It came at the expense of adding a little guesswork to the image, but sometimes that was okay.
In this case, it looked as though Zane had an ID to go with the face. She remembered the shooter from the first pass. Hale had killed him, so there didn’t seem to be much need to identify him. Surely, someone had done that after the attack.
The tag marked him as Oscar Crabtree. She closed the image and found a dossier on the man. He wasn’t Martian. He came from Pallas. A water miner by trade.
He had a somewhat colorful mix of run-ins with authority figures, but nothing that explained why he was on Mars shooting at the Army. The worst offense in his record was an assault in a bar with a broken bottle. Over a woman, no doubt.
Zane referenced another file. She searched the list and found it.
This one was eye-opening. Mister Crabtree was a suspected affiliate of a Disruptor cell in the belt. Based on this designation, he’d been under observation for months before the attack.
That was standard practice. If you found one, there’d be more. The RIS wanted to identify any known compatriots in the hope of compromising other cells. Or even someone in the layer of oversight above them. Whoever they were.
How had he gotten from the belt to Mars? And why? This really made no sense. The Disruptors attacked corporate and government facilities. They assassinated high officials. They actually approved of other groups resisting the Republic. They should’ve seen the Free Mars movement as comrades in arms.
