Alien Salute

by Charles Ingrid

  “I’m not an assassin.”

  He looked around the apartment for a moment. “Winton suggested otherwise.”

  “Winton was crazy.”

  “Perhaps. It would have been easier to tell if Storm had brought him back alive, wouldn’t it?” He looked back to her. Then, so quickly she couldn’t evade him, he grabbed her wrist. His fingers felt like live coals on her skin.

  “You come from under-Malthen,” he said. “You’ve no implanted ID. You come and go past the security systems as if they don’t exist.”

  She wrenched her arm away. “Old habits die hard.”

  “Indeed. Are you and Storm a team, or are you using him?”

  Amber palmed the door open. “Get out.”

  “I’ve not finished our talk.”

  “I have.”

  Baadluster flushed, a purple mottling of his pasty flesh tones. “You play, but I do not.”

  She straightened and threw her head back, feeling her chin settle into pointed stubbornness as she did so. “It would really be naïve of me to think that we’re on the same side, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes,” the Minister of War answered. “It would. And it would be even more naïve to think that Jack Storm will not suffer for his association with you. Or you from his.”

  “What do you want?”

  Baadluster curved his plumpish lips into a semblance of a smile. Amber concealed a shudder as the nape of her neck tingled. “A word now and then,” he said, “might convince me of your loyalties.”

  She stood for a long moment, running through the possibilities of what Baadluster wanted, then fixing on it in shock. “Why?”

  Vandover smiled. “Because you will want to.”

  Amber gathered her thoughts. Jack would not be surprised that they were suspicious of him—they had to be, after these last few years. But without proof, and with Jack in the position he was in, with war looming on the horizon… he’d probably never been safer. She cleared her throat. “I won’t do it.”

  “Of course not, my dear. I didn’t think you would.”

  Her stubborn chin dropped slightly.

  Vandover Baadluster smiled widely. “But it was worth a try, and neither will you tell him I contacted you. Pepys is a liberal emperor, but nothing in regulations says that a soldier’s whore has to be allowed to stay with him.”

  “I’m not his whore!”

  “No?” His brow arched. “Perhaps they have another word for it in under-Malthen.”

  Amber moved away from the portal as Baadluster neared it. “And I’ll give you this, for free.” Her angry gaze met his amused one. “Just like me, you aren’t safe anywhere, either.”

  For the briefest of moments, she thought he was going to hit her, and fought every muscle in her body not to pull back until she sensed the muscular heat of his arm bunching. But Baadluster did not move. The darkness of his eyes seemed to flare but whatever it was he might have done, Rawlins interrupted.

  So filled had her senses been with the man before her, she’d never heard his approach, but the young Knight filled the doorway suddenly, his milk blond hair tousled from the wind, and his fathomless blue eyes drinking her in.

  “Amber. The commander has word for you.” Rawlins blinked slowly as he looked from her to the minister. “I’m sorry,” he said, “if I interrupted you.”

  “No matter, lieutenant.”

  Amber cleared her throat to say, “Rawlins, this is Minister Vandover Baadluster, the emperor’s newest adviser.”

  Rawlins saluted.

  “Lieutenant. I’m finished here. For now.”

  She held her ragged breath as the man inclined his head slightly and left Jack’s apartments. Even with the portal closed and locked behind him, she could still feel the feral heat of his body and his thoughts.

  If she could have, she would have disinfected the room.

  Amber pressed her hands to her lips for a moment and found herself trembling. Angrily she dropped her hands to her sides and clenched her fists. They would never have dared approach Jack like this. Never.

  And because he wears armor, Amber thought. You won’t jerk him around because he wears the armor!

  Rawlins looked thoughtfully out the portal as he opened it to leave himself. “Trouble?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes. What does Jack want?”

  “He’d like you to come out to the training grounds.”

  She frowned. “Why?”

  “He wants to talk with you.”

  A chill ridged up her spine. “Why didn’t he use the com?”

  Rawlins would not meet her eyes as he said, “Some things are better said face to face.”

  Amber shivered as the coldness from the room seemed to gather inside her. Rawlins sensed her withdrawal and moved back from the door. He made as if to touch her comfortingly on the arm, but did not complete the gesture.

  “It’s our job,” he said.

  “No.” She returned his gaze, thinking of Jack and how far they’d come to reach this point. “No, I think it’s his destiny.”

  Chapter 12

  Intercepted

  Baadluster shadowed the emperor as Pepys looked over the subspace call report.

  “Have you made a record of this?” he asked of the minister.

  “Nothing official. You won’t be able to keep it down long. There’s bound to have been other messages that were gotten out.”

  Pepys sighed. As he looked up, he rubbed his fatigued eyes. “It will be blamed on the Thraks.”

  “I think so. But there’s no doubt in my mind from the description given here that it’s someone else. Perhaps even a twin ship of the unknown Storm encountered.”

  Pepys blinked his eyes back into focus. “Another planet gone. Hundreds, no, thousands of colonists… so far out on the rim that we barely had contact. Why?”

  “Shall I inform your officers?”

  The emperor sat there, caught by the stark realization that there might be somebody out there bigger and badder than the Thraks. Were they waiting around to pick up the pieces? Or did they even care if there were any pieces left?

  “Your highness.”

  “What? No. I don’t want anything official said about this. Let’s wait and see if any other messages got out. Perhaps not. This… massacre… seems to have been pretty efficient.”

  “Your highness, I’d suggest the star fleets be notified, if not the Knights.”

  “No.”

  Baadluster drew himself up. “Very well. Good night.” He withdrew, his gangly shadow mingling with, then dissolving among the other long shadows in the emperor’s private chambers. Pepys scarcely noticed his leaving.

  Chapter 13

  Jack looked up from his reports as a flicker of movement outside his private berth caught his eye. He keyed the tapes to pause and a faint hum of static filled his ears as the audio dimmed as well. The shadow of movement coalesced into Rawlins, waiting nervously beyond the privacy panel, and Jack made a movement to let him in.

  “What is it, lieutenant?” Disapproval faintly edged his words. With the ship nearing their destination, they had barely enough time to prepare themselves for the coming drop. Rawlins should not be wandering around.

  The young man came to a stop. His milky white hair spiked back from his high forehead, and his blue eyes seemed to beg Jack for reassurance. Jack did not need to hear any words to read the unease in Rawlins’ eyes. Forty-eight hours would not be enough to prepare this man for war. Maybe a lifetime wouldn’t.

  Jack hated to go into battle with hesitation like that riding his men. But he knew Rawlins wasn’t a coward—he had never seen that in him before. So it was something else that gave the young man doubts. Evidently Rawlins thought Jack had an answer, or he wouldn’t be here.

  But Rawlins stood poised, his fear unvoiced, as though speaking of it would give it shape.

  “Come in, lieutenant. There just might be enough space for you to sit down if you do.” />
  That thawed his second’s vocal cords. “Yes, sir.” Rawlins stepped in past the privacy panel’s track and squeezed his lean hip onto a chair, flap. “Did I disturb you?”

  “Just going over the terrain. We’ll stay in orbit on the far side, keeping the planet between us until the Thraks commit to a landing pattern. Then we’ll position the drop. I don’t know where it’ll be, but I have a good guess based on past performance.” He had a damned good guess and he didn’t need the tapes to inform him. His communion with Bogie was feeding him a storehouse of information. Now he had more than his instinctual gut level hatred of the Thraks to fight them with. More than his nightmares of locked-in cold sleep. More than Baadluster’s vague stratagems. And he could only pray it would be enough.

  Rawlins stretched his legs out restlessly. He looked up at Jack from under dark brows. “It all depends on us, doesn’t it?”

  “No.”

  The brows went up in surprise. “But I thought—”

  “You thought we had something to do with gravity and magnetic attraction, with rain and wind and fire and DNA? Come on, lieutenant. The only thing depending on us is whatever sector of land I give you to hold onto. That’s it.

  “I’ve never seen a sand planet, sir, and I don’t want to. Claron was bad enough for me. But I thought that the Dominion… that Congress’ support of the war… the whole circuit… was in our hands.”

  Jack took his tapes off pause and shut the whole system down. He took his headset off. “I don’t think any Knight alive is armored well enough to carry that kind of load, do you?”

  “Well, no, sir. Not really.”

  “Then you can relax, soldier, because you’re not being expected to.” Jack leaned forward slightly. “What you are being expected to do is study your briefs so that when I give you your assignment, you can carry it out.”

  Rawlins’ color came back, and so did the glint in his eyes. He nodded. “Yes, sir. I can handle that.”

  “Good. Now get out of here or you’ll wish Lassaday had come along instead.”

  Rawlins grinned in tribute to their tough and feisty NCO. “Yessir!”

  Jack watched him go and sat for a long moment as the privacy panel closed after him, leaving the berth in silence. As he finally moved to replace his headset, he thought of what rested on his shoulders, and what didn’t.

  Amber had had little for him in the way of goodbyes other than the immense sadness welling in brown eyes flecked with gold. She had stood in the curve of his arm for a long time after his words had died away, and they watched the training grounds empty of troops eager for combat, until there was nothing left but dust whirls and the spartan barricades. Because of Bogie, he felt her presence through his second skin, every nuance of movement and heat.

  He felt the sighing moving through her just before she said, “I don’t mind you going so much… it’s just that I always get left behind. And I never thought I’d be jealous of a pile of scrap… but Bogie’s the lucky one. I may share your bed, but he shares your soul.”

  And with a faint whisper of a kiss, she’d left him on the command bridge to make ready to go to war.

  She’d been right, of course. And that was one more wrong he carried with him until he found the Thraks who could purge him.

  Chapter 14

  No, no, you stupid son of a bitch,” Lassaday bellowed, his voice breaking into static over the com. “Keep that up and you’re going to blow your ass off! Now step in line and remember, the suit’s carrying you, you’re not carrying the suit. Quit flexin’ your muscles like some overgrown ape.”

  Denaro fought the wild gyrations of his armor to a standstill as the sergeant’s rough voice washed over him. Beneath it, he imagined he could hear the jeers of the other recruits. His heart thumped loudly with anger and he took a deep breath, retreating into the meditations of the Blue Wheel to compose himself.

  St. Colin had promised him a hard but rewarding road to travel. How hard, the old man could scarcely have guessed. But, and Denaro steeled his jaw, the empire would not get the best of him. He had been given his mission and he could not fail in it. He was in exile until he mastered the armor or it mastered him. Sweat dripped off his brow and down his bare torso, where leads pinched uncomfortably to his skin. He took a deep breath and, almost as if Lassaday sensed he had composed himself and was ready to try again, the sergeant rasped, “Get the lead out, boy.”

  The session over at last, Denaro stumbled into the tunnel corridors leading to the locker rooms and the shop. Jostled and bumped around by recruits more in tune with their equipment, he sagged against a wall and let them run by him. He ached in more muscles than he thought God had ever created as he reached up and unscrewed his helmet.

  Malthen air poured in, tinged with a smell of hot concrete and dirt, but it was sweet compared to the sour aroma of his own body.

  “Rough day?”

  Denaro was startled, in spite of himself, and smothered a groan as a calf muscle threatened to cramp. He half crouched down to rub it, realized he couldn’t get to it through his armor and settled for stomping his foot on the ground several times until the muscle unknotted. He glared at the woman who shared the corridor shadows with him, until he recognized the commander’s woman.

  His mother had taught him that the ungodly feared a fight and to “stare the de’il in the eyes until He backs down.” The commander’s whore was no exception and so he stared at her until she came out of the shadows and he could see her better.

  He had stayed away from her on the evacuation transport. There, Jonathan had been by St. Colin’s side and it had been Denaro’s job, in the background, to keep the evacuees away from the prelate. He had been in disgrace, the majority of his company overrun by Bythian snakeskins until less than one man in twenty had survived. It was none of his business that the reverend seemed to enjoy the woman’s company. It was, perhaps, a minor reflection of his humanity and flesh that he did. But Denaro did not like to profess such a weakness himself and though he stayed rock-steady as she glided within arm’s reach of him, he could feel his nostrils flare.

  The thundering passage of the other recruits faded away and the two were left alone in the corridor without even an echo to disturb them.

  The woman jerked her head slightly, indicating over her shoulder. “They have an advantage over you.”

  “Three weeks of training,” he said warily. He knew the Devil was going to offer him something and he wondered what it might be.

  Amber smiled. He saw then she was no older than himself. “Jack said you had potential.”

  The Devil himself! But Denaro felt a tinge of pleasure at the praise, nonetheless. “Did he?”

  The girl-woman said nothing further, but began to circle him slightly until Denaro had to crane his neck a little to keep her in view. She unnerved him.

  “I’ve been with Jack a couple of years,” she said. “You might say I’ve got the theory while you’re getting the practice.”

  “Theory?”

  “On how the suit works. How it should work, how to mesh its power with your ability.”

  Denaro froze as she went behind him and then returned. The dim light of the tunnel caught the feathery tattooing on her bare arms… she wore her jumpsuit with the sleeves cut off as though daring people to look upon her disfigurement. He ill shivered even as he made his mind up that he’d let the imp tantalize him enough. He straightened and tightened his grip on his helmet.

  She laughed, a breathy, mocking sound. “Denaro! I think you’re afraid of me.” He shot her a look that lesser disciples of the Blue Wheel would have quailed at, and she laughed at him a second time. Then, astonishingly, she stretched out her hand, palm up as if offering peace. “I could help you through the rough spots of the next few weeks,” she said.

  “You? Why?”

  “Colin has been very good to me. Let’s say I owe him.”

  Denaro relaxed slightly. “St. Colin is a man of many virtues.”

  “You can say that a
gain.”

  He scarcely noticed as she entwined her arm about his Flexalink sleeve and began drawing him down the corridor with her. As the perfume of her tawny hair dazzled his senses and blurred his vision slightly, he was deaf to her last words:

  “And I’ve always wondered what it would be like to wear armor myself.”

  The staging hold vibrated as the ship began to descend into an orbit. Around the shop, soldiers in various stages of hook-up looked up briefly. Their glances flickered toward their commander. Jack was aware of it and ignored it as he continued donning his armor. Steadied by his presence, the men went back to their tasks. Most of them had never made a wartime drop before and it did not help that the few who had were keyed up. Jack tried to ignore the shaking of his own hands as he wired himself to stay in the suit, plumbing and all, for the next few days.

  The surging through his nerves was not fear though, it was adrenaline. Pure, unadulterated. His pulse sang throughout his body as he outfitted for battle. His ears rang with the buzz of his readiness, and with Bogie’s tide of ferocity which grew by the second.

  “Commander Storm.”

  “Yes, Whitehead.” Jack looked up. The fleet pilot’s face filled the screen, his helmet masking all but his wide nose and dark eyes. The pilot looked unhappy.

  “We’re approaching the far side as requested, commander, but we’ve picked up a blip.”

  Jack’s skin tingled. “What is it?”

  “I’m not sure, sir.”

  “Give me your best guess or relay the picture.”

  Whitehead gave him a measuring stare over the com. “I’d say there’s somebody waiting for us.”

  In a corner, one of Jack’s men muttered, “Shit.”

  Jack stood up and finished shrugging into the suit. “Give me the overview.”

  The pilot fed it in.

  The shadowy blip grew in size until there was little doubt.

  “It’s a trap,” Rawlins said.