by Rhonda Mason
He missed being out on assignment, doing his job as an IDC agent. If things were “normal,” he and his octet would likely be shipping out in a week, sent to one of the two Protectorate Planets quickly escalating toward war with everyone’s attention focused on Falanar and Wei-lu-Wei.
He couldn’t afford to leave Falanar at the moment, not with the IDC situation reaching critical mass. Malkor walked to the maglift, ready to head to the first floor and get the void out of there, when he remembered a question he had for Janeen. He hit the button for the sub-basement with a sigh. Almost done with work for the day. He riffled through his bag, grabbing a datapad. I’ll leave it with Janeen overnight. She could go over the details he still had questions on, shore up the notes and he’d get back to her in the morning.
Check-in through security went smoothly. Malkor anticipated lounging in his chair at home in front of his faux fireplace, feet on the coffee table, as he walked to Janeen’s cell.
He froze at the sight that greeted him.
Janeen sprawled on her back on the floor of her cell, both hands in a death grip around her throat.
“Janeen!” He fumbled at the panel, entering his senior agent override codes and cursing as he shut off the electrical field sealing her cell. The field winked out and he dashed into the opening.
“Janeen!”
Too late.
Her face was a mottled blue-violet, her eyes bulging from their sockets, her skin cold to the touch. She looked like a beached fish frozen mid-flop, spine arched upward, heels dug into the floor, struggling, straining, dying for that last breath of air that hadn’t come.
Tears stung his eyes. He sank to his knees.
Not like this. Frutting—
Gods. Not like this.
Coroners would do an official cause of death, but he already knew. Only one thing could keep the muscles of her spine bowed like that long after death, could keep her hands clutched, manacle-like, around her throat: dutrotase mixed with the muscle stabilizer known as RDU-7.
Janeen had been killed with her own toxin.
Rage surged inside of him. He boiled with a fierce blast of hatred that had no outlet. He slammed his fist against the wall. Once. Again.
How could this have happened? How? She was under guard day and night. She was in total lockdown, for frutt’s sake. Shouldn’t alarms have gone off when her vital signs flagged? The guards had a grand total of four criminals to watch at the moment. Frutting four.
I’m going to tear them apart.
He shot to his feet and ran down the hallway. The men at the guard station took one look at his face and launched into panic mode. One cycled through the vidfeed on each of the cells while the other loosened his weapon in its holster and turned to face Malkor.
“What is it? What’s happened?”
Malkor grabbed a fistful of the man’s indigo tunic. “What’s happened? Check your frutting vidscreens.” He shook the man, who looked close to choking. “One of your prisoners is dead.”
The other guard frowned. “They’re all fine.”
Malkor thrust the first man aside and knocked his chair out of the way to get to the bank of vidscreens. There she was, in cell twelve. Alive, pacing, walking the length of her room over and over, hands tucked behind her back and head bowed in thought.
Malkor growled at the image. “Not possible.” He ran back down to her cell, the two guards jogging to keep up. He thrust his finger at her dead body when they arrived. “There. That’s the truth.” Blood drained from the guards’ faces.
“Your security feed has been duped and looped.”
“Holy shit,” one muttered. They finally had the presence of mind to hit the alarm and recall security procedures. “Check wings one and two,” the first one said to his partner, “I’ll check three, four and five.”
“Don’t bother,” Malkor snapped, eyes locked on Janeen. “This was personal.”
Like the hack in his complinks, the bug in his office.
When the guards finished their sweep, Malkor stalked back to the security desk to meet them. “Who was her last visitor?” he asked. A guard protested when Malkor sat down and started going through the records, but the look he shot the guard silenced him.
It wasn’t hard to find Janeen’s last visitor, since it was the last visitor to the cell block in general.
[Check-in time: 04:12 Today]
[Guest ID: Senior Agent Malkor Rua]
[Biometrics: Confirmed]
[Credentials: Confirmed]
[Visual Identification: Confirmed]
[Confirmation completed by: Guard 016, Petres]
The three of them stared at the log, no one moving as the details sank in. It took a full minute for Malkor to process the information, and by then it was too late.
Both guards raised their pistols, covering him in three hundred sixty degrees.
“Agent, I’m going to have to ask you to surrender your sidearm.”
24
Kayla woke early the next morning to a blank mobile comm.
No New Messages.
She hadn’t heard from Malkor last night. Her chest ached from holding in the news of Vayne and Corinth, but she didn’t want to discuss it over comms. Odd not to have heard from him. Kayla sent him another message, then rolled out of bed.
After a shower and some breakfast, she still hadn’t heard back. The need for immediate action drove her from one side of the room to the other, pacing. She needed a ship, needed to get to her family, needed to rescue them.
My people, though…
If she fled Falanar now and abandoned her push for withdrawal from Ordoch, what would happen to her people? How could she abandon her family for the “greater good?” Then again, how could she abandon her people to save two lives?
Another thought brought her up short: How can I abandon Malkor?
The idea pierced right to her heart, split her down the center. As much as she wanted to run to her brothers, the thought of leaving without Malkor, of never seeing him again, caused an instant ache in her chest that took her breath away.
She remembered the expression on his face the day she’d tried to leave Falanar on Tia’tan’s ship, leaving him behind without warning. The hurt, the loss—stars, the anger. The feelings ripped through her now.
If she left to rescue her brothers, how would Malkor feel when she demanded a ship?
How could she hurt him like that again? How could she hurt herself like that?
Maybe I could convince him to come with me.
An irrational thought. His duty here, to his people, to the IDC, was no less important to him than her ro’haar duties were to her.
She needed to talk to Malkor, now.
Kayla grabbed her jacket, formulating a plan to storm IDC headquarters. A chime from her vidcomm stopped her at the door. Finally. Hekkar hailed her when she opened the channel, not Malkor.
“What’s going on?” she asked by way of greeting. Hekkar’s tight expression let her know right off the news was bad. He was in Rigger’s apartment, and the tech specialist typed furiously at her complink in the background.
“Malkor’s in custody for the murder of Janeen.”
“What?”
Hekkar’s frown deepened. “It happened last night. The entire octet is suspended; we’ll be brought in later for questioning.”
“Who set him up?” Malkor might have wanted some revenge on Janeen, but murder? Not remotely possible.
“As of right now, the evidence points perfectly to Malk committing the crime.” Hekkar jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Rigger tapped into the security files. Someone got into IDC’s cell block with a flawless set of Malk’s credentials—palm print, retinal scan, credentials—around oh-four-hundred and injected Janeen with her own toxin. She asphyxiated.”
Rigger grunted. “It would have been easy to pass as Malkor through security if someone had access to IDC’s personnel records. Tough to get, those records are locked down in a virtual fortress. However, if they had tha
t info, they could make contacts to match his eyes for the retinal scan and use a polymer biofilm stamped with Malkor’s palm print. It wouldn’t last long before being dissolved in the skin, but it could have been applied in the lift on the way down. As far as fake credentials? I could have made those even before joining the academy.” Rigger continued typing as she spoke. “A cheap hologram with the boss’s image would fool a visual inspection. It wouldn’t even need a voice replicant program as long as he didn’t say much.”
An inside job, then.
“Tell her about the hack,” Rigger said, without looking away from her screen.
“Malkor’s complinks were hacked right before the murder. No doubt evidence was planted that Malkor manipulated security in the cell block before heading down there. Two feeds were clipped and copied, one from Malkor’s previous visit to Janeen and one of Janeen pacing her cell looking perfectly healthy. Also, the alarm system on Janeen’s cell was disabled using Malk’s code, so the guards weren’t notified when the cell was opened or when her vitals dropped to nil.”
Shit. When the IDC conspired against its own, it didn’t frutt around. Kayla banged her fist against the wall. “We have to get him out of there.”
“Working on it,” Rigger called. Hekkar, however, looked doubtful. Very doubtful.
Kayla’s lungs clenched, making it hard to breathe. She lowered her voice. “We have to spring him, Hekkar. If they could get to Janeen, even while she was in custody…”
“I know,” he said, his voice running with an undercurrent of frustration and serious worry—worry that sent her pulse spiking higher. “At this point, our only possible lead is to identify the hacker.”
Rigger pushed herself away from her desk, sending her hover chair spinning until she faced the comm. She ground the heels of her hands into her closed eyes for a minute. When she opened them, she looked pissed. “Right now identifying the hacker is proving impossible. Malkor’s private complink is unnetworked and his IDC-issued one is powered down. Both are in custody at HQ and I can’t access them remotely.”
“I’m sorry, Kayla,” Hekkar said. “At this point—”
“Unacceptable.” She looked from one to the other. “I assume you’re both banned from headquarters?” They nodded. “Then I’m going to see Commander Parrel. This second.” He was the only one with enough clout to get Malkor cleared, and she’d be damned if she was going to let him stay neutral on this one.
She pulled on her jacket as she spoke. “If we can’t clear Malkor’s name, then we’re busting him out. ASAP.” It had to be possible. Somehow she had to get in there and get Malkor back. Frutt the damage to his reputation as an IDC agent. “I’ll let you know how it goes with Parrel.”
She cut the connection and was out the door before the screen had fully dimmed.
The royal guards snapped to attention as she exited. “I need transportation to IDC headquarters.”
The more senior of the two cleared his throat. “Has this been cleared, Princess?”
Isonde had stressed that it wasn’t safe for Kayla to be loose in the city at this point. Protestors gathered outside the palace with signs of GO HOME WYRD; WYRDS SHOULD BE IN PRISON, NOT A PALACE; TERRORIST IN PRINCESS CLOTHING, and so on. Demonstrations were happening across the planet—the newsvids loved to interview those assholes and broadcast their not-so-clever hate propaganda.
“No,” Kayla said, “it hasn’t been cleared. And yes, we’re leaving now.” She headed toward the lift to get to the underground garage. She’d drive her damn self if need be.
The guards hopped to follow, one calling in the excursion while the other pushed the lift button for her as if she were incapable. Kayla stared straight ahead, ignoring them both. The distinct urge to murder someone had her in a stranglehold.
As she slipped into the back of a hover car after her guard, she tried to pull together her thoughts for approaching Parrel. She should probably be cool and logical. What she wanted to do was grab the gruff commander by the front of his uniform and demand immediate action. If he tried to dance around his dual loyalties to Malkor and the future of the IDC she’d knock him out.
The drive to headquarters was uneventful. The only scuffle came at the IDC security station when her guards refused to abandon her and she refused to abandon her kris. Her threats of dire consequences if the security officer tried to take her kris didn’t have the desired effect, and in the end she and her two guards were forced to go weaponless into the den of inequity.
The only reason they passed the gate at all was because Parrel gave the OK when security paged him. No doubt he’d expected her. IDC security escorted them to Parrel’s office, where Kayla left her guards outside and entered alone.
Parrel was finishing a call when she entered, and he held out his hand to silence her while he wrapped it up. Kayla didn’t do “cooling her heels” well, especially not today. Then again, she probably wouldn’t win him over if she marched to the comm and hit “end” before he was finished, so she forced herself to wait, all the while tormented with thoughts of what could happen to Malkor while he was in custody.
Parrel finally finished his call. Before she could speak, he said, “I really don’t have time to deal with you right now.” He could have looked less friendly, but only with serious effort. She knew he had issues with Malkor’s friendship with Isonde, and apparently that dislike rubbed off onto Kayla. Probably because she was Isonde. Or had been, for quite some time. That or he knew her relationship with Malkor divided his loyalties further.
“Tough.” Kayla crossed her arms over her chest and braced her feet. “I’ll get right to my point—you need to get Malkor exonerated.”
Parrel steepled his fingers and leaned back in his chair. “How do you propose I do that? My word against hard evidence?”
“Easy. Counter-attack.”
Parrel arched a brow.
“We both know this is a plot by your IDC’s secret cabal to discredit him.” Parrel didn’t reply; agreement enough. “You’ve been tracing this conspiracy much longer than he has. I know you have evidence of illegal dealings by certain octets and commanders who are under secret orders. Evidence of leaders in the IDC having knowledge of Dolan taking Wyrd prisoners and conspiring with him to keep their existence a secret, allowing for his scientific ‘experiments.’ Of Janeen being given off-the-book assignments like assassinations and unsanctioned intelligence-gathering. Agents being recruited for shadow ops who, when they refused, were discredited and forced out of the IDC with falsified or manufactured evidence.”
“I see Malkor has no secrets from you.” Parrel, if he ever liked her, certainly didn’t now.
She forced herself to take a breath, calm down a notch. Get back to facts. “Add to all of that Carsov’s findings on the army harvesting the TNV, and Bredard acting as the IDC’s go-between with the army to supply Trebulan with the virus.” That in itself should be enough to sink the bastards.
Kayla uncrossed her arms, aiming for a less combative stance. “Go to the press right now with every piece of evidence you’ve got. I know the IDC answers directly to the Council of Seven but this can’t wait to be handled through official channels.” Malkor might not survive that long. And Kayla couldn’t think straight when faced with the very real chance that he could be dead already.
Parrel was shaking his head, so she continued. “Put every single thing out there for the empire to see, every single instance of conspiracy. Make the biggest stink you can. You’re high enough in the IDC, with a flawless record, you can make this real.” He had to do this. No one else could. “Credit Malkor with finding most of the evidence and everyone will see he’s been framed.”
Parrel shook his head again. He leaned back in a chair that squeaked in protest. “It’s not the right time.”
“Commander.” Kayla kept her voice level with effort. “This is the only time you have. You have to strike now, before anything else happens.” She tapped her finger against the empty holster on her thigh, missing the
familiar weight of her kris at times like this.
“If you understood anything of imperial politics,” Parrel said, “you would know this plan is a disaster.” He did a fair job of making her sound like an idiot. “It would lead to the dismantling of the IDC, right when it’s needed most.”
And there it was, the one thing holding them all back: the fate of their precious IDC.
“You will always think the IDC is ‘needed most,’” Kayla said. “Always. You believe in what you do and the necessity of your organization. Obviously an empire this large needs something like the IDC. Not something this corrupt, though, and not,” she said, making each word crystal clear, “at the cost of Malkor and his octet.”
“Believe me, I’d like nothing better than to clear Malkor and launch Vega and all her cronies into deep space.” And the way he said it, Kayla really did believe him.
Damnit. Why did he have to fight her so hard when they were on the same frutting side?
Well, almost. Only one of them gave a damn about the fate of the IDC.
“If I thought I could do it,” Kayla said, “I would release this info myself and take the decision out of your hands. We both know I don’t have access to the proof, and I don’t have a chance of making the kind of impact that you would with this. So—do it.”
Parrel slowly let his chair tip back upright. His eyes narrowed. “Last I checked, you had exactly zero authority to tell me how to do my job.” He let that sink in. He might agree with her on some points, but he wasn’t going to be pushed around.
We’ll see about that.
“I’m one candidate approval away from being promoted to Senior Commander, on par with Vega. Once that happens, then—”
“I can’t wait that long.” She’d assassinate Vega first. “Look, I know this chafes. Sometimes events take control of your life right out of your hands.” Kayla knew all about that. She’d been living that way ever since Malkor found her in the Blood Pit.
She leaned over him, bracing both palms on the desk and staring him down. “Welcome to the new timetable, Commander. Make it happen.”
