Venusian Uprising
Page 20
Admiral Urdon turned to eye his bodyguard expectantly, hands clasped behind his back, spine ramrod straight. “I assume everything is in ord—”
A flash of annoyance appeared on Urdon’s face. He flicked his hand, and a CNT-edged blade slid from its hidden sheath. Palming it, he flung the knife with deadly accuracy, bulls-eyeing the speaker embedded in the bulkhead above the cabin door.
“You could have just ordered the damn thing to shut off.”
The words were delivered with a casual amusement, borne from years of close collaboration.
Urdon shot Moira a cool stare. “That comment might have seen you spaced, if we’d been on my flagship.”
“Wouldn’t have said it there.” Moira paused a beat before adding an insouciant, “Sir.”
Urdon's lip twitched. “Remind me again why I took you on as my protégé?”
“Because I'm your top asset.” Moira rose, her normally delicate bone structure and light complexion replaced by strong, swarthy features, thanks to the body modification she’d undergone for this engagement. “And I know where all the bodies are buried,” she added as she reached for the knife.
The embedded blade proved to be just out of her reach.
“Still not used to this new identity,” she groused before she bent and leapt up to snag it. “The height differential sucks.” Reversing the knife, she offered it hilt-first to her superior, returning to her seat once he’d reclaimed the blade.
Urdon smiled thinly. "Careful," he warned. “I've killed agents over less.”
He fingered the knife, then slid it back into the sheath embedded in the underside of his forearm. “Buried bodies or no, I’ll gut you myself if your cover isn’t impenetrable by the time you walk out that door.”
Urdon wasn’t about to admit he was having a similarly difficult time adjusting. The transformation had been a bit of a rush job, and neither had quite settled into their new bodies just yet.
No one mentioned such minor details during training. Being a full head taller forced all sorts of minute adjustments to actions neurologically encoded into one’s subconscious. He still caught himself expecting things to be higher than his current eyeline, and chairs felt surprisingly low when he sat.
The changes had been hastily wrought, aboard a ship that belonged to the Scattered Worlds Special Intelligence Division. The SSID ship housed an autodoc loaded with the most cutting-edge innovations available, half of them purloined from the TSF’s Division 99.
Moira’s expression turned hard, the mask of a warrior falling into place. “Understood, sir,” she said simply.
Urdon bent to retrieve his luggage. “Then what are we waiting for?” He straightened and jerked his head toward the door. “Let’s go hijack a few fusion suns.”
* * * * *
The shuttle bay wasn't nearly as crowded as it should have been. Only a few hardy souls braved the blocAaron. These were the ones willing to chance a brief opening to get to the planet’s surface—people trying to get back to their families, or those with urgent business on Venus.
The personas that Urdon and Moira had assumed fit seamlessly with this crowd. Harried businessmen and women who would rather be anywhere but here, forced by circumstance to endure such inconveniences. No one gave either of them a second look, and that was just fine by Urdon.
He had three separate identities loaded up, each belonging to a legitimate Sol Fed citizen. As these were constantly checked against a TSF database that was routinely updated by the federation, he'd likely burn through all three personas before this operation ended.
He wasn't worried about getting caught. His hand-picked cadre of SSID intelligence officers was very good. They had yet to provide him with a cover that didn't hold up to close scrutiny.
He nodded, a subtle shift of his head. They followed the trickle of passengers past the guards and into the area designated for arrivals.
Urdon felt anticipation rise within him as the cold, crisp air of Venus’s southern continent hit him in the face. He’d always been a hands-on kind of person; he fed off the rush that came from an active assignment, and the more challenging, the better.
It was one of the few drawbacks to his position. There were those within the Scattered Worlds government who insisted he was too important to risk on fieldwork. He managed to get around their protests, for the most part, by simply ignoring them…and by agreeing to be accompanied by a bodyguard.
What no one had yet figured out was that the very organization tasked with supplying said bodyguards to protect him actually reported to him. He was the one who defined the parameters of the job description. Its title might be ‘bodyguard’, but in practicality, it played field agent far more than protection detail.
As befit an executive of his position, they had no need to hail an autotaxi. Instead, an actual limo service, complete with human driver, awaited them. The driver stood in a short line beside three other limo drivers, Urdon’s alias hovering in a holoprojection over the man’s head.
Urdon waved him down, and the man stepped forward with a polite greeting, hands out to take his luggage.
“Welcome to Venus, sir. May I take your bags?”
“Thank you,” Urdon replied, handing over the larger case while retaining ownership of his smaller brief before sliding into the back seat of the car. Moira slid in beside him, his silent shadow.
The moment the driver sealed the car's doors and they lifted off, Urdon released a small cloud of drones to sweep its interior and check for bugs. Once completed, the drones began a simple jamming sequence. Nothing over the top, just a routine program one would expect an executive guarding against corporate espionage to have.
That done, he turned to Moira and spoke the passphrase. He saw the driver's eyes connect with his in the rearview holo. The two exchanged a look, and the driver gave a slight nod before raising his voice and offering up the counterphrase.
Urdon got right to the point. “Have you secured passage to Tarja?”
The driver’s head bobbed a bit too enthusiastically for Urdon’s comfort. “Indeed I have, Admiral.”
“The name’s Munson. If you can’t remember that, then call me ‘sir’. You do not break cover. Ever.”
“So sorry, sir. It won’t happen again.”
The driver lapsed into silence, until Moira prodded him back on track.
“And our transportation is…?”
“Oh, sorry, ma’am.” His cheerful demeanor returned, and he grinned back at her. “I borrowed us a ship from the Coasties.”
“Coasties…” Moira prompted.
He slung a hand over the back of the front passenger seat and shot Moira a conspiratorial smile. “That’s what the folks here call anyone who works for the Coast Guard. Locals went a bit loony centuries ago, building it up way beyond what that military branch usually handles.”
“Indeed,” Moira said sweetly, her jaw clenched in annoyance. She established a connection with Urdon.
The driver, oblivious to the exchange, continued with an audible chuckle. “Yeeahhhh, they’re the planet’s only native military presence. The rest is all Sol fed government, or TSF postings.”
Urdon couldn’t help but smile at Moira’s curt response. He knew the man grated on her nerves, but she hid it well as she continued to press him for information.
“And the vehicle you managed to procure…?”
“One sweeeet ride,”
he exhaled the words, managing to sound both slovenly and envious, all at the same time. “Got you one of those cigar ships. An absolute beaut. Thing just skips across the water. It’ll go from zero to thirty gs in one-point-one-six seconds. It’ll get you to Tarja right quick.”
“Crash cradles, then, I assume?” Urdon interjected, and the man nodded vigorously.
“Only way to use ‘em, unless you’re a TSF-augmented ship’s pilot. Gel-cushioned, NSAI-controlled. A few of the newer ones have Federation stealth tech incorporated into their skins, too.” His eyes flicked to them and then back to the local air traffic.
“Max velocity’s a hair lower than three-fifty, depending on weather conditions and air temperature, but that’s automatically throttled by the onboard system, so’s you don’t break the sound barrier near populated areas.”
“Won’t they miss such a marvelous piece of machinery?” Moira’s voice held a sarcasm completely lost on the man.
“Nahhhhh. Gotta cousin whose wife works maintenance for the Coasties down at the Skarsgard Port Authority.” The man paused to tell the holonav system to descend.
“So, this cousin’s…wife….” Moira prompted, sending Urdon a side-eye that clearly communicated her desire to end the man—now.
“Told me one of ‘em showed up the other day for regular maintenance. So I got into the system and doctored up the files a bit.” He chortled at his own cleverness. “Records now show it’s sitting in a Skarsgard spaceport slip, planetside, awaiting parts.”
“And how long do these maintenance records say it will be out of commission before they notice it's not where it's supposed to be?”
The driver scratched his forehead, thinking. “Two, maybe three days, I suppose. I’d have to ask my cousin’s wife to know for sure.”
Moira shot an oblique glance his way before narrowing her eyes on the driver. She bent, lifting what looked like a cosmetics case from her carry-on. She flipped it open, and a mirrored screen blinked on, hovering just above it.
Her body language ensured that all the driver would see was a woman freshening her makeup as she continued their conversation. From Urdon’s vantage, he could see that the vials she manipulated weren’t beauty products. The three she selected could be combined into half a dozen deadly nanoagents.
This initiative was what made Moira the best field agent Urdon had worked with in many a year. He couldn’t help but admire the skill she employed in practicing her craft.
Moira’s brows rose in disbelief.
Urdon frowned.
Moira nodded, made a few adjustments, and secured the case just as the limo circled once and began a low approach to a secluded cove.
“Here we are, sir,” the driver announced, and Urdon turned his attention to their surroundings.
The cove featured an open stretch of sandy beach. Set back from the shore in a strand of tall conifers was a building that looked like a private hunting lodge. The beach was marred only by a small, covered dock. It was alongside this that the limo came to rest.
The driver stepped out first, opening Urdon’s door before hurrying around to help Moira from the car. The agent patted the man’s cheek with one hand. “You’re too kind,” she murmured, picking up her carry-on and turning away.
Urdon sent her a mental nod as he manipulated the man’s Link.
Instead, he turned to the man, gesturing toward the dock. “We need to be on our way,” he ordered. “The insurgents won’t wait on us forever.”
“Oh, didn’t you hear?”
Urdon stilled at the man’s words.
“Hear what?” His voice was dangerously low.
The man was too foolish to notice a threat when he heard it, and prattled on.
“Oh, the separatists decided not to wait for your arrival. They’ve already pretty much taken Tarja. Wanted to have it in hand for you when you got there.”
Urdon felt his face grow red as he struggled to rein in his anger. “They had explicit instructions—”
“Yeah, I know,” the man was stupid enough to interrupt. “Real buncha screwups, too. Last I heard, the TSF was already calling for Marine reinforcements.”
Urdon turned, hands planted on his hips, eyes raised to the sky as he fought—and lost—his battle with rage. With the flick of his wrist, his CNT blade was in his hand. In the next moment, it was buried to the hilt in the base of the man’s skull.
The man turned, a bemused expression on his face as the life drained from his eyes, and his body slowly corkscrewed onto the sand.
“Well, that was a waste of a hack-it, not to mention a perfectly good viral agent,” Moira muttered in disgust as Urdon retrieved his knife and cleaned it on the dead man’s shirt.
He speared her with a dark glance. “Prophylactic air freshener. I couldn’t stand to breathe the same air as that idiot for one more minute.”
THE STREETS OF TARJA
STELLAR DATE: 3227476 / 06.06.4124 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Seven Wonders Theme Park, Hadrian, Tarja suburb
REGION: Venus, InnerSol, Sol Space Federation
The world took its time swimming back into view around Williams. It took a few disconcertingly long moments for him to even realize he was laying down. Following that, the understanding that he was in pain settled in firmly.
“Easy, Gunny,” a voice said from nearby. “You got walloped by something.”
“Dvorak?” Williams asked without opening his eyes. “What’re you doing here?”
The tech laughed. “Well, I got orders to go somewhere and followed them. Honestly, it’s how I get most places.”
“Faaawk,” Williams groaned. “Corps didn’t issue you a sense of humor. Stow it.”
He cracked an eye and saw the Marine applying a mednano kit to his chest. Looming behind him was Sergeant Kowalski and Agent Smith.
“Whole damn party, I see. Come to bury me?”
“Not yet.” A grin split Kowalski’s lips. “Death’s still too scared of you, Gunny.”
“The coward. Did you get them by any chance?”
“Them?” Agent Smith asked.
Williams let out a sigh as the medpack released a cocktail into his body. “Yeah, the Disker and an AI in a mech frame. They had the NSAI node.”
The squad sergeant shook his head. “All we found was Agent Jones with her neck snapped. Becker’s fireteam is back with her, waiting for the medivac.”
“Plus a dead Disker,” Smith added. “Your handiwork?”
“No.” Williams didn’t keep the sour note out of his voice. “She did that…while I was trying to get their plans out of him. Then she tried to kill the other Disker. I stopped her, and she fired on me—”
“Wha
t?!” Smith demanded. “You shot a Division 99 agent?”
The pain in Williams’ chest had diminished, and he pushed himself up on one elbow. “Sure did. She was unhinged. The Diskers were taking the NSAI node somewhere for a reason, not just ‘cause they felt like joyriding with it. I wanted to figure out where.”
“Well, if one was down, and she was firing on the other one, wouldn’t that have dealt with the issue?” Kowalski asked. “We’d have the node back.”
“No.” Williams sat up and nodded to Dvorak. “It wasn’t there, the AI in the mech frame had it. If I’d gotten the woman to help—and not run off—we might have it by now.”
Smith’s face was a mask of uncertainty. “I…I don’t know what the protocol for this is.”
“I’ll tell you what the protocol is,” Williams grunted out the words. “We go after them and take them down. We get that NSAI back before they use it.”
“Use it?” the two men asked in unison.
“Yeah.” The gunnery sergeant was feeling much better, and carefully rose to his feet. “I overheard them talking. I think they plan to use it to hack the uplink tower in Tarja.”
“Uplink for what?” Perez asked from where he stood at the treeline, peering into the underbrush.
Williams rolled his eyes and established a point to point connection with Kowalski and Smith.
The three men stared at one another in silence for a minute, then Kowalski asked,