The Last Paladin

by Ward Wagher

  Jones watched the action on his HUD and called to the gunner.

  “Raise your guns ten degrees and fire. It looks like they are setting up to fire a missile.”

  The gunner in the shuttle immediately raised the angle of the turret and fired for effect.

  “Good job,” Jones called. “You got them. If you can tie them down at the hangar, it is better for everyone.”

  Whoever was leading the attackers was not stupid, Jones thought. They abandoned their attack on the hangar and moved quickly to the house.

  “Get ready,” Jones said quietly over the tactical channel.

  Fifteen seconds later, the attackers burst through the front door and the glass doors to the patio. They fanned out through the rooms and ran up the stairs. After making a quick search of the upstairs rooms and closets, they moved down the stairs and halted in the foyer. The leader made hand-signals towards the basement and they began moving quietly down the stairs.

  The concussion grenades used by Singman Jones were designed particularly for situations like this. They were coated in a soft plastic surface so that they were noiseless when Jones sent two of them rolling down the hall. They also maintained sensory contact with the tactical network, so everyone on the security team saw them moving down the hallway. The invading terrorists were trying hard to maintain situational awareness but missed the small devices until the last second.

  One of the invaders spotted the rolling ball and began to shout at the same time that Jones command-detonated both grenades. Being tied into the tactical net, the guard team helmets blanked the faceplates and pulsed the sound transducers to minimize the effect on their ears. The terrorists had no such protection. The concussion grenades detonated with a blinding flash. The concussion physically knocked several of them down and stunned the rest.

  And then the guards opened fire. They used frangible projectiles to minimize the ricochets off the stone walls. The invaders were slow to respond and managed to get off only a few shots. Four of them quickly retreated up the stairs where they backed into Lesa’s team. Taking a gamble, she had armed her team with air pistols shooting sleepy darts. The four members who had thought they were making their escape dropped into unconsciousness where they would remain for the next five or six hours.

  It grew quiet again in the house. Jones keyed the tactical net. “Say status.”

  Outside they heard the sound of the chain gun. It seemed that two of the attackers were posted outside and tried to withdraw. Unfortunately for them, they ran past the hangar and the gunner in the shuttle took them out.

  “Shuttle clear,” came the reply from the hangar.

  “Team Gamma clear,” Lesa called over the net.

  “I think Team Alpha is clear,” Jones said. “Anybody catch lead?”

  “Jackson, Chief,” called one of the guards. “I caught a round in the leg. Smitty is helping me.”

  “Lesa,” Jones said, “call for dust-off.”

  “Will do, Chief.”

  Jones carefully stood up and began to walk the hall. The ten terrorists who had advanced down the basement hallway were very dead. “Police the area,” he said.

  He walked up the stairs where Lesa and her team trussed the four who tried to escape.

  “What have we here?”

  “Sleepy darts have their uses, Chief,” Lesa said. “I thought you might like a little present.”

  “So, I might. Good thinking, Lesa.”

  “Can I come out?” the Paladin’s voice was broadcast over the tactical network.

  Jones replied. “Wait one, Boss. We need to check the rest of the house.”

  Without being told, part of the group began searching the house. Finding nothing untoward, Jones released RWB from the wine cellar.

  “What is the bill for this one, Jones?” RWB asked when he walked upstairs.

  “One leg wound. Medevac is inbound, Boss. Lesa captured four of them with sleepy darts. The rest are KIA.”

  RWB looked over at Lesa. “Congratulations, Carper. Very good work on your part. Perhaps we will get some information from these four.”

  He looked around again. “Carry on, Jones. If it is all right with you, I thought I might return to my room for the night.”

  “We have several entry points to repair,” Jones said. “I think it would be better to fly you back to Chicago.”

  “Are we likely to have another attack tonight?” the Paladin asked.

  “It is not likely, but not impossible.”

  “So, I am probably as safe here as anywhere else.”

  Jones nodded regretfully. “That is probably true. Very well, I will see you later this morning, Paladin.”

  RWB nodded and trudged upstairs to where his personal bedroom suite was located. Jones watched him go. He turned to Carper.

  “Lesa, I want you to take these four birds back to Wilton House in the medivac shuttle and put them each in a solitary cell. See that their needs are cared for and they are fed. Otherwise, no contact with them. I want them to sweat a bit before we interrogate them.”

  “Will do, Chief. What about coverage for the house?”

  “The quick reaction team will be landing momentarily. They will get put to work.”

  “Very good, Chief.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  “There has got to be a leak somewhere.”

  Singman Jones sat in Arlen Senter’s office the day after the attack on the Kenosha house. Facing west, they watched as building materials were hoisted past the windows on counter-grav lifts. Sarah Hoyt’s construction company had attached a counter-grav scaffold to the side of the building to repair the damage from the previous raid.

  “Holden Palmer has egg on his face,” Senter commented.

  Jones glanced out the window again. “RWB should have fired him. I do not understand why he delayed acting on the repairs.”

  “One of life’s little mysteries, I suppose.”

  “Especially when the Paladin took care of the problem with a single comm call.”

  “But we were talking about the possibility of a leak,” Senter said, bringing the conversation back to the original topic.

  “You know how spur of the moment RWB tends to be. After lunch yesterday he told me we wanted to go to Kenosha. Twelve hours later an attack is mounted on the house. That is pretty quick.”

  “We should consider also that the residents of the Kenosha area saw the shuttle coming in. One of them might be the source.”

  “That is very possible, although there are not that many people up there. The Kenosha house has the only ground link for comm. We pulled the comm records from the Satcom usage for the past twenty-four hours and came up with nothing.”

  “And most of the people around here who have lake houses are those around Lake Geneva,” Senter mused. “Very well. Have you monitored communications in and out of Wilton House? We have good cause to go to a judge to get an order to break encryption.”

  The fetish for privacy in the Satcom meant that everyone routinely encrypted all comm and data traffic. With virtually unlimited computational power available, no form of encryption was ultimately safe. But the cultural norms made anyone reluctant to cross that line and the judges everywhere except possibly in Arabia could be remarkably crabby about authorizing that kind of a fishing expedition.

  Jones looked uncomfortable. “Arlen, do we want to do that?”

  “I understand what you are saying. But this is about as serious as things get. We are having repeated attacks on our head of state and so far, our investigations have turned up squat.”

  “And the judge will ask for the Paladin’s authorization. Do you think RWB will do that?”

  Senter ran his right hand through his hair. “I do not know. He has been ruthless in protecting the Palatinate. But he also is very protective of the rights of the people. Do this: get the paperwork ready and I will approach him. If we do not ask, we will not know.”

  Jones gave him a sour grin. “I suppose that is all I can ask.”r />
  “And Singman,” Senter warned, “this is not a time where I want you to use your legendary initiative. If word gets out about you stepping outside of the law regarding private communications, I will not be able to protect you.”

  “I understand.”

  Senter stared at the other man. “What is the phrase the League Navy uses? Aye, aye, Sir. It means I hear and obey. I need your word that you will not do something we will all regret.”

  “Come on, Arlen,” Jones said. “I have been in this business as long as you. I know my responsibilities.”

  Senter rose from his chair and walked over to the window. A lighter carrying a stack of ceramaplast sheets rose past the window. He shoved his hands in his pockets as he stared across the city. The preferred office space in Wilton House required a view of Lake Michigan. Facing to the west, he studied the clear delineation where the city ended, and the wilderness began. In the northern parts of the Palatinate, the forests had gradually reclaimed the open ground over the previous centuries since the Carrington Event. The ensuing pandemics had initially decimated Earth’s population and then the gradual collapse of that civilization led to further declines.

  In the struggle to survive, humanity had adopted several survival tactics. The Upper Midwest Palatinate had reverted to the rugged individualism that had marked the early days of the North American colonists in the 18th century. Palatinate culture was deeply introspective and introverted. Any citizen of the Palatinate assumed that anything he did was his business and no one else’s unless he chose to make it so. That ingrained privacy made any official intrusion into personal affairs deeply abhorrent.

  “We have got to do this, Arlen,” Jones insisted.

  Senter stared out the window and wished he could lose himself in the wilderness beyond the city gates. He was getting pushed by circumstances into decisions he didn’t want to make. He knew Jones was right, but he feared the fallout. He made up his mind and sighed as he turned back to Jones.

  “Very well. Get the paperwork done and I will get the Paladin to sign-off. Somehow.”

  “We really need to move quickly,” Jones said, as he stood. “I do not want the trail to grow cold.”

  Senter nodded and waved a hand towards the door. Jones walked through the door where Lesa Carper waited in the outer office.

  “Send it Lesa,” Jones ordered.

  She waved a hand to wake up her comp term. She typed a couple of commands on the 3D force-field keyboard.

  “Done, Chief.”

  “Thank you. We need to get back to the office.”

  Senter noted the arrival of the document from Carper and shook his head. He tapped the control to talk to his assistant.

  “Amaris, please check with Holden and see if I can get in to see the Paladin this afternoon.”

  He disconnected without waiting for her response. He leaned back in his chair and gazed at his desk. He had this post as the result of years of politicking and marketing. He wondered why he had been so single-minded as to want a job like this. He had recently concluded that Singman Jones would be a much better Director of Security for the Palatinate. Jones was not troubled by people’s sensibilities as he was. Jones had the bloody-minded ruthlessness that seemed necessary in these troubled times.

  He stood and walked again to the window to gaze at the western horizon. He loved this land and the nation that stood upon it. He decided that was what motivated him to seek this thankless job. That reinforced his desire to do the best he could.

  A delicate chime interrupted his thought.

  “Yes?”

  “The Paladin will see you now, Sir,” Amaris said.

  “Thank you.”

  He walked over to his desk and picked up his portable comp term. He would wait until he had prepared the ground before transmitting the request to the Paladin. While he had become adept at reading the old Paladin and guiding the conversations, RWB was a different sort of person and Senter had yet to master his personality.

  “What do you have for me this afternoon, Arlen?” RWB asked as the security director walked into his office.

  “There are several items related to last night’s attack we need to discuss and develop a course of action.”

  “Yes, I suppose we should do that,” RWB replied. “It might have been better all-around if they had managed to kill me.”

  Senter looked sharply at the Paladin. “Did you get any sleep last night, Paladin? You look terrible.”

  “Thanks,” he replied dryly. “And no, I have not slept. Perhaps I will be weary enough to sleep tonight. Please proceed.”

  “The group that attacked last night seemed to materialize out of nowhere.”

  “Which is absurd on the face of it,” RWB commented acerbically.

  “Right. They had to come from somewhere. We seem to constantly have trouble following flight tracks back to the point of origin.”

  “And for good reason, Arlen

  “Yes, and compounding our challenge is the apparent leak of information from this building. You decided to travel to the Kenosha house on the spur of the moment. We purposely did not disseminate that information.”

  RWB looked around at the ceiling of the office. He glanced out his windows at Lake Michigan. “It is not likely that anyone could have seen us fly in and tell anyone about it in time for them to take action.” He nodded. “Very well, I accept your premise. What do we do about it?”

  “We do an analysis of comm traffic from Wilton House. If someone is actively leaking, we could then find it hopefully.” He watched the Paladin carefully to see how he would react to the previous statement.

  RWB sat still for a long moment. He looked up at Senter. “Why have you not already commenced the analysis?”

  “There are the privacy concerns, of course. I have prepared the forms for your approval so I can take it before the judge.” Senter blurted.

  “Why must I do everything around here?” RWB exploded. “The fact that you are in here with these forms tells me that you already know what needs to be done. You should not even need to ask me.”

  “But… but, I thought your approval would help with the judge…”

  “Take it to the judge,” the Paladin interrupted. “The time to come to me would be if you encountered problems with the judge. Then I would have a pretext to talk to her. Now get out of my office. You are wasting my time and yours, Arlen. Correct me if I am wrong, but I do not believe we have time to waste.”

  Senter pulled his mouth closed and quickly stood up. He started to speak and then stopped. He turned and fled the office.

  Holden Palmer stepped in. “What was that all about?”

  “We are infected by an inability to take the initiative on anything, Holden. People wait for me to take action when they are fully capable of doing it themselves.” He was still shouting.

  “Does that sound familiar to you? It should. You and I had a conversation about that last week, and you have not entirely redeemed yourself, either. Now you can get out, too.”

  After Holden left, RWB walked back to his chair and slumped into the supple leather. He folded his arms on the desk lay his head on them. After a moment, he wept. “What is the matter with me?” he cried out.

  The sobs continued and grew worse. He stood up again and staggered over to the floor-to-ceiling ceramaplast window. Placing his fists on the unyielding material, he leaned his face into the cool transparency.

  “Oh, Scout! Why did you have to die?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  RWB sat at his desk in the deepening gloom of the early evening. When issues arose in the building or the Palatinate, he was able to make quick, accurate decisions. Otherwise, he did nothing. The archivist at the Paladin’s Library had discovered an obscure mechanical device from the early twenty-first century. It appeared to have no functional purpose. The archivist had carefully researched the item and found some limited information.

  It was called a fidget spinner and apparently was briefly popular as a trin
ket, given as token gifts. This one was dark blue and had the letters IBM on the top. He wasn’t sure what an IBM was, but it was fun to set it on his desk and idly spin the thing. He would use a finger from one hand to hold the hub and use his other index finger to spin it. He would then watch it wind itself down. It was the most fascinating thing he had seen in a while.

  “Display weather radar,” he commanded the comp term built into his desk. It obliged by painting a radar map of the northern Palatinate across his 3D display. There was a line of thunderstorms brewing and they would be big. But his usual observation suite was currently hors de combat. He really wanted to watch the storm. It was suddenly the most important thing he could do.

  He left his desk and walked through the outer office. Holden Palmer had abandoned his desk promptly at 5 PM. The guards of the day quickly stood up.

  “Sit down,” RWB ordered. “I will be back shortly.”

  The Paladin walked through the door into the hallway and the door slid shut. The two guards looked at each other and stood up again.

  “I think we need to see where he goes.”

  “Right.”

  They walked over to the door and stepped into the hallway. The elevator door was just closing.

  “Paladin on the move,” the first guard spoke into his comm unit.

  In the Security Operations Center, Lesa Carper quickly switched screens. The building systems always tracked the Paladin when he was in the building. The screen showed him into the elevator.

  “He is headed to the top floor,” she barked into the comm.

  Jones walked out of his office. “What is happening?”

  “The Paladin is headed towards the top floor. The guards did not follow him.”