by Terry Mixon
Better them than her. She had her own problems to worry about. Like her sudden skill with guns.
It had to have something to do with her near-death experience. One more thing the sarcophagus had done to her. One more mystery to solve.
4
Chen Jian, formerly the Chinese ambassador to the United States of America before they expelled all of his country’s diplomatic staff, slammed his phone onto his desk, smashing the screen.
How had the targets escaped his team? How had they killed most of his men? He’d seen the report. It was just a few civilians, one mercenary, a scientist, and a few guards.
He’d sent a combat team of Dragons. Their heavy-worlder genetics and combat training should’ve made the outcome inconceivable. Yet the primary team was dead, and the bodies were in the hands of the American authorities, and the only lead to his targets had slipped his grasp.
Chen sighed and regretted smashing his phone. It would take time to get him a new one and move his data over. The rage was acceptable. The violence was not.
If the man seated in front of him cared about the show of emotion, he was wise enough not to show it. Arthur Hyde, a short American with blond hair, showed only a mildly interested expression and said nothing. A wise decision from the Dragon’s lead agent in America.
“I apologize for my unseemly display of emotion,” Chen said, putting his ruined phone into a desk drawer in his appropriated office at the Yucatán spaceport. “The loss of our agents is regrettable. The failure to capture any of the people with access to the Asharim technology, though, is unacceptable. How did that happen?”
“It seems there was a preexisting escape tunnel built into the sewers that we had no reason to expect. Once the point team discovered this, the surface teams went down through breached manhole covers, and they surrounded the targets.
“Unfortunately, the confrontation went poorly. As none of the Dragon warriors returned, and the transmissions from the video cameras in their gear was blocked by being underground, I can’t say with any certainty how they died. Only the helicopter pilots and the vehicle drivers and lookouts had escaped.
“While I hesitate to suggest this, as it smacks of making excuses, it’s possible the targets prepositioned fighters in the sewers. Our people could have run into an ambush that was strong enough to end them, even with terrestrial weapons.”
Chen nodded slowly. “That’s possible, since we have no insight into how familiar they were with the area. The man we traced there was at one time Clayton Rogers’s personal assistant. He is known to be canny, so it’s possible that he knew exactly what was there and used it to his advantage.”
Leaning back in his seat, Chen half turned and stared out his window at one of the lifter gantries in the distance. Even though the ownership of the place was still being contested, possession, as they said, was nine-tenths of the law.
This spaceport had once belonged to Clayton Rogers. The man had sold it to the Chinese to avoid having the American government seize it along with the rest of his assets when they found out the man had built an interplanetary spaceship with a nuclear powerplant rather than a space hotel.
Quite the trick, Chen had to admit. A worthy play in the great game.
The Chinese in turn had sold it to Rogers’s ex-wife, Kathleen Bennett, with the sure knowledge that they could maintain control in the end while replenishing their coffers. The US government was already in the process of seizing her property, so the Chinese government would simply void the sale and keep her money as well.
What was she going to do about the crime, after all? Particularly if the rumors of her death proved accurate. The same was true of the United States. They could scream all they liked, but so long as he controlled the spaceport, they had no other recourse.
The chaos those actions engendered suited the goals of the Dragon admirably. No one outside his organization suspected the Dragon even existed. Descendants of the heavy-worlder attack teams that had assaulted the human resistance’s bases in this system a thousand years ago made up the core of the Dragon, and they’d been manipulating the Chinese people and government ever since.
That had held true until recently. Now he was certain there was another group of people playing the great game from the resistance side. His spies had identified a former FBI agent named Brenda Cabot as a leader in this organization, and they were apparently in league with the company Clayton Rogers had formed to exploit the Asharim technology: Humanity Unlimited.
The man’s son, Harry Rogers, had led the flight of the illegal ship that they’d named Liberty Station to Mars. He’d undoubtedly found an old resistance base there. The evidence was incontrovertible, as he’d appeared back on Earth without his ship returning.
That meant they’d found and activated one of the Asharim gates of legend. The portals that could take a person across the galaxy in a single step. And the key to the Dragon once again finding the Masters and serving them.
The Asharim had transformed the heavy-worlders into their warriors. Each of them trapped on Earth longed to fight once more at their sides.
Which only made capturing Harry Rogers and his female companion more critical. Or Brenda Cabot, as Chen was certain she had control of the gate Rogers had used to return to Earth.
Chen forced himself out of his reverie and turned back toward Hyde. “The original goal of this attack was to capture Harry Rogers or any of his companions, but the secondary goal was to trace Brenda Cabot. He has to be staying somewhere near her, and she is in Washington, DC. Did you have any luck tracing the van that Rogers arrived at the site in or capturing the driver?”
Hyde shook his head. “We captured the driver, but he perished from wounds inflicted during the fight.”
Chen grimaced. “A pity. We need to focus on Cabot and Rogers. At some point, they will once more come within our grasp.
“The police will recover the bodies of our people and much evidence from the scene of the attack. I want you to arrange a raid tonight to retrieve them from the morgue and to destroy the crime lab. Also, send a third team to cleanse the sewers with fire. No evidence pointing back at the Dragon must remain in soiled hands.”
The man rose smoothly to his feet and bowed. “It shall be as you say. No one will be allowed to discover our secrets.” With that, the American left his office.
Chen returned his gaze to the launch gantry in the distance. The battle had barely commenced its opening stages, yet he was hopeful. If they couldn’t get a gate on Earth, he’d seize the one on Mars.
Rogers’s makeshift ship would not be able to stand against the Chinese Mars vessel. It had weapons aboard that the American would never dream of. If he returned to the Red Planet to fight in its defense, his body would be left moldering on the frozen surface of the desolate world.
The ascendance of the Dragon was within his grasp, and he would not falter. Victory would be his, no matter how many people he had to kill to achieve it.
Harry had finally started to relax when their van met up with the one Cabot sent to pick them up. The vehicular trade took place in a parking garage, so while there were witnesses, there weren’t many, and no one seemed to pay them any particular attention.
Her people put Weller and Brighton-Jones into the back of the van after relieving the latter of his weapons. They also scanned everyone for tracking devices, which was a good idea since he was certain that the attackers had followed Weller to the meeting. They’d found nothing, so the tracker must have been in the clothes they’d discarded.
It was an open question whether the attackers had understood who the man was meeting. If Harry had to guess, he’d have said they’d followed Weller hoping to get Cabot. They’d had no reason to expect him or Jess. So far as everyone on Earth should have known, they were on Mars.
Harry gave Jess a covert look as Cabot’s people drove them back to the hideout. She’d been a little off since her brush with death. A lot more introspective than usual, though that was probably inevitable.
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Her recent improvement with the Asharim weapon was more inexplicable. She hadn’t had time to practice, yet she’d acquitted herself more than admirably. That was a mystery he’d have to invest some time solving later.
The van pulled up behind the hideout, and the guards hustled them all inside. Weller and Brighton-Jones went into seclusion until Cabot either approved of them being there or sent them packing.
“Let’s go talk with Cabot,” Harry told Jess.
She shook her head. “You go ahead. I need to shower and then go see Doctor Granger. I still have one more checkup, and I have a few questions for him.”
“Okay,” he agreed, sensing her evasion but willing to let it pass. “I’ll fill Cabot in and see how she wants to proceed while you get checked out.”
Once they’d parted ways, he took the elevator down to the basement and found Cabot exactly where he’d expected, sitting at a table, going over some of the recovered Asharim technology.
She stopped what she was doing as soon as he entered the room and marched resolutely over to him. “What went wrong? We lost the driver we sent with you when some people attacked the van. I’ll assume it was the same people that attacked you. Who were they?”
“The heavy-worlders you told us about, I think,” he said. “We got down into the sewers, but I’m afraid they got the men you sent with us as well. We killed them all, and I recovered what I could from their bodies.”
He put their wallets, keys, and other objects on the table. “Your people scanned us for tracking devices, and these came up clean. If I had to guess, they were tracking my father’s personal assistant, hoping that his visit to Washington had to do with meeting you. We dumped their clothes early.”
The woman grunted as if someone had punched her in the gut. “Three good people gone. Dammit.”
She rubbed her face and started going through the licenses. She stopped at one. “I know this guy. He and his crew were searching this neighborhood when I first spotted them.”
“Do we have any idea who they are?” Harry asked. “Better yet, how did they know you were here? Are they still in the area?”
Cabot shrugged. “My guess is that they’re of heavy-worlder descent and that they’re based out of China. My ancestors must have missed a few of the heavy-worlder guards that were sent to suppress the human resistance.
“I’m not sure how they tagged this area, but we’ve tightened up our security and signals control. Whatever it was, they seem to have moved on to other locations. I’m not sure where they’re based, but you can bet your ass I’m going to be looking for them a lot more aggressively from now on. No one kills my people and gets away with it.
“Thanks for getting this identification. It’s almost guaranteed to be fake, but it gives me a place to start.”
She gestured for Harry to come over to one of the cleared tables and sat down. “What did your father’s assistant want with you? Something to do with your inheritance?”
Harry took a few minutes to fill her in on what he’d been told. She simply nodded her head until he got to the part where he’d inherited his mother’s and brother’s assets. Then she laughed.
“Wow, that’s some serious karma. All the crap they pulled and then, because they didn’t update their last wills and testaments, the guy they were trying to kill gets it all. That’s hilarious.”
He grunted, unamused. “You’re not the one that has to try and make any sense of it. It’s not like the US government is trying to confiscate everything out from under you. Though, technically, I suppose they are. Frankly, I don’t care what they owned. If it all vanishes, that doesn’t mean anything to me.”
Cabot nodded. “What are you going to do about your father’s assistant? Did you decide to hire him?”
“So far as I can tell, the man has always been a rock that my father could count on. With everything we’ve got going on, I’d be an idiot not to accept his help. So, yeah, I hired him. Jess did too, so I suppose he works for Humanity Unlimited rather than me.”
“You’ve spoken about his competence,” Cabot said. “What about his trustworthiness? Is he someone that we can bring completely into what we’re doing and trust that it’s not going to get out to anyone else?”
Harry considered that for several seconds and then nodded. “My father trusted him implicitly. He wouldn’t have done that if the man didn’t have what it took.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes before he broached the next subject on his mind. “I’m concerned about Jess. Almost getting killed really screwed her up, and today she displayed a talent that I never expected to see out of her: she used one of the flechette pistols like a professional. Way better skill than she’d exhibited with one in the past.”
That caused Cabot to frown slightly. “I’ve heard a couple of stories—legends, really—based around the kind of healing device that we found her in. Humans in general didn’t know anything about how they worked, but at least a few of the old stories speak of the people being healed having skills that they’d never had before once the process was complete.
“The skill I’m thinking of wasn’t fighting, but since we found this device on a heavy-worlder ship, perhaps a fighting skill was more appropriate than language.”
Harry felt his eyebrows rise. “Are you telling me that that machine could implant something in her mind to give her the skill to use the flechette pistol? Seriously? And what do you mean by language?”
Cabot grimaced a little. “This is a very old story, so don’t hold it against me if it doesn’t turn out to be accurate. What I heard was that the machine was able to teach others how to speak the Asharim language. She hasn’t shown any indication of that sort of thing, but it’s not as if we’ve exposed her to anything that would reveal it.”
A chill washed through him. “If it could mess with her brain, could it do other things? Turn her against us?”
“I don’t think so,” Cabot said firmly. “Nothing in the legends ever said anything about it altering someone’s personality or allegiances. It wasn’t a way to brainwash someone. It was a healing device that might have had the added capability of teaching someone something that’s programmed into it. Let’s not get carried away and start down the path of paranoia.”
“How do we know what it did?” he asked. “If it taught her how to speak Asharim and shoot a pistol, what else might be in her head now?”
Cabot smiled slightly. “We do it the old-fashioned way: we give her a series of tests that she’s absolutely going to hate. I suggest we get Jess to see Todd Granger, and then we’ll see if we can figure out what’s really going on.”
Harry rubbed his face. “Just what I need, one more thing on my to-do list. I need to be striking items off it rather than adding them on.”
“Welcome to leadership,” Cabot said with a laugh as she rose to her feet. “The first thing you learn is that you’ll never clear the decks. No matter how much you do, the list of things you still have to get to just keeps getting longer.
“Be glad you’ve got a personal assistant now. Maybe he can get your life organized and take some of those action items off your plate. But for right now, we need to check on your partner.”
Harry reluctantly agreed. No matter how many other things he had to get to, if Jess wasn’t in a good place, she deserved his full attention. The rest of the world was just going to have to wait.
5
“Hey,” a female voice said, causing Jess to turn. Sandra Dean was exiting the stairwell and headed her way. Fast. Even though the other woman wasn’t the most demonstrative person, she pulled Jess into a tight hug.
She then pushed Jess back out and gave her a thorough looking over. “You’re looking good for someone that bled out.”
“Thanks, I think. I thought you were still in France working on the heavy-worlder prisoners and the Volunteer refugees.”
“We moved the Volunteers to Freedom Express,” the brunette said with a slight smile. “We’ve got plenty of room for th
em there. The heavy-worlders are down in New Zealand. The dead base there makes a decent holding area, now that we have the lights on and basic supplies in stock. The gates are dead, other than the one that’s locked down, and the only way out is through the cave in the top floor, so we have them penned in pretty good.
“But I’m not here to give you an update on that. I want to see how you’re doing now that you’re out of that box. Harry said there’d been something weird, and I want to hear all about it.”
“I suspect that you weren’t supposed to mention that part to me,” Jess said dryly.
“Life is too short to talk around the important things,” the sniper said firmly. “What’s happening?”
“We got into a fight down in the sewers. I shot some people.”
“Succinctly put, but that doesn’t sound at all outside the realm of normal events these days.”
Jess sighed. “I was using a flechette pistol, and I shot it way better than I should have. Way, way better. Now I’m worried that sarcophagus did something unexpected to me.”
“Other than bringing you back from the brink of death? How will you know?”
“Doctor Granger is going to run some tests, which I’m now late for. Come on.”
Jess went farther down the hall and rapped on the doctor’s door. His muffled voice told her to come in, so she did.
The room on the other side was larger than the door might lead one to believe. They’d removed a few walls to make a single large room where several had been before. The space was filled with a mixture of Asharim technology and Earth medical gear. The largest object present was the sarcophagus that had healed her.
Doctor Todd Granger, a short man of Asian descent in a white lab coat, stepped over from the alien device and gave her a considering stare.
“You’re looking okay,” he said at last, his voice jarring her with its deep Southern accent. He’d been raised in Georgia, and the accent was wildly outside her expectations, even though she’d known him for a while now.
