Bandits Engaged (Battlegroup Z Book 4)

by Daniel Gibbs

  The bearded prisoner—a rough-looking bear of a man—was hauled in by two masters-at-arms and deposited at the table. With shackles on his feet and his hands mag-cuffed behind his back, the prisoner presented virtually no risk. His head never wavered, however. It was held high, and his jaw stuck out.

  Grant had been in the room by himself for fifteen minutes, preparing. “Yiorgos Samaras, welcome. I am Special Agent Grant, Coalition Bureau of Investigation.”

  Grant changes identities as effortlessly as I change my uniform.

  The man didn’t reply except to stare with hatred in his eyes.

  “Under the War Powers Act, enemy saboteurs are subject to summary trial and execution.” Grant spread his hands out on the table. “If you’d like to avoid that fate, I suggest you start talking.”

  “I have nothing to say,” Samaras replied. “Except I want my lawyer.” His English was accented, but Tehrani couldn’t quite place it.

  Grant leaned back in his chair and laughed. “I don’t think you understand your situation, Mr. Samaras,” he said with mock politeness. “You and your fellows have participated in piracy and sabotage of the Terran Coalition war effort. One doesn’t just request a lawyer after that.” The smile disappeared. “I want answers. For starters, I can’t find a record of Yiorgos Samaras anywhere in our databases. Or I should say a Yiorgos Samaras with your biometric signature.”

  “I value my privacy.”

  Whoever this guy is, he’s got spunk. I’ll give him that. Tehrani shifted on her feet.

  “A real funny man, I see.” Grant put his hands in his lap. “Are you familiar with enhanced interrogation techniques, Mr. Samaras?”

  Samaras maintained eye contact and stayed mute.

  “There was a time when the phrase meant things such as, oh, pulling off your fingernails one by one. Staging a mock drowning or extracting a tooth with a pair of pliers.” Grant leaned forward. “You need to come to an understanding that I will do whatever it takes to get the information I need out of you. The sooner you comply, the sooner we can ship you off to prison to serve out your debt to the Terran Coalition.”

  “Lawyer.”

  Grant reached across the table and slapped Samaras. “Not until I get what I want. Who are you? Who do you work for? Where do these so-called pirates come from, and most importantly, who’s backing you?”

  Samaras’s face turned bloodred from the slap. “What happened to the great Terran Coalition’s laws on the humane treatment of prisoners, Agent?” A thin smile came to his lips. “More propaganda from the great religious saviors of the universe?”

  “Inter arma enim silent leges. In times of war, the law falls silent.” Grant’s one-hundred-watt grin returned. “I wasn’t entirely truthful with you, Mr. Samaras. You see, I’m not with the CBI. I’m actually with the Coalition Intelligence Service, and I’m authorized to use whatever means are required to obtain your cooperation.”

  “I will not speak with you. Torture me. Do whatever you like.” Samaras crossed his arms. “I’m done talking.” He glanced behind him. “Guard!”

  Grant sprang from his seat and, in an instant, had the prisoner in a choke hold. “I decide when you’re done talking,” he grated out. “Do you understand?” After a few moments, he let his arm go limp.

  “I’ll never help you.”

  Tehrani stared at the interaction with rapt attention. Something about Samaras was off—most criminals, when confronted by a live, in-the-flesh CIS operative, would lose their lunch. He, on the other hand, acted like it was just another day at the office. I’m sure Grant’s picked up on it.

  “You might not want to.” Grant pulled a small case out of his pants pocket and placed it on the table. “But you won’t have a choice. See, the techniques I described earlier are much more fun than technological solutions to making prisoners talk. This”—he gestured to the case—“on the other hand, is the first step in a multistep process to remove the inhibition in your brain that prevents you from answering my questions. By the time we’re done, you’ll have spilled everything.”

  What is he doing?

  “There’s just one problem. Well, for you. Not for me. The protocol isn’t perfected. So far, it’s left everyone we’ve used it on in a persistent vegetative state.”

  For the first time, Samaras’s face blanched as his nose and lips twitched. “You can’t do that to me. It's against your laws.”

  “Unfortunately for you, I don’t care about the law, Mr. Samaras.” Grant opened the case and retrieved a syringe. “For the last time, would you care to answer my questions? If not, we’ll just get on with this. Look on the bright side. If you’re lucky, you might survive with basic brain function and still be able to feed yourself.”

  Tehrani had thought Grant’s threats so far were just that—threats. But as he raised the syringe and prepared to inject the hapless prisoner, she knew it was more than a mere bluff. Without thinking beyond the next five seconds, Tehrani dashed out of the observation room.

  “Open the hatch!” she bellowed at the two masters-at-arms standing guard outside the interrogation area.

  The two young men quickly complied, and the door swung open.

  “Stop!” Tehrani shouted as she crossed the threshold to find Grant holding the syringe a few inches from Samaras’s arm. “Corporal, secure Mr. Grant and protect the prisoner.” She turned to the intelligence agent.

  “Precisely what do you think you’re doing, Colonel?” Grant asked tightly. “This is a sanctioned CIS action. Please return to your duties.”

  If Tehrani had had a sidearm, it would’ve been in her hand after his last comment. Barely controlled fury channeled toward Grant. “You forget something, Agent. The Zvika Greengold is my ship. As her commanding officer, I and I alone decide what happens. If you think you’re going to torture someone on my ship, you’re in for a rude awakening.”

  “Oh, don’t be daft. You have to break some eggs to make an omelet.” Grant gestured toward Samaras. “He has information we both need to stop these destabilizing attacks on our rare-earth-metal imports. Get out of here and let me do my job.”

  “The ends don’t justify the means.”

  “Says the loser of every conflict and victors that want to feel good about themselves. The ends do justify the means, Colonel.” Grant’s voice rose. “People like you and the rest of the Coalition Defense Force get to sit high on your moral high horses because of people like me.” Grant sneered at her. “I do the difficult things that must be done—the things no one else wants to do—because it makes them feel bad. Now, get the hell out of here.”

  “You will not torture this man. I’ll shoot you myself if I have to.”

  Grant laughed. “This is rich. These assholes killed your pilots and crew, and you won’t let me get the information out of him so we can finish the job.” He threw his hands in the air. “Fine, have it your way. I’ll have orders here within the hour to transfer Mr. Samaras to a CIS-controlled vessel.” Grant turned to the prisoner. “Remember what I was telling you about some of those more fun ways of getting info? We’ll be using that first before the techno-toys.”

  “Get out.” Tehrani set her jaw. “Now. Until you have orders from my superior to the contrary.”

  Samaras stared at her. “Wait. You’re letting him take me?”

  “If he has lawfully executed orders to transfer you, I must comply.”

  “What if I give you something?” Samaras suddenly appeared like a cornered animal, with sweat pouring off his forehead and his face beet red.

  “Go on. If you gave us information willingly, it would help me to say you cooperated with questioning.” What’s going on here?

  “I…” Samaras began then bit his lip. He twisted his neck. “Damn you all. You’ve already figured out we’re getting support from an outside source. I’ll tell you this: our objective is freighters carrying lithium, neodymium, and praseodymium.”

  “That’s not news,” Grant replied. “We already know that. Try harder
.”

  “We have a source that provides shipping manifests from the Interstellar Spacers Union. We tag the freighters in the Lagoon Nebula using micro-QETs.”

  Tehrani glanced at Grant. “What’s a micro-QET?”

  “Quantum entanglement tracker. Very small, expensive, and rare.” Grant’s face relaxed. “You will provide the access frequency and codes to receive the transmission.”

  “Fine. That’s all you get.” Samaras shifted in his seat and snarled. “I won’t tell you where the main base is, nor will I give you any further information.”

  “Take him back to the brig,” Tehrani said to the two masters-at-arms still in the interrogation room.

  “Aye, aye, ma’am,” one of the privates replied.

  With firm hands, they hauled Samaras out of his seat and trundled him off.

  Left alone, Tehrani faced off with Grant. Anger still pulsed through her veins. She tried to dial it down and regain control. “I will be submitting a full report to my superiors and filing a formal complaint with CIS.”

  “For what?” Grant replied.

  Tehrani stared at him in amazement. How does this man sleep at night?

  Grant tilted his head back and laughed. “Oh, Colonel. You played your part so wonderfully.” He smiled at her. “That was all theater for Mr. Samaras’s benefit. CIS doesn’t have the technology I described. A few scientists have tested such a device on mice, but they haven’t made it work yet. Ethics concerns and all. We have our limits, as do I.”

  The mental image of backhanding the spy played out several times in Tehrani’s mind. She suppressed it and forced her lips to a neutral expression. “You played me.”

  “Too harsh. I played Mr. Samaras. You did your duty. Colonel, the CDF are known as the proverbial white knights. Always eager and ready to do your part for God and country. I don’t have that luxury.” He paused. “Someone once said that nice people get to sleep safely in their beds because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. This is no different.”

  “If we can’t uphold the laws of the Terran Coalition, we’re a nation of hypocrites. There’s one thing I detest more than anything in life, Agent Grant—hypocrites.”

  “Which I am not. I’m open and honest about what I am, Colonel. But I’ll do whatever it takes to defend my country.”

  Anger built in Tehrani. Does he dare suggest I wouldn’t pay the ultimate price? “I would die for the Terran Coalition, Agent. My crew and I have come far too close too many times.”

  Grant glanced away for a moment. “In a way, I envy you, Colonel.”

  “What?”

  “All you have to do is die for your country. I must have a soul as dark as death and do things ninety-nine percent of my fellow citizens would condemn, without medals, recognition, or even acknowledgment. If I died in the course of my duties, the only marker would be a single gold star with no name.” Grant narrowed his eyes. “And it is a price I will gladly pay. Even if my actions condemn my soul to hell, if such a place exists.”

  The enormity of what he’d said took a few moments to register with Tehrani as she played the words over in her mind. “You would spend the rest of eternity in punishment for a finite construct in the here and now?”

  “Well, if we’re getting metaphysical, I’d flip that around and tell you I was preserving the ability of several hundred billion people to live their faith freely.” He shrugged. “I don’t put too much stock in the afterlife, honestly. Or God, for that matter.”

  “Such is your choice,” Tehrani replied neutrally.

  “Is this when you tell me to get off your ship and don’t let the hatch hit me in the hindquarters on the way out?”

  Tehrani gestured to the opening. “I hope never to lay eyes on you again as long as I draw breath.”

  “You know, if you weren’t married, I’d ask you out,” Grant replied cheekily. He seemingly got the message as her face contorted. Her last sight of the intelligence officer was his scurrying into the security area beyond.

  The interrogation room was utterly silent after the hatch clanged shut behind him. Tehrani stared at the chair Samaras had sat in for what seemed like an hour, pondering the events she’d just been through. While she was convinced Grant had a dark soul, as he’d put it, the earnestness of his beliefs bothered her. Are we all susceptible to sliding into a pattern of behavior in which the ends justify the means?

  Some time later, she left the area, and as she pushed the hatch shut, she hoped that the action was as symbolic as it was real. I hope I never see such behavior again from a Terran. Something told her that hope was in vain.

  14

  The next morning, Justin received a summons to the deck one conference room during his daily workout. A part of him wondered if senior officers waited until the exact inopportune moment to send such demands. He quickly completed an abbreviated exercise session and hit the shower. Fifteen minutes later, he strode through the hatch into Colonel Tehrani’s meeting space. Emblazoned with the logo of the Zvika Greengold on one end and the flags of the Terran Coalition on the other, the room had become a familiar sight.

  Tehrani, Wright, and Whatley were already there, leading him to glance at his wrist comm and realize he was walking in three minutes late. “Captain Justin Spencer reports as ordered, ma’am.” He braced to attention.

  “At ease,” Tehrani replied. “Sit down.”

  Justin dropped into the empty chair next to Whatley.

  “Nice of you to join us, Spencer. Did we interrupt your beauty sleep? Or maybe those long Hollywood showers you like to take.”

  He took the barb from Whatley in stride. “No, sir. I was representing aviation down in the Marines’ gym. You know, the one you’re too afraid to enter because the workouts might give an old man like you a heart attack.”

  “Watch it,” Whatley growled. “I’ll school you in the simulator again if you keep that crap up.” His eyes flicked to Tehrani. “Apologies for the language, ma’am.”

  Tehrani chuckled. “I expect it out of you flyboys.” Her face changed to a neutral expression. “On to business. Now that we understand where the pirates are tagging their targets for destruction later on, I believe we have an opening to plan a counterstrike.”

  “Fighting in a nebula is iffy, ma’am.” Whatley crossed his arms. “Not saying we’re not up to the task, but it's virtually impossible to track ships in a high-energy ultraviolet photon environment, which Lagoon has in spades.”

  “I suppose that explains why merchant freighters use it as a waypoint,” Wright remarked. He leaned forward. “We’ve eliminated several of their heavy fighters and two of those up-gunned corvettes. Attacks are down.”

  “Yes, but not stopped,” Tehrani replied. “Any loss in rare earth minerals causes delays in munitions and ship construction. Bottom line up front… we must eliminate these pirates by any means necessary.”

  Except torture. Justin ran the possibilities through his head as the others discussed the tactical advantages and disadvantages of trying to engage a small fleet in the nebula. Perhaps there was a simple solution. “What if we fight them elsewhere?”

  “We would if we could, Spencer,” Wright said. “But unless you’ve got a magic prediction machine, I don’t see how our hit rate will improve. The entire battlegroup is needed to counter that converted bulk hauler they’ve got.”

  “All we need to know is where they’re going,” Justin replied. “Doesn’t CIS have tracking devices we could plant on one of their ships, allowing us to find them once the ship leaves the Lagoon Nebula and goes back to its base of operations?”

  Whatley glared at him. “How do you propose to place such a device on the hull of a ship, in a nebula, without drawing attention to yourself?”

  “Using one of the two SFS-4 Ghost stealth fighters on board.” Justin grinned and put his hands on the table. “And a crackerjack pilot who can fly through anything.”

  Tehrani and Wright chuckled, while Whatley snorted.

  “Let me f
ind a pin to deflate that ego, Spencer. Okay, let’s suppose for a second you could fly in that muck and find the enemy. How are we going to tag them?”

  Tehrani cleared her throat. “I can fill that in, gentlemen. Agent Grant sent over a micro-QET launcher. I believe it’s designed much like an ECM pod and will fit on any standard CDF external wing pylon.”

  “We just went from science fiction to mildly plausible, ma’am,” Whatley replied. “But there’s no way to know where the pirates will be.”

  “They’ll be where the freighters are. We don’t have to find them. All Spencer has to do is wait by a freighter with rare earths on it. They’ll find him.” Tehrani’s eyes glinted. “Then you follow the fighter back to its carrier, tag it, and get out. Does that about sum up the mission, gentlemen?”

  Justin was impressed with Tehrani’s tactical-planning abilities—especially since she was a ship driver, and they rarely grasped the ins and outs of small-craft strategy. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “It might help if the pirates’ attention was diverted elsewhere,” Whatley said. “We’ve got a good bit of firepower here. Could rattle their cages a bit, and maybe these guys get sloppy.”

  The thought was intriguing. Justin kicked around in his mind how the Greengold could stir the pot. He visualized the galactic map, specifically around the Lagoon Nebula region. “Isn’t there a series of systems used mostly for raw-material extraction one or two jumps from our primary objective? If I remember right, a helium-3 refinery too.”

  “The kid might be onto something,” Wright replied. “And yeah, there’s a lot of commercial activity in that area. It’s close to the border, and between Terran Coalition assets, the neutral planets, and megacorps, anything not nailed down is being exploited.”

  Tehrani nodded. “XO, put together an operational plan, but I want to be within one jump of Spencer. If the pirates show up in force, we need to be there with equal force. The entire battlegroup, including our stealth-raider friend.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’ll have it in your tablet by eighteen hundred hours.”