by M. D. Cooper
“That’s it. I’m hitting the shower and then getting some rack time.” Lena paused as she stood, pinning Jason with a look. But before she could say anything, Tama beat her to it.
“What? I just got here, and now everyone’s leaving?” Tobias asked.
“Must be your winning charm,” Jason said as he rose. “Once I’m rested, let’s hit the sims for some friendly competition.”
“Sure thing, boyo. You go rest that fragile, organic body. You’re going to need it if you think you can beat me.”
A SPORT AS OLD AS GILGAMESH
STELLAR DATE: 03.10.3272 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Premier’s Estate, Hauptstadt
REGION: Barat, Little River
Giovanni looked to the sky, noting that Epsilon was riding low in the west, its ruddy glow lengthening the shadows of the guards around Rachelle Feretti. The premier stood facing a stand of trees on the other side of the field, her arm raised and gloved hand fisted.
Sitting in a bough high in one of those trees was a Harris’s hawk, a band of white gracing the tips of its tailfeathers. The hawk, named Tigan, had a mild temperament that was best-suited for novice falconers.
Of all the birds housed in the mews on the premier’s estate, Tigan was the only one that the master falconer trusted Feretti to handle. Even then, the falconer ensured that someone more experienced was always present when Feretti chose, like today, to go hunting.
This afternoon, it was Giovanni’s turn. He, too, wore a glove, and on it perched a second chestnut-shouldered Harris’s hawk. This one’s gaze was fixed upon the distant tree where its companion sat.
“Tigan!” the premier commanded to the Harris’s hawk across the field. Extending her arm, she pivoted her shoulder toward the tree, her voice imperious and carrying. “To me!”
Giovanni knew better than to allow any hint of censure or amusement to color his expression. He merely stepped closer to Feretti and rose his hand behind her so that she could not see the visual cue he sent to Tigan.
Tigan was imprinted to the master falconer; the bird wouldn’t come to any other voice. Thankfully, the premier rarely went hunting like this, and all raptors kept within the mews had been trained to respond to visual commands as well.
It appeared Feretti had forgotten this.
Giovanni signaled once more to the bird perched in the trees. Tigan launched into the air, sweeping across the meadow with powerful strokes of its meter-wide wingspan.
Giovanni began an internal mantra, mentally urging Feretti to not flinch or duck as the Harris’s hawk swooped toward them at an incredible speed. He cupped his hand just behind the woman’s elbow, ready to steady her should she make the mistake of moving out of the bird’s path.
Raptors such as Tigan devoted up to eighty-five percent of their brain power to their vision, and he knew the hawk had his flight path dialed in with precision. At his rate of speed, deviation could mean injury to both bird and human.
Giovanni suspected that allowing Feretti to be injured might not help his chances at career advancement.
He released a silent breath as the raptor alighted onto her fisted hand, scraping his reward off the base of Premier Feretti’s glove with his beak. Faust, the hawk on Giovanni’s own fist, shifted slightly at Tigan’s approach, turning a bright and inquisitive eye toward her fellow raptor.
“There,” Ferreti said, her eyes glinting in satisfaction as she glanced over at him, one brow arched. “That is how you call a falcon to you, Giovanni.”
He bowed his head respectfully. “Impressive, ma’am. Tigan is a fine specimen.” Stars, she can’t even tell a hawk from a falcon! Giovanni looked down at the chestnut-colored hawk on his wrist and sighed mentally. It’s a good thing they aren’t falcons; those are solitary hunters and don’t exactly play well with others, even of their own species. Not like our two Harris’s hawks here.
The pair of humans turned and began trudging along the brush that edged the tree line, Feretti’s security detail fanning out behind them.
Giovanni murmured to Faust, then launched her into the air. The raptor alighted on a tree a few meters ahead of them, her gaze intent upon the ground, prepared for the moment her human rousted a small animal from the brush.
It was a routine the two performed regularly. His job was to startle the small animals from their hiding spots; hers was to kill.
He dutifully plied his walking stick, sweeping it into the bushes, rustling the foliage as they walked. Feretti tsked, glancing pointedly down at the hand that was beating the bushes.
“It’s no wonder your bird took off, with all the racket you’re making.” She turned to address the hawk on her fist, cooing at it. “Such a good bird, Tigan. So well-trained, unlike your sister up there.”
Giovanni arranged his face into an expression more appropriately respectful than his thoughts allowed.
“He knows power when he sees it,” he murmured in response and, with a mental apology to Faust, limited his rustling to the occasional light whack against the foliage as they passed.
“Speaking of power,” she began, and Giovanni arrested his motion, his attention now fully on his premier. “I understand our prisoner on Phaethon almost managed to escape yesterday afternoon.” She glanced his way, her expression appraising.
“She did,” he admitted. “But she has been secured, and the offer to exchange her for Enfield’s stasis tech has been tendered.”
Feretti pursed her lips, flashing him an astute, measuring look through narrowed eyes. He reminded himself that this woman was not all affectation. Despite her pretentions, Feretti was a shrewd politician.
“I hear that an exchange may no longer be possible,” the premier said, tossing Tigan carelessly into the air and turning to face him.
Giovanni tensed at the action, then relaxed as the hawk joined Faust on a nearby branch. Quickly, he sent the master falconer instructions to come retrieve the hawks. He hoped they were still there when the woman arrived.
Though Feretti had yet to internalize the concept, hawks weren’t truly ever trained; each time a hawk was released, one risked them returning to the wild, never to be seen again.
Abruptly, he realized what the premier had just said.
Mentally berating himself for allowing the Harris’s hawk to distract him, he asked cautiously, “Not possible?”
Feretti took her time unfastening the glove and handing it to one of her attendants. “No, Giovanni, it would seem not.”
Her voice held disapproval, and he tensed once more, this time for entirely different reasons.
“Apparently,” she said coldly, “your man on Phaethon had not made the situation clear to the citizen commander at our duty station’s compound. She deemed the prisoner too much of a flight risk and shipped her here.”
“Madam Premier, Enfield need not know this,” he assured her. “We can still use her as a bargaining chip for the stasis—” His words stumbled to a halt as she began to shake her head.
“No, Citizen Perelman, we cannot.”
Giovanni looked at her blankly, not understanding what the woman’s location had to do with her value in trade.
“Giovanni, Giovanni,” the premier chided, shaking her head. “Any possible chance we might have had to treat this as a simple exchange went out the airlock when your people initiated standard interrogation procedures on her.”
Shock reverberated through him at the news. Those had not been his standing orders.
Feretti pointed an accusing finger at his chest, and he wondered if a pistol shot from one of her detail would follow in its wake. “How do we return such damaged goods and expect any reciprocity?” she demanded.
She turned suddenly and began walking back toward the estate. When he made to follow, she halted him with her hand.
“I’m sure you are much too busy cleaning up the mess your people have made to join us at tonight’s dinner, Citizen Perlman. Citizen soldier Marsden will see y
ou to your transport.”
Giovanni swallowed hard at the rebuff, as he realized his dinner invitation had been revoked. The premier’s retinue closed around her retreating form as she returned to the mansion, save for the single soldier—the one of lowest rank—who stood, waiting to escort him off the estate.
He nodded stiffly to Marsden and then trudged behind her as she turned sharply on her heel, marching toward the estate’s general parking area.
As they walked, his mind raced.
How did this go off the rails so quickly, when mere hours ago, everything was proceeding so smoothly?
More importantly, who on my staff has been feeding the premier information from my own offices before it gets to me?
DEAD SHORT
STELLAR DATE: Unknown
LOCATION: Unknown
REGION: Unknown, Little River
Calista knew she was in trouble.
She had no idea how long she’d been out, nor where the ship was taking her. She could feel the subtle vibration through the soles of her feet as she paced in her cell, and knew they were underway.
She recalled, as through a fog, her attempted escape back on the duty station. The memory of a pair of crisp grey pants swam into view in her mind’s eye, of being hauled up to face their owner—Citizen Lieutenant Maritz, the one from the bazaar.
Another face had registered, that of the soldier who had posed as her lawyer—Sergei, his name was. He’d been one of the ones who had hauled her aboard this ship. She’d been barely conscious at the time.
There had been some sort of medical or research area. She’d been stripped, injected with a paralytic. Then agony, as every muscle in her body seized when they subjected her to a strong electrical current, strong enough to fry her mednano. It was a crude but effective way to remove any chance she had of neutralizing the pharmaceutical cocktail the autodoc sent coursing through her veins, far more effective than the EMPs they’d hit her with back in her cell.
Through a drug-induced haze, she heard voices discussing the autodoc’s scan, as the unit pinpointed every modification the El Dorado Space Force had given her, and the ones Task Force Phantom Blade had upgraded.
And then the extractions had begun.
First, they went after the superconducting batteries embedded within her body. These ran the length of both femur and tibia, of humerus and ulna. They were excised for study and comparison to existing tech.
The sample of retractable CNT lattice that protected her organs—a mod she’d received when she became a fighter pilot with El Dorado’s Space Force—had been acquired by the simple expediency of removing one of her kidneys.
Her optical implant went next.
“Just one, though,” she heard a voice instruct the medic who was programming the autodoc. “It’s too much of an inconvenience to have a blind prisoner.”
Stars forbid I inconvenience you, she thought sardonically, although she couldn’t make her mouth form the words.
Then they moved on to her musculoskeletal frame. A plug of bone containing carbon nanothreads had been removed from her femur—that had been fun. She heard one of the medics note that it was to compare Barat’s CNT with the ones Alpha Centauri used. Why, she had no idea; the tech was hundreds of years old.
Tissue from artificial sinews was next, harvested from enhanced ligaments and tendons. And then the Baratians harvested the specialized nano laced throughout her brain.
It was designer nano, custom-tailored to the unique folds of her brain’s peaks and valleys, predetermined by her parents before she’d been born, and she had no idea how it could possibly be of use to them. She’d overheard enough to know they intended to try their hand at reverse-engineering the tech.
Stars, haven’t they heard of patented anti-tampering code? she thought foggily, but then she heard one of the chop-shop crew bragging about the Godel scientist whose studies on retroviruses looked promising as a tool to neutralize security programs.
Had she the energy to cringe, she would have, for Calista couldn’t fathom equipping these monsters with advantages of any kind.
When they’d extracted what they could from her, a dead short had been deliberately induced in the remaining SC batts. Sabotaged, they were turned into slag so she couldn’t use them to power the active modifications laced throughout her body.
The resulting surge across each low-resistance connection released a tremendous amount of energy. Those handling the procedure hadn’t cared about her comfort. After the first searing discharge, she’d slipped into blessed unconsciousness.
They must have been instructed not to allow her mind to be damaged, though, for they had discharged the batts near her brain stem much more carefully.
Or so she thought.
It was a bit difficult to tell, given that some of her modifications were ones that augmented the speed at which her mind processed information. Without them, she felt as sluggish as if she were treading through a morass.
It had been decades since she’d last had only her own natural-born neurons to call upon; it was frightening how handicapped she felt.
Her hand shook as she ran it through her short tresses, wincing as her fingers touched the tender spot where they had invaded her head.
“Stars, that hurts,” she said aloud, but the words sounded more like “shtharths tha hurth.” She felt an edge of hysteria build within her as she heard the garbled words. What if I’m damaged beyond repair, and this is permanent?
Calista shuffled away from the entrance of her cell and slid down the wall, resting her wrists on top of her knees, her hands dangling uselessly. Her one good eye closed, she gently banged her head back up against the wall, a physical mimicry of what she was attempting to do mentally: knock the wool from around her thoughts.
She recalled as through a fever dream the interrogation that had followed the medical exam. Relentless questions hammering at her over and over again, all the while, her body strapped into the autodoc as drugs poured through her system. Her ESF mods, standard for every soldier, included anti interrogation filters; she was certain those in charge had attempted to bypass them.
If she recalled accurately from within the dream, they’d even attempted to hack her Link—a fact that boggled her befogged mind, as it was common knowledge that such a thing was impossible to do.
What kind of crazy, messed-up society has taken me captive?
With effort, she stood and gave herself a shake, much like her Space Force roommate’s dog did when wet. Despite her aching body, she paced and tried to ignore the fact that one leg dragged slightly and her speech was slurred.
She suspected that the ruthless manner in which they’d defanged her may have triggered a mild stroke or transient ischemic attack, damaging a brain now bereft of the resources it required to repair itself.
Resolutely, she worked her body as best she could, cycling through sets of calisthenics while doing much the same inside her mind.
It is the duty of every soldier to resist to the utmost of their ability. To remain in the best possible shape in order to take advantage of every opportunity.
As Calista paced, she recited the words inside her head as a mantra.
* * * * *
Jason was still in a foul mood and he knew it.
The team had spent the second full day on their journey to Godel being briefed by Simone. The analyst possessed a thorough knowledge of Barat—an invaluable tool as they planned how best to conduct Calista’s rescue.
“A smaller team, assisted by some of our local assets, will have a much better chance of infiltrating Gehenna,” Simone informed them, mentioning the name of the prison Barat used to house spies and outworlders. “Our people know how to get you in without detection. They can provide passage into the area, a few local guides, and a safe house.”
Terrance nodded. “Sounds solid. How many is it safe to send in, then? Three? Four?”
Simone paused, her gaze traveling from Terrance over to the Marines in the room. Jason waited i
mpatiently as her gaze shifted to him and then Tobias.
“One,” she said abruptly.
“One?” Jason erupted. “That’s—”
“One human, one AI,” she interrupted, then paused and glanced down at where Tobi sat next to him. “And one cat.”
“Why the cat?” Noa was the first to recover. The physicist voiced the question that Jason was sure had sprung to many of their minds.
Jason heard the sound of nails puncture the carpeting that lined the ship’s deck, and saw Terrance wince at the sound.
By way of reply, Simone turned to the holo and brought up a visual of the animal life around Gehenna.
“Take a look. You’re a bit smaller than some of the local predators that live on the veldt, but no one from Barat has ever heard of an uplifted animal, so you’d be far better equipped to blend into the surroundings than a human,” she explained. “Because of that, you should be able to get much closer to the prison camp than a human could.”
The big cat’s mental tone was smug.
Jason exchanged a glance with Tobias. “I don’t know,” he began. “It makes more sense to me to have more people along—”
Jason narrowed his eyes at the Weapon Born, then shifted abruptly back to Simone.
“How fast can we get there?”
Simone smiled wryly. “Speed’s not going to be the issue, as much as a human’s—or cat’s—tolerance of it will be,” she said, indicating Tobi. “I can get you passage on any number of container ships that travel between Godel and Barat daily, but a lot of them are drone ships that use the fast lanes to transit between our two worlds.”