Soldier

by David Ryker

  17

  Volchec looked grave. She was leaning over, hands pressed flat on a ragged old workbench.

  Outside, the storm still raged. The building creaked and the single bulb hanging off one of the rafters on a thin wire swung gently.

  Her features were carved in shadow, her eyes closed, jaw set, nostrils flaring gently as she thought.

  I was sitting on top of a wire spool, legs dangling, picking at a tag of loose skin next to my thumbnail. It was hurting, but that was okay. I didn’t stop.

  Fish was in the corner, leaning against the door next to the wall. Mac was sitting opposite Volchec, elbows on the table, head in his hands.

  Everett was next to the window. It’d been painted over with dark gray paint, but a small section had been scratched away at eye level, and she peered out, hands in pockets. The rain in the warmer parts of the city had long changed to snow this far into the night-side, and snow battered the old warehouse we’d taken refuge in. On the other side of the room, shrouded in darkness, I could see three shapes. Our rigs. The Tilt-wing was a little ways away. Volchec and Everett had set it down in a gully and made the trip over. They’d identified this building as one that the Federation Taxation Company, or the FTC, if you were into that sort of thing, had repossessed, and had pulled some strings to get the access codes. A phone call was all it took, and here we were.

  I watched her closely, not saying anything. They’d been here when we arrived, in the same positions. Greg and I got there just after, and Mac and Fish came in last. Fish’s rig had taken some damage, but it was nothing compared to the elephant in the room.

  “Fuck,” Volchec said quietly. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”

  Everett looked over her shoulder and caught my eye. She pressed her lips into a tight line, pushed a couple strands of loose blond hair off her face, and then turned back to the window. Whatever way we spun it, it wasn’t looking good. The mission had been a total fuck-up from start to finish. Lost for any other leads, we’d gone ahead, ill-prepared with an even worse-thought-out plan. Whether it was cockiness or just stupidity, we all looked back on what had just happened with no idea how any of us thought it would ever work.

  There’d been no contact from Kera and the other mercs. They’d given us a rendezvous point to drop the Iskcara off, but they’d have been watching, or at least would have heard. Four mechs attacking an Iskcara shipment in the city — it was big news. And four mech meant that the one who was supposed to be dead wasn’t actually dead.

  I rubbed my chest gently and went back to picking my nail.

  And if the fourth, me, wasn’t dead, that meant that we’d lied to them. And if we did that, it probably meant our intentions weren’t truthful, and neither was our story. But none of it mattered now, anyway, because we had no Iskcara, and there was no way anyone was going within a hundred clicks of that RV point.

  I guess the way we all figured it was that Telmareen was losing Iskcara anyway — and it was losing it to God-knows-who. So, with us stealing just a little more, it meant we could prevent a lot more from being taken in the long run. In actuality, all that we’d accomplished was killing two Telmareen guards and blowing up a Federation-owned Telmareen Guard Fixed-wing. Oh, and losing Alice, of course. We still didn’t know if she was alive or dead. Volchec had gotten access to the Guard database and she was watching both the arrests and the morgue arrivals. She hadn’t been scanned in to either.

  Everyone who lived on a Federation planet had a code on their wrist. It was used for everything from shopping to interstellar travel. Anyone who was arrested would be scanned. And if a corpse came in, it’d be scanned too, but there was no sign of her, alive or dead. She wasn’t coming through on comms either. That meant one of a few things. Either she was dead and that electric field designed to protect the transport, triggered when she’d gone for the hatch, had fried her so badly the code wasn’t scannable. Or it meant that she was dead, and they’d just not bothered to check in her body yet. Or it meant that she was alive, but they hadn’t processed her. And if it was the last one — we couldn’t figure out why, which meant it probably wasn’t that one.

  Volchec shook her head. “Goddammit, Kepler,” she mumbled. “MacAlister—”

  “Yeah?” Mac grunted, not taking his head out of his hands.

  “She seem okay to you before you went in?”

  Mac shrugged and put his hands down. “No different from usual — focused, sharp, determined — a little pissed-off, but when isn’t she?”

  Volchec sucked her cheek. “Goddammit.”

  She was kicking herself — I could see that much. But it was weird. As soon as everything had gone to shit, we got out of there. Volchec and Everett got down as quickly as they could, found the warehouse, gave us the location and told us to get our asses over there pronto. But that wasn’t the weird thing — the weird thing was that Alice had disobeyed a direct order, which was that if Mac’s initial barrage of fire didn’t bring the transport down, and if it got out of the pines and into the central band of the city, that they were to fall back immediately and get out of there. And if the Telmareen Guard were scrambled, that they were to split up, ditch their steel somewhere quiet, and head to a prearranged location a few clicks from where it’d all gone down. Then, they’d let things cool off, and we’d go from there. But none of those things had happened. Mac had failed, Fish had been shot off the hull, and when the transport had gone into overdrive and gotten right into the middle of the city, Alice hadn’t backed off. She was supposed to, but she hadn’t. There wasn’t any gray about it — she had an order to fall back, and she disregarded it completely, and did the same with Mac’s transmissions, cutting him off when he told her to get out of there. I could vouch for that — she’d told me to piss off, too, that she was going to finish the mission, whatever it took. It just so happened that it took her life. And all that was only compounded by the fact that I had to jump in when I saw her giving chase, not only further fucking up the mission by blowing my cover, but also by tacking on two Telmareen Guard deaths to the whole thing. I was trying not to think about them, but they lingered in the back of my mind like they all did. Any way you spun it, we were all out of sync and it’d cost us the mission, as well as one of our own.

  I shook my head. No. I couldn’t think like that. We didn’t know for sure. She could be alive. We just had no way to tell, and no idea what the fuck we were going to do next.

  Everett was looking at me again, and this time, when I caught her eye, didn’t break away. She looked at me for a few seconds, and then dipped her head sideways toward Volchec. I studied her face, her eyes — what she was looking at. She was glaring at the tabletop. I thought for a few seconds, decoding what I was seeing. Shit. As rough as this was for all of us, it was as bad for her. She’d not known Alice as long as I had — but it was her responsibility. She’d sent us out there, she’d given the mission a green light, and like all showrunners, the responsibility was hers.

  Alice was a kid — this was her first mission. Was Volchec wondering if it was too fast? Was this all too soon? Were we poorly chosen? It’d all happened so quickly. It’d all been such a sure thing. We were going to arrive on Telmareen, track down some leads, and go from there. We’d been at the bar, stumbled on something, picked up momentum, and now it was all falling apart, and Volchec was taking it hard. No one else was doing anything, either. Fish looked vacant. Mac wasn’t even moving, head still in his hands. Volchec was in pieces, her courage and surety gone, and it was contagious.

  Everett was heading over, walking toward me. No one took any notice. She stopped a few feet away, close enough so she didn’t have to speak above a whisper. “How you doing?”

  I nodded as well as I could. “I’m okay.” I wasn’t sure if she bought it.

  She smiled abjectly. “Told you it pays to be alone.” She shrugged to make a point of it and I felt my throat constrict. I wanted to tell her to go fuck herself, though I didn’t know if she really was that heartless and cynical, or j
ust trying to prove a point. Either way, I had to restrain myself.

  “Sure,” I said instead.

  Her smile softened a little bit and she put her hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “There’s nothing you can do. Volchec’s got feelers out. When Alice shows up — dead, or alive — and either is possible — we’ll know about it. Until then, sitting here isn’t going to get anything done.”

  “What do you suggest?” I mumbled, staring at the three faces of the others, all empty and in shock. Mac’s sure-footed confidence was gone. Volchec was still grappling with herself. Fish… I couldn’t figure him out without asking and I wasn’t in the mood.

  “Before you called in with the lead on those mercs, Mac and Fish were heading away from that rented garage. Seemed that Barva was making headway with his investigation before he disappeared. The garage was empty — or as good as. It was a desk, a lamp, some papers — shipping manifests, that kind of thing. Nothing that amounted to anything, but he was sharp, he knew what he was messing with,” Everett said, her voice even. She was the only one staying on-mission. “Whoever was skimming off the Federation knew how serious it was, and they were well connected. Mac and Fish found some bits — string, couple pins, a trash-can with some empty markers. The back wall had a big notice board on it — but it was totally blank. Thing is, it was full of pinholes. So what we figure is that it’s where Barva was putting all the information he amassed together, doing it the old-fashioned way. Nothing electronic — no way to trace it… Unless someone knows where your secret hideout is.” She said it casually and held up her hands. I had to admire her stoicism. Either she really didn’t give a shit, or she was holding it all together better than any of us were.

  “So?” was all I could muster.

  “So… we get back on track with our investigation. Whoever got Barva, because he was getting close to exposing them, or because he took one risk too many — whatever happened — they found his hideout and cleaned it out. Took everything. Destroyed it or took it back to whoever they were working for.”

  “Okay. What are you saying?”

  “What I’m saying,” she said, enunciating so there was no way I couldn’t get exactly what she was saying — I didn’t know if she thought I was in shock or something, but I tried to ignore how patronizing I thought it was. “Is that Barva was a paranoid sonofabitch and that even in his secret hideout he had secrets. And that whoever tortured him to get that information out of him was satisfied with what they found at the garage — enough so that they didn’t press for anything more.”

  “Torture?” I raised an eyebrow. “Where are you getting torture from?”

  She smirked. “Come on, Red — a Federation spy, trained for this sort of stuff — you really think he’d just give up his whole operation? If he wasn’t tortured, and they just asked him some questions, then we’d have had our report, all his findings, and we’d not even be here. The reason we are is because he went missing. The reason his garage is empty is because someone cleaned it out. The reason that they cleaned it out is because they knew where it was, and what was in it. And the reason they knew that is because they strapped him to a chair and—”

  I raised a hand and cut her off. “I get it.” I breathed deeply and rubbed my eyes. “You said something about a secret in his secret hideout?” I shook my head. It was spinning. It’d been a long day and I felt like it was about to get longer.

  “Scratched into the underside of the desk was a code — eight digits.”

  I groaned. This was feeling more like a test and less like an explanation with every second. “So?”

  “When Mac and Fish got there, they searched the whole thing. Drawers in the desk, pulled it out from the wall — anything. They even turned it over, just to see if anything was hidden under it. And there was, just not in the way they thought.”

  “So what are they? A secret code? Coordinates?” I was shaking my head now, my concentration levels about as low as they could be without just falling off the spool and banging my forehead against the ground repeatedly.

  “Simpler than that — a combination. To a locker, at the spaceport nearest his apartment. We pulled his transaction history, found that he’d opened one up for himself. They’re used to store belongings when people go on trips, and—”

  “I know what a locker is,” I said with a little more bite than intended.

  She looked away, composed herself, and then drew a breath. “Of course you do. On Federation planets, though, Federation citizens get certain perks. Discounted travel on Federation vessels between sanctioned worlds. Free universal healthcare. Free education. And free storage while you’re off-world.”

  “But you just said you pulled his credit history. So that means he paid?”

  She waggled her finger at me. “You are paying attention then.” Everett smiled for a second and cast an eye over the others before returning to me. No one else seemed in the mood to jump in, so she kept her voice low.

  But still, I had to admit that little bit of zeal was infectious. I could feel myself starting to come around. “So what did he pay for?”

  “The locker.” She paused and narrowed her eyes a little. “Think of it more as a deposit. You pay to get it open, put your stuff inside, and then when you get back—”

  “You get a refund — the credits come back to you.” I nodded, finishing it for her.

  “Bingo.” She restrained a smile. “And if he had the credits taken out…”

  “Then that means he opened a locker.”

  “And if he never got them put back in…” She made a circular motion with her hands, waiting for me to get it.

  “Then it means whatever he put inside is still there,” I said, staring into space. “Shit.”

  “Shit is right.” She raised her eyebrows, grinning. “Took us a while to work all that out — didn’t have anything for Mac and Fish to go on when you called us, so your lead took precedence. But now…”

  I nodded. “And we have the code.”

  She nodded too. “Yup, and the locker’s just sitting there, waiting for us.”

  “How do you know that he didn’t give up the locker, too? That the people who searched the garage didn’t get the code and go there to collect whatever was inside?”

  “The biometric failsafe on those lockers means that only the person who took out the rental can open them again, and that immediately redeposits their credits. And the stations are heavily policed by the Guard. Plus, those lockers are pretty heavy duty. If someone was trying to break into it, then it’d cause a lot of fuss, attract a lot of attention. There’ve been no incident reports, so we have to assume that it’s still there.” She finished and folded her arms, looking at the group before coming back to me, eyes expressive, staring with anticipation. “Well?”

  “How are we going to get into it then? And do we even know what locker it is?” I was looking for outs. I didn’t know if I had the energy to face anything else today… tonight… whatever it was. I glanced at my watch and tried to work out how long I’d been awake. The lack of night and day was making me nauseous. I couldn’t figure out if it was the middle of the night or the middle of the afternoon. At least on board the ships there was a universal time that was adhered to, lights that mimicked a night and day cycle. Here it was perpetual misery. An endless waking dream.

  “Luckily the Federation actually have some tools for dealing with that sort of thing. The locks they use on those lockers are standard across the galaxy — they’re biometrically encoded, a little like what’s on your F-Series. All biometric profiles — at least of most Federation citizens — are stored in one big central database. That code on your arm is linked to yours, same as mine.” She pulled up her sleeve to show it off. “These lockers, though, are just basic thumb-scanners — real run of the mill. They read the biometric profile through the skin and if it matches the account that took out the policy, it’ll open. We can simulate it because we have his profile on the database, and have access to it — Volchec made
sure of that. All we have to do is scan the lockers until we find the right one, and hey presto… It’ll be a cinch.” She grinned at me, but it died on her lips when she saw my bloodshot eyes and crumpled brow. I didn’t have any smiles left in me.

  I swallowed, looking for any out. I couldn’t find one. After a while I bowed my head and sucked in a long breath. “You said we? Who’s we?”

  “Me and you,” she said flatly. Her usually pinned-back blond hair was now falling around her ears, curling slightly against her jawline. Her blue eyes shone in the dim glow of the bulb over the table. “We can go now,” she said, her voice urging. “The spaceport will be open, but with the storm, nothing’s flying right now — the place will be quiet. We just slip in, find the locker, slip out.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that. We’ll be gone and back before any of them realize. They’ll update us with any news of Alice if it comes in, but trust me, in times like this...” She nodded, looking back at Volchec, and then at Mac. “Some people just need a win, you know?”

  I sighed. “Alright, fine. But… can I at least get some sleep first?”

  18

  “Volchec,” I said quietly, looking over Everett’s shoulder.

  She looked up, but didn’t say anything.

  Everett turned and motioned Volchec over with her head. She looked at the top of Mac’s bowed head and then pushed off the table and walked over. She pursed her lips and folded her arms, clearing her throat. “What?”

  I rubbed my eyes and let Everett do the talking. She seemed to be the only one with her head on straight just then. Maybe it was that cold isolation she talked about and she really did just care about the mission and nothing else — or maybe she was just better at keeping it hidden than the rest of us. Maybe she just hadn’t gotten to know Alice like the rest of us. Either way, her focus was admirable. “We need to follow up on the Barva lead.”