by Terry Mixon
That was roughly what Brad had been expecting. Posturing about rebellion from fringe groups was as old as the internet if not the printing press, but it rarely came to anything. If the Cadre was funneling supplies and arms to those fringe groups, however, the concern became much more severe.
“Unlike Fleet, we have not refused to become involved,” the speaker continued. “We had an Agent on the scene attempting to infiltrate the organizations, code name Mulroney. They went dark three days ago and we haven’t heard anything since.
“Agent Mulroney may attempt to make contact once you’re in position, as you’ll be closer than any other Agency operative and possess a force capable of launching a rescue expedition or, well, even something as straightforward as orbital bombardment of rebel bases.
“Everything we’ve learned from Mulroney and other sources is attached to this message. Your orders are to discover everything you can about the threat to Venus and the Commonwealth and to see if you can learn what happened to Agent Mulroney.
“Extraction of Mulroney is preferable, but the retrieval of their data is an absolute priority. We are operating blind in our own backyard, Agent, and this is unacceptable. More resources will be deployed independently, and they may also contact you for fire support.
“If we are lucky, we can neutralize this before it turns into a conflagration that will see too many innocents killed. Find Agent Mulroney, Agent. Stop the pirates. Protect the people of Venus.
“You know your duty.”
The message ended and Brad sighed. There was nothing in the orders from the Agency he wouldn’t have done on his own, but he couldn’t help feeling that an Agent going missing should be a bigger deal.
What would they do if he disappeared one day? Send in someone to quietly look for him, to make sure nothing made it to the news?
It wasn’t a reassuring thought. Fortunately for this “Agent Mulroney,” however, the Agency was sending him. He wasn’t egotistical enough to think that no one else could do what they were asking him to.
But he was certain that very few people could do it better than his crews.
Something in how Brad was walking when he returned to the bridge told his wife what was going on. She took one look at him and sighed.
“Lewin.” She gestured Oath of Vengeance’s new tactical officer, Narendra Lewin, over. The petite blonde officer didn’t look Pakistani, though Brad’s understanding was that she was only two generations out of that country on one side of her family.
“You have the watch,” Michelle ordered the other woman. “From the skipper’s look, I’d say I need to be briefed on that data packet.”
“Not a bad assumption,” Brad admitted. “My office, XO?”
“Sure.”
He’d barely left the room before she shuffled him back into it and closed the door. With a concerned gaze on her face, Michelle sat on his desk and studied him.
“I take it the Agency has some wrinkles to throw into our vacation on sunny Venus.”
“Just a few,” he agreed. “They think the pirates are tied up in a movement that’s been talking rebellion on the planet lately—and potentially being supplied by the Cadre.”
His wife sighed.
“That would fit their MO—and this whole ‘Independence Militia’ they’re using as a front.”
“Agreed. The Agency had an operative on the ground, but they’ve gone missing. We’re tasked to find them and to fulfill our contract by dealing with the pirates.”
“Because anything else would be easy,” Michelle replied.
“The Governing Council called for the best. The Agency, it seems, agrees with that assessment,” Brad told her. “We’ll have our work cut out for us, especially if there are Cadre-funded groups on the planet. The last thing I want is a mono-blade fight with Cadre commandos in a tunnel.”
“When do we get what we want?” she asked.
“Sometimes,” he said. “For example, you did marry me. I call that getting what I want and amazing luck.”
She snorted and kissed him.
“That’s going to be a mess, though,” she admitted. “Searching for a missing person on a strange planet without telling anyone just what we’re doing? While running a customs blockade, cargo escorts, and potentially a small war?”
“Our people can do it,” Brad told her, his own confidence rising as he said it. “We have some of the best damn troops and crews in the system. If anyone can do this, we can.
“We’ve fought the Cadre everywhere from Mars on out. I guess it’s time to fight the Cadre closer to the sun.”
“We can keep that optimistic outlook,” she agreed. “Or, of course, we could actually realistically assess our chances.”
“We really do have some of the best,” he said, his tone more serious. “I don’t actually expect us to get ambushed on the way to Venus, or even to face opposition at Venus that can seriously threaten the ships.
“It’s going to be the boarding teams and landing troops that are going to be at risk. We’re going to be meeting these pirates and smugglers on their own ground, and they’re going to be waiting for us.”
He shook his head.
“I’d love to assume we’ll just scare them off, but you’re right: realistic is good. Our people are retraining on boarding ops and customs as we speak. We won’t be ready for everything, you never are, but we’ll be ready for a lot of problems.”
“And this missing Agent?” Michelle asked.
“That, I think, will be our problem,” he concluded. “We let the rest of the company get on with going through the contract, and then you and I start quietly poking around and asking questions.”
“Fair enough,” she allowed. “May I make a suggestion, oh great and wise husband?”
In the absence of safe things to throw, he stuck his tongue out at her.
“You always do and you’re almost always right,” he said. “What is it?”
“Let’s bring Saburo in. There’s nobody on this ship with more of a weasel brain.”
“See, I told you you were brilliant,” he replied. “That was exactly what I was thinking for our next step.”
Chapter Seven
Brad Madrid was a child of merchant shippers and the asteroid belt. His life experience was almost entirely the corridors of spaceships and space stations, broken occasionally by tunnels drilled into asteroids by miners. The domes of Ceres had been the highlight of his childhood and teen years, even if he now knew them to be a poor second-rate version of Mars or Ganymede’s domes.
Venus, though, was entirely outside his experience. The shuttle carrying him down from Oath of Vengeance cut through clouds of yellow like he’d never seen before, but it was the aerostat cities themselves that caught his eye.
New Venice was a disk almost a dozen kilometers across. An immense lightweight crystalline dome rose above the disk, containing the air that balanced the pressure of the atmosphere outside. For all of its size, Brad’s experienced eye could tell that New Venice was extremely lightly built.
It was, quite literally, lighter than the air beneath it. The city hung suspended in the atmosphere of a planet politely described as a steaming mess—and impolitely as a literal hell. Careful design balanced the weight of the city against the air around it, holding the city well above the levels of the atmosphere with crushing pressure.
Venus’s air was still toxic up there, but technology could handle that. The heaviest part of the floating city was probably the massive air refineries loosely attached to the west side of the city—and Brad’s practiced eye picked out the gravity generators that offset that mass and allowed massive balloons to hold the refineries aloft.
“That’s damned impressive,” he murmured.
“New Venice is the biggest, but what’s truly impressive is that there’s over four hundred of these cities,” Saburo told him. “I did some research. This isn’t our backwater colonies at the ass end of beyond, boss.
“This is where people set up their
fancy luxury condo cities to get away from Earth. The miners and regular people came later. That’s why the government is such a mess.”
“So, it’s not so much city-states as overgrown condo boards,” Brad suggested. There were a lot of condominium-style organizations aboard space stations, and he’d rarely had good experiences with them.
“Probably. With the metaphorical backstabbing possibly gone literal,” his friend said. “Can I argue the point around guns again?”
“We don’t break local law,” Brad told the Colonel. “They ban guns, we don’t carry guns. They don’t even mention mono-blades, we carry mono-blades.”
The cylinder hanging at his belt held roughly one hundred and twenty centimeters of coiled monofilament wire. The wire had been manufactured by nanites under the control of specialized smiths using neural interfaces and had a carefully designed lattice of crystals that would straighten when charged with electrical energy.
The resulting blade repelled other blades and could cut almost anything but could also retract into a fifteen-centimeter cylinder.
Saburo snorted.
“And how many concealed weapons are you carrying, boss?”
Brad counted in his head.
“Five,” he admitted. “I won’t ask how many you’ve got. You taught me that habit, after all.”
The landing pad was next to an honest-to-goodness park, easily a hundred meters on a side and filled with trees. Carefully positioned blast shields protected the greenery, but the exit also led directly into the park.
An older man with dark blue eyeshadow and a shaved head was waiting for them. Two bodyguards, both attractive young women in low-profile body armor, hung back slightly watching him.
They, of course, had guns. The man with the eyeshadow didn’t, but he did have a disarming smile and extended grip.
“Commodore Madrid, welcome to New Venice,” he said brightly. “I’m Councilor James Fisk. I’ll be your contact with the Governing Council here while this contract is ongoing.
“You’re earlier than expected.”
“It sounded like the sooner we were on the scene, well, the fewer people were going to be in danger,” Brad admitted. “It’s a pleasure, Councilor Fisk. Do you have an intelligence update for me? We’ve been watching the news and so forth while we flew over here, but I’m assuming you know more than is in the public eye.”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Fisk admitted. “We’ll have a data update sent to your ships, but I have a few people you need to meet before we get too tied down with business.”
Politics. Brad’s favorite.
“Of course, Councilor,” he allowed. “Perhaps you can give me the basics on the way?”
“I think we can do that,” Fisk told him. “Lacy, Tracy, can you get Stacy to bring the car around?”
There was no way that list of names was an accident. Someone had…interesting hiring criteria.
“Yes, boss.”
The second large car that Brad had seen that month rolled up to the curb a few moments later.
“Your Colonel is welcome, of course,” Fisk told them. “The car is secured against most methods of spying; we should be safe to speak in private.”
Brad nodded his acknowledgement and followed the Councilor into the vehicle. With the two mercenaries, the politician, and the two bodyguards, it was a cramped but still surprisingly comfortable fit.
“The situation is shit,” Fisk said bluntly as the doors closed. “The losses have accelerated since we hired you, and we’re reasonably sure someone is rushing cargo off-world. My colleagues on the Governing Council don’t believe the rumors and threats of rebellion we’re hearing, but I have to wonder.”
“Who would someone even rebel against here?” Brad asked. “My understanding was that most of the cities were independent.”
“That would be…part of the problem,” Fisk said slowly. “You have to understand, Commodore Madrid, that Venus’s society is a very careful balancing act between the original colonists, who came here to get away from everything, and the later additions of mining and skydiving work.
“That industrial class and those industrial platforms continue to provide a large portion of the planet’s wealth, but the residents don’t like being reminded of it or dealing with it. They just want the money to keep flowing and the workers to know their place.”
“That doesn’t sound like a situation that’s sustainable long-run,” Saburo said calmly. “History says that balance will break.”
“I agree,” Fisk confirmed. “My colleagues on the Council have more…nuanced opinions. The status quo has worked for Venus for almost a century. New Venice was a playground for the wealthy when it was built, and it remains that on the backs of a working class that, while well compensated, compares themselves to the ultra-rich around them.
“Reform is a slow process—a working process, but there are always those in a situation like this who will not wait and will attempt to take what they are owed by the sword.”
“I was not hired to put down a rebellion,” Brad pointed out. “And frankly, I’m not sure you can pay me enough.”
“Good. Because the Council may try and twist your contract to that,” Fisk warned him. “This is New Venice, Commodore Madrid, and the word Byzantine doesn’t do our politics justice. Trust no one.”
“What about you?” Saburo asked dryly.
“Don’t trust me, either,” Fisk said with a chuckle. “I have my own agendas, Commodore. Fortunately for you, right now I just want you to do your job, get paid, and go home.
“I suspect that aligns quite well with your own objectives.”
Brad might not have known his way around New Venice in the slightest, but his wrist-comp had happily downloaded a map of the city and was tracking his location. He knew they were roughly halfway to the New Venetian House of State when the vehicle suddenly pulled to a sharp halt.
“What is it, Stacy?” Fisk asked.
“Flash alert from the NVPD,” the woman driving reported. “They got an alert of a planned attack on the Commodore. They’re advising we change routes and rendezvous with an escort.”
“I see I’m already making friends,” Brad murmured. “I haven’t even got to work yet.”
“Give our people time; I’m sure you’ll grow on them,” Fisk replied. “All right, Stacy. Does the NVPD have a location on that escort?”
“We’re to meet a dome cruiser at Sixty-third and Fiftieth,” she told him. “They’ve given us a recommended route.”
“We’ll meet the car, but let’s take an alternative route, if you’d be so kind,” the Councilor ordered. “Not that I don’t trust the NVPD—but I don’t trust our com security.”
“On it,” the woman replied. “And could you please put on a vest, boss? This is already going off-script, and I’m not explaining you getting shot to your partner.”
Fisk shook his head, but he pulled open a side panel of the car and extracted an armored vest. He looked over at Brad and Saburo measuringly.
“I’ve got spares, but I’m not sure they’ll fit either of you,” he admitted.
“Councilor, if I’d left my ship without wearing higher-quality body armor than that vest, Saburo would hurt me,” Brad told Fisk. “And my wife would help.”
There was nothing wrong with the ballistic vest that the Councilor was putting on; it was a quality piece of police-issue gear. The skintight bodysuit he wore under his uniform was somewhere around twenty-five times the price, custom-fitted, and rated for heavy rounds at a range of one hundred meters.
He wouldn’t walk away from being shot with a sniper round even at that distance, but it wouldn’t pierce the armor. The suit’s main purpose was to shed the low-penetration shotgun rounds favored for fighting aboard ships, and it could do that reliably at point-blank range.
“I’m not a soldier, I guess,” Fisk said.
“No, that’s what you’re paying us for,” Brad agreed. “Saburo?”
“Pulling the map right now,”
his friend replied. “Linked into the shuttle’s systems, I’ve located the dome cruiser. Cute piece of hardware, that.”
“Oh?”
“Gravity wheels on the top; it moves around the dome above the city. Light armament and quick-rappel system. Nothing major, but effective for the environment.”
“Thank you,” Fisk said.
“Of course, I can see four ways to evade one and six to take it out in under ten seconds,” Saburo continued. “And that’s without breaking out heavy gear, because nobody wants to pop the dome on this place.”
Fisk’s bodyguards both winced in unison, and Brad finally noticed what they were doing. The sidearms they were carrying had been pulled out, and a series of parts were being extracted from panels inside the car. The light pistols had rapidly transformed into lightweight but effective-looking carbines.
“What are you thinking, Saburo?” Brad asked.
“There’s only three routes between where we were and where the dome cruiser is supposed to meet us. The cops flagged one, but if I was planning this, I’d assume Fisk was paranoid enough to avoid that one—and send my goons to the other two.”
Fisk and Brad shared a long look, and then the politician leaned forward.
“Stop the car, Stacy!” he barked. “I’m being played for a damn fool. Stop the car!”
The vehicle careened to a halt on the side of the road, just out of the traffic. Brad began to breathe a sigh of relief—only for it to be interrupted by the road they had been about to drive over erupting in a burst of plastic and metal as the embedded explosives went off.
“That was almost very bad,” the Commodore said slowly. “I suggest we get out of the vehicle and wait for backup. I doubt this was a one-string operation.”
Chapter Eight
Fisk’s three bodyguards were out of the vehicle in moments, external panels on the car folding out to provide some impromptu, presumably-bulletproof cover.
“I have contact with the NVPD,” the shortest of the three—Lacy, Brad thought—reported. “The dome cruiser is redirecting towards us. Several ground and dome units are being pulled off-task and sent our way as well. They say to keep our heads down.”