Black Holiday (The Black Chronicles Book 2)

by J. M. Anjewierden

  “Rescuing any hostages is the primary objective. If they can take the terrorists alive they will, but that is secondary. Resistance will be dealt with… expediently.” Lady Novan smiled at that last word, a predatory smile that reminded Gertrude that, for all her genteelness and propriety while in society, Lady Novan was first and foremost a warrior.

  “Do you wish you were there with them?”

  Lady Novan cocked her head, considering Gertrude’s question.

  “It is for the best I am not.”

  “Because you’re their ultimate target?”

  Lady Novan shook her head.

  “I haven’t worked with a strike team in far too long, years. It takes more to do that,” she gestured to the images of the various SWAT teams, the feeds now nearly incomprehensible as they ran into the smoky holes their explosives had opened, “than just being skilled. You have to know your team, how they think and react.”

  There was still enough smoke that Gertrude couldn’t make out many details, but now it was also being lit up by the flashes of gunfire. One of the officers with a camera suddenly fell backwards, the camera only showing the ugly metal roof of the terrorist’s hideout for long seconds until they started lurching to their feet, covered by their fellows.

  “Besides,” Lady Novan continued, turning from Gertrude to watch the feeds herself, “Even when I was regularly training with my men I wasn’t a door kicker. That’s a job for a young warrior, the Lieutenants and Captains. My specialty was in rather larger scale actions.”

  “But you still want to be out there, don’t you?”

  Lady Novan sighed.

  “Yes. It isn’t rational, it isn’t reasonable, but I do wish I was with the officers. The terrorists made this personal not only by taking Morgan, but by attacking me directly in the first place. This is about the Battle of Brighton Bay, not anything I’m doing now. As far as they would know I’m just a retired military officer and a rather low ranking noble.” Lady Novan trailed off.

  “But aren’t they after all the nobles? Isn’t you being a baroness enough to make you a target?”

  Lady Novan shook her head again.

  “That isn’t how they operate, or at least it wasn’t. It is a bit hard to explain to an outsider, and forgive me, Gertrude, but despite your husband’s service on Albion you never really spent enough time here to understand the oddities of our planet. The revolutionaries always tried to present themselves as legitimate, at least in public. Half of their recruitment depended on being a truly democratic movement, of the people.”

  “But Albion does have democracy. The house of commons…”

  Lady Novan nodded.

  “You’re right, of course. But what is right and what is perceived as right are not always the same thing. The unscrupulous or deluded can often manipulate that for their own ends. The truth is that the people, as a whole, have much more political power than the whole of the lords put together, and the lords are more stewards than rulers.” Lady Novan paused to look more intently at a single camera feed, from one of the teams that had attacked a safe house dug into the ground, if Gertrude recalled correctly. They had come to a large windowless door with a lock on the outside, something that very easily could be a prison cell.

  They watched as one of the policemen brought up a cutting torch, burning through the hinges.

  “No more explosives?”

  “The shaped charges are excellent for an initial entry, but are too dangerous to use in more enclosed spaces, especially as the likelihood of finding hostages goes up. As I said, safety of any hostages is paramount.”

  “Good,” Gertrude said simply, though the reminder did not do much to ease the knot of worry in her gut.

  Without the audio it seemed like the policeman just arbitrarily stopped cutting, but then the leader turned to face down the hallway and Gertrude could see the terrorists opening fire on the police with rather large rifles.

  Several of the terrorists went down as the police returned fire, and then one of the police in turn fell.

  It is so… clinical, Gertrude thought, nauseated at the thought that she was watching men and women be hurt and probably dying. From here it seems no different than a particularly realistic bit of entertainment.

  Lady Novan must have noticed Gertrude’s expression, because she spoke.

  “It is distressingly easy for the people here to become detached from the reality of violence.” She swept her arm around the men and women seated at the various consoles and communications centers in the room, plus a couple men and a woman standing towards the back with enough ribbons and stars on their uniforms that they were probably chiefs of police departments. “Violence, or the threat thereof, is necessary, in one form or another, but under most circumstances it should not be the first option.”

  “We didn’t offer them a chance to surrender today, did we?”

  “No, we did not,” Lady Novan said, unflinching. “Remember though, they started the violence, and I don’t just mean their attack on me. Furthermore, the lives of the hostage – Morgan’s life – are more important than theirs. If we let this turn into a standoff they could very easily use her as a hostage all over again, and that is an unacceptable risk.”

  “Then why not try infiltrating, get Morgan out before trying to arrest them?”

  “Sometimes that is the best answer, if they know where exactly the hostages are, along with some other concerns. We just don’t have enough intel to take that risk, not only with Morgan’s safety, but the safety of whoever would be tasked with the actual infiltration.”

  Abruptly one of the camera feeds cut out in a blinding flash, replaced by a black void.

  One of the technicians held a hand up to his headset, listening more intently for a moment, before he tapped a few buttons and called out in a loud clear voice.

  “We have confirmation. Penetrator rounds are in play.”

  More than a few of the men and women in the room swore.

  The man with the most ribbons on his fancy uniform brought up his uplink, presumably tying into the communication network for all of the scattered teams.

  “Penetrator rounds confirmed. Normal Rules of Engagement are suspended,” he said in a very gruff and world-weary voice. “Be cautious, but remember, this is still a rescue mission.”

  “Aren’t they wearing armor, though?” Gertrude asked. She wanted ask what dropping the ‘rules of engagement’ meant specifically, but she was not entirely sure she wanted to know the answer. She’d heard enough about the rules of war from Naru, before his passing, that she imagined it was nothing good.

  “Of course they are. Slightly modified versions of the mark-twenty combat and exploration suit the Marines use. The triple-x’s are one of the best armor systems in the known galaxy.”

  “Then why change the rules because of some special ammunition?”

  “Do you remember what penetrator rounds do?”

  Gertrude shook her head. She owned a gun, and practiced with it as often as she could, but she wasn’t anywhere near as knowledgeable about them as Morgan was, let alone a military officer like Lady Novan.

  “When a p-round strikes a surface they explode, forcing the hardened tip of the projectile forward with enough force to pierce just about anything, even something as tough as the triple-x. Not always, or even reliably, but often enough that they are very dangerous. And against unarmored targets…” Lady Novan said, trailing off with a shake of her head.

  “Throwing around explosive bullets seems like a very good way to get Morgan killed,” Gertrude said.

  “Leaving her with terrorists is as well,” Lady Novan whispered by way of reply. She then added in a louder whisper, “But the point is moot, it looks like most of the operations are wrapping up. They’ve subdued or dealt with any resistance. Now we just need to wait while they finish their sweep, and for any prisoners to be brought here.”

  “Brought for what?”

  “Interrogation.”

  Gertrude shivered.
She couldn’t say why exactly, she hadn’t varied her tone or volume that Gertrude had noticed, but the way Lady Novan had said the word chilled her to the bone.

  “I don’t think I need to stay here for that.”

  “No, of course not. If they find Morgan, I’ll want you – and for that matter you’ll want – to go to whatever hospital they take her to. If they don’t however, I would ask you to stay. Your presence will be useful.”

  “You assume Morgan will need to go to the hospital?” Gertrude asked, not really wanting to know why her presence would be useful.

  “Not necessarily,” Lady Novan assured Gertrude. “But whatever condition they find her in, they will want to do a full battery of tests, just to be on the safe side. The tests are needful, but not really pleasant.”

  “So, you’re staying here so you don’t have to be the one to convince Morgan to play nice with the doctors?”

  Lady Novan pressed her lips together. To an outsider it would probably be interpreted as annoyance, but Gertrude could tell she was really trying not to laugh.

  “Of course not. These terrorists were specifically targeting me. I have a rather powerful incentive to oversee the attempts to find out what further plans they may have had to do me harm.”

  Gertrude just rolled her eyes.

  Morgan had no love for hospitals. Given that they had literally been forced to break Morgan out of the last one she had stayed in, it was not surprising at all. That of course had only exasperated her previous distrust for anyone in authority, especially governmental.

  Gertrude sighed.

  “Do you think if I hide her clothes she’ll stay in bed and be good?”

  Lady Novan didn’t respond, but neither did she stop pressing her lips together.

  “Yeah, I didn’t think so. I think I’ll bring Haruhi with me, have her sit with Morgan. She’ll latch onto her so tight Morgan won’t be able to breathe, let alone slip away.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Ironically, one of the biggest groups to engage in this romanticizing of criminals is by the criminals themselves. They tell themselves they have no choice, or that they have a code they live by, that just happens to be different from the norm. Don’t be fooled, these criminals can be just as dangerous as the less delusional career criminals. Humans are all too often rationalizing rather than rational. A criminal with a code will still do what he wants, and then afterwards rationalize why he was right to do so. Still, these types of criminals can sometimes be persuaded to ‘do the right thing,’ either by themselves or by others.

  - Dr. Susan Baptist, Head Profiler for Landing, planet Calvin

  MORGAN WAS somewhat surprised when she woke up. Actually, that wasn’t true. She was astounded. Stupefied. Maybe even flabbergasted.

  I woke up, was her first thought. Incoherent, blinding pain was her second thought, such as it was.

  The surprise was because of several things, really, but the biggest was that she had woken up at all. The pain when the man had struck had been worse than almost any she’d experienced in her admittedly short life. Short or not, however, she had experienced more than her share of pain. It was hard to be sure, years later, but she thought it about equivalent to the compound fracture she’d suffered when the muggers who had been bothering Gertrude caught up to Morgan the following day.

  That injury had nearly killed her. She’d almost bled to death before help had arrived. Given that head injuries were, as a rule, more dangerous than injuries to limbs…

  Years of working underground had given Morgan a very good spatial sense, something only reinforced from working on freighters in space. She hadn’t dared open her eyes yet, but she was almost certain she wasn’t in the makeshift closet prison, because it did not feel like she was lying on a mattress on the floor.

  Morgan reached up to rub her head, maybe soothe the pounding headache a bit, and to assess the damage, but her arm stopped just a few inches off the bed with a metal clink.

  Handcuffs, Morgan thought. How she wished she didn’t recognize what those felt like.

  She tried raising her other hand, to the same result.

  Well blast it. I’m not going to be able to pick the lock if they’re both shackled.

  Morgan tested the give on the handcuffs, and no, she couldn’t reach one hand with the other.

  The pain hadn’t really subsided in the least, but Morgan needed to know where she was, what was going on.

  Opening her eyes felt like someone was stabbing picks into her eyes, but Morgan persisted, blinking back the tears with only limited success.

  Everything was white.

  No, everything just looked white, at first.

  She was in a small room, mostly empty. There was the bed she was handcuffed to, looking like something out of a hospital, wheels and metal rails on the sides, a small table with a couple gadgets she couldn’t place, a pole holding the tubing and bags that were connected to her left arm, a small cot opposite her bed, and a chair, backed up against the solid looking door.

  Sitting in the chair was Lanky.

  “Good, you woke up. The doctor wasn’t sure you would.”

  Morgan tried to speak, it came out more as a groan.

  She tried again, with little better success.

  “I imagine you have questions, but you’d better just be quiet for a bit. Ja…” Lanky paused, shaking his head. “Sorry, no names. I need to remember that. It’s for your protection too.”

  Morgan still couldn’t speak, so she settled for a grunt of disbelief.

  “Yeah, I don’t suppose you’d believe that, just now.

  There was something different about Lanky, Morgan realized. She wasn’t sure how, or why, but he didn’t seem quite so… awkward. He was more sure of himself, or, perhaps, just more sure of what he was doing.

  “Anyway, the man that hit you wasn’t actually trying to hurt you.”

  Morgan grunted again, gesturing at her head with her hands as well as she could.

  “Sorry, let me be precise. He didn’t mean to seriously hurt you. He wanted to knock you out, make you easier to get back to the room and tie up. He had no idea how serious head wounds are. He’s seen far too many stupid action holos.” Lanky cleared his throat, looking away for a moment. “We aren’t really in a position to accept just smart people into our ranks. We take what we can get.”

  And that makes it better? I was almost killed, by accident?

  “Luckily not all of our people are incompetent. We were able to get a doctor here from one of the other cells and he patched you up as well as he could.”

  “As… well?” Morgan managed to stutter out. It felt like she was still waking up, that her body wasn’t sure what to do with itself yet.

  “I won’t lie to you, you would have gotten better treatment in a real hospital. But now that you’re finally awake you should recover just fine.”

  The way he said it finally made Morgan suspicious. As if thinking about it was her body’s cue to notice, Morgan realized that she felt really gross. Like how she felt after an entire double shift crawling around the guts of a freighter.

  “How... long?” she said, her voice already stronger, clearer.

  “Four days, give or take a few hours,” Lanky answered immediately. “We had to set up a feeding tube, or you’d likely have died of dehydration by now.”

  Morgan ran her finger down the tubes connected to her left arm. She then glanced down at her body, realizing that she was wearing some kind of thin robe, and the tubes in her arm weren’t the only ones.

  “I’d suggest you not mess with the tubes,” Lanky said quickly, following her gaze, “You’re likely to hurt yourself trying.”

  “I want them out,” Morgan demanded.

  “I’m sure you do. Once you’re feeling a bit better we’ll get them off. Right now, though, we don’t want you moving about too much. You’ve already tried to escape once.”

  “Can you blame me?” Morgan asked.

  “No,” Lanky said, frowning slightly. “
I don’t blame you at all. That doesn’t mean I can let you try again.”

  “You should just let me go. I’m not part of… whatever it is you’re trying to do.”

  “We plan on doing just that,” Lanky said, standing up from his chair to stretch a bit. “But not until it is safe for us to do so.”

  “I have a job. What if I lose it because you lot have kidnapped me?”

  The words were out of Morgan’s mouth before she realized what it was she was saying. She could feel the blood drain from her face, but the damage was already done.

  “I thought…” Lanky said, sinking back down onto his chair, “I thought you were here to look for a job?”

  “That’s right,” Morgan said, the words spilling out far quicker than she had intended. “But freighters operate on a set schedule. If you keep me here too long the ships I want will have left the system, and they won’t be back for months, sometimes longer.”

  “Yeah? What ships? With which company?” Lanky asked, forcefully.

  Morgan didn’t answer. She couldn’t.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  Lanky stood up, quickly, knocking the back of the chair against the door.

  He stepped closer to Morgan, who flinched back from him, not that she could go very far on the small bed, even if her hands hadn’t been handcuffed to it.

  Seeing her reaction, Lanky drew back.

  “You think I’d hurt you?” he asked, sounding actually hurt by the realization.

  “Why wouldn’t I?” Morgan answered, as she scooted the rest of the way to the side of the bed farthest from him. “My first experience with all of you was getting shot at, grabbed, threatened with an injection of something I assume was lethal, and then kidnapped. After that, I heard some woman say, practically to my face, that you should just kill me. And that doesn’t even include getting my skull broken open.”

  Lanky closed his eyes, sighing.

  “I give you my word. I will not hurt you.”

  Morgan almost asked him why she should believe that, but his tone stopped her. He actually meant it.

  “And the rest of your friends?”