by K. C. Sivils
The Sergeant shook his head. For all of her strengths, the Colonel simply was not capable of planning an operation like this one. Securing information from humans was her gift. If she survived the next few months, he would make sure he did all the planning in the future. He loved his Sandra, but the cause came first.
If he could protect his Sandra, no, he smiled for a second, his Molly, from herself, they might have a future together. But Molly had to be faithful. To him and most of all to the cause.
He watched the mercenary Captain approach. The man had done a good job. The glitches had not been the fault of the mercenaries, but of the Colonel’s sloppy planning. He had the authority to pay a significant bonus.
Dead mercenaries don't get paid. Poor planning by the employer made mercenaries unhappy, understandably so. The loss of a single man did not bother the Sergeant. He also knew, in time, the mercenaries would close ranks and move on. Death was an occupational hazard.
Employers who planned poorly, on the other hand, were to be avoided as often as possible. The mercenaries had probably already complained to their leader about their current contract. The bonus would be large.
“Sir, my men are in place. The first containers are due to be lifted by barge in about an hour.”
“Excellent,” the Sergeant replied, allowing a hint of cheerfulness to creep into his voice. “If you check your account, you will notice an additional payment has been made. You will receive final payment as soon as the last freighter leaves the space station.”
The Captain didn’t say a word; he just turned to return from where he’d come.
“Captain.”
The mercenary stopped and glanced back at the man he distrusted.
“If I were you, I would be very hesitant to contract with our employer again. Trust me when I say the planning for this contract could have been better. I think we can both agree on that much.”
The mercenary still didn’t speak.
“I have been authorized to award a significant bonus in light of your performance under the circumstances.”
“How significant?”
"Each enlisted man will receive a twenty-five percent bonus. Your Sergeant a thirty-five percent bonus and you sir will receive a fifty percent bonus. I hope this will make up for any difficulty you experienced that you felt was due to poor planning on our employer's part."
He watched the mercenary think for a moment.
"Losing a man is tough. Buck was a good soldier. Include a bonus for him. His wife will need it. The life insurance is never enough. As to working for your employer again, I don't know. Something just smells wrong about this job. All I can say is if you need our services again, we'll talk. Beyond that, I won't promise anything."
The Sergeant nodded in understanding. “I will see to it your request is honored.”
He watched the mercenary vanish among the containers. The Sergeant recognized a professional when he saw one. It was a shame the politicians in the Alliance didn’t respect the men and women who served.
The cause he now served would punish them for that lack of respect.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
A knock on the door woke me up. I’d fallen asleep going through the files on every clone produced at the facility. Josephson was furiously working on organizing the overwhelming amount of evidence he’d collected since the raid had ended. Sarah was still asleep.
“Enter.”
The door opened, and Bones peered inside.
“Did you really have to call me in for this?”
“Who else was I going to call?”
“I figured as much,” he groused. “Where are the bodies?”
I didn’t really want to go back to that place, but somebody had to show him where the work was.
“We won’t be able to remove the bodies,” I told him. “All of the remains will be cremated and disposed of here.”
I shot him a look to let Bones know not to complain. He’d understand soon enough.
We finally arrived at the lab. The two Marine guards nodded and let us through. Bones took one look at the carnage and stepped back outside the lab. A few minutes later he returned, his face pale.
“I know those are clones,” he whispered. “But to butcher someone like that, I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
Bones walked over to the nearest body, applying gloves as he did so. He started a cursory examination that lasted all of two seconds before he was glaring at me.
“They’re still alive!”
I shrugged. “I didn’t know what to do.”
To my surprise, Bones stepped away from the vivisected corpse and bowed his head. I could hear him praying. I hadn’t figured Bones for a religious man.
“Forgive me, God," he whispered. Bones went down the row of steel examining tables and pulled the plug for the life support machines. The monitors of each victim immediately flat lined, indicating the remains were no longer alive.
“I don’t know what to do with this either,” he said looking at me with a weariness that seemed to age him ten years.
"Let me give you this before you go," he said suddenly. Reaching into his pocket, he produced a drive. "Official autopsy of the SP. Unique sized kinesthetic projectile did the job, a .42 cal.” He looked at me and then glanced to see if the two Marines had heard him.
“That’s a unique caliber,” I whispered.
He nodded. “Army Special Forces or Military Intelligence. My guess is we have a trained assassin wandering around on our planet.”
I left to find Kilgore. This case just kept getting worse and worse.
---
Markeson was less than happy with the reception he received at the base entrance. Having never served in the military, he had no idea of just how impossible what he wanted was.
“Sir, I readily acknowledge your status as a civilian. If this base were not military, you would have already been admitted."
He frowned at the SP.
“Why again is it you won’t admit me?”
“The base is on lockdown.”
“Why is it on lockdown?”
“I don’t know sir.”
“Why don’t you know?”
“I don’t need to know. If my superiors wanted to me to know, they would have told me. They didn’t, so I don’t need to know.”
“Is this normal?” Markeson barked at the SP in frustration.
“Sir, with all due respect,” the SP answered politely. “It’s obvious you’ve never served in any branch of the military.”
“What makes you so sure,” the detective snapped back.
“If the military, any branch of it sir, wants an enlisted man to have an opinion, they issue it to him.”
Markeson had to laugh at the beleaguered SP’s remark.
"Can you at least send a message to my Inspector? He's on the base, conducting an investigation of a dead SP, one of yours," Markeson added for emphasis.
Without speaking the SP nodded at the other guard to keep an eye on Markeson. Stepping into the guard booth, the SP contacted Major Kilgore. A few moments later the SP reappeared.
“Major Kilgore has granted clearance.”
“Finally,” Markeson grumbled. “Let me in.”
“That’s not possible, sir.”
“You just said I was granted clearance!”
"Yes, sir."
“Then let me in!”
“You’ll have to wait for an armed escort sir.”
Markeson glared at the SP and then the other standing duty.
“I’m not going to get in until Kilgore is good and ready, am I?”
“No, sir.”
A sudden gust of freezing wind hit the detective square in his face, blowing his perfectly groomed hair about. The two SPs were standing at ease again, staring off into space. The conversation was over.
He would have to wait in the bitter, freezing cold until Sullivan was good and ready for him to enter the base.
---
Two hours
had passed since Markeson had shown up. The SPs on sentry duty had been rotated twice because of the cold. I decided I’d had my fun. I told Kilgore to have him escorted in. He was my boss.
I waited outside the underground entrance to the research facility. There was no hiding what we had found from him. To be honest, this was a mess that could spill over and bring down a lot of very influential people in the Alliance, not to mention, start a war. Markeson might be a weasel, but he was a smart weasel, and this was right up his alley.
Why not drop the mess in his lap?
When Markeson rounded the corner, I had to laugh. I'd never seen him with a less than perfect appearance. His hair looked like it had been through a storm of static electricity, each strand was standing straight out from his scalp. A crusted layer of snow and ice covered his expensive designer coat. His nose was bright red from the cold.
It had been a long day, and I didn't feel like listening to his guff, so I just entered the facility. I figured he would follow.
“Sullivan,” he bellowed. “You have some explaining to do! I didn’t authorize a raid on this base!”
He kept it up in that vein until we entered the butcher shop. That shut him up.
“Major Kilgore ordered the raid. I was invited because of the investigation of the SP and the fact his men needed help with the forensics. This is your problem now, Captain.”
“My problem,” he stammered.
"Yes, sir. Because you see sir, the dead SP was a clone. What we have uncovered is an illegal cloning operation. One that was run for profit I might add. Jurisdiction is ours because the initial murder took place off base. That and I doubt the military will be allowed to investigate its own illegal cloning operation."
I’d never seen the smug, arrogant, self-righteous narcissist be at a loss for words before.
I'll give him one thing. He thinks quick on his feet.
“We have to keep a lid on this. Word of this gets out, war could break out. You’ve seen the bodies. What were they thinking? Running a chop shop for human organs. That’s got to be at least a dozen laws they violated per body. I see you brought Bones in, good thinking. Where are you on this?”
“Josephson has documented a lot of the crime scene digitally and is organizing the material now. He’s pulled as many of the hard drives as he can. Our Forensic IT people will have to go through those.”
“Any arrests? Please tell me you’ve made arrests.”
The base commander is dead. Assassinated in the interrogation room in the brig by a clone who then committed suicide.
“So nobody convenient we can pin this on?”
“I’m afraid not, Captain. That’s why you get paid the big credits. I’m just an Inspector.”
"My hair's a mess. I can't think," Markeson announced to nobody in particular. "Any idea on who the initial shooter was? With the dead SP that is?”
“No, sir, but we do have evidence indicating it was a hit carried about by Army Special Forces.”
"Oh, great. We're on an Army base. Like that is going to help any."
Markeson went and sat down on a box. He pulled a comb out and took nearly ten minutes repairing his hair. It was interesting to watch the man’s CPU run at maximum while he tried to piece how he was going to get out of this one.
Josephson made an appearance and handed me a message.
"From forensics back at the precinct. It would appear the Boss Man wasn't really the boss. He was just a district manager so to speak. Our forensic accountants tracked the money to an off-planet account, and then it disappears."
At the mention of the dead Boss Man, Markeson came to life.
“Who is this dead Boss Mann?”
“Different case, Captain.”
Markeson’s expression had changed from panic to anger. Something wasn’t right.
“But, it has a link to our situation here.”
“How so?”
“This Boss Man used to be your old partner, a Detective Vitter.”
I had to give Markeson credit. After his initial lapse in control, he did a good job with the news.
“Vitter. That’s a shame. You probably know he did some time.”
“Yeah, and his hired muscle was a clone.”
“A clone! Like what’s back there,” he said, pointing back at the secure portion of the facility.
“Before she was killed, General Savier informed us they would cut loose a clone or two into the general civilian population to see how they assimilated. This one went bad evidently.”
“Please tell me you have this General Savier’s interview recorded,” he moaned.
“Yes sir, along with the clone executing her. The General didn’t even look surprised when the clone came in and aimed at her.”
Markeson sat back down on his box and entered his own mental world. He looked up after a bit and waved Josephson and me over.
“I read the report on the train robbery. You think the cargo came from here?”
“It’s obvious now, but yes. General Savier was less than happy about the fact,” I informed him.
“It’s a different case that I’m working on,” Markeson told us, “but I think I know where whatever was taken is, or at least where it will be.
“Sir?”
“Smugglers. It would appear some of Devereaux’s old crew is still trying to make a few credits on the side. We need to go.”
I was suspicious. We had too much work to do still here at the base.
“Sir, we need to finish processing this crime scene,” I insisted.
"No, we need to catch the people who are smuggling clones off this planet. We catch them in the act, we have leverage, and we can pull in the big wigs!"
Markeson was right. It made no sense to shut down one chop shop just for the others to stay in business. General Savier had alluded to the fact this was just one research facility.
“Major Kilgore,” I asked, turning to my old C.O. “Can you keep this place locked down for another forty-eight hours?”
He frowned. For a base this size, communication was a constant, on going process. To simply black out for any duration of time would arouse suspicion, especially if those trying to communicate were the individuals responsible for the cloning operation.
“I will do my best. That’s all I can promise.”
Markeson looked at Major Kilgore in an odd manner. I should have recognized what he was thinking, but I didn’t.
One more thing to feel guilty about.
"Major Kilgore, do you have anyone you could leave in charge, run things via a secure comm? These people might have some military personnel with them. It would be helpful to have you and a couple of SPs in tow.”
He frowned at Markeson.
“Just where are you going?”
"The space station. If I'm right, they've lifted the cargo up, and the smugglers will be loading any time. We need to go now," he insisted.
Kilgore just nodded yes and left to issue orders.
I rounded Josephson and Sarah up. If Markeson was right, we didn’t have a lot of time.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The shuttle approached the docking ring of the passenger terminal. To the Sergeant, it traveled at what seemed to be the slowest possible velocity any shuttle could maneuver at and maintain control. Finally, it docked, and the automatic airlock sequence started, securing the shuttle to the terminal and filling the vacuum in the lock with breathable atmosphere.
His patience wearing thinner by the minute, the Sergeant checked his chronometer while tapping the toe of his expensive, handmade, leather shoe on the steel deck of the waiting area.
After what seemed to him to have been several hours, but was less than two minutes, the first of the shuttle’s passengers disembarked. The seventh was Molly, his beloved Colonel. She flashed a dazzling smile upon spotting the Sergeant and strolled toward him.
He smiled his best smile in return and offered his arm. The Colonel gracefully took his arm, and the pair sauntered toward the st
ation’s best restaurant.
“Have my bags arrived?” the Colonel purred.
“Yes, Molly. They have been checked aboard the St. Gabriel. You will be traveling in a first class cabin the first leg of your journey. The steward will provide you with the rest of your travel arrangements once the St. Gabriel is underway.”
“You’ve thought of everything. What will I do without you?”
“Try to stay out of trouble I would hope,” the Sergeant replied, his tone unpleasant and openly threatening.
"Excuse me?" The Colonel stopped and pulled her arm away. Her left eyebrow arched in anger. She glared at the man she viewed as beneath her.
“Do not make a scene,” the Sergeant replied, smiling like nothing was wrong, He took the Colonel’s arm and guided her toward the restaurant again. “I understand Anderson’s is not bad for a back planet facility like this one. We might as well be on one of the Rim Worlds.”
"How dare you threaten me," the Colonel whispered through clenched teeth.
“How dare you ignore me Molly. Your failures as an operational planner have not gone unnoticed. Those in the Society who are interested in these matters are well aware of your, how shall I put it, shortcomings, Molly."
“What are you talking about,” the red head asked, stopping suddenly, a confused expression darkening her refined features.
"Things did not go smoothly in the acquisition of the cargo. As you are well aware, I was forced to terminate an SP off base. Forced because you let the SP follow you to the rail siding. Not to mention, that Inspector Sullivan nearly killed me while I was attempting to finish cleaning the crime scene and uncover just how badly you'd compromised the mission.”
The maître de of Anderson’s approached with a smile as the Colonel stood in silence. She stared at the Sergeant as if he were a complete stranger.
“A table for two? Would you prefer the bar?”
“We have time to dine,” the Sergeant replied graciously. “Perhaps a private table for the two of us?”