by E A Wicklund
Matuczak endured a hail of cornbread rolls.
“I’m serious, you guys,” said Aziz. “You know we’ll be under twenty-four hour surveillance.”
“You hear that, Slattery,” Castellano said. “No more wanking off. You might turn the guards on.”
“Does that mean I should give up my pictures of Blazer’s mom?”
The marines roared with laughter again.
The jocularity quickly changed to relief as Grey and two guards arrived with a cart. The ordinary jumpsuits the warden promised had arrived. While they were distributed, he quietly invited McCray outside the holding room and introduced him to Deputy Warden James Anderson.
Anderson was slender and pale with black hair that scattered around his head with every movement. McCray didn’t like him on sight. The man’s limp handshake did nothing to improve his impression.
“Is everything all right?” said McCray.
“Just something unexpected,” Grey said. “Were you aware that prisoners were being transferred out of Arcoplex already?”
McCray felt that itch pestering him again. “Not at all. As far as I know, they were staying here until Madkhali vessels arrived to pick them up.”
“It seems the bulk of them are remaining, but the marines outside are asking for forty of the Sciroccos.”
“So, they’re just asking for the officers?”
“Some. Enlisted men, too. It’s quite irregular, but they do have the proper transfer orders. I just didn’t expect them to bring such a large escort.”
“How big?”
Grey shrugged. “Three hundred men.”
McCray felt warning bells were ringing in his head. “That’s way too many for such a small transfer.”
Grey offered him a condescending smile. “The military does things like that. When you deal with the military as much as I have, you get used to it.”
I am military, you idiot.
“Do you mind if I have a look at what’s going on?”
“Certainly,” Grey said. “But I’ve got to go and attend to the prisoner transfer.” He turned. “Mr. Anderson, please escort Captain McCray to the security shack. And while you’re there, check in on the decoy shuttle. Find out why it hasn’t arrived yet.”
As Grey walked away, McCray felt certain something had gone terribly wrong. He wished he could contact Springbok, but then they would know at once he wasn’t civilian and Springbok’s cover would be blown. McCray looked up briefly, hoping things were going smoothly on his ship.
***
Springbok had departed Hikonojo Port and established an orbit around Huralon III like an anxious mother hen. Commander Zahn paced beside the tank while Ando continued his efforts to reach McCray.
“Captain McCray, Captain McCray, please respond,” said Ando. He turned to Zahn. “Still nothing, sir. I see no jamming at all. It’s like Arcoplex isn’t listening.”
“Give him the full download,” Zahn said. “Just in case he can hear us.”
“Captain McCray, if you can hear me, you need to leave Arcoplex immediately. The decoy shuttle has been shot down by forces in Braunfels. We believe they were targeting Mallouk, and they may now think he is dead. These same forces are now at Arcoplex, posing as Elysium Marines.
“Captain McCray, you need to evacuate immediately. You are in imminent danger. Captain, please respond.” He slammed his hand on the console in frustration.
“Keep cool, Ando,” said Zahn. “What about local police? Alert them.”
“I tried! They think I’m pranking them. I contacted Vickers base, and they said they would investigate.”
“How soon?”
“They wouldn’t say.”
“All right. Do your best, Ando.”
“Aye, sir. “ Ando kept at it, doggedly trying to reach his captain.
While Ando worked, Zahn walked over to Warwick’s station. She now had six screens in front of her, more than her usual four. Beads of sweat slipped down her forehead.
Zahn had rarely seen her quite so intense. It was obvious she still kicked herself for McCray’s predicament.
He gave her a warm smile. She punished herself unnecessarily, but telling her so wouldn’t help at all. He thought he knew her well enough to give her what she really needed.
A chair appeared beside her at his command as he sat. “Athena, tell me more about this Xerxes Regiment.”
Warwick dropped her hands into her lap. “Well, they’re seriously bad news.” She stopped and took a long breath. “Sir, I just gotta say…”
“It’s okay, Athena.”
“No, it’s not,” she said, her voice husky. “The Captain asked me to look into that liner and I meant to. I just didn’t give it a high enough priority. If only I had checked quicker, he wouldn’t be down there in Mind knows what kind of trouble.”
“Athena, none of us took that ship very seriously. We’re lucky you even saw the activity at all. Nobody else in Fleet would even have caught it.”
“That’s nice of you to say.”
She was tougher than this, Zahn knew. She just took a hit in a soft spot, and that was Captain McCray. She looked up to him like a shipboard father and mentor or maybe something more. “No, that’s a command assessment, Lieutenant. May I remind you it was you who returned to it again and again.”
“But sir, it was me who thought they were professional protesters.”
“And I agreed with that. It’s been happening a lot on Huralon. But even so, you kept watching even when the answer seemed obvious. Then—”
Warwick scowled, “That armored personnel tank unloaded from the shuttle.”
“That’s right. And you were still there, watching. It was obvious then they weren’t just protesters. So can we belay the self-recriminations and get back to work?”
She sniffed and sat up straight. “Yes, sir.”
“What else have you got on the Xerxes Regiment?”
With a flip of her hand, she transferred footage of destroyed villages and towns to the tank. Another screen held the intel files she had just researched. Before Aja had arrived, she had been the ship’s intel officer. “They’re technically a mercenary outfit, but their only client is the DPM Army. For all practical purposes, they’re just another Army outfit. For me, I would just call them state-sponsored terrorists. They specialize in the dirty work their military doesn’t want to admit to. These are the guys that burn down whole villages and towns as an example to the rest. Usually they kill everyone, of any age, and they’re famous for impaling living victims on stakes. Their most infamous act was the destruction of Rahme. None of the city’s 7,000 people lived through it. Essentially, anywhere they go, they destroy everything in sight. They’re the DPM’s psychopathic killers.”
She restored the tank to the current optics view of the passenger liner that brought the murderers to Huralon. “Everywhere they go, they contract out a civilian ship to haul them to their campaigns. This time it’s SS Heavenly Light. Civilian shipping credentials gives the Army plausible deniability. They can always claim that rogue mercenaries or pirates did the job.”
Zahn stood up. “I’m practically within my rights to blast that ship out of space right now.”
“We have no solid proof that it’s Xerxes,” noted Piper.
“Hundreds of bodies in Braunfels say otherwise, Guns.” Zahn sighed. “But I’d say you’re right. It would only make me feel better after I was forced into retirement. Ando, you can stop trying to reach the Captain. We’re going to get him ourselves.”
He opened a comms window, and Annette Candless appeared in it saying, “Mr. Zahn. Any word on the Captain?”
“None so far. We’re going to force the issue, Major.”
“Ooh frickin’ rah!” she snarled. “Whatever you need.”
“Prepare a small Strike team and an Exfiltration unit. No Reapers, please. You’ll be on Elysian soil, after all. Take a pair of DaggerSwifts with you and arm them for CAS.”
“On it. We’ll be ready in fifteen
mikes.”
“Sir,” said Piper. “We can’t just dump a Marine strike team. We’ll blow our civilian cover.”
Zahn returned to the Conn. “That’s why we’re going space black.”
“Even that would give us away,” Piper pointed out. “There’s what, sixty some vessels in orbit and around Hikonjo? Someone will notice if we suddenly disappear from all visual and electromagnetic scans.”
“You are absolutely right. We need a plan to make that plausible because, Piper, we’re sending our Marines in, damn it.” He changed the view in the tank to a tactical view of the star system. “Ideas anyone?”
The officers looked at each other for a long moment. Ando said, “The Captain would use smoke and mirrors.”
“Well, he’s not here. We’ve got to figure this out ourselves.”
At the helm, Raj said, “Not smoke and mirrors, so why not a shell-game instead?”
Everyone looked at the mustang, shock on their faces. The Ensign rarely spoke.
“What are you getting at?” said Zahn.
Raj stood beside the tank. “We need reasonable cause to disappear from scans before going space black. If we headed for the moon, Cloye, and placed it between us and Huralon and Hikonjo, we would naturally disappear from scans. We could go space black there.”
“Excellent, Raj,” said Zahn, joining him at the tank. “Acceptable to you, Piper?”
Piper walked to the tank. “Better, but Space Control would expect us to reappear. When we don’t, that would send off an alert, and Huralon Space Force units would come looking for us. They might even find us. space black doesn’t mean invisible; it just means hard to find.”
“Pretty much anything we do will draw in HSF,” Zahn said. He grinned suddenly. “What we need is a believable reason why we’ve disappeared.” He paused for effect. “We need a catastrophic fault.”
Ando clapped his hands. “Fake our own death!”
Warwick chimed in, “Let’s really make it believable. We can eject a standard attack missile and remotely trigger the warhead. Even behind the moon, Space Control would detect a nuclear blast and assume the worst.”
“Let’s not forget a distress signal,” Ando said. “Before the missile blows, I’ll report a critical fault in Fusion Three...no wait, Fusion Four, just in case the captain is listening.”
“Excellent people,” said Zahn. “Raj, we need to do this fast. How long to reach Cloye, slingshot around it for extra delta-vee, and return with paddles on standby to limit our signature?”
Raj didn’t even consult his screens. “29.382 minutes.”
Zahn smiled. Excellent; Raj had already worked it out ahead of time. The XO turned and gazed into the tank, hoping McCray was alright; that he was still alive. Hopefully their plan would work as is. If it didn’t, then operational security be damned. If he had to aim the massive firepower of Springbok downward and obliterate every Xerxes on the planet to get McCray, he would happily do so. “All right folks, let’s be about it.”
Chapter 13
Bartholomew Quartermain sat on a carved stone bench towards the middle of the Raymond Spruance bridge. He wrapped his long coat around his legs as a chill February breeze blew through. Holding a datapad in his lap, he switched off the news broadcast it played and placed it in selfie mode. He practiced smiling as his wife insisted, at least for the sake of the grandkids. Additionally, he hoped a little rehearsal might help him for the upcoming encounter, but three ghastly rictus grins later, he gave up and settled for enjoying his surroundings.
The Capital District in New Chicago looked like no other. No massive edifices cast long shadows here. The many-storied buildings in this seat of power all lay underground, marked only by slender spires with sculptured entrances. Stone pathways wound through forests of terrestrial redwoods, maples, and oaks. Water flowed through canals leading between ponds of Koi, where colorful ducks plied the water’s surface.
He pulled his eyes away from the hanging gardens of flowers gracing the ornamental arches and checked his Zephyr. Keeper Morrisey Chamberlain was late again. Quartermain despised the man for his impertinence and his questionable ethics, though it was that latter quality that made him useful.
While Quartermain would agree, ending the use of career politicians benefited society, the twelve-member parliament, selected fresh every four years from Elysium’s billions of citizens, entered the task with only a vague idea of how to write laws. A four-week class beforehand helped, but the knowledge was still fresh for the new lawmakers. That left it to the scholarly Keepers to advise, instruct, and compose the laws according to the incoming members direction. Supposedly, Keepers were selected for their impartiality, incorruptibility, and a decided lack of personal ambition.
Of course no system, especially one managed by human beings, walked in perfection.
Without Chamberlain’s participation and his lack of ethical conviction, constructing an illegal Q-Ship like Springbok would have been far more difficult. As it was, Parliament knew only of a new Black Ship type thanks to the pliant Chamberlain’s subterfuge.
The Keeper finally approached, at long last. His body modifications included an impossibly heavy jaw line, silvery fish eyes, and fluttering hawk wings at the crown of his head. Quartermain pretended not to notice the ridiculous, but currently fashionable, body mods as the man sat at the other end of the bench.
“Hey, Bartie. You wanted to see me?”
Quartermain carefully schooled a bland expression. He’d rather have his eyes scooped out with spoons than be called Bartie, but he wouldn’t let this man know that. “I thought you should know, he took the bait.”
“You got Mallouk?”
“Names,” chided Quartermain. The jammer in his pocket should block any unwanted observation, but one could never be too certain. Some of those dragonflies flitting past might not be dragonflies.
“Right. Mordred. That’s excellent news. How certain are you that this will draw out Morgana?”
“We have a high degree of confidence. He’s gained access to a vessel that appeals to his inflated ego. Everything is falling into place for him. He’ll come.”
Chamberlain stared directly at the spymaster. “You aren’t making it too easy for him are you? What if he suspects a trap?”
Quartermain pointedly watched the ducks drifting by. “Stop looking directly at me. Look at your damned navel, if you must, just don’t look like you’re talking to me.”
Chamberlain flinched, as if physically struck. “Sorry.”
“Morgana is a megalomaniac. If the rains falls and makes flowers bloom, he thinks he’s the cause of it. Believe me, he’ll not pass up the golden opportunity we’ve laid out for him.”
Chamberlain gave a beatific smile. “A chance for a victorious war? You must be thrilled.”
Quartermain suddenly felt nauseous at the man’s reaction. “War? We’d bloody well hope not. That’s your job in this whole affair. Preventing one from starting. All we’re doing is removing the enemy Queen from the chessboard. With Morgana out of the way, our tame Madkhali can move in and pacify the Senate. This is a game of statecraft, not blind destruction.”
“Of course, I know that,” complained Chamberlain. “I just thought that you—”
“Well, stop thinking. Speaking of that, I ask that you accept my next words with all due respect.”
“Okay.”
“Have you gone mental, you great, bloody pillock?”
“Here now. There’s no cause for such language. You—”
“We caught Mordred with his hands in the cookie jar. In response you ask for forgiveness? Act from a position of strength! There was no need to throw Arthur to the wolves like that.” In no way would he reveal McCray’s real name to this loser. Better to use McCray’s mission codename of Arthur.
“You asked me to help maintain the peace. I did that!”
“Arthur already feels he’s under attack by senior leadership, and Mind knows he’s not entirely wrong. To make things worse,
you make Admiral Gaatz stab the man through the heart.”
“That’s what you get for a cut-rate, loose-cannon like Arthur. I read your reports.”
“If you read them carefully, you’d know he’s probably the Navy’s most capable tactician. All he needs is support and an enemy to fight. My agent had that handled until you stuck your bloody foot in it.” Quartermain took a long breath. “I want to be advised, in advance, of any further suggestions you make to the diplomatic corps.”
Chamberlain snarled, “Last I checked, you weren’t my boss.”
This time Quartermain did look at him, leveling a practiced stare at the Keeper. The man appeared to wilt like a daisy confronted with the very fires of Hell. “Need I remind you of your activities that first drew you to my attention?”
Chamberlain became fascinated with a bit of lint upon his trousers.
Quartermain turned back to the scenery. “You’ll do as you’re told, boy. Now, off you go.”
***
The Martinsyde smelled like worn leather and stale snack foods. Native purple trees and terrestrial crops became a blur as the slider dashed along at more than 280km/hr, repellers holding it eight feet above ground. Aja preferred travelling in a slider. Repeller fields were a slider’s advantage since they could raise the vehicles as much as eighteen feet above the surface. Without the friction of the ground, sliders could fly far faster than ground cars could drive. The disadvantage being that sliders couldn’t make the crisp turns of ground cars, hence the term, “sliders.”
This being an IS-3 vehicle it enjoyed a number of extra features. The surface-to-orbit comms system was a definite plus. The smoke screen generator and defensive-driving software reminded her of the action holoflicks. She doubted she’d need these things, but you never knew when you would.
For now, she leaned back as the car drove and she reveled in the sensation of speed, happy to make the trip in something faster than the city ground cars. Motor pools of the small electrics were publicly-owned, available for anyone at no charge, but awfully slow on the highways. In the realm between cities, sliders dominated.