Marven threw a smoke grenade and some toe tappers down the hallway then grabbed a can off his belt. He sprayed organics cleaner on the floor and wall, then sprayed Quang. It wouldn’t do him any good but they couldn’t afford to let the blood on his clothes drip as they ran.
More thugs came around the corner as the smoke grenade popped. Curses mixed with the first thug repeating, “I don’t know, they blinded me.” The trio stepped lightly along the corridor.
They turned a corner as the first toe-tapper was stepped on. It skittered around making pop-pop-pop sounds. Deeper pops indicated a thug panicked and fired into the smoke. Another toe-tapper went off.
Mitchie worried the noise would conceal another group of searchers closing in on them. But they went out the back door without seeing anyone else. A block away they gave Quang some much-appreciated medicine.
The support staff had cached changes of clothing in four alleys near Corday’s HQ. They took an evasive route to the northern one. The old clothes, along with gloves, galoshes, goggles, and hoods, went into a squeeze bag to be destroyed. Marven took the databank.
Mitchie shook his hand. “Excellent mission. Well done.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” he replied. “I appreciate your help.”
She stopped herself before offering her hand to Quang. He waved his uninjured left arm. “Stay safe, ma’am.”
“You too. Let me know if you need a doctor.”
“We have everything he needs at the house,” said Marven.
“Good. See you soon.” She stuffed the bag under her shirt and started toward the spaceport. She had to make another stop to change into the outfit Blythe had worn before making the switch.
Joshua Chamberlain, Pintoy Spaceport, Pintoy, gravity 9.4 m/s2
“Welcome home,” said Guo with relief.
Now that’s fidelity, thought Mitchie. Normally a husband chatting with a big-titted hussy flinches when his wife gets home. “Hi, baobei.” She kicked off the borrowed high heeled shoes and draped the pink raincoat over a chair. Blythe would wear them off the ship to finish the switch for any observers.
Blythe straightened up. “Hello, Michigan.” The way she’d been leaning across the galley table must have given Guo quite a view. He was opposite her, looking almost cornered against the counter.
“Hi, Blythe. How was the party?”
“Um, okay. I didn’t talk much. Some people might be offended.”
“I’ll deal with that. Let’s get you paid.” Mitchie walked into her cabin, crooking a finger to bring Blythe along.
An electronic transfer from a shell account covering half the agreed fee went directly to her. Mitchie covered the rest with gold and silver coins in a mix of Akiak and Bonaventure denominations.
“Whoa,” said Blythe. “These are worth lots more than they used to be.”
“That’s why we use them. And a little extra. You can’t spend these anywhere but you can use them as props.” Digging in her shirt drawer unearthed a bundle of flimsies held together by an elastic.
Blythe riffled through them. “Bank of Eden, One Thousand Rubles.” Her face lit up. “Is this from Old Earth?”
“Eden. First system on our way back. If anyone asks you’ll have to say you bought them from a collector.”
“Oh, wow. Something you brought back from your trip to Old Earth.”
“That covers what we agreed on, yes?”
The whore jerked her eyes away from the cash. “Yes. Thank you. Let me know if you need me to do it again. Or do . . . anything for you.”
“If I ever do I’ll contact you.”
Blythe turned to go, then paused with her hand on the open hatch. “Just so you don’t have to worry, Guo and I didn’t, didn’t anything.”
“I know.”
***
“Look, there’s been three weeks of changes to the file,” said Marven. “We copy the new version and compare them. That gives up patterns of data structures, positioning, time trends.” Quang chimed in with more cryptographic technobabble.
Mitchie leaned back her in her seat at the head of the galley table. The dataraid had found backups of Corday’s routine correspondence and one large encrypted file. It had defied their efforts to crack it. Marven had grown desperate enough to give a copy to Guo in hopes his limited code training might find a weakness. Now he was trying to talk Mitchie into supporting a second dataraid on the same target.
Guo emerged from their cabin, secure datasheet in hand. “I don’t think that will help.”
“Oh?” Marven glared at him.
Mitchie couldn’t tell if the anger was over his plan being challenged, an enlisted man questioning an officer, or an amateur contradicting the specialist. Possibly all three.
“I tried an old troubleshooting technique, working the problem from the opposite end. Encryption tries to make data look like noise. Instead of looking for the data I analyzed how random the noise was.”
He slid his datasheet onto the table. Quang peered into it eagerly.
“Mathematicians have tests for random number generators to see if their output is truly random. As they say, it’s too important to be left to chance. I copied a set of tests to the secure system.” He stroked the datasheet to bring up an array of results.
Quang studied the data. Marven just snarled, “Well?”
“Your mystery block is pure, total, casinos would pay good money for it, randomness. No patterns at all.”
“You mean I got shot for nothing?” said Quang.
Mitchie laughed. “You got shot for bait. Corday set it out where someone spying on him would find it, and we fell for it.”
Marven let out a string of curses.
“If he’s set up that level of data security, he probably has multiple layers of personnel security. Analyze your infiltrators’ contacts. Check for honeytraps and overwatchers,” she ordered.
“Yes, ma’am. God damn it. We’ve totally wasted our time,” complained Marven.
“No,” Mitchie corrected him. “We proved he’s expecting intelligence operations against him. We know he’s diverting resources to security and deception. We can infer his plans are tightly held in his inner circle. He may be keeping them entirely to himself.”
Marven thought a moment. “It’s negative data . . . but, yes, if he was doing more than that we’d see signs.”
Mitchie wrapped up the meeting and saw her spooks off the ship. Guo still sat at the table when she returned.
“What bothers me,” she said, “is I was an idiot and led Guen to expect I’d have a breakthrough for her. Guess I was too excited about getting through the mission alive.” She filled a cup from the sink and drank. “Which raises the question of how much I should tell her.”
Guo answered, “No specifics. Just say we took something, it turned out to be cheese, and if he’s setting traps it means such-and-such.”
“That works. She’s going to be pissed though.”
He smirked. “Then I’ll cheer her up.”
Guen accepted the news calmly. And accepted Guo’s cheering up.
***
Mitchie flung herself onto the bed.
Her husband looked up from his papers. She’d just come back from checking on the analysts, which wasn’t tiring duty. The fall had been too theatrical to be real exhaustion. She was probably just trying to distract him from his project.
And it had worked.
Guo left the papers on the chair as he climbed on the bed. “Rough day, wo de airen?”
“No. Just frustrating. We’re helping the new fleet get trained up but not getting any ships to send against the Betrayers, which is our real mission. Admiral Galen probably thinks I deserted.”
He chuckled. “He might be happier if you had.”
“True. Involving the Disconnect in a civil war is excessive initiative.” She snuggled into his chest as his arms tightened around her.
“Want to see something that might end it?”
Mitchie looked into his eyes. “I fi
nally get to see the secret project?”
“Now that it’s done, yes.” Guo pulled some sheets out of the stack on the chair and handed them to her. “My proposal for a peace treaty between the Harmony and CPS.”
She sat on the edge of the bed to read. “This isn’t a treaty. It’s a constitution.”
“If they’re going to live together it’s the same thing.”
Mitchie went through the second page with a mutter of, “Bicameral, nice.” After the fourth page she re-read the second and third. She looked up at Guo. “The representation and protections for underpopulated worlds . . . are you thinking the Disconnected Worlds would join this?”
Guo shrugged. “Whether they join the Fusion or not, they need to have some structure. The Defense Coordinating Committee can’t be a real government, it’s too weak.”
“Don’t I know it.”
She read the rest. “I like it. God knows what the Fuzies will make of it.”
“I’ll show it to Guen at our date tomorrow.”
Pasteur Park, Capitol City, Pintoy, gravity 9.4 m/s2
The cheers almost deafened Mitchie even without electronic amplification. Guen continued her praise for the new boot camp graduates. The latest wave to pass through the VR training was the largest ever. They now filled Pasteur Park for a public ceremony. Tomorrow they’d be shuttled up to their ships.
“You will bring us victory! Victory over the Harmony! And victory over the Betrayers!” Guen’s close brought more cheers, shaking the stand holding the dignitaries. She stepped down from the pulpit.
Professor Corday took her place and launched into his speech. Mitchie wondered how Guen had maneuvered him into such a visible position. The speech wasn’t bad. He’d avoided making a lecture of it. The historical examples were amusing or inspiring.
A wave of laughter covered the sound of the shot. Mitchie saw blood spurt from under Corday’s shoulder. He swayed back and fell as his toes just caught the edge of the pulpit’s step.
Mitchie dropped flat.
Panic began, some people jumping off the platform or running for the ramp. Guen flung her arms around Corday, crying, “Professor! Professor!”
Rapid shots sounded. Mitchie lifted up to see. The action group lined up in front of the platform was firing. She traced their aim to a purple laser dot marking a skyscraper overlooking the park. Part of the façade fractured and fell off under the rain of bullets.
Two med techs ran up to the pulpit. “Ma’am, ma’am, you have to let us take care of him.” They pried Guen’s arms off the shooting victim.
Guen turned to Mitchie and seized her in a bloody hug. “Oh, God, it’s so horrible,” the younger woman sobbed. One arm held Mitchie tight. The other slid down her side. A hand went under Mitchie’s uniform jacket then poked into a pocket.
Then the hand withdrew, leaving a small object behind.
What the hell? thought Mitchie.
The med techs cursed as more blood sprayed them. “Get another cauterizer!” yelled one.
Someone else was shouting, “Cease fire! We have people in the building now. Cease fire! Cease fire!” The gunfire tapered off.
Guen kept her head tucked into Mitchie’s chest, letting out the occasional sob. Mitchie looked at the blood covering both of them. This uniform was a loss. Guen’s bodyguards formed a line to shield them from any further shots.
Another line protected Corday and the med techs. A doctor arrived and examined their efforts. “Keep the synthblood going. We’re going to have to collapse the lung and replace it later. I’ll shut down the affected pulmonary arteries.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said a med tech. He started cleaning off Corday’s chest, adding chest hair to the shredded clothing on the floor.
When the doctor started cutting through ribs Mitchie looked away. Even her goriest moments had been neater than that.
Guen looked up. “Where’s the MC?” she demanded.
The master of ceremonies hurried up.
“Play some music,” she ordered. “The crowd’s getting restless.”
Mitchie could hear the mutters even over the curses of the medical team.
“What music? I don’t have any ready,” babbled the MC. He was almost in shock from the disruption of his well-planned event.
“Anything! Have that redhead sing the anthem again.”
The MC flinched and hurried off. The redhead, a soloist in the Pintoy Planetary Opera Company, was more composed than the MC. She stepped over the splashes of blood to the pulpit, asked for prayers on Corday’s behalf, and launched into an aria of a daughter praying for her father’s recovery. Repeater screens showed her image around the park at ten times life size.
The doctor stood and turned until she spotted Guen. “I’m sorry. We did everything we could. The shock wave from the bullet left leaks in every blood vessel in his chest. We couldn’t stop the bleeding.” She looked anxiously over her shoulder as Corday’s bodyguards snarled.
Mitchie frowned. The exit wound she’d seen hadn’t matched the exploding bullet needed to cause what the doctor had described.
“I’m sure you did your best,” said Guen, taking the doctor’s bloody hands. “You and your men go rest. You—” to the bodyguards “—will take the Professor’s body to a mortuary. He will receive a martyr’s funeral and lie in state for all to pay their respects.”
The soloist finished her first song and began a lament.
Guen’s datasheet buzzed. “What? Good. Hold on, I want to make this a public report.” She stood next to the pulpit and made a cutting gesture. The soloist ended the song with the current refrain.
Guen took the singer’s place. “My fellow citizens! The assassin has been discovered!” A swipe on her datasheet transferred the call to the repeater screens. Instead of Guen they now showed Lorraine Q, leader of the Committee of Public Safety’s most vicious Action Group.
“Chairwoman Claret. Citizens,” began Lorraine. “The assassin is already dead, thanks to the response of Action Group Trey.” The gunmen lined up in front of the platform cheered themselves.
Her camera turned to show a room stippled with bullet holes. A dead man lay against a wall. His multiple wounds had already stopped bleeding. A rifle almost as long as he was tall lay across him, its barrel pinched where a bullet had struck it.
“Biometric identification revealed him as Vo Wang, a known agent of the Harmony,” continued Lorraine. “After failing at subversion and sabotage he moved on to murder.”
The crowd roared in anger. Guen shifted the repeaters back to herself. “This is an outrage. The Harmony has demanded our submission, attacked peaceful worlds, now they spill blood on our own world? No! We will not tolerate this! We will crush the Harmony and force them to respect our freedom! Spacers, to your ships!”
With cries of “To ship!” knots of training graduates ran out of the park, heading for the shuttleports.
Guen shut down the repeaters and pulpit. She whispered to Mitchie, “Best get your people inside. This could get ugly.”
Mitchie just nodded. No one got in her way as she left the speakers’ platform. She ducked into the first public restroom she saw.
A stall provided privacy to check her pocket. Poking from outside revealed Guen’s present as a small cylinder with a spike on the end. She reached in carefully to avoid stabbing herself.
It was a standard single use injector, one dose of medicine with a needle and pressure cartridge. The label declared it had contained ‘clotase,’ a standard treatment for heart attacks, strokes, and other clotting problems.
Mitchie remembered a first aid instructor finishing his lecture on clotase by threatening to strangle anyone who gave it to a bleeding victim, even a nosebleed. With no ability to clot even trivial wounds could bleed out.
She pondered how to destroy the injector. Flushing it would only lead to an intact injector arriving in the sewer lost and found with its description posted on the net. Not a good way to cover up a crime. Destroying the evidence wou
ld take running it through a converter.
Mitchie had to admit Guen had chosen the best qualified person to act as her accessory to murder. No, two murders. The ‘Harmony agent’ fit his role too well. He had to be a plant or dupe.
Mama Mitchie’s little girl is all grown up now.
***
Guo hugged Mitchie as she came through the cargo hold airlock. “I’m glad you’re back. It’s going crazy out there.”
“More than you know.” She led him below decks to the converter room. After chasing out mechanic Finnegan she produced the injector. “We need to destroy this.”
“Easy enough.” Pliers tore it into small pieces, then they went into the inspection port for the start tank. Next time Joshua Chamberlain fired up the converter they’d be disintegrated. “Why?”
“Proof of premeditated homicide.”
“Who did you kill?”
“Not me. Guen knocked off Professor Corday.”
Guo sat on a cross-pipe. “Really? It wasn’t the Harmony?”
“She had someone shoot him, then dosed him so he’d bleed out. First I knew about it was when she planted the drug injector on me.”
He let out a string of Mandarin words she didn’t know. Profanity, by the tone. “That’s it. I can’t see her any more.”
She considered the possible repercussions. “I kill people and you still sleep with me.”
“You’re following orders. She’s just blowing where the wind takes her. No more.”
Mitchie gave him a long hug. He clung to her for comfort. “I’ll take care of it. Not sure how, but I’ll think of something.”
The PA speaker came on. “Captain to the bridge! Captain to the bridge!”
“But it’ll have to wait.”
***
Mitchie climbed through the bridge hatch then bent over, hands on knees, to catch her breath.
Mthembu closed the hatch behind her.
“What?” she panted. Maybe she shouldn’t have taken all those ladders at top speed.
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