He had no intention of letting that be a recording of them looking suspicious.
Because then someone would retrace Team Gamma’s activity for that watch, and that someone might report to Department 9. And if Silasja was saying her report was ready, it meant she had followed his whispered instruction to wipe the recording of Sybutu and his two companions questioning their orders as they’d started off to the Pride of Lienport.
The wiry SOTL – Hines Zy Pel according to his records – had complained about his orders.
Ever since the Legion had set up shop in this part of the galaxy, it was a scene that must have played out millions of times.
But Zy Pel had struck a chord with the watching security specialist. His orders were more than senseless. They were suspicious.
Or was Fon-Derez getting nervous?
Officers with stupid notions in their head that they wanted carrying out against all reason were hardly unheard of.
But this was the Legion, not the Militia. Unprofessional officers were an aberration, quickly fixed. And there had been a far too much recent activity that made no sense to Fon-Derez.
This wasn’t incompetence.
This was something else altogether.
And Fon-Derez wasn’t prepared to let the three jacks caught up in this get wiped the same way as the admiral.
Unable to resist it any longer, he glanced across the room at the empty workpods and pictured his comrades who worked there.
Were any of them spies for Department 9?
Who among them were heroes and who villains?
Was there even any way to tell?
Such thoughts were too dangerous to harbor in his mind, let alone speak aloud. He was in far too deep now.
He looked at Silasja with her blushing face and wondered whether she realized how much her sergeant worried about her.
The word ‘sorry’ formed in his mind.
But even that was too risky, and he chased it away to leave nothing but numbness.
GREEN FISH
As soon as the doctor and her humanoid entourage left the ward, Green Fish threw back the covers – taking care not to dislodge her drip – and waved to her new dropship infantry buddy across the room.
“Hey, Dezza. Chuck us your slate.”
The robo-nurses ignored the interactions between the dozen inmates of their ward. Probably, they reported everything to the doctors, but it suited everyone to pretend the patients got up to mischief whenever they could.
Dezza tossed over the cheap dataslate, which landed dead center of her bed.
“You and screens!” he mock admonished her. “I swear it’s an addiction. You can get pills for that, Green.”
“Uh huh.” She sent data pulses out from the slate, searching for a relatively unsecure remote access node. “Shame I can’t say the same for a man in your condition. The only way you’re leaving the hospital, Dezza, is inside a cannister of soil improver. I promise to water the plants that grow out of your remains.”
She looked up at her guffawing friend and smiled back.
For a bonehead jack, Lance Corporal Khallum Dezza was okay.
His chosen role in life was to be thrown down a gravity well in a wildly gyrating metal box. If, by some miracle, his dropship survived the descent without crashing, or being blasted out of the sky, then he would be shot at as soon as the hatch opened. Seemed to think his training and combat experience made him a tough guy.
He was here for an ingrowing toenail that he’d ignored until his foot was more pus than flesh.
No doubt his affliction hurt like hell, but the notion of a dropship jack with a dodgy toenail amused the hell of her.
And after she’d worked on him for a few days, he was finding the funny side too.
Got it!
HS3-AS07/ext01 was a net node in the water cooler, its function to communicate water purification and cleaning status to a central server.
Now it was her latest backdoor into the inner workings of the enormous space station.
“She’s right, you know,” chimed in Markel, the spruce Navy load rat in the next bed to Dezza. Green Fish suspected Markel had the hots for her. “Green knows things.” She leaned across to put a hand on Dezza’s arm, adding in a whisper, “She’s connected.”
Green Fish laughed at the irony.
None of them knew her history. She’d gleefully put about that if they knew what she really was, she’d have to kill them, and then proceeded to hint at the wild adventures she’d come through.
Before long she had the other patients eating out of her hand. They’d didn’t believe the half of what she told them. But that left a half that they almost bought into.
All bullshit, of course.
Green Fish was the most isolated on the ward. She’d watched the spark of joy and hope illuminate the eyes of her sick and injured friends when they received visitors.
No one had come to see her. She’d received no word from her friends. Were they dead? Or imprisoned?
Vetch and Lily wouldn’t abandon her without trying to send word, which meant something was wrong.
And what about Vol? She refused to believe he had forgotten her, but as each day went past, it was more difficult to tell herself that.
She’d never met a Kurlei before. What foolishness it was to kid herself that she understood a member of an alien species she knew almost nothing about.
Then she reminded herself what it had felt like to sense the deep reservoir of affection in Vol’s mind, and convinced herself for a little while longer that she would see him again, even if only to say goodbye.
Still, she’d been here for days…
Data service credentials missing. Enter XLD moniker…
Green Fish bit her lip and tried not to scream.
Lily had taught her that there was a time to curse and holler at the galaxy, and there was a time to suck it up and concentrate on winning first. The only person who could decide where the boundary lay was Green Fish herself.
So she kept her shit together and activated the sniffer process she’d written that passively plucked credentials out of the ether and stored them in Dezza’s slate.
Her finger hovered over the button that would send a string of stolen connection data to the node in the water cooler.
If it worked, she could maybe learn what had happened to her friends. Maybe get a message to them.
But if it didn’t… Most likely it would trigger an automated security audit that would trace the attempted hack back to Dezza’s slate, and then alert a flesh-and-blood security team.
She moved her finger across to the cancel button and began closing down her session.
Another day of healing, first, she told herself. I can try again tomorrow.
Suddenly, there was a commotion at the nurse station by the ward entrance. The robo-nurses were arguing with a couple of people she didn’t recognize, but had burst in with such a sense of urgency that panic set her nerves afire.
She must have triggered an alert after all.
Please don’t drag Dezza out for questioning, she pleaded with the galaxy while she activated a hard reset that would scrub his slate clear of her incriminating activity. He’d lose those intriguing videos he’d secreted in an encrypted folder too, but she knew where to find more and better examples of that kind of thing.
The men were headed her way.
Only when she was sure the data scrub was underway did she look up and realize these were medics, not security personnel, although they looked nothing like the normal doctors and orderlies.
“We were not notified of this,” protested one of the robo-nurses, almost pulling on the arm of what Green Fish took to be the senior of the two medics.
“I should think not,” the man countered. “This is a code nine-seven emergency. It should never have reached this stage.”
“We must consult–”
“You will shut your metal mouth and assist. Do you want to be reset to factory settings?”
The other robo-nurse said nothing. It shadowed the other man as he strode purposefully along the ward.
“It is only by pure chance that we caught her condition in time,” admonished the other man. “You will be held accountable, as will your biological counterparts.”
His companion wore an orderly’s jacket over otherwise unconventional clothing. Instead of ship shoes, he was shod in tough dirtside boots. And he was moving along the beds on her side of the ward.
Her condition?
The doctor had said her condition.
Shit!
She sat up quickly, tearing the scars over her stab wound, and contemplated the drip tube feeding into her. If she could hook it over the man’s neck and pull tight, it would be a start.
Then what…?
One step at a time.
The orderly saw something in her face and scowled. He quickened his pace, headed straight for her at just short of a run.
If she could fend him off for just a few moments, Dezza would come to her aid. He’d have to hobble over, but he wouldn’t hesitate. So would the others whose wounds would let them.
She stared defiantly at her attacker.
The man’s face was hard. Handsome too. Dark, human, humorless, and… she’d mostly seen him wrapped in hats and cloaks, but by the Five Hells, it was Osu Sybutu!
“Sorry,” he grunted, and pushed an injector into her neck.
“Why?” she said. “Where is…? Ah…”
The breath wouldn’t come.
Her heart was pounding away like an autocannon. A vice was closing its cold grip on her chest.
And it hurt like hell.
Now was the time to scream, but she could only gasp.
“Doctor!” called Sybutu. “The patient’s entering cardiac arrest.”
No shit, she thought as the universe faded to black.
IZZA ZAN FEY
Storming along the walkway wasn’t enough release for her high energy state. Izza needed to punch someone.
Didn’t matter who, so long as they were plausibly deserving.
“Almost here,” announced Fitz cheerfully, and by the time she’d glanced up at the overhead sign and saw they were two piers away from Phantom, she’d changed her mind.
Now she did care who she vented her frustration on. She wanted to wrap her knuckles around a human, the immigrant species who’d caused so much trouble since arriving in the outer rim of the Perseus Arm.
Kanha Wei. Lord Khallini. The admiral who’d been murdered, and the team who’d killed him.
Human. Human. Human!
Never mind that she herself had a distant human ancestor.
That only explained why she was trouble too.
The Kurlei Fitz had brought along for some reason looked across at her. He seemed on the cusp of saying something – was probably reading her fury through those head lumps of his – but thought better of it.
Wise choice.
But he wasn’t getting away with it that easily.
According to Fitz, Vol Zavage had signed up with the Phantom. Which meant his fishy ass was hers now.
“The captain’s soft,” she snapped at him. “So’s your sergeant. I wouldn’t have gone back for your girlfriend.”
“No, ma’am.”
Damned Kurlei didn’t believe her.
He was right not to. She sucked in a breath, calming a little. The alien’s ability to suck emotions out of the air could prove very handy one day.
Then she reminded herself that she’d been running around the galaxy like a loon since forever, and the anger came flooding back into her hydraulics.
She hadn’t set her own agenda for far too long. And now, to add to the long list of favors being called in, and powerful people wanting them dead, they had to go retrieve their missing troopers. And of all the crap holes on the Perseid Rim, it had to be from Eiylah-Bremah.
Maybe the Kurlei could round up the troopers while she got Fitz’s head around their more serious problems. “Your head transmit as well as receive?” she asked him.
“Not much,” he replied. “I can send a burst of surprise that can catch someone off guard. That’s it unless I know the person extremely well.”
“Oh, I can see where this is headed.” She stopped and cocked an eyebrow. “You found a special connection with your girlfriend. Get yourself a little positive feedback, did you?”
“That’s none of your damned business,” he stated before adding uncertainly, “Lieutenant.”
“But we’re making it our business,” called a voice from behind. A human voice. “Because the ways of the weird and wacky in our glorious Federation make such good entertainment.”
Three men and a woman had come out of a side passage to Piers 15 and 16. They wore the black service uniforms of the Navy with a gold sun over their breast pockets that marked them as 4th Fleet.
She didn’t care for the way they were looking askance at Izza’s party as if they were dirt. Admittedly, Fitz looked like he’d been crawling through a sewer again, but her sap rose in anger.
“Who are you?” asked the largest one. A female.
Behind her, she heard Fitz stop and retrace his steps. On their own, each of them could walk off and ignore idiots like this, if they were in a big enough hurry. For some reason, they never could when the two of them traveled together.
“I’d lay money on them being dumb jacks,” said one of the Navy men. He was a head shorter than her, but heavily muscled. “Look at the little lost lambs.” The man’s tone became even more patronizing as he addressed Zavage. “We are currently in the void, little fish jack. I know it’s confusing because it feels as if there’s a down pressing into the deck, but we’re not actually dirtside. We’re above the sky in a spinning metal chariot.”
He grinned at his annoying friends. “Mader Zagh! When these jacks haven’t got the Navy to ferry them around, they’re completely lost.”
“Do we really need to do this?” Izza asked her captain. “We have business to attend.”
“We do,” Fitz replied. “I believe that with our more diverse roster, we are now obliged.”
Muscle Man looked one way and then the other up the walkway as if searching for someone. Then he pointed at Izza, while addressing Fitz. “Does this talking plant belong to you?”
Izza lashed out.
She looked at her bloodied fist. And then at the beefy spacer she’d laid out on the deck.
Fitz looked down at the man groveling at his feet, trying to staunch the blood flowing from his nose. “A talking plant?” He shrugged. “That’s just everyday banter. But saying she belongs to someone? Kid, that was the biggest mistake–”
Two spacers charged into Fitz, not giving him the chance to finish his sentence.
But their attack was uncoordinated, and Fitz easily dodged their strikes, kicking one in the back of the knee and headbutting the other.
Around him fists were flying, but none of the punches were being thrown by the spacers. They had already lost.
Fitz stood over Muscle Man. “A word of advice, son. Before you pick a fight, check who you’re up against. I was flying Jaguar-class corvettes through the blockade at Dama Prime while you are still at junior school.”
“Like hell you were,” said the spacer, licking his wounds.
“Oh,” said Fitz, acting shocked. “You were there too, were you?”
“No. But we’ve all studied that campaign. There’s no one aboard our ship who knows more about Dama Prime than me, and I…”
Fitz raised his shades to reveal the lilac eyes of a so-called mutant.
The man went pale. “Shit! Lieutenant Commander Zi’Alfu. What happened to you? Where did you go after Dama Prime?”
Fitz winked at Izza. “I’ve been enjoying the pleasures of deep cover work.”
The troublemaker picked himself off the deck and shook Fitz by the hand. “It’s an honor, sir.”
“Yes. Yes, it is,” said Fitz, smiling, and then punched him right out. “But don’t ever u
pset my wife again.”
——
“You need to be more discreet,” Izza advised him as they hurried off to Phantom’s bay, leaving the battered and bewildered Navy spacers behind.
He slowed, just before the exit tunnel to Pier 17, and lifted her right hand. He gave her bruised knuckle a tender kiss. “An admirable punch,” he told her. “You were magnificent.”
“Fitz,” she warned.
“My lady, our cover is already blown. I promise I shall conceal my presence with more care … once we’re off this spinning dumbbell. For now, let’s ready our bird to fly. I have a feeling our new recruits will leave the hospital having caused a lot more fuss than we did. Don’t you agree, Zavage?”
“Oh, for sure,” said the Kurlei. “They’ll make a hot exit. They always do.”
“Really?” Fitz gave Zavage one of his charming grins, but Izza could see it was forced. “My new friend, our association will be legendary.”
Zavage returned the smile in the way of his kind: almost a dislocation of the narrow lower jaw that exposed a mouth crammed with fangs optimized to bite through necks.
It was a look that would take some getting used to, but it was more genuine that Fitz’s grin.
What now, Tavistock? What are you not telling me this time?
For that matter, why had they stopped?
Fitz’s gaze flicked down to his left hand. He’d pushed out his fingers at right angles, like an electromotive force diagram.
With a heavy heart, she glanced at his feet and noted they were turned inward slightly.
No, it couldn’t be.
It had to be a mistake.
She walked off, the three of them marching the rest of the way to the Phantom in a strained silence.
At Bay 17/12B, the crew greeted them warmly. The ship was ready to go, but none of that warmed her heart or loosened the tight bands across her chest that made it near impossible to breathe, let alone answer the crew’s greetings.
Instinct was hardening the bands to protect against another blow to the heart, and that was precisely what Fitz had just landed.
Chimera Company Season 2 - Deep Cover Page 13