“Why the hesitation, then, Lieutenant?”
“I like him. He’s not a bad man. He believes in what he’s doing and he truly cares about the people of Kastanje.”
“Haven’t you been paying attention in these meetings? He’s a power hungry son-of-a-bitch who is trying to turn this planet into an authoritarian, fascist state with him and his friends at the top pulling the levers. And he wants to use Union funds and RuComm expertise to pull it off.”
“That’s the same thing Sam told me about him. I don’t want it to be true.”
“Would you like to see the DCI dossier on him?” She pushed her display pad across the table to me.
I pushed it back “No. I suck at lying. I need to believe he’s honorable and decent if I’m going to be convincing. What should I offer him?”
“Mediation with me to start with. Tell him you can get me back to the table. Then play up your family connections, tell him you can get me reassigned and he can help choose my successor. Bring up the assignment at the hospital and, if you can, make him think it’s his idea to send you there. Maybe as a way to poke me in the eye, but don’t go down there yet. Stay close to him, be his friend, the one Union officer that understands him.” She hesitated.
“What else?”
“To save Sam, you may need to offer him something more. Gerbrandij has had a succession of mistresses, each carefully chosen to advance his career. He might view you as the next logical conquest, a first step to gaining access to positions of power within the DCI and the Union.”
“I am not sharing my bed with him.”
She shrugged. “He probably doesn’t find you attractive anyway, although his past choices seem more aligned with what each woman can help him achieve than with their physical beauty. You should consider making him think that it’s at least a possibility.”
I shuddered. “You’re wrong about him.”
“Perfect. That’s the naive attitude you need to fake for this to succeed and to get your husband back to us.”
“I’m going to prove you wrong, regardless of what’s in that dossier. “I’m sure–” I gasped and turned to Winona. “Sam’s awake. He’s groggy and confused, but not in pain. Thank God, they didn’t hurt him.”
“How do you know that, Lieutenant? Is he talking to you right now? Ask him if he knows where he’s being held.”
I stared at her, my eyes getting bigger, not answering. I had no idea what to tell her. I glanced at Winona. She was staring at me doing the same thing.
“No, not talking to me exactly. He’s, um…” I stammered to a stop and sighed. “Oh, to hell with it. Sam’s life is at stake and I’m tired of hiding what we can do. Ma’am, my husband and I have an emotional link. I can feel his emotions and he feels everything I feel. We’ve been doing it since I was sixteen. It’s only emotions, though, not words; I can’t read his mind. I had to convince Storm that we could do it back before the battle of Costrano’s Redoubt. Ask her if you want proof. Please don’t ask me how we do it. It was a gift, and they don’t like people knowing that they exist. They’re dangerous and human life isn’t very valuable to them.”
“I don’t believe you, although why you would make up such a thing is beyond me.”
“Fine, we’re even then, because I don’t believe Colonel Gerbrandij is the monster you make him out to be. I just want to save Sam.” I closed my eyes. “He’s scared, Winona. Something is not right, not what he was expecting. Why would he be expecting something?” I put my hand on my cheek and smiled softly. “He knows I’m worried about him.”
“Enough. Storm?”
“I have seen her demonstrate the reality of her ability on several occasions. You should believe her.”
“Says my psychotic ship. Ms. Killdeer? You better be able to make sense of this for me.”
“She and Sam can do it. You’d be happier not knowing how. I know I’d sleep better at night if I didn’t know how she does it.”
“Huh.” She pointed back and forth between us. “The two of you share this “gift” too, don’t you? It’s starting to make sense. That explains how someone as emotionally brittle as she is can function, and why she does stupid things when you’re not around. What range does this have?”
“Between Lieutenant Holloman and me? About fifty meters. Sixty if she’s really excited. Between her and Captain Coleridge it’s considerably farther.”
“I can hear him as long as we’re both on the same side of a DSH,” I told her.
“Shit. He can be millions of kilometers away and you know what he’s feeling in a matter minutes or hours?”
I scrunched my eyes closed, wincing, not wanting to say it. “Faster. It’s instantaneous regardless of distance.”
“If that’s true, it needs to be studied. The ramifications are more than I can even begin to imagine. The military applications alone…”
“That’s why we keep it secret. They’ll destroy you if you try to do that. They’ll destroy your career, and if you persist, they’ll eliminate you without a second thought. They’ve done it before, many times. I’m sorry I told you, but when Sam came back into my head it was overpowering.”
She slumped back in her chair. “I’m desperately trying to keep this planet from becoming a fascist dictatorship. I have almost no support from RuComm, and the Union is busy fighting battles without us. We should be out there on the front line with them, not here. I don’t need this crap. I don’t need one more of these bizarre things that buzz around you like Bechtel flies.”
“Ugh, I remember those from Dulcinea. Nasty. I had one bite me once when we were camping, right on the back of my knee, and…”
Her head was tipped and her eyes were squinted almost shut, trying not to scream at me. “Leave. Both of you leave. I need to think this through.” She pointed at me. “You. Go suck up to Colonel Gerbrandij.” She pointed at Winona. “And you. Be back here in an hour and help me figure out what I need to do next.”
“Yes, ma’am,” we replied together.
“You can’t feel my emotions, can you?”
“No, ma’am,” I told her. “The linkage is always two way. If I could read your emotions, you’d know everything I’m feeling.”
She shivered. “Good. Dismissed.”
Winona pushed me up against the wall as soon as we were out into the passageway. “Kal was right about you. You’re going to get us all killed. The factions are going to murder Kal and Colin, and everyone else we sent to the surface, Gerbrandij is going to have you killed, if he doesn’t do it himself, and the Tarakana are going to assassinate the Captain.”
“That will leave just Winona alive to avenge us.” I was feeling irrationally happy. Sam wasn’t scared anymore. He was in ‘sense-of-adventure’ mode again, the same as when he’d left the ship to work at the hospital. “Sam’s going to be all right. I’m sorry about what I just did to the Captain, and I’m in constant prayer for Kal and Colin, but Sam’s fine.”
“What are you feeling?”
“Here.” I took her hand and placed the palm against my forehead. “Can you feel the echo of him in my mind?”
She closed her eyes for a second and then they opened wide, but she wasn’t seeing me. “Samuel, enjoying himself. Something flickering. I see mountains, blue sky, walking, loose rock on the trail.”
“How do you see it? I can’t see anything. I want to see it too.”
She stepped back from me, breaking the connection. “Samuel is an idiot. These people drugged and kidnapped him, killing an unarmed security officer in the process. Did you feel the sense of purpose in him? They’ve asked him to do something for them, something he thinks is noble and worthy, and he’s gone with them to do it with a smile on his face.”
“If Sam is doing it, it must be noble. He may not know about the woman that was killed, or there might be more to the story than we’ve been told.”
We went back to our quarters and I changed into my standard issue RuComm kakis and white shirt. Winn smiled at me when I stepped out of my room.
“Brilliant. Back to being defiant, no longer trying to be Captain Rostron’s ‘good officer’. I think he’ll buy your change of heart.”
“I’m afraid.”
“I know you are. It’s OK to let Gerbrandij see your fear. He’ll assume it’s because you’re worried about your idiot husband.”
I nodded. My idiot husband. He wasn’t worried, but damn if he didn’t still need me to rescue him.
“Winona? Will you pray for me?”
She adjusted my collar that I knew was already perfect. “Yeah, I’m doing it right now. Don’t lie to him, just don’t tell him all of the truth. He’ll believe you. And Mala Dusa? Don’t do anything stupid.”
I grinned at her. “Never do. See you for dinner?”
She nodded. “But not the shipyard cafeteria again. Meet me on the Orageux. I’ll ask Storm to make something special.”
I left our quarters and glanced at the ceiling. “Damen, where is Colonel Gerbrandij?”
“The Colonel is in his quarters,” the shipyard AI answered.
“Can you guide me there?”
“Follow the white ball, Lieutenant.”
I knocked gently on his door, ignoring the call button. I wanted my entrance to seem timid. I could hear the sound of voices arguing. The wall shook with the force of the hand that slammed against the interior keypad and the door slid open.
Gerbrandij face went from anger, passed through surprise, and settled on satisfaction as his brain processed me standing in front of him wearing standard RuComm attire. “Lieutenant Holloman. What additional demands do you have for us?”
“None, sir. I’ve come to ask for your help.”
“Now she wants my help?”
“Not her. Me. I need my husband back and what my Captain is doing will get him killed.” I maintained eye contact and let the tears I’d been fighting all day fill my eyes. “Please. Will you get him back for me?”
He stepped to the side, let go of the door jamb, and waited for me to enter. “Come in, Lieutenant. Let’s talk about what might be possible.”
“Thank you, sir.”
I stepped into the room, Major Zweig glaring at me with each step I took. I nodded to him, but his expression didn’t change. The Colonel’s aide, Captain van der Vlis, never looked up from his display pad.
“Sit,” the Colonel pointed at a small sofa. I sat on the edge of the cushion, feeling vulnerable.
Gerbrandij sat in an overstuffed chair opposite me and crossed his legs, seeming completely at ease. “As I told Captain Rostron, we are doing all that we can to recover Captain Coleridge.”
I nodded. “There is always more that can be done, isn’t that true?”
His eyes crinkled with his smile. “Did they teach you that at the Academy?”
“It may have been mentioned.”
“And there might be some truth in it. Extra effort requires extra resources. Your Captain seems unwilling to provide us with what we need.”
“I think I can help you with that. I can put whatever you need into our plans. Just tell me what you really need and I’ll convince her it’s critical. Let me be your intermediary to bring her back to the table. She knows that her superiors will never allow the current situation to persist. She’s bluffing. She told us that she’ll have to restart talks soon anyway or General Kimmel will replace her.”
“Good to know. What, exactly, would you have us do to find Captain Coleridge?”
“I don’t know, sir. Our Marines are tied up with their protection and training duties for the Provisional Government, so they can’t do anything for him. I’ve tried to contact General Kimmel’s office, but they won’t talk to me. Something about my needing to stay within the chain of command.”
“I can appreciate that.”
“Yes, sir. I’ve tried to reach my mom, but she’s on Earth and it will be days before I can expect a response.”
“Your mother? How could she be of help?”
“She’s done some work for both RuComm and the Department of Cultural Intelligence in the past, so she has friends. I don’t even know if the DCI has a presence on Kastanje, but I’m desperate. If nothing else, she can push to get you the resources you need. I just need Sam back.” I blinked hard, letting tears fall across my cheeks. Colonel Gerbrandij stood and came back with a pack of tissues for me.
I could see Captain van der Vlis out of the corner of my eye. He was typing hard on the display pad that I was certain must be connected to the Kastanje intel network, tracing my name back through open source Union records to whatever their own covert organizations had logged. I could tell when he found it. His pale face somehow managed to lose color. Mom has that effect on people.
“Mala Dusa, if you can get your Captain talking to us, and if she will agree to provide what we need to improve our surveillance network, there may be a chance–”
“Colonel, you need to see this.”
He turned, irritated by the interruption. “It can keep.”
“No, sir. It really can’t.”
Van der Vlis brought the pad and handed it to the Colonel. I waited, sniffling into a tissue. I waited to see if the Colonel was the monster Sam, Winona, and my Captain believed him to be, or if he was a decent man doing his best to serve his people.
He smiled and gave the pad back to his aide. His eyes had changed when he looked back at me. “Where were we? You were saying that your mother is still on Earth?”
“Yes, sir, I’m certain of it. We always stay in touch, or as much as we can this far away with the comm lag.”
He thought about it for a moment. “I’m sorry.” He stood, seeming to have come to a decision. “Something has come up that requires my immediate attention back in Oranjestad. I wish you could come with me so we could continue this discussion. I think I may be able to help you. We’ve reconstructed some of the events from this morning, and we have some promising leads that I’d like to tell you about.”
“I’ll go with you.” I stood and took a step toward him. “If your offer was serious, sir, I’ll go with you.”
He paused, looking down into my eyes. “Now how could I explain that to your Captain? She’ll accuse me of kidnapping another of her officers, and then where would I be?”
I pretended to be thinking about it for a few seconds. “Well…maybe you could tell her that you need me to complete the work Sam was doing restoring the medical AIs? It’s sort of a humanitarian necessity, isn’t it? I was helping him, so I know what needs to be done. Make her think that there’s no way for her to refuse without damaging her own career, that women and babies are dying because it’s not fixed.”
He grinned. “You are a shrewd one, aren’t you?”
“No, sir. Just desperate. I believe you’re my only hope of seeing Sam alive again.”
“How will you be able to help me get the resources I need if you’re down there fixing the medical AIs?”
“It won’t take more than a day or two. You saw me on Costrano’s Redoubt, you know I can do it. And Lieutenant Killdeer will be here while I’m gone. With her, it’s like I can be in two places at once. Please, let me go with you.”
He touched my cheek. “You are a very valuable woman, Lieutenant. What am I to make of you?”
I lowered my voice. “If you can get him back? Pretty much anything you want.”
CHAPTER 17
KASTANJE
Colonel Gerbrandij started to send a request t
o Captain Rostron asking for my temporary presence to finish Sam’s work, but then changed his mind. He sent her a notification instead, telling her that he was taking me to the surface and would return me when the medical AIs were all functioning. He had chuckled when he hit send. Major Zweig hadn’t been as amused. His voice was soft and his accent thick, but his meaning and his worry were clear.
“That may be a mistake, Colonel. You know you need Rostron very much. There is little to gain by pushing her more toward anger.”
“I’ve played nice for the past week, Arni, and see what it got me?”
“Her reaction to the kidnapping. Tell me that you would play nice with her if it was I that had gone astray, and her that you believed could find me.”
He patted the Major on the back and turned to me. “Run, Lieutenant. I’ll give you five minutes to gather what you need. If you aren’t standing at the shuttle when we arrive, I’ll leave your ass here.”
“Yes, sir,” I responded. I had a fleeting look at Major Zweig’s disapproving headshake as I sprinted from the room.
Winona’s response was much more visceral when I arrived panting at our quarters.
“That was quick. Is he chasing you?” She glanced out into the passageway, ready to bar the door.
“Leaving with him for Oranjestad in five minutes.” I grabbed my duffle and stuffed in one of each type of uniform, underwear, and my toothbrush. I could print anything else I needed. “Gotta run.”
“The hell you are. That is not the plan. You’re supposed to wait for the Captain to approve it.”
“Improvising. Saving Sam,” I panted, still out of breath.
She grabbed both of my shoulders, hard. “Stop. Think.” Her eyes looked into mine and she sighed. “Your arm is not fully healed. My smudging kit is back on the Esprit Orageux and there are Puca down there. In a week, we’ll be back where we started. Or worse.”
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