“Turn it on and see if there’s been any attempt at accessing the files.”
While I waited for her to boot up the computer, I rechecked the house and yard for any additional security. I stopped in front of the Sentinel I’d shot outside. His face didn’t look hardened or evil like some kind of faceless enemy. Somewhere behind those motionless eyes there used to be a life, possibly a family. What made him do this? Turn on his own planet and people? I killed him with little thought or consideration. My life had been in danger, but I cringed at how easy it was to aim and fire my revolver at him.
I hated death and I never killed a man if I could do something different to change the situation. Events over the last year hardened me and made me realize that sometimes there wasn’t a choice. But even in the darkest times, I could convince myself that killing wasn’t the answer.
Paranoia can be a nasty enemy or a useful ally, but it’s not an excuse for pointing a gun at a man, like I did with Tress and Damon. But this wasn’t paranoia and I had to remind myself more than once about that. This wasn’t about paranoia or anger. This was survival. Him or me. If I didn’t kill him, he would have killed me. I forced that thought over the confusion and regret from killing him, and stood without looking at the body again.
Still, for all the regret behind my actions, I felt like underneath it all I was a violent man, something I didn’t want to be true.
When I turned around, Autumn stood with the computer in her arms, cradling it like a precious keepsake. I must have zoned out longer than I thought.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
I chose to ignore the question and nodded at the computer.
“Any tampering that you can tell?”
She shook her head. “I’m not a computer genius, but as far as I can tell the computer hasn’t been used in over a week.”
That didn’t surprise me at all.
“Come on,” I said, putting my hand behind her back and easing her forward. “We need to get out of here.”
I found out what happened to the third guard when we reached Autumn’s car. His body hung over the window frame of the passenger door, the window itself shattered. I stopped and my eyebrows shot up, then I looked back at Autumn who had the beginnings of a small grin.
“What? I told you I knew Reynold for a long time. You don’t think he taught me self-defense?”
Thirteen
Terra was an enormous world filled with technological marvels, at least according to Autumn’s description of it. The skyline, no matter where you turned, held vibrant lights and colors, and each building was shaped in unique, innovative ways. We drove past a skyscraper that curved from bottom to top and another shaped like a circle, which we flew through. No structure looked outdated or empty. I felt the urge to get lost in the maze of the streets and experience the thrill of something new, but all I could do was focus on the mission at hand, and try to close the door on the explorer inside me.
I didn’t think it was safe for Autumn to return home, especially now that Granak and the Sentinels saw her at her father’s house. Likewise, I felt returning to Sentinel HQ was out of the question, now that a traitor within the organization seemed likely. I instructed Autumn to take us back to Trenton Hall, where the council members were murdered. I felt confident Granak or whomever he worked for wouldn’t be there.
Every couple of minutes I looked at the communicator in my hand. I told Scott I would return within an hour, and that time had passed. He would be calling me or, worst-case scenario, he would find out what happened at Damon’s home and to the three Sentinels there. Autumn didn’t kill the third, which meant he was alive and free to report us.
The shield surrounding Trenton Hall was gone when we arrived, and from the sky, I saw a large number of people coming and going from the entrance.
“They cleaned that mess up quick,” I said.
“Every day without customers is thousands of dollars lost,” Autumn said. “We might be light years away from Earth, but no matter what planet you’re on, if it has humans, it’s all about the money.
“When Terra and Gaia weren’t at each other’s throats, things were better. The trade industry kept people working and without need. Gaia got our technology to help them farm and process their stock, and in return Terra would get a percentage of their goods. Now with the war, all trade has been cut off. There are some people who still believe in peace and they do what they can to help, but it draws the attention of those who embrace war.”
I found it hard to believe anyone would be willing to help their enemy, but then I thought about the medical ship—a crew who almost sacrificed themselves just to provide support to their neighboring planet. As a reward, they were chased down and nearly destroyed.
We landed and walked into Trenton without any trouble or questions. The quietness of the lobby I heard yesterday was gone, replaced with the buzz of social interaction. My eye detected a handful of guards—not Sentinels, but most likely internal security. Once we reached the hall of the murder scene, we ran into our first and only Sentinel.
“Let me handle this,” Autumn whispered, and grabbed the communicator from my hand.
“Hey—” I started to protest, but she ran ahead of me toward the guard.
“Curtis!” Autumn waved her hand like she was saying hi to an old friend. Then the two of them embraced and my suspicions were confirmed. But at the same time, their embrace struck a chord in me, something uncomfortable.
“Daniel, this is Curtis,” she said after I caught up to her. Curtis’s jaw and cheekbones were almost as hardened as the helmet he wore. Blonde hair stuck out from under the sides of his helmet. The corner of his mouth turned up for a second, but quickly disappeared as he tried to maintain a professional posture.
“Ms. Derringer,” he said. Definitely trying to look professional. “I’m sorry, but this section is closed to all civilians.”
“That’s okay,” she said, typing something into the communicator and showing it to him. “Captain Daniel Quinn has clearance.”
My eyebrows shot up at the same time that Curtis’s did. I didn’t know the communicator could bring up credentials, but I’d only been here a day. There were a lot of things I didn’t know yet and as long as my lack of knowledge wouldn’t get anyone killed, I was okay with that.
“I still have to radio in that you’re here,” Curtis said.
“Fine, just let us through,” Autumn said, her response forced. He opened the door and we stepped inside. When the door closed, I hurried to the counter and opened Damon’s laptop.
“We don’t have a lot of time, not if Scott finds out what happened at your father’s house. He’ll have questions.”
I took the memory drive from my belt and inserted it into the side of Damon’s laptop. A loading bar appeared on the screen, followed by a box asking for a password.
“Does this mean anything to you?” I turned the screen toward Autumn.
“Hmm,” she said, putting her fingernail between her teeth. “I’m guessing Dad didn’t give you a password before he died?”
I shook my head.
“Okay then.” She leaned over and typed on the keyboard. Strands of hair hung forward, covering part of her face. I couldn’t help but stare at her.
Her eyes shifted toward me and her hands froze. “What are you staring at?”
I turned my head quick as heat rushed to my face. In my peripheral, I thought I saw her grin.
“Well, Captain,” she said. “It looks like our team-up wasn’t mere coincidence.”
“What do you mean?”
She turned the laptop back around and numerous folders opened with files, photos, and appointment calendars. I recognized some of it from the data I looked at on the Belle, but a lot of it was new information. The mutual information of the drive and the computer reminded me of the memory module Al used. That small device saved my life on more than one occasion, but it could only work if Al was active. Damn, I missed him, even though he technically wasn’
t a “him.”
Focus, I thought. Worry about Al later.
“The password was my birthday,” she told me. “I guess he hoped that you would accept his request and come here, and if he died, find me.” I caught the start of a tear, but Autumn quickly blinked it away. “So, what are we looking for, anyway?”
“Think about everything that happened. Your father left Terra and knew someone was following him. He knew he might die. Granak shows up and kills him and then he disables my ship so I can’t make it to Terra, except I do. Then we’re ambushed in the stairwell of the docking tower, and worst of all we find Granak hasn’t only landed on Terra, but he is working with the Sentinels.
“Clearly there’s someone behind all this, someone above Granak. He’s like me, a mercenary who works for the highest bidder. That same bidder hired the soldiers in the docking tower to attack us.”
“And you think it’s Reynold,” she said, her arms crossed.
“I don’t know for sure, Autumn. I mean, yes, he was on those stairs with us, getting shot at, but that could have been to sell the point that he was a target, not the ringleader.”
“I just don’t buy it,” she said. “You’ve known him for a day, haven’t you? I’ve known him my entire life. This is just the result of Terra and Gaia targeting each other.”
Her loyalty towards Scott was admirable, and the passion that she spoke with made me want to believe her, so why didn’t I? Scott was a soldier, past his prime from the looks of him. Was that the reason I didn’t trust him? The vague wrinkles on his face, the grey hair, and though he was ridden with guilt over his past, he held an outstanding amount of confidence. In a way, he reminded me of another old man I had met, and only now I realized it.
Was I set on accusing Reynold Scott because he reminded me of Raymond Erebos? Both of them were leaders in their own right. Erebos wasn’t a soldier, as far as I knew, but if he commanded one of his followers to jump out of an airlock, they would without hesitation. Erebos was the reason, the person responsible for my journey to Dawn, alongside his assassin, Cessa. He threatened me, nearly had me killed. I haven’t seen him since the battle on Dawn, but did my anxiety of knowing he was still out there pass subconsciously towards Scott?
But if Scott didn’t do it, then who hired all the soldiers? Could it have been this General Ambrose? Whoever he was, he spent a lot of time traveling from Terra to Gaia and overseeing the transition into peace, assuming the council succeeded in creating a treaty between worlds. But if he was traveling, how could he organize everything?
I rubbed at my temples. Stress acted like a pendulum inside my skull. The files on the computer looked like business receipts and meeting journals. I skimmed them as fast as I could. There wasn’t enough time for me to look over everything, but then the word “Starcade” caught my attention.
There were multiple Starcade transactions, all for enormous sums of money. Personnel transfers. Bulk orders of equipment. These all looked identical to the mercenary receipt I grabbed off of the man in the docking tower. This must have been what Damon found. The routing and account numbers meant little to me, but to Damon, an educated man of the council and everything surrounding them, he must have figured out who they belonged to.
“So what do you think?” Autumn asked quietly.
“I think I need the man or woman responsible for all of this to come out and just scream, ‘Hey! It’s me! I’m the one you’re looking for!’” I meant it, but Autumn laughed at the comment, which lifted my spirits.
“Let’s get out of here. There are some account numbers I want to look up. I think your father stumbled upon transaction reports paid for by the killer.”
“Nice job, Captain!”
The information wasn’t groundbreaking, but it proved her father found something and tried to make it right.
“What I don’t get is why all the public violence,” she said as we walked back to the door, a crease between her eyebrows. “If this person hired someone to go in and assassinate the council, wouldn’t that be enough to stop the treaty?”
“But they didn’t assassinate the council. They were literally torn limb from limb, like some kind of sadistic work of art. They didn’t care how public the news was.”
Something clicked inside me—the thought of assassins, violence, and everything happening around us. I thought about the public outcry for war, the battle in the stars. All of it, merged with the receipts, unlocked the answers. I ran into the coffee table and cursed as I stood and knocked over the chair.
“Flux me, they do care.”
“Come again?” she asked.
“They do care how public the news is,” I said as I tried to rub the pain away in my leg. “Whoever is doing this, they want people to know about it. They want people to know the council was brutally murdered. They wanted to cause a scene at the docking tower. Think of your father’s house, destroyed and turned inside out, but nothing stolen; his computer was even intact, nothing missing from the files as far as you know, right?”
“Right,” she said, nodding.
“I’m willing to bet someone is going to pay to have your father’s house featured on news segments and reports. People will know that his home was ransacked. This isn’t just about stopping the peace treaty. Everything done up to this point is fueling the tension, building up to a boiling point.”
Autumn stared at a blank spot on the wall, her eyes turning left and right as if she were putting her thoughts in front of her. When her mouth parted and her eyes widened, I knew she figured it out.
“This isn’t just to stop peace, but to ensure the war,” she said.
“That’s it. Whoever is behind all this, they’re antagonizing the people into calling for war. They’re going to cause chaos until both planets are ready to destroy each other. That’s why the attackers in the stairwell were dressed like Gaians.”
“Which means there’s more to come. Terra hasn’t launched a full scale war yet,” Autumn said, pacing around the room.
“We have to find out whose account number is in your father’s files, then go from there. We should also look at his calendar and see if there are any campaigns that were scheduled to take place. I’m betting the next set of events will be public, proof to the people that war is imminent and necessary. Then we have to contact the council and warn them.”
“There’s a parade . . . a week from now, I think,” Autumn said.
That was it. If the council intended to continue with this parade, I’d bet my ship there would be an attack.
A floorboard behind us creaked. I turned and something whizzed past me. Autumn’s body fell to the floor. I tried to draw my weapon, but Curtis aimed his gun at me and fired. The impact wasn’t painful, but more like a pinch from my midsection to head.
The sedative worked its way too fast, and I dropped shortly after she did.
As my mind blackened, I could see all the cogs move and take shape, the prospect of war on Terra’s doorstep, maybe even Gaia’s. Damon’s death, my trip here, Al’s damaged mainframe, and the survival of the council members; none of it would matter if someone didn’t take action against the bloodshed.
Fourteen
Jail cells. Brigs. Imprisonment. I knew the words as well as I knew how to fly my ship. The fact that I kept ending up in cells spoke to how careless I was in life. So I wasn’t surprised when I woke up on a less-than-soft cot to find myself surrounded by a red shield similar to the ones that blocked the hotel after the council murders. Autumn wasn’t here and only one other person stood outside the shield—a Sentinel guard.
“Where am I? Where’s Autumn?” I asked. I faced his back and when I spoke, he didn’t turn around. Either the shield was sound proof, or he was ignoring me. I didn’t have to wait long to find out. Moments later, Commander Scott entered the room, a deep scowl on his face and his hand on his firearm. I asked him the same questions. Scott didn’t answer either, but my bionic eye picked up minor fluctuations of his facial expressions. His scowl lowered a
small margin and his eyes narrowed. So he could hear me, unless he just didn’t like how my mouth moved.
Was I staring into the face of the council’s murderer, as I originally assumed? If so, maybe I could push some buttons, try to manipulate him into giving his true intentions away, but with what? What did I know that he didn’t? I stepped closer to him until the edge of my foot barely touched the barrier, and crossed my arms.
“Granak is already on Terra,” I told him, but he didn’t flinch. I couldn’t read his expression, something that time and experience taught him to hide well.
“Scott,” I said, losing my composure. “Did you hear me? Granak is already here. You told me you were going to keep surveillance on all the incoming ships. Either he was here before I showed up, or someone on your team allowed him access.”
He flinched. My comment about his team, suggesting that someone could betray him, hit a nerve.
“Tell me,” he said, his voice blanketed by a rasp, as if he hadn’t spoken aloud in hours. “Why are there two dead guards at Damon Derringer’s residence, and the third claims you and Autumn attacked them by surprise?”
“Yes, Scott,” I said, throwing my arms up over my head. “Autumn ordered the death of her father, and then she teamed up with me to ransack his house and steal all the valuables so I could get rich.”
“Mr. Quinn, don’t patronize me. I know Autumn would never wish her father harm, but you are a mercenary, and I don’t think it would be difficult for you to use her grief to manipulate her.”
“Scott,” I said, my tone harsh and forced. I stepped back and took a deep breath. I wasn’t going to win an argument, nor would I convince him by begging. I needed to use logic, and nothing more. Don’t lie, don’t try to plead with the man, but use something he can’t deny or question.
I dropped my hands to my sides and told him everything I knew. I told him everything about Granak, starting from our meet on Karth up to this point. I told him how I threatened Damon before he got shot. I explained everything that Autumn and I discovered during our trek. The only thing I didn’t tell him was the warm feelings I felt towards her. That, at least, deserved secrecy.
Antagonize (From the Logs of Daniel Quinn Book 2) Page 12