by John Mierau
She looked to Janeen's corpse and back to Lee, understanding what had transpired.
“Move,” he snarled.
The mech carried Tyler’s body behind the line of doctors, soldiers, and medical guinea pigs. Willard helped Boyd Thatcher, Padalecki had Carol Steeps and doctors, Tubby and Red each had a shoulder of Elard Baako, a head taller and twenty pounds heavier than each of them. The patients were weak, but monitors in the spacesuits they wore indicated fair health--despite Dr. Mentel’s best efforts.
Once abroad the elevator in the centre of the wheel, Lee shared Janeen’s bio-hack with the other wielder subjects. He didn’t know what to expect from Willard’s Alliance, only what the doctors and the limited records provided to them wanted him to know. He wanted to protect his people. That started with Willard and the three wielders. He’d work the rest out when he had to.
When the elevator opened, Lee walked at the front of the line, his hand around the neck of Mentel’s helmet, and not gently.
The airlock out of Mentel’s shielded module below the wheel opened onto the vacuum that had hollowed out the rest of Ryson. Instantly, emergency messages crowded radios and implants, informing them help was coming, the Fleet was stabilized and people desperately wanted to know Doctor Carina Mentel was alive and unharmed.
Lee let Willard report in. He wasn’t a captain in the eyes of the Alliance, only to his friend.
But he listened to the reports, and the hoarse and trembling voices who made them.
Mentel was zip-tied to an acceleration couch inside Willard’s small docking craft. Alex Kincaid, Calvin Bonner, and Taschen Lachman hovered compassionately over their charges. Willard left Padalecki in charge of the passenger section. Before the airlock to the cockpit closed behind them, Lee saw the private fighting back tears as she remote-piloted Tyler’s mech—and his coffin—against a wall.
Willard sat in his pilot’s chair and eased his skull back against a silver plate on his chair. His eyes glazed over. Instantly, the tender began to pull away froM Ryson.
Lee’s stomach and eyes needed a moment to accept the conflicting realities: the ship was accelerating through space without any sense of thrust of motion. So this was Jean Bargana’s legendary gravity drive.
Lee’s implant had gone silent outside Ryson. He queried the network, which told him he could not be who his implant said he was: Lehu Zhang had died on Reach, at the battle of the Row. Apparently, Mentel and the powers that be were keeping him a secret.
The wall parted under the window to Lee’s right, extruding a twin of Willard’s chair. That was fine with him; he sagged onto it. His eyes burned, but the world outside was new and terrifying. He could count seven spaceships all oriented in his direction; Willard was flying to the back of the pack. Some he recognized from before the war, some were new constructions. His implant roughly calculated twenty-five-kilometre buffers between each. There was too much drifting wreckage to count. Everything beyond was blackness, no stars. The only light was occasional bolts of red and orange lightning.
So this is the Fold. It looked even scarier with his real eyes than it did in the VR hallucinations his implant’s sandbox conjured up, of convoys past.
“Thank you, Angel,” he sighed.
“Had nothing better to…” Willard’s usual smart mouth failed him. “I’m sorry, Cap. You deserved a medal, the way you went out—the way we thought you went out. Protecting an Earther like that? That was… I was watching, you know? None of us ever forgot the example you set. Carson deserved your protection, but… You deserved better.”
Lee ghosted a smile. “Been a long time since somebody wasn’t trying to kill me.”
Willard sat up, veins in his neck rippling against under his skin. “It’s all supposed to be different now. We’re on the same side. This ain’t right, Lee! I’m going to reach out. A lot of us owe you, Lee, and we’re gonna find out who gave you to that troll and—”
At the back of the line of ships loomed a large form, suddenly haloed with color. He recognized it the Peter Cloke, and then he recognized the weird flares of gas from the drive section for what it was: as an explosion in vacuum.
“No,” Willard said, sounding sure he was right and at the universe was wrong. “The Reacher battalions live on Cloke!”
Two battalions meant thousands of lives. Lee was heartsick. Numb. He wondered how many of the friends that had mourned him were now racing to the grave before him.
The door behind them hissed open and Carina Mentel sauntered in. “I see they started without me.”
Padalecki grabbed her by the hair and dragged her backwards screaming.
Willard and Lee stared blank, helpless gazes, each hoping for some direction from the other.
“They started without her? What the hell is happen—?”
Light raged in the cockpit as Cloke’s drive section ripped itself apart. The ship wobbled, falling out of alignment with the rest of the Fleet.
Willard screamed a warning far too late to help anyone as explosions continued in a domino effect, shattering the spine of the ship. Flares of atmosphere lit the entire Fold, then died away…along with the crew of the Peter Cloke.
Then the shooting started.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
In-Fold
Alliance Intercept Convoy
Aboard Shadrach
The captain stood on the wrong side of his desk and stared hatefully at the woman in his chair. “I don’t have time for this, Miss Tenjin! People are dying out there right now!”
“It’s Special Investigator Tenjin actually,” Sameen corrected him coolly. “And people are always dying, Captain Joiner. Haven’t you noticed?”
His usually pale white expression was flush, but Sameen sniffed something else beneath the rage. Fear. Sweat dripped down Captain Joiner’s forehead, but it wasn’t hot in the captain’s cabin deep in the heart of the Earth ship Shadrach. He was on his third excuse for refusing to provide the code to his personal data store.
First, he only grudgingly recognized her authority—a quick ping from Fleet Council to his implant killed that excuse. Next, he claimed captain’s privilege to have her escorted off the ship, but they both knew that was bullshit. He’d moved quickly on to the third reason he didn’t want to recognize the warrant Fleet Council had sent along with her credentials: the convoy remained in a state of emergency following the violent Churn that had claimed three ships, and regular operations were suspended
She leaned back and put her feet on his desk. He raised his chin, eyes bright with outrage, but breaking from attention. Sameen rolled her eyes. “Relax, Joiner, special investigators aren’t senior officers, we’re outside the military chain of command. ‘At ease,’ man!”
Sameen froze for a fraction of a second as she felt her neural implant disconnect, but didn’t dare take her focus out of this room long enough to find out more.
“You want me ‘at ease’?” Captain Joiner snarled. “Fine, hear this! I’m sick and tired of you 'special investigators' lording it over real military.” Joiner didn’t look at all at ease when he towered over the desk. “Get the hell out of my office, bitch. I don’t have time for your accusations.”
Sameen’s smile grew. She loved when assholes gave up trying to outsmart her and went for pure intimidation.
“My people? Oh, you mean Reachers.” She furrowed her bows in mock confusion. “But aren’t we all one happy Alliance now? United in common purpose to stop the advance of the Takers before Reach gets barbecued too?”
“I am going to—!”
Sameen shot out of her chair. “What, Captain 'Skimmer'? What are you gonna do?”
The big man was taken aback by Sameen’s raw fury and fearlessness. Most people with a brain were, even when they outweighed her and thought they had a chance.
Joiner’s eyes glazed over for a second, then focused back on Sameen. “Look, maybe we got off on the wrong foot here.”
Sameen shook her head. “Nope, we got off on the perfect foot. I’ve k
ept you in here, scared to shit that I’ll get into your dirty secrets vault, while a friend of mine has tallied a complete inventory of Shadrach’s actual supplies against the list you submitted to Fleet.”
Joiner’s eyes bugged out, then he worked his nerve back up and laughed in her face. “There’s no one I don’t know on my ship except you, little miss ‘Special Investigator,’ and until I give you my codes, there’s no way in hell you can run that cross-check!”
Sameen dialled up her hearing: two sets of boots were racing down the hall. She’d have to wrap up the gloating.
“No wonder you didn’t last a year stealing supplies from the Alliance, Joiner. You’re just plain stupid. Can you chew bubblegum and use your implant at the same time? I said someone was digging up your bodies, not that they were on the boat.” She tapped her temple, drawing his eyes up. At the same time, she pushed her jacket off her right hip, clearing the holster on the small of her back for a draw.
The footsteps were getting louder now. Joiner smiled an ugly little smile. “Gee, did you feel that? I think Shadrach’s network must have accidentally on purpose dropped offline. I bet whatever error happened triggers a reboot. Then my guy in systems runs a complete scan before initiating contact again, just to be safe. You know what that means? It means your implant’s not talking to anyone right now. You’re not getting any data out of your head for at least, oh, twenty minutes. It’s a crying shame you’re going to slip and fall off a catwalk and land on your head, in about ten.”
Two burly officers appeared in the doorway. One of them wolf-whistled at her. The captain backed to one side and they joined him on the far side of the desk. “Hey, Captain,” said the other one, “you never said she was pretty. We got time for a little fun before she flies?”
Joiner made a face. “If Reacher skin is your thing, go for it. Make sure you spike her sandbox and RAM when you’re done.”
Sameen shook her head. “Unbelievable. I mean, I knew Earthers were stupid—” All three men bristled, “—but you guys take the cake.”
Both summoned slabs of muscle snarled and stepped forward. Sameen kept her cool, and held off drawing the pistol hidden in the small of her back.
Captain Joiner held up a hand, and the men backed off. “We took down the net, ship wide.” Joiner scowled at her, maybe one percent of his brain finally realizing Sameen really should be more worried than she was. “Shadrach’s empty, everyone's out cleaning up after all those poor dead Reachers on Cloke.”
Cloke? Cloke was still flying, she’d checked on all the Reacher ships before her meeting with Captain Joiner. Sameen filed that away for later scrutiny.
Joiner was warming up now, talking himself out of his suspicions. “…and when my men are done unloading in your pants, they’re gonna make sure nobody ever unloads so much as a spark from the shit in your skull.”
The two new assholes actually giggled.
“So what are we missing, you piece of Reacher trash?”
“How about this: my friend uploaded a replicating worm to your ship’s computer along with my search warrant.” She wiggled her eyebrows. “Search the search warrant’s metadata for files tagged ‘Shadrach Sloppy.’”
All three men froze. The muscle looked to their captain—turned instantly into scared whining children, the both of them.
“Hope you can spike every byte of memory storage in every door, coffeemaker, and flushing toilet sensor on this ship before the nets come back. Otherwise, you’re fucked, boys.”
Joiner’s face was shaking. “No, you’re fucked.” He started unbuckling his pants. “Once I’m done with you, I’ll take your advice: an EMP oughta do the trick. Hold her down, boys!”
Sameen drew and fired three shots, right to left. Kneecaps for the little boys, but a bullet in the dick for the captain.
She leaned over the desk and smiled. “Need a doctor, Joiner? Oh, I forgot. The net’s down.” She sat back down in the captain’s chair, ignoring the wails of agony from the other side of the desk. “Have to wait I guess,” she said, kicking her feet back up on the desk.
Sameen settled in to wait for the network to come back up, or for more crew to investigate the ruckus going on the captain’s cabin. She kept her gun in her hand at her side.
She thought about Joiner’s wisecrack -something about the Peter Cloke- and made a mental note to look into it.
How many ships and lives had the Churn taken, while she had been taking out the trash?
She’d know soon enough. In the meantime, her new friends kept her company with their screams. Nobody else heard, or maybe nobody else cared.
Twenty minutes later, Sameen’s implant reconnected, and immediately triggered her cochlear nerve. A woman’s voice yelled inside her head. “Sameen, are you there?”
Finally. Sameen stood and stepped over the gasping, bleeding war profiteers. “Fine. Just standing guard until my implant could upload my chat with Captain Joiner.” She stopped at the door and smiled down at them. “See ya, guys. I’ll send the MP’s down on my way out.” Sameen pushed off the door, and started down the hall. “Did your worm turn up buried treasure? An un-doctored ship’s manifest? The captain’s porn stash?”
“Sameen, get your—” the audio glitches, “to Return now! Dock at the hole in th—”
Sameen broke into a jog, checking the new flight plan her tech-wizard teammate had sent to her sandbox. ‘Hole in the wall’ was their shorthand for an out of the way meeting place at the top of access tube M-14. An out of the way corner of the flagship, perfect for off the record conversations and complete with a ship-sized airlock. “Hole in the wall, gotcha. Listen, I got something from Joiner. He said a lot of Reachers died on Cloke, you know anything about that, Frankie?”
“Willard—” the voice broke apart. Sameen’s implant struggled to fit the words together again, “—with Paladin. Can you hear me, Ghost? Lee’s still ali—”
What the hell? Lee Zhang, alive?
Frankie’s voice cut out completely as the network died for the second time in half an hour. Only this time it wasn’t just Shadrach affected. Not as deep inside Shadrach now, her implant reached out and pinged one of the many satellites spread through the Fleet. It was online, but someone was jamming the network, and the blackout zone was growing. Soon, the whole Fleet would be alone in the dark.
Sameen ran as fast as her unpowered plastic and metal left leg could take her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
In-Fold
Alliance Intercept Convoy
Aboard Flagship Return
Frankie Olander climbed hand over hand through access tube M-14, panting with fear and exertion.
Admiral Daku wasn’t answering her calls.
Multiple scramblers had put a pillow over her beautiful Fleet network, scrambling ship-to-ship communications and jamming up Return’s own internal network to a snail’s pace.
She reached a ledge and sagged onto it, drenched with sweat. Frankie’s lungs were for shit, completely devoid of the genetic markers for high-altitude adaptation. Even on an Earth ship like return, with its thicker atmosphere, just climbing half-way to her and Sameen's 'hole in the wall' had exhausted her. She was trembling from more than exhaustion, of course: she was no soldier. She wasn’t built for running in the dark, scared out of her wits. Too bad for her nerves, she also wasn’t built to stand by while people died by the thousands and her beautiful network was strangled.
The Reacher battalions training and living aboard Cloke—half the Reachers in the Fleet—all killed in an instant. She dropped her head against her hands, still wrapped around the ladder, and sobbed.
Now Daku wasn’t answering her calls, and she had to know what Willard and Sameen had told her.
Hurry your ass up, Frankie!
The world was always mad, always cruel. She’d married the wrong man, trusted the wrong government, found herself in the wrong place at the wrong time.
She chewed on the scar on her lip. Franzen’s gift.
It remi
nded her she made a difference. First with the resistance and then for the Alliance, Frankie had shone a light on the misdeeds of pricks in power. Her leaks and intel had allowed the resistance to get the people on their side, and push back the darkness.
Fleet Admiral Ashlan Daku had sought Frankie out and trusted her to do the same for her.
Seems like her reward for surviving one rebellion was getting dumped in the middle of another…mutiny? Or conspiracy?
The search terms ‘Mentel’ and ‘Wielder’ had started her down a new rabbit hole before the Reachers strangled Fleet net. Curious about the information blackout about the badly damaged Ryson, she put her network access to use-she'd built the thing, after all, and she was the Fleet Admiral's personal Special Investigator. She quickly found the redacted orders approving and later rescinding a very, very black project. She found the original sealed orders seconding Mentel and everything else on Ryson. All signed by a Fleet council member, no less.
Daku needed that name.
Whatever the override project started out as, it wasn’t the Fleet’s doing now. It was a rot, spreading inside the Fleet.
She shifted her weight back onto the ladder and kept climbing, ignoring the pain in her arms and legs. Return was a big ship. Information Division’s lab in the belly of the boat was five levels below her. The 'hole in the wall'—a maintenance airlock she used for the occasional quickie—and where her one-legged investigator friend in Special Investigations would be meeting her shortly—was still three levels up.
Then, it was another five levels up to knock on Fleet Council’s door once she and Sameen compared notes, and were sure about what they were chasing
She stared up the seemingly infinite ladder, then rested her forehead against a cold steel rung. God, I'm not built for this!
Frankie blinked the sweat out of her eyes and kept climbing.