Silent Order: Iron Hand

by Jonathan Moeller

  “Here,” she said, patting one of the pockets on her jumpsuit. “A credit drive that will transfer funds to any Mercator-compatible bank. Anonymously.”

  “The sort preferred by all good covert agents,” said Bishop. “What is your plan?”

  “To improvise,” said March. “Any questions?”

  There were none.

  ###

  A short time later, the lift car returned to the spaceport complex, and Heath, Heitz, Karlman, Bishop, and the remaining Ronstadt men left the car. Heath headed for the Tiger’s docking bay at a run. Karlman departed with his men, and March suspected that the Ronstadt supervisor might have his own plan for vengeance.

  Lorre might escape with the ransom, but he wouldn’t get very far.

  “Good luck, Captain March,” said Heitz. “You’re an idiot, but good luck.”

  “Thanks,” said March. He turned to Bishop. “You had better head back to the restaurant. If those goes sour someone will need to know what happened.”

  “Good luck,” said Bishop. “Come back, and you’ll have a free meal on the house.”

  March laughed once. “There’s a reason to live.”

  “Anne would be glad to see you,” said Bishop with a wink.

  “I’m sure,” said March. He looked at Roanna, who stood with her arms wrapped around herself, face tight with fear. “Come on.”

  He walked back into the lift car with Roanna, set it for Dome 12, and closed the doors. The display panel informed him that the journey would take twelve minutes, and then the car shivered into motion.

  “Anne,” said Roanna at last

  “What about her?” said March.

  “She’s the woman at Mr. Bishop’s restaurant,” said Roanna. “The one in the tight skirt.”

  “She said you were polite to her,” said March.

  “I was raised to be polite,” said Roanna, staring at the wall. “Is she…” She thought about it for a moment. “Is she your girlfriend?”

  “No,” said March.

  “Then she’s not the reason that you…”

  Her voice trailed off.

  “The reason that I what?” said March.

  “That you turned me down,” she said in a quiet voice.

  “No,” said March.

  She laughed a little. “I would have felt better if it was. A girl doesn’t like to be rejected, even if the man rejecting her is keeping his head, and she is not.”

  “This isn’t the time to discuss such things,” said March.

  “Lorre might kill us both,” said Roanna. “There might never be a time to discuss anything ever again.”

  “Which means it is especially not the time to discuss it,” said March.

  “This is my fault, isn’t it?” she said.

  “What?” said March.

  At last, she looked at him, her blue eyes full of pain. “I got all those men killed, didn’t I?”

  “No,” said March. “You didn’t.”

  She blinked, puzzled. “You’re just trying to make me feel better.”

  “Do I really seem like the kind of man who makes women feel better?” said March.

  She blinked again, then laughed, sobbed a little, laughed again, and pulled herself together.

  “No,” said Roanna. “No, I think no one in my life has ever spoken as bluntly to me as you have. Maybe I would be a better person if more people were so blunt to me. Maybe I wouldn’t have gotten those men killed.”

  “You didn’t get them killed,” said March. “Lorre did. He’s the one who dosed them with infiltrator drones, and the infiltrator drones are the ones who killed the Ronstadt men.”

  Roanna shook her head, black hair lashing around her face. “They were only there because of me.”

  “No,” said March. “They were there because of your brother.”

  She stared at him.

  “Your brother dabbled in dangerous things and got himself into trouble,” said March.

  “He did,” said Roanna.

  “And you came out here to rescue him,” said March.

  “You must think that was stupid,” said Roanna, looking down again.

  “Yes,” said March. She flinched. “Stupid, but noble.”

  Roanna laughed a little again. “High praise.”

  “There are worse things in life than stupid and noble,” said March. “No, if anyone is to blame for this, it’s Lorre. Or, to be blunt, your brother. He did something stupid and a lot of people suffered for it.” He shook his head. “I hope he’s worth it.”

  “He is!” said Roanna. “He’s a good man, I swear, he…he really is. He just got in over his head. He wanted to do something big with his life, something grand…”

  “He should have stayed home and attended to his duty,” said March.

  They looked at each other.

  “Yes,” said Roanna. “Maybe I should have, too. I should have stayed home.” She took a ragged breath. “But I had to help Thomas. I had to. Can you understand that?”

  “I can,” said March. “What’s done is done. We have to be ready. You still have your pistol?”

  She took one more deep breath and nodded, touching the gun at her hip.

  “Keep it ready and in your hand,” said March. “And follow my lead. If I tell you to get inside an airlock, do it.”

  “Because you will have told Heath to blow up the dome,” said Roanna.

  “If he aims right, the rod should go right through the dome and rip open the top,” said March. “We should have a few seconds to get behind an airlock before the dome depressurizes. If not, that’s what the masks are for.” He shrugged. “We don’t have to worry about being blown up.”

  “That’s…comforting,” said Roanna.

  March grunted and checked his rifle again. “We just have worry about what Lorre might do.”

  “That’s less comforting,” said Roanna.

  “Yes,” said March. “There’s not time to put together a good plan. We will just have to improvise.”

  They rode in silence for a few minutes.

  “Captain March?” said Roanna.

  “Yes?” said March.

  “Thank you for all of this,” said Roanna.

  March shrugged. “It’s my job.”

  “Even so,” said Roanna. “I know you hate yourself, but you shouldn’t. You’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty.”

  March snorted. “I don’t hate myself.”

  “Men who don’t hate themselves don’t get annoyed when someone sees them with their shirt off,” said Roanna.

  “Men of sense don’t appear half-undressed in front of unmarried young noblewomen,” said March.

  She laughed. “If nothing else, Captain March, you are a man of sense.”

  March said nothing. If he was a man of sense, he would have killed Lorre on Antioch Station and saved himself a world of trouble. And if he was a man of sense, maybe he wouldn’t be rushing to this confrontation.

  Roanna might have a point.

  March pushed aside the thoughts. What was done was done. Regret was useless, and it was time to focus on the task at hand.

  The car slowed as it approached Dome 12.

  “Let me go first,” said March. “Draw your pistol, but don’t fire unless I say.”

  Roanna nodded and drew her gun.

  “Also, please don’t shoot me in the back,” said March.

  She almost smiled. “I promise.”

  The car stopped, and the door hissed open, stale air washing into the lift. March snapped up his rifle, looking through the door, but he saw nothing but a dim corridor, the only illumination from emergency lights along the floor.

  “Come on,” said March. He stepped into the corridor, leading the way, and Roanna trailed after him. She made more noise than he would have liked, but she was still quieter than he would have expected.

  The corridor opened into Dome 12, the musty smell sharper. The dome overhead was about a hundred meters across, built of transparent metal braced w
ith thick gray beams, the stars blazing overhead. The buildings below the dome were laid out in a round mall around a courtyard. Once a hydroponic garden had dominated the center of the courtyard, but now it was nothing more rusting equipment.

  “Where is he?” whispered Roanna, her voice tight with strain.

  March came to a decision. Any moment Lorre would detect them. Almost certainly he would take lethal action as soon as he felt safe to do so. March needed a distraction, and he needed it soon.

  “Heath,” he whispered, tapping his earpiece. “Fire in exactly ten minutes.”

  “Acknowledged,” came Heath’s voice.

  “Are you sure?” whispered Roanna.

  “No,” said March.

  Roanna digested this. “Where do you think Thomas is?”

  “That building, likely,” said March, looking at a two-story building on the other side of Dome 12. “Smallest windows. Most defensible place here, and it probably has an airlock connected to his ship. If I was hiding out, I would…”

  A burst of static went over his earpiece. Their communications were being jammed.

  Then static crackled from somewhere in the dome, and March spotted the speaker mounted over the door of the two-story building.

  “Captain March, Lady Roanna, welcome,” boomed Lorre’s voice.

  “Do you think he can hear us?” said Roanna.

  “I can hear you just fine, Lady Roanna,” said Lorre. “Please divest yourself of your weapons and come inside. I’m afraid, for the sake of your brother’s health, that you must come unarmed. It would be a pity if a stray plasma bolt impacted his chest or skull.”

  “Do as he says,” said March.

  Roanna grimaced but dropped her pistol on the ground.

  March had a lot of weapons, and he took his time removing them, stacking them upon the ground one by one. He kept a running count in his head as he did. Ten minutes came to six hundred seconds, and the training of an Iron Hand ensured he could keep an accurate count in his head.

  That meant he had an operational plan. He had to locate Lorre and Thomas Vindex. Once he did, he to stall for the remainder of the time until Heath fired the railgun. And once Heath fired the railgun, March would need to neutralize Lorre and make sure Roanna and Thomas survived.

  Right now, that meant stalling.

  March divested himself of his weapons as slowly as he could, which took seventy-five seconds. Roanna watched him with a puzzled expression, but March could not share his plan with her with Lorre listening.

  “All right,” he called. “Weapons gone.”

  “Though an Iron Hand is never unarmed, is he not?” said Lorre. “Come into the building, please. Captain March first.”

  “Follow me,” said March.

  Ninety-six seconds had passed.

  March crossed the mall and walked to the door. It swung open at his approach, revealing a darkened lobby illuminated only by a few emergency lights. A row of old chairs stood against one wall, and a receptionist’s desk again another. A door behind the receptionist’s desk led into a corridor lined with offices, and a flight of stairs led up to the second floor.

  One hundred and sixteen seconds had passed.

  Simon Lorre stood next to the office hallway, a plasma pistol in his hand and pointed at March. He looked just as he had on Antioch Station, big and scar-faced, but this time he was smiling, and his gun did not waver. March was fast, but there was no way he could cross the lobby before Lorre pulled the trigger.

  “Face to face again, eh?” said Lorre. “Rare in our line of work, isn’t it?”

  “Conversation isn’t in our line of work,” said March. “We have the ransom, and we’re here for Lord Thomas.”

  “Right to the point,” said Lorre. “I appreciate that.” He turned his gaze towards Roanna, though his gun remained pointed at March. His eyes flicked up and down Roanna’s body in a proprietary manner. Roanna remained stony-faced. “Do you have the ransom, Lady Roanna?”

  She held up the credit drive. “Where is my brother?”

  “I think we can begin now,” said Lorre. “Lord Thomas! Please join us.”

  One hundred and forty-seven seconds had passed.

  A door opened in the offices, and a young man in a ship crewer’s jumpsuit emerged. He had a lean build with thick black hair and deep blue eyes, and the family resemblance to Roanna was obvious. Roanna often wore a cool mask, but an arrogant sneer was Thomas Vindex’s default expression.

  He did not look as if he had been mistreated, and he was not restrained.

  Thomas stopped at Lorre’s right side. He looked at March, dismissed him, and shifted his eyes to Roanna, his sneer intensifying.

  The cold suspicion in March’s mind hardened into certainty.

  “Thomas,” said Roanna, relief flooding her voice. “Oh, thank God. Thank God. You’re all right.” She took a step forward, her arms coming up for a hug.

  “Stay right where you are,” said Thomas, his voice cracking like a whip.

  Roanna froze, puzzlement coming over her face. “What? Thomas? I…”

  “I said,” said Thomas, drawing a plasma pistol and pointing it at her chest, “to stay right where you are.”

  Roanna stared at him, bewildered hurt going over her face. “Thomas? What are you doing?”

  “I am acting for the greater good,” said Thomas, smiling for the first time.

  “Ah,” said March. “They always say that.”

  One hundred and eighty seconds had passed.

  “Why are you pointing a gun at me?” said Roanna in a small voice.

  “Because, sister,” said Thomas, “you are going to help me bring the Revolution of the Final Consciousness to Calaskar.”

  Chapter 9: The Glory of the Revolution

  “What?” said Roanna. “No, no, no. Why are you saying those things?”

  Thomas laughed with contempt, while Lorre’s attention remained on March. “Poor little Roanna. You never were terribly bright, were you? Your whole life is dresses and banquets and stupid little social events. A brood mare for the upper classes of Calaskaran society. That was your entire purpose in life. You ought to thank me for this. You will have a chance to help the Revolution bring Calaskar under the guidance of the Final Consciousness.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Roanna. “I brought your ransom. I came here to rescue you. I…”

  “This never was a ransom, was it?” interrupted March.

  It was a golden opportunity. Thomas Vindex was all but quivering with gloating emotion. If March could keep him talking for another six and a half minutes, then Thomas would still be standing there pontificating when Heath fired the railgun.

  Thomas’s gaze turned towards March, and the contempt upon his face intensified as the two hundredth second passed.

  “What a pathetic man you are,” said Thomas. “You were an Iron Hand, the elite of the Final Consciousness. You were the vanguard of the Revolution, its harbinger and its defender. You were part of the Final Consciousness, the only true god that humanity will ever know. And you threw it all away to join a wretched little kingdom with obsolete social structures and its shabby little secret service.”

  “It seems the traditional education of a Calaskaran noble,” said March, “has given you the ability to dress envy up in pretty words.”

  Two hundred and thirty-three seconds had passed. Thomas Vindex clearly liked to talk.

  “Envy?” said Thomas, incredulous. “Envious of what?”

  “Of your father,” said March. “Of your older brothers.”

  Thomas laughed, but there was a shrillness in his laughter that told March the insult had hit the mark. “Of my father? A dusty old fool…”

  “Thomas!” said Roanna, but he kept talking.

  “And my brothers? Pompous fools strutting about in their Calaskaran uniforms and spouting outdated religious superstitions…”

  “Men who did their duty,” said March, “and you were too weak to follow in their path. They had al
l the same chances you did, all the exact same opportunities, but they made something of them, and you screwed them up.” Thomas’s face darkened. “You screwed them up, and you ran away to the Machinists to have a tantrum, and…”

  “Shut up,” said Thomas, his voice low and dark.

  “You ran away to have a tantrum,” said March, “and Lorre’s using you because you’re too stupid to realize that you’re being used.”

  Two hundred ninety-eight seconds had passed. March just had to stall for five more minutes.

  “I said,” said Thomas, “to shut up.”

  “Do you really think you’ll get what Lorre promised you?” said March. “That he’ll join you to the Final Consciousness? No. They’ll feed your body into the organic recyclers or use you as slave labor in the foundries or the fields. Or he’ll just shoot you and dump you out of an airlock because you were too stupid to see what…”

  “I said to shut up!” roared Thomas, stepping forward.

  Lorre laid a hand on Thomas’s forearm, and the younger man subsided.

  “Comrade Thomas,” said Lorre, using the pompous style of address Machinist cells liked to affect among themselves. “I urge restraint.”

  “But…” said Thomas.

  “I also urge you,” said Lorre, “not to come within the grasp of an Iron Hand.”

  Thomas blinked, chagrin going over his expression as he realized the depth of his folly.

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, Comrade Simon. You are right. I…almost acted rashly.”

  “Come along,” said Lorre, gesturing with his pistol towards March and Roanna. “Both of you. Into the hallway.”

  “Aren’t you going to tell her why, Comrade Thomas?” said March, putting scorn into the title.

  “What?” said Thomas.

  Three hundred and thirty seconds.

  “She flew out all this way to rescue you,” said March. “Aren’t you going to tell her why you’re going to kill her? Or are you going to let your sister go to her death believing you to be the moronic dupe of a far smarter man…”

  “I’m not going to kill her, you idiot,” said Thomas.