Sir. Clarification requested. Authorities include relief of current commander?
Butler
I looked at it a long moment before I hit send, and sat there for another after I completed the action and the screen cleared.
Shit.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I lay wide awake on my sweat-soaked sheets at 0415 the next morning. I’d screwed up my drinking the night prior. The secret to drinking yourself to sleep is to drink just the right amount. You need to have enough to get you to sleep, but not so much that you pass out and then wake up four hours later, unable to get back to sleep. It was an art . . . and usually I was a master.
The pills that Elliot gave me threw me off, I think. After taking one and having one whiskey, I felt a little loopy. Some people would have taken that as a sign to stop drinking. I ignored it and had another, because I couldn’t possibly be drunk off one drink. I didn’t take the pills during the day because I didn’t like how they made my head feel fuzzy. Fuzzy at night was perfectly fine. Apparently I was wrong.
After a few more minutes of pretending I had any chance of slumber, I decided I may as well get up and do some work. I checked the news and found nothing from Plazz, which was good, then popped open my messages to see if I got anything from Sharon. I needed to write her. However, I stopped when I saw the first message in the queue had Serata’s name on it.
I touched the screen to open it.
Regarding your request for clarification: Do whatever you need to do.
Serata
That could mean anything. Hell, the message was for me, and even I wasn’t sure what it meant. Why was he being so vague? He certainly meant it. He’d never have sent it if he didn’t. Not Serata. But by telling me to do what I needed to do, he gave me a lot of leeway. Either he didn’t know what to do and assumed I’d have better information, or he knew me well enough that he thought he knew what I would do. Maybe both.
I sipped my coffee and brought up the next map of Karikov’s compound. It showed heat signatures. Infrared. A set of buildings with similar characteristics clustered together in a compound, but didn’t show anything unexpected. There was one large facility, maybe two klicks away from the others, which did seem odd, and I pondered it for a bit. Maybe a lower-level headquarters collocated with the main. I didn’t know enough about Karikov’s command structure to say for sure.
I called the same location up in high resolution from a daylight pass. The lone building looked different from that perspective, barely military at all. It had a low silhouette with a slightly rounded roof. I hadn’t seen anything like it during any of my deployments. That didn’t necessarily mean anything. Special Ops did lots of things I hadn’t seen before. I was merely pondering before, but now it seriously made me curious.
I pulled it up in the energy spectrum. The building shone three times as bright as any other building, including what I believed to be Karikov’s headquarters. A building shouldn’t use that much power. I flipped the map back to the high res, but didn’t notice anything I didn’t see on my first pass.
I went to the same set of maps a month prior. Same thing. Nighttime, no change. Another month prior, still similar. Before I knew it my alarm went off in the other room: 0630. Time to get up. I shut it down, and stopped to make another coffee. On a whim I stopped at the comm and buzzed Alenda.
“Major Alenda.” She answered after one buzz.
“Alenda. Butler here. You awake?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Get over here. I want your take on something.”
“On the way, sir.”
I didn’t know how long she’d take. She could have still been in bed and she’d have said she was awake once I asked. Any good officer would. She buzzed my door five minutes later.
“Good morning, sir.” She wore a pressed uniform, sharp as ever.
“Look at this. What do you make of this low building here?” I showed her the high-res picture, first from overhead, then offset at an oblique angle.
She considered it for a moment. “Never seen it before, sir.”
“Me either.” I pulled up the electromagnetic emissions.
“Wow.” She got closer to the screen to read something. “That’s a lot of power.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. What on Cappa would need that much energy?”
She scratched her head. “I don’t know, sir. I wonder . . .” she trailed off.
“What?” I moved closer so I could see around her.
“Yesterday I told them to pull all the flight tracks from the last week. That looks like a landing pad there, on the west side of the building. I wonder if any of the tracks will correlate. Maybe we can tell what it is by seeing what lands there.”
“You’re a genius, Alenda. I don’t care what the other officers in your outfit say about you.”
Alenda turned to me, narrowing her eyes.
“It’s a joke,” I said. “You want coffee?”
“Yes, sir. I’ll get it. Let me use the terminal for a moment first, and get them to start dropping the radar tracks into a form we can use.”
I waved her off. “I’ll get it. How do you take it?”
“Black, sir.”
I rinsed out another tumbler and fixed Alenda a coffee. I went to sit down after that, but quickly stood again. Lack of sleep, half a hangover, and caffeine made me edgy. Not to mention being given authority over the entire sector, which I’d never seen happen before.
“We’ve got about two hours to wait,” said Alenda, after maybe ten minutes.
I finally sat down. “Waiting. Great.”
“You have kids, sir?” asked Alenda, probably trying to take my mind off waiting.
“I do,” I said. “Two. Boy and a girl. And a grandson.”
“Damn, sir. You don’t look old enough for grandkids.”
I chuckled. “You lie. But also, thirteen years in cryo will do that to you. He’s two. My son’s son. He and his parents live near my wife. She’s quite happy about that.”
“That’s awesome, sir. What about your daughter?”
“She was killed in action,” I said.
“Oh, shit, sir. I’m sorry.”
I took a sip of coffee. “It’s okay. It happened a long time ago.”
Alenda sat quietly for a moment, drinking from her plastic tumbler. “If you don’t mind me asking, sir. Where did it happen?”
I tried to force a smile, but probably failed. I normally kept this sort of thing forced down, didn’t think about it. Alenda couldn’t have known that. It was a natural question. “I don’t mind. It happened on Cappa.”
Awkward silence followed. What else would happen after that exchange? I hated that more than anything, at this point. The awkwardness. Some things people just don’t talk about.
“Did you get anywhere with the squadron and who they flew where?” I asked, after a couple moments, to break the tension.
“Yes, sir.” Lex looked relieved at the chance to change the subject as well. “They said they’d get me some information today. I’d call them, but it’s the squadron, so there’s no way there are any leaders up at this hour.”
“Good point.” Pilots never got up early if they could avoid it. I finished my coffee and thought about another, then thought better of it. “Damn. Guess I’ll go to the gym. Why don’t you get the tracks, get some breakfast, see what you can get from the flying folk, and meet me back here in three or four hours?”
I felt a bit ridiculous going to the gym with three armed guards, but I forced my way through it. Then, after a shower, I decided to head over to see Chu before Alenda made it back.
When I arrived in the Special Ops area this time, they immediately sent someone to wake the major. She came in dressed in full uniform, like she’d been up already and expecting me.
“What’s the word?” I asked.
“Can we talk in my office, sir?”
“Sure.” From the tone of her voice, I assumed she had bad news. I expected all al
ong that Karikov would say no, so I’d prepared for it.
“Sir, Colonel Karikov sends his apologies, but he has multiple meetings on the surface daily. It’s a delicate time with our allies, and he feels that his leaving to come back up spaceside would adversely impact the mission.”
“Those were his words?” I didn’t buy it. It sounded too much like a statement I’d give a reporter.
“I’m paraphrasing, sir.”
“You talked to him personally?”
“No, sir. But I talked to the XO.”
“I wanted Karikov to get the request directly, so I could be sure it made it to him.”
“Sorry, sir. The XO assured me that he delivered your message.”
“You trust him?”
“The XO? Yes, sir. He and Colonel Karikov have served together for years. Multiple assignments. Talking to the XO is as good as talking to the boss.”
Again, no surprise. I thought about it, considered faking a blowup and demanding that she get me on directly with Karikov. I wasn’t sure that would be productive, though, so I held it in reserve in case I needed it later. “Can I get a phone call?”
“Yes, sir. We can set that up anytime, as long as it doesn’t conflict with his obligations to the Cappans. The Cappan elders are very sensitive to slights, and sometimes they take a changed meeting as an offense.”
“Sure. I get it. See what you can work out.”
“Will do, sir.” I didn’t really believe her boss would follow through, but it didn’t hurt to give her a chance.
Truth was, I didn’t have other options at the moment.
By the time I got back to my room, Alenda was there waiting.
“Tell me something good,” I said.
“Working on it, sir. I’ve got a list of the doctors who either traveled with Colonel Elliot regularly or made trips to the surface on their own. What do you think that’s going to tell us?”
“Probably nothing. But if I gather enough data, I’m going to eventually get lucky and it’s going to be useful.”
“I see, sir.” From her tone, I didn’t think she actually saw. I have that problem, sometimes. People think I’m joking when I’m actually serious.
“It’s one of my skill sets, Lex. I can’t really explain it. I fill my brain with stuff, and expect that it will pop back out when it matters.”
“Yes, sir. What do you want me to do with the names of the doctors?”
I thought about it. “How many are there?”
“Six. Doctors McDaniel, Jones, Emory, Kepple, and Kwan. And of course Doctor Elliot.”
“They’ve made multiple trips?”
“Yes, sir. All of them. Kwan only started two months back. It’s possible that she just rotated in, though.”
“Makes sense, Elliot said they all do twelve-month individual tours.”
Alenda frowned.
“What?”
“I’ve been here ten months, sir. A little more than that. Colonel Elliot has been here since before I got here. So if she did a twelve-month tour, she’d be due to rotate out any day.”
“Huh. Maybe the commander is the continuity. Maybe she does eighteen months. I’ll ask her about it the next time I see her. Print out the names of the docs and let me have a copy. I’ll see if any of them are on the list of folks I’m interviewing tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir.” Lex touched the screen and my device vibrated in response.
“Thanks,” I said. “Can we pull up the radar tracks, now?”
“We can, sir, but I don’t think we’re going to find much. Apparently we don’t track the really low-level stuff from up here. The Cappans control that part of the airspace since their own planes only fly inside the atmosphere. So we can see the general area where ships are headed, but not with the accuracy we’d need in order to tell us what pad they landed on.”
“So what’s it tell us?”
“Sir . . . it tells us that there’s an armada of ships going into that area. Mostly Spec Ops, but a lot of contracted stuff too.”
“That’s not really that surprising.” Special Ops guys had a huge budget and expedited contracting standards, so they tended to contract anything they needed.
“No, sir. But this one is.” She touched the screen and brought up a single track.
“What am I looking at here?”
“Sorry, sir. This is a track from earlier this week. When we hover over it, we get the flight information.”
“And?”
“This is Colonel Elliot’s shuttle.”
“Flying right into the area of Karikov’s headquarters.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I think maybe I’d have led with that instead of the list of doctors,” I said.
“I wanted to nail a big finish, sir.”
“You’re turning into a smart-ass, Alenda.”
“Sorry, sir.” She tried to hold it, but a quick smirk escaped.
“Don’t be. It’s a good look on you. I wouldn’t try it out on Stirling, though.”
“No, sir. That wouldn’t go well.”
“Right. So Elliot flew to meet Karikov. This week.”
“We can’t say that for sure, sir. But she definitely flew close.”
I paced a bit. “Does Karikov have a clinic? I mean, if he did, it wouldn’t respond to MEDCOM anyway. He’d have his own folks staffing it. Maybe something for the Cappans? An outreach project?”
“Not sure our docs could work on Cappans, sir.”
I bit my lip on one side. “Yeah, me neither. I think I might need to visit the hospital again. Hardy should be awake today.”
“Roger, sir. I’m going to visit the squadron and see if maybe I can find the pilot who flew Colonel Elliot. He or she could tell me where they went.”
“Good thought. Be careful.”
“What do you mean, sir? It’s the squadron.”
“And someone attacked me. We don’t know why. Watch yourself. Stick to areas with other people around.”
Alenda looked at me, and I didn’t see fear. It made me worry more.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Hardy sat propped up by a couple of pillows in his elevated bed, smiling when I walked in. Two pretty women in hospital gear stood nearby, which explained his expression.
“Sir,” he said.
“Don’t get up,” I joked.
He looked at me, puzzled. Young people don’t get my humor anymore. It’s time to retire.
“Sir, this is Lieutenant Morietta, the physical therapist who’s going to be working with me. We were going over some of the training I’ll be doing.”
He was lying. If she’d explained the pain he’d experience over the next week, he wouldn’t be smiling. But I didn’t call him out on it. Let the young man have his chance to screw things up on his own. “Good to meet you, Morietta. Take good care of my boy here.”
“Will do, sir,” said the taller of the two women. “We’ll let you two have the room.”
I waited for them to leave, noticing Hardy follow them out with his eyes. “You know she’s going to torture you, right?”
“I think I’m okay with that, sir.”
I laughed. “Good to see they didn’t blow up your spirit. How are you feeling?”
“I’m okay, sir. They kept me under until most of the fast-healing finished. It just aches, now. Stiff. I feel like if I could walk it out, I’d be good.”
“Yeah. Don’t do that. Wait for the PT. Do what she says.”
“Yes, sir.”
I fixed his eyes with mine. “I’m serious, Hardy. You’re going to want to push it, and you’re going to want to show off for her. Don’t do it. I say this even though I firmly understand that it’s pointless, since you’re young and stupid. And when I was in your place, I did exactly the same thing.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The reason I’m telling you is so that when you ignore me, and push it, and you really, really hurt, I can call you a dumbass and not feel bad about it.”
He laughed.
“Understood, sir. I’m sorry about all this.”
I waved dismissively. “You got unlucky, Hardy. It happens. If it happens too many times, people will stop wanting to ride with you. We had one guy who got hit four times. Nobody would take him out again. But it’s too early for that yet. It’s one time. It’s war. Bad shit happens. Besides, it’s more my fault than yours. I should have known it was coming.”
“How could you know that, sir?”
“I don’t know.” I sighed. “But I should have. I missed something, somewhere. Probably a lot of things.”
“So the investigation isn’t going well?”
“I’m not sure. I think I’ve found some threads to pull, I’m just not sure what’s attached to the ends of them yet. But a lot of them seem to be connected to the hospital.”
“What do you mean, sir?” asked Hardy.
“Some of the doctors have taken trips planetside. I have no idea why, but it feels funny. Never mind that, though. You worry about getting better. I don’t want to have to answer to General Serata as to why I broke his aide.”
“I’m not his aide anymore, sir. I’ll get a new job when I get back.”
“Yep. And if you don’t do what I say and take your recovery seriously, that job will be as a night clerk in Student Command Headquarters.”
Hardy smiled. “That’s harsh, sir.”
“It is. I’d never do that to you. You’re a damn war hero.”
His face went a little dark. “I got blown up, sir. I never even saw the enemy.”
“Speaking for war heroes everywhere, you’re not going to want to lead with that.”
“I don’t want to lie about it, sir.”
“You don’t have to lie.” I pulled a chair away from the wall and sat down. “Listen to me. This is important. When you go home . . . even before you go home, but to a lesser extent . . . people are going to want to talk to you about your experience. All the time. It’s going to happen so much that you’re going to get sick of it, and it’s going to frustrate you, because it’s all anybody is going to want to talk about. It’s not their fault. They’ve read about it, seen it in the holos, read it on the news feeds, but obviously they’ve never actually experienced it. It’s new and different to them, and you’re right there.
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