by Jay Allan
“You expect me to just sit here while you do whatever it is you are planning?”
“As I do not intend to give you any other options at present, that is exactly what I expect, admiral.” Stark put his hands on his knees and looked at Garret. Let us make the best of this, shall we? Things could be worse.” There was a passing coldness in Stark’s voice that chilled even Garret’s battle-hardened soul. “It is fortunate that I do not need more from you. As I am sure you are aware, there are occupants of this building in rather more distress than you right now. We have numerous methods of…persuasion, some of which are quite unpleasant.”
Garret’s eyes narrowed, focusing like lasers on Stark’s. He was trying to decide if he’d just been subtly threatened. “Whatever you are planning, it won’t work. You will never get away with it.”
Stark rose slowly from the chair. “Admiral, I sympathize with your frustration, however I assure you that we are both loyal servants of the state. I am not, as you so pointedly put it, trying to get away with something. I am doing what must be done for the security of the Alliance.” He looked down at Garret. “We need not be enemies, admiral.”
Garret stood up, his eyes never leaving Stark as he did. His legs were still a little wobbly, but he held himself rigidly, not showing any weakness. “Are you suggesting that I would take any actions contrary to the security of the Alliance?” His cool composure was cracking just a bit. Augustus Garret had served in the navy his entire adult life; he sacrificed everything else important to him, even the only woman he’d ever loved…duty was all that mattered to him. “I am no traitor.” His tone was icy, coldly threatening.
Stark stepped back a bit; the two had been standing close to each other, and he wanted to defuse Garret’s temper. “Admiral, I meant no offense.” He paused, trying to decide how much he wanted to say. “But we are in uncertain times, and we may have to take specific actions, actions I was uncertain you would be willing to be a part of. Let’s just leave it at that for now.” He turned and walked toward the door.
“If you think you can turn the navy into your blunt instrument, you’re going to have to do a lot more than kidnap me.” Garret was struggling to maintain his cool. The thought of his beloved navy being a tool of Alliance Intelligence was too much to bear. He tried to push the thoughts back, but he couldn’t banish the visualizations in his head…images of naval ships bombarding Alliance colony worlds. Killing the very people they had fought so hard to protect.
“Get some rest, admiral. It will help you recover from the after effects of the drugs.” He looked at the scanner next to the door. “Open.”
“Yes, Number One.” The computer’s tone was ominous, part of the overall design scheme of the detainee levels. Even prisoners like Garret weren’t supposed to be too comfortable. Of course, those on the lower levels had much more pressing things to worry about than a nasty-sounding computer.
“We will speak later, admiral.” Stark didn’t wait for a response; he walked through the door as soon as it opened, and it slid shut behind him.
“So? Are we ready, Number One?” Standing in the hallway was Augustus Garret. Not the real one, imprisoned in the cell just beyond the closed door, but the one Gavin Stark had invented. As close an imitation as modern plastic surgery could make from one of Stark’s agents who was the right basic size and shape.
“Are you ready? That is the more relevant question.” Stark’s eyes bored into those of the fake Garret. “It is essential that you pass for the admiral. This is a dangerous game we are playing.”
“I am ready.” He looked and sounded exactly like Garret, down to the cold stare and commanding presence. “Shall I go?”
Stark looked him up and down, almost forgetting it wasn’t the admiral he was facing. It was uncanny, his own creation, and even he was taken in. The imposter had Garret’s small personal mannerisms nailed perfectly – posture, expressions, fluidity of movement. “There are two vacancies on the Directorate at present. If you are successful in your mission, you will occupy one of these.”
“Thank you, Number One.” The agent, whose real name was Zander Alexi, was genuinely surprised. He knew there would be great rewards for success – that was how Alliance Intelligence operated. But he hadn’t considered a seat on the Directorate. The wealth and privilege – and power – that came with such an appointment were almost incalculable. “I will succeed.” Anything else was unthinkable…he knew the penalties for failure would be draconian. That, also, was how Alliance Intelligence operated.
“I hope so.” Stark’s voice was still calm and even, but a reptilian coldness crept in. “I trust you are aware of the consequences if you are not successful. Assuming, of course, that the navy leaves me enough of you to punish.”
Alexi swallowed hard. “Yes, Number One.” His voice wavered a bit, but he still sounded confident. “I understand. And I shall not fail.” He could feel his heart pounding in his ears. This was Alliance Intelligence, how it operated. There was constant stress, and operatives were dually motivated by the promise of great reward and the threat of unspeakable punishment. It was carrot and stick on steroids, and it worked. Things had always been that way to an extent, but Stark was the master of maintaining a constant level of tension in his people. The cost in burnt out agents was high, but in the end, they too were just tools to Stark. Getting the job done, that was all that mattered.
“Then go. You will already be late getting to the office.” Stark took one last look at Alexi. Everything was perfect, right down to the slightly rumpled uniform. “Number Three will meet you this evening for dinner. No doubt many people have seen the admiral with her. She is quite…noticeable.” Stark always had to repress a little smile when he thought of Alex. It was nothing so quaint as affection, more an appreciation of her own ruthlessness and stubbornness. Of the entire Directorate, she was the most like him, though Stark never really let anyone know him very well. Except for Jack Dutton, of course. “The two of you will appear to be tense at dinner, and this will set the stage for a breakup. I need Number Three for another operation, but we must be methodical in extricating her from this one. We don’t want to arouse any suspicions, however minor.”
“Yes, Number One.” Alexi turned on his heels and started to go.
“And Zander?”
The agent spun around. “Yes, Number One?”
Stark couldn’t help admire his handiwork. It could have been Augustus Garret standing there. “Don’t overdo it at dinner. Just a little tension. Admiral Garret would never make a scene in public, not even when quarreling with a lover. Understood?”
“Yes, Number One.” He looked slightly impatient, just the way Augustus Garret would in this situation. “I will remember.” He turned and walked down the corridor and rounded the corner toward the lift.
“So what do you think?” Stark was alone in the hallway, but a few seconds later, a hatch in the wall opposite Garret’s cell slid open.
“I think he is as ready as possible.” Jack Dutton walked slowly out into the corridor. “And I think there was no alternative.” He paused slightly as the hatch slid closed behind him. “Admiral Garret is not a blatant colonial partisan like many of the others. He is a creature of duty, and the coming conflict will put him in an almost impossible situation. There is no way to reliably predict how he would react.” He sighed quietly. “We could not take the risk. We must control the navy, or at least a large percentage of it.”
“I would have preferred that Lin Kiang had saved us this trouble.” Stark’s tone was slightly bitter. “That damned fool can’t do anything right.” Lin Kiang had been a senior CAC admiral assigned to intercept Garret’s task force and destroy the admiral’s flagship during the latter stages of the war. It was a daring assassination attempt against the preeminent mastermind of naval tactics, but it failed. The flagship was destroyed, but an unconscious Garret was saved by his fanatically loyal staff, most of whom died after getting him off the ship in his cutter. The disgraced Admiral Lin was no
w the guest of Alliance Intelligence, ensconced in luxurious quarters in this very building where Stark protected him from the agents of his vengeful counterpart, Li An, head of CAC external intelligence. Li An had assured Lin that failure would carry a heavy price, and she was accustomed to keeping such promises.
“Garret’s survival yielded us benefits as well. The fighting at Epsilon Eridani could have gone quite differently without the admiral.” Garret had been thought dead, but he’d come back on the eve of the final battle to take command and win a smashing victory. “Now, however, we have no other options. He is too powerful not to control, and too big a hero to push aside. The navy must continue to think he is in command.” Dutton put a hand on Stark’s shoulder. “Once we are able to complete our restructuring, we won’t need him anymore.”
Stark looked back at the door to Garret’s cell. “And then we will have to arrange a suitable end for the good admiral.” Stark’s tone had the slightest hint of regret. “Perhaps a shipyard accident on an inspection tour.”
“Yes.” Dutton was somber, genuinely unhappy about the prospect. “I don’t see any alternative to liquidation.” He paused, looking down at the ground. “It is a shame. Garret is a good man, one who should never have ended up here.”
Stark’s gaze turned back to Dutton. “Life is not fair, my friend.” The momentary emotion was gone from his voice, replaced by a feral coldness. “We both know that.” He paused, a stony expression on his face. “We will have to terminate Zander as well. Such will be his reward for success.”
Dutton paused before answering. He found the realities of the job becoming more difficult with age. He was just too tired for it. He sighed deeply, an aching sadness in his eyes. “I agree. We cannot afford any loose ends on this.”
Chapter 7
Columbia Militia Armory
North of Weston City
Columbia - Eta Cassiopeiae II
“Kevin, take five of your people upstairs and find good vantage points covering the road.” Marek’s voice was crisp, commanding. Things were spiraling out of control, and his combat instincts were taking over. “Now! We don’t have time to waste.”
“Ok, John. On the way.” Kevin Clarkson was a submersible captain, one of the 20 or so contractors who scoured the oceans of Columbia for the raw materials Marek’s factory turned into valuable exports. He turned and called out to several of his crew, telling them to get upstairs. “Are they really coming, John?” His voice was a little shaky.
Marek almost scolded Clarkson for wasting time with nonsense, but he held it back. You have to remember, he thought, scolding himself, these are not all veterans - you can’t handle them like you would a crack platoon. “Yes, Kevin. I left a couple scouts in Weston before I came here, and they sent the signal. The Feds are mustering now. We must have tripped an alarm we didn’t know about.” He could see the tension in Clarkson’s face. Kevin had never been in combat; he’d never fought his way through the slums on Earth. His father had immigrated to Columbia before he was born, and he’d never even been off-planet. “It will be OK, Kevin.” Marek put his hand on Clarkson’s shoulder. “Just stay focused. Tell your people to be steady, be deliberative. If it comes to shooting, pick your targets carefully, methodically.” He paused, looking right into Clarkson’s eyes. “And, Kevin…it only comes to shooting if they force the issue. No one fires without my order. Understood?”
Clarkson nodded. “Got it, John.” He spun around and followed his crew up the stairs. He still sounded nervous, but that wasn’t surprising. A thirty second pep talk wasn’t likely to chase away the fear, especially the first time. Marek knew that much from his own experiences.
He still felt the fear himself. It wasn’t as acute as it had been the first time he’d gone into battle, but it was always there. People who hadn’t been in battle thought veterans overcame fear, left it behind. Legends and heroes were more inspiring as unshakeable monoliths, super men and women with no weaknesses. Marek knew better. He knew from his own experience, and he knew because he’d served with some true heroes, and all of them had been scared too. Veterans dealt with the fear, not defeated it. They shoved it aside, made it an ally, let it focus them but not paralyze them. He knew from training; he knew from experience – if he let the fear rule him he was vastly more likely to end up KIA. Reaching that realization, asserting the dominance of judgment over fear…that was a as good a definition of veteran as Marek could imagine.
Unfortunately, this was a hard lesson, and his prospective citizen soldiers weren’t likely to learn it quickly. If it came to real war, a lot of them would die before they learned it at all. Marek started to realize how deeply unprepared they were. There had been bluster and speeches, and hushed meetings late at night, but the non-veterans had no idea what they were heading into. He wondered, how would they hold up, bloodied and battered, their homes burned, their friends dead at their sides? Would they have the inner strength to persevere against whatever the Feds threw at them? Freedom was not going to come cheaply.
He realized how unprepared he was himself. He’d reluctantly come to terms with the need to take up arms again, but he hadn’t considered all the realities, at least not in detail. The last time he’d set foot on a battlefield he wore powered armor, assisted and advised by an artificial intelligence unit that was the cutting edge of information technology. His troops, even the few who were newbs, had been though years of training. When he had first resolved to take a stand here, Marek remembered the combats he’d been in, but now he took stock of the realities. This was going to be a vastly different war, and the challenges were going to be unlike anything he’d encountered before. As a veteran officer he knew he would bear heavy responsibility to forge his untried soldiers into a combat ready force. His thoughts were grim, tentative. Can I do this?
“John, what do you want us to do with them?” Aaron Davis was one of Marek’s employees from the factory. Also a veteran, Davis had served five years in the Corps, though only two were in combat assignments, and those were in quiet sectors. He had a gift for administration, which made him a great asset at the factory, but Marek wished he’d seen a little more action. Still, he was a fully-trained Marine who had been in battle, which made him worth his weight in frag grenades right now.
Marek glanced over at the six Federal officers who had been stationed at the armory when his people burst in. They claimed to be there to assist in the inventory and categorization of weapons, but Marek knew they were an advanced team prepping for the shutdown of the facility. “Make sure they are tightly bound.” Their hands were already tied behind their backs, bound with durable polymer shackles. “Gag them too, and secure them in the back room.” Davis nodded and turned to go. “And Aaron?” Davis stopped and looked back. “They are not to be harmed. This may well come to fighting, but we are not going to start it. Understood?”
Davis had an odd expression on his face; Marek couldn’t decide if he was disappointed they weren’t going to shoot the Feds or offended that Marek was worried he would hurt unarmed prisoners. This entire situation was like nothing he’d ever prepared for, and he wasn’t sure exactly how to handle his people.
“I understand, John.” His voice was clear, respectful but a little too sharp, too clipped. That answered Marek’s question. Davis clearly would have handled the Feds less gently had he been in charge. That kind of attitude was spreading rapidly. The federal authorities were barely tolerated in the colonies in the best of circumstances, but on Columbia they had been cracking down pretty aggressively. A lot of bad feeling had developed, and many Columbians were anxious to strike back. And with the veterans, you never knew what was in their past. Some of the ex-Marines were native-born colonials, but many of them had come from some of the Alliance’s worst slums. They’d survived and found a home in the Corps, and later in the colonies, but many of them harbored intense grudges against Alliance Gov and the system they’d had to endure.
The strange relationship between the Marine Corps and the federal
government created a lot of unpredictability in the current, rapidly changing situation. Almost certainly, some individual Marines would side with the colonists. But in many ways, the Corps was caught in the middle. When it was defending the colonial worlds against the other Superpowers, it was serving both Alliance Gov and the colonists. Now, for the first time, the Marines faced the possibility of a choice…obey an order to fire on colonists or defend those rebels and attack other federal forces. Or sit the whole thing out.
The Corps was generally perceived to be sympathetic to the colonies, and overall that was true. But Marek knew it was more complicated. The Marine Corps was made up of thousands of individuals. The views of its commanders, the loyalties of its personnel, and the reality of its situation were all major factors in how it would respond. The Marine Corps would have immense difficulty sustaining itself without supplies and resources from Earth. A Corps that declared for rebelling colonists – or even disobeyed orders to attack those rebels - would quickly find itself very short of weapons and equipment. It was even possible that the pressure of the looming conflict would fracture the entire organization…that Marine would end up fighting Marine.
He might – just – be able to help forge the colonists into an army that could take on the better equipped Federal Police and other paramilitary forces they were likely to face. But he knew if Marine assault units came to Columbia to fight for the Feds, his amateur troops would be cut to pieces. The prospect of firing on other Marines was something he didn’t want to imagine. He liked to think it couldn’t come to that, but he’d been in battle too many times. If they came here to attack him, to fight his ragged little army, he knew he’d do whatever he could to destroy them. He could feel the anger, the bitterness and confused feelings about an eventuality that hadn’t even happened yet. He had always considered other Marines as his brothers and sisters, but he would think of any who came here to kill colonists as traitors. If they made themselves tools to repress what a century of Marines had died to preserve they would no longer be his brothers. They would be his enemies.