“Ma’am, if I may,” ventured the lieutenant. “If it’s dirty work you need doing, perhaps the hire of mercs is in order.”
“You Militia are my fucking mercs!” she yelled.
“That is not accurate, ma’am.”
In’Nalla felt a chill down her spine. The Militia major’s voice was filled with contempt. Disgust. Condescension. At her!
She got in his face and whispered, “If you fail me, I shall destroy you. I shall demand of the Sub-Sector Marshal that he breaks you to the ranks and orders you to lick my boots clean every day – dawn, noon, and dusk.”
Lyssin wasn’t the slightest bit fazed. “I advise you not to. And if you think you have any” – he had the good grace to give an embarrassed cough – “dirt on me, then know that the Sub-Sector Marshal already has that and a whole lot more. It’s your prerogative, of course, but I would think carefully before you make yourself a liability.”
In that moment, she knew the Militia were no longer the answer. She needed another means to complete the improvement of Eiylah-Bremah.
Lyssin seemed to sense the change too. He swallowed hard, showing nervousness for the first time. “I take it we’re dismissed, ma’am.”
The major practically picked up his petticoats and fled her presence, drawing the Zhoogene lieutenant with him.
At least the asshole had rediscovered his fear of her in the end, but what exactly was he afraid of? If she could no longer rely on the Militia, then she had limited means to project power. Less, perhaps, even than the rebels. Most people assumed she held an unassailable position of authority, but it was just a house of cards, held up not by rifles and fighter craft, but the support of the people.
And that depended on controlling the lies circulating through EB-Link.
She needed to shore up that support. Deepen it with fear. If Lyssin wouldn’t implement Plan 19, then she needed to find a way to do so herself, and soon.
A howl of pain – quickly suppressed – came from outside the entrance to the hollow.
She pressed herself against a muddy wall and covered the entrance with her Needler.
“Easy,” said Lieutenant Ren Kay, his arms up and spread wide. He halted with his chest a yard from her muzzle. “I offer you no threat of danger, and your security guard is unconscious but will be fit for action by tomorrow with no permanent damage done.”
“Who are you really?”
“Oh, I really am Deroh Ren Kay, but I am more than a Militia lieutenant. I work for a federal agency called the Blue Chamber. I’m here to help.”
“Blue Chamber?” She waved her pistol at him. “I have no qualms about firing a weapon in anger.”
Ren Kay raised an eyebrow the color of golden wheat. “As the cute fluffy animals discovered to their cost. Look, Revered Leader, I don’t blame you for not knowing about us. We don’t exactly advertise our existence.”
“The Federation is awash with secret societies and black ops departments. I think they’re compartmentalized sections of the same two agencies. Which are you? Militia, or are you really Legion?”
“If what you say is true, then how would I know from within the confines of my compartment? If I may… a more useful question for you to ask is why should my organization want to help you? For which the answer is that our objectives align perfectly. We want to discredit the Panhandlers. Unlike the official position of the Militia and its Senate backers, as represented by my superior, Major Lyssin, the Blue Chamber is not afraid to get our hands dirty with fabricated atrocities. In fact, we specialize in false flag ops.”
“It’s very kind of you to answer my own damned questions, but that wasn’t top of the list. I was thinking more, why the hell should I accept your help?”
The green bastard shrugged. “Because you need us too much not to.”
——
In the grass outside the burrow entrance, Ren Kay smiled at the muscled security human groaning in his semi-conscious state.
He’d lied about the severity of the human’s injuries. A police medic was making his initial assessment, and if the man knew his trade, he would recommend amputation of Halm’s hand and replacement by a prosthetic.
Sergeant Edrifice Halm was no longer a problem, though.
In’Nalla was.
In his first few moments of direct conversation, she’d demonstrated that she was highly perceptive, and that made her very dangerous. He had to consider the possibility that she suspected the department had been running her as their asset from the very beginning of her ascent to power.
With Operation Blue Chamber suddenly moving faster than planned, threatening to spiral out of the department’s control, he had to escalate or abort.
He watched the little human with the pockmarked face storm across the knoll back to her car. She didn’t look like a woman who knew she was a pawn, but then she’d used her disheveled demeanor to cause people to underestimate her in the early years of her ascent to power. Was Ren Kay underestimating her now?
No, he didn’t think so.
Admittedly, he was working on gut feel, but the department had taught him when to trust his instincts, and now was such a time.
He wouldn’t abort the operation.
He would accelerate it.
“Lieutenant!” called Lyssin. “Stop dawdling.”
The major was in a huddle with a police tech support team. Drone operators by the look of their equipment cart.
“Sorry, sir.”
“Hurry up, man. I need you to acquire the police data on our targets.”
Ren Kay gave a slow blink, wiping away the Department 9 operation commander, and becoming once again the junior Militia officer eager to ingratiate himself with his superior.
He rushed to Lyssin’s side. “My apologies. Did I miss anything?”
VETCH ARUNSEN
After reaching the co-ordinates Shepherd had given them, they had slithered through the mud of a chunk of featureless jungle and carried straight on through. Five klicks farther on now, and Vetch took a breather to scan the area. Far from seeing signs of civilization, they were deeper and darker into the jungle.
With a squelch of sucking mud, Vetch resumed his march, scanning the tall trees for a welcoming party and finding none. Sunlight streamed through gaps in the canopy high above, shining off the peculiar metallic growths like polished steel short swords that formed the center of leaf spirals. Were these swords a kind of stamen?
The foliage was green on this world, as it was throughout most of the Perseus Arm. Back in the Orion Spur, leaves were mostly purple, though the old myths said Earth had been an exception.
Why the difference? Was it because the quality of light was different with the older stars found in this region of the galaxy? It wouldn’t make any difference soon, because as they pressed on, the gaps in the canopy were shrinking. Before long, they would be encased in steamy shadows in which all colors would merge into a uniform darkness.
He shook his head sharply, realizing that the monotony was making his mind drift.
“Stay alert,” Vetch warned the party.
“Have you seen targets?” asked Darant hopefully.
“No.”
“I don’t like it,” Darant complained. “I’ve got a brace of plasma pistols begging for some action.”
“And again, no,” said Vetch. “Our best defense is to approach openly and allow ourselves to be seen. Same as that recruiter did with us.”
“More to the point,” said Lily, taking a look behind her to see if they were being followed. “We allow ourselves to be heard.”
The route ahead was blocked again by chunky tangles of vines that moved like twitching fingers. Enthree got to work with short swords redeployed to machete clearance duty.
“I told you weapons safe,” Vetch roared at the other humans. “Not bunch up. Keep your separation.”
As they slid apart from each other, still watching the shadows between the trees, a plaintive bleat emanated from Darant’s pack.
; Bleah? Bleah?
“Did you hear that?” Vetch asked.
“Hear what?” Darant responded, innocently.
The noise came again, Darant trying to cover it with an unconvincing cough.
“Sounded like a dropship making atmos entry,” Lily suggested.
“Or…” Vetch gasped in horror. “The hunting shriek of an atrox air-drifter.”
Darant scowled at him. “You need your lugholes de-greasing again, big guy.”
Vetch looked at him, hands gripping hard on the shaft of his war hammer as if in fear, but in truth taking full advantage of his thick beard to hide his grin.
Even his prodigious beard didn’t prove enough in the end. A little boy’s giggle escaped the whiskers.
“Goddamned bunch of asshole jokers,” Darant muttered. He knelt down in the mud and undid the main flap of his pack. Hubert leapt out.
The miniature goat blinked at the familiar faces and then used all six limbs to skim across the slimy jungle floor like a guided torpedo.
Man, the little guy was fast!
“How long have you known?”
“Since your pack started wriggling a hundred yards after we set off from the hideout,” said Lily. “Who knew our grumpy old bookworm was such a sweetie?”
“Stow it,” Darant growled. “I’ve grown to like fresh milk in my coffee, that’s all. Only way I could figure how to do that was to bring a supply with me.”
“You know, Yat,” said Vetch stroking his beard thoughtfully, “on some planets you could legally adopt Hubert. You should look into it.”
“That goat will be in a pie long before we get off this mudhole planet,” Darant retorted. “Sooner if you don’t stop ragging me. Now shut your giggling, you goddamned clowns, and keep alert.”
“Shepherd sent us,” said Enthree.
“What?” Vetch frowned at the Muryani who’d stopped hacking away at the foliage. “I know. What’s your point?”
“I wasn’t addressing you, Mr. Arunsen.”
With a sinking feeling, Vetch realized everyone else was looking up. He followed suit and saw the leaves bristling with rifle barrels pointed their way.
The rebel fighters soon had them on their knees in the mud, hands on heads, while their leader inspected them.
Works both ways, my friends, thought Vetch, as he assessed their captors.
They were armed with a random selection of rifles, pistols and even a crossbow, most of which were sports models. Half of them carried their weapons as if they were an extension of their body, while the rest held them awkwardly as if they were armed with screaming infants.
Their heads were wrapped in folds of light gauzy material that revealed only their eyes and noses. Dull reds and greens were the dominant colors in the tough material of their plain jackets and pants. None of them wore camo. In fact, they didn’t look like an army so much as a mob of desperate farmers off to rob a grain store.
The leader, a male Gliesan, stared into Vetch’s face before giving a satisfied nod and moving onto Lily.
He gave her a good look and a sniff. “Forgive me,” he told her.
What the hell kind of desperado rebel says forgive me?
The Gliesan wiped one of his delicate-boned fingers across Lily’s cheek, and then traced the spikey black lines that curled out the corner of her eyes.
Lily took it stoically until he removed his touch and inspected his fingertip.
“It doesn’t rub off, you know,” she sneered at him. “It’s called a tattoo. What the hell were you expecting?”
For several seconds, he contemplated her.
“Roses,” he said and gestured to his soldiers to bind their captives. “And you ain’t got ’em.”
LILY HJON
The interrogation room was a small grain store in a village clearing by a fast-flowing stream. Bags of food supplies were neatly stacked on one side, but the other half of the climate-controlled building had been made over into an operations room with printed local maps on the wall above a bank of comms equipment.
A human rebel in camo and beret, who actually did look like a soldier, beckoned Lily forward, motioning for Vetch and Darant to stay back with the grain bags. The man remained expressionless behind one of the face flaps that had been commonplace at their last hideout.
Back in the jungle, the rebels had bound their wrists behind them, but they hadn’t known what to do with a Muryani. Currently, Enthree was waiting outside, with a half dozen weapons pointed at her.
Lily took a few steps toward the man who stood in front of a battered plastic table strewn with paper, more maps, and unwashed coffee mugs.
On the far side of the table, another man regarded the prisoners from the depths of a leather chair shrouded in cigar smoke. He was quite the contrast to the soldier, dressed in tattered red boiler coveralls. Instead of hood, beret or wrapped fabric, his head was covered by a trucker’s cap, its peak pulled low over his eyes. A corporate logo was emblazoned on the front above the words Bori-Alice Space Truckin’.
The soldier man squared himself up. “They’re undamaged, sir. As ordered.”
Lily was convinced the two men were about to exchange salutes, but it turned out these rebels weren’t Legion wannabees. The leader blew a smoke ring at his subordinate, and then tipped his chair back against the wall so he could put his feet up on the desk.
Something about that looked familiar…
“We’ll help you win your revolution,” she told the smoking man, “but if you’re not interested in joining us, then feed us and let us go. We’ve people to find offworld. Stuff to do. You know how it is.”
“We join you?” said the soldier, incredulous.
“Lily’s not joking either,” said his leader. He lifted his cap and leaned forward out of the smoke to regard her through twinkling lilac eyes.
“Oh!” she said.
“What?” Fitz echoed her astonishment for a moment before nodding sagely. “Oh, I see. Yes, the sight must be quite a shock for you.” He held out his cigar. It was almost half the length of Lily’s forearm. “Filthy habit I’m revisiting from my youth. Izza would kill me if she ever found out. Not that she ever will.”
“Fitz. What are you doing here as a rebel leader?”
“Waiting for you.” His grin dissipated. “I gather our Muryani friend is waiting outside, but…” He grimaced. “I don’t see Mr. Sward.”
“Didn’t make it,” grunted Vetch from behind her.
“I’m sorry.” Fitz waved at his people to start undoing the captives’ bonds. “I mean no disrespect to your absent friend, but it gladdens my heart to see the rest of you here and safe. I’ve been leaving threads for simply ages, hoping that you’d pick one up and follow it to me. I’d almost abandoned hope that you’d make it here in time.”
Freed at last, Lily rubbed at her chafed wrists and allowed Vetch to storm over to the table and lean his bulk over it.
“What the hell are you doing here, Fitzwilliam?”
“Mr. Arunsen, please call me Fitz. Or Captain Fitz if you require formality like a damned jack. Speaking of which, Sybutu and his two little jack friends are not far from here. They’re safe but all their talk of ‘I swore an oath to the Legion’ has yet to convince the fine people who brought you here that they’re on the same side. As for me…” He puffed on his cigar. “A little misunderstanding led to me being marooned here by my own crew. And now…”
Fitz’s eyes blazed with violet light.
“I find I don’t like the way the people here run their world,” he said. He kept his voice level, but it filled with the power of a fusion generator about to blow its containment field. “I don’t like it at all.”
Lily had never seen him truly angry before. The other rebel soldier recoiled in disgust from mutant eyes like nebulae glowing in the warmth of newly born stars, but what did he know? Fitz’s freakish eyes were awesome!
“I’m going to tear down the tyrant, In’Nalla. Rip out their sick system of inform-on-your-neighbor. Di
smiss the Churn. And did you know that humiliation is a major export industry? People across the Federation are shipped here as a lesson to those at home. A lesson on what happens if you upset the powerful. All that has to go.”
“And you’re what?” Lily asked, a little breathless. “The big cheese in this rebel outfit?”
Fitz grinned and the anger was gone. No, not gone. Concealed within, but passion still drove him.
Hold on! Rewind… What was it he’d said about his wife?
“I’m working on it,” he replied. “I’m a senior zone advisor for now and with big plans to get this revolution moving.”
“You said we got here just in time,” said Darant. “In time for what?”
Fitz got out from behind the desk and walked over to Darant, cigar clamped between his teeth.
He choked on its smoke halfway over, coughed a little, but quickly recovered to slap Darant heartily on the back.
“We’re going to free the political prisoners at In’Nalla’s flagship house of tortures. The Ameliorate-10 Re-Education Camp. A-10. It’s 80 klicks northwest of here. We’re going to bust it open and you, my fine friends, are going to help me do it.”
Darant punched the air. “Screw the system! Let’s tear it down and start again. When do we go?”
“You have a day to rest, learn, and train with these excellent local people. Then we head out. Then it starts.”
DEROH REN KAY
The comm chimed on his way to the parade ground.
Ren Kay clicked his teeth in irritation. The tension between Major Lyssin and the tyrant notwithstanding, it was the opening of the Global Economic Forum tomorrow, and Ren Kay was leading the honor guard. His troopers would look as smart and well-disciplined as any legionary, damnit.
It was a text message from Singh: Tried to raise you earlier. Nothing urgent. Call me tonight?
His heart skipped a beat.
Ren Kay was always very aware of his surroundings at all times and knew no one was around. He unlocked the door to a nearby tertiary armory and quickly stepped inside before that changed.
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