The Island Deception

by Dan Koboldt

  “It doesn’t matter now, in any case. The greater concern is how this installation blew.”

  Logan didn’t agree that the how of it was the greater concern. When he looked at her face, though, he saw the brave show she was putting on. She clearly felt the magnitude of that error right now, that was for damn sure. He wasn’t done with the ethical debate, but that could come later. “We should make a sweep of the crater, to see what’s left.”

  She gave a sharp nod. “Let’s start with the security door.”

  They hobbled the horses and worked their way around the crater to where the steel door lay wedged into the earth. Logan didn’t even have to get close to confirm that the shape charge had blown. Looks just like the aftermath of an IED. He’d seen enough of them for two lifetimes.

  Logan heaved the metal door over to get a look at the exterior side. Incredibly, it was in pretty decent shape. Whoever had set that shape charge really knew what he was doing. Oh, yeah, that was me. He thought he was putting in a self-destruct charge, a last-ditch security measure, so it hadn’t bothered him. He’d done so many company install jobs that they all sort of ran together. But the biting flies jogged his memory every time.

  Neon lights glowed softly on the keypad display.

  “Keypad’s still active. Check it out,” Logan said. The last entry on the six-digit code was 090578. “Good news is the code’s not even close.” Hopefully that meant none of his deep-cover operatives had done this.

  “It’s not good news.”

  Logan read the numbers again, but couldn’t pick out a pattern. “What am I missing?”

  “That 090578 is a CASE Global employee identification number.”

  “Whose?”

  “Who do you think?”

  Aw, hell. “Holt.”

  “He’s always had a flair for the dramatic.”

  And a soft spot for the natives. “Did he know about your little shortcut with the secondary?”

  The corner of her lips curled downward. “Not officially.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Because of his sentiments, I consulted with a different member of the research team before we made the change.”

  Of course you did. She always collected expert opinions, even when it came to civilian casualties. “Who did you get?”

  “Chaudri.”

  “Oh, good. Because she would never tell him anything.”

  Chapter 11

  Disturbance

  “It has long been documented that observing a culture changes it, even with the best of safeguards. Our mere presence in Alissia will have ramifications.”

  —R. Holt, “Reevaluating Alissian Assumptions”

  Logan hated everything about Tion. Especially the southern regions, which seemed to be one massive quagmire. The weather grew warmer as they pressed south, too, which meant that the flies got progressively worse. It wasn’t too bad while they were riding, but every time they slowed to take bearings or water the horses, the flies swarmed them.

  The road grew more crowded, too, which made him nervous. Every traveler they passed could be an agent for Holt. And they passed dozens as they approached the border to Valteron. It was either that or ride behind the slowest horse cart as it trundled along, which would drive both Kiara and him crazy.

  The Tioni “smart mules” were a slightly more amusing problem. The animals obeyed verbal commands—as long as the rider was polite enough—but with that cleverness came a haughty attitude. Where a normal mule naturally edged aside for the passage of a warhorse twice its size, a Tioni mule hogged the road on purpose. Like some jackass in a BMW taking up two lanes on the highway.

  “Jesus,” Logan muttered. “This guy is killing me.”

  A farmer in a broad-rimmed hat and his smart mule were plodding along, oblivious of the half-dozen riders jammed up behind him. The marsh pressed in so close to either side that there was no room to go around.

  “Hmm?” Kiara asked. She was on her console again, the one made to look like an old leather-bound book. In spite of the antique appearance, the slim device represented some of the most advanced tech on either side of the gateway. The infinity cell had to be Logan’s favorite feature: the next-generation battery recharged on ambient light.

  The console gave her a link to Command, along with a real-time status of the Alissian communications infrastructure. She could pull up the complete research archives, including all of the maps and survey data. And those were just the functions Logan knew about. He didn’t have clearance to see her tablet unless she was “incapacitated or KIA.”

  Just one more secret.

  “What’s the latest on the three musketeers?” he asked.

  “They’re headed for the Landorian capital to catch a riverboat.”

  Good. If they’d been riding as hard as Logan and Kiara had, they could use the downtime. “How’s Mendez?”

  “No complaints.”

  “He never complains,” Logan said.

  “A fair point.”

  He waited for her to say more, but she didn’t. I should check in with him later. See how he’s really doing. It’s not like she’d ordered him otherwise. “So, why the hell are you sending them to a tiny port in the least-trafficked part of the east coast?”

  “Why do you think?”

  You don’t want to know what I think, Lieutenant. He mulled it over and made his best guess. “So Mendez and Chaudri can keep an eye on Bradley?”

  “And vice versa, frankly. They balance one another well.”

  Logan snorted. “Oh, there’s no balancing Bradley.”

  “You kept him in line.”

  “Well, I’m a professional.” And I miss getting to do that. At least Bradley kept things interesting, and had a bright outlook.

  “Mendez knows how to handle him,” Kiara said. “Chaudri, too, in her way. They’ll—” She cut off at the sound of an insistent buzzing from her console. She checked it, and her frown was enough to chill Logan’s bones.

  “What is it?”

  “Southern network just went down again,” she said.

  “Which part?”

  “Everything in Valteron, and half of Tion and Caralis.”

  “That’s got to be, what, sixty relays?”

  “Seventy-four.”

  Son of a bitch. “Where does this leave us?”

  “Virtually no surveillance in Valteron. And comm delays while we’re down there, both with Command and with the others.”

  “So Holt’s disrupting our communications. Sounds like he’s been reading up on military strategy.”

  She compressed her lips, in the Kiara form of a grimace.

  “Unless he got some formal training I didn’t know about,” Logan said.

  “I’m ordering an engineering team to get it back up as soon as possible.”

  “Really?” That surprised him. Not like it’s our first mission with less-than-perfect comms. The delay was a pain in the ass, but manageable. “What about the mission ban?”

  “I want our network fully operational by the spring.”

  “What happens in the spring?”

  She didn’t answer.

  They rode while talking even less, if that was possible. It was warm enough that Logan no longer used the self-contained atomic heater in his pup tent. Truth be told, he used it as little as possible even in the colder parts. Sure, the engineers assured him it didn’t leak radiation, and he was done having kids anyway, but there was no sense in taking chances.

  Well, probably done having kids. Sharon wasn’t pressing the issue with him right now—she had her hands full with the girls. But if her best friend got pregnant again, all bets were off.

  They’d hit the border of Valteron soon. Enemy territory. Holt had told them in no uncertain terms to keep out. He’d probably stepped up the border control, too.

  The cover identities CASE Global operatives had developed over the last fifteen years were practically legends. They had families and work histories backed by
legitimate-looking documents. Not to mention the sworn testimony of paid informants. Even Earth-side intelligence agencies would have a hard time picking out the false identities.

  The problem was, Holt had consulted on every single one of them. He’d provided those finishing touches—occupational histories, connections to existing families, religion-specific marital customs—the kind of nuances that made them legitimate.

  So that meant he knew the names. And he might have even alerted the authorities of other nations, too, kind of a medieval version of the no-fly list. Logan couldn’t use any of his trusted aliases. Instead, he had to rely on a rush job and pray that it held up under scrutiny. Yet another thing that pisses me off about Holt’s defection. All the goddamn paperwork.

  Kiara drew rein about a quarter mile before the border crossing. A long line of impatient travelers waited for their turn to pass between two heavy stone-and-mortar towers, each about forty feet high. Logan made a quick survey with his field glasses. A spotter in each tower plus six on the ground to do the checks made for eight bogeys, all of them in the black-and-gold livery of Valteroni officials. That was normal. The men with crossbows were not. “Well, that’s new.”

  “What is?” Kiara asked. She’d dismounted to fiddle with their straps on her mare, to make it seem like they had a real reason for stopping.

  “Oh, just a bunch of soldiers waiting inside the checkpoint.”

  “How many combatants?”

  He was already counting . . . six, seven, eight. “I make eight on the ground, but I’m guessing each tower has a ranged weapon, too.”

  Kiara had her own compact binoculars out. “It’s probably just a patrol checking in. No cause for concern.”

  I’m not so sure. Crossbowmen were unusual in Alissia. They were easier to train, but the technology left much to be desired. The reloading time sank the crossbow as a field weapon. Unless you had well-disciplined archers, you got one massive opening salvo and that was it. Light infantry could cover the effective range of the weapon—about seventy yards, currently—in the time it took to reload. Horsemen could close the gap in half that.

  Which made this even more suspicious. “I’ve never seen that many crossbows in one place,” he said.

  Kiara gave it a look with her field glasses. “You want to try skirting the checkpoint?”

  “They catch us doing that, and we’re in real trouble. Not even Bradley could talk his way out of that interrogation.”

  “That doesn’t leave much of a choice,” Kiara said.

  Logan cursed under his breath. Talk about a rock and a hard place. “I guess not.”

  They started toward the gate. Logan played the game of watching the guards without making it obvious. He stole the occasional glimpse, though, and didn’t like what he saw. In peacetime, most patrols had grizzled old veterans riding out the last few years of their service contracts. That wasn’t the case here. Their youth showed in the posture, and the efficient speed of their movements as they inspected each wagon. These were soldiers in their prime. The kind you didn’t waste on customs.

  The waiting made it worse. Once Logan and Kiara had joined the press of bodies, it took ten minutes to get to the gate. Logan dismounted to walk his horse through—a touch of humility for the officials, and a way to look less threatening to the guards—and gestured for Kiara to do the same. Come down off the high horse, Lieutenant.

  A liveried man waved Logan forward. He was portly, probably early forties, and had the semi-bored expression of a career government official. “Name?”

  Logan slouched a bit to keep from towering over the man. “Abram Walters. I’m from Felara.”

  “How fascinating.” The official’s eyes barely flickered up from his ledger. “Purpose of your visit?”

  Oh, this guy’s a delight. “Looking for work.”

  “You might want to sell the horse.”

  Logan did a double take. “Sorry?”

  “Your mount, Mr. Walters. The Prime is paying for horses, if you’re looking to sell.”

  “Is he, now?”

  “Handsomely.”

  “Well, maybe I’ll pay him a visit. See if he’s interested in this one.”

  The man laughed. “Oh, going to just drop in on the Prime, are you?” He called over to one of his colleagues. “Jensen! This one here’s gonna visit the Prime.”

  “That a fact?” The other official looked Logan up and down. “Give him my best, will you?”

  Both of them burst out in laughter, slapping their knees. Meanwhile, Kiara had a look of alarm on her face. All right, so maybe it wasn’t the best thing to joke about.

  “Are we done here?” Logan asked.

  “Yes, yes.” The official wheezed as he scrawled something on the ledger in front of him. “Welcome to Valteron.”

  Logan led his horse out of the gate, trying to ignore the obvious amusement among the Valteroni officials. Anything to make me less threatening to the soldiers. He stole a glance to where the crossbowmen lounged in the shadow of the towers. Most Alissian crossbows were heavy, crudely made things with windlasses as the cranking mechanism. The weapons these men cradled looked off somehow. Lighter, sleeker, and—son of a bitch—lever-cranked. It might seem a small thing, but a lever would let them shoot about six bolts a minute. On their own, Alissians shouldn’t have made that technological advance for another couple hundred years.

  Kiara got clear a minute later, and they both mounted.

  “Those crossbows are a pretty big leap,” Logan muttered.

  Kiara glanced over, and cursed under her breath. “I think we know who to thank for that.”

  Chapter 12

  The Slip

  “I’d say there’s no such thing as magic, but that would make the world a boring place.”

  —Art of Illusion, March 3

  The more Quinn learned about Cambry, the less he wanted to go there.

  “The King of Landor has ruled for close to two decades,” Chaudri said. “He seems to possess a strong sense of right and wrong, and most of the kingdom follows his lead. Even minor infractions merit severe punishment.”

  “Prison time?” Quinn asked.

  “More like amputation,” Mendez said. “Execution’s pretty popular, too.”

  “They have tribunal courts in Cambry,” Chaudri said. “Government officials, merchants, and even members of the royal family have been sentenced there.”

  “And this is the place we’re going to try to slip through to catch a riverboat?” Quinn asked.

  “They run a hell of a military, too,” Mendez said. “Best heavy cavalry on the continent.”

  “That’s the part of the culture I’m least fond of,” Chaudri said.

  “What, just because they joust in the streets?”

  “And the courtyards, and the plazas.” Chaudri sniffed. “Even the market square.”

  Mendez grinned. “They gotta practice somewhere.”

  “You think we’ll have any trouble?” Quinn asked. “We’re just passing through.”

  “Crimes of which we could be accused include espionage, smuggling, and possibly fraud,” Chaudri said.

  Oh, delightful. “Great. And here I forgot my CASE Global get-out-of-jail-free card.”

  “No need to worry,” Chaudri said. “The courts are quite efficient. If we’re captured, we’d probably be convicted and executed before the company could task an operative.”

  “That does make me feel better.”

  “I’m tempted to tell you not to talk at all, Bradley,” Mendez said.

  “Come on, man. My charm is my best weapon.”

  “Not so sure the lieutenant feels the same way about that.”

  Quinn scoffed. “Are you kidding me? She’s seen some of my best stuff.”

  “All right, all right,” Mendez said. “You made your point. No gag orders.”

  “What about me?” Chaudri asked.

  “You’re our world expert, Veena.” Mendez gave her a big smile. “You can say whatever you want
.”

  Quinn managed not to roll his eyes. Jeez, get a room, you two.

  They were half a day out from Cambry when they hit their first patrol. A forest of tall, densely packed conifers lined the road to either side. Mendez had the lead as usual, with Chaudri and Quinn riding side by side behind him. They rounded a blind turn and were nearly overrun by a dozen lancers in full plate armor.

  “Whoa!” Mendez yanked back on the reins. Quinn’s horse stopped on its own, nearly tossing him from the saddle. He scrambled to stay upright without dropping his parchmap, which he’d been perusing while they rode. Meanwhile, soldiers in bright armor parted around them, smooth as silk. Then they halted, boxing Mendez, Quinn, and Chaudri in on three sides.

  One of them rode right up to Mendez and removed his helmet, revealing a wide face and the brightest orange beard Quinn had ever seen. “Good afternoon. May I ask where you’re headed?”

  He directed the question to Mendez, who hunched his shoulders and glanced back at Chaudri. She’d insisted on doing all the talking.

  She lifted her chin and gave the man a cold look. “I’ll ask you to direct your questions to me, Captain. Not my man-at-arms.”

  He touched his fingertips to his forehead. “Of course, m’lady. Due apologies.”

  Quinn slowly folded the parchmap over, to make it less conspicuous. One more fold, and he’d be able to slide it up his sleeve.

  “We’re headed to Cambry,” Chaudri said.

  “For what purpose, may I ask?”

  “To catch a riverboat, and otherwise cause no trouble.”

  “Spoken like someone who understands our ways.” The captain made to put on his helmet again, but his gaze fell to the map in Quinn’s hands and he hesitated. “What is that?”

  Quinn looked to Veena. Her eyes were wide with alarm. No help there. “Just an old map,” he muttered. Like a fool, he’d failed to stash a normal scrap of parchment to swap it out with.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” the captain said.

  “It’s nothing special,” Quinn said. If I ever needed a magical distraction, it’s now. He tried to reach within himself for that power, to make a noise or a fireball or something, but there was nothing there. No power. No magic at all.