Angela didn’t know what to say. Instead, she smiled at her friends and fell into line behind Roy.
Tarina asked, “Ma’am, do you know where we’re going?”
“Yes, I do and the irony of the whole thing is not lost on me,” responded Roy. “We’re going to an out-of-the-way communications station on Dorset Island in the Canadian north.”
Wendy giggled and nudged Angela in the ribs with her elbow. “You can look at life this way, at least you’re going to a place named after your namesake’s long-distant ancestors.”
Angela didn’t see the humor. She pursed her lips and said, “I’d rather be going home.”
“You will soon enough,” replied Tarina. “You have my word on it.”
Chapter 9
The sun was beginning to set when Sheridan and Cole finally reached ADF Headquarters. Long shadows crept over the ground like the dark hands of an unseen trespasser. They stood a few hundred meters back under the awning of a shop that had just closed for the evening. Built to the west of the Italian capital, the headquarters was a ten-story building that overlooked the Tyrrhenian Sea. A tall, electrified fence surrounded the sprawling complex. In the tall towers, automatic sentry guns kept a silent watch. Minutes after the attack on the president, road blocks and checkpoints had been established on all the roads leading to the base. As an added security measure, two drones, armed to the teeth, flew in tight circles above the headquarters to deter any possibility of further attacks.
“It’s a bit late to go poking our noses around,” observed Cole. “People might think we’re acting a bit too suspicious and try to detain us. Why don’t we find ourselves a nearby hotel and grab a bite to eat.”
Sheridan would have preferred to get right to work, but he knew that his friend was right. Things would have to wait for first light. He was about to turn around when he spotted an armored personnel carrier with a forty-millimeter cannon on it drive up to the front gate and stop. A squad of soldiers in full-body armor got out and moved over to the tall, steel front gate and took up defensive positions. A couple of seconds later, a staff car surrounded by two more wheeled APCs drove up and waited to be let out. When it was determined that it was safe to proceed, the thick metal arm barring the way lifted up and the small convoy drove off into the night. Overhead a smaller drone flew, looking for any potential threats to engage.
“I guess some high-ranking general is going home for the night,” said Cole with more than a hint of sarcasm in his voice.
“Nothing like an assassination attempt to trigger an overreaction from the already paranoid security folks.”
Above them in the evening sky a woman’s voice said, “Citizens, do your part for freedom. Join the men and women of the ADF fighting to preserve our way of life from the invading forces of the Kurgan Empire.” Both men looked up and saw a dirigible flying overhead. A recruiting commercial shone brightly from its side. The message repeated again, this time in Italian before the floating advertisement moved to the next city block to pass on its message.
“You’d think we and the Kurgans had hired the same PR firms,” quipped Cole. “Their propaganda sounds just like ours.”
Sheridan chuckled. “Come on, let’s find us a quiet hotel.”
In the front passenger seat of the staff car, as it wound its way through the narrow streets of Rome protected by the two APCs, Lieutenant Monica Solari checked the image on her watch and silently swore. Her contacts keeping watch around ADF Headquarters had just sent her a picture of two men standing on the street. Before she could stop herself, Solari let her temper get the better of her and punched her fist against the car door. She instantly regretted doing so.
“Is there something wrong?” asked a middle-aged man sitting in the backseat of the up-armored vehicle. He had short blonde hair, light blue eyes, and a square jaw.
“No, sir. I just forgot to do something. It’s not important. I can deal with it in the morning, sir,” lied Solari to Lieutenant General Kurt Wagner, Chief of Staff to the commander of the ADF.
“I hope it isn’t something to do with General Sadir’s visit to Tranquility Station in two days’ time?” said Wagner.
“No, sir. I have been assured by the station’s staff that everything is in place for the general’s tour of the facilities. It’s just a small personal matter that I need to deal with.”
“I already gave you a week off to set your affairs in order, Lieutenant. I hope it won’t become a habit for you.”
“No, sir, not at all. I appreciate the time off you gave me. It was quite useful.” Solari detested her boss. The man was arrogant and not a pleasant person to be around. As a Chosen agent, none of that mattered to her as she had a mission to accomplish for her Lord.
Wagner tapped the back of Solari’s seat. “See to it that you separate your private life from that of the service from now on or I will be forced to find a new assistant.”
“Yes, sir,” she replied. In her mind, she imagined herself shooting a bullet between the horrid man’s eyes. Solari sat back in her seat and glanced down at the picture of Sheridan and Cole. There could only be one outcome to their unwanted appearance in Rome. She reached into her briefcase and retrieved her personal tablet, turned it on, and quickly typed an encrypted message. Inside, she was seething with rage. Harry Williams’ foolish stunt had caused the reaction she had counseled against. How they had gotten this far without being detected by her global web of operatives dug at her. Regardless of what had happened, they were here and would need to be eliminated quickly and as quietly as possible.
Chapter 10
As he had countless times before, the pilot of a commercial shuttle coming up from Earth lined his ship up with a vacant docking port. He waited for the space station’s final clearance before turning on the autopilot to finish the docking procedure. Once his ship had a good seal with the airlock, he pressurized the passageway and turned on the artificial gravity to allow his passengers to disembark. For this flight, he had brought up a crew of workers who, after checking in on Tranquility Station, would be put to work repairing the battle-damaged ships.
In the back of the shuttle, a crewman saw the airlock light turn green and opened the inner door. The workers, almost all men, got out of their seats, grabbed their luggage from the overhead bins, and filed out into the space station. A woman with long strawberry-blonde hair dressed in a light blue jumpsuit waited to greet the new arrivals. In her hands was a tablet.
“Good evening, all. Welcome to Tranquility Station,” said the woman cheerfully. “My name is Linda, and I will be taking you through the clearance procedures here on the station. Once that is done, you will all be given your work assignments. This process shouldn’t take more than a few hours to complete. As it is late and all of the offices are closed for the evening, I have obtained sleeping quarters for you.”
“Are we getting paid for this?” called out a gruff voice.
Linda smiled. “Yes, of course. The moment you stepped into your shuttle to come up here, you were placed on the military’s payroll.”
“You wanna be right. I got mouths to feed back home.”
“Trust me, sir, I’ve done this dozens of times and no one has missed out on a single credit owed to them.” With that, she took a quick roll call before leading the workers through a long corridor which came out in the station’s central tower. They walked for another few minutes until Linda stopped outside of a closed door. She pressed a button on the wall and the door slid open.
A man popped his head inside. “Some hotel, it looks more like an army barracks to me.”
“I never said you were staying in a hotel for the night. Welcome to life in the ADF’s Civilian Support Branch. If you think this is roughing it, wait until you’re jammed eight to a room on the spacedocks.”
The workers groused as they walked into the room filled with bunk beds.
“The showers and washroom facilities are down the hall. The women’s showers are on the left, the men’s on the right.
I’ll be back in the morning to take you all to breakfast. After that, we’ll begin the paperwork required to get you working.”
Linda turned and walked away, leaving the unimpressed workers to find a bed for the evening. Most just tossed their bags on the nearest bunk and began to chat among themselves. They never paid attention to the door as it opened and a man stepped inside. He smiled when he saw the men and women in front of him. He lifted a hand and snapped his fingers. The talking stopped. All eyes turned to see a black man with a shaved head standing in the room.
“Praise the Lord. My prayers have been answered. It is so good to see that you have all arrived here safely,” said Harry Williams.
A young man with a neatly trimmed beard got up off his bed and walked over to shake Williams’ hand. “Praise the Lord, indeed.”
The people in the room dropped what they were doing and moved closer as if drawn to a light.
“Is this room clean?” asked a short man with curly black hair.
“I swept it myself,” assured Williams. “There is nothing to fear. You can speak openly. Brothers and sisters, our time has come. Two days from now we will bring the humans to their knees and once again there will be peace throughout the galaxy. A peace dictated by us . . . the victors of this war.”
An excited murmur ran through the group of Chosen operatives.
The curly haired man asked, “Are there still more of us to come up from the planet?”
“No. You are the last to arrive.”
“What is the security situation like up here?”
“The humans are fools. They don’t suspect a thing. We, my friends, are wolves among the sheep.”
“That may be so, but there must be at least a regiment of human soldiers on this installation,” said a woman with short brown hair. “What can we do against that?”
Williams smiled. He placed a hand on the woman’s shoulder and looked deep into her eyes. “Have no fear. We shall prevail.”
“How?”
“Trust me. The Lord has shown me the way. Remember the words of the prophet, the greater the challenge, the sweeter the victory.”
“True words,” agreed the curly haired man. “What do you want us to do?”
Williams stepped back so he could look into the faces of his followers. “Go about your business tomorrow. By noon, there will be a clerical issue with your clearances and you will be asked to stay here another day. Rest here. When the time is right I will come for you and together, with the rest of our brothers and sisters, we will win this war.”
Chapter 11
It may have been well after midnight, but Admiral Oshiro was still at his desk. He had let most of his staff go for the night. Parker, naturally, remained in case his boss needed him. Colonel Valens’ preliminary report into the destroyed freighter had arrived less than an hour ago and deeply bothered the old admiral. The few bodies they had been able to retrieve showed signs of gunshots to the head. The attackers had somehow been able to hijack the freighter during its flight to Eris and murdered the entire crew. The Home Guard with its net of ships, satellites, and bases spread throughout the solar system should have been able to detect an unregistered ship deviating from its flight plan. Yet there was no evidence of another vessel having been anywhere near the freighter.
Oshiro removed his reading glasses and rubbed his tired eyes. The answer must be right in front of him, he just couldn’t place all the pieces of the puzzle together yet.
There was a knock at the door. Oshiro looked up and waved in Parker.
“I take it you’ve reviewed Colonel Valens’ report,” said Oshiro.
Parker nodded. “Most troubling. Have you shared his findings with Home Guard command?”
“Not yet. General Sadir wants us to be the lead service on this investigation for now. When we figure out what’s going on, it will be up to the staff at ADF Headquarters to decide how to best disseminate this information.”
“Sir, according to Colonel Valens the Alpha Virus was held in a container that could be easily hidden inside a midsized suitcase. Whoever stole it did not need a large ship to take it away.”
“Agreed, but there are no signs of another ship having been anywhere near Eris when the virus was stolen.”
“A civilian vessel, perhaps?”
“I thought about that. The trouble is that there is only a handful of people wealthy enough to afford a ship that is jump capable. Perlinium is not cheap and with a war on, the skyrocketing costs would make it all but out of reach except for a very select few. Besides, the Home Guard would have been able to track a civilian ship the second it left Earth’s orbit. No, it had to be a military vessel capable of masking itself from detection.”
“Sir, if you’re saying what I think you are, we’re in bigger trouble than we thought we were. Chosen operatives have either stolen a stealth ship or have access to one which would mean whoever did this are ADF members.”
Oshiro nodded. “There can be no other answer. We are dealing with traitors in our own organization. Please contact your counterpart in the Home Guard and see if any stealth vessels were used recently as far out as Eris. If he cannot supply you with an answer then speak with General Wagner and see if ADF Headquarters can answer your query.”
Parker checked his watch. As Home Guard Headquarters was in Beijing, he did the math quickly in his head and saw that it was nearing lunchtime. He hurried to make the secure call.
Oshiro sat back in his chair. He felt drained and in need of sleep. He let out a resigned sigh and stood up. His feet felt like they were made of lead. He knew that if he didn’t get some rest he would burn himself out and be good for nothing. He glanced down at a picture on his desk of him and his wife with their only son, a captain in the fleet. His heart felt heavy. His wife, Kaoru, had died of cancer five years ago. Going home to an empty house was something he abhorred. He reached for a coffee urn and poured himself a cup. Oshiro would wait until Parker had made his calls. Then and only then would he make his way to a room he kept on base to put his head down for a couple of hours of sleep. His gut told him it was going to be a long few days before he would get any real rest.
Chapter 12
Sheridan placed his cup of coffee down and looked up at the azure sky. For as far as he could see, there wasn’t a cloud in sight. For a few seconds, he let his mind wander and take in the old-world architecture of the buildings near their hotel. He had always been fascinated with castles. The tall medieval fortress that overlooked the entrance to the harbor caught his eye. With its tall stone walls and turreted watchtowers, it was a reminder of a time long gone by. The rest of the city, however, was an eclectic mix of the old and the new. Buildings hundreds of years old stood side by side with tall modular towers that reached up to the sky. Solar panels adorned the tops of almost every building. Since personal-use vehicles were all but forbidden in the major cities around the globe, subway trains ran through tubes above and below the ground while cable cars moved about suspended by near-invisible clear steel wires.
“Oy, you with me this morning,” prodded Cole.
“Sorry, I was somewhere else.”
“Yeah, I saw that.” Cole picked up a croissant from his plate and gave it displeasing look. His idea of a healthy breakfast included eggs, sausages, bacon, and heaps of hash browns, not pastries and jam.
Sheridan was about to reach for his orange juice when he stopped. “Back on the Sydney you said that you thought that the infiltration by Chosen operatives was far worse than people had expected. Care to explain your reasoning?”
Cole sat back. “Sure, why not. I was thinking about Mister Williams. He wasn’t born on a Kurgan planet, and neither were his parents or his grandparents. They were all born here on Earth. So let’s assume for a minute that his great-grandparents were the first to convert to the Kurgan religion. They secretly brought it back with them when they were exchanged for Kurgans trapped on our side of the disputed zone at the end of the last war.”
“Okay, but that
doesn’t mean we’re swimming in enemy agents back here on Earth.”
“I’m not done,” pointed out Cole. “The indoctrination into the Kurgan religion along with an unswerving loyalty to an Empire they have never seen must have been implanted in the minds of the conspirators’ children at an early age. At some point, it was locked away until the next generation was born and the whole process began anew. What I’m trying to say is that for one hundred years, we’ve had people secretly converting their children to be ready to serve the Kurgan Empire in the event of a war. It stands to reason that there are thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people walking about the streets who have no idea that they are Kurgan operatives.”
Sheridan nodded. “I tried to impress upon my father the same idea after our first encounter with Chosen warriors. I’m not sure ADF Headquarters agrees with your assessment. In fact, I’m fairly sure they believe that there are only a few rogue operatives running around down here stirring up trouble.”
“Well, I for one don’t want to be around when they find out just how wrong they are.”
Sheridan’s voice turned serious. “Where do your kids live these days?”
“They live on Mars with their mum and new dad. Why?”
“Because my gut tells me things are about to turn nasty around here and the further they are away from Earth, the better.”
Cole stood up. “If you feel that way, then it’s time for us to quit talking and get to work. Where to, mate?”
Sheridan paid the bill, stood, and pointed down the cobblestone street. “I think the cameraman who captured Harry’s image was standing somewhere over there. I’d like to start from there and try to identify where the three shooters with Harry were when they were gunned down.”
“How is that helpful?”
“If I’m right, the attack on the president wasn’t just conducted to strike fear into the hearts of the folks back home. I’m beginning to think that it was also a dry run to gauge how we would react.”
Vengeance (The Kurgan War Book 4) Page 6