by J. J. Snow
“I’d like to see him before you begin, if that’s okay.”
The doctor nodded and beckoned for Duv to follow him into the treatment area. Duv paused and motioned to Reilly, inviting her along, but she shook her head.
“You go. This should be your time with Seth. Tell him to get better soon for me because I’ve done all the hiring I plan to do for a while and I’m going to need my best outside-the-box thinker back.” She watched Duv as he turned to follow the doctor down the hallway. Once they had disappeared, Reilly’s gut began to churn again. Her first instinct was to grab Seth and run like hell, but she had no tangible evidence, no defined threat to base this action on. Besides, the kid needed help, and these were the best people in the galaxy to do the job. She shrugged the feeling off, chalking it up to her negative predisposition towards mental health specialists as a whole, and waited for Duv to return.
—————
The treatment had worked fast, faster than Seth had hoped. Zain’s team had already corrected some anomalies in the code, and the additional control programs had stopped the headaches and provided a clarity he could only wonder at. He felt euphoric and invincible as his mind made connections easily between disparate data, linking facts into larger truths, enabling him to take action when and where he chose to. A few more data loads and he would be ready for the mission. He sobered a moment, knowing what he was going to have to sacrifice in order to do what needed to be done. There was a soft knock at the door and the glass slider moved back, admitting a nurse and Duv.
“Hey! Skeeter—how are you feeling, kiddo?” Duv tousled his hair and punched him lightly in the shoulder.
“Better. They, uh, say they can fix me and make this stuff in my head go away, so that’s pretty good, huh?” Seth nervously licked his lips. He hated lying to the ones he loved, even if it was to keep them safe.
Poor kid! He’s scared to death! Duv sat down on the white sofa.
“You know these people are the best at what they do, right? They are going to get you well, and then you’ll be back to your old self, just like normal. They tell me it will take a couple of days but then you’ll be all fixed up.” Duv trailed off for a moment, thinking.
“You know the Captain is going after Ty. Chang and Tiny have some crazy plan they hatched up, but I think it just might work. In fact, I was thinking I might just stay here with you until they get back. What do you think?”
Seth looked down. Zain was right, this was going to be hard. He put on his best sincere kid face and focused back on Duv.
“You can’t stay. I’m here in a safe place, but Sergeant Ty, well, he’s not. Captain always says we take care of our own. He’s family and we’ve got to get him back. That means the Captain’s going to need everyone she can get. And I’d rather she have the best pilot in the galaxy there to lend a hand than sitting here watching me sleep. Doc says I’ll be doing a lot of that.” Seth looked down and dug into his emotions, looking for foundations of truth for the lie. “Sergeant Ty, well, maybe he doesn’t always make the best calls, but he’d never let anything bad happen to any of us. He’s kinda like an uncle to me. I think I’ll feel better if I know you’re out there helping to get him back. And well…that’s just what I think.”
Duv sat back taking, it all in. He knew Skeeter was close with the crew and that he and Ty had bonded, but he hadn’t realized that his son had grown that attached to his scout sniper friend. Perhaps part of Seth getting better was due to this new relationship, and Ty had been helping him to get out of his shell, move forward from his past. The kid was right. If he stayed, there wasn’t much he could do except wait around. But if he went with the crew, then there was a good chance for them to get Ty back.
“All right. If that’s what you want me to do, I will. I’ll bring him back, too. You just focus on getting better in the meantime, okay?” Duv stood to go. “The Captain said to tell you she needs her best problem solver back soon!”
“Okay. Duv?” Seth looked up.
“Yeah?” Duv asked softly as he looked down at his son.
“I love you. Be careful, okay?” Seth’s eyes welled a little bit, but he caught himself. He couldn’t give away his secret, and he needed Duv to leave in order for this to work.
“You know I will be. I’ll be back before you know it. Love you too, boy.” Duv leaned over and gave Skeeter a hug. The kid hugged him back fiercely, and for a moment he began to rethink his plan to go on the mission. Then Seth let him go.
“Bring Sergeant Ty back for me, okay? And, uh, tell him I can’t wait to see him.”
“I will. See you soon.” Duv turned and headed for the ship, the glass doors swooshing closed behind him as he left.
In that moment, Seth felt a wave of emptiness wash over him. This was how it had to be. He sighed as the medical staff returned and began prepping him for the final transfer. In two hours they would be done, and he would be headed off on his mission alone. He consoled himself again with the thought that at least he could keep his family safe by doing this, but as he went under for the last segment of programming, part of him wished it could have ended differently.
—————
Tiny felt Commander Zain’s presence before she saw him. He had a very pronounced walk that reverberated off of the walls to her ears, even when he was being stealthy.
“So do I get read in on the kid’s mission? Or am I support only on this?” She didn’t turn, she didn’t need to. Zain was ten paces behind her when she spoke. It always irritated him that she could do that, especially since he prided himself on his covert abilities. He continued to walk up to where she was standing before he spoke.
“Support only. Besides, the kid will stay here with us until you return from your…rescue mission.”
Tiny scowled. “Sounds like you are somewhat skeptical of our success, sir.” She turned, watching his face for a reaction but seeing none.
“Not skeptical, no, but aware of the risk, aware of the threat Ray Alton poses. Hell, even Campbell is honest about it. Seems like you would be, too—or has reintegration with a crew caused you to lose a bit of your edge?” The jab was unnecessary, but Zain threw it in anyway. He was still sore about being detected. He needed to get some sleep. He rubbed his face casually and leaned on the railing.
Tiny smirked at his sorry attempt to provoke her. At the same time, warning bells began to ring in the back of her mind. Something felt wrong. She turned back to him again, looking him full in the face.
“I thought the plan was for us to meet and you were going to brief me on what I needed to do to aid the operative. So when do I receive my orders, sir?”
Zain stared at her as he responded. “Once you return, we’ll sit down and discuss the project at length. I can fill you in then on what I need. It really depends on the final outcome and the boy’s progress over the next few days.” He turned back to the view. They were in the central core of the hub in front of a large window in which giant robotic arms conducted a mesmerizing dance as they performed multitudes of operations to control everything from gravity and life support to security and communications at the facility. She always met him here, although he had never figured out why. It didn’t really matter why, he realized. It could be anywhere, she just chose here, perhaps for convenience or privacy or a hundred other reasons. Who was he to guess the mind of a Gaiden, anyway?
Tiny regarded him for a moment longer before she spoke. Something was wrong. The Commander was trained in deception, so he was hard to read at times. Even so, at least part of what he had just tried to feed her was a lie. He had never tried to lie to her before. This was different, and she sensed it was dangerous. Zain was a patriot, he made tough calls, but even she was starting to wonder how he planned to use Jackson’s son. Most Gaiden were not even used on a mission until they were at least fifteen. Seth was the first fourteen-year-old Gaiden she knew of. The kid was bright, but she wasn’t sure he was ready for a mission. She wondered if Zain knew his backgrou
nd, knew what taking this kid away from his family would do to the crew, what it would do to him. And if he did know, had he just become that callous that he didn’t care? Was duty all that mattered to him now? That meant that Tiny and the others had become tools, not even human in his mind. Her insides twisted a bit as the suspicions that had been building in her mind crept forward again. But she kept all of this hidden under an impassible mask as she watched the robots do their work. Cool, indifferent, unemotional. Zain would see nothing she didn’t want him to see.
“Very well. We will be heading back out soon. I have a few extra items to retrieve from my locker, so if we are done…?”
The Commander inclined his head and watched her disappear towards her old quarters. He turned back to watch the machines and wondered how the mission would go with Alton. It would be a good progress check to gauge where the team was at and how much work they would need to be field ready again. The likelihood that they would come back at all, any of them, was very slim. Those that did make it back alive should be in pretty good shape for the war. It would be painful to lose any of the team, but he couldn’t risk trying to stop them. The other mission was far too important, and he already knew some of the cost would be in blood. His handheld beeped and he slid it open. The operative was almost finished with the programming. He acknowledged the text and put the device away, turning towards the medical wing. It was time to finish what he had started.
—————
Tiny continued along the darkened corridor until she found the door to her room. No one had ever asked her why she had chosen to stay in the bowels of the facility. This was the room she had been given as a trainee. As Gaiden progressed, they were offered better accommodations, training, weapons, and the like based on their performance in the field. Tiny’s accomplishments had won her a full suite of rooms at the top of the city, along with several ships and an entire collection of weapons that she had cached around the galaxy. She hosted meetings and dinners at times in her upper-level lodgings. But still, when she came home, she came to this room. She could hear the robots working at the core, the noise drowning out all other sound. It was the one place she could truly relax. And it was the only place where she could get reliable information when she needed it.
She punched the access code and entered the room, tossing her bag on the bunk and heading straight to the wall. She placed her hand on a pad, then stepped back. The top of the table rotated, revealing a small computer. She began to type a series of codes and then hit enter. The screen blurred with the flood of data as the computer began to search the core. During her trainee days, she had spent every moment learning as much as she could about the base. One of her more important discoveries was that the main data transfer lines from the core servers to the upper levels ran directly under her room. By tapping into them, she had been able to infiltrate the government and military systems, getting information they were often reluctant to provide her, even though it frequently saved her life.
Zain’s files appeared. Tiny scrolled through them until she came to his operational folders. They were all encrypted. She copied them as they were and then searched for his cipher program and copied it too. The Commander had been busy while she had been gone. It was obvious with all this activity something major was getting ready to happen, and soon. It could be the war with Welch, but her gut told her that was only part of it. Tiny glanced at the time. Damn. She would have to take the data with her and work it on the ship. She pocketed the drive and then shut down the system. She hastily grabbed a few extra items from her locker and stuffed them in her ruck before re-securing the room. Her mind buzzed as she headed toward the docks. The Commander had been shutting her out, she was certain. So it must be something very sensitive that involved her, the boy, or the crew. Several scenarios flashed through her mind, none of them positive. She hoped she was wrong, but the data would let her know for certain.
—————
“I’m dead.” Reilly lay back on her bunk with her eyes closed, part of her pre-mission ritual, when time allowed. Dead men feared nothing, they had nothing to lose. In death there was no pain or hesitation, nothing to get in the way of doing what had to be done. Reilly focused on the void, welcomed it, let it swallow her up like it was a ravenous beast. In this moment, everything grew calm, the storm could rage around her, but she would remain untouched. She was a warrior, and fear had no hold over her.
She slowly opened her eyes and looked up at the bottom of the bunk above her. An old family photo, a picture of her brother before he went away to the military, her and Jeremy before he died, a worn label from a bottle of Whitehot she had finished off on a particularly bad day, a prayer card from her mom, and one old, pressed four-leaf clover in a piece of plastic with wishes for luck. She was beyond all of that now. She could meet death on even ground confidently and unafraid. It was time to get to work.
Reilly broke out her favorite rifle and set it up to clean it while she waited on the crew to return. It helped her to relax as she fell into the rhythm of breaking the weapon apart into its components. Her handheld beeped as she wiped her hands and picked it up. She had been running decryption programs non-stop since they brought the ledgers on board. The latest encryption program hadn’t made a dent in the Welch cipher. She was beginning to think nothing would. Still, never one to accept defeat gracefully, she cued up the next program, a hybrid of two other programs, and then hit run. She set the handheld back down as it began to process the hundreds of pages of scanned cipher data from the ledgers and, feeling nostalgic, decided to load up the old CD player. A few moments later, she was contentedly cleaning the trigger assembly of her gun to the old-time rock-and-roll sounds of Guns and Roses, one of her favorite bands. She cleaned and lightly oiled the metal parts, then put the laser assembly back together and did a function check on the weapon. The rifle charged up without issue as the last song ended, and she set the gun back down on the table, turning to focus her attention on her blaster.
“I don’t think they let prisoners have those.”
Reilly looked up at Chang and scowled. Unperturbed by her look, he stepped through the hatch and picked up the rifle, looking it over. The CD looped and began to play again as Chang plugged his ears, pretending to be in pain.
“What? Don’t you like my music?” Reilly chided loudly with an evil grin over screaming guitars.
“This is music? I thought it was some type of deafening device designed to destroy my eardrums! See? I tell you, you won’t need guns, just blast this at Crazy Ray…then again, that might not work. He might like it!”
Chang dodged as Reilly threw a small screwdriver at him, catching it as he moved and returning it to her as she hit the pause button on the CD player. He grew serious.
“You ready for this?”
“You know I am, Gunny. When have I ever been not ready for a mission?”
“And if he’s already dead? If I was wrong and they didn’t keep him alive?”
“Then Crazy Ray better hope his Enforcers get to me before I find him. Unless he has more insiders on my ship, in which case Tiny and Marek will simply hand me over to die or kill me on the way.” Reilly smiled grimly at the thought.
“Neither of them is working for that man. Marek has been a friend to Ty for a long time, and he has already shown himself to be part of the crew by fighting with us. Tiny may be working for Zain, but not because she is here to kill anyone. Besides, she dismantled that EMP when she could have just as easily set it off. No, if she had been here to kill us, we’d already be dead. Gaiden don’t waste time, they execute and move on.”
“Well, there’s a comforting thought—at least I’ll die quick!” Reilly joked. It was strange how gallows humor could help get you through black days. As if making light of it somehow made it all easier to bear, made the tough stuff pass by you faster.
Both of their faces darkened, though, as they thought again of Ty. He wouldn’t be so fortunate. Crazy Ray would make certain of that
. Reilly figured, if he was still alive, then they had about thirty-two hours before he got to the station. She wasn’t sure how long after that he would have before Crazy Ray started his detainers working on him. She hoped it would be long enough.
They both looked up as her handheld beeped. Chang glanced at her and she shook her head.
“Another failed encryption program, I’d bet. I’ve been burning through them double-time, and still nothing. This one must have been a hybrid of two others that had already failed.” She turned her back and started to load her ruck with her tactical gear.
Chang watched her for a moment, then walked over to turn off the beeping handheld. He picked it up and paused, then looked at it.
Reilly turned to ask him a question as he turned to face her. He held the handheld up facing towards her with a grim expression.
“It worked this time.” His voice sounded hesitant.
“What does it say? Can you read any of it?” Reilly hurried over to take a look.
“It says that it’s not good news.”
Reilly scrolled through the first ledger pages, disbelief lighting her features as she scrolled faster through the data. Finally, she sat back against the table.
“He’s building an army of implants. An army made up of AOC and ISU forces to take over the galaxy. And he’s working with the damn Vhax ! Shit. We need to get this to Commander Zain.”
“I already know.” The Commander stood in the doorway, his face drawn, and held up his handheld.