by Rick Partlow
"We are hopeful that, together, we may be able to conquer these abominations once more and save you, our children, from the fate that befell us. I will allow your President to outline our plan of action."
"Thank you, my friend," President Jameson said. "We must meet the enemy fleet out in interstellar space, where they can do no more damage to our colonies---I cannot allow another of our civilians to die. We will be marshaling all of our military forces, and putting the Patrol Service under central military command for the duration of the emergency.
"This would leave many of our colony worlds unprotected and unpoliced, were it not for the patriotism and foresight of our friends in the Corporate Council."
"This is where the other shoe drops," General Murdock murmured, not without admiration.
"This," the President continued as the camera panned to the left, "is Andre Damiani, the Executive Director of the Corporate Council."
The man the camera showed was handsome, with a sculpted face and immaculately-styled dark hair, yet I couldn't help but feel that his hand-made business suit concealed the heart of a snake.
"Thank you, Mr. President." Damiani looked into the video pickup. "I have offered the President the services of the Council's Corporate Security Force in order to keep order in the colonies and protect them in case of any further Skrela attacks. I will immediately place command of all CSF forces in the hands of the Commonwealth government for the duration of this struggle. God willing, they won't be needed."
Murdock touched a control and the image faded.
"That's it except for the shouting," the General told us. He scanned each of our faces with a hint of amusement in his eyes, as if he found the grand game we were all playing mildly funny. "I trust you all see the significance of this."
"Hell," I snorted, leaning back in my seat, "it's so damn obvious you'd have to be in a ViR haze to miss it. How can they expect anyone to buy this?"
"How did a short, dark-featured little runt like Hitler expect anyone to buy Aryan racial supremacy in the 1930's?" Murdock replied. "How did Sergei Antonovich convince the Russian military that the nation could survive a thermonuclear conflict with China in the 2,020's? The Big Lie is almost always believed by the masses, Captain Mitchell. And it will be again, with the aid of the Executive and the DSI. Unless we can stop it."
"Mebbe I came in late," Cowboy spoke up, "but could someone tell me what this obvious plan is?"
"The only thing that's keeping the Council from rigging the next Presidential election is the threat of military opposition," Kara replied, laying it out for him. "So, you send the military on a wild goose chase while the CSF takes over all law enforcement functions."
"Then you arrange an ambush, lead the fleet into a trap," said General Murdock, taking up where Kara had left off. "Voila! No more fleet, no more opposition---and the only organized military around is the Corporate Security Force."
"And I'm sure," I put in, "that the 'emergency' will last long enough to put Corporate puppets in power for the next few generations."
"You always were such a perceptive young man," Murdock said, smiling at me.
"But what are those things?" Deke shook his head. "These Predecessor things? I mean, I'm sure they've had to let military people look at them---they can't just be bionic constructs, or some other obvious fakes. Do you think they've really contacted the Predecessors? Or maybe those 'corpses' you found," he offered, looking at Kara, "weren't really dead."
She scratched her left hand thoughtfully. "That's always a possibility, but for some reason, I doubt it. I don't know why..."
"I do," I interjected, the answer coming to me in a flash of insight. "Did you see their facial expressions? Not just the ones with Jameson, but the ones in that little shock video? Did you notice their body language? Didn't it look just a bit too familiar?"
"Too damned human," Kara nodded.
"You're right," Murdock agreed in a soft, thoughtful voice. "Of course, if they were really Predecessor aliens, they could have been trying to be accommodating to us, but it still doesn't sit right."
"Do you think they really destroyed that colony?" West asked. "It could've been a faked shot."
I shook my head. "They had to have done it. Someone might check. God knows, it's not as if they haven't..." I had to swallow the lump in my throat before I could finish my thought. "... killed innocent people before."
"Where are we going?" Kara asked Murdock directly. "If you knew about this, you must have something planned."
"The General always has something planned," Deke muttered, but Murdock ignored him.
"We're on our way to the Fleet HQ on Inferno," the Bulldog told her. "I've arranged what I hope is a secret meeting there with top officers in StarFleet and the Marine Corps to discuss a plan of action that we hope won't lead to all of us spending the rest of our lives on a penal colony. Your presentation there will doubtless sway a few opinions. Until then, I suggest you all make use of the spare cabins available to get some rest and," he said, eying Kara and me, both of us still sporting numerous semi-healed cuts, "seek further medical attention." He rose from his chair, and I knew this meeting was over. "My guards will show you to your rooms."
* * *
I was lying in the dark on the bunk in the tiny cabin Murdock had provided for me when I heard the knock on the door. I ignored it, hypnotized by the emotional inertia I'd built up, continuing to stare at the featureless ceiling.
The noise persisted, unimpressed by my lack of response.
"Cal," came a muffled voice from the other side of the door. It was Kara. "Cal, do you want to talk?"
I seriously considered the question. Did I want to talk? Did I want to bare my soul and let loose all the pain and rage that was festering in my guts? Or did I want to keep it penned inside, and let it grow hot and hard until I had the chance to vent it on the first unfortunate bastard that happened to get in my way? It was a tough call. I swung my legs off the bunk.
"Cal, do..." Kara broke off awkwardly as I pulled the door open.
She looked a lot better than the last time I had seen her. She'd had her cuts taken care of---I could see the shiny gloss of synthskin on her jawline where it covered the slice there, waiting for the flesh to heal itself beneath---and she'd changed into a pair of nondescript, tan shipware shorts and a T-shirt.
The gentle light filtering in from the corridor sent shadows playing over the curve of her face and across the hollow of her throat. I saw a teasing flash of her nipple beneath the thin T-shirt as she shifted her weight uncomfortably.
I took her by the shoulder, pulled her against me and shoved the door shut. Her breath was warm against my cheek as her eyes stared widely into mine.
"No," I decided aloud. "I don't want to talk."
Interlude: Rachel
Rachel rapped the knuckles of her right hand into the malleable thermoplastic of the cell walls, keeping up a steady rhythm, vaguely amused at the way her new, alloy-infused fist left visible dents in the material. If only, she wished, she could bury those knuckles in the face of one of her captors. It wouldn't do much to improve her situation, but it would certainly make her feel better. She was scared, true, but her feelings of fright were nothing next to the overwhelming sense of impotence.
They'd brought her here---wherever "here" was---under suspension, so she wasn't even a hundred percent sure when she was. For all she knew, she could have been in hibernation for a decade. When she'd come to, she'd found herself in this white-walled, windowless cell, about five meters by five meters. It was fairly comfortable, as jails went---fold down bed, exercise machine, shower and a ViR player with a good-sized library---but it was still a jail.
She'd been there and awake, she calculated, for nearly three weeks now, with the only human being she'd seen the attendant who brought her food, and she felt like she was slowly going insane. The worst part of it all was not knowing about Cal and the others. They could have been dead for months, for all she knew.
There was
a loud crunch, and she looked down in surprise, seeing that she'd put a five- centimeter-deep depression in the plastic. She shook her stinging hand and leaned back against the wall. How long, she wondered, would they keep her here?
The door to her cell hissed open and she jumped up with a start as a tall, powerfully-built Tahni stepped into the room.
"Don't be frightened, Mrs. Mitchell," the Tahni male said in perfect Basic as the door slid shut behind him. "I'm as close to a friend as you have on this base."
"Who are you?" she asked, trying to keep the tremors out of her voice.
"My name is Trint," the humanoid replied. "I don't have too much time---I sent the attendants away on an errand, and temporarily disabled the surveillance cameras, but that will only buy us a few minutes."
"A few minutes for what?" she asked, fighting the small spark of hope lighting up in her mind.
The Tahni named Trint didn't sit down and didn't move from his position just inside the door as he answered her.
"Holding you here is not honorable," he said. "Attacking your enemy's family is not the way of the warrior. At this moment, there is no way I can free you, but I thought it my duty to at least tell you where you are, and why you are being held."
Rachel eyed him suspiciously. "I don't recall the Tahni as being too reluctant to kill noncombatants in the War. What makes you any different?"
"The actions of one man corrupted our race." Trint's face went harder---if that was possible. "Our emperor was not worthy of his people, and far too many of those people were not worthy of the title 'warrior.' But I was...I am something more, yet also something less than those I served. You have heard of the Imperial Guard."
Rachel's eyes widened, and a flush of terror from instincts honed in the War went through her.
"My God..." she gasped. "You're one of the cyborgs." Cyborg, she knew, was almost too tame a word for the elite special operations commandos. They weren't just ordinary men with bionic parts grafted on---they were total constructs, a self-contained version of her new right arm. Alloy endoskeletons had been fleshed out with a few cloned organs and surrounded by plastic-fiber muscles, superconductive nerves and cloned skin, all controlled by a combination of lab-cultivated brain tissue and computer CPU. "But...they hunted all of you down, didn't they?"
"Most of us." There was a hint of sadness in his voice. "But what I am is not important to you. What you are is the issue."
"What am I?" she asked, awed by the mere presence of what had been a living nightmare.
"You are a hostage. Your husband has contacted officials in StarFleet Intelligence, and my...master believes that they plan a raid on this base. He expects to have a trap waiting for the assault force, but you are a guarantee. Your husband frightens my master and his security chief. He is an X-factor with a history of doing things in an unorthodox manner."
"The world's full of amateurs..." Rachel muttered to herself, shaking her head.
"What?" Trint frowned.
"An old saying my husband told me back during the War," she explained. "He called it one of 'Murphy's Laws of Combat.' It went, 'Professional soldiers are always predictable---but the world's full of amateurs.' He always called himself an amateur soldier."
"Indeed." The Tahni cyborg smiled---smiled! "No wonder your people won the War."
"So is your duty discharged now?" Rachel asked, wondering just how far she could trust the mysterious alien.
"My duty is to myself, Mrs. Mitchell," Trint informed her. "Though I admire you and your husband, I am constrained by certain cruel realities, the foremost of which is a small explosive device planted in my cranium as a safeguard by my new master, Andre Damiani. If my loyalty to him is ever in question, he can blow my head off with but a thought."
"Why don't you just run away?" she wondered, frowning at such a barbaric idea. "Get out of his transmission range?"
"Where could I go?" he asked her.
Rachel started to answer, but stopped herself. He had a point. For the cyborgs, the war was never over. The Commonwealth considered them too dangerous to leave alive; any that were discovered, even this long after the war, were destroyed without warning. Even his own people hated and feared the Imperial Guard, regarding them as little better than machines and as alien as any human enemy despite the Tahni genes that made up their biological component. And it wasn't as if he could just blend in with the crowd somewhere---a simple thermal scan would reveal him for what he was. She could hardly offer him shelter, either---her home wasn't safe for her, much less him.
"So what happens now?"
"We wait," he told her. "Sooner or later, the strike force will come. Then it may be out of our hands."
"And if the strike force fails..." She let the question trail off.
"You'll probably be killed once Damiani feels he no longer needs you," Trint told her directly.
"How are they so sure about what Cal is doing?" Rachel asked, dismissing the realization of her impending mortality even as it was presented to her.
"There is a spy among them," Trint revealed, his respect for the woman going up a notch. "Damiani's chief of security was one of your husband's teammates during the War. He has insinuated himself into his confidence."
"Damn," she murmured, falling heavily on her cot. "There's no way you could let him know?"
"None, even if I was so inclined."
"How can you serve him?" Rachel snapped, angered at the flatness of his answer. "Is this kind of life really worth living?"
"You forget what I am," Trint admonished her. "I am not, so to speak, my own man. My programming doesn't bind me to Damiani---or anyone else, now that the Emperor is dead without successor---but quite apart from any feelings I may have, my constraints will not allow me to choose my own death. I may be ordered to my death, and I may be killed in battle, but I may not throw my existence away uselessly, or kill myself."
"Oh." Rachel looked down, a bit ashamed she'd even made the suggestion. Who was she, after all, to tell this creature how and when to die?
The Tahni regarded her silently for a moment, feelings wrestling in his breast that he had never experienced before.
"I will promise you this," Trint said quietly, "and it is all I can give. If it becomes possible for me to aid you without assuring my destruction, I will do so."
Rachel's head came up. "I appreciate what you're trying to do. Will...will you come and talk to me again? It gets pretty lonely."
"I'll try," Trint promised, surprising himself. He'd fully intended to say no, that it would be too risky, but there was something appealing in conversing with someone who didn't see him either as a tool or a monster. "Time is short. Is there anything else I can tell you?"
"One more thing," Rachel said. "The spy? The old team member? Who is he?" When he told her, Rachel drew in a breath, not even looking at him as he exited the room. Of all of the answers she could have been given, that was, perhaps, the worst possible. Cal had told her about that man: he was, in Cal's opinion, probably the most dangerous of the whole team, and he was lying like a snake waiting to strike her husband.
And there was nothing she could do about it.
Chapter Twelve
I blinked groggily into wakefulness, light streaming in from the room's open balcony. Waking with the sunrise was an odd thing for me---sunrise on Canaan only happened once every couple Standard months. Waking with someone other than Rachel was even stranger.
Propping myself up on an elbow, I regarded Kara as she lay beside me. In sleep, her face softened, the corners of her mouth upturned slightly. It was all a deception. In bed, she was a tiger, as aggressive in her lovemaking as she was in a knifefight. It was her strength on mine, and it was an interesting new experience, though not without guilt.
Gnawing at my guts was the accusation that I was being unfaithful to Rachel's memory. Yet alongside the guilt was the realization that I needed this. Rachel was gone, my life was gone and even the Machine had failed me. If I hadn't found some kind of release, I wo
uld've cracked, come completely unhinged. I couldn't afford that yet.
I eased out of bed, feeling the chill of the air conditioning on my bare skin, and padded silently out to the balcony. The oppressive humidity washed across me, chasing the chill away, and I squinted at the too-harsh light from too-close 82 Eridani. Yawning lazily, I leaned over the railing. Ten stories beneath me sprawled the computer-pattern grid of preform buildings that was the sector command base at Inferno.
The military, I reflected, never had much imagination---everything for five kilometers on any side, from the data processing centers to the medical facilities, was a flat-white buildfoam box. At the center of it all was the spaceport, a huge complex of square, fusion-form landing pads and massive hangars. The petulant whine of landing jets vibrated in my head as I watched a small shuttle coming down from orbit.
We'd arrived in a similar craft over seventy hours ago, and had immediately been chauffeured by high-speed hopper to the Guest Officers' Quarters at the perimeter of the huge base. It was a typical military game of hurry up and wait---the brass we were supposed to meet weren't due for another three days.
Feeling the touch of soft hands on my back, I slipped an arm around Kara as she came beside me. She was still naked, and her skin felt pleasantly cool by contrast with the oppressive humidity on the balcony.
"Good morning." She kissed me passionately, her tongue slipping into my mouth. "Sleep well?"
"Like a baby." I gave her a squeeze.
"Beautiful view," she muttered, wrinkling her nose at the haze that drifted low over the military base. "Is the climate this miserable everywhere?"