by Rick Partlow
She and Cal took a seat next to Pete and she squeezed his arm affectionately, then nodded to Deke and Kara, who were on the other side of the younger man. She could just about stand to be around Kara McIntire now, which was progress after hating the woman for the last five years for her part in turning their lives upside down. Deke...Deke was like a crazy, irresponsible uncle, she thought. She regarded him with affection tempered with caution, knowing how close he and Cal were but also knowing the crazy risks they took when they were together. Deke looked uncharacteristically glum, she thought. She knew he and Kara had been the last to arrive and she wondered just what intelligence they'd brought back that could bring his irrepressible mood down.
The other four at the table she had only met recently. The elfin woman with the short, brown hair and the blue Fleet uniform was Holly Ann Morai, the only surviving female from Omega Group; Rachel knew she was an officer in the Fleet Attack Command now and she wasn't sure how General Murdock had stolen her away for this. Next to her was Reggie Nakamura, CEO of a fairly large executive protection agency for the last ten years and yet to Rachel he still seemed like a man more comfortable in a fight than behind a desk. He was in generic grey utility fatigues and a leather jacket and, like all the others, was armed. The way the handgun rode on his hip seemed natural, like it was at home there.
Then there were their hosts, seated across the table from Holly and Reggie, making quiet comments to each other with the sort of verbal shorthand typical of couples or partners. Hell, they could be both, for all she knew. She'd only met Vontez Slaughter and Keller Savage a few weeks ago and in the time she'd spent with them, she still hadn't learned a single personal detail about either one of them. Slaughter, especially, was a cipher. She knew he was an ex-Marine and he wore his Savage/Slaughter dress uniform with all the pride of that former Marine officer. He was a tall, powerfully-built man, his dark hair was cut short, with some sort of stylized design shaved into one side, and his cafe-aux-lait skin was drawn tight over his squared-off face. But the expression on that face was as unreadable as his dark eyes.
Keller Savage was as tall as his partner---of course, to her all non-Canaanites seemed tall---and even broader through the shoulders, probably thanks to the Omega Group augments, but his manner was more casual and relaxed. He wore olive drab fatigues with the mercenary battalion patch emblazoned in subdued colors on the chest, their sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and his red-blond hair was as long as Deke's had been before he'd started working with the DSI, though more chaotic than styled. His eyes though...he had grey eyes, perhaps a shade darker than Cal's, eyes of pure gunmetal. When she looked into them, she saw a weapon more than a human being.
Cal had told her, after the war, about what he called The Machine: the killing trance he would go into when the combat programming in his implant computer took over his actions, processing and focusing his sensory input, using his brain faster than he could by shutting out all the conscious level decision making, as if it were his own instincts. He had spoken of an unshakeable fear that someday the Machine would take him over and not give him back, and he had let slip just once that he thought this might have happened to other people on his team.
She wondered now if he had been talking about Keller Savage.
"I guess we're all here that's coming," Savage said in a drawling accent she couldn't place. It was a bit like Roger West's and she thought she remembered that they were both from around the same place back on Earth...well, the same continent anyway.
"Where's General Murdock?" Kara asked, frowning. "He was supposed to be part of this planning session."
"He lit out of here the minute he got the news about Tahn-Skyyiah," Savage told her, shrugging expressively. "Said to go ahead without him, that he'd be back in a couple weeks."
"Well, isn't that fucking special," Deke muttered, slapping a palm on the table in exasperation.
"It doesn't matter," Cal declared flatly. "We have actionable intelligence and we need to get to work. If Murdock doesn't like what we come up with, he shouldn't have left it in our hands."
"Agreed," Holly Morai said with a curt nod.
"You always did have a way with words, Caleb," Reggie Nakamura mimed applause. "So, what have we got?"
"We've had our best techs working the data that Cal and Deke brought back," Savage said. "It's all pretty heavily encrypted, but we've made some headway." He looked over to Slaughter. "Captain Slaughter, you wanna do the honors?"
The former Marine stood, straightening his uniform jacket with an automatic gesture, then cleared his throat.
"It'll take weeks to sort through that much raw data," Slaughter began, his voice as clear and sonorous as a professional singer. "But we've run both databases through a few algorithms and we've caught some overlap." He touched the 'link at his wrist, then whispered a command into it and the holoprojector above the table snapped to life.
Three faces floated above them, two men and a woman, the collars of Commonwealth Spacefleet uniforms visible at their necklines. They were obviously military file photos, each with the same pose and neutral background.
"You know Captain Denarius Laussel, DSI," Slaughter went on. "The other two are Lieutenant Rita Antonov, Fleet Intelligence and Commander Jai Yanto, Attack Command. They are the only three officers were are one hundred percent certain are Chang's duplicates, so we cross-referenced them to see if there's anything or anyone in common."
He touched his 'link again and another face appeared, this one less sharp and posed and more along the lines of a long-distance surveillance shot. And it was the face of a Tahni. Rachel blinked away a trick of memory that wanted to make it Trint's face, and realized quickly that this Tahni male was very different from her lost friend. Trint's face had been broad and powerful, while this male was skinnier and unkempt, tufts of hair growing unmanaged behind his flattened ears and a ratty horsetail that wrapped around his throat half-heartedly. His eyes appeared sunken beneath his brow ridges and they seemed so dark they almost glinted in reflection of the light.
"Holy shit," Cal breathed and Rachel turned to look at him, noticing that everyone else had turned as well. Cal's eyes were wide. "I know that guy. I mean, I've seen him, in Harristown...down in Skintown a few years back.”
"How can you be sure?" Reggie cracked, snorting a laugh. "They all look alike to me."
"Yeah, well," Savage interrupted, seeming like he knew when to cut off one of Reggie's moods, "there's a good reason you might have seen this guy. He used to work for Robert Chang."
"His name is..." Slaughter trailed off, checking his 'link again. "Ryl'n-Kah-Rint-yar." He shrugged. "He goes by Kah-Rint, and that's about as much as we know about him. He started working for Chang sometime prior to his first sighting six years ago and has very rarely been seen on Canaan, so the speculation was that he did Chang's dirty work offplanet."
"And he contacted all three of the...replacements?" Kara prompted.
"That's not evident yet," Slaughter corrected her. "All the algorithm can tell us so far is that there is some connection between them and this Kah-Rint."
"Come on, we're ignoring the fucking elephant in the room here," Deke said, waving a hand demonstratively. "Does anyone really think that the attack on the Tahn-Skyyiah garrison isn't related to all this somehow?"
Slaughter clasped his hands behind his back and took a deep breath and Rachel thought perhaps the man was searching for patience. Finally, he turned to Kara. "What does the DSI think?"
"Given the brazen nature of the attack in Hesperides, I've been trying to avoid open contact," Kara admitted, a bit reluctantly Rachel thought, "but everything I've been able to suss out says that all indications point to a Tahni terrorist group pushing for independence from the Commonwealth. We don't have any names yet, but there's a Fleet Intelligence investigation ongoing."
"Fleet Intelligence?" Caleb repeated, sounding surprised. "I thought you said that they were being phased out since General Murdock took control of the DSI."
"As everyone has noted," she returned, a slight grating tone to her voice, "General Murdock isn't around right now, and neither am I. Bureaucracy, like nature, abhors a vacuum."
"And one of the three replacements we know about is in Fleet Intel," Holly Morai mused, steepling her fingers. "I wonder if that's a coincidence."
"In my line of work," Kara returned, "there are no coincidences."
Reggie snorted a laugh, shaking his head. "Well isn't that all ominous."
Holly shot him a quelling glance. Cal had mentioned to Rachel that Holly had always been upbeat and talkative when they'd served together. She wondered what had happened to make her so serious and stolid. "So you don't have any connections with the investigation, Major McIntire?"
"I'm afraid not, Commander Morai," Kara told her. "The only DSI agent in the system was on the garrison station when it was destroyed."
"It's like I said a week ago, then," Keller Savage cut in. "We need someone on the ground at Tahn-Skyyiah."
"We need several someones on the ground," Holly corrected him. "Even if we restrict it to their capital city, we're talking, what? Ten million people?"
"Ten million angry, resentful Tahni people," Reggie corrected her. "I'm sure they'll be happy to cooperate with our investigation."
Holly rubbed her temples, closing her eyes. "You know why the two of us were never teamed up during the war, Reggie?" she asked tiredly.
"Bad luck for you?" he assayed with a smirk.
"Because the team psychologist Dr. Rhajiv said I'd kill you myself within a week," she corrected him.
"All right," Caleb cut in sharply, "so we're going to need at least two teams on the ground." He glanced around at all of them. "Who goes?"
"Kara and I should go," Deke asserted. Caleb looked at him curiously, and Rachel knew why: Cal had mentioned to her that Deke had turned from his life as a go-it-alone outlaw to his work with the DSI with the zeal of a convert. It was strange, seeing someone you thought you knew change so drastically.
Kara chuckled, thumping Deke on the arm. "Thanks for volunteering me," she said, sarcasm heavy in her tone. "He's right, though," she admitted to the others. "I have to go in order to maintain our cover, which will be reestablishing a DSI presence in the system. Deke is officially on the roster now as well, so he has an excuse too."
"I'm attached to the DSI temporarily," Holly offered thoughtfully and Kara nodded.
"You can be our pilot," she said, grinning. "I like the idea of having an Attack Command Squadron leader as my personal pilot."
Holly raised an eyebrow, but didn't comment.
"There's still a problem," Keller Savage said. "That's only three and everyone else is a civilian. How are you going to get any of the rest of us in?"
"You're out," Kara told Savage bluntly. "And you know why."
Savage grunted but didn't argue. Rachel looked at Caleb and he shrugged uncomfortably. "Savage/Slaughter is officially persona non grata with the Commonwealth government."
"It's no fuckin' secret," Savage said, waving it away. He looked directly at Rachel and she did her best not to flinch at having those weapon-sight eyes aimed at her. "We took a job in the Pirate Worlds for the Sung Cartel a few years back, wound up getting into a running gunfight through Novye Moscva. There were some civilian casualties..." He shrugged. "We cut ties with the officer who ran the operation, but it caused a stink. And especially after the business with the Corporate Council getting broken up and we used to do work for them, well, we aren't exactly welcome in the Commonwealth."
"Which isn't important to us right now," Kara elaborated, "but Colonel Savage's face was plastered all over the NewsNets during the business with the Russian bratva and we don't need to draw attention to ourselves." She gestured to Reggie Nakamura. "You can't go for the same reason. Your company has been advertising all over the colonies for ten years now. Too many people in Fleet Intell would know your face."
"Damn," Reggie muttered. "Stuck in the rear with the gear."
"Actually," Kara told him, "you could use your contacts to try to track down the replacements we already know are in place. You have an excuse to be on Inferno, after all, with your Executive Protection deal with Commonwealth diplomats."
"If you're looking for volunteers for the mission to Tahn-Skyyiah," Pete said, "I'll throw my hat in."
"No," Caleb said quickly, and Rachel thought she noticed him glance at her before he went on. "I want you and Rachel to head back to Canaan."
"Why?" she asked him, eyes hardening. They'd had it out about him trying to protect her and he'd promised to stop shuffling her off to a corner like a child.
"Kah-Rint," he declared, pointing at the face in the hologram. "We need to track him down, and I need you two to work with Jason to do it."
"Why us?" Rachel wanted to know. "Why aren't you going?"
"Because I'm going to be on Tahn-Skyyiah," he answered, sighing with resignation.
"You're still a civilian," Savage pointed out. Rachel noticed a certain...respect, was it? Maybe fear even? in the mercenary's tone when he spoke to Caleb that wasn't there with anyone else.
"I must be getting patriotic in my old age," Cal said, grinning ruefully as he looked over to Kara. "Consider me un-retired, Major."
Deke was chuckling and offering Cal a playful salute, but for some reason, Rachel felt a sinking in her gut at her husband's words. She couldn't escape the sense that somehow they were all in too deep now to ever get back out again.
* * *
Tyya-Khin squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his fists to his ears, trying to shut out the thunder of multiple tons of alloy-armored death marching by. Their spiked soles pounded the ground, cracking pavement beneath them with each coordinated step as twin lines of Commonwealth Marines filed by in the street outside. Tyya-Khin had seen them coming as he looked through the open entrance to his family's shop, seen the crowds running ahead of their advance even before he'd heard the loudspeakers repeating the automated warnings for everyone to get to their homes and remain indoors.
The warnings echoed from the sky, projected from hovering drones and broadcast over every public communications link, but they couldn't drown out the bass thunder from the pounding feet of the Marine battlesuits. He could feel the wall of the shop vibrating against his back as they passed in the street thirty meters away; his lips moved as he repeated a prayer to the Emperor silently to himself. It was instinct; he hadn't believed in the God-Emperor for many years, even before the humans had banned His worship. If the God-Emperor had any real power, He wouldn't have allowed these humans to set foot on the holy ground of the Tahn-Khandranda, the City of the People of God. He surely wouldn't have allowed them to kill his physical avatar in the war, wouldn't have allowed His people to lose that war so badly...
Unless it was our sin that lost the war, Tyya-Khin thought. It wasn't the first time he'd had the thought, and he knew he wasn't the first to have it. The Sinners were the largest remaining faction of believers and held high position in the puppet government. He was sure the humans had encouraged the growth of the Cult of the Sinners, and might have even created it themselves. That didn't mean they were wrong, though.
Finally, the column of armored Marines passed, their aftershocks fading, the last vestiges causing a small rattle in the ceramic oblation bowl Tyya's father still kept on the altar by the door. Ever the traditionalist, his father.
Tyya scowled at the altar as he rose from the floor and strode purposefully through the partially-open courtyard, passing under the cloth awning that covered the shop entrance. He didn't enter the workshop, didn't even stop to check on his father. He could hear the clatter of metal on metal as the man continued to work, ignoring the passage of troops as he had ignored everything else since he'd returned from the war. Tyya passed the main entrance and walked by the private door to their living quarters as well, heading directly for a short stairway that led down into the storage cellar beneath the shop.
He paused before the closed door at
the end of the stairs, kicking at the frame softly in a prescribed pattern. The rounded, stone door slid aside on its tracks with a strained scrape and the dim light of an oil lamp trickled through to the shaded twilight. Tyya stepped through, not looking back when the door closed behind him.
"They're gone," he said quietly, "for now."
"I had dared to hope," the female seated cross-legged on the dusty floor spoke, her tone harsh and unpleasant, "that we had seen the last of these days."
Tyya tried not to look at her, but his eyes wouldn't follow his will. She was attractive, her hair long and woven into four separate braids that fell across her strong shoulders provocatively. Her robes were the darkest crimson and covered her from neck to calf except for her shoulders and upper arms, and he could sense as much as see the swell of her hips and breasts. Hormones raged in him, nearly uncontrollable. He knew the humans worked side by side with their females and he still could not fathom how they did it.
"It is not the Path to have a female here among males," the older man seated on a stool in the corner of the room declared with anger that might too have been fueled by his hormones. The priest was imperious even in this filthy store-room, impressive and glowering with hooded eyes and cheekbones that could slice bread and a gown so black it ate what little light there was. "The God-Emperor does not shine on it."
Tyya fought back a derisive snort, but the female did not bother to hide hers, and the older male stared daggers at her.
"We must meet when and where we can," the fourth Tahni in the store room said soothingly. "Propriety must yield to pragmatism."
Tyya peered at the male carefully. He still wasn't sure he trusted this one. He was older than Tyya, as old as his father, though not as old as the priest. He was dressed as a common merchant or tradesman, but Tyya guessed it was camouflage. This one was far too shrewd and crafty to be a common anything, despite appearances.
"You called us here, despite the danger and irregularity," the female said and Tyya gritted his teeth and fought hard for control of his urges. "What do you propose?" She was bold; she spoke as if she were back in the Female Holdings outside the city and not in the world of males, where women rode in enclosed carriages and never went unguarded.