Duty, Honor, Planet: 02 - Honor Bound

by Rick Partlow

  “I’ve had people investigating the rumor Val told us about,” Shannon began without any further preamble. “But it’s brought up some questions…some things that need to be looked into. But I can’t do it, and neither can my people, not without raising some red flags.”

  “So you want me to do it,” he deduced. “All right…what is it?”

  “Vice President Dominguez. If they want to take out your father-in-law, there has to be a reason. Unless they expect things to be different if Dominguez is in charge, it doesn’t make any sense.”

  “You think he’s involved?” Glen seemed surprised.

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “The alternative is, they have something on him they think they can use to control him. Either way, we have to know.”

  “I don’t know him that well,” Glen said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “But I know President O’Keefe trusts him. They’ve been friends for years.”

  “Can you do some digging for us? Or is this too high up the food chain? I don’t want you or Val to get burned in this.”

  “I’ll dig around the edges, see if I turn up anything that could point toward him being compromised,” Glen said, wheels turning behind his eyes as he spoke. “There are a few journalists I could talk to, people I trust, that have systems for connecting this kind of thing. That way, if something does pop up, Dominguez couldn’t keep it quiet just by…silencing me.”

  “Glen,” she shook her head, “if you think you’ve gone too far, back off. You have your family to think of. Ask your journalist friends, but that’s it…keep your involvement in this untraceable.”

  “I’ll stay quiet,” he assured her. “I wouldn’t do anything to put Val or Natalia in danger. Besides,” he shrugged, “it might all turn out to be nothing.”

  “Let’s hope. If you find out anything and need to reach me, send a message to this address…let me see your ‘link.” He handed the device over and she tapped a name into his address book file. At his raised eyebrow, she chuckled. “It’s safer and harder to trace than if I’d sent you the name electronically.”

  “Well, you’re the spymaster,” he shrugged, pocketing the ‘link. “So, tell me…how are you and Jason doing?”

  “Great,” she sighed, “except for all the time we have to spend apart. But that’s just part of the job.”

  “You two ever think about having kids?”

  “We’ve talked about it. But we’ve both agreed we want to wait until we’re ready to retire from the military. Having both your parents shipping around different star systems for months at a time is no way for a kid to grow up.”

  “Somehow I just can’t imagine you retiring, Shannon,” Glen laughed.

  “I expect to live a long time,” she grinned, knocking on the wood of the table, “barring enemy action. People change. Ten, twenty years down the road I might be ready to change diapers and read stories.”

  “Well, don’t wait too long,” he warned her. He glanced out the window at the lake, his face peaceful. “Because you’re right…people change.”

  * * *

  “People never change, Captain Al-Masri,” Colonel Lee Jun-hwan declared forcefully, punctuating his statement with a jabbing finger. “Daniel O’Keefe was a bleeding heart populist as a senator, before the war with those Russian jasig.” Bastards, Ari mentally translated the Korean word. “His idiot daughter is nearly killed by peasant scum on Aphrodite and does it bring him to his senses? No, he’s just as big of a fool now that he’s president.”

  Colonel Lee, Ari thought, reminded him of one of his college drinking buddies commenting on politics…if that drinking buddy had been a high-ranking military officer responsible for training and deploying men and women to other star systems. When Alida had come to him after the end of training Friday and suggested that it was the time to meet the people who thought like him, he had expected someone lower on the food chain. Lee was Kage’s XO, his second in command. They were ensconced in Lee’s private room in the base Officers’ Club, lounging on real leather couches and sipping well-aged bourbon: Lee, Alida, Lee’s aid Captain Hassan Ali and himself. It had taken an hour of pleasantries and feeling out and several glasses of bourbon before Lee had warmed up to him; now he was worried about how to get the Korean officer to cut to the chase without encouraging another hour of political bluster.

  “He is indeed a fool,” Ari nodded. “But he is indeed the president and we but soldiers. And alas stuck here on Earth when the problems are months-long journeys away. What can we possibly do, other than train our troops to the best of our ability?”

  “There are things that can be done, Mohammed Al Masri,” Hassan spoke, hiding his words behind a sip of bourbon. He was a young man with a dark, narrow face and close-cropped hair. “The question is, are you the man to help us do them?”

  Ari considered his reply, staring at the drink in his glass for a long moment.

  “Hassan Ali,” he finally said, “there are words and there are words. Some words are empty bluster, while some are made of solid steel. I respect you, Colonel Lee, and I respect your authority, but if these are empty words, if this is more of the talk I have heard of a strike or a political campaign, I am not your man. I am a direct man, not a politician.”

  “We are all politicians, my friend,” Hassan smiled. “For is not the end move in politics always to pick up a gun?”

  “And have we come to the end move?” Ari asked, fixing Hassan’s stare with his own, unwavering.

  “We have indeed,” Lee answered him as if he had been speaking instead of his XO. “It will be very soon, and it will happen all across the colonies…as well as here. We need someone like you, a proven leader in combat, a man who is not unwilling to get his hands dirty. But I will also tell you that if things go wrong, it could cost you not just your career this time, but your freedom and possibly your life. Is this a risk you are willing to take?”

  “If I were unwilling to risk my life,” Ari responded, “I would never have become a Marine. What I am not willing to do, Colonel Lee, is throw it away. There must be a chance of success, a plan worth carrying out. Noble gestures and martyrdom are fine for stories to tell children, but not something to which I aspire.”

  “Ha!” Lee barked, smiling thinly. “You did not lie when you said you were a direct man. I cannot tell you all you wish to know yet, Captain. I am sure you understand the concept of operational security. But I will tell you that we are not interested in martyrdom either. I and the others involved have every expectation of success.”

  “You know me,” Alida interjected. In the Biblical sense anyway, Ari thought, forcing down a grin. “Do I strike you as someone who wishes a symbolic death above accomplishing the mission?”

  “No, you do not,” Ari answered truthfully. Which was worrisome. Whatever the plot was, it would have been much easier to defeat if the plotters were resigned to martyrs’ deaths and a glorious failure. “But I would feel more comfortable if I knew what my role was to be.”

  “Eventually, your role will be to do what you do best,” Colonel Lee informed him. “You will lead men in combat. But for now, what we need you to do is to recruit others, from among your trainees. Those who show skill and promise and recognize the dangers we all face.”

  “Sir,” he said slowly and firmly, his own dark eyes locked with Lee’s, “I am willing to be part of your cause, for I certainly agree that we have to act. But I cannot in good conscience persuade young men and women who trust me to become involved in this unless I know we can succeed. I know you can’t share everything with me…but if we have some edge, something that I have not thought of, that will give us the victory, I must know before I can convince others to follow me.”

  Lee steepled his fingers thoughtfully, considering Ari carefully. Then he glanced at Alida with a question in his eyes, and she nodded. “I can tell you this, Captain,” he said. “What keeps us isolated and unable to coordinate with our brothers and sisters who share our cause is communications lag. It takes mon
ths for messages to be passed back and forth to the colonies from Earth and back, secreted on Eysselink Drive starships. That is no longer the case…for us.”

  Ari felt a tingling up his spine as the repercussions of what the Colonel had just said echoed through his mind.

  “I see,” he replied very carefully. “Very well, sir. You can count on me.”

  “Good,” Lee smiled broadly, satisfied that he had made the right decision. He leaned forward and extended his hand and Ari shook it firmly. “Start feeling out the students you wish to recruit. But don’t take too long…by the time their class ends, we need to know which ones are with us.”

  “If you need to contact us,” Hassan put in, “go through me. Leave me a message about morale issues and I will find you.”

  Ari and Alida rose as the Colonel came to his feet.

  “It has been a pleasure, Captain,” Lee returned Ari’s salute.

  “Sir, the pleasure and the honor have been mine,” Ari told him.

  As the Colonel and his aide exited the suite, Ari exhaled a sigh and sagged against Alida.

  “Were you worried, Mo?” she asked, seemingly amused. He felt a stirring of desire as he stared at her smile, feeling her warmth against him.

  “Alida my sweet,” he eyed her balefully, struggling to remain in character, “I was just conspiring with the second-highest ranking Guard officer here to commit treason against our government. I was worried then and I am still worried now…perhaps more worried.”

  “Do not be troubled,” she patted his arm affectionately. “I would not have involved you if I did not think you could handle it.”

  “And you know so much about me, eh?” He snorted doubtfully.

  She turned his head toward her with a gentle finger on his cheek and kissed him passionately. Ari felt his breath catch in his chest. “Everything. kedves.” “Darling” in Hungarian, he knew. “And don’t you forget it.”

  As he followed her out of the club, Ari couldn’t shake the feeling that he was in way over his head. He knew one thing for sure, though…it was time to call the boss.

  Slowly, carefully, Ari disentangled himself from a sleeping Alida and slipped silently out bed. As he slipped into his running shorts and T-shirt, he couldn’t help but spare another glance to the curving landscape of milky skin visible where the sheet had slipped down. He frowned thoughtfully. He had cultivated their relationship these past few weeks because it had made it easier for him to infiltrate, but he had to force himself not to think about the endgame…about having to arrest her, or God forbid, kill her. This was getting too complicated.

  Sighing, he slipped into his shoes, then clipped his ‘link to the waistband of his shorts and eased out the door. He waved to the guards at the entrance of the Officers’ Quarters; nothing more natural than an officer going out for a pre-dawn run before duty hours. He broke into a slow, warm-up jog down the main path and then when he reached the perimeter trail that circled the whole complex, he began to run. No telling if there were any security cameras watching him, so he had to make it look real…he did one full loop around the complex, a full ten kilometers, then began another and kept it up until the track again wound through an arboretum at least three kilometers away from the main training complex.

  Grabbing his right hamstring, Ari pretended to have a cramp, limping over to a bench and propping his heel on the top of it, trying to stretch out his leg. While he did so, he pulled his ‘link off his belt and surreptitiously held it close to his mouth.

  “Record message protocol Eldest Son,” he commanded quietly. “Colonel Lee, the XO here is involved and so is his aid, Major Ali. Don’t have evidence that General Kage is in on it, but I’d be surprised if Lee were the mastermind; he doesn’t have the temperament. We had a face-to-face and I’ve been asked to recruit officer candidates for the mutiny. The mutiny is sounding a lot more like a coup to me.”

  Ari switched legs on the bench, stretching out the other one. “The kicker is,” he continued with the message, “he told me that the mutineers have access to instantaneous FTL communications. That’s gotta’ mean they’ve somehow found and figured out how to use the wormholes Antonov discovered…and I don’t know how they could have pulled that off without outside help. This thing is way bigger than we thought and I need to know how far you want me to take this. I do not feel comfortable recruiting young trainees to something that could get them arrested or killed…” Ari trailed off, something teasing at his subconscious, something he hadn’t quite heard, but knew there’s been a sound…

  There. A faint crunch of a footstep on mulch…

  Ari had barely had time to straighten up from his stretch before the man was upon him, an indistinct figure clad in speed and darkness, striking with a hiss of a blade passing through the air. Ari threw himself backwards on instinct more than anything else, feeling the breeze of the strike against his skin as it just missed, then he darted in with both arms held up in a block and caught the return swing in mid-motion, his forearms cracking against the back of his attacker’s left arm, the impact sending the small, dark-bladed knife the man had been holding spinning through the air and into the brush.

  Ari turned the block into a grab, catching his attacker at the wrist and triceps and yanking him into a knee-strike that slammed into unprotected sternum with a crunch of cracking bone. He could hear and feel the wind go out of the man in an explosive gush and his training told him to lock his opponent into a choke and finish him…but instinct made him spin the man around by his captive arm and throw him into the path of the second attacker he’d sensed more than heard was coming at him.

  The disarmed attacker tumbled into an uncontrolled roll and took the oncoming assailant at the knees, pitching him face-first into the dirt. Ari only had the barest impression of dark clothes and a stocky build-he couldn’t tell if the man was armed or not-but he pounced on the second man immediately, pressing his advantage with an elbow strike on the downed attacker’s back that broke his right clavicle with an audible snap. A muffled scream came through the man’s black balaclava and the assassin reached desperately with his left hand for the knife clutched in his now-useless right, but Ari had spun around and pinned the left arm with his knee. With a swift, trained motion, Ari wrapped his arm around the man’s neck and yanked backwards sharply. A sickening crunch and then the man’s struggles stopped and he went limp.

  Ari was up in an instant, coming into a crouch as he watched the first man scramble to his feet, still struggling to breathe. Ari lunged at him with the tactical aggression that he’d been taught in the Intelligence Service’s unarmed combat courses, catching him low across the hips, and yanking him off his feet, slamming his shoulders squarely into the ground. Not knowing if there were more of them out there, Ari took the man out quickly with a vicious punch to the throat, crushing his trachea.

  Leaving the man thrashing on the ground, choking to death, Ari jumped to his feet, scanning for more attackers, his own gasping breath and pounding heartbeat deafening in his ears. Suddenly a sound penetrated the cacophony of his own respiration, a coughing snap that he instantly recognized as the report of a suppressed gunshot. He spun toward the sound and saw a third black-clad man slumping to the ground, a compact pistol slipping out of his lifeless fingers.

  Standing behind the man was Alida, dressed in running Capri’s and a tank top, an ugly little pistol with a sound suppressor attached to its barrel held in her outstretched hands. He stared at her agape as she glanced back and forth, checking for any other threats before lowering the gun.

  “Getting a bit sloppy, Captain Shamir,” she said softly. “You should have known they’d have someone backing them up with a gun, just in case.”

  He started to respond, then checked himself, his mouth left wide open.

  “What the fuck?” was all he was finally able to say. “Do you…are you with…us?”

  She laughed softly, her hands working to detach the suppressor from the pistol then stowing the gun and the silencer in a
small waist pack. “You mean am I with the Fleet Intelligence Service? No…I work for the Guard Investigative Division, but at the moment I am working directly for General Kage.”

  “General…?” Ari felt incredibly disoriented, as if he’d walked into the middle of someone else’s conversation. “So, General Kage isn’t…”

  “Look,” she sighed, “we don’t have much time…we need to get these bodies off the trail and out of sight, then get back to the OQ before we’re on duty. I’ll fill you in while we run.”

  Ari nodded, finally hearing something he could understand. Without another word, the two of them dragged the three would-be assassins off the trail and deep into the trees, then covered them with brush, making sure their weapons were left with the bodies.

  “Someone will find them eventually,” he warned as he paused to retrieve his ‘link from where he’d dropped it near the bench.

  “I’ll get a team out here to clean up,” Alida assured him. “Now, let’s get going.”

  Ari and Alida made their way back onto the running path and broke into an easy jog. Ari felt a jolt of post-fight adrenaline jitters hit him like a hammer and only previous experience kept him from curling into a ball on the trail. Instead, he used breathing exercises to keep his pulse and respiration under control as he kept up a steady pace next to the woman he’d thought he knew.

  “General Kage knows about the conspiracy?” He asked Alida once he had his breathing under control.

  “Of course…he’s many things, but he’s not stupid,” she replied, seemingly calm as a mill pond.

  “How did you know who I was?” He heard more anger in his voice than he’d meant to put there. Mistakes like that could easily get him killed.

  “The GIS stole the Marine personnel files on all the Marines that were recruited to Intelligence,” she explained with a shrug. “So, we had biometric recognition, voice recognition, DNA recognition, etc…for you and a bunch of others that came in five years ago when everything got reorganized. Frankly, with what was going on, we expected someone. That’s why I’m here…”