Duty, Honor, Planet: 02 - Honor Bound

by Rick Partlow

  Ari rose silently, sliding off the hood of the vehicle to face the Guard Captain. Hassan Ali was dressed in field armor, his helmet under his arm, a rifle slung over his other shoulder, trying to blend in with the other troops.

  “There is something you must see,” Ari said, stepping past him and beckoning him to follow. “It is not far.”

  Hassan Ali followed behind him, slipping on his helmet to use its night vision as they strode through the defensive lines, past sleeping sentries and into the open fields around the encampment. Half a kilometer past the lines, there was a clump of tall ombu’ bushes that loomed dark in the moonless night like an impenetrable wall. Ari led the Guard Captain through a gap in the tree-like bushes, into a small, bare-dirt clearing.

  Alida Hudec lay motionless on the dirt, hands and feet bound and a strip of utility tape wrapped around her mouth.

  “What the hell happened?” Hassan Ali demanded, looking back and forth between Ari and the woman.

  Ari sighed, running a hand through his hair. “She came to me tonight after dinner and asked to speak with me out here. She told me that she was an undercover investigator and that she wanted my help…that she liked me and didn’t want me arrested. She told me that she was calling in her people tonight, to arrest you and Colonel Lee and his staff and that if I didn’t agree to help her, I would be arrested as well. So I agreed of course…then I choked her out and tied her up. You need to alert the Colonel.”

  “Dammit,” Ali hissed, pulling off his helmet and tossing it to the ground angrily. “I thought we’d have more time!”

  “Shit happens, as my American friends say,” Ari said with a shrug. “Either she figured out that Lee was the biggest fish in this pond or her superiors grew impatient. Either way, I have bought us some time-she had not yet made the call for them to move in and make the arrests. But I would think that the GIS will send their forces eventually if they do not hear from her within a day or so. Do you have a way to get a secure message to Colonel Lee?”

  “Of course,” Ali said impatiently. “There is an address…an anonymous account. I just leave him a coded message there and he can check it with any public terminal.”

  “You need to get him to meet us somewhere remote and quiet,” Ari instructed. “We can take her there and determine how much she knows and how much time we have, then he can make a decision about our next move. And we need to do this now, before dawn, while we can still get her out of here unnoticed. And we need a vehicle that can meet us here, with a driver who can keep his mouth shut.”

  “Um…” Ali dithered, beginning to be overwhelmed by the situation. “Ah…yes, let me contact the Colonel.” He pulled out his ‘link and gave it a net address, then recorded his message. “Chess aficionado seeks same, face to face game, on April 5 at three in the afternoon in the city park.” He looked up at Ari. “I just asked him to meet me at the old demolition bunkers in two hours. No one goes there anymore…they opened up a new range a year ago.”

  “Good,” Ari clapped the man on the arm reassuringly. “Now get us a vehicle and let’s get out of here. I very much dislike standing out here in front of every satellite in orbit with her tied up on the ground in front of me.”

  As Ali turned and stepped away to make the call to his driver, Ari glanced down at the woman he’d known as Alida. Her eyes opened for a split second, then winked at him before closing again. He fought back a smile.

  Roza. It was a very nice name.

  The old demolition range was an eerie moonscape of craters, devoid of life or evidence of life other than the one dirt road leading into it and the abandoned bunker at its center. Buried in the dirt up to a series of narrow view slits on its front face, the lone entrance was in the rear, an open doorway shielded by a meter thick concrete wall that stood claustrophobic guard just 70 centimeters away.

  The only light inside the bunker came from old, half-exhausted chemical ghostlights, so Ari and Captain Ali had brought in a pair of lanterns from the utility rover before the Guard Captain had sent his driver away with the vehicle, telling her to park at least a kilometer away and wait for his call. The lights were set up on either side of the bound and gagged Roza Kovach, who had abandoned her pretense of unconsciousness and was glaring angrily at the two of them with frightening earnestness.

  “The Colonel should be here by now,” Ali fretted, pacing back and forth on the dirt-coated cement slab floor. “It has been nearly three hours. It will be dawn soon!”

  Ari shook his head as he sat on the concrete bench built into the wall, watching Ali wear a rut in the floor. “For the love of God, relax,” he muttered. “I’m sure the Colonel had business of his own to take care of and this place is on the ass end of nowhere. He’ll get here when he gets here.”

  Inwardly, though, he was just as worried as Ali. This was their best shot at getting them both together away from the headquarters and away from prying eyes. If Lee got spooked and didn’t show up, it would make things much more difficult.

  “Is that a vehicle?” Ali’s head whipped around. Without waiting for confirmation, he bolted up the short set of stairs and looked down the narrow dirt road. “There’s a rover coming up the road,” he called down to Ari. “I think it’s the Colonel. Yes, it is him…he has Captain Fillon with him and it looks like Major Sobawale.” Ari had heard their names before, but never met them…they were other participants in the conspiracy, also tasked with recruiting trainees. “That must be what took so long, getting them together without attracting attention.”

  “If you ever leave the military, Captain Ali,” Ari commented dryly, “you should get a job as a sports announcer.”

  Ari tried hard not to look at Roza-it was still hard not to think of her as Alida-as Colonel Lee stepped down the stairs with the other officers in tow. Captain Fillon was a tall, gangly man with fair skin and a dusting of red stubble on his shaven head, while Sobawale was short and muscular with the ebony skin of a native African. Both were dressed in their field utilities and wore sidearms, as did Colonel Lee. Lee frowned as he saw the woman sitting bound on the floor, looked between Ari and Captain Ali.

  “So,” he said, “I see events have forced our hand.”

  “We have hours,” Ari told him. “A day at most before the GIS moves in. The question is, do we run and hold up somewhere with the recruits we already have, or do we make a stand here?”

  “If we battle them here,” Lee responded, shaking his head, “we take the chance of inviting a strike by the Marines before we are ready. Timing is everything.”

  “Then we must run,” Ali said. “If we can find a secure place to marshal our forces, we can wait this out…they don’t have enough ships or men to arrest every officer in every armory in the colonies. As long as we can keep our forces in play, we can still do this.”

  “You are more optimistic than I, Captain,” Major Sobawale shook his head morosely. “Without access to the trainees here, we can’t field a large enough force to seize Buenos Aires. We only have about a hundred right now that we can count on to come with us. Our entire force would be no more than three hundred troops.”

  “But we can recruit more support from the local militias and police forces,” Fillon reminded him, sounding more optimistic than he looked: his long, horsey face seemed to have a perpetual frown. “They wouldn’t be much use against Fleet Marines, but they could keep the rabble in check while we face the stronger forces. And soon, it won’t matter-the Marines will have other things to worry about.”

  “Sir,” Ari interjected, addressing Colonel Lee, “do you know how much longer we have before the orbital strike occurs and we can launch our operation?”

  “I am not totally certain,” Lee admitted, looking as if he had bitten into something sour. “I have not heard from my allies in weeks now.”

  “Is there a way you can contact them, sir? We can’t make a decision like this without knowing how long we have to hold out.”

  “He’s right, Colonel,” Ali said with an eager nod. �
�If it is only days away, we could hold out here…perhaps take hostages.” He nodded at Roza as an example.

  “I was given an address to use in an emergency,” the Colonel admitted with a reluctant nod. “This most certainly qualifies.”

  Ari allowed himself a smile. “If that is the case, Colonel,” he said, “then there is something you need to hear, something that our ‘Lt. Hudec’ told me before I captured her.” He walked over to the woman and yanked her to her feet by her shoulders. “You should hear it from her own lips,” he explained, ripping away the tape from her mouth, then moving behind her, appearing to hold her arms secure.

  Roza worked her jaw, regarding the Colonel with rage in her eyes.

  “Tell him, woman!” Ari snapped, yanking on her wrists.

  Roza took a deep breath, let part of it out. “Colonel Lee Jun-hwan,” she said formally, “I am Captain-Investigator Roza Kovach of the Guard Investigative Service, empowered by a personal warrant from General Kage, and I must inform you that you and everyone else in this room are under arrest. If you resist arrest, I am authorized to use lethal force.”

  Lee stared at her for a moment, confusion and disbelief on his face, and then he started laughing. It was a high-pitched almost girlish giggle that seemed almost involuntary and he was quickly joined by Ali and the others. Ari chuckled appreciatively.

  “That is it?” Lee demanded, still laughing. “That is what you had to say? Well, let me tell you, Investigator Gisela Katona or Roza Kovach or whatever your name really is…I most assuredly do resist arrest!” He looked around at the other officers. “What about you gentlemen? Do you wish to surrender or resist?”

  “I think we will resist, sir,” Ali said, chortling.

  Roza shrugged. “I tried,” she said.

  There was the barest of sounds, a tick of plastic hitting concrete as the zip-tie handcuffs fell off her wrists. No one noticed it over the laughter, but they did notice when the tie around her ankles broke at the slightest pressure and she fell into a balanced shooting stance, bringing up the compact handgun that Ari had slipped into her hands when he was behind her.

  “Gun!” Lee screamed, scrabbling at his waist for his own holstered sidearm. “She has a…”

  He didn’t get another word out, because Ari grabbed him by the wrist of his gun hand and the throat, and slammed him to the ground. Lee’s breath left him in an explosive “whoosh” and his eyes rolled back in his head.

  Roza ignored him. It was too dark and too close to use sights; instead she held the 10mm in an Isosceles stance, her arms making a triangle with her torso, the gun at the tip, and pointed her whole body at Major Sobawale. The Major was faster than the others…his service pistol had actually cleared its holster before she shot him. Two rounds through the chest and then a shift upwards and a third into his forehead. The triple-explosion of the Mozambique Drill echoed through the enclosed bunker like a snare drum, shocking the others.

  Roza wouldn’t even remember hearing it. She dimly registered Sobawale’s body falling to the side, didn’t hear the shriek of fear and disgust from Hassan Ali as he suddenly found his face covered with the Major’s blood and brain tissue. Her focus was on Captain Fillon, who was trying to run for the door while simultaneously clawing at his holster, trying to get his handgun free with hands that suddenly wouldn’t stop shaking. He finally ripped the gun out and swung it around one-handed as he side-stepped toward the door, jerking the trigger over and over as he swung the gun.

  A strobe-effect of muzzle blasts lit up the bunker but the rounds came nowhere near the target; the ceramic jackets shattered harmlessly on concrete walls and ceiling, the tantalum penetrator fragments within burying themselves in the rock. Roza took her time, shutting out the fear and the sounds and flashes of his gunfire as she put two rounds in his chest and a third to the head. Fillon collapsed back against the wall next to the doorway and slid down it to the floor, coating it with a red swathe of his blood.

  Hassan Ali was still screaming when Ari came up behind him and snatched his handgun from its holster, then slammed it into his temple. The Guard Captain went down in a heap, moaning and clutching his head and Ari came down on his back with a knee, pinning him to the ground as he fastened a zip-tie handcuff around his wrists, then another around his ankles. He left him there and went back to Colonel Lee, who was still barely conscious, struggling for breath; more temporary cuffs secured him as well. Ari came to his feet and darted out of the bunker, Ali’s gun in his left hand as he drew his own with his right.

  There had been a driver, as he feared. It was a woman, one of Lee’s trusted NCOs…he thought he remembered hearing her referred to as Sergeant Paakannen. She was running towards the bunker, a rifle in her hands. Ari didn’t have time to think, but his body reacted as he’d been trained. Even as the Sergeant raised her rifle to her shoulder, he stepped to the side, using the bunker entrance’s blast shield as cover, leaving only one eye and his gun hand revealed. She was wearing armor but no helmet…no doubt she’d been relaxing in the car and charged out without bothering to grab it. That left one target vulnerable to a handgun.

  Ari’s 10mm bucked in his hand twice in quick succession and Sergeant Paakannen’s head snapped back in a spray of blood, bone and brains. She fell face first to the ground, feet kicking in one last, frantic firing of nerves before she went motionless.

  Ari stayed behind cover for a long moment, making sure there was no one else out in the darkness, before he stepped out and pried the rifle from the dead woman’s hands. Slinging it over his shoulder, he grabbed her by an arm and dragged her through the door to the bunker, letting her body fall down the steps and roll to a rest next to Captain Fillon’s.

  Roza gave him a nod. “Sit those two up,” she gestured at Colonel Lee and Captain Ali.

  “Yes ma’am,” he grunted, tossing aside the rifle and two pistols he’d collected.

  Lee had managed to get his breath back, and was using it to curse them both in Korean at the top of his lungs as Ari dragged him by the collar of his uniform jacket across the room to the concrete bench. Ari didn’t respond, just sat the officer against the bench, then went back for Ali. The Captain was still lolling from the blow to the head: Ari judged that the man probably had at least a light concussion. At any rate, he didn’t say a word or resist being moved next to the Colonel.

  “Colonel Lee,” Ari said, “please allow me to introduce myself. I am Captain Ariel Shamir of Republic Spacefleet Intelligence Service, Special Activities Division. Formerly of the Fleet Marine Corps.”

  “You…” Lee stuttered, recognition coming into his eyes. “You were on the Protectorate flagship in the war…”

  “Yes, I’ve seen the movie,” Ari said dryly. “I am telling you this because I want you to know who you’re dealing with. This woman,” he nodded at Roza, “has specific orders from General Kage to make you go away. You’re an embarrassment to the new Colonial Guard he’s trying to build. She is very willing to kill you to make you go away. I am the only hope you have. I have the authority and the ability to allow you to disappear somewhere comfortable. And I am willing to do so, if you give me your contacts in this conspiracy. I want to know who from Spacefleet and who from the multicorps is in this with you.”

  “You have me,” Lee shook his head defiantly, “but this cause will go on without me. The word will still go out…the colonies will be ours!” Ari interrupted his rant with a quick, sharp slap to the face.

  “Let’s be clear about something, Colonel,” Ari snapped, “we do not need your fucking cooperation to pull this off.” He looked to Roza and she pulled a small syringe from a thigh pocket and held it up. “This will have you babbling like a baby in seconds. You’ll tell us everything you know. If we need your face, we’ll use a computer simulation. If we need you to meet someone in person, I can have restruct surgery done on my face,” Again, he moaned inwardly, “and I will be you. The only thing you have to offer us is saving us time and trouble, and for that service we will give you
your life and a comfortable place to live it in anonymity.” He grabbed Lee’s jaw in his hand, yanking the man forward to stare in his eyes. “If you decide that your ‘honor’ is too precious to allow you to save us this time, then my dear Roza here will use the truth drugs on you. You’ll tell us what we want to hear, and when you’re done, Roza will follow her orders and put a bullet in your brain. You and the others,” he jerked his head toward the corpses that littered the area around the bunker entrance, “will die in a training accident.”

  “I…” Lee swallowed hard. “I do not believe you would kill me in cold blood…”

  He hardly had spoken the words when Roza’s gun fired only inches from his face and Captain Ali jerked back and collapsed against the bench, half his skull blown off. Lee screamed as blood splashed into his face, blinding him.

  Ari shot Roza an annoyed glance. “That was extremely loud,” he said plaintively, wiping blood drops from his tactical vest. Calmly, he turned back to Lee, slapping the man across the face to stop his screaming. “Colonel, trust me when I say, Roza wants to kill you. She’s been ordered to kill you. General Kage wants you dead. The only reason you have a chance to leave this bunker alive is because I am here.” Ari glanced at his ‘link. “The cleanup team will be here in less than an hour. You have one minute to make up your mind.”

  “All right, all right,” Lee could hardly speak from hyperventilating. “I will do what you want, I will do it!”

  “Good.” Ari said with a smile. “Roza, let us begin.”

  Without a word, she pulled the safety cap off the syringe and jabbed the needle through Lee’s trousers and into his thigh, drawing a gasp from the man.

  “What are you doing?” Lee asked in a panicked voice. “I said I would cooperate!”

  “And you will, and I will keep my word to allow you to live,” Ari nodded to the Colonel as the older man began to blink his eyes and fall into a stupor. “That does not mean we trust you.”