by Rick Partlow
“The docs say it’s healed up enough for me to be on my feet,” Tom said, shrugging slightly and wincing as it tugged at the healing wound in his neck. There was still an ugly red weal there, but that too would fade as the medical nanotech continued to do its work over the next few days.
Shannon shook her head, too exhausted to argue the point further.
“I still don’t know how that bastard snuck away,” Ari Shamir growled from the pilot’s seat. “I mean, you dropped him off in the middle of fucking nowhere Nevada, right? How the hell did he slip satellite coverage?”
Roza reached over from the copilot’s seat and patted his arm. Ari had been growling quite a bit the last couple days; he was still angry at himself for believing that Shannon had been brainwashed and for setting Kage up to stop her.
“He had planned ahead for this,” Shannon explained with a pained look on her face. “Just like he seems to plan ahead for everything. He even had an all-terrain groundcar waiting to take him to the Vegas Transportation Hub. Hell, Ari…you were just there, you saw the same security video I did.”
“Saw the same blue screen, you mean,” Ari grumbled. “That fucking bastard has better jammers than we do.” Ari turned away as a call came in over his ‘link and he spoke softly into the mic.
“So,” Roza said to Shannon, “you think this Helenne D’Annique woman will know where he is going?”
Shannon shrugged, then rubbed at her eyes: they wouldn’t stop burning with fatigue, despite the stimulants that were keeping her alert. “I think she’s the only fucking link we have left to this whole thing. And I sure as hell don’t trust the Houston cops to bring her in, not with everything that’s riding on this.”
“We’re five minutes out,” Ari said as he turned back to Shannon and the others. “That was Sergeant Manning…she and Griffin have had eyes on the target for the last twelve hours. She says that D’Annique is in her apartment and should be there until she leaves for work.”
“Do we take her in her apartment or when she leaves, Colonel?” Roza wondered.
“Inside,” Shannon decided after a moment. “It’s a risk-she may have alarms and monitors; but on the street there are too many variables, and we don’t have enough people or vehicles to ensure a safe capture. Ari,” she said to the pilot, “tell Manning to break into the local security systems and run a complete isolation program on her apartment. No signals get out to the police or emergency services, all communications get jammed, starting the minute our feet hit the ground.”
“Got it, ma’am,” Ari acknowledged, then called Sgt. Manning to deliver the instructions.
“Stunners or other nonlethal weapons only,” Shannon reminded the others. “For one thing, she may have been innocent brainwashed into doing this. And for another, without her, we have jack until Antonov decides to make his next move.”
“We’re sure there’s no other way out?” Shannon murmured quietly to Sgt. Manning as they stood at the opposite end of the hall from Hellene D’Annique’s apartment door. The building was upscale, as befitted someone with the former First Officer’s current salary, with plush carpeting in the hallways, tasteful art pieces on the walls and an impressive security system that had taken them nearly a half hour to shut down remotely.
“Ma’am,” Manning replied with a newbie’s deference in her voice, “I’ve checked the plans for the building, ran exterior scans on thermal and sonic, and did a quick visual scan using the building security cams. There’s only one door visible, no exterior windows and no roof access, but I haven’t done a physical inspection so I can’t be sure there isn’t any other entrance.”
“That’ll have to be good enough,” Shannon declared. “We don’t have time to wait.” There was no one else in the hallway at the moment, thankfully, but that wouldn’t last.
“She’s still in the bedroom, ma’am,” Manning told her, angling the tablet so that Shannon could see the security feed. D’Annique was just out of the shower and in the midst of pulling a grey business suit over her solid, muscular frame.
She nodded to Ari, Roza and Tom, who waited on either side of the apartment door. They were all dressed in civilian clothes, but wore body armor under their jackets and had stunners in hand. Shannon took the tablet from Sgt. Manning, found the control for the security override and ordered the system to unlock D’Annique’s front door.
The minute the door slid open, Ari was through it, stunner at the ready, and Roza went in directly behind him. Shannon moved up and entered right behind Tom, pulling a pistol from the shoulder holster under her light jacket. She needed D’Annique alive, but one of them needed the ability to use deadly force if the situation called for it.
D’Annique’s apartment was uncluttered and impeccably kept, as neat as one might expect from a former first officer on a cruiser but strangely impersonal. As she followed the others through the entrance hall and into the living room, she didn’t see a single photo or video display-not one family photo, not one shot of D’Annique herself, not even a video of an old pet. There was a generic art holo inlaid in the living room wall, but it looked as if it had come with the apartment. Even the furniture had a generic look to it, as if there were no trace of D’Annique’s personality at all, no stamp of her on anything in the apartment.
Shannon and Tom took up an overwatch position by the edge of the entrance hall and the living room while Ari and Roza silently swept the kitchen and dining room, signaling the area clear. Their collective attention turned to the short hallway to the bedroom and Shannon risked a glance at the tablet once more: D’Annique was pulling on her jacket, her square, homely face calm and unconcerned as she moved to the door, pausing to pick up a small briefcase from next to her bed.
Shannon got Ari’s attention and signed that their target was coming out. Ari and Roza edged along the same side of the hall, Ari high and Roza crouched low, while Tom and Shannon moved to cover them from the edge of the living room. Shannon could hear the soft footsteps of D’Annique’s pumps on the carpet of the hallway and she brought up her pistol, ready to support Ari and Roza…
…when the small briefcase sailed lazily around the corner, landing with a gentle thump in front of the sofa.
“Down!” Shannon yelled, instinctively grabbing Tom by the arm and dragging them both behind the wall to the entrance hall.
Years of training kicked in and she opened her mouth and closed her eyes, feeling the concussion deep in her chest and seeing the sun-bright light through eyelids squeezed shut.
Flash-bang, part of her mind thought clinically, pushing aside the adrenaline, the panic and the fear for her friends. No other way out, so her next move will be…
Shannon had dropped the tablet when she grabbed Tom, but she had held onto her weapon: she twisted around to bring it up but D’Annique was already firing, the compact, small-caliber machine pistol spraying a hail of tantalum slugs across the room as she rushed for the entrance hall. Shannon ducked back, hugging the floor as the high-speed bullets tore through the wall above her, bracing herself to brave the metal storm to try to stop D’Annique before she could escape…
…and then the high-pitched chatter of the machine pistol was abruptly interrupted by the full-throated boom of a 10mm service pistol and Hellene D’Annique pitched forward, her weapon clattering to the floor as she fell heavily, clutching at her right arm. Shannon’s head whipped around and she saw Sgt. Manning standing behind her in the entrance hall, eyes narrowed and face intense, her sidearm still extended as she watched the downed woman intently.
“Tom,” she said to Crossman as they both clambered up from the floor, “get D’Annique secured.”
While Tom went to the wounded woman, Shannon stepped over to check on Ari and Roza, who’d taken the full brunt of the concussion grenade concealed in the briefcase. They were both still prone on the tile floor; Roza with her eyes squeezed shut, a trickle of blood running from her nose, while Ari was opening his eyes wide and rubbing them, mouth gaping as he tried to clear hi
s ears.
“It’s okay!” Shannon yelled to them, trying to get through the hollow ringing in their ears-she’d experienced a concussion grenade before, in training, and knew what they were going through. “We have her; it’s okay!” She didn’t want either of them opening up blindly with their stunners while they were in a daze.
Slowly, their eyes began to focus on her and Roza nodded silently.
“We’re okay, ma’am,” Ari said as Shannon helped them to their feet, his voice loud and unmodulated because he couldn’t hear himself talking.
“Get them out to the flyer,” Shannon instructed Manning. The NCO nodded, holstering her sidearm and guiding Ari and Roza out into the hallway.
Tom, she saw, had D’Annique up, her hands flex-cuffed behind her back, a smart bandage covering the wound in her upper arm and her eyes glazed over from the sedative he’d given her.
“Get her out of here,” Shannon told him. “We have to clear the area before local law enforcement arrives.” The security hack would slow them down, but sooner or later someone would call and report the gunshots.
Shannon brought up the rear as Tom hustled the insensate D’Annique through the hallway and into the apartment building’s lobby, tastefully and expensively decorated as was fitting for a high-end complex in the upper-class end of Houston…and occupied by two visibly horrified young middle management types in fashionable business wear, staring at the handcuffed, blood-soaked D’Annique being shoved forward by Tom Crossman with a stunner aimed at her chest.
“Are you…” stuttered one of them, a red-headed woman with a restruct face and eyes too green to be natural. “Are you…police?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Shannon told her, making her voice serious but cordial. “Sorry for the commotion…we’ve shut down a weapons smuggling ring that was operating out of this building. You can scan it on the net in about an hour, I imagine.”
“Wow,” the man breathed, smiling. “In our building?”
Leaving the couple to debate whether they might be interviewed, Shannon and Tom quickly moved D’Annique out the front door to the covered walk leading down the length of the apartment block, past a few more gawking civilians to the open lot where they’d landed the flyer. The vehicle waited with the boarding ramp down, its silver-grey exterior shining painfully bright in the morning sun but Sgt. Manning visible through the cockpit canopy in the pilot’s seat.
Ari and Roza were already strapped into the first triple row of seats, so Shannon and Tom belted D’Annique into the next one then sat on either side of her even as Manning was lifting off from the landing area.
“That could have gone smoother,” Tom commented with a sigh, strapping himself in.
“She must have had her own security alarms,” Shannon guessed. “Nothing to be done about it, we couldn’t take the time we needed to set this up any better, not without risking her going to ground.” She called up to the pilot, “That was very well done, Sgt. Manning. Good shooting as well.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Manning said crisply. Shannon couldn’t see her face, but she was a good enough reader of people to guess that the young woman was smiling proudly.
“Get us to the safe house as quickly as possible,” Shannon directed. “And radio ahead for Griffin to get the hypnoprobe ready.”
“Commander D’Annique,” Shannon intoned, “can you hear me?”
“Yes,” the former Fleet officer responded almost in a whisper, her eyes flickering at unseen memories suddenly flooding her brain under the influence of the probe, the psychoactives and the neuronomine. Shannon glanced aside at the medic, who was standing in a corner of the darkened, claustrophobic room, watching worriedly for signs of the very probable side-effects.
“Do you know where General Antonov is?”
“No. I have not had contact with him directly.”
Something in that answer bothered Shannon. “Were you aware that General Antonov was on Earth and being held by Brendan Riordan?”
“Yes,” she answered. “I was made aware of it by Kevin Fourcade six days ago.”
“Why did he tell you?” Shannon asked, becoming annoyed at the closed-mouthedness of the woman.
“He said that General Antonov was going to be moving and I needed to arrange transport. He had me get a groundcar with a driver out to northern Nevada, then arrange for a flyer to be waiting at the Vegas transportation hub.” She hesitated, her bland face showing what was perhaps a flicker of emotion. “And he had me send a special team to kill the driver and the pilot of the flyer afterward.”
“Damn,” Tom muttered from where he leaned against a wall, arms crossed. She silently agreed. Fourcade and Antonov were infuriatingly paranoid.
“Do you,” Shannon asked, “have any knowledge of where Riordan is manufacturing or storing biomechs?”
It took a moment for her to answer, and a frown passed over her face. “Things are compartmentalized, need to know…but I was tasked a few times with arranging shipments of weapons, too many for regular security use. I believed…I believe they were intended to arm a force of biomechs. They were shipped to what is nominally a food production research facility just outside of Montreal.”
“Tom!” Shannon snapped as Crossman pushed away from the wall, eyes lighting up with sudden alertness. “Get on the horn, I need a military strike team on the way to Montreal now!”
Tom Crossman nodded and stepped quickly out of the room as Shannon turned back to D’Annique. The woman was sweating now, her head swaying slightly in the harness for the hypnoprobe.
“How many weapons did you ship to this facility?” Shannon pressed.
D’Annique blinked, yanking slightly at the straps that held her. “Tw…twen…” She began to jerk and the medic surged forward, but Shannon held him back with an upraised hand. “Twenty thou…,” she croaked hoarsely and Shannon’s eyes went wide.
She waved the medic forward and the man began unstrapping D’Annique, pushing an injector into her neck even as he did so, but the woman was seizing violently, foam coming from between clenched teeth. Shannon stepped back, watching in horror as the woman thrashed in the medic’s grip even as he lowered her to a cot.
“I have to get her to a hospital!” the medic yelled, panic in his voice. “This bad a reaction, she’s gotta have a bleeder and I don’t have the equipment to handle it here!”
Shannon nodded. “Go ahead; I’ll get Griffin to help you.”
Shannon stepped out of the room, heading down the hallway to the apartment’s living room, where she found Griffin sitting on the cheap couch, quietly recording a report. “Help the medic get D’Annique to a hospital,” she ordered him before heading over to where Tom Crossman was speaking into the mic of his ‘link, his face pale and grim.
“Did you get hold of General Rietveld?” she asked him. “Are they sending troops?”
“The Marines onplanet and the Republic Service Corps are going to be otherwise occupied, ma’am,” he told her, shaking his head.
“What’s happened, Tom?” she demanded, an icy chill running up her back.
“The Protectorate fleet is coming through the wormhole in the Belt,” he replied, confirming her worst fears. “Hundreds of them…including ramships that are already on their way insystem. And the only cruisers we have closer than six light years are the Bradley and the Decatur. Captain Di Ndinge doesn’t think we’re going to be able handle them all, even with the lunar defenses.”
A haze of unreality settled on her, like she was in a nightmare from which she couldn’t awaken. “Put General Rietveld and Captain Di Ndinge through on my ‘link,” she said, hearing her own voice but feeling as if it were someone else speaking. At his nod, she spoke into her communications link. “This is Colonel Stark, sirs…I’ve been advised of the situation, but there’s another threat that’s even closer and we have to have combat troops to deal with it.”
“Colonel,” a German accent answered and the voice she knew to be grim-toned on the best of days sounded like a minis
ter at an atheist’s funeral, “this is General Rietveld. Captain Di Ndinge has been called away. We’ve just received word that Protectorate ramships are heading straight for the lunar base.” His voice wavered. “The Bradley and the Decatur are engaged with other ramships and there’s nothing we have that can stop them in time. The Captain is trying to order an evacuation.”
“General,” she growled, more in fear than in anger, “if we don’t get a military force to Montreal soon, it won’t matter what happens out there, because General Antonov himself will be leading twenty fucking thousand biomech troops right into your lap!”
“Colonel…” Rietveld sounded as if he were about to argue with her, then he sighed in resignation. “You’re going to need to talk to the President about this. Hold one.”
While she was waiting, as the medic and Sgt. Griffin urgently dragged Hellene D’Annique’s now-limp body toward the front door, Shannon began to hear the emergency sirens in the distance, noticed out of the corner of her eye the apartment’s small entertainment console activating by itself and playing a recorded government warning for all civilians to get to the nearest certified shelter, as well as a call for all RSC troops, police and emergency personnel to report to their duty stations immediately.
Numbness crept over her, the feeling of unreality she’d been experiencing growing ever stronger as she followed Griffin and the medic out the door, walking out to the street and seeing the beginnings of panic, of people starting to run towards the shelters or back to their homes, or just away. Almost unwillingly, she searched the sky and found the moon…it was still visible in the morning sky, barely. And there, along the terminator, she could just see it…a bright spike of gas erupting into the vacuum, where the ramships had penetrated the crust when they impacted the defense base.
She slowly shook her head. Everything they’d done, all the sacrifices they’d made, and it hadn’t been enough to stop this…
“Colonel Stark,” she heard President O’Keefe’s voice over her ‘link; she could hear the horror and fear in it. “You have heard what’s happening?”