by A. D. Bloom
"You know it is."
She peeked around him at the back of the Shediri who had switched off his translator. "Careful. Is it what happened with Hank? I didn't make him start a war. We just wanted him in power instead of Ram Devlin. For the record, I tried to stop him. If anyone triggered a war it was you trying to kill old man Devlin."
"I just tried to show him what would happen if he went through with it. I...I shared the pain of the Houston survivors with him."
"Shared?"
"I pushed it into his mind and he had some kind of seizure. I went to help him and he got better fast enough to knock me out. But he only remembers the last part. What I did...it didn't change his mind and he still thinks I tried to kill him."
"Sounds like you almost did."
"Aren't you at least surprised I could do it?"
"I never said you couldn't hurt people, Samo. I said not to. Goddamn it, you went exactly where I told you not to go. I said that place wasn't for you. That place has a mind of its own. Don't do that again. Ever. There's still plenty I can teach you, even if you do spend most of your time with that pet rock of yours."
"Doctor Gellanden. You killed him."
"Nobody killed him. 4SI asked questions and sent him home with a second memory wipe. He's lecturing right this second."
"You lied to me?"
"Pavic lied, I just didn't tell you the truth. Hank lied, too. He said Gellanden was dead. Don't be cross about it. We were all doing our jobs. Even if you are cross, you know you need me." He didn't want to do much more than nod at that. She said, "That was smart how you never told any of them."
"About what?"
"You know what."
"You mean it was smart how I never told your boyfriend."
"For the record, I haven't had to exert myself with Hank for some time now. He's running on his own power so to speak."
"I knew you were going to say exactly that."
"And yet you still couldn't come up with a wittier response." The color drained from her as she snarfed up his next thoughts. "No, don't, Samo. He doesn't deserve it. Just don't do it. He matters to me. This isn't business. It's personal." It surprised him to sense that need in her. He'd felt it once himself. Scilla was in love; he'd thought her immune. She said, "Don't tell anybody anything about either of us...me or you."
He shrugged. "They wouldn't believe me if I did."
She grinned at him with a genuine sympathy he didn't think he'd ever felt from her before. "Someday, you'll learn to appreciate that fact. It's like a warm and cozy blanket."
The Ketok
Outer System
Once aboard the Ketok, Ram Devlin kept his distance from Hank. The trip out to the eighth planet took long enough that it became something of a feat to hide himself where he thought he might not be found by his adopted son. After seven hours of dodging from place to place and making the bugs nervous, he put on his helmet, passed through an airlock into the corvette's bay and took refuge inside a longboat. Much like when Hank had been a boy, Ram finally saw his dimly lit and helmeted face on the other side of the canopy looking in.
The voice came out the speakers in the helmet set next to him sounding tinny and distant. "We're not far from our rendezvous point. This far outside the lanes nobody is going to spot our longboat. We're practically in a shadow orbit with the blue giant already. I say we leave now."
Two minutes later, they set out. Trapped in the longboat with Hank and alone, it became harder and harder by the second not to express all the anger he felt and scold him like he'd scold a boy. Hank was a man, of course and what kind, he'd always feared he didn't know. He didn't want to think he knew now either.
"I can read the turn of your furrowed brow, Mr. Devlin."
"Don't call me that. Even if you think you're Harry Cozen, you're still Hank as well, the Hank that I raised. Don't insult me by forgetting that."
"Always so serious. Did Mickey Wells put that in you when she raised you? Otherworld needs Harry Cozen. It needs him and it needs you. When either he or you go unchecked by the other, disaster soon follows."
The 27-meter raider appeared on their LiDAR then. Its black and white chitin hull wasn't stealthed; hiding in the shadow of the banded blue gas planet had made it well-nigh invisible to passive detection. "And there they are," said Hank. "Now, remember. She might not be in a terribly good mood after having traveled for twelve hours in a Shediri raider. But being pleasant isn't why she's here. You need a bodyguard and I have a feeling this is someone you can trust. Are you going to turn and burn the longboat? We're at 10 Ks."
"What?" He barely heard the last part Hank said. "Right."
"I'll do it. You're a bad pilot even when you're not distracted."
Hank spun the boat on its outboard nacelles and then vectored thrust into their line of flight. The longboat braked with an extra half-gee over the coils' threshold as the stationary Shediri boat seemed to ease itself into view from the rear edge of the canopy. He stared at the chitin hull next to them. "Is it really her on that ship? Is it really Mickey Wells?"
"Yes. And no. The DNA is unchanged. She remembers nothing. She has no memories of Mickey Wells' life or her time with me or even you. The first Mickey never received a mnemonic storage and transfer server implant. There was no record of her memories to put in this Mickey's brain after the first Mickey's death. This is Mickey Wells Yejide. After paying for her creation, I left orders and paid to have her under surveillance for the last 22 years, of course because I'm Harry Cozen. She's a very impressive individual. You should also know that she speaks Guinean better than English because of where I had to hide her."
"You hid her in West Africa?"
"I did. There's no biometrics net operating there."
"How long are you going to keep me in the airlock?" The voice on local comms was like hearing a ghost. It was her voice. He'd seen her die, but...
Hank rose first and opened the hatch. In her helmet, she looked like the woman they'd both known, but once she took it off, he was stunned to see her so young - as young as she'd been when she'd come back from war, found an orphan in the crater that was her home, and then raised him. This version was as young as Mickey had been when he was a boy. She stood with the same pride now.
"Mickey Wells Yejide," said Hank. "Please come in. Thank you for coming all this way."
"The message I got said Governor Ram Devlin was looking for a bodyguard." She looked to Ram. "I hope you can pay because from what I've heard, you're going to be a lot of work."
Hank said, "There's certainly easier jobs out there. Don't take the position unless you want it, but we want you to know that you're at the top of our list." She shrugged. "This is your signing bonus." Hank opened the thigh pocket of his suit and withdrew the Honma & Voss wrapped in its holster. As he unwound the straps and withdrew it to show her the ivory and gold inlaid weapon made before the fall of Istanbul, the dim light of the longboat seemed to collect and shine on it. "It's from the War of the Americas. It's an H&V Itar, the first and (now illegal) user-regulated discharge x-ray laser. Only two-hundred were ever made."
"I know exactly what it is." She stepped forward and took it from his hands with a nod of gratitude to both of them. "It is an honor to carry this. Thank you." She had no difficulty figuring out how to put it on.
"That suits you," said Hank. "Welcome aboard, Mickey."
Ram said, "Your mother carried that gun. This is hers as well." He reached into the pocket of his suit, pulled out the case, and opened it to show her the Silver Star she'd been posthumously awarded for her actions on the first day of the 2164 war. "I've been holding this for her. She'd want you to have it. We both knew her very well. Would you like to hear about her?"
Books in the War of Alien Aggression series in chronological order:
Hardway (Book 1)
Kamikaze (Book 2)
Lancer (Book 3)
Dreadnought 2165 (Book 3.5)
Taipan (Book 4)
Combat Salvage 2165 (Book 4.5
)
Cozen's War (Book 5)
2166 - Force Liberty (Book 6)
2166 - Battle of Shedir (Book 7)
2166 - Devlin's War (Book 8)
The Otherworld Rebellion (Book 9)
$2.99 box set, books 1-5 The War of Alien Aggression (550 pages, the complete war with the Squidies from the first shot to the last) available now.
$2.99 box set, books 6-8 The Liberty Fleet Trilogy (377 pages)
2.99 The Otherworld Rebellion (300 pages)
War of Alien Aggression - Audiobook coming 01/2016
Click author link to see all books.
About the Author
A.D. Bloom types loudly on a 1998 IBM M13 (13H6705) and other fine mechanical keyboards.
amazon.com/author/a.d.bloom
Table of Contents
01
02
03
04
05
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07
08
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36
Epilogue