by Justin Sloan
“We got one of them, maybe two with that explosion, but don’t get cocky,” Alice warned. “The minute we let hubris get the best of us, we fall to the wayside like the White Rabbit did.”
Their expressions turned somber—they were all too familiar with what had happened to her last team. A former PD soldier named Gretchen had joined the ranks and gotten ahead of herself, trying to take over the team and make a move that would’ve led to at least one General’s death. She started calling herself Teach and lighting her hair on fire. While an obvious sign that the woman was mentally unstable, at least to Alice, it worked to rally the weak-minded members of the team.
That same team mutinied against Alice and went with Teach, then overextended themselves, got greedy, and in the end got themselves killed. Part of her had always wondered if it had been a trap to begin with, if Teach had been a plant and the whole idea to lead them on a suicide mission. Hence the post-mortem name of the White Rabbit. A reminder for her and her team to never go down that hole.
It didn’t matter now. She’d learned her lesson, better vetting her recruits and keeping a strict hierarchy of power.
More often than not, however, she preferred to work alone. Tonight, that had been impossible. She’d had to rely on Scorpio—one of the few survivors from back then. The only one who had stayed true to her, and had been captured because she’d asked him to pretend to be in with Teach. She owed him one for that, and therefore always ensured he was in the know.
Swinger turned his wide, starkly white eyes to her, cocking an eyebrow. “Your move, boss. They’re going to be scrambling.”
“Right.” She turned back to her station and started working her magic. It helped that she had once been in charge of setting up the firewalls she was now tearing down. She knew her way inside the systems, and knew the other men and women prepping defenses, the way they thought.
The right moves, and they’d never see her coming. For at least an hour she went through the steps she guessed might work, finding barriers and then backtracking to find new ways in, potential backdoors or failure points.
The fatal flaw often led back to some programmer who had been too damn lazy to check with security—a peon who was told to just get the damn program working. Higher-ups were, more often than not, more concerned with the bottom line than with ensuring security measures were in place.
And she was using that to her advantage. Loving, for once, that private companies put more stock into fast money than did their government counterparts.
“Got it,” she said finally, pulling up a screen that showed various communications and contact information. “Next move of theirs is an arrival at the docks, from Earth. If we let them believe we’ll hit them hard there, they might leave PD headquarters that much less guarded. Just have to find out when.”
Scorpio nodded, then added, “Break the chain while it’s hot.”
“Damn straight.” Norwal stood, going for the small fridge they kept in the corner and pulling out a bottle of homemade ale. Her favorite, though Alice found the stuff to be rancid.
“Work hard, play hard,” Norwal added, giving Swinger a playful wink.
“Keep it PG,” Alice said, standing and heading for the door. “I’m gonna hit the head, then I’ll need to analyze the findings with Scorpio. Do what you gotta do to unwind, but be ready.”
“And get a damn room, you two,” Scorpio said with a laugh as he stood to join her. He pretended not to look as Norwal handed the drink to Swinger and straddled one of his thick thighs. The two weren’t really a thing, per se. But when it came to playing hard, they were often playing more with each other than the team.
“You’re always welcome to join us,” Swinger said—proving, as was never necessary, where he got his nickname.
“Keep dreaming,” Scorpio replied with a sideways glance toward Alice, which she pretended not to see. Even if her husband was dead, the love she felt for him wasn’t. It never would be, and she had every intention of finding out what had actually happened to him.
Could she move on and try to live without him? Maybe, but she didn’t want to. Not until she had the answers that New Origins and Project Destiny weren’t giving her.
Another glance back showed Swinger whispering into Norwal’s ear, the younger woman giggling, fingers playing with his earlobe. A small gesture, one Alice normally would have ignored, if it hadn’t been for the memory that little gesture called forth.
Marick had often touched her like that, hand moving through her hair, down her cheek, fingers caressing her earlobe as he stared at her with love and admiration. She remembered one morning when the snow had just started to fall outside. She’d let him stay over because it had been so cold and icy the night before—the first night she’d said okay. She’d woken up to him looking at her like that, caressing her earlobe like that. And when his lips had met hers, it had been the first time she’d realized she would spend the rest of her life with him.
As far as she was concerned, he wouldn’t have a say in the matter, she had thought with a giggle similar to Norwal’s now. Somehow, she doubted that was what was going through the woman’s mind at the moment, but smiled at the thought all the same.
Intrepid finally stood, grabbing the slim glass screen of his computer, and swiped his fingers across it so that it shrunk down to pocket size. He walked over and handed it to Scorpio with a grunt, then nodded as he continued on past them.
Scorpio hid it in the inner pocket of his old military jacket, calling after him, “No play for you either?”
Intrepid answered with a finger.
Scorpio had thick skin and was used to this, replying with a hearty laugh as he joined Alice at the doorway.
“When are you going to start acting like a member of the team?” Alice asked.
“Tell you what,” Scorpio nodded toward Norwal and Swinger, “the day they act like adults, I’ll shake their hands and give them a smile. Those two are like horny teens, and Intrepid…”
“Don’t be shy now.”
He chuckled. “Well, we all know he’s a dick.”
“The irony,” Alice replied with a chuckle. “But you can’t tell me you wouldn’t be like the other two if you had a woman. Or… a man?”
He shrugged. “I’ve had my share of women. I like a taco as much as the next guy, but I ain’t interested in licking no popsicles. To each their own, just ain’t my style.”
“Classy. And now?”
“Now we have a job to do, and I think it’s best to stay focused.” The words left his mouth calmly enough, but Alice wasn’t blind—she saw the look he gave her, the longing in his eyes. If she changed her stance on the subject, there was no doubting he would too. That wasn’t about to happen, though, so she dropped it and led them on their way.
They passed an opening where the hall led into a larger chamber, light falling down on them. The SCIF was hidden in the inner workings of the space station, one of many secretly carved out rooms in this subsection. As they continued along the corridor, several guards stood at their posts, pretending to be working on repairs if asked by outsiders.
Alice greeted each of them with a nod, stopping to hand a few metal chips to an especially large one they called the Bull. They exited their hall to find the section with the head and another hall that led to their private chambers.
“Just remember why you’re doing this,” Alice told Scorpio.
“Don’t have to remind me,” he said, eyes finally abandoning that hard look he so often wore, turning to her with compassion. “We’ll get those bastards, and we’ll learn the truth.”
“Is there ever a moment when you, I don’t know, wonder why we’re doing it?”
He frowned. “I thought I just said… the reason.”
“That’s not what I mean. My conviction is as strong as any, but why? Why is it necessary? What the hell kind of world do we live in where a corporation has this kind of power? It didn’t use to be like this.”
“And the new kids don’t k
now the difference,” Scorpio said, nodding. “I remember a time—”
“Hold up. How old do you think you are?” she laughed, in spite of the gloom hanging over her. “You can’t be a day older than me, and I’m… well, you don’t need to know how old I am.”
“Pretty sure you don’t have any secrets from me at this point. Point is, the why is because some piece of slime back on Earth approved it, that’s why. If you give the politicians power, they’re gonna abuse it. How it’s always been.”
“Good, so you’re in it for the long haul.”
He assessed her, then coughed. “Didn’t you say you had to hit the head?”
“Yeah, yeah.” She did feel herself starting to get a tad squirmy. Soon it would turn into a full-on dance. “Pull what you can, we’ll go over it in your room.”
“Roger that,” he replied, turning to the halls beyond and going on his way. Others were filling the area now, either passing to their rooms or using this walkway as a shortcut to their jobs. It was one of the many that were considered off-limits, but nobody actually followed that. And since pissing off the entire population of a space station wasn’t the best move on the part of the corporations that relied on them for a workforce, they hadn’t made much of a fuss.
Now that Alice’s team had attacked the corporation, she wondered how long the status quo would last. Right now, though, she had to take the Niagara Falls of pisses.
Making a beeline for the bathroom, she found herself a stall and, for the billionth time, wished to God they had bathrooms up here like she remembered from Earth. As a high-ranking civilian, she’d had access to the bathroom on the top floor of New Origins’s Earth building. Plush couches, floor to ceiling mirrors, even warm towels and complimentary perfume.
Here? Here she had a metal bowl, a metal seat, and a plywood stall. Not the worst, but since importing toilet paper was a bitch, they had to rely on the station’s recycling for that, and it was rough as fine sandpaper.
All the technology in the galaxy, and they couldn’t fix that.
If her husband’s supposed death wasn’t grounds for going after them, the toilet paper might have been.
She was about to stand, when she heard two women gossiping about the hit on the PD forces. She lingered instead as one mentioned the explosion and hack surrounding it, and said something about a clue left behind.
“What do you mean?” the other lady asked.
A glance down showed their feet—fancy red heels on one, so clearly not one of the workers, and sneakers on the other. Maybe on her way to the station’s fitness facility. Either the higher echelon, or easy money.
Alice wasn’t particularly fond of either group.
“Just what I said. A clue… rumor is there’s some trace, that PD has a lead.”
“Damn, you mean they might catch them this time?”
“Doubt it, but…” A pause came in the conversation, the sound of someone else entering, and then the two ladies leaving.
That wasn’t much, but it was enough to make Alice wonder if it were true. What sign could her team have possibly left behind? Unless, maybe, there was some sort of tracer built into the software. Some new form of leech, as they called them, waiting there for her team’s presence to be felt so that it could grab hold and trace them back. Damn, if that was true… She needed to check in on the team.
She moved cautiously, in case there was a chance someone was aware of her and the conversation itself had been a plant. Maybe she was being paranoid, but in a situation like this, she found paranoia always the best mindset to be in.
Nothing odd on the way back. A roar of hundreds of people walking and talking filled the halls now, and she quickly made her way to Scorpio’s room. Out here he was known as Cleat—not a bad name, but she could see why he didn’t want the rest of the team knowing it.
At the entry to the rooms, she nodded to the short doorman, said Cleat’s name, and was pointed to the hall on the left. She’d been here enough times to know where to go and for the doorman to know that she knew, but he had his job to do, so she let him.
The action gave her pause as she wondered about some of the other members of her team. She knew the general direction Intrepid headed off each night, but not more than that. Norwal always seemed to be with Swinger, so her room’s location was a mystery, too. A common moral dilemma for Alice, in that. How much should she follow them, spy on them, and know everything about her team?
In this line of work, trusting everyone didn’t seem the smartest course of action.
Stairs led to the next level up, and for a moment she was jolted as the station’s rotational ribs must’ve hit a glitch. But then all was good and she was moving again. It was always a worry that something would go wrong and they’d have to live with zero gravity until the technicians fixed it, but so far that had only happened three times in the year that she had lived here.
“Psst,” Scorpio hissed at her, from the opposite direction of his room. She saw him in the shadow of an area that, she was pretty sure, normally had a sheet metal wall. Sure enough, as soon as she joined him he put the wall back and held out his wrist for light. He wore a bracelet with a screen on it, which he used to pull up a map of where they were at that moment.
She wasn’t aware he had that, and from the look of it, was pretty sure it was a hack from the security system.
“You’ve been doing extra credit,” she said, impressed.
“I know all of your secrets, doesn’t mean you know all of mine.” He winked, then held up the screen for her to see. Next, he pulled out the screen from their SCIF. Holding them together, he waited for her reaction.
“Ah, hell.” She took the second screen, placing it over the first to ensure she was right. Sure enough, the map showed his room as well as Swinger’s and her own. They were all blinking with a red X. There were more, and she guessed a couple of those were Norwal’s and Intrepid’s rooms.
“We’ve been made,” he said with a growl. “Dammit all, how’d this happen?”
“I heard something,” Alice said. “It’s all over, apparently. Two ladies in the head even knew. Check it out—they said a clue was left behind.”
“Not a chance.”
She nodded. “Not a chance in hell. We would’ve spotted it. We’re too smart for that… unless someone did it on purpose.”
“Don’t say that.” He put the screen away, but left his wristband screen on so that they could see by its light. Not that she needed to see his face to know that his mind was already racing with questions as he contemplated the idea of who could’ve betrayed them.
“We have to be quick,” she said, already leading him out of there.
“You want to put our necks on the line for a traitor? I say we bail.”
That wasn’t even worth a response, but she gave it to him anyway, never breaking stride. “If we have a mole, it’s not everyone here. I won’t let the others be taken.”
He mumbled something that she didn’t hear and was glad to ignore. This was her team, her responsibility. No way was she abandoning a single one of them.
3
Stealth: Command Room
Stealth stormed into the command room, tearing off his helmet and holding it in his left hand as his eyes darted about in search of Captain Legorn. Several officers stood about, most leaning over screens in discussion. A couple at a table in the back played Celtic chess—a strange, circular game that had made a resurgence in the early twenty-second century, but that Stealth couldn’t quite figure out.
None of them, however, had the trademark stark-yellow hair of the captain.
Where the hell was that piece of slime?
The captain, however, found him first. He stomped forward, a group of lieutenants jumping out of his way as he came for Stealth, hands balled into fists.
“Captain—” Stealth started, prepared to get down to business, but a fist caught him across the jaw. Next thing he knew, the captain had him by the hair, pulling his face in close enough for Stealth
to see the yellow stains on the man’s teeth, the bloodshot red of his left eye, though oddly not his right.
“I should have you shot for disobeying a direct order,” Captain Legorn started in on him, spittle flying and landing on Stealth’s cheeks. “The hell were you thinking?”
Stealth ground his teeth, using all of his discipline to not slam his fist into the captain’s nose. He’d done it before, which was a large part of why this guy hated him so much. And also why he, Stealth, wore the three chevrons of a sergeant, missing the rocker of the staff sergeant he’d once worn.
This was all in the civilian military, however, so part of him said he didn’t give a damn. In his mind, he was still a Marine through and through, and they couldn’t take that from him. Since it was all he could remember from before, and even that was somewhat hazy, he clung to the memory even more. He would always be a staff sergeant in the U.S. Marines, no matter what they told him or what other military he joined. Not the PD, not the Global High Command’s ridiculous excuse for a military. None of them were on the same level, as far as he was concerned.
But this was his life now, and he had to remember not to completely trash it. Instead of clocking the captain, he just stared, glaring, imagining the smug look on that bastard’s face vanishing with a good elbow across the temple.
“That explosion take your hearing?” the captain asked, lowering his voice and leaning in. “Or is it time for another attitude adjustment?”
“You threatening me?” He couldn’t take it anymore, feeling the rage boil up inside. He broke free of the man’s grip, ignoring the pain as some of his hair was yanked free. “Instead of wasting your time trying to prove you have big balls, why don’t you tell me how the hell we were hacked?”
“Hacked?” the captain asked, his anger shifting to concern. “What’re you talking about?”
“The helmets, for one. Gave us the wrong directions, so that we walked right into that trap. We weren’t breaking your orders—we were following what the helmets said your orders were.”