by John Lumpkin
Out they went, emerging in a wide and foul-smelling alley. They could hear the hum of the airborne skycar, still positioned for a shot at the front of the building.
They moved toward the side street where Rafe was parked, about 50 meters distant.
A shout behind them … Neil turned and saw two more armed Hans emerge from a cross-alley at a dead run, and his eyes widened in recognition.
Cai Jinming and Li Xiao. They were close enough that Neil could see anger in their faces. They halted and raised pistols.
“Stop and you will not be injured,” Cai Jinming shouted.
In one smooth motion, Donovan dropped to one knee and shot her, three hits in her torso. She crumpled to the pavement.
Li Xiao took aim; Neil raised his gun, left hand balancing the right, and depressed the trigger three times.
His shots went high and right.
Li shifted his aim toward Neil.
And then Li dropped his arm and dived into a doorway.
The party turned and continued to move toward the street. Neil walked backward, his gun pointed to Li’s hiding place, but he did not emerge.
Over his shoulder, Neil said, “How –”
“Later,” Donovan said fiercely. “We’ll figure it out later.”
Twenty meters to go … the hum grew louder. From a nightmare, a black skycar appeared above and ahead of them. The passenger-side butterfly door was open, and Neil could make out the rifleman trying to steady his aim at the party.
The rifleman fired. Four feet away from Neil, the wounded bodyguard pitched forward, now hit in the leg. His comrade dropped him and stumbled to the ground.
Neil pointed his gun at the car. He knew it would likely be ineffective at this range, but maybe he could scare him off …
A different kind of rifle chattered nearby. Neil recognized the sound of a smaller-caliber weapon firing a series of three-shot bursts. The skycar lurched; one of its nacelles was hit and the fan inside was tearing itself to pieces. The rifleman grabbed the car’s frame just in time to keep himself from falling out, but he lost the grip on his gun, which dropped eight meters to the pavement below and shattered. The skycar driver regained control and pulled away from the alley and out of sight.
Neil and the uninjured bodyguard picked up the twice-wounded man and carried him down the alley. They found an excited Rafe standing beside the ute, cradling an assault rifle.
“Took me a while to put this bitch together,” he said, patting the gun. “Did I get anybody?”
“You got a Toyota,” Neil said.
Rafe grinned wildly. “Never liked those cars anyway.”
They bundled the three rebels into the ute and drove off with Rafe at the wheel. They heard sirens, but no one pursued them. Neil’s hands would not stop shaking.
Captain Thorne had little to be happy about.
The shore leave party had come back two days early, forcing San Jacinto to alter its orbit around Entente to rendezvous with the Sabre. Shortly afterward, a Graypen police inspector contacted the ship, saying some people on board were wanted for questioning in connection with a double homicide on the planet. The investigator didn’t have any names, however, and no one spoke with her other than the comms watchstander.
Worse, Donovan had brought two more foreign nationals on board, a dissident leader from Taiwan and her bodyguard – her other, wounded, bodyguard had been left at a Graypen hospital. Donovan said they were allies, able to lead them to Sun Haisheng, who had apparently relocated to another planet, Commonwealth, about a year ago. Thorne restricted them to quarters within the MMP and denied them access to the crew or any ship’s computer.
But worst of all was the realization that two of the refugees she had pulled out of the fire were probably Chinese operatives. That one of them was dead was something of a relief, but Thorne ordered a quiet investigation to determine whether they had done any damage on board. Stahl and the master-at-arms found no evidence either way.
Still, she had to report the serious security breach up her chain of command. It could be a disaster for her career, except that Space Force had already classified the massacre of the colony ships, lest U.S. complicity in the incident become widely known. So Thorne would be given a pass; her commanders were in the same boat as she was, and very few people considering her for promotion in the future would have the authority to learn about the refugees who had been Han spies.
Donovan insisted San Jacinto make for Commonwealth immediately; it would be a short journey, as Beta Canum Venaticorum’s fourth planet was only three weeks travel and two keyholes from Entente. Thorne’s secondary mission was to visit the military headquarters of several of Entente’s nations that had declared independence from their motherlands on Earth; a few had expressed interest in setting up a space force of their own, and Space Command wanted to get in on the ground floor with them. That opportunity was lost now. Her primary orders said to go where Donovan wanted.
The captain had little desire to orbit Commonwealth, anarchic mess that it was. She looked over the latest intelligence report on the situation on the planet and bit her lip in frustration. It noted a slight danger to San Jacinto from the surface; from time to time, warlords had found themselves with a big laser and taken a shot at a ship in its sky.
Marvelous, the captain thought. She keyed her handheld, called the OOD on the bridge.
“Bridge, this is the captain. Take us out of orbit.”
The safe house scarcely deserved the title. It was a dingy one-room apartment somewhere in Graypen’s impoverished western suburbs. Dents pocked the unpainted walls.
Li Xiao’s fists had made many of them.
Li Xiao … as good a name as any, he thought through a fog of anger and grief. After five years with Second Bureau, his birth name meant little to him … any name meant little to him; they were just words to be arranged and discarded as needed.
He’d never learned his mentor’s real name, either … Cai Jinming was just an alias she had used occasionally. She had found him in Harbin, leading a well-organized shakedown operation. She was impressed: He commanded thugs ten years his senior and had developed a network of informants telling him who was shirking payments. Cai recruited him into Second Bureau by pretending to represent a regional criminal syndicate, promising him money beyond his wildest dreams.
Money. How meaningless it seemed now, compared to the new power he had discovered. He’d been put through a rigorous education and sent to the stars. Before long, important people began coming to him for information. Bureaucrats, legislators, even representatives of the president. They all had power, but, in a way, he had power over them. He controlled what they knew and therefore how they thought. They decided policy, but he always knew just what information to give them, and what to leave out, to get them to behave the way he wanted.
And Cai Jinming, his mentor, was always with him. He didn’t mind much, being junior to one of Second Bureau’s best operatives. She would often stay in the background when he briefed senior leadership. She never interfered with the agents he ran.
She was fourteen years older than he, yet they had become lovers after they both nearly died on an operation in Hanoi. She’d saved him; he promptly fell in love with her with a fire he had never experienced, before or since.
Later, she told him she had been quite bemused by his affection. She did not fall for him, and for a while hoped he would turn his hunger for her into passion for his work. But he grew more and more reckless; finally, she decided to sleep with him to calm him down. For a few months, Li Xiao lived in a dream, satisfying his youthful needs with her at will.
Over time, his fires cooled, and Cai Jinming gently separated herself from him. He was hurt, somewhat, but he quickly discovered a new confidence around other women that rarely left him lonely. He and Jinming had slept together a few more times over the years; she had her own needs and sought him out on occasion.
A few months ago, she said he would soon be assigned his own operation. But t
he Bureau wanted them to eliminate a threat to China first, one Japan was sure to exploit: Sun Haisheng, the one man who could inspire Taiwan to declare independence.
The best information was that he was on Entente, directing finances and recording messages to his followers on Earth and elsewhere. But their trip to the planet met with disaster. Even Li Xiao, who had set bombs, conducted assassinations and started riots, all in the service of the people and their republic, was shocked by the Japanese brutality against the colony ships.
Then they were picked up by the Americans. The initial interviews with the ship’s security and intelligence personnel were routine enough; they had all been easy to fool. Later, they sent someone Cai Jinming recognized.
He introduced himself as “Jim,” but she knew him as Bill Marshall; he had served at the American embassy on Xinzhou fifteen years prior when she was assigned to counterintelligence. He had been tagged as a “possible” intelligence officer, but his tails had never detected him committing espionage.
Now Cai was certain. He asked questions an intelligence officer would ask.
They had been pleased, initially, that a neutral nation had borne witness to the massacre. But reports on the incident did not appear on the Western news nets; they realized the Americans were keeping it concealed. Cai Jinming suspected some secret alliance between Japan and the United States.
When Cai and Li arrived on Entente, they immediately got in touch with the local intelligence network, which put tails on several of the San Jacinto officers down the planet, as well as “Jim.” The next day, he was tracked to a neighborhood where Sun Haisheng’s followers were known to operate. It was simple to put together what was going on.
Cai Jinming had an extraction team ready. Mostly local muscle, not true professionals, but they went in, confident, even joking on the flight over.
Then the world shattered.
Li Xiao was subdued now, sitting on the sheetless mattress, his head in his hands. He slowly pulled on strands of black hair.
Failure … cowardice … shame …
In his mind, he watched Cai Jinming fall to the pavement over and over again. He raised his gun, but then the panic came out of nowhere, gripping him. It was like his entire body clenched; the only way to unclench it was to flee.
Was she alive when I ran? Could I have saved her? He had emerged from his hiding place in the alley to witness the Americans and Taiwan rebels departing; when he returned to Cai Jinming, she was dead. He was too stunned to carry her body off, and he fled before the local police arrived.
He already filed his report to Second Bureau, emphasizing the Americans’ apparent aid to the Japanese. The Americans had crossed the line; the rules of the game dictated intelligence officers didn’t kill one another. They had proxies and agents for any necessary violence; the puppeteers had had a tacit agreement to leave one another alone. Until now.
As calmly as he could manage, he asked Second Bureau for permission to continue the hunt for the rebel leader Sun Haisheng. He had already located Huang Jin’s injured bodyguard in a Graypen hospital; it didn’t take much coercion for him to describe the conversation between the American officer and the terrorist. Sun was on Commonwealth, and the terrorist would take the Americans there. All Li had to do was follow the Americans.
Now, he waited for a response from Beijing. Would they force him to return home for his failure to protect Cai Jinming? He couldn’t bear the shame, not without a chance to redeem himself. He actually considered ignoring any recall order, and pursuing them himself.
The shame …
A wave of self-hatred rolled over Li Xiao, too much to bear. He leaned over, picked up his knife from a pile of clothes.
He stared at the blade for a long moment, then made three swift cuts on his left forearm … and felt a sweet sting as blood welled up and dripped to the floor. His distress drained out. He could think again, plan again. The cuts would leave scars, good scars, to remind him of his failure.
He was still staring at his bleeding arm twenty minutes later when his handheld buzzed.
The text message, sent from Beijing, was brief.
“Request approved. Use any means necessary. We will send assistance.”
Deliverance. He had shamed himself in that alley, and failed Cai Jinming, but he could redeem himself by killing “Jim” and the others who had been present.
I will end the terrorists. I will end the Americans.
After they launched for Commonwealth, word spread quickly around San Jacinto about the events on Entente, giving Neil a strange cachet among the crew. Unlike most of them, he’d faced hostile fire.
But he sensed fallout among his closer colleagues. Donovan grew remote, spending much of his time in conference with Huang Jin. Neil attended once or twice, but Huang seemed to dislike his presence. Nor did Donovan want to relive the gun battle, gruffly brushing off Neil’s single inquiry as “one of the unpleasant necessities of the job.”
And Tom Mondragon was unhappy about something. Neil knew it, tried to broach it, and failed to get him to open up.
Despite the length of the journey, Donovan had brought no personal trappings in his stateroom … no photos, no knickknacks, nothing. It was as if he regarded these things as residue, and he wanted to leave none behind.
“Neil, I apologize we haven’t spoken much lately. Debriefing Huang Jin has been … time-consuming. She’s not really sure we’re on her side, but she’s going to take us to Sun Haisheng anyway.”
“No apologies necessary, sir.”
Donovan looked up, regarded him for a long moment.
“I did want to talk to you about the information the Sakis passed you regarding the nanological weapons. Apparently, two other copies of the document have been provided to the U.S. government, through other channels, and they have made quite a splash with the White House.”
He said it so mildly it took a second for it to register with Neil.
“You mean … they believe it?”
“According to my folks in Washington, President Delgado says he does, despite advice to the contrary from my agency. He says he’s getting better information from elsewhere in the government … which, Neil, I presume to mean the military’s intelligence organs. Please tell me you aren’t the source of that.”
“No, I just gave it to you, and Captain Thorne didn’t force me to give it to Stahl,” Neil said, recalling his doubts about Donovan’s quick dismissal of the report. “But what if it is true?”
Donovan looked at him sharply. “It’s not, Neil, I promise. I know I can’t really convince you of the fact, but you’re asking me to prove a negative. It’s a fundamental problem in intelligence work: How do I prove the other side isn’t doing something? I can’t. All I can tell you is we’ve looked really hard for weapons programs like that in China, much harder than the DIA and the OSFI ever did, and we haven’t found any information that remotely suggests they have anything beyond a defensive research program.”
Your agency’s track record is far from perfect, Neil thought, but it was pointless to say.
“You have your doubts; that’s fine, Neil,” Donovan went on. “What bothers me is the president doesn’t.”
“So Delgado really believes the stuff the Japanese are feeding him.”
“I presume he believes it. Maybe it’s just an excuse … it doesn’t matter, much. He’s backing us into a war with China, and it’s not a conflict I’m sure we’ll win, even allied with Japan.”
At last, Erin had found some time to see Neil. In the time since their connection in the bar, he had been unable to get her alone. She spent most of her off-duty time with her gun crews, and when he did encounter her, Anne Fitzgerald or Maria Sanchez or Daphne Vikram or somebody would always be with her. She swore it wasn’t deliberate.
At 2030 sharp on a Friday, as San Jacinto traversed DG Canum Venaticorum for the second time, he showed up at her stateroom door, emboldened by promises from her roommate they would be alone, with two sealed tins of S
pace Force Materiel Command Meal #20 (Rotini with Meat Sauce and Cheese) and two bulbs of wine. One bulb comprised his weekly alcohol allowance, but the second came at cost: In exchange for ordering the wine and passing it to Neil, Tom would get Neil’s next three weeks’ allowance. The transaction was against regulations – you weren’t allowed to stockpile alcohol – but Neil figured the risk was worth it, and Tom would be able to enjoy “that vital second beer” three Fridays in a row.
But no one answered when Neil knocked, and he stood there for a few minutes, feeling foolish and wondering if he should call her, and then she arrived, looking amused at his collection of food and drink.
Her cabin was as small as Neil’s; she pulled herself over to her hammock. Neil, uncertain, floated across from her, above Fitzgerald’s hammock.
Erin apologized for her tardiness; she had been working with some of her gun crew and lost track of time. Neil smiled, mumbled that no apology was necessary. He passed her the pasta tin and wine bulb.
Her handheld beeped.
Leave it be, Neil thought.
She didn’t. By the time she cut the communication, Neil knew what was coming.
“Neil, I’m sorry, but one of my kids is having some real problems,” she said. “He’s a first-cruiser. His baby daughter was just born, and he isn’t handling being away from home so well. I need to talk with him. But I promise we’ll pick this up again.”
It was a week later when Neil confronted Tom in their quarters.
“What’s bugging you?” he insisted.
“Eh …”
“Out with it, man,” Neil said. “If you don’t talk about it, your head will explode, and the skipper will make me clean it up.”
“All right,” Tom said. “It’s Entente.”
“What about it?”
“I guess … We talked about my plans to go colonial, yeah? I guess I was surprised at how much Graypen was like the shittier parts of Earth. While you were down at the OK Corral I explored more of the city … lot of squalor, man. Kids pissing in gutters. Gangs. Cops abusing their authority. We exported all our crap to these planets.”