The Rampant Storm

by J. Alan Field

With minimal luggage, the duo had a limited choice of clothing to wear. The Templeton had a clothier on premises, and both operatives immediately took advantage of this amenity. Going to the service console, Carr punched in an order for a couple of suits, some shirts, pants, and a few other sundry items. Final clicks on the menu for correct sizes and colors ensured that the following morning a new wardrobe would be delivered to their suite. Dummy spending accounts were wonderful—too bad most of the goods would be left behind when they made their dash off-world.

  “If only I had this service back home,” quipped Sanchez as she shopped for extra outfits.

  Looking out the window at the cityscape, Carr smiled. “See if you can get the Director to open an account for you, working through Black Dove criminal funds, of course.”

  “My sewist would be thrilled,” she said, touching her color choices on the screen. “Carr, when was the last time you were here?”

  He had to think for a moment. “I believe it was four years ago—yes, I remember because Lucky was with me that time as well. And you said you’ve been here once?”

  “Uh huh, but I was only a teenager. Uncle Leo brought my father and me with him while he was here attending some sort of conference. Things have really changed.”

  Carr walked over to kibitz her dress selection. “Get that one there,” he pointed, “the black one.”

  “This one?”

  “No, the other one, with the big plunge in the front,” he said.

  She grinned and bit her lip, then tapped the screen. “This is such a rich society. There’s so much wealth, just like this clothier —only five-star hotels would have this service in Boutwell. The clothes I just ordered are probably some of the nicest things I’ll ever own, and on this world they’re considered disposables.”

  “Well, we are in the largest city in known human space. Boutwell is a hamlet compared to Beresford. I bet the rest of the planet isn’t quite as wealthy.”

  “But still, these people seem a long way ahead of the Union.”

  They didn’t venture out that evening and ate at the hotel restaurant. The plan was to meet Lucky the next day for lunch, which would give Maldonado tonight to get the lay of the land, make some local contacts, and secure some weapons. Carr just hoped that’s what his friend was actually doing, rather than romancing away the night with Julian. On the other hand, if Carr’s guess was correct, Julian had probably already scurried away into the maze of the city, never to be seen again.

  Despite the fact that the suite had two bedrooms, they decided that one of them would sleep in the living area each night as a de facto lookout. At bedtime, Sanchez stretched out on the couch, fluffed pillows, arranged her blankets, and settled in for a night of light sleep. After tomorrow’s rendezvous with Lucky, both of them would be sleeping with a pistol under their pillow for the remainder of the stay.

  * * * *

  Carr was wrong. The next day at the designated time and place, Maldonado arrived with Julian in tow. Not only was Lucky’s boyfriend still around, the guy had been doing his own recon work last night.

  It was amazing how fast Julian could make friends. They had barely been in the city twenty-four hours, and it seemed as if he had already met half the population. Again, Carr was impressed, but reminded the boy that it worked both ways.

  “I appreciate your enthusiasm, Julian, but you need to keep a lower profile,” said Carr. “Don’t get on the government’s radar—I don’t want them finding us through you.” Both Sanchez and Lucky looked like they were about to scold him, so Carr added, “And, I don’t want you getting hurt.” It was true enough. The kid seemed to be trying to repay them for helping him get off Cardea, but good intentions had a way of biting people in the ass.

  “Also, you’re the only one of us that’s clean,” added Sanchez. “Unknown to the Gerrhan authorities,” she elaborated to wipe away Julian’s puzzled look.

  “So, Julian, how do you do it? How do you meet people so easily?” asked Carr.

  The young man shrugged. “I don’t know. I go to clubs or other places where people are having a good time. I just smile and introduce myself and start talking. I guess people think I’m harmless, so they don’t mind opening up. Most people really are nice if you’re nice to them first.”

  “But we had to work so hard to get you to speak with us that first day,” said Sanchez.

  “I was scared.”

  “Of us?”

  “No, it wasn’t that,” he said looking downward and lowering his chin almost into his chest. “I was scared you wouldn’t help me.” Lucky reached over and gave Julian’s hand a reassuring pat.

  “And speaking of being scared,” said Maldonado with a grim expression, “count me in. We stumbled over some troubling news last night. We’re not the only ones on the move.”

  Just before Lucky could speak, their lunch orders came. They were in a nice eatery about three blocks from the Hotel Templeton. Everyone seemed to be in a soup and salad mood today. As the server placed down their orders, Carr casually eyeballed the place. No one seemed terribly suspicious, but that didn’t mean they weren’t being watched.

  “So, this troubling news,” said Carr, preparing to dive into his squash bisque.

  Lucky nodded to Julian, who hesitated and then asked, “Do you guys know anyone named Casca?”

  Carr was about to take the first spoonful of his soup but froze with his mouth open. Sanchez was already eating her zavaleaf salad and stopped in mid-chew, a little Alphean dressing dripping out of the corner of her mouth.

  “Casca,” repeated Carr, his appetite lost for the moment. “Where did you hear that name?”

  Julian looked around, like someone who was about to spill a big secret often did, then launched into his story. “I went to a bar last night that’s a hangout for a lot of the gay cops in town—you know, when they’re off-duty. Anyway, this guy started to hit on me, trying to impress me with who he was and all.”

  “Who was he?” asked Sanchez, dabbing her mouth with a napkin.

  “He claimed to be a Beresford police detective. Said he was working on some big case hunting down this guy who had come to town. Kept asking me if I was Casca, wanting to cuff me, making lame jokes like that. He was really buzzed.”

  “I heard it on my rounds last night too,” Maldonado added. “My cousins are quite worked up.”

  “Do you think it’s a coincidence?” asked Sanchez, directing the question to Carr.

  “No, I don’t believe in them. If Casca’s here…” He never finished his sentence, staring down at his bisque in deep thought before finally taking a taste.

  Julian looked around the table. “All right, I know I’m not really part of the gang or whatever, but he won’t tell me what’s going on,” the boy said, motioning toward Lucky. “Who is Casca?”

  Carr glanced over at his old comrade. “Lucky, he’s already involved—he has a right to know.” The husky man started to say something back at Carr, but instead turned to his boyfriend.

  “Casca is the Michelangelo of wetwork,” said Maldonado. Julian gave him a vacant smile. “An assassin.”

  “Ohhh,” grasped Julian. “Ours or theirs?”

  “Ours,” answered Carr. “It complicates things.”

  “It’s a funny name—Casca,” said Julian aloud, almost as much to himself as to the others.

  “The name is from history,” said Carr. “First assassin to strike at Julius Caesar.”

  “Julius who?” asked Lucky, but no one answered his question.

  “But if he’s on our side…” Julian started to say, only to be interrupted by Sanchez.

  “Casca is an assassin used by the OMI for very special assignments. Only our boss knows Casca’s true identity. No one else knows who he is or what he looks like. I might add that nobody’s even certain if Casca is a man or a woman.”

  “Problem is,” continued Maldonado, “when Casca is around, people die—and usually more than one. He has a reputation for being… enthusiastic about hi
s work. Almost makes me wish I was still back on Cardea.”

  Carr eyed the man sharply. “A contract is a contract old friend. You need to see this through.”

  Sanchez used the Old Tongue to drive home Carr’s point. “You wouldn’t abandon us would you, friend?”

  Maldonado looked around the table and then squarely back at Sanchez. “You do your job, and I’ll do mine.”

  “Everyone calm down,” said Carr, sensing frayed nerves. “We still have an assignment to carry out. Lucky, did you locate Eden Southwell?”

  “No, but I found the next best thing.” A smile came back onto the criminal’s face. One thing Carr appreciated about Maldonado was that his general disposition was a happy one, and he never stayed angry for long. “I ran into Billy Van Fossen. He said Eden already has a lead on our target.”

  “Finally—some good news,” said Carr. “Go back to Van Fossen and set up a meeting with Eden.”

  “Who’s this Van Fossen guy?” asked Sanchez.

  “Her, ah, agent,” replied Maldonado with a wink toward Carr.

  For the rest of lunch they tried to enjoy their food and relax. Lucky smoothed Sanchez’s ruffled feathers by asking her about her experiences as a pilot, an olive branch of sorts. For his part, Carr continued to gently persuade Julian to rein in his voracious socializing, fearing the young man would accidently endanger himself and the rest of the company.

  Rather than returning directly to the hotel after the meal, Carr and Sanchez strolled along the riverwalk. It was a beautiful summer afternoon, in sharp contrast to the brutal winter they had left behind on Sarissa.

  “So, Carr, what’s Casca doing here on Gerrha?” asked Sanchez, knowing he needed to talk it through.

  “Well, it could be that it’s all rumor.”

  “True, but if it isn’t…”

  “There is a war on, you know. Could be the Director sent Casca in to liquidate someone in the Gerrhan government or the military. Maybe even someone in Gerrhan Intelligence—an enemy agent.”

  “But you don’t really believe any of those things, do you?”

  “No, not really,” he confessed, stopping to lean forward against a railing, gazing out over the broad river. “My guess is he—or she—is here to ghost the Doc if we don’t get him out. The Director told me himself that whatever is in Acree’s head has to stay there, no matter the cost.”

  Sanchez put her hand on Carr’s arm. “Wait—are you saying Tolbert wants us to kill Acree if we can’t extract him?”

  Carr didn’t respond, which was as much of an answer as she needed.

  As Carr faced the water, she turned her back to it and leaned against a railing. “You know, we’ve both killed people in the course of our duties.”

  “We’ve never killed in cold-blood,” he said emphatically. “We’ve never killed the father of a friend. We’ve done what we had to do in self-defense. I’m no assassin, and I don’t believe you are either.”

  “Do you think the Gerrhans know that Acree is the father of the Earth Prime Minister?” asked Sanchez.

  Carr thought for a bit before answering. “I wouldn’t see how. Goran said it was a secret from everyone, even their superiors on Earth.”

  They stayed as they were for a few minutes. Sanchez discreetly cast an eye over the nearby people, looking for signs of a tail. Carr stared into the river. The water seemed dark and dirty. Here and there, occasional pieces of garbage floated by—empty cans, the remains of a cardboard box, a few isolated oily patches on the surface. It was a far cry from the pristine rivers of the restored planet Earth. Of course, this river was clean once too. There are always people who will ruin anything if given the chance, Carr thought.

  Turning his back on the spoiled waterway, he placed his arm around her shoulder. “Let’s go shop for some art,” he said, trying to rally out of his dark mood.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Art, little sister Maya, art. The Grooms of Galba are in Beresford on an art-buying spree. It’s going to look suspicious if we don’t at least shop around a little. Besides, we don’t have much else to occupy our time until Lucky sets up the meeting with Southwell.”

  Sanchez smiled. “OK. This could be quite fun.”

  More fun than it’s going to be tonight when he explains to Sanchez about his past relationship with Eden Southwell, thought Carr. Anyway, he and Sanchez weren’t involved anymore—it won’t be a big deal. So why did it feel like it was?

  16: Havoc

  Union cruiser Tempest

  Varasova system

  “The ship is now secured and all stations reporting green,” announced David Swoboda, shaking away the last of the Daze. Like most people, translating from hyperspace to normal space always left him muddled for a few seconds, but he pushed the fog aside to engage his duties. “Picket drones away. Tactical on main viewscreen, sir.”

  There wasn’t much to see. Varasova, the insignificant blue O4 star shone in the distance, casting an eerie tint over the few subjects in its dominion. Two gas giants, Hanakoa and Kyanar, swept through the Black at a leisurely pace. Hanakoa held five natural satellites in its sway, and little sister Kyanar ushered along eight moons—all rocks and spheres of ice devoid of life or anything else. According to historical data, most of the accessible minerals in this system had been mined out years ago. Varasova was at first glance positively underwhelming.

  “Sir, there’s no evidence of unusual radiation levels in this system, epsilon or otherwise,” reported a crewmember from the science station.

  “So why the Order Thirty-Two?” asked Swoboda to no one in particular.

  Pettigrew looked over at the XO and cocked his head. “Commander, I think someone is trying—”

  “Captain, sorry to interrupt, but we have an incoming transmission,” said Lieutenant Paruzzi. “It’s in Triad, sir.” The SUSF Triad code was the most secure encryption the service employed. Whoever was trying to initiate communication with Tempest had top-level clearance.

  Pettigrew rubbed a hand across his chin. It was now going beyond curious to downright bizarre. “Ship,” he called to the Tempest AI, “decode the incoming Triad message, and send it to my station.” After he entered an authorization code into his console, the computer scrolled the mysterious message across his personal viewer.

  The captain took a deep breath. “Mr. Swoboda, I’m sending you an attachment from this signal. Execute the program, and allow it to perform a level five recalibration on our sensor array software.”

  Slowly, the bridge viewscreen changed to reveal new details of what was really happening in the Varasova system. Selwyn, one of Hanakoa’s moons, was the hub of a massive amount of human activity. A huge spacedock drifted between the moon and the gas giant. The facility bustled with activity as shuttles darted back and forth between the dock and Selwyn’s surface. On the planetoid itself, a large domed structure was surrounded by dozens of smaller buildings.

  In the distance, silhouetted against the yellowish-brown planet were numerous Union Space Force vessels—warships, freighters, troop carriers, and oilers. ID markers started to pop up on the viewscreen to label each ship—the heavy cruiser Serquet, the destroyer Envoy, and more. Most impressive of all however were the battleships. The Union only had ten of the great vessels and four of them were gathered above Hanakoa: Paladin, Charybdis, Temujin, and the starhold’s newest capital ship, Huntress.

  As the buzz around the bridge died down, Ensign Kuypers spoke up. “Captain, sensors are reporting twenty-three warships. Eight frigates, six destroyers, three cruisers, two heavy cruisers, and four battleships—all friendlies, sir.” The ensign scrunched her face realizing she had just said something silly—of course they were all friendlies—but no one seemed to notice her slip. “Sir, counting support vessels and TF Nineteen, there are a total of sixty-six Union ships in this system.”

  Swoboda gave a low whistle of simultaneous surprise and awe.

  “Mr. Swoboda, pass this sensor data on to the rest of the task force,” instr
ucted Pettigrew.

  “Incoming signal for you, Captain,” said Paruzzi. “It’s Fleet Admiral Maxon.”

  Everyone on the bridge looked toward the skipper. It wasn’t every day you got a personal call from the Supreme Commander of the Sarissan Union Space Force. “To my station, Lieutenant,” Pettigrew said calmly. In the background, XO Swoboda pretended to cough—hard. It was a reminder to the bridge crew to refocus on their jobs.

  On a small screen next to the command chair appeared the image of Channa Maxon. “Welcome to Strike Base Havoc, Task Force Nineteen.”

  “We are honored, ma’am. Quite a setup you have here,” said Pettigrew with a smile.

  “My home away from home, Captain. Bring your ships in to space dock—I’m sending someone over to greet you. We’re going to give your shield generators a proper fitting. Later on, after you and your people get properly squared away, drop by the Command Dome and see me. Maxon out.”

  * * * *

  Pettigrew disembarked from Tempest into what he understood was called the Polanco One Spacedock. It made him wonder whether there was a Polanco Two or Three lurking around some other supposedly empty star system in the Renaissance Sector. The XO and Nyondo were staying behind to coordinate ship work schedules with the dockmaster. As he stood on the reception deck gawking around at Polanco One, he heard a familiar voice call out.

  “I guess they’ll let anyone join this party.”

  Pettigrew smiled to himself and turned around. “Don’t tell me you’re the Admiral’s reception committee.”

  A tall, muscular blonde woman stood at attention and welcomed him with a salute. As Pettigrew returned the gesture, the formal greetings morphed into smiles and hugs. As they embraced, Uschi Mullenhoff whispered into her captain’s ear. “Chaz, I am so sorry to hear about Taylin. I know she meant a lot to you.”

  “She was a good officer,” he replied, trying to muster a smile. “And a good person. Taylin always thought the world of you—you know that don’t you. We’ll all miss her.” It seemed like a trite, lame response—he seemed to be doing a lot of that lately. Lame or not, it was the truth.