by Rick Partlow
“Yes, yes,” the woman waved off the introductions. “I have been instructed to have you two,” she jabbed a finger at Sam and Pris, “transported down to Capital City under guard. The rest of you will be staying here on your ship, and if you attempt to power up without authorization, we’ll burn a hole through your lock and kill you all.”
She was trying to sound intimidating, Telia thought with a burble of amusement, but wasn’t close to pulling it off. She reminded Telia of a petulant child appointed class leader for the day and intent on abusing the power to the full extent of her ability.
“Good luck, Sam,” Devon said with a philosophical shrug. “Guess I won’t get a chance to see old Earth.”
“Someday, Devon,” he told her, offering her a hand.
“Let’s get to the shuttle,” Fellows said, motioning with his free hand. “I told my wife I’d be home for breakfast.”
“Still married?” Telia asked, eyebrow shooting up as she moved to follow him and the others. “I would have thought she’d find someone less likely to screw young colony girls while on duty.”
“You!” The Deputy Commander, who still hadn’t bothered to share her name with them, rounded on Telia, finger spearing out again. It was very difficult for Telia to resist the urge to bend it backwards until it shattered. “You are not coming! You will stay with the enemy…umm, the Resolution ship.”
“I am the Guardian assigned to these people by the Prime Minister,” Telia responded, voice colder than she thought she could manage. But then, she’d always turned cold when she was enraged.
“You’re a fucking cyborg freak!”
Telia hadn’t thought the woman’s face could get redder and yet somehow, she managed it.
“You aren’t setting foot on the homeworld if I have anything to do about it!”
“You don’t.”
Telia glanced backwards at Fellows. His expression was as flat and unimpressed as his tone had been; he regarded the station’s Deputy Commander the same way he might have a junior NCO who’d gotten too big for his britches.
“I beg your pardon?” the woman blurted, eyes widening. “I am Deputy Commander of this station and…”
“And I’m under the direct orders of the Prime Minister of the fucking Human Consensus to bring these three down to her office.” That sounded like the Fellows she remembered. His volume rose as he went on, though his register stayed low and gravelly. “I don’t care if you’re the fucking Queen of Fairyland, you’re not in my fucking chain of command and I have my fucking orders! Do I fucking make myself clear?”
“I will have you up on charges for insubordination!” the woman exploded. Telia half-expected steam to shoot out of her ears. “You are under arrest, mister…”
“If you want to arrest someone,” Fellows told her, taking a half-step forward and bringing his rifle down to port arms, “you generally should have bigger guns than they do.” He looked her up and down. “Looks like you brought a big mouth and not much else.” The sneer again. “Of course, you’re welcome to call up some of your security guards. I haven’t had any range time with a good reactive target in weeks.”
The cylindrical cooling jacket of the pulse rifle was polished and spotless but for a small section near the receiver, where Telia could see several rows of tiny notches scratched into the metal by something hard and sharp. If the Deputy Commander had noticed and cared to count, she would have seen there were thirty-one of the notches, and might have even been intelligent enough to guess what they signified.
Telia didn’t know if it was the threat, or the notches, or simply the realization she was in so far, far over her head, but the woman didn’t say another word, just glared at the Guardian Prime, hatred plain in her eyes. Fellows sniffed at her, then turned and began click-clacking down the docking bay, heading for the shuttle. Telia fell in behind him, sparing the Deputy Commander a thin smile. The rest of the half-squad followed in an open wedge, the last of them walking backward to cover their withdrawal, which was even harder in zero gravity wearing mag boots.
Men and women and the occasional older child disembarking from shuttles and smaller intersolar transports eyed them with prurient curiosity, probably wondering if they were VIPs or just criminals.
A bit of both, I imagine.
Telia picked up her pace and came even with Fellows, wondering if it would be appropriate to thank him.
“Don’t bother thanking me,” he told her, as if she’d projected her thoughts at him. She closed her mouth and he must have noticed her nonplused expression because he grinned. “You were always a horrible poker player, Proctor. Don’t thank me because I’m following orders; I don’t give a shit if you come along or not.” He shrugged. “The way things are going, you’d probably be better off staying with the Rezzies up here, or just getting the hell out of the Solar System altogether.”
“Why?” Priscilla interrupted, earning a scowl from Fellows. “We’ve been incommunicado,” she explained, either not noticing the Guardian’s expression or, more likely, not caring. “What’s happening?”
“Let’s just say we may not have to worry ‘bout your robot ramship destroying the Earth,” Fellows told her, and Telia thought she detected real concern trying to hide behind his sarcastic bluff. “The government had declared a moratorium on gas shipments out of the Jovians to the Belt.” He threw a hand up as if he knew how idiotic the move had been. “Like they were going to go along with that. Well, big shock, they didn’t. The Jovians called our bluff and sent a tanker through on the run to Ceres.”
“Tell me we didn’t blow it up,” Telia begged him, wincing in anticipation.
“That would be wasteful. No, we sent a tactical team in and boarded the tanker; I think the idea was to steal it…sorry, I mean, ‘confiscate’ it.” He shrugged. “Whichever, the Belters weren’t having any of that. They blasted the ship with a mass driver, blew the hell out of the thing, killed all twelve of our people plus the Jovian crew.”
They’d reached the dock for the shuttle, the delta-winged craft visible through the transparent alloy of the window beside the airlock. Fellows popped the hatch controls with a fist and waved to the open lock, turning back to them.
“So, welcome to Earth, everyone,” he said cheerfully. “I guess we’re at war.”
Chapter Twenty-One
There were no curious onlookers this time, no official representatives to meet them, no ornate conference of Ministers to determine their fate. The shuttle landed in the dead of night at the far end of a military-run spaceport kilometers from the public port, and Guardian Fellows chivvied them into an unmarked groundcar.
Capital City took on a different character at night, down at the street level. Sam had noticed the same phenomenon before, on other worlds. Cities could seem buttoned-down and business-like during the day, but at night they would loosen up and take on a more daring, even dangerous persona. Capital City wasn’t casual this night, wasn’t a worker cutting loose after a long day on the job; it was claustrophobic, paranoid, waiting for the sword of Damocles to descend upon them. The streets were nearly deserted, and the people he did see all seemed to be scurrying to get someplace quickly, to find another hole to hide in.
“You can see the ramship now,” Fellows told them, arm resting casually against the passenger’s-side door as he stared out the window. He’d shed his armor in the shuttle, probably so as not to attract undue attention when they landed, but Sam had noted he still had his sidearm. “With telescopes I mean. Optical ones, the kind you can buy in any fab shop. There was no hiding it, so the government announced it publicly, said there was nothing to worry about, we were taking steps to intercept it.”
He glanced back over his shoulder to the second row of seats, to the three of them crowded together as if huddled for comfort.
“Not everyone believes that.”
“What is going to happen when they find out there is nothing to be done?” Telia wondered.
“Panic, I imagine.” Fellows’ voi
ce was flat, emotionless, as if the whole thing was merely an intellectual exercise. “Those with the money will get off the planet. Everyone else will likely storm the spaceports and try to force their way off.” He shrugged. “Not enough ships in the whole galaxy to evacuate them all.”
“We can still do this,” Sam insisted, uncomfortable with the fatalistic tone the two Earthers were taking. “We just need to find out who was really responsible for the destruction of the Gateway, so we can stop this war and get shipments coming in again from the Belt.”
“It took you over two years to complete the Gate,” Telia pointed out. “We have months now. Six until the impact, but likely less than that before the ship’s electromagnetic fields begin to wreak havoc with the Earth’s weather and begin to disrupt our communications and travel.” She shook her head. “And even less before the fields make construction impossible in the Sun-Mars LaGrangian points.”
“There could still be a way.” Sam dug in his heels. Why didn’t anyone else see, giving up wasn’t going to solve anything? “I mean, the Gateway took two years because we had two years. I’m not a trans-dimensional physicist, but maybe we could make it work with something smaller, maybe with less power…”
“Shit!”
Sam’s head snapped around at the unexpected exclamation from Pris. She was staring straight ahead, her mouth slightly open, her eyes unfocused and he felt a sudden surge of panic at the thought her counter-programming might be setting in because she’d disobeyed orders to return to Aphrodite.
“Are you all right?” he asked her, putting a hand on her shoulder.
“Yeah, I think I am,” she told him, a smile slowly spreading across her face as she turned to him. She leaned over and kissed him and he blinked as she laughed softly. “I think we all might be.”
“What?” he asked her, shaking his head in baffled confusion.
“You have an idea,” Telia stated, eyes narrowing. “What is it?”
“Not yet,” Pris insisted, holding up a hand. “Give me a few minutes. I need to get this firmed up in my head before we meet the Prime Minister.”
“Think fast,” Fellows muttered. “Because we’re here.”
They were nowhere near the Ministry Building, Sam could tell that much even in the dark. The neighborhood seemed to be industrial in nature, the sort of featureless, impersonal buildings where you might find public fabricators or distribution centers for food stores. No one was out and about in this neighborhood this time of night, and he hadn’t even seen another vehicle for the last five minutes.
He was about to ask Fellows what he meant when a sheet-metal garage door began trundling upward as they slowed to a halt on the street beside it. The driver was a younger man, his skin pale, his head totally hairless right down to the eyebrows, and he didn’t even look to Fellows for confirmation before he pulled through the garage door and into the dark recesses beyond.
The headlights revealed not a fabricator center or a storage building, but instead a façade…and a tunnel. The suspension of the vehicle bounced and jolted as the driver took it down the slope of the paved ramp into the passageway, just wide enough for one car. The road was smooth and graded, and he spotted the ventilation machinery to pump air down into the tunnel. It all had the look of age, as if this setup had been built decades ago.
Maybe it’s as old as the Consensus government. Built when they laid down the foundations of the street.
An instant’s paranoia nagged at him with wild thoughts of underground dungeons where they’d be left to rot, but he shook them away. Surely it would just have been easier to turn them away, make them return to Aphrodite. Anyway, Telia hadn’t said anything; if there were anything untoward about the secret entrance, he was certain she would have raised an objection.
“This doesn’t lead all the way to the Ministry building, does it?” Sam asked, staring out at the bare, concrete walls of the tunnel. That would have been kilometers away and he couldn’t imagine the underground road stretching so far. And it was still sloping downward…
Fellows snorted but didn’t bother to answer. Telia sighed under her breath, barely audible even right next to him.
“This is the entrance to an emergency shelter,” she told him. “It’s meant to provide a safe haven for government officials to ride out disaster or political unrest.” She shrugged. “Or war.”
“Or all three wrapped up in one giant, fucking bundle, in this case,” Fellows contributed.
The car had already begun to slow, and ahead of them loomed the end of the road in the form of a solid wall of what looked to Sam to be the same sort of alloy the Consensus used in starship hulls. Set in the concrete at the joint of the tunnel and the metal barrier was an elevator. The driver stayed in the car, face impassive, as if he made these sorts of deliveries every day, while Fellows pushed his door open and hopped out before the vehicle had even made a complete stop.
“Let me guess,” Sam ventured, coming up behind the Guardian as the squared-off, blocky man input a code into the elevator’s security panel, “we’re going down?”
They were. Down and down and, just when he thought they couldn’t go any further, they still went down.
I should be used to closed spaces, he thought, staring around him at the tiny elevator, barely large enough for the four of them. I was a starship Captain, for Gaia’s sake.
Maybe he’d just spent too much time on the station, with its broad corridors and roomy compartments. Either way, when the thing finally jolted to a stop, Sam had to restrain himself from squeezing past Fellows to be the first out. The corridor outside, in sharp contrast, was broad and brightly-lit and crowded with purposeful workers in the sort of dull-colored business dress you’d expect from government employees.
It wasn’t even a corridor, he realized abruptly, forcing himself to step out of the car last just to prove he could. It was more of an open cubicle farm, miniature offices separated by low dividers. Behind the sound-proof barriers, men and women huddled in virtual-reality gear, hands moving over projected controls no one else could see. No one seemed to notice them as they passed, even the workers not buried in virtual tasks still too preoccupied with their own individual assignments to worry about the newcomers.
Except the Guardians. They noticed. He saw them standing in a star cluster near the center of the room, armed and armored and watchful, and he saw heads turn at the sight of Telia and Fellows’ sidearms and their uniforms. They were probably reading RFID chips in the uniforms or the guns, checking the authorization in the Heads-Up Display readouts in their helmets. He had never thought much of the elite Consensus soldiers before he’d met Telia; after seeing her in action at the station, he had a newfound respect for them, and a profound hope none of them ever saw him as an enemy.
“Sir,” the highest-ranking of the armored troops said to Fellows, bringing his weapon to port arms in salute. “We have orders to pass you on through to the command bunker.” A slight hesitation. “I’m afraid you’ll have to leave your weapons with us, though.”
Fellows scowled, more deeply than the usual scowl which seemed to be his default expression, but he unfastened his gun belt and handed it over to the armored trooper. Even without armor, Fellows dwarfed the other man, and he held onto the belt for just a beat longer than he needed to before he let it go.
“You lose it,” he warned, glowering darkly, “and I’ll see you busted back down to Private, Blumenthal.”
Telia smiled at the little display of machismo, then pulled her pistol out of its holster. The armored Guardians tensed, and Sam thought he saw the muzzles of their rifles dip slightly toward her, but Telia simply ejected her magazine and cleared the chamber before storing the mag in one of the belt pouches. She re-holstered the pulse pistol and passed the weapon over, her eyes following the gun as the other Guardian slung the belt over his shoulder.
Sam wondered if she was sizing them up, determining whether she could take them. He got the impression she did it automatically, though he’d
never worked up the nerve to ask her.
“This way,” the senior Guardian motioned, leading them off to the left, through a long, narrow hallway.
More Guardians stood watch at a thick, security-sealed metal door at the end of the hall, but they stepped aside for the group and the door swung inward at their approach. The “command bunker” looked very much like your typical government office on the inside, though perhaps a bit outdated technologically and stylistically. A clerk sat at a data terminal, staring at the two-D flat-screen monitor, not even looking up at their entrance, while Prime Minister Brecht huddled closely with John Gage and two other well-dressed officials around an oval table near the center of the room.
None of them rose, though Gage nodded to them, the expression on his face more forlorn than welcoming. Brecht barely acknowledged their presence, just a glance out the corner of her eyes betraying the slightest attention. Sam felt a drop in his gut, like his first time in free-fall.
“I allowed you to return,” Brecht said, still not looking at them, lifting her steaming mug of tea to her lips and taking a sip before she went on, “because frankly you’re mad to be here. But I do not, for the life of me, understand what you hope to gain by this meeting.”
“We’re here for two reasons, your Excellency,” Pris said, stepping in and taking the lead. Her stance was straight and confident, more like the woman who’d confronted Tejado on Luna, the one who’d fought side by side with him on Mars. “First of all, we’ve uncovered a major lead to those responsible for the destruction of the Gate assembly and we’d like your aid in chasing it down.”
“The Belters and Jovians were behind the attack on your Gate,” Brecht snapped, eyes flaring as she finally graced them with her full attention. “Or haven’t you been following the news? Let me guess,” she went on, not giving Priscilla a chance to answer, “you’d like to blame this on us, somehow?”
“In point of fact,” Priscilla said, pushing her voice in before Brecht could continue, “the woman directly responsible for hijacking the barge’s automated systems appears to be an expatriate Resolutionist.”