“Don’t ask.” Leeger’s right hand unconsciously touched the fading welts on his cheek as he walked toward Erica. “Captain Varick, I’m Hugh Leeger.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you.” Both Varick and Mortas wore the gray fatigues that were the traveling uniforms of Force officers, matching the gray tunic of Mortas family security now worn by Leeger. “We were beginning to wonder what the holdup was.”
“It’s not a holdup.” Leeger moved over the gold carpet, careful not to tread on the seal of the Chairman of the Emergency Senate. Olech Mortas’s desk stood at the end of the small, tubular compartment. Leeger sat down and activated the monitors on the curved walls. “The alien left the Whisper settlement shortly after our agent finished interviewing her. She provided a radio frequency you’ll use to notify her once you’re in place. We don’t know where she went out there, or how long it might take for her to come back. So we’ve got time to plan this out.”
The screens brightened into the photo taken by the Holy Whisper colonists on Roanum. Jander scowled at the face that he knew was an imitation of Captain Amelia Trent.
“We code-named her ‘jogger’ because Trent was a long-distance runner. Our visitor appeared at the settlement out of nowhere, and immediately identified herself as a non-human. As pacifists and explorers, the HWs didn’t hesitate to invite her inside. Of course they already knew about your experience with the first shape-shifter, so they asked her a few questions. She consented to having her picture taken, after explaining why she dropped by.”
“Why’d she pick a Whisper colony?” Varick asked. “Why not go straight to a Force unit?”
“Apparently this version of Amelia Trent knows what happened to the last version. According to the HWs, she refers to the immolation of the original alien as if it happened to her personally. She consented to a manual scan, just to prove she is what she says she is, and then asked to speak to Jan.”
“It’s not a she, Hugh. Or a her. It’s an it.” Mortas spoke slowly. “It tortured the real Amelia Trent to death, just to pry open her psyche so it could impersonate her. Then it pretended to be one of us while we walked and starved and got hunted by giant snakes and then the Sims. You can’t trust it.”
“All right.” Leeger studied Jander for a long moment, as if seeing him for the first time. “You’ve brought me to my next point. We already know that it has some capacity for entering the human mind. Perhaps it can read minds, and maybe even control them.”
“That thing downloaded its thoughts and experiences into my head while it was being scorched in its decon tube.” Mortas kept his eyes on the monitor facing him. “But until that moment, I never had the feeling that it was controlling my actions or even understanding what I was thinking. Truth to tell, I didn’t like her—it—at all when we first met. I should have listened to my instincts.”
“The Chairwoman decided to send a third party to conduct an initial interview. Because we don’t know its capabilities, it couldn’t be anyone privy to top-level secrets.” Leeger continued. “Fortunately, we have good connections with the Brodan Analytics Guild. Under certain circumstances they will provide a certified practitioner to do this kind of job. The analyst conducts the requested research—in this case, the requested interview—and then remains incommunicado for a specified time. Handsomely rewarded, of course.”
“I thought the Guild was sworn to secrecy anyway,” Mortas offered. The Brodans were the gold standard for the collection and analysis of information.
“That’s true, but a lot of powerful organizations are on the lookout for the alien’s reappearance—as you well know. If the wrong corporation, or the wrong government, gained control of a shape-shifting alien that can communicate with the Sims, who knows what might happen? We haven’t been taking any chances with this.”
“So how are you keeping the analyst under wraps—did you make him join the Force?” Varick chuckled at her own joke.
“He’s having the time of his life on a resort vessel in Earth space. Supervised by our people, of course, but apparently he’s mixing well with the other vacationers.”
“You sent him on a singles cruise.”
“From what I’m being told, he really needed it. When we release him, he’s probably going straight to a hospital for exhaustion.”
Even Mortas joined in the laughter. When it subsided, Leeger resumed the briefing.
“Despite all that, we have to assume that the news will get out. The colonists were required to send word to Pacifica, notifying the Holy Whisper Elders of their visitor. The HWs are good at keeping secrets, but every outfit’s got its spies.” Leeger stopped, and looked at Jander. “I’m assuming you’ve heard the latest news about Ayliss.”
“How could we not? It’s been all over the Bounce. In a million years I never would have thought she’d enlist.”
“There’s a little more to it than that.”
“Look at it this way.” Erica spoke once Leeger had departed. “At least your sister didn’t actually kill anybody. That Step Worshiper is going to make a full recovery.”
“Margot Isles. I remember her from a couple of state functions before I went to university. Family of climbers.” Mortas almost mumbled the words, lost in thought. “I knew Ayliss fought on Quad Seven, and that she’d done well. I didn’t know she’d developed a taste for it.”
“It’s been my experience that you don’t develop that. You’ve got it, or you don’t.”
“She always had this deep core of anger. Growing up, she hated my father.”
“If it’s any consolation, she had good reason to hate this Rittle character. I’ve had my own brushes with the Guests, and they’re a bunch of real assholes. It’s not clear who started that fight, so if she survives her hitch with the Banshees, she’s likely to come out free and clear.”
“You know something? One reason I came to the war was to get away from all the family political bullshit. And I did it, too. Out there, with my troops, it didn’t matter who my father was. God I wish I was with my platoon right now.” Mortas absently rubbed the brace that ran the length of his leg. “How about you? Missing your company?”
“My company? I haven’t led troops since I first met you. I did command a Banshee company once—best job I ever had—but that ended two years ago. I got pulled up into high-level staff work right after Twelfth Corps abandoned Glory Main, and I haven’t been on an operation since.”
“What were you doing there, anyway? Seemed like a waste of good combat vets, pulling guard duty at a corps HQ.”
“The Banshees you saw were a reinforced platoon that I’d been leading for a few months. Bit of an emergency reaction force. They were some really good fighters, so we kept getting mission after mission.”
“I know how that feels.”
“We got an offer to stop off at a nice cushy headquarters to rest, refit, get some real chow, and like an idiot I said yes. Those Glory Corps staff pukes turned us into their little palace guard.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Mortas remembered the words of his first platoon sergeant, as the man lay dying at the end of the disaster on Fractus. He’d asked Mortas to get the surviving members of the platoon safe jobs protecting his father, and it had sounded like a good idea at the time. “But you did the right thing, trying to get your people a break.”
“I suppose that’s true. I’d been in the war for five years by then. Sometimes I wonder if I was trying to get myself a rest.” Varick gave a short laugh. “But you know Command; give ’em a chance, and they’ll do you in. I hated that staff job, but they wouldn’t let me transfer. That’s one of the reasons I’m here. They said they had a mission for me, and without hearing one word more I said yes.”
“I thought you’d like to see this.” Hugh Leeger waved Mortas over to one of the shuttle’s viewing portholes. The vessel had passed into Roanum’s atmosphere, and was cruising far above its orange-and-red surface.
Jander looked down, shocked at the mix of emotions the vista evo
ked. It had been nighttime when he’d escaped the planet with the dying Gorman and the alien impersonating Trent. He’d never seen it from the sky, but he remembered the cruel miles they’d walked and crawled. Rocky mountain ranges, brown against the orange, twisted their way across the plains. Fine traceries appeared here and there in the open, reminding him of the deep ravines they’d used to travel unseen. The sides of one ridgeline showed the yellow grass that had led them to water, and just beyond the escarpment he saw a meandering river.
“You should have seen it, the first time one of the snakes tried to eat us.” Mortas placed a palm against the bulkhead and leaned out over the porthole, shifting the weight off his injured leg. “Cranther, the Spartacan Scout, had warned us that predators stake out the water sources. He was sticking a long pole out into the flow, filling this plastic box, when the thing jumped right at us. All teeth and muscle, it was the size of your leg—and that was one of the small ones.”
“The HWs say those things are in all the waterways. They don’t like to mess with the local ecology any more than they have to, so they’ve built barriers into the rivers closest to their settlement.”
“They’d be crazy to trust those. Once they sensed food in the area, more and more of them converged on the spot. Some of them were twenty feet long.” Mortas felt his jaw clenching, and looked for a distraction. An unnatural outline on the planet surface caught his eye. “No. Is that the spacedrome?”
A long, thin rectangle stood out from the surrounding plain. The main airstrip, it was pocked by hundreds of brown craters. Smaller rectangles appeared in a cluster at one end, also riddled with blast holes. These were the outlines of the burned-out warehouses and hangars of the spacedrome that had supported the Sim colony. One of the wrecked structures, close to the runway, appeared to have suffered almost no rocket strikes when the HDF had destroyed the place.
“See that there? I blew that entire warehouse apart with a tank round. It must have been loaded with explosives. I was just trying to create a diversion, and I turned the whole place into splinters.” The combat veteran inside him laughed at the memory of the destruction, but then stopped. “That blast was probably what killed Gorman. He’d been badly injured earlier, but he and the alien were slipping across the runway when I fired the cannon. A flying piece of wood nailed the alien, too. I thought I’d killed them both, but it pulled that javelin out and told me it was only a scratch.”
Leeger didn’t respond, so Mortas ended the tale. “What a fucker.”
“Jan, I know how you feel about that thing, but you need to set that aside.”
“Why? Just because it asked for me by name?”
“Yes. The shape-shifter you met was the only one of its kind ever encountered by a human. And until now, we haven’t seen another. We’ve spent that entire time worried that one might slip through our screening, and dreading what it might be able to do. The one you bumped into was working with the Sims, but this one wants to talk peace.”
“And you trust it? After everything the first one did?”
“At the very least it wants to talk.” Leeger grimaced at Jander’s hard stare. “Look at it this way. It knows we’re wary of its abilities, and it seems to have taken that into account. I believe one of the reasons it asked for you is that you’ve already been, for lack of a better term, exposed to it. If it can read minds, it’s already read yours. There’s no new information it can get from you.”
“Been a few places since then, you know? Let it read my mind about Fractus.” Mortas stopped himself. “Wait a minute. That’s why you picked Erica for this mission. Apart from a couple of techs who walked in after we’d been sealed in the decon tubes, she’s the only living human who was in close proximity to the alien.”
“Yes. Not counting the Guild analyst.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t send him with us.”
“A deal’s a deal. He earned his vacation.”
“So how do you expect me to react to this thing, Hugh? Pretend to be some kind of happy-ass ambassador? Put on a trusting face when I know better?”
“I’m not asking you to trust that thing—just keep an open mind. It wanted to contact us, and it wants to speak with you. It told the Brodan that it’s ready to act as a translator, and that there are plenty more like it who can do the same. Just think about it, Jan—four decades of war with the Sims, and we’ve never been able to communicate with them.”
“The ones I’ve met didn’t seem to want to talk.”
“That’s not true. Right down there, on Roanum, you infiltrated a Sim column and almost walked right onto their base with them. In your report you said it was hard to remember they weren’t human. Their mannerisms, their responses, heck, one of them helped you up an incline just like a human soldier would.”
“Sam’s got another mannerism, you know. He mutilates our dead. I stopped comparing him to us once I saw that a few times.”
“But don’t you see what we could gain here? If we could just talk to them, we might find out why they do things like that. Why they fight us wherever we meet them. And maybe, just maybe, we might find out what’s making them.”
“Somehow I doubt they’re gonna want to tell us that.”
“Well then we’ll have to capture a few of them, and make them.” Leeger looked down at the planet. “For the first time in the war, we might be able to actually interrogate a prisoner or two. They’ll tell us what we need to know if we get rough enough.”
“What’s going on, Hugh?” He didn’t look at the man who had practically raised him. “You didn’t used to be like this.”
“We’re in big trouble, Jan. For years we weren’t winning or losing the war, so most people just plain forgot about it. Now Celestia’s gone to pieces, and we’re doing the one thing we cannot do. We’re fighting each other. The Celestians are out of the war, and the Tratians are really putting pressure on the Chairwoman. If we don’t come up with something big, very soon, Tratia is going to end up calling the shots in the alliance.”
Mortas looked down again, recognizing the terrain that had punished him and the others with such cruelty. So much pain, so much deprivation on that ground, and yet their suffering had forged the four maroons into a unit. Drawing on the hidden strengths of each member, meeting and overcoming obstacle after obstacle, and then finally escaping. And then to discover that the only one he’d brought out alive had been playing them the whole way.
Remembering an even darker revelation only a few months earlier, on a jungle planet named Verdur where the Orphans had fought a force of fanatical Sim holdouts. The nauseating discovery that a human research station on that planet had been torturing Sim prisoners—not for information, but to learn if they could serve as a labor force. The site had belonged to an enormous corporation called Victory Provisions, and its demented personnel had possessed a videotape of the alien being immolated on Glory Main. It hadn’t taken a genius to understand that they saw the shape-shifter as a means of communicating orders to their prospective slaves.
“The Whisperers told their elders about the alien before they told you. No matter how insular they are, it’s only a matter of time before the news gets out.”
“We were rushing to get you here, but then we learned the alien had walked off. Unfortunately, we’re following its schedule.” Leeger had been fully briefed on what the Orphans had discovered on Verdur. “But you’re right. We have to expect Victory Pro, and others, to hear about this if it drags on.”
“If it’s just Varick and me and a colony of pacifists, there’s not much we can do if a determined party tries to snatch that thing.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.”
“Now this is the way to do it.” Mortas spoke to Varick as they watched the shuttle vanish in the sky. “Last time I was here, we had absolutely nothing. You should have seen us, traipsing across all this empty ground. We might as well have been cavemen.”
“If we have to be here, we might as well be comfortable.” Varick turned an
d looked at their temporary home. A one-story cylindrical drum rose out of the orange dirt, surmounted with antennae and the launching sling for surveillance drones. The cream-colored cylinder extended another story beneath the surface, and a four-wheeled mover was parked next to it.
They’d inspected the shelter with Leeger before his departure, making sure that everything worked. Communications were already established with the Ajax, a Force cruiser crewed entirely by Mortas family loyalists that had routinely accompanied the Chairman. The Ajax would remain in orbit for the entire mission, and was busily launching satellites designed to provide increased security in case unwanted guests attempted to arrive or depart.
“Let’s test the perimeter,” Mortas suggested. “One of us should try and walk on in. See how long it takes for a warning.”
“That sounds like good, healthy paranoia, Lieutenant.” Varick cracked a grin at him.
“Yeah, this know-it-all captain once told me to nurture that.” Mortas raised a finger. “Wait. I forgot to show you this.”
Varick waited while Mortas laboriously bent over. His left leg was held rigid by the brace, and he pulled up the tan fabric of his right pant leg. The handle of a short dagger stood up from the boot, and Varick reached down and drew the weapon.
“Hmm. Seems I’ve seen this before. It went missing right after all the alarms stopped ringing at Glory Main. How’d you get it back?”
“Leeger took it from the guy who interrogated me. Musta stolen it as a souvenir.” Mortas frowned. “You didn’t meet that prick, did you?”
“What was his name?”
“Leeger wouldn’t say. He was the chief interrogator for the Glory Corps. Kept at me for days, but I never saw his face. God I wish I could have got my hands on that guy.”
“I didn’t hang around with anybody like that. Never have. Interrogators, internal security, just a gang of backstabbers getting in the way.”
“Amen to that. Of course, I can’t forget that you’ve been spending a lot of time with the upper-level staff types recently.” Jander winked at her. “Vote’s still out on you.”
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