by Rick Partlow
The other had that same look of awareness, but not the same eye for detail: McKay could spot at least one gig on his uniform for which a Marine D.I. would've torn him a new rectum. Not that Jason particularly cared; he wasn't a nitpicker for such details as long as a troop did his job. And this man looked like he could handle that. At least a meter-nine, he towered a good eight centimeters over his companion and outweighed him by at least twenty kilos---a lot of iron had pumped its way into those muscles.
Yet, even with the weight and height advantage, and even though he shared the same rank as his companion, Jason somehow knew that the smaller man was the leader. There was something in his eyes that spoke of native intelligence and heads-up good sense. The big one, though his gunmetal grey eyes were clear and watchful, had the look of a follower.
The men halted inside the room, came to as much of attention as was possible in zero-g, and saluted.
"Sergeants Vincent Mahoney and James Gregory reporting, sir," the wiry New Englander announced.
"At ease." McKay returned their salutes, trying not to lose his grip on the holoprojector. "We'll save the introductions till..."
A voice sounded from the hall.
"Mister, you will belay that kind of talk right now, or I will throw your ass so far into the brig that they'll have to feed you with a mass driver!"
"I was just trying to be friendly, ma'am," a smooth, unperturbed male voice responded. "Even officers need a little companionship now and then."
"My needs are not your concern!"
The exchange came to an abrupt halt as the two rounded the bend and came face-to-face with Lieutenant McKay.
"...the rest of the team gets here," McKay finished his thought with a deep sigh.
"Uh...Lieutenant Shannon Stark," the female officer told him, thrusting out a hand, charging through her obvious embarrassment. Jason judged her to be in her mid-twenties, with the immaculate uniform and well-toned athletic form of an officer who took her job seriously. Cut regulation-short, her red-gold hair still retained a subtly-styled femininity, complimenting her high cheekbones and strong chin in a way that made Jason's breath come a bit shorter.
"Pleased to meet you, Lieutenant." Jason shook her hand and shook off the unexpected feeling, then looked over to the Tech-2 who had walked in with her.
"Technician Second-Class Tom Crossman reporting, sir." The wavy-haired enlisted man threw him a sloppy salute. Everything about the man seemed manifestly unmilitary, from the barely-regulation haircut and mustache, to the way he wore the top fastener of his uniform undone, to the loose way he carried himself. McKay wondered what Colonel Mellanby had been thinking.
"At ease," Jason returned ironically, not bothering to answer the salute. "I'm Lieutenant McKay, your new CO. I assume you all know that our assignment is to safeguard Ms. O'Keefe on her tour of the colony worlds. We will carry out this assignment despite what any of us may think of her involvement in the EJA, or her father's politics, and despite her feelings toward us. We will be supported by a Marine Reaction Force, and we've been provided with a variety of special weapons. I assume all of you have been checked out with unconventional weapons?"
"We've all been through Colonel Mellanby's training course," Lieutenant Stark confirmed.
"Good. That's it for now. I know you're all the best or you wouldn't be here, so I'm counting on your support. I'll see you all in the g-sleep chambers." He saluted and the enlisted returned it before heading for the door. "If you'd wait for a moment, Lieutenant," he asked Stark as she was moving to leave.
He waited till the others had made their way out, then turned back to the woman.
"Lieutenant Stark," he began hesitantly, "did the Snake---I mean, Colonel Mellanby---recruit each of you personally?"
"As far as I know," she replied, regarding him evenly, with something of an air of evaluation.
"Did he mention anything to you about his real reason for forming this team?"
"He did say something about an idea to recreate an organization similar to the old special operations forces," she confirmed with the briefest of hesitations.
"What do you think of the team?" He cast a meaningful glance at the door.
"I only had a few minutes with them when we arrived on board." She shrugged. "First impressions? Mahoney seems like the best of the bunch. He seems to have natural leadership, and from the brief look I got at his personnel file"---She had personnel files, McKay thought to himself with more than a bit of envy---"he scored highly in the training. He and the big fellow are both ex-Corps. Gregory's competent, and he's an expert at almost every weapon made. He'll always be a follower, though."
"What about Crossman?" Jason asked directly. "He doesn't seem to be the type Colonel Mellanby would pick."
"He's had some discipline problems," she admitted. "And, to be frank, he seems to be a gigantic pain in the ass. But he's a fifth degree black belt in Tae Kwan Do, and he's put four separate unarmed combat instructors in the hospital."
"No shit," McKay blurted, shooting a glance at the door, and the path Crossman had taken out of the room. "Well, I guess the Snake knows what he's doing, as always. Anyway, a couple things. First, I want you to meet me outside my cabin at 1700 hours to go have a talk with Ms. O'Keefe about security. Second, call me Jason, okay? It'd get pretty confusing with all those 'Lieutenant's' flying around."
"All right, Jason." She smiled, and McKay could have sworn the room brightened visibly. "I'm Shannon."
"I look forward to working with you, Shannon," he said. "Feel free to share any ideas you might have about the structure of the team."
She cocked an eyebrow as she shoved off toward the door. "Well, I already have one idea."
"Yes?" he encouraged, eyes following her as she moved into the hall.
A marvelously mischievous grin darted across her face as she hung in the doorway, only her face still visible, like a childhood image of the Cheshire cat.
"I think I should be in charge."
And then she was gone.
McKay stared after her for a long moment, speechless.
"Damn." he finally whispered. This, he thought, was going to be interesting.
* * *
"Wish they had passenger ships to the star colonies," Mulrooney complained, unpacking his suitcase in the tiny cabin he and Valerie were to share. "Kind of takes the romance out of it, hitching a ride on a Goddamned warship."
"We're not on a pleasure cruise, Glen,” Val reminded him softly, stuffing clothes into a locker. There was no use folding them in zero gravity. "It was either this or a freighter---colony ships don't do 'grand tours.'"
"Just because we're working"---Glen kicked off from the wall on his side of the bed and spun in mid-air to hang upside down over her---"doesn't mean we can't have a little fun."
He wrapped his arms around her from behind and began playfully exploring with them while he nuzzled at her neck.
"Glen," she sighed in exasperation. "Will you try to control yourself? That Lieutenant McKay person's going to be here any minute."
"Let him get his own girl," Glen said with a laugh, working at the fasteners on her blouse.
"Glen!" Valerie protested, but only half-heartedly.
But the moment was interrupted by the chime of the door intercom. Glen sighed and let Val go, floating sullenly back across the room. Valerie hastily refastened her shirt and kicked off toward the door.
"Yes?" She hit the door's speaker button.
"Ms. O'Keefe?" A male voice answered. "It's Lieutenant McKay."
"Come in." Val pressed a palm to the lock and the door obediently slid aside, allowing Jason and Shannon to propel themselves into the cabin.
"Hello, Ms. O'Keefe." Jason extended a hand. "I'm Lieutenant Jason McKay, and I'll be in charge of your security escort."
"A pleasure," she returned.
"This is Lieutenant Shannon Stark, my second-in-command." Shannon moved up to grasp the woman's hand.
"This is my fiancé, Glen Mulrooney," Va
l said, motioning to Glen.
"Expecting trouble, McKay?" The Senator's aide raised an eyebrow, nodding towards Jason's sidearm.
"It's my job to expect trouble, Mr. Mulrooney," Jason fired back, trying to suppress a laugh at the campy line. Had to hold up that Intelligence image.
"Just what can I do for you, Lieutenant?" Val asked abruptly.
"I need to review a couple of items on your schedule," Jason told her. "Specifically, the meeting you have with the Farmer's Independent Council the first day. You have it scheduled for..." he snuck a look at the notes on his wristcomp, "1930 hours, local. That's only three hours after our arrival, which doesn't give my team enough time to secure the meeting hall. If you could delay it for another couple of hours..."
O'Keefe shook her head. "I'm afraid that's impossible, Lieutenant. That schedule was delivered by a message on a cargo ship over a month ago---there's no way to reschedule it in time."
"Ms. O'Keefe," Jason protested, "we can't insure your safety if you don't cooperate with us in matters like this. Surely you can see..."
"I'm afraid you'll just have to deal with it," she declared.
"Ma'am," Jason insisted, beginning to become a bit irritated, "my having to 'just deal with it' might result in not only your death but my people getting killed as well."
"Look, McKay," Glen interjected, moving between Val and Jason, "we're both sick and tired of paranoid military fantasies. First it was those so-called 'ship attacks,' and now this bullshit! Why don't you Fleet bully boys stop whining and do your jobs?"
"If you politicians would allow us to do our jobs..." McKay's voice rose.
"Gentlemen, please!" Val put a hand on each of their arms. "This isn't the time or the place for a political argument. Lieutenant McKay, I will attempt to contact the Council once we're insystem and, if it is workable for them, I'll try to delay the meeting. Is that satisfactory?"
"Thank you." McKay took a deep breath, trying to relax.
"But from now on, I would appreciate if you would coordinate all security measures with Mr. Tanaka, my personal bodyguard."
"Sure thing." Jason smiled frostily. "I trust we'll have a good working relationship. Ms. O'Keefe, I'll leave you to get moved in here. Mr. Mulrooney, I'd like to say it's been a pleasure meeting you. I'd like to say that, but I can't."
With that, McKay and Stark exited the room, leaving Glen with his mouth hanging open.
"'It's my job to expect trouble?'" Shannon repeated with a chuckle, cocking an eye at him as they propelled themselves down the corridor.
"Sorry," Jason said. "I just couldn't resist."
Chapter Four
"People are not born bastards. They have to work at it."---Rod McKuen.
Jason McKay woke with a shiver that rattled his bones, his eyes flying wide open as he jerked upright. It took him a moment to remember where he was, but the sight of row upon row of coffin-like sleep chambers lying open all around him brought him back to reality. He still had the bitter aftertaste of oxygenated biotic fluid in his mouth and the slimy feel of it on his skin. On a conscious level, he knew he'd been breathing the stuff; that it had filled his lungs and surrounded his body for the last two months, cushioning him and the others from the crushing acceleration and deceleration necessary to reach supralight speeds in a reasonable time. But he was still grateful that he'd been unconscious during the process, in a state of chemically-induced hibernation: the thought of breathing liquid scared the hell out of him.
He looked around, still trying to get his bearings, and saw Shannon rising from her chamber, clad only in the halter top and shorts that was twice what he was wearing. Her short hair was matted with dried biotic fluid and her eyes were squinty and half-closed, but he found himself staring at her in a most unmilitary way. Her halter top was plastered over her small, pert breasts, and suddenly Jason wasn't feeling quite so cold anymore. Her eyes came up to meet his, and he knew he should have tried to look away, but he didn't. To his surprise, she just smiled.
"Sleep well?" she asked, stretching her legs over the side of the cabinet.
"I really hate this shit," he admitted, swinging himself out of the chamber, feeling the kinks in his back. He was grateful that the g-sleep machinery had electrically stimulated his muscles while he was in the tank, or he'd have been a quivering mass of jelly after a couple months of floating. Trying to locate the other members of his team, he saw Jock and Vinnie still sitting in their cabinets, doing crunch situps. Shannon followed his look, shaking her head. "Ah, youth," McKay muttered.
Crossman, he noticed as his gaze swept the room, was already hitting on one of the ship's crew, and getting nearly as frosty a reception as he had from Shannon. Maybe, he thought, there had been a mixup of the personnel files, and they were really supposed to get some other Tom Crossman.
Flexing his knees, Jason realized that they were still decelerating at around one gravity, which probably put them somewhere around the system’s outlying asteroid belt and well below lightspeed. If they were following standard Fleet procedures, that would give them nearly twenty-four hours at one gravity before they coasted into orbit: time enough for everyone to recover from their long g-sleep. Then they would drop the O'Keefe party off and go refuel at the solar antimatter factory, where kilometers-wide collectors powered a huge particle accelerator, producing the antiprotons that were the only fuel that would take humans to the stars.
Thinking of O'Keefe, he hunted her down with his eyes and saw that she and Glen Mulrooney were just getting out of their booths, huddling close with the RHN cameraman that had accompanied them to record their mission for posterity. Posterity, my ass, Jason thought to himself. More like to further her political career, the Goddamned hypocritical bitch. Hitching a ride on a military ship so she could try to get their funding cut. How did he ever get himself into this? And just what the hell was the Snake thinking of?
"Good God," the slim, twentyish RHN cameraman was moaning to Glen Mulrooney on the other side of the room. The young reporter's long, black hair, usually tied into a ponytail, was hanging in greasy strings across his face and his temples pounded with every pulsebeat. "Is it always this bad?"
"I hope not." Glen shook his head, wiping slime off of his face. "We've got nearly a year of this to look forward to."
"It's not so bad after the first time," Valerie assured him, smoothing her hair back from her brows. "I just wish we didn't have to wear these skimpy outfits." She could already sense some of the male crewmembers staring at her. It was nothing she couldn't handle, of course, but it still made her uncomfortable. "Come on, Glen," she said, standing, her arms crossed over her breasts. "Let's go get cleaned up. We have a lot of work to do."
* * *
"So," Shannon asked as they strapped into their seats, "where are the Marines?" She glanced around the shuttle's passenger compartment, seeing only Valerie O'Keefe's party and the guard team. It was odd to see them dressed in civilian clothes, but McKay had thought it best to maintain a low profile: if the bad guys couldn't tell them from O'Keefe's people, they wouldn't know who to concentrate on. Jason, Vinnie and Jock were clothed in baggy, tan utility pants, with light-colored shirts worn open over T-shirts, while she wore a white safari shirt and tan shorts---sensible wear for the climate in Aphrodite's dry season. Tom Crossman, of course, was clad in some garishly-colored jumpsuit more appropriate for an inner-city dance club than a desert.
"They're coming down separately," Jason explained, mouth screwing up in distaste, "on the lander." He jerked his head toward Valerie O'Keefe, engaged in conversation with the RHN reporter. "She didn't want to have them around for the press to see---thought it would make her look paranoid."
"Hell, I wish I was on the lander," Jock Gregory grumbled from the seat behind him. "These pus..." he hesitated, glancing around self-consciously, "wussy Fleet shuttles make me want to puke."
"So, sir," Vinnie asked, surreptitiously elbowing his friend in the ribs, "what's the agenda? Did she move the meeting back?"
"My favorite job," Gregory muttered.
"What about me, Lieutenant?" Crossman asked, somehow managing to look more at ease than everyone else, even in zero gravity. "Do I get to do strip searches on the local senoritas?"
"You..." Jason bit back his initial response, doubting it would seem very professional. "You'll draw a weapon and patrol the perimeter. If as much as a cow comes too close to the building, I want you to restrain it and hold it for questioning. You got that, Mister?"
"Aye, aye, sir." Tom’s mouth twisted into his crooked grin. "Arrest all suspicious farm animals---got it, sir."
"MacArthur shuttle SL-103," the pilot's voice came over the PA system, "preparing for launch. All passengers fasten your safety restraints, and have a pleasant flight."
"Goddamned commercial pleasure cruise," Vincent Mahoney whispered to Gregory, who grunted agreement. McKay had to laugh: those two would always be Marines.
The metallic clunks of releasing locking rings vibrated through the aerospace vehicle as it began to float through the open docking bay doors. Muffled bangs signalled the momentary ignition of the maneuvering thrusters that carried them out of the bay and into the shadow of the massive nickel-iron obelisk that was the RFS MacArthur. For a few seconds, the black metal of the hull was all they could see, punctuated by the regular bumps of sensor pods and antimissile defense turrets; but then they emerged into the harsh brightness of Aphrodite, a brown, green and blue hemisphere that stretched before them in the compartment's holographic viewscreen.
"It looks a lot like Earth," Shannon observed.
"Looks can be deceiving," Jason told her. "About a third of the surface is as barren as the Mojave desert."