by Rick Partlow
Grabbing his right hamstring, Ari pretended to have a cramp, limping over to a bench and propping his heel on the top of it, trying to stretch out his leg. While he did so, he pulled his ‘link off his belt and surreptitiously held it close to his mouth.
“Record message protocol Eldest Son,” he commanded quietly. “Colonel Lee, the XO here is involved and so is his aid, Major Ali. Don’t have evidence that General Kage is in on it, but I’d be surprised if Lee were the mastermind; he doesn’t have the temperament. We had a face-to-face and I’ve been asked to recruit officer candidates for the mutiny. The mutiny is sounding a lot more like a coup to me.”
Ari switched legs on the bench, stretching out the other one. “The kicker is,” he continued with the message, “he told me that the mutineers have access to instantaneous FTL communications. That’s gotta’ mean they’ve somehow found and figured out how to use the wormholes Antonov discovered…and I don’t know how they could have pulled that off without outside help. This thing is way bigger than we thought and I need to know how far you want me to take this. I do not feel comfortable recruiting young trainees to something that could get them arrested or killed…” Ari trailed off, something teasing at his subconscious, something he hadn’t quite heard, but knew there’s been a sound…
There. A faint crunch of a footstep on mulch…
Ari had barely had time to straighten up from his stretch before the man was upon him, an indistinct figure clad in speed and darkness, striking with a hiss of a blade passing through the air. Ari threw himself backwards on instinct more than anything else, feeling the breeze of the strike against his skin as it just missed, then he darted in with both arms held up in a block and caught the return swing in mid-motion, his forearms cracking against the back of his attacker’s left arm, the impact sending the small, dark-bladed knife the man had been holding spinning through the air and into the brush.
Ari turned the block into a grab, catching his attacker at the wrist and triceps and yanking him into a knee-strike that slammed into unprotected sternum with a crunch of cracking bone. He could hear and feel the wind go out of the man in an explosive gush and his training told him to lock his opponent into a choke and finish him…but instinct made him spin the man around by his captive arm and throw him into the path of the second attacker he’d sensed more than heard was coming at him.
The disarmed attacker tumbled into an uncontrolled roll and took the oncoming assailant at the knees, pitching him face-first into the dirt. Ari only had the barest impression of dark clothes and a stocky build---he couldn’t tell if the man was armed or not---but he pounced on the second man immediately, pressing his advantage with an elbow strike on the downed attacker’s back that broke his right clavicle with an audible snap. A muffled scream came through the man’s black balaclava and the assassin reached desperately with his left hand for the knife clutched in his now-useless right, but Ari had spun around and pinned the left arm with his knee. With a swift, trained motion, Ari wrapped his arm around the man’s neck and yanked backwards sharply. A sickening crunch and then the man’s struggles stopped and he went limp.
Ari was up in an instant, coming into a crouch as he watched the first man scramble to his feet, still struggling to breathe. Ari lunged at him with the tactical aggression that he’d been taught in the Intelligence Service’s unarmed combat courses, catching him low across the hips, and yanking him off his feet, slamming his shoulders squarely into the ground. Not knowing if there were more of them out there, Ari took the man out quickly with a vicious punch to the throat, crushing his trachea.
Leaving the man thrashing on the ground, choking to death, Ari jumped to his feet, scanning for more attackers, his own gasping breath and pounding heartbeat deafening in his ears. Suddenly a sound penetrated the cacophony of his own respiration, a coughing snap that he instantly recognized as the report of a suppressed gunshot. He spun toward the sound and saw a third black-clad man slumping to the ground, a compact pistol slipping out of his lifeless fingers.
Standing behind the man was Alida, dressed in running Capri's and a tank top, an ugly little pistol with a sound suppressor attached to its barrel held in her outstretched hands. He stared at her agape as she glanced back and forth, checking for any other threats before lowering the gun.
“Getting a bit sloppy, Captain Shamir,” she said softly. “You should have known they’d have someone backing them up with a gun, just in case.”
He started to respond, then checked himself, his mouth left wide open.
“What the fuck?” was all he was finally able to say. “Do you…are you with…us?”
She laughed softly, her hands working to detach the suppressor from the pistol then stowing the gun and the silencer in a small waist pack. “You mean am I with the Fleet Intelligence Service? No…I work for the Guard Investigative Division, but at the moment I am working directly for General Kage.”
“General…?” Ari felt incredibly disoriented, as if he’d walked into the middle of someone else’s conversation. “So, General Kage isn’t…”
“Look,” she sighed, “we don’t have much time…we need to get these bodies off the trail and out of sight, then get back to the OQ before we’re on duty. I’ll fill you in while we run.”
Ari nodded, finally hearing something he could understand. Without another word, the two of them dragged the three would-be assassins off the trail and deep into the trees, then covered them with brush, making sure their weapons were left with the bodies.
“Someone will find them eventually,” he warned as he paused to retrieve his ‘link from where he’d dropped it near the bench.
“I’ll get a team out here to clean up,” Alida assured him. “Now, let’s get going.”
Ari and Alida made their way back onto the running path and broke into an easy jog. Ari felt a jolt of post-fight adrenaline jitters hit him like a hammer and only previous experience kept him from curling into a ball on the trail. Instead, he used breathing exercises to keep his pulse and respiration under control as he kept up a steady pace next to the woman he’d thought he knew.
“General Kage knows about the conspiracy?” He asked Alida once he had his breathing under control.
“Of course…he’s many things, but he’s not stupid,” she replied, seemingly calm as a mill pond.
“How did you know who I was?” He heard more anger in his voice than he’d meant to put there. Mistakes like that could easily get him killed.
“The GIS stole the Marine personnel files on all the Marines that were recruited to Intelligence,” she explained with a shrug. “So, we had biometric recognition, voice recognition, DNA recognition, etc…for you and a bunch of others that came in five years ago when everything got reorganized. Frankly, with what was going on, we expected someone. That’s why I’m here…”
“If you know what’s going on,” he asked, panting a bit, “why didn’t you just bust it up yourselves already?”
“Two reasons…one, as you may have guessed by now, it goes beyond some dissatisfied Guard officers who want to pull a stunt, and we don’t know how far yet. Two, you Fleet boys don’t trust us and Kage figured the best way to get your help was to let you see it for yourself. Who the hell do you think started the rumors so you’d pick up on this?”
“Well shit,” he commented bitterly. Not only had he been played, the whole Intelligence Service had been played. “And now Lee knows about me too.”
“Those hitters didn’t work for Lee,” she told him. “Lee doesn’t take a shit without us knowing what he had for dinner. He’s as happy as a pig in slop to have someone like you…like Mo…here.”
“So who the hell did send them?” Ari wanted to know.
“I don’t know,” she replied, “I spotted them when you left the room---I’m not that sound of a sleeper, you know. I tied into the security cameras with my ‘link to see where you were going and I spotted them heading out about five minutes after you did, going the opposite way on the perimeter tr
ail. They tried to look like joggers, but no one wears that much clothing to run here in summer, not even before dawn. I thought about calling security, but I decided to see if I could handle it myself.”
“And I appreciate you saving my life,” he told her. “Thank you.”
“I like you, Ari” she told him, and he could see her smile even in the dark. “Even when you’re pretending to be Mo. So don’t take this the wrong way, but the real reason I saved you is that we do need you Fleet boys’ help and we can’t wait for them to send your replacement. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen soon.”
“You think I can still maintain cover?” he asked her, surprised. “Whoever sent those hitters must know I’m not who I say I am.”
“Oh, they may try again,” she agreed. “But that just gives us an opportunity to find out who they are. What? You afraid?” she asked, teasingly. “You did pretty well, for a guy in skimpy running shorts.”
He couldn’t help it…he laughed, a coughing, breathless laugh. “As long as you’ll be there to watch my back, Alida…or whatever your name is.”
“Alida will do for now,” she told him. “Wouldn’t want you to slip and call me something else. If we live through this, I’ll tell you my real name.” She sighed. “I hadn’t intended to come out of cover with you so soon…but I suppose it does simplify things if you know we are both working to the same end.”
“No more need for a cover,” he smiled ruefully, “so I suppose you’ll be moving back to your own room.”
“Don’t be silly, Mo,” she grinned back at him as they came within sight of the OQ. “As I said…I like you. Now let’s get a shower and get to work.”
“I like you too, Alida,” he murmured, shaking his head. “I like you too.”
Chapter Seven
“Have I mentioned,” Vinnie groaned, “just how much I hate g-sleep?”
“Yeah,” Jock muttered, sitting up in his open hibernation chamber, rubbing his eyes. “You’ve whined like a little bitch about it every trip the last three years. Sir.”
“So, how long have you two been married?” Lt. Commander Villanueva asked dryly as she rose stretching from her own chamber across from theirs. Jock cocked an appreciative eyebrow as her stretch did interesting things to the tank top she was wearing, still damp with the oxygenated biotic fluid they’d been breathing as it cushioned them from the crushing pseudo-acceleration of the stardrive.
“Since Basic Training,” Vinnie grunted, rolling out of his chamber. “But I’m considering a divorce.”
“But what about the kids, honey?” Jock said in a plaintive falsetto, climbing out himself. “Sir.”
“I can’t take you two anywhere.” McKay shook his head, walking past them towards the showers. They were still decelerating into the system at a one-gravity warp analog, but that would end soon, and everyone was rushing to get cleaned up before the pseudo-gravity was gone. “Shuttle launches in two hours, Vinnie,” he reminded over his shoulder as he grabbed a towel from the locker.
“Yeah, yeah,” the former Marine NCO muttered, falling into a pushup position next to his g-sleep chamber and cranking out a quick fifty to get the tingly, pins-and-needles feeling out of his muscles.
“So, Captain Mahoney,” Lt. Commander Villanueva asked as he came to his feet, “you were on the Protectorate flagship during the Battle for Earth.”
“Yeah…err, yes, ma’am,” Vinnie replied, quickly calculating her Fleet rank and converting it to the Marines/Intelligence equivalent of Major. He bit off his well-rehearsed follow-up of “what? You want an autograph?” that had become his standard reply to the question.
“You met Antonov, didn’t you?”
“I guess you could call it that,” he shrugged, wishing she would get to the point so he could get a shower. “He mostly told us what suckers we were, until Colonel McKay got tired of it and the shooting started.”
“That’s right, he set a trap for you,” she recalled. “Does that worry you?”
“You mean do I think this is a trap?” He thought about it for a moment. “Could be. Doesn’t really matter. We still gotta do what we do, and I’m not sure I could be any more cautious than I already am and still do my job. Let me tell you something, Commander…there’s nothing like getting shot to make you grow eyes in the back of your head. Anyway,” he said, shaking the thought off, “we gotta go collect ourselves a former Protectorate Colonel turned cattle rancher, so if you wouldn’t mind, ma’am.”
“Go right ahead, Captain,” she assented with a thin smile, “I had better go get cleaned up myself.”
“I think she likes you,” Jock stage-whispered to Vinnie as they entered the men’s showers. “Sir.”
“Jesus Christ I wish you’d taken a commission,” Vinnie snarled. “Then I could tell you exactly what I’m thinking without breaking regulations about abusing lower ranks.”
“Why the hell do you think I stayed a sergeant?” Jock cracked. “Sir.”
Jason McKay stepped off the shuttle and into a chilling wind that whipped mercilessly through the grassy valley and across the landing pad, making the hood of his jacket flap like an ensign.
“Isn’t it supposed to be spring?” He asked, squinting up at the orange glow of Epsilon Eridani in the harshly blue sky.
“Hell yes,” Vinnie said, beside him. “You should see this shit-hole in winter, sir…you spend a couple days in Beacon Pass in winter and you’ll wonder why Loki is classified as habitable.”
“It’s not that bad,” Jock shrugged, staring off at the high, craggy mountains in the distance beyond the port city. “I’d rather have the cold than the heat.”
“Here comes our ride,” McKay nodded towards a boxy all-terrain rover rumbling down the dirt road that connected Beacon Pass to the landing pad. Behind the three men, Captain Minishimi’s XO Commander Duncan stepped off the boarding ramp with their pilot Lt. Commander Villanueva at his heels. Duncan wasn’t, McKay recalled, Minishimi’s usual First Officer; Jack Durant had been badly injured in an accident while rock climbing just before the end of their last leave.
“We’ll ride into town with you, Colonel,” Duncan said, pulling on a watch cap. He was a pale man and his cheeks were already turning red from the cold wind. Villanueva withstood the weather stoically, her short, dark hair waving slightly like the fields of grass in the distance, her face impassive. “If you wouldn’t mind picking us up at the Colonial Governor’s office on your way back.”
“Not a problem, Commander,” McKay assured him. “Hopefully we won’t be too long. But I guess that depends on how reasonable our friend Podbyrin wants to be…”
“Are you absolutely fucking nuts?” Colonel D’mitry Grigor’yevich Podbyrin demanded. The Colonel, late of the Russian Protectorate Space Force, was a thin, sallow man with a shaved head and dark, sunken eyes. He looked as if he were in late middle age, but McKay knew him to be over one hundred and eighty years old, his life extended by organ transplants done on the Protectorate home base. Right now, his pale face was red, old broken blood vessels in his nose lit up like neon signs. “Let me tell you something, McKay,” he said, shaking his finger in the younger man’s face, “this is not an easy place to make a living.” He stomped away across the porch of his cabin, waving a hand at the wind-swept plains beyond his homestead. “In the winter, I cannot leave my house without a thermal suit that preheats the air I breathe. A regular cow would die in five minutes…only those things can survive here in the cold.” He jerked his head towards a gaggle of genetically engineered cattle grazing contentedly on the other side of a plank fence beyond his house. They were a lab-created mixture of American bison and musk ox, huge and ornery with long, shaggy fur and padded hooves.
“And besides the cold, I have to protect those things from the predators…those damn hafgygr that look like something from a nightmare; and the grab-worms that tunnel under the dirt and dig traps for the cattle. I’ve almost been worm food more than once. And all for a profit margin that barely pays bac
k my loan and gives me enough trade credits to live on. But you know what…at least I am living! And now you want me to go running after the General, to give him a chance to settle up with me for betraying him during the war!”
“You didn’t exactly betray him, D’mitry,” McKay said soothingly. “You were pumped full of truth drugs.”
“I betrayed him by not killing myself before you captured me!” Podbyrin yelled, his hands going up in frustration. “That is how he will see it, and he will have me gutted like a Christmas lamb! Strangled with my own intestines!”
“What a drama queen.” Jock muttered to Vinnie. The two of them were standing farther down the porch, Jock leaning lackadaisically against the railing, out of earshot of McKay and the Russian.
“At least his English has improved,” Vinnie shrugged.
“D’mitry,” McKay went on, “Antonov will never know you’re there. It’s not as if I’m asking you to come along on an infiltration mission, I just want you to help me get a feel for what he’s after.”
“And who will watch my cattle while I am gone?” Podbyrin demanded. “Or do you just assume I need not worry about losing everything I’ve built because you think there’s such a slim chance I’ll live through the trip?”
“We will be stopping by the Governor’s office on the way to the port,” McKay told him. “He is going to arrange to have three of his best wranglers watch your ranch until you return. And,” he raised a hand to forestall any further objections, “I have been authorized to pay you for your time as well…you can either accept a payment equal to three times your profit last year, or we can, if you like, relocate you to the colony of your choice and set you up with a homestead or a business there. You don’t have to make up your mind now, either.”