by Rick Partlow
That seemed to take Podbyrin by surprise. He frowned thoughtfully, hooking his thumbs in his broad leather belt. “Anywhere?” he asked.
“Anywhere outside the Solar System,” McKay confirmed.
“I must think on this,” he murmured, half to himself. He glanced up at McKay. “Do you give me your word I will be protected?”
“Colonel Podbyrin,” McKay replied, “I will tell you this: I will not even ask you to leave the ship unless it is absolutely necessary. I just want you available to consult with.”
The Russian sighed, looking around at his house and land as if he might never see them again. “How long do I have to get ready?”
D’mitry Podbyrin, McKay reflected, looked like a condemned man as he sat strapped into the shuttle acceleration couch, eyes staring straight ahead at the bulkhead, not even bothering to look at the curve of the planet passing beneath them. McKay felt guilt stir within him…whatever his gripes about the hardships, the man had been content here. He shook his head. It didn’t matter. Antonov’s last attempt at invasion had cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars. If he had to upend Podbyrin’s life to prevent another attempt, he’d do it.
“Colonel McKay,” Commander Villanueva’s voice came over the cabin’s PA speakers. “There is a call for you. I am having it transferred to your ‘link.”
“Thanks Commander,” he said, knowing the overhead pickup would catch his words. He pulled his ‘link from a pocket, took the ear bud off of its mount and put it in place, then hit the “connect” button on the screen. “This is McKay,” he said.
“McKay, this is Minishimi,” the Captain’s voice sounded in his ear. “You need to tell your pilot to re-route to a new course.”
“Why’s that, Captain?” He frowned. “What’s going on?”
“We have an unexpected visitor,” she said and he could almost hear the smile in her voice. “And he’d like to have a chat…”
The man waiting for McKay in the Flag Cabin of the RSS Sheridan was short and wiry, with a deceptive grace to his movements and a gravity in the lines of his high forehead and short, black hair. Every inch of his office and his uniform were a tribute to followed regulations, right down to the textbook cut of his thin mustache and the neatly tucked sheets of his bunk.
“Admiral Patel,” McKay said, coming to attention as much as was possible in zero gravity and saluting.
“Oh, at ease, McKay,” Arvid Patel saluted, smiling. “For God’s sake, it’s not as if I outrank you by that much anymore. Come on in and close the door.”
“Sir,” McKay said, shaking Patel’s extended hand, “it’s great to see you again, but if I might ask…how did you come to be here? Last I heard, you were scheduled for a run out to Eden for a conference with the 82 Eridani Governors’ Council.”
“Oh, I still am.” The smaller man waved a hand dismissively. “But they aren’t going anywhere and one of the benefits of being the highest ranking officer in the Fleet is the ability to go where I think I’m needed. We were stopped at the Outer System Refueling Station topping off the antimatter stores when I received an encrypted report from the President’s office.”
“Ah, so you already know then, sir,” McKay said. He felt vaguely annoyed, though he knew that was irrational. There was no way President O’Keefe was going to keep this from Admiral Patel. But the Intelligence officer in him had an innate distaste for sharing secrets beyond those with an absolute need to know.
“Yes and I didn’t fly out several light years just so you could say ‘I told you so,’ either,” Patel said with a smirk. He and McKay had argued incessantly five years ago about the need to search for Antonov versus the need to concentrate their resources on securing the colonies from the unrest following the war. “I came here to put this ship at your disposal. The President didn’t say I had to, but he didn’t say I couldn’t, either.”
“That’s very good to hear, sir,” McKay sighed. “Frankly, I’ve been worried about how long this is going to take with just one ship available.”
“Well, I’ve just doubled your capabilities…where do you want us?”
“We’re…the Decatur that is, going to be investigating the system where the attack occurred, then moving inward to the next system on the list of possible locations that I showed President O’Keefe…I assume he shared that with you?”
Patel nodded and used the controls on his desk to call up a hologram of the sector in question. McKay gestured, indicating the system they’d be checking after their investigation on Peboan. “If you could start here…” he pulled the picture around to the system furthest out from Peboan, “and work your way back towards us, we could meet at the last location and compare notes once we both arrive insystem.”
“What if we spot them?” Patel frowned. “Activity on a planet, ships? On the one hand, I don’t want to chance losing them, especially if it’s a force small enough for us to overwhelm, but on the other hand the point of all this is to find Antonov and if we attack prematurely, we might make him go even deeper into a hole.”
McKay considered the question for a moment before answering, hand rubbing the back of his neck thoughtfully. “Sir, I’ll leave that to your discretion. We could be weeks away if and when you spot anything. I think it would be prudent if you do see anything to launch a beacon with a message set to go off when the Decatur arrives. That way, no matter what happens, at least we’ll have some idea of what’s going on.”
“Sound thinking,” Patel said approvingly. “Well, as much as it would be nice to shuttle over and say hi to Joyce in person, I think we’d all be best served in getting under way as soon as possible.”
“I agree. I have a sense that Antonov wouldn’t have risked this attack unless something important was going on and it was imminent.”
“Then we meet again in a few weeks,” the Admiral offered his hand. McKay shook it, greatly relieved by the man’s offer of help.
It’s nice, he reflected as he left the cabin, to have friends.
Chapter Eight
Ariel Shamir was not comfortable. He knew Alida was right, that he had to keep going to work as if nothing had happened, but as he sat in the back of the open utility rover, following his class of officer candidates driving their troop transports over the dirt tracks through the training area, he felt as if he were sitting in the crosshairs. Whoever had tried to kill him---and Alida’s people still didn’t know who it had been after two weeks of investigation---they could attempt it again any time, any place. He had taken to wearing full body armor in the field---“sharing the burden of the troops,” he’d said, since the candidates were also required to wear it at this stage of training---and carrying a loaded sidearm, but no one seemed to have noticed. The only difference was that he was sweating his ass off in the late-afternoon sun.
More frustrating than the tension, though, was the fact that Colonel Lee had yet to contact him again. But he had an idea on how to change that…
As the sun came closer to touching the horizon, the armored vehicles and the rovers and trucks following them began to pull off the track and into a barren clearing. The armored troop carriers arrayed themselves into a ring with the unarmored trucks and rovers in the center before the officer candidates piled out to dig overnight fighting positions: one per vehicle. The armored vehicles held nine troops each. For the night halt, three would man the fighting position, three would man the vehicle’s weapons and three would sleep, in shifts.
Ari smiled thinly as he saw Sergeant Chen fingering the cylindrical artillery simulator on his belt with undisguised anticipation. The SOP for training missions like this was to test how well the ones on duty stayed awake by throwing out artillery simulators while a patrol was outside the wire and seeing if those on watch lit their own patrol up in a panic. It was also very entertaining to watch.
Ari stretched as he stepped out of his rover, feeling the kinks in his back from sitting too long in the uncomfortable seats on rough tracks.
“Sergeant Chen
,” he instructed, “make sure the candidates get a hot meal tonight. We want them nice and drowsy come 0300.”
“Yes, sir,” the training NCO said with a cruel smile, heading for the vehicle of the appointed candidate platoon leader.
Ari made the rounds as the troops settled in, checking the quality of their fighting positions, the placement of the armored vehicles and the watch rotation plan, and offering constructive criticism to the officer candidate leaders. They were, he reflected, shaping up much better than he’d thought they would when he started this assignment. If Kage’s reforms held, the Colonial Guard might not be as much of a joke in a few years.
Of course, if the mutiny and the assassination attempt actually play out, the Guard will be disbanded and reviled for decades, he thought grimly. Maybe it wasn’t so hard to understand why Kage wanted to stop it badly enough to work with his rivals in Fleet Intelligence.
Once the sun sank below the horizon and everyone was fed, Ari rolled out a sleeping bag next to his rover and laid down to grab a few hours’ sleep before the attack came. He felt as if he had just laid his head down when there was the familiar feeling of a kick at his boot: the traditional, safe way to wake up an armed man in the field. He opened his eyes and waited for them to adjust before he spoke.
“Captain Hassan Ali,” he said quietly, sitting up. Beneath his sleeping bag, his hand still touched the grip of his unholstered handgun. “When I sent the message, I expected you would contact me upon our return to base.”
Colonel Lee’s aid crouched down next to him, anonymous in the dark of night in his grey guard body armor, a black watch cap pulled over his head. “Fewer prying eyes and electronic ears out here,” he replied in hushed but conversational tones. “Have you made progress recruiting the candidates?”
“Yes, I have a couple very promising ones,” Ari replied, leaning back against the side of the rover, getting his feet beneath him. “Candidate Matienzo for one. His father is highly placed in the Southbloc Corporate Development Council…he has little love for the policies of the current administration. We have spoken of this…I think we can count on him if I am allowed to bring him into this. And he seems to be developing into a very capable soldier.”
“That is good to hear. But you did not contact me for this, I assume.”
“No, I did not,” Ari sighed. “This is difficult to say, Hassan Ali. It is about Alida…Lieutenant Hudec. We have become quite close…”
“And I salute your excellent taste, as well as your excellent luck, my friend,” Ali smiled. “She is an impressive woman.”
“I have…noticed things, in our time together. She has made calls that she has ended abruptly when I entered the room. She has been pressuring me to ask you and Colonel Lee for more details on your plans. This has worried me. So, I took a DNA sample from her. I had some close friends in the Marines, and one of them recently went to work for Fleet Intelligence. I contacted him and did not give him her name…I simply sent him the DNA analysis and had him run it through their database.”
“This was a hell of a risk, Captain Al-Masri.” Ali’s voice was cold and full of menace and trepidation.
“Her name is not Alida Hudec,” Ari went on as if the man hadn’t spoken. “And she is not a Colonial Guard infantry officer.” He let out a deep breath. “She is actually Captain-Investigator Gisella Katona of the Guard Investigative Division.”
“That is not possible!” Ali came to his feet, his voice raising instinctively before he remembered himself and crouched back down. “We ran a very thorough background investigation of Lieutenant Hudec,” he hissed in angry denial.
“The GID backstopped her very well,” Ari allowed. “But my friend has access to files that are more deeply classified than the ones your sources used. I cannot offer you any proof of this…my friend was hesitant to reveal even this much. But now that you know what to look for, you should be able to search this out on your own.”
“If you are wrong about this, Captain Al-Masri,” Ali said darkly, “it may be the end of you.”
“Captain Ali,” Ari returned, “if I am right about this, it may be the end for us all.”
Hassan Ali nodded reluctantly, swallowing hard. The man was very obviously close to panic, but he regained control of himself visibly. “Do nothing. Say nothing. I will be back in contact with you as quickly as I can.”
With that, Ali rose and strode quickly away into the darkness, probably to a waiting vehicle, Ari guessed.
Ari considered trying to go back to sleep, but abandoned the idea. His guts were roiling and his thoughts were on fire. This was a desperate gamble and one that could easily cost Alida her life. He knew these were the risks of the job, and he’d taken them a dozen times himself…and yet somehow, this time, he was scared…scared at what might happen to her, scared that she wouldn’t forgive him, and scared that he would never forgive himself.
* * *
Glen Mulrooney sliced cleanly through the water, his form perfect, his stroke textbook. He’d been swimming since he could walk and had competed as a student in high school and college; it came as naturally to him as breathing. It had been difficult to find the time when he’d been an intern for Senator Daniel O’Keefe, and his time was even more monopolized as an advisor to President Daniel O’Keefe, but at least now he had the benefit of being a member of the Capitol Athletic Club. Only a few minutes’ walk from the President’s office, the club boasted an Olympic size indoor swimming pool among its other amenities and he found the exertion both refreshing and refreshingly simple.
He particularly enjoyed coming in late at night, after Natalia and Valerie were asleep, when the place was mostly empty, as it was now. Which was why it surprised him when he caught a fleeting glimpse of someone walking on the pool deck as he turned to take a breath. For a moment, he felt a freezing panic in his gut as he thought of what Shannon Stark had said, but as he paused at the end of the lane, he let out a breath in relief.
The man approaching him was short and pudgy, his face nondescript, his hair and clothes so far from stylish that he seemed to be making an effort at it. But his doughy face was familiar, and that was enough to make Glen relax.
“Ozzie,” he said, levering himself out of the water and grabbing his towel from the wall. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m a member,” the man shrugged. “Which doesn’t speak well for this place’s standards, I’ll tell you.”
Glen had to laugh. Oscar Fuentes was many things, but athletic wasn’t one of them. Hell, the man cared so little about how he looked that he didn’t even cheat and get a decent bodysculpting.
“Don’t laugh, blondie,” Ozzie cocked an eyebrow. “This is a great place for getting the inside track…people tend to talk a bit more loosely when the endorphins are flowing. Plus, they don’t allow security cameras in the locker rooms…privacy laws and all. So there’s no one to see who they’ve been talking to, and no one pins it on them when the story goes out over the newsfeed.”
“So,” Glen prompted, drying himself off and storing his goggles and earplugs in their case, “are you here trying to get information out of me? Not sure I worked out long enough to be that loose-lipped…”
“You need a shower,” Ozzie replied, frowning grimly. “Let’s hit the locker room.”
Shrugging, Glen snagged his swim bag and followed the reporter out of the pool deck and through the deserted hallways into the men’s locker room.
“I have to warn you, Oz,” he said jokingly, “if this is a come-on, I’m flattered but I don’t swing that way…”
“Shut up for a minute, will you?” the little man snapped, surprising Glen. Ozzie glanced around them, then walked through the rows of lockers and benches, making sure they were alone before he came back to Mulrooney.
“You asked me to run a check on Vice President Dominguez,” Ozzie said, sitting down on one of the benches. “Well, I did. I used the Pattern Recognition System that RHN developed to dig up dirt on celebrities and corporate bigs
hots and I used it to try to find anything about Dominguez that would make him vulnerable.”
“So, is he connected to the reactionaries in the Southbloc?” Glen asked, pulling on a T shirt and sitting down across from the reporter.
“The only connections he has to the Southbloc are his Aunt Rosaria in Caracas and some skank clerk from Argentina that he’s been banging on the side for the last three years,” Ozzie grunted dismissively.
“Then what was so important that you had to visit me here?” Glen wondered, an annoyed frown passing over his face.
Ozzie sighed, shoulders setting as he organized his thoughts. “You have to understand something about Dominguez. Xavier Rosario Dominguez…58 years old, Modern History PhD from Harvard. Impressive early career and a fairly staid private life. One marriage that ended after five years, no children. A succession of short-term relationships since then that is part of my point. Dominguez is a dilettante. Not regarding his career, but socially and personally, he flits around from one woman to another, from one set of friends to another, from one hobby to another. He’s a black belt in several martial arts, a concert pianist when he bothers to play, a scratch golfer, a poet…you get the idea. Since his marriage fell apart when he was 33, he hadn’t had a relationship that lasted more than three months. Hobbies last a maximum of two or three years.
“Until five years ago. Five years ago, when he was still a Senator, Dominguez volunteered for a relief mission to Aphrodite, to help the colony recover from the Protectorate invasion. When he came back…something changed.”
“What?” Glen asked.
“Nothing,” Ozzie replied perversely. “Nothing at all. Before he left for the trip, he’d taken up rock climbing. He’s been an avid rock climber ever since…he goes at least twice a month, schedule permitting. Before he left on the trip, he’d become involved with the aforementioned clerk from Argentina…and they’re still bumping uglies three years later, but they haven’t gone public, haven’t done anything but each other, despite the fact she’s been complaining to her friends about his intransigence. Before he left for the trip, he’d become a regular at the weekly poker game at the Situation Room lounge in Capital City. He still is. Do you see where I’m going here?”