Duty, Honor, Planet: The Complete Trilogy

by Rick Partlow

  “What I’d like to know,” Villanueva asked pointedly, first making sure that the intership comms were switched off, “is why that Russian engineer isn’t in here with us, putting his ass on the line.”

  “Because if we don’t come back,” Vinnie answered her rhetorical question, “they want him there to answer for it. And so they can try again.”

  “Well, aren’t you just a wellspring of sunshine and cheerfulness?” Orton cracked.

  Vinnie had to laugh. Maybe the guy wasn’t so bad after all. “Hell, Lieutenant, why do you think military retirement is so generous?”

  “You look like an expectant father, McKay.” Patel commented quietly as the two of them stood on the bridge of the Sheridan, watching the video feed from the shuttle on the main viewscreen.

  “I feel like an expectant mother,” McKay muttered back, eyes glued on the screen. The shuttle had flipped end for end and was now decelerating, bleeding away their velocity so that they would be moving at a more controllable speed when they went through the gate. Mironov had told them that the ship would retain its pre-jump velocity when it exited the wormhole, and they wanted to be able to get back through in a hurry if there was a threat on the other side.

  “I am sure there will be no trouble,” Mironov told him, reading the tension in his face. The Russian was a couple meters in front of the command couch, hanging on to a handle by the Tactical station. “This gate is used not much. It would be very strange for a ship to be coming there.”

  “I hope you’re right, Konstantin,” McKay replied in Russian. “But I still worry about my friends.” The Russian looked at him strangely. “What is it? Is my Russian not correct?”

  “No, it’s perfect,” Konstantin said, shaking his head. “It’s just that…it’s been a long, long time since I had any friends to worry about. The only people I could talk to were the crews of the patrol ships and cargo ships, and they rarely came back twice. They would tell me things…things about the General and what he was doing on Novoye Rodina.

  “He’s a madman…he would experiment on our own people. He was trying to find more ways to use the replicator vats as a weapon against you. They said he was trying to make viruses, trying to create smarter troopers…what you call ‘biomechs.’ I even heard that he was trying to find a way to make exact duplicates of people, so that he could have more than one of our most valuable officers.”

  McKay glanced at him sharply. “Jesus, did he ever do it?”

  “I heard no,” Konstantin said, shaking his head. “They told me he could duplicate the bodies, but they would be like babies…no memories. I pray to God he never found a way to make it work: there should never be more than one of him, eh?”

  “If you two wouldn’t mind,” Patel interjected. ”I don’t speak Russian.”

  “Sorry, Admiral,” McKay shifted back to English.

  “Two minutes to detonation,” the transmission from the Decatur’s Tactical station came over the bridge speakers. “Assault One is on target to enter two minutes and thirty seconds later, right in the middle of the five minute window.”

  McKay pulled out his ‘link and keyed in a private text to Colonel Podbyrin, who was still back on the Decatur---he thought it was best that Konstantin not find out about him yet.

  D’mitry, he typed quickly, Konstantin told me about experiments in duplicating people. Said they turned out as babies, no memories. Ever hear of this?

  It was nearly a minute before he received a reply. Heard stories. Never worked on it myself. Everything was compartmentalized.

  Did they ever make it work?

  Don’t know. Never heard they did before the war. But I don’t know.

  Not satisfied but wanting to see the wormhole jump, McKay put his ‘link away and turned back to the screen as the countdown continued.

  “Detonation in ten seconds…nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one…we have detonation.”

  In the view from the shuttle’s exterior cameras, he could see a sun-bright burst of light far too close to the small aerospacecraft, a light so bright that it washed out the picture in a haze of pure-energy white that was replaced almost immediately by a blank screen.

  “The fusion burst is interrupting their transmission,” the voice from the Decatur explained. “Sensors are overloaded too…it’ll just be a couple minutes.”

  What they did have was a view from the ship’s forward optical telescope, which showed a slowly-shrinking globe of white far in the distance but nothing of the shuttle.

  “Thirty seconds to scheduled transition,” Decatur announced, “but we’re still not getting the video feed back from Assault One. Gravimetic sensors are picking up…static of some sort.”

  “It’s the wormhole,” Konstantin explained. “It’s distorting the local space-time…all electromagnetic and gravimetic signals are warped around it.”

  “That means we won’t be able to tell if they make it through,” McKay said, frowning. “Until they come back, anyway.”

  “Wonderful,” Patel muttered.

  “Scheduled transition time is past,” the voice from the Decatur told them. “Still no signal, sensor readings still unclear.”

  “The gate will close by itself after another minute,” Mironov said. “We never knew if it was designed that way by the…whatever…that built it or if it is some physical law we do not understand yet.”

  “Your people thought---think---that the wormholes were artificial, not naturally occurring?” McKay asked him, surprised.

  “That is what our physicists say,” Mironov shrugged. “I just know how they work, not why so much.”

  “The interference is gone,” Decatur announced over the speakers. “Sensors are reading…nothing. No sign of Assault One.”

  “They’ll be back,” McKay said to Patel, nodding a confidence he only wished he felt.

  “Damn,” Vinnie said mildly, staring at the whited-out viewscreen. “Does this mean we won’t even get to see it when we go through this thing?”

  “The cameras were overloaded by the blast,” Villanueva explained. “Just give it a second.”

  The screens came active again and Vinnie saw…nothing. No stars, no planets, just blackness.

  “Why the hell aren’t we seeing the stars?” Orton wanted to know.

  “It must be the wormhole,” Villanueva reasoned. “Maybe it’s distorting electromagnetic radiation the way the Eysselink drive does.”

  “Well, that sucks,” Vinnie commented. “How long till we’re through this thing?”

  Villanueva checked the readout. “Should be about…”

  Discontinuity.

  “Shit!” Vinnie and Orton exclaimed almost simultaneously, joined by a chorus of profanity from the technicians behind them. They were looking around the cockpit of the shuttle as if they didn’t quite believe it was still there.

  “I think I just tasted the color green,” Esmeralda Villanueva said, trying to shake the indescribably strange feeling she’d just experienced.

  “That was so fucking weird,” Orton said, shaking his head. “I felt like I wasn’t there.”

  “Well, you’re here now,” Vinnie said, looking at a new starfield on the viewscreen. “Wherever the hell here is.”

  “There’s the primary,” Villanueva jabbed a finger at the computer map slowly building on the screen as the sensors came back to life. “It’s a red giant. We’re about nine AU out from it…looks like we’re in the orbit of a gas giant. God knows where in the galaxy we are---the science types can look at our scans when we get back. Anyway, executing turnover.” She touched the thruster controls and they heard a series of “bangs” as the maneuvering rockets flipped the boat end for end, then restabilized it, facing the direction of the gate through which they’d come.

  “Tactical board reads a big fat lot of nothing,” Orton announced. “Not so much as a stray radio wave. Guess that old Russian guy was telling the truth. We got the coordinates of the gate relative to the primary.” He twisted around
in his chair to face the technicians. “You guys ready to place the bomb?”

  “Hell yes,” the woman in charge of the team replied, unstrapping from her seat. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “Cal,” Villanueva said to Orton, “go back to the hold with them and help them get that thing out of our cargo lock, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  “Roger that, ma’am,” he said with a nod, yanking off his own restraints and grabbing his helmet before he kicked off towards the hatch in the rear bulkhead.

  “So,” Villanueva turned to Vinnie once Orton and the techs were back in the cargo hold, “glad you came?”

  Vinnie scratched his head. “Well, to be honest, it’s been kinda’ boring,” he admitted, “other than the whole tasting colors and not being there thing. But the company’s nice,” he added with a grin.

  She regarded him with a dubious expression. “Don’t try to tell me that you volunteered for what could have been---hell, still could be---a suicide mission just so you could be with me.”

  “You may not believe this, Esme,” he said, “but it wouldn’t even be close to the stupidest reason I have volunteered for what could have been a suicide mission.” He let loose his restraints and nudged himself close enough to her that he could gently run the back of his hand across her cheek.

  “Well, how’s a girl supposed to resist a line like that?” She grinned, grabbing him by the neck and pulling him into a kiss. “Damn these suits,” she murmured softly as their lips parted, leaving them floating face to face, millimeters from each other.

  “Hey, we’ve got a while together,” he assured her. “God knows how long we’ll be out here scouting the Protectorate. Do squadron leaders rate a private cabin or am I gonna’ have to kick Jock out of the room again?”

  She laughed full-throated at that, a husky sound that drove Vinnie crazy. “I think we can work something out,” she said with a shrug.

  “If you two are done,” Cal Orton’s voice came over the speakers, “we have the bomb in the airlock and we’re ready to activate its maneuvering unit.”

  Oh shit, Villanueva mouthed, her face turning red as she realized she’d left the speaker on to the cargo hold. “Ah, roger that, Cal…get the thing moving so we can get back to the ship.”

  Wincing, she muted the audio pickup and glared at Vinnie, who was laughing uncontrollably. “Oh sure,” she chided, pushing him back toward his seat. “You don’t have to work with him!”

  Finally, she couldn’t help it and began laughing herself.

  You got it bad, girl, she told herself. Surprisingly, she didn’t much mind.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Shannon Stark looked up from her book when she heard the man stir. The assassin was strapped to the bed which, besides the chair in which she sat, was the only furniture in the stone-walled room. She regarded the man with an impersonal coolness as he roused from his drugged stupor, looking better than he had when he had first been brought to the secure facility several days before. His knee was mostly healed and he’d been cleaned up and dressed in fresh clothes. And, of course, he’d been squeezed like a sponge.

  “Where th’ fuck m’I?” He mumbled groggily, eyes blinking against even the dim light in the room. His voice was a surprisingly pleasant baritone with a clear Australian accent.

  “Someplace no one will ever find you, Mr. Finley,” she told him, laying her tablet down on the chair as she stood. “If they’re even bothering to look.”

  He squinted at her, face screwing up in concentration. “You’re Stark,” he said. “You suckered me good…shoulda’ known O’Keefe wouldn’t be stupid enough to meet that reporter in the Old City.”

  “I’d have expected better from someone with your training,” she admonished. “Ten years in the Fleet Marine Corps, multiple commendations, promoted to Gunnery Sergeant…and then busted back down to Corporal and given a general discharge for assaulting an officer.”

  “Let me save you some time, Major Stark,” he interrupted her, sighing and closing his eyes. “I can tell by how shitty I feel that you had me under, so you already know everything I know. And you know it’s pretty well fucking useless. Blind drops, dummy accounts, no faces, no names. So your next move is to offer me a deal: you give me a new identity and pretend you don’t know I killed Mulrooney and I go undercover for you or some such bullshit. Well, save your breath, Sheila…I’ll take my chances in government detention.”

  “We considered that,” Shannon admitted with a nod. “If you’d actually known any way to meet someone in person, or if we actually thought you were important enough to whoever hired you for them to try to kill you, we’d have made the offer. As things stand, though, you’re worthless to us. We have your ‘link, we have your accounts, we have your addresses and your passcodes. We can make those connections ourselves, without you.”

  He scowled in confusion. “So why are you talking to me?”

  “It was my turn to stand watch,” she explained as the door to the room opened with a pneumatic hiss. Valerie O’Keefe-Mulrooney stepped through, the look on her face cold enough to freeze nitrogen. “She wanted you awake for this.”

  She didn’t look at Shannon, just stepped over to the bed, her eyes locked on Finley. “Thanks for calling me, Shannon,” she said quietly. “You can go out now.”

  Shannon picked up her tablet and stepped through the door without a word, closing it behind her with the press of her palm on a plate on the outside wall.

  Finley snorted with amusement. “Are you supposed to intimidate me? Shame me into wanting to help you?”

  “Six years ago,” Valerie said as if he hadn’t spoken, speaking slowly and calmly, “there was a man on Aphrodite named Huerta. He was a man I thought was a friend and ally, but he used me as a pawn, and wound up trying to rape me in a little farmhouse in the high desert.” Val reached into her purse and pulled out a large, broad-bladed knife. “Let me show you what I did to him, Mr. Finley.”

  Outside in the corridor of the old, abandoned emergency shelter, Shannon heard the screams. She smiled grimly and waited till they stopped.

  * * *

  Now that the undercover part of his mission was over, Ariel Shamir was missing his old face. There hadn’t been time or opportunity to get it changed back before the flight to Houston, so he was stuck with it until the operation was over. At least, he reflected as he rubbed his chin self-consciously, he had been able to shave the damn, itchy beard.

  “Stop fidgeting, kedves,” Roza whispered to him as she pretended to sip her drink.

  “If this takes much longer,” he responded softly, “I’ll fucking get up and dance.”

  They’d been sitting at the corner table in the out of the way bar on the outskirts of the Greater Houston Development Complex for nearly two hours, watching Colonel Lee waiting for the meet with his contact and it was pushing midnight. Lee looked even more uncomfortable and impatient than Ari felt: the Colonel was sitting alone, dressed incongruously in bland civilian clothes, at a booth near the door of the place. He was studiously ignoring the two of them, his eyes only lifting from his barely-touched drink to glance furtively at the door every few minutes.

  “You know,” Ari commented, “for the mastermind of a conspiracy, the good Colonel is a bit high strung.”

  “I’m beginning to wonder if this guy is going to show at all,” Roza sighed. “Maybe they had an insider with Lee’s group and they know everything’s gone to hell.”

  Ari shook his head. “We’ll give it another few minutes, then I’ll signal Lee to head back to the hotel.”

  He let his attention drift to the news ‘net that was playing on the bar’s glitchy, flickering holotank. He couldn’t hear the sound, but the video they were showing was of Senator Valerie O’Keefe-Mulrooney---archival footage of a speech she’d given---and then it cut to President O’Keefe, looking worried and old and then a stock shot of the Old City. He frowned. What the hell was all that about?

  He was about to check the news on his ‘l
ink when the bar’s doors hissed open and Lee looked around, as he had every time they’d opened the last two hours…but this time, the expression on his face was relief mixed with anxiety.

  “I think we have a winner,” Roza whispered.

  The woman was somewhere in her forties, Ari judged---you couldn’t tell by appearance of course, but with practice and observation you could make a good guess by a how a person carried themself. She was dressed in civilian clothes, but the way she wore them was so precise and tucked in that Ari knew with a moral certainty that she was recent ex-military, if not current military. Her dark hair was cut short in severe bangs and her face looked as if it were frozen in a perpetual stern frown. And by God, he knew her!

  The woman took a seat at the bar beside Lee, but didn’t speak immediately. She pulled a glass from the dispenser and placed it under the spigot, then tapped the screen to dispense herself a beer. The bar read her ID from her ‘link and charged her account automatically

  “I don’t like you being here, Lee,” she finally spoke, not looking at the Colonel, looking for all the world as if she were speaking to someone on her ‘link. “This is unnecessarily conspicuous.”

  “It can’t be helped,” Lee said tightly, taking a cue from her and not making eye contact. “There are things I could not tell you via any method that can be intercepted, and I need guidance that can’t be given from a dead drop.”

  “Well out with it, for God’s sake,” she grumbled.

  “The Guard Investigative Service knows about the…operation,” he said, licking his lips nervously. “They had a plant in my staff.”