by Rick Partlow
“We don’t know for sure it was their only one,” McKay pointed out, “but yes, it’s something. But that leaves Yuri out there with five of those canisters, each one of which could probably take out a megacity.”
Jameson’s gaze refocused, locking in on McKay like a targeting reticle. “Recommendations?” It was a question, but it sounded more like an order. “How do you plan on locating Yuri and these…weapons?”
“Sir,” McKay said, “in my estimate, given the extensive satellite surveillance we’ve done, I don’t believe Yuri is currently on-planet. Our investigation into the bratva in Alaska has convinced me that they are heavily compartmentalized and make extensive use of mules and dead-drops to make it very difficult to gain actionable, big-picture intelligence.”
He took a breath and pushed forward, knowing the President wouldn’t like what he said next. “It’s my opinion that our best bet to find Yuri and the weapons is to concentrate our investigation on the raiders. We have agents in place among the Belt Pirates and the wildcatters that could give us an inside line to them and they’ll be easier to track: they still have to use the wormhole jumpgates to get anywhere and those are all monitored.”
“Ridiculous!” Kage interjected, rising from his seat to stand nearly nose to nose with McKay. Up close, the man’s face looked as if the features had been burned into hardwood. “We have weapons right here on Earth in the hands of a criminal fanatic that could kill millions of civilians! We can’t afford to waste resources chasing mercenary pirates who don’t even know who hired them!”
McKay stared into the shorter man’s dark, intense eyes and imagined the many ways that he could kill him with his bare hands. That helped him to keep his calm, for some reason.
“General Kage,” he responded tightly, not moving from parade rest, “if you have some insight into the command structure of the enemy that I don’t, I’d be happy to hear it.”
“Insight?” Kage tossed his head in derision. “They are criminal, terrorist scum and I’ve dealt with their like my whole career.” He turned to President Jameson. “Put my Homeworld Guard in charge of this operation and we will haul every one of these bratva bastards in and we will find Yuri and those weapons.”
“Jason, Hikaru,” Jameson said, uncharacteristically subdued, “please sit down.”
“Yes, sir,” McKay said, pulling a chair out opposite Kage’s. Jameson, he noted, seemed almost distracted, his eyes hooded, his hands clenched on the table in front of him.
“Jason,” the President finally spoke, looking up to meet McKay’s eyes, “I understand that your instinct is to follow your intelligence sources, but we have a clear and present danger to the civilian population that won’t wait for a long-term investigation offplanet. Whether Yuri is on or off Earth right now, our best chance of finding him is with his people in Alaska; and you don’t have the personnel to mount an operation of this scope.”
Jameson turned to Kage. “Hikaru, I want you to take the lead on this one. You have authorization to do whatever is necessary to find Yuri and those weapons…I’ll make it official before you leave.”
McKay fought back a gut-punch grunt. This wasn’t completely unexpected, but it wasn’t less frustrating for all that. He felt things slipping away from him and tried to keep from unconsciously clenching his fists. A part of himself that he hadn’t heard from in ten years whispered in his ear that when everything went to hell, at least he wouldn’t be the one in charge. He pushed that thought away and made himself ask the obvious question at the expense of his personal pride.
“What do you want my people to do, Mr. President?”
Jameson regarded him for a moment before he replied, and when he did, his tone was almost morose. “I want you to make them available for General Kage’s operations,” he ordered. “Your operatives likely have insights that will be valuable in rooting out the bratva cells.” He cocked his head towards McKay. “I want this to be your number one priority…do you understand?”
No, McKay thought but was careful to not to let show on his expression. I don’t understand at all.
Instead, he simply said: “Yes, Mr. President.”
It was very important that he play the good, obedient soldier…especially when he fully intended to not be one.
* * *
Valerie O’Keefe leaned back in the well-padded seat of her personal flitter and listened to the evening rain pattering against the canopy. She didn’t need to check her ‘link to know the time: it was five minutes later than the last time she’d checked it. Her pilot/security guard glanced back at her out of the corner of his eye; too professional to ask why they were parked out on a small, private landing field on the edges of the Old City, but obviously curious.
She turned her gaze out at the dead buildings of old New York City, barely visible through the steamy, gray haze of the storm. Over the decades, there’d been various movements to restore the buildings of the Old City and turn some of them into historical exhibits; but she thought they served better as they were, as the crumbling tombstone of an unsustainable world.
Sometimes, when she was feeling morbid, she would imagine them as they’d been in the months after the Sino-Russian War: set ablaze in a paroxysm of mindless violence. The streets had been filled with tens of thousands rioting as they realized that the food shipments weren’t going to come and the banks weren’t going to reopen. The police had tried to keep order, for a while…most of them had died and the city had burned. Then the National Guard had moved in and the streets had run red with blood for days.
And it hadn’t just been New York. Across the country, cities had burned and tens of thousands had died from violence and starvation, and the United States hadn’t even had it the worst. Almost a billion people had died in Russia and China combined from the bombs, the radiation and the subsequent starvation and disease. Many nations in East Asia, Eastern Europe, east Africa and Central America had simply ceased to exist, their governments collapsing in an overload of humanitarian disasters. The war and following crises had killed almost three billion people and very nearly brought an end to technological civilization. The global economy had collapsed, governments had collapsed and only swift, decisive---and some had said brutal---action by then-President of the United States Calvin Elliot had pulled the world back from the edge.
She shrugged at the thought. It was easy to judge from the comfort of hindsight; she’d found that out the hard way. Perhaps there simply had been no other choice; or, more likely, there simply hadn’t been time to think of a better way. But what about now? The future of the world, of all human worlds, had hung at the edge so many times in the last ten years…and they’d made so many sacrifices, so many compromises to pull it back, over and over.
Would there ever be time to think of a better way? Or was this their destiny, to bounce from crisis to crisis and to give up just a little more freedom each time?
She was still pondering that when she heard the VTOL coming in, its jets screaming in the darkening sky. The suborbital aircraft spiraled downward, slowing to a hover before it lowered itself on superheated jets of steam, throwing up clouds of vapor as the rain melted away from it. It settled on three sets of landing gear only thirty meters from her flitter, cooling metal popping and pinging in the steady shower, and squatted there, grey and nondescript, giving no indication of its provenance.
“Who…” her pilot started to ask, but was interrupted by the jet’s hatch swinging open, the lower half presenting a short staircase that led into its darkened interior.
“Stay here,” Valerie told the man, hitting the control to open her door, letting half the canopy hinge upward. The sound of the rain went from a patter of water on plastic to a deeper drumbeat on the cracked cement and a few drops blew in past the sheltering canopy to splash her face. The water was a refreshing, cool change from the humid misery of late summer, but it seemed cold to her after sitting in the flitter’s air conditioned interior for so long. She instinctively smoothed down her skirt a
s she climbed out of the flitter, feeling the rain striking the bare skin of her legs.
“Senator O’Keefe,” her bodyguard objected, turning in his seat, one hand going to the canopy release, “you shouldn’t go alone…”
“I said, stay here,” she repeated flatly, pausing to catch his eye and hold it with a commanding glance. “Wait for me. Do not call anyone.”
Valerie didn’t wait for his reply. She stepped out into the rain, pulling her coat tighter around herself to keep the rain off her clothes as she strode quickly across the gap between the aircraft and stepped up into the VTOL. The interior was dark, lit only by chemical lightstrips along the floor, and in the dim light she could see that the front right passenger seat was occupied by a tall, slender figure, long legs stretched out in front of the seat. As she moved further into the cabin, the hatch powered shut behind her and the interior lights gradually rose, revealing the red-gold hair and piercing green eyes of Shannon Stark.
“Hello, Senator,” Shannon said, leaning forward to offer her a hand.
“Stop being so damned formal, Shannon” O’Keefe said in fond exasperation, pulling the other woman into a warm hug. “And for the last time, call me Valerie.”
Shannon hugged her back a bit awkwardly but earnestly, she thought. She let her go before it got uncomfortable and found the officer’s smile matching her own.
“Okay, Valerie,” Shannon went on. “How’s Natalia?”
“She’s doing great,” Valerie said. “She’s really enjoying school…and enjoying all the time with her grandpa.” Val cocked an eyebrow at her. “Have you and Jason thought about having children?”
“We want them…eventually,” Shannon said with a tone that might have been wistful. The red-headed woman shrugged diffidently. “Things are just a bit too unsettled at the moment.”
“Well, they aren’t likely to get settled very soon,” Valerie said, hearing the sadness creep into her voice against her will. “That’s why I asked you to meet me.”
“So,” Shannon prompted, sitting back in her seat with a sigh, “what other crisis has popped up while we were chasing down terrorists, gangsters and pirates?”
“I don’t know how much you keep up with Senatorial politics in your job, Shannon,” Val began, “but there are what we call ‘junk bills’ introduced on a regular basis in the Senate. They’re pet projects, personal causes that have little to no chance of ever getting out of Committee, much less passing the full Senate.”
“I’m familiar with the concept, Valerie,” Shannon told her, seeming more exhausted than interested. Valerie knew the woman had just returned from a combat mission in another system and she felt a twinge of guilt for drawing her into this.
“There’s a junior Senator from the European Union named Michelle Daladier; she was elected four years ago, in the special election after my father resigned.” Valerie fought down a surge of bitterness that threatened to show on her face. She still hated the idea that her father had been blamed for the second Protectorate invasion.
“Every legislative session since then, she’s introduced a package of bills that, among other things, would outlaw private colonization, outlaw private travel through the jumpgates, and severely curtail civilian space travel here in the Solar System as well. Basically, she doesn’t want civilian access to space without very tight government control.”
Shannon shrugged. “I’ve heard the sentiment before,” she said. “But that would cost a lot of people a lot of money.”
“Which is why it’s never left committee,” Valerie agreed, “until a couple weeks ago. Three Senators on the Transportation Committee switched their votes and sent the package of bills to the Senate floor.”
“For God’s sake, why?” Shannon wondered, frowning in confusion.
“All three have a very close relationship with Brendan Riordan and the Republic Transportation Multicorp.”
“Riordan,” Shannon repeated bitterly. “Wonderful.” She shook her head. “But why now? Why would he think it could get passed?”
“The raider attacks, for one thing,” Valerie told her. “The strike on Rhiannon for another. The sentiment is that the colony was defenseless because there was no Republic military presence.” She raised a hand to forestall Shannon’s forming protest. “I know, a Colonial Guard garrison wouldn’t have made a single bit of difference, but that’s the sentiment. You know as well as I do that laws are often passed more from sentiment than from logic.”
Valerie saw Shannon’s jaw quivering slightly and realized that she was stifling an ironic snort. Valerie was sure she knew why: before their shared experience on Aphrodite, Shannon would have considered her as one of those people likely to act more from sentiment than from logic. They had all changed quite a bit in the last ten years.
“Huh,” Shannon grunted thoughtfully. “Given what Jason told me about his meeting with the President, that makes altogether too much sense. Riordan doesn’t want us taking down the raiders because their existence makes it possible to pass this legislation…which would give Republic Transportation a monopoly on almost all civilian space travel.”
“And Jameson is in bed with Riordan,” Valerie finished. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he has a nice position lined up for himself at Transportation after he retires.”
“No, that doesn’t sound like President Jameson,” Shannon said, in a tone that Valerie sensed was very carefully chosen not to seem argumentative. “I know you and your father have never liked him---honestly, I don’t like him all that much myself, lately---but he’s never been about personal gain. Hell, he had a pretty cushy job with the Multicorps before he ran for President again. However you feel about him, however much you disagree with him, he’s always acted for what he considers to be the best interests of the Republic.”
Val opened her mouth to disagree, but then shut it again. Shannon Stark was, perhaps, the most perceptive person she’d ever met. Trying to be totally honest with herself, Valerie realized that the woman was right. Jameson was many things, some of them not at all pleasant, but he wasn’t the type to sell himself to the highest bidder.
“It’s possible he honestly believes that it’s not safe for civilians to have unfettered access to space travel,” Valerie allowed. “That could be why he’s playing along with Riordan.”
“Or why Riordan is playing along with him, more likely,” Shannon said. “Either way, the bottom line is he’s hamstringing our investigation for political reasons.”
“Maybe it’s post-traumatic stress from everything that’s happened to us,” Valerie said, her eyes clouding with bad memories, “but I just can’t help but think that there’s more to this.” She looked up and met Shannon’s gaze. “I would have brought this straight to Jason, but I thought that would be more likely to attract attention. Do you think I’m being too paranoid?”
“Valerie,” Shannon answered with a soft laugh, “in my line of work, there is no such thing as too paranoid. And in the spirit of healthy paranoia,” she said with a conspiratorial grin, “there’re a couple things I think you could do for us…”
Chapter Eleven
The man’s face was weathered and lined, his hair touched with grey, but he didn’t have the look of advanced age so much as that of a life lived hard in a wild place. His clothes matched his face, rough and patched and made for hard work. He didn’t look like a man who ran from a fight, but he was hiding now. He crouched in the dark behind a stack of storage bins, one arm around a skinny, short-haired pre-teen girl who huddled against him, shivering with fear.
The man glanced to his left and a look of annoyance passed over his face.
“Put the camera away, Alexi,” he snapped, his Russian as good as a native, despite the fact that he’d never set foot in the Motherland. “Stop screwing around.”
“I’m going to upload this, father,” the one behind the ‘link’s built-in video camera insisted, his voice that of a teenager. “People need to see this. It isn’t right that they treat us this way…w
e shouldn’t have to hide in our own home.”
“Should and shouldn’t have nothing to do with real life, boy,” the older man said, shaking his head sadly. “Your mother knew that…”
Before he could finish the sentence, a loud concussion blasted through the room and light flooded in as the door blew off its hinges. The image shook violently and whipped around, showing glimpses of simple furniture, a small entertainment console and bunk beds. Then it settled down slightly with a grunt of pain as the teenager stumbled back and slammed into the wall.
The teenager recovered enough to hold the ‘link so it could pick up the armored bulk of Homeworld Guard troopers storming through the door into the small house, external speakers blaring.
“Get on the ground!” The leading trooper was screaming at them in English, swinging his rifle back and forth wildly. “Hands on your heads!”
The camera picked up a shot of the father huddled in a corner, shielding his daughter beneath him, hands held out in surrender as another trooper covered him. But what took up most of the picture was the yawning muzzle of the first soldier’s weapon, trained directly at the teenaged boy.
“Empty your hands and put them on your head!” the soldier screamed, a bit of his native Pacific Islands accent sounding through the English. “Put that thing down now!”
“It’s just a camera!” The teenager was screeching, his defiance lost in terror. “Look, it’s just a camera!”
Unfortunately, he was screeching it in Russian.
The rifle muzzle erupted with an explosion of sound and light, the picture swung wildly around and a panicked scream cut off in the gurgling of a young man choking on his own blood. The camera image spiraled in a roller-coaster drop as it fell from the young man’s hand, hitting the floor and bouncing upward, showing a slow-motion kaleidoscope of the young man’s long, blond hair whipping around uncontrollably as he thrashed in pain, his face contorted as blood gushed from his mouth.