by Rick Partlow
The view shifted as the camera hit the ground once more, showing the father screaming with grief and rage and lunging across the room toward his dying son. The second Homeworld Guard soldier visibly jerked the trigger of his rifle and a fusillade of rounds cut through the older man…and into his young daughter. The camera only caught her legs jerking in shock, blood spreading from her body and merging with the pool of blood that spread from her father’s still form. The old man’s eyes were open wide, staring into nothing.
The two Homeworld Guard soldiers were cursing in their native languages, looking around furtively, seemingly horrified by what they had done. Finally they realized their external speakers were still on and the cursing cut off, but from the way they looked at each other they were still talking via helmet radio. After a long moment, the closer of the two stepped over to where the ‘link had fallen and the last image it recorded was the sole of his boot coming down.
The two-dimensional scene froze and was replaced by the 3D hologram of an attractive young woman standing in front of the Republic NewsNet logo.
“This footage was uploaded live,” the woman announced with a grim tone that was, for once, not affected, “from the ‘link of Alexi Andronikov, a fifteen year old boy who lived with his father, Mikhail, and his eleven year old sister, Alina, in the Little Moscow district of Fairbanks, Alaska. All three were killed by soldiers of General Hikaru Kage’s Homeworld Guard as they swept through the area, reportedly searching for suspects with ties to the terror bombing in Houston ‘plex and the biological attack on the colony at Rhiannon. The two soldiers involved have not been identified and there has been no official comment by either General Kage’s staff or the office of President Jameson.
“Reports out of the city say there have been other casualties as well---according to local community leaders, there may be as many as two dozen dead in the raids, which have been ongoing for the last three days. Exact counts are difficult because many of the Russian immigrants who live in Fairbanks are not in the government databases…”
Drew Franks reached over and switched off the holotank, snorting with disgust.
‘What a bunch of fucking amateurs,” he muttered, settling back into the office chair. He glanced over at Agent Carr, who was sitting on the edge of the desk, staring aghast at the darkened holotank. “You wanted to know the difference between what we did and a police state, Caitlyn? There’s the fucking difference.”
“We should be doing something to stop this,” Jean-Paulo Assange said, pounding his palm down on his desk and jumping up from his chair, hands clenching into fists. “This is bullshit. We’re sitting on our asses here in my office and those bastards are out there killing children!”
“They have an army,” Franks reminded him. He shrugged. “Well, a brigade, anyway. We have a squad of operators, two CIS agents…and me.” He scowled, the expression looking out of place on his boyish face. “And we have orders from our superiors…and the President.”
“Just following orders isn’t much of a defense, historically,” Carr commented dryly.
“Doesn’t really matter,” Franks ignored the barb. “Our orders were to support the Guard effort if they asked…and they haven’t been asking.”
“I can’t sit around here,” Assange grumbled, rising from his chair and heading for the office door.
“Where are you going, Jean-Paulo?” Carr asked him, frowning.
“Just gonna go for a drink,” he said with a shrug, not looking back at her as he walked down the hallway towards the exit, grabbing his jacket on the way. “Don’t wait up.”
Carr shook her head as she heard the door slam behind him. “He’s going to get into trouble,” she predicted, frowning with concern. “I should go with him.”
“He’s a big boy,” Franks said dismissively. “Plus, he fits in here. They expect him. You’ll stand out and that would be very bad right now.”
Caitlyn Carr almost snapped at him, but stopped herself, regarding him thoughtfully. He seemed cocky to her, a mouthy prick…but she knew he wasn’t, which made her wonder.
“Have you always been this sure of yourself, Captain Franks?” she asked him.
He glanced over at her, a bit of surprise in his eyes. “I don’t know” he admitted, seeming to consider it. “As far as the job goes: yeah, pretty much. General McKay doesn’t really encourage self doubt and introspection in his field agents. Personally, well…that’s another story.” He grinned disarmingly. “Call me Drew, by the way.”
“You keep saying that,” she noted, chuckling softly. She shrugged, knowing what she was getting into. “Okay, Drew, what about personally?”
“I guess I just kind of bury myself in my job,” he told her, looking a lot younger than when he’d been dodging bullets in the streets of Fairbanks. “Doesn’t leave a lot of time or energy for anything else.”
“You can’t tell me,” Carr said skeptically, “that you didn’t have women throwing themselves at you after you got that medal and all that publicity.” She cocked an eyebrow. “Or was it men?”
“It’s women,” he said, reddening slightly. “Not that I didn’t get offers from men, too…” He threw his hands up helplessly. “Look, I’m no Jock Gregory, Agent Carr. I found the whole thing a bit…overwhelming. So instead of sifting through all the attention for someone who wasn’t a psycho, I ignored all of them.” He waved the question away, changing the subject abruptly. “So, where are you from, Caitlyn?”
“I was born on McAuliffe Station,” she told him. “My mother is a particle physicist in the Leeds Orbital Laboratories there---she’s from Pretoria originally, but she moved around quite a bit as a kid. My father is a propulsion engineer from Edinburgh…they aren’t together anymore. He’s out at the proving grounds at Titan, designing the next generation of Eysselink drives.” She discovered, somewhat to her surprise, that she was smiling; she rarely smiled when she talked about her family. “How about you?”
“My family’s pretty ordinary,” he laughed self-deprecatingly. “No scientists or stardrive engineers in the bunch. My parents are both maintenance techs at the Greater Cascades Preserve: we lived out in the country at the housing complex near Bend, Oregon…me and my younger sister.”
“Wow,” Carr said, raising an eyebrow. “That’s not very ordinary: you got to live out in the wilderness, out of the cities. I can’t imagine leaving all that. What made you join the military?”
“I applied for the Fleet Academy because I wanted to travel, see other worlds, the whole shtick, you know. I never thought about making a career out of it: I always thought I’d come back home after, do something with the Preserves.” He shrugged. “Then the Protectorates invaded, while I was in my second year.”
He went around to the back of Assange’s desk as he talked, and retrieved two bottles of beer from the cooler there, handing one to Carr. She nodded thanks and opened the bottle, taking a long swig.
“And you wound up working for General McKay.”
“I busted my ass to wind up working for General McKay,” he corrected her, laughing ruefully. “I think half my graduating class requested Intelligence.”
“What makes you so special?” she asked him, then chuckled at the way it sounded. “I mean, why did you get Intelligence and they didn’t?”
“A lot of them did get it,” he said, his expression turning grim. “Most Fleet Intelligence personnel were on Fleet HQ when the Protectorate destroyed it. It had to be rebuilt basically from scratch. As for why I wound up a field op…well, you’ve seen that documentary.”
“And that’s the whole story?” She eyed him skeptically. “Come on, Drew.”
“The whole story?” he repeated. “Well, not exactly. But my part was pretty complete. The rest…well, that’s stuff that’s still classified.”
“You mean like how Brendan Riordan was involved with the coup attempt against President O’Keefe?” she asked, grinning puckishly.
Franks blinked just a hair longer than usual; she almost didn�
��t notice it. “I’m sure,” he replied blandly, “that I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
She laughed quietly, then took another drink. “Guess not everything is as secret as you spooks would like,” she said. “There are a lot of people who don’t buy into the story that President Jameson was pushing back then, with him playing the hero and hunting down Antonov and Fourcade.”
“There were enough to vote him in as President in that special election,” Franks said, looking away from her, with what she thought was a hint of a grumble in his voice.
“Well, I don’t think he’d win a vote in this city,” Carr said with a cynical snort.
“Not just this city,” a voice said from the doorway.
Carr and Franks turned with a start and saw Tanya Manning standing in the door to the office, still dressed in local garb. Carr’s eyes narrowed as she spotted a bright stain on the shoulder of the woman’s tan jacket.
“Is that…blood?” she asked hesitantly, rising from her seat.
Manning shrugged dismissively. “Not mine. It’s getting bad out there. I left the rest of the squad at the lander to keep an eye on it.” She sighed and leaned heavily against the wall. “I don’t know if you’ve been following the news…”
“We saw the video,” Franks told her. “Looks like General Kage’s living up to his reputation.”
“A lot of people have seen that video,” Manning told them. “There are street demonstrations in cities all over the world…even Trans Angeles and SeaTac. And a lot of them are turning violent. I got a transmission from General McKay when I was at the lander---he sent it there because the equipment there is more secure. He wants us out of here, now. We’re to report to him back in Capital City ASAP.”
“What about me?” Carr asked her. “Is there anything from Director Ayrock?”
“No, ma’am,” Manning reported so shortly that Carr blinked as if she’d been slapped.
“You’re still assigned as our liaison,” Franks interjected. “You’ll return with us on the lander.”
“I should call Agent Assange and let him know,” she said, pulling her ‘link off her belt.
“Call him on the way,” Manning told her. “We’re leaving now.”
Drew Franks shifted in his seat, feeling like he was back in primary school, waiting for the dean of discipline. They’d arrived in Capital City less than two hours ago and immediately upon landing, he’d been called into General McKay’s Earthside office and told to stay there until his commander arrived. He’d been sitting in the office for over forty minutes and he began to wonder if this was some sort of punishment…
He glanced around at the room, trying to distract himself. This office was less personal than the one on Fleet HQ: the only touch of his boss he could see was an image cube that was cycling back and forth between shots of Shannon Stark and different photos of McKay’s parents. Franks had never met them, but he could see General McKay’s features in the strong jaw and broad shoulders of his father and the grey eyes and light brown hair of his mother. He thought they lived in Trans-Angeles, but he wasn’t sure what they did there.
The door to the office banged open and General McKay barked “As you were,” before Franks could rise more than halfway out of his chair. He settled back into the seat as McKay moved around behind the desk and fell heavily into his chair, dark circles under his eyes and a blank expression on his face that Franks had come to know meant something very, very bad.
“Sir,” Franks said hesitantly, deciding it was best to come right out with his concerns, “did we get pulled off point on this because of my actions in Alaska?”
“You and your team performed well, Franks,” McKay told him. “I didn’t pull you out because you fucked up; and the Homeworld Guard taking over this investigation had nothing to do with your actions…other than the fact that your discovery of the presence of the nanovirus on Earth concerned the President enough to make him want to change tactics.”
Franks let out a relieved breath. That concern had nagged him for days, though he hadn’t shared it with anyone else.
“Franks,” McKay said slowly, trailing off as he closed his eyes then opened them again, as if steeling his resolution, “we’ve finally got intelligence back from the netdivers about the Houston bombing. They monitored every possible route that could have brought the hyperexplosives into the city without being detected,” McKay explained. “There aren’t many, but it wasn’t something we couldn’t run through a computer filter---every second had to be screened by an experienced analyst who was familiar with the city and with the properties of hyperexplosives. Then it had to be followed up with personal interviews and other feet-on-the-ground investigation. That’s why it took this long.”
Franks’ eyes narrowed with interest, but he couldn’t help but think that this wasn’t what he’d expected when he’d been called to this office. “What did they find out, sir?” he asked.
“After they eliminated every other possibility,” McKay replied, “there was only one way that load of explosives could have been smuggled in, and that was with the latest shipment of biomech workers three days before the blast.”
“Where were they shipped from?” Franks asked, leaning forward in his seat.
“Luna,” McKay said. “The main production facility is at the Lunar South Pole, not too far from where we’re rebuilding the defense base.”
“Can we penetrate their computer security?” Franks asked sharply, then reined himself in as he abruptly realized to whom he was talking. “Sir,” he added quickly. McKay smirked slightly at the slip before he answered the question.
“The factory was built on the moon for a reason,” he reminded the junior officer. Franks got the impression from McKay’s tone that the man would have been happier if it hadn’t been built at all. “People didn’t want to take the chance of someone manufacturing their own ready-made army the way Antonov and Fourcade did four years ago. The computer controls for the manufacturing system are totally isolated, no way to access them remotely.”
“So,” Franks said, grinning, “when do you want me to go?”
“Franks,” McKay said slowly, as if choosing his words carefully, “we have been removed from this investigation by the President.”
Franks looked his commanding officer in the eye and finally understood why McKay was in such a dark mood. “I understand, sir,” he said.
“I have reason to believe that I may be under observation,” McKay went on. Or I’d be doing this myself, was what Franks understood to be the unspoken half of that sentence. Franks knew that Jason McKay would never have asked anyone else to do this if there was any way he could have done it himself.
“Got it, sir,” Franks said with a nod. “I would be willing to testify that you never gave me any orders on this matter. Was there anything else?”
“Yeah, there’s one other thing,” McKay said. “It’s about D’mitry Podbyrin.”
“Is he all right?” Franks asked, frowning. The Russian had flown back to Capital City shortly after the operation that had netted Anya, and Franks hadn’t spoken with him since.
“He’s fine.” McKay shrugged equivocally. “He’s depressed, but physically fine. Franks, I understand why you did what you did. And it worked, which covers a multitude of sins.” His mouth quirked up at the side. “Ask me how I know. But there’s something I wanted to warn you about…part of your professional development, let’s say.”
McKay’s grey eyes glazed over for a moment with old memories. “In this business, you have to be willing to put good men and women in a position where they might die. It comes with the territory.” His vision seemed to clear as he locked eyes with the younger man. “You do that too much, though, and there’s a danger of getting to the point where you don’t see people as people…you see them as chess pieces, to be used and sacrificed.”
Franks had an instinctive urge to protest that he had never intended to sacrifice Podbyrin, but he bit down on the words. This wasn’t an in
dictment; it was advice from one officer to another. One man to another, really.
“Keeping that in your head,” McKay went on quietly, without rancor, “that the people you’re leading are real human beings, with friends and lovers and children and parents…that’s not an easy thing. It means you hurt when they hurt. It makes it harder to send them into the shit. Some people can’t do it. But the best of them can, Drew.”
Franks started slightly at that. He could count the times General McKay had called him by his first name on one hand.
“You’re already a good field op,” McKay told him. “Maybe as good as Ari Shamir. But if you want to be the best officer you can be, you have to remember that they’re not just your troops, they’re your people. A lot of them will follow you into the fire because of the uniform, but you need to be able to get them to follow because of the man inside that uniform.”
“Yes, sir,” Franks acknowledged quietly. “I understand.”
“Good luck, Franks,” McKay said, standing and offering the younger man a hand. He cracked a smile. “Don’t get caught.”
“Interesting times we live in, sir,” Franks said with a grim chuckle, shaking his head as he moved towards the office door.
“One last thing,” McKay said, bringing him up short. Franks looked back and saw his commanding officer’s expression darken. “The CIS has its own agenda in all this.” He shook his head. “Don’t trust Agent Carr.”
Chapter Twelve
Caitlyn Carr fought back a pang of guilt that nagged at her conscience as she watched Drew Franks enter the restaurant. She was doing her job, she reminded herself. She was following orders. She snorted humorlessly as she remembered how she’d reacted to that phrase when Franks had used it in Alaska. Still, what else could she have done when Director Ayrock had given her the assignment?
It certainly hadn’t been what she’d expected when she’d been called into the private meeting with the man yesterday. She’d never been to his office before, and if she’d been asked today, she couldn’t have described it: the whole meeting was a blur to her even now.