by Rick Partlow
“Kage had his chance at this and fucked it up,” Jameson declared, scowling. “Which is a shame, because, while he’s ambitious to a fault, he’s also fairly predictable. But he’s been raiding every other business in Fairbanks for a week, and hasn’t found Yuri or anyone who knows where Yuri is. So, we’re going to swallow our pride…” He hesitated and corrected himself with honesty that tasted as bitter as castor oil. “No, I am going to swallow my pride, admit my mistake and put McKay’s people back in charge of this investigation.” He sighed. “Worse than that, I’m going to have to give him what he’s been wanting the last four years.”
Fiorentino’s eyebrow shot up in surprise. “Yes, sir,” she said simply, but he could see the unspoken question in her eyes.
“You have something to say, Marquesa.” It wasn’t a question.
“Just…” she hesitated. “Do you trust him, sir?”
“I trust Jason McKay to do what he thinks is right,” Jameson replied. His expression hardened. “So, to answer your question…no. I don’t trust him at all.”
* * *
Caitlyn Carr had been in detention cells before…she’d even stayed overnight in one as part of her academy training, just like every other CIS agent. But somehow this time felt very different. It wasn’t the size of the cell or the amenities provided---McAuliffe’s detention center was actually pretty upscale, as jails went. The room was big enough to pace in, if you were so inclined, and the cot was even comfortable.
No, what felt different was the certainty that her future was going to involve spending a lot of time in cells just like this one. She sighed, sitting down on the cot and resting her elbows on her knees. She’d known this was a possibility when she’d decided to help Patel instead of arresting him, and she’d done it anyway.
Carr chuckled softly. Patel had been the only one to walk away from the whole thing free…she hoped he was making good use of his time to try to get the others out of confinement. She very much doubted he could help her.
When the door slid aside, she expected one of the guards to come through; it was about time for dinner, she calculated. She wouldn’t have been surprised if Director Ayrock himself had stepped through, come to the station to rub in her face just how completely she’d shit the bed.
The one person she didn’t expect was her mother.
“Caitlyn,” the tall, statuesque woman said quietly, glancing back at the armored security guard stepping in behind her, “are you all right?”
Willimien Sobukwe had never been a woman who cared much about her appearance; she would often spend thirty or forty hours in her lab without a break and would then catch a few hours sleep in a cot before heading right back to work without showering or changing clothes. Now, however, she was dressed in her best suit, her long hair carefully arranged and she was even wearing makeup.
“I’m fine, mom,” Carr said, standing but not moving towards the woman. “You get all dressed up just for me, or did I interrupt a date?”
“Caitlyn,” her mother chided, frowning at her in much the same way she had when Carr had smarted off as a teenager.
“Sorry, mom,” she said, holding out her hand. Her mother took it, squeezing it gently. “How did you know I was here?”
“Dan contacted me,” she explained. “He recognized your name on the detention order. I heard about it immediately, but they wouldn’t let me see you until now.”
Carr didn’t have to ask for further explanation. Daniel Durant was the head of security for McAuliffe Station, and one of her mother’s former lovers. They were still friends, amazingly enough.
Carr laughed quietly. “Your cavalcade of old boyfriends pays off again.”
“Darling, be serious for a moment,” her mother said reprovingly. “How bad is this? No one will tell me anything…they wouldn’t even give Dan any details.”
“I can’t be specific,” she said, shaking her head, “but it’s basically a political turf war. My boss came down on one side and I chose the other, which is why I’m in here.”
“Oh darling,” Willimien sighed, her shoulders sagging, “something like that could kill your career.”
“Mom, I’ll be lucky if that’s the worst thing that happens,” she admitted. “I’m afraid you won’t be able to get me out of this one.” The corner of her mouth turned up. “You have better taste in men than to have ever gone out with my boss.”
“Maybe I can’t, Caitlyn,” Willimien countered, grinning conspiratorially, “but someone else already has.”
The older woman cocked her head towards the still-open door and Caitlyn’s eyes widened as she saw Drew Franks walking into the room, the smirk on his face even more smug than usual. She felt like smacking that grin off his face and she also felt like kissing him knowing the fact that he was here meant they’d been let go, but something else was more important, something she hadn’t had the chance to tell him before they’d been arrested. But she held back, knowing it wasn’t something she couldn’t talk about in front of her mother.
“I see you’ve met my mother,” Carr said instead.
“Dr. Sobukwe is a very charming and intelligent woman,” Drew said, nodding towards the scientist. “Which is an argument in favor of both nature and nurture, if I might be so bold. I wish you two had time for a proper reunion, but right now we have to catch a shuttle to Fleet HQ.”
“We?” Carr repeated, frowning.
“General McKay wants you there,” Franks told her. “Unless you’d rather fly back to Capital City and report to Director Ayrock. That’s what your boss wants, but General McKay has been given back control of the investigation and he insisted that you stay on as liaison.” He shrugged. “I think Abshay’s account of things helped convince him.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you had nothing at all to do with it,” she said, snorting skeptically. “Thanks, Drew,” she said sincerely, her expression softening. “I really wasn’t looking forward to sleeping in here.”
“Say goodbye to your mom, Caitlyn,” he told her. “I’ll be waiting for you in the lobby.”
The guard followed Franks out, leaving Carr alone with Willimien.
“So that’s Captain Franks,” the older woman mused, eyes following him down the corridor. “He looks even better in person.” She winked at Carr. “You going to let that one get away, honey?”
“I think he’s spoken for, mom,” Carr said, trying not to let it sound like a regret.
“All the good ones are,” Willimien sighed. She smiled and pulled her daughter into a hug. Carr felt like a midget compared to her mother---she barely came up to the woman’s forehead---and the hug brought back pleasant memories of being a little girl. “Take care of yourself, honey,” Willimien whispered into Carr’s hair.
“You too, Mom,” Carr said, squeezing her one more time before letting her go. “I’ll call you from Fleet HQ, if I can.”
“You should give your father a call sometime, Caitlyn.” Willimien said, surprising Carr. “He misses you.”
Carr bit back her initial, instinctive response and took a breath. If her mother could forgive the man and be civil to him then so could she. After all, it was Willimien who had been wronged, not her.
“All right, I will,” she promised. “I’ve got to get going…I love you, Mom.”
“Love you too, sweetheart.”
Once she was out in the corridor, Carr hurried through the sterile halls of the detention center until she found Franks waiting for her in the lobby, Tanya Manning by his side. The CIS agent glanced around to make sure no one else was in the room before she stepped over to them.
“The explosives,” she said quickly, “I know how they smuggled them in.”
Franks blinked, clearly not expecting that announcement. “Um…” he stuttered, “okay, how?”
“I watched every second of that offload and nothing came out except biomech containers,” she explained. “Then I watched each container being unloaded and there was nothing inside them except biomechs.”
A light went on behind Manning’s eyes as she realized what Carr was saying. “Jesus Christ,” she muttered. “The hyperexplosives were planted inside the biomechs! They were manufactured with the HpE inside their bodies!”
Franks was silent for a moment and Carr thought she could see the permutations running through his mind.
“Come on,” he said, “let’s get to the shuttle. The Boss has to know about this.”
* * *
D’mitry Podbyrin hesitated for a few, long seconds before he raised his hand to push the door chime. When he did, he found that the hand was shaking. He cursed softly and made a fist to stop the shaking, then banged it into the chime control.
Then he waited. He wasn’t sure how long to wait…he still had no idea what time it was supposed to be on the military space station, or how to determine what schedule a particular person was following. He was sure there was a way to do it using the ubiquitous datalinks everyone carried, but he still hadn’t figured out how to use the one he’d been given.
He’d almost decided to hit the chime again when the door slid aside, revealing a bleary-eyed Jason McKay, dressed in nothing but shorts, his short hair spiking out in places. He regarded Podbyrin with a mix of curiosity and annoyance.
“Something wrong, D’mitry?” he asked, his voice husky with interrupted sleep.
“I’m sorry to wake you, Jason,” Podbyrin said, “but I had heard that you were going back to Novoye Rodina.”
“You heard that, huh?” McKay said, cocking an eyebrow. “So much for operational security.”
“Invite him in, Jason,” Shannon Stark’s voice came from deeper inside the apartment.
McKay nodded to Podbyrin and motioned for him to step inside the door. The Russian picked his way carefully through the dimly-lit entrance hall into the apartment’s living room. Podbyrin was surprised by how small the place was; he’d thought a General would live in greater luxury, even here on a space station. But the room contained only a comfortable couch, a small dining table with four chairs and a compact entertainment center.
The only light in the room came from the holotank of the entertainment unit, which was running a muted series of what Podbyrin thought were family photos. At least the people shown in the stills and video clips seemed to bear a strong family resemblance to Stark and McKay. He saw what seemed to be a portrait of a younger McKay together with an ordinary looking man and a moderately pretty woman who he knew were the General’s parents. He tried to remember what his own parents looked like, but their faces were blurred somehow, as if by tears.
“What’s going on, D’mitry?” Shannon asked him, stepping out of the apartment’s bedroom. She was dressed in simple shorts and a plain, sleeveless shirt and also looked to be freshly awoken.
Podbyrin heard the door shut behind him and he glanced back to see McKay coming up on his left shoulder.
“Is it true?” Podbyrin asked. “Are you going to lead another expedition to Novoye Rodina?”
McKay glanced at Shannon, who shrugged by way of reply. “May as well tell him, Jason,” she said.
“Yes,” McKay said, pulling a chair away from the dining table and sitting on it tiredly. “The task force is forming up right now in Mars orbit. I’m taking a shuttle to the Farragut in about sixteen hours to meet them.”
“Your President Jameson, he approved this?” Podbyrin seemed surprised, given that he had heard McKay complain many times in just the last few weeks about how Jameson was reluctant to commit to such an invasion.
“The attack on the Danube Corridor forced his hand,” Shannon explained. “Between that and the leaked report that he had given General Kage the lead in the investigation and taken us off of it…well, if he hopes to avoid impeachment, he needs to get a win here.”
“And there’s also the matter of the probe we sent,” McKay added. He rubbed at his eyes. “When all this started, I got him to send an automated probe to the Novoye Rodina system to see if we could link the raider attacks to the Protectorate. The report came back three days ago through the Instel Comsats.” He looked back at Shannon for an instant before he went on, as if seeking confirmation that he was doing the right thing by telling Podbyrin.
“What did they find?” Podbyrin asked, almost afraid to hear.
“The probe didn’t go too close,” McKay went on. “We wanted to avoid detection, obviously. So it used the jumpgates to get as close as possible to the system, then used its Eysselink drive to travel the rest of the way in, not going any closer than the system’s outer ice giant.” He paused again. “They didn’t see anything. No spacecraft other than satellites and orbital stations. No EM radio traffic. Nothing.”
“What do you think this means?” Podbyrin asked, his head swimming with the possibilities.
“We don’t know,” Shannon admitted. “But we need to find out, and the President agrees.”
“I want to go with you,” Podbyrin declared. “I need to go with you,” he corrected quickly.
McKay blinked in surprise. “Are you sure about that?” he asked. “I mean, look what happened last time…”
“Things are…” Podbyrin broke off, trying to search for the words. “Things are happening with my mind, Jason. With my memories. I don’t understand it, but ever since you suggested that they may have been altered, nothing in them seems real anymore.”
“Maybe it’s just because I put the idea in your head,” McKay protested.
“No,” Podbyrin declared, shaking his head. “I began thinking about it and it was that way on Loki as well. I only became more certain of them after I was put in the compound in Alaska. After I was hypnoprobed and chemically interrogated and put in the compound in Alaska.”
“You think Yuri inserted memories,” Shannon deduced, falling into a seat on the couch as she absorbed the idea. “And you want to go back to Novoye Rodina to find out the truth behind them.”
“Yes, I do,” he said, grateful she understood.
“Meet me in my office at 2300 hours GMT,” McKay told him, surprising Podbyrin by his quick decision. He stood up and offered Podbyrin his hand. The old Russian took it in both of his, suddenly overwhelmed with an emotion he didn’t fully understand. He felt as if he wanted to cry for some reason. “Pack for a couple weeks’ journey, minimum,” he said. “Might be longer, no way to know.”
“Thank you, Jason,” he said. “You are a better friend than I deserve.”
“Yeah, I’m a great friend,” Jason snorted. “I keep taking you into situations where you might get killed.”
“You take me where I need to go, Jason,” Podbyrin corrected him gently. “This is where I need to go.”
Chapter Twenty
Drew Franks was slumped in a chair in a corner of the Intelligence briefing room, doing his best not to stare at the starfield projected on the far wall, when Tanya Manning stepped through the door. He looked up as she approached, eyes brightening a bit but face still fixed in a frown. She was back in uniform, as was he, and they were back to business, but he still felt like her presence brightened the room.
“You still mad you don’t get to go?” she asked him, leaning against the table across from his seat.
“Why would I be mad about that?” he said sarcastically. “After all, it’s only the most important military operation in human history and I’m sitting on my ass in the rear with the gear.” He eyed her skeptically. “You’re telling me you’re not pissed off?”
“A little,” she admitted, shrugging philosophically. “I’ve never been on an op outside the system, just a few training missions. But there’s work to do here that might be just as important.”
“Is he still sulking?” Caitlyn Carr asked as she filed in behind Abshay Patel. Patel was in Intell blacks, but Carr was still in casual civilian clothes, which were all she had brought with her to Luna. Apparently, Franks deduced, she hadn’t had time to get any more fab’ed since they’d arrived on Fleet HQ less than twenty four hours ago.
“I’m not sulking,” Franks
insisted, sitting straighter in his chair. “I’m just a bit disappointed.”
“How do you think I feel?” Shannon Stark asked mildly, striding into the room as if she’d heard the whole conversation. And maybe she had, Franks mused, as always feeling a little paranoid and intimidated in Colonel Stark’s presence.
“This is the second time General McKay has taken off across the galaxy and left me here to do his dirty work,” Stark went on, a trace of a grin on her face showing she wasn’t completely serious. “But duty calls…and so do our staff netdivers.”
Shannon hit a control on her ‘link and a file coalesced over the conference table, centered on the full body hologram of an Asian gentleman who could have been anywhere from his twenties to past a hundred from his looks, but whose stats claimed he was 47.
“They finally crunched all the IDs of the users in Foucault’s Tea Room, that anarchist chat where the Houston bombers most likely got their marching orders. They tracked down every single supposedly anonymized account and finally spat out this guy.”
“Timothy Arellano,” Franks read the name on the file’s readout. “Who’s he?”
“Technical supervisor for assembly operations at the biomech manufacture facility on Luna,” Shannon told him.
“And he was in that discussion group?” Carr asked, frowning.
“Nothing quite so simple,” Shannon replied, shaking her head. “They traced one of the accounts to one purchased at a recreation station in the Belt, which they tracked via a security camera to an employee of an independent mining concern, who was then paid via a series of cutout accounts that we finally traced back to this guy’s cousin on Mars.”
“So, Mr. Arellano is on Mars?” Manning presumed. “I thought he worked on the Moon?”
“Neither,” Shannon corrected her. “He visits the Luna factory on a semi-regular basis for quality checks, but he lives in Trans-Angeles.” She cocked her head at the hologram. “Pretty posh neighborhood too, if I remember from the last time we visited General McKay’s parents.” She turned back to the others. “Unfortunately, the trail dead-ends at him. We can’t establish any connection between him and anyone else and that’s where you four come in. You’re going to Trans-Angeles to set up surveillance on him until we can connect him to someone else.”