Duty, Honor, Planet: The Complete Trilogy

by Rick Partlow

“We have to get out of here now,” he told her quietly but firmly, standing up and stepping back from the edge of the gentle slope.

  “Don’t panic,” she scoffed, mocking him for suddenly being so serious. “It’s just a bear…and it’s asleep, it won’t hurt us.”

  “It has a carcass down there,” he told her urgently, letting his voice get a hair too loud in his anger. “We need to get out of here before it…”

  He heard the snort before he saw the bear moving. It shook itself and slowly came to its feet, nose in the air.

  “Come on!” Franks grabbed his sister by the hand and yanked her to her feet.

  He didn’t run: that was the one thing you never did around bears. Grizzlies could run at sixty kilometers an hour, even uphill, and running away from one was a sure way to make it look at you as prey. Instead, he and Robbie backed away from the bear, walking quickly. Normally, they would have been talking to let the bear know they weren’t sneaking up on it; but when a bear had a carcass, it didn’t much care if you were a human or a wolf.

  Maybe if they just got out of the area quickly enough…

  “Shit!” Franks swore again as he saw the shaggy, dark-brown head emerge over the crest of the hill, nose snuffling loudly.

  “Drew…” Robbie said doubtfully, a bit of her little-kid whine creeping into her voice.

  “Just stay calm, Robbie,” he said, hearing his voice cracking and hating himself for it.

  I should call Dad, he thought, then immediately rejected the idea. Dad was twenty klicks away; even in the flitter it would take him way too long to get here.

  The bear lumbered through the brush with a crash of leaves, starting into a trot that was going to overtake them in just seconds. Franks patted the back of his equipment belt with his free hand, trying to find the emergency flash-bang that his parents had insisted he keep there to deal with dangerous wildlife.

  “Drew!” Robbie screamed into his ear, yanking at his hand as the grizzly began to gallop and all he could see was the huge claws on the end of those dinner-plate paws…

  “Drew!”

  Franks eyes flew open and he tried to sit up in bed, but a hand held him firmly down and he lacked the strength to fight against it. As his vision cleared and the dream faded, he realized he was in a hospital room and that the hand and the voice both belonged to Tanya Manning. She was standing over him, dressed in casual civilian clothes and not the fatigues and body armor she’d been wearing the last time he’d seen her, so he guessed he had been here a while.

  “How…” he tried to ask, but his mouth was full of cotton and all that came out was a dry rasp. Manning picked up a cup from a bedside table and held it to his lips. He sipped down a couple swallows of water, then took a deep breath before trying again. “How long?”

  “It’s been nearly five days since the attack,” Manning told him. She had a look on her face that seemed like a mixture of relief and devastation. She also looked beautiful and he was surprised at the surge of emotion he felt just looking at her. It almost overrode the shock he felt at having been unconscious for that long.

  “You were pretty fucked up, Drew,” she told him honestly. She was trying to be casual about it, but he heard the slight catch in her voice and the just-a-heartbeat-too-long blink as she held back tears. “You had third degree burns over half your body, both lungs collapsed, blown out eardrums, a major concussion, a lacerated kidney…” She took a deep breath, and he knew she was trying to control herself. “We…we weren’t sure you were going to make it to the med center. You spent three days in a tankful of biotic fluid.” She wiped a hand absently over one eye.

  “Anyway,” she said, “you’re going to be okay. You’ve got a shitload of cloned skin tissue on your back and it’s going to take a while for your hair to grow back, but you’re going to be okay.”

  Franks’ hand automatically went to his head and touched bare skin rather than the short-cut hair that had been there. It was only then that he noticed the IV feed entering the back of his right wrist, the clear tube connecting it to a pump next to his bed. The room was fairly generic: a few monitors, some fixed diagnostic equipment, a sink and an entertainment console. It could have been anywhere, but a holographic display on the wall confirmed he was at the Trans Angeles East Medical Center.

  “Did the missile get the nanovirus?” he asked her, worry suddenly gnawing at his gut.

  She nodded, eyes looking away from his. “The biomechs carrying it were nothing but ashes. The techs went over the wreckage with scanners and found no trace of the stuff.”

  “What about the others?” he asked the question he’d been putting off, the one to which he was afraid to hear the answer.

  Manning seemed to steel herself before she responded. Her face went impassive, as if a mask had descended over it.

  “Lt. Patel is fine,” she began. “He made it out the exit before the missile hit. Agent Carr…Caitlyn and the teenagers she found at the band shell, they were too close to the blast. They didn’t make it.”

  “Oh Jesus,” Franks moaned, letting his head fall back on the pillow. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to hold back the tears, but he was too weak physically to exert that sort of emotional control and soon sobs were wracking his chest. He felt Manning’s arms go around him and he hugged her to him, her hands rubbing at his back until the helpless sobbing finally subsided and he began to breathe normally again.

  “Who,” he choked out after a minute, whispering it into Manning’s ear. “Who told her mother?”

  “Colonel Stark,” she said softly. “It was…rough. She blames herself, I think, not just for Caitlyn but for the kids, too. She couldn’t have known; and even if she had, there isn’t anything different she could have done. It was their lives against tens or hundreds of thousands.”

  Manning let loose of him and he sank back against the bed, spent. Franks laid there for a long time, feeling hollow and useless, feeling a sense of powerlessness that he’d never experienced before. He grabbed her hand in his and she squeezed it tightly.

  “I’m glad you’re all right, Drew,” she said after a few more minutes of silence, caressing his cheek. Her fingers felt like silk on his skin. She leaned down and kissed him tenderly on the lips and he felt warmth flooding his chest.

  She drew back, looking into his eyes, forehead resting against his. “I have something potentially dangerous I need to tell you, Captain Andrew Franks.”

  “I know, Tanya,” he replied. The corner of his mouth twitched up. “I love you, too.”

  “You’re such an arrogant prick,” she teased him, the tenderness of her tone belying her words. “How do you know I was going to tell you that I love you? Maybe I was going to report you to the Inspector General’s office for improper relations with an NCO.”

  She laid her head down on his chest; she was being careful but he still fought back a wince at the pressure.

  “If that’s what it was,” he said with a sigh, running the fingers of his right hand through her short hair, “then you’re going to have to wait a couple days. I’m in no shape for improper relations right now.”

  She stretched up and kissed him again before sitting back up, still holding his hand. “All right dammit, you were right. I do love you. But don’t let it go to your head. You’ve got a big enough ego already.”

  He felt his stomach rumble. “I don’t mean to get all crass or anything,” he said apologetically, “but did the docs say if I’m okay to eat? ‘Cause I’m starving.”

  Manning eased off the bed and stood up. “I’ll go grab you something. I think there was a vending kiosk on the next floor down.” She paused next to the room’s door. “Your ‘link was trashed, but there’s a replacement on the table there.” She nodded towards the other side of his bed. “I had it synced with your personal and military accounts.”

  “Thanks,” he said, grabbing the datalink off the table as she stepped through the door.

  He checked the device for messages and felt a chill go up his
spine as he saw the name beside one of the blinking icons.

  It was a recorded audio message from Caitlyn Carr.

  His hand trembled slightly as he hit the control to play it.

  “Drew,” Carr’s voice seemed strained, worried. “If you’re hearing this, then…something has happened to me. I set it up to auto-deliver if I didn’t cancel in a week. Since I haven’t cancelled, I’m either in a detention center, on the run or dead.” Franks felt a gut-punch as he listened to the words. “I hope you’re not in any of those situations, but if you are, I set it up to go to others after you.” There was a pause. “I chose you as the first option because I trust you to do the right thing. Don’t let me down, okay?”

  “I won’t,” he promised quietly.

  “I was looking into the registration spoofing of the shuttle used in the Danube Corridor attack,” she went on. “I found…something. I’ve attached it as an encoded file, keyed to your DNA. If anyone else tries to open it, it’ll erase itself. I hate to dump this on you, Drew; God knows, I wish I’d never seen it. But someone has to do something with this. If not, we’re going to be trapped in this loop forever, running to put out one fire after another.”

  There was a long pause, and Franks looked down to check if the message had ended, but then Carr spoke again.

  “I think there’s a good man under that swagger and attitude, Drew. Don’t become the mask. Goodbye. Tell my mom I love her.”

  The message completed and he looked down at the notification that there was an attached file. He put his thumb to the ID confirmation plate on his ‘link and waited for the device to read his DNA. An audible tone let him know when the confirmation was complete, and then a holographic projection of the file appeared above the ‘link.

  It was a text file with a few still images and graphs, entitled “Quarterly Report on Project Asatru.” Franks skimmed quickly through the summary…and felt a chill up his back when he realized exactly what he was reading. By the time he’d reached the part of the document that Carr had highlighted, he understood exactly why she’d been so paranoid.

  He felt paranoid himself, working as quickly as he could to set up a secure transmission of the file to Colonel Stark, keying it to her biometrics and marking it “eyes only.” A sense of relief flooded him when the message was sent, almost as if he were passing this burden on to someone else. But he knew that was an illusion; once something like this was seen, it couldn’t be unseen.

  He hoped Shannon Stark knew what to do with the information, because every possibility he came up with was nothing less than suicidal.

  * * *

  Shannon Stark sat curled in the recliner, hugging her legs to herself, trying to keep warm. The apartment always seemed so cold and empty without Jason in it…and it felt especially empty now. She was dressed in the shorts and tank top she’d worn to bed, and she felt chilly without the covers she’d left behind; but she couldn’t seem to summon the energy to pull on a robe or even to tell the apartment’s maintenance systems to turn up the temperature. She would have dearly loved a drink, but she couldn’t bring herself to move to get one.

  So she just sat in the darkened living room, the only light coming from the six faces displayed in the projection of the entertainment center’s holotank. She’d been staring at them for an hour…No, she corrected herself, I’ve been staring at them for days. On the news nets, in her reports, and in her nightmares.

  Five adolescents, none older than fifteen, the youngest of them thirteen. Guilty of nothing more than being minors in possession of mild narcotics, nevertheless they’d paid the ultimate price for something that should have earned them a few hours of community service. She’d seen the video of their parents crying, screaming for justice they weren’t going to get.

  The media hadn’t blamed her personally…not yet. They were still focused on the rogue biomechs and the people they’d killed and injured, and the narrow escape the city had experienced from a nanovirus attack. She knew that wouldn’t last. Blame was always assigned, whether officially or unofficially. The question was, did she blame herself? Not for the kids, not really. She grieved them, but they’d done all they could to get the area evacuated and a group of teenagers too stoned to hear the sirens wasn’t something she could have anticipated or really done anything about.

  No, what she blamed herself for was that sixth image in the holotank. Caitlyn Carr was all over the news nets, lionized as one of the heroes of the whole fiasco along with Drew Franks. But Franks had survived and Carr was a martyr. Ironically, she was bringing in shitloads of good press for the CIS, despite the fact that they’d wanted to toss her in a detention center not that long ago. Director Ayrock had done an interview where he lamented the loss of such an outstanding agent and had tried to cast doubt on the military’s handling of the situation without coming right out and saying it.

  She wished McKay were there to run point on all this, but then he’d be the one taking the heat for being heartless and calculating and she knew that was her job. She wished she could at least talk to him…but the expedition had been incommunicado for days now. So all she could do was wait for the fallout to hit and wonder if she would wind up being court-martialed or simply forced to resign her position.

  Shannon was debating going back to bed and brooding there, where it was warmer, when a message icon popped up on her holotank. It was from Franks and it was marked “eyes only” and encrypted to her biometrics. Her eyes narrowed and she uncurled from the chair, retrieving a secure tablet from a drawer in the kitchen and using it to open the message.

  Two minutes later, she found that she wasn’t tired at all anymore. Five minutes later, being court-martialed suddenly seemed like a best-case scenario.

  * * *

  The RFS Farragut was travelling between wormholes under a one gravity acceleration analog, the gravito-inertial feedback pushing Jason McKay against the deck plates with his usual eighty kilos. He was grateful for the weight: he needed to pace, and the empty Situation Room was a good place for it. It was Spartan and bare, only the tactical display over the conference table to distract him as he tried to think. Still, the holographic projection drew his attention. It showed the formation of the Farragut, the Bradley, the Triton and the Tethys, all separated by hundreds of kilometers to avoid unwanted Eysselink field intersections but all heading for the same place.

  There were only three more jumps to the Solar System and home…as if being home would mean the end of their troubles. He frowned, pausing as he stared at the display. Why was it that every time he left to handle some emergency, he wound up coming home to a much bigger one?

  Shannon’s right, he thought. I need to learn to delegate.

  Then again, they each had their strengths, and hers was clearly cutting through the political bullshit on Earth while his was being out here, doing this. Only now, of course, they’d each managed to get themselves into shit so deep that they were both counting on the other for help.

  Only I don’t know how the hell I can help her without committing treason.

  The door to the Situation Room slid aside and Joyce Minishimi stepped through, hands clasped behind her back, her face grim.

  Uh oh, he thought. He knew there was already a lot to be grim about, but this looked like a new development. She circumnavigated the conference table and dropped heavily into a seat beside where he stood.

  “Whatever horrible news you have for me,” he said to her, “hold off and listen to mine first. After you hear what I have to say, you might forget all about it.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel better at all,” she said, glaring at him.

  “I got this transmission over the temporary comsats we put in place on the way,” he said, pulling up a holographic video file into the display over the table. “It was about as encrypted as we can get it and it had a code key personal between Shannon and I. You’ll understand why in a second.”

  He waved his hand at a control area and began the playback. The video showed Shannon
Stark in uniform, sitting in a desk chair, probably in front of a secure communications console. Where, he wasn’t sure, but he guessed it was somewhere on Earth and not on Fleet Headquarters.

  “Jason,” she said somberly, “I just received your report about the results of the expedition.” She shook her head. “Just when I’d thought things couldn’t get any more fucked up… I’m sorry about D’mitry, I know he was your friend. He deserved some happiness, but I don’t know if he would have found it even if he’d lived.” Her expression hardened. “I hate to dump something else in your lap, but I couldn’t let you sail home blind. We were able to avert another nanovirus attack---just---in Trans Angeles. I made sure your parents were safe; there’s a message attached from them. We lost Agent Carr in the operation. I’ve included a full report also.” McKay felt a pang of guilt, even though he’d heard the news earlier. He hadn’t trusted Carr and she’d wound up giving her life to protect innocent people.

  “But Caitlyn left us a message before she died.” Shannon closed her eyes for a moment, and McKay knew she was pushing down guilty feelings of her own. He’d sent men and women to their deaths before, and so had she. It never got any easier. “She was researching the registration spoofing technique that the bratva was using to disguise their spacecraft and she came across something called Project Asatru.”

  A wall of text replaced her image. McKay didn’t bother looking at it because he’d already read it far too many times. “I’ve attached the report to this message, but as you can see, it was an economic stimulus package intended to kick-start small, independent cargo and mining businesses in the Belt. It offered generous loans to these businesses to buy intersystem freighters and cargo shuttles from Republic Transportation Multicorps. Agent Carr traced the cargo shuttle used in the Danube Corridor attack back to one of the freighters sold under the aegis of Project Asatru.” She smiled humorlessly.

  “It was reported stolen by pirates. After a detailed search, Agent Carr discovered that somewhere over seventy-five percent of the ships provided by Project Asatru were reported stolen or destroyed under suspicious circumstances…including one that’s a dead ringer for the ship that hit Tintagel City. Yet there was no federal investigation initiated by the CIS or the Patrol. The whole thing was buried.