by Jake Bible
“The tavern planet?” Hole asked. “I don’t like bourbon that much to visit a planet made up of nothing but taverns, bars, and speakeasies.”
“You aren’t missing much,” Motherboard said. “A tavern is a tavern. Except not always. There was one tavern where the deserters could hide out. If they were willing to help pass on information about the Fleet. It all started like any normal bunch of Marines deciding they’d had enough of the War. They saw an opportunity and they took it. Deserted from the platoon and disappeared into the galaxy.”
“Then turned up on Xippeee?” Hole asked.
“Not for a while, but eventually,” Motherboard said. “By that time, they’d gotten themselves into some hot water and they needed to make some chits fast. So they sold out the Fleet by selling as much intel as they had. Turns out that a couple of them liked the business of turning simple information into chits so much that they decided they’d go into it full time.”
“And the kid knew about them somehow?” Hole asked.
“The kid belonged to one of them,” Motherboard said. “Like a pet. Nice kid. Slinghasp, so helpful.”
“I have had my fill of Slinghasps lately,” Hole said. “But they are pleasant in general.”
“This kid had been used as labor around the tavern where the traitors set up,” Motherboard said. “Sold to one of them by his mother after she couldn’t pay a debt. Good kid, smart kid.”
“LT? Can we get to the point?” Hole asked.
“Am I boring you?” Motherboard laughed. “I bet I am. Here’s the gist of it, Hole. Those traitors took off only minutes before we raided their tavern. Minutes. They were tipped off and not by street thugs or lookouts. Someone in our office, in my office, gave them the heads up. I know that with all of my soul.”
Hole narrowed her eyes, but didn’t respond. She had a couple more sips and set the glass aside. She leaned forward and rested her forearms on her knees.
“You killed the kid to find a mole,” Hole said. “You killed him to get to the truth. It was something that had to be done.”
“I know that,” Motherboard said. “But that’s not the problem. The problem is I saw the truth and I ignored it.”
Hole grimaced. “LT, Bish, I have a brain that can process trillions upon trillions of bits of data per millisecond, yet you have somehow managed to lose me with this story.”
“I killed the kid because of the truth, not because he wouldn’t give it up,” Motherboard said. “Before he could say the name of the person that had really been running those traitors, I snapped his neck. I made it look accidental as if I had applied just a little too much pressure at the wrong moment, but it was far from accidental.”
Hole didn’t respond. Motherboard emptied her second glass and set it on her thigh. She watched it balance there for a minute before she continued.
“The mole was my wife,” Motherboard said. “She was also my partner. She was standing right behind me while I interrogated that kid. I didn’t want to believe what I was seeing, but every time, every Eight Million Gods damn time, I asked that kid who was in charge, who was really pulling the strings, who sold out my department before that raid, his eyes skipped past me and focused on the woman standing directly behind me.”
“Could have just been fear,” Hole said. “The kid wanted to see which one of you was the real threat. The good cop, the bad cop. If the kid had been living the life you say he had then he knew the drill.”
“But I knew the drill better,” Motherboard said. “The first couple of glances I chalked up to exactly that. The rest I knew the kid was telling me something. I killed him before he could explicitly tell me. I covered it up.”
Hole frowned. “But your wife died in a roller accident, correct? While you were on vacation in…”
“Exactly,” Motherboard said. “She died in a roller accident while we were on vacation. Vacation on Xippeee.”
“You did that,” Hole stated. “You took your own wife back to the scene of the crime and you did what? Gave her a choice to turn herself in or you would do it? Things got bad and you were forced to do something you didn’t want to do?”
“There you’re wrong on a couple of counts,” Motherboard said. “I did want to do it. The second that kid breathed his last breath, I wanted to put a blade between my wife’s ribs and make her pay. The other part you are wrong about is that I gave my wife a choice. She never had a choice. She was dead as soon as the kid was. Love is powerful, but betrayal is so much more. I got the information I needed, I closed the hole in my office, I killed the mole responsible, and I was promoted. All because of the death of a Slinghasp kid.”
Hole leaned back and began to speak then she closed her mouth. She shook her head and closed her eyes for a moment.
“You want to know what this all has to do with the black site we’re going to,” Motherboard said. Hole nodded without opening her eyes. “You also want to know why, if I was promoted within Fleet Intelligence, I am now running Drop Team Zero. Strange to go from Intelligence to SpecOps. Not the usual path.”
Motherboard rubbed her temples for a minute.
“This black site in the Klatu System? That’s how I lost parts of my body,” Motherboard said. “It didn’t start as a Fleet site. It wasn’t Skrang either. It was Collari Syndicate. I hurt them when I shut down their Xippeee operation. I hurt them when I closed the hole in Fleet Intelligence. I hurt them bad. So they snatched me up and took me there. They hurt me bad. Tit for tat.”
“Did you break?” Hole asked.
“No,” Motherboard said. “That’s why I have top of the line Fleet cyber-tech replacements without having to spend a single replacement chit. Most Marines get two repchits per tour. Lose a limb, spend a repchit, get a new limb. Mine were on the house. They saw something in me.”
Hole cocked her head. “You weren’t rescued. You escaped.”
“I escaped,” Motherboard said. “I killed every single one of the Collari Syndicate’s operatives in that moon. I killed them without even batting an eye and I did it with half my body removed and most of my life having been spilled down a wash drain in a dank and smelly interrogation bay they used to torture me in.”
Hole was at a loss for words once more, so she just nodded.
“I took this job because after I had killed all of those beings, I realized that if I was ever going to kill again, it was going to be in the open and with deliberate purpose,” Motherboard said. “I took a demotion from major down to lieutenant since Fleet rules state an officer above the rank of lieutenant cannot lead a SpecOps Team in the field.”
“We’re going to this black site because you not only know it, you know it intimately and you know exactly how to extract the information we need from Sha Morgoal,” Hole said. She laughed. It was an empty sound, but it made Motherboard smile. “The Fleet’s been waiting for this day for a very long time.”
“That they have,” Motherboard said, “and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell the others about all of this.”
“They suspect you aren’t leveling with them,” Hole said. “That suspicion could cause a problem down the road.”
“Let me worry about that,” Motherboard said. “But you know how SpecOps feels about Intelligence. If the rest of Zero finds out I used to be a spook then their respect for me will drop considerably. Where we’re going, we cannot risk that. I need them sharp and I need them in line. The Klatu System is nothing to fo with. When I bark an order, it needs to be carried out without hesitation. Doubting me will result in that hesitation and that could kill us all.”
“Now it makes sense why there’s a black site in the Klatu System,” Hole said. “The Fleet would never have the balls to do that, but the Collari Syndicate would.”
“Fleet Intelligence never got it up and running during the War,” Motherboard said. “Understandable. The Collari Syndicate had more bugs and boobytraps and hidden surveillance in that moon than anything I’ve ever seen. It has taken all these years to finally clear it.
”
“And we get to take it for a test drive,” Hole said.
“I already took it for a test drive,” Motherboard said as she held up her cybernetic hand. “Now we own it and forget about tests. Sha Morgoal will talk. He will tell us what we need to know or he won’t; either way, it will lead to the next phase of our op.”
Hole’s eyes narrowed. “Bloody hell, Bish,” Hole said, going straight for the familiar. “You expect this hand-off of the Keer kid to be monitored, don’t you?”
“The Fleet suspects it will,” Motherboard said.
“The Collari Syndicate will be waiting and when they see that only the kid is handed over then they’ll know we have Sha Morgoal and they will follow us to the black site,” Hole said. “It’s a moon? This place we’re going is built into a moon?”
“Yes,” Motherboard said. “The Collari already know where it is, so all we have to do is show them that’s where we’re headed. They won’t strike right away since they think they’ll have the advantage. They’ll let us get comfortable then come in and try to remove Sha Morgoal. And it won’t be grunts they send. They know who we are and what we’re capable of. It’s going to be heavies coming for us. Beings that will be in the know.”
“A honey trap,” Hole said. “That’s what this is called, isn’t it? Fleet Intelligence is setting a honey trap. The Collari Syndicate sends big guns and they fall right into it. We use the black site’s design to extract intel from these big guns, once we take them down, which we will, then… What? What comes next?”
Motherboard sighed. “Then we use that intel to help the Drop Teams Division get to the real op. We’re going to take down the Collari Syndicate where they live and end that scum-sucking organization once and for all.”
“This op has a lot of moving parts, LT,” Hole said, her voice back to business. “If one of those parts gets out of synch then we are looking at way more than a SNAFU. We’re looking at a mess that even Zero may not be able to clean up.”
“Now you see why Zero was sent to handle a simple hostage situation,” Motherboard said. “Because it has never been a simple hostage situation. Not for us.”
Hole exhaled. An unnecessary thing to do, but it made her point very clear.
“Fleet Intelligence let the Keer boy dangle like low-hanging fruit so Sha Morgoal couldn’t miss the opportunity,” Hole stated. “They let him get nabbed to put this all in motion. Did the councilman know?”
“Of course not,” Motherboard said, “and he never will. The only reason I know what I do is because Fleet Intelligence needed me to know because of my experience with the black site.”
“There it is,” Hole said. She smiled. It was a smile that would have made small children cry and most others turn away. “You weren’t rescued right away, were you?”
“Now you’re getting it,” Motherboard said. “I spent six months alone in that moon. A broken, severed woman fighting just to keep the rot in my body from killing me. I didn’t even have the strength to jettison the corpses I had made. Got to a point that I didn’t know what was stinking worse, me or them.”
“But during those six months, you studied every single inch of the place,” Hole said. “Took a while, LT, but we finally have arrived at the piece of the puzzle that has been bothering me. We’re going there because no one knows the black site better than you. Not the Fleet, not the Collari Syndicate. Not even the androids that are running it. You’re it.”
“I’m it,” Motherboard said. “This is why they let me take a demotion. This is what they have been waiting to use me, and Zero, for. It’s taken years, but we are finally here.”
“You’re finally here,” Hole said and stood up. “The rest of us are just along for the ride.”
“I trust you can keep my confidence?” Motherboard asked.
“You dump all this on me and that’s what you ask?” Hole responded. She shook her head. “You don’t ask what I think? You don’t ask what I think the rest of Zero will think? You don’t ask whether or not I think they’ll think this is a betrayal of their trust? All you ask is whether I will keep your confidence.”
“Yes,” Motherboard sated.
Hole smiled. “Yeah, you’re more like me than I thought. Of course I will keep your confidence. I have to for the op to work. You’ll tell them what they need to know when they need to know it, just like always. I’ll back you up 100% on whatever decisions you make, just like always. Zero will complete the op and make the Fleet happy, just like always. It’s what we do.”
“Thank you, Hole,” Motherboard said. “This wasn’t easy to tell you.”
“I believe that,” Hole said. “But may I ask one question?”
“You’ve earned the right,” Motherboard replied.
“Were you planning on telling me all of this anyway or did I force your hand by coming to you like this?” Hole asked.
“What do you think?” Motherboard responded.
“I think you planned on telling me every single thing you just told me,” Hole said, “except for the part about your wife. That was personal. That will be locked away inside my brain until my time is up and I’m melted down.”
Motherboard watched the android for a minute before she cleared her throat and nodded. “Thank you.”
“I may not be human, and you may not be all human, but that doesn’t make either of us monsters,” Hole said. “If we can’t be here for each other then there is no point in even opening our eyes in the morning.”
“You read that somewhere?” Motherboard asked
“Billboard in one of the Fleet Headquarters corridors,” Hole said. “Didn’t understand it until now.”
“Billboards and greeting cards,” Motherboard laughed, “more wisdom there than we give credit.”
“Get some sleep,” Hole said. “I’ll be on the bridge and handle everything from there. I’ll wake you when it’s time. Rest up until then. We’ll get through all of this and be fine like always.”
“You believe that?” Motherboard asked.
Hole shrugged. “Probability is in our favor.”
“Even with the possibility of the entire Collari Syndicate sending close to everything they have at us?” Motherboard asked.
“They better,” Hole said as the door slid open and she stepped out into the corridor. “Only way they’ll even have a chance against us.”
The door started to close, but Hole stopped it.
“What?” Motherboard asked.
“Why did Sha Morgoal want the Keer kid?” Hole asked.
“Councilman’s kid,” Motherboard said and shrugged.
“Maybe,” Hole said. “The Fleet may have served the kid up, but I want to know exactly why Sha Morgoal took that bait. Plenty of easier, more profitable targets.”
“We’ll find out when we get the Slinghasp to the black site,” Motherboard said.
“I suppose we will,” Hole said and let go of the door.
The door slid closed and Motherboard smiled. She felt lighter, even with the most dangerous part of the op looming only a hair’s breadth away. If Hole said probability was on their side then probability was on their side.
Motherboard just hoped luck and fate were riding along with.
Fourteen
“Wanders, how are we looking?” Hole asked as she sat in the Eight-Three-Eight’s pilot’s seat, her eyes watching the holo of the Fleet ship that had rendezvoused and docked with them only minutes before. “Any sign of hostiles?”
“We are clear right now,” Wanders replied from the weapons system console, his own eyes glued to the readings telling him they were alone in the System. His four hands rested on the edge of the console, only a quick twitch away from the Eight-Three-Eight’s targeting controls. If something came at them, he would take it out faster than a blackhole sucking down a stray comet. “Not a sign of trouble, but we all know what that means.”
“Trouble is coming,” Geist said as he sat in the co-pilot’s seat.
It was a seat Hole usually
occupied, but with Motherboard supervising the handoff of the Keer boy herself, with Mug and Cookie as backup, that meant the seat was empty and it was Geist’s job to fill it.
“Engines are on standby,” Geist said. “Things get hinky and we can be back at the wormhole in five.”
“Let’s hope things don’t get hinky,” Wanders said. “Hinky is bad.”
“Hinky is bad,” Geist agreed, “but expected. Flying through the Havlov System is never a picnic. Some of these gas giants have been known to swallow the smaller gas giants.”
“Gas midgets?” Wanders asked.
“Funny,” Geist said. “But I’m serious. The orbits of some of these planets aren’t always heliocentric. Some are wildly elliptical. There’s a collision every couple of decades. No way to predict them, really. They just happen.”
“That explains why there aren’t any races in this System,” Wanders said. “I’ve met plenty of other races that come from gas planets, but none from Havlov.”
“You can predict collisions,” Hole said. “Whoever told you that it can’t be done is an idiot. Math is math, geometry is geometry, astrophysics are astrophysics. Predictions are easy.”
“That so? You a rocket scientist now?” Geist asked.
Hole sighed and pointed out the Eight-Three-Eight’s view screen. “See that mauve planet there?”
“Mauve?” Wanders chuckled.
“That’s the correct name of that color,” Hole said. “Look it up. You see it?”
“I see it,” Geist said. “Hard to miss a mauve planet made of swirling gas that’s bigger than the entire system I grew up in.”
“Someone’s got system envy,” Wanders said.