Conflagration 1: Burning Suns

by Lisa Wylie

  Cold fear slithered unpleasantly in the pit of her stomach, crawling up her throat and making it difficult to breathe again. All the evidence was pointing her to an unpleasant but irrefutable conclusion, one that made her heart hammer against her ribs.

  Her attacker had been a changeling.

  And he’d been sent to kill her.

  It all added up with frightening ease. The idiom confusion, his quick recovery from a blow that should have incapacitated a human male, and the speed of his reflexes pointed to his species. The disposable comms device and the masquerade as a member of the hotel staff marked him as practiced in deception and undercover work. And his tactics had all the hallmarks of classic changeling training—create an opening, strike hard and fast, and if compromised, disengage. Which meant that she hadn’t seen the last of him. Well, likely she’d seen the last of that skin, but if he had her targeted, she could expect another attack in due course.

  She might have been compromised, she realized next, her fear redoubling. Somehow, somewhere, she’d slipped up, tipped someone off. Or, perhaps more likely, it was what she had initially feared: the Sentinels had marked her for execution, regardless of her true identity. This had been a premeditated attack intended to take her out, implemented by an agent operating with a back-up crew. Which would mean Mahmoud’s death hadn’t been an accident, either…

  She pushed herself to her feet and hurried over to her computer. The protocol for these situations was clear: if she had reason to believe she was compromised, she should call in and then go to ground until she could be extracted by the Service, or until she received further orders. Under no circumstances should she try to continue her mission while there was a risk of it being blown.

  She was about to call Estris when she remembered he had ordered her not to call. Was it conceivable that he was in on what had just happened? Or that he had been replaced by a Sentinel?

  … Don’t call in again before your next scheduled check.

  Had his order been genuine pedantic observation of procedure, or an attempt to freeze her out so that she wouldn’t get in touch with someone else and expose him before his associates had a chance to deal with her? She didn’t want to believe that—she’d known Estris for years, he’d been her handler for her entire assignment to the Marauder capital. He’d been her anchor back to her real life, the only contact she had who knew who she really was.

  You don’t want to end up being this year’s object lesson… do you?

  That thought drove a spike of panic clean through her chest. Had Estris been trying to warn her, or had he made the call himself? Had the Service decided to terminate her before she was exposed, or… Don’t be ridiculous, she scolded herself. You only broke tradecraft once to check in—they don’t wipe agents for that.

  But if I have been compromised…

  “Get a grip, Keera,” she said out loud, sucking in a few deep breaths to try and slow her racing heartbeat, control the fear scrabbling at her throat. “Get a grip. Calm down and think this through. Don’t do anything hasty. Act, don’t react.”

  She forced herself to regulate her breathing, tried to get a plan together. She needed to relocate, at the very least. If she wasn’t going to call for back-up right now, she was dangerously exposed, since her enemies knew exactly where she was. Trying to keep calm, she threw on some casual clothes and made her way down to the bar, accessing the complimentary comm network to book a new room at a much smaller, cheaper hotel a few blocks away. Then she went back to her suite and packed up most of her belongings, leaving only a few easily replaced items to make it appear as though she was still in residence. She set the suite’s communications console to forward any calls to her directly so she wouldn’t miss them, set the privacy status on the security system to “do not disturb,” grabbed her bags and headed to her new hotel, doubling back on her route twice to make sure she wasn’t being followed. Once locked in her windowless, mid-floor room, she shoved the cheap office chair in front of the door to provide advance warning of any intrusions, and settled on the floor behind the bed with her would-be killer’s weapon close at hand.

  It was a long time before she got any sleep that night.

  JENNIFER

  Pergamon Museum, Berlin, Earth, Modeus System, Assembly Space

  The museum was busy.

  So much the better, Jennifer reminded herself as she and Thud walked arm in arm toward the entrance. With more traffic underfoot, there was inherently more distraction for the security staff. She noted several queues of school children snaking toward the group entrance, brightly coloured shirts making them easy to spot in a crowd. Once inside, each group would be a vibrant little pool of chaos. Better and better.

  All right, here we go, she told herself as they joined the security search queue, taking a deep breath to calm the butterflies fluttering around in her belly.

  “Performance jitters?” Thud cracked as he heard her exhale.

  “Every time,” Jen agreed. “You?”

  “Hell, yeah. You remember how much I used to shake before combat drops?”

  “You weren’t the only one,” Jen recalled. “Man, I hated doing those. Hated to be in the hands of another pilot.”

  “I always said you had trust issues.”

  “And you were totally right,” Jen admitted as she stepped through the detector with a smile for the youthful uniformed guard. He smiled back, a full-on grin that had less to do with professional courtesy than it did with appreciation of Jen’s figure.

  “Enjoy your day with us, ma’am,” he offered.

  “Aw, thanks, hon,” Jen drawled, blowing him a kiss. Thud scowled, shoving her in the back to keep her moving and keeping a possessive hand on her backside as they headed into the vestibule.

  “You’re incorrigible,” he grumbled.

  “Just keeping in practice,” Jen shrugged impishly. “Besides, I’m trying to be distracting, remember?”

  “You’re succeeding admirably,” Thud observed. “You’re enough to make a good dog break his leash, particularly dressed like that.”

  “Well, if you’ve got it, flaunt it, right?” Jen grinned back. It wasn’t that she particularly cared about her appearance; she considered herself pretty low maintenance, and most of the time aboard ship she could be found dressed in cargo pants and a vest, donning her more practical light armour, boots, and duster combo when out and about in town. She rarely wore make-up (except when she wanted to hide her tattoo to be more inconspicuous, like now) and owned nothing even remotely approaching formal wear. For the op, she was casually dressed in typical summer tourist style, skin-tight fitness shorts, trainers and a fitted souvenir t-shirt she’d bought the previous day—hardly model or movie-star chic. That said, she was rigorous with her fitness regime, and she knew her body was in pretty good shape, and that confidence let her indulge her flirtatious side. And besides, if people were enjoying looking at the Checkpoint Charlie stencil across her tits, then they weren’t going to remember her face.

  Thud had similarly decked himself out in tourist civvies, and the two of them had spent some time over the past few days practicing the gestures and touches peculiar to intimate couples. They were planning to pass themselves off as colony-born honeymooners, and for such a ruse to work they needed to be comfortable with the physical contact. It was weird for both of them—although they were good friends, they’d never even been remotely attracted to one another. Their shared background camaraderie was a big help in lieu of the required romantic allure, however, and Jen had found herself enjoying Thud’s company more and more as the time slipped by. It boded well for any future co-operation.

  “All right,” she said softly as she pulled her ear-jack from her pocket and slipped it in, tuning her comm wristband to the agreed team frequency. “Dolos, come in?”

  “Receiving you, Bronwen,” the cyborg answered promptly.

  “Great. Thud and I are in the museum, starting to make our way to the main hall. Status report, all positions.”
/>   “Standing by,” Wai-Mei responded. “Waiting for my go.”

  “Working on it,” Solinas offered, his voice sounding somewhat thick, as though he had a blocked nose. “Should be in the next five minutes.”

  “Did you catch a cold or something?” Jen queried. “You sound all bunged up.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Bronwen,” Solinas retorted. “I can’t catch your human diseases. It’s just a lousy mike.”

  “Fair enough.” Jen rolled her eyes at Thud in exasperation. “Dolos, status?”

  “I am hacking in the credentials for Xox now,” Dolos reported. “I require two minutes to complete activities.”

  “I’m in position,” Honold replied. “It’s a lovely day out, ain’t it?”

  “Sure is,” Jen agreed. “OK, stay sharp. We are go on Solinas’ signal. We’ll check-in again after the signal. Stay off the freak till then.” She clicked the comms off and took a moment to centre herself. This was going to be the worst part. The waiting. She took a few deep, slow breaths and then nodded to Thud. “Ready, buddy?”

  “Yeah, reckon so. I came prepared for all eventualities.” He opened the bag he was carrying and beckoned her closer.

  Jen peered into the backpack, and cursed as she saw the outline of a handgun. “Thud, what the fuck?” she whispered harshly, stunned. The job was going to be risky as it was, and adding weapons to the mix would do nothing but provoke an uncontrollable escalation if things went wrong. While she rarely went unarmed in the rough and tumble systems beyond the Assembly’s control, in systems controlled by the governing council’s member races and obedient to the rule of law, there was no need to carry. There was almost zero risk of being assaulted, kidnapped, raped, or otherwise enduring any of the more unsavoury blood sports crime meccas like Hel’s Market tended to encourage.

  “You like it?” Thud was grinning like a kid with a new Christmas present.

  “No, I… how did you even get that through the security scans?”

  “It’s got a polymould body and mechanism, and it’s kinetically charged,” he explained. “It uses a solid ammo block—the charge shatters the block and spits out the shards as rounds. Neat little bit of kit, they’re all the rage on Ganymede. It’s just a holdout, not meant for more than about ten shots. You buy them in packs of five. Disposable. I got the whole pack there, you want one?”

  “No!” Jen hissed, scowling. “I explicitly said no weapons.”

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t feel like taking the risk.”

  “Taking the risk?” Jen repeated incredulously. “This is Earth, not some backwater moon in the Lazarus Depth! Concealed carry is illegal.”

  Thud arched an astonished eyebrow. “You’re worried about breaking the law?”

  Jen glared at him. “We’re not doing anything illegal yet,” she ground out from between clenched teeth. “In point of fact, if we do this right you and I won’t be breaking any laws until we pick the package up from the bank. But if you get caught with that before then you’re gonna do a century or so in the deep freeze.”

  “Then let’s make sure we don’t get caught, babe.” Thud winked at her, shouldered the bag, and pulled her by the hand down the corridor toward the main display.

  “Asshole,” Jen growled under her breath, but she let him lead her along the gallery. “Wait up, honey,” she pleaded more loudly as they reached a large knot of people clustered around some ancient Greek statues. Time to test their assumptions about crowd reaction before the big show. “C’mon, slow down, I wanna see all these things. They’re cool. Y’know, some of them are even older than the dirt we got on Erebus.”

  Thud sighed ostentatiously, but he slowed his pace. “Well, I want to see the alien stuff. Templars and Guardians and all that neat galactic warfare shit. This old schoolbook crap is boring as hell,” he retorted, drawing a few disapproving glances from passers-by.

  “We’ve got all day, baby,” Jen pointed out in a plaintive whine.

  Thud sighed again. “All right, if it’ll stop you bitchin’. Though I’m pretty sure you only want to look at the statues of naked dudes.”

  “Aw, baby,” Jen purred, patting the front of his pants suggestively, “you know me so well.” She bounded over to one such statue and pointed at the crotch with a leering grin. “Good job you’re bigger than that, stud, or I’d never feel a thing.” Flicking a glance around, she caught the gaze of an elderly woman staring at her with an expression of rigid disapproval, and favoured her with a scowl. “Fuck you lookin’ at, Grandma?” she demanded belligerently.

  The woman looked away hastily, and Jen smirked at Thud as she sashayed back over to him and draped her arms around his neck. “Looks like that works pretty well,” she murmured as he pulled her in for a hug.

  “Shit, Jen, you keep this up, you’re gonna make me laugh. And then the gig’ll be up,” Thud protested, giving her ass a firm squeeze that was part play-acting, part rebuke.

  She nipped at his earlobe with her teeth in response. “Focus, Sarge. Focus. You’re supposed to be a pro, remember?” Releasing him, she jerked her head toward the back of the building. “C’mon, let’s get into position. So to speak.”

  ***

  Ten interminable minutes later, a muted chirp sounded three times across the team’s comm frequency. Jen tore her gaze away from the section of the Altar of Zeus she had actually become engrossed in—the thing really was impressive up close—and ambled over to where Thud was perving over some of the well-endowed female statues. Taking his arm, she leaned in. “That’s the signal.”

  Thud kept looking at the statues. “Showtime, huh?”

  “Yep. Let’s get to it,” Jen muttered. “Wai-Mei, Honold, you in position?”

  “Confirmed.”

  “Good to go.”

  “Dolos, you ready?”

  “Affirmative. Xox’s credentials are loaded to the system.”

  “Solinas, we’re good to go. Keep an eye on things for us, OK?”

  “I’ve got your back, Bronwen. You’re all clear, and everything looks good from my end.”

  “Then I’m rolling,” Wai-Mei said. “Heading in now.”

  “All right, we’ll get in position to make some noise.” Jen nodded to Thud. “Ready?”

  Thud nodded, and the two of them made their way slowly over to a point where they were in full view of most of the milling visitors, and well within earshot of one of the school groups. She couldn’t have asked for a better audience—the teachers were certain to react badly when they realised what was happening. All we need to really be juicing the afterburners are some nuns and a couple of Ercineans, she thought wryly.

  Time dragged, the seconds stretching out into endless minutes as Jen firmly resisted the urge to check her chronometer. She couldn’t afford to look nervous. Thud stood close to her, muttering occasionally, as though they were deep in conversation, and for the first few moments she forced some sporadic smiles and nods, then as the minutes crawled past, she eased through a neutral expression to a slight frown.

  “What are you frowning for?” Thud asked eventually.

  “I’m reacting badly to what you’re telling me,” she replied. “I want to start warming up anyone who’s actually watching us.”

  Thud frowned back. “Right. Shit, how long is Xox gonna take?”

  “As long as she needs to.” Jen shifted her weight, the closest she’d allow herself to come to fidgeting. The thief did seem to be taking her time, but it was hard to judge. “This is the toughest bit of what we’re doing,” she reminded Thud. And herself. “Once we get into action, the time will run quicker.”

  “Routine check-in, fifteen-minute mark,” Dolos’ voice murmured in her ear before Thud could respond.

  “Solinas, check.”

  “Xox, check. I’m in the maintenance complex, the hack worked like a charm.”

  “Bronwen, check,” Jen added softly.

  “Jones, check.”

  “Honold, check. I’ve got an ice cream, it’s real tasty.”


  Jen bit back a grin.

  “Aw, I hope you got me one?” Wai-Mei asked.

  “Uh, no. Sorry.”

  “Damn. Could you be a friend and get one for me? I like raspberry ripple.” She chuckled, then her mike clicked. “I’m moving in. I’ll check in when I have the package. You can start making a spectacle of yourself whenever you like, Jen. Don’t get arrested, though, OK?”

  “Good tip, thanks.” Jen looked up at Thud, and he winked.

  “Let’s do this.”

  Jen took a deep breath and adopted an angry scowl. “You son of a bitch,” she said, not too loudly, but clearly enough to be overheard, overemphasizing her Bronwen system accent. She stepped back, bumping into the man behind her, but not bothering to apologise.

  “Aw, baby come on,” Thud countered, letting his naturally loud voice ring out as he reached for her. She slapped his hand away, circling left and colliding with a second person. She had no idea who, her gaze was locked on Thud. The big man circled with her, keeping her opposite him as he reached out again.

  “Don’t you touch me!” she spat, much more stridently this time.

  “I wasn’t… I was only… I didn’t lay a hand on you!” Thud protested.

  “You did!” Jen retorted. “You pushed me. You ain’t got no right to be pushing me around!”

  Thud rolled his eyes. “For God’s sake, Jenny…”

  “Don’t fucking call me that!”

  ‘Jeez, would you listen to me for just one damn minute?” Thud snarled, grabbing her by the arm. She shook him loose with an angry hiss.

  “Don’t you touch me!” she repeated shrilly. “Keep your goddamn hands off me.”