“Cal Vross,” Melissa said with satisfaction as Shawn returned his gaze to her unharmed body. “A pleasure to meet you.”
Vross looked like a cobra waiting to strike. His hooded, gray eyes were like two large silver coins. Vross’ shoulder-length, chocolate-colored hair was fanned around his head, accentuating his overly large ears. The dark sheen of his skin reflected the overhead lights in all the wrong places and made his cheekbones look abnormally high. He wore a well-tailored suit, its colors split right down the middle, blue on one side and silver on the other. Judging by the mist of sweat covering his face, Cal Vross was obviously nervous, but he tried poorly to hide it behind a façade of overconfidence. “And I’m afraid I still don’t know who you are.”
“Does it matter?” Melissa smirked. “I’m the one with the gun.”
“Perhaps not, but you could at least be cordial before you kill me.”
“I’d rather just get the information I need.”
“I see,” Vross leered. “Then, I presume, you’ll kill me?”
A cheeky smile played across her face. “I haven’t decided.”
“And what about you, Captain?” Vross asked of Kestrel. “Will you sit by while I’m murdered in cold blood?”
Shawn turned slightly to show off the fact that his manacles were still securely fastened. “I’m not really in a position to do anything at the moment.” He could taste blood on the edge of his lip as he spoke.
Melissa motioned to Shawn with a nod of her head and he stepped to her side. She pushed the barrel of her pistol into Vross’ temple, making the point that he should continue to remain still. Shawn turned his back to Melissa and offered his restraints for her inspection. A second later, the cuffs were on the floor at his feet. Rubbing some feeling back into his wrists, he turned to Melissa to inquire how she’d managed to release him so quickly. Instead he noticed that her eyes were trained back on Cal Vross.
“Go get the rifle,” Melissa said with little emotion.
Shawn stepped back from the desk and found the weapon on the floor next to Ja’s lifeless corpse. He could see now that Ja had a hole in his tunic, just to the right of his left hip. It didn’t look like it could have been fatal, so Shawn kicked the body once more to check it for signs of life. Thankfully, there were still none.
“He’s dead, Shawn. I don’t think he’ll be bothering us anymore,” Melissa called from across the room.
“Are you sure?” Shawn asked, giving Ja’s body another tentative push and making sure to stand a safe distance away.
“Of course I am, and we don’t have time for you to continue kicking at him. I shot him in the heart. Now pick up the exodisintegrator and get back over here.”
“Yes ma’am,” he cursed condescendingly under his breath, then reached down and pried the weapon from the dead Erkelian’s hand.
“You’re not exactly human, are you?” Vross asked Melissa.
She pushed the gun farther into his neck. “What makes you say that?”
“No human could have unshackled herself, killed my two best men, and then have vaulted over here to secure me in less than thirty seconds, all in pitch blackness.” Vross then gave Shawn a look of contempt. “And, it’s obvious the Captain had nothing to do with it.”
Shawn sauntered up to Vross, rifle slung under his shoulder. “Did you hear the way he said ‘Captain’?” Shawn asked Melissa.
“Yes. Very condescending,” Melissa agreed.
Vross turned his eyes back to her. “So what are you?”
“I’m a poor little farmer who’s lost one of her sheep.”
“You take an awful lot of risks for some mutton.”
Melissa raised an eyebrow. “Oh, it’s a very prime cut, I assure you. Now, about that information?”
“What’s in it for me?”
“If I’m in a very good mood after you give it to me, I may be inclined to continue sharing the air with you.”
“I see,” Vross said, regaining some of his lost confidence. So he had something she wanted, and she had something he wanted. As far as Vross was concerned, this was business as usual. No matter that it cost the lives of his two best guards. They could be replaced, and for probably fewer credits. He leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers in his lap. As he did so, Melissa’s sidearm fell away from his jugular. “Well, then. What can I do for a wayward farmer?”
Melissa looked to Shawn, and then set her eyes on a crate on the left side of the room. Shawn took the hint and approached the six-foot-long, military-grade container that was propped up waist-high on a table.
“Open it,” Melissa called. “But be mindful of the content.”
“Is it a bomb or something?” Shawn asked cautiously.
Melissa’s eyes never left Vross. “Something like that.”
With a flick of a single switch, the three magnetic latches securing the lid unclasped. Shawn carefully lifted the crate’s dull gray lid. Reaching inside, he withdrew a slightly charred but otherwise fully functional Unified-issued pulse rifle—the same kind still issued to active Marine infantry units. The weapon was one of twenty in the crate.
Shawn let out a slow whistle. “Oh my, Mister Vross. I think you’ve stepped into some deep, stinky doo-doo here.”
Melissa eased onto the edge of Vross’ desk, her weapon still directed at his snakelike head. “I’d ask where you got this, but you and I already know the answer to that, don’t we Vross?”
Chapter 6
Cal Vross slowly turned his cobra-like visage to face Melissa Graves, the direction of her weapon having moved from his face to his chest. “Perhaps you do need to ask,” the dark-skinned man rasped.
Melissa, still seated on the edge of his desk, leaned in and pushed the muzzle of the blaster into his forehead, forcing his head back at an awkward angle.
“I’d tell her what she wants to know,” Shawn said, his highly lethal rifle now cradled over his forearm. “She’s got a nasty temper sometimes, if you know what I mean.”
Vross’ gray, panicked eyes darted to Kestrel. “Get this inhuman psychopath away from me, Captain, and I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” Shawn sounded disappointed.
Melissa edged the weapon deeper into the skin of his high forehead, sneering. “I don’t like being called names.”
“Fine! Whatever. Just get that thing out of my face and I’ll talk.”
Something in Melissa’s eyes was actually starting to concern Shawn. Even with her fury at full force, she’d never burned at him with this much repulsion. And while her methods had goaded Cal Vross into spilling his proverbial beans, they were also striking. Shawn silently hoped he was never on the receiving end of one of her interrogations. Just as he was about to raise a hand to gently pull her back, Melissa lowered the weapon and leaned away from Vross. The circular tip of the weapon had left a noticeable impression in the man’s forehead.
With her weapon still angled in Vross’ direction, she folded one long, well-toned leg over the other. “To be honest, I’ve never used a gun like this before. So you’ve got sixty seconds to explain yourself before I start pressing buttons.”
Cal Vross rubbed at his bruised forehead for a moment before responding. “I got the crates from Indarax, out near the old frontier.” His words seemed practiced.
Melissa swiftly kicked the man’s shin, then pressed the initiator button on the pistol. The discharge tip crackled to life, and a beam of white hot plasma shot out and sliced the corner of Vross’ chair clean off. “One more chance, Vross, or so help me, I will make those your last words.”
“Fine! Fine!” he quickly stammered. “I got them from Second Earth, okay? Is that what you want to hear?”
“What?” Shawn sounded skeptical.
“Keep your voice down, Mister Vross,” Melissa said coldly, disregarding Shawn’s question. “Keep going. Where on Second Earth did you get them?”
Vross rubbed his shin briskly to lessen the bruise that was sure to fo
rm in the next few minutes—if he lived through this encounter. “From the only place on Second Earth you can get something like those, of course.” He nodded to the open crate of pulse rifles.
Shawn slowly stepped up behind Melissa and leaned over Vross’ desk. “Delta Base?” he whispered cautiously.
“Exactly right, Captain.”
Shawn’s eyes darted as a dozen thoughts raced through his mind. Throwing the exodisintegrator rifle to the floor, Shawn quickly stepped around the desk in a move almost too quick for Melissa to catch. He reached down, grabbed Vross by his crisp lapels, hauled him from the chair and pinned him against the far bulkhead. “There’s nothing there! Nothing at all! Delta Base was completely wiped out—every last trace of habitation, along with everything else on the planet.”
The lines of Cal Vross’ face contorted and he sneered with unadulterated satisfaction at Shawn. “Oh, there’s lots there…if you know where to look. First, though, you have to get past the bodies.”
Shawn’s grip tightened and, with unrestrained rage, he lifted Vross nearly two feet from the deck.
“Captain,” Melissa put a gentle hand on Shawn, trying to get him to lower Vross back down to the floor.
Kestrel was unmoved. “There were no survivors, no functioning technology, no habitable buildings!”
Vross continued to look at Shawn blankly. “As you can see by those stacked crates of fully functioning weapons, I’ve already proven one of your points wrong, Captain. Would you care to try for two?”
Shawn threw him to the floor, but kept his distance only long enough to retrieve the exodisintegrator. He then planted a knee into Vross’ chest, shoved the barrel of the weapon into the fallen man’s nose, and then leaned his own face down over the slimy arms dealer. “You’d better start making sense, little man, before I turn your head into a taco shell.” To prove his point, Shawn pulled back the manual primer on the rifle.
Vross could hear the exodisintegrator powering up to a slow, painful discharge, knowing it would take about ten seconds before it got to full power.
“Okay, okay! Yeah, there’s plenty of good technology on the planet, and plenty of habitable space…if you don’t mind living under the stars. I don’t think a single structure above a hundred feet has a roof on it, but most of the buildings are still there.”
“What about survivors?” Shawn was enraged. “Or do I start deciding which wall to plaster with your gray matter?”
“No-no-no survivors,” Vross stammered. “At least, none that I’ve ever seen.”
“How many times?” Shawn continued to disfigure Vross’ nose with the rifle muzzle.
“How many times w-what?”
“How many times have you been there, you little weasel?”
“T-t-twelve. No more, no less.”
“And you’ve never seen anyone at all.”
Vross’ voice became still. “Just…the remains. Hundreds of them…thousands…maybe more. They’re…everywhere.”
Not knowing if Shawn was going to make good on his threats, Melissa stood safely away from the two men. “Then you’ve seen Crystal City?” she asked.
“Of…of course I have. It’s right outside Delta Base. I passed over it…ten times. On the eleventh run I came in from the other direction.”
“And the twelfth time?” Shawn’s face showed his disdain.
“Twelfth?”
Shawn placed his full weight into Vross’ chest, knowing that the man’s ribcage couldn’t hold the pressure for very long. “Yeah, the twelfth. You said you were there twelve times, ‘no more, no less.’”
“I…I don’t like to think about it.” Vross’ voice was suddenly distant.
“Well you’d better start reconsidering your stance on that particular statement.” Shawn disengaged the safety catch on the rifle, caring very little that a discharge at such a close range would easily kill them both, and possibly even Melissa as well.
“I had to…I had to go through…the city.”
“Meaning?” Melissa asked.
“My skimmer was damaged. I had to…to travel on foot. The streets are full of debris. I had to park my craft in an old hangar outside the main citadel. I took a mag-cart with me to haul out the weapons. There were…there were so many bodies…so many.” Vross then started sobbing uncontrollably. His emotions and his brain were probably fighting each other for control of his mouth.
Melissa went to her knees beside Vross’ head. “How did you get past the Sector Command satellite drones?”
“My ship…has…a jamming transmitter.”
“Uh-uh,” Shawn disagreed, shaking his head firmly. “No way. There’s no way you can have a transmitter capable of that. Second Earth is guarded by the most sophisticated automated defense systems the Unified Collaboration has.”
Vross stopped his sniveling for a moment. “You’re right, Captain. Exactly right. My jammer wouldn’t have been strong enough to go undetected. But it didn’t matter, because the satellites weren’t there.”
“You’re not making sense again, Vross. I thought you’d have figured out by now how much I don’t like when that happens. My finger gets all itchy, you see, and I feel like I want to start pulling triggers, if you catch my drift.”
“I can’t make it any plainer than that, Kestrel. The satellites are not there. As in, ‘They are gone.’ Vanished. No longer present.”
“You destroyed them?” Melissa asked skeptically.
“Of course not. That would have instantly alerted Sector Command.”
“As would tampering with them,” Shawn agreed. “So what did you do with them?”
“Nothing,” Vross cried. “Nothing! They simply aren’t there. I don’t know where they went. There was no debris. And if anyone stole them, there was no residual ion trail.”
Filing those facts away for future reference, Melissa reached out a hand and grabbed Vross’ chin, forcing his head to the side and directing his unblinking gaze at her. “What did you see when you went to Delta? Tell me about Delta Base.” She tried to keep her voice as calm as possible, her OSI interrogation training telling her that his mind could quickly splinter in its current state.
“I saw…I saw things. Many things. Horrible things…horrible things everywhere.”
“More bodies?” Shawn asked.
“Yes, lots more…almost a whole city’s worth.” Vross began sobbing again. “If Hell is a real place, then Second Earth is it. A dead world.” He repeated his final phrase several times, each once becoming less intelligible due to his weeping.
Shawn shot Melissa a glare. “Delta Base had a normal complement of about three hundred, most of them scientists. That means the people in Crystal City must have known…something. Why else would they have flocked toward the base?”
“What do you mean?”
“If the civilians knew the Kafarans were orbiting the planet, they would’ve gone to the base for shelter. It was the most fortified place on the planet.”
She looked at him dubiously. “But that assumes the people knew they were about to be attacked, and all the official reports—”
“—say the attack was a complete and total surprise to them,” Shawn finished. “The civilians purportedly never had a chance to get to shelter.”
“No chance…no…no chance.” Vross blathered.
Shawn turned his attention back to the howling wreck of a man. “What are you babbling about? What do you mean ‘no chance,’ Vross?”
“Delta…D…Delta. At Delta.”
“What about it?”
“It was there…at Delta. It was always there.”
The way he said it gave both Shawn and Melissa pause. “What was there, Cal?” Melissa asked sternly. “What was there at Delta Base?”
In a moment of clarity, Vross stopped shaking and turned his near-pupil-less eyes to Melissa. It was an expression she hoped she’d never see again, and it chilled her to her very core. His eyes were wild, and sweat poured off his forehead. “The…the beginning…of the e
nd.”
“He’s just spouting gibberish at this point,” Shawn said sideways to Melissa. “We all know the end of the war started at Delta.”
Vross could only laugh. “You don’t know anything, Captain. Neither of you do. If you go there, you won’t come back. No one ever has.”
Shawn leaned in closer to Vross’ face than Melissa would have been comfortable with. “You did.”
“No, Captain. Not…all of me did. I left a part of myself there; everyone who goes there leaves a part of themselves there. That’s why most never come back. If you go—if you stay longer than only a few hours—you’ll change. If you do come back, you won’t be…the same.”
“What’s he talking about?” Shawn asked Melissa. “What does he mean by ‘everyone’?”
She shook her head slightly in confusion. “I don’t know. No one has reportedly ever gotten close enough to Second Earth to get readings about the surface. Before Intelligence stumbled onto this little man, the majority of the reports were centered on atmospheric readings, and they stated that the air was entirely unbreathable, poisonous to all life forms.”
Shawn let out a sigh, then turned back to Vross. “Shows how much the OSI knows. Look at this guy. He might be half-crazy, but he made it there and back.”
Melissa gave no sign of whether or not she could agree with Shawn’s statement.
“What else do you need from him?” Shawn said, slightly lessening the pressure on Cal Vross’ chest.
She withdrew a small scanner from her pouch and waved it over Vross’ body from head to toe, storing the information for later retrieval. “He’s given us everything we need. I just…had to be sure.”
Something in her tone told Shawn that although Vross had provided her what she’d wanted, it hadn’t sat well with her at all. “About the planet?”
“Yeah,” she replied with a slow nod. “What should we do with him?”
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