by Rick Partlow
“There is no problem, McKay.” Deng smiled—not a pleasant sight, speaking of incredibly ugly. “You will take your little Senator’s daughter from this place, and my troops will disperse this crowd of troublemakers.”
“These people aren’t causing any trouble, Captain,” Valerie’s voice came from behind McKay. “They have every right to be here.” Jason just stared at her in disbelief as she and Glen Mulrooney paced through the crowd into the middle of the gathering of officers. Glancing around, he saw Tanaka close behind her, and considered demanding why the bodyguard hadn’t kept her inside. Deciding that recriminations could wait, he turned back to the brewing confrontation between Val and Captain Deng.
“You have no authority here.” The Guard Captain didn’t try to hide her sneer of disdain as she regarded O’Keefe. “All your ridiculous prating can do is cause trouble for those of us who are forced to live here after you leave.”
“You have orders from the Senate to cooperate with me,” Val reminded her.
“And I have cooperated. You had your little speech, now I will make sure it did no damage.” She turned to her XO, a broad-shouldered Filipino in full armor. “Munos, have the drivers begin launching the gas gren…” She wasn’t able to finish the sentence because of the sudden appearance of a gun barrel in her mouth. Her eyes widened as she looked past the pistol, and the arm that held it, to the stony face of Jason McKay.
“No disrespect intended, Captain,” he spoke quietly, trying to keep the anger and desperation out of his voice, trying to sound calm. “But I believe my position as senior Intelligence officer onplanet gives me authority over all planetary troops and constabulary. So I’m going to give you a direct order to put your people back into their vehicles and vacate the area.”
“McKay, you can’t…” Deng began to protest, her voice comically distorted by the gun barrel.
“If you disobey this direct order,” he continued, ignoring her. “I will have no choice but to charge you with insubordination, try you and execute you. Should take… oh, about three seconds, more or less.”
“Captain,” Lieutenant Munos said uncertainly, aiming his rifle at McKay.
“First one that moves,” Shannon warned, pulling out her compact pistol and leveling it at Munos, “gets a bullet through the faceplate. Vinnie! Jock! Tom!” She shouted. “Get over here now!”
The three enlisted men rushed forward, putting themselves and their heavy weapons between their officers and the CeeGee troopers. Vinnie obviously disliked CeeGees—he looked as if he would relish putting a few grenades into the bunch of them. Jock was nearly spastic, quivering with adrenaline and anticipation. Tom wore a confident smugness, sure of his invulnerability.
“You’re being foolish, Lieutenant,” Deng said, her voice almost a whisper—but McKay could see the doubt in her eyes. “My troops will cut your people down in a heartbeat.”
“That’ll be one heartbeat more than you live,” Jason declared flatly. “I don’t know if you’ve heard of me, Captain, but I’m well-known for my bad relationship with Colonial Guard officers. I’ve already punched out one CeeGee Captain, but Momma told me never to hit a woman. So I’ll just have to blow your Goddamned head off.”
Captain Deng stared at him, her considerable pride and self-importance struggling with an increasing conviction that the young officer would do exactly what he was promising, despite the probable consequences. In the end, it was an easy victory for self-preservation.
“Lieutenant Munos,” she said quietly, “get the troops back in the APC’s.”
“But Captain,” the man protested, rifle still trained on McKay.
“Do it now, Munos,” she growled, “or, God help me, I’ll shoot you myself.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The XO relented reluctantly, lowering his weapon with a sigh. “Platoon leaders!” He ordered, turning back toward the troops. “Back in the vehicles now! We’re going back to the armory. On the double!”
Slowly and carefully, Jason pulled the muzzle of his pistol back from Deng’s face, but still kept it trained on her from hip level.
“Don’t think this is over.” She shook her head, rage burning behind her dark eyes. “No Intelligence spook is going to come in here and push my command around and get away clean. Your superiors will hear about this.”
“I expect so,” Jason agreed. “Make sure you get their names right, though. There’s only two of them, so it should be easy to remember: Kenneth Mellanby and Gregory Jameson.” He smiled wryly, hoping it hid the way his gut was twisting. “Say hi to ’em for me.”
The Captain opened her mouth, but bit back her reply, choosing instead to turn on her heel and stride purposefully back to one of the armored vehicles. McKay felt a bit light-headed and fought to keep from swaying as the APC’s started up and pulled away from the warehouse, heading out across the rocky plain back toward Kennedy. Behind him, he could hear the crowd, which he’d shut out for the last few minutes, cheering and yelling insults at the retreating CeeGees.
“Holy shit,” he heard himself sigh, almost unconsciously, as he reholstered his handgun.
“Colonel Mellanby was right,” Shannon Stark mused, running a hand through her hair. “This assignment won’t be boring.”
Vinnie stepped over to Jock and the pair shared a subdued high five. McKay looked back at Valerie O’Keefe, who was staring at him, wide-eyed.
“Ms. O’Keefe,” Jason told her, surprising himself with the coldness of his tone, “I remember asking you to stay inside the building. If you’d like to stay alive long enough to finish this little tour, maybe you’d better think about dropping the antimilitary hostility and listening to me. As for you, Mr. Mulrooney”—he turned on the man, who looked as if he were about to say something in Val’s defense—“you feel free to do whatever the hell you want, because I really don’t give a good Goddamn whether you eat a bullet or not.” Before the man could respond, Jason turned to Vinnie. “Sergeant, get these people in the flitter right now. I want to be out of here in five minutes.”
Without another word, Jason stalked away from the group and found a shadowy corner of the warehouse to lean against. Closing his eyes, he fought to control his breath—he felt as if he were on the verge of hyperventilating and his legs were very, very weak. He forced himself to put the situation into a coherent thought: he had put a gun in the face of a Colonial Guard Captain and threatened to kill her, in the process taking the risk of having two full platoons of armored CeeGees blow him and his whole command into little bits. Yeah, that’s what he had done all right.
“Jason.” He heard a voice and looked up to see Shannon approaching.
“Yeah?” he asked, his voice cracking slightly.
“I’ve never heard of that regulation about the senior intelligence officer having authority over CeeGee personnel,” she told him, green eyes glinting softly in the lights of the flitter.
Jason found himself chuckling as he straightened and headed for the open door of the aircraft.
“That’s because,” he said, not looking back, “I made it up.”
Chapter Five
“People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.”
—Eric Hoffer
“Damned macho-bullshit, testosterone-junkie military punk,” Val could hear Glen grumbling as he unpacked his clothes from the suitcase on the bed into the room’s closet. They’d been back at the governor’s mansion for over an hour, and he hadn’t ceased to bitch about the actions of Colonel Deng and Lieutenant McKay the whole time.
Val sighed softly, leaning out of the third-floor room’s open window and looking up at the stars. She remembered how breathtaking it had been the first time she’d seen the stars from an alien star system, how it had carried such incredible possibilities with it. Perhaps, she had thought, the new perspective could bring out a new way of thinking, even aid in the evolution of the human species. She realized now how naive she had been. Simply opening up a new frontier hadn’t been enough. T
he explorers of the Twenty-third Century were just as exploitative and greedy as those of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth.
The only way to change things was to change the laws; the attitudes would follow, as they had with civil rights in the 1950’s and 60’s. The military would have to be disbanded, or at least cut back, and forced emigration would have to stop. The exiles who wished to return to Earth should be allowed to, and those who wanted to stay should be given adequate supplies and funding to live with some kind of dignity. Corporate influence over colonial policies would have to end, as would the awarding of huge tracts of fertile land to friends of important politicians and corporate leaders. Things had to change.
And among the things that might have to change, she reflected, glancing back at her fiancé, who was still grumbling to himself, was her relationship with Glen. Ever since they had left on this tour, he had become insufferably protective and obnoxious. As distasteful as she found Lieutenant McKay and his militaristic attitudes, she appreciated what he had done in protecting the farmers against the atrocities of the Colonial Guard. Oh, she was sure he did it to protect her as a function of his duty, but it had been the right thing to do, nonetheless. Yet all Glen could do was bitch and moan about the Intelligence officer’s actions, as he had the whole time. She understood his frustration, but he was doing nothing but making things worse. And if he couldn’t keep his cool when confronted by situations as basic as this, how would he react to the kind of psychological warfare that could be waged by Greg Jameson?
Of course she still had feelings for him, but choosing a lifetime companion wasn’t entirely an emotional decision. She had things she wanted to accomplish in her life, and they could only be achieved by high political office. She would need a husband who could retain his composure under pressure, and it was not at all clear that Glen was that man.
She was a bit startled when she felt Glen nuzzle against her neck—she’d been so lost in thought, she hadn’t noticed when his tirade had ended.
“What are you so caught up in, honey?” he asked her, kissing her ear affectionately.
She considered telling him, but a look at the trust and dependency in his eyes robbed her of the will. There would be time for that later.
“Just the stars,” she lied, stroking his hair gently. “Just the stars.”
* * *
Jason hesitated in front of the door, suddenly feeling very foolish. He was an adult and an officer—he shouldn’t have to beg some whacked-out wannabe ninja to cooperate with him. But, he sighed softly to himself, since he was an adult and an officer, he would do whatever he had to do to accomplish his mission. He knocked firmly on the door.
“Yes.” He heard Tanaka’s voice carry through the native wood.
“It’s Lieutenant McKay,” he said. “I need to talk to you.”
“Come in.”
He turned the anachronistic doorknob, feeling the cool tingle of its polished brass in his hand as the solid, hand-made door swung inward with a squeak of hinges. From the dim light of the chemical ghostlights at the baseboards of the room, he could see Tanaka sitting cross-legged in the center of the floor, staring straight ahead, his fingers intertwined in a complex mesh. Pushing the door shut behind him, Jason suppressed a shudder. Tanaka’s face was wreathed in shadows while the rest of his form was lost in the darkness of his loose, black clothing. Burning red cinders floated where his eyes would be, from the reflection of the dim ghostlights off his retinas; and McKay almost felt as if he were stepping into some otherworld, with Tanaka as its resident demon.
“I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” Jason stepped forward, feeling a bit awkward.
“Nothing that can’t wait.” The bodyguard rose to his feet lithely and economically, not a movement wasted. Jason realized then, for the first time, just how dangerous this man looked. Before, he had regarded him as just another hired merc out of the Eastbloc, but the way he moved spoke volumes as to the extent of his training.
“Mr. Tanaka,” McKay began, “I think we’ve got a couple problems that we need to work out.” He took a deep breath before continuing. “Look, I know you’ve been guarding Ms. O’Keefe for a long time, and I appreciate that, but I think we need to reach some kind of accommodation. It won’t do either of us any good to keep bumping heads in potentially hazardous situations.”
“I see no problem,” the bodyguard replied, his face unreadable in the shifting shadows. “You and your people will stay out of my way.”
“Uh-huh.” McKay chuckled humorlessly, putting his hands on his hips in an effort to avoid making fists with them. He’d lost his temper once tonight already, and it just wouldn’t do to get into a confrontation with a man he’d have to work closely with for the next year. “That’s all well and good to say, but in a situation like this evening, your allowing her to leave the building could have gotten her killed.”
“When armored personnel carriers come to call,” Tanaka declared, smiling thinly, “the worst possible place to be is inside their probable target.”
“That may be,” the Lieutenant said, trying to work the tension out of his neck. “And you may have insights in the future that will help us both take care of Ms. O’Keefe. That’s why I feel we have to work together.”
“Lieutenant McKay,” the Japanese man interrupted, “I have had much experience with soldiers, of one government or another. Some of them were honorable men, some were not. But all had overriding loyalties to a General or a Chairman or a President—or merely to a career.” He seemed to look McKay up and down without moving his eyes a millimeter. “From what I have seen, you are not without courage, but I cannot trust you.” The bodyguard sniffed almost imperceptibly, a dismissive gesture that was the most expressive thing the man had done since Jason had stepped into the room. “The point is moot. I am not under your command, and I will continue to act as I see fit to safeguard Ms. O’Keefe’s life. Your assignment, whatever it may be, is your own concern.”
“All right.” Jason took a deep breath, his shoulders squaring as the fire that had been kindling in his gut for the last five minutes flared behind his eyes. “I tried to be pleasant about this, but I haven’t yet found one of you damned civilians who wanted to listen to any kind of reason, so I’m going to be blunt.” He stabbed a finger at the bodyguard. “You can go ahead and be as stubborn as you want to be about all this, and you can ignore me as much as you want. But when the time comes that you get in my way, or obstruct any decision that I consider vital to ensuring Ms. O’Keefe’s safety or the safety of my team, I’m not going to argue with you, and I’m not going to bother trying to arrest you. I’m just going to have someone put a bullet in you, and worry about the consequences later. And that’s something you can trust.”
Jason stormed out the door without another word, slamming it behind him with a negligent shove, and stalked his way down the darkened hallway, cursing as he went. He started in English, worked his way through Spanish and French, and was well on his way into German by the time he found himself in the large, extravagantly-decorated study at the other end of the wing. The reading lamp over one of the couches was lit, and beneath it, he noticed too late as he entered in mid-invective, Shannon Stark sat reading an old-style, jacketed book. She looked up at his entrance, eyebrow raising.
“Problem?” she asked him, setting the volume down beside her.
“Naw,” he chuckled. “Just rehearsing for my court-martial. What’s keeping you up at this hour?”
“Well, we may not think much of His Honor, the Governor’s taste in architecture,” she explained, “but he has a hell of a library.” She ran an appreciative hand over the spine of the lavishly-decorated book she’d been reading. “This is a Hemingway first edition, and there’re dozens of others in here.” She stood, motioning back at the shelves behind her. “All the old classics, most of them first editions, some even signed, for God’s sake. It must have cost a small fortune to have them imported here from Earth.”
Jason stepped over to
the couch, picking up the book.
“I used to love reading when I was a kid,” he told her. “I’d sit out at the docks with a hardcopy of Hemingway or Heinlein and lose myself for hours.” He laughed softly, eyes seeing something long ago and far away. “Dad thought I was nuts, but Mom told him to leave me alone—Mom was always the old-fashioned one.”
Shannon moved closer to him, putting a hand on the book he still held, her fingers brushing against his. She wore khaki shorts and a matching top, unbuttoned over a pale t-shirt; and he was suddenly acutely aware of the warmth that radiated off the bare skin of her legs and neck, and of the faint but unmistakable sweet scent of her perfume.
“I enjoy the old poetry the most,” she told him, green eyes locked on his like sighting lasers, the expression on her face displaying an intent totally separate from her words. “Like Lord Byron:
’Away with your fictions of flimsy romance,
Those tissues of falsehood which folly has wove!
Give me the mild beam of the soul-breathing glance,
Or the rapture which dwells on the first kiss of love.’”
She had brought her face closer to his with each word; and by the finish, her lips were inches from his, only the book separating them. For some reason, Jason found himself having difficulty putting together a coherent thought; his chest felt tight and his head was light. There had to be some reason he shouldn’t be doing this, he thought as he leaned forward almost imperceptibly to allow their lips to meet, but he couldn’t for the life of him think of one right now.
* * *
“I don’t like this,” Jason heard Vinnie mutter, half to himself, half to Jock. McKay had to agree that there was a lot not to like.
The three squat hemispheres of buildfoam that were the Mendoza’s farmhouse jutted out of the rocky, arid wastes that bordered the northern deserts, the white surfaces glaring harshly in the midday sun. The flitter that had delivered them there crouched buglike a good fifty meters from the buildings, the governor’s pilot and a security guard lounging lazily in the shade of its open boarding hatch, while Valerie O’Keefe’s party and McKay’s team slowly approached the farmhouse.