by T J Mott
He turned, pointing his headlamp at the opening torn into the cafeteria’s exterior wall. “I drove a forklift through the walls.”
“That’s quick thinking.”
He ignored the compliment, remembering how the slaves had acted. “It almost didn’t work. The slaves were afraid to leave. Even though the building was burning down around them.” He reflected on all the times he’d watched the soldiers gun down slaves, and knew they’d been afraid of that even while fleeing a burning building.
“They live in constant fear, Chad. But you got them out safely. What you did here was amazing.” Her tone seemed a bit awestruck now.
“Your crew was totally unprepared for this, Ria. I can tell you’re a well-oiled machine when it comes to medical work, but you guys just aren’t trained for responding to disasters like this.”
Her headlamp bobbed up and down slowly as she nodded. “I know. But we do what we have to. Thank you for taking charge.”
There was a long, awkward silence. The two faced each other, unable to see past each other’s headlamp, and then she suddenly turned around and walked back towards the inner parts of the factory. “Let’s finish what we came for.”
They followed the distant sounds of voices and the flashes of headlamps through the wreckage, returning to the rest of their crew. “We’ve found what we need,” said Chet.
“Good.” Ria turned to face Thad again. “Chad, can you back the truck up to the loading dock?” He nodded. “Thanks.”
He walked quickly towards the docks, wondering what Chet had meant, and then stripped off his jacket. It was chilly outside, but the jacket was too much inside, the building’s wreckage blocking much of the wind and retaining some of the fire’s heat. He tossed it into the truck’s cab and then settled into the driver seat, wincing as the cloth seat rubbed against his burned back. A few moments later he had it expertly backed up to the dock, and he returned inside to find the others grunting as they rolled barrels of something across the floor. He frowned behind his filter mask. I thought we were just inventorying.
He saw Ria and Jason working together to roll a barrel. “Here, let me get that,” he said, motioning Ria away. He was twice her size.
“Thanks.”
He and Jason gave the heavy barrel a push to get it moving again, and Thad felt something sloshing around inside it. After a few revolutions, he stepped on something slippery and fell onto his back. Landing with an oof, he felt something cold and wet begin to soak into the back of his shirt.
“Hey!” said Jason. “This one’s leaking!” The kid’s headlamp turned down at Thaddeus and he offered a hand. “You all right?”
“Yeah, just slipped. I’m fine.” Thad took his hand and let the young man pull him back up to his feet.
“Leave that one and find another,” ordered Ria. A few minutes later, Thad and Jason were loading a similar barrel into the back of the truck. As they set it upright next to one other barrel and several small plastic crates, he took a moment to read some of the labels. He frowned. Why would a medical clinic be taking sodium hydroxide and powdered aluminum from a destroyed building? Something here didn’t quite make sense.
Switching his headlamp off, Thad joined the others in the cab of the truck. Ria started its engine and began driving them back to the camp as a brand-new set of questions began to form in his mind.
***
They quickly returned to the camp and transferred the materials into the clinic’s supply trailers. Thad’s back stung quite a bit during the return trip, and he’d leaned forward to avoid touching the seat back during the return trip. Damn, I must have scraped open some of my burn blisters in that fall. And they were just starting to heal a bit.
He pulled down the door on the supply trailer and winced as it stretched out the flesh in his back. “Are you okay?” Ria asked, seeing his obvious discomfort.
He nodded in dismissal. “Just fell and landed on my burns back there.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. I stepped in something slippery and went down. Reopened some wounds on my back, I guess.”
“Something slippery?” Her face grew tight with worry. “From the leaky barrel?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“You didn’t get any on you, did you?”
He nodded again. “I landed in it, it was all over my back.”
“Take your shirt off.” Grabbing him by the hand, she pulled him towards one of the nearby examination tables still set up outside by the supply trailers.
“What?”
“Take your shirt off!” she repeated more forcefully. Frowning, he did so as she switched on a nearby portable light, took supplies from a cabinet, and put on gloves. She grabbed a sprayer wand from the nearby sink. “Sit down where I can reach you.” He sat on the edge of the table, and then she began rinsing down his back. The water was startlingly cold and a sudden breeze made him shiver. “I wish we had a chemical shower.”
“What, is it acid or something?”
“Sort of. It was lye. It’ll dissolve your skin if it’s there long enough.”
Thad laughed nervously. “Lovely.”
“You know, I’d expect a shuttle mechanic to know the dangers of lye exposure,” she said scoldingly. “Even I know it’s used as a strong degreaser in that line of work.”
“I guess I missed that day of training,” he said.
She paused. The stream of water on his back disappeared. A moment later, his surroundings brightened slightly as another light turned on somewhere behind him. A second later, he heard a soft gasp. “Is it that bad?” he asked. “It only stings a little.”
“No, we got to it in time. You’ll be fine. It’s just…those scars.”
Oh. Yeah. Those. He grimaced.
The spray of cold water started up again, running down his back and beginning to soak into his pants. He shivered as the breeze blew again. “Who did you fight for?” she asked softly. He didn’t say anything. “Chad, I know you were a soldier. These scars prove it.” Suddenly, the water stopped again and he felt her gloved fingers touch his back, tracing out a small, tight circle above his left shoulder blade. “You’ve been shot. This is a slug wound.” Her touch lingered there for a long moment, and then slid down his back, making a larger circle near his right kidney. “This. Wow. Nasty laser wound.” She came around his side, stopping in front of him with her eyes fixated on his mechanical arm. “Your hand, that had to be from a combat injury, too.” And then her gaze stopped on his stomach. Her green eyes slowly moved from his right to left as she looked at the long, horizontal strip of hairless, melted flesh that scarred him there. “And there’s another laser burn. From a very high-powered laser weapon.” She reached out a hand as if to touch it, too, but then pulled it back. “A graze, else it would have cut you in half.” She looked up into his face. Her mouth was slightly open and her brow was a bit furrowed. She looked both worried, and maybe a little awed.
Thad smiled at her awkwardly. “Is my back safe from melting now?” he asked.
“What?” He pointed at the spray wand she was still holding. “Oh…sorry.” She stepped around him and returned to spraying down his back. “We can’t have any of that lye stay behind. Once I’m done here, I want you to get in the shower and run water down your back for at least fifteen more minutes.” He nodded silently. The water stopped, and then he felt a dry towel pat against his back, softly so it wouldn’t agitate his burns.
“You make more sense to me now. The way you stick by yourself, you don’t talk much, don’t seem to want to make friends. I see the same thing in the veterans I know, the few who fought with the rebels and survived. A lot of them are different, and distant now. Just like you.”
She carefully wiped his back with the towel again. “Looks like you’ll have some minor chemical burns on top of the other burns you got the other day. Try to stop hurting yourself until all this heals.” Behind him, he heard Ria peel her gloves off. “My husband died in the war,” sh
e said, sounding sad and solemn. “But when I see those who survived and how they changed, sometimes I think he was the lucky one.”
He stood, cringing as the cold water that had pooled up in the seat of his pants drained down his legs. Taking a step away from the examination table, he turned to face her, keeping his voice low so it wouldn’t carry through the camp. “Ria, I do know what happens when you mix sodium hydroxide and aluminum powder.” She froze in place and stared into his face, suddenly looking frightened and conflicted. “Ria, what’s going on here?”
She continued to stare at him, her lower lip quivering slightly. “Chad, please tell me I can trust you. Because if I can’t…” She paused, and he could see fear in her eyes.
He nodded, a slight, nearly imperceptible bob of his head.
She stepped even closer to him, so close now he found it uncomfortable, and craned her neck up to match his gaze. Her voice was still a whisper. “Chad…I don’t know if…if I should say this or not.” She paused, and in the dark, her green eyes flickered back and forth nervously. “We were waiting to see how you turn out before bringing you in, but…” She looked away, continuing to speak without making eye contact. “There’s more to the Foundation than what you’ve seen. We’re going to fight back. We’re going to free Ailon.”
He frowned, just slightly, probably not even enough for her to see. “I came here to get away from that sort of thing,” he admitted.
She looked down, staring at his abdomen. This time she did touch him, letting her fingertips trace very lightly across the scarred flesh across his stomach. “But you’re clearly either good at it, or very lucky.”
He snorted. Lucky. Right. I know people who have been in this business far longer than me and don’t have a single scratch from it. His frown deepened. And there are so many who never made it back. Like the crew of the Caracal.
Ria pulled her hand away, slowly, and looked back up into his eyes. “I’m really not sure what to think,” he told her. “But I won’t turn you in, or try to stop you, or anything like that.”
“We could really use you.” Her tone changed. Now it was a plead. “We need real soldiers. With experience. Most of the good ones didn’t survive the war.”
He sighed. “I don’t know,” he said. “Give me some time to think it over.”
“Okay,” she whispered. And suddenly she stepped forward, closing the last few centimeters between them, and hugged him. It took him completely by surprise and he didn’t reciprocate. Her embrace lasted for a few seconds and then she pulled away. “Get yourself cleaned up,” she said very softly. “Get in the shower and run water down your back for another fifteen minutes.”
He nodded. He could see fear, worry, and uncertainty on her face. But, he thought he could see also admiration in the way her brilliant green eyes looked up at him.
And for reasons he couldn’t quite form into coherent thoughts, that frightened him.
Chapter 11
Fletcher Pennell completed his third sweep of the house. Once again, he found no listening devices, recorders, or transmitters. “We’re clean,” he said.
“It’s about time,” retorted Iva as she watched him shut down and put away his handheld scanning tools. “You’re so paranoid. Everyone is getting impatient.” The short, trim, and regal-looking brunette possessed a terrifying intellect and intuition, but she could sometimes be impatient, and that trait often clashed with Fletcher’s own highly-methodical nature whenever she thought he was being too obsessive.
“Impatience is what gets agents killed,” he answered calmly. Paranoia was a valuable asset in his line of work, and one could never be too cautious.
“It’s Calco,” she said sharply, sounding dismissive and irritated. “And this is the cleanest ring we’ve ever run. I’d dare call this assignment cushy. We could march into the local authorities and declare ourselves to be foreign spies, and they’d just roll their eyes and send us home.”
Momentarily frowning, he gave her a quick kiss on the cheek, and then the two of them walked into the dining room together, holding hands.
The home they’d shared together for the past year was a large, nice house located in an upper-class part of Osgood, a mid-sized city on the Imperial world of Calco III. It was a quiet, low-crime area that made it easy for them to avoid notice during their operation. And the house was very nice, Fletch reflected, owing to Iva’s skills as a housewife. He was going to miss it.
Their dining room was extensively decorated. A long, highly-polished wooden table occupied the center of the room. The middle of the tabletop was made of a fused crystal inset, stronger than any common glass. The room was intimately lit by a pair of large gas-burning candelabras which hung from the ceiling above each end of the table. Dark paneling lined the walls, made from local hardwoods, much of it hidden behind china cabinets and canvas paintings in the style of local artwork. It all worked well towards building the illusion that they were a rich couple, minor Imperial aristocrats with no children who were rapidly approaching middle-age and enjoying a lavish lifestyle on a quiet Imperial world with no concerns at all in life.
But compared to the spotless, high-class decor of the dining room, many of its occupants looked distinctly out-of-place. Four scruffy-looking young men in mismatched clothes looked like they often spent nights sleeping under park benches and didn’t quite understand the concept of shaving. But they had a number of connections among the city’s criminal underworld, including the black market and corrupt police.
Three more young men looked excited, with a bright alertness in their eyes and the annoying habit of constantly examining their surroundings, as if expecting something to happen. They wore dark, formfitting clothes, their pockets packed with knives and handheld computer gear, trying to dress the part of elite espionage agents but instead looking like stunt doubles from a cheesy spy holo. These men were computer and data experts, hackers and criminals belonging to some kind of self-proclaimed “cyber militia” that called itself Angel. Angel seemed to have no particular ideology, and as best as Fletcher and his sources could tell, they pursued anarchy on Calco merely for amusements’ sake.
But the final three men looked fairly ordinary, mostly clean-cut men dressed in slacks and collared shirts. White-collar office workers, with a variety of connections, administrative skills, and mundane experience that still proved quite useful.
Releasing Iva’s hand, Fletch stepped up to the head of the table. He stopped behind the chair, resting his hands on its back instead of sitting down, and visually scanned the rag-tag group. Iva stood beside him with her arm around his waist.
“I received final orders from my employer,” he stated. “It’s time to finish the job and clean up.” The Angel members clapped their hands together and smiled broadly in excitement. The criminals’ reaction was similar, but more muted. One of the office drones, a man named Nic, suddenly looked even nervous than normal, which Fletch could understand since he was their traitor. The final part of their plan involved destroying property belonging to his own employer.
“Your employer is happy with the data we sent them?” Nic asked.
Fletch nodded at him. “Very happy,” he stated. “They have everything they need from us here. Now it’s time to shut it all down.”
He smiled inwardly as he considered all the ways they’d misdirected the group. Academy Engineering had a small hyperspace R&D division here. He and Iva had been monitoring the facility for a year now, building up a network of local contacts to help with their assignment. Each group was here for different reasons. The Angels craved excitement, and cracking the facility’s networks stroked their innate needs to solve electronic puzzles. The criminal group wanted prestige among their peers in the local underworld. And the office workers were typical family men, drowning in debt and desperately looking for a payout.
Nic, the “traitor”, actually worked at the local Academy Engineering office, though he mostly dealt with low-level office work and was quite far removed from any of
the actual engineering work there. But now, he believed the experimental hyperdrive division was a facade, and that they were really designing antimatter weapons that would make the mostly-ignored Calco—and the Imperial territory it was the capital world of—a military target if discovered. He also believed that Fletcher would get him a higher-paying job at a competing corporation elsewhere in the Empire. Nic had a wild imagination and Fletch often allowed him to fill in his own blanks.
Though he’d never mentioned who his supposed employer was, all of them believed he was conducting industrial espionage and sabotage work for one of Academy’s rivals. None of them knew his true mission, and even Nic was unaware of the importance of the data he’d helped Fletcher steal. And nobody in the group suspected that Fletcher and Iva were field agents for a different group entirely, one that mostly operated well outside the Empire’s borders.
Though they were both lifelong Imperial citizens, they were also both Commanders in Gray Fleet, the intelligence and covert operations division of Thaddeus Marcell’s mercenary Organization. The two were stationed on Calco III to learn more about the R&D division, and it had been an extremely successful mission. They’d been the ones to discover the new cryogenic hyperdrive, even arranging for the theft of one of the working prototypes which they’d finally delivered to Commodore Cooper months ago.
And now the final step of their operation was to shut down Academy’s progress on the new hyperdrive before disappearing from Calco. On one level, Fletcher felt especially sorry for Nic. Fletcher had paid the entire group quite well during their prior operations, but Nic was about to destroy his own workplace—although he didn’t realize to what extent yet. And none of them would receive their final payouts. After all, Fletcher and Iva were planning to die at the end of the operation.