Rick Partlow

HONOR BOUND

“The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.”

—R. Buckminster Fuller

To my family: Beth, Danny and Erin, for encouraging me to keep writing.

To my friends Pete and Tim for being sounding boards for my ideas.

Chapter One

Jason McKay adjusted his grip on the pistol, the tacky surface of his gloves holding it secure despite the sweat that soaked his palms beneath that material. The interior of the old storehouse was like a darkened broiler and his battle utilities were soaked beneath his body armor, rivulets of perspiration running down his face as he crouched behind the concrete solidity of a support pillar. This had gone on too long… the heads-up readout in his helmet was counting up past fifteen minutes since he’d entered the building and there was still at least one target inside, armed with an assault rifle. He was running out of time.

He winked his right eye and the shadowed recesses of the warehouse interior brightened into a two-dimensional, green-tinted maze of stacked cargo containers, each of the square, plastic boxes labeled with some arcane numeric designation next to their computer code. None of them showed anything on thermal and he saw no heat sources visible anywhere other than a few glowing power outlets. But he knew they were here… and they knew he couldn’t wait forever.

Drawing in a deep breath, McKay threw himself from behind the support column and rolled forward across the aisle as a burst of automatic fire cratered the pillar in a spray of concrete, then drilled into the floor inches behind him. He took cover behind a line of cargo boxes, flinching as the rifle fire tore into them just above his head. But now he knew where the gunman was: the fire had come from above, from the landing of the stairs up to the loader control room.

Getting to the stairs would mean crossing twenty meters of open ground… and that would be suicide. McKay glanced above him, then holstered his handgun and leaped upwards to grab the next shelf of cargo containers. Grunting with the effort of lifting his own eighty kilos plus another ten of body armor, he pulled himself hand over hand to the top shelf, then levered himself onto the topmost cargo container. Scrambling forward onto his belly, he drew his pistol from its drop holster and high-crawled down the line of boxes, their hard, ridged surfaces clunking awkwardly against his leg armor and elbow pads.

Now he could see a thermal source… human-shaped, through the window of the control room, part of the elbow sticking out the doorway as it aimed the rifle downward, waiting for McKay to show himself again. McKay cursed silently… he had no good shot from this angle. The doorframe shielded the shooter’s torso and head and he wasn’t sure his handgun rounds could penetrate the wall material. He looked around him, then felt at his belt, fishing a spare magazine from the pouch at his waist. Rising up on his right elbow and right knee, he threw the magazine as hard as he could across the room to the right. It clattered noisily against the far wall and he was already on his feet as the gunman turned the barrel of his rifle and his attention to that direction. McKay jumped from one cargo crate to the next with broad strides until he reached the end of the row, only three meters from the suspended claws of the cargo loader arm hanging from the ceiling.

Gritting his teeth, McKay threw himself across the gap, catching the upper mandibles of the loader arm with his left hand, while his feet found purchase on the lower pair, his knees flexing to absorb the shock. The Gomer with the rifle heard the metallic clank as the loader arm wobbled under his weight and he swung the short-barreled bullpup weapon around, but McKay was still moving, leaping off the loader onto the stairway landing, firing his outstretched handgun in midair.

The targeting reticle in his helmet HUD was connected to the sight of his pistol, but there was no time to focus on it; instead, McKay aimed by instinct, the large-caliber auto bucking in his hand as the floor of the landing swiftly came up to meet him. McKay took the landing in a shoulder roll, coming to his feet over the falling body of the gunman and pumping two more rounds into him before he fell into a crouch in the doorway, scanning for more targets. Before he could turn the whole 360 degrees, a blast of gunfire sounded from behind him and he spun around, throwing himself to the floor.

He saw a rifleman in the mottled grey armor and dark-visored helmet of the enemy slumped to the ground, his carbine clattering on the hard floor. Behind him stood a slim, curved figure in the darker fatigues and armor that he shared, a handgun similar to his own held outstretched in a classic tactical stance. It was obvious that both the shooter and the victim had come in on the other side of the control room through a now-open door that led to the outside, a moonlit sky barely visible through it.

“Thanks,” McKay said, breathing heavily as the adrenaline began to flow out of him. Before the word was out of his mouth, the counter in his HUD ran out and an alarm horn went off above them…

“Simulation ended, time has expired,” a voice sounded through his helmet speakers. “Colonel McKay and Major Stark have successfully completed Scenario Seven. Congratulations, sir, ma’am.”

The lights of the room came up and McKay sighed with relief as the climate control kicked in, bringing the temperature and humidity down. He pulled off his helmet and the illusions it had sustained abruptly ended: the “night sky” outside the open door had changed into a blank wall in the middle distance, the dilapidated look of the “warehouse” disappeared along with the bullet-holes in the walls and cargo containers, and the wounds on the downed enemies—and the pools of blood around them—faded away even as the two men rose to their feet, laughing.

“Damn, Colonel,” the one he had shot said, chuckling ruefully. “That was an awesome move… but you could have broken your neck!” He pulled off his helmet, revealing a sharp-angled, freckled face and a scalp-short brown buzz cut.

“You fight how you train and you train how you fight, Vinnie,” Colonel McKay reminded him, unfastening his body armor and letting it drop to the floor. Aside from cushioning you from impacts, it had the detrimental effect of immobilizing you if you were shot in the simulation. A small swarm of enlisted personnel came out from behind previously-invisible doors to collect the armor and the special simulator weapons.

“Is that why I got the drop on you, sir?” the other man cracked in a strong Australian accent, running a hand over his sweat-matted blond hair as he rose to his full meter-nine height.

“I wasn’t worried about you, Jock,” McKay said, smiling. “I knew she had my back.”

She was a tall, athletic woman, with shoulder-length golden-red hair, green eyes and a strong-chinned, high-cheekboned face that still took his breath away after six years. She smirked as she tossed her armor on the floor next to McKay’s.

“Yeah,” she said with just a hint of her native Irish accent. “We planned it that way… but you’ll note that my part of the plan didn’t involve jumping off any freight-loaders, Jason.”

“Shannon, I know better than anyone that no plan survives contact with the enemy.” McKay cocked an eyebrow. “Even when the enemy is our friends.” He slapped Vinnie on the shoulder. “Hell, especially when it’s these guys. They still get paid to do this stuff… you and I spend most of our time in meetings or buried in scout reports. Thanks,” he nodded to a Technician Second Class as the young man handed them water bottles. He downed about half the bottle, and then poured the rest over his head, sighing deeply.

“Well, even though you’re the youngest full-bird colonel in Republic military history,” Shannon reminded him between gulps from her own water bottle, “you’re still a desk jockey running the Intelligence Service… that generally doesn’t involve much field work.”

“Yeah,” he agreed with a dissatisfied scowl. “This wasn’t quite what I envisioned when Colonel Mellanby transferred me out of the Marines back when.”

“Sir,” one of the technicians, a Lieutenant, approached him, looking a bit hesitant. “I hate to rush you, but we do have three more training groups coming through this afternoon…”

“Yeah, I get the hint, son,” he nodded. Son… hell, he’s only about seven or eight years younger than me. “We’ll do our jawing elsewhere.”

The other three followed McKay out the main exit to the simulator bay, past rows of monitors that had displayed their session to the technicians. He was sure it had been recorded… he had already seen one of his and Shannon’s previous training runs on the ‘net. He shook his head slightly… it wasn’t always convenient being a living legend. Beats being a dead one though.

“So, Vinnie,” he went on as they headed for the locker rooms, “how goes the recruit training?”

“Oh, about as well as I could expect,” the younger man shrugged. “This latest class has a couple that show some promise. Tom… err, Master Sergeant Crossman, that is… tells me there’s one guy who’s even better at hand-to-hand than he is, if you can believe it.”

Shannon smiled, having noticed the slip. “Tough being an officer, isn’t it, Vinnie?”

“Sometimes I’d rather go back to being ‘Sergeant Mahoney’ instead of ‘Captain Mahoney,’ ma’am,” he admitted. “But it’s important work, and someone’s gotta do it.”

“See you boys on the other side.” Shannon waved, heading into the women’s locker room.

“You’ve got the job I was supposed to have,” McKay commented a bit wistfully to Vinnie as the three of them stripped out of their battle utilities in the men’s locker room. “And don’t think I don’t wish sometimes I were still Captain McKay, First Special Operations Command instead of Colonel McKay, Fleet Intelligence.”

“Well I am damn glad,” Jock proclaimed, stepping under one of the showers, “that I stayed ‘Sergeant Gregory’ when you blokes tried to talk me into OCS!”

“One of ‘you blokes’ was the President of the Republic,” Vinnie reminded him.

“And he lost the next election, didn’t he?” Jock shot back. “Shows how good his advice was.”

The three men had just finished showering off and were beginning to get dressed when the ‘link clipped to the collar of McKay’s black uniform shirt chimed for attention.

“McKay,” he responded tersely as he tucked the shirt into his trousers.

“Colonel McKay,” a voice he recognized as that of his aide de camp, Lieutenant Franks came over the microphone, “I’m sorry, sir, I know you left instructions not to disturb you, but sir, it’s General Kage again… he keeps calling back and insists on speaking with you today.”

“Oh great,” Jock sighed, listening in on the conversation. “What does that…” he stopped in mid-sentence at a quelling look from Vinnie, “…fine Colonial Guard officer want now?” he finished, rolling his eyes.

“Put him through, Franks,” McKay said with resignation in his voice, stepping out of the locker room and out into the corridor.

“That’s just it sir, he’s…”

“He is here,” said a harsh voice behind him, a voice as sharp and unyielding as the edge of an axe. McKay turned to see a trim, compact man in an impeccable grey uniform approaching. His craggy, scarred face was chiseled out of amber, his dark eyes clouded with a roiling anger. His hair was dark and wavy and the only thing that gave a clue to the man’s age were deep lines on either side of his downturned mouth.

“General Kage,” McKay nodded. They were indoors and he wasn’t formally reporting to the man, so a salute wasn’t warranted. Not that he would have given one anyway…

“I thought I would find you here, playing your child’s games, McKay,” Kage shook his head. “Perhaps if you put as much effort into your job, your recommendations to the President on the Inferno situation would have been more rational and less impossibly optimistic.”

“I had trusted people on the ground in Inferno, General,” McKay shrugged, unconcerned. “I listened to their recommendations and passed them on up the chain. Well, up the last link of the chain,” he grinned maliciously, “since I do only report to the President.”

“I am well aware of the unwarranted trust President O’Keefe has in you and your department, McKay,” Kage ground out. When he was upset—which, in McKay’s experience, was most of the time—you could hear a hint of his odd accent: Japanese by way of Peru. “While you can make light of it, it is my troops that will have to deal with the results of your miscalculations when the criminal scum you’ve arrogated into a political party rise up and try to take the Inferno colony from us.”

“Inferno isn’t yours to keep or not, General,” McKay reminded him. “It belongs to the colonists, not the Colonial Guard and not the Multicorps. You’d have less trouble if you and your troops remembered that. As for the political situation, Governor Cho seems to be handling it well… he has the parties talking instead of shooting, which is an improvement over the first time I visited.”

Kage’s mouth snapped shut on his automatic retort. He shoots, he scores! McKay thought, fighting down a laugh. He had last visited Inferno as a Second Lieutenant, the platoon leader of a Marine Reaction Force, sent in to rescue a Colonial Guard unit that had been captured, along with their armory and weapons, by the local rebels. He had defeated over 400 rebels at the cost of eight of his Marines’ lives and when the local CG Captain had tried to interfere with his medics treating a civilian casualty first before a CG trooper, McKay had beat the shit out of him.

He’d expected to be court-martialed, but instead the original head of his department—Colonel Kenneth Mellanby, the legendary “Snake”—had transferred him into Intelligence and tasked him with setting up a new special operations team. He’d been assigned Shannon Stark, Vincent Mahoney, Jock Gregory and Tom Crossman as the kernel of the new team and they’d been given a shakedown mission to guard Valerie O’Keefe, daughter of then—Senator Daniel O’Keefe, on a goodwill tour of the colonies on behalf of the Economic Justice Association. That had put them on Aphrodite when it had been invaded by the forces of the former head of the Russian Protectorate, Sergei Antonov, long thought dead in the Sino-Russian War.

McKay and his team had been instrumental in defeating Antonov’s attempt to conquer Earth, which had made McKay and the rest legendary figures and made his position as the new head of Fleet Intelligence nearly unassailable. By bringing up Inferno, he had not only reminded Kage of the fact that he had pulled the CG’s fat out of the fire before, but tangentially that there was no way Kage could get around his authority.

“McKay,” Kage finally spoke again after a visible attempt to control himself, “you may think that there is nothing that can threaten you, but I will tell you this: if those rabble on Inferno cost the lives of even one of my men, I will make it my mission in life to see you pay for it. You should try to remember that you, too, are capable of making a mistake.”

“I’ve made plenty of mistakes, General Kage,” McKay shrugged. “I do try to learn from them, however. Given the history of the Colonial Guard’s dealings with the colonists on Inferno, I’d think you’d want to try that, too. If you are actually concerned about your troops, my advice would be to stop trying to put down the New Dawn Party and start trying to give them a stake in the future of the colony beyond digging up iridium for the mining firms. People don’t want to burn down cities when they own part of them. That’s Republic policy.”

“For now,” Kage snorted. “Presidents change, McKay. You’re this President’s golden boy, but I wouldn’t get too comfortable in the position.”

Before McKay could respond to that, Kage turned on his heel and strode purposefully down the corridor and through the exit.

“Whaddya suppose he meant by that?” Jock wondered. “Next election ain’t for another seven years.”

“He’s just talking out his ass,” Vinnie shrugged. “As usual.”

“Either way,” McKay said, “we’ve got more important things to worry about.” As he spoke, Shannon Stark emerged from the woman’s locker room in her Intell blacks, her dirty utilities in a bag slung over her shoulder. “Shannon, tell them about the reports from the Scouts.”

“We had an observation post in a system near the inner frontier,” Shannon told them quietly. “They were checking out a habitable there, fourth out from the primary. They’d been checking in every two months with a regular military patrol, then, about four months ago, the patrol cruiser found this.” She pulled a tablet out of a thigh pocket and touched the screen, bringing up a video feed, then turned it around so Vinnie and Jock could see it.

The picture was a recut and remixed video that started in orbit around the green and blue planet, then descended with the lander through a thick, stormy atmosphere to circle above a tall, old-growth forest. The trees were subtly different from terrestrial flora, yet similar in a way that convergent evolution had, they found, made almost inevitable. Here and there, as the shuttle passed lower above the treetops, the two former Marines could see a local flyer, aloft on four wings. Finally the picture dissolved in a cloud of dust and fire as the lander came down on VTOL jets, and then the view switched to the helmet camera of a Marine, walking point in a wedge formation of other grey-and-black camo’ed, body-armored ground troops.

Their rifles swung back and forth in a constant scan as the trees slid by on either side; tall, broad-leaved plants tugged at their weapons and harness and once in a while an out-of-focus flitting dot spoke of swarms of flying insect-like life. Then the trees gave way to a wide clearing, the darkened ground speaking of the recent clear-burn that had established the base. As they moved into the clearing, video cut together from different helmet cams showed several domes sprayed from buildfoam, linked together with walkways lined with flat, local paving stones.

Even from more than a hundred meters away, Vinnie and Jock could see the scorch marks on the outer walls and the jagged edges where the doorways had been blown in with some sort of explosives… but no smoke. Whatever had happened was long over. As the images grew closer, the pockmarks of bullet impacts became clear, and on the paving stones leading to the door of one of them was an all-too-familiar dark red stain.

When the image moved to the interiors of the buildings, it was more of the same: bullet holes and blood, but no bodies and no equipment other than some cheap, plastic furniture. Vinnie was about to ask if that was the end of the video when the view swung downward, to a glint of brass wedged behind a broken table. A gloved hand reached down into view and pulled the object free, revealing a spent brass cartridge casing. Vinnie’s blood froze in his veins. No one had used brass-cased ammo in over a century. No one except…

“There were no bodies found,” Shannon told them quietly, switching off the picture and stuffing the tablet back in her pocket. “Every piece of electronic or mechanical equipment, every weapon, every vehicle, everything useful was stripped away and missing. There were a couple dozen of those cases found, mostly buried in the dirt.”

“It’s Antonov,” Vinnie murmured. “The son of a bitch is back.”

Chapter Two

Staring at the rat-faced, slicked-back lobbyist across the desk from him, Daniel O’Keefe wondered idly why he had ever wanted to be President. It was all he had dreamed of since the time he was nine years old and had watched a documentary in school about Calvin Elliott, the first President of the Republic, the man who had brought the whole planet away from the edge of the abyss of the Sino-Russian War. He had worked his way up from a volunteer for a Provincial Commissioner to running for that office himself after graduating college, to the Republic Senate… and now for the last three years, he had been the leader of all humanity

Usually it felt like a sacred responsibility combined with the most thrilling experiences ever—a sort of cross between the Pope and a fighter pilot. But at times like these, it felt like a neutronium anvil hung around his neck and he understood why every president he could remember looked so much older when they left office than when they were elected. He looked at his grey-haired, open-faced reflection in the display on his desktop and wondered if the new lines he saw around his eyes were just his imagination…

“I understand what you’re saying, Mr. Fourcade,” O’Keefe said slowly, trying to keep the perturbed sigh out of his voice, “but I can’t change Republic immigration policy based on the needs of the mining consortium. The colonists on Inferno do not exist to make your multicorp more profitable.”

“The issue isn’t our profitability, Mr. President,” Fourcade insisted, frowning through his neatly trimmed mustache—he was less adept than O’Keefe at hiding his frustration. “The issue is the future of the Republic’s economy, and the hundreds of millions of jobs dependant on supplies of raw materials from the colony worlds. If we can’t make a profit from resources in the colonies, it will not be worth our effort and investment to keep extracting them.” He spread his well-manicured hands. “You’re going to have inflation, shortages of products we all use… it will hurt the less-affluent more than anyone else. Tax revenues will dry up and you will not be able to fund your… generous incentive packages for emigrants to the colonies, which will make the labor situation even worse.”

“Many of those resources could be produced in space-based facilities right here in the Solar system, Mr. Fourcade,” suggested Svetlana Zakharova, his Finance Minister, from the chair to the lobbyist’s right. She was a tall, broad-shouldered woman with blond hair and pleasant, matronly face, her business suit subdued but expertly tailored. “In fact,” she went on, “if it weren’t for government infrastructure on some of the colony worlds—laser launch systems, for example—paid for by the taxpayers, you couldn’t profitably produce in the colonies at all.”

“The situation has hardly been one-sided,” Fourcade shrugged. “The government couldn’t have built the fleet that helped save our planet a few years ago without aid from the multicorps. As for space-based resources… yes, there are asteroids in the Belt that hold minerals that we can and do exploit, but the Belt facilities are, as you well know, highly unionized. That greatly increases production costs. And the safety requirements for a space-based facility often offset the transportation costs for a planet-based mine.” He sat back, crossing his arms. “But that only applies to resources available from asteroids and the various moons… iridium, nickel-iron, fissionables, water ice, for example. But there are resources that just can’t be had except on a planet—petroleum for one. Drilling is obviously illegal here on Earth and without the oil from Inferno, our chemical industry won’t last a year and you,” he directed that at Minister Zakharova, “damn well know it.”

“It’s clear that we do have a problem, Mr. Fourcade,” O’Keefe acknowledged. “But that problem will not be solved by forcing the underclass to move off-planet so that you can use them as cheap labor. Those days are gone. We will work with the multicorps to come up with an alternate solution; that one is off the table.”

Fourcade sat back, steepling his hands thoughtfully, as if considering his words carefully before he continued.

“There is,” he finally said, “one option that would satisfy our needs and your requirements, Mr. President. I hesitate to bring it up, because I’ve heard of your opinion on the matter… but Senate Measure 1143B has the potential to provide us with a ready and problem—free labor force without exploiting the masses, as it were.”

O’Keefe took a deep breath, trying to keep it from turning into a shudder as he gathered his thoughts to make a coherent objection rather than the vehement “Fuck no!” that threatened to burst past his pursed lips. He fought back nightmare images of superhuman soldiers hulking in camouflaged battle armor and of pale, blue faces with black, shark’s eyes.

“I am uncomfortable,” he finally said, “with the idea of creating a possibly intelligent slave race out of human DNA.”

“We’ve been working on sentient computer systems for decades,” Fourcade pointed out. “I haven’t seen any angst over the possible use of those for our needs. If our labs were given the go-ahead to experiment with the creation of the sort of biomechanical constructs that the Protectorate used against us, they could make certain that the results weren’t sentient by restricting the amount of brain tissue we used. Sure, we would be working from human tissue samples, but we’re not talking about cloning human beings… these would be meat robots, basically.” He shrugged. “They would just be much cheaper to make and maintain than ones made from artificial materials.”

“And if the technique for producing these… things,” Zakharova said with distaste in her voice, “becomes widespread, we could wind up with someone trying to do the same thing Antonov did and using them as a ready-made army. There are some huge ethical, legal and practical considerations to this sort of enterprise that you are oversimplifying.”

”Any solution to this problem will be complex and problematic,” Fourcade shook his head. “But the problem won’t go away because we don’t like any of the possible solutions. We need those resources and if we’re going to maintain an interstellar civilization, we need them as cheaply as possible. If we don’t get them… well, sir, you will be remembered as the President who oversaw the retreat of humanity from the stars, because the colonies will wither on the vine.”

“Mr. Fourcade,” O’Keefe stood, prompting Zakharova and Fourcade to do likewise, “I am sure that we will be able to solve this problem and prevent that from happening. We will be sure to keep the lines of communication open and perhaps I can task my science advisors with finding out how feasible the limitations you mentioned can be.”

“Thank you very much for your time, Mr. President,” Fourcade shook his hand, taking the hint. “I’ll relay your concerns to the board of directors and possibly we can come up with some ideas of our own.”

“I’ll walk you out, Mr. Fourcade,” Zakharova offered, putting a guiding hand on his shoulder and leading him out through the ornate wooden door.

O’Keefe sank back into his chair, feeling infinitely weary. Taking a deep breath, he touched a screen set into his desktop.

“Send in Colonel McKay.”

O’Keefe’s expression didn’t quite brighten when McKay entered the room—he knew why the officer was visiting and it wasn’t pleasant news—but he did feel some of the weight lift from his shoulders. McKay wasn’t quite a friend, but he was certainly an ally and whatever their philosophical differences, he knew that he could count on the man to do his duty, no matter how heavy the responsibility.

“Mr. President,” McKay shook his hand. “Thanks for seeing me on such short notice.”

“I’ve seen the video you sent over,” O’Keefe said with a nod, waving McKay into a seat. “So, he’s back.” O’Keefe allowed himself a moment of vulnerability with the military officer that he couldn’t with the lobbyist and rubbed his eyes tiredly. “You thought he would be, eventually.”

“Yes, sir,” McKay said, a frown passing over his lean, squared-off face. There had been quite the debate five years ago, just after the war, when he had pressured then—President Jameson to mount an all—out search for Antonov’s headquarters. He knew that as long as the former Russian dictator was at large with access to the nanotechnological factories from the alien ruins on his headquarters world, he wouldn’t rest until he had come back and finished the job of conquering Earth. Antonov’s cosmonauts had discovered the wormhole gateway to the ruined alien world by accident, during a mining mission to the asteroid belt, but five years of searching for it had produced no results.

“So, the question becomes, how do we respond and how long do we have?”

“I’ve been researching the area of the frontier where the attack occurred,” McKay said. He gestured towards the star map projected in a recess of the back wall behind the President’s desk. “If you wouldn’t mind?”

At O’Keefe’s wave of assent, he stepped over to the projector’s controls and brought up a section of the Republic’s inner frontier—towards the galactic center rather than away from it. “Here’s the system where the observation post was attacked,” he indicated a main sequence star in the near center of the sector. “We don’t have any manned bases farther in than this, but we have done surveys in a few systems nearby, both manned and unmanned.” He traced an arc of stars in a half-circle around the original one. “There’s a couple with habitable worlds and the early indications are they’re rich in natural resources. I’m wondering if he isn’t working one or more of those worlds for resources and wiped out the observation post so we wouldn’t get wind of what he was doing until it was too late.”

“So it may be too late to catch him,” O’Keefe muttered sourly. “Damn, I hate having him out there like a Sword of Damocles.” His eyes narrowed and he looked at McKay suspiciously. “You could have told me all this via videoconference from Fleet Headquarters. You’re here because there’s something you wanted to ask me in person.”

“Yes, sir,” McKay admitted, looking him in the eye. “I want to go out there. I need to supervise this personally.”

“McKay, in case you hadn’t noticed, you’re the head of the Fleet Intelligence Service,” O’Keefe couldn’t help but smile. “You have people to do this sort of thing for you now.”

“I do, sir, and I trust them, but this isn’t a question of proper training or judgment… this is a question of experience. I know Antonov better than anyone else in the Republic military… I’ve looked in his eye, and I have a feel for him that no one that works for me does. I could get a sense for the data from reports, but that runs up against the time lag. If there is something further I think needs investigating based on findings from a report, it will take months to get that new investigation on the ground. I have a sense that we don’t have that kind of time.”

“Yes,” O’Keefe nodded slowly. “I see where you’re coming from. Very well, it will raise some eyebrows, but the hell with them. You’ll be on a cruiser to the frontier as soon as you’re prepped. Is there anything else?”

“Yes, sir,” he said. “I want to take Colonel Podbyrin with me.”

O’Keefe raised an eyebrow. “The Protectorate officer you captured during the war?”

“Yes, sir… we captured his ship in the Belt and used it to board Antonov’s flagship. He knows exactly how Antonov thinks. I believe he could help us.”

“Where the hell is he, anyway?” O’Keefe blurted. “In prison?”

“No, President Jameson was lenient with him because he cooperated with us. He was under supervised house arrest for a year for evaluation, then he was given some land and a start-up grant on Loki. He has a cattle ranch there, selling beef to the multicorps’ cafeterias and company markets.” McKay shrugged. “From reports, he’s pretty content there.”

“You’re going to be burning a lot of antimatter on that trip,” the President mused. “But I don’t think anyone will praise my frugality if we wind up being invaded by Antonov’s things again. Our economy barely recovered from the first time and it wound up costing Greg Jameson his job.” He glanced up at McKay. “I know it’s not your area of expertise, but I’m not sure our economy has actually recovered… or that it will. It was the right thing to do to end the forced exiles, but combined with the war, it’s left us with inflation that might prove to be runaway unless we do something about it.”

“Do something like what, sir?” McKay asked cautiously.

“Have you heard of a bill in the Republic Senate to allow the use of biomech technology in private industry?”

“Christ no!” McKay blurted. “Are they serious? Sir.”

“That was my reaction as well, though as a politician, I had to be a bit more diplomatic about it,” O’Keefe said, chuckling softly. “The thing is, though… I may not have a choice in this. If things get much worse, it will get passed and if I veto it, it will be overridden. There are things I can do to try to derail it… but if I fail, I will have used up one hell of a lot of political capital for nothing and possibly made myself the first Republic president to be a lame duck for over half of his term.”

“So, what can you do, sir?”

“To stop the bill? Perhaps appeal to the people. There’s enough residual fear from the invasion that they might pressure the Senate to vote it down. About the economy?” He shook his head. “I wish I knew. But that’s my problem. Yours is Antonov. You solve yours and I’ll try to solve mine while you’re gone.”

“Maybe you should talk to Valerie and Glen sir,” McKay suggested.

“That’s not a bad idea at all,” O’Keefe admitted. “Have a safe voyage, Colonel,” the President offered his hand and McKay shook it… but O’Keefe held onto the hand for a moment, looking him in the eye. “Find Antonov, Jason… find him and kill that son of a bitch.”

“I’ll do my best, sir,” McKay nodded, then he left the office.

Was it his imagination, McKay wondered, or did O’Keefe look older?

Chapter Three

McKay stared at the empty duffle bag sitting on the bedroom chair and wondered what he was going to pack. It had been five years since he’d left on an interstellar voyage and the last time had been as a Captain in charge of a grand total of five people, including himself. Now he was a Colonel, probably due to be promoted to General soon, the head of the whole damned Intelligence Service, and he was about to go gallivanting off to the edge of explored space.

“What the hell are you thinking, McKay?” He muttered to himself.

“You’re thinking, ‘I hate being behind a desk and thank God for this excuse to get out in the field again,’ that’s what you’re thinking,” Shannon’s voice whispered in his ear as her arms slipped around his waist. He could feel the tickle of her fire-colored hair against his face, the warmth of her bare skin against his back and he smiled with satisfaction.

He turned, putting his arms around her and pulling her into a kiss.

“We start doing this again and you’ll never get packed,” she teased him.

“Well, I am going to be gone for several months,” he raised an eyebrow. “Gotta leave you something to remember me by…”

“How did I get stuck manning your desk while you have all the fun?” She beat a fist against his chest playfully. “You’re supposed to delegate this sort of thing to me.”

“I wanted to take you along,” he confessed. “But with Kage stirring up so much trouble, I thought I should leave someone with some sense of diplomacy here to deal with him.”

“Ha!” Shannon barked. “Me? Diplomatic? I’ve always thought of knocking people’s heads together as the best sort of diplomacy.”

“Hey,” McKay protested, “back during the war, you had to deal with a colonial governor, a senator and a president! And that turned out okay.” He sighed as he let her slip out of his arms. “You’re right though, I have to pack. The shuttle for the Decatur leaves in two hours.”

“The Decatur? Isn’t that Captain Minishimi’s new cruiser?” Joyce Minishimi had been one of the Fleet captains who had launched the final attack on the Russian Protectorate ships during the war, and with Arvid Patel, one of the two Captains to promote McKay to the overall commander of the assault, despite his then-inferior rank.

“Yeah, it was in port and between patrols, so I requested her. Haven’t seen much of her since the war.”

“Come on,” Shannon said, grabbing a robe from the bed and slipping it on. “Let me help you pack.’

* * *

Joyce Minishimi’s breath chuffed with effort as she kicked into a sprint, legs pumping, each stride landing perfectly as she came down the last quarter mile of the course. The beautiful Japanese red spruce, yew, gingko, and Yezo wild cherry trees passed by her faster and faster as she raced through Nakajima Park. She vaguely registered the other runners but didn’t bring them into focus; her focus was on the finish line. She felt as if she didn’t have even a hint of energy left, her legs felt as if they were on fire and she was fairly certain she’d developed a blister on her left big toe, but she gritted her teeth and kept her legs moving via force of will.

Then it was there, the finish line… with just one other female in front of her, only twenty yards ahead. Screaming hoarsely, Joyce threw herself forward, pushing past the other woman and crossing the finish line, then stumbling and nearly collapsing, limping painfully towards a table with water bottles, trying to catch her breath. She opened one and downed it in one gulp, then threw it down and snagged another before sinking to the grass.

“Did you really,” a voice asked from behind her, “run the whole Hokkaido marathon?”

She turned and saw a man in a black uniform walking towards her, seemingly out of nowhere. He was a young man, but with the look of experience, his brown hair cut short, grey eyes framed by a lean, strong-jawed face.

“I run it before every long patrol, McKay,” she nodded. “Hard to find time for this when we’re under way.” She looked up and spoke loudly and clearly. “Authorization Minishimi, simulator off.”

The image of the Hokkaido morning vanished, replaced by the bare walls of the RFS Decatur‘s simulator bay and the shifting treadmill that made up its floor. The only adornment in the room was the small plastic tray with water bottles and a few towels.

“You know,” she said, wiping the sweat from her neck and toweling down her short, dark hair, “when they started building this ship three years ago, I thought it was ridiculous to install a rotational drum just for recreational and medical use. After all, we spend most of the trip in the g-tanks anyway. But I have to admit, it’s handy having someplace to get a good workout at one gravity when we’re not using the drive.”

“You’re looking good, Joyce,” he told her, squatting down on the floor beside her. He smiled as she started. She hadn’t seen him in years and it took her a moment to remember that they were of equal rank: a Fleet Captain was equivalent to an Intelligence Service or Marine Colonel. “I thought I’d call you that while I still could,” he explained with a chuckle. “You’ll be an Admiral soon enough.”

“Knock on wood,” she banged her knuckles against the side of her head. “So, you’ve shanghaied my ship for a trip to the frontier… Jason. Care to tell me why?”

“That’s why I’m here,” he nodded, waving around him. “Here and not on the bridge, I mean. This is for your ears only, for the moment.”

“Oh you spooks and your secrets,” she laughed, a surprisingly girly sound from someone he knew to be tough as nails. “You’ve changed since the war,” she estimated, looking at him sideways. “You seem less… naive, somehow.”

“Five years dealing with politicians will do that to you,” he allowed. “But let’s cut to the chase. Antonov’s back.”

Her eyes widened and he saw her glance around instinctively to make sure no one had come into the room. “You’re sure?”

“An observation post was destroyed on the frontier. Looted, even the bodies stolen. They cleaned up after themselves but we found some brass cartridge casings. I don’t know who or what else it could be.”

“Well, you always thought it would happen eventually,” she shook her head, arms resting on her knees. “So, you’re going out there in person then? Isn’t that a bit risky?”

“Not as risky as missing something because I’m months away. I’m bringing Vinnie and his best Alpha Team with me, along with two platoons of Marines and half a dozen assault shuttles. Hell, if I could get approval, I’d take a couple more cruisers along. I don’t want to do this by half-measures.”

“Yeah, that was never one of your failings,” she snorted. “Jesus, Jason… I need to get my people ready. How long do you need a lid kept on this?”

“Till we’re out of the Solar system,” he told her. “I don’t want this news spreading to the general population until we know more. We have enough problems right now without adding a panic to them.”

“I can live with that.” She checked her watch. “We leave orbit in three hours and I need a shower. I’ll see you on the bridge… how about you come brief my officers just before we hit the g-tanks?”

“Works for me,” he nodded, standing and offering her a hand up. “See you on the bridge, Captain.”

* * *

Shannon was silent as she watched the mountain of nickel iron that was the RFS Decatur leave orbit. Reality warped away from the ship in shimmering waves of disrupted space-time and the ship began to move, slowly at first, almost imperceptibly… but then with increasing acceleration and within minutes it was little more than another star in the projection in the viewport on the wall of Jason’s office.

“Damn,” she muttered to herself. Then louder, “Dammit!” She thumped a fist against the wall. It wasn’t just that he was going to be gone for months and that she was going to miss him… and it wasn’t just that he was flying blind into what could be an incredibly dangerous situation. There was just a feeling in her gut that she couldn’t shake that there was something wrong about this. It felt like a trap.

The problem was, they couldn’t not investigate it… and if it was a trap, there was no one better than Jason to sniff it out. But she wished she could have been there.

“Major Stark?” A voice came over the room’s intercom.

“Yes, Lt. Franks?” she said, looking up instinctively.

“You have a call from Senator O’Keefe-Mulrooney.”

“Put her on,” Shannon said, raising an eyebrow in surprise. “Colonel McKay’s desk display.”

The holographic projector in McKay’s desk lit up and an image of Valerie O’Keefe-Mulrooney sprang to life. She looked good, Shannon reflected inwardly. Her brown hair was shorter than Shannon remembered, and there was a glow to her heart-shaped face. The last few years had added a look of maturity and responsibility to her green eyes.

“Hello, Senator,” she nodded.

“Good morning, Shannon,” Valerie said. Shannon supposed it must be morning wherever she was, because the phrase had little meaning on a space station like Fleet HQ. “How’ve you been?”

“Doing well,” Shannon said, trying to hide the loathing she had for meaningless pleasantries. What the hell had Jason been thinking leaving her in charge of dealing with people? “I can see motherhood agrees with you. I hope Glen and your daughter are doing well.”

“Natalia is great,” Valerie smiled warmly. “She’ll be two years old next week. Glen is doing fine, but… well, first of all, I need to know, is this a secure line?”

Shannon blinked, then reached out to the desktop and hit a control. “It is now, ma’am. What’s wrong?”

“Shannon, as father’s chief of staff, Glen, well…” She hesitated, for the first time in the conversation seeming nervous. “He hears things in that position… rumors. Many of them turn out to be nothing, and this one might too, but…”

“…but it’s something you thought we should check out,” Shannon finished for her. “What’s going on, Valerie?”

“Glen has been trying to mediate some of the disagreements between Daddy’s administration and the Southbloc,” Valerie explained. “The end of forced emigration has handed some of their nations a lot of political problems… and the inflation and unemployment increases haven’t done anything to help the situation. He was consulting with a friend of my father’s, Senator Friere of Brazil, and Friere mentioned hearing rumbles from Brazilian officers high in the Colonial Guard about a possible mutiny.”

Shannon blinked. It wasn’t entirely shocking… there was a lot of dissatisfaction in the Colonial Guard, after all. But if it was gaining enough momentum that the Senator from Brazil had heard of it, it could be serious. “Did he have any details?” she asked.

“Just one… that’s the reason I’m calling you and not my father. He said that the mutiny was designed to coincide with an attempt on the President’s life.”

“What?” Shannon exclaimed. “But why? It’s not as if the Vice President will reverse the policies just because the president is killed. That makes no sense.”

“I don’t know anything more.” Valerie shook her head. “It might all be just ridiculous rumor—I know that’s what Daddy would say if I brought it to him. That’s why I’m bringing it to you.”

“I understand, Senator,” Shannon said. “I’ll look into it. If there’s anything to it, I’ll let you know… and I’ll see it gets dealt with.”

“I knew I could count on you, Shannon,” Valerie said, smiling. “I hope you find that it’s just barracks rumor.”

“Me too.” Shannon whispered as the transmission cut off. She ran her fingers through her hair tiredly. “As if there wasn’t enough going on already…” She hit the intercom control. “Franks.”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Contact Captain Shamir. Tell him I need to meet him in Colonel McKay’s office as soon as he can get a shuttle up here.” She didn’t even register Frank’s reply… her thoughts were wrapped around what Valerie had told her. There had never been an attempt on a president in the history of the Republic… and now she was finding out about one just after learning that Antonov was back. She wasn’t sure she believed that heavily in coincidences.

Something, she reflected again, was wrong about all this. Time to get to work and find out what.

Chapter Four

Jason McKay sat back in his chair and waited for the last of the group to file into the conference room. He was enjoying the Earth-normal gravity while he could. In just hours they would be immersed in the g-tanks, hibernating in the cushioning, aerated fluid while the ship accelerated at a warp—analog of hundreds of gravities for weeks, and when they arrived at their first stop, he’d be back in zero-g until planetfall.

Vinnie and Jock were in the room already, along with the other men and women of their Alpha Team, all looking quite relaxed and deadly in their black combat utility uniforms. Also present, though making a point of sitting apart from the special operations squad, were the platoon leaders and platoon sergeants of the Fleet Marine Reaction Force units on board. Even though Vinnie, Jock and McKay himself were all former Marines, the Fleet Marines had developed a resentment of the new Special Operations units.

They were still waiting for the Fleet personnel—the only one present was the flight commander of the assault shuttles, a tall, slender woman with high cheekbones and a face that hinted at Asian ancestry. She was typing something into a small notepad, her expression all business, ignoring the others around her.

Finally, after another ten minutes of waiting, Captain Minishimi strode into the room with her executive officer in tow.

“Captain on deck!” McKay barked, bringing everyone to their feet.

“As you were,” Minishimi waved a hand, leaning against a table near the center of the room. “We don’t have a lot of time, so I’ll get right to the point. We are heading to Loki to pick up a passenger, then we’re going straight for the inner frontier. There was an observation post there until a few months ago. It was destroyed and looted, the troops manning it either taken or killed and their bodies taken. Evidence found on the scene suggests that the culprits are our old friends, the remnants of the Russian Protectorate.” A chorus of murmurs went through the assembled officers and NCOs, some of them glancing at McKay.

“At ease,” Minishimi’s XO barked and the talking ceased.

“We have been tasked to aid Colonel McKay in his investigation of this incident. I will turn the briefing over to him.”

McKay stood, nodding to the Captain, then touched a control on the wall and a star map was projected near the ceiling. “We’re heading here,” he said. “The system doesn’t have an official name, but the Scouts have been calling the habitable there ‘Peboan.’ It means…”

“Winter spirit,” the ground support shuttle flight leader spoke up, her contralto voice clear and piercing. “From the Chippewa myth.”

“Yes,” McKay nodded, raising an eyebrow. “The planet’s a bit on the cold side most of its year. Our surveys have indicated that Peboan is rich in petroleum, fissionables and other resources, as are a couple other habitable worlds in close proximity. We are working on the theory that Antonov doesn’t have enough ships to do extensive space-based mining, so he will choose to get his resources onplanet where possible.

“The only reason for Antonov to attack the outpost is that they had either already spotted his activities or he thought they were about to and wanted to buy some time. So, we probably won’t find him anywhere in the immediate area, but I am hoping we can find a lead as to where he’s going and what he’s up to. We are prepared in case we do run into his forces, however, as you can see by looking around you.” He surveyed their faces, seeing total attention in every one. “I do have to tell you, there is the possibility that we could be out here more than a year, depending on how far the search takes us. I’m sorry you weren’t allowed to send out messages to your loved ones indicating this, but I have direct orders from the president not to let news of this get out until we get confirmation as to whether this is Antonov’s work and what his next move might be.” He paused. “Any questions?”

“What evidence do we have that this is Antonov or his people?” The question came from one of the Marine platoon leaders, a sharp-edged young man with cafe aux lait skin and dark hair that was little more than stubble on his head. The name Dodd was stenciled on his shirt.

“We found brass rifle casings in the wreckage of the destroyed base, Lieutenant Dodd,” McKay answered. He hit a control and a video of the Marines holding up the brass casings played for them.

“That’s all we got?” asked his platoon sergeant, her puffy, schoolteacher’s face screwed up in a frown. “Ain’t that a little thin, sir?”

“If you can tell me another solution more likely, Gunny Dzvonik,” McKay shrugged, “I’m all ears. We have to postulate an enemy that has star travel independent of the established cargo and passenger runs, that has a motive to attack one of our remote observation posts and loot everything not nailed down and that uses gunpowder weapons firing from brass-cased cartridges marked with Cyrillic writing.”

“Yeah, guess you got a point, sir,” she admitted.

“I have a question,” the shuttle commander raised a finger.

“Yes, Commander…?”

“Villanueva, sir,” she told him. “As I understand it, the Protectorates use some sort of artificial wormhole gateways to travel FTL… so why are you concerned about the planets in the systems around Peboan? Couldn’t they be just as easily jumping somewhere dozens of light years away?”

“They could,” McKay admitted. “But we know they’ve pirated some of our Eysselink drive ships… it’s possible they make use of them. And frankly,” he sighed, “it’s all we got. If we can’t find them this way, we’re basically going to have to sit on our ass until they decide to attack us.”

“Understood, sir,” Villanueva nodded.

“All right, if there’s nothing else…” No one spoke up, so McKay nodded to Captain Minishimi.

“Thank you, Colonel McKay,” she stepped back into the center of the conference room. “All right, ladies and gentlemen… get yourselves and your people squared away for g-sleep.” She grinned tightly. “See you in a month.”

Vinnie hung back as the rest filed out of the room, seeing McKay’s frown.

“What’s wrong, sir?” he asked.

“It’s times like these I wish we had access to those wormholes, Vinnie,” McKay said. “I don’t like the idea of spending weeks asleep. God knows what’s going to have happened by the time we wake up…”

* * *

Ariel Shamir didn’t recognize himself in the mirror. The face he was used to was that of a young, clean-shaven, hawk-faced Israeli of European Jewish heritage, with short, black hair, dark brown eyes and a light olive skin. The one that stared back at him now was darker-complexioned, the nose broader and slightly more hooked, the eyelids heavier, the hair thicker and the face adorned with a neatly trimmed full beard. Good thing the cosmetic implants weren’t permanent… there were a few girls back in Tel Aviv that wouldn’t approve of the changes..

He nodded with satisfaction and checked the fit of his uniform—the two-piece, precisely tailored grays of the Colonial Guard rather than the black Fleet Intelligence utilities he was used to. It felt odd wearing a uniform that was cut more like a business suit than a set of fatigues, but that was the CeeGees for you.

Smoothing down his tunic once more, he turned, shouldered his duffle bag, and left the solitude of the empty bathroom to re-enter the buzzing chaos of the Buenos Aires Transportation Hub. Throngs of people moved through the huge complex of buildings, dragging luggage behind them, embarking and disembarking from suborbital transports, boarding subways and maglev trains, renting flyers or being picked up by groundcars or buses. In the center of the giant auditorium that was the hub of the Hub was a huge statue worked from a single piece of granite, twenty meters tall. It was a copy of the city’s iconic Obelisk and the wave of humanity seemed to break upon it, spreading into streams and rivulets to one of the many exits.

He knew exactly where his ride was waiting… he headed out one of the Hub’s north-facing exits, leaving the cool, conditioned air of the building for the broiler of a South American February afternoon. Ari began sweating almost immediately, but ignored it as he took in the view of the city.

Ari had spent a lot of time in Capital City in his career and he had grown used to the Old City that used to be called New York within sight of the New City, the interconnected megalopolis that had been built after the Crisis period after the devastating nuclear exchanges of the Sino-Russian War. But Buenos Aires was different… rather than the old being abandoned as it had been with Capital City, or being razed over and replaced as it had been in Asia, Buenos Aires seemed like a city of the previous millennium had magically been merged with a modern one. Stretching from the western shore of the Rio de la Plata to the Riachuelo, the city was patchy now, with stretches of old architecture—modernized on the inside of course—interspersed with more modern designs in places, and then suddenly whole districts of nothing but newer buildings, usually in areas where the old sections had been destroyed by fire or torn down in one improvement project or another. It wasn’t as energy efficient or convenient as the megalopolises like Capital City, Cleveland ‘Plex, or Nuevo Rio but it had a certain charm to it. Very European in a way, Ari thought.

Letting his gaze fall away from the Paris of the Pampas, Ari scanned across a series of numbered lots on the other side of the road from the terminal until he saw one with a flyer in the colors of the Colonial Guard, with a pilot leaning casually against the hull beside the open ramp. Nodding to himself, he took the foot bridge over the road, striding up to the ducted fan hovercraft as if he owned it. The pilot, a jowly, mid-ranking NCO, quickly came to attention, eyes straight ahead, and saluted.

“I am Captain Mohammed Al-Masri,” Ari snapped, returning the salute perfunctorily. “Why wasn’t there someone inside to carry my bag?”

“My apologies, sir,” the sergeant said, still at attention, his eyes darting to Ari’s scowling face. The NCO spoke English with the accent of a Pacific islander, though to Ari he looked Central American. “I was not informed what flight you were coming in on, sir, so I thought I should wait here for you.”

“Where I come from, soldiers are not paid to think,” Ari sniffed, throwing his duffle bag at the man. The sergeant caught it, barely, his mouth an “O.” “Load this into the aircraft and get me to where I am going.”

“Yes sir!” the sergeant stuttered, scrambling up the ramp into the aircraft. Ari followed him, concealing a smile. The best thing, he thought, about undercover work, was the ability to act like an asshole with no consequences…

For all else, the sergeant was a competent pilot. Ari had flown in hundreds of the ubiquitous ducted-fan hovercraft that were the transport of choice for most military and government personnel in the Republic, and those flights were often the most dangerous part of his assignments, but this ride was fairly smooth and his rude treatment of the NCO had the benefit of keeping the man from attempting small talk.

The little flyer passed over the Rio de la Plata and over the city proper, giving Ari a good look at the full size version of the Obelisk he’d seen in the Hub. The city was a hive of activity, bustling with people and vehicles, including tens of thousands of individual cars, something rarely seen in the more developed nations. Hundreds of thousands of pedestrians coursed through the arteries of the metropolis, looking from the air like a mass of insects swarming over a decaying animal.

Their course took them straight through the heart of the city and past it, into the sprawling, untidy suburbs, another feature not seen in more developed lands. Those too thinned out in minutes and then, in the countryside beyond, in the middle of the rich, grass plains grew a huge complex of buildings, a hodge-podge of different designs, some styled for form, some for function. Kilometer-across domes sat next to the ugly square blocks of barracks, while across a broad grassy field was what could have been a mansion from 19 Century Spain. And in the center of it all was an inverted trapezoid of a building faced with gleaming white marble, surrounded by a huge parade field. At the center of that field was a marble disc set in the ground, thirty meters across and bearing the stylized planetary system and crossed swords of the Colonial Guard. Troops performing drill and ceremony marched through that field in lines of grey, cutting right angles with precision.

The pilot set them down in a field behind the giant white trapezoid, the Headquarters building for the Colonial Guard, then hurried to get unstrapped and carry Captain Al-Masri’s bag out of the flyer before Ari could yell at him again. “Can I take this inside for you, Captain?” he asked. Ari suddenly felt guilty for acting like such a jerk to the man, despite the fact that it was part of his cover.

“No, Sergeant Gutierrez,” Ari took the duffle bag from the NCO and shouldered it—he’d read the man’s name off the tab on the chest of his uniform tunic. “Your service has been satisfactory. It was a… long flight from Yemen.”

“I understand sir,” Gutierrez nodded gratefully, then saluted. “I hope your journey here is a rewarding one.”

“I hope so, too, Sergeant,” Ari said sincerely, returning the salute.

Ari strode quickly into the main entrance to the headquarters building, pausing for a moment at the security checkpoint just inside until his implanted ID chip cleared the scanner and the armed and armored guard there nodded for him to proceed. The place wasn’t that busy in the mid-afternoon, with most of the enlisted and NCOs drilling or training outdoors and most of the officers firmly ensconced in the comfort of their air-conditioned offices.

The interior of the building was just as richly decorated as the exterior, Ari noticed. White tiled walls were inlaid with gold and hung with what he hoped were copies of classic artwork, and doors were made from real wood, incredibly expensive here on Earth as it had to be imported from the interstellar colonies.

At the far end of the entrance corridor was an elevator, almost out of place amongst the classical elegance of the decor, but he wasn’t about to show his disdain for the anachronism by taking the stairs to the top floor. The ambience there was even more ornate than that of the entrance hall, if that was possible. Classical style statuary lined the halls in well-lit alcoves, but Ari ignored it as he approached his destination, instead working on embedding himself deeply into his cover identity. This would not be a good time to screw up.

The office was guarded by a clerk at a desk, who was working with a virtual desktop, dragging files from one inbox to another via a touch-sensitive holographic display. She came to her feet as she saw him approach, noticing the rank on his shoulder.

“You would be Captain Mohammed Al-Masri?” she asked for form’s sake… she’d known who he was since he entered the building.

“I am here to see General Kage,” he said, tossing his duffle bag to the side of her desk.

“Yes, sir, he’ll be right with you. If you would just have a seat here for a moment…” She waved at a chair beside her desk. Ari fought back a sigh. He hated this game. The General was sitting at his desk, watching him via a video feed as he made him wait, sizing up his reaction to the ordeal.

Nothing to be done about it. He sat, forced himself to wait a few minutes before he began checking the newsfeed on his ‘link. What would Mohammed Al-Masri be interested in? He brought up the financial reports, checking the investments into which his backstopped “family” had sunk their money and were swiftly losing it. After he gave them a cursory viewing, as one might that knew the figures and didn’t want to dwell on them, he switched to auditing the Senate hearings on the biomech legislation. He gave those more attention, not least because he wanted to actually be up on the latest in case General Kage brought up the topic.

“Captain,” the clerk said finally, “the General will see you now.”

Ari pocketed his ‘link and sprang to his feet, marching up to the thick, wooden double doors to General Kage’s office and knocking twice confidently but not sharply.

“Come in,” Kage’s hard-edged voice invited him.

Ari had never met the commanding general of the Colonial Guard before, but he knew everything that Fleet Intell knew about him, plus the personal observations of Colonel McKay and Major Stark. He knew that the man sitting before him in the neatly pressed grey CeeGee uniform was not your typical Guard officer, given his rank because his parents had high social or political position in their home country. Kage was the son of moderately successful Peruvian ranchers and had joined the Guard to see the stars. He’d demonstrated a ruthless competence that was rare among CeeGee officers in Ari’s experience… well, the competent part was, anyway. Ari did not intend to underestimate him.

“Captain Mohammed Al-Masri reporting for duty, General, sir!” Ari said, saluting smartly as he entered the office, letting the door swing shut behind him.

“At ease, Captain,” Kage returned the salute. He looked Ari over as the younger man stood before him, hands clasped behind his back. “So, Captain Al-Masri, you come highly recommended. Your record in the Fleet Marine Corps was exemplary… until you were court-martialed and discharged for abusing a captured insurgent. Care to share your side of the story?”

Ari made his face appear to be fighting back a sneer of disdain. “There is no side to this story, General,” he replied. “My platoon had dropped on the city of Cape Verde on El Dorado. There was a city-wide riot going on, looting, burning… savages,” he spat the word. “It was the local arm of the Chaos Front… those damned anarchist bastards wanted nothing more than to bring down the colonial government. They had no thought of establishing their own; they just wanted to bring every bit of order and civilization crashing down. The violence overwhelmed the local police and Colonial Guard armory so when the Montgomery arrived insystem for the scheduled patrol, the two platoons she carried were called in to help put down the riots.

“On the third day, we had managed to capture one of the group’s chief planners. We… myself and my platoon sergeant… were interrogating him, trying to find the location of their weapons stores, the other leaders…” He shook his head. “The man was a fanatic. He wouldn’t cooperate and things were getting worse. I did what I had to do. My actions saved lives.”

The story was a good one, Ari thought. Probably because it was true: it just hadn’t happened to him.

“The court-martial disagreed,” Kage said with a thin smile. “You were given the choice of a reduction in rank and a reprimand on your record or a discharge from the Corps. You chose discharge. Why?”

“I have to admit, General,” Ari answered, feigning thoughtfulness, “I am not without ambition. A letter of reprimand and a demotion would have kept me from advancing past Captain. My career would have been frozen. But more, I did not want to stay with a military that was not willing to do what was necessary to defeat our enemies.”

“So you believe the Colonial Guard is willing, then?”

“General, I have worked with CeeGee… your pardon, sir, with Colonial Guard troops several times. I have always been impressed with their zeal for doing what was necessary to keep order in the colonies. Aggressiveness has never been the problem with the Guard units I have known.”

“And what, in your estimation, is the problem, Captain?” Kage cocked an eyebrow and Ari debated retreating for the moment… but no. Better to risk it.

“With all respect, sir, the problem has always been lack of tactical training and experience in the junior officers.”

“And you believe this to be so because of the nature of our junior officer recruitment system,” Kage surmised.

“Sir, it has been well known for many years that Guard commissions are handed out as political favors to the sons and daughters of well-connected families in the South and Eastblocs. Those that have the capacity to learn and grow eventually become good officers, but those that do not wind up getting their men killed unnecessarily… and giving us a bad name.”

“I am the commandant of the Guard, Captain Al-Masri, but even I do not have the power to reform the system at that high a level,” Kage smiled. “So, how would you suggest this be changed?”

“I have seen reports of the changes you have made to officer training, sir and they are excellent ones,” Ari nodded. “But if I were to make a suggestion, it would be that you do two things: one, create some sort of… ceremonial positions, an honor guard for dignitaries or some such thing, and staff it with those appointees who are simply not suited to combat command; and two, use the newly-open junior officer slots to promote more competent NCOs to officers’ training.”

Kage regarded him for a long moment, before nodding with satisfaction. “Well, it is easy to see why you are so highly recommended, Captain. You are unafraid to speak your mind and you are one hundred percent right. In fact, I have already begun to expand recruitment of good NCOs to officers’ training. Your first suggestion though is a very good one, and one I had not thought of. I will sit down with my staff and give it serious consideration.”

“Thank you sir… if I may, General Kage, my orders were not very specific. They said I was to report to you here, now, but they did not say where you intended for me to be stationed, or in what capacity.”

“Captain, I considered that very carefully. There are several colonial garrisons that could use your leadership, but given your experience, I think you would best serve the Guard by training other officers. You will be stationed here; over at the Junior Officers’ Basic Course… you will be the new Executive Officer of the training cadre, under Colonel Ibrahim Gambari. He’s a very able commander and under my instructions to let you try whatever new training methods you think may be effective as long as you run them by me first. You report to him in the morning. In the meanwhile, sign out a groundcar and find yourself a room at the Officer’s Quarters.” He stood and offered a hand. “Welcome to the Colonial Guard, Captain Al Masri.”

Ari shook it. “Thank you very much, General. I will not let you down.”

It was perfect… he was in just the right place to carry out his assignment. But the funny thing was, Ari thought, part of him wished he really had the job.

Chapter Five

“Cease fire! Cease fire! Cease fire!” The loudspeaker cut through the din of shouts and the stutter of blank rounds and the thirty men and women in dark-colored body armor scattered around the forest compound stopped in their tracks, looking around in confusion.

“Recruit Manning!” Tom Crossman bellowed, stalking down from the top of the rise from which he’d been observing, hands on his hips. “Can you tell me exactly why you thought it would be a good idea to fire a grenade into a building you knew to hold a store of hyperexplosives? Particularly when you were standing in the open not ten meters from it?”

One of the armored figures safed and slung a rifle, then paused to pull off a visored helmet. Beneath it was the face of a twenty-something female, her black hair cut short and spiky, her normally pale face red with embarrassment.

“Sorry Sergeant Crossman,” she stuttered. “I just knew that one of my squads was taking fire from the building…”

Crossman took a deep breath, visibly trying to control his temper, then ran a hand across his swept-back brown hair. He had a movie star’s face, with a strong jaw and high cheekbones and usually an easy smile, though not at the moment.

“Noble sacrifices are very romantic, Recruit Manning,” he bit off, “but this skirmish is only part of your mission. If this were a real op, and you got yourself killed early in the action, your team would be a troop short and missing a leader. So next time you’re faced with this situation…” He pointed behind her, where fifty meters away the ground dropped off into a gulch. “Get to cover, then blow up the damned building.”

He looked around at the rest of the recruits. “No matter how little time you have, there is always time to think.” He checked his watch, sniffed in irritation. “All right, we’re doing this again. Get formed up and move back to the LZ, get resupplied from the shuttles and we’re kicking off the raid at No Later Than 2000 hours. Which means it’s now a low-light attack, so take the opportunity to adjust your tactics, Manning.”

“I’m still Team Leader, Sergeant Crossman?” she asked, surprised.

“Till you get it right, Manning,” he nodded. “Get them moving and don’t get yourself killed this time. Unless you have to.”

“Yes, Sergeant!”

Crossman shook his head as he watched her yelling at the rest of the recruits to get them moving back down the game trail.

“She remind you of anyone, Tom?” A voice came from behind him and that easy smile returned.

“Just some reckless, ballsy LT I once knew,” he turned and saluted as Shannon Stark walked down the hill. She was dressed for the field in dark battle utilities, a sidearm holstered at her waist. Not that she’d need it in the Canadian wilderness, but it was regulation for Intelligence, thanks to Colonel McKay. “How’ve you been ma’am?”

“Busy,” she sighed. “Always busy, especially now that Colonel McKay got the itch to be a field op again. How are Rosalita and the kids?”

“Doing great ma’am… little Jimmy started preschool and Mira is walking now. So what brings you out this way? Don’t usually see the big brass until selection time gets closer.”

“I needed to run something by you. I know you’re busy, but Vinnie and Jock went off with Jason, so you got a minute?”

He checked his watch, grinning. “I have exactly three hours and twenty four minutes, ma’am. Let’s go sit down.”

Tom led her into the buildfoam dome they had been using as part of the “enemy compound,” shoo-ing out the Op-For personnel that had been firing simulators at the recruits. They sat at a table next to stacks of bricks of fake hyperexplosives and Tom poured her a cup of coffee.

“So what’s eating you, Boss Lady?” he prodded, taking a sip from his own mug.

“Tom, we have some chatter that there’s going to be trouble with the Colonial Guard. A lot of them don’t like the new emigration policies and the new rules in place limiting their authority in the colonies, and a lot of the parents of the officer corps don’t like the fact that they aren’t getting kickbacks from the Multicorps anymore for funneling them cheap labor. So the word is, there’s going to be a mutiny, that the CeeGee armories on all the colony worlds are going to seize power from the local governors.”

“I can believe it,” Crossman nodded. “Things aren’t too great for anyone right now and it’s worse in the Developing Blocs.”

“I have Ari working that angle already,” she went on, “but the other shoe is, the mutiny is supposed to coincide with an attempt on President O’Keefe’s life.”

Crossman whistled in surprise, his face thoughtful. “That’s a pretty ambitious move for the CeeGee officer corps,” he mused. “And what’s the endgame here? Do they think that Vice President Dominguez is going to reverse the emigration policies just because he’s from Central America? Or maybe they have something on him that won’t work on O’Keefe…”

“That’s something I am going to have to check out,” Shannon nodded. “And it’s going to be a bitch doing it without the President finding out. But the reason I came to you has less to do with the why and more to do with the how.”

“Right, like if they actually think they have a chance of succeeding, they gotta have an inside guy,” he said. “Unless they’re planning on crashing a cargo ship into the President’s mansion out of orbit, and even the CeeGees can’t be crazy enough for that. So who has access and opportunity that we think would want to do it?”

“And do they plan on getting away with it?” Shannon pondered, rubbing a hand on the back of her neck tiredly. “If you’re willing to sacrifice yourself, you can use any method… hell, a sharp stick would do it.”

“But if you want to get away with it,” Crossman amplified, “you have to use something undetectable, something that can’t be traced back to you. So let’s take three approaches here… what could you use if you wanted to get away with it, what could you use if you didn’t care and what couldn’t you use at all?”

“Well, this stuff’s out the window,” Shannon laughed, kicking at the stack of fake hyperexplosives. “There’s chemscanners all around the President, wherever he goes, and there’re too many different people running them to fake them all out. Same goes for conventional firearms.”

“Most poisons too, and those aren’t sure kills, not with the medical facilities he always has available around him. So, we’ve ruled out bombs, guns and poisons,” he ticked off on his fingers. “You could try for a long-range, coldgas-launched missile, but the automated defenses the Security Service sets up wherever the President goes should be able to detect those and shoot them down. Maybe,” he mused, “a Gauss gun could do it, if it was powerful enough and you could set it up far away enough to escape detection during the security sweep. No way the defenses could shoot down a tungsten penetrator going that fast. They wouldn’t even detect it till it was past.”

“Getting a clear shot from that far away would be difficult to set up though,” Shannon pointed out. “That’s one of the things the Security people look for right away when they’re scouting a location.”

“Wouldn’t necessarily have to be a clear shot,” he pointed out. “A penetrator slug launched from an electromagnetic cannon could go right through a couple buildings and take out the President easy.”

“You’re right,” she nodded thoughtfully. “Okay, we’ll mark that down as a possibility. We can always have Security widen their scans and look for power readings that could fire a gun that big. Anything else? Anything that could get him when he’s at home? In Capital City?”

“Well, we’re back to a sharp stick or an orbital strike there,” Tom shrugged. “I just don’t see a way for the killer to get away, so it would have to be either up close and personal and he doesn’t care if he dies in the attempt, or it’s something so big that it’s more a coup than an assassination.”

Shannon frowned and her eyes narrowed. “That’s an interesting thought, Tom.” She shook her head clear, then smiled warmly. “So, how’s this class looking?”

“Lots of promise in this one,” he told her, accepting the abrupt change of subject without flinching. “Gonna’ be hard to keep the normal cull rate. I’d like to graduate half of them, to be honest.”

“Take them, then,” she told him. He raised an eyebrow. “If Jason does find Antonov somewhere out there… well, we may need all the help we can get.”

* * *

Shamir watched the line of Colonial Guard officer candidates through his binoculars as the camouflage-clad, armored men and women moved through the tall grass of the wide, open plane, their weapons held listlessly, fatigue plain in their gait and pace as the afternoon sun beat down on their heads. They’d been in the field for three days, little of it spent sleeping, and they were not used to it. They were only three weeks into the four-month training course and most of them had never even picked up a weapon before their trip to the range in week one, much less humped one through the boonies.

“Sergeant Chen,” he transmitted over the ‘link microphone attached to his collar, “whenever you’re ready.”

“Yes, sir,” came the laconic reply from the training NCO. Less than a minute later, the tall grass parted in a dozen spots arrayed in a semicircle to the front of the trainees and he could faintly hear the chatter of simulator rounds as the platoon of officer candidates scattered, some running, some hitting the ground, others standing where they were and returning fire. Only three did the correct thing: they charged into the ambush, laying down suppressive fire as they bounded forward. But there were too many attackers and eventually they were overwhelmed, the joints of their body armor locking up and freezing them in place when the lasers from the simulator guns hit the sensors built into the armor.

“All right,” Ari sighed, “let’s get down there for the After Action Review.”

He jumped into the open-topped utility groundcar, taking a seat beside the enlisted driver. Behind him, Captain Adedotun Odawale and First Lieutenant Alida Hudec climbed into the rear seats and the driver set off down the hill toward the ambush site. Odawale was a tall, somewhat gangly African male, his skin dark as ebony, his head clean-shaven and his eyes harsh and business-like. Hudec was a dark-haired, dark-eyed eastern European woman with an athlete’s build and piercing green eyes. Ari had just met them both yesterday, but his first impression was that they were professionals… probably more of Kage’s new breed.

By the time the groundcar arrived at the site, training NCOs were already freeing the officer candidates from their armor-induced paralysis and the thirty-six men and women were mostly resting on the ground, helmets in their laps, some gulping down water, others merely grumbling in low voices. The other platoon, the ambushers, was in much better spirits; laughing, trading stories and slapping each other on the back. Ari stepped into the midst of them, trailed by the other two officers.

“All right, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, hands clasped behind him. “Can anyone tell me what the proper response to an ambush in open country is?”

One of the men in his platoon, a handsome young Argentine, raised his hand. “You are to assault through the ambush, Captain Al Masri.”

“That is correct, Candidate Matienzo. And you did just that, as did Candidates Calderon and Maathai. It didn’t work, however… because the rest of Fourth Training Platoon seems to have forgotten that lesson. At least a few of you bothered to return fire, although standing in the middle of an open field and returning fire is a quick form of suicide. The rest of you either hit the ground and hid or ran outright. Tell me, ladies and gentlemen, what do suppose the punishment is for doing such a thing in actual combat?”

Maathai raised his hand. “Court-martial and possibly execution, sir, if your actions caused the deaths of your fellow Guard troopers.”

Ari nodded. “At the very least, you would be kicked out of the Guard for good, and sent back to your homes with your tails between your legs, any respect you may have had now gone forever.” He spread his hands before him demonstratively. “You have only been here a few weeks. I can forgive a mistake… that can be rectified with training, with practice. I cannot forgive innate cowardice. We will forget this happened, just this once. If it happens again, those in question will be sent home and it will be a minimum of six months before they are again allowed to re-apply for training.” He looked them over, back and forth. “Am I clear?”

“Yes, sir,” came the disjointed mumble of replies.

“I said,” he barked, louder, “am I clear?”

“Yes, sir!” The response was louder and more uniform. He smiled thinly.

“You are tired,” he went on. “You are hungry. You are hot, your muscles ache, your weapons are heavy. You are not used to this. That is why you are here, my children. To get used to it. Let me ask you, do you suppose that a Panamanian Liberation Front terrorist will allow you the luxury of a rest break before they attack? I can personally assure you that they won’t… they are without mercy and without remorse. They are worse than animals, for at least animals have rational, logical needs and follow predictable means to achieve them. If they get the upper hand, they will not hesitate to kill you. You must not allow them to have the upper hand. If you give in to fatigue, to pain, to confusion, you are defeated before you fire a shot. If you want to kill these terrorist bastards, you must be harder than them.”

“Now,” Lieutenant Hudec stepped forward, “as for you, Third Platoon. You executed the ambush well… but when the three members of Fourth did the proper thing and assaulted into the ambush, how many casualties did you take? Candidate Ramirez?” She addressed the platoon leader.

“Five, ma’am,” the young man admitted. “Two dead.”

“And if more than three had assaulted, if they had been better organized, how many casualties do you think you would have received?”

“At least twice that, ma’am.”

“So tell me, how do you prevent that? How could you set up your ambush to prevent it?” Her question was met with silence. Finally, she looked to Ari. “Captain Al Masri, if you wouldn’t mind?”

“There are two ways,” he told them. “The first, and simplest, is to array your forces in an ‘L’ shape, so that to attack either arm of the ‘L’ requires exposing your flank to enemy fire. The other is to set up in a broad ‘V,’ which would do the same for both flanks. When you put the bulk of your ambushing force in one spot, as you did, you invite an assault and you have no counter to it.”

“So we see,” Captain Odawale spoke up for the first time, his voice clear and full, “that both the ambushers and the ambushed have made mistakes today. But do not allow this to frustrate you, or make you angry. This was not a test that you pass or fail, this was a lesson, as much as any you have received in the classroom or simulator, and it was meant to teach you. The tests will come, both here and later in the field, where to fail is death. Think on this and learn, and you will pass these tests.” He looked up, shading his eyes from the sun with his hand, towards the horizon and a cloud of dust raising on a dirt track. “And I see the transports are here, to take you back to the barracks.” That drew a ragged cheer from the trainees. “Platoon leaders, take charge of your platoons and load them onto the trucks. Weapons maintenance and then dinner.”

“And what are your plans for dinner, Captain?” Lieutenant Hudec asked him quietly as they watched Odawale see the troops loaded onto the vehicles.

He glanced at her with unfeigned curiosity in his eyes. “I had thought to take it in the Officer’s Mess,” he admitted.

“I know of a place in the city that has excellent Moroccan fare,” she smiled, and he couldn’t help but notice the way her face lit up when she smiled. “Do you like Moroccan food?”

“Surely I do, Lieutenant,” he smiled in return. “I would be most grateful if you would be willing to show me this place.”

“I have a flyer on call in the motor pool,” she told him. “Meet me there at 1800 hours… sir.”

“So, Lieutenant Hudec,” Ari said conversationally between bites of lamb, “tell me… how did you wind up as a trainer here?”

“We are away from the base,” she took a sip of wine. “Is it permissible to call me Alida?”

Ari watched the shadows of the candlelight play across her face, not conventionally beautiful but still alluring. “Yes, Alida,” he savored the name as it came off his lips. He was a bit surprised that he had to remind himself not to ask her to call him ‘Ari.’ “I would tell you to call me ‘Mohammed,’ but no one calls me that. My full name is Mohammed Abed Al-Masri, so back home they call me ‘Abed.’ But when I joined the Fleet Marines, my fellow officers all called me ‘Mo.’ This is not something a Muslim would do… you do not shorten the name Mohammed, it is disrespectful.” He shrugged. “I am not so religious as my parents, or especially my grandparents. Which is, I suppose, why I am here rather than in charge of the family fortune, as my elder brother is.” He smiled and lifted his wine glass, inclining it toward her. “You can call me ‘Mo.’”

She nodded, returned the toast and took a sip. “To answer your question, Mo, I came to be here because I embarrassed the hell out of my parents.”

He laughed sharply. “Ah, a direct woman. So, what did you do to scandalize the Hudec family?”

“I was a silly, teenage girl, in my first year at university, rebelling against my parents, who are career diplomats. I was smitten with a boy, who was a neo-Marxist.” She sighed. “I knew nothing of politics other than that he horrified my parents. Unfortunately, he had friends who were not hesitant to use violence to further their beliefs, and I was a convenient pawn. They attempted to kidnap me, to use me as a tool against my parents. It… did not end well for them. While young and stupid, I was not a helpless waif. I disarmed one of them and killed them all.”

“Khara,” he swore softly. It was Arabic for “shit.”

“It was a huge story for a while, and my parents suggested that I might consider going off to college somewhere far away from there. I saved them further mortification by joining the Guard. I finished my schooling in my off time, and went through this course myself only two years ago. Then…” She hesitated, taking another sip of wine. “I was on Kali when the Moro People’s Army attacked the capitol at Pithapuram.”

“Blood of the prophet,” he shook his head. “That was a nightmare.”

“Only four of us survived,” she said softly, staring somewhere past him. “We held out in the armory for three days until reinforcements arrived.”

“Well, I suppose that answers why you are here,” he raised an eyebrow. “Yet, I wonder, Alida, whether anything we can teach them will be enough.” Seemingly casually, he glanced around at the dark, cozy restaurant, its walls decorated with colorful mosaics. There were only a few other people eating and they all seem deeply involved with their own conversations. “Things are bad out there, and they are going to get much worse. O’Keefe is a bloody fool, and our troops are going to be the ones to pay the price.”

“So you are not a fan of the new emigration policies, Mo?” She asked him, her mouth curled into a sarcastic smirk.

“History shows us that revolutions happen in times of increased expectations. That moron is creating the perfect atmosphere for revolution, and then trying to tie our hands and keep us from preventing it. And it’s not just the colonies I worry about,” he expanded. “Without the ability to remove troublemakers and provocateurs from the population, we will be faced with violent uprisings right here on Earth, the same sort that led to forced exile in the first place.” His expression grew dark. “I tell you truly, Alida, I feel that our whole civilization is in danger of burning. And I do not know what I can do to stop it.”

“You are not the only one who feels that way,” she said quietly, eyes flickering to meet his as she hid her mouth behind a sip of wine.

“I am certain of that,” he shrugged. “But unless they wish to get drunk together, I do not see what good it does.”

“You should talk to them,” she suggested. “Then you can judge what good they can do.”

“If you think well of them, I would be happy to, of course,” he said, trying mightily not to show the eagerness he felt. “Though I should tell you, I have little experience speaking with politicians.”

“These men and women are not politicians, Mo. I think you will find them easy to relate to. But I will tell you more once I have had the chance to talk to them. For now…” She cocked her head to the side and grinned. “The night is young. Let us speak of more pleasant things…”

Ari felt his heart beat a bit faster as she laid a hand on top of his.

There were some advantages, he realized as he grinned back at her, to being married to your job…

Chapter Six

Shannon Stark stepped out of the flyer and onto the soft loam of the clearing. The valley and the lake at its center were remnants of the glaciers that had swept through northern Minnesota 12,000 years before, but the cabin and the dock behind it were more recent, dating back only three hundred years. The bass boat floating next to the dock could have been a year old or a hundred… the design for such things didn’t change much. The man dressed in casual clothing, fishing off the dock could have been from anytime in the three hundred years the cabin had existed, though he had definitely changed in the years she had known him.

Glen Mulrooney still had the same wavy, blond hair and the same youthful look to his rounded, pleasant face, but that face seemed less driven than when she’d first met him and more at peace with himself. As she came closer, Glen reeled in his line and dropped the pole into the boat, then turned and strode over to meet her.

“Hey Shannon,” he smiled, taking her hand. “You’re looking good.”

“So are you, Glen,” she said. “Nice place you have here.”

“Isn’t it?” He looked around, as if appreciating it himself for the first time. “Val loves bringing Natalia out here… there’s no roads, no one around for a hundred miles.” He laughed. “I’d never gone fishing before, you know that?” His eyes went thoughtful. “I wonder how many people go fishing. Probably not a lot… most people live their whole lives in the cities.” He shook his head clear. “But I don’t think you flew out all this way to talk about fishing.” He waved at the cabin. “Let’s go inside.”

The interior of the cabin was more modern than the outside; a full holographic communications hub occupied one corner, appropriate for the getaway vacation house of a Republic Senator. Glen gestured to the kitchen table and sat across from her. Running a hand across its smooth surface, she noticed that it was real wood.

“Val said you wanted to talk someplace private,” he said. “I couldn’t think of anyplace more private than this.”

“I’ve had people investigating the rumor Val told us about,” Shannon began without any further preamble. “But it’s brought up some questions… some things that need to be looked into. But I can’t do it, and neither can my people, not without raising some red flags.”

“So you want me to do it,” he deduced. “All right… what is it?”

“Vice President Dominguez. If they want to take out your father-in-law, there has to be a reason. Unless they expect things to be different if Dominguez is in charge, it doesn’t make any sense.”

“You think he’s involved?” Glen seemed surprised.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “The alternative is, they have something on him they think they can use to control him. Either way, we have to know.”

“I don’t know him that well,” Glen said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “But I know President O’Keefe trusts him. They’ve been friends for years.”

“Can you do some digging for us? Or is this too high up the food chain? I don’t want you or Val to get burned in this.”

“I’ll dig around the edges, see if I turn up anything that could point toward him being compromised,” Glen said, wheels turning behind his eyes as he spoke. “There are a few journalists I could talk to, people I trust, that have systems for connecting this kind of thing. That way, if something does pop up, Dominguez couldn’t keep it quiet just by… silencing me.”

“Glen,” she shook her head, “if you think you’ve gone too far, back off. You have your family to think of. Ask your journalist friends, but that’s it… keep your involvement in this untraceable.”

“I’ll stay quiet,” he assured her. “I wouldn’t do anything to put Val or Natalia in danger. Besides,” he shrugged, “it might all turn out to be nothing.”

“Let’s hope. If you find out anything and need to reach me, send a message to this address… let me see your ‘link.” He handed the device over and she tapped a name into his address book file. At his raised eyebrow, she chuckled. “It’s safer and harder to trace than if I’d sent you the name electronically.”

“Well, you’re the spymaster,” he shrugged, pocketing the ‘link. “So, tell me… how are you and Jason doing?”

“Great,” she sighed, “except for all the time we have to spend apart. But that’s just part of the job.”

“You two ever think about having kids?”

“We’ve talked about it. But we’ve both agreed we want to wait until we’re ready to retire from the military. Having both your parents shipping around different star systems for months at a time is no way for a kid to grow up.”

“Somehow I just can’t imagine you retiring, Shannon,” Glen laughed.

“I expect to live a long time,” she grinned, knocking on the wood of the table, “barring enemy action. People change. Ten, twenty years down the road I might be ready to change diapers and read stories.”

“Well, don’t wait too long,” he warned her. He glanced out the window at the lake, his face peaceful. “Because you’re right… people change.”

* * *

“People never change, Captain Al-Masri,” Colonel Lee Jun-hwan declared forcefully, punctuating his statement with a jabbing finger. “Daniel O’Keefe was a bleeding heart populist as a senator, before the war with those Russian jasig.” Bastards, Ari mentally translated the Korean word. “His idiot daughter is nearly killed by peasant scum on Aphrodite and does it bring him to his senses? No, he’s just as big of a fool now that he’s president.”

Colonel Lee, Ari thought, reminded him of one of his college drinking buddies commenting on politics… if that drinking buddy had been a high-ranking military officer responsible for training and deploying men and women to other star systems. When Alida had come to him after the end of training Friday and suggested that it was the time to meet the people who thought like him, he had expected someone lower on the food chain. Lee was Kage’s XO, his second in command. They were ensconced in Lee’s private room in the base Officers’ Club, lounging on real leather couches and sipping well-aged bourbon: Lee, Alida, Lee’s aid Captain Hassan Ali and himself. It had taken an hour of pleasantries and feeling out and several glasses of bourbon before Lee had warmed up to him; now he was worried about how to get the Korean officer to cut to the chase without encouraging another hour of political bluster.

“He is indeed a fool,” Ari nodded. “But he is indeed the president and we but soldiers. And alas stuck here on Earth when the problems are months-long journeys away. What can we possibly do, other than train our troops to the best of our ability?”

“There are things that can be done, Mohammed Al Masri,” Hassan spoke, hiding his words behind a sip of bourbon. He was a young man with a dark, narrow face and close-cropped hair. “The question is, are you the man to help us do them?”

Ari considered his reply, staring at the drink in his glass for a long moment.

“Hassan Ali,” he finally said, “there are words and there are words. Some words are empty bluster, while some are made of solid steel. I respect you, Colonel Lee, and I respect your authority, but if these are empty words, if this is more of the talk I have heard of a strike or a political campaign, I am not your man. I am a direct man, not a politician.”

“We are all politicians, my friend,” Hassan smiled. “For is not the end move in politics always to pick up a gun?”

“And have we come to the end move?” Ari asked, fixing Hassan’s stare with his own, unwavering.

“We have indeed,” Lee answered him as if he had been speaking instead of his XO. “It will be very soon, and it will happen all across the colonies… as well as here. We need someone like you, a proven leader in combat, a man who is not unwilling to get his hands dirty. But I will also tell you that if things go wrong, it could cost you not just your career this time, but your freedom and possibly your life. Is this a risk you are willing to take?”

“If I were unwilling to risk my life,” Ari responded, “I would never have become a Marine. What I am not willing to do, Colonel Lee, is throw it away. There must be a chance of success, a plan worth carrying out. Noble gestures and martyrdom are fine for stories to tell children, but not something to which I aspire.”

“Ha!” Lee barked, smiling thinly. “You did not lie when you said you were a direct man. I cannot tell you all you wish to know yet, Captain. I am sure you understand the concept of operational security. But I will tell you that we are not interested in martyrdom either. I and the others involved have every expectation of success.”

“You know me,” Alida interjected. In the Biblical sense anyway, Ari thought, forcing down a grin. “Do I strike you as someone who wishes a symbolic death above accomplishing the mission?”

“No, you do not,” Ari answered truthfully. Which was worrisome. Whatever the plot was, it would have been much easier to defeat if the plotters were resigned to martyrs’ deaths and a glorious failure. “But I would feel more comfortable if I knew what my role was to be.”

“Eventually, your role will be to do what you do best,” Colonel Lee informed him. “You will lead men in combat. But for now, what we need you to do is to recruit others, from among your trainees. Those who show skill and promise and recognize the dangers we all face.”

“Sir,” he said slowly and firmly, his own dark eyes locked with Lee’s, “I am willing to be part of your cause, for I certainly agree that we have to act. But I cannot in good conscience persuade young men and women who trust me to become involved in this unless I know we can succeed. I know you can’t share everything with me… but if we have some edge, something that I have not thought of, that will give us the victory, I must know before I can convince others to follow me.”

Lee steepled his fingers thoughtfully, considering Ari carefully. Then he glanced at Alida with a question in his eyes, and she nodded. “I can tell you this, Captain,” he said. “What keeps us isolated and unable to coordinate with our brothers and sisters who share our cause is communications lag. It takes months for messages to be passed back and forth to the colonies from Earth and back, secreted on Eysselink Drive starships. That is no longer the case… for us.”

Ari felt a tingling up his spine as the repercussions of what the Colonel had just said echoed through his mind.

“I see,” he replied very carefully. “Very well, sir. You can count on me.”

“Good,” Lee smiled broadly, satisfied that he had made the right decision. He leaned forward and extended his hand and Ari shook it firmly. “Start feeling out the students you wish to recruit. But don’t take too long… by the time their class ends, we need to know which ones are with us.”

“If you need to contact us,” Hassan put in, “go through me. Leave me a message about morale issues and I will find you.”

Ari and Alida rose as the Colonel came to his feet.

“It has been a pleasure, Captain,” Lee returned Ari’s salute.

“Sir, the pleasure and the honor have been mine,” Ari told him.

As the Colonel and his aide exited the suite, Ari exhaled a sigh and sagged against Alida.

“Were you worried, Mo?” she asked, seemingly amused. He felt a stirring of desire as he stared at her smile, feeling her warmth against him.

“Alida my sweet,” he eyed her balefully, struggling to remain in character, “I was just conspiring with the second-highest ranking Guard officer here to commit treason against our government. I was worried then and I am still worried now… perhaps more worried.”

“Do not be troubled,” she patted his arm affectionately. “I would not have involved you if I did not think you could handle it.”

“And you know so much about me, eh?” He snorted doubtfully.

She turned his head toward her with a gentle finger on his cheek and kissed him passionately. Ari felt his breath catch in his chest. “Everything. kedves.” “Darling” in Hungarian, he knew. “And don’t you forget it.”

As he followed her out of the club, Ari couldn’t shake the feeling that he was in way over his head. He knew one thing for sure, though… it was time to call the boss.

Slowly, carefully, Ari disentangled himself from a sleeping Alida and slipped silently out bed. As he slipped into his running shorts and T-shirt, he couldn’t help but spare another glance to the curving landscape of milky skin visible where the sheet had slipped down. He frowned thoughtfully. He had cultivated their relationship these past few weeks because it had made it easier for him to infiltrate, but he had to force himself not to think about the endgame… about having to arrest her, or God forbid, kill her. This was getting too complicated.

Sighing, he slipped into his shoes, then clipped his ‘link to the waistband of his shorts and eased out the door. He waved to the guards at the entrance of the Officers’ Quarters; nothing more natural than an officer going out for a pre-dawn run before duty hours. He broke into a slow, warm-up jog down the main path and then when he reached the perimeter trail that circled the whole complex, he began to run. No telling if there were any security cameras watching him, so he had to make it look real… he did one full loop around the complex, a full ten kilometers, then began another and kept it up until the track again wound through an arboretum at least three kilometers away from the main training complex.

Grabbing his right hamstring, Ari pretended to have a cramp, limping over to a bench and propping his heel on the top of it, trying to stretch out his leg. While he did so, he pulled his ‘link off his belt and surreptitiously held it close to his mouth.

“Record message protocol Eldest Son,” he commanded quietly. “Colonel Lee, the XO here is involved and so is his aid, Major Ali. Don’t have evidence that General Kage is in on it, but I’d be surprised if Lee were the mastermind; he doesn’t have the temperament. We had a face-to-face and I’ve been asked to recruit officer candidates for the mutiny. The mutiny is sounding a lot more like a coup to me.”

Ari switched legs on the bench, stretching out the other one. “The kicker is,” he continued with the message, “he told me that the mutineers have access to instantaneous FTL communications. That’s gotta’ mean they’ve somehow found and figured out how to use the wormholes Antonov discovered… and I don’t know how they could have pulled that off without outside help. This thing is way bigger than we thought and I need to know how far you want me to take this. I do not feel comfortable recruiting young trainees to something that could get them arrested or killed…” Ari trailed off, something teasing at his subconscious, something he hadn’t quite heard, but knew there’s been a sound…

There. A faint crunch of a footstep on mulch…

Ari had barely had time to straighten up from his stretch before the man was upon him, an indistinct figure clad in speed and darkness, striking with a hiss of a blade passing through the air. Ari threw himself backwards on instinct more than anything else, feeling the breeze of the strike against his skin as it just missed, then he darted in with both arms held up in a block and caught the return swing in mid-motion, his forearms cracking against the back of his attacker’s left arm, the impact sending the small, dark-bladed knife the man had been holding spinning through the air and into the brush.

Ari turned the block into a grab, catching his attacker at the wrist and triceps and yanking him into a knee-strike that slammed into unprotected sternum with a crunch of cracking bone. He could hear and feel the wind go out of the man in an explosive gush and his training told him to lock his opponent into a choke and finish him… but instinct made him spin the man around by his captive arm and throw him into the path of the second attacker he’d sensed more than heard was coming at him.

The disarmed attacker tumbled into an uncontrolled roll and took the oncoming assailant at the knees, pitching him face-first into the dirt. Ari only had the barest impression of dark clothes and a stocky build-he couldn’t tell if the man was armed or not-but he pounced on the second man immediately, pressing his advantage with an elbow strike on the downed attacker’s back that broke his right clavicle with an audible snap. A muffled scream came through the man’s black balaclava and the assassin reached desperately with his left hand for the knife clutched in his now-useless right, but Ari had spun around and pinned the left arm with his knee. With a swift, trained motion, Ari wrapped his arm around the man’s neck and yanked backwards sharply. A sickening crunch and then the man’s struggles stopped and he went limp.

Ari was up in an instant, coming into a crouch as he watched the first man scramble to his feet, still struggling to breathe. Ari lunged at him with the tactical aggression that he’d been taught in the Intelligence Service’s unarmed combat courses, catching him low across the hips, and yanking him off his feet, slamming his shoulders squarely into the ground. Not knowing if there were more of them out there, Ari took the man out quickly with a vicious punch to the throat, crushing his trachea.

Leaving the man thrashing on the ground, choking to death, Ari jumped to his feet, scanning for more attackers, his own gasping breath and pounding heartbeat deafening in his ears. Suddenly a sound penetrated the cacophony of his own respiration, a coughing snap that he instantly recognized as the report of a suppressed gunshot. He spun toward the sound and saw a third black-clad man slumping to the ground, a compact pistol slipping out of his lifeless fingers.

Standing behind the man was Alida, dressed in running Capri’s and a tank top, an ugly little pistol with a sound suppressor attached to its barrel held in her outstretched hands. He stared at her agape as she glanced back and forth, checking for any other threats before lowering the gun.

“Getting a bit sloppy, Captain Shamir,” she said softly. “You should have known they’d have someone backing them up with a gun, just in case.”

He started to respond, then checked himself, his mouth left wide open.

“What the fuck?” was all he was finally able to say. “Do you… are you with… us?”

She laughed softly, her hands working to detach the suppressor from the pistol then stowing the gun and the silencer in a small waist pack. “You mean am I with the Fleet Intelligence Service? No… I work for the Guard Investigative Division, but at the moment I am working directly for General Kage.”

“General…?” Ari felt incredibly disoriented, as if he’d walked into the middle of someone else’s conversation. “So, General Kage isn’t…”

“Look,” she sighed, “we don’t have much time… we need to get these bodies off the trail and out of sight, then get back to the OQ before we’re on duty. I’ll fill you in while we run.”

Ari nodded, finally hearing something he could understand. Without another word, the two of them dragged the three would-be assassins off the trail and deep into the trees, then covered them with brush, making sure their weapons were left with the bodies.

“Someone will find them eventually,” he warned as he paused to retrieve his ‘link from where he’d dropped it near the bench.

“I’ll get a team out here to clean up,” Alida assured him. “Now, let’s get going.”

Ari and Alida made their way back onto the running path and broke into an easy jog. Ari felt a jolt of post-fight adrenaline jitters hit him like a hammer and only previous experience kept him from curling into a ball on the trail. Instead, he used breathing exercises to keep his pulse and respiration under control as he kept up a steady pace next to the woman he’d thought he knew.

“General Kage knows about the conspiracy?” He asked Alida once he had his breathing under control.

“Of course… he’s many things, but he’s not stupid,” she replied, seemingly calm as a mill pond.

“How did you know who I was?” He heard more anger in his voice than he’d meant to put there. Mistakes like that could easily get him killed.

“The GIS stole the Marine personnel files on all the Marines that were recruited to Intelligence,” she explained with a shrug. “So, we had biometric recognition, voice recognition, DNA recognition, etc… for you and a bunch of others that came in five years ago when everything got reorganized. Frankly, with what was going on, we expected someone. That’s why I’m here…”

“If you know what’s going on,” he asked, panting a bit, “why didn’t you just bust it up yourselves already?”

“Two reasons… one, as you may have guessed by now, it goes beyond some dissatisfied Guard officers who want to pull a stunt, and we don’t know how far yet. Two, you Fleet boys don’t trust us and Kage figured the best way to get your help was to let you see it for yourself. Who the hell do you think started the rumors so you’d pick up on this?”

“Well shit,” he commented bitterly. Not only had he been played, the whole Intelligence Service had been played. “And now Lee knows about me too.”

“Those hitters didn’t work for Lee,” she told him. “Lee doesn’t take a shit without us knowing what he had for dinner. He’s as happy as a pig in slop to have someone like you… like Mo… here.”

“So who the hell did send them?” Ari wanted to know.

“I don’t know,” she replied, “I spotted them when you left the room-I’m not that sound of a sleeper, you know. I tied into the security cameras with my ‘link to see where you were going and I spotted them head out about five minutes after you did, going the opposite way on the perimeter trail. They tried to look like joggers, but no one wears that much clothing to run here in summer, not even before dawn. I thought about calling security, but I decided to see if I could handle it myself.”

“And I appreciate you saving my life,” he told her. “Thank you.”

“I like you, Ari” she told him, and he could see her smile even in the dark. “Even when you’re pretending to be Mo. So don’t take this the wrong way, but the real reason I saved you is that we do need you Fleet boys’ help and we can’t wait for them to send your replacement. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen soon.”

“You think I can still maintain cover?” he asked her, surprised. “Whoever sent those hitters must know I’m not who I say I am.”

“Oh, they may try again,” she agreed. “But that just gives us an opportunity to find out who they are. What? You afraid?” she asked, teasingly. “You did pretty well, for a guy in skimpy running shorts.”

He couldn’t help it… he laughed, a coughing, breathless laugh. “As long as you’ll be there to watch my back, Alida… or whatever your name is.”

“Alida will do for now,” she told him. “Wouldn’t want you to slip and call me something else. If we live through this, I’ll tell you my real name.” She sighed. “I hadn’t intended to come out of cover with you so soon… but I suppose it does simplify things if you know we are both working to the same end.”

“No more need for a cover,” he smiled ruefully, “so I suppose you’ll be moving back to your own room.”

“Don’t be silly, Mo,” she grinned back at him as they came within sight of the OQ. “As I said… I like you. Now let’s get a shower and get to work.”

“I like you too, Alida,” he murmured, shaking his head. “I like you too.”

Chapter Seven

“Have I mentioned,” Vinnie groaned, “just how much I hate g-sleep?”

“Yeah,” Jock muttered, sitting up in his open hibernation chamber, rubbing his eyes. “You’ve whined like a little bitch about it every trip the last three years. Sir.”

“So, how long have you two been married?” Lt. Commander Villanueva asked dryly as she rose stretching from her own chamber across from theirs. Jock cocked an appreciative eyebrow as her stretch did interesting things to the tank top she was wearing, still damp with the oxygenated biotic fluid they’d been breathing as it cushioned them from the crushing pseudo-acceleration of the stardrive.

“Since Basic Training,” Vinnie grunted, rolling out of his chamber. “But I’m considering a divorce.”

“But what about the kids, honey?” Jock said in a plaintive falsetto, climbing out himself. “Sir.”

“I can’t take you two anywhere,” McKay shook his head, walking past them towards the showers. They were still decelerating into the system at a one-gravity warp analog, but that would end soon, and everyone was rushing to get cleaned up before the pseudo-gravity was gone. “Shuttle launches in two hours, Vinnie,” he reminded over his shoulder as he grabbed a towel from the locker.

“Yeah, yeah,” the former Marine NCO muttered, falling into a pushup position next to his g-sleep chamber and cranking out a quick fifty to get the tingly, pins-and-needles feeling out of his muscles.

“So, Captain Mahoney,” Lt. Commander Villanueva asked as he came to his feet, “you were on the Protectorate flagship during the Battle for Earth.”

“Yeah… err, yes, ma’am,” Vinnie replied, quickly calculating her Fleet rank and converting it to the Marines/Intelligence equivalent of Major. He bit off his well-rehearsed follow-up of “what? You want an autograph?” that had become his standard reply to the question.

“You met Antonov, didn’t you?”

“I guess you could call it that,” he shrugged, wishing she would get to the point so he could get a shower. “He mostly told us what suckers we were, until Colonel McKay got tired of it and the shooting started.”

“That’s right, he set a trap for you,” she recalled. “Does that worry you?”

“You mean do I think this is a trap?” He thought about it for a moment. “Could be. Doesn’t really matter. We still gotta do what we do, and I’m not sure I could be any more cautious than I already am and still do my job. Let me tell you something, Commander… there’s nothing like getting shot to make you grow eyes in the back of your head. Anyway,” he shook the thought off, “we gotta go collect ourselves a former Protectorate Colonel turned cattle rancher, so if you wouldn’t mind, ma’am.”

“Go right ahead, Captain,” she smiled, “I had better go get cleaned up myself.”

“I think she likes you,” Jock stage-whispered to Vinnie as they entered the men’s showers. “Sir.”

“Jesus Christ I wish you’d taken a commission,” Vinnie snarled. “Then I could tell you exactly what I’m thinking without breaking regulations about abusing lower ranks.”

“Why the hell do you think I stayed a sergeant?” Jock cracked. “Sir.”

Jason McKay stepped off the shuttle and into a chilling wind that whipped mercilessly through the grassy valley and across the landing pad, making the hood of his jacket flap like an ensign.

“Isn’t it supposed to be spring?” He asked, squinting up at the orange glow of Epsilon Eridani in the harshly blue sky.

“Hell yes,” Vinnie said, beside him. “You should see this shit-hole in winter, sir… you spend a couple days in Beacon Pass in winter and you’ll wonder why Loki is classified as habitable.”

“It’s not that bad,” Jock shrugged, staring off at the high, craggy mountains in the distance beyond the port city. “I’d rather have the cold than the heat.”

“Here comes our ride,” McKay nodded towards a boxy all-terrain rover rumbling down the dirt road that connected Beacon Pass to the landing pad. Behind the three men, Captain Minishimi’s XO Commander Duncan stepped off the boarding ramp with their pilot Lt. Commander Villanueva at his heels. Duncan wasn’t, McKay recalled, Minishimi’s usual First Officer; Jack Durant had been badly injured in an accident while rock climbing just before the end of their last leave.

“We’ll ride into town with you, Colonel,” Duncan said, pulling on a watch cap. He was a pale man and his cheeks were already turning red from the cold wind. Villanueva withstood the weather stoically, her short, dark hair waving slightly like the fields of grass in the distance, her face impassive. “If you wouldn’t mind picking us up at the Colonial Governor’s office on your way back.”

“Not a problem, Commander,” McKay assured him. “Hopefully we won’t be too long. But I guess that depends on how reasonable our friend Podbyrin wants to be…”

“Are you absolutely fucking nuts?” Colonel D’mitry Grigor’yevich Podbyrin demanded. The Colonel, late of the Russian Protectorate Space Force, was a thin, sallow man with a shaved head and dark, sunken eyes. He looked as if he were in late middle age, but McKay knew him to be over one hundred and eighty years old, his life extended by organ transplants done on the Protectorate home base. Right now, his pale face was red, old broken blood vessels in his nose lit up like neon signs. “Let me tell you something, McKay,” he said, shaking his finger in the younger man’s face, “this is not an easy place to make a living.” He stomped away across the porch of his cabin, waving a hand at the wind-swept plains beyond his homestead. “In the winter, I cannot leave my house without a thermal suit that preheats the air I breathe. A regular cow would die in five minutes… only those things can survive here in the cold.” He jerked his head towards a gaggle of genetically engineered cattle grazing contentedly on the other side of a plank fence beyond his house. They were a lab-created mixture of American bison and musk ox, huge and ornery with long, shaggy fur and padded hooves.

“And besides the cold, I have to protect those things from the predators… those damn hafgygr that look like something from a nightmare; and the grab-worms that tunnel under the dirt and dig traps for the cattle. I’ve almost been worm food more than once. And all for a profit margin that barely pays back my loan and gives me enough trade credits to live on. But you know what… at least I am living! And now you want me to go running after the General, to give him a chance to settle up with me for betraying him during the war!”

“You didn’t exactly betray him, D’mitry,” McKay said soothingly. “You were pumped full of truth drugs.”

“I betrayed him by not killing myself before you captured me!” Podbyrin yelled, his hands going up in frustration. “That is how he will see it, and he will have me gutted like a Christmas lamb! Strangled with my own intestines!”

“What a drama queen.” Jock muttered to Vinnie. The two of them were standing farther down the porch, Jock leaning lackadaisically against the railing, out of earshot of McKay and the Russian.

“At least his English has improved,” Vinnie shrugged.

“D’mitry,” McKay went on, “Antonov will never know you’re there. It’s not as if I’m asking you to come along on an infiltration mission, I just want you to help me get a feel for what he’s after.”

“And who will watch my cattle while I am gone?” Podbyrin demanded. “Or do you just assume I need not worry about losing everything I’ve built because you think there’s such a slim chance I’ll live through the trip?”

“We will be stopping by the Governor’s office on the way to the port,” McKay told him. “He is going to arrange to have three of his best wranglers watch your ranch until you return. And,” he raised a hand to forestall any further objections, “I have been authorized to pay you for your time as well… you can either accept a payment equal to three times your profit last year, or we can, if you like, relocate you to the colony of your choice and set you up with a homestead or a business there. You don’t have to make up your mind now, either.”

That seemed to take Podbyrin by surprise. He frowned thoughtfully, hooking his thumbs in his broad leather belt. “Anywhere?” he asked.

“Anywhere outside the Solar System,” McKay nodded.

“I must think on this,” he murmured, half to himself. He glanced up at McKay. “Do you give me your word I will be protected?”

“Colonel Podbyrin,” McKay replied, “I will tell you this: I will not even ask you to leave the ship unless it is absolutely necessary. I just want you available to consult with.”

The Russian sighed, looking around at his house and land as if he might never see them again. “How long do I have to get ready?”

D’mitry Podbyrin, McKay reflected, looked like a condemned man as he sat strapped into the shuttle acceleration couch, eyes staring straight ahead at the bulkhead, not even bothering to look at the curve of the planet passing beneath them. McKay felt guilt stir within him… whatever his gripes about the hardships, the man had been content here. He shook his head. It didn’t matter. Antonov’s last attempt at invasion had cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars. If he had to upend Podbyrin’s life to prevent another attempt, he’d do it.

“Colonel McKay,” Commander Villanueva’s voice came over the cabin’s PA speakers. “There is a call for you. I am having it transferred to your ‘link.”

“Thanks Commander,” he said, knowing the overhead pickup would catch his words. He pulled his ‘link from a pocket, took the ear bud off of its mount and put it in place, then hit the “connect” button on the screen. “This is McKay,” he said.

“McKay, this is Minishimi,” the Captain’s voice sounded in his ear. “You need to tell your pilot to re-route to a new course.”

“Why’s that, Captain?” He frowned. “What’s going on?”

“We have an unexpected visitor,” she said and he could almost hear the smile in her face. “And he’d like to have a chat…”

The man waiting for McKay in the Flag Cabin of the RSS Sheridan was short and wiry, with a deceptive grace to his movements and a gravity in the lines of his high forehead and short, black hair. Every inch of his office and his uniform were a tribute to followed regulations, right down to the textbook cut of his thin mustache and the neatly tucked sheets of his bunk.

“Admiral Patel,” McKay said, coming to attention as much as was possible in zero gravity and saluting.

“Oh, at ease, McKay,” Arvid Patel saluted, smiling. “For God’s sake, it’s not as if I outrank you by that much anymore. Come on in and close the door.”

“Sir,” McKay shook Patel’s extended hand, “it’s great to see you again, but if I might ask… how did you come to be here? Last I heard, you were scheduled for a run out to Eden for a conference with the 82 Eridani Governors’ Council.”

“Oh, I still am,” the smaller man waved a hand dismissively. “But they aren’t going anywhere and one of the benefits of being the highest ranking officer in the Fleet is the ability to go where I think I’m needed. We were stopped at the Outer System Refueling Station topping off the antimatter stores when I received an encrypted report from the President’s office.”

“Ah, so you already know then, sir,” McKay nodded. He felt vaguely annoyed, though he knew that was irrational. There was no way President O’Keefe was going to keep this from Admiral Patel. But the Intelligence officer in him had an innate distaste for sharing secrets beyond those with an absolute need to know.

“Yes and I didn’t fly out several light years just so you could say ‘I told you so,’ either,” Patel said with a smirk. He and McKay had argued incessantly five years ago about the need to search for Antonov versus the need to concentrate their resources on securing the colonies from the unrest following the war. “I came here to put this ship at your disposal. The President didn’t say I had to, but he didn’t say I couldn’t, either.”

“That’s very good to hear, sir,” McKay sighed. “Frankly, I’ve been worried about how long this is going to take with just one ship available.”

“Well, I’ve just doubled your capabilities… where do you want us?”

“We’re… the Decatur that is, going to be investigating the system where the attack occurred, then moving inward to the next system on the list of possible locations that I showed President O’Keefe… I assume he shared that with you?”

Patel nodded and used the controls on his desk to call up a hologram of the sector in question. McKay nodded, indicating the system they’d be checking after their investigation on Peboan. “If you could start here…” he pulled the picture around to the system furthest out from Peboan, “and work your way back towards us, we could meet at the last location and compare notes once we both arrive insystem.”

“What if we spot them?” Patel frowned. “Activity on a planet, ships? On the one hand, I don’t want to chance losing them, especially if it’s a force small enough for us to overwhelm, but on the other hand the point of all this is to find Antonov and if we attack prematurely, we might make him go even deeper into a hole.”

McKay considered the question for a moment before answering, hand rubbing the back of his neck thoughtfully. “Sir, I’ll leave that to your discretion. We could be weeks away if and when you spot anything. I think it would be prudent if you do see anything to launch a beacon with a message set to go off when the Decatur arrives. That way, no matter what happens, at least we’ll have some idea of what’s going on.”

“Sound thinking,” Patel nodded. “Well, as much as it would be nice to shuttle over and say hi to Joyce in person, I think we’d all be best served in getting under way as soon as possible.”

“I agree. I have a sense that Antonov wouldn’t have risked this attack unless something important was going on and it was imminent.”

“Then we meet again in a few weeks,” the Admiral offered his hand. McKay shook it, greatly relieved by the man’s offer of help.

It’s nice, he reflected as he left the cabin, to have friends.

Chapter Eight

Ariel Shamir was not comfortable. He knew Alida was right, that he had to keep going to work as if nothing had happened, but as he sat in the back of the open utility rover, following his class of officer candidates driving their troop transports over the dirt tracks through the training area, he felt as if he were sitting in the crosshairs. Whoever had tried to kill him-and Alida’s people still didn’t know who it had been after two weeks of investigation-they could attempt it again any time, any place. He had taken to wearing full body armor in the field-“sharing the burden of the troops,” he’d said, since the candidates were also required to wear it at this stage of training-and carrying a loaded sidearm, but no one seemed to have noticed. The only difference was that he was sweating his ass off in the late-afternoon sun.

More frustrating than the tension, though, was the fact that Colonel Lee had yet to contact him again. But he had an idea on how to change that…

As the sun came closer to touching the horizon, the armored vehicles and the rovers and trucks following them began to pull off the track and into a barren clearing. The armored troop carriers arrayed themselves into a ring with the unarmored trucks and rovers in the center before the officer candidates piled out to dig overnight fighting positions: one per vehicle. The armored vehicles held nine troops each. For the night halt, three would man the fighting position, three would man the vehicle’s weapons and three would sleep, in shifts.

Ari smiled thinly as he saw Sergeant Chen fingering the cylindrical artillery simulator on his belt with undisguised anticipation. The SOP for training missions like this was to test how well the ones on duty stayed awake by throwing out artillery simulators while a patrol was outside the wire and seeing if those on watch lit their own patrol up in a panic. It was also very entertaining to watch.

Ari stretched as he stepped out of his rover, feeling the kinks in his back from sitting too long in the uncomfortable seats on rough tracks.

“Sergeant Chen,” he instructed, “make sure the candidates get a hot meal tonight. We want them nice and drowsy come 0300.”

“Yes, sir,” the training NCO said with a cruel smile, heading for the vehicle of the appointed candidate platoon leader.

Ari made the rounds as the troops settled in, checking the quality of their fighting positions, the placement of the armored vehicles and the watch rotation plan and offering constructive criticism to the officer candidate leaders. They were, he reflected, shaping up much better than he’d thought they would when he started this assignment. If Kage’s reforms held, the Colonial Guard might not be as much of a joke in a few years.

Of course, if the mutiny and the assassination attempt actually play out, the Guard will be disbanded and reviled for decades, he thought grimly. Maybe it wasn’t so hard to understand why Kage wanted to stop it badly enough to work with his rivals in Fleet Intelligence.

Once the sun sank below the horizon and everyone was fed, Ari rolled out a sleeping bag next to his rover and laid down to grab a few hours’ sleep before the attack came. He felt as if he had just laid his head down when there was the familiar feeling of a kick at his boot: the traditional, safe way to wake up an armed man in the field. He opened his eyes and waited for them to adjust before he spoke.

“Captain Hassan Ali,” he said quietly, sitting up. Beneath his sleeping bag, his hand still touched the grip of his unholstered handgun. “When I sent the message, I expected you would contact me upon our return to base.”

Colonel Lee’s aid crouched down next to him, anonymous in the dark of night in his grey guard body armor, a black watch cap pulled over his head. “Fewer prying eyes and electronic ears out here,” he replied in hushed but conversational tones. “Have you made progress recruiting the candidates?”

“Yes, I have a couple very promising ones,” Ari nodded, leaning back against the side of the rover, getting his feet beneath him. “Candidate Matienzo for one. His father is highly placed in the Southbloc Corporate Development Council… he has little love for the policies of the current administration. We have spoken of this… I think we can count on him if I am allowed to bring him into this. And he seems to be developing into a very capable soldier.”

“That is good to hear. But you did not contact me for this, I assume.”

“No, I did not,” Ari sighed. “This is difficult to say, Hassan Ali. It is about Alida… Lieutenant Hudec. We have become quite close…”

“And I salute your excellent taste, as well as your excellent luck, my friend,” Ali smiled. “She is an impressive woman.”

“I have… noticed things, in our time together. She has made calls that she has ended abruptly when I entered the room. She has been pressuring me to ask you and Colonel Lee for more details on your plans. This has worried me. So, I took a DNA sample from her. I had some close friends in the Marines, and one of them recently went to work for Fleet Intelligence. I contacted him and did not give him her name… I simply sent him the DNA analysis and had him run it through their database.”

“This was a hell of a risk, Captain Al-Masri.” Ali’s voice was cold and full of menace and trepidation.

“Her name is not Alida Hudec,” Ari went on as if the man hadn’t spoken. “And she is not a Colonial Guard infantry officer.” He let out a deep breath. “She is actually Captain-Investigator Gisella Katona of the Guard Investigative Division.”

“That is not possible!” Ali came to his feet, his voice raising instinctively before he remembered himself and crouched back down. “We ran a very thorough background investigation of Lieutenant Hudec,” he hissed in angry denial.

“The GID backstopped her very well,” Ari nodded. “But my friend has access to files that are more deeply classified than the ones your sources used. I cannot offer you any proof of this… my friend was hesitant to reveal even this much. But now that you know what to look for, you should be able to search this out on your own.”

“If you are wrong about this, Captain Al-Masri,” Ali said darkly, “it may be the end of you.”

“Captain Ali,” Ari returned, “if I am right about this, it may be the end for us all.”

Hassan Ali nodded reluctantly, swallowing hard. The man was very obviously close to panic, but he regained control of himself visibly. “Do nothing. Say nothing. I will be back in contact with you as quickly as I can.”

With that, Ali rose and strode quickly away into the darkness, probably to a waiting vehicle, Ari guessed.

Ari considered trying to go back to sleep, but abandoned the idea. His guts were roiling and his thoughts were on fire. This was a desperate gamble and one that could easily cost Alida her life. He knew these were the risks of the job, and he’d taken them a dozen times himself… and yet somehow, this time, he was scared… scared at what might happen to her, scared that she wouldn’t forgive him, and scared that he would never forgive himself.

* * *

Glen Mulrooney sliced cleanly through the water, his form perfect, his stroke textbook. He’d been swimming since he could walk and had competed as a student in high school and college; it came as naturally to him as breathing. It had been difficult to find the time when he’d been an intern for Senator Daniel O’Keefe, and his time was even more monopolized as an advisor to President Daniel O’Keefe, but at least now he had the benefit of being a member of the Capitol Athletic Club. Only a few minutes’ walk from the President’s office, the club boasted an Olympic size indoor swimming pool among its other amenities and he found the exertion both refreshing and refreshingly simple.

He particularly enjoyed coming in late at night, after Natalia and Valerie were asleep, when the place was mostly empty, as it was now. Which was why it surprised him when he caught a fleeting glimpse of someone walking on the pool deck as he turned to take a breath. For a moment, he felt a freezing panic in his gut as he thought of what Shannon Stark had said, but as he paused at the end of the lane, he let out a breath in relief.

The man approaching him was short and pudgy, his face nondescript, his hair and clothes so far from stylish that he seemed to be making an effort at it. But his doughy face was familiar, and that was enough to make Glen relax.

“Ozzie,” he said, levering himself out of the water and grabbing his towel from the wall. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m a member,” the man shrugged. “Which doesn’t speak well for this place’s standards, I’ll tell you.”

Glen had to laugh. Oscar Fuentes was many things, but athletic wasn’t one of them. Hell, the man cared so little about how he looked that he didn’t even cheat and get a decent bodysculpting.

“Don’t laugh, blondie,” Ozzie cocked an eyebrow. “This is a great place for getting the inside track… people tend to talk a bit more loosely when the endorphins are flowing. Plus, they don’t allow security cameras in the locker rooms… privacy laws and all. So there’s no one to see who they’ve been talking to, and no one pins it on them when the story goes out over the newsfeed.”

“So,” Glen prompted, drying himself off and storing his goggles and earplugs in their case, “are you here trying to get information out of me? Not sure I worked out long enough to be that loose-lipped…”

“You need a shower,” Ozzie replied, frowning grimly. “Let’s hit the locker room.”

Shrugging, Glen snagged his swim bag and followed the reporter out of the pool deck and through the deserted hallways into the men’s locker room.

“I have to warn you, Oz,” he said jokingly, “if this is a come-on, I’m flattered but I don’t swing that way…”

“Shut up for a minute, will you?” the little man snapped, surprising Glen. Ozzie glanced around them, then walked through the rows of lockers and benches, making sure they were alone before he came back to Mulrooney.

“You asked me to run a check on Vice President Dominguez,” Ozzie said, sitting down on one of the benches. “Well, I did. I used the Pattern Recognition System that RHN developed to dig up dirt on celebrities and corporate bigshots and I used it to try to find anything about Dominguez that would make him vulnerable.”

“So, is he connected to the reactionaries in the Southbloc?” Glen asked, pulling on a T shirt and sitting down across from the reporter.

“The only connections he has to the Southbloc are his Aunt Rosaria in Caracas and some skank clerk from Argentina that he’s been banging on the side for the last three years,” Ozzie grunted dismissively.

“Then what was so important that you had to visit me here?” Glen wondered, an annoyed frown passing over his face.

Ozzie sighed, shoulders setting as he organized his thoughts. “You have to understand something about Dominguez. Xavier Rosario Dominguez… 58 years old, Modern History PhD from Harvard. Impressive early career and a fairly staid private life. One marriage that ended after five years, no children. A succession of short-term relationships since then that is part of my point. Dominguez is a dilettante. Not regarding his career, but socially and personally, he flits around from one woman to another, from one set of friends to another, from one hobby to another. He’s a black belt in several martial arts, a concert pianist when he bothers to play, a scratch golfer, a poet… you get the idea. Since his marriage fell apart when he was 33, he hadn’t had a relationship that lasted more than three months. Hobbies last a maximum of two or three years.

“Until five years ago. Five years ago, when he was still a Senator, Dominguez volunteered for a relief mission to Aphrodite, to help the colony recover from the Protectorate invasion. When he came back… something changed.”

“What?” Glen asked.

“Nothing,” Ozzie replied perversely. “Nothing at all. Before he left for the trip, he’d taken up rock climbing. He’s been an avid rock climber ever since… he goes at least twice a month, schedule permitting. Before he left on the trip, he’d become involved with the aforementioned clerk from Argentina… and they’re still bumping uglies three years later, but they haven’t gone public, haven’t done anything but each other, despite the fact she’s been complaining to her friends about his intransigence. Before he left for the trip, he’d become a regular at the weekly poker game at the Situation Room lounge in Capital City. He still is. Do you see where I’m going here?”

“That’s kind of weak, Oz,” Glen shook his head. “Maybe he’s just come to appreciate stability now that he has some real responsibility.”

“So stable he won’t commit to his girlfriend? Responsible? Hell, Mulrooney, he took time off from a summit with the South American Workers’ Unity Party and the Southern States’ Government Conference to go rock climbing! He’s not stable or responsible… he’s fucking frozen. It’s just like someone told him… act just like Xavier Dominguez acted the last time he was seen on Earth before his trip to Aphrodite.”

“So, what are you saying, Oz? That it’s not really Dominguez? That someone has taken his place? Do you know how impossible that would be? I can’t even tell you how much identity verification there is for the Vice President of the Republic, but we’re talking DNA, alpha wave, full biometrics… it’s just impossible.”

“I don’t know what I’m saying, Mulrooney,” Ozzie shrugged. “But you told me to run him through the program, and I ran him. This is what I got. You do with it what you will. But I will tell you something, my friend, this sort of search is not something that can go completely unnoticed. You have to know what to look for, and you have to be actively looking for it, but if they do… they’re going to find out who ran it.” Ozzie stood up, shrugging his shoulders. “You might think this is nothing, that I’m being paranoid, but I’m going on vacation for a while. Don’t try to find me.”

With that, the older man turned and walked briskly out of the locker room. Glen watched him go with a bemused smile on his face.

Ozzie is nuts, he thought, shaking his head. He’s gotta’ be.

And yet…

He took his ‘link out of his swim bag and pulled up the address Shannon Stark had given to him back in the cabin. Maybe it was nuts, but she’d want to know anyway. “Major Stark,” he spoke into the ‘link, “looked into that matter. There is some evidence that…”

Glen never saw the arm that snaked around his neck, never saw the ceramic blade that speared through his left eye and into his brain. Blackness claimed him before he could form a final thought.

Chapter Nine

Walking through forests darkened by the shadows of thirty meter tall trees, Jason McKay decided that the videos he’d watched didn’t do Peboan justice. The place was so much larger and more intimidating in person. There was a chill bite to the air, an ozone tang to its smell, that the recordings hadn’t captured; and a paranoid foreboding to the trackless forests that no video could convey. Added to the slight difference in gravity from Earth and the odd color cast the blue-tinted primary star gave to everything just to remind you that you were on an alien world light years from home, it was enough to raise hackles on the back of his neck.

“I don’t think I like this place,” D’mitry Podbyrin commented quietly, eyes darting around from shadow to shadow, hands clenching like they longed for a weapon. Behind them nearly a kilometer back were the ruins of the scout base, being pored over by the technicians for any as-yet-undiscovered evidence, but McKay had wanted to get an idea of how the infiltrators had approached the place, so he had headed into the surrounding forest with Jock, Vinnie, and the Russian expatriate looking for their landing site.

“It is a bit creepy,” Jock said with a shrug, “but all in all, I like it better than laying around up there in the ship.”

“At least there is gravity here,” Podbyrin grunted agreement. McKay had been surprised when the man had volunteered to go down with the landing party; apparently, zero gravity didn’t agree with his stomach after so many years living planetside. “Are we sure they came from this direction?” Podbyrin wondered, looking around them at the looming trees, each thick as a sequoia, their bark an inky black. He looked out of place in borrowed Marine body armor and fatigues.

“Well, on the west, the front of the outpost is pretty open,” McKay explained. “I doubt they would have advertised they were coming by setting down at the landing zone the scouts cleared. East has a sheer cliff about a hundred meters out overlooking a pretty steep canyon. South there are lava-rock hills… it’s a possibility, but an accurate landing on those hillsides would have been iffy. So I’m betting they came from the north. There has to be a clearing somewhere out this way they could use to land, then walk in.”

“Fuckin’ chilly out here,” Vinnie muttered, flexing his gloved fingers for a moment before they returned to gripping his carbine. “And this is what? Summer?”

“Close enough,” McKay nodded. “Late Spring, almost Summer. It doesn’t get much warmer than this in these parts from what I’ve heard.”

“Feels like home,” Podbyrin said with a shrug. McKay idly wondered if he meant his home on Loki or his home back in Twenty-First Century Russia.

“I don’t think they would have risked dropping too far from the outpost,” McKay mused, coming back to the subject. “The biomechs don’t have that much in the way of autonomy, and they’d have to guide them through the woods probably in the dark…”

“Yes,” Podbyrin nodded agreement. “Three, four kilometers, no more. But your people who found the base destroyed… would not they have found any landing site already?”

“They didn’t have time,” McKay informed him. “It was late Fall when they arrived. They had just found the rifle casings when the first big storms of the winter rolled in and dumped about a meter of snow on this place. The ship’s captain made the call to get the news back to Earth instead of waiting out the weather.”

Stepping across the bare floor, desolate and shielded from the star’s warmth by the tyranny of the trees, they fell silent under the oppressive hush of the forest, eyes hunting for signs of intrusion but seeing only a still-frame sameness. Long, wordless minutes passed, the only sound the faint crunching of dead leaves beneath their boots, and McKay began to lose track of time and distance. A quick check of his ‘link revealed that they had walked nearly three klicks from the outpost and he had begun to debate whether he was going to go any farther on foot.

“Hold up,” Vinnie said softly, raising fist in the air to halt them. Slowly he brought up his carbine, gesturing with the barrel to a point on their right. “Three o’clock, fifty meters, on the ground.”

McKay scanned to their front right and almost passed over the dark shape as a root or rock before he came back to it, noticing the not-quite-right color, the too-regular shape.

“Vinnie, Jock, stay here and keep overwatch,” McKay ordered. “Podbyrin, you’re with me.”

“Joy,” the Russian muttered, following behind him.

As the two men approached the object, its lines grew clearer and its color more distinct… it was globular, colored a dull grey mixed with rust. McKay nudged it with the barrel of his carbine, turning it over and revealing it for the broken remnants of a battle helmet.

“That is Protectorate,” Podbyrin declared, a slight waver in his voice.

“You’re damned right it is,” McKay muttered. The visor was gone, shattered, the pieces buried and carried away in the snow melt, but the helmet’s design was all too familiar to McKay. He waved Jock and Vinnie forward, standing and turning to keep watch as they examined the helmet.

Jock cursed softly. “Well, no more doubt now,” he muttered.

“Come on,” McKay said. “We still have to find where they landed.”

As they moved on through the forest another few hundred meters, McKay began to notice a gentle upward slope to the ground and a thinning of the trees, accompanied by a lightening of the gloom and the presence on the forest floor of some short, stunted growths of some sort of plant life that wasn’t quite grass but could have passed for it on first glance. Gradually the slope increased and he could see that they were heading for the crest of a small hill. He halted the others with an upraised hand, taking a knee on the soft loam.

“Jock,” he instructed. “Scout the other side of that hill.”

The big man nodded and slowly made his way toward the hilltop, going from a crouch to a high crawl, knees and elbows taking him forward to the very edge, where he dropped to his belly and wormed the last few meters. Jock was, McKay reflected, surprisingly stealthy for someone almost two meters tall and a good 110 kilos. After a long moment, he turned back to them and waved them forward. McKay led Podbyrin up the hill while Vinnie watched their backs, trailing them by ten meters and scanning carefully around.

“Eleven o’clock, one hundred meters,” Jock said quietly as they went to the ground beside him.

McKay looked down into the valley on the other side of the hill, seeing a narrow, shallow stream cutting through it and meandering into the near distance as it wound around another hill. The trees had thinned out near the hilltop and there was a clearing near the middle of the valley, not far from the creek. In that clearing was what appeared at first glance to be a mound of loose dirt… until a closer look revealed its true character. Here and there, the dirt deposited by mudslides after the spring melt had fallen away, revealing the bare nickel-iron and small pieces of the grey, gnarled surface of polystyrene: a cheap, low-tech method of making the thing invisible to microwave sensors. A single surviving parachute shroud whipped in the wind like a tail behind the thing, the huge parasail it had once secured long ripped and blown away by winter storms.

It was a Protectorate drop pod, the same sort of cheap, stealthy insertion craft that Antonov had used to invade Earth five years before.

McKay felt his throat go dry. It was one thing to know something on a purely intellectual level; it was another to come face to face with the reality of it. He swallowed hard, forced himself to concentrate on scanning the area around the pod for threats.

“Looks clear,” he rasped. “Jock, stay up here and cover us.”

The footing on the downward slope was treacherous from fallen leaves slick with yesterday’s rain and the three men wound up half-sliding down it, McKay and Vinnie in a half-crouch, Podbyrin squarely on his ass. As McKay reached the valley floor he brought up his carbine and nearly squeezed off a shot at a blur of movement to his left, but held off as he saw that the tan flash was an animal of some kind… an herbivore by the look of it, the size of a cow, four-legged and covered with shaggy fur. He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding as the thing galloped silently out of the valley.

“Coulda’ been dinner,” Vinnie cracked quietly, shrugging. McKay snorted, grateful for Vinnie’s irreverence.

“I like my steak a little less rare,” he muttered in return.

There were no humanoid tracks around the pod, McKay saw as they approached it, no trace of the Protectorate biomech troops at all. Everything had been wiped clean by the snow melt and the rains and the only tracks were from the local wildlife. He circled the lander slowly and carefully, not fearing a present threat as much as the possibility of missing something.

Going around the other side, they could see where the explosive bolts had split the pod in half to free its payload of troops, the edges jagged and broken. The floor of the pod’s interior was buried in several inches of mud, dirt and animal droppings… something had evidently used it as a den during the winter. McKay saw piles of small bones collected under the metal benches that had held rows of seated biomechs but were now bare except for more caked dirt.

McKay sighed, shoulders sagging. “We’re not going to get anything useful out of here. Time to let the lab techs have their fun.” He tapped a control on his ‘link. “McKay to Decatur, over.”

”Decatur here,” came the reply from the ship’s communications officer. “Over.”

“Get a fix on my location,” McKay instructed, “and get me a full field investigation team down here ASAP. We’ve found the Protectorate drop pod.”

“Aye, sir.” McKay could hear a slight waver in the woman’s voice as the reality of the situation hit her. “Captain Minishimi says it will launch in a couple hours.”

“Acknowledged. McKay out.”

“This feels wrong.” McKay turned, surprised, at Podbyrin’s quiet declaration. The Russian was shaking his head thoughtfully, staring at the wreckage of the drop pod.

“What?” McKay wanted to know.

“To attack like this,” Podbyrin amplified. “This is a risk, no? It draws attention. The General has spent the last five years avoiding attention, rebuilding one assumes. To do this, there would have to be something very important here that he wanted.”

“We’re not going to find it standing here,” McKay shrugged. “Let’s head back to the outpost site. Maybe someone’s turned up something there.”

* * *

“What do we know about this planet?” McKay murmured to himself, staring at the globe map of Peboan projected above the table. He’d been leaning against the table for the last ten minutes and the map hadn’t yet revealed any secrets to him.

“It’s pretty rich in minerals,” Vinnie shrugged from where he sat on the floor of the outpost building, leaning against a bare wall. The investigation team had cleared them to use the place as a base after they’d finished scanning it a few hours ago, but there still wasn’t much in the way of furniture available. “Oil, natural gas, uranium, gold…”

“But we haven’t seen any evidence of mining from orbit,” Jock pointed out. The big man was squatting by the opposite wall, cleaning his field-stripped carbine.

“D’mitry,” McKay asked the Russian, who leaned against the wall beside where Vinnie was sitting, “did Antonov ever do any asteroid mining or did he get his resources from planetside?”

“We did not have the equipment for smelting asteroids,” Podbyrin shook his head. “Nor did we have extensive EVA gear for working in vacuum for long periods. We were forced to get those resources which we couldn’t steal from your cargo ships from easily-available mines near the surface of habitable planets.”

“Okay, we have no reason to believe that’s changed,” McKay said, nodding. “So, it’s possible he needed resources from this planet… but we haven’t found the location he mined yet. Is there anything else you guys can think of that would make this place important to him?”

“Location?” Jock ventured. “He uses those gates to travel FTL… maybe this system is a hub of some kind, and he needed to move something through here without us seeing?”

McKay cast a questioning glance at Podbyrin, who nodded confirmation. “That is possible,” the Russian said. “There were several systems that had multiple gates.”

“Not bad, Jock,” McKay said, nodding thoughtfully. “That feels more likely to me than just a mining site. If he has to move through here to get to where he’s going, he’d want to keep this system clear of Republic forces. It might be worth the risk to him to take out this outpost.” His eyes narrowed and he grabbed his ‘link from his belt. “Decatur, this is McKay, come in.”

A pause and then: “Roger, McKay, this is Decatur, go ahead.”

“Let me speak with the Captain,” McKay told the communications officer. “It’s urgent.”

“Aye, sir, wait one.”

“Minishimi here,” her voice came over the ‘link after a moment. “Go ahead, McKay.”

“Captain,” McKay said calmly but firmly, “we’ve been piecing some things together and I have reason to believe that Protectorate forces may still be in this system and are probably maintaining surveillance here… we may be facing an imminent threat. I recommend breaking orbit and taking up a tactical posture at the closest LaGrangian point and launching combat shuttle patrols immediately.”

Behind McKay, Vinnie and Podbyrin slowly came to their feet, concern on their faces. Jock seemed unmoved, but he silently began reassembling his carbine.

“Our active scans aren’t showing anything, McKay,” Minishimi protested over the link. “Are you certain about this?”

“Captain,” McKay took a deep breath and reminded himself she wasn’t his subordinate, “our working hypothesis is that this is a hub system for their wormhole matrix… and if that’s the case, they will not be leaving it unguarded. It’s my feeling that there are either enemy ships already insystem or else some sort of automated sentry that launched a message buoy through the gate the minute it spotted us. If I’m right, we could have anywhere from days to no time at all, but I would recommend we err on the side of caution.”

“Roger, McKay,” Minishimi acknowledged with, he thought, a little reluctance in her voice. “We are launching patrols and then will engage the drives and move out of orbit. We’ll be out of contact once the drives activate, but I will instruct the patrols to keep contact with you. You have a shuttle on the ground right now… do you want them to stay there for possible evac?”

“If it’s all right with you, Captain, we’ll keep Commander Villanueva’s shuttle here just in case.”

“I’ll send them the word, and then we are out of orbit. If we don’t see anything in twenty four hours, we’ll drop the Eysselink field and contact you.”

“Talk to you then, Captain.” McKay tapped a new frequency into his ‘link. “Lieutenant Dodd, this is McKay.”

“Dodd here, sir,” came the reply.

“Lieutenant, what’s the disposition of the Marines currently onplanet?” McKay asked. Jock had finished reassembling his carbine and he loaded the magazine, chambering a round and moving to stand in the open door of the building.

“Sir, we have two platoons down,” the young officer reported crisply. “One is in a defensive perimeter around the shuttles at the landing zone; the other is assisting the investigation team in bringing their equipment to the Protectorate pod you discovered.”

“Call back the investigation team,” McKay instructed. “Have them report back to the outpost. Get the platoon with them to set up a perimeter around the outpost buildings and report back to me when it’s done. We may not be alone here, Dodd.”

“Aye, sir,” there was an urgency to the man’s voice now as he signed off.

“You think they will attack here?” Podbyrin asked, voice wavering. There was a fine sheen of sweat on his forehead despite the cool temperatures.

“Jock,” McKay spoke to the big NCO instead. “Take Colonel Podbyrin to the shuttle and…”

“Colonel McKay!” A voice… he thought it was Commander Villanueva’s voice… came over his ‘link. “We’ve got…”

Whatever she’d been about to say was lost in a thundering explosion that shook dust from the ceiling and echoed through the woods around them.

”Bozhemoi!” Podbyrin swore, ducking instinctively as the explosion was followed by the faint sound of gunfire in the distance, first to their front and then more distantly to the rear. Jock crouched down in the doorway, not seeing anything. scanning the immediate area but

Too fucking late, McKay snarled at himself silently, a cold surge of fear welling up in his gut that he hadn’t felt since a Protectorate drop pod had almost landed on his head six years ago on Aphrodite. I was too fucking late.

Chapter Ten

“And so,” Colonel Lee clasped his hands in his lap, looking as if he were trying very, very hard to avoid panicking, “We have… we have confirmed your findings.” It was a mark of how serious the situation was in his eyes that Ari, Lee and Hassan were meeting in the Colonel’s office instead of someplace more unofficial. The Colonel was squirming in his chair uncomfortably, while Hassan Ali sat morosely by his side, looking as if his world had collapsed around him. “We dug deeper, in the right places, and it was there, just as you said. We… we have a serious problem now.”

And it only took you four fucking days, Ari thought, trying to hide a sneer.

“We have to kill her,” Hassan snarled, slamming a fist into the arm of his chair. “I will do it myself, with my own hands.”

“That aside,” Ari spoke for the first time since entering the office, keeping his voice calm and measured, “how does this affect our plans? Does she know enough to stop us?”

“The bitch knows enough to have us arrested!” Hassan Ali blurted. “Being in jail would stop us fairly certain.”

“Yet we are not in jail, my friend,” Ari pointed out to him. “That tells us that either she wants to collect more evidence, or, more likely, she has, as my American friends used to say, bigger fish to fry.” He looked to Colonel Lee. “She knows this plan goes beyond and above your position, sir, and that is her target. She knows if they arrest you and the rest of us here, the plan could still go forward.”

“This cause does not go above me,” Colonel Lee said peevishly, his anxiety briefly turning to annoyance. Then he sighed. “But it does go beyond me…” He glanced at Hassan Ali, who shrugged demonstratively.

“If this does not prove he can be trusted,” Hassan said, “I do not know what would.”

“I will lead the Guard in this operation,” Lee asserted, looking back to Ari. “But it does reach beyond the Guard… we could not hope to hold out for long without assistance from other elements of the government and even the private sector. This is about more than what is important to us as Guard officers… when it is finished, many other things will be changed as well.”

Ari nodded, silent for a moment. This wasn’t unexpected… neither he nor Major Stark had ever believed that this was something the Guard could pull off on its own.

“The question I have,” Ari began carefully, “is whether this could all be moved up. If we can start now, before those opposed to us are ready, then even Alida’s infiltration could not stand in our way.”

“That is, unfortunately, not possible,” Lee told him, shaking his head in obvious frustration. “We could advance the timing of the uprising, but not the distraction that will draw the Fleet ships away from the colonies; and, without that distraction, our forces would be vulnerable to orbital bombardment and would be forced to fight Marine reaction platoons. The signal will be sent when the Republic government is decapitated by an orbital strike, and that will happen only when the Fleet returns to Earth.”

Ari nodded thoughtfully. “Such an attack could only be accomplished with the complicity of the Spacefleet. I can only surmise that whatever elements with which we are allied in the Fleet need the time to consolidate their influence.” He glanced up at Colonel Lee, eyes narrowing warily. “Sir, I mean no disrespect by this, but how certain are you of the… steadfastness of our allies? Can they do what they say they will do? Or will they allow us to sacrifice ourselves while they decide if it’s worth it?”

Ari noticed Hassan Ali cast a glance at Lee as if saying I’ve been wondering that myself, but the man held his tongue. “I am convinced they will go through with it.” Lee told him. “It is in their interests even more than ours. The multicorps need cheap labor and the Fleet needs a reason to exist. If we do not reestablish order in the colonies, our whole civilization will collapse and the peasant rabble will sift through the ashes for food and wish for the days when they had the option of leaving this world.”

“You are a far-sighted man,” Ari said, affecting a deep respect. “I can only hope our allies have such vision as well. Yet, I still wonder… how did they ever find the wormhole gates? It has been talked about for years in the Marines, the search for the gate in the asteroid belt, but nothing has ever come of it.”

“Ha!” Ali snorted derisively. “And in whose interest was it to keep that discovery a secret? The multicorps, of course. With the help of the Fleet, they control all access to the star colonies. If people could use the wormhole gateways, anyone who could afford an insystem shuttle could set up shop in the colonies and where would their monopoly be then?”

Ari wasn’t certain he bought the logic of Hassan’s assertion, but he nodded anyway.

“So,” he said, “we are forced to wait… which brings us back to the question: what do you want done with the investigator? If we kill her, her superiors will know we are onto them, and likely come after us immediately.”

“What else can we do?” Hassan Ali demanded, throwing up his hands in frustration.

“She is looking for the next level of this conspiracy,” Ari reminded him. “If we can keep stringing her along, making her think it is within reach…”

“Ah,” Lee said with a smile, “I see where you are going, Captain Al-Masri. We can feed her false intelligence, send her and her people on a wild goose chase looking for a superior I do not have.”

“And hopefully,” Ari added, “we can keep it up long enough that they won’t be in time to stop us.”

“Do you think this will work?” Hassan Ali asked him, his tone doubtful.

“She thinks I trust her,” Ari told him. “However, if you do not approve of this plan, Colonel Lee, I would be willing to kill her myself.”

Lee eyed him a bit suspiciously. “You are involved with her… would you really be able to kill her?”

“I was involved with Alida Hudec,” Ari corrected him. “Alida Hudec doesn’t exist. She used me, and I would be willing to kill her for that alone.”

Lee rubbed his chin, seemingly more comfortable with his situation now than when Ari had walked into the office. “No, I think we will keep our Lieutenant Hudec around for now… we will feed disinformation to her superiors through her. Perhaps something can be salvaged from this after all. Captain Al Masri, can you maintain the fiction of your relationship with her for now? I do not want to give her any reason to think we suspect her true identity.”

“I will do what I must for the cause, Colonel Lee,” Ari said dutifully, concealing his sigh of relief. “If that is to be our plan, I should get back to my office… we are scheduled for training in an hour.”

“Go, then, Captain,” Lee said with a nod. “And you have my thanks for your initiative. You may have just saved our cause.”

And more importantly, he thought as he left the office, I may have saved Alida’s life. For now. And now I have to contact Major Stark… because things are so much worse than we thought.

* * *

Shannon Stark hesitated outside the office door, taking a breath to compose herself before she raised her hand to knock.

There was a long silence, and she wondered if perhaps she should leave, but then she heard a soft “Come in,” and the door slide aside silently.

The room was dark, only a sliver of light piercing the gap in the blinds pulled shut over the windows. Valerie O’Keefe-Mulrooney sat alone at her desk, staring into the darkness with darker eyes, the tracks of dried tears evident on her face. Shannon stepped into the office, smoothing down the front of her dress uniform. She’d worn it to the funeral and hadn’t had time to change out of it before receiving the call from Valerie’s secretary. Her hands froze as she felt the dampness on her hip… she had hugged Natalia at the funeral service and the little girl’s tears still stained her uniform. She fought to keep from jumping as the door slid shut behind her.

“Sit down,” Valerie said, nodding at the chair in front of the desk. Her voice was steady and unwavering, her tone as normal as if she were ordering lunch… yet Shannon could see a cold rage in the set of her eyes. “The Capital Police tell me they think Glen was killed because he witnessed the murder of that celebrity scandalmonger Oscar Fuentes. They think the killer had a personal grudge against Fuentes for one of his stories. They already have a list of suspects… people Fuentes embarrassed or hurt who were in the area but don’t have an alibi.” She speared Shannon with a frigid glare. “Is that what you think happened, Shannon?”

Shannon tried not to flinch under the woman’s gaze. “Both Glen and Mr. Fuentes were killed in the one place in the gym where there were no security cameras,” Shannon replied, trying to keep her tone as cool and measured as Valerie’s. “They were both killed with a single stab wound through the eye and into the brain. One wound… surgically precise, before the victim can react. You don’t learn how to do that in a commercial martial arts school or even in the regular military. This was a professional assassin, and an experienced one.” She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them and met Valerie’s gaze. “Glen told me he was going to ask some journalists to look into Vice President Dominguez. See if there was anything strange going on with him or around him.”

“So you’re telling me that the people behind this are the ones who are planning to kill my father,” Valerie stated flatly. Shannon waited for the accusation that she was sure was coming, the dissolution into a screaming fit and the voicing of the cry that had been echoing through her head for days: You got him killed!

But the calm facade remained over the cold rage and Valerie said nothing. “It’s worse than that,” Shannon told her. Her eyes flickered suspiciously around the office. She knew it was secure because she’d overseen the process herself, but at the moment she didn’t feel sure of anything. “We’ve been investigating the Guard mutiny plot and I’ve received reports that indicate that it’s quite real and that it goes far beyond the Colonial Guard. There are elements within the Fleet and the multicorps involved… Valerie, this isn’t a mutiny and it’s not just an assassination attempt. It’s a coup. “

For a moment, Valerie’s ice wall crumbled and her eyes widened with shock and fear.

“Have… have you told my father?”

“Not yet,” Shannon admitted. She shook her head hopelessly. “I honestly don’t know what to tell him. The only conspirators we can name are in the CeeGees and hauling them in would accomplish nothing. There are corporate interests involved, but nearly all the multicorps oppose your father’s emigration policies and we can’t arrest people just because they disagree with the President politically. Hell,” she bit off, “with the possibility of traitors inside the Fleet, I can’t even be a hundred percent sure of my own people… except Tom, of course.”

“If what you’re saying is true,” Valerie interjected, voice still a bit tremulous but now more thoughtful, “even if we break up this plot, we could be looking at a civil war.” She looked up sharply. “But what about Antonov? This happening at the same time as Jason is off chasing after him can’t be a coincidence.”

“Valerie, I can’t be certain right now that Antonov was behind the attack on the outpost. This whole thing could be a setup… the evidence could have been planted by the conspirators to draw our attention away from their plans.”

“Jesus,” Valerie breathed, shaking her head. “What the hell are we going to do, Shannon?”

“Things might get bad, Valerie.” Shannon reached out and took Valerie’s hand, squeezing it warmly. “Take Natalia, go to your cabin in Minnesota and stay there until it’s over. They won’t bother you. Even if…” Shannon winced, hesitant to say the words. “Even if we lose this thing, I doubt they’d come after you there.”

“I can’t just go hide and hope things turn out all right,” Valerie protested. “They killed Glen!”

“And if you get in their way, Valerie, they’ll kill you too… and Natalia will have lost both her parents.”

Shannon could see anger, grief and fear struggling in Valerie’s eyes, only to be replaced by resolve. “I’m a Republic Senator, Shannon. I love my daughter more than anything, and if I have to die to make sure she grows up to enjoy the same freedoms I have, then that’s the price I’ll have to pay. Now, what are we going to do?”

Shannon considered the question for a moment. What could they do? They had no actionable intelligence, just suspicions. And if they tried for more, there would be an assassin sent out for them just as surely she knew that one had been sent to kill Glen…

Shannon’s eyes narrowed. It was a hell of a risk, but the only move she could see that might work. “I’ll tell you what we’re going to do, Valerie. If you really want to stick this thing out, then what we need to do is finish what Glen started.” And God forgive her if it didn’t work.

Chapter Eleven

With an effort of will, Jason McKay pulled control back and forced his mind to work.

“All personnel,” McKay snapped into his ‘link, “report! What’s going on?” There was a transmission that crackled in his earpiece with the muted sounds of gunfire and shouting, but whatever was said was unrecognizable and then nothing. “All right,” McKay looked to the others in the room. “Vinnie, you and Jock head into the forest and find the platoon with the investigation team, get them back here and set up a defensive perimeter here until you hear from me…”

Jock spun around at the sound of running footsteps behind him, but lowered his carbine when he saw it was friendly… two NCOs from the Decatur, their grey armor vests and helmets indicating they were both ship’s security.

“Sir!” The senior of the two-a tall, rangy young man with olive skin visible through the faceplate of his helmet-ran up to McKay, clutching a submachine gun nervously. “We were assigned to guard the outpost… do you know what’s going on?”

“You two,” McKay jabbed a finger at him and the shorter, stocky sergeant with him, “come with me… we’re under attack and we’re heading to the landing zone to make sure the shuttle is secured. Podbyrin, you come with me too, unless you’d rather stay here and take your chances by yourself.”

“No, I think I will come with you,” the Russian shook his head, much calmer than McKay thought he would be. “I don’t suppose you have a spare gun…”

McKay was about to tell him no when Jock surprised him by pulling his sidearm from its holster and handing it to the Russian. “Don’t shoot anyone important,” the big Aussie cracked.

“We’re going, sir,” Vinnie said, motioning for Jock to follow him. Once out of the building, the two of them broke into a run, heading into the forest.

“All right, come on,” McKay motioned to Podbyrin and the two security guards. “I’m in front; Podbyrin, you stay between them and everyone maintains a ten meter interval. Stick to the side of the trail and keep your eyes open. Go.”

He could tell the senior security NCO wanted to argue with him, but he was the one with combat experience and Colonel or no, he was taking point. He just wished he’d brought his helmet with him from the shuttle; when he’d taken the others on the scout for the infiltration site, he’d thought it was more important to be able to use all his senses and get a feel for his surroundings.

He wanted to run as they headed back up the dirt path to the landing zone, but he held himself to a cautious trot, both to keep the little group together and to avoid running headlong into enemy fire. That gunfire seemed to grow more intense as they approached ever closer to the LZ, punctuated by explosions at intervals that sounded like the detonations of grenades. McKay snuck a quick glance at his ‘link and saw that they were less than a kilometer from the LZ… he could already see smoke billowing into the air, the dark cloud just starting to reach over the trees.

At five hundred meters, he began hear the solid smack of bullets hitting the trees around them and he wordlessly led the group off the path, heading into the forest to the left and increasing his speed. Fifty meters in, they came across a pit where a redwood-size tree had been uprooted in a storm and pulled up tons of dirt with it. The dead tree was down next to the pit, its tangled network of roots hanging over the three-meter deep depression and nearly hiding it.

“You,” McKay pointed at the lower ranking of the two security guards, “get into this hole with Colonel Podbyrin and stay here until I come and get you. Don’t fire unless the enemy sees you, and if they do, un-ass the area and head back to the outpost.”

“Aye, sir,” the man acknowledged. Podbyrin didn’t seem comfortable with being left behind, but the position was concealed and defensible, and McKay knew he was going to have to move fast.

After the two men had scrambled down into the hole, McKay led the other security guard in a gentle arc that took them around the opposite side of the LZ from the main path, increasing his speed as the noise of battle drew closer. As they ran, hurdling roots and tangling vines, McKay began to see flashes of movement through the thick veil of trees and brush: figures in camouflaged armor, firing weapons, too far away for any other details to be made out.

More trees, thicker, hiding the clearing of the LZ from his view, a haze of thick, dark smoke that turned humanoid figures into shadows and seemed to muffle the jackhammer gunshots. McKay felt as if he were in a nightmare, running through an unending battle yet never able to see any of the combatants clearly or fire a shot himself… and then, as if they’d crossed a threshold, he and the security guard were suddenly in the thick of the fight. McKay almost tripped over the back of a Marine rifleman as the man crouched behind a dead tree, his carbine at his shoulder, firing off controlled bursts at a cluster of three figures partially hidden in the smoke fifty meters ahead at the edge of the clearing.

Dropping to a knee beside the Marine, McKay added his own carbine to the volume of fire, while the security man stood to his left and shot from the hip with his submachine gun, using the HUD display in his helmet linked to the gun’s sights to aim it. The trio of enemy went down and McKay slapped the Marine on the shoulder and yelled “Heading downrange!” before sprinting over to them. He had to know…

Their armor was familiar, large and clunky compared to what he and the Marines used, camouflaged in brown, green and grey where it wasn’t punctured and stained with blood. The troopers were over two meters tall and broad across the chest, but the armor made them seem even more imposing. It was all made from designs over a century old, copied over and over in nanotech replicators built by long-dead aliens on an unknown world. Using the barrel of his carbine, McKay pushed the helmet off of one of the downed humanoid forms, revealing the face that had haunted his nightmares for the last five years.

The skin was the shade of pale blue that reminded him of a cyanosis victim, the nose flat to the face and the brow protected by a heavy, bony ridge. Yet it was the eyes that truly horrified him. They were black and lifeless, like a shark’s, soulless and inanimate. He had to remind himself that the thing was built from human DNA, yet somehow that seemed to make it more horrifying rather than less.

“Sir!” The Marine grabbed his arm. “Sir, we should get moving!”

“Where’s the rest of your platoon, Corporal?” McKay asked him.

“Last I saw, they were falling back to the shuttle, with some of your special ops guys, sir. I got cut off with a couple other Marines and had to run.”

“Then let’s find them. Follow me, both of you.” Before the Marine could object, McKay took off at a sprint back towards the clearing, the Corporal and the security guard trailing behind.

Louder than the cacophony of battle, louder than the crack of bullets breaking the sound barrier in their passage, McKay could hear the ragged pant of his own breath in his ears and he knew he should have been feeling the exertion, but he was riding a wave of adrenaline and pure, unadulterated fear and felt nothing. Somewhere in the depths of his conscious mind, the part of him that remembered the two times he’d been shot was screaming at him to take cover, but his body may as well have been a machine.

Two of the Protectorate biomechs appeared out of the smoke to his left, just meters ahead of him, firing their rifles from the shoulder as they trotted across his path, shooting at someone to his right that he couldn’t see through the haze. Without slowing, McKay fired a burst that cut across both of the hulking figures, slicing through the neck of the first before punching through the second’s faceplate in a spray of blood and shattered plastic. The biomechs collapsed, crashing to the ground in a heap, but McKay had already rushed past them and was scanning for the next target, because to stop in the killing ground was death.

McKay rushed through a thick, black whirlpool of smoke and dug in his heels as a blistering wall of heat loomed before him. One of the Marine assault vehicles that had come down on the shuttle was consuming itself in an urgent rush of flame, the source of the billowing clouds of smoke that covered the area. He didn’t know what could have set it ablaze, but all the possibilities seemed very, very bad for his current situation.

The Marine corporal and the security guard came up behind him, and McKay turned to waved them to a halt… and brought up his carbine as he saw two more running figures coming out of the haze behind them. His finger was putting pressure on the trigger when he saw that the two were Marines: a skinny, painfully young private and a female sergeant.

“Jesus, Bill,” the Sergeant gasped, panting with exhaustion, “where the hell did you go?”

“I got cut off by the Gomers, Sergeant Manuel,” Bill, the Marine Corporal explained. “I thought you guys were dead!”

“Enough with the family reunion,” McKay interrupted. “You’re all with me now. Wind’s blowing that way,” he pointed behind them. “Once we get clear of the assault car, we’re going to lose the smoke pretty quick, so stay low and look for cover.”

At their nods, he circled around the burning hulk, emerging from the smoke into the clear, and immediately becoming aware of several things, the first of which was that he knew what had destroyed the assault vehicle. The Protectorate mostly used things that they had brought with them back at the tail end of the 21 Century, when they had gone through the wormhole in the asteroid belt and emerged in orbit around the ruined alien homeworld. Those and some of the things they had pirated from Republic cargo or colony ships they could run through the alien replication factory they’d discovered and make more. But there was one thing they had built on their own, using designs from before the Sino-Russian War and cannibalized parts. The Marines who had first faced them had dubbed them Hoppers because the armored gun vehicles walked with a curious, hopping gate on ostrich-like legs designed to travel over rough terrain.

One of the Hoppers lay on the ground a hundred meters from the assault vehicle, burning just as fiercely, its cockpit and weapons turrets a smashed ruin. It was clear to McKay that the Hopper had taken out the assault vehicle with a missile before being destroyed itself.

Beyond the wrecked Hopper McKay could finally see the shuttle and marveled that the spacecraft was still intact. The delta-winged craft was designed for combat and heavily armored but it couldn’t have survived a missile strike from the Hopper… it was just luck that the Marine assault vehicle had taken out the Hopper before it had a chance to destroy the shuttle. He could see that the shuttle was sealed tight, the cargo and boarding ramps both retracted, but showed no other signs of being ready for takeoff. At least a dozen bodies were scattered around the shuttle’s landing gear, most of them Protectorate biomechs, and the battle was still raging around it.

A force of about twenty biomechs was clustered around the cover of the wrecked Hopper, oblivious to the flames still licking off of its shredded turbines, laying down a steady stream of automatic fire in the direction of the shuttle’s massive, heavy duty landing gear. What was left of the Republic forces were huddled behind the landing gear, firing back but in controlled bursts, conserving their ammo.

And about thirty meters behind the Hopper, there was an overturned cargo jack-a compact, remote-operated forklift; someone must have been using it to unload equipment from the shuttle when the attack came and in the battle it had been knocked on its side and partially buried in the dirt. Without hesitation, McKay sprinted straight for the cover of the cargo loader, legs pumping as he put every ounce of speed he had into crossing the fifty or sixty meters of open ground. The skinny private passed him up like he was standing still, sliding into position behind the loader before McKay was halfway there. He made a mental note to be embarrassed about that when he had the time.

Once all five of them were behind the cover of the loader, McKay grabbed Sergeant Manuel by the arm and pulled her close enough to hear him over the din of unceasing gunfire. “You have grenades?” He asked her.

“Private Toma and I have rifle launched grenades, sir!” She responded, patting a pouch on her chest.

“Load ‘em up,” he instructed her. “At my signal, launch them into the Gomers position, then stay here and provide cover fire.” He pointed to the Corporal and the Security NCO. “You two follow me.”

He watched Manuel and Toma load the rocket-assisted grenades into the launchers below the barrels of their rifles, then edge out around the end of the cargo loader to aim them. “Fire!”

The grenades exited the launchers with a puff of coldgas and then their onboard rocket motors ignited, taking them across the thirty meters in an eyeblink to slam into the Protectorate biomech troops with twin blasts that McKay could feel in his sinuses. Shrapnel pinged musically off the casing of the loader and a shower of dirt and debris showered them even thirty meters away.

The last bit of shrapnel was still ricocheting when McKay shouted “Go!” and bolted from behind the cargo jack with the Marine and Security guard trailing close behind. The grenades had taken a toll on the biomech attackers, scattering four of them into component pieces and incapacitating a few others, so McKay concentrated his fire on the ones still standing, particularly the ones who were turning to face the new threat from behind.

Bringing his carbine to his shoulder as he ran, he began pumping controlled bursts into the necks and heads of one biomech after another, hoping fervently that the others with him were doing the same, and that his people at the shuttle would take advantage of the distraction to attack.

If they don’t, this will be the shortest counterattack in Republic history, he mused, coming even with the footpad of the downed Hopper’s twisted, charred right leg, nearly tripping over a dead biomech trooper there. He could see the remaining Protectorate biomechs rising up from cover and turning to deal with the new threat; he downed one with a burst that emptied his magazine and then was forced to duck behind the footpad.

He could hear the Protectorate 9mm rifle rounds spanging off the metal of the Hopper’s leg as he dropped the empty mag from his carbine and fished another from his chest pack, seating it with a slap of his palm and then racking a round into the chamber. Instinctive movements, repeated thousands of times in training… his hands didn’t even shake. What came next was harder… bullets were still ricocheting off the footpad above him, making it unwise to stand up. He looked around and saw Corporal Bill and the Security NCO moving up nearly shoulder-to-shoulder, firing steadily and considered yelling at them to cover him while he moved… and then the Security Tech-Sergeant went down with a bullet through his knee.

“Sonofabitch!” McKay muttered under his breath.

He gathered his feet underneath him and jumped out from behind the footpad, making himself ignore the rounds impacting in the dirt around him as he rolled to a crouch beside the Tech Sergeant, who was laying prone, writhing in agony. Emptying his fresh magazine in the direction of the enemy, he slung the carbine and grabbed the Fleet NCO by the back of his armored vest, then hauled him backwards toward the cover of the Hopper’s footpad. He’d almost got the man to safety when he felt a sledgehammer slam into his chest and the air went out of him in an agonized gasp.

Somehow, he stayed on his feet and yanked the wounded Tech Sergeant behind cover before he collapsed next to him, struggling to breathe. He patted at his chest and felt a pair of ragged holes in the armor there, but couldn’t tell if the slugs had penetrated through to his flesh.

Dammit, just gonna’ have to assume they didn’t, he told himself.

Still fighting to take a breath, he rolled over and grabbed in his pockets for a smart bandage, ripped it open and wrapped it around the wounded man’s leg. The Tech Sergeant relaxed as the bandage injected him with painkillers and coated the wound with clotting agents. Satisfied that the man was not in immediate danger, McKay grabbed his carbine off his shoulder and painfully reloaded it, then rolled onto his knees and tried to lever himself back to his feet..

Things had changed since he’d been shot, he saw instantly. The biomechs were down and even as he watched, Sgt. Manuel and Pvt. Toma were rushing past him to finish off the ones still moving. The friendlies who’d been firing from the shelter of the shuttle’s landing gear had moved up and circled around the downed Hopper and were advancing warily, led by Sgt. Sean Watanabe, the Special Ops team’s senior NCO after Jock. He was a short and stocky man with an open face and dark hair worn a bit longer than when he’d been a Marine; like McKay, he was wearing body armor but no helmet.

“Are you okay, sir?” Watanabe asked as he jogged over to McKay.

“All I need’s a clean pair of shorts,” McKay snorted. “Situation report, Watanabe.”

“They attacked out of the woods while we were offloading, Colonel,” the Sergeant told him.

“While I was supervising offloading,” Commander Villanueva interjected, coming up from behind Watanabe, a pistol in her right hand, her left arm hanging limp with her forearm wrapped in a blood-soaked smart bandage.

“Yes, sir,” Watanabe nodded confirmation. “The flight crew wasn’t on board, just one of the junior enlisted they sent down from the Decatur to help with unloading. He apparently shut the boat up tight to keep the Gomers out. The Hopper was gonna’ take out the shuttle, but Gunny Dzvonik and one of her Corporals jumped into the assault vehicle and took it out.” His face went grim. “Then a couple of the biomechs blew up the assault vehicle with a crew-launched missile before we could nail them.”

“The biomechs don’t operate with this sort of organization without a controller,” McKay interrupted. “Hold on.” He pulled out his ‘link and keyed in Vinnie’s frequency. “Vinnie, this is McKay, do you copy?”

“Read you, sir,” came the immediate reply. “We have the Investigation team secure at the outpost, heading to the LZ now with the Marine platoon.”

“LZ is secure, Vinnie,” McKay told him. “But we do not have a fix on the biomech controller… unless they’ve come up with something new from what we saw during the war, they don’t have much range, so they’re going to be in this area. I want you to take the Marines and cover the area between the outpost and here. We’ll run a search the other direction.”

“Roger, Colonel,” Vinnie replied. “I’ll shout if I see anything. Out.”

McKay turned back to Watanabe. “Casualties?”

“Besides Dzvonik and Corporal Ash,” the Sergeant told him, “we lost Lt. Dodd, the platoon leader… he was trying to get to the vehicle to look for survivors and got caught in a secondary explosion. Couple of Fleet techs got killed when the whole thing started, along with Givens.” The last with a sigh. Givens was one of the Alpha team and had been a friend of Watanabe’s. “We also have three members of the shuttle crew unaccounted for, unless they’re on board and didn’t tell anyone. We have five wounded, not counting you; nothing life-threatening but a couple are going to need treatment for burns and broken bones.”

“Commander Villanueva,” McKay turned to the pilot. “Get a hold of whoever’s inside the shuttle, get it opened up and have the medics get the wounded on board, then get powered up and get in the air… I want a patrol up to make sure we don’t have any more enemy inbound, and some air support.”

“Aye, sir,” she nodded, then holstered her pistol and pulled out her ‘link to call the shuttle.

“Sean,” McKay turned back to Watanabe. “Get the Marines organized and run a search in a kilometer radius from here out,” he waved away from the path to the outpost. “If that controller is still here, I want him taken, alive if possible. We…”

His thought was interrupted by a burst of gunfire in the distance, back towards the outpost: the stutter of a submachine gun and the rapid booms of a handgun.

“Vinnie,” McKay keyed his ‘link. “Is that you?”

“Negative,” came the immediate reply. “I heard it, though.”

“Podbyrin,” McKay muttered. “On my six, Sean!”

Not waiting to see if the NCO followed, McKay took off running back into the forest toward the fallen tree and the pit where he’d left the Russian and the Security guard. This time, his adrenaline spike was gone and he was feeling every bit of the exhaustion and fatigue of the last half hour, as well as the pain of his bruised chest. He pushed through it on sheer force of will, knowing he’d pay for it later.

It seemed like it took twice as long to get back to the pit as it had to come the other way, and he snagged his feet on roots and brush over and over, but finally he saw the massive fallen tree looming ahead of him, its bare roots clawing the air in death.

D’mitry Podbyrin sat on the ground with his back against the tree trunk, Jock’s borrowed pistol held loosely in his hand, sobbing quietly. The Tech Sergeant McKay had left to guard him was sprawled half-in and half-out of the pit, the faceplate of his helmet shattered, his face a bloody ruin, his submachine gun at his side. And laid out in front of the pit was a tall, powerfully built Russian in Protectorate battle utilities, his head half blown away by multiple gunshots at point blank range. At his feet was a Protectorate battle rifle and strapped to his back was a transmission unit with a small broadcast dish attached.

McKay came to a halt in front of the former Protectorate Colonel, noting peripherally that Watanabe was moving around to the other side of the pit to check on the Tech Sergeant. “D’mitry,” he said softly, leaning over to put a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

“Sergei,” Podbyrin responded, not looking up. McKay blinked, wondering if the little man was hysterical and thought he was someone else. “Lt. Sergei Luzhkof,” he expounded. He looked up, glancing back at the dead Russian officer, agony in his eyes along with the tears. “He was… he was my friend.”

“I know, D’mitry,” McKay nodded, offering him a hand up. “But we have to go.”

The Russian looked up at his hand, sighed deeply and took it, allowing himself to be pulled to his feet. “I should have stayed on the ship,” he muttered half to himself.

“Colonel McKay,” Jason heard over his ‘link.

He touched a button on his earpiece and responded, “McKay here.”

“Sir, it’s Commander Villanueva,” the pilot transmitted. “I’m up, and I’ve got contact with the combat patrol shuttles from the Decatur. It’s the ship, sir… it’s under attack.”

Chapter Twelve

Joyce Minishimi had been a starship captain for eight years, had done interdiction patrols against the Belt pirates for two of them and had been in command of the cruiser Bradley during the war with the Protectorate. She commanded a warship with more destructive power at its disposal than any other device built by man. And yet, she realized abruptly as she watched the sensor icons in the command holotank, she had never once been fired upon. The Belt smugglers had always run at the first sign of trouble, realizing they couldn’t outgun a cruiser; and during the war, they had basically ambushed the Protectorate ships in Earth orbit, destroying them before they even realized they were being attacked.

All of that was about to change. She could see three enemy ships inbound in the sensor display, their fusion drives lighting up the black as they exited the orbit of Peboan’s moon. They had been concealed there, powered down and running cold, until less than an hour ago; they’d gone active immediately after she’d received McKay’s warning and powered up the drive field. She whispered a prayer of thanks for that warning, and for the insight that had made McKay give it. Without the drive field up, the Decatur would have been a sitting duck, vulnerable to a sneak attack. One round from a Gauss cannon fired from lunar orbit would have cored her ship like an apple,

“Bogies are accelerating at two g’s,” the Tactical officer announced from his station to her left. He was half-surrounded by holographic displays and she could barely see him, but Commander Gianeto was a solid, dependable officer. The traditional part of her missed the older setup on the Bradley with flat-panel screens that let her look him in the eye when she gave commands. “At our present speed, we’ll be in direct fire range in twenty-two minutes.”

“We’re still at one g acceleration, ma’am,” the Helm reminded her. “Do you want to increase acceleration?” Lt. Witten was on his first cruise, she remembered. Very intelligent young man, but lacking experience.

“No, I think we can stay comfortable for now,” Minishimi shook her head. “Tactical, target all three bogies and launch Shipbusters.”

“Aye, ma’am, launching Shipbusters. Helm, drive field shutoff in ten seconds.”

“Ten seconds to drive field shutoff, aye,” Helm responded.

Gianeto hit a series of controls on his board and on the Decatur‘s starboard weapons pod, three launch ports slid open and three deadly wedge shapes, each the size of an assault shuttle, moved forward into the launch bays. “Missiles are targeted and ready for launch,” Tactical announced. “Commence drive field shutdown.”

“Drive field shutdown commencing,” Witten nodded, powering down the Eysselink generator. The gravimetic field that had been expanding the space-time behind them and contracting it in front ceased and the ship was suddenly in zero gravity.

“Launching three Shipbuster missiles now,” Gianeto declared, touching the three launch controls at once. They could feel the ship lurch as the three huge missiles were shot free of the weapons pod by the electromagnetic launch racks, kicking out several miles from the Decatur before their on-board fusion drives ignited. “Missiles out, you are clear to reinitialize the drive field.”

“Drive field initializing,” Witten said, feeding the generators a trickle of antimatter, beginning the reaction that produced the Eysselink Effect. He stared intently at the display, waiting for the waves of distorted space-time to once again cloak the ship in its protection. “Field initialized, engaging to one gravity analog acceleration.”

Joyce Minishimi breathed a little easier as the apparent gravity returned, a side-effect of the build-up of gravito-inertial energy by the drive. Nothing could touch a ship with the drive field around it, except a sufficiently strong gravitational field or, of course, another Eysselink drive. They knew the Protectorate had pirated a few Eysselink drive ships, but she couldn’t imagine how they could produce the antimatter needed to fuel them.

“Helm,” Minishimi ordered, “take us out past lunar orbit; I want a hundred klicks between us and the closest of their ships when those missiles hit.”

“Aye, Captain,” Witten acknowledged, changing their course.

“Bogies are launching countermeasures,” Gianeto announced. He squinted at the displays with amused disbelief. “Awfully big ones too… Damn, it looks like they’re shooting Shipbusters at our Shipbusters!”

“That makes sense in a Russian kind of way,” Minishimi mused. “If they have enough to spare…”

“Should we launch again, ma’am?”

“Not yet, Commander… no use throwing good money after bad. Let’s see what happens. How long till their missiles intercept?”

“Not long, ma’am,” he temporized, checking the readings. “Ten minutes, twenty four seconds.”

“What heading are the enemy ships following?”

“Two of them are changing course to follow us, ma’am. One is breaking from the others and seems to be heading into planetary orbit.”

“Helm,” Minishimi snapped urgently. “Immediate drive cutoff. Communications, get a message to the patrol shuttles and to the landing party that they have possible incoming enemy spacecraft. Tactical, target the ship heading for the planet and fire off four Shipbusters, overwhelm their defenses.”

“That will only leave us with four, ma’am,” Gianeto reminded her as her officers scrambled to obey.

“Understood, Commander, carry out the order.”

“Drive shutting down,” Witten said loudly, and the apparent gravity disappeared, sending stomachs lurching throughout the ship.

“Launch ports open, missiles running out,” Gianeto announced, drowning out the voice of the Communications officer on the other side of the bridge trying to hail the shuttles. An alarm sounded from the Tactical station, one Minishimi had never heard before outside of a drill. “Ma’am, they’re targeting us with a weapons laser… it’s extreme range right now, not penetrating the ship’s armor. Looks like it’s a continuous wave weapon, probably a gas laser, nuclear powered. Launching missiles now,” he added, hitting the control. They all felt a significant jolt as the four weapons were ejected from the ship. “They’re away. Laser is causing significant heating on the forward hull, ma’am.”

“Communications?” Minishimi demanded.

“Message delivered,” Lt. Higgs reported from her station.

“Reinitializing drive field,” Witten shook his head, blowing out a breath. “Reestablishing course.”

“Missile drives have ignited,” Gianeto told her. “The first flight is closing on target, and the countermeasures are still inbound.”

“We are clear of lunar orbit,” Witten said. “Drive field set at station keeping, negative g burn coming.” Minishimi felt herself coming up against her seat restraints as their acceleration ceased, and with it the faux gravity. There was a warning klaxon and then there was a brief, punishing burst in the opposite direction that pushed her forward against the restraints as the drive field braked them at three gravities for a couple minutes to slow their forward velocity before they were once again in zero gravity.

Minishimi suppressed an urge to chew at her lip as the minutes dragged by… space battles required patience and steady nerves. She had the latter and could fake the former.

It’s just like a war game exercise, she told herself. Except for the part where there were three shiploads of Russians trying to kill them.

“Shipbusters are approaching countermeasures,” Gianeto finally reported. “It looks like the missile AIs are attempting evasive maneuvers, but I don’t think they’re gonna’ have enough time… no, the first of them just detonated. Jesus, that’s a big blast! Gotta’ be twenty megatons!”

“Commander,” she admonished quietly.

“Sorry, ma’am,” he apologized, abashed. “There’s the second detonation, though… now the third. Sensors are pretty much blinded by the flash, it’s gonna’ be a second…” He hesitated, then shook his head, frowning with disappointment. “Damn it, I was afraid of that. The first wave of Shipbusters are slag, ma’am. The second flight is still on target. The bogie heading for the planet has launched two countermeasures… that may be all she has. The other two bogies are still heading our way… no further launches from either of them. Orders, ma’am?”

“No use wasting any more Shipbusters,” she reasoned, “or time. Helm, intercept course… get us to weapons range so we can get this over with.”

“Aye, ma’am,” Witten said, “initializing one g acceleration.”

“Estimate five minutes to effective Gauss gun range,” Gianeto announced after a quick calculation. “Ten minutes, thirty five seconds to effective laser range.”

“Tactical, plot me a targeting package and charge capacitors,” she instructed.

“Charging capacitors, aye.” Gianeto worked the holotank controls, plotting firing solutions for the approaching Protectorate ships. “Ma’am, the larger of the two ships is moving into a blocking position for the other.”

“Target the leader first, then… we can deal with the trailing ship afterward.” She wasn’t worried. That tactic might have meant trouble for a conventional spacecraft, but with the Eysselink drive, they were maneuverable enough to target both ships.

“Ships are within extreme visual range, ma’am,” the communications officer informed her.

“On screen,” she ordered. The sensor display that had been projected on the main holographic viewscreen disappeared, to be replaced by a computer-enhanced visual of the Protectorate starships. The lead ship was some sort of converted in-system cargo hauler, likely pirated, its utilitarian lines obscured behind makeshift armor, the flare of fusion pulse engines lighting up like a star at its aft drive bell. Partially obscured behind it was a smaller ship, wedge-shaped and unrecognizable.

“Lead ship is coming into range,” Gianeto announced a few minutes later. “Targeting operations center and weapons.”

“Helm,” Minishimi snapped, “prepare to deactivate drive field.”

“Ready to drop field,” Witten confirmed.

“Deactivate drive field now.”

“Deactivating drive field.” More zero gravity and her stomach lurched.

“Open fire,” Minishimi snapped, trying to keep the satisfaction out of her voice.

“Gauss guns firing,” Gianeto confirmed, palming the control. The ship vibrated as tungsten slugs that weighed tons each were ejected from the port and starboard coilguns at thousands of meters per second. “He’s firing too, Captain… Gauss guns and lasers. Gauss gun rounds are a minute out, lasers starting to melt armor on the bow.” He bit back a curse. “Losing sensors on the bow, too…”

“Are our capacitors charged?” Captain Minishimi asked.

“Aye, Captain, lasers ready to fire.”

“Target their lasers and fire all batteries!”

“Firing lasers.”

Four huge capacitors in the twin weapons pods, fed by the ship’s fusion reactor, pulsed through semiconductor rods and were focused by gravimetic lenses using the ship’s drive field generator. The pulses were invisible in the vacuum of space, but the ship’s computer simulated them with crimson threads that speared out to strike the enemy ship in its weapons ports. Vaporizing metal flashed and escaping atmosphere ignited with incandescent clouds as the weapons ports blew apart.

“Gauss guns cease fire,” Minishimi ordered. “Reinitialize drive fields.”

“Drive fields engaged,” Witten sighed, relieved… the enemy Gauss rounds were getting close.

“Just in time,” Gianeto echoed the Helmsman’s unspoken concern. “Incoming Gauss rounds being shunted by the drive field. Our rounds should start impacting… now.”

Even as he spoke, Minishimi could see the tungsten darts slam into the bow armor of the Protectorate warship, ripping through it and sending a cloud of vaporized and splintered armor into an orbit around the accelerating ship. The huge projectiles kept impacting, one after another, until finally the armor was gone and they penetrated deep into the heart of the ship, coring through its nuclear reactor and killing its fusion pulse drive. Unpowered and helpless, the dead hull lost its acceleration but kept its course, the proverbial object in motion.

“Gauss rounds effective,” Gianeto reported with a touch of savage joy. “She’s a rock now… current course will take her out of the system. The trailing ship is still accelerating, should be past the derelict in a couple minutes.”

“Helm,” Minishimi ordered, “flip us end for end… I want our weapons pods on him as we pass. Tactical, are capacitors recharged?”

“Capacitors at full, ma’am,” Gianeto reported. “We’ll be ready to hit her with all laser batteries…” He clipped off his sentence, staring at the sensor display. “She’s adjusting course, ma’am… it looks like he’s trying for a collision course!”

“What?” Minishimi frowned. That was monumentally stupid, even for a Protectorate captain. The Eysselink field warped the space-time around the starship… the same effect that had shunted aside the Gauss gun rounds would rip an enemy ship to pieces if it got that close. “Well, never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake,” she shrugged. “Maintain course, prepare for high-g decal… we want to do maximum damage when the drive field hits him.”

“Preparing for high-g deceleration, aye,” Helm responded, sounding the alarm klaxon.

“What the fuck?” Gianeto blurted, staring at the sensor display. “Captain, I’m reading an Eysselink drive signature on the trailing ship!”

Joyce Minishimi felt her stomach drop away from her in a manner not unlike transitioning to zero g, as a hundred thoughts overlaid themselves on her brain at once, coalescing into a stunning realization in less than a second: the Protectorates had a stardrive, but not enough antimatter to use it for propulsion, so they were going to make a suicide run with it, ramming the fields into each other in an effort to make them collapse.

“Helm!” Minishimi shouted, instinctively trying to rise from her chair but restrained by the safety straps. “Emergency burn, 30 degrees at seven g’s, now!”

There was no time for acknowledgements, no time to sound another warning. Witten followed the command as if he’d been thinking it himself and everyone on the ship felt their body crushed by the sudden, brutal acceleration… but only for a moment, because it wasn’t quite enough…

There was a wavering uncertainty on the main viewscreen as the two Eysselink fields touched and then Joyce Minishimi felt as if she had been turned inside out. She knew she was screaming in agony, but she couldn’t hear anything, couldn’t see anything, couldn’t feel her body.

Is this what it feels like to die? She wondered.

Then reality snapped back like a rubber band that had been stretched too far and she was back in her acceleration couch, back in zero gravity and hurting everywhere. She heard a quiet, agonized moan coming from somewhere on the bridge and finally realized it was coming from her. The holographic displays were all dark, the only illumination coming from emergency chemical ghostlights that threw the bridge into a sharp, shadowed relief. The bridge crew were floating limp against their restraints, only one or two showing signs of consciousness.

“Eng…” She tried to talk but it came out a barely audible rasp. She coughed and shook her head, both of which caused far more pain than she’d imagined. “Engineering!” She called as loud as she could. Nothing. The engineering bridge officer was a slender, fragile-looking young Lt. Commander named Mehta, and from what she could see in the gloom, he was unconscious, his head lolling.

Forcing her hands to work, she touched the button on her ‘link’s ear bud. “Captain to Engineering.” Nothing. “Captain to Engineering, is anyone there?”

“Cap… captain,” a voice rasped in answer. She barely recognized it as belonging to Commander Prieta, the Chief Engineering Officer. “What happened?”

“They had an Eysselink drive,” Minishimi told him. “We touched fields.”

“Ah,” he sounded analytical, as if it were some fascinating experiment he’d been performing in the lab. “That makes sense. Our drive field projectors… as near as I can tell, every single relay is slagged, ma’am. The antimatter stores automatically ejected and our reactor flushed and shut down. All we have is the emergency batteries right now… and the automatic switches are burned out. Hold on for a minute, ma’am.” A long pause. “There you go.”

The bridge lights returned, and so did some of the sensor displays.

“Tactical,” Minishimi said. She saw Gianeto shaking his head, hands going to his forehead. “Commander Gianeto, I need a tactical report right now.”

“Ma’am, aye, ma’am,” he stuttered, trying to force his eyes into focus. “About half our active sensors are inoperable… we’re getting nothing from the gravimetic scans.”

“The drives are down and the reactor is offline. What can you see?”

“Ummm… yeah, there she is. The bogey with the Eysselink drive is still intact, as far as I can tell. I’m getting reactor signatures here… I think he has a fission power plant running. And he’s activated his fusion pulse drive. He’s heading towards us, ma’am.”

“Damn,” Witten swore. “How is that thing under weigh already? We’re trashed… I’ve got nothing but maneuvering thrusters right now.”

“Because he was built for that attack, Mr. Witten,” Minishimi said with grim admiration, shaking her head. “Antonov suckered us good. Put it onscreen Lt. Higgs.” The main display tank flickered fitfully and then the image of the strange, wedge-shaped enemy spacecraft solidified, with the green and blue of Peboan behind it. “Tactical, have we got anything to shoot at him?”

“No Gauss guns without the reactor, no lasers without the Eysselink field to focus them,” he shook his head. “I’m not even sure we have enough power to energize the EM launchers for the missiles, ma’am. We can launch some countermeasures, but that’s about it.”

“Engineering,” Minishimi called into her ‘link. “Any chance of getting the auxiliary drive back online?”

“I’m working on it, ma’am,” Prieta reported, still unflappable. “We have to build up a charge in the capacitors though, and it’s slow on batteries. I can get the fusion reactor online in another…” He hesitated, checking his figures. “…call it seventeen minutes. Then another few minutes before the plasma drive coils are charged. Less than half an hour.”

“Oh, I don’t think we have quite that long to live, Commander,” Captain Minishimi told him. “I am sure we’d all appreciate whatever you could do to expedite matters.”

“I’ll do what I can, Captain,” he assured her cheerfully.

“I don’t think the bogey has Gauss guns, Captain,” Gianeto said thoughtfully. “She might not have the room for weapons pods with the gear for the Eysselink drive and antimatter storage crammed in there. I’m not seeing anything that looks like Gauss guns or lasers on her hull. She might have missiles, or…” He looked back at her. “She might be intending to ram us.”

“Time?” She snapped, staring at the display.

“Not much,” He shook his head. “She should be well past us and heading the opposite direction, but when our fields touched, I think it absorbed all of our momentum and fed it into the gravito-inertial spectrum as gravity-analog stress. That’s what knocked us for a loop. It left us both drifting pretty slow in the same long orbit around the primary star. She should be able to match velocities with us in less than twenty minutes.”

“That’ll be suicide for all the crew,” Witten protested weakly.

“Not if their Eysselink generator is still working,” Minishimi corrected him. “Then it’s just us that gets crushed.” And didn’t it feel shitty to be on the other side of that equation. Well, no use letting the clock run out with time outs still on the board. “Helm, full maneuvering thrusters… whatever we have left. Aim us for a lower energy orbit. Maybe we can buy some time.”

“Aye, ma’am,” Witten replied without enthusiasm. They could barely feel the gentle jolt as the maneuvering thrusters-solid-fuel rockets powered by small, isotope reactors-began nudging them slowly out of the way of the enemy ship. It was pointless, but it was all she could do…

“What the hell…” Gianeto breathed, staring at the sensor readout in disbelief. Minishimi opened her mouth to chide him for cursing when she saw the monolithic shape of a Republic starship appear on the main viewscreen, its image distorted by an Eysselink drive field as it brushed within a hundred kilometers of the Protectorate vessel.

The Republic cruiser was gone in an eyeblink and the Protectorate vessel was quite abruptly ripped to shreds, consumed in a savage explosion of fused hydrogen, fissile uranium and matter/antimatter. But many of those shreds were still headed their way…

“Tactical, are we going to clear this orbit before what’s left of the ship hits us?” She demanded quickly, snapping Gianeto out of his amazed speechlessness.

“Umm… yes, ma’am,” he stuttered. “It’s still got the same heading more or less, but it’s not accelerating anymore. It’ll take over an hour to get here.”

“Who the hell was that?” Witten asked what the rest of them were thinking.

Minishimi relaxed against her seat restraints, smiling the smile of someone who’s had a death sentence commuted. “That was an old friend,” she said, “with a wonderful sense of timing.”

Chapter Thirteen

“I don’t like this,” Ari said between panted breaths, sweat running off his brow to sting his eyes.

“You don’t like what?” Alida asked, her voice and breathing maddeningly even, despite their pace. “The fact that it’s twenty-seven degrees and eighty percent humidity and it’s not even dawn, or the fact that I’m running your ass into the ground?” They were on their daily-at least daily while they were in garrison rather than the field-run around the same perimeter path where Ari had been attacked weeks before, but Ari couldn’t shut his mind down and run the way he usually did. He was worried and stressed and the dark trees around them seemed to him to be filled with concealed menace.

. “I’m running right next to you,” he reminded her a bit peevishly. “And I am used to the heat. I don’t like how long this is taking. It’s been over two weeks since I told them you were an investigator and your ass is still hanging in the wind.”

“Always thinking about my ass, aren’t you?” She laughed.

He shot her a baleful glare. “It is charming that you retain your sense of humor, my dear, but I am not quite so sanguine. I have not received any further instructions from my command since my last communication and I should have. There is no point in stringing this along any further… we have nothing else that we can learn from Lee that he has not already revealed. We should take them down now and kill as much of this plot as we can.”

“Ours is not to question why, kedves,” she shrugged.

“I don’t like the other half of that quote,” he grumbled. “It involves something about us dying, if I recall right. Another thing that bothers me is that we still don’t know who hired those guys that tried to kill me.”

Before she could reply, they both slowed to a jog, staring at a dark figure standing at the edge of the trees, just out of the reach of the illumination of the chemical light poles that lined the path. Ari automatically began scanning the woods around them, searching for other threats, trusting Alida to watch the one they already knew about. She was already opening her waist pack, her hand wrapping around the compact pistol there…

“Relax, Inspector,” the man said, emerging from the shadows to reveal himself as General Kage.

“Sir,” she said, coming to a halt. “I am… surprised to see you out here.”

“It is the only way I could speak to the two of you without raising suspicions,” he told her, stepping up to the two officers. He seemed out of place dressed in dark sweats and running shoes, his bearing casual.

“General,” Ari said with a cautious nod.

“Nice to meet you formally, Captain Shamir,” Kage smiled thinly. “By the way, let me assure you that, had I not known who you were in advance, I would never have suspected you.”

“Thank you, sir,” Ari replied. “Let me assure you, I was serious about what I said in our meeting.”

“And they were very intelligent suggestions, Captain. But we don’t have much time, and we have more pressing matters to discuss.”

“Did something happen, sir?” Alida asked.

“No, Inspector, and that is the problem. Given what Captain Shamir was able to discover about the scope of this conspiracy, I have decided that the scope of our investigation needs to expand as well. I need you to take the next step up this ladder: Lee has a contact with whomever in the Fleet or the corporations or the government recruited him into this plot. You need to meet with this person.”

“How do we get that information from Lee?” Ari wanted to know.

“I have further decided,” Kage went on as if he hadn’t heard the question, “that since we know nearly everything that Lee knows, there is no sense leaving him and Captain Ali out there as potential wildcards.” He spared Alida a meaningful glance. “You will clean this mess up, Inspector, and then you will use whatever means necessary to find out who Colonel Lee’s contact is. Do you understand what I am saying, Inspector?”

“Completely, sir,” she nodded, mouth set grimly.

“General,” Ari interrupted, “aren’t you forgetting something?”

“And what would that be, Captain Shamir?” Kage raised an eyebrow, seemingly amused by the thought.

“The hitters that came after me, sir,” Ari said. “Someone hired them… someone who knew who I was and that I was here investigating Lee.”

“The men who attacked you were street trash from the city,” Kage informed him. “Hired because they were disposable and wouldn’t be missed. And they were indeed hired by someone who knew who and where you were.” He smiled once more and Ari felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle.

“You hired them,” he realized suddenly. He glanced at Alida, his eyes narrowing, a film of unreality settling over him. “You hired them so I would trust Alida when she ‘rescued’ me from them. So I would work with her, help you with this investigation.”

“What?” Alida exclaimed, looking back and forth between the two of them. “General, is this true?”

“You don’t need to keep acting, Alida,” Ari told her, anger in his voice. “I would hardly abandon the operation at this point, even if I had clearance to do so.”

“Captain Shamir,” Kage said quietly but firmly. “Yes, I did indeed hire those men. I needed to find out how good you were… if a group of street toughs could kill you, then you would not be of much use to me. And it worked out very well that your ‘Alida’ arrived in time to help. But she was not informed of my tactic… I decided that I could not trust her to allow you to be put in harm’s way. It was my observation that she was already developing feelings for you.”

“Ari,” she said, shaking her head, “you must believe me; I did not know about this, and had I been told, I wouldn’t have let you go out there alone.”

“Enough,” General Kage snapped impatiently. “You can have this lovers’ quarrel on your own time. What I need to know, Captain Shamir, is whether I can count on you to help us carry this out. I can’t simply have Guard troops march in and arrest the Colonel and Captain Ali… that would burn our bridges. This must be handled quietly, and it must be the two of you that handle it.”

“I’m in,” Ari confirmed, his mouth a hard line, his face stone.

“And you will not balk at doing what must be done?”

“Accidents happen,” he shrugged.

Kage snorted appreciatively, and then turned back to Alida. “When you have the information, you may contact me again.”

Without another word, he turned and faded back into the shadows. Alida glanced from the suddenly empty darkness to the doubt in her lover’s eyes. “Please believe me, kedves.”

“I do not even know your real name,” he responded, smiling sadly. “There is no Alida Hudec… I call you by a name of someone who does not exist.”

“My name is…” she began, but he gently placed a finger over her lips.

“Wait. We have work to do first. When we have done what we must, when I know that I am speaking to who you are and not who you must pretend to be, then you will tell me your name and we will speak as a man and a woman.”

She considered that silently for a moment, then grabbed his finger and quickly and painfully bent it back. Shocked, Ari went down to his knees, mouth open as if he were on the verge of crying out in pain.

“The hell with that, Ariel Shamir,” she said forcefully, lowering her face to look him in the eyes. “I can’t make you talk, but I will make you listen. If we die doing our duty, then you will die knowing that my name is Roza Kovach, that I told you the truth about being kidnapped as a teenager, about my parents and about Pithapuram. And you will know that I am telling you the truth when I tell you that I love you.” She let loose of his finger and pushed him away, putting him on the ground on his rear. He stared at her, mouth agape. “Get off your ass, Captain. As you say,” she turned and began jogging down the path, “we have work to do.”

* * *

Valerie O’Keefe-Mulrooney felt strangely relaxed as she waited for someone to try to kill her. The Old City was, she decided morbidly, a very good place to die, if it came to that. She stepped away from her groundcar reluctantly, as if it somehow represented safety, and gazed upward at the crumbling remains of what had once been a city at the center of the world: New York. Millions of people had lived and worked there, businesses and homes had been crammed into every square centimeter of it. They had all thought, she realized, that it would go on forever. And then things had changed.

The bombs hadn’t touched the old United States directly… most had been targeted at China and the Russian Protectorate. But they had come so close, so horrifyingly close to destroying civilization and driving the whole of humanity back to the Paleolithic. There had been riots, cities had burned and people had starved. Troops had patrolled the streets.

Looking out at the shadowed, empty streets, now overgrown by grass and trees, she could feel the ghosts of those people haunting the ruins. She tried to imagine what it had been like, but it was just too alien. She was glad she hadn’t seen it, and she didn’t want to see it happen to her world… to her daughter’s world. That was worth dying to prevent.

She pulled her jacket tighter around her against the chill; the sky was grey and there was the feel of imminent snow in the air. The Old City seemed so much more real down here. She had passed over it and by it so many times in flyers, never imagining what it would be like to walk among the buildings. It wasn’t closed to the public, but very few people came here. Very few people ventured outside the megalopolises at all, she reflected sadly. If things collapsed again, those people would all die.

She started slightly when she heard the other groundcar approaching down the narrow, barely-maintained service road, but made herself relax. She was expecting it; it was why she was there. The woman who stepped out of the vehicle was familiar to her from various political and celebrity events: exquisitely dressed even for this clandestine meeting, she was blond, tall and statuesque, and she mingled freely with the glitterati of Capital City. Val knew she was a veteran who’d been in the business for decades, despite her seeming youth.

“Good afternoon, Senator,” Amanda Sanchez said, offering a hand.

“Call me Valerie,” she insisted, shaking the hand, “since we’re conspirators.”

“Then I’m Amanda,” the other woman nodded. “I’m so sorry about what happened to your husband, Valerie.”

“Thank you, Amanda, but the way I feel I can best honor his memory is to carry on the work that got him killed.”

“You really believe that someone assassinated Glen to suppress this information?” Amanda frowned. “It’s just so hard to believe.”

“I know, Amanda,” Val said, biting back the urge to snap at the woman’s inanity. “But if I’m wrong, I’m just a grieving widow with a paranoid imagination, no real harm done. If I’m right, though…”

“Yes, I can see what you mean. Well, I have the information you asked for… I was able to access Ozzie Fuentes’ last log-in to his network’s system and I just ordered the results re-computed using his credentials.”

“Have you read the results?”

“Yes I have,” Amanda told her, pulling a small tablet from her bag. She looked at it, shaking her head. “But it’s pretty thin, Valerie… basically, the program they have analyzes behavioral patterns over time to try to discern hidden variables. For some reason, Ozzie had been looking at Vice President Dominguez.”

Just tell me, you bitch! Val was screaming at her mentally. Instead, she clasped her hands tightly in front of her and asked politely: “Did the program find anything?”

“As I said, it’s pretty slim… all it found was that Dominguez was something of a dilettante until five years ago, when he became more set in his ways.”

“What do you mean ‘set in his ways?’”

“Well,” she glanced at the tablet, trying to remember, “he had never stayed with one woman for more than a few months, but he’s been with his current girlfriend for five years. He used to skip around from one passionate hobby to the next-competitive chess, martial arts, you know-but he’s been an avid rock climber for the last five years. Used to jump from one group of friends to another, but has been close with the same group of people for the last five years… you get the idea.”

Valerie’s brow furled. That was intriguing, but there had to be more. “Did anything happen five years ago? Before the lack of changes?”

“Um…” Amanda scrolled through the document on the tablet. “Yes, actually.” She sounded surprised. “He travelled to Aphrodite just after the war, for a conference. It was when he returned that the program noticed the discrepancies.”

Valerie felt the hackles rising on the back of her neck, but she wasn’t sure why. There was something surreal about this… something she couldn’t quite pin down. But that wasn’t why she was here anyway.

“Thank you for your help, Amanda,” she told the woman, holding her hand out for the tablet. The journalist handed it over, with a trace of reluctance. “Trust me,” Valerie said, noting the hesitation, “if and when I can piece something together, I will contact you and allow your ‘net to be the first to break this story.”

“Valerie!” A voice buzzed urgently in her ear. “Get down!”

Without thinking, Valerie grabbed Amanda and dragged her to the ground behind her vehicle, just as something passed through the air where her head had been moments before…

Shannon Stark sighed with relief as she saw Valerie’s vehicle pull up at the end of the service road. She had been lying motionless in a hide on the fourth floor of this ruined apartment building for nearly seven hours, since before dawn, and the Senator’s car had been the first movement she’d seen. Which was disappointing… she had hoped to spot whoever came to make the hit long before Valerie arrived. She’d never forgive herself if she let anything happen to Valerie… not after Glen had died trying to help her. Not to mention how Jason would feel about it… he and Valerie had a short-lived relationship six years before, when they’d been stranded alone together in the high deserts of Aphrodite during a Protectorate incursion there. It was long over, but she knew he still cared about her.

When Shannon saw the second vehicle approaching, she reflexively reached for the rifle lying beside her in the hide, even though she’d been expecting it. She recognized Sanchez, the journalist, from the file she’d pulled when Valerie had contacted her about Fuentes. The two of them had worked for the same newsnet, though Sanchez was much farther up the food chain. Shannon looked her car over thoroughly with the thermal scanners in her binoculars, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. She hadn’t expected to: Sanchez was a solid citizen with an extensive background.

Of course, so was Vice President Dominguez…

“Major Stark,” she heard a call over her ‘link’s ear bud. “Check out the building at your eleven o’clock, fifth floor, on thermal.”

“Roger,” she muttered. She shifted around to her left, playing her binoculars over the partially-burned down hotel across the street.

There. Through one of the windows she could see a shape barely moving on thermal, more visible than it would normally have been in the early afternoon because of the winter cold that had set in to the concrete and steel. It hadn’t been there only minutes before when she had done a thermal sweep of the area, which meant that whoever it was had been concealed in a thermal-masking cover of some kind, and had only taken it off because he was ready to shoot…

“Get up there now, Tom!” She said urgently, grabbing her rifle and shifting it over to target the hotel window. “Valerie! Get down!”

She raised the scope to her eye, cursing when she saw the puff of hot gas coming from the window that indicated the assassin had fired. Shannon flicked her selector to full auto and squeezed the trigger, gritting her teeth against the sharp recoil. There was little sound, since her rifle was suppressed, so she could actually hear the impact as a dozen 8mm slugs punched through the decaying concrete of the hotel, sending a spray of dust and concrete chunks into the shooter. Through her thermal scope she could see him jerk back from his hide position in pain and surprise, giving her a better view, and a better target. Letting out a breath, she put the targeting reticle on the shooter’s right leg and stroked the trigger. A single round coughed out through her suppressor, the tungsten penetrator propelled by a mass of caseless hyperexplosive powder the size of her middle finger, and knifed through the concrete wall to spear into the assassin’s right knee.

The shooter thrashed and writhed in pain, a red and yellow light show in her thermal scope as he rolled back and forth inside his hide, trying to get out of the line of fire.

“He’s lame, Tom,” she transmitted. “Take him now.”

There wasn’t a reply, but she could see a red and yellow form moving up the stairs into the shooter’s room, then duck through the doorway and raise a weapon in outstretched hands. The assassin on the floor convulsed once and then went limp.

“He’s down, ma’am,” Tom Crossman told her, and she could see him turning the unconscious form over and slipping restraints on his wrists. “I’m bringing him downstairs.”

“Roger that. Good job.”

Shannon grabbed her rifle and binoculars and scrambled to her feet, heading out of the apartment, being careful to avoid the gaping holes in the floor. The stairs were solid concrete and still in fairly good shape and she sprinted down them as quickly as she could, exiting the centuries-old building through a side door, having to jump a meter down to the street because the stoop had been washed away by the years.

“Jason goes off looking for the Protectorate dozens of light years away,” she muttered to herself as she jogged towards Valerie, “and I wind up in a damn firefight. Figures.”

Valerie was helping Amanda to her feet as Shannon approached and she could see that the journalist was ashen, shaking with fear. “Are you all right?” She asked them, putting a supporting hand on the journalist’s shoulder.

Amanda looked up and saw the woman dressed in combat utilities and body armor, carrying a sniper rifle and jerked away from her with a screech of fright.

“It’s all right, Amanda,” Valerie assured her. “She’s a friend… this is Major Shannon Stark.”

Amanda blinked, looked back at Shannon with wide eyes. “The Shannon Stark?”

Shannon sighed. While Valerie explained things to Amanda, Stark turned to see Tom Crossman and Sergeant Miller, one of their most trusted Special Operations NCOs, carrying an unconscious man between them on a folding stretcher. She stepped over to them, examining the assassin.

He was a solidly-built man somewhere in his middle years, the bushy mustache and shoulder length hair giving her the impression of ex-military, probably a gun for hire. He wore plain black utilities and a combat vest, along with a fresh smart bandage wrapped around his right knee. He was still motionless, having been hit with a fairly large jolt from the electro-dart shooter holstered at Tom’s right hip. The gun used compressed air to shoot darts containing small capacitors that could deliver enough of a shock to render someone unconscious for hours.

“That was some good shooting, ma’am,” Crossman grinned. “Didn’t even nick the artery. He’ll be good as new in days.”

“Good,” she nodded. “Get him to the flyer and get him secured.” She looked back at Valerie and they shared a grim smile. “He has a lot of questions to answer.”

Chapter Fourteen

Jason McKay watched with a predatory set to his eyes as the blackened and cracked hull slid by on the Sheridan‘s master viewscreen. It had taken some tricky maneuvering, but the big cruiser had finally matched orbits with the disabled Protectorate lighter. In the days since the space battle, it had drifted in an eccentric orbit that was eventually going to slingshot it around the system’s primary star and send it out into interstellar space, but for now it was accessible to their recovery teams. And since it was the only Protectorate ship to survive the battle even partially intact, McKay badly wanted to see what they recovered.

He could see their shuttle hugging the surface of the pirated and converted freighter like a remora on a blue whale, but the men themselves were not visible.

“The boarding party has burned through the airlock,” the Sheridan‘s communications officer announced. “They’re broadcasting a video feed now.”

“Put it on screen, Lieutenant,” Admiral Patel ordered. He was strapped into his command couch, but McKay was making do holding onto a handle affixed to the bulkhead beside him. It wasn’t convenient, but somehow he felt more at home there than in a seat of his own.

The image on the screen switched abruptly from the exterior shot to a darkened, claustrophobic corridor in the ship’s interior. From the helmet-mounted camera, they could see the other Marines and Fleet technicians in the boarding party, all of them dressed in massively-armored vacuum suits and the Marines armed with backpack-fed lasers only practical in zero gravity.

“There’s still no sign of any survivors?” McKay asked.

“No, sir,” the Tactical officer told him, checking her sensor displays. “We have some spots that still have auxiliary power and probably life support, but no attempts to maneuver or communicate.”

“It’s been days,” Patel pointed out. “If anyone survived the battle, they’d have got out in landers or escape pods by now.”

“You’re probably right, sir,” McKay admitted with a shrug. “But a live prisoner to interrogate would be nice.”

“You spooks,” Patel lamented, shaking his head. “You always want egg in your beer.”

Jason had to chuckle at that. A few days ago, he’d felt lucky to be alive and not stranded on Peboan for the foreseeable future. It had been a close thing. The Protectorate ship that had split off to try to strike them from orbit had been close enough that he’d been able to see the explosion from the ground when Captain Minishimi’s Shipbusters caught up with it. At the time, he’d been morally certain that the blast was the Decatur being destroyed, and he’d experienced a terrifying flashback to the Protectorate attack on Aphrodite until the transmission from the patrol shuttles told them what had actually happened.

The view on the helmet cam shifted as the party made a turn into a broader corridor that abruptly ended with a mass of charred, twisted metal and a view of the stars.

“The main bridge is toast,” the voice of the leader of the investigation team came through the transmission. McKay had met him before the shuttle had launched… he was a competent young Lt. Commander named Landers. “We’re moving toward the auxiliary control room to see what we can find there.”

“You know, Admiral,” McKay said, eyes still on the feed on the viewscreen, “we’ve been pretty busy the last few days, what with cleaning up the mess on Peboan and trying to get the Decatur repaired, so I haven’t had the chance to ask you… how the hell did you wind up here weeks ahead of schedule right when we needed you?”

“You should be grateful I didn’t waste any more time on that wild goose chase,” Patel snorted. “We hit the first system and found a habitable that had some pretty accessible mineral deposits, but no evidence of any Protectorate activity and my XO and I got to thinking: why would Antonov risk discovery for some resources on Peboan when there are a lot of other places he could get them?” The Admiral shook his head. “It didn’t make any sense. So we decided that the only thing that did make sense was if there was something unique or at least rare about Peboan or the star system there, so I ordered a max-g burn back to the system. I brought us down to sublight in the cometary halo and started working our way inward, doing a slow sweep. We didn’t contact you because I had a sense that whatever made this system important could mean the Protectorates were still around somewhere and I didn’t want to advertise our presence.”

“Well, you’re smarter than me, Admiral,” McKay admitted ruefully. “It took me till about five minutes before the attack to figure out why this place was important to Antonov.”

“Oh?” Patel glanced over, curious. “You know what he wants with the planet?”

“I think so, sir. It’s a guess, but it feels right. Podbyrin told me that the network of wormhole jumpgates they’re using has several systems that contain multiple gates-sort of transportation hubs. My guess is that this is one of those hubs. Antonov needs this system to get his ships where they’re going, so he won’t give it up without a fight.”

“Not bad,” Patel judged. “Whether you’re right about that or not, we’ll need to keep an eye on this place long term.”

“The auxiliary control room is intact,” Landers finally reported. On the screen, they could see the door to the control room, marked in Cyrillic lettering, and through the window set in that door to an old-fashioned looking bank of readouts and controls, still lit by emergency battery power. “We are going to attempt to burn through… shit!”

Landers’ exclamation was at a face that suddenly appeared in the window, dark-haired and wild-eyed, with a bushy beard and cracked, chapped lips. He was saying something, but they couldn’t hear him with him behind the thick transplas and them in a vacuum.

“We have a survivor, Sheridan,” Landers reported, unnecessarily.

“Set up a temporary airlock and get him out of there, Commander,” Patel ordered quickly. “Get him into a rescue bubble and get him over here ASAP. But be cautious opening that door… it might be booby-trapped.”

“Roger that, sir,” Landers confirmed, then turned to give the orders to set up the temporary airlock.

Patel grinned at McKay. “Well, there you go, Colonel… you wanted a live prisoner. Now you’re going to have one.”

“Aye, sir,” McKay nodded, trying to contain his excitement. “Sir, Podbyrin’s back on the Decatur. I need him here when I interrogate this guy. He might know him.”

“By all means, Colonel, we’ll send a shuttle for him.” Patel raised an eyebrow with amusement. “You and Podbyrin and an interrogation in my brig… it’ll be just like old times. Hopefully this time we won’t have to drug him.”

“Do you know him?”

D’mitry Podbyrin stared at the viewscreen hooked to a camera in the security detention cell, at the image of the Protectorate crewman secured to a padded couch via straps at his wrists, chest and calves. The man looked much healthier now than the first time McKay had seen him. He’d been severely dehydrated and hadn’t had anything to eat in days, not to mention the beginnings of anoxia and hypothermia as the life support started to fail in the auxiliary control room.

After a few days in sick bay, the Russian officer was alert and much less grateful than he’d been shortly after being rescued.

“I…,” Podbyrin began, and then closed his mouth, shaking his head. “I’m not sure. I think I have seen him before, but I do not know him, or remember his name.” He shrugged. “You must understand, there were hundreds of men and women, enlisted and officers, even at the beginning. And there were some births over the years, of course.”

The old man’s eyes glazed over slightly, the way they did when he thought back through the long decades he’d been alive; McKay had seen it before when he’d debriefed the Colonel after the war. “We didn’t have that many women… it was perhaps three to one. And the planet we found… the background radiation there was high. Some of the women were made infertile, and the ones who did get pregnant sometimes miscarried. By the time we could make settlements on other worlds, there were few women who could still carry a child to term and few men who were still capable of fathering one. Still, some were… are, I suppose… born every year. So there are probably a few thousand adults at least, even after the war, and some were always other places while I was on Novoye Rodina. I might have seen this man at one time or another, but I do not remember him.”

“Damn,” McKay said mildly. “Oh well, it was just a thought.” He fell silent for a moment, considering the situation. “Okay, it’s probably better that you aren’t in the room then. You may not know him, but he probably knows about you, if Antonov blames you for his defeat. You monitor the interview from in here… you can talk to me through my ear bud, give me advice. Is that all right with you?”

“It is better that I not be in there,” Podbyrin agreed, still staring at the Russian officer on the screen. McKay could see a deep sadness in the man’s eyes, hear a weariness in his voice. It had been there ever since Podbyrin had been forced to kill the Russian officer on Peboan. He couldn’t say for sure, but drawing on the past few years of learning to read people, McKay guessed it was the very final realization by the old man that he really could never go home again.

McKay left him in the main Security office and stepped out into the corridor. The Security section in the new cruisers like the Sheridan was in the rotational drum, giving them faux gravity even when they weren’t under acceleration. McKay wasn’t sure why it had been put there, but at the moment he appreciated it.

The guard outside the holding room opened the door for him and McKay entered, trying to look casual, business-like and unconcerned. The prisoner glanced at him furtively, then looked straight ahead, trying not to meet his eyes. The man was sweating and uncomfortable… the room was being kept warm and humid and not by accident.

”Kak tebya zovut?” McKay asked him in Russian. What’s your name? He’d learned the language quite fluently over the last few years, just in case they ever came across the Protectorate again.

The Russian opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, visibly debating with himself whether he should answer. After a moment, he shrugged. “Konstantin.”

“Hello, Konstantin,” McKay smiled as he went on in Russian, sitting down across from the man. “I’m Jason. Are you being treated well?”

“Yes,” the man said with a shrug… or as much of a shrug as he could give with a strap across his chest and his wrists shackled to the arms of his chair. “They have given me food and water. And new clothes,” he added, glancing at the dark blue utility coveralls he was wearing.

“Good,” McKay nodded. “I am going to be honest with you, Konstantin. I’m in here with you because we want to know why your ships and your troops attacked us. After the war, after your General Antonov tried to take Earth and lost, we let you alone, didn’t we?”

“You couldn’t find us!” Konstantin snorted. “The General returned and told us how he’d been betrayed by that miserable bastard Podbyrin, but that he had managed to escape his treachery and leave you all with your thumbs up your ass!”

“I’m afraid General Antonov lied to you, Konstantin,” McKay said gently. “He wasn’t betrayed. We captured Colonel Podbyrin’s ship by chance as it came through the wormhole in the asteroid belt and we interrogated him using truth drugs. He had no choice at all. And General Antonov was able to get away because he ran while his officers were being slaughtered and his ships destroyed. Do you know how I know this, Konstantin?” At the man’s shaking head, McKay went on. “Because I was on his flagship during that battle. I was with my squad and two platoons of Republic Marines. We battled your officers on the bridge of that ship, Lieutenant Dubronov and Matviyenko and the others…” Konstantin’s eyes went wide at the names… he knew the men. “And the only reason that your General was able to get away was that we were kept busy killing them and disabling the ship. He even had his cloned toy woman fight us to save himself… she lured in a Sergeant and then killed him and herself with a grenade.”

At the mention of the cloned woman Antonov had kept as a companion, Konstantin’s mouth dropped open. This guy must suck at poker, McKay thought.

“So, Konstantin, I know your General. I know how he will use others to do his dirty work while he stays safe and leads from the rear. And here we are. You and I, front line soldiers-you on an attack ship, me on the planet fighting your biomechanical clone troops. And your General is nowhere to be found. You are going to tell me everything you know about the wormholes and how they’re used, Konstantin; and you are going to tell me everything you know about Antonov’s plans and why this system is important to him.” The Russian began to protest but McKay held up a hand. “You will either tell me because you come to understand that General Antonov is a cowardly, evil man who will lead your people to their deaths as he led his whole nation and nearly the whole world to their deaths… or you will tell me because we will pump you full of psychoactive drugs and you’ll have no choice.”

“Why do you bother to tell me this?” Konstantin wanted to know. “Why not just give me the drugs?”

McKay sighed with sad resignation. “Because, Konstantin… I wanted to give you the choice. The drugs won’t injure you… hell, you won’t even remember that you talked. But afterward, you’ll feel like something has been taken from you, something you can’t get back. You seem like a decent man. I’d rather give you the chance to talk to me willingly first.”

“Even if I believed you,” Konstantin said quietly, with little conviction and a great deal of hopelessness, “I could not talk. You will lose and the General would have me taken apart a piece at a time and put into the replication vats.”

“Why should we lose?” McKay asked. “He had much more of an advantage last time, and he still lost. He nearly lost everything. If we knew how to make your jumpgates work, we would have already captured him. Now that we are ready for him, how can he win?”

Konstantin looked him in the eye and McKay could see a very real fear in the man’s gaze. “You think General Antonov is mad, and you are more right than you could ever know, Jason. But he is also a genius… you are a smart man, I can tell, but he is smarter. Whatever you have thought of to defeat him, you can believe me, he has thought of it first.”

“That may be, Konstantin.” McKay allowed, feeling his gut twist up but trying his best not to show it. “But the fact is, your fate is tied to ours now. If we lose, you’ll likely die.”

“That didn’t work on me and it won’t work on him,” Podbyrin’s voice sounded in his ear. “Death in some maybe battle isn’t as frightening as being torn to pieces by the bogey man.”

“But I don’t think you’re a man who’s scared of death,” McKay went on as if he’d always intended to. “After all, you’ve lived with the threat of death for how long now? Over a century? Every single day, wondering if you’ll be the next one Antonov sacrifices to feed his madness? Did you travel all the way from Earth to Novoye Rodina with the General?”

“Yes,” the Russian answered quietly, eyes looking past McKay to a home he’d lost decades ago. “I was a drive technician on the first asteroid mining expedition.”

McKay felt a prickle of disbelief travel up his scalp.

Holy shit.

”Bozhemoi,” Podbyrin breathed. “McKay, if he was on the mining ship, he might have been there when they first triggered the wormhole! I thought those men had all been killed!”

“So,” McKay went on, “it must have been especially hard for you… I’m sure you were afraid for years or even decades that General Antonov would have you killed just because you might know something about the jumpgates.”

“I… I was put in confinement for weeks, interrogated by his internal security. They told me I would be executed for treason. I finally convinced them that I knew nothing, that I was a simple technician with no training in theoretical physics. After that, I volunteered for every job that would take me away from the General. I spent years crewing a cargo run from our first mining colony. When the opportunity came to be part of the security garrison here, I took it. I have been out here for over ten years. I would go on leave once a month, but not to Novoye Rodina. I would go to one of the mining colonies and stay onplanet long enough to stay healthy… you need the gravity, you know? And then back out here. For ten years.”

“This man is unhinged, even by my standards,” Podbyrin transmitted, “which I have come to understand over the last few years are a bit lax.”

You’re not helping, Jason thought hard at him, wishing he had a way to tell him.

“Konstantin, you don’t have to live like that anymore. If you help us beat Antonov, you can live wherever you want… you can have a house on any of our worlds and you’ll never have to work again if you don’t want to. Or if you decide you want to travel, we can get you a position on a ship.”

“You cannot beat him,” Konstantin insisted morosely.

“All right, let’s say we don’t,” McKay said with a shrug. “We can have restruct surgery done on you, totally change the way you look, even your height, the pitch of your voice. You can learn a new language, be given a new identity in our databases. Even if he wins, you’re still better off than you were before, because even if Antonov rules us all, he won’t know who you are or where to find you.”

“You can do this?” For the first time, there was an inkling of hope in the man’s eyes.

“In a week,” McKay told him. “And four days of that is recovery from the surgery. You get restruct surgery and we put you as an anonymous farmer or shop-owner or mine technician on a colony world and the worst that happens, if we lose, is that you wind up working for a new boss who doesn’t know you from Adam. And if we win, you get a guaranteed income for the rest of your life… and you get to be a hero. Famous, if that’s what you want.” He shrugged. “Or still anonymous if you prefer. But this time, it’s your choice.”

“And if I still say no?” Konstantin asked, face thoughtful.

“Then we use the drugs and you tell us anyway, but it takes much longer and you get to spend the whole time in restraints. And afterwards, you’ll spend the foreseeable future in a detention facility. If we win this war, maybe you’ll get put on some backwater colony freezing your ass off.”

“That was low, McKay,” Podbyrin muttered sourly.

“If we lose… well, Antonov will know where you are and who you are and he’ll know we got information from you.”

The Russian was silent for a long moment, his face like a man facing a death sentence. “All right. I will help you. I… I know how the jumpgates are triggered. I know the exact location of many of them, including the one in the Solar asteroid belt and the three in this system.”

Thank you, God! McKay breathed a sigh of relief. He’d been waiting five years for this moment. He turned to the security guard. “Take off his restraints.” Once the Russian was set free, McKay held out a hand and the other man slowly, hesitantly stood and shook it. “I am Colonel Jason McKay of Republic Spacefleet Intelligence.”

“Lieutenant Konstantin Vyacheslavovich Mironov,” the Russian officer told him formally. “Engineer…” He paused, smiled slowly. “Formerly engineering officer in the Protectorate Space Force.”

“Konstantin Vyacheslavovich,” McKay returned the smile, “it is a genuine pleasure to meet you…”

Chapter Fifteen

Ari lay across the hood of the utility rover, looking at the stars. It was nearly one in the morning, and the training company had dug into a defensive position just before dusk, but he had not tried to sleep. The night was still and warm, the only sound the soft snoring of one of the training NCOs from his sleeping bag: no artillery simulators tonight. Theoretically the trainees were at 50 percent security, which in practice meant that half the people who were supposed to be standing watch were awake about half the time. Another night, he might be walking the perimeter, checking on them. Tonight, he wanted them to sleep.

He heard the footsteps behind him, but didn’t get up. “A pleasant night to you, Hassan Ali,” he said quietly. “Salaam alaikum”

“Am I so predictable now, Mohammed?” He could hear the rueful chuckle in the man’s voice at being detected. “Alaikum salaam. I received your message… you said it was important.”

Ari rose silently, sliding off the hood of the vehicle to face the Guard Captain. Hassan Ali was dressed in field armor, his helmet under his arm, a rifle slung over his other shoulder, trying to blend in with the other troops.

“There is something you must see,” Ari said, stepping past him and beckoning him to follow. “It is not far.”

Hassan Ali followed behind him, slipping on his helmet to use its night vision as they strode through the defensive lines, past sleeping sentries and into the open fields around the encampment. Half a kilometer past the lines, there was a clump of tall ombu’ bushes that loomed dark in the moonless night like an impenetrable wall. Ari led the Guard Captain through a gap in the tree-like bushes, into a small, bare-dirt clearing.

Alida Hudec lay motionless on the dirt, hands and feet bound and a strip of utility tape wrapped around her mouth.

“What the hell happened?” Hassan Ali demanded, looking back and forth between Ari and the woman.

Ari sighed, running a hand through his hair. “She came to me tonight after dinner and asked to speak with me out here. She told me that she was an undercover investigator and that she wanted my help… that she liked me and didn’t want me arrested. She told me that she was calling in her people tonight, to arrest you and Colonel Lee and his staff and that if I didn’t agree to help her, I would be arrested as well. So I agreed of course… then I choked her out and tied her up. You need to alert the Colonel.”

“Dammit,” Ali hissed, pulling off his helmet and tossing it to the ground angrily. “I thought we’d have more time!”

“Shit happens, as my American friends say,” Ari said with a shrug. “Either she figured out that Lee was the biggest fish in this pond or her superiors grew impatient. Either way, I have bought us some time-she had not yet made the call for them to move in and make the arrests. But I would think that the GIS will send their forces eventually if they do not hear from her within a day or so. Do you have a way to get a secure message to Colonel Lee?”

“Of course,” Ali said impatiently. “There is an address… an anonymous account. I just leave him a coded message there and he can check it with any public terminal.”

“You need to get him to meet us somewhere remote and quiet,” Ari instructed. “We can take her there and determine how much she knows and how much time we have, then he can make a decision about our next move. And we need to do this now, before dawn, while we can still get her out of here unnoticed. And we need a vehicle that can meet us here, with a driver who can keep his mouth shut.”

“Um…” Ali dithered, beginning to be overwhelmed by the situation. “Ah… yes, let me contact the Colonel.” He pulled out his ‘link and gave it a net address, then recorded his message. “Chess aficionado seeks same, face to face game, on April 5 at three in the afternoon in the city park.” He looked up at Ari. “I just asked him to meet me at the old demolition bunkers in two hours. No one goes there anymore… they opened up a new range a year ago.”

“Good,” Ari clapped the man on the arm reassuringly. “Now get us a vehicle and let’s get out of here. I very much dislike standing out here in front of every satellite in orbit with her tied up on the ground in front of me.”

As Ali turned and stepped away to make the call to his driver, Ari glanced down at the woman he’d known as Alida. Her eyes opened for a split second, then winked at him before closing again. He fought back a smile.

Roza. It was a very nice name.

The old demolition range was an eerie moonscape of craters, devoid of life or evidence of life other than the one dirt road leading into it and the abandoned bunker at its center. Buried in the dirt up to a series of narrow view slits on its front face, the lone entrance was in the rear, an open doorway shielded by a meter thick concrete wall that stood claustrophobic guard just 70 centimeters away.

The only light inside the bunker came from old, half-exhausted chemical ghostlights, so Ari and Captain Ali had brought in a pair of lanterns from the utility rover before the Guard Captain had sent his driver away with the vehicle, telling her to park at least a kilometer away and wait for his call. The lights were set up on either side of the bound and gagged Roza Kovach, who had abandoned her pretense of unconsciousness and was glaring angrily at the two of them with frightening earnestness.

“The Colonel should be here by now,” Ali fretted, pacing back and forth on the dirt-coated cement slab floor. “It has been nearly three hours. It will be dawn soon!”

Ari shook his head as he sat on the concrete bench built into the wall, watching Ali wear a rut in the floor. “For the love of God, relax,” he muttered. “I’m sure the Colonel had business of his own to take care of and this place is on the ass end of nowhere. He’ll get here when he gets here.”

Inwardly, though, he was just as worried as Ali. This was their best shot at getting them both together away from the headquarters and away from prying eyes. If Lee got spooked and didn’t show up, it would make things much more difficult.

“Is that a vehicle?” Ali’s head whipped around. Without waiting for confirmation, he bolted up the short set of stairs and looked down the narrow dirt road. “There’s a rover coming up the road,” he called down to Ari. “I think it’s the Colonel. Yes, it is him… he has Captain Fillon with him and it looks like Major Sobawale.” Ari had heard their names before, but never met them… they were other participants in the conspiracy, also tasked with recruiting trainees. “That must be what took so long, getting them together without attracting attention.”

“If you ever leave the military, Captain Ali,” Ari commented dryly, “you should get a job as a sports announcer.”

Ari tried hard not to look at Roza-it was still hard not to think of her as Alida-as Colonel Lee stepped down the stairs with the other officers in tow. Captain Fillon was a tall, gangly man with fair skin and a dusting of red stubble on his shaven head, while Sobawale was short and muscular with the ebony skin of a native African. Both were dressed in their field utilities and wore sidearms, as did Colonel Lee. Lee frowned as he saw the woman sitting bound on the floor, looked between Ari and Captain Ali.

“So,” he said, “I see events have forced our hand.”

“We have hours,” Ari told him. “A day at most before the GIS moves in. The question is, do we run and hold up somewhere with the recruits we already have, or do we make a stand here?”

“If we battle them here,” Lee responded, shaking his head, “we take the chance of inviting a strike by the Marines before we are ready. Timing is everything.”

“Then we must run,” Ali said. “If we can find a secure place to marshal our forces, we can wait this out… they don’t have enough ships or men to arrest every officer in every armory in the colonies. As long as we can keep our forces in play, we can still do this.”

“You are more optimistic than I, Captain,” Major Sobawale shook his head morosely. “Without access to the trainees here, we can’t field a large enough force to seize Buenos Aires. We only have about a hundred right now that we can count on to come with us. Our entire force would be no more than three hundred troops.”

“But we can recruit more support from the local militias and police forces,” Fillon reminded him, sounding more optimistic than he looked: his long, horsey face seemed to have a perpetual frown. “They wouldn’t be much use against Fleet Marines, but they could keep the rabble in check while we face the stronger forces. And soon, it won’t matter-the Marines will have other things to worry about.”

“Sir,” Ari interjected, addressing Colonel Lee, “do you know how much longer we have before the orbital strike occurs and we can launch our operation?”

“I am not totally certain,” Lee admitted, looking as if he had bitten into something sour. “I have not heard from my allies in weeks now.”

“Is there a way you can contact them, sir? We can’t make a decision like this without knowing how long we have to hold out.”

“He’s right, Colonel,” Ali said with an eager nod. “If it is only days away, we could hold out here… perhaps take hostages.” He nodded at Roza as an example.

“I was given an address to use in an emergency,” the Colonel admitted with a reluctant nod. “This most certainly qualifies.”

Ari allowed himself a smile. “If that is the case, Colonel,” he said, “then there is something you need to hear, something that our ‘Lt. Hudec’ told me before I captured her.” He walked over to the woman and yanked her to her feet by her shoulders. “You should hear it from her own lips,” he explained, ripping away the tape from her mouth, then moving behind her, appearing to hold her arms secure.

Roza worked her jaw, regarding the Colonel with rage in her eyes.

“Tell him, woman!” Ari snapped, yanking on her wrists.

Roza took a deep breath, let part of it out. “Colonel Lee Jun-hwan,” she said formally, “I am Captain-Investigator Roza Kovach of the Guard Investigative Service, empowered by a personal warrant from General Kage, and I must inform you that you and everyone else in this room are under arrest. If you resist arrest, I am authorized to use lethal force.”

Lee stared at her for a moment, confusion and disbelief on his face, and then he started laughing. It was a high-pitched almost girlish giggle that seemed almost involuntary and he was quickly joined by Ali and the others. Ari chuckled appreciatively.

“That is it?” Lee demanded, still laughing. “That is what you had to say? Well, let me tell you, Investigator Gisela Katona or Roza Kovach or whatever your name really is… I most assuredly do resist arrest!” He looked around at the other officers. “What about you gentlemen? Do you wish to surrender or resist?”

“I think we will resist, sir,” Ali said, chortling.

Roza shrugged. “I tried,” she said.

There was the barest of sounds, a tick of plastic hitting concrete as the zip-tie handcuffs fell off her wrists. No one noticed it over the laughter, but they did notice when the tie around her ankles broke at the slightest pressure and she fell into a balanced shooting stance, bringing up the compact handgun that Ari had slipped into her hands when he was behind her.

“Gun!” Lee screamed, scrabbling at his waist for his own holstered sidearm. “She has a…”

He didn’t get another word out, because Ari grabbed him by the wrist of his gun hand and the throat, and slammed him to the ground. Lee’s breath left him in an explosive “whoosh” and his eyes rolled back in his head.

Roza ignored him. It was too dark and too close to use sights; instead she held the 10mm in an Isosceles stance, her arms making a triangle with her torso, the gun at the tip, and pointed her whole body at Major Sobawale. The Major was faster than the others… his service pistol had actually cleared its holster before she shot him. Two rounds through the chest and then a shift upwards and a third into his forehead. The triple-explosion of the Mozambique Drill echoed through the enclosed bunker like a snare drum, shocking the others.

Roza wouldn’t even remember hearing it. She dimly registered Sobawale’s body falling to the side, didn’t hear the shriek of fear and disgust from Hassan Ali as he suddenly found his face covered with the Major’s blood and brain tissue. Her focus was on Captain Fillon, who was trying to run for the door while simultaneously clawing at his holster, trying to get his handgun free with hands that suddenly wouldn’t stop shaking. He finally ripped the gun out and swung it around one-handed as he side-stepped toward the door, jerking the trigger over and over as he swung the gun.

A strobe-effect of muzzle blasts lit up the bunker but the rounds came nowhere near the target; the ceramic jackets shattered harmlessly on concrete walls and ceiling, the tantalum penetrator fragments within burying themselves in the rock. Roza took her time, shutting out the fear and the sounds and flashes of his gunfire as she put two rounds in his chest and a third to the head. Fillon collapsed back against the wall next to the doorway and slid down it to the floor, coating it with a red swathe of his blood.

Hassan Ali was still screaming when Ari came up behind him and snatched his handgun from its holster, then slammed it into his temple. The Guard Captain went down in a heap, moaning and clutching his head and Ari came down on his back with a knee, pinning him to the ground as he fastened a zip-tie handcuff around his wrists, then another around his ankles. He left him there and went back to Colonel Lee, who was still barely conscious, struggling for breath; more temporary cuffs secured him as well. Ari came to his feet and darted out of the bunker, Ali’s gun in his left hand as he drew his own with his right.

There had been a driver, as he feared. It was a woman, one of Lee’s trusted NCOs… he thought he remembered hearing her referred to as Sergeant Paakannen. She was running towards the bunker, a rifle in her hands. Ari didn’t have time to think, but his body reacted as he’d been trained. Even as the Sergeant raised her rifle to her shoulder, he stepped to the side, using the bunker entrance’s blast shield as cover, leaving only one eye and his gun hand revealed. She was wearing armor but no helmet… no doubt she’d been relaxing in the car and charged out without bothering to grab it. That left one target vulnerable to a handgun.

Ari’s 10mm bucked in his hand twice in quick succession and Sergeant Paakannen’s head snapped back in a spray of blood, bone and brains. She fell face first to the ground, feet kicking in one last, frantic firing of nerves before she went motionless.

Ari stayed behind cover for a long moment, making sure there was no one else out in the darkness, before he stepped out and pried the rifle from the dead woman’s hands. Slinging it over his shoulder, he grabbed her by an arm and dragged her through the door to the bunker, letting her body fall down the steps and roll to a rest next to Captain Fillon’s.

Roza gave him a nod. “Sit those two up,” she gestured at Colonel Lee and Captain Ali.

“Yes ma’am,” he grunted, tossing aside the rifle and two pistols he’d collected.

Lee had managed to get his breath back, and was using it to curse them both in Korean at the top of his lungs as Ari dragged him by the collar of his uniform jacket across the room to the concrete bench. Ari didn’t respond, just sat the officer against the bench, then went back for Ali. The Captain was still lolling from the blow to the head: Ari judged that the man probably had at least a light concussion. At any rate, he didn’t say a word or resist being moved next to the Colonel.

“Colonel Lee,” Ari said, “please allow me to introduce myself. I am Captain Ariel Shamir of Republic Spacefleet Intelligence Service, Special Activities Division. Formerly of the Fleet Marine Corps.”

“You…” Lee stuttered, recognition coming into his eyes. “You were on the Protectorate flagship in the war…”

“Yes, I’ve seen the movie,” Ari said dryly. “I am telling you this because I want you to know who you’re dealing with. This woman,” he nodded at Roza, “has specific orders from General Kage to make you go away. You’re an embarrassment to the new Colonial Guard he’s trying to build. She is very willing to kill you to make you go away. I am the only hope you have. I have the authority and the ability to allow you to disappear somewhere comfortable. And I am willing to do so, if you give me your contacts in this conspiracy. I want to know who from Spacefleet and who from the multicorps is in this with you.”

“You have me,” Lee shook his head defiantly, “but this cause will go on without me. The word will still go out… the colonies will be ours!” Ari interrupted his rant with a quick, sharp slap to the face.

“Let’s be clear about something, Colonel,” Ari snapped, “we do not need your fucking cooperation to pull this off.” He looked to Roza and she pulled a small syringe from a thigh pocket and held it up. “This will have you babbling like a baby in seconds. You’ll tell us everything you know. If we need your face, we’ll use a computer simulation. If we need you to meet someone in person, I can have restruct surgery done on my face,” Again, he moaned inwardly, “and I will be you. The only thing you have to offer us is saving us time and trouble, and for that service we will give you your life and a comfortable place to live it in anonymity.” He grabbed Lee’s jaw in his hand, yanking the man forward to stare in his eyes. “If you decide that your ‘honor’ is too precious to allow you to save us this time, then my dear Roza here will use the truth drugs on you. You’ll tell us what we want to hear, and when you’re done, Roza will follow her orders and put a bullet in your brain. You and the others,” he jerked his head toward the corpses that littered the area around the bunker entrance, “will die in a training accident.”

“I…” Lee swallowed hard. “I do not believe you would kill me in cold blood…”

He hardly had spoken the words when Roza’s gun fired only inches from his face and Captain Ali jerked back and collapsed against the bench, half his skull blown off. Lee screamed as blood splashed into his face, blinding him.

Ari shot Roza an annoyed glance. “That was extremely loud,” he said plaintively, wiping blood drops from his tactical vest. Calmly, he turned back to Lee, slapping the man across the face to stop his screaming. “Colonel, trust me when I say, Roza wants to kill you. She’s been ordered to kill you. General Kage wants you dead. The only reason you have a chance to leave this bunker alive is because I am here.” Ari glanced at his ‘link. “The cleanup team will be here in less than an hour. You have one minute to make up your mind.”

“All right, all right,” Lee could hardly speak from hyperventilating. “I will do what you want, I will do it!”

“Good.” Ari said with a smile. “Roza, let us begin.”

Without a word, she pulled the safety cap off the syringe and jabbed the needle through Lee’s trousers and into his thigh, drawing a gasp from the man.

“What are you doing?” Lee asked in a panicked voice. “I said I would cooperate!”

“And you will, and I will keep my word to allow you to live,” Ari nodded to the Colonel as the older man began to blink his eyes and fall into a stupor. “That does not mean we trust you.”

“Now, Colonel Lee,” Roza began, “you will tell us who your contact is and how we can get in touch with him…”

Chapter Sixteen

“Well, doesn’t this inspire deja vu?” McKay commented wryly, looking around the table at Admiral Patel, Captain Minishimi and their staffs, as well as the surviving Marine officers, Vinnie Mahoney, Commander Villanueva and Konstantin Mironov. They were gathered in the spacious conference room on the Sheridan, located conveniently in the ship’s gravity drum, to discuss their next move.

Patel and Minishimi shared a laugh at the thought: the last time the two of them and McKay had sat down in a situation like this was during the war, when what remained of the Fleet was gathered in the asteroid belt and the Protectorate forces had taken control of Earth.

“Well, at least things aren’t quite as dire this time as they were then,” Minishimi pointed out. “We’re on their doorstep instead of the other way around.”

“The question is,” McKay said, “where do we go from here? As I see it, we have two priorities: we need to get the information that Konstantin has given us back to Fleet HQ, but we also need to follow through on that information before Antonov has a chance to react.”

“We also have an issue with fuel,” Minishimi spoke up. “The Decatur dumped her antimatter and we weren’t able to recover much of it. If we distribute the Sheridan‘s stores evenly, we won’t have enough for either ship to go into combat, if need be. Hell, we don’t have much of a margin for error just to get both ships back to Earth. I don’t know that we can follow through, unless you want to leave the Decatur here.”

“I had a thought on that, Captain,” McKay said. “What if the Decatur didn’t need any antimatter to get back to Earth?”

Patel looked back and forth between McKay and Mironov. “You can get the ship back to Earth using the wormholes?”

“Of course,” Mironov said with a shrug, his English halting. “The route from here to Earth is easy… just a few jumps and the systems are not normally monitored. You need a way to trigger a fusion explosion though… it is necessary to open expand the gate, you see. You need the… the, what’s the word? The burst of electromagnetic energy, focused in the right place, it opens the way.”

“You know the precise amount?” Minishimi asked.

“Yes of course, it is my job,” he told her. “You know, it might even be possible to use your gravimetic focusing technology to do this… we could try it.”

“Hmmm…” Admiral Patel mused. “Let’s do that, but with this ship. Here’s what I’m thinking: Mr. Mironov here shows Captain Minishimi’s engineering crew how to navigate the wormholes and gives here the coordinates to the gates that will take her back to Earth. But he comes with us and we scout out what we can reach using the gate locations he has memorized and working out a way to use the Eysselink field to open the gates.”

“I think I see where you’re going with this, sir,” McKay said with a trace of excitement in his voice. “If we can actually find Novoye Rodina, by the time we return, Captain Minishimi could have the Fleet marshaled and ready to move.”

“And when they do move, Colonel,” Patel confirmed, “they’ll be able to make it in days instead of weeks or months, using Antonov’s wormhole matrix against him.” He looked around the table. “Comments? Additions? Objections?”

“Sir,” Commander Villanueva spoke up, “will my birds be going with you or with the Decatur?”

Patel considered the question for a moment, unconsciously cracking his knuckles as he often did when he was thinking. “Unless Captain Minishimi has any objection,” he finally answered, “I’d like to keep your squadron with me, Commander. We are bearding the lion in his den, as it were. The extra firepower might come in handy.”

“No objections from me,” Minishimi said, raising her hands palm up in acquiescence. “We still have our landers; that should be enough for the trip back to Earth.”

McKay saw Commander Villanueva grin with satisfaction. “Thank you sir, ma’am,” she said. Then he saw her glance quickly-so fast he almost missed it-at Vinnie, and saw Vinnie wink at her surreptitiously.

Damn, he thought, amused, didn’t see that one coming. But then, he never would have imagined Tom Crossman as a family man, yet there he was, still married to the emigrant household maid he’d met on Aphrodite at the governor’s mansion six years ago.

Hell, for the first few months he’d known Vinnie and Jock, he’d have sworn they were a couple… he remembered how hard they’d laughed when he’d finally asked them about it. And how hard Shannon had laughed when he’d told her.

“Also,” Patel went on, “I want the Marine reaction platoons with us, and of course your Special Operations squad, Captain Mahoney.”

“Hoo-rah, sir,” Vinnie said, impressing McKay by managing not to sound ironic while being both cool and gung ho at the same time.

“Mr. Mironov,” Admiral Patel said to the Russian, “how long will it take you to get the Decatur‘s engineering crew up to speed on how to use the gates?”

Seeing the look of doubt in Mironov’s eyes, McKay quietly repeated the question to the man in Russian and he smiled with comprehension. “No more than… perhaps a day, maybe two to put together the fusion triggering devices, Admiral.”

“Excellent. Captain,” he said to Joyce Minishimi, “prepare your crew to launch for Earth in 72 hours. I’ll send over my chief engineer and navigation officer to sit in while Mr. Mironov is explaining things to your people… that should save some time. Commander Villanueva, see to getting your shuttles, equipment and personnel transferred to the Sheridan. I will also leave it to you to liaison with the Marines and Special Operations units to transfer them over here as well, if you don’t mind.”

“My pleasure, sir,” she assured him.

“Captain Minishimi,” Patel said, “if you need any supplies or personnel to help ready your ship, please let me know and I will see personally that you get them immediately.”

“Thank you, Admiral,” she replied with a nod. “We’ll get it done.”

“Then if there are no further questions,” he stood and the others all stood with him, “this meeting is adjourned and you are all dismissed to your tasks.” As McKay turned to leave, Patel put a hand on his arm. “Colonel, if I could speak with you for a moment alone…”

“Yes, sir,” McKay said, standing aside as the others began to file out of the room.

“Have a seat,” Patel invited once the last of them was out and the door closed, sitting back down at the head of the table. McKay sat kitty-corner to him, waiting patiently. Patel looked him in the eye, a frown crossing his face. “Jason, I need to know: do you trust this Konstantin?”

“To a point,” McKay responded with a shrug. “We slipped him a tranquilizer with his dinner and then fed him the truth drug and an amnesiac. Under the drug, he confirmed what he’d said and that he had no loyalty to Antonov. He’s scared shitless of him.” McKay looked uncomfortable. “I felt kind of bad doing it, but it’s all our lives and millions more… and he doesn’t remember any of it. I think it would be wise to check the wormholes with a shuttle before bringing the cruiser through, though.”

“It’s your job to be paranoid, Jason,” Patel commented with an appreciative chuckle. “Don’t feel guilty about it.”

“Yes, sir. Well, to answer your question, I trust Mironov to the point where I’m willing to test his trustworthiness. Beyond that… well, to game the drugs, he’d have to be hypno-imprinted pretty deeply. And while I wouldn’t put anything past Antonov, it would take a damned psychic for him to know that particular guy would get captured.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Patel acknowledged. “At this point, we don’t have much choice. It’s either trust him or head straight for Earth… or leave the Decatur here and hope we can get fuel back to her eventually. Neither of those options appeals to me, and since I’m the admiral, they don’t appeal to any of you either.”

McKay laughed. “Not that they would have anyway, Admiral. But I’ll keep an eye on him.”

“We’ve waited five years for this, Jason,” the Admiral said with a sigh, sitting back in his chair. “Let’s not fuck it up.”

* * *

“Assault One, this is Decatur,” Esmeralda Villanueva heard the transmission from the cruiser over the cockpit speakers. “The fusion device is in place and the countdown has begun. You may commence your burn.”

“Roger, Decatur,” she responded in her professional, clipped tone. “Commencing one gee burn… now.” She hit the control and was pressed back into her acceleration couch by the acceleration from the shuttle’s boron drive. “Assault one will cross the event horizon in 32.5 minutes.”

“Copy that, Assault One, ignition in exactly 30 minutes.”

“Jesus,” Vinnie said quietly from seat to her rear right, between her and the copilot. “That’s awful damn close to be flying behind a fusion bomb going off.”

“Ground pounders” the copilot muttered with a snicker. Vinnie glared at him. He was a young Lieutenant named Orton with all the cockiness you’d expect from an assault shuttle pilot and blond hair a millimeter from being longer than regulation. It was bad enough that Vinnie already felt out of place and constrained wearing the same armored space suit as the two pilots, its helmet secured to the side of his acceleration couch.

“There’s no shockwave in a vacuum,” Villanueva reminded him. “All we have to worry about is radiation, and this is a very ‘clean’ bomb. Plus we’re pretty well shielded in here, anyway.”

“You know,” Lt. Orton commented, “I know why they’re here,” he nodded back toward the trio of armory techs who occupied three of the six acceleration couches in the passenger compartment behind the cockpit. “They have to place the bomb to get us back through the wormhole. But why are you here, Captain Mahoney?”

“Let me ask you something, Lt. Orton,” Vinnie bit off, “let’s say this is all a trap and when we get on the other side, there’s a shitload of Protectorate warships waiting for us… what do you plan to do?”

“Fight them,” Orton replied, looking at him as if it were a stupid question.

“Well, once they blow out your drives and disable your weapons, Lt. Orton, someone is going to have to hit this control,” Vinnie fished a small remote trigger out of his pocket, showing it to the copilot, “and blow up that fusion bomb back there before the Protectorates can get their hands on us and figure out what we know.” He smiled. “That’s why I’m here.” What he didn’t tell him was that he had volunteered for the job, mostly because of Esmeralda. You’ve got it bad, Vinnie boy, he admitted to himself.

Scowling, the younger man turned back to the viewscreen, where the starfield was overlaid with a computer map. The twin bulks of the Decatur and the Sheridan hung in space in the gravitational shadow of the system’s largest gas giant, balanced between the pull of the Saturn-sized planet and its largest moon, concealed from passive sensors in case the whole experiment was a Protectorate trap. The wormhole was represented on the map by a stylized whirlpool nearly half a million kilometers from where the star cruisers were hidden; while a blinking red icon positioned next to it represented the jury-rigged fusion trigger.

“What I’d like to know,” Villanueva asked pointedly, first making sure that the intership comms were switched off, “is why that Russian engineer isn’t in here with us, putting his ass on the line.”

“Because if we don’t come back,” Vinnie answered her rhetorical question, “they want him there to answer for it. And so they can try again.”

“Well, aren’t you just a wellspring of sunshine and cheerfulness?” Orton cracked.

Vinnie had to laugh. Maybe the guy wasn’t so bad after all. “Hell, Lieutenant, why do you think military retirement is so generous?”

“You look like an expectant father, McKay.” Patel commented quietly as the two of them stood on the bridge of the Sheridan, watching the video feed from the shuttle on the main viewscreen.

“I feel like an expectant mother,” McKay muttered back, eyes glued on the screen. The shuttle had flipped end for end and was now decelerating, bleeding away their velocity so that they would be moving at a more controllable speed when they went through the gate. Mironov had told them that the ship would retain its pre-jump velocity when it emerged on the other side, and they wanted to be able to get back through in a hurry if there was a threat on the other side.

“I am sure there will be no trouble,” Mironov told him, reading the tension in his face. The Russian was a couple meters in front of the command couch, hanging on to a handle by the Tactical station. “This gate is used not much. It would be very strange for a ship to be coming there.”

“I hope you’re right, Konstantin,” McKay replied in Russian. “But I still worry about my friends.” The Russian looked at him strangely. “What is it? Is my Russian not correct?”

“No, it’s perfect,” Konstantin said, shaking his head. “It’s just that… it’s been a long, long time since I had any friends to worry about. The only people I could talk to were the crews of the patrol ships and cargo ships, and they rarely came back twice. They would tell me things… things about the General and what he was doing on Novoye Rodina.

“He’s a madman… he would experiment on our own people. He was trying to find more ways to use the replicator vats as a weapon against you. They said he was trying to make viruses, trying to create smarter troopers… what you call ‘biomechs.’ I even heard that he was trying to find a way to make exact duplicates of people, so that he could have more than one of our most valuable officers.”

McKay glanced at him sharply. “Jesus, did he ever do it?”

“I heard no,” Konstantin said, shaking his head. “They told me he could duplicate the bodies, but they would be like babies… no memories. I pray to God he never found a way to make it work: there should never be more than one of him, eh?”

“If you two wouldn’t mind,” Patel interjected. “I don’t speak Russian.”

“Sorry, Admiral,” McKay shifted back to English.

“Two minutes to detonation,” the transmission from the Decatur‘s Tactical station came over the bridge speakers. “Assault One is on target to enter two minutes and thirty seconds later, right in the middle of the five minute window.”

McKay pulled out his ‘link and keyed in a private text to Colonel Podbyrin, who was still back on the Decatur-he thought it was best that Konstantin not find out about him yet.

D’mitry, he typed quickly, Konstantin told me about experiments in duplicating people. Said they turned out as babies, no memories. Ever hear of this?

It was nearly a minute before he received a reply. Heard stories. Never worked on it myself. Everything was compartmentalized.

Did they ever make it work?

Don’t know. Never heard they did before the war. But I don’t know.

Not satisfied but wanting to see the wormhole jump, McKay put his ‘link away and turned back to the screen as the countdown continued.

“Detonation in ten seconds… nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one… we have detonation.”

In the view from the shuttle’s exterior cameras, he could see a sun-bright burst of light far too close to the small aerospacecraft, a light so bright that it washed out the picture in a haze of pure-energy white that was replaced almost immediately by a blank screen.

“The fusion burst is interrupting their transmission,” the voice from the Decatur explained. “Sensors are overloaded too… it’ll just be a couple minutes.”

What they did have was a view from the ship’s forward optical telescope, which showed a slowly-shrinking globe of white far in the distance but nothing of the shuttle.

“Thirty seconds to scheduled transition,” Decatur announced, “but we’re still not getting the video feed back from Assault One. Gravimetic sensors are picking up… static of some sort.”

“It’s the wormhole,” Konstantin explained. “It’s distorting the local space-time… all electromagnetic and gravimetic signals are warped around it.”

“That means we won’t be able to tell if they make it through,” McKay said, frowning. “Until they come back, anyway.”

“Wonderful,” Patel muttered.

“Scheduled transition time is past,” the voice from the Decatur told them. “Still no signal, sensor readings still unclear.”

“The gate will close by itself after another minute,” Mironov said. “We never knew if it was designed that way by the… whatever… that built it or if it is some physical law we do not understand yet.”

“Your people thought… think… that the wormholes were artificial, not naturally occurring?” McKay asked him, surprised.

“That is what our physicists say,” Mironov shrugged. “I just know how they work, not why so much.”

“The interference is gone,” Decatur announced over the speakers. “Sensors are reading… nothing. No sign of Assault One.”

“They’ll be back,” McKay said to Patel, nodding a confidence he only wished he felt.

“Damn,” Vinnie said mildly, staring at the whited-out viewscreen. “Does this mean we won’t even get to see it when we go through this thing?”

“The cameras were overloaded by the blast,” Villanueva explained. “Just give it a second.”

The screens came active again and Vinnie saw… nothing. No stars, no planets, just blackness.

“Why the hell aren’t we seeing the stars?” Orton wanted to know.

“It must be the wormhole,” Villanueva reasoned. “Maybe it’s distorting electromagnetic radiation the way the Eysselink drive does.”

“Well, that sucks,” Vinnie commented. “How long till we’re through this thing?”

Villanueva checked the readout. “Should be about…”

Discontinuity.

“Shit!” Vinnie and Orton exclaimed almost simultaneously, joined by a chorus of profanity from the technicians behind them. They were looking around the cockpit of the shuttle as if they didn’t quite believe it was still there.

“I think I just tasted the color green,” Esmeralda Villanueva said, trying to shake the indescribably strange feeling she’d just experienced.

“That was so fucking weird,” Orton said, shaking his head. “I felt like I wasn’t there.”

“Well, you’re here now,” Vinnie said, looking at a new starfield on the viewscreen. “Wherever the hell here is.”

“There’s the primary,” Villanueva jabbed a finger at the computer map slowly building on the screen as the sensors came back to life. “It’s a red giant. We’re about nine AU out from it… looks like we’re in the orbit of a gas giant. God knows where in the galaxy we are-the science types can look at our scans when we get back. Anyway, executing turnover.” She touched the thruster controls and they heard a series of “bangs” as the maneuvering rockets flipped the boat end for end, then restabilized it, facing the direction of the gate through which they’d come.

“Tactical board reads a big fat lot of nothing,” Orton announced. “Not so much as a stray radio wave. Guess that old Russian guy was telling the truth. We got the coordinates of the gate relative to the primary.” He twisted around in his chair to face the technicians. “You guys ready to place the bomb?”

“Hell yes,” the woman in charge of the team replied, unstrapping from her seat. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“Cal,” Villanueva said to Orton, “go back to the hold with them and help them get that thing out of our cargo lock, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Roger that, ma’am,” he said with a nod, yanking off his own restraints and grabbing his helmet before he kicked off towards the hatch in the rear bulkhead.

“So,” Esmeralda turned to Vinnie once Orton and the techs were back in the cargo hold, “glad you came?”

Vinnie scratched his head. “Well, to be honest, it’s been kinda’ boring,” he admitted, “other than the whole tasting colors and not being there thing. But the company’s nice,” he added with a grin.

She regarded him with a dubious expression. “Don’t try to tell me that you volunteered for what could have been-hell, still could be-a suicide mission just so you could be with me.”

“You may not believe this, Esme,” he said, “but it wouldn’t even be close to the stupidest reason I have volunteered for what could have been a suicide mission.” He let loose his restraints and nudged himself close enough to her that he could gently run the back of his hand across her cheek.

“Well, how’s a girl supposed to resist a line like that?” She grinned, grabbing him by the neck and pulling him into a kiss. “Damn these suits,” she murmured softly as their lips parted, leaving them floating face to face, millimeters from each other.

“Hey, we’ve got a while together,” he assured her. “God knows how long we’ll be out here scouting the Protectorate. Do squadron leaders rate a private cabin or am I gonna’ have to kick Jock out of the room again?”

She laughed full-throated at that, a husky sound that drove Vinnie crazy. “I think we can work something out,” she said with a shrug.

“If you two are done,” Cal Orton’s voice came over the speakers, “we have the bomb in the airlock and we’re ready to activate its maneuvering unit.”

Oh shit, Villanueva mouthed, her face turning red as she realized she’s left the speaker on to the cargo hold. “Ah, roger that, Cal… get the thing moving so we can get back to the ship.”

Wincing, she muted the audio pickup and glared at Vinnie, who was laughing uncontrollably. “Oh sure,” she chided, pushing him back toward his seat. “You don’t have to work with him!”

Finally, she couldn’t help it and began laughing herself.

You got it bad, girl, she told herself. Surprisingly, she didn’t much mind.

Chapter Seventeen

Shannon Stark looked up from her book when she heard the man stir. The assassin was strapped to the bed which, beside the chair in which she sat, was the only furniture in the stone-walled room. She regarded the man with an impersonal coolness as he roused from his drugged stupor, looking better than he had when he had first been brought to the secure facility several days before. His knee was mostly healed and he’d been cleaned up and dressed in fresh clothes. And, of course, he’d been squeezed like a sponge.

“Where th’ fuck m’I?” He mumbled groggily, eyes blinking against even the dim light in the room. His voice was a surprisingly pleasant baritone with a clear Australian accent.

“Someplace no one will ever find you, Mr. Finley,” she told him, laying her tablet down on the chair as she stood. “If they’re even bothering to look.”

He squinted at her, face screwing up in concentration. “You’re Stark,” he said. “You suckered me good… shoulda’ known O’Keefe wouldn’t be stupid enough to meet that reporter in the Old City.”

“I’d have expected better from someone with your training,” she shook her head. “Ten years in the Fleet Marine Corps, multiple commendations, promoted to Gunnery Sergeant…and then busted back down to Corporal and given a general discharge for assaulting an officer.”

“Let me save you some time, Major Stark,” he interrupted her, sighing and closing his eyes. “I can tell by how shitty I feel that you had me under, so you already know everything I know. And you know it’s pretty well fucking useless. Blind drops, dummy accounts, no faces, no names. So your next move is to offer me a deal: you give me a new identity and pretend you don’t know I killed Mulrooney and I go undercover for you or some such bullshit. Well, save your breath, Sheila… I’ll take my chances in government detention.”

“We considered that,” Shannon admitted with a nod. “If you’d actually known any way to meet someone in person, or if we actually thought you were important enough to whoever hired you for them to try to kill you, we’d have made the offer. As things stand, though, you’re worthless to us. We have your ‘link, we have your accounts, we have your addresses and your passcodes. We can make those connections ourselves, without you.”

He scowled in confusion. “So why are you talking to me?”

“It was my turn to stand watch,” she explained as the door to the room opened with a pneumatic hiss. Valerie O’Keefe-Mulrooney stepped through, the look on her face cold enough to freeze nitrogen. “She wanted you awake for this.”

She didn’t look at Shannon, just stepped over to the bed, her eyes locked on Finley. “Thanks for calling me, Shannon,” she said quietly. “You can go out now.”

Shannon picked up her tablet and stepped through the door without a word, closing it behind her with the press of her palm on a plate on the outside wall.

Finley snorted with amusement. “Are you supposed to intimidate me? Shame me into wanting to help you?”

“Six years ago,” Valerie said as if he hadn’t spoken, speaking slowly and calmly, “there was a man on Aphrodite named Huerta. He was a man I thought was a friend and ally, but he used me as a pawn, and wound up trying to rape me in a little farmhouse in the high desert.” Val reached into her purse and pulled out a large, broad-bladed knife. “Let me show you what I did to him, Mr. Finley.”

Outside in the corridor of the old, abandoned emergency shelter, Shannon heard the screams. She smiled grimly and waited till they stopped.

* * *

Now that the undercover part of his mission was over, Ariel Shamir was missing his old face. There hadn’t been time or opportunity to get it changed back before the flight to Houston, so he was stuck with it until the operation was over. At least, he reflected as he rubbed his chin self-consciously, he had been able to shave the damn, itchy beard.

“Stop fidgeting, kedves,” Roza whispered to him as she pretended to sip her drink.

“If this takes much longer,” he responded softly, “I’ll fucking get up and dance.”

They’d been sitting at the corner table in the out of the way bar on the outskirts of the Greater Houston Development Complex for nearly two hours, watching Colonel Lee waiting for the meet with his contact and it was pushing midnight. Lee looked even more uncomfortable and impatient than Ari felt: the Colonel was sitting alone, dressed incongruously in bland civilian clothes, at a booth near the door of the place. He was studiously ignoring the two of them, his eyes only lifting from his barely-touched drink to glance furtively at the door every few minutes.

“You know,” Ari commented, “for the mastermind of a conspiracy, the good Colonel is a bit high strung.”

“I’m beginning to wonder if this guy is going to show at all,” Roza sighed. “Maybe they had an insider with Lee’s group and they know everything’s gone to hell.”

Ari shook his head. “We’ll give it another few minutes, then I’ll signal Lee to head back to the hotel.”

He let his attention drift to the news ‘net that was playing on the bar’s glitchy, flickering holotank. He couldn’t hear the sound, but the video they were showing was of Senator Valerie O’Keefe-Mulrooney-archival footage of a speech she’d given-and then it cut to President O’Keefe, looking worried and old and then a stock shot of the Old City. He frowned. What the hell was all that about?

He was about to check the news on his ‘link when the bar’s doors hissed open and Lee looked around, as he had every time they’d opened the last two hours… but this time, the expression on his face was relief mixed with anxiety.

“I think we have a winner,” Roza whispered.

The woman was somewhere in her forties, Ari judged-you couldn’t tell by appearance of course, but with practice and observation you could make a good guess by a how a person carried themselves. She was dressed in civilian clothes, but the way she wore them was so precise and tucked in that Ari knew with a moral certainty that she was recent ex-military, if not current military. Her dark hair was cut short in severe bangs and her face looked as if it were frozen in a perpetual stern frown. And by God, he knew her!

The woman took a seat at the bar beside Lee, but didn’t speak immediately. She pulled a glass from the dispenser and placed it under the spigot, then tapped the screen to dispense herself a beer. The bar read her ID from her ‘link and charged her account automatically

“I don’t like you being here, Lee,” she finally spoke, not looking at the Colonel, looking for all the world as if she were speaking to someone on her ‘link. “This is unnecessarily conspicuous.”

“It can’t be helped,” Lee said tightly, taking a cue from her and not making eye contact. “There are things I could not tell you via any method that can be intercepted, and I need guidance that can’t be given from a dead drop.”

“Well out with it, for God’s sake,” she grumbled.

“The Guard Investigative Service knows about the… operation,” he said, licking his lips nervously. “They had a plant in my staff.”

“That is unfortunate,” she said harshly, her hand tightening on her glass.

Lee winced. “She was about to call in a raid and have us all arrested, but she trusted the wrong man and never got to make that call. That gives us time, but not much. I need to know if things are imminent. If they are not, we need to grab as many recruits as we can and go find a secure location to hide until we can move forward with our part of this. If there is not much longer to wait, we can hold out where we are, perhaps with valuable hostages such as General Kage. We might even make a move into the city.”

Ari nodded slowly. Lee was performing well. He’d had his doubts, particularly on the flight from South America.

“I’m not authorized to tell you anything about the timetable,” the woman said, shaking her head. “And I don’t know, even if I were.”

“Then find out,” Lee ground out through clenched teeth. “Get authorized. Or I swear, I will find a hole and pull it in after me and that is the last you will hear of me. I will not be a distraction for you… I will not sacrifice good men and women to make things easier for your bosses. If you treat me as a valuable ally, you will have a valuable ally. If you treat me as a disposable flunky, you will have nothing.”

“Calm down, Lee,” she said soothingly. She sighed with resignation. “Give me two hours, then check the messages on our dead drop. It will be one word: ‘go’, or ‘stay.’ If it’s ‘go,’ then we’re looking at more than two weeks. That’s all I can do.” She didn’t wait for an answer, just downed her beer with one gulp and stood up. “Wait ten minutes before you leave,” she instructed him, heading for the door.

“Did you grab her ‘link signal?” Ari asked Roza as the woman walked out into the dark street.

Roza checked the tablet she’d been holding under the table. “Yes. It’s spoofed and anonymous, obviously, but it took the Trojan and it’s broadcasting the ping. I can’t say how long it’ll be before she enters a secure facility and they block it down, but we have her for now.”

“Doesn’t matter if we lose the ping,” he said, grinning. “I know who she is.”

Roza glanced up at him, startled. “You do?”

“She’s Helenne D’Annique,” he informed her. “She was the First Officer on the Patton, Admiral Patel’s ship during the war. I was on the ship as a Marine; she always struck me as a cast-iron bitch. I don’t know where she’s been the last five years… but I know how to find out.”

“Well, isn’t this interesting?” Ari mused, rubbing his chin unconsciously as he stared at his tablet screen. It had been over an hour since the meeting at the bar and the three of them had made their separate ways back to the hotel, a working-class place in a cheaper area of town that wasn’t that scrupulous about accepting anonymized accounts. Ari was seated in a chair while Lee and Roza huddled around the desk terminal, watching the dead drop account for a message.

“You got something?” Roza asked, moving to the chair to look over this shoulder.

“D’Annique resigned her commission not too long after the war,” he replied, summarizing the Fleet Intelligence dossier on the woman that he had been reading. “She lived off her savings and half-pension for a year until she was hired by a small security firm here in Houston… which pays her somewhere on the order of ten times her military salary, and is, coincidentally enough, a very, very indirect subsidiary of Republic Transportation multicorps.”

“Szar,” Roza cursed in Hungarian. “This is so above my pay grade.”

“Yeah,” Ari agreed, sighing. “This is going to be complicated. I think I’m going to have to call Major Stark and get some backup.” He twisted around to look at her. “Unless you have some GIS assets you trust?”

“We are a small department,” she lamented, shaking her head. “And this is not what we do… well, not what we have done. There are a handful of undercover inspectors such as myself, two Direct Action platoons and that’s about it. Most of the inspectors are offplanet at any given time.”

The hotel room’s doorbell chimed and three heads snapped around as one, pistols jumping into Ari’s and Roza’s hands. Ari went to the small viewer embedded in the wall next to the door and saw a tall, rangy figure in a flowered shirt and tourist shorts standing out in the hallway, his features obscured by a broad-brimmed hat and sunglasses. He looked at Roza and shook his head. She returned the motion and moved to the other side of the door, handgun at the ready, while Colonel Lee ducked behind the cover of the desk. Ari touched the intercom button.

“Yes?” was all he said.

“Open the fuckin’ door so I can take off this stupid hat,” the man said. Leaning into the camera, he slipped off his glasses and lifted the hat momentarily and then put them back on.

“Holy shit,” Ari breathed, laughing softly. He reholstered his pistol and waved Roza back as he released the door lock and palmed the panel to open it. The man slipped inside quickly and shut the door behind him, taking off his hat and glasses.

“Hey Captain Shamir,” Tom Crossman said casually as he gave the room a quick once-over. “Love the new face. Inspector Kovach,” he nodded to the woman, who was staring at him curiously, her gun still in her hand. Crossman’s gaze halted on Colonel Lee, who was slowly emerging from behind the desk. “Oh, there you are, Colonel… I thought for a second they’d dumped your body somewhere.”

“Not to offend,” Roza said, “but who the hell are you?”

“He’s Sergeant Tom Crossman,” Ari told her.

“The Tom Crossman?” she asked, doing a double-take.

“Sweet suffering Jesus,” Tom muttered, rolling his eyes. “And this,” he waved a hand at her, “is why I can’t do undercover work. Fucking movie. Hell, I couldn’t even go out in public here without this shit,” he gestured at the hat and glasses he’d thrown down on the bed.

“Tom,” Ari interrupted, “as sorry as I am for the burdens of fame and as glad as I am to see you… what are you doing here?”

“Making sure it’s safe,” he replied with a shrug. He touched a button on his ‘link. “Bring her in,” he said, then palmed the door control.

The door opened and Shannon Stark strode inside, flanked by two of Tom’s recent graduates: a competent-looking, stocky woman with spiky black hair and pale skin and a tall, long-legged young man with sad, dark, hound-dog eyes. All three were dressed in casual civilian clothes, although not quite as casual as Tom Crossman’s.

“Ma’am.” Ari nodded to her as the door closed behind them.

“Ari, can I ask what the hell you’re doing in Houston?” Shannon said without preamble. “The last thing I heard from you, you and Inspector Kovach were going to arrest Colonel Lee.” She eyed the Colonial Guard Colonel, who was standing beside the desk. “I see the plan has evolved.”

“Before I answer that, ma’am,” he said, “just for my own peace of mind, how did you find us? And why are you here? In this city, I mean… you didn’t follow me here, did you?”

“We’re following up a lead,” she said. “We…” she shrugged. “We managed to get a line on the man who killed Glen Mulrooney. We got ahold of his ‘link, his accounts, everything. It was all anonymized and encrypted and bounced around, but our netdivers managed to trace some of his money to an account that we know-but can’t prove-is connected to a security firm here in Houston,”

Roza shot a glance at him and he nodded.

“We were in town following up,” Shannon went on, “when your ‘link pinged in the city. It’s an anonymous ‘link, but we issued it and we can track it. So here we are. Your turn.”

“Ma’am, we turned Colonel Lee… I made him an offer of a new identity for his cooperation. As the alternative was not desirable, he accepted and left a message for his contact to meet him here.”

Realization came into Shannon’s eyes. “A-ha. And I’ll bet that contact works for a security firm with ties to Republic Transportation?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Ari nodded. “And it’s better than that… or possibly worse. I know who she is. It’s Helenne D’Annique.”

Shannon’s eyebrow rose. “The same one that was the First Officer on the Patton under Admiral Patel?”

“She got out about five years ago and started working for Lone Star Security a year after that,” Ari told her. “It was pretty sudden, from what the file says… she got back from some diplomatic mission to Aphrodite and boom, resigned.”

Tom Crossman and Shannon Stark looked up at that, Crossman’s eyes narrowing.

“Let me see that file.” Shannon held out her hand and Ari passed her the tablet. She shook her head as she read it. “Son of a bitch,” she muttered. She looked up at Tom. “It was the same trip, the one Dominguez was on.”

“Dominguez?” Roza repeated. Her eyes widened. “You mean Vice President Dominguez?”

“Oh, shit,” Ari muttered, sitting down heavily on the bed.

“I think it’s time,” Shannon said slowly and thoughtfully, “that we find out just who was on that mission… and what the hell happened out there.”

“Whatever you are going to do,” Colonel Lee spoke up from the desk, where he was staring at the monitor, “you do not have long to do it.” He looked up at Ari and Roza with the expression of a man watching a traffic accident unfold in front of him. “The message has been posted. It says ‘stay.’”

Chapter Eighteen

Jason McKay shook his head, trying to clear it of the acrid taste of yellow and the sweet smell of sideways and of the maddening sensation that he was nonexistent and yet omnipresent all at once. He looked at Mironov, who was strapped in beside him on one of the acceleration couches behind Admiral Patel’s command station on the bridge of the Sheridan. The Russian was humming to himself impassively, as if he’d just travelled across town on the overhead tram.

“And you really get used to that?” McKay asked, disbelief in his voice. This was the third jump the ship had made through the wormholes and it seemed a dozen times worse than the first. Worse still, there were many more to go: Mironov knew many of the gate locations, but he had not been trusted with which ones led to the Protectorate headquarters world of Novoye Rodina, so their plan was to explore what they could of the Protectorate wormhole matrix and hope the physicists could make map it out and predict where the gates were located.

“Eysselink drive field activated,” the ship’s Helm announced, drowning out whatever answer Mironov might have given. “Navigation systems are analyzing the star patterns… we should have a best guess for our location in a minute.”

“Sensors are up,” Tactical reported, as the ship’s viewscreen began to overlay a sensor projection on top of the new starfield they’d found on the other side of this jumpgate. “We have an F-class star, looks like three terrestrial planets, two medium-size gas giants and maybe an ice giant out at extreme range. We are currently within a small asteroid field between the last of the terrestrials and the first gas giant. No gravimetic radiation present, no contacts, no sign of habitation.”

“Maintain active gravimetic scans,” Patel ordered. “Secure from battle stations. Helm, you have the coordinates for the next gate, take us there at one g acceleration.” Looking at the Admiral, McKay felt a bit of admiration for the way he seemed to be taking all this in stride. As if using a multimillion ton, multibillion dollar starship as an experimental test bed for opening alien-created wormholes with waves of warped space-time and then travelling outside the damned universe was something he did every day.

“Mr. Mironov,” Admiral Patel turned in his chair to address the Russian, “what are the odds of us encountering Protectorate military forces in these systems? You told us that Antonov maintains mining bases and listening posts in some of them, but this is our second with no sign of occupation.”

“It is difficult to say,” Mironov answered after McKay quietly translated the question for him. “We did not have the ships to keep them in every system; only key hubs like Peresechenie-that is what we called the system where you fought us. But there are patrols, and sometimes cargo ships to take supplies in and minerals out.”

“So, they’re not likely to be waiting in ambush for us as we pass through the gate,” Patel surmised, nodding with satisfaction.

“That depends,” Mironov added quickly, as if he didn’t want to give the Admiral the wrong idea. “Normally, no… but if one of the ships in Peresechenie managed to send a message through the gate before the battle, then it is possible you may face opposition.”

“Even then,” McKay pointed out, “they wouldn’t know we can get through the wormholes, so they wouldn’t be looking for us here.”

“That is true,” Mironov conceded with a nod. “Your only danger would be if…”

“Sir!” Lieutenant Commander Pirelli, the Tactical officer exclaimed. “We’re getting a gravimetic energy surge about twenty thousand klicks out consistent with a wormhole gate opening!”

“Der’mo,” Mironov cursed.

“Battle stations!” Patel snapped. “All hands secure for emergency acceleration! Helm, four g acceleration toward that gravimetic signature. Tactical, I want to be on him before he knows we’re here… target him as soon as we’re in range.”

“Emergency acceleration engaged,” Lt. Sweeny, the helmsman announced and McKay felt himself pressed back into his couch by 310 kilos of his own weight.

“Sensors indicate one ship coming through,” Pirelli reported, grunting the words out through the strain of the acceleration. “About the size of one of their converted cargo ships. Date coming up onscreen.” The ship’s computer created an icon of the enemy vessel on the tactical projection on the main screen, along with a graphic representation of the gate.

“That…” Mironov struggled to breath, face contorted with pain. “That is not gate I knew about.” He wheezed with effort. “Do not know where it goes.”

“Roger that sir,” Sweeny confirmed. “It’s a lot farther out than the one we were heading for.”

“Konstantin,” McKay asked, trying to make his brain work despite the pressure, “what would he do if he sees us? Fight or run?”

“A lone ship will run,” Mironov told him. “Back to somewhere he can report it.”

“Admiral,” McKay said, “my advice is to slow down, let her see us… fire a shot that won’t kill her… then follow her.”

“I see where you’re going, McKay,” Patel interrupted him. “Helm, take us back down to one g acceleration.”

“One g, aye,” Sweeney confirmed and McKay enjoyed a deep breath as the crushing weight lifted off his chest.

“Tactical,” Patel went on, “Target the ship’s communications array with the lasers and fire immediately on maximum effective range.”

“Targeting communications antennae, aye,” Pirelli said. “They still haven’t spotted us… they’ve activated their fusion pulse drive, accelerating towards the area of our entrance wormhole at one g. We should be in maximum effective laser range in ten minutes, sir.”

“Good thinking, Admiral,” McKay complimented, nodding his appreciation. “If his long range comms are down, he’ll have to lead us right to their concentration of forces.”

“They didn’t give me these stars for my good looks, McKay,” Patel said mildly, eyes still fixed on the sensor readouts on the main viewscreen. The computer had put up an avatar of the enemy ship based on sensor scans: it was a boxy, utilitarian insystem freighter design, either stolen from a Republic colony system or copied from a stolen ship, but various protrusions and extensions told a story of jury-rigged armor and weapons pods.

“Obviously not, sir,” McKay commented drily, watching the ship advance toward them. “Since I’m not a General yet.” Patel glanced at him sidelong, then laughed quietly.

“I’d debate you on that,” the Admiral said, smiling, “but Major Stark is a very good argument for your case.”

“Shannon is way out of my league, sir,” McKay admitted, “which she reminds me every day.”

“Uh, oh,” Pirelli spoke up, “I think she’s seen us. Her drive just cut off… she’s doing a turnover, I think. Still two minutes to laser range, and if the drive is in the way, we’re not going to have a shot.”

“Sound alarm,” Patel ordered, “emergency acceleration five g’s immediately.”

“Oh wonderful,” McKay muttered and then he couldn’t breathe.

The seconds crawled by as elephants tap-danced on his chest, until from somewhere far away he heard Pirelli croak: “Ship in range…”

“Deactivate drive,” Patel said in a voice like a snarling dog. “Fire!”

The crushing weight of five gravities of acceleration analog lifted immediately, causing a collective gasp among the bridge crew, and he could see the computer simulation of the laser batteries streaking across the space between them and the Protectorate freighter even before Pirelli said, “Lasers firing now.”

Flares of heat blossomed on the port side of the Protectorate ship as the laser pulses sliced into it, and then they and the ship were blotted out by a flare of fusing hydrogen as the enemy ship’s fusion pulse drive fired.

“Drive field reactivated,” Sweeny announced as the lasers ceased firing.

“He’s heading back for the wormhole,” Pirelli said. “Pushing three g’s… can’t keep that up for long unless he can refuel on the other side.”

“He’ll be doing another turnover soon,” Patel predicted. “They need to kill some velocity to place the bomb to reopen the gate.”

“Sir,” McKay interjected, “he’s going to be suspicious if we let him get away too easy. Let me talk to him, Admiral.”

“Communications,” he addressed Lt. Junior Grade Mandel, “hail the enemy ship, wide signal and put Colonel McKay on.”

“Aye, sir,” Mandel nodded. “You’re on, Colonel,” he said after a moment.

“This is Colonel Jason McKay of the Republic Spacefleet Starship Sheridan,” McKay said in Russian. “Kill your velocity and prepare to be boarded or you will be destroyed.” He turned to Lt. Pirelli and quietly slipped into English. “How long before they can reach the gate?”

“No less than five more minutes, sir,” she replied.

“You have five minutes to comply,” McKay said in Russian again, then nodded to Lt JG Mandel, who killed the connection. McKay glanced at Patel. “Now they’ll think we stumbled across them and are trying to capture them, and we just don’t know where the jumpgate is.”

Patel nodded his understanding. “And they’ll be congratulating themselves on outsmarting us as they jump through.” He frowned thoughtfully. “The next part will be tricky. We can’t come through the gate too close behind him or he’ll realize what we’re up to. Helm,” he turned to Sweeny, “once he’s through the gate, take us into position to jump and take up station keeping. We’re going to hold there for a few minutes.”

“He’s flipped and decelerating towards the gate,” Pirelli announced.

“We’re getting a response,” Mandel told him. “It’s a bit weak… he’s only got short-range coms now.”

“On screen,” Patel told him.

The image on the screen flickered fitfully, fading into static every few seconds, but while it lasted McKay could see the image of a tall, broad-shouldered man with a weathered, lined face and shaggy grey hair, his uniform Protectorate grey.

“I am Captain Igor Medvedev,” the man said in Russian, his deep voice sounding oddly mechanical with the static breaking it at intervals, “of the Protectorate vessel Postavshchik.” McKay translated the man’s words to Admiral Patel. “We are decelerating and will be able to come to boarding velocity in six minutes. We surrender and will agree to be boarded. Do not fire on us, please.”

“He’s a cool customer for someone supposedly surrendering his ship,” Patel commented drily. McKay agreed… the Russian wasn’t so much as sweating. “He’s convinced he’s got us all figured out…”

“Put me on with him, Mr. Mandel,” McKay told the communications officer. At her nod, he replied to the transmission. “You have your six minutes, Captain, but do not deviate from your present course or try to run. We will contact you again once we match velocities.”

“You should consider a career in acting, McKay,” Patel said as the Communications officer cut the connection. “Helm, take us to one g acceleration to the turnover point, then decelerate to match velocities… but make sure we’re not too close.”

“He’s almost there,” Pirelli said, eyeing the sensors. “Yeah, his drive’s shut down.” The fusion flare behind the computer enhanced image of the ship on the viewscreen had disappeared, and they could see the minute stars of maneuvering thrusters firing near the aft of the ship. “He’s slowed to near station-keeping velocity and he’s doing a turnaround. I expect he’s about to place the fusion trigger.”

“Probably launched it already,” McKay said. “He only has a couple minutes left.”

There was the flash of a miniature sun on the viewscreen. “And there it is,” Pirelli said with a nod.

“Drive field deactivate. Fire lasers,” Patel ordered. “Target their drives but just miss.”

“Aye, sir.” The young woman traced a finger on a control screen then tapped it and a crimson line flashed on the viewscreen as the computer simulated the laser pulse that hit just forward of the Protectorate ship’s drives where the armored hull plating was at its thickest, evaporating tons of it in a glowing plume of hot gasses.

And then the Postavshchik was gone. A nothingness in space outlasted her passing by moments and then the stars returned.

“She’s through,” Pirelli said redundantly.

“Station keeping,” Patel ordered. “Ready the emitters to open the gate on my order.”

“Without gravimetic sensors,” McKay mused, “it’ll be tough for them to see us come through, especially if they’re doing a fusion burn. The question is, do we want them to see us come through? On the one hand, if they see us come through behind them, it might spook them into running straight home. On the other hand, if they have a competent captain with some nerve, he’ll realize that we could be following them home and he’ll take us farther away from it.” He looked to Mironov. “Konstantin? What do you think? How will this Medvedev react?”

“I served on his ship once,” Mironov said with a shrug. “He’s smart… but he’s more concerned with his skin than his duty. He’ll go somewhere safe.”

“Helm,” Patel decided, “give him thirty minutes before you open the gate. That’ll give him time to clear it and be on his way to the next one before he sees us come through.”

“Aye, sir,” Sweeney confirmed.

McKay felt a vibration at his belt and looked down to see, with some annoyance, that someone was buzzing his ‘link. He put the ear bud in place and answered, “McKay here,”

Patel glanced back at him with some annoyance, but said nothing. He knew the Admiral didn’t like any private communications on the bridge, but the Admiral knew him well enough to realize that he wouldn’t have taken the call if it wasn’t important.

“McKay, this is Podbyrin,” the former Protectorate Colonel said to him over the communications link. “I’ve been doing as you asked and watching Mironov over the monitors in the auxiliary control room.”

McKay studiously avoided looking at Mironov, who was still strapped into the acceleration couch next to him. “Yes, I understand. Go ahead.”

“Something is…” The Russian struggled for a phrase. “Something is not right about him, McKay. I am watching him and I see that he is too… too comfortable. This is very unnatural for him; he should be more out of place, more nervous. Instead, he looks as if he is on vacation.”

“Mmm-hmm,” McKay replied ambiguously. “So, why do you think that might be?”

“I can only think of two reasons. Either he is playing you… or he’s gone over the edge and he’s mentally unstable. Neither of these are a good thing.”

“Well, I find the former difficult to believe, given our precautions,” McKay said carefully. “As for the latter… we don’t have much choice than to just deal with it. Thanks for letting me know, I’ll get back to you later.”

He ended the call and shrugged an apology to Admiral Patel but his stomach was roiling and his head was pounding. He knew that Podbyrin was right and he’d been thinking the same thing himself: it was too easy. But there was no way Mironov could be a plant, he was certain of that: how the hell would Antonov have known the man would survive and be captured? Which left the possibility that the man was bat-shit insane; that, unfortunately, McKay could readily believe.

I guess all we can do, McKay thought, is hope he’s crazy but not stupid. God, I wish Shannon were here. She’s so much better at reading people than I am.

“All right,” Patel announced finally, “that’s enough time. Helm, open the gate and take us through. I want the drive field reactivated the moment we are through that gate. Tactical, sound battle stations.”

McKay had a knot in his stomach as the wormhole expanded. If they were guessing wrong, they could be jumping right into a fusion missile, with their shields down. They would all be dead before they knew what hit them… or worse, they would see it coming but not have time to do anything about it. The thought of dying didn’t scare him so much as it frustrated him. There was just too much left to do for him to die now.

“Engaging plasma drives,” Sweeny said. “We’re entering the wormhole now…”

Jesus… McKay had been so worried about what they would find on the other side of the gate that he’d forgotten how much he hated transitioning through the damn things. His brain yanked itself back into reality with the whooping of alarm klaxons and his eyes snapped to the viewscreen. Before he could make sense of what the Tactical officer was saying, he could see that the Sheridan had jumped into a binary star system with three gas giants and two terrestrials and he could also see the representation of the Protectorate lighter a light second away from them.

“I think she’s heading for the next gate,” Pirelli said. “She doesn’t seem to have seen us.”

“Make sure she does, Commander Pirelli,” Patel instructed with a predatory grin. “Deactivate drive field and target her forward weapons pods with the Gauss cannon.”

“Aye, sir, targeting weapons pods and firing.”

The ship shuddered ever so slightly as a pair of tungsten darts, each the size of a groundcar, shot out from it at thousands of meters per second. They crossed the distance between the ships in minutes and smashed into the bulbous weapons pod that jutted from the port bow of the lighter. The pod was ripped from its stanchions in a glowing cloud of burning oxygen, floating away with the kinetic energy imparted by the impact.

“Weapons pod destroyed,” Pirelli said with a nod of satisfaction. “Doesn’t seem to be much secondary damage… she still has hull integrity. She’s still firing her drive; I think she’s increasing acceleration.”

“She has to do a turnover soon,” Sweeny said, frowning. “Unless the next gate is still pretty far away.”

“They are never more than a few light-seconds apart,” Mironov corrected him. “He is, I think, going to try to make the transition at high acceleration… he is, what you say…” He exchanged Russian with McKay, then nodded. “He is scared shitless.”

“There it goes!” Pirelli said, pointing at the screen, where the explosion of the fusion trigger was almost swallowed up in the ship’s drive flame. The wormhole entrance barely had time to expand before the Protectorate ship was through it.

Sweeny looked to Admiral Patel. “Do we wait or follow him through, sir?”

“Stay on his ass,” Patel urged. “Re-open the wormhole and take us through now, before he has the chance to think up something clever. I want him with only one option: keep running.”

“Aye, sir,” Sweeny nodded. “Opening the gate.”

McKay tried to control his breathing and relax this time, but the transition was like riding a roller coaster with a first drop infinity deep and he still found himself feeling like his body was turning inside out. He blinked his eyes hard and gripped the arms of his couch, forcing himself back to coherence. He looked up at the viewscreen as it flickered back to life, seeing stars returning to the screen, seeing… was that the drive tube of the Protectorate ship?

Oh shit!

“Activate the drive!” He screamed the order at the same time as Admiral Patel, but then the Protectorate ship’s drive fired; a focused fusion blast ignited less than ten kilometers ahead of them and everything went white…

Chapter Nineteen

“That’s him,” Ari nodded to Roza as the man emerged from the Veterans’ Clinic. He looked much as he did in the video they’d reviewed from the Republic Veterans’ Resources file: average height, almost painfully thin, with shoulder-length red hair and a sparse, half-hearted mustache. He walked with a disinterested shuffle, eyes on the sidewalk, hands in his pockets.

Ari and Roza rose from the bench where they’d been waiting and followed him, maintaining twenty meters’ separation. It was almost an effort for them to walk slowly enough to stay at his pace: he didn’t seem to be in a hurry to get anywhere. Ari made an effort to keep his eyes moving, both to avoid the man turning around and seeing him staring and to have a sense of their surroundings.

It was an indecently sunny afternoon in Houston ‘plex, without a shading cloud to be found in the blue sky. Over the last few days, Ari had developed an intense dislike for the megacity. It was open to the sky and as crassly commercial as a strip mall; the weather was relentlessly humid even in early spring, and the public transportation system was brutally inefficient and dirty. And they were about to have to ride it again to follow this guy.

The neighborhood around the Veterans’ Clinic was on the shabby side: not dangerous, but just… apathetic was a good word. Here and there were cracks in the sidewalk or peeling facing on buildfoam barriers or dying bushes untended in roadside arboretums; evidence of lack of care in all senses of the word. In Capital City, such things were fixed as a matter of course. In London, they were fixed as a matter of pride. In Paris they were ignored as a matter of style.

Here they seemed to be a matter of no one bothering to report them or no one caring enough to fix them.

Cracked sidewalk led to the cracked and peeling walls of the tram station, where the lower class employed shuffled from one job to another, hoping to make enough to become taxpayers and thus become eligible to vote in the Republic elections. Most of the working class didn’t care, Ari knew, preferring to enjoy the benefits of comfortable living provided by the government, those that thought about politics at all satisfied with being able to vote in the local and national races.

If they weren’t required to work to keep their government housing, most of them wouldn’t ever leave their apartments, Ari thought cynically. With raw food stock delivered daily to their kitchen processors and entertainment provided free 24 hours a day on their consoles, there was no reason to. It was an environment like that back in Tel Aviv that had driven Ari to enlist in the Marines to begin with. He wanted to do something, not become a fucking mushroom.

What he’d wanted to do, however, was not ride the fucking tram in Houston ‘plex all day long. They watched the redhead board a car bound for a slightly more upscale neighborhood and slipped through the doors behind him just before they closed. The car was nearly empty, occupied only by the three of them and an older man who was sitting in the back, leaning his head against the wall with his eyes closed, catching a nap on his way home. The redhead took a seat near the middle of the car and Roza sat next to him, while Ari sat across from him.

The redhead eyed them suspiciously, glancing around at the nearly empty car as it began to pull away from the station.

“You’re Liam Bryant, aren’t you?” Ari asked the man, painting a friendly smile on his face.

“Do I know you?” the redhead asked, confused. His voice was hesitant and timid, without a trace of confidence.

“We have some mutual friends.” Roza told him, patting his shoulder. “From the Patton.”

“That was a long time ago…” Liam began, starting to get up from his seat… before Roza’s surprisingly strong grip on his shoulder pulled him back down.

“But you’re still going to the clinic once a week, after all this time,” Ari observed. “Even after spending a full year in the Behavioral Ward at the Richmond Veteran’s Hospital. I suppose you’re lucky they ever let you out of there after you attacked those medical techs at the Fleet Outprocessing Center.”

“I… I’ve just had some problems adjusting,” Liam said, looking away from Ari’s stare. “That’s all behind me now. The doctors say I’m over that, that the treatments worked fine.”

“Except you and I know, Liam,” Ari shook his head sadly, “that the problem never was what you did… the problem was what happened to you on the Patton, on that trip to Aphrodite just after the war.”

“No!” Liam exclaimed and tried to rise up again, but was again pushed back, this time by Ari’s hand on his chest. Roza quickly checked the other occupant of the car, but he hadn’t stirred. Ari put a shushing finger to his lips, his eyes giving an implicit warning. “That never happened,” Liam insisted, voice still strident, though lower in pitch and volume, his pale skinned face growing red in the cheeks. “I was… I was sick. Delusional. They… they fixed me.”

“No, Liam,” Roza countered softly. “Something did happen on that trip. Whatever it was, your mind tried to suppress it and you wound up delusional, paranoid. But something happened. We know that because other people who were on that mission are acting different.”

“Who… who are you two?” Liam asked, confusion and fear in his eyes.

“Liam, we’ll tell you who we are and what’s going on,” Ari offered, “if you come with us and answer some questions. It won’t take more than a couple hours, and just maybe you can actually get better. But it’s now or never. Whoever did this to you is monitoring you through your ‘link.”

Liam fumbled at his belt for the device, looking at it in alarm. “Right now?”

“No, not right now,” Roza assured him, “because right now this,” she produced a small black box from her shoulder bag, “is jamming the ‘link and all other electronic monitoring in this car. But once you leave this car, whoever is monitoring you is going to know something happened because of that jamming. And they’re going to come for you.”

“If you come with us,” Ari promised, “we’ll protect you. And you’ll find out what happened to you. If you don’t…” He shrugged. “Maybe we’re bullshitting you, maybe it’s a con… but really, what do you have to lose? You sit in your apartment all day long, never talking to anyone except for your therapist, except for a couple hours a night when you go to the anonymous terminals at the cafe across town and cruise the conspiracy communities.”

Liam’s eyes snapped up, a horrified expression on his face. “Yeah, that’s right ‘Knowledge-Seeker,’ your account isn’t quite as anonymous as you thought,” Ari sneered. “And if we know, you know that they know.”

“All right,” Liam said shakily, “I’ll go with you. What should I do?”

“Leave your ‘link here on the tram,” Roza instructed him. The man hastily yanked it off his waistband and tossed it on the seat. “When we reach the next station, we’re getting out. Walk quickly and keep your head down.”

The next stop came up swiftly, the holographic advertising on the tram walls advising them that it had easy access to several reasonably priced restaurants and personalized fabrication shops. When the doors opened, they all rose from their seats and stepped out of the tram into a small crowd waiting to board-the post-lunch crowd, Ari estimated from the time. Roza kept a guiding left hand on Liam’s right shoulder as they wound through the throng, with Ari in the lead.

Roza could feel Liam’s shoulder tense up and knew the move was coming: it was the logical place to try it, in the middle of a crowd of people in a public place, where they couldn’t pursue. So by the time Liam twisted around to get the torque to swing an elbow at her head, she already had her hand in her shoulder bag, and when the elbow began to swing, she halted it in mid-motion by digging her left thumb into his triceps. Liam gasped with pain and surprise and then her right hand darted up, wrapped around a small, cylindrical object that could have been mistaken for a stylus. The tip of it jabbed unobtrusively into the bare skin of his right biceps, and instantly the man staggered slightly.

“Ari,” Roza said quietly, moving in to support Liam as he nearly collapsed. Ari turned back, saw the hypo in her fist and saw Liam’s dazed expression and he moved to the other side of the redhead, putting a supporting hand under his arm. “Now Liam,” Roza said, “you’re going to be a good boy and do exactly as I say, aren’t you?”

Liam grunted assent, his eyes glazing over.

“Good boy, Liam,” Roza whispered soothingly. “Now just walk, Liam… walk with us and you can rest very soon.”

Ari’s eyes scanned the crowd, but no one gave them a second look as they guided the drugged Liam through the tram station and out onto the sidewalk. They headed away from the rows of restaurants, past street vendors selling ice cream, drinks and anonymized ‘links, till they came to a flyer pad, where a handful of the ducted fan helicopters were parked. Most were empty, stored on the lot by businesses, but one was occupied, its turbines whining as they idled, its clam shell doors open.

Ari and Roza walked Liam up the steps into the flyer, sitting him in one of the vacant seats and strapping him in. In the pilot’s seat, Tom Crossman twisted around, noting Liam’s dazed expression and wandering eyes.

“Plan ‘B,’ huh?” Crossman commented with a grin. “You owe me ten bucks, Captain.”

“Just close the doors and get us out of here, Tom,” Ari said. “I want to get this loser back to the safe-house before the drugs wear off.”

Ari settled back into the chair, buckling his safety harness and sinking in with a deep sigh. He could feel Roza’s eyes on him and he knew what she was thinking. He was thinking it too. He’d hardly been able to think of anything else in the last couple days. The Patton. The manifest. Major Stark had looked it up after Lee had received the message. Arvid Patel had been the ship’s Captain, Hellene D’Annique the First Officer; and among the many distinguished passengers had been then-Senator Xavier Dominguez… and then-Colonel Hikaru Kage of the Colonial Guard.

They all knew what that could mean, but none of them had been willing to discuss it, least of all Roza. There was no point, until they could find out what had happened on that ship. They’d thought about grabbing D’Annique, but she was too high profile-people would notice if she went missing. And then, they’d dug up the medical files on one Liam Bryant…

“So,” Shannon said, watching Tom and Ari strap the insensate Liam into the chair at the center of the mostly bare room, “this is our guy.”

“Yeah,” Ari grunted, tightening the straps across the man’s chest. “:And he’s nuttier than a cage full of squirrels. I hope this isn’t a waste of time.”

“If he weren’t nutty,” Shannon pointed out, “he would be a waste of time. Give him the stimulant, Ari.”

Ari took the hypo off the small tray table next to the chair and carefully injected Liam in the neck, then stepped back cautiously. The man jerked slightly, his eyes popping wide open, and he began to pull against his restraints, panting with exertion and fright as he looked around the room in a blind panic.

“What the fuck is going on?” He demanded loudly. “Where am I? What the hell are you doing with me? Who are you people?”

“If I might answer those questions in reverse order,” Shannon spoke up and he stared at her in wonder, as if he were just noticing her. “I am Major Shannon Stark of Fleet Intelligence.” His mouth started to form a question and she interrupted him. “Yes, that Shannon Stark. We have you restrained to prevent you harming yourself. You’re someplace safe and private just outside the city. As for what the fuck is going on… well, we were hoping you could help us with that.”

Liam tried to say about a dozen different things at once, but finally managed to sputter out: “Help you?”

“Mr. Bryant,” she said, pacing in front of his chair, hands clasped behind her back, “five years ago, you went out on the cruiser Patton for a political mission to survey the damage done to the Aphrodite colony by the Protectorate invasion there. Within a month of returning to Earth, you’d had a psychotic break, assaulted several medical technicians and wound up in a treatment facility for a year. You kept insisting that no one except you was real… that they were all copies.”

“I had some problems,” Liam said helplessly. “But they were able to treat me… they gave me some drugs that helped me to get better.”

“Yes, I know, Mr. Bryant. And no one is asking you to go back to how you were behaving. But here’s the thing: we think that your psychosis was triggered by an actual event during that trip. Other people who were on that mission have shown… significant personality changes.”

“Was there some kind of chemical contamination?” Liam asked, fear in his eyes.

“We don’t know, Mr. Bryant,” Shannon admitted. “But from what we’ve seen… we think it was deliberate, whatever it was. We need you to try to remember what happened on that ship.”

“I can’t,” Liam insisted, yanking at the straps on his wrists in frustration. “I haven’t been able to remember any of it for the last three years, since the treatments.”

“Yes, I know… I read your records. That’s why we want to do a hypnoprobe on you to bring them out.” She nodded to Roza, who stepped out into the hallway and came back rolling in a cart laden down with an interface helmet and the hardware to support it.

“No,” Liam pleaded hoarsely, shaking his head. Ari frowned as he saw beads of sweat streaking down the man’s forehead. “No, keep that fucking thing away from me!”

“Mr. Bryant,” Shannon tried to comfort him, “there’s no danger. It’s completely safe; you must have used one before, when they were trying to defuse your violent behavior?” She shot a look at Ari and he pushed the tray back and went back out of the room.

“Don’t bring that goddamned thing near me again!” Liam screamed, going from terror to fury now that the machine was farther away. His face was beet red, his breath coming in strained gasps. “I’ll kill you! I swear to God I will!”

Shannon didn’t reply to him, just stepped out into the hallway to meet Ari, who had retrieved the tablet with Liam’s medical file. The hallway was as sparse and utilitarian as the room: the safe-house was a converted warehouse rented out by Fleet Intelligence via several layers of shell corporations.

“It’s right here,” Ari said grimly, holding up the tablet. “I had to dig a little deeper… it was in the detailed daily reports, not the overall summary. They tried to use a hypnoprobe on him initially, but he reacted violently to every attempt so they were forced to use psychoactive drugs instead. They never could get through to his actual memories of the trip, though… he kept repeating the paranoid fantasy about everyone on the planet except him being copies, fakes. Finally, they resorted to memory suppressants to get rid of the fantasies.”

“Damn,” Shannon muttered. “The hypnoprobe won’t work if he goes psychotic every time we try it, and If we can’t use it, we’re not going to be able to get to those memories either… he can’t even remember the fantasies any more. Maybe he is a waste of time after all.”

“There still might be a way,” Roza said, coming up behind them. “In the GIS, we don’t often have access to a full hypnoprobe machine when we do field investigations, so we use a drug instead. It was developed over a hundred years ago to fight a disease called Alzheimer’s, before genetic surgery put an end to such things. It is designed to restore neural pathways to the memory centers… when used in conjunction with psychoactives, it can basically make people remember things they had forgotten and force them to tell them.”

“Sounds too good to be true,” Ari commented. “What’s the downside?”

“Yes, that is the problem,” she admitted, cocking an eyebrow. “The drug by itself is not a bad thing. At the most, you would find yourself remembering things from the past very clearly for a while. I have heard there is a black market in it for that reason, though not a large one. But when you use the psychoactives with it, well, you run the risk of seizure and possible brain damage. We didn’t use this method on people we liked.”

Shannon took in a deep breath and sighed it out heavily. “Go tell Tom the name of the drug. He can get it for us. Tell him to bring back a trained medic with a portable kit.” Roza nodded and turned to find Crossman. At Ari’s look, Shannon shook her head. “I know… he doesn’t deserve it, but it’s his welfare against possibly billions.”

“We’re also breaking quite a few laws and violating the Republic and the US Constitutions,” Ari pointed out.

“If we don’t stop what’s coming,” Shannon pointed out, “none of that will matter. I take full responsibility. Go check on Bryant. If he’s still panicking, give him a sedative.”

Ari nodded and headed back into the room. Shannon waited till he was gone, then cursed softly, slamming her fist into the bare buildfoam wall.

Dammit, Jason. Why’d you have to go off and leave me to handle this shit?

Because he trusts you more than anyone else in the world, she answered herself. In any world. Which means you can’t let him down.

“Liam,” Shannon repeated, snapping her fingers, “can you hear me?”

The man’s eyes were unfocussed, his head lolling, his breath coming in shuddering gasps. The Special Ops medic Tom had brought back with him looked worried, but didn’t say anything as she lightly slapped Liam on the cheek.

“I… hear you,” Liam answered, his words slurred.

“Liam, tell me what happened on the mission to Aphrodite,” Shannon instructed. “Tell me what happened on the Patton.”

“Please don’t make me,” Liam whimpered pitifully. “It… it hurts.”

“Liam, if you tell me, if you get it out, the hurt will go away,” Shannon promised him, feeling like a total shit. “Tell me what happened on the Patton.”

“It was…” He grimaced at the words, as if they were a bad taste in his mouth. “It was just a few months after the war, and we were shuttling some VIPs to Aphrodite. We were bringing some relief supplies too… small stuff like medicines, a couple portable fabricators, along with some techs to fix up their solar powersat rectennae. It was a bitch getting the shuttles rearranged to carry all that shit down.” His voice was becoming easier, more conversational as he talked.

“Aphrodite was boring as shit,” he went on. “I had to stay with the lander the whole time and even if I hadn’t, there wasn’t a damn thing to do anyway. We were all unloading supplies or running the buildfoam dispensers, building temporary shelters, repairing the buildings left standing, while the politicians and the brass gave speeches at each other. I couldn’t wait to get off that damn rock.

“Then, after staying there a month, we shipped out. Except… when we stopped at the antimatter factory out near the system’s primary, there was a ship there. Someone told me it was a cargo ship sent after we left. Uncrewed, automated. They thought it had come to the antimatter satellite to refuel for the trip back to Earth, but something was wrong with it. It wasn’t moving. Captain Patel, he sent a work crew over in my lander. They had to wear suits… the freighter wasn’t pressurized. We had telemetry with them through their suitcams, but when they boarded the freighter, it got staticy… there was some kind of interference. After a few minutes, I got a transmission… voice only, but they said they had found the problem. The AI had a bad cooling core and they needed to take it back to the Patton for repair.”

Liam was getting less at ease now, his brows furled, nostrils wide as he took in labored breaths. “They came back on board carrying it… it was pretty big, like two meters long, a meter wide. They stayed with it in the hold, said they would get it stabilized and ride there with it back to the Patton since they were already suited up. I… I didn’t know these guys, you understand? I barely could have recognized them with their suits off and they were in helmets the whole time. It wasn’t my fault!”

“It’s okay, Liam,” Shannon said soothingly. “No one’s blaming you. Go ahead, tell us the rest.”

“We… we got back to the ship,” he continued. “And they carried the core into the docking bay, put it on a maneuvering sled to take it through the cargo lock and into the ship’s engineering section so they could work on it. I locked the lander down and headed back to the ready room for some downtime… and then… I was in the corridor, just heading for the ready room and I felt something. Like a sound, but not a sound, like it was in my teeth, in my gut.” He winced, fists clenched, arms tensed against the straps that held him down. “It hurt… it felt like every bone in my body was going to explode, then nothing. Not like going to sleep, more like someone switched my lights off.” He moaned softly, a trickle of spittle running down the side of his mouth.

“When I… when my brain switched back on, I was somewhere else. I was lying in a room with a dirt floor, and there was gravity. Not Earth normal, but close. There were a few other guys in there with me, guys I knew. Sanchez from the bridge crew, Gradkowski from maintenance and Dalton from engineering. We all came to at the same time. Dalton… he told me what happened. He said that the work party that came back from the freighter… they weren’t our guys. He said they came into engineering and gassed everyone, but before he went out, he heard them talking Russian.”

“Oh, shit,” Ari muttered from behind her.

“He figured that there was something in that fake core that knocked everyone out. He said subsonics or something. Something that could conduct through the ship, wherever there was atmosphere. I don’t know where they took us or how long we were out… there was no way to tell. All our ‘links had been taken, we didn’t have anything-we were even wearing different clothes. After a few hours, they hit us with the whatever- it-was again. When I came to, I was in some sort of laboratory, strapped to a chair…” His voice was becoming more and more strained and his face was covered with sweat.

“They… they used that thing on me,” he said through clenched teeth, jerking his head toward the door, obviously referring to the hypnoprobe. “There were others in there with me, being made to forget. I don’t remember anything after that until we were on our way back to Earth on the Patton and by then no one remembered anything.” He shook his head, face screwed up in agony, muscles spasming against the restraints.

“There’s something else, Liam,” Shannon said, taking a step toward him. “What is it?”

“No… no…” The words were an agonized plea. “I… they… they told me…”

“If you tell us, the pain will go away,” she insisted. “It will all go away…”

“Before…” he grunted the words out like they were poison. “Before they started with the machine… I saw something. These things… vats? Tanks? I don’t know… they were shaped like nothing I’d seen before. They didn’t look like any human thing. I don’t know how I knew, I just knew. They had someone over there, at the tanks… one of the politicians. That Senator guy. They pulled him out of one of the tanks and he was like drugged or something… and then… they…” He groaned as if he were in physical pain and squeezed his eyes shut. “And then they pulled him out again. There was two of him!” He screamed the words out and began sobbing cathartically, tears pouring down his cheeks. “Oh Jesus, oh Jesus,” he moaned. “Then they put the machine on me and tried to make me forget everything, but Jesus Christ! How could you forget that? How could anyone?”

“Doc?” She looked to the medic. The man held a monitoring device to Liam’s temple for a moment, then nodded.

“He’s okay,” the medic told her. “I don’t think there’s any damage and he hasn’t seized. His brain waves are looking good.”

Shannon let out a relieved sigh and patted Liam’s shoulder as the man continued to sob. “Ari, Doc, unstrap him, give him a sedative and put him in one of the holding rooms. You stay with him there Doc, make sure he doesn’t lose it again. Hopefully remembering what actually happened will get rid of his delusions.”

“What actually happened?” Ari repeated. “Ma’am just what the hell did actually happen? Is he…” Ari shook his head in disbelief. “Is he saying what I think he’s saying?”

“If you think that he’s saying that the Patton was hijacked by the Protectorate five years ago,” Shannon said calmly, looking him in the eye, “and that the entire crew was brainwashed, and that our current Vice President was somehow copied using alien technology… then yes, he’s saying what you think he’s saying.”

“So, the Protectorate is behind the coup?” Tom Crossman asked, his eyes wide.

“I wonder if the others who are involved know just to what extent then Protectorate is involved,” Roza mused.

“Ma’am,” Ari asked as he began taking off Liam’s restraints, “what the hell do we do about all this?”

“That’s not our decision, Ari,” Shannon told him, rubbing the back of her neck tiredly. “What we do now is take what we know to the President.” She shook her head. “And hope we can make him believe any of it.”

Chapter Twenty

“Looks pretty bad from out here,” Esmeralda Villanueva radioed, gently nudging the controls of her shuttle to send it slowly floating across the nose of the Sheridan. The nose of the massive cruiser was armored with a solid meter of nickel iron melted off an asteroid… not even the directed fusion blast of the Protectorate lighter’s main drive had been able to penetrate that, though it had re-melted and vaporized several centimeters of it.

What the blast had penetrated was the much thinner armor over the gravimetic emitters in the nose that were the key to the ship’s long-range sensor array. Without them, the ship could still use optical, radar and lidar to scan her surroundings… but when she went FTL via the Eysselink field, she’d be flying blind.

“Are you seeing this, Sheridan?” She asked, trying to angle the shuttle to get a better picture of the damage.

“Roger that,” acknowledged Lt. Commander Devlin, the Damage Control officer. “Assault One, do a slow pan around the nose then you can head back to the docking bay.”

On the bridge of the Sheridan, Devlin shook his head slowly as he examined the images coming from the shuttle. “I don’t think there’s any way to repair that kind of damage outside of a dry-dock, Admiral,” he said with grim finality.

“I think you’re right, Mr. Devlin,” Patel agreed, scowling. “I suppose it could have been worse.”

McKay nodded silent agreement, suppressing a shudder.

What a clusterfuck, he reflected. The Helm had activated the drive at nearly the same time that both he and Patel had screamed the command… but it had been a half-second too late. The damage had been done. And when the Eysselink field had impacted the enemy ship’s drive plates, the resultant fusion explosion had ripped the Protectorate lighter to atoms.

“So,” McKay finally said aloud, holding onto a safety rail behind the Admiral, “the Protectorate ship is toast, which means we can’t follow it to the next gate. Even if we figured out where we are, we can’t use our Eysselink drive to go home because we can’t navigate at hyperlight speeds without the gravimetic sensors: we could fly right into a planet or even a star. That leaves us with just one option as far as I can see: follow the gates back the way we came until we reach the Peboan system and then follow the route that Mironov gave us back to Earth.”

Patel hissed out a sigh, and McKay knew him well enough to know that another man would have been cursing. The Admiral said nothing for a moment, staring at the viewscreen. “Engineering,” Patel called over the intership communicator.

“Engineering here, sir,” came the reply from Commander Kopecky, the Sheridan‘s chief engineering officer.

“Commander, can we still use the Eysselink field to open the wormholes without the forward emitters?”

Kopecky didn’t answer immediately and McKay could picture from past encounters the broad-bodied, bushy-browed Czech lost in thought, mouth twitching as he talked himself through the problem. “Aaaaaye,” the man dragged the word out slowly as if he were assembling it in his head, “I believe we can still manage it sir. We can rig something using the gravimetic lensing fields for the laser batteries possibly.”

“There’s no way to use those lensing fields to replace the sensor emitters?” McKay asked, curious.

“Hmmm…” Kopecky turned the grunt into a Buddhist mantra. “You know, Colonel McKay, that’s not entirely impossible. The downside would be that we would lose the lasers as armament for the duration of our voyage… and of course the range would be a bit less: those lensing field emitters aren’t as big as the sensor emitters, nor as powerful. But we might be able to rig something up. What say you, Conner?” He was speaking to Conner Devlin, the Damage Control officer who was still on the bridge.

Devlin had a troubled expression, his eyes clouded with thought and McKay thought he would be pacing if there were gravity. “It might work. It will require some serious crew-hours of work… I think we’re looking at thirty to forty hours, minimum of solid work, not counting testing. And like Commander Kopecky said, we’d lose the lasers.”

“That’s a damn good idea, McKay,” Patel nodded to him. “Commander Kopecky, get with Commander Devlin and work me up a detailed plan for making the modifications. I want it presented to me in my office in two hours.”

“Permission to head to engineering, sir,” Devlin asked.

“Of course, Mr. Devlin.” Devlin pushed off and headed out into the corridor and Patel turned to the Tactical officer. “Ms. Pirelli,” he said, “we have some experience now with the jumpgates. I know you can pick them up on the gravimetic sensors when they open. What I want you to do is get together with the senior Sensor tech and compare our readings from before the gates were opened and see if there is any sort of predictable reading we’re getting via the Eysselink scanners when they aren’t open. And I want that report in my office in three hours, is that clear?”

“Aye, sir,” Pirelli said with more confidence than she probably felt, if McKay judged the slight widening of her eyes correctly. She turned back to her station and used her ‘link to call the Sensor station.

“I think I see where you’re going here, sir,” McKay ventured thoughtfully, hanging behind the Admiral’s shoulder. “It’s risky, but I like it.”

“I’m grateful for your approval, Colonel,” Patel commented ironically, cocking an eyebrow. “Mr. Mironov.” He turned to the Russian, who’d been taking all this in impassively, as if he were watching a movie. “You said you had tried to stay away from Novoye Rodina, but if we get you within a few jumps of the system, could you recognize it?”

Mironov looked to McKay, who sighed and had a brief exchange with the man in Russian.

“I think I can,” Mironov said haltingly. “I would need to see system…” Another exchange with McKay. “…specifications, planetary positions. I would need to be within one or two jumps, I think.”

“Mr. Mironov, I want you to sit down with Mr. Sweeny and give him every detail you remember about the systems near Novoye Rodina… Colonel McKay, you can help translate, if you wouldn’t mind. Get it done in four hours and get it to my office.”

“I’m beginning to sense a pattern there,” McKay said with a grin.

“Well, you are the head of intelligence,” Patel observed wryly. “I want to be moving on a course of action in six hours. If we have to rig the laser focusing fields, I want us ready to leave the minute the work is done. We are not going home without the location of Novoye Rodina, even if it means flying blind through every jumpgate between here and the next galaxy. Do you concur?”

“The President’s last word to me on the matter of General Antonov,” McKay told him, “was ‘Kill that son of a bitch.’ I don’t want to head home until I at least try to carry out that order.”

“Excellent. Then let’s get to work.”

Vincent Mahoney smiled slightly as he traced a finger over the curve of Esmeralda Villanueva’s shoulder. Her skin was warm and slightly damp with sweat; spherical globules of their perspiration floated around inside the sleep net that kept them in her bed.

“You know,” Vinnie said quietly, “I never had sex in zero gravity before this trip.”

Esmeralda raised an eyebrow. “And you were a Marine? I find that hard to believe.”

He shrugged. “Getting involved with someone in my platoon didn’t seem smart. And the Fleet girls… well, by the time I made it on the Reaction Force platoons, I was an NCO and it didn’t seem like the right example to be setting.”

“Jesus, you’re a regular boy scout, aren’t you?” She laughed, a sound he would never get tired of.

“If I were a boy scout,” he replied, raising an eyebrow, “I wouldn’t be fraternizing with a superior officer.” He shrugged. “Of course, I may have mellowed a bit in my old age.”

“And fraternizing very, very well, may I say,” she purred, leaning over to kiss him. “I’m just glad for the break. It seems like we’ve been on battle stations for days.”

“If we do find a way to detect the wormholes,” Vinnie said, “we’ll probably be on battle stations for the foreseeable future.”

“Can I ask you something totally stupid that you’ve probably had to answer a million times before?”

“You can ask me anything except to leave you alone, darlin’,” Vinnie cracked.

She seemed reluctant, but finally managed to say it. “Everyone’s seen the movie and the newscasts, and I know you’re going to want to toe the party line, but tell me honestly: Colonel McKay and Major Stark… were they really that, you know…” She shook her head, looking for a word.

“Heroic?” He supplied, grinning. “Larger than life?”

“Yes,” she laughed. “I guess. You know how stuff gets exaggerated.”

Vinnie stared into space for a moment, thinking how to answer the question. “The first thing you gotta’ understand,” he began, “is that they’re very different people. Different leadership styles, different personalities, sometimes different priorities. How they wound up working so well together… and becoming a couple… is still a mystery to me. Major Stark is very calculating, almost cold. She will risk her life in a heartbeat if it’s the best way to accomplish the mission, but she also knows that sometimes as a commander, you have to put other people in situations that might kill them while you manage the situation from the rear.

“The Colonel, now, he was a Marine like me and he never met a door he didn’t want to bust in. He leads from the front, guns blazing and I think he figures, if he bites a bullet, the guys coming up behind him should have been trained well enough to take over. Don’t get me wrong,” he said quickly, “he’s smart too, and he has really good instincts, but he’s also got some great big cajones and a conscience that won’t let him order someone to do something he hasn’t done himself first. And the thing that makes it even more… awesome, I guess, is that I know him well enough now to know that he is scared when he does that shit. And he does it anyway, and he does it just as good as any of us door-kickers.”

“You sound like you like him,” Esmeralda commented, keen interest in her eyes.

“Darlin’,” he corrected her, “I love the man like he was my own family. More, since a lot of my family are shitbirds. You asked me if he and Major Stark were heroes… that’s an easy one. Everyone in the war was a hero. Bunch of cops and Republic Service Corps janitors taking the Defense Satellite Control Center, damn straight they were all heroes. And our team with two squads of Marines boarding the Protectorate flag ship. Ari Shamir realizing he was walking into a trap and finding a way to spring us from it, Gunny Lambert saving us all from a grenade by giving up his life, they were heroes.

“But the one thing that Colonel McKay did that made me love him like a brother, that made me respect him like I’ve never respected another officer, was when we were on Pallas, and Admiral Patel and Captain Minishimi were arguing about what to do and Colonel McKay realized that someone had to take charge and make a decision and he had the balls to tell them so. And then when both of them had the damn nerve to ask a Captain-and an Intelligence Captain at that, an O-3, not a Fleet Captain O-6-to take charge of the whole thing and he said yes. That’s what took some balls. I can’t imagine saying yes to that, when screwing up means you’ve just lost the whole damn planet.”

“Wow,” Esmeralda murmured. “I can’t imagine Admiral Patel doing that… handing off responsibility to a junior officer like that. He seems so… confident.”

Vinnie frowned, head cocked thoughtfully. “You know, that’s true. He has seemed awfully sure of himself since then. Especially on this mission.”

“Maybe he decided that’s how he had to be if he was going to be the Fleet admiral,” she suggested.

“I know plenty of guys who pretend to be confident, darlin’. The Marines are full of ‘em, and we get more than our share in the recruits for Special Ops. He really is confident.” He shrugged it off. “People can change, I guess.”

“I’m sure they can, corazon,” she said, nibbling at his earlobe, “but we only have a couple hours left and I would hate to waste them talking about the Admiral…”

“That is all I can remember,” Konstantin Mironov concluded, letting out a breath and then taking a sip from the bulb of water that had been attached to the table by an adhesive strip.

McKay translated the last of Mironov’s directions to Lt. Sweeny, who was feeding them into the ship’s navigation system in the ship’s auxiliary control room, away from the noise and bustle of the main bridge.

“Okay, got it,” Sweeny said as he adjusted the virtual template and saved it in the navigation system. “Thanks, Mr. Mironov,” the Helmsman nodded to the Russian drive tech. “With that, we should at least know if we’re in a jump or two of Novoye Rodina. Now I just have to get all that ready to present to the Admiral in…” He checked his ‘link. “Christ, in an hour.” He glanced up at McKay. “Sorry sir, but I need to work on this, if you’ll excuse me?”

“No problem, Lieutenant,” McKay assured him. “I need to go grab some food anyway. You want some lunch, Konstantin?”

“I do not eat too much in this no gravity,” Mironov said in English, making a sour face.

“There’s an officer’s mess in the gravity drum,” McKay told him, pushing off from the worktable. “Come on, I’ll buy you a soy burger.”

A few minutes later, they were both reveling in the pleasures of eating a meal under normal gravity, if not the meal itself.

“This tastes like shit,” Mironov commented as he took another bite of the soy burger.

“Well yeah,” McKay acknowledged with a shrug. “We can grow cloned cow muscle in a factory, but there isn’t much room for food freezers on a starship. It’s either fresh soy or reconstituted dried meat. Trust me, this is better. What did you eat on your ships?” He frowned curiously.

“We ate shit, mostly,” Mironov admitted after taking a moment to find the right words. “But I got spoiled in my time on the outposts. They had to be self-sustaining, so they had pens with animals.”

“Earth animals?” McKay asked. “Where did you guys get Earth animals?”

Mironov looked uncomfortable answering, but he finally replied. “From the colony ships that General Antonov pirated. The cloned animal fetuses you had frozen. He duplicated them in the nano vats on Novoye Rodina.”

McKay just nodded, not trusting himself to comment on that without getting angry. Tens of thousands of colonists had been murdered by Antonov and his clone troopers before the war and during the invasion of Aphrodite.

“So, Konstantin,” he changed the subject. “Do you… did you have family? On Earth?”

The Russian shook his head. “Not alive. My parents and my sister died in the war with China a long time ago. I was not married… though there was this one girl…”

“Tell me about her,” McKay urged.

“She was beautiful,” Mironov said with a sad smile. “She had this long, blond hair that I could just lose myself in.” He shrugged. “But she is long gone now. And I am alone.”

““Did she die in the war as well?” McKay asked solicitously.

Konstantin gave him a look that made his blood go cold. “Yes, she died in the war, Colonel McKay.”

“Sorry,” McKay said, holding up a hand. “Didn’t mean to open up a sore subject, Konstantin.”

“No,” the Russian shook his head, “it is all right. Sometimes the memories… they get the best of me. Living this long, the brain was not built for it, you know? The old memories seem more recent sometimes than the new ones, you know? When I thought of her, of Yevgenia, the old anger came back as if we were still at war.”

We? McKay thought.

“You were at war with the Chinese,” McKay reminded him quietly, “not America.”

“They were pawns of the Americans,” he said with an air of one who’d used the line before. “But it is no matter. It was a long time ago.”

“Yes it was,” McKay said with a neutral voice. Holy shit, he thought, guarding his face carefully, D’mitry is right: this guy is over the edge. I need to talk to Patel about this…  “Well,” McKay went on aloud, making a show of checking his ‘link, “the Admiral has had all his consultations by now, so I had better get to his office and see if he needs my input. You can stay here and eat some more if you like, or there’s also a gym and a sim room and a ViR theater. If you hear the warning klaxon, it means we’re going back on alert and the drum rotation is about to stop, so hold onto something.”

“I understand,” Mironov told him. “I will finish eating then go back to my quarters.” He shrugged. “I do not need entertainment. After all these years, I have little need of anything.”

“Come.”

At the invitation over the exterior speaker, McKay palmed the door plate to the Admiral’s office/cabin and pulled himself inside. Patel was alone in the flag cabin, belted into his chair to give him better access to the readouts and holographic projections that covered the surface of the desk. He glanced up at McKay and waved him over,

“Well, here it is, McKay,” he gestured at the data. “Everything we know and everything we can do.”

“Did you give the order, sir?”

“Yes, I did,” Patel replied, still staring at the readouts. “I hate losing the lasers, but I’d hate to lose our FTL drives a lot more.” He jabbed a finger at a projection that floated above the surface of the desk top. “Pirelli did it, McKay. She’s a hell of an officer. She’ll be a Captain soon.”

“She found a way to detect the wormholes?” McKay asked, excitement creeping into his voice as he drew closer to the projection. He couldn’t make much out of it: it was mostly mathematical symbols.

“She surely did,” Patel nodded. “Oh, you have to be at fairly close range-their gravimetic signature is small when they’re not open-but she thinks she’s found the other gate in this system already. As soon as the laser focusing field projectors are converted, we’ll be heading though it.” He looked away from the desk, catching McKay’s eye. “When that happens, I’m putting you, your team, the Marine platoons and all non-essential personnel in the shuttles and landers.”

“Sir?” McKay frowned.

“We’re jumping blind into what could wind up being the heart of enemy territory. I’m playing Russian roulette here with a starship full of good people. We know they have the ram ships outfitted with Eysselink field generators… if they score on us with one of them, we don’t have any friendly forces to cover us while we affect repairs. If that happens, I’m launching all shuttles and landers and whatever lifepods we can get loaded in time. If we’re in reach of a planet, make for it. You’ll be in command then.” At McKay’s doubtful look, he nodded. “I know, it’s a desperate measure, but what we’re about to do is a desperate move. Besides,” he added with an irreverent grin, “if anyone could find a way to pull it off, it’s you, McKay. You’re the luckiest son of a bitch I’ve ever met.”

“Your lips to God’s ears, sir,” McKay laughed. “But I have something else I wanted to tell you. It’s Mironov… Admiral, I think he’s not mentally stable.” He sighed. “To be honest, I think he’s totally fucking bugnuts.”

“Do you think this affects the reliability of the data he’s provided us?” Patel asked, steepling his fingers in front of him as he regarded McKay carefully.

“I don’t believe so. He’s not trying to deceive us… I just think his hold on reality is tenuous. As far as I can tell, he seems to regard everything happening around him as little more real than a ViR simulation.”

“You’ll have to keep an eye on him, McKay, but right now, I think he’s given us everything we can get from him and we have Antonov to worry about. Tell your people to get some sleep and get some food in them. We head through that gate in thirty six hours.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Wooden planks creaked under Daniel O’Keefe’s shoes as he stepped out of the back door of the cabin, fastening his jacket against the chill in the air. Spring in northern Minnesota was colder than winter in Capital City.

I’m getting soft, he thought to himself with a trace of bitterness. He’d once been used to the cold, fond of it even. He’d spent most of his youth in the family home outside Calgary, and it was no colder here than it had been there. But he’d spent too much of his life in Capital City, first as a Senator and then as President, and now he needed a jacket where once he would have worn shorts and a short-sleeved shirt. Old and soft.

He sat in the padded deck chair on the back porch of the cabin and stared up at the night sky. The stars were incredibly clear out here, away from the cities; countless hundreds of thousands of them stretched overhead in a breathtaking Sistine-Chapel ceiling painted by a universe-spanning divine Michelangelo. When he was a young man, O’Keefe had been fashionably atheistic, but as he grew older he found himself leaning towards something closer to a Jeffersonian Deism. He still couldn’t envision any sort of personal deity that meddled in the day-to-day affairs of men-or other beings-but he could very easily imagine a Watchmaker God that set the universe in motion then sat back to observe.

At the moment, he wished he could believe in a more personal God… because he very much wanted to pray. His son in law, a man he had trusted more than any other, a man he imagined could someday hold the very office he now occupied, was dead in a senseless act of violence that he still couldn’t fathom or understand. His daughter, the person who meant the most to him in all the world, someone he also envisioned as President one day, was missing for over a week.

How the hell, he raged inwardly, not for the first time, did the President’s daughter, a Republic Senator, go missing in this day and age?

Her car had been found abandoned in the Old City. The woman she’d gone there to meet was also missing and the security teams that had gone over the area had found nothing… except an unexplained blood stain in a nearby building. The press hadn’t stopped hounding him and everyone connected to his administration, interfering with his attempts to find her…

And then, over a very, very secure and private ‘link that only he and Jason McKay had supposedly known about, Shannon Stark had contacted him yesterday and told him to find a way to get out to Glen and Valerie’s vacation cabin and to bring Natalia with him.

He hadn’t told anyone why he was out here, just said that he needed a break from the pressure due to his daughter’s disappearance and his son-in-law’s murder. His staff had been quietly apoplectic at the thought of leaving Capital City with an economic crisis looming and the Biomech bill being argued in the Senate, and his Presidential Security Service agents had practically thrown a fit at the idea of an unscheduled visit to such an unprotected spot.

But he had put his foot down and here he was. There were no agents and no staff on the grounds of the cabin, just a security perimeter thrown up at the major roads within twenty kilometers and a complete air cordon. Natalia was asleep inside… finally. His gut clenched at the memory of her helpless cries for her mother and father, at her sobs as she cried herself to sleep in her mother’s bed. He’d fought back sobs himself, remembering how Valerie had cried all night the day her mother had been killed in a terrorist attack in Europe so many years ago.

His ‘link buzzed in his pocket and he pulled the bud off of it and put it in his ear.

“O’Keefe,” he snapped.

“Mr. President,” he heard the voice of Agent Havelock, his chief of security. “there’s a flyer approaching the air cordon. It’s registered to a rental company in Houston ‘plex. We hailed it and all the driver would say was that you were expecting company.”

“Let it through,” O’Keefe ordered instantly. “And Havelock, I don’t want any record it was ever here.”

“Yes, sir,” the man said with a resigned sigh.

O’Keefe broke the connection and levered himself from the chair. He could hear the whine of the turbines as the flyer came in over the lake, though he couldn’t see it: it was running without lights and there was no moon tonight. He had a vague impression of something dark passing in front of the stars and a wind tugged at his hair, rustled the leaves on the trees around the lake.

Then he could see the shape of it, a black shadow across his vision as it landed in the meadow beyond the back porch, the fan humming as it slowed, the turbine whining down. He forced himself not to run as he approached it, even as the clamshell doors opened and light leaked out from the interior, silhouetting the vehicle’s passengers as they clambered out.

But when the light fell on the face of one and he saw that it was Valerie, he couldn’t hold back: he ran across the meadow and pulled her into his arms, half sobbing as he held her.

“Oh my God, honey, I am so glad you’re alive! When they found your car…”

“I’m sorry, daddy,” she said soothingly. “I am so sorry I put you through all this.”

O’Keefe held her at arm’s length, looking her up and down. “Are you all right? Were you hurt? What were you doing in the Old City anyway?”

“I’m fine, daddy,” she assured him. “We should go inside: we need to talk.”

For the first time, O’Keefe looked beyond Valerie to Shannon, who was sealing the flyer’s doors. “Tell me you didn’t involve my daughter in your cloak-and-dagger bullshit, Stark,” he hissed.

Shannon winced, hesitated.

“Daddy,” Valerie interrupted, putting a hand on his arm, “don’t. I called her. I didn’t accept the circumstances of Glen’s death and I wanted to look into it, but I knew it would be dangerous, so I asked her to back me up. She kept me safe.”

O’Keefe’s expression softened and regret showed on his face. “I’m sorry, Major Stark,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s just been a very… stressful few days.”

“I’m afraid it’s going to get much worse, Mr. President,” she told him. “Let’s go inside… we have a lot to talk about.”

From the opposite side of the desk, Shannon watched the President’s eyes get wider and wider as he watched one video after another, culminating with the video recording of Liam’s testimony.

“God in Heaven,” O’Keefe breathed. He looked up at Shannon, then back and forth between her and Valerie, disbelief in his eyes. “You can’t be saying… I can’t believe…” He shook his head, trying to come up with something coherent to say. “What proof do we have of any of this?”

“Well sir,” Shannon ticked off on her finger, “we have first-hand testimony that the Colonial Guard mutiny is real, and we have eyewitness evidence that it is connected to the multicorps via this Lone Star Security, where Hellene D’Annique works. Colonel Lee was told by D’Annique that there would be an assassination attempt on you via an orbital strike timed to coincide with the return of the Decatur-well, let me clarify, we think he meant the Decatur, we have no names or specific ships. We also know that the merc who murdered Glen Mulrooney and tried to kill Valerie was hired by a shell company with ties to Lone Star Security, and we know he was only hired to do this after Glen began asking his friend the journalist to look into the background of Vice President Dominguez.”

She shook her head. “As for the rest… we only have Mr. Bryant’s testimony under chemical interrogation to say that Antonov was involved with this or that this story about…” She searched for a word. “…duplication, I suppose, is true. Investigator Kovach vouches for the accuracy of information obtained through the combination of drugs, but there is no psycho-medical study that confirms that those memories are real and not fantasy. Still sir,” she pointed out forcefully, “something happened on that trip to Aphrodite. Bryant was on it and immediately developed psychological problems. D’Annique was on it and immediately quit the Fleet and is now working against your government. And Vice President Dominguez was on it and is, we know, at least tangentially involved in all this.”

She shook her head. “Once is happenstance,” she quoted, “twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.”

“If Antonov isn’t behind this,” Valerie said thoughtfully, “someone has gone through a lot of trouble to make us think he is. If the attack on the outpost was staged to draw away Jason or you, Shannon, and to get some of the Fleet out of the way… there has to be involvement by some of the top officers in the Republic Spacefleet.”

“Jesus,” O’Keefe murmured, burying his face in his hands for a moment. When he looked back up, his eyes were haunted, his face pale. “So either a sizable percentage of the military and the multicorps are conspiring in an elaborate plot to assassinate me and overthrow our elected government, or Antonov has access to technology that can duplicate people and has foisted a copy of the Vice President on us and brainwashed the entire crew of a starship, including Admiral Patel and possibly General Kage.” He laughed a bit maniacally. “I can’t honestly say which of those possibilities I find worse.”

Still chuckling, he stood from the desk and went to the bar against the far wall, pulling out a bottle of Scotch and pouring himself a tall glass of it. He downed half of it in one gulp, then closed his eyes and took a deep breath to steady himself. “I used to feel sorry for Greg Jameson, you know,” he went on, refilling his own glass and pouring one for each of them. “He had to handle Antonov’s invasion, being a prisoner, almost dying, the war… and of course the economic aftermath.” He set the glasses in front of both of the women at the desk, then retrieved his own and sat back down with them. “I used to think it wasn’t fair that all that was dumped on his head. Now…” He shook his head. “Now I wish that son of a bitch were back in office so he could deal with this.”

Valerie picked up her glass and took a long sip from it. “Daddy,” she said, “we… you have to make a decision. We have to do something and you have to be the one to make that call.”

O’Keefe caught Shannon’s eye. “You wouldn’t have come here without some ideas, Stark.”

“Yes, sir,” she confirmed, taking a long gulp from her own glass. The Scotch was old and smooth. “The most obvious course of action is to bring in D’Annique for interrogation and follow her trail up the line.”

“I assume there’s a downside to that other than the Constitutional and legal issues,” O’Keefe said dryly, “since that hasn’t stopped you so far.”

“The downside is that her disappearance would be noticed,” Shannon explained. “Which would give her superiors time to go to ground. Right now, so far as we know, whoever is behind this in the Fleet and the multicorps has no reason to think we’re onto any part of their plan beyond the Guard mutiny. If we grab D’Annique, they’ll know for sure, and whatever we did get from her might not be enough to make all the connections.”

“I see. So what are the alternatives?”

“Well,” she said, reluctantly, “there’s one that appeals to me on a visceral level but I doubt I can get you to approve.”

He looked at her and smiled shrewdly. “You want to put Xavier Dominguez in a hotbox and sweat him, don’t you, Major Stark?”

Shannon chuckled despite herself. “Yes, sir, I surely do. He’s the key to all this. None of it will work without him in place. If we take him off the board, we may remove the threat entirely.”

“That certainly makes sense,” O’Keefe admitted. “The problem is, we have no legal justification to do it; and unlike some psych burnout junior Fleet officer, we can’t make the Vice President disappear without raising more questions than I can answer and still stay president. No, barring an actual state of civil war, I don’t think kidnapping the Vice President is on the table.”

“Then there’s only one other option, sir,” Shannon told him. “We keep watching D’Annique and hope she leads us to someone bigger… and we wait for the other side to make their move and hope we can get you through it alive when it comes.”

O’Keefe slumped back in his seat, rubbing the back of his head tiredly. “If this isn’t Antonov,” he began uncertainly, “if it’s just a home-grown coup attempt… I wonder if I should approach Dominguez myself and try to make a deal.”

“Mr. President?” Shannon’s eyes went wide.

“Daddy, you can’t deal with these people!” Valerie exclaimed. “They murdered Glen!”

“Look, Major Stark, Valerie,” O’Keefe held up his hands palms-up in a helpless gesture, “I’m not sure if either of you realizes just how tenuous a position our economy is in right now. It can’t take another war, particularly not a bitter and bloody civil war. The economy will collapse, the Republic government will collapse and we will have one would-be warlord after another vying to take over what’s left. Millions of innocent people will die, maybe tens of millions. Nuclear weapons, kinetic kill weapons from space, biological weapons… if there’s a protracted civil war, any of those can and will be used.”

“What sort of a deal would you propose?” Shannon asked quietly, the wheels turning behind her eyes.

O’Keefe shrugged. “Whatever it would take. I would step down, let Dominguez take power peacefully.”

“He’ll start the forced emigration again,” Valerie reminded him. “Worse than before, since he’s in the multicorps’ pockets. And I doubt he’ll be willing to sit back and let the voters decide if he stays in office when the elections come up. You’ll be dooming the whole world… and many others… to dictatorship, Daddy.”

“And if the choice is between that and death, chaos, starvation and possibly the end of our civilization, honey? What do you think those who are forced to go to the colonies would choose, death or exile?”

“They should have the right to choose that for themselves!” She insisted, leaning over the desk towards him.

“Yes they should, sweetheart,” he agreed. “But if I can’t keep them safe any other way…”

“Mr. President,” Shannon interrupted, “I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. We don’t know that Antonov and his forces are not involved, and if they are, there really is no choice of stepping aside. Antonov will smash the Republic and install a dictatorship with him at the head and I think we both agree that is not something that is preferable to war, don’t we?”

“Yes,” O’Keefe nodded reluctantly. “If it is Antonov, we have no choice but to fight.”

“Well, sir,” she pointed out gently, “you’ve told us we can’t interrogate the Vice President. I’m not sure D’Annique would know even if we did grab her. So, we won’t know if it’s Antonov or not until after the conspirators make their move, will we?”

O’Keefe shook his head, grinning ruefully in admiration. “McKay always reminds me that you’re the brains of the operation, Major Stark. So, my noble sacrifice is put on hold. It seems we don’t have a choice but to wait this out.”

“Hold on,” Valerie said, eyes narrowing in thought. “You know, Daddy, maybe you should talk to Dominguez after all.”

“Val?” Shannon shot the other woman a questioning look.

“You were right, Shannon, we can’t surrender. And daddy, you’re right, we can’t kidnap and interrogate the Vice President.” Val grinned the grin of a shark that had just smelled blood. “But there’s no reason that Dominguez needs to know he’s being interrogated…”

* * *

Xavier Dominguez cut quite a figure, Roza Kovach admitted to herself as she watched the man step out of the flyer flanked by security agents. He was tall and trim with a look of whipcord strength beneath his perfectly tailored Italian suit, and his face was lean and sculpted, his dark eyes showing just the right touch of compassion and sympathy for a politician… or a salesman. Not that there was much difference between the two professions, she reflected cynically.

Right now, though, she could see in those salesman’s eyes a hint of the annoyance he must feel at being called away from Capital City out to President O’Keefe’s family home outside Calgary. The estate was large and well-tended, the house a multistory Tudor built over a century ago and pretty in a quaint sort of way. Roza had never been there before, of course, but she’d become very familiar with it in the last two days of preparation. She still felt hideously out of place, however, in the expensive designer business suit that Major Stark had insisted she wear.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Vice President,” she greeted him as he approached the back patio of the house, the security agents taking up their positions at its edge. “I’m Rachel Kosar from President O’Keefe’s Calgary office. He’s waiting for you in his office, if you’ll follow me.”

“He’s inside,” Ari told Shannon, watching Dominguez over a security monitor in a small office in a far corner of the house. It had been previously used as a guest room, but two days of frantic effort had filled it with monitoring equipment and various other high-tech gadgets brought in from the Special Operations training center by Tom Crossman.

“Get a baseline on his biometric readings,” she told him, pacing the small room behind him. She seemed, Ari thought, as nervous as he had ever seen her, and he couldn’t blame her. This was extremely risky, not only to their lives and careers but to the future of… hell, of humanity, he realized.

“I’m recording his bio readings,” Ari confirmed. He worked his mouth after he said the words… his face was still sore. He’d taken advantage of the time it had taken to get the equipment in place to see a restruct surgeon and get his old face back and it was still healing.

Watching Roza lead the Vice President through the house, he thought of how she had reacted when he’d returned from the surgery. “We have a strange relationship, my love,” she’d remarked. “I feel like I’m cheating on you… with you!”

He could see a reflection of himself in an inactive monitor at the edge of the display and it almost seemed to strange to him to have his own face back. But he’d decided that if they were facing imminent disaster, he’d rather go out with his own face than a borrowed one.

“Mr. President,” he could hear Roza saying as she knocked on the office door. It was real wood, with a brass knob, no intercom or any other electronics.

“Come in,” O’Keefe said in a subdued voice that barely carried through the door.

Roza pushed the door open and gestured to Dominguez to enter, then quickly retreated and closed the door behind her. O’Keefe was sitting at his antique oak desk, leaning back in a comfortable chair, his cowboy boots propped up on the desktop, hands folded across his chest. He made no move to get up.

“Have a seat, Xavier,” O’Keefe told his Vice President, waving at the very expensive leather-upholstered chair on the other side of the desk.

“Daniel,” Dominguez began, sinking into the chair and looking decidedly uncomfortable, “things are not good right now. You shouldn’t be all the way out here in Calgary, much less both of us. What the hell is going on?”

O’Keefe swung his legs off the desk and reached behind it to a low shelf, grabbing a half-empty bottle of bourbon and two glasses. He poured two fingers into each of them and set one in front of Dominguez.

“Have a drink with me Xavier,” he said, picking up one of them.

“Daniel, I don’t want a drink,” the other man insisted, shaking his head. “I want to know why you’re hiding here in Canada and I definitely want to know why you dragged me out here. The press is eating this up, you know that, right? I know you’re worried about your daughter, but the police are doing everything they can to find her… I’m sure she’s going to be all right.”

“Xavier, I’m asking you as a friend… have a drink with me in memory of my son-in-law.”

Dominguez sighed, then picked up the glass. “All right, Daniel,” he gave in, matching the other man’s toast and downing the bourbon with a barely-concealed look of distaste.

“Are we looping the bio readouts?” Shannon asked Ari back in the spare office, her eyes locked on a monitor that was showing Dominguez’s vital signs, a spectroanalysis of his breathing and skin temperature.

“We’ve jammed the signal from his implant,” Ari confirmed. “I’m rebroadcasting the loop from earlier.”

The President and Vice President and the Senate Majority Leader, uniquely among all Republic officials, were outfitted with health monitor implants that broadcast their biological readouts to the Security Service so that they could be treated immediately in the event of a health emergency. Circumventing this was the reason for all the equipment that packed the little office. More was hidden in the house’s attic and basement… and Ari hoped to God that none of the Security agents stumbled onto it…

“All right, Daniel,” Xavier said firmly, setting his glass on the desk. “Tell me why I’m here or I’m leaving right now.”

“I promise I will,” O’Keefe told him. “And I promise you, Xavier, it is important. There have been things happening lately, things I never would have believed could happen. Like Glen’s murder.”

“Yes,” Dominguez said slowly. O’Keefe looked at the other man closely, saw that he was blinking his eyes irregularly, leaning back in his chair a bit more heavily… “Yes, I understand that, Daniel,” Xavier said, voice a bit softer and slower than it had been. “But we have the whole Republic to think about. God,” he rubbed his eyes, “I didn’t realize how tired I was. Shouldn’t have had that drink.”

“Xavier,” O’Keefe continued, “I’ve had an investigation going on. I’ve found out who killed Glen Mulrooney, and why.”

Xavier’s head snapped up and his eyes tried to focus on O’Keefe but failed. “I thought… I thought the target was the journalist.”

“They were both targeted,” O’Keefe corrected him. “Glen had asked Fuentes to look into someone. They were killed to keep what he found out quiet.”

“Who?” O’Keefe could see that Dominguez wanted to say more but didn’t trust himself to do it.

“You, Xavier,” O’Keefe told him. “They were investigating you. And what happened to you on that mission to Aphrodite five years ago, just after the war.”

Dominguez’s eyes went wide, his self-control compromised by the drugs that had coated the interior of the glass from which he’d drunk the bourbon. “Jesus, Daniel, you can’t know this,” he shook his head, trying to lever himself out of the chair but somehow lacking the strength. “They’ll kill you when they find out you know.”

“They’re planning to kill me anyway, Xavier,” O’Keefe reminded him. “And when they do, do you think that it’s going to be easy? That the military and the government are going to follow you because you’re the Vice President?”

“They said there wouldn’t be any other choice,” Dominguez agreed, his eyes seemingly horrified at what his mouth was saying. “They’ll be looking for a leader and I’ll be there to lead them.”

“And who’s ‘they,’ Xavier?” O’Keefe demanded. “Who made you all those promises? Who’s your contact?”

“Lobbyist for Republic Mineral Resources multicorp,” Dominguez told him. “Guy named Fourcade.”

“How shocking,” O’Keefe muttered dryly. “And who else does Mr. Fourcade say is involved in this?”

Dominguez shook his head. “He says it’s better that I don’t know. The fewer people who know, the better. Hell, I didn’t even have to do anything. Just wait for you to die, then take office and we could start undoing the damage you did with your emigration policies.”

“You supported those policies too, Xavier,” O’Keefe snarled at him, leaning across the desk. “You were elected as Senator because of your support for them! When did you change your mind on that?”

“I..,” Dominguez’s face went slack and he looked as if he were about to fall unconscious, but then he shook himself. “I don’t remember ever feeling like that. I know I did. I’ve seen the voting records, the speeches. I know I did… but I can’t remember why.”

“What happened on that trip to Aphrodite, Xavier?” O’Keefe asked him, elbows resting on the desk as he studied the man, as if he could discern the truth if he watched him closely enough.

“I don’t know,” Dominguez replied.

“What happened on the trip to Aphrodite?” O’Keefe repeated, slamming his fist on the desk.

“I don’t know,” Dominguez insisted sullenly. “I can’t remember any of it. I just have this weird… divide in my memory. Like everything that happened before the trip is… muffled somehow. Not real, or less real. Like I had been sleeping my whole life and just woke up after that trip. Fourcade said something happened on the trip, too… he said it was key to what we are going to do, but he wouldn’t tell me. I don’t think he trusts me.”

“So why do you trust him?” O’Keefe wanted to know. “Why are you going along with this?”

Dominguez blinked, his face showing some surprise. “It never occurred to me that I shouldn’t,” he admitted. “It seemed… right. Like it’s what I had been waiting for.”

O’Keefe looked up to where he knew the video pickup was located. “Is that enough?”

“No,” Shannon told him over his ear bud, “but it’s all we’re going to get. Go ahead and cut him loose.”

The President sighed in frustration, then turned back to Dominguez. “Xavier, in a moment, I am going to give you another drink. After you drink it, you’re going to go to my guest room and take a nap. When you wake up, you’re going to remember that we had a conversation about how worried I was about Valerie and how I thought you should deliver my scheduled speech to the Senate next week.”

“I can’t!” Dominguez exclaimed, surprising both O’Keefe and Shannon.

“You can’t what, Xavier?”

“I can’t give that speech… I won’t be anywhere near the Senate! I’ve been ordered not to.” He hesitated. “He wouldn’t tell me why… but I’ve been thinking, and I think that’s when they’re planning on having you killed.”

Ari stared at the screen for a second, then looked at Shannon, who was frozen in place with shock.

“Oh shit,” he muttered.

Chapter Twenty-Two

“Welcome aboard, Colonel,” Esmeralda Villanueva said to Jason McKay as he moved into the cockpit of the shuttle, pulling himself into the seat behind the command station, strapping himself in next to Vinnie and Jock.

“Thanks, Commander,” he told her. “Tell me, can you link your main viewer to the one on the bridge?”

“Not a problem, sir,” she assured him, adjusting the screen controls until it showed the tactical readout from the bridge, complete with an avatar of the wormhole they were about to transit.

“We’re in range of the gate, sir,” they could hear Pirelli’s clear contralto over the intercom.

“Where’re our resident Russians?” Vinnie leaned over to ask.

“Locked in their cabins and strapped to acceleration couches,” McKay replied.

“Best place for ‘em,” Jock muttered.

“Activate the emitters,” Patel ordered from the bridge. “Helm, ready the pulse drives.”

“Well, here we go again,” Vinnie said under his breath.

“At least we aren’t chasing the ass-end of a fusion drive this time,” Jock mused

The stars ahead of them disappeared as the wormhole opened, then the Sheridan lurched forward under the thrust of the plasma drives. McKay clenched his jaw and gripped the arms of his acceleration couch tightly, preparing himself for the transition, but it didn’t seem to help. Reality abandoned him and left him naked to what was beyond, what couldn’t be perceived by the human mind, for just a fleeting moment that lasted all of eternity and yet no time at all.

And then they were through. “Oh man,” Jock moaned, “Thursday smells horrible.”

McKay let out the breath that he’d been holding for light years and tried to focus his eyes on the viewscreen, where a small, bright primary star and a nearby gas giant were already visible. An alarm began to sound as threat icons popped up on the screen and Pirelli’s voice came over the speakers. “We have multiple bogies within three light seconds… we are being scanned on active radar and lidar.”

“Drive field reactivated,” Sweeny announced.

“Commander Pirelli,” Patel spoke up, “where are we on an analysis of the system?”

“Sensor sweep in progress,” she informed him. “Gauss cannon capacitors charged and ready. Two of the bogies are accelerating our way.”

As she spoke, McKay could see the viewscreen filling in the details of the system, adding detail to the gas giant and adding three large moons to its orbit, two of them marked with the blue and green coloration of habitable worlds… and then adding another jumpgate less than a light second from the one they’d just exited.

“We have the next wormhole located,” Pirelli noted. “Still scanning for Mr. Mironov’s parameters.”

“Helm,” Patel ordered calmly, “make for that gate, one g acceleration analog.”

“Aye, sir,” Sweeny confirmed and in the shuttle they could feel the pressure of their normal Earth weight pushing them into their couches.

“Admiral,” Pirelli reported, excitement creeping into her voice, “we have it… this is one of the systems Mr. Mironov told us about! If he’s right, we should be two jumps away from Novoye Rodina!”

“Excellent, Commander. Is there any sign of the Eysselink-equipped ramships?”

“Negative sir,” Pirelli told him. “Not close enough for us to detect anyway-our gravimetic sensor range is only about five light seconds with the weaker emitters. The two ships heading for us are conventional fusion pulse drive. We should be at the next gate before they intercept.”

“Admiral Patel,” McKay spoke over his ‘link, hooked to the intercom speakers on the bridge.

“Yes, Colonel McKay?” Patel looked up at the interruption.

“Sir, this close to their home system, we have to assume they have communications set up through the gates. From here on out, they’ll be waiting for us.”

“Understood,” Patel assured him. He glanced at Sweeny. “Helm, I don’t suppose we have any idea what would happen if we transited the wormhole with our Eysselink field engaged?”

“I couldn’t tell you precisely without running some experiments, sir,” the officer told him deadpan, “but my assumption would be: bad things.”

“Don’t try dazzling me with your technical terms, young man,” Patel replied dryly. “All right… on the chance that our computers recover from the transition faster than we do, create a subroutine that activates the drive as soon as we’ve exited the hole.”

“On it, sir,” Sweeny said, then began mumbling to the computer input as his hands traced commands on the ViR board projected in front of him.

“If they have those damned rams on the other side waiting for us,” Vinnie said to McKay, Jock and Villanueva, “it won’t matter if our drives are activated or not.”

“That’s why we’re on the shuttle, Vinnie,” McKay reminded him impassively, doing his best to project confidence despite not feeling it.

The minutes passed by insufferably slow, with the Protectorate ships growing ever closer until smaller icons split off from the larger ones, speeding forward just ahead of them.

“The Protectorate ships have launched Shipbuster missiles,” Pirelli announced. “Accelerating at ten G’s. We should be able to beat them to the gate still, but it’s going to be close.”

“Increase to one and a half G acceleration,” Patel ordered.

McKay’s chest ached as he was pushed back into his acceleration couch, but the ship began to inch slightly ahead of the oncoming missiles.

“We’re approaching turnover,” Sweeny warned. “We need to start decelerating.”

“Negative,” Patel snapped. “Open the gate, then cut the field… we’re going through at speed!”

“Aye, sir,” Sweeny acknowledged, doubt in his voice. “Preparing to open the gate.”

“Well, that’s one way to avoid an ambush,” Vinnie grunted. “We’re going to be at relativistic speeds when we come out of the gate.”

“Prepare for high-g deceleration once we’re through the gate,” Patel warned.

“Cause there’s nothing we love more than negative G’s,” Jock said cheerfully inside the shuttle.

“Activating the emitters,” Sweeny announced.

“The gate is opening,” Pirelli said. “Transition in ten seconds.”

Another slide down the rabbit hole of unreality ended with a brain-bending jerk light years away and when McKay returned to coherence, the viewscreen was a sea of white and alarms were sounding.

“…were fusion mines,” Pirelli was saying. “We just shot through a minefield around the gate exit at about a quarter lightspeed! The computer activated the drive field in time… we’re okay!”

“Emergency high-G deceleration,” Patel ordered. “Then get us to the last gate!”

The emergency boost alarm sounded and McKay pulled his straps tighter as the ship flipped end for end under maneuvering thrusters in preparation for deceleration.

“We have at least four bogies around the gate area,” Pirelli reported. “We’re out of range for more details until we get closer.”

McKay was just noticing the details filling in on the viewscreen: a red dwarf primary surrounded by layers of asteroids, with what looked to be a cold gas giant beyond the fields; when the boost hit and he was crushed into his seat and nearly into unconsciousness by five gravities worth of deceleration analog-the Eysselink stardrive expanding space behind them like a cosmic boat propeller and the energy building up in the gravito-inertial spectrum until it was forced to feed back into four-dimensional space as gravity analogous to the acceleration or deceleration.

The Eysselink drive made star travel possible, but the damn feedback made the g-tanks necessary for long journeys and made tactical maneuvering a nightmare. McKay had heard they were working on a neural interface to make it possible to control the ship while in the g-tanks, but the prospect of being awake while breathing liquid scared the shit out of him.

Then again, he reflected dimly, from some far distant part of his mind that somehow retained consciousness during the brutal deceleration, breathing liquid didn’t seem as bad as not breathing at all.

Finally, after what seemed like hours of torture, the boost ended and his vision returned along with an agonizing pounding in his head and he could hear a collective gasp both in the shuttle and on the bridge as two dozen people took a deep breath simultaneously.

“Executing turnover,” Sweeny reported. “Preparing for acceleration back to the next gate. Should take about five minutes at one and a half g’s.”

“Tactical,” Patel ordered, “once we hit turnover, I want three spreads of Area Denial missiles launched and detonated just short of the gate in intervals of a thousand kilometers. And launch them quickly… I want our drive field back up with as little delay as possible.”

“Aye sir, preparing to launch now.”

“Area Denial missiles?” Jock murmured a question to Vinnie that McKay barely overheard. Vinnie shot him a baleful glance and Jock shrugged apologetically. “Ay, Captain sir, I’m busy enough keeping track of new infantry weapons!”

“They’re small,” Vinnie told him, sighing like a teacher lecturing a slow student, “launched out of the Gauss cannon coils and then they have a quick burnout solid-core fission drive to take them the rest of the way. They have a small fusion warhead surrounded by lasing rods; when the warhead goes, the rods blast the immediate area with gamma-ray lasers. Takes out any mines, smaller blockade ships, etc… He’s trying to clear the mines before we head through the gate.”

“Launching ADM’s,” Pirelli announced, and a section of the main viewscreen showed dozens of small missiles shooting from the weapons pods so fast they could barely be seen. “That’s the last of them, Admiral.”

“Helm, take us to the wormhole at one point five g’s,” Patel instructed.

One and a half gravities seemed gentle compared to the high gravity deceleration they’d just experienced and McKay was able to keep his attention on the screen display. Six enemy ships were insystem, four of them arrayed around the gate that should lead them to Novoye Rodina. Two of the four were accelerating to intercept the Sheridan, the flare of fusion pulse drives at their tails.

“Admiral,” Pirelli said sharply, “one of the ships heading for us is a rammer. He’s trailing the lighter… same tactic they used with the Decatur.”

“Are the AD missiles going to hit them before they reach us?’

“The first two waves are past their position…” Pirelli reported, checking a sensor readout. “The third… is in range and detonating now.”

A series of flashes on the screen simulated the warheads exploding less than a light-second from the Sheridan, a halo of light surrounding each detonation signifying the ignition of the gamma-ray lasers surrounding each warhead.

“Looks like positive hits on the two ships,” Pirelli said. “Not sure of the damage yet.”

Then without warning, the lead ship, a pirated and converted freighter, was consumed in a huge fusion explosion that expanded into a glowing spherical cloud of gas and debris. A brief cheer erupted on the bridge. “Got her!” Pirelli exclaimed. “The grasers must have ignited her hydrogen fuel stores!”

“What about the rammer?” Patel demanded.

“Can’t tell yet, sir,” Pirelli shook her head. “The explosion is masking her… no, wait! I’m getting her Eysselink signature now… she’s activated her drive field.”

“Come on, Admiral, earn your pay,” Vinnie hissed. McKay glanced at him; he’d never known Vinnie to show nerves in the face of danger, but the man seemed rattled. McKay could sympathize: it was one thing to keep your head and your nerves in check when the bullets were flying and the adrenaline was flowing, it was another thing entirely to sit and wait while simulated icons on a screen decided whether you lived or died from thousands of kilometers away.

“No one has any experience fighting one Eysselink drive ship against another,” Villanueva mused from the pilot’s seat. She turned to Vinnie. “What would you do?”

“Long term,” he said after a moment’s consideration, “I’d develop a Shipbuster missile with an Eysselink drive. Short term… I’d try to use the gravimetic sensor emitters to destabilize her drive field.” He shrugged. “Couldn’t hurt.” McKay’s head snapped around and his mouth nearly fell open.

“Admiral,” McKay broadcast over his ‘link to the bridge speakers, “Vinnie had an idea… would it be possible to use our gravimetic emitters to destabilize the rammer’s drive field?” Vinnie glanced at him wide-eyed, looking like he wanted to shush him.

“Pirelli?” Patel threw the question to his Tactical Officer.

“Theoretically it’s possible,” she allowed. “I don’t know what range we would have or how much damage we can do with the reconfigured laser focusing fields…”

“Pirelli, here’s what I want you to do,” Patel said with an intensity born of inspiration. “On my signal, deactivate our drive field, target her with the emitters, hit her with two volleys of Gauss cannon fire, then reactivate the field.”

“Aye, sir,” Pirelli acknowledged. “Helm, prepare to deactivate the drive field.”

“Ready when you are, Angie,” Sweeny said with a grin. She glanced at him sharply, then smiled in return.

“Bogie is two minutes out at current acceleration,” Pirelli announced. “I estimate another minute before our emitters would have any effect.”

“Jesus, sir,” Vinnie said quietly to McKay in the shuttle. “Way to leave my ass hanging in the wind if this doesn’t work.”

“But if it does work, you’ll be the hero of the day, Vinnie,” McKay countered, grinning widely. “By the way, when we get back-assuming we live through this-I think it’s pretty well past time to make you Major Mahoney.” He looked between Vinnie and Villanueva, still grinning. “Then you two can date without feeling guilty.”

Villanueva covered her mouth to suppress a bubbling laugh, but Jock didn’t even try… he guffawed loudly until Vinnie, red-faced, elbowed him in the ribs. “Stop braying you damn Aussie jackass,” he said, “or I’ll field-promote you to Lieutenant just so I can bust you to Sergeant again.”

“The rammer is one minute out,” Pirelli said. “Ready to hit her with the emitters, sir.”

“Drop the drive field,” Patel told Sweeny. “Tactical, activate the emitters and open fire with the Gauss cannons.”

“Aye, sir, firing now.”

On the screen, the computer simulated the beams of directed gravimetic energy as shimmering lines connecting the Sheridan to the ramship… and where they touched, there was a flickering in the blue halo that represented the ship’s Eysselink field until it winked out entirely. Then the streams of tungsten penetrators shot out from the ship’s accelerator coils and cored the defenseless ship like an apple, piercing her light hull armor as if it weren’t even there.

Burning oxygen shot out of the huge holes in the ramship’s hull as the streams of projectiles trailed down the length of the vessel and finally punctured the drive pods…

“Reactivate drive field now!” Patel snapped, leaning forward in his chair, knowing what was coming next.

Sweeny had just hit the controls and hadn’t even had time to speak the confirmation when the ramship’s containment fields failed and its antimatter fuel contacted the bare metal of the storage field projectors…

There was a fiercely bright light, like a star had ignited in space ahead of them and the optical viewers blanked out as their filters were overloaded, and then they were past the conflagration and heading for the exit gate.

Patel sat back in his chair with an exhale of relief that was inaudible over the cheers of the bridge crew. Sweeny and Pirelli shared a nod of congratulations, both of them grinning with triumph.

“My regards to Captain Mahoney,” Patel said with a slight upturn at the corner of his mouth. “Maybe we can keep you all on board after all.”

Valenzuela shot Vinnie a grin and Jock slapped him on the shoulder, then tried to fake an apologetic look. “Oh, sorry, sir… I shouldn’t have touched your august personage.”

“One minute to the gate unless you care to decelerate, Admiral,” Sweeny told him.

“I think we’ll take this one at speed as well, Helm,” Patel said, shaking his head. “Pirelli, the minute that gate is activated, I want a full spread of Area Denial missile shot through it… make sure they detonate before we get there, though.”

“Got it, sir… I recommend we decrease to one half G acceleration now.”

“Do it, Helm.”

After so long boosting at over one gravity acceleration, McKay felt like he might float away when the push decreased to a half G.

“Activating emitters now,” Sweeny said. “Gate is opening.”

“Launching missiles,” Pirelli said as two dozen of the weapons streaked out of the electromagnetic coils and disappeared through the wormhole.

“Gate entry in thirty seconds,” Sweeny said.

“Here’s where we find out if you live to be a major,” Jock said aside to Vinnie.

“Oh, sweet mother,” Cal Orton whispered from the copilot’s seat, crossing himself.

Darkness consumed the Sheridan once more and when the light returned it was also all-consuming, the spheres of fusion explosions lighting up space all around them. And in the midst of it all, a pair of warships bore down on them, so close they could see them on optical alone…

And then the drive field was up, as a chorus of voices began shouting status reports until Patel had to yell: “Silence on deck!” and they all ceased, leaving the bridge in an unnatural stillness.

“Tactical!” Patel looked to Pirelli.

“The AD missiles ignited several mines,” she reported quickly. “We have two bogies with a hundred kilometers… I think we took a Gauss round to the nose, but it didn’t penetrate the armor. Drive field is up and we’re good for now, but sensors are detecting at least one ramship within two light seconds. The primary here is a G5 main sequence star, there are three terrestrial planets and one large gas giant with five moons-we’re about two light seconds from the gas giant. It matches Mironov’s description of the system that holds Novoye Rodina.”

“Helm,” Patel said, turning to Sweeny.

“We’re running star patterns and constellations, should have a location in a few minutes. I’m detecting multiple gates in close proximity as well.”

“Accelerate to one point five gravities. Take us closer to Novoye Rodina,” Patel ordered. “I want to make a pass within optical range, get some details. Keep us ahead of those ramships though.”

“Accelerating to one point five g’s, aye,” Sweeny repeated, sliding a finger along a holographic projection to feed power to the Eysselink field. “Making course for a flyby of Novoye Rodina.”

The viewscreen showed the Protectorate ships beginning to fall behind as the Sheridan accelerated. The Protectorate vessels could probably make two or three g’s, McKay knew, but they couldn’t keep it up for long.

“Bogies are launching Shipbusters at us, sir,” Pirelli reported. “Four… no, six. Accelerating at ten gravities. They have to know they can’t hurt us with the drive field on, sir.”

“They may know that we can’t hurt them with the field on, Commander,” Patel reminded her. “And it will be chancier for us to make an attack of any sort with a whole row of Shipbusters lined up and waiting for our field to go down.”

As the ship swung around to make a run by the Protectorate homeworld, McKay could see the gas giant appear on the screen’s optical cameras. A dull orange, it had a clearly visible ring and as he watched a rocky, asteroidal moon passed across its mottled face.

“A lot of the gates seem to be near the orbits of gas giants,” he said to Patel over his ‘link. “That must be significant somehow.”

“Convenient source of energy and material,” the Admiral speculated. “Or perhaps the large gravity well has something to do with it. The science geeks can figure it out after the dust settles.”

McKay had to smile at that: Patel had graduated from MIT with a Masters in Theoretical Physics before going to Fleet Officers’ Candidate School. Most starship captains had a scientific background, but McKay happened to know that Patel was a dissertation away from his PhD-and likely would remain a dissertation away until he retired and had time for research.

Assuming we live long enough for him to retire, McKay had to remind himself. He fervently wished he were on the bridge; it felt incredibly claustrophobic in the shuttle cockpit. He knew it was purely psychological, that he was in instant contact with the bridge any time, but he also felt isolated down here in the shuttle bay, away from the place decisions were made.

“Admiral,” Commander Sweeny said, “we have the report from the star analysis: we know where we are. 59 Arietis… and it’s a long way from home, sir. We are 210 light years from Earth.”

McKay shaped a silent whistle. It would take them, he calculated, over two years to get home using the Eysselink drive… if they had enough antimatter, which they didn’t.

“I guess that settles that,” Patel murmured half to himself, apparently having done the same math in his head. “We’re taking the wormholes home or we’re not getting home.”

“Yes, sir,” Sweeny agreed. “It’s going to take us 40 hours to reach optical range of Novoye Rodina at our current acceleration sir.”

“Give it another… say, four hours, Mr. Sweeny, then take us down to one g acceleration. The ships pursuing us will be low on fuel by then and won’t be able to keep up their current acceleration any longer. McKay, when we slow to one g, I’m going to release everyone from the shuttles and landers until we get closer to the planet. No point in squatting in there for two days.” Patel grinned. “And I know how you miss standing behind my command chair, ready to jostle my elbow…”

“Something has been bothering me, D’mitry,” McKay said to Podbyrin as they faced each other over a chess board in the Russian’s quarters. They’d been released from the shuttles hours ago and McKay had decided to pay a visit to the man while he could, since he’d been unable to look in on him in person while baby-sitting Mironov.

“Is it the fact that I am about to take your rook?” Podbyrin asked, fingers working in anticipation as he waited for McKay to complete his move.

McKay frowned, realizing the box he’d been lured into. “No, though that is bothersome. What’s bothering me, D’mitry, is all the Protectorate ships we’ve been running into.”

“Well, you have been getting closer and closer to Novoye Rodina,” Podbyrin said with a shrug. “Did you not think you would meet Protectorate forces along the way?”

“He can’t have built all these ships in just the last few years,” McKay shook his head thoughtfully. “Most of them have been pirated freighters, even insystem ships he must have taken over the last few decades-ships we thought the Belt Pirates had grabbed. So if he had them, why didn’t he use them when he attacked Earth?”

“The answer to that is simple, McKay,” Podbyrin tsk’ed. “The more ships he brought with him to Earth, the better the chance that one of them would mutiny and surrender. General Antonov, as you may have gathered, is not a trusting man. It is one thing to leave a few ships in an isolated system when the captains do not have the coordinates of the wormholes that lead to Earth. It is another to show them the Promised Land and expect them to launch fusion bombs at it if your plan doesn’t work.”

“So the men he brought with him to Earth were his most trusted officers,” McKay mused. “And they all died. I wonder how he’s been able to maintain control since then?”

“Through fear and intimidation, I am sure,” the Russian officer responded with a snort. “As always. And who would not be intimidated? He still has his scientists, and they control the biomechs. The man can make people for Christ’s sake… and when some of them are as good looking as Yevgenia, well, you can buy many men’s loyalty with that sort of reward.”

“Yevgenia?” McKay frowned. He’d heard that name before, but he couldn’t remember where.

“Yes, that was his sex toy… that blonde thing on his ship. You told me she killed your Sergeant with a grenade. He named her after his wife… she died in the war with the Chinese, along with the rest of his surviving family.”

“Where have I heard that name before?” McKay fretted, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. He was sure he’d never known that the biomech woman had been named…

“Yevgenia…” He hissed the word. “His wife. His family… they died in the war.” His eyes went wide. “Oh holy shit!” He keyed his ‘link, calling ship’s security. “This is Colonel McKay, where is Mr. Mironov right now?”

“He complained of stomach pain, sir,” came the answer, “so we sent someone to escort him to sickbay. Let me check on the man I sent with him.” There was a pause that seemed way too long to McKay. “Uh, sir… Kowalski isn’t answering his ‘link. Let me check the monitors while I contact sickbay.” More moments passed, but McKay was already standing and heading for the cabin door. “Sir, Mironov never reported to sickbay… I haven’t been able to locate him yet.”

“We injected him with a transponder when he was captured,” McKay snapped, stepping out into the corridor. “It’s in your system’s file on him… find him now!” He glanced both ways along the corridor, trying to decide which way to go, which way made more sense… shuttle bay one direction, engineering and life support another.

“The transponder code is in the file, sir,” the security officer confirmed. “But it’s not responding. It’s not currently active.”

“Send out an immediate shipwide alert,” McKay ordered. “Make it a personal alert, over the ‘links… every ‘link except Kowalski’s. I want him found now. And I want engineering and the shuttle bays locked down… no one gets in but me or my people, not even security, you got it?”

“Yes, sir, Colonel,” the security officer responded quickly. “Doing it now.”

Engineering, he decided, breaking into a run down the corridor. “Vinnie, Jock,” he called over his ‘link, “Mironov’s in the wind… get to engineering now!” Not waiting for a response, he touched his ‘link’s call button again. “Admiral Patel, this is McKay.”

“McKay,” the Admiral’s voice buzzed in his ear. “I just heard the alert… what in the hell is going on?”

“Mironov is missing sir, and I may be totally off the reservation here, sir, but… I don’t know how it’s possible, but I think somehow Mironov is Antonov.”

”What?” McKay winced as the Admiral’s exclamation rang in his ear.

“Like I said, Admiral, I may be nuts, but I think we should find him now and I’ve ordered that engineering and the shuttle bay be locked down until we can…”

“Colonel McKay,” another voice interrupted over the line. “This is Lieutenant James from Security, sir. Engineering isn’t responding. I’ve sent security to lock it down but…”

McKay was rounding a corner, heading for the lift station when the Earth normal gravity that one g acceleration had been providing abruptly cut out, leaving him floating helplessly toward the ceiling. Yelping in surprise, McKay covered his head with his arms and took the impact on his shoulder; thankfully, the ceilings and walls were fairly well padded.

“McKay!” Patel yelled. “We’ve lost acceleration! The drive field is down!”

“Yes, sir,” McKay grunted, pushing off from the wall and heading for the emergency access shafts next to the lift station-he didn’t want to be stuck in the lift if the power suddenly went out. “I’d noticed that.”

“It’s worse than that,” Patel informed him after a moment’s pause. The Admiral’s voice was as close to panic as he had ever heard it. “McKay… somehow, he managed to eject our antimatter stores. The plasma drives aren’t igniting… we’re dead in space. And McKay, those Shipbusters are still inbound.”

McKay closed his eyes for a moment and thought of Shannon.

“Aye, sir,” he acknowledged. “I’m on it.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Captain Joyce Minishimi had to fight an urge to spit as the acrid taste of sideways lingered in her mouth. “Tactical,” she said, blinking her eyes to try to force them to focus, “report.”

Lt. Commander Gianeto shook his head clear, his pushing-regulation-length dark hair whipping back and forth like a dog trying to shake off water. “Umm.,.” he stuttered, trying to make his brain work after the transition through the jumpgate. “Ma’am, we have a K-class star. Two gas giants… we’re in the orbital path of the closer one, but it’s a good ways off. Looks like a couple terrestrial planets closer in and that’s about all we’re gonna get on optical, since we don’t have gravimetics.” He waited as more sensors came online, filling in the gaps. “We aren’t reading any active scans, no obvious signs of habitation yet. According to spectrometry, the terrestrials aren’t habitable, at least not by us.”

“Helm, how far are we from the next gate?” Minishimi asked.

“This one’s close-less than 50,000 kilometers, Captain,” Lt. Witten said, seemingly fully recovered from the transition. Some people, Minishimi mused, appeared to have no problem with it at all, while others needed as much as a half hour to get their heads straight. Witten seemed imperturbable, all square jaw and blonde buzz cut. “Permission to set course for it?”

“By all means, Mr. Witten,” she replied. They’d only left the Sheridan a few days before, but they’d transited three of the wormholes already, a slow and tedious process with only their plasma drive for propulsion. At least they’d figured a way to use the electromagnetic launch system for the missiles to place the warhead to open the gate: that was much faster than having a lander place the bomb.

There was a faint push as Witten fired the maneuvering thrusters, swinging the ship’s nose around ninety degrees.

“Accelerating at one half g,” Witten announced.

Minishimi felt pressed into her seat by the plasma drives as the ship moved ponderously forward. She found the sensation frustrating: without her Eysselink drive, the Decatur felt as responsive as a slug. She had been hoping that one of the jumps would take them through a Republic colony system where they could pick up more antimatter, but so far they’d all been strange to her and foreign to the ship’s computers, and not one had contained a single habitable world.

“Loading the fusion trigger into the launchers,” Gianeto told her. “We can launch it right before turnover.”

“Your call, Commander.”

“Turnover in ten seconds,” Witten informed him. “Plasma drive shutdown.”

“Launching the trigger device,” Gianeto said as the acceleration faded and they all floated up against their restraints. “Detonation in ten minutes.”

“Executing turnover.” Witten sketched a command and the maneuvering thrusters spun the ship around to face its massive engine bell towards the still-closed wormhole. “Deceleration commencing.”

“Ma’am,” Gianeto frowned as the half-g burn once again gifted them with the illusion of gravity. “I’m picking up something.”

“What is it, Mr. Gianeto?”

“Not sure, ma’am, but I got a lidar blip on one of the moons of that gas giant. Something was more reflective than the background, for just a second.”

“Is it a bogie, Commander?” She leaned forward in her command chair, concerned.

“Can’t say for sure,” he admitted. “There’s a possibility of a volcanic eruption or other outgassing. We’re too far away for a definitive visual.”

“Keep an eye on it with the rear sensors even after we do the turnover,” she cautioned him. “I wouldn’t put it past Antonov to have someone out here.”

“Deceleration complete, executing turnover. Transition in five minutes at this velocity.”

“Trigger device ignition in three minutes,” Gianeto piped up. “Still nothing from the sensors.”

“Nothing to be done about it then,” Minishimi mused. “We don’t have the fuel to be burning around this system waiting to see if she reveals herself.”

“Fusion trigger has ignited.” The announcement was accompanied by a blank white space on the viewscreen that faded into a shrinking white sphere of light ahead of them. “Sensors indicate that the wormhole is open and stable.”

“Half g burn for ten seconds,” Minishimi ordered.

“Half g burn, aye,” Witten confirmed. “Revised transition time is thirty seconds.”

Joyce Minishimi didn’t feel like waiting around in this system a minute longer than necessary. Something about that sensor contact was making the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

Gianeto’s eyes darted to a readout and then widened. “Captain, there’s…” His declaration was interrupted by the temporary cessation of the universe.

“Shit!” Gianeto swore when he could talk again. “Ma’am, it was a spaceship… I saw it just before we jumped!”

“Understood, Commander Gianeto,” she acknowledged. “Report.”

“Aye, ma’am,” he said, calming down and glancing up at the viewscreen, where the optical sensors were putting together a picture for them. “We got a dual star system… holy crap! Ma’am, we’re in the Sirius system, I’m sure of it!”

“Damn,” Minishimi muttered. “So close to home, yet so far.” Sirius was only eight and a half light years from Earth, but it had no habitable planets, nothing worth mining for the money and no Republic presence.

“No bogies on radar, lidar or visual,” Gianeto said. “No active scans detected.”

“Helm?”

“We are one light second from the gate home, ma’am,” Witten reported. “Set course?”

“Do it, Mr. Witten,” she told him. “One g acceleration. Mr. Gianeto, keep an eye on our entrance gate… I don’t want whatever ship you saw taking us by surprise. If he pops his nose out of that gate, you need to be launching a Shipbuster at him before you bother to tell me he’s there.”

“Aye, ma’am.”

“Four hours to the gate at one g, Captain,” Witten reported, “including deceleration.”

“Don’t spare the horses, Mr. Witten,” Minishimi admonished him. “I know we’re pushing it on reactor fuel, but once we get into the Solar System, we can get refueled at leisure.”

“Captain, this is Commander Duncan,” the voice of the ship’s First Officer came over the ear bud of her ‘link. Minishimi raised an eyebrow. Her first officer was posted in the auxiliary control room-a backup bridge in case the main bridge was destroyed-and she couldn’t imagine why he would be contacting her privately via her ‘link rather than over the ship’s intercom system.

“Yes?” she responded, purposely not using his name in case there was a reason for the private contact.

“Ma’am, there’s a problem… I’d like to speak to you here in auxiliary control as soon as possible.”

She frowned. “I’ll be right there.” This had better be important went unsaid but understood by her tone. She ended the call and unstrapped from her seat, looking over to Gianeto. “Commander Gianeto, you have the bridge.”

“I have the bridge, aye, ma’am,” he acknowledged formally.

Minishimi briskly exited the bridge, the thick vacuum doors sealing shut behind her with a sibilant hiss and a muffled thump, and then made for the lift station. She actually preferred the access tubes when they were in zero gravity, but under one g acceleration they weren’t an option.

The auxiliary control room was at the opposite end of the habitable section of the ship, just ahead of engineering, and it took Minishimi a good ten minutes to reach it. She passed very few people along the way-nearly everyone was at their posts, at battle stations-and it seemed eerily like a ghost ship to her as she walked the silent corridors, the gentle tap of her soft-soled ship boots on the padded floor and the barely-audible hum of the ventilators the only sounds.

The vacuum hatch to the auxiliary bridge was closed, but a palm to the plate beside it opened it and she stepped inside. The auxiliary bridge was a bit smaller than the main one and somehow felt more insular to her, its screens smaller and darker. Commander Phillip Duncan was alone in the room, standing behind the communications station, a troubled look on his gaunt, pale face.

“Where’s the rest of the crew?” Minishimi asked sharply, glancing at the empty stations that should have been filled by the junior Communications, Tactical and Helm officers.

“Confined to their quarters for the moment,” he said grimly. “Eventually, one of them is going to be in the brig.”

“What’s going on, Commander?” She asked, having to remind herself not to call him “Jack.” Jack Durant was her usual XO and it was strange not having him on the cruise.

“Before we made the transition,” he said, anger in his voice, “I was running a diagnostic on the communications station because the computer kept kicking out an error code in the daily reports. I found out that someone had loaded a worm into the communications computer. It was designed to take advantage of the disorientation we’ve been feeling every time we go through the wormholes. Immediately after each transition, it’s been sending out an automatic broadband signal, basically advertising our location and identity. Then it erases itself from the log so it never gets picked up by the main Comm station.”

Minishimi hissed out a breath, feeling as if she’d just been punched in the gut. “We have a traitor on board,” she said, putting the unthinkable into words. “Is it Lt. Rojas?” Rojas was the junior Communications officer, the one who would have been assigned to that station in the auxiliary bridge.

“I don’t think so,” Duncan told her, shaking his head, his long, horsey face seeming to get even longer. “She’d have to be pretty damned stupid to input the worm on her own station, ma’am. But it has to be one of the auxiliary bridge crew, and I think I have an idea who. Look at this, ma’am.” He waved at the readout on the Communications desk’s holographic display and Minishimi stepped over to the station. Duncan took a step back to let her get closer.

“What am I looking at, Commander?” She asked, peering at the diagnostic report.

“Right there, ma’am,” he leaned in, jabbing a finger at one of the lines. “I can’t be sure, but to me, that looks like a subroutine that shuts down the fusion reactor.”

“Christ!” She exclaimed, squinting more closely at the display.

So intent was she on the readout that she didn’t notice Duncan’s arm snake up around her neck until it was locked around her throat and the knife in his other hand was already darting in towards her left eye…

Joyce Minishimi responded with reflexes honed by long years as an athlete and grabbed the descending hand before the blade reached her face. Instinctively, she knew she couldn’t match Duncan’s raw strength, so rather than pushing the arm away, she redirected it and pulled it down, plunging the dark, ceramic blade into the First Officer’s forearm that was across her throat.

Duncan roared an incoherent mixture of pain and fury and slammed his knee into the small of Minishimi’s back, sending her plowing face-first into the Communications console as he staggered backwards.

“Fucking bitch!” He screeched, gritting his teeth and pulling the blade out of his arm, moaning as he heard and felt it scrape on bone.

Minishimi tasted blood as she sprawled across the station, her form half-hidden by holographic projections, but her brain screamed at her to ignore the agony in her back and the dull ache of her broken nose. She half-turned, ignoring the pain it caused in the spasming muscles of her lower back, and saw Duncan lurching towards her, knife raised in his left hand. She lashed out with her right heel, catching the man in his forward plant leg, feeling his kneecap dislocate with the impact.

Duncan screamed, but kept lunging forward, the knife descending. Minishimi desperately tried to move but she was half-turned and only managed to shift slightly to the side, taking the blade in the right side of her chest. Shock draped over Joyce Minishimi like a fog bank and she barely registered it as Duncan let go of the knife to collapse back to the deck, clutching his horribly out of place knee. Slowly, dully, she felt herself sliding off the console and landing hard on her back, trying desperately to breathe and tasting blood in her throat as she did.

Distantly, some clinical and detached part of her realized that the knife had gone into her lung and it had collapsed… she was about to drown in her own blood. She knew she should move, that she had to try to save herself, but everything seemed fuzzy and far away, as if she wasn’t really there.

Then she saw Duncan lever himself off the ground with his one good leg and one good arm. For a moment, she thought he was intent on finishing her, but then she saw him clawing at the Communications console, and she realized he was trying to finish the job: he was going to execute that subroutine he’d so arrogantly showed her and shut down the ship’s reactor, leaving them helpless.

Drawing on the deepest reserves she had, deeper than the ones that let her sprint the last hundred meters of the Hokkaido Marathon, she reached her left hand up to her chest and grasped the hilt of the knife that protruded from her flesh, then jerked it free with a strain that hurt worse than the blade sliding out of her lung.

She wanted to gasp out a scream, but she swallowed it instead, swallowed blood as she fought the cough that was struggling its way out of her throat, and managed to roll over, getting one knee beneath her.

Just one thing, she thought with dogged determination. Just got to do one more thing.

Duncan was leaning against the terminal, trying to work the controls one-handed, nearly blinded with pain and oblivious to her as she rose up from the ground, the knife gripped point-down in her right hand. With the last bit of energy left in her, she raised the knife over her head and slammed the point into the base of Duncan’s neck, neatly severing his spinal cord.

Duncan went limp, falling like a marionette with its strings cut and then she was falling too, collapsing almost on top of him as the blood filled her throat and everything was suddenly dark…

Commander Gianeto’s head snapped around at the sound of the sensor alert, and his eyes went wide as he pulled the holographic readout forward, enlarging it so he could get a better look at the bogie.

“Captain Minishimi,” he called over the ship’s intercom, “please return to the bridge, we have a bogie exiting the jumpgate! Captain Minishimi please return to the bridge.”

“Damn,” Witten muttered, irritation in his usually stoic face. “Almost home, too…”

Gianeto patched into Minishimi’s ‘link and called her again. “Captain, this is Gianeto, we have a Protectorate ship through the gate… it’s accelerating on us at two g’s.” Silence. “Captain? Are you there? Can you hear me?” He turned to Lt. Higgs at the Communications console. “Lieutenant, get me a fix on Captain Minishimi’s ‘link, please.”

Higgs checked her board, pulling up the ping location for the communications link. “She’s in the auxiliary control room still,” she said.

“Security,” Gianeto called over his ‘link. “This is Gianeto… the Captain is on the auxiliary bridge and I can’t raise her on the intercom or her ‘link. Do you have a visual feed from the cameras in there?”

“Negative, sir,” Lieutenant Marvez, the head Security officer, responded. “The cameras have been disabled via command override. Either the Captain or Commander Duncan did it, sir.”

“Well, get someone over to the auxiliary bridge and get the Captain up here now… we have an enemy ship insystem!”

“Aye, sir,” Marvez acknowledged. “I’ll go myself.”

“Commander Duncan,” Gianeto called over the First Officer’s ‘link. “Commander Duncan, do you read?” Again, nothing. “Dammit!” Gianeto turned to the Helm officer. “Witten, is their ship going to be in weapons’ range before we reach the gate?”

Witten checked his instruments before answering. “It’s going to be close, but we should be able to get through before he’s in laser or kinetic energy weapon range. Shipbusters are a different story.”

“We have countermeasures for missiles,” Gianeto reasoned. “But just in case, prepare to take us to emergency high-g acceleration as soon as the Captain’s back on the bridge.”

“Aye, Commander, will do.”

Remembering what Captain Minishimi had told him, Gianeto punched the control to launch a Shipbuster missile at the bogie. The ship lurched noticeably as what was basically an unmanned intersystem spaceship separated from the weapons bay with a boost from the electromagnetic launcher. Once it was far enough away, the fusion drive ignited and it headed for the bogie at ten gravities acceleration. “One Shipbuster away,” Gianeto announced, mostly from habit. “Let’s see if it’ll do any good.” He switched the intercom to Security. “Lt. Marvez, what’s the word?”

“Just getting there, sir,” Marvez panted, the quiver in his voice telling Gianeto that he was sprinting. “At the door… vacuum hatch is sealed, using my Security override.” Gianeto could hear the door hiss open. “Holy Christ!” Marvez exclaimed. “Oh my God! Sir, it’s Commander Duncan and Captain Minishimi! They’ve been stabbed… I think they’re both dead!”

“What the fuck?” Gianeto exploded. “Marvez, get them both to the medical bay right now… and get some of your people on that auxiliary control room-find out what the hell happened!”

“Will do, Commander!”

Gianeto took a deep breath and turned to Witten and Higgs. “I need you two to witness that I am officially assuming command.”

“Witnessed,” they both confirmed, their voices dull with disbelief, shock evident in their eyes. Under his breath, Witten muttered “Better you than me.” Gianeto shot him a dirty look, then glanced back at his board at the sound of an alarm beep.

“The enemy ship is launching countermeasures,” Gianeto observed, checking the sensor readings. “Gonna take a while to see who wins that battle.”

“We have over three hours to watch the show,” Witten reminded him.

“Negative,” Gianeto said, shaking his head firmly. “We are not decelerating, Mr. Witten.” Gianeto punched in the control for the weapons section. “Commander Chappelle, this is Gianeto… I’m acting Captain. I need you to take the fusion trigger for the gate and put it on a Shipbuster. And I need it done in an hour.”

“Uhh…” Chappelle stuttered. “Aye, sir, we can do it.”

“Get back to me when it’s done.” Gianeto turned back to Witten. “We are going to continue at one g until the Captain and Commander Duncan are in the medical bay, then we’re going to two g’s. We are going to be through that gate in under two hours, Francis… as far under as we can manage. We are going to be launching the trigger on a Shipbuster in an hour… at ten g’s, it can get to the gate in plenty of time to get it open for us, even as close as we’ll be to it.”

“Aye, Captain,” Witten said, and there was no irony in the man’s tone.

“Oh shit!” Gianeto exclaimed, almost drowning out the alarm from the tactical sensors as a pair of threat warning icons appeared on the display. “We have two more bogies going active between us and the gate. They must have been sitting there powered down, waiting for us.” Cursing under his breath, Gianeto hit a control. “I just launched our last two Shipbusters, besides the one we’re going to use to open the gate.” He snorted. “The Hell with it, I’m launching Area Denial missiles too… maybe we can overload their anti-missile systems.”

“Why haven’t they launched on us?” Witten wondered.

“I’ve been wondering that myself,” Gianeto admitted. “But I’ve been too busy to look gift horses in the mouth.”

“Someone stabbed the Captain and Commander Duncan,” Higgs pointed out. “Maybe they were supposed to sabotage us. They could be expecting us to not be able to fight.”

“That’s a damn fine point, Lieutenant,” Gianeto nodded. “And I think it’s a pretty good clue that we’re dealing with a traitor. But if he or she attacked Captain Minishimi and Commander Duncan, why didn’t they finish the job and disable the ship?”

“Commander Gianeto!” Lt. Marvez’s voice came over Gianeto’s ‘link. “We’re in the medical bay. Commander Duncan is dead, non-revivable, but they’ve got the Captain breathing again; the doc says she’s going to make it.”

“Thank God,” Gianeto breathed. “Any indication who did this to them?”

“Sir, they did it to each other! The Captain’s ‘link was being jammed, but it was still recording to its onboard memory-I just downloaded it to my tablet while the docs were working on her. Commander Duncan lured the Captain to the auxiliary bridge, then he attacked her. He was going to disable the ship, but she managed to kill him first.”

“Jesus Christ!” Higgs exclaimed from the Communications station, her grey eyes wide with disbelief. “Commander Duncan? But he’s been in the Spacefleet for fifteen years!”

Witten shook his head. “Shit, if they expect us to go dead any minute and it doesn’t happen, they’re going to open fire pretty soon.”

“Sound the alarms and accelerate to two g’s, Mr. Witten,” Gianeto ordered, his face taking a grim set. “Engineering,” he called, even as the acceleration klaxons began to sound.

“Prieta here, Commander,” the chief engineer responded. If the chaos and alarms of the last few minutes had disturbed Prieta, he didn’t show it by his calm demeanor.

“We salvaged a little antimatter from the Peboan system, Commander Prieta… how long will it keep our Eysselink field active if we use it?”

“Minutes, Commander Gianeto,” Prieta estimated. “Five, perhaps ten if we don’t go over a few g’s acceleration.”

“What are you thinking, Larry?” Witten blurted, then grimaced, realizing he’d broken protocol by using Gianeto’s first name in the current situation. Gianeto just smiled.

“I am thinking, Francis, that there might be a way for us to make us through that gate alive after all.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

The emergency access shaft was bare metal about a meter wide with a single plastic rail running the length of the tube to use for propulsion and the lightly-claustrophobic McKay hated it with a passion, but he plunged headlong into the tube nevertheless.

“Vinnie, talk to me,” he called as he pulled himself down the tube at ever-increasing speed.

“Not there yet, sir,” Vinnie replied tightly, voice strained. “I’m in the access shafts, coming from the shuttle bay.”

“Damn. I’ll be there before you. Jock?”

“Be there in two minutes, sir,” the Australian replied.

“Lt. James,” McKay called Security again, then had to tuck his legs in and absorb an impact against the wall on his hip as he careened around a curve in the tube. “What’s the sitrep?” He was finally able to ask.

“Sir,” James responded, a touch of panic in his voice, “we have security personnel on scene now… but Mironov has a weapon-I don’t know where he got it, maybe from Kowalski-and he’s taken the engineering crew hostage. The hatch is locked; we could open it, but he’s threatening to kill everyone in the section if we do.”

“Casualties?”

“Unknown, sir. We have to assume Kowalski is down, but comms are down inside engineering and Mironov has taken everyone’s ‘links.”

“Goddammit,” McKay muttered, picking up speed again. “What was Kowalski armed with, James?”

“He was only supposed to have a stunner, sir, but Sergeant Carson reports that Mironov has a pistol.”

“Anything else I should know about?” McKay asked sarcastically. “Maybe an unaccounted for fusion warhead he might have picked up?”

“I’m sorry, sir,” he could hear James cringing in the tone of the man’s voice. “I’ll find out how he got it…”

“Later, James,” McKay interrupted. “Work on getting eyes in the room. He didn’t physically disable the monitors… he hasn’t had time. Get whatever command he used overridden and get me video.”

“Yes, sir, Colonel.”

Finally McKay came to the exit for the engineering deck and manually undogged the hatch-everything in the emergency access shafts was manual except the pressure gates to seal off compartments in case of decompression. Engineering was down in tail of the ship, the last pressurized compartment before the radiation shields and metallic hydrogen fuel stores that separated them from the fusion reactor and the antimatter containment bottles.

The lift station and emergency access shafts emerged in an antechamber that separated engineering from the rest of the ship, since the engineering compartment contained airlocked access tubes that allowed them to suit up and work on the reactor in an emergency. The antechamber could be sealed off from the rest of the ship via a meter-thick blast door, but at the moment only the thinner vacuum hatch was closed, a small window set in the door the only view into the engineering section.

Half a dozen armored security troops were clustered uncertainly in the corridor outside the hatch, milling around in the uncertain leadership of a Tech-Sergeant who’d obviously never confronted this sort of circumstance before. McKay shoved off from the edge of the access tube hatch then stopped himself against the far wall by the hatch, in the midst of the security.

“Is there any way to communicate with him?” McKay demanded of the Sergeant.

“The intercom should still work, sir,” the Sergeant waved at a panel on the wall next to the door.

“Good.” He touched his ‘link and called Security. “Lt. James, be ready to open the hatch on my word.”

“Yes, sir, Colonel,” James responded.

“Antonov,” McKay said, hitting the speaker control. “This is McKay.”

There was a long pause and McKay thought maybe it was too late, but then the speaker made a scratchy hiss as someone inside the engineering section activated it. “So, you’ve figured it out, McKay.” The voice was Mironov’s, but the mannerism, the tone… they were very familiar to McKay from historical recordings and from the brief time he’d spent with Sergei Antonov. “You’re more intelligent than I gave you credit for. Although that wouldn’t be too difficult.”

“I think I have a pretty good idea of what’s going on, General,” McKay replied, ignoring the barb. “You gave me the hint yourself. The ‘rumor’ you heard about duplicating people with the alien technology. At first, when I pieced together that it was you, I thought you’d had restruct surgery, changed your looks. But you would never take that big a risk with your life… unless you had more than one life to risk. You’ve copied yourself and you figured out a way to give the copy your memories.”

“And that’s not the end of it, is it, Colonel?” Antonov’s voice was playful, taunting.

“No,” McKay agreed grimly. “There’s no way you could have known we’d capture you on that ship… so, at a guess, there are multiple copies of you. One in each system maybe? One on every ship even?” He remembered his conversation with Podbyrin about why Antonov hadn’t used more ships in the invasion. “Just in the last couple years I’d imagine, to make sure your ship captains don’t get any ideas. And you even went to the trouble of hypno-imprinting each of them to resist chemical interrogation. “

“Well, you are the bright boy,” Mironov/Antonov cackled. “And do you know the wonderful thing about being effectively immortal, Colonel McKay? That I don’t even care that this body will be atomized when my ships and missiles catch up with it.”

“But you know I do, General. You know I’m going to have to open that door and come in and try to set things right, don’t you? So, the question is, would you rather kill a couple of engineering officers before I put a bullet in you, or would you rather surrender and get to watch us go through the futility of trying to get out of this alive?”

McKay glanced up as the Security Sergeant-his name tab read “Aubrey”- motioned for him, then shut down the voice pickup for the door speaker and pushed over to the man. “Sir,” Aubrey said, holding up his tablet, “we got the visual feed back up.”

McKay took the tablet from him and saw that Mironov/Antonov was against the far wall of the chamber, one arm around the neck of a female engineering officer, a gun-a real firearm, not a stunner-held to her head. The others floated helplessly, their hands and feet secured by rigging tape and strips of it across their mouths.

“You present an intriguing argument, McKay,” the Russian admitted, a smirk on his face that McKay felt an irresistible urge to wipe off with a punch. “But I think that smacks of making things far too easy on you.”

“How about this, then?” McKay suggested, keeping his voice light despite the savage grimace on his face. “You move away from the hostages and I come in the door alone. You get the chance to take a shot at me, and we’ll finish what we started on the bridge of your flagship.”

“McKay,” he heard a voice in his ear from the ‘link. “It’s Patel. Keep him distracted. We’ve launched shuttles to recover the antimatter fuel canisters; hopefully we can get them back on board before their integral batteries run out of power for the containment fields.”

“Ah, McKay,” Antonov laughed. “You do know how to reach my heart. I will tell you what, Colonel, I will do this. You may come in… just you, hands empty. I will stay where I am, and I will have a hostage, just to insure it is just you. You will shut the door behind you and I will seal it, and then we can talk.”

“Don’t do it, sir,” Vinnie whispered behind him. McKay started; he hadn’t realized Mahoney had come up behind him while he was talking to Antonov. “He’ll kill them anyway.”

“Of course he will,” McKay agreed, muting the speaker. “But at least this gets me inside.” He pulled his 10mm from its belt holster and checked the load. “And I’m sure as hell not going in empty-handed either.” He hit the speaker control again. “All right, Sergei, I agree to your terms. I’m coming in, alone.”

“I await you with baited breath, tovarisch.”

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” McKay said as Jock came up behind Vinnie, a carbine cradled in his arms-he’d made a stop by the ship’s armory along the way, apparently. “When that door opens, we’re going to be against the wall over there.” He pointed to the section of bulkhead opposite the vacuum hatch. “I’m going to go inside first and draw his fire, and Sergeant Aubrey, you are going to keep that door open-do not let Mironov close it. Jock and Vinnie, you two will follow me after a count of two and if I haven’t done it already, you will take him out, no matter how many people you have to shoot through to do it. Are we clear?”

“Got it, sir,” Jock confirmed. Vinnie looked as if he wanted to argue, but he knew it was useless, so he just moved over to the wall opposite the door.

“You ready, Sergeant?” McKay asked the Security NCO as he moved into position.

“Yes, sir,” Aubrey confirmed with a nod, looking at his tablet. “He’s still against the far wall. It’s about ten meters from the hatch, sir.”

“It’s gotta be a trap of some kind,” Vinnie muttered, a sour expression on his face.

“It doesn’t need to be,” Jock pointed out, his voice and manner as calm and matter-of-fact as if this were a training exercise. “We’re surrounded by enemy ships, in the middle of their home system, our antimatter is ejected and our reactor is shut down. What the hell does he care if he dies now or when we blow up?”

“Open the door,” McKay ordered, gritting his teeth, bracing his feet against the wall.

Sergeant Aubrey touched a control and the vacuum hatch slid open, then McKay sprang away from the wall and floated towards the door. He had time to think I wish I’d done more zero-g combat training before we left, and then he was through the hatch, his 10mm held in front of his chest in an Isosceles stance.

McKay had heard others who’d been in combat describe the feeling of time slowing down for them: tachypsychia the experience was called. They could describe in great detail every second of a firefight, see every move they’d made in their head. McKay had been in combat more than most Marine officers, much less Intelligence officers, but he could barely remember a second of any firefight he’d ever experienced. Flashes of blood and gut-punches of fear that threatened to turn to panic were the only memories he had, though nightmares sometimes revealed more details.

This was no different. It was so fast he didn’t have a conscious idea of what was happening even as it happened. He yelled “Antonov!” to distract the man, to get the gun pointed at him instead of the hostage, but he couldn’t tell if it worked. He couldn’t see the gleeful, delighted smirk on Antonov’s unfamiliar face as the Russian started shooting, and he wouldn’t remember the panicked tears on the face of the apprentice engineer that the duplicate was using as a human shield. All he would recall was a silhouette-like outline of a human head in the electronic pop-up sight of his pistol and the recoil of the 10mm driving him backwards towards the corner of the room.

He did see a haze of blood misting off the entangled figures of Antonov and the apprentice engineer, but before he could determine from whom the blood had come, he had drifted out of the line of sight, behind a locker. He could see Vinnie and Jock bouncing into the room behind him, but they were quickly hidden from view as well. He tucked to do a roll in mid-air, putting his feet against the wall and pushing off back towards the open part of the engineering bay.

Jock was already cutting the tape off Chief Engineer Kopecky, while Vinnie was pulling the apprentice engineer away from Mironov’s body.

“We’re all clear in here!” Vinnie called out to the Security outside the room. “Get us some medics now!”

As McKay came closer, he could see that Antonov… Mironov… whoever it was, was dead, a bullet hole through his forehead, the back of his skull shattered and exploded outward, a cloud of brains, bone fragments and blood hanging over his body, some of it already spattered on the wall and the hostage he’d held.

“Casualties?” He asked, reholstering his pistol and trying to get his breathing back under control.

“She took two to the chest,” Vinnie reported grimly, turning over the apprentice engineer that Antonov had been using as a shield. Her face was pale, her eyes open but unseeing and two gaping holes in her upper chest were frothing oxygenated blood, adding to the red mist that filled the air. The medics were on the way and even as he watched, two of the Security troops boosted over to slap smart bandages on the wounds, but she was clearly dead.

” Jesus,” McKay moaned, feeling as if he’d been kicked in the stomach. “I thought he was shooting at me.”

The young woman was waif-skinny, her brown hair shoulder length and drifting into her lean, hawk-nosed face. And she’d died because of him. But there had been no other choice… just as he had no choice now but to see to the safety of the ship.

“Commander Kopecky,” McKay turned to the Chief Engineer, who was finally free of the tape that had been restraining his wrists and ankles. “Can you get the fusion reactor restarted?”

Kopecky ripped the tape away from his mouth, cursing in Czech as it took part of his close-clipped beard with it. His eyes were on the body of the apprentice engineer as he spoke, but his tone was professional. “Yes, it is not even flushed… he did not know how. He just cut the power feeds. Give me a moment.”

The engineer pushed off from the floor and came up against the main command station, his hands flying over the controls. “Bridge,” he called over the intercom, “reactor power is restored: the plasma drive is online.”

“Good to hear your voice, Commander,” Patel replied. “We’re going to be holding off on the plasma drive until the shuttles get back… we’ve managed to recover some of the antimatter storage canisters and to be brutally honest, without them there’s no way we’re outrunning those Shipbusters on conventional power.”

“Aye, sir,” Kopecky answered. Then he closed his eyes and took a breath, looking as if he might collapse if there’d been any gravity. “Her name was Mary Boudinot, Colonel,” he said softly, not looking at the dead woman. “She was just 23, only six months out of the Academy. This was her first cruise.”

“I’m sorry, Commander…” McKay began, but Kopecky interrupted him.

“You have nothing to be sorry about, Colonel,” he said sadly, shaking his head. “You did what had to be done. But Ensign Boudinot… she gave her life for us, in a way, you know? And I just think we should try to remember her.”

“I’ll remember her, Commander,” McKay assured him grimly. In my nightmares. For years. “Vinnie,” he said to the Captain, who was helping the Security troops to free the other engineering personnel, “I’m heading up to the bridge. After everything is secure here, I want you to get with Lt. James and find out where Mironov got the gun and if he had any help.”

“Yes, sir,” Vinnie said, eyes still fixed on Mironov’s corpse. “Sir, you really think this guy was some sort of copy of Antonov?”

“Yes I do, Vinnie,” McKay told him. “He was either a duplicate of some kind or he’d been brainwashed into thinking he was. I got suckered,” he declared bitterly. “It cost that girl her life and now it might cost us all our lives.”

“Hell, boss, that’s not something I’d expect you to account for,” Vinnie insisted, shaking his head. “There’s no way you could have known that was even possible.”

“It’s my job to know,” McKay said flatly, then headed out of the room, making for the lift station.

McKay didn’t bother trying to contact Patel on his ‘link as he rode the lift back to the bridge. The Admiral probably had his hands full already and he needed the silence.

This is a fucking disaster, he thought, closing his eyes. They were over 200 light years from home, in the enemy’s home system, surrounded by Protectorate ships, disabled and now they couldn’t even be sure that they actually knew the way home even if they did get away. And if they didn’t use the wormhole matrix, they were not getting home.

And worse, what about the Decatur? They’d been counting on Mironov’s directions to take her home, but now… for all they knew, he could have been directing them to a Protectorate stronghold. They could already be dead. He knew that Antonov would never have let them return to Earth safely with the secret of how to navigate the wormholes.

By the time he arrived at the bridge, McKay was deep in a funk and pissed off that he was going to have to find a way to hide it from Patel. He needn’t have worried: the bridge was so abuzz with activity that the Admiral hardly noticed him enter and take a position behind the command chair.

One look at the main viewscreen told him why: the Shipbuster missiles were only minutes away, so close they could see them on the optical cameras. Wedges of blackness hunted the Sheridan like wolves, framed by the star-bright glow of fusion drives; and there were so many of them…

“The countermeasures are almost there,” Pirelli announced calmly, eyes flickering back and forth between the readouts at her station and the camera view onscreen. “Ten seconds.”

“Damage control,” Patel snapped, “what’s the status on the canisters?”

“We’ve recovered ten of the fifteen ejected canisters,” Devlin’s voice came over the intercom. “The others are too far away to get to them in time. The shuttles are loading the first three right now… five more minutes for those.”

“Get those loaded then get the shuttles into the bay,” Patel ordered. “We can transfer the rest internally and load them through the engineering bay’s service locks.”

“Aye, sir.”

Patel looked a question at Pirelli.

“Twelve minutes, three seconds till the Shipbusters hit us, sir,” she told him. “Countermeasures are on target.” There were small starburst explosions on the screen that lit up the dark wedges of impending destruction, and then two huge, spherical fusion blasts that whited out the screen. Pirelli grinned, checking her readouts. “Two of the Shipbusters prematurely detonated,” she announced. “And I read two more as losing their fusion drives… the blast knocked them off their course, they should miss us. Two more still tracking us, still accelerating.”

“Open fire with the Gauss guns, Commander Pirelli… maybe we’ll get lucky. Commander Devlin,” Patel contacted Damage Control again. “I need to know when those shuttles are secure in the bay! Commander Kopecky,” he called to engineering, “tell me the second the Eysselink drive is back online.” He glanced back, noticing McKay for the first time. “This is going to be uncomfortably close, Colonel. Thanks for taking care of Mironov before he could do any more damage.”

“He did enough,” McKay said, his voice flat, eyes on the viewscreen.

Patel shot him a glance but withheld comment.

“The antimatter canisters are secure, Admiral,” Commander Devlin reported. “The shuttles are moving into the docking bay now… just a couple more minutes.”

“If they don’t get inside in the next five minutes, Mr. Devlin, you’re fired,” Patel deadpanned.

“Understood, sir,” Devlin said, a grim humor in his voice.

McKay watched the approaching missiles and didn’t feel fear so much as a crippling guilt. It would have been different had there been something for him to do, some duty he needed to perform, but as he could only stand and watch, he had the luxury of stopping to feel guilt. Would Shannon have seen through him? He asked himself. Would she have been more suspicious?

“McKay,” Patel looked to him. “You might want to strap in,”

“Yes, sir.” He moved to the acceleration couches behind the command chair and belted himself into it, eyes never leaving the screen and the approaching missiles.

“Gauss rounds hit one of them,” Pirelli reported, “but it’s still on target. Two minutes.”

“Admiral,” Commander Kopecky called from engineering, “the antimatter injectors are connected, field is ready to power up on your order.”

““Excellent, Commander, stand by for my order.” He switched over to Damage Control. “Commander Devlin, the shuttles?”

“They’re all inside the bay, sir,” Devlin reported. “We’re still getting them secured to the docking locks-if we accelerate, they could break loose and cause some serious damage, but you can activate the field.”

“Mr. Sweeny,” Patel said, a relieved sigh in his voice, “activate the drive field… station keeping only.”

“Aye, sir,” Sweeny said with the grin of a condemned man who’d just been handed a reprieve, “station keeping only.”

The view on the exterior cameras shifted as the drive field began propagating outward from the emitters in the pods on either side of the hull. Space-time warped outward and the ripples slammed into the oncoming missiles, ripping them apart in flares of fusion fire.

“Shipbusters have detonated against the field,” Pirelli announced. “Sensors are back online. Oh, damn,” she said mildly. “Sir, we have two ramships coming in at 20g’s. They’re using Eysselink drives.”

“They must keep most of their pirated antimatter here in their home system,” McKay guessed.

“They have to be running on computer control, too,” Patel deduced. “The crew must be in g-sleep.”

“If they have a crew,” McKay countered, remembering Vinnie’s idea from earlier. “It would be just as easy to give the computer a target and say ‘hit that,’ then let them go. Shipbusters with Eysselink drives.”

“Now that’s disturbingly innovative of him,” Patel grumbled.

“They’ll intercept us in less than an hour,” she said. “Sir..” she said hesitantly to Admiral Patel, “I don’t think we can use the emitters to destabilize their fields like we did before. They’re coming in too fast… we won’t have time to target them.”

Sweeny blew a breath out through puffed cheeks and looked up from his station’s readout. “Admiral, to outrun them, we’re going to have to go into the tanks.”

“Commander Devlin,” Patel pushed the indicator on his command console for Damage Control, “what’s the status of the antimatter fuel canisters we brought in with the shuttles?”

“On the way to engineering now, sir,” Devlin told him.

“Get it locked down, then get your people to the g-tanks,” Patel ordered. “Engineering,” he switched channels. “When the antimatter canisters get there, I need them powered up and locked down immediately. We are going to be in the g-tanks within the hour.”

“Will do, sir,” Kopecky replied

“Mr. Sweeny,” Patel said to the Helmsman, “I need a subroutine drawn up to get this ship through the last gate we came through without pulling us out of g-sleep. You and Ms. Pirelli tie it in with the emitters to get that gate open, cut the drive field, launch a spread of Area Denial missiles, then punch us through on the plasma drives before reactivating the Eysselink field, then waking us up. Correction: have it wake up just the bridge crew. That way if the rammers are still following us, we can do the same thing with the next gate then get back into the tanks quickly.”

“Aye sir,” the Helmsman and Tactical officer chorused.

“We’re going back the way we came, Admiral?” McKay noted.

“We know we can at least get back to Peboan that way,” Patel said with a brisk nod. “I don’t trust Mironov’s word on the route back to Earth from here. Lt. Mandel,” Patel said to the Communications officer, “sound a shipwide alert: all personnel to report to the g-tanks in forty minutes.”

“I guess we don’t get an observation run on Novoye Rodina,” McKay said wistfully as the alarm klaxons began to sound throughout the length of the Sheridan.

“No,” Patel agreed. “But perhaps I was being greedy to try it anyway… at least we know where it is now.”

“Why would he have risked that?” McKay mused, shaking his head. “Mironov… Antonov, whoever or whatever he was. Why would he risk bringing us here? Sure, he intended to sabotage us, but he couldn’t be certain he’d succeed. And if… when as it turned out… he failed, he’d risk letting us get home with the location of his home base.”

“I can’t say for sure, of course,” Patel attempted to answer, “but I think you being on the ship made it personal; he probably figured he’d have a better chance of killing you and destroying the ship here, where his forces are the thickest. And he damned near did.” The Admiral shrugged. “We’re not out of the woods yet, McKay. Get to the g-tanks and make sure your people are secure. I’ll be down with the bridge crew as soon as they have that program finished up.”

“Aye, sir,” McKay unstrapped and headed out of the bridge. “See you on the other side.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Daniel O’Keefe put on his most polished politician’s smile as he rose to shake Kevin Fourcade’s hand. Svetlana Zakharova shut the door to the office behind them, trying unsuccessfully to hide a look of distaste.

“Thanks for coming on such short notice, Mr. Fourcade,” O’Keefe said as he leaned over the desk, pumping the man’s hand. “Please, have a seat.”

“Thank you, Mr. President,” the lobbyist said. “And believe me, it’s my honor to be called here, especially with everything that’s been happening. Sir, you have my deepest condolences on the death of your son-in-law. I hope there’s been progress in finding your daughter, the Senator…”

O’Keefe examined the Fourcade’s well-designed face and was impressed by the way the man was able to fake sincere concern. Of course, maybe he was concerned about Valerie’s whereabouts, given the fact that his people hadn’t heard back from their hired assassin.

“The Investigative Service is following up some promising leads,” he told Fourcade, neatly segueing from Cordial Politician to Concerned Parent. “We’re confident she will be found soon.” He took a breath, pretending to collect himself and his thoughts. “But I’m afraid that I have been neglecting the affairs of state for too long due to my personal family tragedies. There are things that must be dealt with, and the future of our economy is one of them.”

O’Keefe sat back, clasping his hands in front of him on the desk and pursing his lips gravely. “Mr. Fourcade, I have given much thought to our last meeting. Finance Minister Zakharova and I have discussed these matters exhaustively with our scientific and business advisors; it is no exaggeration to say that we have agonized over them, in fact. There is still great disagreement about this among my advisors, but as President, I have to take a public position on the matter of biomech research.”

Fourcade nodded, sighing theatrically, his hands forming a resigned half-pleading position. “Sir, I know you have some personal experiences that make this a difficult issue, but…”

“I’ve decided to support the bill,” O’Keefe interrupted him, fighting to keep from laughing as the man’s expression fell apart in clear shock. Of all the things Kevin Fourcade had been expecting from this meeting, that clearly wasn’t one of them.

“Well, I…” the lobbyist fumbled with the words, hands still frozen in mid-gesture. “Sir, that’s… that’s very good to hear.”

Svetlana Zakharova obviously disagreed; she was still scowling from where she sat beside Fourcade. O’Keefe had tried to explain his position to her, but was hampered by the fact that he didn’t really believe in it. Finally, he’d told her she could accept his position or he could accept her resignation.

“I will be brutally honest with you, Mr. Fourcade,” O’Keefe admitted, “on a personal, visceral level, I still find the idea of us using these… things… for cheap labor to be a distasteful and frightening prospect. But I’ve come to realize that we are faced by nothing but distasteful prospects.” This part was easier to be sincere-sounding about, since it was patently true. “We can either return to sending political malcontents into what is basically indentured servitude or retreat from the stars and face an economic collapse that will rival the Crisis after the Sino-Russian War.” He shook his head. “Or we can take a leap into the unknown with the biomech bill. There’s only one possibility that doesn’t abrogate my responsibility to the citizens of the Republic whom I serve, and I have come to terms with that.”

“I respect your devotion to the Republic, sir,” Fourcade said, having regained his composure. “When were you planning to go public with this position?”

“Well, that’s why I wanted to talk to you in person, Mr. Fourcade. I had in mind a sort of a ceremony… I’d like to announce this from a setting appropriate for a decision that will affect our economy for decades to come. And it should happen immediately. So, I’ve decided to reschedule my speech to the Senate this Wednesday and instead have a live news conference meeting with the executives from the multicorps Executive Council in their headquarters in the Greater Houston Development Complex.”

It was harder this time. O’Keefe actually felt the corner of his mouth tugging upward and had to cough to keep the laugh from bubbling up inside him at the way Fourcade’s eyes widened.

“Sir, that’s… very short notice,” he stammered. “I’m not sure we can put something appropriate to the occasion together in such a short time…”

“Don’t sell yourself short, Kevin,” O’Keefe said, waving the concern away. “My press secretary will coordinate with you. I’m sure we can work out the details.” He leaned forward, his hands flat on the desktop, his expression adamant. “Besides,” he said in a tone that brooked no argument, his eyes fierce with conviction, “by the power invested in me by the citizens of the Republic… I insist.”

“You know,” Ari commented softly, “this was fucking genius, pardon my French.”

“It certainly was,” Shannon agreed, mouth turning up in a wry smile. “I wish I had thought of it, but it was Val’s idea. It’s elegant, simple and has the potential to completely fuck up the plans of whoever’s behind this.”

The two of them were sequestered in a small, unoccupied office not too far from the Capitol building, monitoring the President’s office.

“We have a positive pairing with Fourcade’s ‘link,” Ari reported, checking a readout on the surveillance device on the folding table in front of him. “He’s got some serious security software on there, but we got around it.” He shrugged. “I hope. Otherwise, we’re being spoofed so well we can’t even realize it.”

“He’s left the office,” Shannon observed. “He’ll be making the call soon.”

“And here it comes,” Ari noted. “He’s calling the office of the Executive Council right now.” He cross-checked the information. “The number is just a switchboard system.”

“Fourcade,” the lobbyist spoke into his ‘link, “calling for the Director.” Ari’s mouth shaped a silent whistle. Brendan Riordan, the Director of the multicorps’ Executive Council, was one of the three most important men in the Republic.

“Yes, sir,” the switchboard program responded with a cheerful female voice. “One moment.”

The hold was very brief, which Shannon found impressive, given Riordan’s status.

“Kevin,” Riordan’s voice answered in a basso profundo like boulders crashing on a mountainside. “What can I do for you?”

“Sir,” Fourcade said, his voice respectful but tense, “President O’Keefe has… had a change of heart about 1143B. He’s decided to come out in support of it.”

“Well,” Riordan temporized, his deep voice going up an octave, “that’s… interesting, isn’t it?”

“It gets more interesting. He wants to come out publically with this position Wednesday night… and instead of doing it during his scheduled address to the Senate, he’s planning on having a press conference at the Headquarters in Houston… and he wants you and the rest of the Executive Council in attendance.”

“I’m sure you told him that’s not possible, given how little warning…”

“Sir, he is not taking no for an answer,” Fourcade interrupted. “He said if he needs to, he’ll invoke the Emergency Reconvening Act of 2,104 and call a meeting of the Senate and the Council in Houston.”

“Well then,” Riordan said after a moment’s consideration, “I suppose we have some calls to make, don’t we? Some things will need to be rescheduled.”

“Yes, sir,” Fourcade replied, sounding even more harried, “but there are events that are pre-arranged and it may be difficult to communicate the schedule changes in time to assure a viable outcome.”

“Kevin,” Riordan rumbled with an unmistakable tone of finality, “that is your problem.”

The connection ended but Shannon and Ari could hear Fourcade mutter “Goddammit,” over the ‘link’s open pickup.

“And the plot thickens,” Shannon commented. She glanced up at Ari. “Keep monitoring his communications. I’ll send Tom to help out.”

“And what mischief will you be up to, ma’am?” Ari asked with a grin.

“Captain Shamir,” she told him, “I think that Valerie O’Keefe has been missing for quite long enough.”

* * *

Commander Larry Gianeto embraced the misery of two g acceleration, trying to slow down his heart rate and breathing and go with the rhythm of the labored rise and fall of his too-heavy chest as he kept his eyes glued to the screen and the threat icons before and behind them.

“Shipbuster is thirty seconds out from the bogie behind us,” he choked out. “Their countermeasures went off, but it’s still on target.” A few tense seconds went by and then the icon for the Shipbuster and that of the Protectorate ship chasing them merged on the screen. “Warhead didn’t ignite,” he said, checking the scanners. “Must have been damaged by the countermeasures. But I’m getting debris readings… and thermal flares. His drive has gone dead too! Must have impacted the ship!’ Even without a fusion warhead, the Shipbuster could severely damage or even destroy an unshielded ship; it was hundreds of tons of mass accelerating at over ten gravities. “Now all we have to worry about is the guys in front of us. Can’t be much longer.”

Then he saw the faint lidar bounceback in the space between them and the two Protectorate ships ahead. “There it is… we got Gauss rounds incoming. They could be shooting at the Shipbusters, but they’ll hit us in ten minutes. Shipbusters still inbound and five minutes out.”

“Is that like, habit?” Lt. Francis Witten asked, grimacing in what might have been an attempt at a grin. “I mean, you’re the acting Captain, so you’re kind of talking to yourself, right?”

Gianeto scowled at him. “If anything happens to me,” he ground out, “you and Higgs need to know the situation. Didn’t they teach you that in Bridge Officer’s school?”

“Hard to remember,” Witten admitted. “Never had a Captain get injured in a knife fight before.”

“I appreciate it,” Lt. Higgs commented from the Communications station. “Hard to keep an eye on my station and the screen too.”

“There go their countermeasures,” Gianeto reported as simulated explosions lit up the screen, displaying data too far away for the optical cameras to pick up. “And… yeah, was waiting for that. They’ve each launched two Shipbusters.”

“I guess they’ve figured out that Duncan isn’t going to be able to sabotage us,” Higgs said.

“Too bad the docs couldn’t save him,” Witten commented. “Been nice to be able to question him and find out how the hell the Protectorate got to him.” He frowned, looked over to the Communications officer. “Hey Janice,” he said, “can you pull up his records?”

“What’s publically available anyway,” she said with a half-shrug. “Born in Capetown, South Africa, graduated tenth in his class from the Fleet Academy, class of 2,190. He started out as the Tactical Officer on the Patton-they still called them ‘Weapons’ Officers’ then-until the ship returned from a trip to Aphrodite back five years ago, then he applied to Command College and finished top of his class. Promoted to Commander shortly after and served on the Bradley before spending the last year on staff at Fleet HQ. I know he volunteered for this mission when Commander Durant broke his back rock climbing a week before we were scheduled to leave.” She gasped a bit as she finished, from the strain of talking so much during the 2g burn.

“Wasn’t that convenient,” Witten snorted.

“I’m not liking how this is sounding,” Higgs said.

“We have more pressing concerns right now,” Gianeto reminded them. “Four Shipbusters and a whole bunch of big metal slugs just a few minutes out.”

Suddenly there was a fierce, white globe visible on the optical viewers. “That was one of our Shipbusters,” Gianeto announced, excitement in his voice. “Negative detonation on the other one… the countermeasures or the Gauss rounds must have taken it out. Ha! Got one of them!” The threat icon on the right side of the viewscreen flickered out.

“Just one left between us and the gate,” Witten said hopefully.

“Thirty seconds until the Gauss rounds impact,” Gianeto said. “Engineering, power up the antimatter reactor. Francis, kill the plasma burn and activate the Eysselink drive now.”

The pressure of two gravities lifted from their chests as the plasma drive shut down and Gianeto gulped in a huge breath of air, then had to fight not to throw up.

“Drive field is up,” Witten told him. “Station keeping.” He checked a readout. “We can maintain station keeping status for a while, but we ain’t going anywhere.”

“We’ve deflected the Gauss rounds,” Gianeto said, eyes glued to the tactical screen. “Shipbusters are only seconds out. The enemy ship is still accelerating…” He snarled a feral grin. “Three g’s acceleration, ramming course!”

Alarms sounded throughout the ship and Gianeto steeled himself just before what felt like the weight of a planet descended on him, pushing him into the gel of his acceleration couch. He could see a fleeting glimpse of the Shipbusters on the screen as they were ripped apart on impact with the drive field, but then they were past and the Protectorate ship loomed ahead of them, maneuvering rockets flaring as it tried desperately to change course.

“Commander Gianeto,” he heard dimly, over the roaring in his ears, “this is Commander Prieta.” Prieta’s voice sounded as if he were at the bottom of a well. “The antimatter will only last a few more seconds at this rate…”

God, Gianeto prayed silently, just long enough…

There was a white light that filled the bridge and then the pressure disappeared and Gianeto wondered for a brief moment if this was what being dead felt like…

Then his head cleared and he drew a breath and looked down at his station’s display and saw the lidar and radar readings off the remains of the Protectorate ship.

“Sweet Jesus,” Witten murmured. “We cut that one pretty damn close, didn’t we?”

“Commander Gianeto,” Prieta called up from Engineering again, “we have depleted the last of our antimatter stores.”

“That’s okay, Mr. Prieta,” Gianeto told him, letting out a deep, relieved breath. “It lasted just long enough. Weapons, launch the modified Shipbuster and get that gate open before something else pops up. Francis, give us a half g burn on the plasma drive and take us to the gate.”

“Aye, sir,” Witten shot him a grin.

“Medical, this is Gianeto,” the Tactical officer called. “How is the Captain?”

“Stable, sir,” came the answer. “She was in a suspension tank, so the acceleration didn’t affect her.” The medical officer chuckled. “The rest of us are a bit sore, though.”

“Commander Gianeto,” their conversation was interrupted by a call from Security. “This is Lt. Marvez. We were securing Commander Duncan’s cabin and personal affects and we kind of got stuck in there during the emergency acceleration. We’re getting something on Commander Duncan’s ‘link. I think you should hear this, sir.”

“Go ahead and patch it through to the bridge,” Gianeto ordered.

There was a hesitation at the other end of the transmission. “Uh… sir, this is… it’s, well, very sensitive. You might want to hear it in private.”

Gianeto hesitated, then glanced at Higgs and Witten, the only other people on the bridge. “No, Lieutenant,” he decided. “Just patch it through.”

“Yes, sir,” Marvez acquiesced reluctantly.

There was a pause, then the scratchy, static-filled recording began to play. “The situation has changed, Duncan,” the male voice stated without preamble. “O’Keefe has changed his schedule, so the original target area is a no-go. You and the support ships should hold up there in the Sirius system until we can get you a revised target area and strike schedule, then you can gate through and go ahead with the original plan. End of message.”

The recording shut off, replaced by Marvez’s voice. “It keeps repeating, but that’s the gist of it.”

“Higgs,” Gianeto snapped, fixing her with a glare.

“I’m on it!” She assured him, turning back to her station, fingers flying over the display. “Sir, this is not coming via an internal ‘link, I am sure of that. But the system isn’t picking up this transmission…”

“I’m sure because Commander Duncan programmed it specifically not to,” Gianeto said grimly, his eyes beginning to fill with a murderous fury. “Dammit, if the Skipper hadn’t done it already, I’d kill the fucking traitor myself. Get into the subroutines, Janice, find out what he did.” He looked over at Witten. “Francis, once we get through that gate, I want you to kill the drives. We’re going full silent till I say differently.”

“What the hell is going on?” Witten muttered, shaking his head. “Was someone just talking to Commander Duncan about… about assassinating the fucking President?”

“What’s going on,” Gianeto answered, staring at something light-years past the main viewscreen, “is that we’re not just fighting the Protectorate. There’s something else happening here.”

“I’ve got it,” Higgs said, pushing a stray lock of blond hair out of her eyes. “The signal came from a point less than 30,000 kilometers from the wormhole. I’m sending the coordinates to your station.”

Gianeto checked the sensor readout, adjusting the lidar to cover the area she had indicated. “Yeah, it’s there. It’s small… can’t be much bigger than about two or three meters across.”

“It has to be a relay,” Higgs said, “for signals coming through the wormhole.”

“Then it’s coming from the Solar System,” Witten said. “Someone back home wants to use us to kill President O’Keefe!”

“Not just us,” Gianeto corrected him. “Remember they said ‘the support ships.’ That would be those three Protectorate ships we just destroyed. Someone back home, one of our people, is working with Antonov.”

“What are we going to do?” Higgs asked in a small voice, her face pale.

“The gate’s open,” Gianeto announced, eyes still on the main screen. “We’ll be through in two minutes. What we’re going to do once we get through is shut down, go dark and wait until the Skipper wakes up. Air’s too thin up here for an O-4 to make this call. Anyway,” he shook his head, “I wouldn’t know who to try to warn about it.” He met their lost, overwhelmed looks with one of his own. “Who the hell can we trust?”

Chapter Twenty-Six

“So, where the hell are we now?” Jock Gregory wondered, sitting up in the g-tank and wiping biotic fluid from his eyes.

Jason McKay wondered the same thing himself. Shaking his muddled head clear, he sat upright and glanced at the readout on the g-sleep chamber’s bulkhead display panel. “We’ve been under for forty-six hours,” he said. “That means we’ve gone through at least two gates, maybe more.”

“Are we there yet, Daddy?” Vinnie muttered, levering himself out of the tank.

“Just a little farther,” McKay returned automatically, carefully stepping out himself and moving stiffly towards the showers.

“We’re still alive,” Esmeralda Villanueva observed as she stepped over to Vinnie, brushing her hand against his. “I wondered when we went into the tanks this time if we would be getting out again.”

“Ah yes,” Jock intoned as he headed into the showers, “I too wondered, as I entered the forbidding chamber of deathlike sleep, whether I would ever see your face once more, my dear Captain Mahoney. Sir.”

Vinnie scowled at Jock’s retreating back but Esmeralda’s full-throated laugh interrupted his comeback.

“He reminds me of my younger brother,” she said fondly, shaking her head.

“He reminds me of a dog we used to have,” Vinnie cocked an eyebrow, “who used to shit all over the floor.” He sighed. “I gotta’ get going, Esme… gotta’ meet with Lt. James still… we never did have time to track down where Mironov got that gun.”

“Then I will see you when the opportunity arises,” she said with a wistful smile, letting her leg brush against his as she passed by.

Vinnie felt an electric tingle run up his spine and he closed his eyes for a moment and took a breath before he moved on in to the men’s shower room.

It was less than a half an hour later that McKay stepped onto the bridge. Patel and the bridge crew were already there, of course, having been woken up first, and the viewscreen showed him a familiar picture of one of the systems they’d circumnavigated on their way to Novoye Rodina.

“How long did it take us to lose them, Admiral?” McKay asked as he stepped up behind the command chair.

“I’m not a hundred percent certain we have yet, McKay,” Patel responded grimly. “But by the second jump, they’d slowed to five g’s acceleration and after the third, they seemed to have run out of antimatter. That doesn’t mean they still couldn’t be following on conventional engines. But there’s no trace of enemy activity in this system so far. We have a few hours’ transit time to the next gate.”

“I was hoping we’d have a bit of time to discuss what we’re going to recommend to the President when we get back, sir.”

“Of course,” Patel assented with a shrug. “Commander Pirelli, you have the bridge. “Notify the First Officer that I will be in my cabin.”

“Aye, sir,” Pirelli acknowledged as McKay followed Patel to the lifts.

“Okay, sir,” Lt. James said, “this weapon,” he waved, indicating the Fleet-issue sidearm in the clear-plastic locker built into one wall of the Security station, “is definitely one of ours. Came out of the Sheridan‘s armory. But,” he shook his head, “it was never officially signed out. According to the computer records, the pistol’s transponder never left the armory vault.”

“Well how the hell is that possible, Lieutenant?” Vinnie wanted to know. The two of them were alone in the Security station: Vinnie hadn’t wanted an audience for this investigation.

“The transponder was physically removed from the weapon.” James motioned towards the back of the pistol’s handle, where Vinnie could, upon closer inspection, see a small cavity. “I had the armory crew check… it’s still sitting in the vault. It was hidden behind another handgun.”

“There have to be security cameras in the vault,” Vinnie assumed. “That would let us see who removed it.”

“Of course, sir,” James agreed. “If we knew when they did it. No unauthorized personnel have been in the armory and the last full visual inventory was before we left the Solar System. Even if I just restrict it to the time since Mironov came on board, that’s days of footage that we’d have to watch in close to real-time to be sure of what was being done.”

“Tell you what, Lt. James,” Vinnie said, “instead, pull up a list of all the personnel to enter the armory on this trip. Highlight the ones that entered since Mironov came on board.”

“No problem, sir,” James spoke the command into the computer’s audio pickup and the list appeared in the display over the main Security station console.

“All right,” Vinnie went on, “now, I want you to bring up a list of everyone who’s been in Mironov’s cabin since he came on board, and cross-reference it with the ones who’ve been in the armory.”

“But Captain Mahoney,” James said with a frown, “whoever took the gun could have hidden it somewhere and let Mironov come and get it later. Wouldn’t that have been safer?”

“Yes, it would,” Vinnie admitted, “but we’ve gotta’ start somewhere, so let’s just add that to the list. Cause if this doesn’t work, James, you personally are going to be sifting through every second of footage we have of Mironov until we find out where he got that gun.”

“Yes, sir,” James assented glumly. “All right, here’s the list. There aren’t many: just me, Colonel McKay, the Admiral, the First Officer Commander Nunez, and… I think Security Tech Morales. That’s it.”

“Now find me which of those visited the armory since Mironov has been on the ship but prior to visiting his room.”

James relayed the question to the computer and then examined the results. “That would be just me, Colonel McKay and the Admiral.”

“Bring up the video of all three of you when you were in his room after visiting the armory. Can’t be that much of it.”

“I’ll pull up mine first,” James decided. “I was only there for a minute when we gave him the cabin and then again when we put him there before the battle.”

The video played on the holographic display, showing James doing his duty, checking the cabin before Mironov entered and then dropping the man off prior to the battle and sealing the door.

“Guess you’re off the hook, Lieutenant,” Vinnie spared him a small grin. ‘Course, as head of Security, you could have doctored the recordings. But like I told James, ya’ gotta’ start somewhere.

“Now for your Colonel McKay,” James went on. Vinnie thought about telling him not to bother-he would believe that he himself had given Mironov the gun before he’d think the Colonel had done it-but decided that wouldn’t be fair, seeing as how the man had gone ahead and shown footage of himself already.

McKay had spent quite a bit more time with Mironov, obviously, and they had to fast-forward through the footage, making McKay look a bit absurd in the process, Vinnie thought with vague amusement. But as he’d known as certainly as his name, there was no sign of the Colonel passing the Russian a weapon.

James sighed. “Just the Admiral left, which is a huge waste of time. Then I’m going to wind up sitting here for hours watching that loony Russian play with himself.”

Even as James was calling up the video of the Admiral, Vinnie was nodding in agreement with the man. There had to be some way of paring down the footage. The problem was, James was right: Mironov could have picked up the weapon almost anywhere on the ship. All it would have required was whoever had stolen it leaving him some sort of message. They were back to square one.

“I don’t see too much need for discussion, McKay,” Patel admitted as he sat behind his desk, motioning McKay into a chair. “We have to take out the Protectorate fleet and destroy their ability to make war.”

“That’s a maneuver, Admiral,” McKay argued, “not the main goal.”

“And what is the main goal, then?” Patel asked, raising an eyebrow.

McKay spread his hands as if the answer were obvious. “Sir, our goal should be to either capture or destroy the alien technology they found on Novoye Rodina. Without it, their ability to make war on us, as you say, is incredibly limited: not much more potent than the Belt Pirates.”

“Good point,” the Admiral admitted, nodding in acknowledgement. “But how does that affect our strategy, or what we’re going to recommend to the President?”

“A frontal attack will be costly, sir. More costly than we can likely support, given the current economic realities. What we need to do is draw them away and launch a targeted strike on Novoye Rodina. If possible, we secure it, but I doubt it will be that easy. I think the most straightforward plan with the best chance of success is to plant nukes and take out their production facility.”

“That sounds pretty risky,” Patel said, brow furling. “Why not just take it out with missiles?”

“Antonov’s had a long time to set up space defenses,” McKay explained. “I’m thinking he wouldn’t expect a small-scale insertion, particularly if it’s masked by a large space attack.”

Patel smiled knowingly. “And I suppose you’ll be leading that operation personally, eh?”

“Unfinished business, sir,” McKay replied with a shrug.

“Colonel,” Vinnie’s voice sounded in his ear over his ‘link’s earpiece. “I know you’re in Admiral Patel’s office; don’t respond to this call. Act as if you’re still talking to him, sir.”

McKay had never been much of a poker player, but he tried to put on his best poker face nonetheless and act as if he hadn’t heard the transmission. Patel was chuckling lightly, shaking his head.

“McKay, someone needs to have a little professional development talk with you,” he was saying. “You’re a Colonel now… O-6’s don’t generally lead commando raids. Shouldn’t you delegate something like that to Captain Mahoney?”

“There will be plenty for all of us to do, sir, I’m sure,” he replied, trying not to sound distracted.

“Sir,” Vinnie said quickly, “we ran some of the Security video from Mironov’s cabin. Admiral Patel was in there the day before Mironov took over engineering-he was in there alone, no one else. We can’t be one hundred percent certain because the angle’s bad, but we’re pretty sure we just saw the Admiral put the pistol in the cabin, in the clothes locker.”

It took every ounce of will and self-control that Jason McKay had within him to keep his composure at that moment and he knew his face had given something away, so he wasn’t surprised when Patel frowned at him.

“Is something wrong, McKay?” the Admiral asked.

McKay’s mind worked furiously and still he knew it couldn’t work fast enough to reason through this, so he went with his gut, as he had so many times before. “Sorry, sir, I just got a call from Vinnie down in Security. He says there’s something that you and I should see, if you wouldn’t mind. He says it’s important and he’d rather we saw it in person.”

Patel’s eyebrow rose but he shrugged assent. “All right, let’s go while we have the time.”

It wasn’t far from the Admiral’s cabin to the Security station, but to Jason McKay it seemed like kilometers as he feverishly worked possibilities out in his mind. Why the hell would Admiral Patel put a gun in Mironov’s room? It made absolutely no sense; if the Admiral was a traitor, why would he have worked so hard to save the ship after Mironov’s-he still found it uncomfortable and confusing to think of the man as Antonov-sabotage? But what other reason could there be for him helping the Russian?

The one thing that he couldn’t shake though, no matter how many scenarios played themselves out in his head, was the conviction that there was no way that his friend Arvid Patel was a traitor; there was no way that the man he’d fought beside six years ago was working for the Protectorate.

He hoped to God he was right, because if he was wrong, Patel could easily have him and whoever else saw the video put in confinement and then erase everything.

The door to Security was closed and sealed, but Patel’s palm on the door plate opened it and they entered to find Vinnie and Lt. James seated at the console. Both men jumped to their feet as the officers entered.

“Admiral,” Vinnie nodded, the expression on his face like a kid who’d walked in on his parents having sex.

“All right,” Patel waved a hand impatiently. “What did we need to see?”

“Well, umm, sir,” Vinnie said hesitantly, “Lt. James and I were going through video footage from Mironov’s room and we… we think we found who slipped him the weapon..”

“Excellent, let’s see it.”

Lt. James looked to Vinnie, face pale. Vinnie shrugged helplessly and hit the control to show the video. While Patel and McKay watched the playback, Vinnie watched Patel. He didn’t react at first as he saw himself enter the cabin, but then his eyes grew wide as he realized that Mironov wasn’t in the cabin.

“When was this taken?” He asked hoarsely.

“The day before Mironov took the hostages in Engineering,” Vinnie replied quietly, pointing to the date/time stamp projected in a corner of the picture.

For the first time since Vinnie had met the Admiral, Patel seemed speechless. “But that…” he finally stuttered, face slack. “That’s not possible!”

Then he saw himself reach into his belt under his uniform jacket, and pull something dark and metallic out, quickly hiding it between stacks of clothes in the wall locker. When he turned around in the video, his face was blankly intense, his mouth in a hard line but his eyes staring at something a thousand kilometers away. Then he left the cabin.

Patel looked around him at the other officers, mouth agape. “Gentlemen,” he said slowly and carefully, “I can’t explain this.”

“Vinnie,” McKay asked, “is there any other suspicious interaction between the Admiral and Mr. Mironov that was caught on the security cameras?”

“There was one thing we found,” Vinnie confirmed, “when we looked up every time they’d been together since Mironov came on board.” He nodded to Lt. James, who pulled up the footage.

“This is earlier that same day,” Vinnie supplied.

The video showed the Admiral walking into the cafeteria, stepping over to the dispenser and grabbing a cup of coffee. Mironov was sitting at a table nearby and rose when he saw the Admiral enter. He stepped close behind the officer and as he reached for a cup and paused.

“Lodka,” the Russian whispered. In the video, the Admiral’s eyes took on the same distant stare as they had in Mironov’s cabin. “Get me a handgun. Put it in my cabin.”

Then he turned and was gone. Admiral Patel left his coffee cup sitting on the counter and left the mess without his expression changing.

“You go straight from there to the armory,” Lt. James finally spoke. “You asked the guard on duty to run an errand, then removed the transponder and took the pistol. A few hours later, you left it in Mironov’s cabin. Sir.”

“Lodka,” McKay repeated, rubbing a hand over his chin. “That’s Russian for ‘boat.’ What the hell is the significance of that?”

Patel was still staring at the video display, his face a mixture of rage, disbelief and absolute horror. “Hypnoprobe me,” he snarled suddenly.

“Sir?” McKay looked up at him, startled.

“McKay, I don’t remember any of this! In fact, I actively remember not doing it!” He threw his hands up helplessly. “I can’t explain it and I am not going to just stick myself in a holding cell until I know how it happened. Take me to the medical bay and hypnoprobe me, McKay and find out what the hell happened to me!”

McKay looked his old friend in the eye, seeing the desperation and fear in the man’s face. “Aye, sir.” It might, he thought sadly, be the last order that Patel ever gave.

“I just don’t believe it,” Commander Estefan Nunez repeated, shaking his head.

McKay glanced at him sidelong as they both waited for the ship’s medical officer to finish setting up the hypnoprobe. Nunez was a short, broad-bodied man in his early forties, his face jowly, his dark hair cut short and tightly curled. Right now, watching the Admiral strapped into a seat in front of the machine, he looked as if he’d been sucker-punched, and McKay knew the feeling well.

“Pull it together, Steve,” Patel told him, staring at the memory probe with a bit of trepidation. “No matter what we find out, you’re going to be in charge till we get home. Who are you going to have as your acting XO? I know Pirelli is senior, but she’s a hell of a Tactical Officer, so you might want to keep her on the bridge in case we have to fight again.”

“Probably Sweeny then,” Nunez decided, swallowing hard and trying to steady himself. “I’ll bring Ghent up from the auxiliary bridge to run the Helm.”

“And make sure you listen to McKay,” Patel instructed him. “He’s not always right, but he’s always worth listening to.”

“We’re ready,” the medical officer announced, swinging the hypnoprobe’s visor into place over Patel’s eyes. She pulled an injector from a tray and applied it to his bared arm. “Once we activate the probe, you can ask your questions, but you need to speak into this microphone,” she pointed to a small mic that extended from the side of the machine, “and they need to be specific. If this is something he can’t access consciously, he’s not going to be able to help guide you in your line of inquiry.”

“I understand, Dr. Walters,” McKay said, smiling thinly. “This isn’t my first rodeo.”

Walters seemed to blush a bit as she remembered who she was talking to. “Yes, sir,” she said. “I’m activating the probe now.”

Patel was lolling slightly as the drugs took effect, but when the light patterns began to pulse in the hypnoprobe’s visor, he stiffened slightly.

“Admiral Patel,” McKay said quietly into the microphone, “why did you give Mironov the gun?”

“I don’t remember,” Patel responded, his voice steady and clear but with an automatic tone to it, as if he were reading from a script.

McKay frowned. “What does the word ‘lodka‘ mean to you?”

“You said it was ‘boat,’ in Russian.”

“When did you first hear the word?” McKay pressed him.

The Admiral paused, not speaking for a long moment. “I don’t remember.”

McKay glanced at the medical officer, who was frowning in confusion. “But you have heard the word before this week?”

“I don’t remember.” The answer came faster this time.

McKay reached down and turned off the microphone, leaning back against the wall, his face thoughtful.

“He’s suppressing the memory,” McKay mused.

“How is that possible?” Dr. Walters asked. “I’ve never heard of anyone being able to fight the hypnoprobe.”

“It’s possible,” he told her, “but it’s not easy. It takes deep conditioning by experts.”

“Wouldn’t that take some time to do?” Nunez asked him. “When would that have happened?”

“Is there a way to get past it?” Dr. Walters interjected before he could answer the XO.

“I don’t know when it would have happened,” McKay told the XO, “but yes, it would have taken days at least.” He turned to the medical officer. “There are ways, but it’s risky and to be honest with you, I’ve never tried it, just heard about it from a colleague.” He hesitated, weighing Admiral Patel’s desperate desire to know the truth against the risk to his friend’s health. “Do you have any neuronomine in the medical stores?”

Walters raised an eyebrow. “I’m not sure… I haven’t even heard that name since medical school.” She pulled a small tablet out of her pocket and pulled up an inventory. “By God, we do have a little of it.”

“Inject the Admiral with 10 cc’s of it,” he instructed her.

She looked at him doubtfully but went back into the drug storage cabinets and typed the name into the console. A motorized retrieval system delivered a vial of the drug to a dispenser tray and Walters pulled it out then fed the vial into an injector. She paused with the injector near Patel’s arm.

“Colonel,” she said, “I don’t know how this will interact with the psychoactives…”

“I do,” he said gravely. “And it’s not good. Prepare to treat for seizures and intracranial bleeding.”

“Jesus, sir!” she exclaimed, eyes widening. “Are you sure we should do this?”

“It’s what the Admiral wanted,” McKay told her. He looked to Nunez. “It’s your call, though, Commander… you’re in charge now.”

Nunez’s eyes narrowed and McKay could almost see the debate going on in the man’s head. Then he visibly came to a decision. “Give the Admiral the drug, Dr. Walters,” he said quietly but firmly. “I take responsibility for the consequences.”

The medical officer was still shaking her head doubtfully as she placed the head of the injector against Patel’s arm and pressed the activation stud. The drug hissed into the officer’s veins and the doctor stepped back, watching the Admiral with a worried look. Patel showed no effect for a moment but then he began to jerk against his restraints, his muscles tensing, the veins in his neck popping out, and the only sound coming from his lips a strained moan as his breathing became labored and harsh.

“Is he having a seizure?” Nunez asked, alarm on his face.

“A minor one,” the medical officer confirmed, her mouth set in a grim line. She brought out another injector and quickly used it. The Admiral relaxed, his head hanging forward against the visor, his breathing slowing down to a steady rate. Dr. Walters pulled a small MRI unit over to the Admiral’s chair and took a quick reading. “No bleeding,” she said with a relieved sigh. “I think he’s okay. Go ahead and ask your questions, sir.”

“Admiral Patel,” McKay spoke into the microphone again, “when did you first hear the word ‘lodka‘ and what is its significance?”

“I first heard it five years ago,” the Admiral told them easily, in a calm, drowsy voice, “when my ship was boarded by Protectorate troops in the Tau Ceti system, just after our relief mission to Aphrodite.”

“What the fuck?” Nunez muttered as Dr. Walters’ mouth dropped open in shock. McKay only just restrained himself from muttering a curse, refraining only because of the knowledge that it would be picked up by the hypnoprobe’s microphone.

“The word ‘lodka’ was to be the trigger,” Patel went on, oblivious to their reactions. “I was instructed that the next time I heard it, I would be given instructions and I must follow them as if they were orders from the President, then I was to forget everything connected with the event.”

“Were you given any other instructions?” McKay asked carefully, forcing his brain to work despite the shock.

“Yes,” Patel said in a steady drone. “I was to forget that the ship had been captured, and instead remember an antimatter feed chamber fault that caused our return to be delayed. And I was instructed that if there was ever a possibility of the Republic finding the Protectorate homeworld, that I was to make sure that I was along on the mission. Especially if you were to be involved, McKay-they wanted me to keep an eye on you if you ever came close to finding them.”

“Was Antonov there?” McKay demanded. “Did you see him?”

“No, I never saw him,” Patel admitted. “I just saw the biomech troopers who were guarding us and the doctors who were hypnoprobing all of us.”

“Who was on the ship?” McKay asked, a faint memory of the mission coming back to him with a creeping feeling of horror. “Besides the regular crew, who else was on that mission?”

“Colonel Kage was there; he’s a general now. Unpleasant, abrasive son of a bitch, but intelligent.” McKay felt the hairs prickling on his arms. Kage. Why am I not surprised? “And that Senator… Xavier Dominguez. He was there too.”

McKay froze, cold fire running through his veins. He didn’t look around, but if he had, he would have seen Dr. Walters and Commander Nunez mirroring his stunned expression.

“Vice…” He coughed, clearing his throat of the lump that had suddenly formed there. “Vice President Xavier Dominguez?” He asked.

“Yes, that’s him. He did get elected Daniel O’Keefe’s Vice President later on. He seemed sincere; nice man. A bit too smooth, perhaps, but after all he is a politician.”

Trying to keep his hand from shaking, McKay reached out and switched off the microphone, turning to face Nunez. “Commander,” he said, iron discipline keeping his voice steady, “I’m going to pull up a manifest from that mission. If we find any other crewmembers that were on it, it’s my recommendation that they be confined to quarters for the rest of this voyage.”

“Of course,” Nunez waved an impatient acceptance. “But Colonel… we have bigger problems than that! The fucking Vice President! We have to get home… we have to tell people about this!”

“If they don’t know already, Commander,” McKay said with a grim nod. “If they don’t know already…”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Shannon Stark slept fitfully in the unfamiliar cot, unable to get comfortable and also unable to shut down her conscious mind. It was unusual and frustrating for her. She had always been able to grab sleep whenever it was available, even strapped into an acceleration couch. But here, in the sparsely furnished Intelligence Service safe-house in Houston, she simply couldn’t shut out everything that was happening.

She knew that Ari and Roza were in the next room, Val and her daughter were down the hall and that the operatives that Tom had assigned to her were standing watch, some inside near the front door and some surreptitiously patrolling outside. Despite that, however, she felt utterly alone in a way she hadn’t since the War.

Dammit, she thought, rearranging her pillows once again, how did I wind up in this position again? Wasn’t it enough to have to save the world once?

Theoretically, she should have handed the whole thing off to the Republic Investigative Service, the agency in charge of domestic law enforcement; but they were a joke, notoriously inefficient and inept, and with the Vice President corrupted and the money of the Multicorps Executive Council behind the scheme, she just couldn’t trust anyone else.

Up to now, it hadn’t seemed real, somehow… it had the cognitive plausible deniability of being in the shadows, invisible to the rest of the world. But Wednesday would change all that and she wasn’t sure she was ready for the ramifications.

She tried to force it all down, to bring on needed sleep with an old mantra she’d used as a child, repeating “silence, darkness” to herself in her head till it drowned out all other thought. Finally she felt herself being drawn into the dark embrace of sleep… and then her ‘link beeped for attention. Swearing softly, she pushed the ear bud into place.

“Stark,” she answered abruptly, trying not to snap in frustration.

“Ma’am, it’s Lt. Franks,” the voice in her ear announced, a tinge of excitement in his usually steady voice. “We received a tightbeamed pulse message about ten minutes ago from somewhere out in the Belt. It’s the Decatur, ma’am… they’re back!”

“Jason… I mean, the Colonel is back?” Shannon bolted upright in bed, relief flooding into her suddenly, highlighting an ache deep inside her that she had hardly noticed with everything else that had happened.

“I don’t know, ma’am,” Franks told her. “It’s encrypted and it’s for your eyes only. I’m sending it to your tablet.”

She disconnected without another word and lunged across the bed for her tablet.

“Please be okay,” she muttered urgently in half a prayer.

The message was encoded biometrically and she obediently pressed her finger to a port in the side where a small needle pricked it and took a DNA sample from her blood. A few minutes passed as a progress bar showed the status of the decryption and then she was looking at an image of Joyce Minishimi. The woman was in a medical bay bed in zero gravity, held lightly in place by padded straps across her chest and hips and she looked gaunt and pale; and Shannon fought back a rising sense of doom.

“Colonel Stark,” Minishimi said a bit hoarsely, as if she couldn’t draw in a full breath, “this is Captain Minishimi. We’re in the asteroid belt. We’re intact but we’re deadlined on antimatter. How we got here… well, I hope you’re sitting down…”

“Well, now I really don’t know what in the fuck is going on,” Shannon admitted tiredly, running her hands over her face, elbows on the table of the safe-house’s kitchen.

“I was almost ready to believe that the Protectorate wasn’t involved at all,” Valerie said, nodding, from where she sat opposite Shannon. The young senator looked drained, her normally styled hair hanging limply and circles under her eyes. She’d left her daughter sleeping in her room when Shannon had woken her.

“At least we know the boss is okay,” Ari interjected. He and Roza shared a rumpled but satisfied post-coital glow but were businesslike as they had viewed the recorded message with the others. “Sailing into the teeth of the enemy,” he amended with a shrug, “but he was alive when she left him. And he’s got Admiral Patel there, too.”

“Admiral Patel,” Shannon nodded in grim counterpoint, “who was also aboard the Patton when it was hijacked.”

“You think Admiral Patel was… copied?” Ari asked her, eyes narrowing. “But she said he saved their ship, destroyed Protectorate spacecraft… why would he do that if he were on their side?”

“I hope he isn’t,” Shannon told him earnestly. “But Commander Duncan didn’t show any sign of having been copied or brainwashed or whatever until he tried to destroy the Decatur and kill Captain Minishimi. We can’t take anything for granted.” She frowned. “The worst part is, Jason won’t even know that it’s a possibility… he still thinks this is purely an external threat.”

“If Antonov is involved,” Roza said thoughtfully, “the question I have is, how did he and Fourcade-or whoever Fourcade represents-come to be in contact? It’s not as if they could meet each other in passing at the local bar.”

“I think the more important question,” Shannon countered, “is what Antonov has to gain by allying himself with Fourcade and his people? It’s not as if the multicorps are going to hand over the planet to him… and I don’t know he would settle for less.”

“He can’t have replaced all of them,” Ari figured, shaking his head. “If he could get away with that, he wouldn’t have to be this subtle. So they have to have something to offer him. You’re right though, ma’am, I can’t figure what. This was simpler when it was a home-grown insurrection.”

“We’re missing some piece of the puzzle here,” Valerie declared.

“Or several pieces,” Shannon granted, “but we can’t sit back and wait for them to fall into place. The enemy isn’t going to sit on their asses and we can’t either.” She tapped a code into her ‘link. “Franks, this is Stark. The area where the transmission came from… what do we have out there that can deliver a load of fuel-grade antimatter in the next 48 hours?”

She listened for a reply, then nodded to herself in satisfaction. “Excellent. Get them out there immediately and, Franks, no one can know about this. Make it clear and see to it that it’s done. Also, I need a tightbeam pulse sent back to the Decatur letting them know that refuel is coming. And tell them to put a relay in place in line with the wormhole so they can intercept any transmissions back through to Sirius and decrypt them with Duncan’s ‘link. Once they’re refueled, they’re to hold and wait for further instructions. Get it done now.” She disconnected from the ‘link and let out a relieved breath. “Well, at least there’s that. Damn, I wish I had more of an insight into the multicorps’ politics: maybe then I could get more of a handle on who was backing this. The problem is, anyone I could ask could conceivably be involved.”

“There’s someone we could ask,” Valerie suggested quietly, a small grin lighting up her weary countenance. “Someone we could trust, who knows the multicorps inside and out.” She shrugged. “The only tough part will be figuring out how to contact him without attracting too much attention…”

* * *

Shannon leaned tiredly against the window of the flyer, her eyes slitted against the late morning sun, looking down every now and then when the vast, nearly unbroken plains of Oklahoma were interrupted by the swiftly moving dots of pronghorn antelope or the lumbering masses of elephant herds. Once, she was sure she saw the tawny bulk of a pride of lions slinking through the tall grass near the edge of a clump of bison.

“I’ve never been to the Preserve before,” Ari commented idly from the pilot’s seat, glancing back at Major Stark. “Always meant to check it out one of these days.”

“My parents brought me here when I was twelve,” Shannon told him, her voice sounding rough and hoarse to her own ears. She hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in days. “For a year after, I wanted to be a park ranger or a wildlife biologist.”

“My family never had the money to take all of us that far,” Ari said wistfully, “what with five kids, and my folks weren’t taxpayers or anything.”

“Maybe you should take a vacation one of these days, Ari,” she suggested. “I personally plan to take one when all this is over, assuming we live through it and don’t wind up conquered by the Protectorate or exiled to a star colony by a new government.”

“That’s what I’ve always liked about you, ma’am,” Ari said with a grin. “You’re so upbeat and optimistic.”

The flat grasslands and gently rolling hills of the Great Rewilding Preserve that covered millions of acres of America’s Great Plains gradually gave way to clusters of support and control buildings and living quarters that ran along the edge of the park, then to the infrastructure that was the outskirts of Oklahoma City.

“There it is,” Shannon nodded at a long fence-line that ran along the cracked and neglected length of an ancient surface road “Follow that fence-line and it’ll take us to the ranch house.”

“Flying this thing on manual, it feels like I’m out on a colony world somewhere,” Ari commented, “instead of the middle of the United States.”

“Well, we can switch back to satellite control if you like,” Shannon replied dryly. “Then we could go on Republic HoloNet and announce to the whole system what we’re doing, just to put a cherry on top.”

“Well, when you put it like that, ma’am…” He chuckled. “I see the house. We should be there in a minute.”

Ari traced the route of a dirt track that turned off the main road and then followed it to the crest of a low hill, where a single story ranch house sprawled comfortably in the dry, brown grass of summer as it had since the early 1900s. He landed the flyer on the side of the house, between it and a much newer garage, not far from a rugged-looking all-terrain rover suitable to travel the untended roads as well as the rolling grassland.

Shannon was unstrapping even as Ari powered down the turbines, and when she looked up from unfastening her safety harness, she could see the lone figure stepping out the side door of the house to meet them. He was tall and powerfully built, still intimidating in his early 70’s, though looking strangely incongruent to her in a short sleeved shirt, jeans and boots. He had skin the color of cafe-aux-lait; close-cropped, tight-curled hair with no grey in it and a face that had been sculpted from the side of a granite cliff. He halted a few meters from the flyer and waited for Shannon and Ari to climb out of the vehicle.

“Welcome to my home away from home, Colonel Stark,” he said with a thin smile, his voice a modulated earthquake.

“Thanks for agreeing to meet, Mr. President,” Shannon said, extending a hand.

Gregory Jameson, former President of the Republic, took her hand in his and shook it warmly.

“From the method you used to contact me, I assume this isn’t a social call.”

“No, sir,” she admitted, “unfortunately it’s business.” She waved a hand back at Ari. “You remember Captain Shamir, sir.”

“Yes, a most capable Marine,” Jameson declared. “And quite the Intelligence officer in the last few years, I understand.” Ari actually felt himself blushing.

“Thank you, sir,” he said. “It’s an honor to meet you again.”

“Come on in,” Jameson invited them, waving at the open side door. “My wife is back in Capital City for a conference, so it’s just me today.”

“How is Janice, sir?” Shannon asked politely as they stepped into the house. She’d met the woman once, just after the wedding five years ago and couldn’t remember a thing about her.

“She’s doing well,” Jameson said, closing the door behind them. The side door led into the house’s old-fashioned kitchen; from the layout, Shannon could easily imagine it as it had been three hundred years ago, fitted with a wood-burning stove and an ice-box instead of the modern food storage and processing equipment it now held.

A drowsy English sheepdog padded into the kitchen from the living room and shoved its head under Jameson’s hand. He paused to kneel and scratch the dog’s ears affectionately before turning back to the two officers.

“Please, sit down,” Jameson motioned to the kitchen table. “Can I get either of you a drink?”

Shannon started to say no reflexively, but smelled coffee brewing and changed her mind. “I’d love a cup of coffee, sir,” she said. “I feel like I haven’t slept in a week.”

“You, Captain Shamir?” Jameson asked as he stepped over to the counter and grabbed a cup for Shannon.

“I’m good, sir,” Ari assured him, shaking his head.

Jameson sat across from them and the sheepdog draped itself contentedly across his feet on the floor beneath the table. “So, how can I help you save the world this time, Colonel Stark?”

She took a careful sip from the cup he’d handed her before she answered. “Sir,” she began, “we’ve come to you because we have a problem with the Executive Council and we know you have some connections there since…”

“Since I lost the election and had to get a real job,” Jameson finished for her, a smile quirking across his lips. “Yes, I’ve done some lobbying for Brendan Riordan the last couple years, both for the Council and for Republic Transportation. What’s Brendan done now?” He shook his head ruefully and leaned his elbows on the table. “I know he wasn’t happy with Daniel’s emigration reforms… is he trying to bribe the colonial governors again?”

“Not quite, sir,” she replied carefully. “He’s ah…”

“He’s trying to cut out the middleman, you might say,” Ari interjected, earning a baleful glance from Shannon.

“We have reason to believe,” Shannon told him, “that Director Riordan is part of a coup attempt against President O’Keefe.”

“What?” Jameson’s eyes widened and he jerked upright, startling the dog, who glanced up at him curiously. “Are you serious?”

“That’s not the worst of it, Mr. President,” she went on. “The coup attempt may involve an alliance with Antonov and the Protectorate.”

“Perhaps,” the former President said slowly, “you should start from the beginning.”

“Yes, sir,” she said. “You have to understand that this is incredibly sensitive and strictly need-to-know; you can’t repeat this to anyone without clearance and honestly, the only reason I can tell you any of this is that we’re basically desperate and President O’Keefe has dumped this whole thing in my lap.”

“Teach your grandma to suck eggs, Colonel Stark,” Jameson commented dryly and she had to chuckle. Jameson had been well known for playing things close to the vest as president.

“It started a few weeks ago, sir, when…”

A half hour later, her coffee cup was empty and Jameson was sitting back in his chair, a stunned expression on his face. The sheepdog had laid her head across his thigh and he was petting her reflexively. Shannon had told him most of the story, but she had left out the fate of Glen’s assassin and also, from gut instinct and natural paranoia more than anything else, she had omitted the fact that the Decatur had returned.

“If anyone,” he said slowly and quietly, “and I mean anyone other than you or Colonel McKay had told me that story, I would have laughed them out of my house. Unfortunately, I believe you. Jesus Christ,” he moaned softly, rubbing his eyes. “How did it ever come to this? What could Riordan be thinking working with Antonov?”

“Actually sir,” Shannon said, “I was wondering the opposite: why would Antonov work with the Council? What could they offer him?”

“Perhaps it’s as simple as the promise to leave him alone?” Jameson wondered. “After all, he knows we’ve been trying to hunt him down for the last five years.”

“Antonov would never be satisfied with that,” Shannon disagreed. “He spent over a century dreaming and planning to take over Earth, he wouldn’t be satisfied reigning in some alien hell.”

“That doesn’t mean he hasn’t let them believe that’s what he wants,” Ari pointed out thoughtfully. “If they’re desperate enough or greedy enough, they might buy it.”

“They’re likely both,” Jameson confirmed grimly. “Things are going badly, as I’m sure you both know. It hasn’t filtered all the way up to the level of the Council, but it will and they know it. Half the time I’m in Capital City, I spend trying to force Senators to face reality: the Republic economy and our government is a house of cards and it’s about to collapse.”

“Damn, another ray of sunshine,” Ari muttered. At Shannon’s quelling glance he raised his hands helplessly. “Sorry, ma’am, Mr. President, but everyone we run into keeps telling us the same thing and I keep wondering why it’s come to this if everyone seems to know it’s going to happen.”

“It’s a fair question,” Jameson admitted. “I’ve asked myself the same thing many nights since the election. Before the invasion, we were pushing our borders out and colonizing every habitable world simply because we were so surprised and delighted that there were habitable planets so close to us. So we came up with reasons to be there: we drilled for oil and found exotic animals and plants and we dumped our political rabble-rousers off far away from home and used them for cheap labor.

“But it wasn’t sustainable. We were pouring money into the antimatter production plants and building Eysselink drive starships and not making enough return to cover our investments. Eventually it would have imploded anyway… but the war pushed things up by years.” He sighed heavily. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to abandon the colonies pretty soon… at the least, we won’t be able to resupply them. Whoever stays will be on their own for years at a time.”

“That makes it even more crucial that we get rid of the threat of Antonov now,” Shannon declared. “Otherwise, he’ll be able to prey on the colonies and we won’t be able to stop him.”

“Actually, Antonov could be the key to saving the colonies,” Jameson said, a bit of excitement creeping into his voice. “Think about it… if we could gain access to the wormhole matrix that Antonov controls, we could reach the colonies without using expensive Eysselink drive starships… anyone who could afford an in-system transport could travel to the stars. Mining in the star colonies would be practical and affordable. But only if we get rid of the threat of Antonov… otherwise, he could ambush ships coming through the gates and make things too dangerous for trade.”

“That might explain why the Council is desperate enough to deal with him,” Shannon guessed. “They think they can make a deal with him and save their corporations. But why do they think he would cooperate?”

“I’ve known Brendan Riordan for over twenty years,” Jameson told her. “The man is many things, but he’s nobody’s fool. If he is involved in this, he must think he has some hole card that will keep Antonov in line.”

“This is where we need your help, sir,” Shannon told him. “We had some idea of when, where and how the people involved with this were going to make the attempt on President O’Keefe’s life, but things have changed. We’re pretty sure they won’t make an attempt while he’s in Houston addressing the Council, but that means we don’t know when they will decide to try it. We need you to try to get a read on who is involved in this beyond Fourcade and Riordan and what their next move might be.”

“I’ll do my best to find out what I can,” Jameson promised. He rubbed the knuckles of his right hand thoughtfully. “If they’re confused and their plans are in flux, it could be a good time for me to approach them. After all,” he grinned, “I am an old friend.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“You are going to lose,” Podbyrin declared flatly.

McKay started, looking up at the man suddenly as if he were just realizing he was there in the cabin with him.

“What?”

“This game,” Podbyrin expanded, nodding at the chess board between them. “Mate in three moves. You are distracted today.”

“Well Gosh, D’mitry,” McKay grinned crookedly, “what could I possibly have to be distracted by?”

“You are supposed to be resting,” the Russian reminded him. “That is why we are stopped here, no?”

“I slept for ten hours,” McKay muttered, looking at the chessboard sourly and seeing that Podbyrin hadn’t been exaggerating. He tipped over his king and they began to reset the pieces.

“Knowing you, McKay, you probably worried in your damned dreams.” Podbyrin said with a snort. Then he shrugged. “I do admit, sitting here orbiting this rock makes me nervous too. The gate is not that far away… if they come through, they will see us here.”

“We didn’t have much choice. We had to repair a dozen damaged relays and get the antimatter storage canisters we retrieved at Novoye Rodina hooked back into the drive system. And we’d been on alert for three straight days-the crew needed the downtime.” McKay shrugged. “Besides, we already had two Protectorate ships come through the gate and they just passed right on through without seeing us.”

“Der’mo!” Podbyrin spat. “And no one bothered to mention it?”

“The duty crews were on alert. Commander Nunez didn’t want to wake the others needlessly.” He frowned. “Plus, if there are any other Protectorate sleeper agents on board, we didn’t want to give them any ideas.”

“I have been thinking about this,” the Russian said, drumming his fingers on the chessboard as pondered his first move. “It does not seem like something General Antonov would do.”

“Huh?” McKay peered at him curiously. “I met the man and I would say there’s not too much beneath him.”

“No, my friend,” Podbyrin said, chuckling, as he advanced a pawn cautiously. “I didn’t mean that it was too evil for him, I meant that it was too subtle.” He waved a hand demonstratively. “The General can be brilliant and bold, but at heart he is a direct man, not possessed of such subtlety. If he were, we… the Protectorate, that is… would have won the war, won both wars: the first one with the Chinese and the second against your Republic. I was working on that bioweapon, remember, when the invasion was occurring. If he had been patient, if he had waited even a few months we might have had it ready. Then he could have controlled the only treatment for it and held all of Earth hostage to it.”

McKay felt a prickling on his neck listening to this man speak so calmly about potentially killing millions of people and he remembered again that just because Podbyrin was his ally didn’t change the fact that he had been a dangerous fanatic at one time.

“But he had his plan and it was the one that could be implemented the soonest and the simplest. And he had little patience for anyone who told him he was wrong… it was to the point where no one wanted to be the one to tell him bad news. If General Antonov had hijacked the Patton, one of your star cruisers, he would never have given it back. He lacks the patience to give up the immediate reward for something more long term.”

McKay’s eyes stared through the chessboard as he considered what Podbyrin had said. “You know, D’mitry, you’re right, this is a bit of a complicated and risky plan for him. Why wouldn’t he have kept the Patton when he had her?” He glanced up at the Russian. “Is there an advisor he might have listened to more after being defeated in the invasion of Earth?”

“Hell no!” Podbyrin’s answer was a scornful laugh. “After we lost the war with China, he blamed everyone but himself! He blamed you Americans most of all, even though you didn’t fire a shot in the war. No, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he blamed the failure of the invasion on me… and, to be fair, it was my fault for being captured rather than killing myself.”

“What if he didn’t make it back from Earth?” McKay suggested almost reluctantly. “Is there anyone else with more patience and foresight who would have taken over?”

Podbyrin thought about that for a moment before shaking his head. “No,” he finally answered. “The General did not encourage initiative among his officers. They had a plan and they would stick to it or die. If someone did take over, it would take them a long time before giving up on his return. Mere months after the war… no, none of them would have the initiative and intelligence to come up with this plan so quickly.”

“Well great,” McKay said morosely, pushing forward a pawn of his own. “As if I didn’t have enough to think about. I’m playing chess with someone and I can’t see their side of the board.” He snorted a laugh. “Half the time it feels like I can’t see my own side of the board.”

“General Antonov was never much of a chess player,” Podbyrin told him, making another move. “I used to beat him every time. It made him mad as hell, but he kept playing me, always confident he would get it right next time.” He looked up and caught McKay’s eye. “It comes to me that you are not playing chess with the General alone. There is another player here who thinks farther ahead.”

“If you’re right, then we aren’t sailing into safe harbor going home,” McKay said softly, advancing a knight.

“How do you know that?” Podbyrin asked, voice taking on a sharp, suddenly-worried tone.

McKay shrugged, seeming preternaturally calm. “As far as we know, there’re only two forces out there with access to star travel: the Republic and the Protectorate. Someone hijacked the Patton and whoever it was had access to star travel. If you’re right, and Antonov isn’t behind this, or at least isn’t the one planning it, who else does that leave?”

“Someone on Earth,” Podbyrin realized, half-moaning. “Bozhemoi.” He frowned, confused. “But it had to have been Protectorate forces that took the ship… your Admiral said he saw biomech troopers there.”

“It had to be the Protectorate,” McKay agreed with a nod. “But you’re telling me that it can’t have been Antonov and it can’t have been anyone else in his officer corps. And then there’s Mironov, who certainly thought he was Antonov’s duplicate and I can tell you he acted like he was Antonov.”

“So it was Antonov, and yet I do not see how it could be him,” Podbyrin mused, taking a moment to move a rook. “This… this is an interesting problem. Do you have any ideas?”

“D’mitry, all I have is ideas right now. I have facts that could fit together in a hundred different ways and all of them are pretty bad.” He moved one of his knights again, then sat back in his chair. “But the longer I think about it, the more sure I am that the timing of all this is no coincidence. Things are bad back home: a lot of people with a lot of money and power stand to lose everything, and I don’t think they’ll let that happen without a fight, even if it means dealing with the Devil.”

“What do you plan to do, McKay?” Podbyrin asked as he took a knight with his rook.

“I plan to trust Shannon,” he told the Russian, grinning ruefully. “She’s a much better chess player than I am.”

* * *

Charlie Klesko wiped sweat from his shaved head with the back of his hand, swearing softly under his breath at the Houston humidity and the way the late afternoon sun was reflecting off the marble tile floor in Commerce Square. His dark eyes flicked from side to side, from the other security agents arrayed at various key positions in the square to the crowds of tourists and gawkers wandering through, to the cluster of Republic HoloNet reporters and the various indie netrag dilettantes that rode their coattails.

He was uncomfortable and it wasn’t just the heat. He hadn’t worked Presidential Security since the Jameson administration and wouldn’t have ever considered working it again if President O’Keefe hadn’t personally requested him… and personally explained why. He’d spent the duration of the Protectorate invasion in a secret shelter with then-Senator O’Keefe along with his daughter and her fiance, as well as Shannon Stark. He’d been wounded in the attack when the Protectorate forces had seized President Jameson and slaughtered most of the sitting Senators, and Shannon Stark and the others had saved his life, so he had reluctantly said yes when Stark and the President had told him about the threat and asked him to take charge of security.

“The meeting is over,” Amelia Moriarty reported from inside the gleaming, white-faced corporate temple that was the Executive Council Headquarters, looming over the square like impending death. “They’re all coming out.”

“Got it,” Klesko responded into the microphone of his ‘link, then pulled his tablet out of his coat pocket and called up the visual feed from the interior security cameras. President O’Keefe and his financial advisors were leading a party of multicorps CEOs through the halls of the palatial building, heading for the front entrance and the spacious courtyard there. “Team Two,” Klesko transmitted softly, “prepare for handoff to exterior security.”

“Preparing for handoff,” came the reply from Brian Wing, the agent in charge of the exterior team. “All units in position. Air and ground surveillance reports clear.”

Klesko checked the time and the progress of the presidential party on his tablet, then tucked it into his pocket again. “This is One-Alpha, moving to secondary position. One-Bravo, you’re in command until I get back; I need to check something.”

“One-Bravo is in command,” Sandra Keiser confirmed from just outside the headquarters office.

Klesko moved quickly across the square, trying hard not to look as nervous as he felt.

Daniel O’Keefe watched the faces around him with concealed amusement as he strode casually through the well-appointed halls of the Council offices. Svetlana Zakharova was trying hard to keep up a neutral, professional demeanor and failing miserably: she was outraged by the thought of compromising on this issue and only iron self-control prevented her from saying so every time they were alone. Kevin Fourcade was just as frustrated, though for different reasons, and also doing a poor job of hiding it: he looked like a man who’d been slathered with honey and tied down next to an ant hill, and now was just waiting to feel the first bite.

Brendan Riordan… now he was a different story. Riordan was a fireplug of a man, barely a meter-seven and broad across the shoulders and chest, with a mane of red hair that gave the impression of being a wild mass but was actually carefully styled. Every detail of the man was carefully controlled and always had been. O’Keefe had known him for years, which was the only reason he could tell that the Director’s perfect Buddha calm was underlain by a rage so fierce he could almost feel it radiating off of him. He knew he was being used and it infuriated him, even though he didn’t know the why of it.

You think you’re mad now, Brendan, O’Keefe thought with a suppressed smile, you just wait.

The President followed his Media Advisor out the front entrance of the offices, thinking not for the first time that the Council headquarters was decorated as lavishly as some of the ancient palaces of Europe that he’d toured. That had been Riordan’s doing, he knew. The Director had the manner and style of royalty and O’Keefe still wasn’t quite sure if it was an affectation or just the way the man was. Of course, if you pretended to be something long enough…

Passing through the exit and out of the climate conditioning, O’Keefe felt as if he’d stepped into a broiler; he began sweating almost immediately and had to restrain an impulse to wipe his forehead. You couldn’t look nervous in front of the cameras. The press was out in force for the announcement, and he’d known they would be: he’d had the news of his support for the biomech bill leaked to assure it. Republic HoloNet was there, of course, but he’d also made sure the independents were present for this as well: the more sources that reported on this, the less likely it would be swept under the rug.

The party ascended the marble platform at the edge of Commerce Square, looking down on the assembled reporters in every sense of the phrase. Leslie Arbocus, his Media Advisor, stepped to the front, affixing his most sincere smile to his plastic face.

“Thank you all for coming this afternoon,” he said in his perfectly modulated voice, seemingly genetically engineered for public speaking. “Before the President speaks, I’d like to allow Brendan Riordan, the Director of the Executive Council of the Multilateral Corporate Interests, to say a few words.”

“Thank you, Mr. Arbocus,” Riordan rumbled. The networks would have to re-modulate his voice before they broadcasted it or it would sound almost unintelligible. “This is an historic occasion for the Republic. We are on the verge of taking what was a nightmare for us, a weapon used against us in horrific fashion only a few short years ago, and turning it into one of the greatest technological boons in the history of humanity. This technology will not only be an aid to the agricultural and mining concerns, but will also create significant economic benefits for transportation and energy. Jobs that used to require risk to the life and limb of untrained human labor at low pay will now be filled by biomechs. Tasks that are now performed by robotic machinery that is expensive to produce, transport and maintain will instead be done by biomechs, which are fairly cheap to make and are easily replaceable.”

He turned to smile ingratiatingly at O’Keefe. “I know that President O’Keefe had some personal reservations about utilizing this technology, that he feared it would be abused, but I feel that in partnership with the Republic government, we can create safeguards that will prevent such abuses. I would like to thank my good friend, President Daniel O’Keefe, on putting the needs of the Republic above his own personal feelings and agreeing to support this bill.”

He turned and offered his hand to O’Keefe, who smiled and shook it with all the fake sincerity he could muster.

“Thanks very much, Brendan,” O’Keefe said, taking center stage from the executive. “This is indeed a momentous day for the Republic… and not to hijack this ceremony, but also for me personally. I’m sure there isn’t anyone watching today who doesn’t know about the disappearance of my daughter Valerie, and how much it has weighed on my mind lately. Well, I am happy to announce that my own personal nightmare has ended. My daughter, your Senator, Valerie O’Keefe-Mulrooney, has returned to me.”

There was a shocked murmur among the gathered press, corporate executives and even his own staff as Agent Klesko walked Valerie up the platform. She was dressed in a casual blouse and skirt, as if she had just returned from a day trip to the museum, with her hair tied into a conservative bun. She smiled beatifically as she hugged her father, then turned to the press.

“Good afternoon. I don’t mean to minimize the announcement of the President’s support for the Biomech Bill, but we both felt that it was important that the news that I was safe and had returned be broadcast as soon as possible, to put my constituents at ease.”

“Where were you?” The question came from the RHN reporter, a major departure from protocol for this type of event; but then, so was Valerie’s sudden appearance.

“I was forced to go into hiding because the same people who assassinated my husband, Glen Mulrooney, tried to kill me as well.”

That statement caused a storm of questions from all the assembled press and a buzz of disbelieving noise from the various onlookers as well as the President’s staff and some of the corporate executives gathered on the platform. Not from Fourcade or Riordan though, O’Keefe noted.

“Please, if you all would just settle down a moment,” O’Keefe said with a raised voice, waving his hands in a calming fashion, “I will explain what has been happening. I’ve had a special investigation running of the murder of my son-in-law, Glen Mulrooney, and that investigation led to the story that Mr. Oscar Fuentes was working on at the time, for which Glen was a source. Mr. Fuentes, in conjunction with Glen, had discovered that there were subversive elements at work among certain elements of the governments of many states in the Southbloc that was attempting to foment a mutiny among the Colonial Guard forces both here and in the colonies as a protest of the emigration reforms that my administration has instituted.

“Valerie was meeting with a journalist colleague of the late Mr. Fuentes, trying to find out how high this plot went, when the same assassin tried to kill them both. Fortunately, she was being watched over by Colonel Shannon Stark and a team of military bodyguards and they managed to kill the man, a mercenary who had been discharged from the Marines for behavioral problems. He was being paid from blind accounts and contacted via anonymous ‘links, so it has proved difficult to trace who hired him, but investigations are ongoing.”

“I didn’t want to take the chance that a further attempt on my life might harm my daughter,” Valerie took over from her father, “so I went into hiding for a while to make sure there were no other would-be assassins who had possibly been working with the dead man. As our investigations have shown no indication that he had a partner, we decided that it was safe for me to come out of hiding.”

“The attempt to foment a mutiny has been squashed,” O’Keefe cut in, “but the investigation is ongoing, so we can’t reveal any more details at this time. I will be making further announcements as we uncover more of the facts in this matter. Right now, I am just very happy that my daughter is safe.”

There was a hailstorm of questions from the press, but O’Keefe waved them off, signaling to his Media Advisor to intercede as he and Valerie made their way off the platform, surrounded by Klesko’s protection team. O’Keefe didn’t look back, but he could feel Riordan’s eyes boring into his back as he left. It wasn’t so much the upstaging of the announcement, although that had been a sweet side-benefit, and it wasn’t even that he’d revealed that he already knew about the Colonial Guard mutiny. No, what was spiking the pressure in the miniature volcano he knew as Brendan Riordan was the knowledge that, if O’Keefe was revealing to the press that he knew about the Colonial Guard, then it was pretty damn certain that he knew far more that he wasn’t revealing.

“That went well,” Ari commented as he watched the Newsnets start to flash one update after another on his tablet’s display.

He, Roza and Shannon were huddled in the Houston safe house, watching the President’s announcement on the tiny entertainment center in a corner of the living room. Roza was curled next to him on the couch, frowning. “Perhaps,” she said doubtfully. “Although now the Colonial Guard has a black eye in all this, something General Kage and I were trying to avoid.”

“Not the black eye they would have had if Colonel Lee had succeeded,” Shannon reminded her from where she paced across the room, restless as a caged tiger. “There will be plenty of black eyes to go around for all of us once the story of the Patton comes out.” She paused in her motion and speared Roza with a look. “By the way, Roza, have you been in contact with him since we found out about the Patton?”

The GIS agent looked uncomfortable with the question, but she nodded. “I report to him every few days via a secure connection, per his orders.”

“How… complete are your reports?” Ari asked her, a bit of alarm entering his expression.

“He is my commanding officer,” she told him, shaking her head. “And without him, you would know of none of this.”

“That’s true,” Shannon admitted. “However, given that he has undeniably been exposed to hypnoconditioning during the hijacking of the Patton, it could be risky to trust him. He may not be totally in control of his actions.”

“It’s possible,” Roza said, “but his response to the news of the hijacking was, and I quote, ‘I see. Well, I will have to get that taken care of.’”

Shannon snorted a laugh. “All right, that ship has sailed, for good or ill. If General Kage wants to betray us, there’s little we can do about it at this point, so we may as well trust him.” She paced back in front of the entertainment center’s holotank, staring for a moment at a frozen image of Brendan Riordan’s face. “Now comes the part that makes me nervous.” She nodded to Ari. “Send the message to President Jameson. It’s time.”

* * *

Gregory Jameson sometimes felt like a spoiled scion of the privileged class when he thought about his ranch in Oklahoma and the apartments he and his wife kept in Capital City and San Francisco. Sitting on the porch of Brendan Riordan’s summer mansion in Jackson Hole, watching the sun set over the Grand Tetons, he no longer felt like that. In fact, he felt very much like a poor cousin come calling with hat in hand.

He took a sip of the exquisitely-aged Scotch the actual human butler had brought to him and smiled to himself, realizing that the feeling was exactly what Riordan had intended when he’d selected this place for the meeting.

“Greg!” He heard the man before he saw him: Brendan Riordan was the only man he’d ever met whose voice made his own sound girlish by comparison. He rose to meet the Director, towering over him by a good twenty centimeters, though they were about equal in breadth and width. “Thanks so much for coming all the way out here!”

“I called you, Brendan,” Jameson said with a shrug as he shook the other man’s hand, trying to look him in the eye without looking down on him. Riordan was dressed casually, as was he, yet anyone looking on would have been able to guess that both men were more at home in a business suit than blue jeans.

“That you did,” Riordan acknowledged, waving him back into his chair and taking the seat across from him. “Dammit, Greg, it’s been too long. I don’t think I ever got the chance to tell you back then, but it was a travesty that you lost that election. That bastard O’Keefe really knifed you in the back, after prattling on about cooperation and rebuilding after the war.”

“Thanks, Brendan, I appreciate the thought.” He paused and took another drink as the butler silently served Riordan a cocktail of his own then moved swiftly and smoothly back into the house. “That’s kind of why I called you, to be honest.”

“How so?” Riordan asked casually, watching Jameson over the rim of the glass as he took a drink of single-malt Scotch.

“Things are going south pretty quick, Brendan. It’s partly the aftermath of the war, partly just the way things happened, but some of it is O’Keefe’s fault and he’s getting the blame for all of it either way.” He nodded outward away from the house. “You were there in Houston… I saw it. We’re looking at a civil war.”

“It won’t come to that,” Brendan said with a dismissive snort. “O’Keefe is just fear-mongering, trying to get public sympathy on his side.”

“Brendan, we’ve known each other since we were in college,” Jameson reminded him. “Don’t bullshit me. I didn’t come here to check out O’Keefe’s story, I came here because I already have checked it out and I know it’s true. And he wasn’t telling the best parts of it.”

Riordan set his glass on the table between them and regarded Jameson coldly. “Greg, you should be very cautious on how you proceed here. This is not a place to tread lightly.”

“Do you think I’m telling you things that aren’t known by other people, Brendan?” Jameson replied with calm confidence. “Do you think that threatening me is going to make them disappear? That didn’t work when you had Glen Mulrooney murdered, and it sure as hell won’t work now.”

“Goddammit, I did not have Mulrooney killed!” Riordan exploded, slamming his palm down on the table, knocking his drink to the ground. “That fucking moron Fourcade…” He bit back the rest of what he’d intended to say, hands clenching to fists in his lap as he tried to control himself. “All I told Kevin was to find out what Mulrooney knew and try to seal the leaks. I meant to erase any damaging information, but the fucking stupid son of a bitch went and hired that mercenary…”

“Finley. Good help is hard to find,” Jameson affected sympathy.

The executive considered his words for a moment before continuing.

“All right, so you know,” Riordan said, his face looking as if he had just bit into something sour. “But how much do you know, and how do you know it.”

“Beyond that… well, I know that you and Fourcade were working with the Colonial Guard mutineers through third-party cutouts, and I know that you have Fleet personnel and former military working on this. But most importantly, Brendan, I know you have access to the wormholes and that you’re working with Antonov.”

Riordan’s face went pale and Jameson thought if the man hadn’t already been sitting down he would have passed out. “Where the fuck did you hear that?”

“You really shouldn’t have trusted Colonel Lee,” Jameson replied. “Or should I say, Fourcade shouldn’t have trusted Hellene D’Annique, who shouldn’t have trusted Colonel Lee.”

“Jesus Christ,” Riordan muttered, coming out of his chair and pacing across the porch, eyes glazing over in horror. “If you know, Greg, then…”

“Then O’Keefe knows,” Jameson confirmed, nodding. “And more important to your purposes, Shannon fucking Stark knows, Brendan. And you know what she’ll do if you she gets her hands on you.” He sighed. “I can really sympathize with your position: you know that I accepted the pragmatic reality that, as distasteful as I found the whole forced emigration process, we needed it to keep our society and our economy running on the colonies. O’Keefe means well, but he’s running the Republic into the ground and we might not recover.” He glared hard at Riordan. “But Jesus, Brendan… working with Antonov? He’s a Goddamned madman!”

“Dammit, Greg, I am not working with Antonov!” Riordan raged, fists clenching at his side. “I’m not fucking stupid! Antonov is working for me!”

“What?” Jameson blurted. “What the hell do you mean he’s working for you?”

The executive took a deep breath and shook himself as if trying to work the fury out of his system. “I’m afraid this conversation won’t be proceeding until and unless you can convince me why I should tell you more than you already know.”

Jameson shook his head. He levered himself out of his chair and stood to his full height, towering over Riordan. “Because, my old friend,” he enunciated every word with certainty and precision, “I am the only thing standing between you and utter disaster. However well you think you have this figured out, it is not going to go like you hoped it would.”

“You’re so sure of that, are you?” Riordan sneered. “I wouldn’t think you’d give O’Keefe that much credit.”

“It has nothing to do with O’Keefe… you think you have the military in your pocket, but you don’t. You don’t even have the Colonial Guard: Kage knew about your scheme all along and he wasn’t about to let it happen. But most importantly, whoever your wildcard is in the Fleet, whether it’s Patel or whoever, neither the Fleet nor the Marines will get behind Dominguez.”

Riordan looked very much like he wanted to ask Jameson how he knew about Dominguez, but he bit back the impulse.

“Who do you think they will get behind, Greg?” He asked instead.

“I’d think that’s pretty damned obvious,” Jameson said, grinning broadly. “They’ll get behind the same man who saw them through the last conflict with the Protectorate. That’s why I’m here, Brendan. I want you to make me President again.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“I think this is a mistake,” Kevin Fourcade repeated, arms folded across his chest sulkily. He kept glancing toward the plane’s blacked out window as if he could see through the plastic barrier.

“Yes, Kevin,” Riordan grated with strained patience. “So you keep saying. Pardon me if I don’t accept your judgment unreservedly, given your recent history of decision-making.”

“This is an incredibly complicated plan, Brendan,” Fourcade countered plaintively. “Things were bound to go wrong somewhere… you have to give some latitude.”

“Exactly, Kevin, and this is a prime example of latitude. We’ve been handed an opportunity to upgrade our position. Dominguez was never anything but a stop-gap anyway, a bone to throw the rank and file to make them think everything was on the up-and-up. With Greg on our side,” he jerked his head toward the door to their compartment-Jameson was on the other side of it, secured between two armed guards, “we can push for an immediate election and with Jameson as our figurehead, we get the military on our side. We might even get McKay and Stark to support him.” He shrugged. “If they survive.”

“I don’t oppose involving Jameson,” Fourcade clarified. “I just don’t see a reason to take him to the bunker.”

“It’s necessary,” Riordan told him. “He needs assurances that we have the Antonov situation under control.” He snorted ruefully. “Hell, I’d like to get some reassurance of that myself…”

Jameson emerged from the VTOL jet into an enclosed chamber. He hesitated at the bottom of the boarding ramp and glanced up, seeing the now-closed hangar doors above him. He raised an eyebrow and chuckled at Brendan Riordan and Kevin Fourcade as they met him at the bottom of the ramp. The hangar was roomy and well-lit and mostly vacant. There was room for a dozen flyers or perhaps three more of the small VTOL jets like the one on which they’d flown, but their vehicle shared the large space with but one ducted-fan flyer, parked nearly a hundred yards away. The walls were bare, undecorated concrete and to Jameson they had the look of age.

“Thorough,” he commented, obviously impressed.

“It’s not something we want someone stumbling across by accident,” Fourcade said with a testy defensiveness.

“Follow me,” Riordan told him, leading the group out of the hangar, the two guards who had watched over Jameson during the flight trailing him silently, hands still filled with compact submachine guns.

Jameson eyed them with concealed amusement as they walked. “You know, Brendan, I guess I must look dangerous, but I swear, I’ve only ever killed three people in my whole life and only one of them was with my bare hands.”

“It may seem a bit paranoid,” Riordan admitted, “but then again, we are plotting the overthrow of the government, so perhaps paranoia is just good sense.”

”Touche,” Jameson admitted.

The exit to the hangar was a large double-door that led into a broad hallway, wide enough for power-loaders to haul pallets of supplies through it to storerooms, and at the end of that hallway was a freight elevator. Riordan pressed his palm against a biometric ID plate that seemed much newer than the elevator itself and the doors opened with a quiet creak of metal, confirming for Jameson his estimate of the facility’s age. Riordan hit the last button on a panel with more than two dozen floor selections and the car jerked into motion. The ride seemed to last forever and Jameson fought the urge to check the time on his ‘link; it had been taken from him before the flight, and then he’d had to submit to a complete scan to make sure he wasn’t carrying any implanted tracking devices.

“What level of hell are we getting off at?” He asked dryly. Riordan smirked but did not reply. In fact, he didn’t say a word even when the elevator stopped a few minutes later, disgorging them at the end of a bare hallway lined with unmarked doors; he merely stepped out and led them down it with a confident stride.

He’s spent a lot of time here, Jameson realized.

The corridor split into a T at the far end and Riordan took a right without hesitation. Jameson began to see people then: dressed in civilian business casual, without even an ID badge to betray their purpose, ignoring Riordan except for an occasional nod as they passed by to press palms to security plates next to the equally anonymous doors and entering those mysterious chambers for some unknowable purpose. Finally they reached a door that seemed much newer than the rest. It was wide enough to admit a power-loader and thick and featureless, without as much as an ID plate. Jameson wondered for a moment how Riordan would open it; but only moments after they arrived at the door, it slowly slid aside. Waiting beyond it in a small antechamber was a dowdy, middle-aged woman with mousy brown hair and clothes that looked as if they’d been slept in. She greeted him with a forced smile and shook his hand with feigned warmth.

“Director Riordan,” she said, “so nice to have you back so soon.”

“You’re a bad liar, Maggie,” Riordan accused, shaking his head in amusement. “Don’t worry; it’s not another inspection, just a VIP tour. Dr. Cochrane, I assume you remember former President Jameson.”

The woman seemed to notice Jameson for the first time and surprise registered on her lumpy face. “Mr. President!” She exclaimed, holding out a hand. “It’s such an honor to meet you!” She glanced at Riordan doubtfully as Jameson shook her hand.

“President Jameson is a new recruit for our little enterprise,” Riordan told her. “He just wanted some assurance that we have things in hand when it comes to dealing with our Russian asset.

“Ah,” she said with a nod of understanding. “Well, right this way then, Mr. President.”

The room was half a cell, half an apartment, enclosed behind a transparent, airtight wall from the three meter-high ceiling to floor. It seemed well-appointed as prisons went: besides a bed and a reclining chair, there was an exercise machine and a fully-equipped entertainment center. A partially open door in the corner led to a small, private bathroom-notionally private: Jameson was sure it was being monitored as well, though at the moment there was no one in the chamber other than their party and the doctor.

Standing at the center of the cell was a tall, broad-chested man with a face off a Roman coin: aquiline nose, deep-set dark eyes and cheekbones carved from the side of a mountain. A bushy mustache shot with grey completed the mental picture that Jameson remembered very well both from history lessons and the videos he had seen of the invasion.

“I remember you,” Sergei Pavlovitch Antonov said slowly, staring intently at Jameson, one hand resting lightly, palm out, against the transparent enclosure. His voice was being amplified by some system in the cell, because Jameson could hear him with no problem despite the intervening wall. “The hostage.”

“Yes, well… look who’s talking,” Jameson returned, cocking his eyebrow at the irony. He glanced aside at Riordan. “And you’ve actually had him here since the war?”

“His ship never left the asteroid belt,” Riordan confirmed with a self-satisfied nod. “From what we gathered under chemical interrogation, he had to alter course to avoid a Fleet intrasystem patrol ship and ran out of fuel. He probably would have drifted right out of the solar system if a couple Belt pirates hadn’t noticed him. They’d seen him on the reports from insystem and took him to one of the corporate mining stations, thinking we might be interested in making a deal.” He grinned. “We landed him for one hundred tons of soy protein.”

“Genius,” Jameson said, admiration in his voice as he stared at the former dictator. “And then you squeezed him like a grapefruit until you got the key to the wormhole network. But how did you handle the rest of them? I can’t see them all giving up just because you had Antonov.”

“That’s the beauty of it,” Riordan couldn’t hold back a laugh. “They don’t even know. We had him record messages for them… they think he’s still in command, directing them from a remote location where he’ll be safe from ‘American spies.’ He’s told them all about the great allies he’s found here… that would be us. And like the good allies we are, we’ve provided them with some extra ships they can use however we direct them to… our own, secret, ready-made fleet.”

“Which will make just the bogey-man you need to justify nearly anything,” Jameson finished for him. “And I assume you have some way to neutralize the advantages you’ve given them if they become too troublesome.”

“Of course,” Riordan confirmed. “As I’ve told you: I’m ambitious, not stupid.”

“Well, I’ve certainly seen and heard enough to convince me,” Jameson told him. “O’Keefe has to go and you’ve got the plan to get rid of him. What you need is an inroad to the military and I can give you that. Shannon Stark trusts me; I am sure I can throw her off your trail and salvage things.”

The whole time he and Riordan were speaking, Jameson was keeping a sideways eye on Antonov-mostly because the man gave him the creeps-and for some reason the Russian was smiling broadly. That bothered him greatly for some reason that he couldn’t put his finger on.

“It’s great having you aboard, Greg,” Riordan pumped his hand enthusiastically. “I have to admit, the one part of this whole operation that’s always bothered me is Dominguez… the man is too squirrelly for my tastes. Bringing him in was always Kevin’s idea.” He shot Fourcade a baleful glare.

“He was willing,” Fourcade protested, “and having the Vice President working with us was a damn sight better than nothing!”

Jameson frowned slightly, looking back and forth between the two of them, but quickly corrected his expression. He closed his mouth on the question he’d been about to ask, yielding to an instinct that asking it would be giving away more information than he’d gain.

“Gentlemen,” he said instead, striking a conciliatory tone, “let’s not waste time on recriminations. We’re all working towards a common goal: to preserve the Republic as we know it. Vice President Dominguez will serve his purpose, as will I, and we should think about how to best use each asset we have.”

“You’re dead right, as usual, Greg,” Riordan relented. “What we need to concentrate on is getting rid of O’Keefe before he does any more damage.”

“Before he starts a civil war trying to stop us,” Jameson amended for him. “If it comes to that, we’ll lose everything.”

Behind them, Antonov laughed loud and long.

“Riordan doesn’t know,” Shannon mused thoughtfully, staring at the readout on her tablet. She, Ari and Roza were gathered around the table of the Houston safe-house, listening to a recording of the conversation inside the bunker. They hadn’t been able to chance bugging Jameson, but they had still had that Trojan on Fourcade’s ‘link… and knowing when the meeting was happening, they’d activated the device’s recorder and then later had it send a data squirt over the ‘net with that sound file.

“He doesn’t know what?” Ari asked, confused. He and Roza had been floored by the revelation that Antonov was on Earth and a captive of the Executive Council, but Shannon had, surprisingly, taken it in stride.

Stark looked up from the tablet, a fierce glint in her eye. “He doesn’t know about the Patton,” she expanded. “He doesn’t know that’s why Dominguez is cooperating. But Fourcade knows, and he’s not sharing the information with his boss.”

Ari suddenly remembered Dominguez’ statements when he’d been drugged at President O’Keefe’s house, when he’d said that Fourcade knew about the Patton. “You’re right, ma’am!” he exclaimed. “But what game is he playing?”

Roza’s face grew thoughtful for a moment, then she grabbed the tablet and typed in a request. Realization dawned on her face and she turned the tablet back around so they could see the readout. “This is the roster of the Patton.”

“Holy shit,” Ari said. “We never thought to look for him there.”

“Kevin Fourcade was on the Patton,” Shannon breathed.

Roza nodded firmly. “He was working for the mining multicorps, checking the damage to the facilities on Aphrodite. We didn’t pay attention to the lists of corporate employees that were on the ship,”

“You know what this means,” Ari told Roza and Shannon. “Riordan thinks he’s running Antonov… ”

“But Antonov is running Riordan,” Shannon finished for him. She picked up her ‘link and tapped in a message. “I need to talk to the President.”

* * *

“Holy mother of God,” Nunez breathed softly, subconsciously whispering as if the Protectorate ships on the screen could hear him from thousands of kilometers away.

“Where the hell are they all coming from?” Pirelli asked, shaking her head.

On the Tactical display she could see one ship after another transitioning from the wormhole through which they’d entered the system and then moving in a conveyor-belt line to one of the system’s other gates. Behind them the system’s primary glared harshly, while in the foreground the brown, blue and now mostly white surface of Peboan gleamed in its distant light and scant warmth.

“I assume they’re coming from Novoye Rodina,” McKay replied, hanging from the railing behind her bridge station so he could look at the readouts over her shoulder. “I guess we know now why they fought so hard to keep us out of here.”

“Thank God we got here before they started coming through,” Nunez commented, crossing himself. “And that they we were able to move out of the area before they spotted us.”

The Sheridan had arrived insystem hours ago and the convoy of Protectorate ships hadn’t ceased since then. There were dozens of them and they were still coming through with no end in sight.

“That leaves us with a big problem still, though,” McKay reminded him. “They’re heading for Earth; nothing else makes any sense. And if we go through the same way, we’re going to have to fight our way through them.”

Nunez looked at him sharply. “Colonel, we don’t have the antimatter or the missiles left for that kind of fight.”

“Hence the whole big problem thing, Commander,” McKay replied dryly. “We only have one real choice, and it sucks.”

“We have to go back to Earth using our Eysselink drive,” Nunez realized, dismal resignation in his voice, “which will take nearly six weeks.”

“If the enemy ships are heading for Earth, too,” Pirelli objected, “they could be there long before that.”

McKay regarded her with strained patience. “Yes, Commander Pirelli; hence the whole ‘it sucks’ part of my statement.” He shook his head. “We just have to hope that the Decatur made it through.”

“There’s no use putting it off,” Nunez decided; McKay thought the man sounded grateful to have the decision made for him. He turned to the Helm officer. “Lt. Sweeny, plot us the fastest, most direct course possible back to the Solar System.”

“We’re going to need to hit refueling stations twice, minimum, sir,” the Helm officer told him after only a moment’s calculation. “That’s 41 days, 10 hours travel time.”

“Don’t waste time then… get us heading out of this system at one gravity acceleration until we get into the tanks. Lt. Mandel,” Nunez turned to the Communications station. “Sound the alarms. All stations secure for maximum acceleration, all personnel to the g-sleep tanks within the hour.”

The boost alarm sounded and McKay held onto the safety rail with practiced instinct as the acceleration brought them to the bridge floor at a one gravity analog. “If you don’t need me, Commander,” he said, “I’m going to make sure my people are squared away and ready to hit the tanks.”

“What do you think we’re going to find when we get home, Colonel?” Nunez asked him softly before he could step away.

McKay turned, fighting back a brief flash of annoyance. How the hell would he know what they were going to find? Then he realized that, even though Nunez was about the same age as he was, the man had not seen combat in the war and probably hadn’t had the opportunity since. And now he was thrust into command of the Fleet’s flagship in a situation he never would have imagined…

“Commander,” he said after a moment’s consideration, “there’s no way to say for sure, but I think we’re going to have to be prepared to sail into an all-out war. We also have to play our cards close to the vest: if the Protectorate got to Vice President Dominguez the way they did Admiral Patel, we may not even know who’s on our side.” He saw Pirelli’s head snap around at his words and he cursed himself: that might not have been wise to share with the crew just yet. At least the rest of the bridge crew was out of earshot for the quiet conversation.

“I can fight this ship, sir,” Nunez said, his voice even more subdued. “I’ve been trained for that and I think I can do it. But this… cloak and dagger stuff, sir, I don’t know. Admirals are trained to be politicians, I’m just a sailor.”

“Don’t sweat it, Commander,” McKay told him, putting more confidence in his grin and his voice than he actually felt. “That’s why I’m here.”

Chapter Thirty

Shannon Stark stepped off the ramp of the lander and into oblivion. The darkness swallowed her up and her helmet’s HUD switched futilely from infrared to thermal and back before settling on a computer mapping program that showed their target 10 kilometers below and over 200 kilometers north. She heard nothing but the slow hiss of her own breathing, felt nothing through her sealed helmet and armor, even as she fell at terminal velocity through the frigid night sky, her arms and legs spread in a stable X position.

“Report,” she said tersely into her helmet microphone, and the command was directed behind her via a laser line-of-sight antenna affixed to her backpack.

“Charlie Gulf Two deployed and nominal,” a male voice answered her command, a slight tremble in his tone as he tried to sound calm.

“Charlie Gulf Three deployed and nominal,” a female followed closely on his last syllable, full of eager excitement.

Ten more echoed the words, until finally she recognized Tom Crossman’s voice bringing up the rear. “Charlie Gulf One-Four deployed and nominal,” the senior NCO reported. “All elements deployed and nominal.”

“Engage wings,” Shannon ordered, tapping a control on the band around her left forearm. Paper-thin polymer wings swung out from her backpack and pushed her skyward as they immediately began to grab air. “Fire boosters.” A tap on a second control and she felt a rumbling whoosh from the compact jet engines that protruded from her flight pack, felt the sudden pressure on the straps that secured her into its harness as she began accelerating forward.

Her helmet’s HUD displayed the transponder signals of the rest of the unit and she could see them falling into formation behind her, their flight computers pre-programmed for the target landing zone. That done, she did a quick check by feel of her gear: her carbine and assault pack were strapped to her chest, out of the way of the flight pack and she quickly confirmed that everything had stayed in place through the jump.

She tried to go over the plan in her head, making sure there was no weakness to it, but she couldn’t manage it because she couldn’t overlook the glaring, obvious fact that this whole operation was totally fucked. The entire situation was fucked, and had been since that meeting with President O’Keefe two days ago…

“So now we know.” Daniel O’Keefe’s words had the grim finality of a death sentence, Shannon thought. They were back in his private office at the Executive Mansion in Capital City, far from the hectic, grimy danger of Houston ‘plex, but Shannon felt the coming threat just as gravely.

“Yes, sir,” she confirmed, sitting back in the chair across the desk from him, her hands folded in her lap. She was back in a dress uniform again, too, after days spent in mufti. “Antonov is calling the shots, even from a prison cell in a bunker. This isn’t just a home-grown coup.”

“But Brendan doesn’t know it,” O’Keefe mused, leaning forward, eyes focused on a thought outside the office walls. “I wonder what he would do if I told him?”

“Sir?” Shannon asked, eyes widening. “Are you suggesting that you actually do that?”

“I’m considering it,” he admitted. “The man isn’t a psychopath. He’s ambitious to the point of lunacy, but he’s not stupid. If he knows he’s being played, he might cooperate. Particularly if I give him immunity from prosecution.”

“You can’t do it, Daddy!” Valerie protested, coming to her feet from where she’d been sitting casually on the edge of the President’s desk. “He’s responsible for Glen’s death!”

Shannon felt a slight shiver go up her spine as she pictured Valerie plunging a knife into Riordan the way she had with the hired killer in Houston.

“He didn’t order Glen’s killing, honey,” O’Keefe pointed out. “That was Fourcade, and I am not suggesting we let him off. But whatever Brendan Riordan is guilty of, I am not ready to allow the Republic to destroy itself just to make sure he pays for his sins.” He reached out and took Valerie’s hand, looked her in the eye. “I loved Glen like a son, Val, you know I did… but I will not do that, even for him.”

“Sir,” Shannon interrupted carefully, “the problem is, what if he doesn’t believe you? If you spook him, he could have Antonov moved and then we might lose track of him completely.”

“What would you suggest, then, Major Stark?” O’Keefe asked her.

“We should raid the bunker and seize Antonov,” she declared. “We can interrogate him and find out everything we need to know.”

“Riordan already tried that,” O’Keefe pointed out. “Look what it got him.”

“If Fourcade was brainwashed or even replaced by Antonov,” Shannon countered, “they might never have actually interrogated him.”

“If you assault the bunker, they could just as easily kill him, or blow the whole place sky-high,” the President pointed out. “Or worse, the assault force could be detected and they could move him. Seems to me both ways have some serious risks, and we aren’t likely to think of a risk-free option.” He grinned sardonically. “Unless you’d like to order an orbital strike on the site.”

“I’ve thought about it,” Shannon said seriously. “But it gains us a hell of a lot more to find out what they’re planning, and for that we need Antonov alive. Fourcade too.”

O’Keefe shook his head, chuckling softly. “I suppose by now I should know better than to make that kind of joke where you’re concerned, Major.” He frowned. “You need a promotion, you know. You’re dealing with serious players here in Capital City; you should at least be a Lt. Colonel.” He squinted at her doubtfully. “Can I do that, without going through the Senate? I honestly don’t remember.”

Shannon fought to keep from sighing with frustration. “Sir, I believe you can, as President, award any promotions short of the rank of Fleet Admiral or Commanding General of the Marines without Senate approval. But I have to admit, sir, my rank isn’t the foremost thing on my mind right now.”

“I know it’s not important to you, Major,” he smiled at her indulgently. “But when you’re dealing with people like Brendan Riordan and Xavier Dominguez, appearances and labels are important. By the time you leave this office, you’re going to be a full Colonel and McKay is going to be a General, even if he doesn’t know it yet.”

“That’s very kind of you, Mr. President,” Shannon said, trying very hard not to clench her teeth. “I’m sure you know more about the effect of such things in the political arena than I do.” She stopped herself as an idea came to her. “Sir, how about this: you call Riordan and ask him to come to a private meeting-tell him it’s about the biomech bill, maybe. If he does come, you try to get him to come clean about Antonov. If he isn’t honest about the whole thing, we can take him into custody immediately. If he doesn’t meet with you, then we track his movements and launch the raid.”

“That sounds sensible,” Valerie interjected. “Do you already know the location of the bunker?”

“Approximately,” Shannon told her. “We have a Trojan on Fourcade’s ‘link. The signal was blocked for a few hours, but it got us close enough that we were able to narrow it down to an old U.S. Air Force testing range from about 250 years ago. The records we located indicated there was an emergency bunker on the range, out in the desert. We think the Riordan must have bought it through a blind account and had it rebuilt. It fits with what President Jameson told us.”

“All right, Major… Colonel,” O’Keefe corrected himself. “Start putting together the team for the raid. I’ll contact Riordan immediately and we should find out soon whether we have to use it.”

Riordan had cordially and enthusiastically agreed to meet with President O’Keefe later that day to discuss the implementation of the biomech research. Then he’d boarded a private VTOL jet and headed for the southwestern desert. She’d been in western Canada with Tom Crossman at the time, putting together the raid unit, when she got the call from Valerie on a secure ‘link.

“We’ll be wheels up in an hour,” she’d told the Senator, giving a nod to Tom that sent him out of the office to get the team on their transport.

“Shannon, there’s something else,” Valerie had gone on hesitantly. “Daddy is calling a special session of the Senate for tomorrow morning: he’s timing it to coincide with your assault. He’s going to tell them what’s going on, everything. He says he can’t keep it secret any longer, that there’s too much at stake.”

“Oh, fucking wonderful,” Shannon sighed. She shook her head. “Well, Valerie, that’s his call. I disagree, but at this point it won’t make my job any more difficult.” She snorted humorlessly. “Frankly, I’m not certain my job could be any more difficult.”

“This could push us into civil war,” Valerie said, her voice distant and sad.

“Which is probably exactly what Antonov wants. But one crisis at a time. I’ll contact you when we reach the objective.”

A few minutes later, as she’d been rigging her assault pack and weapon for the flight, she’d received a call from Jameson: she’d been half-expecting it.

“Major Stark,” he said, his bass voice sounding oddly tinny on her earpiece, “I just received a message from Riordan. He said he thinks that President O’Keefe is about to have him arrested and he’s heading for the bunker.”

“Yes, we’re aware of that, Mr. President,” she said, trying to make the words sound polite despite her anxiety and the press of time. She didn’t even consider correcting him about her rank. “If you can contact him, try to reassure him that you’ve talked to me and we don’t have any plans to arrest him.”

“I take that to mean you’re on your way now,” she could hear the grin in the man’s voice.

“I have no official comment on that, sir,” she told him, grinning to herself. “I can tell you this, though: President O’Keefe is about to go public with this.”

“Oh my,” Jameson’s tone became grim. “He’s the President, but that seems like an extraordinarily bad idea to me.”

“He didn’t ask for my opinion either, sir, but the point is, once he does present this to the Senate, it’s possible that Riordan and Fourcade may figure out whose side you’re on. You should probably lie low for a while.”

“Major Stark, if his side wins, I’m not sure there’s any place on this planet that’s low enough to hide me.”

Shannon felt her backpack jets run dry with a coughing sputter and she checked her HUD readout, noting with a slight start that they were only 20 kilometers from the target. She’d spent too long feeling sorry for herself and lost track of the flight-time.

“Charlie Gulf One bingo fuel,” she radioed. “One minute to chute deployment.”

The rest of the unit echoed back the status with Tom bringing up the rear. She chuckled at the thought of how much she trusted the man: six years ago, when they’d first been assigned together under Jason McKay, she’d considered Crossman an unreliable fuck-up whose only positives were a fearless attitude and a virtuoso skill at the martial arts.

She shook off the reverie before it distracted her once again, then checked her HUD and poised her hand over the parachute ring. “Ten seconds,” she announced. “Five… pull!”

Shannon was yanked upward by the expanding parachute and found herself descending vertically at an agonizingly slow pace. Each of the members of her unit was wearing stealth armor, designed to mask heartbeat and thermal signature as well as absorbing radar and lidar sensors… theoretically, they were undetectable except by a Mark I Human Eyeball. But she still felt as if she were wearing a huge target on her chest and screaming “Shoot at me!”

This shouldn’t be that difficult, she told herself again. They didn’t know she was coming, didn’t even know she knew about the bunker at all, so the surprise should be complete. The lander would provide air cover and extraction once they’d acquired the assets and they’d be out of there in less than an hour… if everything went according to plan.

And when has that ever happened?

An altitude warning lit up on her HUD as the ground rose swiftly up to meet her feet, details suddenly filling in on her thermal and infrared display as rocks and scrub brush began to become visible in the moonless night. At the last second, she yanked downward on the chute’s control handles and the canopy inflated sharply and Shannon touched down lightly on the balls of her feet, stumbling forward as she caught her balance against the bulky mass of her flight pack.

“Charlie Gulf One is down,” she announced, pulling the quick release on her flight pack. It felt as if she were in free-fall again as the wing assembly and thrusters dropped from her shoulders to thump heavily to the ground behind her, the parachute beginning to retract into the pack automatically. She took a knee beside the flight assembly and began freeing her assault pack and carbine from the fastenings that held them to her chest. She transferred the pack to her back and made sure the carbine was ready to fire, then went prone in the hard-pack sand as she began to hear replies from the rest of the squad.

They were all professionals, the best that First Special Operations Command had to offer, and they each moved to fill in a position on the perimeter, scanning watchfully until, at last, Tom Crossman moved up beside Shannon, clapping her on the shoulder as he took a knee beside her.

“We’re ready to move out,” he told her, voice calm and easygoing, as if this were a weekend training exercise. She couldn’t see his face through the darkened visor of his helmet, but she knew he was probably smiling.

“EM silence from here on,” she ordered. “Keep the formation tight… I’m more worried about detection than I am separation.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he confirmed, then went to convey the orders via touching helmets, forgoing the use of suit comms.

Their point-man, a Technician Second Class named Von Paleske, moved out first with Shannon just behind him and Tom Crossman riding drag in the rear. Shannon let him watch for threats while she scanned for cameras or seismic detection devices that could pick up footsteps. It was tricky going-they couldn’t risk being detected, but they also had a ticking clock: they had over ten kilometers to cover and they needed to be inside before sunrise or the satellites would be able to pick them up on visual.

The night was fairly cool, but Shannon felt herself begin to sweat under her armor as she half-walked, half-jogged across the packed sand and bare sandstone of the high desert plain. They were in southeastern Utah, on the edge of a small pocket of privately-held land in the midst of the vast Southwest Heritage Preserve, and even in summer the temperatures at night were temperate, but the Stealth armor lacked the powered cooling systems of other modern body armor: the thermal signature of such systems was too visible.

Shannon sucked water from her backpack reservoir as their trail led over rolling hills of bare sandstone that offered treacherous footing and divided her attention from her wary search for sensors. At least, she told herself, they had the enhanced vision of the battle helmets. She would have hated to try to travel this path at night with nothing but her naked eyes for guidance. It took over an hour of careful, tedious, exhausting trudging before the slippery rock mounds gave way to plains of scrub and sand and they were able to pick up their pace.

They were almost on top of the old structures before Shannon saw them; they were dead and falling apart, the newest of them over a century old. Shannon looked down at the ground beneath her feet and saw for the first time that the sand was covering broken and crumbling pavement rather than natural rocks. She waved Crossman forward and touched her helmet to his.

“We’re at the edge of the old military base,” she told him, motioning towards the looming skeleton of an ancient administration building, only sections of concrete block and bare rebar still standing. “According to the old maps, we need to follow this road,” she shrugged, “or what’s left of it anyway, east around the edge of the base about another klick and a half. Keep your eyes open: I don’t think they know about the emergency exit tunnel, but they might.”

“If they know,” Crossman pointed out reasonably, “they’ve already seen us and we’re FUBAR.” She could hear the grin in his voice. “So we might as well assume they don’t.”

Shannon clapped Tom on the shoulder, then turned and motioned to the point man to head out.

* * *

Larry Gianeto stepped gingerly into the ship’s medical bay, trying to be quiet. The lights were off inside: it was the designated sleep period, and he didn’t want to wake the Captain…

“Come on in, Larry,” he heard her voice from the darkened bed against the far wall. “I couldn’t sleep.”

At the touch of a fingertip on a control, a gentle light went on over her bed. Gianeto smiled as he stepped over to her. “You’re looking better, Captain,” he told her honestly. She wasn’t as pale as she’d been a few days before and she no longer looked like a stiff breeze would blow her over. Her loose, grey medical bay gown covered it, but he knew from the doctor’s reports that her wounds were closed and swiftly healing with the aid of bio-engineered bacteria, though it would be another couple days before she recovered from the trauma and massive blood loss enough to go back on duty.

“Thanks,” she chuckled, sitting up cautiously. “The gravity helps.” They’d spun up the habitation drum once they’d gotten settled in their observation point and she did look less frail without the restraining straps holding her to the bed.

“I was… uh, just about to grab some rack time, ma’am,” he told her, “and I thought I would check in and see how you were doing.”

“How goes the refueling?” she asked him.

“Good,” he told her. “We picked it up from where that robotic freighter dropped it and engineering has the canisters loaded in the drive chamber. We’re up and ready.”

“Something’s bothering you, Larry,” she said in flat declaration. “Come on, out with it… I’m convalescing, I haven’t the energy to drag it out of you.”

“Oh, it’s nothing important, ma’am,” Gianeto assured her. “It’s just that… now that we’re refueled, it feels like we should be doing something. So much is going on, on Earth and back out there,” he waved a hand expansively at the hull and the wormhole jumpgate outside it, “and we’re just sitting here.”

“It’s what Major Stark wanted us to do,” Minishimi reminded him. “I think we’re her hole card if things go badly, to be honest. She doesn’t want to come out and say it, but… if it comes to a civil war, we can do a lot of damage and she knows she can trust us.”

“Do you really think it will come to that, ma’am?” he asked her quietly, an edge of misery in his voice.

She moved a finger underneath the edge of her gown and touched the bright pink spot on her chest where the knife had gone in. “It’s already come to that, Larry. Let’s hope we can avoid it happening on a planetary scale.”

Gianeto went stiff, hand going instinctively to his ear bud.

“What is it?” Minishimi demanded sharply, fighting an urge to leap out of the bed.

“Something just transited the gate, ma’am,” he told her as he listened to the report from the bridge. “Two of the Eysselink drive ram-ships. They came out at around a quarter light, then hit their drives and warped out at 200 gravities!” His eyes were wide. “Captain, they’re heading for Earth, and at that rate of acceleration…”

“Even if we get everyone into the g-tanks, we’ll never catch them in time,” Minishimi finished for him. She grabbed her ‘link from the table next to the bed. “Communications,” she said, “get me a secure line to Fleet headquarters.” Her eyes met Gianeto’s. “We have to warn them.”

Chapter Thirty-One

The tunnel was narrow, no more than a meter across and two meters tall, and as dark as a tomb. Even with the infrared illuminators and the night vision optics in her helmet, Shannon could barely see two meters in front of her and what she could see was nothing but bare walls carved out of bedrock and narrow steps constantly leading downward. They’d been trudging down those stairs for an hour and the view hadn’t changed; Shannon knew that it had to be nearing sunrise and a part of her subconscious nagged at her over it, even though she knew that it made no difference anymore. They were underground and their target was underground and the time of day outside was no longer relevant. If only she could force herself to really believe that…

She suppressed a sigh. At least they hadn’t found any indication that the tunnel was being monitored, and the entrance looked as if it hadn’t been used in decades: it had taken them nearly a half hour to dig it out of the rubble and then several more minutes to burn the rusted and bent metal door off of its hinges with a portable plasma torch. She had felt so relieved when it had finally crashed inward and they’d been able to get under cover, but now the doubt was beginning to close in on her like the walls of the tunnel.

Finally, the stairs ended and they found themselves on level ground again, though just as narrow and dark. Ahead of her, Von Paleske held up a fist, indicating a security halt. Normally, that meant that the rest of the unit would take a knee and watch in all directions, but in the cramped darkness, everyone just stood in place as Shannon stepped up to the man, touching helmets so they could speak without using the radios.

“We’re getting pretty close to the exit, ma’am,” he told her quietly. “Another thirty meters according to the plans.”

“Stay here,” she instructed him, then squeezed past the man and moved down the tunnel, her infrared illuminator gradually revealing an abrupt end to the passage.

There wasn’t a light at the end of this tunnel, but there was a door. It wasn’t twisted and crushed like the entrance door had been, nor was it as covered and ruined by rust, but it still bore the unmistakable air of age. She let her carbine hang from its sling and pulled a hand-held sensor from her belt, holding it a few centimeters from the metal surface of the door and running it from the top to the bottom and then around the frame.

The sensors read nothing that indicated that the door was being monitored. She frowned, re-casing the device. There was always the possibility that the door was under visual surveillance, which her sensors couldn’t discern… but hell, they hadn’t come all this way to turn tail and run. She unslung her carbine and waved Von Paleske forward.

The Tech-2 pulled a portable cutting torch from his backpack and went to work, setting the plasma cutter for low and aiming the white-hot jet of ionized gas into the locking mechanism of the door. Shannon watched impassively as the torch slice slowly through the ancient, rusted bolt, running scenarios through her mind so that nothing that stood on the other side of that door could take her by surprise. Death she feared not at all, but failure was a terror that didn’t bear consideration.

Von Paleske shut off the torch and replaced it in his backpack, then held his rifle at the ready and nodded to Shannon, his gaze calm and businesslike. She grabbed the rust-coated handle of the heavy, ancient door and gave it an experimental tug; it didn’t budge. The bolt was severed, but the hinges resisted, frozen by nearly two centuries of inaction. Shannon slung her rifle again and grabbed the handle with both hands, planting a boot against the wall and giving a hard, breaking yank. The hinges squealed loud enough that Shannon was sure the racket could be heard from orbit, but finally the door swung open and Von Paleske ducked inside, followed closely by Sergeant Morales, the next in line behind him.

Shannon crouched low, her back against the wall just outside the open door, waiting for what seemed like hours until finally Von Paleske emerged from the dark chamber and signaled “all clear.” Shannon waved him back inside, then turned and motioned for the rest of the team to follow her as she stepped through the door.

She emerged from the tunnel into what looked like a small storage room. Ancient plastic tubs, warped with time, were stacked in one corner, taking up about a quarter of the space in the chamber. She scanned the room carefully on IR and thermal and saw nothing else significant: no active electronics, no sensors, no monitors; just the door from which she’d emerged and one other opposite it. Sergeant Morales had already posted herself next to the other door and was still scanning it with her own hand-held sensor for any electronic signatures. After a moment, she turned to Shannon and signaled that she wasn’t detecting anything.

Shannon felt a touch on her arm and looked around to see Tom Crossman standing next to her. He leaned in to touch helmets. “I’m leaving Reynolds here at the tunnel entrance to watch our backs,” he told her. They could, she knew, have left a remote drone to do the same thing, but that would run the risk of the control signal for the machine being detected. Better to do things the old-fashioned way until they secured the facility.

“Keep someone on the EM sensors scanning for power conduits,” she told him. She didn’t have to tell him why: they had no detailed plans for the part of the bunker that Riordan had rebuilt, so they were going to have to try to intuit which way to go by tracking electricity usage. He nodded confirmation then went to instruct their point-man.

Once everyone was in position, Morales put her hand on the door’s latch and shot a questioning look at Von Paleske. He nodded and she slowly pulled the door open, allowing him to angle through it; she followed him out while Crossman waited against the wall beside the opening. After a moment, Morales leaned back inside and waved for the others to follow.

The hallway outside was still the ancient stone passages of the old bunker and Shannon began to wonder if they were actually in the right place… until they followed the corridor around a curve to the right and it abruptly ended in a decidedly modern hermetically sealed barrier of opaque grey polymer. Shannon felt a momentary chill run through her and she was sure they’d been spotted by sensors at the door… but a quick glance at Sgt. Morales and a horizontal slice in the air from her hand told her that there were no active electromagnetic signals present.

Shannon paused for a moment, reminding herself that there was always time to think. There was no EM signal and the door had no obvious keypad or handle. Perhaps it wasn’t as much a door as a simple seal for the bunker’s climate control. They had two choices: blow the door and storm in or take the risk that the other side wasn’t being directly monitored and burn through slowly and quietly.

She almost waved for Von Paleske to come forward with the cutting torch, but she stopped herself in mid-motion. There was a tickling in the middle of her back, a strange feeling in her gut. She turned and motioned for Tom to come forward, then touched helmets with him.

“Set charges,” she instructed. “We’re blowing this door. I want people on either side ready to toss in grenades.”

“Flash-bangs?” He asked.

“Frag,” she corrected him. “I’ve got a funny feeling about this one, Tom. Once we’re through, we charge through whatever’s in our way until we reach Antonov.”

He moved to pass on the orders and Shannon took a deep breath, closing her eyes for a heartbeat as she prayed silently that she was making the right call. The squadron deployed in a stack around the door as Morales and Von Paleske placed the charges and the two others closest to the door, Jurgensen and Wellington, pulled out frag grenades from pouches on their chest.

Everyone was set in seconds and Tom gave Shannon a questioning glance. She nodded, then moved to the side of the stack, her carbine held muzzle down. From the other side of the door, Sergeant Morales held out her hand and did a silent count-down: three fingers, two fingers, one… and then she mashed the button on the remote detonator and ducked her head.

The shaped charges detonated with a thump that Shannon could feel in her chest, shaking the walls and drowning out the clatter of the wreckage of the door in the corridor beyond. Smoke billowed through the room, obscuring Shannon’s vision as Jurgensen and Wellington immediately tossed their grenades through the jagged, gaping hole where the barrier had been and ducked back again. The explosions of the fragmentation weapons were kettle drums to the snare of the door-buster, but to Shannon they sounded louder and harsher, the tinny echoes of their fragments bouncing back into the room like off-key notes from a piano.

Tom slapped Von Paleske on the shoulder and the point man swung around the jagged edge of the hole created by the breaching charges and led them into the roiling smoke beyond. Shannon’s helmet automatically switched to thermal and infrared, seamlessly integrating the scene into a visual representation for her: beyond the barrier, the walls ceased to be bare rock and were instead lined with modern polymers, lit by glowing panels in the ceiling-some of them were cracked and broken, sparking or dark from the force of the explosions.

A body was sprawled on the floor just a few meters past the breach, clad in nondescript dark-colored armor, a rifle on the floor by its outstretched hands. A shard of polymer from the door had been driven through the rear armor plate by the force of the blast and the ballistic cloth that held the armor inserts together had been shredded by the grenades. Blood pooled around the body, though not as much as Shannon would have expected. She was about to order one of the squad to check the man-she assumed it was a man, from the broad shoulders and nearly two meters of height-but then he lurched onto his knees, reaching in unnatural, jerky motions for the rifle just beyond his grasp.

Shannon acted without thinking… the rifle was closest to her. She kicked the weapon away, then turned on the ball of her plant foot and smashed a heel into the man’s chest. Blood splashed as he sprawled away and Shannon stumbled backwards; she felt as if she’d kicked a brick wall. Crossman stepped up beside her and leveled his carbine, squeezing off a burst. Three rounds of tungsten-core ceramic jacketed 8mm impacted the helmet’s splintered visor, one snagging the edge of the helmet and ripping it off his head.

Shannon froze, breath catching in her throat, eyes wide. The face beneath the helmet was ruined and bloody from the impact of the rifle rounds, but it was also just as obviously not the face of a human. From behind heavy, boney brow ridges stared the black eyes of a biomech, no more cold and lifeless in death than they had been in life. Tom hesitated as well, all the implications of what he was seeing running through his thoughts, until Shannon slapped a hand on his shoulder.

“Just go!” she told him urgently. He nodded sharply and moved out down the hallway with Shannon and the remainder of the unit behind.

Shannon gritted her teeth and swore to herself in the privacy of her helmet. They had those fucking things here, on Earth… they were already producing them. How many more did they have? An army? Were they all here or did Riordan already have them in Capital City to support his coup attempt? She felt an overwhelming urge to run, to get them all out of the complex and call down an orbital strike, but she fought it back: nothing had changed. They still needed Antonov alive and this was their only chance at him.

No audible alarms were sounding as they moved through the complex at a trot, but she knew that was meaningless: they had to assume that the place was on alert. Tom fell behind her to watch the rear and she moved ahead, coming up just behind Von Paleske and Morales near the front of the unit. The halls were wide and yet she felt increasingly claustrophobic, paranoid that the enemy was going to burst through the featureless white doors that lined the corridor. Yet those doors remained closed and they didn’t bother to investigate them: their plan was to head straight for the holding cell.

They came to a fork in the corridor and Shannon waved Von Paleske to the left, both on instinct and an overlaid computer rendering based on the data mined from Fourcade’s ‘link. They had barely rounded the corner when Von Paleske pulled up short and Shannon and Sergeant Morales nearly ran into his back. Shannon had the briefest glimpse of three hulking, black-clad figures thirty meters away down the corridor before a hail of gunfire slammed into the wall behind them and Von Paleske went down in a heap.

Shannon lunged back around the corner, grabbing at Von Paleske’s harness and dragging him back with her, not realizing until he was behind cover that Sergeant Morales had a hold of the other side of the man’s armored vest. Tom Crossman and Sergeant Jurgensen moved up quickly from the rear and leaned out from behind cover, laying down a wall of return fire. The medic slid in beside Von Paleske and Shannon rolled out of the way to give him access to the wounded man, then scrambled to her feet and joined Crossman and Jurgensen at the corner.

Tom Crossman was ducking behind cover to swap magazines, so Shannon crouched down and lunged into the corridor, bringing her carbine to her shoulder. One of the three biomech troopers was down, but the other two stood their ground, lacking any sort of instinct for self-preservation. Shannon’s weapon sight linked automatically with the reticle in her helmet and she lined up the aiming crosshairs with the faceplate of the biomech on the right and squeezed the trigger. The carbine bucked slightly against her shoulder and a three-round burst punched through the tough polymer over the biomech’s face, blood spraying out among a scattering of polymer shards as the manufactured humanoid collapsed forward.

The last biomech fell just moments after as Crossman and Jurgensen concentrated their fire on it, and just as suddenly as the cacophony had begun, it ended in a ringing echo and then dead silence. Shannon jumped up and stepped over to the medic, who was kneeling down beside the prone form of Von Paleske, wrapping a smart bandage around his left thigh.

“How is he?” she asked, using the external speaker on her helmet.

“I’ll be okay, ma’am,” Von Paleske answered for himself. “I can make it.”

“He caught a couple in the chest,” the medic told Shannon, ignoring the man’s protestations, “but the armor stopped them… got some bad bruising there, maybe a cracked rib or two. But he’s got a through-and-through on the leg that might have nicked his left femur. The smart bandage should stop the bleeding, but he won’t be running anywhere for a while.”

“Gunnar,” she said to Von Paleske, putting a hand on the wounded man’s shoulder, “I want you to get back to the tunnel entrance and tell Reynolds that we’re facing biomechs. Make sure he communicates that to the lander, and make sure the crew of the lander knows that anything that tries to fly out of this installation needs to get shot down, no questions asked.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Gunnar Von Paleske replied with a resigned sigh. Shannon and the medic helped him to his feet and he began limping gingerly back the way they had come.

“Move out!” Shannon ordered the rest.

“Morales, you take point,” Tom Crossman ordered the junior Sergeant.

Now we’re down to twelve, Shannon thought, worry gnawing at her. Going up against God knew how many biomechs, was that going to be enough?

Morales led them off down the left hand corridor, past the sprawled and motionless forms of the biomechs, moving even faster than before: she knew, as did Shannon, that their best bet was to get to the target as quickly as possible and get out. The long corridor was lined with open doors, Shannon saw as they jogged through it, all of them living quarters for installation personnel and all of them empty. Shannon wondered if they’d been evacuated prior to Riordan’s decision to run or if they were hold up somewhere else in the installation, alerted by some silent alarm after the explosion had breached the door.

Shannon slipped a rifle grenade from her tactical vest as she ran and slid it home into the launcher mounted beneath her carbine’s barrel; she nodded to herself as she saw Morales do the same. The corridor turned sharply to the right just ahead and Morales slowed as they reached the corner, lunging into a crouch then extending her carbine around the corner to use the connection between her rifle sight and her helmet reticle to check for enemies.

“Clear,” she announced, rising from her crouch and scrambling around the corner. Following her, Shannon saw that the hall ended just twenty meters down in a security door, bare but for an ID scanner.

“Breach it,” Shannon ordered Morales curtly, waving the rest of the unit forward and into position. “Four frags inside once it’s down,” she told Crossman. She winced at the realization that the missing personnel might be on the other side of that door, but shrugged the thought away: those people knew exactly what they were doing and what the consequences could be.

Morales shrugged off her backpack and retrieved the remaining breaching charges from it, pealing the backing off of each block to bare the strong adhesive and then sticking each to a key point on the door.

“Set,” she announced, slipping her pack on and backing away from the door. Tom Crossman, Sergeants Jurgensen and Wellington and Tech-2 Martinelli all took out grenades and armed them, waiting to the side of the door, while the others stacked up and made ready to charge inside.

“Blow it,” Shannon ordered, her grip tightening on her carbine as she looked away from the door to keep her visor safe from shrapnel.

In the scant second before Morales hit the switch to ignite the explosives, everything seemed to come into sharp focus in Shannon’s vision, down to the dust motes dancing in the air beneath the ceiling light panels and the antiseptic white of the polymer liners that coated the ancient stone of the walls.

“Detonating!” Morales announced, mashing her thumb into the control.

A wave of backpressure forced Shannon against the wall and she could feel the plastic lining vibrating like a drumhead. She took a step forward to keep her balance and turned in time to see Tom and the other three NCOs throwing grenades through the smoke-filled gap where the door had been. The grenades went off so close together that they sounded like a single, massive blast and the light shining through the haze of smoke dimmed as ceiling panels were blown out.

Morales and Martinelli were moving forward to enter the smoke-shrouded room when a burst of gunfire came through the opening, barely passing between them and sending them both diving for cover. Shannon angled her carbine around the edge of the jagged hole where the door had been and used its thermal sensors to see through the thick smoke and dust: there were at least a half dozen figures laid out and broken on the floor, but another four were still standing, heat glowing white on their weapons as they fired.

“Tom!” Shannon transmitted over her helmet radio to be heard over the shooting. “Four Gomers, between one and three o’clock! With me on two!” The NCO took a position at the edge of the doorway, carbine at the ready. “One… two!”

She and Crossman leaned out and the NCO sent a trio of quick full-auto bursts at the two biomech troopers on the right, while Shannon launched her rifle grenade at the other pair. They were only about ten meters away, but the grenade’s integral ballistics computer accounted for the distance and when it struck the biomech trooper in the chest, it used internal baffles to focus the explosion forward and to the sides.

The grenade exploded with a gut-punch concussion that blew the biomech into chunks of flesh and bloody armor; the jets of plasma from the side burned fist-sized holes through the neck and chest of the one next to it, blasting it off its feet and sending it plowing into the other two troopers. All three went down in a heap and Crossman emptied his magazine into them, putting burst after burst into the faceplates of their helmets until they stopped moving,

Fire control systems sprayed a fog of chemical foam into the room, adding another level of haze to the smoke that still wafted through the room, until an emergency ventilator activated and the mix of white chemical cloud and black smoke spiraled into a pair of large fans set in the walls. As the room cleared, Shannon became aware of several things in a moment: first, the room was the same one that Jameson had seen them holding Antonov. The transparent cell walls bisected the room; the other half was filled with monitoring and control stations, many of them blasted into charred and shattered pieces by the grenades.

The second thing she noticed was that Antonov was standing behind that clear wall; shadows playing across his craggy face in the patchy light from the few surviving ceiling panels, arms crossed as he watched them with what she could have sworn was amusement. And she also saw that he was not alone: also in the cell, flanking him, were half a dozen biomech troopers, their weapons trained on the former dictator of the Russian Protectorate, and beside them Kevin Fourcade and Brendan Riordan. Fourcade seemed impassive, as if he were watching a movie, his face bland and expressionless; while Riordan’s was flushed with anger, frustration and fear. His big right hand was filled with a pistol, pointing back and forth between Antonov and the general direction of Shannon and her troops, but that hand was shaking.

Slowly and almost casually, Shannon rose from behind cover and stepped through the doorway, her carbine held across her chest. She could see out of the corner of her eye Tom Crossman rising to join her, but she motioned for him to stay on the other side of the doorway.

“This is Colonel Shannon Stark of Fleet Intelligence,” she announced, amplifying her voice over her helmet’s external speakers. “We’re here to take General Antonov into custody.”

Riordan’s mouth curled into a ferocious sneer and he remarked aside to Fourcade, “Well, Kevin, I suppose I owe you an apology: Jameson was a plant.” The comment was picked up by the intercom system in the cell and audible over speakers set in the ceiling outside of it.

“Actually, Director Riordan,” Shannon corrected him, “we found this place by tracing Mr. Fourcade/s ‘link.” She grinned slightly as Fourcade seemed to cringe at that and Riordan’s face flushed. “But that’s not important… we just want Antonov. We know what you’ve done, but we are facing a civil war and an imminent attack by the Protectorate and Antonov is behind all of it. If you turn him over and cooperate with us, you won’t be charged and your role in this never has to be made public.”

“What the hell do you mean Antonov is behind it?” Riordan demanded, his grip tightening on the handgun. “He’s been sitting here in a cell since the fucking war!”

“Yes, he has… but Kevin Fourcade hasn’t. Right after the war, Mr. Fourcade travelled to Aphrodite on the Patton along with current Vice President Dominguez. That ship was hijacked by Protectorate forces and taken back to their homeworld and everyone on it was systematically brainwashed. Most were just made to forget what had happened, but a few were turned into active sleeper agents for the Protectorate.” She purposefully didn’t mention the duplication of Dominguez… it would only have confused the issue and made Riordan more incredulous. “Including Mr. Fourcade here, who has been taking Antonov’s orders ever since.”

Fourcade’s eyes went wide and even Antonov seemed surprised at how much she knew: the man brought his hands together in sarcastic applause that Riordan didn’t notice.

“I’m not a fucking child, Stark!” Riordan bellowed, slamming the butt of his gun against the transparent polymer wall. “Don’t feed me fairy tales! This is what’s going to happen: you and your people are going to put your guns down and let me fly out of here, and you’re going to call whoever you have outside and tell them to let me go. And if you don’t do that, Colonel Stark, I will use this,” he held up a small control unit in his left hand, “to detonate the charges I had built into the walls of this place and bring a few thousand tons of rock down on all our heads. And don’t think you can get to me before I do it… these cell walls are ten centimeters thick. You don’t have enough explosives to penetrate them.”

Shannon paused for a moment and reached up to pull her helmet off, stepping closer to the cell and looking Riordan in the eye. “So,” she said, a bit of amusement in her voice, “let me get this straight, Riordan. You are threatening to commit suicide in order to kill us, just to avoid getting caught?” The half-grin vanished, replaced by cold fury. “You stuffed shirt son of a bitch, you are already caught! You aren’t leaving this fucking cave you built alive unless you leave with me. We’d like to have Antonov and Fourcade alive to question, but at least if they-and you-are dead, we don’t have to worry about them doing any more harm.”

She took another step closer, her nose nearly touching the surface of the cell wall. “Listen to me, Riordan… President O’Keefe doesn’t want you. He knows that going public about you would just make things worse.” It was a lie, of course-she knew that O’Keefe was about to go public later that very morning-but Riordan couldn’t know that yet. “This is bigger than your coup. You’ve been used: Antonov is playing you, with Fourcade’s help, to try to finish what he started in the war. Believe me when I say, Riordan, I would be happy to put a bullet in your head. You’re a fucking traitor as far as I’m concerned. But I follow orders and I have been ordered to give you the chance to cooperate. So make your choice, die here with me or live and give up your coup in exchange for keeping everything you have.”

Riordan frowned as he stared back at her, trying to determine if she was telling the truth. He looked back at Fourcade, doubt in his eyes. “Kevin, tell me this isn’t…”

“Enough of this shit” Antonov finally spat, visibly losing patience. He turned to Fourcade and nodded. Riordan’s face showed sudden alarm and he tried to bring around his handgun, but Fourcade had already raised a small stunner and before Riordan could react, he fired.

Shannon lurched forward instinctively but came up against the impenetrable polymer barrier, her cheek pressed against it as she watched the directed electrical charge course through Riordan’s body. The thick-muscled executive jerked and twitched spasmodically, his face contorted into a mask of helpless agony until Fourcade released the trigger and Riordan’s eyes rolled up in his head and he collapsed against the wall, sliding down to slump on the floor unconscious.

Shannon took a step back from the wall and watched as Antonov leaned over and picked up the detonator and handgun from where Riordan had dropped them. Seeing him up close and in person for the first time, Shannon noticed a psychotic intelligence glowing in his eyes, like an ancient demon staring out from behind a face carved in stone. The Russian paused as he sneered at Riordan’s motionless form, spitting aside at the man.

“That’s much better, don’t you think?” he said in mildly accented English, smiling broadly at Shannon. “I only wish I could kill the mudak.” Asshole, she knew that meant.

“Why didn’t you?” she asked him, trying to sound more calm and confident than she felt, watching intently as he casually tossed the remote detonator up and down in his palm.

“Because I may yet have need of the fool,” Antonov admitted freely, “and I am a man who likes to keep his options open, my dear.”

“What options do you have, General Antonov?” she asked him, waving a hand around them. “Whether you or Riordan is in charge down here, the only way out of here alive is with me.”

“You know, Colonel Stark,” Antonov mused almost whimsically, “I believe you are correct.”

Shannon felt a prickle of fear run up her spine and even before she heard the hiss of a door opening, she was on the move, pushing away from the cell and bolting for the doorway where Tom and the others waited. Some remote part of her mind realized that she had dropped her helmet, but most of her attention was on the main entrance to the chamber, opposite the one they’d blown through. That door had opened and armored biomech troopers were pouring through it, two by two… there didn’t seem to be an end to them.

Shannon opened her mouth to tell Crossman and the others to run when her vision suddenly went white and she felt her muscles jerking out of her control; she could feel herself falling, feel the floor striking her shoulder but she couldn’t make her mind work to figure out why it was happening. Her muscles ceased spasming after what seemed like an eternity, and her vision cleared enough for her to see a blurred, skewed double image of the biomech troopers advancing through the room, their weapons firing with a sound that reverberated through her head like a jackhammer.

Her brain was still filled with a dense fog, but she was fairly sure she saw a figure in grey stealth armor dart through the blasted-open doorway, trying to reach her… and going down face first as a burst of gunfire sliced into him. The man slid across the ground, leaving a trail of blood, stopping only a meter from Shannon. Just before blackness swallowed her, she saw through the helmet’s visor Tom Crossman’s face, his eyes closed, mouth twisted in agony. Then she slipped into unconsciousness in a bitter haze of failure.

Chapter Thirty-Two

First Lieutenant Drew Franks, Republic Space Fleet Intelligence, eyed the walls of his office distastefully, feeling like a caged animal. His Academy graduation photo hung on the wall beside his desk, a hologram of a strong-jawed, fair-haired young man only a couple years younger, but with an optimism and enthusiasm in his freckled face and green eyes that he no longer felt. After he’d graduated, he’d pushed hard for a slot in Intelligence-hell, everyone wanted Intelligence, after the war. He’d envisioned himself running a covert operations team or infiltrating terrorist cells…

Instead, he’d wound up working as the go-to errand boy for Colonel McKay. Not that he disliked working for the Colonel: the man was a legend, and he was great to work for. He expected competence and efficiency, but he wasn’t a martinet or a stick-up-the-ass regulation-quoter. He and Major Stark were both great. But he hadn’t joined Fleet Intelligence to be a glorified secretary and it was even worse now, with everything that was going on.

And as McKay’s aide, he knew exactly what was going on. The Colonel was out there fighting the Protectorate halfway across the galaxy, while Major Stark was rooting out a nest of treasonous corporate executives and maybe going after Antonov himself. Meanwhile, he was stuck here in an office in Fleet Headquarters and the only excitement he could look forward to was if Antonov blew up this space station the way he’d blown up the old Fleet HQ station during the war.

A tone from his ‘link interrupted his thoughts.

“Colonel McKay’s office,” he answered, “Lieutenant Franks speaking.”

“Lt. Franks,” the voice in his ear was familiar, “it’s Captain Portevent from Communications. We have a priority call incoming from the Decatur… I’m sending the file over to your office now. She said that Major Stark needs to hear this immediately.”

“Thanks, Captain,” he told her, checking his desk terminal and seeing the encrypted message file pop onto his display. “Got it.”

Franks hit the control to activate the office’s security interlocks, then inputted Major Stark’s identity code and played the message.

A hologram of Captain Minishimi coalesced above the desk-Franks was shocked at how pale and drawn she looked but even more concerned about the horror in her eyes.

“Major Stark,” the Captain said, speaking with a quick urgency to her tone, “two of the Eysselink drive Protectorate ramships emerged from the wormhole just minutes ago, then headed insystem at 200 gravities of acceleration. They’re headed straight for Earth and there’s no way we can intercept them in time. Major, by the time they reach Earth, they’re going to be travelling at almost twenty percent of lightspeed… I don’t know what their target is, but I’m afraid they’re going to kamikaze, and if they hit anywhere near a population center, they’ll kill millions.

“They’ll have to shut down their Eysselink fields once they get into Earth’s gravity well, but by then it won’t be possible to stop them. Even if you hit them with a Shipbuster, their plasma field would hit the planet at twenty percent lightspeed and cause a huge wave of radiation. The only way to stop them is put an Eysselink drive field in their way and shunt them away from their course, and you have less than three hours to do it.”

Captain Minishimi took in a deep breath and winced as she did it. “We’re on alert and we can move insystem right now if you order it. Please respond with your orders as soon as you can.” She shook her head. “Good luck, Major.”

“Oh shit,” Franks muttered as he shut down the recording. Three fucking hours…

Trying to hurry without fumbling, Franks brought up the secure communications line on his display and then hesitated… Major Stark had left orders not to contact her while the operation was under way. He quickly looked up the commo ID for the lander supporting her operation and punched in the number.

“Charlie Gulf Niner Niner,” Franks transmitted, “this is Sierra Hotel Bravo.” His eyes flicked to the contact codes on the display. “Sierra Hotel Bravo authenticates ‘Georgetown Alibi.’ Do you copy? Over.”

“This is Charlie Gulf Niner Niner,” the answer came immediately, a male voice that Franks had heard before. “Go. Over.”

“I have a priority one message for Charlie Gulf One,” Franks told the man. “I repeat, this is priority one, very urgent. Over.”

“Charlie Gulf One is not available,” the man told him. “We’ve received a report from Charlie Gulf Ten that there are biomechs on site and the operation may take longer than estimated.” There was a pause before the man went on, reluctantly. “It’s been too long, Sierra Hotel Bravo. I’m worried. Please advise. Over.”

Franks’ eyes glazed over. Please advise? He thought in disbelief. I’m a fucking First Lieutenant!

“Wait one, Charlie Gulf Niner Niner,” he said, breaking the connection.

The ramships… those were the priority. That’s what Major Stark would say. Three fucking hours…

“Oh shit!” he exclaimed as he suddenly remembered something else. “The President!”

As he tried to do half a dozen things at once, part of his mind gibbered Just five minutes ago I was complaining about being bored…

* * *

Daniel O’Keefe paced restlessly in the antechamber just steps away from the Senate floor, waiting impatiently as introductions were made. He glanced at the monitors on the wall and saw the hundreds assembled in the audience to hear his speech. The full senate was in attendance, including Valerie, along with several high-ranking military officers-though not General Kage, he noted-and a few executives of the multicorps. They waited, some impatient, some curious to hear his speech. They knew he was to speak about the failed Colonial Guard mutiny, but none had any idea of what else he intended to cover.

“Sir,” Charlie Klesko stepped through the door into the antechamber, still looking a bit uncomfortable in his renewed role as a Presidential protection agent. “They’re ready.”

O’Keefe shot the man a grateful smile. “Thanks, Charlie,” he said. “Don’t worry… you won’t be babysitting me too much longer.”

“Sir,’ Klesko said with grave sincerity, “it’s an honor and a privilege to work for you in whatever capacity you deem necessary.”

O’Keefe clapped the protection agent on the shoulder as he passed him, then he was on the speaker’s platform of the Republic Senate. He had toured the building this one was based on, the United States House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. and reflected for a moment that this chamber somehow lacked the feel of history and gravity that the older building possessed. It had a feel of novelty to it, a feel of impermanence that he couldn’t shake.

There was a light smattering of polite applause but most of the hundreds gathered were subdued and expectant as he stepped to the podium. O’Keefe tried to focus on one face or a small group, in order to make his words seem more personal, but he found to his surprise that he couldn’t do it. The faces merged together in a haze of thoughts that he couldn’t suppress.

Just have to do this the hard way, he thought grimly.

“Good morning,” he said, his voice amplified and also transmitted to each person’s ‘link. He suppressed his usual speaker’s smile: it would seem disingenuous and puerile under the circumstances. “Thank you for joining me here on such short notice. I know you’re all concerned and curious as to why I’ve called this special session of the Senate, so I’ll get right to the point. I spoke at the press conference in Houston about the foiled attempt by some reactionary elements in the Colonial Guard to stage a mutiny and how the assassination of my son-in-law was connected with this. Well, as I am sure you can guess, there is more to that story than I’ve been able to share so far.

“The attempted mutiny was only a small part of a larger plot that is still ongoing. What I am about to tell you is going to be hard to believe, but I will be presenting evidence to back it up, both to the Senate and the press. Elements in the Multicorps Executive Council, organized by a lobbyist named Kevin Fourcade, have been conspiring to engineer a coup against the Republic government.” There was stunned murmuring at that… though not as much as if he’d gone ahead and mentioned Brendan Riordan’s name, as he’d seriously considered. But he still held out hope of turning the Executive Director and he needed to be able to promise him something resembling his old life back in order to do that.

“We are still gathering intelligence… we don’t know how far up the chain this conspiracy goes, but we have definitive proof that Fourcade was planning to distract us with the Colonial Guard mutiny, then stage an apparent attack by Sergei Antonov’s Protectorate that would lead to my assassination and replacement by Vice President Dominguez, who they hoped would be more receptive to their demands.”

Now there was a huge uproar and some people rose from their seats, shouting questions and demands at him-a major violation of Senate rules, but it was an unusual circumstance and he waved away the sergeant-at-arms when the woman stood to try to restore decorum. Instead, he motioned to his chief of staff to raise the volume, and when he spoke again it cut through the chaos.

“Vice President Dominguez couldn’t be here this morning,” he went on. In truth, Dominguez was nowhere to be found: he’d slipped his protection detail and his biological sensors were inactive. “However, we have no evidence that he is involved in this in any way.” No evidence that would hold up in court, anyway.

“As I said, this threat is ongoing, and there were those who believed I shouldn’t make it public as of yet, but I was elected on the promise of making the Republic government more transparent to the people. There are some campaign promises I haven’t been able to keep-I don’t have to tell any of you about the state of our economy-but this one I can and will. Time will tell whether I’ve made the right decision in doing so, but I have to believe in the strength and courage of the citizens of the Republic.”

The crowd had quieted at his words and he took the opportunity to take a deep breath and gather his thoughts… but before he could speak again, Charlie Klesko was sprinting up the steps of the podium toward him, his eyes fierce and focused. On instinct, Daniel O’Keefe touched the control to mute his microphone.

“Sir,” he hissed tightly, grasping O’Keefe’s arm, “we have to get you to safety. There are two Protectorate ships inbound using Eysselink drives. They’re probably unmanned and they’re heading for Earth at relativistic speeds: anywhere they hit will cease to exist to a radius of about ten kilometers. They’ll be here in just over two hours and we’ll need every minute of that to get you clear of the city.”

“Jesus Christ!” O’Keefe hissed in disbelief. His mind tried to shut down but he flogged it into action. Two hours… there was no way to evacuate the whole city in that amount of time, not even close. There were emergency shelters, but would they be enough? And could he fly out of Capital City and leave its citizens to the threat of death? He grabbed Klesko by the shoulder and looked him in the eye. “Charlie, get my daughter and granddaughter out of the city.”

“Sir!” Klesko exclaimed, a protest forming on his lips.

“Charlie, just do it,” O’Keefe said firmly. “That’s an order. Get her out of here now.”

“Yes, sir,” Klesko ground out through his teeth, then ran down the steps into the audience.

O’Keefe looked back up at the crowd, hearing their restless rumble. He saw the Majority Leader of the Senate rise from his seat and start to walk toward the podium, her arms swinging authoritatively. He hit the control to turn his audio pickup back on.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, speaking slowly, trying to give Klesko time to get Valerie out of the audience, “I’ve just been given disturbing information.” He raised a hand to halt Senator Chorney’s advance, motioning for the Majority Leader to stay where she was. “There are two unidentified Eysselink drive spaceships heading towards Earth from the area of the asteroid belt where we believe the Protectorate wormhole is located. They are accelerating toward us at 200 gravities and are showing no sign of slowing down.”

He let his gaze travel across the crowd, saw Klesko hustling Valerie out of a side exit to the chamber. People were rising in their seats hesitantly, alarmed but unsure what to do. “These two ships are probably unmanned, and they’re travelling at near 20 percent of the speed of light. They will arrive in two hours, and if they impact on any populated area, millions of people could die. Capital City is a logical target for these ships, though we don’t know as of yet where they are intended to hit. There is no possibility of evacuating this city, much less every city that might be a target.” He looked directly into the nearest news camera pickup. “I would encourage all citizens to move in an orderly and safe fashion to the nearest emergency shelter, and I am hereby ordering all Republic Service Corps personnel to report to the shelters to support those who seek refuge there. If anyone here wishes to use their personal resources to evacuate ahead of the threat, I will not condemn their actions, but I intend to stay in Capital City and share the fate of its citizens. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to coordinate our defense against this threat.”

Without further pronouncement, O’Keefe turned and left the podium, grabbing his chief of staff by the shoulder as he passed her. He’d promoted Svetlana Zakharova to the position after Glen’s death, not so much because she was supremely qualified for it but mostly because he trusted her more than anyone else in his administration.

“I need a ready room set up here, now,” he told her urgently, motioning back towards the antechamber where he’d waited for the speech to begin. “I want a line to Fleet Headquarters in there now and get me General Rietveld and Fleet Captain Di Ndinge from the audience. I need to know what we can do about this.”

“Sir,” Zakharova interrupted him, “I just got a call from Lieutenant Franks at Fleet Headquarters… he has an idea, but needs your immediate clearance to do it and says there’s no time to explain.”

O’Keefe paused in mid-step, a wry grin spreading across his face almost unwillingly. “Goddamn, that apple surely didn’t fall too far from the command tree,” he said, shaking his head. “Tell him he has my clearance to do anything he thinks will stop those ships, no questions asked. But God help him if it doesn’t work…”

* * *

Captain Tomas Perez was sweating and he hated himself for it. He’d been promoted to Captain and given command of the Bradley just three months ago, and the ship had been in dry-dock being refitted for nearly all of that. He only had half his crew aboard and had yet to meet his Executive Officer… and now, the ship had been put on alert and ordered to power up the drive and detach from the dock at Fleet Headquarters in less than an hour which was fucking impossible. He’d been to engineering twice in the last ten minutes and it seemed like they were finally ready to go…

“Prepare to detach from docking umbilical,” Perez ordered the Helm officer, a short-haired, stocky Asian-looking young man with the unlikely name of Bevins… at least Perez hoped that was his name, as he’d called him by it twice in the last half hour and he just didn’t have time to consult his ‘link to make sure.

“Sir,” the Communications Officer said from his position across the bridge, “we have an Intelligence officer coming on board via the umbilical… a Lieutenant Franks. He says he has to go with us, that it’s urgent.”

“If he’s in, tell them to disconnect from the umbilical now,” the Captain snapped, annoyed at the delay.

“Umbilical is clear,” Helm announced, checking the sensors. “Disconnecting now…”

“Directional thrusters,” Perez ordered. “Takes us to a safe distance then engage the plasma drive.”

There was the familiar “bang, bang” sound of the maneuvering rockets gently pushing the massive, monolithic cruiser away from the hub of the slowly spinning barrel of Fleet Headquarters.

“Lieutenant,” Perez turned to the Comm officer-Reno was his name, a hawk-faced Lt-JG a year out of the Academy, “get on the horn with command and find out where exactly we’re supposed to go.”

“I can help you with that, sir.” Perez turned at the unfamiliar voice and saw a freckle-faced young man in a black Intelligence uniform kicking off from the bridge entrance to come to a halt on the back of the acceleration couches behind the Captain’s station. “I’m Lt. Franks, Fleet Intelligence,” he said, saluting awkwardly as he levered himself into the couch and strapped in. “Sorry to intrude on your bridge, sir, but we have next to no time and you’re the only Eysselink drive ship in the Earth-moon area at the moment.”

He took a breath, seeming a bit frazzled at the situation himself. “There are two Protectorate ships headed for Earth… they’re just over an hour away right now, going at almost a quarter light using stolen Eysselink drives. That means none of our defenses can touch them. They’re probably unmanned or even if they are crewed, they’re most likely on a suicide mission-they’re going to be used, we think, as relativistic kinetic kill vehicles, try to slam into their targets on Earth at a good percentage of lightspeed, which will turn anything it hits into a crater about ten kilometers wide.”

Perez started to blurt out an exclamation, then checked himself as he realized it wouldn’t be professional. “So, how are we going to stop them, then?” He asked instead.

“The only way to stop a ship with its drive field up is to hit it with another drive field,” Franks replied, shaking his head ruefully. “Unfortunately, the consequences of that can be… drastic. So we need to make some preparations, because we have to do it twice… and we have to intercept those ships before they reach the point where they’ll turn off their drive fields because if we don’t, it won’t matter what we do, even their ashes will be traveling at relativistic speeds and the radiation wave they would cause would still kill millions.” The young Lieutenant grinned. “But no pressure.”

Chapter Thirty-Three

Shannon Stark woke slowly and painfully, with a metallic taste in her mouth and her pulse pounding in her head. She jerked and thrashed in a half-conscious panic but found she couldn’t move: something was restraining her wrists, ankles and even her head. Her eyes felt glued shut, but Shannon managed to pry them open and blink away the blur that painted a haze across reality.

She was sitting upright, she discovered, strapped into a padded chair, staring into the lenses of a machine she recognized all too well: a hypnoprobe. It loomed in front of her, sinister in its plastic and metal sterility, so much more terrifying from this side than it had even been from the other. She struggled to control her breathing and heartbeat and to try to force her mind to work. She’d been hit by a stunner… presumably one built into the room as a security system. The whole thing had been a trap…

“Ah, Dobroe utro, Colonel Stark,” she heard Antonov’s voice from her right side and just behind her. Good morning. So, she hadn’t been out for very long. She tried to twist around to see the man, but he was too far behind her and she could only see the bare wall of whatever room she was in.

“Why…” she tried to speak, but her mouth felt as if it were stuffed with cotton. Antonov came into her peripheral vision, holding a cup of water. She considered resisting but that, she reflected silently, would be pointless. She sipped the water and sighed slightly in relief.

“I think,” Antonov said cheerfully, “you were about to ask me why I didn’t kill you, no?”

“Yes,” she said quietly. Antonov walked behind her and around to her left. She tried to follow him, but the strap around her forehead restricted her motion.

“I kept you alive,” he informed her, “because as you said, I can’t leave without you. As I don’t have time for anything more entertaining,” he chuckled at that, and she fought back an instinctive shiver as his calloused finger traced a line across her left cheek, “…and believe me, my dear, I can think of much more entertaining ways to bend a beautiful woman to my will… I will be forced to rely on the more antiseptic option of using this mashina.”

“It won’t work,” she told him tightly. “To use the probe on me without drugs, I’d have to do it voluntarily… and if you drug me, I won’t recover quickly enough to call my air cover before they sound the alert and seal this place off.”

“I did indeed consider this, Colonel,” he assured her, voice as confident and cheerful as ever. He walked back around behind her and she felt a surge of panic as her chair started to shake, but then she realized he was turning it so she could see farther to her left.

As she slowly turned, she could see that she was in some sort of medical lab or clinic, filled with a fairly sophisticated array of equipment; turned a bit more and she could see a wheeled gurney was rolled up a couple of meters to her left and that there was someone laid out on it. She recognized the boots as belonging to the stealth armor her team had been wearing and she felt her heart rise into her throat.

Another jerk on the side of her chair and she could see that the soldier had half-dried blood spattered on those boots and a pair of smart bandages on the right leg, at the knee and hip. A bit more to her left and she saw a bedraggled female in rumpled clothes that she recognized from Jameson’s description as Dr. Maggie Cochrane. Cochrane was standing behind the gurney, looking supremely uncomfortable, her face twisted in what looked like a combination of distaste and abject terror. Next to her and slightly behind her, backs against the wall, were two armored biomechs, their weapons trained on her and the soldier on the gurney, standing stock-still.

One final turn of the chair and she saw that the man on the table was Tom Crossman.

“I know this man,” Antonov told her, leaning close and speaking in a conspiratorial whisper. Shannon found it hard to focus on his words as she scanned Tom’s face, saw that he was unconscious but still breathing. His skin was pasty from loss of blood and coated with sweat. She could see another smart bandage on his neck and one on his arm as well. “He was on my ship five years ago,”

“Your memory is impressive,” she said in a neutral tone, trying not to let her feelings creep into her voice. All she could think about was Tom’s children…

“My memory is not what it once was,” Antonov countered. “The hazards of living over two centuries. But I saw the movie.”

Shannon bit back a bitter laugh. Tom hated that damned movie…

“So, here is what we will do, moi dorogoi,” he went on. My dear. “You will submit to the hypnoprobe without resistance, and I will allow the very competent Dr. Cochrane here to treat your friend. When we leave this place, we will leave them here and your man will survive. The alternative… well, if you refuse, I will have the good doctor tear off those ingenious smart dressings of yours and bring your man to full consciousness and then we will see just how much blood he has left in him.” A snort. “Not all at once, of course.”

“Where are the rest of my people?” She asked in a voice that could have come from a computer.

“Ah, I am so sorry to tell you,” Antonov said, his mock dismay sounding just as cheerful, “but I am afraid that Sergeant Crossman was the only survivor.”

Shannon closed her eyes for a moment and her mouth formed into a hard line. “All right,” she said softly.

“What?” Antonov said in slight surprise. “No cliched questions about how you can trust me?”

“I know I can’t fucking trust you,” she ground out between clenched teeth. “But I have very little choice.”

“Ah, I do love a pragmatic woman,” he laughed, pulling her chair back around until she faced the hypnoprobe once more. He moved around to the other side of the machine and she could see him again: the genius and insanity blended in his eyes, the cruel humor in his smug, arrogant smile. He reached out to the hypnoprobe and hit a control to activate it. “And now… just relax…”

* * *

“Well, at least they’re not trying evasive maneuvers,” Lt. Franks murmured, staring at the main viewscreen. The twin Eysselink ramships showed on the gravimetic sensors like glowing comets, arrayed one a few light seconds in front of the other: they had to stay separated to avoid the same sort of drive field entanglement that he and Perez were going to try to use against them.

“At their current velocity,” the Tactical Officer, Lt. Wolford, reported, his breathing a bit labored due to the two g acceleration, “the lead ship is forty minutes from Earth impact and ten minutes from rendezvous with the Bradley. The trailing ship is approximately ten minutes behind him.”

“Engineering,” Perez spoke into the intercom, his voice strained, “how are the modifications going?”

“Just about done, sir,” the Engineering Officer replied, her voice improbably cheerful. “It’s mostly software adjustments and a few circuit bypasses… well, that’s all we have time for, anyway. I can’t honestly say if this is going to work or not… every experiment that’s been done with intersecting drive fields has led to pretty spectacular mutual destruction.”

Perez’ eyes widened and he shot a glare at Franks.

Franks spread his hands. “Commander Prieta, the Chief Engineer on the Decatur swears it’ll work.”

“I’ve got the vectors plotted for the field intersect,” Bevins, the Helm Officer, announced. “This is going to be real tricky, Captain…”

“Just program the vectors, Lieutenant,” Perez told him tersely. “There’s no second option and there won’t be a second chance.” He turned to Lt. Franks. “Tell me something, Lieutenant, you could have told us all this over the radio… why come on board yourself?”

Franks shrugged expressively. “Sir, I’ve been following a lot of the communications from Decatur and they’ve given me some idea of how these ramships work… I figured it would be better if I were on board just in case something came up that I could help with.” He grinned. “And, to be honest sir, I’ve spent the last two years sitting at a desk, funneling communications from one covert operation after another. I wasn’t about to sit on my ass while the Protectorate was attacking Earth.”

Perez chuckled softly. “You remind me of Colonel McKay… when he was a Captain.”

“You served with the Colonel?” Franks asked, surprised.

“I was the Assistant Weapons Officer on the Patton during the war,” he said, an understandable pride in his voice. “I fired the missile that destroyed Antonov’s flagship.”

Franks began to smile a “that’s cool!” sort of smile, but it froze on his face as a realization passed through his mind like a wash of ice-cold water.

“That’s awesome, sir,” he said with as much enthusiasm as he could fake. “Did you stay with the Patton after the war?”

“Only till we got back from a resupply mission to Aphrodite,” the Captain confirmed Franks’ worst fears. “After that, I got promoted and went for advance officer’s training.”

Oh, shit, Franks moaned inside his head, letting the high gravity force him deeper into the acceleration couch. What the hell do I do now?

“Two minutes till intercept,” the Helm officer announced. “I’ve got the vectors programmed… we’re in the pipe. Taking acceleration down to one gravity.”

The pressure pushing down on Franks’ chest eased to a normal level but he barely noticed: he was intent on watching Perez. As the seconds crept by, he saw beads of sweat rolling down the Captain’s forehead, saw the man’s face transform from intent concentration to agonized indecision as the moment of intercept approached.

He had a conviction deep in his gut that the Captain was being pressured by the conditioning he’d undergone on the Patton‘s ill-fated journey to Aphrodite, and that the man was going to crack and abort the maneuver at the last second. He didn’t know if he was being paranoid, but he knew what Shannon Stark or Jason McKay would say about that: the question was never if you were being paranoid, it was whether you were being paranoid enough.

“Captain,” he said firmly, leaning forward in his seat.

Perez’ face swung toward him, the movement furtive, like a cornered animal.

“Captain Perez,” he repeated, trying to keep his voice calm but firm. “You received the authorization from President O’Keefe placing this ship at my disposal for this mission, correct?”

In his peripheral vision, Franks could see the Tactical and Helm officers casting curious glances at the interplay, even as they tried to concentrate on their stations.

The Captain’s eyes flickered back and forth, but he nodded jerkily. “Yes, but…”

”Captain,” Franks emphasized the rank and leaned even closer, one hand loosening his restraints, the other falling on the man’s shoulder. “You said it yourself… we don’t have a second option and we won’t get a second chance. Right?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Perez admitted quietly, nodding but beginning to shake slightly, sweat now pouring down his face. “But there’s something wrong, I can feel…”

“Captain,” Franks hissed so quietly that no one else could hear it, directly into the man’s ear, “Republic Spacefleet Regulation 304.3 states that every Intelligence officer is required to carry a loaded sidearm at all times while on duty. I am currently acting in accordance with that regulation and if you try to countermand the orders to intercept these two ships, I will draw my sidearm and put a bullet through your head.”

Perez’ eyes went wide and he started to open his mouth, but Franks shook his head and raised a finger to his own lips in a shushing motion. “Captain Perez, I know you’re feeling panicked, like you have to stop this from happening, but I promise you, that will go away if you just let it happen, let your orders get carried out. Just keep your mouth shut for the next thirty seconds, and everything will be fine.”

Oh Jesus Christ, Franks thought, half-praying, don’t make me kill this guy…

“Ten seconds!” Helm exclaimed, and Franks head snapped around, his teeth baring as he saw the first of the ramships impossibly huge in the viewscreen.

He instinctively pulled himself back into his seat and began to tighten his restraint harness…

“Five seconds!” Bevins called. “Four…”

Franks’ eyes were glued to the screen, but he saw out of the corner of his eye Captain Perez clawing at his own safety restraints. “Captain!” he exclaimed. “No!”

“…two, one, impact!”

Franks had gone bungee jumping once, during a summer leave from the Academy, off a bridge in Oregon. It had scared the shit out of him and he’d sworn never to do it again, but now he felt as if he were falling once more, not into a river gorge but instead into the holes between bits of space-time; falling forever until the bungee cord of reality snapped him back, slamming him into his seat with terrifying authority.

His vision swam in a sea of smoke and flickering lights, and his ears were filled with the distorted tintabulation of multiple alarms sounding, while his stomach did flip-flops from the sudden return of zero gravity. He beat a fist against the arm of his acceleration couch and bullied his brain into action, forcing his eyes to focus.

The viewscreen was flickering through a haze of smoke that was drifting across the bridge, rising from shorting relays at the communications station, and everywhere he looked the bridge crewmembers were floating against their restraints… except for Captain Perez. He’d managed to get his restraints undone just before the impact, and Franks guessed that the whiplash effect had slammed him into the hull. He was floating over the Helm station, his neck cocked at an unnatural angle and globules of blood beading up from his nose and mouth. His eyes were open and he stared lifelessly at Franks, sending an electric chill up the young man’s spine.

“Aw, son of a bitch…” Franks moaned. That means I’m gonna have to do this… “Tactical!” he yelled hoarsely.

He saw Wolford shaking his head, trying to get it clear and he knew that the man would take too long. He pulled the emergency release on his restraints and pushed off, lunging for the Tactical station. The control display flickered fitfully twice more before it settled into coherence, to Franks’ great relief-the relay switches they’d put in place had kept the feedback caused by the drive field overload from shutting the ship down. He dragged every single one of the Shipbuster missile icons into the launch folder, then stabbed at the icon.

The ship shuddered as the missiles separated one by one and were accelerated outward by the electromagnetic launch racks before their fusion drives engaged and sent them rocketing away. There were six in all, but he saw with some annoyance that only four had launched: one of the launch racks was down, damaged by the feedback the drive field intersection had caused. Two of the missiles curled away, heading for the drifting shape of the ramship they’d intercepted, while the other two killed their drives and waited patiently, just as they’d programmed them.

“Helm!” He called, and Bevins looked at him, eyes clearing even as the smoke on the bridge began to clear, sucked away by the now-working ventilation system. “Reactivate the drive field now! Get us on course to intercept the second ship!”

“Jesus Christ!” Bevins bellowed, jerking against his safety harness reflexively as he stared with horror at Captain Perez’ body floating above them. “What the hell happened?”

“He’s dead!” Franks yelled, grabbing the man by the shoulder and yanking himself over to get in front and look him in the eye. Bevins’ doughy face was pale and he was close to hyperventilating. “Now get the fucking drive field activated or that ship is going to blow past us and slam into Capital City and kill everyone in it! Do you hear me?”

Swallowing hard, Bevins nodded and went to work at his sputtering control board. As he did, the others on the bridge began to come out of the shock of the field collision and he could hear a chorus of curses and exclamations as they saw Perez’ body. Muttering a curse himself, Franks grabbed Perez by the ankle and, anchoring himself on the Helm station, he pulled the man’s body back towards the auxiliary acceleration couch and strapped it down.

“Captain Perez!” Franks heard the voice coming over the intercom in the Captain’s station and thought he recognized the Chief Engineer.

“Goddammit,” he hissed, pulling himself into the Captain’s chair and strapped down. I am so going to get court-martialed.

He hunted for the intercom control as Wolford and the Communications Officer stared at him in disbelief. He ignored them as he found the right control. “This is Lt. Franks… Captain Perez is unavailable, give me your status report.”

“Uh, well, Lieutenant, we’ve got some major damage to the main power relays, and we’ve had to switch to auxiliaries. The changes we made managed to keep the reactor from dumping, though, and antimatter containment is still stable.”

“We need the drive online right now, Commander,” Franks told him. “We still have to take out the second Protectorate ship and we only have,” he checked the countdown on the display at his left arm, “eight minutes to get into position.”

“The drives are good to go for now, Lieutenant,” the engineer informed him. “But I have to tell you, the auxiliary power relays will overload when we intercept that ship, and the reactor will flush, We’re going to be without power or drives for a while, if this works.”

“Commander,” Franks instructed him, “contact the XO in the auxiliary control room and give him a quick update. Tell him that Captain Perez is incapacitated and he needs to get to the bridge and take over after we intercept the second ship. Not before, though… it won’t be safe to move until then.” Franks disconnected, not waiting for a reply. “Lt. Wolford, what’s the status on the first ship?”

“Still not moving,” the Tactical Officer reported. “The Shipbusters are a minute out. No countermissile fire that I can detect.”

“Drive field is up,” Bevins announced. “Prepare for two gravities acceleration.”

Franks felt the pressure pushing him back into the Captain’s seat and tried not to notice the pitter-patter sound of Perez’s blood raining down on the deck, some of it hitting right at his feet. He concentrated on watching the icon that represented the Patton on the tactical display jump forward, on a course to intercept the second ship.

“We’re in the pipe,” Bevins said after a moment. “Three minutes at current velocity. I’m taking it back to one g acceleration.”

Franks turned to the Communications station, trying to remember the man’s name and failing. “Commo,” he said instead, “tell all hands to secure for impact.”

The Communications officer glanced briefly at him, then at Captain Perez’ corpse, before he nodded and turned back to his station to issue the warning. Franks was trying his best to not look at the man… the body was slumped back in the seat, hanging limply against the straps and the head seemed to keep turning towards him… He’d never seen anyone killed before and somehow hadn’t imagined it being like this.

He shook his head and made himself stare at the oncoming Protectorate ship. It was looming before them on the viewscreen, wedge-shaped and featureless, lacking any weapons ports.

“We have detonation on the first ship!” Wolford reported excitedly. “Both missiles hit it, it’s gone!”

“It never tried to use its conventional drives?” Franks asked, grateful for the distraction.

“No, just drifted,” Wolford confirmed.

“Then they’re probably uncrewed,” Franks deduced. “And apparently their AI isn’t that bright… or else it got fried by the field collision. So if we can pull this off, our Shipbusters can take care of this guy whether we’re around to see it or not.”

“Well,” Bevins snorted, not looking back at him, “aren’t you Lieutenant Sunshine?”

“Sorry, sir,” Franks said with a nervous laugh. “My job is to save the Earth… it’s up to you guys to save the ship.”

“Thirty seconds to impact,” Bevins said in a clinically neutral voice, as if he didn’t trust himself to say anything else.

As the image of the second ramship grew in the viewscreen’s display, Franks sat back in the Captain’s seat and closed his eyes for a moment, wondering briefly if he had any regrets.

Never got to any of the star colonies, he acknowledged, ticking that off on an imaginary counter.

“Twenty seconds.”

Never asked out Lara from Communications. He saw an image in his memory of the perky, dark-haired Lieutenant smiling her pixie smile and he grinned.

“Fifteen seconds.”

I wish I’d been there for Brian’s wedding.

“Ten,” Bevins intoned, “nine, eight…”

Not too bad, Franks shrugged inwardly. Of course, my biggest regret is that I won’t live long enough to have more regrets…

He opened his eyes and felt a spike of fear as he saw the ramship huge on the screen, barreling toward them so terrifyingly close… things in space weren’t supposed to be that close to each other, he thought absurdly. It wasn’t natural…

“…impact!” Bevins cried, voice quavering with a note of fear that he couldn’t quite disguise.

The universe twisted around Franks, and he felt as if he, too, was being spindled and stretched for an interminable eternity… and then he snapped back with an incredible violence and everything went dark.

Chapter Thirty-Four

“Charlie Gulf Niner-niner,” Shannon Stark spoke calmly into her helmet pickup, “this is Charlie Gulf One, do you read? Over.”

There was a pause and then a crackle of static. “Roger, Charlie Gulf One, this is Charlie Gulf Niner-niner, what’s your situation? Over?”

“We have the target secured, Niner-niner, and are ready for pickup, over.”

“Good to hear, ma’am,” the voice of CG99 sounded relieved. “Any casualties?”

Shannon opened her mouth, then closed it again, swallowing the reply she wanted to give but couldn’t. “Negative. We have four to pick up at the hangar elevator exit… just follow my homing signal. The load will consist of myself and three Priority Targets. The rest of the unit will be staying to secure the complex. Over.”

“Roger that, Charlie Gulf One, I’m on my way, over.”

“We’ll be waiting for you. Charlie Gulf One, out.”

Shannon looked over to Sergei Pavlovitch Antonov, who stood watching her with arms crossed, eyes squinting against the morning sun, the warm New Mexico wind tugging at his grey-streaked beard, looking like Moses in the desert.

“Very nicely done, Colonel Stark,” he said genially. “I wonder… since you are now a Colonel, is my old friend Jason McKay a General?”

“Yes, he is,” Stark replied, her voice quiet and neutral, without a hint of feeling. “The President promoted us both yesterday.”

Antonov laughed, looking over to Fourcade. The slick-backed lobbyist was grinning himself, as he held a gun on Brendan Riordan, conscious once more but securely handcuffed, with a burlap bag pulled over his head. “I wonder, Kevin, if General McKay will find out about his promotion.”

“I suppose that depends on your feelings about the existence of an afterlife, General Antonov,” Fourcade cracked, chuckling.

“You know,” Antonov mused, running fingers through his beard thoughtfully, “it is very pretty out here.” He nodded towards the red-hued rolling hills in the distance. “I will have to have a ranch built for me in this place, once I rule this world.”

“There’s the aircraft, sir,” Fourcade told him, looking northward.

Antonov followed his gaze and saw the black shape in the impossible blue of the clear desert sky, curving around a stand of low hills as it approached. “Time for a bit of maskirova,” Antonov said, placing his hands before him. Shannon wrapped his wrists with the plastic band of a flex-cuff, then did the same for Fourcade, taking his gun and shoving it in her belt.

“Now, remember, Colonel Stark.” Antonov told her quietly as the assault lander came closer, its deadly, angular lines coming into clear focus, “once we are on the lander, you will have the pilot fly directly to the coordinates I gave you. No unnecessary talking, no radio communications whatsoever. Do you understand?”

“Of course, General,” she said with the same, calm tone, eyes fixed on the lander. The attack craft descended on a column of superheated air funneled through its reactor and directed through rotating ducts on its belly, the roar of the engines making the ground beneath their feet tremble from nearly a hundred meters away.

A sandstorm of red dust lashed at them as the lander came to a rest, and Fourcade and Antonov turned away to shield their eyes from the blast, while Shannon watched impassively from inside her helmet and Riordan stood in numbed silence under his hood. The lander touched down on heavy-duty retractable skids, the roar of the jets dying down to a high-pitched whine as the turbos spun down, and a boarding ramp lowered from its curved belly.

A lone figure stepped down the ramp, dressed in standard, sanitized Intelligence combat gear with no nametag or unit designation, and a mirror-visored helmet, arms full with a short-barreled carbine. The trooper advanced towards them as they all marched towards the lander, Riordan shuffling uncertainly with Shannon’s hand on his arm.

“I’ll take care of the prisoners,” Shannon announced before the Intelligence trooper could reach them. “Tell the pilot to go to complete radio silence and get us in the air now.”

“Yes, ma’am,” a female voice said over the helmet’s external speaker, and the trooper turned and trotted back up the ramp.

The whine of the turbines pitched higher as the pilot fed power to them, and dust began to bloom around the aircraft even as Shannon escorted the three men up the ramp, out of the increasingly hot desert morning and into the shaded bliss of climate control. Shannon paused as they stepped into the passenger/cargo compartment and hit the control to raise the ramp. The lander leaped into the air before the ramp was halfway shut, letting a haze of dust blow into the cargo area before it cleared the ground.

Shannon guided Antonov and the others into a set of seats mounted on the wall of the cargo area and strapped them in, then moved up a short set of steps into the lander’s cockpit. The female trooper who had met them was seated in the copilot’s position, so Shannon dropped into the command seat behind them, pulling off her helmet and holding it in her lap.

She was expressionless as she leaned over and typed a destination into the navigation console. “These coordinates. Get us there as quickly as you can.”

“There are priority communication requests for you from President O’Keefe, ma’am…” the female trooper began.

“Radio silence for now,” Shannon stated flatly. “Notify me when we’re close.”

With that, she rose from her seat and stepped back down to the passenger compartment, halting in front of Antonov’s seat. “We’re en route,” she told him.

“Excellent,” the Russian said quietly. “When we arrive, you will escort us to our vehicle, then you will re-board the lander and head for Capital City.”

Shannon blinked, but remained silent. Antonov laughed, an unpleasantly harsh and chilling sound. “You thought I would kill you. No, my dear… you’re far too valuable an asset to dispose of so quickly. I have a very big job for you, prekrasnaya zhenshchina.” Beautiful woman. “You are going to take a message from me to the fool you call a President…”

* * *

Ari Shamir grunted as he dropped the two meters to the ground from the hovering lander, absorbing the shock with his knees as he fell into a crouch, holding his carbine out in front of him to avoid burying it in his gut. He quickly scrambled away from the shadow of the aircraft, moving out thirty meters to get away from the dust cloud the lander was generating, then going prone and scanning the area for threats as he waited for the rest of the team to disembark.

The noonday sun beat down on his back as he lay there, overtaxing the cooling systems in his Marine-pattern body armor and the polarization of his helmet visor. He was beginning to sweat by the time a hand slapped down on his shoulder and he looked back to see Roza’s eyes through the visor of her helmet. She gave him a thumbs-up and he scrambled to his feet, waving a hand for the rest of the unit to join him.

There were a dozen of them in all, a mish-mash of stray Marines he and Roza had dragged away from desk assignments in the Fleet offices in Capital City when the call had come in from Lt. Franks a few hours ago. He’d heard scattered reports of a missile attack aimed at Capital City, at evacuations to the emergency shelters, engagements in orbit… but everything was a chaotic roar with a very low signal-to-noise ratio right now and the only thing he knew for sure was that Colonel Stark was overdue and Franks thought that someone needed to check on the situation.

He tried to push down the worry he felt about what was happening out there and concentrate on what was directly in front of him: the entrance to the underground hangar of Riordan’s bunker. The giant hangar doors were closed and well-camouflaged, colored rust brown like the dirt and covered with bits of rock, but off to the side of them was the entrance to a tunnel, where a set of stairs led downward. It had been left glaringly open, as if someone had departed in a rush and not cared what evidence of that they left behind them.

Ari edged up to the opening, a ring of heavy, dark metal set in the sandstone, then used the video connection between his carbine’s optical sight and the reticle in his helmet to check inside. The shaft was empty, the steps half-covered in sand blown in during the time the entrance had been left open. He shrugged and started down the steps. It could be a trap, but they weren’t going to find out what had happened by sitting on the surface waiting for an epiphany.

The silence as he descended was deafening, making the sound of his own breathing in his helmet incredibly loud in his ears. All he could hear through the external pickups was the soft scraping of his soles on the sand-covered stone steps. The stairs ran a good fifty meters down to the main hangar, where a VTOL aircraft rested lonely on the bare concrete, with no human in sight, not on visual or thermal.

A quick scan showed only one way out into the complex from the hangar: a large set of double-doors standing open that revealed a short corridor ending in a freight elevator. Ari led the group across the large hangar with Roza bringing up the rear and the Marines maintaining a good tactical separation for all that they’d been riding desks for most of their careers. Once they reached the corridor, Roza directed them via hand signals to take positions near its opening, then she joined Ari by the elevator doors.

“Shit,” Ari grunted as he examined the control plate. “It’s a biometric scanner. Gonna take a bit.” He pulled a small computer module from a belt pouch and touched a control then stuck it to the face of the scanner plate. “Honestly, I hate the idea of using the elevator at all, but it would take hours to get in through the entrance Colonel Stark’s team used.”

“I think the element of surprise isn’t a factor anymore, kedves,” she replied. “From the looks of the place, we are, as they say, a day late and a dollar short.”

Ari started to agree when the elevator’s indicator display suddenly lit up to show that a car was ascending to the hangar bay. His head swiveled back and forth between the display and Roza for a split second before he turned to the Marine squad.

“You two,” he jerked a finger at two of the troopers who were at the end of the hallway, “watch our backs. The rest of you spread out and cover the elevator!”

The Marines trained their weapons on the broad double doors of the lift and Ari and Roza moved to the corner to give them a clear field of fire.

“Remember,” Ari said quickly, “the last report we had was that there were biomechs down there, so aim for the head.”

The words were barely out of his mouth when the door began to open with a grinding squeak of old metal and Ari quickly brought his carbine up to his shoulder and slipped his fingertip over the trigger.

“Hold your fire!” A male voice called out loudly. “We’re friendlies!”

Ari’s eyes narrowed, then widened as the doors slid all the way open. The elevator was occupied by three men in Intelligence-pattern stealth armor, one of them laid out on a gurney and being tended to by a fourth, a short, frumpy woman with a doughy face that grew paler as she stared at the rifle barrels pointed her way.

“Put your hands on your head,” Ari snapped as he cautiously approached the four of them. “Don’t move.”

“I’m Reynolds,” the closest of the men insisted as he raised his arms, his voice tinny over the helmet’s external speakers, “Fleet Intelligence Special Operations.” He motioned at the other armored man, who had a blood-stained smart bandage on his leg and was struggling to remain standing with his arms over his head. “That’s Von Paleske… we were with Colonel Stark’s raid team.”

“Get out of the elevator and on the ground,” Ari ordered, motioning with his carbine, “all three of you.”

“That’s Tom Crossman,” Roza said tightly, gesturing to the figure on the gurney. Ari let his vision, which had been scanning back and forth between the two armored figures and the civilian, focus on the man on the medical bed and he cursed softly as he recognized the unconscious man.

Dammit, he thought, we don’t have time for this.

“Take off your helmets,” he told the two men as they began to step out of the elevator. Reynolds did immediately, pulling off the full-face helm and dropping it on the ground. Ari had never met the man, but he recognized the young NCO’s face from files he’d viewed. Von Paleske took a moment longer, having to lean against the elevator doorway to wrestle off the helmet.

Ari gave the man a once over, then nodded to Roza. “They’re who they say they are.” He turned back to the two men, pulling off his own helmet

“Captain Shamir, thank God…” Von Paleske sighed. He’d met the young man before, though briefly, during the spin-up of the last few weeks.

“Let’s not be thanking anyone just yet,” Ari muttered. “Who’s she?” He nodded towards the civilian. “And what the hell went down here?”

“I’m Dr. Maggie Cochrane,” the woman stammered. “I work for Mr. Riordan…”

“She was in charge of keeping Antonov healthy,” Reynolds interjected. “Captain, I was covering the rear entrance and Von Paleske came back to my position after he got shot… we couldn’t contact anyone except the lander because we were too far underground.”

“Stop wasting time, dammit!” Ari nearly jumped at the hoarse, labored voice that came from the gurney. Tom Crossman pushed himself into a seated position, waving aside Dr. Cochrane’s objections.

He looked, Ari reflected, like hell: His armor had been cut off and his utility fatigues were torn and coated with blood all along the right side of his body. Smart bandages were stuck to his right thigh and hip, his right arm and the right side of his neck; and an IV in his left arm was attached to a pump and reservoir on the gurney, feeding his veins a blood substitute. His face was ghostly pale and his hair was matted with sweat, but his eyes were alert.

“Captain,” he said, taking a breath and wincing as it hurt his neck, “Antonov was waiting for us… it was a trap. The place was full of biomechs…”

Ari inadvertently glanced around in alarm. “Where are they now?”

Crossman shook his head impatiently. “They’re down in the holding area…”

“They’re just standing there,” Reynolds interrupted, “not moving, like they’re waiting for orders. They didn’t even move when me and Von Paleske finally went in.”

“They haven’t moved since Antonov left,” Crossman snarled, giving the lower ranking noncom a glare that made him shut up. “Captain, the room where Antonov was being held was rigged with stunners. Everyone else is dead, but the Russian psycho captured Major… I mean Colonel Stark.” Even under the circumstances, Tom’s face had a hint of a smirk at the promotion. “They thought I was out, and I let ‘em think so, but I was awake for all of it. He had me in there… he told her that he’d let Fourcade cut me up unless she submitted to it.”

“To what?” Ari demanded impatiently, feeling a pit opening up in his guts.

“A hypnoprobe,” Crossman replied grimly. “Sir… he has her brainwashed. He used her to get in the lander and escape. He promised her that he’d leave me behind and let the Doc here fix me up if she didn’t fight him and make it take longer.” There was agony on Crossman’s face that wasn’t just from the pain of his wounds. “You’ve got to track them down, because God knows what he’s going to do to her when he doesn’t need her anymore…”

Ari swallowed hard, looking back and forth between Tom and Roza.

“Holy shit,” he blurted, eyes wide. “I just realized, I have no idea who to call.”

“I think perhaps,” Roza said slowly and quietly, “I do.”

Chapter Thirty-Five

“Mr. President,” Captain Di Ndinge called, “we have a report from Fleet Headquarters!”

Daniel O’Keefe stepped across the crowded, chaotic, makeshift ready room that had been set up in an antechamber off the Senate floor, pushing aside staffers, both military and political, making his way to the small tactical readout that had been hooked up to a terminal in a corner of the chamber. Divungi Di Ndinge was a slender, gracefully-featured officer from Gabon in the African Confederation and he was normally a reserved and soft-spoken gentleman, but at the moment he seemed almost giddy.

“What’s happening out there, Captain?” O’Keefe asked the man, who was part of Admiral Patel’s senior staff.

“A cislunar patrol craft received a transmission from the Bradley,” the Captain told him. “It was fairly low power-the ship is in pretty bad shape. But according to their report, they managed to destroy both enemy craft.”

“Thank God,” O’Keefe sighed in relief, leaning heavily against the back of the officer’s chair. There was a smattering of applause and relieved exclamations around the room as the word spread. He even heard someone softly sobbing. “You said they took damage… how many casualties?”

“There are a few serious injuries-bad burns and shrapnel wounds in engineering mostly, but just one fatality, Mr. President: Captain Perez, the ship’s commanding officer. He apparently somehow broke his neck during the intercept maneuver with the first enemy vessel. The report wasn’t clear on how it happened.”

“My God,” O’Keefe murmured, shaking his head sadly. “The man died saving our lives, Captain. I’ll make sure his sacrifice isn’t forgotten. For now… do we have any ships that can get help to the Bradley?”

“Yes, sir, there’s an antimatter freighter that was on the way from the Mercury production facility out to Fleet Headquarters. I’ll have them divert to the Bradley and aid her in repairs.”

“Excellent, Captain. Keep me informed of their status, please. And let me know if any of the other cruisers return from outsystem” They’d ordered a recall weeks ago, but when the fastest interstellar message went at the same speed as the ship carrying it, there was no way to know when the half dozen interstellar warships on routine patrols would make it back. He turned to Zhakarova. “Spread the word that the threat is over and sound the all-clear to the people who went to the shelters.”

“Yes, sir,” she acknowledged before hurrying out of the room.

The President stepped over to the small workstation where Marine General Rietveld was hunched over a communications display, speaking in hushed tones to someone wearing a flight helmet.

“Any word from Colonel Stark?” O’Keefe asked him.

“Nothing yet, sir,” the tall, shaven headed officer reported, coming to his feet. “I have Captain Shamir’s pilot on the line, but the last report he heard was a few minutes ago when Shamir and the others entered the bunker.”

“Can’t we track where her lander went?” O’Keefe demanded, exasperation in his voice. “I mean, we do have satellite coverage, don’t we?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. President,” the General assured him. “It’s going to take a while… we’ve been concentrating on the threat from the Protectorate ships… now that we know they’ve been destroyed, we can run a tracking procedure on Colonel Stark.”

“Make it happen, General,” O’Keefe told him, clapping a hand on the big man’s shoulder. “I want to know where that lander went and what happened to Colonel Stark.” And Antonov, he thought but didn’t say. No one else needed to know that yet.

“Sir.” O’Keefe looked up to see an aide handing him a plate with a sandwich and sliced carrots. He opened his mouth to say he wasn’t hungry when his stomach reminded him he’d skipped lunch and was, in fact, starving.

“Thanks, son,” he said with a nod, taking the plate and grabbing a bite as he leaned against a wall, suddenly feeling the nervous energy of the last few hours running out of him.

I’ll have to see that Lt. Franks gets a medal for this, he thought, his mind beginning to wander with exhaustion. Can’t promote him though… that’s up to Stark, or McKay when he gets back. I’ll just let them know that I approve of any promotion they want to give him.

“Mr. President?”

O’Keefe’s eyes snapped up and he saw Svetlana Zakharova half-in the door of the room, looking a bit frazzled. “Yes, Svetlana?” He set his plate down on one of the few bare spots he could find, noticing out of the corner of his eye that it was wobbling and threatening to fall before one of his aides grabbed it with fortuitous timing.

“Sir,” Zakharova went on breathlessly, “it’s Colonel Stark… she’s back. She just landed and wants to meet you privately in your office.”

“I’m damn glad she’s back.” O’Keefe admitted, shaking his head. “It’s a madhouse here and I still don’t have a clear idea of what’s going on. Get my security detail… I’m heading there now.”

He took a moment to check in with the military officers and make sure they kept him informed of any new developments, then he followed his security team through the secure exit to his flyer. As a Senator, he’d often used a groundcar to get around Capital City, an old-fashioned affectation he’d clung to from his boyhood in rural Alberta, but a President couldn’t get away with such eccentricities. He was conveyed in a special, armored flyer, always accompanied by another flyer full of Security and usually a combat lander of Marines.

O’Keefe settled into his seat in the flyer as a Security agent took the seat next to him and Zakharova fell into the one across from him, eyes glued to her tablet.

“Public confidence has gone down 43 percent since the announcement and the attack, sir,” she told him. “The people are close to panicking, sir… there are reports that thousands of people are still in the shelters in a half dozen different cities. You need to address the public very soon.”

“And I will, Svetlana,” he assured her drily, “once I actually know what to tell them.”

Zakharova paused with a retort on her lips, raising a hand to her ear bud reflexively. “Yes, transfer it to my ‘link,” she spoke quietly to the caller, then she looked back to O’Keefe. “Sir,” she announced, “you have an urgent call coming in from General Kage. He says he needs to talk to you immediately.”

“Put it over the cabin speakers,” he told her.

“Sir,” she said hesitantly a scowl passing over her face, “he says this is very confidential, for your ears only.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” O’Keefe hissed in frustration. He pulled the ear bud from his ‘link and put it in place. “Put him through,” he told her, nodding. “Let’s see if he has a good excuse for missing my speech…”

* * *

Shannon Stark strode through the halls of the Republic Presidential Office Building with the casual familiarity of a regular visitor, even her sweat-soaked utility fatigues and holstered sidearm hardly drawing a second glance on a day when a Protectorate attack had narrowly been averted. The offices were a mass of confused activity as personnel trickled in from the shelters and others audited newscasts or tried to press their contacts in the Fleet to find out just what the hell had happened.

Shannon moved through the chaos purposefully, eyes fixed straight ahead as she approached the President’s private offices. There were the normal pair of Security agents stationed in the outer office, arrayed on either side of the entrance, but none of the President’s aides or secretaries were at the pair of workstations in the outer office.

“Colonel Stark,” the senior of the Security agents nodded respectfully. “The President is expecting you.”

She nodded and stepped towards the door, but the guard held up a hand, an almost-embarrassed look on his face. “Sorry, ma’am, but regulations… you need to check your sidearm before entering the President’s office.”

Shannon hesitated a moment, coolly assessing the beefy, professional-looking man, his right hand resting casually on the stock of a submachine gun strapped around his chest, then she smiled thinly and pulled the 10mm from the holster high on her right hip and handed it butt-first to the agent. He grinned sheepishly as he accepted it, pulling open a drawer at one of the work stations and locking it inside.

“I’ll have it for you when you come out, ma’am,” he assured her.

The door slid aside and Shannon stepped into the President’s private office. It was a well-appointed room with tasteful art on the walls and a collection of antique hardbound books on mahogany shelves, with a polished oak desk as its centerpiece. It was as nostalgic and old-fashioned as the man behind the desk… though at the moment, he looked less old-fashioned than simply old.

He looked up and smiled wanly as Shannon entered, but he didn’t rise, seemingly too exhausted to get up. “It’s good to see you, Shannon,” he said, sounding utterly drained. “I was beginning to worry.”

Shannon stepped over to the desk, absently running a finger over the antique fountain pen in a sterling silver holder displayed there. “Well, Mr. President,” she allowed with a shrug, “there were reasons for worry. Things didn’t go well.” She took the pen from the holder, turning it back and forth in her fingers, examining the classic lines of the obsolete device.

O’Keefe’s eyes flickered to the pen, then back to her. “So, Antonov wasn’t there?” he guessed.

“Oh, no, sir,” she shook her head, “he was there all right. Along with about a hundred biomech troopers, armed and armored. They knew we were coming, and they were ready for us.” Her eyes were cold and deadly as they locked on his. “They’re all dead, Mr. President. Except for a couple I left to guard our back before we went in, they’re all dead. And I had to leave them there.” Her fist tightened on the pen, gripping it so tightly it creaked in her grasp. “I had to leave Tom Crossman there to die.”

“Tom Crossman is not dead, Colonel Stark,” a voice said from behind her. Shannon spun around, her face screwing up in shock that bordered on rage, raising the fountain pen instinctively, like a weapon.

Shannon knew there were at least two concealed entrances to the President’s office. She had to guess that General Kage had been concealed behind one of them when she entered, because now he was standing directly in front of her, his eyes dark pools of impassive calm in the harsh and craggy terrain of his weathered features. His right hand rose to meet her left wrist, holding it and the fountain pen immobile in a grip of iron, while his other hand pointed a stunner at her at hip level.

“Please drop the pen and relax before I am forced to incapacitate you,” he said in a cool, level voice. “Your friend Sergeant Crossman is alive, and being taken to a hospital by Ari Shamir and my agent Roza Kovach. They also picked up your two other men, Reynolds and Von Paleske… and one other, a woman, was still alive from the raiding force, she is receiving treatment.”

“Crossman told us how Antonov forced you to submit to the hypnoprobe, Shannon,” O’Keefe said. He was standing now, having taken a few steps back from the desk, and had his hands up in an almost pleading gesture, a helpless, plaintive tone to his voice. “We can help you through this.”

Shannon hesitated for a moment, then with a dismissive flick of her fingers tossed the fountain pen towards Kage’s chest. His attention faltered for just a moment, but it was enough: with speed born from years of constant practice, she snatched the stunner from his hand and put the barrel against his nose.

The General’s eyes widened slightly and the only sound in the room was President O’Keefe’s sharp intake of breath. Shannon pulled her wrist free of Kage’s grip and stepped back from him, then sniffed and tossed the stunner on the floor.

“Get real, General,” she told him, shaking her head, her fists on her hips. “If I were brainwashed, you’d be dead and so would the President.”

“But…” O’Keefe stuttered, his back against the wall of the office. “But Captain Shamir said…”

“Mr. President, you’ve known me for six years now,” she said, her glare boring into him. “Have you ever known me to be careless?” She looked to Kage. “I’ve known for weeks that the enemy was using hypnoprobes to control their agents. One of the first things I did was to visit the Fleet psych-med wing and receive counter-conditioning. I’m sure you did the same thing once Agent Kovach informed you that you’d been brainwashed during that voyage on the Patton.”

“Yes I did,” General Kage admitted, nonplused. “But if you were not hypnoprobed then why did you allow Antonov to…” Realization dawned in his dark eyes and he smiled, an unusual expression for him. “Ah, I understand… you are tracking him.”

“But why didn’t you tell us?” O’Keefe stepped away from the wall, approaching the two of them tentatively. “Why didn’t you tell Captain Shamir?”

Shannon fell tiredly into a chair beside the desk, closing her eyes and taking a breath. “Because frankly, Mr. President, Antonov has been two steps ahead of us this whole time and I don’t trust our lines of communications. I had to make sure he believed I was doing exactly what he told me to do so he wouldn’t deviate from his plans.” Her mouth twitched and her tone grew hard and bitter. “So I didn’t get all those men and women killed for nothing.”

O’Keefe was about to offer her some condolence, when Kage interrupted. “Where is Antonov going?”

“He left nearly a hundred biomechs behind at the bunker,” Shannon told him. “He abandoned them as if they were superfluous. I’m guessing he’s going somewhere he can get a lot more…”

* * *

General Sergei Pavlovitch Antonov, former leader of the Russian Protectorate, former ruler of Eastern Europe and part of Asia, former ruler of the Novoye Rodina system and a dozen others, surveyed his army with an air of satisfaction long delayed. They were seated on dozens of benches, row upon row, in a square half a kilometer long by half a kilometer wide. Each of them was in simple, unmarked grey body armor and each was hooked up to feeding and waste removal tubes through hookups in the armor.

They sat motionless and silent, thousands of them, like a high-tech terra-cotta army in the harsh, sharp-edged shadows cast by the industrial lighting of the old warehouse. Here and there, human technicians walked among their ranks, tending to the feeding machines or emptying the waste disposal tanks; here and there one would pull off a helmet and make an adjustment to the hookups.

Antonov watched them for a moment more, then hit the control to darken the window that looked out from the office to the main floor of the warehouse. He looked over to Kevin Fourcade, who stood by the utilitarian metal desk, still watching over Brendan Riordan. The executive was no longer blindfolded, but his hands were still cuffed in front of him and his expression was sullen and fearful as he sat quietly in a chair much too small for his bulk. Every so often, he glanced almost unnoticeably at the handgun Fourcade kept trained on him.

“I have to thank you, Mr. Riordan,” Antonov said in a booming voice, smiling broadly. “None of this would have been possible without your limitless ambition and hunger for power. I can respect that.” He stepped over to the man, grabbing the square chin in a hand and turning Riordan’s face toward him. “The difference between us, tovarisch, is that I want power for the good of the oppressed people of this world, while you want it merely for your own glorification.” He let the man go, shrugging expressively. “Still, you may yet be of use to me… perhaps, if you prove yourself able, I can find a place for you in my new government.”

Fourcade cocked his head to the side as a call came in over his ‘link. He spoke softly to the caller for a moment, then turned to Antonov. “We can find a use for him right now, sir,” he said. “The vehicles are ready to ship out-all we need is his authorization.” Fourcade pulled a tablet from his jacket pocket and touched it to his ‘link, syncing their settings, then put it down on the desk next to Riordan.

“If you would be so kind, Brendan…” Antonov nodded towards the tablet.

“And you will be so kind, Brendan,” Fourcade said softly into the big man’s ear, “because I have worked for you for enough years to have many reasons to want to kill you even if he didn’t order me too.”

Riordan glared at him for a moment, but then nodded curtly. He placed a thumb on the tablet’s side and winced as it pricked him, drawing blood for DNA analysis. When it confirmed that his DNA sample had been confirmed, he leaned over its audio pickup and spoke slowly and clearly. “Riordan, Brendan Jacob. Authorization E-98.”

“Authorization confirmed,” the tablet announced.

“And there we go,” Fourcade said with satisfaction, snatching the tablet back. “The vehicles will start staging here in a few hours. It shouldn’t take more than a day to get them loaded.”

“It will be more difficult without the Colonial Guard troops to support us,” Antonov mused, “but with McKay and Stark out of the way, and the military’s space assets distracted, it should be enough. By the time our forces break through their ships, we will have the orbital defenses under our control.”

“Even if you win,” Riordan said slowly, his indignation finally overcoming his fear, “you’ll have wrecked everything.” He shook his head in disgust, his matted, sweat-soaked hair flopping limply. “Why bother? You have resources, you have your own worlds, we couldn’t have reached you… why not just leave it alone?”

The good-natured smile never left Antonov’s face, but his gaze went cold as he took a step toward the corporate executive. Riordan flinched instinctively as the Russian’s hand raised, but Antonov merely patted his cheek as one might a toddler who’d said something amusingly naive.

“Because it is my world,” he told the man, his voice at once warmly condescending and yet as coldly lethal as a blade. “And I will rule it, finally, as is my destiny.” He laughed softly, an unholy sound that sent shivers up Riordan’s back. “I will rule it, Mr. Riordan, or I will watch it burn.”

Chapter Thirty-Six

Drew Franks emerged from the access tube into the engineering section of the RFS Bradley, pausing for a moment to let his head stop spinning before he moved into the chamber. The Brad had been in zero g for over two days now and it was starting to get to him. Staying still until he was sure he wasn’t about to throw up, Franks finally pushed off into the chaotic turmoil of activity that filled the chamber.

Spools of superconductive cable were stretched out across the chamber ready to install, while engineering crew ripped charred lengths of it from burned-out conduits leading to the main trunk line from the fusion reactor. Scorched carbon streaks lined the deck below where the conduits had exploded under stress, filling the chamber with deadly shrapnel that had sent a dozen men and women to the medical bay. On the central station display, he could shuttles hovering near the midsection of the ship, using loader arms to insert antimatter fuel pods into the heavily armored ports there, while other technicians in vacuum suits oversaw the seating of the pods into the evacuated portion of the engineering bay.

Radio traffic filled the air, a cacophonous racket of overlapping conversations as dozens of men and women worked at a dozen different major tasks. In the center of it all, maintaining a Buddha-like calm in the eye of that storm, was Lt. Commander Maria Infante, the ship’s Chief Engineering Officer. As he watched her, Franks was amazed at the way she seemed to be able to keep track of all those separate conversations and respond to each question while still monitoring the various displays at her station.

He was loath to disturb her when she was obviously insanely busy, but he had a job to do as well, and this wouldn’t wait. He pushed off from the wall and floated across the chamber, twisting in midair to avoid being sideswiped by a preoccupied technician, then stopping himself against the side of the engineering control center console.

“Commander Infante,” he interjected and she looked up at him, still droning orders to three different people.

“Yes, Lt. Franks?” she said, automatically muting the audio inputs to the microphones at her station.

“You’ve seen the effects of field intersect now,” he said, trying to be quick and brief. “I need to know if you can come up with any way we can do it repeatedly without almost destroying ourselves.”

“Why?” she cracked, “Are you planning on making a sport of it?”

“Ma’am,” he went on seriously, “I don’t think the Protectorate is going to quit at two of those things. Eventually, they’re going to throw everything they have at us, and we can’t be knocking a star cruiser out of commission every we have to take out one of those ramships. I need to know how to take them out.”

“Lieutenant,” she said soberly, shaking her head, “there is no way we can harden the power systems on this ship enough to survive multiple field intersects. We can jury-rig it to barely make it through one, but that’s it without access to a full dry-dock. The gravito-inertial feedback is just too intense. I’d need a whole secondary power trunk, and we just don’t have the equipment to build one… or the time, most likely.”

Franks scowled, wondering what the hell Colonel… oops, that’s General now… McKay would do. He was still wondering when Infante spoke again, her head cocked thoughtfully. “You know, though, Lieutenant, there is something else we might try.” She tapped her chin with a finger, forehead scrunched up. “I’ll need to have a little talk with Lt. Bevins…”

The words were barely out of her mouth when a klaxon began sounding over the ship’s speakers, accompanied by the announcement: “All hands, battle stations!”

Franks saw Infante’s eyebrow raise, her mouth quirking in what might have been annoyance.

“Better have that talk now, ma’am,” he suggested. “It looks like we’ve run out of time.”

* * *

“Are we certain they can’t see us, Commander Witten?” Captain Minishimi asked quietly, staring at the Tactical display, watching one icon after another appear out of the wormhole gateway only a few thousand kilometers away.

Witten glanced at her, feeling a rush of gratitude that she was on the bridge and in charge instead of him. She still looked a bit pale, but her voice was strong and she didn’t seem to be in pain. “Fairly certain, Captain,” he responded. “We’re running cool… minimum reactor output, minimum thermal signature. We should be indistinguishable from the background radiation. And we’ve seen no indication that they’re equipped with gravimetic sensors, so they shouldn’t be able to pick us up that way, either.”

“Higgs, what are the chances we can get a message to Fleet HQ without them picking up on it?”

“It’s chancy, ma’am,” Higgs warned. “I think it’s about even odds one of their ships will detect it.”

Joyce Minishimi was silent for a moment, her eyes fixed on the display. Then she sighed softly. “There are only two Fleet cruisers insystem right now,” she said, half to herself, “and the Brad isn’t ready to sail yet.” She looked back to Higgs. “Send to Fleet HQ: Enemy ships are transitioning the wormhole; numbers are estimated to be in the hundreds. We are going to move to engage. End of message. Attach a copy of our current sensor scans.”

“Aye, ma’am,” Higgs acknowledged, turning back to her station.

“Lt. Witten,” the Captain said to the Helm officer, “prepare to activate the drive field and take us in toward the wormhole at one gravity. We’re going to use our drive field as a weapon until they figure out we’re there.”

“Aye, Captain,” Witten responded. “One gravity acceleration at your word.”

“Commander Gianeto,” Captain Minishimi continued, “I want you to launch every Area Denial missile we have right into the wormhole immediately, set to detonate just outside its event horizon.”

“Aye, Captain,” Gianeto was hitting the controls even as he spoke. “Launching all AD munitions now.”

On the Tactical screen, they could see the swarm of small missiles emerging from the weapons pods, accelerating away from the mass of the Decatur, one wave after another launching only seconds apart. It seemed the missiles would never stop, but finally the last were gone, leaving only the glowing stars of their drives slowly fading as they drew away.

“One hundred Area Denial Munition missiles away, ma’am,” Gianeto announced. “We’re cleaned out.”

“Mr. Witten,” she addressed the Helmsman formally, “take us in.”

* * *

“Jesus Christ that’s a lot of ships,” Lt. Wolford muttered, shaking his head as he stared at the sensor display.

“At ease on the bridge!” Commander-acting Captain, Franks reminded himself-Tandy Lee snapped. She was a dark-haired, dark-eyed young officer with cafe-aux-lait skin and soft, rounded features-and she was as tense and raw as an exposed nerve. She had even less experience than Perez, and when Franks had told her that the Captain was dead, he thought she was going to go into shock. “Commander Infante,” she said a bit too loud and harshly into the intercom pickup, “how much longer until we can activate the drives?”

“We have the fuel pods loaded, Captain,” Infante replied, unflappable, “and the new power conduits have been installed… we just have to get the shielding in place. It should just be another few minutes.”

“We have fusion detonations near the wormhole!” Wolford announced, stabbing a finger at the white globes that were popping up in the Tactical projection. Franks moved around behind the man, looking at the readout.

“Those are Area-Denial Munitions,” he said confidently. One of the many things he’d been doing in his spare time to try to make himself more qualified to be a field agent was studying the signatures of various Fleet weapons. “That has to be the Decatur attacking.” He paled as he realized what that meant, turning to face acting Captain Lee. “She’s all alone out there, Captain.”

“Lieutenant,” she ground out impatiently, clearly unhappy about having him on the bridge at all, “we are doing everything we can to get under power and help the Decatur…”

“That’s not what I mean, ma’am,” he cut her off, earning a dirty look. “If she’s engaged with the enemy, they’re going to…”

“Eysselink drive signatures detected!” Wolford exclaimed. “It’s more of those ramships, ma’am… they’re breaking away from the rest of the enemy formation and heading this way!” He swallowed hard as he glanced between Lee and the Tactical display. “There are six of them at least, from what I can read.”

“They’re going to do that,” Franks finished, letting out a sigh.

“Commander Infante!” Lee’s call was almost desperate. “Did you hear that?”

Infante sounded, for once, affected. “Yes, Captain… I’m powering up the drive now. My people can install the shielding on the move.” Franks winced, knowing exactly what that could mean: if they had another field intersect without the shielding in place, everyone in the engineering compartment would be fried instantly.

“Lt. Bevins,” Lee said-trying, Franks thought, to sound more confident than she felt, “plot an intercept course for the ramships and take us to 1g acceleration.”

Lt. Franks braced himself as the acceleration alarm sounded and gravity pressed his feet to the deck, a welcome feeling after days of zero gravity. He stepped over to the Captain’s station and hovered a hand over her communications console, looking a question. She sighed with exasperation but nodded.

“Commander Infante,” he called. “Did you and Bevins have time to work out that modification?”

“I believe it will work, Lt. Franks,” Infante confirmed. “The only way to know for sure is to try it.”

“What will work?” Lee demanded. “What are you talking about?”

“Sorry, ma’am,” Franks told her. “With the alert, we didn’t have time to tell you. Commander Infante was working with Lt. Bevins to try to come up with a new way to stop the ramships… other than, well, ramming them.”

`“What did you come up with, Commander?” Lee asked the engineer.

“Lt, Bevins and I made some adjustments to the gravimetic sensor emitters, Captain,” Commander Infante explained. “Theoretically, we should be able to use it to destabilize the ramships’ Eysselink drive fields, if we can get close enough.”

“How close?” She asked and then scowled and added: “Theoretically?”

“At least a hundred kilometers or so,” Infante said. “And yes, theoretically because it’s never been tried outside a research station. It’s a lucky thing I read about that study… I doubt there’s anyone else in the Fleet that would have thought of it.”

“It’s the only chance we have, Captain Lee,” Franks reminded her. “Intercepting just two of those things almost destroyed this ship and killed Captain Perez… and there are at least a half dozen of them.”

Lee hissed out a deep breath. “We’ll have to try it,” she decided. “Tactical, work up an intercept plan that will give us time on target with as many of the ramships as possible and get us on course.” She shook her head. “I just hope the Decatur can handle the rest of them…”

* * *

It felt inexpressibly good to Francis Witten, after weeks of crawling between wormholes on plasma drives, naked to whatever the enemy wanted to throw at them, to be surrounded once more by the protective sheath of the Eysselink field… even if they were accelerating directly into the midst of hundreds of enemy ships.

“Thirty seconds to the first wave of enemy ships,” Gianeto announced. “Twenty ships, mostly lighters”-converted freighters-“with about 100 kilometers between them.” His eyes darted to the right, to another section of his Tactical display, where a series of white globes was erupting like a fireworks display. “We have positive detonation from the first of the AD munitions, Captain! I’m reading several secondary explosions too… don’t know how many of them we took out. Some of them are going through the gate… they must be keeping it activated with a series of fusion triggers.”

“Mr. Witten,” Minishimi directed, “sweep through the first wave of Protectorate ships, starting with those closest to us… do as much damage as possible before they realize where we are.”

“Aye, Captain,” Witten acknowledged. “Ten seconds to impact with the first target.”

The enemy ship expanded impossibly swift on the viewscreen, growing from a barely-perceptible dot to an ungainly, bulbous collection of jury-rigged armor and weapons pods… and then expanding into a ball of glowing plasma as the drive field ripped it to shreds. Witten blinked at the explosion and then it was gone, whisked away along with that particular wave of space-time, and the next ship, almost identical in design, was coming into view. It was gone just as quickly, and Witten tried not to think about all the human lives he’d just ended.

“That’s two of them down,” he announced, touching the controls and dragging the icon of the ship into the course he desired. “Swinging around for the next pair in this wave.”

“Captain!” Gianeto interjected. “I’m picking up multiple Eysselink drive fields near the gate! It looks like five… no, six are splitting off and heading insystem at high g’s.” He glanced back at her. “There are at least two more heading straight for us.”

“How long till they intercept?” Minishimi asked, her voice calm.

“At current acceleration, approximately…” he glanced at another readout, “twenty-two minutes.”

“Stay on course, Commander Witten,” Minishimi ordered, eyes on the screen, voice resolute. “Increase acceleration to 2g’s, but keep on the ships. We’re going to have to count on the Bradley to engage the ramships that headed for Earth; we are it out here until the cislunar gunboats get close enough to engage, so we have to do as much damage as possible.” She called up the connection to the Engineering section. “Commander Prieta, we are most likely going to be experiencing one or more drive field intersects. If there’s anything you can do to make sure we survive them as a combat-ready asset, I swear I will buy you a drink in Paris.” Her mouth quirked into a wry smile. “If we live.”

“I’ll do my best, Captain,” Prieta assured her, chuckling appreciatively.

“Increasing acceleration to two g’s,” Witten fed power to the drives and was crushed into his seat as the Decatur leaped ahead toward the next set of enemy ships.

* * *

Drew Franks felt claustrophobic constrained in the acceleration couch behind the Captain, but a memory of Perez’ lifeless body kept him securely strapped in, even at 1g.

“The bogies are in a globe formation,” Lt. Wolford said. “Three thousand kilometer spread between each drive bubble. Closest bogey is…” He double-checked the display. “…three minutes out at current acceleration. My best intercept course is to take the lead ship, then circumnavigate the globe formation from north pole to south.” He shrugged. “Until they react to us, then it all goes out the window.”

“How long before we can try to disrupt the drive field on the closest target?” Lee asked him.

“From the specs that Commander Infante sent to my station,” Wolford guessed, “we will be in range in two minutes, fifteen seconds.” He shook his head. “It’s going to be close: if we want to use Gauss cannons on her, we’ll have to shut off our drive field and that’s going to make it even trickier to intercept the others…”

“Why bother?” Franks wondered out loud. He reddened a bit at Lee and Wolford’s questioning and annoyed glances, but he pushed the embarrassment aside and expounded. “Look, we have to stop them either way… so, don’t shut down our drive field at all. Use the modified sensor beams to shut down theirs, then just ram them. If their field shuts down, they’re toast and we keep right on going.” He shrugged fatalistically. “If it doesn’t work, we can at least take out one of them before we’re incapacitated.”

“Sound strategy,” Wolford said with a nod, a bit of surprise and perhaps respect in his voice. “It might work.”

“You’re awfully cavalier about risking all our lives, Lt. Franks,” Lee commented quietly, regarding him with an expression that he thought might have been hiding a profound fear.

“Ma’am,” he reminded her, “my butt’s sitting right behind yours.” He laughed wryly. “I’m twenty-five years old; trust me, I don’t want to die. But this is our job, right? If we don’t do it, who will?”

Lee didn’t respond immediately, staring for a moment at the viewscreen and the approaching enemy ships. “Do it, Lt. Wolford. It’s the best chance we have.”

“Aye, ma’am,” Wolford said. “Requesting helm control to my station.”

“Helm is yours, Tactical,” Bevins told him, releasing the controls to his station.

“Coming into range,” Wolford murmured, eyes glued to the display, where a pale red globe around the ship’s icon indicated the range of the modified sensor emitters. That red expanse was just ready to overlap the drive bubble of the first bogey, a wickedly Spartan silver wedge in the projection. “Firing gravimetic pulses now.”

Had someone been watching what happened with the naked eye, they would have seen precious little. Perhaps they might have noticed the distortion of the starfield as the Eysselink drives stretched and folded and spindled the fabric of space-time, but little else. The ship’s computer, however, gave a much more satisfying recreation of events: the blocky monolith of the Bradley plodded forward, surrounded by a shimmering globe of unreality that represented the drive field, approaching another, identical globe with the silver wedge of the ramship at its center. Then a wavering line of uncertainty connected the Bradley to the ramship’s drive field for a fleeting moment and suddenly the ramship was naked to the universe, its drive field dissipating in a wash of quantum foam.

“Her drive field’s down and…” Wolford’s booming announcement cut short as their own Eysselink field rammed directly into the unprotected ramship and it abruptly ceased to be, torn to subatomic particles in a sun-bright release of energy.

“Yes!” Franks yelled exultantly, pumping a fist, his cheers echoed by the rest of the bridge crew.

“At ease on the bridge!” Lee ordered, but Franks could see the grin brightening her face. “Take us to the next target, Lt. Wolford! Increase acceleration to two g’s!”

“Aye, ma’am, increasing acceleration.”

Franks felt the hand of Newton pressing him back into his couch with twice his normal 75 kilograms and saw the Bradley rushing forward on a hemispherical curve toward the next ship in the globe formation. Through a pounding pulsebeat in his head he heard Wolford: “Firing emitters at second target.”

And just as quickly as before, the next wedge-shaped enemy vessel was nonexistent. For a moment, Franks dared to hope that they might be able to take out the whole flight of ramships, but then… “They’re breaking!” Wolford warned, and on the display Franks could see that the four remaining Eysselink drive ships were breaking out of the globe formation, two of them increasing to 3g’s acceleration and maneuvering straight down from their previous plane of inclination while the other two…

“Two of them are trying to pincer us!” The two ships were on opposite sides of the Bradley‘s line of advance, trying to trap the Republic cruiser between them.

“Shift course to follow the other two and increase to 3g’s!” Lee barked.

Franks tightened his stomach muscles and tried to prepare himself, but the crushing weight still squeezed the air from his lungs and his vision was reduced to a narrow tunnel. For a moment, he was certain he was going to pass out, but then he forced himself to drag in a shallow breath and clenched the muscles in his gut and his vision widened out again enough for him to see the Bradley pursuing the two ships that had cut downward.

“Dammit,” Wolford grunted out, barely audible. “The two that were trying to trap us broke off now… they’re heading insystem again, at 4g’s.” There was a shallow rasp as the man struggled to get a breath. “Ma’am, we’re not going to be able to catch them all in time…”

Lee didn’t speak for a moment, and Franks thought perhaps she couldn’t, that the acceleration had rendered her unconscious. But then she said, with amazing clarity despite the g-forces: “Pursue the two ahead of us, Lt. Wolford. It’s the best we can do.”

Shit, Franks wanted to scream it but he couldn’t even whisper it. Shit, shit, shit!

How many people were going to die because he couldn’t do enough?

Chapter Thirty-Seven

“You should be in bed, Tom,” Shannon chided the man quietly as he leaned his head back against his seat, closing his eyes tiredly.

“And I suppose you’ve just been lying around relaxing this last week, ma’am?” Tom muttered in response, not opening his eyes.

Shannon squinted against the morning sun as the flyer headed east into the Texas sunrise, endless brown plains unfolding beneath them. “To be honest, Tom, I can’t remember the last time I slept more than an hour. But then, I didn’t get shot to shit just three days ago, and you did.”

“The docs say it’s healed up enough for me to be on my feet,” Tom said, shrugging slightly and wincing as it tugged at the healing wound in his neck. There was still an ugly red weal there, but that too would fade as the medical nanotech continued to do its work over the next few days.

Shannon shook her head, too exhausted to argue the point further.

“I still don’t know how that bastard snuck away,” Ari Shamir growled from the pilot’s seat. “I mean, you dropped him off in the middle of fucking nowhere Nevada, right? How the hell did he slip satellite coverage?”

Roza reached over from the copilot’s seat and patted his arm. Ari had been growling quite a bit the last couple days; he was still angry at himself for believing that Shannon had been brainwashed and for setting Kage up to stop her.

“He had planned ahead for this,” Shannon explained with a pained look on her face. “Just like he seems to plan ahead for everything. He even had an all-terrain groundcar waiting to take him to the Vegas Transportation Hub. Hell, Ari… you were just there, you saw the same security video I did.”

“Saw the same blue screen, you mean,” Ari grumbled. “That fucking bastard has better jammers than we do.” Ari turned away as a call came in over his ‘link and he spoke softly into the mic.

“So,” Roza said to Shannon, “you think this Helenne D’Annique woman will know where he is going?”

Shannon shrugged, then rubbed at her eyes: they wouldn’t stop burning with fatigue, despite the stimulants that were keeping her alert. “I think she’s the only fucking link we have left to this whole thing. And I sure as hell don’t trust the Houston cops to bring her in, not with everything that’s riding on this.”

“We’re five minutes out,” Ari said as he turned back to Shannon and the others. “That was Sergeant Manning… she and Griffin have had eyes on the target for the last twelve hours. She says that D’Annique is in her apartment and should be there until she leaves for work.”

“Do we take her in her apartment or when she leaves, Colonel?” Roza wondered.

“Inside,” Shannon decided after a moment. “It’s a risk-she may have alarms and monitors; but on the street there are too many variables, and we don’t have enough people or vehicles to ensure a safe capture. Ari,” she said to the pilot, “tell Manning to break into the local security systems and run a complete isolation program on her apartment. No signals get out to the police or emergency services, all communications get jammed, starting the minute our feet hit the ground.”

“Got it, ma’am,” Ari acknowledged, then called Sgt. Manning to deliver the instructions.

“Stunners or other nonlethal weapons only,” Shannon reminded the others. “For one thing, she may have been innocent brainwashed into doing this. And for another, without her, we have jack until Antonov decides to make his next move.”

“We’re sure there’s no other way out?” Shannon murmured quietly to Sgt. Manning as they stood at the opposite end of the hall from Hellene D’Annique’s apartment door. The building was upscale, as befitted someone with the former First Officer’s current salary, with plush carpeting in the hallways, tasteful art pieces on the walls and an impressive security system that had taken them nearly a half hour to shut down remotely.

“Ma’am,” Manning replied with a newbie’s deference in her voice, “I’ve checked the plans for the building, ran exterior scans on thermal and sonic, and did a quick visual scan using the building security cams. There’s only one door visible, no exterior windows and no roof access, but I haven’t done a physical inspection so I can’t be sure there isn’t any other entrance.”

“That’ll have to be good enough,” Shannon declared. “We don’t have time to wait.” There was no one else in the hallway at the moment, thankfully, but that wouldn’t last.

“She’s still in the bedroom, ma’am,” Manning told her, angling the tablet so that Shannon could see the security feed. D’Annique was just out of the shower and in the midst of pulling a grey business suit over her solid, muscular frame.

She nodded to Ari, Roza and Tom, who waited on either side of the apartment door. They were all dressed in civilian clothes, but wore body armor under their jackets and had stunners in hand. Shannon took the tablet from Sgt. Manning, found the control for the security override and ordered the system to unlock D’Annique’s front door.

The minute the door slid open, Ari was through it, stunner at the ready, and Roza went in directly behind him. Shannon moved up and entered right behind Tom, pulling a pistol from the shoulder holster under her light jacket. She needed D’Annique alive, but one of them needed the ability to use deadly force if the situation called for it.

D’Annique’s apartment was uncluttered and impeccably kept, as neat as one might expect from a former first officer on a cruiser but strangely impersonal. As she followed the others through the entrance hall and into the living room, she didn’t see a single photo or video display-not one family photo, not one shot of D’Annique herself, not even a video of an old pet. There was a generic art holo inlaid in the living room wall, but it looked as if it had come with the apartment. Even the furniture had a generic look to it, as if there were no trace of D’Annique’s personality at all, no stamp of her on anything in the apartment.

Shannon and Tom took up an overwatch position by the edge of the entrance hall and the living room while Ari and Roza silently swept the kitchen and dining room, signaling the area clear. Their collective attention turned to the short hallway to the bedroom and Shannon risked a glance at the tablet once more: D’Annique was pulling on her jacket, her square, homely face calm and unconcerned as she moved to the door, pausing to pick up a small briefcase from next to her bed.

Shannon got Ari’s attention and signed that their target was coming out. Ari and Roza edged along the same side of the hall, Ari high and Roza crouched low, while Tom and Shannon moved to cover them from the edge of the living room. Shannon could hear the soft footsteps of D’Annique’s pumps on the carpet of the hallway and she brought up her pistol, ready to support Ari and Roza…

…when the small briefcase sailed lazily around the corner, landing with a gentle thump in front of the sofa.

“Down!” Shannon yelled, instinctively grabbing Tom by the arm and dragging them both behind the wall to the entrance hall.

Years of training kicked in and she opened her mouth and closed her eyes, feeling the concussion deep in her chest and seeing the sun-bright light through eyelids squeezed shut.

Flash-bang, part of her mind thought clinically, pushing aside the adrenaline, the panic and the fear for her friends. No other way out, so her next move will be…

Shannon had dropped the tablet when she grabbed Tom, but she had held onto her weapon: she twisted around to bring it up but D’Annique was already firing, the compact, small-caliber machine pistol spraying a hail of tantalum slugs across the room as she rushed for the entrance hall. Shannon ducked back, hugging the floor as the high-speed bullets tore through the wall above her, bracing herself to brave the metal storm to try to stop D’Annique before she could escape…

…and then the high-pitched chatter of the machine pistol was abruptly interrupted by the full-throated boom of a 10mm service pistol and Hellene D’Annique pitched forward, her weapon clattering to the floor as she fell heavily, clutching at her right arm. Shannon’s head whipped around and she saw Sgt. Manning standing behind her in the entrance hall, eyes narrowed and face intense, her sidearm still extended as she watched the downed woman intently.

“Tom,” she said to Crossman as they both clambered up from the floor, “get D’Annique secured.”

While Tom went to the wounded woman, Shannon stepped over to check on Ari and Roza, who’d taken the full brunt of the concussion grenade concealed in the briefcase. They were both still prone on the tile floor; Roza with her eyes squeezed shut, a trickle of blood running from her nose, while Ari was opening his eyes wide and rubbing them, mouth gaping as he tried to clear his ears.

“It’s okay!” Shannon yelled to them, trying to get through the hollow ringing in their ears-she’d experienced a concussion grenade before, in training, and knew what they were going through. “We have her; it’s okay!” She didn’t want either of them opening up blindly with their stunners while they were in a daze.

Slowly, their eyes began to focus on her and Roza nodded silently.

“We’re okay, ma’am,” Ari said as Shannon helped them to their feet, his voice loud and unmodulated because he couldn’t hear himself talking.

“Get them out to the flyer,” Shannon instructed Manning. The NCO nodded, holstering her sidearm and guiding Ari and Roza out into the hallway.

Tom, she saw, had D’Annique up, her hands flex-cuffed behind her back, a smart bandage covering the wound in her upper arm and her eyes glazed over from the sedative he’d given her.

“Get her out of here,” Shannon told him. “We have to clear the area before local law enforcement arrives.” The security hack would slow them down, but sooner or later someone would call and report the gunshots.

Shannon brought up the rear as Tom hustled the insensate D’Annique through the hallway and into the apartment building’s lobby, tastefully and expensively decorated as was fitting for a high-end complex in the upper-class end of Houston… and occupied by two visibly horrified young middle management types in fashionable business wear, staring at the handcuffed, blood-soaked D’Annique being shoved forward by Tom Crossman with a stunner aimed at her chest.

“Are you…” stuttered one of them, a red-headed woman with a restruct face and eyes too green to be natural. “Are you… police?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Shannon told her, making her voice serious but cordial. “Sorry for the commotion… we’ve shut down a weapons smuggling ring that was operating out of this building. You can scan it on the net in about an hour, I imagine.”

“Wow,” the man breathed, smiling. “In our building?”

Leaving the couple to debate whether they might be interviewed, Shannon and Tom quickly moved D’Annique out the front door to the covered walk leading down the length of the apartment block, past a few more gawking civilians to the open lot where they’d landed the flyer. The vehicle waited with the boarding ramp down, its silver-grey exterior shining painfully bright in the morning sun but Sgt. Manning visible through the cockpit canopy in the pilot’s seat.

Ari and Roza were already strapped into the first triple row of seats, so Shannon and Tom belted D’Annique into the next one then sat on either side of her even as Manning was lifting off from the landing area.

“That could have gone smoother,” Tom commented with a sigh, strapping himself in.

“She must have had her own security alarms,” Shannon guessed. “Nothing to be done about it, we couldn’t take the time we needed to set this up any better, not without risking her going to ground.” She called up to the pilot, “That was very well done, Sgt. Manning. Good shooting as well.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Manning said crisply. Shannon couldn’t see her face, but she was a good enough reader of people to guess that the young woman was smiling proudly.

“Get us to the safe house as quickly as possible,” Shannon directed. “And radio ahead for Griffin to get the hypnoprobe ready.”

“Commander D’Annique,” Shannon intoned, “can you hear me?”

“Yes,” the former Fleet officer responded almost in a whisper, her eyes flickering at unseen memories suddenly flooding her brain under the influence of the probe, the psychoactives and the neuronomine. Shannon glanced aside at the medic, who was standing in a corner of the darkened, claustrophobic room, watching worriedly for signs of the very probable side-effects.

“Do you know where General Antonov is?”

“No. I have not had contact with him directly.”

Something in that answer bothered Shannon. “Were you aware that General Antonov was on Earth and being held by Brendan Riordan?”

“Yes,” she answered. “I was made aware of it by Kevin Fourcade six days ago.”

“Why did he tell you?” Shannon asked, becoming annoyed at the closed-mouthedness of the woman.

“He said that General Antonov was going to be moving and I needed to arrange transport. He had me get a groundcar with a driver out to northern Nevada, then arrange for a flyer to be waiting at the Vegas transportation hub.” She hesitated, her bland face showing what was perhaps a flicker of emotion. “And he had me send a special team to kill the driver and the pilot of the flyer afterward.”

“Damn,” Tom muttered from where he leaned against a wall, arms crossed. She silently agreed. Fourcade and Antonov were infuriatingly paranoid.

“Do you,” Shannon asked, “have any knowledge of where Riordan is manufacturing or storing biomechs?”

It took a moment for her to answer, and a frown passed over her face. “Things are compartmentalized, need to know… but I was tasked a few times with arranging shipments of weapons, too many for regular security use. I believed… I believe they were intended to arm a force of biomechs. They were shipped to what is nominally a food production research facility just outside of Montreal.”

“Tom!” Shannon snapped as Crossman pushed away from the wall, eyes lighting up with sudden alertness. “Get on the horn, I need a military strike team on the way to Montreal now!”

Tom Crossman nodded and stepped quickly out of the room as Shannon turned back to D’Annique. The woman was sweating now, her head swaying slightly in the harness for the hypnoprobe.

“How many weapons did you ship to this facility?” Shannon pressed.

D’Annique blinked, yanking slightly at the straps that held her. “Tw… twen…” She began to jerk and the medic surged forward, but Shannon held him back with an upraised hand. “Twenty thou…,” she croaked hoarsely and Shannon’s eyes went wide.

She waved the medic forward and the man began unstrapping D’Annique, pushing an injector into her neck even as he did so, but the woman was seizing violently, foam coming from between clenched teeth. Shannon stepped back, watching in horror as the woman thrashed in the medic’s grip even as he lowered her to a cot.

“I have to get her to a hospital!” the medic yelled, panic in his voice. “This bad a reaction, she’s gotta have a bleeder and I don’t have the equipment to handle it here!”

Shannon nodded. “Go ahead; I’ll get Griffin to help you.”

Shannon stepped out of the room, heading down the hallway to the apartment’s living room, where she found Griffin sitting on the cheap couch, quietly recording a report. “Help the medic get D’Annique to a hospital,” she ordered him before heading over to where Tom Crossman was speaking into the mic of his ‘link, his face pale and grim.

“Did you get hold of General Rietveld?” she asked him. “Are they sending troops?”

“The Marines onplanet and the Republic Service Corps are going to be otherwise occupied, ma’am,” he told her, shaking his head.

“What’s happened, Tom?” she demanded, an icy chill running up her back.

“The Protectorate fleet is coming through the wormhole in the Belt,” he replied, confirming her worst fears. “Hundreds of them… including ramships that are already on their way insystem. And the only cruisers we have closer than six light years are the Bradley and the Decatur. Captain Di Ndinge doesn’t think we’re going to be able handle them all, even with the lunar defenses.”

A haze of unreality settled on her, like she was in a nightmare from which she couldn’t awaken. “Put General Rietveld and Captain Di Ndinge through on my ‘link,” she said, hearing her own voice but feeling as if it were someone else speaking. At his nod, she spoke into her communications link. “This is Colonel Stark, sirs… I’ve been advised of the situation, but there’s another threat that’s even closer and we have to have combat troops to deal with it.”

“Colonel,” a German accent answered and the voice she knew to be grim-toned on the best of days sounded like a minister at an atheist’s funeral, “this is General Rietveld. Captain Di Ndinge has been called away. We’ve just received word that Protectorate ramships are heading straight for the lunar base.” His voice wavered. “The Bradley and the Decatur are engaged with other ramships and there’s nothing we have that can stop them in time. The Captain is trying to order an evacuation.”

“General,” she growled, more in fear than in anger, “if we don’t get a military force to Montreal soon, it won’t matter what happens out there, because General Antonov himself will be leading twenty fucking thousand biomech troops right into your lap!”

“Colonel…” Rietveld sounded as if he were about to argue with her, then he sighed in resignation. “You’re going to need to talk to the President about this. Hold one.”

While she was waiting, as the medic and Sgt. Griffin urgently dragged Hellene D’Annique’s now-limp body toward the front door, Shannon began to hear the emergency sirens in the distance, noticed out of the corner of her eye the apartment’s small entertainment console activating by itself and playing a recorded government warning for all civilians to get to the nearest certified shelter, as well as a call for all RSC troops, police and emergency personnel to report to their duty stations immediately.

Numbness crept over her, the feeling of unreality she’d been experiencing growing ever stronger as she followed Griffin and the medic out the door, walking out to the street and seeing the beginnings of panic, of people starting to run towards the shelters or back to their homes, or just away. Almost unwillingly, she searched the sky and found the moon… it was still visible in the morning sky, barely. And there, along the terminator, she could just see it… a bright spike of gas erupting into the vacuum, where the ramships had penetrated the crust when they impacted the defense base.

She slowly shook her head. Everything they’d done, all the sacrifices they’d made, and it hadn’t been enough to stop this…

“Colonel Stark,” she heard President O’Keefe’s voice over her ‘link; she could hear the horror and fear in it. “You have heard what’s happening?”

“Yes, Mr. President,” she said. “Sir, I know about the threat from the Protectorate fleet, but I have evidence that Brendan Riordan’s resources have been used by Kevin Fourcade to build an army of perhaps twenty thousand biomechs somewhere near Montreal. He’s been arming them with modern weapons and I believe he intends to mobilize them very soon… he’s probably been waiting for this strike by his fleet.”

“Isn’t this why we have orbital kinetic strike weapons, Colonel?” O’Keefe asked, a bit testy and impatient, she thought. “I’ll release their control to you… won’t that be enough to stop them?”

Shannon bit back her initial response and grabbed desperately at what little patience she had left. “Sir, those weapons are meant for use on hardened targets: weapons emplacements, terrorist strongpoints, armored columns. They are useful for fire support, but first they have to have someone to support. I need troops, sir, and lots of them.”

“Colonel Stark, I’m sorry… the RSC is needed to support the evacuation to the shelters. And I doubt they’re well-armed enough to do much anyway. We just don’t have that sort of force available!”

“Excuse me,” a harsh-edged, familiar voice came onto the ‘link. “I am sorry for intruding, Mr. President, but I was contacted by General Rietveld.” General Kage paused and she could almost hear the tight, satisfied grin on his ugly face. “I believe I may be of some help…”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Drew Franks sagged against his seat restraints, cursing softly as he watched the sensor display on the main screen, the thermal plumes hanging over Armstrong Base like a tombstone. Everyone on the bridge seemed stunned, even acting-Captain Lee. She closed her eyes for a moment, lips moving in what might have been a prayer.

“We do what we can,” she said finally. Franks thought it was becoming a mantra to her. “Lt. Bevins, take us back toward the enemy fleet.”

“We need to reach the Decatur,” Franks said, having to fight the shock just to find the strength to open his mouth. “They don’t know about the method we used to take out the ramships. At least I don’t think they do.”

“I’ve got a fix on them, Captain,” Wolford told her. “They have two ramships closing with them, and I’m reading more Eysselink drive signatures coming through the wormhole.”

“Set course to intercept the ramships, Lt. Bevins,” Lee ordered. “Two g acceleration.”

“Where the hell are they getting all the antimatter to run those things?” Bevins wondered, touching the controls that sent them pushing back into their acceleration couches with the fist of God pushing against their chests.

“They don’t need that much,” Franks pointed out, his voice strained. “They use the wormholes to travel the interstellar distances, and conventional drives when they’re not in combat. As for where they got it… well, there have been quite a few cargo ships pirated by them over the years. And maybe they’ve figured out how to make it themselves.”

Of course, there was also the very real possibility that it had been provided to them by Riordan and the other collaborators, but Franks was pretty certain that wasn’t something that Colonel Stark wanted him spreading around.

“What’s the tactical situation?” Lee asked.

“Ma’am,” Wolford answered, “I am currently reading at least 250 ships that have already come through the wormhole, and that’s not counting the 30 to 40 that the Decatur has taken out so far-I’m guessing on that number, from the wreckage floating around. I’m not currently reading anything coming through the gate, but I don’t know that means they don’t have any more to send.”

“If we take out the ramships first,” Franks mused, “we can plow right through the rest and they couldn’t touch us.”

Lee gave a curt nod that he barely saw. “Let’s just hope the Decatur can hold out till we get there, Lieutenant…”

* * *

Captain Joyce Minishimi barely blinked this time when the globular fusion explosion lit up the main viewscreen for an eyeblink then slid away.

“That’s the last ship in this cluster,” Gianeto told her. “The others have spread out pretty far to not give us an easy target.” He hesitated. “The two ramships are still on our tail. Three minutes till the lead ship intercepts our field at current accelerations.”

“No use putting it off any longer,” Minishimi sighed. She hit a control on her station’s console. “Commander Prieta,” she called to the Engineering officer.

“Yes, Captain,” the reply came immediately, as if he had been expecting the call. And maybe he had, she thought.

“How confident are you in the bypass you’ve rigged to keep us from experiencing a terminal overload if we touch fields with one of those ramships?”

“As I told Lt. Franks when he contacted me earlier,” he replied, “I can guarantee we can survive it once. The second time…” She heard the shrug in his voice. “It is a 50-50 chance, ma’am.”

“Well, as those ramships don’t seem to be lacking for fuel,” she decided, “it’s a chance we’re going to have to take. Prepare for field intersect in one minute Commander.” She turned to Gianeto. “Larry, we’re going to go to station keeping and let the lead ship run right into us. When our fields go down, we’re going to have less than five minutes to get them back up in time to hit the other one. During that time, we need to do what we saw the Brad do: launch a pair of Shipbusters and program one of them to take out the second ship after we bring down its field. And I need that programming done in the next thirty seconds.”

“Not a problem,” Gianeto muttered, concentrating on his station as he entered the commands. A moment later, he looked up. “Done, ma’am. Ready when you are.”

“Just say the word, ma’am,” Witten announced from his station, fingers hovering over the icons that would start the deceleration.

Minishimi watched the display carefully for a moment, then hit the shipwide intercom. “This is Captain Minishimi. All hands brace for collision.” She paused. “It’s been an honor to serve with and fight beside all of you.” She locked eyes with Witten. “Hit the brakes, Francis.”

Minishimi had braced herself, but when the hit came, she was still thrashed violently, both physically and somehow spiritually in a way she couldn’t fathom, and everything went fuzzy in a way that seemed to have little to do with any trauma to her brain and more to do with trauma to reality. Somewhere deep in her consciousness, she raged, knowing that she was wasting time they wouldn’t get back, time that could cost them their lives, but it was as if she were swimming through a sea of glue to get back to herself.

“L… launch missiles!” She tried to scream it, but it choked out as a squeak that she was sure was nearly inaudible. As it turned out, it didn’t matter… she could see that Gianeto had recovered quicker than her and was stabbing the control to launch the pair of Shipbusters.

“Missiles away!” he called, the Tactical display projected around him still hazy and flickering from the near overload of the systems.

“Commander Prieta,” Minishimi was finally able to speak, the words breaking out in a bellow, as if they’d been trying to kick down a door, “can we get the drive back up?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Prieta assured her. “The bypass held and we have fuel containment. The drive is ready, on your command.”

“Lt. Witten, activate the drive field and give us a heading away from the first ship… we don’t want to be nearby when the Shipbuster hits it.”

Witten shook his head, still trying to clear it, then hit the controls before croaking out, “Drive activated, Captain. One g acceleration.”

“One minute till field intercept with the second ramship,” Gianeto told her. “The first Shipbuster is thirty seconds out from the disabled enemy vessel. She is not attempting to evade at this time… I think she’s out of it.” He cocked an eyebrow, looking at the display analytically. “They’re pretty small for Eysselink drive ships. They probably don’t have much in the way of personnel or hardware redundancy.”

“Oh, I think they’ve proven devilishly clever,” Minishimi responded sourly. “They’ve certainly made the most of what they have, and I didn’t think they had that much.”

“Positive detonation on the first Shipbuster,” Gianeto said, nodding with satisfaction as he saw the white globe of the fusion blast appear on his display. “She’s toast, ma’am.” His eyes flickered to the other readout in front of him. “Twenty-five seconds to impact with the other ramship.”

“Anyone who’s into praying,” Higgs murmured, barely audible, “say one for me.”

“Got you covered, Maggie,” Witten said, shooting her a grin.

“Engineering is ready for impact, Captain,” Mehta, the engineering bridge officer, reported. “Commander Prieta says that the emergency interlocks are in place on the antimatter storage pods. He…” Mehta hesitated, stumbling over the words. “He, uh, says that he has perhaps 25 percent confidence they will hold.”

Gianeto’s face twisted into a grimace as he watched his display. “Oh, damn,” he said, mildly. “Captain, we…”

He didn’t finish. Minishimi thought she would be better prepared for the second field collision, but she was discovering that it wasn’t actually possible to prepare for it. If anything, it was worse than the first time, as if the effects were cumulative somehow. And it felt wrong in a way that was hard to express, the way you felt when you injured yourself badly and knew it, the way she’d felt in high school when she’d tore a ligament in her knee playing soccer.

Her vision was blurred and her head spinning, but the first thing she could sense was the acrid scent of the smoke from an electrical fire; and then, vaguely, a crackling of exposed power relays in counterpoint to low, antiphonal moans from others on the bridge.

She tried to shake her head to clear her vision, but couldn’t summon the energy for it… instead, her head lolled and she could feel spittle drifting from her slack mouth and floating away. She concentrated feverishly and finally she was able to blink her eyes clear… and almost immediately wished she hadn’t.

The bridge was a haze of slowly-drifting smoke, punctuated by the wild sparking of overloaded relays, blown out when the energy surge from the successive field intersects had finally jumped the dampers. Worse, the smoke wasn’t being automatically sucked out by the bridge fans, which meant that even the batty backups were offline. Her ‘link’s ear bud was silent and the displays were dark; the only light was the ghostly glow from the chemical light strips that lined the bridge. And worst of all, Francis Witten was floating slack in his harness, a trickle of blood from his nose drifting away in loose globules that hung over him absurdly, unmoved by absent breath.

“Francis!” Larry Gianeto yelled, yanking loose his restraints and lunging across the bridge to the Helm officer. A detached, incredibly calm portion of Minishimi’s shock-numbed brain wondered how the Tactical officer could recover so much more quickly than everyone else from the effects of the collision.

Gianeto grabbed the back of Witten’s acceleration couch, halting his momentum and feeling for the man’s pulse. Under normal circumstances, he could have checked the man’s vital signs via remote access to the sensors in his uniform, but that was down along with everything else on the ship.

“Oh, Jesus, he’s not breathing…” Gianeto moaned helplessly. “He doesn’t have a pulse!”

“Larry,” Minishimi rasped, getting up the strength to pull off her harness. She was remembering something, something even more important than Witten’s condition.

“What the hell happened to him?” Gianeto demanded of no one in particular, hands clenching and unclenching helplessly, head turning back and forth as if he were trying to find someone to help him.

“Larry!” Minishimi said more forcefully and his eyes snapped onto her, finally focusing. “We’ll get him to the medical bay,” she promised. “But before the collision… what were you saying?”

“Oh,” he seemed to come back to reality. “Ma’am,” he said, his voice grim, “I caught a reading of two more ramships coming through the wormhole. They’re headed this way.”

Minishimi closed her eyes, taking in a deep breath, then letting it out. A preternatural calm had descended on her, as her options were stripped away until only one was left. She opened her eyes and fixed Gianeto with a fond gaze.

“Larry,” she said gently, “get the bridge crew to the life pods. The intercoms are down; everything is down, we have to abandon ship.”

She heard a gasp from Maggie Higgs as the woman came to her senses and saw Witten’s body. “Oh my God!” the woman cried. “What happened to him?”

“Probably a cerebral hemorrhage,” Minishimi told her quietly. “Leave him here, Larry. We can’t help him now.”

“There’s nothing we can do, Captain?” Gianeto asked her, agony in his eyes as he clung to Witten’s acceleration couch desperately.

“I’m going to head to engineering and see what the situation is,” she said, shaking her head, “but with enemy ships inbound and no power, we have to get the crew to the pods. I’ll call out to the decks I pass, and you do the same.” She put a hand on his shoulder, squeezing it. “Get moving, Commander.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. He gave Witten once last glance, then looked to the others on the bridge. “Higgs, Mehta, we’re abandoning ship. The comms are down, so Higgs, I want you to take B deck and get the word there; Mehta, take C deck. The Captain is headed for Engineering and I’m going to the hangar bay. Got it?”

“Aye, sir,” they responded, unstrapping from their seats and following him to the bridge hatch.

Gianeto pulled open a panel beside the hatch and worked a hand crank, sliding the normally automatic door open at an agonizingly slow rate. Minishimi felt a desperate urgency start to take hold of her, sure that a ramship was bearing down on them at this very moment, ready to rend them into atoms. But she also knew that the life pods weren’t necessarily salvation from that fate… which was why she had to get to Engineering.

She pushed her way to the front of the crowd and slipped through the portal as soon as Gianeto had it open far enough to fit, then headed for the access tubes.

“Ma’am!” Gianeto’s voice stopped her and she turned back. His face looked pale and drawn in the chemical ghostlight, and his eyes were clouded with fear. “You’ll be taking one of the lifepods from Engineering?”

“Yes, Commander,” she assured him, smiling at his concern. “I’ll meet you on the other side.”

Then she shoved off into the access tube and left the others behind her.

The tubes were eerily silent, without the usual hum and shudder of the ship’s systems, and the silence beat in her ears like a pulse as she sailed through the near-darkness. Joyce Minishimi’s whole body was a mass of aches, her healing chest wound was flaring with fresh pain and her head felt as if it would explode, but she flew through the narrow tube with reckless abandon, knowing that time was running out and feeling as if the passage would never end.

She almost missed the exit for engineering, but managed to brake herself at the last moment, catching a handhold at the expense of a painful wrench to her shoulder and a sharp, stabbing jolt of agony in her chest. She gasped, cradling her arm against her chest, but kept moving, kicking out into the corridor. The hatch to Engineering was closed, and she could see nothing through its viewport, but she didn’t hesitate, moving to the panel beside it and accessing the manual controls. Inside the panel was a hand crank and she worked it with her good arm as quickly as she could, pain shooting through her chest with each turn.

As the hatch to Engineering slowly rolled open, a haze of black smoke dotted with bits of particulate metal drifted out of the chamber. With it, she saw as a sense of horror crept through her, drifted a pair of charred and bloodied bodies. She coughed fitfully as the smoke reached her, and she knew that to last in there, she was going to need a respirator. She went to a rack just outside the hatchway and pulled an emergency breather from it, settling the mask over her face and pulling the elastic strap over her head, adjusting it automatically as it tried to yank at her hair.

Fresh air filled her lungs and she felt relief for the first time in long minutes. Thinking quickly, she grabbed a spare respirator and a flashlight from the cabinet and pushed off into the smoke-filled chamber. Shining the powerful light around the Engine Room, she could see, despite the smoke, exactly what had happened: the main trunklines had exploded with incredible force from the feedback of the second field collision, probably weakened significantly by the first. And when they’d violently overloaded, they’d burst right through the shielding, turning the armored sheaths into shrapnel that had sliced through everything… and everyone… in the room.

Loose globules of crimson blood floated amid the clouds of smoke and twirling bits of metal like some surreal collage, and at the center of it were a collection of human bodies in torn, bloody and burned blue utility fatigues. She recognized Commander Prieta among them immediately, his dark eyes clouded and sightless. But one of them was still moving…

Pushing off from the partially-open door, Minishimi caught the drifting crewmember and pulled the spare respirator over her face, wincing as she saw the raw, weeping burns that covered half of it. The woman-Chief Grieger she remembered-stirred and coughed violently as the oxygen hit her lungs, thrashing with pain and confusion.

“Chief Grieger!” Minishimi shouted through her breath mask, trying to pin the woman’s arms. “It’s the Captain! Can you hear me?”

“Ma’am!” Grieger calmed down, ceasing her struggling and looking into Minishimi’s eyes. “What… what happened?”

“We had a catastrophic overload, Chief,” the Captain told her, yelling to make sure she understood. “Commander Prieta is dead. The ship is dead in space and we have rammers inbound-I’ve sent the crew to the lifepods, but if those ramships hit us, their fields will tear those lifepods apart. I need the plasma drive up and running to get them some room.”

Grieger was probably in shock, physically and emotionally, but she was also a 20-year veteran NCO. Without another word, she pushed off from Minishimi toward a panel set in the far wall on the other side of the ruined trunk line. The Captain waved her arms to steady herself as she floated back towards the control panels, grabbing the edge of the panel to stop as she watched Grieger yank open the panel and pull down a heavy manual switch.

The switch closed a circuit with a loud snap and the control panel’s displays that weren’t smashed flickered to life, along with the lighting still left intact. Grieger pushed away from the wall and went to the control panel, moving from one station to the next until she found one with working systems. Her fingers flew across the display, and she paused as she evaluated the results, then turned to the Captain.

“We’ve lost our antimatter fuel pods, ma’am… they all ejected automatically when the circuits blew. The reactor flushed, but I think I can get it up again with the emergency batteries if I can reroute from the blown power trunks.” She shook her head. “It’s going to take a few minutes though.”

“Get it done,” she told the engineering NCO. “Then get to the lifepods and get off this ship. I’ll be on the bridge-contact me there when the reactor is up.”

“What about you, ma’am?” Grieger asked, eyes frowning beneath her mask.

“Don’t worry about me, Chief,” Minishimi assured her. “I’ll be off this boat just as quick as I can program the Helm to take the ship out of the area. I definitely want to live to fight another day.”

Larry Gianeto looked up as the primary lighting flickered on in the hangar bay, followed quickly by the hum of the main ventilators. He turned to Commander Irvine, the Decatur‘s flight officer, who had been directing his people into the bay’s half dozen life pods.

“Commander!” he called. “Belay the lifepods! Get your people into the shuttles!”

“Roger that!” Irvine nodded in understanding. Now that the power was back up, they could use the hangar’s launch locks, and the shuttles could keep them alive longer than the pods. They could also get farther away from the ship, making it less likely they would get caught in the drive fields of the…

Gianeto’s head snapped around to the access tubes, and he made an instant decision. “Commander Irvine,” he called and the tall, lanky officer looked back. “Get as many shuttles as you can launched, and prepare to bring life pods on board once you’re out. I’m heading to the bridge.”

Irvine said something, but Gianeto didn’t hear: he was already in the access tube and heading back the way he’d come.

Captain Minishimi was already on the bridge by the time Gianeto got there, leaning over the Helm station, frowning in concentration. She had, he noted, taken the time to move Francis Wiitten’s body, strapping it into the acceleration couch at the Communications station.

“I figured I’d find you here, ma’am,” he said as he moved up behind her.

“Mr. Gianeto,” the Captain said in a disapproving tone, glaring at him, “I recall giving you an order to abandon this ship.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said with a smile. “But when the power returned, I realized we had a chance to get the plasma drives online and move the ship away from the lifepods, give them some room so they have a better chance of surviving.” He shrugged. “I thought you might need some help programming the Helm.”

“I appreciate the thought,” she said, voice gentler… then she sagged and sighed. “Unfortunately, we aren’t going to be able to do that.”

“Ma’am?’ Gianeto asked, moving over to the station beside her.

“The feedback from that field intersection did more than burn out our trunk lines,” the Captain explained. “We had a burn-through just aft of the bridge.” Gianeto winced. If an Eysselink field collapsed catastrophically, as theirs had, it could cause point failures at various spots in the field, which would burn back into the ship like a laser-an antimatter-powered laser fired at point-blank range. “It fried the ship’s navigational computer.” She waved a hand at the Helm display. “We have no helm controls from the bridge or even the auxiliary bridge. We’ll have to rig up something in the engine room.”

“But Captain,” Gianeto said slowly, realization creeping into his voice, “without the navigational computers, we’d have to maneuver the ship manually…”

“I’m heading to the Engine room, Commander Gianeto,” she said firmly, catching his eye with her no-nonsense look. “You are to get to the lifepods immediately and abandon ship. That’s an order.”

“Ma’am,” he blurted, shaking his head, “let me do it. This war isn’t over… they’re going to need experienced captains.”

Minishimi smiled sadly, laying a hand fondly on his shoulder. “Larry, I’d be a captain without a ship to run. This is my ship, and it’s my duty to carry out.” She jerked her head toward the door. “Get out now, or I’ll choke you out and drag you to the pods myself.”

“Aye, ma’am.” He turned and headed for the door.

“Tell my husband I was thinking about him,” she said softly. He nodded in reply, not trusting himself to say anything. He took one last look at her, then he was out the door and gone.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Shannon Stark stepped off the boarding ramp of the combat lander, the weight of her and Marine-pattern combat armor feeling strangely constrictive across her chest, and moved to the side to allow the Special Operations troops behind her to scramble off. They reminded her of a coiled spring, unfolding into a defensive formation around the aerospacecraft, full of youth, energy and an ignorance of their own mortality.

The turbines of the lander whined plaintively as they were throttled down, the waning blasts of superheated air from their vectored thrust nozzles tugging fitfully at the high grass in the clearing that had once been a shopping mall off the interstate in upstate New York. It was late afternoon, but the sun was already low in the sky: the days were getting shorter as autumn progressed.

Here and there you could see the vestigial remains of the old buildings, where no one had bothered to tear them down, but most of the cleared ground was now landing zone for two dozen Colonial Guard heavy transports and staging areas for four times that many armored personnel carriers. Colonial Guard troops swarmed around the vehicles, pulling security and deploying the heavy weapons, while officers shouted orders… among them Ari Shamir and Roza Kovach.

“Are we really counting on a bunch of just-graduated CeeGee officer candidates and a few training officers and NCOs to face down 20,000 biomechs?” Tom Crossman asked Shannon quietly, stepping up behind her with his helmet tucked under his arm.

“They’re all we have, Tom,” she told him with a resigned shrug. “Ari thinks they can do it. Anyway, we’ll have support from the orbital weapons emplacements”

“Uh-oh,” Tom whispered, “look busy, here comes the teacher.”

Shannon concealed a grin as she looked over and saw General Kage striding purposefully toward their position, his natural bulk even more imposing in full CG body armor. His helmet was off, carried in his left hand, and he looked more at home than Shannon ever remembered.

“My people will be deployed at the interstate junction within the hour,” he told Shannon, his voice businesslike but a frown darkening his face. “I still do not like this, Maj… Colonel Stark. By allowing the enemy to array against us, we give them time to prepare, to organize. We should have taken them at their staging area, before they had time to mount the vehicles.”

“That would have been ideal, General,” she acknowledged, nodding, “except for the fact that their staging area was on the edges of the Montreal Metropolitan Complex and neither the President nor I wanted to be responsible for starting a major battle in a population center when we could avoid it.” She waved a hand around them. “No one lives out here and the only traffic is large cargo haulers. We take them here, in the open, away from innocent civilians.”

“This doesn’t make any sense to me,” Tom muttered, looking up into the darkening sky. “Sure, he’s got a shitload of those blue-skinned fuckers to throw at us, but what’s the point of driving them cross-country in a fleet of APC’s? He’s just lining them up to be ducks in a shooting gallery.”

“He is a man out of time,” Kage reminded them. “Perhaps he doesn’t realize the potential of orbital kinetic weapons to wreak havoc in an armored column.”

“Maybe he doesn’t,” Shannon allowed, following Tom’s gaze to unseen weapons satellites, “but I’ll bet you Hellene D’Annique does.” She shook it off. “Still, they’re coming this way and we have to stop them.” She turned back to Tom. “Tell the lander pilots to take off and get into position.” He nodded and headed back up the ramp into their combat shuttle.

Shannon reached into a pouch on her thigh and pulled out her tablet, calling up the view from the weapons satellites. “The enemy column is on the road,” she told Kage, turning the screen to let him see the video feed. “Let’s hope Antonov is as anachronistic as you believe.” Her eyes narrowed in a frown. “But somehow, I doubt it.”

* * *

Xavier Dominguez strode into the Orbital Weapons Control Center like he owned the place-which, as far as the young Fleet Lieutenant JG on duty was concerned, he did.

“Mr. Vice President!” The duty officer shot to his feet as Dominguez and the half dozen men of his security detail walked through the front entrance. Not all VPs in Republic history would have been as instantly recognizable, but the handsome, charismatic politician had been a staple of the gossip reports for years. “Sir, I’m sorry we weren’t prepared for an inspection visit, but we had no notice…”

“That’s quite all right, Lieutenant…” Dominguez peered at the man’s nametag in the dim lighting of the entrance hallway, still not automatically adjusted as the sun set outside its doors.

“Barron, sir,” the young officer stammered, blushing slightly. “Lt. J.G. Louis Barron.”

“It’s no problem, Louis,” Dominguez gave the officer his most sincere smile, patting him on the shoulder. “This is kind of a last minute thing. It’s the President’s idea, actually; I’m sure you’ve been kept abreast about the Protectorate attack this morning-tragedy, all those brave men and women at the Lunar base losing their lives.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Vice President,” Barron said somberly. “We’re ready here, if those bastards try anything like they did five years ago!”

“Well, see, Louis, that’s exactly why I’m here!” Dominguez clasped his hands together demonstratively. “I understand that there have been several changes in security since this base was overrun by the Protectorate during the invasion, and I’ve been sent to inspect things and make sure that nothing like that happens again.”

“Well, um, sir,” Barron stuttered, glancing back and forth between Dominguez and the security door behind him, “I can, I guess, go over the changes with you… if Captain Prementer were here, he could… I mean, he’s the base commander, but he was on leave. I mean, he’s been recalled, obviously, with the attack, but he’s still in flight from Antarctica…”

“That’s all right, son, I know you’ll do fine.”

“Yes, sir, but the thing is,” Barron looked ready to fold into a ball and huddle in a corner, “technically, I need some sort of clearance from Fleet Headquarters to allow anyone not stationed here into the secure area of this base.”

“I’ll do you one better, son,” Dominguez smiled ingratiatingly, pulling a tablet from a pocket of his designer jacket. He handed it to Barron and the younger man’s eyebrows went up. “That’s a Presidential authorization to enter any secure facility in the Republic. You can check it on your base mainframe, it can’t be forged.” And it wasn’t… but it had been given to him three years ago. He’d just made sure through the aid of some talented netdivers that it had never been rescinded.

“Well, yes sir, Mr. Vice President,” Barron said with a relieved nod. “That should do fine then. If you’ll just follow me.” Barron nodded to one of the two armed guards stationed at the base entrance and the man fell in behind them as the officer presented his retina and palm for the biometric ID scanner. Two of the Vice Presidential security unit stayed in the entrance hall, while the others followed their charge into the bowels of the base.

The thick blast doors slid aside, revealing a blank hallway that Dominguez already knew was lined with a half dozen automated weapons systems, lethal and nonlethal. Barron didn’t mention them, however, which Dominguez found interesting-perhaps the young man wasn’t as naive as he seemed. Instead, the officer was droning on about the history of the invasion and how the Protectorate had been able to take control of both the ground-based defense lasers aimed outward and the kinetic kill satellites aimed downward.

“To prevent such a thing happening again,” Barron went on, “changes have been made to the system that won’t allow anyone to shut out remote access to the defense network from here without a combination of three biometric access codes.”

“So, it wouldn’t do the Protectorate any good to simply take this place over,” Dominguez summarized as they moved into the main control room. “That wouldn’t prevent us from using the orbital weapons systems. What if they just attacked this site from orbit, blew it up?”

“There are backup uplinks at a few other locations that can communicate with the defense satellites,” Barron assured him, “and of course the ground-based lasers can be controlled on-site. The advantage of this place is that we centralize everything and provide targeting based on input from multiple sources. We’re also a fail-safe against someone hijacking the system from one of the other sites-every use has to be confirmed here and we can shut out remote use with the biometric access codes: the CO, the XO and a rotating code chosen at random and kept top secret.”

“So, losing this place wouldn’t cripple our defense system,” Dominguez said, looking around, “and they can’t use it to shut out remote access either.” He nodded. “Good to know, good to know.” He pinned Barron with a glance. “And I assume the systems here are safe from outside computer attack as well.”

“Yes, sir!” Barron told him, smiling with enthusiasm and obviously warmed up to his presentation. “The core systems here are totally isolated, not connected to any net. The only way to access them is through these stations, physically.” He waved a hand, indicating the stations against the far wall, where the technicians on duty were monitoring targeting data from sensor feeds out in the asteroid belt and Martian orbit.

“Well, that’s just fine then,” Dominguez said, nodding slowly. He turned to the head of his security team and smiled. “I think we’ve heard enough.”

Louis Barron turned back to the Vice President, ready to thank him for his visit, but the relief on his face turned to shock when he saw the wide-shouldered, hard-faced security agent aiming a suppressed handgun at him.

“What…” was all he had the chance to say or think before the weapon fired. Its hoarse cough was the last thing he ever heard.

* * *

The sun was nothing but a faint glow on the western horizon as Shannon and Tom Crossman huddled behind a CeeGee armored vehicle, watching the feed from the combat lander on which they’d arrived as it hovered a few hundred meters above the enemy convoy. The vehicles were state of the art Republic Fleet Marine Corps APC’s, their dull grey coloring blending in nicely with the pavement, their insulated engines showing only a faint red even on thermal. And there were five hundred of them, packing the old interstate like an ancient traffic jam, rolling along at a steady 50 kilometers an hour, with another hundred corporate cargo haulers following them, each presumably carrying up to 50 biomech troopers as well as support equipment.

“Jesus Christ, there’re a lot of them,” Tom muttered, shaking his head.

“Target rich environment,” Shannon responded. Then she pushed the connection button on her ‘link’s ear bud. “Charlie Gulf Niner Niner, this is Charlie Gulf One. Your birds are cleared to fire.”

“Roger, Charlie Gulf One,” the pilot responded. “We’re coming in for our first pass.”

The view from the lander’s cameras shifted with roller-coaster abruptness as the combat craft banked hard out of its hover and swooped downward like a hawk after a rabbit. Smoke trails followed a fusillade of missiles that arced downward from the lander’s weapons bay and terminated on the trailing cargo haulers in the convoy, swallowing up three of them in a massive fireball. Then the aircraft was past the line of vehicles and angling around and the view shifted to the rear camera, showing the next lander coming in for a firing run…

…and suddenly coming apart like a paper airplane as the cockpit and the entire front end of the aircraft disappeared in a haze of glowing vapor, the heat trail of the weapon that had destroyed it barely visible on thermal, climbing back along its trajectory, straight up into the twilight sky.

Shannon’s eyes went wide and the roaring in her ears of the stunning realization nearly drowned out the panicked, redundant reports of the other pilots. “Get out of there!” she shouted desperately over their transmissions. “All aircraft evacuate the area and take evasive action! The enemy has orbital weapons!”

As she spoke, Shannon pulled up the controls for the orbital defense system and was totally unsurprised when the tablet told her that she was not authorized to access that operation. She shoved the tablet at Tom, spitting out a curse.

“General Kage!” she yelled into her ‘link. “Get your people away from the vehicles! Do it now!”

In the background, Shannon could hear the screams on the communications channels as one after another of the assault shuttles went down, reduced to burning fragments by remotely-steered tungsten darts barely two meters long, dropped from orbit. She fought back bile that rose in her throat, realizing that not only did each strike kill three good men and women, but that each one meant another second gone before those orbital weapons were retargeted…

“What is happening, Colonel Stark?” Kage demanded, his deep voice sounding small and distant in her ear. She knew he was less than a kilometer away from her position, farther down the old interstate. “What are you talking about?”

“The orbital defense network is compromised!” she told him quickly. “The landers are being destroyed by kinetic weapons! Once they’re gone, those weapons will target our vehicles… you have to get everyone away from the APCs!”

Behind her, she could already hear Tom yelling at the Special Ops team to move away from the vehicles and take cover in the tall grass and she began moving that direction herself in a quick jog as she spoke with Kage. “General, did you read me?”

There was no answer, and she was in the process of calling Ari when a CeeGee armored vehicle only a hundred meters away exploded. Shannon stumbled at a concussion that she could feel in her chest and a quaking in the earth from the 50 kilogram tungsten rod hitting the ground at around Mach 10, but she managed to keep her feet long enough to reach Tom’s position out in the middle of the field. She sprawled next to him, pulling on her helmet and securing it as she continued to try to call Ari.

“Ari, get them away from the APCs!” She switched to her helmet radio.

But the only reply she received was the endless roll of thunder as one after another of the armored vehicles was destroyed in a hideous overkill of liberated kinetic energy raining down from the sky like the wrath of an angry god.

Chapter Forty

Drew Franks grunted with a primal satisfaction as the Protectorate ramship vaporized in a cloud of plasma, its fuel stores ruptured by a fusillade of tungsten Gauss cannon rounds.

“Cease fire, reactivate drive field,” acting Captain Lee ordered.

“That’s four of them down,” Lt. Wolford reported, checking the sensor display. “Plus the two the Decatur took out.” He looked back at her from his station. “She’s still drifting, ma’am… and there are two ramships left this side of the wormhole, heading straight for her.”

“Shit,” Franks muttered, earning a dirty look from Lee.

“Can we reach them before they get to her?” Lee asked, looking back and forth between Wolford and Bevins. They looked at each other, then checked their displays and fed data to each other’s station before turning back to her.

“No chance, ma’am,” Bevins said, shaking his head. “The first rammer is less than fifteen minute away now. It would take us a half hour to get there at the maximum acceleration we could stand outside the tanks”

“She’s launching shuttles and lifepods,” Wolford put in. “They’re abandoning ship.”

“Set an intercept course for the ramships,” Lee said. “We can’t save the Decatur, but we’ll clean up those two bogies, then swing back and pick up the survivors.”

“They won’t be able to clear the ramship’s drive field,” Franks pointed out, his voice dull, trying to force down the rage he was feeling. “They’ll get ripped apart.”

“And what would you suggest I do about that, Lt. Franks?” Lee asked tautly but quietly, her dark eyes flaring with anger.

Franks didn’t answer her immediately, biting back the angry retort that rose in his throat like bile. Commander Lee felt just as angry and impotent as he did, he realized, and had absolutely no combat experience. “I don’t know what we can do, ma’am,” he finally said, “or what we could have done differently. That’s what gets me: I know there should have been, and I can’t help but think that if Major Stark or Colonel McKay were here, they would have done things better than I have.”

Lee’s expression softened and she chuckled humorlessly. “Hell, Lieutenant, you think I’m not wishing Captain Perez were sitting in this seat? Or Admiral Patel? This is not how I saw myself getting my first command. But as of a few minutes from now, we’re going to be all that’s left between the Protectorate and Earth, like it or not.”

“She’s moving!” Wolford blurted, leaning closer to the holographic display as if he didn’t believe it. “Her fusion drives are up… she’s moving away at two g’s!”

“She’s getting farther from the shuttles and lifepods,” Franks deduced.

“Get us in there, Bevins,” Lee snapped. “Two g’s acceleration, we have to take out those ramships before they reach the survivors!”

“Aye, ma’am, sounding acceleration alarms, prepare for high-g burn!”

Franks tightened his harness and leaned back into his couch just as the Helm officer fed power to the drives and space-time spat the ship out like a watermelon seed. On the main viewscreen, the ship seemed to jump forward, the stars streaking by around them, but Franks’ eyes were glued to the representation of the Decatur, which was still accelerating as well, a flare of fusion fire behind her drive bell. The lead ramship was bearing down on her, though, not moving terribly fast for an Eysselink drive ship but still outpacing the crippled Republic warship.

Someone-probably Wolford-put up a projection of the reach of the ramship’s drive field and a line showing how far away it would have to be for the shuttles and lifepods to survive. It seemed like the Decatur was crawling away from the tiny green symbols that represented her shuttles, the blue tinged circle of the ramship’s drive field still on course to rip those green symbols apart.

“Why only two g’s?” Franks wondered aloud, pushing the words out past twice his normal weight on his chest.

“What?” Lee asked, eyes flickering over to him.

“The Decatur,” he clarified. “Why is she only hitting two g’s? They can’t be saving fuel-saving it for what? For a short run like that, the fusion drive could hit four g’s easy, get them out of the area faster. Why only two g’s?”

There was silence on the bridge for a moment as his question sank in, and then Bevins broke it, with a grim statement. “There are still people on board,” he said. “Someone’s running her manually.”

“Jesus,” Wolford hissed.

“Enough chatter,” Lee snapped, trying to sound tough, but Franks could see the pain in her eyes, hear the catch in her throat. “Just take us to that intercept.”

On the screen, the blue halo moved almost imperceptibly away from the shuttles. Franks watched it, wishing he could somehow make it disappear…

“What’s the range on the sensors?” He asked suddenly. Wolford looked at him blankly. “The modified sensor beams we used to destabilize their drive fields… it’s gotta’ have a longer range that conventional beam weapons. It’s travelling FTL for Christ’s sake!”

A light came on in Wolford’s eyes and he hit the intercom control. “Commander Infante!” he nearly shouted into the audio pickup. “What’s the effective range of the sensor mods to destabilize an Eysselink field?”

There was a long silence and for a moment, Franks thought that Infante hadn’t heard the transmission, but then the Engineer replied, her voice slow and hesitant. “I can’t say for sure, Lt. Wolford,” she said. “It depends on the strength and size of the field you’re targeting and…”

“Give me your best Goddamned guess, Commander!” Lee interjected with an impatient snarl.

“Perhaps… 100,000 kilometers at the power levels we’re using,” the Engineer estimated, a bit of pique in her voice at Lee’s tone.

Franks glanced to Lee and she shot him a fierce grin. “The hell with McKay and Stark, Lieutenant,” she said. “You’re doing all right yourself.” She turned to Bevins and Wolford. “Tactical, I need a firing solution for that ramship! Range is 100,000 kilometers! Helm, get us there in time!”

* * *

Larry Gianeto squeezed through the lifepod hatch and the narrow docking umbilical, into the pressurized cockpit of the shuttle. The cabin was crowded with a dozen crewmembers, two more than it was supposed to be able to hold safely, and two dozen more were crammed into the lifepods in its unpressurized cargo hold. Larry moved through the press, coming up to the back of the pilot’s seat.

“Commander Irvine,” he spoke loudly to be heard over the hubbub in the crowded cockpit. “Do we have all the lifepods secured in the shuttles?”

Irvine turned back to him, sweat beading on his dark-skinned, hawk-lean face from the heat of the massed bodies in the small cabin. “They’re just closing the cargo bay doors on the last one, Commander Gianeto,” he reported, strain in his voice. “The Decatur is under way… she activated her fusion drive about a minute ago.”

“I want every shuttle in a full-power burn in the opposite direction now,” Gianeto ordered. Irvine glanced at him dubiously, not least because they were both the same rank, but then nodded and turned to relay the order.

“Everyone strap in!” Irvine yelled back into the cabin. “One g burn in ten seconds!”

Gianeto glanced around, heartbeat quickening as he saw that every acceleration couch was occupied, but then Irvine’s co-pilot jerked a thumb back to a fold-down seat next to the airlock. Gianeto scrambled back to pull it down into position and barely managed to get the harness around him before the shuttle’s engines flared to life. He was pushed back into his seat by a familiar 80 kilograms as the shuttle’s small, onboard particle-bed reactor heated up the liquid hydrogen reaction mass and expelled it at hypersonic velocities.

Gianeto felt his heart rate increasing and fought to stay calm. There were dozens of crewmembers in the shuttles, and yet his attention kept drifting back to the Decatur and Captain Minishimi, now just a distant star of fusion light on the viewers.

“Which lifepod is the Captain on?” Irvine asked him, as if reading his expression.

“She’s not in a lifepod,” Gianeto told the pilot. “The navigation computers were fried by the feedback from the field collision. Captain Minishimi is in the Engineering bay of the Decatur, piloting her manually.”

Irvine’s head snapped around, his mouth dropping open and he wasn’t the only one. It seemed to Gianeto that everyone in the cabin was staring at him aghast. A sour taste was in his mouth and he felt like a coward. “I tried to make her let me do it,” he said, shaking his head. “She said it was her duty as Captain.” He felt a surge of anger and put it in his voice. “She ordered me to look after the crew and that’s exactly what I intend to do.”

Irvine nodded, acceptance reluctantly entering his eyes. He paused, closing his eyes and whispering a prayer under his breath, then crossed himself; Gianeto saw a few others join him. He wasn’t Catholic, or much of anything, but for a moment he wished he were: right now, it would be very comforting to believe in an afterlife.

* * *

“We’re two minutes from effective range, Captain,” Wolford reported, the glowing light of his holographic display playing over the worry lines in his face. “The enemy ship’s drive field will impact the Decatur in exactly two minutes and forty five seconds.”

Franks hissed involuntarily, watching the two computer-simulated avatars coming closer together on the main screen. That wasn’t a hell of a lot of room for error.

“Even if we can take out the ramship’s field,” he said, “she might still ram right into the Decatur.”

Then he blinked as the fusion flare at the rear of the Decatur abruptly faded and the ship’s acceleration ceased.

“The Decatur has ceased its burn!” Wolford announced, worry in his voice.

“What are they doing?” Bevins muttered.

“I read a lifepod ejecting near the Engineering section,” Wolford said. His head snapped up, looking to Captain Lee. “Whoever was on board has abandoned ship, ma’am!”

“They can’t know we’re going to be able to stop the ramship,” Franks observed. “Why are they ejecting?”

“Hope, perhaps,” Lee murmured a speculation. “Let’s make sure it’s not false hope. Are we in range, Lt. Wolford?”

“Ten seconds, ma’am,” Wolford told her, “assuming Commander Infante’s estimate was correct. I have control of the emitters.”

“It was a rough estimate,” Lee mused. “Bevins, take us down to one gravity. Wolford, open fire now… let’s see what the outer envelope is on this thing.”

“Aye, Captain,” Wolford said with eagerness in his voice-or perhaps it was relief at the extra weight on his chest disappearing. “Activating emitters now, three second burst.”

The sensor display froze as the gravimetic emitters switched function from analysis to offense, and then the images were in motion again… and the blue halo of the ramship’s Eysselink drive field was intact. Franks bit back a curse.

“Their drive field destabilized slightly,” Wolford said, looking at his readouts, “but not critically. We have less than thirty seconds till the drive field intersects the lifepod’s course.”

“Fire again!” Lee snapped. “Longer this time! Get that field down!”

“Ten second burst,” Wolford said, adjusting the controls. “Firing.”

This time the sensor display went completely dark and Franks thought the lighting on the ship flickered and dimmed as well, but that could have been the displays flickering on and off. His hands were clenched on the arms of the acceleration couch and he found himself holding his breath.

“Emitters off,” Wolford said, hitting the control. He shook his head. “It’s going to take a few seconds to get the sensors back up and calibrated.”

Franks forced himself to breath, forced his fingers to relax as the seconds dragged on, interminably long and he saw acting Captain Lee begin to open her mouth, as if she were about to ask how long it was going to take. Then the main viewscreen and the Tactical display both snapped to life and the images of the two ships began to form once again, hazily at first, flitting back and forth like ghosts until they came into sharp relief… and merged in a glowing ball of star-white plasma.

“What just happened?” Franks demanded, leaning forward against his restraints despite the acceleration trying to push him back.

“That was a collision…” Wolford said helplessly, trying to analyze the data that was coming into the newly-activated sensor.

“No kidding,” Bevins muttered.

“Shut the hell up,” Lee hissed at Bevins with venom in her tone and her eye and the young man blanched, swallowing hard. “Where is the ramship, Wolford?”

“I can’t find her…” Wolford admitted, shaking his head. “Ma’am… I think we must have taken down her drive field, then she hit the Decatur and they both went up.” He anxiously grabbed at a section of the Tactical holographic display and pulled it into larger focus. “Yes!” he yelled. “The lifepod is still there, ma’am! We did it, we got the ramship!”

“Thank God,” Franks said softly.

“We’ll come back for the lifepod,” Lee decided. “Set a course for the last ramship: we have to take her out before she can get near the survivors.”

“Aye, Captain,” Bevins said, happy to have an order to follow to take his thoughts off her previous anger. “Setting intercept course.”

“She’s still seven minutes out,” Wolford began, then frowned as he pulled up a section of the sensor display. “Ma’am, I have another Eysselink drive signature coming in, but it’s not coming from the gate in the Belt.” His eyes grew wide. “And it’s a lot bigger… Captain, I think it’s one of our cruisers! I can’t tell which one yet.”

“What’s her heading?” Lee asked, face lighting up with the hope that they might actually get some help.

“Oh shit,” Wolford blurted, “she’s heading straight for the ramship!” He looked from the display to Captain Lee. “She’s coming up broadside on her… only two minutes from field collision!”

“Okay, this is workable,” Lee said, leaning forward, her hands clasped in concentration. “When they have the field intersect, both their fields will be down; we’ll fire a Shipbuster at the ramship…”

“Hold on!” Wolford exclaimed. “There’s something…” He looked back up at Lee. “Captain, the ramship’s drive field just went down! I think that cruiser used a gravimetic emitter on her!”

On the main screen, Franks could see the avatar representing the Republic cruiser, its drive field still intact, move right through the disabled ramship, ripping it into component atoms in its wake.

“I guess,” Franks said as a smile passed over his face, “we have to tell Commander Infante she might not be the only engineer in the Fleet to have that idea after all.”

“The cruiser is dropping out of Eysselink drive,” Wolford said.

“Deactivate our drive field, Mr. Bevins,” Lee said. “Lt. Reno,” she addressed the Communications officer, “try to raise the cruiser, find out who we’re dealing with and let them know about the survivors-we can use the help retrieving the shuttles and lifepods.”

“They’re already contacting us, ma’am,” Reno told her. He looked at Franks. “But Lieutenant… I think it’s for you.”

Franks glanced at him, confused, but then looked at the main screen. Projected there was a full body hologram of Jason McKay, looking-Franks thought-very iconic in his Intell blacks, hands clasped behind his back.

“Franks?” he said, one eyebrow raising in surprise. “What the hell are you doing out here?”

“Saving the planet at least once, sir,” acting Captain Lee interjected and Franks felt a surge of gratitude. “Not to mention all our lives.”

“There’ve been a few changes since you left, sir,” Franks spoke up, trying not to be intimidated. “Oh, by the way, you’re a General now.”

“Well hell,” McKay snorted. “I should have stayed away longer… they woulda’ made me President.”

“Oh no, sir,” Franks shook his head vigorously. “I think you came back just in time…”

Chapter Forty-One

Ari Shamir ran with breakneck speed fueled by desperation, his legs pumping as he ignored the burning in his lungs and the dragging weight of his armor and weapon. Another APC flew into the air not fifty meters from him, throwing him down to one knee as the ground quaked and a mushroom of dirt and superheated gas climbed into the sky. Clouds of burning metal hung in the air and screams rang in his ears, some coming over the cacophonous roar of the communications channels, some from men and women who had pulled off their helmets in the throes of panic or agony.

Most of the troops had heeded the warnings from Colonel Stark and General Kage and had abandoned their vehicles in time, but here and there were bodies and parts of bodies in scorched black armor. Even those not touched by the constant fall of the tungsten thunderbolts from orbit were huddled in the tall grass, frozen with shock, trying to shut out the explosions and the screaming.

When Ari came to an intact vehicle, he leaped onto it, ignoring the shouted warnings of the CeeGee troopers around him, and dropped down through the open roof hatches to grab armfuls of shoulder-fired missile launchers from a rack in the back wall. With a heave that strained his back muscles, he threw the launchers out into the grass, then climbed out behind them, kicking free of the vehicle and taking the fall in a shoulder roll.

Scooping up the anti-armor weapons, he jogged as fast as he could with the heavy load into the tall grass where the vehicle’s crew was lying on their bellies, hands covering their helmeted heads. Coming up on the designated squad leader-he could tell by the chevrons on the back of the man’s helmet-he dumped the launchers right in front of his face, startling the man into a crouch. Ari hesitated as he read the name tape across the man’s breastplate and saw that it was Lieutenant Matienzo.

“Distribute these to your squad,” Ari told him, using the public-address speakers on the outside of his helmet, not trusting the comm channels that were still jammed by panicked reports from inexperienced officers. “Get them up and get them arrayed there,” he pointed down the road, where he could see several dozen other troopers getting into positions, led by General Kage and Captain Odawale. “If we don’t get into a defensive position, the enemy will run right over us!”

“But, but…” Matienzo stuttered, eyes flicking back and forth.

A tungsten rod sliced into the APC behind them and the explosion slammed Ari into the ground beside the CeeGee trooper, the overpressure flattening the dozen troopers into the hard-packed ground and stealing the breath from their lungs. Ari came up first, gritting his teeth and forcing his brain to work as he got his legs underneath him and pushed himself to his feet.

“For fuck’s sake, you stupid shits!” He screamed at them, his PA speakers turned up to their maximum. “Do you want to stay here by the vehicles and die like bugs? Get your asses out there and die fighting!”

Matienzo grabbed his rifle from where it had fallen and used the buttstock to lever himself to his feet. His eyes were wild through the slit of his faceplate as he looked at Ari, then turned back to face his squad. “Get up, Goddamn you!” he bellowed, half in anger and half in fear. “Grab the missile launchers and move!”

Ari nodded in satisfaction and moved on to the next intact vehicle…

Shannon crouched in the middle of the meadow, ignoring the instincts that screamed at her to take cover, trying to ignore the chaos and panic all around her as she concentrated on the voice coming over her helmet headphones.

“…was Dominguez!” President O’Keefe was telling her. “We’ve just seen the security feed from the Control Center!”

“How the hell did he do it?” she demanded. “I thought we had security measures in place to prevent this?”

“He used them against us, Colonel,” General Rietveld said bitterly. “He didn’t take control of the weapons from the center; instead, he accessed the targeting system remotely, then manually inputted a virus at the center’s physical mainframe that shut out any remote access from that point on.” He paused, and she could hear him taking a breath to try to control his temper. “Then he destroyed the whole place with orbital weapons.”

“Well, where is he now?” Shannon asked. “We have to get his tablet or whatever he’s using for remote access… if we get it, he’ll be shut out just like us.”

“He took his flyer west, then it dropped out of sight near the Canadian border…” Rietveld began.

“Shannon,” O’Keefe interrupted, “he went to Valerie’s lake house in Minnesota! There’s nothing else out there! She’s there, Shannon, with Natalia! Agent Klesko took her there… and he’s not answering his ‘link! Neither is Valerie! He’s got them, Shannon!”

“Oh, Christ…” Shannon moaned, collapsing back to a seated position. “It makes sense… they’re his hostages. He knows we can’t just put a missile strike into wherever he’s hold up now.”

“And if we try to send a team in to free her,” O’Keefe said in a voice filled with rage and impotence, “he can blow them out of the sky or take out any ground vehicle that gets close.”

“We’ll get her back, sir,” Shannon assured the President. We have to, she thought. If we don’t get control of the defense satellites, the biomechs will slice right through us. “We need some sort of fire support though… what about orbital gunships?”

“We can try,” Rietveld said a bit doubtfully. “But Dominguez controls the ground-based laser launch sites too… if he sees them coming, he can shoot them out of space with the lasers. Same thing for missiles, if the ships sit back and launch them from out of laser range. We could try Gauss cannons, but I doubt we can target them accurately enough for fire support from that far out.”

“Dammit, there’s gotta be something out there that can help us!” Shannon said in frustration, flinching as yet another APC was destroyed by an orbital strike.

“Perhaps there is,” another voice came on her communications link, identified on her heads-up display as Fleet Captain Di Ndinge. “Colonel Stark, I have a priority transmission waiting… someone would like to speak with you.”

When the voice came over her helmet speakers, it hit Shannon like a wave, washing away a fraction of the constant tension that had been resting between her shoulders for months and bringing a smile to her lips despite the circumstances.

“Hi, honey,” Jason McKay said, “I’m home.”

* * *

Joyce Minishimi clenched her hands on her restraint straps and tried not to fidget as the cramped lifepod jerked and shifted in the grasp of the hangar bay’s cargo arm. She’d never been claustrophobic before, but spending the last few hours crammed into one of the tiny Engineering Level lifepods with the corpse of a young Lieutenant. He’d still been breathing when she’d found him in a corner of the Engineering Bay, and she’d dragged him along to the lifepod, but he’d passed away only an hour after she evacuated the ship.

He was barely twenty-five and she couldn’t even remember his name, but she’d never forget his face. She’d stared at it or tried not to for the last three hours, or watched drops of his blood orbiting around the small space, dreading the inevitable moment when they would splash into her. When she’d been pulled on board and the ship had gone back into one g acceleration, they’d spattered on the floor and seats like red rain. She’d endured it, telling herself over and over that this was surely not worse than nearly being killed by a knife to the chest… but now, when she was so close to being free of her prison, she felt a panic attack barreling down on her and she wasn’t sure if she could hold it back this time.

Then the lifepod came to a shuddering halt and a telescoping airlock slid out to attach itself to the hatch with a deep, metallic tone. The atmosphere light on the interior control panel went green and Minishimi fairly lunged out of her seat to slam her palm into the panel that opened the hatch. Her hands shook as the hatch slid aside with painful slowness, teasing her with a glimpse of light and a taste of fresh air, until finally she pushed through the narrow gap, feeling the door scrape painfully against her lower back, squeezing her eyes shut against the pain and panic.

Then someone took her hand and pulled her gently through the opening hatch, drawing her into a powerful hug. She sobbed quietly for a moment into a uniformed shoulder before she pulled herself back to control with deep, shuddering breaths. When she drew back, she realized that the one holding her was Commander Gianeto, and that he was crying as well.

“Sorry, ma’am,” he said, letting her step back as he wiped at his eyes. “I thought you were dead.”

“I was under that impression myself, Commander,” she laughed a bit maniacally, dragging sleeves across her face. “What the hell ship are we on board, anyway?”

“It’s the Bradley, ma’am,” he told her. “But, ma’am… the Sheridan‘s back!” His face broke into a smile. “She just showed up during the battle! Colonel McKay sent you a message before the ship went back into the drive field and headed for Earth orbit…”

“It’s actually General McKay now,” a voice said from behind them. Minishimi turned and saw a young-looking, redheaded Intelligence officer stepping into the hangar bay’s utility lock with them, trailed by a pair of medical techs. “Captain, I’m Lieutenant Drew Franks; I’m aid to General McKay and Colonel Stark-yeah, she got promoted too, while you were gone.”

“Damn,” Minishimi said mildly, “I’m going to have to salute him now.”

“Do you need medical attention, Captain?” Franks asked her, eyeing the bloodstains on her clothes.

“No, Lieutenant,” she assured him. “I’m fine.” She caught the attention of the med techs. “There’s the body of an engineering officer in the lifepod,” she told them, gesturing back through the lock. “You should see to him.”

The med techs nodded and moved past her, heading through the airlock back to the lifepod.

“Ma’am,” Franks went on, “we’ve got a situation on Earth… it’s complicated and I’ll explain it later, but basically, the Sheridan had to head for Earth orbit, so it’s going to be up to the Brad to take care of the rest of the Protectorate ships.” Franks hesitated, looking around to make sure there were no crewmembers nearby. “Captain Perez is dead… that’s also complicated but he was out of his harness during a field collision and broke his neck. Commander Lee, his XO, has no combat experience before today. General McKay knows you’ve been through a lot, but if you can, he’d feel more comfortable with you in the command chair.”

Minishimi closed her eyes and took a deep breath, leaning against Gianeto in utter exhaustion for a moment. A few hours ago, she’d been resigned to her own death, at peace with it. Unexpectedly surviving had been ten times as stressful as the acceptance of death, paradoxically. She dug down deep within herself, imagining the last mile of the Hokkaido marathon, then straightened and looked Franks in the eye.

“Do I have time to take a shower?”

* * *

Admiral Patel, Jason McKay reflected, looked like hell.

“Wait outside,” McKay told the security guard as he stepped into the Admiral’s cabin, which had become his prison since they’d emerged from g-sleep a few hours ago. The guard nodded and stepped back into the corridor, allowing the door to slide shut.

Patel didn’t even look at him as he entered the room; he just sat motionless on the edge of his bunk, staring at the photo on the wall across from him. It was a hologram of the Admiral with his teenage son, who was a freshman at the Fleet Academy. The Admiral’s first marriage had fallen apart for the predictable reasons of being a starship captain, but he’d maintained a close relationship with his son. McKay had met him once, when the boy was just a freshman in High School.

The Arvid Patel in that photo looked a million years younger than the man sitting on the bunk. His uniform jacket was unfastened, his face grey and his eyes sunken and lifeless, and there was a tremor in his lip: he looked as if he’d been weeping and as if he might start again at any moment.

“Admiral,” McKay said quietly. Patel didn’t answer, didn’t move.

McKay grabbed the Admiral’s desk chair, disengaging its magnets and moving it in front of the bunk, then reengaging them and sitting down across from Patel.

“Arvid,” he said, putting a hand on the man’s shoulder.

The Admiral seemed to wake up from his stupor then, and his eyes narrowed.

“‘Arvid?’” he repeated hoarsely, a little shocked.

McKay shrugged, grinning lopsidedly. “Sorry, just trying it on for size… I got promoted to General while we were gone.”

“Of course you did,” Patel muttered with a humorless chuckle. “You know, for a while there, Jason, I hated you. I loathed myself for shunting the responsibility of command onto you there on Pallas, and since you can’t hate yourself for very long and still stay sane, I started resenting you instead. I especially resented you for the way everything kept going your way… even though that meant we won the war and a saved millions of innocent people.” He shook his head. “It was crazy, and I knew it; but after the war when you kept insisting we search for Antonov, I thought you were a huge pain in the ass. I only started to warm to you… after I returned from that mission to Aphrodite.”

He paused to let that sink in and McKay’s eyes went wide. “That’s right, Jason. I don’t even know if we were really friends… or if the fucking Russians put the idea in my head. I don’t know if my marriage fell apart because I was a shitty husband, or because the conditioning they gave me made me a shitty husband.” He let his head sag, his hands massaging the back of his neck.

“Arvid,” McKay said, squeezing the man’s shoulder, “we will be able to undo what they did to you. Everything we will be back to the way it was.”

“You can’t be serious,” Patel murmured, almost too faintly to be heard, face toward the floor. “Nothing will ever be the way it was. I was the senior officer in the Fleet, McKay. They’ll never trust me to hold that position, not now.”

“Maybe not,” McKay admitted. “I promise you that will do my best to make sure they do, and I have quite a bit of pull with the President, but maybe not. But I’ll give you my word: if you can’t keep your current position, I will do my damnedest to make sure you get whatever else you want besides that. The Senate has to approve the Fleet Admiral, but you can still captain a starship, if that’s what you want. Or you can finish your doctorate and get a teaching position at the Academy… hell, you can run the Academy, if you like. The point is, your life is not over.”

Patel took a deep, shuddering breath and nodded, straightening up. “You’re right. God knows, now’s not the best time for self-pity, anyway.” He looked up, looking McKay in the eye for the first time since he’d come in the room, something of the old Arvid Patel coming into their glint. “What are you really doing here? I know you don’t have time to sit here and listen to me bitch about my problems.”

“Things are pretty fucked up at home,” McKay told him, leaning back in his chair. “Worse than we could have imagined.” He quickly laid out the situation for Patel, finishing with Dominguez holding Valerie O’Keefe hostage.

“Bloody hell,” Patel swore softly, a hint of his London accent coming through-it was usually undetectable. “What are we going to do?”

“I’m going to be leaving the ship,” McKay told him. “Commander Nunez is a good officer, but he doesn’t have much combat experience. He wants you on the bridge with him.”

Patel’s eyebrow arched. “He’d trust me on the bridge?”

“There’ll be an armed security guard on the bridge with you,” McKay told him frankly. “If you do anything… hinky, he’ll stun you and throw you in a g-sleep tank. But he wants you there.” McKay grinned. “You can jostle his elbow the way I did yours. If you agree.”

“It will be very strange,” Patel said, shaking his head. “Very awkward. But as I said, this isn’t a time to be feeling sorry for myself.”

“Good,” McKay said, standing. “I’ll let him know before I go gear up.” He hesitated by the door. “Good luck, Arvid.”

Patel stood, extending a hand. McKay took it and the two men shook hands warmly.

“You will need the luck, I think,” the Admiral said. “As a General, shouldn’t you be leaving this sort of thing to your junior officers?”

McKay shrugged. “I’ve always been a lead-from-the-front kind of guy.”

“Really?” Patel barked a laugh. “I never noticed…”

Chapter Forty-Two

“Fire!” Ari swatted the CeeGee trooper on the shoulder and ducked aside.

The woman-she was technically a 2 Lieutenant, as she had just graduated the Officers Candidate School-touched the trigger on the missile launcher and the projectile kicked free of the front of the launcher with a hiss of coldgas, then fishtailed as the main motor lit. It streaked across the 500 meters of open field in less than a second and slammed into one of the lead APC’s in the Protectorate convoy, striking it just beneath the forward gun turret. Three more smoke trails joined it within a heartbeat of each other and the lead rank in the column disappeared in a huge fireball of hyperexplosives that stretched from one edge of the bridge to the other, lighting up the night.

The short bridge forded a dry ditch where a shallow stream used to run, and the slope was too sleep for even the Marine APCs to take it without flipping over. Ari sprinted forward to the front of the defensive perimeter, taking a knee and bringing his carbine to his shoulder as the line of vehicles crawled to a halt barely 200 meters away. From so close, he could smell the chemical tang of the burning fuel cells and hear the loud, random bangs as ammunition cooked off or tires exploded. Billows of black smoke were already beginning to climb into the evening sky, sending a haze across the moon.

Roza moved quickly from where she had been giving instructions to a small team of missile-launcher-equipped soldiers to crouch next to him. In the gathering darkness, he could only tell it was her from the IFF signal in his helmet’s Heads-Up Display.

“They will either have to try to go off-road,” she said, a hand resting on his shoulder, “and try to find another crossing, or send troops out on foot to clear the wreckage.”

“Targets of opportunity, independent fire,” Ari intoned to the Colonial Guard troops around him. “Only use your grenades if they cluster together.” He turned back to the missile-launcher team. “If they try to turn and go off-road, be ready to hit them at the choke points.”

Roza punched him in the arm lightly. “I already told them that,” she admonished him. He grinned, though she couldn’t see it through his helmet. Even in this huge clusterfuck, with imminent death staring him in the face, he was glad he was with her.

Then he heard turbines whining shrilly as the APCs in the rank behind the burning wreckage began to power back up… and slam directly into the burning hulks blocking the road.

“Oh, shit,” Ari muttered.

The first impact didn’t move the wreckage more than a few centimeters, so the vehicles backed up and rammed them again, the squeal of tearing metal and the grinding of the charred wheel rims against the pavement echoing down into the gulch and across the fields.

“Missile team up!” Roza was already yelling, waving them forward. “Get ready to hit the next row of vehicles as they come through!”

The first APCs to batter through the flaming hulks were on fire themselves, their grey metal hulls charred black and smoking, and Ari knew that the heat inside them had to be unbearable… for a human. The first group through stalled for a moment, and Ari thought the heat might have caused the wheels to seize up; but then the line of APCs behind them pushed hard and shoved them off to the side, two of the armored vehicles actually flipping over the side of the bridge to crash into the ditch ten meters below;

“Now!” Ari and Roza shouted together as the third lines of armored vehicles emerged from the line of wreckage, the firelight throwing menacing shadows off their dull grey surfaces.

The missile team let loose with another barrage and a half-dozen projectiles streaked out to strike the vehicles coming through the gap in the line. Six fireballs merged into one and the end of the bridge was consumed in an inferno with a wash of heat that Ari could feel through his armor even 200 yards away.

“I think that did it!” Roza said over their private comm channel. “They can’t just ram through that!”

“No,” Ari agreed grimly. “Now’s when the fun starts.”

The thermal lenses in his helmet were useless because of the flames, but by the light of the fire, he could see the armored figures clambering out of the hatches of the foremost vehicles in the jammed up convoy while the APCs behind them spread out on either side of the bridge. He knew what was coming next.

“Everyone get down!” He yelled over the general comm channel. “Get to cover!”

Taking his own advice, Ari flattened himself behind a berm that had formed where a low dividing wall had once stood, just as a rank of the Protectorate vehicles opened up with their autocannon. All around, the ground began to erupt as explosive shells ripped into the midst of them, targeted at the spots from which the missiles had been fired. Most of the team had moved, but Ari saw one trooper flying backwards in a rain of dirt and sod.

“Heads up!” He heard Roza’s voice on the net as the incoming fire began to slack off. “They’re coming up the ditch!”

Ari lunged up over the berm, bracing his carbine on the hard dirt, linking the weapon’s optics with his helmet’s targeting system. The Protectorate troops were barely visible, their grey armor dampening their thermal and IR signature, but the helmet’s targeting computer enhanced the picture using their movements and Ari focused on the closest of them, a shadowy figure clambering up the side of the ditch. A steady press on the trigger sent a three-round burst of 8mm slugs screaming from the carbine’s barrel and punching into the biomech’s head, sending it sprawling back into the dry creek bed. He shifted aim to the one just behind it and took it down as well, then took a moment to roll over to the other side of the berm, vacating the spot just as a cannon round hit not a meter from where he’d been.

Ari ignored the explosion and the clods of dirt that spattered against his side and picked out his next target…

“There are not enough of us,” General Kage told Shannon Stark over the command channel, not looking up from the barrel of his rifle as he put another round downrange, blowing the head off of an armored biomech. “They will overrun us when we run low on ammunition.”

He didn’t flinch as a cannon round struck near their position and a CeeGee trooper fell back, writhing and clutching at his side, where shards of shrapnel had penetrated his armor. “We must pull back and regroup at a more advantageous spot.”

“There is no more advantageous spot,” Shannon reminded him, squeezing off a burst from her carbine. “If we seek hardened cover, Dominguez will drop kinetic weapons on us and kill us even faster.”

“Then we will be forced to retreat and strike at them from the roadsides after they clear the bridge,” Kage said. “Or we will die where we stand. We can’t win without the defense satellites or air support.”

Shannon grunted, jerking back as an enemy bullet grazed the side of her helmet, setting her ears ringing and filling her vision with stars. She ducked down below the cover of the low, rock wall, hearing bullets punch into it from the other side. Cursing softly, she shook her head to clear it, then checked the time on her helmet display.

“We have to hold out a bit longer,” she told Kage, climbing back to a knee and bringing her weapon to her shoulder again. “I’m hoping for some good news on both fronts.”

“I recall one of your American sayings,” Kage growled. “Hope in one hand and shit in the other and see which fills up first.”

“I personally am Irish, born and bred, General,” she corrected him absently, most of her brain working on ranging a rifle grenade. “But as we seem to have a double-handful of shit right now,” she went on, launching the grenade into a clump of biomech troops coming over the bank of the dried-up stream, “we really don’t have much to lose by hoping.”

* * *

“Prepare to drop the drive field,” Nunez said, trying to make his voice sound calm and self-assured… but Patel noticed that his eyes kept darting back toward the main viewscreen, where the image of Earth continued to get larger and closer. “Commander Pirelli, we’re only going to have one shot at this before they target us with the lasers, so make it count.”

“You won’t be able to access the feed from the defense satellites,” Patel reminded her, feeling like he was backseat driving sitting in the acceleration couch behind the command station. “But you might try the news net sats. Their resolution is nearly as good.”

“I’ll cross-reference Colonel Stark’s comm signal,” Pirelli said, nodding sharply, “and drop the shots across the bridge from their position.” Her eyes flickered towards the countdown on her station’s display. “Ten seconds till we’re in range.”

“Lt. Sweeny,” Nunez said, “drop the field.”

Sweeny’s hand played over the control projection and the one g deceleration ceased abruptly, leaving them all in zero gravity. “Commander Pirelli, do you have a target lock?”

“Give me a few seconds, sir,” she said in a distracted voice, drawing a line from her sensor projection to the glowing avatar of a news net satellite, then tracing another from the satellite to the glowing signal from Shannon Stark’s communications ‘link.

I’ll give you all the time you want, Patel thought but didn’t say, but the Protectorates might not be so patient. But that was something the ship’s Captain would say, he reflected bitterly, and that was no longer his job.

Patel could see Nunez starting to fidget as nearly a minute passed, but then a satellite image came up on the Tactical display, showing a thermal/infrared rendering of the battlefield far below them on the darkened circle of a sundown Western hemisphere. Dim yellow-green humanoid shapes scurried here and there, and swarmed across the black gap of the dry creek bed, and here and there flares of white and red erupted where chemical hyperexplosives unleashed their fury. But what shown brighter were the ruddy glowing turbines inside the appropriated Marine armored vehicles that the Protectorates were using, arrayed in a semicircle on the other side of the bridge.

“Targeting the vehicles closest to the bridge and working outward,” Pirelli announced clinically, tracing the intended arc of fire across the image projected in front of her. “Firing Gauss cannons… now.”

Patel started to say something to Nunez, but forced himself to wait, and just as he thought he would have to step on the man’s toes…

“Mandel,” Nunez said to the Communications officer as they all felt the far-away jolts of the electromagnetic coilguns opening up. “Tell McKay it’s time to launch.”

“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,” Jason McKay muttered as the assault lander kicked free of the Sheridan‘s hangar bay with the sharp bang of maneuvering thrusters.

“Not too crazy about the idea of closing the wall up with our English dead,” Jock commented drily from the row of seats behind him. More loud, abrupt bangs echoed through the packed rows of the lander as the maneuvering rockets shifted their attitude, swinging the drive bells parallel to the course of the Sheridan.

“You know your Shakespeare, Jock,” McKay said, raising an eyebrow in slight surprise as he glanced back at the NCO.

The big, blond Aussie looked even bulkier than usual in the full battle armor and HALO parachute rig they all wore, his battle rattle overflowing the edges of his acceleration couch and the safety harness straps pulled to their maximum extension. “Not too many buggers in the military that don’t know Henry V,” he said, shrugging it off.

“Don’t let him fool you, sir,” Vinnie said with a snorting laugh. “Jock was lead in a high school production of Henry V that got picked up by Republic HoloNet Entertainment’s Asia Talent Search. He was a minor celebrity in Sydney for weeks.”

“Oh my God,” Sergeant Watanabe spoke up from the seat on the other side of Jock Mahoney, his normally morose face breaking into a smile. “I saw that broadcast! That was you?”

“Hold onto your butts, ladies and gentlemen,” Commander Villanueva’s voice sounded over the speakers from the cockpit. “We’re going in.”

“The wardrobe girl was a smokin’ hot Sheila,” Jock muttered, half to himself.

Then the lander’s drive ignited and the two dozen Special Ops and Marine troops were pushed back into their seats as it moved from behind the shelter of the monolithic star cruiser and headed for the atmosphere below.

* * *

The Protectorate gunners were beginning to get the range, walking round after round in towards the CeeGee positions, and Shannon was about to admit to General Kage that he had been right and they were going to have to pull back, when it seemed like God Himself reached down and smote the enemy. Claps of thunder sounded as sonic booms echoed through the sky and trails of ionized vapor connected the heavens and the Earth for an eyeblink. The ground erupted across the road bridge, liberated kinetic energy turning the very air into a weapon as superheated gas turned to plasma and bathed the Protectorate lines in incandescent fire.

Shannon knew she should be hugging the ground, but she couldn’t look away from the apocalyptic vision that stretched out before them, lighting up the night with a glow brighter than day. If the attack by the orbital defense satellites had been the terrifying hand of an angry deity, this was the very end of the world by comparison. She counted at least three dozen of the groundcar-sized projectiles fall, each taking out a handful of enemy vehicles in a splash of plasma and a mushroom cloud with an impact that shook and split the very earth beneath them. Men and women and biomech troopers lay helpless, unable to walk on the trembling ground.

And then it ceased as abruptly as it had begun, leaving a preternatural silence that let Shannon hear the crackle of the flames and the pop-crack-boom of ammunition cooking off in the APCs that had been at the edge of the strikes and had only been set afire rather than being vaporized outright. An instinctive thought that didn’t reach her conscious mind made her turn and she gasped involuntarily at what she saw.

Behind them, rising into the sky from a spot over five hundred kilometers away to the southeast, a crackling thread of ionized atmosphere marked the invisible passage of an incredibly powerful laser beam, fed by a dedicated fusion reactor. Designed to launch cargo capsules into orbit, it doubled as a defense system against orbital attack… and now it was being used against them by their enemies.

“They have done what they can,” Kage said, eyeing the line of destroyed enemy vehicles… at least a third had been destroyed in the attack. “Now, the rest is up to us.”

“Ari, Tom,” Shannon broadcast on her team’s net. “Take them over the top. This is all the advantage we’re going to get… let’s take it.”

She picked up her carbine from where it had fallen and checked its load, focusing on the enemy… but she couldn’t help a glance up into the night sky and a hope that the Sheridan was still there.

* * *

Admiral Patel sighed with relief, settling back into his acceleration couch as the Sheridan headed away from Earth at one gravity. It had been way too close.

“Damage report,” Nunez said, his tone normal but sweat beading on his forehead.

“Captain Nunez,” Commander Devlin’s voice came over the bridge speakers, “we took quite a hit before the drive field came up. “Can’t tell without a survey flight, but we lost quite a bit of armor off the nose and there may be some damage to the laser emitters we’ve been using for gravimetic sensors. The sensors are still working, but I’m getting some feedback in the circuits. I don’t know how long they’ll hold out.”

“Stay on top of it, Commander,” Nunez said. “We don’t have time for repairs right now… there are still dozens of Protectorate ships heading this way.”

“Aye, sir,” the man acknowledged.

“Any word on the lander?” Patel asked quietly. Nunez looked from him to Pirelli.

She shook her head. “They entered the atmosphere before the laser fired,” she told them, “but then I lost it and we’re too far away now.”

“The battle down there is out of our hands now,” Nunez said, crossing himself instinctively. “Our battle is out here. Helm, set course for the nearest formation of Protectorate ships.”

“Aye, sir,” Lt. Ghent replied, linking his board to the Tactical sensors.

“Sir…” Pirelli began hesitantly, frowning at her display. “We’re at pretty extreme range for the sensors we’ve rigged up, but I think I’m detecting an Eysselink drive field coming from the direction of the wormhole.”

“Damn,” Nunez muttered, shaking his head. “More of those ramships?”

“No, sir,” Pirelli said, her eyes widening. “Whatever this is, it’s much, much larger than that…”

Chapter Forty-Three

Valerie cradled Natalia in her arms, feeling the jerking sobs slowing, feeling the wetness of her daughter’s panicked tears soaking her blouse over her left shoulder. There were dirt stains on her skirt from sitting on the floor and she had to fight an inane impulse to brush at them. Instead, she drew her knees up and huddled in the corner of the cabin’s kitchen, trying not to stare. But there was so much to stare at…

There was, to start with, Vice President Xavier Dominguez. She’d known the man for years, from before her father ran for President; he’d even been to their cabin a few times, been fishing with Glen in the lake. Now… now he was like a different person. His eyes were wide and red, like he was on something, and his skin was pale and clammy. He looked wired and terrified and giddy all at the same time, and it was scaring the hell out of her. He sat in a chair at the kitchen table, foot tapping out a haphazard rhythm on the wooden floor, eyes glued to the large tablet resting on the table in front of him, showing the tactical display from the orbital defense satellites.

Dominguez had flown into a rage when the Sheridan had shown up and launched an attack on the biomech ground force, screaming curses as he tried to target the ground-based lasers in an attempt to destroy the ship. He’d pounded the table in frustration when she’d put up her drive field before the laser did any real damage, but now he was back to his keyed-up murmuring, ignoring everything else around him, including Natalia’s panicked reaction to his violent outburst.

Then there were the half dozen mercenaries he’d brought with him. They were all cut from the same mold: hard-faced, hard-eyed men and women in nondescript grey fatigues and body armor, submachine guns strapped across their chests and sidearms at their hips. They were stationed in and out of the cabin, ever watchful yet ignoring her and her daughter except to make sure that neither of them made a false move.

And of course, there were the platoon of biomechs that had flown in on a tilt-rotor transport just after the mercenaries had seized the cabin. They were all outside, but she could see them through the bay windows, patrolling robotically along the perimeter of the property, three of them stationed around the dock, barely visible in the glow of the exterior floodlights. Thankfully, their helmets hid their dead, black shark’s eyes, but there was no mistaking their inhuman bulk or the graceless, mechanical precision of their movements. One of the mercenaries was their controller, she had deduced: a plain-faced blond woman who wore a backpack with a small transmission dish affixed to it, a control pad strapped to her left forearm.

But the one thing she was trying the hardest not to stare at was Charlie Klesko’s body. He’d been killed by the mercenaries the minute they’d stepped out behind Dominguez, shot on the porch outside the back door of the cabin, and they’d left his body where it fell. The back door was clear transplas and through it she could see his sightless eyes staring at her, the blood pool beginning to dry under his body. Charlie had been a friend…

She forced those thoughts down, not wanting to give them the satisfaction of seeing her cry. It was bad enough that they thought of her as helpless, a hostage. A surge of anger went through her, but she pushed that down as well. She couldn’t afford to give into rage any more than grief. She had to think of Natalia.

She pulled the three-year-old away from her shoulder and looked her in the eye. Natalia looked just like the pictures she’d seen of her mother as a little girl, except that her hair was blond like her father’s. Right now, her cheeks were streaked with tears, her face red from crying, her lower lip quivering.

“It’ll be all right, Natalia,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm and comforting. “Everything’s going to be fine. No one is going to hurt you.”

She thought she’d been speaking softly, but apparently Dominguez heard her.

“Of course no one is going to hurt you,” he said, his usual, smooth, politician’s tone contrasting sharply with his manic expression. His eyes flickered back and forth between them and the display from his tablet as he spoke. “You’re not a threat to us, and after this is all over, your father won’t be either. When we’re finished, we’ll leave you two here.” He attempted a smile, which was grotesque enough that Natalia buried her face in Val’s shoulder once again. “We’re not monsters, after all.”

“Xavier…” She spoke hesitantly, afraid of what reaction she might get. “Do you remember what you used to be like, before?”

“What do you mean, Val?” He appeared confused. “I’ve always been like this.”

She didn’t say anything else, just let her head rest against the wall. The man was beyond brainwashed: he was hopelessly insane. There would be no talking her way out of this. She had to keep her eyes open for opportunity and hope that somewhere out there, someone was coming to help.

* * *

“Two minutes,” Esmeralda Villanueva announced from the cockpit, not glancing back, her eyes glued to her sensors. The lander was supposed to be nearly undetectable by radar or lidar, but the exhaust would still show up on thermal, and none of them wanted to think about what a kinetic kill weapon from one of the defense satellites would do to the aircraft.

“Get into jump positions,” Vinnie ordered, raising from his seat and signaling for everyone to move to the rear ramp.

McKay hit the quick release on his safety harness and waddled to the rear of the aircraft, burdened by nearly 80 kilos of armor, weapons and HALO gear, joining a double line of two dozen men and women hand-picked from the surviving Marine and Special Ops troops on the Sheridan for this mission. Jock was at the front of the right hand line, Sgt. Watanabe on the front of the one on the left.

McKay moved to the rear of the left hand line, glancing around expecting to see Vinnie at the same position on the right… but Vinnie had moved up to the cockpit. McKay saw him thump Cal Orton, the co-pilot, on the shoulder, then lean over to touch helmets with Esme, sharing a private word that no one else could overhear. The sight made McKay feel disconnected, somehow, and apart from the others; he felt a surge of nostalgia for the days when he’d first been a First Lieutenant and all his problems had seemed simpler, if no less insurmountable.

Vinnie moved back down the right side of the rows of seats, getting into position just before Esme warned “Thirty seconds!” McKay might have imagined it, but he thought something caught in her throat as she said it.

“Opening the ramp,” Jock announced on the general comm channel.

A mechanical hum filled the aircraft as the ramp slowly began to open, letting in a whistling blast of bone-chillingly cold and dangerously thin air. McKay barely heard the soft click in his helmet as it transitioned from filtering outside air to feeding him a supply of oxygen from his backpack’s small internal tank.

“You’re seven klicks up and 80 out,” Esme reported. “This is as close as I can get before he’ll probably think I’m a threat and start dropping nasty big darts on me. I’ll circle around and land a hundred klicks out and wait for your word that you’ve secured the satellite controls.”

“Go!” McKay heard Jock yell from the front of the line. “Go! Go! Go!”

The line pushed forward as one after another of the group stumbled forward and soared off the end of the ramp into the darkness. McKay felt his stomach twist as he came closer and closer to the opening and the empty black beyond it-he wasn’t crazy about heights-but he kept moving anyway, walking down the ramp until the wind took him.

Ignoring the instinctive panic of the fall, he touched a control at his left wrist and sent a current through the electrically activated polymer flaps that stretched from the harness of his HALO suit, expanding them into glider wings that sent him soaring forward as he fell. Ideally, they would be using powered flight packs for this, but there weren’t any in stock on the Sheridan; the HALO gear was standard TO&E for Marine drop troops for stealth insertion, but powered flight packs were specialized equipment too expensive for line units.

That meant that they had to jump much closer to the target than he was comfortable with, given that Dominguez had access to real-time military satellite surveillance, but there wasn’t much of a choice. Shannon was down there with a few hundred CeeGee officer cadets and their training cadre, fighting an enemy force ten times their size with no air support and no heavy weapons and that thought made his insides curdle more than jumping into nothingness four miles high.

The HUD in his helmet projected a map of the area and traced a line ahead of him, as well as the green dots that signified the rest of the jumpers. They were stacked in a staggered line, but all following the same heading.

“General McKay,” he heard Esmeralda’s voice in his earphones, on his private channel, “I didn’t want to say this in front of Vinnie, but if things get bad, call me. I’ll try to give air support. I might be able to elude the kinetic weapons for a while.”

“Commander,” he replied, ‘if things go bad, I want you to hit that cabin with a Bunker-Buster missile on my command.”

“Sir,” she protested, “that much hyperexplosives will level anything within half a mile. You, your team, the Senator and her daughter… you’ll all die.”

“We’re all going to do our damnedest to make sure that doesn’t happen,” he told her, “but in the end, we have to take out that controller. That army of biomechs could kill tens of thousands of people if they get to Capital City.”

There was a long silence when all he could hear was the air whistling by outside his helmet and he thought she wasn’t going to respond. “Yes, sir,” she finally said, her voice resigned. “I guess that’s why you’re a General.”

I’m a general, he reflected cynically and silently, because no one else wants this fucking job.

* * *

“Larry,” Joyce Minishimi said, a worried tone coming into her voice, “tell me what the hell that thing is.”

Gianeto looked up from the Tactical display with a frown, still not comfortable with the slight differences between the Bradley‘s bridge and the Decatur‘s and very uncomfortable with the huge Eysselink drive field signature heading insystem from the enemy gate in the Belt at two gravities.

The Bradley had been pursuing the next in a line of scattering Protectorate ships when the big vessel had come through and immediately activated its drive field. Now, they were on an intercept course for the thing at a sedate one gravity.

“Captain,” he said hesitantly, “as near as I can figure, that is the drive field of a Republic cruiser. One of the newest ones, too.” He shook his head. “The problem is, there are only two ships with that drive signature. One’s the Sheridan and the other got blown up a few hours ago.”

“Oh, shit,” Drew Franks muttered from behind her. Minishimi glanced back at him, trying not to glare.

“Something, Lieutenant?”

“Captain,” Franks said, a look on his face like he’d swallowed something distasteful, “we’ve found out that the Multicorps have been aiding the Protectorate unwittingly… Kevin Fourcade, a high up in Brendan Riordan’s staff, was a mole, working for Antonov.”

“Yes, Lieutenant?” she prompted, straining to keep her patience in the face of total exhaustion.

“The Multicorps have a contract to build one more Sheridan class cruiser, ma’am,” he expanded, nodding at the sensor display. “I’m just not certain who they built it for.”

“Oh, my dear Lieutenant Franks,” Minishimi said quietly, shaking her head, “you share with Jason McKay an almost uncanny intuitiveness for the worst case scenario. But try as I might, I can’t think of any other reason a Fleet cruiser other than the Sheridan would be exiting the wormhole.”

Bevins and Reno eyed the interplay uncertainly, both of them looking between her and Commander Lee, a fact that didn’t go unnoticed by Minishimi. It hadn’t been very comfortable relieving Lee of her newfound command, despite the fact that the woman had been very professional about it. She’d kept her on the bridge instead of sending her back to the auxiliary control room, counting on her to help smooth things over with the original crew. She’d sent Wolford to handle the XO position, replacing him with Gianeto, who had more experience and her unconditional trust.

“What Lt. Franks is saying,” she interpreted for Commander Lee, “is that we are most likely looking at a Sheridan-class cruiser built by our own corporations for the enemy.”

“And its current course is taking it straight for Earth orbit,” Gianeto added.

“Dominguez has control of the orbital defense satellites,” Franks pointed out. “If that thing gets by us and makes it to orbit, it can sit back and nuke our cities.”

“How the hell do we fight that, ma’am?” Lee asked, shaking her head in disbelief.

“I’m open to suggestions. Engineering?” Minishimi called down to Commander Infante, “Have you been following this?”

“Yes, Captain Minishimi,” Infante responded, her voice with that far-away tone of someone lost in thought. “I can tell you right now that the method of destabilizing the drive field using our sensor emitters isn’t going to work on them. The field on a ship that large is going to be too powerful for that. It’s certainly possible to make a gravimetic emitter powerful enough to destabilize a field on a cruiser that size, but I can’t rig it up from anything on this ship.”

“What about a field intersect?” Franks asked. “The ramships managed to take out the field on the Decatur, right?”

Infante hesitated for a long moment. “It would be close. I might be able to rig up a bypass that would keep our trunk line from exploding from the overload, but I guarantee the gravito-inertial load in a ship that large is going to cause one hell of a lot of structural damage.”

“Worse than that,” Gianeto said, “remember that those ramships were already equipped to survive multiple field intersects… what if this cruiser is rigged up the same way?”

“She’ll recover before we do,” Minishimi deduced. “And unlike the ramships, she’ll have enough firepower to blow us apart.”

“Could we launch a Shipbuster before the intersect?” Lee wondered. “Like we did with the ramships? Program it to hit right after we take out their field?”

“We could get away with that before,” Gianeto explained, “because the ramships are basically unarmed. If this is an operational cruiser, it’ll have the defenses to take out a Shipbuster.” He hissed out a frustrated breath. “We’ve never had to plan on fighting our own ships, or anything remotely like them.”

“We have the Sheridan,” Franks suggested. “If one of us did a field intersect, that would leave the enemy ship open to a strike from the other.”

“The only problem there is what I mentioned before, Lieutenant,” Infante replied. “If that ship is rigged to recover quickly from a field collision, the other cruiser may not have time to attack before the enemy’s drive field is back up. And with the damage I expect from such a collision, we’ll have basically sacrificed one of our ships for nothing.”

“Work on it, Commander Infante,” Minishimi directed. “Find me something. If you can’t, we’re going to have to put ourselves between her and Earth. She can’t launch on them without dropping her field, and she can’t do that if we’re sitting right there, waiting to take potshots at her.”

“But Captain,” Franks said, “they still control the defenses… including the ground based lasers. If we drop field to fight the ship, they can shoot us down.”

“Yes they can, Lieutenant,” she admitted, smiling sadly.

“Oh.” Realization came into his eyes. “Yes, ma’am.” Franks shrugged. He’d known what he was getting into when he’d come aboard the Brad. “Between our loved homes and the war’s desolation,” he murmured.

“What was that?” Minishimi asked, eyes narrowing as she tried to place the quote. “Is that from Homer?”

“Sort of, ma’am,” he told her. “Just something I remembered from history class.”

“If we win this fight, Lieutenant,” she told him, “you’ll be taught in those history classes.”

“And if we lose,” Gianeto cracked, “the history classes will be taught in Russian.”

Minishimi scowled at him, but it broke into a smile against her will.

“Lt. Reno,” she said, turning to the Communications Officer, “signal the Sheridan to come into comms range and drop field. We won’t be able to do this alone.”

Chapter Forty-Four

As he knelt over the dead biomech, Ariel Shamir thanked whatever gods of war that might be listening that Fourcade and Hellene D’Annique had found it convenient to outfit their clone army with standard military 8mm rifles already in the supply pipeline. Otherwise, they all might have run out of ammo by now. He slapped a fresh magazine into the well of his carbine and stuffed the rest of the salvaged mags into the empty pouches on his tactical vest. Beside him in the dry creek bed, Roza did the same from another of the dozens of biomech corpses piled there, some in charred and bloody pieces.

“Grab everything you can,” he called to the rest of the two platoons they were leading as they moved through the ditch, scavenging. “Look for grenades and heavy weapons!”

Ari glanced up and down the creek bed and beyond it, where the surviving Cee Gee cadets, their training cadre and a few of the Special Ops troops were foraging through the dead for ammunition. A glow of burning vehicles suffused the air above them, while the ditch itself was cloaked in shadows and darkness, growing a pale green in the infrared filters in his helmet visor.

“Ari,” he heard Colonel Stark’s voice in his earphones. “Hurry them up down there. Their vehicles are reforming and I think they’re getting ready to circle around and make another push for the bridge… or move off to find another crossing. We’re going to make sure it’s the former.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied. “A ‘V’ centered on the bridge?”

“More or less,” she agreed. “See if we can make a bit more use of natural cover this time, since we aren’t running for our lives at the moment.”

“Got it, Colonel.” He expected to chuckle at the comment, but found he couldn’t. Too many of the Colonial Guard officer candidates that he himself had helped to train were lying dead on the bloody, smoking ground up there. Instead, he walked over to Roza, squeezing her arm and touching helmets. “I love you,” he told her. Through her visor, he could see her eyes glancing his way with a bit of worry.

“I love you, too, kedves,” she said. “Is it bad?”

“The enemy is swinging around the wreckage and trying to come back in and take this bridge,” he replied. “They’ll have to dismount and push us out of here before they can clear it.”

“And there’ll be no more fire support,” she said with resignation in her voice.

Ari didn’t answer: there was no need. Instead, he keyed his helmet radio, tuned to the company net. “Wrap it up, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “The day’s not over yet.”

Tom Crossman fought to control his breathing as he jogged the game trail that led over the gently rolling hills on the other side of the dry creek bed. He hadn’t slept more than an hour in days, his body’s resources were being tapped by the medical nanotech still repairing his wounds from within and he was buzzing on stimulants. His heart felt as if it were about to beat out of his chest and he seemed to be constantly on the verge of hyperventilating, but he pushed on, ignoring it all, ignoring the weight of the load he was carrying in his backpack and concentrating on trying to make sense of the input from the thermal and infrared lenses in his helmet in the pitch blackness.

The trail was closed in by young trees but as it cleared the next hill, it opened out onto an old secondary road that exited off the main highway. The road was crumbling and overgrown, but it was wide and clear enough for even the big cargo haulers, much less the APCs, which could have gone cross-country at need. That was why Tom and his squad were there.

“Where are their scouts, Colonel?” he radioed to Shannon Stark as he crouched in the trees beside the old road. He could hear Aaron Diehl slowly moving into place beside him and could see the rest of the squad’s avatars on his HUD as they took up positions on both sides of the road.

“They’re heading your way, Tom,” she warned him. “Two APCs. You’ve got maybe two minutes.”

“Roger that, ma’am.” He switched two Sgt. Diehl’s channel. “Sam, we have two enemy vehicles inbound, ETA two minutes. Take Manning and the last two missile launchers and stop them.”

“Got it, boss,” Diehl said, sprinting across the road and slapping Manning on the arm. The two of them grabbed a pair of anti-armor launchers from the backpack of one of the other Special Ops troops then headed down the road toward the intersection.

“Griffin!” Tom snapped at another of the newly-graduated operators. “Get over here and grab these charges from my backpack! We got ourselves a road to blow up!”

Tanya Manning gripped the twin handles of the missile launcher tightly, trying very hard to keep her hands from shaking. She could see the two armored vehicles approaching now, their thermal signature dim but still visible through the trees lining the road, and she touched the launcher’s targeting control, seeing a red reticle appear in her helmet’s HUD. The reticle flashed yellow as the launcher detected the trees between it and its intended target, but she waited, knowing the APCs would clear the obstructions in a few seconds.

Her finger was tightening slightly on the trigger when both armored vehicles stopped in the middle of the road four hundred meters away, their turbines mosquito whines in the distance. She froze, certain they’d been seen, watching the 25mm cannon on the upper turret of both APCs traversing back and forth and waiting for the inevitable flash of fire and the explosion of shells…

What she got instead was the thump of the rear ramps on both vehicles opening and the faint clatter of armored boots as each APC disgorged a squad of a dozen of the biomech troopers.

“We have dismounts from the scout vehicles,” Diehl’s calm pronouncement sounded in her helmet speakers. “We’re going to need some support up here.” He seemed so calm about it, as if this was something that happened every day. She felt awe when she heard him or Sgt. Crossman react that way; she was sure of her own courage, but nowhere near as sure of her unflappability.

“I’m sending what we can spare,” Tom Crossman told him, a shrug in his voice. “Hold them off until we get these charges planted.”

“Roger that, boss. Manning,” Diehl directed her, “come get this other launcher from me.”

Without questioning it, she slung her own launcher and quickly high-crawled across the road to Sgt. Diehl’s position, taking the jagged pavement on the padded knees and elbows of her armor to minimize the noise. Reaching Diehl’s side, she rose to a crouch and accepted the proffered missile launcher from him.

“Cut through the trees,” he instructed, “and get into a position where you have a clear shot at both those APCs. We’ll hold off the dismounts, but we need those vehicles gone.”

“Got it, Sergeant,” she acknowledged, slinging the second launcher over her shoulder, then pulling her carbine loose against its chest straps. “I’ll take care of it.”

She felt the strain in her quads as she pushed up the steep hill on that side of the road, weaving between the trees. Loamy soil shifted under her boots and she shifted her weight forward to keep from sliding back down the hill, trying to make as little noise as possible. She fervently hoped that the crew of the APC was focused on the road ahead, because if they opened up on her right now, she had no cover and no clear shot back at them.

She hadn’t gone more than fifty meters through the woods, struggling to keep her balance on the steep hillside, when she heard gunfire erupt behind her. She risked a quick check on her HUD and saw six friendly icons on the road, engaging at least twenty of the enemy, who weren’t accommodating enough to provide IFF transponders to let her know where they were.

She forced herself not to think about the danger her friends faced, concentrating instead on the square icons glowing a faint red on the thermal sensors in her helmet, still over 200 meters away. She’d intended to skirt the edge of the road and come out behind the vehicles, giving them less time to react after the first shot, but with the dismounted biomechs already engaging the Special Ops troops on the road…

Dammit. The APCs were slowly rolling forward, moving up to support their squads. No choice now.

Manning dashed straight down the hillside, grunting in pain as she bounced off one tree after another, using the impacts to keep herself upright despite the steep grade. Coming to the bottom, she took the last meter in a leap to the pavement, absorbing the landing on flexed knees and still having to slap a hand on the hard ground in front of her to keep from toppling over.

Her head tilted up and she could see the two armored vehicles looming a hundred meters away, the muzzles of their cannons and assault guns seeming to be pointing directly at her. She let her carbine fall free of her grasp, allowing its sling to pull it tight against her chest armor as she unslung the first of the missile launchers, activating its targeting system even before she brought it up to her shoulder.

The APC to her left was closer by about 50 meters, and she instinctively made it her first target, squeezing the trigger the second the reticle flashed red, then throwing the spent launcher aside and flattening on the ground. The missile hit before she was fully down and the concussion tossed her backwards, sending her tumbling along the broken pavement, her weapons and equipment jabbing into her painfully despite her armor, adding to the bruises she’d already collected and crushing the breath from her lungs. Heat washed over her as the APC was consumed in a fireball of hyperexplosives and she felt a chunk of debris smack painfully against her helmet, leaving her ears ringing, her vision filled with stars and her faceplate starred and cracked.

Manning desperately forced her brain to work, forced her limbs to respond. She brought her knees beneath her and scrambled to her feet, running to the left to put the burning vehicle between her and the intact APC. She thought she heard the deep drumbeat of an assault gun opening up at her, but she didn’t dare turn to make sure; instead she kept running, pushing into a sprint that made her heart pound like a triphammer and her breath rasp in her throat.

She had almost cleared the edge of the burning wreckage of the left-hand APC and reached cover when she felt something tug at the back of her right calf and she stumbled but refused to go down, not even bothering to look to see how badly she was hit: there just wasn’t time. Her calf was numb and her foot didn’t seem to want to work right so she dragged it and limped-ran, cutting closer to the flames of the burning hulk than she’d wanted to. Her armor was fire-resistant but the wash of raw heat that washed over her made her light-headed and stole the breath from her lungs.

Tears filled her eyes and she blinked them away angrily, compartmentalizing the pain, shutting it away. There was one job left to do, then she could cry. She unslung the last missile launcher, tried to activate her helmet’s targeting system, but her HUD was down, damaged in the blast from the first APC.

“Fuck it,” she snarled aloud to herself. “I’ll shove the damned thing up their ass.”

She giggled a bit deliriously at the thought that her father would have been horrified to hear her use that sort of language. Captain Alfred Manning had been a pillar of moral rectitude, first in his class at the Republic Military Academy and the model officer and gentleman… right up until Republic Spacefleet Headquarters had vanished in a sphere of fusion fire five years ago, killing off over half the Fleet’s officers in one shot. Her mother had screamed at her, then cried, then pleaded when she had told her that she was enlisting after the invasion, but none of her mom’s words could speak louder than her father’s silent example.

The external audio pickup in her helmet was dead, and besides the ragged rasp of her own breathing, all she could hear was the muted roar of the fire that was consuming the enemy APC. So when she rounded the end of the destroyed vehicle, she felt a dull surprise at the sight of the second APC backing up at high speed away from her, trying to bring its guns to bear on her position.

She fell to one knee, brought the launcher up to her shoulder and used the secondary sights mounted on the weapon itself to target the vehicle only 50 meters away. There was a flash from the APC’s main gun just as she pulled the trigger and the world disappeared in a sunburst of white fire…

Tom Crossman cursed and hugged the pavement as a grenade went off way too close to him and the five kilos of hyperexplosives beside him. The biomechs had pushed through the fire team he’d sent to stop them through the simple tactic of ignoring what would have been fatal wounds on a human and a liberal use of rifle grenades. Four of the six men and women he’d sent were dead, the other two were wounded and he and the four troops who’d been helping him set the charges to crater the road were pinned down by heavy fire.

He pushed his carbine out in front of him, using the weapon’s sight’s connection to his helmet targeting system to aim at the biomech who’d fired the grenade. It was nearly 50 meters away and he was firing from an awkward position, but he managed to walk a burst up from the thing’s leg to its chest. It stumbled backwards, but kept its feet and tried to return fire… only to find that its weapon wouldn’t function, having been hit by Crossman’s barrage. The thing dropped the useless rifle and began to walk forward, pulling a combat knife from a sheath on its belt.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Tom muttered. He shifted aim and managed to put a burst into the thing’s helmet, sending it crashing to the ground, motionless.

Tom came up to his elbows and pulled the cratering charge in front of him, ignoring the gunfire all around him as he punched a pair of detonators into the spongy block of hyperexplosives.

“Colonel Stark,” he transmitted as he worked, “we have at least four KIA, two WIA and Manning is MIA-her transponder is inactive. We’re being overrun but I’m setting the last cratering charge right now.” He tapped a code into the detonator’s control panel and was in the process of synching the device with his helmet controls when a massive concussion threw him three meters sideways, tumbling off the jagged edge of the road and into the drainage ditch beside it.

Crossman’s head swam, his vision blurred and he couldn’t seem to make his arms and legs obey his commands. Slowly, his sight cleared enough that he could see, through a web of cracks in his fractured faceplate, another of his men lying in the ditch beside him. It had to be Mathers, part of his mind realized through the fog of concussion, the junior NCO who’d been setting one of the other charges. His chest was riddled with bullets and his armor was soaked in blood; he looked very dead, and Crossman wondered if he himself looked any better.

There wasn’t any pain yet, but he knew there would be, and he would have welcomed it if only he could have made himself move faster. He managed to get a hand beneath him and push himself up enough to look over the edge of the ditch. Three biomechs were moving towards him-their armor was scorched and bloody but they were still upright and functioning, which was more than he could say for himself. He patted at his chest, trying to find his carbine, not coherent enough to be desperate but knowing somewhere deep down that he should have been. He felt the buttstock of his carbine and yanked at it with all the strength he could muster, but it was trapped under his body and he just couldn’t move fast enough to free it…

When the grenade exploded, his first thought was that it was aimed at him and he ducked his head instinctively at the flash and gut-punch percussion, but the fact that he was still alive made him look back up. Two of the biomechs were down, one of them in pieces-the grenade must have hit him directly, Tom thought. The third was staggered but still on its feet, trying to swing its rifle around.as the smoke from the detonation swirled around it.

Tom’s ears were battered from the explosions, the noise-cancelling headphones in his helmet damaged by the grenade blast that had shattered his visor, so he didn’t hear the gunshots, but he saw the biomech stumble backwards, saw the bullet holes punch through its chest then climb upwards to penetrate its helmet in a spray of blood. The thing fell to its knees, then collapsed forward to the pavement, motionless.

When the lone shooter stepped forward, Tom could barely see it in the spare moonlight-his helmet’s night vision was gone with the broken visor-but he could tell immediately it wasn’t a biomech. It was short, and not wearing a helmet, and it was limping badly, a carbine cradled in one arm. Tom gave up clutching at his trapped carbine and pulled a flashlight from his belt, shining it on the approaching figure.

Tanya Manning’s spiky hair was matted with blood from a nasty gash on the left side of her head, and her armor was scorched and battered, stained with blood in at least four places, including a nasty gunshot wound on her calf that was causing the limp. Her eyes looked nearly vacant, but there was a grim and relentless purpose to the set of her mouth.

Tom tried to speak and had to cough his throat clear and spit through his broken visor before he could manage it. “Manning,” he said hoarsely. “Gotta set off these charges. Helmet controls are fragged.”

“A grenade should do it,” she said in a voice curiously cool and casual, except for the way she slightly slurred her words.

She stepped over to the cratering charge, still sitting in the middle of the road, and knelt down next to it. She pulled a rifle grenade from a bandolier on her chest and methodically unscrewed the base, discarding the tail portion that held the propellant for launching it from the tube beneath her carbine’s rifle barrel. Inside that base was a simple dial with time measured out in seconds and minutes around its perimeter. She twisted the timer, set the bomb down next to the lump of hyperexplosives, then pushed herself slowly and painfully to her feet and limped towards Tom.

“Five minutes to get clear, Sgt. Crossman,” she murmured as she pulled him to his feet. Crossman bit back a gasp as a wave of agony went through his right leg, and leaned into her for support.

“Anyone else alive?” he managed to ask her as they limp-jogged down the road. He knew the answer, but he had to make sure.

“No, Master Sergeant,” she told him, eyes fixed on the road ahead. “Just you and me.”

“Damn,” he hissed, pain and exhaustion and a sense of utter hopelessness filling his voice. “This had better mean something.” He glanced upwards towards the stars and what flew among them. “They’d better win this fucking fight.”

Chapter Forty-Five

“Five minutes to orbital insertion,” Bevins reported, watching the blue green image of the planet growing huge in the holographic display.

“Where’s our friend, Larry?” Minishimi asked, absent-mindedly tugging her harness tighter in anticipation of impending zero gravity.

“Still on course to Earth orbit, ma’am,” Larry Gianeto told her, nodding toward the red icon in his Tactical projection. “Depending on how fast they decelerate, somewhere between 30 minutes to an hour behind us. The Sheridan is trailing him a few light seconds back; they’ll reach orbit right after he does.”

“Why’s he heading for orbit?” Franks wondered aloud. At Minishimi’s questioning look, he went on. “Ma’am, it’s just that… last time around, Antonov parked his flagship in orbit and threatened to nuke our cities if we didn’t surrender. We haven’t heard any demands this time and he knows that if he drops field and tries to hit ground targets, we’ll be there taking potshots at him.”

“Maybe he’s going after Fleet Headquarters?” Commander Lee suggested. “They haven’t attacked it yet.”

“They don’t need an FTL cruiser to take out Fleet HQ,” Gianeto pointed out. “They still have enough conventional ships out there to do that, if we aren’t able to take them out.”

“He’s here to take us out of the equation,” Minishimi said, nodding. “Everything about this attack has been about stripping away our defenses… and they knew there would be at least one FTL cruiser insystem. The ramships were the first wave, and when they didn’t work, they sent their biggest gun.”

“So why’s he heading for Earth orbit then?” Lee asked, confused.

“Because he knows we’ll have to try to stop him,” Minishimi answered her. “And he’s right.”

“We’re at minimum safe distance for field activation,” Bevins announced, reaching out to slide down a control. “Drive at station keeping.” Gravity faded and Frank’s stomach fluttered with the sensation.

“Helm,” Minishimi ordered, “link the drive field controls to Tactical. Mr. Gianeto, prepare to deactivate field when the enemy does and target him with Gauss cannon and forward lasers.” She swung around in her chair. “Communications, signal the Sheridan. Time to earn our pay.”

* * *

“This is going to be a huge cluster-fuck,” Captain Nunez said so quietly that only Admiral Patel, seated just behind him, heard it.

“Yes it is, Steve,” Patel agreed, his voice pitched just as low. “I’m sorry you had to be saddled with this situation.”

“Not like you asked for any of this, sir,” Nunez returned, smiling sadly, eyeing the security guard who was strapped into one of the emergency couches at the bulkhead, watching Patel carefully.

“The Bradley is signaling, sir,” Lt. Mandel informed Nunez. “They’re in position.”

“Put me on general address, Lieutenant,” Nunez ordered. At the Communications officer’s nod, Nunez spoke and his voice echoed through the halls of the ship and every duty station from Engineering to the hangar bay. “This is Captain Nunez. The Protectorate has a fully equipped Sheridan class cruiser. They are drawing us in toward Earth orbit to force us to engage them. If we sit behind our drive field, they will move in too low for us to use the field as a weapon against them and they will lay waste to our cities.

“If we drop our shields and engage them, they will use our own ground-based defense lasers against us and try to shoot us down. Together with the Bradley, we are going to attempt something dangerous and very complicated: one of us will attempt to put ourselves between the other and the lasers while the other ship engages, using our drive field to shield them from attack.

“If we are in too low of an orbit to engage our field, we will still attempt to shield the other ship.” At this, Nunez saw a couple doubtful glances from the bridge crew and he fought back a rueful smile. “We are likely going to take some major damage if this occurs; we may even be destroyed. But if we don’t take this risk, we leave our homes and our families naked to the aggression of the madman Antonov.

“I took my oath to defend our world and our people and I will gladly put myself between them and the war’s desolation. I know that I can count on the same from each of you. Do your job well and make them proud.”

The Captain gestured to Mandel and the Comm officer cut the transmission. Estefan Nunez glanced at Patel almost involuntarily, the look of a student to the teacher that even years as a senior officer hadn’t burned out of his system. Patel nodded almost imperceptibly to him, feeling a surge of pride.

“Captain,” Pirelli said, “the enemy cruiser has ceased his braking burn and is accelerating at one g. And she’s changed course, sir… she’s heading straight for the Bradley.”

“They can’t be trying for a field intersect,” Nunez reasoned, frowning. “That would leave them wide open for a strike from us… with our field up, we’d destroy them in one pass.”

“I suppose that depends on how quickly they can recover from one,” Patel said, frowning with concern. “Steve, this whole journey, I’ve seen the enemy do things that I might call crazy, but never one so far I would call stupid.”

Nunez considered that for a moment and his expression hardened. “Helm, sound high-gravity warning and accelerate to two g’s. Engineering, prepare for possible drive field collision.”

“If we hit him, it’ll still take half our assets off the board,” Patel reminded him, his words concealed beneath the din of the acceleration warning klaxon.

“The Brad is an older design,” Nunez said, eyes fixed on the Tactical display. “It can’t take the hit as well as we can.”

“Going to two g’s,” the Helm officer announced and everyone was abruptly pressed back into their liquid-filled couches , the breath leaving their lungs in a choreographed whoosh that no one could hear for the roaring in their ears.

“Besides,” Nunez croaked, his voice filled with the strain of the increased weight, “can’t let the enemy call the shots.”

Patel didn’t respond. They’ve been calling the shots this whole time, he thought bitterly. Why should now be any different?

* * *

“What the hell are they doing?” Larry Gianeto muttered, watching the enemy cruiser burning towards them on the Tactical display.

“If I had to guess,” Joyce Minishimi answered, “I’d say they’re going for a quick kill.” She waved at the Earth, looming huge on the main viewscreen. “We’re about as low as we can go and keep our drive field up… they’re going for a field intersect, take out our field, knock out our power and let us burn up in the atmosphere while they assume a low Earth orbit.”

“And the Sheridan will have to drop their field to fire at them,” Franks finished for her, nodding grimly. “Which will leave them open to ground fire from the launch lasers.”

“Take us out of orbit, ma’am?” Bevins asked, a bit hopefully she thought.

“No, Mr. Bevins,” she said, a bit of amusement slipping into her reply. “That’s his secondary objective, I should think. If we leave orbit, he can take up a position to bombard our cities unopposed and force us to retreat.”

“So what are we going to do, Captain?” Commander Lee asked hesitantly. Minishimi read on Lee’s hard-angled face a struggle between a desire not to look afraid and a need to know what was going to happen to her ship. She sympathized with the younger woman, especially given the position in which they found themselves.

“We’re staying right here,” she told the XO. She nodded towards the icon of the Sheridan as it plunged closer to the enemy ship. “They’re trying to disrupt the attack… we need to be ready to back them up. Mr. Bevins, slave the drive field controls to Tactical. Mr. Gianeto, the second the enemy cruiser comes out of his drive field, drop ours and target him with the lasers and Gauss guns. Be prepared to raise the Eysselink field if… when we come under fire.”

“What if he reaches us before they reach him?” Lee asked so quietly that the Captain almost didn’t hear her.

“In that case,” she answered anyway, grinning fiercely, “I hope the Sheridan‘s Captain is giving the same orders.”

* * *

“Are we going to reach him in time?” Captain Nunez grunted against the acceleration, unable to get his eyes to focus on the Tactical display.

“Field contact in thirty seconds, sir,” Pirelli said, her voice as calm and clear as if she wasn’t being pushed down by twice her normal weight. “He’s a minute away from the Bradley‘s drive field.”

“Sound the collision alarm, Ms. Pirelli,” Nunez ordered. “Lt. McElroy,” he said to the Engineering bridge officer, “alert Commander Kopecky that we are twenty seconds from field collision.”

Patel saw the computer-simulated image of the enemy ship beginning to grow ever larger on the main display and felt an emptiness in the pit of his stomach, as if he were in a flyer heading straight for a mountain. He was so caught up in the roller-coaster feeling that he missed Commander Pirelli’s count-down until he heard her say “…one!” and then…

* * *

Larry Gianeto didn’t bother to announce it when the enemy ship’s field collapsed… he didn’t have to with Captain Minishimi, Commander Lee and Lieutenant Franks all blurting “Fire!” at the same moment. His left hand had been hovering over the field controls for ten seconds and he chopped it downward, then stabbed at the fire controls with his right, swiping his finger across the display to the icon of the enemy ship.

“Lasers and Gauss cannons firing!” He finally said, feeling the faint shudder from the 800 kilogram slugs exiting the coilguns at hypersonic velocities, imparting a slight backwards impetus to the huge ship. “Jesus!” He blurted, seeing a starburst flare from the enemy ship’s aft engine bell. “He’s got his fusion bottle up already!”

“That’s damn fast,” Franks murmured, shaking his head. His eyes tracked the Sheridan where it drifted a few thousand kilometers away, showing no signs of activity.

“He’s climbing into a higher orbit,” Gianeto bit off, using his Tactical override to take control of the ship’s maneuvering thrusters and track the cannon and laser fire to follow the enemy ship. “We are getting positive impact on him though… I’m reading an oxygen bleed…”

Then there was a flare of white light from the exterior camera feed and the view went fuzzy with electromagnetic interference for a moment before it cut to black. Gianeto swatted the field controls with his left hand and sighed out a deep breath as the Eysselink drive field coalesced around them.

“We took a half second’s fire from one of the ground based defense lasers,” he said. “Drive field is back up.”

“Damage control!” Minishimi snapped. “Give me a sitrep! Bevins, get us between the Sheridan and that laser now!”

“On it!” Bevins touched his controls and acceleration pressed them back in their seats once again. “Ma’am, I’m going from the position we recorded from before the laser strike, but I am not receiving any navigational data from the gravimetic sensors.”

“Nothing here either, Captain,” Gianeto reported. “The gravimetic sensor feed is inactive.”

“Damage control here, Captain,” a female voice came over the bridge speakers. “I can’t say how bad it is until we come out of the Eysselink field, but preliminary indications are that the exterior gravimetic sensor emitters have taken significant damage. No idea yet how long repairs might take.”

“We should be in position to shield the Sheridan now, Captain,” Bevins cut in. “Drive field to station keeping.”

“We’re flying blind,” Minishimi mused, frowning at the computer simulation on the main and Tactical screens. Those were nothing now but best guesses based on the last known readings before the laser had hit them. “Mr. Bevins, turn our fusion drive bell toward the laser; then, on my command, drop drive field for five seconds and then reactivate. Get me a 360 degree sensor reading during that second, Mr. Gianeto.”

Gianeto nodded in appreciation as well as assent. Though the defense lasers could eventually burn through even the fusion drive plates, they would hold up long enough for this to work.

“Now.”

At the Captain’s word, Bevins cut the drive field, the specified five seconds feeling more like five hours before the computer automatically reactivated it. Gianeto flinched as laser fire flared against the fusion drive plates just before the Eysselink field reformed, but he forced himself to scan the sensor input that had flowed into the system in the scant seconds that they’d been open to the rest of the universe.

“The enemy ship’s drive field is up,” Gianeto said. “Captain, he’s heading this way… I think he might be moving in to finish off the Sheridan.”

“And we can’t even see him,” Lee hissed.

“Lt. Bevins,” Drew Franks said suddenly, eyes widening as a thought sparked, “how quickly can you turn the Eysselink drive on and off?”

“Ummm…” Bevins stuttered, caught off guard. “Uh, I think, theoretically…”

“Commander Infante,” Franks snapped, hitting a control on his ‘link. “How quickly can you turn the Eysselink drive on and off?”

“One half second is the time it takes for the field to propagate,” she responded without hesitation. “The main power trunks would only be able to handle that sort of surge for a few tens of thousands of cycles though… maybe 30 minutes continuous before it blew.”

“Commander Gianeto,” Franks turned to the Tactical officer quickly, “is there any way to detect the enemy ship with the drive field up without our gravimetic sensors?”

“Yeah,” Gianeto said with a thoughtful nod. “This close to the planet, we should get some major radiation flares from the drive field interacting with the ionosphere… we can track it.”

“Lieutenant Franks,” Minishimi interrupted, her tone urgent and eager, like a hound on the scent, “I see where you’re going with this. Lieutenant Bevins, set up a program to pulse the drive on and off each half-second. Commander Gianeto, set up a sensor survey to run in that interval and find that damned ship. We need to get between them and the Sheridan.”

As the two men went to their tasks, Minishimi glanced at Franks and nodded in appreciation. “You have quite a grasp of practical engineering. What’s your degree in?”

His mouth twisted in a wry grin and he suddenly looked very much his age. “Eighteenth Century English Literature,” he told her. “But as a desk jockey, I have lots of time to do research.”

“We’re up, Captain,” Gianeto reported after a nod from Bevins.

“Starting the field modulation,” Bevins said, wincing in expectation as he hit a control. Despite his fears, they felt nothing different as the Eysselink field began switching on and off in an eyeblink; the only difference was that a stream of data from the exterior sensors began painting a more complete picture on the Tactical display and the main viewscreens.

“There he is,” Gianeto said, seeing the Threat icon of the enemy cruiser crawling across the display. “He’s coming for the Sheridan all right… he’s pushed into a higher orbit and he’s going to come in from above and try to take her out.”

“Communications,” Minishimi said, “any word from the Sheridan?”

“She’s not answering my hails, ma’am,” Lt. Reno responded, shaking his head. “I’m not reading any transmissions from her at all.”

“From the thermal scans,” Gianeto put in, “her reactor is still down. She hasn’t even used maneuvering thrusters…” He frowned deeply. “Ma’am, I’m getting some oxygen leaks near the hangar bay too.”

“Right now we have to worry about that cruiser… and the laser,” Minishimi reminded him.

“Captain,” Franks said, “the Sheridan‘s a more modern ship with better armor and power systems than us, and they’re still down from that hit. If we risk a field intersect with that ship…”

“I think we’ve just about run out of other options, Larry,” the Captain replied quietly. “Drop field long enough to launch every Shipbuster we have left on board and program them to target that cruiser once her field is down. At least that could keep her occupied for a while… maybe give us more time to recover.”

“Slaving drive field to Tactical,” Bevins said, anticipating her command. Gianeto felt a smile tug at the side of his mouth. The Helm officer wasn’t very experienced, but he was catching up fast.

“We have two Shipbusters left in the magazine,” Gianeto told the Captain as he punched in a series of commands. “I’ve programmed them to go into standby and target the enemy cruiser when he’s in the open.” He hesitated for a moment, double-checking his work. “Dropping field and launching now.”

They could all feel the ship lurch slightly as one of the huge missiles shot out of each of the weapons pods. “I hope they can’t track well enough from whatever they’re using to control the ground lasers to take out those missiles,” he said with a shrug as he reactivated the drive field. “The enemy ship is two minutes out, Captain,” he told her.

“Mr. Bevins,” Minishimi said, “put us in a position to intercept him but make sure we stay in place to shield the Sheridan from the lasers as long as possible.” She paused, looking around at the bridge crew. “I’ve already said this once today,” she began, chuckling humorlessly, “but since this is the second ship I’m leading to possible destruction in the last few hours… it’s been nice knowing you, ladies and gentlemen.”

* * *

It was only when he began coughing uncontrollably that Arvid Patel realized that he was still alive. When he pried open his eyes, he half expected to see pitch darkness, but there were still lights on the bridge. The chemical ghostlights on the floor never went out, of course, but to his surprise some of the control stations still seemed to have power, though the main screen and Tactical displays were both dark. Black smoke drifted slowly towards the ventilators, which seemed to be working at a much lower speed than usual, and with the clouds of electrical smoke floated bright red globules of blood…

Patel snapped to alertness as he realized what that meant, and he began working at his harness with numb hands. A low moaning sounded from the Tactical station and Patel glanced up to see Commander Pirelli cradling her head, in pain but apparently still intact. The Helm officer, Lt. Ghent, was awake and blinking his eyes to try to clear them, and Reno the Communications officer seemed to be recovering.

Lt. McElroy, the Engineering bridge officer, was floating limply in his harness, his mouth and eyes hanging open and blood droplets slowly floating away from his ear. The security guard who’d been watching him was breathing, but still unconscious and there was a trickle of blood from his nose. Captain Nunez… Estefan Nunez was clearly dead. Blood leaked from his ears and nose and even his eyes from the massive cerebral hemorrhages that the stress of the field intersect had set loose in his brain.

Patel groaned involuntarily, feeling a pain in his chest as if he’d been struck. “Oh God, Steve…” he murmured. Then he shook himself, forcing the shock and pain away. His fingers finally began to get feeling back and he managed to free himself from his harness, pushing over to the Captain’s station and hitting the control to ‘link with the auxiliary control room.

“Commander Sweeny,” he called. “This is Admiral Patel. Come in please, Commander Sweeny.” He waited for another few seconds and called again, but there was no response. He let out a deep breath and made a decision, switching the comm channel to Engineering.

“Commander Kopecky,” he said. “Are you there? Anyone in Engineering, please respond!”

“This is Lieutenant Christian,” a female voice responded, then broke into a pained cough that lasted several seconds before she went on. “The main trunk line blew… we have at least three dead-including Commander Kopecky-and a lot more wounded.” She paused again with a wet cough. “Including me.”

“This is Admiral Patel,” he said gently, trying to keep her as calm as possible. “What’s our status?”

“Sir, we have backup battery power, but we’ve got burnouts all to hell and gone from the power surge, so it’s not getting everywhere it should.” Another fit of coughing that made Patel wince. “The antimatter storage pods are all jettisoned and I can’t be sure, but I think the whole Eysselink field generator is trashed… I’m not even certain the drive nacelles are still attached to the ship, but if they are, it’s only by metal, not by any power trunks.”

“Can the fusion reactor be re-started?” He asked her urgently.

“Wait one,” she said.

“Sir,” Patel heard Pirelli speaking to him, her voice a pained rasp. He looked over and saw her unfolding a backup monitor screen from a recess in her station. It was 2D and only 40 centimeters across, and included an actual physical keyboard; but it worked, unlike the holographic display that it was replacing.

“Are you all right, Commander?” He asked her. He was worried about her obvious headache: she could still have a cerebral bleed or a major concussion from the gravito-inertial feedback.

“I think so, Admiral,” she said. “Sir, is Captain Nunez…” She trailed off, unwilling to say it.

“Yes, I’m afraid so,” he said with a nod. “I know I’m not technically supposed to be doing this, so if you want to take charge…”

“Sir,” she said slowly and quietly, “no matter what was done to you, I still consider you my commanding officer. If they want to court-martial me later, well,” she sniffed wryly, “I’ll claim head trauma.”

His mouth quirked in an almost-smile. “What’s our status, Commander?”

“We’re dead in the water,” she told him grimly. “No power to any of the weapons, about half our sensor net is down and of course we have no gravimetic sensors at all with the drive down. I’m surprised they haven’t finished us off with the planetary defense lasers.”

“There’s why,” he nodded towards the display on the screen.

It was difficult to perceive, at first, as if it were a ghost that wasn’t completely there, but the computer filled in the gaps quickly and they could see the old-fashioned bulk of the RFS Bradley sitting a few hundred kilometers away.

“Where’s the enemy cruiser?” Pirelli wondered aloud, typing search parameters into her keyboard.

“Try looking for gamma radiation bursts,” Ghent suggested, finally back to full alertness. “If she has her drive field up, it will be interacting with the magnetosphere and the upper atmosphere… you should get some anomalous radiation spikes.”

“Yeah, I’ve got her,” Pirelli said, and a command to the Tactical computer brought up a simulation on the screen. “She’s… yeah,” Pirelli sighed. “She’s heading right for us. Her drive field will hit us in about five minutes, give or take. But I think…” She checked her calculations quickly. “I think the Brad is moving to intercept.”

“Man,” Ghent said, swallowing hard, “if it does to them what it’s done to us…”

“Christian!” Patel called urgently, trying hard to ignore Estefan Nunez’ corpse at his elbow. “Lt. Christian, do you read?”

“Sorry, sir,” her voice came over the speakers in the headrest of the Captain’s chair. “Things are pretty fucked… err, messed up down here. I had to go grab portable air supplies for the wounded.”

“I understand, Lieutenant,” he said, “but what about the fusion drive?”

“The Bradley launched two Shipbusters!” Pirelli interrupted. “The missiles got out of range of the drive field perimeter then dropped thrust. They’re probably programmed to go for the cruiser after they knock out its field.”

“Sir,” Christian answered Patel’s question, “I can get the reactor back online in a few minutes… I’ve got the process started already. But with the power trunk as… messed up as it is, it won’t stay online for more than a few minutes before the electromagnetic bottle collapses. I don’t even think the lines are still intact between the reactor and the weapons pods.”

She paused, and he could imagine her shaking her head. “I can maybe get you a few minutes of thrust on the plasma drives, but that’s taking a pretty big risk too… if the bottle fails at the wrong moment, you could wind up with a catastrophic burn-through. It could destroy the ship.”

“Get the plasma drive working, Lieutenant,” he told her. “We’ll worry about how long it lasts when the time comes.”

“Aye, sir,” she said, signing off.

Patel fell silent for a moment as he watched the Bradley approaching the enemy cruiser on the Tactical screen. “Commander Pirelli,” he said, “Lt. Ghent, I want you two to grab Sgt. Elias,” he nodded towards the security guard, “and get to the life pods. Lt. Reno, sound the general evacuation order, then follow them.”

“Sir, are you sure?” Pirelli asked him, eyes wide.

“Commander, this ship is helpless and dangerous. Sitting here only makes us a bigger target for the defense lasers.”

“What about you, Admiral?” Ghent asked, yanking free his restraints.

“I’ll be right behind you,” he assured the man, “as soon as I make sure everyone else gets the word.”

Ghent looked doubtful, but he went over and helped Pirelli grab the security guard and they headed for the bridge exit, pulling the man between them. Patel waited for Reno to sound the evacuation alarm, then watched the man go before he pulled himself to the Tactical station and called Engineering once again.

“Lt. Christian, do you read me?”

“Aye, sir,” she responded immediately. “I heard the alarm… do you want me to proceed with the reactor re-start?”

“Yes, Lieutenant,” he told her. “Get it running, make sure I have control of the drives from the bridge, then get you and your people off this ship.”

“Sir,” she said hesitantly, “what do you intend to do?”

“Whatever I can, Lieutenant,” he said softly. “Whatever I can.”

Chapter Forty-Six

“I can’t believe they’re this fucking stupid,” Xavier Dominguez muttered to himself, staring at the scene unfolding before him on the cabin’s holographic display. He’d hooked his tablet controller up to the communications hub earlier, so Valerie could see the sensor simulation of the battle taking place in high orbit above them.

One of the Republic cruisers-the Sheridan, she thought from its profile-already had its field down and looked to be in bad shape: even as she watched, she could see life pods ejecting from it. The other, the Bradley she assumed, had its drive field up but was heading straight for the enemy cruiser, which was also shielded by its Eysselink drive.

“They saw what happened to the Sheridan when she tried the same thing,” Dominguez went on, glancing across the room at Valerie to indicate he was talking to her, “but they’re going to do it anyway. Morons.”

“They don’t have any choice,” she said, quietly but bitterly. “That’s how you planned it.”

“They could run,” he argued, seemingly rational once again, after several manic episodes that night… in fact, she reflected, he sounded almost sad about what he was doing. “They should run… they won’t accomplish anything… I’ll just burn them down once their drive field drops. Just like I’m going to do to the Sheridan right now…”

Valerie’s stomach clenched as she watched Dominguez-or whatever the hell he was, because he wasn’t the Xavier Dominguez she had known for years-pull up the targeting display for the planetary defense lasers, cycling through one after another until he found the one that could fire on the Sheridan, then locking it on to the crippled warship. She knew she should try to stop him somehow, and if it had just been her, she might have risked it, even knowing it meant certain death. But the shivering warmth of Natalia in her arms reminded her that she couldn’t afford to be a hero, so she just clenched her fists and tried to fight down the surge of nausea that she felt.

“Goodbye, Admiral Patel,” Dominguez murmured in an almost singsong voice as his finger hovered over the fire control, his eyes taking on a dreamy look. “Goodbye, Colonel McKay…”

Valerie’s eyes squeezed shut, not wanting to see it happen… and then flew open involuntarily at the sharp, harsh bark of gunfire. Dominguez was already on his feet, his head snapping around towards the front door of the cabin, where the dirt access road passed by it. The individual shots turned into a full-auto barrage and the mercenaries in the cabin moved behind cover.

“There are enemy troops in the tree line on the other side of the access road,” the woman who was controlling the biomechs told him. “We have two troopers down already but I’m having them take cover and return fire.”

“Get out there with them,” Dominguez ordered her. “Go out the back and take the guards from the dock with you.” He looked at the other three mercenaries in the cabin. “I’m heading out with her. The rest of you stay here.” He jabbed a finger at Valerie. “If she moves, kill her and her daughter.” He grinned, a touch of the old rueful humor she remembered coming back into his face. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that they tried something, desperate as your father must be.” He disconnected the tablet controller from the communications console and followed the female mercenary towards the back door. “Desperate people do stupid things.”

This may be the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, Jason McKay thought, walking across the bottom of the lakebed.

Sure, it had made sense: there hadn’t been any dive equipment available on the Sheridan, and their HALO gear and combat armor had an onboard oxygen supply and enough insulation to keep them from getting hypothermic in the ice-cold Minnesota lake; also, their load-out weighed enough to prevent them from swimming across, so walking across the lakebed was the logical alternative. It still seemed crazy to him.

No starlight penetrated to the lake bottom and it was pitch black even with his helmet’s thermal filters engaged. Only his helmet’s GPS mapping software projected in the HUD gave him any idea where he was or where he was headed. At least the ten meters of frigid lake water should shield them from any sensors that Dominguez and his forces might have set up… and at least it was faster going than he had feared.

True, it was like… well, hell, it was walking underwater, and his quads felt like jello from the strain of trying to push himself through it, but the lake was narrow and the bottom was fairly smooth. Except for the resistance, it wasn’t that different than low gravity training at the lunar base… he winced at the thought that the lunar base wasn’t there anymore, and tried not to think of all the people he had known and worked with who had been killed there.

God knew he had enough to think about. Valerie was in that cabin… and even if it hadn’t been love six years ago back on Aphrodite, it had been more than a fling. He owed her, and the very least he could do was make sure that she and her daughter walked out of this alive. Despite what he had told Commander Villanueva, he was going to make sure that Val and Natalia made it out, even if he and the others had to die in place to accomplish the mission.

The lake bed abruptly began to slope upward as he approached the dock, going from ten meters in depth to only four, and a diffuse brightness beckoned to him from the floodlights mounted on the old, wooden posts there. McKay grunted with the strain as he pushed himself up the slope through the silt and loose rock. He had to lean forward and support himself on one hand, grabbing at the larger stones that were half-buried in the bank and pulling himself up until he was just two meters below the surface.

He couldn’t see them, but his helmet HUD showed the IFF signals from the rest of his team moving into place along the bank of the lake. Vinnie and Jock were to his right while Sean Watanabe and two other Special Ops NCOs were lined up on his left. The remaining 18 men and women in the combined force of Fleet Marines from the Sheridan and the Decatur had circled around the lake into the woods on the other side of the dirt road, and if he had timed everything right…

He could hear the gunfire even through four meters of water and he felt a rush of adrenaline urging him to charge up the bank with guns blazing, but he held himself back, waiting nearly thirty seconds. The shots grew from an initial flurry to a steady background rattle before he finally felt in his gut that the time was right.

“Now,” he radioed to the others, then pistoned his legs and surged up the bank and out of the lake.

He grunted with exertion and impact as he landed shoulder first on the loose gravel that had been dumped on the bank beside the dock, his carbine trained upward just in case the enemy had been smarter than he’d hoped. The dock was deserted, though, and he allowed himself a relieved breath before he low-crawled up the bank, peering through the high grass that grew up around the dock pilings.

There was the back porch of the cabin, unguarded… but through the clear transplas he could see three human guards inside, all hugging the front wall, trying to catch glimpses of the fighting through the windows. There was a body on the porch as well, stiffened with rigor and corpse-white from bleeding out. He assumed it was Charlie Klesko and felt a pang of sorrow: Charlie /had been a good man.

“They’re all good,” he murmured to himself, remembering something he had once told Shannon.

He pulled a flash-bang from his vest and fed it into the launcher under his carbine’s barrel. He didn’t have to ask to know that on the other side of the dock, Vinnie was doing the same. It bothered him that he couldn’t see Dominguez, but perhaps the man was staying behind cover. He just hoped Valerie had enough sense to keep her head down.

Valerie saw the mercenary guards drifting towards the front wall as the firing continued and considered for just a moment trying to make a break for it, but she knew she couldn’t move fast enough carrying Natalia. They knew it too, she realized bitterly, which was why they weren’t bothering to be more careful.

She cautiously peeked around the edge of the dividing wall between the kitchen and the living room and saw the three remaining guards trying to watch the action as best they could through the front window. None of the mercenaries wore full-face helmets, instead going with open-faced ones that gave them better peripheral vision and awareness, and that had allowed her to differentiate them in the few hours she’d been with them.

The ones who had remained in the cabin with her were a tall, bearded man with pale skin, a nervous look to his eyes and a face that reminded her of a Yorkie she’d had as a child; a shorter, Asian man with a rounded face and scar that bisected his upper lip; and a baby-faced young man with mocha skin and a complex tattoo that ran across both cheeks and the bridge of his nose.

The nervous terrier kept glancing back and forth from the back door to the front, shifting weight from one foot to the other, while the other two men crowded around the edges of the left-handed window… until a stray burst of gunfire punched through it, sending them all scattering backwards, cursing loudly and looking for cover.

Valerie ducked back down, clutching Natalia closer to her as she buried her head in her arms, which was why she was looking away when the rear windows burst inward and a pair of flash bang grenades exploded in the face of the three mercenaries. Valerie hadn’t been looking at the flash and her eyes had been closed, but it was still bright enough that she had spots in her vision. The sound and concussion had left her ears filled with a hollow whistling and her brain muddled and only semi-coherent. She couldn’t hear Natalia crying, but she could feel the little girl shaking spasmodically in her grasp and knew she was in pain as well.

She blinked her eyes and lifted her head, risking a look around just in time to see the tattooed mercenary jerk backwards as holes were punched through his chest armor by a burst of incoming rifle fire. She could see the pain and surprise in his eyes, as if he had, until that very moment, been convinced of his own immortality. He toppled backwards to join the other two guards: they’d already been shot before she’d looked up, apparently, since the blood was pooling under their bodies before the tattooed one hit the floor. Through the haze that dragged at her thoughts, she struggled to grasp at what that meant and from somewhere she felt a thrill of hope.

The back door flew inward at the kick of an armored boot and three faceless figures of dark camouflaged bulk stamped inside, moving swiftly and efficiently through the cabin, looking for opposition and finding only her and her daughter. One of them stepped over to Val and crouched beside her, a gloved hand resting lightly on her shoulder.

There was a distorted buzzing and she sensed that the armored figure was trying to say something, but her hearing was still fried from the flash-bangs and she shook her head, touching her ear demonstratively with a hand. The man worked a latch on his faceplate and swung it upward; beneath it was the very familiar and very welcome face of Jason McKay. She felt an uncontrollable relief drain all the strength and resolve she’d stored up and she sobbed as she threw an arm around his neck and hugged him.

“Are you okay?” She could finally hear what he was saying as he yelled the question in her ear.

“We’re fine!” She yelled back, and her own voice sounded distant and distorted. I knew you would come for us, she wanted to say but didn’t. “Just get us out of here!”

“Sean, come get her!” McKay called into his helmet radio loud enough for her to hear before he closed and re-latched his faceplate.

Three more armored soldiers rushed into the cabin and one offered her a hand while the others stood guard. She hesitantly took it, letting him draw her to her feet with ease despite her holding her three year old daughter.

“Mommy!” She could hear Natalia shriek. “Who are dey?”

“They’re friends, honey,” she told the terrified little girl. “They’re going to take us home.” But this was home, she thought, surprised at the bitterness that welled up with it.

They were moving towards the ruined back door when she felt more than heard the massive, concussive impact from the front of the house, and the trooper guarding her pulled her and Natalia to the floor, covering them with his body.

“What the hell is that?” She heard the man ask from right next to her ear. But she had a horrible feeling she knew exactly what it was.

Crouching behind the cover of the flyer that he had arrived in, inputting targeting commands into his tablet, Xavier Dominguez tried to make himself feel rage at the attack, or glee at the carnage that he was about to unleash on the enemy… but he couldn’t. He couldn’t feel anything. It was as if a personality had flowed into him over the last few months and now just over the last few hours had flowed out, leaving him an empty shell just going through the motions. He was beginning to doubt his sanity, but his head hurt when he had thoughts like that and he wondered if he wasn’t being allowed to doubt anything… which only made his head hurt even worse.

Bullets punching into the hard carbon fiber of the other side of the flyer shook him out of his reverie and he sighed in resignation as he pressed the fire control. It took just a couple minutes, though it seemed longer with the gunfire and the occasional grenade explosion. He saw three of the biomechs down in the shadow of the large tiltrotor that had been their transport, and another fell as he watched, a rifle grenade blowing off one of its legs.

Then the first KE weapon struck like the hammer of a god, a streak of ionized air trailing behind it like a lightning bolt, a sonic boom echoing through the sky but drowned out by the explosion of liberated energy that uprooted trees and sent bits of wood and rock flying like shrapnel. The next tungsten rod followed only seconds later, then another, then another, until the whole wood line on the other side of the dirt road erupted in a constant drumbeat of rolling thunder and flashes of lightning that left afterimages in Dominguez’s vision even after he looked away.

It was a glorious, awe-inspiring display of power and it was in his hands… he should have felt god-like. But all he could think was that he hoped that none of them had got away. He waited until the last KE rod had impacted, then turned to Sergeant McElroy, the mercenary who was controlling the biomechs.

“Send them in and make sure they’re all dead,” he ordered her. “We don’t need any more surprises.”

“Yes, sir,” she said with a nod, typing commands into the control pad strapped to her left arm.

“Sir!” Dominguez turned and saw Captain Romero, the senior officer of the mercenaries trotting up to him, urgency in his tone and the look on his face. “I can’t raise the men we left with Senator O’Keefe-Mulrooney!”

“This was a fucking distraction!” Dominguez snarled in irritation, turning back to the cabin. “Get in there now!” He turned to McElroy. “Get me a dozen troops around the back of the cabin, block off the rear entrance! The rest get on line right here and back up Captain Romero.”

“How the hell did they get behind us?” McElroy muttered, not looking up from her control pad.

“Doesn’t matter,” Dominguez said, shaking his head. “They won’t be getting out.” He brought up his tablet. “Our hostages have outlived their usefulness.”

Jason McKay scrambled up from the cabin floor before the last sonic boom had ceased to echo, a cold, dead feeling in the pit of his stomach. Dominguez had done the unexpected: he’d gone outside to meet the attack instead of staying under cover… and taken the defense satellite controller with him.

“Lieutenant Bryant!” He radioed, trying to reach the Marine platoon leader. “Lt. Bryant, report!” Silence. “Any Marine personnel report!”

“No way they could have made it through that, sir,” Vinnie said from where he was crouching by the back door.

“Sean,” McKay said to the NCO, “they’re going to know we’re here. Get them out of here before…”

“Contact left!” Vinnie shouted, immediately opening fire.

McKay spun around and caught a glimpse of grey-armored biomechs coming around the corner of the house before incoming fire began cutting through the ruined door and windows, forcing him back. Vinnie emptied a magazine at the biomechs but then fell backwards heavily as a pair of rounds smacked into his chest armor. Jock surged forward, firing his carbine with one hand to suppress the enemy as he ducked in and grabbed his friend by the handle built into the back of his body armor, dragging him back behind the relative cover of an exterior wall.

McKay didn’t see any blood and Vinnie seemed to be moving, if gingerly. He moved to check on him when the front windows exploded inward with a withering barrage of gunfire that sent everyone flat to the floor. McKay cursed as he tried to watch the front and back simultaneously, swinging his carbine back and forth.

“Commander Villanueva,” he transmitted to the lander’s pilot. “This is General McKay, do you read?”

“Got you, sir,” he barely heard her voice in his earphones over the enemy gunfire. “What’s your situation?”

“Dominguez didn’t stay in the cabin,” he told her. “He went outside and took out the Marines with the KE satellites. We’re trapped inside the cabin with the Senator and her daughter.” He hesitated for a breath. “Launch the Bunker Buster, Commander.”

He waited for a reply, but none came. “Commander?” He called. “Commander Villanueva, do you read me?”

Nothing.

“Goddammit!” He hissed. He’d just have to hope she’d received the transmission. He switched to the general frequency. “Everyone load up a grenade,” he ordered. “We’re making a break out the back, making for the lake. Vinnie, are you okay?”

“I’ll be fine, sir,” he heard the man’s strained voice. “Armor stopped the shots… mostly.”

“I want you to take Val and Natalia and run for the lake while we provide suppressive fire,” he told the man, pulling a grenade from his vest pouches and loading into the launcher beneath his rifle barrel. “Once you get them to the water, grab a life jacket out of the boat and a line off the dock… you tow them across the lake and get them out of here.”

“Let Jock do it,” Vinnie argued. “He’s got muscle where his brains oughta’ be, he can get them across faster than me.”

“This isn’t a democracy, Major Mahoney,” McKay said with finality in his tone. “Follow your orders.” He turned to Valerie and keyed his external helmet speaker, turning the volume up to be heard over the gunfire. “Valerie, get ready to make a run for it! Vinnie’s going to take you and Natalia across the lake.”

She didn’t say anything, but McKay could see the terror in her eyes when she nodded to him in acknowledgement.

McKay raised his carbine and took the safety off the grenade launcher, trying to ignore the bullets tearing through the air all around them, smacking angrily into the furniture and the interior walls. He looked back at the other five in his squad and saw that Sean Watanabe was bleeding from a wound in his left arm, trying to bring up his grenade launcher one-handed, while one of the other two men in Sean’s team-he couldn’t tell if it was Brent or Timmons-was face-down and motionless, a pool of blood spreading beneath his shattered faceplate.

He tried to put that image and everything else aside as he aimed through the rear windows at the advancing biomechs.

“Fire…” he began to exclaim, but before the word was entirely out of his mouth, a burst of 8mm slugs tracked upward across his chest, not penetrating the hard armor there but slamming into his clavicle like a sledgehammer and snapping it, then slicing a line of fire across his neck before chewing a gouge in the side of his helmet and nearly ripping it off his head. His finger squeezed the trigger of the grenade launcher convulsively and the round actually fired true, hitting in the ground only a meter in front of a group of three biomechs and bursting with a brilliant fireball. McKay barely noticed it as he fell flat on his back, agony coursing through his right shoulder and stars flashing across his vision.

“Get them out!” He tried to yell the command, but it came out as a strained whisper instead. He still couldn’t see anything but the ceiling and the flashes from the blow to his head, but he heard the explosions and felt the concussion through the floor. For a moment, he thought that it was the others launching their rifle grenades, but then he felt the whole cabin shake and saw pieces of the front door flying over his head, blown out by a powerful shockwave that sent tongues of flame licking through the doorway and windows into the living room.

Gritting his teeth against the pain in his chest, neck and head, McKay rolled to his left and yanked aside his broken faceplate, trying to see what was happening. Smoke was drifting across the lake from over the cabin, where… whatever it was had happened, but through the smoke he could still see four of the biomechs moving, their rifle barrels swinging to and fro in confusion.

He heard the whine of turbines first, then saw the exhaust spraying ripples across the surface of the lake, and then the sleekly angular grey bulk of the assault lander swung into view from overhead, bristling with weapons’ hardpoints, and a chin cannon swung around towards the surviving biomechs. The burst of fire was brief, just a “chuff” of smoke and a spark of muzzle blast that lasted an eyeblink, but the biomechs just… disappeared. There was an explosion of dirt and smoke and blood and the four artificial soldiers were gone, leaving in their place scattered armor and body parts.

The lander hung there in the air, its jets screaming in the night, then it lurched forward and swung back around towards the front of the house. There was the distinct sound of another burst from the chin cannon, then an explosion that made the roof timbers tremble.

Another missile, McKay realized. The explosions had been from ground-support missiles, he now understood. Son of a bitch, he thought with irrational irritation. Commander Villanueva had disobeyed his orders.

Still half in a daze, McKay pulled his damaged helmet the rest of the way off with his good arm, then tried to get his feet beneath him to stand. Jock Gregory was suddenly there by his side, carefully helping him up and then pressing a smart bandage to the side of his neck. McKay abruptly realized that his armor was stained with way too much blood and that the neck wound had been much closer to being fatal than he would have liked.

“Valerie…” McKay rasped, looking around.

She was half-under a table just a couple meters away, with Sean Watanabe draped over her and blood staining the floor around them. McKay stepped quickly over and grabbed the armored man by the shoulder, rolling him off of her. Watanabe was clearly dead. He’d taken a burst through the neck and faceplate that had cut his jugular and taken off the left side of his face. Valerie and Natalia were lying motionless on the floor, covered in blood and McKay felt gorge rising in his throat… and then he saw her move, heard Natalia crying.

“Oh Jesus God,” he breathed, kneeling down beside her. “Are you all right? Is Natalia all right?”

Valerie didn’t answer immediately, her eyes blinking Sean Watanabe’s blood away. She seemed to have to pry her gaze away from his body to check on Natalia, slowly and lovingly patting at the little girl’s dress and making sure that she was unharmed. Natalia was sobbing, but seemed to calm down as she saw that her mother was all right. The little girl’s eyes went to McKay and got a bit wider-he must be a sight, he thought.

“Are you okay, Natalia?” he asked her, trying to keep his voice light.

She nodded, thumb going towards her mouth before Valerie automatically pulled it away.

McKay let out a sigh of relief and nearly collapsed, since the worry had been about the only thing keeping him going. He rose slowly from the crouch, looking around. Jock was helping Vinnie up from the floor, while Sgt. Timmons had his carbine up and was keeping a watchful eye out the back entrance. So it’s Brent that got hit, McKay thought.

“Timmons, check on Brent,” he told the man. “Then keep an eye on the Senator and her daughter. Jock, Vinnie, with me.”

McKay’s carbine was tight against his chest, pulled there by its retractable sling after he’d let it loose, but he left it where it was rather than trying to wield it one-handed. Instead, he reached around with his left hand to his right hip and yanked his sidearm from its holster, letting it hang at his side. The painkillers in the smart bandage were starting to take effect, but he still didn’t want to try doing anything with his right arm just yet.

He didn’t so much walk out the front door as step through what was left of the front wall, into a storm of swirling smoke still being stirred by the jets of the assault shuttle as it landed on the dirt road, next to the burning wreckage of the flyer and the tiltrotor transport that Dominguez and the biomechs had flown there.

The dirt road was cratered and torn, littered with bodies and body parts barely discernible in the flickering shadows from the fires, and the woods beyond the road simply didn’t exist anymore: a square acre of trees had been uprooted or blown apart by the KE barrage and a haze of black smoke and dust hung over them like a shroud.

“Over here, sir!” He heard Vinnie calling him from behind the wreckage of the small flyer and he turned and carefully made his way over there, trying not to step on anything squishy.

He found the Captain… no, the Major, he corrected himself… standing over a body. The corpse was charred almost beyond recognition, flash-burned by the explosion of the missile that had taken out the flyer, but half-concealed beneath it was a small tablet…

McKay shoved his pistol into his belt and pulled a flashlight out, then pushed the smoking remains aside with his boot, clenching his teeth at the sickly-sweet smell and the crunchy feel of the burned flesh under his foot. Kneeling down, he shone the flashlight beam on the tablet.

“Goddammit,” he hissed, feeling hope desert him.

The tablet was nearly ripped in half by shrapnel and what remained was warped by the heat of the explosion. Their only hope of regaining control of the defense satellites was gone. Without the tablet, it could take weeks to cleanse the system of the virus Dominguez had uploaded, and Shannon needed help now. He paused. Shannon needed help, but so did the Sheridan and the Bradley.

McKay stood, jogging over to the assault shuttle: it had touched down and the boarding ramp was lowering. Commander Villanueva stood at the top of the ramp, framed in the light from the interior.

“Commander,” McKay said as he climbed the ramp, “I distinctly recall ordering you to launch that Bunker Buster.”

“Reception was bad, sir,” she said, spreading her hands. “You were breaking up. I could have sworn you told me to come in low and provide fire support.” He saw her eyes looking past him to where Vinnie was coming up the ramp, and she smiled in a very unprofessional way.

“I’ll yell at you later,” he promised her, moving past her toward the cockpit. “Get us in the air and get me on the radio.” He glanced back and saw Vinnie grabbing her hand, squeezing it. “Vinnie, get in if you’re coming… tell Jock to call for a transport for Val and Natalia.” He waved a hand impatiently. “Let’s go, people… we still have a war to win!”

Chapter Forty-Seven

“He’s not making this easy for us, is he?” Drew Franks commented, watching the enemy cruiser changing course on the Tactical screen.

“If it was easy,” Captain Minishimi replied quietly, “they wouldn’t be paying us the big bucks, would they?”

Franks barked a laugh. “But why is he stalling?” the younger officer asked. “Doesn’t he want to try to take us out?”

“Maybe he’s not as hardened as he thought he was,” Commander Gianeto theorized. “After all, it’s not like he’s ever done this before either.”

“Then let’s not give him any more time to get ready,” Minishimi said. “Lt. Bevins, accelerate to 1.5 g’s and set a collision course.”

“Aye, ma’am,” Bevins said, sounding the acceleration alarm. “Thirty seconds to field intersect.”

“Engineering,” Minishimi called to Commander Infante, “we will be intersecting fields in thirty seconds. Get your people away from the main trunk lines and get them strapped in.”

“I am way ahead of you, Captain,” Infante said, sounding satisfied with herself. “Engineering is good to go.”

“Maybe she’s as smart as she thinks she is,” Franks murmured. Minishimi heard it and raised an eyebrow at him, but he could see the smile fighting to emerge on her face.

“Everyone hold on,” Gianeto said, strain evident in his voice, and not just from the one and a half gravity acceleration. “Here we g…”

* * *

Admiral Patel watched with a horrified fascination as the Bradley touched fields with the enemy cruiser. The computer was simulating the two ships, and the enemy ship looked suspiciously like file footage of the Sheridan… but when the field intersection occurred, the simulation was replaced by feeds from the exterior cameras as well as the views from satellites in orbit nearby and Patel saw the globe of light that was the visible manifestation of the burst of raw gravimetic energy that escaped when the fields of warped space-time interacted with each other and the thin ionosphere.

Left behind in the wake of the collision were the two star cruisers, drifting aimlessly in high orbit, their momentum absorbed by the Eysselink field collapse. The enemy ship was looking a bit the worse for the wear: she had taken several hits from the Brad after the Sheridan had knocked her out of warp previously, and now she had experienced two field collisions in a very short span. The thermal scans showed multiple hotspots on the cruiser’s drive pods and significant fluctuations in its fusion reactor, as well as atmosphere leaks from the hangar bay.

If the enemy cruiser looked as if it had been in a fight, though, the Bradley had obviously lost one. Her drive pods had been completely sheered away by the gravito-inertial feedback and their mounts were twisted wreckage, coolant spraying white into the vacuum from severed feed lines. Her reactor was cold and inactive and her hangar bay spewed burning atmosphere, set alight, he guessed, by a shuttle explosion. She was helpless and not much more now than a stationary target.

Her Shipbuster missiles, however, were still active and now burning towards the enemy cruiser behind flares of fusion fire. Patel urged them on with his fervent hopes, running a quick check with what sensors the Sheridan had left to make sure that the lifepods and shuttles from his ship weren’t going to be too close to the blast, but unlike the Bradley, the enemy cruiser wasn’t powerless. From the weapons pods on either side of the ship shot two identical Shipbusters, moving away from the cruiser before their fusion drives ignited, taking them on intercept courses with the Bradley‘s missiles.

Patel swore softly and looked down at the control board beneath his fingers. The holographic displays weren’t working, but the backup physical controls were folded out and operational. He made a decision and touched the button to activate the fusion drives. The Sheridan lurched forward, shaking violently as the fusion drive came to life fitfully, its electromagnetic bottle taking a moment to stabilize. Then Patel felt a full one gravity of acceleration pressing him back into his command couch as his ship lumbered toward the enemy cruiser.

Hundreds of kilometers away from the starships, the two pairs of Shipbuster missiles converged and detonated, and all of the Sheridan‘s external and satellite feeds whited out at once, leaving only the computer simulation: a huge white globe, a second sun that outshone the real one that was emerging from the Earth’s terminator. Patel worried for a moment about radiation, then had to chuckle to himself as he realized what he was about to do.

“Try to do anyway,” he mumbled, correcting himself.

The cameras came back online and he could see the enhanced visual image of the enemy cruiser. They had to have the noticed the Sheridan accelerating by now… As if the captain of the enemy ship were reading Patel’s mind, two more Shipbuster missiles nosed out of the cruiser’s weapons pods and kicked free, their fusion drives igniting.

“Well damn,” Patel said, shoulders sagging. There was no way the Sheridan would reach the enemy ship before the missiles intercepted him. And once he was gone, there would be nothing left to stop that ship.

* * *

Drew Franks had imagined the worst, but somehow it was so much worse than he imagined. It was different both qualitatively and quantitatively than their previous field intersects with the ramships. It seemed like he was hanging forever in a grey limbo where there was no physical sensation and yet he still felt an incredible almost psychic discomfort. He could think, in that he was able to perceive what was happening to him, and yet he was unable to conceive a single coherent thought.

Then, after a subjective eternity, reality crashed down like a twenty foot wave into coral and rocks, with him in-between. The pain-nothing localized, just a general, intense soreness everywhere-was breathtaking and blinding, but in moments it retreated into a dull ache and he was able to open his eyes.

“Medical? Do you read me, medical?” He could hear Captain Minishimi’s voice before he was even able to bring his vision into focus.

How the hell is she back up and moving around so fast? he wondered enviously.

Then he saw what she was doing and he no longer felt any envy for her position. Captain Minishimi was out of her seat and hovering in the zero gravity, anchored to the navigation console, where Lt. Bevins was hanging against his restraints, blood pouring from his nose and trickling steadily from an ear. But even in the flickering shadows from the sputtering holographic displays, Franks could tell that Bevins was still breathing…

“This is Lt. Fields in Medical,” a reply finally came over the intercom.

“We need a team up here immediately,” Minishimi snapped. “We have one crewmember with a possible brain hemorrhage and others that may be injured as well.”

“Aye, ma’am,” Fields said. “We’ll get someone up there as soon as we can. Things are… bad down here.”

“I understand, Lieutenant,” Minishimi said with a resigned sigh. “Commander Infante,” she switched to the line to Engineering. “What’s our situation?”

There was no reply for a moment, and Minishimi glanced around to see that Franks was conscious. “Are you all right, Lt. Franks?”

“As far as I know, Captain,” he told her. A glance around showed that no one else was awake and coherent yet, although Commander Lee was shaking her head, trying to clear it.

“This is Commander Infante,” the Chief Engineer’s voice came over the bridge speakers. “Captain, we all seem to be okay here… no casualties. I am trying to get a look into the Engineering compartment now… oh dear.”

That doesn’t sound good, Franks thought morosely.

“Captain,” Infante reported, “the main trunk lines exploded and the entire compartment is pretty much destroyed. From what I can tell from our remote sensors, the Eysselink drive pods are nonfunctional-to be honest, I’m not even sure they’re there anymore. The antimatter fuel pods have ejected and the fusion reactor has completely flushed. I may be able to get the reactor back up, but it’s going to take hours to re-route the power feeds. Sorry, ma’am, but we’re driftwood.”

Minishimi was silent for a moment, and in that time, Larry Gianeto had managed to reboot the Tactical station and unfold the backup display screen. “Captain,” he spoke up, “I just picked up multiple fusion explosions about 400 kilometers from us, 600 klicks from the enemy ship.” He frowned. “Ma’am, I think he took out our missiles.”

“Damn,” the Captain said softly. “Lt. Reno, send a message to Fleet Headquarters. Tell them that we and the Sheridan are both disabled but the enemy cruiser’s field is down, at least temporarily. Tell them they have to launch everything they have at it, before it can start taking out our cities…”

“Ma’am,” Gianeto interrupted her. “The Sheridan is boosting on her fusion drive.”

Minishimi’s head snapped around, her eyes wide. Franks knew what she was thinking: the ship’s life pods had already evacuated, along with her remaining landers and shuttles. Whoever had stayed behind was doing exactly what she had intended to do: trying to save the crew.

“The enemy ship is launching on the Sheridan!” Gianeto announced. “Two Shipbusters, ma’am.”

“Captain,” Lt. Reno said, “we have an incoming communication.”

“Is it Fleet HQ?” she asked, feeling numb and helpless.

“No, ma’am,” Reno told her, shaking his head. “It’s General McKay.”

* * *

“Listen to me, Commander Kent,” McKay growled into the cockpit mic, “I don’t give a flying fuck about your procedures or your regulations. There is a Protectorate cruiser in orbit and the only thing that’s going to keep it from bombarding our population is if we can get the defense lasers operational.”

“Sir, I understand that,” the harried officer replied, “but I can’t target anything without access to the system and we don’t have that!”

“And I’m telling you that you don’t need to target anything, Mister… I will be giving you the coordinates and you will be firing that damn laser like it was God Himself telling you where to shoot. And if you don’t, and if you are unfortunate enough to survive what happens next, I will find you, Commander George Kent and I will make you wish you’d died in something as painless as a fusion explosion.” Beside McKay, in the lander’s pilot’s seat, Esme Villanueva grinned with appreciation.

McKay cut the connection without waiting to hear a reply, then switched over to another frequency. “Bradley, this is General McKay, do you read?”

“McKay, this is Captain Minishimi,” he heard her familiar voice over the cockpit speakers. “Do you have control of the defense system?”

“No, but neither do they,” he told her. “We have contact with the maintenance crews of the lasers, though-if you can feed me the targeting coordinates, I can get them to the right station and take out that damn cruiser.”

“McKay,” Minishimi interrupted, “the Sheridan is under power, she’s heading for the cruiser and the enemy ship just launched a pair of Shipbusters at her… you need to target the missiles immediately! I’m sending you a targeting vector now.”

“Shit,” McKay muttered. Hitting a slow-moving cruiser was one thing; hitting a missile moving at a dozen gravities acceleration was going to be much trickier. “All right, let’s hope we can make this work…”

* * *

Arvid Patel hit a control on his ‘link and set it on the console by his right hand.

“Dad?” The voice sounded so different than the last time he’d heard it, so much deeper and older.

“Hello, Abshay,” Patel said, trying to keep his voice casual as he stared at the icons of the fusion missiles boosting towards him on the screen. “Are you safe?”

“Yes, sir,” Abshay assured him. “They have us in a shelter here at the Academy. I… I didn’t know you were back insystem, sir. Is the fighting over, then?”

“Not quite yet, son. Soon, I think.” Patel cleared his throat to keep from choking up. “So, I have not been able to speak with you for a long time… I just wanted to make sure you are all right. Does school go well?”

“It’s fine, Dad,” Abshay told him, his tone sounding a bit puzzled at the train of the conversation. “Expectations are high, of course… it isn’t easy walking in your footsteps.”

“Oh, don’t do that, Abshay,” Patel couldn’t hold back the tears now, or the crack in his voice. “Make your own path and you will be twice the man I ever was.”

“Dad?” Abshay said, sounding worried. “Is everything all right?”

Patel opened his mouth to answer… and let it hang open as he watched a brightly glowing track of superionized atmosphere trace a line up from the ground in less than an eyeblink, disappearing as the air thinned to near vacuum, but still simulated by the ship’s Tactical computer as it intersected the route of the lead Shipbuster and speared directly through its fusion drive. The missile disappeared into a miniature star that swallowed up the second Shipbuster as well for a long moment, until it emerged from the huge ball of superheated gas charred and dead, its drives inactive, its course changed from the explosion.

“Yes, Abshay.” Admiral Patel smiled as he answered his son’s question. “I think things are all right. I have some work to do, though. I love you, and I am proud of you.”

“I love you too, Dad.”

Patel was still smiling as he cut the connection.

* * *

“The Shipbusters are gone!” Gianeto announced, excitement in his voice.

“McKay,” Minishimi called, “they got the missiles! Tell them they need to shift aim to the cruiser!” She motioned to Gianeto and he nodded, sending a transmission from his station to Communications. “The coordinates are on the way.”

Drew Franks and Commander Lee were both hanging over Gianeto’s shoulder, trying to follow the battle on the small emergency screen at the Tactical station, which was why the younger officer was still looking when Gianeto had turned away to transmit the coordinates. “Captain!” Franks exclaimed. “The cruiser is turning on her axis!”

Gianeto’s head snapped back to the screen and he touched the screen, magnifying the view of the enemy ship. The image showed the massive vessel slowly spinning end for end, the minute flares of her maneuvering thrusters visible at her bow and stern.

“She’s realigning her weapons pods,” the Tactical officer realized. “Captain, I think she’s…”

Sunlight twinkled off of a long chain of silvery beads that shot out of the cruiser’s weapons pods, each the size of a groundcar.

“She’s firing her Gauss cannons!” Gianeto said. “She’s firing at a planetary target…”

“She’s targeting the lasers,” Franks said, grim certainty in his voice.

“The optics are all shielded and underground, aren’t they?” Lee asked.

“They don’t have to destroy the optics,” Minishimi told her, biting back a curse. “All they need to do is block the emitters. It’s an easy fix, but it will still take time… and that leaves them free to destroy the Sheridan… and us.”

“Captain!” Lt. Reno said. “I have Captain Fox from Fleet HQ on the line. He says they’ve launched a Shipbuster at the enemy cruiser, but it’s going to be almost a half hour till it gets there.”

“One?” Franks blurted, aghast. “Is he saving them for a fucking special occasion?”

“You know Captain Fox,” Minishimi reminded him, shaking her head, too disgusted to even reprove him for his language. “That station is his baby. He’s saving them for the rest of the Protectorate fleet we left out there. We’re lucky he granted us the one.”

“If we live through this,” Franks promised with a half-snarl, “I’m going to have to make a concerted effort to see he’s reassigned to a post more in concert with his abilities.”

You’re just a Lieutenant! Franks reminded himself silently. Then, with a cold amusement, Not if we survive this you won’t be.

“The Sheridan is still heading for the enemy ship,” Gianeto reminded them, staring intently at the screen, as if afraid to turn away again. “She’s at two g’s acceleration now.”

“Lt. Reno,” Minishimi instructed, “try to raise the Sheridan. I want to know who’s piloting that ship.”

* * *

“The Australia defense laser is down, General,” the voice of Captain De Ndinge came over the cockpit speakers of the lander. “We have reports from the maintenance crew that the damage is not too extensive and it should be repaired in a matter of less than an hour, but…”

“I understand Captain,” McKay said. “Patch me through to Mojave… that’ll be the next station the ship passes over.”

“This is Mojave Laser Launch Station,” a female voice said. “Lt. Commander Botha here, sir.”

“Commander Botha,” McKay said clearly but rapidly, “the enemy cruiser is going to be passing through your cone of fire in about a minute and he’s going to be firing on you with KE weapons the second he does. I’m going to relay targeting coordinates to you and I need you to fire along that vector until you can’t fire any more, do you understand?”

“Will do, sir,” the officer said, refreshingly without argument. “Waiting on target vectors.”

“We’re keeping him busy, sir,” Vinnie commented as McKay sent the information stream, “but what are we keeping him busy for? A couple of seconds of laser fire isn’t going to destroy that ship, and sooner or later we’re going to run out of lasers.”

“We’re keeping his attention,” Jason McKay said bitterly, not looking up at him, “to give one of my best friends time to commit suicide.”

* * *

“Arvid, can you hear me?”

Patel recognized the voice immediately, even with the roaring in his ears from the high-g burn. He smiled thinly and touched the control to transmit. “Hello Jason,” he said, his eyes still fixed on the image of the enemy ship on the screen. “I’m glad you’re still in one piece. I hope Senator O’Keefe and her daughter are safe.”

“They’re fine, Arvid. But we weren’t able to get the controller intact… it was destroyed in the fight.”

“That… was always a longshot,” Patel allowed, grunting with the effort of taking a breath.

“Admiral… it’s not too late to get out of there. Set the controls and get in a lifepod. It’ll still work.” McKay’s voice didn’t sound pleading… the man was too good to allow that. No, it sounded reasonable, like someone giving you good advice.

“Trust me, Jason… I’d love to.” Another deep, pained breath. “But she’s going to try evasive maneuvers… got to be here when she does.”

There was silence for a long moment. The enemy ship was growing larger on the screen. As he watched, another laser pierced the sky, this time striking the cruiser on its armored nose, and a glowing cloud of superhot, vaporized nickel iron surrounded the monolithic ship before its coilguns spoke again, sending massive shells downward at hypersonic speeds. The armor on the ship’s bow was thick, but Patel could see it running off like liquid in the long seconds it took the Gauss artillery to reach their target. Then the laser fire ceased and the cruiser hung there, leaking burning atmosphere, partially blinded by the loss of its forward sensors, but still alive.

“Is there anything I can do?” McKay finally asked.

“Two things, Jason,” Patel replied after a moment’s thought. “First of all, I want you to swear to me that you’ll see this through to the finish, no matter where it takes you or who gets hurt.” A ragged breath. “This went too far and too high and for too long. Something isn’t right and I don’t know how, but we need to discover what.”

“You’ve got it, Admiral.” McKay assured him. “I’ll work that bone like a bulldog. What else?”

“Keep an eye on Abshay. Give him the advice you always gave me.” Patel drew in a gasping, painful breath. “Make sure he has someone to turn to. You’re his hero, you know.”

”You’re his hero, Admiral,” McKay declared, his voice finally breaking. “And that’s one of the first pieces of advice I’m going to give him. But not the last.”

“Ah, he is finally making his move,” Patel noticed. The enemy cruiser’s maneuvering jets were flaring and she was swapping end for end, leaving her less vulnerable fusion drive plates to face the next laser in line, the Long Island laser. Meanwhile, a large missile, the size of a Shipbuster but sleeker and obviously intended for use in a thick atmosphere, moved into the launch rail of the port weapons pod.

“They’re loading a space-to-ground missile,” the Admiral informed him. “Not one of our designs. Too big to be conventional.”

McKay’s grunt sounded as if he’d been punched in the stomach. “Probably a multiple-warhead fusion missile,” he reasoned, his tone hopeless. “With the defense network down, we’ll have no way to stop it.”

“Don’t worry about it, Jason,” Patel said, smiling as he heard the proximity alarms start to sound. “He’s about to be too distracted to fire it.” He saw the cruiser’s fusion drive light as the enemy tried desperately to move to a higher orbit, to get out of his way…

“No, tovarisch,” he whispered, using his own maneuvering thrusters to stay on target. “It’s far too late for that…”

“Arvid?” McKay asked, pain and sorrow in his voice.

“Goodbye, Jason,” Patel said. “Thank you for being my friend… whether I deserved it or not.”

* * *

Two medics treated Lt. Bevins, exchanging information and instructions in quiet mutters, but other than that, the bridge of the Bradley was silent. All other eyes were focused on the small backup Tactical screen, where the Sheridan was roaring toward the enemy cruiser, riding a star-bright plasma flame.

Drew Franks had never met Admiral Arvid Patel, but all he could think, watching with rapt attention as history unfolded before him, was that he wished he could trade places with the man. He wasn’t sure if that was because he wanted to spare a great man and a great leader from this fate… or because he knew that the name Arvid Patel would never be forgotten. He felt like he should be disturbed by that notion, but for some reason he was comfortable with it.

When the two nearly-identical ships merged with atom-shattering finality, shining a new sun over a darkened world, he could hear Captain Minishimi quietly sobbing behind him, but he couldn’t bring himself to mourn. Admiral Patel would live forever.

Chapter Forty-Eight

There should be screaming, Shannon thought numbly. Biomechs were swarming up the ditch over the piled bodies of their fellows, climbing over the fallen corpses of the defenders, young men and women barely out of their teens who would never live to see their second battle. Others were running back to their secondary positions, where the few that remained were taking up as much cover as they could, waiting to sell their lives as expensively as they could.

Bullets and grenade fragments crisscrossed the open field, slicing through natural-born and lab-grown flesh and bone without prejudice, and yet she couldn’t hear a single scream. The helmets held them in, bottled them up, shut them out. The men and women all fell as silently as the biomechs they fought, as if they were all automatons. But there was, Shannon knew, one key difference between them beyond their ability to independently reason: numbers.

Between the CeeGee trainees and the brief orbital bombardment, Shannon estimated they’d killed over half the biomech army. Unfortunately, that meant there were nearly ten thousand of them left, against less than 300 of the CeeGee officer candidates, their trainers and the half a dozen Special Operations troops still standing… or shooting at least, even if they couldn’t stand.

Crouching behind the cover of a low earthen wall, trying to organize what remained, Shannon felt an insane guilt that she was still alive. She shook it off, watching the oncoming horde of inhuman troops and reflecting that soon she’d have nothing at all for which to feel guilty.

“Colonel Stark,” General Kage said from where he was half-crouched, half-sitting a few meters away, his words clear in her helmet’s headphones despite the din of battle. “I do not believe we can hold this time.”

“I believe you’re right, sir,” she said simply, firing off the last few rounds from her magazine into a biomech only thirty meters away. “We have to pull back, save what we can.” She turned to face him, his eyes barely visible through his faceplate in the grey, pre-dawn light. “You lead the retreat, General… I’ll stay here with my people and try to cover you.”

“Shannon,” another transmission interrupted her conversation. It was Jason, and the sound of it flooded her with relief. He’s alive, she thought gratefully. At least one of us will make it through this. “Shannon, do you read?”

“I’m here, Jason,” she said, holding a hand up to pause Kage as he was about to order the retreat. “Are Val and Natalia safe?”

“We got them out, but the controller was destroyed,” McKay told her. She felt the bottom fall out of her stomach as she realized what that meant. There wouldn’t be any fire support. “Shannon, I need you to break contact with the biomechs and fall back from the bridge as far as you can… get behind some serious cover.”

“Why?” Shannon asked, confused. “What’s coming?”

“Air support,” she could hear the grin in his voice, recognized it very well after the last six years. “I’ll explain the details later, just trust me.”

She could hear the silence as the transmission ended. She shook her head, smiling despite the circumstances. “General Kage,” she called. “There’s been a change of plans…”

* * *

Commander Caroline Pirelli felt like a traitor, leaving most of her shipmates to chancy reentries wherever their lifepods happened to take them, but she’d abandoned the ship on board one of the assault shuttles and they had a job to do. There were half a dozen of them, not counting the one that General McKay had taken earlier-five from the Decatur and another that was the standard complement for the Sheridan-and thank God it was SOP to keep them armed and ready in case of emergency.

Because I’d say this definitely counts as one, she mused.

As the senior officer on board, and a qualified pilot, she rated the co-pilot’s seat on the bird, so she had a very clear view out the cockpit window as the shuttle entered the atmosphere, flying point in a lopsided V formation. The brown, green and blue hemisphere stretched below her, half sheathed in darkness, half bathed in the glow of dawn as the blinding glow of the sun emerged from behind the curve of the Earth. It was beautiful, she reflected for a moment, suddenly realizing that she was home again and also realizing how much she’d missed it.

Hope Mom and Dad are okay, she fretted silently. They lived near Capital City…

* * *

“Pull back!” Ari Shamir yelled over the general frequency as he ran from position to position, grabbing each of the troopers in his company and pushing them in the direction of the designated rally point on the other side of the original LZ.

It was hard getting most of them to listen: they’d been fighting on and off for hours, and scavenging the dead for ammo when they hadn’t been fighting… the biomech’s and their own. They’d lost half their number as of the last surge, and God alone knew how many were dead in this assault. Everyone was in a haze, getting tunnel vision and focusing on putting rounds downrange to the exclusion of all else, including commands over their radios.

Ari stumbled and nearly went down as a bullet slammed into the armor pad over his right thigh; he felt as if he’d been smacked by a baseball bat, but he didn’t think that the slug had penetrated. He limped-ran to the last fighting position, a hole dug hastily between two trees, then fell into it, taking cover. There had been two Colonial Guard troops in the hole before this last attack; one was gone, hopefully to the rally point, while the other was sprawled half-in and half-out of the fighting position. Blood soaked the dirt and grass around him, though Ari couldn’t see where he’d been hit.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Ari thought that he should feel something, horrified or sad or sickened… but too many people had died that night for him to work up the emotion. Ari caught his breath for a moment, crouching at the bottom of the hole, and tried to flex his right leg. It hurt like hell, but it didn’t seem to be broken and he couldn’t feel any blood soaking it.

“Roza,” he transmitted on her frequency. “Are you at the rally point yet?”

There was no reply and now he did find the energy to curse. Pulling his carbine up, he climbed out of the foxhole and fired off three quick bursts at a pair of biomech troopers who were advancing across the open field between him and the ditch. One of them went down and the other staggered and Ari took the opportunity to make a run for it.

He should have gone straight to the rally point and organized what was left of his company, but instead he ran a serpentine course that took him across the last line of defense to where Roza’s company had been dug in, behind a low berm that had once been the back wall of a convenience store. Biomech corpses were scattered in clusters of two or three everywhere he looked, but they began to grow thicker as he approached the berm.

The whole length of the earthen wall was buried beneath a pile three or four deep that spilled over the top… and that was where he began to see the bodies of his people. Some had been cut down from behind as they tried to run, but others were half-concealed under the corpses of the enemy, dying where they had fought.

Heedless of his own safety, he pulled out a flashlight and began shining it on each of the bodies, desperate to know.

“Roza!” he called on her radio frequency, then switched to the external speakers and shouted it. “Roza!” The word echoed through the night, but there was no reply.

There… he’d seen movement from one of the bodies, hunched up against the inner wall, with a biomech corpse collapsed over it. He grabbed the Protectorate trooper by the back of its armored vest and yanked it off, grunting with the effort of moving the massive, 120-kilo body. The biomech’s faceplate was shattered, its face pulped by a 8mm slug and its blood coated the barrel of the CG trooper’s rifle from the point-blank shot.

More blood-human, this time-stained the right arm and left side of the Colonial Guard armor from bullet wounds, and something, maybe the concussion from a grenade explosion, had damaged the helmet, knocking loose the faceplate. It was Candidate Matienzo and he was barely conscious, his eyes blinking at the glare from Ari’s light.

“Matienzo, can you hear me?” Ari asked, shaking the man’s shoulder.

“Captain Al-Masri?” Matienzo muttered groggily.

“Where is Lt. Hudec?” Ari asked, remembering to use her cover name. He was fairly sure that Kage hadn’t bothered to explain the situation to the officer candidates.

“Don’t know,” he shook his head, wincing as it obviously caused him pain. “We were trying to fall back…”

Ari grabbed Matienzo’s left hand and pulled him to his feet. “Come on,” he said, “we have to get to the rally point quickly.”

They were turning to head away when he heard the gunfire nearby. There had been the constant background noise of automatic fire in the background for so long he had shut it out, but this was nearby, not even fifty meters away. Ari sprinted towards the sound, trusting Matienzo to follow him.

This is crazy, he thought as he ran. If I keep chasing every movement and gunshot, I won’t make it out of here. She’s probably dead. But he didn’t care and he couldn’t leave her. He’d rather stay there and die than leave without her. The thought was intimidating: he was thirty years old and had never felt that way about anyone before.

It didn’t take long to find the source of the gunfire-it was just over a small rise then down into what had been a drainage ditch a hundred years before. Four biomechs were on the banks of the drainage ditch, firing down toward the culvert; someone was taking cover in the concrete-lined tunnel, returning fire sporadically.

Ari sighted via the aiming reticle in his helmet HUD and fired a three-round burst into the back of the closest biomech’s neck. The Protectorate trooper pitched forward like a marionette with its strings cut, its spinal cord severed, and he shifted to the next target before the other biomechs realized he was there. By the time the second biomech went down, the other two were turning, but it was far too late: the Colonial Guard soldier had crawled forward out of the culvert and was adding another gun to the battle.

Ari saw out of the corner of his eye that Matienzo had come up beside him and was firing his battle rifle one-handed-at this range, it didn’t matter, as none of them could miss. The remaining two Protectorate troopers fell under the withering crossfire and suddenly the area around them was deathly quiet.

Ari jumped down into the drainage ditch and knelt down to help the soldier there as she dragged herself out of the culvert. She couldn’t stand: there were bullet wounds in both her legs and her helmet was gone, a gash in the side of her head matting her short, dark hair with blood. She was also the most beautiful thing Ari had seen in his life.

“Thank God,” he breathed as he lifted Roza from the ditch. Then he remembered to key his external speakers. “If it weren’t for this damn helmet,” he said, “I would kiss you.”

“Later, kedves,” she leaned her head against his chest for a moment. “Now, we must get out of here.”

“Hold on,” he told her, crouching down and throwing her over his left shoulder, hearing her gasp at the pain it caused in her legs and wincing in sympathy. “Matienzo!” he said. “Watch our backs and follow me.”

His left arm wrapped around Roza’s legs and his right hand filled with his carbine, Ari took off at a trot, as fast as he could manage carrying her extra weight and as fast as they could go and still allow Matienzo to keep up. The first hint of false dawn was visible as a grey line across the eastern horizon and Ari used it as a beacon, more real and visceral than the indicator on the map in his HUD, more comforting than the lines of tracer-fire that cut through the darkness all around them.

“Hurry!” He could hear Matienzo’s yell over his external audio pickups and he risked a glance backwards. A few hundred meters behind them, hundreds of biomechs were swarming out from the wash and he could see hundreds more behind those, all pushing in, spurred on by whatever human was controlling them, sensing that this was the time to throw everything in on one final attack.

“Kusemek,” Ari grunted, reverting to the curse words of his youth on the streets of Tel Aviv. Motherfucker. He tried to run faster, but his right thigh felt like jello and Roza was not a small woman: a meter seven and 54 kilos of muscle, not to mention the weight of her armor. His breath came in short, painful gasps and his feet pounded the dirt, sending jolts of pain up the muscles of his back and into his shoulders with each step, and still that icon on the map seemed so far away…

The pounding of his own pulse in his ears was so loud that he almost didn’t hear the whine of the turbines, couldn’t understand Matienzo’s shouted warning… and was totally unprepared when the officer candidate took him and Roza down in a body block. He rolled off of Roza, ready to scream an obscenity at the younger man, which was when he saw the assault shuttle screaming down behind them, anti-personnel missiles dropping free from its hardpoints and rocketing their way.

Ari threw himself down over Roza, catching a glimpse out of the corner of his eye of Matienzo curling into a fetal position, hands over his head, and then the whole world exploded. A pressure wave lifted him and Roza off the ground, sending them tumbling across the ground, coming to a rest in a rut in the field. When his head stopped swimming, Ari saw a wall of fire where the advancing biomechs had been, the line of fireballs slowly mushrooming into the night.

The assault lander rose into the sky above them, climbing against the bright stars then tumbling back into a turn that took it down the way it had come, passing back over the next wave of Protectorate troops and letting loose another flight of air-to-ground missiles. Ari watched in awe as the ground erupted with a chain of explosions a kilometer long… and then felt elation as he saw a half dozen more assault shuttles coming in from the west, breaking out of a V formation to split up and split the enemy force into separate sectors.

Waves of missiles rained destruction down on the Protectorate forces, secondary blasts from their APC’s exploding in antiphonal counterpart. As they expended their missiles, the shuttles opened fire with chin cannons, hovering on belly jets to pour explosive shells into clusters of surviving biomechs.

Roza sat up beside him, pain etched on her face but satisfaction in her eyes as she clung to his neck for support and, he hoped, just because. Ari worked free the yoke at his neck and pulled his helmet off, feeling the refreshingly cool night breeze drying the sweat on his forehead. He leaned down and kissed Roza gently, savoring the warmth of her, the softness of her lips for a long moment.

She put her head against his chest and just rested there for a moment. Thinking of her wounds, he patted at the pockets of his tactical vest, but found them empty.

“Matienzo,” Ari said, “do you have any smart bandages left?”

“No, sir,” the young man said, shaking his head… then stopped and stared at Ari curiously, seeing him with his helmet off for the first time. “Captain Al-Masri,” he said, frowning, “what the hell happened to your face?”

Ari laid his head back on the grass and laughed.

* * *

Jason McKay stepped down the ramp of the lander slowly, chains of exhaustion and pain dragging at him. His emotions were a roller coaster, taking him from deep sadness to extreme relief and almost giddiness, and it took a concerted effort to keep himself from breaking into sobs. There would be time for that later.

Dawn was breaking over the trees, the golden light coloring the billowing smoke that climbed into the morning sky and adding a hint of gold to Shannon Stark’s red hair where she stood waiting for him, her helmet held under her arm. She looked as drained as him, but they met somewhere in the middle, falling into each other’s arms.

“Hi honey,” he whispered in her ear, recalling words he’d spoken to her over five years ago, “I’m home.”

She snorted, punching him lightly in the shoulder.

“Easy!” he hissed, wincing. “I think my collar bone is broken.”

“I told you you should stay behind that desk,” she said, touching lightly at the bandage on his neck, her tone still playful but tears welling up in her eyes.

“General McKay,” General Kage approached them, clearing his throat. He had stripped off his helmet as well and sweat matted his dark hair. McKay kissed Shannon on the forehead, then turned to face the CeeGee officer.

“General Kage,” he said, nodding to the man. He didn’t know what to expect from the man, but given past experience, he decided to try to defuse the situation preemptively. “Sir, from what I’ve seen and been told, your people fought very well here. Their sacrifice saved tens of thousands of lives.”

“And you saved our lives, McKay,” Kage acknowledged, surprising Jason with his gratitude. “So I gather from that,” he waved at the other shuttles, which were still patrolling back and forth along the battlefield, hunting stray biomechs, “that our ships in orbit prevailed?”

McKay’s expression was grim. “Yes, sir, they did. But not without a hell of a cost. The Bradley is disabled, and the Decatur and the Sheridan have both been destroyed. Admiral Patel,” McKay kept his voice from breaking with an effort of will, “sacrificed his life ramming the enemy cruiser with the Sheridan after the crew had abandoned ship.” He nodded at the assault aerospacecraft. “Some of them are on those shuttles.”

Shannon had looked up sharply when he mentioned Patel’s death, then closed her eyes, mouth moving in a silent prayer, her hand grabbing his in a tight grip. McKay sighed. “It’s not quite over yet. There are some Protectorate ships still insystem, but our cislunar cutters and the Fleet Headquarters station should be able to stand them off until the rest of our cruisers arrive.”

“There is one other matter that needs resolving as well, McKay,” Kage reminded him. McKay squinted curiously, but it was Shannon who answered the unspoken question.

“Antonov,” she said. “I doubt he would put his ass on the line out here in the battlefield, especially not dragging around Fourcade and Riordan. So,” she shook her head, “where the hell is he?”

* * *

Brendan Riordan had been wondering for days now when Antonov and Fourcade were going to kill him, and now he thought he finally knew. He’d had his suspicions when they’d received the transmission from… well, from someone telling them that the Protectorate cruiser in orbit had been destroyed and that Dominguez was dead. They’d been hiding out in a safe house in the middle of nowhere outside Ottawa when they’d got the news and Antonov had flown into a rage, smashing everything in the place not bolted to the floor and smacking Riordan around a bit before Fourcade had managed to calm him down.

That was when Fourcade had mentioned the shuttle, and Riordan had begun to suspect that he would shortly be a dead man.

“We just need to get into cislunar space,” Fourcade had said, trying to mollify a seething Antonov. “Then we get in contact with one of the remaining ships and have it take us back to Novoye Rodina. They still can’t touch us there with the defenses we have in place… and we can add more before they’d be ready to make a run at us. Yes,” he’d admitted, spreading his hands to forestall the outburst he had known would be coming, “we’ve lost a lot of resources, but we have the ability to make more. General… I know you’re a patient man. You waited more than a century to attempt to exact your revenge because you wanted to be ready. We just have to be patient for a little longer.”

Antonov had still been incensed, but he’d gone along and they’d taken Riordan’s private flyer, the one whose registration had been spoofed so that it would come up as a different vehicle every time it was used, and made a beeline for west Texas.

Neither of them had spoken to him the entire way, but he’d known why he was being brought along. For years now, he’d kept a private shuttle in an unobtrusive little hangar on a shut-down storage facility just outside the boundaries of the Rio Grande Nature Preserve. It was a just-in-case emergency getaway vehicle; a bit of paranoia that he’d felt was justified by the various pots into which he’d stuck his political spoon. The hangar and the shuttle were only accessible to his DNA and biometric identification, so they would need him alive to access it… and then they wouldn’t have any need for him at all.

Riordan understood full well by now that he had made several huge mistakes, the biggest of which had been the illusion that he’d ever been in control of this scheme. No, the one who had been in control was Kevin Fourcade. Oh, Antonov was giving the orders, but the one who’d arranged everything, the one who’d created an army of biomechs that Riordan had never known existed, the one who’d given the Protectorate forces a Goddamned star cruiser as well as many more warships than Riordan had ever agreed to and conveniently left off the fail-safe shut-offs he’d insisted on… that one was Fourcade.

He’d known Kevin for over fifteen years. How had he gotten the man so wrong?

He shrugged the thought away and blinked at the blinding morning sunlight reflecting off the sand as he led the other two across the landing pad from his flyer toward the old hangar. It was a simple, cheap buildfoam structure-from the outside, anyway-with a broad awning covering the office entrance just off to the side from the three-story tall metal doors that would allow the shuttle to roll out onto the tarmac. It was an inauspicious place to spend his last moments alive.

He sighed with resignation and went to the office door, staring at it for a moment before casting one last look back at Fourcade and Antonov. Fourcade seemed impassive, as if all this were just run of the mill ordinary, another day at the office. Antonov, by contrast, was still livid, his pale skin ruddy and his breath ragged.

“There’s no need to kill me,” Riordan insisted, deciding he had little to lose by begging. “Nothing I know can hurt you. If you lock me up in here, destroy the communications gear, I couldn’t stop you from getting away, even if I wanted to.”

He tried to smile, but felt it come out on his face like a grimace.

Antonov started to speak, from the shape of his mouth it would have been nothing pleasant, but Fourcade interrupted him, his voice smooth and soothing. “Of course there’s no need to kill you, Brendan,” he assured the man. “Now just open the door for us, let us in that shuttle and we can all get exactly what we want.”

Riordan closed his eyes and felt hope fall away from him. He turned back to the door, wondering if he could try to make a break for it after he got inside…

“I don’t know about getting what you want,” the deep, booming voice made him jump, “but I do know you’ll be getting what you deserve.”

Riordan’s eyes went wide as Greg Jameson stepped around the corner from the side of the building closest to the office door. He could have been a workman, dressed in drab, dusty coveralls… except for the 10mm service pistol he held, pointed directly at Kevin Fourcade. Fourcade’s hand had been halfway toward drawing his own pistol from beneath his suit coat when he saw the gun in Jameson’s hand and froze.

“Greg?” Riordan said inanely. “How… how did you know about this place?”

“You may have forgotten,” Jameson said drily, not taking his eyes off Fourcade and Antonov, “but I used to be President of the Republic. I had complete files on quite a few important people. Nothing is as secret as you might think, Brendan.” A smile quirked on Jameson’s lips. “I figured that you fellas might wind up here… and since everyone else was way too busy with other things, I took it upon myself to arrange a greeting for you.”

“President Jameson,” Fourcade said slowly, finally seeming nervous and unprepared, “perhaps we can work out some sort of arrangement…”

“Oh, I’m sure we can,” Jameson said, his smile getting even broader. Then he shot Fourcade in the chest.

“Jesus!” Riordan screamed, falling over his own feet as he tried to back away, winding up on his ass on the packed sand, watching Kevin Fourcade stumble backwards, hands pressing at the fist-size hole over his heart as blood spread a huge stain across his shirt and jacket and down the front of his pants. In what seemed to take hours but was only a few seconds, Fourcade fell to his knees, then slumped sideways, his mouth working but nothing coming out of it except a gush of blood.

Riordan scrambled backwards, trying to stay out of the puddle of blood that spread across the ground beneath the man’s corpse, his eyes flickering back and forth in disbelief between the dead corporate lobbyist and the former President. Jameson’s aim had shifted to Antonov, whose response was much different than Fourcade’s.

“So, the hostage has grown a spine,” he said with a voice so calm that Riordan thought he might have just witnessed someone stepping on a bug rather than a man being killed. “I have to admit, Mr. Jameson, that I never thought this would be necessary, but at the time I bowed to the greater foresight of those who were interrogating you.” He grinned. “Lodka.”

Jameson laughed quietly. “Oh, General Antonov,” he said, shaking his head slightly. “I was the President. Don’t you think I had any conditioning you gave me removed years ago?”

Antonov finally showed desperation then, lunging forward, trying to grab Jameson’s gun. The report of the large-caliber handgun echoed off the building walls and across the landing pad, out into the trackless desert. Antonov’s lunge turned into a sprawl that sent him to the ground face down at Jameson’s feet.

Jameson watched the Russian for a moment, seeing the rise and fall of his chest cease forever, then he shoved his handgun into a pocket of his coveralls and stepped over to Riordan, offering him a hand.

Riordan’s mouth was still hanging open in disbelief, the idea that he might not die finally penetrating his consciousness, as he let Jameson pull him to his feet.

“Greg…” he stammered. “You saved my life…”

“Brendan,” Jameson said, his expression darkening, his voice harsh, “you’re a fucking idiot. The only reason you’re not lying on the ground bleeding out with those two,” he spat in the general direction of Fourcade and Antonov, “is that I still have a use for you. So you had better do your best to endeavor to remain useful to me if you want to stay above ground and out of penal exile digging up crops on some colony world.”

“How the hell are you going to manage that?” Riordan wondered. “I’m going to be blamed for all of this.” He waved a hand at the horizon demonstratively. “They’ll use me as a scapegoat… I’ll be publically executed. You can’t stop that, no one can.”

“Stop whining,” Jameson admonished him, pushing him towards the flyer. “They won’t be thinking about you at all… they’ll be too busy blaming a much higher profile scapegoat.” He grinned. “Ask me how I know.”

“You…” Riordan cocked his head as realization came over him. “You want to be President again.”

“I will be President again, Brendan,” he said. “And I won’t be waiting six years until the next election. Now get in that flyer and get out of here. I already called the military and you need to be gone before they get here. I mean to control this narrative, and you aren’t a part of it.”

Riordan walked up to the open hatch of the flyer, then hesitated and looked back to Jameson, where he stood beside the two bodies.

“Greg,” he said carefully, “just how much did you know about all this?”

Jameson was silent for a moment, his face unreadable, and then he repeated: “Nothing is as secret as you think it is, Brendan.” He waved a hand. “Now go home. Let me take care of the rest.”

Epilogue:

“…it is my honor and pleasure to award you, Captain Andrew Franks, the Republic Medal of Valor.” President Daniel O’Keefe seemed a bit haggard as he draped the ribbon over the young officer’s head, settling the gold star of the award against the breast of his black dress jacket. As for Franks, he looked stunned and intimidated by the line of cameras that stretched over the stage in the middle of Reagan Plaza and by the crowd of thousands that had braved the grey drizzle to watch the ceremony.

The camera view panned smoothly to take in those standing at attention on the stage behind the President and newly-minted Captain Franks. There was General Kage, looking very stoic and professional, flanked by Lt. Matienzo and Captain Kovach, with Ari Shamir beside Roza, supporting her as she stood on still-healing legs. Ari had asked for a transfer to a training position and after what he had accomplished, Jason McKay and Shannon Stark were inclined to give him whatever he wanted.

On the other side of the stage were McKay and Stark, standing close enough for their hands to touch even if they weren’t holding hands at the moment. Neither one had been inclined to be apart in the days since he’d returned. Neither, apparently, were Vinnie and Esmeralda so inclined, as they had begged off the ceremony, going on a well-deserved leave together. Josh and Tom had also skipped the ceremony, Tom resting from the beating he’d taken over the course of the last few days of action and Josh because he figured it would be boring and would rather be “trolling for Sheilas on the beaches back home.”

Tanya Manning was there, newly promoted and already wearing a medal of her own, though not the Medal of Valor. Tom had spoken so highly of her, McKay thought he wanted to give her Vinnie’s job, but she’d have to settle for Sean Watanabe’s instead. Beside her were newly-promoted Admiral Minishimi and Captains Pirelli and Gianeto, all of them newly decorated as well… and all just out of the hospital. Joyce Minishimi’s husband stood next to her, a tall, athletic man with long, wavy dark hair and a narrow face made broader by the smile he couldn’t contain.

And then there was the dark-haired teenage boy in the dress uniform of an Academy cadet, a cased Medal of Valor and a folded Republic flag grasped tightly in his hands, his dark eyes brimming with tears waiting to be shed.

“He looks so much like his father,” McKay said softly, reaching over to switch off the NewsNet broadcast.

“You should have been getting a medal,” President O’Keefe commented, sipping from a glass of Scotch.

McKay shook his head, sitting on the corner of the desk in the President’s private office. It was just the two of them now: Shannon was checking in on Valerie and her daughter. “Too much of what I did wouldn’t be wise to make public yet,” he said. His mouth turned up into a smile. “Besides, I already have a Medal of Valor and it’s considered bad taste to wear two at once.”

“Hell, I should give you two more just for bringing home that map of the wormholes and the technique for opening them up,” O’Keefe snorted. “You may not know it, but you might have just saved the Republic economy.” He sighed. “Not that it’s going to do me much good.”

“Is it bad?” McKay asked, feeling a jolt of sympathy for the man. What had happened under his watch wasn’t his fault and hadn’t been foreseeable, but that wouldn’t stop him from being blamed for it.

“I’m considering resigning the Presidency,” O’Keefe admitted, not meeting the other man’s eyes.

“I never thought you’d give up without a fight, sir,” McKay said, shaking his head.

“I’ve had a lot of fights, Jason,” he replied, downing the last of his Scotch in one gulp. “My fights got my wife killed, they got Glen killed, and they almost got my daughter and granddaughter killed… would have, if it weren’t for you. This job,” he shook his head, “this job just isn’t worth it.”

“Dominguez is dead,” McKay pointed out. “There would have to be a special election.”

“And I believe I know who will win that election,” O’Keefe touched a control on his desk and brought up another news report, this one showing the serious, heroic face of Gregory Jameson. “The press is really running with the story about him taking down Antonov.”

“No mention of Riordan or his role in all this, though,” McKay noted. “Whose doing is that?”

O’Keefe shrugged. “I was convinced by my advisors that it would do more harm than good to go after him. There are too many things we don’t want made public that would get out.”

“Sir, I understand why you’re doing what you’re doing, but I think you’re bowing out too early. There’s another layer to this onion. There’s just too much we don’t know yet.”

“That’ll be your job, Jason,” O’Keefe poured himself another glass and topped off McKay’s. They both picked up their drinks and O’Keefe raised his in a toast. “May you find the answers to all your mysteries.” They each took a sip and O’Keefe set his glass down with a sigh. “And may you have fewer regrets than I have.”

“We all have regrets, sir,” McKay said thoughtfully. He took another drink. “For one, I regret ever getting D’mitry Podbyrin involved in all this. He was happy where he was, and I got him killed.”

“He didn’t make it off the Sheridan?”

McKay shook his head. “We’ve accounted for all the survivors. It was a bit difficult, since the ship’s power surges were ejecting lifepods unoccupied and some of them reentered automatically, but there’s been no sign of him. He probably died when the ship’s fields intersected.”

“Then here’s to Colonel D’mitry Podbyrin.” O’Keefe raised his glass again. “He died doing the right thing.”

* * *

Colonel D’mitry Grigor’yevich Podbyrin sat quietly in a dark corner of the bar, half-watching the NewsNet broadcast of the awards ceremony in Reagan Plaza and half listening to the scattered murmurings from customers nursing their drinks.

It was so strange to hear Russian once again. He hadn’t been back to Earth since the War, but he would have thought it a dead language now: and it was, except for a few places. It so happened that Alaska was one of those places. Many Russian immigrants who had fled the Rodina during or after the War had settled here, and every city had a large minority population of Russian-speaking citizens.

It was fortuitous that his lifepod had landed on the bare tundra, and even more fortuitous that the first people he had come across after two days of wandering through the wilderness were Russian immigrants. Or perhaps it was fate…

Either way, Fairbanks was much more homelike than Loki had been.

Podbyrin saw the man approaching his booth and slid aside to give him room. Yuri was an older man, his face weathered and strong and his eyes as blue and cold as the Arctic sea.

“I have contacted our friends,” Yuri told him quietly. “They have sunk the lifepod in the ocean. There will be nothing to connect any of us to it, and they will never know you were on it.”

“I thank you for your help,” Podbyrin said earnestly. “I truly did not wish to return to exile. But I wonder… you do not do this just because I am Russian?”

“There are few enough of us left,” Yuri said, grinning frostily, “that we help whoever needs it. But yes, there is a special interest in you, particularly among the bratva.”

Podbyrin felt a chill run down his neck. Bratva… the brotherhood: it was a term used for various families in the Russian mafia back in his day. Apparently, the language wasn’t the only thing that had survived the War here.

“And why would they be interested in me?” he wanted to know. Or perhaps he didn’t, he wasn’t really certain.

“We are interested in certain information you might have,” Yuri said. Ah. “We” are interested, Podbyrin noted. That settled what Yuri’s stake in this was.

“Any information I have,” D’mitry Podbyrin pointed out, “the Republic military already has. They questioned me chemically and quite thoroughly.”

”Tovarisch,” Yuri assured him, patting him on the shoulder in friendly fashion, “there are things that you know that you don’t even know you know. Things that could be very useful to the General.”

“The General is dead,” Podbyrin said, taking a gulp of his drink to stave off a feeling that the room was closing in on him.

“No, my brother,” Yuri said, the look in his eyes utterly terrifying. “The General lives.”

Content

Rick Partlow
HONOR BOUND

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Epilogue: