Challenge met, p.5
Challenge Met, page 5
Bogie. Bogie was alive with him, even then! And the realization repels Jack as he is caught within his mind, watching battle armor split like brittle eggshells, not to free his men, but to spit out immense saurian creatures, hatched from the helpless bodies of his men, frills spread in berserker frenzy, to attack both Knights and Thraks. The Milots, knowing they are losing their world, have indeed seeded the parasitic berserker lizards in whatever flesh they can. Barracks rumor has become nightmare reality.
And his own alien bonds flesh with him even as Jack fights to live.
The furious will to survive carries him through.
Gauntlet fire cuts down the Thraks, their carapaces popping and fizzing in the flame, and even his suit, too drained now to work efficiently, feels the heat. He has come full circle as the recall signal pulses across his com. He looks across a pit of Thrakian chiton and human flesh into a shadow, a blot of darkness across his visor and finally, stupidly, recognizes a transport.
They are being scraped off the surface of Milos like so many squashed bugs… all that is left of the Dominion’s finest. He knows what battle fatigue is, and shock, and swims though it anyway, grabbing an arm strap from the transport hover, and stepping onto the running board as it lifts him from a pit of death—and he’s the only one still up and moving. He waits impassively as the hover brings him cross-country to staging where, he can tell, evacuation is in an absolute rout.
A tech helps him peel off the suit, nose wrinkling at the smell and reek of his imprisonment. Sweat drips off him like a toxic wash. He kicks out of his boots and leaves the equipment, not looking back. The noise and turmoil of staging as they make ready to load three massive cold ships brings him back to reality sometime after the crew has checked his palm and retinal prints.
The cryo nurse puts a kit into his hand. “You’ll need this, soldier. Showers are to the right. This is your locker number. Stow your kit in it before you report to the lab.”
The man will not meet Jack’s gaze. He says, although it is not necessary, and he knows the nurse has no time to listen. “We lost Milos.”
“No kidding.”
“I’m sorry. I tried.”
The nurse pauses. Jack feels the impatience and weariness of the men lined up behind him. The nurse shrugs, answering, “You think you’re responsible for the whole damn war? Now get a move on, soldier. We’ve got a deadline. We’ve got to get our asses out of here before the bugs know they’ve won.”
Jack showers, luxuriating in the feel of real water, before the cut off leaves him half lathered and dripping. He towels off, dresses from the kit, general issue that fits much too tightly across the shoulders and thighs—general issue not being cut for a man who wears armor—and joins the masses in the hold as they stow their gear. Over the com lines, they receive a stream of instruction, the harsh voice falling, for the main part, on deaf ears. They are troops. They’ve been through this before. The only thing they want now is a hot meal—not possible before chill down—and some rest. The rest they’ll get: months in cold sleep. The cold ship hold is immense and stacked to the ceiling with the coffinlike cryos. He works his way down the aisles to his locker and opens it.
The Flexalinks wink at him, an obscene pearl hanging from the equipment racks. The NCO loading the transport bellows once more, and this time he hears the announcement, “Your suits have been infested. They will be maintained in quarantine until we can determine their status and either flush or destroy them.”
No suit, no soldier.
“Line up and file in, in an orderly fashion,” the NCO bellows again, and around him, he can hear the tired shuffling of those still on their feet, the ones who are able enough to walk.
He tells himself he is lucky. He tells himself that thousands have died so a few hundred can make it to these transports. He tells himself that he will somehow bring victory out of this horrifying defeat. He is still a Knight, and he still wears battle armor.
The suit swings on its rack, splashed with soot and blood and the ichor of Thraks. It smells of Milos and war. It looks like a denizen of Hell. It is bonded inexorably with him.
Just as he begins to integrate his past with his present, the devourer strikes without mercy. The eyelids of the frozen man begin to flicker.
Chapter 6
The coracle rocked violently as it was released, ejected like an empty shell into a decaying orbit. Bogie fine-tuned the armor’s sensors to listen after the Ash-Farel vessel. He abruptly damped them as a human scream cut like a laser across the frequency. Fear and pain vibrated through his system as he lay curled in the tiny rescue vehicle’s equipment bay where, well-camouflaged, he had been overlooked by the aliens.
Pain and fear were not unknown to Bogie. He had carried Jack through many such ordeals. Now it resonated inside him uneasily until he understood the edge of the feeling: he, too, was afraid. The revelation was both heartening and disheartening. It meant he had evolved enough, was alive enough, to fear death. Now at last he understood some of Jack’s hesitation to fight. Death was the dark side of war. And only a living being would fear death.
He had come far, but he did not cherish the feeling. He was a warrior, he knew that, he savored battle and victory. Now, in the echo of Colin’s anguish, he knew he would never be the same.
He made plans to emerge when the Ash-Farel mother ship pulled away. He would correct the coracle’s orbit. He would wait for Jack, who would come as Colin had promised he would, and Bogie would then point the way as it was his duty to do. Until then, he would tap into the armor’s power circuit and take the energy he needed to continue to live. He would try not to listen to the recording of St. Colin’s capture. It frightened him too much.
“I want,” Vandover said to the computer screen, “someone disposed of in under-Malthen.”
The image looking back at him showed no emotion, nor did he expect it to. The man’s skin was sallow and his pupils too wide under the influence of ratt. “Who?” the man said.
“Never mind who. I’ll give you a body… you make the arrangements.”
“Ahhh.” Illumination showed on the old man’s face. “I’ll need twenty-four hours’ notice.”
“Consider it given.”
Wrinkles deepened momentarily in his contact’s expression, then he shrugged. “I can handle it. What about the ident chip?”
Satisfaction broadened Vandover’s smile. “She doesn’t carry one,” he said. “Do whatever you want.”
“All right.” The screen went dark as the com line closed.
With a little luck, Vandover reflected, Amber’s body would never be identified properly—or even found. And if it was, all signs would point to another terrorist atrocity against Pepys by the Green Shirts. No, disposing of Amber was a strategy which would work well whatever its consequences.
He pushed away from the keyboard with long, tapering fingers that ached as if they could already feel the curve of her throat within their grasp.
A com light flickered, signaling another incoming call. Vandover hesitated. Pepys would be demanding his time and he still had field reports to evaluate… but anything coming in over this line would be from his own security units within the World Police or the local sweepers. A morsel of information from there was too sweet to ignore. He opened the line.
The screen stayed dark. The informant did not wish his face shown, then, but Vandover’s grid confirmed the retinal pattern of the speaker and he knew immediately who talked to him.
“Minister?”
“I’m here,” Vandover replied carefully. His screen did not relay such niceties of information to the other caller. Baadluster winced a little at hearing the harsh accent of under-Malthen mingled with a touch of the Outward Bound planets as the informant spoke again.
“Several years ago you were looking for… a custom weapon.”
A chill thrilled its way up Vandover’s spine. “A weapon?”
“Yes. Molded for a specific need. You went through Winton for its inception, but when he was killed, you lost track of that weapon.”
“Ah,” was all Vandover breathed in confirmation. This was unexpected serendipity, indeed. Then, “You’ve located it?”
“Yes and no. I have the weapon’s identity. You’ll have to go from there.”
Vandover’s knuckles whitened. Winton had died without passing on all of his information to his partner, even such vital information as this. Undoubtedly, the former security chief had been as uneasy in his alliance with Vandover as Vandover had been with Winton. A plan some fifteen years in the making had ground to a halt. He’d been unable to access Winton’s secret files, but here, finally, was the data he needed. “All right,” he said. “What do you want from me?”
The informant named a figure and added, “And passage off-planet.”
“Done. How do I verify what you’re going to tell me?”
There was a verbal shrug in the pause that followed. Then the informant said, “You know the subliminal programming. Trigger it. The assassinations should follow.”
“Good enough. Who is my missing weapon?”
“A street hustler named Rolf had a stable of kids working for him. Usual scams. His contact with Winton was well-hidden. But the one you want is a girl called Amber. She’s not on the street any more and she never carried a chip, but—”
“Never mind,” Vandover answered coldly. “I know where to start looking. You’ll find your money at the usual drop.” He cut the call short and sat looking at the darkened screen.
All those years under his nose and he’d never even guessed. It made sense to him now why Winton had not had her eliminated, making Storm even more vulnerable. Winton had not known the targets or the programming, but Vandover didn’t doubt he’d been trying to ferret the information out so that he could do the manipulation. Each of them had kept secret from the other a vital part of the plan, forcing them to work in tandem with one another, despite their differences.
Vandover stroked the keyboard lightly. “Winton, my boy, you were clever.” The hit on Amber would have to be canceled. Or perhaps not. A postponement would suit as well. She was much more subdued since the evacuation of Bythia. He would give his right arm to know what had happened on that fringe planet, how Winton’s plans had gone awry and gotten him killed instead of reaching fruition. Perhaps she was no longer the weapon she had been groomed to be. He had never sensed any psychic fires banked within her, yet Winton had assured him the assassin being groomed for them was a genuine talent, unlike those charlatans Pepys kept bottled up in the east wing. So genuine a talent that the strike could be directly to the heart or the brain… swift, unstoppable, and virtually undetectable.
He must investigate the information carefully before acting. A good place to start would be the powerful loan maker, Sadie, who’d given the girl safe harbor more than once. Sadie would cooperate. She was a businesswoman skilled in the art of compromise, a reed that would bend in the wind rather than be broken.
Vandover placed a call. He would stay the inevitable, but it would be only a delay. If the girl proved false or useless to him anyway, she would still have to be removed.
Chapter 7
Amber was dozing, forehead to her knees, folded up in the corridor like a chair someone had tossed carelessly aside. The rank scent of Thraks wafted over her and she heard their constant clicking become agitated chatter through her half-dreams. Doors opened and the sounds awakened her fully.
She had lifted her head, wincing as a neck muscle kinked. She had done vigils in worse places by far, on concrete and permaplast streets without soul or hope, in backwater holes with murderers skulking about, on faraway worlds where, even surrounded by friends, the agony of waiting for Jack to return was almost too much to bear.
But this morning’s vigil had worn her out in a way no other had, and as she met the stare of the nurse standing across the corridor, she gleaned no comfort from the man’s words.
“He’s out of it. A couple of hours on dialysis and we’ll be able to let visitors in.”
Amber got to her feet, slender legs unfolding to hold her, unaware of the technician’s masculine reaction to her grace. She carefully rubbed the sleep from one eye. “How is he?”
“A little disoriented. We put a piggyback on his tape to bring him up to date—it’s been twenty-seven years since that imprint was made.”
Weariness fled. “You did what?”
The nurse looked over his shoulder. His bulk blocked the lab door very effectively, and he listened to something happening behind him, before he looked back to her. His jaw set. “We added on a short orientation tape.”
“I know what you meant. Who the hell authorized that?”
“Pepys,” the nurse said. With that, he backed up and the door slid shut. Hard glittering eyes watched her until the barrier sealed them off.
“Shit,” Amber muttered, and clenched one fist. The Thraks in the corridor came to attention, their facial masks pulling into Kabuki contortions of expression. Jack had once taught her how to read them and she now saw aggression and command. “Don’t worry, boys,” she said aloud, wondering what Pepys had done. “But I suggest, for your own good, there be a changing of the guard before Jack comes out of that lab. He doesn’t like Thraks.” With a tight smile, she turned and left. There were things to do before she could end her vigil.
The Thraks had been replaced by an honor guard of Knights when she returned. She eyed them as she entered the medical wing corridor, her attention caught by their gleaming armor of many different colors. Jack’s own white armor was so white it was iridescent even though it had been damaged over the years. A sudden sense of loss hit her, and she felt a fluttering inside her throat, a panicky, tickling surge as she wondered if it or Colin could ever be found.
The guard parted, exposing Vandover Baadluster. He had given up his somber black robes for those of charcoal… a slight, psychological change and one which she pondered as he inclined his head to her.
“Milady Amber.”
“Minister,” she answered. Triumph flooded her abruptly and, though she felt her face warm with its intensity, she savored it. She had managed to deal with him without Jack’s presence, but the knowledge that Jack would soon be able to back her up made her stronger.
Vandover’s flat eyes glinted slightly as if guessing her emotion and her triumph turned swiftly to anger. Anger she could deal with. She let her words stay in her throat. She would not lose her advantage by throwing it away.
“We’ve been waiting,” Vandover said. “I was most surprised to arrive here and find you missing. But then, the nurse told me he had spoken with you. You look well.”
Amber put her chin up. She was tall, but the Minister of War was taller. “Thank you. When can I see him?”
“Now… if you’re ready.”
She hesitated. Thoughts flooded her, too many to pin down. Jack had his victory, at last. What would it mean to him? To them? Where was he now? Why wasn’t he striding out to meet her?
“Milady?” Vandover prompted softly.
“Of course.” She stepped through the aisle formed by the honor guard, followed by Baadluster, the fabric of his long overtunic whispering with his lumbering gait. She barely heard the noise, yet it brought a sense of foreboding as though a legion whispered evil of Pepys’ minister. An omen, she thought as they entered the interior lab, and one which I don’t need.
He sat with his back to them, wearing a clean white jumpsuit which echoed the pallor of his convalescence. She crossed the portal and came to a hesitant stop, aware that she barred Baadluster and the others from entering the lab behind her. He heard them nevertheless. He put up his right hand, four-fingered, snapped off the console deck, and removed his ear set. She saw then that he’d been listening to something.
Before he even swiveled in the chair, she knew. There were lines of tension across that familiar back. Tension and apprehension. And when he turned to face her, there was a pleasant blankness across his plain, high cheekboned face and in his light blue eyes. For a moment, her heart stuttered in her chest—but then she saw the same keen intelligence in his eyes that he’d always had and knew he’d at least retained that much.
As he stood, his eyes spoke before the man did. Who are you?
Her knees turned to water. One shoulder touched the portal framing, bracing her, as she listed slightly. Her ears buzzed.
“You must be Amber,” he said, reaching for her.
She slapped his hand away. “I’m fine.” Shivering, she pulled herself upright again and let Baadluster brush past her.
The minister gave Jack a masculine hug. “Let me welcome you back, my boy.”
Amber watched Jack’s faintly puzzled expression over the top of Baadluster’s shoulder. Vandover released him. “Back after twenty some years of exile, one of the emperor’s finest.”
“Only to find a new emperor and the same enemy,” Jack responded. There was very little warmth in his voice. “Though I understand we’ve become allies. I’m ready for debriefing when you are.”
“Good. Emperor Pepys would like to see you as soon as possible.”
“I understand.” He caught Amber’s gaze for a moment, then looked about him where two techs were still charting monitors. She became aware that leads still attached him to the lab console. “I’ll be ready in about an hour as soon as the techs are convinced my blood sugar’s stabilized and there’s no hypothermia.”
“Done.” Baadluster signaled the guard, and they about faced and left.
Amber stayed. She ignored the observation monitors as she stepped closer and shivered at the stranger’s expression in the eyes of her lover. Damn him, he made her break all her rules! “Don’t do this to me,” she told him. “I don’t care what the advantage is. You’re playing right into their hands. They added an imprint of their own onto your mind loop. God knows what they’ve programmed into you.”
