Honor Bound

“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