Honor Bound

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