Honor Bound

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