Honor Bound

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