by the… whatever… that built it or if it is some physical law we do not understand yet.”
“Your people thought… think… that the wormholes were artificial, not naturally occurring?” McKay asked him, surprised.
“That is what our physicists say,” Mironov shrugged. “I just know how they work, not why so much.”
“The interference is gone,”
“They’ll be back,” McKay said to Patel, nodding a confidence he only wished he felt.
“Damn,” Vinnie said mildly, staring at the whited-out viewscreen. “Does this mean we won’t even get to see it when we go through this thing?”
“The cameras were overloaded by the blast,” Villanueva explained. “Just give it a second.”
The screens came active again and Vinnie saw… nothing. No stars, no planets, just blackness.
“Why the hell aren’t we seeing the stars?” Orton wanted to know.
“It must be the wormhole,” Villanueva reasoned. “Maybe it’s distorting electromagnetic radiation the way the Eysselink drive does.”
“Well, that sucks,” Vinnie commented. “How long till we’re through this thing?”
Villanueva checked the readout. “Should be about…”
“Shit!” Vinnie and Orton exclaimed almost simultaneously, joined by a chorus of profanity from the technicians behind them. They were looking around the cockpit of the shuttle as if they didn’t quite believe it was still there.
“I think I just tasted the color green,” Esmeralda Villanueva said, trying to shake the indescribably strange feeling she’d just experienced.
“That was so fucking weird,” Orton said, shaking his head. “I felt like I wasn’t there.”
“Well, you’re here now,” Vinnie said, looking at a new starfield on the viewscreen. “Wherever the hell
“There’s the primary,” Villanueva jabbed a finger at the computer map slowly building on the screen as the sensors came back to life. “It’s a red giant. We’re about nine AU out from it… looks like we’re in the orbit of a gas giant. God knows where in the galaxy we are-the science types can look at our scans when we get back. Anyway, executing turnover.” She touched the thruster controls and they heard a series of “bangs” as the maneuvering rockets flipped the boat end for end, then restabilized it, facing the direction of the gate through which they’d come.
“Tactical board reads a big fat lot of nothing,” Orton announced. “Not so much as a stray radio wave. Guess that old Russian guy was telling the truth. We got the coordinates of the gate relative to the primary.” He twisted around in his chair to face the technicians. “You guys ready to place the bomb?”
“Hell yes,” the woman in charge of the team replied, unstrapping from her seat. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Cal,” Villanueva said to Orton, “go back to the hold with them and help them get that thing out of our cargo lock, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“Roger that, ma’am,” he said with a nod, yanking off his own restraints and grabbing his helmet before he kicked off towards the hatch in the rear bulkhead.
“So,” Esmeralda turned to Vinnie once Orton and the techs were back in the cargo hold, “glad you came?”
Vinnie scratched his head. “Well, to be honest, it’s been kinda’ boring,” he admitted, “other than the whole tasting colors and not being there thing. But the company’s nice,” he added with a grin.
She regarded him with a dubious expression. “Don’t try to tell me that you volunteered for what could have been-hell, still could be-a suicide mission just so you could be with me.”
“You may not believe this, Esme,” he said, “but it wouldn’t even be close to the stupidest reason I have volunteered for what could have been a suicide mission.” He let loose his restraints and nudged himself close enough to her that he could gently run the back of his hand across her cheek.
“Well, how’s a girl supposed to resist a line like that?” She grinned, grabbing him by the neck and pulling him into a kiss. “Damn these suits,” she murmured softly as their lips parted, leaving them floating face to face, millimeters from each other.
“Hey, we’ve got a while together,” he assured her. “God knows how long we’ll be out here scouting the Protectorate. Do squadron leaders rate a private cabin or am I gonna’ have to kick Jock out of the room again?”
She laughed full-throated at that, a husky sound that drove Vinnie crazy. “I think we can work something out,” she said with a shrug.
“If you two are done,” Cal Orton’s voice came over the speakers, “we have the bomb in the airlock and we’re ready to activate its maneuvering unit.”
Wincing, she muted the audio pickup and glared at Vinnie, who was laughing uncontrollably. “Oh sure,” she chided, pushing him back toward his seat. “You don’t have to work with him!”
Finally, she couldn’t help it and began laughing herself.
Chapter Seventeen
Shannon Stark looked up from her book when she heard the man stir. The assassin was strapped to the bed which, beside the chair in which she sat, was the only furniture in the stone-walled room. She regarded the man with an impersonal coolness as he roused from his drugged stupor, looking better than he had when he had first been brought to the secure facility several days before. His knee was mostly healed and he’d been cleaned up and dressed in fresh clothes. And, of course, he’d been squeezed like a sponge.
“Where th’ fuck m’I?” He mumbled groggily, eyes blinking against even the dim light in the room. His voice was a surprisingly pleasant baritone with a clear Australian accent.
“Someplace no one will ever find you, Mr. Finley,” she told him, laying her tablet down on the chair as she stood. “If they’re even bothering to look.”
He squinted at her, face screwing up in concentration. “You’re Stark,” he said. “You suckered me good… shoulda’ known O’Keefe wouldn’t be stupid enough to meet that reporter in the Old City.”
“I’d have expected better from someone with your training,” she shook her head. “Ten years in the Fleet Marine Corps, multiple commendations, promoted to Gunnery Sergeant…and then busted back down to Corporal and given a general discharge for assaulting an officer.”
“Let me save you some time, Major Stark,” he interrupted her, sighing and closing his eyes. “I can tell by how shitty I feel that you had me under, so you already know everything I know. And you know it’s pretty well fucking useless. Blind drops, dummy accounts, no faces, no names. So your next move is to offer me a deal: you give me a new identity and pretend you don’t know I killed Mulrooney and I go undercover for you or some such bullshit. Well, save your breath, Sheila… I’ll take my chances in government detention.”
“We considered that,” Shannon admitted with a nod. “If you’d actually known any way to meet someone in person, or if we actually thought you were important enough to whoever hired you for them to try to kill you, we’d have made the offer. As things stand, though, you’re worthless to us. We have your ‘link, we have your accounts, we have your addresses and your passcodes. We can make those connections ourselves, without you.”
He scowled in confusion. “So why are you talking to me?”
“It was my turn to stand watch,” she explained as the door to the room opened with a pneumatic hiss. Valerie O’Keefe-Mulrooney stepped through, the look on her face cold enough to freeze nitrogen. “She wanted you awake for this.”
