Honor Bound

we have done. There are a handful of undercover inspectors such as myself, two Direct Action platoons and that’s about it. Most of the inspectors are offplanet at any given time.”

The hotel room’s doorbell chimed and three heads snapped around as one, pistols jumping into Ari’s and Roza’s hands. Ari went to the small viewer embedded in the wall next to the door and saw a tall, rangy figure in a flowered shirt and tourist shorts standing out in the hallway, his features obscured by a broad-brimmed hat and sunglasses. He looked at Roza and shook his head. She returned the motion and moved to the other side of the door, handgun at the ready, while Colonel Lee ducked behind the cover of the desk. Ari touched the intercom button.

“Yes?” was all he said.

“Open the fuckin’ door so I can take off this stupid hat,” the man said. Leaning into the camera, he slipped off his glasses and lifted the hat momentarily and then put them back on.

“Holy shit,” Ari breathed, laughing softly. He reholstered his pistol and waved Roza back as he released the door lock and palmed the panel to open it. The man slipped inside quickly and shut the door behind him, taking off his hat and glasses.

“Hey Captain Shamir,” Tom Crossman said casually as he gave the room a quick once-over. “Love the new face. Inspector Kovach,” he nodded to the woman, who was staring at him curiously, her gun still in her hand. Crossman’s gaze halted on Colonel Lee, who was slowly emerging from behind the desk. “Oh, there you are, Colonel… I thought for a second they’d dumped your body somewhere.”

“Not to offend,” Roza said, “but who the hell are you?”

“He’s Sergeant Tom Crossman,” Ari told her.

“The Tom Crossman?” she asked, doing a double-take.

“Sweet suffering Jesus,” Tom muttered, rolling his eyes. “And this,” he waved a hand at her, “is why I can’t do undercover work. Fucking movie. Hell, I couldn’t even go out in public here without this shit,” he gestured at the hat and glasses he’d thrown down on the bed.

“Tom,” Ari interrupted, “as sorry as I am for the burdens of fame and as glad as I am to see you… what are you doing here?”

“Making sure it’s safe,” he replied with a shrug. He touched a button on his ‘link. “Bring her in,” he said, then palmed the door control.

The door opened and Shannon Stark strode inside, flanked by two of Tom’s recent graduates: a competent- looking, stocky woman with spiky black hair and pale skin and a tall, long-legged young man with sad, dark, hound- dog eyes. All three were dressed in casual civilian clothes, although not quite as casual as Tom Crossman’s.

“Ma’am.” Ari nodded to her as the door closed behind them.

“Ari, can I ask what the hell you’re doing in Houston?” Shannon said without preamble. “The last thing I heard from you, you and Inspector Kovach were going to arrest Colonel Lee.” She eyed the Colonial Guard Colonel, who was standing beside the desk. “I see the plan has evolved.”

“Before I answer that, ma’am,” he said, “just for my own peace of mind, how did you find us? And why are you here? In this city, I mean… you didn’t follow me here, did you?”

“We’re following up a lead,” she said. “We…” she shrugged. “We managed to get a line on the man who killed Glen Mulrooney. We got ahold of his ‘link, his accounts, everything. It was all anonymized and encrypted and bounced around, but our netdivers managed to trace some of his money to an account that we know-but can’t prove-is connected to a security firm here in Houston,”

Roza shot a glance at him and he nodded.

“We were in town following up,” Shannon went on, “when your ‘link pinged in the city. It’s an anonymous ‘link, but we issued it and we can track it. So here we are. Your turn.”

“Ma’am, we turned Colonel Lee… I made him an offer of a new identity for his cooperation. As the alternative was not desirable, he accepted and left a message for his contact to meet him here.”

Realization came into Shannon’s eyes. “A-ha. And I’ll bet that contact works for a security firm with ties to Republic Transportation?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Ari nodded. “And it’s better than that… or possibly worse. I know who she is. It’s Helenne D’Annique.”

Shannon’s eyebrow rose. “The same one that was the First Officer on the Patton under Admiral Patel?”

“She got out about five years ago and started working for Lone Star Security a year after that,” Ari told her. “It was pretty sudden, from what the file says… she got back from some diplomatic mission to Aphrodite and boom, resigned.”

Tom Crossman and Shannon Stark looked up at that, Crossman’s eyes narrowing.

“Let me see that file.” Shannon held out her hand and Ari passed her the tablet. She shook her head as she read it. “Son of a bitch,” she muttered. She looked up at Tom. “It was the same trip, the one Dominguez was on.”

“Dominguez?” Roza repeated. Her eyes widened. “You mean Vice President Dominguez?”

“Oh, shit,” Ari muttered, sitting down heavily on the bed.

“I think it’s time,” Shannon said slowly and thoughtfully, “that we find out just who was on that mission… and what the hell happened out there.”

“Whatever you are going to do,” Colonel Lee spoke up from the desk, where he was staring at the monitor, “you do not have long to do it.” He looked up at Ari and Roza with the expression of a man watching a traffic accident unfold in front of him. “The message has been posted. It says ‘stay.’”

Chapter Eighteen

Jason McKay shook his head, trying to clear it of the acrid taste of yellow and the sweet smell of sideways and of the maddening sensation that he was nonexistent and yet omnipresent all at once. He looked at Mironov, who was strapped in beside him on one of the acceleration couches behind Admiral Patel’s command station on the bridge of the Sheridan. The Russian was humming to himself impassively, as if he’d just travelled across town on the overhead tram.

“And you really get used to that?” McKay asked, disbelief in his voice. This was the third jump the ship had made through the wormholes and it seemed a dozen times worse than the first. Worse still, there were many more to go: Mironov knew many of the gate locations, but he had not been trusted with which ones led to the Protectorate headquarters world of Novoye Rodina, so their plan was to explore what they could of the Protectorate wormhole matrix and hope the physicists could make map it out and predict where the gates were located.

“Eysselink drive field activated,” the ship’s Helm announced, drowning out whatever answer Mironov might have given. “Navigation systems are analyzing the star patterns… we should have a best guess for our location in a minute.”

“Sensors are up,” Tactical reported, as the ship’s viewscreen began to overlay a sensor projection on top of the new starfield they’d found on the other side of this jumpgate. “We have an F-class star, looks like three terrestrial planets, two medium-size gas giants and maybe an ice giant out at extreme range. We are currently within a small asteroid field between the last of the terrestrials and the first gas giant. No gravimetic radiation present, no contacts, no sign of habitation.”

“Maintain active gravimetic scans,” Patel ordered. “Secure from battle stations. Helm, you have the coordinates for the next gate, take us there at one g acceleration.” Looking at the Admiral, McKay felt a bit of admiration for the way he seemed to be taking all this in stride. As if using a multimillion ton, multibillion dollar starship as an experimental test bed for opening alien-created wormholes with waves of warped space-time and then travelling outside the damned universe was something he did every day.

“Mr. Mironov,” Admiral Patel turned in his chair to address the Russian, “what are the odds of us encountering Protectorate military forces in these systems? You told us that Antonov maintains mining bases and listening posts in some of them, but this is our second with no sign of occupation.”