Honor Bound

“Is there a way to get past it?” Dr. Walters interjected before he could answer the XO.

“I don’t know when it would have happened,” McKay told the XO, “but yes, it would have taken days at least.” He turned to the medical officer. “There are ways, but it’s risky and to be honest with you, I’ve never tried it, just heard about it from a colleague.” He hesitated, weighing Admiral Patel’s desperate desire to know the truth against the risk to his friend’s health. “Do you have any neuronomine in the medical stores?”

Walters raised an eyebrow. “I’m not sure… I haven’t even heard that name since medical school.” She pulled a small tablet out of her pocket and pulled up an inventory. “By God, we do have a little of it.”

“Inject the Admiral with 10 cc’s of it,” he instructed her.

She looked at him doubtfully but went back into the drug storage cabinets and typed the name into the console. A motorized retrieval system delivered a vial of the drug to a dispenser tray and Walters pulled it out then fed the vial into an injector. She paused with the injector near Patel’s arm.

“Colonel,” she said, “I don’t know how this will interact with the psychoactives…”

“I do,” he said gravely. “And it’s not good. Prepare to treat for seizures and intracranial bleeding.”

“Jesus, sir!” she exclaimed, eyes widening. “Are you sure we should do this?”

“It’s what the Admiral wanted,” McKay told her. He looked to Nunez. “It’s your call, though, Commander… you’re in charge now.”

Nunez’s eyes narrowed and McKay could almost see the debate going on in the man’s head. Then he visibly came to a decision. “Give the Admiral the drug, Dr. Walters,” he said quietly but firmly. “I take responsibility for the consequences.”

The medical officer was still shaking her head doubtfully as she placed the head of the injector against Patel’s arm and pressed the activation stud. The drug hissed into the officer’s veins and the doctor stepped back, watching the Admiral with a worried look. Patel showed no effect for a moment but then he began to jerk against his restraints, his muscles tensing, the veins in his neck popping out, and the only sound coming from his lips a strained moan as his breathing became labored and harsh.

“Is he having a seizure?” Nunez asked, alarm on his face.

“A minor one,” the medical officer confirmed, her mouth set in a grim line. She brought out another injector and quickly used it. The Admiral relaxed, his head hanging forward against the visor, his breathing slowing down to a steady rate. Dr. Walters pulled a small MRI unit over to the Admiral’s chair and took a quick reading. “No bleeding,” she said with a relieved sigh. “I think he’s okay. Go ahead and ask your questions, sir.”

“Admiral Patel,” McKay spoke into the microphone again, “when did you first hear the word ‘lodka‘ and what is its significance?”

“I first heard it five years ago,” the Admiral told them easily, in a calm, drowsy voice, “when my ship was boarded by Protectorate troops in the Tau Ceti system, just after our relief mission to Aphrodite.”

“What the fuck?” Nunez muttered as Dr. Walters’ mouth dropped open in shock. McKay only just restrained himself from muttering a curse, refraining only because of the knowledge that it would be picked up by the hypnoprobe’s microphone.

“The word ‘lodka’ was to be the trigger,” Patel went on, oblivious to their reactions. “I was instructed that the next time I heard it, I would be given instructions and I must follow them as if they were orders from the President, then I was to forget everything connected with the event.”

“Were you given any other instructions?” McKay asked carefully, forcing his brain to work despite the shock.

“Yes,” Patel said in a steady drone. “I was to forget that the ship had been captured, and instead remember an antimatter feed chamber fault that caused our return to be delayed. And I was instructed that if there was ever a possibility of the Republic finding the Protectorate homeworld, that I was to make sure that I was along on the mission. Especially if you were to be involved, McKay-they wanted me to keep an eye on you if you ever came close to finding them.”

“Was Antonov there?” McKay demanded. “Did you see him?”

“No, I never saw him,” Patel admitted. “I just saw the biomech troopers who were guarding us and the doctors who were hypnoprobing all of us.”

“Who was on the ship?” McKay asked, a faint memory of the mission coming back to him with a creeping feeling of horror. “Besides the regular crew, who else was on that mission?”

“Colonel Kage was there; he’s a general now. Unpleasant, abrasive son of a bitch, but intelligent.” McKay felt the hairs prickling on his arms. Kage. Why am I not surprised? “And that Senator… Xavier Dominguez. He was there too.”

McKay froze, cold fire running through his veins. He didn’t look around, but if he had, he would have seen Dr. Walters and Commander Nunez mirroring his stunned expression.

“Vice…” He coughed, clearing his throat of the lump that had suddenly formed there. “Vice President Xavier Dominguez?” He asked.

“Yes, that’s him. He did get elected Daniel O’Keefe’s Vice President later on. He seemed sincere; nice man. A bit too smooth, perhaps, but after all he is a politician.”

Trying to keep his hand from shaking, McKay reached out and switched off the microphone, turning to face Nunez. “Commander,” he said, iron discipline keeping his voice steady, “I’m going to pull up a manifest from that mission. If we find any other crewmembers that were on it, it’s my recommendation that they be confined to quarters for the rest of this voyage.”

“Of course,” Nunez waved an impatient acceptance. “But Colonel… we have bigger problems than that! The fucking Vice President! We have to get home… we have to tell people about this!”

“If they don’t know already, Commander,” McKay said with a grim nod. “If they don’t know already…”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Shannon Stark slept fitfully in the unfamiliar cot, unable to get comfortable and also unable to shut down her conscious mind. It was unusual and frustrating for her. She had always been able to grab sleep whenever it was available, even strapped into an acceleration couch. But here, in the sparsely furnished Intelligence Service safe- house in Houston, she simply couldn’t shut out everything that was happening.

She knew that Ari and Roza were in the next room, Val and her daughter were down the hall and that the operatives that Tom had assigned to her were standing watch, some inside near the front door and some surreptitiously patrolling outside. Despite that, however, she felt utterly alone in a way she hadn’t since the War.

Dammit, she thought, rearranging her pillows once again, how did I wind up in this position again? Wasn’t it enough to have to save the world once?

Theoretically, she should have handed the whole thing off to the Republic Investigative Service, the agency in charge of domestic law enforcement; but they were a joke, notoriously inefficient and inept, and with the Vice President corrupted and the money of the Multicorps Executive Council behind the scheme, she just couldn’t trust anyone else.

Up to now, it hadn’t seemed real, somehow… it had the cognitive plausible deniability of being in the shadows, invisible to the rest of the world. But Wednesday would change all that and she wasn’t sure she was ready for the ramifications.

She tried to force it all down, to bring on needed sleep with an old mantra she’d used as a child, repeating “silence, darkness” to herself in her head till it drowned out all other thought. Finally she felt herself being drawn into the dark embrace of sleep… and then her ‘link beeped for attention. Swearing softly, she pushed the ear bud into place.

“Stark,” she answered abruptly, trying not to snap in frustration.

“Ma’am, it’s Lt. Franks,” the voice in her ear announced, a tinge of excitement in his usually steady voice. “We received a tightbeamed pulse message about ten minutes ago from somewhere out in the Belt. It’s the Decatur, ma’am… they’re back!”