Honor Bound

from the Marines for behavioral problems. He was being paid from blind accounts and contacted via anonymous ‘links, so it has proved difficult to trace who hired him, but investigations are ongoing.”

“I didn’t want to take the chance that a further attempt on my life might harm my daughter,” Valerie took over from her father, “so I went into hiding for a while to make sure there were no other would-be assassins who had possibly been working with the dead man. As our investigations have shown no indication that he had a partner, we decided that it was safe for me to come out of hiding.”

“The attempt to foment a mutiny has been squashed,” O’Keefe cut in, “but the investigation is ongoing, so we can’t reveal any more details at this time. I will be making further announcements as we uncover more of the facts in this matter. Right now, I am just very happy that my daughter is safe.”

There was a hailstorm of questions from the press, but O’Keefe waved them off, signaling to his Media Advisor to intercede as he and Valerie made their way off the platform, surrounded by Klesko’s protection team. O’Keefe didn’t look back, but he could feel Riordan’s eyes boring into his back as he left. It wasn’t so much the upstaging of the announcement, although that had been a sweet side-benefit, and it wasn’t even that he’d revealed that he already knew about the Colonial Guard mutiny. No, what was spiking the pressure in the miniature volcano he knew as Brendan Riordan was the knowledge that, if O’Keefe was revealing to the press that he knew about the Colonial Guard, then it was pretty damn certain that he knew far more that he wasn’t revealing.

“That went well,” Ari commented as he watched the Newsnets start to flash one update after another on his tablet’s display.

He, Roza and Shannon were huddled in the Houston safe house, watching the President’s announcement on the tiny entertainment center in a corner of the living room. Roza was curled next to him on the couch, frowning. “Perhaps,” she said doubtfully. “Although now the Colonial Guard has a black eye in all this, something General Kage and I were trying to avoid.”

“Not the black eye they would have had if Colonel Lee had succeeded,” Shannon reminded her from where she paced across the room, restless as a caged tiger. “There will be plenty of black eyes to go around for all of us once the story of the Patton comes out.” She paused in her motion and speared Roza with a look. “By the way, Roza, have you been in contact with him since we found out about the Patton?”

The GIS agent looked uncomfortable with the question, but she nodded. “I report to him every few days via a secure connection, per his orders.”

“How… complete are your reports?” Ari asked her, a bit of alarm entering his expression.

“He is my commanding officer,” she told him, shaking her head. “And without him, you would know of none of this.”

“That’s true,” Shannon admitted. “However, given that he has undeniably been exposed to hypnoconditioning during the hijacking of the Patton, it could be risky to trust him. He may not be totally in control of his actions.”

“It’s possible,” Roza said, “but his response to the news of the hijacking was, and I quote, ‘I see. Well, I will have to get that taken care of.’”

Shannon snorted a laugh. “All right, that ship has sailed, for good or ill. If General Kage wants to betray us, there’s little we can do about it at this point, so we may as well trust him.” She paced back in front of the entertainment center’s holotank, staring for a moment at a frozen image of Brendan Riordan’s face. “Now comes the part that makes me nervous.” She nodded to Ari. “Send the message to President Jameson. It’s time.”

* * *

Gregory Jameson sometimes felt like a spoiled scion of the privileged class when he thought about his ranch in Oklahoma and the apartments he and his wife kept in Capital City and San Francisco. Sitting on the porch of Brendan Riordan’s summer mansion in Jackson Hole, watching the sun set over the Grand Tetons, he no longer felt like that. In fact, he felt very much like a poor cousin come calling with hat in hand.

He took a sip of the exquisitely-aged Scotch the actual human butler had brought to him and smiled to himself, realizing that the feeling was exactly what Riordan had intended when he’d selected this place for the meeting.

“Greg!” He heard the man before he saw him: Brendan Riordan was the only man he’d ever met whose voice made his own sound girlish by comparison. He rose to meet the Director, towering over him by a good twenty centimeters, though they were about equal in breadth and width. “Thanks so much for coming all the way out here!”

“I called you, Brendan,” Jameson said with a shrug as he shook the other man’s hand, trying to look him in the eye without looking down on him. Riordan was dressed casually, as was he, yet anyone looking on would have been able to guess that both men were more at home in a business suit than blue jeans.

“That you did,” Riordan acknowledged, waving him back into his chair and taking the seat across from him. “Dammit, Greg, it’s been too long. I don’t think I ever got the chance to tell you back then, but it was a travesty that you lost that election. That bastard O’Keefe really knifed you in the back, after prattling on about cooperation and rebuilding after the war.”

“Thanks, Brendan, I appreciate the thought.” He paused and took another drink as the butler silently served Riordan a cocktail of his own then moved swiftly and smoothly back into the house. “That’s kind of why I called you, to be honest.”

“How so?” Riordan asked casually, watching Jameson over the rim of the glass as he took a drink of single- malt Scotch.

“Things are going south pretty quick, Brendan. It’s partly the aftermath of the war, partly just the way things happened, but some of it is O’Keefe’s fault and he’s getting the blame for all of it either way.” He nodded outward away from the house. “You were there in Houston… I saw it. We’re looking at a civil war.”

“It won’t come to that,” Brendan said with a dismissive snort. “O’Keefe is just fear-mongering, trying to get public sympathy on his side.”

“Brendan, we’ve known each other since we were in college,” Jameson reminded him. “Don’t bullshit me. I didn’t come here to check out O’Keefe’s story, I came here because I already have checked it out and I know it’s true. And he wasn’t telling the best parts of it.”

Riordan set his glass on the table between them and regarded Jameson coldly. “Greg, you should be very cautious on how you proceed here. This is not a place to tread lightly.”

“Do you think I’m telling you things that aren’t known by other people, Brendan?” Jameson replied with calm confidence. “Do you think that threatening me is going to make them disappear? That didn’t work when you had Glen Mulrooney murdered, and it sure as hell won’t work now.”

“Goddammit, I did not have Mulrooney killed!” Riordan exploded, slamming his palm down on the table, knocking his drink to the ground. “That fucking moron Fourcade…” He bit back the rest of what he’d intended to say, hands clenching to fists in his lap as he tried to control himself. “All I told Kevin was to find out what Mulrooney knew and try to seal the leaks. I meant to erase any damaging information, but the fucking stupid son of a bitch went and hired that mercenary…”

“Finley. Good help is hard to find,” Jameson affected sympathy.

The executive considered his words for a moment before continuing.

“All right, so you know,” Riordan said, his face looking as if he had just bit into something sour. “But how much do you know, and how do you know it.”

“Beyond that… well, I know that you and Fourcade were working with the Colonial Guard mutineers through third-party cutouts, and I know that you have Fleet personnel and former military working on this. But most importantly, Brendan, I know you have access to the wormholes and that you’re working with Antonov.”

Riordan’s face went pale and Jameson thought if the man hadn’t already been sitting down he would have passed out. “Where the fuck did you hear that?”

“You really shouldn’t have trusted Colonel Lee,” Jameson replied. “Or should I say, Fourcade shouldn’t have trusted Hellene D’Annique, who shouldn’t have trusted Colonel Lee.”

“Jesus Christ,” Riordan muttered, coming out of his chair and pacing across the porch, eyes glazing over in horror. “If you know, Greg, then…”

“Then O’Keefe knows,” Jameson confirmed, nodding. “And more important to your purposes, Shannon fucking Stark knows, Brendan. And you know what she’ll do if you she gets her hands on you.” He