Honor Bound

sighed. “I can really sympathize with your position: you know that I accepted the pragmatic reality that, as distasteful as I found the whole forced emigration process, we needed it to keep our society and our economy running on the colonies. O’Keefe means well, but he’s running the Republic into the ground and we might not recover.” He glared hard at Riordan. “But Jesus, Brendan… working with Antonov? He’s a Goddamned madman!”

“Dammit, Greg, I am not working with Antonov!” Riordan raged, fists clenching at his side. “I’m not fucking stupid! Antonov is working for me!”

“What?” Jameson blurted. “What the hell do you mean he’s working for you?”

The executive took a deep breath and shook himself as if trying to work the fury out of his system. “I’m afraid this conversation won’t be proceeding until and unless you can convince me why I should tell you more than you already know.”

Jameson shook his head. He levered himself out of his chair and stood to his full height, towering over Riordan. “Because, my old friend,” he enunciated every word with certainty and precision, “I am the only thing standing between you and utter disaster. However well you think you have this figured out, it is not going to go like you hoped it would.”

“You’re so sure of that, are you?” Riordan sneered. “I wouldn’t think you’d give O’Keefe that much credit.”

“It has nothing to do with O’Keefe… you think you have the military in your pocket, but you don’t. You don’t even have the Colonial Guard: Kage knew about your scheme all along and he wasn’t about to let it happen. But most importantly, whoever your wildcard is in the Fleet, whether it’s Patel or whoever, neither the Fleet nor the Marines will get behind Dominguez.”

Riordan looked very much like he wanted to ask Jameson how he knew about Dominguez, but he bit back the impulse.

“Who do you think they will get behind, Greg?” He asked instead.

“I’d think that’s pretty damned obvious,” Jameson said, grinning broadly. “They’ll get behind the same man who saw them through the last conflict with the Protectorate. That’s why I’m here, Brendan. I want you to make me President again.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“I think this is a mistake,” Kevin Fourcade repeated, arms folded across his chest sulkily. He kept glancing toward the plane’s blacked out window as if he could see through the plastic barrier.

“Yes, Kevin,” Riordan grated with strained patience. “So you keep saying. Pardon me if I don’t accept your judgment unreservedly, given your recent history of decision-making.”

“This is an incredibly complicated plan, Brendan,” Fourcade countered plaintively. “Things were bound to go wrong somewhere… you have to give some latitude.”

“Exactly, Kevin, and this is a prime example of latitude. We’ve been handed an opportunity to upgrade our position. Dominguez was never anything but a stop-gap anyway, a bone to throw the rank and file to make them think everything was on the up-and-up. With Greg on our side,” he jerked his head toward the door to their compartment-Jameson was on the other side of it, secured between two armed guards, “we can push for an immediate election and with Jameson as our figurehead, we get the military on our side. We might even get McKay and Stark to support him.” He shrugged. “If they survive.”

“I don’t oppose involving Jameson,” Fourcade clarified. “I just don’t see a reason to take him to the bunker.”

“It’s necessary,” Riordan told him. “He needs assurances that we have the Antonov situation under control.” He snorted ruefully. “Hell, I’d like to get some reassurance of that myself…”

Jameson emerged from the VTOL jet into an enclosed chamber. He hesitated at the bottom of the boarding ramp and glanced up, seeing the now-closed hangar doors above him. He raised an eyebrow and chuckled at Brendan Riordan and Kevin Fourcade as they met him at the bottom of the ramp. The hangar was roomy and well- lit and mostly vacant. There was room for a dozen flyers or perhaps three more of the small VTOL jets like the one on which they’d flown, but their vehicle shared the large space with but one ducted-fan flyer, parked nearly a hundred yards away. The walls were bare, undecorated concrete and to Jameson they had the look of age.

“Thorough,” he commented, obviously impressed.

“It’s not something we want someone stumbling across by accident,” Fourcade said with a testy defensiveness.

“Follow me,” Riordan told him, leading the group out of the hangar, the two guards who had watched over Jameson during the flight trailing him silently, hands still filled with compact submachine guns.

Jameson eyed them with concealed amusement as they walked. “You know, Brendan, I guess I must look dangerous, but I swear, I’ve only ever killed three people in my whole life and only one of them was with my bare hands.”

“It may seem a bit paranoid,” Riordan admitted, “but then again, we are plotting the overthrow of the government, so perhaps paranoia is just good sense.”

”Touche,” Jameson admitted.

The exit to the hangar was a large double-door that led into a broad hallway, wide enough for power-loaders to haul pallets of supplies through it to storerooms, and at the end of that hallway was a freight elevator. Riordan pressed his palm against a biometric ID plate that seemed much newer than the elevator itself and the doors opened with a quiet creak of metal, confirming for Jameson his estimate of the facility’s age. Riordan hit the last button on a panel with more than two dozen floor selections and the car jerked into motion. The ride seemed to last forever and Jameson fought the urge to check the time on his ‘link; it had been taken from him before the flight, and then he’d had to submit to a complete scan to make sure he wasn’t carrying any implanted tracking devices.

“What level of hell are we getting off at?” He asked dryly. Riordan smirked but did not reply. In fact, he didn’t say a word even when the elevator stopped a few minutes later, disgorging them at the end of a bare hallway lined with unmarked doors; he merely stepped out and led them down it with a confident stride.

He’s spent a lot of time here, Jameson realized.

The corridor split into a T at the far end and Riordan took a right without hesitation. Jameson began to see people then: dressed in civilian business casual, without even an ID badge to betray their purpose, ignoring Riordan except for an occasional nod as they passed by to press palms to security plates next to the equally anonymous doors and entering those mysterious chambers for some unknowable purpose. Finally they reached a door that seemed much newer than the rest. It was wide enough to admit a power-loader and thick and featureless, without as much as an ID plate. Jameson wondered for a moment how Riordan would open it; but only moments after they arrived at the door, it slowly slid aside. Waiting beyond it in a small antechamber was a dowdy, middle-aged woman with mousy brown hair and clothes that looked as if they’d been slept in. She greeted him with a forced smile and shook his hand with feigned warmth.

“Director Riordan,” she said, “so nice to have you back so soon.”

“You’re a bad liar, Maggie,” Riordan accused, shaking his head in amusement. “Don’t worry; it’s not another inspection, just a VIP tour. Dr. Cochrane, I assume you remember former President Jameson.”

The woman seemed to notice Jameson for the first time and surprise registered on her lumpy face. “Mr. President!” She exclaimed, holding out a hand. “It’s such an honor to meet you!” She glanced at Riordan doubtfully as Jameson shook her hand.

“President Jameson is a new recruit for our little enterprise,” Riordan told her. “He just wanted some assurance that we have things in hand when it comes to dealing with our Russian asset.

“Ah,” she said with a nod of understanding. “Well, right this way then, Mr. President.”

The room was half a cell, half an apartment, enclosed behind a transparent, airtight wall from the three meter-high ceiling to floor. It seemed well-appointed as prisons went: besides a bed and a reclining chair, there was an exercise machine and a fully-equipped entertainment center. A partially open door in the corner led to a