Honor Bound

for him to stay on the other side of the doorway.

“This is Colonel Shannon Stark of Fleet Intelligence,” she announced, amplifying her voice over her helmet’s external speakers. “We’re here to take General Antonov into custody.”

Riordan’s mouth curled into a ferocious sneer and he remarked aside to Fourcade, “Well, Kevin, I suppose I owe you an apology: Jameson was a plant.” The comment was picked up by the intercom system in the cell and audible over speakers set in the ceiling outside of it.

“Actually, Director Riordan,” Shannon corrected him, “we found this place by tracing Mr. Fourcade/s ‘link.” She grinned slightly as Fourcade seemed to cringe at that and Riordan’s face flushed. “But that’s not important… we just want Antonov. We know what you’ve done, but we are facing a civil war and an imminent attack by the Protectorate and Antonov is behind all of it. If you turn him over and cooperate with us, you won’t be charged and your role in this never has to be made public.”

“What the hell do you mean Antonov is behind it?” Riordan demanded, his grip tightening on the handgun. “He’s been sitting here in a cell since the fucking war!”

“Yes, he has… but Kevin Fourcade hasn’t. Right after the war, Mr. Fourcade travelled to Aphrodite on the Patton along with current Vice President Dominguez. That ship was hijacked by Protectorate forces and taken back to their homeworld and everyone on it was systematically brainwashed. Most were just made to forget what had happened, but a few were turned into active sleeper agents for the Protectorate.” She purposefully didn’t mention the duplication of Dominguez… it would only have confused the issue and made Riordan more incredulous. “Including Mr. Fourcade here, who has been taking Antonov’s orders ever since.”

Fourcade’s eyes went wide and even Antonov seemed surprised at how much she knew: the man brought his hands together in sarcastic applause that Riordan didn’t notice.

“I’m not a fucking child, Stark!” Riordan bellowed, slamming the butt of his gun against the transparent polymer wall. “Don’t feed me fairy tales! This is what’s going to happen: you and your people are going to put your guns down and let me fly out of here, and you’re going to call whoever you have outside and tell them to let me go. And if you don’t do that, Colonel Stark, I will use this,” he held up a small control unit in his left hand, “to detonate the charges I had built into the walls of this place and bring a few thousand tons of rock down on all our heads. And don’t think you can get to me before I do it… these cell walls are ten centimeters thick. You don’t have enough explosives to penetrate them.”

Shannon paused for a moment and reached up to pull her helmet off, stepping closer to the cell and looking Riordan in the eye. “So,” she said, a bit of amusement in her voice, “let me get this straight, Riordan. You are threatening to commit suicide in order to kill us, just to avoid getting caught?” The half-grin vanished, replaced by cold fury. “You stuffed shirt son of a bitch, you are already caught! You aren’t leaving this fucking cave you built alive unless you leave with me. We’d like to have Antonov and Fourcade alive to question, but at least if they-and you-are dead, we don’t have to worry about them doing any more harm.”

She took another step closer, her nose nearly touching the surface of the cell wall. “Listen to me, Riordan… President O’Keefe doesn’t want you. He knows that going public about you would just make things worse.” It was a lie, of course-she knew that O’Keefe was about to go public later that very morning- but Riordan couldn’t know that yet. “This is bigger than your coup. You’ve been used: Antonov is playing you, with Fourcade’s help, to try to finish what he started in the war. Believe me when I say, Riordan, I would be happy to put a bullet in your head. You’re a fucking traitor as far as I’m concerned. But I follow orders and I have been ordered to give you the chance to cooperate. So make your choice, die here with me or live and give up your coup in exchange for keeping everything you have.”

Riordan frowned as he stared back at her, trying to determine if she was telling the truth. He looked back at Fourcade, doubt in his eyes. “Kevin, tell me this isn’t…”

“Enough of this shit” Antonov finally spat, visibly losing patience. He turned to Fourcade and nodded. Riordan’s face showed sudden alarm and he tried to bring around his handgun, but Fourcade had already raised a small stunner and before Riordan could react, he fired.

Shannon lurched forward instinctively but came up against the impenetrable polymer barrier, her cheek pressed against it as she watched the directed electrical charge course through Riordan’s body. The thick-muscled executive jerked and twitched spasmodically, his face contorted into a mask of helpless agony until Fourcade released the trigger and Riordan’s eyes rolled up in his head and he collapsed against the wall, sliding down to slump on the floor unconscious.

Shannon took a step back from the wall and watched as Antonov leaned over and picked up the detonator and handgun from where Riordan had dropped them. Seeing him up close and in person for the first time, Shannon noticed a psychotic intelligence glowing in his eyes, like an ancient demon staring out from behind a face carved in stone. The Russian paused as he sneered at Riordan’s motionless form, spitting aside at the man.

“That’s much better, don’t you think?” he said in mildly accented English, smiling broadly at Shannon. “I only wish I could kill the mudak.” Asshole, she knew that meant.

“Why didn’t you?” she asked him, trying to sound more calm and confident than she felt, watching intently as he casually tossed the remote detonator up and down in his palm.

“Because I may yet have need of the fool,” Antonov admitted freely, “and I am a man who likes to keep his options open, my dear.”

“What options do you have, General Antonov?” she asked him, waving a hand around them. “Whether you or Riordan is in charge down here, the only way out of here alive is with me.”

“You know, Colonel Stark,” Antonov mused almost whimsically, “I believe you are correct.”

Shannon felt a prickle of fear run up her spine and even before she heard the hiss of a door opening, she was on the move, pushing away from the cell and bolting for the doorway where Tom and the others waited. Some remote part of her mind realized that she had dropped her helmet, but most of her attention was on the main entrance to the chamber, opposite the one they’d blown through. That door had opened and armored biomech troopers were pouring through it, two by two… there didn’t seem to be an end to them.

Shannon opened her mouth to tell Crossman and the others to run when her vision suddenly went white and she felt her muscles jerking out of her control; she could feel herself falling, feel the floor striking her shoulder but she couldn’t make her mind work to figure out why it was happening. Her muscles ceased spasming after what seemed like an eternity, and her vision cleared enough for her to see a blurred, skewed double image of the biomech troopers advancing through the room, their weapons firing with a sound that reverberated through her head like a jackhammer.

Her brain was still filled with a dense fog, but she was fairly sure she saw a figure in grey stealth armor dart through the blasted-open doorway, trying to reach her… and going down face first as a burst of gunfire sliced into him. The man slid across the ground, leaving a trail of blood, stopping only a meter from Shannon. Just before blackness swallowed her, she saw through the helmet’s visor Tom Crossman’s face, his eyes closed, mouth twisted in agony. Then she slipped into unconsciousness in a bitter haze of failure.

Chapter Thirty-Two

First Lieutenant Drew Franks, Republic Space Fleet Intelligence, eyed the walls of his office distastefully, feeling like a caged animal. His Academy graduation photo hung on the wall beside his desk, a hologram of a strong-jawed, fair-haired young man only a couple years younger, but with an optimism and enthusiasm in his freckled face and green eyes that he no longer felt. After he’d graduated, he’d pushed hard for a slot in Intelligence-hell, everyone wanted Intelligence, after the war. He’d envisioned himself running a covert operations team or infiltrating terrorist cells…

Instead, he’d wound up working as the go-to errand boy for Colonel McKay. Not that he disliked working for the Colonel: the man was a legend, and he was great to work for. He expected competence and efficiency, but he wasn’t a martinet or a stick-up-the-ass regulation-quoter. He and Major Stark were both great. But he hadn’t joined Fleet Intelligence to be a glorified secretary and it was even worse now, with everything that was going on.

And as McKay’s aide, he knew exactly what was going on. The Colonel was out