Afterburn Page 6

“These people meant enough for you to risk your life, several times, to save their species,” Norash put in. “Surely those feelings haven’t changed.”

  “That was an assignment.” Shon gritted his teeth. “I may look Skartesh, but I am oKiaf. The cult is not my responsibility, and I am hardly qualified to act as their leader in anything.”

  “We’d be willing to give you all the support you need, Major,” Ana said. “The final decisions would not be left in your hands.”

  Which meant more deliberate manipulation of the cult by K-2’s well-intentioned governing body; something Shon violently opposed. “I am not Skartesh. I can’t represent them.”

  “There is no specific rule that a rep/liaison must be a native of the species they represent,” Ana told him. “Nor is there any requirement on service duration.”

  He glared at her. “Is there a rule about how much harassment an undercover intelligence officer has to take from bureaucrats wishing to control a group of traumatized refugees?”

  “All of us appreciate how complicated your former assignment made things for you here,” Chief Norash said. “That does not negate the fact that we still harbor over seventy thousand Skartesh on this planet. Seventy thousand beings who tried to commit mass suicide only a short time ago, and who still largely consider you their preferential Messiah.”

  “I have—very patiently, and with great detail—explained what I did, and why, to the Elders of the cult.” Shon turned to Ana Hansen. “I don’t know what they’ve convinced themselves of now, but at the time they understood that I am not a member of their species and that I was never ‘chosen’ to do anything but act a part in order to protect the cult, and to keep them from attacking the occupied worlds in this system.”

  “Religious beliefs are ever-evolving,” Ana Hansen suggested. “When Rushan Amariah’s parents were executed for their actions against the Skartesh, and you were revealed as an undercover operative, the cult lost all its leadership. I can’t say for sure, Major, but I believe they are desperate to find new focus. Because of your efforts on their behalf, in the past and the present, they believe that you were sent to save them.”

  “By Pmoc Quadrant Intelligence,” Shon said. “Not their Gods.”

  “It doesn’t matter where you came from to them. They want to consult with you on matters of vital importance to the future of the Skartesh. They refuse to have anything to do with anyone else, except the Hlagg.” Ana’s wristcom chirped, and she frowned. “It appears I have an emergency situation I have to attend to.” She rose and smiled at Norash and then Shon. “Please reconsider, if you would, Major. You could be a tremendous help to a very frightened species. Chief, I’ll signal you later. Excuse me.”

  Once the administrator had departed, Norash secured the door panel and put the room panel controls on maximum security.

  “Shouting at me isn’t going to compel me to change my mind,” Shon told him.

  “That’s not why I’m sealing up the room.” Norash pulled up an assignment file and turned his viddisplay so that Shon could read it. “I received three inquiries from PQMI yesterday as to your current assignment status, workload dispersement, and location.”

  Quadrant Intelligence knew exactly where Shon was, and what he was doing. “I’m scheduled to begin flying medevac with the Bio Rescue program.”

  “Your orders read that this pilot duty was a voluntary and temporary assignment,” Chief Norash said.

  Tension was beginning to knot the muscles in Shon’s neck. “They shouldn’t. I put in for a permanent transfer to K-2’s planetary patrol squadron as soon as the deprogramming of the cult was completed.”

  “Your application must have been misplaced, then. PQMI is basically asking when they should date your orders for your transfer back to oKia.”

  “oKia.” Shon blinked. “I was never stationed on my homeworld, and it’s never been under any threat of invasion.” Had that changed? Were his parents in danger?

  “Let me make one thing utterly transparent.” Norash removed a disk from his terminal and handed it to Shon. “You did not receive this data from me, Major.”

  Shon examined the disk. It was unmarked and the recording terminal ID tag had been deliberately erased. Bootlegged. “Understood.”

  “On that disk you’ll find details about a recent attack on the oKiaf planetary patrol. The mercenaries were repelled and destroyed. This is all public knowledge. What isn’t generally known is that one of the Faction’s assassins was able to slip through the security grid during the firefight and land on-planet. He went directly to Central Intelligence during a shift with minimal night staffing, infiltrated the building, and blew it, along with himself, into orbit. Forty officers were killed, including Horvon Jala.”

  “Jala.” Shon had to put down the disk before it snapped in his paw.

  Horvon Jala had been Shon’s superior officer in Intelligence from the beginning. It had been Jala’s idea to alterform the young oKiaf officer to double for Rushan Amariah. He had trained Shon, and then personally supervised the Skartesh infiltration operation from oKia. Aside from Shon’s own father, Jala had been the most influential male in his life.

  It was not the loss of a fine officer that hurt. The pain of knowing how the old man had been murdered cut deep, like an Omorr blade in a skilled hand.

  Horvon had always wished to die in battle, and instead he had been murdered while sleeping peacefully in his bed.

  Shon took a moment to stow his outrage. “Why wasn’t I informed of this?”

  “There has been a system-wide shutdown to control the flow of information, so the enemy does not know just how successful their assassin was. Quadrant will likely send a signal as soon as they reorganize oKia Intelligence and cut your orders.”

  “They’re restaffing.”

  Norash nodded. “As rapidly as possible, and they’re looking for a replacement for Jala. My sources tell me that your name is on top of the list.” His expression darkened. “Apparently you have more experience than is listed on your service records. Along with undercover infiltration, Jala was in charge of all quadrant prisoner special interrogations.”

  “Jala and my father served in the prisons; I never did.” Shon thought of his sire, and how his brief military experience had scarred him. “I enlisted as an undercover field agent, not an interrogator. I would not follow in my father’s tracks.”

  “There are rumors about your species. Nothing concrete, you understand, but word cycles around. Prisoners talk about secret chambers, and tell stories about hearing important captives being beaten to death one night only to reappear with no wounds the next morning.”

  Shon shrugged to cover his shock at the chief’s illicit knowledge. “Prisons are rife with that sort of waste.”

  The Trytinorn regarded him steadily. “If you are what I think you are, then your reassignment will not come through as a request. Intelligence will yank you out of here faster than you can say ‘Messiah.’ ”

  “What is your position on this matter?” Shon asked, still wary.

  “Had I the sort of talent for Jala’s kind of work, I likely would have joined an all-male cloister in the most remote portion of the rainforest on Trytin,” the chief said. “Or, perhaps, ended it before someone could force me into doing something I personally found revolting. If that were possible.”

  “Possible, but extremely difficult.” Shon turned the disk in his hands. “I need time, Chief. Time to think.”

  “I’ll run interference for you for as long as I can. But make no mistake, Major. I’m in charge of security for one colony. The people who will be coming for you are responsible for thousands of worlds. If it comes to a shoving match, I will lose, and you will go.”

  “I won’t let it come to that, Chief.” Shon stood and began to salute before he dropped his arm. “This has nothing to do with military business. For this, I now consider you a friend.”

  “The friend of an oKia warrior need never go hungry, or hunt alone, or sleep without an ey
e to watch his back,” Norash said. “Isn’t that how it goes?”

  “We also share our females,” Shon informed him, “but given the differences in our sizes, that would likely not go well for them, or us.”

  “My mate would find it novel. I would be too busy trying not to step on any woman of yours.” Norash uttered an amused sound before his expression sobered. “Valtas, you have my eyes at your back. Keep yours there as well. They will be coming for you.”

  Shon nodded. “I’ll be prepared.”

  “We’re prepared to return to the surface, Dr. Selmar,” the blub-headed humanoid said. “You wanted to speak to me about some problem before we left?”

  Teresa Selmar wanted to yell at the reconstruction site manager, Pridsan, but she settled for another visual survey of the Underwater Research Dome’s upper deck. The damages to K-2’s first subaqua science facility didn’t trouble her as much as what had caused them, or how they were being repaired.

  The wall of transparent plas, which admitted half of their natural light, was an important feature of the URD. Land-dwelling scientists from K-2’s colony had never had an opportunity to dwell among the ’Zangians in their element, and they expected to learn a great deal more about the aquatics via observation through the dome’s walls.

  The specially reinforced plas also kept water and native life-forms out, and Teresa and her staff from drowning.

  “It’s these panels that your crew installed in my upper level,” she told him. “They’ll have to go.”

  Pridsan, a squat Farradonan whose shape resembled that of a Terran who had been compressed into the form of a block, gave her a belligerent look. “Doctor, these panels are identical to the ones that were originally installed.”

  Teresa tapped her short fingernails against the new plas. “Those would be the panels that cracked and threatened to collapse in on us after the three mogshrike attacked the dome.”

  “It was one mogshrike, according to the reports I reviewed,” the blocky humanoid told her. “The other two were attacking the natives. Besides, I find it very hard to believe that three ’shrikes would attack the URD simultaneously. I’ve worked on this planet for thirty revolutions, and we know those monsters always swim rogue. They’d probably devour each other before they’d hunt cooperatively.”

  Most of the colonists believed the same thing, because that was how it had always been with ’shrikes. Up until the day Teresa had opened the URD.

  “I was here when it happened, Pridsan, and I can count. Trust me, we had three of them.” Teresa recalled the terror she had felt, standing helpless on the inside of the dome as one of the ’shrikes slammed its massive head into the viewer panels. The mental image of that gaping maw, lined with all those jagged teeth, still made her stomach clench. “We’re expecting members of the Peace Summit to pay a visit to the URD. I’m not going to have substandard materials cause an interplanetary incident.”

  “Whatever drew the ’shrike to attack was an aberration, and there’s nothing I can do about that. Maybe you should call off the visitation.” Pridsan scowled at one of the staff researchers, who stood talking to a pair of his workers. From their gestures, it was obvious that they, too, were discussing the integrity of the viewer panels. “Maybe you should tell these diplomats to stay on their ship.”

  “That should contribute mightily to the peace process,” Teresa said. “How should I phrase it? ‘Welcome to K-2, stay the hell out of our sea?’ ”

  “If you think that will work.” Pridsan expelled some air. “Look, Doctor, my people and I are slotted to break ground on the new outpatient facility over at the FreeClinic tomorrow. This site hasn’t been allocated any more time or alternate materials, so we’re done here. There’s nothing more I can do for you.”

  “Then how do I get better panels?” Teresa demanded.

  The Farradonan shifted his I beam-shaped shoulders. “Make your case with the construction code office, or petition the council.”

  “That will take weeks, maybe months.” Teresa thought for a minute. “What about the Department of Colonial Construction? Wouldn’t they have something to say about the safety issue?”

  Pridsan regarded the plas wall. “OCS approved your original design as safe. They gave us the schematics they had on database so that we could rebuild according to them. They won’t red-flag this site as unsafe. It will have to be the facility manager here.”

  “I’m the facility manager.”

  “Then you decide whether to shut it down or continue on until you can have better replacement materials approved. I do wish you luck with it.” Pridsan went over to his workers and exchanged a few words with them before escorting them out to the air lock. The researcher gave Teresa an exasperated look before returning to her station.

  “I know just how you feel,” she muttered before striding into her office to start composing her council petition.

  Half an hour into justifying the expenditure for safer, multilayered, reinforced panels, Teresa took a break to make a server of coffee. As she swallowed some analgesics to treat a budding tension headache, her door panel chimed. “Come in.”

  A towering being with multijointed limbs ducked over to pass beneath the too-short threshold of the door panel. Although the N-jui were classified as humanoid, T’Kafanitana strongly resembled an eight-foot-tall, maroon-colored version of a Terran praying mantis. A talented chemist and researcher, T’Kaf worked as Teresa’s lab manager and general assistant.

  The N-jui straightened and regarded Teresa with four sparkling dark eyes. “Doctor, forgive the interruption. I have the results on those water temperature samples that you requested.” When Teresa indicated the server in her hand, T’Kaf shook her head. “Thank you, but no. That beverage makes my diaphragm spasm all night.”

  Teresa grinned. “More for me. What did you find out from the temp data?”

  “Nothing abnormal.” T’Kaf went over and loaded the lab results into the main console terminal. “Samples taken from a two-hundred-kim section of the Western Sea coast match temperatures measured in the same region over the last two decades. The water is not growing any colder.”

  “There goes my main theory right down the drain.” Teresa studied the numbers. “So if the coastal waters aren’t cooling off enough to attract the ’shrike, then what is?”

  The N-jui made a cautious gesture. “It could be a shift in the migratory patterns of their primary food sources. Or, perhaps, their breeding habits are changing.”

  “Have they been interbreeding?” a male Terran voice asked.

  Both women looked up at the man standing in the doorway. His short black hair, cool blue eyes, and smooth features were unmistakably Terran. The brown uniform and double-bar insignia on his collar indicated he was a League captain.

  Teresa could react, or she could play it cool. Since they had an audience, she chose the latter. “May I help you?”

  “That’s my question.” He walked in and sized up the room and the N-jui before doing the same to Teresa. “Captain Noel Argate, Pmoc Quadrant Marine Research Division.”

  Captain Noel Argate. How far the mighty have fallen. “I was under the impression that MRD have their base ops on a water world two systems from here.” A planet filled with aquatic life-forms too primitive to protest whatever atrocities the League committed in their waters, and what the hell was Professor Emeritus Noel Argate doing in a damn uniform?

  “We are. I’m a marine biologist, temporarily assigned to K-2 to observe your native population.” Argate offered Teresa his ID and assignment disks. “Quadrant occasionally has skirmishes on worlds with populated marine territories, so some of what I learn here could possibly help the civilians caught in the war.”

  Help civilians. Maybe if he were repeatedly prodded by a high-energy discharge device, Teresa thought. Otherwise, the Noel Argate she had known wouldn’t have wasted the effort it took to flick nasal discharge in the general direction of anyone who couldn’t pay him, advance him, or kiss his perfectly toned,
world-renowned ass.

  “Hold that thought, Captain.” Teresa inserted the disks and verified Argate’s claims with Colonial Administration. Either he had a forger with first-class skills, or he was on K-2 on legitimate business for the League.

  Which was impossible. Noel would never have left Terra, and he certainly wouldn’t have taken the massive compensation cut it would have cost him to join the military.

  Teresa pulled a copy of his orders from Transport and compared them to the one he had presented to her. “All right, Captain, let’s assume you’re not lying through your teeth.” She handed the disks back to him. “What do you want from me?”

  The old Argate would have given her a suggestive look. This one merely offered up a polite smile. “I’d like the opportunity to work at the URD and provide whatever assistance I can. Of course, you’re in charge here, Doctor. If you feel my presence would be a hindrance, I can set up quarters back at the surface colony. If space permits, however, I would be delighted to stay here and possibly help with your mogshrike problem.”

  Teresa blinked. The man was on some sort of psychosis-inducing substance. That was the only possible answer.

  “Excuse me, but I must go and check on an experiment I was conducting in the lab.” T’Kaf rose and collected the lab results. “I will speak to you later, Dr. Selmar.” She spared Argate a glance and inclined her head. “Captain.”

  Teresa could secure the door panel after the chemist left and have it out with Noel Argate, the architect of her ruin back on Terra. That was what he was expecting, though, and she had no intention of playing up to his ego. She took shelter in a calm silence and what she hoped was an indifferent stare.

  “Your lab chief doesn’t care for Terrans, I take it?” Argate asked.

  “Her species tends to be somewhat reserved.” Teresa had picked up on T’Kaf’s instant dislike of the League captain, too, but the N-jui might have simply resented the man’s intrusion, or sensed Teresa’s silent but violent internal reaction. “T’Kaf is not accustomed to working with males.”