Jae fell.
The planet was marginally Superterran-as were most worlds-so his acceleration was faster than 1g, but he had operated in worse.
Join the Fleet, see new worlds. Join the Marines, see the next one. Join Tactical, see bits of it unfit for human consumption. Jae thought, thankful for the fact that his armor filtered ambient noise-otherwise, he’d be assaulted by the noise of wind the entire length of the drop.
The planet was marginally Superterran-as were most worlds-so his acceleration was faster than 1g, but he had operated in worse.
Join the Fleet, see new worlds. Join the Marines, see the next one. Join Tactical, see bits of it unfit for human consumption. Jae thought, thankful for the fact that his armor filtered ambient noise-otherwise, he’d be assaulted by the noise of wind the entire length of the drop.
His radio crackled. “Insertion Leader, this is Bluebottle. We’re reaching the last bailout opportunity in twenty seconds. Gemini Base has normal radio traffic, their Ansible is transmitting in the normal frequencies, and their shield is down.”
Jae smiled. “Bluebottle, do me a favor?”
A pause. “Sir?”
“Get yourself shot at a few times. This is the last drop of the war my friends, and it’ll be a shame if its as boring as you’ve just said it is.”
“Insertion Leader, you’ve got barely two dozen Agents inserting on what intelligence has reported is one of the single largest, most highly defended facility the Imperiata possessed.”
“Like I said, boring.” Jae knew that he talked like a walking cliche-but damn, in Tactical you didn’t really have a chance to be yourself. “Incidentally, we’ve cleared the Bailout zone, Bluebottle, so you’ll want to get to your holding position.”
“Copy that, Insertion Leader.” The line clicked shut.
They were eighty seconds from the ground now-the plan called for a HALO Jump in, with the velocity burned off at the end with a new gravitic Jetpack that Hazzard-Tech had rushed off the production lines in time for the war’s finale.
Forty seconds above the ground, he checked in with the leaders of the Tactical squads from the other three gunships. The team from theOriole reported all well, the team from the Shrike reported that their team had drifted off course more than expected, but still within acceptable margins.
Twenty seconds-at least, it would be twenty seconds if they didn’t care about impact-above the ground, the Gravpack kicked in, beginning to slow the fall.
Ten of those aforementioned imaginary freefall seconds above the ground, the Gravpack was proving why they were willing to spend over five hundred thousand Credits on each of them-they made nowhere near as much heat, light, or noise as a conventional jetpack.
However, five seconds above the ground, the base must have picked up something, because the bases floodlights switched on, and the pale blue flicker of its shield appeared, hundreds of feet overhead.
Two seconds above the ground-still a good ninety feet-the mission started the inevitable cycle of events that would send it to hell. It wasn’t that this particular sequence of events was inevitable, but, in Jae’s experience, when nothing went wrong was when you needed to be watching your back.
In this case though, it went wrong rather spectacularly. The Gravpacks simply gave out.
The spooks figured it all out later. The damn things had been tested in 1g. Gemini was 1.2. They hadn’t adjusted the packs for the change in gs. And over a dozen soldiers died because of that.
Mary Wentworth was completely Human. That meant they didn’t work her to death in the camp, like they did the poor souls that the Imperiata had labeled ‘non-Human’. Instead, they used her for more visible labor
It wasn’t even like there were any real differences between people whose ancestors had been Modded and those who hadn’t. There were a few populations that were still noticeably different, like the Kynaki Spartoi, but even those were supposed to be closer to Baseline than they once had been.
In short, Mary had come to the conclusion that the Imperiata was fighting a useless and stupid war. That was nothing revolutionary-it was, in fact, generally acknowledged. It was just refreshing, while sitting in prison on a rock in the middle of nowhere, to realize that there was pretty much no justifiable reason for her to be there.
She tried to scratch her wrist, where the tracker chip had been implanted in her, but couldn’t as she held an overloaded tray of food. She didn’t get any, obviously-they couldn’t be bothered to actuallyfeed their prisoners. Hell, Mary didn’t even have the worst of it-she had passed their ‘Genetic Purity Test’, and so got fed something that was vaguely similar to something found in nature, as opposed to genetically modified yeast concentrate.
A door hissed open in front of her, and she stepped outside onto the balcony, where a group of four soldiers manned one of the massive Anti-Aircraft guns that guarded the base.
The soldiers had been tense lately-she had gathered that the war had not gone well for the Imperiata in the past few years-so she announced her presence by clearing her throat. “Excuse me, sirs?” She asked, holding out the food. One of the white-armored men glanced over from where they were sitting, then stood.
She recognized the man behind the faceplate-he was one of the younger Imperiata soldiers she had met, and a relatively decent human being-at least, he had been polite to her, and occasionally not shot an inmate for a minor offense. He was still Imperiata though, she reminded herself, and that was in and of itself a pretty damning character trait.
“Thank you, ma’am.” He said, smiling slightly, taking the tray. “You’ll probably want to run back inside-it’s cold tonight, and those jumpsuits don’t look like they’ll stop a wind.”
She smiled back, and nodded. “Thank you...” She trailed off as the klaxons sounded. Then she saw the blue lines streaking through the sky, and the Imperiata soldiers dashed for the turret. The one with the tray glanced at her for a second, before thrusting the tray back into her arms and shouting “Go!”
She didn’t even get a chance to turn though-something black slammed into the ground between the soldier and the turret.
It was clearly a human, as it stood, and tossed a grenade into the turret, vaporizing the three soldiers, as well as the turret itself.
Then, the person in black collapsed-it looked like their leg had given out. The single remaining soldier unslung his rifle, and took aim at the man in black, who Mary could now see was wearing a Republic flag on his shoulder.
Mary was a Spacer-beholden to none. The Imperiata and the Republic had both been laughingstocks among the Spacers. Hell though, the Republic would be hard-up to be worse than the Imperiata. Therefore, as the soldier fired his rifle, she threw the tray into his back.
Obviously, he found it rather hard to aim an assault rifle with a relatively heavy tray of food slamming into his back. He stumbled into the ground, and the person in black shot him.
The person in black tried to stand again, but fell. Surrounded by clamour, she glanced around, uncertain of what to do next-part of her wanted to run and hide somewhere in the building, part knew that she had to help this man. Steeling herself-gunfire was now splitting the air-she ran.
Jae tried to stand, but his ankle was clearly sprained. Thankfully he had been equipped to deal with such an eventuality, and his suit began to release painkillers and stimulants into his system, even as it began to tighten around his ankle. He got a popup on his HUD asking if he wanted a DX2 Injection. He indicated yes.
A woman approached him, wearing a prisoners jumpsuit. She admittedly was probably a prisoner-but dammit, Jae had no idea what state the raid was in and, judging by the blinking red lights in his HUD, it was going to be... Interesting.
Nevertheless, he wasn’t going to let her get close until his armor had finished applying the compression treatment. He drew his pistol, and levelled it at her. “Don’t move!” He ordered, voice quiet, but commanding. If he were to shout, or threaten, he’d sound desperate. What he needed to be was a cornered animal-something far, far too dangerous and unpredictable to approach.
It didn’t take much acting skill.
It also worked. The woman froze, then stepped away. “Sorry, sorry.”
Jae kept the pistol trained on the woman in the prisoners uniform until he had a single green light pop up amid the various red alert icons. That probably meant that he could stand again, a suspicion he confirmed a moment later by actually executing said maneuver.
He couldn’t feel any pain in his foot, but that wasn’t necessarily good, as he couldn’t feel anything in his foot. He was, bizarrely, still alone with this woman on the terrace where the AA gun had once been. He guessed that had something to do with the firefight that was erupting outside-and judging from the fact that the bluer, higher-energy lasers wielded by Tactical agents were apparently few and far between, good things were not happening. “Up against the wall.” He ordered.
The woman complied, raising her hands above her head.
Then, Jae’s leg collapsed again-apparently there was something beyond a sprained ankle wrong with him.
He swore, and the woman moved forward to him. He tried to bring his weapon to bear on her, but couldn’t manage it before she was directly next to him.
“You alright?” She asked, voice with a Spacer accent. The Spacers were a loose group of traders, miners, and occasional pirates that operated at the fringes of Terran space, generally ignoring all authority-neither the Republic nor the Imperiata particularly cared about them at the moment, but they didn’t miss the opportunity to take the occasional potshot at them either.
Pushing down the instincts that told him to defend himself against this woman, he answered, through gritted teeth, “No.”
She nodded, and bent down by his leg. “I don’t suppose you can take this armor off, can you?”
“We’re in the middle of a war zone! Hell, you’re a civilian-you need to get under cover.”
She laughed. “Please-this base’s been operating at less than half its optimal manpower for months. It’s huge, and it’s meant to be a massive bastion of final resistance, but it’s had men and resources gradually funnelled away for months. General Desails isn’t going to surrender, but his troops aren’t going to put up that much of a fight.”
Jae’s radio crackled-it was the Bluebottle, apparently tired of him ignoring their messages. “Agent Ali, what’s your status!”
“Injured and incapacitated. I dealt with the turret at my objective, but I won’t be able to get any further than that.”
“Understood-we’ll pick you up if you can get the shield down, but can’t do anything until then.”
It killed Jae, being there, exposed with practically no cover, being tended to by a random civilian. The minutes stretched like hours, but, judging from the periodic reports he was sent, the Imperiata was losing ground. It took less than fifty minutes for the shield to go down.
Jae was, honestly, incredibly surprised that no hostiles had found him during the raid-they must be incredibly undermanned.
The Grouse, one of the three dropships on the mission, touched down on the platform a few minutes later, its metamaterial sheathing rendering it hard, though not impossible, to see with the naked eye.
A team of three medics ran down the Grouse’s still-extending ramp, clad in a pale blue and red version of the same armor Jae wore. The Medical Corps had worn white before the Imperiata war, but their adaptation of an all-white uniform had led to an unfortunate incident where a unit of Marines had opened fire on a group of Corpsmen. After that, their uniforms had been redesigned, being converted into a pastel blue, as well as having red highlights added.
It barely took them a minute to check in with both Jae and the Spacer woman about what she had done-not much-and what drugs he had authorized to be injected into his system-pretty much all of them-and then get him onto the Grouse.
The Grouse was the Medical ship, outfitted to deal with the casualties for this mission. From the radio chatter though, it sounded like they needed body bags more then stretchers, due to the damn gravpacks.
That was pretty typical of Tactical these days though-they lost more men to a small scientific error than to the actual mission. Jae had joined Tactical years ago, a young Marine who had already killed more Imperiata, and on more planets than he cared to count. He had been approached by Admiral Hazzard to join the nascent agency known as Tactical-an organization that, she had promised, would be immune to the bureaucratic regulations that crippled the Marines and Fleet.
Over the past few years, however, that had evolved into a situation where Tactical could be reproached by no-one save a Founder. The Founders were primarily concerned with staying in power after the Imperiata was finally dealt with, however, so anything that looked useful to them was tolerated-and no dictator had ever been found without their Secret Police.
Over the next few days, as his leg was healed, he thought on this. He spoke with several other wounded Agents on the Ecumenical Church hospital ship Regina, and he wasn’t alone in that thinking, even if he wasn’t in the majority.
The news about Riya Dare being appointed the new head of Tactical drove the ship into uncontrolled mayhem. Several Agents onboard immediately handed in their resignations, and reports trickled in about similar events all across the Republic. What was equally terrifying was the fact that, apparently, hundreds of Agents and dozens of facilities had gone rogue, and were actively recruiting.
Jae was contacted by several of them, and dutifully reported each to the ranking Agent onboard the Regina.
The reports died down, eventually, and Tactical, after degenerating into a brief but bloody civil war, emerged as a fully metamorphosed Secret Police force. First Citizen Shishani announced its changing role on the Ansnet late one night, flanked by Admirals Hazzard and Dare-the agency’s founder, and its current head.
Jae handed in his resignation the very next morning.
Mary had been free for barely a day, but the prison-apparently named ‘Gemini’-was busier than it had ever been before, even at the height of the war. Republic dropships moved in and out constantly, flying ex-prisoners up to the pair of Ecumenical Church aid ships that had accompanied the Republic fleet there. Mary had about as much use for the Church as she did for the Republic that it was more or less in bed with, but if they were finally getting her off the rock, they were fine with her.
Damn, but it felt weird to walk the halls of the prison without the occasional buzz of her implanted tracking device telling her where to be and who to serve. It was equally odd to see white Imperiata uniforms inside the cells.
She had been asked to meet one of the Republic people in one of the hangar bays. When she arrived, she saw that it was occupied by a trio of those same strange, barely visible warships that had taken part in the assault the previous day. She was met by a woman in a black two-piece uniform-an actual set of shirts and pants, not a jumpsuit. It had a muted Republic flag patch on one sleeve, a practically solid black insignia on the other-Mary thought she could make out a design, though it was hard to tell.
“Mrs. Wentworth?” The Republic woman asked.
Mary nodded in return-she wasn’t going to be rude, but didn’t feel like she was under an obligation to give the Republic or its cronies anything, up to and including words.
“I apologize for taking your time. Your dossier in the Imperiata computers indicates that you’re a mechanic?”
“It’s not wrong.”
“In that case, Mrs. Wentworth, I need to ask a favor. We need-.”
“No.” Mary cut her off. “If your spying told you anything about me, you’ll know that I’m a Spacer, through-and-through. No favors for someone who’s not one of us. Money though-that’ll work.”
The Republic woman smiled. “I don’t think you’ll need something so easily obtainable-how about the whereabouts of Jack Ellwood?”
Mary frowned. “So that’s his last name?”
This seemed to surprise the Republic soldier. “You were married to the man, and you didn’t even know his name?”
Mary shrugged. Among the Spacer community, ‘Jack, the guy from theDreammaker’ was all that was needed for practically instant identification, and many spacers had ample reason to hide their pasts. “Never seemed to matter.”
“I see.” The Republic soldier said, before continuing, “Regardless, we require your services.”
“You seem to be bad at asking, and even worse at haggling. Hell, you seem to be bad at even describing what it is you want.”
“Apologies, Mrs. Wentworth. As I don’t believe I’ve yet said, I’m Agent Rindos, the Commanding Officer of the TS Bluebottle.” She pointed to one of the ships, though Mary couldn’t tell them apart-these Republic ships had no character. They were, however, still beautiful-sleek on the outside, large engines that indicated huge acceleration capabilities, lines that showed that she’d handle beautifully in the atmosphere of most worlds. Hell, they were invisible-or at least, something close to it. “Our mechanic was injured during the battle-there was a malfunction in our Ansible chamber, and our mechanic, Caspar lost his arm. Obviously, this leaves a hole in our roster, and there seems to be a dearth of qualified individuals.”
Mary winced, thinking of the times she had seen ansibles out of control. Then she winced again, thinking of the times she had seen people lose limbs, which was worse. She knew that she should refuse the offer, but... Damn, those ships were beautiful. “Fine.” She said, eyes roving over the Bluebottle’s hull. “I’ll stick with you for a few ports. But one thing-I’m not one of you Republic drones, okay?”
The officer nodded. “Thank you, Mrs. Wentworth. You’re operating here under a purely contractual basis-you’re not under any obligation to stay with us a second longer than you wish to. Do you have any personal possessions that will need to be transferred to the ship?”
Mary laughed. “Guess.”
“I’ll take that as a no then. Right this way, please.”
As Mary stepped up the ramp, she got the feeling that she had just signed up for more than she had reckoned for. She had gotten that feeling when she had first stepped aboard the Gardevoir, the first Asteroid Miner she had been a crewmember on.
And that was wonderful.
Jae smiled. “Bluebottle, do me a favor?”
A pause. “Sir?”
“Get yourself shot at a few times. This is the last drop of the war my friends, and it’ll be a shame if its as boring as you’ve just said it is.”
“Insertion Leader, you’ve got barely two dozen Agents inserting on what intelligence has reported is one of the single largest, most highly defended facility the Imperiata possessed.”
“Like I said, boring.” Jae knew that he talked like a walking cliche-but damn, in Tactical you didn’t really have a chance to be yourself. “Incidentally, we’ve cleared the Bailout zone, Bluebottle, so you’ll want to get to your holding position.”
“Copy that, Insertion Leader.” The line clicked shut.
They were eighty seconds from the ground now-the plan called for a HALO Jump in, with the velocity burned off at the end with a new gravitic Jetpack that Hazzard-Tech had rushed off the production lines in time for the war’s finale.
Forty seconds above the ground, he checked in with the leaders of the Tactical squads from the other three gunships. The team from theOriole reported all well, the team from the Shrike reported that their team had drifted off course more than expected, but still within acceptable margins.
Twenty seconds-at least, it would be twenty seconds if they didn’t care about impact-above the ground, the Gravpack kicked in, beginning to slow the fall.
Ten of those aforementioned imaginary freefall seconds above the ground, the Gravpack was proving why they were willing to spend over five hundred thousand Credits on each of them-they made nowhere near as much heat, light, or noise as a conventional jetpack.
However, five seconds above the ground, the base must have picked up something, because the bases floodlights switched on, and the pale blue flicker of its shield appeared, hundreds of feet overhead.
Two seconds above the ground-still a good ninety feet-the mission started the inevitable cycle of events that would send it to hell. It wasn’t that this particular sequence of events was inevitable, but, in Jae’s experience, when nothing went wrong was when you needed to be watching your back.
In this case though, it went wrong rather spectacularly. The Gravpacks simply gave out.
The spooks figured it all out later. The damn things had been tested in 1g. Gemini was 1.2. They hadn’t adjusted the packs for the change in gs. And over a dozen soldiers died because of that.
Mary Wentworth was completely Human. That meant they didn’t work her to death in the camp, like they did the poor souls that the Imperiata had labeled ‘non-Human’. Instead, they used her for more visible labor
It wasn’t even like there were any real differences between people whose ancestors had been Modded and those who hadn’t. There were a few populations that were still noticeably different, like the Kynaki Spartoi, but even those were supposed to be closer to Baseline than they once had been.
In short, Mary had come to the conclusion that the Imperiata was fighting a useless and stupid war. That was nothing revolutionary-it was, in fact, generally acknowledged. It was just refreshing, while sitting in prison on a rock in the middle of nowhere, to realize that there was pretty much no justifiable reason for her to be there.
She tried to scratch her wrist, where the tracker chip had been implanted in her, but couldn’t as she held an overloaded tray of food. She didn’t get any, obviously-they couldn’t be bothered to actuallyfeed their prisoners. Hell, Mary didn’t even have the worst of it-she had passed their ‘Genetic Purity Test’, and so got fed something that was vaguely similar to something found in nature, as opposed to genetically modified yeast concentrate.
A door hissed open in front of her, and she stepped outside onto the balcony, where a group of four soldiers manned one of the massive Anti-Aircraft guns that guarded the base.
The soldiers had been tense lately-she had gathered that the war had not gone well for the Imperiata in the past few years-so she announced her presence by clearing her throat. “Excuse me, sirs?” She asked, holding out the food. One of the white-armored men glanced over from where they were sitting, then stood.
She recognized the man behind the faceplate-he was one of the younger Imperiata soldiers she had met, and a relatively decent human being-at least, he had been polite to her, and occasionally not shot an inmate for a minor offense. He was still Imperiata though, she reminded herself, and that was in and of itself a pretty damning character trait.
“Thank you, ma’am.” He said, smiling slightly, taking the tray. “You’ll probably want to run back inside-it’s cold tonight, and those jumpsuits don’t look like they’ll stop a wind.”
She smiled back, and nodded. “Thank you...” She trailed off as the klaxons sounded. Then she saw the blue lines streaking through the sky, and the Imperiata soldiers dashed for the turret. The one with the tray glanced at her for a second, before thrusting the tray back into her arms and shouting “Go!”
She didn’t even get a chance to turn though-something black slammed into the ground between the soldier and the turret.
It was clearly a human, as it stood, and tossed a grenade into the turret, vaporizing the three soldiers, as well as the turret itself.
Then, the person in black collapsed-it looked like their leg had given out. The single remaining soldier unslung his rifle, and took aim at the man in black, who Mary could now see was wearing a Republic flag on his shoulder.
Mary was a Spacer-beholden to none. The Imperiata and the Republic had both been laughingstocks among the Spacers. Hell though, the Republic would be hard-up to be worse than the Imperiata. Therefore, as the soldier fired his rifle, she threw the tray into his back.
Obviously, he found it rather hard to aim an assault rifle with a relatively heavy tray of food slamming into his back. He stumbled into the ground, and the person in black shot him.
The person in black tried to stand again, but fell. Surrounded by clamour, she glanced around, uncertain of what to do next-part of her wanted to run and hide somewhere in the building, part knew that she had to help this man. Steeling herself-gunfire was now splitting the air-she ran.
Jae tried to stand, but his ankle was clearly sprained. Thankfully he had been equipped to deal with such an eventuality, and his suit began to release painkillers and stimulants into his system, even as it began to tighten around his ankle. He got a popup on his HUD asking if he wanted a DX2 Injection. He indicated yes.
A woman approached him, wearing a prisoners jumpsuit. She admittedly was probably a prisoner-but dammit, Jae had no idea what state the raid was in and, judging by the blinking red lights in his HUD, it was going to be... Interesting.
Nevertheless, he wasn’t going to let her get close until his armor had finished applying the compression treatment. He drew his pistol, and levelled it at her. “Don’t move!” He ordered, voice quiet, but commanding. If he were to shout, or threaten, he’d sound desperate. What he needed to be was a cornered animal-something far, far too dangerous and unpredictable to approach.
It didn’t take much acting skill.
It also worked. The woman froze, then stepped away. “Sorry, sorry.”
Jae kept the pistol trained on the woman in the prisoners uniform until he had a single green light pop up amid the various red alert icons. That probably meant that he could stand again, a suspicion he confirmed a moment later by actually executing said maneuver.
He couldn’t feel any pain in his foot, but that wasn’t necessarily good, as he couldn’t feel anything in his foot. He was, bizarrely, still alone with this woman on the terrace where the AA gun had once been. He guessed that had something to do with the firefight that was erupting outside-and judging from the fact that the bluer, higher-energy lasers wielded by Tactical agents were apparently few and far between, good things were not happening. “Up against the wall.” He ordered.
The woman complied, raising her hands above her head.
Then, Jae’s leg collapsed again-apparently there was something beyond a sprained ankle wrong with him.
He swore, and the woman moved forward to him. He tried to bring his weapon to bear on her, but couldn’t manage it before she was directly next to him.
“You alright?” She asked, voice with a Spacer accent. The Spacers were a loose group of traders, miners, and occasional pirates that operated at the fringes of Terran space, generally ignoring all authority-neither the Republic nor the Imperiata particularly cared about them at the moment, but they didn’t miss the opportunity to take the occasional potshot at them either.
Pushing down the instincts that told him to defend himself against this woman, he answered, through gritted teeth, “No.”
She nodded, and bent down by his leg. “I don’t suppose you can take this armor off, can you?”
“We’re in the middle of a war zone! Hell, you’re a civilian-you need to get under cover.”
She laughed. “Please-this base’s been operating at less than half its optimal manpower for months. It’s huge, and it’s meant to be a massive bastion of final resistance, but it’s had men and resources gradually funnelled away for months. General Desails isn’t going to surrender, but his troops aren’t going to put up that much of a fight.”
Jae’s radio crackled-it was the Bluebottle, apparently tired of him ignoring their messages. “Agent Ali, what’s your status!”
“Injured and incapacitated. I dealt with the turret at my objective, but I won’t be able to get any further than that.”
“Understood-we’ll pick you up if you can get the shield down, but can’t do anything until then.”
It killed Jae, being there, exposed with practically no cover, being tended to by a random civilian. The minutes stretched like hours, but, judging from the periodic reports he was sent, the Imperiata was losing ground. It took less than fifty minutes for the shield to go down.
Jae was, honestly, incredibly surprised that no hostiles had found him during the raid-they must be incredibly undermanned.
The Grouse, one of the three dropships on the mission, touched down on the platform a few minutes later, its metamaterial sheathing rendering it hard, though not impossible, to see with the naked eye.
A team of three medics ran down the Grouse’s still-extending ramp, clad in a pale blue and red version of the same armor Jae wore. The Medical Corps had worn white before the Imperiata war, but their adaptation of an all-white uniform had led to an unfortunate incident where a unit of Marines had opened fire on a group of Corpsmen. After that, their uniforms had been redesigned, being converted into a pastel blue, as well as having red highlights added.
It barely took them a minute to check in with both Jae and the Spacer woman about what she had done-not much-and what drugs he had authorized to be injected into his system-pretty much all of them-and then get him onto the Grouse.
The Grouse was the Medical ship, outfitted to deal with the casualties for this mission. From the radio chatter though, it sounded like they needed body bags more then stretchers, due to the damn gravpacks.
That was pretty typical of Tactical these days though-they lost more men to a small scientific error than to the actual mission. Jae had joined Tactical years ago, a young Marine who had already killed more Imperiata, and on more planets than he cared to count. He had been approached by Admiral Hazzard to join the nascent agency known as Tactical-an organization that, she had promised, would be immune to the bureaucratic regulations that crippled the Marines and Fleet.
Over the past few years, however, that had evolved into a situation where Tactical could be reproached by no-one save a Founder. The Founders were primarily concerned with staying in power after the Imperiata was finally dealt with, however, so anything that looked useful to them was tolerated-and no dictator had ever been found without their Secret Police.
Over the next few days, as his leg was healed, he thought on this. He spoke with several other wounded Agents on the Ecumenical Church hospital ship Regina, and he wasn’t alone in that thinking, even if he wasn’t in the majority.
The news about Riya Dare being appointed the new head of Tactical drove the ship into uncontrolled mayhem. Several Agents onboard immediately handed in their resignations, and reports trickled in about similar events all across the Republic. What was equally terrifying was the fact that, apparently, hundreds of Agents and dozens of facilities had gone rogue, and were actively recruiting.
Jae was contacted by several of them, and dutifully reported each to the ranking Agent onboard the Regina.
The reports died down, eventually, and Tactical, after degenerating into a brief but bloody civil war, emerged as a fully metamorphosed Secret Police force. First Citizen Shishani announced its changing role on the Ansnet late one night, flanked by Admirals Hazzard and Dare-the agency’s founder, and its current head.
Jae handed in his resignation the very next morning.
Mary had been free for barely a day, but the prison-apparently named ‘Gemini’-was busier than it had ever been before, even at the height of the war. Republic dropships moved in and out constantly, flying ex-prisoners up to the pair of Ecumenical Church aid ships that had accompanied the Republic fleet there. Mary had about as much use for the Church as she did for the Republic that it was more or less in bed with, but if they were finally getting her off the rock, they were fine with her.
Damn, but it felt weird to walk the halls of the prison without the occasional buzz of her implanted tracking device telling her where to be and who to serve. It was equally odd to see white Imperiata uniforms inside the cells.
She had been asked to meet one of the Republic people in one of the hangar bays. When she arrived, she saw that it was occupied by a trio of those same strange, barely visible warships that had taken part in the assault the previous day. She was met by a woman in a black two-piece uniform-an actual set of shirts and pants, not a jumpsuit. It had a muted Republic flag patch on one sleeve, a practically solid black insignia on the other-Mary thought she could make out a design, though it was hard to tell.
“Mrs. Wentworth?” The Republic woman asked.
Mary nodded in return-she wasn’t going to be rude, but didn’t feel like she was under an obligation to give the Republic or its cronies anything, up to and including words.
“I apologize for taking your time. Your dossier in the Imperiata computers indicates that you’re a mechanic?”
“It’s not wrong.”
“In that case, Mrs. Wentworth, I need to ask a favor. We need-.”
“No.” Mary cut her off. “If your spying told you anything about me, you’ll know that I’m a Spacer, through-and-through. No favors for someone who’s not one of us. Money though-that’ll work.”
The Republic woman smiled. “I don’t think you’ll need something so easily obtainable-how about the whereabouts of Jack Ellwood?”
Mary frowned. “So that’s his last name?”
This seemed to surprise the Republic soldier. “You were married to the man, and you didn’t even know his name?”
Mary shrugged. Among the Spacer community, ‘Jack, the guy from theDreammaker’ was all that was needed for practically instant identification, and many spacers had ample reason to hide their pasts. “Never seemed to matter.”
“I see.” The Republic soldier said, before continuing, “Regardless, we require your services.”
“You seem to be bad at asking, and even worse at haggling. Hell, you seem to be bad at even describing what it is you want.”
“Apologies, Mrs. Wentworth. As I don’t believe I’ve yet said, I’m Agent Rindos, the Commanding Officer of the TS Bluebottle.” She pointed to one of the ships, though Mary couldn’t tell them apart-these Republic ships had no character. They were, however, still beautiful-sleek on the outside, large engines that indicated huge acceleration capabilities, lines that showed that she’d handle beautifully in the atmosphere of most worlds. Hell, they were invisible-or at least, something close to it. “Our mechanic was injured during the battle-there was a malfunction in our Ansible chamber, and our mechanic, Caspar lost his arm. Obviously, this leaves a hole in our roster, and there seems to be a dearth of qualified individuals.”
Mary winced, thinking of the times she had seen ansibles out of control. Then she winced again, thinking of the times she had seen people lose limbs, which was worse. She knew that she should refuse the offer, but... Damn, those ships were beautiful. “Fine.” She said, eyes roving over the Bluebottle’s hull. “I’ll stick with you for a few ports. But one thing-I’m not one of you Republic drones, okay?”
The officer nodded. “Thank you, Mrs. Wentworth. You’re operating here under a purely contractual basis-you’re not under any obligation to stay with us a second longer than you wish to. Do you have any personal possessions that will need to be transferred to the ship?”
Mary laughed. “Guess.”
“I’ll take that as a no then. Right this way, please.”
As Mary stepped up the ramp, she got the feeling that she had just signed up for more than she had reckoned for. She had gotten that feeling when she had first stepped aboard the Gardevoir, the first Asteroid Miner she had been a crewmember on.
And that was wonderful.