I preceded him into a limo and immobility kicked in again. I don’t blame him, and didn’t think it was rude. I was nervous myself. I couldn’t do anything here. If I started a major fight, they’d certainly kill me. If they were smart, they’d just blow up a building with me under it, and blame me. That would leave me dead, my daughter distressed, and Randall on the loose.
We got out underground of some tower or other in the Washington area. It wasn’t their actual HQ, but probably had a secure pipe to it. We went into a carpeted conference room that obviously had full shielding. He even left his phone outside.
They were professionally cordial. I accepted a sealed bottle of mineral water, though of course it could still have been doctored. We were going to feel each other out until we had some level of trust.
“There were four people in my section,” I offered. “Apparently, two of us escaped.”
“Where was this?” he asked.
“Minneapolis. Two zero nine five six East Trone Road, Executive Storage Solutions.”
He nodded. “That checks.”
“I wasn’t there, and apparently he escaped.”
“And he is . . . ?”
I wasn’t going to give real names even after the fact. “It hardly matters. He never uses it, and never did. At the time, he was going by Doug Rognan.”
“What name did he use to escape?”
“I would have no idea. We had multiple IDs cleared ahead of time, and none of us knew any of the others, nor even some of our own.”
It was true. I wasn’t going to tell him we had buried caches on Earth. They might still be here and I might still need some.
“You understand that you are . . . reviled here.”
“I do,” I said. “I’m not going to make excuses about the events during War. There’s nothing I can do about that now.”
I tried not to let that show. I didn’t want to think about it, because I couldn’t function if I did.
He said, “We didn’t find you, of course. We didn’t find him, either. We have nothing on him at all. I reviewed all the videos of those events today. Nothing.”
That caused an acidic burn inside.
I said, “You viewed them today?”
“I did. Are they useful to you?”
“Yes, very.”
“Then I want a name.”
“I went by Marquette,” I told him, deliberately misunderstanding the question. “He left Earth, I took over his persona. He didn’t know what for and was resettled elsewhere. I think everyone who might know where he is now is dead. We were in Minneapolis.”
It worked, though. He nodded and spoke to the desk.
“Play video, this archive, of Minneapolis assault.”
I turned to the wall.
It was raw footage. They hadn’t stabilized the bobbing of the helmet cameras, nor clarified anything. This was an intelligence file.
They were good, I had to admit. Their first assault tried hitting the building’s roof from two adjoining ones. The mines, zap fields and other boobytraps we’d laid disabled several troopers, probably killed two who fell twenty meters. They stopped that as soon as the first wave hit it.
A ground team materialized from several directions, stacked and hit the door in under five seconds. They threw low-grade explosives, jammers and EMP ahead, to clear the entrance. They made it past the first few traps unhindered, before taking two casualties to nonlethal stuff we’d set against common gangers or thieves.
It was less than another ten seconds before they hit the stairs. I watched the multiple views along the sides as well as the photographer’s view center screen.
And there was Deni, alone on the first landing of the stairs. It was just a glimpse, but even after fifteen Earth years her face was burned in my brain. Seeing her was gut wrenching.
The camera operator was back just far enough, or maybe she IDed him and didn’t waste ammo on him. But in front of him, Uno government goons were dying, and I felt a flush of vengeful glee. I had to force myself not to cheer, because it was very satisfying to see them die, bullets ripping through heads, necks, torsos, accompanied by screams and wails. She was ten times the soldier the lot of them were, and a thousand times the human being. We’d targeted the infrastructure and innocent people had died. These were the scum who needed it. They’d been unreachable, though I had one across the table from me now . . .
Then the stunner bolt caught her and she went limp, eyes focused on some euphoric tickle that was actually within her brain. They had her. She’d taken twelve of them down at least, but they had her.
As they rushed past, two of them knelt to ID her or restrain her, and one of them just had time to say, “Look out! She—” and then the camera jolted, the image suddenly focusing on a wall as it tumbled back down stairs.
At least fourteen. She’d rigged a charge, and I was betting, because I didn’t dare ask, that she’d worn it right over her belly.
That was why they didn’t know to look for a child. A child she hadn’t been holding. A child I’d found three days later, who had kept me just sane enough to not go on a killing spree of these . . . filth.
Then another camera took over, and I raised Deni’s count to at least fifteen.
They regrouped and got reinforcements from another platoon, and advanced at once, shooting anything that looked like a mine or sensor, three of them wearing jammer packs. It was a professional assault, for its time.
Next was Tyler. She was in great concealment, near a water heater that was operating because the hot water was on throughout the building and drawing on it and the pipes from it. The combination of heat and noise had ruined any sensor image of her. Tyler was not carrying a baby. Tyler was carrying a UN issue machine gun, and tore an entire squad apart. All they saw was a snarl and incoming tungsten.
She dropped the gun and went to pistol, and I counted her tally. She’d never been a lover, though she could have been. We’d been close enough, she was a buddy, a comrade and a friend, and I was proud to have known her. When the screams were done, at least nineteen more were dead, including one who got his larynx crushed when he tried to administer first aid. No, she wasn’t going to be kept alive to be tortured or murdered later. The grimace on her face at that moment was frightening, even to me, even after all that had happened.
No baby.
I didn’t pay much attention to the clearing of the rest of the building. Kimbo had escaped and they only had his most recent destroyed Earth ID to work from.
And it had to be him who’d hidden my sedated daughter up top.
It made sense. Deni had to be first and had to die in a fashion that made it impossible to tell she was a mother. Yes, there are ways to tell even from protoplasm, but they had no reason to look that closely.
It wasn’t cowardice that he was last. He was a better medic than Tyler. She was better with weapons. It was utterly logical, had been a decision reached in seconds or less . . .
And it made my target, my arch-nemesis, the shame of our unit, into the man who had saved my daughter’s life, and mine by extension.
I couldn’t tell anyone.
With that one act, however, he’d redeemed himself.
And I was going to use that knowledge to shame and humiliate him with his “cowardice” until I could get him off guard and kill him.
There are days when I really want the entire race wiped out by alien invasion, or a brutal virus. Then there are days I want to do it myself.
I realized Vandler was staring at me.
“I presume he left through the top window, east side.”
“How do you figure?”
“Because when I reconnoitered later, I left through the west in a hurry, past some of your police. I didn’t see anything of him.”
“What did you go back for?” he asked casually.
My neck hair turned into wire.
“Comm codes. No risk to us, but I needed them for exfiltrating.”
“I understand,” he said. “You wer
e reported, and then we went through the building in detail for several days. It was hard to tell much of anything, really. There were only the four of you? Then, what can you tell me about this man, who’s going by what name?”
He wanted intel. It couldn’t hurt now, and gave me some goodwill to bargain with.
“Just the four there. At one time he was Kimbo Randall. I doubt that will lead to anything, though.”
“Likely not. You have no comment on your two female compatriots killing thirty eight of our best tactical troops?”
“Not really,” I said. “About average, really, though at the time I’d have commended them as a matter of course. We were all decorated after the fact, as were your troops who dropped kinetic kills on our bases and nuked New Hilo, not to mention the bio weapons scientists. It’s not relevant to what we’re doing now, and I’d hope we can all put all of it behind us.”
“You are very reasonable,” he said. “That makes me personally hate you even more, that you’re dispassionate over it.”
What would he say to the inner me, screaming, weeping, shivering?
“I don’t think there’s any attitude I could have that would help,” I said.
“Probably not,” he said. He was as cold and dispassionate as I. Here we were, discussing the mass slaughter of billions, and the hand-to-hand slaughter of hundreds, with nary a raised eyebrow.
“So how dangerous is he, then?”
“If surprised, you’ll lose tens, and he’ll disappear. Try to trap him, he’ll do what he did on Caledonia. You heard?” He nodded. “Chase him, you’ll never find him.”
He said, “I would accuse you of arrogance, but I have no reason to doubt your statements.”
“Well, I went home, eventually, and into hiding. I wanted nothing to do with the military, or the people who sent me, after the fact. There’s a line between infrastructure damage with collateral casualties and mass slaughter. I ran over it in a tank.”
“It’s a shame you didn’t decide that beforehand. But go on.”
I shrugged.
“He came home and went freelance. Eventually, our people figured that out. Later, they found me. I trained him, so I have a chance of bringing him in, or down.”
I realized at once he hadn’t known as much as he let on. He’d lulled me into talking.
“You were in charge of the entire operation?” He prickled as he asked it.
Liquid nitrogen chills, phosphorus burns, high voltage jolts and earthquake tremors hit my nerves all at once. I wasn’t worried about dying. I was worried how long it would take me to die.
Then part of me decided, if that would appease them, at least I could die with a clear conscience.
“I was. I was directed to plan, train, insert and await, and then after the attack and occupation of our system, I was ordered to implement.”
“This was done in anticipation?” he fairly shouted.
“Wasn’t your own attack? Four million on our planet, wasn’t it? Does the number of zeroes matter?”
I realized that “zeroes” could refer not only to the hordes killed, but to the insignificant people making up those hordes. Except I knew that no one was insignificant to themselves and their friends.
This asshole felt some kind of moral superiority because “only” millions had died on his government’s orders, and he hadn’t done it personally. No one had. They’d pushed buttons. I’d been angry and belittling of them when I mentioned our bombardment controllers to Andre, but here was the other side, where that was considered perfectly acceptable. For me to engage personally was dirty.
Is there really much difference between shoveling shit and handling it?
I suddenly didn’t know how I felt, or how I should feel. I wanted to feel justified, I wanted to feel remorse, and I wanted them to at least share some of that remorse. They did strike first, they did cause the deaths of near four million people, but they wanted to use me to let them claim the moral high ground.
I was not going to be anyone’s poster child or talking point.
I stared back at him and waited for him to tell me I was going to die, or just have me coshed and hauled off to be tortured. I no longer cared at all, about anyone on any side. We were all murderous fucking criminals, we were all pawns, and I suddenly knew why Randall was doing what he did. It just didn’t matter, and a few more dead assholes of the class of people who implemented this stuff was no loss to the human race at all. It might even be a benefit.
I wasn’t, and never had been the person to do such things myself, but I had never pretended that I really cared about dead politicians and spammers, and in this case, I’d been correct. No one should care.
Then I remembered back to the surgery on my arm and the artificial opiates that had obliterated my memory for most of a day.
I understood why people would do that. One could be alive, and just not there. When life was too hard and death too easy, massive amounts of drugs could destroy you temporarily, so you could try it again later, reliving and escaping the world in turn.
He intruded into my philosophical musings with, “How do you rate your odds of stopping him?”
“Good,” I said. “Better now. He saw fit to expose our past, which he had no need to do. It’s a panic reaction because he believes my odds are good himself.”
“Meaning you want me to let you out of here.” He almost snarled.
I said, “That’s entirely up to you, sir. If you don’t, he keeps killing for quite some time. If you do, I can probably stop him.” Maybe. Maybe I could stop him. Maybe they’d let me go.
“Will you?”
“I haven’t chased him halfway across space to ask for a date.”
“And after that?”
“I go home and tell the universe to go fuck itself again.”
He stared at me, considering.
So I asked, “This seems to be a bit personal for you, too.”
He continued to stare, then nodded, “I drew second camera duty for that team,” he said. “I was backup medic, backup right, and backup camera. I had to do all three in a matter of two minutes. I know what kind of carnage is involved, because everyone I worked with died in those two minutes. My best friend had his throat ripped out.”
“Two of mine got riddled with bullets, and I have to stalk the remaining one down personally,” I said.
“Then I will release you to do so,” he said. “I’m going to implant you with a tracer that is also an explosive. You may have it deactivated at any jump point station at our office. If you mess with it, it will blow a hole through your carotid artery. That won’t bother me at all.” His expression was completely dead.
A medic came in with an insertion gun, and we each nodded. He leaned over and shot me in the left side of the neck.
Son of a bitch, that hurt like a dogfucker.
The medic left while I watched blotches swim in front of my eyes and rubbed my neck in pain.
“What if I have to turn around?”
“You tell us, and we’ll escort you. I prefer risking a death here to letting you remain.”
“Tactically, I can’t fault you,” I said.
“You will also give us all the intel you have. Now,” he said.
Blackmail and veiled threats of death. I probably didn’t know anything critical to current ops, I’d die before I’d talk about mine, and what he asked was perfectly reasonable.
I said, “It mostly came from your files, but I’ll turn over what I have. I can’t do it here.”
“Can she?” he asked, flashing an image of Silver.
“She can,” I said. “She’s also obviously younger, recent, and is not part of my outfit. She’s support only. Is she in custody?”
“Yes, she is nearby. She said nothing.”
Really? Good woman.
“She knows nothing about the past. She’s my technical expert.”
“As your ‘technical expert’ falsified chips that are supposed to be impossible to fake, hacked into our police
nets, changed IDs and disabled two officers when apprehended, naturally I’m not going to trust that.”
“I don’t expect you will,” I said. “Do you need anything else?”
Now that I was equipped with a bomb he controlled, he finally let his emotion show in a grimace of hate.
“No. I’ll book you semi-official travel with codes that ensure you won’t be harrassed. Get off my planet.” He fairly spat it at me.
I said, “You’ve got the events on Caledonia, Mtali, Novaja Rossia, and here. You’ve got the fight I had with him at Station Starlight. You have all that video. You have the assets you confiscated, which are serious violations of our intel and I wouldn’t let you have if I didn’t have to. I really am serious about the threat he poses, and I suggest you take it as seriously as you did fifteen years ago.”
“Very well,” he said.
I eased back from the table and headed for the door. He didn’t bow, rise to open it for me, or acknowledge me other than to follow me with his eyes. Another cop opened it for me, and there was still a whole squad of them.
“Mister Vandler,” I said as I reached the door. I turned to face him and met his eyes.
I said, “I am sorrier, and more ashamed of those events than you can imagine. I can’t undo the past. I can only proceed with the future. That future requires that I kill a friend.”
“I would like to feel sorry for you,” he said. “If you die, I’ll consider it a small balance of justice. If you live, I’ll consider it fair that you feel that remorse, and know the hatred that exists here. I would strongly suggest you never return to Earth after this.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
With that same blank expression he said, “I wish you luck killing your friend.”
He meant that to be cruel, and I understood him.
“Thank you,” I nodded, turned and left.
CHAPTER 25
They took us directly to the spaceport, past all security, and delivered us, with only the clothes on our backs, to a flight bound for the Freehold. That wasn’t where I wanted to go, but we didn’t have much choice at this point.
Once in orbit, we were able to shop, with a very blatant escort loitering near us, and more obviously armed guards outside them. I made sure they could see my movements, so they didn’t get happy with a trigger by accident. If they did so by intent . . .