Eric Flint's Blog, page 169

Chain of Command – Snippet 09

Chain of Command – Snippet 09

Chapter Four

2 December 2133 (ten minutes later) (nineteen days from K’tok orbit)

“Thanks for staying after,” Huhn said, pulling his blanket more tightly around his shoulders and avoiding eye contact with Sam. “I know we haven’t exactly been on the same page a whole lot, but we’re deep in the shit now, and we need to work together. You know what I mean?”

“Work together. Yes, sir,” Sam said, trying to concentrate on Huhn’s words instead of the image of gray body bags.

Huhn frowned at him and then looked away.

With the others gone, Sam now saw a part of the smart wall near Huhn’s cabin workstation which was live, showing a rotation of family pictures. Most of them looked posed. They featured three people: Huhn, usually in uniform and with a variety of different hair lengths and colors; a woman ranging from her mid-twenties to late-thirties in different pictures, but always with the same tentative smile; and a boy ranging from six or seven up to late teens. The younger version of the boy looked bored, the older one defiant.

“You’ve got a good tactical head on you, Bitka,” Huhn said.  Sam looked up from the pictures with a start, but Huhn’s attention was on the blank gray expanse of the opposite wall. “You’ve shown that much. That was quick thinking during the attack, recommending we realign the boat. I had to think about it a little before agreeing, but you were right.” Huhn glanced at Sam again, perhaps gauging his reaction to this re-writing of history.

“Thank you, sir.”

Huhn fidgeted with his blanket for a moment, as if unsure how to proceed.

“Okay. Like they say, water under the bridge, right? Okay. So …XO, huh? Quite a feather in your cap. Something to brag about to the folks back home, that’s for damn sure. It’s a big job, and a thankless one–take that from me. No one appreciates the XO, but you’ll learn that as you go. You’ll have to keep the tactical department too for now. Short-handed.”

“Yes, sir. Not a problem.”

“I’ll help you out with this job, show you the ropes. But you need to help me out too. I’m new to being captain, you know.”

Something was happening here but Sam was too numb to understand quite what it was or what to do in response. His brain–the analytical part anyway–was still sharp, but the emotional part remained punch-drunk, useless. He knew he should say something.

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay. Well …we’ll take this up again later. Now you better get started on drafting the new watch list and general quarters assignments. Oh, and since you’re still Tac Boss, you’re also the boat’s intel officer. We need to let the crew know what’s going on. You know, big picture stuff, keep it simple, but put together a summary and broadcast it over the all-crew channel.  So …well, dismissed.”

Sam glided out and closed the hatch, then spent a moment holding a stanchion on the bulkhead, thinking through the conversation. Once Huhn got over his surprise having Sam as his XO he had at least been polite, had sounded as if he wanted to get along, work together. Sam wasn’t sure the two of them could manage that, but then he shrugged. What choice did they have?

First things first.

*****

“All hands, this is Lieutenant Bitka the executive officer speaking. Captain Huhn directed me to tell you about our current situation and our mission. As you all probably know, as of 0937 Zulu today, the United States of North America, along with our allies–the West European Union, the Republic of India, and the Federal Republic of Nigeria–have been at war with the Varoki Commonwealth of Bakaa. The biggest thing we know is they shot at us first.

“Something to remember is we’re not fighting every single Varoki out there. Like us, the Varoki don’t have one central government. They’ve got almost thirty sovereign nations, and we’re only at war with one of them: the Commonwealth of Bakaa. They’re called the uBakai in their language.

“You’ve probably heard USS Hornet was badly damaged by the sneak attack. The other destroyers of the squadron took damage and suffered casualties too. We don’t know the extent yet, but for the moment it appears that all twelve destroyers are operational. Our own damage is repairable and does not threaten our survival or that of the boat. Our losses were heavy, though–seven dead and seventeen injured. The good news is, all but four of our injured have already returned to duty or will shortly.

“We’re here in this system for one reason only–to protect Human colonists on the planet K’tok. Why is K’tok such a big deal? Because of all the ecosystems any of the Six Races have discovered in the last couple hundred years, K’tok’s is the only one that has proteins compatible with Humans. That means it’s the only place other than Earth where we can eat the fruit and vegetables and meat without it killing us. People can grow food in the ground, not just in hydroponic tanks.

“The Varoki settled a corner of the world before anyone knew it was compatible with us, but when they found out, they tried to cover it up. That all came out a couple years ago and there’s been a flow of Human settlers there ever since. The local Varoki–the uBakai–started getting rough and so our government sent us to keep everyone honest. Instead they pulled a sneak attack on us.

“There’s a big combined task force following us, ships from all four Human allied navies. They’re headed for K’tok, and so for now our mission is to provide the forward screen for that task force. That’s exactly what they built our destroyers for, and what we’ve trained for.

“In twenty minutes we’ll secure from general quarters and go to Readiness Condition Two. That will give half of you a chance to grab some chow and rest. They you’ll spell your shipmates.

“We’re in a shooting war. We didn’t want it, but we’ve got it, and there’s a lot of combat power backing us up. I was proud of the way everyone I saw performed during the attack, and I’m sure the captain feels the same way. Carry on.”

*****

Two hours later Sam was supervising a repair party, welding permanent patches over the holes in the interior of the central transit tube where uBakai “buckshot” had punched through. The all-boat commlink alert sounded.

“All hands, bury the dead,” he heard Lieutenant Marina Filipenko, the officer of the deck, announce.

He waved his work party to a halt and they all anchored their feet to stanchions and came to attention. Captain Huhn’s voice came on next. He must have been aft in Engineering, where the large maintenance airlock would allow all seven of their dead to be buried together, as was customary. The captain read off their names and said something about each of them, although he sounded as if he read summaries from the service folders.

 

Iron Angels – Snippet 17

Iron Angels – Snippet 17

Chapter 10

Carlos Ochoa’s meeting with the police had gone as well as expected. The only problem he foresaw was the waitress, Lali. She kind of understood what he did and where he went, but wouldn’t be able to provide any real details. But why would the police bother asking her anything? He was probably worried over nothing.

Even though today was Saturday and few of the guild members would be hanging around the machine shop, he was expected to report in after the contact with law enforcement.

He headed south and east from the diner, working his way across multiple sets of tracks. He’d been lucky so far, missing every train and hitting little traffic. Carlos drove with his windows down, enjoying the warm and sticky air mingled with the sharp scent of gasoline and slightly acrid scent of metal working. The mix of abandoned buildings standing alongside operating businesses had been the reason the guild took up residence on Summer Street, running a business called Wayland Precision.

He pulled up to the main gate, and waited. A few seconds later, the gate retracted, allowing him entrance. He drove around back and parked alongside Steve Stahlberg’s extended cab Ford pickup. He desired a vehicle as sweet as Steve’s, with the heavy-duty suspension. He could practically live in the precious hunk of machinery if he had no choice. On the other side of Steve’s pickup was a beater, a worn out Ford Ranger.

“Great, she’s here as well,” Carlos muttered as he thumped his Toyota pickup’s door shut. He had no desire to deal with Steve’s daughter Penny, but no other choice existed unless he wanted to quit. Ever since her father’s stroke, she’d practically taken over the day-to-day operations of Wayland Precision as well as the guild. Penny wasn’t doing a bad job, but Carlos believed she influenced her old man a bit too easily, and a bit too often.

The back of the Wayland Precision building appeared much the same as the front — red brick and frosted glass windows all around. He trotted up the steps and punched his code into the keypad. A buzz sounded and he let himself in.

The building’s eerie weekend stillness unnerved him a little. Only two people in the guild knew where he’d been today, meeting with the FBI and the police — and they were both here and would have plenty of questions. The machine shop itself was dark today. Steve ran a tight ship, keeping the place spotless, at least by machine shop standards. There was hardly a sliver of metal anywhere on the floor or on the machinery. It helped, of course, that they only worked with high-grade steel alloys. If they were cutting stuff like cast iron or bronze, it’d be impossible to keep the shop this clean.

Carlos walked the length of the machine shop, pushed through a swinging door into the warehouse, and descended a flight of stairs off to the side. A vegetal scent filled his nose as he proceeded deeper into the recesses of the building. Warm, damp air hung thick in the wide bench-lined corridor. Mushroom-filled boxes rested atop the benches. The public never saw any of this, only employees and guild members who were one and the same.

“I like the Wizard of Oz,” a female voice echoed from a speaker over his head. That was Penny.

A light flickered on as he approached a solid white door, its edges coated with greasy fingerprints and dirt, as if no one used the doorknob. On the other side of the peephole, he knew, Penny was staring at him.

“It’s me,” Carlos said — he hated this password crap she’d instituted.

“Come on,” Penny said, “what’s the response?”

Penny had obviously gorged herself on too many movies, probably James Bond or the old spy show, Mission Impossible, but this nonsense came from some Christmas movie.

“Fine.” Carlos took a deep breath, and blew out the air with a sigh. “I like the Tin Man.”

“Thank you,” Penny said.

The door buzzed and sprung open. Carlos entered the so-called inner sanctum.

Penny grinned. “See? That wasn’t so bad.”

“Why do you insist on these silly spy antics?” Carlos asked. “I’ve never even seen the movie we’re quoting.”

“We’re quoting A Christmas Story.” Penny shot Carlos a reproving glare. “One of the funniest movies ever.”

“What Christmas story?”

“I feel like we’re Abbott and Costello here doing who’s on first.”

“What?” Carlos asked.

“What’s on second,” Steve chimed in, yanking ripped and faded overalls up.

“You people are insane.” Carlos smacked his forehead. “I don’t know what you’re — ”

Penny’s face turned red, she laughed so hard.

“What?” Carlos was truly perplexed.

“Never mind. Thank you for playing though,” Penny said.

Steve grinned and rubbed his white whiskers with rough hands, like they’d been chewed on like a dog toy.

Carlos grabbed a coffee-stained mug off a shelf and filled it with water from the cooler. “Why use any lines from any movies? Gates, locked doors, and cameras aren’t enough?”

“Let her have some fun,” Steve said. “I don’t quite understand either, but using passwords certainly doesn’t hurt.”

“If you two haven’t noticed, people aren’t beating down the door to uncover what happens in a machine shop. No one cares. Hell, I doubt if more than one percent of the people who drive by — don’t nobody walk on this street — even notices we’re here.”

“Enough,” Steve said.

“So tell us what happened.” Penny grabbed another mug, dropped a bag of black tea in, and drew hot water from the cooler.

Carlos worked his way around and behind a battered old three-drawer filing cabinet, and sat in a chair resembling refugee furniture from the mid-seventies. If the basement had been finished with the dark, wood-grained paneling so prevalent back then, this could have been any house built back in the odd seventies. He was a little too young to truly remember plaid and all the crazy exploitation movies, which made a comeback a few years ago.

“They want to continue meeting me.”

“And?” Penny motioned with her hand as if trying to pull the information out of him.

“So I’m in,” Carlos said, “what more do you want?”

Penny smacked the top of the filing cabinet. “You know damn well what kind of information we’re seeking.”

“Ease up, Penny,” Steve said. “No need to get angry.”

Penny rolled her eyes.

Carlos grinned. “Fine. They had plenty of questions, and for a moment I thought they had caught on to the scene over at animal control, but for now, they aren’t sure what’s going on and haven’t connected the two events.”

“They aren’t sure, huh?” Steve rubbed his chin. “The cops or the FBI still investigating the matter?”

“I don’t know,” Carlos said.

Penny frowned.

“Look,” Carlos folded his arms, “I couldn’t ask too many questions, right? I mean, I had to kind of work with what they tossed at me. If you want my opinion, the local cop, this Pedro, isn’t interested. The FBI guy did most of the asking and appears more eager to use me as an informant.”

“Interesting,” Steve said. “We’ll keep tabs on them as best as we can to be sure they aren’t getting too close.”

“And you want me to continue meeting and figuring out if they’re learning too much?” Carlos asked.

“Yes.” Penny picked up the phone.

“It’s starting up again, the demon universe leaking into ours, right?” Carlos gazed at Steve.

Steve shrugged. “Let’s just call it the ‘other’ universe. We don’t really know for sure what we’re dealing with. But, yes, we think so. There’ve been too many horrific coincidences lately.”

“Speaking of a coincidence,” Carlos drummed his fingers atop the cabinet, “did we have anyone over at animal control today? Once the police arrived?”

Steve shook his head and glanced at Penny who now had the phone up to her ear. She frowned. “No, not that I’m aware of,” she said to Steve and Carlos, then spoke into the receiver: “Hey, John. Be here first thing in the morning. We need to be cutting stainless all day. Let Danny and Ian know also. Right.” A second later she hung up.

“Our old enemy has returned, I’m afraid.” Steve said. “They’re up to something. The two men who died in the hotel weren’t an anomaly or wannabes. No way. The Câ Tsang is back.”

“Great,” Penny said. “We’ll be dodging the law, the Câ Tsang, and Nephilim from another world.”

“Maybe Nephilim,” Steve cautioned. “We don’t really know what they are. We’ve never known, as far back as our records go.”

 

Iron Angels – Snippet 16

Iron Angels – Snippet 16

“Wait a moment, please,” Vance said. “I didn’t complete my explanation and analysis. What is not ordinary is men using thermite on themselves, and also using such an interesting chemical as a means of catalyzing.”

“The mats,” Jasper said. “They stood on the mats, coated their feet with a liquid, and hopped into the basins.”

“Yes,” Vance said, “sulfuric acid. Remember, I read your report.”

“How could I forget? You called me at some crazy hour to talk about it.”

Vance coughed. “Now, this sort of suicide pact –”

Jasper opened his mouth, but Vance raised a hand —

“This sort of suicide pact is common with cults.”

“But there were only two men, wouldn’t there be more cult members crowding around for a peek?”

“A good point, but I still believe we’re dealing with a group of men engaged in heinous –”

“So you’re saying this wasn’t some fucked up kiddie porn type thing, but some sort of ritual killing? A sacrifice?”

“Perhaps,” Temple interjected. “We’re entertaining a few theories, but we’re still forming a more complete picture.”

“But you figured you had enough so that your little group — your guild or whatever you call it — could roll into Indiana and take over what is essentially a crimes against children case.”

“There has been more than one death,” Temple said.

“Yeah, two men killed themselves. Two utterly despicable men.”

“But three deaths over all,” said Temple.

“What?” Jasper stepped closer to Temple — uncomfortably so for him and hopefully for her, but she stood her ground. “Are you trying to tell me the pile of meat and bones over at animal control is somehow related to this?”

“Possibly. Vance?”

Jasper turned his attention toward Vance, and felt Temple take a step backward.

“I found markings near the site of the uh, pile of meat and –”

“Yeah, yeah, go on. I get it.”

“– uh, similar to the striations and distortions on the floor and wall here at the hotel.”

Jasper dragged his hand down his face in frustration.

“But how could they possibly be connected? A cult? The mess over near animal control was no suicide.” Jasper tried to keep the incredulity out of his voice, but failed. “The pile of meat? No way.”

“No,” Temple said, “but perhaps the pile of meat, as you so eloquently put it, had been witness to the cult’s activities and paid the price.”

“I’m sorry, but the idea a person could mangle a body in such a way is ludicrous. Are you two about finished here? You were supposed to wait for me, remember? I was going to escort you through the crime scene –”

“Oh, I wasn’t aware of any arrangement.” Temple stepped into Jasper’s space now. Her glossy lips pursed and her eyebrows arched in a go ahead, make my day sort of way. “Remember, we’ve taken over the investigations.”

“Wait. This one and the murder? The locals, the East Chicago Police, will never agree –”

“They already have.” She turned her attention on Vance whose head was down studying some smudge on the floor. “How much more time do you need?”

“A few more minutes. I need to collect samples from the basins.”

“Ten-four,” Temple said. “Now, Jasper, tell me, has the rest of the building been checked?”

“Yes, but this is unacceptable. I can’t have you two blundering all over Lake County. Don’t screw around too much with this place, the Evidence Response Team is going to give this place another going over –”

“Afraid not.”

“Are you trying to be a pain in the ass?” Jasper huffed. Out of nowhere, a chill crept up his legs and worked into the core of his body, as if emanating from deep within the earth. His shoulders shook, despite his attempt to tamp down the urge.

“Look, why do you care so much?” Temple shook her head, the tight curls wiggling. “You said yourself this was a clear case of suicide and the other a murder and they weren’t connected. The girl was rescued, right? You’re off the hook.”

Yeah, why was he so interested in all this? Why did he care so much about the turf war? Wouldn’t it be easier to simply go back to busting lowlifes? Black was right, after all. Suicides, murder, and a rescued girl. Why stay involved?

He realized it was because a part of him believed what she was saying. Both the suicides and the murder were fantastic in nature. He’d never witnessed human bodies devoured by thermite and had never seen a human corpse rearranged into a pile of meat.

Vance looked up. He’d donned thick spectacled glasses that reminded Jasper of some nutty scientist examining bugs or something. “Hey, this is interesting.”

“What?” Jasper and Temple asked in unison.

“I can’t be certain out here in the field, but a sample I took from the murder scene and another from here match. This is big, we’ve never seen anything like this.” Vance grinned. “Once I can get the samples to a real lab, I’ll go to town.”

“Can you give me a hint as to what you’re talking about?” Jasper asked Vance, but never took his eyes off Temple. Damn, she was good. Her eyes hadn’t left his either, and he wasn’t sure if she’d even blinked yet.

“You don’t have to answer, Vance.” Temple arched an eyebrow, as if once again relaying a go ahead and try me look.

“All right, I guess we’ll be straightening this out over at the Merrillville office. My boss, SSA Johnson has agreed to meet me, and he requested your presence.” Johnson hadn’t requested her presence, but Temple didn’t need to know he lied.

“I’ll do you one better,” Temple said. “Your Assistant Special Agent in Charge is going to be there as well.”

“Great.” Jasper hadn’t ingratiated himself to ASAC Masters any more than he had the ERT leader. A minor insight hit him: perhaps the other person wasn’t always the problem. A slim chance existed that on occasion he caused the problems. He laughed.

Temple’s eyes widened. “What is so funny? Care to let me in?”

“Not at this moment,” Jasper said. “I was simply detecting an emerging pattern, is all.”

“With the investigations?”

“No. Not at all.” Jasper took his eyes from Temple’s. “Fine, I’ll meet you over at the office. When is ASAC Masters supposedly arriving at the RA?” She’d gone above and beyond to shoehorn her little group into places they didn’t belong and then had likely gotten him in hot water. As if he needed help in the hot water department.

Temple glanced at her watch — a slender non-digital piece — a Tag Heuer. Perhaps this woman had some class after all, or perhaps it’d been a gift from a lover jilted by her cherubic demeanor.

“If we leave in fifteen minutes,” she said, “that should give you plenty of time.”

“Fine, I’m leaving now.”

“Okay. Bye now.” She fluttered her fingers, shooing him from the hotel.

He spun and made for the stairs. What a total bitch —

“I know what you’re thinking.”

“That’s good, but do I get to zap you with electricity if you’re wrong?”

She laughed, the first genuine one he’d heard out of her. “That a Ghostbusters reference?”

“Something like that, kind of obscure I’d imagine,” he said, still pissed and managing his anger poorly. “Bill Murray at the beginning when he’s zapping the guy, but not the girl when they’re guessing what patterns are on the cards he’s holding. So, yes.”

“I’m good,” Temple said. “Relax, Agent Wilde, maybe you’re not so bad after all.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“And maybe I’ll allow you to tag along.”

“Too many maybes for me.” That had done it. “See you later.” He wanted to salute her with a finger, but buried his hands in his pockets like he was some little kid being run off the playground by a bully.

 

The Amber Arrow – Snippet 08

The Amber Arrow – Snippet 08

“As Rome’s highest representative in the kingdom at present, I am the Hand of the Bishops, so yes, I am in charge of its fate.”

“Poor Count Lerocher,” the queen murmured.

“Your sympathy is misguided. He was a heretic.”

“You would know, Magister.”

“Marchioness, the man confessed to sacrilege and crimes against the Colonial Dispensation. He allowed his bloodservants Roman surnames. He made midnight sacrifices to the Kalte gods to beg for good tobacco crops.”

“And you got him to confess this after only a little prodding with red-hot pokers?” the marchioness said. “Amazing.”

“The Resonance of the Faith demanded his confession, not me. But it is my task as a master inquisitor to bring the heretic into harmony.”

“With the use of the whip and rack, I’m sure,” Valentine said. Rossofore detected the marchioness’s obvious sarcasm, but decided to ignore it. He had more important matters to attend to.

“Sometimes the body must suffer so that the soul can be saved.”

He’d thought the young Countess Lerocher a self-serving coquette. It had turned out that the young girl loved the old man after all. How disgusting and unnatural!

She came to Rossofore and pled with him to keep her husband from burning at the stake. She offered him nearly everything, even–he thought with disgust–herself as a mistress.

Then Rossofore had named the price he’d intended to demand all along.

“The Golden Rose of Lerocher would be suitable atonement for what Count Lerocher has done,” Rossofore had said.

The little countess’s hand had gone to her mouth in shock.

“Please don’t ask that of us,” she pleaded. “It’s the foundation of the family fortune. If you take it, we’ll be ruined. My husband would rather burn than give it up.”

“Do you care nothing for your husband’s soul, Countess? Would you rather he never resonated with the Emptiness?” Rossofore asked. “I remind you that the souls of the excommunicated are doomed to walk in the underworld forever.”

“Yes, I know it.”

“The Golden Rose stands between your husband and the Blessed Void. With its weight upon his conscience, he will never ascend from this world of suffering.”

Even then, she had wavered. So he’d ordered the stakes erected and the wood piled high for burning. There were ten heretics currently held in the Montserrat dungeon.

He sent a messenger to the countess saying that one of those stakes was for Lerocher.

The messenger came back bearing the Golden Rose in a strongbox.

“The count confessed,” Rossofore told Valentine. “And the faith was merciful. He did not burn.”

“You had the old man hanged in his cell,” the marchioness replied dryly.

“Yes, but we released the body to the widow to be buried in consecrated ground with a wafer of blessed celestis on his tongue. This is the foundation for passage to eternity, as you know, Marchioness.”

Rossofore looked from Valentine down to the necklace again and smiled.

Mine.

There is nothing that this old woman can do about it, either.

He took one of the amber beads in his hands and gave the metal that enclosed it a powerful twist.

“No!” Valentine gasped.

He gave it another twist. The bead popped from its casing and into Rossofore’s hand.

“That is a priceless relic from the first days of the colony,” Valentine said, her voice trembling with dismay.

Well I certainly wiped that arrogant smile from her face, Rossofore thought. Good.

One by one, as the queen watched, horrified, he twisted the other amber stones out in the same way. He threw aside the rest of the necklace. It was gold, and worth a small fortune, but was useless to him. He held the amber beads before his eyes.

Lovely. Perfect. Concentrated dasein. The power that had made the world, and that could unmake it.

He stepped over to his writing desk near to the window where a wine pitcher and glasses sat.

He smiled at Valentine. “Join me in glass of wine, Marchioness?”

Rossofore poured himself a glass. He began to pour one for Valentine, but she shook her head and put a hand over the top of the glass.

The obsidian Raven Ring of l’Ange Noir glinted on her right hand. The Montserrat rivulet topaz sparkled in a bracelet on her wrist. She wore a subtle and no doubt expensive perfume, a mixture of jasmine, vanilla, and musk. Rossofore felt for a moment that he was in the presence of a creature who maybe was a little more than merely human.

A true queen.

Mother of a kingdom.

He quickly shook the feeling off, however. No time to be foolish.

Rossofore raised the wine glass, then put one of the amber beads into his mouth. He rolled it around on his tongue.

Valentine whimpered at the sight.

“Don’t!” she gasped.

The bead was warm. There was no taste to it. This always disappointed him. Pure power ought to have a taste.

“Blood and marrow!” the marchioness exclaimed. “Are you crazy?”

Rossofore smiled. He took a sip of wine.

He swallowed.

“No!” Valentine cried.

She lunged at him, but the guards were nearby to hold her back. There was no need. She controlled herself at the last moment.

At least she has some self-dignity and good breeding, Rossofore thought. For a colonial.

One after another, he swallowed five more of the dragon amber beads. He washed each down with another sip of wine.

Each swallow drew another whine of agony from the marchioness.

It took only a moment for the power to blossom. He felt the warmth flow through his body. His skin began to shine, the dasein inside him producing its own light. His mind raced with a thousand thoughts and plans. If he gazed into a looking glass, which he’d done before when the amber flush was upon him, he knew he would see his eyes glowing like reddish-yellow orbs of fire.

He stretched out his hands. They were crinkling. No, they were scaling, like a fish. A reptile.

He was becoming a dragon.

A man-dragon. A mandrake. A creature of pure dasein.

“Dark Angel protect us!” the marchioness shouted. She backed across the room at the sight of Rossofore. She would have fled entirely, but the guards would not let her pass.

He walked to the citadel window and looked out over the stronghold of Montserrat, his base in this cursed colonial land.

“Come here!” he commanded Valentine. He saw her try to resist, but with the amber power behind it, his voice was compelling. It’s dasein was irresistible. She turned and stumbled toward him.

“Stand beside me at the window,” he continued. Valentine did as he said. He smiled. “Watch this, Marchioness.”

Rossofore raised his now-scaly hands and stuck them out the open window. He clapped them.

A great peal of thunder boomed through the city.

Lightning forked across the sky, then crashed somewhere near the horizon.

The people looked like bugs from here in the tower.

Roaches, Rossofore thought. Like those cursed colonial Palmetto bugs. Ugh.

And like roaches, they scurried in all directions, startled and frightened, but not knowing which way to go.

He clapped his hands again. This time the thunder was louder. It shook the ground. A blast of wind flowed through the town and the people below were blown from their feet.

Then the wind stopped. The people slowly picked themselves back up. After a moment, they went back on their ways.

“I did that,” Rossofore said. “Me!”

“This is sacrilege,” Valentine whispered.

Rossofore chuckled. “How can it be, Marchioness? I’m the one who decides what sacrilege is in these cursed colonies. That is my appointed task.”

He reached over and pulled Valentine closer to himself.

The old daydream returned.

She did smell so good. Rich. From some other world.

A beautiful world beyond the filthy orphanage and Brother Luigi’s leather straps and knotted rope whips.

Rossofore shook his head to clear it.

No, no, no. She isn’t my mother. She may not be anyone’s mother soon.

But he would have to find out the name of whatever perfume she was using. He might recommend it to the true ladies of Rome.

Later. There would be plenty of time.

“What you are seeing is dasein,” he said. “Pure power. You colonials have had it for generations. But you’re ignorant. You didn’t know how to unlock it.”

Rossofore took another bead, put it in his mouth. Swallowed.

“But I do.”

 

Chain of Command – Snippet 08

Chain of Command – Snippet 08

Moe listed the holes the uBakai buckshot had torn in their boat’s roster: two officers and five others dead; one officer–the captain–and three others critically injured and in cold sleep; one officer and twelve others injured but expected to return to duty soon. It was a big bite out of a total crew of ninety-five, but the biggest bite had been out of Sam’s tactical department.

As if thinking the same thing, Huhn’s gaze settled on Sam

“Bitka, I don’t know how you’re going to manage the tactical department without Lieutenant Washington. She was a hell of an officer. You lost your senior chief, too, didn’t you? And Waring?”

Sam looked away and swallowed before answering.

“Yes, sir. Chief Nguyen was killed on the bridge along with Lieutenant Washington, Ensign Waring, and one of my sensor techs. But our weaponry is up, except for one point defense laser mount. I’d like to get the power ring recharged as soon as possible so we’ve got plenty of juice for the spinal coil gun and lasers, but TAC’s up and running otherwise.”

The power ring was the boat’s superconducting magnetic energy storage system, or SMESS, wrapped around the boat’s waist like a corset, buried under armor and coolant lines.

Huhn stared at him for a few seconds. “Well, can you handle the department without your best people? No officers, no senior chief–do you know what you’re doing?”

Once Sam might have felt a surge of anger or resentment at that, but he looked at Huhn’s scowling face, wrapped in his ridiculous blanket, and he felt nothing: no anger, no resentment, no contempt–nothing. He tried to remember what it had felt like to be intimidated by Huhn, but he could not. He felt detached, withdrawn from everything going on in the room, as if it was happening to someone else. His body was here but his mind–part of it, at any rate–was in the wardroom staring at a floating gray body bag.

“My two division chiefs are rock-solid sir. Chief Burns is ready to move up to Bull Tac, and he’s got a good machinist first behind him in weapons division to move up to chief.” Sam decided not to mention his candidate for promotion to chief was Joyce Menzies, one of the two petty officers Huhn had argued with him over earlier. “I’ve got a good set of acey-deucies to fill in behind them. We’ll manage, sir.”

Bull Tac was the unofficial title of the senior chief petty officer in the tactical department, the position Chief Nguyen had held. Acey-deucies were the petty officers first and second class, the men and women who did most of the real work in the boat.

“I hope to God you’re right,” Huhn said. “We’re going to need your department up to speed where they’re sending us, which is right straight into hell. There’s a combined task force following us in, about six days behind us. It was meant as a show of force, to keep the Varoki from pulling something like this, but it’s too late for that. Now they’re the counterattack force, and we’re riding point for them, all the way down to low orbit around K’Tok. When I said we were in the shit, I meant it. This is definitely Charge of the Light Brigade stuff.”

Hennessey and Filipenko exchanged a worried look, but again Sam wasn’t sure if they were more worried about the new mission or Huhn.

“I think somebody better warn the follow-on force to expect the same attack we got hit with,” Sam said.

“Noted,” Huhn answered and looked away–which was Navy-speak for Who cares what you think?

“I’m serious,” Sam said. “We need to get a tight beam message to the main task force right away or they’re going to get whacked.”

“They came in later than we did so they’re in a different intercept corridor,” Huhn said.

“Doesn’t matter.”

They all looked at him and Huhn opened his mouth to cut him off but Sam pushed on. “This attack was launched along an exactly reciprocating course track. That’s nearly impossible. There is only one way this attack could be executed.”

“Oh? So please educate us all, Mister Bitka,” Huhn said.

“Yes, sir. Buckshot is just inert pellets, so once it’s launched there’s no way to alter its vector. That means the launch vessel has to already be on the correct course. The only practical way to do that would be to leave orbit around K’tok and accelerate into the reciprocal course, but to do that they would have to already know our position and in-coming course. That means the vessel had to leave K’tok orbit after we came out of J-space and began our glide. I bet there’s a departure report somewhere in the intel feeds for the last two weeks.”

“You mean they had us detected all along?” Filipenko said.

“Impossible!” Huhn spat.

“Not if they knew where to point their hi-res optics,” Sam said. “If they have a couple optics platforms out in the asteroid belt we don’t know about, all they have to do is point them at the right spot, look from a couple different angles, and wait for us to occlude a star.”

“But how would they know where and when to look?” Huhn demanded. “Do you have any idea how enormous the volume of space above and below the plane of the ecliptic is?”

“Yes, sir, I do. But according to our standard operating procedure, we always enter this star system from above the plane–galactic north–always at the same distance from the orbital plane, and we always do it so that our residual momentum from the final sprint at Bronstein’s World carries us on a zero-burn intercept with K’tok. And we always do it with the same residual momentum so we don’t have to recalculate the intercept problem.”

“Wait one,” Rose Hennessey said. “You want to unwrap that a little for the benefit of a poor engineer who doesn’t know beans about astrogation?”

“Boy, howdy,” Moe agreed.

Sam looked at their blank faces. Even Filipenko, who was supposed to have some background in astrogation, frowned in thought.

“Sure. The galaxy is a flat spinning disc of stars. There’s no real north or south, up or down, but for purposes of reference, if you’re looking at it from a distance and it looks as if its spinning counter-clockwise, you’re ‘up’, or galactic north of it. If it’s spinning clockwise, you’re galactic south. Got it? Okay.

“Same with a star system. Over 99% of the matter that makes up a star and its planets, asteroids, all that stuff is concentrated in a very flat disc. The planet orbits, the asteroids, all of them are in that disc, called the plain of the ecliptic. Only stuff that wandered in and got captured later, like some comets, move outside of it.

“When we jump from star to star, we pop out of J-space into real space. If we come out and some part of the ship is in the same space occupied by, say, a rock the size of a baseball, you get what’s called an ‘annihilation event’.”

“That sounds bad,” Moe said.

“Sounds bad, is bad. So we like to do it above or below the star’s plane of the ecliptic, because there’s hardly anything floating around there.

“When you make a jump you retain whatever momentum you had from before. So we jump here from Bronstein’s World, which has a plane of the ecliptic aligned almost the same as K’Tok’s: both of them angled between thirty and forty degrees off the galactic disc. Before we jump, we accelerate down, stellar south, away from the Bronstein’s World plain of the ecliptic, but we calculate the jump to come out north of K’Tok’s plane.”

“Okay, so our momentum is carrying us down toward the plane and the planets,” Moe said.

“Right. We know where K’Tok is in its orbit at any given time so the astrogator calculates the jump to come out exactly where our residual momentum will carry us on an intercept course with K’Tok.”

“Of course,” Huhn admitted, finally speaking. “That way we don’t have to expose ourselves with a mid-course correction burn. All we do is decelerate into orbit once we get there.”

“Yes, sir. But here’s the thing: at any one time there’s only one place we can emerge from J-Space with that vector and make that intercept. It’s a moving exit point, because K’tok is moving in its orbit, but it’s pig-simple to calculate where it is. Maybe they aren’t idiots. Maybe they noticed that. And so maybe that’s where they point their optics.”

Rosie Hennessey ran her hands back through her buzz-cut hair and looked at Huhn. “Shit, sir, sounds to me like he’s on to something.”

“Okay, okay, so you’re on to something, Bitka. What does that get us?”

“If they saw us, they’ll use the same method to spot the follow-on force and may have buckshot on the way to them, so they need to be warned.

“But we also know when ChaCha’s probe went active there was no ship on that course within normal detection range of our radar. Unless they’ve got some new super-stealth ship out there–and there’s nothing in the intel briefings to suggest it–they did a low-signature course correction after they launched the ordnance, and they got way the hell away by the time we started getting hit, which means they did it a long time ago.”

“Get to the point,” Huhn snapped.

“They had to have fired that buckshot days before the incident on K’tok they say started the war. This was a carefully-planned surprise attack.”

For a moment the only sound in the compartment was the hiss of the ventilators.

Moe put his hand to his temple and squinted, a habit he had when getting an incoming message on his embedded commlink. He nodded a few times absently, then his eyes opened a bit wider.

“Roger that,” he said and turned to the others. “That was Yeoman Fischer. We sent the casualty report up to squadron and just got the modified chain of command. Commander Huhn, you’re skipper, of course.”

Moe turned to Sam. “Looks like you’re second in command, Bub.”

“What?” Huhn said. “No, that’s got to be a mistake! They must have drawn it up not knowing Larry’s returning to duty status.”

“No, sir,” Moe said. “Seems like Bitka has almost a year’s seniority in grade over Goldjune.”

“Were you on active duty when you got your promotion to full lieutenant?” Huhn demanded.

Sam shook his head.

“Don’t matter, sir,” Moe said. “Effective date is effective date.” He turned to Sam, his right hand out. “Congratulations, XO.”

 

The Amber Arrow – Snippet 07

The Amber Arrow – Snippet 07

Chapter Seven:

The Necklace

“Bring me Marchioness Valentine,” said a tall, somber man. He looked to be about thirty years old. He had a close-shaven face and wavy hair that fell to his shoulders. His hair was dark brown. So were his eyes. He had the olive skin color of a Tiberian. Here in the Roman colonies, he stood out. Most of the inhabitants of Vall l’Obac were much darker in complexion. They were of Afrique and Aegyptian ancestry.

The young man wore the jet-black tunic of a Talaia priest. His red clerical collar showed his clerical order.

The Talaia faith called this order the Fratelli di Sangue, the Brothers of the Blood.

Two guards in Roman scale armor near the door to the room left to execute the command of the man in the black tunic.

The man’s name was Quintos Rossofore. His official title was Continental Magister Praelatus of the Inquisition Suprema and Vice Abbot of the Fratelli di Sangue Order of Talaia.

Although vice abbot of an order was a higher title, Rossofore liked people to address him as “Magister.”

While he was waiting for the marchioness, Rossofore gazed down at the lovely necklace of amber beads in his hands. Yellow-golden beauty. He let it swing freely and shifted it this way and that to catch the afternoon light streaming through a citadel window.

Dragon amber.

So much concentrated dasein, he thought. Magic. That was what dragon amber was. Dasein that brought the world to life and sustained it.

And now he held that power in his hand.

Life.

Dominance.

If dasein was the essence of life, then the dragons were life’s greatest enemies. They fed on the dasein in the Earth. They took its magic for themselves, only allowing tiny amounts to escape their horrible appetites.

So said the articles of the faith of Talaia.

Rossofore knew the teachings of Talaia. Oh yes, he knew them well.

He’d spent his younger days in a special orphanage in Rome having them beaten into him.

No matter. That was years ago. Now he was a very powerful man.

Because of amber. Because of dasein.

If the free amber in the world could be collected . . . concentrated . . .

He took the beaded necklace in both of his hands. Each golden amber droplet was the size of a robin’s egg.

He was admiring it when his guards returned with Valentine Archambeault, Queen of the Colonial Kingdom of Vall l’Obac, and Marchioness of the Holy Roman Empire.

“You wish to present yourself to me?” Valentine asked. Her voice was low for woman, a rich alto. Some might call it edged with iron, but Rossofore thought it ridiculously prideful coming from a colonial.

“Yes, Marchioness,” Rossofore replied with a bow. “Thank you for coming.”

Valentine hesitated. She was obviously miffed. All in Vall l’Obac called her “Your Majesty,” Rossofore knew. Even though it was officially correct, calling her marchioness was an insult. What Valentine didn’t know, and never needed to know, was that he called her by a lesser title for his own sake as well as hers.

She reminded him of his mother.

His imaginary mother.

He had never known his true mother or his father. Instead there had only been old Brother Luigi who had drummed the books of wisdom and the Testament of the Covenant into all the children at the orphanage.

Brother Luigi and his knotted whip.

And when memorization didn’t work, the children were sold.

Sold away. Gone.

Rossofore later learned that these were sent to the mines or indentured as chimney sweeps and night-soil collectors. But when he was a small boy all he knew was that children who didn’t learn what Brother Luigi wanted . . . disappeared.

He’d been constantly worried that it might be him next. He’d had to come up with something to keep himself from digging his nails into his palms and grinding his teeth every night.

So he’d secretly imagined having parents.

He thought they might be a rich couple, possibly noble, who had to hide him from jealous relatives who wanted to kill him for his inheritance.

He was a smart boy. A boy of quality. Why shouldn’t he be of the nobility? After all, nobody knew where he’d come from. He’d just showed up in a dirty basket on Brother Luigi’s doorstep one night.

He might’ve been brought from a manor house.

Rossofore fantasized that his mother would one day show up. She would claim him from the orphanage.

She would hug him, and tell him what a good boy he was.

Then she would take him home to her big house and feed him everything he ever wanted to eat. She would have him sit next to her by the fire. She would stroke his hair.

Rossofore hadn’t been touched often in the orphanage, and when he was it was usually by the back of Brother Luigi’s hand.

His mother would never spank him. He would be a good boy. In his fantasy, he would get his own room, a really nice one. But sometimes when he had nightmares–which was all the time at the orphanage–she would let him crawl into bed between her and his father.

He would fall asleep between them, warm and safe.

He would know that nobody was going to send him to the mines.

His parents would never allow that.

Rossofore had grown older and learned that such daydreams were foolish. Idiotic, even.

Many orphans had them. They couldn’t all be the secret sons and daughters of nobility could they?

In fact, none of them were.

Such fantasy was a weakness and had to be stamped out.

Rossofore tried.

But he never could quite stamp out the memory of his imaginary mother.

Marchioness Valentine Archambeault reminded him very much of that daydream mother. She looked almost exactly as he’d pictured her. He’d been struck almost speechless when he’d first met her. Now whenever he was around her, he had to make extra sure that he didn’t give her any special privilege because of some childish delusion that he hadn’t succeeded in wiping out.

She was not his mother.

No one was his mother.

Valentine Archambeault was a heretic. She deserved punishment. He knew it. He just had to prove it.

And she never came for me! She just left me there for Brother Luigi to torment!

Stop it. That was nonsense.

The marchioness was merely of professional interest to him. After all, he was an inquisitor of the Holy Roman Empire, and she was a heretic. Most colonials were in one way or another.

After a moment off balance, Valentine regained her proud bearing and nodded to Rossofore, acknowledging that he didn’t have to address her as he would a queen.

Then she saw the necklace he was fingering, and let out an involuntary gasp.

Rossofore raised his hands and let the sunlight from the open window of the tower hit the amber beads. His office in the castle had once belonged to the marchioness’s lord high counselor.

That was before the same high counselor had been burned at the stake for heresy.

On Rossofore’s orders.

They were in a towering turret that was part of Pierre du Corbeau Castle, residence of the queen. The window looked out over the western regions of Montserrat, the capital city of Vall l’Obac.

“Do you recognize the jewelry?” Rossofore asked.

“Of course I do. It’s the Golden Rose of Lerocher. It belongs to the countess. I have no idea what you are doing with it.”

“It was owned by the Lerochers,” Rossofore replied. “By the old count and his young countess. She’s twenty years younger than the count, you know.”

Count Lerocher had disgusted Rossofore. He could still picture the wrinkled old man’s claw of a hand grasping the lovely, smooth hand of the countess.

He’d brought the man and his young wife to Montserrat. He’d told them it was for a special duty to the Brothers of the Blood. And it was, in a way. He’d immediately seen the count’s seemingly devout nature was merely a cover for deep heresy.

“In actual fact, the necklace was only in the possession of the countess. It belonged to the count. It has been in the Lerocher family for generations. When he confessed his heresy, naturally he forfeited his family’s earthly possessions. So now the Golden Rose belongs to the faith.”

“You mean, to you, Magister Rossofore.”

 

Chain of Command – Snippet 07

Chain of Command – Snippet 07

Chapter Three

2 December 2133 (two hours later) (nineteen days from K’tok orbit)

“She’s over there, Mister Bitka,” the medtech told him, “with the others. Ensign Waring and Chief Nguyen, too.”

Sam turned and saw the seven gray body bags floating softly in zero gee, nuzzling against each other as if for comfort. They were tethered to a fitting at the aft end of the wardroom, which had become a temporary casualty dressing station. The air had been vacuumed and filtered now, but two hours earlier it must have been like hell in here. The circular stains on the bulkheads and walls bore mute testimony to globules of blood having floated in the air like a child’s soap bubbles.

“Sir,” the medic said, “if it means anything, she never felt a thing. There was a lot of high speed fragmentation when they took that hit, most of it on the starboard side of the bridge. I know it’s none of my business, but … well, if I were you, I wouldn’t look inside. Remember her how she was last time you saw her. I mean …there was a lot of fragmentation.”

Sam had already seen Captain Rehnquist, still alive but missing his right leg below the knee, right arm at the shoulder, and his lower jaw, nose, right cheek, and eye. Rehnquist had already gone into a cold sleep capsule to wait until they could get him to a hospital and start reconstructive surgery. Sam looked away from the bags and shuddered, then nodded. He wanted to thank the medic but no words came, so he just patted him on the back.

The medtech went back to his patients and Sam floated to the gray composite bags, found the one with the tag reading “Washington, Lieutenant Julia K, Tactical Department” and closed his eyes.

“Hey, Jules,” he said very softly, “How did this happen? It doesn’t make sense. Little over a year ago I was back on Earth in civies, happy as a clam. Now here I am. Here you are.

“One year. That was a pretty quick change from weekend spaceman to head of a department, but I wasn’t worried. I had you backing me up. Now peoples’ lives depend on me making the right call, on my own, and I wonder how ready for all this I really am. Maybe everyone’s wondering that, huh?”

His embedded commlink vibrated. He opened the circuit and heard the voice of Senior Chief Petty Officer Constancia Navarro, the Chief of the Boat, COB for short.

Lieutenant Bitka, all department heads are to report to the executive officer’s cabin.

“On my way, COB,” he replied. Sam touched Jules’s bag one last time. “Goodbye, friend. God, I’ll miss you.” He pushed off toward the hatch, grateful for someone having ordered him to do something, anything.

*****

He paused in the main access trunk to let another damage control party hurry past going forward, where most of the damage had been suffered. The XO’s quarters were just aft of the wardroom and when Sam got there the stateroom already held three other officers besides Lieutenant Commander Huhn.

Sam had never been inside Huhn’s stateroom and as he glanced around he was struck by its sterile, institutional feel. Most of that was due to the smart walls being turned off, showing nothing but bare gray composite panels. What sorts of pictures or background did Huhn normally display on his walls? Or was this it? Maybe so.

He nodded to the others as he glided in the hatch and grabbed a padded handhold to anchor himself next to Lieutenant Moe Rice, the supply officer and the only other reservist in the room. Rice looked at Sam with eyes wider than normal and nodded a sad greeting. Jules had been his friend as well.

Lieutenants Marina Filipenko and Rose Hennessey floated side-by-side against the opposite wall. Most of the others had zero-gee drink bulbs, but Filipenko had a “bat-rat”, a battle ration in a self-heating bag. She took a bite, pausing first to sniff the bag’s dispenser valve. Sam had noticed that habit of hers before: she always sniffed each bite of food before eating it.

She was short and slender, but Sam knew from working out with her that her leg muscles were like steel springs–a legacy of growing up in the 1.1 gees of Bronstein’s World, the only Human extra-solar colony. Now she looked at him with that eyes-a-little-too-wide expression which always made him uncomfortable. Not that she singled him out–she looked at everyone that way, as if trying to see past their skin and into their souls, trying to solve the mystery of their existence with one good, long stare.

Hennessey, the chief engineer, was a regular officer, but her degree was from MIT instead of Annapolis, and her solid build, ruddy complexion, and buzz-cut reddish-blonde hair, contrasted with Filipenko’s slighter physique and paler palette.

Huhn was in his sleep cubby with the covers wrapped around him. He looked like a cocooned caterpillar to Sam. What kind of way was that to conduct a meeting? Sam looked quickly back at Moe Rice and raised his eyebrows slightly in question. Moe shrugged.

“I see Lieutenant Bitka has finally joined us,” Huhn said. “Good of you, considering there’s a goddamned war on.”

“Yes, sir, I heard the war announcement an hour ago. I came here as soon as I received word of the meeting.”

“Oh, no hurry,” he answered, his voice heavy with sarcasm. “At least no one higher up the chain of command seems to think there’s any hurry. Do you know when the uBakai turned over their declaration of war to our consulate on K’tok?”

He looked around at the faces of the other officers–glared at them, his rage barely contained.

“Seven damned hours ago! Some bureaucratic screw-up. We didn’t get the formal word until fifty seven minutes ago, although an hour before that we got the message loud and clear, didn’t we? That’s for damn sure! My God we’re in the shit.”

“What’d they go and start a fight for?” Moe Rice asked, looking from face to face in genuine bewilderment.

“Who knows why leatherheads do anything?” Huhn said.

“K’tok,” Filipenko said, eyes unfocused, as if she were talking to herself, her fork hesitating half way to her mouth. “That’s the brass ring everybody wants.”

“Let’s not argue over why,” Hennessey said. “They did it. That’s what counts. So what comes next?”

Huhn hunched his shoulders and pulled the covers tightly around him.

“I’m taking command of the boat, effective immediately. Captain is officially off the duty roster. Hell, he’s an icicle down in the med bay. The bad news is we took a lot of damage. Worse news is Hornet couldn’t get out of the way of the particle cloud and the really bad news is she was turned broadside trying to evade when she got hit.”

He paused and glanced at Sam for a moment and then looked away. Was that a veiled thanks for Sam getting them turned into the pellets or a veiled apology for freezing up himself?

“Our anti-collision nose armor stopped most of the stuff that hit us, but Hornet’s crippled and the squadron commander was killed. Hornet barely has internal power. Their A-gang is working to get emergency maneuvering and life support up, but even if they do, she’s out of commission for the foreseeable future. Her jump drive’s shot, too, so she’s not going home soon, which means we aren’t either.”

“Damn! What do we use as a back-up carrier?” Moe Rice asked.

Huhn’s mouth twisted into an ugly scowl. “I guess they’ll tell us when they figure it out themselves, okay? We’ve got our own problems to worry about, starting with holes in the personnel roster and … well, we’ve got to get organized. Re-organized, I guess. Filipenko, what’s Lieutenant Goldjune’s status?”

Filipenko looked up sharply as if her mind had been elsewhere. Her white shipsuit was stained–with grease, Sam had first thought, but now that he looked more closely he recognized the stains as dried blood. When they’d taken the hit she had been on the bridge in the communications chair, to the captain’s left, and that was probably his blood on her uniform. It was a miracle she hadn’t been killed or injured. She wrapped her arms across the front of her torso, hugging her shoulders, and shivered, then cleared her throat.

“The medtech tells me he will be alright. He was on the bridge, was wounded by fragments in the shoulder, and passed out from oxygen starvation when his suit failed, but they got to him quickly enough. I saw him and … the others.” She shuddered again. “He was lucky. The medtechs already have him bandaged and stabilized but they want to keep an eye on him for a few more hours.”

Sam understood her revulsion. His own brief glimpse of their mutilated captain would inhabit his nightmares for some time. Goldjune had been lucky his chair was on the port side of the bridge; no one on the starboard side–all of them people from Sam’s tactical department– had survived

“Thank God!” Huhn said, shaking his head. “We’d really be in the shit without Goldjune. I …” Huhn stopped and cleared his throat, then continued in a reedy voice. “I don’t know how I’d run the boat without him.”

Sam looked at Huhn and tried to match the figure in front of him with the officer who, a little more than two weeks earlier, had described himself as a “hard-charging warrior.”

Huhn shook himself once, the way a dog shakes off water, took two long deep breaths, and looked up.

“What shape’s the boat in, Hennessey?”

Rose Hennessey put a pair of viewer glasses on and gave them a short and to-the-point summary of the damage Puebla had suffered and how far her damage control teams had gotten in repairing the worst of it. They had atmospheric integrity and all fuel leaks had been patched. The thermal shroud was operational again at about 95% efficiency. That struck Sam as a hell of a lot accomplished in only two hours. Beyond that, the drives and life support were operational, although their high resolution visual spectrum–HRVS–optics were still down along with their active radar.

Hennessey pushed the viewer glasses back up on her head. “Problem is I only got eight EVA-qualified A-gangers, and they can only get so much done on the outside of the hull at one time. I’d like to get back to them as soon as possible.”

Huhn looked away and frowned. “You got snipes can turn a wrench. I need you here, figuring out what we do next. But I’ll keep it as short as I can. Rice, what’s the final casualty count?”

 

Iron Angels – Snippet 15

Iron Angels – Snippet 15

Chapter 9

Jasper pulled up to the Euclid Hotel, the scene of Teresa Ramirez’s rescue as well as the site of the bizarre thermite deaths of the two still unidentified men. And likely to remain unidentified unless Temple’s assistant Vance hid some magic divining powers within the recesses of the case he dragged around.

Under the glaring sun, the Euclid Hotel appeared benign. The dilapidated exterior was like the other abandoned buildings in the area, but he’d never view the hotel in that way again. Now that he sat parked curbside, he found it difficult to muster up any enthusiasm to enter.

Jasper squeezed the Charger’s steering wheel as if he were choking the life out of the car until his fingers ached. He took a breath and realized he’d been clenching his jaw the entire time.

“Fine, I’ll go in,” he muttered to himself. “They’re probably back there annoying the police standing guard duty.”

He went around back and found two East Chicago police standing guard.

“Evening,” Jasper said.

Both men straightened a bit at his approach.

“Pete called you?”

“Yes,” said the man on the right.

“You see two other Bureau Agents come around here? I’m supposed to –”

The man on the right held up a hand. “They’re already down there, sir.”

“What?”

“Yeah, they arrived fifteen minutes ago.”

They must have parked around the corner. Jasper sighed. “May I enter the hotel?”

“Sure, knock yourself out. We’re not even sure why we’re guarding this dump.”

“You boys are brilliant conversationalists.” Jasper sighed and his shoulders slumped. “Damn it. I’m sorry. But you understand how it is when muckety-mucks and uninvited guests crash a party, right?”

Both men smiled and relaxed their postures a bit.

SAG. Wasn’t that the name of the silly group Temple had tossed about?  The fault didn’t rest with the two officers standing guard — Temple had probably assaulted them with a huge chunk of her mind. He couldn’t believe she had the nerve to enter the hotel without him. She’d overstepped her mandate. Surely SAC Weber couldn’t have known this would happen, that two headquarters Agents would be traipsing throughout Indianapolis field office’s area of responsibility. Now he couldn’t wait for the meeting with his boss later on today.

“She gave you fellas quite a go around, I’d wager, and left an impression, huh?”

The man on the left rolled his eyes, and the man on the right snorted. “You could say that.”

“Thank you, gentlemen, if I’m not back by dawn, well, you know –”

The man on the right winked. “Copy that.”

He entered through the same door Pete and he had used the previous evening. Chills coursed through him as they had then. This time, however, someone had flicked on what appeared to be every light source still functioning in the hotel. Illuminated such as it was now, the building’s years of neglect were obvious.

The heavy incense aroma from the previous evening had dissipated somewhat, but the acrid chemical odor of the thermite reaction remained as if the stench had permeated the building’s old, porous bones. Jasper descended the stairs, not looking forward to his next interaction with Temple Black, despite having left her on somewhat good terms a few hours earlier near animal control.

He eased into the doorway at the bottom of the stairs.

“Agent Wilde held back on his reporting,” a male voice said. From the accent, that had to be Vance.

“How so?” a female asked. That was Black.

“The samples I’m collecting here are quite fascinating,” Vance said.

Jasper strode into the basement, the scene of the thermite suicides and the little girl’s captivity. “Which samples?”

Vance and Temple jumped. Temple’s lips pursed, rolled her eyes, and shook her head. “You’re lucky you didn’t get shot.”

“By who?” Jasper placed his hands on his hips. “You? Him?” He nodded toward Vance.

“I’ll have you know I’m an excellent shot.” Vance frowned and kneeled before a scorch mark on the floor.

“Hey, the mark you’re examining wasn’t there last night,” Jasper said.

“What wasn’t?” Temple’s brow furrowed.

“The scorch mark.” Jasper walked over to where Vance kneeled and studied the black streak. “I wonder if someone else has been down here? I mean, we cleared the building last night and posted guards, but is it possible someone got in here? Another man associated with the two who offed themselves?”

“Look here,” Vance said. “You see this?” His dark brown fingers traced a wavy pattern in the floor coinciding with the scorch mark.

“Strange.” Jasper stood, and motioned for Vance to follow. “I noticed similar markings back there.”

He moved toward the back room where the kidnapped girl had been tied to a stone slab. Vance followed and scraped the wall. Soot and dirt covered a piece of paper he held. He opened a vial, folded the paper and allowed the debris to fall in.

“What do you make of the substance you’re scraping off the wall, Vance?” Temple entered the back room behind them.

Vance shrugged. “Until I can perform a detailed analysis, I can only venture a guess.”

“Which is?” asked Temple.

“This isn’t from the thermite reaction.”

“So?”

“I’d say from the fading on the marks back here that they are older than the thermite scars in the other room as well as the identical scorch marks,” Vance said.

“But what is it?” Jasper asked. “I understand the thermite and how that’d jack up not only a person, but anything the intense heat touched. My confusion is over the odd distortions rippling throughout the wall and spots on the floor as well. What can you tell me about those?” He knelt near the stone slab where the little girl had been tied down, studying for odd marks like those appearing on the wall and the floor.

“My question exactly,” Temple said.

“Patience.” Vance scraped more samples from the wall, and joined Jasper by the slab. “What are you seeing here?”

“Nothing. Well, nothing but another image I’ll never eradicate from my mind.”

Vance raised an eyebrow.

“He’s talking about the little girl,” Temple said, “you know, the one we’re going to go speak with? The victim?”

“Oh, of course,” Vance said.

“You’re gonna speak with the victim?” Jasper shot to his feet.

“Yeah, that’s exactly what we’re going to do. We’ve taken over the investigation out here, remember?”

“Now wait a minute,” Jasper said, “this is Indianapolis territory, and –”

“Remember, your SAC, the one who is checked out and would say yes to anything, agreed to our presence here.” Temple raised a fancy camera to her eye and began snapping photos.

“Yeah, but his concurrence didn’t include taking over investigations, and what’s your nexus here, anyway? We solved the case — Pete and I.” Jasper’s ears were red and hot. This woman understood how he worked, what riled him up, and how to push his buttons. Shoot, even Lucy, his ex-wife, hadn’t ever got to him this fast.

“Don’t be so sure, cowboy,” Temple said, continuing to take photos of the room.

Cowboy? Did she think he hailed from Oklahoma or Texas? His home was Tennessee, although he’d ditched most of the accent between his time at college, the Marines, and now the Bureau.

“Calm yourself. It isn’t the end of the world. Our nexus is clear, my group investigates this sort of thing.”

“What, this SAG of yours?”

“Yep. Scientific anomalies, remember?”

“Oh, I remember, but explain to me how this is an anomaly.” Jasper folded his arms.

“Vance?”

The Indian man with a small potbelly resting on an otherwise spindly frame stood and pulled a notebook out of an inside jacket pocket and flipped it open. “So, you reported the thermite, which in and of itself is not out of the ordinary –”

“Excuse me? Are you serious?” Jasper’s hands went to his hips.

“Completely.” Hurt crept into Vance’s deep brown eyes, as if Jasper had wounded him. “Now, if you’ll –”

“Look, in the Marine Corps we dismantled huge chunks of machinery with the stuff. The temperatures involved in a thermite reaction are capable of taking almost anything down to parade rest. And you’re saying the presence of thermite isn’t out of the ordinary? I disagree.”

 

The Amber Arrow – Snippet 06

The Amber Arrow – Snippet 06

Chapter Six:

The Letter

Ursel broke the wax seal and spread the scrolled letter onto her lap. She allowed Wannas to stand in the sunlight to cut down the glare on the parchment.

“It is from Lady Ulla,” she said. “This is the handwriting of a castle scribe.”

“I told you,” Wannas replied.

“Please be quiet and let me read.”

The Skraeling started to move away.

“No, keep standing in the sunlight there,” Ursel said. “You cast a good shadow. And I can keep an eye on you that way.”

“I’ll stand here as long as it takes,” Wannas said with a snort. Ursel couldn’t tell if she’d offended him or amused him. She turned her attention to the letter.

My dearest Earl Keiler,

I hope you have identified the respected holder of this letter and have not accidently dispatched him and his men with sword, arrow, or hangman’s noose. You bear people can be famously grumpy at times. If identification is needed and has not been provided, then see the accompanying formal letter of introduction and diplomatic passage through the mark. Also enclosed in a separate packet is personal correspondence from myself to Ursel Keiler. I would request that she receive this at your earliest convenience.

The Skraeling man before you, Wannas Kittamaquand, arrived in Raukenrose with an alarming report. He is an emissary from the Republic of Potomak. That city-state is now under siege by Sandhaven’s professional military. They have been reinforced, I am sorry to say, with Imperial Roman troops.

Roman troops on Kalte soil, my dear earl!

This has been a reason to go to war many times in the past. It is even worse when the military of an important Kalte kingdom is teamed up with Rome and attacking one of the Skraeling republics, our long-time allies and trading partners.

Potomak sits at the Great Falls of the river. All portage up and down river must pass through the city. For over two centuries, she has guaranteed the mark’s route to the sea. She has guarded all trade coming in and out of the Shenandoah Valley.

I am told that this Wannas Kittamaquand, while not of noble birth–his republic has forbidden royal titles–belongs to a clan and family of high importance in Potomak. His father is a senator in the Potomak Assembly. His uncle holds the executive position of chief of war for the republic.

You may have heard of the Kittamaquand clan in passing. His family owns and operates Kitty Yards, the largest Potomak tobacco market.

In order to get to the mark, Wannas and his men had to break through the siege. It was a dangerous undertaking. Many were killed and great sacrifice was made while carving a way through the Sandhaven encirclement. According to the young man, they fought Roman Imperials as well as Sandhaveners. I grilled two of his men separately, and their stories agree. Both also say that Wannas showed great bravery during the breakout.

I am inclined to believe that the situation is as Wannas reports it. The city is cut off. People inside are down to their last food sources.

They are eating horses, my dear earl, horses!

Knowing the respect in which the Skraeling hold their horses, the people of Potomak must be in a terrible condition, indeed.

Wannas very forcefully requested military aid from the mark. I came to see that his agitation, while sharply expressed, is justified.

I am going to send a limited levee of our people to Potomak to attempt a diversionary tactic, around five hundred men. I’ll do this so that new supplies might be brought into the city. The alternative is to let the people of Potomak starve. Our centuries-old route to the sea will be cut off.

But I will not send a full force to ally with the Skraelings until I speak with my brother.

I don’t need to tell you that most of our trade with the northern sister kingdoms goes out through the Chesapeake Bay. Overland shipment adds one hundred times the transportation cost to our goods. It raises the price of all trade goods coming into the mark, also.

You are no bean-counting scribe, my dear Earl, so if you can’t make heads or tails of this, just ask your lovely adopted daughter. Mistress Ursel is quite gifted with numbers. She can put it into a hunter and warrior’s terms, as you well know.

My brother Wulf is not in Raukenrose. He is traveling to the Mist Mountains and to Eounnbard, where the elves dwell. We have had no message from him. I can only assume he has been forging on in that direction for the past weeks.

And since he is not here, I cannot seek his advice. I cannot ask his permission to send a full levee of troops to Potomak.

We need Wulf’s approval.

Wulf is the only von Dunstig who can hear the land-dragon call. The duke, my father, continues to suffer from the morosis disease, and his reason is fading. Even before the death of our older brothers Otto and Adelbert, Wulf had begun hearing the dragon call.

The gift is said to be passed down to male heirs. I don’t know about that, but I can tell you that I myself have not the slightest ability to hear the call. Nor, as far as I can tell, does our ten-year-old sister, Anya.

Wulf is the heir to the dragon-call, and so the heir to the Mark of Shenandoah.

He refuses to take on the title of Duke Regent. Instead, he has appointed me Duchess Regent.

I can promise you that I do not want this honor. With him out gallivanting to Eounnbard, I saw little choice but to take it.

For more than a month before Wulf headed south, the dragon-call was strongly on him. Since the Olden Oak, his usual vision-site, was cut down by the Sandhaveners during the invasion, it was obvious that he should return to the spot he’d last communed with the Dragon of Shenandoah. You know the place well. It is Raven Rock, on the northern edge of Shwartzwald County.

Wulf resisted.

He was busy preparing for an expedition to Amberstone Valley. He planned to take our foster-sister Saeunn back to her homeland. Yes, you read correctly. That’s a trip of nearly six hundred leagues.

This didn’t matter to Wulf.

After her confrontation with the Draugar Wuten, Saeunn was left wounded. During the summer, she became deathly ill. As you know, elves do not get sick often. There are very few diseases which can kill an elf. They are born immortal after all, with a strong constitution meant to last them for centuries.

But Saeunn died in that battle, then got brought back to life. She wears a star-stone–an artifact that seemed to revive her after the final fight with Draugar Wuten.

Wulf is convinced that the star-stone is failing.

He thinks Saeunn will die if he can’t get her to help. So his plan was to take the Elf Road west with her.

That didn’t work out.

Wannas is not the only strange visitor we have had to Raukenrose lately.

About a week before Wulf’s planned departure, an elf warrior stumbled into the mark. He’d been on what sounded like an impossibly hard journey from Amberstone Valley–which was where Wulf was planning to go.

The elf’s name is Abendar Anderolan. Abendar reported that the Wild Kingdoms between the mark and the Great Mississippi River were in an uproar, and that the Elf Road to Amberstone Valley was closed.

He claimed to have set out in a traveling caravan of over one hundred elves, complete with wagons full of trade goods from his valley. Only five elves survived. Once they reached relative safety, they decided to separate to warn the Kaltelands that taking the Elf Road is a march of death at the moment.

Abendar convinced Wulf that only a full battalion of warriors might punch its way through. Wulf almost ordered up the general levee to raise such a force.

At that point, our friend and Wulf’s advisor at the university, Master Albrec Tolas, stepped in. He convinced Wulf this was a terrible idea. It was. It would have left the mark defenseless. Even Wulf, in his desperation to help Saeunn, could not justify doing that.

I don’t really need to explain why Wulf is so determined to help Saeunn Amberstone, do I? They haven’t agreed to a marriage–I don’t think that will ever happen, given the nature of men and elves. But they’ve made no secret of the fact that their friendship has grown into something more for both of them.

They are a couple. In love.

At this point, Ursel’s hands began to shake as she held the scroll.

To hear it so plainly stated . . .

A couple. In love.

She knew she must be flushing, and she blinked water from her eyes. She didn’t look up at Wannas. She didn’t want to have to explain what was affecting her so much.

Then Ursel got a hold on herself and continued reading.

Now there is turmoil to the west. There is grave danger in the east if Potomak falls. And the divine ones only know what is happening in Vall l’Obac. We’ve had no word from the south in over a year. Our rangers report that trade at the border towns has slowed to a trickle.

This is worrisome to me because of our other castle fosterling, Princess Ravenelle Archambeault–yes, the one-year-old child you took as a hostage after the Little War. Princess Ravenelle is now seventeen and, per the agreement with Queen Valentine, is free to return to her native country. As you and my father may have foreseen when you made the fostering arrangement, my family has grown to love Ravenelle–I think Wulf may feel closer to her as a sister than he does to me, to tell the truth.

This is not a surprise, since they are the same age. They grew up as something like outcasts among the castle children. Wulf as third son, and Ravenelle the living symbol of what we’ve been taught to believe are Roman vampires, down to drinking the blood of her servants to gain control of their minds.

Ravenelle has always been a devoted practitioner of the Talaia faith. Her freedom to do this was also part of your arrangement with her mother.

The mark has never been so threatened in a thousand years, and all our young heir can think of is saving his girlfriend, even with the dragon-call knocking at his mind.

Something had to be done, and Abendar stepped forward with an alternate plan. He was headed to the south himself to find refuge among his relatives, the Mist Elves of Eounn Anderolan, the Mountains of Mist. He considers them as something like poor relatives to his own folk, the Smoke Elves of Amberstone Valley. But their king is extremely old. It is possible he knows some way a starless elf might be saved.

It was a long shot, but it was a chance for Wulf to do something about Saeunn.

Please understand, I love Lady Saeunn as a sister. I would gladly have gone with Saeunn to anywhere we might find hope.

I offered. But my brother wouldn’t have it.

I must confide that I am afraid that he may be running from his responsibilities as heir and regent as much as toward help for our foster-sister, Saeunn.

Again, this is not a secret opinion. Half of Raukenrose thinks the same thing. In fact, mobs who claim to be either pro– or anti–Wulf von Dunstig have taken to the streets in our beloved capital. They are practically at each other’s throats. Sometimes it seems all I can do is to keep the peace, much less prepare for war.

But I do prepare.

War is coming. And despite what my brother may think, it doesn’t give a fig about love.

 

Iron Angels – Snippet 14

Iron Angels – Snippet 14

“How about a missing person? An abandoned vehicle along Gary Avenue over near the animal control center? Doesn’t mean anything to you?” Pete leaned on the table with both elbows. The approach wasn’t quite as effective when sitting next to a person you were questioning, even if the proximity of Pete to Carlos should have been uncomfortable. There was nothing like sitting across from someone and staring at them while leaning forward and knowing the answers to the questions posed, or at least pretending. This wasn’t an interrogation, but a simple extraction of information in the furtherance of a homicide — a disturbing homicide. Jasper hoped Pete wouldn’t provide details, not in such a public place with food being served.

Jasper had picked up another dripping fry but he dropped it back on the plate. The image of the pink mound with bone poking through the one-time flesh of a man overwhelmed his hunger.

Pete and Carlos hadn’t noticed Jasper’s action, and hopefully not the sick expression, nose kinked up replacing his attempted stoicism. In fact, Carlos’s body language and attitude was that of a person who retained more information than he provided. Was he afraid to talk about the homicide because he feared the person who had perpetrated the heinous crime? He did have a family — a daughter — to protect, after all.

The clinking of silverware on plates, and clunking of glasses on table worked forward into his mind. The sounds had been there the entire time, but surfaced when the conversation chilled. Motion from the left caught in his periphery. Jasper turned and saw the waitress coming toward them. He opened his eyes wide, alerting Pete so he’d cease the current line of questions.

“You having anything else?” The waitress stood with her hip cocked to the left with a hand resting upon the ample curve.

“We’re good.” Jasper considered a fresh cup of coffee, but would hold out for a cappuccino at Starbucks once they finished with Carlos. The waitress slapped the check down on the table and walked off, shaking her head. “What’s with her?”

“You’re cops and she doesn’t particularly care for me.”

“That bother you?”

“Should it? I’m not doing anything wrong. She’s been busted before, though, so I’m sure she has a beef with you guys.”

“Pfft, not me,” Jasper said. “Probably Pete, he’s into hate crimes.”

“Ay.” Pete dropped his head into his hands.

“Kidding. Totally kidding. Sheesh.” Jasper picked at the fries, just from reflex. His appetite was quite gone, for the moment. “She think you’re a narc or something?”

Carlos shook his head. “No — besides, she never got into the drug scene.”

“A few more questions and I’ll let you get back to your weekend, okay?”

“Sure thing.”

“What do you do for a living, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Metal working. You know, a machine shop and other various odds and ends.”

“Like a handyman?” Jasper asked.

“Only during my off hours, fixing stuff around the neighborhood.”

“You must hear quite a bit about what goes on around town, right?”

Carlos shrugged. “It’s talking to people, being friendly. You know how it is.”

Jasper did indeed. The main job of a Special Agent involved talking to people and obtaining information in the prevention of crime and in the furtherance of investigations in the hopes of locking up criminals.

“Yeah, I understand,” Jasper said. “We understand.” He glanced at Pete.

“The machine shop,” Pete cut in, “what sort of shop is it?”

“We do specialty work. Stainless steel, mostly, and other alloys. Some of them are pretty exotic.”

“You work that stuff?” Pete asked. “Impressive.”

“I’m more of a helper. Sweeping, odds and ends mostly.” Carlos broke eye contact briefly.

“Fair enough,” Jasper said, wedging himself back into the conversation. He had the impression Carlos held back information on them, but no source ever gave up the whole enchilada during a first meeting. No need to press the man now, he’d get more information from him later. “I can contact you at the number you provided to the station?”

“Sure, that’s a private number.”

“Good, I was hoping I didn’t need to provide a drop phone. The budget for operational items is kind of in the crapper right now.”

Carlos arched an eyebrow. Perhaps Jasper shouldn’t have discussed budget issues with a prospective source, but the government’s financial woes were well known throughout the world.

“But if you ever needed a drop phone, that’s doable. Getting one depends on the sort of information you’re providing and the need to keep your identity secret.”

Pete smiled, as if saying “nice recovery.”

“No need. I’ll be fine, but do feel free to contact me if you come up with more questions.”

“Thank you,” Jasper said and slid from the booth.

Carlos stood and Jasper thrust a hand out to shake. Carlos shook, hardly gripping Jasper’s hand, nodded, and walked off. Jasper slid back into the booth, frowning.

“What?” Pete asked.

“His hand’s not as calloused as I would have thought from a metal worker and handyman.”

“So what? Maybe he wears gloves and uses hand lotion.”

“Nobody in their right mind wears gloves around moving equipment. Sure as hell not machine tools. Good way to lose a hand.” Jasper shrugged. “I had the impression he held back on us a bit. He knows more than he’s admitting, or at least he’s not admitting to how he knows so much. The waitress angle interests me — they obviously know each other fairly well.”

“He said they were once friends,” Pete said. “For a first meeting, I’d say Carlos acted like any other source. He did provide the information leading us right to those bastards at the hotel yesterday.”

“That he did, but there’s something off about the whole thing.”

“A feeling you have, perhaps?”

“You’re funny. No, I can’t figure his mannerisms and odd answers.”

“Sounded straightforward to me,” Pete said.

“Before I can open him as a Bureau source, I’m gonna have to run a few background checks and vet him a bit.”

“Do what you have to do, it’s no skin off my nose.” Pete finished off his water.

“You two ready?” The waitress had walked up on them without either of them noticing.

“Yeah,” Jasper said, and dropped a ten on the table. “Keep the change.”

The waitress picked up the money and sauntered off.

The diner had grown quiet and had entered the lull before the dinner rush.

“I need to meet those Agents in a bit.” Jasper slid from the booth. “You’re ready, right?”

Pete chuckled. “I only had water.”

They exited the diner and stood near their vehicles. Pete shoved a toothpick between his lips, but then grasped it between his thumb and forefinger. “Where are you meeting those Agents? You’re talking about the black woman and that little Indian man?”

“Yep, those are the ones. I’m meeting them over at the hotel. They’re interested in examining the scene.”

“What for?” Pete asked.

Jasper released a protracted sigh and dragged his hand down his face. “They’re out from headquarters, some unit I’ve never heard of, SAG or something. They’re interested in the crime scene and the M.O. for some reason.”

“You mind if I sit this one out?”

Jasper raised an eyebrow. “You’re gonna leave me with those two?”

“I’d rather hang with you, but I can’t go back in the hotel, or anywhere near the place.” Pete glanced away from him. “And I don’t know why.”

“But you stared at a lump of meat, a mangled human corpse, over at animal control, eh? That was one of the most horrible things I’ve ever seen.”

Pete tilted his head back, squinting against the sun. “Look,” he said, dropping his gaze back on Jasper, “I can’t explain. Cut me slack on this one, will you?”

Jasper rested a hand on the man’s shoulder, “Sure thing. You know, it’d probably be better anyway if you aren’t involved much with the headquarters folk. I’ll call you if I need anything. You do the same.”

“Sounds fine by me.” Pete nodded and dropped into his Crown Vic.

“Hey, I won’t have any problems getting into the hotel, will I?”

“I’ll call over for you and tell the officers standing guard to allow you entrance.”

“Great, talk to you later.”

Pete waved, started the engine, and drove off.

Jasper did likewise. The afternoon sun had baked the interior of the black vehicle, but within a minute the air conditioning caught up to the heat.

By the time he reached the Euclid Hotel, the headquarters Agents Temple and Vance would likely already be waiting for him. He didn’t speed, though. If he got caught on the wrong side of the tracks waiting for a train to pass and the HQ zombies had to wait, so be it.