Eric Flint's Blog, page 170

Chain of Command – Snippet 06

Chain of Command – Snippet 06

“Cha-cha has gone active with a drone!” Delacroix reported from the Tactical Three seat beside him, and Sam saw it on his own screen as well. USS Oaxaca, the command vessel for their four-boat destroyer division, nicknamed Cha-cha, had just launched a sensor drone and turned on its active radar.

“Multiple radar echoes,” Delacroix continued, “small projectiles incoming, bearing zero degrees relative. Range nine thousand kilometers and closing fast. Very fast.”

The projectiles were coming on the exact opposite heading. All the captain’s burn had accomplished was to add about two hundred meters per second to their collision velocity. Sam checked the calculated closing rate: 97,000 kilometers per hour. Jesus Christ, that was twenty-seven kilometers a second! They’d better get out of the way quick. He set a course intersect timer.

“Three hundred thirty seconds to impact,” he said.

Ensign Lee at Maneuvering One began working the current and projected courses. “Best evasion track is ninety degrees relative and flat. Permission to align the boat for burn.”

“Negative! It’s the captain’s call,” Huhn answered.

Ensign Lee, the only reservist line officer other than Sam, turned and looked at Huhn and then at Sam, her eyes questioning. Her face was round and fine-featured, chin recessed, mouth small, eyes always open wide, and her nose was incongruously large and wedge-shaped, which gave her the look of a slightly startled bird, even more so just then. She was right, though.  Sam was sitting TAC One. It was his job to speak up.

“Sir, you’re in command until we’ve got comms to the bridge. We need to get the hell out of that cloud’s way.”

“Kramer, get me the division commander,” Huhn said. That would be Captain Bonaventure aboard USS Oaxaca.

“Incoming text from Cha-Cha now, sir,” Kramer answered from the Comm Station “Message reads: All red stingers, evade. Seventy-eight degrees relative, angle on the bow ninety, forty-second MPD full burn. Expedite. Signed Red Stinger Six Actual. End message.”

“Aligning the boat,” Ensign Lee said immediately, punching the acceleration warning klaxon. Huhn visibly started in his command station as it sounded. Sam saw him open his mouth to speak but then hesitate and close it again. For just a moment Sam was sure he had been about to order Lee to belay the alignment. Then Sam felt the side-ways acceleration as Lee turned the boat’s orientation with the attitude control thrusters. After a dozen or more seconds he felt the acceleration switch direction, begin slowing them to the new orientation. Sam played with the range adjustment and resolution on his tactical display just to keep his hands busy, waiting for the boat to finally settle on its new track, feeling the precious seconds bleed away.

“Boat aligned,” Lee finally announced. “Full burn.”

Again Sam noticed she didn’t ask for permission. He felt himself pushed back into his acceleration rig from the first thruster pair, then rapidly climbing to a half gee once all six thrusters kicked in, roaring out 8,500 tons of thrust for forty seconds.

“Two hundred five seconds to impact,” Sam said when the thrusters fell silent and they were weightless again. A plot of the course change due to the burn showed they’d have displaced forty kilometers laterally from their former position by the time the cloud got to them. Forty kilometers wasn’t much in deep space, where they usually measured distance in light seconds, each of which was about three hundred thousand kilometers.

If the intel briefing had been right, the pellets in the cloud were small, maybe not much bigger than sand, and the search radar couldn’t track individual particles that size, just the collective reflection of a whole bunch of them. That made it hard to tell how wide the cloud was and exactly how far they were from its leading edge. The shipboard tactical system had made some assumptions about likely dispersion and had predicted they’d avoid the likely danger zone, but assumptions weren’t facts.

How had a cloud that small, relatively speaking–actually three of them in succession–happened to hit them in all this big black vacuum, and on an exact reciprocal course? Whoever lived through this had better give that some hard thought.

“One hundred sixty seconds to impact.”

They sat in silence, feeling the burden of time’s glacial passage, waiting to empirically discover their fates. As they did so, Chief Petty Officer Abhay Patel glided through the hatch and wordlessly strapped into the Tactical Two chair. Sam nodded to him.

Maybe they should have burned longer, but for Puebla that would have meant emptying their energy storage system. They’d have had to use the direct fusion thruster to get back on course. Everyone in the star system would see that. Maybe everyone already knew where they were. Maybe they all should have just used the direct fusion thrusters and poured on two gees of acceleration for the full two minutes they had until impact. Maybe.

One thing occurred to Sam: if the pellet cloud hit them now, it would hit them broadside, and that would do a lot more damage. Huhn didn’t look as if he was thinking things through very well, and it was Sam’s job as Tac One to remind him.

“Commander Huhn, I recommend we re-orient the boat nose-on to the angle of attack. The forward micro-meteor shield will give us some protection.”

Huhn jerked a bit in his acceleration rig and looked at Sam, eyes wide.

“Sir, shall I order Ensign Lee to reorient the boat?” Sam asked.

Huhn stared at him blankly. His eyes blinked.

“Yes, sir,” Sam said. “Ensign Lee, reorient the boat to our previous heading.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” she said and sounded the boat-wide acceleration klaxon.

“One hundred to impact,” Sam said as he felt the Puebla begin to turn.

Why wasn’t Jules or anyone else on the bridge answering their commlinks?

She and Sam had hit it off almost as soon as he came on board. They were officers and both understood their responsibilities–she probably better than he–so they hadn’t crossed any lines, hadn’t broken any rules. Maybe they should have.

The radar image of the pellet cloud disappeared when it crossed the 1700 kilometer range band and snuffed out ChaCha’s drone and its active radar.  Sam’s screen went back to displaying just the passive thermal images of the nearby friendlies.

“Sixty seconds to impact.”

It was funny. His taste in women usually tended toward the buxom, but Jules was thin, wiry even. But people aren’t just types, are they? You think you know what you want, where your life is going, and then someone comes out of nowhere and just surprises the hell out of you. She had this amazing smile.

“Twenty seconds to impact.”

“Damage control party has reached the bridge,” Karlstein reported, her voice strained. “Multiple casualties.”

Sam breathed in slowly.

“Impact in five, four, three …”

 

Chain of Command – Snippet 05

Chain of Command – Snippet 05

“Captain’s orders, sir. Blockage at frame fifty-five, so people are reshuffling their stations. Jules is sitting TAC One up front.” Sam pulled the folding workstation over his midsection and locked it in place after strapping himself into the chair. He plugged the life support umbilical from his shipsuit into the work station socket, slid the helmet cover down over his face, and checked to make sure his suit was sealed and had positive air flow, in case they lost pressure in this compartment as well. All his internal system telltales showed green and he slid his helmet cover back up.

“Damage report,” Huhn demanded, now ignoring Sam.

“Umm … multiple hull breaches forward and amidships,” Karlstein answered, her eyes flickering across the different data feeds and flashing red indicator lights at her workstation. “We’ve lost atmosphere on decks one, four, five, and nine, as well as parts of number one crew bay. All of the compromised spaces are sealed and pumped down to vacuum. No casualties reported yet. We’re losing hydrogen from tanks eleven, twelve and fourteen through seventeen, and have some O2 contamination, but it’s under control.”

“How bad’s the hydrogen loss?” Huhn asked.

“Not critical. Cumulative loss rate looks like about twenty liters per minute and dropping,” she said. “Automatic self-sealing is working. The thermal shroud is compromised as well.”

“Christ, we’re a sitting duck without that shroud!” Huhn said. “Bitka, where are your other people?”

Sam looked up from his operations display, which was blank except for the faint thermal signatures of the other eleven destroyers in the squadron and the one larger signature of USS Hornet, the squadron carrier.

“There’s Ramirez,” he said, as Petty Officer Second Ron Ramirez glided through the hatch and toward Tactical Four. Neither of the two weapons specialists had shown up yet. Sam punched the manning roster up on his display.

“Sir, Smith and Chief Patel are probably coming from the forward crew bay and if it’s sealed they’ll have to cycle through the lock,” Sam answered. “Ramirez, we don’t have any sensors active so move weaponry to your board for now. Guns up. Delacroix can handle the passive sensors,

“Aye, aye, sir. Guns up.”

“Sir, do we know what hit us?” Sam asked Huhn.

Huhn didn’t answer for a moment, probably listening on his embedded commlink to the bridge command channel. Then he shook his head. “Negative. No energy spike, no radiation, no thermal plume anywhere nearby. Just impact shock, holes, and interior spalling, so something small and solid–a bunch of somethings.”

Sam scanned back through the recorded integrated operational displays to a minute before the impact and saw nothing.

Petty Officer First Kramer, their communications specialist, glided through the hatch and toward her station. She looked shaken.

“Where the hell you been?” Huhn barked.

“Sorry, sir. We lost pressure. I had to wait a cycle to get through the crew bay air lock.”

“Didn’t you tell them you needed to get to a critical battle station?”

“The casualties had priority, sir.”

“Casualties? What casualties? I thought you said there weren’t any, Karlberg,” Huhn said, his voice angrier.

“It’s Karlstein, sir,” she answered, “and none reported so far.”

Huhn turned back to his own display. “What the hell’s the medtech doing?”

Probably tending the wounded, Sam thought. Of course, anyone admitted to sick bay would be scanned into the system already, but until the medtech made an assessment there wouldn’t be a report.

Nobody on board Puebla had ever been under fire in a space battle before, including the Captain and Exec, but Sam had still expected to look to the regular officers as models of how he should behave. Sam wasn’t sure Huhn was giving all that good an example so far.

“One KIA,” Karlstein said, her voice flat.  Sam’s vision became more focused, the colors on his monitors a little more vivid, and for a moment he tasted metal.

Puebla’s complement was only fourteen officers and eighty-one enlisted personnel. Now one of them was dead? Which one? After five months he knew all of them by sight, all but a few in the engineering department by name.  He shook his head. He’d find out later; for now he had to focus on the job.

Unbidden, an image of Jules came to him. At least the bridge was okay. He’d have liked to say something to her, although he couldn’t think what he’d actually say if he had the chance. “Hey, you okay?” That sounded stupid even to him.

She’d be doing fine. Since he met her she’d been eager to prove herself, even more so once her promotion from ensign to lieutenant junior grade came through six weeks earlier. Sam had a more cautious approach to demanding situations, not that that mattered now; whatever sort of trouble this was, it had found them.

The boat shuddered and the feed indicator on Sam’s tactical display flickered from “slave” to “direct.”

“Multiple hits forward!” Karlstein called out, her voice rising in excitement. “Deck two now depressurizing. Hydrogen loss rate up to fifty-four–no, sixty-one liters per minute.”

“Sir, I’ve lost the bridge feed on my ops display,” Sam said. “I’ve still got a feed but it’s direct from the sensors now and updated locally.”

“Same here, sir,” Ensign Lee reported from the Maneuvering One station, followed by a chorus from the others.

“Yeah, I lost the commlink to the command channel,” Huhn said. “Kramer, get those internals back up.”

“Sir?” Kramer asked.

“I’m on it, sir,” Karlstein said before Huhn had a chance to answer.

Petty Officer Delacroix in the Tactical Two seat below Sam turned her head back and raised her dark eyebrows. Sam frowned at her and shook his head, which drove the petty officer’s attention back to her screens, but her unasked question was obvious. What was Huhn thinking? Kramer’s station was for boat-to-external communications and vice versa. All the internals ran through Karlstein’s Boat Systems board. The Exec knew that.

Sam put that out of his mind. His job was the tactical situation, and right now it was out of their control and getting worse. They had to do something to regain some initiative, and quickly.

“Sir, something’s hitting us and I still got nothing on thermals or HRVS optics,” Sam said. “I want to go active with radar.”

“Active? Are you insane? Everyone in five hundred light seconds will see us.”

“I think they already know we’re here. This feels like those pellet cluster things the uBakai were supposedly deploying. Intel called it ‘buckshot.’ You remember the briefing on them? If the launch vessel isn’t close enough to pick up, we should at least be able to detect incoming pellets.”

“Permission denied, and it’s the captain’s call anyway. Karlstein, any luck on the command channel?”

“Negative, sir. Looks like whatever hit up there cut the data and comm feeds. I’ve alerted Engineering and they have a damage control party headed there now.”

It might have cut the hard feeds, Sam thought, but everyone’s embedded commlinks up there should still be working. Why weren’t they?

 

The Amber Arrow – Snippet 05

The Amber Arrow – Snippet 05

The buffalo woman’s name was Puidenlehdet. She had a human body, over which she wore a coarse wool cloak, but possessed the head of a normal she-buffalo.

She was a wise woman, gifted in healing. Responding to Wulf’s inquiring look, the dark-skinned woman, Ravenelle, shook her head sadly.

Wulf went to the other side of the pallet and kneeled beside the elf woman.

Her name was Saeunn Eberethen, or Saeunn Amberstone in Kaltish, Wulf’s language. She wore a white linen dressing gown, but was covered from the breasts down by a buffalo skin robe. She was blonde, with long hair draping over the pillow on which her head lay.

Wulf had been in love with her for as long as he could remember.

Saeunn was awake. She raised her head with difficulty, and looked toward Wulf. Her blue eyes were glazed with tears from the pain he knew she was going through. Sitting up caused her blonde tresses to fall away, revealing her pointed ears.

“Something happened. I heard,” Saeunn said. “Are you all right?”

“Roman soldiers. Real Imperials,” Wulf replied. “Cavalry scouts, I think.”

“This far northwest?”

“Yes. Jager’s company took care of them. Don’t worry about it.”

She lay her head back down and sighed.

“I’ve put everyone in danger,” she said.

“No,” Wulf said. “The mark would have had to deal with them one way or another. They are in our territory.”

Saeunn lay her head back down on the pillow. She shuddered as a chill ran through her body. This was the way it had been for the past week, alternating high fevers and chills.

“But not you personally,” she said. “And we’ll be over the border soon.”

“You’re sick. We’re going to get help.”

A wave of pain appeared to wash over Saeunn. She squeezed her eyes tight.

“It’s not too late to turn back,” she whispered.

“I won’t,” Wulf said.

“All right,” Saeunn whispered even more faintly.

Wulf’s eyes were tearing. He wiped them with a wrist still caked with dirt and sweat from his run.

“Get out of here, von Dunstig,” Ravenelle said to him firmly, but with sympathy in her voice. “We have to let her rest. The lady is completely drained from this quite grueling quest that you’ve seen fit to embark on with her. Not only that, she has to be ready to travel to the inn tomorrow, and that is not an easy ride.”

“I know.”

“We’re really going, aren’t we? To real beds?”

“So Ahorn tells me.”

“You’d better not be lying, von Dunstig,” Ravenelle said, “Once we cross into my kingdom you’ll have a very cross princess on your hands. One who holds a grudge for a very long time.” She smiled to let Wulf know she was joking.

Mostly joking, he thought.

He was too tired and worried to say anything funny back to her. “We’ll find out tomorrow, Ravenelle.”

He stood, turned to leave, but looked back a final time.

Saeunn was an elf. She was supposed to be immortal.

But Saeunn Amberstone was dying.

Chapter Five:

The Skraelings

The Skraeling man that Ursel Keiler had stuck with her arrow reached under his deerskin shirt while Ursel kept careful watch. He brought out a cloth bag.

Now that she got a better look at him, she saw that her first impression was correct. He was haughty in the way he stuck out his chest and drew in his shoulders.

He was also handsome. He wore buckskin pants and the deerskin shirt covered with beads. Around his waist was a wampum belt. His hair was cropped short, but three eagle feathers dangled from its rear. In one ear hung a bone earring. Very thin and delicate looking. Bird bone, probably.

The man opened the packet and from inside took a scroll with a wax seal on it. Then he pulled out another scroll bag and held it up also. “This is the letter of introduction,” he called out. “The other, the unread scroll, is for the earl.”

“All right. Bring them.”

“Where are you? Who are you?”

“Just follow my voice,” Ursel said. When he reached the other side of the rock, she told him to throw the scrolls over to her. He did what she asked.

Ursel quickly picked up the open scroll. There was a broken wax seal on the outside that had the impression of the mark on it. On the inside was a wax badge embedded with trailing ribbons that announced that the bearer of this certificate had permission to travel within the mark to carry out his task. The script under the interior wax seal named the holder of the document.

WANNAS KITTAMAQUAND, SPECIAL ENVOY OF THE REPUBLIC OF POTOMAK, HIS RETAINERS, BANNER-MEN, AND ASSORTED RETINUE

“So you’re this Wannas Kitta . . . Kitta-something of Potomak?”

“Kittamaquand is my clan,” the man said. “My given name is Wannas. And you?”

Ursel stepped out of her hiding place. She had lowered her bow, but still had an arrow nocked.

As she drew closer, the Skraeling captain gazed at her as if he were a stunned deer.

I know I’ve been out in the woods for a few days, she thought, but do I look that scary?

“Welcome to Shwartzwald Forest,” Ursel said. “I’m pleased not to have killed you.”

The Skraeling bowed his head slightly. “And I’m glad not to have died,” he said. He looked down at his groin. “Or had something worse happen.” He turned his gaze back to her, more serious now. “We do come on urgent business, m’lady–”

“Like you said, I am not a lady. Just a kind of clerk. A secretary. Very common.”

“It’s important I speak with the earl.”

“We’ll see.”

The Skraeling stomped a booted foot in obvious impatience and frustration. “Listen, woman, you don’t understand! None of you do!” He pursed his lips huffed in exasperation, then calmed himself enough to speak again. “My city is under siege–by Sandhaven and Romans. Shenandoah must come to our aid. We need humans, bear men, buffalo people, anyone. I’ve even heard your gnomes are warriors. You have to help us. The Sandhaveners will be at your gates soon if you don’t!”

“We beat them before. We can do it again.”

“I heard you lost your duke’s castle in the process.”

“And got it back.”

Ursel remembered the battle for Raukenrose. It had been a very close thing. If not for the gnomes getting there in the nick of time, the capital would still be in the possession of Sandhaven and that evil thing that led them. The draugar, they called it.

“This is different. Sandhaven is backed up by a legion from Rome. And they have a new way of fighting. Some new and powerful version of that communion wafer the Romans eat with blood. Their generals control the minds of their troops.”

“We faced that.”

“Did you face a Roman legion of nearly ten thousand Imperials? Because you will if you don’t help us.”

Ursel nodded. “Okay. You have a point,” she said. “But tell me: what did Lady Ulla say when you made demands on her like this?”

Wannas looked embarrassed. “She threw us out. At first.”

“Then what? You must have gotten that marquee of travel somehow.”

“I came back and . . . apologized for sounding . . . arrogant.”

“Right,” said Ursel. “Then what?”

“She said I had to ask her brother. He’s the heir. He has a direct connection to the land-dragon, whatever that means. She won’t send a full levee of troops without asking him.”

“So why are you here?”

“Lord Wulf is gone. Traipsing off into the wilderness.”

“Yes, I heard. With a hundred men at arms and a herd of cattle to feed them.”

“Lady Ulla said maybe the earl would know where to find him.”

Ursel shook her head. “No,” she said. “He would not.”

Wannas looked dejected–and angry. “Then I’ve come all this way for nothing,” he replied.

“The earl wouldn’t. But I might,” Ursel continued. “I have a little skill at tracking. But first let me take a look at the letter from the duchess regent and see what her instructions are.”

 

Iron Angels – Snippet 13

Iron Angels – Snippet 13

“Carlos Ochoa,” the short man offered.

“Thank you for meeting us today.” Jasper dumped a few drops of cream into the pitch-like coffee, as thick and viscous as ninety weight oil, and probably as tasty.

“I gave you what you needed, so why are we talking now? Am I in trouble?”

The waitress interrupted. “A drink? Some food? What’ll you have?” For some reason she was frowning at Carlos.

“Water.”

“That it?” She placed a hand on her hip.

“Si.”

“Food for you two?” Her eyebrows rose, hopeful.

“No food for me.” Pete shook his head. “But I’ll have a water –”

She cocked her head. “Water.”

“And,” Jasper said in a drawn out manner, trying to get across that he hadn’t finished his sentence, “I’ll have an order of wet fries, you know, fries with gravy?”

She walked off, muttering something under her breath.

“A friendly girl,” Pete said.

“She isn’t too bad,” Carlos said.

“You know her?”

“Once a friend of mine, now more of an acquaintance. So, again, why are we here?”

Pete coughed. His hands encircled the mug, still drawing warmth despite the heat outside now in full force in mid-afternoon. “Tell us more about the missing girl, and how you knew what you knew.”

“My daughter saw Teresa’s kidnapping happen.” Carlos stared at the tabletop. It was a dark wood-grained veneer, like the wood paneling so prevalent in the seventies, and reminded Jasper of his childhood home. “She was really scared by it.”

“Explain the entire event if you’re able.” Pete sipped his water. Jasper relinquished the lead to Pete, happily, even if Pete sitting next to Carlos created an awkward environment for a source recruitment and debrief.

“The abduction?”

“Yes, run the scenario by us,” Pete said. “We’re trying to figure out if more people are involved, maybe a gang or a human trafficking ring operating under the radar.”

“The stolen van belonged to a friend of a friend.”

Jasper tamped down his irritation. “Go deeper, please, we need more information than you’re giving us.” He took a sip of the thick, bitter coffee, which turned out not to be as bad as he’d thought it would be.

“My daughter hangs around with Teresa quite a bit.”

“What’s your daughter’s name?”

“Isabella.”

“A pretty name,” Jasper said.

“A pretty girl,” Carlos replied. “So, they often walk together, along with a few other girls to a friend’s house on the other side of the railroad tracks.”

“Which tracks? At what street and near which intersection?” That was an important piece of information since railroad tracks crisscrossed northwestern Indiana more than perhaps anywhere else in the United States. The exact location might help pinpoint where the kidnappers had operated out of, and would also provide a few more leads in the form of other eyewitnesses.

“The tracks just north of Chicago Avenue, a block west of Indianapolis Boulevard. The girls were heading north on Magoun, after leaving their friend’s house a few blocks south. All of them crossed the tracks except for Teresa.”

“Why? The guys in the van grab her?”

Carlos shook his head. “Not yet.”

“A train, right?” Jasper asked.

“Si. A train had been bearing down on them, and poor Teresa had been too afraid to cross according to my daughter. And as the train crawled past, the van pulled up right next to Teresa as if waiting to cross the tracks. My daughter said that a passing freight car blocked their view and when it passed Teresa was gone. In that moment, they must have grabbed her.”

“You said, ‘they.’ How do you know more than one man participated in the kidnapping?”

“The news –”

“Damn it.” The media had somehow gotten wind of certain details. The fact there were two men was leaked probably didn’t matter, but media problems annoyed Jasper. “Go on, my apologies.”

The waitress dropped off the rest of their drinks and food. Jasper pushed his coffee aside in favor of plain old water to have with the fries and gravy.

Carlos took a sip of water, wiped his lips, and continued: “One of my daughter’s other friends even tried to crawl beneath the slowly moving train, but the other girls pulled her back. All of the girls are so upset by this.” He stared into his water.

“Any other details? Something you’re leaving out?”

“Are you saying I’m purposely withholding something?” Carlos kept his eyes averted, but his clenched fist and white knuckles betrayed his anger at possibly being called a liar.

“Not at all, I’m trying to get as much information as possible.” Jasper had both hands up in a placating gesture.

“I’m not sure I understand,” Carlos said, finally raising his gaze. “You rescued the girl, what else is there to understand?”

Pete placed a hand on Carlos’s shoulder. “What if more girls go missing because there were more than two men?”

“Of course.” Carlos sipped his water, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You’re right. The girls saw the van, an older make, and white. But you know this.”

“We do,” Jasper said. “But the details are quite a bit for a bunch of young and excited and scared girls to recite, don’t you think, Carlos?” He extricated an fry from the pile and plopped it in his mouth.

“Fine.” Carlos sighed. “No point in hiding this.” He paused.

“Go on,” Pete said. “You can tell us. You’re not in trouble, unless you were in on the crime.”

Carlos stiffened and made to slide from the booth.

“Hold on.” Jasper wiped off his hands and motioned for Carlos to remain in the booth. “I don’t think you were involved. That doesn’t make any sense to me. But tell me, if the van belonged to a friend of a friend, would you really know the specifics so well?”

Carlos stared at Pete, and reluctantly eased onto the bench seat of the booth. So much for Pete building rapport.

“I drove around the area and spotted the van. I got out and felt the hood and so forth — warm metal. And the engine ticked, you know, like it was cooling off.”

“So you had a woman report the activity at the hotel. A woman phoned in the hotel tip, an Hispanic woman.”

“I did,” Carlos said. “My wife. I told her what I’d seen and said they had to be in the abandoned hotel. I noticed the door had been used recently.”

“But you didn’t witness the men take the girl inside, did you?” Jasper bit into another fry, this one soaked with gravy.

Carlos shook his head. “A guess, but it was the only place that made sense.”

“Fine, anything else?”

“No.”

“Could we speak with your daughter at some point?” Pete asked.

“I’d prefer not, but if you must.” Carlos allowed the final word to hang.

“Probably won’t be necessary,” Jasper said, and Pete frowned at him. “Let me ask you, would you be available to meet with us from time to time?” Jasper grabbed a couple more of the less saturated fries and stuffed them into his mouth. He hadn’t realized how hungry he’d been.

“I already told you all I can about this nasty business.”

“Understood, but what I mean is for other goings-on in the community. Someone with your sense of duty to the neighborhood and so willing to put yourself in harm’s way, well, I’d enjoy working with you again. Would that be okay? If you need money or something, I’m sure we could –”

“No. No money.” Carlos frowned, and disgust crept onto his face. “Some coffee or lunch perhaps, but no money, I can’t accept money. I was simply doing my duty and helping the community. For my daughter.”

“I didn’t mean to insult you,” Jasper said. “Again, my apologies. Can you tell us anything else about Teresa’s kidnapping, and the men who died?”

Carlos shook his head.

Pete glanced at Jasper, appearing antsy to pursue a different line of questioning. Jasper raised his eyebrows and tipped his head to the side in a quick gesture.

Pete took over. “We discovered a body today –”

“In the abandoned hotel? Another man?” Carlos asked. “Not a little girl, I pray.” He glanced up at the ceiling and crossed himself.

“No, nothing like that,” Pete said, “but it’s a strange death.”

“Strange? In what way?”

“How about we say strange, all right? The body had been mutilated.”

Carlos took a sip of water. “I heard nothing about a mutilated body.”

 

The Amber Arrow – Snippet 04

The Amber Arrow – Snippet 04

Chapter Four:

The Gulley

Wulf had always figured that he and Rainer would die together. Probably doing something like this, fighting a bunch of bullies in a ditch. That was the way it went the whole time they were growing up.

They had been the low boys in the castle kid pecking order. The commoner, Rainer. And Wulf–third son, not even spare to the heir.

People who didn’t matter.

Both the perfect ones for the castle kids to take out frustrations and resentment on.

Except they had survived the bullies at Raukenrose Castle. The unfair fights. The ambushes.

So he and Rainer swore together, they made a pact.

Never give in.

Go down swinging.

They had gone down. A lot. At first.

That was ten years ago. Now he was seventeen and Rainer was eighteen.

Rainer had gotten better, until he was, simply, the best fighter around. Wulf had become, if not a great warrior, at least more durable.

The gulley was formed by what looked like an on-again-off-again stream flowing down the hill. Today it was dry. Its bottom was filled with creek rock. Rainer rattled his way over the stones. Wulf followed close behind, pleading to Sturmer and all the divine beings that he wouldn’t twist an ankle.

Sturmer evidently wasn’t in a giving mood. Wulf’s boots, slicked by the damp leaves he’d been running on, slipped on a smooth creek stone. The pain in his turned ankle was momentarily excruciating. But the ankle wasn’t sprained, and after a couple of steps the agony tapered off. He kept going, gritting his teeth against the little sparks of shooting pain that remained.

A javelin flew past him, almost taking him in the side of the head. It clattered on the stones ahead of him.

“They’re close!” he called out to Rainer.

There was a slight twist in the gulley. Another javelin embedded itself in the dirt bank where the twist began. They rounded behind the bank. Wulf glanced back. They were out of sight of the Romans for a moment.

Still he heard the sound of nearby horse hooves. Rainer pointed to the side of the gulley.

Blood and bones! No, they hadn’t escaped the pursuit at all.

There were four Roman cavaliers on either side of the gulley. Two of the riders had their sabers out. Cavalry sabers were wicked long. These could easily reach down into the gulley and slice into a skull.

The two others were lining up for a spear throw, even as their horses trotted along. The horse was watching, in fact, and matched Wulf and Rainer pace for pace.

Cold hell, Wulf thought, Roman horses sure are well-drilled.

One of the men drew his arm back to throw his javelin. Wulf couldn’t help flinching. He had to fight to keep from raising his arms trying to block the spike–and dying embarrassed.

The man never cast his spear.

Four arrows popped into him, almost at the same moment. One glanced off his plate armor. Another punched its way through the steel and sank deep into the man’s chest. The third and fourth caught him below the neck and in his throwing arm.

With a cry, he dropped the javelin. He clutched at the arrow in his chest. Two more arrows struck and sank in as he did so. The man went slack and fell from the horse. He rolled into the gulley, but Wulf and Rainer had already moved past him, and he came to rest somewhere behind them.

Wulf looked up again. The other Roman cavaliers on the gulley sides seemed to run into a wall made of arrows. Two of the horses went down. Another kept running after its rider fell off. The man was filled with arrows like a human pin cushion.

Wulf and Rainer still charged down the center of the gulley. Ahead it widened as it neared the stream it emptied into.

Rainer stopped, and Wulf slowed and stopped beside him. Rainer bent over gasping. Wulf put a hand on his back, steadying himself while he too sucked in air.

After a moment, Rainer straightened up. “Listen,” he said. He pointed to a spot behind them up the gulley.

Hooves clopping on stone. The clatter of armor.

Shouts of anger and shock.

The clopping ceased.

Terrible horse screams.

Men bellowing in agony.

Crashing and clanking of metal striking stones.

Silence.

Then a single white horse in Roman livery dress came galloping down the gulley. Wulf and Rainer dove to the side as it thundered past them. The horse leaped out the end of the gulley and disappeared as it plunged down to the stream. They heard splashing, a great whinny, then more hoofbeats as it charged away into the forest on the other side of the water.

“Let’s get out of here,” Wulf said. They scrambled up one side of the gulley, then made their way back along its edge.

About a field-march back through the woods, they saw human warriors and Tier lining either side of the gulley. Bear men, buffalo men, a few other types of animal people. A single very short bobcat man was in charge. Just then, he was ordering a contingent of buffalo men to get down in the gulley and make sure those thrice-cursed, trespassing Romans were finished off with spear thrusts. He ordered the rest of his force to spread out and find any remaining Imperials.

There was a centaur nearby, Ahorn, who carried a sword and buckler. Beside him was a very tall male figure with a bow. His name was Abendar Anderolan. He was an elf. The two exchanged a glance and both charged off into the woods together.

Moments later, there was the sound of crashing through the brush like a running man would make.

Then there was a long, drawn-out scream.

The centaur and elven man returned from the woods, the centaur wiping the blood from his sword on a cloth the tall figure had given him.

I would not like to be a man being hunted by a centaur and an elf warrior, Wulf thought with a shudder.

Wulf gazed down into the gulley at a gruesome sight.

There lay a pile of Roman cavalry and their horses. It was hard to pick out individual soldiers and horses. They were all so twisted together. It looked more like a mound with arrows and pikes sprouting all over it.

A few horses still twitched. One kicked out a leg feebly. None of the soldiers moved.

Blood flowed from wounds and pooled in low places among the rocks.

“May Tretz receive their souls,” Rainer murmured. Tretz was the dragon-man god that he and his family worshipped. Some of the others would have thought this was blasphemy. But Wulf had been around Rainer most of his life. He had long ago decided to put up with his foster-brother’s odd religion.

“You guessed that Jager was setting an ambush?” Wulf asked Rainer.

Rainer shrugged. “Nagel looked like she was signaling us.”

The owl flew from a nearby branch and landed on Wulf’s shoulder again.

“Blood,” she said, sounding satisfied. “I was right.”

Nagel was never exactly happy–her emotions seemed to be more those of a bird of prey than a human–but the smell of fresh blood did seem to move her to something like fierce joy. She launched herself back into the air before Wulf could reply.

From the woods they heard the whisper of arrows, the curse of a man struck.

More screams.

Then silence.

“I guess they found one last Roman,” Rainer said grimly.

Wulf’s eyes adjusted to the candlelight inside the tent.

Near the center of the tent, a female elf lay on a bed. Sitting on a chair beside the bed and holding the elf’s hand, was Ravenelle Archambeault, a dark-skinned woman in a black dress trimmed with red silk. Her mass of curly black hair, as usual, seemed about to explode from its hairpins. Ravenelle was a Roman colonial princess. She was also apprentice to a healer.

Nearby was the healer herself, a buffalo wise woman. She was grinding a pungent mix of dried herbs in a wooden bowl. The smell of sage and something else Wulf couldn’t name filled the room.

 

Chain of Command – Snippet 04

Chain of Command – Snippet 04

Chapter Two

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

Later, Sam would decide it had been a mistake to accelerate, but later still he would realize the captain had made the best call he could based on what he knew at the time. Captains sometimes just don’t know enough to know what the right call is, but they have to make one anyway.

But that all came later.

Sam woke to bedlam–harsh, repetitive, mechanical bleating, deafeningly loud, which made no sense and nearly drowned out the voice trying to be heard. His body responded before his mind did, hands tearing open the zero-gee restraints on his sleeping cubby, feet kicking free first. His right arm became tangled in the restraint netting as his brain separated the sounds and made sense of them: the regular gongs of the call to general quarters, the whooping siren of the hull breach alarm, and the klaxon warning of imminent acceleration. He had never heard all three at the same time.

“General Quarters. General Quarters. All hands to battle stations,” the calm but insistent recorded female voice said over the boat’s intercom. “Hull breach. Hull breach. All hands rig for low pressure. Warning. Warning. All hands prepare for acceleration. General Quarters. General Quarters,” the voice continued in its synthetic loop.

Suddenly there was gravity, enough to turn the rear wall of the stateroom into floor and drop Sam’s feet against it. That would be the first pair of MPD thrusters. He untangled his right arm as the second and third pairs kicked in, upping the gravity to a half gee.

He yanked the helmet from the locker beside his sleeping cubby, now a narrow bunk bay set into the wall and parallel to the deck, and he sealed the collar of the white shipsuit–short for ship environment suit–he’d slept in. He prepared to catch himself when the acceleration stopped, but it didn’t, so he pulled open the stateroom hatch and sprinted down the trunk corridor to the hatch to the boat’s spine and the access tube leading forward. “Sprinted” was a misnomer; he used the low-gravity fast shuffle, the only way to cover ground quickly at a half gee without his head slamming into the overhead. He ducked past half a dozen crew on their way to their own battle stations. The acceleration cut out as he approached one of the main bulkheads and he sailed the rest of the way, colliding with two ratings and sliding past them.

“Mr. Bitka!” one of them called out. “What’s up?”

“Get to your battle station, Cummings. Your section leader will tell you.”

If he knew, Sam thought. He hadn’t kept exact count but he guessed the acceleration burn had lasted at least forty seconds, perhaps more, and the thought made him sweat. At full thrust the Puebla’s low-signature MPD thrusters had less than two minutes worth of juice in the energy storage system.   Whatever was going on, it was bad. The General Quarters and Hull Breach alarms continued to sound but at least the acceleration klaxon had fallen silent. With his free hand he snagged the handhold above the bulkhead hatch as he nearly collided with it. The sudden stop at an awkward angle wrenched his back but he launched himself through the hatch, into the spinal transit tube, and forward toward the bridge.

The tube itself was square and three meters across, but was also interrupted by half-bulkheads jutting out from the sides, closing off the port half or starboard half of the tube, alternating back and forth every three meters for the length of the boat. It made travel through the tube tedious in zero gee, but it also kept the tube from becoming a hundred-meter-deep shaft of death when the boat accelerated.

Within twenty or thirty meters he encountered a mass of men and women, mostly in blue enlisted personnel shipsuits but with a couple in the khaki of chief petty officers.

“Make way,” Sam called.

The crew closest to him looked back, saw his white shipsuit, and one of them shouted, “Officer. Make way!”

Each half-bulkhead also included an extendable hatch which could completely close the shaft, sealing it in the event of a hull breach. Sam moved forward and several hands helped pull him to the extended and sealed bulkhead hatch, with flashing red lights around its perimeter: low atmospheric pressure on the other side. As he watched they lights changed to solid red: vacuum.

Surgically embedded commlinks included a limited visual menu controlled with eye pressure. Sam squinted up the boat’s directory and pinged Damage Control.

Damage Control. Go, a harassed-sounding female voice answered inside his head.

“Lieutenant Bitka aft of frame fifty-five with a sealed hatch and a vacuum warning forward,” he reported.

Wait one, she said and for a few seconds the connection went mute. Then the brusque voice returned. A-gang on the way. Do not open the hatch until they arrive. Acknowledge.

“Bitka acknowledged,” he answered and cut the connection. His commlink vibrated softly almost at once. He opened the command channel and the captain’s voice filled his head.

Mister Bitka, this is Captain Rehnquist. I understand there’s a block at frame fifty-five.

“Yes sir. I’m here with about a dozen other crew trying to get forward to our primary battle stations.”

Understood. We have maneuvering watch personnel here to cover the bridge stations, and Lieutenant Washington will ride the TAC One chair. Send the crew aft to their secondary stations. You go to the auxiliary bridge and help Lieutenant Commander Huhn.

“Aye, aye, sir.”

So Jules would ride the TAC One chair in the bridge. Whatever was happening, she could handle it as well as Sam could. He passed the captain’s order on to the nearby crew and made his own way aft to the auxiliary bridge.

Puebla’s auxiliary bridge was only half-manned by the time Sam got there. It was a smaller, cramped version of the main bridge. A smart wall comprised the forward bulkhead, able to display any combination of sensor and instrument readings. The nine crew stations were built into the bulkhead three meters back.

The dorsal row consisted of the Tac One chair to the right, Communications to the left, and the command chair in the center, with Huhn buckling himself in. The broader second tier consisted of two more Tac chairs on the right with Petty Officer Third Elise Delacroix at Tactical Three, the hatch giving access to the central communication trunk in the center, and the two maneuvering station chairs on the left, with Ensign Barb Lee at the helm. The bottom row, usually called “the pits,” held another empty Tac chair to the right side of the access trunk tunnel and engineering petty officer second Rachel Karlstein at boat systems station to the left.

“What are you doing here, Bitka?” Huhn snapped.

 

Iron Angels – Snippet 12

Iron Angels – Snippet 12

Chapter 7

Temple and Vance stayed at the animal control scene long enough to see the coroner’s van arrive followed by a black SUV. A grumpy looking man with round spectacles exited the van while two women wearing cargo pants and dark blue shirts emblazoned with FBI and ERT exited the SUV and marched purposefully over to Jasper and his cop friend, Pete.

“Hold on a moment,” Jasper said to the two women and focused on Temple and Vance. “I’ll see you later?”

“Fine,” Temple said. “But don’t be late — we have work to do.”

Jasper rolled his eyes. “Yeah, sure.”

“Let’s go.” Temple motioned for Vance to get in their rental. She started the car but kept the air conditioning off and lowered the windows. Jasper was pointing and gesticulating like a madman as he appeared to lecture the two women who were Evidence Response Team members. The rental was far enough away that she couldn’t make out the words but she imagined what the man was thinking and could probably guess what he was saying. Agent Jasper Wilde was probably thinking the women loved their “chick SWAT.” Bureau women didn’t typically join the tactically-minded and typically knuckle-dragging group known as SWAT — Special Weapons and Tactics — but preferred the more cerebral ERT, the Evidence Response Team, known as “chick SWAT” by a few women Temple had known on ERT.

“Hey boss –”

Temple’s grip on the steering wheel tightened and her head snapped toward Vance. “What?” she demanded. Then she took a deep breath and relaxed. “I’m sorry. It’s just that –”

Temple nodded toward Jasper. “That annoying man out there is going to be trouble. He’s already gotten under my skin and we were with him for what, five minutes?”

“I don’t know, he’s probably all right.” Vance stared through the windshield and not at Temple. “When you were in the field didn’t you resent having HQ show up?”

“HQ never showed up in the field, except for maybe meetings at the office, but –”

“Exactly.”

“No, you’re right,” Temple conceded. “The field hates it when HQ butts in. But if he’s the agent we have to deal with out here, Lord do I hope it’s only for a day or two.”

She swung the car around and headed for the Euclid Hotel.

“So, Temple, what’s the plan? Where are we going, not our hotel, right?”

“No. It’s too early to check in, but we are going to drive by another hotel, the Euclid, maybe we can sweet talk the police they left there into allowing us in, and then we’ll head over to Merrillville and the hotel, see if we can get an early check-in.”

Vance yanked his neck to the right, then the left, cupped his chin in his right hand and shoved to the right and then to the left, filling the car with pops and snaps and cracks. Temple’s stomach grumbled — now she wanted some cereal, Rice Crispies.

“You done? If so, how does that plan sound to you?” Temple asked.

“I’m hungry, but yes, that sounds good.”

As they drove by the Euclid, they spotted two police still watching over the abandoned hotel, so they didn’t bother stopping or even slowing up much for that matter. Temple swung into the first greasy spoon she spotted, hoping to soak up some local color, or perhaps overhear some gossip about what happened the evening before. But the place was close to empty and the few people who were in there kept to themselves, so they just ate and left.

They drove by the FBI office in Merrillville and farther down the road found their hotel. It was a decent looking place, part of a major chain but certainly no Hilton or Marriott. She was glad Vance hadn’t chosen the Express, since he’d be cracking that silly joke about knowing how to do everything since they had stayed there. Temple smiled. Vance wasn’t perfect, but he was easy to work with and willing to put in crazy hours in the name of science.

Chapter 8

Jasper phoned his boss, Supervisory Special Agent Johnson, the senior Agent of the Merrillville office, requesting a meeting for around seventeen hundred. Johnson met his request with a sigh. His excuses all sounded the same — something about his kids, but Jasper read between the lines. Johnson simply didn’t want to come in on a Saturday, especially when he discovered no crisis existed. After hearing about the headquarters people and the mangled body on Gary Avenue, he capitulated and promised he’d meet Jasper at the office, but that whatever this problem was better not take long.

Pete had already arrived at the diner in Hessville where they’d directed the informant to meet them. Pete’s Crown Vic was empty, and Jasper spied Pete through the window, seated alone at a booth.

Jasper found meeting an informant such as this one in a public place safer, and the odds of a successful recruitment higher. The locations for gang informants mattered, since a bad one could result in the death of the informant. But with this type of person, someone who’d simply reported the whereabouts of a missing girl, the diner was a decent place to break the ice. It was well-known in the area and had been in business for years.

This particular diner was located outside of East Chicago, since Hessville was one of the neighborhoods in nearby Hammond, but it was close enough that straying into another local department’s jurisdiction wouldn’t be an issue for Pete. They weren’t actively working a case, anyway; the meeting was for informational and recruitment purposes. And meeting in the middle of the afternoon meant the three men wouldn’t be hassled to finish and get out.

The diner’s exterior demanded a new paint job. The fake luster reminiscent of so many diners had tarnished, the railing was pocked with rust, and the concrete steps cracked. Often with diners like this, though, the food was a lot better than the rundown appearance. Jasper hadn’t eaten here in quite a while, but as he recalled the meal had been good if not outstanding.

A middle-aged hostess greeted Jasper, but he nodded toward the dining room and she gestured for him to head on in. All neighborhood diners like this featured the same sort of smell — fried food laced with coffee followed by a tinge of sweetness. A few even claimed wet dog as a featured scent, but not this one.

“Glad you could make it.” Pete grasped a mug with both hands, as if warming them.

“I had to call my boss.”

“About those headquarters people?”

“Yep.”

A waitress appeared, wearing black and white attire and holding a little pad in one finely manicured hand and a pencil in the other. She had a tattoo on her neck and a spike protruding from beneath her bottom lip.

“Something to drink?”

“I don’t suppose you’d be able to make a cappuccino?” Jasper asked.

“Sorry, hon,” she splayed her hands, “don’t do those here. But the coffee is drinkable.”

“A coffee then, cream only.”

“Something to eat?”

“We’re waiting on someone else,” Pete said, glancing past Jasper toward the entrance.

She nodded and walked off.

“Kids.”

Pete grinned. “You’re probably not much older, my friend. You go for her type?”

“What do you think?”

“How should I know? You don’t date anyone. Just askin’,” Pete said. “Ah, there he is — has to be him.”

Jasper turned in his seat for a glimpse and spun back around. A short Hispanic male, glancing about nervously, stood inside the door. He wore a short-sleeved, black and white checkered button-down shirt and faded but intact jeans. On his feet were work boots, steel-toed. A factory worker most likely, but Jasper’d been wrong before on his attempts at profiling. He’d been wrong about his wife, Lucy, after all. He reminded himself that there was no point in allowing his personal life and divorce to take up residence once again in his head.

“I’ll go get him,” Pete said.

“He can sit next to me, you think that’ll work?”

“That’d be better.”

The waitress returned with Jasper’s coffee as Pete and the informant arrived. After an awkward moment of jockeying for seats, Pete and the informant sat across from Jasper, with Pete scooted all the way to the window.

Jasper tilted his head and Pete flashed a quick grin in return. There were always plans, and they usually never worked out the way they were drawn. The seating arrangements were less than optimal, but acceptable. Jasper believed having Pete sit across from the informant better because he figured they’d do most of the talking, leaving Jasper to his coffee.

 

Iron Angels – Snippet 11

Iron Angels – Snippet 11

“Scientific Anomalies Group,” Black said, staring straight ahead as if embarrassed by the name, or not wanting to go into detail.

“SAG?” Jasper asked, pronouncing it as an acronym rather than a string of initials. He couldn’t help but laugh. “Really?”

Black’s jaw tightened. “Look, I didn’t come up with that one. I had some other ideas.”

Jasper wasn’t surprised. Government bureaucrats could come up with the silliest acronyms, sometimes, because they didn’t stop to think that the proverbial man-in-the-street wasn’t likely to be properly respectful if the acronym spelled out something stupid or offensive. Probably the all-time champion Idiot Acronym had been before his time, during the Nixon administration — the campaign staff morons who came up with Committee to Re-Elect the President. CREEP. But he’d seen some doozies.

There was no point in ribbing these two agents over it any further, though. So he just said “never heard of it” in as neutral a tone of voice as he could manage.

“You wouldn’t have,” Ravel said, wiping his mouth with a handkerchief. “It’s new and… ah, we don’t publicize it.”

“How did you find me?”

“The cops over at the Euclid Hotel told us you responded to an abandoned vehicle over here,” Black said. “We need to go back over to the hotel.”

“The little girl was rescued and the investigation is over,” Jasper said, but that was a lie. He just didn’t want headquarters pukes stomping around the crime scene. “By me and my partner over there.” They’d come within sight of Gary Avenue. He pointed toward Pete, who stood by two uniformed cops and was engaged in an animated discussion.

Black opened her mouth but Jasper held up a cautioning finger.

“Pete!” he said loudly. “You need to get over here and take a look at what I found down there. It has to be the driver.” Jasper paused a moment. “I warn you, the body isn’t pretty to look at.”

Pete broke away from the uniformed police, and walked with purpose toward Jasper and the two headquarters people. “They said they were here looking for you,” Pete said, his eyes registering Jasper’s annoyance, and conveying sorry.

“It’s okay,” Jasper said. “They were just leaving.”

“SAC Weber already approved this,” Black said.

Jasper shot her a look he hoped would shut her up, but she went right on. “And furthermore, the Assistant Director — my boss –”

“Hold it right there,” Jasper said. He focused on Pete. “Take a peek over there at the body. Follow the sound of the flies, you can’t miss it.”

Pete frowned, and walked off. Jasper turned back to the woman.

“SSA Black, we do not squabble like that in front of locals, you got me? You may be a headquarters supervisor, but in the field that doesn’t mean squat. And you said Weber approved this? My Special Agent in Charge? That’s a joke. He’s been checked out for a year now; he’d approve anything. He’s pretty much retired-in-place ever since he got the job.”

Black’s mouth opened again, but closed as if she’d reconsidered her choice of words.

Ravel stepped forward. “Jasper,” he said, “may I call you that?”

“It’s better than the alternative.”

“That’d be what? Jerk?” Temple Black took another deep breath and turned her head. “I’m sorry, it’s already been a long morning –”

“– and long night,” both Jasper and Vance said at once. Jasper grinned. “Yeah, you called me at oh dark thirty. I didn’t appreciate that.”

“My apologies,” Vance said. “Listen, we need to discuss what happened last night. When is a good time? We’d also really like to get into that abandoned hotel. We think there is something else going on here. Based on your preliminary report we think it’s serious.” He lifted the case in his hand a few inches. “There’s some equipment in here… Well. We think we could be of use, let’s leave it at that.”

Black nodded and faced Jasper again. “We should speak with your boss, your immediate boss. This needs to get worked out, but you should finish up here first. That,” she swallowed, “body was a mess and needs to be processed.”

Heavy breaths came up behind them as they reached the side of the road and their line of vehicles. Pete jogged past them and signaled to the uniformed men who joined him. They then engaged in a spirited conversation.

“It’s about to get crowded around here,” Jasper said. “I’ll tell you what, if you can wait until mid-afternoon I’ll take you to the Euclid Hotel. I don’t think evidence recovery is going to happen until Monday at that scene, if at all, especially given this new incident.” He cocked his head toward the dirt road where the mangled corpse lay in a pile. “Afterward, I’ll see if we can meet with my boss. But I can’t promise anything, SSA Black. It is the weekend, you know. Exhausted supervisors need their rest.”

The moment he made the wisecrack he wondered if he’d gone a little too far. But Black just grinned. The expression transformed her face, turning it from something that had seemed overbearing to something good-natured and quite a bit younger. He wasn’t sure, but he had a feeling that expression came more naturally to her than the one he thought of as Supervisory Special Agent Ramrod Up Her Ass.

“Yeah, I know how that is with some of this new breed of management,” she said. “And call me Temple, would you?”

Jasper nodded. “Sure. And I’m Jasper.” They’d come up onto Gary Avenue by then and he could see the entire line of vehicles parked there: a police cruiser, his bucar, Pete’s Crown Vic, and two other vehicles, one a rental and the other clearly belonging to a local.

He frowned. “You only rented one car, right?”

Temple nodded.

“Probably a reporter, then,” Jasper said. The person in the vehicle, a middle-aged white man, noticed Jasper’s gaze. The vehicle lurched forward and then spun in a tight turn to head back toward East Chicago proper.

“Damn! Too far to get a plate.” For a moment, he was tempted to go in pursuit. But by the time he got into his vehicle, the man would be out of sight beyond a bend in the road. And once he got to the junction of Gary and Parrish, a short distance beyond, there were just too many ways he could go.

“That was a 2009 Ford Fusion with Indiana tags,” Temple said. “Couldn’t make out even a partial on the tags though, sorry.”

“Well, there’s an outside chance that was the person responsible for the corpse back there,” Jasper said. “But that would have been pretty bold, even for a serial killer who wants to insert himself into an investigation. It was likely just a nosey citizen who got twitchy when he saw me looking at him.”

“We could run a search based on the parameters of the make and model and color of the vehicle,” Vance said.

“You’re right,” Jasper said. “I’ll have Pete run it through his folks, since this homicide is likely their investigation anyway. And it’s got to be a homicide, with the corpse looking like that. I can’t think of any kind of accident that would do that sort of damage. Maybe in the middle of a steel mill, but out here?”

He reached out and shook their hands. “Okay, I’ll meet you two at the Euclid later on? Say seventeen hundred?”

“That’ll work,” Temple said.

“Go take a nap or something, and please don’t poke around anywhere. I don’t want to have to bail you guys out of trouble.”

Temple smiled. Vance nodded, his head bobbing up and down rapidly.

 

The Amber Arrow – Snippet 03

The Amber Arrow – Snippet 03

Chapter Three:

The Clash

“Humans? We’re the shadows, Rainer,” Wulf von Dunstig said to his best friend and foster-brother, Rainer Stope. “The Divine Beings are what’s real.” Wulf and Rainer had spent the early morning out gathering firewood and were headed back to camp, each with an armload of wood. For half that time, they’d also been arguing religion. “Sturmer, Regen, the Allfather, and the others. It’s a sacred way of looking at the world. Stuff like the Sun. Storms. Ice. Water. Good luck. Bad luck.”

“Tretz isn’t just another god, or divine being, or whatever. He’s not a swap for your gods of the cathedral,” Rainer replied. He adjusted a stick on the top of his bundle that was falling off.

“Not gods. They’re principles,” said Wulf. “Spiritual principles.”

“Tretz is a person. A dragon. The firstborn dragon.”

“I know, I know–a man-drake,” Wulf replied. “Killed and risen from the dead. Son of the Never and Forever. Firstborn of the land-dragons.” Wulf was so intent on making his point, he almost tripped over a root. He managed to step over at the last moment, then continued walking through the layer of newly fallen leaves on the forest floor. There was a chill in the air. Early autumn was settling in. “I was paying attention to you all this time.”

Rainer smiled crookedly. “You either get it or you don’t.”

“I want to get it.”

“It isn’t something to prove,” Rainer said. He pointed to the star-shaped tattoo on his left forearm. The Aster. The sign of Tretzians. “It just is. He just is. Tretz.”

“Like Ravenelle and her Dark Angel and Talaia and the rest?” Wulf replied. He slipped a glance over at Rainer. This was bound to irritate his friend.

“No,” Rainer replied curtly. “Not like that at all.”

“Same roots in history.”

“We don’t dip our bread in human blood,” Rainer continued. “And ours is actual bread. Not whatever mold those Talaia wafers are made from. Makes me nauseous thinking about it.”

“Yeah, but somebody might believe that’s why you and Ravenelle are so . . . compatible . . .” Wulf let his voice trail off. There was only so far he would push his friend. Kidding him about his frustrated feelings for Ravenelle would be going too far.

Rainer stopped short and turned to Wulf. “Me and Ravenelle are what?”

“Forget it. You’re both like oil and water,” Wulf replied. “Let’s get this back to camp so I can check on Saeunn and–”

Clank.

“–shush!” Rainer said, nodding to his right. “You hear that?”

“Yeah,” Wulf replied in a low voice.

“Sounds like metal,” Rainer said, also speaking quietly now.

Rainer knelt and carefully set the armful of firewood he’d been carrying in the leaves. Then he reached under his cloak and drew his sword.

Wulf set down his firewood bundle and did the same.

Clang.

Definitely metallic, like Rainer said. Then Wulf heard a horse’s snort.

The voices of a men.

“Qui crepitus fecit?”

“Erat Remigius!”

Latin.

“Blood and bones!” Wulf whispered to Rainer.

Romans.

There were Roman soldiers in the woods of the mark.

Not good.

They hunkered down behind one of the granite outcrops that poked out along the ridge they’d been walking along. Wulf carefully look around the edge of the largest of the granite boulders.

Down the slope of the forested hill a creek glinted as it flowed through a pine-straw-covered glen. From the woods on the left soldiers emerged. Some were riding horses. Some walking.

Scale armor. Red shields. Glinting movement of horses. Horses with armor.

It was Romans, all right. Imperials.

We’re lucky they didn’t ride down on top of us, Wulf thought.

Wulf and Rainer had been in the glen below only moments before. Rainer had stopped wood gathering long enough to pull out his knife and shave off his morning’s scruff. He’d wet his whiskers with creek water, and used the flowing creek to wash away the stubble.

Wulf didn’t need to shave. He was blonde, fair, and seventeen. Well, he didn’t need to shave often.

Now they had to survive if they wanted to ever shave again.

There was a flutter and what looked like a small snow owl shot down from a tree and settled onto Wulf’s right shoulder. Her name was Nagel. She was a talking owl person.

Most Tier–animal people–looked as much like humans as animals. Not Nagel. She seemed like a normal owl in every way but one.

Nagel spoke.

“Fifteen horses. Eighteen men,” she said in her screeching whisper rasp. “Swords and pikes. Soldiers.”

Wulf nodded. “Get back to the others and tell them,” he said.

“I want to stay. Blood in the air. I can smell it.”

Wulf knew ordering Nagel around wouldn’t do any good. He tried to make his whispered reply sound reasonable. “Go get Jager. There’ll be blood enough for you later.”

“Stupid bobcat. Might swat me,” Nagel said.

“Captain Jager knows you’re a person.”

Another moment of hesitation, then the owl answered. “All right, man. I’ll go.”

“Thank you. Now hurry!”

Nagel shot away, winging through the trees down the slope of the ridge.

Rainer risked a glance. He quickly ducked back down. “What the cold hell are they doing in the mark?”

Wulf frowned. “I don’t know,” he said, “but we haven’t got time for this kind of distraction.”

A voice shouted in surprise about twenty paces to the right side of them. “Hey!”

Wulf turned to see two armed Roman soldiers coming toward them from the right side along the top of the little ridge they’d climbed. They carried armloads of firewood. Both dropped the wood and drew swords.

Iberian blades. Roman short swords.

“Seems like we’re about to make time for it,” Rainer said.

“Blood and bones,” Wulf replied, shaking his head.

He glanced at Rainer. His foster-brother smiled wickedly.

“In inferno quis est?” one of the soldiers yelled. He spoke in Latin, which Wulf could understand and speak, but Rainer could not. It meant “who in Hades are you?”

“I’ll take the one on the left,” Rainer said.

“Your left or his?”

“Yep,” Rainer replied distractedly.

Rainer charged toward them. Wulf’s sword was originally forged to be a bear person’s short sword. Now it served as a long sword for Wulf.

He followed right behind Rainer.

Rainer feinted toward the Roman soldier on his right. The Imperial instinctively stumbled back. Rainer then took an overhead swing at the other. That Roman managed to get his sword up in time to block the full force of Rainer’s blow. But he gripped his sword in one hand only. So the strength of Rainer’s strike pushed the tip of the Roman’s sword down. It swung like a hinge in his hand, and sliced a gouge across his cheek.

The Roman screamed in pain and fury.

The other Imperial got back his balance. He raised his sword to strike at Rainer from behind.

Uh-oh. Rainer didn’t see this.

Wulf put on a burst of speed and levelled his sword at this man.

The soldier Rainer had wounded was facing Wulf. He took a surprised glance at Wulf charging in. He stopped his arm in midswing. Before Rainer could come back with another blow, the Roman turned and ran.

He’s going for backup, Wulf thought.

Wulf’s focus narrowed to the remaining soldier. The forest was a blur of green and brown as Wulf rushed forward.

Wulf’s sword tip rammed into the breast plate of the remaining Roman . . . and deflected to the side. The blow pushed the soldier back, though.

He turned his attention from Rainer to Wulf then. The soldier brought his sword down in a vicious swipe. The blade connected just in front of Wulf’s sword guard.

Wulf blocked it.

Wulf’s hard-won fighting habits took over. He let the blow of the other’s sword push his sword arm into a deadly arch. His run had already carried him inside the Roman’s swing. He brought the bear man’s sword down from above.

The Roman jerked his own sword up to shield himself.

Too late.

Wulf’s blade sank into his left shoulder.

The leather shoulder harness that connected to the Roman’s plate armor split and the armor sagged to one side. The blow sank into flesh and bone, too. The soldier cried out. He raised his sword again.

Cold hell, he’s tough, thought Wulf. Which isn’t a surprise–if this guy really is a Roman Legionnaire.

But then the pointed end of a sword pommel slammed into the back of the man’s head. The Roman collapsed, unconscious.

Rainer stood behind the fallen Roman.

Wulf heard branches crackle and looked around for more attackers. But this was the soldier running through the forest in the direction from which he’d come from.

“Let’s get out of here.”

They sheathed their swords–Wulf put his away unwiped and bloody.

Had the Romans been tracking them, or was their meeting just a coincidence?

Doesn’t matter, Wulf thought. They’ve found us.

“The mounted soldiers won’t fight with those Iberian swords.” Rainer breathed hard as he jogged beside Wulf. “They’ll use sabers.”

They heard the whinnying of horses behind them.

The clanking of armor.

Wulf risked a glance over his shoulder.

The first of the Roman cavalry was cresting the hill.

“Here they come,” he gasped to Rainer. They ran. They leaped over a downed tree. They tore around rocky outcrops.

Now he heard the pounding of horse hooves on the leaf meal of the forest floor. He didn’t bother to look back.

“Time to take a stand,” he shouted to Rainer.

“No. I see Nagel,” Rainer said.

“Where?”

He pointed ahead of them through the trees. “That gulley.”

Wulf didn’t see the owl, but he trusted Rainer’s sharp vision better than his own.

“Head for it,” Wulf said. “Down the middle!”

He hoped he was guessing right. If not, he and Rainer were about to die at the end of a Roman sword. In a gulley. In the middle of nowhere.

He would fail. The girl he loved would die.

And the whole trip to Eounnbard would be for nothing.

 

Chain of Command – Snippet 03

Chain of Command – Snippet 03

“The other four races we contacted have been content with the arrangement,” the admiral continued. “The Humans, though…” The admiral paused and shook his head. “You know them. They are like children who never grow out of their questioning phase. ‘What is this? How does that work? Why can’t I see that? Why can’t we manufacture this ourselves? Why? Why? Why?‘”

Nuvaash knew it was so. He had experienced it many times but did not find it as annoying as did the admiral. Still, he nodded in sympathetic agreement.

“But mostly,” the admiral continued, “they want to know the secret of the jump drive–our most closely guarded secret, something which only a handful of Varoki even know.”

“But others have wanted to know as well, Admiral. We have always prevented it.”

“Yes, we always have. The intellectual property covenants make scientific research along those lines already explored economically fruitless, as the Varoki houses which own the core knowledge own any discovery based on it. Every member state agrees to this as a condition of access to the jump drive itself. But the Humans persist.

“When Human research firms began making dangerous progress, Varoki trading houses bought them up and redirected the research, as we have done elsewhere, but the Humans persist. Now there are private Human charitable foundations dedicated to pure scientific research–with no hope of commercial gain. Their curiosity is inexhaustible and relentless.”

Nuvaash knew that as well. He had never found it anything but interesting and sometimes admirable. Now he began to understand the potential threat it posed.

“But even if they discover the underlying science, commercially it will still belong to the Varoki trading houses,” he said.

“Not if the Humans withdraw from the Cottohazz,” the admiral answered. “Once they discover the secret on their own, what is to keep them? And if they withdraw, what is to keep the other races with us?  The stable and peaceful star-spanning civilization we have built will unravel and the Humans–aggressive, violent, and impulsive–will end up our rivals, and in all likelihood eventually our masters.”

Nuvaash felt his skin flush with fear as he listened to the admiral, fear of the future the admiral prophesied but also a more immediate one–fear of where the idea that war was the only road to peace might take them.

“It must not come to that, Nuvaash. It will not come to that.

“This war, which starts here in the K’tok system, will not end here. It will end with Human fleets swept from space, Human cities in ruins, and the Human spirit broken forever. But before it can end, it must begin.”

*****

An hour later Sam Bitka sat over coffee in Puebla’s “away” wardroom in Hornet’s habitat wheel, with Lieutenant Julia Washington–“Jules” to her friends–and Lieutenant Moe Rice. Moe, the largest and most heavily muscled member of Puebla’s crew, a former offensive lineman from Texas A&M, made Jules’s diminutive figure look out of scale next to him. They were his two best friends on Puebla, in Jules’s case maybe even more than that.

“Oh, Sam,” she said. “Commander Huhn can ruin your career. How could you be so stupid?”

“Boy, howdy,” Moe added.

Sam laughed. “I think it must be a gift.”

Jules sipped her coffee, but her green-flecked brown eyes stayed on him. She had good eyes in a good face, clear-featured and softened by her thick curly black hair cut short, but not the buzz cuts popular with a lot of starship crews, something called a pixie cut. Her café con crema complexion–classic American hybrid–contrasted sharply with the white of her officer’s shipsuit. Moe was much darker, the only black Jewish cowboy Sam had ever known

“He can’t hurt my career back at DP.” Sam said. “Oh, you mean here. Well, the thing I figured out today is I’m bullet-proof. See, I don’t really have a Navy career to worry about. Do my job and stay out of prison for two more years and I’m out of here. Nobody back in The World is ever going to read the fine print in my fitness reports.”

That was something he’d realized. He really was bullet-proof, as least as far as Del Huhn was concerned. Sam had a good career, just starting to turn into a damned good career, waiting for him back home. It took him seven years with DP–Dynamic Paradigms, LLC–to work his way up through middle management, but he had just finished the company’s Emerging Leaders program, the first step to executive service. Activation of his reserve commission had interrupted that, but only for three years. His corporate mentor had assured him it would look very good on his resume when he came back. It would set him apart. To rise, you needed to stand out from the herd.

“In the meantime,” Sam added, “I’m just not going to worry about Del Huhn any more, that’s all. Besides, I got him so pissed off at me I think he forgot about Menzies and Delacroix, which is good. Those two he could hurt.”

“We call that drawing fire,” Jules said, “and you know how well that usually works out in the tactical exercises–for the draw-er.”

“Bullet-proof, remember?”

“Can you reason with him, Moe?” Jules said.

“Reason?” Moe said and shook his head. “I’ll tell you what, if stupid ever goes to ninety bucks a barrel, I want the drillin’ rights on Sam’s head.”

“Very funny,” Sam said. “I’ll tell you something else I figured out today. Jules, I’ve been riding you guys in the tactical department like a whip-wielding overseer–updating squadron contingency planning and SOPs, running drills, memorizing Varoki naval manuals and ship energy signatures. And now I’m wondering why.”

“Because you’re Puebla’s Tac Boss, and it’s your job,” she answered. “And I think you’re right.”

Sam shook his head. “I’m just a dumb reservist. Look at the regulars, the Annapolis grads–other than you, I mean. Goldjune’s looking for an open slot on the admiral’s staff and Captain Rehnquist is getting his resume together to retire into a cushy job with a DC defense lobbying firm.”

“Nest featherers,” Moe said, his voice heavy with disdain.

Sam shrugged.

“Yeah, there’s a lot of that going around. And ever since Jules rebuffed his amorous advances Del Huhn just wants to be Bed-Check-Charley. Every regular officer on this boat above the rank of lieutenant junior grade has their head full of everything except getting ready for a war.

“So what do they know that I don’t? The odds-on favorite answer is: damned near everything.”

“Ain’t wrong there,” Moe agreed.

Jules sipped her coffee and thought about that for a while before answering.

“So, fewer drills?”

She didn’t look happy about the prospect. Sam knew Jules took pride in the ‘missile monkeys,’ in her weapons division, took pride in their efficiency and professionalism, but also in the sense of esprit she’d fostered in them. There wasn’t a sharper, more square-away division on Puebla, and every one knew it–especially her missile monkeys.

“I got the word right before I talked to Huhn: we decouple from Hornet in three days. Our destroyer division’s taking point, right out front, the ‘position of honor,’ somebody called it.”

Moe snorted at that but Jules straightened slightly in her chair and her eyes brightened.

“So, yeah, drills are cancelled until we’re separated. Between now and then we’ll have our hands full just getting the crew moved over and settled in, and making sure all the systems are nominal. Tactical department’s got a nice edge and we’ll start running cold drills out there to keep it, once we’re on station. But I’ll tell you something, near as I can tell I’m the only department head taking this whole imminent war thing seriously. I guess that makes me either the smartest guy in the Navy or the dumbest.”

“Pretty sure I know the answer to that one,” Moe said.

Jules glanced at Moe and then back at Sam, and she smiled, showing even white teeth with one crooked incisor which he suddenly and inexplicably found very sexy.