Annihilation (Star Force Series) (32 page)

I also knew who my prime suspect was in this case: the amazing, vanishing, General Kerr.

-26-

I seethed with emotions and was barely able to sit on my command chair. Both armrests were seriously damaged, due to my hammering and cursing.

The staff was staying quiet. Word had gotten out about the attack and no one wanted to approach me right now. I shouted for Miklos until someone went and got him. He stepped up, standing at attention.

“Are you aware an imperial assassin was in our midst for over a week, undetected?” I demanded. “This is your command territory, Commodore. Security is part of your duties. I’m holding you responsible.”

“I’m sorry, sir. I hope Sandra will recover.”

“You have some explaining to do,” I told him. “When I left, I put you and your carrier on duty at Helios ring. If you were there now, you could chase down Kerr. He’s running and has reached the Helios system by this time.”

Miklos looked concerned. “The carrier itself is still there, sir,” he said. “But I don’t think that ship could catch the General in any case. Recall your removal of several of the ship’s engines…”

“Don’t try to put this off on me!” I shouted.

I shook my head and took a deep breath. All around me, everyone else had frozen again. I suspected they were waiting to see if I had another violent outburst. I tried to calm down, but didn’t entirely succeed.

“I was suckered,” I said. “This entire thing from Earth—this sham about peace talks…Kerr just wanted to come out here and kill us.”

Bravely, Captain Sarin approached me. I was surprised to see her aboard the battle station.

“You are away from your post, Captain,” I growled at her. “Why have you left your carrier?”

“I heard about what happened,” she said quietly. “I wanted to see if I could help.”

I barely listened to her. I wasn’t looking at any of them.

“Last time Crow sent some newsy to sucker us with her charms,” I said. “This time he sent an old acquaintance and worked the knife again. This time, he drew blood. Why am I such a fool?”

“What do you mean, sir?” Miklos asked.

I focused my eyes on him. “Isn’t it obvious?” I asked. “Crow is clearly behind these last two attempts on my life. But there have been many in the past. Remember the first, the young Asian girl he’d just hired? Or the Dutch commandos after that? I blamed Major Barrera for those plays, but now I think it went higher up. Barrera and the rest of them were all working for Crow.”

Miklos and Jasmine exchanged glances. I noticed, but I didn’t react. Let them think I was crazy. I could see everything now. It was all so very clear. Crow hadn’t been able to arrest me and remove me from power directly, so he’d made a half-dozen underhanded attempts to end my life. Now, he’d managed to strike down my closest confidant, my best bodyguard. If nothing else, I would be an easier target for the next blade that came out of the dark without Sandra watching my back.

“Get Kwon up here,” I said suddenly.

Startled, Miklos and Jasmine both relayed the request. Less than thirty seconds later, Kwon walked onto the bridge. I felt my face smile, even though it was only a grim twitching of the lips.

Kwon was in full battle-gear. His visor was shut, and his laser projector was cradled in his arms.

“I see you came well-prepared, First Sergeant,” I said.

“Actually, sir, I thought you might call,” Kwon said, placing himself beside my command chair. “I was standing in the passageway outside.”

“Of course you were. Well, I have need of you now. I don’t know who’s going to poison or shoot me next. Since Sandra’s out of the picture for the moment, I want you on hand to do her job.”

“Very good, sir.”

I noticed that the command staff looked intimidated. I often wore armor on the bridge, but somehow seeing Kwon there, staring at each of them in turn as if he suspected them of treachery, unnerved people.

I turned to Miklos. “What assets do we have in play to catch General Kerr? I assume he’s crossing the Helios system on full burn by now?”

“That’s correct, Colonel. We don’t have much in range, actually. The task force at that end of the Eden system is small and slow. If you recall, you placed a squadron of gunboats and a single carrier there as a defensive force. None of these ships can catch General Kerr’s battleship, as it is now too far ahead on the acceleration curve.”

I asked for the data and got it immediately. I walked to the planning tables and did some calculations. We couldn’t catch him with a ship, but…

“What about a missile?” I asked. “Or better, a
lot
of missiles? What do we have on
Defiant
?”

Miklos squirmed. “You didn’t authorize missiles to be placed on the new carriers,” he said.

“Yes…?”

“But, it just so happens that the ship in question has some aboard.”

I snorted. I knew Miklos loved those ships and loved to improve their designs. I knew I’d ripped his heart out when I’d torn up his plans and deleted so much optional equipment. At this point, I was unsurprised that he’d continued outfitting them to match his original plans.

“Under the circumstances,” I said, “I’m glad you made certain…
improvements
upon the agreed carrier blueprints. Captain Sarin, please check my numbers, if you would.”

She eyed them closely. “I think they’re correct, sir,” she said, “but there isn’t enough time. The missiles could reach Kerr’s ship if they were fired right now, but the command to fire must cross the Eden system. That’s nearly twenty light-hours. By the time the command reaches the carrier, it will be too late.”

“Maybe,” I said. I turned back to Miklos. “I recall that your original design placed a ring-to-ring communications unit aboard these carriers. Did that deleted item somehow make it back onto the roster?”

“Uh,” said Miklos, his eyes sliding around between the two of us. He seemed flustered and mildly embarrassed. “Yes it did, sir. I thought that since the carriers were natural taskforce command ships—”

“Enough of that crap. Call them up and order them to fire everything they have.”

Miklos nodded and hurried to the communications consoles.

Jasmine stepped closer to my chair. Kwon twitched at her approach, but she ignored him. “How did you know he would disobey orders and build that equipment onto the carrier?”

“I didn’t,” I said, “but I probably would have done the same thing. His design was superior, and he knew it. I changed it because his plans would have taken too long to build at the time. Since I’ve been off campaigning in the Thor system, he made some worthwhile edits, that’s all.”

“Kyle,” she said quietly, her voice almost a whisper. “I know you’re upset, but are you sure you want to kill Kerr this way? We don’t know everything yet. There hasn’t been any kind of investigation.”

“If I wait for an investigation, Kerr will be safely home on Earth by the time he’s been declared guilty. There might not be enough evidence to be certain, anyway, without capturing and questioning him.”

“But you might be making a serious mistake, and a major diplomatic error.”

I stared at her coldly. I liked Captain Sarin, but she didn’t always know what she was talking about.

“I play the odds,” I said. “I always do. Instinct must be part of any commander’s arsenal of tricks. I trust mine in this instance. Kerr was behind the assassination, and Crow was behind him.”

 I stood up and towered over her. She looked up at me, clearly unconvinced. I brushed past.

“Which reminds me, I need to check up on Sandra and her would-be murderer.”

I headed down to medical, and Kwon stayed firmly in my shadow. We didn’t talk, which was just fine with me. I wasn’t in the mood to explain anything to anyone. I left Kwon on guard in the main passage as I inspected the facilities.

Marvin’s body filled a good portion of medical. He was bigger than the last time I’d seen him. Today, I would estimate he was the size of a pickup truck, and twice as heavy.
The medical staff wasn’t too happy about his presence, but they were tolerating it. They had little choice.

Marvin’s tentacles seemed to have been elongated. Maybe he’d made some special changes just for this occasion. In any case, the tentacles flowed over the floor and up to the ceiling like black, metallic ropes. They then dangled down directly over the patients or snaked up from the floor like self-mobile cables. Occasionally, the doctors and nurses stepped on one of the appendages and muttered a curse.

In a modern Star Force facility, the doctors and nurses didn’t do much. They were mostly there to monitor the process, make executive decisions and fill out reports which I normally read later on casualty update screens. This time, I was more emotionally tied up with the process than usual.

“Do you have a moment, Doctor?” I asked, grabbing the arm of a passing woman with a Fleet medical insignia on her shoulder.

She turned to me, startled. “Colonel? I wasn’t expecting to see you so soon. We’re not done yet. Nothing’s been determined.”

I frowned. She seemed nervous. I checked her nametag, it read: Kate Swanson, M. D.

“What do you know so far?” I demanded.

She looked down at her computer tablet and shook her head before she replied. I could see she was building up to give me some bad news. Even before she spoke, I felt butterflies in my stomach. It had been a long time since I’d experienced that sensation.

“It was a neural toxin, sir,” Dr. Swanson said. “Something we’ve never seen before. It was tailor-made for this purpose.”

“Designed to kill a Star Force marine who is otherwise unkillable?”

She looked me in the eye for a second, then dropped her gaze again. She nodded. “Yes, that’s a good way to describe it. Fast-acting, too fast for the nanites or the microbials to adjust. Tissues were damaged so quickly the body didn’t have time to respond.”

“But the nanites and microbes should clear toxins. They flush them before they can do much harm.”

“Normally, yes. By the time we got to Sandra, they
were
flushed out of her system. But they’d already done their work.”

“Where did you get your data?”

“From the empty syringe. There was a residue—enough to run tests.”

I nodded, thinking hard. “You mentioned tissue damage, but you said it was a neural toxin, right?”

She nodded, eyeing me, then looking down at my hand. I realized at that moment I still had a grip on her arm. I forced myself to release her. She seemed to breathe more easily after that.

“You’re talking about brain damage, aren’t you?” I asked.

She compressed her lips together into a tight line and nodded.

“But we can rebuild her,” I said. “Any cell that’s been damaged can be reconstructed if there’s something left.”

She gave me a wan, flickering smile. “That’s true sir.”

“So, why are you looking at me like someone killed your cat?”

“It’s too early to tell what we’re dealing with,” she said.

Her voice was soothing, but I didn’t feel like being soothed just now. I stared at her with hard, narrowed eyes.

“You’re telling me Sandra’s mind has been damaged,” I said.

She shook her head. “It’s been less than half an hour. We don’t know everything. Give us some time, Colonel.”

I tried to think. I felt as if I’d been given a dose of neural toxins myself. “Can she breathe? Is her heart pumping?”

“Yes sir—with help.”

“What about the other one? The assassin.”

“Lieutenant Brighton was severely injured,” the doctor said. “Apparently, you struck her very hard.”

I looked at her sharply. Was that a reproachful tone in the good doctor’s voice?

“Don’t be taken in by her youth and attractiveness,” I said. “I was fooled, and she almost got both of us. She’s an accomplished actress—an assassin who succeeded where a half-dozen others have failed.”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” Swanson said, refusing to meet my eye again. She was reading a chart from a computer tablet. “She has a fractured clavicle, two broken ribs and a broken wrist. There’s also a hairline fracture at the base of her skull. She had a blood clot in her left lung due to a complication from the broken ribs, but we managed to dissolve that with a nanite injection.”

I put a hand out again and touched the doctor’s wrist. “Don’t give her nanite injections. She doesn’t deserve that. I’d rather see her die of her injuries.”

Doctor Swanson looked horrified, but she made a note on her tablet. I left her and went to talk to Marvin.

“Hey Marvin, can you fix Sandra up?”

“Unknown, Colonel,” Marvin said. He didn’t sound sorrowful, but then, he never did.

I looked around for cameras. They seemed to be split between me and Sandra, who was lying on her back on a table. A few more cameras followed Kwon and the assassin.

“What do you mean ‘unknown’?” I demanded.

“Unknown as in ‘not yet determined’ or ‘dependent on input not yet gathered’ or—”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. Listen, I want you to do whatever you have to, within reason. I need her up and around again within a week.”