Annihilation (Star Force Series) (34 page)

“I bet you know why I’m calling too, Riggs. Is this how you start a peace talk? By firing on the diplomat if they decide to leave before you want them to? I’m not usually in the diplomacy business, but to me, this is a capital ‘F’ for failure on your part.”

“Are you done with the bluster yet?” I asked. “You know why I’m stopping you. Your little care-package went off.”

“What the hell are you talking about? Is this another of your fantasies about bombs and women, Riggs? ‘Cause if it is, I think you need to see an entirely different kind of doctor.”

Growing tired of the General’s tirade, real or acted, I made a spinning gesture to Captain Sarin, who had a vid queued. She transmitted it to Kerr’s ship now. It detailed the attack by Lieutenant Brighton upon Sandra and myself.

For several long seconds after it had ended, Kerr was quiet.

“I can see how this looks bad,” he said at last.

“Yes sir, it does.”

“Is Sandra okay?”

“No sir, she’s technically dead.”

“I’m sorry about that, Kyle, I never suspected Brighton was a fanatic. Some people are just really into Crow. It’s odd, I know—probably downright unbelievable to you. But he has a cult of personality going now back on Earth. Young Alexa must have fallen under his—”

“Cut the shit, General, please. We’re adults, here. Now, let me tell you how this is going to happen. You’re going to pull the emergency brake on that battleship of yours, and you’re going to turn it around. When it reaches a full stop, I’ll transmit the order to the missiles to self-destruct. I’ll also tell the Worm ships to hold their position. They won’t fire upon you unless you try to run their blockade.”

“This is a huge breach—” Kerr began.

I was happy to hear the nervousness in his voice.

“Not as big a breach as coming to my system and sitting down at my dinner table to place a mole in my headquarters. You used my hospitality to violate the peace, General.”

“If you’ll allow me to give you a few words of advice,” Kerr said, “You’d best be careful, Riggs. We’re playing with interstellar relations, and it appears to me that you’re doing it on an emotional basis. Everything you’ve told me is conjecture—”

“I’ll tell you what’s
not
conjecture,” I snapped. “I’m pissed off. If you don’t turn around, I’m blowing up your ship. The next move is yours, General. Riggs out.”

I closed the connection before he could utter another word. I was tired of his lies and excuses. I didn’t even care if there was a grain of truth in any of them. I wanted him to sweat for a change. I wanted him to agonize.

Nothing changed for the next hour. Every ten minutes or so, Jasmine informed me Kerr was requesting to talk again. I ignored every call. I hoped he was raving, walking around his battleship, kicking asses and ripping out hair. The very image brought a glimmer of amusement to my deadened face.

At last, he stopped trying to engage me in pointless talk and took action instead. I’d half-expected him to wheel and fire on my ships. If he turned to fight now, he’d avoid tangling with the Worms. My force outclassed his, but with a well-fought battle he could hope to take a few of my vessels down with him. If he wanted to play it that way, I was ready.

“They’re braking, Colonel,” Captain Sarin said. “Commander Becker is able to see the exhaust plume visually now. They’ve stopped their burn and they’re braking with what looks like full power. From my calculations, I’d say they started doing it right away, after you got off the phone, as they are over a light hour out from Becker’s position.”

I nodded, unsurprised. “Have they fired anything? Any missiles on the loose?”

“Nothing like that, sir.”

“Too bad,” I said to myself.

“There’s another message coming in,” Jasmine said. “It’s General Kerr again. Do you want to talk to him now?”

I shook my head. I stared out a viewport into the blackness of space.

“No,” I said. “Let him twist in the wind for a while longer.”

-28-

As we flew across the Eden system, I became more and more concerned about the state of Sandra’s health. They had her on full life-support. She couldn’t breathe by herself, and her heart didn’t beat without constant stimulation. After living in a world where tiny nanites and microbial creatures could repair any sort of damage to tissue, I was accustomed to people getting better, and doing it quickly. This was not happening in Sandra’s case.

I went down to the medical center frequently to check on both the women. Kwon was no longer following me around, as we were pretty sure by this time the assassin had been working solo.

The assassin herself was doing much better. Alexa had sweated a lot due to the pain of nanites healing her without anesthetic, but she was past that stage now. I hadn’t felt sorry for her during the ordeal. It was nothing every Star Force marine hadn’t gone through.

I’d noticed that the staffers were avoiding me when I went down to check on Sandra’s status. It was about when we reached the ring that transported us to the Helios system that I decided I’d had enough of dodging nurses and evasive answers from Dr. Swanson.

I grabbed the good doctor’s arm again, firmly. She was just about to slip by, saying something about being “very busy”. I looked at her, and she looked at me.

“Doctor,” I said…then I caught the look in her eye. It was undeniable, she was afraid of me.

Among my subordinates, my physical strength had become the stuff of legend. I’d never intended to be a superman; it had just turned out that way. Part of being able to withstand the gravitational field and atmospheric pressures of a gas giant was the necessity of possessing an extreme physique.

I’d often performed tricks on vids for the staff. That sort of thing built morale for fighting men, especially marines. No doubt, Kate Swanson had seen me bend girders and work trees from the ground with my bare hands. She was Fleet, and had been nanotized like everyone aboard any Star Force ship, but she couldn’t hope to face me if I lost my temper. I could rip the arms off a normal marine, and she knew it.

Not wanting to be a bully, I let her go. She looked relieved, but no longer attempted to slip by, or to give me weak excuses.

“Kate,” I said, forcing my voice to soften, “I need to know what Sandra’s real prognosis is. She’s not getting any better, I can tell that. What’s wrong?”

Dr. Swanson licked her lips, then squared her shoulders. Around me, I noticed the room had quieted. I looked left, then right. The orderlies had vanished. I saw that the place was pretty much empty except for Marvin, who was panning his cameras like mad, and Sandra in her box. I caught sight of Alexa’s box, and frowned as it was empty.

Dr. Swanson finally began talking, “As you must know, Colonel,” she said, “Sandra’s situation is far from ideal, she—”

“Wait a minute,” I said, my frown deepening. “Where the hell is that woman, Lieutenant Brighton?”

“She’s been transferred to the brig, sir.”

“So, she’s fine, but her victim is still in a box? Tell me why.”

“Sandra’s body has fully recovered, sir,” she said. “There are a few spots of scarring, but really she would normally be fit to return to duty in another day or so—normally.”

“Right, just tell me,” I said, trying not to become angry.

In the back of my mind, I figured I was going to hear something about a coma state, something that had triggered in Sandra’s mind that they couldn’t reverse as yet. I honestly thought Kate would tell me Sandra was going to sleep for a long time, maybe a month or a year, but when she finally did wake up this would all be over. Sometimes, the human mind can ignore the evidence set before it. Possibly, that trait was one of the things that kept us going in times of great strife.

“She’s never going to recover, Colonel Riggs,” Dr. Swanson said finally.

I looked at her. I saw her turn her face to one side, then the other. She glanced up at me briefly each time, before finding some reason to look away again. She was about my age, but was still an attractive, vivacious woman. I could see that in her youth, she’d been a rare beauty. I saw all that in her face in a single moment. But mostly, what I saw was pity—pity for me. It was not an expression I encountered often.

“I don’t—I don’t understand,” I said. “I mean, I know there was brain damage, but a brain is just a mass of cells like any other organ. It can be repaired, can’t it?”

“Yes,” she said. “But it’s not her brain that’s damaged, really. It’s her mind. There’s nothing there, Colonel Riggs. She’s been erased.”

“Erased?”

I felt funny then, it was an old sensation—one that I’d almost forgotten. Then, in a flash, I remembered when and where I’d felt it before.

Years ago, my wife had died in a car accident. Sometimes, I still dreamt of her. And my two children had died years later, the night the machines came to Earth. This felt like those times. It was a sinking feeling, as if my guts were falling out of my body onto the floor, as if I weighed a million pounds suddenly, and couldn’t move.

Dr. Kate Swanson kept on talking, but I no longer heard her. My mind was racing; I wanted to fix whatever had happened to my girl. I didn’t need any more input, I needed to act.

I threw up my hands suddenly, and she flinched away. She’d finally stopped talking, and now watched me with big, round eyes.

I took several deep breaths, staring at the floor. I didn’t know what to do. That was a shock all in itself. As a man of action and decision-making, I rarely was met with a moment like this, a moment that required drastic thought and action, when I had absolutely no idea what to do next.

I was a problem-solver. An engineer. Someone who lived by his wits and
made
things work, no matter how difficult or impossible-seeming the task was.

But this time, my mind was blank. Almost as blank as my lady-love, who lay in a glorified coffin full of feeding tubes and gently pumping bladders of oxygen.

“Alexa Brighton,” I said aloud. I wasn’t sure if I’d whispered it or shouted it, but I knew I’d spoken the name.

I turned and walked out of medical with a determined stride. I knew where I was going and what I was going to do.

Behind me, I heard Kate talking again. “He’s going to kill her. Marvin, you have to do something.”

“What would you like me to do, Dr. Swanson?”

“Stop him. He’s going to kill the prisoner.”

“Colonel Riggs is in command,” Marvin said. His voice possessed none of her alarm or concern. He sounded calm and curious instead.

“That doesn’t give him the right to kill a prisoner!”

“That is debatable,” Marvin said. “But in my honest opinion, I don’t think any of us are capable of stopping him.”

I could no longer hear them behind me, and I no longer cared what they were saying. I headed back to the very farthest aft portion of the ship. There, between the main hold and the engines, was a closet-like chamber that served us as a brig.

It was rarely used, but sometimes one of our marines got too drunk and beat a couple other marines unconscious. Our version of military justice had somewhat less strict rules in these situations. Our people could recover so quickly, it wasn’t a court-martialing offense to strike one another. However, there were exceptions that required discipline. If the disagreement was between men of the same rank, that was all well and good. But if it involved a superior officer, or if the aggressor just wouldn’t settle down and apologize, we had to lock him up until he came to his senses. Usually, this resulted in a loss of rank for the drunk.

Today, there was a single occupant in the narrow, steel cage. I saw they hadn’t even bothered to post a guard. If a nanotized, drunken, raging marine couldn’t get out, this young woman was staying put.

I stepped up to the bars. Alexa jumped up and stood at attention. She stared straight ahead at the forward bulkhead, which was only about three feet from her face.

I felt sure she knew why I was there. How could she not? She’d known what the poison would do. She’d known how I would respond to her treachery, if she knew anything about me at all.

I reached out my hands and placed them on the steel bars. I gripped them, and squeezed. A strange sound erupted from the bars in my hands. It was like the sound of heavy old springs being pulled apart.

“Lieutenant Alexa Brighton,” I said loudly. “I hereby charge you with treason, murder and assassination. How do you plead?”

“Guilty, sir,” she said softly.

This surprised me somewhat, but not enough to take me off the track I was on. I summoned the strength that Marvin’s baths and a million tiny alien robots had built into me. I summoned physical power I barely knew I possessed.

The bars were like wire in my hands. I pulled them apart and snapped them in places. The hinges gave me trouble for a moment, but not the lock itself. The bolt had nothing to latch with after I’d pulled the door off and held it over my head. Twisted, groaning and wrecked, I hurled the door up the passageway. It clattered and rang, making a horrible din.

Up that way, I knew, marines were watching. It wasn’t that big of a ship, after all. They could hardly have missed this strange business.

I felt their eyes on me from the dark passage, but I didn’t turn to look. I sensed that Jasmine was among them. She was the only one who might have been able to stop me, I thought vaguely, but she didn’t say a word. None of them did.