Rich Man's War (26 page)

Tanner
stared off into space, chewing on all the thoughts she had sparked. “Vanessa… who’s her captain?”

“Whose captain?”

“
Aphrodite. Argent
. Whichever.”

“Couldn’t tell you. Either it’s above my pay grade, or I don’t have a need to know. Why?”

“Because Captain Kelly didn’t know, either. And
Argent
took a shot at us.”

“Tanner, we had a pack of tanks right on our ass and
Argent
had civilians to protect. I wouldn’t take it personally. Listen, I can connect a lot of dots on my own, but there was more going on with that mess than either of us know.”

* * *

“Your
pirate
killed three of our people, including a goddamned state hero.”

“Four people, Mr. President.
Far as I can tell, I lost one of mine, too. He also saved hundreds of civilians. Scheherazade’s a sideshow now, anyway, what with—”

“Oh, don’t give me that shit, David!” Aguirre’s skin flushed red as he glared at the man standing before his desk. Like any good spy, David Kiribati knew how to maintain a neutral expression. As much as Aguirre found that aggravating, he figured any other tack Kiribati might take would only annoy him even more right now. “That’s not the point and you know it.”

“That is the point, sir,” maintained Kiribati. “We sent him in there to rescue civilians and when they were put in the line of fire he acted to save as many people as he could.”

“And you think it’s
a coincidence that he killed Tanner Malone in the process? Of all the goddamn people to have run into each other in the middle of all that?”

“He had no more idea that Malone was in the system than I did. I reviewed all the logs myself. Casey wasn’t on the comms channel and Malone never identified himself, nor offered a visual, and when I talked to Casey he didn’t know about—”

“No chance he’s putting one over on you, huh?” Aguirre interrupted with a dry scowl.

“I like to think I haven’t been out of the field so long that I can’t read a guy like Casey, sir,” Kiribati replied with an icy but controlled tone. “He won’t shed any tears once he finds out what happened. Hell, I’m sure he’ll drink himself into a celebratory stupor. That doesn’t mean he knew Malone was there.”

“We should never have let that bastard out of his cell.”

“Due respect, sir, that bastard is half the reason we’ve come so far.”

Aguirre shot his longtime partner an irritated glare. “You don’t think he’s outlived his usefulness?”

“No, sir, I don’t, and I’d point to the operation on
Scheherazade as the reason why. We got all of our civilians and consulate staff out of that mess while only losing a handful of military people, and I’d say that’s a bargain. Casey is a big part of that. He did everything right.”

Fuming, Aguirre sank back into his
chair. “There’s nobody else we could put in charge of that ship?”

“Yeoh has at least a dozen people. You want to hand the whole thing off to her?” He waited for that to sink in. Aguirre understood the implications of what could happen if Yeoh got her own people on board
Argent
. Even a completely blanked-out log history would raise too many more questions. “Sir, Casey got a lot done for us in the three years leading up to his capture—“

“Not out of loyalty,” Aguirre snorted.

“—and this is the fourth mission he’s taken since we put him on that ship, and every mission was a success. Yes, there were losses. Yes, the fact that Malone was there is a giant PR headache and it’ll have people asking questions.”

“It’s already got people asking questions!” Aguirre snapped. He pointed across his office, empty except for the two of them, to the closed door on the other side of the room. “We’ve got a security briefing to start. The
Navy already knows that their people died from friendly fire. We can’t keep it from the media much longer, and we have to notify the families. They’re all gonna want to know who was in charge of that ship! We can’t just tell them it’s classified. The media won’t shut up and nod and accept that like good soldiers.”

“We don’t have to keep it from the media, sir. I have a cover story for this. I have a captain to give to the media. He’s a retired agent. We’re prepping him now so he’ll know what to say. Yeoh will probably see through that, but she also knows that
Argent
is an Intelligence Service asset. She’ll toe the line.”

One of Aguirre’s eyebrows rose in a doubtful arch. “She lost three of her people over this. She’s not going to let this go.”

“As far as I can tell, I lost one of my best operatives, too, sir,” Kiribati frowned. “Yeoh will have to let it go and she’ll have to move on, just like me. Besides, we’ve got much bigger matters to deal with. Like I said, Scheherazade was a sideshow. Everyone will know that once we’re ready to go with the intelligence we’ve gotten.”

“We can’t go public with that for months,” Aguirre said, waving his hand dismissively. “In the meantime, this is all the public is going to care about.”

“This is a dangerous business, sir. It will get much uglier before we’re done. And we’ll need Casey and people like him.”

“We needed someone we could rely on, not some freelance criminal.”

“Gabe, we never had the time to build a better asset up from scratch. You know that. You knew it at the time. We needed the genuine article, and we found him, and he delivered. ‘The enemy of my enemy’ is always a dicey proposition, but it paid off here. You also know how many ships we acquired completely off the books because of him—before and after he got caught—to say nothing of the cover he provided for the public face of the build-up.

“Malone’s death is a PR headache
. I get that,” Kiribati continued, taking on a reassuring tone. “We don’t have to cover up the friendly fire angle. It’s the kind of tragedy that happens in combat. Look, forget about all the hype. He was just another enlisted kid. He didn’t want to go back into the field. Tell Andrea before the news breaks, give her a little time to get her head back in the game, and then I’m sure she’ll pour her heart into some sort of martyr spin. That’ll probably be worth more than we’d have gotten out of him if he’d lived. You ask me, we’re getting a bargain.”

Aguirre let out a sullen sigh. He looked at the time and then gestured to the door
. “Are we ready for this?”

“Yes, Mr. President. The question is whether you’re ready?” He waited for Aguirre’s nod. “Yeoh isn’t here for this one. She headed out to Augustine to meet with Lt. Booker’s family. We’ll have one of her subordinates here and he won’t ask too many questions. I’d say we should try to get the routine stuff out of the way first before moving on to the
Scheherazade fallout to give you a breather—“

“I’m fine, David,” said Aguirre, shaking his head. “This business is going to drive all of our other decisions, anyway.” He paused thoughtfully. “Are we ready to move up the timetable?”

“Our people are on board, yes,” Kiribati nodded. “Enough of them that the other relevant business leaders will join up when they see the contracts and the money flowing for the people on the inside.”

Again, Aguirre gestured for the door. “Let’s get on with it
.”

Kiribati turned and walked across the office to let everyone in. Aguirre could have buzzed for one of his secretaries outside the office to get the door
. Instead, the president used the simple task to remind his intelligence chief who was in charge. It wasn’t the sort of thing Kiribati missed, but they’d all come too far in this to let anyone’s petty idiosyncrasies become an issue now.

He expected to see Yeoh’s stand-in waiting outside, as well
as Theresa Cotton, the defense minister and all the usual aides. He didn’t expect to see the smiles.

“Mr. President,”
Theresa said as she walked in, “we just got word. They’re alive.”

* * *

Operations Specialist: a versatile rating whose duties include astrogation, high-level helmsman duty and coordination of shipboard operations. Applicants must qualify for Delta security clearance.

Signalman: Operates, maintains and installs communications gear. Signalmen with qualifying aptitude scores
may receive advanced foreign language training. Applicants must qualify for Epsilon security clearance.

“
What’cha doin’?”

Tanner looked up from his holocom screen to Sanjay. The pair sat in an otherwise empty waiting room of characterless chairs, couches and small tables. Pictures of
Navy ships adorned the walls.

Both of them wore
hospital robes. Wealthier civilians in such circumstances could get around in antigrav chairs and the like. For all the emphasis on high-quality medicine, though, the Navy found some old-fashioned implements to be much more cost-efficient. Tanner’s knee surgery left him on crutches for a couple more days. Sanjay sat in a wheelchair. The sleeve of his robe hung limply over his missing arm. Replacement growth and attachment surgery would take weeks.

“I’m looking at rating options,” Tanner sighed. “Gonna have to make a decision pretty soon.”

“What are you thinking?”

“Well, initially I wanted a science tech rating, but those all got closed up. After that, I thought maybe I could go corpsman or survival tech. I want to do planetary survey work when I get out of
the Navy, so I figured those might be good preparation, y’know?”

Sanjay frowned a bit. “
Those are both combat arms ratings, right? I thought you wanted to get away from that sort of thing?”

“I did. I do,” Tanner nodded. Though anyone on a ship could wind up involved in combat,
the Navy specified certain ratings as more likely to face such exposure than others. Corpsmen frequently served as combat medics alongside marines. Survival techs were essentially search and rescue specialists, but their skill set could easily put them into combat as well. “Part of it is a process of elimination. I know I don’t want an admin job. I’m not the technical sort, either, so none of the engineering ratings fit.”

“And you’re a terrible pilot,” Sanjay offered helpfully.

“Yeah, I’m a terrible pilot,” Tanner agreed with another sigh. He drew a circle around the operations specialist summary with one finger and then poked at it in the center to eliminate the text on his screen.

“So it’s corpsman or survival tech?”

“Well… it was.”

“What happened?”

“Conversations with a few people. Captain Kelly for one. Vanessa. And…” His voice trailed off as the door opposite their seats opened up. Several officers in dress uniforms filed out one by one. A few headed for the restrooms. A couple of others walked off in conversation with Lt. Booker, also in dress uniform, who managed only a glance and a nod toward the two younger men.

Two more officers walked directly to the crewmen. One of them was a tall, well-built man with a commander’s bars. The other was Admiral Yeoh.

“Crewman Sanjay,” said the commander, “we’re taking a quick break, but your debriefing is up next. Are you ready to go? I thought we might get you settled in, unless you need anything first?”

“No, sir,” Sanjay shook his head. “I’m good to go.”

Yeoh gave Sanjay the soft, reassuring but controlled smile that Tanner had seen at their first meeting. “This likely won’t take long, Crewman,” she said. “Lt. Booker spoke very highly of you. This isn’t an inquest. You’re in no trouble at all. Quite the opposite. We want everyone’s unvarnished impressions.”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m ready.”

The commander got behind Sanjay’s wheelchair and pushed him toward the briefing room. Yeoh lingered, watching the pair leave. Tanner saw her smile fade. “Something bothering you, ma’am?”

“This would all be more complete if we co
uld have debriefed Agent Rios.”

Tanner nodded. Word came down for Vanessa to return to her own service headquarters within hours of their packet ship’s arrival in the system. At first, Tanner presumed it was only to limit exposure of her identity and to preserve her ability to work undercover. It wasn’t until now, hearing the tone in Yeoh’s voice, that he suspected something else might be at work.

“She saved our hides out there,” said Tanner. “And mine specifically.”

“So I’m told.”

Tanner waited for her to say something else. His thoughts turned toward his conversation with Vanessa in the packet ship. Not for the first time, he wondered if the debriefing might confront him with a choice of loyalties. He also noted that Yeoh had him alone out here. He’d been concerned with what she or one of the debriefing officers would ask him in the presence of others; now he wondered what she wanted to say to him privately.

“Lt. Booker mentioned that you handled
the last communications with
Argent
.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Did you hear anyone on that ship identify themselves?”

“No, ma’am. I’m pretty sure I was speaking to a woman. That’s all I could say.”