Tritium Gambit (Max and Miranda Book 1) (2 page)

I placed my hand on the chrome scanner next to the door. When the door opened, I walked in. The captain was waiting for me.

“
Agent Miranda, how nice of you to drop by,” he said. The tone of his voice didn’t sound like he thought my arrival was nice at all. “Finally made time for me, then?”

“
Sir?” I asked.

“
Agent, do you know what some people call the Intergalactic Secret Service?”

“
The Service?”

“
The intergalactic shit storm.” He sighed. “I’d like to strip you of your credentials and send you off to that piss-water planet you came from, but we have an agent in sudden need of a partner. Unfortunately, I can’t find anybody better than you.” He smirked, obviously privy to some information he had yet to reveal about my new partner. “Maybe you’ll get each other killed and save me the paperwork of transferring the two of you.”

“
I tried to reason with Agent Riley,” I said.

“
Agent Riley survived a dozen missions before you came along. By the time they take him out of the induced coma, he’ll only be useful for copious drool samples and mission debriefs rendered in Crayola’s primary color palette. That’s not what I called you here to discuss though.” A smile that looked genuine enough actually settled on his lips. “I need you to pack your things and meet your new partner, Agent Maximus, in the hangar in thirty minutes. Wendy will be your mission coordinator and will brief you on the details.”

“
Yes, sir.”

“
Dismissed,” he said.

As I turned and began walking to the door, I heard him mumble too low for most people to hear, but my hearing wasn’t human. “Seriously, feel free to get each other killed.”

I walked out. When angry or embarrassed, my face lights up bright red, and right now my face burned with both anger and embarrassment. I shook my head. I needed to ignore him and keep focused. I couldn’t let him get to me, I told myself. I took slow breaths as I walked to my room to get my gear and tried to think about positive things, like the fact that I had another chance.

Normally, my room is regulation clean, but with Riley’s incapacitation, I hadn’t found a reason to make my bed or keep my trunk tidy. I needed to adjust my attitude, I said out loud, and I decided I would start with my personal space. Using my innate speed, which is many times the speed the humans are capable of, I made my bed, straightened my trunk, and then grabbed my gear belt and pistol. I then put on a light jacket so I could conceal my weapon.

I walked to the hangar, focused on the opportunity to earn my place. I would make Captain Johnson respect me by showing that I was a valuable team member. I was the top graduate from the Academy and wouldn’t roll over when the going got tough. Things were difficult now, but I was going to use my difficulties as motivation, use this situation to my advantage.

Wendy was working on the engine of a Cherokee 140. She turned toward me as I approached.

“
You’re early,” she said.

“
I was told to meet my new partner at the hangar and that you would brief us.”

“
I’m just finishing up some repairs on this plane. I understand that you can fly it,” she said.

I nodded. “I’ve had basic training on small aircraft.” I looked past her into the engine compartment. “It looks like one of the mags is disconnected.” I reached past her and fixed it.

She looked irritated. “I was getting to that.” Her tone was all venom.

“
Sorry,” I said, and I meant it. I did not mean to show her up. “I’ll wait over here while you finish.”

Chapter 2. Max

The door to the infirmary slid shut behind me. After a few steps toward the command center, I became aware that I was not alone. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Hillary McMasters.

“
Max!” She hurled my name at me like a curse.

Generally, men have more muscles than women, but Hillary was built like a tank. She had muscles in places that I couldn’t even grow them. Her skin was pale white and had a slight red glimmer to it. I wondered if that was some kind of warning system built into her DNA.

“
You realize that you’ve ruined my wedding, don’t you?” Her voice was a low growl. I began desperately trying to remember what Dozer had said about her, but I couldn’t recall what planet she was from or what nasty surprise she was about to unleash on me.

I sighed. “You’re an agent. You know the job is dangerous and that sometimes... Well, sometimes agents get smelly.”

She grabbed my shoulder and yanked me around with serious force. “He was sprayed by a half-dozen Krylian boars. That’s not smelly. That’s a life sentence.”

“
It could have been worse. He could have been gored.” I lifted my shirt to show her what I meant, but there wasn’t even a scar left to demonstrate where I had been slashed open by twelve-inch tusks. Sometimes healing fast was a curse.

“
I can’t kiss him without vomiting.”

“
It might help if you close your eyes,” I suggested.

“
He’s in a plastic bubble right now because his odor can be detected a mile away.”

“
Yeah, I keep telling him that his ‘lucky socks’ aren’t as lucky as he thinks.”

She stomped her foot. “Every partner you have ends up this way. I’m going to talk to Captain Johnson and…”

“
Hold on! I’ve never had another partner end up smelling like an Ogerian armpit, except Jameson but he came that way.”

“
Jameson was a good agent before he was turned into burnt toast.”

“
Yeah, I sort of feel bad about that.”

“
Sort of?” Her face glowed red—literally glowed red. “You’re partners end up dead, or worse, terminally smelly.”

“
It isn’t my fault,” I protested. “It’s a dangerous job, and I’m usually the one that gets hurt the worst.”

“
But you always walk away and your partners don’t.” I saw a tear escape the corner of her eye. She turned and ran back toward the infirmary.

“
Usually, I crawl away,” I whispered.

I strolled through the familiar glossy white tunnel ribbed with evenly spaced black arches. When I reached the end of the corridor, I hesitated before a door that had the lustrous shine of a MacBook. I placed my hand on a cold chrome panel and lights came to life across the surface, scanning both me and the surrounding area. Standard procedure, I reminded myself. Nothing entered the command center without authorization. Nothing from this planet anyway, I thought.

A disembodied female voice purred, “Identity confirmed.” The door slid open.

“
Thank you,” I said.

The voice responded, “You’re welcome.”

I couldn’t contain my smile. “What are you wearing?”

“
I am wearing nothing.” She paused briefly, and then her synthesized tone changed. “Why would you ask me that? I’m distributed artificial intelligence.”

I snickered. It’s so easy to get the AI upset. I stepped into a circular room that glowed with wall monitors displaying high definition maps, security camera feeds, and threat profiles. The door slid shut behind me. Was it me, I wondered with a chuckle, or did the door slide shut unnecessarily hard? A man stood motionless in the center of a tsunami of swirling information. A cone of stadium-bright light bathed him.

He wore a crisp tan uniform with small colored metals on his chest. His blond hair was parted perfectly to one side, not a hair out of place. He reminded me of old pictures I had seen of World War II captains.

“
Agent Maximus,” the man said without averting his eyes from the displays when I approached.

“
Captain Johnson,” I replied.

“
I see you survived the North Carolina incident.”

“
Just a dozen Krylian boars, sir.”

“
I take it that they didn’t gore you.” He sounded disappointed.

“
They did, sir.”

He looked distracted and I wasn’t sure if he heard me. “Excellent,” he said absently. He sniffed the air. “Did you take a shower?”

“
No, sir. Is one missing?”

He sighed ever so slightly. “Agent, there’s a level nine disturbance in Texas, and we’re deploying primary and secondary agents to engage hostiles tonight.”

“
Yes, sir!” Level nine, I thought! In the four years that I’d been with the Service, there had never been a level nine incident. I’ll bet we get to use the cool toys to handle this one.

“
We’ll be dispatching two teams in Raptor Sixes armed with Archer III Stingers deployed via the Space Curve Rail. Each agent will be equipped with Wolverine Two-Eighties and Rayshark body armor. However, I’m not sending you.” He paused as he continued his study of the display panels.

“
What?”

“
There’s been a ping in northern Minnesota, and I’m sending you in to investigate.”

“
But Sir…”

“
Your mission coordinator will brief you. I need somebody who can handle the Minnesota case without assistance. Unfortunately, all I have is you,” he said. “So, this is the plan: get your ass to Minnesota.”

“
Sir, I could help in Texas and then go to Minnesota.”

“
Listen, Agent Maximus. We exist to squash problems before they squash the pitiful little humans going about their ordinary lives unaware of the aliens on their planet. If the humans knew how precarious their situation is from day to day, how near doom they are each and every day, they sure as hell wouldn’t worry about whether their neighbor had a nicer Audi or whether their next TV should be plasma or LCD. That’s what they are supposed to be doing, going about their days without a care in the world beyond the utterly mundane. It’s our job to keep them thus oblivious. We let the humans grow at their own pace as a race until they are ready to join the Intergalactic Alliance or they destroy themselves.”

“
What does that have to do with Texas, Sir?” I asked.

“
Nothing, but it has everything to do with Minnesota. I dispatch resources to keep the dirty apes on this planet glued to
Dancing with the Stars
instead of worrying about the future, and frankly, I don’t have to explain my decisions to you. That is all, Agent Maximus.” He sniffed the air again. “Oh, and take a shower.”

I stood my ground for a second, fighting the temptation to argue, but I knew there was no sense arguing. I wouldn’t get to use the cool toys after all, and if I wasn’t careful, I’d end up in the mess hall cleaning pots instead of investigating pings. At least I got to do this next mission my way. I never liked having teammates underfoot. Then it occurred to me that maybe that’s why Johnson was sending me to Minnesota, because he knew how I hated having a teammate mess things up, get burned to a crisp, or even get smelly.

As I approached the only door in the command center, it opened extremely sluggishly. AIs can be so temperamental, I thought. I headed for the hangar to find Wendy and get the details of my assignment. I tried to look at the bright side. I wasn’t just an agent in charge. This was a solo mission! I had always thought Johnson didn’t like my methods and the way I bent the rules, but maybe he was starting to like my results. Maybe I was wrong about him.

When I came to the Hall of Remembrance, where the pictures of fallen agents decorate the walls, I found my parents’ pictures like I always did when in this part of the compound. My mother had olive skin and bright green eyes. On top of her head, where humans have hair, she had small triangular plates growing on her skin. When she wore a wig, anyone would mistake her for a beautiful human woman. My father looked entirely human—because he was. He had brown hair, like me, and piercing blue eyes that missed nothing. He was muscular but not intimidating, and his smile implicated his whole face. I brushed the top of their picture frames to make sure no dust had accumulated since my last visit. None had.