SWNOVELS Chapter Chapter Four
Military policeman Lieutenant Grier, a tall man with pale, close-set eyes and a beak of a nose, at least as far as Gel could tell through the thick coats and face coverings they both wore to keep from freezing, would have been in his element interrogating spies in Earth’s long-gone Cold War. He was deeply suspicious of Gel and his motives as well as sceptical about just how Private Hartmann came to be wounded so far behind the perimeter, three levels down.
After Hartmann had been taken away in a snowcat Gel was left with this unsympathetic individual in charge of a squad of MPs, the only ready reaction force at the base able to respond to Gel and Hartmann’s call for help from the bunker entrance.
“You were tracking cargo containers, here?” said Grier, looking around. “This is a long way from the port, Lieutenant Obsidian.”
“That’s why it was unusual to get readings for cargo containers,” said Gel, trying not to snap. “But Hartmann, the wounded private, tracked containers here. What were they doing down there? Are you able to tell me, Lieutenant?”
“Hmmm! And you came armed?”
“Just a precaution, Lieutenant,” said Gel. “A wise one as it turned out, as we were ambushed when we got down there.”
“Ambushed down there? Who’d be down there - we’re several klicks inside the perimeter.”
“I know that, Lieutenant!” This time Gel snapped. “But I was too busy being shot at to hand out questionnaires. Maybe now you guys are here with long arms we can go and look at the scene, and you can try and explain away all the bullet holes.”
Lieutenant Grier grumpily agreed to follow Gel into the bunker and even condescended to order his four person squad to keep their combat helmet visors down and weapons ready. They reached the entrance at the bottom level and the squad took up positions, rifles covering the room, scopes set to infrared.
“Can’t see anything on the scopes, sir,” said the female squad leader, Grier’s deputy. “But there are some heat spots.”
“See the holes in the wall,” said Gel. The heat signatures were clearly visible through the infrared optics on their helmet visors. “You can see they’re still warm.”
Grier grunted. “Move in cautiously squad leader.”
A few minutes later they were about where the ambushers must have been, but whoever had been shooting at them was long gone.
“Shell casings,” said the squad leader, who showed some signs of knowing what she was doing. Gel could see her holding one up on and sniffing at it. “Real hot, recently fired, sir. Lot of casings.”
Grier grunted.
“Blood!” said another squad member. “A trail, sir!”
“Did that private…,” said Grier.
“Hartmann,” said Gel.
“…Hartmann get this far?”
“No. He didn’t go beyond the wall back there.”
They followed the trail to a round hole in a back wall big enough for a soldier to get through on hands and knees.
“Look at the blood, sir,” said the squad leader, pointing to a smear. “They dragged someone wounded through here.”
“Quite a breeze coming through,” said Gel, waving his hand in front of the hole. “Don’t think it’s just a crawl space.”
“Might open out further on, sir,” said the squad leader looking through the hole with her rifle scope. “Should we follow it?”
“Well, um...,” said Grier.
“These guys might have set traps,” said Gel. “If I may suggest Lieutenant Grier, if your guys have the standard metal detector sensors, they should use those on the first few metres.”
“Good point,” conceded Grier. Sure enough they found a trip wire a short distance in, but Grier refused permission for his eager squad leader to deliberately set it off. “We dunno what it’ll do. There’s a bomb squad at Fort Bravo with equipment for this stuff.
“You didn’t see these guys?” Grier asked Gel.
“Nope, nothing on the sensors either,” said Gel. “We just fired at the flashes. But they must have come from the Hoodie side of the perimeter. That’s a long way to come, underground, to take shots at me and Hartmann. And where are my containers?”
“I saw something back here, sir,” said the squad leader. She lead him back to a concrete pillar near the ambush site, and picked up two metal objects.
“These are the casings that hold tracking chips on containers,” said Gel. They turned on their suit lights to search the floor.
“Boot marks from your friends but no sign that containers were here,” said the squad leader.
“It’s a mystery,” said Gel. “I seem to be getting a lot of those lately.”
***
After dropping the weapons into the harbour, Gel led Yvonne out through another point in the fence where the slope on the embankment was manageable and the wire could be pushed to one side. As they walked away calmly, Yvonne holding her high heels, Gel looked back.
“Cops caught up with our friends. They’ve even got aerial support. They’ll be glad we ditched their hardware. With no victim and no weapons to explain, Cops ’ll have to let them go.”
“So that’s why we came here,” said Yvonne, as they emerged on the road skirting the harbour which included a tiny strip of auto-vendor shops. “You live around here, I believe. That’s why you knew about those derelict wharfs.”
“My apartment is just a block up. You can order a taxi or a self-drive from there - the Eye knows where I live?”
“We have a file on you which pre-dates you joining the Salts,” said Yvonne, cheerfully as they walked. “Your family is rich enough to be of interest anywhere in the Imperium but there wasn’t much in it. Apart from your school and degrees and a drunk charge that was dropped, there was just the stuff about the Infantry Cross and how you refused interviews.”
“Publicity annoys me. People read those stories and then want to talk to me about it.”
“There was so little information,” said Yvonne, “I did some discreet shadowing to add to it, saw you with that really hot girl then followed her to that apartment building. Am I right in thinking she both lives and receives clients there?”
“I was a client there for a while myself, then I helped get her mum out of trouble and my status changed.”
“Helps if you’re useful in a crisis,” said Yvonne. “Where is she tonight?”
“Working right through,” said Gel.
“Meaning she’s having sex with other guys for money.”
“That’s right, if you must point that out.”
“Seems a strange arrangement,” said Yvonne. “You could do real well for yourself without her. She knows your last name is Obsidian?”
“Oh yes, and she knows I’ve been disinherited.”
“Any girl couldn’t help thinking you might be re-inherited.”
“Maybe, but I’m not about to discuss my personal life in detail with representatives of the Eye,” said Gel, sharply. “Of much more interest to me is that our recent friends tried to snatch you off a busy street – and they seemed to know what they were doing.”
“Fair enough,” said Yvonne, “and thank you, by the way.”
“Did you know those guys?”
“No. I’m not even sure who they’re working for or why they’d take an interest in me. There have been indications of a new kid on the block, but we’re still in the dark about who or what that new kid might be. Maybe they tracked me through that card I gave you which your friend might have seen, but it seems like a lot of trouble and a drastic step to take. Why snatch me? Do you know anything about who she works for?”
Gel thought about this for a moment then shrugged. “Been curious about that myself but any questions I ask get deflected.”
“Maybe you could look around when you’re next at her place?”
“I’m a soldier,” said Gel. “I didn’t train for the cloak and dagger stuff.”
“You did pretty well with a van load of my not-friends,” said Yvonne smiling. “I think they were impressed. Once the police let them go, assuming they don’t say anything stupid, they’ll start trying to work out who you are. They might find this address and come here and want to talk to you again on more favourable terms. You may want to think about shifting.”
By that time, the pair had reached the apartment block’s security entrance.
“I’ve already had callers wishing me harm,” said Gel. “It may not look it but there’s plenty of security here. What about you? When did your non-friends start following you?”
“Just after I left home, now that I think of it. I’ll have to cut our intimate evening short and go home to move, before the police get tired of them. This is going to puzzle my daughter.”
“You have a daughter?”
“Oh yes, she’s at a sleep over tonight but she was part of the reason I opted to serve the Eye in what I thought would be a backwater where I’d file reports about anti-Imperium agitators and suspect senators, not mix it with snatch teams. All the Eye’s usual opponents are on the other side of the Imperium.”
“The Destroyers we ran into on Outpost-3 were also way out of place,” said Gel.
“That’s right,” said Yvonne, “and that’s one of the major reasons I wanted to talk, that and Jerrold - any detail not in the official reports.”
They walked into Gel’s apartment.
“Not bad,” said Yvonne judiciously. “Been a while since I’ve been in a man’s apartment. The neighbourhood’s not the best but you’ve got plenty of space here. Is your boarder around?
“Sometimes he brings a girl home, sometimes he stays out. Either way, I don’t expect to see him until later. We’ll order in and you can ask me these questions.”
“Dinner with a man,” said Yvonne, smiling, “even if it is takeout, and I have to dash afterwards. That also hasn’t happened for a while.”
***
Colonel Lee was puzzled by Gel’s report.
“No containers, just container tracking chips?” she said.
“Yes ma’am, and an ambush. Those guys were waiting for us. They’d had some training, fortunately not enough to stop them firing too high or wasting ammunition.”
“Hmmm,” said the colonel. “Sounds about right for those guys. That private you had with you took one in the leg?”
“Just going to check on him now, ma’am, but I don’t believe it’s serious enough to ship him back to Lighthold.”
“He may have mixed feelings about that,” said the Colonel, “it’s a lot warmer at Lighthold. But what I don’t get is that this is a lot of trouble to go to just to set up an ambush for you two, and they’ve tipped their hand. The MPs tell me they’ve sent probes through that hole, and it opens up into a gallery which connects to the underground parts of Jasper. It would have been one way for the Hoodies to get in behind our lines and create real problems, but it’s an even better way for us to move troops into the bottom levels of the city.”
“Easy to block at a chokepoint, ma’am,” said Gel.
“Maybe,” said Colonel Lee, but it’s worth keeping in mind if and when I get more bodies to do anything. In the meantime, are we any closer to working out where the arms are coming from?”
“There’s one lead on a suspect container but it’s too early to report, ma’am.”
“Very well,” said the colonel, “the sooner the better with any results.”
“Of course, ma’am,” said Gel.
At the hospital, Gel encountered Alyssa and Flight Lieutenant Brigit Nilsen, whom he had last seen at her marriage to a staff officer back on Lighthold. Before that Flight Lieutenant Nilsen had shared many of Gel and Alyssa’s adventures on Outpost-3. They embraced.
“Can you be seen hugging a friend now that you’re a respectable married woman?” asked Gel.
“I told you before,” said Nilsen. “Getting mixed up in the fighting on the ground with the Salts was my social ruin in the flight arm, so it doesn’t matter. Alyssa was just complaining, again, how you didn’t bring that girl of yours to my wedding.”
“She was working that day,” said Gel. That meant she was having sex with other guys for money, but he was not about to say that.
“On a Saturday, and couldn’t even come to the after party,” said Alyssa, glaring at him. “Seems strange”.
“Have you ever known anything about me to be straightforward,” said Gel.
“That’s true,” she said.
“We’ll catch you later,” said Nilsen. “We’ve just been to see Hartmann and he has another visitor.”
The other visitor proved to be Squad Leader Grace Addison, sitting by Hartmann’s hospital bed. The private was lying on top of the bed clothes his leg up on pillows, impressively swathed in bandages.
“All is going well at the docks, I hope, squad leader,” said Gel.
“Oh yes, sir,” she said, standing. “I’ve just finished here, and I’ll go and check now. All cargoes in both directions had been cleared.”
Since the confrontation between Gel and the dock workers there had been no trouble, not even from the giant Staff Sergeant Bradley.
Addison left with a wave and a “bye” to Hartmann, who punched the air and exclaimed “yes!” after she left.
“Date?” asked Gel.
“Drinks in the main bar, after her shift tonight.”
“If you get as far as drinks you can parlay it into dinner,” said Gel. “Keep it casual ‘while we’re here’ sort of thing and go to the restaurant they have here, not the dining hall.”
“Restaurant, not dining hall,” said Hartmann listening.
“Maybe even a little wine, but don’t try to go more than a step or so up from the house wine. Don’t overwhelm.”
“Don’t overwhelm,” said Hartmann
“When the bill comes, pay like a gentleman unless she insists on splitting, but don’t expect anything. As you’ll still be on crutches even walking her back to her room, as you should, won’t really be on the agenda, and she’ll understand that. But you can always arrange to call her again.”
“Call again, gotit,” said Hartmann.
“Anyway, it seems taking one in the leg has advantages,” said Gel.
“Way worse than being blown up, sir,” said Hartmann, “But the sympathy afterwards is a lot better. I said I got shot while exchanging fire, rather than running up the stairs, if that’s alright.”
“I can cover,” said Gel.
“What she wanted to know, and I’m kinda curious about myself, is how come we got shot at two floors down?”
Gel told them what he had found out. “What I didn’t tell the colonel is the obvious point that the container tracking panels were left there deliberately, and those guys must have been waiting for us.”
“Specifically, for us?” said Hartman. “But how did they know we’d be there? We didn’t even know we’d be there until we were there.”
Captain Barastoc came in at that moment.
“I hear you got my guy shot up,” he said to Gel, lightly. “Hartmann wanders away from his screen for a few seconds and takes a bullet.”
“We figured we ran into a Hoodie attempt to infiltrate the perimeter from that bunker Hartmann found – a one in a million shot but a fortunate one. The tracking units must have been left over from some earlier time.” Hartmann looked at Gel sharply, but kept his mouth shut. “As it is the hole is now watched and Hartmann is so taken with the glory of having incurred an honourable wound in beating off a Hoodie assault, he’s even asking women on dates.”
“Hartmann, for star’s sake, you want to take it one step at a time,” said Barastoc with mock exasperation. “First defeat a couple more Hoodie ambushes; win a lottery, then think about saying hi to a woman you’ve known for years as you pass her in the corridor.”
“I’ll try to remember that sir,” said Hartmann, smiling.
They talked for a while, then Barastoc said he had to get back to actual work and left.
“Was it a one in a million shot we found those Hoodies?” said Hartmann quietly, after Barastoc had left.
“Nope,” said Gel. “Like I said, I’m pretty sure they were waiting for us, but the co-incidence thing makes a good cover story to spread around the base. I have a few jobs for you to do on the quiet when you get back to your desk, if you feel up to it.”
“I’ve come this far, sir,” said Hartmann. “I might even get a second date.”
***
While still at officer training on Lighthold Gel arranged to take Athena/Heather for a harbour cruise in a private boat he had rented, only for Athena to bring three other workers from her building to the dock. These were elegant escort and synth Helena, Latin type Carmen and Asian-dream Annie.
“Ladies!” said Gel. “You’re all coming on the boat?”
“They all wanted to come,” said Heather kissing him. “None of us have been getting out much of late and you said the boat is a big one.”
“It is big enough for us all,” said Gel, “but it’s a bit old – it doesn’t have the elegance to go with the way you ladies look.”
They giggled.
“If it keeps afloat, we’ll survive,” said Carmen.
“If you all come, I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep tonight,” Gel said
Athena reached up and whispered, “I’ll make sure you’ll be able to sleep.” Then kissed him on the cheek. This was unusually demonstrative for her, but she was marking her territory, particularly for the benefit of Annie who, she suspected, had Gel in her sights.
The boat was a spacious if elderly cruiser, with a large after deck and a single cabin. The bridge was on top of that cabin with an awning to keep the sun off the helmsman.
Fortunately for Gel’s peace of mind the weather had turned cold so there would be no swim suits but, as they all wanted a turn at piloting the boat, he got to talk to each one as they stood at the steering station, wearing a captain’s hat Gel had brought along.
“Sorry about the crowd,” said Athena/Heather when she took the first turn. “It would have been mean to say no.”
“Doesn’t bother me,” said Gel. “Very high standard where you work – although we’ll attract a lot of attention at the lunch place.”
Athena giggled. “I’ll tell them you said that.”
“More seriously though, they’re all so good looking – Helena rivals you in looks and Annie and Carmen are not far behind at all that I can’t help wonder about the place you work.”
It had occurred to Gel how he might ask questions along the lines suggested by Yvonne without raising Athena’s suspicions.
“It’s just a business,” said Athena, lightly, although Gel suspected that her response concealed a wariness.
“You and the others are obviously top drawer – tip-top drawer – working out of the same building and when we first met you said there were people who would come if I caused trouble. It seems to me that whoever is behind this are seriously organised. I mean do you have any idea who they are? Is it some sort of crime organisation thing?”
“Don’t think it’s anything to do with crime,” said Athena, carefully. “The operation’s not illegal – at least that’s what I was told.”
“If they have all the permits, it’s not illegal,” said Gel, “and they seem to have it arranged so that no-one notices much. I mean its appointment only, right? You can’t just walk in.”
Athena shook her head. “No one off the streets. Conditions are good and the pay is great. A couple more years on my back and I’ll have choices in my life and that’s what I’m aiming for. I tried asking questions once, and the woman I asked said she didn’t know either and her boss frightened her. That was all she would say.”
“Not so good that the boss frightens her,” said Gel, but changed subjects to Athena’s relief.
When Carmen took her turn at the helm, surprisingly, she wanted to talk about politics. She and Gel had a spirited discussion about the Chancellor in power on Lighthold at the time. Carmen did not care for him, Gel thought that he was doing a reasonable job. Incautiously he told her that his mother had wanted him to go into politics and that impressed her to the point of distracting her when they were close to a sailboat.
“You could have gone to the senate here?” asked Carmen, turning her head to look at Gel. The soldier grabbed the wheel and pushed it so that they avoided a collision. The youthful captain of the sailboat glared at them as they went past, then his glare turned to round eyed astonishment as he saw the passengers. “That would have been something.”
“If you’re into politics, sure,” said Gel. “I pay attention but I’m not that into it. Meetings bore me and I detest the horse trading that goes with the job. I prefer being a soldier. My mother even wanted me to go to the Imperial Senate…”
“Far out – you’re kidding!” said Carmen forgetting about the wheel altogether, forcing Gel to grab it. “With that fiancée of yours?”
“Ex – fiancée and sure, she was way more interested in the job than I was. She wanted to strut her stuff on the Imperial stage and thought of me as some sort of puppet and mouthpiece. I didn’t want to be a puppet.”
“What happened to her?”
“Last I heard she was going to marry someone else – I sort of know the guy she’s going to marry, and he’s got money too. He can deal with her.”
“The Imperial Senate,” said Carmen turning back to the wheel, “I’d put up with a lot for a shot at the senate.”
Annie, during her turn, talked about assets and money.
“Guess you would have owned your own boat, before you joined the army,” she said, flicking back her dark hair and smiling at Gel – actions which Athena noted from her vantage point in the stern.
“My dad had a yacht, quite a big one, but I wasn’t into it. I prefer an engine to get where I’m going. When I really wanted to go places I took my skycar.”
“Get out! You had a Skycar?” exclaimed Annie. These were car-sized versions of the transporters used by the military. Like the military transports they did not have the noise whirling blades and downdraft of the old helicopters so they could be used anywhere, even for city commuting. But they used lift crystals and that meant they were expensive.
“It was actually owned by the family trust, so I lost it along with everything else,” said Gel hurriedly, realising he had been incautious again. At least, he thought later, he had not mentioned the Bugatti which had been in his name before he sold it. Annie becoming interested because he admitted to owning a skycar opened up intriguing possibilities, he had to admit, but there would be complications with Athena and he did not want complications.
“That’s a shame,” Annie said, smiling, “you could have taken us out in a skycar. I’ve never been in one of those.”
In her turn to perch the captain’s hat on her blonde curls, Helena had more serious conversation to make.
“Athena said you were surprised to hear I had a son,” she said.
“Surprised certainly, but I didn’t say anything.”
“I know and thanks.”
“He would be adopted, of course,” said Gel. “Your employers must have set it up. They sound like capable guys. What about the woman who is supposed to be your mother? Where did she come from?”
“Someone my employers found. I pay her. It was a condition of my coming here that I be allowed to raise a child and live a life like a human.”
“Must be hard to keep it up, even if you’re very difficult to detect. Can you eat food like humans?”
“Oh yes,” she said. “That’s the way the new generation gets their energy, from eating just like humans. The digestion and stomach systems are simplified but quite effective. I can even taste food – I don’t have a big taste range, but it’s enough to fake the rest.”
“No need for batteries or recharging and you eat and, I guess, excrete, like a human. I’m really impressed. The full bio model.”
She smiled. “I’d be detected the moment a doctor looks at me of course, which brings me to something I’ve been meaning to ask you. I even asked to tag along so I could talk to you. There is another like me who needs to be looked at by someone who knows about Synths but it can’t be official.”
“Another one of you,” said Gel, “this seems alarming. How in all of Lighthold did she get out here without it being official? Is this another import by your employers?”
“Not them. I told her about living here – way less paperwork and checks than on Earth - and she decided to do it too. But didn’t want to do the sex thing when she got here. I’m amazed that she managed it, but somehow she did. She was in a box that turned up out of the blue at my son’s place all systems shut down for the journey. There was a letter explaining it all and saying how to reboot her, but I wasn’t able to do it right.”
“Hmmm! It’s not illegal to administer fix-it services to Synths, and it doesn’t have to be reported,” said Gel. “But taking your friend to any of the recognised places would cause problems, I guess. They’d want to contact her makers.”
“Exactly,” said Helena. “Then it’d all be for nothing.”
“There may be a place. The Synth I grew up with …”
“You grew up with a Synth?” said Helena.
“Sure, the family butler Stebbins. That’s how I spotted you so quick. He’s a friend of mine. There was an incident a few years back when it proved convenient to take another Synth who worked around the estate to a place where they asked fewer questions. I can always ask him.”
“Would you?” She smiled at him. The smile would turn any man into her slave.
“Of course, in return for one tiny favour,” he said. He saw an opportunity to do some information trading with Imperial Intelligence.
“Oh well,” said Helena coquettishly, “you can always ask.”
“The people who run your building; you can repay the favour by telling me what you know about them?”
Her smile vanished. “I met the boss’s boss once,” she said after a pause. “I deal with a woman manager, but I came in once when he was there. He wore a hood but I saw his eyes and they seemed to glow yellow.”
“Yellow?” said Gel thinking of Dr Evil and Jerrold on Outpost-3.
“Like he had some sort of disease,” she said. “When he stood up he was tall and thin, then he was gone. I haven’t seen anyone else, and the woman in charge told me that if I wanted to stay healthy don’t ask questions, so I don’t. That’s all I know.”
“Guess it’s not so surprising that your friend doesn’t want to work at your place?” said Gel. “The place has hidden depths.”
“She doesn’t care what I do,” said Helena, “but she wants a relationship. They talk about love all the time in films and dramas and she wants to try it. I’m not sure it’s possible for Synths but she’s still going to try. You’ve been in love, haven’t you – in relationships.”
“Me?” said Gel, startled by the sudden change in topic. “Sure, leaving Athena aside twice for real and both times the girl was interested in other things.”
“Twice?” said Helena. “Once was that fiancée of yours who cheated.”
“Yep,” said Gel. “The other time was a girlfriend I had at university who took the money my mother gave her to dump me, without blinking.”
“Really?” said Helena. “Your mother bought her off, like in one of those costume dramas.”
“Yep, ready to take her call and negotiate a price, my mother said.”
“You two have been having an intense conversation,” said Athena who had come onto the bridge while they had been talking.
“Oh sure,” said Gel putting an arm around Athena’s waist. “I’ve discovered Helena’s deepest, darkest secret.”
Helena shot a horrified glance at Gel.
“What secret?” said Athena.
“That she’s a romantic at heart,” he said.
Athena’s look of horror relaxed into one of bemused exasperation.
“That’s not a secret,” said Athena smiling. “We all knew that.”
“Couldn’t help myself,” Gel later told Athena quietly. “Anyway, being teased is part of the human condition.”
***
The grossly fat man sat back in his tattered, worn black chair.
“You’ve seen the reports from Lighthold?” he asked his deputy. “What are we going to do?”
“It is a matter of concern,” the deputy admitted. He was well groomed, wore the latest business fashions and, as far as the world was concerned, was the head of Imperial Intelligence, otherwise known as The Eye. Very few knew that he was, in fact, the deputy head who conferred with his boss by going though a back door in his state-of-the-art office then down two flights to sit in the fat man’s dusty, tattered lair.
“Not only have these Gagrim set themselves up on Dimarch to the point of the whole place sliding into a nasty civil war,” said the fat man, “but they evidently have agents and some sort of organisation on Lighthold, one of our best border settlements. It’s not just a matter of concern, it’s a potential crisis and one the Eye has to nip in the bud.”
“Move assets to Lighthold?” suggested the deputy.
“This Yvonne has done well,” said the fat man, “but she was also fortunate in that the person she was making contact with, Gellibrand Obsidian, proved capable in the field.”
“He seems to have talent for this work,” said the deputy, “should we try to recruit him for starters?”
The fat man shook his head.
“We can consider him a fellow traveller and perhaps someone we can trust where the interests of the Imperium and Lighthold coincide but he’s a soldier not an agent, and too high profile. Yvonne should keep in contact with him. What other assets do we have there?”
“Two besides Yvonne and Addanc,” said the deputy consulting a list on a tablet he carried, “both on watching briefs. This has been the first sign of any actual danger in this posting.”
“Another six field agents with tech support,” said the fat man after a moment’s consideration. “As it can be difficult to get agents to relocate mid-career maybe take two from the academy and get the local Imperial office busy acquiring the equipment they will need.”
“I’ll get onto it at once,” said the deputy standing up.