“If you’d told me we were meeting,
I’d have got here sooner.”
“If I’d told you, you wouldn’t
have come.”
“Now you’ll never know.”
I’d lodged that flight plan
before Jase had ended up in jail after a drunken bar fight. It was an
unfortunate case of a gas miner’s wife not being completely truthful about her
marital status with my oversexed copilot. Jase had spent two days on ice while
I bribed various officials to get him released. The bribe was coming out of his
cut, of course, as were the miner’s medical bills. For Lena to have known my
intentions, her people must have been watching me and used a fast ship to report
my flight plan.
She slipped into a chair while I
remained defiantly standing. “Sit down, Sirius.”
Whatever she was after was
important enough to commandeer a navy frigate to meet me where no one would
know I’d had contact with her or the navy. Giving me a choice was clearly not
part of her plan, so I took my seat. She leaned forward slowly, giving me her
spooky psionic-prober look and reached into the depths of my mind, assessing if
I was still up to it. It wasn’t a natural ability, it was engineered, but you
needed genuine aptitude for the modding – something very few humans had.
I stared into her large brown
eyes, feeling nothing, keeping my emotions calm to make her job easier and get
the psychic dissection over with as fast as possible. While we were both
genetically modified, it was in our specialties that we differed. She’d gone
mega-psi, a very rare choice that involved getting your brain rewired for
transcendent mental powers. Most people went eye-hand and became weapons
experts and field agents. A few – like me – went ultra-reflex, ideal for deep
cover work because even without weapons, you were always armed and deadly.
If your modding took and you were
top one percent, you were threaded – implanted from head to toe with bionetic
filaments. The catch was you had to volunteer without knowing what you were
volunteering for. It had to be that way to preserve the secrecy. You were given
a spiel about joining an elite program, about doing your duty and serving in a
way very few humans ever could, but you never really knew what you were getting
into. After the implant surgery, months of physical rehabilitation followed,
during which time they trained your mind to blend with the threading, to use
its sensory inputs and to allow it to guide you instantly and without
hesitation.
While I was purpose built for
deep cover work, the mega-psi types like Lena became probers, able to extract
secrets telepathically. A few probers became subverters, gaining the ability to
persuade people to work for the Earth Intelligence Service – even against their
will – while the really high functioning evolutionary freaks became breakers.
Supposedly, a breaker could shatter a target’s sanity with a thought, but they
were rare – exceedingly rare. The rumor was there were only four, but you never
knew who they were. Lena claimed to be a subverter – not a breaker – although I
had my suspicions. Her EIS security clearance was inexplicably high, but it was
not something we ever discussed.
Presently, she drew a deep breath
and relaxed, giving me an approving look. I guessed that meant I’d passed.
“Does the navy know who you are?”
I asked.
“They know I’m in charge. That’s all
they need to know.”
The entire crew would be
speculating that an Earth Intelligence Service officer was aboard. The EIS were
the only people who could give the navy orders and EIS officers were always
civilians, which made it easy for navy crews to identify them, although such whispers
were never discussed outside the ship. It had been drilled into the military
relentlessly that their highest duty was the preservation of secrecy, even before
the safety of the ship.
It was an essential, mutually
beneficial partnership. The EIS investigated, infiltrated, sometimes
eliminated, and if necessary, called in the Earth Navy to enforce. Mercy was never
a factor.
“Do they know who I am, or why
I’m here?”
“The crew knows nothing, not even
the captain.”
I nodded towards the Tactical
Warfare Center beyond the hatch. “They’ve seen my ship.”
“There’ll be no record of the
Nassau
intercepting your vessel, or even
coming to this location, and the officers who scanned your ship will say
nothing.”
No leaks? That could mean only
one thing. “It’s an all Union crew?”
Lena nodded.
That explained a lot. The navy
might have been under the control of Earth Council, which represented the four distinct
Earth civilizations, but the reality was the Democratic Union –who paid most of
the costs – didn’t fully trust its three ‘allies’. When the EIS or the Union
wanted something done without their three partners knowing about it, they used
one of the few ships secretly crewed by only Union citizens. For Lena to have
commandeered one of those ships meant her mission was top tier.
“That explains the URA’s presence.”
The Democratic Union’s Regular Army provided combat forces when required, but
the navy normally handled its own security. The only reason Lena had brought
URA troopers with her was because their genetic engineering made them almost
unbreakable.
“I couldn’t trust your biomap to
anyone else. The colonel is the only person who knows your name, and no one
will ever get anything out of him. Only I know you used to be EIS.”
Everyone sworn to secrecy, just
like old times. “Are you going to subvert me, to force me back in?”
“No. You’re going to volunteer.”
“Am I?” I laughed. “Do I look
crazy to you?” I’d had fourteen years of sneaking around in the shadows, of
hunting down and eradicating mankind’s maddest. That was enough. I’d left the
service for the freedom I’d had growing up on my father’s ship, when my brother
and I had learnt from the best, before we’d gone our very different ways. I’d
come out here hoping for a chance to find my brother, before the navy killed
him, but that had become a forlorn hope. No one knew where he was, not even the
EIS. I may have lost him, but I’d found my way, and I liked it. “I’ve got a
life now, a real life.”
“That’s why you’re so valuable to
us. To me. You may not be on the payroll any more, Sirius, but I just confirmed
you’re as committed as ever.”
“Maybe your spooky radar’s a
little off, Lena, because I don’t feel like I belong to you or the service
anymore.”
“It’s not about the service. If
you found someone about to violate the Access Treaty and put at risk our entire
civilization, would you allow it? Or would you eliminate the risk?”
“That sounds like a subverter
question.”
“Not at all.”
“You forget, I’ve seen you work.”
“I forget nothing, ever,” she
said meaningfully, reminding me that eidetic memory was an integral part of
mega-psi reengineering. “And I’m not subverting you. Just answer the question
honestly.”
“I’m a creature of habit,” I said,
avoiding and answering the question at the same time.
She smiled, already certain from
her probing that I wouldn’t hesitate. “You don’t get recruited unless that’s
true.”
“So why me? You have lots of
people out here. Good people.”
“We do, but none like you. You’re
known out here as a trader, a businessman, maybe even a smuggler. Sirius Kade,
captain of the
Silver Lining
, and a
man with a foot on both sides of the law. You have a reputation and access to
people we can’t approach without raising suspicion. Your father was a trader. You
and your brother grew up on his ship. You’re one of them, one of the people out
here – even though we both know you’re not.”
“They hate my brother. That’s got
to count against me.” I hadn’t seen him in twenty years, didn’t even know if he
was alive or dead, but I knew people wondered if we were the same.
“They fear your brother, but he’s
part of your cover. One very bad brother, one . . . not so bad brother, and a
father many respected before he was killed. Your ‘real life’, as you call it,
is the best kind of cover for a deep cover agent.”
“And there’s the problem. What
you do, what we did, that’s the past. There’s no room in my life for that anymore.”
“Consider it a contract – a well
paying contract. We really don’t mind treating you like a mercenary. We only
care about results. You know that.”
“And of course, money is no
object.”
She grinned. “Pick a number, as
high as you like.”
Damn, she really was desperate. “It’s
that serious?”
“That’s why we need you. We need
someone who is believable and who can do what’s required.”
If the Earth Intelligence Service
was writing blank checks, then it was the real deal – an Access Treaty
violation. The whole purpose for the existence of the EIS and the navy was to
ensure there were no more Treaty violations, ensuring nothing would stop Human
Civilization’s second attempt to gain Forum membership – what amounted to
Galactic Citizenship. It was a near impossible job with the scum of mankind
scattered across several thousand light years, far from the watchful eyes of
the four Earth collective-governments. They had formed out of the old nation
states of Earth along cultural and philosophical grounds and still wielded most
of humanity’s economic and military power. Individually, they were each larger
than most off world colonies combined and, as the Earth Council, they spoke for
Human Civilization. Even though billions of humans had spread through Mapped
Space, the vast majority of mankind still lived on Earth. It was why our
ancient homeworld continued to call the shots and would do so for a long time
to come.
The navy and the EIS – both
created by the Earth Council – were the only truly unified expressions of
mankind’s will, of Earth’s will. Both organizations were dominated by the Democratic
Union, the largest of Earth’s great power blocs spanning Europe, the Americas,
Australasia and parts of east Asia. I was born in Mawson City, Antarctica, which
made me a Union citizen even though I’d spent less than three years of my life
on Earth. That birthright put me on the most trusted list, while Lena’s psionic
powers elevated me to the top.
She waited for my answer, fixing
me with a perceptive gaze that made me feel as if she was boring into my soul.
I sighed. “OK.” Simple as that. There
were no contracts to sign, no hedging my bets, no way out. She was desperate
and I was back in – for one last mission.
A hint of relief appeared on her
face, revealing she hadn’t been as confident that I’d help her as she’d seemed.
“My crew can’t know?”
“Absolutely not,” she said,
leaning towards me. “Neither can the girl.”
There was no female member of my
crew, but I knew who she meant. “She knows nothing about my past.”
“You never used to have a
weakness, Sirius,” Lena said. “You do now.”
“Did your probing tell you that?”
She nodded. “She’s all over your
psyche like a flashing light.”
“She’s not my only weakness. I
also can’t swim,” I added lightly.
“Good thing there’s no swimming
on this mission,” Lena said. “Suppose she gets in the way?”
“Marie’s over a hundred light
years away. She won’t be a factor.” Marie Dulon had taken her ship to the
Kazaris Belt to extract as many credits as she could from a bunch of hard
working miners. She wouldn’t be back for weeks.
“I hope you’re right,” Lena said
doubtfully.
“What about my threading?” The
bionetic technology implanted throughout my body had been deactivated the day I
left the service. They couldn’t reverse the genetic engineering, because the
human body can only stand so much modding, but the implanted tech was different.
They switched it off and locked it down the day I left. I’d missed it at first,
but as the years passed, I’d almost forgotten what I’d lost.
“You’ll need it.”
“So how do we do this?”
Lena held out her hand.
“That simple?”
She nodded.
For a moment, I wondered if I
really wanted my senses to be boosted again, to have my mind flooded with a
situational awareness as far beyond the norm as sight was from blindness. It
had taken me a long time to get used to not having it, and now I’d have it back
– at least for a while. When the mission was over, I’d have to readjust to
losing it all over again, but it was already too late to pull out, so I took
her hand. A mere touch was enough to connect our nerve endings and allow her
active tech to talk to my long dormant threading. In the blink of an eye, she
passed a code through my nervous system into the bionetic threads running
through every bone in my body, filaments that because of their biological
nature were undetectable to any known human science. Suddenly, signals I’d not
seen in eight years appeared in my mind, jarring me back into a long lost
sensory reality, telling me about my environment – what was in it, who was in
it – information I’d never have noticed without the threading.
I’d barely begun to process the
new awareness when a flood of information poured from Lena’s threading to mine.
When I left the service, my bionetic memory had been wiped clean. Now she gave
it all back to me, updated for the years I’d been away; DNA patterns for every
known human criminal and for thousands of alien species; EIS and navy
authorization codes; technical specs on all kinds of useful and nasty devices;
contact and informant lists; recognition signals for every EIS agent and station;
and diplomatic codes all the way to ambassadorial level for hailing alien ships
and even Galactic Forum Observers.