Authors: Bennett R. Coles
He felt a distinct satisfaction knowing that its fate was in his hands.
Emmes didn’t slow her pace to stare, and it was only the fact that she was weighed down by a luggage cart that Kete could easily catch up to her. No less than three porters hurried over to assist her, and she was increasingly caustic in her response to each of them.
She was more than halfway across the cathedral-like hall before Chuck Merriman intercepted her.
“Miss Katja,” Chuck was saying as Kete approached. “A moment of your time, please.”
She tried to ignore him, but he subtly stopped the forward motion of her cart and smiled as he towered over her. Kete caught up, but she didn’t even glance his way.
“Mr. Merriman,” she said, “you are a persistent man.”
“In this case I think I’m just lucky,” he said smoothly. “I had no idea you were passing through the skyport, and I realize you probably just want to get home, but could we arrange for that follow-on interview we’ve discussed?”
She glanced around furtively. The crowds slowly moved past them like molasses, and with her laden cart she had limited options. Then, to Kete’s surprise, she smiled.
“Why don’t you ask me your questions right now?” she suggested. “I’m going on leave, and I won’t want to think about the Astral Force once I get home.”
Chuck nodded. “It would be my pleasure, thank you.” He glanced around the hall. “Kit, do you think that arctic biome would be a good backdrop?”
It took a moment for Kete to realize Chuck was speaking to him. Recovering quickly, he surveyed the sparkling ice and pale rocks pressing against their retaining wall.
“Yes, I’d say so.”
Emmes seemed to notice him for the first time. “You remember my cameraman, Kit Moro?” Chuck gestured to him with one hand, and took her cart with the other.
She stared at him strangely with her dark eyes, then turned away. Chuck tried his best to engage her in disarming conversation as they all made their way toward the frigid backdrop, and Kete had to admit he was vaguely successful. At least she stopped frowning.
Chuck got her positioned with expert ease, her dark-blue uniform and blonde hair standing out brilliantly against the pale, dramatic background. Kete donned his “camera” visor and stood so he could capture her in quarter profile, then Chuck took station next to him to give her a focal point just off-camera.
On Chuck’s command, they began.
Emmes was wooden at first, but slowly began to relax under Chuck’s friendly, encouraging barrage. Kete kept his stare focused on her, but subtly shifted his attention to probing her military ID. It was rare to be this close to a member of the military for an extended period of time, and if he could break down at least some of the encryption of her device, it might prove invaluable later on.
The coding was complex, but there were ultimately only so many different ways to mask a signal, and his previous work on Breeze’s ID had already eliminated certain alternatives. He allowed his semiconscious to compare the two, and four groupings emerged quickly, as well as a few outliers that he noted but set aside for later. The first group was—
“Stop filming.”
Kete broke off his thought-web and realized that Emmes was staring at him. He glanced at Chuck, whose eyebrows were raised in mild surprise.
“I’m sorry?” Chuck queried.
Emmes looked back and forth between them.
“Stop filming,” she said firmly. “It’s making me uncomfortable. That will have to be enough.”
Chuck tossed Kete a quick glance, and he shrugged. Then the reporter frowned.
“I think we have enough visuals of you, Miss Katja,” he said, “but I really need a bit more substance.” She made to protest, but he raised placating hands. “We won’t film, I promise—I’ll just record it with my Baryon. I can drop the audio over some stock footage. If I can just ask a few more questions, then I won’t have to bother you again.”
She stared at him for a moment, and Kete was sure she was going to say no. To his surprise, she nodded.
He made a show of lowering his eyes to the floor so that it was obvious he wasn’t filming, and Chuck picked up the interview where they had left off. Emmes needed a few moments to regain her composure, but she carried on quickly enough.
Kete kept his eyes down and re-engaged his thought-web, focusing on gathering as much data as he could from her ID beacon, and saving it for later analysis. Much of what he recorded would prove irrelevant, but he knew time was short, and he didn’t have the luxury of identifying the information he needed to break the encryption.
He saw her foot move toward him. His arm swung up instinctively and slammed into her wrist, barely knocking aside the fist that was aimed at his face. She crouched into a combat stance, dark eyes wide in a mixture of shock and aggression.
Kete realized he’d dropped into a defensive stance of his own, and he quickly stepped back, hands raised in a purposeful display of amateurish defense.
“Whoa! What the hell’s going on?” Chuck stepped back and held up his arm.
“I said no filming,” she hissed. Emmes’s stare burned into Kete. He gestured in confusion, keeping silent to minimize his presence.
“Lieutenant, no one was filming.” Chuck stepped partly between them. “I was just recording the audio on my Baryon. I can assure you, we’re respecting your wishes.”
Confusion mixed into her glare, diluting her anger with doubt. She relaxed her stance, took a deep, heavy breath and stared at the floor.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m very tired and I have to go home. I assume you have enough material that you won’t bother me again?”
Chuck nodded. “Yes. Thank you very much, Miss Katja.”
She again took control of her luggage cart and started for the exit. Her tiny form was quickly lost in the crowds.
Kete straightened his shirt as Chuck sidled up to him.
“You okay?” the reporter asked.
“Yeah.”
“I assume she hit you first?”
“What?”
Chuck eyed him curiously. “Honestly, it happened so fast, I don’t know what you guys just did. One second she’s answering my question, the next limbs are flying, and you two squared off.”
Kete gave his best look of ignorance. “I have no idea,” he said. “She just took a shot at me, and I blocked it, thank goodness.”
“That was a pretty nifty move.”
He shrugged. “I travel a lot.”
Chuck snorted derisively. “You hang out in hellholes a lot, you mean. Remind me to bring you along the next time I have to interview a drug lord.”
He forced himself to laugh. “No thanks.”
Chuck’s gaze wandered to where Emmes had disappeared into the crowd. “She’s an interesting lady, that’s for sure.”
Kete nodded. “She certainly is.”
You have no idea, you poor, ignorant Terran
, he added silently.
She is very interesting indeed.
Thomas knelt down, pressing his hand into the soft, warm grass, and smiled. It was still moist at the roots—the irrigation system worked with remarkable efficiency—and so green. Not like the yellow scrub in the playgrounds in his parents’ neighborhood. He reckoned this was even nicer than the playing fields at the Astral College.
But then, this was the first grass he could truly call his own, so no doubt he was biased.
The sound of rustling footsteps caught his ear, and a pair of small feet moved into his view, jeweled toes scrunching into the lawn. He glanced up at his wife, resplendent in her light, summer wrap and dazzling jewelry. Soma’s eyes shone with excitement as she crouched down beside him.
“The grass is perfect, darling,” she said, mocking him playfully. “Everyone’s going to be very impressed.”
Thomas smiled. “I thought the pond was meant to impress.”
“Oh, yes, but people don’t stand in the pond.” She laughed. “At least, not until some drunken fool starts splashing in it.”
“I can’t imagine who that might be, dear.”
She gave him a mischievous smile. “That was weeks ago! Besides, I wouldn’t want to ruin my wrap.”
“You could always take it off, first.”
“Why, Lieutenant Commander…” She tried to look shocked, but was smirking too much. “What would the guests say?”
“That you are the most beautiful woman on Earth.”
She leaned in to kiss him, sliding onto her back and pulling him down. The passion grew, and Thomas willingly lost himself to her embrace. She tasted of vodka and mint, making the kiss that much sweeter.
A quiet voice in his earpiece disturbed the moment.
“Sir, madam, the first of your guests have arrived. Mr. Errol Meads and Ms. Jade Kennedy.” Thomas sat up with a start, looking toward the back of the house. Soma’s fingers caressed the short hair at the back of his head.
“Darling, really, you shouldn’t be so jumpy,” she said. “We’re married, after all.”
He climbed to his feet and offered her a hand, effortlessly pulling her up. With a sly smile she straightened her wrap and moved to greet their guests. Thomas hung back, knowing that these were her friends, and that he was part of the grand tour she wanted to take them on.
Members of the Jovian elite, she wanted to impress them with her garden of real grass and real surface water under an open, blue sky. Her bona fide war hero husband was the centerpiece of the display. He strolled over to the pond and absently busied himself with tossing a few grains of food into the water for the golden koi.
He heard laughter behind him, and light-hearted voices approaching.
“Darling,” Soma called, “our guests are arriving.” Thomas turned, affecting his best expression of polite interest and the hint of a smile. These were rich, influential people, but he was an Astral Force officer born on Earth, and he intended to greet them as equals.
Errol and Jade were both perfectly groomed in the latest summer fashion, arms bare to the shoulders and legs bare to the knees. They were surprisingly pale, and Thomas thought he could detect the beginnings of an artificial tan working to tint Jade’s skin. Both visitors eyed him with great interest.
“This is my husband,” Soma said, taking his arm, “Lieutenant Commander Thomas Kane.”
Errol extended his hand. “A pleasure, Commander. Good work out there in the colonies.”
Thomas shook his hand firmly, and kissed Jade’s offered fingers. “The pleasure’s mine. It’s good to be home,” he said. “How long have you been on Earth?”
“Barely a week. The damned visa process is still a nuisance.”
“I understand they’ve stepped up security these past few months.”
“Like the colonists would ever try anything here in Terra,” Errol scoffed.
“But at least we had some extra days on Mars,” Jade added. “Have you been to Mars?”
Thomas had, and he slipped easily into the conversation about this resort versus that, and the best viewpoints along the Valles Maneris. Soma excused herself as more guests arrived, each one announced discreetly in the earpieces both he and his wife wore, and by the time drinks had been passed around there was quite a crowd around him.
The reporter Chuck Merriman was among them, although at the sight of Thomas’s expression he promised that everything was “off the record.” That resulted in a gale of disbelieving laughter.
It didn’t take long before one of the women delicately dipped a toe into the pond’s cool water, and Thomas found confidence in the fascination exhibited by these residents of Jupiter’s moons, in what he considered the simplest things.
Talk inevitably came around to recent troubles in the colonies. One of the guests, a Mr. Quinton Speirs, claimed to have been aboard a starliner not far from the Terran jump gates when the Centauri fleet had attacked. He gave what he obviously considered a riveting account of the liner’s diversion away from the trouble. He hadn’t actually seen the fighting, but had heard the reports almost in real-time.
Another guest, a Ms. Maxine Zhou, was good friends with a senior officer on the Astral Base near Ganymede. She reported breathlessly that the military had actually been more concerned about the incursion than the media let on. This drew a flurry of opinions from the assembled guests, each apparently formed by exclusive information they had from the inside.
Thomas listened with interest, eager to break in but not wanting it to show. He kept his face carefully neutral at some of the more absurd suggestions, and waited for his opportunity. Chuck Merriman, he noticed, was also listening more than speaking, and Thomas occasionally made eye contact with him as if to communicate some private amusement. Chuck kept his expression one of polite interest for a while, but eventually he began to respond to Thomas with eye rolls and smirks.
“Any credible reporter,” Chuck announced suddenly, cutting into the chatter, “will try to find the most reliable source. If we really want to know what happened out there, maybe we should ask a military veteran.”
Conversation drifted off as all eyes turned to Thomas. He adopted an expression of thoughtful humility.
“Maxine was right when she said that the military was concerned about the uprising,” he confirmed. “Although we’ve been containing the situation in Sirius for years, no one expected Centauria and the other, more civilized colonies to harbor such extremists. We had to move quickly, and in force, in order to respond.”
“Were you at the battle at the jump gates?” someone asked.
“No, I was already deployed to Sirius, in command of a fast-attack craft,” he replied. “We were sneak-attacked by the Centauri fleet, but we managed to scatter them.” That was a gross misrepresentation of the truth, Thomas knew, but he’d been briefed on what the official story was to be. “Some Sirian warlords tried to use the confusion to spread terror, but a quick strike on Cerberus put that to rest.”
The rest of the story was punctuated by frequent questions, but within a few minutes Thomas had laid out a version of the real battle in both Sirius and Centauria. He used a carefully measured tone that played down his role, while at the same time hinting at his unsung heroism. He’d been practicing the story in his mind for weeks, waiting for exactly this sort of social opportunity.
His guests held their expressions in various degrees of cool interest, but he could tell that each one was riveted. No doubt they’d all go home bragging of their personal friendship with a hero from the front lines, and re-tell his story many times over.