Reborn, page 12
“Without shields,” Bandi grumbled.
“That is correct,” Yormevs said. “She could not read the panels to know what to do, and asked us to meet her in orbit, where we could put a crew member aboard to handle those things.”
“And then she vanished, didn’t she?” Bandi asked.
Taylor perked right up.
Bandi grimaced like he’d just sucked a lemon dry.
“Well, I wanted to go out with a bang, I guess,” Bandi said, looking at the heavens overhead before returning his gaze to Taylor. “Do we know who got her?”
“The vessel was uncloaked for only a few seconds,” Yormevs said.
“Long enough to grab Joie and the others, put a pilot aboard, then everybody cloaked again?” Bandi asked, nodding as he went.
“That is a valid presumption,” Yormevs agreed.
“English, please?” Stone grouched at everyone, a little before Taylor did the same.
“We use an electromagnetic shielding system that renders us invisible to most scanners, except at short range,” Bandi spoke. “It also prevents the matter transmission beams from working. I had one around my old lab in La Plata, but hadn’t gotten it installed in the new place yet. There was another one protecting the ship on the ground. Joie wouldn’t have been able to activate it without a lot of training.”
“Not helpful yet,” Stone growled.
“Someone else has a ship in orbit,” Bandi snapped. “Hidden. They dropped their cloak long enough to capture Joie and the others, then vanished again.”
He turned to Yormevs.
“They did capture her, right?” Bandi asked.
“We found no evidence of an explosion,” Yormevs nodded. “However, we remain at a significant distance so our data is fragmentary at best.”
“Can I see it?” Mitch asked.
Every eye in the place turned to the man. Taylor grinned.
“Analyst,” Taylor reminded the others. “Really freaking amazing at taking odd tidbits and assembling them into useful intelligence. You’ve seen what he’s been able to do for me. Maybe he can do it for you as well. We’ve got nothing to do right now, unless you plan to dump the rest of us back on the surface to be arrested by Bouchard.”
“That would gain us nothing, and potentially cost us everything, Kehoe,” Yormevs replied. Then he turned to Mitch. “What would you need?”
“Who are you folks all hiding from?” Mitch asked. “I’ve heard no mention of any sort of law enforcement or space navy organization running around, like Humans might do it. Instead, I hear about the Danorak and the Heecha as species. Tribes, almost. Who’s the most dangerous, most powerful tribe in this region of space? The one you’re hiding from?”
Taylor grinned at the two aliens, their own mouths fallen open in shock. But they were both scientists. Not agents. Most certainly not analysts.
Yormevs kind of sputtered. Bandi’s grimace was back.
“Myself, we’re always hiding from the Brakhua,” Bandi said stubbornly. “They do see themselves in a law enforcement way, keeping things honest. Nobody is allowed to claim Earth, so nobody has resources here. The Brakhua have been known to stick their noses in anyway.”
“Good,” Mitch said. “So you had several seconds. Were there any passive cameras recording images, even at this distance, that we could magnify and clean up? Or access Human spy satellites that might have seen something? They tend to be extremely high altitude, so they can stay geosynchronous over a specific ground location. Who can we tap? What data can we steal?”
Taylor wanted to laugh. These folks really were amateurs at the espionage business. At the same time, he understood that he was exceptionally good, and had been blessed with amazing teams, both in operations as well as folks like Mitch.
Yormevs was blinking too fast for normal. Taylor put that down to surprise. Emotional overload.
Humans did something similar.
“We will get you what we can,” he managed.
“Include ship silhouettes of Brakhua vessels,” Taylor inserted. “Three dimensional models that can be rotated to compare.”
More blinking. Top-notch scientists. Keystone cops agents.
And while the three operatives he might have to send out into the field weren’t as good as Joie Daring and the other two, nobody else probably was either.
Still, Taylor felt the entire weight of Humanity descend on his shoulders.
What idiot had decided that he had to save the universe?
CHAPTER 31
Joie watched the light fade, expecting to be in another prison cell like she’d been that first time when Yormevs had first grabbed her from Hanoi.
A quick glance to either side didn’t reveal Ernesta or Carter, but they could easily be in their own cells.
She didn’t expect the person standing across from her, pointing some sort of weapon.
“Romana?” Joie gasped.
Romana was dressed in black. Pants over ankle boots. Belted tunic over that, with a hint of a gray collar underneath at the neck. Black beret on her head with a logo Joie didn’t know.
And the gun. Whatever it was, Joie had no doubt that it was a gun. Lethal or not, she couldn’t tell. Didn’t really want to find out.
“Joie, do you have any idea what kinds of trouble you’ve caused?” Romana demanded angrily.
Joie studied the woman. Party-partner. Dancing fool. Occasional sidekick. More-than-occasional troublemaker.
She also straightened from the defensive stance she’d fallen into. This was Romana.
She hoped.
“Actually, I do have a pretty good idea,” Joie grinned.
“Your scans show you are no longer entirely Human, Joie,” Romana said darkly.
Joie nodded.
“That was necessary,” Joie said simply. “Bouchard has slowly been turning out a number of Advanced Model Humans. AMHs. My assumption is that he’s eventually going to form a global army and then attack the aliens that had up until now been thinking they were in control.”
“How much do you know?” Romana demanded, shocked.
“I was the one who captured the three Danorak who have been behind it the longest,” Joie said. “With the help of a group of Heecha. Who are you working for?”
Romana studied her long and hard, scowling like she did.
Romana’s family had come to the United States in the late 1970s, escaping the communist takeover of Vietnam and fitting right into being another facet of American life quickly. Ethnically, mostly still Vietnamese, but wholly American. Wholly TRC, though she’d never been upgraded with cyberware.
Joie looked closer, using some of those new senses that Yormevs had baked into this form. Genetics, rather than cybernetics.
Romana had changed, as well.
“How did you come to be flying that ship, Joie?” Romana asked, ignoring Joie’s question.
She could do that, holding the only gun in here.
Joie glanced down and realized that she was back down to the jeans and T-shirt she’d been wearing under all the thermal gear. And they’d taken the time to strip the silks she’d been wearing under that to stay warm.
How long had she been in the beam?
Still, it was Romana. The woman who’d held her hair so she didn’t drown, face down over a toilet. Who’d gone dancing with her to obscure places, meeting strange and interesting men. Like Mitch.
“Bouchard knew there was something there on that mountain,” Joie explained. Might as well get it all out so everyone could figure out how to salvage the situation.
The bad guys could have gone ahead and destroyed Human civilization anytime they wanted, give the state of their tech. They had to have been holding off for a reason.
Joie just had to find it.
“How did he know?” Romana demanded.
“Mitch found references to something, but they weren’t written down in a database he could access,” Joie replied. “Air-gapped.”
“Mitch?” Romana demanded. “MITCH?!? What the hell’s he doing here?”
Joie sighed.
“Kehoe recruited him when they started chasing me all over hell and gone,” Joie said. “If you want the whole story, that’s going to take a while, so we might as well get some comfortable seats and coffee. Mitch and Kehoe were back at base with the aliens, monitoring the operation. You’ve got Carter and Ernesta somewhere, since they were with me.”
“The records tell me that you had Mithras with you, Joie,” Romana accused.
“He’s a new guy, Romana,” Joie explained. “They took out all the stuff inside him and reset him to Human, like they did with me. Then upgraded both of us, because we had to stop Bouchard and TRC from whatever terrible shit they were doing, before folks like you finally got angry enough to do something irrevocable.”
“Anybody but you, Joie, and I’d say all that was a load of fresh pig shit,” Romana replied.
“Oh, it is,” Joie agreed. “It’s also God’s honest truth.”
“Who’s the woman agent with you?” Romana demanded. “You called her Ernesta?”
“Ernesta Hernandez, of Guadalajara,” Joie nodded.
“The crime lord?” Romana snarled. “More bullshit. This woman is twenty-five.”
“It’s her,” Joie said. “They reset all three of us to that age when they did everything else. Carter was in his mid-fifties before this. Ernesta helped me when I was on the run from TRC. She’d kept helping me after I returned to the fold. Then she went rogue with me when I asked her.”
“There are a lot of angry people extremely nervous right now, Joie,” Romana accused.
“You think I don’t know that?” Joie snapped back at one of her best friends in the world. “I’m out on a ledge here, trying to keep everything from catching fire, because Bouchard is absolutely playing with matches. As were the others. Who do I need to meet to explain it all? You’re in somebody’s uniform, so I assume that they recruited you into going rogue, same as me. I did what I had to because that was the only way I could convince you folks to come out of the shadows long enough. Otherwise, boom. The world ends one day and most of Humanity goes with it.”
Romana started to say something, but a pleasant gong interrupted.
Joie rolled back off her toes and took a moment to actually see the space where she had…materialized. Say it for what it was.
Yet another alien starship. Yet another player. Hopefully, the only other one right now, and not just a new third side against whoever would pull the trigger to dump Earth into the stone ages overnight before a fourth showed up.
Metal walls more like a US Navy aircraft carrier. A little cramped, but she’d been on two ships before this, and assumed that Romana’s bosses might be a physically smaller species, so this was normal to them.
Metal deck underfoot, painted a marbled gray. Door behind Romana, but the room itself was sized more like a bedroom than a prison cell. Entirely empty save for the two of them.
Then the door behind Romana opened and another alien walked in.
This one wouldn’t ever be able to walk the streets of La Plata, even in disguise. Upstate Maine, maybe, but they considered anyone born more than sixty kilometers away to be an alien to be looked down upon with disdain and ignored.
Even a short, skinny humanoid with lavender-hued skin. Maybe one hundred and fifty centimeters tall. Lanky-feeling, in spite of the height. Almost lizardlike build.
The newcomer was also dressed in black, but it felt softer. Like maybe Romana was a warrior and this guy was a REMF in a nice suit, though such an insult was probably uncalled for.
Rear Echelon Motherfucker. The ones that stayed behind in air-conditioned bases while sending agents out into mud and squalor. Kehoe, on a bad day.
Still, the alien did feel like a REMF in the way he studied her.
Joie had a head and shoulders on the man. And a lot of kilograms.
Still, she’d done all this so she could meet this person.
“Good morning,” Joie said.
She and Romana had been…arguing in English, so Joie had started there.
Most of the time recently, she had spoken in Spanish, because of Ernesta and Bandi. Everyone had been fully fluent.
“Good morning, Captain Daring,” the creature replied in a melodious voice that seemed to be more used to a tonal language like Chinese or Vietnamese. Not that English was much better.
Joie nodded deeply. Maybe this was the person—guy?—that had the answers she’d been lacking.
Or the trigger finger poised to wipe out Humanity.
“I have been following your conversation with Agent Pham,” the person continued. “We lack a great deal of the context that the two of you take for granted, but one word stuck out as I listened. You mentioned going rogue.”
“That’s right, sir,” she said, automatically. “I had been forcibly retired from service two years ago. Then my former bosses attempted to reactivate me as something of a last resort when nobody could explain what had happened to Romana. She simply vanished one night out of a secured base. I presume in a flash of light.”
The man(?) seemed to smile at that. The face muscles made a motion similar to how she’d have done it.
“Go on,” he said.
“Then Carter did turn rogue, having been lying to me earlier,” Joie said. “Again, long explanation with a lot of details and a dead, Russian Ambassador. As I was hunting him down, a group that call themselves Heecha used a matter transmission beam to kidnap me from Hanoi. We came to an understanding and I’ve been working for them recently, trying to find a way to stop my old bosses at Technology Research Command before they frightened someone, presumably you, into causing an apocalypse.”
“Indeed, Captain Daring,” the man confirmed. “As you noted, the basis for a long and complicated conversation.”
“Is Bandi’s ship safe?” Joie asked. “I had only intended to keep it out of the hands of everyone on the ground, but if you have us, then it needs a pilot to get it someplace where it won’t fall later.”
“Such was taken care of when you were taken into custody,” he nodded in a Human way. “The stealth circuits were also activated, so it has vanished as well. You mentioned Heecha and Danorak.”
Joie nearly got whiplash from the way he turned the conversation, but nodded.
“Danorak scientists have been working with parts of Humanity secretly for almost two hundred years, according to their story,” Joie said. “The Heecha came for me and my two friends a month ago.”
“The Danorak have told you truths?” he asked.
Romana stirred, but Joie suspected that her friend been a prisoner of these folks for a stretch before being recruited to change sides. Maybe about the time Joie had been unretired by Kehoe.
“The one in charge is named Bandi Algom,” Joie replied. “I think he has had an ethical crisis recently where he came to understand the evil that he had perpetrated previously. He helped me, even before I had to go rogue against TRC. He has helped since.”
“Agent Pham speaks highly of you,” he said. “But only in the past tense.”
Joie nodded and shrugged.
She’d been broken by Kehoe. Driven Mitch and Romana off because she’d preferred to wallow in depression and self-pity.
It had taken Amy to start her healing. Then all her new female friends like Celeste Graydon, Sarah, and Ernesta, plus a whole cast of nameless women who had seen a sister in need and responded immediately. Anonymously.
Because helping a complete stranger was a Human thing Joie had never understood. At least until the Army had no longer been her family.
“I would have stayed retired,” Joie admitted. “Until Kehoe knocked on my door one day several months ago. Romana had vanished and nobody knew how. At the time. Several of us have been in a beam at this point.”
“You spoke truth about the threat to your world, Captain Daring,” he shifted gears again. Directions. Something. “Many have proposed triggering the apocalypse you suspected. Especially when we detected a Human flying a Danorak ship. That would have been unspeakable.”
“Indeed,” Joie replied with a grimace. “I had to keep it out of Bouchard’s hands. My allies would have been fine, since they could have known how to hide it. You’ll do.”
“The Heecha you mentioned,” he said. “They are close?”
“I asked them to meet me in orbit to take care of the ship,” Joie replied. “Not knowing that you were there to do it. I suspect that they will remain hidden for now. Possibly panicking themselves, as you’ve captured many of Kehoe’s agents.”
“Is this Kehoe friend or foe?”
“He was my boss in the old days,” she said, gesturing to Romana. Gods, it was so good to see her. “Our boss. He was something of an enemy when this started, because I didn’t want to come back. He was the hound and they made me a hare. Later, we came to an understanding, so that I would help them try to find Romana. Then Mithras went rogue and we had to hunt him down. The Heecha appeared at that point and things got weird.”
“Lady, you have no idea,” Romana said with a laugh that was good to hear.
“How do we save the world?” Joie asked.
“I think we will need to hear your entire tale, Captain Daring,” the man said. “Then we will make decisions.”
Joie nodded. She’d done everything to bring it to this moment.
Hopefully, she could pull it off.
CHAPTER 32
Valmy boarded the craft and immediately turned left, sticking his head into the cockpit and surprising the woman flying. The other pilot, the male, must be aft sleeping.
“File a flight plan for immediate departure,” he ordered, waiting for her to nod. “Destination Andrews. Take off as soon as you can get clearance from the tower. We will change course over Mexico for a location in the Rockies that we will approach below radar, flying nape of the earth, but do not mention that to anyone. We are under top secret orders. Questions?”
“Negative, General,” she said, already flicking switches. “Andrews, with a deviation probably midway between Guadalajara and Mexico City. I’ll need to study the maps for best timing on that.”
