Command Authority, page 9
part #5 of Last Hunter Series
The chime at the hatch went off before the anguished doctor could retort, yet he wasn’t sure who that could be. Jesse stalked over to the hatch and triggered it. Standing on the other side were Lisa Gane and two of the Tardans. One of them was Pastan—the female leader of the first colonization group—but the male was unknown to him.
“Doctor Romanoff, Mister Chen,” Lisa said. “May we come in?”
The doctor made an aggravated gesture. “Why not?”
Once the visitors were inside, David eyed them warily. The aliens had been furious when Jesse had implanted Regex inside Lisa, and now he wondered if they were angry that he was about to do something that would mean the death of one of their own to save a human. That was a complication he didn’t need.
“This is Leader Yarest,” Lisa said. “You’ve both met Leader Pastan. I’m acting as an interpreter for them, so don’t take anything I say as personal criticism. I’m speaking for Regex and the other two, and if I have an opinion, I’ll make certain to make that clear. We understand that you’re proposing to remove one of the Tardan military leaders from the human they implanted him in and would like to discuss the matter with you before you proceed.”
“The more, the merrier,” Jesse said in a flat tone. “I already have doubts about this course of action, and it wouldn’t take much for me to decide to put a stop to it.”
Lisa frowned. “Okay, this is personal. You’re perfectly fine with putting one of these things inside me without asking my permission, yet when one of them forces their way into another person, you won’t take them out because it might hurt them? That’s pretty hypocritical, don’t you think?”
That came in a bit hot, David decided. The young woman was still angry about what had happened to her, and if their situations were reversed, he’d likely agree with her. Though he had to admit, the idea of having an intelligence source in his body that was willing to talk at any hour of the day and night would shade his opinion on the matter. Tina would probably disagree with him. Probably.
Still, best to rein this in before things became too confrontational.
“I suggest we stick to the matter at hand,” he said. “Rehashing the past isn’t going to make this situation any easier to deal with.”
“I just want her to understand that she’s cheering for the wrong side,” Lisa said, her eyes narrowed. “If Doctor Romanoff is more worried about the Tardans than the humans, maybe she should ask for a transfer.”
The female Tardan said something, and Lisa sighed. Then she responded in the alien language, which sounded unnatural coming from her throat. It seemed like she would have to cause herself physical damage to make noises like that. He was somewhat jealous because he still had to use the translation program—with all its flaws—to get information out of any of the aliens.
When Pastan spoke again, Lisa smoothed her expression until nothing was left. “I’m just going to speak the words that Leader Pastan and the others say. Until otherwise stated, just think of me as a translation program.”
“It is our understanding that you intend to remove the military leader from the human he forced himself upon,” Pastan said. “If you believe we’re here to argue against doing so, then you are wrong. He has violated one of the moral strictures that we as a people hold dear. He has earned death for his actions, and we wish to see that sentence carried out. In fact, we are here to facilitate it, as his actions constitute a capital crime among our people.”
Jesse’s jaw dropped. “What?”
“Perhaps it would help you to know a little of the history of our people,” Yarest said. “We were designed by the Novarites to be clandestinely inserted into other beings and control them utterly. To say that we find such a thing disgusting would be a gross understatement. We were blessed in that we failed to meet their needs and so could grow as a people rather than being used as tools for their conquest of the universe. Any of us that do not share those views is anathema to us.”
“The four leaders of my people that are in this system have unanimously condemned this traitor to death for his actions,” Pastan said. “We are here to carry out the sentence. He is our failure, and we will not burden others with carrying out a sentence we have imposed.”
That was not what David had expected. Perhaps he should have, given what he knew about their background.
“There’s more to the story,” he said. “I intend to offer him a chance of survival if he gives me the information I want. I will not honor that request. It’s a trick and the only way we have to get the data we need without breaking into their computers. I know you’re doing your best, Lisa, but time grows short.”
“I wish I could do things faster,” she said, “but the process is more complicated than I expected. I’m making progress, but I don’t know if I’ll make a breakthrough today, next week, or next month. It’s going to happen, don’t doubt that for a second, but you won’t get any argument about getting what we need from this guy. For what it’s worth, I vote for his death, too.”
David turned to Jesse. “I’m not going to assume this will make things easier for you. I suggest you focus on saving Mister Fogg’s life once we’re done. One way or another, it is coming out of his body, and I want the innocent person to survive. He’ll be scarred for life no matter what we do, but we owe him our utmost effort to grant what peace we can. Now that the Tardan inside him has been condemned to death by his own people for his crimes, will you help us, or will you stand in the way?”
Jesse paced back and forth a few times before sighing. “I suppose now that he’s been condemned, I don’t really have any reason to yell about what happens once he’s out. We’ll still try to extract him alive because that’s what my people do, but in the end, he’s their problem now. What will you do if he won’t tell you anything, David?”
“I’ll press the button,” David said without remorse. “His fate was already sealed, but he’s going to get one chance to make things up to the people he’s hurt. If I can convince him to cooperate, there’s a chance we can spare others the same fate. Isn’t that worth the attempt?”
“Don’t talk to me about worth,” Jesse said as she headed toward the hatch. “I’ve already put myself in a place I’m not sure I can comfortably live in. Let’s just get this over with.”
Once she’d left the room, David turned to Lisa. “I understand you’re angry with her, but I ask that you remember we all want the very best for you and Regex. We were ignorant of the consequences of our actions, but if it had been me making the decision for Tina, I would have done the same.”
“Maybe I’ll forgive her one day,” Lisa said in a tone that hinted otherwise, “but today is not that day. Let’s go.”
“Before we do, I believe it would be best for you and our Tardan guests to remain outside. If he suspects I won’t honor my agreements, he may refuse to cooperate simply to spite me. He needs to believe that he has a chance to live for this to work.”
The young hacker tilted her head slightly to the side. “You really don’t feel the slightest bit troubled by what you’re doing? This is pretty dark.”
“I didn’t expect you to object, but it is dark. People in the intelligence services often have to do deplorable things. I won’t apologize for being the kind of person that will deal someone dirty because they’re an enemy of the Confederation. There are uncountable dead people that would still be alive if not for this trash and the people like him. I will shed no tears over this.”
Without waiting for a response, he headed out of Jesse’s office and spotted her just entering an operating theater on the other side of the large compartment. He hurried and caught up with her.
He found everything was already set up for the surgery and his ruse. “How are you feeling today, Mister Fogg?” he asked. “Are you ready to find some closure?”
The man nodded jerkily. He was sitting on the edge of the operating table, already dressed in a gown that was undoubtedly unflattering from the rear.
“I’m more than ready. Please tell me this is almost over. Tell me that this thing is coming out today.”
“It is. Now, the real question is whether or not he comes out alive or not. I need you to translate between us so that he understands. There are no circumstances under which he will remain in your body. None. Does he understand that?”
Fogg grimaced. “He seems to think he can negotiate a better deal. He says he won’t tell you anything if you attempt to remove him from my body.”
“While that would be unfortunate, we have specialists working on their computers even as we speak. They will get the information I’m looking for in short order. To be clear, I’m not even asking him for specifics of what we’ll find when we get there. Merely point us in the right direction. Once he is out, we’ll put him in a nutrient bath, and there is the possibility of a proper host later. Certain death versus a chance at life. He can take it or leave it.”
Fogg was silent for a few moments. “He wants to know how this will work. He says removing him without damage won’t be possible, and he’s uncertain how he can be implanted into a second host under those circumstances. The only way his filaments can come out cleanly is if I’m dead and he’s cooperating.”
David smiled. “This will be a delicate dance, but it’s not impossible. We’ll wrap him in a bag impervious to the neurotoxin he’ll release if he betrays us. Once that happens, Doctor Romanoff will stop your heart. Within a few minutes, the filaments will release, then we’ll remove him and bring you back to life. Miraculous, yet done every day in operating theaters around the Confederation.”
The man’s eyes widened. “And just how dangerous is that for me? I don’t want to die for a few minutes.”
“This type of procedure has been done for centuries,” Jesse said. “With all the equipment we have standing by, the chances of you not recovering are infinitesimal. When doing heart surgery, it’s often necessary to stop the heart and manually pump the blood. The brain can be fed oxygen, and there’s little chance that a few short minutes will have a lasting impact on you. You have my word as a doctor.”
David wasn’t sure that was true, but if it was a lie, it was a good one. He was glad Jesse had decided she would support the deception. She might not like the outcome, but they had to make this happen, or more people would die.
“What do you want to know?” Fogg asked.
“I want to know where the major conglomerations of Tardans are,” David said. “You no doubt picked systems to mass your forces and set up major defenses. We intend to attack those areas. You obviously believe you can win this fight, so tell us where to go, and we let this play out. If you’re as strong as you think, what do you have to fear from an archaic battleship that’s been heavily damaged in the fighting?”
Fogg didn’t say anything for almost a minute. David was confident that it wasn’t because he had nothing to say. The creature was considering just how far he was willing to go.
“You mentioned a proper host. What do you mean?”
“We have access to host bodies brought aboard the colonization vessels that just arrived. He can be re-implanted into one of them, allowing us to put him with the other prisoners. That’s the best deal he’s going to get.”
Once again, Fogg was quiet. Then he nodded. “He agrees to your terms. He will tell you where the primary systems that the Tardan military is working from, and in return, we will remove him from my body and implant him in another host.”
“Agreed.”
Of course, it was always possible the alien would lie to them. He wasn’t hypocritical enough to be offended by that, but there was nothing he could do to change the situation if the Tardan chose to do so. It was a risk that they’d just have to live with.
“He says the Tardan military is concentrating their forces in three systems. He claims to only know the name of one, but it’s supposedly the largest population center in the cluster. If so, that has to be Argent.”
The name was familiar to David. Argent was a heavily populated and industrialized system and the central hub of the Confederation government inside the cluster. At least it had been.
New Copenhagen had suffered grievous damage and the complete elimination of its space infrastructure. The death toll would be unimaginable if the same had happened to Argent. If the creatures were on the ground there, it would be a humanitarian disaster.
“What other information can you tell me about the locations you don’t know the names of?” David asked. “You must know something about them. For example, there were a lot of forces here at New Copenhagen. I assume that the three you are mentioning would be something significantly stronger than that. Correct?”
“He claims not to have gotten any information about the specific strengths of any system,” Fogg said. “Just based on his tone, he’s lying through his ass. If aliens like him have asses.”
David shook his head and clicked his tongue. “You really shouldn’t be lying to me. This is the time to be forthright and forthcoming. If I don’t get the information I want, I’ll consider that you didn’t meet your end of the deal. We’re still in the appropriate location to make sure your unwanted passenger goes to sleep and never wakes up.”
“If you want to find out what’s really out there, you’re going to have to get specific information from the military computers or go to Argent,” the alien said through Fogg. “Not everyone was trusted with what was intended. I am one of the senior officers assigned to this system, and the information I had about the others was intentionally kept vague. As for the other two systems, they were large and spread out in the cluster. I don’t know their names and locations, but they would have been very important. That’s going to have to be good enough because it’s all I have.”
Fogg shook his head. “Once again, he’s lying. I can almost taste the smugness. He doesn’t think I can sense it, but I can. What do we do now?”
David considered that, and then he smiled. “We’ll split the difference. He will be removed, and we’ll turn him over to the Tardan authorities. They can make an appropriate decision about his fate.”
As if they’d been listening to the conversation—which they might have been—Lisa and the two aliens stepped into the operating theater. They didn’t say anything, but their expressions looked grim to him.
Fogg started laughing. “Now he’s crapping his pants. He’s begging for you not to turn him over to them. He says he’ll tell you whatever you want, but you have to promise not to turn him over to them.”
“He’s going to have to be very convincing,” David said. “Starting with the names of those systems he swears he doesn’t know. Then we’ll start getting down to what type of forces we might expect and exactly what they’re doing in the cluster. Time is wasting, and he’d better get busy.”
The alien promptly spilled his guts. He gave David the names of the other two systems, which were significantly further away than Argent, and even roughly laid out the military forces they could expect. David was no Navy man, but it sounded like a lot of firepower. The recorder he had pinned to his lapel would make certain everything was relayed faithfully to Jack.
As for what the military was doing, his words pretty well matched up with what they’d already been told. They wanted to take control of humanity to have more capable hosts than the Novarites had given them. Then they wanted to use humanity to go to war with their creators. He had no idea that the Novarites had already followed them here, and David saw no reason to mention it.
“Well, I believe I’ve gotten everything I could hope to get,” David said. “Doctor, it’s time to get this thing out of Mister Fogg so we can hand his unwilling guest over to the Tardans.”
Fogg blinked, and David smiled. “After what he’s done, you didn’t really think we’d let him go, did you? He deserves to die, and his people agree. In fact, they’ve already sentenced him to death. Since we want them as allies in this conflict, we’ll turn him over to them. Tell him to enjoy his last few minutes of life.”
As Fogg started laughing, David stepped back to watch the procedure. When the time came to press the button, he’d do it. Then he’d rejoin his wife. They had a lot of data to go over if they were going to make attack plans for Argent.
11
Lisa watched as Doctor Romanoff and her team sedated the patient and opened up his back. It was one of the grossest and most horrifying things she’d ever seen, but this was what had been done to her, and she wanted to know what it looked like. It might feature in her nightmares for decades, but she didn’t turn her eyes away.
I need to see this. If you can, feel free to avert your gaze. Can you?
“Almost ready to take him out,” Doctor Romanoff said. “David? It’s time to press the button.”
She gave her mental permission. Her body turned to face the two Tardan leaders without her instructing it to do so. Then Regex spoke with her voice.
“The humans are willing to sever the traitor from his unwilling host, but I don’t believe it’s appropriate that they should bear that burden. Our people have sentenced him to die, so we should be the ones to press that button.”
Pastan indicated her agreement. “You speak the truth. What do we need to do?”
“The doctor will indicate the button on the controls that sever the filaments joining him to the unwilling host. She says they are almost ready. Once that is done, they will remove him from the unwilling host. What will happen to him then?”
“I will return to the colony vessels and take him with me as soon as the deed is done,” Yarest said. “While I will complete the journey, he will not. I will jettison him into space.”
