Bold Moves, page 8
Kara grinned wickedly. “Since we entered the slum, my implants have overridden how Gwok is monitored. They think we’ve not encountered anything yet. All I have to do now is reach out to Yael and misdirect her. Jace and Onima die in the meantime, and we disperse the virus and disappear into the slum.”
“You think it’s that simple?” questioned Feroz.
“Do you have a better plan?” asked Kara. She gestured toward his hand. “You have that dead man’s switch. If you get dropped, the virus gets released. The Bureau is here, and if someone doesn’t report in soon, they will come. One way or another, there’s no clear way out of this.”
“This is over,” Onima practically spat. “Even if you kill the clones here, this plan you and your cronies have isn’t going to work!”
“You are very much mistaken, Onima.” Kara looked to Feroz. “With the sequester in place, the CBI can do nothing. This is the only place where she has any power to stop it—and between you and I, that power is no more.”
Onima hung her head. It had all been for nothing.
“There is an advantage to being a clone,” Jace said defiantly, standing back up. “We know our purpose. Our lack of ambition keeps us from being able to betray anyone.”
“You’re nothing but a flesh-and-blood machine,” Kara said. Then, to Feroz, “I’ll make the call to Yael; you shoot them.”
“No.” Feroz stepped toward Kara. “I think you should shoot them yourself. More your style than mine, anyhow.”
Kara nodded. “Okay.”
Kara pointed her pistols at Onima and Jace. Feroz tensed.
And as he did, Onima saw his grip on the dead man’s switch detonator loosen.
Kara spun toward Feroz and pulled the triggers.
As the plasma bolts impacted Feroz’s chest, he seemed to fold in on himself.
The detonator dropped from his hand.
Kara dropped a pistol and lunged, catching it before it could hit the ground.
Onima crouched to retrieve her weapons, glancing up toward the trailer behind the APC. It remained inert.
Jace scooped up his weapons and took his place at Kara’s side, his rifle pointed toward Feroz. The former cryptanalyst was not moving.
“That was too close,” Onima remarked.
“It was a great plan,” Kara said. “The two of you should get Oscars for that performance.”
“Not up against your performance,” Jace remarked.
A new sound reached Onima’s ears, and she looked toward the city. The Minotaur was flying low toward them.
<->
When they had been formulating the plan as the Daedalus emerged from its warp bubble, Dr. Patel had brought up a good point.
“What if Feroz is there?” she’d asked.
“He’ll probably monologue,” Kara had remarked.
Dr. Patel had frowned but replied, “It’s possible. He knows Upsilon Gi, as he was with us here before.”
“Kara’s right,” Jace said. “Feroz will feel a need to tell us how wrong we are and will want to belittle us and our cause. He’s shown that he enjoys a flare for the dramatic, so he’ll probably threaten to release the virus to keep us at bay.”
“You’re not wrong,” Onima had agreed.
“I have a terrible idea,” Kara had said.
“He knows you aren’t part of the plan,” Dr. Patel had said. She’d known all about what had happened when Kara had faked her betrayal in Vladimir Bettani’s office.
“Of course,” said Kara. “But he also knows my governor is Jiro Rand. If I produce secret orders from Rand to share....”
“You mean if I produce a forgery of secret orders from Director Rand,” Teru had remarked.
“To-may-to, to-mah-to,” Kara had said.
“Selling it to Feroz will take more than that,” Onima had remarked.
“I’m open to suggestion,” Kara agreed.
“You’ll have to hit me,” Jace had said. “Treat me like clones are normally treated and hit me.”
“I’d rather not.”
“And I appreciate that. But if you are going to really sell that you’re turning on us, you need to show proof. And while I don’t doubt Onima can take a punch, I’m a bit more accustomed to physical abuse.”
Dr. Patel had nodded. “That is the kind of thing that would play into Feroz’s flare for the dramatic. Yes, he’ll be much more likely to buy it.”
“What if Feroz really does play for the dramatic?” Onima had asked. “What if he has a dead man’s switch or something equally prepared to release the virus?”
“I have a hack for that,” Teru had said.
“If he does,” Dr. Patel had added, “he will disable it as soon as he feels secure. Big ego, but not a fan of putting himself in danger. Even knowing all about the clone virus and that it doesn’t impact non-clones – he won’t want to be exposed to it. Keep him talking long enough, and you’ll have him off guard.”
Dr. Patel had sighed, sadly shaking her head. “We spent hours that first night going back and forth, him analyzing every potential pro and con of our being together. I finally took over the conversation, and once he was no longer keeping up his guard.... Well, it was fun while it lasted.”
<->
Teru had assured them that Feroz would not recognize his work as a forgery, and that his hack would prevent anything other than a wired connection to the virus dispersal unit from being used.
Dr. Patel had convinced Kara to play to his ego by reminding Feroz that he was the best hacker around. All Jace and Onima had had to do was play along.
As the Minotaur was slowing to land, Onima looked at Feroz on the ground before her. He was still breathing, but not otherwise moving.
“I still wanted to make sure,” Kara was saying, “that Feroz killed the dead man’s switch on the detonator. It was entirely possible it was a bluff. But even with Teru’s hack and what Dr. Patel said of his sense of self-preservation, I still wanted to know he was not going to release the virus while he was standing right next to it.”
“Let’s secure the APC,” Onima ordered. “But carefully. It might be boobytrapped. Let’s make sure Feroz had no more surprises for us. I’ll check on the trailer.”
Onima went to the back of the trailer. She scanned the door with her datacard and made certain it wasn’t wired to anything nasty. There was no lock.
She opened it and saw a large canister inside. It was tightly secured, with a tube running to a hatch that would iris open at the top of trailer. A scan with her datacard showed her that the clone virus was inside the canister.
Onima shuddered, then resealed the hatch.
“The virus is in containment in here, and we have it secured,” Onima called to Jace and Kara. “Find anything?”
“Nothing,” Jace called back. “I admit, I’m surprised Feroz was here alone.”
As if on cue, plasma bolts impacted the ground and the side of the APC.
Onima saw them approaching. A large number of people in blue armored shells with black helmets were running toward them, firing rifles without even bothering to aim.
12
JACE’S IMMEDIATE CONCERN was to protect the APC.
That amounted to both keeping the armor-shelled attackers back and doing his best to prevent them from firing on the trailer that contained the virus.
Jace knew that the armor-shelled attackers coming at them were not soldiers. If they had been, they would not have run in firing. They would have taken advantage of the element of surprise and targeted Jace, Onima, and Kara directly.
Running in, guns blazing, resulted in sloppy fire. While it was a great scare tactic, it was not a good way to take out enemy combatants.
Soldiers would not have attempted to scare them away. Even if they were concerned about civilians, which Jace, Onima, and Kara technically were, given what they were attacking and why, scaring them made no sense.
It was, fortunately, to their advantage. Or else, Jace suspected, they might have been wounded when the armor-shelled goons sprang their attack.
Onima had climbed into the open control compartment of the APC and was firing her rifle on the attackers coming from the other side. Kara had holstered her pistols and was firing her rifle from where the APC was attached to the trailer.
Jace was at the edge of the trailer. Their attackers were approaching from all around.
Fortunately, they had left themselves wide open to ambush by Warrant Team One, disembarking swiftly in their charcoal-colored armored shells from the Minotaur.
There were a lot of the thugs in armored shells attacking. It occurred to Jace that he’d not gotten a proper count of the blue armor-shelled people. Even taking that into consideration, something about the attack was not right.
Then it dawned on him that they might have a bigger problem.
He reached for his comm. “Warrant Team One, this is Jace. Watch your six! I repeat, watch your six!”
More plasma fire erupted, and several shots only just missed Jace. He couldn’t see where they were coming from. But, as he had guessed, that meant more attackers were now behind Warrant Team One.
Jace was in the open with the APC to his back. He ran for the front and dove into the open compartment.
Both Onima and Kara were there too. They would each take turns popping up and firing at anyone in armored shells.
“Do you still have the detonator?” Onima shouted to Kara.
“Secured!” she replied.
“We need to keep them back,” called Onima. “We can’t let them take back the APC!”
“What if they have a second detonator?”
“If they did,” Jace began, “I expect they’d have already used it.”
“True!” Kara said. She popped up and fired at a target Jace couldn’t see. “We’ve also still got Teru’s jamming, and I think the armor on the trailer is too strong to be ripped open or blown up to release the virus.”
“Agreed!” shouted Jace. He arose, sighted the nearest blue armored shell, and fired several shots at them. The thug dove away, and Jace dropped back down as plasma bolts fired at him.
“Shouldn’t there have been other transporters with the APC?” Jace asked. “Why was Feroz here alone?”
“I was wondering that myself,” Onima confirmed. She arose but ducked down immediately before firing. Plasma bolts whizzed past overhead.
“It only takes one to drive an APC and release the virus,” Kara said.
“Sure,” Jace said. “But does that seem like Feroz’s style to you?”
“No,” Onima remarked, “it doesn’t.”
The firing of weapons at the team hunkering in the open-topped cab of the APC ceased. Jace could hear weapons being fired still, but from farther away.
Onima’s comm beeped. She answered, “Go, Wei.”
“Marshal, they’re falling back,” Special Agent Augustus Wei reported. “Do we pursue?”
“What if they’re just drawing Warrant Team One off?” asked Kara.
Jace had another thought. He arose and looked outside.
“Tah mah dah!” Jace exclaimed. “Feroz is gone.”
“I should have shot that bastard in the face,” Kara spat, leaning out behind Jace to look.
Onima cursed, then said into her comm, “Pursue, Wei! Do whatever you can to keep them from escaping.”
“On it, Marshal!” came the response.
Onima cursed again and tapped her comm. The response came a second later: “Ducre.”
“Special Agent Ducre, get down here,” Onima ordered. “Home in on my signal. Have Santos get in touch with Wei for further coordination.”
Jace climbed out of the cab and went to where Feroz’s body had been. He couldn’t tell if the former CBI cryptanalyst had arisen on his own or been helped.
“No wonder that first group just came in, guns blazing,” Jace said to Kara, who’d followed him. “They weren’t even Gray and Chuang security.”
“The missing transporters....” Kara cursed.
Onima joined them. “Yael is getting the Minotaur in the air now. I ordered her to track the armor-shelled attackers as best she can, which she can do better from the air.”
“I’m sorry, Onima.” Kara shook her head. “I should have made sure Feroz was dead.”
“No,” Onima said. “He was down, and that was sufficient. We should have bound him, but we figured he was out of it.”
“Feroz may still be unconscious,” Jace remarked. “I can’t tell if he got up and got himself clear, or if one of his armor-shelled transporters got him away.”
“Why would he do that?” asked Kara. “Why wouldn’t he have a large guard here?”
“His flair for the dramatic,” remarked Onima. “And they were trying not to attract the attention of the local clones. A bunch of people in armored shells would do that.”
“Of course,” Kara said. “So instead, he puts his transporters in armored shells, has them hide away to come out if need be, as a threat.”
“Right,” agreed Jace. “And since he was clearly expecting us, and knows how Onima operates, had there been a bunch of armor-shelled thugs surrounding the APC, Warrant Team One would have been called onto the scene far faster.”
“When he had us distracted, why didn’t they come then?” Kara questioned.
“Likely, their signal was the arrival of our back-up,” Jace said. “Feroz probably planned all along to let them kill us while battling it out with Warrant Team One. He’d slip away, and then release the virus.”
“That checks out, Jace.” Onima said. “Damn him. At least we’ve secured the virus.”
Jace checked the time. They had only a few hours until the dispersal of the virus had been planned to take place.
“I’ll feel better when we disable this,” Jace said, gesturing toward the trailer. “I’d rather not have gotten this far only to learn that a timer is set to go off and we get everyone killed.”
“When they get closer, I’ll have the tech experts in the other warrant teams disembark and carefully disable this thing,” Onima said.
“Good plan,” Kara said, then added, “Hopefully, Dr. Patel will have some antivirus. She could dump that into the container and disable its contents, right?”
Onima shrugged. “I don’t know for certain, but I think that would work.”
Jace noticed that a group of clones was slowly approaching them. There were probably twenty, moving cautiously but purposefully toward the APC.
“Onima....” Jace pointed.
Both Onima and Kara turned to look.
“Let me handle this,” Jace said. He didn’t wait for a reply, starting off toward the oncoming group.
As they neared, Jace recognized most of their faces. At least half of them shared his own. He also saw several Dahls, Zangs, Pools, and Lavrinenkos.
Jace felt, rather than saw, Onima and Kara take up position behind him. He still held his rifle.
As they got near, one of the Zang clones said, “What in the hell is going on here? And why are you armed, Rojas?”
“These women behind me are Marshal Onima Gwok and Deputy Marshal Kara Martinez, CBI,” Jace said. “We’re here as part of a team that came to capture that lone APC behind us.”
“Did you bring that here?” questioned another Rojas. “I don’t recall one of those being there.”
“No,” Jace told them. “It was brought here for a nefarious purpose, and we came to stop that.”
Jace turned and pointed at the APC. “The trailer behind that APC contains a vessel in which is an airborne variant of the virus that has afflicted clones across the galaxy in the last couple of years.”
“So it is a virus,” said a Dahl.
“Yes,” Jace confirmed. “A virus that was manufactured to make use of programming all of our kind possess, but that lays dormant within us. The intent was to take control of clones.”
“What?” called out a Lavrinenko. “Why?”
“There are some former NECC and NEEA leaders that dislike what the Confederation that replaced them is doing,” replied Jace. “They wanted to use our kind to distract the AECC military—engaging them in a fight to keep them busy—while those former leaders moved to overthrow the Confederation leadership. But the virus doesn’t work, and instead kills clones.”
“And they were going to use it anyhow?” questioned a Rojas.
“Yes,” Jace replied. “They decided that the crisis that wouldn’t been born from massive, unexplained, and nasty clone deaths would be just as effective a distraction as using our kind against our will. It would weaken the existing Confederation leadership and allow them to usurp power.”
“And the shooting we heard?” the Zang who’d first spoken said. “That was you?”
“Yes,” Jace agreed. “And a full CBI warrant team. We came to stop them from distributing this virus and killing you.”
“Why?” a Pool called out. “Nobody cares about clones. Why would the CBI bother?”
Before Jace could respond, Onima said, “Because mass murder is unacceptable to the Bureau, even the mass murder of clones. You may have few rights, and little respect from non-clones—but you are still citizens of the Confederation and, as such, under our protection.”
“What about your Rojas?” called out a Dahl. “Why do you have an armed Rojas with you?”
Before Jace could reply, Kara called out, “Jace has been instrumental in uncovering this situation and has been working as a special consultant to the Bureau. In fact, without Jace, we likely would have failed to stop this. And many—if not most of you—would be dying soon.”
The group of clones looked incredulous at that.
“No way,” a Pool said. “The Confederation, the CBI, the local government—nobody cares what happens to clones. Rojas, is that true?”
“Yes,” Jace said. “This is why I’m here, wearing a plasma/laser-resistant body suit and armed. I’ve been working with Marshal Gwok all throughout the investigation. That”—Jace pointed to the APC—“is what brought us here. We had to stop the release of an airborne variant of the virus for the sake of both the Confederation and the clones like you who call this home.
“Our mission here was fully sanctioned by the Bureau directorate,” added Onima.
