Allegiance (5 page)

“Like I said, don’t believe it,” Quiller said. “Those engines have been upgraded probably six ways from Imperial Center, and odds are everything else beneath the plating has, too. Ditto for the rest of the ships.”

“You suppose they run under false IDs?” LaRone asked.

Quiller snorted. “They probably have whole racks full of them,” he said. “We may be the Empire’s finest, but you’d never know it when ISB gets up from the budget table.”

“You have a problem with the ISB, soldier?” a dark voice demanded from behind them.

LaRone felt his stomach knot up. It was Major Drelfin, the ISB man who’d ordered the massacre on Teardrop.

“No, sir, not at all,” Quiller assured him quickly.

“Glad to hear it,” Drelfin said as he stalked toward them, his hand resting on the grip of his holstered blaster. “Now, you have exactly five seconds to tell me what you’re doing in a restricted area.”

“We’re Imperial stormtroopers, sir,” LaRone told him, fighting to keep the proper level of military respect in his voice. “We’re allowed access everywhere aboard ship.”

“Really,” Drelfin said, his gaze flicking over LaRone’s fatigues. “Why aren’t you in armor?”

“We’ve been permitted a bit of latitude in that area, sir,” LaRone said, choosing his words carefully. Regulations unequivocally stated that stormtroopers were always to be in armor whenever outside their barracks section. But Captain Ozzel resented their presence aboard his ship and didn’t like seeing armored men wandering around during their off hours. Since the stormtrooper commanders had, in turn, refused to confine their men to barracks when they were off duty, they’d come to a more unofficial arrangement.

“Permitted by whom?” Drelfin demanded. “Your lieutenant? Your major?”

“Is there a problem here, Major?” a new voice said from the far end of the observation gallery.

LaRone turned to find Marcross and Brightwater walking toward them, the latter with a rag tucked into the pocket of his fatigues and grease stains on his hands.

“What
is
this, the Kiddie Klub meeting room?” Drelfin growled. “Identify yourselves.”

“Stormtrooper TKR 175,” Marcross said, an edge of both pride and challenge in his voice. “This is TBR 479.”

“Also not in armor, I see,” Drelfin growled. “Also apparently ignorant of the regulations regarding off-limit areas.”

He shifted his glare back to LaRone. “Or is it that you border-world recruits don’t know how to read the regulations in the first place?”

“As I said, sir—” LaRone began.

“—you didn’t think regulations applied to you,” Drelfin finished sarcastically. “I trust you know better now?”

“Yes, sir,” Brightwater said. He touched LaRone’s
arm. “Come on, LaRone. You were going to help me change the steering vanes on my speeder.”

“LaRone?” Drelfin echoed, his voice suddenly strange. “
Daric
LaRone? TKR 330?”

LaRone glanced at Marcross, noting the sudden crease in the other’s forehead. “Yes, sir,” he said.

“Well, well,” Drelfin said softly. Without warning, he drew his blaster. “I’ve been going over the records of the Teardrop operation,” he continued, an unpleasant tightness at the corners of his eyes as the weapon came to a halt pointed at LaRone’s stomach. “Your squad was ordered to execute some Rebel sympathizers. You deliberately missed your shots. That’s dereliction of duty.”

LaRone felt his throat tighten. So someone had noticed his lack of precision shooting that day. This was not good. “My duty is to protect and preserve the Empire and the New Order,” he said, forcing his voice to stay calm.

“Your
duty
is to obey orders,” Drelfin countered.

“They were unarmed and nonthreatening civilians,” LaRone said. “If there were charges or suspicions concerning them, they should have been arrested and brought to trial.”

“They were Rebel sympathizers!”

Quiller took a step forward. “Sir, if you have a complaint against this man—”

“Stay out of this, stormtrooper,” Drelfin warned. “You’re in enough trouble as it is.”

“What sort of trouble?” Marcross asked.

“You’re out of uniform, you’re in a restricted area without authorization—” Drelfin nodded at LaRone. “
—and
you’re obviously friendly with a traitor to the Empire.”

“
What
?” Grave demanded. “That’s insa—”

“With all due respect, Major, TKR 2014 is correct,” Marcross cut him off. “Regulations require that a charge
of this magnitude be brought immediately to the attention of the senior stormtrooper officer.”

“Let me explain something, TKR 175,” Drelfin growled. “We’re the Imperial Security Bureau. What we say is principle; what we decide is regulation; what we do is law.”

“And whoever you order shot is dead?” LaRone retorted.

“So you
do
understand,” Drelfin said, the corners of his mouth quirking upward in a death’s-head smile. “I was in command of that operation, which means
I
will decide what to do with you. Not your lieutenant; not your major; certainly not your stupid Captain Ozzel.”

He stepped up and pressed the muzzle of his blaster into LaRone’s forehead. It was an unfamiliar design, LaRone noted distantly: large and nasty, with an odd-looking attachment at the end of the barrel. “And if I choose to summarily execute you for treason—” His finger tightened visibly on the trigger.

He was bluffing, a small part of LaRone’s mind knew. He was toying with his victim in one of the macabre games that these small-minded, sadistic little men enjoyed so much.

But LaRone was an Imperial stormtrooper, ruthlessly trained in the arts of combat and survival, and those deeply embedded reflexes knew nothing about ISB mind games. His left hand snapped up of its own accord, slapping Drelfin’s wrist and knocking the blaster away from his forehead.

It was probably the last thing Drelfin expected. He stumbled with the impact, snarling a curse as he tried to swing the weapon back on target. But even as he did so LaRone’s right hand came up, catching the other’s wrist and giving it an extra push. For a single, nerve-racking fraction of a second the blaster was again pointing at LaRone’s face; then it was past, overcorrecting and
swinging wide to LaRone’s left. He swiveled on his right foot, spinning himself halfway around as he held on to the major’s wrist, and a second later he had Drelfin hunched over, his arm twisted around, the blaster pointed harmlessly at the ceiling. “What was that about ISB whims being law?” he ground out.

“LaRone, are you
insane
?” Brightwater demanded, his eyes bulging.

“Maybe,” LaRone said. His anger was draining away, and to his dismay he realized that Brightwater was right. If he hadn’t been in trouble before, he was certainly there now. “But that’ll be for the
proper
procedure to determine,” he added. Reaching up, he twisted the blaster out of Drelfin’s grip, then let go of his arm.

Drelfin straightened up, his eyes staring vibroblades at LaRone, his face contorted with rage, his mouth working with soundless curses.

His left hand gripping a small hold-out blaster.

And this time, LaRone knew, it was no game. There was a soft flash, a muted blast—

Without a sound, Drelfin collapsed silently to the deck.

For a long, frozen moment, no one moved or spoke. LaRone stared at the crumpled body, then at the major’s blaster still in his hand, his mind struggling to believe the evidence of his eyes. No—something else had surely happened. The major must have had a stroke or heart attack, or perhaps been shot from concealment by some unknown party. That hadn’t even sounded like a real blaster shot, for pity’s sake—

“Oh, no,” Brightwater murmured, sounding stunned.

LaRone swallowed hard; and with that, the bubble of wild speculation burst, and the cold reality flooded in on him. Daric LaRone, with all his high-minded prattlings about duty and honor, had just gunned down a man in cold blood.

Not just a man. An officer. An
ISB
officer.

And in that second frozen moment, he knew he was dead.

The others knew it too. “It was self-defense,” Quiller said, his voice shaking in a way LaRone had never heard from him in even the most desperate combat situations. “You all saw it. Drelfin drew first.”

“You think ISB will care?” Grave bit out.

“I just meant—”

“They won’t care,” Marcross said, his voice tight as he looked quickly around the observation deck. “The question is, how serious are they going to be about tracking us down?”

“Wait a second,” Brightwater said. “What do you mean,
us
?”

“He’s right, Marcross,” LaRone agreed, his heart starting to pound in reaction. “There’s no
us
here—there’s just
me
. None of you did anything.”

“I doubt ISB will care about
that
, either,” Quiller muttered.

“Of course they’ll care,” Marcross said heavily. “They’ll care that none of us did anything to stop you.”

“There wasn’t any
time—
”

“Quiet, LaRone,” Grave cut in. “He’s right. We’re all for the jump on this one.”

“Not if they can’t identify us,” Brightwater suggested, looking furtively around. “There’s no one else here, and he was shot with his own gun. Maybe they’ll even think it was suicide.”

Grave snorted. “Oh, come
on
. An ISB major, at the height of his twisted little career? They kill other people, not themselves.”

“There’s only one thing to do,” LaRone said. Taking a long step to the side, he brought up his blaster to cover them. “On the floor, all of you.”

None of them moved. “Nice gesture,” Grave said. “But it won’t work.”

“I’ve got the blaster,” LaRone said, lifting the weapon for emphasis. “There’s no way you can stop me, and regulations don’t require you to throw away your lives for nothing.”

“No, LaRone, Grave’s right,” Marcross said, shaking his head. “They’ll torture us, and as soon as they find out we knew you wouldn’t shoot we’ll be right back in the grinder.”

“Besides, you can’t fly one of those ISB ships by yourself,” Quiller said quietly. “At the very least
I
have to come with you.”

“At the very least we
all
have to,” Grave said, his voice heavy. “And we’re wasting time.”

“I can’t let you do this,” LaRone protested. “I can’t ask you to give up everything this way. You’ll have to leave the Empire, become fugitives—”

“We haven’t got a choice,” Grave said. “Besides, after what happened on Teardrop, I’m not sure I’ll ever be comfortable wearing my armor again.”

“And as for leaving the Empire,” Quiller added soberly, “it seems to me the Empire left us first. At least the Empire we thought we were signing up to serve.” He looked at Brightwater. “So: Brightwater. Raise and call to you.”

Brightwater grimaced. “I’m not ready to give up on the Empire quite yet,” he said. “But I also don’t want to sit around waiting for ISB to put me under their hot lights. What’s the plan?”

LaRone looked down at Drelfin’s crumpled form, trying to kick his brain back up to speed. “First thing is to hide the body,” he said. “One of those storage lockers over there ought to do it. Quiller, which ship are we taking?”

“The Suwantek,” Quiller said, pointing to the ship
they’d been discussing earlier. “Considering our combined mechanical skills, we’re going to want the most reliable ship we can get. If they were thoughtful enough to leave the systems on standby, I can have it prepped in ten minutes.”

“We can’t leave while the
Reprisal
’s in hyperspace,” Brightwater said.

“Maybe there’s another way,” LaRone said, an audacious idea tickling the back of his mind. “Go get it prepped—Grave, Brightwater, you go with him. Marcross and I will deal with the body.”

The storage lockers were well packed, but with a little tweaking they were able to make enough room for Drelfin’s body. By the time they finished and descended to the hangar deck level Quiller and the others were already inside the Suwantek. Trying to look casual, LaRone touched Marcross’s arm and headed toward the boarding ramp.

No one challenged them as they strode along, a circumstance that struck LaRone as both suspicious and ominous. They were halfway across before it occurred to him that with the ISB’s restrictions in place there probably wasn’t anyone in the hangar bay monitor room to watch the parade. They reached the ship without incident and climbed up into a small but nicely furnished crew lounge. Raising and sealing the ramp, they headed for the bridge.

Quiller was in the pilot’s seat, his fingers tapping here and there as he brought the ship to full life. “Where are Grave and Brightwater?” Marcross asked as he sat down beside Quiller in the copilot’s seat.

“Checking to make sure no one’s sleeping aboard,” Quiller said. “Okay, we’re ready.” He peered over his shoulder at LaRone. “You said you had an idea?”

LaRone nodded, sat down behind Marcross at the astrogation/comm station, and gave the controls a quick
scan. In-hangar comm … there. Squaring his shoulders, trying to put himself in the mind-set of an ISB thug, he keyed it on. “This is Major Drelfin,” he said in his best impression of Drelfin’s voice. “We’re ready.”

“Sir?” a slightly puzzled voice came back.

“I said we’re ready to go,” LaRone said, putting some bite into his voice. “Bring the
Reprisal
out of hyperspace so we can launch.”

“Ah … one moment, sir.”

The comm went silent. “
That
was your big trick?” Quiller muttered.

“Give him a minute,” LaRone said, trying to sound more confident than he felt. If they had to blast their way out of here—

“Major, this is Commander Brillstow,” a new voice put in. “I see no ship departures on my schedule.”

“Of course you don’t,” LaRone growled. “And you won’t put anything in your log report, either. Now kindly drop out of hyperspace so we can get on with this.”

He held his breath. Quiller was right, of course; standing orders would certainly require that the deck officer clear any such unscheduled request with the captain, or at least check with someone in Drelfin’s own contingent.