Rogue-ARC (41 page)

I had nothing, though. They’d stripped every item from every pocket. None of it would be suspicious, but a lot of it was useful.

As there was nothing else to do, I lay down and waited.

The clock/vid/scheduler on the wall kept time. I ignored the sports and shock shows. I just didn’t feel like putting on any particular act. Nothing is harder to read than no act at all.

When they finally came for me, four hours later, there were no restraints. Two guards and I were locked through section by section, until I was left alone in an interview room. I took a seat. A few minutes later, with a camera indicating recording in progress, a man came in.

“Good day,” he said. He didn’t mean it. He wore a plain but expensive suit and obviously had money for biosculp.

“Hello,” I agreed.

“From your DNA and image, you are a certain individual wanted for some activities fifteen years ago. Do you mind if I am not specific at this point in the conversation?” It was the voice of a viper.

“I don’t mind.” Oh, shit. I was going to die. Shock trickled through me, icy in my fingers and toes, and my balls shriveled up along with my ass.

He sat down and stared at me. “You are definitely confirmed as that individual. This is problematic from both a public relations and an international relations point of view.”

“I understand,” I said.

“Good. I must have positive confirmation of your intentions on Earth, or there will be problems.”

“May I ask who you are?” I asked.

“Here,” he said. He took out ID and laid it on the table, using his hand to shield it from the camera.

Deputy Director for Foreign Intelligence Vandler. I thought back to their hierarchy. This was the number four person in the UN intelligence apparatus.

“I see,” I acknowledged.

“I don’t have your name,” he said. “I don’t really need it. Who you are and what you did is on record. I really do need that information.”

I appreciated that he was treating me as a fellow professional. What he was saying was, “Either you assure me you’re not here on business, or you don’t leave this room alive and the file gets scrubbed. Believe it.”

“I am here on tangentially related business,” I said. I might actually live through this. I’d need to talk carefully.

Oh, did that get his attention. He started sweating.

“I need you to elaborate,” he said, fingering his phone.

Okay, he was who he said he was. No one could fake that reaction if they hadn’t studied what I did.

“I am not here to cause trouble on Earth. That was a long time ago, and no good could come of revisiting it.”

“Yes.” He nodded. He still fingered the phone, ready to make that call . . .

“One of my former subordinates is here to cause trouble. He’s why I was leaked. He did it. He implemented that incident yesterday. I’m here to stop him.”

He clearly had someone feeding him audio. He paused, nodded and said, “We require that you move that activity out of Sol space. Immediately.”

“That’s up to him, and you,” I said. “If you order me to leave, I will. I was trying to. He’s killed two people, though, and probably plans to kill others. Likely high enough to create a major incident. You are obviously aware that you can’t stop him.”

That got his teeth gritting.

I said, “Rothman, Lee, Janich, Lenz, Roberti, Rosencrans, Boulain, Groom. That’s him.”

“It could as well be you, trying to distract attention.”

I shrugged. “I’ll remain here until the next assassination if you like. I hope after that you’ll give me all the intel you have to help chase him down.”

That seemed to register.

“Will you come with me peacefully? Where we can discuss that in greater detail?”

“I would very much appreciate that,” I agreed. “The information will be useful.”

“This way, then,” he said, and stood. He never took his eyes off me. He gestured for me to go first.

They didn’t do badly. There were armed guards in enough angles to make any firefight lethal. I’d probably get most of them, but I’d be unlikely to get all. They had lethal and nonlethal weapons, and their armor was head-to-toe, so they could blaze away at a melee.

I preceded him into a limo and immobility kicked in again. I don’t blame him, and didn’t think it was rude. I was nervous myself. I couldn’t do anything here. If I started a major fight, they’d certainly kill me. If they were smart, they’d just blow up a building with me under it, and blame me. That would leave me dead, my daughter distressed, and Randall on the loose.

We got out underground of some tower or other in the Washington area. It wasn’t their actual HQ, but probably had a secure pipe to it. We went into a carpeted conference room that obviously had full shielding. He even left his phone outside.

They were professionally cordial. I accepted a sealed bottle of mineral water, though of course it could still have been doctored. We were going to feel each other out until we had some level of trust.

“There were four people in my section,” I offered. “Apparently, two of us escaped.”

“Where was this?” he asked.

“Minneapolis. Two zero nine five six East Trone Road, Executive Storage Solutions.”

He nodded. “That checks.”

“I wasn’t there, and apparently he escaped.”

“And he is . . . ?”

I wasn’t going to give real names even after the fact. “It hardly matters. He never uses it, and never did. At the time, he was going by Doug Rognan.”

“What name did he use to escape?”

“I would have no idea. We had multiple IDs cleared ahead of time, and none of us knew any of the others, nor even some of our own.”

It was true. I wasn’t going to tell him we had buried caches on Earth. They might still be here and I might still need some.

“You understand that you are . . . reviled here.”

“I do,” I said. “I’m not going to make excuses about the events during War. There’s nothing I can do about that now.”

I tried not to let that show. I didn’t want to think about it, because I couldn’t function if I did.

He said, “We didn’t find you, of course. We didn’t find him, either. We have nothing on him at all. I reviewed all the videos of those events today. Nothing.”

That caused an acidic burn inside.

I said, “You viewed them today?”

“I did. Are they useful to you?”

“Yes, very.”

“Then I want a name.”

“I went by Marquette,” I told him, deliberately misunderstanding the question. “He left Earth, I took over his persona. He didn’t know what for and was resettled elsewhere. I think everyone who might know where he is now is dead. We were in Minneapolis.”

It worked, though. He nodded and spoke to the desk.

“Play video, this archive, of Minneapolis assault.”

I turned to the wall.

It was raw footage. They hadn’t stabilized the bobbing of the helmet cameras, nor clarified anything. This was an intelligence file.

They were good, I had to admit. Their first assault tried hitting the building’s roof from two adjoining ones. The mines, zap fields and other boobytraps we’d laid disabled several troopers, probably killed two who fell twenty meters. They stopped that as soon as the first wave hit it.

A ground team materialized from several directions, stacked and hit the door in under five seconds. They threw low-grade explosives, jammers and EMP ahead, to clear the entrance. They made it past the first few traps unhindered, before taking two casualties to nonlethal stuff we’d set against common gangers or thieves.

It was less than another ten seconds before they hit the stairs. I watched the multiple views along the sides as well as the photographer’s view center screen.

And there was Deni, alone on the first landing of the stairs. It was just a glimpse, but even after fifteen Earth years her face was burned in my brain. Seeing her was gut wrenching.

The camera operator was back just far enough, or maybe she IDed him and didn’t waste ammo on him. But in front of him, Uno government goons were dying, and I felt a flush of vengeful glee. I had to force myself not to cheer, because it was very satisfying to see them die, bullets ripping through heads, necks, torsos, accompanied by screams and wails. She was ten times the soldier the lot of them were, and a thousand times the human being. We’d targeted the infrastructure and innocent people had died. These were the scum who needed it. They’d been unreachable, though I had one across the table from me now . . .

Then the stunner bolt caught her and she went limp, eyes focused on some euphoric tickle that was actually within her brain. They had her. She’d taken twelve of them down at least, but they had her.

As they rushed past, two of them knelt to ID her or restrain her, and one of them just had time to say, “Look out! She—” and then the camera jolted, the image suddenly focusing on a wall as it tumbled back down stairs.

At least fourteen. She’d rigged a charge, and I was betting, because I didn’t dare ask, that she’d worn it right over her belly.

That was why they didn’t know to look for a child. A child she hadn’t been holding. A child I’d found three days later, who had kept me just sane enough to not go on a killing spree of these . . . filth.

Then another camera took over, and I raised Deni’s count to at least fifteen.

They regrouped and got reinforcements from another platoon, and advanced at once, shooting anything that looked like a mine or sensor, three of them wearing jammer packs. It was a professional assault, for its time.

Next was Tyler. She was in great concealment, near a water heater that was operating because the hot water was on throughout the building and drawing on it and the pipes from it. The combination of heat and noise had ruined any sensor image of her. Tyler was not carrying a baby. Tyler was carrying a UN issue machine gun, and tore an entire squad apart. All they saw was a snarl and incoming tungsten.

She dropped the gun and went to pistol, and I counted her tally. She’d never been a lover, though she could have been. We’d been close enough, she was a buddy, a comrade and a friend, and I was proud to have known her. When the screams were done, at least nineteen more were dead, including one who got his larynx crushed when he tried to administer first aid. No, she wasn’t going to be kept alive to be tortured or murdered later. The grimace on her face at that moment was frightening, even to me, even after all that had happened.

No baby.

I didn’t pay much attention to the clearing of the rest of the building. Kimbo had escaped and they only had his most recent destroyed Earth ID to work from.

And it had to be him who’d hidden my sedated daughter up top.

It made sense. Deni
had
to be first and
had
to die in a fashion that made it impossible to tell she was a mother. Yes, there are ways to tell even from protoplasm, but they had no reason to look that closely.

It wasn’t cowardice that he was last. He was a better medic than Tyler. She was better with weapons. It was utterly logical, had been a decision reached in seconds or less . . .

And it made my target, my arch-nemesis, the shame of our unit, into the man who had saved my daughter’s life, and mine by extension.

I couldn’t tell
anyone
.

With that one act, however, he’d redeemed himself.

 
And I was going to use that knowledge to shame and humiliate him with his “cowardice” until I could get him off guard and kill him.

There are days when I really want the entire race wiped out by alien invasion, or a brutal virus. Then there are days I want to do it myself.

I realized Vandler was staring at me.

“I presume he left through the top window, east side.”

“How do you figure?”

“Because when I reconnoitered later, I left through the west in a hurry, past some of your police. I didn’t see anything of him.”

“What did you go back for?” he asked casually.

My neck hair turned into wire.

“Comm codes. No risk to us, but I needed them for exfiltrating.”

“I understand,” he said. “You were reported, and then we went through the building in detail for several days. It was hard to tell much of anything, really. There were only the four of you? Then, what can you tell me about this man, who’s going by what name?”

He wanted intel. It couldn’t hurt now, and gave me some goodwill to bargain with.

“Just the four there. At one time he was Kimbo Randall. I doubt that will lead to anything, though.”

“Likely not. You have no comment on your two female compatriots killing thirty eight of our best tactical troops?”

“Not really,” I said. “About average, really, though at the time I’d have commended them as a matter of course. We were all decorated after the fact, as were your troops who dropped kinetic kills on our bases and nuked New Hilo, not to mention the bio weapons scientists. It’s not relevant to what we’re doing now, and I’d hope we can all put all of it behind us.”

“You are very reasonable,” he said. “That makes me personally hate you even more, that you’re dispassionate over it.”

What would he say to the inner me, screaming, weeping, shivering?

“I don’t think there’s any attitude I could have that would help,” I said.

“Probably not,” he said. He was as cold and dispassionate as I. Here we were, discussing the mass slaughter of billions, and the hand-to-hand slaughter of hundreds, with nary a raised eyebrow.

“So how dangerous is he, then?”

“If surprised, you’ll lose tens, and he’ll disappear. Try to trap him, he’ll do what he did on Caledonia. You heard?” He nodded. “Chase him, you’ll never find him.”

He said, “I would accuse you of arrogance, but I have no reason to doubt your statements.”

“Well, I went home, eventually, and into hiding. I wanted nothing to do with the military, or the people who sent me, after the fact. There’s a line between infrastructure damage with collateral casualties and mass slaughter. I ran over it in a tank.”

“It’s a shame you didn’t decide that beforehand. But go on.”

I shrugged.

“He came home and went freelance. Eventually, our people figured that out. Later, they found me. I trained him, so I have a chance of bringing him in, or down.”