Three Worlds 01 - Seduce Me In Dreams (11 page)

Justice was a woman and would make for a potentially good perspective; however, Justice had the tact of a rhinoceros and couldn‟t keep a confidence for her life. Ender. Well, Ender was Ender. He‟d sooner blow something to bits than talk about it. He wasn‟t going near the hyperspray-happy medic. He wished Trick was there, oddly enough. The kid was trustworthy with secrets and definitely knew about the nuances of women.

Lasher sauntered into the mess hall and threw himself into a chair with his own brand of laid-back authority. He slid a large CompuVid onto the table, along with a holographic imager and enough handheld VidPads for everyone to use during the briefing. Then he slowly, purposely, turned to look Bronse Chapel dead in his periwinkle eyes. “So what happened?

Someone been pissing in your rations for the past twenty-four hours, or what?”

“Leave it go, Lasher,” Chapel warned, pressing hard against his temples.

“No can do, sir. Not unless I want a mutiny before we hit planetside. You‟re alienating the very people you need in order to stay alive, Bronse. The very people who also need you in order to survive.”

“Masin …” Bronse sighed.

“The meeting doesn‟t start for another ten minutes, Bronse. Go see Jet. Get rid of the headache at least. You‟ve had it for over twelve hours already.”

“I‟m just a little—”

“Tense. And I‟m this close …”—he held up a frighteningly tiny representation between his two fingers—“to ordering you to take a relaxant for five hours and a soma-induced nap in Medbay. And please don‟t tell me I wouldn‟t dare when you know damn well I would. Everyone is wired tight and on the very edge of their last nerves with this mission. It‟s a bad fucking time for you to be shredding everyone‟s confidence and stability. Now, I hope that your stress and that headache are all that‟s wrong with you, Commander, because I‟m not letting one soldier in this unit trot out on a death mission when their C.O. has his head up his ass. You copy?”

Bronse let only a single heartbeat pass. “I copy. And you‟re right. I‟ll be back after Medbay. Be best to review plans without a headache in the way. And I think I‟ll do the soma-induced nap as well after the briefing.” He exhaled a long, slow breath. “I‟m sorry. I can‟t explain everything to you. I wish I could. I just think it wouldn‟t do you any more good than it‟s been doing me. We‟ll be seeing the plot unfold soon enough, right?”

“That‟s the plan,” Lasher agreed, his tone grave but accepting. “Bronse, I don‟t mean to—”

“To what? To be right? Forget it, partner.” He gripped his second‟s shoulder firmly before rising to his feet. “As you‟re fond of reminding me, we have known each other too long to worry about it.”

Lasher gave him a half smile, his roughly handsome features lighting up with his amusement. “Does that mean I can—?”

“Don‟t push your luck” came the sharp retort as Bronse exited the mess.

* * *

Twenty minutes later and feeling a damn sight better, Bronse reentered the mess to join his crew.

“First Actives,” he greeted, not realizing he sounded almost jovial compared to his recent tones and behaviors. He did become aware of it as silence fell over them, and he looked at them to see them all frozen like a snapshot in their surprise.

“Commander,” Lasher greeted in a pointed prompt, his lips twitching with humor.

“Commander,” Ender and Justice echoed in unison.

“Okay, Lasher. How about we skip the dinner date and cut right to the foreplay?” Bronse said in a prompt of his own, slinging himself into a chair and grabbing a piece of fruit.

“Copy that,” Lasher agreed, grinning when Justice snorted out a laugh. He reached out to place the holographic generator in the center of the table, and they each drew a VidPad close for their notes. “Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, I give you Project Pooch-Screw.” He pressed a button and with a brilliant flicker a full-dimensional topographical map of a section of the Grinpar Desert burst to life. In full color, with black sand and significant rock formations in graphic detail, the section began to pivot on its central point, turning slowly so each soldier could get a good look at all perspectives of the area.

“All right, pay attention, kiddies,” Lasher said. “First, we‟re going to take a look at the mission as it was handed to us by our friend at command. Insertion, point A. We land fifteen miles out from target range at the first hour of the next day, under cover of dark and, need I add, freezing-ass cold. From landing point we are to march along this line for fifteen miles until we reach point B—our goal point.”

“My, that‟s a very nice straight line,” Justice complimented him.

“Why, thank you,” Lasher rejoined, smiling at her crookedly. “I thought you might like it. But wait, it gets better.” He magnified and altered the map to draw in on their goal point—a ramshackle-looking building made of stone and mortar, with slabs of metal protruding from the foundation, evidently to reinforce it. The roof was bolted-down rusted metal plates—deck plates that had been scavenged, by the look of them.

“Hmm. A building,” Ender said softly. “A lone building in a desert prone to the most torrential and repetitive natural disaster known to man.”

“Aww, c‟mon. It‟s practically on the wilderness border. How many sand hurricanes could they possibly get?” Lasher asked leadingly.

“Okay, I say we accept that,” Justice piped up. “Location, location, location!” She spun her spoon around in the air with aplomb before setting it back in her pudding.

“So we agree to accept it as normal for a lone building to stand on the borders of the two most volatile land factions, the Nomaads and the western barbarians. Now, as luck would have it,” Lasher went on, his sarcasm sparkling merrily in his tone as the structure began to pivot on the same central point as the other maps moved, “some very, very bad men and women have decided to camp out in and around this structure.”

Justice and Ender leaned together to boo and hiss softly.

“Now, our heroes … that‟s us,” Lasher clarified as a simulation of the team lit up in position on command. Justice and Ender added appropriate cheers and applause, making Bronse chuckle in spite of his attempt to remain in neutral command. “We‟re supposed to approach the building, surround it in a wide perimeter, and infiltrate with silent but … and might I say I love this part …
not
deadly force, and liberate a kidnapped political figure from our naughty bad guys. He‟s being held in the rear section of the building somewhere around here.”

“Okay, wait. The orders actually said to extract the mark without killing the hostiles?”

Justice asked.

“Death of hostiles is to be an absolute last resort. Only if absolutely necessary,” Lasher qualified clearly.

“And did HQ happen to suggest how we‟re supposed to pull that particular rabbit out of our asses, Lieutenant Commander?” Bronse asked genially.

“Subdue with nonlethal tactics. Silent hand-to-hand, drugs, abduction—whatever works that‟s nonfatal.”

“And who‟s the mark?” Ender asked.

“Han Abjurdoon, a high king—a Shiasha—of a powerful Nomaadic tribe from the Gurdon Nomaad sector, which as you know is friendly to peace efforts being made by IM and other international peacemakers.”

“Nice.” Bronse exhaled long and slow. “You see the problem here?” he asked his junior officers.

“You mean other than the fact that I don‟t get to kill anyone?” Ender asked dryly.

“I see that it makes no sense to keep a valuable ransom figure like a Gurdon Shiasha in such an exposed and—might I add—hostile locale,” Justice interjected.

“That‟s not the problem. Logical or not,” Lasher corrected her, “the problem is that if this is a fake—a setup meant to thrash us all and see to Commander Chapel‟s assassination—we can go in and kill whatever we want to, except a few key people to use as humanoid databases.

Information gathering will be crucial in that case. But,” he said, putting heavy emphasis on the conjunction, “what if there really is a Shiasha sitting trussed up in the back room of this dangerous and highly unlikely building on the borders? What if this isn‟t an attempt on the commander and is a legitimate mission operation that just happens to be signed by a scum of the universe admiral with ulterior motives that have nothing to do with this?”

“In spite of it taking place on the same planet and in the same desert as the last assassination attempt?” Justice asked archly.

“In spite of that,” said Lasher. “The problem is, we can‟t risk making the assumption. We can‟t just stomp in there assuming something that could get an important innocent killed.”

“No doubt it was planned this way for that reason,” Ender noted.

“No doubt.” Lasher nodded his agreement. “And so, let‟s look at Project Pooch-Screw, the director‟s cut.” There were no cheers or laughter for the quip. Everyone was leaning forward at full attention now, knowing that this was when they had to focus. “My belief is that if this is another attempt to kill Bronse, they would want to make a mark of him somewhere in here—the fifteen-mile hike between insertion and target.”

“They would have to. If any of us made it to target and found out it was a hoax, then got back to the IM alive, it could be a bad thing for he-who-signed-the-orders. If we all die, it was simply an honest mission gone awry,” Justice said smartly.

“Bingo,” Lasher agreed. “Though I‟m sure they‟ll have plenty of armed, forewarned, and alert guards to see that that doesn‟t happen. We‟re ETF, after all. We‟re supposed to survive the unsurvivable. There are two ways I see this happening. They are either going to try to tank us all, or they are going to try to separate the commander from us and take him down separately.”

“Makes no sense to do that. All they have to do is mine the route or the building and click …
poosh
!” Ender imitated the remote detonation with both sound and hand gestures.

“Easier to take us all out.”

“I agree,” Lasher said, casting a quick glance at Bronse. Bronse knew he had made the alternative suggestion only because of the suspicions that Bronse had related to him earlier about them being separated. “So here‟s my version of the mission. We insert here, two hours earlier, at the twenty-sixth hour, and eight miles west of the original point, landing in this cover of low brush and scrub on the wilderness side of the border. Then we pull what now becomes a twelve-mile march parallel to the original, but we do it along this shale outcropping and the cover of the scrub, staying on the wilderness side the entire time. Besides moving through the hot zone earlier than expected, it will also give us two extra hours to jog across the border and shed the remaining eight miles to the building, approaching from the east rather than the south. It adds five miles onto the whole mission design, but I don‟t see much choice. The new approach should circumvent any ambushes.”

“Okay, so that gets us to this building, for better or worse, right?” said Ender.

“Right,” Lasher continued. “Only we‟re going to send just one man into the perimeter, not the whole squad trying to take down all the hostiles. We won‟t know the best point until we see the guard dispersal, but I plan to approach and eliminate all hostiles on the eastern side of the structure using silent force.”

Lasher pulled out a stick and smacked it firmly down on the table, eliciting a whoop from Justice and a round of clapping from Ender. The metal stick was about eight inches long and thin enough to fit up a sleeve, and it had a dual pronged tip that could not only jab into someone but deliver a nasty, nerve-jiggling shock through the person‟s entire body, rendering them unconscious. The “juice sticks,” as they were called, had been outlawed in the IM years ago as being inhumane, due to the sometimes permanent scrambling of their victims‟ brains. Although it was suspected that the prohibition was more likely because too many soldiers had gotten disarmed of them and received a jolt of their own medicine instead, ending up with valuable training hours suddenly unable to do much more than eat pudding through a straw.

“After which,” Lasher went on, “I will insert myself through this door—after I introduce a Jeffon gas bomb, that is. It‟ll take out anyone not wearing a gas mask, and I‟ll use the simultaneous smoke cover to rip off the masks of any of those who might be protected. Justice, Ender—you are my backups.” Lasher turned to Bronse. “Sorry, sir, but I strongly suggest that you back up the backups and leave the driving to us.”

“Lieutenant, I have absolutely no problem with that. And what about extraction?”

“We truss up the unconscious Shiasha—just in case he wakes up and just in case he‟s not a Shiasha—and we hump him out in a reverse course as fast as our little legs can make it. I expect that an alarm will eventually go out. That‟s why I chose the shale outcropping. It will drop us below sight level as we trek back to the ship. The worst part will be the first five miles eastward. We‟ll be relatively naked until we reach the shale. There‟s cover here—and here—and along here—to help. Not much, but not bad, either.”

“I have a thought,” Ender spoke up. “Why not set out some sweat and tears on the way to the target structure? We can line up smoke and gas bombs for the entire five-mile track in intermittent bursts—like here and here—and when they follow us, it will slow
them
down but not us. I can take us around what I set. Nonfatal, sir, but effective.” Ender gave them a wolfish, eager grin. The arms master did love his ordnance.

“Excellent,” Bronse praised.

“Other than a few other details and surprises I‟ve thought of, that‟s the plan,” Lasher concluded. “If we hit any snafus, we rally back and regroup seven miles deeper into the wilderness at this cave and rock formation. Do you copy? Snafu means any segregations of troops that are unplanned, any casualties, and any other general fuckups that are otherwise undesirable. I mean it. No solo actions, no joyrides. We keep tight and together on this. The instant it goes even the littlest bad, we fall back and regroup. Anyone hard of hearing here today?”

“No, sir,” Ender and Justice assured him.

“Good. Now let‟s talk about surprises and minor details.”

Kith reached down to stroke his sister‟s cheek, his fingers so light that she would barely feel them. That was, actually, the idea. The gesture of comfort was more for his benefit than hers, and he did not want to wake her. When they had finally let him into her cell to see her at the break of light, he had been relieved for all of a minute before he‟d gotten close enough to her to realize that the damage they had done had not stopped when the beating had stopped.