Numina code, p.30
Numina Code, page 30
Rover started to speak; Cactus cut off his microphone. He stepped in instead. “Washington, DC is sending active-duty troops to Ellington?”
Delgado’s avatar moved again. Definitely uneasy. Interesting, Rover thought, that he hadn’t disabled his body language protocols. “Yes. They’ll be working in conjunction with your local Army unit and your Security Forces troops in order to ensure the safety of the Unity candidates.”
“That’s a nice word for forcible conscription,” Rover growled.
Sausage turned off his microphone as well. “Ty, don’t make this worse.”
“How the fuck does this get worse?”
“Later, Ty.”
Cactus was talking. “General, have you cleared this through State?”
“I don’t have to. Everything’s been federalized. Paperwork’s on its way right now. I expect you to act with professionalism on this,” he said. “I know you don’t like this. Nobody likes this. But this is the action that Congress and the president have decided is in the best interests of the nation, and you will comply.” The last three words were icy. Definitive. “Understood?”
Cactus’s jaw tightened. “Of course, General.”
“Good.”
And the virtual briefing room vanished.
Rover tore his VR rig off, shoving back from the table and pacing away. Cactus and Sausage disconnected as well, setting their own gear down. Cactus leaned forward, saying nothing. Sausage reached for his coffee.
“Well?” Rover demanded.
“I think I need more caffeine,” Sausage said. “You want to hit that coffee shop at the terminal? I’m out of brew pods in my office and Scurvy’s shit gives me ulcers.”
Rover almost told him to go fuck himself, but there was something in his commander’s face that made him hold his tongue.
And he was glad he did, for the second they got in Sausage’s early-model coupe, he switched on a jammer, concealed in the dash.
“What the hell?” Rover demanded.
“We need to be careful.”
“They are talking about turning over civilians, American citizens, most of whom have not volunteered for this, over to some foreign government. Last time I checked, we don’t do things like that!”
“We played ourselves here, Ty,” Sausage said, shaking his head. “All we did was lose control of the situation. We can’t afford to do that again.”
“Who says I did anything?” he challenged.
Sausage didn’t take the bait. “What’s relevant here is that they are apparently determined to keep this staging point here at Ellington. But why here? Why this place? Ozona, out in West Texas, is way bigger, a lot more isolated, and less subject to public scrutiny.”
“What are you getting at?”
“I don’t know. But something doesn’t add up.” Sausage clapped Rover on the shoulder. “First things first. We make friends with whoever the hell is coming down from Hood, and we offer every bit of assistance we can.”
“That’s going to be suspicious.”
“I’ll do it. You keep being yourself. It’ll all work out.”
“Not if they start taking people up to orbit. If they’re—”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. No more fuckups. We take our orders and we wait, you understand?”
“Is that an order?”
“Fuck, Ty, it’s a request. But I can’t play this right if I have to fight you too.”
Rover laid an elbow on the door rest. “If this looks like it’s going to turn into another Day Four Incident…”
“Until then, we wait,” Sausage said, and turned off the jammer.
Rover looked out east, across the runway. An Apeliotes was just coming in to land.
Fucking spaceplanes, he thought, and wondered if the aliens would use their own landing craft for this thing or what.
43
“Caitlyn, come on, anything you can—”
“If she wanted to talk to you, she’d talk to you. Why should I help you with that?”
It was way too damn early on a Monday. But Norris had mandated weekly physical training sessions for the shop while the mobilization orders were still in place. Push-ups, a core workout, then running. Garcia hated running. Especially in the dark damp of November at 0630.
Garcia had stuff to do, back at the unit. Most of the full-time crew were on shift, babysitting the comm portions of the mission, and didn’t have time to do the myriad of other tasks that tended to pile up. It had gotten worse in the wake of the captain’s death, during the Shiodome attack. Norris had fewer missions to worry about now, with the whole abiota fleet back at Ellington, and far more people, with the mobilization, so he was aggressively attacking the backlog of work.
But Garcia was tired today. Tired from the run. Tired from worrying about Lara.
So he’d skipped out on the patch installs he was supposed to be doing on the video server and come over here.
Which might have been a mistake, judging by the way Caitlyn was glaring at him from behind the register, disdain stamped on her face.
“Please.”
She crossed her arms. “That hurt, didn’t it?”
“Shit, Caitlyn. I’ve tried everything. She’s not at home, she wasn’t at classes last week, she’s not at her parents. I figured she might be—”
“Here?” Caitlyn asked sharply and scoffed. “That’s not possible, because she was fired last week. HR-bot caught your little argument on the internal security cameras. Doesn’t matter that you’re her boyfriend. Hitting a customer ain’t allowed.”
Guilt washed over him. Guilt, and not a little bit of apprehension. This had been his last resort. Where the hell was she if she wasn’t here?
“Didn’t know that, did you?” Caitlyn asked, still watching him.
“No,” he admitted. “And that’s not what I would have wanted.”
“Maybe y’all shouldn’t be getting in fights over stupid shit in our coffee bar,” Caitlyn said. “Now are you gonna order something or what?” She pointed behind her to the discreet camera, sunk into the back corner of the shop. “I’ve got a planeload of passengers that’ll be coming through here in a minute, and I’d hate for the HR-bot to decide you came back just to cause trouble and call the cops on you.”
“It wouldn’t do that, would it?” he asked.
But judging from Caitlyn’s look, Garcia decided it wasn’t something he wanted to risk.
He ordered a coffee and went to wait by the pickup window. There was indeed a stream of people coming through now; the Apeliotes he’d seen driving over must have finally taxied in and unloaded its passengers. He’d seen this before, people coming back from a few days in zero gravity; they were all walking funny. Kind of amusing, or at least, funnier than trying to figure out where the hell Lara was, and he found himself watching.
And then…
“Daelia?” he called, surprised. He couldn’t see her face, but that arm was a dead giveaway. She turned toward him, and Garcia was surprised to see a mess of bandages plastered across her left cheek and forehead. Grabbing his coffee, he walked over. “Hey, what’s up?”
Daelia stopped and looked behind her. Huh. That new guy, Argo, was with her. He looked pretty banged up too, tired and bruised, little cuts littering his knuckles.
“What are you doing here?” Daelia asked with a sigh.
“You haven’t heard from Lara, have you?”
“What?” And that was Argo.
“Yeah, you know, Lara. Uhh, Staff Sergeant Menendez?”
“Why would she be talking to me?” Daelia asked.
“I thought you guys were, like, friends or something.”
Daelia rubbed her face. “Garcia, it’s been kind of a, umm, shit weekend and we—”
“Last time I saw her, we had a fight over some information she said she downloaded from Eleutheria, said she spoke to Eleutheria directly, and now she’s gone.”
Daelia looked at Argo, who closed his eyes, shook his head. “She’s missing?” Daelia asked.
“Yeah.”
“Daelia,” Argo said. “I think we need to—”
“Eleutheria’s no joke. She’s one of the First Ones,” Daelia told him, and looked back at Garcia. “I’ll try to talk to her.”
“Lara?”
“Eleutheria,” Daelia said, rolling her eyes, like this was obvious and he was an idiot for not thinking of it.
“I’ve tried. She won’t even let me in her stupid rumor fortress.”
“She’ll let me in,” Daelia said, and there was heat in her voice now. “She’ll talk to me. After this weekend, she fucking better.”
As they walked away again, Garcia went back to add a little more milk to his cup. Fucking weird, he thought. And unfair. Daelia had always laughed at the idea of going up there, but she got to go now? When the expo had started? Shit, he thought, he didn’t even ask her how that was.
But no matter. Those patches weren’t going to upload themselves.
And if Daelia thought she could get through to Eleutheria…
So lost in thought was he that he almost ran straight into somebody on his way back out of the shop.
One of the last people on the planet he wanted to see.
“Rover,” he stammered, and glanced over. “And Colonel Lesauvage. I’m umm, I’m working today, I just—”
Sausage waved it off and kept walking. “Caitlyn!” he called. “What’s the cold brew of the day?”
Which left Rover.
Rover. Interdiction Squadron Commander Rover. Eternally cranky Rover. Staring a hole in him. Like he was already thinking up an email to Hack, complaining about that tech sergeant of yours, wasting his morning at the coffee shop.
Hell.
Garcia tried to smile. Tried to deflect. “So,” he tried, “you see Daelia and the new guy on your way in?” he asked.
Rover’s face twitched. “What?” he asked, deceptively mild.
Oh, shit, Garcia thought. What had he just said?
44
Daelia stumbled back into the Scrap House, barely catching herself on the doorjamb.
“You okay?”
“Fine,” she grumbled, and pulled herself back up. “Stupid gravity.”
Argo smiled at her. “Which way to the, uhh…”
Daelia caught a yawn with the back of her hand. Right. She’d promised him a shower. “Just down the hall to the left. Employee locker room. Should be towels and stuff in there.”
“Your dad supplies towels? Maybe I should come work for him.”
It was a lame joke, and fragile. Daelia smiled for it, more out of obligation than anything else. She needed sleep. Sleep, and a shower, and a good cry. She felt like her skin was burning off. And not just in her left arm, but everywhere.
For a moment, they just stared at each other.
“Hey,” Argo said, taking a step toward her. “That—”
She held up a hand. Left. There was asteroid dust under the fine connections of her brace there. It chafed. “Take a shower,” she said, suddenly desperate to be alone. There was something in his gaze she didn’t understand and couldn’t deal with just then.
He looked at her for a moment more—was it pity? Sympathy?—but nodded and headed down the hall.
After Argo had gone, Daelia meant to head upstairs to her little apartment. Get that shower and sleep and cry. But then she heard a noise. Out on the main hangar floor.
“What the fuck?” she muttered to herself and went to investigate.
The hangar doors were still closed, and the lights weren’t on. The shadows were deep, the silence profound. Daelia immediately regretted not grabbing the shotgun out of Argo’s SUV. After the fucking week she’d had, the last thing she needed was more bullshit.
But there wasn’t an intruder out here. No. Not at all.
Instead—
Instead, illuminated by the glow from an open laptop, there was a figure slumped down in one of the break area sofas, feet up on the coffee table, a can of soda resting on one knee. Gaunt, pale, rough. But nonetheless…
“Dad?” she asked, her brain rebelling at the sight. Now, now, right now, was when he finally came back?
“Daelia,” he nodded back, and waved her over. “Good. I’m glad you’re here.”
“Dad. Where the hell have you—”
“We need to talk,” he said, voice rough from lack of use. “About your mother.”
Cyber heists, family reunions, and haunted houses abiota-style in Book Four, Domain Code, available for pre-order now!
AUTHOR’S NOTES
Ahh, space. The final frontier. The ultimate expensive vacation. If you thought going to Six Flags was pricy, just wait until they can charge you twenty bucks for an eight-ounce bottle of reclaimed water!
Still. It’ll be worth it for that view, if nothing else.
I debated whether or not to take us up into orbit at this point in the series. It would seem to be the most definitive way to figure out exactly what’s going on with Unity. But that revelation isn’t an end unto itself; knowledge of the fraud isn’t enough isn’t going to be enough to stop it.
The real battle starts now.
If you liked this book, there’s no greater compliment a writer can receive than a review! More importantly, it helps other readers find and enjoy it as well. Even just giving a star rating is a great thing. (And hey, if you hated it, thank you for reading this far and I’d love to hear your thoughts too)
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Cheers,
Eryn
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A lifelong science fiction fanatic, E.M. Rensing still managed to surprise her family when she decided to pursue a commission in the US Air Force. A graduate of the United States Air Force Academy, she enjoyed a 13 year career as a Cyber Operations Officer, and has traveled all over the world. E.M. Rensing lives with her husband and daughters in south Texas.
E.M. Rensing, Numina Code
