Storm Force: Book Three of the Last Legion Series (3 page)

Kouro pushed her away, and she went to one knee.

Garvin had Kouro’s arm, spun with it, twisting. The bone snapped loudly, and Kouro howled, clutched it.

One of the large men hit a stance, launched a knife-hand strike at Jaansma. Garvin wasn’t there, turning away toward the second man.

The second man lifted his hands into guard as Garvin stepped inside them, headbutted the man in the face, hit him hard in the gut with both hands, was away as the man went down, vomiting over himself.

The first man snapkicked toward Garvin, was well wide of his mark, and Yoshitaro had the man’s foot in both hands and lifted high, brought his own foot up, and kicked the first squarely in the crotch.

The first man howled, stumbled back into Kouro, who was intent on his broken arm, who screeched at the impact, stumbled back, bounced off the glass-paned wall.

Kouro saw Yoshitaro, face in a grimace, a meter in the air above him, legs curled. Njangu lashed out in a flying-mare kick and smashed Kouro through the glass wall, landed on his hands, and rolled to his feet.

Glass tinkled, and hotel employees scurried.

“Son of a bitch,” Garvin said. “What’d he say to you, anyway?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jasith said.

“Nope,” Njangu agreed. “I suppose it doesn’t. Not now.” He surveyed the damage. “Guess press-military relations have just hit a new low, hmm? Who the hell, by the way, were those two bruisers?”

“Damfino,” Garvin said. “Rent-a-goons, maybe. Or sports journohs.” He kicked a bit of glass. “Good thing the Legion’s picking up our tab. I’ll bet this one’ll be expensive.”

“It surely relieved my tensions and anxieties better than a simple old drunk,” Njangu said dreamily. “Pity the son of a bitch appears to be still breathing.”

• • •

“Brawling in public,”
Caud
Angara growled. “In dress uniform, to boot. Savagely attacking, without any reason, and hospitalizing the publisher of the biggest holo on Cumbre. Plus two of his aides.”

“Yessir,” Jaansma said. He and Yoshitaro were at rigid attention in front of the
Caud
’s desk.

“Any explanation?”

“Nossir,” Yoshitaro said.

Angara considered them, picking up a piece of paper from his desk.

“Mister Kouro has declined to press charges against you. His com said he preferred to let military justice deal with you two miscreants, since he considers it to be far more severe.” Angara grunted. “I am not fond of civilians expecting us to do their jobs for them.”

He sighed. “Knowing Mister Kouro and his, shall we say, personality quirks, and certain … personal matters about you,
Mil
Jaansma, I can theorize about the actual course of events.”

He tore the paper in half, deposited it in his wastecan.

“I’m taking no official response to this matter, either as far as punishment or reprimands in your file. You will, however, be held responsible for the repairs to the Shelburne, which seems fair.

“Also, both of you are on my unofficial villain list. I don’t want to have any other problems from either of you until I tell you it’s authorized to be rowdies. Understand?”

“Yessir,” the two chorused.

“I’ll also suggest you can get back into my good graces the quicker you catch that damned spy. That’s all. Dismissed.”

Garvin saluted, and the two, moving like clockwork figures, left-faced and went to the door.

“Jaansma!”

Garvin stopped. “Yes, sir?”

“After the hoo-raw, did you two ever get your reenlistment drink?”

“Nossir. We didn’t figure it was a good night for boozing.”

Angara nodded, and the two went out. After a moment, he shook his head, grinned, and turned to other matters.

• • •

Yoshitaro looked at screens. “Okay, here’s my theory on our agent. Since Redruth hasn’t spent much time on Cumbre, he must’ve hired him out-system. I’d guess Snoopy is either a native of Larix/Kura, or maybe a Cumbrian native who spent some time on those planets, long enough to get bought or subverted.”

“Sounds logical,” Hedley said from where he sprawled on a couch.

“It’d be a lot simpler if everybody on Cumbre had an ID card,” Yoshitaro said. “We could just look up anybody who’s been around Larix and Kura, haul ‘em in, and take out the thumbscrews.”

“Hell of a note, hearing you say that,” Garvin said. “Considering your background.”

Hedley looked curious. Yoshitaro decided this might not be the time to tell the boss about his background as a professional thief, lock-breaker, forger, arsonist, strongarm man, and general layabout.

“Actually,” Hedley said, “you’d have a problem even if you could roust everybody in who knows anything about flipping Larix/Kura. Before you two got shipped out here, that was the main shopping vacation for the Rentiers. If we hauled all of those rich pigs in and started asking, you know they’d gossip, which I’ll assume would go straight back to Snoopy.”

“So everything stays at ground zero until we nail him,” Garvin said. “All right,
Cent
Yoshitaro. Let’s hook the snake.”

“Right,” Njangu said. “We’ve hopefully got Snoopy relaxed with our phony spies all locked up. Now I think it’s time to begin our operation against Kura.”

• • •

Hedley scanned the printout.

“We’re sure … as sure as we can be … this includes everybody who had any knowledge of our penetration attempt against Larix?”

“We were sloppy, boss,” Njangu said wearily. “But not
that
sloppy. We did try to keep a need to know on things.”

“And you trust the Force enough to be assuming the leak to Snoopy was from a civilian source?”

“Not me,” Yoshitaro said. “I mistrust everygod-damnedbody. But Garvin said we can’t spread ourselves too thin.”

“ ‘Kay,” Hedley said. “Now, get your ass out there and talk to all participants again, and make sure they didn’t just happen to forget anybody.”

“Slave driver.” But Yoshitaro said it with grudging respect.

• • •

“Hey, Njangu,” Ben Dill said. “I got a small confession to make.”

“Don’t tell me the baddie we’re looking for is you?” Since Dill had been party to the blown mission into Larix, nobody had bothered to run the cover story about the phony Kura operation past him.

“Yeh,” Dill said, and bared his fangs. “Went and bribed me for two honeys and a roast
felmet
under glass.”

“I should’ve known that was why your breath smells the way it does. What’s the confession?”

Dill told him. When he finished, he spread his hands. “Sorry. But we were in a hurry.”

“You
just
remembered that?”

“No.” Dill looked shamefaced. “Alikhan had to remind me.”

“Fine,” Njangu snapped. “Now be sure and remind me if you happen to remember anything else, like you’ve got an aged aunt who’s head of Redruth’s security.”

“You mean I didn’t mention her already?”

• • •

“
Cent
Ben Dill to pick up some charts,” Dill said. “Requisition YAG One-Nine-Eight.” The Musth beside him didn’t speak, but his head darted back and forth.

The clerk took off her glasses, scowled at the alien, then lifted a security case from under the counter, set it down, a little too heavily.

“Thank’ee,” Dill said, scrawled a signature, and the pair left.

The clerk looked around the airfield office. Her supervisor and another clerk were still working.

“Could you take the desk for me, ma’am, for a couple of minutes?”

The supervisor nodded, taking her folder to the desk. The clerk picked up her belt pouch, and headed for the bathrooms.

• • •

“Bingo,” the tech said. “The scan picked it up right away. We’ve got ‘Eleven’ and ‘Scrambling.’ The rest of the transmission’s coded.”

“Enough?” her
tweg
asked Yoshitaro.

“More than,” he said, turned to the four military policemen in the back of the Grierson, parked a few meters from the spaceport’s administrative building. “Take her. Don’t let her use an L-pill, and make sure you grab all of her possessions. Get in and out, fast. She’s got no rights. No talking to anybody, no lawyer, no nothing.”

• • •

“We’ve got an agent,” Hedley said. “I’ve got our analysts looking for others. But so far, this Pon Wrathers is all we’ve got.”

“Bear down,” Angara said. “The clock is running.”

• • •

The room was very big and felt like it was far underground. An air conditioner was running somewhere, just loud enough to be annoying. Pon Wrathers stood in a pool of light. There was a desk in front of her. Sitting behind it was a man, hidden in the shadows. There was a small box on the table.

“I wish a lawyer.”

Silence.

“Who are you?”

“My name is Njangu Yoshitaro.”

“What are you? Some sort of policeman?”

Again, silence.

“Why am I being held?”

“Who do you suppose you’re spying for?” Njangu asked.

“I’m not a spy!”

“Then why did you make a coded transmission just after giving some officers of the Force classified navigational data?”

“I made no transmission! That scrambler was planted on me by one of those thugs who arrested me.”

“You’re either naturally quick, or well trained,” Njangu said. “Did you realize you were working for an agent of an extrastellar government?”

Wrathers jerked just slightly. “I did no such thing! I want a lawyer!”

“Let me apprise you of something, Wrathers. You don’t know who I work for, what agency of the government. Perhaps I’m not working for
any
government. The Rentiers used to run their own police and death squads, remember?”

Wrathers blinked.

“If that were the case, your asking for a lawyer is a joke,” Njangu went on. “You ought to be more concerned about what could happen to you, here, alone, in a strange place, when no one on the outside knows anything about where you are.”

“Who are you? What are you doing to me?”

Njangu waited silently for a moment. It was interesting being on the far end of techniques he’d experienced as a youth on Waughtal’s Planet.

“I’m doing nothing,” he said calmly. “Not yet. All I want is my questions answered. Why were you transmitting data in code?”

“I already told you, I wasn’t making any transmission!”

“Who is Eleven?”

“I know nothing about any Mar Eleven.” Wrathers realized she’d slipped, but Yoshitaro seemed to take no notice.

“You weren’t scrambling?”

“For the thirty-third time, I wasn’t scrambling anything! Look, I’m a citizen of Cumbre, and you, whoever you are, army or what or secret police, you can’t just grab me like you did, and then take me somewhere without even making charges against me or anything and leave me in a dark cell for hours, and ask the dumbest questions over and over!”

A red light on the box lit.

“We’ve got enough.”

“Good,” Njangu said. “Keep it running, just in case. And send in somebody to take her out.”

Yoshitaro stood.

“What are you going to do to me now? You’d better not torture me or anything, or else I’ll sue you, when I’m free.” Wrathers realized she was getting hysterical, couldn’t seem to stop herself.

“What now?” Yoshitaro said. “We’re going to keep you around for, oh, a day or so if things go well. Then you’ll be released, with no charges being filed. You can go back to doing things the way you did, although I sort of suspect your job with the Air Traffic Department might be eliminated shortly. Even bureaucrats don’t like spies.”

“You just grabbed me, and took me here … and … what did you want? I didn’t answer your questions!”

“You didn’t have to,” Njangu said.

• • •

“Take it, Mister Yoshitaro,”
Caud
Angara said. “You did the footwork, you deserve the glory.”

Njangu took a very deep breath. This was the largest operation he’d ever been in charge of, and it didn’t help that there was only one chance of success.

The night air around Chance Island swarmed with Griersons, civilian-appearing lims, lifters, all carrying armed and ready soldiers, all on a single frequency. In space, satellites were listening, as was every passive sensor the Force had access to.

A technician punched numbers into a com. It buzzed twice, then a click came. A second technician fingered a sensor.

Pon Wrathers’s voice, recorded in the interrogation room, then synthesized, said:

“Mar Eleven. Scrambling.”

The first tech hit another sensor. Garbled words, still recognizable as Wrathers’s voice, came through speakers, then stopped.

Other techs at a control bank worked hurriedly. One grinned, lifted his thumb.

Two moments of silence, then: “Did not translate. Resubmit.”

Again the transmission roared. There was no error in coding — the ‘cast was nothing more than garble. Njangu, not knowing what setting Wrathers’s scrambler should be set on, had been afraid to get trickier.

The receiver went suddenly dead.

“Got him,” a tech said. “The transmission went to somewhere around Lanbay Island, then got bounced back to the main island. The response was from right … here.”

His finger touched a large-scale map. “Tungi. And I’ve got a precise DR.” His mike was open to all Force units. He touched a screen, and a large-scale photo projection of the village came up. “Right here. On this mansion.”

Njangu keyed his own com.

“Garvin, you’ve got that. Take him out. I’ll take care of the backup around Tungi.”

A mike double-clicked, and blacked-out Griersons dived toward the mountain village.

• • •

Ab Yohns stared at his transceiver. Hair on the back of his neck and wrists prickled. He hesitated, then leaned over, and twisted a key in a slot. He went to the stairs, to a large switch sealed in a plastic box. Yohns snapped the cover off, hit the switch, then went up the stairs hastily. Behind him, the smell of burning insulation and charring circuitry grew.

Yohns went out of the villa. Toward the ocean, high in the sky, he could make out black dots diving on Tungi. Then he heard their drives, getting louder.