The Soldier: The X-Ship Read online

  Clarke groaned.

  “Release me,” Halifax said. “We can think this through together. We’ve worked well in the past. We can—”

  Halifax stopped talking as Clarke stepped back into view beside the glaring light. He had a glassy look in his eyes, a controlled look. Worse, he had a gun in his right hand, the weapon aimed at the doctor.

  “Clarke, listen,” Halifax said fast, maybe with a quaky voice. “I can help you. I know how. I work for the most secret Intelligence Agency in the galaxy. They’re located on Earth. You wouldn’t believe what they can do.”

  The words seemed to do something to the glassiness. Clarke twitched. Then, he started firing the gun. The Senior Lieutenant kept pulling his trigger finger until his gun went click, click, click.

  At that point, the glassiness in his eyes vanished. He blinked several times at an open-mouthed and panting Halifax. Sweat poured from the doctor’s skin, and a nauseating stench rose from the man. Had Halifax voided his bowels because of the ordeal?

  The twitch had moved Clarke’s hand a little to the left, enough that the bullets had buried themselves into the wooden wall behind Halifax instead of the man’s flesh.

  “Dan,” Halifax said in a raw voice.

  Clarke holstered his gun as he continued staring at the doctor. “I should have killed you. But I didn’t. Maybe that’s lucky for me now. The galaxy’s most secret Intelligence Agency—tell me more.”

  Halifax moved his lips, but no words came out. He had come that close to dying.

  “You shit yourself,” Clarke sneered. “You stink like an outhouse.”

  Halifax lowered his head and concentrated mightily. He couldn’t think about the blazing gun or how he’d shamed himself just now by voiding his bowels. He had flinched at each shot, certain the bullets were tearing into his flesh. He had to concentrate. What had caused the glassiness in Clarke’s eyes? What was going on here?

  It was difficult to think with his ringing ears.

  Halifax looked up.

  Clarke stepped near and slapped his face. “Where’s Brune?”

  “Uh…”

  Clarke showed him the gun. “I’ll pistol-whip you if you don’t start talking.”

  Halifax sensed death in the air—his. “Brune’s in a bunker outside city limits.”

  “That’s a lie! Brune is dead.”

  “He’s not. I brought him back to Helos, to Sparta.”

  “Tell me exactly where he is,” Clarke said.

  Halifax did.

  “You locked him away?” Clarke snarled.

  “He locked himself in the bunker. I was…I was setting up a meeting between the two of you. He’s angry, Clarke. But I know how to deal with him.”

  “So do I,” Clarke said in a harsh voice. He stared at Halifax. “Wait here. I’ll be back in a few hours. We can finish our conversation then about this super-secret Earth agency.”

  ***

  Quillian dug out a communicator from her purse. She was walking through Lycurgus Park. Putting the communicator against an ear, she said, “Yes?”

  “They killed Halifax,” an operative said.

  “You’re sure?”

  “The kidnappers put Halifax in a shack and left. Clarke went in later. The spy-stick picked up sustained gunfire. Clarke came out alone.”

  “How long were Clarke and Halifax in there before the shooting?”

  “Long enough for Halifax to have bared his soul,” the operative said.

  Quillian cursed softly. If that was true, Clarke would likely head for the complex where Halifax had stashed the new Brune. That would mean the cover was broken. Right. She knew what she had to do. “Listen,” she said. “Get your team. Tell them to bring the broom.”

  “It’s a clean-up?”

  “On aisle five,” Quillian said, using code.

  “Are you sure about—?”

  “Get moving,” Quillian snapped. “We may not have much time left.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Dan Clarke was thoroughly frightened. He didn’t know what was wrong with him. He didn’t know why he did the things he did when he didn’t really want to do them. He had come to believe that there was darkness in his heart. The darkness was evil, and it had led him to do horrific things.

  Years ago, blackmailers had videoed him doing them. In some manner, the videos had found their way into the hands of Dr. Halifax.

  Clarke tugged at the collar of his uniform. He sat beside a pilot of an IPO lifter, in an anti-grav armored vehicle, which in this instance was a troop carrier rather than a tank. It had a missile launcher and a back area for troops or prisoners as needs dictated. This lifter was almost empty. It had the pilot, a lieutenant and him.

  At Clarke’s orders, the pilot had taken the lifter high, several hundred meters into the air as they headed for Brune’s safe house.

  The pilot and lieutenant worked in his department, and after months of patient setup—a year and a half ago—he had found dirt on each. He had turned them, in other words, as he needed IPO personnel to help him kill key people. It had taken time, money and some desperate action, torturing, promising, killing and hunting for old videos.

  Now, unexpectedly, Halifax had returned claiming Brune was still alive. Clarke had always feared the unnaturally strong and deadly Brune. Being a predator of the weak, Clarke had refined instincts, recognizing a superior predator when he saw one. Not that Brune did the sordid things that he, Clarke, did. No, Brune was above such evil, likely not even thinking such things in his darkest heart.

  Clarke tugged at the collar again. He’d left Halifax in the shack. He’d used underworld thugs to kidnap the doctor. It would be best to kill those people after dealing with Brune. What should he do with the doctor then? He should kill the slippery weasel. But the man had spoken about a secret Intelligence organization, the greatest in the galaxy. Perhaps such an organization could help him—

  Clarke breathed heavily. He hated his weakness that led him to do wretched things. How the IPO testers had ever missed this in him—well, they certainly had. He had an IPO badge. It let him indulge himself. If he could grind the secret information out of Halifax…maybe he could set things up so he could do whatever he wanted whenever he wanted. He could quit looking over his shoulder all the time.

  An evil smile spread onto his face. As soon as Clarke realized he was doing it, he wiped it away. He didn’t want the pilot or the lieutenant to see him like that. They were already too nervous about things.

  “There,” the pilot said, a stocky man with a pinched face. “That’s Graff’s complex…and there’s the bunker you were talking about.”

  “Senior Lieutenant,” the older lieutenant said. He had a lined face and frightened eyes. Like the rest of them, the lieutenant wore body armor and a police helmet with IPO stenciled in front. “We’ve already put too many kilometers on the lifter. We’re going to have to—”

  “Shell,” Clarke said sternly, interrupting the lieutenant. “I told you before, don’t worry about the details. I’ve already taken care of that. We find and kill the Brune imposter. I have cover for this.”

  Shell studied him, clearly hoping it was true but unsure whether to believe it or not.

  “Well?” the pilot asked.

  Anger flared in Clarke. He’d gone over the details with them. Why couldn’t they just do their job? Because, like him, he knew they were frightened of the repercussions.

  “Look,” Clarke said evenly. “We’re going down. The Brune imposter is in the basement of the bunker. I checked out the story. Halifax brought him in a cryo unit. The unit came in a starliner. It will be easy to make it look like terrorist activity.”

  “What if the imposter surrenders?” Shell asked.

  “No surrenders,” Clarke said. “He’s already a dead man. Then, once we have the cryo unit, we show HQ the paperwork to substantiate our story. We’ll say that we busted a Cromis terrorist cell. That will put a gold star by each of our names. The Cromis people have been making threa
ts for years, and they’re known to use cryo units to bring in their weirdoes. If we have to, we can doctor the corpse.”

  The pilot and lieutenant began nodding.

  “Good,” Clarke said. “Now, let’s do this. We’re IPO, damnit. We’re the law. No one will have the balls to stop us in Sparta.”

  The pilot headed down, aiming the lifter for the open area in front of the bunker.

  ***

  Quillian wore a black metallic one-piece as she led the way through tall grass. It was less than an hour to dusk as the main star settled toward the horizon. Up in the sky, an IPO lifter started down. Dan Clarke was in it.

  She looked back.

  Behind her toiled her sniper. He carried a long heavy case. Behind him came the two-man missile team. They toted a wicked piece of ordnance set down on Helos two years ago. It would take them time to set up, though.

  “Faster,” she called.

  Her team moved through high grass on a hill three kilometers from the chain-link complex where the recently deceased Halifax had stashed the cryo unit.

  Ah. She reached the top of the hill, crouching, pulling out a pair of electric binoculars. She scanned the complex. Two men there pointed up at the lifter. The two argued. Then, they sprinted for cover. They’d likely seen the IPO designation on the sides.

  Clarke was going to do this boldly.

  Quillian lowered the binoculars as she nodded. These kinds of situations were best solved with a heavy hand. She understood completely. She doubted Clarke realized what was going to happen to him. Quillian shrugged. She disliked this jerkwater planet with its hillbillies. The sooner she could report to the Director, “I took care of it, sir,” the better.

  She raised the binoculars again, feeling that pleasurable sensation in her groin, knowing that she was going to wipe out a trio of jackasses. She wasn’t just going to kill them, but smear their molecules into separate atoms. She could hardly wait for the fireworks to begin.

  Chapter Twelve

  The soldier paced in the basement of the bunker. It had been hours since Halifax had left. The soldier realized, yet again, that he knew far too little about anything. He was missing memories and had implanted ones in their place. He considered them implanted because he remembered them as Jack Brune. The one thing he knew—the constant of his tiny universe—was that he was not Jack Brune.

  He also knew something else. He wanted to go to Avalon IV. He wanted that because of the woman waking from stasis. Something about that was so vitally important to him—

  He groaned as he rubbed his throbbing head. The pain grew so intense that he sat on the cot.

  Through clenched teeth, he said, “I don’t care about the pain. The woman is important. I must find her.”

  When he thought of himself as Jack Brune, the pain lessened. When he realized the woman was important to him, the pain increased.

  Damn the pain. Damn the pain, because it sought to control him. It sought to use him like a pack animal. He wouldn’t let anyone control him. He did not groan even as the pain intensified. He laughed instead daring the pain in his mind to do its worst.

  “Kill me if you have to,” he snarled. “I’m not listening. I’m not obeying you.”

  A knock sounded from the heavy steel door at the top of the stairs.

  The startled soldier shifted so he crouched beside the cot, looking up at the locked door. At the same time, the pain in his head lessened.

  The knock came again, more insistently. It was a metal-on-metal knock. That couldn’t be Halifax. The way the doctor had acted before meant this was a type of safe house. The Jack Brune memories understood that. That meant—

  “Open up!” a man shouted from behind the steel door.

  The soldier made his choice. There was nowhere to hide down here. He lacked combat weapons. He lacked knowledge about too many things. Even as he thought these things, he found himself on the stairs, quietly stepping from one to the next. He kept watch of the door in anticipation. Would the knocking man start firing through it? No, it was a steel door.

  “This is the IPO,” a man said. “I demand you open the door.”

  IPO: the Brune memories told him about the organization. Dan Clarke of the IPO was supposed to be a friend, a contact in the interstellar police organization. If this was Clarke…it wasn’t the Senior Lieutenant. He would have arrived with Halifax. If the IPO demanded entrance—he was in danger.

  Yet…was he right about Halifax being a spymaster? If that was true, he was the spy. If he was here on Helos, he was likely here to spy. Whom did he work for? Whom did Halifax work for?

  The IPO likely hated spies. Yes. He was in danger.

  “Bust it open,” the soldier heard a man on the other side say.

  He crouched low on the third highest step, readying himself for anything.

  With a mighty CLANG, something powerful hit the door, ripping it from its hinges, sending the heavy steel flying through the air. It struck a farther wall, smashing down into the basement.

  The soldier peered up as the ramming device rolled back. An older officer in a uniform stepped into view. He held a gun in a shaky hand, clearly ready to fire at the first sign of a target. That target was him—the supposed Jack Brune. They were here to kill him.

  The soldier launched upward with devastating speed and brutality. The officer must have perceived the attack, but he froze. The palm of the soldier’s right hand struck the man under his chin. That snapped the mouth closed so teeth shattered. It also crushed vertebrae in the neck. The body began to twitch as it fell.

  Another officer farther back shouted in bewilderment and alarm.

  By that time, the soldier had ripped the handgun from the dead man, settled the weapon into his own hand and fired. He’d noted the body armor on the officers. Thus, he did not fire at the torsos, but at the heads.

  The next man was stocky, backing away, holding up his hands, one of them clutching a gun. His head disintegrated under a hail of bullets.

  The last man—Dan Clarke. The soldier recognized him. He noted the nametag on his body armor.

  IPO

  SENIOR LIEUTENANT

  DAN CLARKE

  “Please,” Clarke said. He dropped his gun and raised his hands. He seemed terrified.

  The soldier checked himself. He was still moving forward, but he didn’t kill Clarke. Instead, he swung his gun hand, using it to pistol-whip Clarke in the face.

  The Senior Lieutenant catapulted backward, hitting the floor on his back, out cold.

  The soldier scanned the upper bunker, his gun ready. There did not appear to be anyone else. He looked down at his handiwork: two dead men and Clarke with a blood-pumping gash in his forehead. The soldier wasn’t proud of his work, but he wasn’t ashamed. He had done what he needed to do because he was fighting a war.

  With a moment to spare, he went down onto his hands and knees beside Clarke, examining him and comparing the man against his Brune memories. Yes. This was indeed Senior Lieutenant Dan Clarke. That was interesting information, as it meant he could trust certain Brune memories.

  The soldier furrowed his brow. Clarke had come here. How could Clarke have known his whereabouts? Logically, Halifax had told him. Why wouldn’t Halifax have given Clarke the key to open the locked door?

  Had there been a falling out between Halifax and Clarke?

  The soldier checked his gun and collected more magazines from the others. He took a knife from the first man. He moved Clarke behind a steel stanchion, putting a bandage on the head wound, the bandage from a kit on Clarke’s belt. Then, he inched to the bunker exit, careful to remain hidden in shadows from anyone looking in from outside.

  Ah. Outside the open exit, he saw that it was nearing dusk. He inched closer to the exit—

  A whine alerted him. He froze, with just his eyes moving in their sockets. He saw it then—an anti-grav lifter sat in the yard with a top strobe light flashing red and blue in continuing rotation. Printed on the side was IPO LIFTER. It told him that
whatever cover he had possessed was blown. This also confirmed for him that Halifax had been a spymaster, making him a spy.

  The soldier frowned, gathering himself. He didn’t know enough. He—

  He saw a streak of something. The thing moved toward the bunker fast. No, not the bunker but the IPO lifter. It—

  It’s a missile.

  Acting at almost the same instant as the thought, the soldier rolled to the left. He rolled away from the door, sprang up and dove behind a steel girder. He had a good idea about what was going to happen.

  A monstrous explosion erupted. The world turned white as everything roared. Fire, blast and debris blew through the door into the bunker, wiping out everything in its path and igniting fires elsewhere. The blast blew through the open basement door, driving downward. Which meant that instead of destroying everything up here, some things survived because some of the energy went down.

  The soldier hugged his tiny shelter, his face pressed against the floor as he breathed shallowly. His ears did more than ring from the explosion. His mind had gone blank. He was acting on instinct now, waiting for a second detonation that did not come.

  He realized hazily that he was disoriented. The reptilian part of his mind knew he had a window of opportunity. Without conscious thought, he began crawling for the opening. As he crawled, he regained some of his equilibrium. Peering through the shredded bunker exit, he saw a world of roaring flames. What remained of the lifter was twisted, unrecognizable wreckage.

  With a grunt, he rose to his feet, staggering at first and then increasing his gait. He began running through areas of flame.

  There was a city nearby. Red car lights flashed in the distance, but all he could hear was the roaring in his ears from the blast. The other buildings in the complex were ruined. He saw burning corpses everywhere. Were those Graff’s people or more IPO personnel?

  The soldier kept sprinting, running past the blown-down chain-link fence. He ran for intact bushes in the distance, knowing he had to exit this place now or never. He did not see a small dark-haired woman observe him through binoculars from a hill three kilometers distant. He headed for the bushes. If he made it in time, he could worry about the future then. If he failed, well, it wouldn’t matter.