Orion Fleet (Rebel Fleet Series Book 2) Read online

  “Blake…” he said.

  “What?”

  “Help me up, and I’ll talk to you.”

  I dithered for about five seconds. Then I sighed and lifted him off the floor. He groaned, and I held him well away from my clothing. That nose of his was bleeding, bent to one side, and just plain looked awful.

  “My knife,” he said. “Can you get it? Fingerprints.”

  “Jesus…” I muttered, scooping the blade up and dropping it into a vestibule trashcan—outside the camera’s view. “Time to start talking—otherwise, we part company right now.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Your real name, for starters.”

  He hesitated for a second, then looked me right in the eye, taking in a deep gulping breath through his mouth.

  “Agent Godwin,” he said. “Paul Godwin.”

  “What service?”

  “Does it matter?”

  I sighed. “I guess not. Listen, I’m hungry Godwin, and I’m bored with you. No hard feelings about the knife or the nose, all right? Have a better one.”

  Godwin was able to stand on his own by now, proving he was a tough guy. I had to give him credit where it was due. He didn’t have an artificial symbiotic life form in his body like I did, rebuilding his cells from the inside out.

  He reached out, and my hand came up to block his—but he wasn’t taking another shot at me. Instead, he tapped the menu that was still in my other hand.

  “You want a steak?” he asked. “I’m buying. That’s eighty dollars for the sixteen-ounce cut.”

  My stomach rumbled at the very thought. He’d found my Achilles’ heel.

  His raised eyebrows continued to press the question as his fingers patted the wallet in his breast pocket.

  “Company credit card…” he taunted.

  “All right, but we’ll have to get you cleaned up first.”

  I took Godwin to my hotel room and stood guard while he put red splotches on my white towels. I didn’t let him have any personal space. If he had a gun or something else on him, I wanted him within arm’s reach. By no means did I trust him.

  He fixed himself up a bit and we headed for the restaurant on the top floor. His nose was still swollen, but it had stopped bleeding, and it looked less crooked than it had before.

  “You ready to talk yet?” he asked me.

  “You first.”

  “Okay,” he said, “I’m part of the Project.”

  “What project?” I asked, playing dumb on instinct.

  “The project. Icarus.”

  That was the name. Even I wasn’t supposed to know that name. I was surprised he knew about Icarus, but I still kept my poker-face on. “What’s that?”

  He leaned forward and lowered his voice, letting his eyes slide around to see if anyone was trying to eavesdrop before continuing.

  “Come on,” he said. “I know what you brought home from space. I know more about it than you do—at least, concerning what happened to it after you handed it over at the Pentagon. Your ship was transported to a chamber underneath Cheyenne Mountain, where NORAD used to be located. Did you know about that?”

  I blinked, but I kept my blank expression going. “I’m not supposed to talk about any of this.”

  “Of course not. I know. But I’m here because things are going badly underground. Management has made certain—errors.”

  I hesitated for a few seconds. I knew what I should do—what I should have done right off when this joker first made his play to get my attention. I should have called my emergency contact and reported in.

  But he was doing it right. He’d gotten me curious.

  “What errors?” I asked. “Who’s in charge?”

  “Abrams is in charge.”

  “Abrams? That socially-challenged control-freak who runs star-shot?”

  “Yeah. The star-shot thing is a cover. Something for the press to get excited about. A distraction.”

  I nodded, taking that in. It fit to some degree. It was obvious to anyone who knew about Icarus that star-shot was a joke. It was Earth-tech—outdated and pointless in the face of the knowledge we now had about our competition from the stars.

  “What mistakes?” I asked him again.

  “They’ve built an Earth ship—based on Hammerhead’s design, but bigger.”

  “That seems like a natural first step.”

  “Yeah, maybe. But they want to launch it. Right away.”

  I thought about that, and I sighed. “So what?” I asked, pretending I didn’t know the answer.

  “So, you’re the one who explained in your reports that the Rebels are watching Earth. That they have rules, and we’d be breaking them right off.”

  “A policy fight?” I asked incredulously. “That’s what this is all about? Some director of intel sent you out here to recruit me, is that it?”

  “It goes deeper than that. Trust me.”

  I laughed. “I’m afraid I can’t do that,” I said. “Trust went out the window when you tried to stab me in the back. That was a nice steak and all, but—”

  “Listen, Lt. Blake,” he said. “Let’s go to the site. Let’s go there now. They’ll let you in. They’ll listen to you.”

  “This is above my pay-grade,” I told him, standing up. “Talk to the President, or someone else in charge.”

  It was about then that I noticed Godwin had something under the table we’d both been sitting around. It was a black cylinder, but it wasn’t gun-shaped. It looked more like a small spray-bottle. What was he going to do with that?

  Whatever he was thinking, I could tell he was getting ready to pull the trigger. His face was set, angry. His eyes were sliding around, checking out the patrons.

  “Ha!” I said, pointing over his shoulder. “It’s about time the cops showed up. It took the hotel security people long enough to call them. Slackers.”

  The con worked. Godwin cranked his neck around to see the phantom cops.

  My hand shot out, giving him a hard rap on the temple. His eyes widened, and he slumped gently to one side. By the time he’d slid under the table completely, someone noticed and thought he was choking or something. A waitress started shouting and fussing.

  I was half-way to the exit by then.

  “He’ll pay,” I told a stunned-looking hostess, jerking a thumb at the comatose Godwin. “His credit card is in his breast-pocket.”

  I beat a hasty retreat toward the elevator lobby after that, but took the stairs instead of the elevator. There were blue and red flashers outside the building, but no sirens. It was time to skip out of here.

  I left my luggage and my rental car. That hurt, but I didn’t feel like answering any more questions tonight. Not from the cops, or anyone else.

  =3=

  Out on the streets of Santa Fe in the cool night air, it was just me and the crickets. I reached for my phone, deciding it was time to make that call I’d been putting off. Washington had to hear about this.

  But it didn’t take me long to realize my phone was gone.

  “Dammit,” I said, growling.

  I stopped walking and looked back toward the hotel. Two cop cars were in the parking lot, lights spinning. Going back now wasn’t an optimal solution. Someone had to have recognized me—after all, I was mildly famous.

  I took out the card Robin had left me and checked the address. She was staying in another hotel just down the street.

  The walk took nearly twenty minutes, but it left me invigorated. The dry mountain air was clean, and it reminded me of my home town of Evergreen in Colorado.

  When I got to the front desk, I charmed the clerk and phoned Robin’s room. She answered before it beeped more than once.

  “You changed your mind?” she asked, her voice sultry.

  “Well… let’s just say the world changed it for me. Could you take me out of here?”

  “Out of the hotel?”

  The clerk was eyeing me, but without any kind of star-struck expression. She looked more susp
icious than anything else. Maybe my image was already playing on the local news.

  “Yeah…” I told Robin, turning away from the clerk. “I’ll meet you out front, okay? I’ll be taking a little walk down the highway.”

  She paused. “You’re in trouble again, aren’t you?”

  “Nah.”

  But my lie was instantly revealed. Someone in the police department had changed their minds about the lack of sirens—or maybe it was an ambulance for Godwin this time. I heard a growing wail crossing the city. Apparently, Robin heard it too.

  “Shit,” she said, “I’ll be right down.”

  I hung up, thanked the clerk, and moved quickly out the front door.

  Robin meant business. Not three minutes later, she pulled up in her car and popped the door open.

  “Get in, you crazy bastard,” she said.

  “You really shouldn’t be picking up strange men, Miss.” I smirked as I got in.

  She gunned it and tore out of there before I could yank the door closed. We were doing seventy before one highway joined another, and we vanished into traffic.

  “You can slow down,” I told her. “No one is following.”

  She looked at me nervously. “What’s this all about? Alien trouble?”

  “I do like some of their women,” I said. “And that tends piss off the rest of the Kher—but you know they aren’t technically aliens, right? You keep calling them that. Genetically, they’re our long-lost cousins.”

  Robin shook her head and sighed. “I don’t know why I picked you up. You’ll probably kill me now, right? Or will something else spring out of the road, grow tentacles and invade my body?”

  I chuckled. “Nothing is chasing us now except men with guns.”

  “And you don’t care about that?”

  “I’ve been in worse spots. Could you give me my phone back?”

  She eyed me for a second, then fished it out of her purse and tossed it at me. I caught it out of the air and began tapping at it.

  “You dropped it at the bar,” she said.

  “You left before I did.”

  “Well… I went back, and you weren’t there so the bartender—”

  “Right…” I said, putting an end to her embarrassing lies.

  She fell silent for a while, and she eyed me as I tapped in a series of digits then lifted it to my ear. The phone recognized the code. It wasn’t a normal phone number, and it wouldn’t show up on my recently-called list—not on my phone, or any cellular network.

  Instead of ringing, the phone went silent, then clicked once. I was connected.

  “Code?” asked a quiet voice.

  “Orion,” I replied.

  “Hold, please.”

  Why were government types always in love with the hold button? To my way of thinking, Alexander Graham’s first words to his assistant should have been hold, please.

  Robin’s eyes were flicking from me to the road and back again. She must have tried to get any information she could have out of my phone, but failed. That wasn’t surprising. It was the kind of equipment they only gave to undercover agents. It looked normal, but had some special programming in the firmware.

  “Operator,” a male voice said about two minutes later.

  “This is Lieutenant Leo Blake, US Navy, active.”

  “Yes, Lt. Blake. What’s your emergency?”

  “I need a safe destination. I’ve gotten into a little trouble—”

  “We’ve seen the reports from your location. We stopped following you three weeks ago, and right away, you’ve got attempted murder and fleeing the scene on your list. Why don’t you—?”

  “I was attacked,” I said. “A knife, from behind.”

  The operator fell silent.

  I didn’t know his name. I didn’t even know his codename. He was just the guy who was always there when I dialed in and used my code word.

  “Attacked? There were reports from the hotel earlier about an assault in the elevator—that was you, too? Why didn’t you call in then?”

  I glanced at Robin sourly. “Someone had stolen my phone. I’ve got it back, and I’m uninjured, but I want to come in. I don’t know what’s going on out here.”

  I could tell I finally had his attention. His voice tones became professional.

  “Right… Okay, right. Protocol maps you to the closest federal institution.”

  “Don’t send me to some Santa Fe FBI office full of janitors and the midnight shift.”

  “Agreed… We’re sending you back to the labs.”

  “They’re closed.”

  He laughed. “We’ve got aliens in the skies, Blake. The national labs are never closed these days. There’ll be a pass waiting for you at the gate. Don’t try to crash it.”

  I looked at Robin.

  “I’ve got a companion,” I said. “Can you make that two passes?”

  The man on the other end of the line sighed. “You picked up some piece of tail, didn’t you?”

  “I like tail,” I said, thinking of Mia.

  Robin frowned at me suspiciously.

  “Shit, Blake. You’re so much trouble. All right, she’ll get in, but she’s going to be shunted out of the way and watched.”

  “That’s a good idea. One more thing?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Who’s Agent Godwin?”

  The line went quiet. It was so silent, that I thought for a second it’d gone dead.

  “Operator, are you there?” I asked.

  “Yes. I’ll make some inquiries. Get to the labs.”

  The line went dead, and Robin was freaking out next to me.

  “What the hell was that all about?” she demanded. “What kind of cloak-and-dagger shit are you into? And what was all that about a tail?”

  I shrugged.

  “Tail is your codename,” I told her with a straight face. “Everyone has a codename when they get close to something big like this.”

  To my surprise, she bought it.

  “Tail? I’m Tail? What’s your codename?”

  I’d picked up my name from some agents long ago.

  “Jawbreaker,” I said firmly.

  “Tail is unfair, and it’s sexist.”

  “Yeah…” I agreed. “But the names fit, don’t they?”

  Robin drove on, disgruntled, and she began peppering me with questions. I deflected them all like a master ping-pong player. She was left unsatisfied by the time we reached the gates of Los Alamos.

  A brilliant searchlight splashed over the car, which Robin wisely slid into park. Men in heavy boots stepped out to encircle us, their automatic rifles unslung.

  The lab hadn’t always had this much security, I’d been told, but they’d stepped it up after the men from the stars had begun making unannounced visits.

  After we’d identified ourselves to the duty sergeant, the guards made us get into the back of a Humvee, and they drove us up to TA 91. That was Technical Area 91, the region staked out for the star-shot project.

  I couldn’t help but wonder, as we mounted the cracked concrete steps, if old Doc Abrams was still rattling around the place, crying about his broken space-cannon.

  =4=

  Dr. Abrams was waiting inside when we arrived. He eyed Robin with almost as much suspicion as he did me.

  “You met with Agent Godwin?” he asked me the moment we walked in. “What’s your relationship with him?”

  I shrugged. “He’s been following me for a few weeks. I thought he was just one more spook from the Shop. But I got a funny feeling about him, like he had his own agenda.”

  “Everything he did or said was absolutely unauthorized,” Abrams snapped. “What did he tell you?”

  “The most interesting information concerned you, Doc. He sure seemed to know a lot about you.”

  Dr. Abrams stiffened. He pointed a long finger at Robin.

  “Blake, remember who this is. She’s a reporter. She might have helped you tonight, but you have to keep your head clear—if that�
��s even possible for you in the presence of a young female.”

  Robin looked huffy.

  “I guess I’ll step outside and have a cigarette, then,” she said, taking a pack out of her purse. She placed her purse on the table then walked out.

  I watched her leave, and I noticed Abrams doing the same. He was old and sour, but he could still appreciate a fine rear end when it presented itself.

  It occurred to me while we admired the view that Robin was walking with a serious swing to her hips. Was that on purpose? Was she trying to get our attention?

  The second she’d left, I opened her purse. Abrams made a tsking sound, but I lifted up her cellphone. It was on and running a voice-recording app.

  Abrams made a small, growling sound.

  I spoke to the device. “Tail? This is Jawbreaker. You owe me one for stealing my phone.”

  Then I switched it off and put it back into her purse. I turned back to Abrams.

  “You see?” he demanded. “You brought her here. You brought a reporter here due to a weakness, a character-flaw that—”

  “Doc, I turned it off. We’re in the clear. Now, let’s talk for real. You’re running project Icarus, right? And the new ship is being built at Cheyenne? I’d love to see her. From what I understand, she’s based on Hammerhead’s design.”

  I’d never seen Abrams look so shocked. His eyes popped, and he was speechless for a second. When he started to sputter, I kept going.

  “You’re coming in loud and clear,” I told him, “thanks. Now then, I guess your reaction to Godwin is for real? And our new ship is for real, too? She’s ready to fly, isn’t she? Who would want to stop her from leaving Earth’s surface? Who’s worried that the Kher won’t like it?”

  “Blake…” Abrams said when he got himself under control, “you can’t talk about any of this. No one is to know about Icarus. And I’m not confirming anything else you just said.”

  I chuckled. “You don’t have to confirm anything,” I told him. “You should make a note to yourself never to play poker, Doc—not with anyone, ever.”

  “Stop calling me that. I hate that codename.”