Ships of Valor 1: Persona Non Grata (19 page)

Over the years, I learned what I was good at and what I was not so good at. The Legion was very smart in choosing not to make a medic or nursemaid out of me. I would have gotten people killed. Hayes was getting better slowly thanks to all the drugs and tiny little robots coursing through her system. I was a little worried about the slugs I had left in her, but
Heart
said the nanites had already dissolved them. I hadn’t even known that was possible.

Em was out of the refresher but still giving me dirty looks for not letting her on the bed since we had an unscheduled guest. Every ten minutes or so I would hear
Heart
give a bzzt to keep her from sitting on Hayes’ chest. Eventually, I bought a heating pad and placed it on the couch, which seemed to keep her satisfied.

Heart
made more headway on Maxine Hayes’ identity. His initial guess of her being Imperial was correct, but she was Navy, not Army. We weren’t able to ascertain rank, but an old photo of her in dress whites as a midshipman narrowed her down to an officer of some type.

As I’ve mentioned, I’m from way up in Alaska, well outside Imperial or even the Commonwealth. Never politically aligned before joining and not following the issues while I was in the Legion, the Nations didn’t apply to the section of Terra I was born into. No one was interested in the Northern Reaches. When it comes to Terra geography and civics, my education is barely passable. Most of North Am is part of the greater Commonwealth or the Free States, with the Northern Reaches being part of the latter and being somewhat protected as part falls within the Arctic Circle making it no man’s land politically.

The Empire presence on Terra was mostly in Eurasia and northern Africa so my exposure to them had been limited to my spacefaring days. I hadn’t really encountered many guys from Empire territory in the Legion. Anyone with a military bend tended towards their own Nation’s services or the Mariners instead, if only as a matter of convenience.

Every culture is a little different. Just like Looneys and Marsans are different than Terrans as a group, so are the people living in the Empire and those outside. We looked at issues a bit differently. When General Campbell sent
Heart
and I us down to Terra, he had highlighted the bickering children mentality. Each nation collectively had their own personality. The Free States took their name almost literally and had a rebellious streak. The Commonwealth tended to be a tad more stoic in comparison. The Empire, on the other hand, was something else again. It’s not that they were bullies, they weren’t, but they were expansionists.

For centuries, the Empire had been land-locked within central Europe with the city of Arion acting as the Imperial Capital much like Luna was the de facto Galactic Seat. Although technically in Belgium, the city had grown to the point where it was also in France and Luxembourg as well. When the age of space travel started the Empire was an early adopter, choosing to conquer new worlds. Arion remained the centralized hub with the Empress as the leader. On almost a clockwork cycle of generations, colonization ships were sent out to newly discovered planets increasing the Empire’s footprint and influence. On Terra, they solidified their power since she was the birthplace of mankind.

  Hayes’ presence meant something, but we didn’t know what. Cracking her comm unit was giving
Heart
a hell of a time to the point where he suggested waking her up. I think he was poised to argue with me, except after playing nursemaid for the last couple of days I thought the idea had merit. “I have exhausted what can reasonably be gathered from this device and keeping her sedated has ethical concerns as well. We will need to wake her soon regardless. It is not good to keep her immobile too long, even if she is healing.” True. Back when I had my arm replaced, the docs forced me to get up and moving as soon as they could. Claiming it helped with recovery, something I personally found dubious, as the process took over two years before I was comfortable with the new arm. I think they were sick of my attitude and just wanted me out of the med bays. Maybe gunshots healed faster. The broken foot for kicking me might not. Served her right, though.

I’m not above a bit of petty spite, but I do try to avoid wishing misfortune on others. She had tried to kill me, so Hayes had the broken foot coming. Shooting her was reflex, and I was sorry about that. If I could have thought of another way, I would have. As it stood, I went through the room as sanitized the place minimizing the chances of her using something else against me. I had already gotten rid of most of her kit, simply from a biohazard standpoint. Nothing worse than bloodstained clothes to stink up a place. The rest of her stuff I had shoved in the hotel safe after giving it a good cleaning.

Once I was satisfied she didn’t have anything overly sharp nearby, I picked up a new set of clothes for her and had
Heart
slowly reduce the sedatives. When she finally woke up, we wanted it to be on her own, and hopefully, in enough of a good mood, we didn’t repeat our last encounter.

I wasn’t born with many of the classic virtues. I’ve had to work hard on things like things like temperance and diligence, but patience, I’ve got that in spades. It’s actually given me a great deal of amusement to watch others’ frustration having to wait.

I’m not saying I don’t get bored. I definitely do. It merely takes longer, and I seem to cope better.  I also get a sick little joy out of how badly others don’t handle it. I felt
Heart
getting antsy perking my amusement again. It’s not that we had to wait long, the fact that we had to wait longer than he thought we should, was bugging him. His estimates were off and driving him nuts. My perverse little joy at his annoyance did nothing to improve his mood. “She should be conscious by now. If she would wake up, we can question her.” I reminded him, through a laugh, we had put a very large hole in her chest, and gunshots take a lot out of a person. It took me a week to wake up after my surgery and that was with real doctors and facilities. We could probably cut her a break. “Would you feel the same if she had managed to get the knife into you?” I acknowledged he had a fair point. I dialed my snark back a notch and tried to be a hair more understanding.

When we finally started to hear groaning noises, I cautioned him about revealing himself too soon. It was probably a good idea to keep a few cards hidden. He wasn’t happy but agreed. When we were sure she was awake, but playing possum, I shouted there was water on the nightstand, clothes on the chair, food on the table, and most importantly would love to have a conversation not involving anyone bleeding.

I heard Hayes drain both bottles of water then shout out “Shower first, then food, then talk,” followed by what was a lot of stumbling and even more swearing. I felt for her and was rather impressed. I’d been laid up before, even outside the arm thing and after a few days in bed muscles don’t work right. It’s hard to walk. After the liner incident, it took a long time to get the swing of things, and I still noticed it.

She took a good twenty minutes cleaning up, and I don’t blame her one bit. I had done a reasonable job on bed grime, but sweat builds up when laying there. She eventually ducked out carrying the tray of food and gave a what I assumed was a nod. She didn’t flat out attack, which I took as a good sign. I waved to the table where there was more bottled water and after swallowing the bite she had in her mouth she said: “What in the fracking hell is going on?” There was the million-credit question.

I gave her my best blank stare until she sat down then introduced myself. I kept my side of things brief for the time being but focused on where I thought our missions might have overlapped. I hoped by appearing reasonable and as unthreatening as this body will allow, some good will might be bought regarding our previous altercation. After I was done, I patiently waited for her to share. “Fine. I was investigating GSI.” I kept staring. It’s amazing how much most people dislike silence. She cracked first. I chalked it up to my many years of practice. “They don’t maintain much of a presence inside the Empire, but there were irregularities. My superiors didn’t like the data we were seeing. When the Galactic Union situation occurred, my operation took on special priority.” I mentioned that was a long time to be undercover and got a nod.

“The Empire was not pleased about that. It’s not like we can up and move Arion elsewhere.” I had spent so long in space I had forgotten there were independent governments on Terra. That first State Dinner with Lysha had got it in my head Terra was one big place. That wasn’t strictly true. The General had said as much during Lysha and our dinner with him, but I hadn’t put two and two together. I was thinking galactically, not globally. The GU issue was the direct result of manipulations of Terran politics. If GSI could shape the landscape as
Heart
had theorized, then the Empire had as much a stake as the General or Luna Corp.

I began explaining our involvement starting with the missile attack. She stopped me when I started talking about Fiji. “We were attacked on the way back. Your boat was destroyed almost immediately, along with half my tech team.” She shook her head. I saw the burden of command seeping through and out of habit rattled off the General’s mantra. She gave me a look of rage and looked like she was about to counter with a “what the hell do you know” but something caught her. Some posture, some aura, some feature we all share. She knew I had been there, and let the burst of fury go. She knew I wasn’t preaching and I was genuinely sorry she lost folks.

“It was obvious my cover was blown so I got my team out of there and got as many of them to safety as I could.” That explained why
Heart
and I had a hell of a time finding them. Hayes had been cleaning up after her team. Mendez must have been one of the casualties and low on the list. “I was in a safe house trying to figure out how to get off the continent when Tal called me.” I must have looked like a good way of getting out of town.

It sounded like her paranoia was slightly more developed than mine, and based on our first encounter she took the theoretical and practical hand in hand. I can’t say I blamed her. She had concrete information on the company operations and the danger was imminent. As the old saying goes, there are no coincidences, so my turning up had tripped all her survival instincts.

I got the distinct impression it was through sheer willpower she was battling fight or flight mode during our chat, combined with the knowledge I had gone to great length to keep her alive after she had tried to kill me.

I decided to take a leap of faith, called out to
Heart
, and asked his opinion. “Captain, everything she says aligns with our own theories and timelines.” Captain? I almost yelled at him until I realized he was trying to imply a level of authority I didn’t actually have. It was subtle. Cute even. I went ahead and introduced them, keeping it short and sweet.

Hayes was still pissed at me, not that I blamed her. In her opinion, my very presence on Terra had ruined her life. To be fair, since our mission had begun, hers had progressively gotten worse, leading up to her being in a drug induced coma with massive abdominal trauma and a broken foot. My cat liked her but Em liked anyone who fed her and didn’t kick her off their laps.

Our uneasy alliance relied on our common enemy. We realized GSI had tried to murder both of us, and likely had been pitting us against each other. That gave us enough of a common bond to look past our individual attempts to kill one another, at least temporarily. Personally, all of my anger had started to fade once I realized what had happened, but I had a two-day head start and wasn’t healing. Had I still been experiencing the levels of pain she was, I would have been significantly poutier.

That isn’t fair to her. I got her anger, and she wasn’t being pouty, but emotion and pain bleed out. We’re not machines, and her snapping at me was a perfectly normal reaction. I was the outlet she was venting more than anything else.

My hardest rank was when I was corporal. I pinned the stripes on early for Legionnaires, discounting cold storage, but I am very good at demolitions. It’s not only about the job; it’s about working with people. Sure, we’re super informal inside the Legion, but with the stripes come responsibility and I had to learn how to use them effectively. They’re a tool like any other. The nice part is those with more weight on their collars had all been there before and most were willing to help.

I had to learn how to ask. That’s the hardest lesson and something we all go through. Unfortunately, we preach self-reliance as well, so the two concepts are often in conflict. It’s hard to ask for help. We have this overinflated idea of what we can do by ourselves.

Hayes’ mission was parallel to our own but her support was even thinner than our own. We had effectively the full support of Luna Corp and a very general tasking of discovering what had caused the separation of Terran diplomacy from the Galactic Union. Conversely, she had to infiltrate GSI as an entry-level employee and work her way up the corporate ladder. Where we were reconnaissance, she tipped the scales into full-blown espionage.

Like us, she discovered there was no human management past a certain point but our arrival had indicated the possibility of a mole within the company. The secret was so valuable GSI began to figuratively clean house by removing anyone who had the potential of being a spy, Hayes and her team included. Even though our missions weren’t linked, the similarity had resulted in compromising each other and resulted in both of us nearly being killed.

The big thing I noticed was that she was experiencing the same frustration I had when I was told that I couldn’t return to Terra. Having a rug ripped out from under a person can do that. On Luna, I had used work and Lysha as coping mechanism. Her work had been effectively taken and
Heart
and I weren’t her first choice of friends.

She wasn’t a prisoner by any stretch of the imagination, but she was still recovering and smart enough to know she was safer with us than alone. “So what’s your fracking plan? You’ve got what you came for.” She was right.
Heart’s
and my mission was essentially complete. We knew what had caused the issue, but only in the vaguest way. We felt like we were missing something. Some key piece of information. Something itched at the back of my head. 

I was trying to work through what the missing data was, tracing
Heart’s
and my mission from its beginning when it finally clicked. She wasn’t pissed at us. Actually, she was, but she wasn’t only angry at us. Hayes was frustrated at herself because of her busted operation, and she didn’t know how to get it back on track. The fact we succeeded in ours added insult to injury. She needed help, but was either afraid to ask, didn’t want to, or had never learned how. Luckily, my partner is significantly smarter than I am and generally better with people.

“We still need to test our theory, and fully assess the situation, Commander Hayes. If you are willing, we could assist you. You are significantly more versed in the current situation than we are, and we have slightly more resources than you do. Perhaps a mutually beneficial arrangement can be met?”

I am so glad I wasn’t the one who made the suggestion. I was also glad she didn’t have anything in her hands at the time because I’m sure she would have thrown whatever it was at the view screen. It’s funny both Hayes and I treated that as
Heart’s
substitute body. Odd that it’s much easier to identify personal habits when seeing others doing the same thing.

I thought she was irate before. Oh was I wrong. “Why do you think I need your bloody help? I had this under control until you and your meathead of a partner waltzed in, blew my cover, and damn near got me killed. Twice! In what universe do you think it would be a good idea for us to work together?” I mouthed the waltzed wondering if that was even possible with a ship, before taking slight offense to the other insult.

“We do not think you need us. However, seeing as working separately has resulted in compromising both our missions, I thought you might want to take the lead on a joint venture. It would likely be safer working together than at cross purposes.”
Heart
had gone ultra-calm, bordering patronizing. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to give her a coronary or talk sense into her, but reason versus emotion is not a good mix.

She needed to vent. She had gone through three years of undercover work, essentially hiding all aspects of her own personality to blend in with GSI. The façade had finally slipped and she was on a binge striking out emotionally at anyone close to her. All her rage wasn’t meant for us. It was meant for the situation she had been in until that point and had exploded on her. We had been one of many triggering issues and were an easy target to go after because of proximity.

After a few minutes of back and forth, I finally stopped them. Probably more forceful than absolutely necessary, but my goal was to have her mad at me, not
Heart
. If she viewed him as the reasonable one, we could leverage that impression. When it boiled down to it, GSI was a mutual threat and we could pool our resources and hopefully accomplish both our missions or go our separate ways. Being resentful about botched missions that neither side had advance knowledge of wasn’t going to get us anywhere.