Birthright: Battle for the Confederation- Turmoil (33 page)

Loren was torn, but motioned
for the two to step into view.  Cory stayed out of sight.

"Can I trust
you three to not completely defile my safehouse tonight?" asked Garrett.

"I can't make
promises," Merritt replied.  "I'm a bed wetter."

"Violent night
terrors," Loren added.

"I have sex
with furniture," Web said, trying to look shameful.

"You were
serious about that?" Loren asked of Web as he played along.  "You
told me that was a joke."

"I told you a
lot of things, Commander," Web replied.

Garrett grimaced. 
"There are disinfectants and cleaning supplies in the hall closet.  I'll
see you three in ten hours or so."

Dawn was just
breaking; it was that time of the day when the sky was growing orange but the
sun wasn't visible yet.  Loren let the first rays warm his face as he stood in
front of one of the windows.

Cory silently padded
over to stand next to him. Web and Merritt had taken the first shift; one
watching Velk, one watching the condo and surroundings.  Now that the two of
them and Velk were asleep, Loren and Cory stood there, watching the peaceful
city of beings who were woefully unaware of the galaxy-changing events
unfolding in an upscale condo just outside of downtown.

"So," Cory
said softly, "what's our play here?"

"I talked to
the captain when I was supposed to be sleeping," Loren admitted, and Cory
gave him a disapproving glare.  "I said we could be back aboard in the
early afternoon, which he said was great because he's run out of reasons to
stall the port authority on taking Avenger out of orbit."  He turned to look
at her, determination in his eyes.

"You still
think we can trust Garrett?"

"I think he's
loyal," Cory began slowly.  "We know enough about him to realize that
he values us, at least as clients, maybe more.  And if he accepts a job, he'll
see it through- that's his code."

"Good,"
Loren replied, leaning his head back and blowing out his breath.  "Because
I'm about to make a very tough decision.  I want to have Garrett look after
Velk while we go back, at least until we can sort out what to do with him on a
more permanent basis."

"Leave the most
crucial prisoner of war we have in the care of a shadowy Fixer?" asked
Cory, a little taken aback.  "I mean, I guess I trust him, but that's
pretty huge."

"He's not just
any Fixer," Loren replied.  "Like you said; if he agrees, we can make
this work.  If he doesn't want to do it, he'll tell us and we'll come up with
something else."

Cory nodded, hoping
Loren had read the man right.

Chapter Fifteen

At about the same
time as Loren and Cory were discussing Garrett's trustworthiness, Enric Shae
stalked the halls of the capitol police precinct.  They'd responded to the call
about the safehouse and had been the ones to retrieve Tana Starr.  Escorted by
a heavily armed squad of SAR troops sporting menacing scowls, the Priman agent
had been brought in and left in the most secure cell the station had.  As the
chief staffer of Senator Dennix, privy to almost every bit of information the
Confederation navy churned out, Shae had seen the dispatches about a prisoner
retrieval request from a SAR officer and put the pieces together.

Tana Starr had been
captured and subjected to a field interrogation.  Her interrogator, a SAR
operative by the name of Halley Pascal, had called in Starr's location and left
to continue looking for Representative Velk and his captors to affect a rescue.

So here he sat; in
the wake Velk's escape, nobody was taking anything for granted any more.  Shae
had to wait, endure several scans, and leave half his garments behind before
being allowed into a divided interrogation room to talk to the Priman.  He'd
stated that he was under orders to see for himself that the Senator's valued
aide was in fact a Priman.  At least, that's what he'd told the guards.

He waited patiently
for Starr to be escorted into the room, then chained to the desk.  He guards
left, and finally the two of them were alone.

"Tana,"
Enric began.

"Mr.
Shae," she replied, her speech just a little garbled by the split lip and
missing teeth Halley had claimed.

"I'm here for
business.  I have orders from the Commander that I was only instructed to give
to you if you were captured.  I learned a lot about him and your people while I
was there for our 'negotiations'."  He smiled, though it seemed phony to
her; the kind that someone would show on their face as they told you something
horrible.  "I believe in what you're trying to do, Ms. Starr," he
continued.  "But the Commander is in a difficult position now with you
captured."  He leaned forward, voice dropping even though he'd supervised
the officer who'd disabled the surveillance pickups in the room.  "What do
you remember about your interrogation?"

"Not too
much," she replied honestly.  "I fear I may have given them our plans
for the Representative."

"Which were
exactly?"

"For me to
carry out," she replied with an edge to her voice, "not you."

Shae nodded, mildly
irritated but determined to not show it.  "We can't allow you to be used
against the Senator.  Right now, he's in a very precarious position.  There are
things your Commander needs Senator Dennix to do.  He's gathered a good deal of
power, but linking him to you will end all of that.  What they have is probably
not enough to take serious legal action, but it would be political death, which
would lead to the same result.  He has to stay in power; your Commander made
that very clear.  Under the right conditions, we can spin this to make it look
like you duped him instead of him being a willing participant."

Starr just nodded,
waiting for Shae to get to the point.  He'd always been the chatty one.

"Right now,
your interrogation is single-source.  Halley Pascal might have some
information, but we don't know how well she documented it.  In any case, for it
to be considered valid, they'd need to subject you to it again, administered
and supervised by properly trained professionals.  In addition, since you
’
re an enemy agent, they
’
ll look on your statements with
doubt even though you were under the influence of a known and field-tested drug."

"Please,"
Starr broke in, "get to the point, Mr. Shae.  You ramble like an
Enkarran."

Enric Shae bristled,
something that shouldn't have pleased Tana Starr as much as it did.

"Alright
then," he finally conceded.  "Your Commander has ordered you to take
your own life in captivity here.  If you are dead, you cannot be interrogated,
testify against the Senator, or corroborate any claim Halley Pascal might
make.  We'll bring her in soon enough and I'll deal with her when the time is
right as well."

Starr nodded.  She
swallowed once, digesting the order. 

Shae gave her what
he hoped seemed like a supportive smile and spoke a long string of code words;
the Commander's verification codes along with his exact orders, as given to
Enric Shae to repeat to Tana Starr if anything ever went wrong with her
mission.  Enric Shae had, for whatever reasons, Tana realized, completely earned
the trust of his  handlers during his visit to Priman space.

She wanted to
object, demand her own rescue effort like she'd spearheaded for Velk, but knew
there was no way it could happen, especially considering she probably had only
hours before she was strapped to a table full of Halley's vile truth drug and
singing everything she knew about the Priman infiltration of Confed's
government.  She realized that she'd be a hypocrite if she refused; mere hours
ago, she was ready to write off Representative Velk and his whole rescue team
as casualties of war, people who knew they could be called upon to sacrifice
themselves for the greater good.  She'd be a coward if she wasn't willing to
accept that the same might be asked of her.  She couldn't give up what she knew
of the Priman invasion plan, and she couldn't allow herself to be used to oust
Senator Dennix.  He was the Primans' best chance of a low-bloodshed Confed
defeat.

Instead of
complaining or stalling, she simply nodded once, saying nothing.  She looked at
Shae, waiting for something else, but he had nothing.  He pursed his lips as if
about to say something, then changed his mind.  Rather, he got up and walked to
the door on his side of the room, giving her one last glance before passing
through the door that the guard was holding open for him to pass through.

Tana Starr paced in
her cell.  It was sparse, devoid of ways to hurt herself.  No sharp edges,
electrical conduits or even laces in her footwear to wind together.  She looked
up at the ceiling and saw nothing.  Above the door, though, there was a
junction box of some sort.  It was bolted to the wall with flush-mounted
hardware, but the box protruded far enough to give purchase.  One thing her captors
had underestimated was her strength.  It would have surprised any of the guards
to watch her tear the sleeves and pant legs off her prison jumpsuit and tie
them into a short length of woven rope. 

Her face was an
expressionless mask as she readied her homemade noose.  As she thought about
her face, she realized she was still in her human prosthetics.  It saddened her
to know she'd become so accustomed to them that even now, as the minutes
counted down, she didn't think to rid herself of her disguise.  Dealing with
the mild pain of tearing the cosmetic alterations off instead of using her
aerosol solvent, she ripped them off and flung them across the room and ran her
hand over her face.  Her real,
Priman
face.

She secured one end
of the rope to the junction box and held the other end for a minute, knowing
that she couldn't afford to waste any more time.  They'd probably be back any
minute now to begin preparations for another interrogation.

She completed her
final assignment mere minutes before the guards returned for her.

Loren heard the
entry chime and stiffened in his chair.  He'd dragged one of the comfortable,
shape-fitting lounge chairs to the front door and sat there with his SSK in his
lap, waiting for Garrett to arrive.  He got up and tapped the wall pad to bring
up the security camera view just as Cory arrived with her own weapon drawn.

Garrett's
businesslike facade stared impassively at the camera pickup, waiting on Loren
to grant him entry.  It was his own safehouse and he knew the codes, but Loren
had seemed fairly jumpy so he'd rung the entry chime to give the Confed man
warning.

The door slid
silently open into the doorframe and Loren waved Garrett in with a smile.  It
felt like the first time in days Loren had allowed himself that luxury.

"Garrett, nice
to see you," Loren said as he switched the sidearm to his other hand so he
could shake Garrett's with his right one.  Cory repeated the gesture.

"If there's one
thing I've learned about you, Loren," Garrett said with a guarded look,
"it's that you are incapable of leading a boring life.  Exciting is
usually interesting, and I'm always curious about that."

"Well, have I
got something interesting for you," Loren said, and motioned for Garrett
to lead the way further into the condo.  Loren was pleased to see Garrett's
pace stutter as the man did a double-take upon seeing Velk secured to a chair
in the dining area.

"Can I assume
that's Representative Velk, former Commander of the Priman invasion?" said
Garrett softly but in control.

"You can,"
Cory replied with a smirk.

"Do I want to
know why he's in my safehouse and not in a Confed detention facility?"

"Depends on how
much you want to implicate yourself," Web announced as he rounded the
corner, a hot ready-made breakfast sandwich from Garrett's freezer in his hand.

"Assume I'm
always ready and willing to hear everything," Garrett said with a straight
face.

"First,"
Loren said seriously, "I need to know you can keep it quiet."  He
raised his hand as Garrett was about to object so that he could continue. 
"I know you have never let us down, but this is the entire Confederation
we're talking about now, so at the risk of insulting you, I have to say it; you
need to tell us you're with us on this."

Garrett seemed to
wage some sort of internal dialogue, then spoke clearly.  "You are clients
as well as, let's say, acquaintances in very good standing.  I will comply with
whatever you ask as long as it doesn't involve my immediate death."  He
stared at Loren, daring him to say that the statement wasn't enough.

Loren gathered
himself, trying to find a way to summarize everything that had happened in the
last day into a few sentences.  "Senator Dennix is in league with the
Primans.  We're not sure of the arrangement, but his aide Tana Starr was in
fact Priman.  She arranged Velk's rescue, but was going to kill him so he
couldn't get back to Priman space and possibly encourage a more moderate view
of the invasion among his people.  Starr kidnapped him, we kidnapped him from
her, and now we're here.  We can't take him back to Confed because Dennix will
find out and this will happen again.  The whole government isn't corrupt-"

"We hope,"
Merritt interjected sourly.

"They're not
all corrupt," Loren continued, unfazed by Merritt's comment, "but
Dennix has a lot of friends.  We can't let them get their hands on Velk again. 
We turned over Tana Starr to the local police but she needs to be protected as
well.  Without her, nobody can  make much of a case against the Senator, and
even with her it's circumstantial at best, a case of an enemy prisoner trying
to implicate the de-facto leader of the Confederation.  It wouldn't hold up, so
right now we're laying low trying to figure out what the hell to do."

"Without his
assistant, Tana Starr, you have no case?" Garrett asked guardedly.

"We barely have
one now," Loren said, but something about Garrett's tone set of warnings
in Loren's head.  "What do you know?"

"I did some
research on the way in last night," Garrett said as he dropped himself
into a seat across from the gagged Velk, who just watched him intently. 
"I assumed there was something going on with Confed that you couldn't tell
them about, so I scoured all my sources for anything interesting.  Not long
after she was placed in protective custody, Tana Starr committed suicide." 
He waited for the gasps and curse words to die down before continuing. 
"The last person to see her was Enric Shae.  His reason for visiting, as
filled out in the request log, was to appeal to her for a peaceful resolution
considering that Confed and the Primans are supposedly on the verge of
announcing some sort of treaty or agreement.  He only spent a few minutes in
there."

"I won't even
ask how you know that," Loren muttered, and he realized it was becoming a
trend that Garrett knew things about his own government that Loren had no idea
about.

"The official
word, of course," Garrett continued, "is that she probably didn't
want to be captured, paraded around, interrogated, take your pick.  But the
conspiracy theorist in me sees how that melds perfectly with what you've just
told me."

"Well,"
said Web glumly, "I guess we're doomed."

Loren looked at
Garrett intently now.  "You know what I'm going to ask," he said.

"You want me to
babysit our conquering overlord here until you can find a place to dump him?"

"How long can
you help for?" Loren asked, all business, the intensity in his eyes
increasing with every minute.

"I can give you
a couple days before I'll have to leave," Garrett replied.  "You
realize this is fairly ludicrous already?"

"Of course I do,"
Loren replied.  "That's pretty much the standard these days."  He
paced around a bit, then turned back to Garrett.  "Look, I have one card
to play.  Give me today to see if I can make something happen.  If that doesn't
pan out, I have nothing.  We'll have to consider turning him over in that case,
but that's a death sentence for him."

"One day?"
Garrett said, one eyebrow rising high in doubt.

"I'll comm you
tonight.  But first, the four of us need to get back to Avenger before we're
listed as AWOL, and that will put a real crimp on our plans to save the
Confederation."

"I'll be
waiting," Garrett said with a sigh, then saw them to the door.