Could this get any worse? It had been a simple assignment: Fly down to Mundo and collect Mark Talbot. How the hell could even Deb Spiro screw that up?
Kalico threw her arms up in despair as she paced across the shuttle field. Cursing like a marine, she gave voice to her displeasure. Her people, smart as they were, knew damn good and well that they’d better steer clear of her and her wrath.
As she pounded across the shuttle field, she kept glancing down south, toward Mundo Base, and tried to calculate the extent of the damage.
First had been the agonizing silence as she’d had the communications officer repeatedly call the shuttle. Nothing for a couple of hours.
And then a reply from Ensign Makarov: “Ma’am, we’re inbound. All I can tell you is that after Mundo, Lieutenant Spiro ordered me to maintain com silence, then ordered me to fly to Port Authority. She ordered me to set down outside the gate, at which time she, Chavez, and Nashala exited the shuttle. Soon as they were dirtside, I dusted off.”
Kalico had demanded, “What the hell happened at Mundo? Where’s Talbot?”
“He’s still there, ma’am. Threatened to shoot up my shuttle when Spiro wouldn’t honor Mundo’s deed.”
Deed? What deed? But Makarov insisted he didn’t have a clue.
“Spiro, you ignorant bitch!” she railed at nothing in particular. It felt good to stomp, to shake fists, and rage.
She’d been riding high after blowing the mobbers out of the sky. Then, like a roundhouse to the chin, she’d had to deal with Rita Valerie’s gruesome, hanging corpse with its insane message.
And now this?
It had been such a simple assignment.
She saw the shuttle before she heard it. Just a flash of silver in the northern sky as Capella’s setting rays reflected from the craft’s side.
Retreating beyond the downwash zone, Kalico waited while the shuttle circled, slowed, and settled onto the fired, ceramic-hard surface of the pad.
The spool-down seemed to take forever, and then the ramp dropped. Katsuro Miso and Dina Michegan came striding wearily down the textured surface—a bitter, almost defeated set to their shoulders. Not that their expressions were any better.
“What the hell happened?” Kalico demanded as she stepped out to meet them.
“They were ready for us.” Michegan growled, spreading her hands. “Talbot was in full armor, had his service weapon. Said he’d hose the shuttle turbines with AP. Uh, you know what armor piercing rounds would do to the thrusters, right?”
“Come on, Dina,” Miso said. “Start at the beginning. Some woman named Rebecca came out. Spiro started well enough. Asked to speak to Talbot. This Rebecca said that we were trespassing on private property. That she had a deed. Asked Spiro if you, ma’am, didn’t give your word that deeds would be honored.”
“It went downhill from there.” Michegan kept glancing away, as if to avoid Kalico’s eyes. “Spiro ordered us to fan out and search the place. The woman objected. Spiro pushed her out of the way, and that’s when Talbot popped up.”
“And there was another shooter, too,” Miso added. “Talina Perez with self-guided rounds in a service rifle. Spiro said she felt the IR on her cheek.”
Dina Michegan said, “Spiro was losing it, ma’am. The four of us, Miso, Chavez, Nashala, and me, we tried to talk the lieutenant out of unleashing a shitstorm. Then we beat feet for the shuttle. I mean, they had us. Said it was all being recorded. If it had gone completely to shit . . . Well, we didn’t want to be part of that mess afterward.”
Kalico closed her eyes, her fists knotted at her sides. She forced herself to breathe deeply, to still the frantic beating of her heart.
“But you got out without shots being fired? No one killed?”
“Just the quetzal, ma’am. We didn’t see it, but just before the ramp closed, Spiro fired a single shot. On the way to Port Authority she bragged that she’d center-punched, as she said, ‘the little shit.’”
“She shot Rocket?” Kalico conjured an image of the young quetzal as it walked down the hospital hallway with Talbot. On the way to the men’s room of all things.
The beast had looked at her, curiosity behind those three gleaming black eyes.
“That was a little girl’s pet.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Michegan shifted uncomfortably. “Wouldn’t have been our call, ma’am. You said no trouble. Nothing broken or killed. We were just trying to keep Spiro from—”
“You said she went straight to Port Authority?”
Miso extended a hand, fingers spread, as if to plead for compassion. “Don’t blame Ensign Makarov, ma’am. He just followed the lieutenant’s orders.”
“And Chavez and Nashala?”
“They threw in with Spiro.” Miso adopted a wounded expression. “Said that resigning from the Corps was now a well-established tradition. They shucked their armor, left it in the shuttle, and the three of them walked off at Port Authority. Said for us not to come looking for them. That we wouldn’t like the reception.”
“The little girl’s quetzal is dead? You’re sure of this?”
“Makarov, competent as he is, recorded the whole thing with the sensors and camera gear. It’s all on tape.”
Kalico knew it was bad.
Didn’t know just how bad until an hour later when she reviewed the recordings.
So, how the hell did she get her hands on Mundo Base now?
With a murderer loose at Corporate Mine, Spiro gone rogue, and this woman Rebecca claiming she had a deed? And to cap it all, Spiro really had shot Rocket.
There’s no friggin’ way Dya will forgive this.
She desperately wished she were at Inga’s drowning in a tall glass of whiskey. Just as she was imagining lifting a glass to her lips, her com interrupted the image.
“Ma’am? Petre Howe’s been taken to the clinic. Said he’s suffering from stomach pains. Just keeled over in the cafeteria.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He’s throwing up, foaming at the mouth. Uh . . . Just a moment. Word is he’s gone into convulsions. They’re going to check him for poison.”
In just the short time it took her to get to the small clinic down the main hall and to the right, the poison had done its work and Petre Howe was dead.