CHAPTER 10
New Austin
Lone Star System
Cimarron Territory
Southern Hemisphere
His carbine held at the low-ready, Marcus Winchester surveyed the scene in front of him and smiled. In the open center of the complex, faces down in the cold dirt, lay the remnant of the gang of drug manufacturers. Their hands and feet were bound with flex-cuffs. They had constantly complained of their treatment until the marshal put a bullet in the dirt a few centimeters from one of the survivors’ heads. They’d been quiet after that.
Marcus was pleased. Two marshals had done all this. Outnumbered, outgunned, but not outmatched by the band of thugs, he felt like he had lived up to the reputation the Marshals Service had earned over the last century. Life on a frontier world like New Austin was hard, even with all the comforts and conveniences modern technology allowed for. You had freedom like nowhere else, but there were always those who would prey on the weak and the innocent. It was the job of the Marshals Service to bring the law to every corner of the colony, no matter how remote, and they’d done just that.
Wade stood nearby, rifle tucked under his arm, talking to someone on his headset. “Copy that. Out.”
“What’d they say?” Marcus asked.
“The storm isn’t clearing up, but they’ve got a high-speed transport aircraft inbound. Should be here in an hour, at most.”
“That fast?”
“It’s supersonic. They’re going to go over the dust storm and land right here. I guess our new friend over there is kind of a big deal.”
“She certainly seems to think so,” the marshal said, looking over at Rochelle. She paced back and forth, angrily tearing some poor bastard a new asshole on her handheld. When her conversation was finished, she strode over to the marshals, anger still in her eyes. She was a pretty thing, Marcus thought, tall and fit. Her hair was tightly pulled back, and she had subtle lines around her mouth and eyes from, he assumed, being angry all the time.
She was also, apparently, an agent of the Office of Strategic Intelligence. She’d flashed implanted, hidden credentials as soon as the marshals burst in to rescue her.
“There’s a high-speed transport on its way,” Wade began.
“I know that!” she snapped, dropping the device into her pocket and sealing up her coat. “This is…this is unbelievable!”
“Will you calm down?” Wade said, angrily. “We probably saved your life. You’re welcome.”
“Saved my life? Saved my…are you serious? Surely, you’re playing a joke on me, you unbelievable scratching colonial yokel! Do you have any idea how long I’ve been working this investigation? Any idea at all? You idiots just kicked in the door, guns blazing, kill the marks I’ve been working for months, and what? You want a thank you? You expected to carry me out like some damsel in distress from an ancient fable?”
“I’m a married man, ma’am,” Marcus said.
“Of course you are,” the OSI agent hissed. “You probably have a gaggle of illiterate, dirt-covered brats, too.”
Anger pulsed through Marcus’s body, causing an eye to twitch and his grip on his weapon to involuntarily tighten. “Listen, lady, I’ve had about enough of this.”
“Agent,” she corrected. “You will address me as Agent. If you think you’ve had enough now, you just wait until my report makes its way up the chain. This investigation has been ongoing for years, across multiple planets and who-knows-how-many light-years of space, and you two come along and ruin it all!”
“What in the hell is the OSI doing on New Austin, running around with drug manufacturers?” Wade asked. “How is that in any way the jurisdiction of the Interstellar Concordiat?”
“I just said it was a multiplanetary, interstellar operation,” the agent retorted. “I shouldn’t be surprised that you can’t see the big picture here. It wasn’t just about manufacturing drugs for the dregs of a backwater colony to fry their brains with. These people were part of an interstellar operation that extends outside the Concordiat and is therefore a matter of interstellar security. At least it was, until you two killed the man who was their contact with off-world assets. You know what? Never mind. This operation is classified and I don’t have to explain myself to the likes of you.”
“There’s where you’re wrong, Agent,” Marcus replied, controlling his anger but unable to hide the contempt in his voice. “Under Article 31 of the Interstellar Concord, all Concordiat officers or authorities are required to inform the colonial government of any official business they intend to conduct on that colony world, regardless of whether or not it’s secret. You people failed to do that. Had you bothered to inform us of your operation, this whole mess could have been avoided, and your precious asset would still be alive.”
“Don’t you quote the damned Concord to me—”
Marcus was having none of it. “Second, the whole reason we intervened tonight was because when we were scouting the place, we saw a woman named Misty Esteban, and had reason to believe she was being held against her will. As soon as that happened, as a peace officer, I became legally obligated to intervene, and between that dust storm and these hoopleheads’ commo jammers, waiting for backup wasn’t an option.”
“None of this is relevant.”
“Let me finish. Misty Esteban told us that there was another captive in the facility, a woman she called Rochelle, and that she believed she was being held against her will as well. She said that you were, and I quote, nice to her, and tried to protect her. Is that true?”
“Of course I tried! I did everything I could without compromising my cover! I wasn’t being held against my will, I just told her that so she’d trust me.”
“Right. So what you’re telling me is, you did your best, but if you couldn’t stop them from raping her or doing God knows what else without blowing your cover, oh well, too bad. Is that an accurate assessment of the situation, ma’am?”
The agent’s eyes narrowed. She leaned in, pointing a finger in Marcus’s face. “Now you listen to me, Marshal. I don’t know who you think you are, or where you think you’re going with this, but you can stop this line of questioning right now. This operation was classified level Omega, and some jumped-up farmer with a plastic badge has no business questioning my methods. You have no idea how long it took, how many lives were risked, to get me where I was. I did what I had to do, and I wasn’t about to let some two-credit con-artist compromise my operation!”
“I see. You can be assured, ma’am, that all of this will be in my report.”
The agent laughed in Marcus’s face. He wondered how in the hell she maintained deep cover for so long when she was such a pompous, angry skag. “Go ahead, Marshal, write up your report. If you want to keep your job, you’ll sign a nondisclosure agreement and never speak a word of this again.” She jammed her finger into Marcus’s shoulder. “So, you can take your little report and go fuck yourself with it.”
Marcus took a deep breath. He was a veteran of the Concordiat Defense Force’s Espatier Corps, and spent a good chunk of his military career in special operations. He’d worked with OSI spooks before, and like most spec-ops veterans, didn’t think very highly of them. Many of them, in his experience, were good people: professional, mission oriented, willing to cooperate to get things done. But a lot of them were just like her: arrogant, grossly overconfident in their own capabilities, and utterly convinced that the secretive nature of their work meant the rules didn’t apply to them. As a chief warrant officer in the Espatiers, there wasn’t much he could do about it. He had his orders, and had to put up with these self-important asses. But as a Colonial Marshal, he had authority here, even if the condescending OSI agent didn’t think so.
“Agent,” he said, looking down at her from under his wide-brimmed hat, “I’m placing you under arrest.”
She looked back at him, mouth agape, as if she didn’t understand what he was saying. “I’m not impressed with your petty threats, Marshal.”
“I don’t make threats, ma’am. Wade?”
“On it, Marshal,” Wade said. He pulled a pair of restraints from his vest and grabbed the OSI agent’s hands. Before he could lock them around her wrists she spun around, incredibly fast, and brought a knee up into Wade’s groin. He was wearing a protective cup, but even still, it looked like it hurt. She followed up with a palm strike to his chin. He stumbled backward and fell onto his butt in a puff of dust. His big 12mm revolver was out in a flash, extended in his left hand, pointed at the OSI agent’s face. Marcus raised a hand, and his partner lowered the gun.
A couple of the restrained drug makers, who had been silent throughout the exchange, were laughing. The OSI agent clearly had training, and probably bionic implants, but that wouldn’t stop Marcus from giving Wade hell about having gotten beaten up by a woman half his size. Even though that would amuse him endlessly, he’d had about enough of her.
She turned to him, a sneer on her pretty face. “If you’re quite finished—AAAAIIIIEEEE!” She shrieked in pain as the less-lethal compliance round from the under-barrel launcher on Marcus’s carbine hit her in the stomach and latched on. Doubled over from the impact, she fell to the dirt, convulsing, as the device shocked her over and over again. The electrical pulses were specifically contrived to disrupt the human nervous system, rendering the target immobile, and they usually did a number on bionics, too.
“Wade, if you’re done screwing around, will you please restrain her?”
Cussing, Wade stood up and then knelt by the now-incapacitated OSI agent.
Marcus disabled the compliance round so that he could restrain her without being shocked himself. “Agent,” he said, kneeling next to her, “you are under arrest, as I said.”
“Fuck you,” she hissed. “You’ll pay for this.”
“You’re under arrest for threatening a peace officer, violating Article 31 of the Interstellar Concord, knowingly endangering a kidnapping victim while operating in an official capacity, and, of course, resisting arrest.”
If dirty looks could kill, Marcus would have been struck dead by the icy glare the OSI agent gave him. The New Austin government always resented it when the Concordiat interfered in the colony’s domestic affairs. He didn’t imagine that they’d put her in jail or anything, but until her handlers came to fetch her, she could lay there in the dirt with the rest of the criminals. “I am obligated to advise you that you are being recorded, and this interaction can be admitted as evidence against you in a court of law. I suggest you remain silent.”
“I’m going to destroy you,” she said, coldly.
“We’ll see.”
Log Entry 132
Mission 815-707-SSOC
Reconnaissance Ship 505
The first countermeasure effort has failed. Asset PLASTIC FLOWER is dead. Authorities on Faraway/Heinlein are on elevated alert. Asset EXALTED PAWN has been ordered to return to standby status and conduct no further operations. Colonial authorities blame the government of Ionia-5589/Ithaca. OPSEC has not been compromised. AI/CORE recommends continuing passive surveillance and taking no further direct action at this time.
SIGINT has revealed that Zander Krycek was with an individual named Catherine Blackwood at the time of PLASTIC FLOWER’s death. AI/CORE is CONFIDENT/HIGH/HIGH that this is the same individual who is wanted in conjunction with the destruction of Commercial Space Station 015 and Cruiser 247. AI/CORE scans of the Heinlein planetary network reveal that she is the operator of the Polaris-class patrol ship Andromeda, which was involved in the incident in the home system and is suspected in the incident at Danzig-5012/Zanzibar. CAPTURE/KILL order is still in effect for this individual. We will continue reconnaissance until AI/CORE recommends a direct course of action.