Rath's Rebellion (The Janus Group Book 5) Read online

  Both men turned to look at her. “Yes, Fenoxal,” Lefev agreed. “Did you see the report already?”

  “No,” Dasi said. “Fenoxal’s side effects match what I experienced after my first visit to the church here on Excavar. And it’s the only drug manufactured by a company called Shibuden-Klein Pharmaceuticals. According to the endowment report you got from Exor Davy’s arrest, the NeoPuritans own fifty-one percent of Shibuden-Klein.”

  “Is that so?” Hawken asked, steepling his hands over his desk. He looked at Lefev, who shrugged.

  “I’ll take her word for it,” the older lawyer said. “My own investigation had not gotten that far.”

  “You’re getting slow, old friend,” Hawken said. He leaned back in his chair. “Let’s play this out, then. The NeoPuritans own a pharma company …”

  “… that company manufactures Fenoxal. They sell it through prescriptions to maintain a semblance of legitimacy…,” Lefev continued.

  “… but their real purpose is to turn Fenoxal into lifewater for the Church …”

  “… which they use to hook new recruits,” Dasi added. “They make them feel like the lifewater has imbued them with special powers, but in reality they’re just side effects of the drug.”

  “After a few visits to church, the members are addicted to Fenoxal,” Lefev said. “And that chemical dependency compels them to return, and pay exorbitant fees to keep getting their fix each week.”

  “And that money enriches the Church’s leaders and buys them Senate seats, and they also use it to make more Fenoxal-slash-lifewater,” Hawken finished. “Fuck me. Sorry for the language.”

  “Speaking of buying Senate seats: I found something else in the financial data,” Dasi said. “The Church donated a couple big chunks of money to Senator Foss’ campaign a while back. But his finance reports don’t list the donations.”

  Lefev frowned. “You think Foss is hiding contributions?”

  “Either that or the Church did something shady with the money and is covering it up with phony campaign donations,” Dasi said, shrugging.

  “Send it to me?” Lefev asked.

  “Sure,” Dasi said. “Soon as I get back to my desk.”

  “Campaign finance shenanigans are good leverage, but I doubt we’re going to convict Foss on something that simple,” Hawken observed. “What would you do if you were running public relations for Foss and that accusation came in?”

  Dasi tilted her head to one side. “Without direct evidence that Foss knew of the contributions and tried to hide them, I’d tell him to blame it on his campaign director. We’d make an announcement apologizing, saying the guilty party no longer works for us.”

  “Exactly,” Hawken said. “And then we’re back to square one. I want to run with this pharma company angle.”

  “Their manufacturing plant is located on Sipadan,” Dasi said. “It’s not far. And tomorrow we pass into the night side – Excavar’s shuttle launch window reopens.”

  “Lefev, you stay here. Keep digging on the finance angle, hold down the fort while I’m out. Dasi: we need two tickets to Sipadan. It’s your lead, so you’re coming with me.”

  22

  Rika pulled the rear doors of the van open. The van’s interior was stacked floor to ceiling with modified micro-drones, which the team had built with their Forges during the drive to the concentration camp.

  “Let’s test one,” Rika said, selecting a drone at random from the stack closest to the door.

  As the other contractors watched, she tossed the drone into the air, where it hovered expectantly. Rika accessed a setting in her internal computer and sent the drone a command – on cue, the hologram projector on the drone’s back projected a duplicate image of Paisen, standing directly next to the older woman, like a twin brought to life. In her Jokuan military uniform, Paisen moved her arms experimentally, and the drone’s image mirrored her.

  “Looks good,” Paisen said.

  Rika deactivated the drone and returned it to its pile, closing the doors again.

  “Here comes Vence,” Wick said, turning at the sound of an approaching vehicle. A Jokuan army jeep appeared several seconds later, and pulled to a stop next to the van.

  “Ready?” Vence asked, leaning out the driver’s window.

  “Yeah,” Paisen said. “Any trouble getting hold of this thing?”

  “Had to put a guard at the depot to sleep,” Vence remarked. “Other than that, no.” Her voice was low, to match the male face she had picked to wear.

  “This has to be some kind of record for most vehicles stolen,” Rika observed, climbing back into the van.

  “Stand by for our signal,” Paisen told her. She picked up Rika’s Forge and her own, then climbed into the seats in the back of Vence’s jeep with Wick.

  “Be careful,” Rika replied.

  Vence drove the jeep slowly through the trees, and several minutes later, they emerged onto a rough dirt track. The track wound through the dark forest for another mile, until the three contractors caught glimpses of the high-powered floodlights on the camp’s guard towers. With a sudden burst of light, the trees ended, and they emerged into the open area surrounding the camp.

  Wick handed a pair of handcuffs to Paisen, who attached them to her wrists. She darkened the skin in a circle on one cheek, giving the appearance of a large bruise. Vence slowed the jeep as they neared the main gate, a towering construction of razor wire and steel flanked by two guard towers. Within each tower, she could see a pair of guards covering the jeep with heavy machine guns. She pressed the brake, and the vehicle rolled to a halt. Two guards approached carefully. The closest one barked a demand at Vence.

  she read off of her heads-up display. She handed him a forged ID card.

  she admitted, speaking in the local dialect with the help of her onboard computer. She jerked her thumb at Paisen in the back seat.

  The guard stopped studying her ID and pointed a flashlight into the jeep, shining it first on Wick, then on Paisen. Paisen held up her handcuffed hands, shielding off the bright light, and turned away from him.

  the guard asked.

  Vence said.

  The guard frowned. he said.

  He disappeared back into a small hut and they heard the muffled sounds of a radio conversation. Finally, he emerged. On the inner side of the gate, a group of four soldiers emerged from a matching hut, and loaded up into a jeep matching the one Vence had stolen.

  the guard reported.

  Vence said, shrugging.

  The great wire gate swung open, and Vence drove slowly forward, waiting while a set of hydraulic barricades lowered out of the way, and then a second gate opened, too. As they emerged into the camp, the second jeep pulled up behind them, following. Vence glanced at it in the rear view mirror, turning onto the main thoroughfare through the camp. Paisen dropped the handcuffs on the floor of the car, and Wick passed her an auto-pistol.

  “Loaded, safety on,” he reported.

  Paisen nodded. “Ready when you are,” she told Vence.

  Vence put on a sudden burst of speed, and turned hard down one of the rows of barracks buildings lining the main road, the jeep disappearing into the deep shadows cast by the buildings. Paisen and Wick leapt out of either side of the moving jeep, rolling to a stop next to the buildings. The second jeep came around the corner a moment later, but jerked to a halt when it found Vence’s vehicle stopped, too. Wick and Paisen had already jumped to their feet mere feet away from the guards in the jeep, and the sound of their weapons firing four stun rounds barely registered over the noise of the jeeps’ engines. It was a moment’s work to dump the unconscious guards out of the jeep and roll their bodies under the nearest bar
racks building, and then the two of them grabbed the Forges from Vence’s vehicle, boarded the second jeep, and pulled back out onto the main road. Vence followed them.

  “So far, so good,” Wick breathed.

  Suddenly he jammed on the brakes, and the vehicle skidded to a stop in the loose dirt. Two camp inmates were crossing the road, moving from their barracks building toward a row of outhouses across the street. Both men wore tattered rags, which did little to conceal their gaunt frames. The shorter of the pair was supporting the second, who suffered from a terrible limp. In the glare of the jeep’s headlights, the two men looked up, their eyes a mixture of exhaustion and abject terror at having inconvenienced some guards. But when Wick and Paisen did not move, the two men hurriedly shuffled out of the way.

  Wick started forward again, and Paisen saw him open his mouth to comment on what they had just seen, but after a moment of stunned silence, he simply shook his head.

  “We can’t help them now,” Paisen said.

  “I know,” Wick said. His hands were white from gripping the wheel.

  “There’s the parade ground,” Paisen said.

  The rows of low buildings ended, opening up to an expansive square of hard-packed earth, several hundred yards across. In the moonlight, Paisen saw a row of thick poles standing in the middle of the square, and she could just make out the forms of the Arclight team, each one bound to one of the poles. As they drew closer, Paisen counted eleven poles – four stood empty.

  Wick drove straight for them, circling and then parking behind the row of poles. He and Paisen dismounted, each carrying two Forges. Vence joined them, and they jogged over to the closest poles, dropping duffel bags of spare army fatigues at the base of several poles. Paisen picked a pole, drew a fighting knife from the sheath on her hip, and began cutting through the ropes. Jacque, feeling his ropes start to give, craned his neck around to try to see her.

  “Is that you, Paisen?” he whispered.

  “Yeah,” Paisen confirmed.

  “Starting to think you guys weren’t going to show up,” he told her. “We were all getting ready to manufacture poison with our hemobots, try to kill ourselves and steal some of the Jokuans’ thunder.”

  “This ought to piss them off a bit more,” Paisen said, cutting through the last coil of rope. “There are spare uniforms and auto-pistols in the duffel bags—”

  “Don’t move!” an amplified voice boomed out.

  Suddenly, the parade ground was bathed in harsh white light, as spotlights on several buildings clicked on simultaneously, focused on the execution area.

  23

  Senator Foss heard his computer chime. He looked up from the report he was reading, frowned, and then tapped a key on his keyboard. A video window appeared on the screen.

  “Good afternoon, Patriarch,” he said. “I have a lobbyist stopping by in a few minutes, I’ll need to drop you when he gets here.”

  “This will be brief,” Rewynn replied.

  “I have Shofel here in my office with me,” Foss warned the older man.

  “I can go …?” Shofel said, making ready to stand up from his chair.

  “Stay,” Rewynn said. “I think it’s time you were made aware of the situation.”

  “Yes, sir,” Shofel said.

  “Hawken’s on Excavar, as we suspected,” Rewynn said. “The local Patriarch called me today.”

  “They’re keeping an eye on Hawken and his team?” Foss asked.

  “They’re trying,” Rewynn agreed. “But he brought in a new investigator – a girl. They weren’t aware of her, and she managed to infiltrate one of the parishes.”

  “She got inside? What did she do?” Foss asked, setting the report down on his desk.

  “She observed two ceremonies,” Rewynn said. “During the second one, she attempted to steal a sample of lifewater.”

  “Did she succeed?” Foss hissed.

  “I have assurances that she did not. They searched her thoroughly, and found nothing.”

  “Regardless, this development is potentially devastating, Thomis,” Foss pointed out. “If they’re attempting to get a sample, they must at least suspect what they will find in it. The girl may have drunk some of it.”

  “True,” Rewynn said. “It’s time we dealt with Hawken’s team more directly. I’m uncomfortable letting their investigation proceed much farther. But we can’t rely on the Excavar congregation to handle this. It’s too delicate.”

  “And our people failed at every turn on Scapa,” Foss observed. “I have little faith they would succeed here. We need professionals.”

  “We need the Guild,” Rewynn said. “They used to excel on tasks like this. It’s a pity they’re no longer in business.”

  Shofel cleared his throat. “I could make inquiries with the same company we used for the colony incident,” he suggested.

  “Which incident?” Rewynn asked.

  “That small colony that converted en masse to the Church, and then tried to splinter off a few years ago,” Foss reminded him. “They wanted to form their own sect, and they stole a lifewater supply ship ….”

  “I remember, yes,” Rewynn said, nodding. “We sent the mercenaries to recover the ship, and remove the ringleaders. They were certainly efficient.”

  “They ended up taking a very broad view of who might be a ringleader. But it all worked out for the best,” Foss said. “Would they be up for this type of work?”

  Shofel nodded. “I believe so. They didn’t have any qualms about dealing with the colonists.”

  “See to it. I can secure whatever funds are needed,” Rewynn said. “And send some of them to guard the production facility on Sipadan, too. Just in case.”

  24

  “Don’t move!”

  Floodlights lining the camp’s parade ground flicked on, casting a harsh light on the Arclight team in the center of the square.

  “Shit!” Jacque said, ducking behind his pole as his ropes fell off, and reaching for the nearest duffel bag for a uniform and an auto-pistol.

  Paisen had already moved to the next pole, where she sawed at Huawo’s ropes. “Tell me what you see,” she ordered him, focusing on cutting.

  “Jokuan infantry moving across the square toward us,” Huawo said. He counted swiftly in his head. “A bunch of Jokuan infantry. Two companies’ worth, I think. I can’t see behind me.”

  Paisen glanced past the jeeps, where more soldiers were converging on them. “Looks like another company behind us,” she observed calmly. “That’s the whole battalion. Good.”

  “Good?!” Huawo asked, incredulous. His ropes parted, and Paisen handed him an auto-pistol.

  “The more the merrier,” Paisen said.

  * * *

  At the edge of the woods overlooking the camp, Rika checked the van’s clock for the thousandth time.

  “Come on,” she muttered to herself.

  Movement caught her eye: in the middle of the dark camp beyond the floodlit fence line, a number of spotlights had come on, illuminating what she assumed was the parade ground.

  “There we go,” she said. She initiated the launch command in her internal computer, and behind her in the van, the drones came to life simultaneously, hundreds of tiny hoverjets whirring and buzzing like a hive full of bees. They launched in sequence, a steady stream of drones whizzing off through the van’s back doors, up over the roof of the van, and straight toward the center of the camp.

  “Reinforcements are on their way,” she radioed.

  She opened the door to the van, tugging a rail rifle off of its perch on the passenger seat next to her. Rika flipped a bipod support into position under the rifle’s barrel, and set it carefully on the hood of the van, standing behind it and lining herself up behind the weapon’s sight. She adjusted her aim, then zoomed in on the telescopic sight, bringing the closest guard tower into better focus. Two guards stood in the tower, their backs to her – both were focused on the commotion within the center of the camp. Rika locked their range into the
weapon’s targeting computer, and let the crosshairs rest on the left guard.

  “Good evening, gentlemen.”

  * * *

  The oncoming Jokuan soldiers were less than a hundred yards away when the first drone appeared next to Paisen, and a moment later, another dozen had arrived.

  “Freeze!” one of the soldiers yelled, pointing his rifle at the Arclight team, who were finishing pulling on their Jokuan army uniforms.

  Paisen dutifully raised her arms, and the drone next to her chose that moment to duplicate her image with its hologram, throwing up an exact copy just to her left, arms held high. In the space of two seconds, each team member was doubled, and then tripled, until the space around the poles began to fill up with copy upon copy of the escaping prisoners.

  The Jokuan soldiers halted in a loose ring around the Arclight team, confused stares on their faces.

  “Put … put down your weapons,” one of the officers ordered. A drone hovered in next to him, and abruptly, there was a hologram of the officer standing directly beside him. He did a double take, as the square became crowded with holographic copies of soldiers, too.

  Paisen sent a message to each of the Arclight team members.

  >>>Pick a soldier and mimic him.

  The Arclight team obeyed immediately, shifting their faces, and as the drones copied their new faces, the Jokuans suddenly found themselves in a stand-off with a unit of doppelgangers. More copied soldiers winked into existence among the Jokuans encircling them, until the space was full of confused soldiers facing copies of themselves.

  >>>Switch to thermal imaging so you can distinguish soldiers from holograms. Get ready to break out on my mark, Paisen ordered her team. Rally up at the southernmost barracks building. And don’t dawdle – this isn’t payback time. Not yet.

  She dropped her hands, and flipped the safety off of her auto-pistol.

  >>>Fire.

  The Arclight team opened fire, stun rounds knocking down a handful of soldiers. All around the square, holograms pointed their weapons at the closest soldiers and created the illusion they were firing. The soldiers reacted instinctively, bringing their own weapons up and firing blindly in return, but the stun rounds passed straight through the holograms, and impacted other soldiers instead. In the blink of an eye, nearly a third of the battalion was incapacitated, and the parade ground was a swirling chaos of shouting, firing soldiers.