The Covenant (12 page)

intent. “Tell me one thing, sir, have you ever heard of The Covenant?”

A slight flicker of something showed in the older man’s eyes. “I’m not

here to answer questions, Armada. If there’s something I need to know on

the other hand, I didn’t walk into a quarantine area lightly. Talk to me.”

Broad shoulders shrugged, and because Aspen had gotten to know Larik

well in the past weeks—not just in a sexual way—she recognized the

irreverent twitch to his lips. Whatever the governor wanted, at a guess, Larik

either already knew it or was sure he could get it.

He said with nonchalance, “When you did his background check, sir,

did you discover Ravenot was from Acadien?”

Silence. Then Halden said between his teeth, “No. And how you…oh,

well, forget it, I’m not even going ask you how you found that out, Armada.

Isn’t he too young? The colony was dissolved years ago.”

“Not too young at all, sir. He was there until he was seven. That’s long

enough.”

Trey glanced at Aspen, his expression a mirror of her own puzzlement,

then back at the governor. “If you’ll excuse me, what the hell is Acadien?”

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The older man looked grim, standing abruptly. “It’s a classified subject,

but since apparently that word means nothing to your friend, York, ask him.

For my part, I am going to see you’re all three given standard issue Rapt

One military uniforms, arrange so you have independent transportation and

weapons, and do as Governor Kartel requested and use you to help solve

this problem. Need I say the sooner the better?”

Before any of them could answer, he strode from the room.

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Annabel Wolfe

Chapter 7

The place was one of those quiet dark places he preferred, jeweled

lighting by the tables the only illumination. Soft music, modern and

understated, played, and when they sat down at the elegant table, Larik

arched a brow in Aspen’s direction. “Since the Rapt One government is

buying, this seemed a good choice.”

“Something other than rations sounds good to me.” Trey gave a small

laugh. “I still can’t believe we’re out of our quarters early. Not arguing it,

don’t get me wrong, but it feels a bit surreal.”

Aspen, once again looking like the cool, professional soldier in a black

and gold tunic, her gleaming raven hair coiled neatly at her nape, said dryly,

“And here I was convinced Larik’s activities were going to get us in more

trouble, not less. I think you owe a lot to Ran Kartel.”

She was probably right. Larik nodded, not saying anything more as they

studied the illuminated menu and made their choices. The drinks arrived and

Aspen gave them each an ironic look as her innocuous beverage was set

down. “When I think about the inequity in how we breed, I have to wonder

if we are as advanced as our civilization thinks. Why is it males just

experience a moment of pleasure, and females endure months of symptoms,

restrictions in diet, and at the end of it all, I’m told, considerable

discomfort.”

If she indeed was gestating, it was still too early for her to have to go on

official leave, which Larik couldn’t decide if he was happy about or not. On

the one hand, he wanted to protect her. On the other, she was intelligent and

well-trained and could handle a weapon better than either him or York.

If they were unofficially assigned to do this, they needed her.

“Whatever the limitations,” he told her with sincerity, “the condition

agrees with you. I am not sure how it’s possible but you’re more beautiful

than ever.”

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73

Luminous violet eyes looked at him and her soft mouth quirked. “Be

sure and tell me that in a few months.”

“It’s true.” Trey backed him up, his long fingers idly toying with the

stem of his glass. “And I agree with Larik, I’m not sure how it’s possible.

Not to mention I’d never thought about breeding before this, but it’s sexy as

hell you carry my baby.”

“Or mine.” Larik wasn’t precisely jealous because he was well-aware of

how Trey felt about her, but he agreed in that he wanted the child to be his

with a surprising intensity.

“We’ll know soon enough.” Aspen took a small sip from her glass,

dismissing the issue. It was very hard to tell if she favored him or Trey

more, and at a guess, she didn’t know either.

But if there was one thing about the alluring Lieutenant Thorne, it was

she wasn’t just a gorgeous female but had a very well-functioning brain. She

looked at them both, the iridescent lighting playing over her lovely face in

lavender and gold shadows. She said, “What we need to do now is decide

how to proceed. For one thing, I think Larik needs to explain whatever

Acadien is and how it pertains to Ravenot and the current problem of

possible mantonium theft.”

“I wouldn’t mind knowing also why when you asked about The

Covenant the governor had such a reaction.” Trey regarded him over the rim

of his glass.

Fair enough. Larik wasn’t military and had no interest in doing real

battle with what he knew to be a ruthless enemy. His specialty was

deduction and gathering mechanical data, making sense of it, and fixing

problems. Terrorist wars were for those trained to deal with such issues.

“All right,” he began. “I’ll brief you on what I uncovered. We’ll go from

there on what to do next.”

“This is far more my domain.” Aspen looked at him with cool authority.

“I’m not arguing that. Want me to go on?”

“Please.”

He obeyed the curt order, knowing she chafed a little under the

indisputable fact her military career was about to be severely curtailed.

Leaning forward and keeping his voice low though their table was pretty

secluded, he explained, “First let’s talk about the Acadien Experiment. It

was a brilliant idea in a lot of ways, but like many idealistic plans, it fell

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Annabel Wolfe

short when it failed to take some variables into account, in this case, Sspecies nature. What happened—and this is a brief summary—is our

government decided to take orphaned children and give them a colony of

their own. There they’d be trained in every avenue of military expertise on

the highest level, their entire lives focused on serving Universal rule. Since

they were wards of the government anyway, dependent on UC support, it

made sense to ensure they would grow into adults who could give back to

the society that raised them.”

Trey’s light blue eyes glittered in the low lighting. “Okay, makes sense

to me. What happened?”

“Well, one of the troubles with having a highly-trained, contained and

isolated group of young men and women who concentrate solely on

aggressive behavior is that it works a little too well. From birth sometimes,

these individuals were taught how to fight, how to infiltrate, how to plan,

how to subvert retaliation. They were supposed to do it for us, but one of the

things that started to happen was natural leaders emerged, like with any

military force. Throw in one or two with big ideas and a natural thirst for

power and there’s trouble. Different factions split. It became more than a

military state, it became a war zone.”

“They were killing each other?” Aspen looked troubled.

“Children were essentially killing each other. Naturally there were

adults on the colony to supervise and do the training, but they were targeted

first and wiped out. I guess the first hint something was very wrong there

was that all communications stopped. When the next supply ship came in,

the crew was eliminated and the vessel commandeered by a band who called

themselves The Covenant.”

“How come I’ve never heard of all this?” Trey demanded.

“The UC isn’t all that anxious to broadcast their failures, you know that.

No government is. They sent in personnel to restore order and I guess it

wasn’t easy. When it was finally under control they took the remaining

children and placed them in different colonies all over the place.”

“What happened to the stolen ship?”

“Good question. Luckily, it wasn’t equipped with weaponry because it

was a merchant vessel.”

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“You’re telling us the most aggressive group from a planet of violent

rebels escaped?” Aspen shook her head. “That’s impossible. They could

track them surely. Besides, they’d have to dock somewhere.”

Larik lifted a brow. “Don’t forget, they were trained in how to duck

pursuit, how to survive on very little, how to infiltrate enemy safeguards.

The Covenant just disappeared. When they didn’t resurface after so much

time passed, the official position changed from apprehensive to resigned and

they declared a missing in space verdict and closed the file.”

“How the hell do you know all this?” Trey’s crystalline eyes held an

amused gleam.

“The Universal Council’s database can be pretty helpful. I just looked

under possible subversives and did a quick scan. They’ve never taken The

Covenant off their list of possible terrorist organizations, even with the MIS

status. It caught my eye because one of Ravenot’s communications was

signed, CTC.”

“So?”

Aspen said in slow comprehension, “Commander, The Covenant?”

She was bright. It was one of the things Larik loved about her. “What

clued me off to the possibility is that the messages are sent in a code the

military discarded decades ago. It took me about a minute to break it.

Ravenot’s a civilian, so my question was how would he know it? I know his

personnel file by heart. There’s no record of any service. It tipped me off to

look deeper. The UC fields have pictures of the all children kept on

Acadien. Going from his adult image on file, I digitally enhanced a few

possibilities, aging them to right now, and one matched.”

It was true, the likeness was almost perfect. When Larik had sensed the

connection between Ravenot—whose real name was Ravins—it hadn’t

taken long at all to ascertain that he’d been part of the defunct and disastrous

Acadien project.

“You discovered all this from our simple communication monitor?”

Larik looked at Aspen, not able to suppress a grin. “Well, not exactly. I

used it to access the Rapt One system and then, because it’s pretty

sophisticated, to get into the master center of the Universal Council. Kartel’s

code was easy enough to guess.”

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She gazed back at him with unmistakable resignation. “How anyone

thought I could get you to stick to the rules on this mission is a mystery to

me. I’m just glad you’re on our side. Why didn’t you tell the governor this?”

“Because he’d arrest Ravenot, of course. It’s a knee jerk reaction to

knowing someone on your staff lied about just about everything, plotted to

possibly to destroy your colony, and will eventually make you look like a

fool.”

“We need to stop him,” she argued.

He leaned forward and folded his hands on the table. “He won’t talk.

You need to understand the level of their indoctrination. There were

originally ten of them on that hijacked ship. Don’t you want them all, not

just Ravenot? I know I do because even if we manage to get him and some

of the others escape, this type of thing is just going to happen again.”

“Of course I want all of them.”

“From what I’ve read in the messages, I think at least most of the

original band are here. Two died to cause the quarantine, of course. It leaves

at least eight. One is definitely off-planet. The address he’s communicating

with is in another system.” He added after a pause. “I think it’s on Minoa

and that worries the hell out of me.”

* * * *

Armada’s undisciplined brilliance was not always an asset. Trey knew

full well even a friend like Kartel would be unhappy as hell to know his

personal code had been used to delve into files deemed by the council better

buried than public knowledge.

But, his friend did have a point. If they were supposed to give Ravenot

to the Rapt One authorities, it was probably better to make sure they

rounded up the entire conspiracy. Just from what little he knew about it,

mantonium didn’t sound like something he wanted in the hands of rabid,

indoctrinated anti-government radicals.

After waiting for so long for something other than regulation rations,

none of them really ate too much and when they left they headed to their

new quarters. It was a little disappointing to realize that while he and

Armada had been put in together, Aspen had her own room, in this case,

overlooking the serene inner lake that was the center of the main city. It

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77

disquieted him to think of her alone and he prowled through the apartment,

noting they’d come up some in the estimation of the Rapt One government,

probably due to Kartel. The accommodations were practically luxurious,

especially for military standards. He went to the window and looked over

the illuminated water. Blue light from beryl deposits thousands of feet deep