THE PRIZE: BOOK TWO - RETRIBUTION (24 page)

“You’d almost think they don’t understand what’s going on.” Sergeant Blake let out a snort of anger. “Fuck! I get the impression these assholes think they are still in charge or something.”

“Maybe from their point of view they are. Somehow they made a deal with the Imperials to leave them alone in their little underground paradise as there’s no way this place could go undetected by the Imperials or IMPSEC. It also hasn’t dawned on them that the Empire is gone.” Blake looked at him a moment.

“What the hell did they give the Imperials in exchange?” It was a good question. The Empire had already taken over the planet, so what was their bargaining chip?

“Line them up and let me take a look and see if she’s here.” He didn’t need to specify who. It was odd that Ellis hadn’t come forward, or announced herself yet.

Richard walked down the line eyeing each. The slaves kept their eyes-down posture and submissive attitude they’d been beaten into accepting, while the others looked him in the eye, or tried to. One look and more than one took a step back in fear. She wasn’t here, and Richard gritted his teeth in frustration.

“Are you the one in charge of these ruffians?” A tall aristocratic man asked a slight sneer on his face. He wasn’t intimidated by Penn’s eyes, and seemed to take a rather condescending attitude, as he looked Richard up and down as if he were a side of beef, or a slave.

“You could say I am. Who are you?”

“I’m Senator Bainbridge, and I was the Director of homeland security before everything went to shit.”

“And now?”

“Oh, just the Director for national reconstruction, but who are you?”

“Me? My name is Penn, Richard Penn.” Now the man took a slight step backward.

“You can’t be him… he’s dead.” His face took on a deathly look.

“Oh, I’m him alright, but why so surprised?”

“Director Markoff…” He bit off whatever else he was going to say.

Richard turned to Gunny Keton. “Pack ‘em, rack ‘em and stack ‘em but bag this asshole for special handling. I have a few pointed questions to ask him.”

“Ten-four, Skipper.”

“We need to get them back to base and start pulling some answers to our questions out of these people.” Penn felt a shiver run up his back. “I get the horrible feeling that this goes a lot deeper than just a bunch of cowardly politicians hiding out in a secret bunker.” Lieutenant Weatherly looked at him a moment, then nodded, understanding what he meant.

“And the Thrakee?”

“Treat them with respect. Let them keep their weapons. At the moment they are our allies.” Weatherly shot him a look.

“If you say so, Sir.”

“Also, get a tech team in here and strip any computer they find. I want to know just what the hell’s been going on here.”

“This might be a good place to set up a base of operations as well, Skipper.” Penn looked around at the hanging drapes and soft couches and smiled slightly.

“Better strip out all this fluff and feathers when you do.”

“Too right. The place looks like a frigging whorehouse.” Gunny Keton growled with a loud sniff of disapproval. Now the question was, where had Ellis gone, and why?”

In all it took a day to get the prisoners and slaves separated, and there wasn’t much left of the ornate flower gardens after the constant coming and going of shuttle craft. By mid afternoon Penn got bored and disgusted searching the place as it reminded him too much of the less savory parts of Markoff and Emperor Cytec’s palace with its dungeons and torture chambers. He thought he could detect Ellis’ scent here, tantalizing him with a promise but was never fulfilled. The scent puzzled him, as it wasn’t distinct enough, more like Ellis and someone else. Even the living quarters and the bedroom she’d lived in tasted off but he couldn’t put his finger on why, and it made him angry. By the time, he walked into the holding cell to talk with Senator Bainbridge he was in no mood to be fucked around with. As instructed, the senator was stripped naked and kept waiting in the overly hot interrogation room, dripping with sweat and as thirsty as hell. Penn strolled in sipping from a bottle of ice-cold water, beads of dew running down the outside and stood for a moment just inside the door eyeing the man up and down. To add to his discomfort, Penn had asked Michael to play the odd alien musical sound he’d first heard inside the pyramid. That had many of the team members on edge, as they constantly looked around, nervous and itchy. The sound had a similar effect on the senator, his eyes flicking back and forth looking for the source and licking his dry lips. He eyed the bottle of water in Penn’s hand, looking hopeful. At a murmured command from Penn, three men walked in with a table and two chairs and set them in the center of the room.

“Sit!” Penn commanded and he took a seat with his back to the door.

The senator gave him a look of disdain and remained standing. Penn said nothing and eyed him up and down. The senator was a well-built man in his mid to late forties, muscular, tanned and toned and some might say handsome. Penn smiled slighting as he eyed the man’s mid section, and as well hung as he might usually be, his manhood was shrunken with fear, despite what his face said. One look and he turned sideways to Penn and placed his hands over his genitals. Penn smiled slightly and placed the bottle of cold water in the center of the table, as if offering it to the man as an inducement for him to sit. After a moment he did, more to hide his shrunken manhood than anything else Penn suspected, and reached for the bottle. Before he could, Penn picked it up and took a sip.

“I have a few questions I would like to ask you, and depending on the answers I might let you have some of this lovely ice cold water.”

“I’m sure we can come to an understanding Mr.… Penn, wasn’t it?” He gave Penn an ingratiating smile so typical of politicians and conmen.

“I’m sure we can Mr. Bainbridge. You look like a reasonable man. I have the impression you know who I am.”

“Well… yes. You work for Director Markoff - is there something we did to upset him?”

“Do you know in what capacity I worked for him?”

“No - no, not really. Just that you were one of the…” He trailed off.

“One of the what?”

“You have to understand. I wasn’t privy to the negotiations.” Penn kept his face impassive.

“Why don’t you tell me what happened.”

“You have to understand. Everything was in flux after the invasion and the remaining governments attempted to contact the Imperials to stop the slaughter. Most of the remaining government officials around the world thought it would be better to sue for peace and come to some understanding with the Tellurians.”

“Understanding about what?”

“The President offered them a deal in exchange for letting us maintain a semblance of government… for reconstruction purposes is all.”

“Go on.”

“We attempted to arrange a ceasefire between the scattered fighting units and the Imperials, but to no avail.”

“Yes, I remember hearing that the moment our forces put down their weapons the Tellurians moved in and executed them.”

“No - no, that’s not what happened. They only killed those that wouldn’t stop fighting.” Penn controlled his anger with difficulty, remembering the day the Imperials had attacked his home.

Penn knew that statement for the lie it was. Long after the main fighting was over, they’d come in and didn’t ask for a surrender, they’d attacked full force with the intent of wiping out all the humans on the base. Only by luck had he been away from home hunting with the other Alca boys, only hearing the sounds of explosions and heavy pulse weapon fire as the Tellurians wiped out his home and the Alca village. By the time, he’d returned home everyone was dead, some shot where they lay, wounded and unable to defend themselves, even the sick in the tiny hospital.

“Go on. What did you give the Tellurians in exchange for your lives?”

“You make that sound like a bad thing. The only thing we were concerned with was trying to maintain some semblance of government so we could organize the rebuilding.”

“Under the direction of the Imperials of course.”

“Yes, of course. We wanted to get the economy running again and restore order.”

“So why haven’t you, instead of hiding out in that bunker?” Bainbridge colored slightly.

“It wasn’t that easy. We had little to negotiate with that the Tellurians wanted.”

“Why would they deal with a bunch of second rate politicians when they could just move in and take it all?” Bainbridge turned red as the jibe hit home.

“I might remind you, Mr. Penn that you are talking about the President of the United States and his senior advisors.” Even as he said it, Bainbridge’s eyes flicked down to the bottle of water as he tried to lick his dry lips. Penn deliberately took a long slow drink. In the background the subsonic’ alien sounds increased causing Bainbridge to shiver, despite the heat. To Penn, knowing what it was, it sounded more like a sad melody. From what Penn could feel, so far, at least from his point of view, Bainbridge was telling the truth.

“So what did you bargain away?” Bainbridge turned his head away from the sight of the water bottle.

“We gave them the location of all the super soldier bases.” He said at last.

“Go on.”

“You have to understand. It was a rush program, a last ditch effort to come up with a weapon against the Tellurians.”

“So far, you have told me two lies. One, it was no rush program. You knew the Tellurians were going to invade. It would have taken you at least ten to fifteen years to develop the program and have the children grown enough to be ready to fight the invaders.”

“Accelerated growth.” Bainbridge murmured.

“So what happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“Something went wrong with the program, didn’t it?”

“Yes!” He snapped back, suddenly angry. “The children didn’t come out the way we wanted. You were all so… so… independent and refused to follow orders. You were untrainable!” Penn laughed.

“You mean we wouldn’t tamely follow orders, instead of the zombies you wanted.” Just Bainbridge’s expression told Penn all he wanted to know. “What else?”

“If you must know. The chief geneticist and his wife ran off and began experimenting on their own down in South America where we couldn’t get at them.”

“How so?”

“The damned British Government gave them asylum and hid them away on some jungle base surrounded by heavily armed troops.”

“So, you sold out the location of all the experimental stations and bases to the Tellurians in exchange for letting you live.”

“Mr. Penn. You seem like a reasonable person, even if you are one of them. You have to understand our position at the time. If we hadn’t, the Tellurians would have taken us all out and shot us. What of the reconstruction then?” He added as if that excused the sellout.

“Yes, I’m one of those so called super soldiers, and so is my wife, Ellis, the one you had in your bunker. You are also responsible for the death of my mother and father.”

“What!” He looked startled. “Y… you mean you were born at that base…” Penn smiled slightly, but it wasn’t a nice smile.

“Because of you, two extraordinary, loving people were butchered and died a needless death like so many others.”

“But - but what else could we have done, and who is this Ellis you spoke of?” In answer, Richard tapped his porta-comp and showed him a picture of Ellis.

“I don’t know who you think that is, but as far as I know, that’s Marion Butler, the wife of the Vice President.”

“Maybe, but that is also my wife, Alexandria Ellis.” The ex-senator looked blank for a moment, and then smiled slightly.

“I think I see. I think I can explain it. Mrs. Butler volunteered to be part of the um… experiment and offered her genome. It could be that this Ellis person is a product of that experiment.” Penn nodded. That explained the difference in Ellis’, or Mrs. Butler’s scent.

“Where else were these so called experiments taking place?”

“Here, Russia, England, China, France and a few other places, but I’m not sure.”

“Do you know how many super soldiers it produced?”

“Several hundred so I was told.”

“I see why the Empire was willing to trade. So where is this Mrs. Butler now?”

“On her way to Telluria Prime I suspect, along with the President and the remaining members of the President’s cabinet.”

“So, you and the others weren’t fast enough to get to the courier ships?”

“No, we were selected to stay.” It was a lie.

“Except for the fact that the second courier ship isn’t working due to poor maintenance, or the President made sure you and the others couldn’t escape.” Bainbridge colored again.

“So much for loyalty.” Penn laughed.

“Once the Empire returns we’ll see who laughing.”

“Maybe, if they return.”

“And what will you do then? You have nothing to stop them with, no army, and no navy. You’ll be about as effective as the first time.”

“It will be at least five years before the Imperials return. By then we’ll have all we need to stop them, not that it will matter to you.” Bainbridge went pale.

“Mr. Penn. You’re a reasonable man. Surly we can come to an arrangement.” Penn handed him the remaining water. Bainbridge grabbed it eagerly and gulped it down, only to find it was salt water. He spat the remainder out and threw the bottle away.

“One of the benefits of whatever my father and mother did to my genome, I can drink sea water without any ill effects, unlike you.”

“You pathetic freak, you’re not even remotely human. What did your loving parents splice into your genes, dog, or cat by the look of your eyes? You and your kind should have been flushed down the toilet along with the rest of the lab waste.” He snarled, half rising from the table. “I knew using the genome from the British geneticist and his wife was a mistake.” His fist flashed out, aiming for Penn’s face but it never landed as Penn caught it in mid strike. Penn squeezed and Bainbridge screamed as his fist was crushed.

“For ten miserable years I was Markoff’s pet assassin, and if you think I’m a reasonable man, you are mistaken, I’m not. I have no mercy or compassion for you and anyone else in the bunker, except the slaves. You say you are the remnants of the US government, yet you couldn’t even keep one of the provisions of the constitution, the one against slavery.” Penn gave one last squeeze and push him away.