Dead men tell no tales, but the survivors bear serious grudges.

— attributed to Ryland LeSarte, date unknown

 

19 Decem, 5249 PD

“Grumpy?  Adam!  Are you still there?”

“Sounds like the line went dead,” Winston’s voice said faintly.  The young inspector’s eyes were closed, his breathing raspy and shallow.  Blood oozed from the gash above his ear, his body limp on the dirt floor of the hollow they’d tumbled into just in time to avoid being crushed by a crashing enemy bomber.  “Do you think he heard you?”

“I know he heard me,” Frederick growled, suppressing the strong urge to fling his commlink as far as his arm could throw it.  “I just don’t know if he was able to figure out where we are.”  Or if he’s even able to send someone to help us.

He’d better send someone.  I’ve got the inspector on one side and Brendan on the other.

He hadn’t dared to move Brendan Cho beyond struggling to drag him clear of the edge of the hollow, and he’d been glad that he’d at least done that.  A split second after he’d managed to pull the pilot to safety, the wreckage above them had shifted.

Cho would have been cut in half if Frederick hadn’t moved him.

Now the pilot lay within arms’ reach, unconscious and flat on his back, his face dirty, breathing shallow but even.  Still, when Frederick had checked his eyes, they’d been rolled up into his skull and the young man’s body was entirely limp.

Frederick hadn’t seen him coming or what had happened when the bomber hit, but he knew that there had to be more going on beneath Brendan’s uniform than what was immediately visible.

Damnation, Grumpy, you’d damned well better send someone to find us—and be quick about it.

“You think it’s bad out there?”

Frederick snorted, then groaned.  The world spun for a moment, then righted itself again.  “I have no doubt,” he said.  “We’ve never been attacked quite like this before.  Whoever’s come means business.”

“They’re nervous,” Winston said.  “Whoever it is, whoever did what they did to the Whispers.  They’re worried we’ll figure something out—that I’ll figure something out.  I’m sorry, Inspector Rose.  This is all my fault.”

“Like hell,” Frederick said.  “There’s no way that’s true.  They probably don’t even realize you’re here.”  And once they do, they’ll just chalk your injuries up to collateral damage.

            If we live that long, anyway.

Frederick shuddered, remembering what had happened on Mimir.

The attack had come without warning one early morning.  It had started with flyovers by unmarked fighters.  The first wave of bombers had come next as unknown ships drifted in from out of nowhere, black ships that vanished against the darkness of space.

No warning.  No escape.  The cities had been bombed, experimentally at first.  A few had been completely destroyed.  Others had suffered less damage, but had suffered more in the aftermath.

Sickness and starvation had come next, since the spaceports had been destroyed, the hospitals bombed into ruin—Mimir had been abandoned by everyone except for its allies, who often found themselves falling victim to the minefield that had been left behind by the mysterious attackers.

No one had moved.  No one cared.  The death of the Psychean Guard had begun that day that Mimir was bombed and had ended when Grant Channing and America Farragut had been captured.

“It’s happening all over again,” Frederick whispered.  “It’s the same people.  It’s same conspiracy.”

“What do you mean?” Winston asked, eyes cracking open.  One eye was bloodshot, ringed by a black eye.  He’d taken the brunt of the impact when they’d taken their tumble, when the bomber had come down.  “What are you talking about?”

“It’s just like Mimir,” Frederick said, feeling cold from head to toe.  “It’s exactly like Mimir.”

He’d read all of the reports, penned a few of his own based on eyewitness testimony from the survivors.  He hadn’t been on Mimir when that world had ended, but he knew enough.

I used to know who killed it.  Damnation, I wish I could remember.

Frederick Rose was no fool.  He knew that at one point, he’d unraveled the mystery, and the fact that he’d gotten far too close had nearly killed him.

And now, walking in my footsteps is going to get Inspector Winston killed.

“Go home once we make it through this,” he said hoarsely to the younger man.  “Go home and tell Sephora that she shouldn’t send people out here to get themselves killed.  My example should’ve taught her better than that.”

“I’m doing my job,” Winston said, his eyes sliding shut again.  “Are you telling me to run from my duty, Inspector Rose?”

“Living, breathing investigators are better than dead symbols,” Frederick said, wincing at the bitterness in his own voice.  “You know that they both begged me not to go?”

“Who?”

“Daci and Seph.  They told me not to go to Eldas.  Daci said she had a bad feeling about it.  Seph said someone had been trying to divert our attention from there.  There must have been a reason for it.  I should have listened.  Instead I went and found out what I needed to find out and they tried to murder me for it.”

“Do you remember?”

“No,” Frederick said, feeling the old ache start to rise again, the pain of not knowing, of not being able to remember.  “No, I’ve got no idea what it was that I used to know and forgot.  I know I was going to go back to New Earth and break the whole thing wide open.  There was going to be hell to pay and I was calling the piper’s tune.

“Or I would have, anyway, if I’d made it back in one piece.”

“But you’re sure it’s the same people?”

“The modus operandi is all the same,” Frederick whispered.  “It’s got to be the same people, the same conspiracy.  It’s all too close.”

“The records of your findings were sealed,” Winston said.  “You had to have diplomatic credentials or be a part of the Inspector General’s office to see them.  Hard for someone to copycat that.”

“Hard, but not impossible.”  Frederick shuddered.  “No.  It’s the same people and it’s happening all over again.

“E-557 is the new Mimir, not the Whispers.  The Whispers was just incidental.  This was their target all along.  We were their target all along.”

“That’s all right,” Brendan Cho rasped from the floor nearby.  “We’ll be making them pay just the same.”