Chapter 16: Borrowing Trouble

"What's with the monkey suits?" Tess teased as Mary and I marched into Conference Room Four. Tess was referring to our Confederacy Navy uniforms. I had a few more ribbons on my chest than did Mary—almost as many Confederacy ribbons as I had US Army ribbons on my old uniform. There were some dangerous missions—extractions, checking on space debris, a few instances of direct action...

<Admittance restricted, > Ramses, the station AI, announced. The doors closed behind us. Ramses announced us: <Colonel Popov and Lieutenant Lawrence present.>

"Let's get this over with," the third human in the room was Colonel Dorman. "Identify this object."

"That looks like a gas pistol," I said as the small handgun showed up on a wall. Our station's walls serve as video screens. "They are banned many places in the USA but were quite popular in Europe."

<Lieutenant Lawrence is correct, > Ramses confirmed. <Today a Sergeant Antonio Williams of the United States Army Tenth Mountain Division was convicted of illegally possessing this gas in a Queens, New York school zone and may be sentenced to 15 years in the Attica State Maximum Security State Correctional Facility. Upon conviction, Sergeant Antonio was informed by his attorney of having a qualifying CAP score to volunteer for Confederacy service. He accepted.>

A satellite image of Attica appeared on the wall showing that Buffalo, New York was to the west and Lake Ontario was to the north.

"I thought military personnel were exempt from local weapon bans," Colonel Dorman huffed.

"Sergeant Williams was on leave," a male voice in the teleconference explained. "He wasn't authorized weapons—that takes a field grade officer's authorization."

The story was laid out for us: Sergeant Williams was escorting his sister Victoria to her CAP testing at a department store downtown. She had just passed her CAP test with a 6.6 and was recovering in the food court when several men with automatic weapons and a grenade launcher began rounding up people looking for CAP card holders. Sergeant Williams took Victoria's gas pistol and waited, gun palmed, until one of the terrorists got close. The terrorist was using his Automat Kalashnikov to prod people when he got several tear gas capsules in the face—and Sergeant Williams dynamically disarmed the man, ripping the Kalashnikov from his hands, bashing in the terrorist's temple with the butt plate before shouldering the assault rifle and ripping off five short bursts. Each burst dropped a terrorist—the hostages were on the floor and out of the line of fire. The image showed Sergeant Williams changing magazines (two had been taped together) and then looking around for more targets. Clearly the good sergeant was a combat vet!

The next scenes were the movie trailer edition of the trial that took place over six weeks. Charged with terrorism (!), six murders (the terrorists'), more than a hundred attempted murders, possession of illegal firearms, and resisting arrest, only the weapon charges stuck. Sentencing was next—the judge could give Sergeant Williams two consecutive maximum sentences.

"What is Sergeant William's CAP score?" I asked.

"Why does that make a difference?" Colonel Dorman asked. "Active military members are tested but their scores are kept secret until they have completed their service obligations."

"As a convicted felon, Sergeant Williams was discharged from the Army administratively," I said. "It's the Army way. As he is no longer in the Army, he's eligible for extraction."

<Sergeant Williams is on Pollepel Island.> Ramses announced.

"That's really odd," I said as the image of the island came up. "State park in the Hudson River. Site of Bannermans' Castle. What's he doing there?"

"Is there anything you don't know?" Colonel Dorman sneered.

"Yes," I replied. "Sergeant Williams was either out on bail or in custody. Which was it, Ramses?"

<Sergeant Williams was in confinement and pending sentencing, > Ramses confirmed. <He was transported by automobile to the Hudson River and transferred to a boat. He is currently being held captive in this pre-fab.>

"How are we getting all of this?" Colonel Dorman demanded.

<High-CAP personnel are tracked through implants per NATO agreement, > Ramses said. <The United States Army has released Sergeant Williams as Lieutenant Lawrence has indicated. Sergeant Williams has a CAP score of 8.8 and was a squad leader in the 2nd Brigade Combat Team headquartered in Fort Drum.>

"Any ID on the terrorists?" Colonel Popov inquired.

<Dead men tell no tales, > Ramses replied. <The Confederacy had no standing in the event according to the New York State court system and before the federal court could issue an injunction the bodies had been cremated. Dead men tell no tales.>

"You are a bad influence on AI's," Mary muttered to me. "All those pirate movies!"

"Where is the sister?" I asked. "What does Victoria do?"

Victoria Williams was a young school teacher in Queens. At the moment she was camped out in the basement of a Catholic mission. The AI informed us that Victoria had been fired from her job. No reason was needed. She had been evicted from her apartment. Victoria had no car, no money, not even credit cards. If not for her CAP card and Confederacy surveillance, Victoria would have dropped off the face of the planet. As it was, Victoria wasn't on Earth's grid any more.

"Don't you have enough fucking women?" Dorman muttered. The delay in Dorman's comment was due to reading speed—I learned to read in excess of a thousand words per minute in English and could scan documents at ten times that rate. Dorman still sub-vocalized—he had to move his lips in order to read.

"Sergeant Williams was there for his kid sister when she took her CAP test," I replied. "AI, any next of kin?"

<Victoria Williams is the only known surviving relative of Antonio Williams.> the AI announced.

"We have to extract Ms. Williams too," I said. "The best person for the job is Tess."

"Tess?" Mary asked.

"She's not military!" Colonel Dorman objected.

"Sergeant Williams won't leave Earth without his sister," I pointed out. "It will have to be a soft extraction. Tess can go as a nun and won't attract much attention there. Meanwhile we can pull a hard extraction on Pollepel Island. Messenger of the Gods is equipped for that. We can get in, stun everything with stinger fire and scoop up the bodies. I'll need nine sets of Army Combat Uniforms and current U. S. Army TA-50 for the extraction team and boat crew. We're going to bring the kidnappers with us—all of them. After questioning, they can be returned or put on trial."

<Mission approved.> Ramses announced.

Tess did have the more dangerous mission. The Burroughs of New York City are battlefields—some worse than others. The Catholic mission was located where it was needed and Tess would have to negotiate street people. Nothing she hadn't done before. I'll let Tess tell her own story later—if she will.

My mission was simple. In three hours Messenger of the Gods was over the island in stealth mode, totally invisible. We had to dodge a helicopter that landed there—a charter from the looks of it. Then our turret-mounted stingers discharged in their pre-arranged pattern, controlled by two of the Space Marines. With the remaining four Space Marines we took a drone with a transport pad and began throwing bodies directly through to the station in high orbit above us. I counted eighteen bodies including Sergeant Williams, late of 10th Mountain Division.