Chapter 1

At the rating’s permission, I entered Commodore Roff’s office to see my superior standing, back to me, watching the giant display of the ever-changing view of Poseidon. A passing ship, a Tawara-class I thought, eclipsing the camera that broadcast the planetary view.

“Lieutenant Stewart,” He said without turning, “we have another assignment for you. One you REALLY won’t like.”

Internally, I cringed. Aloud I said, “What is it this time, Commodore? Run buck nekkid through a swarm of Sa’arm?”

The clearness of my words went ignored. “We want you to go back to Earth,” said Roff, turning to watch my reaction. “We want you to help extract a high-value individual.”

Curious, I asked, “Don’t you have Marine extraction teams trained, armed, and eager to do this kind of thing?”

“They have been deployed and have been ... unsuccessful.” The Commodore growled, “This may be due to the confluence of the individual’s unconventional world view and his very high potential CAP score.”

“How high?”

“Possible 9.7+”

“Potential? Possible?” I smelt something very fishy. “Can’t the AIs settle on a score? What’s the problem?”

“He hasn’t taken the CAP test.”

“How can you determine his CAP score without his taking the test?” I asked, “If you can, why bother to administer the test?”

“While you have been racing around this Spiral Arm, gathering unto yourself the Laurels of Victory,” Roff growled, “Things on Earth have gotten worse for us. The more xenophobic have gotten militant. It wasn’t very coordinated at first, but the Central Command, especially Miles Chandler, the Director of Evacuation and Colonial Operations at Earth’at station, doesn’t like the way things are headed.” Roff turned and stood at his large desk.

“First, there were the testing center bombings.” Roff glared, as if I were somehow at fault. “Some frustrated loser’s suicide sparked a wave of violence against Confederation offices. Then the nutcases tried to shoot up pick-ups after the shields dropped. DECO revised their Marine’s Rules of Engagement during extraction and allowed them to shoot first and not wait for someone with a gun to drop a couple of sponsors before reacting.”

“That seemed to help things. Then we noticed that some random civilian shootings started to appear as non-random. Candidates for targeted extraction because of their high CAP score have been turning up dead. The first deaths were crude, hit-or-miss jobs, mostly gang-style drive-by shootings, but then the killings got more creative, car accidents, poisoning, execution-style shootings. The group calling itself “Earth First” started calling media outlets, taking credit for the killings. Soon, people started hiding their CAP scores. Now Earth First has started targeting men who are obviously traveling in a group of women, assuming they are prepacks.”

Roff typed a few commands into the desk’s built-in keyboard, then gestured to the giant screen that now displayed grisly crime scene photos. “Last week in Portland, Oregon a group of eight women and a man entered an upscale restaurant for lunch. After they were seated, two men and a woman wearing black hoods exited the kitchen and opened fire on the group with automatic weapons. As they fled the scene, they littered the area with ‘Earth First’ flyers. The group they murdered was a wedding party, bride, and bridesmaids, accompanied by their gay male wedding coordinator. A communiqué released two days later said that it was regrettable that innocents died, but that their ‘Direct Action’ team saw that many women with a man and thought ‘High-CAP prepack’ and so the deaths were the fault of the ‘Oppressive Confederation.’”