Chapter 16

"Oh hell," gasped Meers finally.

"What?" asked Randy, looking around in puzzlement.

Zucher ignored him. "Right, well we need to stop Cassell from going, and if he insists on going, he needs to take a bodyguard."

"Percy!" I said, suddenly.

Percy Meers looked at me in surprise. "What?"

"Sorry, no, not you. I meant Lieutenant Percy. She reports direct to Sir Cassell, she's head of security for something, can't remember what now. Also team leader of his rapid response team, but far more importantly for this, she's ex-SAS. She's almost certainly had training as a bodyguard, but as a head of security she will have clout."

Zucher nodded intently. "I didn't realise she was SAS," he murmured. "She kept that secret well. But you're right. Let's get her in now." He looked up. "AI. Location Lieutenant Priscilla Percy please."

"Lieutenant Percy is in her office on Artemis base."

"In that case, please contact Lieutenant Percy and ask her to come here ASAP. Tell her it is vitally urgent."

"Acknowledged."

Commander Meers spoke up. "Meers to Lipskiy Security, a Lieutenant Percy will be arriving shortly. Please direct her to A9N as soon as she gets here."

"Yes sir," came a muffled response.

"Information," came the AI. "Lieutenant Percy is on her way, it will take her five minutes at most."

Zucher looked at Randy. "Randy, I think you've done everything you needed to do. It's up to us now. I think it's time to get you to safety, and back with the rest of your party."

"Did I do something ... er," Randy looked back and forth between the three men. "What's happening?"

"We think you've discovered an assassination attempt on Sir Samuel Cassell, the head of Earthat Confederacy Intelligence," Zucher told him.

Randy's jaw dropped, and he seemed to go a little grey. He sat down hard, almost as if his legs had given way, but stayed listening. I smiled at him reassuringly. "Nice one kid," I muttered softly. "Well done."

Randy gave a half smile and sat back, listening intently, his eyes watching all of us, taking everything in. I saw him take out a pad of some sort, but what he was doing I didn't know. I turned back to the meeting.

Meers poked his head out of the door and spoke, briefly, to the receptionist.

"Okay," I said, "so we have a probable assassination attempt on Sir Samuel in Gillingham. "This means that you sir," I nodded at Zucher, "need to try and persuade him not to go. But it also needs someone to try and work out who this King of Clubs is. I take it we are still no nearer identifying him?"

Zucher shook his head, a mournful expression on his face. "Sadly not. Nor his people."

"What we need," Meers said, sitting down again, "is to use it as a trap. Is there any way we could send lookalikes in their place?"

"It's an idea," Zucher nodded. "But what... ?"

"Information," the AI interrupted us, "Lieutenant Percy is on Lipskiy."

"Wait one," murmured Zucher.

We didn't have to wait long for Lieutenant Percy to arrive. She looked just as trim and imposing as she had two days earlier when she had briefed me.

"Sirs," she murmured, nodding to us all. "How can I help?"

"Welcome Lieutenant Percy," Zucher started, "may I introduce Commanders Percy Meers and Lew Carter."

"Hello again Commander Carter," Percy nodded to me, "Commander Meers," She shook Commander Meers' hand, eyeing him with slight amusement.

"Oh, you've met Carter?" Zucher asked, surprised.

"I briefed him two days ago," she said, sitting neatly down.

"Ah, good." He quickly explained what had happened since, and that we now believed Sir Samuel Cassell's life was at risk.

Percy listened intently, her eyes boring into each of us in turn, especially young Randy, as if trying to read all our thoughts. I noticed her eyes straying occasionally to Meers for a few seconds, before returning to the conversation at hand.

"Sir Samuel must not be allowed to go," Zucher finished.

"Agreed. How do you propose to stop him?"

"We were hoping you would have some clout with him."

She smiled, wry amusement on her face. "Not that sort of clout. The best I could do is guard him."

"I was wondering whether we could get some lookalikes to go in their place, and use it as a trap," Meers said softly. "Thoughts?"

Percy shook her head. "No," she said decisively. "Sir Samuel wouldn't go for that. He would consider it cowardice on his part. No matter that we would consider his actions to be foolhardy at best, and cretinous at worst."

"We still need to persuade him not to go, and if, as you suggest, that doesn't work, we need a plan B," Meers said.

"I'm plan B," Percy said quietly. "I need to know as much as possible about this cemetery so that I can protect Sir Samuel, and also plan an ambush on his putative attackers." She frowned for a moment. "Who are the other two people?"

Meers told her, and I realised that his eyes had been straying to her, even when she wasn't speaking.

"Don't know them. Are we sure they're not involved?"

"As sure as we can be," Zucher answered.

"That's my job," Meers followed up. "I'll do a deep background check on both and get it to you ASAP."

Percy nodded. "And you've been to this cemetery?" she asked me.

"Two days ago, yes."

"Describe it for me. Everything you can remember. Every little detail."

"I'm not sure I can," I answered. "It was a cemetery. There were headstones and graves. And a couple of memorials, one of which had the names of a couple of my three-greats uncles on it."

"How wide was the gate you went in through?"

"It was wide enough to drive a car. Or a hearse."

"Gates?"

"Er, yeeeeessss. Tall, wrought iron, lots of curlicues and the like. Open. Not sure whether they would have closed and locked. Didn't exactly look closely."

"Where was the sun?"

"The sun? Oh. To my right I think."

"And what time of day?"

"Um, a little after six pm."

Percy thought for a moment. "Right, so you went in through a gate on the north side. Was the road straight?"

"I have a vague recollection it curved gently left."

"Flat?"

"It rose at first, and then dropped slightly."

Slowly, carefully, she took me through my entire time in the cemetery, teasing out everything she could. I was seriously impressed by her thoroughness and the way she extracted all the information I hadn't realised I possessed. It was a useful technique and one I would try and use myself in the future. I hadn't remembered seeing trees, but under her quiet but determined questioning I described two huge oak trees not far from the memorial, and a few more further away. I described the memorial itself, right down to its colour and the type of stone it was made of.

"Describe the two girls," she said. "How old?"

"Both looked to be about the same age. Seventeen, maybe eighteen. A little younger than me I think, but not by much."

"Height?"

"One about five three, the other about five seven."

"Taller one first. Hair?"

"Blonde. Long, below her shoulders anyway."

"Straight? Curly?"

"Slight wave I think."

"Eyes?"

I shook my head. "Don't remember."

She just looked at me, a neutral expression on her face.

I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to 'see' the girl in my mind. After a few seconds I opened them again and shook my head. "Sorry, no."

"Mouth?"

"Wide."

"Figure?"

I shrugged. "Nice. Slim. Not sexy exactly, but not unattractive. Almost dressed down I would think."

"Dressed down, huh? What clothes? Top?"

"Er. A coat. A lightweight nylon coat. Mid blue. Over a light or white blouse. Blue jeans. Boots. Brown suede I think. Tatty, well used anyway."

"Accent?"

"Don't think she spoke. In fact I'm sure she didn't."

"But she understood you?"

"So far as I can tell, yes."

"Good. Shorter one."

Again she took me through the description of the girl. This time when she got to the accent I paused. "Um. Welsh. North Wales. It was only faint, but I didn't really think about it at the time."

She just nodded. "Did you speak to anyone else?"

"No." I was definite about that.

"Did you see anyone else?"

I paused, going through my whole time in there. "No," I said after almost a minute.

"Good, thank you."

Percy sat back, deep in thought.

"Do you have an idea, Lieutenant?" Zucher asked her.

"No sir. Just pondering ideas at the moment. I'll need to talk it over with a couple of my people."

"Agreed. But keep it as small a group as you can."

"Yes sir."

Zucher nodded slowly. The meeting went on for no more than five more minutes; we had done and said virtually everything that needed to be said.

Zucher gave a big sigh, and summarised the meeting's action points.

"Lieutenant Percy, you and I will start off by trying to persuade Sir Samuel that he shouldn't go to Earth. I suspect we'll fail, so your primary task is to work out how to protect him from himself, and at the same time catch his assassins. Sir Samuel's safety is primary though.

"Commander Carter, you're going straight back to Mars, but I want you to be on the lookout for anything that hints at the identity of the King of Clubs and his people. Anything you do come up with, pass to Commander Meers." He shrugged apologetically to me. "Sorry, but you're out of it now."

"Commander Meers. Check out Ogden and Vickers. I suspect they are innocent, but let's just rule them out. Then just coordinate between Lieutenant Percy and Commander Carter. Act as a clearing-house for any information. Funnel it to whoever needs it. Lieutenant, if you need additional manpower, ask Meers."

He paused and looked at Randy. "My first task is to get this young man back to his family. They're currently in France, I understand." He smiled slightly. "Disneyland Paris I believe."

Randy's jaw dropped, then a look of sheer relief and delight came over his face. Everyone smiled at his obvious pleasure at this news.

The meeting quickly broke up, and as we left the office, I was amused to note that the two Percys were looking at each other, both had identical looks of wondering confusion in their eyes. I smiled to myself and pretended not to see.

"AI? When's the next shuttle back to Mars?"

"Oh bugger," I grumbled as I got into the shuttle to take me back to Mars.

"You okay?" asked the young man sitting next to me.

"Oh. Yeah, sorry. I just remembered I forgot to pick something up."

I was going back without that wonderful Italian red wine I had bought in London a few days earlier. Oh well, I was sure it wouldn't go to waste.

I briefed Major Thornby on my return. He nodded intently. "Well," he said, when I'd finished, "now isn't that interesting. That explains the slightly odd message I got from Lipskiy a short while ago." He nodded. "Carry on with your work as is, but your task from this Colonel Zucher is important. If you think you've found any hints or clues, you don't need to run them past me, and certainly not past Harper. Just pass it on direct." He frowned. "If you want to run an idea by me afterwards, I'm all ears, but for this you actually report direct to Zucher so you are at liberty to keep me in the dark." He gave a shrug. "Quite understandable, if a little frustrating for me." He nodded sharply at me and gave me the first hint of anything approaching a smile I had ever seen on his face.

"Carry on Commander."

I quickly stood to attention. "Yes sir." Turned, and marched smartly out.

About three days later, I had a message relayed to me, via Percy Meers, from Randy. It contained a large graphic showing links and notes. I read it through with interest, and then went through it again, deleting a large quantity of stuff which I knew to be irrelevant, either to me or to the problem at hand. One particular note caught my eye though. "Shadows," I muttered.

I pondered for a few moments before adding a few extra notes to the graphic, describing in more detail what I now believed could possibly be used as a hiding spot. I dithered for a moment, before sending it back. It was a bit tenuous, but eventually I decided that any little thing could be useful. Even if this 'shadow' proved to be irrelevant, it could trigger an idea or a thought in one of the others.

I didn't hear much about what happened to Sir Samuel, other than that he did survive the assassination attempt, but I also didn't find anything directly about the King Of Clubs.

To be honest, I saw little over the next year that could lead to the identity of the King Of Clubs. The Welsh accent of the girl I met in the cemetery made me look at links to Welsh nationalist groups. Though I found, and passed on, one link that made me think he might at least have strong Welsh connections, in the end that turned out to be a red herring. A slightly more tenuous link to an extreme Scottish nationalist group, that in turn had links to both Irish and Basque nationalist groups, I also passed on. These were the sort of people who, I was beginning to hear, were far more likely to be opposed to the Confederacy.

When Siân arrived back nearly four weeks later, there was more than a bit of celebrating in the home pod. She'd been gone for nearly seven months and we had all missed her. Not unnaturally, some of our celebrations had a rather sexual side to them, and when I took her to bed that night, I smiled at her suddenly smooth mount.

She grinned at me. "I like it like this."

I smiled back. "No problem Babe," and got down to some serious pussy licking of my 'baby' sister.

The following morning, in the office which, along with two other people, we now shared, I welcomed her back more formally.

"Welcome back Private."

"Thank you sir, it's good to be back."

I smiled slightly. "I do have one present for you. Major Thornby, our immediate boss, had a note about you from a commander on the moon. As a result of that, I have been asked to give you this." I handed over an envelope.

Siân looked worried. At my nod, she tore open the envelope and out of it dropped a piece of paper and two pieces of cloth. She looked at them in bemusement, and then began to read the short note. Her jaw dropped and then her mouth began to turn up in a smile.

"Congratulations, Lance-Corporal Carter." Only the presence of the two other people in the office prevented her from leaping at me to give me a huge hug, but I could see she wanted to do just that. I handed her another piece of paper. "Uniform regs, showing where and how to stitch those stripes onto your uniform shirt."

There were just three words on the paper: "Use a replicator." She looked at the piece of paper, and then looked up at me blankly for a moment, before bursting into laughter. "I don't sew them on, I get new uniform from the replicator."

I grinned at her, and waved her to her new desk.

Siân had a lot of work to catch up on, so it was a few days before she and I had chance to sit and really talk. "I did about seventy percent of my training on Lunar," she told me. "Mostly Daedelus, but also on Artemis."

"Did you get back to Lipskiy?" I asked with a laugh.

She shuddered. "Just once. And I only got as far as the entrance."

"Oh?" I looked at her with a puzzled smile. "How come?"

"I was asked to escort this young lad from Lipskiy, take him to Euro Disney to meet the rest of his party."

"Euro Disney?" I asked. My mouth dropped open. "Oh my god. Er, Randy something. Randy Jenkins?" Siân just nodded, a very confused look on her face. "Fuckin' hell," I gasped. "I was in that meeting. The meeting Randy came out of. Was he with someone called Andres Zucher?"

"Yeah, he was. I'd met Andres a few times before then. He was part of the platoon's training team. I'm not quite sure what his role was because I never actually had him, but I did meet him."

I almost couldn't help shaking. "Holy shit. Do you realise, we were probably a few metres apart at that moment." Then I frowned. "How long were you waiting?"

"Um. A few minutes. When I'd delivered him, I had to report to a very scary woman. A Priscilla Percy."

"Yeah," I laughed. "She is a bit scary."

Siân laughed. "Nice, but scary. So where were you?"

"Actually, thinking about it, when I left the meeting, Randy was still there. I went down to my room, I'd been assigned a temporary room down on H North. By the time I'd got my stuff and was leaving, I think Randy must have already left." I shook my head. "I bet you were waiting there when I came out of the meeting. If I'd turned the other way I'd have bumped into you."

"Oh no," Siân managed to look both distraught and amused at the same time. Quite a feat really. "You know, I didn't even know you had left Mars. Certainly didn't know you were on Lunar."

I went on to explain just how brief my time on Lunar had been, and roughly what I'd been doing. As my assistant she would have to know most of what I would be up to anyway.

"You know, he asked me if I knew you. I should have picked up on it, but he threw me by asking if you or I would recognise a Welsh accent."

I laughed. "I wonder why? What did you say?"

I was Siân's turn to laugh. "I spoke to him in Welsh."

"Ohh that was mean."

"Maybe, but I thought it funny that he would ask a Welshwoman whether she would recognise a Welsh accent." She paused. "You know, I bet he never clocked that your name was Welsh. Did he call you Llew or Lew?"

I paused in thought. "I'm not sure he ever spoke my name. Maybe once. And yeah, you're right, he called me Lew. I don't think anyone used my full name."

"That was it then. But I wonder why he wanted to know about the Welsh accent."

I just shook my head. "How strange," I murmured.

The conversation moved away from that, but we chuckled about our near miss for a while.

Dr Werner Leud kept his word, and kept me informed of progress, but suddenly, after about four months work, he stopped sending me information. At least, I stopped receiving it. I left it a week, just in case, then sent him a gentle reminder. The response, when it came back a few days later, startled me into action. "Why are you asking me? You took it from me before we could finish it."

"I know nothing about this," I sent back, "so far as we are aware, you should still be working on it. Who has it?"

There was three days silence before the next message came. "It would seem no-one is telling the truth. I was told you personally had authorised this. The men who came gave me your name. They were Americans."

I looked at the screen and pondered. It was unlikely to be the US government, they wouldn't have known my name. It had to have been some part of the Confederacy. I sent another message asking for clarification. When it came back I was even more puzzled.

The two men may have been Confederacy agents, but they didn't have Confederacy ID cards, nor did they have the physical bulk that many Confederacy personell had. I wasn't too concerned about the lack of bulk, not all Confederacy personal had it, I didn't, but the lack of a Confederacy ID card, while not totally surprising, was a little unexpected. Germany was generally pro-Confederacy after all.

I looked up. "AI?" I asked softly, so as to not disturb the other people in the office. "Do you have any information on this?"

There was a long pause. "No," said the AI eventually. "We have no knowledge of this being taken by the Confederacy." There was another short pause. "We were expecting you, Humans, to finish it without our help. We needed to see your levels of competence when you do not have full access to Confederacy technical knowledge."

"Can you find out for me please?"

"Already on it," came the reply.

I sat back, unhappy at this turn of events.

"What's up?" asked Siân.

I told her about the replicator add on, and then told her it seemed to have 'gone missing'.

"'Gone missing'? How? Where?"

I shrugged. "The person working on it was under the impression I had ordered it removed."

"So someone used your name?"

I nodded. "Uh huh. Looks that way."

"What does this device do anyway?"

"It allows replicator patterns to be edited using a standard Earth designed personal computer, tablet or laptop."

"Oh."

I smiled slightly at her. "Standard replicator patterns are huge. And normally only the very smallest and simplest can be expanded and edited on standard linux. The Confederacy's own replicators can edit them of course, but it's a long-winded, painfull process, designed to be used by species other than Human. Someone came up with the idea that actually only small parts of any design really need expanding out, and this device was the result. Replicator patterns are loaded onto it, it's then plugged into a standard USB5·5 or later port on any PC, tablet or PDA, then using a standard CAD package you can edit just the bits that need editing, without having to open the whole pattern."

"Ah, neat. So who do you think's got it?"

I shook my head. "That's what I'm trying to find out."

I had another idea. "AI, did that scientist from Oxford manage to escape? Sorry, can't remember his name."