“You’re going to have to stop that,” Anna said, and moved to stand in front of him.
“I know,” he mumbled awkwardly.
Her smile became evil. “If you’re a big fan, you should get over that shy streak and go ask her for an autograph.”
“Well, shucks, I guess I’m just too bashful.”
Wilson chuckled. “Stop letting her bully you, man.”
“Advice from the henpecked husband. Great, just what I need.”
Wilson’s tranquillity chilled rapidly. “Oh, hell,” he whispered. “Dudley Bose is on the way over. Both versions. The human one looks pissed.”
Oscar resisted the impulse to turn around. “Time to make a break for it?”
“Too late,” Anna said through gritted teeth and a broad false smile.
“Captain Monroe.” Dudley’s imperious voice cut right through Oscar’s residual good humor. He turned and summoned up a smile. “Dudley. I understand you’ve reacquired your memories.” His gaze flicked to the tall alien with its odd stalklike tentacles. It unnerved him to see something resembling an eye on the end of one bending around to return the gaze. This was worse than locking stares with Tiger Pansy.
“Yes, you bastard,” the human Dudley spat. “I got my memory back. So I know what you did to me.”
People nearest to them hushed up and stole some circumspect looks.
“Problem?” Wilson asked politely.
“Like you care,” Dudley sneered. “You who left me there to die.”
“You make it sound deliberate,” Anna said.
“Well, wasn’t it?” Dudley demanded. “You just kept telling us to go farther in. All the time: Just a little bit farther, Dudley. Go on, find out what’s around the next spiral. This is really interesting. And we trusted you.”
“I never said that,” Oscar insisted. He was racking his memories of those frantic last minutes by the Watchtower. “Your comrelay failed as soon as you entered the tunnel.”
“Liar! You knew MorningLightMountain’s ships were on their way. I’ve seen the official recordings; the whole ship was panicking. Yet you let us carry on. You dumped us like we were garbage.”
“If you’d really accessed the original recordings you’d know we busted our balls trying to reestablish contact,” Oscar said with tight anger. “Mac and Frances put their asses on the line to try to get you back. It was you that ignored protocol; you should have come back as soon as you lost contact. If you’d paid the slightest bit of attention to your training you’d have known that. But, oh no, you were too busy playing up for the unisphere media to bother with training like the rest of us. The Great Discoverer off to further the frontier of human knowledge. You’re as ignorant as you are arrogant, and that hideous little combination is what plunged us into this war.”
Wilson hurriedly stepped between them. Oscar was annoyed. He would have liked to have smacked Dudley right on the nose, and to hell with how bad it would make him look.
“Enough, the pair of you,” Wilson said. The tone of command was perfect. Oscar felt himself scowling at what he could see of Dudley, but still backed off. I’ll be damned, how did he do that?
“We clearly need to go over what happened to establish exactly where the communications failure occurred,” Wilson continued. “But this is not the time or the place.”
“Pha.” Dudley waved a hand in disgust. “Official inquiry by a navy already discredited. Did you prepare the whitewash answers before the President fired you?”
A now furious Oscar sidestepped around Wilson. “Part of the training you missed while you were mouthing off on talk shows was how to recognize impossible situations. You should have wiped your memorycell and suicided as soon as you were captured. Where did MorningLightMountain get the stellar coordinates for our planets, eh? Your mind! You’re not just a traitor, you’re a coward with it!”
Dudley went for him, fists raised. The Bose motile hooked a thick curving arm around his torso, preventing him from reaching Oscar.
Wilson pushed Oscar hard in the chest, shoving him back. A quick pushing match followed before Oscar’s heat withered in shame. “Sorry,” he mumbled, mortified to find that Anna was helping to restrain him as well. “He just gets to me.”
“I know,” Wilson said; his arm was still draped loosely over Oscar’s shoulder, muscles tensed in case he needed to push again.
It was an image mirrored by Dudley and the Bose motile, who were walking in the other direction. Dudley managed to look back, and screwed his face up in rage.
Oscar sucked in his lower lip, trying desperately to resist the temptation to start it all up again. Anna and Wilson were both pressing in close.
“Come on,” she murmured. “Let it go. Down, boy. Calmly.”
“All right.” Now thoroughly embarrassed, Oscar held his hands up in surrender. “Backing off. Doing yoga; some balls like that.”
Anna grinned. “Never knew you had it in you.” Her lips puckered up in a mocking pout. “Soooo macho.”
Oscar just winced. “Don’t. Please.”
Wilson gave him a rueful grin, then sobered. “You know, much as I dislike Bose, that is a worryingly big discrepancy.”
“The Starflyer agent?” Oscar guessed.
“My first choice. Damn, we really are going to have to sit at a table with the little shit and listen to what he has to say.”
“Better off with the motile. It doesn’t look like a permanent walking hissy fit.”
“Hey, behave.” Anna punched him on the arm.
“Ow.” Oscar rubbed at the pain, then noticed Tiger Pansy standing a couple of meters away. She had an avid grin as she chomped away on her gum. “You guys,” she said with shrill admiration. “You’re so intense. Really.”
“What the hell is that?” Adam asked.
The sensors that the Guardians had planted around the approach to the Boongate gateway were showing a single dilapidated old carriage creeping forward onto the main Boongate line.
“It’s the type of carriage the station maintenance crews use,” Kieran said.
The sensor image wobbled, then expanded. Kieran was focusing the camera on the carriage windows. There wasn’t much to see. A yellow light illuminated the interior of the carriage, diffused by the grimy glass. There were dark humanoid shadows moving around inside. Bigger than the average human. Much bigger.
“Bradley?” Adam asked. “What do you think?”
“It seems an unlikely vehicle for the Starflyer to use. On the other hand, because that’s not what we’re expecting…”
“It does have a small cargo handling ability,” Kieran said. “How big does it have to be?”
“I don’t know,” Bradley said.
Adam shook his head. He really didn’t like that carriage. It was wrong, and he knew it. But he couldn’t work out what it might be doing.
Sensor data such as it was filled his virtual vision. The carriage certainly didn’t have a force field. But there were some large power sources inside, five of them. And its communications link to traffic control was all standard.
He touched the icons of the small combat team they’d hidden out near the gateway. “Get ready,” he told them.
“If it’s the Starflyer, it will be heavily protected,” Bradley warned.
“I know. Call Burnelli, get her to find out what that is.” He took his armor suit helmet from the cab’s console where it had been lying, and locked it over his head. A hundred meters in front of him, the shed doors began to slide open.
***
“Sir, the navy team is in position,” Daniel Alster reported.
“Okay,” Nigel said. His virtual hands pulled the wormhole activation code from an encrypted store, and sent it to the Boongate gateway control center.
“Confirm activation code,” Alster said. “We’re opening it now.”
“Get them through as fast as you can, Daniel, please.”