Stargods by Ian Douglas

Author:Ian Douglas [Douglas, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Published: 2020-12-02T00:00:00+00:00

Lieutenant Cordell

The Overlook

Quito Synchorbital

1056 hours, FST

Lieutenant Michael Cordell was seated in the Earthview Lounge of the Overlook, a moderately priced bar and restaurant in one of the spin-gravity wheels attached to the Quito Synchorbital complex. Despite the wheel’s slow and steady rotation, providing a constant 0.5 G, the floor-to-ceiling viewall curving across half of the lounge showed a half Earth motionless against the blackness of space.

Obviously the scene was being transmitted by non-rotating cameras, Cordell thought. Except for the lack of motion, it was impossible to tell that he was not looking through a transparency.

His companion touched the sleeve of his jumper. “Lost again?” she asked with an evil grin.

Cordell grinned back. Lieutenant Katya Golikova was keenly intelligent, sharp-witted, and fun. She was also very much forbidden fruit at this point. When he’d met her almost five years ago, Russia and the USNA had been friends and allies, fighting a common Pan-European enemy. Lately, though, the political situation had changed. She wasn’t an enemy, exactly, but the word had come down through the brass hierarchy that fraternizing with Russians was forbidden.

“No,” he told her. “Just woolgathering.”

“And wool,” she said, teasing him, “is that much more interesting than me?”

“Of course not.” He reached out, picked up his wineglass, and raised it. “To us.”

She touched her glass to his. “Na zdorovie.”

He was damned if he was going to report his relationship with her. He might be ordered to break it off, or worse, to carry a microtransmitter up his butt or under his skin every time he got together with her. That sort of thing would have a distinctly chilling effect in bed. But it still might not have stopped him.

And so they both had in-head software running designed to spot nanotech security devices or pickups, and they were very careful about being followed. Of course, the various security forces could hack his own in-head systems without him even being aware, seeing everything he saw, listening in on everything he heard. The trick was to stay off their radar to begin with; if they didn’t suspect him of anything, they wouldn’t monitor him.

He hoped.

Her jab about him getting lost referred to the last time they’d met, when he’d led her into a seldom-used and heavily shielded warehousing unit in the synchorbital facility within Skyport, lost contact with the Net, and lost his directional cues. They’d found their way back to a wired section eventually, but he’d been afraid they were going to have to call for help, and that would have put him on that radar screen big-time.

He reached across the table and took her hand. “How long do you have?” he asked.

“Forty-eight hours. More like forty-one now.”

Katya piloted a Yastreb fighter deployed on board the Russian carrier Vladivostok. Cordell was stationed on board the slightly larger Yorktown. Finding time together—and getting downtime schedules to mesh—was a real challenge, one worthy of a super-AI.

“Well, that’s plenty of time,” Cordell told her.

She arched one perfect eyebrow. “For what?”

“I thought we might go back to our room and—”

A distinct shudder ran through the restaurant.

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