Keeper Hunter

“Spec Ops?” I blurted out surprised. Then there was a lot about the Confederacy I was ignorant about. I had learnt much from my time on Saros but obviously not enough. I guess my hunt for Vanessa had consumed my thinking at the time. Then there were my encounters with the Alliance and the Black Stripes, which had diverted my attention further. Lastly there was the Valkyrie again I hadn’t learnt much from them either. Unlike the other things, which had been my fault, the Valkyrie had been deliberately obtuse.

“Spec Ops, Special Operations under the command of Admiral Katares.”

I’d never heard of an Admiral Katares before they’d mentioned him. But as to Spec Ops, Jervic and my team had been that although that had been the Alliance. I wondered if he had anything to do with Admiral Komana. I was certain there was a connection it was always that way with the higher ups. “A friend of Admiral Komana?” I ventured.

“Hardly,” Guy snorted. “They don’t see eye to eye.” He gave me a look. “Why are you asking?”

“I’ve had my run ins with Admiral Komana,” I replied evasively. I wasn’t going into details, she had me exiled to Earth. Even threatening me with arrest if I came back to the Confederacy.

“What sort of run ins?” Leo demanded.

I’d have to tell the truth I didn’t want to but I needed to be at least honest with them. “Admiral Komana had me exiled to Earth.”

“Earth?” Sindara blurted out.

“Because I was originally from Earth before the Valkyrie got their claws into me.”

“Why?” was Sindara’s next question.

“Because she didn’t want another Sandra Locke.” It was one of the reasons she’d exiled me but I really didn’t understand the implications of that.

“And yet you are,” Inkassi said. He looked at the others. “Don’t you read the reports? Well I did, thank the Ancients.” Inkassi glared at Leo. “Did you not just say that Gwen was in involved in stopping the Three Lines?”

“Yeah I get that,” Leo complained. “Although I didn’t know about Alfheimir and Saros?”

“And now you do,” I said to him.

Abruptly he turned and marched back into the back rooms. I watched him go.

“Where is he going?” I demanded.

“He needs to report in,” Sindara replied. “We got close to being caught only you saved us otherwise we’d have to scrap our mission and Admiral Katares would not be happy with us.”

“I just hope my presence doesn’t cause you trouble?”

Sindara smiled. “On the contrary.”

“Not at all,” Guy added. “We do need a new perspective on our mission.”

I remembered Xenai say the same I felt a little sad. I didn’t have her or my team here. She always treated me like I was her sister. It was what Komana had said, she considered the Alliance her family. There was a question I needed to ask. “And your mission if I can ask that?”

Guy glanced at Sindara and Inkassi. “I suppose we could.”

“People were dying, poisoned, we traced it to the brewery,” Sindara said. “It was a neurotoxin.”

I went cold hearing those words. It was to close to what the lab I accidentally stumbled onto when I was captured was doing. Falling down a ravine and being knocked out wasn’t good for me. I woke to find some pervert trying to remove my clothes before he raped me. He never got the chance I’d killed him before he could do that. After what I found the rest of the guards were doing to their female prisoners I considered he’d died too quickly. Regretting my thoughts as soon as I thought them.

“I assume it’s only Human specific?” I asked changing the way my mind was going.

Sindara and Guy looked shocked at my revelation.

“How did you know that?” Sindara asked.

“I was wondering if it’s the same as the secret lab in the jungle I thought the Confeds destroyed that?” Inadvertently revealing I was more Empire than Confed. Some things didn’t die easily I was still trying to find my place in the galaxy.

“How do you know that?” Despite what they were told earlier it looked like Guy was having difficulty processing my words.

“She knows because she was there?” Inkassi said with a glare at Guy.

I heard Inkassi mutter under his breath. “More muscle than brain.”

“I thought the 43rd did that?” Guy said.

“Don’t you ever read reports?” Inkassi sounded exasperated.

Sindara waved at me before I could say anything. “They’ll work their way through this.”

“Gwen broke out on her own and shut down the systems so the base was revealed and gave the 43rd a target,” Inkassi said to Guy.

“How did you end up on that base?” Sindara said looking at me directly.

“We were flying over the jungle when we were shot down.” I really didn’t want to go into details as why we were there in the first place. “Otherwise we would have never known it was there. Had they just let us go we would have never known?”

“Stupid on their part?” Sindara mused.

I continued. “Thanks to a good pilot we managed to get down in one piece. We trekked through the jungle. Somehow they found and ambushed us. I fell down a ravine and the others were captured by another group.”

“But you escaped and caused havoc?” Inkassi said.

I shivered at the thought even with all that happened I regretted the death of the guard. At the time I just acted on instinct I had no doubt he would have raped me had he the chance. “Yes,” I replied reluctantly.

“You captured the arouraío in charge of the place,” Sindara announced. “Called herself the Director?”

“Yes she was experimenting on Humans with neurotoxins while her guards raped and tortured female prisoners.”

“That’s disgusting!” Guy interjected.

No it had been worse than that. The mere thought of what had happened there was enough to turn my stomach.

“I for one am glad we destroyed the base,” Sindara said.

Which confirmed that they were Confed military. It meant I had to ask the question. I felt I was being pulled into something I had to investigate. Again my life had taken another turn and I was getting further away from my original objective of bringing Vanessa to justice. “So is there a connection to the brewery?” I knew there had to be.

Sindara glanced to Inkassi and Guy. “I suppose I could tell you.” She paused, her eyes on the door to the rest of the house. “There is a neurotoxin in the export brand of the beer.”

I winced at that I’d been drinking the same beer if not the export brand but it amounted to the same thing. I suddenly wanted to puke up the beer I’d drunk earlier.

“Not actually in the beer but in the caps, activated when the bottle is opened. It’s extremely hard to detect. The medtechs say the alcohol activates the neurotoxin.” Guy said to me.

I remembered that the bottles had to be opened with a bottle opener they had those old-fashioned bottle caps. “Caps?” I wasn’t repeating I just wanted to know the connection.

“Are manufactured on site and then only one in ten thousand bottles,” Sindara answered.

Which caused me to ask the question. “How many bottles do they make?”

“Millions,” Guy said. “And they’re exported all over the Confederacy.”

“A neurotoxin that effects only Humans?” I had hoped that had been destroyed in the base that made it. What I hadn’t accounted for was the stockpiles they had before we had destroyed the lab. The Curator had effectively wiped the data from his terminal. Even Denassi and all his expertise had been unable to retrieve any data. Which led to my next question. “Why not send in an assault team?”

“The top brass are concerned with collateral damage. The brewery is in a residential area,” Guy said.

“And it’s a well fortified building a hangover from the first Terran/ Confederacy war,” Inkassi added.

I could well imagine that. The Curator’s museum was a death trap for attackers. “Oh like the museum which had been a fortified bunker armed with auto turrets?”

“Most of the buildings on this world are, except for the turrets.” Inkassi frowned at that and glanced at Sindara and Guy. “That was what the recon was for?”

“But you got spotted,” I surmised.

“I don’t know how, we were discrete and were acting like tourists,” Sindara moaned.

“Well having two ‘Barkers’ in your tote bag would have set off sensors for a hundred metres in every direction?” I said to her.

“We didn’t have them then we retrieved them from the hotel on the way back. We were followed from the brewery we never had a chance to go in,” Guy said.

“ They have daily tours but we think it’s a front. We’ve been unable to verify that,” Sindara said with a shrug.

“It did seem that they herding us in a certain direction but I can’t be sure about that?” Guy sounded uncomfortable about his words. “That’s when we decided to duck into that cantina.” He looked at me. “I’m sorry we got you involved.”

I shrugged his apology off. “Whatever the outcome those Security Officers took offence to my accent.” That would be the problem I’d always have forever classed as an Imperial even though I’d given that up.

“You do have a strong Terran accent,” Sindara said to me.

“Gee thanks,” I replied. Funny enough the Valkyrie never commented on it that they believed in the person and ignored things like were you originated from. If you had the blood you were from Alfheimir.

“Sorry but you do. Davenport is the worse place to be for a Terran. The ATL have a stranglehold here,” Guy said.

I knew that I really didn’t want him to vocalise that. “I’m a citizen of the Confederacy.” That had been Xenai’s idea since I wasn’t one of her crew. I’d only become one afterwards to fool the Valkyrie and look how that went.