After three months of covert meetings and hushed discussions in wine cellars, Captain Julian Gordon was a tired man. He had compiled several notebooks of inventory detailing the matériel available, all written down by hand and all locked away in the safe under his desk. There were thousands of farmers’ rifles in his books; simple, low-capacity weapons that would be only a peg or two above useless against a force of such numbers as the Combined Socialist Military Forces. There were plenty of off-road vehicles, of course, which would be much more of a useful asset. However, there were no explosives, save for simple ones that could be cooked up in someone’s kitchen.
Gordon rubbed his eyes and shut one of the notebooks. The Colonel smiled kindly. “Perhaps we should call an end to this meeting.”
“Perhaps, sir,” agreed Gordon. “I do have work tomorrow.”
They stood and shook hands firmly, and Gordon ushered his guest toward the door. The Colonel’s hardy old four-wheel-drive truck sat in the drive.
“Speaking of work, how is Miss Corran doing in her new post, by the way?”
The Colonel chuckled. “She does’na mind the job, but it’s unfortunate the man she reports to is an animal. I would equip her with an OC spray if I thought she could get it past security.”
“Somehow I dinna think macing your boss is conducive to keeping your job.”
“Very true. She can take care o’ herself, though, to be sure.”
“I’m sure she’ll be fine.”
The Colonel glanced at him over his shoulder. “Aye?” he chuckled. “Ah Julian, ye poor, poor bastard.”
“Sir?”
“Hard to miss the way ye get all shy around ‘er. Allow me to be painfully blunt for a minute: she does’na think of ye like that, because ye have not yet given her cause to. She’s a very focussed and driven woman, no doubt. At the moment, she is extremely preoccupied with going undercover within the Capitol, and so all other aspects of her life have taken a back seat for the moment. Dinna pursue anything for now. Wait until this mess is all over. Once we remove Noonan, she’ll have a chance to breathe.”
He was right, of course. A sleeper agent’s first role is to be inconspicuous, and in such a paranoid institution as the Central Council that was easier said than done. When an agent’s cover is blown, however, then comes the easy part followed by the hardest part: create as much havoc as you possibly can, then disappear while avoiding capture.
“Once this has all blown over, which it should do in a few months, you ought to help get her clear. I know you would go above and beyond for any of us, lad, but especially for her. G’night, Captain.”
Gordon nodded slightly. “Goodnight, sir.”
As the Colonel’s truck backed out of the drive and disappeared, Gordon leaned against the doorframe and sighed. Whatever would a girl like Jane want with a man like him? He wasn’t exactly the kind of brusque alpha male she was probably interested in. Sure, he kept in shape, lived cleanly, had a decent job in consulting… but where was the flair? The spark that a girl would go mad for? As a boy he’d loved reading books about courageous and charismatic men from such times as the First and Second Earth Wars, or the first pioneers and colonists to reach for the stars. He would imagine himself as a fearless, moustachioed Spitfire pilot or an early pioneer braving the dangers of uncharted space in ships that sounded awfully flimsy by modern standards, making first contact with races like the technologically advanced Gorgons or the mysterious and charmingly primitive Syrr’a.
The first spattering of rain snapped Gordon out of his introspection. He locked the door again and went to have a dram of cold milk before turning in.
At about the same time that Cpt. Gordon was sipping his milk, Jane Corran was jogging to her door with her briefcase over her head, shielding herself from the rain that was now pelting down hard. She let herself into her building and climbed to her second floor apartment. She’d been working late, partly because there was paperwork to be done, and partly because people noticed that kind of extra effort. As it was, there were some forms in her briefcase that needed completion. Amongst them was a classified document that she had smuggled out, but it was hidden inside the file folder of a very mundane set of requisition papers that needed the Senior Advisor’s signature to be completed. Security had done the usual riffle through the papers in the briefcase, as per procedure, but one would have to be a very poor spy to leave anything noticable—sensitive material was usually marked with all manner of stamps and bright colours for just that reason—laying open inside one’s case. She’d been cleared through the exit corridor without even breaking a sweat. She took the requisition file to the little office nook of her living room. One of her copiers was connected to the ‘net and could be monitored, but she’d set up a second one completely separate to the terminal and not linked to any network. It was through this second copier that she put the classified document. Several black and white pages later, she had a complete briefing on a soon-to-be-launched campaign. This material could fetch some serious money on the black market, and the Confederates would have paid handsomely for it. It was a wonder it wasn’t kept under constant guard. The original went back into its camouflaged hideaway, and the copy was spread through the leaves of an outdated atlas, which she would ‘loan’ to a friend on the weekend. With the real work done, she began casually straightening out the rest of the paperwork. Approval for this, request for that. Soon, it was a while after midnight, and she packed everything back into her briefcase. She had a suit ready to go for the morning, she’d had dinner at the office, and all that was left was to shower and crawl into bed. A quick sniff down the neck of her shirt convinced her that she could even skip the shower tonight. She threw her blouse and skirt into a hamper, hung up her suit jacket, brushed her teeth, and hauled on a nightie. Despite the usual ritual, she felt like something was missing, and even as she lay with her cheek pressed deep into the pillow, she couldn’t get to sleep. Some part of her brain was still ticking over slowly, refusing to down tools for the night.
Where was the spark? She had let her life sink into a mire of bureaucracy and paranoid second-guessing. There was no enjoyment anymore, but of course that wouldn’t change. The campaign briefing gnawed at her. White Rim, again. Ever since that blasted campaign, her life had been miserable. Until the CSTO was abolished, that wasn’t about to change. Of course, this train of thought reminded her of Nathan, and just thinking about him again opened up old scars in her memory. She burst into tears without warning, clutching her pillow and burying her face in it.
Later that morning, she arrived at Sirhaan’s office precisely on time with the puffy, red eyes of someone who’d done a lot of crying and not a lot of sleeping. He gave her a cold appraisal, then promptly ignored her, uninterested in someone who looked as though the life had been drained from her. She wasn’t in the mood for flirting anyway, so it suited her fine.
Life on the Fringes 