Depraved by Trent Evans
Chapter 23
Beckett sipped the searing coffee from the canister, cursing as it singed his tongue. His security detail always made it too goddamned hot.
His “command post,” such as it was, used to be a supervisor’s maintenance supply room, big enough for a makeshift office for him, but not much else. The building above them had once been a huge residential structure. Only half of it remained standing. The other half consisted of a mound of dusty rubble forty feet high directly above them.
Their maps called it a “Forward Operating Base” but to his mind it was little more than a glorified hole in the ground in the middle of the bombed-out hellscape of Old Vickers.
His head was absolutely pounding at the moment. The smell from the generators, an acrid, almost sour note to it—probably from the rather low-quality oil they’d sometimes been forced to use when supplies couldn’t be interdicted as regularly from TSS transport columns—made his headache even worse.
Pouring over the intel on the latest TSS maneuvers, aerial unit routes, and tracked foot patrols wasn’t helping either.
Because it made no sense. Not a bit of it.
Aerial patrols down 60%. Foot patrols so rare, some Carter Faction topside units were reporting being able to walk down Old Vickers streets in uniform, in broad daylight.
That was… well, that was unheard of.
It painted a picture of one of two possible things.
There might be some sort of command disruption in TSS leadership—a purge, a reshuffling. It could be anything, really.
Or the TSS military was up to something.
Now, of course, Kaman could be preparing to do exactly what he’d told him—smash The Awakening.
But if that was true, why were the patrols along the perimeter of the Emerald Fen practically nonexistent, and aerial flyovers so rare they’d become almost a novelty?
Who prepares to assault the main—and only—base of their enemy, and doesn’t reconnoiter at all?
“Nobody does—and that’s your answer, you sonofabitch!” Beckett smacked a palm down upon the map spread across his desk. “Because they aren’t attacking it. Or at least…not yet.”
But why?
That Beckett didn’t know the answer to that question was the part that unnerved him.
Kaman was a fucking liar. Of that there was no doubt. But he had, thus far, been reliable. Delivering the location of the Rexall unit to him was…surprising.
And with nary a hitch or dirty trick either.
That you know of, anyway.
Kaman hadn’t yet given him any reason he could point to that Beckett should be worried about. Not personally.
He folded up the map, sipping from the now not quite as blazing hot coffee.
The TSS absence? That stunk. There was no rationalizing that away.
Something was up. And that something—Beckett would swear on it—was very bad news.
There was a knock at his door.
“Enter.” Venner, his 2nd Lieutenant commanding his security detail poked his head in.
“Got a report for you, sir.”
“Come on in, Lieutenant.” Beckett stood, stretching. “What do you have for me?”
Venner’s mouth twisted a little, and he reached into the side pocket of his ballistics vest. “Not sure, sir. Secure message—from Gamma.”
“Set it there,” Beckett said waving at the desk. “Dismissed, Lieutenant.”
“Sir.” Venner set the disc down upon the battered desktop.
His lieutenant seemed happy to go.
Slipping the disc into his handheld, he waited for the message to decrypt.
“Hmm.” He sat down once more. He read it again.
His head was screaming at him now.
<Cmdr Harling: HKU has not reported back. Now overdue. No sign of him or prisoner. Orders?>
He dropped the handheld onto the desk, rubbing his chin.
There was no reason for the HKU not to have brought her back by now. Nothing was stopping him at all—especially with the TSS patrols having vanished.
He could have practically walked Yulia right in at this point.
The HKU would have followed his orders, if he were at all able. Kaman had been adamant about that, and from what Beckett had seen of HKU behavior on the battlefield—fearless, cunning, and utterly relentless—he had no reason to doubt Rexall would be the same.
But he hadn’t returned.
Which meant things… might be going sideways.
Harling had no reason to lie. He’d be found out, and Beckett had the weaselly little shit terrified—and rightfully so—for his life. So, that was out of the picture.
If not him, then who? Nobody else knew what the HKU had been sent to do.
Other than the slimy Norton—who was safely in Beckett’s pocket, and thus incentivized to make sure Rexall succeeded—nobody else knew the Carter Faction even had an HKU.
“Well, that’s not quite true, is it?” He croaked the words, staring at the screen of his handheld, the words displayed there almost a taunt.
It was probably nothing, likely paranoia, but if the wheels were coming off on this mission, he needed to know sooner rather than later.
He opened his door, nodding at Venner, who stood guard a few paces down the dimly lit corridor.
“Lieutenant. Find Petra, and tell her to come see me.”
“Sir.”
Venner disappeared around the corner, his heavy footfalls receding as he climbed the broken stairs.
Closing his door, Beckett dropped into his seat once more.
You’re being a scared little girl right now. This likely doesn’t mean anything.
A few minutes later, his door opened, Petra strolling in. Venner leaned inside, a brow arching in question, but Beckett waved him out.
“Sending your errand boy after sis, now?” She propped her ass on the corner of his desk, her arms crossed under her breasts. “This must be good.”
“That depends on your definition of good—and what you say in the next few seconds.”
Petra’s eyes lit up, her lips forming a mocking O.
“You are worked up, brother. Tell me what it is. Maybe, if I’m lucky, I can make it even worse.”
He forced himself not to react to her abrasive provocativeness. His sister took the greatest of joys from inciting an emotional reaction in people, and since he was her brother, her almost pathological need to fuck with people was even more at play.
“Do you know what the HKU we acquired is doing?”
She shrugged. “I assume if I’m supposed to know, I’ll know.”
“Answer my question.”
She rolled her eyes. “No, of course not.”
“Do you have any knowledge of the whereabouts of the HKU? Or if he’s with anyone?”
“I don’t know who he’s with.”
“I didn’t say he was with anyone.”
She pushed herself off his desk, pacing in front of it, affecting the deepest of boredom.
He wasn’t buying it for an instant.
“You’re playing word games, brother. They’re tiresome. But if you want to, then I’ll play.” She locked her gaze with him. “I heard a rumor, and perhaps something more than that… that the person who had Wyndham killed was… someone we know very well.”
He chuckled at that. She was good.
When being backed into a corner, parry, and misdirect. It might have worked—if he didn’t know her so well.
“If you know anything about the HKU. What he’s doing. Anything. You need to tell me now. Right now.”
She looked at him for a long moment, dark eyes narrowed. “What’s this about, Beckett? You seem… suspicious.”
“Do I have reason to be?”
She looked down, shaking her head slowly. “Foolish man.”
“Tell me I’ve no reason to worry about you. Tell me.”
Meeting his gaze again, her sly smile creased her lips. “I’ll answer that, in exchange from an answer from you. No bullshit. No lies. Just between a sister and her brother.”
He wondered where she was going with this, but it didn’t matter. She was going to tell him. He’d know if she was lying. She may have thought her powers of deception were above reproach, but he could read his sister like a book, when the occasion called for it. Her arrogance and cleverness were both an asset and her Achilles heel.
“Do you agree?” Her dark brow rose. “Promise you’ll tell the truth, no matter what?”
“I don’t have time for this, Petra.” He sat forward, lacing his fingers together atop his battered desk. “I agree. Now, tell me.”
She took a deep breath, glancing away for a moment, her expression utterly solemn.
Then she met his eyes. “I know absolutely nothing about the HKU. Only that you got your hands on one.”
Staring at her for long seconds, he studied her face, her unwavering gaze. No slight quiver to her lip, no subtle blooms of color high in her cheeks, no fidgeting of her fingers. He didn’t even note the slightest flare of her nostrils, another “tell” he’d gleaned from watching her over the years.
She wasn’t lying. Not this time, anyway.
“Now, you.” She leaned over the desk planting her palms upon it. “Was it you who had Wyndham killed?”
He almost laughed, expecting a far thornier inquiry that that.
“Not directly. Explicit orders aren’t always needed. But I made it clear he was an allowable target. Once it was plain to see he’d gone… wobbly.”
Her lashes fluttered, her lips quirking in an odd way.
“Does that… surprise you?” He rose from his chair, moving around her and opening his door. “Don’t answer that. It doesn’t matter. What does is that you’ve satisfied my curiosity.”
He tilted his head toward the doorway.
She straightened, spinning on her heel. Her feline strut was back, but her eyes… no longer held the impish mischievousness they’d had when she’d walked in.
She brushed past him, a strangely tentative hand on his shoulder, kept there a heartbeat longer than normal.
“Goodbye…brother.”
He watched her go, Petra pausing for just a moment to say something to Venner, then giving him one last look over her shoulder—a light in her eye that was anything but her normal arrogance.
Then she disappeared up the stairs.
Slumping back in his seat, he put his head in his hands, willing the aching to go away. Painkillers weren’t exactly plentiful, even for the leader of a rebellion, and he told himself he needed to just tough it out.
The uncertainty still needling at him at the back of his mind wasn’t helping in the least.
And he still didn’t know what had happened with Rexall.
A knock at his door sounded.
With a groan, Beckett grunted. “Enter.”
It was Venner once more. Only, something…wasn’t right.
“What do you have for me, Lieutenant? Tell me some good news. I could fucking use it.”
“I was… I wanted to talk to you about this… when you told me to find your sister…” The man’s face was ashen. “Not sure… how to tell you.”
“Just spill it. Considering the steaming pile of dog shit this day has been thus far, I don’t see how you’re going to make it any worse.”
Venner reached into his vest, withdrawing his own handheld, the screen spidered at one corner, but still usable.
“What’s this…?”
The video played, but what he was seeing rendered Beckett into dumbfounded silence.
“Is this…?” Beckett grabbed the handheld, replaying the video again. “Is this…who I think it is?”
“Those new surveillance drones we’ve been testing? Got this from one of them.”
They were experimental, about the size of a human fist, but they held incredible promise. So small, they were easy to miss with the naked eye, completely quiet, and equipped with extremely effective electronic countermeasures to avoid detection by any known TSS bands, either IFR, UV, or even movement-based sensors.
“Picked up her image, by accident, really—it wasn’t part of its sentry parameters. But it matched it visually anyway. It’s…it’s Petra, sir.”
She was standing just inside the opening of a partially blown out exterior wall in the wreckage of a building in Old Vickers.
“Drone was at four hundred meters altitude, so it’s not perfect quality.”
Then he saw the man, moving swiftly, armed. Definitely military. As he entered the same building, he looked back down the bombed out, rubble strewn street—giving the drone a perfect zoom on his face.
“Motherfucker…”
“It’s him, sir.” Venner murmured it, as if delivering a terminal medical diagnosis. “It’s confirmed.”
Anson Merriwether.
Though Beckett didn’t want to—his belly now had a biting, sick, nauseating hole eating its way into his core—he kept watching it, dreading it, rage slowly percolating within him.
The drone couldn’t get a clean shot of him, the man standing in the shadow further inside the room, but it was more than enough to see Merriwether was talking to her.
More than enough to know Petra had been lying to her own brother.