Chapter 10: Righteous Fury

“This is Special Agent Elizabeth Mbenge. All Sunguard units, be advised: As of April 1, 2182, 03:47 UTC, the armed forces of the Terran Federation are hereby placed in a state of Codex Vindicta. I repeat, Codex Vindicta is now in effect.”

Nothing much changed as she relayed the command. A million soldiers didn’t suddenly fall from the sky to apprehend Eric Stoltz for her. All it did was place them in a state of readiness. From now on, regardless of their current assignments, they were to be prepared to drop whatever they were doing at a moment’s notice to aid her mission, should she call upon them. They all understood that whatever resources had been available to them for their own assignments yesterday might no longer be available tomorrow. For the Armies of the Sunguard, the vendetta codex was a state of mind, not a call to action.

And the vast majority of them would indeed never be called upon. For obvious reasons, should she need their assistance, she would prioritize the units that were geographically closest to her and whose current missions were least critical to the security of the people of the Terran Federation. She would never pull a Sunguard squad in the middle of rescuing a kidnapping victim on Jerr if another sat waiting by the roadside somewhere in Hartmann City, hoping to catch speeding cars.

The truth was, declaring a state of Codex Vindicta did not grant her any greater authority over the Sunguard than she already possessed. She was a Special Agent, and her authority was already virtually boundless. With the exception of the admirals of Solar Command, she could already command any and all members of the Sunguard, from the other admirals to the lowliest enlisted recruits. The vendetta codex granted her no additional powers.

No, the doctrine didn’t exist for her sake. Its purpose was to place the rest of the Sunguard in the state of mind required to exact limitless retribution upon her designated target when the time came. It was, more than anything else, a signal.

And now it was in effect.

She had delayed invoking the vendetta codex to lull Eric Stoltz into a false sense of security while she pursued him, but now that he knew he was a hunted man, there was no longer any reason to wait. She had been convinced from the moment the circumstances surrounding Agent Olt-mar-rost-kam’s death became clear that his murder fulfilled the requirements for invoking the doctrine. In fact, they did not merely fulfill them, they far exceeded them. The moment she had learned the identity of Olt-mar-rost-kam’s killer, Codex Vindicta had become inevitable. The doctrine didn’t just exist to protect the Sunguard’s members from violence directed at them from the outside. It applied just as readily to threats from within. The integrity of the judicial and military branch of the Terran Federation was paramount. Nothing could ever be allowed to threaten it.

Minutes earlier, she had slowly backed out of the room, with Stoltz and his terrified hostage following. Both Special Agents had been intensely focused during the standoff—one on getting out alive, the other on not causing any harm. Once they had entered the corridor, none of the guards in the compound had dared make a move. Whether that was out of deference to Stoltz, who now controlled the situation, or out of fear of Mbenge as a solar wolf, she didn’t know. It was not important. The only thing that mattered was that four minutes later, the three of them stood in the dark street outside the restaurant.

“Stay where you are, Elizabeth,” Stoltz barked. “One move, and I’ll kill the girl. Don’t make a scene. You will comply.”

She raised the palm of her left hand to show she was not threatening him. “I’m not following.”

“Good,” he said with a slow nod.

Still keeping his service pistol trained on the girl, he began walking down the street. A soft whimper escaped the woman’s throat. For a brief moment, Mbenge caught her eye.

“It’s going to be all right,” she mouthed, unwilling to say anything aloud that might provoke Stoltz. There was no way of knowing whether the girl understood or even noticed her lips move, but she did it as much for her own sake as for the sake of the young woman.

Disappearing into the crowded street, Stoltz dragged his hostage into a side alley. The moment he could no longer see her, Mbenge silently moved forward and took cover behind the corner of the building. She heard the squeak of an old door opening, and then there was only silence.

She peered into the alleyway.

From a small, rusty vent, partially concealed behind a foul-smelling garbage bag, steam escaped from hidden machinery inside. Somewhere in the distance, she could hear a Terran cat meow as it prowled the late-night streets in search of some small morsel to eat. Knowing that the pararodents of Gloria contained no sustenance its metabolism could digest, it would probably go hungry.

Then again, maybe it wouldn’t. Wherever Terra Homo sapiens had walked among the stars, Terra Rattus norvegicus had inevitably followed. Rats, as she now knew all too well, could be found where you least expected them.

Pushing thoughts of the cat’s dining habits aside, she slowly opened the door at the end of the alleyway, careful not to make any sound that might alert Stoltz that she had completely ignored her promise to let him go. Keeping it had never truly been an option for her. While allowing him to leave with his hostage had been necessary to keep the girl alive in the moment, in the long term, abandoning the pursuit would likely end up becoming a death sentence for the captive woman. The trick was to follow Stoltz without him realizing it.

It all failed miserably.

The door, which had cooperated by remaining silent through the first quarter of its arc, suddenly emitted a loud squeal of protest. She froze at once, but chances were the damage had already been done. But after listening for any reaction from within the building and hearing none, she finally concluded that Stoltz had ventured deep enough into its corridors for the steady rattle of the loud machinery inside to drown out the sound of the creaking door.

She squeezed through the opening and entered a narrow hallway leading to a larger room farther in and to the right. From it, the sharp odor of industrial detergents assaulted her nose. The entrance itself was dark, but the hallway beyond was illuminated by four dirty lumen plates haphazardly mounted on the ceiling. In the middle of the room stood three industrial washing machines, spewing steam as they churned through piles of soiled clothing and bed linens.

Looking around, she could see no sign of Stoltz or his hostage.

“Coil,” she whispered into her earpiece. “Has he left the building?”

“No, ma’am, not as far as I know,” the intelligent computer replied. “But this is a dense block where businesses and residential buildings mix together. Many of the alleyways are partially covered. It’s difficult to track someone moving between them at ground level, especially since it’s night and I have to resort to infrared tracking. I’m afraid the resolution simply isn’t the same as it is during the day.”

There was little she could do about it. If Stoltz had managed to escape, they would have to pick up his trail later somehow. But for the sake of his hostage, she had to continue her pursuit under the assumption that he was still somewhere inside the commercial dry cleaner where she now found herself.

The sound of someone screaming caught Special Agent Mbenge’s attention. Crossing the soiled floor to the far side of the washing machines, she found a small green door standing slightly ajar. When she pushed it open, the sight that greeted her filled her with equal measures of pride and terror.

The serving girl, apparently convinced Stoltz would kill her once he no longer had any use for her, had overcome her fear and decided to take matters into her own hands, knowing she had nothing to lose.

Or, to be more precise, take matters into her own mouth.

Grimacing as he inspected the wound in his maimed arm, the other Special Agent was momentarily distracted. From the smear of blood across the girl’s lips, Mbenge figured the woman had found an opportunity to bite Stoltz. Now the man had been forced to delay his escape to assess the tear in his flesh.

The good news was that Stoltz evidently believed he still had use for the girl. He would not kill her—yet.

The bad news was that Mbenge had hoped to pursue her former colleague unnoticed until she reached a position where she could apprehend him without risking the life of his hostage. Sadly, this was not that place. Despite the pain and the blood, the other Special Agent was too well trained to lose his aim entirely. Distracted or not, he still held his pistol pointed more or less in the direction of his hostage.

“I told you to stay away!” he shouted at Mbenge.

She didn’t reply. There was no point. They had both received the same training, and there was no way he could truly have believed she would completely abandon her pursuit of him. No, they both knew her promise not to follow him had been nothing more than a temporary and hostile truce while he searched for a way to escape and she searched for a way to recapture him without risking the girl’s life.

Abandoning his attempt to stop the bleeding, he yanked his hostage forward with his remaining uninjured arm while keeping the pistol in his bloodied hand trained on her before shoving her farther down the dark corridor beyond.

Special Agent Mbenge followed, now determined never to lose sight of Eric Stoltz again. By now, she was convinced the man understood the value of his hostage and that his earlier threat to kill her simply because Mbenge pursued him had been a bluff. He certainly understood the value of keeping her alive until the moment when murdering her served him better than allowing her to live. Had he intended to execute his hostage merely to punish Mbenge for disobeying his commands, he would have done so already.

And when that moment came, Elizabeth Mbenge vowed to be close enough to stop him.

“Last warning, Elizabeth!” Stoltz shouted loudly. “One more step and I’ll kill her!”

Aiming her gun squarely at his head, her gaze fixed on his eyes, she stepped forward.

Just as she had expected, Stoltz did not pull the trigger. Instead, he took another step backward, dragging his hostage with him.

Mbenge took a step of her own. Stoltz matched it, retreating backward farther down the corridor. For several seconds, they continued their awkward dance.

Then, before she had time to fully register what was happening, her former colleague abruptly shifted the aim of his pistol. But he didn’t point it at her head, as she had assumed he would, and the unexpected direction threw her off for a moment. She never took the shot she had been preparing to fire.

The gaser beam from Eric Stoltz’s gun didn’t pierce the bones of her skull. Instead, the thin line of blue-violet light marking the path of the coherent gamma rays as they sliced through the room, exciting the air molecules in their wake, struck a rusty metal pipe bolted to the wall.

A pipe marked at regular intervals with triangular yellow warning signs.

And in the center of each yellow triangle was a stylized black skull and crossbones.

She had seen the signs the moment she first entered the corridor. Apparently, so had Stoltz. The difference was that while Mbenge had largely ignored them, Stoltz had recognized their significance and now turned them to his advantage.

Because with the pipe now ruptured by his gaser shot, the air between him and Mbenge was now rapidly being replaced by a large, roiling cloud of chlorine gas venting under high pressure from the breach. For a moment, she considered forcing her way through it, but she was already beginning to cough as hydrochloric acid formed in her lungs when the gas reacted with the moisture in her tissues. Stoltz was already escaping through the clean air on the far side of the cloud, and she ultimately decided against it. Unable to breathe, she would be of no use to his hostage. Turning back was now her only option.

She had walked straight into his trap.

For the second time during her pursuit of her traitorous colleague, she had lost him.

Sprinting back through the corridor, past the washing machines, through the creaking old door, and into the back alley again, she had just reached the street outside when she suddenly heard Coil’s voice in her ear.

“I have eyes on Stoltz, ma’am. Just exited the building on the opposite side from where you are. Small side street, leading into a larger thoroughfare.”

Good, she thought. He was out in the open again, which meant orbital surveillance could now track him. The problem was that Stoltz was now on the opposite side of the block from where she stood. While thanking Coil for the assistance and instructing it on how to proceed with the operation, she scanned the surrounding façades for a way to climb them. Two buildings farther down the street, she finally found what she was looking for. Bolted to the front of a rundown stone building was a rusty metal ladder stretching from ground level all the way up to the roof.

Frantically, she began climbing the slippery rungs, clinging to the wobbly contraption as she ascended toward the top. She didn’t suffer from acrophobia. She would never have made Special Agent if she had. But she also wasn’t psychotic. She still possessed a healthy aversion to falling to her death.

Less than a minute later, Mbenge crawled onto the flat roof of the building and rose to her feet, trying to orient herself.

“I see you, ma’am,” Coil said into her earpiece. “Turn twenty degrees to your left, and you’ll be looking straight at the back alley Stoltz is in.”

She could see nothing, but that was hardly surprising. From this vantage point, all she could make out through the darkness was an endless sea of rooftops, broken only by the occasional chimney or railing. But from orbit, Coil’s view of the scene was very different. Observing her through the infrared sensors of the War Cruisers overhead, it looked down upon her much as a man might study a map—except this one was alive.

Without hesitation, she broke into a run in the direction Coil had indicated. Her black boots made a rhythmic, thudding sound as she sprinted across the concrete, roofing felt, and tiles that formed the uppermost level of the block. Twice she had to vault over low walls designed to prevent people from doing exactly that. But she was not here to play it safe, and guided by Coil, she was confident she could reach Stoltz without plunging to her death into some unseen gap between the buildings.

When she finally reached the opposite side of the block, her heart sank.

She could see Stoltz below, slowly dragging his hostage halfway through the long back alley leading away from the dry cleaner. Another minute, and he would reach the larger road beyond, where he could commandeer a vehicle and disappear into the nighttime traffic of Hartmann City.

She could see him below, five meters beneath the roof on which she stood.

But she could see no way down.

There were no stairs. No ladder leading into the alley. Not even a downspout she could climb. And Stoltz, together with his hostage, was getting away.

“Coil, when will the APCs arrive?”

She had instructed the intelligent computer to direct every Sunguard unit it could muster to converge on the intersection where the alley met the street beyond. But even under Codex Vindicta, moving armored personnel carriers through busy city streets took time. In the crowded district, the closest empty space large enough for the ballistic hoppers lifting them in from Merkel Base to land had been two kilometers away. Physics still ruled.

“The first unit is two minutes out, ma’am.”

It would never arrive in time, she thought. Stoltz would escape, his hostage would almost certainly be killed, and all of this would have been for nothing.

She launched herself off the side of the building. This was not the time to be careful.

The pain that exploded through her tibia as she struck the cobblestones below told her the bone had shattered on impact. Crying out, she collapsed onto her side, momentarily unable to move.

She pushed against the cold stone with both hands, trying to force herself into a sitting position, but it was no use. Trembling with adrenaline, the best she could manage was to prop her mangled body up on her left arm. It was enough to reacquire Stoltz, who had now reached the end of the back alley.

With only moments to spare before he and the girl disappeared into the traffic of the thoroughfare, Special Agent Mbenge raised her service pistol one last time.

“Stop!” she shouted, her voice broken by pain. She felt dizzy. The edges of her vision began to darken.

“I’ll kill both the girl and myself if you don’t let me go!” Eric Stoltz bellowed in reply. There was now desperation in his voice. “Don’t think I won’t do it.”

She knew he would. There was no coming back from this. If she managed to arrest him, she intended to sentence him to six years in the Mercury work camps, followed by rehabilitation and a lifetime of Sunguard monitoring. If he survived this, Stoltz would never get to reclaim his old life.

Still, she hesitated. If her aim was off by even a few centimeters, the hostage could die. And now, on the verge of losing consciousness, she harbored no illusions about her ability to shoot straight. The shock, the pain, the adrenaline, the angle, and the darkness of the night all conspired against her.

But if she didn’t take the shot, Eric Stoltz would escape and, more likely than not, kill the girl, who by then would be nothing more to him than baggage with the unfortunate distinction of also being a witness to his crimes.

Summoning the last of her strength, Mbenge aimed her gun at Stoltz’s exposed arm, intending to shoot the weapon from his hand without striking the innocent girl he now held before him in a deadly embrace.

She looked down the trembling barrel of her service pistol.

She looked at Stoltz.

And fired.

She missed.

In the final moments before the world faded to black around her, the beam from Special Agent Mbenge’s gaser pistol pierced the darkness of the alleyway, sliced through the girl’s abdomen, and punched through the hip of the former Sunguard Special Agent standing behind her.

Her last memory before she fell into the deep well of unconsciousness was of agonized screams and the sickeningly wet sound, echoing through the night, of two bodies striking hard stone.

Author's Note

The story you're reading is one of many set in the Lords of the Stars universe I've been creating over the past 30 years, where familiar characters and places reappear, and new favorites await discovery. Check out my profile to explore more stories from this universe.

While The Wolf Reforged is entirely standalone and can be read without any prior knowledge, I think you'll also enjoy Scorched Earth, Wonders From Beyond the Sky, and A Game of Wolf and Mouse which are prequels to this story, and Twilight Duty, Guardian of the Wolf, and Conscience of Steel, which are sequels.

Visit the official Lords of the Stars blog for more information about this hard sci-fi universe: https://lordsofthestars.wordpress.com

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