Supremacy's Outlaw: A Space Opera Thriller Series (Insurgency Saga Book 3) by T.E. Bakutis (top 100 books of all time checklist .TXT) 📗

“Bring Esparza in, soldier.”

“Yes, sir.”

Coffman actually smiled. Putting Graham Esparza on trial could be very beneficial to President Mendoza’s efforts to keep peace with the Advanced on Phorcys. That, plus securing Esparza’s rogue mini-nuke, likely would get Coffman promoted.

Not that promotions, or the vastly increased salary that came with them, were why he did this. Still, those were nice.

“Excuse me, Lieutenant,” a calm male voice said from behind him. “Might I have a moment of your time?”

Coffman spun and pulled his pistol in less time than it took to breathe. He found Jan Sabato — or at least, a man who very much looked to be Jan Sabato — standing behind him, hands raised.

“So it’s actually you this time?” Coffman asked.

“You can poke me, if you like.”

Coffman didn’t lower his pistol. “I don’t get this. Any of it. Did you want us to find the mini-nuke?”

Sabato offered a mild nod. “Unfortunately, I could not reveal my true purpose without tipping off Esparza. You have a few security leaks.”

“And how did you get the Supremacy down here? How did you know Senator Lozano would authorize it?”

“Lozano has very good reason to want someone not with Ceto’s government to retrieve the data disc Captain Varik and his soldiers have now retrieved. As do Senators Beil, Yu, Callahan, and Parrish.”

“Really,” Coffman said.

“Also, you should do a thorough background check on any CSD soldiers who’ve ever served under General Melton or his aides. You may find their loyalties somewhat ... complicated.”

Coffman knew General Melton, and he’d personally never liked the man, but these were outrageous claims. “You’re seriously accusing five Ceto senators and a decorated general of working with the Truthers.”

“Not just working with them. Financing them.”

“And you have proof?”

“I do. I will provide you with indisputable proof implicating your traitorous senators in the plot you’ve just foiled, to bomb Star’s Landing, as well as other useful revelations, providing you agree to arrest me.”

Coffman lowered his pistol. “All right, you’ve lost me.”

“Once I’m in CSD custody, both watchful elements within the Supremacy and those within our own criminal underworld will stop hunting me. Everyone will be confident justice has been served.”

“You’re serious.”

“Quite so. I will, of course, escape a few months after you take me into custody. My escape will never be reported. Official records will assure everyone I remain in prison.”

Coffman scoffed. “You’re dreaming.”

“Am I?” Sabato asked. “And what if, in addition to the generous bounty I have already offered, my aid in capturing Esparza alive, and the tip that saved Star’s Landing, I were also to throw in the location of two unclaimed mini-nukes?”

Coffman blinked. “You have mini-nukes?”

“Well, not on me,” Sabato said. “But I can provide the location of two unsecured warheads, as well as everything else I have just offered, in exchange for the simple consideration I have just requested.”

“I arrest you,” Coffman said. “And then let you go.”

“After a few months. Unofficially.”

“You killed my men,” Coffman growled.

“Ah,” Sabato said, with a gracious nod. “That was, as you must know, a case of mistaken identity.”

“How’s that?”

“Your men attacked us while driving an unmarked APC, working in concert with a group of Truthers who were attempting to kill us. Your men did not identify themselves as CSD. Their deaths came only after they attempted to murder us first.”

Coffman hated how much sense that made. He had been having trouble explaining what his men were doing in the middle of the Prospector District, without orders, in an unmarked APC that CSD records insisted had been destroyed. What Sabato had just said confirmed his worst suspicions.

There were dirty cops, working for the Truthers, and the CSD was lousy with them. They’d have to vet literally everyone from top to bottom, again. Still, perhaps the Truther cause would fade without Esparza’s leadership and the backing of the Ceto senators who’d apparently financed it. If any of that was true.

“Lieutenant?” Sabato asked, smiling. “Do we have a deal?”

Coffman took one cleansing breath. All of this was obviously bullshit. But if it wasn’t ...

“You know everything has to go through the president.”

“I very much look forward to meeting him.”

Coffman felt his mouth open before he consciously closed it. This was the most arrogant man on the planet. “All right. I’m placing you under arrest.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant.”

“I assume the big woman who told me you were down here is one of yours?”

Jan frowned. “Who?”

“The big blonde.” Coffman focused. “Polina Rostov.”

“I have no idea who you’re talking about.”

“Right.” Coffman rolled his eyes. “Of course you don’t.”

Jan turned, placed both hands together behind his back, and offered them. “Please be gentle.”

Even as Coffman slapped his cuffs on his wanted fugitive, it still bugged him that none of this was his idea.

Bharat had long wondered what the reunion between Fatima Blaize and the man foolish enough to believe she’d betray him would involve. From the fact that Fatima now stood, fists raised, across from Jan, it seemed that reunion involved violence. At this point, this didn’t surprise Bharat at all.

“Oh, come now,” Fatima said. “I’m not letting you off with a kick to the shins. You actually thought I’d sell you to the Supremacy. You believed that, of me, for five years!”

“Fine,” Jan agreed. “One punch, no bracing.”

“Acceptable. Where do you want it?”

“You choose.”

“Are you forgetting you got shot two days ago? I want to hurt you, not kill you. Now where can you take a punch?”

Jan looked around the darkened interior of Bharat’s brand-new HUe for help, evidently found none, and shrugged. “Well, all right, I suppose you could punch me in the g—”

Anything else Jan might have said was driven out by Fatima’s expertly placed blow below his sternum.