Supremacy's Outlaw: A Space Opera Thriller Series (Insurgency Saga Book 3) T.E. Bakutis (read my book .txt) 📖

This time, Jan did not have to fake even the smallest amount of surprise. “You have a pool here?”

The Truthers also, apparently, had a large underground gym with a number of treadmills, free weights, rowing machines, and two sim cabinets. Jan whistled softly as Hanson and their armed chaperone entered the crowded gym to find it disturbingly underpopulated. The massive gym had only two other occupants. One ran while the other lifted weights.

The giant laundry system was one thing. The fully stocked underground gym was another, and the pool? There it was, behind a transparent plastic shield at the back of the huge gym. There was not a single person swimming in it.

Luxuries of this sort did not come from an underground resistance. Perks of this variety came only with a government contract, for government workers. The brash ambition of the Truther scam was so utterly obvious in hindsight that Jan felt profoundly stupid for missing it in the first place.

President Mendoza, it seemed, was a very good liar.

“I’ll start with the pool!” Jan announced. He cast a hopeful glance at Hanson. “Will you be joining me?”

“Oh, man,” Hanson said, “I wish I could. But I’m on duty. I’m just here to chaperone you.”

Jan smiled at the entirely unsmiling soldier beside Hanson. “I thought he was doing that.”

Jan’s guard frowned beneath the darkened visor of his gray riot helmet. “We both are.”

“Very well.” Jan spotted a sign with a vaguely male abstraction above one of the two doors beside the pool. “Will you both chaperone me into the locker room, then?”

The locker room, too, was empty, with not another soul in sight. This despite it being the middle of the day. This, combined with the all but empty halls through which they’d walked to get here, halls that had been thick with bodies only days before. Jan also noted, to his great satisfaction, that there was only one camera inside the locker room.

After he stowed his clothes and one additional item, the rest of Jan’s excursion went swimmingly. He was genuinely disappointed when Hanson’s guard called time, but he emerged, dripping and wearing only his very tight bathing suit, without complaint. Hanson certainly wasn’t complaining.

Hanson tossed him a towel. As he dried his hair, Jan turned his gaze on the soldier beside Hanson. “You know, we’ve been seeing each other for days, but I don’t even know your name.”

“That’s right,” the soldier agreed.

“May I ask it?”

“That’s Frank,” Hanson said, with a wry smirk. “He’s just pissed off because he got left behind on babysitting duty.”

Frank turned his scowl on Hanson. “Really?”

Jan frowned as all the tumblers on his prison lock clicked into place. “I don’t wish to be any trouble.”

“Right,” Frank said, turning his scowl back on Jan. “So don’t be. Back to the locker room, Sabato. You’re getting changed, and then you’re going back to your room.”

Jan inclined his head. “Thank you.”

“And, Hanson?” Frank pointed at the door. “You’re done here. They need you back at the infirmary.”

“Who?” Hanson demanded, but he grimaced and gave Jan an apologetic shrug. “We’ll do this again soon, all right?”

Jan smiled at him, and he felt just a tiny bit lighter now that he wouldn’t have to murder the pleasant nurse. “I look forward to it.” Truther or not, Hanson was a noncombatant.

“All right, off we go,” Frank said. “Move.”

Jan strolled easily to the locker room, counting the falls of Frank’s booted feet at his back. They passed into the locker room and out of sight of the rest of the gym. They passed under the camera and to the locker, into the blind spot in their surveillance Jan had instinctively singled out.

As Jan reached into his locker for his clothes and what was hidden in them, familiar concerns rose. Did Frank have a spouse at home? Did he have a child? It wouldn’t change what was about to happen, and this man was a Truther. Still, an act like this should never feel easy.

But it was necessary if Jan wanted to escape.

A moment later, the sharpened thermometer once hidden in Jan’s locker was buried inside Frank’s head. Somehow, it had entered through his nose and traveled at the exact angle it needed to puncture his skull. Jan Sabato, as his enemies often learned too late, was very skilled with sharp objects.

It took little time to strip Frank of his armor and uniform. It was a halfway decent fit, with a helmet and darkened visor completing the best disguise Jan could ask for. Now he just had to hope whatever sap Esparza had left behind to watch all the security feeds in this underground base was looking elsewhere.

Jan emerged from the locker room and walked briskly to the exit. Only one woman remained from earlier, still jogging on her treadmill, and she didn’t even glance his way. No alarms blared, but that didn’t mean anything in a base this big.

Jan exited back into the main hallway and walked at the same unconcerned pace away from his cell. When Rafe had left his datapad behind, he had mentioned the tech pit was “just past the gym.” It was thus comically easy to locate the open entry leading to a pit with a number of darkened monitors, only a few of which were lit. As Jan had surmised from his own observations, and Hanson’s offhanded comment about Frank getting “left behind to babysit,” this base was practically empty.

Esparza had taken the bulk of his soldiers on whatever operation he’d planned, which suggested it was something big. Knowing the Truthers, that was going to be very bad for someone, but that wasn’t