Codename: Bear: Secret Agent (Codename Universe Book 1) Read online

  Codename: Bear

  Secret Agent

  By Geoffrey C Porter

  Seventeenth Draft

  Copyright 2015, Geoffrey C Porter

  All rights reserved. Do not copy or distribute.

  ISBN-13: 978-1508949565

  ISBN-10: 1508949565

  Alpha Readers:

  Brian Hunter, Jeffrey Breault, and Melissa Boyd.

  Dedicated to Melissa J Boyd. Without her encouragement and relentlessness, this book would have never been written.

  Chapter Zero

  I was walking home from college, and two men in black suits were waiting outside our apartment. They walked right up to me, and one said, "Joshua Martin?"

  I said, "Josh, yeah."

  The other one said, "I'm agent Michaels. Will you come with us please?"

  I looked from one suited man to the other. "I have plans today. It's my birthday."

  The first one said, "I'm agent Jeffries. Come with us."

  "What's this about?"

  "We have some things we want to show you," Michaels said. "You have to come with us."

  I could tell by the bulges in their jackets that they were armed. I asked, "Do you guys have badges or something?"

  Both of them nodded.

  I said, "Can I see them?"

  Both of them reached into their coat pockets and withdrew ID cards. All the cards said was, "Agent Michaels" and "Agent Jeffries" nothing else. I sighed. "What's this about?"

  "You have to come with us," Michaels said. "It's a matter of national security."

  Jeffries nodded.

  I looked at their car. "Can I stow my books in the house?"

  Jeffries said, "Bring them."

  I went to the car to the back door, and Jeffries said, "Ride in the front. I'll ride in back."

  I climbed inside. Michaels drove. Neither spoke. They drove me out into the desert to a walled compound. The gate slid open as the car approached. We drove into an underground parking garage. I stepped out of the car. A woman about fifty approached and said, "Bear, you finally made it. And happy birthday!"

  I said, "Bear?"

  "That's your new name. Forget Joshua Martin. My name is Nancy. I'm the regional headmaster. I'll be overseeing your training."

  "Training? What training?"

  Nancy smiled. "It'll make more sense if I show you. Follow me."

  I looked at Michaels and Jeffries. They both nodded at me. Nancy took off in a quick walk through the parking garage to an elevator. I followed. I didn't like this. Who were these people? What Agency? What did they want with me?

  We rode the elevator up to the first floor, and Nancy led me to a door marked, "Traffic simulator." We went inside. Rows of what I could only describe as pods filled the room. Nancy said, "Get in."

  "What's going on?" I said.

  "I want you to try our driving simulator. You'll need to practice driving."

  I wanted to argue or fight or something. I got the feeling I wasn't going to get any answers. I stepped into the nearest pod. The screen lit up. The controls were exactly like a car's. Steering wheel. Clutch. Five speed standard transmission. I turned the key on. The engine revved to life. Nancy said, "Drive as fast as you can."

  I put the car in first and took off. The g-forces pulled on me. I drove down this twisty road, and the machine jerked me around through every corner. I started driving faster and faster, and the g-forces became stronger and stronger. They pulled me this way and that. Nancy chanted, "Faster, Bear. Faster."

  Finally I wrecked. Nancy said, "Do it again. Drive faster."

  I drove as fast as I could dodging in and out of traffic. Nancy said, "Don't be afraid to use the emergency lanes or incoming traffic lanes. The clock is ticking."

  I nodded. I started to sweat a little. The intensity of this game owned any driving game I'd ever played before. I became absorbed in it. Nancy said, "That's enough, Bear. Shut it down."

  I slowed the car, shut it off, and climbed out of the pod with a sinister grin on my face. "How does the pod do the g-forces?"

  "Chor'Tan technology."

  I said, "Chor'Tan?"

  "An alien species sympathetic to our cause."

  "Aliens?"

  Nancy nodded and smiled, which apparently was about all she knew how to do.

  I said, "Can I go home now?"

  Nancy shook her head. "Come on. I want to show you our martial arts training bot."

  I sighed. I really wanted to go home. Nancy started walking, and I followed. She led me to a giant room with a padded floor. She said, "Chan, on."

  An oriental man materialized, and I thought, wow, holograph. Nancy said, "Touch him."

  I reached out my finger and planted it on the holograph's chest expecting my finger to slide through him. My finger stopped. He was solid as a human. Nancy said, "Chan, defend."

  The apparition moved like lightning grabbing my hand with his left and my elbow with his right. He twisted my arm until I was helpless, but he didn't hurt me. He let go of me. I glared at him. I wanted to punch him, but I feared what would happen.

  Nancy said, "Try and punch him."

  I threw my right fist at him, and he deflected it smoothly at the wrist hard enough to throw my punch off, but not hard enough to hurt me.

  I looked to Nancy. "Explain."

  "We're an anti-crime agency, Bear. We hunt the most nefarious of criminals. We only expect you to complete ten missions, and then you can retire. We train you until you're ready, and you can flunk out of training."

  "Why me?"

  "Missions are quite dangerous, Bear. You have no family. We couldn't use you, if you had a family."

  "I have family. Melissa, Mom, Dad, Uncle Jim…"

  "Those are your foster parents. They've been helping you train over the years. Teaching you right from wrong. Showing you their love. They work for the Agency."

  I said, "I'm not interested."

  "You'd be doing a great service to your country."

  "I'm not a patriot."

  "Come to my office. I'd like to show you some pictures."

  I sighed. No pictures would sway me. The first picture was of a sixteen year old girl who had been tortured to death. The second was another torture victim. By the eighth or ninth picture, I felt sick.

  "All the work of one man, Centurian," Nancy said. "He's our greatest threat right now. You showed great promise in the driving simulator. You could stop Centurian. You could make a difference."

  I didn't say anything.

  "Being in training won't be like being in a jail, Bear," she said. "Melissa can visit you, even for overnight stays. You'll have private quarters. You can train at your own pace."

  I shook my head. "I need to finish college."

  "You can finish your courses online from our facility."

  "I have over thirty thousand dollars in student loans. When I finish school I might go for a Masters. If I don't, I'll need to get a job."

  "Consider your student loans erased, young man. The Agency takes care of its own."

  I wanted to say no. I really did. But my heart knew those pictures of Centurian's victims would plague me forever if I said no.

  Chapter One

  I wanted to check out the towers on each wall surrounding the campus. They weren't hard to find. Climbing up some stairs, I reached the top. A belt fed machine gun with pistons and pulleys controlling it was up there. The other contraption appeared to be a mortar, again with gears and such that made me think it was remote controlled. The machine gun had a camera sight on top.

  Melissa spent the night with me almost every day. It was nice. My
room was kind of small, but with space for a queen sized bed, a computer terminal, and a large table with chairs. Mostly I ate in the cafeteria, and the food was good. Healthy, but spicy and full of protein. A personal trainer worked out with me six days of the week with every other day upper body then lower body. Sixty minutes of cardio a day, sometimes swimming, sometimes running, other times bicycling.

  Thirty minutes a day, six days a week, I practiced pulling a pistol out of a holster and firing off a single shot. The computer said I did it quickly enough, but my accuracy lacked. I could hit the chest of a target, but if I aimed for a headshot, I often missed. In practice, I aimed for the heart.

  One of my classes was taught by Professor Henry. He taught information technology theory. How client server applications worked across the internet. How network components interacted. I enjoyed the class, but it was all theory. We never applied any of it.

  There was another class, of course. A law class. Two hours a day five days a week with up to one to two hours of homework a night. I had classmates, too. They were about half black, one fourth Asian or Indian, and a few whites. I don't know why I noticed their races. Growing up in such a segregated America, I was used to being around almost all whites.

  As I was leaving Henry's class one day, he pulled me off to the side. He thrust a paperback book into my hands. A big book. I looked at the title, Battlefield Earth. Henry smiled. "At your age, I enjoyed this book."

  I thanked him and went to my law class. Oh did I mention an hour a day six days a week was spent with the martial arts bot? The martial arts bot was fun. I was sore all the time.

  I bought a ring to give to Melissa. I was going to propose. Before I could give it to her, she said she had something important to discuss.

  "What is it?" I asked.

  She frowned. "I'm leaving you."

  No! "But I love you."

  "I love you, too, but I can't continue like this. I'm pregnant, and you have about two hours a month of free time for me and a baby."

  "You're pregnant! But you're on the pill."

  She turned away from me.

  I reached in my pocket and pulled out the ring. "I got you this. Let's get married!"

  She started to cry. "I wanted to give you a child. So you'd know you're line would continue. I'm leaving you. You'll never see the child."

  "That's a raw deal if I've ever heard of one!"

  She left. I let her go. I cried like the teenage boy that I was. No, I quit crying. I went to the range. Did my draw-the-weapon-and-squeeze-off-a-round. Every shot, the computer chirped, "Accuracy improved."

  After an hour, the computer started chirping. "Shot to the heart. Shot to the heart."

  I holstered the pistol and turned around. Henry was standing there. He grinned. "Your accuracy was improving, but your speed actually slowed down towards the end."

  "I was getting tired."

  He reached out and squeezed my right arm. "The more you train… Your service pistol will actually be one hundred grams lighter fully loaded."

  "That's dumb," I said. "I should train with the same exact thing I'm going to use in the field."

  "I agree with you. Come on, it's after midnight."

  "Tomorrow is Sunday. My one day of rest."

  He let out a little whistle. "Working you a little hard?"

  "Hard enough to drive away my girlfriend."

  "I'm sorry."

  "I loved her."

  "You're a man of duty now," Henry said. "You're dedicated to a higher purpose. You'll find a new woman. I'm sure."

  I walked away from him. Nancy was waiting outside my door. She looked pissed, too.

  "It's after lights out," she said.

  "This isn't a jail."

  Nancy showed off all her teeth. "That's right, but I was curious what was wrong."

  "Melissa left me."

  "I'm so sorry, Bear."

  "I was going to ask her to marry me."

  "Perhaps this is better," Nancy said. "With your schedule, you didn't have much time with her anyhow. You'll have more time for relationships after your training."

  I had better.

  Chapter Two

  Things were going well for a while. Having no woman sucked, or perhaps didn't suck, depending on how dirty my mind was at any given moment. I was halfway through Battlefield Earth, the book Henry had given me by L. Ron Hubbard. While the book was interesting and enjoyable, I didn't understand the lesson behind reading it. After class one day, I approached Professor Henry and asked him point blank why he gave me the book.

  "It's really not a big thing," he replied. "I have thousands of sci-fi books, and I try to give one to each student who passes through my classes."

  "There's no lesson in it?" I asked.

  "Not to my knowledge, but you never know with Hubbard."

  I thanked him and went about my day. One day I was having lunch with a buddy of mine, Jim. He was a tall fellow who was always smiling. He was in my classes, and we worked out together sometimes.

  "Artificially Intelligent Firewalls for a solid week!" He exclaimed between bites of nachos.

  "Firewalls are very important," I said.

  "I agree, but they either work or they don't. It's not like we're going to be recompiling them on the fly."

  I reached over and stole one of his nacho chips. I had a ham sandwich on my plate with potato chips, so a bit of nachos was not a bad thing. "I could see tweaking the artificial intelligence in the firewall on the fly. We may not be recompiling it, but changing the configuration."

  "I just think it's pointless. All this theory, and no applications."

  Theory is where it's at. The software modules are advancing so quickly there's no need to study a specific application right now. In three years, it'll be totally different. Better to not argue. I had very little free time, and Jim could argue theory versus application for days.

  A half hour to kill, and I didn't feel like reading. I wanted a hot shower. Turning the heat up until it steamed, I relaxed for a few minutes. There was a whistle behind me. I looked. A naked alien of some kind stood in the doorway. The first alien I'd seen, but I knew she was alien. She had light green scales over most of her skin. Her jaw was wide and her nose pointy.

  "I thought this was the female shower," she said with a toothy grin.

  I started getting a terrible boner, and I began to think. We're alone. We have the place to ourselves.

  "My name is Jo-Bear," I said clumsily.

  "Is ja-Bear a strange name for a human? My Earth-Name is Ussilla."

  "Ussilla is a pretty name for a beautiful woman."

  She blushed, but it didn't turn her skin pinkish or reddish since the skin was green. The shade of green in her cheeks turned a few hues darker. "Were you using your hand?"

  "Huh?" I asked.

  "You look kind of erect, or is that its natural state?"

  "This is for you, my delicious alien intruder."

  "If it's for me, you're standing too far away."

  Ussilla was pure muscle, and my gear barely fit, but it did fit in the end. She was from a planet that Earthlings called Polaris. Her species was the Chor'Tan. She seemed to know my schedule pretty well, and we became like a regular thing.

  I was asleep, and a terrible siren started shrieking. "Intruder alert. Intruder alert."

  Jumping out of bed, I wanted to go to my terminal, but something drove me to the drop box by my door first. There was a holster and a pistol waiting for me. I grabbed both and ran into the hall.

  "Perimeter breach. Lockdown." The siren screamed. Every door clicked. I was alone. I strapped the pistol on my hip. The communications terminal in the hallway beeped. My finger pushed the talk button.

  Nancy appeared on the screen. "We're under full scale assault, Bear. How many cadets made it out of their quarters?"

  "Me."

  "What do you mean 'Me'?"

  "I'm the only one who made it out in this wing."

  Nancy was in a hallway with a pistol on
her hip just like me. She looked down both corridors. The lights shut off, and emergency lights clicked on. The video died in the communication link. "Bear. I'm out. A few teachers are out. We've been infiltrated. A couple of senior class members are out. This is not a drill. Keep moving." The terminal clicked off.

  Keep moving, she said. I drew my pistol and made sure there was a round in the chamber. I holstered it and waited a few moments for my eyes to adjust to the lighting and my brain to process. Unknown odds. Think Josh, think. No, think, Bear, think. The central computer. The best place to tap into everything was the central computer. I ran to the elevators. The button lit up, but neither elevator moved. I took the stairs two at a time, all while trying to not make a sound. On reaching the bottom floor, I pushed through the double doors. The hallway was empty.

  Turning to look inside the central computer room, I stepped in.

  Henry was there typing on a terminal like nothing was wrong. I cleared my throat.

  "Oh, Bear! Great! You're out, too. You can help me."

  "What are you doing?" I asked.

  "Trying to either purge the main computer or restore the firewall. Right now we're bleeding secrets by the moment."

  I grabbed a terminal and started running diagnostics. The network traffic showed massive incoming packets but no outgoing. The firewalls were blocking everything. There was an anti-purge virus floating in the operating system. Henry was lying. I turned to face him.

  He drew his pistol, but I was faster. My aim was off a little bit though, and the bullet punched through his right chest.

  "Why!" I howled.

  "The drug… The drug… I didn't think anybody listened to my lectures…" Then he expired.

  I just killed my favorite teacher! I counted him as a friend. And now what, he's traitor?!

  Nancy's voice carried from one of the terminals. "Anyone?"

  "Bear, here," I said.

  "There are more intruders. Is Professor Henry dead?"

  "Yes."

  The voice cut to static. A young man still in his boxers stepped into the room. I had my pistol out, and he didn't draw.

  "I'm Cat Nine," he said. "I'm a senior. We haven't met."