Free By Other Means by Evan Currie

you’re any less committed than I am.”
    “Good, then next time think.” She told him, “This is my job, and I’m going to do my job.”
    Ruger closed his eyes, “Madame Ambassador, if you get yourself killed by some alien assassin, we’ll be at war within the week.”
    “And if I don’t do my job, we’ll be at war by the end of the year,” She told him, “and you know it, Admiral.”
    And there it was.
    Ruger slumped, knowing that she wasn’t blowing smoke. The truce was tentative, fragile. It rested largely on the fact that no one seemed to know what the hell happened to Task Force Valkyrie and the Alliance fleet. That lack of knowledge scared the Alliance, hell it scared SOLCOM too, but the alliance had more to lose.
    SOLCOM knew they were on the shit end of the stick, the Alliance only believed they were.
    Finally he nodded, “Alright, fine, you’ve made your point. I still want security doubled. Aida, you go with them whenever the Admiral is in public.”
    “Now hold on a minute!” Swift snapped, stepping into the fray for the first time. “Let’s be straight here,
she
isn’t qualified for this.”
    Sorilla snorted.
    That earned her dark looks from Swift and Ruger, but they otherwise ignored her.
    “
She
is a SOCOM operative, highly decorated, and…”
    “and not trained in personal protection,” Swift growled, actually cutting the Admiral off.
    Sorilla pursed her lips, not quite whistling, but he had to give Swift credit for sheer balls. Either that or he was dumber than she thought he was, which she wasn’t certain was possible.
    Ruger pinned him with a glare a boot camp washout would have read as a warning to shut the hell up, but Swift just ignored it entirely.
    “My team is the best at what we do. We don’t need her tripping us up, screwing our operation. Protection details are delicate jobs, we’re trained for this,” Swift growled.
    “He’s not wrong,” Sorilla said quietly, finally opening her mouth. “They taught me in boot camp that stopping a bullet was a bad thing.”
    Ruger and Swift both shot her acid glares, but Ambassador Desol laughed outright.
    “Can I take it from your decision to enter this conversation,
finally
, that you have an alternate suggestion, Major?” Miram asked.
    “I’ve been made.” Sorilla said simply. “That enemy Operator, he either knows who I am or he’s almost there. They know we’re expecting trouble, no reason for me to be here otherwise, same way we know they’re expecting trouble.”
    Ruger looked sharply at her, “Are you sure he recognized you?”
    “He didn’t.” Sorilla said, waving to a screen on the wall.
    It lit up, showing the Lucian and a pale thin humanoid whispering in his ear. The Lucian seemed uninterested at first, until the pale speaker said something that caught his attention. His eyes darted directly in Sorilla’s direction, and he stared unabashedly at her for some time.
    “Whoever that speaker was, he’s the brains.” Sorilla said, “I’m guessing a behavioral specialist, but it could be anything really. I don’t think I was ever spotted clear enough for the Alliance to have a file on me, unless the Lucian has implants like mine. If he did, though, he should have recognized me himself, and we’ve never found anything that looks like implanted augmentation in any of the bodies we’ve autopsied. No, something tipped the pale one there. We have any idea what species that is?”
    “Sin Fae,” Miram answered, shaking her head, “They were in the public brief we got from the Alliance. Traders mostly, merchants, that sort of thing. We don’t have anything more on them, they’re not a particularly important species in the Alliance.”
    Sorilla raised an eyebrow, “If that’s the case, why are they represented here?”
    Miram shrugged, “The Alliance is a bureaucracy, there could be any number of reasons.”
    “Or they might be more important than anyone wants to let on,” Sorilla suggested. “Let’s