Do No Evil (Aeon Trilogy Book 2)

Chapter 13

Willy sighed as he saved the personnel files he had been working on. Apparently, General James Widelane had an urgent military matter that needed discussion, and Reverend Cruz had summoned her entire cabinet to a hastily scheduled meeting at noon.

Since Cruz had raised her concerns about Widelane, Willy had taken some time to look into the man's background. Despite the fact that Widelane was technically Willy's commander and Willy was charged with assembling the forces Widelane was meant to command, he had not had many interactions with the head of the Separatist military.

Willy had found a number of old performance reviews about Widelane in a personnel database the Separatists had stolen from the Pentagon. Widelane had been promoted to Brigadier General at a relatively young age. But since then, he had been passed over for promotion twice. Willy had only been able to review some of Widelane's service record, but he strongly suspected Widelane's failure to advance beyond Brigadier was because his limitations were becoming obvious to the promotion committees.

Willy had found performance evaluations written about Widelane early in his career, which openly praised him for being a genius at motivating men and planning risky tactical maneuvers. But his more recent performance reviews used elliptical language to avoid saying anything very clearly. Based on his experience decoding the bureaucratic language used to criticize senior officers, Willy determined that the General didn't have the nuanced mind required to evaluate the complex, long-term threats that the most senior military commanders needed to master.

It was also clear from the personnel files that Widelane had only defect to the Separatists after being informed he'd been slated for mandatory retirement from the US military. Apparently, he had not been ready to hang up his uniform. Maybe Cruz was right and he had a chip on his shoulder. Or maybe he just wanted to go home to Texas.

Whatever Widelane's motivations, in return for switching sides he'd received a double promotion to Lieutenant General and been appointed to be head of the entire Separatist military apparatus. Willy could understand why Cruz had jumped at the chance to have a decorated general leading her forces. But Widelane's appointment must have been one of her worst decisions. If Widelane's mental rigidity made him unsuitable to wear two stars in the US military during peacetime, it made him doubly unsuited to wear three stars in the Separatist military as it struggled with amorphous threats from all corners.

***

Nick Lal looked down at the shackles that bound his hands to the bare steel table and sighed.

He heard a metallic clanging and looked up to see General Jaeger entering the room, staring at him with his contemptuous grey eyes.

Nick wished it was Sarah, not Jaeger, who conducted his interrogations. Then he could look forward to them, instead of dreading them. But he hadn't seen Sarah since the day he'd been blindfolded and put into the automobile several days ago.

Because the GPS in his MindWave had been deactivated with all of its other features, he didn't know where the drive had started or where he'd ended up. It had been a long journey, and he thought the air in the new location was slightly different - maybe a little more humid, because the skin on his lips wasn't dried out anymore. But that was all he knew.

As far as he could tell, Sarah had not come with him to the new location. Jaeger and the soldiers that reported to him had continued to avoid directly answering any of his questions about Sarah's whereabouts, except to hint that she was on a special assignment from which she'd eventually return.

"Good afternoon, Nick," said Jaeger in a sarcastic tone as he scraped his metal chair across the tile floor. "How are you enjoying your stay at our new facility?"