The artist understood his audience. It was the dome that had sold the project, but the real treasure lay beneath LUNa’s surface in the honeycombs of tunnels and living spaces currently under construction for the three million people that would eventually live here.
Ban took his position at her door as she surveyed the waiting readouts on her desktop. Would the politicians ever really get serious about living off-planet? The Moon had been inhabited for decades by helium-3 and mineral extraction crews, but not yet by ordinary citizens. Meanwhile, on Mars, Taulke Industries was busy building its own Mars Station. The next step, Taulke promised, would be a terraforming miracle. Anthony Taulke was certainly a genius, but more often than not, his public addresses seemed more hype than history in the making.
Ming’s personal comm channel pulsed her a new message. She bit her lip at seeing the beautiful face framed in blonde locks and checked her display’s chronometer. Had she forgotten dinner with Lily again?
No, she still had another 45 minutes in her shift. She and Lily had agreed that there would be no personal comms during working hours, barring an emergency. That said, Lily sometimes had difficulty with discerning a perceived emergency from an actual one. Ming accepted the call.
“What’s up, Lil?” She kept her voice light, happy. They were about to embark on a two-day leave together. The last thing she wanted was a lover’s quarrel.
“You have a visitor,” Lily whispered, her eyes darting to the side.
“From work? Tell them to come to my office.”
“Not from work.” Lily’s voice was urgent. “I think you’d better come home now, sweetie. She doesn’t look like someone who’s used to waiting. On anything.”
“Who is it? Did she give you a name?”
“Her card says Xi Qinlao,” Lily said. “It’s an actual paper business card.”
Ming’s mouth went dry. With a wave of her hand, she indicated Ban should close her office door.
“She’s a board member from Qinlao Manufacturing,” Lily continued. “She says she knows you.” Her tone rose hopefully. “Maybe she’s here to offer you a job?”
“Listen to me, Lily,” Ming said, more harshly than she meant to. She tried to swallow and found it difficult. “This is very important. Don’t tell that woman anything about me—about us . Just don’t say anything at all. I’ll be home as fast as I can.”
“Do you—”
“Don’t say anything! ”
Ming swept out of her office, surprising Ban, who bolted after her. Her home was ten levels beneath the surface, a quarter mile to the north. And the corridors would be full of off-shift workers looking for drink and diversion.
Ming had maintained her Earth muscle tone with regular workouts and pharmaceuticals. Taking advantage of the light lunar gravity, she bypassed the elevator, descending the stairs three at a time and hopping the railing to avoid the dense foot traffic. Ban, with his moonsoft muscles, struggled to keep up.
How had her aunt found her? More to the point, why had she bothered? And why come all the way to the Moon personally?
Any answer Ming could find to any of those questions wasn’t good. And the thought of family politics reinserting itself into her life—her well-ordered, comfortable, purpose-driven life—frightened as much as angered her.
She paused at the door to her quarters to compose herself and catch her breath. Ban caught up to her, his chest heaving. “Everything okay, ma’am?”
Her own breathing under control now, Ming’s heart still raced. “No, Ban. Everything is far from okay.”
She opened the door.
• • •
Xi Qinlao was a woman of terrible beauty. Tall even by European standards, rake-thin, with high cheekbones and wideset eyes, the woman could have graced the cover of any fashion magazine—in fact, she had in her youth. But there was a hardness about her now, a coldness in her gaze suggesting her beauty simply was skin deep .
She stood when Ming entered, her silken robes making a soft shush in the stillness of the room. Ming took three steps into the apartment and bowed deeply, a reflexive sign of respect she’d been taught long ago.
“Auntie Xi. Welcome.”
Ming’s voice fought to get the expected words out. Her least-favorite aunt had invaded her home, the refuge she’d made with Lily. Now that she was face to face with her aunt, fear outpaced the anger roiling in her gut.
Her aunt returned the bow but remained silent. She made a show of looking Ming up and down, then casting her glare around the apartment. The place was a mess as usual, with blankets and pillows bunched on the loveseat where she and Lily left them after watching vids last night. The bedroom door was ajar, and their bed was a sea of jumbled blankets and discarded clothes. The old woman’s stony gaze lingered longest on Lily before returning to her niece.
Ming’s gaze flitted to Ito, her aunt’s bodyguard. He stood stiff in his charcoal gray uniform like a knight in ancient armor, the Qinlao logo embroidered on the sleeve. When she was just a girl, Ito had been her father’s bodyguard as well as Ming’s self-defense trainer. Thanks to him she knew how to kill a person twelve different ways.
One for each sign of the zodiac, he’d once joked. She’d felt closer to him than almost anyone else in her family’s circle. The skin around Ito’s dark eyes softened, and his chin ticked down in a barely perceptible nod.
“What’s going on here, babe?” Lily asked, bringing her back to the present. Dressed in loose clothes, her blouse spotted with drops from last night’s dinner, Lily looked nervous but also excited. Ming could see she was braless and her golden hair was pulled up in a messy topknot, speared through with a plastic chopstick. A rushed attempt to make herself presentable to visitors.
“Introduce us, Niece,” Xi said. There was challenge in her voice, not a genuine desire to meet Ming’s lover.
“Lily, this is my Aunt Xi…” Ming began formally, then trailed off.
She’d never told Lily that her father was the CEO of Qinlao Manufacturing; never told her anything about her past at all, really. Qinlao was a common enough surname in China.
It was a fair trade; she knew very little of Lily’s past. They’d been happy in their ignorance of one another, each content with the romance of a new relationship. Even last year, when Ming bought out Lily’s construction contract, her girlfriend had never asked where the money came from. Ming’s trust fund, of course. Would she have told Lily if she’d asked? Or would Ming continue to pretend that part of her life had never existed?
Auntie Xi’s disapproving gaze brought color to Ming’s cheeks and sharpened her focus. Ming cleared her dry throat to continue: “Aunt Xi is my father’s sister.”
“So your father works for Qinlao Manufacturing?” Lily asked.
Ming pleaded with her eyes. Please, please, Lil, stop talking. I’ll explain it all later, I promise .
“Yes,” Ming said quickly, cutting off further questions. “Auntie Xi—”
“Young lady,” Xi interrupted with the air of a queen educating a servant, “her father was Qinlao Manufacturing. ”
“I don’t understand,” Lily said.
“Ming’s father was the CEO and founder of Qinlao, the company was named for him.” Xi’s gaze swiveled to Ming with all the subtlety of a cannon. “Pack whatever you don’t want to leave behind, but be quick about it. I’m here to take you home, Niece.”
“Wait,” Lily said. “You can’t just sweep in here and take her away. I don’t care how much money you have, lady. Ming and I live here. She has a job here. We’re going on holiday! We love each other.”
Ming held up a hand to silence Lily. Her ears rang. She regarded Ito again and still saw the softness in his eyes for her. Not the softness of nostalgia, she realized. The softness of pity.
Her aunt had spoken of her father in the past tense. Her father was the CEO of Qinlao Manufacturing, Auntie Xi had said.
A weight that had nothing to do with gravity settled on Ming’s shoulders. There was only one r
eason her aunt would come all this way.
“What the hell is going on?” Lily asked.
“What happened?” Ming snapped at her aunt, desperate with a pressing need to know.
Xi shook her head. Even the granite façade of the fierce woman’s features cracked for a moment.
Ming’s legs weakened. She took a quick step to the loveseat and settled, shaking, into its mound of blankets. They still smelled of popcorn and Lily’s perfume.
Lily appeared beside her, arms encircling her in a lover’s embrace that was warm, alive, comfortable .
It took effort for Ming to drag her eyes up to her aunt’s face. Was there really less gravity on the Moon?
The old woman’s eyes were flat. “Dead. Your father is dead.”
Chapter 4
Remy Cade • Airspace over Alaska
The UN dropship banked again so the press corps could get aerial footage of the Alaskan wilderness before they landed. Remy Cade fitted his rebreather over his nose and mouth and blinked to life the retinal display in his right eye.
Somewhere below them, in that tangle of underbrush, were the last remaining fragments of the once-great North American caribou herd. As a kid, Remy had seen history vids of caribou herds numbering in the thousands loping across the frozen tundra.
But that memory felt to him now like something from science fiction. Today, the term herd when applied to the caribou was almost a sick joke.
The whole situation felt … wrong. Why would the caribou herd migrate here, this far north? The dropship, ironically named Abundance , had had to lift off a US Navy carrier in the Beaufort Sea above the Arctic Circle just to get here.
The UN Biodiversity Section had tracked the herd for days as it made its way across the barren landscape. They seemed drawn to this stinking, swampy little valley, as if this was where they’d chosen to make their last stand as a species. Hopes were high that some instinctive gene was guiding them to a safe place.
And then, this morning, the devastating news: the herd had scanned positive for chronic wasting disease. They had to be destroyed.
In Remy’s mind, a small tactical weapon launched from the carrier in the Beaufort Sea would have been the most efficient means of dispatch. But sending a missile that costs tens of thousands of dollars would have been the very definition of overkill. And the optics would have been terrible.
One thing was certain—when politics and science hopped into bed together, things were never that easy. The United Nations resolution 641.D.5 required any extinction event of a land-based species to be personally attended by the UN’s Secretary of Biodiversity. It was Elise Kisaan’s job to personally sign the death warrant of the caribou, yet another species lost to the cruel whims of Mother Earth.
And it was Remy Cade’s job to protect her. As her bodyguard—and lover—wherever Elise went, Remy was by her side.
Always the newshound, Elise decided to make a photo op out of the death of the caribou. It would accomplish two things, she’d said: draw attention to the sad passing of another victim species of the climate war and demonstrate the commitment of the United States to protecting its citizens.
He surveyed the three soldier escorts carefully selected from UN member nations where Elise needed to strengthen her image. The rest of her entourage included a gaggle of media people, camera drones perched on their shoulders, who peppered Elise with questions.
Remy ignored them. Half their questions were inane and the other half sought to trap Elise into saying something to embarrass the United Nations.
Despite her seeming dispassion—a trait Remy had come to accept as necessary in a job where she pronounced the death of a species on a regular basis—he knew Elise Kisaan to be a caring person. It was the juxtaposition of those two things that had so intrigued him about her, that set her apart from the rest of the fish in the sea. He knew from personal experience how passionate she could be in private.
One of the camera drones turned its all-seeing eye his way, and Remy turned away from force of habit. His security filter was set to private , so his image should be auto-stripped from any newsfeeds, but one could never be too careful when dealing with the media.
As the Abundance made its final approach to the landing zone, the rotten-egg stench of methane releasing from thawing tundra filled the cabin, and with it his sense of unease. Even with his rebreather in place, the air still reeked.
Remy caught the eyes of the three men forming their military escort and tapped his temple.
“Stay frosty,” he pulsed to them.
The two grunts nodded. The third, the sergeant with the name tag Rico , rolled his eyes. Remy resisted the urge to march across the cargo bay and instill some respect in him. As the man in charge of the squad, he should respect Remy’s position as Elise’s bodyguard. That would solve nothing except provide the press corps with footage that would no doubt embarrass the secretary.
The Abundance settled gracefully, landing struts sinking deep into the mushy permafrost. The putrid smell of vegetation increased tenfold. Some members of the group tightened their rebreathers.
Everyone gathered at the top of the ramp. Elise waited till the press drones were lined up and focused on her.
“We’ll proceed into the valley in three teams, find each animal, take a DNA sample to confirm wasting disease, then deliver a fast-acting toxin to put the suffering creatures out of their misery quickly and painlessly.”
As the only child of Indian agriculture magnate Aarav Kisaan, she’d been bred for a role in public life. And yet, when she spoke like this, it was easy to believe she had the animals’ well-being at heart. That tension of caring and coldness within this remarkable woman stoked his heart, as it always did.
And he knew her to be a woman of unusual personal strength. When he’d first met Elise, she’d been confined to a maglev chair by a nervous system disorder. When it was revealed she could walk again, the official reason given to the public was a never-well-defined surgical intervention. Questions for details were met with requests for privacy.
His eyes moved over her body as she discussed “necessary measures” and the “sacrifice of one species for the greater good.” No one in the press corps would have guessed she stood before them on two bionic legs. In bed, Remy called her the Billion Dollar Woman .
“Can you talk about containment, Ms. Kisaan?” A young woman from the YourVoice network asked, a news drone perched on her shoulder.
“Of course.” Elise pulled her dead-straight ebony hair back into a ponytail and secured it with a silver ring. Remy suspected it was a maneuver meant to buy her time to formulate a politic answer. Or maybe just to make sure her face wasn’t blocked for the camera.
“In addition to treating these magnificent animals with the respect they deserve, we also want to be sure there’s no chance of this disease jumping species,” Elise explained. “After we depart, the entire area will be covered with a foam shield to neutralize any contamination. Then we’ll compost all organic matter so it can be reabsorbed by the local environment. Within a few months, this entire area will have regrown.”
Elise had a long, thin face with deep, brown eyes and a perpetual frown. She was a serious person, but plain looking—until she smiled. Then her features blossomed from withering to warm.
She was smiling now, capturing the attention of everyone in the loading bay. Everyone except the short, stocky man from the Chinese state media. He seemed unimpressed by the attractive young secretary’s poise.
Raising his hand, he said, “But couldn’t this entire situation have been avoided if the United States had confined these animals to a secure location? That was recommended by the United Nations more than a decade ago. By letting them trek hundreds of miles across open country, you’ve potentially exposed many other species to a dangerous strain of wasting disease. ”
Elise focused her attention on the man, who glowered back. Remy thought her smile looked forced now.
“The policy of the United States is
to let nature take its course.” Her words sounded forced, too. She had vented to him in the past and her personal thoughts were not in line with the UN. “Mother Nature has spoken. If it’s one thing we’ve learned in the last century or so, it’s that we really shouldn’t argue with her.”
She pulsed a message to Remy: “Make sure he’s not with me .”
Remy nodded.
The atmosphere outside the ship was borderline toxic. The rebreathers dealt with the methane, but the stench made Remy’s eyes water. The valley was the size of a city block, like a shallow bowl in the mostly flat landscape. In the hazy distance, Remy thought he could make out a mountain range. Maybe these caribou were headed to the mountains and couldn’t make it.
In his retinal display, Remy noted the soldiers had gridded the search area and had already made team assignments. Because of the thick underbrush and dense trees, each team would maintain an open channel to avoid someone getting lost. Embracing that basic protocol reassured Remy, but the gnawing fear that something was out of place wouldn’t go away.
Sergeant Rico handed out a type of wide-webbed shoe, patterned like a snowshoe, that would allow them to walk across the marshy earth without sinking in. Remy said in a low voice, “Keep your eyes open down there.”
Rico shrugged. “Hey, man, I just work here.”
Remy glared at the sergeant. Soldiers hated private contractors, and they weren’t shy about showing it. He wondered if he should pull Elise out of the op right here and now. Technically, his contract with the Kisaan family gave him the authority to do whatever was necessary to ensure her safety, but the news cameras … Elise would be furious. And the last thing he wanted to deal with was an upset Elise.
Better to work fast, get this op done, and get her back on the ship as soon as possible. Fingering the Glock on his hip, Remy swallowed his pride and followed Elise into the valley.
The Lazarus Protocol: A Sci-Fi Corporate Technothriller (The SynCorp Saga Book 1) Page 3