Spaceside

by Michael Mammay

  Perhaps the best part of the simulation facility was the full-service bar attached to it, complete with comfortable faux-leather stools and fancy high tables. They had a great whiskey selection, too, which I took advantage of because we were on the corporate bill and I planned to take public transportation home anyway. I sipped on my second very expensive Ferra Three single malt.

  A table over, Phillip Tannard, an asshole from accounting, held court, reliving the action of the battle loudly, with half a dozen followers gathered around him listening. “It was just me, alone in a room facing down the most infamous soldier in the galaxy. The Scourge of Cappa. He had me dead to rights, but I was faster.”

  It had been Tannard who shot me when I froze, but I didn’t correct his story. His version sounded better than the truth, and everybody liked a good story. I smiled and raised my glass to him, then downed it and signaled for another. This was part of the job. They didn’t expect me to do much in the office, but they liked to have the famous guy from the war around. Somehow it made them feel good to be near me.

  Sheila Jackson slid onto a stool across from me as the waiter brought my next drink. She’d changed into a sharp-looking gray suit with a knee length skirt, and somehow looked put together despite having come off the same fake battlefield as the rest of us. She was the one person at VPC I considered a real friend, and she was about to lecture me on something. With friends you can tell.

  “Are you okay?” she asked. “Don’t pay any attention to Tannard. He’s an asshole.”

  “He is. But I’m fine,” I said. She stared me down. “What? Really. I’m fine.”

  “You know we all had video feeds once we got killed, right? We all saw you enter that room.” She sipped a glass of red wine.

  I sighed and took a drink, savoring the rich flavor of the whiskey. “Right. I forgot about that.” Javier Sanchez, the CEO, approached, saving me from further analysis.

  “Carl! Good fight out there.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “It’s a great simulation. Very realistic.”

  “I thought we had you dead when it was fifteen to three, but you really showed us. You caught me on the roof with artillery. How come you didn’t bring out that strategy earlier?”

  “Didn’t think of it,” I lied. It was easier to let it go, now that the battle had ended and I had a drink in my hand. He signed my check, but I didn’t owe him the truth on this one.

  He smiled a big CEO smile. I think he sensed my falsehood. “Right. It was definitely good for the team. Thanks.”

  I fake-smiled back and raised my glass, playing the good employee. “Of course. Anytime.”

  “You could have gotten out of it,” said Sheila, after Javier left us.

  I gave her a half smile, real this time. “What would be the point? They pay me well and don’t ask much of me. I can do this one thing.”

  She hesitated. “Sure. I get it. Okay. But take care of yourself, yeah?”

  “Of course.” I saw where she was going, and I didn’t want to take that trip at the moment. Thankfully, the waiter saved me, handing me a new whiskey. I spent several seconds swirling it and watching the ripples of water course through the amber liquor until Sheila got the hint and changed the subject.

  Chapter Two

  “So you froze? What does that mean?” Dr. Baqri had brought her chair out from behind her desk, close to me. Psychiatry 101. Somehow the desk represented something coming between us, so she took it out of the way.

  “You’re the doctor. Aren’t you supposed to tell me what it means? I locked up. Couldn’t pull the trigger. I don’t know why.”

  “What made you think going into a military simulation was a good idea?”

  I leaned back in the expensive office chair. It had a mesh back and excellent lumbar support. Nothing but first class. “I don’t know. It didn’t seem like a big deal, and it’s kind of part of the job.”

  “I think your boss would have understood if you sat out the event,” she said.

  “I’m sure he would have. But I didn’t want to bring it up, you know? People don’t like knowing that they’re working around crazy people.”

  She shook her head and annotated something in her notebook. “We’ve talked about that word.”

  “Yeah. Sorry,” I said.

  “Besides, it’s not like they don’t know what you’ve been through. It’s pretty well documented in the public domain.”

  I half snorted. “Yeah, I know.” We’d been over that before. The inability to get away from the spotlight, people knowing me—or thinking they knew me—everywhere I went.

  “Do you want to talk about that? People thinking they know what you’ve been through?”

  “Not really.”

  She sighed. “Carl, this only works if you’re willing to talk.”

  I tried to force a happy face. “What’s there to say that I haven’t said? I killed a shitload of people. I have to live with it.”

  “There are a lot of people who consider you a hero for what you did.” She was right. Half the galaxy saw me as some sort of military savior.

  “Sure. And a lot of people are assholes,” I said. “The other half think I’m a monster.”

  “And what do you think?”

  I hesitated a second, then laughed. “You’re so good, Doc. You always bring it back around to me.”

  She smiled, and it seemed genuine. “Well that’s kind of the job, isn’t it? But since you don’t want to talk about that, let’s go in another direction. How are you sleeping?”

  “Fine,” I said.

  She shook her head. “I think you’re lying, Carl.” Smart lady. I rarely fooled her.

  “Okay. It’s the same. I don’t sleep much, and when I do, I have the dreams.”

  “Have they gotten any better?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “You know there are medications we could—”

  “We’ve been over this, Doc. No drugs.”

  “Alcohol is a drug,” she said.

  “It is. It’s one I know, though. I’ve had a lot of practice. The chemical stuff, I don’t want to mess with that. I never quite know how it’s going to affect me.”

  She sighed again. A lot of our sessions ended with her sighing. I didn’t do it on purpose. I guess I wasn’t ready to get better.

  I left my appointment and headed to my job late, which nobody noticed, or if they did they didn’t say anything, which also worked. I got coffee and sat behind my computer terminal pretending to read email. I mostly checked sports news. The information technology folks almost certainly monitored that, but again, nobody ever said anything, so I didn’t care.

  My office had clear walls, which on a good day gave me a measure of privacy in a mostly open-floor-plan building. On bad days it reminded me of a fishbowl, where people could view the mass murderer behind the glass from a safe distance. The placard on my door said Deputy Vice President, Security. Technically that title came with a set of duties, protecting Varitech Production Company from all the dangers of the corporate battlefield. In practice, I showed up for corporate events like the war game, and I used the few contacts I had left in the military to arrange meetings for sales reps or to push a new project. It paid well and nobody shot at me.

  The knock on my door echoed with that funny sound that rapping on fake glass makes. I waved for them to enter without looking up. My friend Sheila wouldn’t have knocked, and other than her I didn’t care. Someone from my team of fifteen or so underlings probably wanted me to sign something.

  “Colonel Butler?”

  “Carl,” I said. No matter how many times I told people, they insisted on the title. I looked up and made eye contact. I didn’t recognize the woman in the door. She wore a corporate uniform—charcoal business suit—and had her auburn hair pulled back in a bun. I was pretty sure she didn’t work for me but not confident enough to say so and risk embarrassment.

  “Sir, there’s been a security breach, and Mr. Sanchez would like to speak to you about it.�
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  “Mr. Sanchez wants to speak to me about it? That seems unlikely. Are you sure he didn’t want my boss?” Javier Sanchez and I had talked on many occasions, but none of those instances involved my actual job.

  “He was quite clear, sir.”

  “Huh.” I stood. “He could have had his secretary send me a meeting notification.”

  “I did, sir.”

  I glanced at my monitor. “Oh. Sorry about that.”

  She gave me a pretend smile that said I should hurry up. I glanced at my shirt and wished for a moment that I’d spent a few more seconds with the iron that morning, and then followed her to the elevator and up to the top floor.

  I’d been to the top floor of the VPC building once before, when they hired me, but I’d mostly forgotten it. It had the same open plan as every other floor of the building except for the four corners, which had opaque-walled offices. Efficient workers sat at efficient desks, speaking softly into communicators or tapping through data on screens. The air seemed to muffle the sound. I followed my guide to the largest of the corner offices. She paused at a desk outside it and said something I couldn’t hear into a device. A moment later, the office door whooshed open and a very fit-looking Sanchez walked out, smiling. He was close to sixty, so about my age by calendar, but more than a decade older because of all my cryo time. If I was a proud man, it might have hurt my feelings that he could easily pass for ten years younger than me. His jet-black hair didn’t show a touch of gray and only the slightest crinkles marred his brown face, right around the eyes. Okay, it hurt my feelings a little.

  “Carl. Good to see you.” He strode toward me and I met him halfway and shook his hand.

  “No problem, Javier. Sorry I’m late.” He insisted that I call him by his first name, though he didn’t do that with everybody. I think he wanted to give people the impression we were closer than we actually were. But the boss is the boss, and it didn’t bother me as long as they kept hitting send on my pay transfers.

  He made an exaggerated face of dismissal. “You’re not late. Come on in.”

  His massive office had two glass walls. Unlike mine, they were huge ones that looked out over a wonderful view of East Park and the city. He walked across the expensive blue carpet to an ornately crafted wooden hutch. “Drink?”

  I checked my device for the time. Eleven in the morning. “Still part of the duty day.”

  He waved me off. “You’re not in the army anymore, Carl. Besides, I’m the boss and I insist. It’s Ferra Three. The twenty year.”

  I looked at the bottle he held up, which cost about three hundred marks. “Well I can’t say no to that.”

  “Smart man.” He poured a generous amount of whiskey into each of two crystal glasses, splashed in a little water and handed me one. I breathed it in, and then took a sip, savoring it. We stood in silence for a few moments. The Ferra Three had waited twenty years, so it demanded a little respect.

  “So I’m guessing you didn’t call me up here only for the wonderful whiskey,” I said.

  He smiled. “That obvious?”

  I shrugged. “It’s not every day that someone opens a bottle of booze that costs more than most people earn in a day.”

  “Sometimes it’s good to enjoy the finer things.” He gestured to a large, straight-backed wooden chair and I took a seat. He pulled another one around and set it at an angle to mine, so we were close, but not directly staring at each other. It was “make-your-guest-comfortable” perfection that I’m guessing he read in a book somewhere. “There’s a security issue that I want you to look into.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t speak for what must have been a little too long, because he spoke again. “You are in security, after all.”

  “I am. And forgive me if nobody told you this . . . I’d have thought they would have. I don’t actually do much with security.”

  His face tightened. “No, I’m aware.”

  “But you want me on this anyway,” I said, so he wouldn’t have to. Once you know where the boss is going, it’s good to help him get there.

  “I think it fits your skill set.”

  “Does Wong know?” Xi Wong was VP of Security, and my boss.

  “He’s aware of the issue. Have you heard of Omicron Technology?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Everyone has. Weapons, military engines, drones, medical . . . all the stuff that pays.”

  “Five days ago someone breached their network.”

  “Wow. That’s big.” I took a sip of my drink. “How deep did they get?”

  “All the way.”

  I whistled. “That’s really big. But what does that have to do with us?”

  Javier took another sip of his whiskey. “On the surface, nothing. I might even be happy for their misfortune, since some of our business interests overlap. But there’s more to this. Whoever hit them . . . it was something unexpected. Omicron has the best security money can buy.”

  “And you’re worried it could happen to us.”

  “Exactly,” he said.

  “Got it. What did the attack do? What were they after?”

  “Omicron isn’t exactly opening up about it, for obvious reasons. That’s where you come in. Omicron employs a bunch of ex-military folks. Reach out, see what you can learn. And see what we might be able to do to protect ourselves.”

  I considered it, running over the scenario in my mind. To do it right called for more of an intelligence operative than somebody with my background, and somebody who had some experience with computer networks, but I could probably find a contact. I took another sip of my drink to buy me a second to think. “Who do you have for my team?”

  “I want to keep it quiet,” he said. “I’ll give you somebody from legal to consult, but that’s it.”

  “Legal?”

  “It’s sensitive, poking around another company,” he said. “We don’t want to get into trouble.”

  I kept my face neutral. What he was really saying was that he didn’t want to get caught. That could be tricky, because anybody I approached who might talk to me would potentially talk about me, too. It was his decision, though, and not unreasonable. I’d find a way to make it work. “How much do we know already? What sort of starting point do I have?”

  The side of his mouth quirked up slightly. He knew he had me hooked. “What do you need?”

  “Anything we know about how the breach happened. Even if we only know who reported it.”

  “We don’t know much. There’s been nothing public.”

  Of course not. I don’t know why I bothered asking. “Let’s start with an easy one, then. How did you learn about it?”

  He looked away from me, pretended to examine his liquor, but he was thinking. Something confidential, then. A source above my pay grade.

  “I need somewhere to start,” I prompted. “At least give me a hint. Your source. Is it military, political, inside of Omicron?”

  “Military,” he said.

  I didn’t respond for a few seconds, hoping that the awkward silence would prompt him to say more. A lot of people can’t handle silence. Something flipped in Javier. A small something, but significant. His face hardened a tiny bit, and I knew he’d finished speaking on the matter. “I know it’s not much. See what you can do,” he said.

  “Sure.” I downed the rest of my drink. I had thin information, but life or death didn’t hang in the balance. I’d do what I could with what I had. “Who’s my contact at legal?”

  “Jacques Dernier will meet you at your office. Make sure you keep him in the loop. We don’t want trouble.”

  I didn’t want a lawyer hanging around, but Javier’s body language didn’t allow for further debate. “Great. I’ll make an initial assessment of the situation and report back on what I’ll need to do from there. Give me two days.”

  His face relaxed slightly. “Good. I knew I had the right man.”

  As promised, the lawyer waited for me in my office, sitting up straight in the one chair I had
for guests. He stood when I arrived, slightly taller than me, younger, with his black hair in a style I referred to as “executive number one.” He offered his hand. “Jacques Dernier.”

  “Carl Butler,” I said, returning the handshake.

  “I’ve been detailed to work for you,” he said. “I’ve taken the liberty of creating a joint page where we can share documents and information. It’s in your system, and all my contact information is there as well.”

  “Great.” I walked around my desk and sat. Jacques sat as well, and waited for me to speak. I toggled my screen on and saw what he’d set up for us. Efficient.

  I decided right then to cut him out of everything.

  Javier told me to share with legal, and I’d fake it a little bit so I didn’t get in trouble, but I kind of wanted to see what would happen if I didn’t. Javier might get pissed, but he wouldn’t fire me. Not without a warning. The main thing was that I didn’t need a lawyer. I didn’t have any plans yet, legal or illegal, and until I did he’d get in the way and ask annoying questions. I ignored Jacques and started searching the company directory for his name.

  “Is there anything you need me to do?” he asked, after several awkward minutes.

  “Sure,” I said. “I need a list of everybody who works at Omicron. No, not everybody—executive level.”

  “Okay. I can do that. What are we looking for?”

  I found Dernier on the company registry. He’d been working for VPC for around eight years. Promoted once. Nothing out of the norm. “Like I said, a list of names. I’m looking for somebody I know, or barring that, somebody I can reach out to. I have no idea what direction I’m going with this, so I want a bunch of information. Maybe I’ll see something and figure it out.”

  “Anything else?” he asked.

  “If you want, start cross-matching names with recent news articles. See if you find anything interesting.” I planned to do the same thing myself, but having an extra set of eyes working on it wouldn’t hurt, and it wouldn’t give away any of my secrets. Not that I had any yet. It might keep Dernier busy enough that he didn’t notice me ignoring him. And it might show me if he missed anything, which would help me evaluate him and see what I could trust him with in the future. “Drop whatever you find into that page you made, and I’ll do the same.”