Spaceside

by Michael Mammay

  My heart pounded in my chest, not because I was offended at being a bargaining chip. I’d been that from the start. Instead, I worried that the Cappan leader would give away that we’d met before, ruining my one advantage.

  “You have caused my people much suffering,” he said.

  “I’m very sorry for that,” I said.

  “If you give us the information we want, we will leave him with you, to do with as you see fit,” said Larsson.

  “That is a generous offer,” said the Cappan. “But he is here now. You bargain with what we already have.”

  “My people are still out there,” said Larsson. “More importantly, they’re still orbiting overhead. If I don’t come out with the data I require, they have orders to level this entire island.”

  So that was the game. They never wanted me to negotiate. They wanted me as barter. For his part, the Cappan’s expression didn’t change, almost as if he expected her response. He had to have known she wouldn’t be without contingencies. He’d as much as told me that he expected this threat. Since my meeting with the Cappan back on Talca, I understood now what I had failed to understand in past years. The Cappans always knew more than we gave them credit for. “Colonel Butler, what is your opinion on this?”

  “His opinion doesn’t matter,” said Larsson.

  “It does,” said the Cappan. “He knows your people, and how much I can trust them.”

  “You can’t trust them at all,” I said.

  Larsson turned on me and glared through her clear faceplate, but she was stuck. She’d promised me to the Cappans as a prize, so she couldn’t do anything without jeopardizing her proposed offer. I appreciated the opportunity her mistake gave me. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

  “Sure I do,” I said. “As soon as you get what you came for and get off the planet, you’re going to lay waste to it anyway.”

  “Why would we do that? We’d have the technology we want. That’s the job.”

  I turned and looked to the Cappan and spoke to him. “To cover their tracks. If they were serious about their offer, they’d be offering to work together on the project. The Cappans solved more of this in two years than humans solved in twenty. But they can’t do that, politically.”

  “He’s lying,” said Larsson.

  I continued to ignore Larsson, keeping eye contact with the Cappan instead. He was the key to everything. She didn’t matter. I’d felt a small connection with him back on Talca, and hoped that he’d felt it too—hoped that he’d act on it.

  “He’s lying to save his own skin,” Larsson repeated, a slight tremor seeping into her voice.

  I shook my head. “I gave up on that the moment I walked out of Haverty’s office. This ends only one way for me. I just want to do some good before I go.”

  “He’s—” Larsson bit back her response. I could almost see her mind working. “If I don’t get what I came for, that’s the end of this settlement and all your people on this planet.”

  “And if she does get what she came for, it’s still the end. Why give up your one bargaining chip?”

  Larsson raised her rifle toward me. I took a step back, for all the good that would do. I should have seen her response coming, provoking her like that. Then again, she should have shot me an hour ago instead of trying to use me in a false deal. Larsson’s face had a look of mixed determination and hatred . . . and then it exploded with two soft pops, gunshots muted by something in the design of the room. I stumbled backward, blood and bits of bone and brain matter spattering my faceplate. One of the Cappans stood behind Larsson, rifle following her body as it sagged to the floor like a sack of dirt.

  “The soldiers outside—”

  The Cappan with the eye patch waved his hand, cutting me off. “Have been dealt with.” I didn’t know if that meant they were dead or alive. I hadn’t heard shots, but with the soundproofing in the walls, that didn’t mean anything. “Those on the ridge, too.”

  “There’s still the ship in orbit,” I said. “It carries XM-25s.”

  “It is as you said. That was always our fate. We have evacuated most of our people underground. We will hope that the damage is limited.”

  I thought about it. Being underground would help, but it didn’t matter. If they survived, Omicron would keep coming back. There was too much money involved for them not to. They were doomed no matter what.

  Or maybe not.

  “What if there was another way?” I asked.

  “I am listening.”

  Chapter Thirty

  The next few minutes passed in a blur. I didn’t know how long we had before the ship would open fire if they didn’t hear from Larsson. For everything that had gone on down on the planet, the things that mattered now were spaceside. I hoped that having their own people down here would make them hesitate to pull the trigger, but given what I’d seen of the mercenary group so far, I wouldn’t have bet too much on it. It took a Cappan technician almost eight minutes to hack my helmet and get my communication functionality back, and I used that time to propose my plan to the Cappan leader.

  “So you want us to simply give away the information,” he said, when I finished.

  “I think it’s our only option. I thought so back when we talked on Talca, and I’m more convinced of it now. Once the information is out there and everybody has it, there’s no reason to come after you anymore.”

  “And you’re sure you can get it out in that manner?”

  “I’ll need your help,” I said. “You have people who can get a message to someone off planet, right?”

  “Yes, we can manage that. It’s difficult to do without it being intercepted, but while they can likely detect it, they can’t stop it.”

  “Then help me get a message to Karen Plazz. I’ll write something for you, and you include whatever you want her to know. She’ll get it to the rest of the galaxy.”

  He thought about it for a moment. “Draft your message. I will decide after. And hurry. I do not think we have much time.”

  I’d thought what I’d say through in my head several times before that moment, so it didn’t take me long.

  Karen,

  Sorry I’ve been out of contact, but I was kidnapped by Omicron, with the willing participation of VPC—you probably read about their “joint venture”—to go on a mission to extort technology from a Cappan colony. I’m not identifying that location in order to protect the Cappans, though they may choose to share it, and the corporations already know. Omicron has been stealing technology from the Cappans and experimenting on their people in order to facilitate medical research in something called the Phoenix Project. The Cappans perfected the technique that Colonel Elliot was working on back when we were on Cappa—the procedure that helps humans assimilate ortho-robotics. Everything that follows this message is from the Cappans themselves. You can trust what they say is the truth. Please distribute it as widely as possible. Know that if something happens to this group of Cappans, it was Omicron that did it. They have XM-25s on their ship, and they intend to use them. Please hold this for ninety-six hours after you receive it before making anything public.

  One final request—and this is the most important thing I’m going to say: there’s a former employee of VPC named Ganos. She helped me get to this point in the operation, and I have reason to believe that Omicron and/or VPC have targeted her. They might already have her. Find her and keep her safe, whatever the cost. Consider it my price for this information. If a human with Cappan DNA named Sasha contacts you, trust her.

  Carl

  I showed it to Eye Patch. He nodded. “We will use our assets to keep Ganos safe as well. But I do not understand the ninety-six hours.”

  “If everything goes to plan, the crew of the ship in orbit will have completed their mission and be headed home by then. They’ll be in stasis, so they’ll be unable to receive messages once the information becomes public.”

  “But it will not matter, if they have already fired their miss
iles.”

  “Leave that part to me,” I said. “I have a plan. But I need to know where your underground locations are.”

  Eye Patch looked at me with what, if he had been a human, I’d have assumed to be incredulity. “You are asking for a lot of trust.”

  “I am. But you chose me, back on Talca. Something made you do that.”

  The Cappan stared at me, and I had to assume he was thinking. Finally, he asked, “You are sure you can protect us?”

  “I’m not,” I said. “But if I can get back to that ship, I’m the best chance you have.”

  He stepped away from me then and called to one of his compatriots. They talked in hushed tones, raising their voices once, the newcomer gesturing with his hands, angry. After several minutes of discussion he came back. “We will show you what you want to know. But only you can leave. The others stay here.”

  “I need to take them with me. As many as possible.”

  He shook his head. “You ask too much. We trust you, but giving up the soldiers is imprudent.”

  “What will happen to them?”

  “They will be with us. If we live, they live.”

  I nodded. “What about after?”

  “We will need to keep them with us. They will be unharmed, and allowed to live freely. Hopefully there will be a time in the future where we can release them.”

  I sighed. I was condemning the soldiers to a life in captivity if I allowed the Cappans to keep them. More significant to my plan, with troops alive on the planet, Omicron, and more immediately the ship in orbit, would have more reason to revisit. These soldiers had friends up there, and when you brought emotion into the equation, it changed the calculus. “If they think their own people are still alive down here, they’re going to come back for them. It’s important to our plan that they don’t.”

  “We could kill them,” said Eye Patch.

  I tried not to cringe. Despite our recent understanding, there were still some serious differences in how I and the Cappans saw morality. I had to remind myself that these were people who hung their own dead on poles as a warning. “Or you could make it seem like they’re dead. The sensors in their suits. You’ll need to disable the location function anyway. It wouldn’t be that much more to alter the other sensors too.”

  Again he thought on it. “That we could do.”

  I nodded and turned away, trying to hide my relief. I couldn’t let myself get so caught up in working together that I forgot we weren’t completely on the same team. I did want to help them, and I think they saw that, but it went only so far. “Then all that’s left is to show me your evacuation sites.”

  “What will you do after that?”

  “I’m going to escape with the data, and try to make the people spaceside believe me.”

  I scurried up the embankment, my feet slipping in the dirt, small chunks of rock skittering down behind me until I reached the top and headed into the forest. I jogged for a kilometer and a half before I initiated contact with the ship. I wanted it to look like I tried to get far enough away from the Cappans to give myself a buffer before I risked a call, as if I feared them tracking me by my signal. The Cappans would start chasing me as soon as I made contact, helping to complete the illusion.

  “Basilisk, this is Butler.” I did my best to put some desperation into my voice. Nobody answered. I checked the channel and tried again. “Basilisk, this is Colonel Butler. Come in.”

  “Go ahead, sir.”

  “I’ve got the data.”

  There was a hesitation on the net, longer than the second or so that it took the message to travel to orbit and back. “Say again.”

  “The data. The mission. The thing we came here for. I’ve got it!”

  “How?”

  “Larsson had it before they killed her. She suspected their treachery and passed it to me. When our troops came in, I ran away in the distraction. I don’t know if they’re chasing me or not. I could really use a pickup.”

  Another pause. “Is there anybody else alive?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing’s showing on my sensors, but I’m away from the last known location and moving farther by the minute.” It was a blatant lie, but it would force them to check their own systems and reach their own conclusions. They’d believe it more that way. They wouldn’t trust me, but they’d trust their machines more than they should. I needed a lot of things to go right for my deception to work, and any one of them failing would blow my plan, so everything I could add in my favor helped.

  “We’re not picking up any vital signs either. But there are Cappans moving in your direction.”

  “Shit. Where?” I asked.

  “About a klick and a half behind you. They’re probably picking up the energy from your transmission. Switch your comm into receive only. They won’t be able to track it as easily.”

  “Roger,” I said.

  “We’re sending coordinates to your heads-up. Move to that location now. Pickup is in fourteen minutes. No response required. Just get there.”

  My computer calculated the location in a split second and put it on my display. At my current pace I’d reach it with two minutes to spare. I changed direction to the left by nineteen degrees and kept running. The low gravity and my suit feeding me oxygen and powering my legs made travel almost thoughtless—it also helped that I wasn’t actually being chased. Those mindless minutes allowed me to run through every scenario that I could envision, knowing I couldn’t possibly think of them all. Something would come up that I didn’t plan for. Basically, I’d be playing a role from the minute I saw another human until we got a final decision. Or until they vented me out an airlock. That was a real possibility, regardless if my plan worked, but I found that it didn’t bother me. There’s something freeing about expecting to die. If I could save the Cappans, I’d call it a success, whatever else happened.

  It sounds like bullshit. I know that. A lot of people say they’re ready to face death but balk when they actually reach that point. But my life didn’t matter anymore. I didn’t want to die. I wasn’t actively seeking it. But I didn’t really want to live, either. If somehow I did survive, I’d have to work out that feeling with Dr. Baqri. One more thing on a long list.

  I reached the coordinates and went to one knee at the edge of the clearing, scanning back the direction I’d come for my Cappan “pursuit.” They wouldn’t catch me since they weren’t actually trying to, but I needed to get in the habit of making everything look exactly right. There was almost no chance that any human could see me at that moment, at least not with enough fidelity to see which way I had my rifle pointed. But almost no chance isn’t the same as zero chance. I had to take every tiny opportunity I could to eliminate potential exposure. They added up.

  The drop ship came in fast, the pilot probably still remembering the anti-aircraft fire that we’d taken on our initial assault on the planet. I wish I’d thought to have the Cappans fire at the ship to make it look better. Probably a good thing I didn’t, since with my luck they would have hit it accidentally, ruining everything.

  I started sprinting for the craft before it touched down. Reaching the door as it opened, I hurried through, stumbling and ending up on the floor as the ship rose before I got firmly set. Two soldiers helped me to a seat and got me strapped in while another manned a manual pulse cannon, scanning the area we’d just departed. I watched her out of the corner of my eye to see if she fired, to see if she’d picked up the pursuing Cappans. She didn’t.

  I popped my helmet off now that I was inside the ship, which had its own oxygen supply, and ran my hand over my bald head, wiping the sweat away. Somebody tossed me a towel and I used it thoroughly on my head and neck, taking the time to prepare my opening lines.

  “What happened down there, sir?” one of the soldiers who’d helped me asked. He was short, with hair so light that it bordered on white. He looked young, no wrinkles around his eyes, but then everybody on the mission looked young compared to me.

  “I’ve got
no fucking idea.” The simpler the answer, the easier it is to lie.

  “How did—”

  “People died,” I said, cutting him off before he could finish his question. I said it slowly, in a tone combat veterans would recognize. The tone that accompanied the thousand-kilometer stare of a man who had seen too much. “Just . . . everybody. Fucking rockets, snipers, and potato mines. We should have pulled out.”

  He watched me for a minute, but not in the way a suspicious interrogator would. More like a soldier—and probably one who agreed with me. That’s what I needed them to do. See me as a soldier. Good thing I’d had some practice in the role. For whatever reason, he didn’t speak again, and nobody else on the ship approached me. I took that to mean that I’d passed the first test, which was the easiest part, to be sure, but a necessary one. Next would come my meeting with the Ops officer. Since my meeting with Lieutenant Danner had been cut off by Larsson, I hadn’t had a chance to get to know him, and now I needed him for the next part of my plan. He’d been in charge of the team left back on the ship. Now he was the commander of the whole mission. More important, he’d be the one communicating back to Omicron for orders.

  And he’d probably be the one to operate the airlock if they decided to float me into space.

  We landed on the Basilisk and waited for the bay to refill with air. I stayed in my seat for a little longer than necessary, letting everyone else unbuckle. I didn’t know my status and I didn’t want to ask. Their actions would tell me if they saw me as a prisoner or not. I assumed yes but hoped for no. When nobody came to help me out after a few seconds, I unbuckled my belts and stood. I fell in with the others and moved down the ramp, scanning ahead for Danner. Nobody waited for us other than the flight support team, who rushed around checking the exterior of the ship, refueling, and doing the hundred other things they did every time a ship docked. The crew went about their business, ignoring me, which threw me a little. Even if I wasn’t a prisoner, I had the data that defined our entire mission. That alone should have been worthy of attention.