House of Midas

by Chloe Garner

  Here, there were familiar faces. Troy sat down at a table next to a man that he’d known most of his career, a ruddy-faced lifer named Major Waterfield.

  “Major,” Troy said. The man nodded happily at him over a sandwich.

  “Glad you’re alive,” he answered. Troy grinned.

  “Thanks.”

  He watched the men around the table as they spoke quietly to each other, then he turned back to Waterfield.

  “It’s wild down there,” Troy said.

  “It is,” Waterfield answered. “We’ve imported a fraternity while no one was looking.”

  Troy shrugged.

  “I went by the analysts’ room on the way up here, and I didn’t know anyone there, either.”

  “Nope,” Waterfield said. “Turnover down there is faster than just about anywhere else.”

  “How is jump school going?” Troy asked. The room volume, already low, dropped another notch. Troy found many of the officers looking at him.

  “No one knows,” Colonel Oliver finally said. “They haven’t graduated anyone this year, and the wall between the officers over there is… thicker and higher than we’re used to it being.”

  “No one knows,” Troy said. There were various head shakes, most of them of disgust, but no one else said anything.

  “Who’s running it?” Troy asked.

  “Peterson, last we knew,” Oliver said. “Been a little busy lately to check in.”

  Troy nodded.

  “Funny thing,” he said. “I just came into a lot of free time.”

  Exchanged looks, telling him there was a lot they weren’t saying. A lot they couldn’t say. Troy shook his head.

  “Damn them all,” he said, standing. “Excuse me, gentlemen, but I’ve been told I’m bullet proof. I’m going to go see just how far that goes.”

  *********

  Jump school was on the base, but off by itself. It had its own training grounds, its own barracks, its own cafeteria and medical facility. The officers who ran it lived in the barracks with the students or in family housing nearby, and there was normally not a lot of interaction among the school officers and the rest of the base staff. It had been set up that way intentionally, and it worked. There were reasons that they might have wanted to mix the two programs, professional and training, but jumpers came out of the program without the biases and habits of the rest of the base, trained by experts who spent their time worrying about ideal ways of doing things more than how to get things done today.

  The idealism smarted, at the beginning, but it was worth it, long term. Having a constant, slow flow of jumpers who believed in doing things right meant that the base was consistently exposed to that, without being flooded by it.

  What surprised Troy as he got close, though, was that there were cadets stationed outside of jump school. One of them stopped him.

  “Are you authorized off of base in this region?” he asked.

  Troy glanced at his shiny new Lieutenant Colonel’s insignia on his car windshield and back at the cadet. The man didn’t blink.

  “Off the base?” he asked. He wasn’t sure he’d ever heard of the base restricting people leaving, especially not officers.

  “Yes, sir,” the cadet said. “General Donovan’s orders.”

  Troy looked down the street and tipped his head to the side, even more confused to find a young man in uniform standing, waiting to inspect him before he could get onto the jump school grounds. It was a demilitarized zone.

  “You aren’t serious,” Troy said.

  “Sorry, sir,” the cadet said.

  “I’m authorized to go wherever I like,” Troy said. “I’m a Lieutenant Colonel, and my job description is as broad or broader than anyone else on base.”

  “You aren’t on my list, sir,” the cadet said, swallowing.

  “And who is?” Troy asked. The young man swallowed again.

  “General Donovan and his immediate staff.”

  “So Colonel Oliver is authorized?” Troy asked.

  “No, sir,” the young man told him. Troy waited, but there was no more explanation offered. Was Oliver not a member of General Donovan’s staff anymore? That wasn’t possible, by simple definition, was it?

  “Whose authorization do you need to let me through?” Troy asked. The man looked uncomfortable. Troy waited. Being a guard was tough, sometimes.

  “General Donovan has to authorize it himself,” he said.

  “To go to jump school.”

  Silence.

  “How long has this been the case?”

  “I don’t know, sir,” the cadet said. “I’ve been stationed here for three weeks.”

  “Did you make your CO angry?” Troy asked.

  “Yes, sir,” the man said. Troy suppressed a smile.

  “I need to get through,” he said. “I have business with jump school, and I am going to wait until you find the correct people to give you permission to let me through.”

  It was hardly kind, but Troy was in no mood to go chasing this one.

  “I can’t do that, sir.”

  Troy raised an eyebrow at him.

  “I’m not allowed to contact the general directly.”

  “Call your CO or whoever is supervising the checkpoint,” Troy said. “They’ll work it out.”

  Troy handed the man his badge, then sat back in his seat, watching the second guard with curiosity.

  A dead zone between jump school and the rest of base.

  How unexpected. And bizarre.

  It took about forty minutes, but the cadet finally came back and handed Troy his badge again.

  “Sargent Nehru will be here in a minute,” he said.

  Oh, good, Troy thought. Was that as far as the cadet had gotten?

  An Indian man with an angry face arrived about five minutes later, getting out of his car and coming to lean against Troy’s car.

  “What business do you have at jump school, sir?” the man asked.

  “The jumper program is part of the portal program,” Troy said. “I don’t understand why we’ve cut them off from each other.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but you have to have specific business with the school to go through here.”

  “I graduated from jump school. I want to go over there and make sure that everything is still going right.”

  The Sargent looked over his shoulder at the cadet.

  “Sir, I respect your rank, but that’s just not going to happen.”

  Troy had a stray thought of Cassie, of how angry this would make her, and he acted on a hunch.

  “Please contact General Donovan and ask him to review my contract,” he said. “He can’t keep me out of the school.”

  Sargent Nehru blinked at him.

  “Sir?”

  Troy nodded.

  “I’ll wait.”

  Nehru shook his head and stood again, going back to his car. Troy rested his palm on the steering wheel while Nehru talked on his phone in the car, dialing at least four different people before he came back.

  “General Donovan would like to see you when you finish with your business with the school, sir,” he said, turning and waving at the cadet. The young man scurried to lift the gate, and Troy passed through, driving all of fifteen yards before he stopped at the next one.

  “Sir,” the young man at this gate said. “I’ve been on the phone with Colonel Peterson and he says that…” he swallowed, glancing at the insignia on the windshield.

  “Go ahead,” Troy said. “I know him.”

  “He says that you should mind your own damned business and go back to playing army.”

  Troy closed his eyes, trying not to laugh.

  “Give him a call back and tell him that Troy Rutger doesn’t play army.”

  The young man flushed and went back to his booth, waving Troy through a few minutes later. Shaking his head, Troy went to park in front of the main building, getting out as Colonel Peterson came through the front doors and started down the stairs toward him.


  “Rutger,” the man said. “You got promoted.”

  “Wasn’t my fault, sir,” Troy answered, and the other man laughed, clapping Troy on the back.

  “Good to see you, son. Heard you were dead.”

  “Rumors, sir,” Troy said. “What’s with the DMZ out there?”

  Peterson shook his head.

  “Come on in to my office. There’s not a lot I can tell you, since you’re on the wrong side in this engagement, but I can at least give you a good strong cup of coffee and tell you off to your face.”

  “Appreciate that, sir,” Troy said, following the man back through the hallways that he knew so well to the man’s office. It was like the principal’s office, for the jumpers, a place you never wanted to end up on accident. Peterson was a terrifying man. He’d been a Lieutenant Colonel when Troy had been a student here, head of the faculty and with a temper he showed off like a trophy when he caught students out of line.

  “So what’s going on in your world?” Peterson asked as they settled on opposite sides of his desk. His secretary, a young man Troy should have recognized, brought them coffees and gave Troy a firm nod that confirmed that they knew each other.

  Troy drew a breath, wondering whether he wanted to spend his time rehashing everything, or digging into what was going on now. Sitting across from Peterson, the temptation to indulge familiarity was too much.

  “You know we have a Jalnian running around over there,” Troy said. “From way back.”

  “Two of them, now, I hear,” Peterson said. Troy nodded.

  “The second one is Calista du Charme.”

  Peterson paused mid-sip.

  “See, now, I’d heard that, but I thought that it was just a confusion in the scuttlebutt. Say it again slow.”

  “Cassie got involved in an engagement with a foreign terrestrial that involved tech beyond what we’ve even speculated,” Troy said, feeling the language of his classes seep back into him from long conditioning.

  “I see,” Peterson said.

  “One off the effects was that her genetics changed. She became Jalnian. I’ve confirmed it myself.”

  Peterson took a long moment, then nodded.

  “You were never one for making things up just to see how big an explosion you’d get,” he said. Troy shook his head.

  “No, sir.”

  “So she’s Jalnian.”

  “She is, sir.”

  “How’s she taking that?”

  “Like Cassie, sir,” Troy said. Peterson grinned into his coffee.

  “Fine, fine. That will only shake up a world or two.”

  “Slightly more than that, sir,” Troy commented, and Peterson grinned wider.

  “So what’s this got to do with you, then?”

  “I’m handling her,” Troy said. Peterson’s eyebrow went up.

  “In which ways, son?”

  “Sir,” Troy said. Peterson didn’t stop grinning.

  “I see,” he said. “Is that how you got yourself dead?”

  “Yes, sir,” Troy said. “She plays hard.”

  “Always did,” Peterson commented. He set his coffee cup down quickly and crossed his legs.

  “So what makes you brave the gap, today, soldier?”

  Troy trusted this man. In this moment, he trusted him more than anyone else he could think of.

  “Everything’s changing, sir.”

  “That it is, soldier,” Peterson said.

  “I want to know why,” Troy said. Peterson raised an eyebrow at him.

  “That’s not how I trained you, son.”

  “It isn’t,” Troy said, “but we both know that the training is just the tool to make us useful. We have to find our own way to make it work.”

  Peterson was watching him hard. Troy swallowed.

  “All of the old guard are gone,” he said. “Jamie Oliver is retiring, going to announce it tomorrow. Cassie’s a foreign terrestrial and everyone else I graduated with got axed. I’m only just managing to scrape by with a lot of luck.”

  “And a lot of talent, no doubt,” Peterson said. “Still doesn’t tell me why you’re here.”

  Troy looked around the office, feeling again like a child.

  “Because this is the core of the program,” he said. “They’ve gutted everything else, stripped out the people who knew their jobs, replaced them with civilians fresh out of college.”

  Peterson scratched his elbow.

  “I’d heard that.”

  “And then no one’s heard from the school in months.”

  “No,” Peterson said. “They haven’t.”

  “And I get here, and you’ve got a DMZ running through the base.”

  Peterson nodded.

  “Barbed wire’s supposed to get here next week.”

  It was a joke. It had to be.

  “What the hell, sir?” Troy asked. Peterson grinned, picking up his coffee again.

  “Always liked you, Rutger.” He paused, motioning at Troy with his coffee cup. “Liked you better as a Major than I do as a Lieutenant Colonel, but there’s life for you.”

  Troy nodded, picking up his coffee and taking a sip. Peterson did like his coffee strong.

  “I can’t tell you a lot, son. Things have been tense between us and base leadership for a while, now. Couple of years. I imagine you can put that one together on your own.”

  Since General Thompson had been dismissed. Yeah.

  Peterson continued.

  “We reached the point of no return about four months back, when Donovan came in here and started fitting my officers’ classrooms for their replacements. Damned sonofabitch was actually ordering new furniture for the lounge.”

  “He started firing and transferring people, then?” Troy asked. Peterson shook his head slowly.

  “No, son. I taught you better than that.”

  “You taught me the chain of command, sir,” Troy answered.

  “But I also taught you how to work your chain of command to get the right result, when there was a clear right and wrong.”

  “Yes, sir,” Troy said. “I don’t see…”

  “We’re in an odd situation, here, you see, Rutger?” Peterson said, making a large motion with his mug, one that seemed to indicate a much larger space than just what was in the office. The man looked at Troy and Troy frowned.

  “In what way, sir?”

  “Our chain of command,” Peterson said, as if revealing a secret. “There has always been more than one interested party in what goes on, here on base, always more than one advocate, you see?”

  “No, sir,” Troy said. The chain of command was clear. From General Donovan, up to the Chiefs of Staff, to the President. It was simple.

  Peterson nodded.

  “We trained you right, son, but you’re stuck in the tools, rather than the working.”

  Troy shook his head, still not grasping it.

  “I had a conversation,” Peterson said. “The day I caught the damned interior designer wandering the buildings. I called up the Senator from Kansas.”

  Unless Troy had missed some very significant news while he was away, Peterson would be referring to Kansas’ senior Senator, Senator Kate Greene. She’d been in the US Senate for thirty-odd years, and had been the driving force behind everything that had made the portal program what it was, first in its location and then in everything else. She protected its autonomy, she secured its funding, and she made an appearance on base at least once or twice a year to meet with base leadership and discuss opportunities and issues.

  Troy had never met her - he wasn’t that important - but she held a mythical status in his mind.

  “She…” he started. Peterson shook his head.

  “We have different goals, now, jump school and the rest of the base. Different chains of command, as it were.”

  “I see,” Troy said. “What are you doing with your graduates, if you aren’t sending them onto the base?”

  “Putting them to use,” Peterson said. “Like I said, son. I can’t
tell you a lot. You’re still the enemy, in this engagement.”

  Troy nodded.

  “But everything here is still solid.”

  “When the base comes to its senses and starts acting like a military installation again, we’ll be ready,” Peterson said. “Until then, we’ll scrape by with some luck, as you say.”

  “And no small amount of talent,” Troy observed.

  “That’s out of line, soldier,” Peterson said with a grin. “Now, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. If you’ll go quietly, I won’t assign you an escort.”

  Troy held his hands up.

  “I would dream of making a scene.”

  “Good luck, son,” Colonel Peterson said. “You’re going to need it.”

  Troy nodded.

  He was, but at least now there was hope.

  *********

  “Met with my handler this morning,” Conrad said on the phone. “We should talk.”

  “When and where?” Troy asked.

  “Same as last time?” Conrad asked. “Thirty minutes?”

  “Done.”

  *********

  It had been three weeks. He hadn’t seen Cassie once, and he’d been avoiding Jesse because of how awkward their last conversation had been. Instead, Troy had been trying to get a better handle on how the flow of power was working through the labs, how information got from place to place and who cared about what. He observed the people from various labs being taken out on special projects, how they were shuttled to sections of the base that even he couldn’t talk his way onto. He met with Donovan three more times, but those conversations were running into each other, now, they were so much alike. Donovan wanted to know what he was doing, what Cassie was doing, whether he had her under control.

  The answers were always the same, and the replies were the same neutered threats. He needed to get it together, or Donovan was going to lose patience, and when that happened…

  Only there was no finish to that. They both knew it. Donovan was ripping apart everything Troy cared about, but Cassie had pulled him up and out of all of that, out of Donovan’s reach.

  “You going out again?” Donovan asked at one point.

  “When Cassie decides she wants to,” Troy told him. The truth, and just as worthless to Donovan as it was to Troy.

  He was making progress, but it was slow, and he didn’t know where it was going. The special projects were key, he thought, but Donovan had them locked up in a facility that Troy couldn’t get into. It was a wall, and he hadn’t found his way around it, yet.