“Oh? Will I also be using my diplomatic credentials to sucker punch someone?”
“No, Major. Your mission does not involve infiltration, but extraction.”
“Extraction? Of whom?” And then her eyes opened wide. “Caine! But he’s not planetside, as far as we know.”
“Not yet, but given his role at Convocation, I suspect it’s only a matter of time before the Arat Kur bring him to Jakarta. It would be almost inevitable, if we agreed to send our ‘negotiators’ there.”
She frowned. “Okay—but why extract him? No matter what happens, he’s protected by his diplomatic credentials, isn’t—?” And then the realization hit her. “Oh. So, before your killer-emissaries violate the basic principles of diplomatic privilege with a mass assassination, I have to get our real diplomat out. Because our enemies will probably not feel disposed to make targeting distinctions between genuine and fake diplomats after Trevor and his pals start pulling their triggers.”
“Yes, that pretty much sums it up, Major.”
“Which means, if I don’t find and extract Caine in time, there’s an excellent chance that some exosapient invader, or megacorporate quisling, or killer clone is going to put a bullet in his brain. Just on general principles.”
Downing put down his stylus. “It is a distinct possibility.”
Opal became very red, stood, pointed a quivering finger at Downing, opened her mouth—but then abruptly turned and was out the door in five angry strides.
Elena watched Opal go, waited until the outer door banged closed, and then rose. She looked at her brother as if she were hugging him with her eyes, and then turned a blank gaze upon Downing. “‘And on Earth, peace and good will to all men,’ That is the customary greeting of the season, isn’t it, Uncle Richard?” She gathered up her things and left without a word or backward glance.
Trevor’s voice pulled Downing’s attention away from the twice-closed office door. “I can’t be your lead operative on Case Timber Pony, Richard. I’m a soldier—not a liar.”
“Trevor, this is war, and its first casualty is personal choice. And right now, we have to do anything that helps us survive. See here, I’ve done—and continue to do—terrible things. I won’t evade or deny that. But who else is going to do them? Oh, I’m sure there were a thousand people who had the skills to do just as well as—or a damned sight better than—me, but when your father reached into the hat of fate, it was me that he pulled up by the ears. Just as fate pulled him up when he found that the doomsday rock was a weapon aimed at Earth. And now fate has tapped you on the shoulder.” When Trevor didn’t respond, Downing felt himself growing genuinely desperate. “Do you think we wanted this for you? Do you think we wanted this for us?”
Trevor still did not look at him. “I think you made a choice to keep on doing this job when you could have walked away.”
“How could we walk away from what we knew about the threat to our families, our planet? How could we walk away from responding to that threat, from a job that had—had—to be done? Who were we supposed to give it to? We couldn’t even tell anyone else what we knew. Would’ve made job interviews a tad difficult, don’t you think? And, even if we could have passed the poison cup to someone else, just what poor sod should we have saddled with this lifelong nightmare? By what right would we have chosen some other human being to sacrifice their happiness and freedom of mind so that we could have some of our own back?
“Not that we would have rested any easier, mind you. I can see it now: Richard and Nolan at the joint family barbecue, grilling shrimp, looking up at the stars, and hoping that the shop in DC was in good hands and that Earth itself wasn’t on someone’s interstellar dinner menu.”
Trevor’s eyes came back up; they were narrow, bitter. “Yeah, paint me some more scenes of your personal sacrifices, Uncle Richard. They sure make me feel better. They sure do bring my father back to life. And bring back all the hours, days, weeks he could have been with me instead of off saving the world with you, halfway around the globe.”
Downing felt his fingers and feet grow very cold, his stomach sink. In the mirroring glass door that separated the conference room from the inner office, his pallor was unnatural, as if he had aged a decade in the last ten minutes. He sat heavily. “I’ve tried to shield you from what I could. God knows I had little enough success at it, but I tried. But this time, it’s out of my hands. By Executive Order, Case Timber Pony is now in its final phase of preparation and we are committed to executing it. We might lose the war if we do not. So, I’m sorry, Trevor, but this time—this one time—you will receive orders that will require you to lie.”
Trevor pushed back from the table; his tone of voice had gone much further. “And when shall I expect those orders, sir?”
Downing waved a weak hand. “That’s not clear. There’s a bit of diplomatic dancing to be done with the Arat Kur first, obviously. We’ll begin assembling the mission force while that’s going on, and we’ll send the primary operation orders—as well as contingency plans—down to Nevis.”
Trevor nodded. “Is that where you’ve stashed Stosh, Rulaine, and the rest of the security team you had me leading on Mars?”
“Yes.”
“And I’m to use them on this op?”
“Yes, but not officially. The official force rosters are being compiled by Commonwealth JSOC and the intel chiefs. They’re not up to me. Not except your group. Which will not show up on the standard table of organization. We’ll reserve your team as our own ace in the hole, so to speak. In case the main plan is called off and you have to use one of the contingencies that involve breaching the enemy compound from the outside.”
“I see, sir.” Trevor rose. “Then, if we’ve no further business to discuss—”
“Trevor, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for this mission, for letting the Dornaani bury your father in space, for everything that our work has cost you. But if I had to do it all over again, I don’t know what I would—what I could—afford to do differently. Not with all that’s at stake.”
Trevor nodded. “I understand. I’ll wait to hear from you.” He turned and walked briskly out the door.
Downing leaned his head forward into his hands and expelled a long sigh. He closed his eyes, drank in the darkness.…
After several moments, he heard the glass door to the inner office open. He did not look up, even when asked a question:
“I perceive that this meeting was—difficult?”
“Not really,” Richard lied.
“The operation you have designated Case Timber Pony has received final approval, has it not?”
“It has. When should we start tracking the system delivery assets?”
“I am already doing so. I have also passed word that our relocation is to commence in two days. Do you believe that is sufficient?”
“Yes,” sighed Downing. “The sooner we can get out of DC, the better, I think.”
“I expected you to say otherwise. The approaching holidays are customarily spent with family members and close friends, are they not?”
“Yes, they are. That’s why I want to leave.”
* * *
Opal discovered that she had arrived on the street. Which was fortunate, because she hadn’t been able to think since leaving Downing’s office and hustling into the elevator. Instead, she had been myopically preoccupied with the irrational fear that Downing would appear, chasing her, demanding that she return the hardcopy folder she had scooped up while he was in the bathroom prior to the meeting. It was labeled “Riordan, Caine/code-name ‘Odysseus’: Bio data,” and it might hold the secrets of the one hundred hours Caine had lost on the moon just before being coldslept, fourteen years ago.
Walking—still without really thinking about what she was doing—she produced the folder from her backpack, grazed a finger along its outer edge. The cover turned back slightly. By mistake, of course. Not that she was snooping. Well, not for herself, anyway. This was for Caine, so he could finally have some answers a
bout what happened on the moon, about why Nolan and Downing had cryocelled him and impressed him into IRIS. Her own burning curiosity was not propelling her actions, of course. She had never stolen anything in her life—not even from the snotty rich girls that always pegged her as a tomboy army brat in each of the myriad of grade schools she attended while her family followed Dad on his endless restationings.
She realized she had inadvertently started glancing at the contents, had a quick impression of old photographs and news clippings. She shut the manila folder swiftly, heart racing. She had faced death on a battlefield frequently, and yet nothing had ever induced this particular species of terror—because this one was laced with guilt, as well. Which was foolish. Because after all, she hadn’t stolen Caine’s file; she had only borrowed it. And she hadn’t done so to satisfy her own curiosity. She had done it to help him. Only to help him.
She looked around her, discovered that she had somehow navigated herself to the correct street corner, and raised a hand. A driverless cab smoothly swerved across two lanes of traffic and came to a stop beside her.
The taxi was requesting the address and she was giving it, but that was happening someplace else, as if it was in a side closet of her mind. Because as soon as she had stepped inside the vehicle, was beyond Downing’s reach, she knew the truth of what she was doing. You’re a liar, Opal. This isn’t about Caine. This is about you, worrying that there’s something in those one hundred hours that could come between the two of you. Maybe he hooked up with some old girlfriend, there, or maybe—
She felt suddenly nauseated. At herself. So now you’re jealous of ghosts that might not even exist, Opal? How pathetic is that?
The question remained unanswered. She was too busy getting the encircling rubber band off the manila folder so she could devour its hated and feared contents.
Letters he sent to friends. High school records. A picture with a girl—but only a skinny, coltish girl—before a prom. It was a funny picture, too; he was kind of gangly as a kid. Pictures of his house on the Chesapeake Bay. Another, much earlier one with several teeth missing from his warm and easy smile, his silver-maned father with an arm around his shoulder, and some kind of sports field behind them. She studied his faintly freckled face and tousled hair. It was impossible to reconcile that boyish image with the mental portrait she had of the man whom fate had turned into an operative code-named Odysseus.
There were printouts of the first articles he published as a kid in the local paper, then later in Time, then reviews of his books, letters to publishers and editors that lauded him, castigated him, and finally eulogized him.
She came to the end of the folder. And had discovered absolutely nothing useful. Somewhere far away, the taxi announced that their arrival was imminent.
She looked down at the ravaged pieces of Caine’s life, scattered in her lap. What have I done? Or, more importantly, why did I need to do this? Because I’m afraid I’ll never see him again? Or that I will—only to find he has someone to go back to, a life in which I can have no part?
She closed the folder slowly. And now I can’t undo what I’ve done. Even if Downing never notices this file is missing, even if I return it first, I still stole it. Stole it to quiet my fears—but at the expense of what little privacy Caine has left. She looked up without seeing the dusk-darkening streets, tried to will away the two tears—one from each eye—that struggled free of her lower eyelids and streaked swiftly down each cheek. Damn me. Damn me.
This time, when the taxi’s robot voice announced her arrival, she heard it. “Now at Bethesda Hospital, Maternity Annex. Eleven dollars, please.”
Chapter Seventeen
Over West Java, Earth
Sitting beside Darzhee Kut, Yaargraukh peered out rear of the extended cockpit canopy. The waves scudding beneath them were now occasionally distressed by small rocks, diminutive islands. “We are approaching the landing zone.”
Darzhee Kut clasped to his seat more tightly. This was a part of his calling that he had never envisioned. “How soon until we arrive?”
“Ten minutes,” answered the Arat Kur at the controls. “Assuming—”
The pilot abruptly stopped speaking, pulled the spaceplane into a steep left-handed dive. The plume of a rocket—the thick white exhaust clumped and bloated like a kilometer-long length of intestines—shot up and past them, not more than ten meters away from Darzhee’s recoiling antenna.
“Counterfire!” Yaargraukh’s order was snarled into his commo clip.
Their two Hkh’Rkh escort craft banked, seeking the active sensors the humans had used in acquiring a lock on the spaceplane. An eyeblink later, a dense cluster of down-shooting, white-hot lines streaked dirtside, a ripple of supersonic cracklings trailing a second behind them: rail-launched kinetic-kill cluster warheads, heading planetside at six or seven times the speed of sound.
Darzhee Kut looked over at the Hkh’Rkh Advocate. “Do they have a target already?”
“No, but the orbital interdiction batteries will have backtracked the missile’s plume. They are simply firing at its point of origin.”
Darzhee looked out the window sheepishly, as if someone on the ground would see him and try to fire again. “The humans will not be so foolish as to loiter at the launch point.”
“Of course not. I doubt they were ever near it, but rather controlled the launch from a remote location. They probably have their active sensors dispersed, as well. That means we have nothing to shoot at, no efficacious response. So we do something pointless. And we feel better.”
Darzhee turned as swiftly as his carapace would allow. Yaargraukh was looking straight at him. Darzhee stole a glance at the rear of the craft. Graagkhruud was deep in a growling exchange with First Voice. “If First Voice heard you—”
“Then it would be among the few times he ever did.” Yaargraukh unstrapped, tried to take a step backward, found the afterdeck of the Arat Kur spaceplane too cramped. He was unable to do more than crouch. “I grow weary of this.”
“Of what? The constrictions of our craft?”
“No, of being brought along as an Advocate that is uniformly ignored.” He turned to Darzhee. “I was a tactical advisor before this. Had I been allowed to remain such, at least my efforts and input would be sought and recognized. And perhaps then we might not have quite so many problems as we do now.”
“Why? Are the strategies recommended by Graagkhruud ill-advised?”
“They are wrong. The humans do not fight as we do, but nor are they the cowards he believes. He does not understand them and he cannot win against them if he does not. The humans know this. Well, some of them do.”
“They do?”
“One, Sun Tzu, wrote, ‘if you would be victorious, know thy enemy.’ I can only hope the humans have forgotten their own axiom. But I think not.”
Darzhee felt the shuttle pull into another, but more gradual, turn. The pilot announced, “Apologies for my interruption. We are holding here until the landing zone at Soekarno airfield is available.”
“There is unexpected traffic?”
Yaargraukh placed a finger on his earpiece and grunted. “There is unexpected insurgency.”
Darzhee felt the wiggling-snake feeling in his upper digestive tract that was the Arat Kur fear reflex. “What?”
Yaargraukh, listening, offered quick updates. “Fifteen, maybe twenty insurgents. Half were killed. Almost all got inside the perimeter.”
“But how?”
“Delivery of comestibles. Explosive devices were apparently already buried someplace within the defense perimeter. An external attack—a feint—on the opposite side of the compound. Our troops rushed there, so security was reduced at the logistical ingress point. Several of the disguised insurgents managed to slip away from the food trucks. They deployed the final, triggering bombs. Casualties—” He paused and removed the earpiece, looked out the canopy into the clear blue sky overhead. “Casualties are high.”
“How high?”
“Dozens. Including some of my clan. I knew them. Personally. We shared knives at feast.”
Darzhee experienced a rare sensation. He did not know what to say. “But there are prisoners to interrogate, so there will be a counterattack—yes?”
Still looking at the blue, Yaargraukh wiggled his neck lazily. “Prisoners, yes. But they will not lead us to anything useful.”
“Certainly they can be made to speak what they know.”
“Certainly. Your drugs and our—methods—are equally effective. But it hardly matters, because the humans do not bother to resist. They tell the truth freely and immediately.”
“Then—?”
“Then we look for what they have told us about. The safe houses are empty. The hidden camps are deserted, and the supply trucks—indistinguishable from those which carry produce—are gone.”
“I do not understand.”
Yaargraukh turned to Darzhee. “The human commanders plan on having their insurgents captured. They tell them to confess and share any information they have. And it is useless to us, because the moment any of their number are captured or lag too far behind, the transponders they wear code them as being ‘lost.’ And so their commanders move everything, that very moment. By the time we have rounded up the prisoners, asked our questions, assemble a reprisal squad, they are gone. Unless they have left an ambush team behind, either with guns or control-detonated bombs.”
“They sound very well organized.”
“Too well organized, if my opinion were to be asked. I find the aptness of their tactics, and the promptness with which they began to exercise them, improbable.”
“What is improbable”—it was Graagkhruud’s voice, a rumble of rocks jounced together in a bag—“is that your defeatist attitude allows you to remain in First Voice’s service, Advocate.” He emerged from the passenger section into the forward cabin. “Perhaps you would do better clearing the streets of our adversaries?”
“The First Fist of the First Voice of the First Family would know better than I.” But Yaargraukh did not lower his crest, or his eyes, as he recited the ritual obeisance.
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