It wasn’t something he was entirely comfortable discussing at the best of times, but Lynch’s supporting attitude grated on him slightly. “I understand,” he said. “And, yes, I feel that whistleblower protection should be nice and comprehensive. Unfortunately … Chuck got himself caught breaking into a Senator’s office. No matter how you slice it, that’s just something people shouldn’t do. It’s a serious crime.”
“I know,” said Lynch, obviously struggling to stay respectful. “And I get that. Really. But it’s just that—you know. He thought Pitt was dirty. He had good reason for doing what he did. He wasn’t malicious, he didn’t steal anything, he just wanted to see the full picture. To serve his country in the best way he knew how. By making sure its politicians were on the level. And he paid for it—losing his job and all, losing his diplomatic credentials, losing … everything ’cept his family. That makes him a patriot. A hero.”
“It makes him an idiot,” said Mattis, but he held up his hand to stave off the inevitable return. “But most truly patriotic people I know are that as well. Including Chuck. I can’t condone what he did, but I can admire him for it. I know that might seem like a contradictory position, but it’s what I got.”
Lynch nodded understandingly. “Yeah, I know how that might seem. I always got contradictory thoughts ’bout ribs you know—” Oh god, please no, not the smoked ribs again.… “Because a lot of folks have a pretty messed up understanding of what good food is and the way one prepares it. Lemme tell you what my father told me.…”
Mattis coughed. Loudly. “You told me,” he said, patiently. “I was here too you know. Smokey Joes does it right, all other forms of smoked ribs are inferior.”
Lynch looked like he wanted to add something more, but thought better of it. Mattis settled back into his seat, and then, with a chirp, the computer announced it was coming up on the translation point for Zenith.
“That was fast,” said Mattis, somewhat disbelievingly. Z-space was a tricky mistress … its layout didn’t match perfectly to real-space. If they had miscalculated, they could come out anywhere. In the middle of a star, inside a planet, or far, far more likely, somewhere in the infinite void of space, possibly even in another galactic quadrant. Or another galaxy. Or galactic cluster. Or—
The ship translated out of Z-space, and the silhouette of Zenith’s star appeared on the ship’s monitors. Mattis switched the view to the planet but the cameras didn’t move. He almost bought up a change in topic, to check that the ship’s first exit of Z-space had indeed been flawless, but it was changed for him.
Lynch glanced at his instruments. “Z-space translation…” his voice trailed off, becoming almost a whisper. “Complete.”
He hadn’t been looking at Zenith’s star. He’d been looking at the southern half of Zenith itself. A whole quarter of the planet was a glowing mass of angry yellow and orange, like a kaleidescope of fire-colors. The flames covered a continent, lapping hungrily at the oceans, from which large vats of steam rose. A black carpet of smoke blanketed everything, lit up orange from the light below, expanding out to cover fully half of the planet.
“What the fuck?” asked Lynch, mouth agape, voicing Mattis’s thoughts perfectly.
“Admiral Mattis,” said Modi into his ear, “priority alert; I think the new engines are having some kind of effect. As we exited Z-space, the sensor readings from Zenith—they just don’t make sense, sir. I think the sensors are being affected by the engine’s graviton flux, since I’m detecting massive levels of carbon dioxide on Zenith’s surface, far more than should be there. The thermal cameras are all out of whack, showing—”
“Showing that everything’s on fire,” said Mattis, flatly watching the viewscreen of the maelstrom below. “Because it is. The instruments are correct, Commander Modi.”
“But sir, nothing could live down there.”
“You’re correct,” said Mattis, gravely.
Modi said nothing for a moment, the silence almost deafening. “My God. I’ll try and find out what’s the cause of this … is it a weapon?”
“I don’t know,” said Mattis. “Tell me when you know anything.”
Modi didn’t answer and shut off the link. It took a lot to rattle him, but as Mattis stared at the ball of rock and fire on the ship’s monitors, he understood completely. Anyone on that planet was dead. It would be generations before the planet was habitable again … assuming anyone bothered enough to try.
What could cause such a disaster?
“Admiral,” said Lynch, his tone shifting from mournful to business-like, “we’re detecting a strange reading in low orbit of the planet.”
What wasn’t strange at this time? Mattis, however, forced down the snappy remark. “What kind of reading?”
Lynch’s face seemed to lose a bit of its color. He tapped some more on his console, saying nothing.
“Lynch?”
“It’s … a small ship. Unidentified. Not much bigger than a shuttle, but….” He looked up. “This is a quarantine zone. It shouldn’t be here, whoever, or whatever, it is.”
Mattis stared. “Sound general quarters,” he said, sitting up in his chair. “Get everyone to their stations. Let me know when we’re ready to engage.”
“Aye aye, sir.” The room was flooded with red light. “Arming weapons, spinning up the sub-Z engines.”
There was a brief moment where nothing happened, and then Lynch spoke again. “Sir? That ship—you’re receiving a transmission from it.”
Mattis squinted. “Me?”
“Yes sir, directed to you.”
Mattis stood out of his chair and walked toward his ready room. “You have the conn, Mister Lynch. If that ship moves, or does anything other than keep slowly spinning around Zenith, shoot it.”
“With pleasure, sir,” said Lynch, as the doors slid closed behind him.
Mattis power-walked over to his desk and tapped on a few keys. The incoming transmission was encrypted. Audio only. He set up a handshake, piped it through to his earpiece.
“Good morning, Admiral Mattis,” said a heavily modulated voice, seeming female but with a strange edge to it, almost synthetic. “Do you know who I am?”
“Should I?” asked Mattis, evenly. “You should be aware that we are currently staring down your vessel, looking for an extremely good reason not to turn it into scrap. I’m hoping you can give me that reason.”
“I can,” said the voice, robotic but seemingly possessed of a certain human flair that was unmistakable. “You haven’t met me yet—haven’t had the chance—but my name is Spectre.”
Spectre. The one who had given them the access code to the gravity pulse weapon during the Battle of Earth.
Chapter Nineteen
Sol System
Ganymede Station
Former site of the Ark Project
The moment they left the Aerostar, Reardon kicked off the ground and started bouncing in either an extremely poor dance, or a private game of hopscotch—Smith couldn’t really tell.
“You do know it’s not that easy to embarrass me?” Smith asked.
“Embarrass? I’m making them underestimate us!”
“You do tend to do that naturally. I assume you’re aware.”
Sammy spoke up through their earpieces. “No. No, he isn’t, actually.”
“It’s tactical.” Reardon’s voice was hurt.
The walk to the station’s airlock couldn’t be over quickly enough.
It wasn’t ramshackle—well, not much in space could afford to be truly ramshackle, the Aerostar’s questionable interior decorating notwithstanding—but the entrance was far from state-of-the-art. An array of glorified dusters flanked the door, a primitive but modestly effective method of keeping the dust content in the mechanisms minimal, and the path between the landing zone and the airlock was tidy and even.
A woman in a fairly clean construction uniform met them at the door. “Hello … sirs?”
Oil stain, dandruff—human origin, dust matching ch
emical composition of Ganymede’s crust, hair: human and feline. Smith’s cybernetic eye analyzed the dirt on her suit, and found it entirely nonthreatening.
“Good afternoon, ma’am. I’m Special Agent Smith, and my … associate,” he let the word hang threateningly in the air, because if he couldn’t stop the smuggler’s idiocy he could at least put an unsettling spin on it, “is Mr. Reardon. I need to speak to the station chief—a Ms. Harp, I believe?”
The woman nodded. “Of course, of course, she’s expecting you. Well, after you contacted us, obviously. She’s just on her way up from the building site now.”
Smith scanned her for telltale signs of dishonesty—his eye would notice the tiniest sweat-drop, the faintest flush, and it was programmed with the best behavioral pattern recognition tech there was—and came up empty. Something going right, that was nice.
“You can leave your suits here,” she continued, indicating an alcove, “Call me Tracy, by the way. Uh, Tracy Stanano.”
The trip through the station was uneventful, apart from Tracy Stanano gabbing on about the reconstruction process, and how boring life was on Ganymede Station. No visitors apart from the occasional bureaucrat or “mysterious official who’s too high-and-mighty to tell us why they’re here, um, no offense”; nothing but standard rations for dinner from “here on ’till hell freezes over”; and “a nice view of Jupiter I guess, though the wreckage you see ’round here still gives me the shivers every time. I worked here before the attack too, you know.”
Reardon spent the walk bantering with the woman over “those idiot bureaucrats, don’t worry about him,” and shooting him meaningful glances. She responded eagerly with a steady flow of station gossip—which suggested Reardon hadn’t lost as many of his old tricks as he seemed to want Smith to think. He quietly logged the incidents in his eye. It was hardly likely that cross-referencing them with official records would turn up anything, but there was no sense in not being thorough.
“Well, here we are!” Tracy stopped by a plain door and knocked. “Chief Harp, guests have arrived!”
“Come in!”
Inside, the office was sensible and well-maintained. No picture frames anywhere, and very few personal effects to speak of, and none of the telltale bare patches in dust or general office detritus to suggest anything’s hasty removal. Smith was impressed; Harp had her sense of—
Reardon. Why.
Smith turned slowly toward the side of the room, where the smuggler was approaching a cat’s bed with exaggerated caution. The bed was adorned with a banner reading “Rudolf: Jupiter’s Toughest Cat!” and it was indeed occupied by a sleek, well-fed siamese feline. It blinked at them and stretched, then turned over and curled up in a ball, ignoring the visitors entirely. He barely contained his eye roll.
“Ms. Harp, I won’t be taking up much of your time,” he told the middle-aged woman. She was staring disapprovingly at Reardon, an expression that looked like it sat quite comfortably on her face. He took out his tablet, selected a folder of stills from Dr. Steve X. Bratta’s video. Possibly the only pictures of Spectre in existence. “Have you ever encountered the man in these images?”
Harp peered at the screen. “May I?” she reached for the device.
“Of course.” Smith let her take her time, and kept his analysis gear—both human and machine— focused firmly on her. Was she really concentrating on the blurry frames? Behavior was well within acceptable statistical margins. No tics to be seen, no particular sign of nerves, nothing to really get a read on at all—not even the customary nerves an unexpected visit from the CIA tended to produce. Damn. Was she hiding something, or was it a customary poker face? Businesspeople and military personnel were often a problem—
“John, this settles it. We need a cat. Just like this.” Reardon was grinning, crouching beside what appeared to have turned into a whirling ball of fluffy death, and darting his fingers in far too close to its stomach for safety’s sake.
Sammy’s voice jumped out from Smith’s earpiece. “Just so you know, bro, I’m expecting pictures. Lots of pictures. You made me miss the kitty.”
Before his answering silence could truly become meaningful, Harp responded, eyes softening as she turned to the cat. “He survived this station’s destruction, you know? The only living creature that did, unless you count the workers who were rotated off at the time.”
Tracy nodded once, expression suddenly distant.
Smith did indeed know, but Reardon’s almost comically wide eyes were too good a distraction to pass up. He blinked twice in quick succession, the activation sequence for the video recording function on his eye.
“Are you a clever kitty? Are you? Yes you are! Yes you are!” the smuggler demanded of the cat as he narrowly avoided being mauled.
Tracy’s face broke into a wide, genuine smile. “You have no idea, Mr. Rearden. Luckiest, cleverest little bastard in the whole solar system.”
“We found him on our scanners a day into the rebuilding effort—remarkably un-traumatized, really, he was asleep when we got to him,” Harp continued.
Reardon yanked his hand back after getting clawed, but reached out with his other. “What a champ.” He gazed into the cat’s yellow eyes. “I wish I could sleep through trauma and death and destruction and apocalypse like that. Who’s a good sleeper? Who’s a good sleeper? Yes you are!” he said in his exaggerated silly voice that normally one would reserve for a cute puppy, not a tornado of teeth and fur. Another claw, drawing a thin line of blood this time. Good God, Rearden was really committed to petting this monster.
Smith cleared his throat. All right, enough theatre. And possibly enough traumatizing Ms. Stanano, he thought. “The pictures, Ms. Harp? Have you or have you not encountered this man before?”
The station chief looked back to the pictures and pursed her lips. “I’m afraid I haven’t, Agent Smith. Sorry I can’t be of more assistance.”
He fixed her with an intense stare. “Are you sure?”
She pushed his tablet back towards him. “Your picture quality leaves a lot to be desired, but yes, I’m sure. I can count the number of guests we’ve had here on my hands, and that man hasn’t been one of them, sorry.”
Well, if nothing else, the profusion of apologies was a natural speech pattern under stress, and not necessarily one easily mimicked by the unpracticed liar. “Very well, thank you for your time.”
“If there’s anything else? I do have a station’s reconstruction to be overseeing,” Harp said, standing.
He went to stand but Reardon was still crouched next to the menacing ball of hissing and fury. “How much?”
“Excuse me?” said Harp and Stanano, almost in unison.
“How much for the cat?” He made one last attempt to get his hand in to rub the furry belly, and came away with another scratch that started beading blood.
Harp eyed the smuggler skeptically. “You’ve got to be joking.”
Reardon finally stood up, holding a hand to his chest in mock offense. “Joke? Me? Come on, Smith, you know we’ve always wanted a cat on the ship. Fight off any Daleks or Klingons or Wookies that come aboard.”
“I’m allergic.”
“You’re allergic to cats?” Reardon exclaimed.
“No, I’m allergic to wasting time.”
Reardon fixed him with an affronted glare, but Smith was already halfway out of the office. “Ms. Stanano, if you’d be able to guide us back to our ship?”
He was silent as they made their way back to the Aerostar, sorting through strategies and hypotheses as he walked, although as before, his companion more than made up for his reticence. They made their final approach to the Aerostar across the barren moonscape, and Sammy jetted out to meet them. His suit apparently came with tiny maneuvering thrusters, and he sported two canes—he liked to get out in low-g environments whenever possible.
Sammy began chatting energetically with their guide through the comm. Deliberately, Smith fell behind, into step with Reardon as they approached the sh
ip. He fingered his comm over to private and keyed in Rearden’s headset.
“So,” he whispered, dryly. “You like cats? This a new thing?”
“I like,” whispered Reardon, with an impish smile, “casually planting listening devices on cats.”
Smith stared. “Why?”
Reardon shrugged. “Might not be useful, but it never hurts to be prepared. They last for months.” He gave a grin, and inspected the long scratches on both hands. “And, good god, I hate cats.”
The ramp descended and they climbed up to the airlock to start pulling their suits off.
“Well, bye Tracy!” Reardon winked. “Keep up the good work! And if you change your mind about Rudolf, call me.”
She avoided eye contact by the barest of hints.
Interesting. Best let this play out. He pretended not to have noticed, and continued suiting up.
“Um, actually….” Tracy’s voice faltered. Smith dropped his hand from the helmet’s seal and looked at her. “I think the boss might have forgotten. Or, uh, not … told you. I’ve seen that guy here before.”
Chapter Twenty
Zenith, High Orbit
USS Midway
Admiral Jack Mattis’s Ready Room
“Spectre,” said Mattis, shrugging helplessly even though the connection was audio only. It helped him sound … detached. Disinterested. “That name supposed to mean something to me?”
“It should,” said the modulated voice, with palpable sincerity. “It means something to anyone who’s anyone, politically speaking. Politicians and bureaucrats and administrators—and more than a few military personnel. All the keys to power in every corner of humanity’s presence in this galaxy know my name.” There was some measure of pride in her synthetic tone. “So many names, so many contacts, so many favors owed to and from everyone … everyone except Admiral Jack Mattis.”
The Last Dawn: Book 3 of The Last War Series Page 9