by John Vassar
PROVIDER PRIME
ALIEN LEGACY
John Vassar
Copyright © 2017 John Vassar
All rights reserved.
No part of this eBook may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles, reviews or promotions.
This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
For Sharon
1
It’s out there. Somewhere in the dark.
For a few, merciful seconds the cliff face was bathed in moonlight. Undetectable in the cam-suit, the agent pressed closer to the granite, cold under his fingertips. Fingertips which were trembling. The sensation of solidity was second-hand, generated by the suit’s sensors, but enough to slow his heartbeat a fraction.
You’re Earth-side and DS have got your back.
The fear is artificially induced. Use your intellect. Resist it.
His breathing steadied. Unlike most in the squad, he had an affinity with solid ground which belied his Orbtown birthplace. Harry Doyle, his commanding Officer, had selected him for the mission almost without thinking. Euro-2 as a whole was sparsely populated but this region, the extreme south-west, was completely uninhabited apart from the personnel at Cytec. It had a rugged charm of sorts. Wild moorland tangled with gorse and heather and a rocky coast battered by the Atlantic and peppered with sandy bays. Not everyone’s idea of a vacation spot, although Gem might be tempted by the interesting geology. He glanced up at the Moon, pale behind scudding clouds. Like him, trying to stay hidden.
Gem. Hold on to that feeling.
The agent shook his head and sweat splashed onto the inside of his visor before the suit’s circuitry rendered it invisible. He took some comfort in that. Knowing that he had the most advanced technology at FedStat’s disposal protecting him. Somehow, it still wasn’t enough.
Courtesy of the neural link in his left temple, flashing red digits reminded him of the impending rendezvous. He moved the countdown display to the periphery of his vision and blinked more salt away. He lowered the cam-suit’s internal temperature by a degree. On the face of it this mission was training manual grade, but the truth was he’d felt uneasy from the start. His apprehension now seemed justified. The intel retrieved from Cytec was safely encrypted and his ops success rate would remain unblemished, but there was a problem. Thirty-seven seconds of a problem. The elapsed time during which his cam-suit systems had informed him that he had not moved a step while inside Cytec’s laboratory. Thirty-seven seconds when someone or something had instilled such a sense of fear into his soul that he had dropped to his knees when he’d come out of it. It had to be chemical. A nerve agent of some description. His training had prepared him for psychological attack, but as always real-life mission experience was very different. He checked the cam-suit’s scanner yet again, this time adjusting the sensitivity to maximum. It would limit the range to around three hundred metres, but the trade-off was worth it.
Four minutes to go. Stay professional.
Directly below lay the pick-up point, an old helipad unused in more than a century. The agent had avoided using the Abseiler until now, but this section of the cliff was too sheer to negotiate without it. Expert fingers, now steadier, passed a carbon filament through the load-bearing link at his waist and bonded the line-end to the rock a few feet above. Seconds later he landed silently on the helipad, the Abseiler clutch slowing his descent a metre from the ground. He instructed the line to un-bond and rewind, then performed another scan. A few small mammals and larger insects registered this time under max sensitivity, but nothing of any potential threat. Nothing real, at least.
Now, the wait. His transport was less than a minute away, its own cam circuits engaged as per mission protocol. Although silent and invisible like himself, he knew the two-man skimmer was on schedule - the countdown display had brightened at sixty seconds and moved to his centre of vision. How fast, he wondered, could he cover the first piece of flat, open ground he’d encountered since leaving the facility? His last officially-timed one hundred metre sprint had taken a fraction over nine seconds. As the training officer had kindly pointed out, his performance was a little below average for an active-status male agent. Even so, this distance should take him no more than eight.
The agent stretched the tension from his shoulders. His last Rasch Test pushed its way into his thoughts for the third time in as many days. The results had once again revealed an elevated E-Quotient and for the last week Doyle had been watching him like a hawk. If the yearly rise in his empathic responses continued, the SenANNs would ground him. Worse, he could be shunted sideways to a non-covert squad leader role in FedStat’s staffer force. After the prestige of Delere Secos, that was not an attractive option. Empathy, apparently, in combination with the latent telepathic tendencies he was also displaying, was a bad thing as far as the Service was concerned. Talk in the mess hall was that one agent had been retired completely on the grounds of a high E-Quotient, and he had no desire to become the next.
An aural warning counted down the final twenty seconds. The voice was female and reminded him again of Gem, of the need to push the all-invasive fear to the back of his mind. He looked into the night and tried to sense the mass and energy of the approaching craft. The sub-ether coms were functioning again, so the pilot would be tracking him. For the entire time he had been in Cytec’s lab area, every coms channel, even SE, had cut out. He was no scientist, but he knew that this was impossible.
Concentrate. Worry about that in the de-briefing.
He took a deep breath and crouched, ready for the sprint. Allowing a moment for the skimmer to settle, he started his run. On the third stride, the neural display flashed red. Interference crackled across his vision as the cam-suit lost invisibility. He had no time to react.
It’s here.
Something smashed into his legs just below knee level. The force was enough to somersault him two metres into the air, but the messages of pain from severed nerves never reached his consciousness. The remainder of his body was vapourised long before his spinning carcass could hit the ground.
A halo of dust swirled in the air where once had been a living, breathing human being. A second later the breeze caught it and that, too, disappeared. A strange silence fell over the scene. As if reality felt cheated, denied the sound of the corpse impacting on solid ground.
There was nothing left to suggest that Agent David Telson had ever existed.
Lee Mitchell held the glass of amber liquid at eye level. He brought it closer, sniffed at it cautiously and took a sip. It had a smoky taste, harsher than his usual Nectin mix and with a kick that threatened a slow and painful retribution. Just as Harry said it would, the second measure went down easier. He smiled. If anyone could lay their hands on a ninety-year-old bottle of whisky without breaking into a museum, it was Harry Doyle. It was almost enough to forgive Doyle his choice of a retro-themed tourist trap like Mulligan’s. Almost, but not quite.
On the adjacent barstool, Doyle had been watching him carefully. ‘More where that came from. If you drank it like a man instead of your mother we may get halfway down the bottle tonight.’
Mitchell ignored the bait. Doyle gulped down his own poison and said, ‘You know what?’
‘Surprise me.’
‘I’m beginning to miss you.’
There was a choking noise from behind Mitchell’s glass.
Doyle looked aggrieved. ‘I�
��m not kidding. You miss me too, don’t bother to deny it.’
‘The drink’s gone to your head, Harry.’
‘Yeah? You haven’t put on a pound since you left and I’ll bet a month’s credits you’re counting every calorie in that glass. Which is not the way to enjoy a single malt.’
Mitchell shrugged. ‘Force of habit. I’m addicted to exercise.’
‘Bullshit. You miss the action. Sure, they used to call you the only intellectual in the whole squad, but you’re just the same as the rest of us. You need a good old-fashioned fight once in a while.’
‘You could be right,’ said Mitchell. ‘Maybe you should change the subject before we find out.’
‘Really? You and who else are going to take me on?’ Doyle swivelled expertly and summoned two more whiskies with a glance. The chubby bartender left a dozen waiting customers and fumbled under the counter for the special bottle. Doyle glared as he set down the tumblers with trembling fingers. Mitchell eyed the drinks with suspicion. ‘Okay, Harry, enough. Chemical dependency aside, why have you dragged me down to The Bar of The Damned?’ He shot a glance at the twitching barman to make his point.
‘You don’t like the real stuff then?’
‘You know what I mean. You mentioned a contract.’
Doyle feigned hurt. ‘I haven’t seen you in months. Can’t we have a few drinks before getting serious and sordid?’
‘I’ll be incapable of serious after another one of these. Sordid, maybe...’
‘Relax.’ Doyle patted the pocket of his crumpled, brown tunic. ‘I’ve got a shot to clear your head afterwards. Not that you need it, I’m the only one doing any flying tonight. How long’s your piece of crap in the shop for, anyway?’
Mitchell pulled a face. ‘Another two weeks. The starboard rear repulsor’s shot. Too many high-G turns.’
‘Told you not to buy an old Axor. They’re as reliable as this idiot behind the bar.’
‘Get on with it, Harry, you’re avoiding the subject.’
Doyle swilled the contents of his glass, drank, then swilled some more. ‘How’d you like to be back on team? Just admin of course, given the circumstances... two month contract, three at the outside.’
Mitchell looked at him with fire in his eyes. ‘What did you say?’
‘Okay, I know, hear me out. Things have changed since you left. Estephan’s out and the new guy’s more worried over balancing his goddam budget than getting sceleri off the streets. Truth is, he’s cutting back on support personnel. Non-com is fair game for anyone who ticks the boxes.’
‘That’s interesting, Harry,’ Mitchell said, putting down his drink. ‘And ex-agents kicked out for no good reason? What boxes do they tick?’
‘All the right ones, lucky for you. Like I said, non-com is fair game.’
‘For the freaks, too?’
‘Yeah,’ said Doyle. ‘Even freaks like you.’
This was why their comlink conversation had been so vague - he would have told Doyle where to shove his offer. ‘This is bullshit, Harry. It doesn’t make any sense.’
‘Of course not. You should know better than to ask for specifics at this stage. You’ll get a full briefing, but not until day one of the contract proper.’
Mitchell felt a wave of disappointment and disgust. The whisky wasn’t helping, but a potential hangover was not the problem. Harry Doyle was. He knew how deep the scars were and still seemed intent on pushing their friendship to the limit...
And Doyle kept pushing. ‘Thirty thousand up front or the equivalent in commodities. Twelve thousand a week plus expenses. I haven’t conned the suits into a completion bonus yet, but everything else is in my own budget, so that’s solid.’
Mitchell’s shoulders stiffened. ‘For a desk job? That sort of money would keep me going for three years.’
‘So, what’s the problem?’ said Doyle.
‘You tell me. What the hell is this? Are you feeling sorry for me?
‘Not in my nature. Although I’m sure you could use the extra.’
Mitchell’s fingers tightened around his glass. ‘I don’t need the credits, Harry, I need an explanation.’
‘I can’t give that to you here. You know the protocol.’
‘Then tell me why FedStat should break the rules for me? You and I both know that using non-family members in the squad is unheard of.’
‘You’re still family as far as I’m concerned.’
‘Sure I am.’ Mitchell felt his throat constricting. ‘I was twenty-eight, remember? Ten years’ service and I’m retired on some flimsy excuse by an unseen machine and a statistical probability.’
‘We’ve been through this, Lee. There was nothing I could do.’
‘Right.’ Mitchell took a gulp of whisky and instantly regretted it. ‘In any case, FedStat would rather stick needles in their eyes than hire an external resource and you know it. It contradicts everything the Service stands for. Do the High Council know about this?’
Doyle spat the words out. ‘You think I’d know if they did? I’m lucky if anyone tells me the fucking time any more.’
Mitchell froze. Harry never criticised Delere Secos. He’d been torn in two when Mitchell was forced out, but had still come down on the side of the Service. Mitchell examined his old friend. It had been six months since they’d last met. Seventeen years as Chief of Operations was bound to take its toll, but Delere Secos was in his DNA and Harry had taken it all in his stride. Until now. The lines on his face had deepened and grey had invaded his temples. The antique neon lighting did nothing for the pallor of his skin, but he looked older. And he looked tired.
Mitchell glanced around for a quieter place to talk. A tourist couple were making their way out and a blind man walking backwards could have spotted them - dressed in repro twentieth century outfits, they looked like a four-year-old’s worst nightmare about clowns. But they’d freed up a corner table and Mitchell gratefully slid his backside from the clammy, red vinyl barstool. ‘Let’s take a seat over there, Harry. I’ve got something with me that might help the situation.’
The bartender scuttled after them, clattering away empty glasses and making a show of cleaning up. Mitchell had never seen service that fast, but he recognised the symptoms. From the sweat pouring off him, Harry must have this one on a leash.
Mitchell sat down, making sure Doyle’s back was to the bar. ‘Okay. Against my better judgement, I’m prepared to give you one last chance to cut the crap and tell me what’s going on.’
‘You,’ Doyle said casually, ‘can go fuck yourself.’
Mitchell was grateful for a personality trait he recognised at last. He reached into his pocket and placed a slim, metal cylinder on the table. It was twelve centimetres long, with an antique brushed-metal finish. ‘Seen one of these before?’
‘Maybe,’ Doyle growled. ‘Looks like something for making your mark on old-style paper.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Okay, I believe you. You don’t need the goddam money, you can afford your own whatever-the-hell that thing is called.’
‘It’s called a pen, Harry. Except it’s also something else.’ Mitchell twisted the top of the instrument and a tiny metal ball appeared from a hole at the opposite end.
Doyle raised an eyebrow. ‘I’ll be even less impressed if you can write your name with that thing.’
‘No writing, but prepare to be impressed anyway. This thing will let us talk without breaking any kind of protocol. Try it. Raise your voice a little.”
Nothing from Doyle but a look of contempt.
‘Come on, Harry, make it up if you have to. Tell me I’m a bastard for sleeping with one of your girlfriends.’
‘You are and you did.’
‘Then let rip. Just don’t get up or wave your arms around.’
Doyle shook his head. ‘Now I know you’re smashed. You can’t handle your liquor, I suspected it all along.’
‘Guess it’s down to me, then.’ Mitchell cupped his hands around his mouth. ‘This man
is Harry Doyle and he works for an organisation that doesn’t exist. To the outside world, he’s just another FedStat staffer chief with an attitude problem. He’s fifty-eight years old, lives in a squalid little Earth-side domice and still follows young girls around in the hope of getting laid once a year.’
There was no reaction from the room, or the bartender who’d been squinting at them all evening. Mitchell’s voice was loud enough to be heard from the walkway. Doyle thumped his drink down. Through gritted teeth, he said, ‘You better pray no-one heard you say those words…’
Mitchell waggled the pen between his fingers. ‘No-one heard, Harry, that’s the point.’
Doyle looked around, his face thunderous. ‘Okay, smart-ass, you got me. Now tell me what the hell you think you’re doing. What is that thing?’
‘Something I’ve been working on for a while. Call it a sound-cocoon. It scrambles our voices and turns them into background noise for everyone within earshot. Except, of course, within a core radius… in our little bubble we can say anything we want. All they’ll hear is what you’ve been giving me for the last half hour – nothing of any relevance. The only drawback is there has to be some ambient noise for it to work.’
Doyle’s eyes narrowed. ‘But it won’t alter what they see, right?’
‘Right. Which is why I covered my mouth and made you sit with your back towards this dump’s only sec-node. But it will warn us if there’s any surveillance trained on us. Like now.’ Mitchell tapped the pocket-clip on the pen, which housed a tiny, jewelled light, flashing red.
Doyle looked unsurprised. ‘Probably an MD. What can I say, everyone wants a piece of me. Hold on a second…’
Mitchell glanced around casually to allow Doyle to neural link with DS Central Ops and request withdrawal of the suspected micro-drone. The bar’s ancient sec-node wasn’t the culprit. He doubted it would have registered on the pen even at point-blank range, not that that high security was a priority here. Out of habit or paranoia, he’d never figured out which, Mitchell checked for sceleri in every place he walked into. Barman aside, he’d seen nothing here at Mulligan’s. A couple of sniffer dealers but no-one on the scale. This was the last place he would have expected Harry to choose, even for a joke. Authentic Old-Earth Atmosphere and Vintage Liquor summed up how desperate Yorktown had become since the Great Famine. It wasn’t alone. There were few places Mitchell would choose to visit on Earth, despite the regen programme.