Stilicho smirked. That was quick. Most of the others he dealt with would usually go into denial first, then they would resort to threats and even physical attacks before attempting to bargain with him. It was like the classic Kubler-Ross model on death and dying, the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance. Only this time, Campos went right to stage three from the get-go. “So you want to make a deal, then?”
Campos made a slow nod. His eyes were blanked out in shock. “Yes. I-I’ll wipe everything clean. I won’t hand the files over to the new company I’m working for.”
Stilicho looked at him solemnly. “Urizen Holdings, right? How do I know you didn’t hand these files over to them already?”
Campos shook his head rapidly. “No, no, I-I just told them what I’ve got. We were supposed to make the final deal tomorrow. Urizen doesn’t have anything yet, I swear.”
Stilicho wanted to grin, but he suppressed it. He already knew that Campos hadn’t given them the files yet, none of the traces on his uploads contained the files, so on that end he was telling the truth. “Assuming that I even believe you, do you honestly think we can just leave you alone after what you’ve done?”
Campos looked down onto the shiny floor. “What do you want?”
“You will need to pay a monetary restitution to ACE Corp,” Stilicho said. “I am aware that we gave you a separation pay bonus, so we’ll get all of it back, and I’ve also activated a penalty clause.”
Campos sighed. “Okay. I’ll destroy the files too.”
“Already being done as we speak,” Stilicho said. “My drones are wiping the files clean, and I’ll be taking the physical hard drives. But I am holding on to a copy of your private stuff, just in case you renege on your promises of going straight.”
Campos got on his knees. “Please, couldn’t you just wipe it all? You don’t need anything on me- you can trust me, please!”
Stilicho shook his head. “Sorry, but that’s how it’s going to play. Once your files are wiped and your drives physically replaced, my AI will be uploading something to your new personal house server, so you can use those files and hand them over to Urizen.”
Campos got up to one knee. He had a confused look on his face. “Y-you want me to go through with the deal I made with your competition?”
Stilicho gave him a wink. “Oh yeah, you’ll proceed as planned. Only this time we’ll be feeding you the info to give over to them.”
Campos thought about it for a minute. “So you mean, I’ll be planting false information?”
“In a way, yes,” Stilicho said. “It’s not exactly false, just research that leads to a dead end. And it will take them months to figure out that it’s useless. That should give us enough of a head start to mass produce our reactors, thereby beating them to market.”
“B-but what if they find out? They’ll kick my ass!”
“They might, but that’s the risks of the game,” Stilicho said. “Oh, by the way, you won’t make any money out of it. You need to approve ACE Financial as partner to your bank account. The moment they pay you for the files, we’ll take the money out of your hands too.”
Campos’s eyes opened wide. “What?”
Stilicho shrugged. “Sorry, but I did tell you that there’s a price to pay for this. Sure beats losing everything, right?”
Campos was now a broken man. “Okay.”
“Tell me,” Stilicho said. “Who designed this mishmash of a house? It’s totally stupid.”
“It was my father’s house before the big quake that leveled Los Angeles- I got it after he died,” Campos said. “The walls came down, but parts of the foundation were still intact, so I kept those and had new smartglass walls installed over the rest.”
Stilicho pushed his lower lip out. “I see. I guess it sort of makes sense- in a weird, silly kind of way.”
Campos had a dejected look on his face. “Are you going to take anything else from me?”
Stilicho looked into his eyes. “Just one other thing.”
“What?”
Stilicho grinned as he shifted the gears on the antique Ferrari while accelerating down the road. His Flux sedan was on autodrive and following at a fair distance behind him. The electric cars everyone drove nowadays just didn’t have the feel and power of the old internal combustion engines, and Stilicho loved to experience the growl and the rhythmic vibrations of the motor as he pressed on the gas pedal. It felt like he was a teenager again. The drive along the newly rebuilt roads of San Diego seemed like old times, and the wind whipping his neck felt very much like the cyber sexcapade that had been interrupted just hours before.
A short, compact woman with long dark hair came out from the driver’s side of the sedan, before the car began to autopark itself along a deserted street in Manhattan’s Harlem district. Pulling up the collar of her raincoat to partially shield her head from the evening rain, she dashed across the street and came upon a police barricade. She flashed her ID, and the two NYPD police officers gestured at her to go on ahead. The woman nodded as she sprinted over to the mobile command post, a heavy police truck parked beside the building. After lightly tapping on the side door, she was quickly let inside.
Opening the door for her, FBI Special Agent Kordell Jackson grinned and held out his hand. “It’s good to see you again, Darian.”
Darian Arante shook his hand. “How are you, Kordell? It’s been, what … six years now?”
Kordell nodded as a burly police lieutenant stood up from his chair and strode over to them. “Yeah, about that,” he said as he gestured over to the cop. “This is Lieutenant Marrone of the Emergency Services Unit. Marrone, allow me to introduce to you NASA Special Agent Darian Arante.”
Marrone pursed his lips while shaking her hand. “NASA Special Agent? Like what the FBI’s got?”
Darian nodded. “Yes, Lieutenant. With NASA’s new mandate, we now have a law enforcement arm that handles incidents up in space and in the other planets.”
Marrone made a low whistle. “Well, I’ll be damned. I suppose you’ve been trained and all that?”
“Darian went through FBI training in Quantico, that’s how I met her,” Kordell said. “We were in the same batch, but she got transferred over to NASA as soon as she graduated.”
“I also underwent full Astronaut training in Houston,” Darian said, before shifting her gaze to Kordell. “I’m guessing this isn’t a social call.”
Marrone crossed his arms. “Nope. We got a hostage situation here. Some loon has threatened to kill two halfway house caretakers.” He pointed over to the 3D monitors lined up along the interior of the command post. A virtual map indicated that two police drones were hovering by the sides of the four story brick building. A team of ESU troopers had made it to the second floor and deployed several scout bots to get a clearer picture of what was happening. There were three infrared heat signatures in a room just above them. Two figures were lying on the floor, huddled together, while a third was walking back and forth, at times stooping over the cowering pair, waving what looked to be a pistol in the air.
“The suspect is a transient by the name of Robert Tsuda,” Kordell said. “Prior records indicate arrests for vagrancy, disturbing the peace while under the influence of drugs, but nothing really violent until now. Seems he was undergoing mental health treatment as a resident of the halfway house, then he just went berserk.”
“Our hostage negotiation team is in touch with him,” Marrone said. “He’s been making demands to go back to Mars, or so he says. He demanded to speak with whoever was in charge of sending people back to the Red Planet, so we contacted the FBI and they sent Kordell over.”
“And then I sent for you,” Kordell said to her. “Since NASA did tell me that you were the closest special agent they have in the area.”
Darian pursed her lips. “Tsuda … that name sounds familiar to me.”
“Checking his background it seems he was a former member of Mars First,” Kordell said. “D
oes that ring a bell?”
Darian’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh my god. Now I remember! He was Silas Balsamic’s personal assistant. I interviewed him a few years back.”
Marrone scratched his chin. “I’m not familiar with all this. Could you two bring me up to speed?”
“Mars First was a private, non-profit group that advocated humans set up a permanent, colony on Mars at any cost,” Darian said. “They were actually more like a cult. Their leader, Silas Balsamic, was most probably a sociopath. They were able to get funding and set up a one-way trip and colony base on the Red Planet, but within a few years it all went to hell. In the end, a number of them died and they ran out of money. The US government had to fund their evacuation and there was a huge outcry. In response, a new space treaty was signed by almost every member of the UN, and it put into place many regulations that restricted future settlements on Mars.”
“I read a few articles on the news, but that was a long time ago,” Marrone said. “Something about a cover up?”
“Yeah,” Kordell said. “Reports came in that some of the Mars First members didn’t die because of accidents on the Red Planet, but were murdered. Others claimed incidents of torture, cannibalism and rape. There was an investigation, but nothing came of it due to lack of evidence.”
“Robert Tsuda was rumored to have very high influence in the Mars First Colony,” Darian said. “He was considered to be a fanatically loyal lieutenant to Silas Balsamic. Like his master, there were plenty of allegations by former members of the cult, but no charges were ever brought up.”
One of the technicians manning the drone console looked over in their direction. “Lieutenant, he wants to talk again. He’s demanding to speak with someone in charge of rockets, he says.”
Marrone gestured at Darian to take a seat beside the drone controller. “Could you talk to him? My men are just outside the door, ready to make a breach. I would like this to be resolved peacefully, but if he starts shooting, we’re going in.”
Darian nodded and sat down on the chair. The drone technician handed her a smartglass visor and headset, which she placed on her head. The police had been able to deploy a tracked robot inside of the room and it had a com-link that allowed her to communicate directly with Tsuda. “Okay, I’m all set,” she said.
The drone controller tapped her on the shoulder. “We’ve got audiovisual on him, but he’s only got audio on you.”
“Got it,” Darian said before tapping the speak button on the console. “Mr. Tsuda, my name is Special Agent Darian Arante of NASA. You said you wanted to speak to a Federal representative on space launches. What can I do for you?”
Tsuda was wearing a bathrobe over his jeans and t-shirt. His hair was disheveled, and he would periodically turn to look closely into the lenses of the robot, bringing his constantly shifting eyes into a close-up. His voice had a nervous tick to it. “Y-you are with NASA?”
Kordell leaned over and whispered in Darian’s other ear. “He’s been taking antipsychotic medication, but we don’t have a confirmation on dosage.”
Darian nodded in acknowledgement before returning her concentration on the screen. “Yes Mr. Tsuda, I am the official representative of NASA. What is it that you want?”
Tsuda waved the pistol back and forth, then he scratched his grizzled chin with the tip of the barrel. “You gotta help me, I need to go back.”
Darian leaned forward. “Go back where, sir?”
Tsuda’s eyes fluttered back and forth. “To Mars, I need to go back to Mars.”
“Why do you need to go back to Mars?”
“He told me I should,” Tsuda said, his voice lowering by a few octaves. “At first I said it would be hard, you know, I’ve gotten old and I’m not in shape anymore, but he insisted. Then I told him there was no way I could do it because I didn’t have the money, but he kept telling me to do it anyway. Then I told him that the government would never allow me to go back, then he said okay, forget it. Then the silence came … then I started missing his voice. Then I knew, I knew he was back there. I was his second in command. Don’t you see? He always trusted me! I have to go there to meet him!”
Darian scowled as she tried to discern his body language. “Who is telling you to go back to Mars, Robert?”
Tsuda rolled his eyes as he waved his arms in the air. “Who else? Silas! Silas told me to go! He’s there right now! Don’t you see, I have to join him over there, he needs me!”
“How did Silas communicate with you, Robert?”
“I was watching TV, then I just heard his voice,” Tsuda said. “Every time I went online, I got messages from him. He’s there, I’m telling you, he’s there! I need to go right now, the synodic transfer orbits will happen in a few days, I need you to put me on a flight right away.”
Darian placed her thumbs underneath her chin. Synodic transfer orbits to Mars came in once every two years, and presented an optimum way to get to the Red Planet. Since both planets would be properly aligned, and any spacecraft using the orbital maneuver would get there much sooner than at any other time of the year. So it was clear that he knew the timing was right, which seemed to indicate that he was still somewhat sane, she thought. “Robert,” she said. “Silas returned to Earth, with you. Don’t you remember? He can’t be at Mars. You both came back together.”
Tsuda started to get agitated. “I’m telling you, he … is … there! He must have found a way to get back there. Why else would he tell me to go? You’ve got to believe me!”
Darian’s voice was calm. She needed to deescalate the situation. “I believe you, Robert. I can arrange for you to get on the next flight. But I need you to do me a favor, okay? I need you to release the hostages. Can you do that for me?”
Tsuda growled. “No! They’re staying with me! I want you to book three passengers on the next launch. They have to go with me, I can’t take the risk of you breaking your promise to me!”
“Robert, I promise you that you will get on that flight, but you have to do something for me,” Darian said. “It’s called reciprocity. I do you a favor, and now you have to return a favor to me, can we agree on that?”
“I-I don’t trust you,” Tsuda said as he pointed the gun at the two cowering old women lying on the floor. “I need these two. They’re my insurance.”
“Insurance for what, Robert?” Darian said.
“Silas told me not to trust you people,” Tsuda said, his voice breaking. “He told me … god how I miss him!”
“Robert, I can assure you that everything is okay,” Darian said. “Just stay calm. What I need for you to do is to just let one of them go, okay? Just one, and I can bring a car over that will take you all the way to the launch site.”
Tsuda’s whole body started to shake. “I can feel him inside of me,” he said. “He’s telling me that … you’re all lying to me.”
Marrone started to key in commands to his ESU troopers using his own headset. He leaned over to Darian’s side. “He’s going unstable, calm him down or my men go in now,” he whispered.
“Robert, take it easy, we can work this out,” Darian said.
Tsuda’s eyes had a glazed, faraway look at them. Then he suddenly turned his attention over at the hostages on the floor. “He told me … he told me that you’re all scum!” Leveling the pistol, he fired a shot into the side of the wall. The two women on the ground instantly began to scream.
Marrone grimaced as he spoke into his headset. “Damn it! Go, go, go!”
Darian stood up. “Wait!”
The robot fired a tear gas canister at point blank range, narrowly missing Tsuda. He staggered backwards in shock for a brief second before aiming his gun at the hostages once more, but the billowing smoke was rapidly filling the room and he couldn’t get a clear bead on them. He was able to fire one wild shot that missed, before the ESU team breached the door. Tsuda turned and aimed the weapon at them. The lead ESU trooper fired a short burst from his submachinegun that hit him squarely in the chest and he went down. T
he hostages continued their coughing and screaming until they were brought out.
Darian stood in Robert Tsuda’s tiny room in the halfway house. A team of forensics experts were going through his possessions, but they were just doing cursory checks since he was already dead, and the case was closed. Darian couldn’t help but think that it would have been better if he was taken alive, but the lives of the two hostages were at stake so the police couldn't take the chance.
Kordell walked into the room. “Pity it turned it out this way, I thought you were about to convince him to give up one of the hostages, then he just went totally nuts all of a sudden.”
Darian sighed. “Yeah, I thought we were making progress.”
“You want to go for a cup of coffee or something?” he said.
Darian shrugged. “Sure, why not.”
As they both started walking down the stairs, Kordell could see that the rain had stopped. A few more hours and the sun would be over the horizon. “Darian,” he said. “When you mentioned his boss, that Silas guy, why did you insist that he wouldn’t be on Mars?”
Darian stepped down onto the base of the stairs. “Because Silas Balsamic is dead. A few years after being back on Earth, he went nuts, just like Robert Tsuda did tonight. He killed himself almost a decade ago.”
Chapter 3
Stilicho caught the last transcontinental flight that evening. The new supersonic passenger jets resembled the old needlelike Concordes, only they were much larger. It had taken a few decades for the public to get used to flying in an electric plane that maneuvered using gimbals instead of rudders. With electric turbofans that gave these aircraft a speed in excess of Mach-3, he made it to Florida’s aptly named Space Coast in less than forty-five minutes. ACE Corp’s automated limousine service picked him up at the arrivals terminal and quickly whisked him away towards the Kennedy Space Center, which had now been opened up for commercial use after NASA began phasing out its own launch operations over thirty years before.
After getting out of the passenger side door, he noticed that there were a large number of cars still in the parking lot fronting the ACE Corp headquarters building. Stilicho suddenly remembered that his boss was doing a press conference, but it had been delayed due to some last minute work they were doing on the reactor in Texas. Stilicho surmised that the proposed new breakthrough that his boss was going to present to the world had experienced some sort of technical glitch, and he was probably doing his best to dampen any disappointment.
The Piranha Solution: A Hard Science Fiction Technothriller (Ace of Space Book 1) Page 3