A Shadow in the Flames (The New Aeneid Cycle)

by Michael G. Munz

  Diomedes nodded, still scowling. "Hiatt." Putting his hand over the payment he had put under his coat, he paused for a moment before appearing to come to a decision. He pulled out his phone. "If anyone can find the mark, it's him."

  Michael permitted himself a quick smile at his friend's attempt at self-persuasion and waited while Diomedes was on the phone. Just possibly, things might turn out alright. Maybe that was just how his life worked: hope from tragedy. When he was four, his mother died of cancer after his father had run off, yet his uncle had raised him well. His uncle's death had meant the loss of his only family. Yet if his uncle were still alive, Michael might still be on the farm, helping him "for just one more year" to keep it going the way Michael had done each year since he had originally planned to leave at eighteen. Though it had been Michael's own choice, he had secretly begun to think of the farm as an invisible chain that kept him from experiencing more of the outside world. He smiled sadly. Maybe soon he'd be able to have the gain without the tragedy.

  Diomedes finished up on the phone and rolled his eyes. Michael watched him for an explanation with an expectant look that took Diomedes a few moments to notice.

  "He'll meet us here soon." Diomedes sounded less than pleased. "Looks like you're a real freelancer now, kid," he said before taking a drink.

  Michael smiled at the thought and tried to focus beyond the night's losses. A new stage of his life was finally beginning. Diomedes was no longer just a role model; he was about to become his mentor. The thought was enough to make him forget the day's earlier disaster for a moment.

  Diomedes set the glass down. Stern, artificial eyes fell on Michael. "Don't screw up."

  III

  A face floated like a ghost above the lunar landscape. The face was Parker's own, reflected in the clear polymer windshield of the dual-passenger rover that kept them safe from the choking, cold, near-vacuum outside. The Earth hung in the sky beyond, the only spot of color in a view of white, black, and grey. It was always there. Parker hadn't realized until he had arrived on the Moon that the same facts of orbit and rotation that kept one face of the Moon perpetually facing the Earth also kept the Earth in the sky above that face constantly. It was a sight that he found comforting in its constancy. Parker had wished more than once that everything were so straightforward.

  His hands remained at the controls of the rover, guiding it along the smoothest course along the Aristarchus crater and following the tracks of the mining transports that had made the journey in the past few days. The rover's only other occupant, the woman from ESA, stood patiently beside him, occasionally shifting her weight as they navigated the route from the operations center.

  In 2035, the European Space Agency had completed Alpha Station, humanity's first major lunar base. Since then, ESA had claimed the right to stewardship of the territory surrounding it. As its resources were primarily those of exploration, it became more feasible to dispense mining contracts to independent companies instead of going into the mining business itself. ESA would bear the responsibility of transport to and from Earth in return for a percentage of the profit. The Saratoga Mining Company, Parker's employer, was one of many firms to take up ESA's offer, with multiple plots available to mine at its discretion.

  Parker steered them across one of those plots until the mouth of a tunnel opened in the surface ahead of them, and then eased the rover inside. "Here we are again," he announced. "Have you had a close look at it, yet? Gotten out and actually looked close at the surface?"

  "I have," she answered after a beat. "Shortly after arriving. As you reported, Mr. Andora, very. . . remarkable."

  "I've sure never seen a thing like it."

  His crew had found it barely six days ago. At the time, Parker had been at work in his office on the paperwork for his crew's hasty transfer from their previous site. The company had pulled them out before they had reached the standard ESA mining limits, which made for an administrative nightmare. Parker had figured that the Aristarchus site must be richer and that Saratoga wished to mine it first, but from the initial survey data he'd had, the place wasn't any better than the old site. In some ways, it was worse. Yet if his crew didn't pull enough out of the new site, someone in administration wouldn't like it, and he'd catch the blame.

  He had been agonizing over the survey estimates and wishing for a distraction when he'd gotten his wish in a signal from the crew's outfitting bay. Parker still remembered. He'd turned, opened the frequency, and responded, perhaps too eagerly, with, "Is there a problem?"

  "Heh. That's a good question, sir," came the response from the speaker. Rayburn's gruff voice echoed from the bare walls of the airlock in which he stood. "You wanna come out here and take a look at this yourself?"

  Parker looked out his window and down at the equipment below. "Take a look at what?"

  "Hell, if I could tell you I wouldn't be callin' you out here."

  Though the tone in Rayburn's voice had hinted otherwise, Parker had headed down to the airlock with the thought in his mind that whatever he was being called to look at might help in some way with increasing the production estimates. He put on his pressure suit and followed Rayburn over the dusty landscape, the hope still with him despite the other's silent refusal to elaborate until they'd reached the site. The appearance of something else soon overshadowed that hope and brought its own unique dilemmas.

  Rayburn led him down toward the center of the Aristarchus crater to where a depression in the exposed rock cradled an area where the miners had begun clearing it. A short distance from here, Rayburn stopped and pointed. At first he seemed to be pointing at nothing beyond the immediate lunar geology, but after stepping closer, Parker noticed a difference. After a moment of uncertainty, he approached further and reached out to touch it, almost gingerly. Of the jumble of thoughts in his mind at the time—a mix of confusion, worry, and amazement—the one thing he could clearly remember was his own voice asking with a slight air of annoyance, "Now what the hell is the protocol for this?"

  Whatever the exposed object was, it appeared to extend farther back and down into the rock than what little had been revealed. It was composed of some type of metal, although the specific type was impossible to determine with a mere visual examination. The metal had a strange ethereal quality to it, at once both uniformly grey and somehow transparent as if he could see a few millimeters into the surface. It felt rather like gazing through a fog at clouds beyond it—yet it was genuinely solid nonetheless, sending the light from his suit dancing in a faint lattice of crystalline reflection. After the initial shock and wonder had worn off, Parker had promptly decided that this was not a situation for him to be handling, and it wasn't long before his own superiors had been contacted. He had been relieved to be told that all he was required to do was to wait for further instructions.

  Considering the nature of the situation, the instructions had come quicker than expected. On the other hand they were generally simple to carry out. Deciding what should be done in this case wasn't the kind of responsibility he'd signed on for, and he was more than happy to just be a cog in the wheel. He was to maintain authority over his crew, of course. That was the job he was qualified for, and what he had been told to have them accomplish was easily within the confines of their ability. Soon the crew had begun to dig again, following the object back into the rock.

  In the time between then and now, they had created a tunnel that sloped gently into the Moon's surface. On one side was the object, clearly much larger than Parker had been able to discern during his initial look. It had been slow going. They'd had to widen the tunnel, now almost one hundred yards long, to the point where the people and machinery had enough space to work. Supports had been put in to keep the tunnel safe, and that had taken time as well. But with the entire crew's effort concentrated on the one task, they were going as quickly as possible.

  Parker refocused on the present as the rover neared the end of the tunnel where his crew was working and eased the vehicle down to a slow creep.
The piercing light from the cutting that carved the lunar rock reflected in the rover's windshield. As the rock was delicately sliced from its foundation, miners moved about, strapped into the large, robotic skeletons that hydraulically modified their own movements and allowed them to carry away carvings that would otherwise break a man's back even in the Moon's lower gravity. Larger vehicles took the heavier pieces that such exo-chassis couldn't handle, and both loaded the rock onto belts that conveyed the rocks along the tunnel to the surface where they would then be hauled to the material processors.

  Normally, once the rocks reached the processors, crews would begin the procedure of extracting any usable material. Only now the processors did not operate. The rock was beginning to pile up. Parker had ordered the initially surprised crew to concentrate solely on digging.

  "Your crew works quickly," the woman commended him.

  "They're the best," he said, easing the rover to a stop.

  For a time, he and the woman watched the crew in silence. She had arrived at the dig site a little over two days ago, introducing herself as Field Chief Marette Clarion, an ESA overseer. French by her accent, so far she had been true to the title, content to only watch while Parker directed the crew. Even so he was glad of her presence, for the most part.

  From the onset of the excavation, Parker had supervised almost constantly. ESA had told him what they wanted him to look for, and although he had instructions to not inform the crew of specifics, he was fairly certain they had an idea of their objective as well. Whether any of them would know it or not, if they saw it, was another question. That was one thing that made him uneasy, as Parker didn't even know exactly how to recognize it himself.

  When they began, he had opted not to worry about it until there was a change in the featureless surface that they were uncovering. When Clarion had arrived, he'd taken some comfort in the assumption that she would help him to make the distinction, yet she hadn't been willing to shed any more light on the subject. Primarily, she watched, tight-lipped, and answered most questions with the assertion that it was best to avoid premature speculation. The apprehensive foreman had assumed—or hoped—that she would speak up when the time came.

  On the other hand, despite the fact that Parker was allowed to continue supervising the project (he had more than half expected ESA to completely take control), Clarion's presence made him uneasy. She had assured him she was only there to see the results of the dig, but as her relative silence continued, Parker couldn't shake the feeling that he was being evaluated as well. The idea was ridiculous, he'd told himself; the woman was from ESA, not Saratoga. It was just his nerves reacting to the circumstances. The fact that it was a non-routine project was enough to cause him stress, even without the incredible details. But somehow realizing this didn't seem to help the feeling that Clarion was studying him.

  A change in the usual rhythm of the digging caught Parker's attention. As he looked over toward the edge of the excavated wall, the crew's comm-channel broke the silence inside the vehicle.

  "You told us to say when we uncovered anything different, Parker," came the female crewmember's voice. "Looks like we just did."

  Parker glanced over at Clarion, who was peering out at the operation. "Can you give me a bit more details, there?" he replied.

  "Looks like a depression in the surface. Doesn't seem to be much larger than ten feet square, though we're still uncovering it."

  "A depression?" Parker asked while trying for a better view. "Like a dent?"

  "Mm, wouldn't call it a dent. Definite corners."

  "All right." He took a deep breath. "I'll be out there in a minute to have a look."

  Parker guided the vehicle in closer to the spot in question. As the crew continued to cut away the rock around the depression, he slipped into the rear airlock and closed it off from the cockpit where Clarion remained. Designed for only one person at a time, the airlock was cramped, and it took a few extra moments of awkward bending to get the suit on. He then opened the outer door, walked over to the wall, and ordered the crew to stop their work. As they backed off, he was able to get a better look at the depression. Just as described, it was around ten feet high, although it extended horizontally at least a little further. The left edge remained concealed by uncut rock. Again Parker gave in to the impulse to touch it. He ran his hand down the side of the indentation that was six inches deep and separated the depression from the rest of the object at right angles.

  Parker stared for a time to let his gaze roam the full width of the depression, scanning corners, peering into the mysterious metal, and wrestling with the decision before him. What business did he have even making this distinction? If he screwed this one up, they'd surely hang it on him, but they could only expect so much of him, couldn't they?

  Well, Parker? Yes, or no?

  "I think," he started. "I think this might possibly be what we're looking for."

  In the rover, Marette Clarion watched the uncertain foreman study the indentation. Marette herself was not entirely positive about her own assessment of the depression—she doubted there was anyone who would be—but she was responsible for making a decision, so she made it. She would sign off on the foreman's report to ESA when he submitted it, but first, there were others to be notified. She reached for her watch and pressed the signal button just above the etching of the Palladium, never for a moment taking her eyes off what appeared to be a door.

  IV

  Felix Hiatt was haunting the offices of Marquand Cybernetics when the humorless freelancer called. Felix didn't work there, or at least he didn't work there for Marquand. He was "working" there for himself, and as far as Marquand was concerned he probably shouldn't have even been in the building. Non-employees weren't normally allowed in the majority of the facilities. He would have been no exception, were it not for an acquaintance of his managing to hook him up with a minimum-access employee card. It didn't give him free run of the building, but very few people had that privilege anyway, so it wasn't a major concern. It was enough, for the moment.

  Despite the minor inconvenience of procuring the pass card, Felix had no specific purpose in the building other than trolling for information. Sitting alone in the cafeteria, he attempted to overhear any interesting conversations. He'd managed to discover a few days earlier that a certain hotshot cybernetic engineer had been hired, and if the woman would be helping out with any particularly interesting hardware, he wanted to know. The annual cybernetics convention was due to happen in just over a month and new things were bound to be in development. As to what Felix might do with the information when and if he got it, he didn't quite know himself. He might find someone interested in paying for the information, or he might not. Perhaps another use of the knowledge might present itself. Even so, he still enjoyed the search—almost as much as he enjoyed the knowledge itself.

  Besides, he had a reputation to consider.

  It was this same reputation that had caused Diomedes to call him, Felix figured. What little the freelancer had told him hinted at a solid job, which was more definite than his current objective, and just the fact that he had called him at all spoke of a challenge. Diomedes liked Felix about as much as a kick in the teeth, and anything that would get him past that attitude certainly involved something big. Knowing Diomedes, it involved a big sum of money. Felix had to smile when he thought of the mental struggle the freelancer must have fought between the want of the money and his dislike of Felix's company.

  No doubt about it, Felix thought, this was going to be fun.

  A short time after getting the call, Felix arrived in The Flaming Pyre. He checked the handgun he kept under his coat at the door, and then stopped just inside where his eyes scanned the room from behind the mirrored sunglasses he'd recently taken to wearing on a whim. Most of the light inside came from the central bar, ringed by orange neon and a few overhead fluorescents. The orange mixed with smaller, reddish lights along the walls and the ceiling, overpowering the white to bathe most of the establish
ment in a rusty ambiance.

  Felix spotted Diomedes in a booth near the back. If the freelancer had seen him, he gave no indication, though Felix guessed that he most likely had. One thing about Diomedes, he was observant, even if he wasn't always discerning enough to properly note the thing he observed. Felix recognized the younger man with him as his roommate: Michael, he realized after a moment's concentration. They had met once, briefly, and although Felix didn't think he'd spent enough time with him to form an accurate impression, he'd seemed like a decent enough kid.

  Felix smiled to himself, feeling old for his mental reference to a man in what looked to be his early twenties as a kid. At thirty-one, he realized he sometimes felt he was a kid himself, even though Felix could still clearly remember being that age and feeling completely matured. He hoped the kid knew what he was doing, hanging around with someone like Diomedes.

  Felix resumed moving, heading not for the booth but instead for the central bar. Not looking anywhere near the direction of the freelancer and his roommate, he took a stool and ordered a drink. The bartender smiled in recognition of his customer and then shook his head disapprovingly as he accepted Felix's order of, "Water, on the rocks."

  Felix smiled back at him. He knew this man, too.

  A few moments later, Felix sipped slowly at his ice water and wondered how long it might take for Diomedes to come over and haul him off the seat. He probably shouldn't be doing this. He was extremely curious about what Diomedes had called him for, and playing with the freelancer's patience probably wasn't the wisest thing to do in any case, but Felix still couldn't quite resist. Should he turn around and wave? Felix chuckled. That would probably be going a little too far. This way at least he could claim to not have seen him if it came to making an excuse, albeit a flippant one.