Fire with Fire, Second Edition

by Charles E Gannon

  “Your suspicions are hardly flattering to me, Mr. Riordan—or consistent with the agreement we made yesterday. Cooperation is a two-way proposition, and one that can only work if we are being open with each other.”

  “Oh—you must mean the kind of openness that Ms. Rakir exhibited when she assured me that a couple of half-buried wall remains at the oil field were the only evidence of intelligent habitation.”

  “Prior habitation,” Helger corrected. “And I think you must have misunderstood Ms. Rakir—or she was unclear. We would never have claimed such a thing.”

  “No? Then why did you leave the main ruins off my itinerary? You presumed that I’d be uninterested? Strange presumption, considering that this is just the kind of violation I was sent to investigate—and which only makes your dismissal of the USSF survey that much more suspect. I think ‘suspect’ is a very charitable term, don’t you?”

  Helger was silent as his wine arrived. He sampled it and then dabbed his lips. “We discovered the ruins after our independent survey. But we were quite aware of how it would look. We saw no reason to attract the inevitable accusations and condemnation any earlier than necessary.”

  “That’s another strange statement, since the group that inadvertently found the first sign of ruins did so five months before CoDevCo conducted its survey. And, according to their report”—okay, just one lie to see if I’ve guessed correctly—“they didn’t stumble across the rocks near the oilfields first; my report indicates the group was ‘relatively near the river’ when they came across the ‘remains.’ That means that they discovered the main site first.”

  Helger sipped his wine. “I fail to see the relevance of these rather insignificant details.”

  So the main ruins were the first ones discovered. Hell, the others might just be decoys—for dupes like me. “These insignificant details will interest the Hague, the EU Investigatory Commission, and the Commonwealth, Mr. Helger. They indicate that you knew—before your surveyors arrived—what you really wanted to extract from Dee Pee Three. The survey was a sham to cover up your attempt to prospect for alien artifacts.”

  “So you are reneging on your offer of cooperation so soon? My, it didn’t even last one day.”

  “Mr. Helger, it didn’t even last one morning, because while Ms. Rakir made sure I was discovering your supposed company secret—the oil wells—you were hustling Ms. Fireau into a VTOL for Downport. So much for my meeting with her—which you yourself scheduled for me.”

  “Mr. Riordan, you flatter me with your presumption that I am God, for you seem to assume that I can foresee and prevent any event which would intrude upon the plans we made in good faith. In the case of Ms. Fireau, there was a business emergency in Little Leyden that was best attended to by the manager who had the longest tenure there. So what you are characterizing as conspiracy is merely an unfortunate coincidence.”

  “Unfortunate for me—suspiciously convenient for you. I wonder if she will return before I depart, just as I wonder if I will find her in Little Leyden once I’ve returned to Downport.”

  Helger’s mouth didn’t smile, but his eyes were crinkled and smug. “Who can say?”

  “Who indeed. Besides, when I get back to Downport, I expect to be too busy to look her up.”

  “Oh? And why is that?”

  “I’ll be too busy filing reports that will retroactively justify the instructions I am going to relay immediately after dinner tonight.”

  Helger seemed amused. “Instructions? What instructions? And to whom?”

  “To the Navy—which, if CoDevCo doesn’t immediately cease archeological excavation, will compel the Port Authority to suspend all inbound and outbound movement of cargos, personnel, and communiqués.”

  Helger got pale, but then his color returned along with an unpleasant smile. “Mr. Riordan, this bluff is beneath your dignity. No messages get in or out of Shangri-La without my express permission: all external contact is routed through our Office of Communications. And I am not about to authorize any such transmissions.”

  “Actually, I think you are.”

  Helger’s smile widened and he studied his blood-red wine. “Mr. Riordan, in a place such as this, it is not wise to presume that you know what will happen next. This is a frontier world: anything can happen. And often, the most unusual events go unobserved or unreported. For instance, were you to fail to stroll out the front door of the refectory this evening, who would notice—or miss you?”

  There it was: the thinly veiled threat—and with it, the opportunity to riposte. “Actually, some people would miss me—and would be asking you where I was, shortly after I failed to walk out that door.”

  Helger was evidently disappointed that his threat had not jarred Caine’s composure. His tone was more brusque: “I don’t think you realize how very alone you are, Mr. Riordan. No one here is obsessed with your whereabouts, or your moment-to-moment safety.”

  Caine sipped his water. “I have friends in high places.”

  “I know all about your clearance—”

  “No, I don’t mean ‘high places’ figuratively; I mean it literally. ‘High’ as in ‘orbital.’” Caine checked his watch. “In fourteen minutes, I’m due to contact Admiral Eli Silverstein on the USS Roosevelt: my daily call-in. He last heard from me when I landed here yesterday, just over sixteen-and-a-half hours ago—and Dee Pee Three’s seventeen-hour day rolls around mighty fast. So if he doesn’t hear from me very soon, twenty Marines are going to be landing, thrusters and rifles hot, in your courtyard. All told, that would be about twenty-nine minutes from now. And the Marines will be—pointedly—interested in whether or not I ever emerged from this refectory.”

  Helger had become pale, was no longer smiling. “You are bluffing. You—the Commonwealth—would not dare—”

  “Let’s not waste time and words on hypotheticals, Mr. Helger. Why don’t we just sit here for twenty-nine minutes and see what happens next? I’m sure you can wait that long to put a bullet in me.”

  Helger’s eyes wavered; had they been equipped with nictating lids, Caine was sure they would have slowly shut at that moment. “Mr. Riordan, you are becoming overly dramatic. I never said anything so overtly threatening.”

  Caine forced himself to smile. “Of course not.”

  Helger’s smile was no less manufactured. “Perhaps I might be present when you make your call to the admiral, so that I might extend my compliments?”

  And to make sure I’m not bluffing. “I would welcome that, Mr. Helger. That way, if you have any questions about my status here—and his prerogatives—you may ask him yourself.”

  “Very well. Now, surely you were exaggerating when you threatened to have even our routine landings and launches suspended.”

  “Surely, I was not.”

  “Preposterous: you haven’t the authority to initiate such an action.”

  “Be assured, Mr. Helger: I have the authority, and I will use it. Today, if I must.”

  Helger’s hand stopped short of his glass. “Again, you are bluffing.”

  “Again, you are wrong. I have no naval rank, but I have access to classified codes which can activate a variety of local contingency orders. I submitted one such code to the admiral the moment I arrived in-system.”

  “Odd: the Commonwealth naval routine seems unaltered.”

  “And it will remain so—until and unless a certain activating condition is met.”

  “And what is the activating condition?”

  Caine smiled. “My disappearance or demise.”

  “I see.” Helger waved the waiter away restively. “So, if I shut down the dig site, I can keep my oil operation running.”

  “For now, yes.” Of course, once I’m no longer in your crosshairs, I’ll recommend the Navy shuts that down, too. But if I take away the oil now, then you’ve got nothing left to lose—and you might once again decide that there’s no reason not to get rid of me—permanently.

  “What guarantee do I have that I will be all
owed to keep my wells in operation after you leave?”

  “Mr. Helger, I do not have the power to make such guarantees. I will assure you of this: if I find no further violations, I will not make any negative recommendations regarding your oil operations.” Not that the Navy’s going to listen to my recommendations, anyway: I already know how Eli Silverstein is going to react. When I leave, and I give him the code authorizing his use of full discretionary powers, Silverstein is going to demand that site control is restored to the legitimate European Union administrators, or he’ll impose a full shutdown.

  Helger’s lower lip protruded a bit; he pulled at it. “Very well: it seems I have little choice. Does this mean you are done here?”

  “I’m afraid not. I have something else that I need to investigate, although it’s nothing that should concern you directly.”

  Helger relaxed a bit; he curved a finger in the direction of the waiter, gestured toward the wine. The waiter dutifully disappeared to fetch and do as he was bid. “And this final investigation is . . . what?”

  “Reports of possibly intelligent creatures in this valley. Would you happen to know anything about that?”

  Helger maintained the same nerveless pose, but his face was less relaxed. “I hear the same wild stories that everyone else hears. Local apes, forest men, spirits of the wood: relatives of sasquatch and the yeti, I will wager.”

  “You have no evidence of local wildlife that travels in groups, shows any tendency toward tool use?”

  “Me? No—but you could consult Mr. Bendixen, here. I brought him along because he is our best field expert and woodsman, and I suspected that you were planning on conducting a search for these fabled creatures. Why else would you have arrived with a backpack instead of luggage, and a rifle instead of golf clubs?”

  “Thanks. I might indeed ask Mr. Bendixen a few questions.”

  “I suggest you make better use of him than that. He is an excellent guide.”

  “Again, thanks—but I had planned on working alone.”

  “You might wish to reconsider that plan, Mr. Riordan. You may not be aware of it, but we have our share of dangerous animals here in the valley. One in particular—we call it Pavonosaurus rex—is quite aggressive. More akin to an undersized allosaurus, I am told, but then again, paleontology has never been my strong suit. So do take Mr. Bendixen along: he has had experience with them. Personally.”

  Caine looked over at Bendixen: square-banged, square-jawed, square-headed, and sleepy-eyed—but very watchful. Throughout the conversation with Helger, Caine could not recall having seen Bendixen blink or smile or even move. Prominently featured in the front-strap bandoleers that were part of Bendixen’s web-gear were two different kinds of old-fashioned brass cartridges: one kind for shotguns, the other an immense round with a sharply-tapering—or spitzen—bullet. He had a magazine bag that Caine recognized as being for an H&K G-81 assault rifle: caseless ammo, bullpup configuration, extremely high rate of fire. The more primitive tools of his apparently less-than-pacifistic trade included a machete, and a knife: no, two—no, three knives. One of the knives was a very old—almost antique—Spetsnaz all-tool utility blade, another was balanced for throwing, and the third was a kukri: the combat blade made famous by the Gurkhas, who swore that its design made it the optimal weapon for close-quarters combat.

  Helger’s second glass of wine had arrived. “Mr. Bendixen is ready to go tomorrow.”

  Caine looked at Bendixen again—who looked back without blinking. “No thanks.” Caine was relatively certain that Pavonosaurus rex represented far less threat to his continued existence than did Mr. Bendixen.

  “A pity. He is so routinely in the bush—surveying—that I’m sure he would have been of immense help as a guide, as well.”

  “I’m sure.” Of course, not bringing Bendixen didn’t neutralize the threat: “accidents” were always possible. “Mr. Helger, actually I would like to make a request of Mr. Bendixen.”

  “Which is?”

  “Which is that he suspend his field activities for a few days—at least until I’m done with mine.”

  Helger feigned perplexity: Bendixen just stared.

  “Well, if we were both out in the bush at the same time, we could be a risk to each other. As strange as it sounds, I am particularly worried about being a risk to him.”

  Helger laughed. “Really?”

  “Well, yes. If our paths were to cross—by accident—I might only see the movement and shoot preemptively, thinking to kill a predator.” Which is what I’d be doing in either case. “So, please follow this directive, Mr. Helger: until I return, I’m requesting—politely—that you suspend sending any personnel into my search area. Which is here.” Caine picked up his palmtop, pulled up the Navy Survey map again, drew a box on it with his stylus: the red rectangle began at the north edge of the main ruins and extended all the way up the floor of the valley. “I’ll be relaying those grid coordinates—and the fact that I should be the only human in that area—to Admiral Silverstein’s ops officer in five minutes. That way, if I go missing for any reason, they’ll know where to look for me. And they’ll know that there couldn’t be any chance of Mr. Bendixen having mistaken me for a pavonosaurus.”

  Helger had not laughed again; he was no longer even smiling. “I see. You seem to fear the errors of humans more than the appetites of large animals.”

  “Perhaps I fear the many dangerous appetites of humans more than anything else, Mr. Helger. At any rate, I thank you for seeing to it that I will be working in isolation.”

  Now Helger smiled. “Be assured: you will be working in complete isolation. Do be sure to bring enough batteries for your radio.”

  Caine nodded: in addition to testing his conventional radio, the time had come to unpack his special equipment from the Navy and give it a trial run. The uplink beacon/communicator—currently folded down into the yellow-stenciled olive-drab canister at the bottom of his A-frame—had been a gift from one Lieutenant Mike Brill, communications officer for the high port naval detachment. Caine had protested the weight and the awkwardness. Brill had insisted that Caine take the system planetside: “You can save your life with a direct link to orbit; remember that every time you’re tempted to bitch about the extra weight.” At that time, Caine had thought Brill’s precautionary insistence to be absurdly melodramatic.

  It did not seem so anymore.

  Chapter Eight

  ODYSSEUS

  Two weeks later, the treetop chittering of what Caine had dubbed squirrel-spiders was almost drowning out the bored commo operator back at Site One: “We have CINCPAV COMCENT on the line for another check-in, Mr. Riordan; your signals are being relayed directly through our transceiver. You may proceed.”

  “Lieutenant Brill?”

  “Negative: this is Eli Silverstein. How was day one of your extended walkabout, Caine?”

  “Admiral Silverstein. I’m, uh, honored—and surprised.”

  The answering laugh was gruff, honest. “You’re not Navy, so I’m not ‘Admiral.’ Just Eli—unless you’ve taken a dislike to me.”

  “No, no—Eli.” And thanks for answering yourself today: it will help keep Helger’s head down, keep him from hatching any bright new schemes about “accidents” I might have. He won’t risk pissing off the USSF’s system CO. “Good to hear from you. The new walkabout is going just fine.”

  “No more trouble with your equipment?”

  “No more troubles.” A week ago, just before his second day-trip further north into the valley, Caine had decided to inspect his ammunition. The rifle rounds—dependable, old-fashioned 7.62 x 51 mm—were fine, but he had discovered a potentially fatal flaw in the propellant receptacle of his NeoCoBro machine pistol. The receptacle seal had a deep and recent nick in its gasket: had Caine even test-fired the weapon before checking it, excessive amounts of the exothermic liquid in the propellant canister would have been injected into the catalytic ignition chamber. The resulting explosion would have been dangerous, even d
eadly. It was a suspicious flaw—particularly since Caine had checked the gasket himself after Brinkley had issued him the weapon as a close-range defense against pavonosaurs and their ilk. He had not bothered to mention—for everyone implicitly understood the significance—that the only time the weapon had been out of his immediate possession was when he had gone for his drive with Consuela. Helger’s symbolic fingerprints were manifest upon the gasket.

  “Caine, I chose to be here when you checked in today because I want you to reconsider your change in plans. Frankly, I’m not sure how good an idea it is for you to start camping out in the bush at night, rather than always returning to Site One. You’ve got no backup.”

  Caine looked up at the rapidly setting yellow disk of Delta Pavonis, sliced into segments by the palmate leaves adorning the tops of the giant ferns. Silverstein’s worried about both the human and indigenous predators. So am I. “I copy that, Eli. But it can’t be helped. There’s no road access to the northern reaches of the valley, and there’s no place to put down a vertibird: we conducted a close aerial recon for landing sites all of yesterday. No luck. Do you have maps that show otherwise?”

  The pause gave him the answer before Silverstein spoke. “Negative. The few areas that are flat enough are all covered by jungle canopy.”

  “That’s what we saw from the air. But I’ve got to get further in, Eli: round trip in and out doesn’t allow me to push more than about twenty klicks beyond the ruins. And that doesn’t give me any time to look around. I’m just humping my ruck blind through the bush. No recon value.”

  “I copy that, Caine. Listen, do you have enough batteries?”

  “I’m fine, and will check in frequently with Site One.”

  “Who will patch me through every time.”

  A command given for the benefit of Helger, who had not indicated that he was listening to their communiqué. But again, everyone knew better.

  “Okay, Eli. I should be fine. As it is, I’m now about thirty klicks in. First new ground I’ve seen in nine days.”