The Redwood Trilogy Box Set

by Jaxon Reed

  “Managing whatever money you do have is also important. You don’t want to spend every dime that comes to you. You want to invest wisely. I’ll tell you a secret that I didn’t learn until I was much older than you are now. If you control your personal finances, no matter how much or how little money you make, you’ll control your life.”

  He leaned back in his chair and looked thoughtfully at me.

  “Stay true to yourself, Marcus. I know you and Dee Dee are different, and you’ll experience challenges others your age won’t. But I know that no matter what kind of affliction you suffer from, inside you are inherently good. There’s a lot of love in you, boy. When you get down to it, that’s the thing that matters most in life: how much you love others.

  “So go out there and live, boy. Serve your University and fellow students well. Be productive. Do good. Love others.”

  He leaned forward, his eyes reaching out to mine across time and space through the hologram.

  “And remember Ulysses S. Grant!”

  -+-

  Solicitor Hu linked my palm print to a much larger expense account, with an astonishing 10,000 credits in it.

  “When that’s gone, the financial management company will add more,” he said.

  I’d never dreamed of having that much money all at once. And the hundred million credit fortune Professor Kalinowski left me? It was more than I could wrap my mind around.

  Solicitor Hu gave me a vid sheet that held a few more documents, offered his condolences regarding Professor Kalinowski, and said to call his office if I had any questions or concerns.

  Dee Dee and I left the Administration Building holding hands, each of us deep in thought as we made our way back to the dorm.

  About halfway there, she grew curious about the vid sheet.

  “What else is in there?”

  I stopped and swiped through the documents.

  “Name of the management company. A list of other companies, I guess these are ones owned by the estate? This one looks like a real time asset inventory.”

  I looked at the bottom of a spreadsheet at a box labeled “Total.” It showed a number, C186,987,004.

  “Is everything really worth a hundred and eighty-six million credits?”

  A few boxes further up changed as I spoke. The “Total” box updated to read C187,003,482.

  “It just went up to a hundred and eighty-seven million.”

  I flicked to the final document stored in the vid sheet.

  “What’s that?”

  “It looks like a deed.”

  The top of the sheet read, “Price Faculty Hall, Suite 2008.”

  “You own that? Let’s go take a look!”

  We made our way to Price Faculty Hall, a large building near the center of campus designed to provide luxury housing for Professors and their families.

  Not all Professors cared to live on campus, but for those who did they could buy an apartment in Price Faculty Hall. It was built by the University years ago, with the generous donation of Alexander H. Price, an early alumnus who’d struck it rich on Athena.

  At least, that’s what I learned on our first tour of the campus. Since then, I’d picked up a few more facts. Faculty members highly coveted apartments in the building. Older Professors who bought in years ago found they were sitting on real estate gold as they neared retirement. It had become very prestigious for a Professor to move into the building, serving as a social marker showing they’d been successful in their field and able to capitalize on their research.

  On the other hand, a strong faction among the faculty turned their noses up at these highly visible displays of wealth and success. Pure science, they maintained, should not matter regarding the money it could produce. Those subscribing to that point of view generally lived off campus in much more modest housing. I figured secretly they all wanted in PFH, as it was called, whether they admitted it or not.

  On rare occasion a Professor came to work with family money, and was able to buy an apartment in PFH early in their career. But however they got in there, the building remained the most prestigious place to live on campus.

  Once Professors and their spouses died, the apartments passed on to their heirs. Most heirs simply sold the apartments to younger Professors rather than move in and live on campus.

  We stood before the outer door. I tried my hand on the palm reader. The door swished open, and we walked inside. A security guard looked up from his desk, surprised to see two students walking in. He shrugged, went back to reading a newspaper on his vid sheet.

  “That was fast, they’ve already got you in the system.”

  I nodded. “Let’s see if we can get up to the twentieth floor.”

  We went to the elevators, pressed the “Up” button. A door dinged and one opened. Inside, I looked at the numbers. They stopped at 19.

  “No twentieth floor?”

  We walked out of the elevator, confused. The security guard looked up from his vid sheet again.

  “Can I help you?”

  “We’re trying to get up to suite two-oh-oh-eight, but the elevators stop at the nineteenth floor, evidently.”

  He furrowed his brows as he looked at us, then his eyebrows shot up in recognition.

  “You’re Marcus Savitch. And you’re Diane Fremont.”

  We nodded.

  “Wow!”

  He sat there with a big silly grin on his face for a moment, looking at both of us. A nametag on his chest read, “Kent.” Finally, Dee Dee broke the silence.

  “The twentieth floor?”

  “Oh! Yeah, so that’s the penthouse level. Very exclusive, there’s just eight suites up there. You can only get there on the private elevator. That’s it over there. Goes straight up.”

  We thanked him and made our way over to a separate elevator off to the side that I missed when we entered the building. I tried my palm on the reader.

  Ding!

  The door opened, and we walked inside. The door closed. There were no buttons.

  A pleasant female computer voice said, “Marcus Savitch, suite two-thousand eight.”

  The elevator whisked us upward, slowed near the top of the building, and came to a stop. Then it started moving sideways, to the right, finally stopping again. The door opened.

  Ding!

  We walked out of the elevator and into a luxurious penthouse suite.

  -+-

  “He hasn’t been here in twenty years, right? I mean, he never left Redwood once they started clandestine research, right?”

  I nodded.

  “As far as I know, and he said in the hologram too, he was alone at AES Three the last eighteen years.”

  The size of the apartment struck me as amazing. I did some quick estimates as we roamed the rooms, and decided it must be around 8,000 square feet. Not including the balcony.

  “What do you think this place would sell for, Dee Dee? A million credits?”

  “I’ve no idea. I’ve never been in a place this nice.”

  Walls were in mahogany, floors marble tiled, counters made of granite, furniture richly upholstered in leather and fine fabrics. We walked from room to room: living areas, dining areas, bedrooms, a kitchen. High, arched ceilings. An outer doorway led to the huge balcony, with a glimmering blue-water pool and lounge chairs scattered about.

  We went back inside to the kitchen.

  “No food in the pantries. Looks like nothing has been used in years.”

  “Everything is so clean and tidy, though.”

  About that time, as if hearing our voices, a door to the side of the kitchen swished open, and a bot rolled out. We watched as it scurried around on rollers, dusting, cleaning. It reminded me of the load bots back on Redwood, and the garden bots built on the same chassis. The main difference with those models: this one had obviously been built for indoor use. It stood slimmer, and smaller, though retaining human-like arms and hands like the load bots. It rolled off into another room, and we heard a vacuum cleaner start up.

&nbs
p; “Must be a maid bot,” Dee Dee said.

  “I guess so. Let’s head back to the library. I saw a computer terminal in there.”

  Dark mahogany shelves filled the library, stuffed with old-fashioned paper books. By the looks of some, they were not only old-fashioned but truly old. I learned later, collecting antiquarian books used to be a hobby of Kalinowski’s before he went to Redwood. Some of the ones in there had been imported all the way from Old Earth at great expense. Many dealt with crop science, his area of expertise.

  Off to one side a doorway led to a walk-in humidor. A quick glance showed it to be full of Redwood cigars, apparently a few boxes from each shipment he’d made over the years. A doorway next to it led to a wine cellar. I’m not an oenophile. I didn’t recognize any of the labels on the wine. But they looked expensive.

  The computer terminal sat on a huge wooden desk. I sat down in a leather chair at the desk, and placed my hand on the palm reader. The desk and chair were worth more money than I’d ever possessed.

  “Please enter password.”

  A virtual keyboard appeared in front of the terminal. Old school, I thought. The technology allowed on the outer planets remained mostly simple, designed to last decades before needing service. Newer high-tech stuff remained on the inner planets, rarely making its way out here.

  I looked at Dee Dee. She shrugged.

  I keyed in “REDWOOD.”

  “Access denied.”

  I keyed in “R3DW00D.” That had worked once, a few months ago, in our assault on Redwood City.

  “Access denied. Would you like a hint?”

  “Yes. Give me a hint.”

  “Remember.”

  Dee Dee and I exchanged glances.

  “Remember what?”

  “Remember.”

  I paused for a moment, thinking about it. Then I grinned.

  “Remember Ulysses S. Grant!”

  I keyed in, “USGRANT.”

  “Access granted. Welcome.”

  -+-

  Twenty years of experiments and data were in Professor Kalinowski’s personal files on the server. Detailed notes on crops, weather observations at AES 3, stats on wildlife and exobiology on Redwood, etc., etc., etc. In short, a goldmine of scientific data.

  I noted with interest the findings some of his holding companies had already exploited, particularly on tobacco, and those which he’d not yet sent to the investment group. There were several drafts of journal articles, which he could never publish since the State had controlled media and restricted research on Redwood. In a quick scan, it looked like much more of his data could be monetized than what the investment group had already taken care of, but I’d need time to sort through it all.

  He’d given me his fortune through Solicitor Hu, but here on the server he’d given me his life’s work. All his research and findings.

  We made our way out of the building as the maid bot finished its work and rolled back into storage. The security guard waved at us when we stepped off the elevator. We walked across campus holding hands, deep in thought.

  “Are you going to move in there?”

  “I dunno. I’m not used to that much space. All my life I’ve slept in a small room with a cot and a vid screen. Even now, the dorm has about the same space for each of us, although the common room’s nice. But that suite is enormous. I think I’d feel kinda lonely without everybody else there with me.”

  “On the other hand,” Dee Dee said, “all that space has been going to waste for years.”

  She had a point, and I thought it about more as we walked back to the dorm.

  Chapter Three

  I jolted awake to a muffled explosion and brief vibration in the walls of the dorm. The vid screen in my room came to life, flashing red, sounding a klaxon.

  “Intruder in the building. Intruder in the building. Please remain in your rooms. University Police are on the way. Intruder in the building . . .”

  I threw on some pants and ran out to the common room. The triplets were there already, pulling on clothes, bleary-eyed and disheveled, their dirty blonde hair sticking out in all directions.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Hold on,” Jason said. “I’ve been doing some hacking. I can get the surveillance cams in here.”

  He took over the virtual keyboard near the common room’s vid screen, and soon the surveillance cams trained on the dorm’s entrance showed up onscreen. The front doors were blown apart. Smoke clouded the air.

  Jason quickly flipped through the cams on the first floor.

  “They’re taking the stairs. Two of them. Black uniforms, must be GPs.”

  We watched as the two figures raced up the stairs, each holding a rifle. They stopped at the door to the fourth floor.

  “Hey, that’s our floor.”

  They threw open the door and ran down our hall.

  “Forget this,” I said. “I’m going to meet them out in the hall.”

  I put my hand to the palm reader on the wall. The door wouldn’t open.

  “Please remain in your rooms. University Police have been notified and will be here shortly.”

  I looked back at the triplets. Their eyes were wide.

  “We’re trapped!”

  “They must have known the protocol for a dorm intruder: lock all the doors and wait for the cops.”

  Jacob said, “I’ve got a gun!”

  He ran to his room, retuned quickly with a pistol in hand.

  “Where did you get that?”

  “Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies.”

  I filed it away for later. Jacob’s procurement skills were legendary. He’d always been able to get things, even back at Ranger Station Alpha on Redwood. Probably best we didn’t know.

  Jason snapped our attention back to the screen, showing the view from the surveillance cam in our hallway.

  “Guys, they’re putting something on our door. I think they’re going to blow it open!”

  “Everybody take cover! And hold your ears!”

  We dived behind furniture just before a huge Whumpf! blew open our door and filled the room with smoke. Two figures clad in black rushed into the room.

  Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

  -+-

  The smoke had mostly cleared. Our common room lay in shambles. Furniture splintered, burn marks all around the walls and floor near the doorway. University Police swarmed the room and hallway. One took pictures of the dead GPs on the floor.

  “Okay, we’ve got footage of them blowing in the front door, then rushing up the stairs, then blowing in your door. What happened next? They stormed your room with three guns? One of them carried a pistol that we didn’t see in the video? How did you disarm them?”

  “Leave them alone, Fleury. It’s enough they’re all still alive.”

  Chief of University Police Tristan Fleury backed down. He seemed to find the idea of a hidden pistol suspect, and appeared genuinely confused about the sequence of events once they moved beyond the reach of surveillance cams. But with President Montoya telling him not to push the matter, he backed off.

  Actually, we never said Jacob’s pistol belonged to the GPs. The first University Police on the scene jumped to that conclusion.

  Jacob shot both GPs twice in the chest. It was enough. They never suspected we’d be armed. They bled out quickly on the floor. With sirens blaring in the distance, I asked Jacob to hand me the pistol. I wiped his prints off, and placed it in the hands of one of the dead GPs, then moved it off to the side, leaving my own prints behind.

  A few minutes later when the University Police arrived, we stayed on our knees with our hands up to let them establish a perimeter and figure out who the bad guys were. Soon enough, they found the bodies on the floor were in GP uniforms, noted the pistol, and jumped to some logical conclusions. They were conclusions probably fueled by recent memories of my disarming another GP at the lecture hall. It helped that only my prints were on the weapon, along with one of the GP’s.

  We
didn’t say anything. When Chief Fleury arrived they relayed their observations, and he tried to confirm things with us until President Montoya showed up and put the kibosh on a full investigation.

  So I was credited with disarming and dispatching another pair of GP assassins in the official report. Jacob didn’t even bother to be jealous when headlines hit the news the following day. The official story saved him the trouble of trying to explain where he got the gun.

  Once most of the University Police left, President Montoya came back over to us. We stood around the shambles of what used to be our kitchen.

  “You boys have a place to stay tonight?”

  The triplets looked at me and one another in confusion. My eyebrows shot up.

  “Yeah. We’ve got a place.”

  “Good. We’re going to try and figure out where these guys are coming from. Looks like somebody’s sending out GPs in pairs. And it looks like they’re trying to take out you, Marcus. I don’t think it’s a coincidence they hit your classroom and now your dorm.”

  I nodded. The same thought had occurred to me.

  “We’ll lay low. I’ve got somewhere we can go.”

  After the President left I said to the triplets, “Grab your stuff. There’s something you’ve got to see.”

  -+-

  We approached the entrance to Price Faculty Hall, its front bathed in light.

  “You’ll note the anti-vehicle barriers. They’re called bollards. They’re decorative, but their real purpose is to prevent someone from ramming the front entrance.

  “Now note the doors. They look like glass in front, but really they’re made of extra thick synthetic sapphire. No way they can be blown in as easily as our dorm doors.”

  We walked up to the entrance and I placed my hand on the palm reader. The door swished open.

  “Supposedly, the entrance protocols are very difficult to crack.”

  Jason snorted at that idea, but didn’t say anything.

  We walked into the building. A different guard sat behind the desk. He looked up, startled, and instinctively reached for his sidearm. He didn’t recognize any of us.

  “Human guard, twenty-four seven. That’s a considerable expense. If he arms the system, he can spew lead from three machine guns hidden in the walls there, there, and there. They’re all aimed at the front entrance. Plus, he has his own gun.”