Project U.L.F.

by Stuart Clark

  “Offered to you? What, with me still there?”

  “Listen to me. Just hear me out, will you?”

  Wyatt wanted to say a million different things, to shout, to scream, to articulate at least some of the thoughts that raced around his head in an attempt to vent some of the rage that boiled inside him. Instead, he stood in smoldering silence, his eyes glaring, glazed windows to the fire that burned within. Par shrank under the stare.

  “It’s no secret that I wanted a position of authority in the IZP,” Par began. “I’ve talked to you about it. I’ve talked to all the other division heads. Somehow Mannheim must have got wind of it.” He stopped, hoping that Wyatt might comment and at least make it more of a civilized conversation, but Wyatt said nothing, just seemed to grow in stature as if his anger were filling him up like air might a balloon. Par gulped. “Mannheim called me into his office a few months ago and offered me your job. Of course I was thrilled, but I knew it was your job, and so I questioned how he could offer it to me. He said that you were resigning and that the position was up for grabs.”

  “And you believed that?” The words seemed to burst from Wyatt’s lips as if under pressure.

  “Well, no, look, I didn’t know what to believe. I told Mannheim that I’d heard no such thing and he responded by saying that you wanted it all kept very quiet. As such I was not to say a word to anyone, not even to you, because by telling me he had broken a confidentiality clause he had with you.”

  Wyatt snorted. That line sounded familiar.

  “It all happened so quickly, Wyatt, before I knew it he was showing me out the door and telling me that contracts would be drawn up the following week.

  “The Wednesday of the next week I was visited at home by two men masquerading as couriers. They asked to be let inside so that I might have time to peruse the contract before I signed it and, like a fool, I let them in. That contract contained the details of this mission and it was then that I discovered what I would have to do to become your successor.” Par glanced quickly at Wyatt and then looked away again. The other man’s eyes seemed to burn into his soul. “I refused. Of course I refused, but then the couriers, pretending to look for more papers, opened their jackets to give me a good view of the weapons they were carrying. It was then that I learned their true identity. They weren’t couriers, as I thought, but temporary employees of the IZP, reporting specifically to Mannheim. They said that they were contractors, of sorts, too, and that if I refused to sign then Mannheim might have another contract issued as far as I was concerned. They left little to the imagination.

  “So you see, I had no choice. I had already crossed too far over the line. I knew too much, just like you had when you agreed to be part of this. We were already caught, Wyatt, it was just up to Mannheim as to when he reeled us in.”

  “Who else is in on this?” Wyatt barked. “Kit?” He too had voted against the sub-space jump.

  “No.” Par laughed. “Do you know of anyone who wouldn’t want to be rid of Kit? No, very few people were involved and none of us knew the full story, perhaps I knew more than most, but we were all pawns in a process, manipulated at the right time to bring us to this, the endgame, if you like.

  “No,” Par said again. “The fewer people who were involved gave the operation a greater degree of success and less chance of mistakes, less chance of discovery.” He paused. “Fewer people to make disappear afterwards,” he said quietly. “That’s why I can’t go back. If I make it back then I can expose Mannheim. There’ll be a contract on my head as soon as my feet touch luna firma.”

  “Why us? Why this crew?”

  “Mannheim wanted to be rid of you, specifically. Once you were on board, he assembled a team of people around you that he had no use for and sent you away with all the faulty equipment he could muster. That’s why you were given the Santa Maria. Do you think Mannheim gives a shit about obsolete Caravel class craft when the IZP is snapping up the stealth class frigates almost as soon as they come off the production line? A couple of billion credits is nothing to them, Wyatt. The IZP is a monster, it’s bigger then either of us realize and I suspect that it’s bigger than the CSETI.”

  “But why? Why does Mannheim want to be rid of me?”

  “Don’t be naïve, Wyatt. You pose a threat to him and you’re too strong a character to be subverted. That only leaves this alternative. Why do you think he has gone unchallenged for so long? Those who would defy him are either disposed of or brought into the fold and entrapped. All of Mannheim’s henchmen are those who once opposed him. He promoted them to keep them happy and now, when they become restless, he moves them sideways to keep them quiet. It’s a commonly used tactic. He’s cocooned by these people now, and even though they might not realize it, they protect him like a human shield. He’s virtually untouchable. A law unto himself.”

  “And the others? What did they do to deserve being here?”

  “They’re all misfits, Wyatt. Failures of some kind, but most important of all—expendable. Except, of course, Bobby and Byron. Their only failing is that they happened to be such good friends with you.”

  Wyatt glared at him.

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” Par added hurriedly, “Just that they would never buy the line that you had resigned. If you disappeared, then they would start asking questions, and Mannheim couldn’t allow that to happen. They also give the mission a degree of credibility as well,” he added as an afterthought. “After all, you’d have suspected something straight away if you’d been sent away with seven complete losers.”

  Wyatt stood silent for a moment, feeling the anger welling up inside of him again, this time fuelled and mixed with a new emotion. Suddenly he grabbed Par by his jacket and, ignoring the screams of pain, wrestled him to his feet, slamming him back into the trunk of the tree behind him. He brought his face up close to Par’s, his eyes burning pure hatred. “Has everything you’ve done since then been an attempt to complete your mission?” he hissed. “Is that why you volunteered to climb up into the shuttle? Were you hoping to dislodge it and deny us a way home? Maybe even kill yourself in the process?”

  “No!” Par frowned, appalled at the accusation.

  “Is that why you went with Byron? To get him on his own? Are you trying to kill us off one by one?”

  “Oh, and I suppose you think that this…” he indicated his leg, “…and my rendezvous with a prehistoric parrot was all planned too, right?” Par was pissed off. He’d confessed to his crime, now he was being labeled with others that had no foundation and that he was incapable of.

  “I don’t know! I don’t know what or who to believe any more, and why should I?”

  “Fuck you, Wyatt! It was you who asked me to go with Byron, remember? It was you who asked me to go into the shuttle!”

  “I never asked you to go!” Wyatt shouted.

  “No one else would go!” Par replied in same.

  The two men stood glowering at each other for a moment, their faces close enough that each could feel the other man’s breath hot on his cheek.

  Wyatt released his grip and turned away.

  “He was my friend too, you know,” Par said behind him.

  “And you repaid that friendship with betrayal.” Wyatt spat. Almost without thinking he rounded on Par again and slammed him back into the tree. “Friend? Friend? What do you know about friendship? I’ll tell you what, why don’t I tell the others your reason for being here? Then let’s see how many friends you have! I’m sure Kit will be very interested to hear what you had planned for him.”

  Suddenly there was a fear in Par’s eyes. “You wouldn’t.”

  “Maybe. Maybe I’d do just as well to get rid of you myself. Save the others the time and trouble.”

  Par’s eyes were still wide and afraid but he was no longer looking at Wyatt, he was looking beyond him.

  Slowly, without releasing his grip on Par, Wyatt turned to look over his shoulder. Directly behind him and now only ten feet away was Gon-Thok. At first h
e almost didn’t recognize it. The alien was hunched over and clearly showing some kind of threat posture. It had curled itself almost into a ball and along its back was a row of seven spikes, each progressively smaller than the one on the vertebra above it. The largest of these was located just below the back of the creature’s neck and now pointed over its head and directly at Wyatt. Now Wyatt understood why the creature’s bulging eyes sat on the side of its head. Not only were they fish like eyes to allow for the refraction of light underwater, they were also bulbous to give the thing three hundred and sixty degree vision. Even though when hunched over it was effectively facing its own stomach, the eyeballs were set far enough to the side of the alien’s head to allow the iris’ to remain firmly locked on Wyatt. It was effectively looking over the back of its head at him.

  “Thank God you have at least one friend in this place, and it will never understand what you’ve done.” Wyatt said quietly. He released his grip on Par, who slumped to the ground, and then Wyatt reluctantly moved away, angry at being denied the chance to go overboard. Gon-Thok shifted uneasily, moving so as to keep the spike trained on Wyatt, but also out of the man’s way. “And what about Kate?” he stopped, turning, the words more a plea on her behalf than a question.

  Par looked up, a face in a pile of disheveled clothes. He looked wretched, pathetic, like the admission of his crime against the others had broken his will. “I don’t know. I don’t know why she is here. She shouldn’t be here. The brief I read made no mention of her at all.”

  Disgusted and unsatisfied with the answer, Wyatt headed back toward the shuttle.

  “Something went wrong, Wyatt,” Par called after him. “Don’t you see, the mere fact that she is here means something went wrong. Think about it…” he shouted, trying to reach him, “…If Mannheim wanted you buried, do you think he’d have left even the slightest way or means for you to make it back? The craft finder wasn’t left there, it was put there for you to find. Why else would it be in such an obvious location? If you wanted something found, where would you leave it?”

  It was a good point and Wyatt slowed, thinking. Par was right. Kate had been the key to the whole thing. It was her outburst after Alex’s death that had made him question the validity of the whole mission, led him to his dreadful discovery. It was while he was looking for the chest protector for her that he had found the craft finder. Everything that had led them to this point seemed centered around Kate. What had she said, that Alan had assigned her to this mission? Maybe Alan had put the craft finder on board for them to find. He would have had to have looked up the mission details before he put Kate on board. But that didn’t make any sense. If Alan had known that it was a bogus mission he would never have allowed Kate to come, indeed, he would have tried to halt the whole thing. No, Alan could not have known, Wyatt concluded, or if he did, then like them, he had discovered the treachery too late and there was precious little he could do about it—except maybe put a craft finder on board.

  Par was right, where else would you put something if you wanted it found? Maybe Par was also right about Mannheim, about the whole set-up. If Alan had stumbled across something then maybe he was powerless to do anything about it. Maybe he sensed the inherent danger in exposing the whole sham and, ultimately, Mannheim. Despite their own ever-worsening predicament Wyatt began to feel very afraid for his friend back on the moon-base.

  “Despite what you may think, Wyatt, I want to live,” Par said behind him. “Now, more than anything, I want to live through this.”

  Wyatt said nothing, nor gave any indication that he heard the comment, just continued on his way back to the shuttle. “You can’t leave me here!” Par shouted after him, but Wyatt just carried on walking.

  * * * * *

  Wyatt climbed back into the main cabin of the shuttle to be greeted by the surprised faces of Bobby, Kate and Chris. “Where’s Par?” asked the latter. Wyatt mumbled something and gave a wave of his hand. “You left him out there?” Wyatt’s look was blank. “You did, didn’t you? Jesus! I can’t believe you left him out there! What is wrong with you?”

  Wyatt gave the youngster a cold stare to remind him of who he was addressing, but Chris was already past him and heading for the door and did not catch it. He jumped the short distance to the ground and disappeared, still muttering under his breath and shaking his head.

  Bobby and Kate continued to stare at him with the same question in their eyes.

  “Forget it,” he said. “You don’t want to know.”

  * * * * *

  The conversation around the campfire was stifled that night. Wyatt, usually one of the most vocal, was quiet and withdrawn, lost in thought. Par too, said nothing, just glanced occasionally at Wyatt like a scolded child would. Kate remained in the shuttle, talking in whispers with Bobby so as not to disturb the relative silence of the men outside.

  Chris wondered what was going on. He desperately wanted to ask—he’d never seen Par behaving like this, but he sensed that now was not the time or the place to be asking questions. Unfortunately, Kit, who said little at the best of times, made the unlikeliest of talking partners, so he remained silent. The only sounds were the occasional crack of the fire and Furball’s complementary chitter of surprise.

  Wyatt had been stewing all day, Chris had noted, ever since he and Par had gone for their private exchange. He wondered what they had talked about, Byron’s death, certainly, but Wyatt had seemed to have dealt with that and now, since their talk, he was aloof and introverted again. Even Par, when Chris had helped him back into the shuttle, was reluctant to disclose the details of their conversation. Something was dreadfully wrong, any fool could see that. The tension between Wyatt and Par was so tangible you could almost touch it, and yet neither of them were talking and none of the others dared give voice to the feelings of foreboding they were experiencing.

  “What about my watch?” It was Wyatt, and the others looked up in surprise. For a second there was confusion, the others looked at each other wondering who the question had been directed at. It was almost as if he were just thinking out loud. “What about my watch?” he asked again, turning his head towards Par.

  The Swede looked at him, mouth agape for a moment and then his jaw seemed to work but no words came out of his mouth.

  “I…well I…well, Byron had it. You gave it to him.”

  “So you don’t have it?” Wyatt sounded disappointed already, like he already knew the answer to that question.

  “Well, er, no. Well, I mean, I didn’t have time to get it from him.”

  “Great!” Wyatt said.

  “What?” Par was already on the defensive.

  “Well, that’s it, then, isn’t it? It’s all over. Without that watch and the coordinates stored in it there’s no way we’ll ever find the DSM now. Looks like you finally got what….” He stopped. Par’s eyes were wide and flicking to the others. He’d nearly told them all why Par was here but it looked like none of them had picked up on it. “Sheesh!” He held his head in his hands.

  It seemed to Chris that Wyatt shrank visibly. It was like every last grain of hope and will had left the man and as a result he had deflated on the spot. It was depressing. Like their flag bearer had fallen and now all they could hope to expect was disarray among their ranks. Just the sight of it seemed to sap some of Chris’ energy and he swore in that moment the flames of the fire lost their luster and died just a little.

  “There is…perhaps…one way.” Par said quietly.

  CHAPTER

  16

  “What? You can talk to the thing?”

  It was the first time Wyatt had seen Kit genuinely interested in anything.

  “Well…yeah. Kinda,” Par shrugged. “Not talk as such, but we communicate…It understands me.”

  “This I gotta see.” A smile of disbelief briefly lit up Kit’s features.

  “So you think the alien could get us back to the other ship?” Wyatt asked.

  “I’m sure of it. It’s intelligent and it o
bviously knows its way around this forest.” Par was enthusiastic now, suddenly turned from villain to hero.

  “Well there’s no time like the present to find out, is there?” Wyatt looked up and away from the dying fire, scanning the nearby trees for the creature. Nothing. Even when his eyes had adjusted to the dark all he could see was the wall of trunks against the black, glowing different shades of amber as they were lit with splashes of firelight. It wouldn’t be there, he realized. It was amphibious. It would have gone to find water in which to spend the night, water which would keep it warm as the air temperature dropped around it. He turned back to the others. “We need to decide who’s going to go this time. Par obviously can’t go back and we need Chris here to complete the repairs as best he can.” Wyatt said it to kill the youngster’s growing enthusiasm. He could see the kid’s face brightening even as he talked. Best just to nip it in the bud.

  “I’ll go,” a voice croaked weakly from inside the shuttle.

  Wyatt smiled faintly. “Thanks,” he said, talking loud enough so those inside the ship could hear him, “But you’re in no fit state to make the trip, Bobby. I appreciate the offer and I understand why you did it, but you need your rest.” He paused, thoughtful. It was pointless discussing the issue. In just a minute’s process of elimination Wyatt had already figured out who would be going with him to the Nebula IV.

  “Kit.”

  The big man looked up.

  “Like it or not, you’re coming with me.” For once Wyatt was pleasantly surprised by the man’s reaction. Kit just shrugged, like he’d already drawn the same conclusion himself. “And Kate.”

  “Huh?” Kate’s head appeared around the doorway of the shuttle and she looked at him quizzically. She was not alone. Chris and Par both looked at him in surprise too. Kit, Wyatt noted, was looking at Kate. He was sure a flicker of a smile had crossed the man’s lips and his eyes had flashed at the mention of her name.