by Mel Odom
“You told Rachel you’d get me out of this.”
“That was before you signaled your playmates. Now you and I have a new deal. You talk, or I drop your body in one of the other buildings with all those dead people. And I don’t care which way you go. But one way means my partner and I have more to eat tonight.”
The professor’s sweating face paled in the flickering firelight.
“Now try again,” Hawke suggested as he went back to tending the bacon.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
A few meters away from the campfire, Flicker worked under the pickup’s hood. She’d found a small toolkit in the vehicle, and gathered a few other tools from the small, mostly-stripped motor pool. They didn’t have any replacement parts, but she was cleaning the ones she could get to, and tuning them up as best as she was able. Fuel was the biggest problem. The pickup’s tank was almost depleted, but she’d told Hawke she had a workaround for that.
“We weren’t there because of any specific research,” Fredericks stated. When the deception suite pinged, Hawke glanced at the man again, even though the professor’s dispirited tone made him inclined to accept that statement as the truth.
The professor leaned back. “We had to do research in the end to provide a basis for the funding request we sent to NeoNET. That was just blue smoke and mirrors. The real reason we were there was because of Rachel.” He pursed his lips and grimaced. “She’s got this . . . gift. I don’t know what else to call it.”
“What gift?”
“There are these artifacts my department’s had for years. They’re thousands of years old. Maybe something that goes back to the Second Age, an era of this world we’ve barely been able to guess at. One is some kind of bell, as near as we’ve been able to figure, and we have no clue about the other things. I don’t have images, or I’d show you. They’re covered with a language we’ve never seen before. It’s not Mayan or Incan, or anything we’ve ever discovered. Though some of the characters look like elvish.”
Hawke took the bacon out of the pan and poured reconstituted eggs into the grease. The smells woke up his hunger, but his attention was focused on Fredericks and the feeds from Flicker’s three surviving drones patrolling a perimeter around the building.
“I was writing a paper on another artifact. Rachel was helping me with the annotations. She saw the bell and the other things, and she just started translating some of the language inscribed on them.” Fredericks shook his head. “Just started translating out of the blue, even though she had no background in whatever language it was. Nobody has ever had a background like that.”
“What’d the translation say?”
“We’re not sure. Rachel was only able to provide glimpses, not a full translation. It talks about something called the ‘Becoming,’ or the ‘Anointing,’ words to that effect.”
“But you have no idea of what’s supposed to ‘become’ or be ‘anointed?’”
“Not a clue.”
“No mention of the jewel?”
“None.”
Hawke used his knife to ease the scrambled eggs from the grease and put them on three disposable plates. “Then how did you find the artifact?”
“Rachel found it. After she started reading the language on the artifacts, she also started dreaming about a jungle. Eventually, we narrowed it down to somewhere in Guatemala. We didn’t know exactly what location the dreams were showing her at first. Discovering that took months of searching through landmarks and topographical maps and satellite searches she remembered from the dreams. Months.” Fredericks squeezed his hands into fists, which shook with the effort. “It was so hard being so patient. We got fragments spaced out over many weeks—it was intolerable! Sometimes I felt like Rachel knew, but she just wasn’t telling me.”
“Is that what was happening? She was holding something back from you?” From the corner of his eye, Hawke caught Flicker pausing her work to listen.
“No. At least, I’m convinced that wasn’t what was happening. Rachel is a giving person. She’s guileless. And she trusted me. At least, until today.” Fredericks sighed, looking distraught and guilty, and Hawke couldn’t help wondering if the professor had only then realized how he’d taken advantage of the mentor-student relationship. Or maybe he was just feeling sorry that he’d been caught. “She just didn’t know.” He sipped his water bulb. “Eventually, though, we figured it out.”
“That’s when you put your dig request through, and got the funding grant.”
“Yes.” Fredericks placed the water bulb on the ground at his feet. “Faculty puts those requests out and hopes someone will bite. I knew if we revealed everything—Rachel’s ability to translate some of the documents, her dreams—we’d have a better chance at getting someone to fund us. But we couldn’t. We would have lost too much control. So we did the best we could, and I—punched up the data when Rachel had finished.”
“Why NeoNET?”
“Because they agreed to fund us. There’s no other reason.”
“You don’t have a relationship with anyone there?”
Fredericks shook his head. “If I’d had someone like that, I would have called them. We had to wait almost three months for the request to get answered.”
“Who brokered the deal?”
“The cred came straight from NeoNET. It was just deposited in an account I could draw on.”
“You didn’t try to find out who put up the funding?”
Fredericks shook his head. “You’ve never been involved in academia. You don’t care where the funding comes from because you’re so glad to get it. I never asked. I was just grateful.”
Frustrated, Hawke activated a tin of freeze-dried, self-heating biscuits. “How did Rachel find the jewel?”
“We’d been onsite for a few days. We moved around because she felt like we were getting close to something. She’d have these visions. There was nothing else we could call them. But while we were in Guatemala, the visions grew stronger and more frequent.”
“Did she have any idea what it was you were getting close to?”
“No. Just . . . something.”
“And it was tied into those artifacts?”
“She believed it was. I hope it is. But I don’t honestly know. And right now it really doesn’t matter because whatever that artifact is, it’s something.” Fredericks met Hawke’s gaze. “You saw what happened in that van with that guard who was threatening Rachel.”
“I did.” Hawke knew it would be a long time before he didn’t think about that.
Fredericks shivered at the memory, grimacing and looking sick. “She did that. Or that jewel did that. I’m not sure which. I’m not even certain you can separate one from the other at this point. She’s different, and that jewel is like nothing I’ve ever seen.”
Hawke let that pass without comment, though he felt the same way. “Who were the men in the Bulldog?”
Fredericks ran a hand over his face and hesitated.
“I saw you drop the broken commlink after you got into the pickup,” Hawke said. “Don’t try to lie about it. Where’d you get it?”
“From one of the men aboard the Scorpionfish. I took it without him knowing while they were marching us out.”
Hawke’s estimation of the professor jumped a couple notches. Fredericks had taken the commlink without Hawke or Flicker noticing, either. The man definitely bore closer watching.
“They were mercenaries,” Fredericks said. “I contacted NeoNET, and told them Rachel and I had been abducted.”
“NeoNET sent that team?”
Fredericks stared at Hawke. “I thought so.”
“Did you ask them?”
“There wasn’t time, but they seemed to know what was going on.”
Hawke guessed the sec men were mercenaries in the area who picked up a contract. NeoNET couldn’t have mobilized a team into Amazonia so quickly. His thoughts chased themselves. For every question the professor answered, the problems they faced just became more complicat
ed.
He took the biscuits from the tin and placed them on the plates. Then he called Flicker over to eat.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
“Careful with that,” Flicker advised as Hawke hoisted the 100-liter barrel into the pickup truck’s bed. “That stuff’s explosive.”
“Thanks.” Hawke set the barrel down and ran a finger under the word FLAMMABLE stenciled in white in both English and Spanish on the black barrel. “I got that.”
“Sorry. Just making sure.” Flicker looked exhausted. She’d been up most of the night working on the pickup, either preparing it for the trip or because she couldn’t sleep. Hawke wasn’t certain which was the cause, but she wasn’t in a good mood this morning. “Now get out of the way and let me work.”
Hawke stepped away from the pickup truck as Flicker vaulted over the side with her makeshift toolkit, a rubber hose, a drill gun, and two metal restraints she’d fashioned from salvage. The pickup idled much better than it had the previous day, purring like another vehicle. The electric drill had been altered to run off the pickup’s battery.
A short distance away, Professor Fredericks sat on a plascrete block under a tree that blocked the early morning sun slanting through the canopy. The jungle was so green the sunlight looked like it was tinted emerald.
“It took a little doing,” Flicker said over the spinning drill, “but I adjusted the pickup’s carburetor to run off the methanol in that barrel instead of gasoline. Methanol’s wood alcohol and acidic, so using it for fuel is going to produce a lot of wear and tear, but those two barrels I found should get us to Distrito Caracas before the engine gets totally fragged. From there we can make the jump back to the Pueblo Corporate Council. Then we check in with your Mr. Johnson and see what’s what.”
“Sounds good.”
She glanced at Hawke. “That’s still the plan, right? We deliver the woman as originally agreed?”
Hawke nodded. “That’s still the plan.” He wasn’t exactly keen on the idea, especially given the present conditions, but he thought it would at least get Flicker and him out of the hot seat.
“Good.” Flicker pulled a screwdriver from her pocket and attached a clamp to the rubber hose. “I asked because the way you’ve been checking up on her, I was starting to think you were taking her on to raise.”
“No.” The comment left Hawke feeling a little irritated and embarrassed. But Rachel Gordon still hadn’t come back from wherever she was. As long as she was in a vegetative state, he couldn’t do anything to help her. She’d be better off in the hands of someone who could look out for her. “I’m just looking for the payday.”
“Uh huh.” Flicker put another screw in the drill and sunk it into the pickup bed. “You have to remember, she was already in a pile of drek when you found her.”
“I remember.” But now Hawke also knew that Rachel Gordon hadn’t put herself there.
“All you’ve been doing—all we’ve been doing—ever since is hauling her out of all the hurt trying to fall down on her. Whatever she’s got going on, whatever that jewel is, it’s none of our biz.”
“I know. She’s got warning labels on her even plainer than the ones on that barrel.” Not wanting to deal with the direction the conversation was taking, or acknowledge his own nascent reluctance about their parts in Rachel Gordon’s future, Hawke went to get the second barrel of methanol.
They made Distrito Caracas just after sundown, and the sprawl was alive with festive neon lights that washed across the pickup’s cracked windshield. Sins came with fees in Distrito Caracas, and several establishments offered flashing trideo lists to catalogue them.
Flicker drove, almost as much a part of the pickup now after hours spent speeding through the jungle as she was in a cyber-equipped rig. She shifted gears instinctively, listening to the engine and just knowing what needed to be done and when. She was proud of the way the vehicle had held together, proud of the way she’d made it better than it was.
And part of her already felt a twinge of guilt about leaving it in some alley. It had done everything she’d asked and more, and she didn’t like the idea of just abandoning it once it ceased to be useful. That was how she was about things she worked on, though, and she knew it. They weren’t use-and-lose things. For a time, they were a part of her—even this mundane, rusty bucket of bolts.
That insight into her own mindset was what gave her a view into Hawke and how he was functioning while on this run. She’d known him for years, and she knew how he operated and what he thought about most situations.
His mind was unsettled now, and it was all because of the sleeping woman in the back seat. Flicker wanted to reach into his skull and fix his thinking. He just needed an adjustment, and his hesitation would go away. People needed to be more like machines, she’d decided a long time ago.
As she rolled down the final hill into the waiting sprawl, she looked at Hawke and knew she needed to ease some of the pressure he was feeling. She was partly responsible for his present mood, after all. “Look, I spoke too soon this morning. I was wound up and, haven’t had any real sleep in two days.”
Hawke looked at her. He’d sat quietly in the passenger seat for most of the day with the assault rifle in his lap. During lunch, he’d been polite while passing out sandwiches and bottled water, but he’d stayed quiet and kept his attention on the landscape, scanning for hostiles.
Flicker nodded over her shoulder at Rachel. “You should meet with Mr. Johnson in Santa Fe and see if you can figure out what’s going on. Don’t just hand her over without knowing more. It wouldn’t be right.”
“‘Right?’’ A smile twitched his lips. “We’re not in the business of right and wrong, remember? We provide services.”
“We’re in the business of right and wrong for us. That’s what I forgot this morning. That’s what I’m telling you now.” Flicker watched the streets as she cruised through them. The vehicle didn’t have an electronic signature to speak of. She and Hawke kept their PANs dark. The address for the guy she needed to speak to was in her head. “To the best of our knowledge, Rachel’s hands are clean in this. I don’t care about the professor. He betrayed a sacred trust, took advantage of a student, and he needs to be held accountable for that. Or at the very least not profit from it.”
Relaxing a little in the passenger seat, Hawke watched the pedestrians drifting to and from the various venues along the winding streets. Security helos and drones tracked the airspace, but Flicker knew none of them would get involved in a simple street crime. They were there for the people who paid expensive security premiums.
“If I’d known we’d be in this deep,” he said, “I wouldn’t have taken this run. I don’t go looking for trouble.”
“I know, but we’re here now. Let’s deal with it. Okay?”
He nodded. “Okay.”
Flicker watched as her companion’s body language relaxed. They weren’t out of the drek right now, not by a long shot, but at least they were in sync again. As usual, she’d take what she could get at the moment.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
“This is the place,” Flicker announced as she doused the pickup’s lights and let the night close in around them.
During that last moment of light, Hawke caught a glimpse of a small, white plascrete warehouse on the outer fringes of the downtown business sector. A faded sign that read MILHAZES’ IMPORTS AND EXPORTS hung on a thick pole over the double entrance doors. Low-key sec lighting illuminated the area in a haphazard fashion, but state-of-the-art cams watched from barely noticeable black transplas observation blisters Hawke located when he looked for them.
Three man-sized shadows waited in front of the double doors. Cloaks and long coats covered them from their necks to their ankles. The outerwear was too hot for the weather, but it was great for concealing weapons and other nasty surprises.
This section of the sprawl had gotten old, and was in need of an overhaul and a few coats of paint. It was also the perfect place for the man they were there
to see. Two longer warehouses sheathed in battered, corrugated plasteel lined the narrow, dead-end street leading to the warehouse.
“Nice killbox,” Hawke commented, recognizing the terrain for what it was. “The warehouses on either side keep people blocked in so they can’t get out after they enter.” He glanced over his shoulder and watched as a large truck rumbled out of an alley and rolled up behind them, blocking any quick exit. “And they close up afterward.”
“Dorival’s careful.” Flicker checked the mirrors, but Hawke knew she was also in contact with her three drones running recon. “That’s why we came to him. The guy is totally wiz when it comes to getting people and things out of Caracas on the DL.”
“You said you two know each other,” Hawke said as he eased his assault rifle into a better position.
“For years.” Flicker pulled the pickup to a stop twenty meters from the warehouse and killed the engine. Slowly, she removed the keys from the ignition and laid them on the dashboard, in plain sight of the sec cams.
“And you’ve always been friends?”
“More like we did some good biz together. The way I figure it, Dorival still owes me a favor, but he might not see it that way, because it was a close call. He makes it a point to keep his books balanced. Either way, I’d rather talk to him over anyone else I know in Amazonia. Especially this close to Aztlan.”
“Works for me.” Hawke pushed away his doubts. Whatever happened, Flicker had the best chance of arranging passage back to Santa Fe in a short time. The longer they took, the more time the opposition—still largely unknown—would have to organize and close off their potential escape routes.
“Then put the rifle on the dashboard,” Flicker suggested. “Show some good faith.”
Reluctantly, watching the three men through the bug-splattered windshield, Hawke did as he was told. “I don’t suppose they’re going to show good faith.”