“Sure. For your away team, the military assigned you a captain named Fader. Monique Fader.”
“Haven’t heard of her.”
“I flew out with her. She’s efficient. Smart too. She’s got a bright future.”
“Efficient. That’s code for ‘I’m not going to like her,’ right?”
“You’ll like her. She’s very competent.”
“The Mother knows I need all the competence I can get. She’s here?”
“In orbit,” he said. “And your personal security officer is here too. I handpicked him. McCann.”
“No shit?” I broke into a smile, even though I was still pissed. Mac? I almost agreed to the mission right then.
“I figured it was the least I could do.”
Right. And he also knew exactly the effect it would have on me. Say this much for Serata . . . he was good at what he did. Still a manipulative bastard, but once you commit to something, you might as well be good at it. “Martha, let me buy the rest of that bottle and take it home.” I turned back to Serata. “Two days. I’ll let you know.”
I tried to talk myself out of it. I really did. I made a list of all the reasons I shouldn’t do it—a list that far outnumbered the two reasons I had on the other side of the ledger.
Serata at least had the decency to act surprised when I met him at Moop’s a day and a half later. “You’re going to do it?”
“Do I have a choice? His daughter is missing, and if I said no, it would eat at me forever. I’m not going to find her. But at least I can say I tried. I can be ready to leave in four days.”
“Four days?”
“Nonnegotiable.” I had a reason, but I wasn’t sharing it with Serata. I’d do the mission, but I wanted to put in some of my own fail-safes.
“Understood. You want Mac to come down, or you want to meet him on the ship?”
I smiled despite myself. “On the ship will do. I need you to do one more thing. I want a computer tech with me. If I’m investigating them from the outside, I don’t want to have to rely on the military for everything.”
“You have someone in mind?”
“I do. A woman named Ganos. A freelancer on Talca. I don’t care what she costs. I want her.”
“As it so happens, I don’t care what it costs either,” he said. “It’s not coming out of my pocket. I’ll make it happen.”
Even though he was screwing me over, I still loved Serata. He spoke without any doubt that he could get Ganos. And he was probably right. After all, he convinced me. How much harder could she be? “You going to hang around here?”
Serata downed the last of his drink. “I’m not. I’ll leave my ship here for you, but I’m heading back as soon as I can. I told them I’d do my best to get you on board. That’s where my part in this ends.”
I polished off my drink and stood up. Once Serata joined me, I shook his hand. “Wish me luck.”
“You know I don’t believe in luck.”
“I know,” I said. “I don’t either. Hey, Martha?”
“What can I do for you, Carl?” the proprietress asked.
“Can you special order me two cases of Ferra Three whiskey? I need them here in three days. I don’t care what it costs.” I’d find a way to put it on Serata’s tab.
“I can try. If they have it anywhere on the planet, I’ll get it for you.”
“Thanks. You’re the best.”
Chapter Two
I had one reason for demanding four days from Serata. Well . . . two if you count just wanting to make them wait. The other reason was that I wanted to contact my associates, and the system I had set up let me send messages only during a specific thirty-second window each week. That sounds ridiculous, but it provided an added layer of security for both sides.
Until my appointed time, though, I had very little to do. I closed up my house, packed, and tried to give away what I could of my produce and other perishables. And picked up my whiskey of course. At home, I did some initial research on Eccasis and sent long notes to my family. We still weren’t close, but my son and I were making strides. We’d become cordial enough to exchange correspondence every month or so, and I’d be in stasis for a while. I wrote to my granddaughter, too. We’d never met in person, and I didn’t really know what to say to a six-year old, but I told her I was taking a trip and talked about what it was like to be in space.
On the third day, I punched a twelve-digit code into my house system and let it scan my retina. An invisible door in the floor slid open, and I climbed down a metal ladder into the hidden basement. I’d brought high-priced contractors in from off planet to build it and had them keep it off the plans. Inside the almost-sterile room, I went through three more authentications to get my computer up and functional. It didn’t connect to anything in the house or any network on the planet. It got data by underground fiber connected directly to a hidden satellite dish on another part of my property. The dish itself was also underground, and the door that hid it only opened for that same thirty second window each week, always at night.
It sounds paranoid because it was. But I had the money, and even if it exceeded my requirements, it was really cool. The people at the other end of the connection didn’t take chances either. Strictly speaking, I didn’t know them. No names, anyway. This time I asked them for a favor. Serata had said no weapons and that the military had things under control, but I’d been enough places where they hadn’t, so I preferred to have my own equipment anyway. Since half the galaxy hated me and I didn’t trust the government to always have my best interests at heart, I wanted my own options available. Just in case. I had no idea how the folks on the other end would make it happen, but I’d learned not to worry about things like that. They had resources. They’d find a way.
With that accomplished, I had a driver pick me up and chauffeur me the three hundred kilometers to the nearest shuttle, and from there I caught a ride up to the orbital space station where my real ride waited. The XT-57—the fastest transport ship in the military—was still ugly. It didn’t help that the last time I’d been on one I’d been headed to Cappa. Not exactly a fond memory. Captain Fader must have gotten a report of my arrival, because she timed her exit from the ship perfectly to meet me at the bottom of the stairs. She snapped a crisp salute, and I waved it away with a sloppy one of my own.
“I’m a civilian now. You don’t need to do that,” I said.
“Yes, sir.” Her starched duty fatigues had knife-edge creases that made me wonder if she had to pry the legs and sleeves apart to get into them, and she had just a light touch of makeup on her dark skin. Everything about her screamed “professional soldier.”
She probably wasn’t going to like me.
“You can call me Carl.”
“I’d prefer not to do that, sir.” Her face didn’t crack even a little bit. Dead serious. She definitely wasn’t going to like me.
“Well, Colonel isn’t going to work for me. What do you suggest?” I asked.
“I could call you Mr. Butler, if you preferred.”
As far as I knew, nobody had ever called me Mr. Butler. Maybe an uninformed banker somewhere. “How about we just stick to sir then?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Can I call you Monique?”
“I’d prefer if you didn’t, sir.”
So much for getting off on the right foot. “Okay. Captain Fader it is. Did my stuff make it?” My bags traveled separately from the passenger car that brought me over from the shuttle.
“Yes, sir. They’re stowed on board. I took the liberty of securing your whiskey for travel. I didn’t know your preference for the trip, so I kept out one bottle in case you wanted it.”
“Thanks. I’ll probably save it until we reach the other end.” I appreciated that she didn’t lecture me about alcohol on an official mission. I could live with her being a stickler for professionalism as long as she didn’t expect me to follow all the rules too closely. She was a spy, of course. Someone high up had sent her to keep tabs
on me. But that was inevitable, so it didn’t bother me. Better to know up front than wonder about it. I decided to keep an open mind, despite my initial impression.
“Hey, sir!” Mac stood at the top of the stairs, a huge grin on his face. I stepped past Fader and bounded up the steps, gripping his hand and pulling him in for a half hug. I held it a little too long.
“Damn, it’s good to see you,” I said. It had been too long. We said we were going to keep in touch, but like with everyone else in my life, I hadn’t made the effort. I meant to. I just never did.
“You too, sir.”
“How’d you get suckered into this gig?”
He laughed. “Come on, sir. You know I couldn’t pass this up. You should have seen my commander’s face when she got a request for my service directly from the Chief of Staff’s office. She wanted to know what it was about, and I played it off like I get summoned by the highest authority in the military every day. Everybody got a kick out of it.”
I thought about asking him to call me Carl too, like I had with Fader, but he would have just busted my balls about it. It was different with people you knew when you were both serving. “What have you been up to?”
“Back at the desk job, sir.”
“Yeah, you look like you’ve been slacking off.” He didn’t. The short man hadn’t aged a day, and if anything, his arms had gotten bigger. He looked like he could punch a hole through the hull of the ship.
“You know me. Once a month at the gym, whether I need it or not.”
I snorted. “Yeah. Right. You find a woman who would tolerate your ass enough to settle down?”
“I had a girl for a couple of years. We split up about six months ago. It was mutual, mostly. Just not on the same page. How about you, sir? I heard about you and your wife splitting a few years back.”
“We did. Nobody since then. Just haven’t found the interest. I’ve mostly been a hermit.”
“Ah . . . sorry to hear that, sir. You’ve got to get out and about.”
“Well, here I am, headed to one of the great garden spots of the galaxy. You know anything about Eccasis?”
“Not much, sir. I signed on without bothering to look. Then I was busy trying to get my stuff stored and my transportation set to meet the general for the trip out here. I got the basics. Jungle, mostly. A small colony. Threat is mostly only outside the gates—a lot of indigenous flora and fauna—so we should be safe as long as we stay inside.”
“I have no intention of going out in the jungle, that’s for sure. But there are a couple of terrorist groups active in the colony itself, so I’m glad you’re along.”
Mac slapped one of his massive arms with his hand. “Point me at them.”
Chapter Three
Seven weeks later I got my first view of Eccasis from space, all green and blue and gorgeous around the equator, brown and white and barren around the poles. I’d been over the statistics for the planet:
Gravity: 1.04 standard
Standard hours per day: 25.1
Average seasonal temperature: 33°C
Average humidity: 79%
The latter would have been miserable if we planned to be outside. Human life on Eccasis resided in protective domes and would for the foreseeable future, until microbiologists and other assorted scientists created vaccines for all the local pathogens. In the past, humans would have eliminated those things during the early stages of colonization, but the laws had changed.
Fader had all that data and more ready for me when I woke up from cryo. She’d gotten the crew to bring her out a full day before me and had used that time to update and collate information. She had loaded everything I could possibly want to know—and then some—into my device, and had my favorite post-cryo meal of biscuits and gravy ready when I zoned in. Serata was right when he called her efficient.
She waited until I was reveling in my gravy bliss before she brought up business. “Whenever you’re ready, sir, I’d like to update you on the mission. Have you read the military report already?”
“I have. It seems pretty thorough.” I didn’t add that it seemed so thorough that I didn’t see what I could add to it.
“Did you have any questions, sir?”
“One,” I said. “The missing person is listed as Xyla Redstone, but I didn’t see mention of any reason for her last name to be different from Zentas. Was she in some religious order where they name change with marriage?” There were five other missing persons as well, but Redstone . . . Zentas . . . was the mission.
“No, sir. Xyla Zentas changed her name to distance herself from her father. They had a somewhat public falling out a couple years ago.”
“Was it because he named her Xyla Zentas? Who does that to a kid?”
Fader didn’t crack a smile. Tough audience. “I can dig further to try to find the source of their issues if you want, sir.”
“Maybe look into why, if they’ve had a falling out, she still works for her father’s company.” I gestured to the chair bolted to the floor on the opposite side of my small table. “Have a seat.”
She slid neatly into the chair without breaking eye contact. “I had the same question, sir. I couldn’t find any direct sources, but one gossip column quoted an unnamed acquaintance as saying that as a xenobiologist, she was focused on the science, and Eccasis was too good to pass up.”
I’m not going to lie: Fader knowing that impressed me. “It’s interesting that Zentas is behind us coming out here, given his estrangement from his daughter. But I get it. It’s his kid, regardless of whatever might have come between them.”
“Yes, sir.”
I got the feeling that Fader wanted more from me, so I decided to flip it around and let her give me ideas without coming out and saying I didn’t have any. “Did anything jump out at you in the report?”
Fader didn’t hesitate. “The report seems to have focused on the mission and ignored her personal life.”
“She disappeared on a mission outside the dome. That seems pretty clear. I don’t know what her personal life matters in that.”
“It probably doesn’t, sir. But I wouldn’t mind seeing her phone records, emails, and any record of what they found in her quarters. As you said before, the military report is thorough. But maybe there’s something in those records that would show a potential motive, or maybe someone who knows her well and might have more information.”
Interesting. Part of me thought she’d seen too many detective holos. Another part of me was even further impressed. I’d naturally focused on the military stuff—the mission—and hadn’t thought to look at other aspects. Even if we didn’t find anything, it would let me show that I’d gone beyond what the military did. I’d been a soldier. I didn’t know the first thing about being a detective. Maybe I needed to think about that. It also confirmed Serata’s assessment of Fader as efficient. “That’s a good idea. Requisition those records once we land.”
To her credit, she didn’t let satisfaction show on her face, as if she expected to be right. “Yes, sir. If you’re open to it, sir, it would help if I knew your initial plan after debarkation so I can anticipate and get ahead of your requirements.”
I didn’t usually like to tip my hand to people I didn’t know very well, but she’d earned it. “Sure. I’m going to go talk to the military command and ask them about the report. It’s thorough, but I want to discuss it and see what kind of vibe I get from them about it. Serata told me that Zentas suspected a cover-up, so I have to at least look into that. I’ll talk to the investigating officer, assess their competence, that kind of thing. It will help me know how much to trust their work and give us an idea of how much of it we want to check behind.”
“Very good, sir. I’ll let them know you’re coming.” She sat there, as if waiting for more. That habit was going to get annoying.
“Anything else?” I asked.
“Yes, sir. I have my initial report that I owe back to headquarters ready, if you want to review it before I hit send.”
>
“You . . . what? You want me to review it?” That was new. She might have been a spy, but she wasn’t a very good one.
“I have to report on the mission, sir. You know that. I figure that if I don’t show you, you’re going to wonder what I wrote, which could then make you question my loyalty. It seemed best to avoid that.”
“Your bosses are okay with that?” I asked.
“Sir, my orders are to assist you in any way possible and send regular reports on our progress. All other aspects were left to my discretion.”
She said our progress. I liked that. I liked her. I still didn’t fully trust her yet—that’s normal with people I just met—but I read people pretty well, and she’d made a good start. Sure, it could have been a ruse on her part. She could show me one report and then send another. But probably not. “Thanks for the offer. I don’t need to see it since nothing has happened other than routine space travel. But I’d like to discuss future reports when the time comes, if you’re open to that.”
“I am, sir. Is there anything else?”
“When will Mac be up?”
“The doctor is bringing him out of stasis now, sir. It should only be a couple of hours until he’s available.”
“Sounds good. Thanks for your work.”
“Roger that, sir.”
Debarkation on Eccasis didn’t endear the place to me. We landed in an underground hangar and had to wait fifteen minutes for a sterile vehicle to seal to our ship, slowly traverse the three or four hundred meters to the hatch, and then wait while it sealed to that. Two receiving parties waited for us. A tall, dark-skinned male captain waited on one side of the doorway and a tan-skinned woman who would have seemed tall if not for the presence of the captain waited on the other, with a shorter man, who I marked as a subordinate, standing just back from her. Fader hurried ahead of Mac and I to talk to them. The three of them talked, hands waving and voices increasing in volume, until finally the tall captain threw his hands up and stomped off.
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