Colonyside

by Michael Mammay

  Karen,

  I need a favor. Imagine that! I’m on a job out on Eccasis—I was supposed to be looking for the daughter of a rich guy named Zentas. Thing is, Zentas himself showed up here in the ass end of the galaxy, and I can’t figure out why. His story is that he’s checking on his holdings here, but he’s admitted to me that that’s BS. There might be a story in the real reason that he’s here.

  I know it sounds like a lot of work, but I’m not sure it would take much prodding. Zentas likes to talk, especially about himself, and if a reporter gave him a forum, he might take it.

  Thanks, and remember all those great stories I gave you that helped make your career.

  Carl

  The last part was a joke. Mostly. I had given her some huge stories in our time working together, but she’d done just as much for me, which she’d probably remind me of in her response. Having finished that, I lay down to take a nap, and when I woke it was in that disoriented state where I might have been asleep twenty minutes or two hours. A quick check of my device told me it was closer to the latter. Mac and Ganos were in my room. It had been he who woke me, but Ganos immediately took the lead.

  “Sir, I found him. Your guy. Hubic. Okay, maybe I didn’t find him, but I found something, and he could definitely be there.”

  “Slow down, Ganos. I thought I told you to take the day off.”

  “Turns out, I don’t really listen to you that much, sir.”

  “Tell me about it.” I looked at Mac.

  “Don’t look at me, sir. You told me to make sure nothing happened to her. Nothing happened. Besides that though, I can’t control her.”

  “Damn straight,” said Ganos. “But forget that. This is so cool. Someone’s hiding in the jungle.”

  “What? That’s impossible. People can’t live outside the domes.”

  “But they can live in domes that aren’t supposed to have people in them. Look.” She pushed some buttons and a map came up on my wall monitor.

  “What am I looking at? It’s a map of Eccasis—I can tell that much.”

  “This is a map of all the communications traffic on the planet. I got to thinking that if someone was hiding, they’d still have to communicate. And since I didn’t have a way to find that communication directly, I decided to hack into the central comms hub for the planet and find all the activity. It’s a heat map. The more red you see on the screen, the more activity is coming from that spot.”

  “Please tell me it wasn’t a military system,” I said. Please.

  “It wasn’t, sir. It’s a planetary asset. Civilian. You told me not to hack any military systems until tomorrow.”

  “That was not at all what I said.”

  “Agree to disagree.”

  She was screwing with me. I hope.

  “Anyway,” Ganos continued, “it’s not military. I really didn’t know what I’d find or how it would help me find Hubic, but sometimes it works that way, you know?”

  “I do.” I really did. That’s how things happened for me a lot.

  “And see what I found? This supposedly abandoned dome out here. It used to be a research station, but they shut it down over a year ago.”

  “Except they didn’t?” I asked.

  “Apparently not. There’s not much, but it represents somewhere between fifty and sixty communication hits over the last month.”

  Her excitement about her find was infectious. I had to admit . . . she had me hooked. I stood and went closer. “There are no active domes anywhere near there. What kind of comms are they using?”

  “Satellite. Same as the rest of us. When I first looked, no dome registered there at all. But the governor’s office has records that go back until the start of the colony—don’t ask me how I know—and I found this one out there by itself, nothing within thirty kilometers.”

  “Whose dome was it?” I asked.

  “It was registered to a company called Garrabond Solutions, which is a sub-company of a little organization called Caliber. You’ve probably heard of them.”

  “Shit. Wow. No chance that other missions in the area are just using it as a stopover?”

  “Super unlikely, sir. This sector got pretty much abandoned once rules tightened up, and even if someone did supersede their parameters, it wouldn’t be every day.”

  “Every day?”

  “Every day at exactly the same times, sir.”

  That set off my not-a-coincidence radar. “That’s something.”

  “Right? You want the bad news?”

  “Do I?” I asked.

  “Probably not. But here it is: I can’t trace it.”

  “Can anybody?”

  Ganos paused for the first time since she arrived. “Maybe. Someone who had full access to the comm system and didn’t have to hack in. But it would still be hard. Whoever is using the comms there is doing their best not to be found.”

  “I don’t know how we get official help on this without admitting that you hacked in in the first place.”

  “That is a quandary.” Ganos smirked. She seemed to put me in a lot of those, but it was worth it for the information she gained. “Sure glad that’s not my department.”

  “I need time to think.” I had angles, now, but it had almost gone beyond what I could manage. I had too many angles. In theory, it was a good problem to have. In practice, it meant I had to pick an option. I had the military looking for both their internal hack and Hubic, and now Ganos had a lead on what might be Hubic. But I couldn’t immediately tell Oxendine, because then I’d have to admit that Ganos had been back at work, and I really didn’t want to do that. I’d have to let things cool first. I also had the link to the Caliber tech. “Ganos, if I ask you to not push any further today, would you actually listen?”

  “Probably. I’m kind of at a dead end. Even I’m not dumb enough to go back after the military, and I still don’t really want to tangle with Caliber. What are you going to do, sir?”

  “I’m going to go back to sleep and attack this stuff with a fresh mind in the morning.”

  I woke in the dark, soaked in sweat, my heart hammering in my chest. The sheets clung to me like another skin, and I kicked at them to free myself. It was probably a good thing that I couldn’t remember the details of the dream. I hadn’t had an anxiety-fueled nightmare in a couple of years, and I didn’t welcome this one. Someone had been chasing me—I remembered that much—some combination of people and animals. The setting had shifted throughout, from the mountains of Cappa to the jungle to an abandoned warehouse complex where the floors didn’t appear to match up, creating some sort of impossible maze. I checked my device for the time. Just after three. I considered trying to go back to sleep—I even closed my eyes for a few minutes—but it wasn’t going to happen. I got up and padded over to my terminal.

  I had a message from Plazz.

  Butler,

  You’re welcome. You owe me.

  Plazz

  Along with the note she sent a link, which I opened. Drake Zentas’s face appeared in a split screen with a reporter, a pretty thirty-something woman with copper skin and perfect teeth. The location bar under her said Talca 4, while Zentas’s said Eccasis. They couldn’t have done the bit in real time with the space lag, so they must have recorded the questions and answers separately and then edited them together. That they did it all while I slept impressed me, though Zentas had often bragged in the media about only sleeping three to four hours a night, so I guess he had the free time. I turned up the volume and hit play.

  The first few questions didn’t matter to me—some things about the health of his company, projected earnings, and other business stuff. At the 1:47 mark I got what I wanted. The anchor asked him about his trip to Eccasis. She framed it by saying that it was a move not many CEOs would make, implying that it might be something that gave him an advantage over the competition. A total softball, but it did play to his ego. Something in Zentas’s demeanor shifted—a minute change—as if this question changed the tenor of the inte
rview.

  “I do like to check on my holdings. I feel like the idea that the boss can show up anywhere in the galaxy makes everything work just a little better. And I did have that purpose for this trip. But there was another reason. My daughter, Xyla—we’ve been estranged for some time, but I was hoping to change that—she disappeared here on Eccasis.” He took a deep breath, paused, let his eyes shift, before reengaging with the camera. “I hoped . . . I . . . I really hoped it wasn’t true. That there’d been a mistake.” He looked away again and blinked several times, fighting tears. “I’m sorry. It’s hit me hard.”

  I paused it. As he said it on the screen, he came across as sincere, but it wasn’t the same vibe I’d gotten from him in person. Either the entirety of the situation had finally hit him, or he was playing to the audience. My gut said performance. He’d have received the questions ahead of time and been able to prepare. He’d have rehearsed and then gone on the news and used his daughter’s death intentionally to gain sympathy. I pressed play.

  “Since I’ve been here—since I’ve come face-to-face with this hard reality—I’ve found another purpose. Not just here . . . galaxy-wide. But starting here. We’ve tried to coexist with the different species on our colonies. Recent laws have pushed us more and more in that direction. I’m here to say that it has gone too far. These animals . . . they’re dangerous to humans. They kill humans—they killed my daughter! And we just stand by and let them. No more. No. Not when I have something to say about it.”

  The news anchor didn’t react . . . she’d have only seen his diatribe after the fact. I pictured the people back on Talca filming a new question for her to fit the direction that Zentas took the interview. “Mr. Zentas, what are you proposing?”

  “I’m not proposing anything.” He looked at the camera now, locked in, as if staring someone down in a business meeting. “I’m doing something. I’m taking action. If you’re a politician—local, galactic, I don’t care—if you’re not on board with putting humans first, I’m going to fund your opposition and we’re going to put someone in power who is. We need people who believe in the supremacy of human life in this galaxy. I urge everyone—my fellow humans—to join me in this. Demand that your representatives put us first.”

  It wound down from there with the required pleasantries from the host, but I let it slip by me. I’d heard enough. He’d used his daughter’s death for political gain. It also didn’t escape my notice that he used the term “humans first.” That could have been a coincidence, but he employed members of the group through Caliber, so I doubted it. Though he hadn’t said anything illegal, the interview ended any chance that I’d go work for him. It did another thing too.

  It told me that my next stop needed to be at Caliber.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I met Martha Stroud the next morning before most people had eaten breakfast. I’d guessed that she’d be in—her boss was on planet, and that tends to get people out of bed early. I’d called ahead to make sure, though. I’d spent the previous hours thinking through my moves. Stroud herself was the first play. I didn’t know what information she had, but I figured that with Xyla’s death and her boss leaving her out of the loop about me, she might not feel super secure about her job. I wanted to use that.

  “Thanks for meeting with me so early.”

  “What can I do for you, Carl? I thought your investigation was pretty much finished.”

  “It is,” I lied. “I’m looking into something new. Mr. Zentas offered me a job. I’m exploring that option.” Her face tightened slightly at my words, but I didn’t know if it meant she didn’t know and I’d caught her by surprise, or if she did know and didn’t like it.

  She controlled her expression. “If that’s the case, I’m sure he’d want us to do what we can to help you out.”

  “Is he here?” I made a show of looking past her.

  “He’s not. He left early for a tour of some of our outer facilities.”

  “Is that wise, with the attacks?”

  “He’s well protected. If you don’t mind, what job?”

  So he hadn’t told her. Either that or he had, but she was playing dumb. I doubted that. “He didn’t say, exactly. ‘Fixer’ was the role he mentioned. I’m sure you know he’s not happy with how fast things have moved here.”

  Her hands clenched and her eyes narrowed slightly, but again she regained control quickly. “I look forward to your help.”

  I pretended to ignore her discomfort. “That’s if I can help. That’s why I’m here. Mr. Zentas proposed a task, but in order to accomplish it, I need to know what tools I have at my disposal.”

  “Of course. What are you looking for?”

  “I don’t know. While I think Mr. Zentas would like a broad-sweeping solution . . . Did you see his interview last night?”

  “Of course.”

  “What did you think?” I asked. This wasn’t part of pushing her . . . I really wanted her opinion. Plus, it served the purpose of changing the subject without alleviating her stress.

  “Mr. Zentas is a visionary. He’s looking beyond the scope of a single problem. What about you?” This was the risky part. I wanted to create a gap between Stroud and Zentas, but in doing so I might drive them closer together.

  I shrugged. “Seemed to me like a guy using the death of his daughter for political purposes.”

  She froze for a second. “Then why are you here about a job?”

  “Oh, you got me wrong,” I lied. “That is why I’m here. Any man who could do that—that’s a man who gets things done at any cost. That’s a guy I could work for.” More risk. I was intentionally making myself look like an asshole, and I didn’t know how she’d react to that.

  This time her face didn’t even give a hint of her thoughts. “What can I do for you specifically?”

  “Tech. Can I see anything we’ve got that we can use to affect the hominiverts? And anything that might help us with the ursagrans, too, while we’re at it. Though I see them as less of a problem.” I used the word we intentionally.

  “Sure. Follow me.” We walked, but we took our time. “Don’t dismiss the ursagrans too soon though. They can be more troublesome than you’d think. They’re not as dangerous, but they’re hard to move, and they don’t stick to one spot. They follow the food. If one moves into an area where you’re working, you can lose a full day, or even two, trying to get them out of there.”

  “Interesting. How do you get them to leave?”

  “Right now? Giant electric prods. They don’t do any real damage. Ideally? We’d defoliate areas we intend to develop. No food, no ursagrans.”

  “Makes sense.” Maybe Stroud and Zentas were closer together on their thinking than I thought. I’d made her uncomfortable, but I hadn’t gotten anything I could use. “But the laws protecting the vegetation prevent it.”

  “Correct. Which ends up being less humane to the animals. There’s plenty of food for the ursagran population. Clearing some would have absolutely no effect on them. Let me ask you something,” she said. “If there were no laws—if Mr. Zentas gets his way—how would you deal with the hominiverts?”

  “Explosive ammo seemed to work,” I said. When she didn’t flinch, I followed up. “But I don’t think we’ll get approval for that right away. However fast we get new legislation, it won’t be fast enough for what we’re doing here.”

  “I agree. Which is why we’ve been using sonic technology to move them where we want them.”

  Pay dirt. I’d wanted to know more about that since Eddleston mentioned it. “Interesting. Some sort of sound weapon?”

  “Not a weapon so much. Low-frequency emitters that bother them enough to make them move.”

  “Mr. Zentas didn’t mention those. Does he know about them?”

  “Of course. He’s the one who approved their development and ordered their use.”

  I almost stopped walking. Zentas had ordered their use. But my theory was that those devices had been deployed to force hominiverts onto
the Caliber research team. If my theory held, and if I believed Stroud, that would mean that Zentas had ordered the policy that killed his own daughter. Did he know that? I couldn’t ask Stroud about it. But if his daughter accidentally got caught up in the fallout of his plans, that would be a reason for him to come to Eccasis. But an accident like that, and nobody important had been fired—at least not publicly. So I had to wonder if he knew. “How long have you been working here on Eccasis?”

  If my radical shift in topic bothered her, Stroud didn’t show it. “About eighteen months.”

  “How long does someone usually lead a mission like this?”

  “The understanding I had when I took the assignment—I volunteered for it—was that I’d be here three years and then we’d talk about an extension if it made sense for both sides.”

  “Is that still the plan?”

  “Nobody has said it wasn’t. Until you did, that is. Your report that Mr. Zentas isn’t happy . . . well, if he’s not happy, he’s always got the option of replacing me. For a minute I thought that might mean you were here for my job, but given what you’ve said, I get the idea that he’s got something else in mind for you.”

  “I wouldn’t be taking over here. He specifically mentioned travel. And even if he had wanted me here, I wouldn’t take your job. Not really my strong suit, running day-to-day operations. No offense.” I’d put her on edge with my earlier comments about Zentas, so now I’d reassured her, trying to turn her to my side. It was a shitty way to manipulate somebody, but I had a shitty job to do.

  “None taken. But I’ll certainly try to work around to my status with Mr. Zentas the next time I have him alone. If he’s got a lack of confidence in me, I have other opportunities. It’s just a job. I took it because it gave me the most autonomy—the biggest chance to make a name for myself as someone who gets things done. I don’t plan to grow old here. If Caliber wants to make a change, a dozen other companies would hire me in a day.”