It was an interesting thought. Xyla didn’t kill herself . . . or maybe she did, accidentally. There were too many variables, so I focused on the one thing I believed to be most likely: That Caliber’s sonic technology caused Xyla’s death or disappearance. If I stuck to that one assumption and treated it like fact, there were only two possibilities relating to Zentas. Either he knew about it ahead of time or he didn’t. If he didn’t know ahead of time, then why he brought me in became easy: He wanted me to find and expose the culprit. But he couldn’t come out and say that without acknowledging the illegal facility and probably a host of other things he’d rather not cop to. If he did know ahead of time, it became more muddled. Unless he wanted to use me to make it look like he didn’t know ahead of time. In that scenario, I became his alibi. Like the murderer who calls the police to report the dead victim.
Regardless of what Zentas knew, Caliber held at least some of the blame because the technology was 100-percent theirs. And regardless of what I knew, I couldn’t prove anything. So Caliber would need to wait. I went to see Oxendine. I didn’t hold out much hope that she’d be helpful, but Mbabe had the last piece of the puzzle, and I needed it. On the way, I called Ganos to see what she’d seen when we lost communications on the mission. Unfortunately, she hadn’t seen anything. She spouted off some technical stuff about how hard it is to observe something like that in real time, but I didn’t understand the specifics. She couldn’t even say for sure that we’d been hacked, though she suspected that we had. At least with what Ganos told me, I could ask Oxendine more about it.
I found her in her office. As usual, she was expecting me. “What can I do for you this time, Carl? I’m a bit busy.”
“What’s going on?”
Oxendine looked at me like I’d just taken a dump on her rug. “Well, let’s see. I circumvented the governor to send out a mission. A dome blew up, which alerted the governor to that, and now he’s up in my shit. Did I mention the part about the dome blowing up? Turns out, I’ve got stuff out in the jungle that I’m not aware of, and I want to do something about it, but the same governor has curtailed all activity outside the dome.”
“He can do that?”
“It’s debatable,” said Oxendine. “For now, I’m acquiescing, because I don’t have the intel or the forces to act anyway, and I’m trying to get him to look past that whole thing where I ignored his order.”
“I authorized that.”
“I’m well aware, and trust me, I’ve made him aware too. I’m sure you’ll be hearing from him soon. But in the meantime, please, Carl, what can I do for you?”
“I need a favor.”
“And I need you to go fuck yourself. The last time I did you a favor, it turned into a full-on firefight.”
“But we found the illegal facility, which we didn’t know about. If you think about it, I did you a favor in exposing that.”
She glared at me. “Not funny. In addition to the mess with the governor, we lost four soldiers and have several more wounded, including your man. Forgive me if I don’t celebrate. And we have no proof that it was illegal.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be active. That’s got to be illegal.”
“Okay. It was illegal the way that parking in a no-parking zone is illegal. Sure.”
“Come on. It was more than that. They were doing illegal research on primates.”
“And you know this . . . how?”
I hadn’t slipped. I intended to tell her. “One of the men who was there told me.”
“Which man?”
“A guy named Mbabe.”
“You went and questioned a prisoner who was under medical treatment. Speaking of illegal . . .”
“I went to talk to Mac. Mbabe just happened to be there.”
“You think a court would see it that way?”
“You think something like this would ever see a courtroom?”
“For you? No. For Mbabe? It’s more likely. And anything you learned is probably excluded as evidence now.”
“You’ve got film of him with a gun shooting at your soldiers. I hardly think me asking him who he worked for is an issue in his guilt or innocence.”
“Doesn’t matter. You had no right. And I’m getting tired of it. I’m done cutting corners for you.”
“So . . . no favor?”
“What do you want?” She crossed her arms and gave me as close to an angry look as I’d seen from her.
“I need you to let Mbabe walk free when he leaves the hospital—”
“No way I—”
“Hear me out,” I said, cutting her off before she could finish her protest. “He doesn’t actually have to be free. He just needs to think he’s free for a few minutes.”
She considered it. “Okay . . . I’m not saying I’m going to do it, but I’m curious, because that sounds ridiculous. Why?”
“I need him to tell me who his boss was at the secret facility.” She didn’t respond, so I continued, trying to prompt her. “That would be useful information for you, too. So you’d know who to charge.”
“I wouldn’t turn that information down if it came to me, but it’s the governor who has to file charges.”
“But you could use the information to force his hand. Make him act.”
“Even if I could do that, it’s not a criminal charge, Carl. It’s a fine. Maybe it’s a big fine, if we can prove significant damage—something I don’t have the assets to prove, by the way. Corporations can deploy an army of lawyers. Me? Not so much. Even if the fine is big to you and me, do you think it hurts Caliber? And all that’s if the governor’s office doesn’t push it under the rug. Which they will.”
“They’re breaking the law. There has to be more to it than that.”
Oxendine sighed. “Don’t be naïve, Carl. It’s only a law if you’ve got the resources to enforce it. We don’t.”
I wanted to pound my fists against something. “So you don’t report it?”
“Of course I report it. I flag the report and make it high priority. Maybe someone will act on it, but prior experience says probably not. I’ll get a response. Maybe a promise for more assets that will never materialize, or if they do, they’ll be so far down the road that they don’t matter.” She paused. “I’ve laid out my issues. Now you answer one for me. Why do you want to know the facility boss so bad?”
I should have seen that question coming. As much as it put me on the defensive, I appreciated Oxendine’s ability. “It’s important to my investigation.”
“To your missing-person investigation.” Her tone said I was full of shit.
“That’s right.”
“You’re going to have to draw that picture for me, Carl.”
I sighed. I didn’t want to, but I didn’t see another way to get her on board. “My theory is that Xyla Redstone—my missing person—worked at that facility.”
“But she didn’t disappear from there. We know her mission’s origin point.”
“We do. But I believe that the work she did at the facility had a direct impact on the reason she disappeared.”
“Primate research,” said Oxendine.
“Among other things, yes.”
“It’s thin.”
“It’s not.” I could hear a tinge of whine in my own voice, and I didn’t like it. I didn’t want to, but I was going to have to pressure Oxendine another way. “I can prove it if you let Mbabe walk free.”
She considered it for a time—longer than she needed, probably for effect. “No.”
“Really? You’re refusing to help me with my mission?”
“I’m refusing to con a prisoner.”
“This will have to go in my report,” I said.
She considered that for a shorter time. “Like I said: Go fuck yourself. And then do what you’ve got to do, Carl.”
I was pissed when I left, but more at myself than at Oxendine. Her response didn’t surprise me once I thought it through. I’d approached her wrong. When I threatened to put it in my repor
t—that was chickenshit. It made her dig in deeper. I’d threatened her career, which would have worked with a lot of officers, but not her. Oxendine would put doing the right thing over serving her own self-interest. We needed officers like her, so I couldn’t be mad, even though I didn’t like her decision. I liked to think that we needed guys like me, too. Guys who would bend the rules to get things done. That might have been arrogance. It might have been what led to some of my big mistakes in the past. But it was the only way I worked. People knew that. People in charge. People like Serata.
Once that thought hit me, I couldn’t shake it. Serata had set me up back during the Cappa mission. He knew my nature and sent me into a situation because he could predict how I’d act. At the time, I’d thought it was because they needed a rule breaker to fix the problem. In retrospect, I’d done exactly what he planned for me to do. Maybe here, on Eccasis, I was asking myself the wrong question. I had fixated on why Zentas wanted me here. Maybe I should have focused on why the military leadership said yes. They knew Oxendine and the governor. They’d know that neither of those two would do anything to curb Zentas and Caliber. But why would the military want to do that? Military leaders didn’t tend to be supporters of green laws. Some would be, of course—there are as many different opinions as there are officers—but as a group, they’d lean toward pro-expansion. So why put me here?
Fader had given me quiet to think, but as we neared my quarters she spoke. “I take it that it didn’t go well with the commander.” She did well to keep any hint of I could have told you that out of her voice.
“I screwed it up.”
Fader accepted that without comment instead of trying to reassure me, which I appreciated. “I gave the questions to the interrogators, including asking about who ran the facility.”
“How’d that go?” I asked.
“They made me fill out a formal RFI.”
RFI—request for information. “So they’ll send it through channels and somebody will reject it, but we’ll never find out who, and it will be too late even if we do.”
“Seems likely, yes, sir.”
“Okay.”
After another minute she spoke again. “So what do we do now, sir?”
I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to go confront Zentas and get him to spill his guts. But I’d rushed into the meeting with Oxendine, and I wouldn’t make that mistake again. I needed to sleep on it. Plan. I needed more information, but barring Ganos stumbling into Xyla’s online diary of incriminating facts, that seemed unlikely. “Now, we go get drunk. Or, at least I do. It’s optional for you.”
“Is that the best plan, sir?”
“Right now, it’s the only one I’ve got.”
I couldn’t find my rifle. Somehow, I knew I’d left it in the shower facility, but I couldn’t find the right shower because they all looked alike in the prefabricated landscape of the camp. But I kept looking. It was ridiculous, of course. I’d stayed in camps like that, but it had been years ago. This one was in a desert, somewhere, with an orangish sun, though that color may have been due to the hour. I knew I was dreaming, but I couldn’t wake myself.
The scene shifted. I still didn’t have my weapon, but now the terrain had changed. Now I needed it. Enemies approached. Soldiers ran everywhere, lacking leadership, in no sort of order. I needed to get them focused, but I couldn’t get past not having my weapon. The terrain started out rugged and mountainous, then jungle, then some combination of the two. We had a mission, but I’d forgotten the brief. I’d forgotten where to go to get the brief, or if it was even my job to know it. Maybe I was supposed to have prepared it. And still, no rifle.
I woke, uncomfortable, but not as bad as I’ve been at other times. I didn’t read too much into the dream, other than it meant I hadn’t consumed enough whiskey to shut it out. I checked my device for the time: 0320. Too late to have another drink to help me get back to sleep. I didn’t want to sleep anyway. That’s not exactly right. I wanted more sleep, but I didn’t want to dream anymore, and I feared that I would. It hadn’t been bad, but something told me if it continued, it would have worsened. I lay there for a while debating it, but eventually I got up and made coffee. Since nobody else would be up for a couple hours, I logged into my terminal and sent a message to Serata. The thought that he sent me here for a reason hadn’t left with a few drinks and a few hours of sleep. I needed to get it into the open. I’d retired, so some of the customs no longer applied. People sometimes acted like they did, but that was more a matter of comfort than regulation. Screw comfort.
Sir,
Need to know why you (or they) wanted me specifically on this mission. I know Zentas asked. But why was the answer yes? Who thought this was a good idea?
Carl
I’d kept the language neutral but made the message direct. I knew Serata better than I knew anyone in the galaxy when it came to things like this. He’d understand. He’d take it exactly how I intended it: as a personal attack. Regardless of who put him up to it, he took responsibility the minute he agreed to recruit me. He’d understand that part, too. What I didn’t know was when he’d respond. Figuring out lag times and then figuring out the time on a specific planet took work, and I didn’t care enough to look it up. I’d said what I had to say and hit send. It was out of my hands now.
To pass the time until the rest of the planet woke, I took care of personal stuff that I’d neglected. I sent a note to my son, and another one to my granddaughter for the first time since we arrived. I sometimes forgot about the time I spent in cryo, but to them, those days passed like any other.
I got another coffee and started in on the information I had about the dead and captured enemy from the previous day’s mission. Eight names, a couple fake. The military had determined that much but little more. Ganos had done better. Based on the time stamps on her information, she had gone to bed right around the time I woke up, and her effort showed. I had real names, criminal records, and most important, a trace of how each person came to be here on Eccasis. Those got interesting.
Only one of the eight—one of the six dead—had a job directly with Caliber. Four others worked for contractors or subcontractors with Caliber affiliations. But that meant that three didn’t. It didn’t prove anything. Most of the people involved had arrived under false pretenses, and Caliber, with its subcontractors, was the biggest employer on the planet other than the government. They’d be the obvious target for fake credentials. But the one employee who did work for them made a big difference. Schultz. The same man who had been on patrol the day Xyla disappeared. The man that Stroud said had left the planet and no longer worked for them. Except he didn’t, and he might.
Somewhere during my second cup of coffee, I decided to confront Zentas with no evidence. I didn’t love the idea any more than I had the previous night, but I had a ticking clock. Without a doubt, Oxendine had reported to her superiors yesterday and asked them to pull me off the case. They might not do it, but I knew from Flak Jacket that they were already leaning that way. Knowing that, I wasn’t leaving without taking a shot at getting answers. From the outside, taking a foolish risk might look like capitulation. I mentally prepared myself for Fader to express exactly that. She probably wouldn’t—she was too professional to say it out loud. But she’d think it. I worked out in my head how I’d explain it, but that was probably more to convince myself than her.
The trouble was, in my hypothetical argument with Fader, she was right: I couldn’t prove anything, and I held out little hope that Zentas would self-incriminate. I’m good at manipulating people, but he resided on an entirely different level in that regard. I know my limits. But he still had an ego. He’d asked for me to come here for a reason. I still didn’t know that reason, but it hadn’t been an accident. I meant something to him. It stood to follow that what I thought meant something to him as well. If nothing else, I’d make sure that he knew that I knew what he was up to. And I did know. I couldn’t prove it, but I knew. When I told him that, he’d reac
t. He still wouldn’t incriminate himself or his company without proof, but he’d do something. I had no idea what. I’d wait for his move, and I’d figure out my next action from there. It ceded him the initiative, which I disliked, but I wanted to nail him and I had to force him to act. It wasn’t about his daughter any longer. It was about him existing outside the law. At one point in my life, I’d been okay with that. Not anymore. Maybe I’d learned something from the Cappans.
A wiser man might have seen his own hypocrisy in all of that. At 0445 hours, I wasn’t very wise.
Once people arrived at work, I contacted Caliber and set an appointment with Zentas. I refused to divulge the subject. He’d assume I wanted to give him an answer about the job, and his people would assume it wasn’t any of their business. He had a busy morning, but they set me up to meet him that afternoon. Plenty of time to rethink things and back out.
It also gave me plenty of time to get things done. I visited Mac again, getting mildly surprised when they allowed me in until I realized they’d moved him to a room on the other side, away from the prisoner. I had to give Oxendine points for thinking that one through. Mac continued to heal, and promised he’d be good to go the next morning. I sent Fader on a mission to find out the next in line in charge of EPV. I also got a message back from Serata.
Carl,
At the time I got the job to recruit you, it appeared to me to be on the level. But if you think it’s not, I trust your judgment. I’ll look into it. It will take some time. The players involved are significant.
Serata
That settled it for me. He hadn’t equivocated. Saying it appeared that way to him—that was Serata’s way of admitting he may have made a mistake. That alone made me trust him on this one. His offer to look into it probably wouldn’t matter. This would be over before he could learn anything.
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