Colonyside

by Michael Mammay

  I met Zentas in an office that he’d appropriated from someone and had redecorated. At least I assumed he had it redecorated, since I didn’t think a random office on Eccasis would have exquisite carpet, polished wood furniture, and art on the walls that probably cost seven figures. A tall male assistant dressed in an expensive suit escorted me in and then quickly left us alone.

  “Drinks?” asked Zentas, and then apparently read something from my face or body language. “Ah . . . I see not.”

  “I’m fine, thank you.”

  “So, this is a bad news visit. You’re not going to take the job.”

  “I’m not here about the job.” I’d already let him take control of the conversation, which wouldn’t help. Not that I had much choice.

  “But you’re not going to take it. If you were, you’d have said so. Don’t tell me you haven’t decided. Give me a little respect.”

  “I’m not here about the job,” I repeated.

  “Fine.” He exaggerated a sigh, then gestured to a chair. “What are you here for?”

  “I want to give you a report on the situation I came to investigate.”

  “My daughter.”

  “Right.”

  He quieted himself. Not just his voice, but his whole body seemed to shrink into itself. It was a good act. “Okay. I’m ready. This is very important to me.”

  I was prepared for that and undeterred. “I’m going to tell you the same thing you told me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Give me a little respect.”

  “Excuse me?” He almost came up out of his chair. I didn’t react. The I’m going to kick your ass thing might work in the business world, but he’d have to do better than that if he wanted to intimidate me. I’d had my ass kicked by better men.

  “I watched you on the news—”

  “Where I expressed my feelings about the tragedy—”

  “Where you exploited her death to make a political point.”

  He started to snap back at me then held it and relaxed in his chair. He shrugged. “Sure. That’s fair.”

  That caught me by surprise a little. I hadn’t expected him to concede that point. Especially not so quickly. “So—”

  “That doesn’t mean I don’t care about her,” he said, cutting me off. “What’s done is done. How I use it after the fact is a completely different issue.”

  I nodded once. I couldn’t disagree. “That’s fair too. I’m going to tell you up front, I don’t have a lot of proof for my findings. But you requested my presence on this mission for a reason. I’m pretty good at this sort of thing.” I wanted to admit the lack of proof up front so he wouldn’t jump right to that after I told him my findings.

  “Sure,” he said.

  “Understand, I haven’t filed this yet. I’m giving it to you first as a courtesy.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  And so, with that, I jumped in with both feet. I had decided prior to arriving to state it as fact. Not I think, or I believe. Fact. “There was a supposedly abandoned facility that we found yesterday that subsequently blew up. Your daughter, Xyla Redstone, was the leader, or one of the leaders of that facility, which conducted potentially illegal research on local animals, specifically hominiverts.” Zentas didn’t jump in and I didn’t want him to, so I continued. “Part of her research involved audio sensitivity of indigenous primates. Whether it was her initial goal or not, she, or others working with her, discovered that hominiverts are sensitive at certain frequencies that humans can’t hear, and that broadcasting those frequencies causes them to move out of an area.”

  “Okay. I’m not agreeing with you, but I understand what you’re saying.”

  “There’s more.”

  He gestured for me to continue, giving me the rope to hang myself. And I was going to oblige him. The next part—I wasn’t even sure I believed it myself. But the clock was running out and I was losing, so I took the desperation shot. “Your daughter was killed—either intentionally or unintentionally—by people from your own company. Personnel from Caliber, or in the employ of Caliber, used low-frequency broadcasts to intentionally drive a group of hominiverts into her research team. Guards from two other teams moved to the site to ensure the job was complete, driving the hominiverts off in the process, thus confusing the initial investigation.”

  Zentas sat silently for several seconds—long enough for it to become uncomfortable, like maybe he expected me to continue. “This!” He paused again. “This is why I wanted to hire you!” He laughed loudly, but it didn’t seem forced. “The balls! The absolute stones that you have to come in here and tell me this to my face. Who else could do that? Nobody. That’s who. Absolutely nobody.” He fell silent again.

  I didn’t know what to say at that. He hadn’t refuted anything, which is what I expected, but he hadn’t confirmed anything either.

  Zentas smiled. “Of course, it’s all bullshit.”

  “Excuse me?”

  He’d said it with perfect confidence. Absolutely nothing to indicate that he didn’t believe what he was saying. He was either telling the truth as far as he knew it, or he could lie like a sociopath.

  “Well, not all of it. There was an unauthorized dome. We know that from your excursion to it. But there’s no evidence linking it to Caliber, and certainly none linking it to Xyla.”

  “There’s some.”

  “Really? What?”

  I walked into that one. The prisoner had recognized Xyla, but he hadn’t said so, and even if he had, I wouldn’t have shared that with Zentas. Mbabe was too vulnerable, in more ways than one. He could be paid off, or more likely, disappear. I had to say something, though. Schultz was dead, which made him invulnerable. “A man named Schultz was on security, working for Caliber, on the excursion where Xyla died. He was first on the scene with no witnesses.”

  “So?”

  “The same man died in the firefight at the unauthorized facility yesterday.”

  “A little suspicious, I’ll give you that. But still not even close to solid evidence.”

  “When I questioned Martha Stroud about the man, she said that he no longer worked for you—”

  “I’m sure he doesn’t,” he interjected.

  I took that to mean that if he did, I wouldn’t find him on the books. “And that he left the planet and couldn’t be found.”

  He started to speak again—he wanted to brush that off as an oversight—but he restrained himself. He probably realized that an instant denial made him look guilty. He didn’t have to speak. We both knew I couldn’t prove it. “Let me sum up to make sure I’ve got this right. Your findings are that my own company killed my daughter.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “That’s what you’re going with?”

  I looked him straight in the eye, my expression flat. I didn’t respond verbally, but he got the message.

  “You’ll find this doesn’t end well for you. I’ve got a lot of friends in the government. They’ll bury whatever nonsense you make up as you try to smear me, and then they’ll bury you.”

  “There are pluses and minuses to bringing in an outsider who doesn’t give a shit. On the plus side, I’ll do what’s right, regardless of what the government thinks. On the minus side . . . I really don’t give a shit.”

  He smiled again, but this time it wasn’t real. “You’ll find I’m much better as a friend than an enemy. You think you’re untouchable. You’re not.”

  I could say the same for you. I really wanted to say it, but I didn’t. I’d done what I came to do. I’d served notice. I told him what happened, and while he called it total bullshit, something in his reaction told me he knew it wasn’t. My accusations almost certainly hadn’t hit the mark with 100-percent accuracy, but I only needed to be close to force him to act. He did have friends in the government, but he had enemies too. They’d jump on any excuse to bring him down. I also had enemies, of course, but what else could they do to me? “Like I said. This was a courtesy briefing
, before I send it in. I didn’t want to blindside you.”

  “Consider me briefed.” He turned away and pretended to busy himself with other work. I sat there for a couple of seconds before showing myself out. I’d probably blown the job offer.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Fader gave me some bad news the next morning. She’d tracked down the new colonyside head of EPV, Tatiana Garabaldi, but Ms. Garabaldi declined to meet with me. I think her exact words were, “Tell him I’d rather walk naked through the jungle.” According to Fader, it hadn’t been lost on Garabaldi that Farric had died in sketchy circumstances, and she had booked passage off planet on the next thing moving.

  On a positive note, Mac rejoined us, and that made me feel better. I’d goaded Zentas into some sort of action, and I needed all the help I could get for when that happened. I didn’t think he’d stoop to a direct attack, but if he did, Mac provided a good insurance policy. I’d convinced myself that Caliber had something to do with Xyla Redstone’s death, and that Zentas probably knew about that before I told him. If he’d allow that to happen to his own daughter—even one who was estranged—then there was no limit to what he might do to me.

  Unfortunately, he had all the initiative. I had two moves left. First, I could send in a report, and once I played that card, I couldn’t take it back. As soon as I did, Zentas would find out through his sources and then he’d have even more control over what happened next. I did prepare it. I wrote up everything I knew, listed every witness and every piece of conjecture I’d made to come to my conclusion, complete with how strong I felt about each piece of it. I didn’t oversell it. I acknowledged that I had a margin for error in my work. I had to. I had to present as dispassionate a case as possible if I wanted anyone to buy it. I encrypted the whole thing and got it ready to send, but I didn’t intend to push the button. I wanted to see Zentas’s move first and hear back from Serata as well. Back on Talca, in a similar situation, I’d set the file to send automatically, only to have it hacked by my captors. I wouldn’t make that mistake again. This time I went old school. I gave Mac access to it, just in case something happened to me. If it did, he was to send it as soon as safely possible. I considered giving access to Fader or Ganos as well but decided against it. Fader might see it as her moral obligation to forward whatever I gave her to her higher headquarters. And—again, while I trusted her—I didn’t trust her boss, whoever that was. If Ganos wanted access to my information, she’d already have it.

  My second option was to visit the governor. He’d opposed my mission to the facility, and it was his job to enforce the laws against places like that. Oxendine couldn’t confront him about it, but I could. If I could get him to press charges against Caliber, it would put even more pressure on Zentas to make a move. To do that, however, I had to get past Davidson.

  I tried to simply skip her, but someone must have alerted her when I entered the building because she caught me well before I could reach the governor’s office. “Colonel Butler. So good to see you.” She didn’t even pretend to mean it.

  “I need to see your boss.”

  “I’m afraid he’s busy.”

  “I’ll wait,” I said.

  “He’ll be busy all day.”

  She pissed me off, but I’d prepared for that. “Of course he will. Do me a favor. Tell him that I’m filing my report in an hour, and I’m specifically mentioning his failure to execute his responsibilities as one of the causes for the disappearance of Xyla Redstone. I just wanted to let him know ahead of time as a courtesy.” It was a bluff, but a strong one. I figured the only thing that would get the governor to act was self-preservation. I also guessed that if the governor went down, he’d take Davidson with him. I turned and left.

  Davidson caught me before I got out of the building, which meant I’d probably guessed right. “You can’t do that.”

  “Of course I can. I have independent authority.”

  “It would be a lie,” she said.

  “First, that’s rich given your position and where your true allegiances lie—”

  “That has no bearing on—”

  “Second, is it a lie? The facility we found was in use doing illegal research on animals. It’s his responsibility to prevent that.”

  “You had no authorization to go to that facility.”

  “And yet I did. What are they going to do to me? Revoke my authority and send me home? Oh, no. Please. Not that. Tell you what—you go ahead and argue that your failure to oversee the illegal actions of corporations here colonyside is because I took some leeway with my authority and went out and found one big illegal action. Let me know how that works out.”

  “We don’t have the resources to monitor everything going on here.”

  “And I’m sure you’ve got all the requisitions asking for more assets to back that up.” Her face tightened. “No, I didn’t think so.”

  She started to snap back at me but paused. After a few seconds, she sagged in on herself. “What do you want?”

  Part of me wanted to press her, ask her what she had to offer. Part of me wanted to know what kind of bribe she could come up with from her corporate masters. But more of me wanted to go after Zentas, and Davidson would never do that. She couldn’t. “I want to talk to the governor.”

  “Fine.”

  “Alone.”

  She didn’t respond for a moment, then sighed. “Fine.”

  It took fifteen minutes in the governor’s office sitting in a wooden chair as various people traipsed in, each with something that would just take a second. I assumed that Davidson sent them to frustrate me or try to catch some snippet of our conversation.

  “Colonel Butler,” he said, finally. “How is the investigation going?”

  “We’re stalled right now.”

  “That’s a shame. What’s holding you up?”

  I couldn’t go right at the governor the way I had with Davidson. I had to build into it and let him trap himself. After that, I could offer him a way out. “As you know, we went on a mission outside the dome and found an illegal facility.”

  “Yes, I’m very perturbed about that.” His demeanor didn’t change at all, which seemed odd if he was truly perturbed. Someone probably had told him to be mad about it, but he didn’t understand why.

  “I’m really sorry about that. I forced Oxendine into it. As you know, my charter gives me the authority to take any action I deem necessary to find out what happened to Xyla Redstone.” It wasn’t that clear-cut, but he didn’t know that.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “I really thought we were going to find the answer there. I mean . . . an illegal facility . . . they had to be hiding something.”

  “Did you find anything?”

  “We didn’t. They destroyed it before we could get there.”

  “That’s too bad.” He sounded like he actually meant it.

  “It leaves me with a problem though. I’ve got to put it in my report.”

  “Well, no help for that.”

  He didn’t get it. I was going to have to spell it out for him. “I’ll have to mention the illegal facility, which leads to the question of why nobody knew about it. Something like that falls—”

  “Under my authority.” His face fell as he finally realized the significance.

  “Your people really let you down on this.” I’d reached a delicate spot. I couldn’t accuse him directly, so I needed to give him an out. This wasn’t it though. First I had to get him on my side. “I’m sure everyone will see it that way.”

  He thought about it. “No, they’ll blame me. It’s my post, and it happened on my watch.”

  “But it’s not your fault,” I said.

  “That’s not how they’ll see it—they never do for people in my position.”

  “You’re probably right,” I said, trying to put hesitation into my voice, as if he’d just convinced me.

  “What am I going to do?”

  I pretended to think about it, even though I had the answ
er prepared. “Well, since I haven’t sent it yet, you could get in front of it.”

  He looked at me with the eyes of a drowning man who’d just been thrown a lifeline. “How would I do that?”

  “I could delay the report a bit. No harm in that.”

  “You’d do that?”

  “Look, Governor, this really isn’t on you. I’d hate to see my work make it seem that way.”

  “So . . . how would I . . . how—”

  “Well, you’re under-resourced. You could put in a requisition for more assets so this thing never happens again.”

  He nodded. “Yes, I can do that.”

  “You could fire someone beneath you and shift the blame.” I stopped short of giving him a name. He’d come up with Davidson on his own. I hadn’t set out to wreck her, but I didn’t mind if she got caught in the collateral damage. With her here, companies like Caliber would continue to run roughshod.

  He seemed less sure this time. “Okay. I might be able to do that.”

  “And you could file charges against Caliber for having an illegal facility and conducting illegal experiments on hominiverts.”

  His eyes went wide. “I can’t do that,” he whispered.

  “I’m afraid I have to insist on that.” I dropped the conciliatory tone for a flat, matter-of-fact one.

  “Insist? No. You can’t report that. There’s no evidence. You said so yourself.”

  “Okay, so instead I’ll say that I had a lead on finding what I needed to know about Redstone but was forbidden from continuing the investigation by local authorities.”

  “But that’s not true!”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “You can’t know what was out there, so you don’t know that it would complete your investigation.” Gone was whatever façade of cool he had. He gestured now with his hands as he talked.

  “Maybe you want to tell me?”

  “Tell you what?”

  “What I would have found out there.”

  “How would I know?”

  “I assume you do. Why else would you be protecting an illegal facility?”