“Let’s say you didn’t know about them, and your first indication of the attack was at the overrun of the outer domes. The animals are within thirty kilometers of Dome One when you learn of it, and it’s probably longer before you understand the extent of the threat.”
“We’re outside of the general here and into specifics. I don’t really feel the need to help you.” I did need to help her for a time, but I didn’t want to make it too easy. She’d get suspicious.
“Let’s be clear. Your team—Fader and crew—they’re not off Eccasis yet. It would be easy to stop them.”
I read it for a bluff, but I let it pass. It gave me a suitable reason to give in to Eddleston’s demands. Once I did—once she came to rely on me—I’d figure out how to make her pay. On top of that, it didn’t hurt to buy more time for Fader. I tried to look suitably cowed and hesitated before I spoke. “Okay. The primates are within thirty kilometers. Maybe closer. So it’s an immediate problem. I’d need to know the threat to the dome itself—structurally—to assess exactly how much danger we’re in by standing pat. The dome is solid, but I’m not sure about the integrity of the airlocks and gates. I’d put my engineers on that, first thing. Because standing pat and waiting it out is my best option.”
“Your engineers suggest there is a risk of a breach . . . between five and ten percent, but reports come in of much more substantial damage to outer domes.”
I thought about it, then answered the straightforward part first. “Even five to ten percent is beyond tolerance because a breach would be catastrophic.” That said, I shifted to her implication. There were two possibilities for receiving reports about substantial damage. Either they’d ensure the damage through some means or fake the reports. I wanted to know which. “How will the outer domes be different?”
Eddleston hesitated, probably trying to decide how much to share. If she was leaking stuff she shouldn’t, that was another weapon for me to use later. “We’ll make sure the damage happens. That’s all I’m going to say about that.”
So sabotage. That would change Oxendine’s battle calculus. Now it was my turn to decide how much to give away. It didn’t take me long. I had to give her something so she’d seem smart when she went back into a room with experts. That would build the trust I wanted to abuse later. “I’d need to know what assets they have to give you a specific answer, but in general, they’re going to want to engage as far away from the dome as possible, so they will push out and try to divert them or, if they can’t do that, stall them and buy time to figure out why they’re coming. Deciphering that signal or finding its source isn’t impossible. Especially since I can establish martial law and drag in experts for questioning.”
Eddleston made a note in her device. I’d given her something useful, and she’d caught it. The martial law. Caliber employed the experts. They’d now make sure they were somewhere that the military couldn’t get to them. That would give her something she could add to the planning that others may have overlooked.
“Can you stop the attack with the soldiers you have?” she asked.
“Maybe. It comes down to a decision for the commander as to whether she’s going to try to delay, stop, or destroy. Given what you say about the destruction at the outer domes, I’d personally err on the side of destruction. But it’s going to be a bit of trial and error, as I don’t think anybody knows what it would take to stop an attack like that, since it’s never happened. Explosive bullets and shoulder-fired rockets will work, but that puts soldiers at risk.”
“But you’d use them?”
“If I had to. In a perfect world, I’d want more weapons. Armed drones if she has them. Bombers would be best, but I don’t think there are any on the planet, and getting them from orbit, if they’re there, would take time . . . that’s possible, but I don’t think they’re there.”
“If you had access to even bigger weapons, would you use them?”
“The big hunter-killer bots from a decade ago would be ideal, but she definitely doesn’t have those. They’re designed for stuff like this. They’d be almost invulnerable to attack from the ’verts, and they have the right weapons. The jungle would be tough terrain for them, but a smart commander could make them work.”
“So you’re saying that the military could defeat the threat if they had the right weapons.”
“Obviously. Yes. You didn’t need a colonel to tell you that. Any officer with three years in service could have come up with the same thing.”
“But officers with three years in grade aren’t going to be making decisions about whether people live or die. Tell me, what do you think Brigadier General Oxendine will do? After all . . . knowing people . . . isn’t that your specialty?”
I smiled. I’d given her enough to hook her. I needed to end the discussion and let her sit with it for a while. “I’m done playing games. Get Zentas out here and let’s cut to the chase.”
“It’s a simple question. What will she do?”
“You already know.”
“Not as well as you do.”
I didn’t need the flattery, but in this case, it was justified. I did know how Oxendine would react. Giving it to Eddleston would give her something that anyone else they had working for them might not have. It was what she wanted and, I hoped, the thing that would bring her back for more. “She’ll follow her orders. If they don’t fit, she’ll try to get new orders.”
“To the detriment of the colony.”
“What? No. That’s not how she’d see it.”
“I don’t understand.”
I did my best to keep a neutral tone and avoid condescension. She needed to feel like I was treating her like an equal. “She’ll see the long-term survival of the colony as more than the dome. There are political implications. She’ll be aware of them, take them into consideration.”
“What would you do in her place?”
“It’s irrelevant. I’m not the commander, and there’s no situation where I would be.” Frankly, I didn’t know what I’d do, but if I said that, it would undermine her confidence in me.
“She’s going to delay,” Eddleston said. “You know that. When she does make a decision, it will be too late.”
“Still her decision to make. And if it’s not hers, there are a hundred other people before it would even possibly get to me. Which it won’t. Look, I’ve told you all I’m going to tell you. Now I want something in return.”
“However I respond, you’re not going to believe me.”
“I want to talk to Zentas.”
“He’s not available.”
She was right. I didn’t believe her. “Fine. Then I want to go for a walk.”
“You . . . what?”
“A walk. I live in a small cell, and I want exercise. You can put guards with me. I don’t care. I’m an old man with a robot foot that acts up. I just want thirty minutes a day to stretch my legs.”
She hesitated, probably trying to find my angle. I had one, but I doubted she’d find it in my reasonable request. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Which meant she didn’t have the authority to make it happen. Another useful piece of information.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I got my walk. Two guards showed up to take me for a walk after dinner—one man and one woman, different from before, both wearing black jumpsuits and appearing to be unarmed. They probably had telescoping batons, or something similar, that I couldn’t see. They wouldn’t need them. I had no designs on escape. I’d be the perfect prisoner for now. I wouldn’t even speak to them. Not the first time I went out. People would be watching. I had to establish a routine first and bore everyone to sleep. But I could gather information.
We walked a hallway that ran around the circumference of the base, which took approximately seventy seconds. Estimating 1.8 meters per second—it’s just one of those things you know about yourself when you’ve been in the military as long as I have—that meant it was 125 meters. That made the base about forty meters in diameter, m
aking the area about twelve or thirteen hundred square meters. We passed a staircase down, indicating at least one more level. On the opposite side of the base we passed a passage up, but that appeared to end in an airlock, so I assumed it led outside.
We also passed seven different narrow hallways and five doors, all on one side of the hall, and all of which had bio-encrypted locks. One of those—the biggest of them, probably to allow for the transport of large animals—led back to the block of four cells that had become my home as of late. We walked for about forty minutes, so I passed each door dozens of times, and I had the chance to study each without looking obvious about it. I tried to get a view of the airlock, but the slope of the tunnel didn’t allow for it. Would they have environmental suits up there? Did it require a bio-authentication to work the door? For safety reasons, it shouldn’t. But for legal reasons, this place shouldn’t exist. So I probably couldn’t count on them worrying about worker safety. I filed the information away for later.
Eddleston had me escorted back to what I now believed was her office the next morning. I had no way to directly assess how the information I’d given her had helped her, but the fact that she’d brought me back gave some indication that she wanted more.
She didn’t wait long to tell me what. “If you had to stop the hominivert advance and you had access to assets that the military didn’t, what would you want?”
She was implying that there were on-planet military assets that Oxendine didn’t control. I should have seen that coming. Caliber had a production shop, and Stroud had told me they could build what they needed. I’d seen enough of corporate-sponsored war to understand the situation, but that didn’t make it right. I decided to play dumb for a minute. “Hello to you, too.”
“I trust that you had a nice walk?” Subtlety wasn’t her strong suit. What she gave, she could take away.
“Lovely, thank you. What are my choices? For assets.” What I meant was, What do you have?
“Everything you need. Hunter-killer bots. Surface-to-surface missiles. Space-to-surface missiles, if necessary.”
Everything I need. That’s what she said. I had a bad feeling I knew their intent for me, but I needed to play it out to see for sure. “No way. They’d see any weapons you had on a space-based platform.”
“They might. If they were looking. They’re not. They’re under-resourced, and we most definitely aren’t.”
I could believe that, and her body language suggested she wasn’t bluffing. They had weapons, and they wanted me to use them. They wanted to kill a bunch of ’verts, and they wanted to blame me for it. Of course they did. Who better to blame than the galaxy’s best-known mass killer of alien life? I needed her to say it. “Why am I here?”
“To make the decision to use the other assets.”
“I told you. Not my call.”
“You see a disaster coming that’s going to cost human lives. Are you telling me that if you had the power, you wouldn’t step in?”
“You have the power. You can simply turn off the sonic devices.”
“Which we’re not going to do.”
“And you’re not going to let me do that either.”
“No.”
“Because you want conflict. You want me to kill the hominiverts. Because you want them out of the way so that the planet can expand faster.”
The door opened, and Drake Zentas walked in. His salt-and-pepper hair was perfect, and he wore the same cargo pants and pressed white shirt he’d met me in previously. How did you keep a shirt pressed under an environmental suit? That didn’t matter. A huge figure in cargo pants and maroon workout shirt squeezed in behind him, muscles bulging. Jan Karlsson. Apparently I could get close to Eddleston without a guard, but not Zentas.
“Ms. Eddleston. You’ve been keeping our guest all to yourself. I went by his cell to see him, but . . .” Zentas let it trail off.
Eddleston’s face reddened slightly, and she took an inadvertent step back away from the new arrivals. She and Zentas weren’t on the same script—good news for me if I could figure out how to exploit that. “Yes, sir. Just trying to get ahead on the next phase of the plan.”
“Of course.” Zentas smiled and waved it away as if it didn’t matter. But it did. The tension hung between them like a wet towel on a slack rope.
“You’ve been here all along and you’re just now coming to see me. Why are we playing games?” I bailed Eddleston out of the immediate situation and threatened her at the same time. It drew Zentas’s attention from her to me, but she and I both knew that she’d told me he wasn’t here. A quick glance her way—she was holding her breath—and I knew I had her. If I told, she was in trouble.
“I’m a busy man, Carl. Please, no offense intended.”
I did take offense, but felt it best not to share that. “Is this because I didn’t take the job working for you? Kidnapping is supposed to convince me?”
He turned his palms up, as if it was that simple. A shrug. Asshole. “I wanted another meeting.”
“My line was open. I could have stopped by.”
“It was pretty clear that I needed a home-field advantage.”
“Just cut to the chase. Why am I here?”
“You want me to say you’re the only man in the galaxy who can pull this off? Is that what your ego needs?”
I let it sink in for a minute. Zentas had touched on it in our first meeting—people would listen to me about this sort of thing. They’d named the law after me. Did he need me? Either way, he’d worked to get me here, so he had a reason. I decided to provoke him, see if I could get him to make a mistake. “You killed your own daughter to get me here.”
“That’s a strong accusation, Carl. Once again, I do admire your stones. Though this time, I think you’re just desperate.”
“Tell me I’m wrong. It was the only way I’d agree to the mission. Serata played on my sympathy, because I’d lost a daughter.” My mind jumped to Serata and his complicity. I didn’t ask Zentas, because I wouldn’t believe his answer either way.
“I’m not going to tell you anything,” he said.
“Then let me tell you something: Your plan is ridiculous. There’s no motivation for me to go along with your farce.”
“Obviously I disagree. You asked me to cut to the chase, and I will. I offered you a job once, and you turned me down. I’m offering one more time, albeit with slightly revised terms. You work for me, you live and become a rich man. If not, we do the mission anyway, and your body turns up. You see, tragically, we had no idea what you were up to, and we had to stop you to protect the colony. Meanwhile, we clear the immediate area so we can expand a little quicker. It’s not ideal, but it’s still progress. And we highlight for the galaxy one more example of alien life being a threat to humanity.”
I considered his plan. If he succeeded—if we lost settlements . . . if we lost soldiers . . . the galaxy would react. Polls would change overnight, and they’d change enough to make politicians switch their positions. Some of them, anyway. The true believers would hold, but the moderates—those who cared about public opinion more than right or wrong—would cave. Especially with someone like Zentas helping to stoke the pressure. He’d make sure it stayed in the news. But it would take time. More than he thought.
“Killing the hominiverts won’t get you what you want. There are more dangerous animals here, and bombs and bots won’t work on them. There are poisonous moths here that will rot off a limb. Don’t even get me started on the bacteria. This planet isn’t compatible with human life.”
“Thank you for that lesson in terraforming. Of course it will take time. Years. But there’s no way to finish if you don’t start.”
“You’ll be dead before it’s completed.”
He gave me the deliberate palms up shrug again. “The burden of being a visionary. I’ll be dead before a lot of my ventures come to fruition.”
“Why are we having this conversation? I’m dead no matter what.” He’d offered me riches, but that was be
cause he had to give me hope. Without it, I had no motivation to help.
“There are worse things than death. You have family . . . a son, a granddaughter. I can make sure the news hits hard where they live,” he said.
I froze.
“Thought that might matter,” he said. “Besides, maybe you do live. I told you when I offered you the job the first time; you have value to me beyond this colony . . . if we can find assurances that you won’t spoil the story.”
They’d have assurances built in—I had no doubt. “Someone’s going to spill even if you kill me. You know that, right? The story always gets out.”
“It will. The key is to tell a louder story. We can do that. You can help. We’ll have video of you in action. You’ll make statements about how you assessed the situation, how you came to have the equipment . . . how you just had to act to save human lives. You’ll be convincing. If not, there’s always another take. We’re obviously not putting you on live.”
He had me. I believed him when he said that if I didn’t cooperate, I’d end up dead. I didn’t have to think too hard to decide between dying and living when dying didn’t accomplish anything. As long as I lived, I could keep trying to find a way to screw Zentas over. I couldn’t make it too easy, though. I put all the disdain I could muster into my voice. “You’re going to kill humans to expand your business.”
“It’s not all about business. We need new planets. The shortsighted laws preventing expansion will cost millions of lives over time. Billions, perhaps. Sure, it will take fifty or a hundred years before that’s realized, but it’s coming. How many of our current planets are overcrowded?”
“You’re talking to a guy who lives on Ridia Two. The idea of overpopulation is going to be a tough sell.”
“Pfft. Ridia Two is in the middle of nowhere. It’s useless. It’s uncrowded because nobody wants to be there. This place though . . . half a billion people could live on this continent alone, and it’s close to the trade routes.”
“And you’d be happy to sell to them.”
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