“We’re scaring them,” I stated. “Everyone should take that as a good sign.”
From the stares I got, I could tell everyone did not share my thinking on this.
“I think they’re going to take it as Calipa allied with us, and now their planet is devastated and millions are dead,” Wade said.
“We have some allies on Guiliv,” Redden continued. “But we keep the Alliance presence there as secret as possible. We can expect active resistance now, just as a matter of survival.”
“You think this will change if you get Mountain Fall?” Diane asked.
“When we have the weaponry,” Redden stated, “it won’t be a matter of people only fearing the Fathom.”
I could see a slight change in Diane’s expression.
“What do you need for this?” Redden asked. “Any more help?”
“No. Let’s keep the team small,” I said. “All we need is someone there to help us access the vault where the code is stored.”
“I think I can get you someone,” Redden said, “but as I said, we need to tread very carefully. What are the chances the Fathom are on the same trail?”
“We tried to cover our tracks on Vesa,” I answered. “But I think we should assume they’re coming.”
“Then there’s no time to waste,” Redden declared. “You better get to this. We don’t have much else left to count on. The efforts to find out anything more about the Fathom have not yielded anything, and the destruction on Calipa has created another dead end.”
“When we’ve encountered the Messengers,” Sylvia said, “they almost seem like the same people. A different woman each time, but something about them is the same.”
“We still know so little about them,” Redden said. “The one you faced on Vesa was the first one we saw who engaged in combat. We were hoping that information from the Oron-Damari corporation would give us a lead on the Fathom, and I guess the Fathom agreed, which is why it’s no more. The Messengers are still our only leads. We identified another one — a Corridian who disappeared from planet Erilia — but that’s still not getting us anywhere.”
Redden rubbed his head. He looked like a man who had felt nothing but the limits of stress for weeks. “I can’t believe we signed an alliance with Nystrom. Of course, it will be a miracle if we all survive long enough for it to be relevant. The key to that is Mountain Fall. If we have that, we have a chance. So concentrate on that. Get us some good news.”
As we closed the channel with Redden, we heard a shout from outside the room. We all rushed out to the common area to see Eldan holding his handheld, tears streaming from his eyes. “Rayina! Rayina!” he gibbered. “I didn’t think ... I didn’t think I’d hear you again. Where are Koltn and Kasra?” There was a pause, and then Eldan lost it again, barely getting out, “Yes ... it’s Daddy. You stay safe. You stay safe with your mom.”
I turned to see that Diane was crying, too. Happy tears, I gathered, though I really didn’t understand that at all. It was a negative response to a highly positive event, perhaps a way to balance out extreme emotions.
Wade walked over to Diane and squeezed her hand. “You’re supposed to go to a crying woman,” Dip told me. “That’s pretty basic.”
I looked away, trying not to let it needle me. I thought happy tears were different.
“Now you know.”
Sylvia wasn’t crying; she just had a smile on her face as she watched Eldan. I think Diane had invested herself more in other people, while Sylvia and Wade knew to stay detached for the sake of the mission. It was the smarter course of action; I assumed if things had gone the other way for Eldan and his family, it would have taken Diane down as well.
I realized I had not reacted positively to Eldan’s news. I considered just forcing a smile at least, but too much could go wrong with that.
“I’ll get to you. I’ll get to you as soon as I can,” Eldan said into the handheld. He looked up at me. “They’re still on Calipa — on the other side of the planet from the capital. It’s ... it’s not good. But they’re safe.”
“We’ll get you to them.” I turned to Wade. “I think we have two other jump-capable ships here. You take Eldan to Calipa. Then you can get to a hospital and get yourself fixed up.”
Wade scowled at me. “We don’t have time for that.”
“We need to be quick here,” I stated. “In and out. No time for a one-armed man.”
“You have holes in your body, and you aren’t stopping,” Wade protested, but he accidentally winced at the movement of his arm in his sling.
“He’s right,” Diane said, firmly but politely — a balance I was never good at. “You’re not ready for this. You need to get healed first, and we don’t have time for that.”
“So you’re just taking Sylvia?” he asked me, but his eyes were on her, possibly to look for some signal.
“You comfortable working alone with us?” I asked Sylvia.
“I haven’t been comfortable with anything for months,” Sylvia said. “But you’re not in a good place, Wade. You go with Eldan back to Calipa and take care of yourself. We’ll get this done.”
Wade seemed to be formulating new protests, but none were worth saying. He finally turned to me. “We’re counting on you.”
“I know,” I answered.
He walked over and gave Sylvia a side hug. “Godspeed.”
“We didn’t go this far to fail now,” Sylvia answered, patting him on the back.
He then looked at Diane but couldn’t come up with anything to say and just smiled at her. She smiled back. “We’ll see you again soon.”
That useless jealousy rose again, but I reminded myself that he was almost gone.
“Thank you for all you’re doing,” Eldan told us. “I don’t know about all of your mission, but I understand it’s important. And I know we can count on you. Thank you for —”
He started to lose it again. Diane walked over to him. “Just hug your wife and kids for us, okay?”
He managed a smile and walked off to the hangar with Wade. The thanks he was giving us seemed premature. If we failed and the Fathom’s rule became complete, I assumed they would take swift vengeance on any rebels left, which included Eldan and his family. He may have saved them just so they’d live long enough for the worse things to come.
But no one knows what the future holds. I guess they just do what they think is right — as vague as that is to determine — and hope for the best.
CHAPTER 29
“This is almost it, isn’t it?” Diane said. No smile, though. I thought I could sense some dread.
We were at a nice open-air cafe on Guiliv, each enjoying soup and a sandwich. From where we were we had views of a park — looked like flora from Earth — and all around us were shiny skyscrapers, including our target, the Dayne Bank headquarters. The idea was to take some time to scope things out and let Sylvia get into position, but it was also nice to finally have some time alone with Diane. She wasn’t very relaxed, though.
“We’ll see.” I tasted the soup. Some tomato-based concoction. “Wade seems to like you.”
That had the effect of distracting her from her source of tension as she eyed me oddly. “Is that his last name or his first name?”
“I dunno. Never asked. Never cared.” I waited in vain for her to say more. She didn’t so I continued. “He’s not a psychopath. Seems capable of normal human feelings.”
“Are you trying to be a matchmaker, Rico?”
“He’s someone with a future, is all I’m saying.” I looked into her blue eyes. I wanted her in ways I couldn’t quite comprehend. “He’s what I was pretending to be when we sort of dated back on Nar Valdum.”
“I’m not looking to date. I sort of fell into it with you, but ...” Her face went distant for a moment. Old, bad memories. “I’m carrying around too much baggage to put on someone else.”
“Except me. The murderous psychopath.” I held the sandwich as if to take a bite, but I wasn’t really hungry. “Do yo
u think you stayed with me because you don’t believe you deserve any better?”
“You’re not a bad person, Rico.”
I laughed. “Come on. I am a very, very bad person, by any standard.”
“You’re a broken person.”
“Who can’t be fixed.”
Her eyes penetrated me again. “Then why are you doing this? Why are you trying to help people?”
That wasn’t an easy question to answer. I wanted to, but I didn’t have the time. It was my turn to change the subject. “You’re worried about what happens when we find Mountain Fall.”
“Yes.” She leaned toward me. “What do you think the Alliance and Redden are going to do when they get it? When Burke gets some control over it?”
I mulled that over for a few seconds. “Probably use the weapons to hit a few of the Fathom’s biggest strongholds. Demonstrate they can retaliate.”
“So then we’d have two sides inflicting untold destruction,” Diane said. “It could become just like the Galactic War. A full-scale conflict with billions dead.”
I shrugged. “What’s the alternative? The Fathom are violent tyrants. The Alliance is ... presumably better. I never really cared for governments, though.”
She brought her voice to a low whisper. “Maybe when we find Mountain Fall, we destroy it. Make sure neither the Fathom nor the Alliance can use it to harm anyone.”
“The Alliance would basically be done for,” I pointed out.
“Maybe that’s just the reality of the situation.” Diane took a deep breath, relaxing a little as she unburdened what I guessed had been brewing for some time. “They’re can’t succeed against the Fathom militarily, and there is no reason for millions and billions of people to die to demonstrate that.”
“So give up?”
“We stick to the shadows. Try to find out who the Fathom are,” Diane stated. There was little emotion in her face, as there tended to not be when she was in business mode. “I already know a group who is good at operating secretly. I know we don’t have many leads on the Fathom now — especially after Calipa — but I don’t believe they’re phantoms. Somewhere there’s evidence on who they are, and when we find that, we find a way to bring this fight to them.”
I tapped my fingers on the table. “It’s a thought. So first, we need to get the information on how to reach Mountain Fall and keep it to ourselves. Once we get that from the bank, no one but Sylvia would be in any position to stop us. I doubt we could talk her over to our side, though. We’d have to take her out.”
Diane’s eyes grew wide. “Are you serious?”
“Of course,” I said. “But I’m guessing you’re not, if you haven’t even considered that already. If you think this is the right course of action, I can handle her once this part of the mission is done.”
Diane couldn’t hide the shock. “She’s saved your life.”
“That’s a personal detail,” I stated. “But billions of lives are on the line. I don’t really understand the morality calculation here — maybe no one does — but if you tell me one way is the right way, I will do whatever it takes. So are you serious on this?”
She stared at me and then down at the table, in painful thought. “Why are you doing this to her?” Dip asked.
Because I want to understand.
“I’ll handle her. We don’t have to kill her,” Diane said. “The important thing is not to let these weapons end up in the hands of the Fathom or Anthony Burke. I won’t be a part of that much death.”
There was always a third way ... some way to weasel out of these binary moral choices in real life. This train of thought wasn’t going any further, so it was time to put an end to it. I took Diane’s hand and looked her in the eyes. “Diane, I need you to trust me on one thing: Do not worry about this.”
“Why?”
“I just need you to trust me.”
Her eyes bored into me, but they weren’t going to find anything. “What haven’t you been telling me, Rico?”
I turned on my communicator. “Are you ready?”
“I am,” answered Sylvia through the radio. “Are you?”
“Heading in.” We stood up, and I left some money on the table next to the uneaten food. A suspicious detail, but too late now. I looked at Diane. “There are some things I need to protect you from.”
She scowled at me. “Have I ever needed your protection, Rico?”
“We’ll see.”
We walked toward the Dayne Bank headquarters. “Your contact’s name is Hector Robertson,” Sylvia told us. “Alliance ally. Been helping us keep our funds flowing. He’ll be waiting for you near the entrance.” Dip displayed for me the picture Sylvia sent of an innocuous-looking middle-aged human male in glasses. “I’ll keep an exit path clear as best I can, but to get to the vaults you’ll have to go to the basement, and you’ll be on your own. Get back to windows as soon as you can; that’s where I can help you best.”
“Roger.” We headed inside to a spacious lobby with inoffensive art on the walls and a sculpture of nothing in particular at the center. The place was currently bathed in natural light as the sun shone down on us, though outside I had seen storm clouds in the distance heading our way. You might call them ominous, but they’d given me comfort. I always preferred cover to sunlight.
There were a dozen men and women in suits in the lobby. They all looked like they could be clerks or customers, but by the way some of them watched us, I could tell they were plainclothes security officers. I had my guns, though, and it was pretty hard for generic hired security to make me feel threatened.
“Mr. and Mrs. Vargas?” asked a man who approached us. Robertson. He managed a smile, but he looked a little nervous. He was a banker, not someone who dealt with intergalactic conflict on a daily basis.
“Hello, Mr. Robertson,” Diane said, smiling much more naturally. “We’re in a hurry, so why don’t we just get our security box and get out of your hair?” An assurance that this would all be over soon. It didn’t seem to work in calming Robertson down, but he looked mostly normal as he led us to an elevator. Its doors shut, and we said goodbye to the sun.
We emerged in a well-lit basement area with a single desk and one door ahead of us. “Eyes on you,” Sylvia said over radio. I glanced at the visible cameras watching the elevator.
A woman sat at the desk, and she stood up as we approached. I gave her my charming smile and then remembered I was supposed to be pretending to be married or something. Well, maybe I was pretending to be a cad. The woman returned the smile, but it was forced.
“Mandy, we need ... um ...” Robertson looked at me. “What box?”
“It’s number 56T-8841.”
“This way,” Mandy told us as she opened the door and led us into another room. Here were a number of secure-looking metal doors. More cameras watched us from the ceiling. Robertson walked over to a console, and one of the metal doors opened up.
“You’ll find it in there,” Robertson told us.
“I have a code for opening it,” I said. “Do I need anything else?”
“That’s all you need,” Robertson said. He stood by the console, nervously playing with his hands. I glanced at Mandy, who was trying to look as though she wasn’t even paying attention to us.
“So just head in?” I asked.
“Yes. Go ahead,” he answered, managing a smile that wasn’t quite selling it.
I glanced at Diane. She looked at me and sighed. Diane walked over to Mandy. “Sorry, but could I borrow a pen?”
“Oh. Sure.” Mandy turned around to get one from a nearby table.
“Eyes shut,” I whispered to Sylvia through the radio.
Lightning-fast, Diane was on Mandy, her arm around the woman’s neck. I pulled my gun on Robertson. “So what’s going on here?”
He watched in shock as Diane brought the unconscious Mandy to the floor, a gun clattering to Mandy’s side. He then stared at my gun. “I just ... I just got contacted by the Fathom’s people. Right bef
ore you arrived. We were just going to lock you in there; that’s all. We were told to detain you. I’m sorry, but you saw what they did to Calipa. If anyone helps you ...”
“If you don’t want to see more people killed like on Calipa,” Diane said, her calm, kind voice contrasting with the fact that she had just strangled someone, “you need to help us get what we’re here for. If the Fathom get that information, they will have even more deadly weapons, and more people will die.”
He was shaking in fear, but he wasn’t even looking at me or the gun. “I have a wife and kids. If the Fathom find out I helped you ... I can’t.”
“A lot more families are going to be incinerated if you don’t help us,” I said, but I could immediately see the problem in that persuasion. People tended to put a lot more weight on their own families than on theoretical others.
“I’m sorry ... I’m sorry ...” he stammered, tears streaming from his eyes. “I can’t.”
I glanced up at the cameras. Sylvia had taken care of them, but it wouldn’t take long before security would notice something was awry. We didn’t have time.
“Robertson, I want you to look at me,” Diane said, keeping her voice calm and collected. “You need to —”
“No, look at me,” I interrupted. As soon as Robertson turned his attention to me, I shot him five times in the torso, and he fell to the floor, screaming. I’m quite familiar with human anatomy, and the shots were placed with no chance of killing him. But they were going to inflict a lot of pain.
He continued screaming as I stood over him. As he saw me, he lifted up his hand defensively, and I shot it off. He screamed even more, and that I also didn’t have time for. “Quiet!” I barked, the full intensity of my gaze cutting through even his pain so that his fear of me reduced the screaming to a whimper. “Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to try to endure more pain than you can imagine, but you’re going to eventually realize you’re doing it to help the biggest mass murderers in the galaxy and give in.”
“My ... my family ...”
I shot Robertson in the leg, causing more shrieking I had to shout over. “It’s not your turn to talk! I will give you a little window of opportunity to talk between sessions, and you better use it, because otherwise you’ll have to wait until the next one for an opportunity to end this. And don’t worry about the Fathom seeking revenge on you for helping us; they’re going to feel sorry for you when they see what’s left of you.” I stepped on the wound in his leg, increasing the volume of the screams. “Time is short, but —”
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