by Terry Mixon
She looked around the dark room. They’d brought in portable lights that could tap into the same 10-centimeter blue cube that powered the gate, but the gate room still seemed abandoned and forlorn. Until and unless they got some of the large power cubes to bring the base’s power generation systems back online, this facility wasn’t going to ever be functional. Maybe not even then.
“So, what’s the plan?” he asked. “I understand that Secretary of State Queen intends to use Commander Krueger as his point man. Is he here?”
“He’s in the camp where we were during the search for your father. My condolences on your loss.”
Harry wanted to tell her that it was fine, that he really hadn’t cared for the man anyway, but politeness didn’t allow for that. He wasn’t even sure it was true. His emotions had been conflicted since his father had sacrificed himself to take down Harry’s murderous mother and brother.
“Thank you,” he finally said, settling for a polite, noncommittal response.
“I’m going to want to talk with the heavy-worlder leader,” Jess said. “He and I have to try and work out a way we can walk back from this conflict. If I had to guess, Kathleen Bennett manipulated him, but making him see that might not be so easy.”
Molly nodded. “I’ll drop you off on the way up. Sorry, but I have instructions not to leave anyone unescorted inside the base. That means you too, Kevin. Grab your bag and come along.”
Harry smiled a little. “If you’re worried that we’ll take something interesting, you needn’t worry. We have more equipment to go over than I could possibly manage in a few decades.”
“I suspect that you’ll need to work that out during the negotiations,” she said with a nod. “Isaiah Vaughn, the assistant to our prime minister, is waiting up there as well. He’s acting for the alliance and was involved in the treaty your father worked out, so it’ll just be the two of you to settle accounts.”
“Then I supposed I’d best be about it,” he said with a sigh. “This was one thing I was more than happy to leave to my father.”
Molly escorted them up the stairs, dropping Jess and Sandra off with the guards at the level holding the heavy-worlders.
He was pleased to see that they’d cleared the remains of the dead from the top-level corridors. They’d been nothing but bones and armor, but the dead should still be treated with greater respect than time had shown them.
As for the entrance, the New Zealanders had opened it up and smoothed the rockfall into a ramp. He approved of the braces they’d added for stability. Those would go a long way to making sure there wasn’t another cave-in.
The bright light of the early morning sun made him use his hand to shield his eyes as they stepped out. The surface of the mesa was as undeveloped as it had been before. That made sense. No need to advertise what was going on to anyone with a satellite.
It would still be better to get some power on in the base and find the hidden door that led out to the slab of rock that had once served as the base’s landing pad. Then no one in the sky would see what was going on if they were careful in how they put a tent up there to block the view.
“What is the excuse for you still being out here?” he asked Molly. “The search is over. Aren’t people going to wonder what you’re doing with so many people coming and going?”
“We’re building a rescue station out here, with the permission of the owner of the property, of course,” she said as she let the way to the narrow path through the rocks that led up to the mesa from below.
His father had effectively blocked it with a large rock rolled from the top, but they’d cleared things out nicely. Getting up and down still required a rope and some climbing skill, but he was pleased to see that Molly was much more confident in putting on a rope harness and clipping a ring to the dedicated line. Someone had given her some training, and she’d gotten some practice.
He followed suit and preceded Kevin down. Once on the ground, it was a relatively simple process to get to the camp that was set up on the massive stone slab. There were easily a dozen people moving around the camp, but Harry spotted the people he was looking for in chairs near the campfire that was burning cheerily inside a circle of stones.
“Thanks for the escort, Molly,” he said. “I’ve got it from here. I’m sure you and Kevin have more important things to do besides minding me.”
She shook her head. “With this joker? Boring.”
The computer specialist scowled at her. “I’m not boring.”
“No, but what you do is,” she countered as they turned to make their way back up the rock face. “All I do is stand around while you plug your slate into things and chatter on about this or that incomprehensible thing.”
“I can prove that’s just work,” he said. “Have dinner with me and I’ll show you how charming I really am.”
They were too far away for Harry to hear her answer, but he was rooting for the other man.
Karl Krueger rose to his feet at Harry’s approach and extended his hand. “Good to see you again, Harry. How was your father’s funeral?”
“More trying than I expected,” he admitted. “Still, not as difficult as dealing with all the chaos he left in his wake.”
“I only knew him a short while, but I could tell he was a complicated man who was playing his own game,” the Navy officer said with a smile. “What he did was nothing short of the bravest thing I’ve ever seen. He stayed behind so we could live, knowing that I left the nuke on a short timer. Even though none of us will ever know, I hope he had a pithy one-liner saved up for the very end.”
The idea of his stodgy father tossing off a line like in some action movie made Harry chuckle. “I’m sure he got in the last word. He always did.”
Harry turned his focus to the other man, who had also risen from his seat. Isaiah Vaughn was a politician and wore a suit, even out here in the howling wilderness.
To his credit, the man held a battered metal mug filled with coffee, which he moved to his off hand as he extended his primary toward Harry. “I knew even less of your father than that. Accept my condolences as well, and my understanding. I never saw eye to eye with my own father and imagine I know something of what you had to deal with. Join us in some of this amazing coffee.”
Once he was seated in the third chair, Harry picked the metal percolator off the grate and filled a battered blue tin cup with steaming black liquid. A sip confirmed it was excellent.
“This is good,” he conceded. “Someone has good taste.”
“Your father had it in his belongings,” Krueger said quietly, bringing a momentary pause to the conversation.
“In any case,” Harry finally said, “I’m told that you are empowered to speak on behalf of the United States, Karl. Brenda Cabot said that Queen was willing to bury the hatchet so that we can all focus on the important things. Why don’t you lay it out for us?”
“I’m no diplomat,” the special operations officer said. “Just keep that in mind. All I’m doing is passing along what he told me to say and operating within the bounds he’s allowing me. Don’t take this personally.
“He gave me a lot of wordy crap to say up front, but why don’t I save us all a lot of time and indigestion? Queen has the Chinese as his most immediate problem, but the secret society of heavy-worlders he thinks is pulling their strings is his real worry.”
“Mine too,” Harry admitted. “I’m pretty sure that’s what’s on the way to Mars right now in the Chinese ship and they’re probably armed to the teeth with Asharim weapons. I have to count on them having antiship weapons, too.”
“And let’s not forget the heavy-worlders that attacked your other base,” Vaughn said. “The survivors of which we have here. Or the aliens on the world your father was trapped on.”
Harry made a dismissive gesture. “The Volunteer world is a lot less worrying to me. They’re using small forces and not even that much high tech. Those Asharim have devolved. That doesn’t mean I won’t have to deal with them so that we
can visit the other human colonies that Susanna Adorno told us about.”
“And I’m sure that you remember your father promised to get them back there in days not months,” Krueger said.
Harry nodded. “I’m far more concerned with the problems we’re facing here on Earth, some of which you don’t yet know about. Not a threat, but more of a mystery.”
He was referencing the frozen version of Earth that Jess had found way out beyond the orbit of Pluto. The one that had either come from the future or an alternate universe, he had no idea which. Neither, he suspected, had the Asharim who’d been studying it before their war had brought them low.
Krueger nodded, but Vaughn held up a hand. “We need to know what that means. Not right this very second, but soon. We can’t help with problems we know nothing about, and we’re partners in this thing.”
“Agreed,” Harry said. “I’ll get a briefing put together and present it personally. I don’t want to let records of it out yet, so we’ll do it on Freedom Express.”
“That’s the asteroid ship? I’m fine with that.”
“Back to Queen and his offer,” Krueger said. “He wants into this partnership you’ve formed with the nations around here. That’s not negotiable.”
“You’ll forgive me if I’m not that trusting of him or his motives,” Vaughn said coolly. “He sent you and that jackass from the CIA to kidnap someone from this very spot. Neither my government or any of the others in this arrangement have any desire to see more of that high-handedness.”
Krueger nodded. “I can’t blame you. Still, Queen insists we’ll be providing the majority of the armed forces, and we did already commit a nuke to the deal.”
“Not willingly,” Harry said. “And the US has a much bigger military threat to deal with, so we’re not talking large numbers of troops. There’s no way the US is more than a junior partner. One that has to follow the decisions of the other nations involved, but one that still gets to share in the technology we’re finding.”
“Only once we agree that it should be shared,” Vaughn added. “The alliance has five senior members. Three of them have to agree to share technologies, both those with military applications and those without.”
The alliance consisted of New Zealand, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and the island nation of Nauru that Harry’s father had bought outright. Jacob Thomas, formerly the vice president of island operations on Nauru, was now acting as the actual vice president, and Harry held the ridiculous title of president.
“Consider my position fought for tooth and nail,” Krueger said. “And I had to reluctantly settle for that. Man, this diplomacy stuff is easier than I thought.”
Harry laughed. “You say that now. Just don’t let Queen know you gave in so easily, or he’ll assign you to Antarctica. What do we get in exchange for allowing the US to play ball?”
“The military assistance I mentioned, as well as letting your inheritances stand, with one exception. We want the Yucatán spaceport in exchange for Liberty Station.”
“Done,” Harry instantly said.
“We also want some of the smaller ships you found,” Krueger added. “We want a way into space.”
“Frankly, I think that’s a mistake,” Vaughn said. “The US government has not shown that they can be trusted, and the very last thing we want is a space race where the US is trying to find ways around the technology restrictions you just negotiated.
“We have to have a clearinghouse for the information. If we start fighting among ourselves, we’re doomed. It is the view of the alliance that Humanity Unlimited is that entity.”
“How about military tech that doesn’t give us a boost out of the atmosphere?” Krueger asked. “Guns, armor, other battlefield tech that might help us make up the ground against the Chinese.”
Harry considered that and then shrugged. “I can agree to that. If the US wanted to use conventional forces against anyone in the alliance, they already have more than we could counter. The people under threat are the Chinese, and it seems like they deserve the attention. I’m in.”
Vaughn nodded. “We can live with that.”
“There are a lot of little things the secretary wanted to talk about, but that’s the big stuff,” Krueger said. “Let’s finish our coffee, and then we can hash them out. As far as I’m concerned, the hard part of these negotiations is over.”
Harry wasn’t sure the man’s boss would agree, but that was hardly his problem. As far as his issues went, Jess’s talk with the heavy-worlder leader was the big issue for today. He couldn’t care less about his inheritance.
He’d have to make a call while he was here to the attorney in Australia and see what the salvage case looked like, but he was fairly sure the alliance could smooth those waters. Then he could take Krueger and Vaughn back to Freedom Express and show them the wonders of the universe while Jess tried to make peace with the real killers in the fight.
7
Jess spent a few minutes getting her head into the game before she had the guards lead her and Sandra to a room that could be used to talk with the heavy-worlder leader. Like the rest of the base, it had been abandoned a thousand years ago and smelled sour, though someone had done their best to clean it up.
They’d also managed to scavenge a table and a pair of battered chairs more suitable for camping than an office. The table wasn’t in much better shape than the chairs, frankly. Still, it would have to do. Sandra lounged against the nearest wall, her hand close to what was probably a weapon.
Jess wasn’t sure how she would bridge the language gap, but Kathleen Bennett had done so. She considered the possibility that the heavy-worlder leader could speak English but rejected it as being a low-order possibility. Maybe they’d communicated by writing in the Asharim tongue.
While she was still trying to imagine how this was going to play out, the door opened again, and a massive man stepped through with four guards behind him. They’d found manacles that fit around his wrists, but Jess didn’t have a whole lot of confidence in how well they’d hold up, considering how strong she knew people like this man were.
The man wasn’t much taller than Harry but was significantly broader and more muscular. She’d met Victor Holyfield, and Brenda Cabot’s associate was notably smaller. This man would have significant difficulty passing unnoted on a public street, where Victor could blend in.
She gestured toward the other chair but suddenly realized that he was probably far too heavy to sit without breaking it. Obviously realizing that already, the man smirked and stood unmoving. One of the guards shoved him, and the man barely rocked and didn’t move his feet at all.
“That’s okay,” she told the guard. “Just let him stand there.”
“It’s not safe, Miss,” one of the men said with a distinct New Zealander accent. “If he makes a move from a standing position, he could get to you before we shoot him. He has to at least go over to the wall.
“You can sit by the door and we’ll cover your retreat if we have to. Trust me, you don’t want to have to fight one of these buggers.”
The guard must’ve been in the fight at the French base. The one where she’d fought the heavy-worlders, killed some, and almost died of her wounds.
Wordlessly, she allowed the guards to make their will known to the prisoner, and he eventually moved to the indicated spot, only when it was clear that he was doing so because he was ready to.
Jess moved her seat so that she was sitting next to the exit with a clear path to bolt if the man attacked. Sandra stood beside her, and the guards arrayed themselves to either side. They kept their weapons ready to fire, but she hoped it never came to that.
There had been far too much blood and death already. Kathleen Bennett and her son Nathan were dead. Let this conflict die with them.
She also had the flechette pistol that she’d proven to be so unexpectedly adept with. They hadn’t had much time to see what else she could do because of this trip, but perhaps that would be enough.
&n
bsp; “Could one of you get me a notepad and a pen?” she asked.
They gave her an odd look but did as she asked, one of the men returning with the requested materials.
Using them would be a challenge if she was going to stay away from the prisoner, but she could at least test the theory. Jess had no idea how the sarcophagus had implanted the knowledge of how to read and write Asharim into her head, but it was just as straightforward as using English.
That didn’t mean it didn’t have its own pitfalls. The concepts didn’t always match up well with things in English, and finding a suitable word for something on Earth could prove unexpectedly complicated.
This should prove simple enough to use for a test. She wrote out a single sentence in Asharim that asked if he could read what she’d written. She then had one of the guards put it on the table.
The heavy-worlder glanced at it and then his eyes shot back toward it, widening in a classic double take. He picked up the notebook, seemingly read it again slowly, and then stared at her intently.
“You write the language of the Masters,” he said, his voice a deep rumble. “Can you speak the language of the People as well?”
That hadn’t been English.
“Did you guys understand that?” she asked the guards, already knowing the answer. She was unsurprised when they shook their heads.
“Sounds like how they talk among themselves,” the guard that had been doing the talking said.
Jess nodded and focused her attention back on the intent heavy-worlder, not exactly sure how she could try to speak the language rather than English. It didn’t prove that difficult in the end. She simply said what she wanted with the intent that it be in his language.
“Is this the language of the Asharim?” she asked, marveling at how the words felt so natural. She saw the guards tense as she spoke.
“No,” he said. “It is the tongue of the People. Who are you, and how have you come to speak our language? Are you an ally of Kathleen Bennett?”
Jess felt her expression harden. “No. Until her death, she was my deadliest enemy. She and her son Nathan. She brought you here to Earth, didn’t she?”