Maybe it was time for some new leadership. Business leadership that showed the kind of success he was used to. A kind of Council with a capital C, composed only of the most forward-thinking business leaders of the time. He was saving the world, after all; he needed a posse to do it with.
He’d ask Viktor Erkennen too, of course.
Ming set down her glass. “The sooner I get the detailed plans, the sooner I can—ah. Great minds.”
He’d pulsed her the full schematics of the nanite design, less the detail about the carbon-consuming bacteria. “I’ll have my people draw up a formal contract between our two companies,” he said.
“You’re a trusting soul, Anthony. I would’ve had you sign the contract before sharing proprietary information.” Her eyes began scanning the detailed specifications.
“I trust you, Ming.” He’d just met her. Hardly knew her. But it was true.
She refocused on Anthony. “I feel the same way. It’s like this partnership was meant to happen. For both of us.”
Anthony smiled gently. “I couldn’t agree more. Let’s have one more drink. I want to talk to you about another idea I have.”
Chapter 19
Remy Cade • Earth Orbit
Remy spent most of his time on the Observation Deck of the Temple of Cassandra space station. The term days lost meaning when circling the earth, but he found odd comfort in the repetitive nature of the station’s orbit.
While he moped, Elise was engaged and happy, obviously a devotee of the New Earth cause.
Remy, on the other hand, was a man without a job. On a space station filled with other weather cultists, there was nothing and no one to protect her from.
She worked on him every day. That’s how Remy thought of Elise’s attempts to get him to join the Neos. And yet, he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—join her.
In retrospect, a fight was inevitable.
“I got you back your WorldNet access, Remy. What more do you want?” A line of frustration furrowed the space between her dark, shaped eyebrows.
“We need to get out of here. Go home.” Weeks of imprisonment— sorry, being hosted , Brother Donald insisted on calling it—aboard the station had put him on edge.
She looked at him with an emotion somewhere between disgust and pity. “Go home? To what? With the New Earth movement, with Cassandra, I am literally saving the Earth. What could be more important than that?”
“But your father—”
“My father is a fossil who thinks in terms of quarterly profits in his little corner of the world. I am talking bigger, much bigger—the whole planet bigger. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
Remy was silent. He stared at Earth revolving below them. Saving the planet … now there was a worthy cause. Maybe he could even prevent more catastrophes like Vicksburg from happening. And they would happen. He’d seen the YourVoice story just this morning: Graves had declared Miami uninhabitable months ago, and FEMA was still relocating its population inland. Except for the part about joining a cult, Elise made a good point. Someone had to do something.
She sidled up to him, placed her head on his shoulder. Together they gazed down on Earth. “It’s okay, Remy. You can go. I’ll be fine.” She’d squeezed his hand and walked away, leaving him to his thoughts.
But he couldn’t go. He told himself he was just doing his job, protecting her from these crazy Neos. He had been contracted by her family to protect Elise, and he was not one to break a contract. They’d brainwashed her, he told himself. She needed him.
But that wasn’t it, either. He’d never seen a more orderly, respectful bunch, and they seemed to damned-near revere her. She was safe here at the Temple, of that he had no doubt.
The trouble with having too much time on his hands was thinking. Elise had been smart about restoring his WorldNet access. He’d gotten to see how her disappearance was playing out back home—and it wasn’t good.
Remy Cade, former Army grunt discharged under the black cloud of the Vicksburg massacre, had wormed his way into the Kisaans’ sphere, apparently intent on kidnapping their daughter. They blamed him!
Conspiracy theorists only fanned the flames. Investigative reporters wrote dark stories of how Remy Cade had become infatuated with Elise Kisaan. They even had vids, real footage of him and Elise together, appearing too familiar for his role as her bodyguard. Her apparent affection for Remy in the vids? Stockholm syndrome, of course. Hell, they even had him half-believing he’d kidnapped Elise.
The Kisaan family was publicly distraught and frequently in front of the cameras, blaming Remy Cade and the US government for Elise’s disappearance. They offered a reward, they hired investigators, they promised revenge. Blackfish Security, his former employer, put out a statement denouncing Remy and issuing a public apology alongside a promise to bring him to justice.
Remy absorbed it all with growing panic. In theory, he could reach out, set the record straight. Give his version of what had happened in Alaska, though there were no vids to exonerate him. The only footage the media still possessed showed dead caribou, military men shooting, and the dead reporter in the clearing. Nothing of him carrying Elise to safety, of Rico’s shooting him.
Who would believe him? The court of public opinion had already convicted him. No one was standing up and saying, “That’s not the Remy Cade I know.”
Elise was happy here, happier than he’d ever seen her. Remy was the first to admit that he didn’t understand it, but it was real.
So he moped for days in the observation lounge, staring down at the planet. In the middle of one of his darker moods, he sensed General Roman Hattan approaching. They’d conversed once or twice over chow, the older officer never once asking him about Vicksburg. That alone rocketed him up Remy’s likability scale. The man was crusty, a welcome relief from Brother Donald’s placid demeanor.
“Saddle up, kid. Need your help.” The general’s voice made it clear he was drafting Remy, not asking for a volunteer.
Remy stood, tearing his eyes from the vista below. “Where to, sir?” The sign of respect was automatic. Hattan seemed not to notice and nodded toward the window.
“We’re taking a field trip. You promise to behave?”
• • •
The eight-man corporate shuttle held only him, Hattan, and the pilot. It was corporate model, with leather trimmed seats and a bar in the back. Remy watched with interest as the shuttle undocked and they entered Earth orbit. In constant communication with someone planetside, the pilot used what sounded like commercial call signs.
Hiding in plain sight.
Remy twisted in his chair to get a look at the space station dropping away behind them. It looked like all the other large stations in orbit, just another corporate home-away-from-home in the Earth Orbital Network. But there was no company logo as far as he could see; certainly nothing identifying it as the Temple of Cassandra.
“If you pay your taxes, no one asks questions,” Hattan said. Remy wasn’t sure if the general thought that was a good thing or not.
“So Cassandra … is a corporation?”
Hattan shrugged. “In a manner of speaking. There are shell companies, lawyers, all that sort of thing. Not my area of expertise.”
“Financial camouflage,” Remy said.
Hattan regarded him with an amused expression. “You’re catching on, Cade.”
“So, what is your area of expertise, General?”
Hattan stared at the approaching Earth. “I play offense.” He turned to look out the window and said nothing more.
The shuttle entered a commercial orbital traffic pattern. They zipped by the Taulke space elevator, the station on the end of a tether looking like a weight on a string, then banked north. Remy could see the tiniest bit of polar ice, then the sweep of green and brown—Siberia?
They dropped out of orbit, leveling off in a high-altitude lane for a cooldown burn, then slowly ingressed into an airliner route over the Pacific Ocean. Remy thought he recognized Vancouver b
efore they descended into clouds. When they emerged again, he could see a steep mountain range, and the sky around them was empty of other aircraft .
The pilot peeled off his headset, then dropped to an altitude below the highest peaks. They flitted in and out of sunshine as they weaved into the mountains.
After the distant vistas of space, Remy reveled in the visual texture of the rugged mountains. It only took being away from Earth for a little while to make you appreciate its beauty close up. Brown and rocky, only the very tallest peaks were touched with white, and most of those were shrouded in clouds. Repositioning the map in his mind around Vancouver, Remy figured they were deep in the Canadian Rockies, maybe Alberta.
The pilot slowed them down, aiming the shuttle straight at a mountainside. Remy watched the sheer cliff grow large in the forward windshield. He glanced at Hattan, who appeared unconcerned. The shuttle came face to face with the rock face, then passed through sheer rock and into a huge cavern.
“Pretty realistic, huh?” Hattan grinned at him, obviously enjoying Remy’s nerves. “Holographic camouflage.”
The ship settled to the cave’s rocky floor. “It’s a larger version of holographic skinning technology,” Hattan continued. “Like what the corporate types use to decorate their offices with waterfalls and mountain views.”
Hattan unclipped his harness and swung to his feet. “Ready for the grand tour? We call this place Mount Doom, but the official name is Assault Base 7.”
“Assault base?” Remy asked.
“Like I said before, I play offense. You’ll see.” As they exited the shuttle, the general returned a salute from a young man in a generic gray-green paramilitary battle-dress uniform. The only insignia was the Cassandra logo on his right shoulder. “We’ll walk, Sergeant,” he said to the young soldier.
Remy matched the general’s brisk pace across the stone floor, their boots echoing in the open space.
“Most of this cavern was here when we found the place,” Hattan said, his arm arcing over his head. “We carved out the rest. We use this level as a launch area. The hangars are below us.” He stepped onto a vast, metal-plated, automated walkway, his footsteps ringing. As they descended to the hangar level, what Remy saw left him speechless. Dozens of troop carriers, fighters, heavy-lift airbuses, even tanks—all with the insignia of Cassandra painted on them.
He recognized the models. These were US military-grade weapons, current models. As the walkway ended, Hattan resumed his march. They passed through the hangar and into an armory. Rows and rows of assault weapons, missiles, ammunition.
“Where did all this come from?”
Hattan gave him a knowing glance. “Same place the military gets theirs. Remember those shell companies I mentioned? We have an arrangement with defense contractors.”
An arrangement. Remy’s mind reeled at the arrangement that could arm a fringe cult like the Neos. As they continued the tour, something struck him. Not all the craft were American manufactured. There were Chinese Chengdu J-42s, the latest in stealth fighter technology from the People’s Republic. Russian BTR-129 troop carriers. Israeli Watcher observation drones that could spot the heat signature of a mouse from orbit.
Remy realized he’d stopped walking. He stood gawking instead.
“How’d you get this equipment across international borders without being spotted? ”
Hattan turned around. “You recognize some of them as stealth craft, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Answers your question, doesn’t it?”
Remy reddened.
“If we couldn’t fly it in, we brought it through smaller shipping yards, the ones without advanced scanning tech,” Hattan said. “Label a container something unpleasant with a digital signature, and the human inspectors at the smaller facilities are less likely to randomly inspect it.” He paused. “It’s a lot to take in, I know, Cade. Come on, there’s more.”
Remy raced to catch up. “Where are all the personnel?” This was a whole lot of high-tech equipment for the dozen or so people he’d seen since they’d landed.
Hattan laughed. “In training, of course.”
“Training? Where? You can’t just fly a bunch of fighters around without attracting a lot of attention.”
“Oh, they’re getting the best training in the world,” Hattan said, smiling. “All over the world. Canadian military, US military, private security. Mossad, Russian spetsnaz, you name it. We have people everywhere.” Hattan’s expression became a mysterious grin. “Are you beginning to see the breadth of our movement now?”
He certainly was. This was no fringe cult with monks running around a single space station. This was a worldwide movement. A well-armed, worldwide military movement.
Remy had heard the conspiracy theories about a subculture of military men and women who’d taken a secret oath to a higher cause than their own country. He’d dismissed it as bunk, the modern equivalent of rural militias two centuries earlier. Myth fed by people’s desperation to believe some greater power would reach down and save them from global catastrophe with the help of Robin Hood and his Merry Men. But with what he saw here…
“But, who will you fight?” Remy said. “I mean who’s your enemy?”
Hattan shrugged. “To be determined. Whoever gets in our way. Look at it this way, son. The world order will not change on its own. It’ll need to be overthrown, remade. ‘People of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains.’”
“Who said that?”
“Marx. Communist Manifesto .”
Remy almost laughed out loud. “So you’re a communist?”
Hattan’s eyes narrowed to slits. “The Neos are not about politics, Remy. We’re realists. Humans have failed to take responsibility for the safekeeping of our home. I—we —are here to change that.”
Remy glanced around. Enough firepower surrounded him to start a decent-sized war.
“Seven,” Remy said. “You said this was Assault Base 7. How many bases like this are out there?”
“Twelve,” Hattan said with pride. “Spread around the globe, armed and staffed with hundreds of thousands of loyal followers of Cassandra. Waiting for the call to arms.”
The call to arms? The followers of Cassandra were disturbing enough when Remy had merely thought of them as a cult. Now…
Hattan stepped aside as an enlisted man approached. He nodded, then turned back to Remy. “Here’s the deal, Remy. I can always use a good soldier and I’ve checked you out. You’re the real deal. But I can’t afford to have any loose operators in my outfit.
“It’s time for you to make a decision. Elise thought bringing you here might help. It’s against my better judgment, but if you want out, I’m under orders to provide you with enough food and gear to make it back to civilization. You can start a new life, somewhere where people don’t ask a lot of questions, where you won’t be recognized. That’s our only requirement.”
Remy’s mind was spinning. His vision of an upstart cult had been shattered by what he’d seen in this stronghold full of the latest warfare tech. If it were up to him, Hattan’s eyes seemed to say, Remy had a choice to join up or get a bullet in the back of the head.
“What about Elise?” he asked.
Hattan cleared his throat. “Elise Kisaan has made her choice, Remy. Now, you make yours. My shuttle leaves in an hour. If you’re on board, I expect you to be a contributing member of my team.” He spun on his heel and strode away with the enlisted man in tow.
Remy watched the two men walk back through the hangar, waited until their footsteps died away. They were offering to let him go, free and clear. Every nerve in his body screamed at him to get as far away from this crazy cult as possible.
And what about Elise? Could he leave her? What happened when she woke up from this insane dream and found out he’d abandoned her? Those were his choices: stay with Elise or leave her behind .
He placed his hand on the dark skin of a Chengdu J-42 fighter, all angles and sharp edges t
o confuse radar. The shield of Cassandra loomed over him on the cavern wall.
Whatever happened, he knew one thing. Elise needed him now more than ever.
Remy squared his shoulders and traced his steps back to Hattan’s shuttle.
Chapter 20
Anthony Taulke • New York, New York
Another sip of coffee, another grimace. Anthony set the cup aside. How was it possible to have a suite in one of the most exclusive hotels in New York and get served coffee this bad? Feeling stir crazy, he paced to the window.
H, sprawled on the couch with one foot on the coffee table, watched him. “Nervous much?” Her green eyes looked black through the glare of her data glasses.
“Are you sure he read my notes for the speech?” Anthony asked. The sun was shining down into the canyons formed by the arching architecture lining New York’s city streets. The pedestrians below seemed to radiate life in the reflected light. It looked like a pleasant summer day from up here.
“He read your notes. Just relax. These are politicians, not scientists. The goal of today is to dazzle, get the public behind us so we can move to the next phase.” She sounded bored with it all.
“I’m going for a walk. ”
“No, you’re not.”
His anger flared. “You can’t tell me—”
H shifted her data screen to the wall of the suite. It showed President Teller mounting the steps to the speaker podium in front of the UN Security Council. He was ready for high-def. His dark skin glowed, and his hair was dusted with the perfect touch of distinguished gray at the temples. The heavy shoulder pads on his dark suit gave his upper body more heft and framed the red power tie. Teller acknowledged the applause with a stern nod of determination.
The first part of the speech was standard stuff: thank you’s and general ass-kissing of the electorate, which in this case included the entire world community. Anthony realized he was tapping his foot and stilled his nervous action with a self-conscious glance at H. She couldn’t suppress a mocking grin.
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