Fire With Fire-eARC

by Charles E Gannon

  Which put those hypotheses in Caine’s one-hundred-hour dead zone, along with the other lost memories of his time on the Moon. But a vague recollection—perhaps a wild guess from his prelunar investigations—teased a conjecture into existence. Antimatter: gram for gram the most potent energy source known. Not good for weapons, since its containment requirements make it much harder to work with than radioactives. So why would anyone need all that antimatter in one place, at one time—?

  Caine blurted it out before he confirmed his thinking. “Interstellar travel: you were creating the power supply for a starship.”

  Downing nodded. “The antimatter plant was merely the handmaiden to Project Prometheus: the first attempt to achieve supraluminal travel.”

  “But—unless physics have changed in the last thirteen years—it’s not possible to exceed the speed of light.”

  Downing wagged a finger. “I didn’t say supraluminal velocity; I said supraluminal travel.”

  Caine understood. “Quantum entanglement, wormholes, electron tunneling: you needed the energy to generate a field effect that could get around the relativistic limits.”

  Downing smiled. “Yes.”

  “And did it work?”

  Downing leaned back, considered the windowless walls. “Rather. We are currently in the Junction system. Technically, it’s still listed as Lacaille 8760. But only astrographers use that label, now.”

  Caine had to focus—hard—in order to stay on track: “Okay: so on whose authority did you coldcell me?”

  Downing seemed to retract into himself for a moment: whatever was about to come out was apparently kept deep within. “I am—call it the executive officer—for the Institute of Reconnaissance, Intelligence, and Security. IRIS, for short. Officially, it is a civilian think tank housed at the Naval War College.”

  “And unofficially?”

  Downing resisted the same retractile reflex he’d combated a moment earlier. “The Institute coordinates the actions of, and analyzes data gathered by, the world’s various intelligence services.”

  Caine stared, then shook his head. “No, I don’t buy that: intelligence organizations would never cooperate that closely.”

  “Not knowingly. Which is why IRIS exists: to provide an invisible intelligence locus that is aware of, and able to coordinate responses to, our new global crisis.”

  “How can something be a ‘global’ crisis if only your handful of analysts are even aware of it?”

  “If something endangers the whole world, then it’s a global crisis—regardless of whether one or one million persons are aware of the danger.”

  “Okay, so what the hell can cause a secret global crisis?”

  “When we realized that Project Prometheus was going to succeed, we started considering the possibility that, if there was another intelligent species, they might have an FTL drive, too. At first it was just a worrisome hypothesis. But now—”

  “Now you’ve found something. Out here.”

  “Yes—on Delta Pavonis Three. But we can’t investigate it with any of our contacts in the military or intelligence services, not without drawing attention to both the site and the Institute. So we need you to go there—on your own—and report back on what you find.”

  Caine considered this rather surreal scheme and quickly arrived at three possible alternatives. Firstly, he might be hallucinating—in which case he had nothing to lose if he agreed to go looking for exosapients.

  If, on the other hand, he was not hallucinating, Downing could be either lying or telling the truth—but whichever it was, he and whoever he worked for were serious enough to abduct and coldcell Caine for a very long time. Which meant if Downing and Company were lying, and Caine refused to cooperate, then their newly defrosted American was of no further use and had to be disposed of. So Caine had to appear to cooperate, if only to buy enough time to escape.

  Or, lastly, it was possible that Downing was telling the truth—in which case there was so much at stake that Caine could not, in good conscience, refuse. So all logical roads seemed to lead to cooperation, albeit by very different paths.

  But damn it, Caine didn’t like being impressed labor, and he didn’t have to make Downing’s job easy. So his answer took the form of a grudging mutter: “I’ll think about it.”

  However, that attempt at gruff defiance came out pathetically slurred: “Althinka bowt.”

  Caine started, stared at Downing—and discovered the tall Englishman was becoming a dark gray silhouette, shrinking against the burgeoning, burning lights. “Whu—wuzhapn me?” Caine mumbled.

  And then the world contracted, sank, and he plummeted down into the black hole that it became.

  MENTOR

  Downing checked the monitors attached to Caine’s chair as two orderlies eased the tall, unconscious American into a gurney.

  “How is he?” asked Nolan’s voice from speakers hidden behind baffles in the debriefing chamber’s matte black walls.

  Downing nodded toward the concealed observation booth. “Passed out. Again. But he’s doing better than yesterday. Pupil dilation and contraction rates are back to normal. So are his EEG and the levels of his acetylcholine, serotonin, potassium, and endorphins. I daresay he’ll remember most of today’s conversation.”

  “Did he recall any of yesterday’s session?”

  “No, nor of the two days before that. Riordan’s brain chemistries were too imbalanced to form true memories. Until now, that is. Huzzah and hooray.”

  “All good news, so why the bitter tone, Richard?”

  Downing dismissed the orderlies with a wave. “I’m bitter because he’s here, Nolan. What happened to him on Luna was a mistake.” Downing checked his dataslate. “This is the third time our conversation got as far as his intentions when he came to Perry City. Three times we’ve monitored his vitals, and watched his behavior, as he talks about it. Not once has there been the faintest hint of duplicity.”

  Downing tapped the slate: it added the day’s results to the cumulative data. “And he bloody well didn’t hatch a scheme to steal plans from us on the spot: he’s too clever for that kind of amateurish idiocy. But most importantly, it is utterly out of character for him: he had access to some very sensitive materials, over time. He never once spilled those beans—not even when he stood to make quite a tidy profit.” Downing stalked back into the spartan observation room as he finished. “Whatever Riordan was doing outside your suite thirteen years ago, Nolan, it wasn’t to break in and steal secrets.”

  “No,” Nolan said quietly, “probably not.”

  “Very well. Now let’s leave aside the trifling moral quandary of sending a perfectly innocent man on a covert mission to the far reaches of interstellar space. Let’s stay on practical considerations.” Downing sat and crossed his arms. “Riordan’s not suited for covert operations. And I do not mean his skills: I mean his character.”

  Corcoran, avoiding Downing’s eyes, scanned the day’s bio data. “What’s wrong with Caine’s character?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with it—and that’s the problem. He made a career out of speaking truth to power—and getting fired for doing so. In short, he’s too straight an arrow for this line of work. He’s a bloody Boy Scout, not a covert operative. And we can’t change that.” And damn it, we shouldn’t even try. It’s bad enough that we have to lie for a living; we’ve no right to corrupt Riordan, too.

  But Nolan was shaking his head. “You’re wrong, Rich; he’ll get the job done.”

  “Nolan, getting the job done means putting the mission first—even if bystanders and innocents have to die. I don’t believe Riordan can do that.”

  “He can, if he must. Caine sees the big picture. He’ll remember what’s at stake and do the right thing.”

  Downing shook his head. “It has to be a reflex, which can’t be trained overnight. And I don’t have enough time with him.”

  Corcoran faced Downing squarely. “Hell, Rich; you’ve got two shifts left: a little over two mont
hs. That is plenty of training time.”

  “With all due respect, Admiral, that is hogwash. That might be a lot of training time for an operative who already has the right background: military, counterintelligence, even police work. But an author and analyst?”

  Nolan nodded. “Yes, he’s an author—and a big part of his success was that when he analyzed military or space policy, he got his hands dirty. He went and learned the ropes himself. He’s gone through Basic and part of ROTC, and was on site in some pretty dangerous situations, like the Pretoria Quarantine. And as for dealing with shady characters—well, he’s had an arm’s-length relationship with the press for ten years, so we know he can think on his feet and smell hidden agendas a mile off.” Nolan glanced out the observation panel at the limp body lying on the gurney; Riordan’s auburn hair was lank with sweat, his half-lidded green eyes as inert as those of a corpse. “Caine will do just fine.”

  Downing grunted, picked up his dataslate from the booth’s control panel. “Nolan, there’s one last thing you might want to consider: a straight arrow like Riordan usually has a strong conscience. So he might veer from his initial trajectory if he begins to doubt the integrity of the bowmen who launched him.”

  “Then we’ll just have to make sure that he never doubts our integrity, won’t we—Richard?”

  Downing, hearing his full name used, didn’t need to hear the emphasis as well: Nolan had indicated that it was “Richard’s job” to ensure Caine’s continued faith in his handlers and mission. Brilliant, just brilliant. “I’ll be heading off to dinner, then. Coming, Nolan?”

  The retired admiral did not look away from Riordan when he replied. “Thanks, Rich. I’m not hungry yet. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Downing nodded. “Bright and early.” He entered the security code for the debriefing chamber’s exit. It hissed open.

  But as Downing stepped into the corridor beyond, he heard a faint sound behind him: Corcoran had left the observer’s booth, was already next to Riordan’s gurney. And, just as the security door closed, Downing noticed that Nolan had abandoned his customary military bearing. He looked more like a troubled father standing beside the bed of a desperately ill child.

  Chapter Two

  ODYSSEUS

  Caine frayed another wire end, cursed, and glanced up at the training area’s control booth. “Do you have to keep distracting me while I try to memorize this circuitry?”

  Downing nodded down at him. “It’s part of the training. If you ever need to jury-rig a command override, or cut a control circuit, you will probably be in a loud, chaotic, and very dangerous environment.”

  Caine looked around as buzzers shrieked and lights flashed erratically. “At least you left out the dangerous parts.”

  “In this scenario, the hatch just to your left—the one you’re trying to bypass now—opens directly to space. And you are not wearing a spacesuit.”

  “Well, that’s not a big deal, since the vacuum is just make-believe.”

  “That’s a dangerous assumption, Caine.”

  “But this is just training. You wouldn’t—”

  “I suggest you work while we talk. A tight schedule such as ours means we have to train you using the fastest form of operant conditioning: negative reinforcement. So failures will result in unpleasant consequences.”

  Caine found that the hatchway seemed slightly ominous, now. He started stripping the next wire more vigorously. “Yeah, but this is a training exercise—”

  “And, as I said, part of it is to train you to perform tasks while being distracted. So, as you work, I will continue answering the questions you asked about IRIS. To continue, the Institute’s primary mandate is to reduce our home system’s vulnerability to hypothetically hostile exosapients.”

  Caine twisted the exposed wires. “If the exosapients have a technological edge, you’d be winning a victory just to get them to land on Earth itself.”

  Downing paused. “And how would that be a victory?”

  “Hell, it’s better than having them exterminate us from orbit.” Caine looked for the green lead, found it snugged behind the red one: good thing I’m not color blind. “Look: if alien invaders beat us in space, they could stay in Earth orbit and play ‘drop the rock’ until they’ve battered us back into the Stone Age. Of course, if they’re genocidal, they’ll do that anyway—and none of this matters.”

  “Wouldn’t mass landings be as bad as bombardment?”

  “You won’t be facing mass landings unless their technology is way, way beyond ours.” Caine fumbled the multitool: it grazed across two leads, imparted a mild shock. “From what you told me earlier, the projected development of FTL craft predicts that they’ll remain big, expensive, and therefore, rare. That means our adversary can only bring limited forces. Unless they’re godlike.”

  “Very well—but I still don’t see how having them establish a beachhead is a victory for us.”

  Caine looked up at the control booth. “Are you familiar with the Vietnam War?”

  Downing stared down: there was a split second of uncertainty in his responding nod.

  Caine shrugged. “The Vietnamese were utter underdogs: inferior tech, lack of air supremacy, unable to strike at their opponent’s homeland. But they won the war, despite losing every major battle.” Caine twisted two wires together, realized he had only half the job done but had used almost three-quarters of his available time. “They understood that when your enemy is large and technologically superior, you want him in your territory, because—if you are still the true master of your own countryside—his invasion force will become your hostage.”

  “Perhaps—but in our scenario, an invader’s orbital fire could reduce our cities to rubble first.”

  Caine shook his head. “Not if they intend to rule us rather than exterminate us. So, if they want to avoid a ‘final solution,’ you dangle the prospect of capitulation—or even collaboration—under their noses while preparing to strike at them.”

  “And with their superior technology, how do you propose to get close enough to strike at them?”

  Caine glanced up. “By getting—or prepositioning—forces inside their beachhead. And don’t give me that doubting-Thomas look: there are always methods of infiltrating forces through ‘secure perimeters’ or ‘impassable’ borders.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, if we don’t take the story too literally, the tactic of the Trojan Horse still has merit.” Caine quickly stripped the insulation off the last two wires. “Look: if people—exosapients or otherwise—want something from you, sooner or later, they’re going to want to meet with you—on what they believe to be their turf.”

  Downing nodded. “And that’s how you get inside, get close enough to deliver the first, crippling blow.”

  Caine nodded back. “That’s the way you get inside. Hey, I’m almost done here.”

  “Yes. But unfortunately, you have just run out of time.”

  Red lights flashed and spun; a klaxon howled next to Caine’s ear. The hatchway beside him wrenched open with a high-speed hiss. But instead of finding himself sucked out into space, Caine was slammed backwards by a lateral geyser of water.

  And, as the roaring flume bounced him off the mock-up bulkheads—which Caine discovered were just as hard as real ones—he thought: Well, shit.

  MENTOR

  Nolan edged into the control room as the orderlies were helping a bruised and waterlogged Caine limp out of the test chamber. “How’d it go?”

  Downing snatched up his dataslate. “A brilliant success and a dismal failure. Riordan effortlessly spewed out a number of completely novel—and potentially game-changing—strategic insights, but botched the main task: a simple circuitry bypass job that many of our average trainees learn in half the time.” Downing shook his head. “I’m afraid Caine’s genius must be of a very narrow sort.”

  “Oh, Riordan isn’t a genius. I mean, he is, but that’s not what makes him useful to us. And that’s not why he excelled at
one task while botching another.”

  Downing looked up. “Then what was the cause?”

  “Interest versus boredom.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Caine was interested in your strategic brainstorming but bored by the circuitry test.”

  Downing reared back in his seat. “Well, isn’t that simply awful for him. I will try to create an amusing vignette involving the circuitry next time.”

  Nolan smiled. “It can be challenging working with a true polymath. We don’t see many in our line of work, mostly because they lack either the depth of interest to become world-class experts at any one thing, or the ability to maintain a brutally narrow field of focus. Or both.”

  “Hmm. That doesn’t sound like a polymath; that sounds like a dilettante. Or a spoiled brat.”

  Nolan shrugged. “In some cases, they are both. But for most polymaths, that’s just how they’re wired. The intensive detail work that intrigues most field-specific geniuses is usually suffocating for them.”

  “So that’s why Riordan can’t memorize the circuitry?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe he’s just bad at it. Or maybe he’s subconsciously responding to the inconsistency between what we’ve been telling him about the mission versus what we’ve been training him for. We assure him that he’s being sent to Delta Pavonis Three just to look around, ask some questions, gather some evidence: nothing dangerous at all. But then we spend most of our time teaching him how to hotwire bulkheads, crack security codes, recognize counterintelligence agents, and a dozen other field craft skills that you only need when the work gets risky.”

  Downing folded his arms. “Well, he should understand that even though we believe the job will be easy, we are preparing him to survive and succeed in the event the job becomes hard.”

  “Look, Rich, you don’t have to convince me. And I suspect that after today, it won’t be so difficult to convince Caine, either. But if you don’t engage his interest, or his self-preservation instincts, you’d better prepare for more frustration: polymaths do not tend to be good rote learners.

  “So why in bloody hell is a polymath any good for us?”