The Reticuli Deception (Adventures of Hannibal Carson Book 2)

by Alastair Mayer

  Carson grinned at her. “That was the title of my Master’s thesis,” he said. “If it’s not in the database I’ll send you a copy.” With that he winked and turned to leave.

  Roberts realized that her jaw was hanging open and closed it. She looked at Marten. “That was a joke, right?”

  “Sort of.” Marten rubbed his nose, trying to remember. “Yes. I think the actual title was Decomposition of High-Energy Nitrates: Implications for Hazardous Artifact Location and Dating.”

  “Say again?”

  “Oh, it was really about detecting old land mines and unexploded bombs using archaeological soil microchemistry techniques, not blowing things up. But he does like to do that too.”

  17: The Plan

  Velkaryan HQ, Earth

  Hubble looked up as Reid entered his office.

  “I’ve heard from our Mr. Lee again,” Reid said. “He has an interesting plan.”

  “Oh?”

  “He thinks he can get the Blue Book archives retrieved from storage and delivered to the National Archive facility in Denver.”

  “How is he going to manage that?”

  “He was a bit cagey about the details.” Reid paused to consider what Lee had told him.

  “If he had someone on the inside I don’t think he’d need us. He may have some way to forge a retrieval note. Either way the records would be going back where they came from, so Steel Mesa won’t be too concerned. They just need the authorization. If it is forged, then if and when the records showed up in Denver there would be a lot of confusion and then they’d get sent back.”

  “If they show up?” Hubble said. “So I take it the plan is for us to hijack the shipment?” That was certainly within their capabilities.

  “Exactly. It’s just old papers, they shouldn’t be under particularly heavy guard, if any at all. If we take the whole truck they may not even realize what we were after.”

  “And Lee expects us to turn them over to him when they’re retrieved?” Hubble sat back and grinned. “More fool he. Is this something we could have done on our own?”

  “I don’t see how, without the right people in place to at least convincingly fake a retrieval order. We'll have more government insiders one day, but we don’t yet.”

  “All right. I want you to haggle with Lee over the arrangements a little so that it doesn’t seem too easy, but let’s do it.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Denver

  “Could you arrange to have some files stored in a particular area?” Rico asked. He and Brown had been going through the documents on Steel Mesa procedures—most of them internal use only. The Velkaryans had provided them without giving much detail on how they’d been acquired. Apparently some things were easier to get out of Steel Mesa than others.

  “The request would have to come from a customer whose files are already stored in that area, from what I can tell. You can’t specify the location—you shouldn’t even know which locations are which—but Steel Mesa’s internal directories would route it appropriately.”

  Rico pondered briefly what kind of merry hell it would raise if those directories got corrupted, but put the thought aside. That wasn’t what he was here for, and it he couldn’t think of any way it would help. It might help cover his tracks, but he’d leave even more tracks hacking their directory systems. No, it wasn’t worth it.

  “Here,” he said, passing a file to Brown’s computer. “Take a look at this list. Do you have contacts or some other way of getting an archival box or two sent to storage?”

  Brown examined the list, mumbling occasionally as he did so. “That’s a diverse collection of government departments. Interesting. Let’s see. Office of ... no, that won’t work. Hmm, perhaps this division of . . .” His voice trailed off, then he looked up at Rico. “Let me make some calls. And tell me exactly what you need. I think we can do this.”

  Rico smiled. This should be fun.

  18: Cutting Daisies

  Verdigris City, Verdigris

  Nobody had anything suitable, or at least not available for Carson’s use. He would have to improvise. Fortunately the local biopharm plant had just the thing.

  “So is this what I think it is?” asked Carson, picking a handful of fine brown powder out of a plastic drum.

  “Dried aerophytoplankton,” the tech told him. He made a waving gesture toward the green sky. “We flash dry it, then use it as a feedstock in some of our processes.”

  Carson examined it closely. Some of the grains had what looked like little bubbles attached, though many of the dried bubbles were broken. “Bubbles? Were these the flotation cells?”

  “That’s right; they help keep the algae afloat. They contain a mix of hydrogen and methane. Much of it leaks out or the bubbles break when they’re dried. Even then, this dry stuff is flammable enough; we have to watch for dust explosions and static buildup.”

  “That can happen even in the wild, right?” he said, remembering the flare they’d flown through.

  “Usually not, because of the water content of the cells when they’re green. It’d be like trying to burn green leaves. Sometimes it’ll flare up, though, if conditions are right.”

  “Makes sense.” Carson tossed the handful of brown dust back in the canister, some of it wisping up in a small cloud. He grinned, this would be perfect. “This is just what I need, I’ll take it.”

  “Okay, anything else?”

  “I need some way to disperse it.” Carson quickly outlined his plan. “Any suggestions?”

  The man paused for a moment, rubbing his chin, frowning. “You are going to keep this away from inhabited areas, right?”

  Carson nodded. “Of course.”

  The man gave Carson an appraising look, decided in his favor, and said: “I’ve got just the thing.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  “Okay, before I let that thing anywhere near my ship, I want to know how it works,” said Roberts.

  “It’s perfectly safe.”

  She looked at Carson’s expression of wide-eyed innocence, and didn’t believe it for a moment. “Of course it is. Now tell me how it works.”

  “All right,” Carson said. “Propellant is here.” He pointed to the ring of plastic around the valve of the compressed air cylinder. “That’s just standard composition from handgun ammo.”

  “Oh?”

  “I spent a half-hour carefully boiling a dozen pistol rounds in a pot of water and solvent to soften the propellant, then I molded it around the valve and burst disk. I don’t know if it’s enough to actually take the valve off, but if the burst disk goes, that will be enough.”

  “I’ll take your word for it. What else?”

  “Igniters are here, wired to this switch. This is the safety pin here” he pointed to a short plastic rod, to which a length of thin yellow cord was attached. “No power gets to the igniter until this pin is pulled, and” he pointed to two more electrical switches, “these switches both have to be armed and the battery installed. I’ve thought this through. I don’t want it to accidentally detonate any more than you do.”

  Roberts hoped that was true. “Okay, and you install the battery and arm the switches just before the drop?”

  “That’s correct. I’ve got a thousand meters of cord attached to the pin, it will fall that far before the pin comes out.”

  “If the spool doesn’t hang up.” She had a horrible vision of the cord unreeling ten meters and jamming, and the pin pulling out just beneath her ship.

  “Uh, right.”

  Roberts inspected the cord spool, spun it a few times, and tugged on the cord. “Kevlar?”

  Carson nodded.

  “Okay, fair enough.” She pulled an arm’s length of cord from the spool and looped it around Carson’s hand. “Here, hold this.”

  “What?” But he held on to the cord.

  Roberts still had the spool in her hand and she promptly took off at a run, letting the cord play out as she did. The spool spun freely; she could feel little, if any, resistan
ce to it. She slowed to a stop about fifty meters from Carson.

  “All right, this will work,” she called to him. She walked back, carefully rewinding the cord on the spool.

  “What happens after the tank blows?” she said as she reached him, and handed back the spool.

  “The powder canister is on top, the powder gets blown out. Dispersed.”

  “And what detonates it?”

  “That was the tricky part. There has to be a time delay for the skyweed powder to disperse, to mix with enough air to burn, so I couldn’t rely on the initial valve charge to detonate the powder. It can’t wait too long after that, either, or it won’t detonate with the needed force.”

  “So?”

  “There’s a big spring-loaded switch in the powder canister. Once the powder has blown out, the contacts will come together, and there’s another propellant charge.”

  “What’s the safety on that?”

  “Same switches as the other, including the pin. It’s in series.”

  “Aren’t you worried the valve blowing will break the circuit?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes, but I couldn’t come up with anything better.”

  “I’m amazed you came up with what you did. How does an archaeologist know all this stuff?”

  Carson grinned at her. “I did have help. The guy at the biopharm plant had some good suggestions. But I also had an interesting childhood, plus my time in the reserves.”

  Roberts raised an eyebrow. “I keep finding out new and surprising things about you, Carson. If I didn’t know better from experience, I’d have thought you’d find archaeology boring.”

  Carson was still grinning, as though pleased with himself over some private joke. “Well, you never know what you’re going to run into in the field.”

  Roberts suppressed a brief shudder as she remembered some of the things she’d run into in the field with Carson. Why in the world was she out here with him again? Because for some damn reason she couldn’t say no. She sighed.

  “Okay then, let’s get it loaded up.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Aboard Sophie, above the jungle

  “Let’s find a spot away from the structure to clear our landing area. We don’t want to damage anything with the blast.”

  “You got it.”

  A few minutes later they were in position, the radar showed the ground under the trees to be fairly level. “Okay, I’m opening the aft hatch,” Jackie said and touched a control. The noise level jumped as the hatch slid open. As she held the ship in hover with one hand, Jackie reached into a compartment under the control panel and pulled out a pistol. “Here, just in case!” she shouted over the wind and exhaust noise, passing it to Carson.

  “In case what?”

  “It’s a flare gun. It’ll be extreme range but if you need to you’ll be shooting downhill. Just in case it doesn’t detonate.”

  “Thank you!”

  Carson made his way back to the aft hatch. Marten sat on the floor beside it, his safety harness buckled to a tie-down on the bulkhead. He didn’t look happy.

  “Have I mentioned how much I dislike heights?” he shouted over the noise.

  “Frequently,” Carson said, and handed the flare gun to Marten. “All right, I’m going to arm the bomb, then hand me the gun and we’ll push the bomb out the door.”

  The cord spool was buckled to a cargo ring beside the hatch. Carson checked that it would spin freely and pushed the canister assembly to the edge. He checked the switch positions then inserted the battery. A light lit to confirm it was positioned properly. He flipped the two switches, and another light came on. “Armed!” he shouted, then took the flare pistol that Marten passed to him.

  He buckled his own harness in, then, holding another cargo tie-down to brace himself, he shouted back to Roberts: “Count down from three!”

  “Three, two, one, go!”

  Carson used his legs to shove the package out of the hatch as the ship started to lift and accelerate away from the drop. “Bomb’s away!”

  The cord spool unwound crazily, and Carson hugged the edge of the hatch, leaning out to watch as the bomb dwindled away below them. He counted to himself. It should take about fourteen seconds for the bomb to fall the thousand meters to the end of the cord.

  “Thirteen, fourteen . . .” Carson was starting to wonder if something had gone wrong when the package suddenly blossomed into a brown cloud, expanding and thinning. Damn, the secondary charge had failed. Carson brought the flare pistol to bear but before he could pull the trigger there was a flash and the brown cloud disappeared in a huge fireball.

  “Brace yourself!” Carson yelled.

  The ship was still accelerating away from the drop zone but Carson saw the shock wave against the ground as moisture condensed briefly in its wake. The fireball expanded and faded, leaving just a rising cloud of smoke and condensation. There was a massive BANG! and the ship shuddered as the shock wave caught up with them.

  “Holy crap!” called back Roberts. “How big was that?”

  “A bit bigger than I’d expected,” Carson admitted. “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah, no worse than a thunderstorm, but bigger than any daisy cutter I ever saw before. All right back there?”

  Carson glanced at Marten, who gave him a thumbs up.

  “We’re good.” He cut the dangling cord free of the spool and let it drop away, then touched a panel on the bulkhead. “Door’s clear, closing the hatch,” he called forward to Roberts. “Let’s circle back and take a look.”

  The daisy cutter had done its work. Where there had been thick, impenetrable jungle there was now a circle devoid of vegetation about thirty meters across, and trees flattened in a radial pattern for perhaps another forty.

  “All right, listen up,” Carson said as Roberts brought the ship in for a landing. “We’ve got a short trek through the jungle to the pyramid. If you see something that looks like a piece of flying green ribbon, steer clear of it.”

  “Ribbon?” wondered Marten.

  “Jade ribbon snakes. They like to live in the treetops and glide down on potential prey. Their venom is one of the most toxic known. Fortunately they’re not that common.”

  “Got it,” Jackie said. “Avoid flying snakes. Maybe I’ll just stay in the ship.”

  “Really?”

  “You know me better than that, Carson. I’m game. But I’m going armed.”

  She set the ship down near the middle of the brand new clearing.

  Interlude I

  Earth, the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula, circa 100 CE

  Kukul and Quetz dragged their inflatable life raft ashore on a narrow sandy beach. Kukul looked back across the intervening water to what was left of their ship. He could have swum the distance if he’d had to, but he hated getting his display feathers wet and he wasn’t sure what predatory creatures he might have attracted. He pulled binoculars out of his emergency pack and surveyed the wreckage. From this angle it didn't look too bad, if you ignored the deformation of the hull and the odd angle at which it sat. He passed the binoculars to Quetzal.

  “Nice landing, Kukul,” Quetz said after a few moments. “We won’t be going anywhere in that. How are we supposed to get home now, flap our arms and fly?”

  Kukul regarded Quetzal, his brow crest rippling with agitation. “You’ve almost got the feathers for it, Quetz.” That bordered on insult; Kesh had a full coat of downy feathers when young, for warmth, but shed all but their display feathers in adolescence. To have feathers implied immaturity.

  Quetz hissed, baring his teeth.

  “Enough!” said Kukul. He looked back at the ship. Quetzal was right, it was irreparable. However, it would still be recognizable from the air or from orbit if anyone looked closely enough.

  “You have to destroy it, you know,” Quetz gave voice to what Kukul had been thinking.

  “Yes, I know.” Reluctantly he flipped open a portable console, keyed in a code sequence, and, with a sigh, pushed a button.
In the distance the wreckage shuddered, pieces flying off and scattering as a series of charges demolished the ship. No dramatic fireball to attract attention, just a shower of dust and small fragments. Not unlike, Kukul thought, that damned volcanic eruption we flew through. A few seconds later he heard the muffled thumps from the distant explosions.

  “Will that be enough?”

  Kukul considered the question. The remains of the ship would still be visible to a careful search, but: “It no longer has a triangular outline that would stand out as artificial. A few days of wave action will take care of the rest.”

  “What about the warp drive?”

  “That’s where most of the charges were placed. There’s nothing left of it.” Kukul hissed a sigh and sat down to take stock.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Their mission was shot now, of course. Unless they could find a way to send a signal, undetected, to their compatriots and get rescued. Perhaps they would send another ship when they hadn’t heard anything from either of them within . . . how long? Six months? A year? Two? There were few FTL ships yet, they had to be built largely in secret; the ruling priest class, limited to sublight travel, must not know. Would the Reformers spare another ship to find out what had happened to Kukul and Quetz? Perhaps not, but they might come here to complete the mission. And if they did, would they find us? Anything Kukul could think of to do to attract their attention would also draw unwanted attention from the resident observers.

  He and Quetz couldn’t just surrender to the local priest-observers either. They would want to know where the rest of the crew were, not believing just two of them could make the twelve light-year trip alone in a ship that was barely a lifeboat compared to their huge, multi-crewed ships, almost flying cities, which took years to cross interstellar distances. If they did believe him, then they’d try to pry the secret of superluminal travel from him. Not that he knew it, but he supposed anything he could tell him about his ship—and they would try to recover the debris—would help them to figure it out. They wouldn’t be pleasant about finding out what he and Quetz knew, either, if they even believed it was nothing.