A Memory in the Black (The New Aeneid Cycle)

by Michael G. Munz

  "Marc? Marc!"

  Marc looked at the pieces of his rig amid the spider's broken legs and body. Without a power source, the leech was dark. "Yeah, I'm here."

  He took a moment to smash the spider's broken body a little more under his boot and then picked up the detached, shattered screen of his rig: a sophisticated mini-server platform turned fancy rock. A victory, maybe, but a Pyrrhic one. It really had been a pain in the ass to configure, but it was likely for the best. Even terrestrial malware was a bitch to eradicate anyway, right?

  "Let's get the hell out of here, okay?"

  CHAPTER 52

  For three days, the unanswered questions pained Ondrea more than her healing wound. Was Gideon still alive? Would Caitlin and Felix reach him in time? Would Beck manage to keep his mouth shut about them? What would Marquand do to her when they got back to Earth?

  Over time, the first two grew even larger. Even on a steady supply of mind-dulling pain blockers, Ondrea figured she'd convinced Beck that he was just as guilty as she was. After all, he was the one who brought Caitlin and Felix to Ondrea in the first place. She made sure he knew she'd take him down with her if he breathed a word of it to anyone. Ondrea wasn't certain she'd have the power to make it anything but a bluff, but Beck didn't take those kinds of risks.

  As for what Marquand would do to her, there was no sense worrying about that until she learned if Caitlin and Felix were successful. If they were, she would deal with her punishment when it came. If they weren't, there would be less reason to punish Ondrea—but in that case she wouldn't care anyway. Gideon would be gone, again.

  His fate had been decided by now. He was either alive or gone, and not knowing which left her agonizing over both possibilities like he were some Schrödinger's cat, at once equally alive and gone. It wasn't quite how the theory went, but she didn't fucking care.

  Ondrea was propped up in bed, pointlessly checking over the numbers that detailed her brother's fate, when the door opened to vomit Beck in from the hallway.

  "Hi," he began. "Feeling any better?"

  His face plainly showed he had news. Jesus, and she was relying on him keeping his mouth shut? "Spit it out, Beck."

  Still he hesitated. It sent her heart sinking. Good news he would have told her instantly. "We heard from—from Gideon, reporting like he was supposed to if, well, if the project succeeded. He's on his way back, midway to the WSC base." Beck swallowed. "If it worked, that means he used the codes to get in and get what Marquand wanted—which means—"

  They failed. "I know what it means, Beck."

  "I'm sorry."

  She turned away, scowling as her insides twisted. Why the hell did people always say that? What the hell made anyone think pity was a damned help when a person's hopes got blasted to shards?

  Except. . .

  "What did the message say?"

  "Er, I don't think I can—"

  Goddammit you little toad, you're going to give me this! She turned and glared with the full force of her grief. "Tell me what it said!"

  He steeled himself, and for a moment she actually thought she might have to beg. Beck looked over a report and read, "Returning from objective. Mission complete, but the target is no longer active."

  "What was the carrier message?"

  "What? Why?"

  "Just tell me." The confirmation would've been sent buried in another, more innocuous transmission in case of interception. Normally the carrier message was disposable. She was grasping at straws.

  "Um, 'Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore.' Weird."

  Ondrea swallowed the hope that flared anew, uncertain if she managed to hide it. "Get out, Beck."

  Beck complied, apparently glad for the chance to leave. She couldn't risk telling him, couldn't risk giving away what she suspected—no, what she knew!—from those first two lines of Poe's "The Raven." It had been Isaac's favorite poem. The man who knew that, the man who was returning from Omicron, was still her brother.

  Gideon was alive! Anything else, for the moment, was just detail.

  Caitlin stroked Felix's hair as the rover crawled its way back to civilization. He remained unconscious. Though the few indistinct words he uttered when they left had given some minor reassurance that he would be okay, every moment he did not wake eroded that scant bit of optimism just a little more.

  She reassured herself that they were at least going home having accomplished what they'd set out to do, as foolish as it was. Somewhere outside, Gideon was making his way across the Moon, returning on his own as Marquand expected. For the first time since Diomedes had killed him, Caitlin was able to think of Gideon without the guilt that used to claw at her.

  If only she hadn't traded one guilt for another.

  She closed her eyes and steeled herself against second-guesses and what-ifs. She would see Felix to a doctor, first at WSC, then home at Horizon Research where they knew more about his implant. Perhaps Ondrea would be in a position to help before they got back to Earth, but no matter how much the woman owed them, she wasn't counting on it. Caitlin would still try, of course.

  For now, as absurd as the idea sounded, she needed to at least try for sleep. Felix's imagined voice came to her with a reminder that what he did was his choice, that he wouldn't have let her drag him up here if he didn't want to go.

  Knackered with worry, she was half-gone already. "When you wake up, Felix," she murmured, "I'll tell you just how little that helps."

  And if you don't wake up, who shall talk me out of hating myself?

  She would have to do so on her own, and she wasn't sure she deserved the charity.

  Michael sat ahead of Caitlin at the rover's controls and guided them back after their rapid departure from Omicron.

  The death and disaster they found when they arrived there. . . Though Michael hated to admit it, he knew there was nothing he could have done about that. He'd done what was within his power and accomplished what the AoA had asked of him: protected Marc, made contact with Marette, gotten ESA out of Omicron—and he helped save those still alive to be saved. A smile crept across his face. It was hard not to feel proud despite the tragedy preceding it all. Even Gideon was better, and that wasn't something he'd even set out to achieve.

  That was mostly Felix and Caitlin's doing, though. Michael spared a glance behind him to check on Caitlin, asleep beside Felix. Michael owed it to his friends to get them back safely, and as fast as possible.

  He turned to Marc, who slumped in the seat beside him in the cab with his visor still on. "You awake?"

  The other stirred and sat up a bit. "Mm? Yeah, still here. Just thinking. Hoping Marette installed that module on the shuttle okay."

  "Er, well it's not something that's terribly hard, is it?" The module would duplicate the false readings on the shuttle's sensors and flight recorder to further maintain the hoax for ESA.

  "Good point. They designed it to plug right in."

  Michael thought as much. Evacuating Omicron was only half the battle. Maintaining ESA's perception that it was lost completely was the other half—and one for which the AoA had been preparing to fight for a long time.

  "So, nothing to worry about. And even if it's not easy, it's not like she's incompetent."

  "Far from it, yeah."

  Michael chuckled and stopped just short of asking about Marc's feelings for the woman. His earlier suspicions in that regard were all but confirmed when they'd found her, though she didn't seem quite as happy to see him—at least that was Michael's impression. He had to admit his own experience with understanding women was rather limited.

  That was Felix's area.

  "Think Felix'll be okay?" It sprang from Michael's mouth before he realized it.

  Marc gave a labored exhale. "Been trying not to think about that. I hope so."

  Michael only nodded. Before, he'd just assumed Felix would wake up soon enough and be fine. He regretted the question and supposed he was t
rying not to think about it either. All they could do was get back as fast as possible.

  And so Michael concentrated on navigating the lunar surface. Yet the terrain was so dull that there was little to distract him. Unbidden, another subject he was trying to avoid quietly crept to the forefront.

  Diomedes.

  Michael found himself shaking his head. The man was gone; that's all there was to it. Whatever he was to Michael, whatever he'd been, there was no changing that now. Better to just accept it and move on.

  Yet it was hard to accept his death when Michael wasn't sure how to feel about it. Caitlin had suggested he was mourning the death of the man Michael once thought Diomedes to be. He lost that man in Diomedes six months ago when the illusion shattered, and now he was rebuilding it for real in himself.

  So six months later with the real Diomedes dead, Michael had now lost. . . what? Had he wanted to save Diomedes from himself? Was that it? Something in his former roommate had opened, some key had turned, when he'd told Michael about Silas, even with there being so much obviously left unsaid. Felix had praised the decision when Michael rejected Diomedes, calling him a self-destructive force likely to take down anyone nearby along with him. If he had more time, would the man have seen Michael as an equal and let Michael try to forge him into someone less of a danger to himself and others?

  Would that even have been possible? Maybe, once again, he was just seeing things in Diomedes that weren't really there. For all he knew, Diomedes might have just snapped back to his usual insular self. His uncle used to say that a person's death wasn't just the death of their body, but the death of their dreams. Michael supposed the same was true of others' dreams for them as well, no matter how foolish.

  It was a question he would never really have an answer to. Diomedes was gone.

  Although. . .

  He kept his eyes on the terrain ahead as he fished the rod device Diomedes gave him from his pocket. He would find out what it was. But then, could he really expect to find anything in it that would satisfy him?

  "Don't get your hopes up," he muttered to himself.

  Marc turned. "Come again?"

  "Nothing, just talking to myself." No sense in asking Marc again what the rod was; he didn't know before. He put it away and again let his mind drift. The path ahead was flat and reasonably smooth. Their remaining oxygen would get them as far as they needed to go. He had no idea if their returning the rover and leaving immediately would cause Fagles any problems through whatever channels he'd acquired it, but that hardly mattered. They'd already ruined his plans, and if things had gone the way they thought, he already knew it.

  "You're sure the leech got its signal out to Fagles?" Michael asked after a time.

  Marc seemed to stir out of a half-sleep. "Hm? Definitely. It got more than a full cycle before it was disconnected. We can confirm more once we get back, but I'm more worried about what that spider thing was trying to do."

  "Like what, exactly?"

  "My computer's smashed to pieces. I can't be sure. Thing is, it wasn't linked to Omicron or anything else but the leech, and without any other—"

  "Smashed to pieces?"

  The weary question from behind them came from Felix, and the two men in front immediately jerked their necks to look. He was sitting beside the still-sleeping Caitlin, rubbing his temples with one hand. "Marc mad?" Felix grinned weakly. "Marc smash?"

  "Hey, you're awake!" Marc declared.

  "I hope so. If this is a dream there's a shocking lack of surrealism."

  Michael guided the rover to a stop. "Welcome back. Feeling okay?"

  "Got a headache like you wouldn't believe." Felix glanced at Caitlin. "Someone want to tell me what happened?"

  "You don't remember?"

  Caitlin's eyes opened before he could answer. "Felix!" She grabbed him and kissed him long enough to where Michael had to clear his throat to get their attention before he felt too uncomfortable.

  "Let him get some air, Caitlin," Michael teased with a grin. Lucky bastard.

  "Oh, sod off, Michael," she shot back as they broke off. "We've limited air in here anyway. How are you feeling?"

  Marc answered for Felix. "He's got a headache you wouldn't believe."

  Felix nodded to that. "And a bit of confusion to boot. Are we still headed to—ah, Om. . . ?" He trailed off, uncertain.

  "Omicron?"

  "Yeah. Hey, I should've known that. What's going on? I'm starting to get worried, here."

  Felix wasn't out of the woods yet, and by the glances shared with the other two, Michael figured he wasn't the only one who thought so. "We should get moving again."

  He turned back to the rover's controls. Caitlin and Marc brought Felix up to date. Felix seemed to have lost all recollection of anything that happened since they first acquired the rover, but still cracked the occasional joke as he listened to it all. Michael just concentrated on driving. At least Felix was awake; it was one step further than they were a short while ago. They'd get him checked out as soon as they could.

  Caitlin quizzed Felix on things he ought to remember. Some things he got, but some he didn't. Felix, his jovial demeanor souring quickly, soon put a stop to the questions and asked to sit up front so he could watch their journey and rest a bit. Marc gave Felix his seat and Caitlin moved to stand behind him, exchanging disquieted glances with Michael.

  "Nothing that the blokes at Horizon can't fix, I'm sure," she assured them.

  "Yeah," Felix sighed.

  Michael gave them both what he hoped was a reassuring smile of his own. "Not too far, now."

  Together they watched in silence as the rover made its way toward the horizon. Somewhere out there was the Western Space Consortium base. The Earth hung in the sky beyond that, a globe of blue in a black and grey sea.

  "God, that's a beautiful sight, isn't it?" Felix whispered. "I've always thought the planet would clean up well if you could just take a step or two back."

  "'Always?'" Caitlin asked.

  "Well. For as long as I can remember."

  They continued on, toward home.

  EPILOGUE

  As far as Adrian Fagles was concerned, Diomedes was a "fire-and-forget" issue the moment he was off the planet. When Fagles had prepped the black op for him, Fagles had slid the arrangements through the woodwork and then covered his own tracks. Even if the freelancer loused it up, Fagles's own connection to the operation was effectively severed. Oh, certainly, there were others in RavenTech who might catch hell for it; they might even successfully prove the reality that they had nothing to do with it, but not a thing would trace back to Fagles. His hands were clean.

  It was a talent of his.

  The price of such secrecy was control; either Diomedes would succeed, or he wouldn't. Fagles could do nothing more to affect that outcome.

  It didn't matter. Now that he'd properly positioned the pieces (a laborious process, and not one that had gone smoothly, but anyone who expected the game to go smoothly had no business playing), things would unfold along their own tailored logic. It was six months ago that Fagles first investigated just why Ken Wallace arranged the theft of RavenTech's own product for personal gain; once he'd culled the dead man's shadow files and learned of the secrets Wallace negotiated to buy, Fagles knew that anything he could do to capitalize on his dead boss's failed venture would be a long shot.

  It was most assuredly worth the risk, but Fagles learned long ago the wisdom to tell the difference between what he could change and what he could not. Really, it was a no-lose situation. If Diomedes succeeded, then having to continue to deal with the freelancer—the sort of fellow one always has to manage in some fashion or another anyway—was more than an acceptable price to pay for getting in on the ground level of the astounding technological secrets surely to be found at Omicron. If Diomedes failed, Fagles would be free of the man.

  There were, after all, other ways to win the game.

  And so he busied himself with other projects—some official RavenTec
h business, some very much not—while waiting for the leech's signal. The computer that would receive it directly sat isolated from any network in his private office to keep others from stealing whatever data the leech might acquire. Fagles suspected no one who knew enough to try, but it didn't pay to be careless.

  The elation that shot through him at the sight of a received signal made Fagles realize he was counting on the gamble more than he'd allowed himself to believe. This was a moment to be relished. He broke the seal on a bottle of single malt scotch, poured himself a glass, and then, finally, sat down to take stock of the initial fruit of his labors.

  The leech's captured data would no doubt take some decryption and processing to—

  Fagles stopped in mid-sip when the computer identified an audio header on the datastream. Just what exactly had Diomedes—or this Marc Triton—done?

  "Mister Fagles, I regret to inform you that Diomedes is dead, through no one's fault but his own. Rest assured that we have arrived at our destination. We could not have done so without your generous arrangements. However, know also that humanity isn't ready for the secrets you sent us to steal. No one should have such power, neither you nor ESA. The Humans' Army for Technological Purity was very persuasive on this viewpoint, and they pay well. We leave you with the following proof of the destruction that you yourself have been accessory to. The Omicron Complex is no more. Have a nice day."

  Fagles set his scotch down atop the computer and watched what happened next, almost daring the rest of the data to bear out this claim, daring his gambit to truly fail, his plan to backfire. The computer hesitated as it translated the data, but it was all there: sensor readings, audio recordings, and the base's eventual evacuation and destruction.

  Fagles sat back in his chair and took a breath. He would look it over again in deeper detail later. The datastream was of considerably larger size than expected. The leech may have sent at least a little more than the saboteurs intended. He was no hacker, of course; he would need to bring in another to analyze it in order to be sure.