The Forgotten Outpost

by Gus Flory

  Diego was at his desk reading an article online about the Martian Lacrosse League playoff results when Michael Helms appeared in his doorway.

  “Yo, Zanger, you busy?”

  “No. What’s up?”

  “A lot. Come to my office. I’ll fill you in.”

  Diego followed Helms down the hallway and then up T-FORCE MAIN’s wide colonnade. Officers sat in the cafes and restaurants taking long lunches or just lounging and chatting.

  “This place, man,” Helms said. “They start work around nine-thirty, then take a two-hour lunch at eleven-hundred, then a thirty-minute break at fifteen-hundred, then they hit the gym at sixteen-hundred. And you wonder why it’s taking so long to win this war.”

  “It’s Division,” Diego said. “That’s how they roll.”

  “Well, welcome to Division then.”

  Diego followed Helms through a set of large doors. An armed guard scanned their badges. Helms walked briskly down a maze of hallways. They passed civilians in suits and ties and women’s professional attire.

  Helms punched a code into a panel and opened a secure door. They walked down an empty hallway to an elevator. They rode the elevator up to the forty-fifth floor. Helms led Diego into his office, which had a fantastic view of Cassini City. They were above the heart of the city looking out at skyscrapers that towered above domes and cupolas. Antennae and communications dishes punctuated the skyline. Beyond the city through the yellow haze was a jagged mountain range. Across the plain in the distance was the flat surface of Kraken Mare. The tholin sky around the city was alive with aircraft. Seemingly unflightworthy and ponderous aerial vehicles could be seen landing or taking off from landing pads on rooftops. From Helms’s office, half of Saturn could be seen filling the hazy sky.

  “Not bad, Mike,” Diego said, taking in the view.

  “Once I get promoted, I’ll get a corner office with a full view of Saturn.”

  Helms sat down at his desk and pulled a chair beside him.

  “Have a seat.”

  Diego sat next to him in front of the flat screens on his desk. Helms clicked an icon and a video feed opened.

  “Well, well. What have we here?”

  A woman was taking a shower. She ran her fingers through her wet hair.

  “What’s this?” Diego asked.

  “Your honeypot returned to her apartment last night. Looks like she’s cleaning up. Wowsers. Nice caboose. Now turn around, sweetheart.”

  The hidden camera had a view of the entire bathroom and looked down over the glass shower stall door.

  Pristina turned around under the spout.

  “Jeez, Louise. That’s what I’m talking about. I give her a ten. Make it eleven.”

  “Turn it off, Mike.”

  “Hey, man. It’s surveillance. This is my job.”

  Pristina stepped out of the shower. She looked at herself in the mirror and then toweled off. Helms’s eyes were glued to the screen.

  “How long have you had bugs in her apartment?” Diego asked.

  “I’m going to let you in on a little secret. We have bugs in everybody’s apartment.”

  “We have laws against that.”

  “Of course we do.”

  Pristina wrapped a towel around her head and began applying her make up.

  “OK, if she sticks to habit, she’s going to get dressed and head to Einstein Plaza. She’ll get a cup of coffee and a pastry at the Blue Bean. She’ll read a little bit. Then she’ll go to her weekly reading group. I want you to go to the Blue Bean, get a cup of Joe and sit out on the plaza. Read something. Make sure you’re sitting in one of the chairs by the door. There’s a fountain there by the statue. She won’t miss you.”

  Pristina was in her bedroom now. She dropped the towel she was wearing and stood nude in front of the full-length closet door mirror.

  “Whoa, Nelly. She’s got the body of Venus, with arms.”

  Diego closed the video.

  “Come on, bro.”

  “I’m going to change into civvies. I’ll head down there and wait for her. Keep your eyes on us. Look for anyone tailing her or surveilling me. How much time do I have?”

  “Thirty minutes.”

  Diego stood and left Helms’s office. He went down to his office and changed out of his uniform. He slipped his pistol into a holster on his waist and put on a jacket. He left his apartment, walked briskly to the front gate and caught the subway just as it arrived in the station.

  He exited at the Einstein Plaza Station and bounded up the stairs. He walked out onto the plaza. It had only been two weeks since the attack, but all looked back to normal except for the makeshift memorial that had been erected at the site of the blast. City denizens walked the plaza and sat at the cafes. Visible above through the crystal-clear acrylic plastic atrium ceiling were towering skyscrapers reaching upward into the reddish-yellow sky.

  Diego looked across the plaza as he walked past the memorial. Flowers, candles, banners with personal messages and photos of the dead had been arranged around the site of the explosion.

  Diego walked past the statue of Albert Einstein and into the Blue Bean. He ordered a black coffee and took a seat on the plaza outside the café’s front door.

  He opened his handheld and began reading through an old history of the Byzantine Empire.

  Twenty minutes passed. Then thirty.

  “Where is she?” he typed into his handheld.

  “I lost her,” Helms typed back.

  “What do you mean you lost her?”

  “She stepped into a book collector’s shop and disappeared in the stacks. I haven’t seen her in fifteen minutes.”

  “Where’s the shop?”

  “It’s a thirty-minute walk from your location. In the Pioneer District.”

  Diego stood from his chair.

  “Stand fast, Zanger. I don’t know if she’s still there. She may have given us the slip.”

  Diego shook his head as he typed into his handheld. “She knows we’re watching her.”

  “Hard to say. Stand by.”

  Diego walked by the fountain. A text message from Havana appeared on his handheld. He opened it.

  “I love you.”

  He closed the message and slid the handheld into his pocket.

  He stood under the giant statue of Albert Einstein. He looked up at it, the trademark hair, mustache and grin. It had been 144 years since his death. Here he was looking up at the great man all these years later on a moon 1.4 billion kilometers from Earth. He wondered what old Albert would have thought about that.

  “Hello, Major Zanger.”

  Diego turned to see Pristina.

  “Hello.”

  “I thought that was you. I’ve never seen you out of uniform. It’s nice to see you again.”

  “It’s nice to see you, too.”

  “What brings you to Einstein Plaza?” she asked.

  As he looked at her in her slacks and blouse, the image of her nude in the shower glistening as water ran over her body flashed in his mind. Butterflies fluttered in his stomach. A wolfish desire came over him. He gave her his most charming smile.

  “Diego?”

  “I’ve been transferred to T-FORCE MAIN. I’ve been there about a week, but we’ve been locked down. They finally dropped the force protection level, so I thought I’d come out, stretch my legs and see a little of the city.”

  “And return to the scene of the crime?”

  “Yes, I suppose. It’s strange being here seeing everyone going about their day as if nothing happened.”

  “Not everyone.”

  She looked over across the plaza at the mourners paying their respects around the makeshift memorial. “I’m sure they’ll build a permanent monument there so we’ll never forget,” she said.

  Diego looked up at the statue of Einstein. “I was just thinking about how some people are able to bring light to others instead of darkness. If only we as a species had more Einsteins and fewer Robodans.”

  Pr
istina looked up at the statue. “And what light did Einstein shine for us?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m asking you. Enlighten me.”

  “E=MC2. The Theory of Relativity, of course. Special and General.”

  “And how do we use his theories today?”

  “What do you mean, Pristina?”

  “I’m just asking a question. How do we use Einstein’s theories today?”

  “Nuclear power. Spacecraft propulsion. Orbital mechanics. Computers, maybe. Probably artificial intelligence.”

  “E=MC2 and the Theory of Relativity are not used for any of those things.”

  “You tell me then.”

  “We don’t use Einstein’s theories for anything. Robert Goddard. Nikola Tesla. Isaac Newton. Galileo Galilei. Archimedes. They laid the foundation for what got us here to Titan.”

  “I’m not sure I agree with you. What are you driving at?”

  She looked up at the statue.

  “I’ve walked by this statue for years. I used to believe Albert Einstein was a man of great importance. A genius. Possibly the smartest human who ever lived. I tried to understand him. But it was all complicated mathematics and visualizations with no relevance to the reality we live in. I came to agree with Nikola Tesla’s conclusion that the Theory of Relativity is a beggar clothed in purple whom ignorant people take for a king—that Einstein was a master of obscuration whose reputation was promoted by the media for generations to convince us his work was exceptional and significant. But it was all mathematical hocus pocus without applicability in the universe we live in. Einstein set physics back more than a hundred years. Many brilliant scientists have wasted their minds counting the number of angels that can fit on the head of a pin, chasing Einstein’s fame, fortune and prestige, like lemmings over a cliff.”

  “You’re losing me, Pristina.”

  She smiled. “If Einstein was right, then nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. It would mean humans are forever trapped in our Solar System, never able to travel out into the galaxy to other stars.”

  “There are wormholes, negative energy warp drives, quantum entanglement.”

  “There’s no such thing as wormholes and negative energy warp drives. And, if anything, quantum entanglement disproves the Theory of Relativity. Tesla was right that Einstein was a media-created fraud. Tesla knew faster-than-light travel is possible.”

  Diego smiled at her, shook his head and looked down. “I’m sure Tesla was a smart man, but Einstein was smarter. That’s why we’re standing under his statue and not Tesla’s.”

  “Tesla pioneered alternating current and invented the induction motor. He practically created modernity. He was a scientist who experimented in the real world. Einstein only performed thought experiments. All he came up with were theories and mathematical equations that have no relevance to our daily lives.”

  “Let’s get a cup of coffee, OK?”

  “Can you name one thing Einstein invented? One technology that was the result of his work?”

  “I don’t know, Pristina. But a lot of smart people think Einstein was a genius. They probably have good reasons. I think maybe after all these years, scientists would’ve figured out if he was wrong. We wouldn’t build statues and name universities after him if that was the case.”

  “That’s the remarkable thing. Everyone just goes along with it even though nothing of practical value, nothing tangible or useful, came from his work. The only significant thing about him is his reputation for being a genius. And people go along with it because everyone else does. Because the establishment does.”

  “The establishment… Hmm.”

  “I’ve said too much.”

  “Look, I’ve got to run,” Diego said. “See you at T-FORCE MAIN. Will you be back at your desk tomorrow?”

  “I quit. I no longer work for T-FORCE.”

  “You quit. When?”

  “Today.”

  “Why?”

  “Madeleine Dzialyn, mainly. But I had other reasons.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “It was nice seeing you again,” she said. “I better go.”

  “We should have coffee sometime.”

  She smiled and turned and walked away across the plaza, quickly disappearing behind the pedestrian traffic.

  His handheld vibrated. He answered it.

  “Come on, man. What are you arguing with her for? You need to up your game.”

  “Arguing? She’s a conspiracy theorist. Did you hear that nonsense about Albert Einstein?”

  “Of course she’s a conspiracy theorist. She’s crazy. A Neo-Fascist nutball. But you’re not supposed to argue with her. You’re supposed to let her think she’s seducing you. You’ve got to go along with what she says. Agree with her. This is amateur hour, man.”

  “OK. Go along with her. Yeah, that Einstein. He was a real idiot.”

  “Exactly. See. It’s not hard.”

  “I can’t do this, Mike.”

  “Next time, don’t think about what she’s saying. Just agree with her, nod your head, and think about her nice rack. It ain’t hard, man. I do it every Friday night.”

  “But you’re a douchebag.”

  “Aren’t we all, deep down inside?”

  “No, we’re not.”

  “Get over yourself, man. You’re on a mission. This is for real. Get your head in the game.”

  Diego ended the call. He walked across the plaza through the crowd. He didn’t feel like returning to T-FORCE MAIN.

  Several children had gathered at the Einstein Plaza Attack memorial. Diego walked past them, then stopped. A little girl and her mother stood by a barrier fence on which photos of the victims had been attached. The little girl left her mother’s side and laid down a flower beneath a photo of a man who must have been her father. The little girl had tears in her eyes.

  Diego walked along the barrier fence until he found the photo of LT.

  In the photo, LT was in his armor, helmet off, rifle cradled in his arms, his signature grin on his face, those big white teeth.

  Diego found a photo of Moxley. Moxley was sitting at his computer looking up, making a funny mug for the camera.

  A message flashed on his handheld. It was from Helms.

  “Remember why you’re doing this. Remember what they did.”

  Diego stood motionless, looking at the photos for a long moment. Then he called Helms.

  “Where did she go? I want to try again.”

  He heard Helms tapping at his computer. “She’s given us the slip again. She’s good at defeating our surveillance systems. She must have someone on the inside helping her, hacking our facial recognition software. She’s good, Zanger. Maybe crazy, but smart. We shouldn’t underestimate her and who she’s working for.”

  Diego returned to T-FORCE MAIN. The fact that Pristina had quit her position may have meant she was no longer targeting him. He and Helms tried to determine what her next move might be, and if Diego’s counter-intelligence mission was still even possible.

  “Once we track her down and figure out what she’s up to, we’ll decide from there,” Helms said. “If she’s no longer interested in you, we’ll pull the plug.”

  “And just let her go?”

  “No, we’ll roll her up. Bring her in and interrogate her and see what we can extract from her. Probably not much. These terror cells are compartmentalized and she looks to be a low-level operative, used for her looks and her willingness to play the honeypot. I’m guessing her handlers wouldn’t have revealed anything of importance to her. You screwed this up, man. If you would have just smiled and shut up, maybe she would’ve thought you were still a good mark.”

  “I’m not a spy. I’m a soldier. I didn’t volunteer for this.”

  “I know. Sorry. But we were so close. It’s frustrating.”

  “Look, give me another chance with her. I won’t make the same mistake again.”

  “Alright, man. But I think that ship
has sailed.”

  Pristina did not return to her apartment that night. She had disappeared. Helms had the SSIS Cyber Team working overtime trying to figure out how she was defeating the moon-wide surveillance and biometrics systems.

  Diego sat at his desk the next day with nothing to do. Helms entered his office.

  “Did you see the news?”

  “Negative. What’s up?”

  “Titan News Network. Take a look.”

  Diego opened the Titan News Network video stream on his screen.

  “This essentially means Tupo Pelagi is finished,” the pundit said. “Her career is over. And she’s probably facing imminent arrest. This could also spell the end of the Alternative Party for Titan.”

  “She’s saying she had no knowledge of her husband’s Neo-Fascist affiliations,” a second pundit said.

  “If you believe that, I have a ring of Saturn to sell you.”

  Diego saw a linked story about Tupo Pelagi’s husband. He opened the link.

  Judy Reza was sitting in the back of a moon rover. She wore a Titan Moon Suit, or TMS, with helmet off.

  “The husband of Tupo Pelagi was found dead this morning just fifteen kilometers outside Cassini City. He was found in a gully wearing the same black armor worn by the terrorists who committed the Einstein Plaza Attack. It appears his armor had been punctured and had a slow leak. He must not have realized it until too late. His wings were extended and his helmet visor was cracked. Detectives are surmising that he was gliding low, making his getaway with the terrorist cell when the leak in his armor began suffocating him. He then lost consciousness and crashed here. His body was found frozen solid inside his armor and his flesh badly corroded by the atmosphere.”

  Reza put on her helmet. She opened the hatch and stepped out of the rover onto Titan’s rocky surface.

  “He hit the ground here, then skidded and rolled until he hit an ice boulder.”

  She walked along the skid in the icy, orange sand until she came to the boulder. Police crime scene marker lights glowed around the impact area where the body was discovered. Rugged police vans were parked at the rim of the gully.

  Crime-scene photos depicted a black-armored figure lying awkwardly against the boulder. Then the images changed to investigators in the back of the police van removing the shattered helmet. Kyle Pelagi’s frozen face—distorted in a grimace, encrusted in orange dust—was displayed on the screen.