by M. D. Cooper
Usef turned the scooter down a side street. The road soon petered out as the land rose. They were nearing the foothills of forested mountains that formed one edge of the city. He took another turn and left the paved road altogether. There was no track, but he seemed to know where he was going, as he maneuvered the scooter through the rising landscape without hesitation. Isa gripped the handle on the scooter tighter in the steeper areas.
The farther they got from the city, the thicker and taller the vegetation grew. Tree ferns, large, wide trees, and hanging vines predominated, giving the place a prehistoric feel. Isa wouldn’t have been surprised to come across a massive dinosaur browsing through the foliage. Then she remembered about carnivorous kinds of dinosaur.
“Hey,” she said to Usef, “they don’t have dinosaurs around here, do they?” As she spoke, they approached a flat space containing several scooters lined up under a tree.
Usef looked over his shoulder. “Not the kind that eat you, if that’s what you’re wondering.” He pulled up next to the other scooters. “Looks like we’ll have some company,” he said as he dismounted. “I wonder if it’s anyone I know.”
Isa followed him along a thin track that ran between boulders. They came out on the side of the mountain, and the track continued down. The view was obscured by trees and tall, bushy ferns, but Isa could hear running water.
“Are we going to a waterfall?” she asked.
Usef’s only response was, “Nearly there.”
Just as Isa noticed steam rising above the tree line, the track opened out onto a spectacular scene. They had arrived at the top of a series of terraces that stepped down the mountainside at irregular intervals. Each terrace held a pool of water and the pools fed into each other via rivulets. In places where the rivulets had a distance to fall, they turned into cascades. In others, they ran on nearly level ground, widening to shallow streams.
In several of the pools, people were lounging, while others stood beneath the waterfalls or dipped their feet in the streams.
“See the main waterfalls?” Usef asked, pointing to some thick vegetation to their left, where Isa could just discern the glint of running water. “One originates from a hot spring, the other is cool mountain water from the upper slopes. By moving rocks at the heads of the pools, you can adjust the water temperature and flow to be exactly how you like it.” As he spoke, his gaze roamed the pools. “Hey, I can see some friends. Come on, I’ll introduce you.”
The paths linking the pools were surfaced with pebbles, slick with moisture. Isa took off her sandals and went barefoot. She also pulled off her top. The air was humid with steam and faintly odorous, though not unpleasantly so. Usef led her down to a pool where several men and women were lounging around the sides.
“Usef,” one of the men exclaimed when they arrived. He got out and clasped Usef in a hug, delivering loud slaps to his friend’s back. “Great to see you. How long has it been?”
He was at least as big and well-muscled as the Marine, if not more so. The other men and women were also extremely well-toned with defined muscles. They told Usef to join them in the water.
Stepping into the pool, he introduced Isa. She said ‘hi’ as she pulled off her pants and piled her clothes on a dry rock.
“You’re all Marines too, I guess,” she said as she lowered herself into the hot water.
“She’s got us figured,” one of the men said with a chuckle.
“Isa must be toting a scanner to see the void between your ears,” a woman rejoined.
“Nah,” said the man, “it’s our piercing stares. Kinda like a predator.” He pointed two fingers at his eyes and then around at the other Marines.
This brought a general laugh, and then the conversation settled down to catching up with Usef.
Isa couldn’t join in, as most of the general discussion of Marine life was gobbledegook to her. She didn’t mind, but her attention wandered. She relaxed deeply, settling into the volcanic water. The heat seemed to seep through to her bones. She breathed in the humid, fragrant air and let her gaze meander over the verdant mountain slopes. After a while, she found herself wondering if there had ever been a time she’d felt so serene and at peace.
“Do you want one, Isa?” a woman said.
Coming back to reality, Isa pulled herself up a little out of the water. She’d slipped down almost to her chin. The woman who had spoken was holding out a plate piled with thin slices of fruit. The flesh of the fruit was white and the skin was brilliant green.
“What is it?” Isa asked.
The woman replied with a name Isa didn’t recognize. “It only grows well on Athens,” the woman went on. “Something to do with the minerals in the soil and the day length.”
Isa took a slice and bit into the end of it. The fruit dissolved into aromatic juiciness in her mouth, so much so that some juice dribbled down her chin. “Whoops,” she said, trying to catch the drips in her hand.
“Don’t worry about it,” Usef said. “That’s what the hot water’s for.”
After scooping up a handful of water to wash away the spill, Isa finished the rest of the slice of fruit in three bites. In the warmth and humidity, it was the perfect refreshment.
She began to sink into the water and drift away again when the ground lurched. She grabbed the rocks on each side of her in alarm. The ground continued to shake, agitating the pool water so that it slopped over the edges.
The Marines weren’t remotely alarmed. “Woohoo,” a man exclaimed. “Looks like surf’s up tomorrow.”
“Is this an earthquake?” Isa asked Usef, her voice trembling with the vibration.
“Yeah, it is. Don’t worry, though. It doesn’t get any rougher than this where we are. It’s a good sign, though. It means Athens’ tectonic plates have begun shifting again, and a shifting crust means tsunamis!”
THE SECOND STRAND
STELLAR DATE: 11.30.8935 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Landfall, Knossos Island
REGION: Carthage, 3rd Planet in the New Canaan System
Erin sat alone in Tanis’s office in Government House, trying to write her report on the incident at the SATC site.
Though Admiral Sanderson would have already passed a preliminary report along, she wanted to get her full accounting to Tanis right away. The governor would want to know every detail, but Erin was struggling to find the right words. She’d started composing it several times only to erase everything. Her main problem was, in her entire career, she couldn’t recall another time that she’d failed so spectacularly.
If only she hadn’t asked Sasha to help her catch the thief. If only she hadn’t decided to force Hart into the open by taking the module herself. She should never have asked Cullen to deactivate the inner security countermeasures. Through her own thoughtless stupidity, they could have lost the picotech.
The difficulty she had with writing the report wasn’t that she wanted to gloss over her incompetence, it was that she felt she’d let Tanis down badly and she couldn’t think of a way to express her regret.
She remembered the message Tanis had sent her when she was hollowing out Laconia. The governor had said she wanted to leave the problem with someone she could trust. Erin felt she’d betrayed that trust and she didn’t know what to do to make things right.
Hart had escaped—without the picotech, thank the stars, but he was free on Carthage. Security checks at the air and spaceports would prevent him from leaving the planet, at least. The only possible way he might leave would be in a private ship, but only a few had been sold, and they were now being closely tracked, so that was unlikely.
No. Assuming Hart had survived his leg wound and managed to get back to shore, he was somewhere on Carthage, and probably still on Knossos. Murry will find him, Erin assured herself. Sooner or later, Hart would have to use the Link, and then they would know exactly where he was.
It was something.
Erin would likely never be allowed near the picotech again, that was for sure. She woul
d be lucky to hold onto her position and not be demoted. She sighed.
Once more, she opened the screen and began to write. This time she wrote quickly so she wouldn’t be tempted to erase her words and start again for the sixth or seventh time. Deciding to leave out excessive phrases of remorse, as nothing sounded adequate to express how she felt, she set down in bald sentences the exact detail of everything that had happened. Before allowing herself another moment of hesitation, she sent the packet to Tanis.
Relieved that she was done with the hateful task, Erin checked the position of Tanis’s ship in the outer system. If the governor replied soon after receiving her communication, Erin should hear from her by that evening.
To kill time, she caught up with the progress of Carthage’s infrastructure projects. The problems with delays and poor quality work had been slowly ironing themselves out. She was pleased to see that most of the projects were nearly back on schedule. Only one stood out: the construction of Carthage’s second space station and space elevator. The project had hardly moved on from the last time she’d checked it, which was strange. Chief Bourke was on the job, and he’d been more than competent during Victoria’s terraforming.
Now that the remainder of the SATC development was in Sasha’s capable hands, Erin decided to turn her attention to the second space elevator. The base platform for building the space station had been constructed and was already in orbit, waiting only for the elevator to connect it to the surface. Once that was in place, then the rest of the station would be built using materials easily ferried up to it.
The first stage for constructing the elevator was to secure the set of carbon nanotube strands that formed its backbone. For some reason, though she’d read Bourke’s report twice, Erin couldn’t understand why work on securing the strands hadn’t even begun yet.
Erin suppressed a groan.
The space elevator site was at Thrace, on the island of Cyprus. Erin wanted to see the progress for herself, so she used Tanis’s private shuttle for the journey. When she arrived, the site was empty but for a few guards. Multi-story, empty buildings that would become offices and stores stood around the central area where the space elevator would be located. The equipment and some materials for constructing the elevator were in place, but Bourke was absent. Erin checked around the materials, but she couldn’t find any sign of fabrication, or of ready carbon nanotube strands.
On questioning one of the guards, she was directed to a manufacturing facility on the other side of town. She took a groundcar to the plant and, upon informing reception who she was, was swiftly led to a conference room.
When she entered, Erin saw Bourke standing across from a stern-looking woman, a pained expression on his face.
“Chief Erin,” Bourke said, ducking his head. “The site said you were coming. I was just speaking with Miss Pettigrew here about our fabrication order, but we decided to hold off further negotiations until you arrived.”
Pettigrew was sharply dressed and had a nose and chin to match. After the introductions were made, she eyed Erin shrewdly before speaking. “It’s fortunate you’ve arrived. We were just discussing the terms for the provision of the government’s order.”
“Terms?” Erin asked, puzzled.
“Yes,” said Bourke. “Ms. Pettigrew is insisting on recompense for the products. I’ve tried to explain the contract terms for all government infrastructure projects, but—”
“You have to understand,” Pettigrew interjected in a patronizing tone. “Things here are quite different from how we originally intended to operate on New Eden. I’ve taken legal advice, and under the new conditions, the old contracts no longer apply. What’s more, I have a backlog of orders to fulfill and debts incurred from setting up the plant that I have to pay. Naturally I must prioritize the higher-paying orders.
“Unless the government is willing to pay for the nanotubes at a fair market rate, I’m afraid I’m unable to help you at this time. If you will pay, then of course I’ll be happy to oblige, but you may have to wait some time, depending on the terms we agree upon. Or perhaps another company might be willing to fulfill your requirements.”
Bourke’s jaw had set as Pettigrew had spoken. “But there isn’t another company that can manufacture the nanotube strands we require. You know that.”
Pettigrew smirked. “I’m sorry, but that isn’t my problem.”
“Wait,” Erin said, moderating her voice to mask the growing anger she felt toward this woman. “Let me get this right. You’re saying that the contract you signed to supply the government’s orders free of charge after arrival in return for passage of you and your equipment aboard the Intrepid no longer applies? So you want to charge us for the nanotubes, but you’re only going to fulfill the order right away if we pay a price that’s high enough to make it worth your while?”
“Crudely put,” Pettigrew replied, “but that’s the long and short of it.”
“I see,” said Erin. “You do understand that you only operate under government license, right? I mean, before you came up with this preposterous argument, that had occurred to you?”
Pettigrew’s confident look began to falter. “Yes. And we’re the only company licensed to manufacture the product you require. That was a condition of our enrollment on the roster.”
“Well, let me think,” Erin said. “What would happen if the government revoked your license? What do you think you would do then? What if, for example, the government decided to award the license to another company? Or, no, wait. I’ve got an even better hypothetical situation for you. What if the government decided you were operating unethically—failure to fulfill agreed upon contracts sure seems unethical to me—and just shut you down? How does that sound?”
“You wouldn’t do it,” Pettigrew countered, though not confidently. “You would have to wait weeks for another plant to set up.”
“Not weeks,” said Erin. “Days, possibly. This isn’t Sol—there is very little red tape. But on the other hand, we’ve already been waiting days for your company to fulfill its contractual obligations, haven’t we? So what difference would it make? Except that I really would take great pleasure in seeing your company closed down, and you yourself banned from ever holding another directorship.” Erin folded her arms. “What’s it to be? I’m happy either way, though personally I’m more on the side of giving someone else the chance to fill the government’s order. What do you think, Bourke?”
A wide grin split his lips. “That would make me very happy, too.”
Pettigrew’s expression darkened. Her lips worked like she had something she needed to spit out, but all she said was, “We’ll have the order filled tomorrow.”
“What a shame,” said Erin, knowing that meant Pettigrew had likely already manufactured the order. “Nevermind, Bourke. Looks like she’s smarter than she seems.”
Inviting the head engineer to accompany her back to the space elevator site, she left without another word to the company owner. As soon as they were in the groundcar, she said, “The cheek of some people. ‘The old contracts no longer apply’? What lawyer told her that, I wonder?”
“Sorry I couldn’t sort out the problem sooner,” Bourke said. “I got everything ready and went there last week fully expecting to be able to collect the shipment within hours. Instead, I’ve been arguing with Pettigrew for days. I know how busy you are with all the projects, so I didn’t want to bother you. I thought I could talk her around and make her see how stupid she was being.”
“No need to apologize,” Erin replied. “You don’t have the authority to make the threats I did. But if you encounter something similar again, just let me know. I am busy, or I am at the moment anyway, but only because we need to get the infrastructure plan back on track. You won’t be bothering me. This is exactly the kind of problem I need to hear about.”
She accompanied Bourke back to the worksite, where she reviewed his plans and made sure that there was nothing else holding him up. Once satisfied that the work would resume the next day, she left him to prepare for the delivery of the nanotubes. She then took the shuttle back to Landfall, and arrived back at Government House at the same time she received Tanis’s packet containing her reply.
Erin, thanks for the update. Glad to hear that you and Sasha are OK. Though you should have arranged for stronger backup, you did the right thing in trying to capture this traitor. He’s a menace and he needs to be found, or else every time we use pico, we’ll be looking over our shoulders.
I’ve cut short my inspection and am on my way back to Carthage as I write this, but I don’t want you to wait for me to arrive before setting up another trap. I want to tempt our nefarious little burglar soon, before he has time to develop more sophisticated methods of infiltrating our security.
Pick another project where you can use picotech. No need to advertise the fact. Hart seems to have a way of finding things out for himself, and if we make it too obvious, he’ll become suspicious.
