by Titan Books
“That holds true for both of us.” Smiling, Bevridge leaned back to regard the woman standing beside the sergeant. “In case it hasn’t already been said formally, Private Rosenthal—welcome to Weyland-Yutani and the Covenant colonization mission.”
She nodded once and returned her attention to the river. Her blasé reaction to Bevridge’s pronouncement only served as further confirmation of Lopé’s choice. No matter what the mission, the less chatty his backup, the more effective they tended to be.
* * *
Later, having parted from both Bevridge and Rosenthal, Lopé took to wandering the streets of the city. As he strolled, he noted and committed to memory everything from the flowing lights of the Victoria Station tower complex to a weathered plaque marking the site of the first public drinking fountain in Britain.
He was enjoying a quick lunch of the British national dish, curry, when his comm unit signaled an incoming call. The tenor of the tune indicated that it was personal enough for him to set his take-out down on the bench where he was sitting and take a moment to answer.
It was a small perk but one that was highly valued by those on the Covenant. All members of the crew had free round-the-clock comm access to anywhere on Earth, for any length of time. Besides being good publicity for Weyland-Yutani, emphasizing the company’s empathy for its employees, it also had a practical side—there was no point in charging for calls when any overdue bills had zero chance of being collected.
So Lopé accepted the incoming communication without hesitation, knowing that neither he nor Hallet had to watch the number of minutes. The voice on the other end came through with remarkable clarity, a testament to modern communications technology. Lopé had experienced more distortion in local calls made to other parts of Greater London.
“Lopé here,” he murmured at the unit’s pickup.
“Don’t be so damn formal, Dan.” Hallet’s tone was relaxed, as usual. “You workin’?”
The sergeant looked around. No one in the surging crowd representing people from all over the planet was paying him the least attention. If anyone was following him, they were damned good at their job.
“I’ll be working until I’m in deepsleep. How are things with you?”
“Up in the air.” It was a cheap joke, often repeated by those on the Covenant. “It’s been quiet ever since our angry employee went pffft. What’s new downstairs?”
“There have been a number of interesting developments.” Lopé chose his words carefully. Though his comm unit was as secure as Weyland-Yutani could make it, he had learned through long experience to assume that no communication could be completely secured. It was better that way. Where electronic interaction was concerned, paranoia was your friend.
“I can’t go into detail right now,” he continued. “Everything is dirt-bound, anyway. Nothing directly involving the ship. With luck, the problem will be taken care of before departure. If it isn’t, well, any lingering troubles will have to be handled without my input. Between you and me, I get the feeling there are folks down here who’ll be disappointed to see me go. I’ve validated my hire, anyway. You sure you’re okay?”
“Normal as normal can be up here, but busy. Mostly running security checks on the final deliveries. Oram and Karine are supervising the placing of the last batches of colonists into deepsleep. Even so, I wish you’d get your butt back up here, man. Why not just let the people do their jobs?”
The sergeant took a deep breath. “I could go for that, but I feel obligated to do what I can to help for as long as I’m down here.”
“You have other obligations besides to the company,” Hallet quietly reminded him.
“I won’t be dealing with this much longer. Promise.” He tried to sound reassuring. “Being part of Covenant security, and not ground-based, I can bring some different insights to the process. Besides, what’s happening here directly impacts the safety of the mission, and so it’s my responsibility.” He paused, then added, “We’re gonna be in deepsleep for a long time. I don’t want to have any bad dreams because I left the situation here unresolved.”
Hallet’s sigh came through clearly from the other end.
“If you think it’s that important, then I suppose you ought to see it through,” he said. “I wish it were otherwise, but I understand.”
The call concluded with a few familiar pleasantries. Disconnect was mutual. Still, the chat left Lopé with mixed emotions. He was happy, as always, to have heard from Hallet. At the same time, he’d meant what he said about wanting—about needing—to see the threat dealt with before he would feel comfortable returning to the ship.
It only made him angrier at whoever was behind the attempt to prevent the Covenant’s departure. The enmity felt personal now, and not just because there had been two attempts on his life.
XIX
Hideo Yutani should have been happy.
The home team, the Yakult Swallows, were up nine to six over the Hanshin Tigers in the top of the seventh inning. Below the ceiling of the covered stadium, a projected three-dimensional ad for one of Weyland-Yutani’s products was playing. Perceptive audience feedback indicated that sixty-three percent of the fans in the seats were aware of it.
Though his favorite pitcher, Haruo Otani, had been knocked out early, the Swallows had come back with two home runs in the fifth inning. Now it was a battle of relief pitchers and attrition.
Yutani lamented the fact that unlike the managers of both teams, there was no relief pitcher for him to call upon.
It wasn’t as if it was a new sensation. He had been more or less on his own since the age of seventeen. From a modest beginning had grown the great company that was the Yutani Corporation. The merger with Weyland had been his crowning achievement. The departure of the colony ship Covenant would be his proudest moment.
Assuming it went forward.
Someone did not want that to happen. Someone or some organization was doing everything in its power to prevent it. Efforts had been made to induce suspicion and paranoia among his own employees, to persuade them that Weyland people were sabotaging the men and women of Yutani. While the Jutou Combine was far from exonerated, it seemed as if other elements were in play. The latest information from London was almost as confusing as it was encouraging. His security people there were onto something. They just didn’t know what.
The triad of executives who ran Jutou were fanatical about business, but they were not fanatics in a more general sense. As much as he admired someone like Zhang, he did not see her authorizing, much less ordering, any of the Combine’s employees to kill themselves in order to carry out a company directive.
The conundrum was that neither he nor Davies nor any of his underlings could imagine another organization besides Jutou, with the will and power to carry out the attempts that had been made. Having failed to stop or even slow down the scheduled departure of the Covenant, he worried about what increasingly desperate fanatics might try next.
How far would they go to achieve their ends? Did they have access to atomics? Chemical weapons? If some Weyland-Yutani employees died stopping them, that could be covered up, but hundreds of colonists were already in deepsleep on board the ship. If any of them were harmed, the resulting publicity would…
“Father?”
Seated nearby in the company’s private sky suite, Jenny Yutani eyed him with concern. Though he concealed his emotions with skill born of long practice in complex business negotiations, she could read him better than anyone. In the space of days he had gone from upbeat, to depressed, to all but frantic over her kidnapping, then to upbeat again over a meeting at a restaurant that, had it not been an old friend, could have turned out very badly.
Now he was brooding anew. While he had access to the best doctors and medicine money could buy, he wasn’t a young man. The joy that had accompanied the successful merging of Yutani and Weyland had given way to a deepening concern over recent incidents.
Nomo promptly hit a triple for the Swallows, scoring a
run and padding their lead. The stadium went wild, but in the private box all was subdued.
“Father,” she said again, more forcefully this time, “are you all right? Is there something I can do?”
“What?” Rousing himself, he managed a smile in her direction. “No, no, Jenny, I’m fine. Just thinking, that’s all.”
“I know what you’re thinking about,” she told him reproachfully, “and if you go on ‘thinking’ like this, you’ll have a stroke. It won’t matter if the Covenant leaves or not if you die before it departs.”
“Wise observation,” he replied, still smiling. “Easy to say, not so easy to accept.” At a nudge from one finger, his chair slid back from its position overlooking the stadium and the action on the field. “I’m going to talk to your mother.”
“Now?” She gestured toward the playing field. “The game will be over soon.”
“Not the way both teams are hitting. It’s exciting, but I just can’t let myself go long enough to get into it. I thought maybe coming to a game would help, but until the situation involving the Covenant is resolved, it is hard for me to think of anything else.” Rising from the chair, which started to follow him until he gestured for it to remain still, he came over to where she was seated, bent, and planted a gentle kiss on her forehead. “Enjoy the game for me, daughter. If I am not back in time for the last inning, I will relive it through you.”
She sighed resignedly. “I hope this unpleasant business is concluded soon. For your sake.”
Grinning, he wagged an admonishing finger. “For the company’s sake.”
She slid a hand toward a control panel set in an arm of her own chair. “Do you want me to put down the privacy screen? Shut out the game noise?”
“No. You enjoy for me.” Raising a hand, he ran it back through thinning black hair. “I have my own privacy screen.”
As he turned and walked toward the back of the executive suite he knew she was worried about him. It could not be helped. He could hide his feelings from others, but not from her. Sakiko had been the same way, aware of his true emotions no matter how hard he tried to hide them, perceptive in that pseudo-telepathic fashion known only to wives.
His underlings and executives were skilled, competent, even sympathetic, but none of them was a partner like Sakiko.
The back room of a private suite in a baseball stadium would have struck some as a strange place in which to keep a loved one’s cremated remains, but where Hideo was a willing fan of the game, Sakiko had been committed. Instructions for the location of her haka, her grave, had been explicit. They had discussed it in some detail when the sickness had turned serious. Locating the haka in the stadium was a compromise, since he had drawn the line at scattering her ashes on the pitcher’s mound.
The lighting in the small room was appropriately subdued. Several small pillars and tablets stood grouped together near the back wall. All had been cut and polished from solid African malachite—green had been Sakiko’s favorite color. Taking a large bottle of fresh water from a nearby cabinet he proceeded to clean everything, then used traditional bucket and dipper to perform the purifying kiyomeru. In lieu of fresh flowers there was a profusion of artificial orchids and other exotic blooms that had been hand-wrought with such skill that they were impossible to tell from the real thing. Adjustable electronic candles glowed inside the twin silver holders. They brightened automatically at his approach.
Taking a stick of self-igniting incense from an open box, he flicked it alight and placed it lovingly in the empty holder. As there was still green tea in the open crystal decanter nearby, he felt no need to add more.
Kneeling before the haka, he sat back on his ankles, pressed his fingers together in front of him, closed his eyes, and bowed. These days his ankles hurt when he knelt in the proper position, but as always he ignored the pain, joking to himself that Sakiko would have appreciated the sacrifice. Straightening, he put his hands on his hips and regarded the grave.
“I have no offering for you today, Sakiko, save that the Swallows are winning.” He smiled to himself. “Knowing you, that should be enough. Meanwhile, the problem I spoke to you about last time remains and I—I don’t know what to do. We still do not know who is responsible and, not knowing, there is no way to direct a response. It seems as if our people are getting closer to an answer, but the departure time for the ship is also growing nearer. This interference has to be eliminated.
“The Jutou Combine is still under suspicion, but it seems as if other forces may be at work. While our people continue to work hard to find the necessary answers, there are no specifics as yet on which we can act.” He shook his head slightly. “I cannot move, cannot give orders, without specifics. I am a general whose troops must dodge incoming arrows, but who cannot see the enemy bowmen.”
He stayed like that until the pain in his knees and ankles threatened to turn them numb. The last thing he wanted to have to do was hit the wall-mounted emergency button that would bring someone into the room to help him stand. It required a bit of a struggle, but he managed to rise to his feet on his own.
“I miss you, Sakiko. I miss your counsel, your touch, your smile. I miss you jumping up and down like a child when one of the Swallows hits a home run or steals a base. I miss the way you looked at company functions, wearing your gowns and jewels. I even miss your nagging, which was usually but not always grounded in some truth. I miss…”
He stopped. It would not do to return to the game with tears in his eyes. He was Hideo Yutani, CEO and president of the Weyland-Yutani corporation. Men in his position did not cry. They gave orders in a quiet but stern voice. They commanded respect. Even while watching a baseball game.
His people here and in London were closing in on whoever was behind the repeated attempts to destroy the mission. They had to be. The departure of the Covenant could not be delayed, much less cancelled. Those who were trying to stop its departure would be identified. Then they would be dealt with.
Quietly but sternly.
Once more he bowed. Then he turned and left the room and the glowing electronic lights and the smell of expensive incense. Leaving them to a part of his life he had been forced to put behind him.
Another part of that life was waiting anxiously for his return. Spinning her chair, Jenny Yutani almost rose to embrace her father, but decided against it. She knew the display might unsettle him, which would be counterproductive. He could be affectionate, but immediately after communing with his dead wife wasn’t the best time to seek such reassurance. Even a man as tough as Hideo Yutani was not immune to emotional excess.
Seeing her expression, however, he hastened to reassure her. “I’m better now. Being in the presence of your mother always helps to relax me.”
“That’s not what you used to say when she would follow you around the house screaming at you.”
The smile remained. “Your mother never screamed at me. She simply emphasized the points she wished to make, and did it in an elevated tone of voice.” He nodded toward the field. “How is the game progressing?”
She made a face. “Not good. Otami hit a grand slam for the Tigers. We’re only up one run now.”
“Damn.” He resumed his seat nearby. “I’m not in the mood for extra innings.”
“I’ll check the defibrillator.” She smiled. “Never let it be said that I didn’t look after my father.”
He had to laugh, albeit softly. “I feel fine, really. Let’s watch the rest of the game.”
It took eleven innings, but the Swallows won on a steal of home off a bunt single. When the game was over he had dinner delivered to the suite. Over synthetic veal, vegetables, and wine sourced from some of the last surviving vineyards in New Zealand, he was comfortable enough again to ask her opinion. Though he never referred to it as advice, only opinion, both of them knew exactly how he felt about her counsel.
“The investigation appears to be progressing in London,” he told her as they awaited a small dessert.
“Then what
’s the problem?” She sipped her Perrier, a wonderful product and company Yutani Corporation had purchased decades earlier.
“It is not progressing fast enough.” Picking his napkin off his lap, he tossed it onto the table. He didn’t feel like dessert. Jenny could have his as well as her own, if she wished. “The closer the time comes for the Covenant to depart, the more uneasy I become.”
She considered. “Everything these unknown people have tried so far has failed.”
“True, but their efforts grow bolder, and thus far we have been fortunate. If not for the tracking devices embedded in your shoes and your coolness in deploying them, the attempt to abduct you might have succeeded. If not for the experience and awareness of our employees—Daniels on the Covenant and Sergeant Lopé in London—either of those efforts might have succeeded.” Sitting up straighter, he folded his hands on the table and eyed her earnestly. “One can play pachinko all day and win, and then rapidly lose everything. You know me, Jenny. I dislike relying on something as insubstantial as luck.”
Dessert arrived in the form of two small cups of freshly made green tea sorbet flavored with pomegranate. His daughter finished one in less than a minute before settling down to a more leisurely reduction of the second.
“Can we tighten security any more?” she asked.
He shook his head and looked away, distracted. “Security on the Covenant cannot be locked down any further. We have instigated serious changes in boarding procedures at the two departure sites. I am assured it’s not possible for anyone with inimical intentions to get on board the shuttles that are running people and supplies to the ship.”
Pausing the petite, sorbet-laden spoon halfway to her mouth, she frowned slightly. “How can even the best security determine someone’s intentions? I can see discovering a weapon or an explosive, but—a hostile intention? Do we now have devices that can divine someone’s purpose?”
“You know what I mean,” he replied impatiently. “We have security people who are trained to watch and if necessary to interrogate those who are boarding the shuttles. Admittedly the system is not perfect, but it has worked effectively in the past.”
