Marines used cases of this sort for transporting sensitive orders and information. I could hold a gun to the latch and fire without so much as scratching it. The metallic outer shell was laser-resistant as well, but I wouldn’t need a laser to open this particular case. I stroked my finger across the lock, and the latch popped open. It knew my fingerprints, and I knew its contents.
Resting in the center of the case I found a bandage-shaped strap made out of stiff cloth—an encryption bandit. It was a device used for hijacking information from enemy computers, a little decoder and memory unit. This particular bandit had recently returned from the undersea cities the Unifieds had been occupying as bases. I knew where it had been because I was the one who had taken it down there—right before our Navy destroyed those cities.
I said, “This case belonged to Hunter Ritz.” Not even a week had passed since we had found Ritz’s body in an abandoned transport.
Tasman had not yet heard about Ritz’s death; MacAvoy had. He asked, “How would Rhodes have gotten his hands on Ritz’s case?”
I said, “Take a wild guess.”
MacAvoy growled, and said, “Not a chance. I got a look at Rhodes when they lifted him off the transport; he couldn’t have killed Ritz. The son of a bitch was whimpering like a new recruit.”
“Good point,” I said. “Maybe he had help.”
“A lot of help,” said MacAvoy. “He’d have been too afraid to take on Ritz on his own.”
Perry MacAvoy had good instincts, but this time I thought he was wrong. Granted, Rhodes’s brand of espionage had more to do with mathematics than combat, but he worked for the Intelligence Agency.
The general said, “Tell you what, Harris; I’ll leave the speck in a dark room to see if he squirms.” That was an old interrogation tactic, pretending to neglect prisoners, leaving them alone and scared, allowing their imaginations to get the best of them. Men on incapacitation cages tended to overthink their situations.
I showed MacAvoy and Tasman the encryption bandit, and asked, “Either of you ever seen one of these?”
MacAvoy pulled the remains of his cigar from his mouth, and said, “Yeah, I’ve seen one before. We do have intelligence units in the Army.” That answer sufficed. He knew, which embarrassed me because I hadn’t known what this device was the first time I saw it.
Tasman said, “Pretend like I’m an ignorant Marine clone. Humor me. What is it?”
I said, “It’s an encryption bandit. You attach this to enemy computers to duplicate their data.”
Tasman said, “There isn’t much room for storage, how much data can it hold?”
I had no idea, but apparently MacAvoy did. He said, “Bandits have crystalline-thread storage,” whatever that meant. “That little strip could have sucked the Pentagon computers dry.”
“How do we get the data off of it?” I asked.
“You’re going to need a special computer to unencrypt it. Bandits turn data into unreadable solid brick.”
“So where do we go to find a special computer?” I asked.
Tasman said, “Rhodes must have had one.”
I said, “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
MacAvoy grimaced and nodded. “Bad idea. Bad idea.”
“What?” asked Tasman.
MacAvoy said, “That’s a civilian agency, and he was one of the directors, so we know that the Unies infiltrated it. Who do you suggest we trust there?”
“I don’t trust any of them,” I said.
“None of them?” asked Tasman.
“How do you tell the loyal ones from the spies?” I asked.
“I have computers at Army Intel,” said MacAvoy.
“So does Hauser,” I said. Maybe it was because I was a Marine, but I always considered the Naval Intelligence more elite than its Army and Air Force equivalents. I laid down a little presidential edict, and said, “I want Hauser to take the first crack at it.”
I was the top dog. I had the most stars on my collar. That didn’t stop MacAvoy from asking a good question. In a somewhat stunned voice, he asked, “Are you planning to send this specker into space?”
The Unifieds had at least one spy ship, a cloaked Navy cruiser that might well be watching our every move. We had no idea what remained in their fleet. For all we knew, they could have had over a hundred self-broadcasting ships waiting cloaked and hiding in the wings. Our fleet had more ships than theirs, no doubt, but their cloaked ships could still intercept a lowly transport.
“All I’m saying,” MacAvoy continued, “is that I have computers downstairs in this very building. You see what I mean? You send that specker to Hauser, and you gotta load it on a transport and send it halfway to Mars. All that time we could be opening files and transcribing data. It’s something to think about.”
It was indeed something to think about. The information contained in the encryption bandit could list the extent of U.A. spying in our backyard. It might reveal plans for future attacks.
I asked, “Howard, how do you feel about bunking in the Linear Committee Building for the next little while?”
Without missing a beat, he asked, “Is it going to be safer than the Pentagon?”
I said, “You’ll be more secure than the gold in Fort Knox.”
Tasman narrowed his eyes, and said, “Fort Knox is empty. It’s been empty for centuries.” The man had the survival instincts of a rat. He said, “You said the Pentagon was secure. What makes the Linear Committee Building any safer?”
I said, “You’ll have me here to protect you.”
Tasman said, “Harris, you scare me more than all the rest of them.”
I said, “Haven’t you heard, I’m a Liberator; they can’t reprogram me.”
I thought about telling Tasman that he’d be a lot safer if he stopped leering at my girlfriend, then I realized that she really wasn’t my girlfriend. Hell, for all I cared, he could have her.
MacAvoy pulled a fresh cigar from his pocket, lit it, and said, “If Harris isn’t enough protection, I can scratch up some natural-borns to guard you.”
Tasman flashed his ugly gray teeth in a death’s-head grin, and asked, “How can you be sure they’ll stay loyal? If you don’t trust your own Intelligence Agency, whom can you trust?”
MacAvoy said, “You help us win this specked-up war, and we’ll keep you around until that testicle you call your ticker stops pumping. I doubt Tobias Andropov will make a similar offer.”
I didn’t know if it was MacAvoy’s callous attitude, his ineffable logic, or his mentioning Andropov, but Tasman caved in. He asked, “Can you get Ray Freeman to guard me?”
“He’s retired,” I said.
“I’d feel safer,” he said.
“I’ll ask,” I said, “but I can already give you his answer.” Then I slid the case to MacAvoy, and said, “You better get this started as quickly as you can.”
I walked as far as the elevator with Tasman and MacAvoy. Tasman said, “Make sure you call Freeman.” I said I would.
Sunny wasn’t anywhere to be found when I looked for her. I asked an aide, “Where’s the girl?”
He said, “She left you a note,” and handed me a folded piece of paper. Expecting an address or a phone number, I unfolded the page. The note said:
I made things good for you. I shared myself.
Good-bye, Wayson.
* * *
I didn’t know it yet, but we had already lost the war.
CHAPTER
SEVEN
I was home and settling down for the evening when I made the call. I started the conversation by saying, “They found Sunny.”
“Who found her?” asked Kasara.
I had left Sunny for another girl; well, I had planned to leave Sunny for another girl—Kasara. Kasara was an old flame who had come back into my life. Back before the universe turned itself inside out, Kasara had worked as a cocktail waitress on a planet called Olympus Kri—Emily Hughes’s old home. Back then, Kasara used to save every spare dime so she
could take annual vacations on Earth. When I first met her, she’d been spoiled, reckless, self-centered, and so pretty it hurt my eyes. In her, youth and beauty had created their own particular variety of glamour.
I’d met her as a newly minted U.A. Marine on leave. That was back when the Unified Authority owned the galaxy, back when we believed that the only threat to mankind was man himself. Time proved us wrong, but that’s history, I’m talking romance.
After the aliens started incinerating planets, the population of Olympus Kri was evacuated to a defunct spaceport. We’d relocated seventeen million New Olympians to a facility designed to serve as a revolving door through which six million travelers would pass per day. There the New Olympians stayed for an entire year, rationing food, sanitation, and privacy until they nearly ran out of hope.
That year had left Kasara thirty pounds lighter. She still barely ate. Her hair had thinned, and her breasts had all but vanished. Her arms and legs looked like sticks, like the limbs of an insect. Only ten years had passed since I first saw Kasara on the beach, but her face had aged twenty-five years. She’d become old and pensive well beyond her years.
I didn’t love her back when I first met her. She was scrub, a great girl for a one-night stand. Now, I thought that maybe I could love the woman that her suffering had unveiled. Hollow cheeks and thinning hair had given her a beauty that youth and energy had hidden.
Kasara didn’t worry about Sunny. Despite the pleasures Sunny offered, she hadn’t been able to hold on to me.
I said, “The Army found her,” and I explained that when MacAvoy sent his commandos to extract Watson, they found Sunny as well. Then I told Kasara about Rhodes and the case Watson had taken from him, the case that had belonged to Hunter Ritz.
“Why didn’t you tell me Hunter died?” she asked.
“I didn’t think you’d remember him.”
“Of course I remember him; he wanted to shoot my uncle,” she said.
Her uncle was a gangster. He’d almost gotten me killed. Ritz and I kidnapped the bastard and drove him to an empty road, where I pulled out a gun and threatened to shoot him though I didn’t plan on pulling the trigger.
Kasara had come along for the ride.
“I was the one with the gun,” I said.
“He didn’t try to stop you.”
“I outranked him,” I said.
“I’m sorry about Ritz. I liked him,” she said. I believed her. This new Kasara didn’t have energy for bullshit; the old one, the young, pretty one, told people whatever they wanted to hear.
We were on an old-style communications console. I saw her face on a five-inch two-dimensional screen. Anyone in the world could have been listening in on us, including the Unifieds, my aides, and her gangster uncle.
Kasara asked, “Do you plan on getting back together with her?”
I shook my head, and said, “She left me a note.” I held the note up, and read it. “It says, ‘I made things good for you. I shared myself. Good-bye, Wayson.’”
Kasara said, “Jeez, what a bitch. What did you see in her?”
I asked, “What did I see in you back in Hawaii?”
Kasara asked, “That pretty?”
“Maybe even a little prettier,” I lied. Sunny was much prettier than Kasara had been.
She laughed because tales of the glamorous and beautiful Sunny Ferris didn’t scare her. She said, “Do you think she went home?”
“Not likely,” I said. “There’s nothing left; it was in a war zone.”
Kasara said, “Don’t worry, Harris, you’re still going to see her again.”
“And that doesn’t bother you?”
“No.”
“You sound confident.”
She said, “You don’t go for glamour girls.”
“I almost married Ava Gardner,” I pointed out.
“And how did that end?” she asked. Ava was the clone of a twentieth-century movie star. Before society turned its back on clones, she’d been the most lustworthy woman in Hollywood. The last time I saw her, she was a shut-in living in a luxury apartment on a planet scheduled for alien incineration. At her request, I left her to burn.
“Not so well,” I admitted.
I said, “You were glamorous,” and immediately realized how deeply I had sunk my foot in my mouth by using the word, “were.”
Kasara favored me with a condescending smile, and asked, “Are you going after her?”
“I’m not planning on it,” I said.
“Of course you are,” she said. She was right.
I said, “We may have the war all sewed up, maybe not the entire war, but this phase of it. The Unifieds aren’t putting up much of a fight. I expected more from them.”
She asked, “What did you find in Ritz’s case?”
“Baby, it could end the war,” I said.
I don’t know if the old Kasara would have minded being called “baby,” but the new Kasara didn’t think much of it. She gave me a sardonic smile and cocked an eyebrow.
I said, “I’d pay good money to see the Unifieds go away once and for all.”
“When are you coming down to the Territories?” she asked. “The Territories” referred to the landmass that the Enlisted Man’s Empire had ceded to the refugees of Olympus Kri. Some of my officers referred to them as “Martians.” It wasn’t as a term of endearment.
“If things keep going the way they are, it’s going to be soon,” I said. “Maybe next week. Maybe next month.”
I’d travel down to the Territories soon enough, but not for a romantic vacation. I’d also try to find Sunny, but not for the reasons Kasara imagined.
CHAPTER
EIGHT
Date: August 20, 2519
“Harris, I’m flying in.”
“You’re flying in from Mars?” I asked. Admiral Hauser seldom traveled to Earth. He couldn’t tear himself away from patrolling the inner third of the solar system.
“I’m coming in,” he said. “Not from Mars.”
“But you’re actually flying here, touching terra firma and breathing uncycled air?”
“Yeah, what about it?”
“You don’t make it back here very often,” I said. “Maybe I should queue up a parade.”
“We have serious business to discuss, Harris.”
It was like we had come from different dimensions to discuss the same war. After yesterday’s skirmish, I saw the world in happy, glowing colors. The Unifieds were on the run. I had my encryption bandit. In my heart of hearts, I believed it held a treasure trove of information.
I wondered what war Hauser was fighting.
Something about the way he watched me made me nervous. He hadn’t flown all the way from Mars for a friendly chat. He kept plowing ahead. It had a sobering effect on me. He said, “Harris, my shuttle should arrive at 14:00. We need to arrange a summit. We’ll need MacAvoy and Strait in attendance as well.”
I said, “Tom, we’re on the cusp of winning this thing. The Mogats are gone. The aliens are gone. The Unifieds are just about played out. I already told you that MacAvoy recovered the data I captured in the Cousteau undersea city.
“Tasman’s working on it right now. I bet he’s half-done by the time you arrive.”
He said, “I hope you’re right. In the meantime, set up that summit.”
That sounded dangerously close to an order. Here I was the highest-ranking officer and the acting president, and he was giving me orders . . . and I didn’t care. I asked, “What are you hiding from me?”
“Harris, if I could talk about it, I would.”
Security.
U.A. stealth cruisers could slip into our territory undetected, and I’d seen their eavesdropping arrays.
I said, “We’ll have a car waiting for you.”
* * *
My bad day quickly got worse.
Not even an hour after my chat with Hauser, MacAvoy called, and asked, “Wayson, you got a minute?”
I said, “I’m a bit busy here.�
��
“I’m in Tasman’s lab.”
“With Tasman?” I asked.
“Can you come down?”
Maybe my paranoia had gotten the better of me. I woke up with a solid strategy for expanding our hold on the east side of the Anacostia. I had even started thinking of ways to go after the U.A. Fleet. Now all my enthusiasm vanished.
“I’ll be right down,” I said.
I took a deep breath and steeled myself. Things had started to fall apart around me, and it appeared that the avalanche had only begun. I didn’t run to the elevator, but I walked fast, fast enough to catch my aide’s attention as I left my office.
Watching me from his desk, he asked, “General, is everything okay?”
I didn’t answer; I had things on my mind.
The elevator only went down three floors, but the ride seemed to take forever. I didn’t strum my fingers or tap my feet, but my mind sorted through the range of topics MacAvoy and Tasman might bring up. Maybe the Unifieds had constructed a bomb beneath D.C. Maybe the U.A. Fleet had more ships than we thought. Could the Unifieds have found the aliens and allied with them? Ridiculous propositions played out in my head.
The doors of the elevator opened. MacAvoy stood waiting for me. MacAvoy cupped his right hand into a fist and coughed into it. In his left hand, he carried a mug of what usually would have been coffee. Instead, it carried an unidentifiable, orange-colored sludge.
I asked, “What is that?”
“It’s an old Army cure,” he said.
“Are you sick?” I asked.
“I woke up with a cough.”
We entered MacAvoy’s Intelligence division. Teams of officers surrounded every desk, sitting so close together that their legs were touching.
“Is it medicine?”
“This stuff’s for soldiers,” he said, a note of pride in his voice. “It’s flu fighter.”
“What’s in it?” I asked.
“Shit,” he said.
“What kind of shit?”
“All kinds of shit . . . carrots, bell peppers, spinach, garlic, and cayenne pepper, and a little specking esprit de corps.”
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