Her answering smile reminded him of a shark preparing to feed. A shark with cherry-glossed lips. “I don’t normally inform people in advance that they’ve been selected.”
“Selected?”
She sat down in one of the couches, leaving him standing in the middle of the lounge. “Do you like your job, Mr. Vernon?”
“Look! Who the hell are you?”
“I work for the Sheldon Dynasty. What does it bring in? A couple of grand a month?”
Thoroughly irritated, he snapped, “More than that, actually.”
“No it doesn’t, Mark, I’ve seen your contract.”
“That’s confidential.”
She laughed. “At your current level of earning, and extrapolating a mild level of promotion, it’ll take you about eighty years to pay off the loan for your house and franchise garage on Elan. That doesn’t take in factors like paying for the kids’ college fees, and your own R and R pension.”
“We’ll get compensation, eventually.”
“Granted, if the Commonwealth still exists in ten years’ time, they might pass a bill letting you off the interest payments. Anything else: stop fooling yourself.”
“Prism Dynamics is just temporary. I’ll get a better job than that.”
“That’s exactly what I want to hear, Mark. I’ve come to tell you I’ve got that better job all lined up for you.”
“And what would that be?” Liz asked. She was standing in the lounge doorway, wearing a T-shirt and cutoff jeans. But there was a fixed look on her face that Mark was familiar with. When Liz made up her mind not to like someone, they were frozen out of this life and the next.
“It’s confidential, I’m afraid,” Giselle Swinsol said. “Once you sign up, then you will be told.”
“Ridiculous,” Liz said. She sat down on a long leather couch opposite the woman, and tugged gently at Mark’s arm. He sank down beside her. The three beers he’d drunk in quick succession out on the terrace were starting to buzz in his head. His e-butler told him a file had arrived, sender Giselle Swinsol. When he opened it, an employment contract slipped down his virtual vision. The salary made him blink in surprise.
“It is far from being ridiculous,” Giselle Swinsol said. “We take our security very seriously indeed. You have already proved your discretion.”
“Ozzie’s asteroid?” Mark asked. “No big deal.”
“Even in today’s climate, the news shows would be very interested indeed in Mr. Isaac’s home.”
“I don’t get this,” Mark said. “I’m not some superphysicist. I repair machinery. What’s so important about that? Millions of us do it.”
“You’re actually very, very good at maintaining electromechanical systems, Mark. We checked. Thoroughly. The project you’ll be working on requires a great deal of robotic assembly. Although there are other factors which brought your name to our attention.”
“Such as?” Liz asked.
“Apart from respecting confidentiality, you have acute financial problems which we can remedy. If you agree to take this job, we will pay off every debt you accrued on Elan. Mrs. Vernon, you have the kind of biotechnology skills which we can utilize. It’s not as if we’ll expect you to act the dutiful housewife for the duration of the project. I’m sure that will make a pleasant change for you.”
Liz sat perfectly still. “Thank you.”
The contract was still flowing down Mark’s virtual vision. “If I say yes, where will we be based?”
“Cressat.”
“The Sheldon world? I didn’t think anyone else was allowed there,” Liz said.
“We are making exceptions for this project. However, we don’t have to in your case. Mark’s a Sheldon, that qualifies his whole family for residency.”
Mark tried not to flinch when Liz turned to stare at him. He’d never considered his heritage worth talking about; if anything it was mildly embarrassing. “Hardly direct lineage,” he muttered defensively.
“Your mother is only seven generations removed from Nigel. That’s good enough.”
“Wait,” Liz said. “This isn’t a navy project?”
Giselle Swinsol gave her a blank smile. “Mark?”
“What? You want an answer now?” he asked.
“Certainly.”
“But you’ve told me nothing.”
“You will be working in a job that will provide an excellent lifestyle for your family, far greater than the one you enjoyed on Elan. You will be rid of all your debts. And we absolutely guarantee your safety. The only downside will be restricted communications with your friends and immediate family. This project must remain secret.”
“I don’t like offers which are too good to be true,” Liz said. “They usually are.”
“Not so. This is on the level.”
“Is it dangerous?” Mark asked.
“No,” Giselle Swinsol said. “You will be working with sophisticated assembly systems. It is challenging, not dangerous. Look, this is not some game, Mark, I’m not in the business of going around defrauding people. In any case, I can’t scam you; you don’t have any money. This is a genuine offer. Take it or leave it.”
“How long is it for?” Mark asked.
“Difficult to say. Hopefully not more than a year, two at the outside.”
He glanced at Liz. “What do you think?”
“We’re broke. I can probably live with it. Can you?”
What he didn’t want to ask his wife was how much she’d been drinking that afternoon; alcohol tended to bring out a bullish streak in her, so she might well want to change her mind in the morning. Looking at Giselle Swinsol, he didn’t think there was any kind of second thoughts get-out clause being put on the table for them. The file was open at the part on health care and schooling. The contract he had with Prism Dynamics didn’t even have that section. “Okay, we’ll take it.”
“Excellent.” Giselle Swinsol got to her feet. “The car will pick you and the children up at seven-thirty tomorrow morning. Please be ready.”
“I’ll have to tell Prism Dynamics,” Mark said. The speed this was happening was leaving him disconcerted, almost as if he wanted an excuse to say no.
“That’ll be taken care of,” Giselle Swinsol said. “You can tell your immediate family you’ve got another job on a new planet. Please don’t tell them where you’re going.”
“Right.”
“Your certificate, Mark, please.”
“Oh. Yes.” He told his e-butler to add his certificate to the contract, and sent it back to her.
“Thank you.” She started for the hall.
“Will I see you tomorrow?” Mark asked.
“No, Mark, you won’t.”
The front door closed smoothly behind her. Mark ran his hand back through his hair. “Goddamn, what a ballbreaker.”
“Yeah, but one that’s saved our asses. I wonder what the project is?”
“Some big military production line. I guess that’s where the automated assembly comes in. They’re going to bypass High Angel; that was only ever about politics.”
“Could be.”
“You don’t believe that?”
“It really doesn’t matter. We’ll find out for sure tomorrow.”
“You sorry I said yes? We could always not turn up.”
“I wouldn’t like to try that, not with Ms. Giselle Swinsol on our asses.”
“Guess not.”
“But you did the right thing. I just didn’t like the way she tried to bump us into saying yes. Then again, I suppose if you are building military systems right now, you can’t afford to waste any time.”
“Yeah. You know, I think I feel good about this already. I’m doing something to hit back at the bastards.”
“I’m glad, baby.” Liz put her arm around his neck, and pulled him close for a kiss. “How come you never told me you’re a Sheldon?”
“I’m not, really. Not part of the Dynasty, anyway.”
“Humm.” She kissed him again. “So what do we
do till half past seven tomorrow?”
***
Oscar and Mac arrived outside Wilson’s office at the same time. Anna rose from behind her desk to kiss them both.
“He’s ready for you,” she told them.
“So how’s married life?” Mac asked.
“Oh, you know, we’re just like any other couple trying to pay off the mortgage.”
“Screw that,” Oscar said. “What was the honeymoon like? Spill it.”
Anna glanced back over her shoulder and gave him a saucy wink. “Euphoric, of course. An entire ten hours out of the office. What more could any girl want?”
Wilson greeted both of them warmly. “Thanks for coming. I try to see each captain before they leave. I don’t suppose it’s a tradition that’ll last much longer. We’re really starting to get a rush of components through for the next batch of starships. The emergency budget is showing some results, thank God.”
“Some good news,” Oscar said as he lowered himself cautiously into one of the scooplike chairs. He hated anything with so much spongy padding. “I haven’t seen that on the unisphere shows. They’re still busy navy-bashing.”
“You won’t,” Wilson said. “We’re holding back on specifics. We don’t know how much information the Primes glean from the unisphere.”
“Are you serious?”
“They must be trying to keep themselves updated about our capabilities,” Anna said. “We have to assume they datamined the Lost23. They know what we had at the time of the attack.”
“We’re watching them,” Wilson said. “QED.”
“Have we had any indication they’re running a surveillance operation?” Mac asked.
“Not as such. But then they haven’t spotted ours, yet.”
“I haven’t spotted ours yet,” Oscar protested.
“Rafael’s running it.” Anna gave him a teasing smile. “We’ve released hundreds of thousands of microsatellites in each system. It’s similar to the technique they used against us, open a wormhole and keep moving the end point. They can detect it, but they can’t investigate each opening.”
“So a lot of the satellites survive,” Wilson said. “They report back to us on a constant basis through the wormhole.”
“Information we are also keeping from the unisphere,” Anna said. “What the satellite swarms are showing us isn’t good.”
“They’re digging in on each of the Lost23,” Wilson said. “Wormholes have now been anchored on the planetary surfaces. The amount of equipment and aliens coming through is quite phenomenal, even by what we understand as Prime standards. Dimitri Leopoldovich was quite right, damn him; we’re not going to reclaim those planets.”
“So do we cancel the planetary section of the counterattack?” Mac asked.
“No. We’re sure the Lost23 are the strategic bases for the next Prime attack. The buildup is so massive it can’t be for anything else. Once they’re established, they can strike anywhere inside the Commonwealth, not just the nearby stars. If anything, that makes infiltrating and sabotaging them even more important. We need to buy time.” He looked directly at Oscar. “We have got to find the star where the Hell’s Gateway leads. It’s the one truly weak point they have.”
“Do my best,” Oscar said. He didn’t like the way Wilson was almost pleading with him. “The Defender will get to each of those stars on our flight’s search list, you can count on that.” It sounded defensive, even to him.
“I know I can,” Wilson said. “Mac, you’ve drawn the easy straw this time.”
“Well, there’s a surprise,” Oscar taunted his friend. “What have you got for him, Boss? Guarding a convent school on Molise?”
Mac politely showed him a finger. “Up yours.”
“You’re going to be testing the relativistic missiles, a long way from Commonwealth space. Now that the Primes have seen what we can do with the hyperdrive they’ll be coming up with defensive strategies. But if these missiles live up to their promise, even they will be hard-pressed to ward them off.”
“We’ll iron any bugs out,” Mac told him.
“Good. I’ve also decided this will be the last flight for StAsaph,” Wilson said.
“Why?”
“She’s obsolete, Mac, I’m sorry. By the time you get back we’ll be starting assembly of the new warships with the marque six hyperdrive. I want you in the captain’s seat on the first.”
“That’s a deal I can live with,” Mac said.
Oscar nearly complained. Doesn’t this navy believe in seniority? But that would have come out churlish, even from him.
“And when you get back,” Wilson said, “you’re heading up the assault cruiser project.”
“Who, me?” Oscar said.
“Yeah, you. It’s going to be our eventual war winner, Oscar. I’m not kidding. They’re putting so many new technologies into the damn thing that even I don’t know half of them. Sheldon’s got every Dynasty collaborating on this. That’s leading to a lot of friction on the overall management team. If anyone’s got the experience to pull that team together and make it work, it’s you.”
“Hell.” Oscar actually felt a burst of gratitude that made his throat close up. He would never ask for so much responsibility. Yet Wilson trusted him with it, and Sheldon must have approved of the appointment, too. “Thanks, Boss. I won’t let you down.” Stupid sentimentalist. Then he thought about Adam, and the recordings he was planning to take on the reconnaissance flight. His cheeks began to flush from the guilt.
“You okay?” Anna asked.
“Sure.”
“For a moment there, you looked embarrassed.”
“Him?” Mac exclaimed. “I don’t think so. Forgotten a date, yes.”
“At least I can get dates,” Oscar shot back. It was too late; the moment was gone. If there was anybody in the world he could trust to explain about Adam and his own past, it was these three friends. He smiled broadly to cover his true emotions. Just who am I afraid of? Them, or me?
***
The simulation environment was almost perfect. Morton had been wetwired for TSI before, of course, but this was an order of magnitude above that simple consumer convenience. There were unisphere artistes who couldn’t afford this level of sensorium quality. The navy technicians had even equipped him for smell, notoriously the most difficult human sense for a program to duplicate correctly. Even now it wasn’t perfect: the smell of the smoke was more like citrus than burning wood.
He was walking through the ruins of a town, wearing an armored suit with electromuscle augmentation. It was the only way he could carry the weight of all the armaments the navy expected him to take with him. Boosted senses swept the piles of concrete and shattered composite panels. His virtual vision flipped orange brackets up over possible targets, which he found immensely irritating. The assessment software needed to be completely rewritten. One item in a depressingly long shakedown list.
Electrical power cables showed up as neon-sharp blue lines threading their way beneath the road. Electronic systems radiated a green-blue aurora, whose intensity varied in tandem with the array processing size. Something else he didn’t like; he’d already asked the technical support staff to change that to a simple digital readout. Then there was the atmosphere analysis graphic. Electromagnetic signal display. Radar. Remote sensor windows, relaying images of the surrounding area from the little sneekbots scampering on ahead. Communications network with his squad members, coupled with all their sensor results.
His virtual vision was so cluttered with multicolored symbols and pictures it resembled some cathedral’s stained-glass window. It was a wonder he could see through it at all.
The mission was supposed to be a quiet infiltration of an alien base, which was being built at the heart of the old human town. Make the assessment, locate the weak points, and select the appropriate weapons to inflict maximum damage. The rest of the squad was spread out along a loose front nearly a kilometer long, each one using a different approach route, which Morton
considered a tactical mistake; it produced a much greater risk that one of them would be spotted.
The squad’s official designation was ERT03 after the planet and location they were assigned, though they called themselves Cat’s Claws after their most notorious member. All of them were convicted felons who had agreed to serve in exchange for their sentence being commuted. In theory none of them had a record anymore, but talk in the barracks at night generally brought out a hint or two, or more. Doc Roberts, for example, was quite proud of his syndicate involvement, wiping inconvenient memories from anyone who had something to hide. Unfortunately he’d tried to make a little extra money on the side by selling some of the memories on the snuff market, which is how the Serious Crimes Directorate had eventually caught up with him. The court agreed he was an accessory after the fact. Morton sometimes speculated that Doc had been the one who wiped his own awkward little incident.
Right now, according to the squad deployment schematic, the Doc was maneuvering his way through a collapsed supermarket four hundred meters west. Next to him was Rob Tannie, who would only say he had been involved in the attempt to blow up the Second Chance. Nothing concerning his earlier life or lives was on offer. He called himself a security operative. Morton believed him. He had an easy grasp of tactics in most situations the training team put them in, and clearly knew how to handle himself in a fight.
Parker was the second biggest worry Morton had. He had been some kind of enforcer, though he wouldn’t say for whom. He loved the weapons they were being wetwired with, and went on in loving detail about the best way to use them to kill silently and effectively. Basically, he was a thug who lacked finesse in every department. Working as part of a team was difficult for him, which he didn’t make a lot of effort to remedy.
And then there was “the Cat” Stewart. She never talked about what she’d done, which made everyone else quietly thankful. They all knew, and they really didn’t want the details. As yet, Morton simply didn’t know what to make of her. When she wanted to, she could be a perfect squad member, contributing a hundred percent to completing the mission objectives successfully. She didn’t do that all the time, though.