Fire with Fire: Chapter Four

ODYSSEUS

    Rocking in unison with the wind-shear chop, Caine’s borrowed slouch hat flopped up and down against his upper back, the rawhide chinstrap tugging at his throat in time with the drumming downdrafts.

    “Sorry about this, Mr. Riordan,” the pilot called over his shoulder into the payload bay. “We’re over the coast and hitting some thermals. We should be out of it soon.”

    “Not a problem. How long to Shangri-La?”

    “Instruments are telling me five minutes, maybe a few more.”

    “What does human experience tell you?”

    “Nothing, sir: only made this run once before, about a year ago. Then, no more.”

    “What happened a year ago?”

    The vertibird shuddered, pitched down and sideways, righted. “CoDevCo came in, took over all the runs to and from the downport. Not real friendly about it, either. This is the first time they’ve let one of our planes into their airspace in six months.”

    “That’s a violation of the colonial ‘equal-use’ policy, isn’t it?”

    “I’m no lawyer, but it sure seems that way to me. If you’re done checking your gear, I’d recommend you strap in. We’ve got a few more –”

    The deck dove away from Caine’s feet at the same instant that the ceiling struck a quick downward blow: the impact against the top of his head made a sound like an iron hammer hitting an anvil. Felt like it, too.

    “Shit. Sir, are you –?”

    “I’m fine,” Caine lied, staying on hands and knees as he moved forward into the cockpit, letting the pulsing spots — and the dull hum between his ears — subside. He half-slid, half-crawled, into the copilot’s chair.

    The pilot stole a sideways look at him. “You sure you’re –?”

    “I’m fine.”

    “I really am sorry, sir. I should have warned you that –”

    “Listen: it’s my fault. Wasn’t like I needed to check the lashings on my gear a fourth time.”

    “What is all that stuff, anyway?”

    “Research materials.”

    Another sideways look from the pilot, skeptical this time. “Really? What kind of research do you do with a trail kit and a rifle?”

    Caine smiled. “Field research.” Caine wondered if the pilot had noticed any of the other unusual items. Besides the predictable collection of rations, salt pills, water purification tabs, and personal medkit, there were the less standard items: thermal imaging goggles, a multi-spectrum sensor kit, high-end photographic gear, a binary-propellant NeoCoBro machine pistol with heterogeneous clips that alternated between discarding sabot and expanding rounds, and a sealed gray-green canister covered with indecipherable abbreviations and acronyms — all stenciled in the dusty yellow block letters favored by the USSF. Well, if the pilot had seen the last two, it meant he had X-ray vision: they were buried under the mundane gear in the A-frame backpack.

    The pilot was still considering Caine’s explanation. “Field research, huh? Well, I hope you find what you’re looking for — before it finds you.” He looked away with a small, tight smile.

    Me, too. Hell, I just wish I really knew what I was looking for. “Is that the valley?”

    The pilot craned his neck to look further. “Yup. It’s pretty wide here; gets narrower, the further up you go.”

    The chop had subsided and the pilot banked to angle onto the valley’s southwest-to-northeast centerline, following a glittering blue ribbon that preceded them. Thick swaths of green hemmed it in its course, worked away from the river and up the sheltering slopes. Which grew steeper as they flew. Caine checked his watch; they were right on time. “Nice country.”

    The pilot nodded. “Seems so — but I’ve never had a chance to get out and see for myself.” He glanced at the dense jungle canopy scudding beneath them. “Not too safe on your own, even if you’re well armed. We can digest the flora and fauna here, so it only makes sense that they can return the favor. And from what I hear, some critters are pretty enthusiastic about doing so. The ones here in Shangri-La haven’t learned to fear guns yet, so shoot to kill: they won’t run away.”

    “Thanks. That’s good to know.”

    “You shoot much?”

    Caine shook his head, thought he saw a hint of right angles distressing the landscape up ahead. “Some. Not too often.”

    “Well, you might want to get in a little time at the range before you go into the bush. Adjust the sights, get a feel for the –”

    “Already did it, before we took off from Downport.”

    “Oh. I thought you said you don’t shoot much.”

    “I didn’t — until this afternoon.”

    The pilot smiled. “Yeah, I heard about your welcoming committee this morning. So now you’re ready to return the sentiments?”

    “Something like that.” Caine pointed at the horizon, now clearly sprouting low rectangular silhouettes in the middle of wide, squared clearings. “Is that — what do they call their base anyway?”

    “Site One: how’s that for an imaginative name? Typical bureaucrats. Yeah, that’s it up ahead.”

    “Looks like they’ve cleared a lot of the forest at that wide point.”

    The pilot was stretching to get a better look. “A whole hell of a lot more than I’ve seen — or heard about.”

    Well off to the north, nestled up against the skirts of the low hills on that side, were what appeared to be a cluster of towers. “Know anything about those?”

    The pilot shook his head. “Not a clue.”

    “How long until we land?”

    “They’ll be talking me toward a vertipad any second now.”

    Caine thought for a moment. Then: “You’ve made a mistake; you need to come around for another pass.”

    “Sir, we’re right on –”

    “I know what the instruments say. But I’m telling you: we’ve made a mistake; you need to circle around for another landing approach.”

    The pilot’s frown became a study in strained patience. “Sir, even if I knew what the hell you’re talking about, please remember that this is a vertibird: we don’t make ‘approach runs,’ so I would never need to circle around for another landing attempt.”

    “Today you need to.”

    The beginning of the comchatter from Site One’s ground control was on general speaker. “Commonwealth Zero-Tango-Niner; you are correctly vectored for transition to vertical landing at Pad Two, coming to a range of ten kilometers at my mark. And…mark.”

    “Site One ATC, this is Commonwealth flight 0T9. I roger your telemetry, and am requesting confirmation for –”

    Caine made a throat-cutting gesture with his right hand. The pilot sighed, snapped off the transmitter. “Sir, what now?”

    “Tell him you don’t trust the gimballing servos on your thrusters; you want to make a runway landing, not vertical.”

    “Look, sir –”

    Caine pulled out the magic ID card that Downing had given him: this might be the one chance he’d get for close aerial reconnaissance of the site.

    The pilot looked over at the card — bored and a little annoyed — and had started to look away when his eyes grew wide, and he looked back. Quickly. As his eyes went through a high-speed back-and-forth scan of the ID and clearance card, his lips slowly dilated and contracted through the cycle of a soundless “Wow.”

    “Charlie Whiskey Zero-Tango-Niner: please say again. Your last transmission broke up.”

    The pilot turned the transmitter back on. “Site One ATC, I’m having problems reading you. Am also showing orange lights on the thrust vectoring panel: I’ll need to skip transition to vertical. Requesting emergency access to runway one.”

    “Negative, CW 0T9 — you do not have authorization for –”

    “Site One ATC, your commo is breaking up. Please say again.” He let the increasingly anxious ground controller get about half way through his denial for the runway landing request before speaking right over the top: “Site One ATC, I am no longer reading you. Please be advised: I am coming about bearing 235 true for approach to Runway One. Please signal ‘all clear’ by setting runway approach lights to strobe mode. CW 0T9 out.” The pilot snapped off the transmitter, banked the plane into a long, left-sweeping curve toward the towers, which now showed themselves as a cluster of girder frameworks. “Do you think they’ll buy it?”

    Caine leaned forward to get a better look at what appeared to be a quarry at Site One’s extreme northern perimeter. “Can’t say that I care.”

    Within five minutes of landing, Caine was being ushered into a room of uncompromising opulence. As he set his A-frame down next to the auto-closing door, he was careful not to scratch the wood-paneling. Is it ebony? No, apparently not. High overhead, descending from a vaulted ceiling reminiscent of Louis 14th enameled and gold-leafed grandeur, were two immense chandeliers. At the far end of the room was a dark wood desk large enough to pass as a small mesa. The man behind it — spare, trimly mustachioed, adjusting a data-link viewing monocle — waited: no motion suggested that he was prepared to close the distance to Caine, nor that he was even going to come around the end of his desk. So that’s the way it’s going to be –

    Caine took his time walking the length of the salon, studying its various appointments. By the time he reached the desk, the man behind it seemed less composed. Maybe he wasn’t used to waiting for his guests to approach, or maybe he had hoped that this guest would be indefinitely detained by a prior engagement with a bullet.

    “Welcome to Site One, Mr. Riordan.”

    “Thank you, Mr. –?”

    “Helger, Louis Helger. I am the Co-Administrative Manager of this joint facility.”

    “A ‘joint facility’?” That was another — and worrisome — new terminological twist: in another half year, CoDevCo would probably push out the EU altogether.

    Helger shrugged. “Very well: technically, Site One is a European Union colony with a full partnership extended to the Colonial Development Combine. However, we consolidated administrative operations when I arrived eight months ago. Too much duplication of effort, other inefficiencies. That is all behind us.”

    “I see. But which of the partners do you work for, Mr. Helger?”

    “I am an EU employee, Mr. Riordan, but I also have a history of employment with CoDevCo.”

    “Oh? What kind of history?”

    “Not that it is any business of yours, but I retired as the Regional Manager for Nordic operations, after having served as an Associate Product Manager for the prior eight years.”

    “Impressive.”

    Helger’s shrug seemed less genuine than his small, satisfied smile. “It was thought that as we moved toward joint operations here on Delta Pavonis Three, it would be best to appoint a person who also had extensive experience with CoDevCo project management.”

    “Well, that was clearly achieved. And the other half of your credentials are, I’m sure, equally impressive.”

    Helger’s face went protectively blank. “What other credentials are you referring to?”

    “Your prior experience as an EU administrator, of course.”

    Helger’s face did not change. “Mr. Riordan, I regret that I do not have time for a casual chat –”

    You mean you don’t want to admit that the first day you worked for the EU was the day you stepped onto the tarmac at the Dee Pee Three Downport.

    “– so I must ask that we constrain our discussion to official matters. Firstly, I have now received your dossier –”

    Obviously. If you hadn’t, you wouldn’t have let me set foot in your little fiefdom.

    “– and I must say I am somewhat puzzled: who, exactly, do you represent?”

    “Officially? No one.”

    Helger was clearly not prepared for such a frank admission. “Then how did you get this rather sweeping writ of cooperation from the European Union?”

    “That was a courtesy, provided at the request of Senator Tarasenko, head of the United States Congressional Committee on Strategic Space Initiatives.”

    “So you are an official representative of the US government? And not the Commonwealth in toto?”

    “Neither. I am not a representative of any one government, which is why the other Commonwealth nations — as well as the EU — were willing to accept me as a general observer.”

    “And your credentials are –?”

    “I am a researcher and a writer, Mr. Helger.”

    “So I see. But without any particular experience in xenobiology or –”

    “Mr. Helger, unless a large delegation was to be sent, there was no way to address all the specializations required for this investigation: xenobiology, xenozoology, evolutionary biology, anthropology, archeology, corporate and international law –”

    “Law? I’m not sure I understand.”

    “Mr. Helger, since you arrived here, there have been a number of legal irregularities which have caused friction back home. You’ve imposed airspace restrictions in direct contravention of international interstellar colonization accords, have constructed a separate downport which only serves your own carriers — another international violation — and conducted an independent regional survey that contradicted and dismissed the original planetary assessment. You then began resource exploitation in a zone which had been interdicted by the first survey — this zone that you now call the Shangri-La Valley. Clearly, these are matters that would ideally be handled by official representatives of, and legal counsel for, the various parties.”

    Helger sat; he did not invite Caine to do so. “I am afraid that is where your analysis is already flawed, Mr. Riordan. The survey was conducted by CoDevCo, not by the EU. Similarly, many of the restrictions and actions undertaken here at Site One have been according to orders sent from Earth by higher CoDevCo authorities. According to the co-administrative agreement with the EU, I must act upon those orders until the contradictions between our corporate prerogatives and national commitments are resolved through arbitration, back on Earth. Therefore, while I would be happy to lift the ban on access to our facilities, I cannot legally do so at this time.”

    Caine sat. “Mr. Helger, the wording of your joint agreement — of which I have a copy — quite explicitly states that the EU’s existing agreements with other parties take precedence over the authority of the co-administration. In short, the European Union’s commitment to the international colonization covenant comes first — no exceptions, no special clauses.”

    “I’m sorry we have such a difference of interpretation, Mr. Riordan, but I am not about to change my operations based on your reading of this contract.”

    “It is not my reading, Mr. Helger: I am following an explication from lawyers at The Hague.”

    “Regardless, I do not recognize your authority here.”

    “Then I’m sorry to say that I must immediately suspend your downport’s interface operations with the highport.”

    Helger laughed, leaned back. “Mr. Riordan, do you really expect me to pick up the phone and ground my spaceplanes? Just because you tell me to do so?”

    “No, Mr. Helger. I know you won’t take any directives from me. But the system Port Authority will.”

    Helger was no longer smiling or leaning back in his chair. “You cannot do this. Port facilities — no matter who owns them — must be kept freely available to all nations –”

    “That’s true. It’s part of the international colonization covenant. But then again, you’ve decided to ignore that covenant. Now, as I understand contract law, Mr. Helger, when one side defaults on a contract, the other party is freed from its obligations under that same contract. Which means that the system Port Authority — which is wholly a Commonwealth entity — is now free to deny you docking access, may impound any cargoes currently held, refuse to accept or relay communications of any kind –”

    “This is outrageous: it is blackmail.”

    “It seems more like blackjack to me, Mr. Helger. You bet that you held the better cards and were willing to reject recognizing my authority. But now it seems that I hold the better cards. Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean I am eager to play them…”

    C’mon, Helger: take the bait.

    Helger did. “What exactly do you mean by that, Mr. Riordan?”

    “I mean that it would be best if we could avoid a showdown, Mr. Helger. Yes, I’d win — but at what cost? I can do a better job here if I have your cooperation. And I’m willing to make sure that cooperating with me is worth your while.”

    “I’m listening.”

    “I’d be happy not to suspend your Port Authority rights. And — for now — you can keep your airspace and regional exclusivity. But I need to be able to go wherever I want, whenever I want, without obstruction. Agreed?”

    Come on, take the step –

    Helger’s lower teeth sought, and chewed lightly at, his neat moustache. “Agreed.”

    Caine managed to effect boredom as he looked out the window. That had been close: if Helger had pushed, he’d have found out that I only have the authority to shut down his outbound traffic, not the inbound. Which means that he would have been able to maintain operations — and kill me with near-impunity.

    “Of course, I will want to confirm this with your superiors.”

    Trying to see if I flinch, if I’ve overplayed my hand. Without looking away from the window, Caine shrugged. “Suit yourself. But I think you’ll find that the Navy brass upstairs are not merely ready, but eager, to find an excuse to shut you down. If you make me show them what I’ve shown you — that I have the authority to shut you down — they might exert pressure on me to do so, and I need their cooperation even more than I need yours. So if I’m forced to choose between them and you, I’m sure you see where that might lead. On the other hand, I’d be delighted to have you confirm my authority: then we won’t have to do this dance every time I make a polite request.”

    Helger did not say anything, but stared at his commplex for three full seconds. Then he rose: “It is a shame we got off to such a bad start. Here, allow me to show you around our facilities — but then again, you’ve already seen them. You had an aerial tour on the way in, if I’m not mistaken.”

    Caine rose also, ignoring the bait. “I’d like to stow my gear first, Mr. Helger.”

    “Certainly. Best that you should find your room before trying to find anything else.”

    Caine did not return Helger’s knowing smile. The issue of what he’d find on Delta Pavonis Three had suddenly become secondary. The far more urgent question was whether CoDevCo would let Caine find it — or let him live to report, if he did.