Trial by Fire: Chapter Four

Off-base sector, Barnard’s Star 2 C

    The last station’s collision klaxon began hooting as Trevor reached the outer gate area. The emergency access portal dilated and spat out a torrent of panicked humanity. Fighting against the outflow of bodies, the stink of panicked sweat and the choking fumes of smoldering plastic, he pushed his way toward the station’s long, narrow platform–

    –and entered a tableau of chaos. He smelled smoking metal and saw the rapidly thinning crowd clustered around the main exit, with a few of the rearmost changing direction toward the portal Trevor had just used. No sign of the Shore Patrol–the wireless comm channels had not reactivated yet–and only a handful of people were still on the platform itself, most of those wounded or just rising from where they had taken cover–

    Caine swayed up into Trevor’s field of view at the far end of the station, just a few meters away from the mauled remains of the two maglev cars. As he reached down to help a young woman back to her feet, Trevor saw movement a few meters farther down the platform.

    From the shadows near a bank of ticket dispensers lining station’s far wall, a tall, lean, knot-muscled man emerged with a knife in his right hand, drawn back for an overhand slash. Trevor took a long leap down to the platform level, yelling “Caine, behind you!”

    But Caine was already changing his direction of movement. In the same instant that he released the arm of the young woman he had helped up, his turn accelerated into a fast pivot, spinning him fully around. His right arm cocked back even as his left arm rose swiftly–

    –and caught his attacker’s descending forearm. Caine’s imperfect but serviceable rising block pushed the down-slashing knife-hand up and out of the way. Without any break in motion, Riordan closed the distance with a quick step and his already-cocked right hand came forward like a pile driver. The heel of his palm rammed into his assailant’s face, just beneath the nose. Blood spurted, the knife wobbled, the man staggered back a step–

    Caine’s momentum carried him through a sideways stance and into a fast, left-foot forward-shuffle. As he did so, he drew his right knee up high and, in a blur, shot that leg out straight as his torso leaned back.

    Caine’s step-through side kick caught the reeling attacker in the sternum. The man crashed backward into the ticket machines and then down to the ground, groaning faintly. By the time Trevor reached Riordan two seconds later, the platform was empty except for the two of them and the corpse of one protester whose chest had been transfixed by two lengths of blackened metal.

    Trevor put out an arm to steady the suddenly swaying Caine, looked down at his would-be murderer. “I guess Opal was a pretty good karate teacher.”

    Caine rose, glanced at Trevor. “Oh. You knew about her giving me lessons back on Mars, then?”

    “Damn it, Caine.” Corcoran sighed. “Everyone knew.” He gestured toward the prone attacker. “What the hell is going on here?”

    “Based on prior experience,” muttered Caine, straightening up, “I’d say that was an assassination attempt. Two of them, actually.”

    “Yeah, but how–?”

    “Trevor, ‘how’ doesn’t much apply to the attacks we’ve been dealing with since Alexandria. Nor do the words ‘impossible’ or ‘unimaginable.’ Because whoever is behind them has trump cards that we didn’t even know were in the deck.”

    Trevor heard movement behind them. The first members of the Shore Patrol trotted through the emergency portal, weapons out. Trevor waved them over, pointed down at the feebly moving attacker, then leaned closer to Caine. “Guess you’ve got eyes in the back of your head, seeing him coming at you.”

    “The reporter I helped up saved me, I think. She saw him over my shoulder, and I saw her eyes move. But also, I had this feeling–” Caine stopped.

    Trevor waited while the Shore Patrol hauled the attacker to his feet and dragged him toward the exit. “What do you mean, ‘I had a feeling’?” he muttered.

    Riordan shook his head. “I don’t know how to say it. Just before he got to me, it felt as though the whole universe was no longer fluid; like I was a small cog in the middle of a very fast, but very stiff and very big machine.”

    “And that–feeling–warned you that some guy was about to carve you up from behind?”

    “No, just that something nearby was–was, well, wrong somehow. So I defended the place I was most vulnerable: behind me, where I couldn’t see.”

    Trevor grabbed Caine’s arm and started moving him toward the exit. “Man, I know twenty-year veterans who don’t have reflexes like that. Didn’t think you had them, either.”

    “That’s because I don’t have them. I wasn’t following a fighting instinct, Trevor. It was more like a–a premonition.”

    “Well, whatever it is, it sure as hell saved your bacon. And we sure as hell have to get back to the Pearl.”

    Caine nodded. “Absolutely. Because there’s one additional thing that needs to be reported, and quickly.”

    “What’s that?”

    “The guy who attacked me was on the first platform, too. He threw a bottle at me, then ran like hell.”

    “What? But how could he know you were going to stop here or–?”

    “I don’t know, Trevor. And I don’t know how he managed to sprint through four kilometers of tight tunnels to get here before my maglev. Or how he went from religious zealot to…” Caine’s voice trailed off.

    Trevor watched the S.P.s shackling the attacker to a restraint bar. “How he went from being a zealot to–what?”

    Caine swallowed. “A madman. No, that’s not right: a killing machine. He was a wild-eyed screamer when I saw him at the first station. But here–” Caine turned to look over his shoulder. Trevor followed his gaze.

    The hollow eyes of Caine’s would-be assassin had been following them steadily, calmly, empty of reason but full of a lethal, insatiable hunger.

Off-base sector, Barnard’s Star 2 C

    The CoDevCo special services liaison who oversaw corporate operations on Barnard’s Star Two C stared at the last, frozen image that had been pirated from the maglev security system: Riordan and Corcoran hurrying away from the crash site. The liaison’s jaw worked unevenly; his face grew steadily more red.

    His mounting fury was defused by a slow, steady voice from behind, which ordered as much as intoned, “Calm yourself.”

    The liaison turned toward the man whom he served, at the behest of his superior CoDevCo Vice President R. J. Astor-Smath. Although having worked under this tall, sunglass-wearing man for almost three months, he still knew almost nothing about him, other than that he had a profound penchant for olives. “I do not know how you can be so calm. Two failed attempts in the course of a single minute? This is preposterous.”

    “Riordan is not as easy to kill as he might seem to an unprofessional observer. He may lack training, but he reasons quickly and has almost infallible instincts in a crisis.”

    “So you consider today’s outcome less than disastrous?”

    The tall, sun-glassed man leaned back in his seat with a sigh. “I find it interesting how many of you, when watching a plan go awry, are so blinded by your frustration that you are unable to learn from what you have witnessed.”

    The liaison mastered his annoyance at the man’s customary, languid arrogance, in part because it was his job to do so, and in part because the man was usually–and infuriatingly–accurate in his observations. “And what was to be learned from what we witnessed today?”

    “Why, that it was good fortune that today’s attempts were failures. Your superior’s ill-advised machinations to encumber Riordan by focusing the interest of the press upon him has produced troublesome results–precisely as I warned. Riordan is now an item of journalistic attention and scrutiny. Kill him, and inquiry will follow. And that inquiry would result in closer investigation of a variety of phenomena which you–and I–wish to remain merely puzzling anomalies in the minds of our adversaries.”

    “Such as Tarasenko’s and Corcoran’s heart attacks?”

    “Those too, yes, but the failed attempt to assassinate Riordan in Alexandria is of greater concern to me. There, we left them with too many unsolvable puzzles. If your news services, or intelligence communities, are repeatedly agitated by such mysteries and ‘baffling coincidences,’ they will eventually begin to consider explanations that they now dismiss as not merely improbable, but impossible. This would be a grave development for us. We wish our opponents to remain complacent, content to follow the forensic pathways to which they are accustomed, which their science deems ‘rational.’”

    “If Riordan were to die because of a very conventional knife in his chest, that would not raise any such suspicions.”

    The tall man shook his head, took a green olive from a small bowl located at arm’s length. “All of you think too linearly. To you, the universe is comprised of infinite rows of dominoes, each ready to be tapped and set in motion. Yet you assume that each row is almost entirely independent from the others.” He chewed into the olive as if he had never tasted one before, and sighed. “But a few of you do see the truth of it: that the dominoes are arranged in sweeping curves that intersect, spread, double back, terminate each other, or engender new vectors, new events. So, if you eliminate Riordan in a place where the press is present or has ready access, there is an excellent chance that you may set other, deleterious events in motion.”

    The tall man evidently noticed the uncertainty creasing his liaison’s brow. He deigned to explicate. “A society’s entrenched attitudes and predilections are balanced upon a broad cultural fulcrum: they are robust and stable, but if pushed and stressed far enough, they tip and change–often becoming the opposite of what they just were. If you kill Riordan in an inexplicable accident–the kind you persistently pressure me to create through my Reifications of quantum entanglement and uncertainty–our adversaries are likely to detect that pattern. Their present tolerance for unconnected coincidences could convert into a fierce resolve to get answers, no matter the cost, and no matter how strange those answers might be.

    “And they just might succeed. Not all of our opponents see the universe in the simplistic one-cause, one-effect paradigm that most of you are trapped within.” The man nodded at the frozen image of Caine, fleeing the platform, looking over his shoulder. “He is one who sees more expansively, more completely. Nolan Corcoran, his companion’s father, was another.”

    The liaison folded his arms. “Let us presume all you have said is true. It is also true that you yourself have asserted that Riordan may now be able detect the onset of your Reifications–which must be why he detected today’s attacker. He felt you ‘push’ our man. Add all this to your observations that Riordan is particularly hard to predict, and that now, he is likely to depart for Earth before we do. Taken together, these things put us on the brink of failure. Riordan might soon slip beyond our collective grasp.”

    The tall man stopped chewing an olive and smiled–an expression which reminded his assistant of a tiger baring its teeth. “Riordan might slip beyond your grasp. But not mine.”

“The Pearl,” Barnard’s Star 2 C

    The first thing Caine saw when the door to the secure debrief room opened was Admiral Martina Perduro sitting at the other end, her body as still as a graven idol’s, her face as pale and immobile as a slab of sun-weathered oak. Caine snapped his best salute a second after Trevor did.

    Perduro waved them to chairs. As soon as they crossed the threshold, she touched her dataslate. The doors sealed and the breathy whirr of a white-noise generator rose up from the peripheries of the room. Then she indicated the screens around her. “I’ve got all the technical reports on today’s nonsense with the maglev cars. None of which can explain the failures in the system. But I’m guessing you two have heard similarly “impossible’ reports on prior occasions. You particularly, Commander Riordan.”

    “Ma’am?”

    “The assessments are very reminiscent of those Mr. Downing shared with me regarding the after-action reports from the assassination attempts you dodged at Alexandria and the Convocation Station: circuits uncoupling, polarities reversing, breakers tripping, computer controls being overridden without any evidence of hacking.” She tossed down her dataslate and passed a hand across her brow. “It doesn’t make a damn bit of sense.”

    Caine shrugged. “It never does, ma’am. And we never even have leads as to who’s behind these incidents.”

    Perduro arched forward. “Well, at least we’ve got a lead this time.”

    “You mean, the attacker?”

    The admiral scoffed, surprised. “No, Heather Kirkwood–who, if rumors hold any truth, may have had both personal and professional motives to set you up, Caine.”

    Caine made sure that his differing opinion did not come out as a contradiction. “Admiral, I know it might seem that way, but I think Heather may have been a patsy as well.”

    “Why? Because whoever she was working for was willing to kill her, too? Commander Riordan, after a mission, covert operators frequently prevent security leaks by eliminating any free-lancer they hired to carry it out. ‘Burning assets,’ it’s called.”

    “Yes, ma’am, I am familiar with that concept.”

    “And according to your report, Kirkwood was attempting to extort highly classified information.”

    “Absolutely.”

    “So how does that not add up to the following scenario: she tries to extort information from you, she fails, and her handlers kills both of you to cover up their identity and interest in those particular secrets?”

    Caine nodded. “I agree it looks that way, Admiral, but I’ve got information that problematizes the hypothesis.”

    “Which is?”

    “Personal knowledge of Heather Kirkwood. Would she take a tip from a shady source in order to get what she wants? She wouldn’t bat a lash, doing that. Would she actually, or at least threaten to, endanger old friends of mine if she thought it might get me to cooperate? Sadly, yes. And would she selectively reveal the time and place I was going to emerge from the Pearl to ensure that the local press and activist groups would be there to generate a more provocative scenario and story? Unquestionably. But here’s where the hypothesis breaks down: Heather wasn’t a killer.”

    Perduro shrugged. “So you say. I’m not convinced. And from what Ensign Brahen told me, you might have been at the top of Kirkwood’s death list, if she had one.”

    Caine shook his head. “Heather Kirkwood was ambitious, vain, selfish, and couldn’t stop trying to outdo everyone at everything–particularly the people she was closest to. But she hadn’t the stomach for murder and frankly, had every reason not to be involved, directly or indirectly, in any attempt to kill me.”

    Trevor glanced at him, frowning. “Why?”

    “Because she did not stand to gain anything by my death. Quite the opposite. If she was in any way connected to an event in which I was killed, she’d come under investigation simply because of our prior contact. And here’s a cardinal rule in the journalism business: you can report news only so long as you don’t become news. So if she was ever implicated, even tangentially, in the murder of a politically significant former lover, that could have ended her career. Even if she was ultimately exonerated.”

    “So again, we’ve got no leads,” sighed Trevor, “just another closed room mystery. Just like Alexandria.”

    Perduro’s gestures became sharp, testy. “Yes, and it’s rife with the same kind of logical gaps. How did they know that either of you had gone to the still-secret Convocation? And, beyond that, how did they know that you had returned to human space? How did the assassin’s handlers know which maglev car Caine was in? How did they have Kirkwood’s private car ready to follow it into the first station? And how did they manage–on that short notice–to override our supposedly unhackable maglev traffic-control software to get another car to follow, and then ram Caine’s car?”

    Trevor frowned. “Well, this time, at least you’ve got one survivor you can interrogate: the religious fanatic.”

    “Except it turns out he’s not a religious fanatic,” Perduro snapped.

    Caine stared. “What–ma’am?”

    “The man who attacked you had no known affiliations with the local extremist sects. None of them know him. In fact, the ‘fanatic’ has no identity that we can determine.”

    Now it was Trevor’s turn. “What?”

    “He is a nonperson, as far as the ID system is concerned. And here at the Pearl, we maintain a very up-to-date registry.”

    Trevor was frowning now. “Have you interrogated him, Admiral?”

    “We wanted to.”

    Caine heard the frustrated tone. “Admiral, what do you mean ‘we wanted to’?”

    “I mean he was found dead in his cell fifteen minutes before you walked in here.”

    “And let me guess. The probable cause of death was a heart attack?”

    “No, Commander. This time, it was a stroke. Massive. He was dead within a minute. There was no response to either immediate CPR or more heroic methods.”

    Trevor leaned back. “Ma’am, as you say, these are just the kinds of mysteries that seem to accumulate around the attempts on Commander Riordan’s life.”

    Riordan shook his head. “Except that there’s an even larger mystery that hasn’t been mentioned yet.”

    Perduro turned toward Caine. “And what mystery is that?”

    Caine looked at Perduro uncertainly. Even though she was asking about a piece of data she’d overlooked, she still might resent having it “explained” to her. Riordan considered how best to ease into the topic–

    However, Trevor’s patience was exhausted after two seconds. “Well, what are you waiting for, Caine? A drum roll?”

    “I don’t need a drum, but it would sure be handy to have a crystal ball like the one the opposition is using. Because there’s no other way to explain how they got all the press here in time to meet me coming out of the Pearl.”

    Perduro made a face. “The presence of the press can be explained by a simple intel leak. No one needed a crystal ball to predict your movements.”

    Caine spread his hands. “Admiral, Trevor, I know enough about the journalism field to be familiar with its basic workings. And here are some facts about field reporters. They are not lurking everywhere, just waiting to pop up with a palmcom set to record. They are assigned to, or string as freelancers in, high-activity news zones. Which Barney Deucy is not. However, they can also be found in locales where an editor has sent them, on the hunch that a newsworthy situation is brewing there.”

    “Like a special task force,” supplied Trevor.

    “Exactly. Now here’s the hitch. I did some checking while we were waiting to outbrief you, Admiral, and it seems the journalists who mobbed me at the first monorail station only arrived here eight days ago. Now, doing the reverse math of how long it took them to travel to Barney Deucy after they shifted in, that means they left Earth about four days before that. Of course, before they could shift out from Earth, they had to preaccelerate for at least thirty-three days–”

    Perduro’s face became even more pale than it had been when they entered: her eyes opened wide as the calendar implications drove in upon her. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, that means most of the surplus reporters here today got their marching orders to come to Barney Deucy at least forty-five days ago. At a minimum.”

    “But–” started Trevor. And then he stopped, his own eyes widening.

    Caine nodded. “We hadn’t even shifted out to get to the Convocation yet. In fact, their travel had to start just a few days after Nolan’s memorial, about fifty days ago, to be here for today’s freelancer feeding-frenzy. And fifty days ago, we had no idea how the Convocation would turn out, or that we’d only be there for a few days, or that Downing, Trevor, and I would detour here, instead of returning directly to Earth, as the rest of the delegates did.”

    “So someone knew what we were planning before it was planned?” Trevor’s voice climbed to a surprisingly high pitch on the last word.

    Caine shrugged. “That’s why I’m half-convinced they have a crystal ball, Trevor.”

    “Either that,” muttered Perduro, “or whoever is behind all these closed room mysteries can send information faster than the speed of light.”

    Caine nodded. “Or can shift between the stars much faster and much farther than we can, and slip that information to human collaborators.”

    “What a reassuring set of alternatives,” grumbled Trevor.

    “Isn’t it, though?” Perduro’s voice was almost as rough and deep as the ex-SEAL’s. “I’ll code this into a report and send it out to the Prometheus ahead of you. She–and your cutter–are due to get to her Earth-optimized shift point in about three weeks, but you never know what might happen between now and then.” She stood. “And I think I’d better run a general defense drill.”

    “A drill, ma’am?” asked Caine.

    “Yes, Commander. I believe Mr. Downing told you he put us on Defcon Three. We’ve kept it from the civilian sector, as per orders, but I wish we didn’t have to. People don’t react well to news of an unexpected threat if you spring it on them at the last second.”

    Trevor’s grin was wry. “Must be darn hard to prepare people to deal with exosapient invaders you don’t have permission to talk about yet, Admiral.”

    “Trevor, get out of here before you make my brain hurt any worse than it already does. Now, have both of you filled out your resignations from active duty?”

    Caine and Trevor produced the carefully folded papers, handed them to Perduro.

    Who scanned them with a scowl. “Damn idiotic charade, this. I hope Downing knows what he’s doing. I promote you yesterday, and pack you off into the Reserves today? Insane.”

    Caine shrugged. “As I understand it, his primary reason is so that, coming back as civilians, we can slip in under the press’s radar. At least they won’t have any immediate knowledge that I’m part of the Navy, now.”

    Perduro shook her head, put out her hand. “Commander, Captain. I hereby accept and duly record your departures from active service. It’s been a pleasure having you here, gentlemen.” Releasing Trevor’s hand, she suddenly looked her full age. “After today’s events, and what it implies about our undisclosed adversary’s ability to run rings around us on the calendar, I’m seriously considering moving this facility to Defcon Two on my own initiative. And I think you gentlemen should move up your departure time to catch the Prometheus, just in case she has to fuse a little extra deuterium to get out of town ahead of schedule.”

    Caine nodded at the ominous implications of that precaution. “And when do you recommend we depart, Admiral?”

    “Five minutes ago, Commander. Get the hell out of my sight, grab your gear, and god speed to you both.”