I was skeptical of his claim and didn’t try to hide it. “Chief . . . sorry, Chris . . . I have a hard time buying that. As head of the Corps of Exploration . . .”
“You’ve got pull, sure . . . but you said yourself that the Corps isn’t in the business of tracking down criminals. Proctors have resources that you won’t have, particularly not if you intend to do this as a private citizen.”
“And you would, even though you’re retired?”
He nodded. “It would mean calling in a few debts. But you’re better off having me along than trying to go at this alone.”
He had me there, yet I was still unconvinced. “It’s not going to be easy. In fact, I imagine this could take some time. No telling how far Laird might have gone in six years, or where he’s holed up. So it’s probably going to be a hard road to wherever he . . .”
“If you’re trying to say that I’m too old for this sort of thing . . . well, you’re wrong.” He glanced back at the house again. “Wendy and I are about the same age, but my health is a lot better than hers. I’m not going to try to claim that I could pass Corps basic training, but I’ve done my best to stay in condition. I can still run five miles, and every morning I work out by chopping firewood. My doctor tells me I’ve got the body of a fifty-year-old . . . which makes me a little younger than you, all things considered.”
He was exaggerating, of course, but I couldn’t deny that Chris was in pretty good shape for an old guy. He would’ve had to do so in order to stay on the job for as long as he had. So that was another argument I was bound to lose, short of challenging him to arm-wrestle me . . . and somehow, I had the feeling that he’d probably pin me in ten seconds.
“Why would you want to do this?” I glanced over at the gyro. The pilot had been keeping warm by returning to the cockpit; now that he saw me coming, he’d climbed out again, and was impatiently stamping his boots against the packed snow. “I’ve got my reasons to go at it alone. I don’t see how you have anything at stake.”
“You lost someone on the
Lee
, sure . . . but so did I.” Chris hesitated. “Look, Carlos Montero was my best friend. In fact, at one point in my life, he was my only friend. Wendy and I go back a long way, too.”
I knew the story; indeed, I was surprised that I’d forgotten it. When Carlos, Wendy, and Chris were teenagers, during the earliest years of the Liberty colony, the three of them ran away to explore Coyote, using a couple of handmade kayaks they’d built in a boathouse near Sand Creek. Chris’s younger brother, David, had been on the trip, too, as had Barry Dreyfus. The only adult to go with them was Kuniko Okada, the
Alabama
’s chief physician and Wendy’s adoptive mother; the boys didn’t know it then, but Wendy was pregnant with Susan, and Dr. Okada had insisted on joining them in order to keep an eye on her adopted daughter’s condition.
The trip had ended in disaster. The whole thing had been Carlos’s idea, but he hadn’t thought things through as well as he should have. By the time they reached the Great Equatorial River, their rations had run low, prompting David to attempt shooting a passing catwhale. The creature attacked the boats, destroying one of them, and David lost his life. Chris blamed Carlos for his brother’s death, and when the Western Hemisphere Union subsequently invaded Coyote, Chris betrayed the other colonists by taking sides with the Union. It wasn’t until the Revolution that the two young men ended their feud, with Chris rejoining the colonists and, later, participating in the Liberation Day assault on Union Guard strongholds in Liberty and Shuttlefield.
The tale was recounted in Wendy’s memoirs, and had become a well-known chapter in Coyote history. Only the night before, I’d seen Carlos’s kayak in the museum. Yet I’d overlooked the fact that, without Carlos, Chris might have remained an outcast and possibly been sent back to Earth along with the surviving Union Guard soldiers. So it was no wonder that he wanted to find Laird as much as I did; the old man had his own score to settle.
“So you figure you owe him,” I said.
“I owe them both.” Chris’s mouth tightened. “For the last few months, I’ve been coming out here once a week, just so that she’ll have someone besides her daughter and Tomas to be with her. And the toughest part has been knowing that there’s nothing I can do to save her. Getting the man who helped Cosenza kill her husband won’t do anything about that . . . but with any luck, at least she’ll die knowing that his death has been avenged.”
I understood what he was trying to say. Nonetheless, I remained reluctant to bring him along. “You realize, of course, that even if I manage to track him down, it may not . . . well, may not be possible to put him under arrest.” I didn’t look him in the eye as I said this, but instead raised my hand to let the pilot know that I wouldn’t be there much longer. “The maggies . . .”
“I know what the maggies said.” Chris continued to stare at me. “I can’t condone . . . well, whatever it is you may have in mind . . . but there’s nothing wrong with acting in self-defense.” He paused. “And accidents sometimes happen, y’know, particularly when it comes to apprehending suspected felons. Either way, you’d do well to have a witness. Just in case any questions are raised about your conduct.”
I looked at him again. He said nothing but simply nodded. Without saying as much, we both knew what each of us had in mind. It was entirely possible that David Laird would never be put under arrest, or that he’d never face the magistrates in a court of law. If that happened, any justice he’d receive would be of the frontier variety, from the barrel of a gun or at the end of a rope.
“All right, then. You’re in.” I let out my breath. “Unless you hear from me again before then, be at Fort Lopez a week from today. We’ll set out from there. Pack light, but be prepared to rough it for a while.”
“Not a problem.” Chris raised an eyebrow. “I take it, of course, that my equipment should include a gun?”
“A gun, sure . . . but no badge or uniform. Once we leave Hammerhead, we’ll be private citizens. You won’t be a chief, and I won’t be a general. Understood?”
He smiled. “Understood. Besides, I gave up my badge and uniform when I retired.”
I nodded, then he silently extended his hand to me. I shook it, then turned to walk the rest of the way to the gyro. A few minutes later, I was airborne again; looking back at Traveler’s Rest through the passenger window, I saw Chris standing where I’d left him, watching me go.
For the next week, I’d be helping Jorge and Inez prepare for their expedition to Earth. And then we would undertake a mission of our own.
Part 3
THE HOUSE OF THE TALUS
Cape pulled around himself for warmth, hands shoved in his parka,
Jorge watched as the spacecraft was towed from its hangar on the government side of the New Brighton spaceport. He didn’t like what he saw. “You’re sure the Corps couldn’t have gotten us something better?” he asked his father.
“Oh, we could have.” Jonathan Parson studied the small vessel as well. “But Sawyer thinks that anything more sophisticated would draw attention, and that’s something you don’t want.” A shrug. “He has a point. Take a ship with null-gravity drive to Earth, and any local who happens to see it is going to know that you’re not from around there.”
The reasoning was sound, but it didn’t make Jorge any more confident in what his expedition had been given. The CFS
Gerardus Mercator
was a Vespucci-class shuttle designed for sorties between Earth and Lagrange-point space colonies. Sixty-five feet long, with stub wings jutting from each side of its cylindrical hull, its main engine was powered by an indigenous-fuel nuclear reactor. Funnel-like airscoops on the upper fuselage tapered back to ramjets mounted on either side of the vertical stabilizer, while its narrow cockpit rose above a conical bow. The shuttle was more than twenty-five Earth-years old, and hopelessly obsolete in comparison to the newer vessels of the Federation Navy, most of which had been retrofitted with reactionless drives derived from
hjadd
technology. Dents and blackened scars of atmospheric friction along its hull and wings only deepened Jorge’s impression that it was an antique that had been mothballed until only a week ago.
Jorge turned to the Navy pilot standing beside his father. “Not to make an issue of it, but . . . how long has it been since the last time you flew this thing?”
“Two days, if you must know . . . and once every three months before that.” Hugh McAlister, the former European Space Agency spacer who’d flown the
Mercator
to Coyote nearly twenty years ago, scowled as if he’d been personally insulted. “It may not look like much, Lieutenant,” he added, his voice an irate Scottish burr, “but it’ll get us where we need to go. And I’ll thank you not to . . .”
“I’m sure he didn’t mean anything, Hugh.” Jon gave his fellow ESA veteran a mollifying smile. “Jorge has just never seen a craft which has had as much service as yours.” As he spoke, the colonel glanced at his son.
Watch your tongue,
his expression said.
Pilots take comments about their craft rather personally.
“My apologies, Captain.” Realizing that he’d said the wrong thing, Jorge sought to make amends. “I wasn’t trying to . . .”
“Of course you weren’t.” Standing behind them, Sergio Vargas regarded him with amusement that bordered on contempt. “You’re just a kid. Probably never seen anything before that wasn’t made before you were born.” He prodded McAlister’s shoulder as if sharing a joke with an old comrade. “Count yourself lucky. Compared to the heap I stole to get here, this is the height of space technology.”
If Vargas’s last remark had been intended to ingratiate himself with the pilot, it didn’t work. McAlister didn’t look his way; instead, a frown appeared beneath his trim mustache. McAlister wasn’t one to keep his opinions to himself, and he’d already let his superiors in the Navy and the Corps know how he felt about having a former Union Astronautica officer—particularly one who’d hijacked a freighter, even one that had been decommissioned—as a passenger. Although there had never been any actual hostilities between UA and the ESA, it was a known fact that spacecraft of both services were frequently armed, with their crews undergoing space-combat training.
Jorge wasn’t crazy about having Vargas in the expedition, either, but there was little choice in the matter. They needed someone who’d recently been on Earth—particularly the East Coast of North America—to act as a native guide, and Vargas was the only person who qualified. Yet when Jorge glanced back at him, he noticed that Inez seemed to be keeping her distance as well. Only a couple of days earlier, while the two of them were taking a break from weapons practice on the Corps’ small-arms range outside Leeport, Inez had confided in him that there was something about Vargas that she didn’t trust.
“I can’t read his mind,” she’d said, “but I don’t think he’s told us everything. He’s holding something back.”
Jorge didn’t trust Vargas, either . . . which was another reason why he’d recruited Greg Dillon to the expedition. The sergeant had been Jorge’s right-hand man in the Corps for a while, and Jorge needed someone reliable to keep an eye on Vargas. So, although Greg’s ostensible purpose for being on this mission was to back up Jorge, his real job was to watch Vargas’s every move and clamp down on him if he did anything even remotely suspicious.
The tractor had finished wheeling the
Mercator
out of its hangar. The driver detached its tow cable, and a couple of ground crew moved in, dragging the fuming hoses of hydrogen fuel lines behind them, while another pad rat ducked beneath the shuttle to open its underbelly hatch. “Time to get aboard,” Jorge said, bending over to pick up his pack. “Gentlemen, Inez . . .”
“Not so fast.” Laying a hand on shoulder, his father stopped him. “You’ve still got one more passenger . . . and I think that’s him now.”
Jorge looked up, saw a small coupe approaching from the direction of the airfield. Whoever it was, he must have flown into New Brighton on a different gyro than the rest of the crew. He’d forgotten that the Federation liaison to the Talus was supposed to be going with them to Rho Coronae Borealis, where he was to assist Jorge in negotiating with the High Council of the Talus. This person wouldn’t be accompanying the expedition—provided, of course, that the Council granted them permission to visit Earth—but instead would return to Coyote aboard another ship.
“You haven’t told us who this gent is, Colonel.” McAlister watched as the coupe glided to a halt between them and the
Mercator
. “I hope he’s not some run-of-the-mill . . .”
Whatever he was about to say, it was left unfinished, for at that moment the coupe’s rear door canted upward, and a tall figure in a black robe emerged. Jorge caught a glimpse of titanium-alloy feet, then two multifaceted red eyes within a metallic, skull-like face peered at them from the raised hood.
“Oh, for the love of God.” Vargas’s voice was an angry mutter. “You can’t be serious.”
Jorge said nothing, though he couldn’t help but stare at the new-comer. Since childhood, he’d heard his parents’ stories about Manuel Castro. Once the lieutenant governor of the colonies during the Occupation, Castro had been one of the Savants—posthumans who had sought immortality by having their brains scanned and downloaded into quantum comps encased within artificial bodies—who’d come to 47 Ursae Majoris aboard the first Western Hemisphere Union starships. Thought to have been killed during the Revolution, Castro was left behind when the Union was forced off Coyote; a few years later, he’d met Jon and Susan and become part of their short-lived rebellion against the early colonial government.
Few people had seen Castro since then. For a long time, he was believed to be a hermit living in the Black Mountains, studying the
chirreep
tribes of Great Dakota. But when Jorge was a teenager, he and a couple of friends had hiked into the mountains, hoping to catch a glimpse of the last Savant on Coyote. Apparently Aunt Marie had once been a very close friend of his, because she had a hand-drawn map pointing the way to the one-room cabin he’d built near an abandoned logging site; when she wasn’t looking, Jorge had copied the map, and the boys had used it to find the cabin. But Castro’s home had been long since abandoned, its roof rotted and on the verge of collapse, its only room infested with birds’ nests and skeeters. No one knew where Manuel Castro had gone, and over the years he’d gradually become a figure of myth and legend.