Haywire (10 page)

Pleased, Laroux turned and looked at his crew. “Did I not tell you? Soon the candy will be ours, and the baby won’t even know we were there.”

Laughter thundered into Shawn’s ears. As he tried to block it out he looked back down at the Titan. She was still on her knees, and her body still trembled. Her face was strained and fearful when she turned her head and looked up at him.

“
They’re coming,” she said, madness darting around in her eyes like a firefly in a jar, “and we’re all-all-all going to die. Help me.”

Shawn frowned, horrified at how quickly and mercilessly his world had been turned upside down.

“
No, I’m sorry,” Joseph Beddor said, “Dr. Campbell isn’t here. Can I take a message?”

Alliance Federal Agent Alex Delgado looked at the audio speaker embedded in the ceiling above his desk like it was an alien device that spoke only gibberish. “She isn’t there? Yesterday she told me she was going in to take delivery of some artifacts. Have plans changed?”

Beddor, who was Alicia’s assistant at the museum, sighed over the comm line in a perturbed gust of wind. “Dr. Campbell called me a little while ago to say that she was going to meet the delivery shuttle at the landing pad.”

A distant alarm bell rang in the far back of Alex’s mind, and he ran his right hand through salt and pepper hair to scratch his scalp. “That’s odd. Did she say why?”

“
No.”

“
Has she done that before?”

“
No.”

“
And you didn’t think to inquire as to why now?”

Beddor sniffed sharply, and Alex imagined the assistant rolling his eyes. “It isn’t my job to question the director of the museum, Agent Delgado. If she wants to personally receive the new items, it’s certainly within her purview to do so. I would imagine she wants to make a big show of things to impress her son, though God only knows why.”

Alex couldn’t fault the man’s logic, no matter how much he wished he could. “Alright. Well, just leave a note saying I called.”

“
Of course. Now, unless you need anything further, I really do have a great deal of work to do.”

The comm line closed with a brief squelch of static before Alex could reply.

“
He was rather rude,” a feminine voice said with subtle electronic undertones. Her words came from the same speaker Joseph’s had, but were much more pleasant to the ears, even if they were said by a computer program.

“
I don’t mind rude,” Alex replied. He leaned back in his chair, which squeaked like a rat getting its tail cut off. The sound was made even sharper as it bounced around the tiny dimensions of his office. “It’s the lack of information that bothers me.”

To his right, a coffee maker beeped, and the warm smell of fresh brew filled his office, which – like most things in his life – was sparse and purely utilitarian. In front of him, centered precisely between four light gray walls, was his desk. It was plain, metal, and had four locking drawers. Two government issue steel chairs sat on the other side of it, neither one comfortable enough to sit on for more than a few minutes. A tall locker was secured to the wall on his right, and next to it was a short filing cabinet, on which sat the coffee maker and a white mug with AFI stenciled on it in bold black letters. The only decorative items he had were two framed pictures on either side of the computer monitor in the center of his desktop. The photo on the left was of his late mother, and the picture on the right was of his girlfriend, Dr. Alicia Campbell.

He grunted as he considered the word.
Girlfriend
. He was far past the age where the word “girl” had any business being in his romantic vicinity, but every other label for it – significant other, lady friend, sweetheart – seemed even worse, like he was trying to make their relationship something it wasn’t. Alicia was his girlfriend, and even though he was halfway into his forties, he was okay with saying it that way.

“
Mr. Beddor isn’t our only point of access,” Isabel said in perfectly clipped tones. “Would you like me to open a channel to Dr. Campbell’s mobile comm?”

In spite of his irritation at Beddor’s lack of tact and details, Alex smiled. He’d balked when the techies had come out to install the automated assistant system, claimed his workload wasn’t heavy enough to warrant an assistant, electronic or otherwise, but it hadn’t taken long for him to admit he’d been wrong. Now he couldn’t imagine doing his job without her. Alicia liked to joke that the A.I. was ‘the other woman’ in his life. Now he was trying to get Alicia to do the same with her home system, but she was a tough sell.

“
No,” he said, straightening his tie and checking his starched white dress shirt for coffee drips. There weren’t any. “If she’s out with her son, the last thing I want to do is interrupt. From what she’s said, their relationship is strained enough. I doubt her boyfriend calling would help. I’m sure it’s nothing. She’d have already called if our lunch plans had changed.”

“
It has been my experience that Dr. Campbell is a very considerate person, Alex,” Isabel said, her voice set in what he thought of as her placating tone. More often than not the tone worked. “I’m sure you’re right.”

A grumble rolled around in Alex’s throat as he leaned around to his coffee maker and poured himself a cup – no sugar, no cream – then took a quick sip. It was hot, and it tasted like something scraped out of a starship’s engine room, but that was exactly how he liked it. Coffee that didn’t sting a little wasn’t coffee at all.

Despite her good intentions, Isabel’s tone didn’t make a dent in his mood, but it wasn’t the A.I.’s fault. Between Beddor’s arrogant attitude and Alicia not being where she said she’d be, he was aggravated, and it would take more than placating words to alleviate his tension. But, when piano notes trickled down from the overhead speaker like a light rain seconds later, he smiled. “Blue In Green” by Miles Davis was guaranteed to untie his knots, and the damn computer program knew it. Not for the first time he silently thanked the programmers who’d written her code.

“
That’s not fair.”

A short electronic laugh filtered into the music. “Fair is an organic concept.”

She had him there. His smile widened, so he tried to cover it by taking another drink of his coffee. He didn’t want to encourage her.

“
You have new email, by the way. Nothing important, though you might find a report about a pirate chase out at Vesta yesterday to be of interest.”

That got his attention. If asked at gun point, Alex was sure he could think of a few nice things to say about Callisto, but excitement wasn’t one of them. It was a small moon, notable mostly because of its ice mines, with barely enough people on it to rate an Alliance Federal Investigator’s office. Most lunar colonies were serviced by an agent who worked out of a space station and handled several moons at once. What little crime Callisto had was typically small time stuff handled by the local authorities. As the sole federal investigator on Callisto, about the only time Alex had to leave his office was to check on a code violation or go to the bathroom. Most of the time it was the latter. So, getting an email about pirates made his morning more stimulating than usual.

“
Put it on my screen,” he said, setting his coffee down and turning to face his monitor.

As the screen lit up, he closed his eyes and let the music cascade down over him. In the back of his mind, in the distant caveman part that was scared of the dark and saw omens in the swirling of tea leaves, he was still bothered. He knew he had no reason to be, had no evidence to justify it, yet the feeling remained nonetheless. But, he refused to jump at shadows, so he listened to the music, sipped his coffee, and read about pirates. Deep in his brain, though, an alarm bell continued to ring.

A cold stone turned slowly in Alicia Campbell’s stomach as she stood in the back of a large museum rover, watching pirates tie up her cargo handlers and dump them in a large plastic shipping crate. Their unconscious bodies flopped around like ragdolls when the rough hands of the pirates moved them, but they were lucky to still be alive. The pirate captain – a despotic monster even with his haughty accent – would have killed them if she hadn’t pled on their behalf.

“
You could at least give them some air,” Shawn said when the crate’s lid was lowered and sealed.

She had to clench her hands to stop from grabbing Shawn and shaking him until his teeth rattled. Just once she wished he wouldn’t antagonize them. They were so many, and so ready to hurt them, yet he either didn’t see that or didn’t care. She saw it, though, and she cared. None of her attempts to get him to calm himself had worked, so she tried to offset his unpleasantness by being especially helpful and obsequious.

Captain Laroux turned his head and gave Shawn a serpent’s smile, then drew one of his pistols and pointed it at the crate. “Oui, Monsieur.”

“
Please, no!” Alicia said, her voice reverberating off the rover’s thick metal walls. “That’s not necessary! If I may…?”

Laroux looked at her, his eyes as smooth and steely as ball bearings. She was chilled by the lack of humanity in his gaze, but when he gave her a small nod she exhaled and activated a control panel embedded in the crate’s top. Tiny holes opened in the lid, the apertures smaller than her little finger, but more than enough to let air in and out.

“
These are designed for transporting animals as well as cargo,” she said.

Laroux glanced at the crate and smirked. “
Très bien
. If your son speaks out of line once more, he will go into that crate as well, and his need for air will be much less than theirs, I assure you.”

Alicia needed no assurance of the pirate’s intentions. She’d seen what sort of violence he was capable of, and how casually he could dispense it. She backed away from the crate and grabbed her son’s arm in a tight grip. His skin was hot against her bloodless fingers.

“
Please stop,” she whispered as she turned toward him. “This
isn’t
some game.”

“
I know, Mom, but we can’t–”

Her grip tightened, and he winced. “Yes, we can, and we will. Don’t say anything, and unless they direct you otherwise, don’t do anything. Do you understand me?”

Shawn’s eyes hardened, but then he closed them and sighed. “Yeah, I get it.”

Mollified, at least for the moment, she let Shawn’s arm go. She then noted whispered mutterings beside her. When she glanced over she saw the Titan kneeling on the floor of the rover’s truck bed. Even on her knees the ancient warrior seemed larger than life, but her trembling shoulders and downcast head diminished her.

Alicia had dreamed her entire life of seeing a Titan in person. As a child she’d been thrilled by the stories of their power and grace. While other children had read comics and watched vids of fictional superheroes, she’d been busy learning about the Titans. She didn’t see a reason to waste time on imaginary heroes when the real thing was out there waiting to be discovered.

Her fascination with the Titans stuck with her long past the point when others thought she’d have moved on to other interests. Her entire life’s work was centered on them, and on their creator, Dr. Groesbeck, a man most people considered a lunatic. For decades Groesbeck had performed his research in secret because the focus of his work – manipulating human genetics through nanotechnology – was outlawed by every government. The irony that his illegal experiments had eventually saved humanity was lost on no one. Then again, the threat of the Hezrin hadn’t left them much choice.

Whether or not the ends had justified the means wasn’t a subject visited often after the alien invaders were run off. Humanity had been too busy healing and rebuilding to wonder about sticky questions like that. They had plagued Alicia’s mind for many long years, though, and the more she learned of Dr. Groesbeck and the Titans, the more uncertain she was. In her youth they’d seemed like gods, able to do what no other human could dream of doing. It wasn’t until she was older that she’d started to wonder what that power had cost them.

“
Do you know what’s wrong with her?” Shawn asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

Alicia didn’t answer him, because she didn’t know. For years she’d dreamed the Titans would return, and now one had, but the being before her wasn’t what she’d hoped for. This wasn’t a god or a superhero. This was someone falling into lunacy, and that scared her more than any number of pirates and guns.

As though she could feel eyes being leveled on her, the Titan looked up and stared into Alicia’s face. In her gaze was fear and sadness chasing after each other like raving animals, and with them was a weariness that no one born of woman should ever feel. Deeper in her eyes, small spots of light moved in a circular pattern, reminding Alicia of stars whirling overhead. In the Titan’s eyes was the person she’d once been a century before, but that person was nearly gone, and who or what was replacing her no one could know.

“
P-p-please,” the Titan said. She raised up a shaking arm, the metal on it undulating like molten steel. “You must…” The Titan drifted off and glanced down at the floor.

Alicia lowered to her haunches. “Must what? What is it? What’s wrong with you?”

“
I-I-I-” The Titan looked back up. “I’m infec-fec-fected. They… they did this to me. They did this.”

“
They who? The Hezrin?”