Vyyda Book 1: The Haver Problem (17 page)

             
“I don’t have the time to go into that.”

             
“
You
don’t have time?”

             
“Is there any chance you’d be willing to come with me…to my vessel?  Something there I want you to see.”

             
“
Who are you?
”

             
“We’re never going to get anywhere this way,” Caroline said.

             
“Then I’ll be going.”

             
Caroline moved quickly from her seat and took Dorsey’s arm.  She’d already removed a small, black weapon from the holster hidden under the top half of her gray outfit, pressing it into Dorsey’s ribs.

             
“I’m sorry,” she said, with a measure of sincerity, “I just don’t have time to waste.”

             
Dorsey glanced at the object in her hand, shaped like a firearm, but much too small to be taken seriously.

             
“What is that supposed to be?”

             
“It’s a called a Hoilman ‘Dainty’.”

             
“Well named.”

             
“Think so?  The man who invented it, Johann Hoilman, got a lot of laughs when he first unveiled it – the ammunition, too:  less than a centimeter in length, each one.”

             
“Well,” Dorsey said, unclear as to the need for a history lesson, “it’s very nice.  You should be proud.”

             
“Not really.  The small pellets within only need to come in contact with your skin for a fraction of a second.  It doesn’t matter where.  The electrical charge dispensed stops your heart beating instantly.  This doesn’t wound.  It only kills.”

             
Dorsey looked back and forth between the ‘Dainty’ and Caroline, trying to gauge a possible bluff.

             
“Do you consider yourself a good judge of character?” she asked.

             
“Usually.”

             
“Judge mine.  And do it quickly…because I don’t have time to waste.”

10.

The Haver Problem

When Caroline had been in the Lunar skip, Ell-C in her wake, sending one transmission after another to the HSPB installation in the hope that clearance to land would eventually be granted, she gave no thought to the consequences.  What’s more, she hadn’t any plan for explaining her claims that Stovall was seriously injured even as she was sending it.  As soon as clearance came through from the surface, however, it became an imperative.  Within ten minutes, the skip would be settled in at HSPB-Luna and answers would have to be given.

“He looks fine to me,” Revgennie, a senior agent, said to Caroline as he stepped onto the skip and saw Stovall.  He had a small contingent of armed personnel with him, ready to contain any potential danger on the skip in the event Caroline’s comms were all a ruse.

“He
is
fine,” Caroline admitted.

The medical team that started unpacking its gear just outside the skip, paused.  They looked back and forth between Caroline and Revgennie for clarification. 
Are we needed…or not?

Revgennie, a tall, bitter-faced specimen, exploded with a combination of questions, recrimination and spittle as two additional top-level agents arrived on the scene, trying to make sense of the uproar.

Once things calmed down enough for Caroline to answer for her actions, she had a simple response:  “It was a lockdown.  I thought you might need us.”

             
Arrest.  She needed to be placed under arrest for her actions, according to Revgennie.  Before she could be restrained and taken away, however, Cyril Redd, director of the Lunar installation – the man in charge – appeared.  He immediately dismissed the armed men Revgennie had brought along and demanded silence from everyone else.

             
Redd was somewhat slight, with fine features and carried himself with a quiet confidence suggesting that his right to respect from all around him was a settled issue.  It wasn’t a swagger, simply a sense that the man never felt the need to look over his shoulder.  His back was safe.

             
“You were following orders, Stovall?  As Agent Dahl sent those transmissions about your condition – you were following the orders of a superior by simply not interfering?” Redd asked.

             
Stovall was clearly torn.  He didn’t know how to answer. 

             
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Redd said.  “Report to the comms wedge, they’ll have something for you to do.”

             
“I don’t -- ”

             
“Answers when you get there.  Someone will fill you in.”

             
Stovall left.  Cyril Redd began a gesture that resembled a shrug, as if an answer to Caroline’s recklessness would make itself known.

             
“You don’t have the slightest idea what’s happening, do you?” he asked.

             
“No, sir.”

             
“You could have been pushing your way into a breach of this installation, a toxic disaster…anything.  Correct?”

             
“Yes, sir.”

             
“Right.  And you thought our need of you was greater than any of those possibilities.”

             
Redd waited for a response.  Caroline cleared her throat twice and wrung her hands behind her back where Redd couldn’t see the anxiety.

             
“As it happens, none of those things I mentioned are what’s happening.”

             
“Glad to hear it, sir.”

             
“Do you think you have helped or hurt your chances for advancement?”

             
Caroline didn’t know what to say.

“If memory serves, you’ve never done anything so reckless as this before,” Redd said.

“No, sir.”

“And, all of sudden, here you are.”

“I…”

“Your bird’s dead, isn’t that right?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Not all that surprising that word could have spread quickly.  Stovall was right.  The perpetrator – particularly Leopold Doone – wouldn’t have been able to keep it to himself.

“And you burned it?”

That should definitely not have been common knowledge.

“How did you know?”

“Traces of it still in your lav.”

“People went into my --”

“No privacy in the Bureau, you know that.”

“Right,” Caroline acknowledged, brought back to the reality of what it was to be an agent.

“Why did you burn it?”

              That part should definitely not have been known.

             
“How did you know?” Caroling asked quietly.

             
“Traces of it still in your lav.”

             
“People went into my -- ”

             
“No privacy in the Bureau.  You know that.”

             
“Right,” Caroline acknowledged, brought back to the reality of what it was to be an agent.

             
“Why did you burn it?”

             
Redd’s question didn’t have any of the menacing tone, the suspicion that it likely would have carried if Revgennie or another of the higher ranked agents on Luna had been the one asking.  He wanted to understand.

             
“Because he didn’t die of natural causes and I didn’t want word getting out.  Enough non-Earthers here now feel less than…they feel…”

             
“You thought there would be unrest over a bird?”

             
“It’s a fragile coexistence.”

             
“Not that fragile.”

“Maybe not.”  Best for Caroline to agree to anything Redd asserted at this stage.

“You thought it would make you look weak…didn’t you?  You thought that it might hold you back as an agent.”

“I…”

“What did you think I would read into it…if I found out your bird was dead?”

Caroline lowered her eyes once more.  Redd understood her well.  How would her superiors see her if she seemed to command so little respect?

V              V              V              V

              Ambition was Caroline’s weak spot.  Her curse.  The prize, the possibility of a retirement on Earth, had been on her mind.  It occupied some part of her thinking most waking hours.  Who could blame her?

             
Cyril Redd knew.  He’d probably known from the first time he met her, a new Academy graduate, assigned as close to Earth as any non-Earther in the Bureau could get.  He’d expressed admiration for her class ranking and said that he was expecting fine things from her.

             
Cyril Redd was the only member of HSPB brass who didn’t treat her with contempt, didn’t patronize her.  He was the only senior official who hadn’t looked down on her as a non-Earther.  At least, she’d never sensed that he did.

             
Caroline had been grateful for the apparent acceptance, but found it a little confusing.  That is, until she learned some of the details of Cyril Redd’s life.

             
Redd was an interesting case.  While he had Earth citizenship and was seen as an Earther by agents underneath him, he’d been born on Luna.  Redd’s father served as installation director at the time, foreshadowing Cyril’s destiny.

             
And so, strictly speaking, by the most precise definition, Cyril Redd was a half-spetcher.  He was that extremely rare individual who could straddle the distinctly different worlds.  Caroline knew this from the equal respect Redd afforded all non-Earthers under his command.  Never a dismissive tone, suspicious look or even the faintest whiff of contempt from the man (and Caroline, along with most non-Earthers, was sensitive to such things).

Caroline had certainly put Cyril Redd in a difficult position.  She returned to her quarters, as directed, and waited.  The cage which had once served as Roland’s home was gone and certain other things seemed out of place, suggesting the visit to her rooms by internal affairs personnel had been very thorough. 

She still didn’t know the reason for the lockdown.  Redd hadn’t volunteered it.  Caroline wouldn’t dare push things by asking.

It could have been, she reasoned while sitting rigidly on one of her deep-back chairs, a settled issue by that time.  She expected that once the lockdown and its immediate aftermath were closed that she would receive a visit from Redd – or one of his adjutants – and be informed of the punishment awaiting her.

Instead, Cyril Redd and the unpleasant Revgennie arrived at her door with an opportunity.  The director emphasized that it was not an order, but an option.  She would be allowed to select one agent (who also had to be agreeable to the proposition) and be prepared to leave within an hour in an unmarked Selphen (the smallest of the Bureau vessels) to pursue a wrinkle of the current crisis that could be pivotal.

“It’s a chance for redemption,” Redd told her.  “Not without risk.”

V
              V              V              V

              Things had started out well for Caroline on Sykes.  Pietro Sklar struck her as laboring to conceal his wonder and curiosity at meeting an HSPB agent.  He was compliant and solicitous without a need to brandish the weapon concealed in her clothing.  She didn't explain what she needed Ladd Bankenshoff for, only that it was Bureau business.  Sklar seemed the type who wanted to remain in the good graces of Earth.  Not uncommon among U-Spacers.  He was quick to offer the possibility of Dorsey Jefferson's assistance after telling her that Ladd Bankenshoff was dead.

             
She also sensed that Sklar assumed she was an Earther.  How odd that felt for her.  Not so odd, however, that she didn't scheme to use his fascination to her advantage, getting the director of Sykes and the man who soon joined them in Sklar’s office, Tomas Witt, to guarantee the cooperation of their “stellar language man”.

             
So much for cooperation.

             
Caroline kept a close eye on Dorsey as she marched him from Sklar’s office down to the landing platform, the Hoilman ‘Dainty’ pressed against his ribs.  She’d never had the occasion to take a prisoner before and there was no way the first time would go awry if it could be helped.