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Invisible to as many spectra as Direct Action’s technology could make it, the stealthy insertion drone hummed low over the Antarctic snowscape. It had taken off from an underground launch-catapult and supercruised through the stratosphere most of the way from Australia before descending to its terminal nap-of-the-Earth profile. Normally used to clandestinely drop or land specialized items, this time its cargo was unusual, even experimental.
A human being.
Crammed into the container, Spooky responded to the alarm and gentle hiss of extra oxygen with a sneeze and two blinks. The latter activated the HUD of his nanocommando skinsuit, which gave him the ETA to time over target: five minutes.
Plenty of time to clear his head and get ready.
He could have come in overtly, on a transport plane perhaps, but that would open him up to two improbable but disastrous possibilities: unexpected treachery on the part of the Free Communities, or more likely, a third party trying to counterfeit such a backstab. Either way, this method was much safer.
That is, assuming he survived the insertion.
His landing zone was a snow-covered plateau ten kilometers from the FC facility. The curve of low hills kept the drone – essentially a weaponless cruise missile – invisible to the air traffic control radar of the complex’s runway, even if its stealth coating was not enough. The deep drifts below would give him an extra margin of safety if the landing did not come off as expected.
Packed tight inside an inert cloth-covered silicone gel akin to the more prosaic stuff of computer mouse-pads, he could do nothing except count the seconds to landing. His final warning was the drone’s ramjet engine shutting off and air brakes deploying to bring the robot aircraft down to a preset speed.
At this point, powerful compressed nitrogen charges blew the landing package out the back and a parachute opened with a brutal shock. Its canopy deployed perfectly, and the shell swung once, twice, then ground gently into the deep white snow.
Another pop split the cargo casing, and Spooky’s surrounding gel inserts fell from him like dead white tribbles. Standing up, he surveyed the Antarctic horizon, feeling the bitter cold as a gentle cooling through his insulated oversuit and skinsuit.
The drone was made to carry and soft-land four hundred kilos of gear. Spooky weighed no more than seventy-five, suit and all. The rest was taken up with supplies – food, fuel, water, drugs, weapons, inflatable tent...everything he might need to survive for a few days in an emergency. He didn’t think he would need most of it, but he hadn’t lived this long by being unprepared.
First he activated a hot-pack meal and downed its semi-liquid contents – a stewlike sludge meant to provide maximum nutrition in minimum time. Thus fortified, he strapped on specialized cross-country skis and his preloaded backpack, and began to schuss toward the base. His chameleon oversuit turned dirty white within moments, to match the snow.
The edge of the plateau presented his first challenge, especially with the twenty-knot wind cutting crossways to the slope. Several hundred meters of broken rock and ice made for a nasty route.
Taking an air-powered launcher off his pack, he fired a grapnel down into a crevice, then pulled up on its attached cord until its barbs seated firmly. Rearranging the lines, he then launched another in a parabolic arc toward the complex in the distance. It reached nearly to the far edge of the ice field, and he drew and pulled until the hooks caught on something and did not budge.
Drawing the two cords toward one another, he tied them firmly and then clipped the resulting safety line into a carabiner, allowing it to run freely. After fitting spiked overshoes and similarly equipped overgloves, he broke his collapsible skis into their component pieces for storage in his pack.
Then he set out.
An ordinary man, if very well prepared, might have made the crossing. Spooky was far from ordinary. His body hardened by years of physical training, perfected by the Eden Plague, then boosted by nanites modified in Direct Action’s own laboratories, he leaped from rock to floe to snowbank.
Occasionally he slipped downward, only to catch himself with his spiked extremities, leaping upward like a video-game figure even as frozen slush crumbled beneath him. Eventually he made his way to the other edge, unclipping himself from his safety line and marking its location with a low-power beacon in case he needed it later.
Reassembling his skis, he skirted rightward into a shallow depression in the rolling plain, staying out of sight of the sprawling complex of shelters on the ground and buildings on stilts. Obviously the base had been growing rapidly this last year.
Cassandra has been busy.
Finally there was no more landscape to put between himself and the nearest building, so he buried his gear, making sure he could find it again, and set out to crawl.
His chameleon-suit should reduce his detectable heat and visible signature to near zero, and radar was unlikely to pick up the small amount of metal he carried. Motion detectors were his only worry, especially the kind strewn on the ground around, listening and looking with sensitive sonics for the traces of a man’s movement.
Because this was not a life-or-death mission, Spooky allowed himself one further risk. Had it been necessary, he would have crept across the intervening two hundred meters at a steady rate below four centimeters per second – standard trigger speed for motion detectors. Below that, most sensors would ignore everything, for the simple reason that excessive sensitivity brought too many false positives that needed to be checked out. No setup was perfect; any system could be beat.
But going so slow would have delayed him by over an hour, and despite his high-tech suit, might endanger him from frostbite and hypothermia. He was already getting hungry again; cold-weather work burned calories at several times the normal rate.
Besides, he might as well give the lady a chance.
It only took him twelve minutes to crawl across the bare field at a pace he deemed correct to fool any merely human eyeballs: a slow, steady creep below the brain’s usual motion sensitivity, like molasses flowing.
Finally, he rolled beneath one of the structures, set on stilts above the frozen ground to minimize heat loss. This was not only to save energy, but also to limit the thawing and instability that inevitably accompanied too much warmth applied to an Antarctic foundation. Much of the ground was layered with ice, and melting it was asking to lose a building in a surface collapse.
Searching, he found an emergency hatch leading up into the structure, with a convenient stairway. Deliberately unlocked in case someone needed to come in quickly, Spooky accepted his good luck and the probability that karma would make him pay later.
The bill came due much sooner than he thought.
After listening for a moment, he lifted the door, hoping to close it immediately and then quickly blend in with the usual heavily clad run of base personnel.
Instead, he was greeted with mocking applause, delivered by a woman whose hard-faced prettiness did nothing to conceal her delight. Two armed figures on either side of her covered him with squat, ugly weapons. “Well done, sir, well done. We didn’t pick you up until you were fifty meters from this building.”
Spooky put on a deliberately pleasant smile before lifting his faceplate, then removing his whole helmet. “Hello, Cassandra. How fast was I moving?”
“Oh, maybe five seconds per meter.”
“Do you think I have forgotten how to count? Or to crawl?”
Her face lost a bit of its triumph. “You might have frozen if you’d done that. The ground is eighty below. Unless you have a fusion pack on your back, the Antarctic will eat your heat if you lie on it for a solid hour.”
“I might have. Then again...I might not. It’s no matter. It was a friendly contest, nothing more, and I salute you.” Spooky raised his fingertips to his eyebrow and winked. “Now do you mind showing me to quarters and a shower? It’s been an uncomfortable trip.”
Cassandra snorted, apparently declining to belabor the obvious, that his discomfort was of his own making. “Sure. Is an hour enough? Daniel would like to see you at 1400.”
“That would be fine, yes. Do you mind having your people point their weapons elsewhere? I’d hate to have to injure anyone.”
One of the figures snorted as Cassandra waved them down. She rounded on him, an iron-chinned hero type straight out of a recruiting poster. “You might want to keep that crap secured, mister.”
“Sorry, ma’am,” the man replied, not looking sorry at all.
“Spooky,” she said without unlocking her eyes from her subordinate’s, “you may embarrass him if you like.”
“Spooky?” the man replied, his jaw slackening. His face turned white as the snow outside.
“I don’t think that will be necessary...anymore,” Spooky responded with a faint smile. “Sometimes it’s enough merely to have a reputation. Lead on, Miss Johnstone.”
The security detail gave them both a wide berth as they walked through their midst, then fell in behind at a respectful distance.
It wasn’t long before the highlander stripped to his skinsuit and scrubbed off in the hot shower. The high-tech material dried almost instantly, wicking away all moisture, and Spooky found a standard set of trousers, tunic and boots that fit well enough. Jauntily he waved at the inevitable camera watching him dress.
Let them wonder, he thought. I didn’t bring any weapons with me, which will make them worry all the more, wondering why they cannot find what I surely must have. He laughed aloud.
* * *
The call came in to Brigadier Alkina’s office a quarter world away, routed directly to her desk by a well-trained COMINT collector.
The fact that the heavily encrypted traffic the man had been analyzing had suddenly become transparent, his near-real-time supercomputer decryption easily breaking a simple eight-bit scramble, surprised him, of course. That the message itself had begun with a recorded loop that said, “Please patch this secure voice feed to Ann Alkina,” had startled him, but he had wisely decided that anyone that could feed into his intelligence system at will should probably be listened to.
And, if the boss did not like his decision, he was sure his career would survive it. She’d never, to his knowledge, been less than scrupulously fair with her subordinates. On the other hand, if it turned out to be important and he delayed...that might be less survivable.
“Alkina,” she answered. For a moment all she heard were crackles, pops and echoes, a sure sign of a call originating off the continent. Then her phone switched of its own accord into secure mode, indicating that the other end had initiated a synchronized encryption that ensured no one between the two devices could decipher their words.
When the line cleared and the green light came on, she heard a female voice, half-familiar. “Ann Alkina? My name is Cassandra Johnstone. I work for Daniel Markis.”
Alkina sat back in her chair and stared for a moment at the inside of her office door, mind racing. She’d never spoken to the woman on the other end, though she knew the name and reputation quite well: Markis’ personal spymistress. Of course she had seen videos and heard recordings of her counterpart – perhaps, technically, her superior, as Johnstone putatively ran the entire Free Community intelligence apparatus.
However, the woman had never tried to assert such authority over Australian affairs, beyond asking for and receiving routine political-military intelligence such as many had access to – the general classified items, not the close-held ones. The fact that she could and did tap so easily into Australian networks, by the roundabout method of deliberately having her call picked up through intelligence channels, was a clear subtext intended for Alkina herself, she was sure. Translation: I can get in if I want to.
“I know who you are,” Alkina answered politely. “How may I help you?”
“I just wanted you to know that our mutual friend arrived safe and sound, and is even now meeting my boss in as much privacy and security as I can provide him.”
Alkina paused again to digest this straightforward declaration. “But that’s not all you wish to say to me.”
“Of course not. There are two reasons for my call. The first is that I have always wanted to talk to you, even to meet you. As it happened, I was not involved in your preparation for the Nebraska mission, so we narrowly missed each other. Since then, we’ve both been a bit busy.”
“Then it pleases me to speak with you directly for the first time, Miss Johnstone.”
“Please, call me Cassandra, or Cassie if you prefer.”
“I would like that. Likewise, you may call me Ann.”
“I wish we were closer together. Perhaps I should come visit? I suspect we have a lot to talk about.”
Alkina took a breath and sighed heavily, a deliberate message. “I would enjoy such a visit, but I do not believe that would be wise at this time. The situation for people such as we are is rather...unsettled. Perhaps when our friend returns, he can stabilize things enough for mutual exchanges to become feasible.”
“I understand.”
“There was some other reason for your call?” Alkina forced brightness into her voice, aware that most people thought her cold and distant in her professional dealings.
“Yes. I have some idea of what our friends are talking about. It will help them both if we have a working relationship, and exchange vital information beyond the ordinary channels. I thought I’d make the first move by providing all the intel we have on the Septagon Shadow Program.”
“Ah, yes, the rogue Unionists and their cyborgs. Are you trying to imply this information is more significant than we think it is?”
Cassandra chuckled. “I’ll let you be the judge of that, without trying to lead you toward any specific conclusion. I will say that I believe that, just as the Eden Plague revolutionized biology, and the nanotech of Tiny Fortress revolutionized covert and special operations – and contributed to beating the Meme space ship – cybernetics is the next frontier of human development. This forbidden technology is the key.”
An odd turn of phrase, Alkina thought. “I will take a look at what you send.”
“That’s all that I ask. And you’ll find my secure telephone number among the message metadata. Your techs can pull it out, I’m sure, in case you need to reach me personally. Until then.”
“Yes, thank you, Cassandra. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye, Ann.”
The line went dead, and Alkina put the handset down. A moment later the internal comm on her desk buzzed to inform her that a triple-encrypted data package had arrived via their secure network. “Download it to my terminal, store one copy on the Deep Vault drive, and wipe it from everything else,” she instructed.
Soon she had it up on her secure terminal, staring at a box that flashed insouciantly at her: Provide Password. She tried several words and phrases – Cassandra, Alkina, Spooky, cybernetics – before something nagged at her memory. Reaching over, she pushed buttons on the recorder that automatically captured her telephone communications, just for occasions like this. After a moment she had it play the phrase she needed.
“This forbidden technology is the key,” she mumbled to herself, typing in those three words. Immediately the package unpacked and showed her a long list of files, some text, some graphics. After an hour of study, “Holy shit” was the least of her exclamations.
* * *
“Good day, Spooky.” Daniel Markis held out his hand, which the Vietnamese took firmly, even warmly. “It’s good to see you.”
“It’s good to believe you when you say that, Daniel,” the other man responded. “In my world, honesty is a luxury.” He released Markis’ hand to slide backward onto the table in the center of the room, where he pulled his feet up to sit cross-legged, incongruously casual.
Markis sat down in a comfortable chair himself. “Yes, I’ve been following your exploits as well as I can...at least until you abdicated your position in Direct Action.”
Spooky raised an eyebrow. “You are well informed.”
“I have good people working for me, that’s all.”
“But you did not call this meeting to brag.” Nguyen looked around the room for a moment, then asked, “Do you have anything to smoke? It’s one of my few vices.”
“Along with sex, yes, I know that too. I’ll call for something.” Markis picked up a nearby wired phone and made the request.
“Sex is not a vice. It’s a tool.”
“What a line. All right, I’m not here to spar – unless it’s in the dojo, for fun.”
“What are you here for?” Spooky looked up as the room’s single door opened and one of the security detail came in carrying a tray with food, water, coffee and a box of cigars. After the woman left, he picked one up, and its attendant lighter, and ran it under his nose. “Nice.”
“Havanas...a gift from the Cuban Free Community. To answer your question...you know I like to deal face to face if I can. So much of FC business is done over the secure networks nowadays that I really value personal contact.”
“I don’t remember you being this much of a politician, Daniel.”
Markis grimaced. “We become the roles thrust upon us, don’t we? Is anyone completely in charge of his own destiny?”
“I am, as much as is possible for a man to be.”
“Yes, that’s what I meant to talk to you about.” Markis reached across to snag a cigar from the box, and accepted the cutter from Nguyen’s hand. A moment passed in silent ritual, until fragrant smoke curled from the ends of both stogies.
“Go on.”
“All right.” Markis put the cigar down on an ashtray and poured himself a cup of coffee from the thermos pot. “You abdicated.”
“I did what I thought was best for humanity. If not for me, Captain Absen might have been killed, and with him humanity’s best hope. I don’t think any other officer aboard could have commanded Orion and won that battle.”
“Not even you?”
Spooky laughed. “Absolutely not me. Do I look like a seasoned naval officer?”
“Just checking for megalomania.”
“You’re the ruler of Earth, DJ, not me.”
“Oh, that. Not all it’s cracked up to be.” Markis took a sip of coffee, made a face. “What’s so hard about brewing a decent pot of java here?”
“You’re circling hard around the point, Mister Chairman. Perhaps you could veer toward it a bit?”
“All right. My sources, and I am sure your Miss Alkina can confirm this, say that your Committee Chairwoman Smythe is gunning for you.”
“Accepted. So?”
“So we have less than nine years until that damned Destroyer comes. Every day counts. You got Orion built, not her. You handled your Committee and you made it happen.”
“A lot of other people were involved.”
Markis slapped his hand on the table, making the tray jump. “False modesty. Sure, everyone was important, but you were vital. Without you, there would have been delays, and the loss of just a few more days might have meant an unstoppable asteroid wiping out all life on Earth.” He shot his index finger out, pointing at Spooky. “You know what I fear?”
Spooky shrugged. “What?”
“I fear the same thing happening. I fear that without you working your magic in Australia, we’ll be a year or a month or a week or even a day late – and it will all be for naught. Because, and I have no idea why, or how: nobody will work as hard at it as you do, nor do it as well.”
“You want to know why, and how?” Spooky filled his mouth with smoke and slowly forced it through his sinuses and out his nose, resembling nothing so much as the stereotypical Asian villain of ancient Hollywood B-movies.
“No. I don’t think I’d like the answer.”
Spooky chuckled. “Dodging your conscience?”
“A necessity of politics. But knowing your reasons and methods would not persuade me I’m wrong, it would just make me feel unneeded guilt. To paraphrase Churchill, I’d make a deal with the devil himself to defeat the Meme.”
“That’s an unkind comparison.”
“Apologies, but you get my meaning. Five-meter targets. Right now I need you – the world needs you – back in the drivers’ seat in Australia. It’s going to be the launching pad of the new spacegoing naval force, and that means it will be literally the most vital defense effort on Earth. I’m afraid if you don’t take charge, someone like Smythe will derail it and kill us all. Not to mention what is going on in Russia.”
Spooky ignored that last for now and smoked some more, long minutes of thought that Markis left unfilled, except to build two sandwiches and push one toward the other man. Finally the Vietnamese spoke.
“I’m not inclined to do this. I have discovered far more satisfaction in independent action, and in self-actualization through martial philosophy. I am less constrained this way. I might even be able to solve your Russian problem better on my own, using my Direct Action operatives.”
Just as Markis was about to speak in protest, he went on. “But I will do it, because you have persuaded me.” Spooky picked up the proffered sandwich and bit off a healthy chunk, refueling his body.
Markis sighed with relief. “Thank you.”
“You are welcome. But I will do what I will do, in my own way. I will not be ordered about by anyone, not even you.”
Markis spread his hands in acceptance. “Once you left my personal service, have I ever expected that?”
“No. I just wanted to be clear. If I take over, I will rule Australia for the benefit of the world – and for the people there, and for myself, not for you or for the Free Communities.”
Markis threw him a jaunty salute. “Got it. Now about Russia...”
“What about it? You said you have some problem with them?”
“Just with the Septagon Shadow program, the parts of it that fled the U.S. The Russians took them in. I’m sure they love the idea of absorbing the technology and using it.”
“I fail to see what the issue is. Surely a few cyborgs are not that disruptive to a technologically advanced nation armed with nuclear weapons.”
Markis finished his sandwich and reached for another. “Not if they stay in their lanes. My concern is that they might turn the tables on the Russians.”
“The tail may wag the dog, you think?”
“I do. Cass has been looking into it for quite a while, ever since her son Rick and daughter-in-law came home with implanted cyberware.”
“Yes,” Spooky replied drily. “I can see the motivation.”
“I’ve directed Cass to turn over a complete package of data to you. All I ask is that you look at it and, once you have secured your position, think about what needs to be done. If the goal is to get all of Earth, especially the big players, pulling the yoke together, we have to remove a rogue element like Septagon Shadow.”
Spooky chuckled. “You want me to do your dirty work.”
“Our dirty work, Tran. We do what we do best, you do what you do best. Win-win.” Markis stared at Spooky a moment longer, as if deciding what more to say. “Did you ever wonder why I gave you so much material to work with?”
“Because you had no choice, if Orion was to be built?”
Markis laughed. “Not that kind of material...I meant human resources.”
Spooky’s eyes narrowed, and his nostrils flared with suppressed realization.
Markis’ smile broadened. “It’s a rare thing to get ahead of the great Spooky Nguyen. I’m talking about your fellows, your compatriots.”
“Psychos?”
“If you have a less pejorative term I’ll use it.”
“I don’t really mind, between us alone. Officially, we call them ‘Outliers’.” Spooky finished the sandwich, drank a glass of water and relit his cigar. “So you’re claiming you...”
“Killed at least two birds with one stone by shipping you all the ‘Outliers’ we could find? Yes. Even Cass was against it, but I think I was right. Getting rid of the Psychos from the rest of the FC dramatically simplified our problems, and I figured that someone would eventually put them to good use, or eliminate them for us. The only risk I foresaw was that they would seize power and make a mess of things, but once you took up residence there, I slept like a baby.”
Spooky puffed his stogie contemplatively, matched by Daniel across from him. “When did you know?”
“About you being one? For sure? I suppose just now...but I suspected for a long while, and was almost certain from the time the missile strikes went awry. I just couldn’t see you getting duped that way, which meant that somehow you had to be complicit. No Eden would sacrifice hundreds of millions of people, even if the payoff was breaking the back of the nations standing in the way of saving the Earth. But I saw you infected. Ergo...an Outlier.”
“Hmm.” Spooky stood up to pace after tapping a chunk of ash into the tray. “A deductive leap. I did not think it would be so obvious.”
Daniel shook his head. “It was only obvious to someone who knew you well, knew your skills and abilities, and also knew the real ins and outs of the Eden Plague’s effects on the human psyche.”
“Ah. Elise.”
“And her team, of course. We were talking one day and suddenly I had an epiphany.”
“You are a fortunate man, to have such a wife.”
“I am.” Markis stood up to match Spooky across the table, putting down his stogie. “My reports say you have a good woman, too.”
“Good? I’m not sure that’s the right term, but...loyal, entertaining, and effective, yes. An excellent match. But now we are just exchanging pleasantries, and I am very tired.” Spooky made as if to grind out his cigar.
Markis leaned back in his chair, interlacing his fingers behind his head, his elbows spread to the sides. “I remember when we used to just shoot the breeze. Be a shame if we’re beyond that simple pleasure now.” His eyes widened, and held something Nguyen could not completely fathom.
Spooky paused, momentarily astonished. Then he tried to put himself in the other man’s place. Loneliness had seldom been the Degar’s affliction, but Markis was a social man, a white knight from his earliest days. Now he sat atop a political pyramid that precluded him from relaxing with anyone except his inner circle – who these days comprised mostly women. Cass, Elise, Shawna, Millie...there was Larry Nightingale, but he was the only one of the original A-team available. Vinny and Skull and Zeke were dead, and Spooky had left Markis’ side.
“I understand, my friend.” Spooky sat back down, putting his feet up on the table, and asked, “We have beer?”
“I’ll send for some.” The Chairman of the Free Communities stuck his head out the door and called for a couple of six-packs, an unconscious smile on his face.
When the beer arrived the Chairman of the Free Communities Council slid one of the bottles across to his old comrade, a man he hoped would soon be the absolute ruler of Australia. Then he ordered the weather shutters that covered the large window opened, allowing in the glow from the southern aurora.
“Remember how Skull could spin a bottle cap with his fingertips like a Frisbee?” Spooky set his first metal lid between thumb and middle finger and snapped it toward Markis. It flew in an arc and struck his target in the chest.
“I do! Looks like you mastered the skill.”
“It took me some time. I couldn’t let him show me up, after all.”
Under unearthly ribbons of dancing light, they reminisced late into the Antarctic night.
