| |
Cassandra stared at the monitor. “Skull Denham. Not in a million years would I have predicted your face showing up on my screen.”
“Hello, Cass. I hear Rick has grown up strong. That’s good. And Millie. How are they?”
“You know, Skull, if you’re trying to remind me that I owe you my family, I know that. But I owe other people things, and so do you, like when Zeke derailed your court-martial using information I provided. Let’s not play that game.”
“No game, Cass. I’m just trying to get in touch with DJ, and here you are. It’s great to see you but I need to talk to him.”
“He’s not back from Pueblo yet...as I bet you already know. Since you’re on, anything you’d like to tell me about Tiny Fortress?”
Skull laughed darkly. “If you can get Markis on, you might learn more than you thought you could. General Tyler wants to make a deal.”
“The meeting with McKenna didn’t go so well.”
“McKenna doesn’t run Tiny Fortress: Tyler does. If he and Markis can make some kind of arrangement, maybe everyone will come out ahead.”
Cassandra pressed her lips together. “All right. Just as soon as he gets back to Medellin, I’ll get in touch.”
***
The meeting took place in Mexico City. In a rented mansion guarded by Karl Rogett and his team, four people sat down together: Markis, General Tyler, Skull, and Cassandra Johnstone. No one shook hands.
“Good to see you, Skull,” opened Markis.
“Good to see you too, DJ. I’m glad this all worked out so well.”
The others looked at Skull in surprise.
Cassandra broke the shocked silence. “How in the world can you think hundreds of millions of dead people ‘worked out so well’?”
Skull smiled in triumph, relishing their discomfort. “Oh come on. It wrecked the Big Three, and now the Free Communities’ research program can go forward, just in time to save us normals from the Demon Plague, right? Because that’s what you’re going to do, isn’t it? If it hadn’t happened this way, do you think the Unionists would have let you alone? They’d have cut their own throats to keep power.”
Markis chuckled. “So you’re making your ‘good from evil’ argument again, huh? And I suppose you’re going to say that without the Unionists and their paranoia, Tiny Fortress would never have made progress enough to be useful against the Demon Plague. See, I can play prophet too.” He turned from Skull to the lean, weathered man sitting next to him. “General Tyler, if I’m right, you decided to overrule or bypass President McKenna in this matter. That means you’re the real ruler of the United States, right? The man who scared him so much?”
Tyler shook his head. “I don’t know what you think you saw, Markis, but I’m not pulling McKenna’s strings. It’s true that I’m going around him; lots of generals have gone around politicians before, if they thought it was important enough. If he fires me, I can live with that. But he needs me too much. No, Markis, it’s just me willing to take a risk for the greater good.”
Markis looked at Tyler long and hard, trying to see past the cowboy confidence and the rough exterior to the man beneath. “Out of the goodness of your heart?”
“Enlightened self-interest. We have a much greater threat bearing down on us. The USA is on her knees and she can’t take much more. We need the cure Skull is convinced you will come up with. He’s sure you’ll just give it away when it’s ready, but I wanted to make sure you owed us. To, as he keeps saying, ‘make a grand gesture.’”
Tyler pulled a finely machined metal cylinder out of his pocket, placing it on the table. It was about the size of a soda can, slightly thinner, and appeared to have a removable top, sealed with plastic tape. Next to it he placed a data module.
“This is the best we can do right now. It’s a few grams of one of several kinds of nanobots we’ve produced. These are self-replicating, so you can get them to breed using the protocols on this drive.”
“What do they do?” Cassandra asked.
“Simply put? They defend Edens against the Demon Plague. It’s all in the files on that drive. I’m sure you have your own nanobot project; this will give them a huge leap forward. If you get them replicating properly, you should have enough to pass around to your most important people, at least, as an inoculation.”
“But what about the rest of the populace?”
Tyler spread his hands. “I’m sorry. It’s the best I can do. Nanotech is centuries, millennia behind biological and evolutionary design. We’re catching up as fast as we can.”
Markis looked at Skull a moment, who nodded smugly. “Bastards,” Daniel muttered under his breath, then he laughed. “This must have been your idea, Skull. You’re trying to out-me me. You know I’ll be in your debt for this.”
Tyler glanced at Skull, masking his surprise, while the tall killer sat back, his smile broadening before he replied, “I told you things were working out pretty well.”
Markis reached for the cylinder and the hard drive. “I’m usually the one arguing for moving past suspicion, but...there’s no chance this could have been tampered with? By the SS, or someone like that?”
Tyler said, “Have your people examine it.”
“Yes,” Skull interjected. “Play with it. Breed it and try it out on Edens that get the Demon Plague. I know you have plenty of those dying all the time. It’s your best chance.”
Markis hefted the cylinder in his hand. “Damn you, Skull, you’re right.”
“You know, DJ, I’m always right.”
