“There wasn’t any indication that the chamber was—”
“You didn’t think the big floating ball at the center might have been a threat?”
Neither Cervera nor Jennings had any response.
“No more.” Richter shook his head and waved his glass to black. “Shut it down. We’re not risking any more lives for something we can’t—”
“You don’t have the authority,” Jennings said quietly.
“The Directive hands final authority over any encounter scenario to the agent in—”
“Holmdel’s dead.”
Richter considered the possibility of his own disappearance if he didn’t tone down.
“Then at least slow down. Send machines into the chamber. Get a better idea of what that thing is before wasting any more people.” Richter tipped a glass from the table. It displayed the torn, bleeding pile of what had been Assault B. “Take your time with this. The vessel’s been buried for sixty-five million—”
“We don’t have the time.”
“You’re afraid of War Four breaking out? Neighbors to the north?”
“How did you—”
“Everyone knows. They’re up to something. And you want this alien technology—whatever it is—as a weapon. Then fucking research it first. Don’t just throw men at it.”
“And women.”
“And women.” Richter scanned through more images of bodies bent, twisted, pulped. “All I’m saying is slow down. We spent years going over every square inch of Titicaca. Give me a blueprint.”
A holoprint image of the buried vessel sparked to life on the main display. Richter walked to it, studied it.
“This area,” he pointed to the starboard nacelle, “is missing something. See the difference?”
Jennings and Cervera blanked.
“A smaller sphere. Not the floating one in the central chamber in the connecting hub. Note the conduits running through the twist points, the nacelle sockets.” Reynald poked the holo, which smudged and rebounded. “That floating ball is directly between two similar chambers, one on each wing of the vessel. One of those connected chambers has a spherical slug of metal secured inside. The other’s empty.”
“Not following.”
“We found what I suspect are pieces of that missing ball spread throughout South America. That thing shattered as it was ejected before impact. The ship is on a straight-line trajectory from the Titicaca site, and fragments of that shattered ball have been found from Uruguay to Peru.” He slaved a hemisphere map from his personal link.
“Why didn’t I fucking know this?” Jennings barely contained a lethal frustration.
“You didn’t need to know this.” Richter swiped a red line across the floating map, connecting the dots between Uruguay and Wyoming. “And I didn’t much feel like volunteering any information after you put me on your kill list.”
“Listen, James. All I knew was that you were close to Holmdel. After the Populace—”
“If you want my help, I’ll need to choose my own team.”
Cervera shook a no. “I don’t think—”
“My own team.”
“We can’t just bring in anyone you want…”
Richter glared. “Cosmotech has a math egg named Hope Benton. Bring her in. And no more of these,” he wagged the autopsy glass before them, “third estate types. Guinea pigs. Send in the robots, and then we’ll talk about sending people in again.”
Cervera and Jennings locked a look.
“Fine.”
“Me?” Adam West slid his only photograph of Abigail into his empty wallet. Milicom paid the bills. “Blood money. Early release from my contract.”
“How long?”
“Eight years left.”
The wheezing, jittery teenager huddled in the corner of the staging area. West saw the healing split of a lip. West saw the dusky haze of a Pearl addict. She shook her head. “World won’t last another eight years.”
“Sure it will. One last dance, and we’re both out, right? Have to stay positive, kid.”
She wracked a cough, enough to scare West marginally. Either she had been smoking three packs a day for the last forty years, or she was terminal Pearl.
“What’s your name, Irish?”
She looked him up and down, the distrust of a life of trauma.
“Come on. We’re gonna be here a while. Might as well get to know each other.”
“I’m called Maggie.”
West extended a hand, shook her collection of metacarpals. The drug had burned through her, leaving only a gaunt form topped with a blossom of orange curls, tied lazily back with a drab cord. The green of her eyes was diluted.
“Adam West.” He was relieved, even after a lifetime of dealing with the brutality of his name, that the reference was lost on the Irish.
He could have constructed a conversation around her age, the fact that she was obviously an outsourced asset, or the Blood Army tattoo he saw crawling up the left side of her neck, but Adam West’s parents had taught him tact.
He saw others among the group crawling over her, or wanting to, the dozens of eyes of the trapped coming to rest on a pretty young thing, vulnerable, slumped in the corner. He was immune to those restings. She was a cute little girl; he was a widower. He’d protect her, although he suspected that she needed no protecting. Each trace of the artist’s needle was a kill; each slough of lung tissue was a testament to her steel core.
The staging area had once been an upper-level office complex for the Diablo Mining company. Now, fifty soldiers, all of whom West suspected were there for their own escape plans, to get out of MSI early, to make recompense for some transgression, to be promoted, all waited in various states of anticipation and fear. They were poor, scrawny kids with bobbing Adam’s apples, a few with the lowbright slope of War Three’s fallout, the non-coms and executives among them standing straight and proud, doing fine jobs of hiding their uncertainty. This job would come with a price, and no one knew who could pay.
The room held the hushed murmur of conversation that only waiting emits.
“You been here—”
West cut off as the door cycled open, cut off as one of the more eager execs stood bolt-upright: “Uh-tennn- HUT!” One hundred legs extended, one hundred heels clicked.
“As you were.” The officer was a tall man, a dark man; his suit was tall and dark. He walked into the middle of the assembly, followed by two. “I’m James Richter, and this is Hope Benton and Michael Balfour. We’re here to apprise you of the situation.”
“Hope Benton, Quantum-X.” She tossed a projector marble into the air, where it spun to life, splashing a neon blueprint into the air. The assembly silently oohed and ahhed as they studied the display. She’d done a good job of forging a schematic; the grunts would never know the difference. “What you see is the layout of the Diablo Mine, sector fourteen, subsector seven. You’ve been contracted for an important mission, one that will release you from all previous obligations to MSI.”
There was a smiling anticipation in the air. People caught glances and grins. The fifty participants each had their reasons for obligation releases.
“It’s fake,” Maggie muttered under her breath. West heard.
“Quiet, please.” Benton continued. She sparked a pointer to life and began to indicate places on the blueprint. “The Diablo Mining Corp called in Milicom because they’ve had an incident downstairs. One of their fat-bore diggers snagged a thread of an unknown metal, and that caused the core of the tractor to seize up. It went a little critical.”
“This is a cleanup, plain and simple,” Michael Balfour took off. “I’m sure most of you have experience with cleanups. MSI doesn’t usually grant contract releases for mop work, so consider yourselves lucky. If you work hard,
