Short Futures, page 3
“Our lives are transitory,” Mitchell’s voice grew harder, his face more grim. “The life of this planet is not---living worlds are precious jewels to be cherished and preserved, not to be carelessly fouled. We cannot allow it.”
“You can’t allow it?” Wellesley exploded. She took a step forward and the muzzles of the troopers’ lasers swung around to back her up. “I’ll be the one deciding whether I allow you to live...”
Before she could finish the threat, a scream of rocket engines ripped apart the sky and a wedge-shaped shuttlecraft descended on incandescent columns of fusion-heated air only a hundred meters away down the hill. A wave of sweltering heat washed over the gathered Corporates and squatters, sending three of the armored Security troopers to their knees and driving the others backward. All except Mitchell. He remained motionless, eyeing the landing spacecraft stolidly, a Jesus regarding the storm. So he was the only one to see when the shuttle’s boarding ramp slowly extended and Andre Damiani disembarked, a jaunt to his step, a hint of a smirk on his face.
Andre watched Investigator Wellesley pick herself off the ground and imagined he could see the steam coming off her. Most men would have at least attempted to look contrite, but Damiani strode into the midst of the group as if he were walking into a party held in his honor.
“Ms. Wellesley,” he nodded to the CSF Investigator.
“Damiani,” Wellesley hissed, “I was so hoping your reputation was overstated.”
“I believe you requested my immediate presence,” he cocked an eyebrow. “From your tone, I assumed it was urgent.” He glanced at Mitchell and his ragged entourage. “Problems with the locals?”
“We don’t have any problems here, Mr. Damiani, and I plan to keep it that way.” Wellesley was in his face with one step, her voice lowering to a threatening rasp inaudible to the others. “I know all about you and your obsession with the Predecessors, Golden Boy...you may have conned those doddering fools on the Executive Board with your fantasies of finding caches of lost technology, but you’ve yet to produce a single usable device. I’ve had my eye on you for a long time.”
“Gosh Agent Wellesley,” Damiani said, intentionally loud, “I am flattered, but it’s my personal policy not to get romantically involved with co-workers.” He smiled broadly. “Maybe we can still be friends.”
Wellesley’s eyes flared with anger and for a moment Damiani thought he had pushed it a centimeter too far, but then she took a deep breath and stepped back from him.
“All right. If that’s how you want it.” Her tone was chillingly dismissive. “But you’d better not make a mistake, Damiani. You may think the worst that can happen to you is to lose your seat on the Council, but I can assure you that will be the least of your problems if you cross me.”
Wellesley stalked off toward her groundcar, followed after a moment’s hesitation by her guard escort, leaving Damiani standing alone with the squatters. He looked Mitchell up and down, sensing somehow that there was more to the man than met the eye.
“Mr. Damiani,” Mitchell said without preamble, “I believe I know what you are looking for. And I can help you find it.”
Andre stared at him, taken aback.
“And just what might I be looking for, Mr. Mitchell?” he finally asked.
“You think you’re looking for the secrets of the Predecessors,” Mitchell delivered the answer that froze Damiani’s blood in his veins, “but what you really seek is both far simpler and yet far more difficult to obtain. You seek meaning, Mr. Damiani.” Mitchell’s gaze burned into him with the intensity of an exploding star. “Meaning for your aimless, meaningless life.”
Damiani wanted to laugh at him, wanted to offer some witty comment about their clothes and make a grand exit back to his shuttle. But something stopped him. Surely not his religious ramblings, part of Damiani’s mind protested. I can’t be that far gone! No, it must be the Predecessors...if there’s the chance he might know anything...
“All right,” Andre shrugged. “What’s the hook? What do I have to do?”
“Our village is three kilometers west of here,” Mitchell gestured up the mountain. “Meet me there in twelve hours. Alone.”
Without waiting for an answer, Mitchell turned and led his group back up the path, quickly disappearing into the thick, tangled foliage.
Andre watched them go, shaking his head in amazement. For the first time in his life, he was at a loss for words.
* * *
Caleb Mitchell stared silently at the night sky, at a field of stars so close it seemed he could reach through the thin, mountain air and touch them.
“Some people look at the stars,” he said, “and think how insignificant we are...individuals, humans, life in general. Just blades of grass adrift in the ocean.” He turned back to Andre, who squatted cross-legged next to the communal fire at the center of the small village. “Is that what you think, Mr. Damiani?”
“Not really,” Andre shrugged, tossing a wood chip into the fire. It was true...he could never think of himself as insignificant.
“What I think when I look at the stars, Mr. Damiani,” Mitchell went on as if Andre had not said anything, “is how lucky this universe is to have us to appreciate it.”
“That’s an interesting way of thinking, Mr. Mitchell,” Damiani admitted. He stood, looking the man in the eye. “Or should I say, ‘Captain Mitchell?’ Would you prefer that?”
“Captain Mitchell is dead,” the big man declared, not betraying any surprise at Damiani’s revelation.
“That’s what the military records say, too,” Damiani agreed. “Which, I suppose, is why Wellesley hasn’t found out who you are yet.”
“You don’t know who I am, Mr. Damiani,” Mitchell shook his head. “You only know who I was.”
“Who you were and what you are, Captain Mitchell, is one of the deadliest human beings that ever lived. “ This time, Mitchell did show a reaction—he looked up sharply at Damiani, but swiftly buried his surprise behind a mask of complacency. Damiani knew he was taking a chance. He was alone with the man, not even any of the other squatters to witness if Mitchell decided to snap his neck. And he knew the man was capable of doing just that...
“If military intelligence found out you knew about Omega Group,” Mitchell commented quietly, “they would most likely have you killed on general principles.”
Damiani chuckled. “The military? Do try to keep up, Captain Mitchell. The Council has the military in its back pocket. Without us, they wouldn’t exist. We kept them in business once the War with the Tahni was over, letting them fight our battles with the smugglers and the pirates in exchange for continued funding. If I turned you in, they would line up to kiss my ass.” He shrugged. “I mean, after all, the intelligence boys probably didn’t take too kindly to losing such a valuable...asset. Particularly one into which they had sunk several million credits worth of physical augmentation.”
“Tell me Mr. Damiani, why do you feel the need to use coercion when I have already said I would give you exactly what you want?”
“Let’s just say,” Andre shrugged, “that I am uncomfortable with the concept of philanthropy. I would rather know why someone is helping me—and I would rather it were in their best interest to do so.”
“Fine.” Mitchell smiled with an apparent sense of ease that disturbed Andre. “Then let’s assume that your ploy succeeded and I am shaking with fear. Now will you allow me to help you?”
“As long as ‘helping me’ involves telling me where the Predecessor outpost in this system is located,” Andre replied, “and not giving me your own personal psychoanalysis of whatever ‘meaning’ you may believe me to be seeking.”
“I can take you to the Predecessors,” Mitchell declared with a matter-of-factness that made it believable.
“You know where they are,” Damiani said, more statement than question. “We can take my ship...”
“No need for a ship. The Predecessor base is inside this mountain.”
“What?” Andre stared at him. “That’s impossible...no Predecessor outpost has ever been found on a habitable planet. It’s as if they avoided them, avoided disturbing the life on them.”
“All except one. The one. Have you ever heard of the Gate of Dreams, Mr. Damiani?”
Damiani barked out a laugh, shaking his head in amusement. “Oh, Captain Mitchell, you really had me going! I can’t believe I actually took you seriously for a moment. That Gate of Dreams nonsense has been bouncing around human space for a hundred years!”
“Trust me when I say it has been around much, much longer than that.” Mitchell smiled softly.
“Oh yeah, I forgot the story,” Damiani chuckled. “The Predecessors had become so advanced that they grew tired of corporeal existence and decided to go through the Gate of Dreams, a relic from another reality, and become gods. I had a girlfriend once who bought into that crap.” He tried to remember her name, but it slipped his mind and he hadn’t thought enough of her to save his memories of her in his headcomp.
“All legends become myths with constant retelling, Mr. Damiani,” Mitchell told him. “And this one has been told and retold since before humans discovered the wheel.”
“But you happen to know the truth of it, eh?”
“There’s one way to find out. If you will go with me in the morning, I’ll take you to the Predecessors. There is just one problem, however.”
“Of course there is,” Damiani sighed.
“The problem is,” Mitchell continued, “that as of tomorrow morning, this mountain won’t be here anymore.”
“The plasma miners come up the hill tomorrow,” Damiani realized. He looked hard into Mitchell’s eyes, wishing he could see through them into the man’s cryptic thoughts. “You understand the risk you’re asking me to take.”
“I ask nothing of you, Mr. Damiani,” Mitchell corrected him. “I only offer an opportunity. Taking advantage of it is up to you.”
Andre wanted to turn and leave the man, to get in his ship and go back to his comfortable office and never look back. But something stopped him, some small part of him that wanted to believe. In the end he could only ask, “Where and when?”
“I’ll find you, Mr. Damiani,” Mitchell replied, then turned and disappeared into one of the huts without another word.
Damiani started down the path to the Corporate camp at the foot of the mountain but hesitated for a moment, looking up at the stars. He hoped Mitchell was right about his significance to the universe, because if he went through with this, he was going to need all the friends he could get.
* * *
Damiani looked from the stunner in his hand to the motionless form of the CSF guard at his feet and briefly wondered if he had finally gone over the edge. Many had predicted it, to be sure, over the last ten years, as he had pursued every angle that even had a chance to lead to the Predecessors.
Oh well, he thought, shoving the stunner into his belt, might as well go all the way.
He dragged the fallen guard into the shadows, then quickly clambered up the ladder into the cockpit of the titanic plasma miner. Three stories tall and weighing over a hundred tons, the machine was little more than a mobile fusion reactor. It used the superhot plasma its reactor produced to vaporize rock and then sucked it through filters to separate out the valuable ores. The three miners parked in the clearing were enough to bring the whole mountain down in less than a week.
Damiani hacked the control panel’s coded safeguards with a cryptography AI module he had brought from his ship, then powered the machine up. Plasma-driven turbines came alive with an otherworldly shriek that tore at his nerves. He had never operated one of these things before, but what he had in mind required little in the way of finesse and much in the way of brute force. He glanced at the horizon and saw a hint of false dawn...not much time.
Recalling the operations manual he had hastily downloaded after leaving the mountain village, Damiani shifted the miner into forward and opened the throttle halfway. The machine lurched forward as massive twin tracks received a sudden jolt of power and he struggled with the steering yoke to keep his course straight towards the side of the second miner. Pulling as close to the other machine as he could, he hit the controls to open the plasma ports to their lowest setting. The shielding on the fusion reactor opened the barest of cracks, less than a millimeter, but the cockpit’s canopy filters went black to protect him against the fires of the sun brought down to man.
Damiani slammed the port shut with a slap of his hand on the control lever, and when he backed his machine away, he saw with some gratification that the miner he had targetted no longer had a portside track—instead, there was a lump of molten and running metal settling into a small crater in the ground.
Wrestling his machine on a course for the third plasma miner, Damiani found himself hoping that the stunned guard had been far enough away to avoid a fatal dose of radiation from his use of the plasma port.
That’s odd, he mused. He hadn’t thought of anyone but himself in quite a while. Mom would be so proud, he snorted.
Cracking the plasma port once more, he melted the side of the third mining machine to slag, then powered his miner down and slipped out of his seat, ducking down beneath the control panel. Drawing on the schematics he had read, he opened an electronics maintenance hatch and yanked out a pair of relay boards, slipping them into his jacket pocket. The boards could be replaced, but they would have to be programmed to interface with the miner’s AI, and that would take at least a day’s work—enough time for what he had to do.
Andre was climbing down from the cab when something hard and unyielding slammed between his shoulder blades, sending him sprawling to the ground, his back spasming in agony. Forcing his eyes open against the pain, he found himself looking up at the visored helmet and yawning pulse-carbine beam emitter of one of the CSF troopers.
“Don’t move or you’re fried,” the man shouted, his voice muffled slightly by his helmet.
Damiani’s hand was positioned over his stunner and he was about to make a grab for it when a dark blur slammed into the guard and he went down in a heap. The dark blur materialized into the form of Caleb Mitchell, his hand extended to help Andre to his feet.
“I said I would find you,” the man reminded him, smiling thinly. “Quickly, there’s not much time.”
Still dazed by Mitchell’s sudden appearance, Andre nodded wordlessly and followed the man back up the mountain trail at a brisk trot.
“Once those guards come to and identify me, “ Andre gasped out, struggling to keep up with Mitchell, “I’m a dead man.”
“Oh?” The ex-commando glanced back at him, not the least bit winded. “And you think you were truly alive before?”
Before Andre could snap back a reply, Mitchell turned back and picked up the pace and Andre suddenly needed all his breath for running. Lacking night vision equipment, Andre had to stick close to Mitchell and trust the infrared filters implanted in the man’s eyes as they made their way up the rough trail.
Damiani expected hordes of CSF troopers to dog their heels, but he heard nothing except the hard stomp of his own footsteps as the local primary edged its way over the horizon. He tried to spot the path to the squatter village but he soon realized they were taking another trail, rougher than the one he had traversed last night, and leading much higher up the mountain. Rocks and vegetation yanked at his ankles, determined to trip him up with every step, but Mitchell refused to slow his pace, doggedly trotting up the ever-steeper slope.
Andre ordered his implanted pharmacy organ to dose his system with endorphines and adrenaline in an effort to keep up with the fast-moving Mitchell. His thoughts grew fevered as his conscious mind battled the fight-or-flight response to the biochemicals, and abject terror battled with a building excitement at the prospect that he might actually find the holy grail for which he had been seeking all these years.
And then what? A little voice asked, so small and still, yet heard clearly through the mists of his overloaded brain.
The question almost made him halt in his tracks. What would he do once he had found the secret of the Predecessors? Would the Corporate Council be so grateful they would forgive all his sins, or would Wellesley simply have him killed and take the credit for herself?
“Halt where you are or we will open fire!” The amplified voice startled him so badly he nearly lost his footing and went tumbling off the side of the trail, but he managed to catch himself in time. Twisting around, he saw the flattened oval of a CSF flyer floating a hundred meters above them, its ducted fans nearly silent, the gaping muzzles of its twin grenade cannons pointed his way.
Andre raised his hands in surrender. No more worries about what he would do when he found the secrets of the Predecessors, anyway...he would never get the chance. Then he felt himself yanked violently backward by the material of his tunic and the lights abruptly went out.
It took him a moment to realize that he was still alive, and a moment longer to figure out that he had been pulled inside some sort of cave. He rolled to a crouch and felt in his pockets for a flashlight.
“Don’t bother,” Mitchell’s voice came from somewhere behind him. The man uttered a word in a language never meant to be spoken by human vocal cords and suddenly the passage was flooded with light.
Andre looked around, trying to spot the entrance they had used, but saw nothing—in fact, he was in the middle of a long, narrow corridor, its walls glowing with an interior light. “Where in the hell am I?” He breathed, his voice thick with disbelief.
“Exactly where you wanted to be,” Mitchell told him, striding off down the corridor.
“What about the CSF goons? It won’t take them long to figure out where we went.”
“Do you know where we went?”
Damiani considered that for a moment before shaking his head in consternation and following Mitchell. The corridor gradually widened into a hall, the walls curving up into a barrel vault lit from within. When he stared at those walls, Andre thought he could begin to make out images within them, ghosts of a dead race watching him with detached amusement.
