Fire with Fire(12)

Brinkley gestured toward the edge of the tarmac: through the heat-shimmer, Caine could make out a boxy, dull-green silhouette. “It ain’t a limo, but it’ll do. Say, are you going to be all right? Do you need anything?”

Yes. I need to know whether that shot was meant to drop me or warn me. But either way, a little more cross-wind and that bullet would have gone straight through my right eye.

Brinkley droned on. “Listen, I’ve got a medkit in the car. We’ll put a compress on those nicks. They’re not too deep. Day or two and you won’t even feel ’em—”

True—because I might be dead by then, without ever knowing who pulled the trigger. Probably somebody working for the Colonial Development Combine’s planet-rapers, but Downing said there could be other players in this game. But they—whoever “they” are—shouldn’t know I’m on Delta Pavonis, or even who I am. Instead, I step straight off the spaceplane and into someone’s waiting crosshairs.

And Brinkley still droned on. “Yep; we’ll have you fixed up good as new. And we’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again. To the extent that’s possible, of course. Sure don’t want folks like yourself taking home bad reports. Hey, who’d you say you work for?”

“I didn’t.”

Brinkley had walked a step ahead, was trying to catch Caine’s eye. “Of course, I understand if you can’t say who you work for. We get that all the time. A lot of covert ops passing through. Every once in a while, our pilots have to ferry super spooks into or out of the bush. Incognito commandos, I call ’em.” Brinkley smiled wider, seemed to be expecting a sign that Caine appreciated his clever nomenclature.

Caine just kept walking, kept his eyes on the low skyline of the settlement, and kept hoping it was big enough to get lost in for a while. Long enough, at least, to decide his next move. From all appearances, the mission had been compromised—so what should he do? Call it busted and catch a shuttle to the next outbound shift-carrier?

No: not acceptable. Even if there hadn’t been any lives depending on the success of his mission, retreat was simply not an option. The next shift-carrier wasn’t due to leave for at least three weeks. And even if he could hop on one this very second, what would stop an assassin from following him? So retreating only made him an easier target.

Meaning, by process of elimination, that he had to drop out of sight until he could come up with a better strategy. And if he couldn’t “get lost” in the colony itself, then in the jungle—which, ironically was the source of the reports he’d been sent to investigate.

Brinkley nudged his elbow. “C’mon, you can tell me. They sent you here to find them, right?”

Caine forced his face to remain unsurprised as he echoed, “What do you mean, ‘find them’?”

Brinkley looked over his shoulder furtively—even though the closest person was still over a hundred meters away. He lowered his voice to a stage whisper. “You know; them. The xeno-chimps. The ‘locals.’”

Caine smiled, but thought: this just gets better and better. I step off the shuttle and—after a quick little welcome bullet—the first guy I meet asks me if I’m here to conduct a secret investigation into reports of xenointelligence. Aren’t secret missions supposed to remain—well, secret?

Brinkley was still looking expectantly at Caine. Who stumbled over the requisite lie he should have told readily: “I’m—I’m here to investigate reports that the Colonial Development Combine has been breaking the local resource exploitation laws.” It wasn’t a complete lie, but it had sounded—and felt—awful.

Oblivious, Brinkley was pouting. “Well, I guess it’s more important to investigate CoDevCo than a bunch of fool rumors about xeno-chimps. Hell, it’s about time the Commonwealth did something about the Euros’ high-handed corporate partners. You out here from the States?”

Again, Caine couldn’t utter the easy lie, the easy “yes.” Instead, he muttered, “Not directly.”

“Have a good trip?”

“Sure. A bit long, though.” Yeah, thanks to being stuck in cold sleep, about thirteen years too long. But who’s counting?

Brinkley nodded. “Yeah, a six-month trip from Earth is a long haul. Seems a shame, too. You look up in the sky at night and you think, ‘that should be a fast, straight run.’”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Look at the night sky while you’re here. Locate Alpha Centauri—you’ll find it crowding Omicron Ursa Major, like a bright new eye in the head of the bear. Sol is there, too—right behind Alpha Centauri. So, as seen from this system, all the major green worlds are pretty much on a straight line: here, Alpha Centauri, Earth. It could be two hops—ten weeks—to Earth, if the Wasserman drive only had a little more shift range.”