Fire with Fire(184)
Downing nodded. “The Doomsday Rock was not a natural event: it was an attack. Some extraterrestrial power visited the Solar System and surreptitiously shifted the trajectory of a rock in the Kuiper Belt to swing in toward Earth and blast us back to the Bronze Age.”
Caine suppressed a shiver: there was no other possible explanation. Even if a terrestrial nation had been suicidal enough to conceive of the plot, none of them could have carried it out: at that time, humanity hadn’t had the ability to send major missions beyond Saturn. “So that’s what led to the creation of IRIS. It also explains how Nolan was so certain that an FTL drive could be built: the Doomsday Rock was proof that we had extrasolar neighbors who could get into and out of our system at will.”
Downing nodded. “He also knew that the threat of an exosapient attack wasn’t simply hypothetical: he had already fended one off, himself.”
Caine rubbed his chin. “Yeah, which means that whoever weaponized a chunk of stone into the Doomsday Rock almost certainly learned that their attack had been foiled.”
Downing kept nodding. “And so they would have to surreptitiously try to find out what had gone wrong. And who was responsible.”
Trevor added the final piece. “Which they couldn’t do by just by sitting at the edge of our space. And we all know who had legal access to our system besides the Dornaani.”
Caine felt his skin grow very cold. “That would be our good friends the Ktor, in their role as Auxiliary Custodians.”
Downing frowned. “Which makes it likely that they are somehow connected with the faceless adversaries that Nolan code-named ‘Circe.’” He stared at the tabletop. “I wonder: do you think the Ktor might have had a direct hand in the deaths of Nolan and Tarasenko, and in some of the other ‘odd events’ we’ve been unable to explain?”
Caine shrugged. “Could be. But how would they recruit agents among us in the first place, or even establish contact? As Thandla discovered, they’ve got a radically different biology: hell, their natural environment is so cold that we can’t even make use of the same planets. So how are we a threat to them? Why would they hate us so much?” Caine shook his head. “No: it still doesn’t add up. Something’s missing.”
“I’ll tell you what else is missing.” Trevor’s voice and eyes were hollow. “The reason why my dad never told any of us why Elena was clinically depressed after she returned from the Moon. Or who Connor’s father was. Dad knew answers that could have saved all of us—but particularly Elena—a lot of grief.”
Caine nodded. “Yes, Nolan knew—but he had to keep those facts to himself.”
“Oh, c’mon. At least he could have told Elena.”
Richard shook his head. “Trevor, Elena is the one person Nolan absolutely could not tell about Caine. We can predict the course of events if she had learned the truth: Elena would want Caine removed from cold sleep. Your father refuses. She asks him how he can expect his own grandson to grow up without a father—and why is it so important to keep Caine in cold sleep, anyway? What was Nolan to say then? That even if Caine was cooperative, he couldn’t be released without a huge, smoke-screening story to throw the news jackals off his scent? That any detailed questions about Caine would have led back to, and unraveled, IRIS?”
Trevor frowned, ground his molars, and then turned sharply towards Caine. “So,” he snapped, “are you going to marry my sister?”
Caine blinked—and became aware of the scent of Opal’s shampoo on his shirt collar. At precisely the same moment, a memory—Elena moaning, sway-backed, hanging on to the bedposts as they moved together—tumbled newfound into his mind. “Hell,” Caine rasped, trying to fight his way out of the conflicting sense-memories, “would Elena even want to marry me? Besides, I have to straighten things out with Opal first.”
Trevor nodded. “Yeah. Okay. And given your—uh, situation—with Major Patrone, I don’t envy you your lady problems right now.”
“Me neither,” sighed Caine. “But I’m thinking that maybe Elena got over me long ago. She didn’t seem bothered by Opal—and she sure didn’t seem interested in my company.”
Now Trevor smiled. “Oh, brother—and I guess that’s almost literally true, now—you don’t know how to read my sister just yet. Yeah, she was dodging you, but probably because seeing the two of you post-corpsicle lovebirds together was making her crazy.”
Downing took a very deep breath. “Which brings up a touchy subject. About Major Patrone, Caine. Your relationship with her is not exactly a chance event. She works for me.”