Splinter Faction, page 19
“Okay, then. So we have a shipment of guns that’s going to show up at that rendezvous in about five days. Unfortunately, our smuggler friend won’t be able to meet it, him being in jail and all. Still, it would be rude just to stand them up.”
“It would,” Perry agreed. “Maybe we should ensure there’s someone there to meet them. And may I further suggest we go in costume.”
I stared at him. “Like—not lawmaker outfits. Not Peacemaker or Fist or b-suit—”
Perry’s eyes flashed. “Tragically, my preferred selection of fashion—a field dominated by Funboy, I admit—is unavailable in my size. So we’ll go incognito, boss.”
I nodded. “Oh, we will.” After a moment, I couldn’t take it. “What… outfit, though? If you could?”
Perry’s beak dropped. “Paul Gross in Due South. Handsomest man in law enforcement, and the Mountie hats just make you feel so—”
“Make. You. Feel? You’ve worn a Mountie hat?”
Perry looked wounded. “Boss, seriously. I do have a life.”
17
First, we had other matters to attend to. Foremost among them was a delegation that had been eagerly awaiting a chance to meet with me about space tourism and the wondrous opportunities thereof.
The delegation was an effusive, animated man named Buck Tindal—and yes, Buck was apparently his actual, legally recognized name. Buck was from Oklahoma and really liked to play up the cowboy thing, right down to the intricately tooled leather cowboy boots, blue jeans, a colorfully embroidered shirt, an even more colorfully embroidered Stetson hat, and a bolo tie. The clasp of the tie was a polished piece of quartz shot through with veins of genuine, metallic gold that had come, I was told, from the richest gold mine in Oklahoma history. He shook my hand with a grip like a hydraulic press, pumping it up and down like he was trying to drive a dull nail into a gnarled old chunk of hickory. He was accompanied by a small retinue of people who were apparently investors, but they might as well have been cardboard cutouts given the way Buck dominated the room.
“Van Tudor—I can call you Van, can’t I? Because you can call me Buck. Everyone calls me Buck. Even my own sweet old mee-maw calls me Buck,” he said, finally releasing my hand.
I smiled and gestured at the conference table in my Nexus office. “Sure, Buck, you can call me Van. Although—doesn’t your mee-maw call you Buck because, you know, that’s your name?”
He laughed a big, loud belly laugh—because of course he did. “Naw, my name was really Clarence ’til I changed it, and it took her a while to come around. I mean, seriously, Van—do I look like a Clarence to you?”
“Not really?”
“No, of course I don’t! Nothing against folks named Clarence, but where I’m from, if you ain’t named Buck or Tex or Zeke, you get looked at funny. It’s a question of brandin’. The name, not marking cattle. Totally different game, that.”
I just nodded. Perry had done up a quick background on Buck aka Clarence Tindal, so I knew that although he’d been born and raised in Oklahoma City, he’d done his undergraduate in business administration at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and had gotten his MBA at the Sloan School of Management at MIT—not exactly home on the range schooling. But, hey, if he wanted to wrap his business acumen in denim and rawhide, who was I to argue?
Perry’s voice buzzed in my ear just then. Enjoying the performance, boss?
Like a school play on a Tuesday. This guy is dripping in bullshit.
I see you understand, Perry sent. Get ready for the onslaught.
I’m ready. And thanks.
When we were all sitting, I asked, “So, Buck, I understand you have a business ven—”
“We sure do! See, we know you’re thinking about building one of those, oh, whatcha call ’em, space elevators. We wanna help you do just that. See, we want to invest in this here thing, so we can put the first ever hotel in space at the top. Be totally unique, like a… first space hotel in the whole universe? People’ll be throwing their hard-earned Greenbacks at us, clamoring for a stay. It’ll be a dadgum sensation, it will.”
Dadgum? Perry snorted in my ear.
Like I said. Dripping.
I kept my noncommittal smile firmly in place. I was getting pretty good at that, I thought—smiling into the face of something aggravating, outrageous, or monumentally dumb. There were spaceborne hotels all over known space. Crossroads had one. Spindrift had two. Even the Dregs Orbital over Simon’s World had a hotel, although it was more like a cross between a jail and a—I’d say ore refinery, but ore refineries were probably cleaner and undoubtedly quieter.
“That sounds like quite an interesting plan, Buck,” I said. “The cost, though, would be—”
“No object,” he announced. “See, when I say Greenbacks, I really mean those funny things you call bonds.” He leaned in, almost conspiratorially. “Not all the investors in our little club are from Earth. Our group represents about, oh, five hundred million of those bond things. And there’s more where that came from.”
I kept myself smiling as blandly as possible as I watched Buck’s eyes, because they told the truth. He might portray himself as a blustering cowpoke, but his eyes held a shrewd, incisive intelligence and a razor-sharp wit. Which made sense. An MBA from MIT’s Sloan School was no small thing, and he was also smart enough to allow himself to be denigrated as a hick.
Ol’ Buck was a planner.
The fact that he was apparently hooked up with off-world investment interests wasn’t a great surprise, either. It was inevitable that terrestrial and extraterrestrial interests would start overlapping. Earth was effectively part of known space now, after all. If anything, what surprised me was that we hadn’t seen more of this, and much sooner.
“I have to admit, Buck, that the idea certainly interests me. But the devil’s in the details, as they say. For one, we’d need a secure, politically stable location on the Earth’s equator—”
“Already got it,” he said, wearing a triumphant grin. “Damned pleasant little town called Macapá, in Brazil. Right at the mouth of the Amazon River itself, right on the ol’ equator. The Brazilian government’s all fired up about it, willing to build a whole new port to handle cargo goin’ up and down our spiffy new space elevator—or beanstalk, as I like to call it.”
As he spoke, one of his—associates? Underlings? Whatever they were, one of them had been tapping at a tablet and now slid it onto the conference table in front of me. I skimmed it and realized I was reading the executive summary to an entire business plan. I started scrolling, made it to page twenty-two, saw that it was page twenty-two of one hundred and eighty-six, and just scrolled back to the top and looked back up at Buck.
“You’ve done your homework, I see.”
“Damned right. Buck Tindal don’t screw around,” he said, then his grin faded, his expression going serious in a way that it hadn’t since he’d stepped into my office. “Van, this is a big project. Biggest I’ve ever been involved in—and I’ve been involved in some big ones. That new bridge they’re building across the Straits of Gibraltar? I’m in that. That new spaceport the Saudis are building in the desert outside Riyadh? I’m in that too. I’m really not screwing around here, Van.”
“I can see that, yeah.”
He nodded. “And while we’re talkin’ turkey here, I just wanna say one other thing. I’m a direct guy. I don’t beat around the proverbial bush or sling bullshit and call it roses.”
I couldn’t resist a smile. “I’ve noticed.”
“Well, good. So, just so’s we’re clear as blue summer sky, I ain’t here asking for your permission. We intend to do this thing, build this Amazonian beanstalk. What I would like is for you to be part of it, though. I think it’ll be a lot easier for, well, everyone involved if you’re signed on. You are kinda Mister Outer Space, after all.”
I looked Buck in the eye for a moment, then nodded. “Okay. Well, let me talk my own Thanksgiving poultry, Buck. You don’t need my permission, no. In fact, I’d really like to get to the point where things are happening largely, or even entirely without our involvement at all. But the reality is that, for the time being, you’re better off if we’re involved. There’s a critical distinction in that word. We have the ships, but more importantly, we know who’s who and what’s what in known space. And, not to put too fine a point on it, there are some… dangerous people out there. Some of them would be quite happy to pose as investors. Hell, some of them are investors.”
Buck’s smile hardened a little. “You know, Van, when I hear things like that, I start thinking I’m hearing someone laying the groundwork for a negotiating position.” He held up a hand. “Not that that’s a bad thing. I mean, it’s how deals are made—”
“I’m sorry, Buck, but—no. This isn’t about negotiating anything. This is about protecting Earth regardless of profit and loss. There are some profoundly dangerous things out there. Some of them would love nothing more than an opportunity to exploit the hell out of Earth before it can establish itself as a power in known space unto itself. And some would be quite happy to see Earth never get to that point. So, this isn’t about me trying to gain leverage in a business deal. This is me saying that things out there will chew you up and spit out the unrecognizable remains, and that you need someone to ensure you’re not about to sit down to a power lunch with them.”
Buck stared into my eyes for a long moment. I let him.
He finally sat back. “Well. Van, I consider myself an excellent judge of people, and I can see that you genuinely believe what you’re saying. Alright—I believe you, too. Where do we go from here?”
“I’m going to assign one of my people to work with you. Consider them a—a resource person. Someone with the expertise you need to navigate the good, the bad, and the ugly out there.”
Buck laughed. “My favorite Western of all time! You’re a treat, Van, you really are.”
I smiled and shrugged. “Hey, you could have Ennio Morricone score a commercial for adult diapers, and I’d be demanding they take my money.”
Torina’s eyes widened as she stood in my office, then she frowned at me.
“Me? You want me to be our liaison with this Buck Whatshisname guy? What, was I snoring last night and this is payback?”
I returned a lip-curl. “He’s not that bad, Torina—”
“I talked to him for forty-five seconds when he was on his way out of your office. He managed to call me little lady three times. That’s once every fifteen seconds—”
“Dear, I can count and divide.” Her frown became a glower, and she opened her mouth on an undoubtedly razor-sharp retort, but I preempted her. “Look. I don’t know if this guy has a serious shot at building a space hotel on top of a space elevator, or if he’s just another flim-flam artist looking to bilk suckers out of their money. Hell, he might even be a wide-eyed innocent who has no idea what he’s getting himself into because he’s been the big dog in his circles here on Earth. The fact is this—I need someone sharp and incisive enough to sniff him out one way or the other, and to do it fast. Because if it’s the former, then that opens up a whole other can of worms—one we’ve had on the shelf for a long time now.”
Torina gave me a wary look. “And what can of worms would that be?”
“The one where people on Earth start inviting parties from out there to come down here in partnerships, business ventures—hell, just for shits and giggles, to have some aliens around. And doing it without us, the Fist of Orion, being involved. It’s like vampires, though. Once you invite them in, you’re opening yourself up to their shenanigans.”
“Vampires?” Torina frowned. “The ones who do all the judging at baseball games?”
“No, that’s umpires, dear—” I said, then stopped and glared at her teasing smile. It was rare for her to not get an Earthly reference anymore. It did happen, sure, but sometimes she used it to just yank my chain. “Ha ha, you’re a riot. Look, Torina, I just—”
“Want me to make sure our friend in the ugly hat isn’t inviting the outer space equivalent of vampires down here, got it.”
“Well, that, and does this business case Buck gave us make sense. I’d like you to go through it with the proverbial fine-toothed comb. And also see where his money is coming from, even if it all seems legit. I’d like to know who’s funding who, especially when it comes to things happening here on Earth.”
She gave me an absent kiss on my cheek, mumbling to herself about cowboys, then left me to dig into the next item in my inbox. But I stopped, turned away from my desk terminal, and looked out the window. The late summer sky looked hot, the product of another hot, muggy day in eastern Iowa. Corn sweat, I thought. A silly and, frankly, kind of off-putting term for the way that crops, particularly corn, drew in water and then released it through evaporation. It was just part of the plants’ metabolic processes, but given the sheer number of corn and other “sweating” plants in the region, that moisture could really amp up the humidity.
But it wasn’t corn sweat that was bugging me. It wasn’t really Buck Tindal, either. My gut told me that Buck himself was, despite his mannerisms, on the level, an ambitious, determined entrepreneur who wasn’t afraid to dream as big as the Oklahoma sky. No, the trouble was the rest of known space. The vampire thing might be a little melodramatic, but it was also apt. Earth was slowly opening itself more and more to interactions with known space, and that meant more and more opportunities for bad actors to gain a foothold here. The Fist of Orion couldn’t police it all, nor should it. Earth was going to have to learn to stand on its own two interstellar feet.
I just didn’t want it to get bled out and drained dry by opportunistic predators before it even got the chance.
“Van, we’ve got the latest from Rektorr on NTX,” Perry said as soon as the Fafnir’s airlock closed behind me. He’d asked me to meet him here, aboard the ship, since this was a conversation that needed to be absolutely secure.
I nodded. “Good. I’m hoping that—WHOA!”
I’d stepped out of the airlock, turned, and walked right into a wall of blue hair and muscle. Icky stood on a sturdy tool chest, her arms and head somewhere up among the overhead she’d exposed by removing the interior panels. I recoiled and shook my head. “Yikes. Sorry, Icky, didn’t see you there.”
She peered down, her head wedged between a conduit and a longitudinal spar. A slow grin spread across her face. “That was my butt, Van. You walked into my butt.”
“Yes, Icky, I’m well aware, thank you.”
She clicked her tongue. “Better hope Pax doesn’t find out you’ve been visiting that particular neighborhood. He’s the jealous sort, you know.”
I shrugged. “It’s not a neighborhood. It’s a continent, big girl.”
“Thank you!” She beamed, then added, “You’re not the first to be corrupted by the big blue booty. It’s inevitable.”
“Well, at least it’s truth in advertising. Guess I’ll have to tell Torina you, ah, shook that thang, and I was—”
“Helpless. Totally.”
“Right, that,” I said, snorting.
“Most guys are, boss.” She added a slight wiggle to her dump-truck sized backside, purely for good measure.
“Okay, at this point, I’d like to lodge an official eeeewwwww,” Perry put in.
I shrugged again. “Well, bird, given the circumstances, I could have reacted with shock and horror or gone with awkward humor. I chose the latter.”
“How do you think I feel?” Icky asked. “I just mooned my boss. And he prob’ly liked it.”
“You organics are weird. So fixated on your bodies and your various parts,” Perry said, shaking his head.
“Yeah, you Created Persons don’t ever worry about your bodies, huh? So how come you’ve got a bottle of feather polish in the cleaning supplies locker?” Icky shot back.
“That’s maintenance, not fixation on my parts. My chassis is all about functionality, not looks or—or the things you guys do with your bodies that consume so much of your time and energy.”
“I’ll remind you that you said that the next time I catch you admiring yourself in a mirror, bird,” I said, smirking at him.
“I do not admire myself. It’s just—I’m inspecting myself for flaws or damage.”
“Uh-huh. You do everything except blow yourself kisses,” Icky said while she fiddled with something up in the overheads. “And I’ll bet you do that when you think no one’s looking.”
“Hmph. I don’t have to stand here and take this.”
“No, Perry, you don’t,” I replied. “What you do have to do is tell me about NTX.”
We left Icky to her work and settled in the crew lounge. Perry put up the latest data and imagery from the “secret” Stillness base at NTX, and it immediately and vividly illustrated the problem.
“There are more ships. Quite a few more,” I said.
Perry nodded. “Yeah, there are. Nine more, since Rektorr’s last report, including another battlecruiser-class ship.” He zoomed the image in on one of the big ships, highlighting a section of its hull with a slightly different coloration than the plating around it. “You can even see where they painted over the Six Stars League insignia and registry info.”
I sighed. That was a hell of a lot of combat power being marshaled for—
And that was the question, wasn’t it? For what? What was the point of amassing this fleet? It was being kept secret, so it wasn’t about a fleet-in-being that could project power and influence. That suggested that it had a specific target, or targets. But what, and where? The League itself, this fleet being intended to support what I suspected would be the inevitable coup by Clynepses and her likely co-conspirators? Or an external target, like Helso? Or Null World? The League and the Schegith did not get along. Or somewhere else altogether?
I drummed my fingers on the arm of the chair, frustrated. “You know, I’m almost tempted to leak this intel to the Eridani and the Ceti. I’m sure they wouldn’t be particularly pleased to know that a hell of a potent fleet is assembling not that far from both their respective territories.”
