Loyalty: Old Mans Comeback Book 5, page 24
So many unknowns. She’d always planned to sacrifice her freedom, even her life to save the planet. But she never counted on having someone else with her. Someone that might suffer the same fate. She had to find a way to protect him.
Sorsha had no idea what that would entail, but she had time to consider it. Maybe it involved a promise to deliver him to the Hostel or something like that. She had no intention of allowing him to suffer the same legal fate as she might find herself in.
“Is it too much to ask that we’d be welcomed as heroes?” Sorsha muttered the question, then smiled sadly. “Yes… because none of my people thought about leaving to find a solution. They just… struggled. Ugh… maybe we can make this right.” If only her people found her feats impressive rather than dangerous.
She might have some ground to argue for her future.
Chapter 35
VasCorp Facility, Nevada Desert
Terrence Morley
The helicopter put down near a bunch of tents. Terrence disembarked, marching straight to the heart of the area. He found Whitby reclining on a gurney as one of the doctors looked him over.
“What’s the matter with you?” Terrence snapped.
“Just a quick check,” Whitby replied. “I’m not hurt.”
“Then get off your ass and report.” Terrence stepped away. Whitby followed him a moment later. “I see you’ve completely failed in every possible way.”
“I guess you didn’t read any reports at all,” Whitby replied. “Because we didn’t exactly have a chance. Oh, there was a moment when I thought we might have that guy, but it fell apart when his friends showed up. And if you thought we could fend them off… then you’re an idiot.”
“Excuse me?” Terrence glared at him. “I put some amazing technology at your disposal. Dozens of fighters. Plenty of ground forces. All the resources you could want.” He gestured to the hole. “The only thing I can applaud you for is digging a damn hole. Congrats. You’ve done about the same as a gopher.”
“You…” Whitby bit his lip. Both fists clenched. “You know… if that guy had done more damage, I might have put you on the ground right now. Lucky for you, he knocked them out. No one died. Not by his hand. But us? We killed plenty. In the bomb run and otherwise.”
“Oh please. We were fighting for one of the most valuable assets in human history. What did you—”
“By the way,” Whitby interrupted, “before you take that too far, I should point out that they also saved a bunch of lives by actively taking a bomb to their hull. And then survived, somehow. Must be the same technology that let the man take freakin’ bullets and keep on running. We didn’t stand a chance.”
“The attitude you’re showing makes that quite clear.”
Whitby laughed. “Say whatever you want about my integrity, my skill, my understanding of tactics, and fighting. But I know my job. Maybe, if we had gotten insanely lucky, we could’ve taken one of those smaller ships down. No way on the bigger one. Oh, and be grateful it was only a couple of them.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“The ground forces, I mean. If they had a dozen, we would’ve lost big. But instead, that one man decided to avoid us as much as possible. And he had ways he might’ve killed us, I have no doubt.”
“I guess you did get lucky.” Terrence sneered. “Unfortunately, that doesn’t do much for us given the fact we lost the sarcophagus and you failed to collect a single piece of alien. Not alive, no tech, nothing. So what’s that do for us, really? I’ll tell you. Nothing!”
“I’m afraid I don’t care all that much.” Whitby shrugged. “We did our best, and we lost. If you want to be an asshole about it, fine. But it’s your head on the block, not mine. I’m not taking the blame for losing to technology so far beyond ours, a hundred guys could probably take our best base.” He turned to walk away.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“I’m getting the scientists out of that hole.”
Terrence scoffed. “They’re hardly important now. The only reason they were here was to identify an alien artifact. Which they lost. Or, I correct myself, you lost.”
“If that’s the story you want to tell,” Whitby said, “then I suppose I can tell one of my own. About who decided to drop a bomb that killed dozens of our people. This can go any number of ways, but if you want support, then I suggest you tone it down a little. Otherwise…” He lifted his hands. “I’ll defend myself and my men.”
Terrence smirked. “I see you’re finding a way to play this game.”
“If that’s what you think this is, then I have a better understanding of what happened here. Lives have been impacted. Families have lost their providers. Equipment was destroyed for no reason. A massive facility has been all but ruined. And you didn’t seem to think about the consequences for even a moment before you gave orders.”
“The big picture…” Terrence turned away. “You wouldn’t understand. That’s not what you do. Clean up the mess. Get those people out of there. We’ll deal with the fallout later.”
“Not me.” Whitby waved as he walked off. “That’s all you.”
Correct, but not the way the captain thought. Terrence understood what would happen next with the authorities. Once they found out that he wasted all of their resources, it would go poorly. Much as he tried to insulate himself from such a situation, he failed. He had banked on understanding the sarcophagus much sooner.
He had lost his position to bargain. And with those scientists coming out of the hole, with no one to keep them in place, no project to justify sequestering them, he didn’t know how to proceed. The next few hours would determine if he had any defense, any chance to walk away from the fiasco.
Or if another alien encounter ended his life as he knew it.
***
Lunar Orbit
Raymond “Flip” Kinnely
Something cold rushed up his arm. Flip woke with a start, sitting up in the infirmary. Sorsha stood nearby. She approached, placing her hand on his chest. Her mouth moved, but he didn’t hear her at first.
“Do you understand?” she asked.
“No.” Flip shook his head. “Wait. I heard that one. What’s happening?”
“You’re fine,” Sorsha said. “You fell off the landing, hit the ground pretty hard, but the shield took care of most of it before all but failing. That thing saved your life. Aside from a lot of bruises, you’re unscathed.”
“Wow.” Flip rubbed his face. “What was that weird cold feeling?”
“An injection to wake you up,” Sorsha replied. “Your vitals were fine. And we’ve got some problems that need to be solved before we get out of here.”
“What’s up?”
“Hamish?” Sorsha shrugged. “The scientist? Do you know this man?”
“A new acquaintance from the facility. They’re extorting them. Holding family members hostage. That Terrence Morley guy… he’s gotta go.”
“I assume you have some plan,” Sorsha said. “If not, then I suppose we can take care of that beacon then get out of here. But we might want to return Hamish to Earth.”
“I don’t have a complete plan yet.” Flip stretched. Some of his skin felt tight, though not painful. “Blech… I know where those bruises were.”
“I bet.”
“Okay, so I think we can expose VasCorp. If we can broadcast something, send all the information we have about what they’ve done, then let Hamish sell it… then the authorities will have what they need to take care of the situation.”
“Broadcast?” Sorsha lifted a brow. “You mean provide information to the people?”
Flip nodded. “They’ll be able to decide.”
“And they’ll believe it?”
“That…” Flip frowned. “Hmm. Okay, I don’t know. It depends on what the other scientists say, I suppose. I don’t know. Let me talk to Jake and Hamish. Maybe they’ve got some ideas. But we can’t just leave them like this. Their families are on the line. And who knows what else?”
“Okay.” Sorsha nodded. “Torma and I will be on the bridge. We’re—”
Flip hugged her.
“Oh… hi.” Sorsha leaned into him. “I’m glad you’re back.”
“Me too,” Flip muttered. He cleared his throat, but couldn’t quite raise his voice above a whisper. “I didn’t know if I would be. If you had left. Not that I would’ve blamed you, of course. Considering everything at stake, and everything we’ve done, it would be—”
“Why would I abandon you down there?” Sorsha interrupted. “What makes you think I’d ever do that?”
“Your people…” Flip leaned back. He looked her in the eyes. “You’ve got the means to save a whole planet. I’m one guy. It was kind of the right thing to do. The mission… I mean, sometimes it has to come first.”
“It hasn’t so far.”
Flip smirked. “I guess… I don’t know. When I was down there, I didn’t know. For a minute. I hoped, of course. I think I trusted. But with all of them about to take my position, there wasn’t much to do but wonder if that was it.”
“I’m sorry you felt that way.”
“Not your fault at all.”
“Let me tell you something.” Sorsha touched his face. “An extra couple hours saving my friend wouldn’t make any difference. We don’t abandon the people we care about.”
“Amen to that.” Flip touched her hand. “Right… um… I’ll be out there.”
“See you soon.” Sorsha patted his shoulder before striding out.
Flip found Jake in the cargo area where Hamish rapid fire asked questions about the technology all around him.
“Guys,” Flip said. “How’s it going?”
Jake replied, “So much better with you here. Please field this dude’s questions. I have no clue what he’s on about.”
“What’s up?” Flip asked. “You okay, Hamish? You look like you’ve been running for three days straight.”
“This place is amazing. I can’t believe it works. I looked outside… saw Earth. I never thought—”
“Same,” Flip interrupted. “Not to be abrupt, pal, but we need to work out what we’re going to do. As you can imagine, we’re busy. We need to get the Box where it belongs. But I promised you I’d help. My ideas might be crap, so now’s your chance to let us know if you’ve got any thoughts.”
“Tell everyone,” Hamish said, “make it so there’s no doubt VasCorp has committed a crime.”
“We got proof?” Jake asked. “Or would it just be ‘these guys suck, take them down’?”
“I can speak to it,” Hamish replied, “but do you have any sort of footage of what went down? Maybe a recording of the attack on the facility?”
“Gia?” Flip called. “You heard the man. Was any of the attack recorded?”
“Affirmative,” Gia replied. “We have a reasonable view of the situation as we landed, as well as what happened after. Please note that such footage would expose an alien presence on Earth. Considering the primitive nature of the people, it may not be good to have something quite so obvious.”
“I can spin it,” Hamish said.
“Whoa.” Jake held up ha hand. “Bro, I don’t think you want to start talking like that. If you spin it, then they can pick your comments apart. And by ‘they,’ I mean lawyers. Or interrogators. Believe me, you gotta go in with the truth if you’re going to deal with this.”
Hamish nodded. “Alright, what about taking care of Morley?”
Flip lifted a brow. “Did you just ask if we could kill him?”
“I mean…” Hamish shrugged. “Why not? The man’s a piece of trash.”
“You want to do?” Flip asked. “If I give you a gun, you feel like putting one in him?”
“Me? I um… well…”
Jake said, “He’s got it in him. He shot at us with the rifle.”
“That was self-defense,” Hamish blurted out. “I… don’t think I could…”
“So you’re volunteering us for murder.” Flip smirked. “No. That’s not the way this is going to work. Much as I’ve got cause to put that piece of trash down, I think the better way is to find something that puts him in prison. He’s already gotta be looking at real trouble. Losing the Box only compounds the shit he’s going through.”
“Wait,” Jake held up a hand, “how’d he even get involved? After VasCorp lost the spaceship and Sorsha, shouldn’t he have been cut off? Hell, they should’ve lost their contracts with the military. Or am I crazy?”
“The guy’s a conniver,” Flip said. “So who knows what kind of friends he had?”
“I know,” Hamish replied. “He had some congressional friends. And a couple military contacts. I think they renegotiated contracts, gave a discount, provided more training or something. This is what I heard from the military guys at the facility.”
Flip shrugged. “There you go, Jake. Money. You give someone a discount, and they’ll overlook a lot of problems.”
“Fantastic.”
Hamish gestured at Jake. “You worked there too?”
“Yeah. Got canned helping them.” Jake waved at Flip. “And now… I don’t know what’s next.” He pulled Flip aside, lowering his voice. “I could take them back. What I’ve seen, what I’ve done, I’m pretty sure I can get Morley screwed.”
“Prison,” Flip said. “Or worse. That’s what you’d be looking at.”
“Worse?”
Flip gestured to Hamish. “Remember what they were doing with the Box? You think they wouldn’t want to know what you’d undergone?” He shook his head. “Anyway, it’s your choice. If you want to help them, if you want to make that sacrifice…”
“Nah. I mean, I’m cool, but there’s a limit.”
Flip snorted. “Fair enough. What if we nabbed Morley?”
“Okay. Point?”
“Record a confession to what he did to the scientists and their families. Show that he’s an extortionist. Talk about how he bombed the area, killed all those people. That should be enough to get him out of here.”
“Could work.” Jake frowned. “And you know… when you offered Hamish the opportunity to shoot him and he balked? I wouldn’t.”
“Yeah?”
“Screw that guy. He corrupted a place that I loved working for. And taking on an alien spaceship the way he did? I know that VasCorp had some decent research and stuff, but that was ridiculous.”
“I don’t think it was entirely their fault,” Flip said. “I’m pretty sure they were ‘selected.’ Morley might’ve pushed for the opportunity, but beyond that, proximity won the day.”
“Lucky me.” Jake sighed. “Anyway, if we’re going to grab him, it might not be so easy. Dropping down near where he lives or something? Could have guards. Security. Then there are civilians that would see the ship.”
“As long as we are quick,” Flip said, “we could get him and get out before anyone had a clue.” He hummed. “Then we give the information to Hamish, he takes it to the right people…” The idea made his shoulders slump. “But then it comes down to hearsay. They might not believe him, and it could get him in a lot of trouble.”
“Then we send the information to the right people.” Jake shrugged. “That should be easy enough.”
“Right. Broadcast it straight to them. You didn’t pack your laptop, did you?”
Jake chuckled. “Yeah… I had no idea how I’d charge it or whatever, but I spent a lot on that damn thing. Plus, it’s got all my games on it.”
“I had a feeling about your priorities.” Flip considered their options. “Okay, so we’ll get the information, then we can use your laptop to send it to the right people. That should be enough.”
“And,” Jake said, “we gotta make it fast, right? We’re on a timeline for Sorsha’s people.”
“Yeah, I’m feeling that.” Flip stepped over to Hamish. “Listen, we’ve got an idea. But we’re not heading back to Earth right away. In fact, we’ve got something to take care of near Jupiter. When we’re done with that, we’ll fix your problem.”
“But my—”
“I know, it’s not ideal.” Flip held up his hands. “But it’s what we’ve got. I’m damn sure you and your family will be fine when we’re done.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Only that there’s no way to be certain that we can help. Morley’s clever. You know that. He might have a way out of all this. But we’ll do what we can to put him away for good.”
Hamish closed his eyes, then nodded. “Sure. Okay. Not that we have a lot of choice, right?”
Sorsha had no idea what that would entail, but she had time to consider it. Maybe it involved a promise to deliver him to the Hostel or something like that. She had no intention of allowing him to suffer the same legal fate as she might find herself in.
“Is it too much to ask that we’d be welcomed as heroes?” Sorsha muttered the question, then smiled sadly. “Yes… because none of my people thought about leaving to find a solution. They just… struggled. Ugh… maybe we can make this right.” If only her people found her feats impressive rather than dangerous.
She might have some ground to argue for her future.
Chapter 35
VasCorp Facility, Nevada Desert
Terrence Morley
The helicopter put down near a bunch of tents. Terrence disembarked, marching straight to the heart of the area. He found Whitby reclining on a gurney as one of the doctors looked him over.
“What’s the matter with you?” Terrence snapped.
“Just a quick check,” Whitby replied. “I’m not hurt.”
“Then get off your ass and report.” Terrence stepped away. Whitby followed him a moment later. “I see you’ve completely failed in every possible way.”
“I guess you didn’t read any reports at all,” Whitby replied. “Because we didn’t exactly have a chance. Oh, there was a moment when I thought we might have that guy, but it fell apart when his friends showed up. And if you thought we could fend them off… then you’re an idiot.”
“Excuse me?” Terrence glared at him. “I put some amazing technology at your disposal. Dozens of fighters. Plenty of ground forces. All the resources you could want.” He gestured to the hole. “The only thing I can applaud you for is digging a damn hole. Congrats. You’ve done about the same as a gopher.”
“You…” Whitby bit his lip. Both fists clenched. “You know… if that guy had done more damage, I might have put you on the ground right now. Lucky for you, he knocked them out. No one died. Not by his hand. But us? We killed plenty. In the bomb run and otherwise.”
“Oh please. We were fighting for one of the most valuable assets in human history. What did you—”
“By the way,” Whitby interrupted, “before you take that too far, I should point out that they also saved a bunch of lives by actively taking a bomb to their hull. And then survived, somehow. Must be the same technology that let the man take freakin’ bullets and keep on running. We didn’t stand a chance.”
“The attitude you’re showing makes that quite clear.”
Whitby laughed. “Say whatever you want about my integrity, my skill, my understanding of tactics, and fighting. But I know my job. Maybe, if we had gotten insanely lucky, we could’ve taken one of those smaller ships down. No way on the bigger one. Oh, and be grateful it was only a couple of them.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“The ground forces, I mean. If they had a dozen, we would’ve lost big. But instead, that one man decided to avoid us as much as possible. And he had ways he might’ve killed us, I have no doubt.”
“I guess you did get lucky.” Terrence sneered. “Unfortunately, that doesn’t do much for us given the fact we lost the sarcophagus and you failed to collect a single piece of alien. Not alive, no tech, nothing. So what’s that do for us, really? I’ll tell you. Nothing!”
“I’m afraid I don’t care all that much.” Whitby shrugged. “We did our best, and we lost. If you want to be an asshole about it, fine. But it’s your head on the block, not mine. I’m not taking the blame for losing to technology so far beyond ours, a hundred guys could probably take our best base.” He turned to walk away.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“I’m getting the scientists out of that hole.”
Terrence scoffed. “They’re hardly important now. The only reason they were here was to identify an alien artifact. Which they lost. Or, I correct myself, you lost.”
“If that’s the story you want to tell,” Whitby said, “then I suppose I can tell one of my own. About who decided to drop a bomb that killed dozens of our people. This can go any number of ways, but if you want support, then I suggest you tone it down a little. Otherwise…” He lifted his hands. “I’ll defend myself and my men.”
Terrence smirked. “I see you’re finding a way to play this game.”
“If that’s what you think this is, then I have a better understanding of what happened here. Lives have been impacted. Families have lost their providers. Equipment was destroyed for no reason. A massive facility has been all but ruined. And you didn’t seem to think about the consequences for even a moment before you gave orders.”
“The big picture…” Terrence turned away. “You wouldn’t understand. That’s not what you do. Clean up the mess. Get those people out of there. We’ll deal with the fallout later.”
“Not me.” Whitby waved as he walked off. “That’s all you.”
Correct, but not the way the captain thought. Terrence understood what would happen next with the authorities. Once they found out that he wasted all of their resources, it would go poorly. Much as he tried to insulate himself from such a situation, he failed. He had banked on understanding the sarcophagus much sooner.
He had lost his position to bargain. And with those scientists coming out of the hole, with no one to keep them in place, no project to justify sequestering them, he didn’t know how to proceed. The next few hours would determine if he had any defense, any chance to walk away from the fiasco.
Or if another alien encounter ended his life as he knew it.
***
Lunar Orbit
Raymond “Flip” Kinnely
Something cold rushed up his arm. Flip woke with a start, sitting up in the infirmary. Sorsha stood nearby. She approached, placing her hand on his chest. Her mouth moved, but he didn’t hear her at first.
“Do you understand?” she asked.
“No.” Flip shook his head. “Wait. I heard that one. What’s happening?”
“You’re fine,” Sorsha said. “You fell off the landing, hit the ground pretty hard, but the shield took care of most of it before all but failing. That thing saved your life. Aside from a lot of bruises, you’re unscathed.”
“Wow.” Flip rubbed his face. “What was that weird cold feeling?”
“An injection to wake you up,” Sorsha replied. “Your vitals were fine. And we’ve got some problems that need to be solved before we get out of here.”
“What’s up?”
“Hamish?” Sorsha shrugged. “The scientist? Do you know this man?”
“A new acquaintance from the facility. They’re extorting them. Holding family members hostage. That Terrence Morley guy… he’s gotta go.”
“I assume you have some plan,” Sorsha said. “If not, then I suppose we can take care of that beacon then get out of here. But we might want to return Hamish to Earth.”
“I don’t have a complete plan yet.” Flip stretched. Some of his skin felt tight, though not painful. “Blech… I know where those bruises were.”
“I bet.”
“Okay, so I think we can expose VasCorp. If we can broadcast something, send all the information we have about what they’ve done, then let Hamish sell it… then the authorities will have what they need to take care of the situation.”
“Broadcast?” Sorsha lifted a brow. “You mean provide information to the people?”
Flip nodded. “They’ll be able to decide.”
“And they’ll believe it?”
“That…” Flip frowned. “Hmm. Okay, I don’t know. It depends on what the other scientists say, I suppose. I don’t know. Let me talk to Jake and Hamish. Maybe they’ve got some ideas. But we can’t just leave them like this. Their families are on the line. And who knows what else?”
“Okay.” Sorsha nodded. “Torma and I will be on the bridge. We’re—”
Flip hugged her.
“Oh… hi.” Sorsha leaned into him. “I’m glad you’re back.”
“Me too,” Flip muttered. He cleared his throat, but couldn’t quite raise his voice above a whisper. “I didn’t know if I would be. If you had left. Not that I would’ve blamed you, of course. Considering everything at stake, and everything we’ve done, it would be—”
“Why would I abandon you down there?” Sorsha interrupted. “What makes you think I’d ever do that?”
“Your people…” Flip leaned back. He looked her in the eyes. “You’ve got the means to save a whole planet. I’m one guy. It was kind of the right thing to do. The mission… I mean, sometimes it has to come first.”
“It hasn’t so far.”
Flip smirked. “I guess… I don’t know. When I was down there, I didn’t know. For a minute. I hoped, of course. I think I trusted. But with all of them about to take my position, there wasn’t much to do but wonder if that was it.”
“I’m sorry you felt that way.”
“Not your fault at all.”
“Let me tell you something.” Sorsha touched his face. “An extra couple hours saving my friend wouldn’t make any difference. We don’t abandon the people we care about.”
“Amen to that.” Flip touched her hand. “Right… um… I’ll be out there.”
“See you soon.” Sorsha patted his shoulder before striding out.
Flip found Jake in the cargo area where Hamish rapid fire asked questions about the technology all around him.
“Guys,” Flip said. “How’s it going?”
Jake replied, “So much better with you here. Please field this dude’s questions. I have no clue what he’s on about.”
“What’s up?” Flip asked. “You okay, Hamish? You look like you’ve been running for three days straight.”
“This place is amazing. I can’t believe it works. I looked outside… saw Earth. I never thought—”
“Same,” Flip interrupted. “Not to be abrupt, pal, but we need to work out what we’re going to do. As you can imagine, we’re busy. We need to get the Box where it belongs. But I promised you I’d help. My ideas might be crap, so now’s your chance to let us know if you’ve got any thoughts.”
“Tell everyone,” Hamish said, “make it so there’s no doubt VasCorp has committed a crime.”
“We got proof?” Jake asked. “Or would it just be ‘these guys suck, take them down’?”
“I can speak to it,” Hamish replied, “but do you have any sort of footage of what went down? Maybe a recording of the attack on the facility?”
“Gia?” Flip called. “You heard the man. Was any of the attack recorded?”
“Affirmative,” Gia replied. “We have a reasonable view of the situation as we landed, as well as what happened after. Please note that such footage would expose an alien presence on Earth. Considering the primitive nature of the people, it may not be good to have something quite so obvious.”
“I can spin it,” Hamish said.
“Whoa.” Jake held up ha hand. “Bro, I don’t think you want to start talking like that. If you spin it, then they can pick your comments apart. And by ‘they,’ I mean lawyers. Or interrogators. Believe me, you gotta go in with the truth if you’re going to deal with this.”
Hamish nodded. “Alright, what about taking care of Morley?”
Flip lifted a brow. “Did you just ask if we could kill him?”
“I mean…” Hamish shrugged. “Why not? The man’s a piece of trash.”
“You want to do?” Flip asked. “If I give you a gun, you feel like putting one in him?”
“Me? I um… well…”
Jake said, “He’s got it in him. He shot at us with the rifle.”
“That was self-defense,” Hamish blurted out. “I… don’t think I could…”
“So you’re volunteering us for murder.” Flip smirked. “No. That’s not the way this is going to work. Much as I’ve got cause to put that piece of trash down, I think the better way is to find something that puts him in prison. He’s already gotta be looking at real trouble. Losing the Box only compounds the shit he’s going through.”
“Wait,” Jake held up a hand, “how’d he even get involved? After VasCorp lost the spaceship and Sorsha, shouldn’t he have been cut off? Hell, they should’ve lost their contracts with the military. Or am I crazy?”
“The guy’s a conniver,” Flip said. “So who knows what kind of friends he had?”
“I know,” Hamish replied. “He had some congressional friends. And a couple military contacts. I think they renegotiated contracts, gave a discount, provided more training or something. This is what I heard from the military guys at the facility.”
Flip shrugged. “There you go, Jake. Money. You give someone a discount, and they’ll overlook a lot of problems.”
“Fantastic.”
Hamish gestured at Jake. “You worked there too?”
“Yeah. Got canned helping them.” Jake waved at Flip. “And now… I don’t know what’s next.” He pulled Flip aside, lowering his voice. “I could take them back. What I’ve seen, what I’ve done, I’m pretty sure I can get Morley screwed.”
“Prison,” Flip said. “Or worse. That’s what you’d be looking at.”
“Worse?”
Flip gestured to Hamish. “Remember what they were doing with the Box? You think they wouldn’t want to know what you’d undergone?” He shook his head. “Anyway, it’s your choice. If you want to help them, if you want to make that sacrifice…”
“Nah. I mean, I’m cool, but there’s a limit.”
Flip snorted. “Fair enough. What if we nabbed Morley?”
“Okay. Point?”
“Record a confession to what he did to the scientists and their families. Show that he’s an extortionist. Talk about how he bombed the area, killed all those people. That should be enough to get him out of here.”
“Could work.” Jake frowned. “And you know… when you offered Hamish the opportunity to shoot him and he balked? I wouldn’t.”
“Yeah?”
“Screw that guy. He corrupted a place that I loved working for. And taking on an alien spaceship the way he did? I know that VasCorp had some decent research and stuff, but that was ridiculous.”
“I don’t think it was entirely their fault,” Flip said. “I’m pretty sure they were ‘selected.’ Morley might’ve pushed for the opportunity, but beyond that, proximity won the day.”
“Lucky me.” Jake sighed. “Anyway, if we’re going to grab him, it might not be so easy. Dropping down near where he lives or something? Could have guards. Security. Then there are civilians that would see the ship.”
“As long as we are quick,” Flip said, “we could get him and get out before anyone had a clue.” He hummed. “Then we give the information to Hamish, he takes it to the right people…” The idea made his shoulders slump. “But then it comes down to hearsay. They might not believe him, and it could get him in a lot of trouble.”
“Then we send the information to the right people.” Jake shrugged. “That should be easy enough.”
“Right. Broadcast it straight to them. You didn’t pack your laptop, did you?”
Jake chuckled. “Yeah… I had no idea how I’d charge it or whatever, but I spent a lot on that damn thing. Plus, it’s got all my games on it.”
“I had a feeling about your priorities.” Flip considered their options. “Okay, so we’ll get the information, then we can use your laptop to send it to the right people. That should be enough.”
“And,” Jake said, “we gotta make it fast, right? We’re on a timeline for Sorsha’s people.”
“Yeah, I’m feeling that.” Flip stepped over to Hamish. “Listen, we’ve got an idea. But we’re not heading back to Earth right away. In fact, we’ve got something to take care of near Jupiter. When we’re done with that, we’ll fix your problem.”
“But my—”
“I know, it’s not ideal.” Flip held up his hands. “But it’s what we’ve got. I’m damn sure you and your family will be fine when we’re done.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Only that there’s no way to be certain that we can help. Morley’s clever. You know that. He might have a way out of all this. But we’ll do what we can to put him away for good.”
Hamish closed his eyes, then nodded. “Sure. Okay. Not that we have a lot of choice, right?”
