Chapter 15
Chapter fifteen
Gibbous Prime
Earth?
Carver hated the fucking place. A dying rock with no purpose.
People acted like it was the center of the universe when it was a reminder of humans’ complete and utter failure.
His species couldn’t even keep a planet alive.
He didn’t know why the CORE government didn’t just pull the plug on the pointless conservationist efforts, extract whatever resources remained, and never look back.
The doors to his quarters opened, and he stepped inside the sparsely furnished suite—one place of many he called “home.” A functional, disposable room he may return to at some point. Or not. Nothing in his life was ever guaranteed. Nothing was solid.
He crossed to the reclamation unit, stripped, and stuffed everything he wore inside, including his PALM. The end of a job meant hitting the restart button on his life. A new mission, a new identity.
Except they hadn’t given him a new identity in the packet.
He mulled that over as he took a steam, cleansing himself of his last job.
He had only read through the first file by the time he’d arrived at the next station and needed to reconnect to the grid.
There’d been no point of entry in a political setting or an assassination target.
The more he read, the more his objective eluded him. They’d given him information, more than he ever had on a job, and it made little sense.
“Off,” he said aloud, turning off the steam shower. “Dry maximum.” Air flowed around his naked body, drying his skin in seconds.
He exited the washroom and grabbed a clean PALM from the top drawer of his desk. He slid it on, and it connected to the grid a second later. Media updates and reports streamed across his ocular implant.
He strode to the wall compartment that held his uniforms. A spectrum of professions confronted him in colors of tan, and white, and navy blue. He hesitated, not knowing which one to grab, when a new directive passed in front of his eyes.
Possible target: Dr. Wynn Lambdin.
Finally, he had an objective, but it didn’t state whether they wanted the person terminated or apprehended. The code to wait for more orders blinked beside her name.
This is bullshit. He’d never accepted a job to be denied the full details. The unbalanced feeling returned.
He closed the wall compartment and stepped to the next. It opened to reveal all-black attire. If he didn’t need to play a part for this one, then he would wear whatever the fuck he wanted.
While dressing, he scanned through the files he’d already downloaded, searching for anything attached to the doctor’s name. A personnel file surfaced, tagged with over a hundred media reports. He opened the file, and an image of her flashed in front of his eyes.
The picture was from the personnel file at her current post. She wore a tan science officer’s uniform, her black hair cut to her chin.
Sad brown eyes stared at him from a face devoid of any other expression.
Her location tag said Earth, and she had one of the million pointless conservationist positions on the shitty rock.
But her image gave him pause. This was his target? A grunt worker? She wasn’t like anyone he usually disposed of, but appearances could be deceiving.
And for the hundredth time over the past day and a half, he reminded himself that it wasn’t his job to ask questions.
Sitting on the edge of the bed to pull on clean boots, he opened the media reports attached to her file. Multiple newsreels streamed in front of him, all depicting an event that had happened a few weeks ago.
He remembered it. A new species of animal had mutated on Earth’s surface, and an unfortunate scientist had died making the discovery. Dr. Foster Kish was Dr. Lambdin’s colleague.
Another sign that everyone should abandon the conservation efforts on Earth. The animals that could exist on its toxic surface didn’t want them there either.
Each media outlet covered its own version of the death, trying to outdo the others in hypotheses of where the animals came from, and how they’d stayed hidden for so long. None of them came up with straightforward answers.
Then there were the clips of reporters trying to get comments from Dr. Lambdin as she navigated the halls of Asia Prime’s Science Academy days after the incident.
They shouted questions at her like rabid dogs, ignoring her pain.
Her posture curled inward as defenders escorted her to the administrator’s office.
Carver clicked to the next reel, the one official interview sanctioned by the Science Academy. Lambdin sat in a chair across from the interviewer, her spine straight and her hands clenched in her lap. Earth’s dead terrain spread out behind her through the window.
The interview had all the earmarks of Lambdin repeating a predetermined script. Whenever the reporters asked something off-topic, the doctor clammed up.
Carver tried to remain unaffected, but her disadvantage, her inability to answer the way they wanted, tugged at him. He pushed the sensation aside, and moved on to the next clip, then the next.
The news stories were still coming from that event. The animals were being studied at the Science Academy, and the media hadn’t tired of the updates.
More files were attached to those reports, ones marked with a government seal. He opened the packet. These encompassed the official investigation at the doctor’s outpost, an autopsy of her colleague’s remains, and a deeper dive into both doctors’ lives.
Carver read for a bit, then shook his head at the useless knowledge—useless until his orders firmed up and he knew what they wanted him to do with the woman.
He slapped his knees and stood, then signaled the handler they’d paired him with to await his instructions. He wouldn’t know what the hell he needed for the assignment until his final orders came through.
Like the thought materialized them into existence, live orders downloaded to his PALM.
Target confirmed: Dr. Wynn Lambdin. Retrieve alive. Final destination: Corvus, General Cazin. Immediate dispatch.
This was what they’d called him off for? A time-sensitive pickup? They could have asked a defender to perform the task.
And if Lambdin was a threat to CORE security, he would eat his left boot.
The really fucked-up thing was that they saw fit to send him terabytes of data, but his orders were one line. Besides Earth’s live weather update, no other details about what he’d find downloaded to his PALM—only that her probable location was a remote outpost.
He grabbed a short jacket out of the wall compartment, shrugged it over his shoulders, and zipped it up. Tapping his PALM, he messaged his handler to prepare his cruiser, and received confirmation a moment later.
Carver returned to the initial package of files and read the first of them as he exited his quarters.
None of them had anything to do with Lambdin.
The files were from a hundred fifty years ago: the details of Operation Odyssey and the Calypso’s doomed mission to Epsilon Eridani, a solar system over ten light years away.
Why the fuck were they sending him this shit? He could have accessed library banks and read the same thing.
He stepped on the lift closest to his quarters. “Level sixty-seven.”
The lift descended, humming around him, then stopped, but the door didn’t open automatically, waiting for his security clearance. He swiped his PALM, and the lift continued its journey downward.
When it stopped, he swiped his ID again, then stepped out onto a military-controlled level, the corridors empty. He passed by unmarked doors, the shiny black surfaces of the inactive terminals in between reflecting his image back at him.
He was skimming the files scrolling across the bottom of his ocular readout when he noticed a tag on the first file. He slowed his steps. They’d attached another file, this one topped with a government seal.
After entering his ID code, another massive file downloaded.
Hundreds of security reports were attached to the data he’d just skimmed, including sealed generals’ logs from every action with the Calypso when it returned to their solar system, and a wealth of secure communications between high-up officials.
What in the ever-loving fuck? Did every download have a secondary packet? Reading and listening to all of this before he reached Earth was impossible. His seven-day completion promise ticked away.
Carver picked up his pace, then stopped at the second last unmarked door on the left. He swiped his PALM on the control panel, and it opened into a docking port. He strode through the dark passage lit only by running deck lights, then swiped his PALM on the outer panel of his cruiser.
The airlock opened, revealing the interior of the customized ship.
He stepped inside and inhaled deeply, the scent of his preferred cleaning fluid filling his lungs.
His eyes skimmed over the sleek black interior, highlighted by beige upholstery.
A two-seat cockpit spread out on his left, and a combination kitchen-living space lay on his right.
Behind that, a slender door led to his sleeping quarters.
Out of the very little he owned, he was most attached to this ship.
He swiped the panel, and the airlock closed, sealing him inside. He passed the bank of wall terminals and slid into the pilot’s seat. With a swipe of his bio-signature, the ship began the pre-flight process. A moment later, the engine purred beneath his feet.
His departure clearance scrolled across the main terminal. No further orders came in.
The docking clamps released with a clank. He pulled away from the station and set a course for Earth.