April 4: A Different Perspective (37 page)

"This is wonderful. Thank you, so much."

"It's our pleasure. You do so well with plain pencil, it will be interesting to see how you grow into this."

"Neither of us draw all that well, but you might ask Faye if she has any artists on call as tutors," Frank suggested.

"I'll do that," Lindsy agreed. She got up and hugged them both.

* * *

"That's the one," Mo said without hesitation when Jeff loaded the pic.

Jeff finished sending the rest of them and waited. The lunar lag didn't matter for this.

"That's still him," Mo insisted, after getting all the pix. "The other guy was the one to speak first, so I think he was higher ranking. They were both light skinned so this guy is out," he said dragging a picture of a black guy off to the side of the screen.

"The other guy is not that different," he struggled to remember. "Real close in age, but a coarser face, dark like his beard comes in heavy. His face is wider, beefier. That's all I got."

"That helps. We'll find out who is associated with this one."

"Oh, there's one stupid little thing. This one, the underling, leans forward when he sits. The other guy is ramrod upright, like he had a broomstick up his rear. Maybe military is what I thought, but he could have just been raised in a weird social environment too. Don't know how that can help you, but it was so extreme I did notice it."

"Every datum helps to build the picture. Thanks, Mo."

Chapter 31

"Where do you want to set it down?" Dave asked. "We can do a water landing in the open ocean, or we can do a do a aero-brake and start the engine in midair and do a pull-up and set it down on its tail on solid land. Or we could do aerobraking and land on a friendly runway, if you have an ally you trust to let them see the vehicle. If it fails on start-up that could be embarrassing. Especially if it blows up."

"If it blows up on a water take off the parts will sink and somebody could recover them. They can go to the bottom of the deepest trench and recover things."

"OK, scratch that idea."

"Is the runway at Tonga long enough for this shuttle?" Jeff asked.

"It is, just barely. But it's crowded and there is nowhere really safe to do a start-up, if it blows up instead of re-starting properly. The runway ends are close to hangers and public roads. We'd have to build at least a safety berm around an area for start-up. That might not thrill them, to know we don't trust it."

"I like the idea of a dirt landing in a remote area. If it's remote we'd have plenty of time to purge and pump the chamber," Jeff figured. "I'd rather land on dirt, because if we didn't model the hydrodynamic model perfectly it may pitch up, or dig nose in and sink like a rock. We'd be trying to test more than one major system at a time."

"Antarctica would be harder for Earthies to reach than any of the remote Pacific islands. Most of them are pretty small too. In Antarctica there are rocky valleys without boulders safe to land. If it fails and you have to destroy it, there is no fragile lagoon ecology to damage. On the other hand, we can't watch it from orbit continually there." Dave countered.

"Let's do that. I want to watch it real time. We can put a ship in temporary polar orbit and time the take-off for when they are passing overhead and can observe. Land fairly early in the day," Jeff suggested.

"It's
all
day right now," Dave reminded him.

"Oh, I forgot about that," Jeff admitted embarrassed. "Don't some countries have declared interest zones?"

"Yeah, but the main thing is they agree to not militarize it, or start mining there. We're not going to land on a penguin colony or anything. Besides, we're not signatories to the treaty."

"OK, how long before we can set it down?"

"Third day from now, earlier in the day. It isn't fitted yet with some things a human pilot would need, but it's ready for remote control. I'll have the new shuttle and the observer ship in orbit timed, so we can watch it land and they can relay the telemetry. Then they will do an orbit and watch the take off. So it will sit there about an hour. Do you have a name for it yet?" Dave asked. "I'll paint it on where it might not burn off, if you want."

"I'm thinking
Dionysus' Chariot.
" 

"Mythology?"

"Yeah, He was the god of wine and craziness, but more importantly he descended into Hades to affect a rescue. Bacchus is the Roman version, but he has a really bad reputation."

"Whatever, we just need some sort of ID to talk to traffic control about her."

"Do you want to ask permission to land?"

"I'll advise them of the polar orbit," Dave said, "but why start bad habits we don't intend to repeat in the future? We'll do a short de-orbit over the South Atlantic. I'll bring it back up like it just skipped an orbit and see if they even notice."

"Let's run it from my office," Jeff suggested. "It has just a little more room."

"And better coffee," Dave agreed.

* * *

"That's him," Mo said with no hesitation.

"I need to be
very
sure," Jeff told him, but didn't say why.

"It gave me a chill up the back of my neck to see him. I'm
sure
."

"He's still working with the same partner."

"You knew then," Mo accused.

"Things change. People get reassigned. I wouldn't just assume his partner was the same."

"You've gone to a lot of trouble. What do you intend to
do
?"

"I'm not going to tell you." Jeff said, but not with any hostility. "You are free to deal with them any way you feel is necessary," he pointed out. "So am I."

Mo thought about that a little while. "Fair enough," he decided and dropped it.

* * *

"I need a generator set," April dropped in a text to Jeff. She wasn't sure if he'd be sleeping. "Something small with an accumulator. I'm thinking maybe two hundred kilowatts. Enough to propel a fairly big boat with an electric motor and run air conditioning and cooking. The boat sits at dock and moves on wind often enough to build up a backlog in the accumulator. So it can pull double when needed."

"I have one built, unsold, that's three hundred-fifty kilowatts," Jeff said, opening a screen and going to voice. "But if this is for something that's part of any joint venture, I would build you one at cost."

"No, this is private, something I promised and I'll pay for it full retail. Just take it out of my account I opened with you the other day. This is my verbal authorization. Ask Papa-san where to ship it. It'll be some port in Italy, I think."

"Ah, his old boat. The pix you had, of staying in that atoll and snorkeling were awesome. Do you think he'd lease it for a week sometime, if we could get away? I'd love to do that."

"That's exactly what his man Lin is doing, charters. Papa-san gave him the boat as severance for all his service. I promised Papa-san the power if he wanted it. I feel the promise still holds with Lin as the new owner. I expect to keep a working relationship with Lin and suspect he'll stay close to the Santos. If we need something they could do for us with a boat, then certainly this gesture would not be forgotten."

"Indeed, it shouldn't be. I may also need their services I expect. In fact I've asked Chen to feel them out about that already. I tell you what. I won't charge you at cost, but I'll discount this heavily. Say a hundred-eighty thousand dollars USNA. That's about a third off. If you happen to mention I added some support to the deal it wouldn't hurt. No reason they can't be pleased with both of us," he said, with a smile.

"No reason at all," April agreed. "I don't mind paying less either, thanks."

"I'm planning a holiday in my head already," he said. "Heather, you and me. Is the boat big enough?" he worried.

"Oh, easily," April assured him. "And room for security and to do business too."

* * *

"Cindy, you have those two nice windows on the corridor and you are right by the cafeteria. I like drawing clothes and I bet you have a lot of favorites you've made that younger people don't know to ask you to make. I'd like to do some drawings of people wearing your clothes different places on Home. You show me the machine files and I'll draw them like they will look in life. You put them in the window and see if it doesn't make somebody order them."

"How much would you charge to do that, dear?"

"I thought I'd just do it when I'm here working anyway. I have times I'm not doing anything and not all the customers are chatty. I can talk and sketch at the same time anyway."

"Have you ever drawn on a larger scale?" Cindy asked. "Like so," she demonstrated with her hands defining a poster size.

"I've never owned a piece of paper that big. I could try, but it might take me awhile to get the hang of it."

"Perhaps better to do it on the paper we gave you, then I'll have you run it up to Brown's Mercantile on the half G deck. She has office supplies and such and she has a large format printer that can make us a bigger copy for the window," she decided.

"You know what?" Cindy said, after some thought. "You could offer your original drawing at auction beside the window display. People can bid on com and the store site will show the high bid. We'd run the ad in the window for the week and whoever puts the high bid would get to buy your drawing."

"You really think my stuff is good enough to sell?"

"I do and I'll put a base bid on it of a hundred dollars to back up that opinion."

"Oh good. Then I can't be embarrassed by nobody bidding on it. I'll do it."

* * *

"I need some of your security guys organized into a active force that can do infiltration, hard intelligence gathering, such as entry into industrial areas and computer snatching. High level sabotage and assassination," Jeff asked Chen. "I figure you know who to ask."

"Well, you don't mess around with coy euphemisms, I'll give you that."

"We've been on the receiving end of it. Has Gunny related how the Chinese tried to assassinate April, right in our cafeteria?"

"He has and both he and Santos detailed how they went after her on Earth."

"There comes a point you have to make them realize that these acts have consequences." Jeff asserted. "Now, I don't personally have the skills to do it subtly. I could go straight to war and drop a two-hundred megaton warhead on Beijing or Washington and clear an impressive list of the rogues who have been troubling us, but I'd much rather go directly to the responsible individuals and send a message that way."

"I want to hear something directly from you before we work together. Is it true that weapon you dropped on the West Winds facility had more yield than you expected?"

"It had about five times as much yield as I expected," Jeff admitted.

"Would you have dropped it anyway, knowing that?"

 "Yes, if the Chinese had gotten into my ship and reverse engineered the things in it I don't think Home would survive long. I don't have any illusions I can be a 'good' guy and do what needs done. But I'd rather not be a monster unnecessarily. I simply didn't have a reliable smaller weapon to use I was confident would obliterate it. I will say this - I wouldn't ask anyone to do a mission I wouldn't do and anything I ask you to do will come with an explanation of
why
the action is being taken. Are you interested in being offered a mission, or pass?"

"What is the pay scale you are offering and if we pass on a job does that cut us off from future offerings?" Chen asked rather than commit yet.

"You tell me. I don't know the going rate, so bid on the job. If I can't afford it I'll tell you. I'll keep offering, until you have passed on enough of them that I think it is obvious you aren't going to accept anything."

"OK them, run a job by me and I'll see what I can do."

"This is one example of the devices that my employee was suborned by CIA agents to place on our property on the moon." Jeff sat one of the laser reflectors on the table between them. "It is designed to push down in the regolith and it sits there until it is illuminated to pin point the location on a map, or it is actively used to guide a weapon to that point. They were being placed above our tunnels to allow bunker busters to destroy our moon colony."

"Is your colony a military threat?" Chen asked, visibly surprised.

"Heather has an old cannon off a patrol boat she put on a rover. Just about all Home ships carry weapons now, but they have only been used when we were attacked first. We have not approached or threatened anyone else on the moon, unless they came at us. The USNA base Armstrong sent a rover force overland to arrest folks who moved to Central and they sent a ship to cluster-bomb our landing field, with our ship sitting on it. I guess anything they can't destroy is a threat."

"Marking civilian targets is ugly," Chen scowled.

"These are the two agents who blackmailed my hire to plant them." He laid their pictures on folders in front of Chen. "These are all the other known agents at the same office, important enough to be given government vehicles. This is the chief of their Vancouver shop. The folders detail where the targets and the others live, quite a bit about where they do business, where they eat and shop and go to the gym. What routes and schedules they take. Several are married and there are photos of the family so you can avoid them. One fellow has a regular mistress and she has her own folder. The support staff such as secretaries and cleaning crew are shown in photos, but we did not track them home, as they are not targets. This is an interior layout of the building, but they know they have been physically penetrated and could move assigned offices. We haven't seen any indication they are physically remodeling. We can get similar information on any CIA office by remote sensing, although their main campus in DC may be a bit tougher to crack, but this is the only one we have targeted like this so far."

"Wow." Chen sat, thinking in horror what it would mean, if his own agency offices in Beijing had been penetrated and cataloged to this extent.

"What do you want done to them?" Chen cut to the heart of the matter.