Project U.L.F. (43 page)

Collecting himself, Wyatt resolved what he must do. He must find a way back to Earth. Not just for them, but for Byron’s girls so they might hear the news of their father. He would avenge Byron’s death, he told himself. He would squeeze the very life out of Mannheim with his bare hands if he must. It would be worth going back inside for that satisfaction alone.

In the darkness his mouth set in a thin, hard line.

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Par awoke shortly after noon, which was fortunate for him, since Wyatt’s patience was waning rapidly. Another hour and his superior would have forcibly dragged him from his bed.

“I want to speak with you.” The others turned, only now noting Wyatt’s absence because of his sudden reappearance. “It concerns Byron and what happened out there. Think of it more as a debriefing.”

“Okay, sounds sensible,” Par said between shovels of food.

“Now.” Wyatt’s voice was flat and firm. “Alone.”

Par looked longingly at the next forkful of food, now only inches from his face. A glance at Wyatt saw him put it back down again. The issue was not negotiable. Chris made as if to protest but he, too, was silenced by Wyatt’s expression.

Wyatt jumped out of the shuttle door, his booted feet landing heavily on the sun-baked mud and kicking up a small circle of dust. He turned and helped Par down, sticking his head under one arm to bolster the other man’s weight, then they slowly made their way over to a small mound, home to a few isolated trees.

On sight of Par leaving the shuttle, Gon-Thok emerged from the trees. It watched the two humans carefully.

“It has waited for you,” Wyatt nodded in its direction. “Sometimes it disappears for hours but Kit has consistently reported seeing it just beyond the tree line.”

The creature, seeing where they were headed, moved to intercept them.

When they reached the mound, Wyatt carefully lowered Par to the ground, resting his back against one of the slender trunks. Gon-Thok stopped about ten yards away from them, watching them intently and getting an occasional wary and suspicious stare from Wyatt in return.

“So, tell me what happened out there.” he said when he was satisfied the alien posed no threat. “Leave nothing out.” Par sighed heavily and began.

He talked for over an hour, during which time Wyatt paced unceasingly around him, hand to chin, forefinger pressed to lips, and brow furrowed in concentration. When he was finished, the two men stayed silent for a moment.

“It should have been me,” Par said quietly as an afterthought.

“We all think like that,” Wyatt reassured him, “And we’d all trade places if we could. Don’t blame yourself. It wasn’t your fault.”

“But Byron had everything to live for.”

“And you don’t?”

“No. Not now.”

Wyatt frowned and turned to face him. “What do you mean?”

“You may as well know, seeing as how it makes no difference any more.” Par sighed heavily once again before continuing. “I was sent on this mission with you to make sure you failed.” He paused, looking for the reaction such news would bring. There was none. Wyatt was stunned. “Your suspicions were correct, Wyatt; you were dumped here by Mannheim, but you were never supposed to find out. At least not so soon, anyway. If you had gone through with the mission as planned, without suspecting anything was wrong, then you would have found out when you powered up to leave. By then, it would be too late. Your supplies would be exhausted, the end would be relatively quick.”

Wyatt laughed, a shallow laugh of disbelief.

“It’s true, Wyatt. You know inside that what I say is the truth. You’ve questioned my presence on this crew right from the start. I’ve sensed that from you.”

“But that’s ludicrous! You’re telling me you came away on a suicide mission?”

“Ah, not quite. You see, I had a way home. Two days after the sub-space jump we performed in the
Santa Maria
, a skimmer was scheduled to come and pick me up at a predetermined rendezvous about six clicks from the landing site. I would have just…disappeared.” He looked up into the sky dreamily, then shrugged. “Trappers go missing all the time, Wyatt, lost in jungle or desert never to be seen again. Maybe you’d have come looking for me. Maybe you wouldn’t have given it a second thought. Who knows? Who cares? I know I wouldn’t have.”

Suddenly it all began to fall into place. Par was right. Wyatt had never been able to justify his assignation to this mission; at least, he hadn’t found a reason that sat comfortably with him. “That was why you didn’t agree to the sub-space flight?”

“Of course. What was I supposed to do, wave you guys off and say ‘I’ll be seeing you!?’ All I could do was abstain from the vote and hope that I fell in the majority. If I’d done anything else you’d have suspected something straight away. In fact I’m surprised you didn’t suspect something then.”

Wyatt laughed again, and continued laughing.

Par frowned. “Don’t you understand what I’m saying to you? I’m not bullshitting you!”

“So by coming with us you gave up your chance of going home.”

Par could see the irony of it now. “I had no choice,” he said with resentment. “You and I both know I wouldn’t have lasted two days on my own out here. Besides, I figured if Mannheim was prepared to do this to you then I was kidding myself if I ever thought he’d come good on his promise to me. Hell, I don’t even know if the skimmer came for me, do I?”

“What was the promise?”

“Huh?”

“The payoff? What did he offer you?”

Par swallowed nervously. “Your job.”

“My job!” Wyatt could hardly believe it. “My job! Shit! If I’d have known you’d have gone to these lengths to get it you could have just asked. I’d have given it to you.”

Par looked at him questioningly, thinking for a second that there might be some truth in those words, but then he realized that Wyatt’s emotions were making him flippant.

“Sheesh! My job!” Wyatt said again quietly, running a hand through his hair.

“It’s not what you think.”

“Oh, really?” Wyatt was really interested now.

“I would never have challenged you, you should know that. The position was offered to me.”

“Offered to you? What, with me still there?”

“Listen to me. Just hear me out, will you?”

Wyatt wanted to say a million different things, to shout, to scream, to articulate at least some of the thoughts that raced around his head in an attempt to vent some of the rage that boiled inside him. Instead, he stood in smoldering silence, his eyes glaring, glazed windows to the fire that burned within. Par shrank under the stare.

“It’s no secret that I wanted a position of authority in the IZP,” Par began. “I’ve talked to you about it. I’ve talked to all the other division heads. Somehow Mannheim must have got wind of it.” He stopped, hoping that Wyatt might comment and at least make it more of a civilized conversation, but Wyatt said nothing, just seemed to grow in stature as if his anger were filling him up like air might a balloon. Par gulped. “Mannheim called me into his office a few months ago and offered me your job. Of course I was thrilled, but I knew it was your job, and so I questioned how he could offer it to me. He said that you were resigning and that the position was up for grabs.”

“And you believed that?” The words seemed to burst from Wyatt’s lips as if under pressure.

“Well, no, look, I didn’t know what to believe. I told Mannheim that I’d heard no such thing and he responded by saying that you wanted it all kept very quiet. As such I was not to say a word to anyone, not even to you, because by telling me he had broken a confidentiality clause he had with you.”

Wyatt snorted. That line sounded familiar.

“It all happened so quickly, Wyatt, before I knew it he was showing me out the door and telling me that contracts would be drawn up the following week.

“The Wednesday of the next week I was visited at home by two men masquerading as couriers. They asked to be let inside so that I might have time to peruse the contract before I signed it and, like a fool, I let them in. That contract contained the details of this mission and it was then that I discovered what I would have to do to become your successor.” Par glanced quickly at Wyatt and then looked away again. The other man’s eyes seemed to burn into his soul. “I refused. Of course I refused, but then the couriers, pretending to look for more papers, opened their jackets to give me a good view of the weapons they were carrying. It was then that I learned their true identity. They weren’t couriers, as I thought, but temporary employees of the IZP, reporting specifically to Mannheim. They said that they were contractors, of sorts, too, and that if I refused to sign then Mannheim might have another contract issued as far as I was concerned. They left little to the imagination.

“So you see, I had no choice. I had already crossed too far over the line. I knew too much, just like you had when you agreed to be part of this. We were already caught, Wyatt, it was just up to Mannheim as to when he reeled us in.”

“Who else is in on this?” Wyatt barked. “Kit?” He too had voted against the sub-space jump.

“No.” Par laughed. “Do you know of anyone who wouldn’t want to be rid of Kit? No, very few people were involved and none of us knew the full story, perhaps I knew more than most, but we were all pawns in a process, manipulated at the right time to bring us to this, the endgame, if you like.

“No,” Par said again. “The fewer people who were involved gave the operation a greater degree of success and less chance of mistakes, less chance of discovery.” He paused. “Fewer people to make disappear afterwards,” he said quietly. “That’s why I can’t go back. If I make it back then I can expose Mannheim. There’ll be a contract on my head as soon as my feet touch luna firma.”

“Why us? Why this crew?”

“Mannheim wanted to be rid of you, specifically. Once you were on board, he assembled a team of people around you that he had no use for and sent you away with all the faulty equipment he could muster. That’s why you were given the
Santa Maria
. Do you think Mannheim gives a shit about obsolete Caravel class craft when the IZP is snapping up the stealth class frigates almost as soon as they come off the production line? A couple of billion credits is nothing to them, Wyatt. The IZP is a monster, it’s bigger then either of us realize and I suspect that it’s bigger than the CSETI.”

“But why? Why does Mannheim want to be rid of me?”

“Don’t be naïve, Wyatt. You pose a threat to him and you’re too strong a character to be subverted. That only leaves this alternative. Why do you think he has gone unchallenged for so long? Those who would defy him are either disposed of or brought into the fold and entrapped. All of Mannheim’s henchmen are those who once opposed him. He promoted them to keep them happy and now, when they become restless, he moves them sideways to keep them quiet. It’s a commonly used tactic. He’s cocooned by these people now, and even though they might not realize it, they protect him like a human shield. He’s virtually untouchable. A law unto himself.”

“And the others? What did they do to deserve being here?”

“They’re all misfits, Wyatt. Failures of some kind, but most important of all—expendable. Except, of course, Bobby and Byron. Their only failing is that they happened to be such good friends with you.”

Wyatt glared at him.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Par added hurriedly, “Just that they would never buy the line that you had resigned. If you disappeared, then they would start asking questions, and Mannheim couldn’t allow that to happen. They also give the mission a degree of credibility as well,” he added as an afterthought. “After all, you’d have suspected something straight away if you’d been sent away with seven complete losers.”