Gabriel's Redemption (12 page)

He stepped into a brightly-lit anteroom, occupied solely by a small desk with a receptionist behind it, a flag of La Republica de Sudamerica, and a wall mural depicting the South American continent and its constituent nation-states, only the former Peru not matching in color. Cáceres glanced at the map, eyes lingering on the missing nation-state, and felt a sadness many South Americans had never gotten over. The start of the South American nuclear war in the middle of the twenty-first century had left most of Peru uninhabitable for centuries.

He stood respectfully by the back wall, hands clasped in front of him, as the anteroom lacked any type of seating besides the receptionist’s chair. He knew the drill. The minister would keep him waiting a predetermined period of time, during which Cáceres would be expected to reflect on his lowly position, and enter the meeting suitably humbled.
I’ll play along
, Cáceres thought.
Just until I get what I need.

After ten minutes of being ignored by the receptionist, a light tone sounded on the desk. “You may enter, Señor Cáceres,” the receptionist said, never looking up from his flexscreen. A door opposite the one he had entered slid aside noiselessly, and Cáceres walked through.

The door immediately slid shut behind him as he stepped onto the plush crimson carpet of the office, and he caught a faint whiff of Cuban cigar in the air. He wasn’t aware Tevez smoked, so the aroma caught him off guard, and he idly wondered if Tevez had met with someone earlier in the day.
 

The Minister of Finance was a large man, borderline obese, who had always projected an unhealthy vibe with his eating and drinking habits. Today was no different, Cáceres noted. The rotund Tevez was reclining on a leather settee near one of the office’s picture windows, a spread of fatty meats and cheeses arranged on the low table in front of him. Even at eleven in the morning, a half-empty tumbler of bourbon sat within chubby arm reach, and if the level of liquid in the crystal decanter on the bar behind him was any clue, it wasn’t his first glass of the day.

Tevez motioned with his free hand, several pieces of chorizo and cheddar cheese in his other. “Ignacio, please have a seat.” His wave indicated the faux velour chair across the table from him. “Drink?”

Cáceres sat and folded his hands in his lap, as Tevez’s ego demanded. “No,
gracias
, Señor Tevez.”
 

Tevez polished off the snack, brushing crumbs from his hands and shirt, and picked up his bourbon, leaning back in the settee.

“Of course. You are an
aguardiente
man, I remember,” he said, a wheeze evident in his voice at the end of each breath. “I have come to appreciate the north’s fine cuisine and unique beverages more often these days, and if you bring me good news, we can all look forward to more, ah, relations with
el norte
, eh?” Tevez laughed heartily, choking a bit on the last few pieces of chorizo he struggled to swallow. He tossed off the remainder of the Kentucky bourbon and set the glass down on the table, wiping his lips with an embroidered cloth napkin. “Tell me good news,” he said in a more demanding voice.

Cáceres cleared his throat. “Minister, I do bring good news. Admiral MacFarland and his people are on target to make the deadline, he assured me personally. All signs point to an on-time mission to Poliahu, and he has his best people running the mission. He does ask me to confirm that all is on schedule with ‘our end of the bargain’, as he says so often.”

Tevez laughed louder. “You tell that rat-bastard…” He paused. “
Lo siento
…our
partner
. Make a one-time mental note for your next meeting for the Admiral’s peace of mind,” he said as he tapped his own head, telling Cáceres to have his neuretics record the information he was about to give him. “Let him know our surface ships are already en route to Toronto. As he requested, six cargo vessels will arrive on the 17
th
, eleven days from now, via the Saint Lawrence Seaway. They will be fully loaded with our troops, with no traceable IDs of course, and Chinese weaponry. The ships will be under the cover of automotive parts using our contacts within Chrysler-Puma and fully documented for transit.”

Cáceres nodded. “Of course, sir.” He tapped his head. “For the Admiral’s records, the packages?”

Tevez smiled. “All in place. Four 20 kiloton tactical nukes, courtesy again of our
friends
in China,” he said, his overemphasis on friends an obvious bit of sarcasm. “They will detonate under the specified landmarks just after the ships dock and unload our personnel. During the resultant confusion, the six top NAF leaders MacFarland named will be taken out, leaving our trusted partner in charge of a panicked Federation that has no choice but to take our offer of help. And with MacFarland cleverly finding and eliminating the Chinese terrorists responsible for this horrific attack, he will have full support in declaring martial law and a state of war between the NAF and China.”
 

He stood heavily and walked to the bar, pouring another glass of bourbon. “We will be needed allies called to the NAF’s side, and when our esteemed leaders refuse, they will be conveniently taken out by the same Chinese terror cell, with more blame squarely placed at Chonglin Liu’s feet.” He laughed, a sickly coughing sound. “I of course will run that operation, and in the end, will have the power of two nations behind me.”

Cáceres felt slightly ill, hearing the full plan once again. Eight months ago when he was called into an innocuous staff meeting and Tevez had pulled him aside, he never thought it would have gotten this far. He thought of himself as ambitious, sure, but now he was rethinking the entire situation every day. Every call to his wife, every vidcomm to see his children, he regretted saying yes to the powerful Tevez. But the consequences of a no may have been even more dangerous.

“Minister, you and I have never talked about what happens after that, except your promise of a Ministry position for me and safety for my family,” Cáceres said. “What do you anticipate China’s response to be?”

Tevez snorted and took a sip of his bourbon. “China will cower at the combined strength of La Republica de Sudamerica and the North American Federation. They are of no long-term worry for us. Besides, even a small war benefits the economy, and
Dios sabe
we need that boost.” He looked out the picture window at the Plaza below.
 
“My presidency will be seen as one of the most successful in Argentina’s history, or any other southern country. Our people will prosper, our coffers will fill, we will gain technology from the NAF in exchange for our advanced food production, and our military will grow to be the envy of the world.” He walked over to the table and picked up a piece of local
salchicha
sausage. “We will finally get a foothold in space with the acquisition of Poliahu,” he said, popping the meat into his mouth whole. He raised an eyebrow towards the spread.

Cáceres politely picked up a piece of gouda cheese on a toothpick. “Poliahu, yes, the crux of our agreement. You are leaving me in the dark on that one, señor.” He nibbled at the crumbly gouda, which apparently had been out for several hours.

“Correct, my future minister. Some things must be on a need-to-know basis, as our northern friends say,” Tevez said with a smile, which quickly hardened into a glare. “But you tell MacFarland if he does not produce the fruit of the colony labs for us immediately upon his mission’s return, the entire plan will be called off and he will be left holding the bag.” He drank the last of the bourbon, lifting one fat finger off the glass to point to Cáceres. “You make sure he knows that.”

“Of course, Minister,” Cáceres said, rising from his seat and placing the half-eaten gouda on a napkin lying on the edge of the table. “He has an excellent understanding of what’s required, of both of our parties.”

Tevez laughed as Cáceres headed for the door. “Yes he does!
Ciao
, Ignacio. The next time we talk, it will be over drinks upstairs, toasting our success and long, long life!”

Cáceres walked out of the door that had slid aside at his approach, ignoring the bored receptionist, and out into the hall, where he loosened his tie and fought the wave of nausea that came over him.

Santander strode into Moravec Station’s departure lounge, his team on his heels, and walked up to the gate agent, a young woman barely out of the university, probably paying her way through post-graduate school by moonlighting here. Santander didn’t even look her in the face as he jostled his way to the head of the long boarding line, stepping in front of a family with two small children and a crying baby.

“Quentin Santander and guests, you have our passes on file,” he said gruffly as he glanced distractedly at the minipad he carried in one hand. The baby behind him screamed its displeasure, and the father gave it a shush after having caught a glimpse of the MarsSec shoulder boards Santander wore.

The harried young lady at the boarding kiosk tapped at her screen, and her eyes grew wide as the information scrolled past. “Uh, yes, of course, Mr. Santander, right this way,” she said quickly, throwing an apologetic look at the family behind the six newcomers. She turned and waved them through the staff entrance, bypassing the detector arch, and pulled the manual door shut behind them. Turning back to the line of passengers, she patted her hair absently. “Good afternoon, welcome to Skyhook Alpha. Your boarding passes please?”

On the other side of the door, Santander and his team made their way down a bare corridor lined overhead with flickering light strips. Santander called over his shoulder to one of the men behind him. “Ran, are you one hundred percent sure all of our gear is loaded in the cargo container?”

The wiry man walking at the back of the group answered. “Everything accounted for and loaded properly. The gear will hit the ship before we do, it’s probably halfway there as we speak.”

“About that,” Santander said. “Any problems in contacting the ship’s crew, Isham?”

“None, sir. They seem to speak enough English for us to get by,
Inshallah
,” Isham replied.
 

“Hey, none of that religious shit for this cruise, all right?” Rheaves chimed in.

“No problem, big man,” the Pakistani national said. “As long as you promise to cut out your swearing.”

“Screw you, Indian,” the large mercenary said with an fierce grin.

“Enough, people,” Santander said sharply as he reached to open the door at the end of the corridor. “Save it for the targets.”

The door opened and admitted the group into the staff entrance to the space elevator boarding area, bypassing over a hundred waiting passengers and allowing them choice seats on the ride up.

Skyhook Alpha was the first space elevator constructed on Mars, back at the end of the twenty-first century, as a more efficient way of transportation to and from orbit was needed. Mars offered limited resources to produce rocket fuel, and water as a reaction mass was strictly controlled on such a dry world, so the engineers took an idea from science fiction and began work on a revolutionary form of transportation, one they wanted to ‘test’ on the failing world of Mars for future development on other worlds.

The elevator was more of a vertical cable car, very similar in appearance to what old town San Francisco used before the tsunamis. It was a large car, seating just over three hundred, as well as several tons of cargo. It rode on a carbon-carbon nanotube cable, only sixteen inches in diameter, from the Moravec ground terminal to Bixby Station in low Mars orbit. One end of the incredibly strong cable was anchored over 300 feet below the surface of Pavonis Mons, just outside the city of Bradbury. The far end, extending 462 miles past the orbiting station, was tethered to a captured asteroid as a counterbalance weight. This allowed the cable to remain stretched and taut for the entire 192 mile ride from station to station, as well as keeping it areostationary.

A cross-section view of the interior of the cars to an outside observer would look like small auditoriums stacked on top of each other, seven high, and arranged in ten rows of six seats with an aisle down the center, like a traditional passenger aircraft. At the front of each section was a wallscreen, which typically showed an exterior view of the journey for passengers. Each seat also had personal flexscreens mounted in case the thin Mars atmosphere wasn’t an exciting enough distraction.

For half of the ride, the cars were right side up to the surface; at the halfway point they slowly rotated to decelerate into the station, providing solid Mars gravity “down” for the passengers the entire ride. Cars ran in both directions, opposite sides of the cable, with up to twelve cars running in each direction at a time.
 

Even with all of Mars’s troubles, the Skyhooks were still the pinnacle of technology in the solar system. Two were in operation; construction on a third was started but never completed, the food riots of 2135 having seen to that. Skyhook Alpha was still the busiest because of the proximity to three of Mars’s largest cities; Bradbury, New Hope, and Aregrad. But Santander’s waiting elevator car was completely empty; station security had cleared a solo run for them along with their cargo.

The team entered the bottom F level and spread out, relaxing in the spacious cabin. Rheaves eased his bulk into the front row and immediately fell asleep; the others in the team busied themselves. Santander tapped at his minipad and contacted the ship’s captain, tucking in a secure earpiece link.

“Captain Yao,” he said, sitting down in the back row as the car began to vibrate. He felt more than heard the clamps secure the car to the cable, and the car lurched to a start, slowly picking up speed.

A heavily-accented voice came through his earpiece. “
Nihao
, Mister Santander, we here await arrival.”

Santander shook his head in disgust.
Dredge couldn’t find a North American ship, or at least a full English-speaking crew?
There’s only so much trust he felt like extending, and putting his life in a stranger’s hands and ship…he wasn’t so sure about how far he could extend what little trust he had. “Yao, we are en route on the skyhook.” He checked his minipad. “We will be arriving at the station in less than two hours, and as long as your shuttle is ready, our transit time to your ship will be an additional three hours, fifteen minutes.”