Humanity Unlimited 1: Liberty Station (2 page)

“Hello?” Harry could hear mixed notes of fear and hope in the woman’s voice.

“Miss Schultz? Harry Rogers. We have Emily and we’re safely away.”

“Oh, thank God!” He could hear the anguished relief in the woman’s voice. “Can I talk to her? Is she okay?”

“She’s perfectly fine. Here you go.” He handed the phone to the little girl and stepped back to let them have their reunion.

Once they finished their long and tearful conversation, he took his phone back. The woman was still crying. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

“It’s my pleasure. We’ll have her back to you tomorrow evening. Try to get some rest.”

He hung up with a sense of satisfaction, knowing that the woman wouldn’t be able to sleep a wink. Another family reunited. Those were the best jobs.

That’s when he noticed he had a voicemail from an all-too-familiar number. His father. Great. That man could ruin a wet dream.

Harry stepped onto the deck and looked out over the waves. The smell of the sea calmed him. It reminded him of a less complicated time when his family had taken long trips on the ocean. He must’ve been two or three. They’d hardly been a model family, but at least they’d been together.

He could ignore the message, but his father was resourceful and determined. One didn’t build one of the most powerful companies on the planet by rolling over at the first setback. He’d get more and more irritating if Harry didn’t call him back.

He sighed and listened to the message. His father’s deep voice came out of the speaker.

“I’m sorry for disturbing you while you’re at work, Harry. I hope you’re enjoying the med. It’s wonderful this time of year.”

How had the man known where he was?

“Anyway, something has come up. I know that we don’t have the greatest relationship, but an innocent woman is in grave danger. I’m willing to pay triple your usual rate, and you can attach a substantial surcharge for working for me. Please call me back as soon as you get this message.”

The fees Liberty SOG—Special Operations Group—charged for the simplest operations were substantial. Private military groups took a lot of money to keep in specialized gear and weapons. And Harry paid his people very well indeed. They deserved every penny.

The amount of money his father was talking about was…substantial. Enough to tempt Harry, even against his better judgment.

He sighed. Might as well get this over with. He dialed the number, smiling a little at the time. At least he got to wake the bastard up at an inconsiderate hour.

* * * * *

The phone beside the bed jarred Clayton Rogers from a sound sleep. Only a select few had his private number, or the code to make it ring through, so he knew it was his son before he checked the Caller ID.

He noted the hour with resigned amusement and answered the call. “Harry, it’s good of you to get back to me so promptly. I hope your work bore fruit. Kidnapping children is a nasty business.”

“And you know more than your share about nasty businesses, don’t you?” his son said coolly. “Let’s cut the pleasantries short. I’m not inclined to take your money. I know how you earned it.”

His son’s antipathy was no surprise. He really couldn’t blame the boy. Clayton was honest enough to see his own failures. The things he’d done to climb to the top of his business were sickening, despicable, and occasionally horrific. And quite necessary. Something his son had never been able to understand.

Business in 2035 had very little in common with what it had been even two decades earlier. The largest international corporations were almost governments in their own right. Cutthroat didn’t begin to describe some of the things they did to one another.

Rainforest—his company—was no exception. He’d like to believe that his behavior was less ugly than most of his compatriots, but that was only rationalizing. He did what he had to. The project was too important to fail.

“I strongly urge you to reconsider. If you walk away, it’s likely that dozens of innocent people will disappear into hidden graves. Most of them are in no way associated with my business interests. These are the kind of people you help every day. On that I give you my word.”

The long silence made him wonder if his word was no longer good enough. That day would eventually come.

“When the bill arrives, you’ll pay it without a peep,” Harry said. “Who are these people, where are they, and what pickle have they gotten themselves into?”

Clayton let out his breath slowly. He’d made it past the most difficult hurdle. Whatever Harry charged would be worth every cent and more. “They are a team of archaeologists excavating a Mayan ruin deep in the jungles of Guatemala. Communications there are quite spotty. For their own safety, they need to be brought out.”

He could hear the surprise in his son’s voice. “Archaeologists? Why in the world would people like that be on your payroll? You own the world’s largest online store. Is Rainforest selling priceless relics now?”

“Only one of the people is associated with me. The rest are innocent bystanders.”

“Who is this person and what do they do for you?”

“Her name is Jessica Cook. She’s an engineer with specialties in space construction.”

That silenced his son for a moment. “What is she doing at an archaeological dig in Guatemala?”

“I’m not precisely certain,” Clayton admitted. “The man in charge of the site—a friend of hers—asked her to come look at something. Her office is at the Yucatan Spaceport, so it wasn’t too much of an inconvenience, I suppose.

“I found out after she departed that your mother has taken an unhealthy interest in her. One of my spies in Kathleen’s organization tells me that your mother has dispatched Nathan to collect her. And to make certain there are no unfortunate questions asked later.”

His ex-wife was always on the lookout for chances to harm him or those around him. With cause, he admitted. Their marriage of convenience had become most inconvenient when he terminated it.

Scratch the CEO of any global corporation and you’ll most likely find a high functioning sociopath. The ability to look past the harm people suffered during the course of making a company succeed was a prerequisite to doing business on that scale.

Kathleen Bennett had led her own company when he married her. One that had been in her family for generations. It had made up half of Rainforest when they merged. And he’d stripped it from her via a hostile takeover when they divorced.

The generous payout had done nothing to quench her burning rage at his outright theft of her family’s company. Instead, it had given her the tools to wage war against him.

She’d started a new company, but something had broken inside her. She’d become a psychopath determined to hurt him in any way possible, no matter the cost, laws broken, or who she hurt doing so. She’s become the poster girl for the apocryphal corporate monster.

And an almost cartoonish enemy. It wouldn’t be unreasonable for most people to imagine Kathleen sat around rubbing her hands together while cackling madly and muttering “revenge!” to herself.

One day her insensible rage would bring her down. She’d do something so heinous that even her wealth couldn’t save her. And he had to admit that she’d recovered her fortune quite well. She was worth almost as much as he was these days. Perhaps more.

The cruelest irony had been finding out she’d been pregnant with their second child after the split. He’d managed to gain sole custody of Harry, but she’d hung on to Nathan. He was almost as bad as she was now.

Harry and Nathan had clashed before, so his younger brother’s involvement was actually a plus for Clayton. Nathan was one of Harry’s buttons.

“Why didn’t you say that up front?” Harry demanded. “That would’ve made this conversation go much more smoothly. As much as I despise you, those two are a completely different level of bad news.

“I’ll need all the information you can give me about Jessica Cook, her friends, and the site. A secure upload to the Liberty SOG servers would be the simplest solution. I’ll email you a link and a public encryption key. I have a child that I need to deliver. That will complicate the timing.”

Clayton had planned around that contingency. “I have a ship in your general area. I can take the child off your hands and assure a safe and speedy delivery. It’s something Rainforest prides itself on. Time is of the essence in this matter. Your brother is already on his way.”

“Fine, but I hold you personally responsible. If the girl doesn’t make it home safely, I’ll come for that visit you’ve been pestering me about, but you won’t enjoy it. Look for the email.”

The call ended abruptly. Clayton returned the phone to its cradle and rubbed his face tiredly. Days like this made him wonder if his schemes were worth the pain they caused.

The only positive aspect to this situation was that he now had a way to bring his son into the plan. Only stage one, but possibly enough to whet Harry’s appetite to learn more.

His son didn’t know it, but Clayton had always intended to bring him in on his grand undertaking. In fact, his boy was a critical component of its eventual success. Even if he had to keep lying to his son until he’d ensnared him too deeply to extract himself.

Clayton glanced at the clock on his nightstand and rose. He had a lot of work to do if he wanted to salvage his undertaking and stymie his ex-wife.

Chapter Two

Jessica Cook removed her Astros cap long enough to wipe her face and reapply her insect repellent. The jungles of Guatemala were even hotter and more humid than she’d feared. What had she been thinking?

The trees towered over her, filled with life that called out to attract or warn off others that she would never see. The cover didn’t stop the undergrowth, though. Someone had cut a path through the worst of it, but that wasn’t saying much. And, God, the humidity! She was soaked in sweat.

Besides being far more uncomfortable than she’d counted on, this jaunt was taking her away from her job as the chief construction engineer for Liberty Station. They were coming up on some very important deadlines and she really should be preparing for them.

The rest of the world—those that even paid attention to such things—thought Liberty Station was going to be a space hotel for the uberwealthy. The truth behind that story was a lot more impressive. Clayton Rogers was building the first spaceship to take humans to Mars and beyond.

If the truth got out, plenty of people would try to stop them. The only players in space these days were the Indians and the Chinese. Both had Mars locked in their sights and were determined to be the first to put a human on the Red Planet. They’d lose that race when Liberty Station stole a march on them. Just one more reason to keep things quiet, since those governments might be able to stop them if they had enough warning.

The United States had given up on space, turning their attention to purely terrestrial problems. Oh, they’d tried to keep up appearances, but the ISS2 space station project had imploded financially. Mister Rogers had bought the unfinished skeleton and they’d corrected its flaws and expanded on it.

They’d be the first global corporation to focus on the rest of the solar system, and the riches—both financial and scientific—awaiting them. With their technological lead, they’d have years to set up infrastructure that the rest of the world would be hard-pressed to match.

She stumbled a little and forced herself to focus on the here and now. A broken leg would slow her down even more than this side trip.

The boat had dropped her and her guides off that morning, but it had taken them all day to traverse just a few miles of thick jungle. The workers had it much harder than she did, though. They had boxes and bags of equipment and supplies to carry. The sight of them all moving in a long line reminded her of an old Tarzan movie. She could’ve used a pith helmet.

A stone column was the first indication they’d entered the Mayan ruins. With all the people behind her, she couldn’t stop to examine it. Not that she could see much anyway. The thick vegetation hid it almost completely.

She began looking at the hills around them. The ones behind the caravan looked normal. The ones in front of them were more angular. They weren’t hills at all. They were pyramids covered in jungle growth.

They’d arrived at the city.

The ghost of a road led them deeper into the long abandoned capitol of some forgotten Mayan kingdom. Her imagination filled in the missing details and she could see it as a bustling metropolis. Considering the Mayan’s technological level, the city was a marvel.

She spotted a few young men and women with survey equipment on a small rise ahead. They waved as she and her party walked past them. Jess cheerfully waved back.

The caravan leader took them to the central camp in what must have once been a great courtyard. Tents stood in neat rows just past a large, dark hole in the ground. A small tumble of stone marked what she imagined had been a short wall surrounding it.

Doctor Abel Valdez stepped out from one of the tents and waved at her. “Jess! You made excellent time! Come! I must show you what we found.”

Even though she ached to sit and rest, she wanted to see what had gotten her old friend so excited. And to find out what possible assistance an orbital engineer with degrees in mechanical and nuclear engineering, and several minors in space sciences, would be at an ancient ruin.

His enthusiasm was as infectious as she remembered from college. He’d almost convinced her to become an archaeologist before she’d dedicated her life to engineering. The past had called to him even as the stars seduced her toward space.

Jessica pulled him into a hug. “Abel! Take a breath! How are you? This place is amazing!”

His expression turned sheepish. “Better than good. I apologize. I should let you rest and recover from your trip.”

“And miss this mysterious find of yours?” she asked with a smile. “No way. Maybe now you’ll explain what the hell is so important that you couldn’t tell me over the phone.”

She’d been at the Yucatan Spaceport, so it had only been a matter of hours to fly to Guatemala. And then three days of rough travel involving overland driving, a boat she’d been certain would capsize, and a full day hiking through almost impenetrable jungle.