Vatican Ambassador (20 page)

BC takes the offensive. “So. What is your name? I mean, really?”

“Anita Capituna. Doctor Anita Capituna. That’s my real name. And I really am a scientist. I work for The Project.”

The Project? Man I can hear the capital “P”. Never hurts to ask...

“The Project?”

She hesitates. “The Project. It’s what we call ourselves. And we’ve decided it’s time for you to know about us. That’s why I’m here today. That… and we
do
think we know who has infected us with this sickness.”

“Right,” BC says suspiciously. “It’s ‘my time’. I see.”

“Look. I’m here to bring you in on what The Project is up to. You can accept that, or walk away from it.”

“How do I know you’re not just fucking crazy?”

“Such language from a priest,” she says with a tsk. “I didn’t kill you, I had you rescued. You saw the

‘flasher’ as you call our ships. They called in the LSC.”

BC is still not convinced. “How can I be sure you’re not still a UIN agent, just trying to take advantage of the current situation and trying to keep me from being a threat?”

“Like I said before, if I wanted you dead, you’d be dead. I’m not UIN!” she insists.

“I saw you at the conference here! You were working with McEntyre! Last October! It was all over the news… you’re a celebrity secret agent. Kind of an oxymoron, isn’t it?”

“Did you like that? That performance was for you, once I realized you’d spotted me. I was spying on McEntyre. Then I saw you and I improvised. Hey, it helped you get rid of McEntyre, didn’t it? And as far as we know, Amanda Erskine is clean. No alliances, no agenda except the Moon’s. I did you a favor!”

“Wait, back up. Are you saying McEntyre didn’t know you were here that last time?”

“Not at all. I made it look like he did for your benefit. Well, for you and the cameras, anyway. It helped you take him down, didn’t it?” She pleads her case. “And McEntyre must have been so confused,” she chuckles, “probably figures he did something wrong and the UIN set him up to fall down. Smiles all around, then, wouldn’t you say?”

“You’re hurting my head,” BC says.

“Still getting those headaches?” she asks.

“How do you...”

“I know stuff,” she says, cutting him off. “Why be so hostile?”

“I’m not hostile! I’m a priest,” BC protests.

“Oh, like those two have ever been mutually exclusive!” she fires back.
Jesus Christ!

BC raises his voice, “I guess the whole ‘you tried to kill me’ thing is still giving me trouble! I’m having a really hard time getting past that!” BC realizes he’s being loud. He looks around McGrady’s, but no one else in the place is really paying attention.

“Look,” she says, “I was doing you a favor. I was originally down there to see if you wanted to go for a walk. I knew the UIN were about to strike. And I knew they were gunning for the NcC area. I drew you away! I saved your life twice, and you don’t even know it. One more time, I was
not trying to kill you
!

I was trying to make it
look
like I was trying to kill you! There is a difference! It’d be nice to get some gratitude for a change. I mean, now that you know.”

BC shakes his head, “I don’t know anything. You’re raving about some ‘Project’, trying to spin your trying to kill me as saving my life,” BC says, lowering his voice. “What now, then? What could have ever possessed you to make you want to get in touch with me? What do you want with me? And what do you think I’d be dumb enough to agree to go along with you on? What is there you could want that you’d think I’d be foolish enough to get for you?”” BC says in a harsh half-whisper.

“I want what you want,” she says.

“I have no fucking idea what I want.” BC states. “How can you want that?”

Ha!

“You can’t know what you want,” she surprises BC, “because you don’t know all of your options. I can increase that awareness. I can let you see what else is out there. Let me help you expand your options.”

“What options?” BC asks, a skeptical edge to his voice.

“The optional answers to the question of who spread this sickness that is killing the human race, Father Campion,” she says solemnly.

“The UIN didn’t do this,” she says.

“Oh, like I’m going to listen to
you
about the UIN’s innocence,” BC says with a chuckle of his own.

“C’mon. If this thing is a manufactured virus designed for biological warfare, who else
but
the UIN

would be doing this?”

“Who else? There are others you don’t know about, Father Campion. They’re the ones I need to tell you about. They’re the other options you need to know about. There are other
races
out there, Campion,”

she says, looking up, looking him in the eye. “The Project has met with them and dealt with them for quite a while, now. And we in The Project are pretty sure one of these other races planted the virus that is now killing our people.”

BC’s brain tries to sort out what she just said.

“So. What you’re saying is that aliens are trying to wipe out the human race?” He shakes his head. “You expect me to believe this crap?”

“I know it sounds farfetched. I know it sounds unbelievable. I know you have absolutely no reason to trust me, and every reason to mistrust and hate me. I know that,” Dr. Anita Capituna tells BC. “But I won’t ask you to take my word for it. I told you The Project has agreed to let you in, and so I’d like to show you that what I’m saying is all true and for real. Let me prove it to you by taking you on a tour through The Project’s facilities. I can show you evidence there of our interstellar neighbors and fill you in on those who may be trying to do us in.”

“How do I know you’re not just taking me off to kill me?”

“Jeesh. Look, if I wanted to kill you, you’d already...”

“...be dead, I know,” BC says, finishing her sentence, having heard it enough already.

“You should understand that by now,” she says and laughs. “This will take some time, though, about a day. And the lab is totally cut off from other communication, so you’ll need to let your staff know you’ll be
completely
out of touch for about twenty four hours.”

“I’m not sure I like that. Where are we going?”

“Nowhere far. Just to the other side of the Moon. The Project’s labs on the Moon are located there,”

she explains.

“It would probably be best to go soon, then,” BC says. “Strike while the iron is hot!”

“No time like the present. Can you get some time right now?” she asks.

“Right now?” BC asks. She nods. “Let me see.”

This is happening a little too fast. Why the fuck should I remotely trust her? Can I get away
right now? I don’t think there’s anything...

BC tries his personal link.

“Hello?”

Good, she’s at her desk.

“Hey Lisa, it’s Father BC.”

“Good evening, Father.”

“Do I have any appointments tomorrow?”

“Nothing. Although you did say you’d stop by the hospital to visit the sick people.”

Damn, good old-fashioned Catholic guilt.

“Thank you, Lisa. I’m going to be out of contact for about the next twenty-four hours. There’s something,” he looks over at Bendix, or Capituna, as he speaks, “I need to look into.”

“Okay, Father,” BC hears the sigh in her voice, then the quick tone indicating the link closed.
Judgmental woman... thou shalt not judge? Ah, hell. Secretaries.

Bendix... er, Capituna’s smiling at me. I don’t like that. That’s not the smile of happiness. She
looks like the snake about to swallow the little mouse whole. That’s that kind of smile.

“Okay,” BC says to the smiling predator in front of him, “Let’s go.”

Her eyes light up, her eyebrows raise, she says, “Alright!” and gets up to go.

“Hold on,” BC stops her. “I need to stop by my office first.”

She tries, unsuccessfully, to hide her frustration, “Why?”

It’s BC’s turn to smile. “My business, not yours.”

“You can’t come into my lab armed,” she warns him.

“I need certain security,” BC counters.

“You don’t trust me. That’s understandable,” she admits.

BC laughs, “Thank you for being so understandable,” he says sarcastically.

“Oh, my pleasure,” she retorts, matching his sarcasm.

BC gets up. “Okay, so let’s swing by my offices.”

She shakes her head, “Tell you what. You swing. I’ll meet you back here.”

“Back here?”

“Back here.”

“Sure.”

BC walks over to the bar and pays the bartender for his tab. Anita Capituna sits back down at the table, as if to wait for BC.

Yeah. I’ll bet she just sits here waiting. Doesn’t strike me as the type. Bendix, Capituna, or
whoever you really are.

BC sets off on his way to his office.

What do I want? Not a gun, obviously. Be nice to have some nano’s... No more of those
without the OPO. Maybe a toxin? Poison of some kind? Do I have anything left? Damn, I’m out
of practice!

Back in his room a few minutes later, BC settles on a wrist-worn poison dart launcher. The “darts”

are sliver thin and made of an instantly deadly neurotoxin.

Undetectable by most contemporary security systems. And they conveniently melt away
without a trace. I’ll drop her in her tracks if I have to... hate to be a prick... heh.
BC laughs to himself at his wordplay. He heads back to McGrady’s feeling just slightly more secure. He chuckles again to himself as he enters the bar. Anita is there, waiting.
I wonder if she
did
go anywhere?

She stands up as he approaches the table.

“Ready?” she asks him.

“Ready,” BC replies. “I guess. So where are we going? How are we getting there?”

“It’s hard to explain. You’ll see. We’re not going far. I said it was nearby, here on the Moon. Still suspicious, huh?” she observes.

“Absolutely.”

“I understand,” she says.

“That’s big of you,” BC counters. She looks exasperated.

“Okay. Please get over yourself so we can move on! I’m sorry you think I tried to kill you! I’ll explain what’s going on when we get going to the lab. I have a lot to tell you. There’s more you need to know.”

Bitch.

“What?” she asks when he doesn’t say anything.

“Nothing. I’m just working on repressing all my feelings of mistrust and hatred so I can keep my tensions bottled up inside while I follow you,” BC tells her.

She wrinkles her brow, but then nods, “Okay. Fine, I guess. For now. I’ll take what I can get from you. At this point.” She sighs. “Follow me.” She brushes past him and on out of the bar. She doesn’t look back.

He follows her out. They cross the atrium and head for the spaceport.
Funny, this is right near where she tried to lose me that time... or didn’t try to lose me,
according to her current version.

“Deja Vu, huh?” BC comments as they head down a familiar looking tunnel.

“Yeah. We’re actually going to be near the same place I left you for, um, dead. But not really.”

“Huh. Not really the place? Or not really dead?” BC prods her.

“Didn’t really leave you for dead,” she says, not looking back at him. “In fact, your deja vu should continue. One of the ships you call flashers is coming to get us. Might be the same ship that called for your rescue back then. When I told them to call.”

“Yeah? I hear what you’re selling. I just haven’t committed to buying it yet,” BC responds. They end up in the same outbuilding where she tried, or didn’t try, to kill him two years ago.
Well this just creeps me right the fuck out! Talk about-facing things head on...

“Come on,” she says. BC didn’t realize it but he stopped in the doorway to the building. “Sorry. Old wounds ripping open and all,” he says as he walks into the outbuilding.

“Sorry. This
is
one of our regular rendezvous spots. Grab an EV Suit. We’ve got to go outside.”

“What, did you sabotage them ahead of time?” BC cracks.

“Ha. Ha. No,” she says with no humor in her voice. “Get dressed. We’re supposed to be out there to meet them in five minutes.” She answers BC’s inquiring look. “I called when you were back at your office.”

BC gets dressed. He pulls on the bulky pants and oversuit and snaps them together, puts a helmet on and clicks it into place.

Just to be careful, I’ll put my gloves on last. Keep the darts available until she opens the
airlock...

BC hears his breathing echoing in his helmet. The helmet’s nearly clear all around. He can see pretty well around him. Anita Capituna is over at the airlock. She stops just before she starts to cycle the airlock.

“Let’s go, Campion,” she says in his ear, over the com. “They’re waiting for us.”

BC pulls on his gloves. “Go ahead.”

She opens the airlock and walks in. BC follows her in and closes the door behind him. She cycles the airlock. BC can feel his suit puff up a little as the air escapes from the airlock and the pressure drops. Capituna opens the outer door and bounds through out onto the lunar surface. BC follows her out, feeling the artificial gravity let go as he crosses the airlock door’s threshold.
Low gravity... always makes me feel like trying to fly!

“Campion,” Capituna says over the com. “Close the door, huh?”

Oh. Yeah.

BC bounces back and hits the button for the door. He turns and sees Capituna waiting for him about a hundred yards away.

“Here they come!” she says in his ear.

Wait... did I blink?

Because, suddenly, there is a ship behind her.

Holy shit... I think we’ve got ourselves an actual flasher here!

He bounds over towards her and they approach the side of the ship.

A door opens on the side of the ship. She bounds over to it.

“Come on!” she yells in his ear, louder than she has to.

It’s a com, woman!

BC tries to take it all in as he scrambles to get to the door.

The ship
is
identical to the one I saw in this same place two years ago.
BC climbs up into the flasher and the door closes behind him.