Vatican Ambassador (50 page)

The UIN soldier is on the other side of the door, banging to get in. BC can see him, but can’t hear him. Sound doesn’t carry in a vacuum. BC turns and pushes the panels on the outer door’s control panel. It starts to open.

BC holds his breath and zips the hood’s seal shut. He lets his breath out, but there’s still no air to breathe in!

The outer door of the airlock opens full onto the surface of Mars, and BC stumbles out onto the dusty Martian sand.

His hands scramble across his chest, trying to find the on switch for the emergency oxygen. Black dots begin swimming across his sight, making it hard to see.

Is this how I go? Grabbing at my chest for the on switch for my air while I die of suffocation
on the surface of Mars, two meters away from an airlock?

Click.

Hisssssssssssssssssss…

Nope.

Not this time!

BC sucks in the oxygen as it pours into the suit. He’s suddenly lightheaded, almost punchy, as the pure oxygen floods his thirsty lungs.

He sees bright lights swimming in the air in front of him.

Am I hallucinating? Or is that my ride?

Flashes disturb the dusty, dim Martian sky over BC’s head. Bright flashes of blue, amber and red light up the dust clouds and descend from the heavens to land about eighty meters away from BC.
Cool! It is my ride!

Have to get on board before my buddy back there gets into a suit and out of that airlock!

He jogs over the dusty sand toward the lights in his EVAC suit. It’s hard to make out details, but BC

has no doubt it’s his ship.

Wentworth. Good as his word. Actually, come to think of it, his word ain’t really that good!

He could have left me to die out here…

Well, it’s a gift horse. I ain’t gonna look it in the mouth. I’m gonna ride it outta here!

A ramp lowers from the bottom of the hovering UTZ ship as BC approaches. As soon as BC climbs up on to the ramp it begins closing up into the ship. He feels the ship rise up quickly off the Martian surface, feels a jarring lurch as the ramp locks into place.

BC stands up and looks around. He’s in the ship’s cargo bay. The four walls are blank, save for tied down cargo straps along the walls every two meters or so and a hatch in the wall in front of BC. The cargo bay doesn’t appear to be pressurized.

Never assume that a space is pressurized, right?

He tries the hatch. It opens on an airlock. BC climbs into the airlock, closes the hatch and starts the airlock cycling. He can feel the pressure as the air pours in, pushing in on him through the flimsy EVAC

suit.

When the airlock finishes filling with air, BC opens the inside hatch. He climbs through into a small corridor.

There’s no one around. He unzips his helmet and hears a com already talking at him.

“…in front of you! Can’t you hear me, Campion?” the voice says.

“I can now,” he replies. “No need to yell.”

“Good. Come up to the flight deck, Campion. Just come on ahead through that door in front of you,” a voice tells him.

BC makes his way down the short corridor, through the door in front of him and onto a small flight deck. He sees the stars outside, sees Mars on a viewscreen, shrinking rapidly in size.

“Get ready for Transpace, Campion,” the pilot tells him. BC slides up into a chair on the flight deck next to the pilot and straps himself in.

He realizes he knows the guy.

“Don’t I know you?” BC asks him.

“Hold on, don’t talk, please. Don’t say anything,” the man warns BC. “I hate being bothered while I do Transpace, okay?”

“Gotcha,” BC says, shutting up.

Was it Tex? Drax? Rex? Drex, I think…

“Drex” pushes something in front of him and BC feels his stomach flip flop as the Transpace Drive kicks in. He feels it again as Drex pulls back on the controls and they come out of Transpace.
Not as smooth as the Project’s ships, for sure.

We need more integration of resources.

Damn, that sounded managerial. I never wanted to be a manager! Now I’m a CEO. And, oh yeah,
I’m the fuckin’ POPE!

It’s like I’ve become the uber manager.

“There we go, Campion!” the pilot says to him. “Sorry to shush you before, but… well, you know.”

“Sure. Is it, uh, Drex?” BC asks, extending a hand.

“Drex? Yeah, you remember! I’m flattered, Campion,” the man says with a quick smile.

“Where are we going?” BC asks.

“Back to the Moon, I guess,” Drex says, “but that’s really up to you.

“Mr. Wentworth said that’s your decision. He said you might want to go to your home on the Moon, said something about you meeting with the scientists there. So I’ve got us heading for the Moon. Is that okay?”

BC considers his options.

“The moon probably is the best idea,” he agrees.

“Then we are on course,” Drex says, nodding.

“Could you get me Wentworth on the com?” he asks Drex.

“Sure thing,” the pilot says. “Guess you wanna thank him, huh?”

“Something like that,” BC says.

It takes some time for Drex to make the connection. Twenty minutes later Wentworth is on the line.

“Ah, BC! How are you?”

“Fiza?!” BC asks. First thing out of his mouth.

“Ah, yes. Fiza,” Wentworth drawls, extending the sound of her name. “She’s become quite the undercover agent, hasn’t she? She makes a good looking Arab woman, don’t you think so?”

“You lied to me,” BC accuses him.

“I was protecting her and her cover. And a good thing for you that I did!”

“Do you always have to sound so smug?” BC asks.

“Smug?” Wentworth answers. “I’m hurt! I’m merely happy my plans have paid off with your safe return, Campion! That was a foolish mission you just failed on.”

“I thought it was necessary. Al-Salid and I had arranged a secret meeting! We didn’t want it blown out of proportion. Had he been himself, this ‘mission’ would have gone fine. But Al-Salid isn’t himself,” BC

explains.

“You know, you really made me hate you, Wentworth. When I thought you’d drugged her and made her…” BC shakes his head.

“Spare me your grudging respect, Campion. You can be sure I would have had it done to her had she not accepted the Mars mission.

“I’m not a nice man, Campion. I’ve done that and worse to other women… and men. Your hate is safe with me!” he laughs.

“It’s just business, Campion. It’s not personal. But men like you never learn that do you?”

“God, I hope I don’t,” BC says.

That excuses everything for him, doesn’t it?

“How long has she been there? On Mars?”

“Almost a year,” Wentworth tells him. “Ever since she proved more useful than I thought she could be.”

“More useful?” BC asks him.

“Her knowledge of Arabic?” Wentworth explains. “Her past experience on Mars?”

BC nods.

“So you know of that as well,” Wentworth says. “Then you can see why I decided to send her back there. And again, it was lucky for you that I did!”

He presses his point.

“What went on down there? What went wrong?”

“I don’t know, for sure,” BC tells him. “I had proposed this kind of covert meeting between us to Al-Salid when we last spoke, before I went out to visit the aliens, the Eldred. But when I showed up…

he wasn’t himself.

“I’m not absolutely positive, but I think I know why that is. I can’t discuss it now, not even on a secure line. There’s more I need to tell you. More to talk about. Just not now.”

“Campion, I’ve told you before, you can…”

BC cuts him off, “Not this time, Wentworth. We’re dealing with those who can bust through any security you
think
you have,” he tells him.

“Oh.” Wentworth gets it. “The ones you said might have…” he trails off. BC nods.

“Any chance, then, of getting you to come here to Wentworth Station before you head to Lunar Prime?”

Wentworth asks. “So we
can
discuss this?”

BC considers changing course.

“Why not?

“Drex, set course for Wentworth station, please,” BC says.

“Got it!”

Drex works the ship’s controls.

“On our way, Padre!” Drex informs him.

“Padre?” Funny. That reminds me of the pilot who took me to Fortune Station. Mr. Longeux,
I think it was. Poor guy. Adrian Longeux. That was it!

“So, we’ll see you here soon, then?” Wentworth asks.

“Soon enough.”

“How big is this thing? Who are these aliens? These ‘Eldred’?” Wentworth asks BC.

“Big,” BC says. “And I’ll tell you more about them when I get there. But if I’m right? A million-year-old, intergalactic war is about to flare up, right here in our backyard. And there might not be anything we can do to stop it.”

“Right,” Wentworth says, but he’s shaking his head. “I never like to say ‘never’, Campion. We can at least try to stop it,” Wentworth says. “And if we can’t stop the war, then we can damn well try to win it!”

“Damn, that sounds optimistic, Wentworth! Not like a reasonable businessman.”

“If they want to kill me, that makes it bigger than business. That makes it personal,” Wentworth says.

“But it does put me in the business of making allies and shoring up my defenses.”

“That’s why I’m coming to see you,” BC tells him. “We’ve gotta deal with each other on a different level. We’re going to need to actually work together. And maybe even trust each other. You with me?”

BC hears Wentworth sigh over the com.

“We have a lot of work to do!”

“Yeah, we do.”

“Well,” Wentworth says, “guess I’m with you.”