Battle of Earth Read online

  “My people should have been in touch with you to get the destination of the crate that came through the portal this morning,” Troy said.

  “Yes,” Roxy said. “And until we confirm with our client that he’s willing to have us share his information, I’m afraid I can’t give it to you.”

  Troy sat back in his chair, genuinely stunned.

  “That’s not how this works,” he said. “Their contract is with the base, not with us. Your job is just to deliver to an address.”

  “I’m afraid it is how it works,” Roxy said, tipping her head with a little smile. “We recover goods that our clients have rightfully purchased, and we keep their confidentiality under all circumstances.”

  Troy crossed his arms.

  “You know what was in that box?” Troy asked.

  “We don’t ever ask,” Michael said.

  “You should,” Troy said. “Because smuggling is illegal, even if you don’t know what’s in the box. And you should know that Senator Kate Greene was standing in the room when I opened it, this morning.”

  “You opened it?” Roxy asked.

  “I did,” Troy said. “That should also be in the contract that we have with your client. All material that goes through the portal is subject to inspection and potential seizure in the event that it is ruled unsafe to transport.”

  Roxy looked at Michael.

  “We don’t ask,” she said. “But can you give us a… category that the shipment might fall into?”

  Troy laughed.

  At first it was calculated, part of the exchange, then it was just helpless, knowing just how out of control he was - how out of control they were.

  “I can’t count the number of laws you’re breaking, taking that crate out of the country. It may be illegal to take it out of the state.”

  Roxy shook her head. Troy closed his eyes and snorted.

  “My people were in contact with you because we need instructions on how to keep it alive.”

  “No,” Roxy said. “We have a contract with our clients that says we will not ship illicit or illegal material.”

  “But you never open the box to check,” Troy said. “And I bet you don’t ever listen to it, either. When it moves around, in there.”

  If it wasn’t his imagination, Troy thought Roxy went a bit pale, and he nodded.

  “We’re in contact with the Kansas City zoo as the next best expert,” he said. “If you don’t want this to get any more public, I would get in touch with your clients and let them know that they need to get involved immediately.”

  “Send it back,” Michael said.

  “Excuse me?” Troy asked. Michael shrugged.

  “If it’s not legal, we won’t touch it. It isn’t our problem any more. Just send it back.”

  Troy hadn’t even considered it.

  His first reaction was about the scientific value of the creature, rejecting the idea of just letting it go, but he came up with better reasons quickly.

  “It’s unethical,” he said. “We need to understand the situation on the other side of the portal and make sure that they’re prepared to deal with it. In the meantime, it stays here.”

  “Still isn’t our problem,” Roxy said. “You have your option. You simply refuse to exercise it.”

  Troy thumbed through the reports on the floor, finding the most recent ones and paging through them until he found this one.

  He skimmed it for a minute while Roxy and Michael waited.

  He put the report on his desk.

  Held his tongue between his front teeth.

  “This has been very informative,” he said. “This isn’t how any of this is supposed to work, and I’m certain the two of you know it. There is no address nor customer listed on any of this, and the funding for the transfer is coming from you, not from the customer. The only reason I can think of for avoiding all contact between the portal program and the end customer is that the customer is not someone who wants to have interaction with the US military, which, if I’m not mistaken, would make you not a security company, but a fence. The fact that the portal program is operating in direct contradiction to its mandates doesn’t help anything, but we’ll worry about that another day.”

  “This could be very uncomfortable for all of us,” Roxy said. “Or we could all agree to get along and forge a new relationship moving forward.”

  “Are you going to hand over your records?” Troy asked.

  “No,” Roxy told him. Troy punched the button on his phone.

  “Yes, sir?” Bridgette answered.

  “Bridgette, can you start the process of getting a subpoena for all transactions with Otherworld Security and their customers?” he asked.

  “Of course,” Bridgette said.

  “You don’t have any standing to issue a subpoena,” Roxy said. Troy shrugged.

  “I know what’s legal and what isn’t. I know that you’ve been operating illegally. Bridgette is very intelligent, very clever. She’ll figure out whether she needs an investigator or a prosecutor, and she’ll get the right subpoena issued.”

  “Is it going to fix anything?” Roxy asked. “You were involved more than we were. It can only make all of us look bad.”

  Troy frowned.

  “Would that have worked on General Donovan?” he asked. “Because it won’t work on me. It’s my job to get the base straightened out and working according to its original restrictions again, and part of that means finding the depth of mistakes made by the previous leadership and doing what I can to make them right.”

  He looked down at the report in front of him again.

  “I trust that when the subpoena comes, all of your documentation will be complete and in order. I have a complete list of every shipment that has come through the portal. I know which ones your company was involved in delivering. If I find missing records, I will tear through your company until I find the information I need.”

  He paused, then he nodded.

  “I think we don’t have any more to say,” Roxy said. “You’ll hear from our lawyers.”

  “Your escort will show you out,” Troy said, turning his head down to the stack of documents on the floor again to dismiss them.

  The two executives showed themselves out, and Bridgette came in a moment later with yet more paperwork.

  “Every jumper who has ever gone through the new portal,” she said. “And current information about where they are.”

  Troy sighed.

  He wished Cassie was here. Even Jesse would make short work of all of this, digesting all of the information and forming a living database that Troy could query to find out things that he needed to know. As it was, he was going to have to piece it together on his own.

  “I have them in digital, if you prefer,” Bridgette said, standing at his desk. Troy shook his head.

  “When I get a laptop, I’ll want to be able to run text searches and start organizing them, but for now, I need to be able to see the scope of everything at once.”

  She nodded.

  “General Ellsworth felt the same way,” she said. Troy’s head shot up and Bridgette smirked. “Didn’t I say?”

  “That you…?” Troy started. “No. You didn’t.”

  She nodded. Ellsworth was likely to make a run for president in the next election or the one after that; he had been such a popular general.

  “Wow,” Troy murmured. “Slumming it a bit, then, aren’t you?”

  “Doing a favor for a friend,” she said. “I won’t stay after they name a new General. The new General will want to name his own assistants, anyway. But I’ll get you through this, Major.”

  He nodded slowly.

  “Thank you. Would you call Olivia Macon and ask her if she’ll help me out with personals from my apartment for tonight?”

  “Does she need a key?” Bridgette asked.

  “Yes,” Troy said. He got out his keychain and unwound the key for his apartment, handing it to Bridgette. “I’d like to see her, when she comes, but i
n case I’m busy.”

  Bridgette nodded.

  “I called legal and they advised that we use a civilian court for Otherworld. I contacted the Attorney General. He wants to talk to you before he calls a judge.”

  Troy nodded, and she put a piece of paper on his desk.

  “I can connect you if you want,” she said. “Or you can call him directly. You’ll probably get his secretary. Her name is Pamela and if you express concern for whether or not she’ll be able to leave work in time for her daughter’s play this evening, she’ll connect you faster.”

  “Is that manipulative?” Troy asked.

  “Not if you mean it, sir,” Bridgette said.

  Troy gave her a half a smile, and she gave him a quick nod and left.

  He sighed, looking at the mountain of paperwork he had in front of him.

  And beside him.

  And behind him.

  And he hadn’t even touched on the foreign terrestrials living on the base. They’d been above-board about Jesse. He had actually come to them through space, rather than the portal, as unbelievable as that was, and the world had known, the day he arrived. They’d been obsessed with him for about six months, and then the fact that he was largely invisible on base meant that they’d lost interest and moved on. But people knew he was here.

  Cassie was a bit more complicated, because she was just human, when all of this started, and she’d ended up a foreign terrestrial by some miracle of science - one that no one was able to reproduce in order to turn her back. That she was foreign terrestrial wasn’t something that they’d ever tried to hide. They hadn’t made a big deal out of it, either, publicly, but everyone who needed to know did know.

  The portal program had brought across a few other foreign terrestrials, over the years, mostly for negotiations that couldn’t take place on the other side of a jump, or for reasons of credibility, but all of those foreign terrestrials had gone back rather quickly.

  The idea that there were dozens of foreign terrestrials who were here with the intention of staying permanently… Troy couldn’t begin to imagine how Donovan thought he was going to get away with that.

  And now Troy had to disclose it and figure out what to do with them.

  But.

  That was tomorrow’s problem.

  Today, he had shipments to track down, jumpers to bring in, and NDAs to understand and break. And a humongous rhinoceros.

  That was enough for one day.

  He picked up the phone to call a secretary named Pamela who was clock-watching for her daughter’s play.

  *********

  Cassie woke stiff and cold.

  “She was here,” she muttered.

  “She was,” Jesse answered. He was somewhere else in the room, but Cassie’s neck was too stiff to turn, yet.

  “Tell me,” Cassie said.

  “Sirens are disappearing,” Jesse said. “Their performances are getting to be a big deal, when they happen, but they’re shorter and they’re appearing in smaller numbers than they used to.”

  “Any idea what’s happening?” Cassie asked.

  “The news coverage hasn’t caught on to the fact that their numbers are going down,” he said. “I’m having to piece it together on my own. They think that the sirens are getting more discriminating with who they’ll perform for.”

  “I see,” Cassie said. “What did she tell you?”

  “Not very much,” Jesse said. “She’s struggling with singular identity. And the fact that you’re warm-blooded.”

  Cassie nodded.

  “You’re not okay,” Jesse said.

  “She’s stronger than I gave her credit for,” Cassie answered. He came into view, gentle hands on her neck.

  “Hot shower?” he suggested.

  “Yes. That would be a good starting point.”

  “Do you want me to try to medicate you?”

  “No,” she said. “Leave that for if the shower doesn’t fix it.”

  “You’re cold,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Can you walk?”

  She wiggled her toes.

  They were down there. Numb, but present.

  “No.”

  “All right.”

  He got an arm under her and levered her up out of the bed. She had just enough motion in her hips to help with balance as he walked her to the bathroom and started the shower. He turned back to look at her and she wiggled her head back and forth.

  “Just put me in there dressed,” she said. He raised an eyebrow playfully.

  “You can raise your voice if you need me?” he asked.

  “Jesse,” she growled. He gave her a flicker of a smile and started the shower, putting her in on the floor under the water. Any place else, she would have worried over the cleanliness of the floor, but on Luminos, everything was exactly and pristinely clean all the time. She closed her eyes and let the hot water soak her.

  Slowly, her joints came unhinged, and she sat up, working her jaw loose and propping her elbows on her knees.

  “I’m not going to drown, just so you know,” she called.

  “Glad to hear it,” he called back. “But you can breathe underwater.”

  She frowned at this.

  She should have known that; she’d seen him either hold his breath for an insane amount of time or breathe underwater, but her human instincts about not sticking her head under water and pulling in a lungful of it had managed to stay through the genetic transition.

  “Good to know,” she called.

  She rolled her head to either side, feeling out the tendons there as they cracked and popped, like over-tensioned rope, and finally she stood. Everything hurt, but the water was helping, and the motion - while breaking loose hurt more - did ultimately put her back into her normal shape. She went through a series of military-drill stretches, things designed to keep her from throwing clots when she was stuck in a confined space for hours on end, and then she just stood under the water with her hands cupped under her chin and took in the heat. The waves of cold receded into the pit of her stomach and she finally turned off the water, stripping her pajamas and leaving them on the floor of the shower and taking a heavy robe off of a hook to wrap herself up in it.

  “So tell me what you’ve got,” she said, toweling her hair as she went into the main room again. Jesse was sitting on a curved piece of stone, snapping at the data screen. Cassie reclined on a couch, watching the screens go by.

  Pictures.

  Articles.

  Everything publicly known about sirens, going back in time. The incremental change in time was usually just a few moments; Jesse was only back a few weeks, right now. She blinked and let the data settle in on her brain as he snapped.

  “Are you well?” he asked after a while.

  “They’re dying,” she answered.

  “They are.”

  “And I just did everything in my power to knock her back,” Cassie said. “I could have killed her.”

  Jesse shook his head.

  “Not yet. They’re too powerful for that.”

  “How do you know?” Cassie asked.

  He snapped again and Cassie blinked twice, taking in the contents of an article about a siren who had possessed a woman on a planet Cassie had never heard of. It had killed the woman instantaneously, but the siren had walked around in her body for three days, pleading for someone to help her. There had been debates about destroying the body to kill the siren, but in the end she had died on her own.

  “Why didn’t she get out?” Cassie asked.

  Jesse shook his head.

  “There are more accounts of it,” he said. “I think she forgot how.”

  Cassie shrugged.

  “Then we don’t have much time.”

  He shook his head.

  “No.”

  “You need to talk to her. Figure out what’s killing them.”

  “Letting her out almost killed you,” Jesse said. “And she didn’t make any sense.”

  “
I’m Palta,” Cassie told him, feeling the slosh of the siren regaining power deep in her stomach. “I’m hard to kill.”

  She could go ask the resort for a freezer, just chill her body down to the point that the siren was more powerful than Cassie, let her talk to Jesse that way.

  “But why did she have to possess me to talk to me?” Cassie asked. “Or to you. She could have just come up out of the pool like she did and… talk to me.”

  Jesse pointed back at her, snapping once more to bring up a new article.

  “Funny thing about sirens,” he said. “They sing in every language, but I can’t find a single instance of anyone talking to them.”

  “What do they sing about?” Cassie asked. Jesse glanced back at her.

  “It’s considered sacred,” he said. “The songs you hear are for you alone. No one writes them down and no one records them.”

  “In the whole universe,” Cassie said flatly.

  He shrugged.

  “It’s a pretty overpowering impression.”

  “You’ve heard them,” Cassie said. “What did they sing about?”

  “It’s been years,” he said, and Cassie snorted.

  “I could pick a date from history and ask you what you had for breakfast that morning, and you’d have no problem.”

  He shook his head.

  “And yet, I lie about it to you, even when you know that I’m obviously lying. Do you get it, yet?”

  “Hypnosis?” she asked.

  “It’s more powerful than that,” Jesse answered. “It’s in the music. There’s a reason that sailors thought they were supposed to sail over to them and got their ships gutted on rocks.”

  Cassie pursed her lips.

  “Energy creature that no one talks about specifically,” she said. “Hard to see how no one has weaponized it by now. Either way, it sounds hard to kill.”

  “I’m not convinced they’re dying,” Jesse said. “I mean, they could be. If something went wrong with their ability to convert new energy, they would all eventually run out and disappear. I’m not sure if that counts as dying, but we can use that as a functional definition for now.”

  “Disappearing?” Cassie asked. “Could you trap them? If you understood their energy well enough?”

  “I’m certain between the two of us we could figure it out,” he said. “The measurements we took yesterday would go a long way toward that.”