One Jump Ahead-ARC Read online

  I stopped well short of Gustafson, spread my arms slightly, showed him my palms, and said, "Top."

  "Looking to join up?" he said, the smile still fixed on his face.

  "No."

  "I didn't think so." The smile vanished. "What do you want?"

  "No trouble," I said, "only to ask a question." Two more of the duty troops casually wandered closer. "I appreciate that you have to engage all the security," I tilted my head slightly toward the various gathering soldiers, "and I'd do the same in your job, but it's not necessary. Let me make this at least a little simpler. I served with the Saw for a decade, most of it under a captain named Tristan Earl, humping sector-to-sector on the ground in planets I'd just as soon forget. I opted out twelve years ago. Scan my fingerprints and retinas; unless the Saw has slid downhill enough since I left it to make me cry, I'll still be in the databases."

  His expression didn't change, but he nodded his head in the direction of the recruiting desk. I walked up to it. He and the men accompanying me paralleled my path, never letting the distance between us change.

  The woman who was leading the team at the desk, Schmidt according to her name tag, flashed me a smile that looked perfectly at home in a face pretty enough to make potential recruits want to sign up just so they could get to know her. Her sergeant's stripes, callused hands, and heavily muscled forearms suggested they'd end up spending more time fearing her than adoring her. She ran quick retinal and fingerprint scans, the skin scrape for the secret DNA test a little too obvious.

  "You need to adjust the print scanner, Sarge," I said.

  She cocked an eyebrow.

  I smiled. "It accidentally scraped my finger."

  She glanced at her display and straightened a tiny bit. "Thanks, Gunny. We will."

  Gustafson stepped up, clapped me on the back, and led me off to a side room with a sofa, a few chairs, and a low table in the center of the seats. As we left the main area, the guys who'd positioned themselves behind me and those monitoring the exits all floated back into the swirl of the room.

  He sat, and I did the same.

  "What can we do for you?" he said. "Don't tell me you miss it."

  I laughed. "Now and then, sure, I find myself thinking about it, but mostly because I liked being part of a group that knew what the hell it was about. Most of the time, though, no, I don't. Most of the time, I wish I slept better."

  "I sleep fine," he said.

  I stared at him, saying nothing.

  He laughed. "Most nights." He shook his head and laughed again. "Some nights."

  I laughed with him. "Fair enough."

  "So," he said, "we've established we're a couple of guys with some obvious things in common. That's all fine, and if I were on leave I'd buy you a drink and maybe we'd get in a little trouble together, but I'm working. Again: What can we do for you?"

  "I need to talk to the Old Man here on Lankin," I said, "and I know trying to find out who he is and where he is will take a lot of time."

  "Why?"

  I shook my head. "Top, I have a little data to give, and I need a little data in return. Please trust me that I mean no trouble, and leave it at that."

  He nodded, understanding. You don't make it anywhere near as far as master gunnery sergeant in any serious outfit I've ever seen without learning that you're going to spend a lot of your life acting without anything approaching all the information you'd like. The smile flooded back onto his face. "Who'd you say you served under?" he said.

  "Captain Earl, Tristan Earl."

  "Then meeting the Old Man will be a reunion for you," he said.

  "Captain Earl runs the Saw here on Lankin?" I said. I'd always hoped Earl would receive the recognition he deserved, but I never expected it to happen so quickly. Then I realized it wasn't quickly at all; sitting with a man in a Saw uniform, going back to those days even for a moment, the twelve years I'd been away seemed no time at all.

  "Colonel Earl," Gustafson said. "When the FC awarded the Lankin deal to us, the colonel got the post. We've been here five years, and he's run the show the whole time. He's done a damn fine job of it, too, if you ask me."

  "I would have expected no less."

  "Stay put," he said, as he got up and headed back to the main desk.

  I'd planned to improvise a bit with the local Saw head, because I needed to understand the FC, corporate, and Saw relationships a bit better before I could know what was safe to say and what might land me in the brig. With Earl, though, improvising wouldn't cut it. He was too smart not to spot the game, and unless he'd changed a lot, too focused and too busy to have the patience to put up with it. I'd have to tread carefully but play it as straight as I could without putting either of us in a bad position.

  Gustafson returned and handed me a small sheet of rich paper; the Saw's admin corps liked pomp. "End of business tomorrow," he said. "This will give you the details and a map."

  "Thanks," I said. "I appreciate it. You won't regret it."

  "I hope that's the case," he said, "because from your record I'd prefer to avoid ending up on the opposite side of any heavy action."

  I shook his hand, and, as I was heading out, said, "Me, too." I meant it.

  Chapter 16

  The Saw station where I went to meet Earl blended seamlessly with the many corporate fabs that ringed the southwestern edge of the city. Surrounded by a few layers of active-wire fencing that writhed like snakes when you walked too close, fronted by gates bristling with both automated and human security, the cream-colored central buildings appeared no more important or heavily guarded than those of any of the fabs. Fabrication modules and the design intelligences that guided them ranked as core assets of all the corporations that dominated commerce in this sector of space, so everyone expected heavy security around them. No one would give this facility's setup a second thought.

  When I torqued my vision over to IR, however, the picture changed. Hot spots dotting the interior perimeter at irregular intervals marked hatches covering weapons I could guess at but not see. Similar spots on the roofs and walls of all the buildings in the complex made it clear that the Saw had, as always, dug in securely and would make anyone trying to take their turf pay dearly for every centimeter.

  I arrived early enough to make sure I'd be outside Earl's office a few minutes before our appointment; punctuality ranked high on the long list of societal conventions he considered vital. The guard made a show of checking for my appointment while the cameras and clearance systems did the real work. When I and the cab I'd hired had passed all the tests, the guard snapped me a small but polite salute, my record obviously visible in his pad. He beamed directions to the cab's guidance systems and waved me through. The vehicle dropped me in front of a central building that looked no different from all the others, then sped away as soon as I paid. Gustafson stepped out of a door a half-dozen meters in front of me.

  "Good to see you again, Top," I said, "though I'm a bit surprised he has you on all these babysitting details."

  Gustafson pulled on the outside seam of his right pants leg. The fabric parted to reveal an almost albino, hairless stretch of skin that ran as low and as high as I could see. "Still integrating the new leg and hip," he said. "Lost the old one on a dirtball a few jumps away that I'm not allowed to name and you probably wouldn't recognize anyway. I might have healed as fast, maybe faster, if I'd let them keep me in hospital, but I've always believed work is the best therapy. I posted for any station that would take me and let me do a job. Earl's unit offered the recruiting and admin gig, and here I am."

  I nodded in understanding. I couldn't picture him waiting at some physical therapy station for a bunch of rear-echelon doctors to pronounce him fit. "So it's coincidence you're here to meet me?" I said.

  "You know better than that. I understand you couldn't tell me why you wanted this meeting, but you have to know that your refusal left me curious. I can't believe anything that makes you feel the need to meet the Old Man is entirely legit, and he can't, e
ither—which means he has to make sure nothing happens here that casts the Saw in a bad light with its employer. So, you get the pleasure of me joining your meeting."

  I should have expected Earl wouldn't take the risk, physical or contractual, of even listening to me without a witness. The Saw and I could both fake recordings, of course, but I wouldn't have a supporting eyewitness on my side. This wasn't bad news—I'd known I'd need to be careful—but it did make caution even more important. I had personal history, a lot of it in sharp zones, with Earl; to Gustafson, that history earned me cordial behavior, but no more. I remained yet another guy who wasn't on his team.

  I plastered on a smile. "I appreciate the honor. As I said before, I'm not here to cause the Saw any trouble. I'm only after information."

  Gustafson led me through a door that I'm sure scanned me for weaponry, and then we entered the maze of busy, monitor-walled hallways that typified any active fort. The displays switched to images of the sky outside as I approached and failed to emit the appropriate clearance signals. After three turns, we came to a door the same dull gray metal as all the others we'd passed, but this time we stopped and waited for the door to clear and announce us.

  About a minute later it slid open, and Gustafson motioned me in. Reflexes caused me to hesitate, my natural desire not to walk between two potentially hostile unknowns taking hold, but he outwaited me; we both knew I had no option if I wanted the meeting. I entered a pleasantly appointed conference space, five comfortable chairs covered in a local red-spotted leather surrounding a low table that held three glass pitchers. Gustafson followed, and I caught a momentary glimpse of the side of the door as it slid shut: it was thick and ran in a track on all four sides. I leaned on the wall to my right and nodded slightly at the firmness beneath its lightly patterned pale red wallpaper. They'd set the meeting in a containment room, its door armored, its walls thick with fused layers of metal and local composite, definitely reinforced, almost certainly laced with enough metal and active countertransmission circuitry that no electromagnetic data could enter or leave. I had to assume Earl could record in here, but I doubted he'd allow even his own devices to transmit—too much risk of transmission hijacking or piggybacking. The interior of the room operated entirely manually. The pitchers weren't for show: we had to pour our own beverages. Lobo might hate drink dispensers, but I would have been happy to see one.

  A door in the wall opposite me swung open, and Earl walked in. Aside from the colonel's wings on his shoulders, he looked exactly as I remembered him, which was exactly the same as the day I'd met him over twenty years ago. Being able to look the same for decades is nothing notable; all but the very poorest and those choosing to live on new planets during their early colonization years have access to all the med tech they need to remain physically unchanged for at least fifty years. What is unusual is someone choosing to use med tech in that way. Most people grow bored with their looks, or decide to ride the wave of some passing celebrity-appearance fad, or simply opt to appease the desire of a new lover for a little customization. Not Earl. He wore his hair in the same combed style as always, neatly parted, never buzzed or shaved in the manner many in the Saw favored, but never long either. I doubted his weight wavered by more than a kilo plus or minus from what it was at the end of basic training, and he wore the same working blues he always had. I'd seen him in dress uniform only when informing families of the loss of their son or daughter and, on rare occasions, when a Saw Central Command general required it.

  A good twenty centimeters shorter than I and considerably lighter and less muscular, Earl nonetheless was one of the men I'd least like to face in combat, because I knew he'd never be trying to fight, only to kill. In the years I'd served in his units, I'd watched him many times go to great lengths to avoid conflict, even to the point of appearing to retreat. When he finally judged conflict to be unavoidable, however, he acted quickly and committed completely, bypassing the small moments of hesitation common even in most highly trained fighters.

  I started to salute him, but he waved it off.

  "None of that, Jon," he said. "You're a civilian now, so this is strictly informal."

  "As you say, Colonel Earl."

  "Please, just Tristan." He pointed to a chair opposite his, and Gustafson took one between us.

  I smiled. "Sorry, Colonel, but some habits aren't worth breaking. And, though this is an informal visit, that doesn't mean it might not be of professional interest to you."

  "Of course," he said, smiling. "I didn't think you came here just to tell me how much fun you were having since you left us, or how much you were enjoying traveling with your new PCAV." His smile never wavered, and he never looked away.

  I matched his behavior, reminded of sitting at card tables with him while we waited for cleanup crews and scooping up the money of the newer officers and NCOs who were betting extravagantly in their happiness to be alive, to be anywhere but where they'd been. I'd assumed the registered transfer of any weapon half as powerful as Lobo anywhere in Earl's turf would attract his attention, but I'd half hoped that the fact that the Saw didn't have a contract for Macken might keep this information away from him. It was a dumb hope, but no matter; I'd left no other tracks he'd be likely to find.

  "May we speak without a formal record," I said, "other than the one in Top's head, of course?"

  "Yes," he said. He touched a spot on his sleeve. "All recording is off. Continue."

  The notion that being true to one's word is a fundamental underpinning of a strong society either died or moved to life support centuries before I was born, probably centuries before mankind found and entered the first jump gate. For Earl, though, and for me and a few other men and women I've had the pleasure to know, the concept surged with as much vitality today as when Jennie first instilled it in me back on Pinkelponker. As a boy there I learned the sad lesson that I shouldn't assume others placed the same value on their word as the two of us, but Earl was a proven exception. He said he wouldn't electronically record this meeting, so I trusted he wouldn't.

  "Thank you very much," I said, slowing the cadence of my speech both for clarity and to give me time to choose my words carefully. "I appreciate how busy you are, so I don't to want to consume more of your day than necessary. You also know me—knew me—well enough that I hope you'll recall how much I prefer getting directly to the point."

  "I always liked that aspect of you," he said. "I wouldn't mind experiencing more of it now."

  "I understand, but because I want to minimize any possible negative consequences for either of us, in this case I need to take a slightly more circuitous route."

  He leaned slightly forward. "Negative consequences? Please don't tell me we're meeting so you can deliver a threat for some new employer. I'd hate doing what I'd then have to do, though"—he paused and leaned back, apparently relaxed—"you know I'd do it."

  I waved my hands slowly, easily. "No, as I've already told Top, I don't want to be on the opposite side of the Saw. I simply need to understand how things work here so I don't accidentally cause problems for either of us by saying the wrong thing."

  "Fair enough," he said, "for now. Go."

  "I've canvassed the publicly available data about the Saw's contract with the FC for Lankin," I said, "but we all know how much that data is worth. I also know that Kelco and Xychek are the main corporate players here. What I'd like to understand are the limits of your contract with respect to conflicts that involve those two organizations."

  "And for sharing this private data, I get what?"

  "Maybe nothing," I said, "but maybe quite a lot you'll care about. I promise this isn't a game."

  He nodded, knowing I was telling the truth. "We perform no police functions; the FC locals handle those jobs. We deal with any native fauna issues in new settlement areas, monitor and are on call to handle any serious armed insurrections, and, of course, make sure Lankin appears prickly enough to any governments outside the FC that it's not worth their time to attack. The two b
ig corporations have the standard deal with the FC: They handle their own security and frontier action, and they pledge not to use their forces against each other or the FC. The FC—and we, as its enforcing agent—conduct periodic, scheduled and unscheduled inspections of their troops and weapons, and they report all weapons acquisitions and militia deployments. As long as they follow the rules, we run our inspections and otherwise leave them alone. The arrangement is classic post–corporate wars, the same one you've seen, the same one all the big conglomerates and governments have used for over a century, since before either of us was born."