Sanctuary (Jezebel's Ladder Book 3) (6 page)

Johann nodded. “We’ll be back to
check on you as soon as moon base is in the clear.”

Her projection shook its head.
No
.
Mu shielding will prevent further contact. Whatever lies beyond, we come out
victorious or not at all.

He bowed his head. “You went to
jail for me, and now you’re doing this. How am I supposed to repay you if you’re
not around?”

Live well
, she thought at
him before she disappeared.

****

Toby hadn’t been so busy since his
residency. The others used the hour to step into the series of pods one at a
time. Herk waited for his wife to immerse first, and then signaled Sojiro. The
fluids would provide cushioning and possible healing in the event that weapons
fire made it into the bay.

Sojiro opened the lens just wide
enough for Crandall to detonate a shaped charge that sent debris upward out of
the microgravity of the landing bay. Lights went off in the decontamination
room. If the alien had any questions about the odd behavior, Red wasn’t awake
to relay them. Smoke and particles were sucked out by the escaping air. Once
the marine launched himself after the fragments, carrying the recorder, Sojiro
closed the aperture.

When Sojiro climbed into his pod,
he remarked, “It’s almost freezing in here.”

Herk climbed out of his armor,
placing every piece carefully in the room Red called ‘baggage check.’ “Maybe
heat leaked with exposure to the vacuum, or Sensei is just getting ready to
mothball the area.”

Toby checked the monitors one last
time. “The pod people are still snug as a bug.” The nanobiologist was the last
to leave the decontamination room. He stood for a moment beside the sleeping
Yvette, staring at her through the glass. She was stripped down to her
underwear, a Nike custom sportswear set. These were the same bikini briefs she’d
worn on that Tongan beach a couple years ago—before she’d laughed at him and
rescinded her offer of recreational intercourse. He’d been unable to perform
because the seagulls were watching and cyclists could happen by at any time. By
contrast, Yvette was the team’s free-spirit. She’d no doubt tried out several
potential team members since, but she poisoned the well against Toby with every
woman who joined. Her continued laughter blocked any chance he had of being
happy on this mission.

It was just like that old joke.
What’s the difference between a bitch and whore? A whore slept with everyone. A
bitch slept with everyone but you.

He inched around the fish bowl,
examining the French woman from every angle and recording the journey. He still
wanted her, after all this time.
I could do it now, and no one would ever
know. I could break the seal, and she wouldn’t wake up in time to stop me. When
I was done, I could close her pod again, and scrub away all the evidence. It
wouldn’t hurt her. As the expert, I could shrug and say it was a timing
malfunction. Who knew what made alien machinery work the way it did?

Toby considered the plan for
minutes, flush with excitement, but if she remembered anything, the group would
crucify him. The entire world would know what he’d done. Worse, his mother might
hear.

Eventually, he climbed into his own
nutrient vat, knowing there were some things that even science couldn’t scrub
out of a person.

At four hours past the event, the head of Mori Electronics
sat at his desk managing the firestorm. Even thousands of miles away, his wife
put plans in motion before his usual flunkies even knew that contingencies were
necessary. His family had foolishly objected to his choice of a foreign
woman—until she had saved his life for the second time, used her Simplification
skills to raise profits, and borne him a model child. Now Amanda had arranged
for his representative to be the first human inside the control room of an
alien spacecraft. If Amanda could satisfy a Japanese mother-in-law, she could
do anything. He decided that the success of any marriage depended on the
willingness of each member to support the needs and interests of the other as his
or her own. Over the decades, they had become extensions of one another. Not
having her at his side in this time of crisis felt unbalanced, but the screen he
kept dedicated to her on his desk helped shore up his confidence. An alien page
had given her the ability to winnow reams of data and come out with important
facts. Her latest diagram was a masterpiece more beautiful than a Tibetan
mandala.

In the past few hours, the world
stage had shifted to feature a conflict between the new superpowers—China and disenfranchised Muslim states versus the megacorporations, represented by Fortune
Enterprises. His UN Space Agency allies were hiding behind thin moral fig
leaves. According to recent debate, Brazil didn’t have a right to retaliate
because the atomic blast had occurred just past the start of international
waters. Nobody believed it, but the Chinese only needed a few hours’ delay to
declare a
fait accompli
.

As one of only three surviving
board members, Mori was part of a triumvirate that could decide the fate of the
world—if the others could wipe their own noses for a few minutes. Mori had to
be consulted about every decision in this crisis, and he’d already put in a
twelve-hour day. He was currently connected to the New York office of Fortune
Enterprises.

Thanks to his wife, he knew that
the ‘Mira’ he spoke with was an impostor. The real heiress was on the alien
ship. However, he backed the fake’s claim because she had the true Mira’s
proxy. Repudiating her would only cause chaos and weaken the company. Concealing
his knowledge until the right opportunity presented itself could gain him
nearly anything. Indeed, she didn’t know he was aware of the deception.

“Opposition forces tried to storm
the corporate vault here,” the fake Mira said in English.

“How have you responded?” Mori
asked.

“When the first
Ascension
team members on the artifact entered the control room, twenty-six alien pages
went blank all over the planet. Only the Ethics page remains, etched with the charter
we wrote. I told the UN that we purposely wiped them in retaliation for the
bombing of Alcantara.”

The side effect of the Ethics page—the
inability of the reader to lie or murder—was a strong reason the leaders in
many countries refused to join the coalition.

Mori nodded. “That will make them
cautious.”

“I’m hoping to prevent mass murders
of Fortune employees and other Actives. Without pages, unless an Active who had
the talent already bestows it, no one will acquire the alien abilities ever
again.”

“You make Fortune resources too
valuable for the world to destroy.” This gave them a modicum of safety and a
whopping dollop of power. “Of course, eradicating all alien taint appeals to
the religious extremists. However, their leaders won’t tell them what to
believe for a few more days.”

The girl was good in the media and
boardroom, but she was all defense. She could only stall while the other two
board members did the heavy lifting. She asked, “How is Sanjay coming on his
project?”

The third surviving board member
was busy convincing his native India to weigh in on the conflict. Mori grunted.
“Recent exercises by Pakistan on the Indian border almost guarantee the
alliance, but commitment could take days of posturing. I will fill the gap
between our enemies’ first fumbling attempts and the day we have enough armies
on our side.”

“You’re not going to tell me how? I
have encryption set to maximum.”

“The trick is to force the tiger to
reconsider when all you have is a rolled-up newspaper. Timing and surprise are
tantamount. How are our financials?”

“Brazil might only be the fifth
largest country and economy, but they have enough resources to back whatever
play we decide to make. While people sell corporate shares in panic, our
families and the Brazilians buy. We’ve sold or leased our most vulnerable
holdings. The obvious economic weapons have been blocked.”

“For now,” Mori cautioned. “But the
price of everything scarce is increasing. People know what war means. Gold and
fuel are climbing already. You can’t protect everyone.” He stopped lecturing
when an icon flashed red.

When the Chinese Weather Service
dropped equipment off the Tokyo coast to track a potential typhoon, Mori’s
orbiting eyes told him the next phase of the dance had begun. Minutes later,
the strike team landed on his roof. If Amanda had been here, she’d have cut off
their balls, but Mori let them in with minimal resistance to make his point.

He tracked them every inch of the
way. The moment they reached his floor, he spoke to his computer. “Koku, open
the first of Amanda’s seals. Record everything that happens, and transmit to
other board members and the prime minister.”

Originally, the Koku had been a
measure of how much rice one peasant could produce in a year. It was the
currency used by warlords to purchase and provision troops. The Koku management
project had evolved from Fortune economic software that was designed to prevent
global starvation and currency collapse. One merely had to adjust the goals of
the expert system to make it useful for more commercial purposes.

Attempting to appear casual, Mori raised
the receiver on his desk phone. A voice on his badge warned, “Explosives” in
his daughter’s synth voice, standard on every Mori interface. He dove under the
armor-plated furniture to avoid flying fragments of wood and hardware as the
heavy doors he’d salvaged from a Shinto temple blew inward.
So much for
promoting serenity.

Koku activated the fire-suppressant
systems and dropped the clear, bulletproof wall into place. The Chinese Special
Forces soldier in front didn’t shoot the barrier but dispatched his black-clad technician
to subvert the next hurdle. On the desk’s thermal monitors, Mori could see six
men in his secretary’s office before her camera was disabled.

In fluent Japanese, the leader of
the assault team said, “You will accompany me to the People’s Republic where
you will be tried as a criminal. If you cooperate, you will be well treated. If
not, we will make an example.”

Mori sneered as he sat in his
custom-made control chair.
What kind of moron would volunteer for years of torture
and hard labor?
Even with the arc welder, raising his barrier would take at
least fifteen minutes, more time than he needed to make his point. “I think
not. You have already triggered my first reprisal. At my signal, every Mori
chip in Chinese hands, including those you stole the plans for, stopped
working. Planes, trains, and cars are now crashing—military as well as
civilian—all because you violated the end-user agreement.”

“You’re bluffing.”

“Your high-tech VTOL on the roof is
scrap now. You’ll have to use my secretary’s phone to call a cab home.” Mori
lit a cigar to celebrate.

There was a pause while the
soldiers noted the lack of response from their radios. A runner had to be
dispatched up the hotly contended staircase. “Even if you knocked out our vehicle,
there’s no way you can neutralize the aircraft carrier off your coast.”

“The low-cost game systems we’ve
been handing out for two years broadcast the computer-chip kill signal. Power
plants, TV, and radio stations will also be affected.”

“Impossible.”

Blowing smoke against the clear
wall, Mori said, “Learn the definition of that word. This was not an attack;
rather, I am attempting to get your country’s attention. This is only the first
and least damaging method at my disposal. Cease your attempts to override my
systems, or I’ll open the second seal.”

“Seal?”

“That’s right, you’ve never heard
of the Bible. My wife had wonderful Jesuit tutors who scared children with
stories about plagues of Egypt and the end of the world. You should at least
stop until you confirm what I said about your assault craft being useless.”

With his expression covered in a
face mask, the leader ordered his technician to pause. Then, he asked, “What do
you threaten us with? How bad could your second seal be?”

“Nanotechnology has enabled us to
breed a strain of the mumps that targets only ethnic Han Chinese. In case you
haven’t heard, this causes sterility in men. If you think one child per family
is hard, wait till you can’t have any.”

The head soldier backed up. “We
would stop any missile that attempts to disperse such a plague.”

Shaking the cigar like another
finger, Mori said, “Ah. That’s the beauty of nanofactories. They can be put in
any number of innocuous places—even the pump housing of a rural well. Your
modern cities, as mighty as they are, still depend on the poor farmer in order to
eat, and there are fewer than ever.”

“Keep an eye on him while I try to
find a working channel to command.”

As the soldier backed out, Mori
added, “Remember, there are seven of these surprises, each nastier than the one
before. If you take this to the next level, be prepared for the wrath of
Amanda.”

“If we decide to kill you right
now?”

“Koku, tell this gentleman what
happens if I die?”

The feminine synth voice responded,
“I am instructed to open all seals immediately.”

Mori smashed out the tip of his
cigar. “Your dynasty becomes a pathetic footnote in history.”

“And if we hold him hostage?”

Koku replied, “I am to open one
seal an hour until he is returned and duress free.”

“Check,” gloated Mori.

“We have declared war on your
company.”

“So being on the board makes
someone a part? By contagion, your war spreads to 129 other companies and three
countries, yours included. By extension, you idiots just opened fire on the
people who pack your parachutes.” The last part wasn’t completely true, but
disinformation was a vital part of war.

A soldier ran from the stairwell to
tell the leader in Chinese, “All electronics more advanced than our flashlights
have ceased working, even the night-vision systems.”

Explosions sounded from the
stairwell. All but two of the Chinese soldiers rushed to investigate. That
would be corporate security retaking the floor. Mori said, “Koku, tell my
security team they are to leave exactly one invader left alive to give the news
to his superiors.”

The technician against the wall
heard this order and promptly shot his own commander.

Mori applauded the man’s survival
instinct. “Very good, Mister—”

“Ye.”

“Corporal Ye, you have a future in
politics. Tell your employers that from now on, I will deal only with you.”

Ye bowed in thanks, arms behind his
head as Corporate Security eliminated the other threats. With the evidence of
Chinese aggression on their soil, Japan would have no choice but to join the
Fortune side.

Mira, who had never closed their
connection, interrupted his thoughts. “Mori, if we manage to get out of this
mess, you could have a future in politics, too.”

“I thought you detested me after
what happened to the island.”

“Although I find you morally and
professionally repugnant, your enlightened self-interest may be our species’
only hope for survival.”

“Flattered as I am, the respite
will only be temporary.”