The Nexus Series: Books 1-3 (19 page)

THE DARK BENEATH

Copyright
© 2012 by J. Kraft Mitchell

All
rights reserved.

No
part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior
written permission of the author.

For
everyone who gave
The Nexus
a chance.

This
one’s for you.

THANK
you:

Hannah, whose
input I value more than anyone else’s, and whose support I rely upon more than
anyone else’s.

Everyone who
posted, reviewed, “liked,” or commented.  Success would have been
impossible without the momentum you all gave me.

Finally, all of
you who kept asking me, “When’s the next one coming out?”  You kept me
going.  And here it is.

1

OTHER
than the ten people in the room, almost no one on Earth—or above Earth—knew
this meeting was taking place.

They met in a
hotel conference room downtown.  The bank of windows looked out over the
city lights.  Though night had fallen here, the sun still shone on the
distant form of Earth looming beyond the city’s rim. 
Metropolitan
Satellite IX
, or simply MS9, had been the massive orbiting structure’s name
when the United Space Programs constructed it a century ago.  The
million-plus citizens of the city built across its face called it Anterra.

Nine of them were
already sitting around the room’s polished black table.  The tenth had
just walked in the door.  He removed his brimmed hat and long coat as he
entered, regarding the others with penetrating steel-gray eyes.

“Welcome,
Director Holiday,” the woman at the head of the table greeted him.  Her
voice was as unfriendly as her face.  Her red hair was much too vividly
hued to be natural at her age—maybe at any age.

“Good evening,”
he replied, not bothering to sound any friendlier.  He didn’t know her
name.  He didn’t know any of their names, though they knew his.  They
were the governing board of his classified government department, which meant
they were to remain anonymous to him.  Director Holiday only knew them by
face, only made contact with them on the rare occasion they asked him to attend
one of their weekly meetings.

Which he loathed.

He took a
seat.  There were no refreshments, no coffee, though he could certainly
use a cup.  Strictly semi-cold water and business.

“Now,” the
redheaded woman said without enthusiasm, “would you care to begin by presenting
any complaints or requests before the board?”

Director Holiday
smirked humorlessly.  “You don’t invite me to your meetings because you’re
aching to hear what’s on my mind,” he said in the sophisticated accent of his
British homeland.  “So why don’t you just go ahead and tell me what’s on
yours?”

His comment was
met with nine frowns.

“We do have a
concern,” said the man to the right of the redheaded woman.  He was a
thin-featured, serious man with somewhat pointed ears and dark, tightly knit
eyebrows.  His goatee was trimmed a little too perfectly.  “We’ve
been hearing some rather disturbing news about a certain recruit of yours.”

“You’ll have to
be more specific, I’m afraid,” the director said as he poured himself a glass
of lukewarm water.  “I’m sure there’s no lack of disturbing news about
many of my recruits.”

The man
sniffed.  “I don’t doubt it, Director.  But I’m sure you know the one
we mean.”

Holiday knew, all
right.  He’d known it the instant he got the message to come to this
meeting.  But he wasn’t letting on.  “I’m all ears.”

“Tell us a little
more, please,” said the woman at the head of the table, “about this Jillian
Branch.”

SHE
was leaning against a wall of hewn logs.  Hanging directly above her was a
moose’s head mounted on a wooden plaque.  Together she and the moose
watched the spacious, bustling foyer of the Hunter’s Lodge Restaurant and
Bar.  The heads of other various woodland fauna adorned the walls as well,
along with some fish with hooks dangling from their mouths and big paintings of
mountain peaks and forest streams.  Flames roared in a huge hearth near
the hostess’s desk.

Not really her
type of place.

She watched the
front door.  Friday nights at the Hunter’s Lodge were pretty busy. 
Comers and goers passed through every few seconds, allowing momentary bursts of
urban lights and traffic to intrude upon the outdoorsy atmosphere.  Most
of the clients dressed to fit—plenty of plaid flannel shirts and billed caps—like
there was anywhere on Anterra to go fishing or hunting or logging, or whatever.

A voice buzzed in
her hidden earpiece—Dizzie Mason reporting from HQ:  “He should be
arriving any second now—if Sherlock is tracking the right guy.”

“Thanks, Diz,”
she said, leaning slightly toward the lapel of her coat.

There, that had
to be him.  It was a young man with tousled blonde hair.  He wore a
slick black leather jacket and riding gloves.  Hardly the motif most
customers were going for.

“Got him.”

“WHAT
about her?” Holiday asked the board.  He was suddenly enjoying himself a
little.  This would be good.

Another woman at
the conference table—a squirrelly woman with a double chin—pulled out a thick
file and began flipping through it.  “According to our sources,” she said,
“Miss Branch is ‘reckless and unrestrained, with a tendency to neglect caution
and common sense.’”

Holiday stroked
his chin with feigned interest.  “I see.  Whoever writes your reports
apparently owns a thesaurus.”

THE
kid
with tousled blonde hair and a black leather jacket was Doug
Grandan
.  The moment he’d entered the Hunter’s Lodge
he wished he’d dressed to fit in.  Now he would stick out like a toddler
in a nursing home.

Well, nothing he
could do about it now.  Next time he’d know better.  New
erranders
always had a lot to learn.

Now, to meet the
contact.  He’d said
Grandan
would find him at
the booth in the northwest corner of the upstairs dining area. 
Grandan
walked toward the wide wooden staircase while he
puzzled over which direction was northwest. 
Let’s see, when I walked
in, Earth was behind me, so....

“Mr.
Grandan
?”

He jumped. 
He hadn’t even seen the girl approaching.  She had jet-black hair and dark
eyes.  She stood between him and the foot of the staircase.  “Who are
you?” he stammered.

“My name is
Cordova.  I’m your contact.  Is anything wrong?”

“N-no.  No,
it’s just that I thought you would be....”

“A guy? 
Don’t worry, I get that a lot.”

“I was supposed
to meet you at the northwest—”

“Change of
plans.  I’m afraid I was followed here.”

Grandan’s
eyes widened.  “What?  Oh, great!”

“Don’t
worry.  It’s not uncommon in jobs like this.  I lost the people who
were tailing me, but I have a feeling they’ll catch up eventually.  We’ll
have to speak someplace where we can’t be seen.”

He seemed hesitant. 
“Okay....”

“Follow me.”

“DIRECTOR,”
the redhead said through a frown, “do you disagree with the report?”

“Not
particularly,” said Holiday.

“Then you admit
Jill Branch is a dangerous individual?”

“To the criminals
of our city, yes.”  He furrowed his brow.  “I thought that’s what we
were going for.”

“What we are
going
for
, Director, is a new way to fight crime.  We did not put you in
charge of The Nexus to give young people weapons and let them run amuck on the
streets with no apparent purpose.”

“We do nothing,”
he answered severely, “without a very specific purpose—which is clearly more
than can be said of this board meeting.”

The other nine
exchanged annoyed glances.

“By the way,”
Holiday added, “there are a few other characteristics of Jillian’s that your
report conveniently leaves out.”

“Such as?”

“She is clever,
passionate, tenacious, utterly devoted to the good of the department, willing
to do whatever it takes to get her job done.  Shall I go on?”

SHE
led
Grandan
out of the restaurant foyer and down a
narrow log-walled passage.  They passed the restrooms, turned a corner,
and exited through a side door.  Crisp night air and echoing city sounds
met them in an alley.

He was suddenly
leveling a gun at her.

“Mr.
Grandan
, please—”

“Something’s
going on, here!” he sputtered.

“Just remain
calm.  Like I told you, I was followed here, so—”

“I don’t believe
you!”

She put her hands
on her hips and looked at him like he was her ill-behaved two-year-old
son.  “You haven’t been an errander very long, have you, Mr.
Grandan
?”

He
fidgeted.  “Why?”

They weren’t
looking toward the end of the alley, where a black car was just pulling to a
stop.

“IS
it true,” another man at the conference table asked, “that Miss Branch was
wounded by gunfire only a week after joining the department?”

“It’s true,”
Holiday confirmed.  “Very reckless and incautious of her, wasn’t it, to be
in the way of hostile fire while on a mission?”  The director shook his
head.  “Although perhaps we should blame the shooter.  Only a thought.”

“She’s a danger,
Mr. Holiday.  You’ve already admitted that yourself.”

“And what was she
before she joined the department?” he shot back at the man.  “You may have
heard she was a known criminal until we picked her up.”

“Which means she
belongs in detention,” said the squirrelly woman, “
not
in a government
agency.”

“If I wanted to
respond to that remark,” Holiday said dryly, “I would casually point out all
Jillian Branch has accomplished as she’s been ‘running amuck’ on the
streets.  I would mention, for instance, that one of the most lawless men
on MS9 was captured due to her efforts; that she exposed a traitor to our own
government; that, thanks to her, we have stumbled upon the most vast
communications network in the city’s underground; things of that nature.”

The board members
exchanged more glances.

“That is, as I
said,
if
I wanted to respond to your remark,” Holiday went on.  “As
it is, I am in the very fortunate position of not having to respond to your
remark.  The Congress of
Metropolitan Satellite IX
has graciously
allowed me to recruit whomever I wish for my department, without the slightest
consultation of this board.”  He smiled and shot a steel-gray stare at
them.

A bald, mustached
man heaved a sigh.  “You are putting those young people in harm’s way,
Director.”

He raised an
eyebrow.  “Does that bother you?  I thought you were concerned that
they were dangerous to others, not in danger themselves.  You’ll have to
make up your mind.  Meanwhile, I’ll pass along your concern.  Jill
will be very touched.  I’m sure she’ll try to steer clear of any more
bullets from now on.”

GUNFIRE
erupted from the car at the end of the alley.

“Get down!” cried
Jill, dropping to the pavement.

Grandan’s
brain told him to shoot back, to hide, to do
something
. 
But his body wasn’t listening to his brain at the moment.  He just stood
and stared at the black car.

“
Grandan
,” she screamed at him, reaching up to tug at his
coat, “get d—!”

Another shot, and
she was lying perfectly limp and motionless in the alley.

“Cordova!” he
shrieked.

The girl didn’t
budge.

The black car
angled into the alley.  More shots were fired.

Grandan’s
body finally started listening to his brain.

He ran.

2

THE
black car was in the alley now.  The driver leaned out the window, still
firing as he drove.

Jill opened one
eye, not moving from where she lay sprawled on the pavement.  She saw the
fleeing figure of Doug
Grandan
headed for the
streets.

The black car
roared past her.

Grandan
disappeared out the far end of the alley.  The
car disappeared after him a moment later.

Jill stood and
brushed off her coat.  “Don’t follow him too close, Bradley.”

Bradley Park’s
voice crackled in her ear:  “Just do your job, and I’ll do mine, all
right?”

“Good luck to you
too.”

She went back
inside the Hunter’s Lodge Restaurant and Bar.

A
mumble coursed through the governing board of The Nexus.

“Director,” said
the man with the goatee and the dark eyebrows, “we may not have the authority
to tell you who you can and cannot recruit, but we do have the authority to
decide what you can and cannot do with them.”

“To a degree,
perhaps,” Holiday interrupted.  “But we can argue about that later. 
Go on.”

The man frowned
and continued,  “We are also concerned about the role of the new field
team you have assembled around Miss Branch.  As we understand it, their
goal is to track down and eliminate any illegal means of data storage.  Do
I have that right?”

“So far as it
goes.”  Holiday took a nervous sip of water.  Now here, he thought,
was a much trickier subject.

THE
northwest corner of the Lodge’s upstairs dining room was mostly partitioned off
by a half-wall of hewn logs.  There was a single small booth beneath a
painting of a mountain cabin.  A lamp made largely of elk horns hung over
the table.

The man waiting
alone at the booth was younger than Jill expected.  He had longish hair
and a thin moustache.  He was dressed semi-formally.

It looked like he
was just starting to get impatient when she approached.

“Mr. Cordova?”
she asked him.

He smiled
slightly.  “You must be
Grandan
.”

“Felicia
Grandan
.”  She took the seat across from him in the
secluded booth.  “Is anything wrong?”

He shook his
head.  “Not at all.  It’s just that....”

“You thought I
would be a guy.  I get that a lot.”

“PERHAPS,”
the man with the perfect goatee said, “you have heard of a certain mythical
beast from ancient Greek mythology—a serpent-like creature with many heads.”

“I’m confident
you’ll come swiftly to the part where you explain how this relates to my
department,” said Holiday.

“Each time a head
of the deadly beast was cut off,” the man went on, “two more grew back in its
place.  You see my point, I’m sure.  You are attempting to stop our
city’s criminal underground from using outdated means of data storage and communication—means
which your beloved computer cannot track.”

“Means which are
explicitly against the laws of our city,” Holiday added.

“Quite right,”
the man agreed.  “But do you ever get the feeling you are fighting a
losing battle?”

“Every time I try
to talk some sense into this board.”

The man drew an
impatient breath and went on.  “We have to admit to ourselves that it is
far, far too easy to smuggle these illegal devices onto this satellite—old
cameras and televisions, non-digital paper, telephones, and so on.  Every
time you confiscate one of them, there will be two others that you don’t know
about.  You simply can’t keep up with it.”

Holiday looked
into his water glass.  “For once,” he said quietly, “I don’t disagree with
you.”

CORDOVA
motioned for a waitress.

“The venison
burger,” he said, “no cheese or pickles.  Coleslaw on the side.”  He
looked at Jill.  “Can I get you anything?”

“A bottle of
water,” Jill told the waitress with a smile.

“Nothing else?” Cordova
asked as the waitress shuffled off.

“I’m here for
business, not dinner.”

“Whatever you
say.  The food’s good.  I always eat here when I come to
Anterra—which is as infrequently as possible, of course.”  He smiled
condescendingly as he spoke.  Citizens of the Home Planet did that a lot
around Anterrans.  “I like being on good solid ground, thank you, not on
some contraption floating through space.”

“Not something
you’d expect to hear from someone who runs a major shuttle line,” said Jill.

“I may help run
the company, but I rarely ride the shuttles myself.  I spend most of my
time in the office.  Today’s an exception—I wanted to personally oversee
the transfer of this particular cargo.”  His smugness gave way to a
puzzled expression.  “Speaking of the cargo...”

She looked at him
concernedly.  “Is there a problem?”

“Not
exactly.  I’m just confused.  It seems like much ado about nothing,
you know?  All the secrecy and sneaking around.  Why go to all this
trouble for just—?”  He stopped himself.  “Sorry.  You’re just
the delivery girl.  You’re probably not supposed to know what the goods
are, are you?”

She wished he’d
named the cargo.  Some confirmation would have been nice.  But she
couldn’t show her disappointment; she had to play her role convincingly.  “No,
I’m not.  So instead of talking about what’s in the package, how about we
talk about how I get a hold of it?”

He sat back, and
the condescending smile made another appearance.  “Are all young people in
this city in such a hurry?”

“WE
are officially recommending,” the woman with the artificial red hair stated,
“that you dissemble this field team and find a better use for your department’s
time.”

“Your
recommendation is duly noted,” said Holiday.  “You’ll be sure to let me
know, of course, the moment your recommendation has become something
more.  I listen to direct orders, not to polite suggestions.”

“At least take it
into consideration in the meantime, won’t you?” said the man with the
goatee.  He looked penetratingly into Holiday’s eyes, lowering his dark
brows, and continued very slowly and deliberately,  “I think you’ll agree
that Sherlock finds plenty for your department to do.  There’s no reason
to go out looking for any more than his mechanical brain is already aware of,
now is there?”

Holiday returned
the gaze curiously. 
An interesting comment.  Could he possibly
know...?

“THEY
built this place to be better than anything on Earth,” Cordova said through a
bite of venison burger, “didn’t they?”

“The Hunter’s
Lodge Restaurant and Bar?”

He snickered. 
“Anterra.”

“Oh, right,” said
Jill.  “I guess they did.”

“And now it’s
practically overrun by crooks.”  Cordova dabbed his face with a
napkin.  “Well, not everything goes as planned, I guess.  The
original vision was a nice thought.  But corruption found its way up here
after all, didn’t it?”

“You mean when
you arrived on your shuttle this evening?”

“You’re a witty
one, aren’t you?  I’m someone who admires a sharp wit.  You do your
hometown credit.”  He smiled and raised his glass toward her.  “It
seems even Anterra has its positive characteristics.”

She touched her
water bottle to his glass.  “And it seems even Earth has its crooks.”

“DIRECTOR,”
said the redheaded woman, “I don’t need to tell you just how much time, effort,
and money have been spent on the creation of the Sherlock computer.  I
suggest you pay more attention to it—or, should I say, to
him?”

“Your
department’s job,” added the bald one, “is to respond to Sherlock’s findings,
not to go digging around elsewhere for information.”

“My department’s
job,” retorted Holiday, “is to protect this city, and I will use any means
necessary.  The smartest criminals on MS9 know that they’re being
monitored, and they’re finding ways to avoid it.  Sherlock may have many
eyes and ears around Anterra, but he doesn’t know everything.”

The man with the
perfectly trimmed goatee smiled gravely.  “He was never meant to know
everything
,
now was he?”

Holiday looked at
him curiously.  Now it was clear. 
This man knows much, much more
than he’s supposed to.

“YOU
haven’t told me anything about yourself,” said Cordova, polishing off his
burger.

“And you haven’t
told me where I can find our client’s cargo,” she said.  “Which is why we
met, you may recall.”

He looked
disappointed.  “If I’m going to do business with someone, I like to know a
little bit about them.”

“Not in this
business you don’t.”

“I see. 
Forgive me; this sort of thing is new to me.”

“I doubt
that.  What’s the port bay number?”

He sighed. 
“Bay 337.  The compartment is behind the lavatory.  There’s a button
on the bottom of the sink.  Push it three times, then push and hold for
exactly eleven seconds.”

She got up. 
“You’ll be hearing from our client.”

“Your name’s not
Felicity, is it?”

“Felicia,” she
said.

“Whatever. 
That’s not your name, is it?  Next time you should pick an alias that’s
more convincing.”

Jill rolled her
eyes.  “Like
Cordova?”

She was gone
before he could respond.

HER
skybike was parked a couple of blocks away.  While she walked she said
softly into the concealed microphone on her lapel,  “Did you get that,
Corey?  It’s 337.”