Charles Gannon - Fire With Fire

Caine raised an eyebrow. “I have?”

Downing consulted his notes. “You spent two weeks going through the first phases of BT with army recruits back in 2098; it was research for your series in Jane’s Defense Weekly . In 2102, book research led to a formal invitation to audit a course in strategy and tactics at Annapolis. Where, it seems, you received the highest mark in the class.

“President Liu has accepted the recommendation of the Joint Chiefs that these earlier participations in service-related training be recognized as counting towards both your basic and officer training. Hence, the wartime minimum of six weeks of training has been reduced to four. Questions?”

“Yes: why?”

“Why what, Caine?”

“Why induct me?”

“I trust you are not rethinking your commitment to serve?”

Caine shook his head. “That’s not even an option, given the current situation. And since the Executive herself has signed off on everything, I’m as good as wearing blue already. I just want to know why.”

“Fair enough. You are being inducted so that you have enough official clout to take command of conventional forces if you are in an intelligence-critical situation.”

“Okay, but why the rush? And why do it here at the Pearl?”

“Firstly, I didn’t want you arriving back on Earth with the rest of the delegation. The press would climb all over you: that spotlight would kill any future you might have as an intelligence asset for IRIS.”

“Not sure I’d mind that outcome.” Downing noted that Caine’s tone was rueful rather than resentful. “But I see your point. Go on.”

“Since your training will be swift and your promotion unorthodox, it will be easier to get it done on the sly out here.”

“Just how is my promotion going to be unorthodox?”

“When you finish OCS, you will immediately be breveted up to commander, in recognition of your prior ‘official service.’ Five minutes later, you will be retired into the Reserves.”

“I-?”

“He-?”

“Gentlemen, please. Let me finish. Trevor, you’re going to be bumped up again, as well. For the same reason: the higher the rank you have, the more people to whom you can issue bigger orders-particularly in a crisis. Hopefully, you’ll never need to play that rank card, but if you do, you’ll have it up your sleeve. And in your case, Caine, it’s best we keep that potential buried.”

Caine smiled. “So I get retired into the reserves here at Pearl even before my commission papers begin their glacial movement through the system and into the endless reams of Earth-bound housekeeping dispatches. Which no reporter has ready access to or any interest in.”

“Exactly. The rest of the delegation faces the paparazzi by returning first. You and Trevor slink back in after the furor has died down, with you wearing civvies. No fuss, no bother, no press. And I’m sorry to say that, from this point forward, keeping things from the press is going to be a routine necessity. For instance, only because you’re both restricted to base until the end of Caine’s training can I even reveal that I have just activated the final phase of an IRIS operation code-named Case Leo Gap, which initiates from Barnard’s Star.”

Caine leaned forward. “I heard you and Nolan mention Case Leo Gap once. What is it?”

Downing shook his head. “You don’t need those details, yet; you only need to be familiar with the code name.”

Trevor leaned back, frowning. “A damn odd name, too. ‘Leo Gap’? What’s it about, a lion’s hole?”

“No, the pass that Leonidas defended against Xerxes: Thermopylae. Had that battle gone the other way, the Hellenic world would have ended-and ours would never have arisen.”

“Thanks, Uncle Richard, I get the resonances with our current situation: I just forgot the name of the Greek commander. Who had a hell of a fight on his hands, as I recall. How many of the Greeks actually survived?”

Downing hesitated. Into that silence, Caine inserted a recitation:

Tell them in Lacedaemon, passerby,

That here, obedient to their word, we lie.

Trevor looked at him. “That many, huh?”

Downing stood. “I’ve got about thirty minutes left before my clipper leaves. Any unfinished business?”

Trevor nodded. “Yes. Well, I mean, I think so.” He picked up the box from the seat beside him. “As I was hustling to join you two on Alnduul’s ship, Elena ran me down and gave me this. She says my father entrusted it to her about a year ago, and told her, ‘Give it to Uncle Richard at the right time.’”

“‘The right time’? What does that mean?”

“Elena asked Dad the same thing. He told her that the box would become very important if we were ever on the brink of ‘fighting a war like no other.’ She thought that the recent events probably satisfy that condition. I tend to agree with her.”

“As do I.” Downing received the box from Trevor: it was cumbersome, with something weighty thumping to and fro inside. Opening it, Downing discovered another, smaller box and momentarily suspected a monstrous practical joke. But then he saw the envelope on top, with “Richard” scrawled across it in Nolan’s distinctive handwriting. He opened it and read:

Dear Richard:

If Caine Riordan is still alive, please give him the smaller, enclosed box. Except for one additional photograph, it holds the contents of the bag he was carrying when he was apprehended outside my suite in Perry City. Those contents should help him regain the one hundred hours he lost on Luna.

If Caine is dead, then you must open the box. Handle the contents as you see fit.

I wish I was there to help you with the coming troubles. I also apologize for not sharing all the secrets that I was privy to, but the photograph I added to Caine’s box will provide adequate explanation, I think.

Your Friend,

Nolan

Downing stared at the card, felt grief, resentment, and confusion all at the same time. But mostly, he simply missed his oldest friend-even more than he felt curiosity.

He handed the inner box to Caine. “It’s for you,” he said.

ODYSSEUS

Caine opened the box cautiously.

And found himself staring down at an old bottle of red wine-Chateauneuf-du-pape, to be precise. Alongside it was a desiccated rose and a photograph of a young woman who looked very familiar-because, he realized, it was Elena, when she was perhaps twenty-four or twenty-

The memories came unevenly, yet so quickly that he gasped. Luna. 2105. Buying a rose, a bottle of wine-Chateauneuf-du-pape-and porterhouse steaks: all outrageous extravagances on the Moon. All purchased because he had been surprised by joy in a place and at a time he could not have expected it.

The young lady he met while waiting in line for coffee only introduced herself as Elena, at first. She was not much older than a college kid, but she had an unwavering gaze, and a peculiar species of certainty, of intensity, that soon had him forgetting that this was a young woman with whom he should not become involved.

That prohibition against involvement arose not merely because she was eleven years his junior, but because, midway through their conversation, she shared her full name, thereby revealing that she was the daughter of the man he had come to Luna to interview: Nolan Corcoran.

Caine should have avoided her, but he couldn’t. At their second chance encounter-which they both carefully engineered-Caine tried to adopt a casual demeanor, but instead she fixed him with her green green green eyes. He was not able to look away from them during the four-hour lunch that he had originally resolved to be the last forty-five minutes he would ever spend with her.

The memories were scattered, incomplete, ragged in places, but he did recall meeting her that night for a glass of wine. In the course of discovering that they had eerily similar tastes in most everything-from food to art to novels to films-Caine did the next thing that he promised himself he would not do: he gave her a poem he had written about her earlier that day. And in return, she gave him herself. Which led to mutual embarrassment over the speed with which they had become intimate. Which they resolved by becoming intimate again. And then again.