Chapter 14

I stepped firmly, aggressively out of the hospital bathroom, and closed the door behind me with a quiet finality. Sash looked me over, taking in the determination in my jaw and the cold burn in my eyes. He reacted with a very subdued expression, but one that could only be interpreted as approval. He didn’t know what had happened in there, but he apparently liked what he saw come out.

“Sean,” Colette called softly to me. “Come here. I want you to meet my daughter.” I put on my most gaming smile and stepped to the girl’s bedside. “Naya,” Colette said, “this is Sean Brennan. He used to work for Atlas, and now he’s going to help us get rid of them. He’s here to make sure they pay for what they’ve done.”

Well, I hadn’t agreed to all that exactly, but I gave a reassuring nod to the nine year-old.

Naya’s eyes searched my face. When her voice finally spoke, it was weak and hoarse. I stood my ground, even though the sight of her pushed me away. “Why are they doing this?” she said, her eyes pressing into mine.

That stopped me cold. I was ready to kick some ass, but I wasn’t ready for a raw, point-blank question like that from a nine year-old. But then, sometimes children are the only ones asking the right questions, and they demand answers of us that we often don’t want to give.

I met her glare, willing strength into my knees, mentally commanding quiet authority into my otherwise faltering voice. If I couldn’t face a nine year-old, I might as well pack it up now and go home. “Greed, Naya,” I said to her softly. “Pure and simple. But we’re gonna stop it, and we’re going to get you well. I promise you that.”

She seemed to take a small measure of heart from that, and she burrowed her face back into her mother’s loving and protective body.

“I’m sorry this is happening to you, Naya,” I added, impulsively. No sooner had the words escaped my lips that I regretted them, if only because I didn’t know what to say beyond them. Without thinking, I had suddenly stepped out on a limb, and the one I had chosen wasn’t going to support my weight. I didn’t want to take responsibility for what was happening, or promise something I couldn’t deliver. But I felt like I owed her something. I couldn’t just leave it hanging like that. My mind scrambled for a graceful closing statement. “But we’re going to fix it,” I managed.

“Thank you,” she said from the bosom of her mother.

Sash, who was standing behind me, gently put his hand on my shoulder and, with a head gesture, silently signaled for us to leave the room and to give Colette some time alone with her daughter.

When we had stepped out of the room, I leaned against the wall and let out a torrent of breath. “Jesus. What a mess.” I looked pointedly at Sash, who stood ram-rod straight, as if at attention. “We’ve got some ass-kicking to do, Sash. All around this neighborhood.”

Sash’s face broke into a wide grin. In that moment, our undying friendship was born. “That we do, my friend. That we do.”

“I’ve got two things in mind to start off with. First, I want you to hook me up with the Sirian government, specifically the people who are investigating the death of that lawyer, Marff Rindilosk. And second, we saw Geelan enter the Atlas facility; I want to know when he left, who accompanied him in and out, and where he went from there. I imagine you Intelligence guys can track that stuff down?”

Sash nodded, considering my request. “That shouldn’t be a problem.”

“And what’s the name of the guy that’s running the Atlas operation here?”

“He’s an old Atlas veteran,” Sash answered. “A spoiled, pompous sonofabitch who likes to disrespect the Government and throw his weight around. His name is Nat Brixom.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Do you know him?”

“Oh, I know him alright. He’s the bastard that ran me right out of Atlas.” I looked hard at the man across from me. “Goddammit, Sash, you are unforgivably generous in the way you speak of him. I should cuff you across the mouth.” A sudden, short chuckle escaped him. “Let me put it this way. I have imagined a lot of things I’d like to do to that scumbag, and my current favorite is pushing him down a long slide made of metal grates with meat blades in them, and after his back is shredded, let him drop into a vat of pure alcohol at the bottom.”

Sash’s face twisted in response. “That’s a pretty good one. I must admit, I have not seen that done.”

“Yeah, that would be a sight.” We stood across from each other for a few moments, in our own thoughts, then I spoke up again. “Colette said something about meeting the council?”

Sash nodded. “That’s tomorrow. Early evening.”

“What is that?”

“The council? Oh, it’s…an advisory council. A leadership council, you might say. We’ve been working on various strategies to evict Atlas, and your insider knowledge, both of mining facilities in general, and of Atlas procedures and personnel, will help us in those endeavors.”

“So you come up with strategies, and then recommend them to the top decision-makers in your government for action? What is that, the President?”

Sash’s eyes rolled across the ceiling, taking in my words. “Something like that,” he finally said, returning his gaze to me.

I shrugged. I didn’t need the details. It was really disturbing to me that Geelan had gone into that mining facility. I didn’t know if my score with him had anything to do with Gaia’s score with Atlas, but the two situations found themselves in the same dot on the map, and it is a big galaxy. I was really glad that Sash and I would be working together. I didn’t know who he was, exactly, or what his background was. But he struck me as knowledgeable, trustworthy, authoritative, and eminently capable. I was surprised by how much I liked him, knowing as little as I did about him. But I was glad we were on the same side.

Colette came out of the hospital room and gently closed the door behind her to afford the occupants some additional privacy. Her eyes were wet and bloodshot, and her face bore a layer of raw suffering. She was hurting something awful, and I felt bad that such a competent and beautiful woman should be suggested to such inhumanity.

Sash stepped over to her and took her in his fatherly arms. “Let’s get Sean over to the Atlas facility so he can see it for himself,” Sash said when they broke. “Then we can get him settled in his quarters, and start talking strategy, prepare for tomorrow’s meeting with the council.”

Colette nodded bravely, tucking her pain away for another day. Her jaw was set and her chin elevated when she looked at the both of us. “We’ve got work to do, gentlemen.”

We made our way out of the hospital, and boarded the train that had just arrived.

“How did you get that surveillance video of Geelan?” I asked Sash when we were seated and the train was on its way.

“Like I said, it was an Atlas camera, and we pulled it off their network. They think we’re backwards here, so they don’t take the same measure of security precautions they should,” he said with a wicked grin. “It was tricky, but we got it.”

“And it was recorded a week ago?”

“Yes,” my new friend answered. “And it was not Geelan’s only visit.”

“There were more? You didn’t tell me that.”

Sash nodded. “Two weeks ago. He entered the Atlas facility in the early afternoon. Left about an hour later. Escorted by Atlas heavies on both trips.”

“Same escorts, both times?”

Sash hesitated. “That I’m not sure about. I can ask my people to get you that answer.”

I squinted my eyes. What did it all mean? Geelan rips me of all my money. Shortly thereafter, he appears here at Atlas for a short, one-hour visit. A week later, he appears again and stays for an indeterminate amount of time. “You’re still looking for the tape showing when he left?” I asked Sash. “The second time?”

He nodded.

“You realize, of course,” Colette warned, “that Geelan’s appearance here may have absolutely nothing to do with what happened between the two of you.”

“Purely coincidental?” I asked with disbelief. “No, I don’t think so. It’s a big universe. This Sirian comes to me out of the blue, after I’ve been run out of the company. I’m disgraced, but loaded. He shows up with an ideal opportunity for a shmuck like me…a regular cash-cow for an old hand to throw his money into and manage, in a market that I myself had been promoting to upper management. He offers me the chance to redeem myself, to really stick it to Atlas. And I jump on it. It was my pride, I know that now. But then he shows up right here at Atlas. Why?” I looked at my Gaian hosts. Sash’s gaze upon me was steady and pensive. I wasn’t sure if he was studying me or the problem.

“The only thing I can rationally figure,” I plowed on, “is that Geelan had such ringing success with me, he figured he could con the whole company. My guess is that he’s come here to sell this con job to them, and his two visits so far suggest he’s having some success.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know, though. I don’t think they would fall for it. An individual would do something stupid like sign legal papers without even knowing where the vein was. Atlas wouldn’t. They would require an involved process of due diligence that would have exposed the fraud right away.”

Sash’s gaze hadn’t wavered. “May I suggest a…darker, but more realistic, scenario?”

“If you must.”

“Have you considered that Geelan was working for Atlas?”

“What?”

Sash inspected his cuticles. Why he should be looking at them escaped me; his hands were in fine shape. “You mentioned that Atlas ran you out, in disgrace. Unjustly, I believe you said.” I nodded. “And you also said that Nat Brixom was the one who ran you out?” I nodded again, more slowly this time, not liking the sinister turn this man’s lightly phrased questions were taking. “The same Nat Brixom, I presume, who acts as director of this unsavory facility on Gaia. Brixom knew you were disgraced, but still…‘loaded’, I believe is the term you used.”

The sun flashed in my eye as the train took a gentle turn, and I leaned aside to keep a clear view on Sash. Jesus, I didn’t like what this man was saying.

“Is it not reasonable that Mr. Brixom, whom we know from shared experience to be a repugnant worm, found it convenient and perhaps even a touch amusing to arrange a complete and total destruction of your life? Why stop at your job, is what I’m suggesting. Why not your savings too, especially if some of those hard-earned chits somehow found their way into his own pocket?”

I stared at the man in front of me as all the air was being sucked out of my body.

“He may have done it for his own gain, or for Atlas’ gain – Lord knows cheating is a standing corporate policy. In any event, I think these separate threads that weave themselves together here are binding a fabric of a most unfortunate and uncomfortable texture for us all.”

It’s an odd thing, having the wind knocked out of you in the words of a professor. I mean, we’re talking about being run out of my entire personal life by this vindictive prick Brixom, and Sash describes it with the poetry of Herman Melville himself. This was a powerful man.

“Jesus,” was all I could say.

Nobody else said anything, and the train rolled on toward the Atlas facility. I felt like we were riding toward my own gallows, but of course all the bad stuff had already happened. Now I was just cleaning up the mess. I don’t know why that didn’t make it feel any better.

“So you think Geelan’s been coming here to collect his payoffs?” I asked.

Sash shrugged. “I have no idea. Closing loose ends, collecting money, receiving instructions, or none of the above. I’m just theorizing.”

“A pretty earth-fucking-shattering theory.”

Sash smiled sweetly. “I live to serve.”

I shook my head in disgust. Damned armchair philosophers. All this stuff about Geelan was sure easy for him to say…