Chapter 2: Jack McLachlan
White noise. White spots appearing and disappearing randomly on the blackness of a holographic screen.
Looking less closely, the shape of a face appeared through it. A wrinkled, scarred face with square jaw, a thin lipped mouth framed by a graying goatee bellow an once straight nose. His brown eyes were weary but alert.
With a sigh, he touched the screen that came alive, icons and caption appearing before him. His eyes caught the date. It was November already. Another Thanksgiving alone here. Well not alone, but without his daughter. The last time he saw her it was over twelve years ago. Now she must be graduated -with his money having paid for it through alimony- and likely married. He could be a grandfather, for all he knew.
But she likely still hated his guts.
He stood, pulled his backpack up, pulled a small personnal media station. One that was probably older than him. So he gently put it on the table beside him. Carefully, he pressed play.
Gravy sounds came out of the speakers
'Oh the weather outside is frightful!
But the fire is so delightful.
And since we have no place to go,
Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!'
Smirking at how incongruous the lyrics sounded here, on Pandora. But he couldn't help it, he liked that song. And it seemed that Dean Martin's voice acted as repellant against the youth around Hellsgate.
He grinned as he remembered how fast they vacated the messhall when he played it for the first time for Christmas 2152. Since then, he played it every time he wanted to record his log.
Like now.
« This is Jack McLachlan, reporting…» he started, pulling our of his breast pocket a spiral notebook
.flipping a few page, he cleared his voice.
« Things are really going to shit, here. Selfridge is supposed to be running the show, but in reality, he's Quarrich's bitch.. »
He paused, stopped the record and deleted the temp.
« This is Jack McLachlan reporting. Things are a mess and going worse in a hurry. Although Selfridge is supposedly the director of this base, it's Quarrich who's really running the show. He treats the science team like dirt, and the AVTR program staff even worse. It's clear he hates us. At least Falco, even though he was a nut job, paid us respect. »
Jack posed to take a sip from his cup of synthetic warm chocolate., then resumed
« The two of them -Selfridge and Quarrich- make a fine pair of xenophobic bastards. Selfridge can't stand anything that stands between him and the millions tons of Unobtanium laying under the surface of this wonderful planet. Knowing that a kilo runs twenty millions bucks, I guess any greedy sucker would think like him. Trouble is, I'm one of those standing on that one spot, by my sole presence. I'm still here because I know the sector like the back of my hands, and I'm really familiar with places around this planet. Blue Lagoon? I've spent over a year there, with Harper. I was there when that signal specialist landed fresh out of cry sleep. Goliath Plains? Stayed over the camp there, and had the dubious pleasure of meeting Quarrich there, breathing down my neck as I went to meet local Na'vi. Floating Gardens? I inspected the remains of the settlement there. That was the reason of my presence here in the first place. To find out what happened to the crew that came here. Who'd have though that a (former) Pattern Specialist FORENSIC of the NYPD's CSU -that's crime scene unit to you- would be needed on Pandora. Crimes here are supposed to be, like, NIL. And before you smartasses ask, I'm not in Egypt! But what did I find? Big. Fat. Nothing. Not a trace. Not a single smear of blood. Either the animals licked the place clear before the vegetation took over, or they've been taken away. Either way, the 'crime scene' was even more contemned than one on Time Square on rush hour could ever be.
« Anyway, six year years later, I'm still here, working as a glorified guide for mining convoy and scientific going out of the perimeter. I think that, aside from Grace… »
Jack's voice wavered, and a paused the video, then pinched the bridge of his nose, and wiped the wet lids of eyes. Oh, Grace, sweetie, why did you go and get yourself killed?
When he started the recording again, the time caption indicated that five minutes had gone by since he hit the pause button.
« I think that aside from Grace, I'm the oldest and most experienced Avatar driver currently in employ of the RDA. I'm still off use to them. But after what happened to Grace, I guess all bets are off.
Jake did the right thing, siding with the Na'vi. I would too, if I could. But the A-Team -no pun intended, I mean the Avatar drivers team; Tessa, Chen, Miguel, all of them geeky kids…- depends on me to make sure they're safe from these trigger happy bastards. »
Jack looked around making sure nobody was in earshot, and pumped the volume of his player, which now was blaring some Frank Sinatra tune.
« Quarrich is up to something big, and undoubtly not good. I don't know what it is. He commandeered one of the Venture's Valkyries, but I have no idea for what. And I've seen him argue with that Native Canadian girl, Claudette Laroche.» Jack sneered. « That girl is really bad news, folks. She was a convicted terrorist, for Eywa's sake! And after what Quarrich did with the Omaticaya's Kelutral, he could do anything. »
Jack let out a sight.
« Whatever it is, I believe it will be for tomorrow morning. Two days at most. All Avatars are confined to base and limited to maintenance runs and check. Whiiiiich I'm suppose to do in five minutes. So that's it for now »
Jack cut off his camera and put his laptop in sleep mode.
Getting up, he check left, right, then headed to the labs. The base was abuzz with activity. Something was indeed brewing here. The Lab itself was a hive, ripe with tension.
« How could you let them do this, Max! » A petite asian girl with her dark hair pulled in a pony tail growled at the Dr Max Patel. That argument was an old one, going on for days, now. Chen's a pushy lass, like Trudy, and like Kendra. Kendra Midori, that is. A specialist in terraforming, but clearly a Na'vi sympathizer who had aided both Harper and Ryder when they went rogue. She had commandeered a damaged Samson, two years ago, and hasn't been seen since. She's presumed dead, like Ryder. And like Harper.
By the RDA, at least. Jack knew better.
« Hey, Doc. I'm here for my little run. » Jack waved at the Indian doctor.
« Jack… » Max began, then trailed off. « Nevermind. Your interface is waiting for you. »
Jack looked at his friend for a minute, then sat on the mattress of the interface and laid down.
« Well, Doctor… Allons-y » Jack began, grapping the closing handle. Max winced
« Don't say it. For the love of anything sacred, don't say it! » he begged
« …Alonzo! » Jack concluded laughingly as everybody in vicinity groaned.
The 'hyperspace' effect grew old, after over half a decade of seeing several times a week.
But still he coped with it.
He raised from his camping bed in the old school. Looking around, he quickly grabbed the backpack he kept hidden under the wooden floor planks.
Walking outside, he met another Avatar, a gorgeous young woman with her jet black hair pulled back and braided, a pair of John Lennon shades on her nose. Jack had to make an effort to keep his eyes from dropping on her generous bosom. Much more stacked than a normal Na'vi he ever encountered, clearly inherited from her human DNA. Don't look at her bust, Jack! She was young enough to be your daughter, for crying out loud! He admonished himself.
« Hey, Tessa. You're up for a few toss when we're done with the routine stuff? » he asked nonchalantly.
« Mmmhhh I don't know, Jack. You already owe me a full box of beers. »
« How about a full letter sent by McKinney communication? » He offered.
The young woman's eyes went so wide that they were just like they belonged to a native Na'vi.
« Jack, we talk about 40 kb! That's forty thousands times eight thousands credits. And don't make me convert this in dollars! That's more than a house in non-slums neighborhoods on Earth or a small studio within Sierra Planum Dome on Mars or… »
« Are you game or not? » Jack asked, and winked « I have my ways. »
Without waiting for her answer, Jack, in his Avatar's skin, jogged away.
Looking around him, Jack remembered. Reminisced.
How he came to be here. On Pandora.
It started when he was just a cop. A cop with a doctorate or two under his belt, but a cop none the less.
He remember how, as Forensic for the NYPD, he proved that an high rate profile employee of the East Coast branch of RDA had massacred his wife and kids, and tried to put the blame on the blue collar lover of said wife. It was screaming to their faces. Anymore obvious, and it would be slapping them in the face. Jack tried to tell his colleagues, his superiors. His captain first, then the commissioner, and then the Chief of Police. But who listens to a little lieutenant in an underpaid police force while corporative security had better equipment, better pay? Nobody.
And who try to oppose QGAEs? Nobody of importance, and they intended to keep it that way.
First came the promotions offer to captain rank, in an other department. Jack declined, and doubled his effort to gather evidences so solid no court could afford to discard them.
Then there were the attempted corruption deal. But you don't buy Jack McLachlan.
His wife and daughter didn't forgive him his passing over their chance to be rich.
Then came the threats, but Jack stood firm. His wife seized that opportunity to divorce, and his daughter burned most bridges between them, keeping just enough to suck money from him in form or educative alimony.
Through all this, Jack held up. But in the end, it was for nothing.
The employee was cleared of any and all charges, and the lover was arrested, convicted, sentenced to death and executed.
And Jack, well, Jack was (not so) gently pushed toward the exit.
With a substantial prime, but it wasn't like he had any choice… or any desire to stay.
Four years of his life gone. for nothing.
His marriage ruined. For nothing
His daughter hated his guts.
For Nothing.
For a year, he walked the streets looking for missing pets, saving money for a P.I. license.
Then missing persons. Profiting from what seven years in college and fifteen years as Forensic detective taught him. An hardened, embittered, and violent private eye. His neighbour, a…what that kid called himself, again? A -quote-Neotaku-unquote- and drastically undernourished like most of the planet that isn't living up in the arcologies and shooted with sensory simulation recorded out of other people's brainwaves, had called him a straight crossover between Scott's Deckard and Black's Takeshi Kovacs.
Jack had laughed long and hard at that one. He went as far as laying on the young man's couch so he could get some juicy memories from when he was doing patrols.
« Here's something that you could remember for me wholesale, kiddo! » Jack joked after the recording. To say the Neotaku was elated would be an understatement as tall as a Na'vi!
What a shame that the kid was killed in a hit-and-run the day after. Jack, to this day, still feel like he himself pushed the kid under the wheels of the unmarked car. It was clear in his mind that the culprit was someone in the RDA. That they had learned about the -poisoned- gift he made to the young man.
Jack fell into a deep depression. A day didn't pass that he didn't have the barrel of his WASP handgun in his mouth or pressed under his jaw, ready to blow his mind out. But something kept him from pulling the trigger. Like a gentle, invisible hand. Then, he though it was him being a coward, lacking the guts.
Today, fourteen years later, he was thinking that maybe, MAYBE, it was Eywa's hand that kept his finger from pushing the tiny bit of metal down, applying the deadly pound to the mechanism that would take his life.
That's when a man came to see him. He wasn't tall. No, actually he was almost a midget. He wasn't black, but a pastry, pale white, so white his skin seemed translucent. He wasn't bald or shaved, but he didn't have much hair either.
But Jack listened to him. Believed him. And followed him.
Ever since, Jack would say it was there and then that, like in Lewis Carroll's centuries old classic, he followed the White Rabbit.
Jack heard a snort, and looked up, taken from his reverie. He smiled. Smiled and patted the muzzle of the dire horse. His dire horse. His Pa'li.
« Hello, Logan. » he said, taking an apple out of his backpack after he took it off his back. «Is that was you were waiting from, buddy? »
The Pa'li game him an affronted glare, but took the apple none the less.
« I know, I missed you too, Tsumukan. » Jack smiled. He then picked a small device from the pack, and opened it. It looked quite similar to the antique, so-called smart phones from the early 21st Century.
First he pressed his thumb against the screen.
« Tute txo txopuri lumpe tsolam ah ayfo tsolam oeri e'al. » he spoke in the device's microphone. This was a translation Harper had made out of Machiaveli's -he believed it was Machiaveli's, at least- quote « If people understood the reason of my fear, They would understand my pain. »
=ICA FIELD INVESTIGATING AGENT JONATHAN DAMIAN McLACHLAN ID CONFIRMED. READY TO RECORD MESSAGE= the device replied in a soft feminine and synthetic voice.
Jack took a deep breath.
« It is confirmed that the RDA has sanctioned the attack on the home tree of the Omaticaya, last week. I've checked there myself, while Jake Sully, Dr Grace Augustine and Norm Spellman were in custody -need to verify if their captivity was legal or not. The body count is over 500 dead, and a significant part of them were civilians, non armed individuals » Jack's voice cracked some, remembering the corpse he found there, burned or worse… they would haunt him for the rest of his life. He steeled himself and resumed his report. « The way the wood was decaying when I site as well as the small radioactivity, higher than the normal for Pandora's standard indicate the use of isotope warheads. Thirty six hours after the attack, Augustine, Chacon, Spellman and Sully bailed from Hellsgate. I've checked the security cameras' log. Quarrich barged outside the control room through the airlock without notice and opened fire upon Chacon's SA-2 Samson without forewarning with a standard issue assault rifle . After he emptied an entire clip on them, he used his WASP handgun. It is been confirmed that Augustine has been hit, and succumbed from her wound a few hours later. We haven't been able to recover her body from the Na'vi whom, according to Norm Spellman's video log, gave her the funeral ceremony of an estimated clan member. This confirm the emerging pattern I've detected in the past three years, since Quarritch replaced Falco as chief of the security details. His removal from leader duty is IMPERATIVE. There is convincing proof that he is planning illegal action for the next 48 hours, including the use of… »
A pressure in Jack's back applied by something metallic, obviously the business end of a machine gun indicated that he has been caught.
Quarritch's acerb tone could be heard from behind him, as a vehicle, either a Swan jeep or a buggy stopped near.
« I'm not interrupting something, am I, Jack? » the Colonel asked.
Jack dropped the device in the grass. The camera pointed toward Jack and Quarrich
« There must be something wrong with these freak meat suit, that five, no, six -SIX!!- of you brain boys switched sides. Or is it your nerd mind that is at fault? » Quarrich hissed in his expect.
Wynfleet, who just came by with his AMP suit, his hug canon pointed at Jack, guffawed.
« There are reason, after all why us jocks give you people a hard time in high schools and college. » the merc laughed, butt banging Jack's avatar in the jaw. « Maybe that you remember your place. See what happen when you get funny ideas? We normal people have to shoot you freaks down a few notches. »
Wynfleet turned toward Quarritch and saluted.
« All the blue fu… » he began
« Language, soldier! » the colonel snapped.
« Sorry, Sir! I meant to see that all the Avatar drivers but two have been unplugged and their avatar locked in their shack as your order. The Chinese chick and him. Su Chen has tried to strangle one the soldier out of her interface, but nothing a bullet between the eyes can't fix. Aside from this, everything is ready for the clean slate campaign. Nobody can stop us now.»
Something snapped in Jack. He no longer cared that the mercenary just gave him and his employers of the Interstellar Commercial Administration the rope to hang them with. Su Chen was a passionate young woman who believed she could make a difference, and now, she was dead. Not just Avatar dead. But human, gone-for-good dead.
Two things happened at the same time: Wynfleet noticed what Jack dropped earlier was still recording as well as the logo that appeared on the screen. The other was that Jack turned around, slapping the human's face with his tail with the force of a hooked punch, grabbed the machine gun out of the dazzed marine's hands, even though he was using an assisted armor and used said gun as a baseball bat, sending the disarmed man airborne and backward, colliding with Wynfleet's armor hard enough to shatter the soldier's spine and topple the landmate off his feet.
Without wasting time, and not caring to pick the satellite transmitter, Jack jumped on Logan's back, and connected his queue with the pa'li's antenna, forming the Tsahaylu.
I have to warn Sully and the Tsahik Mo'at! I know what they're planning to do!They… »
Jack didn't finish his mental sentence, as the backup AMP that just arrived from the bungalow opened fire along with the marines and the Colonel. The bullets and shells swarm cut through Avatar and Pa'li both as if they were mere cardbox training targets.
Quarritch approached Jack's motionless Avatar, and pointed his Wasp against his forehead. Grinning, he pulled the trigger.
Then, holstering his revolver, he turned. If that sunovabitch was in any shape or form to think, let alone speak, provided he survived the massive feedback, then somebody must really watch over him.
« Is he still alive? » he asked him men in the Avatar Mod trough the VHF radio set.
« Ayeye, Sir, but inconscious. He was convulsing like mad in his box until a few seconds ago. » a voice in his helmet replied.
Quarrich smirked and turned away.
« I love it when my plans come together and on schedule, despite incompetence and sabotage. Wynfleet, toss the carcasses of the freak and his stud outside the shield. Let's leave the Viper wolf have a last meal, soon we'll wipe them out! »
Walking to the transmitter after he got his AMP back up, Wynfleet smached it, ignoring what the tiny, still blinking hologram displayed before vanished.
=PRIORITY 1 -VIDEO MESSAGE SENT =
Then it vanished and all that remained was a broken marvel of technology