Avatar is the property of people who aren't me. This work of fiction is not authorized by those people.
A/N – Starting in October, I should be able to update regularly.
"You know what the real problem is, don't you?" she asked.
Franklin let out a short laugh. "I can think of a few problems," he replied. "But what's on your mind?"
"He knows too many people." Janet Tullman, RDA's chief public affairs officer, had been at the company much longer than Franklin. She had succeeded her former boss, David Lieberman, to assume her current role after Chairman Savage fired David for failing to keep the media away from RDA's prosecutions of Abe Scheller's wife.
Those trials had been the first sign to all of RDA's competitors that something had gone very wrong in the company's upper echelon, and they had spent considerable resources probing RDA for the cause behind the upheaval. Franklin knew that if he failed to resolve the current crisis, he would not lose his job because of the chairman's decision, but because there might not be an RDA at which he could continue his employment.
He sighed and set his glasses on the conference room table so that he could rub his eyes. They had spent most of the last half hour trying to put together a statement in anticipation of the media inquiries that were sure to follow RDA's assault on the Schellers' home. They had nothing to show for their efforts. "Yes, I have considered that."
"Do we have to be so visible about this?" she asked. "Is there any way we can take care of him quietly?"
"That was the purpose of my asset." Franklin had not heard from Jude since last evening. She had contacted him to say that she had successfully planted surveillance devices on the perimeter of the Schellers' home, and would make her first report in the morning. She was supposed to have called in over two hours ago. "Apparently, though, that hasn't gone as planned."
"So why is the backup plan to storm his house with SecOps? I mean, let's go throw bricks at hornets' nests while we're at it."
"We can't sit back and wait for him to act," Franklin said. "Doing things quietly – properly, anyway – takes time. The chairman wants this resolved today."
Janet shook her head. "As long as he knows we're guaranteed to get blowback." She sighed and continued, "My worry is that there's no way we can say something without also saying that our Pandora mission failed. Again."
"It didn't fail," Franklin replied. "It's succeeded in spite of Abe's betrayal."
"You're one of those who believes that the bigger the lie is, the more likely people are to believe it, aren't you?"
"I believe it because it keeps working."
"We can't keep fooling all the people all the time," Janet said, recalling the old adage. She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. "That was the thing about Abe. He also knew who he needed to keep in the dark and who he needed to be open with. It always creeped me out. Whenever he talked to you, you didn't know if he was being sincere or playing you for an idiot."
"But he was successful."
Franklin had met Abe just once before, back when he was starting his career in corporate espionage. It had been at a conference ostensibly for experts in intellectual property rights, but under the surface it was one of the few venues where the wealthiest multinationals sent their armies of intelligence operatives to ensure that lines of communication remained healthy in the event that their business rivalries spilled over into something more dangerous. As each of the leading corporations constituted small – or, in the case of RDA and few others, not-so-small – nations, these were akin to peace conferences.
As a junior deputy, his job was to sit and observe his superiors as they negotiated with their rivals. In contrast, Franklin recalled that Abe had put his deputies forward as chief negotiators at the various meeting tables. He appeared as a commanding general who was only there to watch a meticulously planned battle unfold, and to ensure none of his field commanders got into too much trouble.
Most of Abe's counterparts did not have the same respect for his tactics.
After one such meeting where Abe's deputies had been put forward as lead negotiators, a representative of one of RDA's corporate rivals directly challenged Abe for demeaning the others by refusing to engage them personally. Franklin remembered the encounter in vivid detail. Abe stood there like a rock, patiently suffering through the man's tantrum.
At the end of the rant, Abe said in a measured tone, "I'm sorry your subordinates are too incompetent to play with the big boys, but mine aren't. And since you haven't said anything worthwhile in these last few minutes, I'm more certain now than I was this morning that talking with you directly would have been a giant, goddamned waste of my time."
Four months later, RDA initiated a hostile takeover of the rival company.
"Yeah, well, let's just say I wasn't too broken up when he got the Pandora assignment," Janet said in response to his passively respectful comment on Abe.
"I don't think you were alone," he replied. "Inside and outside RDA." He donned his glasses once again and said, "I still think we're on the most solid grounds if we play it up as a case of extortion. He went to Pandora and found something awry, but rather than do his job and call the leadership's attention to the issue, he decided to use it to his personal advantage."
"So what did he find? Hypothetically."
"We don't have to say that. We'll cover it up as 'proprietary' or 'under investigation.'"
"We already told the world there was an industrial accident," she protested. "Did he find corporate mismanagement? A cover-up? Again, if we go the extortion route, then that suggests RDA has done something that could merit extortion." He arched an eyebrow at her, and she held up her hand. "That we don't know of," she emphasized.
They continued this brainstorming session for another several minutes in the AMIS conference room, whose smoked-glass walls were designed to offer total sound reduction. Had they been of more basic construction, Franklin and Janet might have heard when Abe and his accomplice barged into the office and began pulling employees from their cubicles and offices, corralling them with threats of violence.
Instead, their first indicator that something had gone wrong came when Cliff Houser, a deputy of Franklin's who he frequently encouraged to leave RDA on early retirement, opened the conference room's door and was soon followed inside by the assembled hostages.
At the beginning of the influx, Franklin stood and asked to the group, "What's going on?" He got his answer a moment later when Abe turned the corner and brought a gun to level between his eyes.
A young woman pushed past Abe and began barking orders at the rest of the group. "Faces against the wall! Get on your knees!" Someone was too slow to comply. "I said your knees, asshole!" Franklin might have turned to see who was disobeying if he were not so compelled to keep looking at the gun barrel in front of him.
"Are you Franklin Ashworth?" Abe asked. In contrast to the woman, Abe sounded calm, in total control of the situation and himself. Franklin nodded in response. At that, Abe's eyes seemed to harden. "You and I need to talk."
"Good morning, San Francisco!" the male anchor said into the camera as a light, piano-driven theme song quietly played in the background. His beaming smile seemed to take up most of the screen. "It's eight-o-clock this Tuesday, February Eleventh, and a beautiful sixty-seven degree, sunny day here in downtown." The program switched to another camera, which showed the four-person panel of hosts sitting next to each other on a white, semi-circular couch in a set designed like an oversized living room.
They all had the same broad, pearl-white smiles as the leading host.
"Of course, I'm Dan Steel, here with the best morning show team – I'll just say it – on the West Coast."
"Only the West Coast?" another of the male broadcast personalities, lighter-skinned and balder than Dan, asked, eliciting a round of contrived laughs from the others.
"I don't want to get us into trouble!" Dan replied in mock defensiveness. "And there are a lot of media markets out there. Let's just stick with the most award-winning team in San Francisco, okay?"
"All right, Dan," his female co-anchor said to him, still smiling, and then turned to the camera switched to close-up on her. "It is true that we are San Francisco's leading source for information about your daily living, at home and at work, and we have a great show for you over these next few hours. But first, sixty-seven degrees?" She turned to look at the other male on the sofa, the shot going wide again. "That's a bit warm for this time of year, isn't it, Terry?"
"It is," Terry replied. "We're not going to see anything like the record-breaking eighty- and ninety-degree temperatures that we had this time a few years ago, but we will get into the upper-seventies as this high pressure system continues to linger over the Bay Area. We'll get to all of that, plus the fourteen-day forecast, San Francisco's most accurate morning forecast," he said with a turn and nod towards the camera, "in a few minutes."
The camera focused on Dan and his co-host. "Thank you, Terry." He turned towards the camera. "Sue's right – we have a great show planned for you this morning. In addition to local, national, business, and entertainment news, we have some excellent features for your daily living."
"We do," Sue said. "In this first half hour, we'll be comparing some of the leading, exopack maintenance products to make sure you're getting the most for your money. Later, we'll be joined by the renowned, award-winning chef, Kaylie Davis, who will show you how you can make restaurant-quality meals out of imitation meats. First, let's look at some of today's headlines."
Natalie was not paying attention to any of this. She had turned to the program in an attempt to keep herself relaxed and distracted, but she was finding more comfort in idly scratching the fur behind Vertex's ears.
From the time he was a puppy, Vertex had been able to detect when she was sad or anxious, and his reaction was unchanged. He casually approached her, sat at her side, and rested his snout in her lap. He would then stare up at her with the intelligent, rich brown eyes that were iconic of his breed, and then whimper until she acknowledged him. Normally, a few minutes of petting or talking aloud would calm her down, but she felt no better now than when their ritual began earlier in the morning.
She had done as Dawn advised and put together an emergency escape bag of her essential belongings – her personal tablet, medications, toiletries, and a few changes of clothes – but having it sit beside her on the couch did little else but keep her thinking about the possibility that she would need to use it. In her mind, Dawn – sometimes her mother – frantically raced down to the basement to rouse her into flight. They would pack in to the minivan, and then speed off to a high-speed rail station. Sometimes they were pursued by armed agents; sometimes they were undetected on the drive, but every time they were captured before making it to a train.
Natalie tried not to think far beyond that point; but the thoughts which took the place of her escape fantasies were no less troublesome.
Although Dawn had pressed her for details, Natalie had kept silent about much of her night with Tseyo and the extent to which she entertained her curiosity. She did tell Dawn that she had let him know the extent of her feelings for him, and that he had been receptive – and that bothered her. With her urges satiated, her passion subdued, Natalie had paused to think about the consequences of her advances.
Natalie knew there was no chance of a long-term relationship, but then she knew that was not something she wanted. Tseyo, on the other hand, was quite literally hardwired for such a thing. She looked again at the hammock-turned-bundle which sat on the floor and wondered if Tseyo was trying to think about the effect his actions would have on trying to find a mate back home – if he was still seeking one.
It was always assumed that he was going to go home at the end of his mission, but what if he insisted on staying, now? He would, of course, have to explain his insistence to her father; and he would—? Natalie realized that she did not know her father well enough to complete the thought, but she had difficulty imagining a peaceful resolution under any circumstances.
Vertex whimpered, and she realized that she had stopped scratching. Natalie smiled down at him and, rather than resume petting, patted the couch seat beside her. "Come on, boy," she said.
The German Shepherd Dog looked at the seat, and then back at her. In his eyes, she saw him ask, "Really? I thought I wasn't allowed on the couch."
She scooted over and patted the cushion again. "It's all right. Come on."
Vertex propped his forepaws on the couch before leaping up, his large frame taking up most of the remaining space, and then lay down with his head and forelegs in her lap. Natalie rubbed his shoulder and withers, eliciting a few wags of his tail.
Natalie wondered what would happen to him if she had to leave.
On the heels of that thought, Vertex raised his head from her lap and turned towards the stairs. Natalie heard the footfalls coming downstairs and reached for her backpack. She gave Vertex one more pat on his shoulder.
Her mother turned the corner of the stairwell and smiled weakly at Natalie. "How're you doing?"
"I'm okay," she responded with a slight nod. "Don't you have a client meeting today?"
"I moved it." Krysta approached the couch and said, "And I'm going to guess you requested absences for your classes."
Natalie let out a soft laugh. "Yeah, I couldn't pay attention today if I wanted to."
Krysta reached down and patted Vertex on his head – to his delight – before setting Natalie's backpack on the floor so she could join her on the couch. She took a deep breath and said, "It's been a rough few days, hasn't it?"
"To say the least."
She put a hand on Natalie's knee. "I know this isn't how you thought it would be when your dad came home." She shook her head and added, "It's certainly not what I thought."
Natalie sighed and replied, "I realized something the other night. You know, when Doctor Walsh was here?" Her mother nodded. "You've never told me why he left in the first place – I mean, not in detail."
"That's because we wanted you to think more about him coming home than being away."
She furrowed her brow. "How was I supposed to do that? One day I had a dad, and then the next day he was gone."
"We tried not to make it painful…"
"I know," she interrupted tersely. "I know you did, but it was painful anyway."
Her mother took another breath, looked away, and after some hesitation said, "Your father didn't want to go. It was the last thing he wanted to do. However, the Savage got it in your father's mind that there was the chance that they could find a cure for you on Pandora."
"But why did he have to go? Daddy's not a scientist. Even you told me once that he can't tell the difference between a maple leaf and poison ivy."
Krysta chuckled. "That was an interesting camping trip." She looked back at Natalie and continued, "If you haven't picked up on it, your father doesn't suffer fools very well. After Parker made a mess of Pandora he, like everyone in RDA, was hyper-paranoid about something going wrong again. As soon as he got it in his head that someone might screw up a cure for you, there was no chance of bringing him back."
"Did you try?"
"Yes," she said emphatically. "I was hysterical about the whole thing, actually. However, your father is a stubborn son of a bitch."
Natalie's eyes widened a bit, but she also could not help from cracking a smile at her mother's quip. "Mom?"
She smiled and said, "I knew him for fourteen years before you came on the scene, Sweetie. I love him, but he can be more than a bit of a prick when he wants to be." Her mother sighed, raised an eyebrow, and asked, "Did I ever tell you that I didn't want to hire him in the first place?"
"No," she said with no small amount of surprise. "You guys always made it seem like he strolled into your office one day, proposed to you, and the rest was 'happily ever after.'"
Krysta laughed. "Well, Natalie, I guess we've been lying to you." She shook her head, continuing, "He was so fucking smug – pardon me – during his interview that I wanted to throw his resume in his face, but the HR reps on the hiring panel just ate him up. It didn't get any better once he started working for me, either. He always violated protocol, always got involved in matters way above his pay grade, and was totally blasé about it all." Despite rattling off her father's faults as an employee, her mother's tone was far from harsh. To the contrary, she seemed pleasantly lost in the memories.
"I wanted to fire him," she said flatly, "but despite his complete disregard for the handbook, he never failed on an assignment. Since outcomes were all our director looked at in doing employee evaluations, he got one promotion after another."
Natalie let out a short laugh. "It's hard to imagine Daddy being a renegade."
"He was," her mother said with a slow nod. Her tone became much less light-hearted when she carried on with the story. "And then your aunt was murdered." She shook her head again. "He changed literally overnight. He finally seemed to realize, for the worse, that there were things about life that he couldn't control. So when you were born, he wanted to be sure that there was nothing about your life that he couldn't make better."
"Is that why you named me after his sister?"
"He says you're named after his sister," her mother corrected with a slight smile. "I had naming rights – after twenty hours of labor, that was the least he could give me – and it was a happy coincidence that my dearest grandmother's name was also Natalie."
She smiled and then looked down at Vertex, who appeared less than engaged in the storytelling. Natalie regained his attention by scratching him behind his ears, and then she asked, "So, do you think he's doing all of this for me?"
"I think he's doing all of this because he's angry at how we've been treated by RDA," her mother replied.
"But it's all over!" she protested. "We – You won the lawsuits. The company was leaving us alone."
"Your father has a different definition of winning," Krysta said. "If the other guy isn't begging for mercy, it's not a win."
"Yeah, well, if he's so smart, he could have figured out a better way to get back at the company," Natalie angrily replied. "He could have figured out another way to make sure that things didn't go wrong on Pandora, and then we all could have been fine."
From somewhere deep inside of Natalie, raw emotions of anger and sadness surged forward to overcome her. She felt a lump form in her throat, and her vision became blurred by welling tears. She tried to put a hand over her face to maintain her composure, but it was not enough.
As soon as Natalie began to sob, her mother leaned over to wrap her arms about her shoulders, holding her close. "It's all right," she said in an attempt to be reassuring.
"No, it's not," Natalie replied between choked breaths. "This isn't all right. He doesn't have to do this to us."
"Do what?"
"Leave!" she shouted. "What do you think is going to happen? If he beats RDA, there are lots of people out there who aren't just going to let him come home again." Sarcastically, she imitated the optimistic response from the long arm of the law and said, "'Hey, it's totally cool you were a terrorist for a day and broke the world's economy. We'll clean it up. Have a nice day!'"
"Natalie, it's not going to help to think like that," her mother replied calmly.
"What else can I do?"
Krysta got off the couch to kneel in front of her, forcing Natalie to look her in the eyes. She held her hands, took a breath and said, "Natalie, I don't know what's going to happen today. Okay? I'm scared, too. But I know your father, and I know there's nothing he wants more than to come home to be with us. You're going to have to try to trust him."
"It's more than that," she replied.
"What else is there?"
Natalie explained between sobs, "Last night he tried talking to me about the day he left for Pandora, but I couldn't remember it. Like you said, I know you and he tried to make his leaving less painful for me, and I couldn't remember any of it."
"It was a long time ago," she offered. "You can't be expected to remember every detail from back then."
"But it wasn't for him!" Natalie said. "It was important to him, and I just threw it away like any other memory. I just don't want him to—," she had to pause to think of the right way to phrase her thoughts. "I don't want him to think I don't care."
"I know he doesn't think that, Natalie," her mother replied, reaching up to brush away a tear from her cheek.
A few moments of silence passed between them while Natalie recovered from the emotional upwelling, and then she asked, "Seriously, what are we going to do if everything goes wrong? Where are we going to go?"
"I don't know what we're going to do," Krysta replied, "but I know we're not going anywhere." To emphasize the point, she placed Natalie's backpack behind an adjacent chair. "This is our home," she said firmly, "and nothing's going to force us out."
Once Ashley had divested the AMIS employees of their various communications devices, she took on the task of escorting employees who continued to trickle in during the morning hours back to the conference room, although she had resisted the assignment.
"How do I know you aren't going to take him to the office and make a deal behind my back?" she pointedly asked.
"You don't," Abe replied tersely. "But unless you want someone to get loose and screw us both, you're going to have to trust me."
Abe walked with Franklin back to his office. Along the way, Franklin asked, "Is there any reason why I shouldn't be worried that two people holding guns don't get along?"
"I'm sure there are," Abe replied. "But I don't have time to think about them." Once inside the office, Abe locked the door and commanded Franklin to sit at his desk.
Abe was surprised to find that the office was arranged almost exactly as it had been when he left for Pandora. On the one hand, the familiarity provided him with a measure of comfort; but on the other hand, it was unnerving to think that the office was such that his successors had merely rotated through the office without any attempt to be unique.
"All right, Mister Scheller, you said you wanted to talk," Franklin said as he took his seat. "So let's talk."
"This is going to be a very one-sided conversation," Abe replied, sitting on the other side of the desk. "You're going to log in to the data archives, and then you're going to sit back and let me do what I need to."
Abe's replacement sat quietly for a moment, and then said calmly, "No."
He leveled the gun at Franklin's chest. "Excuse me?"
"I'm not going to be coerced, not as long as you're holding my employees hostage."
Abe had a flashback to the day he landed on Pandora, and was unable to hold back a grin. "Ironic," he said under his breath.
"Excuse me?"
"Nothing," he replied. He tipped the barrel of the gun forward to refocus the conversation. "Let's get back to having you do what I tell you to do."
Franklin sighed and said, "I'm disappointed in you, Mister Scheller. Your reputation wasn't of someone who'd become a gun-wielding maniac."
"If RDA hadn't sought retribution against my family – despite our years of loyalty to the company – maybe I wouldn't be," he replied flatly. "But the facts are what they are."
"And how many people are out there wishing they could hold you at gunpoint for what you did to their families?"
"Lots, I'm sure," he said. "But they aren't here right now. I'm here, and I'm on a schedule."
Franklin paused, nodding slowly, and then said, "Maybe if you just told me what it is you're after, we could work something out."
Abe raised an eyebrow. "Are you in a position to negotiate?"
He held his hands up. "I'm sure you understand that I can't make any promises, but that doesn't mean we can't explore our options."
"No, Frank, that's not what I mean. I mean to ask if you think you're operating on a level playing field."
"You're the one holding the gun," Franklin replied. "I think that says enough about the state of our bargaining table."
"Even if I weren't holding the gun," Abe began patiently, "twelve years ago I got suckered away from my family to go to a God-forsaken planet in order to salvage the ego of the world's richest, and arguably most powerful, person. I spent eight months fighting self-righteous geniuses and overtly hostile aliens to find a peaceful solution to the mess up there. In turn, I was captured, put up for execution, and then watched Savage's men march blindly into a slaughter on the orders of an idiot – an idiot who also sold me out because of his own, misplaced ego."
His voice had steadily risen, almost to the point of shouting. "After that, I crash landed a spaceship and hiked through a desert to make it home. Once I got there, I found out that my wife and daughter were holding on by their fingernails in the wake of one of the chairman's retributive onslaughts, and I was being pursued as a fugitive. If that wasn't enough, yesterday I found out that RDA had, in fact, sent an assassin after me and my family – and, believe me," he said with an uncertain laugh, "I'm heavily glossing over the last seventy-odd hours.
"So, Mister Ashworth, if you think you're in a position to negotiate with a person in my position, please let me know so that I can quickly divest you of that notion."
Keeping a calm tone, Franklin said, "We didn't send an 'assassin' after you, we…"
Abe interrupted him by raising his gun and pulling the trigger. The noise was deafening, and the bullet passed only inches by Franklin's head before it slammed into the wall behind him. Franklin dove to the floor a quarter of a second after what would have been the liquefaction of his brain had Abe's aim been off.
He stood from his seat and walked around to Franklin's side of the desk, lowering his gun at the cowering executive. "That's not what she told me after I broke her ribs with a golf club, Frank!" he shouted. "So don't insult me like that again."
"You can't kill me," Franklin replied from the floor. "You said it yourself: You need me to log in to the archives for you."
"No, I only need you to keep me on schedule." Abe pointed to the communicator in his ear. "On the other end of this line I have a decorated veteran of the Russian cyberwars, someone well versed in military-grade cyber security, much of it based on RDA's architecture. I'm more than confident that she could walk me through a hack into the archives, but I know it would take more time than I have.
"So which is more important to you? Is it your life or my schedule? I'd like to think there's a mutual benefit to keeping both, but I can adapt to not having either."
Franklin took a number of quick, deep breaths, and then he slowly got to his feet. He brushed himself off, and then sat in his chair. He unlocked his workstation, and then began the process of accessing RDA's vast data archives. Most departments of the multinational conglomerate only had access to sections of the database – just enough to be able to perform their critical functions. AMIS, on the other hand, was able to access any part of the archives.
RDA's archives were a history of the company's transactions, correspondence, and workflows going back to RDA's humble founding as a family-owned, green energy business in the overhyped "green economy" boom of the last century. As RDA grew into the world's premier research company, and then one of its first true, private quasi-national entities, the archives expanded to contain a diverse array of data that encompassed every conceivable endeavor of human intellect and creativity. At this point, every hour it added as much information as was created by the entirety of the first six-thousand years of human civilization.
Too vast and dynamic to be navigated by any one person – or any one team of people – RDA had spent billions of dollars creating advanced algorithms and programs to search through the massive repository; but even then it required specialized training. It was in this repository that Abe, due to his intrinsic paranoia, had buried his most vital information before departing for Pandora, and where he hoped to find the seeds of RDA's final undoing.
After passing through a series of security checks, Franklin pushed away from his desk and said, "You're in, Mister Scheller."
Tseyo had intended to say goodbye to Natalie before embarking on this journey, but two things had prevented him from doing so. The first was Norm's constant presence as they made the last preparations, and the second was the lack of affection he expected to feel for her following their actions the night before.
From the time he was a child, he had been told that once he mated with the right woman, he would feel like a missing part of his being had suddenly been rediscovered. Despite the strong response from his body to Natalie's advances, and their intimacy thereafter, he felt little different when he woke up the next morning than he had before their attempted copulation. It did not disturb him, but it did confuse him.
Tseyo had spent much of the rest of the morning considering what it could mean that his energy had not responded to Natalie's affection for him. He found it a difficult question to ponder. Although he was not unfamiliar with couples who, upon trying to bond, discovered their incompatibility and were repulsed, he did not know of any other examples where couples bonded apathetically.
His thoughts had begun to settle on figuring that the absence of a strong, positive response had to be an indication of incompatibility. That suited him well – even if he was disappointed by it – given his initial reluctance to entertain her more physical overtures. Tseyo doubted, though, that Natalie would be willing to settle for that.
He might have explored that concern more deeply, but by now Tseyo's thoughts were focused on keeping his impatience in check. Tseyo knew that countless hunts and battles had been ruined by a person's impatience resulting in well-laid traps springing prematurely and to disaster for all involved. He had been involved in some of those disasters.
However, the very little information he was being given coupled with the silence of his companions – supplanted by the droning white noise of the world outside the confined space – to make him all too eager for the battle to get underway. He looked at Norm and asked, "Are we there, yet?"
"No," Norm replied. "But we're getting close." Tseyo frowned and leaned against the wall. He expected the silence to persist a while longer, but then Norm said, "Can I ask you something?"
"Of course, teacher."
"Why did you paint yourself like that? I never saw your people do that kind of extensive artwork."
"We do," Tseyo replied, "but usually for celebration. You're right that it's not common for hunting or warfare."
"So why did you?"
He shrugged. "I let Natalie do it."
Norm raised his eyebrow and asked, "I thought you two were going to keep a distance after—?" He did not need to finish his thought for Tseyo to understand the question.
He nodded slowly and said, "We were, but I asked for her help to finish the rites."
"You know she's very confused about her feelings for you," Norm said with a frown. "You shouldn't be encouraging her."
"Children can't learn from their mistakes if they aren't allowed to make them," he retorted.
Tseyo respected Norm's intelligence, but he was always very transparent when he worked through his thoughts. Norm's eyes seemed to dart around as he processed Tseyo's reply, and then he looked ashen. "Did you mate with her?"
Sky People had a way of saying one thing while meaning another – a kind of false speech – which Tseyo found impossible to understand. However, he had learned how to speak partial truths, even if he was not always successful in passing them by Norm. Not wanting to cause his teacher and friend any undue concern, particularly given that he had resolved the conflict within himself, he made an attempt to diffuse his curiosity with partial truths. He took a breath and replied, "It's not possible for us to mate."
"True," Norm said. "But did you try?"
"I asked her about why she felt the way she did, and she told me."
"You're not worried that she might keep courting you, now?"
"Not unless she can come home with me."
Norm let out a short laugh and said, "Yeah, I don't see that happening." Even though Tseyo had been waiting for such a dismissive response, he had not expected to feel somewhat hurt by it. Still, he let the feeling pass without commenting on it in order to let the conversation end. Norm took a deep breath and continued, "Just be careful, Tseyo. Natalie's a nice girl, but she comes from a much different background than yours. You and she may not understand the same things in the same ways."
"I understand, teacher," he said with a nod. "But you shouldn't worry. There are more important things to think about today."
"That's very true," he said.
They were quiet again, for how long he was not sure. The silence was interrupted when he felt the compartment come to a sudden stop. Norm touched the device in his ear and spoke in his native tongue. His tone had a barely muted nervousness, but whatever he learned in those few moments did not cause him to panic further.
Norm spoke to the group, and they appeared to brace themselves. Then he turned to Tseyo and said, "We're here. Are you ready?"
The protest Abe had ordered up to lure SecOps out from inside RDA's compound was not the most impressive thing Luke had ever seen, but there was a significant presence of RDA and city security on hand to keep them at bay. Luke turned onto the ramp for the RDA loading dock and stopped at the barricade, waiting for the guards to allow him final passage. He tapped his earpiece and said quickly, "We're at the last gate, stay cool."
"How many guards are there?" Norm asked.
"Just three in the guardhouse," he replied. "I'm sure there're more inside. Will let you know."
When he came to a full stop, two of the guards emerged – both armed with submachine guns – and approached him. Neither was physically impressive, but Luke was more concerned about their marksmanship than whether or not he'd engage in fisticuffs. One also carried a mirror on a long pole, and he began to walk around the van, using the mirror to check the van's chassis for explosives. The other guard walked up to the driver-side door and said, "Can I have your driver's license, shipment order, and vehicle scan documentation, please?"
Luke produced his license – made current by Abe's forgery – and a tablet left in the van by the Soldiers, to which Dawn had uploaded falsified shipment and scanning records. If everything worked out, the guards would accept that he was delivering fifty office chairs.
"I'll be right back," the guard said, and then returned to the guardhouse.
"Take your time."
Moments later, the guard checking for explosives gave his colleagues a thumbs-up, and soon after that the guard who reviewed Luke's documents returned. "Technically, I shouldn't let you in," he said.
Luke's stomach lurched. "Why's that?"
"You're two minutes late from your expected arrival," he replied.
"It's all this police bullshit," Luke replied defensively, thinking quickly, and leaned out the window to indicate the crowd. "I had to detour fucking twice!"
The guard held up a hand and said, "Relax, sir. My supervisor isn't here, so I don't care." He handed Luke back Luke's driver's license and tablet, then added, "Just make sure that the next time you make a delivery, you make it inside the window. Site supervisor's a real asshole about that."
"I'll keep that in mind," Luke replied. "Thanks."
The guard gave him a nod, and then gave a thumbs-up to the guard who remained in the booth. The barricade lowered soon thereafter, and the guard stepped away from the van. "Have a good day, sir."
"You too."
Luke drove forward, entering a short tunnel which led into the main loading dock. He activated his earpiece and said, "Okay, we're in. I'll tell you what the numbers look like in just a second."
"We're standing by," Norm said. "Tseyo's about ready to jump out the doors on his own."
"Yeah, well, that'd be bad," Luke replied with a short laugh.
Once he pulled around the final bend in the tunnel, Luke took a quick survey of the activity on the loading dock. It was an unremarkable expanse of concrete, bunkered several floors beneath ground level. Vehicles were directed to pull up to a raised platform, from which a ramp would extend to assist with unloading. "Okay, I see five guards and seven – no, eight – people unloading other trucks."
"Where are the guards?" Norm asked.
"Three are up on the platform, near the main corridor," he explained. "When I back into our spot, they'll be on your left. One of them is down here waving me in, and the other looks like he's getting ready to operate our ramp, straight back and to your right."
"Guns?"
"Just handguns, nothing special."
Norm snorted. "Yeah, until they start shooting."
As Luke began to back into the spot to which he was directed, he said, "I can probably take out the guy down here. What are you doing?"
"We're working on it," Norm replied. He looked at Tseyo and said, "You're going to go out first, all right? There will be a group of three people to your left. Is that too many for you to take?"
Tseyo very lightly shook his head, his eyes showing complete control and concentration, and he began to readjust himself so that he could quickly exit the van – although not before he brusquely discarded his exopack against the hold's back wall.
"Just remember to be fast," Norm said. "And then wait to follow the rest of us." Tseyo nodded, his tail twitching.
He looked alternately at Amy and Matthew and said, "There's going to be one guy at the top of the ramp. You two rush him, all right?" They nodded just as the van came to a full stop.
Whether it was the adrenaline beginning to pump through him or a senseless, final act of male bravado, Norm leaned forward and gave Amy a deep kiss. She did not push him back right away, but soon leaned back and said dryly, "Battle first, sex later, Norm."
Norm grinned and then touched his earpiece. "We're ready back here."
Luke did not respond, but Norm could hear him opening his door to exit the van. He could barely make out the conversation outside the van, but it did not sound like Luke was under duress. There was a bang at the van's rear doors, which Norm assumed was the ramp sliding into place. His heart began to race. When Luke disengaged the locks on the rear doors, the sound seemed to echo in Norm's head, no matter how faint it might have actually been.
There was a flood of light when the doors opened, and Tseyo leapt from the van with predatory speed – indeed, Norm was certain he heard a strong hiss as the Na'vi warrior disembarked. He was also certain he heard an array of expletives from the unsuspecting persons on the loading dock.
Amy and Matthew were also quick to charge up the ramp, arriving at the stunned guard about the same time that Tseyo had reached his targets. When Norm stepped out onto the ramp, he looked over and saw Luke apply a coup de grâce on his targeted guard by ramming the man's head into the still-open driver-side door with such force that Norm was surprised the door did not break from its hinges.
Norm ran past Amy and Matthew, who were divesting the guard of his radio and gun, and arrived at Tseyo's side. He could see that Tseyo had thrown one guard into a wall – and the man was slowly writhing on the floor, apparently and only semi-conscious – and had thoroughly incapacitated a second guard. The third had his arm up over his head as he cowered at the Na'vi's feet.
"Nice job," Norm said as he reached down and took the guard's gun, meeting no resistance from the terrified man.
He paused in the middle of the action when he recalled both his and Abe's insistence that the assault be conducted without weapons, but then Tseyo's caution from earlier came to mind. Can you promise that our enemies won't want to kill us? he recalled the Na'vi saying. Norm resumed holstering the weapon.
Now armed, Norm called out to the others, "Let's move!" When they rallied around him, he noticed that they had similarly equipped themselves with their subdued enemies' weapons – and Norm assumed with fewer reservations than he had.
Before they ran as a group down the basement complex's main corridor to continue their assault, Norm looked back at the civilians who had been on the loading dock. To a person, they stood motionless and slackjawed, eyes wide in surprise. Norm grinned and then resumed the attack.
As they had practiced, Luke peeled off from the main group to storm the maintenance room and gain control of the tower's elevators. "See you later!" he said, almost cheerfully it seemed to Norm, as he went about his assignment.
When the remaining group reached the elevator bay, they happened upon a small gathering of employees and guards who were waiting for one of the elevators. It did not take these people more than a few fractions of a second to process that they were in trouble.
One of the guards, however, had enough presence of mind to quickly activate the radio on his shoulder and shout, "Breach! Breach!" before Norm punched him square in his jaw, knocking him backwards. It took Matthew's assistance before the guard submitted totally to them, but Amy had far less trouble getting the unarmed employees to comply with her commands.
Tseyo, in the meantime, grabbed the other guard by his shirt and, raising him to eye level, slammed him against a wall. "Fucking Christ!" the guard exclaimed in a panic. "Please, fuck, let me down!" Tseyo hissed and, though it was unlikely that he understood the guard's plea, released him. He landed hard, crying out when he rolled one of his ankles, and Amy was quick to restrain him further.
Norm heard over the security's radios, "This is central. Who just called out a breach?"
He pushed the restrained guard against the wall and ordered, "Call it off!" The guard just spit in his face.
It would not have mattered if he had complied with Norm's demand. A moment later, a panicked voice came over the radio. "This is the loading dock. We just got attacked by aliens! They ran down Access Hall Alpha."
"Shit," Norm muttered. If that worrisome enough, a moment later he heard two distinct bangs echo from the corridor. He activated his earpiece and asked, "Luke, where are you?" Silence. "Luke?"
In the meantime, the guard's radio announced, "This is central. All personnel on Sublevels Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie, enact quarantine procedures."
"Sorry, Norm," he eventually replied. "I had trouble getting into the maintenance room. Shot the lock, we're good."
"Do you see the panel for the elevators?"
"I see lots of panels. This is going to take some time."
An elevator that the now-suppressed employees and guards had called before the team's entrance arrived on the floor, and the team piled in. Norm looked for the cab's identifier and relayed it to Luke. "We're on our way up. Get the other elevators locked down as soon as you can. I think we're going to have company soon."
From her seat in the Soldiers' command bunker, Jude had watched intently while Abe and the Soldier accompanying him had taken the AMIS employees hostage. Abe's fight with the guard at the front desk had caused a small crowd to gather around the monitor of the Soldier in front of her; and the spectators had dispersed with a measure of disappointment when the fight did not end with either Abe or the guard getting shot.
The girl who had been fitted with the stealth camera had been particularly harsh as she had gone from one office to the next, pulling out the unsuspecting workers and frequently striking them with her acquired gun. After the employees had been rounded up, things fell into a boring sentry routine, occasionally punctuated by excitement when a hapless RDA employee showed up for work only to be taken hostage.
Jude was still concerned about the constant monitoring of city traffic in the unidentifiable cities. From the timestamps on the traffic cameras, she was certain one city was on the East Coast, and another was in the Midwest. Soldiers monitoring these cities had spent a while providing traffic updates to unseen drivers, and in the last few minutes had switched to monitoring law enforcement communications.
She had also been able to identify a station which was dedicated to activities in San Francisco, as the Soldiers operating it had mentioned street names she recognized from near her hotel suite. It sounded to her like they were performing a kind of crowd control. "Make sure nobody lingers in the road," one of the controllers said. "The fascists will use any excuse to rush you. They're using Union Square as a staging ground, so watch for increased movement to the south."
In the midst of the activity, a Soldier turned away from her screen to look at the small group of the Soldiers' leadership which had assembled in the room. She said to one female in particular, "Commander, the primary van is inside the target perimeter."
The woman, who might have been the same age as Jude but whose line of work had left her appearing years older, nodded and called out, "Groups A and B, check in."
"Group A. The package just needs to be signed for," the Soldier monitoring the Midwestern city said.
"B, fifty seconds to delivery," the East Coast station reported.
"All right. Main group, synch up the packages and send out the signal in five minutes." The female Soldier tracking the van nodded and turned back to her station. The commander looked at Jude and said with a sneer, "This oughta keep SecOps out of your friends' hair."