Deleted Scene, The Orionids
Caddell revs his antique Benz-Maybach at a crowd, makes a friend, and then is given a directive.
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CAUTION SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT.
Bill Caddell hung up on Axyl Dover, gaveling his fist on his chair, and swiveling to the cloudy, damp solitude outside his window. Ayxl knew Helena’s son had upgraded the software and suspected something was wrong at the moon’s far side station.
Georgetown looked as gloomy as his future, and that of the outpost on the far side of the moon.
“Minh!”
His voice echoed through his twenty thousand square foot estate, returning silence. If Axyl Dover knew, who else knew?
He whirled and called Jim Easton. Easton answered from his California office. At least Easton looked like he was in his office—blue oxford, short sandy brown hair combed to the side, and thin-rimmed round glasses. Or maybe the background was a green screen and Easton had one of his interns program a perfect holographic I’m busy sigh and what now smile. He preferred in-person meetings, where he knew who and what he was dealing with. But he didn’t have time to fly across the country.
“Axyl Dover knows.”
“Crissake. Helena’s little shit is going to ruin everything.”
“Arien’s already started his little campaign of sabotage. We don’t have a lot of time.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to see Adkins.” John Adkins was President Barnett’s Chief of Staff.
“What’s he going to do?”
“Put me on Project Orion.”
“He already said no, Bill.”
“I need to be up there, on the moon.” He swallowed.
I need to look Helena in the eye and explain the gravity of the situation. If her little shit sabotages the station, her life’s work gets destroyed with it.” He paused a beat to let his hook in Easton set. “And Barb’s future too Jim.” Easton’s wife, Barb, was the senior Senator from California and rumored to be the next agency director, or Vice President.
“Maybe we just let it go. Arien’s contract is up soon.”
“Not soon enough. Axyl Dover thinks the images are faked.”
“Christ. Are they?”
“How would we prove that without releasing the raw data?”
The raw data was a problem. It couldn’t be released.
Easton shook his head. The video blacked out, and Caddell heard rustling. “Fine. I’ll have Barb call Adkins.”
“All I’m asking.”
“Take Kody.”
Kody was Easton’s drug-addled, college-aged son. Every vice imaginable was legal on the moon. Kody had the money to buy it, the family pull to hide it, but not the sense to avoid it. That he hadn’t overdosed already was a minor miracle. Did the colony even have a hospital?
Caddell shook his head. “I don’t think that’s wise.”
“You mean like hiring that little shit and his boyfriend in the first place? You guaranteed me.”
Caddell didn’t respond. No point explaining for the third time why they put Darcy and Holden on the station. It was for everyone’s protection—his, Jim Eastons, and especially Barb’s career, which was lucrative for all of them.
“I want Kody there, Bill. I need a second pair of eyes.”
Caddell’s jaw clenched. Having Easton’s little shit watch over him while he went to the moon to manage Helena’s little shit was not how he envisioned his last year at the agency.
“Fine.”
Caddell swiped the call closed and stared out his window again. Where was Minh? He yelled for her again, his voice bouncing off the glass window and reverberating in his ears. What would he do about Minh? His third wife, Mandy, signed the divorce papers three months ago. Now he saw no need for a five-bedroom Georgetown house, three of which were used for storage, anyway. Minh stuck with him through his second wife, who could go from zero to what Minh called con đĩ faster than his antique Benz-Maybach.
He yelled again. No answer. Minh was downstairs, across the house, in the kitchen. Ten thousand square feet of bedrooms and living area between them.
*****
Minh arrived with grilled cheese and tomato soup and served it, squawking about his blood pressure, his diabetes, and his plan to drive to the Oval office. It four kilometers. You walk. Good for heart.
She was right, although he tried not to encourage her by admitting it. A forty-five-minute walk from Georgetown to the Oval Office would have been quicker, but he needed to think. The call to Axyl Dover gave him acid reflux and now lunch burned the back of his throat.
Max, the antique Benz-Maybach S, he won at auction, always cleared his senses. He loved circling the city, letting the drone cars and autotaxis buzz by him. At Foggy Bottom, he liked to rev Max’s twelve-cylinder, six liter engine, shocking gen-whatevers into lifting their gaze from their devices long enough to drool at Max’s Mohave Gold hood and Desert Red body.
Max typically attracted something. Today he attracted the omnipresent Foggy Bottom protestors. A nice young man stepped from the crowd, running his hands over the gilt hood and sang Max’s praises. The young man grinned ear-to-ear, devouring the power of twelve hearts pumping six-hundred twenty-eight horsepower.
As the man approached, Caddell smiled and rolled down the window.
“My name is Ben,” he said, stuffing a blue and green flyer through the crack. “I love this car. Its from a better time, when we had people building cars, not robots. Before machines and humans bonded.”
Bonded. The man meant the neuroface, or the brain implant that let machines interface with humans over nanowires.
Caddell nodded. The kid wasn’t wrong. “This is the six liter handcrafted biturbo with the 4matic transmission. Six hundred and seventy foot-pounds of torque. His name is Max, and he goes zero-to-sixty in for and a half seconds.” Caddell had only done that once, and it cost him four-hundred dollars in gasoline. Max was a lot like his first wife in that regard—pretty to look at, well built, but expensive to maintain. “I had it restored. They don’t build ‘em like this.”
He floored the gas and redlined the engine for emphasis. A few of the protesters at the hood scattered, then laughed when Max went nowhere. The exhaust fumes drew more protestors from the sidewalk, like flies to honey. They surrounded him with signs. No drones! Human justice! Earth First!
Caddell waved, smiled, and rolled up the window as the light turned green. Max spit exhaust fumes at the horde.
After that encounter, he drove the city for a half hour, looking for a parking garage where Max wouldn’t be scratched. On the walk to the White House, his bursitis flared.
Caddell’s walk should have ended at a first-floor corner in the West Wing, a few long strides from the Oval Office. Caddell had been to that office more times than he had fingers and toes. It was where Adkin’s predecessor worked. And his predecessor’s predecessor. And so on, for almost two hundred years. Now, that floor was a museum, and Caddell’s walk took him to a staff elevator.
Past administrations hewed to the tradition of senior staff working from the White House. The Barnett administration’s senior staff worked eight stories under the real West Wing in an office complex that drones carved from clay and bedrock.
As he got in the elevator and pressed eight, he mused it would be funny if it weren’t so sad. He had survived five administrations and eleven agency directors. Of them all, President Barnett held the most promise. The latest Secretary, Leora Hoff, started as a class five hurricane, stirring up money, then hit a political mountain. Now she was barely a warm front. Congressional hill had that effect, although he had higher hopes. Now three years in, The Barnett administration had a bunker mentality. And worked in one to prove it.
The elevator doors opened at eight. Rather than the aroma of antique wood and three centuries of power, the stink of a dirty aquarium hit Caddell on the soft palate. He sniffed a sour mix of body odor and someone’s fish tacos that the ventilation couldn’t dissipate. Adkin’s office was at the end of a long corridor of square fishbowls. Transparent, slate gray, bleary-eyed inhabitants reminded him of bug-eyed koi dispositions more cyborg than human. The people-koi, glued to monitors, swam in blue electronic glare. Their eyes shifted and heads cocked, tracking him.
Caddell imagined that this was what the lunar colony was like. A turbid, decaying fishbowl of machines controlled by remnants of flesh. He spent decades avoiding a trip to the colony. Here, eight floors underground, the machines had come to him.
Adkin’s office door was open. Caddell entered, closing the door behind him. He was relieved to see the office’s transparent glass walls change to milky white. Privacy was a rare and expensive luxury. At least the Barnett administration preserved it here.
Adkins peered over his reading glasses, fixated on his screen. He held a cup of coffee in his right hand and his phone in the left. Low blue light bathed Adkin’s face and lit the slate-gray wall behind him.
Adkins’ face cycled to pink. Neuroface. Adkins used a neuroface to swipe through his screens on his computer.
Caddell didn’t remember Adkins having a neuroface the last time they met. Adkins had capitulated to the latest fad. His aging vision, bald spot, and short gray hair hadn’t changed, so at least he hadn’t capitulated to genetic mods. Who knew what happened when cosmetic doctors spliced brown-hair DNA into a virus and then infected patients?
Caddell waited for Adkins to speak, which ended up being twenty-three heavy breaths.
“Hard stop in five, Bill.”
Adkins didn’t look up. Instead, he sipped his coffee, his eyes jerking like the koi outside. His face changed to yellow, and Caddell could see notes reflected in his readers.
“Advance team.”
“What about it?”
“I saw your message. I need to be on it. Plus one assistant.”
“We had to cut back. Do whatever you need to do virtually. I don’t see the need for everyone to go.”
“Cut back?”
“Barrons are trying to cock-block us on this visit.” Adkins was talking to himself more than Caddell. Red and black print reflected in his reading glasses. “And now we have to go through them for security issues thanks to Homeland.”
Caddell had read rumors about agents getting sent home. There were two thousand towns in America bigger than the colony. All of them complained about Feds. Yet this administration seemed to be in a full-blown panic about it.
Adkins finally looked at Caddell over his readers. “I need to start the next meeting.”
“Like I said, I need to be on first wave to the moon. Plus one assistant.”
Adkins leaned back, inspecting Caddell over his glasses. “What’s the hurry?”
Why was Adkins gatekeeping? Had Barb called? Adkins didn’t have any power.
Caddell flashed his best smile and tap danced. “IIRAS. Pictures are out. I need to gather the staff. Maybe have a celebration this is—”
Adkins shook his head and rubbed his eyes under his readers. “Barb called. Chrissake, Bill, what are you up to now?” He held up his hand to signal that the statement was rhetorical. “I put in your retirement papers, did you get them?”
“I didn’t intend to retire until—”
“Retire Bill. You’ve earned it. Get yourself an RV and smell the pines out west.”
“I have one—”
“Good. You are on your way. Congratulations.”
Caddell looked at his feet and inhaled something that smelled like burning dust. His throat burned. He coughed. “I have a few things to clean up first. I want to—I want to make sure things are tidy for whoever—”
Adkins looked at his screen, and his face changed to orange and yellow. Adkin’s readers reflected TOP SECRET in red block letters. “This is about the Russell kid.”
“He uses Darcy, Bill, and he’s not a kid, he’s thirty two—” Caddell winced. Adkins was a little Napoleon and chafed at being corrected.
“Fucking mess is what he is. I have the intelligence report right here. He should have never been allowed on that station.”
Intelligence report. Caddell’s heart skipped. That was news. Top secret meant what was in that file would cause exceptionally grave damage to national security if made public. Or damage to Barnett’s re-election, which at this point were the same. Caddell stared at the gray sound-absorbing tile on the ceiling and wished he could read the report. Was he in it?
“Helena threatened to resign. His therapist signed off—” It sounded believable in his head. Aloud, his voice was defensive because he was eight floors underground.
“People are replaceable, Bill. Helena is retiring too.”
Caddell’s brain froze. More unexpected news. “She is?” He swallowed.
“I was going to have Hoff tell her.”
Caddell looked at the wall, but felt Adkin’s eyes stalking him. Another lungful of dusty air burned his nose. Sweat stung his eyes. Someone in the administration was cutting him out of the loop.
“Hoff is resigning too.” Adkins read something on his display.
Hoff, him, Darcy. They were cleaning house. His heart pumped in his ears, and Adkins became a pallid head at the end of a long tunnel. Had Axyl said something? First, he’d be fired, then he’d be jailed. He couldn’t go to jail.
“This is news.” The words sounded muffled rolling off his thick, dry tongue.
“What is your plan?”
“Have Helena talk some sense into him.” He choked the words out.
Adkins chuckled. “Yeah ok. Sense.”
His tunnel vision collapsed to a point with a red dot at the end. Adkins was reading a damaging report. Had Axyl prompted an inquiry? Fucking hell. Maybe Helena could persuade her son, but how would he persuade Helena now that she was retiring? He had no leverage.
His pulse raced. He thought he might pass out until Adkin checked his screen and then said, “I think you’re right. You created this mess, you should clean it up. Start with her. Tell her she’s resigning. Her and the kid and his boyfriend.”
He gulped air and a surge of fiery blood flushed his cheeks like he’d been defibrillated. “Me?”
“Commiserate how you were both shoved out of the agency early, then tell her how much you will be enjoying your retirement too. In your RV. Go to Alaska, its beautiful. You’ll like it.”
Adkins shooed him out the door.
“Alaska?” Caddell trembled, like Adkin’s had pulled him from a burning wreck. He scarfed air, waiting for his pulse to slow.
“Holograms don’t do it justice. Some places – still untouched by humans.” Adkins paused, leaning into his monitor. His color changed to a blue glow. “And you can still find cabins off the grid. Just your kind of place. Scenic and off the grid.”
Adkins gulped his coffee, and then the wall behind him glowed yellow. He held his index finger up, shushing Caddell. “Let’s give everyone two minutes. I am running late myself,” Adkins said to his monitor.
Adkins lowered his hand and turned back to Caddell. “And when you get to the colony, stay off Devana’s radar.” Adkins rubbed his forehead. “She’s very good at her job.”
What job had they given Devana? She was a glorified hall monitor for millionaires. If she was so good, why was she hiding two hundred thousand miles away?
“Someone should retire her.” The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them.
“Better not say that to Gaby, Bill. She’ll be through that door telling me how much Devana has done for her country, and giving her integrity and honor speech. How there’s none of it left in this town—which I am tired of hearing.”
Was there ever?
Adkins shook his finger. “I mean it Bill. Don’t you fucking screw this up. Don’t let Devana sniff you out. This trip is hanging by a thread. Do whatever you need to do to clean up the mess you made. Then retire.”
Caddell felt his jaw open. Weak air came out. Adkin’s finger shooed him out the door again, this time more violently. Caddell stepped back. Adkins closed the door, and the office morphed to an opalescent white.
Off the grid. Loud and clear. He turned to see the people-koi twitching their eyes in his direction.
The elevator door opened at the end of the long corridor and he paddled for the surface. Who was in the report? Was Easton in the report?
He dived for the elevator. As it closed, he gulped clean air. In his pocket, the blue and green flyer. The back read, Stop machines infecting humans.
He shoved it back in his pocket. He needed the opposite, to stop a human named Arien from infecting machines. Of course, if Helena thought Arien was messaging a group like Earth First, she would be livid. She would have no choice but to help him remove her son.
When the elevator door opened to F Street, the weather had changed. The sky was cloudless, blue, and he smiled.
The Orionids is available in Kindle Unlimited through Mid-march, and as an eBook, paperback, and hardback: https://books2read.com/theorionids
Total Eclipse is available in eBook, paperback, and as an audiobook by the end of Feb. Hardback is coming soon. https://books2read.com/totaleclipse
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