“Some guy with blue hair you might recognize.”
The thumbnail projected a paused holographic image of Handax Skill in the middle of the limousine.
“I think I’d recognize a cretin with blue hair,” Maar kept his head away from the passenger window. He wasn’t terribly interested in a stray bullet flying through his cranium. “Who is this guy?”
“His name is Handax Skill,” the man explained, “Sort of the leader of PAAC.”
“People Against Animal Cruelty?” Kaoz asked and shook his head. “They’re always disturbing us.”
“They did a great job in the past hour, I’m afraid to say,” Crain snapped his fingers and sat back into the chair, “I could fill you in verbally. The broadcast does a better job of explaining just how bad this is than I ever could.”
“They kill Dimitri and there’s more bad news?”
“Just watch.”
Maar leaned forward as the recording played. A sound of gunfire and commotion rattled around the walls of the limousine.
Even though Handax was long dead it felt like he was directly addressing everyone in the vehicle. Maar found it doubly worrying. He’d failed to realize that Handax addressed a lot more people than just those in the car.
“Bisoubisou never boarded Opera Beta. We found her body at the compound along with hundreds of others. Those we found alive and well, we rescued. USARIC has killed three of my team. Moses, Denny and Leif—”
“—Oh no… no…” Maar gasped and held his mouth in shock, “Did this Individimedia go live?”
“I’m afraid so,” Crain frowned.
“What? How many saw it?”
“Tens of thousands, if not more. Keep watching.”
“That’s okay,” Maar tried to calm himself down, “We’ll just deny it and claim—”
“—They’ll deny it, of course,” Handax’s recording continued much to Maar’s worry, “They’ll claim they went missing and have no involvement. In a matter of seconds, I’ll be joining them.”
“Over there!” screamed another voice in the recording. “Hey, you. Put your arms above your head and drop to your knees.”
Handax turned away from the broadcast to a cacophony of bullets. The recording paused, offering Crain, Maar and Kaoz a view of the ground.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Maar thumped the seat in anger and wiped his sweating brow, “USARIC shot the protesters dead on a live feed?”
Kaoz and Crain didn’t know how to respond. They watched their boss try to calm down.
The roads were empty right now. Maar was surrounded by advisers and bodyguards, two of whom were with him in the limousine. Many more were stationed at USARIC’s Research & Development Institute twenty miles away to the north.
“I’m…” Maar whimpered, “This was a mistake. A big mistake.”
“What was a mistake?” Crain asked with no hint of emotion.
“The Star Cat Project,” Maar pointed around the interior of the limousine, “Opera Beta, all this. How long ago was the broadcast?”
“Thirty minutes or so.”
“Ugh,” Maar hung his head and sniffed, “All hell is going to break loose.”
“Maar, if I may say so. I don’t think any of this was a mistake. You made decisions in USARIC’s best interests. If you had failed to act on Saturn Cry, or Tripp Healy’s request to find a suitable subject, we could well have regretted it. In my view, you had no choice.”
“Try telling that to Dimitri,” Maar looked up and stared Crain out with his now-reddened eyes, “He’s not even around anymore to argue with you.”
“It’s terriful what happened to him,’ Crain tried to sympathize, ‘but this was always going to be a contentious issue. It’s just very unfortunate—”
“—They shot him in the chest and practically destroyed the animal compound,” Maar interjected with a healthy dose of venom, “They’ve set a dangerous precedent. You know what people are like. When one maniac shoots a place up and becomes a household name they spawn thousands of imitators!”
“I’m sure it won’t come to that, Marr,”
“Thank God social media is a thing of the past. Everyone would be getting ideas.”
Crain tried for a smile of reassurance. “They targeted Vasilov because of his Russian connection. The two aboard Beta who defected and tried to sabotage the mission.”
“You’re not the one in my shoes, Crain,” Maar said. “I want my wife and son relocated to safety.”
“It’s not necessary—”
“—Have it done right now, Crain,” Maar snapped in a fit of rage, “I can’t have them in the firing line. Compounds collapse. Important people get shot. Innocent bystanders die.”
Crain slipped his thumbnail onto his thumb and shook his head.
“Crain?” Maar threw the man a remorseless look, “Wives and children burn, Crain.”
Seven-year-old Remy Gagarin looked up at his mother with an angelic smile. She spat into her palm and wiped a black smudge from his cheek.
Vera Gagarin held his face in her hands and made sure he looked the part.
“Mom?”
“Yes, Remy?”
“Why must I speak in English?”
“Because, son, most who watch will not understand Russian.”
She palmed his dark, gelled hair over his scalp, smartening his look. She took a step back and eyed him up and down, “There, that is much better.”
Remy held out his arms. Dressed in a very attractive suit and tie, he looked approximately a quarter of a million dollars.
It had been nearly two years since Space Opera Beta left on its mission to Saturn.
Remy looked at the marble mantelpiece as he pulled his shirt down. Pictures of him with various celebrities, including Maar Sheck, adorned the wall.
He’d become famous for a time – the handsome boy whose Russian Blue had won the Star Cat Project.
He missed Bisoubisou beyond all measure. His family’s new-found riches staved off the regret for large periods of time. The sickening feeling of giving her up for the sake of the good life crept back in. He’d grown up a lot in the past twenty-four months.
Vera didn’t much care about Bisoubisou. She and her son rarely spoke of her.
His mother had never been of a cat lover. It was her son’s cat as far as she was concerned – at least, that’s what she’d tell herself whenever she experienced the odd pang of regret.
The most fierce regret came in the form of the occasional sadness in her son’s eyes. He walked over to the Bisoubisou action figure perched next to the photos. A five-inch rendition of the cat he once had, which resulted in a brief, but Pyrrhic, smile of affection.
Vera’s forearm pulsated. She pushed the black ink around into a circle on her skin and looked at her son, “You still miss her, don’t you?”
“She is in space helping the American astronauts,” Remy was lost in his own naive contrition. He put the figure down on the ledge, “One day she will return.”
“Okay, she is ready,” Vera pulled an antique chair across the rug and set it beside their expensive couch. “Come, sit next to me.”
Remy sat next to his mother on the sofa. She removed her thumbnail and placed it on the Edwardian-style coffee table in front of their knees. “Now, remember. You speak with precision. No filling time with lessense.”
“Yes, mother.”
“You answer the questions she has with as few words as possible and be polite when you do it.”
“I will.”
“Very good,” she snapped her fingers, forcing a projected holographic image of a woman to appear in the middle of the room.
“Ah, I’m here!”
A life-size image of Dreenagh Remix pinged to life in the middle of the coffee table. Her shins were out of view as she stood within the coffee table. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she looked down and stepped out through the wooden slab.