Nighthawk (NUMA Files 14)

“We only did that because—”

He wouldn’t let her speak. “There are five separate treaties governing activities in outer space,” he snapped. “The United States is a signatory on each and every one. Three of them were drafted by American statesmen. Collectively, they forbid every activity you’ve so recently engaged in, from the militarization of space to the national appropriation of any part of space or any celestial body, such as the Moon.”

As he railed at her, she recalled the ethical arguments internally discussed at the NSA prior to the mission. Arguments put forward and then so easily swatted aside. “We claimed nothing,” she said. “We merely retrieved free-floating particles.”

“Are you really going to play the lawyer with me?”

She fell silent and he turned and led her out of the grass and onto a plateau. From here, they looked over the lake seventy feet below. In the distance, the waterfall fell, with its hushed and ceaseless voice.

He turned back her way and bore down. “Like everything else in space, these free-floating particles are reserved as part of the common heritage of all mankind. They belong to everyone on Earth and to no one person or government in particular.”

The furor in his voice surprised her. Why, she thought, should he care about such things? How would he even know about them? Or about the wording of some obscure treaties?

“Who are you?” she asked.

“You still don’t recognize me?” he said, sounding almost disappointed. “Fortunately for me, I suppose. I feared you might spot me when we dined together beneath the cliffs of La Jalca.”

He reached to the side of his face as if to scratch at his ear but instead of scratching began to pull at his beard, slowly removing the portion on the right side of his face. His skin was burned beneath it, not terribly disfigured but scarred and hairless.

“The other side of my beard is real,” he replied, “but I can grow nothing over here.”

An indentation in his jawline told her the bone had been broken and never healed correctly; a portion of it might have been removed.

“It was the crash and the fire,” he explained.

Suddenly, the pieces came together for her. This man was involved in hacking the Nighthawk’s control system. He knew about the NSA mission and the antimatter. He was well versed in the international treaties regulating the use of space. And he knew her.

“Beric?” she said.

“So you do remember.”

She barely recognized him even now. Years had passed. Age and scars had changed his face. His eyes held no kindness, only bitterness and twisted anger. “I don’t understand? How? Why? Your plane exploded. They told us it was a terror group. They told us we were all in danger.”

“I was in danger,” he insisted, as he raised his voice. “And the terror group was based in Washington, D.C. Ironically enough, you now work for them.”

“The NSA?” she said. “Why would they want to harm you? Surely you can’t believe what you’re saying.”

“I have proof,” his voice accusatory as he moved closer to her. “And what’s more, they had a motive. If you recall, I was involved in the initial studies that determined the possibility of antimatter getting trapped in the magnetic field. I was the one who suggested it might be a more stable form of mixed-state matter—if it remained cold enough. The head of the program came to me shortly after I submitted my findings. He said they’d been discussing a plan, not just to search for the antimatter but to actually harvest it. I objected strenuously. They insisted the purpose was peaceful, but when the funding is coming from the military and the National Security Agency, that stretches credibility just a bit.”

Her head was spinning, but she took in every word.

“We shall use this for propulsion to push rockets to Mars in eight weeks,” he said in a false voice. “To the outer planets in less than a year. Even to deep space. But it wasn’t long before someone mentioned the possibility of a weapon.”

His voice growing louder, he shook his head in disgust. “I threatened to go to the press. To put the information out on the Internet. To tell the whole world, no matter what they did to me. I knew what you’re probably discovering right now: it is a mistake, a Pandora’s Box we’ve brought into our homes and managed to hold shut only by the thinnest of margins.”

She saw it now. It was a mistake. A disaster in the making. She wished she’d never been a part of it.

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“I was threatened with deportation, should I speak a word—thirty years in solitary confinement. I agreed to keep quiet, but they watched me constantly. It seems my word wasn’t enough. On that short flight to New Orleans they made their move. My plane exploded over the Gulf of Mexico. It left me like this. I ended up clinging to an abandoned oil rig, my face a cake of blood. I found a life raft the next day and waited for the tide. I made it to shore under cover of darkness. And I chose to remain hidden. I knew if they found me, I would be dead.”

She stared at the scarred complexion, wondering how he’d survived and who had stitched him back together so badly. A doctor with a gun to his head, perhaps. Or maybe he’d done it himself. His affect was hideous; he sounded paranoid. She wondered if he’d blown up his own plane to fake his death. Was he so deranged that the difference between good and evil was lost on him? “So you came here and began plotting revenge?”

“At first, I only wanted to survive and disappear,” he insisted. “I created Urco. As I learned more and more about the destruction of man by man, it became clear to me.”

He hesitated; taking a step back, he changed the subject. “Why did you leave NASA and join the clandestine world of the NSA?”

“Because of what happened to you,” she whispered. “After your death, and the endless news of terrorism and war in other parts of the world, I realized that most of the planet was filled with evil. And that evil must be fought at every turn.”