The Cultist's Retreat (The Erik Midgard Case Files Volume 4)

Chapter 15

Five hours later, we were back home on Luna.

HQ was buzzing, not with the news that I had successfully pulled off the riskiest undercover operation in years, but that, for the first time in history, an unknown amateur team had won the race. No one was celebrating more than the Venusian officers, who were watching the footage over and over again in the main canteen. The corridors were echoing with the cheering every time the Aphrodite Half-Shells, led by Orisha, crossed the finish line in clear first place.

"Good. Carry on," said Horus into his deskcom. "Call me the instant you're done. If you're expecting congratulations, Midgard, forget it. Pulling the nuts out of the fire is a lot less impressive when you threw some of them in there."

"I'm aware of that, sir," I said, standing at parade rest in front of his desk, along with Mirabi, Jake and Thor, who had insisted on coming back to Luna with us so he could explain the truth about the moles in person.

"He wasn't the only one," said Mirabi. "If he's going up on charges, put yourself there up with him. We informed you of the situation early. What were you expecting to happen when you didn't pull him out instantly?"

"Truth doesn't stop it being insubordination, Arjuna," said Horus. "I was stupid enough to hope he might have learnt from experience..."

"Are you nuts? Burnt or otherwise?"

"You said the same thing," I said.

"And you made me wonder what I had been thinking very fast."

"Yes. You clearly haven't learnt hax," said Horus. "And it isn't comforting to know you're still going to be bending the rules in twenty years time."

The security eyes in the infirmary at Poseidon Station had recorded everything. On Horus's deskcom screen, the footage was paused, showing me and Erik 45, just before he teleported away. I was almost tempted to ask for a printout so I could get it framed. Unless I wanted to pose with my cloning tube, which Horus had been talking about when he mentioned my mother, it was the nearest thing I was ever likely to have to a family photograph. But there was something else that kept drawing my eye. On the screen, now, my future self looked incomplete. I had noticed, but not processed, something about him while we had been together. Now I was noticing its absence, even though I could not tell what it was.

"By the sound of things, he was obeying the first rule in the book," said Jake. While he did not know my real story, he had been able to recognise a future version of me. "Protect time before anything else. And while he was doing something else..."

"Yes, that's why I have no choice, but to live with this," said Horus. "But this isn't the unmitigated success you all seem to feel it was. The JI has graciously agreed, in their new spirit of cooperation and positive international relations, not to pursue us for riding roughshod over the Diacria Agreement. That's how the embassy's legal attaché put it, anyway."

"Great. When do we celebrate?" said Mirabi.

"He meant why on Luna would they pursue it when they can hold the fact they haven't over our heads and use it as a favour they can call in as many times as they want for the foreseeable future," said Horus. "And while all the other guests checked out of the hotel while you were chasing Kairos, they didn't try to take their luggage, so Darwin knows how much cultist tech they now have to play with, including systems that we can't detect. And to add insult to injury, you didn't manage to do what I sent you there for in the first place. There are still molehills in my garden."

"Commander, I assure you, there aren't," said Thor.

"Yes, I'm sure you do, colonel. That's why I wanted you here," said Horus, acknowledging Thor for the first time. Thor raised an eyebrow.