Chapter Text
Daniel floated by what had been Alana’s window during their trip out to Wolf 359 and their first few months orbiting the star before things blew up in their face. Their last few months of happiness.
Outside the window, stars flew past, or more accurately, they flew past stars. The new crew of the Urania was just two days into their three-month-long trip back to earth, and Daniel had already started to question his position in the group.
The only reason they had accepted him to begin with was that they had had a common enemy to fight against. (And maybe just a bit to end his murderous revenge spree.) What would they do now that Goddard Futuristics was gone? (Or at least Pryce and Cutter were. Who knew what they would have to face back on earth.)
Could Daniel ever really be one of them after everything he had done? The Hephaestus crew had already hated him just for the things they had known about, and they had barely known any of it.
The only one who could have even begun to understand his turmoil would be Eiffel, but Eiffel was gone.
He might have continued spiraling down this rabbit hole had Hera not interrupted him over the intercom.
“Jacobi?” She asked.
“What.”
“Can I ask you for a favor?”
Daniel sighed. “Sure.”
“Tell me about Maxwell,” she said.
That was a loaded request. “Where do I start?” he asked.
“How did you meet?” she asked.
“It wasn’t that interesting.”
“Well then, how did you start working for Godard?”
“I met Colonel Kepler in a bar.”
“And then…?” she prompted.
“And then what do you think?”
Hera did not respond to that one.
“Honestly how I hit enough of a rock bottom to work for Godard is a more interesting story–”
“Well, then why don’t you–”
“--but I’m not going to tell that story either.”
Daniel could imagine Hera’s eyes rolling. Wherever her eyes were. If she had any. Alana would know that.
“Look, I just… I just miss Maxwell.” Daniel opened his mouth to say something, but Hera cut him off. “And I know that what I feel is nothing compared to how you must feel, but that’s why I’m asking you. I want you to tell me a story that will make me feel like I know her a little bit better. Like I have something of her to hold on to. Can you do that for me?”
Daniel paused, then replied, “yes. Yes, I can.”
Regardless of whether you flew there economy in a commercial jet or in a private plane supplied by a vaguely evil corporate empire, the first thing you noticed when you stepped off the plane in Buenos Aires was how humid it was. The second thing you noticed was how hot it was. Daniel’s shirt was stuck to his back with sweat already only halfway from the landing strip in an abandoned factory to their base of operations in a hotel room downtown.
This type of weather is a problem when dealing with sensitive chemicals and heat-sensitive wires. Nothing Daniel couldn’t deal with of course. He wouldn’t be working for Goddard if he wasn’t the best at what he did. (With a few minor exceptions.)
A few paces ahead, Warren led the way at a breakneck pace, and pedestrian traffic parted around him. He was telling the new recruit, Maxwell (they were not yet on a first name basis), about something called the “Argentinian Incident”; the type of story Daniel had been around long enough to know was about 40% hyperbole and 40% just complete bullshit. (The remaining 20%? Well, working at Goddard really was just like that.) However, Maxwell hung onto Warren's every word as she struggled to keep up, dragging a duffle bag nearly as big as she was. Daniel would offer to help her carry it, but he was also puffling along behind, feeling inadequate, as he often did around Warren.
To the surrounding people, they probably looked more like a dysfunctional family on vacation than like the businessmen from San Francisco on a work trip they were supposed to be. (“If we say we’re from San Francisco, then we don’t have to wear ties,” Warren said.) Warren was of course the patriarch. Older, wiser, and without a doubt in charge. Tagging along with loyalty and taking up most of his attention, Maxwell was the favorite child. Dragging along behind Daniel was… what? The rebellious teenager? The distant cousin mostly forgotten? He tried not to get too much in his head about his own stupid analogy.
Daniel tuned out and focused on taking in his surroundings. Buenos Aires was greyer than he expected it to be, but in the years since joining Goddard and really traveling for the first time, Daniel had discovered that most cities were. As the SI5 wound their way through the streets of packed cars, crowds of people pushed past them. However much Daniel loved all things big and loud, he had never quite adjusted to living in big cities; there were just too many people.
“And so, long story short, that’s why the government can’t know I’m here,” Warren announced as they pulled up in front of an older five-story hotel sandwiched between a restaurant and a laundromat. “Alright, kids. We’ve arrived.”
Of course, this was really only the beginning. Partly because they hadn’t even started their mission yet, but also because Warren insisted to the hotel staff that they did not need help taking their bags up the five flights of stairs to their room. He said something about not trusting anybody else with sensitive equipment and there not being enough space in the elevator, but Daniel suspected it had more to do with just putting Maxwell through the motions.
In their room, Warren dropped his bags and announced, “Well then I’m off to report to Cutter. You two better unpack and set up the rooms,” then left. And Maxwell and Daniel were left staring at each other across an uncrossable sea of luggage in a small hotel room thousands of miles from home.
Maxwell reached down and started unzipping her bags and pulling out computers and clothing wires and some things Daniel couldn’t even begin to identify.
“Are you going to unpack, or are you just going to stand and glare at me?” she asked.
“I’m not glaring,” Daniel said, only just then realizing that he’d been glaring.
“Alright,” Maxwell said, and went back to unpacking and ignoring him.
Daniel sighed loudly. Maxwell didn’t look up. He thudded onto the floor. Maxwell still didn’t look up. As he started unpacking, he finally spoke. “It’s not that I don’t like you,” he said, “it’s just that the colonel and I have worked together for a long time, and I’m just worried that you’re not going to be able to keep up with us. You’ve never been special ops before have you?”
“No,” Maxwell said.
“Exactly,” Daniel said. “You’re a computer person, and I’m sure you’re very good at that, but I’m just worried that you’ll struggle out here in the field. You might do better back at base.”
Maxwell was quiet for a moment, then she said, “You know what I think?”
“What do you think?”
“He’s not fucking me—”
“What?”
“Kepler’s not fucking me, and he’s not gonna fuck you either, so if you can just end this little hissy fit you’re throwing right now, I think this trip is going to be a lot more enjoyable.”
They packed in silence until Warren got back.
Later when the two of them were alone in their room, and Maxwell had gone off to her own room to sleep, Warren turned to him and said, “Do you know what I think, Mr. Jacobi?”
Daniel sighed. Knowing it wasn’t really a question, he replied, “What do you think, Colonel?”
Warren smiled. “I think that you and Maxwell have a lot in common and that you will become good friends.”
Daniel just got into bed and turned off the light. “Goodnight colonel.”
Their mission on that trip was fairly simple. They would infiltrate a rival for-profit space travel company (Space Y), find out if they had made contact, and if they had, wipe them off the map.
The first step of the plan had been laughably easy. All they had needed to do was create a website for a fake computer navigation company based in San Francisco, make a legit seeming social media presence, wait a little while to build a history and reputation then ask for a tour saying they were interested in potentially forming a partnership. Space Y responded immediately saying they would love to give “Secure and Completely Accurate Mapping Services” a tour. Of course, all the past business partners were actually just other sock puppet companies run by Goddard through a tax haven somewhere in the Bahamas.
And they fell for it! How naive. Clearly, they didn’t have their own private military spy organization.
And despite any misgivings he had initially held about adding a third member to their team, he had to admit that it was nice to have someone who could use computers. The last time Warren had tried to use the internet, he had accidentally shared the details of the Goddard Futuristics holiday party with all of his relatives and former high school classmates on Facebook. Pryce and Cutter probably would have fired him if they knew what a smartphone was. As much as Daniel resented the fact that Canaveral thought that they couldn’t do their jobs on their own needed a third member, he had to admit he had been impressed by how fast Maxwell had managed to create convincing fake companies complete with several years of fake tax returns, an active online history and employment records all while also playing solitaire with herself and watching a shitty reality TV show in the background. He just wished she could have stayed back at base and allowed him and Warren to do the hard work.
A representative for Space Y greeted them as they stepped out of the taxi. They had pulled up in front of the building that supposedly housed a functioning space program, but Daniel found that hard to believe. (Who runs an entire space program out of an office building?)
Warren grinned at the representative and shook his hand firmly. “We are just so pleased to meet you!”
The representative looked slightly off-put. “Good,” he said, but he looked unsure. Warren kept grinning. The representative turned to Daniel and Maxwell. “If all three of you would like to follow me, we’re just gonna take a quick tour of the operation, then Mr. Moran will be waiting to meet with you to discuss business.”
“That sounds great,” Warren said.
The representative (who had a name so boring Daniel had already forgotten it, and a face so forgettable Daniel couldn’t have picked him out of a lineup), opened the front door with a key card and held it open for the rest of them to go through. The first thing Daniel noticed upon entering was that security was very minimal. It rested somewhere between anti-shoplifting measures and TSA. Nothing compared to the Goddard headquarters. He looked at Warren who clearly had the same thought. Maxwell was instead hanging onto every word the representative said as he described their most recent machine learning model, which was attempting to learn to navigate using stars in order to create a better spacecraft autopilot.
Their tour wound through floors and floors of offices and cubicles with not a single piece of heavy machinery in sight. As the representative jabbered on and on about their company values and policies, Warren became more and more visibly impatient.
“Excuse me, Mr. Silva,” he said, “but I think my people and I were hoping to see some of your spacecrafts up close.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry Mr. Oliver—”
“Dr. Oliver,” Warren corrected. Daniel had to hold back a snort. Of course Warren cared about his fake Ph.D.
“Yes, I’m so sorry Dr. Oliver,” the representative said, “but we don’t give tours of our ships or launch pads for security reasons.”
“But don’t you think we should be able to take a look if we’re considering a partnership with your company?” Warren pressed.
“I’m sorry, but that’s something that you’re going to have to discuss with Mr. Moran yourself when you meet him.”
“And when will we be able to meet with Mr. Moran?” Warren asked.
“He should be available in another 15 minutes,” the representative said. Warren stopped smiling.
The next 15 minutes dragged by incredibly slowly. Maxwell walked up next to the representative rapidly firing away questions about their existing technology systems and computer systems as well as projects that were under development that the representative probably would have said were confidential and refused to answer if he hadn’t been so overwhelmed by the sheer number of questions and speed at which they were asked. Meanwhile, Daniel and Warren dragged their feet about 10 feet behind, Warren peering over workers' shoulders and into empty offices, while Daniel tried to figure out if they had actually been through this hallway before, or if all the hallways just looked the same.
Finally, after about half an hour Mr. Moran was finally ready to meet with them. The representative led the three of them to a corner office on the fifth floor that looked out over the city, with cushioned chairs on one side of a hardwood desk the size of a mattress and Mr. Moran on the other side.
Mr. Moran was a tall man with thick, shiny hair, a neatly trimmed beard, a silk tie, and a grin to rival Warren’s. He stood up when they entered and held out a hand with a gold watch on the wrist. “It is so nice to finally meet you, Dr. Oliver,” he said. Warren grasped Mr. Moran’s hand firmly and tried to show even more teeth. In the resulting handshake, Daniel could hear a knuckle crack. Maxwell looked at Daniel and rolled her eyes. As unprofessional as it was, he couldn’t help but agree.
“And of course, I am thrilled to meet you two as well,” Mr. Moran said, turning to Daniel and Maxwell. “Dr. Turner, I have heard great things about your pioneering work with artificial intelligence, and Mr. Parker, I am thoroughly impressed by what I have seen of your engineering prowess.” (So that’s what Warren told him I do, Daniel thought.) They both smiled and nodded back at Mr. Moran.
He gestured toward the chairs. “Please, take a seat. Let us talk.”
They sat, Warren in the middle, Daniel on his right, and Maxwell on his left. Mr. Moran sat down in his comically oversized office chair on the other side of the desk. “Would any of you like water? Or maybe coffee?”
“No thank you,” Warren said. “We’ll get right to business.”
“Alright then. I understand your company is interested in forming a partnership with Space Y.”
“We are certainly considering it,” Warren said. “But before we commit to anything, we need to know more. On our tour today, we only saw your offices. We would like to see your workshop.”
Mr. Moran smiled. “Of course, that is a completely reasonable request. However, for security reasons, we never show anything private until later in the negotiations process. If things go well today, then I’m sure we can arrange a tour for you sometime next week.”
“I completely understand your process, Mr. Moran, we actually do much the same thing, but I was wondering if you could possibly make a small exception for us since we’ve come such a long way, and are returning home to San Francisco in just a few days.”
“Oh dear,” Mr. Moran said, “what a shame. I’m sure we will be able to work something out, but for now, let’s talk business.”
Back at the hotel room, Warren slammed the door. “He’s hiding something.”
“Maybe he realized our name spells ‘SCAMS’,” Daniel suggested. Maxwell laughed.
“Oh really?" Warren said, wheeling around to glare at them. “And whose fault would that be, Mr. Jacobi?” He huffed and threw off his formal jacket, shoes, and tie. Grabbing an oversized “I <3 Buenos Aires” t-shirt, sneakers, and a baseball cap he marched right back toward the door. “I’m going to do some more digging; I’ll be back in a few hours.” He left, once again slamming the door behind him.
“Where do you think he’s gonna go?” Maxwell asked.
“Honestly, probably right back,” Daniel answered.
“Wouldn’t he be recognized?”
“By Mr. Moran? Probably.”
“You mean definitely?” Maxwell asked.
“Alright, definitely,” Daniel said. “Especially after that handshake.”
Maxwell snorted. “Maybe he’s going to the hospital to have his hand set.”
“Oh no, of course not,” Daniel answered, “he’s going to be popping that joint into place with nothing but hard alcohol as a painkiller.”
With a completely straight face, Maxwell looked at him and said, in a surprisingly good imitation of Warren, “I like the feel of it in my hand.”
They both lost it.
Finally, after they had both stopped laughing (about fifteen minutes later), Daniel said, “Do you still want to know where he’s going?”
“Sure.”
“He’s probably going to hang out around the building and see if he can follow any of the employees to a second location where they might be storing their rockets.”
Maxwell nodded. “I kind of guessed so.”
“So was your asking all just an elaborate setup for that joke?”
Maxwell wiggled her eyebrows. “I guess you’ll just never know!”
Five hours later Warren returned to the hotel room by throwing the door open so hard that the doorknob planted itself in the plaster of the wall, his entrance blowing their Gin Rummy cards across the floor.
“Hey!” Daniel shouted.
“It’s money laundering,” Warren replied.
“What?”
“That’s what Space Y is hiding,” Warren said. “It’s not faster than light travel, it’s not a pending patent on technology that would change the field of space travel as we know it, and it’s not aliens. It’s just money laundering.”
“Well that’s a disappointment,” Daniel replied, trying to gather up the deck of souvenir playing cards they had picked up at the Wal-Mart down the street.
“You thought there might be aliens?” Alana asked.
Warren gave a stern look. “Dr. Maxwell, what is the third rule of the SI-5?”
“Be prepared for anything, but—”
“No buts,” Warren interrupted. “Anything means anything.”
“Including money laundering,” Daniel added from under the bed where he was trying to get ten of spades unstuck from between the floorboards.
“Yes,” Warren frowned.
They were all quiet for a moment as Daniel tried to slide back out from under the bed and hit his head on the frame.
“So what now?” Alana asked.
“Well, now we report back to Cutter that he has nothing to worry about Space Y that we have decided to partner with another company. Then in twelve hours, the plane will be back to pick us up,” Warren said. “In the meantime, I thought we could hit up some museums, maybe the Casa Rosado.”
Alana groaned.
“But, colonel,” Daniel said, “we were just in the middle of a very important game.”
Warren smiled. “Then I hope you wrote your scores down, because we are going to a museum!”
For a while, after Daniel finished his story they both sat in silence.
Finally, Hera said, “I don’t know how that makes me feel.”
“Yeah,” Daniel replied. “That’s how it is. When you lose someone you keep thinking that maybe if you could only see them or hear from them again then everything would be better. Or maybe not everything, but at least something. But then you find something, a sock, a photo, an old scorecard from a game of gin rummy—she won by the way—and instead of feeling better you just feel even more empty.”
“Well that too, but I also meant about Space Y. Would you guys really have blown up that entire building if they had turned out to have made contact?”
“Yes.”
“With all the employees in it?”
“Yes. Of course,” Daniel replied. “It’s Goddard. You know that better than anyone.”
“I know that Goddard is like that,” Hera said. “It’s just hard to remember that you two were, well…”
“The bad guys?”
“Yeah.”
“I know what you mean.” Daniel sighed. “I think I’m still coming to terms with that part myself.”