“Then I would like a guess, please.”
“Equilibrium is a relatively small organization but the emphasis here is ‘relatively.’ It can operate from a single base but that base has to be relatively large and also recently abandoned, so that its systems can be brought back up to operational capacity quickly. It needs to be in a planetary system that’s either friendly to the Equilibrium cause, or recently abandoned, or not heavily monitored outside of core worlds.”
“That should cut down on the number of available military bases,” I said. “At least that’s something.”
“You’re limiting yourself,” Ocampo said.
“How?”
“You’re thinking like a soldier, and not an opportunistic scavenger, which is what Equilibrium is. Or still is, for the moment.”
“So not just military bases,” I said. “Any sort of base with the requisite infrastructure.”
“Yes.”
“And not just of species obviously aligned with Equilibrium.”
“Right. They would know you’d already be looking at those. They’d want something that’s in the Colonial Union’s blind spot.”
I considered this for a minute.
And then I had a really truly stupendously far-fetched idea.
My computer simulation must have accurately replicated my eureka moment, because Ocampo smiled at me. “I think someone may have thought of something.”
“I need to go,” I said, to Ocampo. “Secretary, you need to excuse me.”
“Of course,” he said. “Not that I could make you stay, mind you.”
“I can leave this simulation running,” I said.
“Thank you,” he said. “I would like that. They won’t keep it running for more than a couple of minutes after you leave. But I will enjoy it until then.”
“I could ask them to let it run longer.”
“You can ask,” Ocampo said. “It won’t make a difference.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, and despite everything Ocampo had done, I was.
Ocampo shrugged. “This is how it is,” he said. “And I can’t say that for all I’ve done I don’t deserve it. Still, let me put a thought in your head, Lieutenant. If that idea in your head pans out, and all your plans for it succeed, then ask a thing for me.”
“What is it?” I asked. I was concerned he would ask for a new body, which I knew the Colonial Union would never ever give him.
He anticipated that thought. “I’m not going to ask you to ask them for a new body. They won’t do that. Institutional forgiveness never goes that far. But I have a place, on Phoenix. Had it, anyway. A small summer cabin up in the mountains, by a small lake. It’s on a hundred acres of forest and meadow. I bought it ten years ago with the idea that it would be a place for me to think and write. I never did, because who ever does? Eventually I thought about it as a foolish investment. I thought about selling it but I never did. I guess I lived in hope I’d eventually make use of it. And now I never will. I won’t ever see that cabin again. Really see it.”
He looked back out, away from the beach, into an Indian Ocean that didn’t exist.
“If it all works out, Lieutenant, and you get what you want out of this whole adventure, then use your influence to get me that cabin, here, in simulation. I know that I’ll never be out in the real world. But if the simulation is good enough, maybe I can live with that. And these days I have nothing to do now but think. Finally, I would use the cabin for what I bought it for. A version of it, anyway. Say you’ll do that for me, Lieutenant Wilson. I would appreciate it more than you can possibly know.”
* * *
“Sedna,” I said.
Colonel Rigney, who was in the small conference room with Egan, Abumwe, and Hart Schmidt, frowned at me. “You’re trying to get me to use my BrainPal to look something up,” he said.
“Sedna is a dwarf planet in Earth’s system,” I said. “More accurately, it’s a dwarf planet just outside of Earth’s system, at the inner edge of its Oort cloud. It’s about three times further out from the sun than Neptune.”
“All right,” Rigney said. “What about it?”
“Ocampo said he didn’t know where Equilibrium’s new base was, but that they would likely take a base, military or otherwise, that was recently abandoned. And also one that we wouldn’t think to look for. One that’s in our blind spot.”
I used my BrainPal to turn on the wall monitor in the conference room. The image of a small reddish planet popped up. “Sedna,” I repeated. “It had one of the Colonial Union’s oldest maintained science bases. We used it for deep field astronomy and for planetary science; Sedna’s in a good place to observe Earth’s entire system and the orbital dynamics therein.”