King of War Tech novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Tray
Stellan has Wesley mop champagne on his knees in front of the Navy; Wesley tells the Admiral the recovered files are missing a key only three people knew.
The champagne tower fell at 8:40, and Stellan Merrick looked straight at me.
I was standing by the service door in a facilities polo with a mop bucket at my feet.
The Navy Club ballroom held three hundred people.
Half of them wore dress whites.
"Wesley," Stellan called, in the voice he used for dogs and waiters.
"You're closest. Clean it up."
Glass and gold liquid covered the marble in front of the Admiral's table.
I walked over with my mop.
"On your knees," Stellan said. "You'll miss the corners."
Somebody laughed.
I looked across the ballroom at my wife.
Imogen Merrick stood beside her mother in a black dress, holding a glass of water.
She did not look at me for long.
"Do as he says," she said.
Her voice carried clear across the marble.
I got down on my knees.
The cold of the floor came through my pants.
I picked up the broken stems one at a time and put them in the bucket.
Above me, Stellan lifted his glass for a toast.
"Admiral Wetherington, gentlemen, thank you for coming."
"Three years ago, we lost my brother Clyde and his whole Ridgeback unit in the Nevada desert."
The room went quiet and respectful.
A giant photograph of Clyde lit the wall behind him.
Clyde was thirty in that picture, grinning, with his sleeves rolled up.
The newspapers had called him the King of War Tech.
It was the only title he had ever lied about.
"Clyde's work was thought lost," Stellan said.
"Tonight I can tell you Merrick Dynamics recovered it."
A murmur went through the Navy tables.
"The Ridgeback targeting system will be demonstrated here, in this city, on Friday, October 23rd."
"A Merrick finishes what a Merrick starts."
Applause filled the room.
I kept wiping the floor.
A sliver of glass cut the side of my thumb.
I let it bleed into the rag.
Three years ago I would have thrown that man across the room.
Three years ago I had also promised my best friend, an hour before he died, that I would keep my head down.
My hands were steady.
I had spent three years making my hands steady.
Under the applause, the Admiral turned to the man beside him and said, "If this is real, the Navy will pay whatever it costs."
Stellan heard it too.
His smile got wider.
I stood up with the bucket and walked toward the service corridor, slowly.
Behind me, Marjorie Merrick said, "Look at him. Clyde would be ashamed."
I kept walking.
Stellan had one thing right.
Clyde would be ashamed.
But not of me.
The service corridor was narrow and smelled of bleach and fried onions.
I set the bucket down by the dish pit and waited.
It took four minutes.
The Admiral came through the swinging door alone, looking for a restroom or a quiet place to breathe.
Dale Wetherington was sixty-three, with white hair and the face of a man who had signed too many casualty letters.
He saw me in my polo and nodded.
"Admiral," I said.
"Son."
"The files Stellan recovered. They're missing something."
He stopped.
"Excuse me?"
"The last four lines of the targeting sequence aren't in them," I said.
"Without those, the system tracks a target for ten seconds and then locks on the wrong thing."
"That's why Clyde's team called it the fourth key."
The Admiral's face did not change.
It went still, the way the sea goes still before weather.
"Who told you that?"
"Nobody told me."
"Then how do you know there is a fourth key?"
I picked up the mop.
"Ask Stellan to run the demo without it," I said. "Ask him what the system does at the ten-second mark."
I turned to go.
"Stand where you are," the Admiral said.
His voice was low and very hard.
"Only three people alive or dead ever knew there was a fourth key."
He took a step toward me.
"Two of them are dead."
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