Countdown

Jake Keeler, Agent 6175. That’s how I was known to the Bureau.
It was early that morning, too early if you asked me, but then Forester never did care about that sort of thing. He worked long hours. We all did, but Forester took it to extremes.
The Bureau had a bad habit of keeping an eye on its employees. It was my suspicion that Forester was looking to kiss up to the top brass. He wanted a promotion and a bigger office, but the higher-ups were happy keeping him right where he was. He didn’t like it, but he couldn’t complain.
The Bureau wasn’t the kind of place where you could march into your boss’s office, and ask for a raise, a promotion, or anything else. If you did, a new guy would take your place, and you’d find yourself walking the unemployment lines the next day. Sure it wasn’t fair, but that’s the way it was, and Forester knew it. He had no choice but to keep his mouth shut, and take solace in the fact that he had a good track record. Like him or not, which I didn’t particularly, you had to give him that.
His agents usually came through for him, solving their respective cases. That was something even the higher-ups couldn’t ignore. Forester knew it, too, although he would never let it be said that his agents were responsible for the commanding position he was in today. No, he attributed most of his good fortune to himself, while he looked down his nose at the people who had put him there. That wasn’t fair either, but that was the kind of man he was.
I sat in the small waiting area outside his office, talking to Diane, Forester’s secretary. She was young, a beautiful girl, just out of the Academy. She was a hard worker, too, and just like the rest of us, underappreciated by Forester. After waiting for about an hour, the door to the room slid back, and Forester appeared, sauntering in with an armload of file discs and the usual pastry stuffed in his mouth.
He was a tall man, about my height, and he wasn’t much older than me, maybe a few years. That’s where the similarities ended. His build was anything but what I called athletic. His several hundred pounds jiggled with every step. He didn’t wear the well-tailored uniforms that we agents and other workers were required to wear when we entered Bureau Headquarters, either. He was administration, and just like the higher-ups, he dressed in whatever he pleased.
His clothing was casual, your basic dress pants and shirt. Forester threw it together sloppily. Quite frankly, he looked as if he smelled. It was a style which some termed as a natural look. I suspected it was due to him being too lazy to haul his considerable rear into a shower. Come to think of it, a shave wouldn’t have hurt him much either.
He stopped in front of me long enough to take the pastry from his mouth, and utter a few words in that thick, gruff tone that never failed to grate on my nerves.
“You’re here,” he said. “Good.”
“And you’re late,” I told him flatly.
“No I’m not. You’re early. I wanted to be sure you were here when I came in.”
He stuffed the pastry back in his mouth, and walked into his office. I politely excused myself from Diane’s desk, and followed Forester in.
As I entered Forester’s office, the door to the cluttered room slid shut behind me. I took a seat in the chair in front of his desk, while Forester finished the last bites of the pastry in his mouth. He rested the stack of file discs on his desk, and tossed one down in front of me. Curious, I decided to pick it up.
“What’s this?”
“It’s your new assignment,” he replied, as he eased into his chair. “Look at it.”
I slid the disc into the computer on Forester’s desk, and entered my access code. The usual blue beam from the computer hit me within moments, scanning me up and down, while it decided if I was who I claimed to be. After a few seconds the process ended, and the computer shut off its beam.
“Access approved,” it said, in a tone as blank and rigid as Forester himself. “Agent Jake Keeler, Number 6175.”
A few seconds later, the file’s information appeared in the form of a three-dimensional hologram. The images hung in the air in front of me. The faces of three psychotic looking men appeared before me, their personal data listed to the side. They were a group of radicals as near as I could tell. Their leader, Sironsen Kenn, a man in his mid-thirties, with slicked back hair, a narrow face, and cold, gray eyes was the worst of the bunch. A cold-blooded killer with a cause, Sironsen was definitely a man to look out for.
Ziara wasn’t the richest of systems, and ever since the trade agreements between its three habitable worlds, resistance was strongly rising. With the agreement, business was now booming, but as usual, the workers who slaved to make it happen were getting the short end of the deal. They wanted more, and I agreed with their point of view, but terrorism wasn’t the answer. It destroyed too much property, and killed too many innocent people. Sure, there were a few groups that fought the cause legitimately, but most were nothing more than a mindless bunch of thugs who figured if they threw around enough muscle, eventually they would get their way.
Sironsen’s group was definitely the worst of the litter. As the information kept pouring out from the file, I soon found pictures of blown out buildings and mangled, twisted bodies looking me in the face. I noticed Forester staring at me intently when the pictures came up. Whether he was looking for some sort of shocked reaction on my face, I didn’t know, but if he was, he wouldn’t find one.
During my twenty-two years with the Bureau, I had seen death many times, and in many forms. I had even invented a few of those forms myself, when the occasion called for it. I wasn’t proud of the killings, but it was part of the job. Even though I didn’t like doing it, I did it fast, clean, and Forester knew he wouldn’t have to worry about any incriminating evidence coming back to haunt him.
After looking at the information, and satisfied that I had seen enough, I switched off the computer, and handed the disc back to Forester.
“All right,” I said. “I’ve seen it. Now what?”
“Now I tell you the rest. Four days ago, our man on Boranna got word to us that Sironsen Kenn’s group of radicals got hold of a Triax missile system from the plant that manufactures them over there. Since then, he’s been telling everyone that he plans on using it if his demands aren’t met.”
“What does he want?”
“He wants complete control of Boranna’s mining operations,” Forester replied. “He’s already promised the workers there a fair cut of the profits from the facility. From what we’ve been hearing, the locals are going for it. His group’s numbers are increasing every day. If this keeps up, we’re looking at what most likely could turn into a full scale revolution. It could destroy the years of work that went into making the trade agreements possible.”
“Has he said where he plans on detonating the missile if he doesn’t get what he wants?” I asked.
“Yes,” Forester said. “He plans on detonating the missile at the ceremony on Coralla.”
“You mean the agreement signing ceremony? That’s only seven days from now.”
“I know. He says if his demands aren’t met by then, the Zicarian, Borannian, and Corallan ambassadors won’t be able to sign the final trade agreements. They’ll be dead before they get the chance.”
“Yeah, them along with about half of Coralla’s population. Have they said what they plan to do?”
“They don’t plan on doing anything. The ceremony is going on as scheduled.”
“Wait a minute,” I responded, almost unable to believe my ears. “Are you telling me that rather than hold off on this ceremony for a few days, they’re going to risk the destruction of half of Coralla, just to sign that damned agreement? That’s crazy.”