59. Jarvis: Détente

General Reginald Jarvis stared at the intruder in his office with unconcealed amazement.

Heads, he thought to himself as he regarded her, are going to roll over this. He wondered if one of them would be his, and if it would be literal.

He gazed at Jack for a long moment, taking in how much she'd changed in the year since he'd last seen her. Her hair was longer, he noticed. It cascaded around her shoulders now in a glorious golden mane. The level gaze was the same, but the smile teasing at the corners of her lips displayed a confidence well beyond anything she'd possessed when they'd last met.

She'd gained some weight, too, he noticed. She was still slender, but she seemed to have filled out a little. Sitting in his chair, clad in simple jeans, tennis shoes and a sweatshirt, she looked like one of a thousand college girls he might see around town.

No disguise. No stealth gear. How the hell had she gotten past the security system? He could almost feel Riddick's touch like a palpable weight upon him, and wondered where the boy was lurking.

Aside from a small pair of stud earrings, the only jewelry she wore was a gold band on her left ring finger. A wedding band, worked in the style of the New Marrakesh craftsmen on Tangier 6. So the intelligence reports had been true, he realized.

I can be calm about this. No warning shots have been fired yet. Find out why she's here, what she wants... and where he is.

He turned and closed his door. With a very deliberate glance at her hand, he smiled and spoke.

"Mrs. Riddick."

Her own smile widened in response. "General Jarvis."

Her poise was unnerving. He almost wished she still had the vaguely hostile look of their last meeting, when she'd sarcastically referred to him as "Uncle Reg." Here she was, after all, in the center of a high-security military establishment, the goddamn Pentagon itself, smiling like a conqueror. Part of him wanted to be very, very frightened.

Doing his best to stay calm, he moved to one of the chairs his lieutenants normally occupied. "I'm impressed. We had no idea either one of you were on Earth."

"You weren't expecting us?" Jack shook her head, a look of mock-sternness crossing her features. "Now that's just bad intelligence-gathering, General. I was sure the headlines from Albany two days ago would've alerted you."

Jarvis frowned. Had his operatives missed something? Something important? He rose and crossed to his terminal without another thought. Jack rose as well, graciously offering him his own chair.

Pulling up the newsfaxes for the Albany area, he spotted it almost immediately:

BODIES OF DIVORCED ALBANY COUPLE FOUND.

Riddick had killed again? On Earth? He began to read.

Moffett? Moffett? Why was that so familiar to him? A chill moved through him, suddenly, as he remembered. The foster parents. The ones who had put Riddick in his coma... He scanned down the article for confirmation of his suspicions.

Of course. There was no way Riddick would think either one of them had paid enough. He'd loved Christina; the Tribunal had never told him about her death because his psychological recovery had been too fragile. Obviously he'd learned about it at last, and had taken his revenge, just as he'd done so on...

"It looks like he used the same M.O. he used on your Uncle, Jack." He frowned at her a little, but she just raised her chin in defiance, daring him to tell her that Boris Kowalczyk hadn't deserved every moment of pain Riddick had dealt out. "You're right. We should have spotted this. Thank God we erased the records of Riddick ever having been in that home, or the panic would already be planet-wide."

"Oh, so that's why it wasn't bigger news. Like the whole thing with Peter Malcolm, huh?" Jack pursed her lips as if she were tasting something especially sour. "Do his victims' kin even know the man who ruined their lives is dead?"

Jarvis didn't know why that made him feel guilty. It seemed like a hypocritical thing for her to say, given Riddick's own massive victims list. A moment later his stomach twisted as he realized that, in truth, all of those crimes lay at his own feet. It was his own negligence that had resulted in the Tech School Massacre, after all, his own conviction that "Bry" was still stable and didn't need to be brought in yet.

"The kin of Riddick's victims have a few things to say about him becoming some kind of Robin Hood, Jack. You must understand that."

Their gazes met and locked. The calm humor that remained in her eyes forced him to drop his.

"Oh I do," she drawled, running her finger over the surface of his desk. "That's why I'm here."

"Why are you here? I was expecting Riddick to come, not you."

"He isn't ready." Jack moved to the lieutenant's chair he'd vacated and sat down, her posture one of complete ease. "Don't worry, he doesn't hate you. And he's not planning to kill you. But there's still a lot of pain, there. He needs some more time. Anyway, this was my idea."

Jarvis sank into his chair, watching her. "What was your idea?"

"We're going to negotiate. If you're a very good boy, General, you may get what you want."

"And what would that be?"

"Richard B. Riddick, Charybdis Operative Number Thirteen." Jack grinned widely at the stunned expression that had to be on his face. "Of course, he'll need a new name, won't he? Can't have the man who ruined so many lives gaining a Robin Hood reputation, like you said."

For a long moment Jarvis sat quietly, unbelieving. Across from him Jack waited, amusement still gracing her elegant features. She knew, he realized. She knew she was offering him the very thing he had yearned after for almost two decades...

"Tell me your terms."

"The first term is simple. Riddick is officially declared dead. It's some kind of public staging that leaves no doubt in anyone's mind about his death."

"Easily done."

Jack nodded, her expression indicating that she'd expected no trouble over that point. "The second term is a bit harder, maybe. He stays independent. He has the right to accept or refuse assignments as he chooses."

"What? Jack, the Tribunal will never accept that term. You're asking way too much there."

"You're getting more than you have now, Reg."

"It won't be enough after everything the Tribunal has invested--"

"So, what seems fair to you? You drag him back? Scrub his brain until he's a good little automaton? You're a father, General." She gave him an ironic smile and hitched herself onto the arm of the chair, that gentle challenge still in her eyes. "So tell me... do you own your children?"

"No." His response was automatic.

"Well, why not? You raised and taught them. You paid for their care. And those are your genes inside them."

"You can't own a person, Jack, no matter how much of an 'investment' you may make--"

"Exactly, General. So why does the Tribunal treat Riddick like property?"

Her level gaze was disconcerting and he found himself unable to answer her.

"You don't own him. You never owned him. You never will own him." A smug little grin flitted across her mouth then. "But that doesn't mean we can't come to a mutually beneficial arrangement."

"We can try, Jack, but the Tribunal might not accept--"

"Then you'll never, ever see either one of us again, Uncle Reg."

Oh, that was hitting below the belt. She knew exactly what he really wanted here, above and beyond what the Tribunal cared about. He wanted Bry back. He wanted the son he'd never had, but had always yearned after. That was the hidden term, more than anything else the Tribunal might get.

Could he strike this deal? Could he short-change the Tribunal in order to have his long-time dream come true? Would he?

Jack gave him another slight smile. "We know how to hide, now, you see. We have the files; we can disappear and you'd never find us, even if you put every Operative in your Corps on it. In a few years we'd be able to do a convincing job of faking our deaths without being able to change the contents of your files. And you might believe we're still alive, but you'll never be able to prove it. That qualifies as a total loss of the Tribunal's investment, there, doesn't it?"

He sighed, conceding her point. "It does. But what's to stop me from just keeping you here and making Riddick surrender himself to us?"

He knew there would be something. Anybody who had the ability to sashay, undetected, into the most secure parts of the Pentagon, had some kind of protection at her disposal.

"You know, there's a thought." The worried frown that crossed Jack was obviously and deliberately fake. Then her face cleared and her eyes lit up. "Oh! I guess that's why Riddick gave me this."

She walked over to a jacket he hadn't even noticed, draped on the back of another chair, and reached into its pocket. She pulled out a picture and grinned at it before turning and bringing it over to him. He had seen that expression before in his own daughters' faces when they'd brought him report cards with straight A's on them. You're going to be so proud of how smart I am, the look said.

He took the proffered picture and glanced down at it. For a moment he felt like his veins had filled with ice water.

Riddick was in the center of the image, a jocular grin on his face. He had his arms around two women, one on either side of him. Patty and Val. His daughters. They were smiling for the camera, too, but there was a hint of nervousness in their expressions. A hard copy of a newsfax lay in Riddick's lap, positioned so that the date was readable.

That's today's date. He's with them right now.

"I guess we're even, huh, Reg?"

He won't hurt them. It's a bluff, it has to be. After Christina and Jack, he loves them more than anybody.

Bry loves them, a darker voice in his head answered. Are you sure Riddick does?

It was, he realized, the most important question of all. Could he, both personally and professionally, trust Richard Bryan Riddick to police himself? If his daughters were really hostages, then the answer was no. But if the answer was no, then his daughters were in real danger, and any attempt he made to rein Riddick in could result in their injury or death.

But are they hostages? If that's Bry in there, he's giving me an excuse to take to the Tribunal, but he'd never really hurt them.

Either way, he realized, the outcome of the round had been decided. He remembered getting the analysis back from the strategists, after Riddick won his first chess game. The boy had planned his assault carefully, they told him; Jarvis had been sucked into a trap he would be unable to escape, nineteen moves before seven-year-old Bry had triumphantly declared "Check Mate!"

This game, too, had been won by Riddick long before Jarvis had even known it had begun.

I have to trust him. I don't have a choice.

He set the picture down and looked up at Jack. "Point taken. Riddick retains his independence. How will we contact you to give you assignments, in that case? And what do we do if he takes a job independently that sabotages our work?"

Jack smiled and sat back down in the chair. Jarvis was relieved; for a moment he'd worried that she'd bridle at his qualifications. But it looked like his questions had been expected, and that she already had answers.

She hitched her chair forward and the negotiations began in earnest.

He sat quietly for several minutes after she left his office. Three hours had passed, the clock told him, but it seemed like a much shorter period of time. Three hours and now, if all went well, the Tribunal was on the verge of having the most dangerous and powerful man in the galaxy as its ally.

The arrangement was extremely elegant, as most of Riddick's strategies tended to be. In a few days it would all begin, and then he'd know whether or not it would really work.

A tone sounded on his comm unit and he answered it. "Jarvis."

"General, this is Sergeant Moore at the security office. We're not picking her up on our screens. We saw her leave your office, but after she left the first camera's range she didn't reappear on any others. And Sir, she only appeared on the primary camera. The backup machines don't even register her leaving your office. If you don't mind my asking, Sir, what the hell is going on?"

How the hell did you manage that one, Bry? "Do a thorough check of all of the cameras. Check their links to your mainframe. Check the mainframe. Look for any new components attached to them. And run a diagnostic of the mainframe's operating system. We may have been hacked."

"Us, sir?" He could hear Moore's disbelief. It had been more than a hundred and fifty years since anyone had successfully infiltrated the Pentagon. Now a nineteen-year-old girl had done it.

Not just any nineteen-year-old girl. Richard B. Riddick's wife. His Charybdis Mate. Damn, I wish I'd managed to recruit her...

"Yes, Sergeant. Us. Don't worry about where she's gone. She'll have left the building by now. Concentrate on finding the mechanisms they used to slice into our security systems. And contact Drs. Aspen and Cartwright and ask them to come to my office. I need to speak with them."

He cut the connection and checked his own private cameras, which were outside of the security grid. Hopefully they had recorded everything, but Jack had been alone in his office for an indeterminate amount of time before he'd come in. Plenty of time, in all likelihood, to find and disable them.

She hadn't. She hadn't even bothered, although she'd walked up to one of them, smiled, and waved. He was watching her on the screen, marveling once again at her poise and confidence, when Dr. Cartwright and his wife arrived. The second both women saw who was on the monitor, they gasped and hurried to his side.

"That's Jack Kowalczyk!" both of them exclaimed. Martina Aspen-Jarvis's hand came to rest on his shoulder and he covered it with his own. Together the three replayed the entire meeting.

Jarvis found himself marveling at how little his own intense nervousness had shown. But Jack's poise and grace was even more pronounced on the vid. Her year with Riddick had matured her and she had begun to achieve some of the prescient stillness that he was known for.

Jarvis felt like he'd not only recovered a son, but gained a daughter. I always knew you'd be the one to bring him back to us, Jack. Thank you.

The hunt for Richard B. Riddick was ending at last.

"Interesting," Dr. Cartwright finally commented as Jack, on the screen, left his office. "She has a baby."

"What?" Jarvis turned and looked at the woman, who now had an almost-smug expression on her face.

"I'll show you." Cartwright punched some keys on the console and soon two images were displayed on the screen, side by side. One was an older picture of Jack, taken right before she'd left for Seti Station and her rendezvous with Riddick. The other was a security image taken moments before she finally left his office. "Look at her breasts."

For a moment outrage filled him, as if he'd been asked to look at a naked photograph of one of his own daughters. He quelled it and glanced at the two images. Then he stopped and took a closer look. What the...?

"She's grown two cup sizes since you last saw her. And do you see the stain on her shirt? She's wearing pads to prevent it, but that's breast-milk leakage," Cartwright explained. "She's breastfeeding."

"Good God," Martina breathed quietly.

"She has a Phase III," Jarvis managed after a long moment.

"Possibly more than one," Cartwright added.

Jarvis whirled to stare at her. "Explain."

The surgeon gave him a smile and a shrug. "I regened her myself. At the time, I thought she was just like all the other clients who came through the clinic. She got the standard treatment, and that assumes our client is intended to be a breeder. I did good work, too. Her womb is strong and her new ovary is especially hardy, and she'll be prone to multiple births."

"Is that safe for her?"

Cartwright nodded. "She's undoubtedly in less danger than any of the Phase III host mothers were. She's built to withstand the usual risks of a pregnancy... and she has Riddick looking after her."

Yes. Jack Kowal-- Jack Riddick had her husband looking after her. There was probably no safer place in the universe for her to be.

Jarvis sat down at his desk, a smile on his face. He picked up the photo Jack had given him and looked at it again. Patty and Val... and Bry. His daughters and the son he'd always wanted to have, captured together in a family portrait he'd never dared hope to see.

"I need a picture frame," he announced as he felt Martina's hand on his shoulder once more. She squeezed lightly to tell him that, yes, she'd pick one up for him tonight. Someday soon, he hoped, he'd have a picture of Bry, Jack, and their baby for his desk as well.

He hoped everything would go according to Jack's plans.

Four hours later, as he prepared to leave the office, the security team arrived with Riddick's equipment.

"We'd ordinarily have to spend months figuring out how it all worked, except he left this behind too," Sergeant Moore grumbled, still clearly piqued at the ease of the intrusion. He handed over a large manila folder.

Jarvis opened it and found himself smiling and shaking his head in disbelief. Inside were the complete blueprints and specs for each piece of equipment, along with the programming codes and Riddick's notations. He skimmed over the notes.

Amazing. A processor had been attached to each camera. As Jack had entered each camera's sights, the attached processor had identified her and begun removing her from the image, substituting a background extrapolated from previous images. In some cases, when she'd walked in front of someone, it had literally reconstructed the person behind her. If she opened a door, the door stayed closed in the image. If another person followed her through a door, it constructed a simulation of them opening the door first.

There was nothing like this in use in the Intelligence game, anywhere. Jarvis was absolutely certain about that. Riddick had built this himself... and given it to them as a gift. He'd sweetened the deal without giving any indication in advance that he would.

Oh, Bry, that is you. I made the right choice.

At the back of the file, he found the note.

I'll see you soon, Uncle Reg. B.

"It's going to work," he announced, and didn't care when Moore gave him a funny look. "It's all going to work."

He glanced at the new identity papers he'd been working on, still sitting on his desk. He suddenly knew exactly what Riddick's new, official identity would be.

General Reginald Jarvis had never loved the Project more in his life.