Part Two, Chapter Four - Jettero Heller is Better Than You

Heller demands to take a look at the "alleged documents," but thinks they look legit - which annoys an experienced intelligence operative like Gris, as he knows how easily such papers could be forged. Gris runs through what Mission Earth will entail, and explains that he will be in charge of keeping Heller safe. The combat engineer is still a little sore about that whole kidnapping thing, and is even bright enough to notice that the date on the orders means that they were issued before he "passed" the test to lead Mission Earth. But he's willing to put the past behind him if Gris can get Fleet authorization for the mission, which our villain protagonist agrees to.

I have a feeling this will lead to a drawn-out, ultimately unnecessary ordeal, but can't remember for sure. There's a lot of pointless chapters in this book, and they all sort of blur together after a while.

We get a Heller Moment as Gris takes him through a guard barracks in the process of checking Heller out of custody. Gris is shocked when the big burly brute Heller tossed around earlier stands up and salutes the man who easily thrashed him. Heller flashes him a casual smile, and the scarred hulk grins back, while Gris' mind struggles to come to grips with the notion of Apparatus personnel showing respect or being friendly.

Gris procures one set of quarters used by Apparatus officers in Spiteos' upper levels for Heller, while quietly ordering a full platoon of Apparatus troops to make sure Heller doesn't run off. There's a mildly homoerotic moment when Heller steps into the "wall tub" to shower off the prison stench, while Gris hangs around to chat. The Apparatus agent asks why Heller didn't make a run for it the minute he got a hold of Gris' gun back in the cell, but Heller laughs - "a very pleasant, easy laugh" - and says that he knew he couldn't make it past all the security of Spiteos.

This leads to the chapter's second Heller Moment, as Gris boggles at how Heller could possibly deduce where he was, especially given the top-secret nature of the Apparatus' headquarters. Heller explains that his watch "runs on twenty-six different time bands as well as Universal Absolute Time," which (somehow) allowed him to somehow detect Palace City's time lag, leading him to estimate where he was from the lack of landmarks this precise distance from the timewarped capital of the Voltarian Confederacy. The second clue was the black basalt Spiteos is made of, which he could identify thanks to his elementary geology knowledge, the nigh-supernatural ability to notice the stone's granularity in a dark cell without the use of sophisticated microscope, and a superior memory that kept track of which rock formations had a sixteen degree dip and two hundred and fourteen degree strike.

This all depresses Gris, not just because a rather big secret is out, but because Heller is so casually letting him know how he figured it all out instead of keeping the knowledge hidden to aid his escape. A spy like Gris just can't understand it.

He'd never make a special agent. Not in a million, million years. I was not going to have trouble making him fail. I was going to have trouble keeping him afloat long enough not to drag me down. Spying takes an instinct. Oh my, he didn't have it! This wasn't going to be a failed mission. This was going to be a total catastrophe!

Is it me, or is the writing here just bad? My inner editor is writhing.


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Forward to Chapter Five