She chuckled when Joyce said, “I’m pushing to have Benjamin order canine teams—I get such a kick seeing these crèche-get shudder when they think of hairy, drooling beasts running around their habitat. However, they could be the best solution, low-tech or not, to my problem.”
At the end of his message, Joyce asked for updates. She knew he was referring, obliquely, to the Maria mission.
No need to call him back, because I haven’t done squat
. With a pang of guilt, she took a long sip.
Ariane woke to the sound of her alarm. Her head was clear, surprisingly so, when she looked at the pint and realized how much she’d drunk. Last night had only been about the alcohol; she couldn’t even justify her drinking as socializing. This was another line her addiction counselor, Major Tafani, had warned her not to cross. She stuffed the pint of rotgut into her locker in the hygiene closet, behind one of her soap bottles. Leaving it beside her bed, or even in her quarters, was too close and personal. It nagged at her, but she couldn’t throw it away, not when it still had a third remaining.
She checked Matt’s schedule. At the moment, he was coming up on the elevator, climbing the stalk in the long trek between moon and station. She considered calling him, but hesitated. Looking at his and her schedules, side by side, she decided that she wouldn’t call him under normal circumstances. Which made her pause; why was she so worried about normalcy? Her schedule had visits to Dr. Lee’s lab, as well as Novak and Lowry’s lab. She decided she didn’t want to face Dr. Lee so soon, and moved that session to after lunch.
After devouring a big breakfast, she decided she couldn’t put off her mission much longer. She had to speak with Maria, but when? There wasn’t time for a trip down to Priamos, not for several days. On impulse, she called Maria, audio only.
“Yes, Ms. Kedros?” Maria’s voice was chillingly polite.
“I was given a package to hand carry to you, from the
Pilgrimage
.” She kept her voice relaxed.
“I see. You’re the last person I’d expect a favor from.”
“Agreed.” Ariane responded in an equally cool tone. “But a mutual acquaintance gave me an antique document you ordered, and told me to be careful with it.”
Maria didn’t miss a beat. “It might be something I ordered more than a month ago.”
“It’s a play titled ‘A Famous History of Troylus and Kressida,’ printed on paper, so I’d prefer to deliver it in person. Unfortunately, I don’t know when I can make the trip down to the surface.”
“I’m working up on-station for a while,” Maria said. “I can meet you on Ring Three, near Maintenance Equipment and Supplies.”
“How soon?”
“Immediately.” Maria hung up.
Well
. Ariane grabbed the sealed box that Edones had given her. It contained, surrounded by inert gas, a certified copy of the play she mentioned—not an original, of course, but a one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old limited print.
She was off the ship in what she considered record time, but she didn’t beat Maria to the maintenance equipment office. As she approached, she saw the tall leggy blonde leaning against the side of the corridor, staying out of the way of maintenance carts and personnel departing for jobs. Maria had cleverly picked a high-traffic area with no ComNet nodes installed.
“You have it?” Maria pushed away from the bulkhead and smoothed her cap of chin- length hair. Her eyes were focused on the package. “What about the price?”
“I was given latitude to negotiate a few points. You can take possession of the document now, if you wish, and deal with details later.” Ariane handed her the package carefully. The package was the important part of their interchange, because an observer would concentrate upon it. And it was totally meaningless.
“Details later, hmm? I can read your body language, Ms. Kedros, and it bodes a high price for me.”
“We’ll talk.” She shrugged uncomfortably under Maria’s knowing glance. The Directorate had made itself perfectly clear, through written orders and Edones’s verbal instructions. AFCAW wasn’t going to pay for Maria’s defection unless they got decent intelligence from several years in place.
Maria would also have to take risks. It was customary for the Directorate to promise “protection” to an informer, but this was unrealistic for deep cover operatives. If Maria backed out of this, Ariane would understand, but she’d also have to pressure Maria to stay the course. She took a deep breath. “We can meet at the end of this shift. I assume we’re both hip-deep in this expedition.”
“I’m applying for the copilot and sensors seat.” Maria sniffed. “Sent in my records and recommendations this morning.”
“I suppose I—” Ariane had to lean in to the bulkhead to avoid an elbow from a lab technician. More than station maintenance streamed by; the R&D laboratories had to requisition equipment through this office, also. This tech was Terran, with a loose lab coat over his tight jumpsuit. She caught a glance from angry blue eyes under a mop of straight caramel-colored hair. Someone was having a bad day. She finished with, “I should wish you good luck.”
Maria watched the back of the tech with a strange expression, shook her head, and murmured, “I hope luck has nothing to do with it, Ms. Kedros.” She held the package close to her body as she strode away.
Ariane watched her weave through the crowd in front of the maintenance office toward the other end of the hall. After passing a knot of people having an impromptu but heated discussion, a shorter figure with burgundy hair darted from behind the group to intercept Maria.
Great
. Sabina might have been shadowing Maria. Ariane watched the two greet each other, neither showing surprise. Maria bent her head to listen to the psychotic bitch but they both turned away, so Ariane couldn’t see their expressions.
She sighed. This mission might be going sour, but that was more Maria’s problem than hers. She had physicists to consult, with hopes of kick-starting an ancient N-space buoy.
After Maria entered, Sabina stood in the doorway until Isrid sent her off with a flicker of his hand.
“Is
she
going to be a problem?” Isrid raised an eyebrow. Maria and Sabina had openly been lovers; Sabina herself had shown him video, for some purpose she wouldn’t divulge. Sabina didn’t know how to interact with people, other than to try manipulation. When Maria had distanced herself from everyone on the station, his wife had probably been hurt, but she’d responded by stepping up her machinations against everyone around her.
“Not at all.” Maria responded blandly. She dropped a light carton, made for the protection of old paper documents, onto the table.
Isrid shrugged. Maria had been forthcoming about her bisexuality, but she’d never publicized her relationships, nor acknowledged Sabina’s jealousies. He didn’t understand her reticence, and probably never would.
“Let’s get to work.” Isrid rapidly filled her in on the many disparate facts. First, Andre Covanni was on-station, carrying out orders from Overlord Three. Second, threats were made against Parmet’s family that mentioned retribution for letting Major Kedros live, yet were referenced by Duval, who then blamed the threats on Kedros. Third, Duval’s information gathering had expanded to include the AFCAW Directorate of Intelligence, and he now had the balls to throw his weight around with Overlord Three’s staff, insinuating that Pax Minoica would be falling and taking all supporters with it.
Maria zeroed in on Andre. She knew the code name, but she couldn’t know Andre’s identity as Dr. Istaga. “What’s Andre doing here?”
“Cleaning up embarrassing loose ends, like letting somebody steal a TD weapon. He’s also inventorying Overlord Three’s assets, assessing loyalties, et cetera.”
“Oh.” Her eyes flickered. She’d been his best intelligence analyst, so she probably just accurately surmised that Andre had executed Dr. Rouxe. “Did Andre have anything to do with the explosive grenades planted on the
Pilgrimage
?”
“He denied any involvement. Seemed rather offended by the insinuation, in fact.”
“And Duval knows what was in the threats you received,” she said. “But only your personal security knew about them, and they say you allowed a
destroyer of Ura-Guinn
to go free.”
He sighed. “So I always come back to the basic question: How did our kidnapping of Major Kedros become common knowledge on Overlord Six’s staff? That doesn’t make sense. Neither does Duval’s absurd attempt to blame Kedros for the threats.”
“Who, on the Terran side, knows who Kedros is, and what she did?”
“You, me, my wives—although they insist it’s gone no further. Andre knows, but he’s only briefed Overlord Three and his closest advisors. Some of my security know, generally, that I came in contact with someone responsible for Ura-Guinn, but they can’t know it’s Kedros, specifically. That still keeps it within Three’s sphere—”
“You haven’t mentioned Nathan,” she said.
Nathanial Wolf Kim had been one of his close advisors, responsible for torturing Major Kedros, until Isrid stopped him. Nathan couldn’t handle the transition from military intelligence to industrial and economic espionage, or that’s how Isrid phrased it. In other words, Nathan couldn’t let go of the war. The irony was that the Overlord was pushing Isrid to be more flexible about his own attitudes, so Nathan became an anchor he couldn’t afford.
“Nathan resigned, of his own free will.” Isrid had tried not to take it personally. “I ensured he got a job elsewhere with Overlord Three, a high- profile, career-building position that would help rebuild Terra.”
Maria snorted. “You give him too much credit, SP. Nathan never wanted to build, or rebuild, as much as he wanted to destroy.”
“He didn’t take the job?”
“I don’t know.” Maria paused. “But we should find out. This morning, I suddenly thought I saw Nathan’s posture and walk, but it wasn’t.”
Isrid got up to stretch his legs. “You’ll get the same access to records as Ensign Walker’s people have, so if Nathan’s here, you can find him.”
“Who’s on the trusted list?”
“You and I. Right now, we can trust only each other.”
Maria flinched, minutely, at his words. Someone untrained in
somaural
reading wouldn’t have seen it, but he did. “I’ll get started immediately,” she said quietly.
“Sure, I’m getting around.” As he spoke into his mike implant, Joyce eyed the torture implements near his bed, all designed to help him “get around.” There was the standard old-man walker that, even though it punctured his pride, turned out to be the most useful. The anti-grav harness was hard to strap on and caused nausea. There were various types of canes, all of which required more coordination than he could summon. Luckily, Matt Journey was a cheap bastard who didn’t want to pay for video, so he couldn’t see Joyce’s state.
“That’s good,” Matt said. “I’ll tell Ari that you’re getting some exercise.”
There was a pause. Joyce rolled his eyes.
Wait for it
. . .
“Is Diana there? Will she be visiting in the next hour or two?” Matt asked.
“No, Mr. Journey. Lieutenant Oleander has started her testimony before the board. From what I’ve seen, they’ll suck away everything but minimal rack time.”
“Is she in trouble? Why are they allowed to do this?” Matt sounded plaintive.
“I don’t know that any one person is targeted, but they do seem to be trying to find inadequacies in the
Bright Crescent
’s performance. And
they
can do it, because
they
are senators and apparently we taxpayers have hired them to do this.” Joyce was getting tense, because this was pinging the last working nerve he had and making it raw.
“If you see her, can you tell her to call me? And have you heard anything about that bot that tried to take out my ship?
Pilgrimage
security isn’t taking my calls.” He sounded so miserable that Joyce felt a spark of compassion, which didn’t happen very often.
“Sorry. Nothing on that bot problem either.” He wouldn’t talk down
Pilgrimage
crew members to another crèche-get, so he left it at that.
After Matt hung up, Joyce stood up and rearranged his bed, pillows, and blankets. He stretched and tried to settle in a more comfortable sitting position on the bed. Just that little bit of exertion made him tired. Not only that, he was depressed. He wasn’t recovering as fast as he wanted.
With lukewarm enthusiasm, he picked up the civilian slate. He’d hoped to get a military slate with crypto today, but Lieutenant Oleander hadn’t showed up, probably for the very reasons he’d explained to Matt Journey.
Surprisingly, with that slate he found a few answers in publicly available records, although he was no Captain Floros when it came to data digging. He concentrated on discovering who was really behind the senatorial investigation, and why. Two powerful senators, Stephanos and Raulini, who sat at the helms of opposing parties, were driving this board of investigation. Why? Even more puzzling, why
now
? It wasn’t the best time for Stephanos because he had to sit, concurrently, on the Interstellar Tribunal. Raulini was distracted in a likewise manner, spearheading some legislation that would soon be discussed on the Senate floor on Hellas Prime. In fact, these senators were so busy that their aides had to stand in for them during most of the board’s proceedings.
That was the clue that finally helped Joyce; that, and his natural suspicion of anyone who wore suits like Myron’s. When he couldn’t find anything by sifting through the public correspondence between senators, he dropped into the aide and staff level.
Pay dirt!
He gave a little whoop as he marked his sources with his stylus.
“Good to see someone’s enjoying the ComNet experience.” Captain Floros stood in the doorway and held up a military-issue slate. “But I think this should help.” She tossed it to him.
“Come in, Captain, and shut the door, will you?” Joyce happily turned on the slate and started the sweep tool. He held it out to Floros, meaningfully.