Abysm (18 page)

A far more horrifying thought occurred to her. What if the Galaxy First bombing was the real diversion?

SPACE, CENTRAL QUADRANT

R
OMANE
S
TELLAR
S
YSTEM

Kennedy clenched both hands in her hair and spun in circles down the aisle of the small transport. “Oh, no, no, no. The vindictive bitch!”

She gaped at Noah, eyes wide. “I am so, so sorry. This is my fault. I never should have let your dad expose himself like this for me. It was foolish and overly brazen of me. I should have been more cautious.”

Noah gave her an easy shrug, but she wasn’t buying it. His heart wasn’t in it. “Eh, a span in lock-up will do him some good. Toughen him up, and maybe, just maybe, make him appreciate how good he’s always had things.”

“You don’t mean that.”

He massaged his biosynth hand with his natural one. It was a tic which had come with the new limb, and she knew it meant he was anxious, swagger or no. “I mean it a little. But…fine, I guess I don’t want him punished for actually doing the right thing for once in his life.”

“Ugh!” She flung herself into a chair and hung her head. She always tried
so
hard not to use her family’s name or wealth in such a way that it harmed others, even inadvertently. And now she’d walked onto a stage and done precisely that, and in spectacular fashion.

True, Lionel Terrage wasn’t exactly a common factory worker—but he’d put himself on the line so she could leverage her name for her own ends, and now he sat in police custody.

“Hey….” Noah knelt in front of her and lifted her chin. “It’s not your fault, so don’t beat yourself up over it. He understood the risks, and he decided to take a stand.”

She wrinkled her nose at him. He kissed its tip…it really did make her feel better. But only for a minute. She had to make this right—fix it completely if she could. “I wonder if Miriam can help. After everything we’ve done for her, if she can, she will. I know it.”

Noah nodded vaguely. “I agree. She owes you big time.”

“Do you think the Aquila government would flip to her side? It’s very close to Romane, so might they be inclined that way?”

“Honey, I left Aquila when I was fifteen. I don’t have the first clue about the inclinations of its government, then or now. But I bet Miriam Solovy does.”

“Good point.” She was putting a message to Miriam together when the pilot came over the speaker. “We’ve reached Romane-controlled space. However, I’m being told all spaceports are temporarily closed to new arrivals.”

“What?” She leapt to her feet.

Noah frowned. “I’ll hit up Mia and try to find out what’s happening down there. You talk to the pilot about our options.”

She nodded agreement and went into the cockpit. “Are they saying why?”

The pilot shook his head. “No, nor are they giving a time estimate of how long the spaceports will be closed. We can return to Aquila or divert to another colony, or we can try to wait it out.”

Well they definitely weren’t going back to Aquila, not with Winslow’s gestapo running roughshod over Lionel’s property and possibly the whole colony. The closest safe world was Messium…she shuddered as violent, heartbreaking memories burst into the forefront of her mind.

Nope. She was not ready to revisit that Hell, she didn’t care how much they had supposedly rebuilt. Pandora then—but not yet.

“Wait it out for now. We’ll pay you for your time.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He adopted a high-orbit course, and she returned to the main cabin.

Noah was sitting near the back, drumming raggedly on his thighs while glaring at the ceiling. Not a good sign.

She sat down opposite him. “What did you find out?”

“Oh, you know, about what you’d expect. OTS has picked tonight to try to blow up Romane.”

EAS STALWART II

S
PACE,
C
ENTRAL
Q
UADRANT

“Shit.”

“Such language! Scandalous.”

Richard spun around to see Miriam walk in his small but still unusually spacious quarters and close the door behind her. “Sorry. I just saw—”

“I was kidding, Richard. What’s wrong?”

He jerked his head toward the news feed holo where updates on the hostage crisis in Cavare streamed.

Her expression grew progressively darker as she took in the information. Finally her eyes cut over to him. “Shit.”

He huffed a breath. “You’re not wrong. OTS is pushing hard on Seneca. Clearly it’s due to the passage of the H+ bill, but I’m surprised they can bring this level of resources to bear on the ground there. Combined with Romane, they must be stretching themselves thin now.”

“I actually came by to ask you what you knew about the situation on Romane.”

“All signs point to a major offensive by OTS tonight. They’ve been escalating their protests throughout the day, and in the last few minutes several explosions in the heart of downtown were reported.”

She sank against the wall with a heavy sigh. “I all but ordered Alex to go there. I hoped it would be safe, but instead it’s turning out to be the most dangerous place in the galaxy. Of course, my second choice was Seneca. I might as well have sent her to Earth, as it could hardly be
more
dangerous.”

“She knows how to take care of herself, as does Caleb, obviously. And I think the IDCC is ready for this. Arguably more ready than Seneca is.”

He should have worked harder to ensure Graham recognized the provocation the H+ bill was likely to cause among its opponents, and paid closer attention to OTS’ ability to move people and resources when needed. He should have—

“You should go back.”

He looked over at her, startled. “Where? To Seneca?” He’d almost said ‘home,’ but that still didn’t feel quite right.

Miriam nodded.

“No. I’m not going to abandon you. Graham has everything under control, and Will…is insisting on getting too close to the front lines, but he’ll be fine.” Warring allegiances fought for dominance in his mind and his heart. He needed to stay; he needed to go. He needed to do both with equal fervor. “I promised you I would see this through with you, and I will. I believe in what we’re fighting for.”

“You’ve already done all the hard work here, and it’s been invaluable to me. You’ve helped to put me in a position to legitimately succeed, and I cannot thank you enough. But there’s not much left for you to do, and what there is you can do on the move.

“Now, you’re needed on Seneca. Go make sure the damn government doesn’t fall—I need the Federation to be a continuing threat to Winslow—and Will doesn’t get himself killed. You’d be zero good to me if that happened.”

“Miriam—”

“I’m not being selfless. I’d send you to Romane if I thought you could help there. But you can’t. Where you can help is Seneca.”

“I can also—”

“Don’t make me order you to go.”

“You can’t give me orders any longer.”

“I can kick you off my ship.”

He paused. “Would you really do that?”

“Are we going to be required to find out?” Her glare was so convincing he almost believed her; he might have but for the kindness remaining in her eyes.

He stared at the news feed for several seconds, then exhaled heavily. “I’m keeping my direct access to Thomas. I’ll stay up to speed on all the intel coming in and keep pushing the open issues which haven’t resolved.

“We can expect movement on Scythia within the next few hours. I suspect it will fall our way, and you and Rychen need to be ready to move when it does. Send Colonel Jenner with a squad to defend against a coup attempt on the ground. And Admiral Cuellar has the materials he asked for, so follow up with him in the morning, Shi Shen time, which is in about three hours.

“Also, I checked into Lionel Terrage’s situation, and I’m working on a way to get him released under the radar. As a result of what happened there, we can pursue several new opportunities with certain members of the Allied Manufacturers—”

She placed a hand on his shoulder. “Okay. We’ll get it all done. Don’t presume you’re taking a vacation. You can send me lists upon lists. At all hours. In fact, I expect nothing less. Now go requisition a shuttle and get out of here. Every minute you dally puts us farther away from Seneca.”

His chin dropped to his chest. “Thank you.”

“Nonsense. Off my ship.”

17

EARTH

S
AN
F
RANCISCO

C
LAIRE
Z
ABROI FIXED ANOTHER
V
ELVET
F
ANTASY
and stretched out on the floor in front of one of the couches.

Markos promptly kicked her in the shoulder to try to gain more room for himself; she retorted with an elbow to the arch of his foot. Not her fault he was barefoot.

Everyone in the apartment was a Prevo; they didn’t need to gather in person to be together. They did it anyway, because they’d always done it. And because with the new laws and gestapo crackdown underway, though no one wanted to admit it aloud, they all felt safer in numbers, behind the same walls and with an encrypted door sporting a few nasty surprises between them and the outside world.

Especially given what they were doing behind the encrypted door.

As soon as her injuries from the attack at Rincon Plaza had healed, Claire had quit lollygagging around and gotten into the game. OTS needed to die in a fire, then the whore Winslow and half the Assembly needed to burn in the pyre built atop the fire’s ashes. She and her mates were doing their part to help make that happen.

They’d been breaking into various government databases for days now, placing traces and smart worms and daemon bombs. As a result of these efforts, they were now getting advance warning of seventy-two percent of planned law enforcement raids in North and South America and Europe—enough time to allow any Prevos in the targeted locations to make themselves scarce. A couple of times the vacating Prevos had left behind gifts for the cops, too.

Tonight, however, this group had a very specific purpose. Despite their small victories in this underground war, the government was getting too good. They knew too much too fast about individuals and safe houses.

Because the government had never been and would never be that good, the most logical explanation was a mole inside the Noesis.

The thought of a Prevo acting as a double agent and betraying their own kind disgusted Claire. But she’d known enough disgusting people in her time to be forced to admit it was not only possible, but likely.

While the Noesis itself was an open system, any reporting to the authorities had to be private, thus outside the system. But a Prevo never truly left the Noesis—well, except for Alex, and she had to go to another universe to do it—which meant somewhere evidence existed of the break.

It might be no more than a microsecond glitch, a blip, an identical cat in the matrix. But they would find it. Then they would find the perpetrator. Then they would handle the snitch in their own way.

“Sandi, babe, toss us up some pasta, would you? I’m famished.”

“Zabroi,
babe
, cook your own damn pasta, and bake me some cookies while you’re at it.”

She flashed Sandi a middle finger and sipped on her drink, trying to decide how much she wanted the pasta.

Markos:  Check this. I’ve got a 723 millisecond hole in Sector 83.9x12, hit four times in the last week.

Claire:  Same ID?

Markos:  No, but the hole is obscured using the same trick every time. It’s a tell.

Claire:  Can you follow it down its rabbit hole? Where’s it lead?

Markos:  Let me just wiggle my fingers around and…wait, they actually converge pretty quickly. And…and….bingo! We’ve got our rat all right. The trail leads straight into a top level government security comm network in Washington.