Authors: Linnea Sinclair
He’d failed. He was going to lose her. “Makaiden, I—”
“Don’t. Please.” She raised both hands defensively. The sadness in her eyes tore at him. “Let’s just forget this ever happened, okay?”
He tried again, stepping toward her, hand outstretched. “Makaiden—”
“I’m sorry.” Her voice was a harsh whisper. She turned quickly and fled through his open doorway, her
small footsteps breaking the silence in the corridor, her sudden absence breaking his heart.
Kaidee stared at the ceiling of her cabin in the darkness and tortured herself by going over and over the last ten minutes of her so-called dance lesson with Devin, cringing at her weak protestations. Why hadn’t she slapped him? Hell, why hadn’t she clocked him one right across that lean jaw of his?
Because he’s a good eight or nine inches taller than you?
That had never stopped her in various bar fights or dockside skirmishes.
Because you wanted to know what it was like to kiss him?
Yes, she had. And that was the reason she couldn’t justify cracking him one in the face. She wasn’t sure she wasn’t the one who had started it. Worse, she wasn’t sure he might have thought her slight stumbles were an excuse to get closer to him. He might even now be wondering just what else he’d bought along with her ship.
Which led her tired and mortified mind down another path: maybe Devin Guthrie was very aware of what he owned and what Makaiden Griggs owed to him. And this was his way of collecting it.
She should have flattened him. She should have never …
Her cabin lights cycled painfully to morning, the glow through her eyelids increasing along with her headache. Finally, she slitted her eyes open and glared
at the bedside time stamp. She’d slept for a little over three hours.
With a groan, she pushed herself out of bed, padded out of her bedroom into the main cabin, and called up ship’s stats on the auxiliary console. They were on course, all systems normal. Nothing needed her immediate attention—at least, nothing that couldn’t wait for another hour. Or two.
“Reset wake-up, two hours,” she told the cabin monitor. Then she collapsed back into bed, burying her face in her pillow.
The next time her bedroom lights brightened, her eyes were already open and she felt marginally better—physically. Emotionally …
She shoved herself out of bed and headed for the shower, then dressed, cajoled a cup of coffee from the slurp-and-snack in her quarters, and headed the twenty or so feet down the corridor, past the lift, to the bridge.
It was only a kiss. One hell of a kiss, okay, but she was a grown woman. It was just a kiss.
She considered shutting down the lift and closing the airlock at the stairs. Her passengers could survive quite well on the lower deck, thank you. Far better than she could with only a slurp-and-snack in her quarters. But as much as the thought appealed to her—
running away from your problems again, Kaid?
—she knew it wasn’t a workable option. There were Trip and Barty to consider. They’d want to know why. And she didn’t want to explain.
She wanted to drop them off at Port Chalo and then hit the lanes as quickly as she could. Except that would probably get the three of them killed, especially with Barty being ill. She knew Port Chalo. They didn’t.
She sighed and initiated a routine systems check, then, coffee mug in one hand, pulled up the standard
Imperial news feed that Trip had watched her upload through that last public data beacon before the jumpgate. For the past few months she’d been ignoring the news; it rarely changed. The Empire continued to complain about the Alliance and its president, Mason Falkner, a former Imperial senator. The Alliance continued to declare its legitimacy. In between all that, various political types said various nasty things about one another, and everyone hated the Farosians.
Makaiden always reviewed trade and commercial news, and already had. But now she wondered if the problem with Guthrie security wasn’t a Guthrie problem but rather something happening on Sylvadae. Or in Port Palmero. Maybe Devin really didn’t have a reason to be worried and she could dump them in Port Chalo with a clean conscience, confident no harm would come to them.
In a
crigblarg’s
eyes.
She pulled up the Aldanian sector news feeds anyway. It was something to do.
She found nothing worthwhile out of Sylvadae or Port Palmero, unless the list of various parties or weddings or engagements—or disengagements—counted for something. To her, they didn’t. She scrolled past without reading them. More political machinations out of Aldan Prime. Tage blaming Farosian terrorists for something. Farosian terrorists blaming Tage back. Nothing new there—
EXPLOSION GUTS GUTHRIE OFFICES ON GARNO—TERRORIST INVOLVEMENT SUSPECTED
.
Kaidee almost dropped her coffee mug. The GGS offices on Garno were Devin’s headquarters. She pulled up the vid report and, clutching her mug with both hands, hunched over in her pilot’s chair to watch.
Five minutes later, she shoved the mug onto the
command console, then bolted off the bridge, heading for the stairs and the lower deck. And Devin Guthrie.
Devin was on his second cup of tea when Makaiden came barreling down the stairs, and for a moment he feared there was a ship malfunction. Being stuck in jumpspace for the rest of his life wasn’t his first choice, though being stuck with Makaiden was infinitely more appealing. He rose from his seat at the wall table as she thudded to a stop, her face flushed, her mouth a tight line.
He knew it didn’t involve Barty. He’d checked on the man not twenty minutes before.
“There was an explosion at your offices on Garno,” she said, with no preamble. “The newshounds are talking terrorists.”
Devin stared at her. He’d rehearsed a dozen things to say to Makaiden when she finally made an appearance on the lower deck come shipmorning. None of them involved the words
explosion
and
terrorist
.
Then his mind kicked back into gear, doing a quick analysis of the information and their current location, which shouldn’t have afforded access to any news reports. “We’re in jump—”
“It uploaded in the regular data feed just before we crossed the gate. With everything else going on, I didn’t bother to read it.” She motioned to the Rada clipped to his belt. “Plus I thought you might have snagged the feed.”
He hadn’t. As she said, with everything else going on, including the message from Ethan, news feeds were his last concern. And why hadn’t Ethan told him? Because it had happened after his brother sent the message?
“I need to see the clip.”
But she was already moving toward the stairwell, one hand motioning for him to follow.
So much for his rehearsed heartfelt expression of his feelings, which he’d spent the past two hours composing in his head.
Explosion
and
terrorist
rather ruined the mood. And added to his growing feeling of frustration and helplessness.
He sat at the comm console and watched the original report Makaiden had found, then two more she’d unearthed while he was watching the first. The good news was that no one was hurt—the explosion happened at night, when the twenty-one-story building in Tal Verdis was empty of all but a few security and cleaning ’droids. The bad news was that not only was the building’s main data server now slag but so was the backup server, located on a different floor in a separate part of the building.
“They were after the data, not people. And they knew where that data lived.” Devin leaned back in the chair, swiveling it slowly back and forth, much like the thoughts going back and forth in his mind.
“Why would a group of crazies who want Sheldon Blaine on the throne care about GGS data?” Makaiden asked, echoing his primary concern almost word for word.
“No salient reason I can think of,” Devin answered, “and therein lies a problem.”
“You working on any big Imperial contracts?”
“We’re always working on an Imperial contract somewhere. We’re an approved supplier for Marker shipyards. We handle various hard-goods contracts for the starports.” Devin ran quickly through a list of recent business deals with the Empire. None stood as significant in any way.
“What if it’s not Farosians but some splinter group, some fanatic with his own agenda?”
There was that. “We’ve always avoided controversial commodities for that reason.” Devin was glad to have someone to brainstorm with and moreover was glad it was Makaiden Griggs, who, as a former GGS pilot, might have heard something of value, even if it was two years ago. He’d see if Barty was awake in a few minutes. Barty, too, might be able to provide a perspective that Devin, being a Guthrie and a corporate officer, might not have.
“I have to look at what someone would achieve by destroying our data servers,” Devin continued. “Considering any data of value is also backed up off-site, I can’t think of any useful reason. This will slow us down for a few days, maybe even a week. But that’s all.”
“How about data of lesser value?” Makaiden asked. “What wouldn’t be saved off-site?”
He shrugged, his mind probing. “Minor schedules, noncritical in-house memos, personal communications. Things like that.”
“What if someone was using in-house memos or personal messages to … I don’t know, sell your secrets to a competitor?” Makaiden leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “I know that rules out the Farosians, but I’m looking more at the act than at who the newshounds are insinuating to be responsible. Rather than figure out why the Farosians would do this, I’m trying to figure out who would gain by slagging your servers.”
Devin sat up straighter, her words sparking ideas he didn’t want to consider but had to.
“Don’t look only at what someone has to gain,” she said, “but at what someone has to lose.”
That pushed him to his feet. “We need to talk to Barty.”
Barty was awake, his readouts improving, though he’d developed a rasping cough that worried Devin. “Reaction to the medication. And my stupidity,” Barty said with a wave of his left hand. His right hand held a mug of tea. Trip had just left, headed for the shower. “It should be gone by tomorrow or the day after.”
Makaiden was angling a wall screen toward the older man. “I picked this up from a news feed we received before we crossed the gate yesterday.” She played the vid clips from the three different news stations. Only one mentioned the tie-in between GGS and Admiral Philip Guthrie. None mentioned Trip’s disappearance.
Devin summarized his and Makaiden’s concerns.
“You missed another possibility.” Barty raised his mug slightly, pointing it at Devin. “Your data systems may have been thoroughly raped. Their destruction was simply a means of covering those tracks. Someone doesn’t want you to know what he was looking for. Or possibly even found.”
Would Petra Frederick and her security teams come to these same conclusions? He hoped so. According to the news vids, Tal Verdis law enforcement was concentrating on the terrorist angle. He felt more strongly now that wasn’t where they’d find answers.
“We have other problems,” Devin told Barty.
“You mean the ransom message on Trip’s pocket comm? He told me he found it and that you were trying to unlock the source code. If you haven’t been able to, I might—”
“I did. I just didn’t tell Trippy.” Devin glanced back at sick bay’s open doorway, making sure Trip wasn’t lurking there. He sucked in a hard breath. “The source
was my father. And there was a stealth pointer uploaded into Trip’s comm at the same time.”
Barty’s eyes widened. “That’s insane!”
“My thoughts exactly. But it’s his codes. Hidden, of course. Decent encryption that likely would have fooled Port Palmero law enforcement, but it bothered me that someone had accessed Trip’s comm. So I kept digging.” Devin shook his head slowly. “All I could think of is that this is some kind of convoluted scheme of his to bring Philip home.”
“Which office in GGS was the end source for the stealth pointer?”
“Location data wasn’t coded to be sent to GGS. It was coded for the adjunct judicial offices on Aldan Prime.”
Barty put his empty mug on the nightstand. “Devin, your father couldn’t code an encryption if the fate of the galaxy depended on it, and he sure as hell couldn’t manage to negotiate a stealth pointer. Nor would he even know Imperial codes. Now, that doesn’t fully preclude possible complicity. But it certainly makes it—in my book—much less likely. This smells more like ImpSec to me. Except ImpSec would have no reason to create a ransom note.” He pursed his lips. “Damned puzzling.”
Suddenly Devin knew what had been bothering him, clanging harshly but indistinctly in the back of his mind like a muffled warning bell. Data encryption and systems codes weren’t remotely the area of his father’s genius, and that’s why Ethan’s message had struck such a wrong chord as well. Numbers, data, and J.M. did not mix. His father’s genius was more in the creative end of business, in sensing market trends and in surrounding himself with the very best people
who could do everything else. His father was a visionary, not a number cruncher.
Relief soared, then crashed. “If my father didn’t do it, then whoever did has access not only to GGS’s innermost systems but our personal Guthrie ones as well.” That admission was almost staggering. “There are fail-safes, but if they have his codes”—he shook his head as if he could deny the facts—“they can gain entry to every level of every division. And all our personal, medical, and financial records.”
“This is something Petra Frederick should be able to catch,” Barty said.
“Unless she’s part of it, working for Tage.” Devin hated saying it but he had to.
Barty nodded. “You’re starting to think like me.” He chuckled, then coughed.
Makaiden handed Barty a glass of water. “Are you sure the message from Ethan
was
from Ethan?” she asked Devin.
Devin opened his mouth to say he’d recognized the comm codes and caught himself. “I was,” he admitted. “I’m not now.” He pulled off his glasses and scrubbed at his face with one hand. “Makaiden, I need to borrow the commdat in your quarters again.”