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But there was no comm now behind his right ear.
She checked the other side. “Did he take his comm off often?” she asked Dallas.
“A comm means money’s coming in,” Dallas said. “He wouldn’t ever disconnect.”
She looked up then, wondering why she hadn’t asked before. “Do you know—when he was killed, was there anybody in port? Like we are now?”
Dallas shrugged. “I don’t keep track of visitors. Too many.”
“You saw them take him.” A nod. “Did they scrape off his comm?”
“Nope. Grabbed him. Hauled him off. Threw him out.”
“Did he fight?”
“Wouldn’t you?” When she glared, Dallas added, “Screamed bloody murder, hung on to the doorway. Took three of them to get him out.”
The doorway. It made no difference; she doubted he would have had that kind of presence of mind. Still, he had been right about people being after him, had made the effort to locate her to ask for help … She walked up to the door and ran her fingers around the frame.
And when she pulled her hand away, a tiny, blood-covered comm strip was stuck under her fingernail.
Comms weren’t guaranteed durable storage, although many people used them that way. Anything important, anything you really wanted to keep, was better passed on to a longer-term system. Most people kept their information on the open network, encrypted with bio codes: vids, games, books, messages from family and friends. Elena, when she had been with the Corps, had saved almost nothing locally; but even so, when she resigned, she destroyed her comm strip rather than turning it in. The one she was wearing now she’d had only for a year, and it held nothing beyond ordinary comms traffic and a few vids from her mother. An older comm, like Jamyung’s, would be packed with intertwined data, but recent messages would be easy to retrieve.
And the best place to find a decent scanner that could examine the comm was in Jamyung’s vault.
Without looking at Dallas, she dropped into the hole in the floor next to Jamyung’s desk. Increasing the output of her light, she straightened, and scanned the big room. It had been, not unexpectedly, entirely tossed; but Jamyung’s diagnostic equipment was more or less where he had left it. His comm scanner was on the floor, still in one piece, and Elena wasted no time adhering the comm chip to the tabletop and flicking on the scanner.
And there it was, right on the top, recorded less than two minutes before the comm was deactivated: a message.
She tried to replay it, using her own comm to amplify, but it was encrypted. Damn. He had to have left the message for her. What would he have used to encrypt it, with little to no warning that the end was coming? A number? How could she guess? An ident code? A bio key? His own bio key would be invalid now that he was dead, and she was fairly certain he wouldn’t ever have had access to hers. Remembering his cleverness, she tried it anyway, but the message didn’t budge.
A code word, then. Something he thought she would try.
“Jamyung,” she said. And then: “Dallas.” Maybe he’d sent the scavenger to meet her for a reason.
Nothing.
Budapest. Earth. Yakutsk. Smolensk. Rat-fucking murdering bastards. None of them worked. She was running out of time.
And then it came to her, certain and obvious.
“Galileo,” she said, and the message began to play.
“They’re here,” Jamyung whispered. Wherever he was, he was in hiding; she heard bangs and crashes around him. “They won’t find it. Don’t let them get it. It’s in the back, in the compost. Well, it was compost. The cats get at it now. Take it out of here, and don’t let them know. I don’t know what the fuck it is, Shaw, but you need to keep it away from these bastards. It won’t help them, not on purpose. But maybe it won’t have a choice. Don’t give them the chance, Shaw. Don’t—”
Jamyung took a gasping breath, and the message ended.
Elena sat back on her heels, thinking, pushing aside a wave of sorrow at the trader’s death. She still found his description unconvincing, and his anthropomorphizing of this unknown object didn’t change her mind. But he’d died for something, and whether or not the thing was really talking to him, someone had thought it was important.
She wanted to know why.
She checked her comm; she had twelve minutes before Bear would expect her back. She stood, and turned to Dallas. “Where’s the compost heap?”
CHAPTER 4 (#ulink_e5b7c2e8-5037-5b28-a500-e17f5552f4cf)
Galileo
Greg rarely used the off-grid anymore. Earlier in his career, it had been a last-ditch method of communication with parties he was not officially supposed to be contacting: PSI ships, off-schedule freighters, even—occasionally—Syndicate raiders, although in those instances he was almost always delivering some sort of threat disguised as compromise. As a general rule, if he could provide the Admiralty with a positive result, they didn’t much care if all his negotiations were on the record with Galileo’s comms system or not. The off-grid allowed him to use tactics of which the Corps would not have officially approved.
The Admiralty would know, if they cared to check Galileo’s logs, when he had spoken with Captain Taras, and what she had asked him to do. They would not know when—or if—he had managed to contact Chryse unless he chose to tell them.
Greg went through the door connecting his office with his quarters and let it sweep closed behind him. Some of his pent-up tension evaporated in the silence. He was aware it was an odd room, given how long he had lived in it: unadorned with vid, picture, or artwork of any kind, nothing personal except a few physical books his mother had left him when she died. For years, the Corps-issue dresser had held a still picture of his wife, and he had kept it long after he had realized he had no love for her anymore, long after he had resigned himself to hanging on to a marriage that meant nothing to him. Getting rid of it after their divorce had felt freeing, but also disorienting. Some days he walked in still expecting to see her looking back at him, pale and beautiful and not at all what he wanted.
The books, which were a more fond reminder of the tendrils of the life he still had outside the Corps, held half the off-grid, with the other half tucked under his mattress. He kept it in two pieces, just in case. As far as he knew, the only other people who knew its location were Jessica Lockwood, his second-in-command, and Ted Shimada, Galileo’s chief of engineering. He trusted both of them to keep it to themselves.
He retrieved the two clear polymer sheets and slid them together, laying the unit on the top of his dresser. It pulsed once, an almost subvisual wave of deep purple, and he keyed in Chryse’s ident. Greg’s off-grid would show up as Galileo on the other end, unless Chryse had more detailed data from the last PSI ship that had received communications from this unit. That ship—Orunmila—was in the Third Sector, and it occurred to him that, among all of the questions he might have asked Taras, he should have asked how much of PSI’s intelligence about the Corps they shared with each other. It might have saved him a considerable amount of time.
Long ago, when he was young and innocent, he had been irritable that PSI seemed so suspicious of Central. At this point in his career, he knew better.
An off-grid comm often languished for a long time, sometimes hours, before it was acknowledged, but Greg’s signal was picked up almost immediately. “Galileo, this is Captain Bayandi of the starship Chryse. To whom am I speaking?”
And didn’t that set Greg back on his heels.
Captain Bayandi.
Captain Bayandi.
Nobody spoke with Captain Bayandi. It occurred to Greg there was probably no way even to verify the man’s identity. Every meager interaction Central had ever had with Chryse had been through subordinates. The voice was baritone, cautious, but with overtones of genuine warmth. Welcoming, Greg thought, which fit nothing he knew of Chryse at all.
Regrouping, he introduced himself. “This is Captain Greg Foster of the CCSS Galileo.I hope I’m not disturbing you, Captain.”
“Not at all, Captain Foster.” No hesitation. “What can I do for you?”
Tell me who you are, Greg thought. Tell me what your ship is. Tell me about your crew. Tell me why you never talk to us. Tell me why you never talk to your own people. “I’m contacting you at the request of Captain Taras,” he said.
“Is she all right? Is Meridia in danger?”
Instant concern, and convincing worry. In so many ways, this was not the conversation Greg had thought he would be having. “Meridia is in fine shape, Captain,” Greg assured him. “And I spoke with Captain Taras a little while ago. She is in good health and spirits. But she’s concerned about your ship, and asked if I could speak with you.”
“I don’t understand. We spoke with Captain Taras yesterday. Commander Ilyana should be arriving at Meridia in just a few hours.”
Greg would have expected annoyance; Bayandi only sounded confused.
“I don’t want to speak for her,” Greg said carefully. “But I have the impression that she’s still worried about your comms outage a few months ago, and the reason for Commander Ilyana’s trip.”
Bayandi was silent for a moment. “I see,” he said at last, and he sounded resigned. “I should have given Captain Taras more detail. I apologize for the need for your involvement, Captain Foster.”
Taras was right; it felt very much like a family squabble. “Don’t be concerned about that, Captain,” he said. “May I ask—is there something we can help you with? Yakutsk notwithstanding, I have some maintenance people I can spare if they would be useful.”
“That is very kind of you, Captain,” Bayandi said, impeccably sincere. “There is nothing for you to help us with. Ilyana should be able to answer Taras’s questions when she arrives, and we’ll join you at Yakutsk twelve hours afterward. Do you know, yet, if there is anything specific you will need?”
“No, Captain, but thank you.” Greg frowned. Pleasantries, Taras had said, and it had annoyed her. He was understanding how she felt, but he had no standing to demand answers or details. A PSI ship the Corps had rarely contacted was unlikely to willingly disclose damage information. And if Bayandi had personal reasons for shutting out Captain Taras—that was not a relationship Greg could mediate.
On the other hand … Bayandi had offered advice, and that alone might be telling.
“Captain Bayandi, if you have a moment, I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on the tactical situation on Yakutsk.”
If the PSI captain was surprised by the question, he betrayed nothing. “They’ve been fighting among themselves for a long time,” he said. “The terraformer project—its inception as much as its failure—has widened long-standing schisms. There is a great deal of anger there, and unkindness. It seems fixed in their culture. But it is not all of them. There are individuals …” Bayandi trailed off. “I think we must be very careful, Captain Foster,” he said at last. “I think we cannot underestimate the need of a subset of the population to feel a sense of control and organization. Yakutsk’s strategic importance is a double-edged sword. It brings them pride, but there are many people there who have killed for power, and will kill again. They are not the people who will help us, and I think attempting a dialogue with them is, at best … procrastination, shall we say?”
“You think we need to start building civilian allies, rather than dealing with the government.”
“The government on Yakutsk may have changed again before you arrive there. Negotiating with the government will accomplish nothing.”
It was a different direction than Greg had been considering. It was also far less well defined, but he felt, for the first time, a glimmer of hope. “Thank you, Captain,” he said honestly. “I’ll discuss your thoughts with my colleagues.”
“And I will contact Captain Taras immediately,” Bayandi promised. “I am sorry that we have worried her. You may rest assured, I will resolve the issue. Thank you, Captain Foster.” He ended with something curious: “I hope we will talk again.”
Greg folded up the off-grid thoughtfully. Even if he had anticipated speaking with Bayandi … the man was not at all what Greg would have expected. Despite his age—reported by some as being north of ninety—he had been lucid and attentive, no waver or uncertainty in his voice. Had Greg not known Bayandi’s history, he would have seemed a typical PSI commander.
Greg was missing something. But PSI being PSI, he was unlikely to ever learn what it was, even from Taras.
The door chime went off, and Galileo flashed his visitor’s name before his eyes: Commander Lockwood.He shook off his thoughts on PSI. Those worries could wait until they had stabilized the situation on Yakutsk.
“Good evening, Commander,” he said, when she walked in. “What can I do for you?”
Jessica Lockwood stood, not precisely at attention, but with the same compact ease she did nearly everything. She was a small woman—very nearly too short for the Corps, and he had taken care never to confirm her recorded height—impeccably beautiful, and always assembled with flawless military precision. She had a head full of curly red hair that she managed to tame back into a symmetrical bun, and shrewd green eyes. Most people noticed only her round-cheeked beauty when they met her, and missed the deep intelligence in those eyes—and the set of stubbornness in her lips. She had been his second-in-command for two years now. He had argued with and raged at her as he had to no one else ever in his life, and he loved her unreservedly, as much as he loved his own sister. He did not think he could have found himself a better first officer anywhere in the Corps.
“I’ve got some news on Yakutsk, sir,” she said. She did not look him in the eye.
Greg knew what that meant.
Before he had promoted her to commander—indeed, long before she had enlisted in the Corps—Jessica had been a dangerously skilled recreational hacker. Having taken an oath to obey Corps regulations, she was generally loath to use her skills in a way that might have been interpreted as illegal. But ever since they had begun secretly investigating Ellis Systems, he had told her to get her intelligence any way she could. He had not been explicit, and she had not been forthcoming; but he knew a great deal of what they had discovered was unlikely to have been obtained by official means. Including, apparently, whatever she needed to tell him now.
“Off the record,” he assured her. “What’s up, Jess?”
Immediately she relaxed, all of the military draining out of her. She began pacing the floor of his room. “It’s Baikul again, Greg,” she said, sounding exasperated. “Oarig, the perpetual amateur.”
Oarig, governor of Baikul, had only had the job for two weeks, having obtained it by summarily ejecting his predecessor and her cabinet from the office—a move widely anticipated after the terraformer failure. While this was not an atypical method for Yakutsk to change governing bodies, Oarig’s qualifications were difficult to understand. He was short-tempered, entitled, and inclined to violence. Greg was not entirely sure how he had amassed enough dedicated followers to kill for him.
“They’ve got wind of a food drop at Smolensk,” Jessica told him, “and they’re threatening to steal it.”
He rubbed his eyes. “Oarig, of course, having no trust in the fact that the supplies are going to be shared.” Which was not entirely unreasonable of him, despite his hair trigger—Villipova, the governor of Smolensk, was not above denying Baikul resources she had previously agreed to distribute evenly.
Jessica shrugged. “Hard to say. He’s paranoid, sure; but really, Greg, I think he’s just been planning a coup for so long he doesn’t know what else to do with himself.”
Which, Greg thought, made a succinct summation of Oarig’s personality. “Budapest dropped the cargo yesterday, didn’t they? So we need to figure out how to alert Villipova without—”
“Actually, sir,” Jessica interrupted, “Budapest is still there.”
Well, hell.
He turned away from her. Most of his crew considered him stoic, even cold; but Jessica could read him too well. She would know what he was thinking. He didn’t need her to see it in his eyes as well. “They should have been out of there ten hours ago.”
“They got delayed,” she told him. “They did airlift assist at Govi. There were … complications.”
“Anybody get hurt?”
“Not those kinds of complications.”
He knew instantly what had happened. Airlift assist meant hands-off recon. Civilian freighters often served that purpose during an evac, using pilots of various experience levels to scan a colony’s surface for people in distress. The protocol was to notify the lead airlift ship when a group was found, and move on.
But Elena would never have left anyone in trouble.
“We’ve got to tell Savosky.” He headed through the inner door to his office, Jessica at his heels. “He needs to abort that cargo drop.”
He heard her step behind him. “I talked to Yuri a few minutes ago. They’re already down on the surface. Import is arguing with them about where they want the cargo delivered.”
“The correct answer,” Greg said, “is they leave it where it is and let Smolensk sort it out.” Civilians. Dammit. He hit his internal comm. “Samaras, get me Budapest.”
But Jessica wasn’t finished. “You’re not going to talk them out of it,” she said. “I tried. If the import office doesn’t certify receipt, they don’t get paid.”
“And they’re willing to risk their lives for that?”
“Apparently so.”
Shit. “Belay that last order, Samaras,” he said, and instead commed Emily Broadmoor, his security chief. “Emily, I need a shuttle and a security detail.” He met Jessica’s eyes. “How far are we out?”
“Twenty minutes,” she told him.
“Twenty minutes,” he said to Emily. When she acknowledged, he turned back to Jessica. “I’m going to get Herrod. Might as well at least maintain the fiction of having diplomacy on the table. You—” He stopped. “Contact Savosky. Tell him we’re sending backup.”
“Yes, sir. Greg—”
He met her eyes. “No time for that now, Jess,” he said, and after a moment she nodded.
“I’ll alert Savosky, sir.” She turned and left.
Greg left the office and headed back to the gym, putting all the pieces together in his head. Savosky had dropped cargo in some pretty ugly places in the past, and he was well aware of the political situation on Yakutsk. If he was moving forward despite Jessica’s warning, then the payoff must be genuinely impressive. Savosky was not naive, and he was not helpless.
And he had at least one pilot who wasn’t a civilian at all.
Past is past, Greg told himself.
But it wasn’t, and he knew it.
CHAPTER 5 (#ulink_8da050d1-629a-5fde-abf1-a46d9906ae1b)
Yakutsk
