“Everything checked out,” he said. “I even threw an x-ray emitter on the probe out to look for material fatigue. Where is everyone?”
“Gone. Something about drinks and celebration. And sleep.”
“Are you hungry? I know a place.”
The place was closed for another five and half hours, but Adem had a key. I followed him into the cafeteria’s small kitchen. He opened the chiller and peered inside.
“I didn’t know you could cook,” I said.
“I’m a whiz at reheating Chef’s potstickers.” He cracked four eggs into a bowl and pulled a whisk out of a drawer. “You must be feeling pretty good about today.”
“I feel great about proving Francis wrong. When I write this up, he’s going to lose tenure.”
Adem pointed at the bowl of eggs with the whisk. “This is going to be something like fried rice. Is that okay?”
“I’ll cut up the vegetables.”
Adem got the rice started and put the potstickers in the oven to reheat.
“I can’t imagine your mother taught you how to do this,” I said.
He laughed. “No. Dooley all the way. I have five meals I do pretty well, but Dooley could put Chef out of a job. I used to cook for Lucy and Hafgan a lot when we were kids.”
“Dooley told me about Hafgan.”
“Died of old age while I was out here skipping around.” Adem turned off the burner under the wok. “Plates.”
We took the food to a table in the empty cafeteria.
“You seem better,” he said. “Maybe you’re getting used to the place.”
“The work has helped.” I pointed at him with a fork. “You know, in a perfect world your mother could have just shown up with this crazy plan and hired me. It wasn’t like I had a lot of prospects.”
“University gig. Little flat in La Mur. Couple of vacations a year to New Berlin or Versailles Station. Doesn’t sound so bad.”
“You’re forgetting the revolution. With a useless degree and rich-but-not-rich enough money, I’d be lucky not to have my head chopped off in the Square.”
“Decapitation would be a downside.” He nodded slowly. “But, if she waited until this year to make the offer, you might not have been qualified for the job.”
“I might have.” I separated the pile of rice and vegetables into half then into quarters to avoid looking at him. “Why did your mother pick us? There had to be a dozen families looking for an arrangement.”
Adem lay his fork across his empty plate and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “Two hundred and thirteen families. I read through the profiles and picked your mother and father myself.”
“So why did you? There had to be better prospects.”
“I liked your parents. Respected the way they presented themselves. A lot of the other applicants were middle-rich EuroDs looking to trade their offspring for business connections. Some of them had conceived just so they could put a profile up and froze the embryos until they could find the right deal. I nixed them immediately. There weren’t a lot of applicants from La Merde. Your parents stood out.”
“Most families from La Merde couldn’t afford the application fee.”
“How did your parents do it?”
“Probably a loan. That could explain why my mother and father never stopped working even…”
“Even though they could have lived off their daughter?” Adem smiled. “Your parents were desperate to give you a good life, Sako. I think they saw this…” he gestured, “marrying into my family as a gift. It wasn’t like we were buying something out of a catalog. Both parties had to agree to it. They had options, too, and they picked us.”
“And I’m supposed to be grateful for that?”
“Grateful to us? Hell, no. Mom’s getting what she paid for. You’re giving her family a giant leg up on the competition. If you’re going to thank anyone, thank your parents.”
I sort of hated that he was right. “What are you grateful for in all of this?”
“This wasn’t my idea, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t more than a little pissed at the captain for getting me into this. But it worked.” He chuckled. “It really did. I suppose I’m grateful for you, Hisako. I’m glad you’re here.”
ADEM
Eight days from Nov Tero
Adem whistled as he wiped down the table and cleaned up what little mess he had made in the kitchen. He felt good. The adrenaline rush of the emergency, followed by the long cool down of the ship-wide diagnostic and the cooking, had left him tired but strangely chipper. The conversation with Hisako hadn’t hurt, either.
He locked the kitchen door and smothered a yawn. It had been nice putting his aerospace design skills to use, too. Adding the x-ray emitter to the probe had saved him from spending hours in a vacuum suit, and he had several other improvements to The Midnight Special in mind. Adem checked his pocket for his reader and headed for his–
Adem cursed and patted down his other pockets. He’d used the reader during the diagnostic, and he remembered carrying it up to the workspace, amongst an armload of tools. He had dumped them on his workstation before coming to the kitchen with Hisako.
Chipper took a beating as Adem retraced his steps. He shaded his eyes as he approached the door of the workspace. The Hajj corridors were comfortably dim, but Hisako had set the lighting in the workspace several degrees higher. Adem had lost track of the number of times he’d gone from dim hallway to dark, unoccupied workspace only to be blinded when the automatic lights came on.
The precaution was unnecessary. The workspace was already occupied.
“What’s up?” Mateo said. He was sweating and elbow deep in a damaged power converter.
“I’ve left my reader. What are you doing?”
Mateo swabbed his forehead with his sleeve. “Eh, couldn’t sleep so I figured I’d try to get a little ahead.”
Everyone on the drive team was going to be cranky-tired come morning. Adem made a mental note to ask his mother for a donation from her special coffee stash. The team deserved the treat and might need the additional caffeine. He stepped to his workstation and searched the day’s detritus. The reader was there, half-buried under a scanning unit and a set of sockets. He slipped it into his pocket.
Mateo was still busy with the converter. It was probably just busy work, but Hisako had said something about rigging up some power buffer before the next jump. Adem woke the screen on her workstation, curious in spite of his fatigue. An index of files came up, but he didn’t recognize it. It wasn’t the one Hisako had prepared for the drive team. Adem scanned the names of the files, rubbed his eyes, and read them more closely. He opened one of them. “Holy sh…” He caught himself before he drew Mateo’s attention.
The index had everything, from the procedures for deactivating UA tamper protection to full schematics and repair instructions for their tech. Every piece of technology the United Americas had taken to their graves was there. Adem’s hands were shaking. He inspected another file. Mass-grav trouble-shooting and repair! A parts list for the fusion engines! A how-to for food assemblers!
Adem’s exhaustion vanished, overwhelmed by a mixture of hope and grief. A thousand years in survival mode had left humanity scratching amongst the ruins of technology it didn’t have time or resources to rediscover. The knowledge in the database could change life on all the worlds. Why hadn’t Hisako shared it? Did she not understand what it meant?
He took it all, copying the decrypted files to his reader and, when that filled up, uploading them to his password-protected corner of the Hajj computers. When he was finished, he returned to the index. The date and time of access were listed alongside the files. He ran his finger down the list to see which ones Hisako had been looking at last.
Adem’s hand floated to his mouth. What did Hisako want with the operations manual for the most powerful weapon in human history?
HISAKO
Eight days from Nov Tero
I wasn’t sure Vee would get up for anythin
g short of a medical emergency or a wild party, but she opened the door to her suite seconds after I triggered her intercom. She was dressed in workout clothes.
“Were you sleeping?” I said.
“I’m on second shift for the next couple of days. Soon though.”
“I need your advice about something.”
Her suite was bigger than Adem’s, enough space for a sitting area. In minutes, she had installed me on a small couch, feet up, drink in hand. She sat beside me. “Tell Auntie Vee all about it. No. Let me guess,” she said. “Adem?”
“Nothing like that. But I really, really need you to keep this to yourself.”
“As long as you’re not planning to kill someone or blow up the ship, I will stay mum.” She tapped her chin. “And it might depend on who you were planning to kill.”
I was exhausted, sinking into the couch, almost too comfortable, but what I needed to talk about was anything but laid back. I put my feet on the floor, sat up straight, and told her everything about Rakin’s offer and the technical records from the Hadfield.
She rubbed her face with both hands. “I should have put more caveats in my vow of silence. You need to tell the captain. This is a ridiculously big deal.” The breeziness she’d greeted me with was a thing of the past. “Rakin is slime. You don’t need me to tell you that. Nothing he does is good for anyone but Rakin.”
“He could do some good for me and my mother.”
“Unless you end up living somewhere he’s trying to pull this scam. He’s not going to stop at one payday. He’ll sell to anyone who has the money.”
“He’s not selling the real weapon,” I countered, “just the appearance of it. It’s only a few technical documents.”
“Those documents are salvage.” Vee picked up a throw pillow and held it in her arms. “Okay, let’s put aside the fact that helping Rakin would mean stealing from everyone who owns shares in the Hajj, myself included… I haven’t seen your contract, but I know mine has a bunch of language in it that would wreck my life if I did something like that. Ignoring that, could someone build a working weapon from the documents Rakin asked you for?”
“Absolutely not. There’s enough detail in there to build a mockup, maybe, but nothing that works.”
“What if they had all of the files on the squeezer? Tech spec, parts list, access codes, the works.”
“Maybe. If they had a United Americas tech expert on hand, they could get started. But it would take years to figure out all the substitutions and workarounds, and I doubt there’s fabricating equipment in existence that’s sophisticated enough to make most of the parts they’d need.”
“So, to get a real weapon, Rakin would need all the documentation and someone like you. And we’re about to dock at Nov Tero, where he has all kinds of criminal connections.” Her eyes widened. “You’ve heard of kidnapping, right?”
I hadn’t thought of that. “He- He said all he wants is the operating manual.”
“And he said he could get it from someone else if you didn’t help.” She cupped her forehead. “Sako, you’re supposed to be a fucking genius!”
“But…” I was out of excuses. “Maybe the UA was right to keep this shit locked up where we couldn’t get it.” Vee got up to pace. I was a little jealous. She had plenty of room for it. “You can’t give Rakin what he wants.”
“Where does that leave me?”
“Not in a TU prison awaiting trial on a breach of contract charge or chained to a workstation on Nov Tero!” She grabbed my shoulder. “You’re part-owner of the fastest Trader ship in the worlds. That’s enough to get your mother out of La Merde. It should be enough for anyone.”
I wasn’t convinced, and it must have shown on my face.
“Rakin’s not going to sell to the good guys. He doesn’t know any. Good guys don’t buy weapons of mass destruction. Trust me, Rakin Sadiq is not someone you want to turn into a kingmaker.”
What did they say about advice? The advisee only takes it if it jibes with what they were already thinking? “Okay, I won’t give him the manual.”
“Really?” She sounded almost surprised.
“You give good advice.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Here’s some more. Go to the captain tomorrow and tell her everything.”
I winced.
“You have control issues. I get that. You’ve never had much. But you can’t keep those files a secret, if they even are anymore. If there’s half as much in there as you say there is, we’re talking worlds changing.”
“I know. I’ll tell her in the morning.” The exhaustion was back. I looked at the clock. Morning was only a couple of hours away.
“That’s good, because if you hadn’t agreed, I would have had to tell her myself. Vow of silence or not.”
“Really?”
“Probably. I’ll go with you when you see the captain.” She smiled. “For support, not for checking up.”
I covered a yawn. “I would appreciate that.”
“We should get some sleep.” She smiled. “Which side of the bed do you want?”
Adem put two coffees in the middle of my breakfast table. “Cream and sugar, right?” He didn’t wait for me to respond and took the seat across from me. I was tired, but he looked borderline exhausted, almost crazed with it. Maybe cooking took a lot out of him. Maybe he’d been up tossing and turning with unspent passion. I had not.
“I talked to Lucy about this, and she agreed that I should talk to you first,” he said.
I had no idea what was coming next. Spending time with him over fried rice and potstickers had been nice, even a little date-like, but unless he had really misread it–
“I know about the technical files from the Hadfield. You left them up on your workstation last night.”
A momentary pang of guilt burned to a crisp. “I logged off when we left for the cafeteria. If you saw anything at my workstation, it was because you were spying on–”
“Hisako, it doesn’t matter how I saw it. What matters is…” He took a deliberate breath. “Lucy and I think you’re working with Rakin on something that involves,” he dropped his voice to a whisper, “that involves the squeezer.”
Adem’s face told me he didn’t want it to be true. I almost felt bad disappointing him. Almost. “Good work, detective. You caught me. Divorce me and throw me off the ship.”
Vee slipped into the chair next to him. “Who are we throwing off the ship?”
“I have a few candidates,” I said. “Did you get us an appointment?”
“The captain will meet us in her suite in twenty minutes.” She looked at Adem. “Are you coming?”
ADEM
Seven days from Nov Tero
Adem had never been able to read his mother’s moods as well as he could his father’s. Her face betrayed little, and her body, long disciplined by her martial arts, always looked at peace. If he’d had to guess now, though, he’d say she was furious.
“We never should have let him back on the Hajj.”
“He’s family,” Dooley said. “Sometimes you make allowances.”
The captain’s poker face broke, and she stared incredulously at her husband. “Allowances? I grew up with that man, Abdul. You give him a centimeter, and he’ll–!”
Adem watched them spar for a few more minutes before clearing his throat. “What do we do about this?”
“What does your sister know?” Dooley asked.
“Most of it. I talked to her last night. She’d be here if she weren’t on watch.” Adem held his hand up to forestall the next question. “She’s already keeping track of outgoing transmissions. If Uncle Rakin tries to send anything out, we’ll know about it.”
The captain rounded on Hisako. “We had a deal. You said you’d make sure I heard everything first. Now, I find out you’ve been hiding things from me and conspiring with my brother.”
“You got what you paid for, Maneera. Anything else I gave you was a gift.” Hisako turned to Vee. “Remember, coming here was your
idea.”
“What is she even doing here?” The captain glared daggers at Hisako. “This is a family meeting!”
“She’s the one who convinced me to talk to you!”
“You shouldn’t have needed convincing! The biggest piece of salvage in a thousand years, and you tried to keep it for yourself.” She threw up her hands. “Breach of contract. I wrote the damned thing, I should know.”
“That’s not why I kept the files! You come into my life with–!”
Adem took a deep breath. “Pipe down!”
Silence fell, and shock appeared on the faces of all present. Adem speaking up was rare enough, yelling…
He paled. “Mother, forgive me. He turned to Vee. “Do you have anything else to add to this?”
She shook her head.
“Head down to the medical center or back to bed or whatever, and please don’t talk to anyone about this. I’ll make sure Hisako isn’t hounded, I promise. Thank you.”
Adem waited until she’d gone through the door.
“Now it’s just family,” he said. “Enough with the breach of contract shit, and no more pointing fingers. Hisako didn’t give Rakin what he wanted.”
“He said he had a backup,” Hisako said. “He said he came to me first because my expertise in UA tech would make his plan easier to sell.”
“So, who’s the backup?” Dooley said. “It could be anyone working on the worm-drive. Who has access to the files?”
Hisako knuckled the sides of her head. “I had Odessa put a lock on them. No one should have been able to see them but me.”
“She could have put in a backdoor,” Dooley said.
The captain frowned. “Or made a copy before she locked them.”
“I don’t think it’s Odessa,” Adem said. “She’s been on the ship for years, and she has no love for the syndicates.”
“Who then?” Hisako said. “Mateo? Tobey? Could either of them hack through Odessa’s security?”
“It may not be anyone.” The captain sighed. “Rakin was an information broker on Nov Tero. A spy. He may have bugged and hacked the whole ship for all we know. I was a fool to let him back.”
The Light Years Page 23