Asterion Noir: The Complete Collection (Amaranthe Collections Book 4)

by G. S. Jennsen

  “You make a valid point. I’ll have Erik bring up a box of them for you. He’s producing the weaves as fast as our system can churn them out. And Maris? Don’t forget to inoculate yourself as well.”

  Spencer’s gaze followed Maris as she swept out of the office as gracefully as she’d entered it, then lingered on the doorway for a telling second.

  Adlai chuckled. “I wouldn’t if I were you.”

  “Sir?” Spencer whipped around, a flush rising up from his neck. “I wasn’t…are you and she…or were you…?” The redness deepened as it reached his cheeks. “I’m sorry. That was an incredibly personal question, and I had no right to ask it.”

  Adlai rolled his eyes. “In lieu of answering the question you barely began to ask, I will only say this: Maris Debray is a wonderful person. Kind, generous and good-hearted. If you are a true friend to her, you will have her loyalty forever. But romance, sex and everything that comes along with them? For Maris, they are simply another genre of art.”

  Spencer nodded vaguely, then frowned. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean, sir.”

  “I mean feel free to take the ride—there are few things like it in the world. But I’d advise dialing down your emotion processes before diving in, else you’re apt to spend a century or two as a broken man on the back side.”

  Spencer opened his mouth, and Adlai dearly hoped the man wasn’t about to ask how he knew. Finally Spencer did the wise thing and closed it before nodding again, more firmly this time. “Thank you for the advice, sir. But it won’t go to any use. She’s an Advisor, and….”

  “So? We’re not gods, Spencer, or even demigods or godlings or mutations thereof. Not Maris, not Nika and certainly not me. We’re just people. To that point, you can stop saying ‘sir’ every third word. I’m your boss, not your lord.”

  “Yes, si—” He corrected himself. “I’ll try.”

  23

  * * *

  TOKI’TAKU

  DASHIEL WAS SITTING on the extended ramp of the Wayfarer, arms draped over his knees and a bag sitting beside him, when Nika returned to the Toki’taku spaceport.

  He smirked and stretched out his arms. “Clothes intact and on my person, and our credit account is only slightly the worse for wear.”

  “Then you haven’t seen what I did to it yet.” He stood when she reached the ramp, and she wound her arms around his neck. “I’m glad. I worried.”

  “You sent me to a glorified embassy gift shop while you went sauntering off into the untamed wilds of an alien world, and you were worried about me.”

  “You should take it as a good sign.”

  “Oh, I do.” His lips brushed lightly across hers before he gestured to the large box secured on the floating trolley behind her. “You were successful in your quest, I take it?”

  She nodded. “Now we just have to make it work. What have you got?”

  He retrieved the bag, then held it open so they could peer inside. “Sixteen Taiyok-to-Asterion signal converter kits and eight power converter ones. I bought four from every merchant who sold them. They’re designed for gimmicky consumer products, not starship cloaking devices, but they include the basic components required to allow Taiyok tech to talk to Dominion tech.”

  “And that’s all you need?”

  He shrugged. “Hopefully. I can break them down, scavenge them for parts and cobble together those parts into something that should enable your cloaking device to talk to our ship’s systems. Of course, I’m not familiar with the internal workings of our ship’s systems, so there might be some trial-and-error involved before I figure out exactly where and in what way to hook in what I build.”

  “Don’t be silly. There’s no reason for you to waste all that time reverse engineering the ship’s wiring. I’ll reach out to Grant and ask him to talk you through the connections.”

  A muscle below his left cheekbone twitched. “All right.”

  She’d already come to recognize the tic as a sign of unvoiced misgivings. “What?”

  “I bet Mr. Mesahle would much rather talk you through the connections.”

  She snickered as she ordered the trolley to follow them up the ramp. “Probably so, but you two gearheads can get done in ten minutes what it would take me ten hours to accomplish, so he’s talking to you.”

  The nex video projection materialized in front of her. Grant sat at his desk, working at an interface. He gave her a little half-smile, but kept his eyes on the pane.

  Nika. How’s the ship treating you?

  “Well. Why are you pinging me instead of speaking?”

  Because I’m being watched, and it’s possible my office has listeners hidden in the cracks. A couple of Justice officers stopped by two days ago. They asked a bunch of questions about Advisor Ridani while probing my business legitimacy.

  She sank against the cabin wall. This was her fault.

  She never should have forced Grant to get involved…and by showing up at his door, bags in hand and looking appropriately desperate, this was essentially what she had done. ‘Diplomat’ was simply a sanitized word for ‘manipulator.’

  “I’m so sorry.”

  Don’t beat yourself up. I can sense what you’re over there thinking, but it’s not your fault.

  Wasn’t it? She tried to console herself by remembering that it was the Guides fault, like everything else in this ordeal.

  She didn’t buy it. “I’m still sorry.”

  I know. Now, before you ask, I lied through my teeth to them. They’d tracked Ridani here and knew he never left—not on the ground—so I told them he’d taken a pleasure craft for a test cruise and had yet to return it. I gave them scrambled credentials for the ship.

  They didn’t act as if they had any idea you’d been here, and they didn’t ask me about you. I think I convinced them I was an innocent rube intimidated by an Advisor into giving him whatever he wanted. At the very least, I created enough doubt to dissuade them from hauling me in for more rigorous questioning for now. But they’re watching the place, either for Ridani to return or for me to slip up.

  “I never wanted you to get mixed up in this.”

  I believe you. I knew the risks.

  There was no way in all the worlds he could have known the true depth of the risks; he still didn’t. “If you have to run, you remember how to reach Perrin or Joaquim, don’t you? They’ll take care of you.”

  I’ve got their private nex addresses. But it’s going to take a lot more than Justice surveillance to scare me away. I’ll keep doing my work, and eventually they’ll get bored and leave. So what do you need? Is there a problem with the ship?

  She needed to protect him. It was her natural inclination to protect everyone on her side, everyone who had showed her a kindness. Doubly so for those she’d put in the crosshairs through her own actions.

  But if Justice hadn’t arrested him on the spot, they likely viewed him as an ancillary player at best, and they were holding out for bigger fish. So long as he continued playing it cool, he should be safe. Maybe.

  “Not a problem—it runs beautifully. We even gave it a name: Wayfarer. But we need to fit it with a cloaking device of Taiyok manufacture. I intended to see if you could meet us somewhere and, frankly, do the heavy lifting of installing it, but that’s out of the question now.”

  She checked the open floor hatch, where Dashiel had descended into the engineering well below to take a look around. “Can you possibly talk Dashiel through the installation process? He’s already rigged up an interpreter module to convert the Taiyok code into a form compatible with the ship’s programming. He’s an industrialist and a manufacturer, so he knows materials, machines and electronics. He just doesn’t know ships.”

  I’m not even going to ask why you need a military-strength alien cloaking device. I have my own problems right now, so I’m not going to worry about yours…much. I’ve never installed a Taiyok module on one of my ships before, but if you’ve gathered the right tools and components, I’m willing to gi
ve it a shot.

  “Thank you, Grant. For everything. I’ll try not to ask anything else of you.”

  You ask of me what you need to, Nika.

  Dashiel scooted on his back toward the auxiliary systems control unit above him. The engineering well was small and cramped, with equipment modules installed along both walls and the ceiling, and he only had about a meter and a half of vertical space in which to maneuver.

  Offhand, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d crawled around in duct space and gotten dirty with the machines. Too long ago.

  He removed the translucent protective cover and propped it against the wall beside him. “All right, I’ve got the auxiliary controls open.”

  There are four vacant slots on the bottom right of the grid. Based on the power flow you’ve described, the cloaking module is going to need three of them. When I designed the ship, I thought the auxiliary systems would be taken up by a gourmet food preparation addon or maybe a full sensory projector, not a powerhouse alien concealment system.

  Dashiel chuckled. Neither of them particularly wanted to be working together, but if Mesahle could take the high road, so could he. “Believe me, no one could have anticipated this modification. No way in hells should it work.”

  It’ll work. Do you know how to split the signal outflow into three separate leads?

  He glanced at the bundle of photal fibers in his right hand, which he’d rethreaded while they talked. “Already done.”

  I had to ask. Go ahead and wire them into the vacant slots, but don’t turn anything on yet. Once they’re connected, move to the distribution panel above the inputs. We’re going to need to reprogram it to treat the three inputs as one system, then add in a buffer so the Taiyok instructions don’t blow up the ship if a few slip through the interpreter.

  “Good thinking. Okay, I’m at the command line.”

  Already? Nice. Auth ID is ‘SAIR 1.’ I’m sending you the first code snippet.

  He paused for half a second over the Auth ID…but it wasn’t his business. “Bear with me while I enter the code. It’s a little cramped down here.”

  Yeah, sorry about that. I was working with an antique hull. While you input it, if you don’t mind me asking, how did an Advisor end up on Nika’s side of whatever’s going on?

  His finger slipped, and he had to backtrack for half a line. “I’ve always been on Nika’s side. Since long before they psyche-wiped her.”

  Before what?

  Shit. Dashiel squeezed his eyes shut and stopped trying to enter code. “I assumed you knew, since the two of you were…close.”

  Sleeping together, you mean. No. It wasn’t like that. We weren’t…sharing our lives.

  What a damn tragedy for Mesahle, if one Dashiel was immensely grateful for. “I didn’t—”

  When did she get psyche-wiped, and who is ‘they’?

  He sighed and instinctively went to run a hand through his hair, but banged his elbow on the corner of the cooling system instead. Ohhh, that hurt. “Look, it’s not my secret to reveal. I shouldn’t have said anything. Let’s just concentrate on getting this cloaking module working, all right?”

  A lengthy silence preceded the reply. Fine. Are you ready for the next code snippet?

  When Dashiel climbed out of the engineering well, he found Nika stretched out on the couch reading up on Eventime Solutions.

  She looked up wearing a smile, but it promptly darkened in concern. “You’re bleeding.”

  “Am I?”

  She pointed at his elbow. He’d forgotten all about the scrape, but sure enough, trickles of blood oozed out of the wound. He shrugged and went over to the sink to wash it clean. “Lot of sharp objects down there.”

  “Did you get it working?”

  “In theory. Everything tests out functional, but making the ship disappear in the middle of the Toki’taku spaceport doesn’t strike me as the best idea.”

  “True. I guess we’ll have to find out the hard way.” She appeared at his side, a small strip of bonding tape in one hand. He let her stretch out his arm and press the tape to his elbow. After it was secure, she leaned down and kissed it softly. “There. All better.”

  Had he ever loved her so much as he did at this moment? His chest ached from the strain of containing it all within his physical body, and his voice cracked as he drew her into his arms. “All better.”

  She hummed in contentment, then kissed his ear and drew back a little. “You should shower. I’ll get dinner out.”

  “In a minute. Listen, I may have screwed up.”

  “In what way?”

  “I let the fact you’d been psyche-wiped slip to Mr. Mesahle. I assumed he knew, but clearly he didn’t. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh.” She frowned and leaned against the kitchen unit. “It’s fine. I mean, I wasn’t deliberately keeping it from him, exactly. It was just never something I advertised.”

  She bit her lip. “Okay, that’s a gross understatement. In our society, is there anything more pitiable than having no past? The last thing I wanted was pity, so once I got my feet under me, I built up a persona that didn’t allow for…vulnerability. That denied the possibility of a hole in my mind. And eventually, that persona became who I was. Everyone seemed to like it, so why would I ever tell them it was a lie?”

  “It wasn’t a lie, merely a piece of a larger reality. If you’ve proved anything, it’s that you are not your memories. They add subtle quirks and highlights to your personality, yes, and I’m glad you’re finding some of them again. But you are so much more than your past.”

  24

  * * *

  MIRAI

  JOAQUIM BURST ONTO THE FLOOR displaying a notable intensity.

  “Well, Spencer’s infected with the virutox. It’s the only explanation for him losing his reasoning mind.”

  Perrin, in turn, immediately lost her train of thought. She’d been talking to Ryan about ways to increase the effectiveness of the defensive routines they’d developed to block the virutox, and…. Nope. Whatever she’d been about to suggest, it was gone on the wind, a consequence of too little sleep and too much to do.

  Since the explosion at the transit hub, she’d thrown herself triply into their work, if such a thing were possible, in a bid to distract herself from seeing the horrors of that night play out in a repeating loop in her mind. It was mostly working, but only because she was too exhausted to do anything other than put out fires, move people from project to project and catch a nap here and there.

  She winced at Ryan. “Excuse me a minute?”

  “Sure. Sounds like more trouble.”

  “Oh, how I hope not.” She climbed to her feet with a sigh and went over to Joaquim. “What are you talking about? You heard from Spencer again?”

  “He says Justice has developed a vaccine for the virutox, and they want our help distributing it.”

  “A vaccine? That’s great news! But why do they want or need our help?”

  Joaquim made a face as he started straightening already straight gear storage shelves. “Allegedly, because our broadcasts have been too successful, and now nobody with an iota of sense trusts anything Justice has to say. Now, this is absolutely true, but I doubt it’s their real motivation. This supposed ‘vaccine’ is probably a new version of the virutox designed to reach the people the first round missed. Or there’s no vaccine at all, and they’re trying to trap us and bring us in.”

  “But this is Spencer we’re talking about. He’s on our side.”

  “He was on our side. Maybe Justice learned of his association with NOIR, and he’s being forced to double-cross us. Or, like I said, maybe he caught the virutox.”

  “I thought you were joking.”

  “So did I when I said it, but something has to explain why he would betray us.”

  “But what if he’s not betraying us? What if it’s true? A vaccine could save—”

  “We’re close to developing one on our own.”

  She looked over her shoulder at Ryan. He w
as near enough to eavesdrop on the conversation, and without a doubt was doing exactly that.

  He shook his head. “If Parc were here….”

  She nodded in silent understanding. Ryan and Parc had been close; though he was hiding it well, she knew Ryan missed him. They all missed him, for a thousand and more reasons, but at this moment for his technical skills above all.

  She placed a hand on Joaquim’s elbow and urged him toward the training room, where they could have some privacy. “Come on, let’s take this conversation elsewhere. You’re shouting.”

  “No, I’m not—oh, fine.” He acquiesced and followed her into the room, and she shut the door behind them.

  “Jo, the truth is, we’re not going to have a vaccine anytime soon, not when we’ve lost our three most talented neural coders. Everyone’s trying their best, but the virutox is built on some of the most sophisticated algorithms anyone’s seen. Whoever designed it, they’re professionals.”

  “We just need a little more time.”

  “Which is something we might not have—or the innocent people walking around out there might not have. I think you’re wrong about what’s happening here. Dashiel believes Spencer’s boss, Advisor Weiss, is trying to stop the virutox from spreading.”

  Joaquim scowled at her. “That’s not an endorsement.”

  Perrin tried not to roll her eyes, but she only marginally succeeded. Damn, his stubbornness could be infuriating! “And Spencer is saying the same thing. And I talked to Roqe Ovet a couple of hours ago, and they said Justice officers came by the store earlier this week and confiscated their limb augment stock. They said other merchants were reporting the same thing happened at their stores. Justice was a bit slow on the uptake, but it is getting the augments off the streets.”