by Jenn Lyons
Mallory...”
I raised a hand. “Don’t. Just don’t. We have too much to do. Zaladin’s still out there, and we still have to stop him.”
I walked out the door.
ggg
If I looked very carefully, I could see a faint shimmer of electromagnetism, a shield around the base camp that probably filtered out the bad air. This location had been carefully cultivated for several years: some of the plants were Terran native, close enough to do well. The air was temperate and smelled good as long as one didn’t mind cantaloupe.
Alexander had found a very nice spot for his startup.
“Paul would have liked it here,” I said out loud.
“Would you like to talk about this?” Medusa asked.
“Oh fuck no.” I inhaled deeply and wished I had a cigarette.
“I was about to ask the same question,” Merlin said.
I looked back, surprised. I hadn’t heard him approach.
“Did Vanessa tell you?” I asked.
“Tell me what?” He raised an eyebrow.
“About—” I pointed a finger to my head like shooting a gun.
“Ah, that.” He shook his head. “No.”
“You weren’t surprised.”
Merlin shrugged. “I’ve known for years, but I thought you’d tell me when you were ready.”
I stared at him. “You knew I was a telepath and you never said anything?”
“To what purpose? You’re the best agent I have. Why would I mess with that?”
I shook my head. “You keep surprising me, Merlin.”
“Ah, well, I’m smarter than you.”
I laughed.
Merlin stood next to me, hands in pockets, looking out at the flowers. “So, while I do believe you may be onto something about what contributed to current events, I can’t help but wonder why Zaladin is killing these particular Sarcodinay, and how the flashbacks are involved.”
I nodded. “I don’t know that a blackmailer does it just once, about one thing—I think Tirris had more than one rabbit roasting over her fire. Tirris Vahn implanted the flashbacks herself. That way the old Emperor could never move against her, never have her or her friends killed, or the secret would come out. Zaladin said the Tu-Shirox templates were implanted with triggers. It’s like telling your victim you left the evidence with an anonymous friend, except in this case the anonymous friend is every Sarcodinay noble less than a hundred years old.”
“Smooth,” he admitted.
“Yes, but Kathanial doesn’t care about the skeletons in Kathosis’ closet. By lobbying for peace, Kathanial threw her blackmail right back in her face. And with every Sarcodinay in the chain Zaladin kills, her rope grows shorter. Pretty soon—” I paused, made a fist with one hand and pounded it against my thigh. “Shit. He’s playing right into her hands.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean Tirris never bowed to Zaladin’s threats because she wants Zaladin to kill all those people. She’s put a token effort into stopping him, enough to say that she tried, but she wants him to succeed, right up until the end.”
“I don’t understand...”
I turned to him. “Isn’t it obvious? She’s going to kill Kathanial. It’s like Vanessa said: Tirris Vahn has a better claim to the throne than Zaladin. Good enough, I bet, to claim the crown for herself if Kathanial dies, and Zaladin becomes a lovely scapegoat. He killed one Emperor...why not two before Tirris heroically brings him to justice?”
Merlin sighed. “All right. That’s very plausible. So what happens now?”
“What, you think I have a plan? I’m a wanted fugitive, remember?”
He chuckled. “Yes, you have a plan. You always have a plan. Out with it.”
I laughed. Then I told him the plan.
ggg
“MOJ sensors aren’t going to pick up our communications?” Campbell asked as he put the ear bud into place.
“No,” I said, “This link works through a combination of quantum tunneling and—” I waved a hand. “Magic. Trust me, MOJ isn’t hacking this or even realizing it’s here anytime soon.” I stepped back to admire my handiwork. Merlin was reading his own disguise.
Campbell and Vanessa were dressed like ambitious admins trying for a promotion up before all this peace nonsense happened. Vanessa’s robes were dark blue and hid most of her figure, including a nicely modest netting that highlighted her admin triple braids and caste-mark. Campbell already had the triple braids, but he was dressed like a manager rather than in his normal MOJ robes. Both looked like they were a sweet young couple just trying to deal with all the chaos and panic.
“Won’t facial recognition—” Vanessa began to say.
“No, you have to trust me,” I said, “Kerethres has already agreed to substitute your facial data matrixes for other people in the system. Avoid running into anyone you know, and you’ll both be fine. The computers won’t flag you.” I straightened one of Vanessa’s braids. “Ah, don’t you both look sweet.”
They both threw me a dirty look, and Merlin chuckled.
“I don’t think it’s likely I’ll run into anyone I know as an admin,” Vanessa said, lifting her nose up a little.
“Oh, you might,” I disagreed. “I need you to go to the main city reactor.”
“Reactor?” Campbell asked.
I nodded. “Okay, here’s the situation. Gala-Mal Norus and Gala-Dor Malak are both sitting quite snuggly in Tirris Vahn’s palace here in the City. They haven’t moved, but they’ve had more than enough time to leave... Why haven’t they?”
Campbell smiled. “They’re bait?”
“They’re bait,” I agreed. “Tirris Vahn knows Zaladin’s coming. She’s had plenty of time to figure out what she’s going to do about that, so leaving two of her old zoo crew to simmer over a low heat out in the open like this is both an open invitation and the equivalent of waving a flag. She knows he’s coming. He knows she knows. Cute, right?”
“So what does he do?” Vanessa asked.
“I imagine he sneaks in anyway and kills them, but we’ll see.”
“Sabotage,” Merlin offered as he tugged scholar-caste robes over his shoulders.
“Right. And if you have the master commands, oh, but the sky’s the limit on the dirty tricks you can play. So we’re going to deny him those tricks. You’re going to go to the main power station and you’re going to plant this—” I showed them a small device. “—in their main computer. This will give Medusa access to computers which, for safety reasons, are not accessible remotely under normal circumstances. Medusa will use that to mimic a criticality event involving the antimatter reactor. That will set off megacity evacuation protocols.”
“Ah ha,” Campbell said. “Those can’t be overridden with a single code. There’s a whole process required, redundancy checks, to make sure the threat is gone.”
“Right, which at least levels the playing field. Everything goes into lock-down and we deal with whatever booby-traps Tirris left behind for her ex-husband.”
ggg
“You did always say you wanted to visit Tirris Vahn’s palace.”
“You said that, Medusa. You like her garden.”
“I adore gardens. There’s some lovely varieties of roses there. And tulips! You know how I love tulips.”
I snickered and walked forward to blend with the press of people on the City streets. I wasn’t particularly surprised that it was very nearly standing room only, a big, giant roaming block party in the wake of the news of peace. Still, at least it wasn’t a riot. At least, it wasn’t a riot in most part of the City.
“I can’t imagine this is going to be fun,” Merlin said over the communicator. He was back on board the Aegis, an ace-in-the-hole in case something went wrong. Besides, there’s a reason he wasn’t a field agent. “Even with your talents, Weaver, you’ve never put yourself up against Tirris Vahn’s security.”
“Sadly, I don’t think I’m going to be doing that this time either,” I replied. “Zaladin’s the
trail-blazer on this one.”
Ahead of us, in the distance, I could see the gleaming spires of the Governor’s Palace, a gorgeous amalgam of gold, crystal and precious gems lighting up the middle of the City. Some whispered that the palace rivaled the Jeweled Hall on Sarcos, but I had my doubts. I don’t think it was as big as the Emperor’s—and I think that bothered Tirris Vahn more than I’d realized. If she really was an omashaikon, the denial of what she’d been raised to believe was her right had to grate. A wide gate, pillars carved and spiraling up, separated by soap bubble prisms of electromagnetic energy capable of frying an intruder, formed a perimeter around the palace that kept the riffraff at bay. It was likely the only thing that stopped the party from rolling right over onto the forbidden grounds.
The guard around the outside of fence was very light, which surprised me, but then, every guard I saw was Sarcodinay, and with the evacuations...
“Any chance of hacking into the computer systems?”
“This firewall is very unfriendly. It will take time.”
“Keep at it.” I looked for blind spots until I finally located one—no easy feat—that let me get close to the outside wall.
I reached into my bag of tricks and pulled out a small cube, unfolding it and unfolding it again until I’d built a tunneling bridge that warped the EM energy around it. The tunnel was cozy, but large enough for me to squeeze through.
“I think there’s an AI here, Mallory, and I don’t think he likes me. Sweet talk isn’t going to mean much this time.”
“Do what you can. I need to make sure—” I paused as I looked at scorch marks on several of the walls, where the automated