“Well thank you. I for one appreciate your hospitality,” Edison said.
Quintana’s face played out a string of micro-expressions that read like a book to Edison’s trained eye. He watched the admiral chewing on a change in direction. Something troubled him that he didn’t want to discuss and Edison could see when Quintana made up his mind to press forward.
“Do you believe Odysseus is the power behind Tomlinson, or is it a tool he’s used to pull his coup?” the admiral asked, nailing down a starting place.
“I’ve spent the time since we got here scanning that. In the three days I spent with the Ladies Drake in Freeport East, neither of them mentioned much about it,” he said. “I’d been tracking a Project Odysseus as a lead in Ariqat’s kidnapping, but it never panned out.”
“In your mind, this is it the same project?”
Edison nodded. “Probably. Although I’m not sure I see it as the power behind Tomlinson. I know Tana believes it is and I also think Saffia knows a lot more about it than she lets on.”
“What makes you think that?”
“She seems to be the one that answers when someone lobs a question about Odysseus into the room,” he said. “She also appears to have an intimate knowledge of it.”
“Did either of them mention the Sentinel Group?” Quintana asked, looking down like he was almost embarrassed to be asking about the boogeyman.
“I’ve heard of Sentinel, but who hasn’t,” he said.
“And neither of them mentioned it?”
Edison studied the admiral’s face, trying to decipher the motivation behind the question. He shook his head. “Not once that I recall. Are you implying there might be a connection?”
“I don’t know yet, but something came at us out of the deep-end and with their intimate familiarity with Odysseus I thought if there was anything to it, they’d be the ones who would know.”
“I can understand why you’d think so. The logical question you might have expected me to ask them is how they came to know about Odysseus in the first place,” Edison said. “Honestly I haven’t wanted to poke at it to find out how far that goes.”
“Why not?” the admiral asked. “Seems to me you’d be the type to question things by nature.”
“I’ve been politely told that some answers are way above my current air supply,” he said, shrugging.
“Do you buy that?”
Edison scratched his new beard and thought about how to answer. “It’s entirely possible. One thing Tana said was that all the cartels had special projects divisions. If that’s true, there might be layers to this that are far outside my experience.” He pushed himself back in his seat and frowned. “There were points in the Ariqat kidnapping investigation where Carsten and I felt like we were staring into a black hole. It didn’t feel like a cover up as much as a place where the civilized universe just didn’t operate by the same rules anymore.”
“You think Odysseus is one of those aberrations in the universe?” Quintana asked.
“I do,” he said. “Whether this has anything to do with the Sentinel Group or not, I think my traveling companions know a lot more than I’m comfortable knowing.”
“So you’re alright burying your head under the pillows?” the admiral asked.
He shook his head. “No, but I can accept that it might be better for my health not to know. This would be an investigation that would require an organization behind me to survive. I’m alone, so it probably wouldn’t be a good idea for me to dig.”
“If I could offer you the resources to take it on, would you be interested?”
After several seconds Edison asked, “Is that a job offer?” This conversation was taking a second unexpected turn.
“Your experience would be a serious asset to us. We have other questions begging for answers. Since you’re an expert on the process of finding truth, having you around might be very useful,” the admiral said.
“That’s an interesting proposition, but what kinds of other questions?”
“Have you ever come across anything about a ghost fleet?” Quintana asked.
Edison shook his head. “Why?”
The admiral leaned back against the front of the console and wedged himself into place with his arms. “Before this all came unhinged, we’d discovered that Ariqat was involved in putting together an unregistered fleet of ships. SourceCartel was redirecting space-worthy vessels off the salvage reclamation line. They’d substitute new materials in the supply chain for the recycled materials and then turn the unregistered ships over to DoCartel to refit.”
“You’ve got hard evidence of this?”
“Some. We also have evidence connecting Ariqat to the death of the woman on the Pegasus—”
“Zora Murphy?”
Quintana nodded. “We think she was a spy for Chancellor Markhas and Ariqat discovered her digging into the resource bleed-off.”
“If Ariqat and Tomlinson were working together to build a secret fleet with stolen ships how does this lead to Ariqat’s disappearance?”
“As we see it there are two possibilities,” the admiral said. “Tomlinson did it to keep Ariqat from blowing their cover in the Sealed Docket Session. Chancellor Roja was prepared to expose the existence of the illegal fleet and if Tomlinson knew it, he’d have done anything to shut that down.”
“And the other possibility?”
“Chancellor Markhas did it to cover the fact that he was spying on another Cartel.”
“That fits our theory about the death of Markhas,” Edison said. “It would be retribution and a warning to anyone else that knew.”
“He was actually the one that pointed us toward the potential existence of this unregistered fleet,” Quintana said. “He and Chancellor Roja both knew about it. And both of them ended up the target of assassination attempts.”
“You know someone wanted to come after Chancellor Roja?”
The admiral nodded. “They actually tried, but she dodged the hit.”
“When did this happen?”
“Before Arun Markhas died. Someone overrode the ALC at Tsiolkovskiy and tried to crash her shuttle,” he said. “In truth they did us a favor because it gave us the idea for improved AA security that allowed us to keep Odysseus out of our networks.”
“So she already knew she was at risk before his memorial services,” Edison said, chuckling. “Remind me to never play poker with her. I had no clue she was ahead of me.”
“Nojo,” Quintana said, grinning like he’d experienced that mistake personally. “By that point Admiral Nakamiru had already called the Armstrong up for active duty, so we were ready to do what we had to. We knew she was in danger, but it was important not to tip our hand too early. We were hoping to bait whoever was behind it into overstepping and hanging their eggs in the wind.”
“I assume that didn’t happen?”
He shook his head. “We expected Tomlinson to make another covert move, but he came at us through the council and then everything twisted. We were hoping to draw out the ghost fleet and instead we ran into the political hammer.”
“You’re sure this fleet exists?” Edison asked. “It’s possible you were chasing a smoke screen.”
“It has to,” the admiral said. “We confirmed the falsification of records independently and it was probably the underpinning of everything that happened up to the point when Odysseus came online. Now it seems like it’s been lost behind something much bigger.”
“And much uglier.”
“That too,” Quintana said. “Now, I was serious in proposing that you take a position on my staff here. Your expertise would be a real asset and we could give you manpower and a fair amount of autonomy if you’re interested.”
“It’s an interesting proposition, but you’ll need to let me think about it,” Edison said, leaning back in his chair and taking several deep breaths. “One thing I’ve come to appreciate lately is that there’s value in remaining mobile. It is harder to hit a moving target.”
; “Not with a computer.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Office of the Senior Advisor to the Director: Galileo Station:
Lassiter sat at his console growling. He’d been reading the latest report on what they’d discovered from interrogating Kylla Torrance. After three days, it still wasn’t much. He had advocated using more serious interrogation techniques, but after a flotilla of legal advisors invaded the security facility, Gaelsen shit himself.
He let her go.
And she promptly grabbed a loop to New Hope City and disappeared into the darkest corners of the underground there.
Paulson shoved himself away from his desk and was about to stand when Tomlinson appeared at his door unannounced. The Director seldom left his office, so he was surprised to see him. Usually when he wanted to talk, he summoned a person into his presence.
“Good morning?” Lassiter said, trying to gage his mood from his expression.
“Not really,” Tomlinson said, his frown deepening as he stood motionless inside the door.
“Same here,” Lassiter said, shrugging. This was not a good sign. “What can I do for you?”
“Since you failed to capture Tana Drake, we need to address what comes next,” he said, crossing his arms and pacing in front of the desk.
“That would be your decision,” Paulson said.
“I think we’ve learned several things from the situation,” Derek said. “First there’s apparently no lack of desire to escalate things on the part of FleetCom.”
“Agreed,” Lassiter said, picking up the empty cup from the edge of his desk and staring into it for several seconds before putting it back down. “I’d also think that might extend to WellCartel too.”
“WellCartel doesn’t exist anymore.”
“Fine call it what you want, but funds that used to belong to WellCartel compensated the advisors who attacked the security center in Freeport North,” he said.
“What?”
“Yes. The woman that was central to the investigation into what happened, was released a couple hours ago,” Paulson said. “Gaelsen had no clue who had jurisdiction over his prisoner, so when he got beat to death by a horde of angry legalizers he turned her loose.”
“I assume he’s now looking for employment elsewhere?” Derek said, his voice almost a snarl.
“Not yet,” he said. “He’s marginally competent, but the chaos in the legal system left him with no way to know what rights she had or where he stood to push back.”
“Why did we leave her in his custody in the first place?”
“I didn’t think you wanted this to get higher visibility,” Lassiter said. “Bullets flying in a sealed dome gets a lot of coverage as it is. If you add to that an armada of government muscle swarming the incident, it makes for a lot of exposure in the media. Unless you’ve totally muzzled them this week, civilian news still operates.”
Tomlinson stopped and glared for several seconds, with his head cocked to the side like he was listening to the sound of the ventilators. Finally he sighed. “Please tell me they got the Brain Engram Scan from her first?”
“It was scheduled for 1200 hours today,” Lassiter said shaking his head. “We have to at least pretend to operate by the law, so we had to get a legal binder to order it and then find a doctor to sign off on the process.”
“If WellCartel had the legal muscle lined up, I’m sure they had the med techs stalling to buy time.”
“I’m sure that’s probably true as well,” Paulson said.
“I assume she got a pass into TFC when they cut her loose?”
“No, she caught a loop to New Hope and dropped off the grid,” he said. “Gaelsen was smart enough to put a tail on her but they lost her in Underhive.”
Derek sat down and closed his eyes for several seconds. His face flashed through several micro expressions like a person dreaming. “There’s no surveillance below level eighteen and they lost her before she was down to twelve. Obviously, they were incompetent.”
“It wasn’t their native turf,” he said. “But how do you know that?”
“We need to stay focused on the big picture,” Derek said opening his eyes. “Kylla Torrance is a small cog in a much bigger machine.”
Paulson opened his mouth to ask how he knew the prisoner’s name but Tomlinson preemptively dismissed his question with a wave of his hand.
“It doesn’t matter how I know,” he said. “What I’m concerned about is that FleetCom is not worried about showing us they’re ready to piss on us in public.”
Lassiter clenched his teeth together and nodded. “The question is how far they’re willing to push it. After we tried to intercept shuttle traffic to capture Drake, they assigned the Kitty Hawk and the Defiant to patrolling the flight corridor from there to the L-2 Shipyard. Although they haven’t claimed to be armed, those multicruisers made it clear they were willing to engage any unwanted security enforcement.”
“We don’t have anything local we can use to push back against them,” Derek said. “We’ve got six Hawking Class science vessels that we converted to gunships. They’re on the way in from Ceres Alpha, but until they get here, we’ve only got one Sagan Class ship we’ve converted in Zone One. It would be no match for a multicruiser.”
“I’d bet they have a lot of their fleet on the way too,” Lassiter said.
The director closed his eyes again and then nodded. “We are tracking at least eight multicruisers inbound below the asteroid belt.”
“Other than L-2 and Mimas they don’t have shipyards, so when they arrive they will have to get them armed before they can use them.”
Derek shook his head. “Multicruisers are able to support emergency operations anywhere in the system. They have extensive fabrication facilities aboard and can do most shipyard level repairs on damaged ships in the field. I think it’s reasonable to expect they can build and mount their own weapons on the way.”
“Of course, you’re right,” Lassiter said, nodding. “That was the tactical mistake that got you in trouble at Hyperion.”
“One we will not repeat,” he said after several seconds. “But this still leaves the point that they will be able to mobilize for a fight faster than we can.”
“There isn’t much we can do about that,” Paulson said. “DoCartel owned most of the shipyards and they’re all still under your control. Why can’t you outproduce …” Suddenly he realized what Derek was angling for.
“Exactly,” he said, leaning forward. “The unaligned fleet is just sitting out there waiting to be called up.”
Lassiter shook his head. “We established the fleet base on a centaur to keep it out of reach and beyond detection. They’re a lot further out than Ceres and even if I wanted to bring them in, we don’t have enough trained crews to man the ships we’ve got.”
Derek snorted. “If you weren’t the only surviving person with command authority, I’d already have them on the field. We need to maintain a balance against their threat.”
“I think it’s premature,” Paulson said. “We don’t know that they will escalate this if we don’t push them.”
“There’s a fulcrum point comin where they won’t wait to press their advantage,” the Director said. “The threat that FleetCom represents is exactly what we were building the fleet to address. Now is undeniably the time.”
Lassiter leaned back in his chair and let out a long slow breath while he thought about how to say no. He was starting to think it might be dangerous to trust Tomlinson, but he knew in his bones that trusting Odysseus was bordering on suicidal. He also realized that it would get ugly if he refused.
Finally he said, “Let me think about it.”
Tomlinson’s eyes flashed for an instant before he nodded. “The longer you take, the further ahead they get. Don’t force me to make it an order.”
Jakob Waltz Fixed Base of Operations: L-4 Prime:
Jeph sat on the edge of the diagnostic bed waiting as Anju brought the scanner over and anchored it to the mount
above his head. “You’re sure you need to do a brain scan on me? I think I’d know if it was missing.”
“Yah, maybe, but it doesn’t mean the rest of us would know,” she said, winking. She helped him ease down into position. Every move forced him to fight the urge to scream.
“Before I begin I need to say, you’re doing a lot better than I expected,” she said.
“I guess I’m glad for that,” he said. “I don’t know if I could deal with anything worse. Hell must have some pretty deep pits if there are things harder than this.”
“I’m sure,” she said, looking away as he wiped an eye with the back of his hand. “When we’re done here I could give you something so you could at least sleep?”
“Can’t,” he said. “I was going to hit the jogging track and do a workout when you’re finished.”
“I’m serious,” she said, grinning and shaking her head. “Sleep would help.”
“I am sleeping. In sprints,” he said. “But maybe tonight I’ll let you drug me if that will make you feel better.”
“It will,” she said. “Now let’s get this done so we can get you back into your pit of doom.”
“What is this test for anyway?” he asked,
“I’m just checking on something I discovered in Chei’s last follow-up.”
“So this isn’t about my gravity sickness? Why would his follow-up make you want to scan my brain?” He stared up at the unit as she dropped it down over his face.
“I’ve actually done everybody,” she said. “Close your eyes and lie still. I am going to ask you a question or two while I do the test and I want to see how it affects your patterns.”
“Why?”
“Just humor me. I think there might be something going on and I want to see if you fit the statistical pattern,” she said. “Ready?”
He nodded.
“I said lie still. Don’t make me get out the restraints,” she said.
He opened one eye to look at her. “I never took you for that type,” he said
“Enough.” She gestured like she meant to swat at him and his eyes went huge. “This is serious. Be still and just do what I say.”
Fulcrum of Odysseus Page 14