Cassandra's War: A Sci-Fi Corporate Technothriller (The SynCorp Saga Book 2)
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Remy mounted the steps into the Temple. It was warm inside, with a hint of incense in the air and soft music in the background. A twenty-something woman wearing slacks and a blazer with the Neo crest stopped him with a stunning smile. “Her peace be upon you,” she said.
“I’m looking for a young lady, an American, long dark hair, Hispanic—”
The woman was nodding. “It is always good to welcome a new acolyte into Cassandra’s flock. She is being baptized as we speak.”
“Baptized? You mean…” He touched the back of his neck.
The smile grew wider. “Oh, yes, she was with the busload of orphans that came in and she insisted on being baptized with them. Immediately.” She indicated a side door off the vestibule. “You just missed them. They went with Brother Alan.”
Remy started for the door, but she laid a hand on his arm. “ You can’t bring weapons into the Temple, sir—”
He shook off her hand and pushed the door open into a narrow hallway. The sound of music was louder, and he broke into a jog. “Luca?” he called. “You back here?”
The hall ended in a broad well-lit room with pictures of smiling Neos from all over the world covering the walls and the golden image of Cassandra’s seal gleaming on the wall. In front of the image was a heavy kneeler with two handholds and a pad for the supplicant to rest their forehead and bare the back of their neck.
Tied to the kneeler with his own belt was a middle-aged man, unconscious and bleeding from a gash on his temple. Brother Alan, no doubt. On the floor next to him lay what looked like a golden clothes iron, which Remy recognized as a flash tattoo device. A cord from the tattooer ran back to a closet. Inside the closet, Luca was savaging a rack of electronics with a chair.
“Luca?”
She whirled around, her eyes wild. For a second she didn’t recognize him. Then, “Remy? What are you doing here?”
He pointed at the destroyed machinery. “You’re asking me that?”
Her face tightened in rage. “They’re branding fucking children! Orphans. They told the kids they’d be part of Cassandra’s Army, part of the New Earth Order…” Her voice trailed off and she started to sob. “Kids…”
Remy caught her in his arms. “Hey, I think you’ve made your point. Let’s get out of here.”
Chapter 15
Ming Qinlao • Taulke Atmospheric Experiment Station, Mars
Ming paused outside Anthony’s office and checked her reflection in the dark glass. The swelling around her eye had gone down, leaving a rainbow bruise. There wasn’t enough makeup on the entire Mars Station to cover up that mess, so she didn’t bother trying.
She touched the wall chime. Her palms were sweating. Anthony had been nothing but gracious to her and Ruben since their arrival, and yet she found herself unable to let her guard down.
The door opened. Anthony sat behind a wide, glass desk with a virtual display surface showing a solar system projection. His face brightened at the sight of her.
“Ming! Come in.” Swiping the displays closed, Anthony stood up and stretched his lower back. He waved her to a couch and chairs surrounding a small coffee table with the Taulke Industries logo embossed in the center. She perched on the edge of one of the stiff chair cushions as Anthony offered coffee .
“Please. Cream and sugar.”
Anthony’s expression turned sly. “A touch of Jameson?”
“God, yes.” It was after 5 p.m. somewhere.
He handed her the drink and Ming looked away when his gaze lingered on her face.
“Does it hurt?”
Ming shook her head. “Not much anymore. It’s just very, um, colorful now.”
Anthony’s smile was understanding as he took a seat across from her. “To what do I owe this visit?”
“I came to thank you, Anthony. I—we—were in desperate straits, worse than I could have imagined.” Since she’d gotten to Mars, Ming had done some basic research on ice mining and the results were horrifying. Besides the mortality rates, the crews were one step above conscripts. No wonder Zeke had warned her away. “Without you…”
“Nonsense. I owed you. Because of Lazarus, I put you in that situation.”
“Someone took control of the project,” Ming said. “It wasn’t your fault.”
Anthony’s face changed. “The Neos. I know that for sure now. They’re trying to destabilize world governments, pit the US against the rest of the world. We’ll fix this, Ming. You and me.”
Silence lengthened, and Ming toyed with her coffee. “I’d like to repay you, Anthony, for your hospitality. Maybe I could work on the domes here. I used to be a pretty good engineer before I became a mediocre CEO.”
Anthony’s laugh sounded as much relieved as mirthful. “If I had my way, I’d put you to work, but my son is very protective of his Mars project. He might see you as competition. We’re a bit on the outs, if I’m being honest.” Anthony hesitated. “Still, there is one thing…”
Ming leaned forward. “Please. You’ve done so much for Ruben and me.”
“It’s too much to ask. I shouldn’t even mention.”
She reached across the table and put her hand on his knee. “Please.”
Anthony drained his cup before leveling his gaze at her. “I think we have a lead on how to find Cassandra. I need someone I can trust to track her down for me.”
She found herself warming to the idea immediately. Something to do with her time, something constructive. And if the Neos really were behind the failure of Lazarus, then they’d also helped propel Xi to the top of Qinlao Manufacturing.
“I can do that,” Ming said. “I’m sure we could do a network search from here—”
“It’s not the tech that’s the issue,” he said. “We’ve tried all that, Ming. This requires someone on site. Someone I can trust.”
“Surely there are transactions you can trace,” Ming said. “Some digital bread crumbs to follow—”
“There’s nothing .” Anthony stood up and paced the room. “The last place we know the Neos were is Viktor’s Darkside facility. There’s a clue there, somewhere in that facility, I just know it. But I need someone I can trust to find it for me.”
“I’d like to help, Anthony, but I couldn’t take Ruben back there. Not now. Not after…”
“You could leave Ruben here.” His voice was kind, understanding .
“I can’t leave Ruben, Anthony. I’m sorry, but I just can’t.”
A flicker of some emotion crossed the man’s face and then was gone again.
“Of course,” he said in a clipped tone. “I understand.”
“He’s my responsibility. If anything were to happen to him…”
“I understand, Ming. I just really need someone I can trust for this mission.” He brought his gaze up to hers. “Trust is a commodity in short supply these days.”
Ming’s cup clinked in the saucer. She owed him. Without Anthony’s intervention, she and Ruben might very well be dead, or wishing they were dead. But she couldn’t leave Ruben here alone, unprotected. Not after Lily.
“I’m sorry,” she said again. The bruise on her face ached, ached with shame. “I just can’t.”
• • •
“Well, the good news, Dr. Qinlao,” the med tech said as she scanned the side of Ming’s face, “is that your injury looks worse than it is.”
“That’s what I keep telling people.”
“No sign of concussion. I’d say another few days and you’ll be good as new.”
“So does that mean I can get my retinal implant restored?” She’d felt naked without it for months, ever since Ito had deactivated it to keep her from being tracked.
“I can do it for you now, if you want.”
Ming held up the new secure implant Viktor Erkennen had provided at Anthony’s request. Any identity-bots searching the WorldNet would never know she was back online.
Ming lay back in her chair as the doctor numbed her right eye and positioned the implant mechanism over her face. Robo
tic fingers drew her eyelids back and the cool air of the medical office made her eyeball itch. Only the anesthetic kept her from blinking.
“Now, look directly at the red circle … you’ll feel a slight pressure.”
Ming swallowed, trying to think about anything besides the enormous needle over her eye. Its silver tip went from sharp to blurry in her vision. She felt a pressure as the needle plunged in, inserted its payload, and withdrew again. The tiny metal fingers released her eyelids, and Ming closed her eye in relief.
“Another minute while I run diagnostics on the new implant. The new device will interface with the memory chip from your previous device while you sleep. In the morning, you’ll have all your old files back.”
• • •
An insistent ping startled her awake.
A flashing red light pulsed in her retinal display, indicating an unopened message. Ming groaned. She was still getting used to having a constant companion back in her head.
“Later .”
It took her a few seconds to realize the new implant was showing her an unopened file from her mother, given to her just before she fled her home in Shanghai. Ito had deactivated her implant before she had a chance to view the file. It seemed like such a long time ago now. Her mother must have assigned the file a time-sensitive push command.
No thumbnail, no metadata, just raw information. She eye-scanned it open and paused it immediately.
Her father filled the screen, his gray hair still holding the shape of a hard hat, a sheen of sweat on his face. He was looking past the camera, talking to someone. His eyes were alert, and the frozen vid had caught him in mid-gesture. A wall of greenery behind him, piles of red dirt in the foreground, and a crane partially assembled looming overhead.
Her breath caught, became almost a solid thing in her lungs. The frozen image was the essence of her father. The smile, the gesture, the place … where was this?
Her mind still foggy from the recent implant operation, Ming struggled to recall the intricacies of the Qinlao security procedures from what seemed like a lifetime ago. The raw footage was uploaded every minute to a satellite relay for collation with concurrent sources and storage.
She checked the length of the vid. Fifty-nine seconds. A check of the coordinates put the scene in the Indonesian jungle. The site of her father’s death.
“Play,” she pulsed to her implant.
Laughing to someone off camera, Jie Qinlao raked his fingers through his sweat-soaked hair. The view shifted to a work crew in rough clothes and scarred hard hats.
“Kerja bagus, ” her father said, smiling. Her implant translated the Indonesian for Good job . It was so like him to offer a few words of praise in his workers’ native tongue. Her jaw muscles seemed to have lost all control, and her lips trembled. She clenched her teeth together in response, willing herself to hold it together.
A distant boom shook the camera. Men shouted in Indonesian. Sharp cries, fearful. Ming heard her father’s voice trying to keep the workers calm.
The camera angle shifted again, looking skyward. A cloud of black smoke rose, and Ming made out three fast-moving aircars. Oblong shadows dropped from them, followed by a whoosh of flame on the ground, then a second, then a third.
“Mr. Qinlao!” Another man’s voice.
But it was too late. She caught a glimpse of the aircraft, a flitting V shape, then the screen went blank.
It took Ming a moment to realize she’d stopped breathing. If someone called in that moment, if her door chimed, if anything outside herself intruded at all, she felt she might shatter into a million pieces.
She threw the vid to a full-wallscreen.
It took a monumental force of will to restart the vid. Her father smiling and laughing, the pan of the camera to his workers and his expression of gratitude, then the explosions and the smoke and the screaming…
“Mr. Qinlao!”
Ming had never seen a firebomb, but the sudden explosion, the devastation that spread so quickly, looked like what she imagined incendiaries could do.
An accident … a virus swept through the work camp … they had to firebomb the site to make sure the virus was contained . That’s what her Auntie Xi had told her, but the vid told a different story.
Her father had been murdered.
She stood up and walked to the carafe on the small table. Slowly, as if it were the most important action in the world, she poured a glass of water and gulped the liquid down.
She played it again. When the aircars first appeared, Ming slowed the video down to view the images frame by frame. She enlarged and enhanced several, but the aircars were mere streaks of reflection in the sky. She let it play at normal speed.
“Mr. Qinlao!” came the voice of the security guard, terrified, beseeching her father to heed his call. Her father was facing away, head angled up. The vid angle followed. A single aircar flew by.
Ming focused on the screen, zooming in on the single attacker. It dropped its payload, then banked. Advancing frame by frame, she watched the weapon fall, and the aircraft turn.
“Pause,” she pulsed. “Five-second rewind.”
Over Jie’s shoulder, smoke was sucked downward.
“Advance.”
Slowly, the smoke rose. The aircar appeared.
“Pause. Zoom in.” The aircar grew on the screen. Her implant employed an algorithm, picking recognizable points from the aircar’s design to fill in the rest of the image. Ming watched the incendiary bomb release from the aircar’s undercarriage.
As the aircar banked, the blurry, helmeted head of its pilot flashed against the glass .
The bomb dropped another meter. The cockpit angled a few more degrees toward the camera. The pilot’s helmet had a logo.
The algorithm went to work on the logo. Ming recognized it long before the program finished its work.
The Qinlao Manufacturing logo.
Ming closed the program and let the silence of the empty room ring in her ears. She ordered her thoughts carefully, methodically, like she was solving an engineering problem.
She could assume the file was genuine and her mother had given it to Ming knowing her daughter would act on the contents. There were only two people in the Qinlao organization with enough power to pull off an assassination using company resources and still be able to cover it up.
Auntie Xi and Sying.
One woman she hated. One woman she loved.
Ming forced her analytical mind to the fore. Her personal feelings for Sying did not matter now, not until she knew the truth about what had happened. Sying was a powerful woman, a queen by her own admission. She played the long game and she played for keeps. But would she murder her husband? It was hard for Ming to fathom such an action.
That left Xi. Ming’s worst fears of her aunt’s duplicity, of the old woman’s bottomless capacity for betrayal, now seemed confirmed. She’d been so covetous of Jie’s achievement in building Qinlao Manufacturing that she’d killed him for it.
And her mother had carried her secret burden of knowing for … how long? Shame draped over Ming’s shoulders for how she’d treated Wenqian upon her return to Earth.
The shame reformed in her gut as anger. Her father, murdered. Lily, murdered. She and Ruben living on the run. All to satisfy the greed of an old woman who loved status and wealth more than blood.
The engineer displaced the grieving daughter. Ming’s every step now was critical. She needed information. Real, verifiable data to arrive at a plan, a plan to reclaim what was rightfully hers.
First step: she needed to get off Mars. Every communication she made here, every iota of bandwidth she consumed was
monitored and dissected by Taulke security personnel. That information could be used against her—somehow, someway, someday.
She placed a call to Anthony. He was still at his desk and his face lit up when he saw her. She automatically tamped down the need to confide in him. Until she solved this puzzle, she had no friends, only variables in her life.
“I’ve reconsidered,” she said. “I’ll do the job you asked.”
Anthony’s smile widened. “That’s wonderful, Ming!” His face clouded. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “I’m assuming Ruben can stay in your care while I’m gone.”
Anthony nodded. “Of course. What changed your mind?”
“I’ve gained a greater appreciation for the big picture. I’d like to leave as soon as possible.”
“I’ll let Viktor know.”
When the call ended, Ming stood alone in her room again. Carefully, she closed her retinal implant and its damning file. The square of light in her right eye blinked away.
Then Ming Qinlao sat down in the nearest chair and wept like a child.
Chapter 16
Remy Cade • Haven 6, Blue Earth, Minnesota
Remy rose with the rest of the staff when General Graves entered the conference room. Jansen walked behind him, her expression tight with concern.
“Seats, everyone, please.” He let his gaze work the room, giving the occasional nod and smile. Finally, he spoke. “The day we’ve been working toward is here. I’ve just spoken with Washington. We’re sealing all seven Haven domes in forty-eight hours. We’ll be taking on final crew members by noon tomorrow. Final logistics checks are due to Captain Jansen by then.”
Forty-eight hours? The bile of panic rose in Remy’s throat.
“Once the dome is sealed, that’s it.” Graves paused to let that sink in. “No one goes in or out. Comms other than those authorized by command are cut off. As far as the outside world is concerned, we no longer exist. We’ll rotate the staff out in thirds for a half-day leave period over the next thirty-six hours so you can say goodbye to your loved ones who aren’t part of the Haven team. ”