No fathomable reason existed to cancel a kyoseil contract. Even if the original reason for purchasing it evaporated, any sensible businessperson would jump at the chance to hoard the mineral for future projects or to resell it at an outrageous profit. Perhaps if the money to pay for the goods to barter for it evaporated as well?
Regardless, it was her job to be informed about such things. He half-turned away from the windows. “All you know, or all you care to share?”
“I see your attitude hasn’t improved since our last meeting. I realize you resent my position—resent me personally—but I submit those feelings have nothing whatsoever to do with me, so I would appreciate it if you, in polite terms, get the fuck over it.”
“Actually, they have a great deal to do with you.”
“Oh? So you think I’m not as skilled at my job as my predecessor?”
“I know you’re not as skilled as your predecessor.”
Her expression darkened. “At diplomacy, or at sucking your cock?”
He peered back out the window to check the convoy’s progress. Twenty seconds. “Assume I meant the former, as I’m not inclined to explore your talent or lack thereof at the latter.”
She laughed; it wasn’t a particularly pleasant sound. “Have you switched sides, or do you mourn her so deeply that you’ve turned celibate in her absence?”
His jaw clenched to grind his teeth against one another. “Not celibate—merely discerning.”
“Oh, you ass—”
The door chimed, announcing the arrival of their guests. He pivoted to face the entrance and donned a friendly, welcoming demeanor.
Two officers from the embassy escorted the Chizeru tribal governor and his four companions into the room.
Before Rowan could step in and bluster through the welcome, Dashiel dropped to one knee to meet their guests at eye level. “Greetings, Shoset Landstjóra Fyrstur.” He reached into the interior pocket of his jacket and retrieved a cashmere scarf of crimson and indigo, then unfolded it and draped it across his extended hands. “A gift, for you.”
Shoset’s tiny, recessed eyes danced with delight, as did most of his body, as he scurried past the escorts to reach Dashiel. The Chizeru lifted the scarf from Dashiel’s outstretched hands and rubbed it against the tough, leathery skin of his cheeks for several seconds before gleefully wrapping it around his left arm from wrist to shoulder. He thrust his chest and chin out with pride.
Dashiel nodded in approval. “It suits you.”
A bolt of lightning streaked across the midnight sky to silhouette the curves of her body and cast them upon a canvas of light.
She didn’t appear to notice the display of nature’s fury playing out beyond the window, however. The stringent line of her jaw and rigid set of her shoulders telegraphed a level of disquiet uncommon for her.
I didn’t enjoy seeing her troubled, particularly since in this instance I was the cause of it, in a way. I had shared my concerns with her and, lacking any obvious path forward for myself to follow to resolve them, had allowed her to involve herself in them. Had I told her in the secret hope that she would in fact involve herself? Shame flared at the thought, but perhaps.
I wound my hands behind my head and relaxed against the pillow in false casualness. “This brooding is unlike you. What are you stewing over so intently?”
“The outpost on SR27-Shi? It isn’t the only outpost to disappear recently. In the last two years, four other exploratory world outposts have become ghost towns, each one seemingly overnight.”
I hadn’t expected this answer, and I abandoned the relaxed pose to sit up straighter. “Five outposts gone? How is it that no one has noticed? Have the Guides not noticed?”
She glanced over her shoulder to give me a wry grimace. “As to the first question, the outposts were managed by different companies operating under the supervision of three different Divisions, with no functional connections between them. No reason to talk to one another or exchange information. To each of the companies, the disappearance of their outpost was a single incident. Worthy of concern, but space is dangerous, and people and equipment are often lost while braving those dangers. It happens. As to the second question….”
Her attention flitted to the window in the wake of a new flash of lightning, but when it faded she turned away from the storm and rejoined me on the bed. She stretched out along the length of my body, instantly bringing delightful warmth across every centimeter where her skin touched mine. Her lips grazed my cheek and settled at my ear. “They must know about the disappearances. There is no other explanation.”
The undercurrent of dread in her murmured words chilled the warmth right back out of me. I lifted a hand to her shoulder and let it caress the smooth skin of her upper arm. “The flat’s warded. You don’t need to whisper.”
She drew back from my ear and folded her arms on my chest, then rested her chin atop where they met. “I know it is. It’s just…I feel like everything we rely on to be true has been called into question. I don’t know what I can believe or who I can trust.”
“You can trust me.”
She smiled, and a twinkle briefly animated her turquoise eyes—neither blue nor green but both at once. “Self-evidently, which is why I’m telling you what I’ve learned. And the Guides knowing about the disappearances doesn’t necessarily mean they’re somehow culpable. Maybe they’ve discreetly instructed Justice to open an investigation, and it’s being kept confidential so exploratory world investment and travel isn’t disrupted.”
“Adlai knows what happened at SR27-Shi. If he or his people were investigating similar incidents, he would have told me.”
“Unless he was forbidden to.”
I stared sharply at her. “The Guides forbidding Advisors from taking reasonable actions that will help in their investigations? Vis-à-vis other Advisors? That’s….”
“Unthinkable. Yes. Yet here we are thinking it.” She sighed dramatically, and I felt the wonderful tangibility of her body as it shifted against mine. “I don’t know what’s happening with these disappearances, but I need to find out. The possibilities are many, and almost all of them are deeply troubling. Also, if our exploratory worlds are being threatened and we don’t disclose it, we’re violating our treaty obligations to the Taiyok government. It endangers our diplomatic relations with other species, and this makes it my problem, too.”
“Isn’t that a bit of a stretch?”
“I’m a very proactive diplomat.”
I chuckled in spite of myself. ‘Proactive’ didn’t begin to capture the magic she wove with our alien allies. “Fair point. So, what are you planning to do?”
“Track the data. I want to access files tagged to the managers of the outposts that disappeared and see what I can learn. Hopefully, I’ll find a common thread I can then follow until it leads to answers.”
“The files at Mirai Tower?” I shifted my weight to move her off me and rolled on my side to face her. “What if you get caught slicing into records outside your purview?”
“I won’t get caught. Besides, it’s not slicing, not really. As Advisors, we enjoy unfettered access to Dominion files. I should be able to view any data I wish.”
“So we’re told. But if…” I shook my head, incredulous at the thought having made it all the way into words “…if the Guides are involved in something nefarious, something treasonous, then they will have locked information about it behind walls you can’t circumvent.”
“And that would be its own answer, wouldn’t it?”
“It’s too risky. They will also have trapped those files, and if you get caught slicing into Guide-secured files, you could be stripped of your Advisor status. Hells, you could be brought up on charges, and if found guilty be subject to involuntary retirement and reinitialization.” I furrowed my brow into a declaration of official discontent. “You only looked into this because of me, and I’m saying you’ve done enough. Don’t risk your position—your freedom or your psyche—for me.”
/> The corners of her mouth curled upward, and she brought a hand to my jaw. “You’re sweet, but you’re also arrogant. This stopped being a favor for you and became a cause for me the instant I discovered the other disappearances. I can’t turn my back on it now.”
Her fingertips drifting along my jaw, so close yet too far away to kiss, was distracting, and I had to force myself to focus on her words instead of her touch. “Let me do the following up on it.”
She arched an eyebrow.
“Or let me go with you. Let me help.”
Now she shook her head firmly. “Two people together are three times as likely to get caught as a single person.”
“But no one will think anything of seeing us together. It does happen quite a lot.”
“Eh….” I saw the uncertainty written across her features…then she closed it down. “No. Who’s going to ensure I get a proper hearing by Justice if we both get arrested?”
“Adlai.”
Her lips pursed as she gave me a mock glare; if I hadn’t been consumed with genuine worry at present, I’d have found it sexy as all hells.
“Fine, but who’s going to hold my hand and provide moral support at the hearing?”
“No one else, I hope.”
“See? I’ll need you. But I won’t get caught. And I’ll share everything I learn the instant I get clear.”
“You had better. No waiting until you see me, either—I want a nex path transfer. The instant.” I reached out and drew her closer against me. I recognized reality. She genuinely couldn’t let it go now—it wasn’t in her nature. “Be careful, please. I beg you. You are the love of my many lives, and I cannot accept the possibility of losing you.”
“You will never lose me.” Her lips trailed across my neck, stirring a rush of renewed heat to flow through my body in anticipation. “I will always find you. We are forever.”
Dashiel removed the memory weave with a weary sigh and tossed it on the table beside him, then sank against the cushions of the chaise and rubbed at his eyes.
He didn’t need the stored memory data to recall that night, but with it he recalled every touch, every blink, every scent and every taste. And in the aftermath, he was left spent. A hollowed-out shell of a man.
The worst of the desolation would pass by the morning; it inevitably did. But it left behind a poisonous melancholy to chip away at his sanity, something all the time in the universe couldn’t dissipate.
Before tonight, he’d gone nearly six months without reliving this memory, or for that matter any intimate memory involving her. He was trying to move on, and moving on required forgetting, or at a minimum deprioritizing until the memories lay buried beneath thousands of more active processes. A steady diet of alcohol and mind-alteration doses helped with that.
But the visit to Chosek had been one hurdle too many. Deflecting Rowan’s thoughtless barbs regarding her, interacting with Shoset in just the way she had taught him to…after barely weathering the onslaught of Maris’ tireless optimism at the Quarterly Report, Chosek had cracked his remaining resolve like an eggshell. Sent him running back for her, desperate to feel her touch and hear her voice, to cast his gaze upon her face in all its living, vibrant beauty.
She’d never returned from her investigative trip to Mirai Tower. Vanished without a trace, just like the outposts. The Guides had informed him and the other Advisors that she’d opted for a retirement for personal reasons, and the Charter bound them to respect her privacy and not share any information about her reinitialization. No exceptions.
He hadn’t believed it. Not then, not now. She had loved her life, her work, her friends. She had loved him, and she would never have given any of it up. Not willingly.
No, she’d gone looking and she’d found something. She’d gotten caught or, more likely, confronted the person or persons involved, because she was tenacious that way, and they had…
…what? Boxed her? Deleted her? And who? Another Advisor? It seemed impossible for even an Advisor to have taken such drastic action on their own. The Guides, then? What could be so terrible of a secret that they would violate their own most sacred of edicts in order to keep it?
He’d searched, for answers and for her. For two years he’d searched. He’d skirted the edges of his own detention and censure and hunted in secret, afraid to ask for help from even their closest friends. For if the Guides were suspect then everyone was suspect.
He’d failed. Whether no trace remained or he simply lacked the skill to find it, he’d failed. He’d lost her. And while he held her promise to always find him close, like an ancestral heirloom clutched in a vise grip against his chest, each passing year his faith in it ebbed further away, and with it his faith in everything else in this damnable world.
13
* * *
Gemina Kail looked around the deserted research lab, hands on her hips and a slouch to her shoulders. She took in the inert equipment, the empty work alcoves, the silenced air.
It felt like a tomb, though the true tomb was packed with occupied stasis chambers and speeding away from the outpost toward a hidden space station in a forgotten stellar system eighty parsecs from here at superluminal speed. The ship had departed SR86-Roku fifteen minutes earlier, and she hadn’t been sorry to see it go. Out of sight, out of mind, no?
The ghosts lingered, but she’d trained herself to no longer see them.
The lab, operated by Briscanti Materials, had been experimenting with combining kyoseil and alisinium, a rare mineral slightly less rare on this planet. Several allotropes of alisinium developed highly volatile characteristics when the mineral was heated to its melting temperature, so the experiments were conducted here on the originating planet, where if something exploded, the lab and the people in it were the only casualties.
The company had been told the experiments were being moved to the Industry Division’s Conceptual Research group due to inconsistent, unpredictable results. And that much was true, insofar as it went—the Conceptual Research lab on Adjunct Shi was going to investigate potential alloys of kyoseil and alisinium in targeted, controlled studies.
The ostensible transfer of the employees who worked here to said lab was obscured beneath a labyrinth of paperwork so convoluted no algorithm could successfully track it to its conclusion (since there wasn’t one). The CR group was buying all the lab equipment at retail cost from Briscanti Materials to help smooth over any wounded egos caused by the loss of the project. Not the actual CR group, but that was the name on the credit deposit, which should be good enough for Briscanti Materials.
Gemina glanced over her shoulder at the maintenance dynes behind her. They stood placidly, waiting for orders. “Disassemble all the equipment and furniture, then load the pieces onto the mecha outside. There’s no need to keep track of which pieces go together—just pile it all up.”
On receiving their instructions, the dynes hurried forward to begin their assigned duties. All but a few pieces of the most advanced testing equipment were being scrapped since the studies at the CR lab would be far smaller in scope, and more precision-minded assemblers had removed that equipment prior to her arrival.
She wandered over to one of the work alcoves as the space filled with the clatter of metal, ceramic and glass being wrenched apart. An image of an attractive woman with ebony skin, indigo eyes and a haunting smile stared back at her. Beside the visual sat a mostly full rack of data weaves. Temporary programs the worker who occupied this alcove used? Memories packaged to send back to the woman in the image?
It didn’t matter in the end, as their owner wasn’t going to be needing them any longer. She tapped the image off and picked up the rack, then tossed it in the garbage chute on her way outside.
On the other side of the doors, bitterly dry air bit at her skin on its way to blowing across the bland, sandstone terrain.
When the Guides had assigned her the task of overseeing the cleansing of selected exploratory world outposts seven years ago, she’d been honored to have them
place so much trust in her. The strict confidentiality and crucial importance of the task had been impressed upon her with eloquent turns of phrase, and she’d swelled with pride at being chosen for it.
It wasn’t until the fourth such cleansing that the realization of the true weight—the crushing darkness—of the burden they’d placed on her had cut its way through her vanity and hubris to slap her in the face then settle into a permanent cowl upon her shoulders. The next five or so cleansings had stolen a chunk of her soul each time, which the mecha had carted off along with the rest of the trash, before she’d finally deadened her metaphorical nerve endings and rendered herself numb to the process.
When the Guides had told her this was a solemn duty, she’d assumed they were merely engaging in their usual dramaticism. But it turned out this time, they’d underplayed the matter a fair bit.
Was a loyal servant doing necessary evil work in the service of their gods an angel or a demon?
She pursed her lips; they were cracking beneath the onslaught of the desiccated air. The answer wouldn’t be calculated for a while yet, and by then it likely wouldn’t matter to anyone, even her.
She believed in the wisdom of the Guides’ decisions; she agreed that the sacrifices made now to buy time and opportunity stood to ultimately result in a brighter future for the far greater number not sacrificed. Because she must believe this. She was committed now, and it wasn’t as if quitting remained an option.
She knew firsthand the lengths to which the Guides were willing to go to in order to keep their terrifying secret. A psyche-wipe would not be her fate.
The dynes filed out of the lab in an orderly line, their appendages laden with broken pieces of lab equipment for their first trip to the waiting mecha. Once they finished their tasks, the lab would be flattened and the exploratory encampment kit across the way packed up for reuse elsewhere.
In a day, two at most, all traces that anyone had ever lived or worked here would be gone.
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