“The ships of Dralee were lost, but the people may yet be saved.” He flicked a symbol on his wristpad, switching over from camera mode to content broadcast, and spooled up the wavelengths and their coordinates. “This is light,” he said, spinning the view. “Green light. Transmitting from the general location of the battle’s rubble field. Their beacons may be silenced, but their evac pods are flashing green.”
Shouts outside his front door. Footsteps pounding up the flagstone pathway. He switched back to camera view.
“I have gone to my superiors. They have told me I am mistaken, that no such light emanates from the rubble. I will leave you, the people of Prime, to decide what you see in those wavelengths. To decide what actions our superiors should take. You have the information. You have the power to act, just as I have done now. I will not tell you that there is no risk. That all we have to do is cry out for Prime to send a few ships and all will be well. This world, this universe, is more complicated than that, though I wish it could be otherwise. But that complexity should not mean that no action is preferable by default.”
His house AI beeped a warning. Biran clenched his fists.
“They are the heroes of the Battle of Dralee. Let us not, by our inaction, make them martyrs.”
The front door burst inward, all his security systems overridden in an instant. Two Keeper guardcore, their faces hidden behind black-tinted helmets, entered first. Their armor wiped all trace of identity from their bodies, standardized them in such a way they couldn’t be told apart. These might be people he’d met before, people who’d guarded his back while he was in the director’s good graces. Now, it took a moment for Biran to recognize the stunners pointed at him—he’d never been near violence in his life—fizzling with building electricity. He held his hands up but kept his forearm rotated so that the camera would see—so that the people would see—whatever happened next.
“I’m not armed.”
Keeper Hitton entered between the two guardcore, a dour smile on her face. “I presume restraint will not be necessary?”
“Of course not. We’re all peers here.”
Her gaze flicked to the camera pointed at her and the bright red square indicating it was recording. All humor wiped from her face. “Cut that feed.”
A guardcore grabbed his wrist, covering the camera lens with the palm of their hand, and turned off the broadcast mode. Biran was alone.
Hitton’s smile twisted, sucked downward by the gravity of her anger. “Guards, please control Keeper Greeve. We wouldn’t want him to harm himself.”
CHAPTER 10
PRIME STANDARD YEAR 3541
IN A SYSTEM FAR, FAR AWAY
I told you this wasn’t what we’re here for!” Harlan shouted above the drone of an AI announcing, “Unauthorized entry, unauthorized entry…”
“There’s a pallet jack here. Nox, cover us—Harlan, help me load her up.”
“We need to bail,” Harlan insisted.
“Look.” Jules thrust a finger toward the other end of the lab. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I don’t see any boots on the ground aside from ours, and there’s a cargo load-out at the other end of this room. Lolla, go hackpatch that if it’s needed.”
“On it.” She darted across the white space, shoulder bag slapping the backs of her thighs.
“Jules,” Harlan ground out the word. She crossed to him, put her face so close her breath tickled the wiry whiskers on his chin.
“Harlan. My op. My call. Now move.”
He stared her down, but only for a count of three. Jules’s heart hammered out every single second. Yeah, it was her op, but she’d never gotten in Harlan’s face like this before. Not since the day he’d taken her in and she’d gotten slapped senseless for complaining about the stink in her bedroll.
But she was older now, and bigger too. And this really was her op. He’d promised.
Harlan moved. He hustled toward the crates and slung one up onto either shoulder like they were nothing, moving faster than she’d seen him move in years, showing off his strength. His power. Proving to her, with his body, that even though she was calling the shots it was only because he had allowed her to do so.
He gave something away in that posturing. Because if he was really secure, if he was confident, she would always bend to his will, then he wouldn’t have bothered with the show. Harlan was scared. Of her.
It was about time.
She swung around and grabbed the pallet jack, wheeling it to meet Harlan halfway while Nox covered their backs, stunner out. How long had it been? Thirty seconds? Forty? How were the response times in this neighborhood? Shit, she should have looked into that when she was planning the op, but she’d figured it’d be a simple smash-and-grab. Hadn’t occurred to her they’d encounter murderous doors and some kind of slick lab. The edge of the Grotta was a part of town known more for its body count than its police response times. Even if the lab had private security, the response would be slow. There weren’t security firms anywhere near here. Ten minutes, probably. She started an internal timer as she helped Harlan lug crates onto the jack.
“How’s that door coming, Lolla?” Jules asked over the comm, unwilling to shout above the persistent drone of the security AI.
“On it.”
“Not a descriptive girl,” Nox said.
“Let her work.”
Jules heaved the last crate onto the jack and flipped a securing strap over the whole pile, wrenching it into place with a short jerk. Harlan took the jack handle from her and wheeled it around while she brushed sweaty hair from her eyes and unslung her own stunner. Eight minutes, give or take a few seconds. It was hard to keep a steady count while her heart was pounding fast enough to escape orbit, but she’d had a lot of practice. She could set a timer on her wristpad, but she’d learned long ago that technology couldn’t always be relied upon. Some things you just had to do, not have done. She credited that attitude with her survival thus far.
“Place is empty,” Nox said, cutting through her thoughts, but not her count. That kept ticking away.
“So?”
“Doesn’t it strike you as strange?”
“Strikes me as lucky.”
Harlan got the jack wheeled around to the door and they clumped up there, forming a protective semicircle around Lolla as she worked the lock. Jules cut her a glance, saw that the light on the hackpatch had gone yellow—bad sign. But the kid jabbed away between it and her wristpad, eyes narrowed in extreme focus. Jules knew better than to bother her while she was working.
“Don’t like luck,” Nox grumbled.
“Neither do I, but here we are.” The red lights pulsed away, glaring down at the intruders while the voice kept on announcing their unwanted presence. She wished her earbuds were better at canceling environmental noise, but she’d cheaped out on them. Six minutes, now, and the kid didn’t show any sign of being done in the next few seconds.
“Time, Lolla?”
“Three minutes.”
“Watch the score,” Jules said to Nox, whose eyebrows jumped up under the brim of his hood.
“Where the fuck are you going?”
“There’s no one here, but there might be something here. Get me?”
Nox’s weathered face fractured into a crag of a grin. “A bonus score? This place might not be such a cock-up after all. Hurry.”
“Bad idea,” Harlan started, but Jules shot him a look.
“Will take me two minutes. Second she has that door open, move out.”
“Understood.”
Jules dropped her stunner into a ready hold at her hip and ducked back toward the other side of the lab. Shiny white tile bounced red light back at her, the place remarkably clean for being hidden behind the walls of the moldering heap they’d originally broken into. Stainless steel lab tables broke up the room, and a quick check told her that all the cabinets inset in the walls were locked—keyed to fingerprints. Cheap tech, easy to break if they had the time, but she really didn’t. She
was on the lookout for a quick bonus, not a whole new score.
Velcro stripes marred the shiny tables and walls, hinting that the tablets whoever worked here used were hidden in those locked drawers. Shit. Might have been saleable info on those tablets—or at least they could have wiped them and sold the hard tech itself.
Who worked here? Jules had never held down a normal job in her life, but she was pretty sure this place should have been staffed about this time of night. Research facilities this kitted out didn’t skimp on the staff. Of course, some of that staff might be dead in the hallway, and labs on the up-and-up didn’t hide themselves away in the walls of rotted-out warehouses on the edge of the Grotta. Something was off here. Something shady.
She knew what came with that territory. Drugs or illegal software—maybe even hacking hardware. Whoever was working here was making something good. Something she could use—or sell. The wraith cache was a solid score, but this could pull some serious credits.
At the end of a row of built-in cabinets was a door. She glanced over her shoulder, saw Lolla still hard at work, and tested the handle. Unlocked. With her stunner out and ready to fire, she swung the door open slowly, letting the mixed red-and-white light of the lab illuminate the dark room beyond.
Sensors kicked in and brought up a faint yellow light from the ceiling. The room, about half the size of the lab, hadn’t been stowed away as neatly as the first room. Two stainless lab tables dotted the floor, with a polished white desk at the opposite end—cluttered with handheld smartboards, scribbled over with erasable marker. The whole wall to Jules’s left had been made of smartboard, too, its surface cluttered with diagrams and figures she didn’t understand. She got up close to the writing, squinting at it as if she could stare it into making sense. Some of the schematic drawings tickled her memory—square, geometric mazes. Like microchips, but she didn’t know what the hell she was looking at. She took a few quick pics with her wristpad. She’d figure out what that was about later.
“Jules.” Harlan’s voice, cold and distant, in her earpiece. “One minute.”
“Heard,” she responded, biting her lip. This room was packed with stuff—if only she had more time, she could sort out what was worth nabbing.
The mini smartboards could catch some coin, she knew that much. She sprinted to the desk and bundled the three boards up in one arm, cramming them into her pack. On a shelf set in the wall behind the desk, a glass cylinder rested dead center, placed so carefully that someone had given it pride of place. Jules picked it up and squinted at the contents—a clear fluid with a mercurial flash, visible only when she turned it just so in the light. Didn’t look like any drug she’d ever seen—but then, she’d never seen the source mix of wraith, only the diluted stuff. Maybe this was the mother fluid. Weird it wasn’t locked up.
“Where is everyone?” she said half to herself, turning the vial over in the light.
“I’m right here,” a soft voice said. The same voice as the AI, a whisper against her ear, bleeding through the earpiece that only her crew should be able to access.
Jules jumped and cracked the vial against the top of the shelf, glass splinters biting into her fingertips as the liquid splashed across her hands. Silver mingled with blood and she swore.
Liquid smeared her palms and bloodied fingers, flashing almost white for a fraction of a second and then—gone. Must have evaporated; wraith was volatile in the open air. She wiped her palm off on her pants for good measure and turned around, scoping the room with her stunner out. No one was here. Must have been her imagination. Damn, but she would be high once that wraith mother kicked in. She had a decent tolerance, but this was the raw stuff. Potent as all get-out.
Even the bit left in the vial was probably valuable. She yanked some SealFoam from her pack and covered the broken vial up as best she could, pressing down to make sure it wouldn’t leak.
“Door’s open,” Nox said over the comm. “Let’s roll.”
“Coming,” she said, and sprinted out of the room after them. Lolla had the lockpad flashing green, the metal roll door sliding up as she approached. Not wanting the mother vial to drip in her pack, she clicked up a lid on one crate while Harlan wasn’t looking and slipped the vial inside. Lolla caught her at it and raised a brow but seemed to accept Jules’s wink in response. Good. The kid was on her side. They sprinted out the open door into the rain-slick night. No security in sight, no police lights breaking up the darkness.
She’d done it. She’d gotten the score, picked up some bonuses, and now it was time to celebrate. Might as well, she could already feel the euphoria of the wraith kicking in.
CHAPTER 11
PRIME STANDARD YEAR 3771
NOT EVERYONE SURVIVES DAY TWO
The lights came up in hab 1’s research lab and stopped Sanda cold. Bero had told her that his purpose was as a scientific station, and that was evident enough. Equipment she only vaguely recalled the names of from long-forgotten academy courses dotted the room—mass spec, gastrometer. Implements of surgery extended from the ceiling over a suspicious-looking table, shiny steel on articulated arms.
File cabinets lined the wall to her left, supply bins the wall to her right, the center of the room taken up by workstations left in various states of use. Unlike the medibay, Bero’s usual crew hadn’t bothered to pack away their resources. They must have planned on returning, never knowing their people’s own discoveries would spell their end.
Biometric research, Bero had said. Sanda hadn’t really gotten what he meant. Had figured on HUDs and smartbands, evac pods and the like. Something she could use, maybe, to extend her life on the long trip to Atrux. She hadn’t expected to see the back of a Prime’s head, splayed open behind resin, a Keeper chip winking at her with a sharp green LED.
“Is that…?” She crept forward. The head held a place of honor in the center of the lab, a pillar of clear plex lifting it up to eye height. Museum lights illuminated it in a soft, tasteful glow. Preservation fluid filled the pillar, casting a bluish tint to the flesh. The skin on the back of the man’s head had been split, unzipped, held out in grotesque wings by wireframe. His brain stem was exposed, the Keeper chip embedded within it, graphene-filament electrodes piercing and melding with grey neurons.
Charcoal hair floated in the fluid, raised but perfectly still, as if the man were forever stuck in fright.
“Bero, is this real?”
“Yes.”
Dios. Trembling so that Grippy rattled where he held her arm, she circled the pillar. Looked into the dead man’s pale hazel eyes. She hadn’t known him. She expected to feel relief wash over her, but instead she choked on a nervous laugh.
“Who was he?”
“Rayson Kenwick, Prime Keeper, aged seventy-three. No known family.”
“Did… Did they kill him?”
Hesitation. “Yes. They apprehended him in a raid on Base Ansail. Interrogation techniques proved deadly.”
They tortured him to death. She stared at those pale, watered-coffee eyes. They had pinned his lids open, twin butterflies of flesh, the lashes insectile. She didn’t need to ask why they’d done this. They wanted him to image his password. To think the series of words or images that would cause his brain to light up an MRI in just the right way to trigger his Keeper chip to release its information. Information used to build the Casimir Gates.
She circled him, committing every detail to memory. Biran’s brain stem would look just like this, if he’d passed his final Keeper exams before Icarion had initiated the Protocol. A little lump of flesh at the base of his neck would be the only change in his appearance, but the chip would lurk beneath, carrying the secrets of their people, tied to a password only the unique signature of his neurons could unlock. Or part of the secrets, anyway. Keepers came in fifths, the schematics of the gates divided between them, ready to be downloaded to the bots that would build the structure and then self-destruct.
Redundancy was the Prime’s philosophy, and so there would be at least five
of each copy at every Prime settlement. Sanda wondered if this man, this Keeper Kenwick, had been the man her brother replaced.
“Didn’t they know killing him made the chip useless?” Anger ratcheted her voice. She didn’t care. “Didn’t they know his death would get them nothing, that it’d be pointless?”
“I cannot speak to the motives of his murderers.”
“What about the motives of your researchers then? What the fuck were they thinking, keeping his head in this freakshow aquarium? This… This man deserved burial. Cremation. Anything but this!”
“They were tasked with reverse engineering the technology. I do not believe they gave any thought to the wishes of the deceased.”
“Really. They were thinking only about the tech?” She stalked toward a lab table, Grippy’s motors whirring to keep up, and snatched up a tablet Velcroed to the tabletop. She snarled and threw it across the room. Satisfying plastic fragments sprayed in all directions. “And how were they going to do that, with the chip in there?”
“That is a facsimile.”
“Looks pretty fucking real to me.”
“The head is real, the chip is elsewhere.”
Nausea swept her. She gagged on empty air. “They stuck a mock-up in his head for—for what? A mascot? These people were sick.”
“Yes,” Bero said, very quietly.
She braced herself on the table, Grippy suddenly inadequate. She knew Icarion had been desperate to reverse engineer the gates. Knew they’d built a weapon to force Ada Prime’s hand. But this…
“Drain the pillar,” she ordered.
“That is not advisable. The specimen will decompose.”
“The corpse will rot, Bero. That’s what this is. A dead body. Death. Human decay. Messy, fleshy rot. Drain the pillar. I’m going to give Kenwick what Icarion took from him.”
“His life cannot be re—”
“Not. That. A funeral. A proper one.”
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