by Webb, Nick
And in the midst of all that, he could be undone by investors, of all things. Dammit all.
His comm came to life. “Sir, receiving word that Secretary General Essa is ordering the Exile Fleet to engage with a Telestine fleet approaching Ceres.”
He tapped the comm in response. “Please take us there. I don’t want that man scratching my ships—at least, not without me there to watch.”
The ship’s engines droned and he felt the subtle shift of the acceleration running ahead of the stolen Telestine inertial dampeners. He glanced at the clock.
Time to Ceres: eight hours.
Barely enough time for him to devise his strategy for reigning in the uppity members of the Funder's Circle, and to analyze the movement of drones throughout the solar system during the last twenty years. And to figure out where the hell Walker went. And to figure out what the hell Tel’rabim could possibly gain by slagging Io.
And possibly, just possibly, enough time to actually sleep.
Chapter Twenty
Asteroid Belt
Vesta Station
Lower Level 3B
“You?” Pike stared open-mouthed at the girl. It was all he could think of to say.
Her hopeful smile faded, and she bit her lip.
“No, it’s not—” Pike shook his head. He crossed the room to her, mindful of Felicia’s stare, of the sudden assessment in her eyes. He remembered Charlie all too well. He didn’t want anyone else to know how important the girl was. “It’s not that I don’t want to see you,” he explained. “I was trying not to lead them to you. Our ship is being tracked.”
Her face softened. She reached out to squeeze his hand and gave a little shrug. Nothing for it, her expression said. Whatever had made her call him here, it was more important than being brought back to the fleet.
Rychenkov, for his part, was delighted. He pushed Pike aside unceremoniously and clasped the girl’s hand, clapping her shoulder. “Lapushka! What’re you doing in this hellhole?”
She smiled. It was genuine, Pike thought; she seemed to like the gregarious captain and his nicknames.
But her smile faded quickly, and she looked over at Parees.
The man hesitated. He looked deeply out of his element, sweating in the heat of the tunnels. His hair was slowly growing out, and the miner’s coveralls could not be more different from the soft, tailored clothing he’d worn at Nhean’s estate. He spoke only when the girl frowned at him.
“We’ve found something.” He hunched his shoulders. “She found something.” He stood and took a roll of papers from behind a nearby rock.
At the girl’s look, Felicia drifted away to keep watch at the door. Pike watched her go, conscious of Rychenkov’s amused glance. The woman was a breath of fresh air after the insular world of the Exile Fleet. She was practical, willing to work with humanity’s enemies if it meant that her people would be safe and well-fed. Pike had known of the Telestine aid groups for years, and had even received food from them on occasion, but this was the first time he had wondered if that connection could be used for something more.
Not all Telestines, clearly, thought the same way Tel’rabim did—and despite Tel’rabim’s control, and hatred of humanity, the Daughters of Ascension were powerful enough—or had enough political sway—to keep sending aid to the human outposts. There was a chance, however small, that Tel’rabim’s hatred could drive more Telestines to support humanity. If they cultivated the connection with this Ka'sagra….
He had to tell Walker.
… And she was going to reject the idea out of hand. He sighed.
Parees cleared his throat softly to bring Pike’s attention back to the group.
“I’m sorry.” He came to look at the documents. “Shipping manifests?”
“And production logs. Vesta is one of the largest mining facilities for heavy metals. Gold, platinum, rhodium, tungsten, iridium. And uranium—they send some of it to the space stations. It’s very carefully controlled by the Telestines, for obvious reasons.”
“Such as…?” Pike raised an eyebrow.
“I thought your ship was a cargo hauler.” Parees frowned.
“That doesn’t mean I know everything about everything.” Pike crossed his arms over his chest and looked over at Rychenkov, who shrugged.
“Okay, well, uranium is used for all sorts of things, but one of them is obvious.” Parees gave a look that said he thought everything had been satisfactorily explained.
“Still not following you.”
“Radioactive material.”
“Next time, lead with that,” Rychenkov advised him.
Parees rolled his eyes.
“Okay, so they mine uranium here.” Pike shrugged. “What about it? Is this where Tel’rabim is getting his super-weapons?”
Parees considered this. “Quite possibly, although … well, it’s something to consider. Uranium weapons are powerful, to be sure, but the Io blast was, shall we say, in a league of its own. But that’s not what she found.”
The girl stabbed her finger at one line in particular.
Pike traced his eyes back to the edge of the sheet. “Exports to Earth.” He looked through the numbers as the girl nodded eagerly. “They seem … normal. The amounts seem stable. A regular supply of tungsten, iridium, platinum—”
“They are.” Parees pointed to another line. “As is the amount going to the human settlements, at least, according to the shipping manifests maintained here. And they pay the miners quite well for it. But the shipping manifests here don’t line up with the manifests on the stations. They’re receiving less, specifically less iridium, and neither the cargo haulers nor the station administrators have put up a fuss, which means they think there’s a good reason.” The man looked between Pike and Rychenkov.
“So there’s extra iridium going somewhere, and we don’t know where.” Pike stared at the sheet, his mind racing ahead. “The question is, is it disappearing from here … or at the stations? And, correct me if I’m wrong, but iridium is pretty damn harmless, right?”
Parees shrugged. “Harmless enough, I suppose. Used mainly for tools, cutting blades, some types of CO2 scrubbers use it. Mr. Tang mentioned that a computer production company on Venus uses it as a dopant in their semiconductors—”
Get to the point, thought Pike, and interrupted, “but nothing lethal, right? Nothing insidious or … explosive?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Then why do we care?”
Parees pointed at the girl, who still hunched, crouched on the floor. “Because she cares.”
She stared at him intensely. Her eyes burned, and they were filled with meaning: she knew this was important, but possibly wasn’t quite sure why.
“That’s not even all of it,” Parees said grimly. The girl started gesturing, and he waved a hand at her to hold off for a moment. “I’ve looked at the numbers. They’re very carefully obscured, obviously, but that’s not all. They’re being masked even further by in-station rumors, believe it or not. You ask anyone here, and they’ll tell you that production has declined, and the official numbers support this. But if you do some creative math and look at the amount of energy the plant is running to purify the iridium ore … you’ll see that production has likely increased. For an ore that, as far as I know, is a niche metal. Someone wants a lot of this stuff, and is going to great lengths to hide it.”
Rychenkov gave a low whistle.
“Wait.” Pike ignored the girl’s continued gestures. “Is there a chance this is for the new Exile Fleet shipyards? Walker’s good at covering her tracks. Hell, so’s your boss. Could this be for the Venus fleet?”
“No.” There was no doubt in Parees’ voice. “I know what materials were going to the shipyards, and where they came from. We buy from Vesta, but only titanium, aluminum, iron. The basics.”
The girl yanked on Pike’s arm.
“I’m sorry.” Pike looked down at her, and followed to where she was pointing: a new slip of paper she’d put
down on the table. He picked it up, and swallowed hard when he saw the information.
“What is it?” Rychenkov asked quietly.
“It’s the official UN report from Io.” Pike forced himself to look at the number of casualties. This was what the war cost, he reminded himself. This was why humanity needed to be freed from its hell. He looked to where the girl pointed. “High radiation signatures, from … huh. They claim it was just a regular nuclear weapon. Uranium.” He looked up at Parees.
The other man shook his head slowly. “I’m no expert, but that bomb was not a simple nuclear warhead. It was small enough to be carried by a man. Sam Thorne. And it was powerful enough to destroy a moon.”
The implications were starting to dawn in Pike. “So … not only was that bomb something far more powerful than your standard nuclear warhead, but the official reports are lying about it. Why?”
Rychenkov shrugged. “Perhaps it’s as simple as them not wanting to cause panic.”
“By claiming Tel’rabim destroyed Io with a nuclear weapon via some idealistic terrorist? A drone?”
“But they’re not saying that publicly, are they? That he’s a drone?” Rychenkov chuckled. “Public opinion and perception is a funny thing, Pike. People don’t think rationally. Tell them that Io was destroyed by a terrifying new super weapon whose composition we can only guess, and the world is coming to an end in the eyes of the public. Tell them instead that the weapon was a regular old nuclear bomb? Business as usual. We’re used to that. Same with the drone. They don’t dare go public about his droniness, because it would cause pandemonium. Just imagine. Anyone, anyone, could be the enemy. Your neighbor. The guy sitting across from you in the mess hall. The janitor. Any one of them ready to blow you to hell in an instant. That’s terrifying.”
His words met silence for several seconds, before Parees spoke again.
“We need to find out who received the missing iridium ore,” he said quietly. “I wouldn’t be surprised that if we find that out, we simultaneously discover who bombed Io.”
“It was Tel’rabim,” Pike said at once. He looked around. “Wasn’t it?”
Parees looked shifty, and the girl looked frustrated.
“I can’t say,” Parees said miserably. He nodded to Rychenkov. “Not with him here.”
“For the love of—we’re on Nhean’s payroll now. He hired us.”
“Nhean hires a lot of people. You think he tells his janitors classified information?”
“His janitors weren’t called here to look at this!” Pike slammed his hands down on the desk, pointing to the ore production and shipping logs. “If we’re going to make this into useful intel for Walker, we need to know who’s doing this.”
Parees looked away, and Pike went cold.
“No. No. Tell me it wasn’t her.”
Parees looked like he was going to respond, then he clamped his lips shut and looked away.
Pike was opening his mouth to yell when the girl’s hands closed around his face. She dragged him down, a palm on each temple, and stared fiercely into his eyes.
“I don’t understa—”
And then he was somewhere else. Blurry images were forced into his mind, making his head ache fiercely. He saw the corridors, shadowed and dirty. He saw miners in their uniforms, and the machinery working endlessly below the surface. A map blazed in his head for a single moment, locations picked out in red—the mines, perhaps? He saw a hand, typing carefully as numbers were changed. He heard whispering.
It wasn’t making sense. He was trapped in someone else’s head and he couldn’t get out. Distantly, Pike felt his body jerk as he tried to escape, but the girl’s fingertips were digging into his scalp and she hung on with a grim determination.
The whisper was everywhere, inescapable. He couldn’t understand the words, but it was commanding him to take action—he knew that much. He watched as a nondescript bag closed over the top of a bomb. He saw hands at the controls of a spaceship, and the approach to Io’s distinctive surface. The whispering was louder, though the memory was clean, far more sterile than the images of the hallways and computer screens. Pike found that he wanted to live that approach. He wanted to put the bomb in the bag, board the Aggy II, and fly to a place that no longer existed.
Thorne. The man from the video.
Sam Thorne. The same man Avramson the miner said Parees claimed he knew.
And everything snapped into place. He felt the impact on his knees as the girl released him and he came down hard on the floor.
“Hey, now.” Rychenkov was at his side for a moment before Parees pushed him away.
“What did she do?” The man’s eyes were intent. He shot a glare at the girl. “What did she do to you?”
“Sam Thorne was a drone, all right,” Pike said thickly. “Io. But he got the orders here. And there’s another one close … who has similar orders to Thorne.”
Parees was staring at him, eyes wide and horrified.
“He went to Io with the bomb. Thorne was here, at least at some point. He got the bomb here. There are more of them here—a lot of bombs.” He swallowed hard. “And a lot of drones. And they’re all getting orders.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Asteroid Belt
Vesta Station
Lower Level 3C
“Drink this.” Parees handed over a small canteen of water.
Pike reached up for it with shaking hands and grimaced when some of the precious liquid spilled over the neck of the bottle. An hour after the girl’s revelation, he was still shaking and sick to his stomach. Felicia and Rychenkov had gotten him to a small bedroom, where he sat now, back braced against the rock wall of Vesta’s interior, a thin pallet under him.
He drank a few sips of water and willed himself not to throw up, then looked over in surprise as Parees settled down next to him on the ground. The man brushed his palm contemplatively over the short bristles of his hair before wrapping his arms around his knees. When he saw Pike watching him, his face closed off immediately.
“How are you doing?” Pike’s voice broke on the words, and opening his mouth seemed to give his stomach ideas. He held the back of one fist over his mouth as Parees considered the question. Had he really known Sam Thorne? Or was that just his “in” with the miners? Trying to draw information out of them as to Thorne’s origins?
His companion was silent for so long that Pike began to wonder if he’d actually asked the question, or just imagined it. The world still seemed wrong at the edges. He had seen things he never saw with his own eyes, and heard words he’d never heard with his own ears. He wasn’t sure what was real anymore. Everything in him told him to run back to the world he knew: small contracts with Rychenkov, an unremarkable existence untroubled by dreams or rebellions.
His stomach heaved again, and Pike was just letting his breath out slowly when Parees whispered, “I hate this place.”
Grateful for the distraction, Pike looked over at him. His eyes traced over the pallor of the skin, the shadows under Parees’s eyes. The man’s hands had blisters that were only just starting to become calluses, and he’d clearly lost weight on the diet of unappealing rations the miners ate. He was dirty, too. Everyone on Vesta was dirty. Even with the best air purification system scientists could build, there was no escaping the dust.
Those who stayed on Vesta were a strange breed, oddly content with a life few others would choose. It was, otherwise, untenable.
Parees met Pike’s eyes. “I do,” the man said again. “I hate it.” His voice trembled.
“So leave,” Pike suggested.
“I can’t!” The cry was ripped out of him.
“We could take you on the Aggy.” Pike could hear the wistfulness in his own voice. “You don’t understand what it’s like out there. It’s not Venus, sure, but you’re free. You could come with us.”
“I can’t leave!”
It was nothing. It was something. Pike narrowed his eyes speculatively. “You could,” he pointed out, stre
ssing the fault line he saw running through Parees’ mind.
Parees gave him a look. You think you’re clever? the look said. I work for Nhean.
Pike gave a shrug and took a sip of his water. “You don’t have to work for him. All I’m saying is, there’s always a choice.”
“Not for me,” Parees said at once. He tipped his head back against the wall. With the lost weight and the exhaustion making purplish bruises on the soft skin under his eyes, the effect was unexpectedly ghoulish. He looked half-dead.
“Why did Nhean send you?”
Parees looked at him sharply.
“Look, you don’t have to tell me anything.” Pike’s temper flared at last. “Everyone’s got their secrets. I get that. Walker doesn’t want to tell me half of what she does and Delaney doesn’t want her to tell me the other half. And Nhean, Mr. Secret-dealer, doesn’t want to tell anyone anything, and you’re loyal to him. I get that. Look, I know you’re here investigating that drone. Sam Thorne.” A thought occurred to him, and he frowned. “How did you start working for him? Nhean?”
Parees looked away, shifting uncomfortably.
“He found me on Zetian Station.”
Pike resisted the urge to whistle. Zetian station was crowded, dingy, and miserable—as well as being one of the furthest outposts from the sun, orbiting Pluto exactly opposite from Charon. Parees clearly did not have good memories of that life, if his discomfort was anything to go by.
“I’m sorry,” Pike murmured.
“You couldn’t have known.” Parees spoke the polite words with a distant smile. He looked down at his hands. “And Nhean sent me to find the drones. Not just investigate Thorne. That’s why I’m here—find them all, and find out who controlled Thorne.”