Peacekeeper

by REEVE, LAURA E.

  "Maybe, if we can come to an agreement.”

  "I don’t bargain.”

  "Wrong, Owen. Every conversation I have with you is a negotiation, one way or the other.”

  Owen sighed dramatically. "You sound like Mr. Leukos now. What do you want?”

  "I’d like to control a little more of my own soul,” she said.

  Joyce quickly looked down at his slate, hiding a smile.

  Owen’s eyes narrowed. "What’s that supposed to mean?”

  "I’d like—I need—” She swallowed, not realizing how hard this was going to be. While she trusted both these men with her life, this was different. This was worse than learning to strip down in front of crew, because that was only physical. This might mean losing their respect.

  They waited.

  "I need addiction treatment,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady.

  Joyce didn’t seem to react at all.

  After a moment, Owen frowned. "I already said that was risky, and neural probes are out of the question for you.”

  "There must be treatments that don’t involve reprogramming.” She waved her arm, indicating her surroundings. "Look at the facilities that AFCAW has. Surely there’s group therapy and individual therapy, with cleared therapists . . .”

  "We’ll see what we can find,” Owen said, after her voice trailed away. Joyce wrote something on his slate.

  That was it? She was expecting her career to blow up in her face. In the military, you didn’t admit to having problems. You could fall down slobbering drunk and throw up on the wing commander’s shoes at a party, but you didn’t walk into his or her office and declare you had a problem. You could swiftly find yourself in charge of only a small desk and under constant supervision and observation.

  However, she filled a special reservist slot, so perhaps this hadn’t been an earth-shattering request after all. Maybe all she had to do was push Owen a little bit. She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders, feeling lighter by taking this first step.

  "Lieutenant Colonel Jacinthe Voyage is the Terran agent,” she said.

  Owen raised his eyebrows. "I’ll agree that she seems unpleasant to work with, but—”

  "You can’t know anything about her personality because she’s trained in somaural techniques. I’m sure, having seen enough of their performances by now,” Ariane said firmly. "She pretended extreme hostility toward me to undermine my job. She also tried to derail Captain Rayiz’s investigation and might have managed it, if we hadn’t been diverted by the arrival of the Minoan emissary.”

  "We could look into her background quietly, but I’ll need more than your opinion on her somaural training and hostility. Remember, you wore the black and blue, so you made an excellent target.” Owen’s mouth twitched in a brief smile.

  "Jacinthe knew what physical evidence I was searching for, before I mentioned what had happened, or where it happened. She slipped up and said Karthage couldn’t start a hopeless search for a bulkhead in the wreckage, before I ever explained the problem of the gym door to Captain Rayiz. That’s what his people have to find to prove sabotage of the manual override for the gym door—so Cipher could prevent Colonel Icelos from leaving the gym, if he realized what was happening. This was the one part of Cipher’s trap that she couldn’t do remotely.”

  Owen still didn’t look convinced.

  "In addition, she tried to usurp Rayiz’s authority and have her own squadron comb the wreckage. She obviously hoped to find the incriminating bulkhead before Rayiz—has he found it yet?”

  "I don’t know. They’re still trying to establish who, or what, set the explosives,” said Owen. "If it turns out to be a bot, they’ll have problems determining if the owner lost control if they can’t find its memory module intact.”

  Ariane nodded, having a quick visual flash of Matt and the bot they’d left in G-145. She also felt a small pang of loneliness; she wouldn’t be part of the planning, or the operations, to recover it.

  "Lieutenant Colonel Voyage was also the one that called Technician Stall away from medical when Major Kedros was kidnapped.” Joyce brought the conversation back to Jacinthe.

  She hadn’t known that; now she wished she could go back to Karthage and have a one-on-one with Jacinthe Voyage. Her fingers tightened into a fist.

  "But that was after they shut down their Hellas intelligence network.” Owen was quiet for a moment, thinking. "Okay, besides another look at her background, we’ll keep an eye on her. We can leave her in place, hoping she’ll be picked up as an operative when they rebuild their network.”

  After he asked everything he could about Karthage, Owen told Ariane about Nestor’s murder. She was saddened. Nestor always tried to act like a tough little pervert, making adolescent advances toward her, yet there was something endearing about him. Apparently, the latest theory was that Nestor had dug too deep into Ariane’s background and attracted Cipher’s attention. The theory didn’t explain how she picked Hektor Valdes for her dirty work, since she already had plenty of customs inspectors in her back pocket. However, the LEF was slowly digging up evidence to prove that Mr. Valdes was paid, or blackmailed, to ensure Nestor’s silence. Whether they’d put together a case that could stand up in court was questionable.

  "Mr. Leukos’s legal staff is zealously protecting his empire, but they’re also protecting Cara Paulos and her crimes. The Athens Point LEF is attempting to push through their second warrant.”

  Cipher might have arranged Nestor’s murder, but Ariane was ultimately the fault. If she hadn’t been working for Matt, Nestor would still be alive. Yet another reason for Matt to hate me.

  Surprisingly, Owen seemed to want to avoid the subject of Matt as much as she did. After Owen and Joyce left, she fell into a deep sleep of emotional and physical exhaustion.

  Several days passed before she checked her message queue. It was stacked. Both the Athens Point LEF and Karthage SF wanted to talk with her. They were only two of many agencies that wanted a "word” with her. There was also the DiastimBot Instrumentation Company, the Hellas LEF, the Administration of the Alexandria Addict Commons, Interpol’s Office of Black Market Organ Brokering, Solicitors for the Demeter Reserve, the accounting offices of Aegis Airlines, the internal audit department of Syracuse Financial, several insurance companies . . . who were all these people? She scrolled down the list and raised her eyebrows when she reached the bottom.

  Less than an hour ago, a message had arrived from Matt. It was text, not the most common format for a personal message, but still used for expediency, privacy, or brevity. Signed with Matt’s official Aether Exploration, Ltd., signature, the message read: "Your job is still open, awaiting your return. We miss you.”

  We miss you?

  Matt rubbed his temples. Exactly as Nestor had warned, splitting and layering these leases was an administrative nightmare, not only for him but also for the CAW Space Exploration, Exploitation, and Economics Control Board. The SEEECB flunkies, as they were not so affectionately called, had to track leases and contracts, as well as manage permits between contractors. The companies doing actual work on the site, whether mining or exploring, were often subcontracted to a contractor of the lessee. When considering the numbers of subcontractors, contractors, and lessees, across several functional areas that had to communicate with each other—well, out of sheer frustration, the SEEECB demanded that Matt put together a reporting and organization matrix.

  Not that he regretted doing this. It was worth it just to see the unflappable Colonel Owen Edones go pink with frustration. Edones had been concerned with Ari signing away leases to the Terrans, but at the time, Matt implied he’d give Edones control over how other leases were awarded. Edones lost his cool restraint when he found Matt had already dispersed the remaining leases between AFCAW contractors and commercial companies that had Minoan funding, causing a three-way snarl with the Terran-based companies.

  "Everything will require integration between contractors, even the smallest archaeological o
r scientific analysis,” Edones said. "How is anything going to get done?”

  "That’s the point,” Matt said, which didn’t endear him to the colonel.

  That might have been the reason he was marched out of the "situation” at the Demeter Sanctuary. Edones assured him that Ari was going to be all right, but she was being treated in a special AFCAW hospital and couldn’t have visitors.

  Edones’s last words were spiteful and Matt remembered them word for word. They had the unmistakable ring of truth. "I doubt Major Kedros will be interested in continuing to work for you, Mr. Journey, considering what she suffered for your leases.”

  Joyce escorted Matt to transportation off Hellas Prime. This time, thank Gaia, he traveled by sedate space elevator. Joyce gave him a final warning.

  "You squeezed the colonel, so I’d lie low for a while.” Joyce grinned. "After all, you don’t want him poking around that ’agent’ of yours. Or looking into what Mr. Expedition did in his spare time.”

  Then Joyce winked and said good-bye, but stayed around to make sure that Matt got on the elevator. Matt still remembered him waving as the elevator started up the cable. Those bastards know all about Nestor’s Muse 3, maybe more than I do.

  Leaning back, he ran his fingers through his short hair, massaging his head and trying to ease the tension. The object of his discontent noticed this.

  "Matt, do you feel all right? I have read that erratic eating habits can lead to headaches.”

  Great, now it’s getting motherly. I should have expected Nestor to program emotional mimicry.

  "Muse Three, you shouldn’t believe everything you read,” Matt said aloud.

  He wished he could shut down the AI’s interface for a while, but net-think cautioned that burgeoning AIs needed interaction. Since he’d been back, Muse 3 had pestered him with questions about his business, even requesting repetitive "verbal renditions” of G-145 missions. The account of the wayward bot that required his rescue by Ari had started feeling like a bedtime story. All this interaction was tiring him.

  "Matt, I detect Ariane Kedros walking up our ramp. She’ll be at the air lock in—”

  "Ari!” Matt bolted out of his chair and was up the ladder to the main deck in record time. He barely paid attention to the AI’s words.

  "—sorry that you do not have adequate preparation time, perhaps for a shave and sonic shower,” finished Muse 3 as he ran down the corridor to the personnel docking air lock.

  Shave and shower? What was the AI babbling about? Matt rubbed his jaw, realizing that he did indeed look a little grubby. What did it matter? Ari had seen him in much worse shape.

  He pushed open the air lock door when she was only a pace away, her arm extended to tap for a call. She jumped backward and he saw that she was still limping from her injuries.

  "Matt,” she said, hesitantly.

  "You look good, Ari.” She looked thin and underweight, as if she’d done several drops in a row. There was plastiskin on one side of her face.

  "Good?” She laughed, and the haunted look in her deep brown eyes changed to sparkling humor. "Have you had your eyesight checked?”

  "Well, you look like you’re healing,” he said hastily.

  "I hear my job’s still open,” she said.

  "Sure is.”

  He’d stubbornly hoped for her to call and then decided only a couple of days ago to hire another N-space pilot. But he never got around to searching the job boards because there was always something better to do, some message or report or question from Muse 3. He hadn’t even gotten around to cleaning out Ari’s cabin, once he had decided she wasn’t coming back.

  "I thought you’d be filling a cushy position on the Demeter Sanctuary.” He gestured for her to come aboard Aether’s Touch.

  "I decided I couldn’t retire to a life of quiet meditation yet.” She walked ahead of him, purposefully, to the control deck. He watched her touch her consoles almost lovingly, the way he often did, as she checked status displays. He smiled.

  She turned and smiled back at him, but again, he sensed hesitancy.

  "Matt, there’s things about me—”

  Impulsively, he cut her off. "I don’t care.”

  "You might not like what I’ve done in the past or what I’m doing in the present. About those leases—”

  "It’s not going to be a problem,” Matt said. "Besides, I know what I need to know. There’s no one else I want backing me up in new space. We work well together; we’re crew. That’s enough for me.”

  "By the way, the message . . . ?”

  "Message?”

  "Why we?”

  "We what?” He looked at her blankly.

  Her smile faltered. "You sent a message, didn’t you?”

  Matt paused. No, he hadn’t. He’d been too stubborn to beg her to come back, even though his company teetered on the brink of ruin without an N-space pilot or an intellectual property broker and administrator.

  "Welcome home, Ari.” Muse 3 broke the silence.

  She started. "That’s Nestor’s voice. What’s going on?”

  "It’s a long story, and it can wait. Welcome back.” He threw an arm around her shoulders and hugged her to his side, making sure to keep it brotherly and gentle, given her injuries.

  "Hope you’re ready to go back to G-145,” Matt added. "We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

  "And we missed you,” said Muse 3.

  "Shut up, Muse Three.”