He didn’t want to get reinfected when he stepped out of that shower. He needed to be clean, even though he wondered if he would ever feel clean again.
Fourteen
Miles Flint bowed his head. He was in his car outside of Celestine Gonzalez’s office. Luc Deshin had left fifteen minutes before, and had smiled at Flint as he had gone by.
Flint had waited until Deshin was gone before contacting DeRicci.
And then she had told him that she had known about the designer clones.
He had severed the connection with her so that he wouldn’t yell at her. Then he shut down all but his emergency links. He needed a moment.
He hadn’t been this furious in a long, long time.
Not since he had found out about Talia.
The car felt too small. He didn’t feel exposed, though. No one else was on the street. He was probably visible on some surveillance cameras, but what would anyone see? A man in his car, clearly communicating with someone, and then bowing his head afterward as if he had received bad news.
Had he received bad news?
Yes and no. He was relieved that the Earth Alliance had someone pursuing the designer clones, but he was furious that he had been kept in the dark. Because of Talia, and because of a few cases he had helped on, he knew a great deal about clones, cloning companies, and cloning laws throughout the Alliance.
He also knew how to track clones, maybe better than anyone else on the Moon.
Of course, Flint’s expertise in this area was something he hadn’t talked about.
Still, the lack of trust astounded him. He thought DeRicci had brought him onto this case because she trusted him wholeheartedly.
Instead, she had been using him to help the investigation, but she hadn’t done everything she could for that investigation.
The feeling he’d had of late, the feeling that investigation had slowed because of something outside of the investigation, turned out to be true.
And that something was politics.
By the person he believed did not have a political bone in her body.
Of course, if he really thought about it, DeRicci had more politics in her soul than he ever had. She had grown in this job, helped the Moon through the Disty crisis, and had been an advisor to Governor-General Celia Alfreda before the governor-general became one of the Anniversary Day victims.
Since then, DeRicci had held the Moon together, in part because of her political skills.
He had seen that, but he hadn’t really seen it. He still viewed DeRicci as the woman he had met all those years ago when he had first partnered with her in the detective division. Back then, she’d been an insecure but excellent cop who dressed poorly, wasn’t sure how she was perceived, and was likely to say whatever was on her mind, even if it got her in trouble.
But she had never mishandled the victims or the suspects. She had ignored the brass because she thought them unimportant.
She had thought justice was important.
That was the DeRicci Flint had known. That was the DeRicci Flint still believed he had been working with.
But he hadn’t been. Not for a long time.
This DeRicci dressed well, kept important people in the loop, and let other people investigate. He hadn’t seen her finesse a victim or a suspect in years.
But he had seen her finesse other people, including him.
The changes in her had been so gradual that he hadn’t really registered them. And now he was faced with the truth of it all: This DeRicci, the woman she had become, was a lot more secure in herself. She had stepped into the role as the Chief Security Office for the Moon. She had actually overstepped at times, taking on more authority than she actually had by law, to save the Moon itself.
She had done it in the Disty crisis. She was doing it now.
Her heart was still in the right place. Flint had to believe that. He didn’t think she had changed so much as to be unrecognizable.
But he did think she wasn’t the woman he thought she was.
She no longer believed in justice.
She was more concerned with the politics.
And that meant that she no longer had the victims or the investigation at heart.
He did. He wanted this solved, and he didn’t care who or what got in the way.
That was why he met with Luc Deshin. Flint would continue to use people like Deshin if it got him to the perpetrators of this horrible crime. Especially if he got there before they attacked again.
And if he had to break a few alliances, betray some political pipe dream, hurt a long-forged understanding, he would do that.
If it cost DeRicci the goodwill she had from the Alliance and the people of the Moon, he would still do it.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
A long time ago, his mentor, Paloma, had told him that friends and family were a liability. She told him to have neither. He ignored the advice, just like she had. She had spoken out of experience: Her friends and her family, in particular, had cost her a great deal. And she had betrayed almost everyone.
That advice bubbled more than Flint wanted it to. He wanted to dismiss it because of all the secrets he had learned about Paloma, all the disillusioning secrets.
But the advice kept coming up.
Like tonight. How far would he be on this investigation now if he hadn’t trusted DeRicci? If he had followed his own path, making his own rules, ignoring some of the niceties that everyone insisted on?
Would he be farther ahead?
On one hand, he would have a lot more freedom, but on the other, he wouldn’t have access to certain databases, wouldn’t know who was doing what in some other jurisdictions.
Not that he knew all of that now. The Earth Alliance betrayal taught him that much.
He let out a small breath.
He couldn’t wait for DeRicci to come to her senses. For all he knew, she had come to her senses and had arrived at a different conclusion as to what was important.
If she wanted to toss him out of the investigation, so be it. He had enough contacts. He could still get any information he found to the right people.
The thing he had to think about was whether or not he wanted to continue working out of the Security Building. Maybe he was making excuses for being there. Maybe he should up the security protocols in his office, and work from there.
But that twisted his stomach. He couldn’t leave Talia there alone. The Security Building, at least, was the safest building in Armstrong.
And there it was again. A compromise decision because of someone he cared about.
But when he came to Talia, he was never going to do something deliberately to harm her.
He would work in the Security Building as long as he could. He might have to take a few trips to some outside networks to look up information that DeRicci might not approve of him knowing. But he could do that.
He probably would have done that in his office anyway.
He sighed, rubbed his eyes, and tilted his head back. He couldn’t quit now. He just had to change his focus.
He had to take control of the investigation.
DeRicci had given him permission to control the zoodeh part of the investigation.
If she caught him working on the clones lead, he’d tell her that he had misunderstood her: that he thought, since these clones were weapons, he could include them in his search.
He started the car.
He had a lot of work to do, an entire investigation to reorganize.
And he needed to get started, right now.
Fifteen
Jin Rastigan had never seen the Peyti Investigative Guard in action. They swarmed over the forested area near Sunbeam Gallen’s habitat. Rastigan had spent eight years on Peyla, most of them as the head of human-based security for the Earth Alliance at the Alliance’s headquarters, and not once had she seen anything like this.
The Peyti moved as if they were in a panic. Usually Peyti walked upright, their stick-figure bodi
es almost comical in their awkwardness.
But now, half of them crouched, running on all fours, stopping and plunging their long twig-like fingers into the dirt where Gallen had said she had seen bits of bodies fall, burning, to the ground.
Rastigan stood inside Gallen’s habitat, along with one Earth Alliance diplomat, a lawyer, and a mental-health counselor, all from the human-based section of the Alliance headquarters. Gallen had sent for help through her human contacts. The Alliance, in turn, contacted the Peyti, and Peyti help had arrived first.
But the Peyti did not have the kind of equipment that allowed them inside the habitat. In addition to permission, they needed breathing apparatus.
The Peyti hadn’t seen the habitat as the issue. They’d found something on the grounds, something that had disturbed them so greatly that they weren’t talking about it.
Rastigan wanted to know what that something was.
She had arrived shortly after the first Peyti officials had, along with her team. She had no idea what she would find, or even if she would find Gallen alive.
Rastigan had come in first, laser pistols in both hands, only to find Gallen cowering under one of the tables. No one—and nothing—else was in the habitat, so Rastigan had beckoned her team to come inside.
She had gotten the story from Gallen in bits and pieces. Gallen was both scared and afraid she’d be banned from this part of Peyla. Rastigan got her to focus on what actually happened—and what actually happened sounded strange.
Peyti flying backward through the air as if catapulted? Peyti hit with some kind of weapon, glowing, and disintegrating?
Rastigan hadn’t heard anything like it before.
She finally managed to palm Gallen off on the other three, letting them deal with the woman’s worries. She’d already sent them a private message, letting them know that Gallen wouldn’t be able to stay here. She was going to have to go back to headquarters, at least for the short term, maybe longer.
It all depended on what the Peyti decided. This was their land, after all, and their problem.
Rastigan informed the others that the moment they could get Gallen out of here, they should. They shouldn’t wait for Rastigan.
She needed to download the security vids. Gallen wanted her research as well, and while Rastigan let her take all of the computerized information, Gallen also wanted dirt and beakers and stuff in some kind of frozen unit. Until Rastigan knew exactly what happened here, she wasn’t bringing any part of the soil or anything else physical to headquarters.
She wasn’t going to explain that, either. That was why she had brought a counselor as well as a lawyer. Initially she had figured the lawyer would deal with everything, but it was becoming clearer that the mental-health professional was the important one here.
Rastigan wasn’t sure if Gallen was just at the edge of her very short rope or if she was slightly crazy.
Considering how far away from everything Gallen actually was, Rastigan was voting for crazy, and maybe not so slightly.
Rastigan had long ago shut out the conversation, filled as it was with Gallen’s sobbing and terrors. Instead, Rastigan had gone to the nearest desk and examined the computer setup. The science part of the setup had been added, and looked awfully complicated. But anything to do with the habitat was standard issue and easy to understand. Rastigan had worked with systems like this her entire life.
She tapped a few icons, and had the security feeds sent to her links. Then she stood near the window where Gallen had seen the so-called attack and watched the feeds superimposed over her left eye.
It was a strange experience. One eye saw Peyti swarming the ground in front of her, investigating in crouches, their long fingers deep in the dirt, and the other saw Peyti propelled backward, hands open in panic, then turning orange and dissolving.
Gallen had said they screamed as they died. Rastigan shuddered.
She understood why.
She turned around to ask Gallen a question, and realized that her entire team had left. Somehow they had gotten Gallen out of the habitat.
Rastigan was relieved about that. She had thought it would be harder.
She sighed and was about to leave when a Peyti came into the habitat. The Peyti held a mask over her features with one long-fingered hand.
Most humans had trouble recognizing individual Peyti, but Rastigan didn’t. She could see the subtle differences around the eyes, the changing patterns of gray in the skin tone, all of the things that Peyti saw when they looked at each other.
Even with the mask, she knew that the Peyti before her was Uzvot, who had come from Alliance headquarters to act as both liaison and as translator if need be.
Rastigan spoke Peytin fluently, but sometimes—particularly in moments of stress—the Peyti preferred to talk with their own. That was why Rastigan always brought a translator with her to any event that might later become important.
“You have to see this,” she said to Uzvot.
Uzvot, to her credit, didn’t say a word. She just moved closer to Rastigan.
Uzvot was tall for a Peyti, but still shorter than Rastigan. Rastigan always felt large around the Peyti, even though she was considered delicate by human standards. She used her delicacy to her advantage with humans; they rarely saw her as a threat. The Peyti were more willing to accept her because of her slight frame and large eyes. More than once, she’d been told she was as close to Peyti as a human could get.
Uzvot had never said those things, however. Uzvot and Rastigan had an understanding. They didn’t need to explain much to each other.
Rastigan tapped a few places on the desk and called up the security feed, this time as a miniature hologram that she ran near the only solid wall.
Uzvot turned a slight blue—a sign of distress among the Peyti.
“This went on until your people arrived,” Rastigan said.
The Peyti had responded to the distress call quickly. But, because Gallen had gone through human channels instead of Peyti ones, the arrival had taken three times longer than normal.
Still, Rastigan felt that Gallen’s decision to contact the humans through her links was the smartest thing Gallen had done. Gallen had no way of knowing if whatever—whomever—was murdering the Peyti monitored Peyti emergency links. By avoiding those links, Gallen had protected herself in a very difficult situation. More importantly, she—and her habitat—hadn’t been noticed.
Rastigan didn’t watch the killings again—at least, not closely. Instead, she looked at that bare ground through the windows. How long had this type of killing been going on? Once the bodies disintegrated, there was no evidence that they had even existed.
Or did the Peyti have a way of figuring that out? Was that what the hands in the dirt signified? Or were there chips on those Peyti’s fingertips that read something in the soil’s composition?
Even though Rastigan was an expert on the Peyti and the Peyti culture, there was a lot she didn’t know.
Uzvot waved her free hand. “Shut it off.”
The area near her right eye had turned turquoise, something Rastigan had heard about but had never seen in all of her years on Peyla.
That turquoise color, she had been told, was the Peyti equivalent of tears. Unlike human tears, which served many functions, the turquoise color showed up only in moments of great distress.
Uzvot bowed her head and adjusted her mask so that she didn’t have to hold it in place.
“Give me a minute,” she said.
Rastigan would have preferred to leave the hologram frozen, but she shut it off like Uzvot requested.
“We will need that,” Uzvot said.
“I know,” Rastigan said. “I’ll make copies.”
“It would be best if copies did not get out.” Uzvot raised her head. The turquoise had faded, but her skin remained a light blue.
“I won’t let any copies out,” Rastigan said.
“I know, but this is important. It could cause unrest.”
Rastigan
’s breath caught. “Among the Peyti?”
“Yes, among the Peyti,” Uzvot said.
Rastigan shook her head. “I didn’t think such a thing was possible.”
Until a few moments ago, Rastigan had thought the Peyti had all the difficult emotions under control. Within the Earth Alliance, the Peyti were known as the most peaceful of the species. They never had civil unrest, hadn’t had a war in more than a century, and always—always—preferred negotiation to violence.
It was a private joke among diplomats: If you wanted war, don’t let the Peyti into a planning session.
Of course, the flip side remained true as well. If someone wanted peace, the Peyti were the best allies to have.
“We have our history, like you have yours,” Uzvot said. “Only unlike you, whenever we are faced with the violent among us, we do not shrug and say that it is part of our character. We believe that with thought and self-control all things can be conquered, even the dark impulses.”
Rastigan knew that. She also knew that the Peyti all struggled with what they called their dark impulses. But she had thought—apparently mistakenly—that they had conquered one dark impulse almost completely. She thought that the Peyti had weeded out the violent among them so long ago that they had bred themselves into pacifists.
Apparently not.
“I’m confused,” Rastigan said. “I’ve been in here investigating. Your people have been dealing with everything outside. The death of these Peyti—it was caused by other Peyti?”
That turquoise color returned, but this time Uzvot did not turn away. She brought her head down, and then back up, the Peyti equivalent of a nod, learned only by the Peyti who had interactions with humans.
“Yes,” she said simply.
“They were using each other as target practice?” Rastigan raised her voice, not because she was angry, but because she couldn’t quite believe this.
Peyti didn’t behave like that.
“Your phrase ‘target practice’ is simplistic. We do not know what has happened here. Only that we have many dead, a true tragedy.”
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