He let the words hang. He wanted Jarvis to know that he had set Elise up. Just like they had set Zagrando up.
You need to come in, Jarvis sent. You might have caused an agent’s death through your unwillingness to follow orders.
Zagrando smiled. The smile felt cold, even to him. I didn’t have orders. As far as I was concerned, she failed to follow orders. I followed protocol for such situations, and saved my cover.
You had new orders! Jarvis’s agitation came through despite the layered links.
I did not have any new orders, Zagrando sent. So under Earth Alliance Intelligence Department regulations, I’m in the clear. Someone botched this op, and it wasn’t me.
The silence after that comment went on so long that Zagrando did a short diagnostic to make sure the link was still open. It was.
Finally, he decided to end the silence.
Tell me one thing, Zagrando sent. Did the orders to change the op come from you or from the Earth Alliance?
I work for the Earth Alliance, Jarvis sent.
So do I, Zagrando sent. So, theoretically, did Elise. I’m going to ask you again. Did the decision to change the op come from you or from a higher-up in the Earth Alliance?
Are you asking me if I’m corrupt? Jarvis sent.
Interesting response. Zagrando started pacing. You can review this conversation. You’ll see I never once used the word “corrupt” until this moment. Until you introduced it.
I work for the Earth Alliance, Jarvis sent.
Which was, apparently, the only answer Zagrando would get to that question. Which probably was enough. But he needed to find out more.
If the Earth Alliance wanted me dead, Zagrando sent, why not just send someone to kill me? Why not cut off all my access to the Alliance? Why not leave me on my own? Why go through such an elaborate ruse?
No one was supposed to die, Jarvis sent.
You could’ve canceled the op, Zagrando sent.
I changed it, Jarvis sent.
And didn’t let me know, Zagrando sent.
I had trouble contacting you, Jarvis sent.
Not when Elise was with me, Zagrando sent. You could have contacted me at any point.
She outranked you, Jarvis sent. I contacted her.
I doubt that, Zagrando sent. Here’s what I know: Usually an operative who already had a cover with that organization would do the job, not someone like me. You had Elise. So therefore, the op I was supposedly on was unnecessary. The trail I was on was unnecessary.
Then he froze. Unless someone wanted to know how easy it was to discover who developed assassin clones. Unless someone wanted to cover tracks.
The op wasn’t tracking the clones. The op was seeing if the clones were trackable.
Zagrando hadn’t been on a mission of discovery. He had been the dupe in an attempt to cover something up.
Come in, Iniko, Jarvis sent. Your cover is probably blown. I’ll protect you. We need to debrief.
I’m sure you do, Zagrando sent. Let’s make it easy for you. I resign.
What? Jarvis sent. You can’t resign.
Too late, Zagrando sent. I resign effective immediately.
We still need a debrief, Iniko, and you’ll need to fill out documentation. I need—
Zagrando severed the link. Then he scrubbed all contact information from that secure line so Jarvis couldn’t contact him again.
Zagrando was going to have to remove all Earth Alliance Intelligence chips, which would mean he was going to have to go somewhere that could scrub him thoroughly. He couldn’t do that in this sector because he had already screwed over the Black Fleet. He would have to go somewhere else.
Before he did that, however, he needed to do one more thing. He moved all the remaining money for the clone buy into a series of untraceable personal accounts.
The Alliance would claim he stole from them, if this was an on-the-books operation, which he doubted. They would probably write off the money as lost by Elise, on that island. No one would be able to prove that Zagrando had it.
He needed escape funds, and he didn’t have enough from H’Jith. Besides, the Alliance owed him money for all those lost years. All those years where he sacrificed his entire life for them, his entire self for them.
They owed him.
And this was one way he was going to make them pay.
Fifty
Flint stood at DeRicci’s desk, operating the built-in computer. She had the most sophisticated computer network in Armstrong, and she had no idea how to use it. She also seemed to have no idea that this particular desk could be isolated from the network—and not hacked.
He couldn’t remember if he had ever explained that to her, way back when she asked him to review the safety features of the Security Office’s computer system. He suspected he had, but DeRicci probably hadn’t paid attention.
She looked at computers as tools for her, not as communications systems that worked both ways. Someone could get in as easily as someone could get out.
At least, if someone was not careful.
DeRicci was still surrounded by the Peyti faces, but she had her back to both Popova and Flint. DeRicci was talking to her contact on Peyla, trying to get more information.
Popova kept refining the search parameters, trying to figure out how many of the Peyti clones were here.
Her searches interfered with Flint’s. He had isolated the desk ten minutes before, so he wouldn’t have to deal with Popova. He also ran an internal scan to make sure the desk hadn’t been compromised. He didn’t entirely trust the Security Office’s network—not with the Earth Alliance investigators here.
He had to stay cautious, because something about this entire investigation bothered him, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
Peyti clones of a mass murderer. Here.
It made no real sense, not like PierLuigi Frémont did. Humans were afraid or appalled by Frémont, even now, years after his death. Humans didn’t care about a Peyti mass murderer. Humans had no idea such a thing existed.
But the numbers Flint was getting dwarfed the ones that Popova initially found. The system tracked at least five hundred of these clones, when adjusted for different ages, like DeRicci had asked.
No children, no Peyti equivalent of teenagers, very few young adults.
So far, Flint’s system had found five hundred such Peyti scattered all over the Moon. He was having trouble setting the searches up so that he could prevent counting the same clone twice. He had to use a rather broad search, one that followed each of the five hundred clones to see if they interacted with each other.
So far they hadn’t. And, as far as he could tell, they rarely interacted with other Peyti, either.
He wished he were dealing with humans. Humans would be easy. He could tell at a glance what he was looking at. Here, he had to trust the computer system, the facial recognition system, the information that DeRicci had gotten from her Earth Alliance contact.
“Okay.” DeRicci turned around. “This was more confusing than helpful.”
“You reached her?” Popova asked.
DeRicci nodded. “She’s not familiar with the masks. She just wonders if it’s a style thing. They do get redesigned on occasion. But remember, she lives on Peyla. She’s usually the one in an environmental suit, and doesn’t deal with many masked Peyti. She’s going to check the databases.”
Flint kept working on his, listening, and not really watching DeRicci. He could tell from her tone of voice that she was both perplexed and irritated. She always got irritated when she didn’t understand something.
“She’s sending more information on those clones,” DeRicci said. “It’s weird. She’s finding those camps everywhere—”
“Camps?” Popova asked.
Flint looked up at that as well. He hadn’t heard about camps.
DeRicci waved a hand. “It’s a whole long story. Apparently, someone grew the clones in batches in camps. But I’ll tell you the details later. Rastigan
was looking to see if batches left Peyla together or arrived somewhere together, and she didn’t find anything.”
Flint’s hands froze over the desktop.
“What she did find was graduation ceremonies. Dozens of them, maybe more.”
“Graduation?” Popova sounded as confused as Flint felt.
“School is extremely important to the Peyti, at least that’s what Rastigan said.” DeRicci shrugged. “Everyone who had a graduation ceremony went off Peyla to a prestigious school. But none of them went to the same school or, rather, if they did, they went years apart from the previous Peyti.”
Flint wasn’t surprised by the Peyti desire to finish education. The Peyti he’d worked with over the years loved knowledge more than anything else, and weren’t afraid to take classes here on Armstrong to get to know local laws or customs.
Of course, most of the Peyti he’d worked with had been lawyers, probably because of his involvement with law enforcement. He’d seen a lot of Peyti students in the law library and cafeteria at Dome University.
The Earth Alliance prized Peyti lawyers because of their brilliance, their ability to see through holes in cases, and their willingness to put in long hours.
“Lawyers,” Flint said. “Most adult Peyti here on the Moon are lawyers.”
“Lawyers have no power,” DeRicci said. “They can’t change the laws.”
“The Peyti who want to do that are involved in Earth Alliance governments,” Popova said. “We’re not centralized enough for them. I don’t think there are any Peyti in the United Domes of the Moon governments or in local ones. I’ll check though.”
“I’m still stuck on this school thing,” DeRicci said. “Why would it matter?”
“It would get them to the Moon,” Popova said.
Flint shook his head. That didn’t feel right. He wasn’t sure what was right. Whatever it was felt slightly out of reach.
“We don’t prevent Peyti from coming here,” DeRicci said. “They come all the time. They’re one of our closest allies in the Earth Alliance. Everyone loves working with them.”
DeRicci frowned. Then she tapped the holographic screen with several faces on it. “We should have gotten the graduation ceremony images from her by now.”
“Don’t open them,” Flint said.
“You don’t trust her?” DeRicci asked.
“I can find out how many educated Peyti are here by running the Earth Alliance bar registry,” Flint said. “Then I’ll cross check the names against the employment records, and finally against our facial recognition software. These five hundred Peyti might not be lawyers. It might be an insignificant sidetrack.”
“Five hundred?” Popova asked. “I didn’t think we had that many from our scans.”
“The Moon’s a big place,” DeRicci said. “Five hundred mixed in a population numbering in the millions is pretty insignificant.”
It depended on where those five hundred were located, Flint thought, but did not say. He started the cross-checks.
“You initially didn’t expect to find anything, did you, Noelle?” he asked DeRicci, mostly to distract her so that she wouldn’t look at the graduation images.
“No,” she said. “I was doing this so I could legitimately send information to the Earth Alliance because they weren’t talking to Rastigan. I thought Rastigan would find a clump of the clones getting ready to attack some Peyti communities. I didn’t expect to find any here.”
“We don’t know what stage this attack is at,” Flint said. “For all we know, they could be training here.”
“The Frémont clones weren’t educated,” Popova said.
“We don’t know that,” Flint said. “In fact, we don’t know anything about them. That’s part of the problem. We’re working off assumptions, not knowledge.”
DeRicci’s gaze met his. “And that’s always so dangerous. I’m sorry, Miles. That’s my fault.”
He shook his head. “It’s mine, too. We approached this investigation wrong. We got overwhelmed by the size and scope, and made mistakes. Now we have to repair those mistakes and conduct the best investigation we possibly can.”
“Whatever that means,” Popova muttered.
“I guess,” DeRicci said, “at some point, we’re going to find out.”
Fifty-one
When DeRicci contacted Rastigan, it helped that Rastigan was in Uzvot’s office. Rastigan didn’t want to go through channels to contact anyone. Nor did she want to use her equipment to check out those masks.
Something about them bothered her.
She still felt sweaty and nervous in her environmental suit. She had almost taken a break from the search when DeRicci reached her. DeRicci’s image was blocked because she was using an extremely secure link, but Rastigan still caught the edge of panic.
DeRicci admitted she had seen some of the clones on the Moon. Which made no sense, really, unless they had gone to school there.
And now the masks.
Rastigan did not put the images that DeRicci had sent her on any equipment. Instead, she sent the images to Uzvot by a different secure link, even though the two of them were standing in the same room, doing the same work.
Have you ever seen these before? Rastigan sent with the images.
Then she turned around. Uzvot’s mouth was open and her skin had turned a pale blue.
“Why do you want to know?” Uzvot asked in Standard.
“I just got those images from the Moon,” Rastigan said.
Uzvot shook her head. Rastigan still couldn’t get used to that movement from a Peyti, even one as used to doing business with humans as Uzvot was.
“That is not possible,” Uzvot said.
“Why?” Rastigan asked.
“I am not supposed to tell anyone,” Uzvot said. The blue in her skin had deepened. She was upset, for the second time in twenty-four hours.
“Why not?” Rastigan asked, trying to keep the panic out of her voice.
Uzvot curled her long fingers against her mouth. Then she turned away, as if she were thinking or consulting with someone. Rastigan couldn’t tell which, and wasn’t sure if she should interrupt or not.
She waited, heart pounding, for Uzvot to speak again.
Finally Uzvot let out a small coo, the Peyti equivalent of a sigh. “Those masks,” she said slowly, “they are not sold anywhere. Nor are they in use by civilians.”
Rastigan turned cold. “Who uses them?”
“No one,” Uzvot said. “They are prototypes. I should not tell you this. I translated on a confidential meeting between a supplier, the Earth Alliance, and some of our military.”
“Military.” The word stuck in Rastigan’s mind. “What are these things used for?”
“Here.” Uzvot called up an image of the mask. Rastigan hoped she was using the image that Rastigan sent and not something on the system.
Rastigan was beginning to believe just being in possession of this information could be dangerous.
“See this?” Uzvot touched the bottom portion of the mask.
It looked big compared to the other masks. Rastigan hoped that it merely stored enough material for a few more hours of breathing. She knew that the Peyti had hoped for better masks, longer-lasting masks, for quite a while now.
“It detaches,” Uzvot said. “You pull here, and it does not disable the mask.”
Clearly, then, it was not extra supplies.
“What’s it for?” Rastigan asked.
“It is designed to go through all Earth Alliance security measures, and many in other sectors.”
“Okay.” Rastigan still wasn’t sure what she was looking at. “And?”
“And nothing,” Uzvot said. “It is clever. It detaches. It can be left behind.”
The chill that Rastigan had a moment ago grew deeper. “It’s a weapon?” she asked, hoping she was wrong.
“Yes,” Uzvot said. “It is a bomb.”
Fifty-two
A bomb. A prototype. Five hundred prototypes.
>
On the Moon.
DeRicci let out a small breath. She couldn’t look at Flint or Popova. Not yet. Because if she looked at them, if she told them, then the horrible thing Jin Rastigan had just told her might be true.
There might be five hundred bombers walking around the streets of the Moon, in various domes, in small cities and large, able to do more damage individually than the Anniversary Day bombers did six months before.
Not again. A big part of her prayed to deities she didn’t believe in, asking all of them, every one she could think of, not again. Please. Not again.
Then she took a deep breath and shook off the terror she felt.
As Flint would say, DeRicci was only taking Rastigan’s word. And for all DeRicci knew, that mask she had seen was only on one face, only part of one Peyti, somewhere on the Moon.
“I need to see something,” DeRicci said as calmly as she could.
She had control of her expression, she knew that. And her voice sounded normal. Flint didn’t even look up. Popova did, but Popova had to. She worked for DeRicci.
“I need to look at yesterday’s faces. Just yesterday’s.” DeRicci hoped that Popova wouldn’t ask why. DeRicci didn’t want to tell her why.
She wanted to be wrong. She wanted to tell them later how she had believed Rastigan for a brief moment, and it had been silly.
She wanted them to laugh about this.
Popova didn’t ask why. Instead, all the Peyti faces floating around DeRicci’s office winked out for a half second, and then came back, in different positions.
And wearing different masks.
The masks DeRicci was used to. The masks every Peyti had worn since they had come to the Moon, maybe since they had started interacting with humans.
“Now,” DeRicci said, her voice still calm even though her nerves weren’t, “show me today’s.”
Flint finally looked up, a small frown between his pale eyebrows. He clearly had no idea what she was up to, but he knew she was up to something.
The images winked out again and reappeared.
With the damn mask prototypes.
She couldn’t contain it any longer. Five hundred Peyti. Clones of a mass murderer. Wearing masks, prototype masks, with bombs.
Blowback Page 29