Emily nodded. She looked pale, but otherwise her usual determined self. “Do we have any data at all?” she asked.
“There’s a little more telemetry with the audio we have,” he told her. “Shimada’s got it now. We should at least be able to get a better look at what hit them.”
“Yes, sir.”
She retreated to find Ted, and Elena became aware that Greg was still tense, still unfinished. “I need a favor,” he said quietly, so only she could hear.
“Of course.”
“In my office,” he said. “On the top shelf, behind the left panel. There’s something there I need you to get rid of.” He would not look at her.
“I’ll be right back.”
She headed back to his office. The shelf was nearly out of her reach, but on her toes she could touch the panel release, and it slid silently open to reveal a bottle of whiskey. Elena herself couldn’t drink, but after observing soldiers drinking for most of her adult life, she knew what he had was very, very expensive. The bottle was still sealed.
She pulled it down, surprised at its heft, and headed through the inner door into his quarters and then to the bathroom. She opened the lid and inhaled the familiar fragrance, then poured the entire contents down the sink. She ran water until the sink was clean, then dropped the bottle and its lid into the recycling chamber.
He had quit drinking entirely two years before. She had never asked him why.
When she passed back through the inner door, he was seated at his desk, eyes out the window. “Thanks,” he said, but didn’t move.
She perched in the chair across from him. “You couldn’t have stopped it,” she told him. Just like this morning.
He was silent for a long time. “We always know that, don’t we? That we can’t save everyone? That Canberra, Liriel, Nova Akropola, all of them—that it’d be worse if we weren’t trying. That sometimes there’s nothing we can do. Sometimes we’re helpless.”
“Sometimes we are, Greg.”
“Bullshit.” He pushed himself abruptly to his feet and began pacing behind the desk. “I can’t believe that. I can’t live like that. I stood there, and I told them all to stay strong in the face of disaster. In the face of whatever disaster is coming. Because you know this isn’t the end of it. There’s no reason to take out Athena, none at all, unless you want to isolate the First Sector. And we’re sitting here babysitting two squabbling cities pissed off at each other because they can’t see themselves as a single damn colony.”
“Yakutsk didn’t do this,” she reminded him.
“I know. But if we weren’t stuck here—”
“Playing that game is pointless, and you know it.” She stood and walked around the desk, blocking his path. “Listen.” He stood over her, glaring, and she glared back. “Stop, just for one minute, and listen. I can’t tell you it’s all going to be fine. I can’t tell you your father is all right, and your sister. I can’t tell you anything because I don’t know anything. And neither do you, Greg. But what I do know is that the people you love are strong and resourceful, and they know that you love them, and it doesn’t matter how long it’s been since you’ve said it. They know it, they feel it, and you are not letting them down.”
He glared at her a little longer, then turned away, and she knew she had it right. When he spoke again, he was calmer. “When I was twelve, Elena. The day my father told me my mother was dead . . . I didn’t believe him. I thought it was a prank. I couldn’t understand why he’d do it. And when I realized he was telling me the truth . . . I wished it was him instead. I said that to him. Do you think he’s ever forgotten that? Because I don’t think I would.”
Oh, Greg. “If I stood here,” she said, “and listed every hateful thing I’ve said to my grandmother over the years, we’d live out our days on this spot.” He turned back, and she thought, The hell with it. She reached out and took his hands in hers. “You were twelve years old, Greg, and you’d just heard something no child should ever hear. I promise you, your wish was normal. Saying that to your father was normal. And if he’s got half your brains, he knew it, too, and didn’t hold it against you for an instant.” And she suspected Tom Foster would have agreed with his son, and taken his wife’s place on that fated starship if he’d had the chance. “Do not do this to yourself. Your father’s fate is out of your hands. The fate of the people on this ship, though—that’s in your hands. Focus on what you can do, Greg, and not what you can’t.”
Greg’s comm chimed, and for a moment she thought he wouldn’t answer it. Galileo helpfully projected Lieutenant Samaras before his eyes. She saw him focus on the letters, and straighten, and she thought just before he released her fingers he tightened his hands over hers. “Yes, Lieutenant,” Greg responded, sounding more like himself.
“I have Captain Bayandi for you, sir,” Samaras said.
“Captain Foster,” Bayandi said a moment later, “I have just learned of Athena Relay. A horrific tragedy. How are your people faring?”
That same focused compassion. “They’re in shock,” Greg told him candidly, his eyes never leaving Elena’s. “But they’re steady. They’re well-trained. What about your people, Captain?”
“We have never had ties to the First Sector,” Bayandi told him. “But . . . I do think I may be able to help, or at least offer some information.”
“Do you know who destroyed the relay?”
“Nothing of that sort, I’m afraid. Rather, my information involves the Olam Fleet.”
Greg’s eyebrows shot up. “They’re not going to be in range of the First Sector for at least another two weeks,” Greg said. “And that’s assuming they’re running their engines at capacity.”
“And that is what concerns me, Captain Foster,” Bayandi said. He sounded worried, but also curious, as if he were not sure if his news was good or bad. “I have been tracking the fleet, off and on, and I am getting some very odd readings. Perhaps they are using some new sort of engine, but I’m finding no matter what I try to analyze, I can’t interpret the data in a way that makes any sense.”
“Captain Bayandi,” Elena put in, “this is Elena Shaw. Can you send us the data?”
“Of course. And may I say, Chief Shaw, it is a pleasure to hear your voice again.”
This time Elena raised her eyebrows at Greg. Bayandi might be a scattered old man, but he never forgot his manners. “Thank you, Captain.”
The data began to stream in, and Greg pulled it up in front of the two of them. She studied it with a practiced eye, teasing out the speed and location information that was relevant, that told them where the fleet was and where it was headed. Except . . . “Captain Bayandi, are you sure of this data?”
“It is precisely as I have received it, Commander. You are seeing what I am seeing, I think.”
“Yes.” No. “I think. It’s—” Damn, she’d been away from all of this too long. “Greg, look at their location vectors. And the field limits. And here—that’s the FTL fold where they started out, or so it says.”
He was frowning, and then his expression cleared, and those gray-black eyes filled with dread. “Oh, hell,” he said.
“So I’m not imagining it.”
Greg was on the comm to Ted. “Commander Shimada,” he said, “drop the Athena telemetry data for now. I want everything you can get on the location of the Olam Fleet.”
“Sir?”
“We need to know if there’s anything non-standard about their engines or their field generators. Or both.” Greg closed his eyes. “Get me everything you can, Commander. Because if what I’ve got now is right, nobody’s going to be able to intercept the Olam Fleet.”
“I think they’re in the First Sector already.”
Chapter 27
Yakutsk
Jessica decided the thing she hated most about command was having to behave like a professional when all she wanted to do was sit down and weep.
“They’re sure about this?” she asked Lieutenant Bristol.
“Audio
and telemetry don’t appear to be modified, ma’am,” Bristol told her, his voice subdued. “And so far there’s no evidence the Syndicate tribe had anything to do with it.”
“Has it hit the stream yet?”
“A few minutes ago. Aren’t they talking about it there?”
Jessica looked over her shoulder at the crowd behind her. She had found a quiet corner in this brightly lit, industrial building that apparently passed for both a public gathering area and a bar. There was a great deal of discussion—most of which, she noticed, Dallas was choosing to stay out of—but none of it was about Athena Relay, or indeed the First Sector at all. “I think they’re mostly focused on their civil war,” she told him.
Immediately he tensed. “Do you need backup, ma’am?”
“No, thank you, Lieutenant.” She smiled, in spite of her mood. “So far the current seems to be away from more violence and toward strategizing. And when that changes”—and she had no doubt it would—“it’s not going to be me they’re after.”
But Bristol, like the good infantry soldier he was, was not satisfied with her answer. “I’m not comfortable with you being there without backup, ma’am.”
Me neither. “If I get in trouble,” she promised, “I’ll send an alert. Will that do?”
“I’d rather send you an escort, ma’am.”
“Can’t blow my cover, Lieutenant,” she said. Behind her, the discussion was becoming more heated. “Listen, I’ve got to go. But—” She thought for a moment. Bristol’s family were Fifth Sector, which had surprised her when she found out, but some of the others were more vulnerable. “How is your team doing?”
Bristol, despite his other limitations, was reasonably perceptive about morale issues. “Varied, ma’am,” he told her. “But we’re all right. Backing each other up.”
“Anybody becomes a danger, send them back to Galileo,” she ordered. “I’ll trust your judgment on that, Bristol. I need you all steady here, which means you take care of each other. Understood?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She disconnected, staring at the wall. She had cousins on Athena Relay. The bad side of the family, as her aunts used to say. She had met them only once, when she was about ten years old; even then, her family had been urging her to get away from Tengri, to use her talent for programming in a place where the annual death rate was lower. But she had loathed her cousins, and managed to remain at home for another four years before she had left for school on Earth.
No more loathsome cousins. She almost wailed at the wall.
“Bad news?”
She turned at the familiar voice, and found Dallas standing half a meter away from her, looking down at her with concern in those dark eyes. She was, she realized, susceptible to Dallas’s apparent kindness: always polite, never encroaching on Jessica’s personal space, but at the same time open, receptive, trustworthy. Impossible to dislike. Impossible to mistrust. Despite counting herself a good judge of character, Jessica knew better than to tell everything to anyone she had only just met.
“Your friends don’t do much stream surfing, do they?” she asked, and when Dallas frowned, she relented. “Athena Relay has been destroyed,” she said.
“Oh.” She saw a flash of surprise, then sorrow, in Dallas’s eyes before the politeness took over again. “That explains the First Sector disconnect.”
“Yeah.”
“You have people on Athena?”
Did it count when she hadn’t liked them? “I did.”
“I’m sorry,” Dallas told her, and she thought again how nice it would be to fall apart for a while.
“Thank you.” She straightened. “None of that changes any of this. Did you get me my equipment?”
A long-range comms trace was not particularly technical or difficult; but her assumption was that signals both in and out of the system would be both encrypted and distorted. She had some hardware on Galileo that was, strictly speaking, illegal, but given Ellis’s presence, she didn’t think it was worth the risk of tipping her hand by having them send it down.
Fortunately, she had realized she was working with a seasoned parts scavenger.
“I’ve got the pieces,” Dallas told her. “But it needs assembly.”
“How much assembly?”
Dallas held up a bag. It rattled as Jessica took it, and she shot her host a look. “We do not have time for this.”
And at that, Dallas looked away, expression unfamiliar. “I may be able to get you a whole one.”
“Excellent.” She handed back the bag. “Why didn’t you say so before?”
“Involves stealing.”
“If you need money to buy it—”
“It’s not that.” Dallas looked back at her. “The owner is dead.”
It took her a moment to figure it out. “You mean it was Jamyung’s.”
Dallas nodded.
“So what’s the problem?”
“Before we retrieved his body, the shipyard was in limbo,” Dallas explained. “Now that I’ve buried him, his equipment is common property.”
“Divided among everyone?” When Dallas nodded again, she said, “We can pay for it when we’re done.”
“Nice idea. But we have to get it first.”
Ah. “It’s guarded.”
Dallas nodded. “Probably Villipova’s people.”
She swore. “I’m a hacker, not a cat burglar. Any chance you’ve got a friend who can help us out?”
The smile that came over Dallas’s face was positively sly. “What makes you think I need a friend?”
Smolensk was, Jessica discovered, distinctly unlike Galileo, which was always lit the same way regardless of the official time. The domed city, in contrast, dimmed and localized the lighting at night, in an attempt to mimic the lighting of a planet orbiting a star. It was the middle of the night, and the streets were largely deserted; but there were bright streetlights and radiant sidewalks all along the path from the pub to Jamyung’s parts yard. If they were intent on realism, she thought, they might at least have let the city go dark. She understood the safety issues, but the well-lit areas were an annoying impediment.
A worse impediment was the six guards surrounding Jamyung’s shop.
Guards isn’t quite the right word, Jessica thought. Goons fit better. They were dressed in civilian clothes, the same nondescript dark fabrics worn by the rest of the colonists, and they varied in height, age, and gender. But their demeanors declared them a matched set: watchful, superficially casual, jackets designed to drape naturally over the small hand weapon each carried at the hip.
She remembered Dallas’s comments about her own body language. “Are they locals?” she asked, keeping her voice low.
They were standing on a corner a few blocks away, facing each other, leaning in as if they were two old friends chatting. Jessica wasn’t sure they were fooling anybody, but at least they were doing better than the goons in front of Jamyung’s place.
“Two of them are off-worlders,” Dallas told her. “The others are local.” Dallas sniffed, and Jessica read both derision and disapproval in the sound. “Think they’re fucking big shots, carrying pistols for a living. Those pissant guns couldn’t light a match.”
“Maybe not,” Jessica said. “But there’s six of them. And unless you’re a trained fighter in addition to being a cat burglar, that’s a problem we need to address.”
Dallas grinned again, and Jessica was beginning to think the scavenger was enjoying all of this. “You good at being quiet?”
“Why would I—” She took a breath. Dallas wasn’t going to tell her a damn thing, and she might as well go with it. “When I have to be.”
“Good. Be quiet.”
Dallas turned and sauntered away down an alley. Jessica followed, trying to mimic Dallas’s step: light, she had noticed, here inside the dome, probably because they were used to wearing heavy boots outside to deal with the gravity. But this time subterfuge was irrelevant: there was no one else in the alley, nothing but dirt
and trash and—she sniffed, and wondered if this was where Elena had found Jamyung’s artifact.
Before her, Dallas had stopped at a doorway. She ran to catch up, and looked down: a fingerprint lock. Archaic. Easily defeated. “I can get through that,” she told Dallas, and reached for the lock.
Dallas just looked surprised. “I hacked this lock twelve years ago.” One touch, and the door swung inward. Jessica, something of an aficionado of horror vids, was mildly disappointed to find a wide, well-lit, clean corridor, as nondescript as any Corps utility hall. They walked side by side, Dallas relaxed, no stealthiness apparent at all.
The hall opened up on a stairwell, looking more like Jessica’s presumptive poorly lit trap. “Where are we going?” she asked.
“Back entrance,” Dallas said.
Jessica followed Dallas down the stairs, where they came upon another door. Dallas coughed a few times, then spoke, voice lower than usual. “Fucking scavengers,” Dallas said, and the door swung open.
Jessica shot Dallas a look. “That was Jamyung’s passcode?”
Dallas nodded. “Took me six months to adapt the lock to take my voice print in addition to his. Couldn’t change the phrase.”
“It doesn’t bother you that he talked about you like that?”
Dallas shrugged. “Always bought my stuff. Paid well. Names don’t matter.”
“Sometimes they speak to attitude.”
Dallas was quiet for a moment. “Jamyung acted like an asshole. But he wasn’t one. You know?”
Jessica tended to be somewhat unforgiving of that personality type, but she had to admit she’d run across more than one solid Corps soldier who would have fit that description. “You were friends.”
“Yeah.”
And sometimes, she knew, it really was that simple. “Dallas, do you know who killed him?”
“No.” Dallas’s jaw set. “But they came from the same place as those two strangers outside. Come on.”
The door opened into the back of a storeroom, and here there was no lighting at all. Jessica touched her comm, and a bright beam came over her ear; at Dallas’s look, she turned down the intensity.
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