Gau took her meaning instantly, and discovered that it was possible to hate Lorsk more than he already did. A sick feeling, rage mixed with helplessness, swirled in his stomach at her description of this twenty-year-old assault.
“Then what happened?” he asked automatically, while inside he thought, I don’t want to know this. There was nothing he could do now—except decide how hard and how long to make Lorsk suffer, when the time came. Perhaps that was why he asked it.
“I left directly, found Jarn, and told him what happened.”
She cast a glance into the dark room beyond the balcony where he slept a few meters from them. “Jarn . . . took care of it. I don’t know what he said to Lorsk, but he never tried that again. He mellowed toward me in general.” She grimaced.
Gau caught her unsaid words: Lorsk had switched his attentions to Gau—the younger, more pliable orphan, with no parents, adoptive or otherwise, to stand up for him. He supposed he could have sought Jarn’s protection, too; the grizzled comms officer would surely have opened his nest to his adopted daughter’s childhood friend. But his experiences by then hadn’t given Gau much reason to trust adults. Adults drove you out of storefronts where you were trying to sleep. Adults gave you contaminated doses of endorphin. Adults—the Terran kind, anyway—tried to kill you for being what you were. And now, apparently, adults made sexual advances on you because you looked like their dead kaneshi.
I’m an adult too. All grown, at least enough to realize that it was simply people who did those things, and thus were best avoided.
Except, perhaps, said a thin traitorous voice inside him, for the friend you’ve known all your life?
Ari watched him, her open face expectant, her long mouth just beginning to curve down in concern.
Gau rose on aching legs. “I have to go. I’m tired.”
He squeezed through the balcony doors and climbed the stairs to his lonely apartment. I want to take you with me Ari, but I don’t know how. Under different circumstances . . .
The thought remained unfinished as he sprawled on his cot and sleep took him.
Chapter Thirteen
Brassy midmorning Teluk sunlight flashed off the platform cantilevered over the side of the caldera.
Shomoro squinted against it, checking the urge to rub her eyes in the presence of the Challa’iti aide beside her in the cable car. After Daikar had left last night—all right, after she’d thrown him out—she’d paced her apartment in an excess of frustration and hurt, before bedding down in her nest to sleep fitfully. She’d tossed and turned, fragments of their confrontation spiraling up from the dark behind her eyes and preventing her from drifting off, even though she’d desperately wanted, if not to sleep, than at least not to be conscious for a few hours.
Yet she must have gotten some rest, because she’d awoken around dawn with her head aching but her thoughts clear. She’d made the appointment with her Council representatives and fallen asleep for a couple hours of true sleep.
Other than the bleary eyes, she didn’t feel the least bit tired now. The cable car ground to a halt on the platform’s edge, the clamps engaging with a thump. The Challa’iti aide gestured her on with a sweep of the dun gliding flaps stretching between their upper and lower sets of arms. Shomoro crossed the platform and sacrificed her drop of blood to the biometric scanner.
The Challa’iti hurried to follow, and they proceeded together down the short corridor.
As the two of them entered the small conference chamber, the aide shuffled to one side of the door and announced, “Shomoro Lacharoksa, co-director of the Teluk Security Nanodefense Research Project.” Having suitably enhanced Shomoro’s importance, the aide melted back into the corridor, leaving her alone with two—if their alien expressions could be judged—rather surprised councilors.
“You know, you could have called on your PagePendant,”
Whalg-General said. “It’s not as if you’re delivering a status report to the full Council in session.”
Unfortunately, she thought. Yurll and Whalg-General were both influential, but they were only two; possibly not enough to bring off what she had in mind. Then again, somewhere among the other five must be Water Dancer and Daikar’s supporters. She had realized, sometime in her recriminations last night, that the two of them couldn’t carry out their plan without tacit approval by someone on the Council. Better to restrict her requests to the two members she trusted to be as blindsided as she by the turn of events.
Scorning the offered chair that had risen from the floor at her arrival, Shomoro stood with her arms folded above the saddle of her lower back, her gaze focused on a point exactly between Yurll and Whalg-General. Without preamble, she said, “It came to my attention last night that Water Dancer plans to divert Mose to a black site.” Her unfocused gaze took in their expressions of shock, but she didn’t stop for them to interject.
“I believe she has the allies to bring it off, including supporters on the Council. I don’t know who they are yet.” Though she would find out, yes.
Yurll’s tail gripped her branch tighter, while Whalg-General looked askance and muttered what might have been a curse.
The Baskar was the first to recover his composure to ask, “Do you know who her allies are in this, ah, endeavor?”
Beneath the calm exterior of her resolve, writhing worms fought themselves in Shomoro’s belly. She would not relish this part, but it had to be done. “Daikar informed me of her plan. Water Dancer had approached him with it earlier. He . . .
agreed to it.”
Yurll blinked; her purple head crest fluttered in agitation.
“Why would he go behind your back and then tell you about it?”
“Daikar is unfailingly honest.” Even in his deceptions, she thought ruefully. “He believed I had a right to know, and also that none of us would be able to do anything about it until it was too late, anyway.”
Whalg-General’s lips flattened into a dangerous snarl.
“About that second part, he’s about to be sorely mistaken.” His gaze flicked to Yurll, whose red eyes hooded for a moment.
“He’s out,” she said cryptically.
He summoned the Challa’iti aide from their exile in the hallway. They had not finished their bow when Whalg-General spoke. “Revoke Daikar Shurinezz’s security clearance. Effective immediately, he is to be removed from Teluk Intelligence’s chain of command on the authority of Councilor Yurll and me.”
Shomoro bit her lip as the aide scurried off to carry out this order. It was exactly what she’d expected, but that did nothing to tamp down the hot flush of guilt in her belly. She imagined Daikar arriving at the command center only to find his biometrics no longer granted access—his disbelief, confusion, dawning realization once he was informed of the order and its authorizers. Or maybe he was already at Command, with guards already converging to bundle him unceremoniously out of the building.
Would Daikar take it as revenge, her taking something away from him to even the score? And what had he taken away from her, exactly?
Control. Choice. Trust, suns take it. He did this to himself. It was almost convincing.
She exhaled slowly, pushing the tension out from the bottom of her lungs. The hardest part was over. A petty part of her would almost enjoy this next move, in comparison. She looked between the two councilors.
“I did not make this appointment only to apprise you of the situation. I need your authorization on something that will directly impact the work my team has been doing.”
That got her a response. Yurll’s neck angled forward in interest, and Whalg-General’s muzzle parted around a questioning ah? As the co-founder of the nanodefense project, Shomoro had extraordinary leeway in how she pursued R&D. Other than their entitlement to regular status reports, Whalg-General and Yurll had been hands—or claws—off in how they managed their star nanoscience team. Neither Shomoro nor Water Dancer had to ask them to sign off on requisitions or personnel decisions, provided they could justify their de
cisions as serving the project’s ultimate aim.
“I wish to terminate Water Dancer’s research contract with the Teluk High Council.”
Saltwater sloshed as Whalg-General jerked back in his tank. He did not protest, however, but looked again to Yurll.
The Arashal councilor spread her large hands. “I know you are feeling slighted right now, but with respect, I don’t see what impact the current situation has on your research that would justify that.”
“No?” Shomoro began to pace a short circuit. Voicing her request aloud had brought back some of the prickly energy of last night. “She went behind my back, circumvented your authority, to make a unilateral decision about a matter in which all of us have a stake. Does that sound like an individual you want to trust with the future of Teluk’s nanodefense architecture?” Shomoro turned on her heel to face them again, and dipped her head in genuine regret. “Also, on a personal level, I don’t wish to work with Water Dancer further after this. I don’t . . . think I can trust her.”
Both councilors were quiet, in the attitude Shomoro had learned meant they were considering.
“There’s also a tactical advantage to it,” she added. It made her cringe inside to frame it in those terms, but she knew it would appeal at least to Whalg-General’s military mind. He rewarded her with an inviting wave of black claws.
“If she can’t use Daikar for her operation, Water Dancer may just suborn someone else,” Shomoro said. “But not if she’s scrambling to regain access to her research. And if she successfully appeals to her supporters on the Council for reinstatement, there will be a record of authorization.”
Yurll lifted her beak and made an approving grunt. “They’ll have to reveal themselves.” Her tongue tipped upward in an Arashal smile; Whalg-General’s mirroring smile was wide enough to show two neat triangular rows of teeth. Shomoro jabbed, and waited, wary of over arguing her case. Let them mull over it together in private.
On cue, Whalg-General waved at her again, this time distinctly toward the door. “We require time to discuss your proposal.”
“Of course.” Shomoro inclined her head. At the threshold, she couldn’t help adding, “When will I know your decision?”
“Oh,” the Baskar said languidly, with a shrug that sent ripples through his tank water, “you’ll know.”
Shomoro’s first indication that her injunction had been successful came in the form of a commotion at the sleek elevator bank in the lobby of her and Water Dancer’s sunken lab.
Having no reason to go home after her meeting with the Council, she’d taken a leisurely midmeal before heading to the lab to check on her and Pri’s experiments—this last an extra favor to Pri, who’d been anxious leaving them in the appendages of mere lab assistants, however competent.
A small but growing multispecies crowd of onlookers had accreted around the elevator banks. The tall backs of a few Baskar blocked Shomoro from easy view of the scene, but she heard raised voices: one, a Baskar, was speaking in a loud but calm explanatory voice. The other voice was the flat-affect burr of a translator. Shomoro wormed her way to the second row of onlookers and peered over the sloping shoulder of a Wurfren.
“I’m afraid this card doesn’t have the proper access rights for that sublevel,” the Baskar—a security guard by the bronze sash at the top of his metallic skirt—said, waving the short black rectangle of an elevator scan card. Shomoro carried one exactly like it in her cloak.
“It must be an error.” The translated voice belonged to a Rul. Shomoro recognized the purplish sheen of her green carapace and ducked farther behind the Wurfren in a moment of reflex. “Run it again,” Water Dancer demanded of the guard.
He dutifully did so, and the scanner inside the elevator blatted.
Access denied.
Shomoro realized belatedly that an ugly public scene was perhaps not the best way to break the news of her termination to Water Dancer. Biting the inside of her cheek for courage, she broke ranks with the crowd and strode into the center. Before she could intercede, Water Dancer hailed her with a hopeful spring of pink and orange flickers.
“Shomoro, thank the Primal Elements you’re here! Can you tell this”—she flicked a manipod at the guard, searching perhaps for a sufficient Rul curse word; finding none, she settled on—“person who I am?”
With a tight nod at the Rul, Shomoro said to the guard, “I’m afraid there’s been some miscommunication.”
The pink and orange intensified on Water Dancer’s skin. “Thank you—”
“Shall we continue this in your office?” Shomoro gestured toward the guard.
Perhaps coming to the same realization regarding the disruption whose crest he was teetering on, the Baskar guard nodded and led the two of them to a small windowed cubicle inset into the wall diagonally from the elevator bank. Inside, Shomoro pulled down the interior blind, shuttering them from curious onlookers. The Baskar settled onto a well-worn block chair near the window; Water Dancer stood almost too close to him, as though afraid he would abscond with the now-useless access card. Shomoro remained standing near the door. She nodded toward the guard’s console.
“May I use that?”
He ceded it to her with a wave. Her own access card quickly gave her local admin rights on the generic machine. Shomoro pulled up the files that contained Water Dancer’s access rights and active contracts. Make that inactive contracts. She turned slowly, mentally generating and discarding a dozen ways to begin this conversation and finding all inadequate—lifeless and formal at best, vindictive at worst.
As far as she knew, Rul couldn’t interpret facial expressions, having no faces themselves, but something in Shomoro’s suddenly stiff movements must have alarmed Water Dancer.
She began shuffling from pod to pod. “What is it? Do you need to rescan the card?”
Shomoro cut air with her hand, groped a last time for a way to soften the blow before deciding any such attempt would only insult Water Dancer. Stiff and formal, then. “Water Dancer, your contract with Teluk Security R&D is terminated effective immediately, by order of High Councilors Yurll and Whalg-General. On my recommendation.”
She’d expected a storm of lightspeech in response; instead, the flickering bioluminescence faded completely from the Rul’s pods, leaving them dull as stone. The effect was like the blood draining from someone’s face. “What? Why?”
“I discovered your interference in one of my experiments,” Shomoro hedged, conscious of the Baskar guard. “The one Daikar was helping you with,” she added in an edged tone, in case the Rul missed the inference.
“Oh,” Water Dancer said quietly. Colors flashed across her carapace, too fast for Shomoro to track the emotions they expressed. All she said was, “What about my experiments? The nanosolutions need regular nutrient injections and monitoring—”
“Your able lab assistants will ensure your experiments continue without interruption,” Shomoro said. “Over the longer term, Pri may take them over. We won’t allow your departure to jeopardize the project.”
“Unlike yours, is that it?” Water Dancer’s pods flashed red in a visual snarl. “You’ll make contingency plans for the rest of us, but not yourself. Despite the real danger—”
“Water Dancer,” Shomoro’s voice was a warning growl. She glanced meaningfully at the uncleared Baskar guard.
The Rul fell silent for a long interval. “Did you ruin him too, for trying to help?”
Her throat tightened. She had still heard nothing from Daikar, and had no idea if he’d discovered what she’d done yet.
She looked past Water Dancer to the guard. “Water Dancer may have left personal effects in our lab. Accompany her down there to retrieve them. Then escort her from the building.”
Daikar ended up on the pathway that skirted Shomoro’s residence with only a dim memory of how he’d gotten there.
Blind fury had carried him a certain distance, after he’d been unceremoniously turned away at HQ, and muscle memory had done for the rest.
As he rounded the corner of the enclosed path, a sleek blue and yellow shape rose from the bench near Shomoro’s door. He recognized Jureshsillim, the Baskar operative leading Shomoro’s security team. She was one of his colleagues. Former colleagues, as of this morning.
“Hello, Operative Shurinezz,” she greeted him, and he stopped on the path. She didn’t know yet. As he watched, her wedge-shaped head cocked to one side. “Is everything all right?
You look in a hurry to be somewhere.”
Daikar was abruptly conscious of his heaving chest and the sweat starting under his disheveled mane. He clawed it back into a semblance of order, taking deep breaths to re-aerate his lungs after the steep climb to this terrace. “I need to see Shomoro about a matter of some urgency,” he said smoothly.
Jureshsillim buzzed the intercom and, at Shomoro’s crackly inquiry, announced him. After an admirably small pause, she told the Baskar to let him in.
He found Shomoro in the small backyard garden, reached from the residence’s railed balcony by a set of stone steps. His own suite was a twin to this; with a flash of bleak precognition, Daikar wondered how much longer the suite would be his, once his Council-provided stipend ran out.
Shomoro stood by the border of purple, helically sprouting bushes that rimmed the miniature water garden, trimming the overgrowth with a small knife. When he came down the steps, she immediately folded it up in her cloak. “Hello, Daikar.” After this initial greeting she was silent, waiting. As if she knew why he was here. Krenkyr, of course she did—no. He didn’t know that for sure. He would lay out the bare facts and see what happened.
“Teluk Intelligence revoked my status this morning,” he said, in an attempt at a calm voice that came out sounding tight. “On Yurll and Whalg-General’s orders. Do you know anything about this?”
A long, audible exhalation eased out of her, and she folded like the knife onto a low garden bench. “I told them what you and Water Dancer were planning.”
Alliance of Exiles Page 20