Her words had the approximate effect of a sword hilt to the stomach. Daikar’s breath escaped him in an outraged snort. He shaped his mouth around the beginnings of a Why?, but he cut it off. He knew the answer before he asked it. The counter had effectively neutralized him and Water Dancer. Without his order to divert, Stone’s team would carry out their original orders and deliver Mose as planned.
Instead, he said, “I didn’t expect this from you.”
She frowned, and an acrid tinge turned her scent. “What, you thought I’d stand by while you made choices for me, for my own good?” Her voice had started out low, but grew louder as she spoke. “Why did you think for a moment I would tolerate that?”
“I didn’t think you would go behind my back,” Daikar snapped—and covered his mouth, wishing at once he could take back the words.
From the cold smile that pulled one side of Shomoro’s mouth up, she hadn’t missed the irony. “It’s not a good feeling, is it.”He turned away, feeling both frozen and scorched. Blindly, he grabbed at a leaf sticking up from the nearest bush and shredded in his hands. “Have you thought about what I’m supposed to do now? Soon I won’t have a stipend. I can’t stay here.”
Cold plunged to the center of his belly, and he looked at her wide-eyed. “Are you trying to make me leave?”
She blinked. “What?”
“There’s not much use for my skills on Teluk outside Intelligence. Now they’ve got rid of me, I’ll have to apply to the Surarchy in Ril. Maybe reinstate with the Fleet. Those are my options.” Both options which, for reasons he hadn’t pressed her on, Shomoro had resisted taking for herself. And both Ril and the Fleet would place Daikar a long way away from Anmerresh, and her.
“You’re still part of my alliance,” she said. “We’ll work out some way for you to stay in Anmerresh. I don’t want you to leave.” Panic edged her voice at the last, panic and a surprise that caught him off guard. Had Shomoro really not realized the consequences her disclosure would have? Shomoro, who calculated the outward ripples of her actions over years and decades?
Or had she prepared for every consequence, except his response?
“I see.” He let the leaf fragments fall from his hand, scattering between them. “You want me here, as long as I always agree with you. As long as the only opinions and feelings that count are your own.”
He turned on his heel and left the garden, head down and unseeing.
“Daikar, wait—”
He slid the door shut on her entreaty.
Chapter Fourteen
Jan Shanazkowitz was watching the view through his window, a spun-diamond panel looking out on the river of rock and ice in which the Hub floated like a bath toy, when the door to his office chimed. He sat up and swiveled front, blinking away the half doze the unchanging view outside had lulled him into. That and the dim amber lighting had conspired to make him nod in his chair, waiting. Back in his service days he’d learned to tolerate the 5 A.M. reveilles, but that was a long time ago now.
Still, he didn’t raise the brightness of the recessed lights. He wanted Mose Attarrish to be comfortable.
Jan keyed the door open. A security guard entered first, followed by Vernsky and Mose. A second guard brought up the rear, both of them taking positions on either side of the door. Both were armed with nonlethal tranq guns.
Jan had pored over the Project’s security routines as part of his after-hours study of his new position as director, and discovered how they had evolved first under his mother’s, and later her former staff sergeant Jun Watanabe’s, leadership. For the first couple of years Mose had always been restrained in the presence of Project heads and staff, kept in maximum-security lockup when he wasn’t actively being prepped for a mission or debriefed from one. Over time, Watanabe had loosened many of those restrictions, eventually coming to this arrangement of light guard, constant surveillance, and the ever present threat of swarm deactivation to keep Mose under control. Jan had decided to preserve the arrangement when he stepped into the role, to minimize Mose’s adjustment period.
There was also the small detail of his—he supposed lineage was the term, according to Osk ways of reckoning kinship. He was the son of General Diane Shanazkowitz, the person whose orders had reduced Za to a nanovirus-scoured wasteland and imprisoned Mose in his own nano-cage fifteen years ago. Jan wasn’t about to throw fuel on that fire by being more of a hard-ass than he had to be.
“Please sit.” His open hand indicated two chairs before his desk. Vernsky took the standard office chair, folding his lanky frame into it. Mose settled onto the generic padded block beside his doctor.
Jan leaned his forearms on his desk and interlaced his fingers. “So, Attarrish,” he said, “does the name Shomoro Lacharoksa mean anything to you?”
Mose looked blank. But then, Jan reflected, his long face usually looked blank to Jan’s untrained eye. It was with satisfaction he caught the small frown that tugged at the corners of Mose’s lips for an instant. He was getting better at catching the Osk’s microexpressions; his review of the Project’s old footage was paying off.
“I don’t know that name,” Mose said. “I assume that’s the seph you want me to kill?”
She wasn’t someone Mose knew. Thank God. That would make this mission vastly easier, he hoped.
“Yes,” Jan said, answering the question as directly as Mose had asked it. He received a tightening of the Osk’s long lips in response.
Jan brought up the brief précis that Expansion Intelligence had released to the Project, found the file photo, and projected it onto the large holofoil square mounted at an angle on his desk.
To Jan’s eye, it was identical, save small variations, with the file photos of the majority of Mose’s targets stored in the Project’s archives: Shomoro Lacharoksa faced the camera before a blank silvery-white wall that contrasted with the long black mane framing her narrow, pointed snout. It was a personnel photo, one of hundreds that Intelligence had extracted from Za’s mainframe. He was sure Mose would be alive to details of the other Osk’s face that Jan, as a human, was unequipped to see.
Yet Mose’s reaction still took him by surprise. His lips parted in what looked very much like recognition, pupils widening. He closed his mouth abruptly and his usual blankness descended.
Vernsky caught the odd reaction, too. He essayed, “Does she look familiar?”
Mose dipped his torso in what Jan had learned was a shrug.
“A little,” he admitted. “I was wondering if she might have been one of the sephs I ran in Za Intelligence—there were at least sixty of them. But I don’t think so. ‘Lacharoksa’ is an unusual lineage name. I would have remembered it.”
Aren’t we talkative all of a sudden. A fascinating contrast with the monosyllabic Mose on whose behalf Vernsky had appealed to him a month ago. But then, Vernsky knew his patient. Maybe the concessions he’d won were having the desired effect on Mose’s morale.
Jan hoped he was right and Mose was bouncing back, because this next part was going to hurt. “Lacharoksa was a scientist for Za, as well as a seph.” He paused. “We’ve recently come across her trail doing similar work for the High Council of Teluk.”
Mose jerked upright; no need for a course in Osk paralinguistics for Jan to see the unhappiness in that stiffened spine.
His hands splayed on the table, the stubby nails digging in as if to anchor him. “Teluk?” he said faintly. He turned to Vernsky, sharply enough that the guards tightened their grips on their tranq guns. “Is this why you wouldn’t tell me where I was going?” Anger roughened his normally sibilant voice.
Jan hadn’t been sure if the concept of “home” carried the same resonance for Osk as humans, until now. Vernsky’s right. They’re not so hard to read once you’ve had practice.
Vernsky made the beginnings of an apology, but Jan cut him off. “We’re going to try and get you in and out as fast as possible,” he said. “Minimize your time on the ground. Since you’re a known entity there, Sharon d
etermined it would be safer if you stay off the streets.”
It also wouldn’t give Mose time to linger and run into people he’d known, to get reacquainted with a home that would no doubt take on a new and terrible resonance when he completed his mission. In and out, like ripping off a bandage.
“We’ve set up a safehouse for you. You’ll drop in by capsule craft,” he grimaced in sympathy at the distaste that twisted Mose’s snout, “and meet your contact here.” Jan banished Lacharoksa’s image and pulled up the map of Anmerresh City from the file. “It will pick you up after, too. It’s biometrically coded to your DNA, so with a sample, it can find you just about anywhere.”
Mose nodded tersely. “What about extraction?”
Jan opened a hand to him. “As you might’ve guessed, we can’t exactly send a ship to rendezvous with the capsule.” He tapped the map, highlighting several large structures camped out on the horns of the bay the city nestled in. “Automated cargo launches are pushed into orbit via laser several times a day. The capsule will latch onto one of ’em, and you’ll both ride up.”
Jan pictured the wild ride with a sudden breathlessness, like a combat drop in reverse. For a moment, he was almost jealous. He hadn’t entirely lost his taste for the adrenaline rushes that came with soldiering—just the part about killing people, in all their varied shapes. His jealousy cooled.
Mose visibly fought for composure, inhaling deeply through the nostrils under his snout. Like a curtain descending, his neutral mask fell into place. “Tell me more about Lacharoksa.”
Jan was glad to oblige. The more operational details Mose had to focus on, the less time he had to brood over their setting.
“She maintained a base somewhere on Olios 3’s New Great Plains up until the end of the war, when she was captured by the White Arrows.”
Vernsky frowned. “What were they doing out there?”
“As it turned out? Operating a spy network with the blessing of the Core Worlds Government.” Among other things. The White Arrow base had been out of Jan’s jurisdiction as interim military liaison for the Terran colony, for all it was operating under his nose. He shook off the memory of irritation and continued. “The operation was under the control of one Tor Berkyavik, a Church special envoy. I gather it was his idea to take Lacharoksa into custody. They tortured her for information over several months, until she escaped.”
Vernsky winced. Jan nodded silent agreement. Even fifteen years later, some of the records from that case were imprinted on his memory.
Mose’s face was very still. “What happened to Berkyavik?”
An unexpected question—but he understood it. Jan matched Mose bland for bland. “She killed him.” And ate him, his mind supplied, but he kept the thought and the lurid images it evoked to himself.
“If she’s working for the High Council, she must be a high-value target,” he said. “She’ll be hard to get at.”
“I gather our informants have connections in the government,” Jan said curtly. “That should help. Beyond that, I know you can be creative.”
Mose accepted this with a nod. “When do I leave?”
Jan rubbed his thumb over his knuckles, a habit from his military days. “Two days from now, 1300 standard. Any more questions?”
The ghost of a smile parted Mose’s lips, the edges of his teeth just showing before it vanished. “I’ll let you know.”
Jan watched him for a moment, hoping the expression would repeat itself, but Mose gave nothing further.
“Dismissed.”
Jan remained in his chair for a few minutes after Mose and Vernsky left. Something had felt off about the Osk, something he couldn’t put his finger on until he reran the recording of the briefing just concluded and had the inspiration to mute it.
It was Mose’s expressions. Jan kept count, separating the dramatic reactions from the more subdued ones. No, not subdued; Vernsky had said many times that Osk microexpressions were every bit as sincere as human ones. What looked, to Jan, like normal emoting was, according to Vernsky, more likely to be exaggerated for the benefit of half-blind humans like him.
He finally saw the pattern. Mose’s exaggerated reactions were the ones Jan had expected him to have at the news of where he was being sent. But the unexpected reactions—his surprise on seeing Lacharoksa’s photo, and his smile at the end—were true microexpressions. But what was Mose masking?
Jan didn’t have the insight to suss that out. But he knew who did.
The Terran light cruiser Damyata slipped from its bay in the cylindrical docking hub like a pip squeezed from a fruit. The carpeted decking in the ship’s tiny observation lounge vibrated for a breath under Mose’s boots as the craft fired its engines. On the wall-mounted screens, a feed patched in from Greenwich Hub’s docking authority showed the silvery arrowhead shape detach from its collar clamps and glide forward against the star field. Assisted by small auxiliary thrusters along its sides, the ship pivoted gracefully away from the Hub’s orbital ecliptic.
The nauseating liquidity of weightlessness slid into his stomach as the Damyata ceased to spin with the rest of the Hub. But, as usual, his feet were still in contact with the floor when the cruiser fired its main engines again, a long steady thrust that would last until just before they rendezvoused with the out-system gate. “Down” reasserted itself, and he was able to walk rather than float from the observation lounge to his shipboard quarters.
The door slid open to reveal a room barely bigger than a closet—just a narrow slot with a blanketed bunk and a space just long enough for him to stand at the wall-mounted wash station. The toilet apparatus folded up inside the wall until needed. The cabin made his permanent quarters on Greenwich Hub look like the Monarch’s apartments. He would have to stretch out on his back or belly on the bunk to sleep, instead of curled on his side in the C-shape that felt more natural.
It didn’t matter. He didn’t intend to stay awake in these cramped quarters for long. He wasn’t sure if Pri’s nanite schema would function during hibernation sleep; this might be his last chance to access the memories it encoded before he reached Teluk. The trip to the ’stream gate would take twenty-six standard hours, and he intended to spend as many of those sleeping as he could. Mose awkwardly climbed onto the bunk one foot at a time, sinking his belly to the blankets and resting his head on his arms. He turned off the lights and closed his eyes.
Mose enters the memory like moving into a new room.
«It seems our Soft Ones have had help.» Dur’s thoughts are grave. He skids past Pri down the steep defile toward the Stone Hearth in the valley below. Pri has come up to meet Dur’s craft on its return from the Terran ground camp. Now she swivels and follows Dur down the canyon in leaps and bounds.
«What do you mean?»
«I’ve been paying closer attention to their thoughts, as we agreed. To see if I might see anything like you did. I found something.»
«What did you see?»
«I will tell you after we get to the Hearth. I must convene a meeting of the other Hearth leaders.»
The day is dead calm and mercilessly hot outside the shelter of the crevasse. For a while, the only thing that passes between the two Drevl Char is the wheezing of spiracles as they labor from blazing heights into rocky depths. Dur’s mind is a cool, smooth orb; Pri’s timid attempts to read him slide off its surface like sand over Terran glass.
The Stone Hearth under Dur’s direct leadership is a warren of caves and tunnels dug deep into the red rock of the canyon. Pri has been a guest in this particular crevasse, itself a mere tendril of the massive Hearth, during the time she’s spent communicating with the Terran scientist Delicia Baker.
The canyon’s meander terminates in a little cul-de-sac of crimson stone. A shelf of rock shelters three-fourths of the courtyard from the sky’s brightness. Dur leads Pri into the comfy space and goes over to the message terminal beside one wall. «We’ll hold the meeting here,» he says. «I will message the other Hearth leaders at once.»
<
br /> As she crouches into a resting pose, a thought tickles Pri’s antennae. «What of Bef? Wasn’t he with you, negotiating with the Soft Ones for more of their nanoweave?»
«That, and a few other things to make us more comfortable when the sandstorms become bad,» Dur replies, as he searches for the general frequency that transmits to all the Stone Hearths. «I had him stay at the camp. To complete the original negotiations, but also to imagine some new ones, if he could. To stall for time.»
A spike of alarm impales Pri. «Dur, what did you see?»
He turns from the terminal, antennae switching back and forth in agitation. «You are first of the Xenologist Line. Perhaps you will understand their memories better than I, if I show you.»
Pri calms her mind and touches his in a mental invitation.
Memories rush in, transmitted from Dur to Pri but belonging to neither of them.
When they end, she is no longer calm.
The sun is a red smear on the horizon by the time the dozen-odd Stone Hearth leaders stand assembled in the cul-de-sac. Pri crouches with them in a rough circle around Dur, who keeps them all in sight with small turns of his head. Feelings of companionship and curiosity inhabit the mental analogue of the cul-de-sac; Dur’s broadband message to the Hearths was vague enough to raise a response, yet innocuous enough that it has not alarmed them.
«Warmness fills me to see you all here,» Dur contacts each guest, brushing invisible fingertips along their antennae. «Yet there is sadness in me too; I bear evil news. The Soft Ones—the Terrans—are lying to us.» He uses the new glyph that represents “lying,” which the meaning-smiths of the Linguistics Line have created since the Terrans’ arrival .
Prickles of disbelief and confusion crackle through their shared space. Dur raises all four tendrils against the other leaders’ mental chatter. «I have images and thoughts to prove my words. If you would quieten and open your minds.» But the other Drevl Char are already damping their initial shock. As Pri relaxes, she feels the sliding rush of Dur’s mind into hers, like a breath of air inflating behind her forward-facing eyes.
Alliance of Exiles Page 21