Two spots of color had risen on Popova’s cheeks.
“Give me just a minute,” she said, and then she left the room.
Pippa glanced around. She hadn’t looked at her surroundings before. A few chairs, a table with nothing on it, and a wall that clearly had no network built in. This room was designed for exactly what Popova had used it for—a preliminary investigation room.
Popova had closed the door, making Pippa feel like a prisoner. She paced for a moment, her heart still racing. She half expected someone to take her into custody. After all, she had just admitted to being a Disappeared, and inside the Alliance, most Disappeareds had broken actual laws—major laws, not identity laws.
But Popova hadn’t said anything about arrest.
Maybe, though, she had locked Pippa inside the room.
Pippa walked to the door, and pushed it. It opened easily, revealing the corridor outside.
She kept the door open just slightly. It was a psychological thing, so that she knew deep down that she wasn’t a prisoner here.
She had been terrified of being caught, imprisoned, and killed for so very long, especially after she had admitted who she was, that she was trembling.
Only she hadn’t said her real name, not at all.
She smiled just a little. She had always planned to reveal that. The fact that she hadn’t surprised her. The secrecy had become a reflex.
She wondered what Popova was doing. Was she checking the name of Starbase Human? Was she investigating Pippa?
Was she getting the guards?
Pippa didn’t know. But she was on this path now.
She had chosen it. She had chosen to help all of these people on the Moon, even though she didn’t know a one of them.
Her son had told her that the Anniversary Day bombings weren’t her problem. But they felt like her problem. They felt like they had always been her problem.
She had never talked to law enforcement about the base explosion. She had never done anything to get those clones captured or stopped or the clone creators imprisoned.
Maybe if she had…
She shook her head. Raymond used to say that what-ifs didn’t matter at all. What-ifs were a foolish way to self-flagellate.
Usually, she took his advice. But on this one, she couldn’t stop.
Maybe if these people caught her clones, she wouldn’t be so afraid all the time. Maybe the nightmares would go away.
Maybe she could really slide into Pippa Landau, and not be terrified that someone was going to drag her away in the middle of the night, taking her children too.
Maybe, maybe, maybe. As useless as what-if.
Rudra Popova leaned in the doorway. “Ms. Landau,” she said, “let’s go upstairs. Someone up there would like to talk with you.”
Pippa nodded. She was back to being a scared rabbit again. She didn’t ask who wanted to talk to her, because she knew nothing about the way things worked here on the Moon. The name would most likely be meaningless.
She was on the road now, the road created by her latest choice.
She just needed to keep moving forward, and see where this road would take her.
THIRTY-ONE
IN THE PAST hour, all Flint had done was walk from one part of his office to another. He was deep inside two searches. The search into the Peyti Corporation that might or might not be named Legal Fiction was narrowing. He found numerous references to it on law school sites and in documentation concerning the Peyti lawyers back when they were law students.
But Flint couldn’t find the shipping addresses for the masks that the Peyti lawyers had received earlier in the year. The one-of-a-kind explosive masks had to have come from somewhere.
So far, every address he found turned out to be false.
About a half an hour ago, he had opened a search into the masks themselves. They had to have been made somewhere. There were a lot of companies that made the Peyti masks. Most of the information was in Peytin, so he had to have translation programs working simultaneously with the mask search.
He wished he could speak to Luc Deshin. Deshin knew more about explosives than Flint ever would, and Deshin also knew how to do a proper search for them. Deshin had given Flint a lot of information about the explosives and things to search for after Anniversary Day. Flint had valued that, even though Deshin made him uncomfortable.
But Deshin had told Flint that he had done all he could. And Deshin had done a lot. He had left the Moon to track down the clones of PierLuigi Frémont, which had led to the name Jhena Andre, a woman who worked inside the Alliance.
Flint had given that name to DeRicci, and she had assigned Wilma Goudkins to investigate Andre.
Flint had tried shortly thereafter to contact Deshin, but had been unable to do so. Either Deshin had not answered deliberately or he was out of range.
Flint had no idea where Deshin had gone, but he did know that Deshin was not currently on the Moon.
And that made Flint uncomfortable. He needed as much help as possible.
Nyquist was investigating the Jarvis/Moon connection, but that was a small piece of information, and searching for the source of the explosive masks was a large piece of information—which was thwarting Flint at the moment.
He returned to his main desk and the Jarvis search. He had found the Moon connection fairly easily. Maybe he should search for a connection between Jarvis and Jhena Andre.
Flint knew he had to explore that connection carefully. He didn’t want to tip off Andre, and he didn’t want to interfere with Goudkins’ searches.
But he didn’t trust Jarvis to Goudkins, either. Not with Zagrando’s life in the balance.
So Flint started compiling a list of all the people Jarvis had worked with, both on the Moon and off. The list was extensive. Jarvis had worked with a lot of people inside the Alliance, and those were the names listed publically.
They did not include Zagrando, at least so far. And Flint had been delving for a while now.
That meant that any undercover operative Jarvis ran would be difficult to find in a casual search.
At some point, Flint would have to work with Goudkins on the Jarvis connections.
Flint set up a program so that the computers would put together a list of Jarvis’s known interactions, and leaned back.
That lack of focus—the sense of too many things to do at the same time—was driving Flint crazy.
Or maybe it was the fact that he wasn’t finding what he wanted quickly. He wasn’t used to being this cautious in his searches. When he searched for a Disappeared, he had set protocols to protect the Disappeared, but he often didn’t care if he attracted the notice of whoever maintained the database he was searching in.
This time, he was acutely aware that most of the databases he was digging through were attached to the Alliance, and the attacks were coming from a faction inside the Alliance.
He had no idea what kinds of protections they had placed inside their databases. He would have placed extensive hidden tripwires, things that would never be obvious to the searcher, but which would notify of anyone poking around in the databases.
Flint had to assume that whoever he was looking for was just as smart about this stuff as he was.
He ran a hand over his face, then sighed.
No word from Talia yet on Zagrando’s condition. She would let Flint know the moment Zagrando woke.
Flint thought about contacting her, then decided against it. He needed to continue his search, and Jarvis was his best lead.
Instead of looking for connections, maybe his finances would reveal something.
Flint leaned forward and began another search, this time into the monies in Jarvis’s personal accounts.
Flint half expected to find a man who enriched himself off the sale of clones, but Flint didn’t find anything like that. Jarvis had no hidden wealth, no living above his means.
All the search of Jarvis’s finances showed was a mid-level Alliance civil servant who was barely making it
from paycheck to paycheck.
So how did he get a Black Fleet replica ship? He couldn’t have paid for it himself. It had to have been part of one of his operations.
But he hadn’t worked on targeting of the Black Fleet for years. Flint felt confused by this detail. There was no name on that Black Fleet replica ship, at least that Flint had been able to find.
Still, there had to have been a crew and a history—something that would lead to the one piece of information that Flint needed.
He didn’t know right now what exactly that piece of information was, but he would know it when he saw it.
And he hoped he would see it soon.
THIRTY-TWO
GOMEZ FOLLOWED DERICCI through double doors that opened into an office. The office would have been impressive—if it weren’t for the piles of self-cleaning food cartons on one desk, and the dirty clothes that peaked out behind the other. Tablets covered a few chairs. A blanket, scrunched up against the arm of one couch, looked like it had recently doubled as a pillow.
Signs of stress, everywhere, and none clearer than on the face of the chief herself, Noelle DeRicci.
DeRicci looked nothing like the vids that Gomez had seen of her. The woman before Gomez was thinner, older, with lots of gray in her curls. Those curls were matted, whether from inattention or a recent nap Gomez couldn’t tell. The blanket suggested a nap, but the food cartons suggested inattention.
“Forgive me for being blunt,” DeRicci said, “but I’m pressed for time here. I know you told my assistant that you have information we need. Before I hear about that, I want to know why you were looking for a job in Hétique City.”
Gomez felt a frisson of surprise. She hadn’t expected that piece of information to show up in a vetting.
“I wasn’t,” Gomez said. “I used my status as on-leave and an old posting the cloning factory in Hétique City had made on law enforcement sites to get into the factory itself. I was following a lead.”
“What lead?” DeRicci’s voice was flat. She was obviously tired, but still sharp.
Gomez appreciated that.
“Some PierLuigi Frémont clones originated there decades ago,” Gomez said. “I wanted to see if that factory was the one that made the clones that attacked the Moon.”
DeRicci’s eyebrows went up dramatically, which was clearly an affectation, done for Gomez’s benefit.
“Why would you care?” DeRicci asked.
She hadn’t been kidding when she said she was going to be blunt.
“Because,” Gomez said, “I think I could have prevented all of the attacks on the Moon years ago, if I had only followed up.”
DeRicci leaned her head back as if she hadn’t expected that answer. “Followed up?”
“I sent some injured PierLuigi Frémont clones from a moon in the Frontier to hospitals inside the Alliance, expecting that my division would follow up, interview the survivors about the strange situation they had been in, and stop whatever was going on. Instead, those clones were warehoused in the Alliance prison system. Shortly after I found him, he and the rest were killed.”
DeRicci’s expression didn’t change.
Gomez wondered if her words had been too dramatic. Maybe she should have led into the Alliance involvement. DeRicci probably had no idea that there was an Alliance connection to the attacks.
The silence hung between them what seemed like hours.
Then DeRicci sighed. “How long ago was this?”
“About fifteen years,” Gomez said.
DeRicci cursed. “Who plays this kind of long game? And why? What has the Moon done to these people?”
“I don’t think it was the Moon,” Gomez said. “I think these attacks are aimed at the Alliance itself.”
DeRicci didn’t seem surprised by that either, although she did say, “Well, it’s sure looking personal to me.”
Gomez nodded. “I understand that. It’s personal to me too. I thought I was working for some kind of justice out there on the Frontier. I believed in the system, and the system failed so badly that you’ve lost millions here on the Moon. And I’m connected to it. I could have stopped it.”
DeRicci let out a snort. “If I had a credit for every time I said that…” She swept her hand toward the couch set-up on the far side of the room.
Gomez walked toward it. DeRicci followed.
They sat down together.
“I want to hear what you have to say,” DeRicci said. “I need to hear it all, without recriminations.”
“Recriminations?” Gomez asked.
“Yes,” DeRicci said. “You were out there, doing your job. Someone inside the Alliance wasn’t doing theirs.”
“Or someone was actively thwarting these cases.” Gomez wasn’t going to let DeRicci misunderstand this. Gomez firmly believed someone was trying to tear down the Alliance from the inside.
“Yeah,” DeRicci said softly. “Do you have a name of who that might be?”
“No,” Gomez said. “But I know where the clones were made. I have the name of that company—and it’s not an Alliance-based company. It’s in the Frontier. And I think with the right tools, we can find out who owns it.”
DeRicci folded her hands together. “Why haven’t you already investigated that?”
Blunt. Gomez was beginning to like that.
“It took the acting commander of my ship, the Stanley, months to gain that information. He had to go deep into the Frontier.” Then, because Gomez had learned long ago that no one inside the Alliance knew how big the Frontier was, she added, “The Frontier is five times the size of the Alliance, you know.”
DeRicci didn’t seem angry at being told a fact that could be easily looked up. Gomez liked that about her as well. Not everyone in authority could know everything, and it was the comfortable leader who accepted what she didn’t know as well as what she did.
“I hadn’t known the Frontier was that big,” DeRicci said. “Just that it was big.”
“Nuuyoma got the information to me just before I came here,” Gomez said. “Combined with everything else I’ve found and the Peyti Crisis, I felt you needed all of this information sooner rather than later.”
“You said ‘my ship.’ You’re going back when this is over, aren’t you?” DeRicci didn’t wait for an answer. “Leaving like that must’ve been hard. You made quite a commitment to get me this information.”
It was Gomez’s turn to be blunt. “No offense, Chief, but the commitment isn’t to you or the Moon. The commitment is to the Alliance. The more information I got, the more I became concerned about what’s going on inside our government.”
“But you came to me,” DeRicci said.
Gomez nodded. “You’ve suffered through these attacks, and you don’t work for the Alliance. That makes you trustworthy in my book.”
For the first since Gomez met her, DeRicci smiled. “That must be some book.”
Gomez smiled in return. “Yeah,” she said. “When this is all over, I’ll share some chapters with you.”
“Deal,” DeRicci said. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”
THIRTY-THREE
EARTH ALLIANCE INVESTIGATOR Wilma Goudkins sat in her favorite chair in front of the system she always used for investigations. Her heart was pounding as if she had run the Moon marathon.
She was doing extremely risky work, and she knew it.
Fortunately, she was deep inside her own ship, with a non-networked system that was hard to hack. She had armed the ship’s doors so that anyone even attempting to enter would have difficulty—not that anyone else had access.
She worked here alone, and she often did her best work here.
The problem was that the system she used was networked with the Earth Alliance’s Security Division. She just hoped no one was monitoring her work.
For the past few hours, she had been investigating names for Noelle DeRicci instead of doing her job with the Earth Alliance Security Division. Goudkins had argued to her partner, Lawrence Ostaka (the
asshole), that she really was doing work for the Security Division by helping DeRicci, but Ostaka had made a fair point: some of the things that Goudkins was doing now compromised her job.
The fact that she didn’t care had as much to do with her sister’s death during Anniversary Day as it did with the fact that Goudkins believed—deep down—that there was a cancer inside of the Alliance, and for some reason, it was attacking the Moon.
With just a few hours of investigation, she had discovered that Jhena Andre had ordered the hold on any investigation of the PierLuigi Frémont clones. Andre was so high up inside the Earth Alliance Security Division that Goudkins couldn’t even figure out exactly how Andre outranked her. Andre didn’t seem to do much connected with the Anniversary Day attacks, but what she did seemed suspicious enough, especially when combined with the fact that she’d also had access to pure PierLuigi Frémont DNA from the day the man had killed himself inside an Earth Alliance prison.
The problem was that Andre could flag any investigation inside the Earth Alliance system without someone as low-ranking as Goudkins even noticing the flag. And Goudkins had been using Earth Alliance Security protocols to do her investigation.
Goudkins had taken some precautions. Part of her job was to investigate misbehaving Earth Alliance officials, so her little ship had all sorts of layers of security that usually made it invisible to someone who was watching their back.
The problem was that the people she usually investigated didn’t have the reach that Andre did.
Goudkins had focused her initial search on Andre as if Andre were a candidate for a high-level job. Goudkins deliberately did not search for any connection between Andre and clones, Andre and PierLuigi Frémont, and Andre and the Anniversary Day investigations.
Eventually, Goudkins would have to do all of that. But she wanted to bounce what she had found off someone else before she did.
That someone would probably be Noelle DeRicci.
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