“You’re changing the subject.”
“Actually, I’m not. Look at the image they used for their security mesh.”
After a pause, he said, “The image is the web of a reptisect called a sand-weaver.”
“A repti-what?”
“Reptisect. It’s a term for animals with traits similar to both reptiles and insects.”
Huh. All the decades I’d lived on this planet, and I didn’t know the animals were called that. “They’re beautiful in a terrifying sort of way, like little shimmerfly dragons. They build webs out of the sand and some glue their bodies produce.”
“Why do you bring them up?”
“A few years ago I read an article about how they weave their webs on the starships. The army has to keep cleaning them off. The sand-weavers are practically part of the ships.”
“That doesn’t mean the Majdas have a connection to this meeting at the ships. It could be coincidence that they use that symbol for security.”
“Yah. It could.” Except I didn’t believe in coincidences.
The Vanished Sea looked less barren up close than from my penthouse. Its iron-rich sand sported many shades of red, from pale hues the color of an Earth peach to glowering crimsons. Blue azurite speckled the dunes and streaked the rocky patches. I jogged across the land, passing stone-vines with delicate tendrils stretching everywhere, like silver lace. Their roots extended under the desert for hundreds of meters, seeking water like miners searching for ore.
The folds of land were larger up close than they looked from my window, and isolated, untouched by most humans. I could easily hide here from visual scans. That didn’t mean Cries ignored the Vanished Sea; the army monitored every meter of the desert this close to the starships. Those ruins had once housed a giant EI that destroyed whatever beings brought humans to this world. They couldn’t defeat the EI, but they forced it to go dormant before they died. The rise of the human mesh activity on Raylicon had gradually awoken the monstrous intelligence. It attacked our electro-optic systems; humans were just a side-product of the infestation it wanted to eradicate. Left unchecked, it could have accessed our interstellar networks and wreaked havoc, even destroyed our civilization.
We’d just barely managed to destroy it. The authorities had secured the records of the event, afraid that if it became public knowledge, the resulting outcry might awake other malevolent EIs. Imperial Space Command intended to take no chances; the starship ruins remained off-limits to everyone except the soldiers who guarded them and a few scientists.
Why would the High Mesh meet out here? Gods only knew what they might wake up. It seemed unlikely any of them knew what had happened with the EI—
Unless their members included General Vaj Majda.
I grimaced as I jogged across the desert, using enhanced speed so I didn’t have to hide a vehicle. After my foray into the palace mesh, I’d updated the jammer in my backpack, taking into account the newer protections we’d found there. It would give me an additional edge against the sensors at the ruins.
As I ran, I thought, Max, did you look at my financial portfolio today?
Yes, I did my usual monitoring.
Anything happen with my Suncap holdings?
Their value decreased substantially after the board ousted Bak Trasor, the CEO, in a vote of no-confidence.
Damn. Did it impact my portfolio?
Yes. However, your financial advisors are minimizing the effect. As long as you don’t sell any Suncap assets for a while, your portfolio will recover.
Why did the Majdas oust the CEO?
The Majdas had nothing to do with it.
Like hell. We heard General Majda and her husband plotting to get rid of him.
Let me rephrase. As far as anyone else knows, the Majdas had no involvement. It’s true that Prince Izam, General Majda’s husband, sits on the board. However, he attends the meetings only via a mesh linkup. He never appears as a holo and he never speaks. His only participation was to cast his vote.
Against the CEO.
Yes, that is correct.
Well, wasn’t that convenient. I wondered how long it had taken the Majdas to weave their influence throughout the financial structure of the Imperialate. Of course, their House had been around for six thousand years. They’d had more than enough time to perfect a stealth empire. So why did the board oust the CEO?
He lacked support for his vision of the company. Suncap manages water farms on Raylicon. The board wanted to extend their holdings to citrus farms on the world Parthonia. Trasor wanted to create more water farms here. He believes the demand for water is greater than for citrus fruit. The board pretended to go along with him, and then threw him out with the coup.
So the corporate rebels at Suncap betrayed his trust.
Essentially, yes.
Why would the Majdas care?
I can hazard a guess.
Hazard away.
They don’t have a majority holding in water farms on Raylicon. However, they would have a majority holding in the citrus farms on Parthonia.
It all seemed so convoluted. Their scheming better not put Suncap out of business.
Suncap will be fine. Humans like citrus fruit, and the worlds where it grows best are Earth and Parthonia.
He had a point. I loved oranges, or I had when I’d lived on Parthonia. I never ate them here. They were impossible to import.
You’re approaching the restricted area, Max added.
I stopped behind a rock formation that resembled the fingers of a giant skeleton reaching out of the ground. Peering around its edge, I could see what appeared to be three large dunes in the distance, about a kilometer away.
Toggle visual magnification, I thought.
The “dunes” jumped in size. Starships. The half-buried ruins each looked about the size of a small house. Millennia of wind-driven sand had scoured their surfaces, and a glistening mesh encrusted their hulls. It amazed me that they’d survived for six millennia. Whoever designed those ships had built well.
Pretty, I thought. Haunted, though.
Do you see the largest one on the right? That is the location for the meeting.
If anyone comes. Daan Bialo never got the message.
I can’t detect anyone. However, I may be too far away.
I took the red beetle out of my jacket pocket. Go on, little bot. Tell me who’s out there.
The beetle took off, humming toward the ruins.
Can you shroud it? I asked Max.
Not from here. The jammer is in your pack.
Have it stay back, then, enough to avoid detection. Let me know if it sees anything.
I’ll do my best. After a moment, Max thought, The beetle has located four people. Two are outside the first two ships, cleaning off sand-weavers’ webs. Two more are inside the third ship. I’m pretty sure three of these people are army officers. I don’t know about the fourth.
How do you know they’re officers?
They’re communicating with each other via military-issue nodes in their spines.
You shouldn’t be able to pick that up. Those spinal nodes have better security than you.
Apparently not. He sounded smug.
It always intrigued me what emotions he chose to simulate. What about the fourth person?
Based on what the beetle can read for respiration, heartbeat, and other vital signs, I’d say the fourth is older. My guess is that we have three army lieutenants guarding the ruins and a civilian scientist studying the ships.
I don’t see how the Mesh can meet there, with all these other people around. Unless these four are also involved. That seemed unlikely with the lieutenants. Link me to the beetle’s cam.
I “jumped” inside one of the ships, viewing it from near the ceiling. The low resolution of the beetle’s tiny cam didn’t provide much detail. The dimensions of the ship seemed wrong, designed for beings shaped differently than humans. Instead of a pilot’s chair, several stools stood in what looked like a cockpit. Th
eir arrangement would never work for a human pilot; they were too far from the controls. Someone in a green uniform stood near the hatch, probably a woman. Another person was sitting on the floor near the stools, examining panels there.
Ho! I know that guy on the floor. It’s Professor Ken Roy from the university. His work to slow the failed terraforming of Raylicon helped keep this region of the world habitable.
You mean the man who helped you set up the tykado tournaments for the Dust Knights?
Yah, that’s him. I wonder why he’s here. He’s a terraformer, not an archeologist.
Perhaps he’s looking for clues about who terraformed this world and why it didn’t work.
That was the billion-credit question. If the race that brought our ancestors here had intended to design this world for humans, they’d made some strange choices. The planet had no axial tilt, so no seasons. Atmospheric churning aided by our weather machines kept the climate livable, but the heat could be miserable at midday and midnights were icy. Humans on Raylicon had used a shorter hour before we rediscovered Earth, but once we adopted the Earth standard, a day on Raylicon lasted exactly eighty hours, with forty hours of light and forty of darkness. The year matched Earth’s exactly. It all seemed too convenient for coincidence. If some race could move the planet in its orbit to set the length of the year, surely they could create a more habitable biosphere, without the lack of water, thin atmosphere, and poisonous native life. Either they never finished developing this world or else they’d intended it for some other form of life.
Those ships still have secrets, I thought.
You think Professor Roy is working with the High Mesh?
I doubt it. He has too much class.
You don’t know him that well.
Well enough. He’s a nice guy, Max. And he volunteers in the Rec Center. He can enjoy any advantages he wants in his free time. So what does he do? He goes to a place for underprivileged youth and mops tables. Would you say that fits anyone else involved with this High Mesh?
Not at all. Even so, you shouldn’t make assumptions.
I’ll be careful. I watched the lieutenant. She wasn’t doing anything, just leaning against the hull watching Ken. My beetle hovered in the ship, its little engine in stealth mode. With enhanced hearing, the lieutenant might have noticed the bot, but she didn’t act as if she’d activated her augmented senses. People using their biomech had a quality of hypervigilance in their body language and facial expressions. This lieutenant just seemed bored.
Ken was absorbed in his work. I’d have been surprised if he carried biomech in his body. He had no military connection, and that kind of invasive augmentation wasn’t something people usually did without a reason.
I don’t think either of them is expecting anyone, I thought.
I find no trace of anyone else, either. Just the three officers and Professor Roy.
Release my link to the beetle. As my view of the ship faded, I added, Have it search the desert around the ships.
Will do.
I need to get closer. Can you tell how much security they have?
I can only access the outermost layer of their security mesh. If I push deeper, it might detect my probes.
Do what you can. I set off at a jog, staying behind a ridge of the land, keeping to rocky ground where I didn’t leave a trail. When I was about a hundred meters from the ruins, I paused. From here, the sand-weaver meshes that covered the ships looked like bronzed lace.
Someone else is here, Max suddenly thought. Three people.
I tensed. Where?
On the other side of the ruins, outside the third ship.
I moved behind the ridge, keeping low. Why didn’t you see them before?
They’re about fifty meters away from the ships. Max accessed my eyes and projected a heads-up display that floated in front of me, marking the position of the intruders with red dots. I headed in their direction. When the ridge tapered off, I ran across the ground in a crouch until I reached a ridge that ran parallel to the third ship. I slowed down as I neared the intruders.
Do the people at the ships know anyone else is out here? I asked.
I don’t think so. I haven’t detected any of them linking with the three intruders.
I don’t see how the intruders could come here without the army guards knowing.
Why? You’re here without their knowledge.
I know Majda security. It gives me an advantage. If this group had similar access, that suggested either the Majdas were complicit or someone inside their circle had betrayed their trust.
The beetle is getting a visual of the intruders. Max projected a translucent image of three people standing about thirty meters from my position and fifty from the ruins. An overhang concealed them, created by a rock formation that jutted up from the ground.
Toggle my ear augs, I thought. As my enhancements kicked in, I strained to hear the trio, with no success. Can you crank it up more?
Yes, Max thought. But it can damage your ears if you augment them too much for too long.
Understood. Warn me if you think it’s becoming a problem.
All right. I’m turning it up.
“—without Daan if he doesn’t get here soon,” a woman said. She sounded familiar.
“My contact at the casino said he never showed last night.” The man speaking also sounded familiar. “Apparently the cops are protecting him.”
“For what?” the woman asked. “Do we need to drop him?”
“I don’t think so.” That came from a second woman with a crisper manner of speech. I didn’t recognize her voice. “He’s being careful. Keeping a low profile.”
Max, can you identify them? I’ve heard two of them recently, which means you have, too.
Searching, Max thought.
The man spoke grimly. “Has anyone found Mara or Chiaru?”
“Nothing,” the familiar woman said. “But that damn investigator, she keeps nosing around.”
Does she mean me? I asked. Or Talon, the Scorpio detective?
She must mean you, Max answered. She is Detective Talon.
What! Holy shit.
I don’t think her excrement has spiritual qualities.
Ha, ha, Max. Are you sure that’s Talon?
I get a ninety-two percent match on her voice.
What about the other two people?
The man is Bessel, the assistant of Lukas Quida.
Bessel again. He kept turning up. What about the second woman?
I don’t have a match for her. However, when I extend my search beyond the people you’ve met in the past few days, I find an eighty-seven percent match with Sav Halin, the reporter.
My would-be killer at the gala. Extend how?
I looked at news broadcasts she’s done over the past few years.
How good do you consider an eighty-seven percent match?
I’d say it’s probably her. People speak differently when they’re being recorded for a public broadcast. If I account for that, the match goes up to ninety-three percent.
Bessel was talking again. “Without Bialo, we can’t go any further. Only he can reach under-chambers from here.”
Talon spoke. “He’s afraid that what happened to Mara or Chiaru will happen to him.”
“Have there been any attempts against him?” Sav Halin asked.
“Nothing so far,” Talon said.
It sounds like they don’t know about the explosion in the tunnel, I thought.
It also sounds like they aren’t the ones making people vanish.
“I’ll report back . . .” Talon said. The rest of her comment was garbled.
Max, did you get that? I’m losing contact.
You need to get out of this enhanced mode. You’ve used it for too long.
“—people in charge want to know what happened to Mara,” Bessel said. “They’re nervous.”
Come on, I thought to them. Hurry up. Tell me who is nervous.
Bhaaj, I’m going to deactiva
te your augs, Max thought.
No! Not yet. I need to know who they report to.
“. . . can’t find out,” Sav Halin was saying. “—hit us like a mountain.” The rest of her words were garbled. Then she said, “ . . . Vibarrs don’t want anyone to—” Her voice cut off.
Enhanced mode deactivated, Max thought.
I pressed my palms over my ears. Damn it, my ears are ringing.
You shouldn’t abuse them that way.
It will heal, right?
Yes. You need to stop doing things that require healing, before you reach a point where your body can’t heal itself.
I will. I think I got what I needed.
What is that?
The Vibarrs. They’re a noble House. Not royalty, like the Majdas, but aristocracy. Their House dates back to the Ruby Empire. They live on the world Parthonia. They’re a juggernaut, all bankers and lawyers and wildcatters determined to get richer than anyone else alive.
I hope that information was worth the price. I’m getting a message from the picoweb formed by your nanomeds.
I blinked. The picoweb couldn’t do much besides help the meds maintain my health. It almost never sent me messages. What does it say?
You’ve stressed the hair cells that support stereocilia on the basilar membrane of your inner-ear cochlea. You need to remove all further stress if you wish your tinnitus to cease.
Does that translate into something I can understand?
Avoid loud noises. If you do, your ears should soon stop ringing.
I can do that.
You also need to leave here. Now.
I’m not done. I have to find out what they are going to do next.
What they are going to do next, Max told me, is look for you.
CHAPTER XIII
THE LEARNED HALLS
I froze. They know I’m here?
They’ve spotted the beetle-bot.
Do they realize it’s mine?
I don’t think so. However, they are embarking on a search. I suggest you leave. Fast.
Keeping low behind the ridged bank, I retreated back the way I’d come. When I reached the gap I had to cross between the two ridges, I stopped.
They’re looking for the ripple effect in the air created by a holosuit, Max thought. If you go into the open, they might see yours.
The Vanished Seas (Major Bhaajan series Book 3) Page 19