She licked her lips and nodded.
A few minutes later, Glim grabbed her hand.
“Come on. We’re here.”
Nemily managed to get the augment back into its slot in the case and the lid snapped shut before Glim dragged her from the seat. He held her close as they ascended the stairs to the interior.
She looked around at the stop. Not far away was a secured entry. Club Standard.
“We’re going to see Piers Hawthorne,” she said.
“The one and only,” Glim said.
“He’s your contact. He’s the one you ran the overlay through me for.”
Glim grinned at her. “Exactly so. Shall we pay him a visit? I’m not welcome anymore, but I’m sure you can get us in without a bit of trouble.”
Eighteen – AEA, 2118
MACE PRESSED THE MICI and stepped back from the oversized door. It was impossible to see the size of the dom from here—the entry portico was practically a small room in itself—but he could feel it, it seemed, a vastness just beyond. There were larger doms in Aea but not many and most of them reduced the impact of size by architectural tricks. This one had simply been added to until it was a sprawl.
The door opened. Piers blinked at him, then grinned.
“Mace! Twice in one week, this is a record. Come in, come in.”
Mace followed Piers down the hallway and into the wide living room.
“What can I blame for this?” Piers called over his shoulder. “Or have you changed your mind about Delia?”
“We need to talk, Piers.”
Piers glanced at him. “Of course. I was just about to go up to my garden.”
Mace waved his hand as if giving permission and Piers smiled.
“Something wet?” Piers asked. “You’re not smiling, Mace, which means you’re thirsty or you have something on your mind.”
“Stat check.”
“Excuse me...?”
“Let’s sit down.”
Piers’ grin faded, but he led the way to his kitchen where he picked up a tray with a pitcher of amber liquid and a glass. He hesitated, frowned, and set the tray on the counter. He took another glass from the cabinet, then smiled at Mace.
“I tried to find out who has been bothering you from PolyCarb, Mace,” he said as he went out a rear door and started up a set of ornate metal steps. “There’s some security thing going on, something to do with pension fraud. The agent in charge—”
“Under Koeln?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact.”
They emerged on a broad patio. The walls were rimmed with flower boxes abloom with tulip, vinca, carnation and iris. Around a filigreed table and chairs, trees grew from heavy tubs. Piers placed the tray on the table and gestured Mace to a chair.
“I don’t know anything about him, though,” Piers continued, “and I got slapped in the face with a stern ‘Confidential’ icon when I dug around. Sorry.”
“It’s not important.” Mace sat across from Piers. “Except that you’re lying.”
Piers poured without glancing at Mace. He set a glass before his guest and took his own. “Of course I am. What about?”
“Not knowing what the investigation concerns. You know.”
“Do I?”
“I stopped by InFlux before coming here. I had some questions.” Mace pulled a disc from his shirt pocket and dropped it on the table. “That is an InFlux record. Instead of detailing immigrations, though, this one is a record of sponsorships. It took some doing to get around the confidentiality protocols, but I managed to ask the right questions.”
“Sponsorships. I don’t understand.”
“You know about sponsorships, Piers. Most immigrants to Aea are sponsored, they can’t just come in here on a whim and live. Corporations do a lot of it for workers of one kind or another, and people who travel make friends they want to help immigrate. Once in a while there’s a marriage involved, like me. From time to time it’s political and I understand that there’s a genealogical group that specializes in reuniting families. Nemily Dollard was sponsored.”
“Really. I didn’t know that.”
“She works for you, Piers, of course you knew that.”
Piers shrugged. “I’ll take your word for it.”
“It was brought to my attention that there was a peculiarity in her sponsorship.”
“And that would be?”
“Helen sponsored her.”
Piers frowned. “Helen... ? As in—”
“My wife.”
Piers looked at the disc. “How—?”
“I’d appreciate it if you’d stop lying to me, Piers.”
“How could Helen have sponsored Nemily Dollard? Nemily didn’t come here till—”
“The same way she sponsored Glim Toler.”
Piers’ eyes shifted toward the stairs, then up at Mace.
“Or,” Mace went on, “do you know him better as Cru Mills? After all, you worked together on Mars for a short while.”
“We did?”
“Yes. And Helen. At least, it was the same issue. I also found out you’d been to the Hellas Planitia site before the storm. Just a few days. You got back to Burroughs a couple days before the storm hit.”
“Routine matters, Mace. Doesn’t mean anything.”
“Except that you never told me. In all this time, you never told me you knew Helen. See, your signature turns up on a number of her reports as adjuster of record. It never occurred to me to look before. Silly me. But once I realized that Cru Mills and Glim Toler were one and the same and that you’d had Toler as a guest in your house, well...”
A series of expressions passed over Piers’ face in the next few seconds—shock, fear, panic, resentment, resignation, returning finally to shock. Piers lurched to his feet and staggered away from the table.
Mace rushed at him. Piers looked again toward the stairs but did not move. Mace grabbed his shirt, high at the collar, and snapped his fist into Piers’ nose. Blood sprayed, forming a red mustache on Piers’ lip. Mace spun him around and dropped him back in the chair.
Piers raised his hands to fend Mace off, but his gestures were uncoordinated. His eyes closed as the blood ran down his chin. Mace tightened his grip on the shirt and drew back to punch Piers again.
“I didn’t know—! Mace, stop! I didn’t—it wasn’t supposed to hap-pen—
“What wasn’t? Killing Helen?”
“I wasn’t there when it happened! She—”
“You and Cru Mills worked for SetNetComb. You were there to destroy the project. Helen got in the way, didn’t she?”
“I don’t know! I’m telling the truth!”
Mace hit him again. Piers barked sharply in pain and would have fallen out of the chair if Mace had let him go.
“Stop! Damn, Mace, I didn’t do it/” His voice was plagued with a strong lisp, the result of a now-broken nose.
“You know who did! Why was Toler in your house?”
“Please...”
“Why was Glim Toler in your house? Why did you have Nemily Dollard here?”
“Mace, Mace, it isn’t what you think—damn, you broke my nose—”
Mace pulled him to his feet and brought his face close.
“I’ll break a lot more than that if you don’t start talking to me!”
“Yes, for the—all right! Now don’t hit me again!”
Mace shoved him at the chair, hard, and Piers toppled over it. He rolled on his shoulder and tried to get to his feet. Mace stepped up to him and swung his right foot up into Piers’ stomach, sending Piers sprawling with a loud shout.
“Why?” Mace asked.
Piers looked at him resentfully He tried to talk, but winced and held his stomach. He breathed deeply and finally managed a breathy “Which part?”
“Start somewhere.”
Piers prodded gingerly at his nose. Mace could hear cartilage crackle delicately Suddenly he leaned down and took Piers’ nose between both hands and jerked. Piers yelled and sneezed viole
ntly and more blood sprayed.
Piers slowly rolled into a sitting position and wrapped his arms around his waist. He gulped air for a minute, then said, “It—we were supposed to undermine the Hellas project. Aea was making XMs... exotic materials, molifiber definitely, but other material, too... we were only going to
damage the sheeting, the cover, not…” His eyes reddened. “All those people, Mace... it wasn’t... that was never...”
Piers sobbed loudly, once.
“Toler intended to kill. He said it was the only way to make the point—that SetNetComb had decided that any attempt to manufacture XMs off the moon had to be blocked. You do that by attacking the credibility of the material. You make it stick by causing deaths. A war, he said. It was a war. That’s not what SetNetComb said, but the department deploying Toler did. I didn’t want any part of that. I left.”
“You, Toler—who else? Cavery?”
“No, he didn’t know—he was paid, that’s all. He just looked the other way for a fee, fixed records.’’
“And Oxmire?”
“I think he might have been with Toler. I don’t know.”
“Tell me about Helen.”
Piers moaned, shaking his head. “She... knew. She knew Toler, she knew me.” He sniffed and winced. “She figured it out soon after she arrived. Toler commed me to let me know. I think she’d been investigating us, I don’t know for sure, but Toler—when she showed up that’s when he decided to go for maximum impact.”
“You think she knew?”
“Well. Yes. She knew. I only confirmed that recently Yes, she’d been investigating suspected industrial sabotage for a long time. That’s why she was brought back in from Ganymede, because she had been out of the loop all that time and corporate knew she could be trusted. Her method—typical Helen—was to join us.”
“She knew you.”
Piers nodded. “We’d worked together before. At Hellas I’d heard she was coming and I told Toler I had to leave, that my presence would compromise the operation. I didn’t know then that she already suspected me. He agreed with the proviso that I pick him up afterward. I didn’t know exactly what afterward he meant, but he said it would be obvious. As it turned out, it was. We had a tractor stashed near one of the service bores. We’d planned to set a booby trap at that shaft, just in case. I did set it up.”
“Before Toler could get out?”
“I never intended to get him out. The man was insane.”
“What about Helen?”
Piers shook his head.
“What about the sponsorships?” Mace insisted.
“That was... Lunase needed people in place. When Helen was away, I used her ID to sponsor trojans. Only a few Most of them left Aea soon after arriving.”
“To where? Cassidy? Five-Eight? Midline?”
Piers nodded.
“Why?” Mace asked. “Loyalty to Lunase? Why? Why Helen?”
Mace reached for him. Piers slapped his hand away and scooted back.
“What do you want? I’ve tried to make it up to you! I made sure you retained your citizenship, I pushed through your insurance claims, I even got you work! I never intended Helen to die! When I came back with Cambel and I saw what had happened, I was sick! I quit then! I turned my back on Lunase and retired from the so-called war! I’ve done what I could to make it up to you—”
“Short of telling me the truth.”
“And what would you have done? I have a life, too!”
“I might have understood.”
“Of course you would have. When? After you’d killed me? Or would you just have turned me in and seen me deported, back to Lunase where I’m considered a traitor? Don’t try to tell me you have the capacity to be more than human, Mace Preston.”
Mace took a step back. Piers was right, he knew. Anytime in the last three years he might have gone for revenge without any thought to circumstance.
“Nothing justifies what you did on Mars,” he said.
“No. Nothing. But it’s done.”
“What about Toler? Why’d you bring him here?”
“I didn’t.”
“You sponsored him!”
“Before Mars! I never sent for him, he just showed up. Why would I? He’s insane.”
“That’s a hell of an excuse. What’s yours?”
“I didn’t—I never wanted—”
“Damn it, Piers, Helen sponsored you.” He bounced the disc off Piers’ forehead.
“Of course she did, years back, when I needed help to get off Lunase. That was legitimate.”
“Why? What did she get from you?”
“I was—” He swallowed, looking away. “I was a double agent. I did freelance work for PolyCarb. Helen was my operator. Lunase found out. Helen got me out before they arrested me.”
“She helped you hide the trail?”
“Yes. It was necessary, then. Lunessa were even less trusted than they are now. And besides, it was possible Lunase would come after me. Turns out, they did.”
“So you started working for Lunase again. What was that, habit?”
“Money. All right? Money. It was all harmless anyway, just information. Lunase felt it could never get a fair chance with Aea—”
“They’re not exactly doing anything to earn our trust, are they? Like you! She sponsored you, helped you, and you betrayed her!”
“No! I didn’t—it wasn’t supposed to happen that way! The storm made it worse than it should’ve been!”
“She died, Piers! You helped kill her! Was that harmless?”
Piers writhed, refused to look at Mace.
“What about Cassidy and the others since?” Mace asked.
“I didn’t know anything about those. I told you, I quit, I didn’t have anything—”
“Toler came here, to see you, though. I saw him.”
“Bad timing, I swear. I was visiting Reese when Simity brought him to Reese’s clutch. Then he just showed up.”
Mace picked up the disc from the floor and sat down. “Death came here with Toler. He had the key to activate the molecular solvent, didn’t he? What did Nemily have to do with it?”
“Nothing, she was just a carrier. She had the algorithms embedded, deep. As she worked here, she discovered the weaknesses in Aea that the molecular solvent could attack. Toler could download the algorithms and the specifications, which were combined through a CAP’s collator. She was analyzing everything without ever knowing it.”
“You needed a CAP for the whole thing to work, then?”
“Yes.”
“The dead CAP’s missing augment on Mars.”
“Yes. I’m sorry, Mace, but she had seen us both, she knew, she contained the initiation protocols. If you’d gotten a chance to look at it—”
Mace raised his hand. “So any one of dozens of Lunessa émigrés could have been mules, carrying the same occluded instructions, all waiting.”
Piers nodded.
“Nemily never would have been sent back,” Mace said. “Those discs in her baggage were just an introduction, a way to get her listed with the right people... so who are the right people?”
Piers stood carefully, holding his ribs. He righted the overturned chair and sat down. “I always thought there was another trojan in the company. I have no idea who.”
“The same person who killed Reese Nagel and tried to kill Patri Simity.”
“Patri—why would anyone try to kill her?”
“Because she was betraying your little war.”
Piers scowled painfully and slammed his hand on the table. “It is not my little war. I retired from the field. Hellas was enough. Too much.”
Mace studied Piers for a time. The man was in shambles, his face and shirt front covered in blood, tears streaming from his eyes, his breathing shallow and labored. Piers shuddered a couple of times. He picked a napkin off the drink tray and started carefully cleaning his face. Abruptly, Mace lost any desire to hurt Piers further.
“Toler contacted Simity
before anyone else,” Mace said. “She sent him to Reese with the data with a note that Reese ought to turn it over to SA. But Reese was working a deal with PolyCarb for his new illicit datafeed from Earth. If he got SA involved then, it might have ruined the whole thing for him. He wanted that deal done first, so he took the problem to PolyCarb security.”
Piers looked up, frowning. “Through whom?”
“Linder Koeln.”
“You have a guest at the front door,” the house system announced, causing both of them to jerk.
“Who?”
“Nemily Dollard and an unidentified man.”
Mace headed for the stairs.
“Mace, wait; this is still my dom.”
Piers descended the metal stairs carefully.
“I don’t think anything is actually broken,” he said at the bottom, “but you certainly bent something.”
They approached the door and Piers waved Mace aside, into the living room.
“I’ll take care of it. I won’t run off, I promise.”
“I don’t think you can.”
Piers nodded. “You’re right.” He stepped into the bathroom along the hall. Mace heard water running, then Piers emerged with a damp rag with which he wiped off the rest of the blood on his chin. He shrugged. “So I walked into a door, if anyone asks,” he said and continued on.
Mace stepped out of the hallway and leaned against the wall just inside the living room, and watched Piers.
“Open,” Piers said. The door obeyed. Mace glimpsed Nemily and someone else right behind her.
“Ms. Dollard, what an—oh, hell.”
Mace saw Piers suddenly drop limply to the floor. The man behind Nemily shoved her forward and started to turn. His head jerked to one side and he collapsed against the door.
Nemily staggered over Piers and tried to catch her balance. Mace leapt for her. She looked up, eyes wide, and opened her mouth to shout—
—Mace collided with the wall, his left leg suddenly useless beneath him. The pain came a few seconds later—along with the instant realization that he had been shot. He rolled. Nemily crawled toward him. He caught her hand and pulled. He tried to push himself to his feet, but could not manage it with a shattered kneecap. Nausea crept through him.
Linder Koeln stood in the doorway to the kitchen, a pistol fitted with a silencer in his hand.
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