"And I spent all this time trying to create this person—Razia." She looked down at her hands, feeling quite silly vocalizing all of this. "I thought Lyssa was...weak. Damaged. But, she, Razia, she wouldn’t be anything without...without..."
"Without Lyssa," Vel finished for her.
Lyssa finally looked up at Vel, who was watching her comfortingly.
"And you know what?" she laughed. "I…I actually like being Lyssa. I like excavating planets, and I like…I like being me. But I can't stop…I can't stop thinking that being Lyssa is…bad…that I ruin everything…" She softened. "I made Sostas leave and I… Tauron…"
"First of all, you did not make Father leave," Vel snapped, the harshness in his voice shocking to Lyssa. "If you ask me, maybe he finally saw what his actions were doing to you, and decided that it was time to pull his head out of his ass."
"What?"
"Leaving an eight year old girl on a planet alone? Dragging her through Leveman's Vortex?" Vel snapped, sounding angrier than she'd ever heard him when it came to Sostas. "You saw what happened when you left me alone for three days!"
"He didn't care about me, Vel."
"From what you and Dorst have told me about him, he was obsessed. Oblivious to how his actions damaged other people, including you. Maybe when the Great Creator showed him what was headed his way when he died, he finally decided to quit tormenting you."
"Maybe," Lyssa whispered, having never considered that option before. She was sure nothing could have wrenched Sostas from his studies, but maybe seeing his mortal fate could have shocked him enough to change his perspective.
"And as for Jukin," Vel sighed, "from what I can tell, he's the exact same way. He took your money because he saw a means to an end, not because he was intentionally trying to hurt you."
"What makes you say that?"
"Because you would have found out about it when it happened," Vel said. "Believe me, in our family, if he had wanted you to know, you would have known."
Lyssa nodded, knowing the way her elder sisters gossiped.
"You've made so much progress, Lyss," he said. "Don't abandon yourself again."
"Nope," Lyssa said, on her feet in a second and walking away out of sheer annoyance and panic. It was a mistake to tell him. He now knew her deepest fears and it was…Oh, it made her skin crawl to think—
She didn't get too far before Vel caught her, yanking her into a firm hug. She couldn't believe that he was so much taller than she was now. She felt like resisting, like running away, but she found herself tired of running from him. After all this time, he had finally worn her down.
With a great sigh, she laid her head on his shoulder, defeated. He wrapped his arms tighter around her, as if he were trying to make up for months of lost time. She didn't resist or fight him, and she even quietly admitted to herself that it was nice to not have to pretend to be so strong all the time.
"Thank you for telling me," Vel said, his head on her shoulder. "I know it's hard to change old habits."
She sniffed.
"Also, I think you need to apologize to Lizbeth," Vel said, releasing her.
"What?" Lyssa snapped, stepping back from him. "She needs to apologize to me! She's the one who told everyone about…well… my thing."
"She was trying to help and things got way out of hand, from what I hear."
"Yeah, and she should apologize first."
"Or, you could be the bigger person and just get it over with. Besides, I can't say I don't agree with her about you playing the victim."
"I do not play the victim," she said, but the protestation died with Vel's skeptical face. "I don't want to play the victim."
"Then you need to trust us," Vel said, taking her hands. "And we'll be able to trust you with handling the truth and not throwing a temper tantrum when we do."
"What else have you not told me?" Lyssa asked, scrutinizing him.
"I've been going to the Manor on weekends at Dorst's request," Vel said. As Lyssa puffed up in indignation, he gave her another knowing look and she deflated. "And," he continued, chuckling. "I've been doing my level best to grease the wheels for that time when you feel able to come home and have a proper conversation with the family. Dorst as well."
Lyssa scoffed. "Don't bring him into this."
"One of these days, maybe you'll be able to see that he's changed. He's really looking out for your best interest these days."
"Whatever."
"Good God in Leveman's, you hold a grudge," Vel laughed good-naturedly. "Do you not even realize how much flack he's been getting for you missing all of your license renewals?"
"So do I have to take you back to the Academy or is Sage still hanging out nearby?" Lyssa asked, changing the subject to avoid thinking about Dorst doing anything nice for her.
"Oh, no, Sage is..." Vel trailed off and glared at her affectionately. "Very clever. That's another one you need to—"
"Look, I just made a huge leap of progress, let's not get too hasty," Lyssa snapped.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
"I'm sorry, but I am not going to give you a visitor's badge until your escort gets here," the angry gray-uniformed security guard snarled at Lyssa. The latter had been able to slide in behind others who assumed that because the stranger was wearing a button-up and nice pants that she must work there as well. But she had hit a brick wall at her nemesis, the annoyed security guard who refused to let her in without an escort.
"Just call her," Lyssa snarled back. "Lizbeth Carter."
"I did call her. She ain't answering."
Lyssa let out a grunt of frustration and was wondering how far she'd get if she attacked the security guard when a voice called her name.
"Lyssa?"
Lyssa spun around, her breath catching in her throat as she spotted Lizbeth holding a paper cup of coffee and a muffin. They stared at each other for a moment, unsure of what to say. Then they spoke in unison:
"Sorry, I—"
"Lyss, I—"
They stopped, embarrassed.
Lizbeth spoke first, taking a few steps forward with a pained expression. "I'm…oh God in Leveman's Vortex, Lyssa, I'm so sorry I told them your secret. I swear, if I could take it back I would."
"To be honest," Lyssa said with a small smile, "I was surprised Sage hadn't told them already…"
"I told you he's crazy about you." Lizbeth laughed a little before growing more serious. "I'm sorry that you had to find out about Tauron like that. I'm sure it wasn't an easy discovery to make."
"No, it wasn't," Lyssa replied quietly. "But I shouldn't have…what I said was…well, it was really shitty of me to say it. And I'm…" She took a deep breath and steeled herself. "I'm sorry."
"Wow," Lizbeth said quietly. "That must have been hard for you."
"Oh get sucked," Lyssa snarled.
"No, no," Lizbeth said, stepping forward. "No, I know…I mean, I know that…well…I know that wasn't easy for you…to apologize…"
She trailed off and they stood in awkward silence.
"Got a muffin there?" Lyssa said, after a few moments.
"What?" Lizbeth said, looking down at her hands. "Yeah…from the cafeteria."
"I'm kind of hungry."
"Oh, well…oh right!" Lizbeth said, understanding her meaning. She turned to walk back the way she came from with Lyssa walking quietly beside her. They passed by a muted television station where Jukin was talking.
"That dick," Lizbeth growled. "How could he steal from you?"
Lyssa thought about what Vel had said, about being a means to an end, and said nothing.
"But you know what pisses me off even more?" Lizbeth said, stopping in the middle of the hallway. "He doesn't recognize you. What kind of an asshole brother is he, anyways? It's one thing that he stole your money, but to not even know his own sister?"
Lyssa couldn't help but smile at Lizbeth's indignation and they began walking towards the cafeteria again.
"It's not right, and it's not fair to you. And whatev
er reason he had for taking your money, that is really unforgivable," Lizbeth finished before grinning wryly. "And you say the word, I'll beat the shit out of him for you."
"I think you'd get arrested."
"You're worth it," Lizbeth said as they walked into the cafeteria. "That's what friends are for, right?"
"Yeah," Lyssa chuckled, more focused on the word. Lizbeth had said it again, so casually, so easily. Lyssa supposed they were friends after all, especially now. "Anybody that you want me to beat up for you?"
"My boss?" Lizbeth muttered hopefully. "Got my ass chewed out this morning when I got back. But I really feel like we are on the brink of cracking it."
"Did you end up finding the name of the company Dorst sold the company to?" Lyssa asked, keeping her voice down.
"Wedekind, but…I can't continue this investigation. I'm in enough trouble as it is, and unlike some people, I don't have a secondary career I can moonlight in…"
Lyssa smiled, but her eyes were drawn to the television screen hanging above them in the cafeteria. It was replaying the same story, but what caught Lyssa's attention was Alfr Jos and Krishna Harman being led away by Jukin's Special Forces.
"Leveman's Vortex," Lyssa mumbled, tugging at Lizbeth's shoulder. "Look!"
Lizbeth swiveled her head and her eyes nearly bugged out of her head.
"What in…?" Lizbeth gasped, running up to the screen and feeling around for the volume button.
"…Alfr Jos of S-864 was arrested near N-42653, whereas retired Major Krishna Harman was picked up en route to S-4296. Both men surrendered to Captain Peate without incident."
"Captured by…Jukin?" Lyssa said.
"Oh, look, they're replaying it," Lizbeth said, turning up the volume.
"Breaking news from S-864. Two officials associated with General Charles State's presidential campaign have been arrested on charges of conspiracy to commit insurance fraud."
"What?" Lizbeth exclaimed, her coffee falling out of her hand.
"The two men are accused of hiring pirates to hijack cargo bound for S-4296 and filing insurance claims for almost four hundred million credits, while delivering the cargo as 'new' to the government. The money is unaccounted for, but police suspect that it has been funneled to General State's presidential campaign, which has been running in the red for the final three months of the campaign."
Jukin's smug face then filled the screen.
"I credit the hard work of my Special Forces with tracking down those responsible, and hope that this will send a message to our elected leadership that piracy will not be tolerated."
"Get sucked, you son of a bitch," Lyssa snarled as the newscast played on to the point when they had first seen it.
"I don't understand," Lizbeth said sitting down. "How in Leveman's did they know?" She closed her eyes, and her face contorted into a snarl. "Those assholes were reading my reports! And funneling them over to Jukin!"
"You know, I don't think—"
"Of course!" Lizbeth seethed. "Of course they'd want to pass on the buck to someone else. They never give me credit for anything. Jealous of me, I suspect. Sons of bitches."
"Lizbeth."
"Maybe I'll just stop working so hard, you know?" Lizbeth continued unabated. "Maybe I'll just be like the rest of them, come to work and just sit there like a lump and pretend to work. You know, half of them just play card games on their computers. I know Wendy, she's even writing a damn novel while—"
"Lizbeth!" Lyssa said, finally getting the girl's attention.
"What?"
"They only mentioned the three planets Harms told us the other pirates were focusing on," Lyssa said. "Not on S-6642, not on Hardrict, and not on Relleck."
"Yeah, because I stopped submitting my daily status reports. So they missed that integral piece—"
"No," Lyssa said, eyeing a rather large portrait of President Llendo in the cafeteria. "Don't you think it's odd that two of General State's men were captured two days before the election?"
"What?"
"General State was a shoe-in," Lyssa said, her eyes not wavering from the presidential portrait. Llendo was staring back at her with a smile of someone with a low IQ. "Up twenty points the last time I checked. I would guess, not anymore."
"You don't think it was some kind of political conspiracy to ensure Llendo got re-elected?" Lizbeth said dubiously. "That's silly."
"I've seen a lot of silly lately," Lyssa said. She glanced up when a security guard on break walked into the cafeteria, walking over to the coffee machine and pouring a cup. When the guard turned around, Lyssa's eyes nearly fell out of her head when she saw the uniform.
Or rather, the very familiar patch on her chest.
"Lizbeth, were you aware that Secure Solutions provides the security for your building?"
Lizbeth's eyes followed hers and she gasped, "That's where I've heard that name before!"
Lyssa's mind began spinning. "Who else do they provide security services for?"
"Leveman's…everybody. Consolidated under a giant contract a few years ago." Lizbeth seemed to be thinking the same thing as well.
"And the warehouse where Relleck is delivering guns," Lyssa said. "And they're a subsidiary of the company where other pirates have been amassing cargo. And, oh by the way, that company doesn't actually exist in the Universal Bank."
"What are you saying, Lyssa?"
"I'm saying that if you get fired for this, I may allow you to join Dissident's web as a fellow female pirate," Lyssa smiled. "You know, moonlight a second job."
Lizbeth seemed genuinely touched.
***
"Lizbeth, you need to see this," Lyssa said. They were huddled at the Lizbeth's dining room table with a bunch of papers scribbled with thoughts splayed out. They had spent the past two hours trying to piece together what they knew and what they didn't know.
Lyssa pushed her mini-computer over to her partner and smiled.
"What in…?" Lizbeth gasped.
"Looks like our bank manager got scared and put all of the missing transactions back," Lyssa said, glancing up from her mini-computer. "Do you think your threat spooked him?"
"That, or he heard about the break-in at the archive," Lizbeth said, moving the scrap of paper marked "bank manager" to a pile with other papers called, "Harman" and "Relleck." "He probably figured that whatever he was being paid to remove them wasn't enough to get him tossed in jail."
"This is good, then," Lyssa smiled. "Now we can find proof. Let's see where Jos and Harman have been going."
With that, she searched on the first man's transaction history, scrolling quickly through his account history.
"Yes, look at this. All of his transactions are…hang on a second," Lyssa stopped when she noticed the date. "What day is it?"
"Nineteenth" Lizbeh replied. "Election Day."
"Then how in Leveman's Vortex is Alfr Jos on D-882?" Lyssa asked.
"Pirate prison?"
"I don't think they have whores in the pirate prison," Lyssa said, shoving the mini-computer back over to Lizbeth.
"You have got to be kidding me," Lizbeth shook her head. With a sigh, she picked up the piece of paper with "Jukin" on it and put it in a pile with Jos and Harman. "So what does that tell us?"
Lyssa saw a payment from Jos to a "Mason Dining" account and searched the Universal Bank for their account.
She narrowed her eyes, and sat back, "And another piece of the puzzle falls into place. Wedekind owns that diner."
"Shocker," Lizbeth said.
Lyssa searched on the name of the diner and was surprised to see a list of names.
"That's interesting," she mumbled. "How are all of these transactions here if they didn't even have a C-card machine?"
"Maybe they had it in the back somewhere?" Lizbeth shrugged, moving a piece of paper that said "Hardrict" to a different pile.
"King…that's…that's Relleck!" Lyssa said, doing a double-take on the list. "And that one is Silas Brendler. Costa Enoch, Max Fried, Con
boy Conrad…These are all pirate transactions!"
"Why were they all out there?" Lizbeth asked, confused. "Harms said they were out near N-42653, I thought."
Lyssa opened the transaction history of the alias of Max Fried.
"Holy shit," Lyssa said. "All of these planets…there's no way that Fried has been hanging around all these planets. It's completely…infeasible."
Lyssa sat back and thought for a moment, running through several scenarios. Even though she could see a smattering of transactions from near N-42653, it was infeasible for pirates to be criss-crossing the universe the way their transaction histories were suggesting. She knew for a fact that no pirates except for Hardrict and Relleck were anywhere near B-725425, and definitely not near S-6642. Neither planet was mentioned in any of the news briefs they'd seen about the arrests of Jos and Harman.
"Why only tell half the story?" Lyssa asked aloud. "Why didn't any of the news reports mention S-6642 or B-725425?"
"Maybe because the other planets were just a distraction?"
"A distraction from what though?" Lyssa said, chewing on her lip deep in thought. The breaking news had resulted in the almost inevitable re-election of President Llendo, but that didn't account for the amassing of guns in that warehouse five blocks away. And it also didn't account for why half of the transactions from these pirates were showing in places they had never actually been. It was almost as if someone were trying to frame the pirates for something.
The only person who would ever want to frame the pirates for anything was Jukin, who also happened to be the only person she knew that had successfully modified transactions. But that was only to hide the fact that he'd transferred five billion dollars to the Congressional Minister…
Her eyes opened as big as saucers.
"The Congressional Minister," Lyssa gasped. "What would have happened if State had won the presidency?"
"He would have been able to nominate his own minister, confirmed by the…" Lizbeth trailed off, her mouth dropping. "Do you think?"
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