“The keys to the kingdom.”
His brows came together in concern.
“I have one more mission,” Lea explained. “There’s a pretty good chance something might happen to me. If it comes down to that, I need someone I can trust to carry on my work here.” After a pause, she added, “You’re the man for the job, Drew.”
Talbot considered her request. Eventually, he took the integrator into his hands—treating the thing like a bomb that might go off in his face. Lea knew she was asking him to change his life, something that could easily put him on the wrong side of the law.
Of course, Talbot never had much respect for the law in the first place.
His thumb brushed against the touch pad, bringing the device to life. Light from the tiny screen illuminated his features, pinpoint reflections in his eyes. Talbot studied the text that appeared, inspired by a glimmer of recognition.
“Is this what I think it is?”
Lea nodded.
“Access codes,” she said, “protocols, the whole works—everything you need to deal with Lyssa. The routines are all buried deep enough so that nobody will ever find them.”
He turned the integrator off.
“You’ve got balls, girl. I’ll give you that.”
“Does that mean you’re in?”
He tossed the integrator into the air, then slipped it into his own pocket. “Why not? I always wanted to stir up some trouble.”
“You’ll get your chance,” Lea assured him. She stood, offering Talbot her hand—he would need it where they were going. “Right now, there’s something you should see.”
Again he seemed unsure.
“It’s what you’ve wanted,” Lea said. “What you’ve earned.”
Talbot understood.
Together, the two of them walked across the empty lab. It was a short distance, but when they arrived at the airlock it felt as if they had gone halfway around the world. Lea kept her friend close the entire way, his excitement a tangible presence between them. As she punched in the entry code, it seemed as though Talbot would jump right out of his skin—but he remained outwardly steadfast, ever the professional.
The airlock hissed, its cylindrical door rolling aside.
And Talbot entered the Tank for the first time.
Lea allowed him to go ahead of her, to assimilate the environment in his own way. Wave after wave of bionucleic energy turned the air to a virtual liquid, forcing Talbot to push his way through—but Lea kept watch on his back, ready to lead him out if he couldn’t take it. To her amazement he never faltered. Seeing her emerge from all those sessions in the Tank must have prepared him for the worst.
And it had never been this bad.
Explosions of pseudolight revealed the small chamber in stroboscopic glimpses—bits and pieces of a violent frenzy, set to a chorus of dissonant voices. A maelstrom churned behind the glass of the Tank, random shapes and colors colliding with one another in vicious combat, a duel between immortals. Lea stared into the swirling patterns in a vain attempt at recognition.
Talbot raised a hand up to shield his eyes, shouting above all the noise.
“Is this Lyssa?”
“Part of her,” Lea told him. “She’s at war.”
“With what?”
Lea walked past him, to the glass wall, her reflection diminishing to a mere silhouette. Human faces stretched to inhuman proportions leaped out at her from within. She searched for Cray among them, but he wasn’t there. The ongoing battle, however, proved otherwise.
“With another,” Lea said, turning back toward Talbot. “His name is Vortex.”
The touch panel seared Nathan Straka’s fingertips, a crop of electrodes frozen to his temples. He checked the temperature in the computer core, but the status readout came back normal—a flat 5.5 degrees Celsius, no variation since he had sealed himself inside. It only felt colder, as if the embedded crawler was working his subconscious.
“Come on,” he whispered, coaxing the miniscule bits of data as they coalesced on the interface. “Bring it on home.”
Nathan had plugged himself back in the moment he and Farina parted, at the tail end of an active jack he started more than a day ago. The latency of the transmission left him wasted, strung out on an open tether while he waited the eighteen light-minutes to get a response from his last query. The experience was like holding his breath, the connected parts of his mind floating in a state of limbo behind Almacantar’s firewall—running a gauntlet, with the crawler on one side and a lethal dose of cosmic radiation on the other. He still wasn’t sure what he expected to find, but right now it was the only thing he knew how to do.
Find me proof.
The captain’s words still echoed in Nathan’s memory. They put the whip to his efforts, driving him to push a little more even as his synapses begged relief. The possible evidence buried in the trickle of communications between Directorate Command and Special Services existed only as an article of Nathan’s faith. He believed it because his instincts told him so—and because he needed to believe that there was another reason behind Gregory Masir’s death. Anything less…
Would mean you’re crazy, Nathan finished. And if you’re crazy, then the doc was too—and all the rest of us are headed in the same direction.
He simply would not accept that.
The panel beeped at him when it completed the download. Nathan dissolved himself out of the interface, unplugging his electrodes from the unit while his body shivered. Even though he wore a thermal suit, the cold bit right down to his skin. He blew into his fingers to warm them up, then transferred all the jacked data directly to one of the core’s old crystal media slots. After his experience with the NavCon logs, this time he made sure that everything stayed clear of the local system—a precaution bordering on overkill, but Nathan was taking no chances. Not after sticking his head in the meat grinder for that long.
He reached for the media card, his stiff fingers barely registering touch. He meant to pluck it out and read the transcripts in his quarters while pouring coffee down his throat. But curiosity demanded that he take a look now—and he was in no condition to resist. Routing the feed to the main display, he settled back and watched the information displace the frigid air in front of him.
Most of it was text, which he searched using algorithms that took into account the special code phrases used for interagency communications. Intelligence personnel practically spoke their own language, often talking around a subject instead of addressing it directly—the better to deny involvement later if necessary. Special Services kept meticulous records for the same reason, which meant that any references to Almacantar and her mission would be in here somewhere.
If I went deep enough.
So far, it had been a crapshoot—lower-risk maneuvers designed more to avoid the security subsystems than to tap Directorate databases, an approach that yielded only small morsels of data. Nathan desperately hoped that this time his net had hauled up some bigger fish.
He clicked through one screen after another, parsing the search terms and translating the results. He picked up a few oblique references—as he guessed, nothing that approached the sensitive material he targeted. Even secret and eyes-only classifications didn’t cut it, unless something got slipped in by accident—
—and there it was.
Nathan augmented the page, the highlighted search hits flashing at him in bright red. His frosty breaths quickened the farther he read, into a memo some junior staffer at Command had obviously composed as an ass-covering measure:
FLASH BULLETIN PRIORITY ENABLE
DELTA BRAVO TANGO ZULU JULIET ALPHA XRAY
DATE: 04.19.72
FROM: TOBIAS, GILLIAN LT. (jg)
DIRECTORATE OPERATIONS
RE: DISPOSITION OF SRM-77621
SRM-77621. Salvage recovery mission.
Almacantar’s designation. Nathan went farther:
In response to queries from mission personnel regarding the unexpected find at the si
te of the Mars terraforming settlement: I have repeatedly made requests of Command for instructions on how to proceed but did not receive a response.
As of today, however, I have been informed that the matter has been referred to the office of Corporate Special Services and classified Echelon Crypto. Further inquiries are hereby prohibited, as are any related communications with the captain and crew of SRM-77621.
I believe this course of action to be highly unusual given the circumstances on Mars, and advise Command to take steps to release all relevant information to SRM-77621 as soon as clearance can be established.
END MESSAGE
Nathan tensed. From the beginning, he thought that the Directorate had kept them in the dark—but he had never imagined this level of CSS involvement. Command was no longer calling the shots on this mission, assuming they ever had. With spooks running the show, Nathan’s worry took a sharp turn into dread.
But why the hell is it taking them so long to cut new orders? CSS would be anxious to resolve this—or at the very least make it all go away.
Nathan kept scanning through more messages until he came across a follow-up entry:
In light of the discovery of survivors at Olympus Mons, it is URGENT that Command provide specific guidelines to SRM-77621 as to their handling and status. A continuing blackout of communications in this matter can have potentially catastrophic consequences.
If CSS does not approve at least partial disclosure, then Command should be on record indicating that it cannot be held responsible in the event of related collateral damage.
Please advise status as soon as possible.
END MESSAGE
At least one person at Command has a pair, Nathan thought—high praise for anybody at that level of the food chain. A loud-mouthed lieutenant wasn’t supposed to give flag officers a hard time on matters of policy—which was why it didn’t surprise him to find a later memo from the same author spelling out the details of her relief from duty. What did amaze him, however, was the bomb she dropped in the middle—the kind of language that could get a person court-martialed for treason:
The safety of SRM-77621 and her crew has clearly been compromised by the seemingly capricious directives from CSS, abetted by officers at the highest level of Directorate Command. Should this course of action stand, I believe serious repercussions will result.
Toward that end, I intend to turn the results of my personal investigations into this matter over to the civilian government. In particular, they will want to address why transmissions of unknown origin picked up by Mars advance craft were not entered into the official record, or made known to mission planners prior to the launch of SRM-77621.
Transmission intercepts…
Nathan remembered their own approach to Mars, and the signals that led them deep into the caverns of Olympus Mons.
But even that couldn’t compare to the darker revelation:
Corporate Special Services must also explain the probable presence of one of their agents on board a Directorate ship, in violation of at least eight separate sections of space maritime law.
Until these matters are resolved, the future of all missions to the Martian surface will remain in serious doubt and serious danger.
END MESSAGE
Nathan could barely contain the adrenaline shakes within his numbed body.
“They knew,” he seethed. “They goddamned knew.”
He slammed the pages down in front of Kellean, nearly knocking the table over.
“Anything you want to explain?”
The lieutenant recoiled from Nathan’s violent approach, turning to the captain for help—but Farina kept her distance, a neutral observer for the purposes of this interrogation. She did make a point of turning off the camera, leaving the three of them in total isolation. This time, there would be no witnesses to what transpired in the wardroom.
“Sir?” Kellean pleaded.
Nathan smacked the table again.
“I’m asking the questions, Lieutenant.”
“What questions?” she shouted back. “These aren’t questions! I don’t even know what you’re talking about!”
“Take a look at the transcript.”
“Why? You’ve already made up your mind about me. What’s the point of talking to you about anything?”
“Because that’s an order,” Farina growled.
Kellean took notice and settled back down. As Nathan circled around her, she thumbed through the printouts he had made, stopping frequently to wipe the sweat from her forehead.
“I still don’t get it,” Kellean said when she finished—a feeble attempt at confusion and dismay. “What does any of this have to do with me?”
“You tell us,” Nathan pressed.
“I already did.”
“You haven’t even begun,” he snapped, pulling out the chair next to her. He sat down next to her, while the captain continued her leisurely pace across the table. “I had you figured for a liar after you sliced up the doc—but I have to admit, I never thought you could be CSS. You kill Masir because they told you to, or was that just a little fun you had on the side?”
“He attacked me, Commander!”
“More like he found you out.”
Kellean shifted into defiance. “This is ridiculous. I’m the victim here.”
“We’ll see about that,” Nathan retorted. “How long do you think it’ll take before we pick apart sickbay and find something that ties you to this?” Then, in a sinister turn, he added, “Or maybe we should just turn you over to the crew and tell them what you really are.”
Kellean jerked her head toward him. “You can’t do that. I have rights—”
“So now you’re talking about rights?” he sneered. “Pretty strange coming from somebody who hasn’t done anything wrong.”
“What you’re doing is illegal.”
“Take a look around you, Lieutenant. This is deep space. Anything could happen to you out here and nobody would ever know.”
“You’re insane,” Kellean said.
“Maybe,” Nathan intoned, “but I’m not the one in irons.”
They stared each other down—and for one tense moment he actually thought that Kellean might break; but then she hardened, her defenses popping back up, as if she’d just remembered her resistance training. Short of making good on his threat, this could go on for hours or even days—time they didn’t have.
Nathan looked at Farina.
“Take her down to the hangar deck,” the captain said. “Put her over the side.”
Kellean’s eyes widened in shock.
“I won’t have spies on my ship.”
Nathan reached for Kellean, grabbing her by the arm. She resisted as he yanked her out of the chair, shrieking in pain when Nathan twisted the arm behind her back. Kellean struggled to see Farina, her legs kicking wildly as he dragged her across the deck.
“Captain!”
Farina just turned away, shaking her head in disgust. “Get her out of my sight.”
Closer to the hatch, Kellean’s flailing pushed Nathan into the bulkhead—but he kept going.
“Skipper, please!”
Farina sat down, pensive and distant. Even Nathan wondered if this was a bluff, or if she really meant it.
“Don’t do this!”
Nathan squeezed harder. Kellean’s words came out in gasps.
“I’ll tell you anything you want!”
Farina straightened up, motioning for Nathan to halt. He relaxed his grip and dropped Kellean to the floor, tears streaming down her swollen cheeks. Nathan almost felt sorry for her.
Almost.
The captain slowly rose, walking over to the prone lieutenant while Nathan withdrew. Their roles reversed, it was now Farina’s turn to apply pressure—which she did with quiet ferocity and lethal intent. She picked Kellean up by the collar, draping her against the bulkhead.
“Who are you?”
Kellean squirmed, but went nowhere.
“You tell me now,
or I swear to God I’ll kill you myself.”
The lieutenant’s lips twisted into a grimace. “Just somebody doing a job,” she grunted, “and you have no idea what you’re dealing with.”
Lauren Farina let go of Kellean and backed away. The lieutenant made no attempt to stand, but just watched as the captain walked slowly to the other side of the wardroom, where she stopped next to a porthole and stared past her reflection into the blackness beyond.
“You’re no agent,” Farina observed coldly.
“I’m just a contractor,” the lieutenant replied, propping herself up. Nathan hovered nearby, making sure that Kellean didn’t try anything else. “They needed somebody in the service. I was available.”
Farina turned back around. “What for?”
Kellean studied the captain closely, weighing her options. The game was up and there was little to gain from her carrying on her charade, but Nathan still didn’t trust her. No matter what she said, he planned on making sure it was the truth—even if it meant spilling more blood.
“To investigate,” she said, “and report.”
“Activity on the Martian surface?”
Kellean nodded. “Command didn’t know what to do,” she explained. “When the scouting craft detected those signals from Olympus Mons, everyone started to get nervous—so they took the problem over to Special Services.”
Farina considered what she had just heard, deciding how much of it to believe. “Why would CSS be interested in a Directorate operation?”
“How the hell should I know?” Kellean grumbled. “Maybe they were afraid of creating some big, messy incident. All I can tell you is that the word came from high up—somewhere outside the chain of command.”
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