“I was assured that it would be good for several years. It’s supposed to have the best shielding,” Abram said, gesturing for Tahir to follow him.
They entered a small room that Tahir had never seen, not surprisingly because the generational ship was huge. The only reason Abram could maintain control over such a large ship and crew was that the crèche-get were easily cowed. Of course, they were still in shock and they’d never entertained this security nightmare: someone wresting a controlled buoy away from them. Who would have thought of doing that?
Abram. And Qesan, before him. Tahir watched his father call up a display, which looked like a report from Dr. Lee, and read. He looked pleased as he fingered the collar of his coveralls.
Tahir glanced at his father’s moving fingers, and his gaze froze on something that peeked out under the collar. Was that a body-armor vest? His lip twitched as he pictured Abram’s bravado in the face of shrapnel, inspiring his men with his lack of fear.
“Back to our precious cargo. You were saying?” Abram turned quickly to face him, and he glanced away.
“Right. The shielding. It’s holding up well, according to our measurements,” Tahir said. “But the shielding is expended as it’s exposed to the exotic matter, so I have to know its original quality and density. I can’t believe we could afford shielding that’s rated for more than six months.”
Abram’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t worry. I paid well for that shielding and it’ll last long enough.”
“There’re not many places that’ll sell shielding for exotic matter, without asking questions.”
“What’s your point?” Abram seemed to be losing interest in the conversation.
“How did we afford all this, and where could you procure items such as exotic shielding and cases of flechette weapons?” Tahir asked. His heart was pounding.
“You heard the geneticist. We received quite a bit of emergency aid, and we invested it well.” Abram shrugged as he closed the report. “I’m not going to apologize for withholding information from you, considering that I had to keep you focused on your studies.”
You can’t fool me twice, Father. I’m not like Emery. He chose his next words with care; he was walking a fine line here. “Since I’ve lived on the outside, I have a good idea of what this equipment can cost.”
“You think we had funding from other sources? You’re right. Are you insinuating that we might have paid more than we should? Perhaps, but what does it matter? We have no further need of accountants or buyers.”
Tahir’s heart skipped. Someone else had helped fund him, and now that someone had a say in Abram’s plans. More than Tahir did, or ever could. After Lee’s comments, he’d tried to do an honest assessment, for the first time, of what the past two decades had cost his people. Qesan’s Cause turned out to be frightfully expensive, his own education merely a drop in the bucket. Yet he allowed Abram to use it against him, to twist him with guilt. He let Abram manipulate him, because he didn’t want to know the truth.
“What will you need—in the future?” Tahir stammered as his mind raced. “I’d like to do something useful for the Cause.”
“You want more responsibility? A leadership role, perhaps?” Abram watched him with flat eyes.
“Yes. I can handle it.” Watch out, I can’t look too eager.
“You must earn it, like Rand or Emery. Tell me, why are we doing this?”
Tahir was stunned speechless as he tried to control his anger. This was more hypocrisy, saying he should earn it! He’d spent years, studying, and eventually worming his way into a defense contractor job. What had Emery done during all this time?
His father’s gaze chilled his budding rage, so he bent his head and recited, “‘We do this to bloody the hand of oppression.’”
“Good. We’ll see if you have any use in our new world. Now get ready to board the Father’s Wrath.” Abram dismissed him.
Tahir left, seething quietly, although he had to place much of the blame on himself. He’d had his doubts before, but his guilt and fear of his father had kept him in-line. Now he knew Abram could be bought, just like any common criminal. He had to escape this hell, while he could.
Whenever their investigation dug up more facts, the nightmare continued to grow. What disturbed Lieutenant Oleander most wasn’t her notion of the problem, but the fear that emanated from the other officers, much as they tried to hide it.
“This is bad,” Major Bernard said, initiating a whispered conference during a break.
“Surely there’s no way the criminals could detonate a stolen package, even if it’s the functional part of the weapon.” She kept her voice as low as she could.
They were standing outside the cleared conference room and Bernard bent his head sideways to hear her. He shook his head in response to her question, leaving her frustrated and obviously not in the loop. She knew the line of execution approval for AFCAW: It required presidential, vice presidential, and tripartisan senatorial approval. After that, authorization traveled into military authority through a tangled web of special access and down the chain of command. Without those authorization codes, the criminals simply had a chunk of toxic components—and that’s if they could dismantle the package, since it should have antitamper protection.
“Sirs, please come back into the shielded room for updates,” said one of Hauser’s aides. He was a nonuniformed young man who, according to Major Bernard, was TEBI.
They filed back in, having grown to a task force of fifteen Autonomist and Terran personnel, both civilian and military. Once the doors closed, their agenda displayed on one wall and Oleander noticed that the “Hazardous materials threat” bullet kept sinking lower and lower. Nobody seemed to be worried about the exotic material leaking.
“We’ve got reports on the civilian weapon-transfer team. These three men performed the final inventory: two long-term employees, plus one man who was in training at the time. They all had clearance, although the one in training had only interim clearance.” The aide pointed to the wall and displayed three faces.
“Dr. Russell-Li and Mr. Nielson were responsible for the inventory and Dr. Rouxe was an observer-in-training. Russell-Li supposedly signed the inspection for warhead WM15-894.”
It was silent in the room and Oleander’s ears hurt from the strain of listening. She looked at the three Terran faces. None were out of the ordinary, and Rouxe seemed youngest, but appearances were meaningless.
“Dr. Russell-Li died in an accident a month after he signed the inventory, while both Mr. Nielson and Dr. Rouxe were laid off during defense contractor changes.”
Murmurs rose about the room, but Edones cut through with a question. “Were the circumstances of Russell-Li’s accident suspicious?”
“No. He died while on vacation. It was a drowning accident; he had a coronary while swimming and couldn’t be saved,” answered the aide.
“The body was recovered and identified? Positively?” Edones’s voice was sharp.
“Yes, sir.” The young man giving the briefing obviously thought the question irrelevant. “His family identified him and there was a full autopsy. We have no suspicions about his death, even with the strange timing. We’re more concerned with the other two members of the team.”
The aide’s fingers flickered gracefully in command. The picture of Dr. Russell-Li went away, leaving Nielson and Rouxe. Background information appeared under the pictures in Martian patois, which Oleander didn’t understand.
“Change display to common Greek,” the aide ordered.
The writing changed. Oleander noted Nielson’s and Rouxe’s home planets, one of which was New Sousse—what was familiar about New Sousse?
Beside Oleander, Captain Floros gasped. She turned to see Floros’s dark, square forehead crease into a frown and deep lines pull at the corners of her mouth. Floros’s fuzzy blond hair was cut close to her head, making it look like a block. She didn’t have the urbane and politic manners of Edones or Bernard, and Oleander wondered if her not
ably slow rank progression resulted from her lack of tact. Considering the Directorate of Intelligence could hand-pick their people, Floros had to bring some esoteric skills to AFCAW’s shadowy intelligence organization.
“Do you always grant clearances to—to—” As Floros sputtered and searched for words, Oleander looked down at the surface of the table in front of her, willing Floros to be a little bit diplomatic, just this once.
“Anarchists?” suggested Major Bernard.
“ ‘Isolationist’ is the correct term,” Colonel Ash said.
Floros spat out, “You gave a clearance to one of Qesan Douchet’s descendants?”
Oleander frowned, the name jogging her memory and bringing up visions of the famous last video taken of Qesan Douchet. The name now had a buffoonish aura for younger Autonomists and Terrans, usually meaning “a mundane who is ignorant of his or her imminent demise by Minoans.”
Douchet had stepped across an invisible line. Minoans accepted humankind’s societal rules and laws, but they expected everyone to follow them. They didn’t understand idiosyncratic defiance of authority and they didn’t understand individuals who broke rules or laws. The chaos after first contact with the Minoans should have been an obvious lesson to someone like Douchet.
However, the Minoans did understand warfare. There were rules governing warfare between governments and states, and the Minoans had slapped on more conventions and treaties. In the decades-long warfare between CAW and TerraXL, all conduct of hostilities had to fit within the Phaistos Protocol. Whenever terrorism or piracy turned attention, foolishly, to Minoan assets—well, the perpetrators rarely survived the attempt. The Minoans would carefully declare war, often considered “open season,” and hunt them down. Douchet’s enclave was attacked under such a declaration, while the League and Consortium sat by and watched.
Colonel Ash shook his head. “If the enclave on New Sousse hadn’t seceded from the League, they might—”
“Don’t be absurd.” Floros’s frown morphed to a sneer. “We all know the Minoans did the League a favor, after filing intent with the Overlords. Douchet was an irritating pustule on the ass of humanity.”
There was a shocked silence. Colonel Ash’s mouth hung open, the colonel unable to finish his politically correct comment after that harsh honesty. Oleander raised her eyebrows and looked at Colonel Edones, expecting him to rebuke Floros.
“Obviously, the background of one of your scientists is suspect, by our standards.” Colonel Edones’s brisk voice was like a fresh breeze, letting them move on to a more comfortable topic.
“More than you realize,” SP Hauser said. “Nielson is currently serving a prison sentence for embezzlement, occurring after his stint with the defense contractor. He’s an example of the extremely small percentage that background investigations can’t weed out: those that initiate an atypical late-life criminal event.”
“That worked in our favor,” the aide said brightly as he enlarged Nielson’s picture. The background text extended to include the particulars of the prison sentence. “Since Nielson was in Unified League Prison, we could question him under neural probes.”
Every Autonomist in Oleander’s sight flinched at that violation of personal privacy, even Colonel Edones. She exchanged a glance with Floros, who leaned close and whispered, “Latin barbarians.”
She agreed with Floros’s assessment, nodding, and internally thanking Gaia that she was a Consortium citizen. This was a small example of the differences between the League, where there was oppressive control, and the Consortium, founded upon colonist principles that valued personal freedoms.
Not that these differences led to outright warfare—no, the long war between TerraXL and CAW started over money. After the Yellowstone Caldera caused an extinction event by blowing itself into the atmosphere and pushing Terra into an ice age, the League was desperate for funds. The settlements in newly opened solar systems were significant tax bases and started taking the brunt of tax increases. Many of the colonies, however, no longer felt responsible for restoring the “mother planet” and began to break away from the League, diverting their tax monies to other purposes. The League had to declare war, carefully following the Phaistos Protocol. In defense, colonist solar systems united the original Prime Planets of the Consortium of Autonomous Worlds and fought back, leading to decades of hardship and violence.
To Oleander, the events that had led to the war seemed avoidable, but she was a member of the first generation to grow up under Pax Minoica and she knew that colored her opinions. This small difference about personal rights, the cornerstone of Autonomist law that even applied to prisoners, reminded Oleander again that the Terrans were more than people who dressed strangely and spoke common Greek with accents. They competed economically and industrially with CAW and, to every other AFCAW officer in the room, they had been the enemy for nearly fifty years.
“Ah—Nielson underwent the procedure voluntarily. He wanted to prove his innocence.” The aide noticed the reactions from the AFCAW side of his audience. Many relaxed, although the unsaid sentence hung in the room: If Nielson hadn’t volunteered, he’d have been forced.
“Which leaves the obvious suspect,” Floros said. “The one who comes from misogynists and criminals, who comes from a tribe thrown out of northern Africa, and then evicted from the French South American colonies. They were asked to leave Terra, if you look at your history.”
“This isn’t as obvious as you might think.” The aide showed pictures of Dr. Rouxe and his background, including parents, birth date, previous addresses, and education. “He left Enclave El Tozeur at the age of eight, and then New Sousse at the age of twelve. He was educated in Terran schools, getting a doctorate in physics from the University of Florida in the Terran Florida Biome. He did his postdoc work at Mars MIT, before getting a government research position on Mars Orbital One.”
“Who paid for his education?” Colonel Edones asked.
“Disbursed directly from the relief fund established for El Tozeur survivors and yes, sir, the tribal elders had to approve the disbursement—obviously, he’s indebted to them.” The aide knew Edones’s next question and rushed through his second sentence.
“Yet he gets an interim security clearance to work in a weapons storage facility,” Floros said disdainfully.
“Dr. Rouxe voluntarily went through a psychiatric evaluation under neural probe,” the aide said. “He was estranged from his tribe and traumatized by watching his father torture his mother. The evaluators thought he held too much fear and hatred toward his father to involve himself in tribal politics.”
There was silence in the room as everyone digested the information. Oleander pitied the man whose face displayed on the wall; the eyes that first seemed exuberant to her now took on a tragic cast.
“In societies like Rouxe’s, obedience to tribal goals doesn’t require respect or admiration. Fear and hatred won’t prevent him from following Abram Hadrian Rouxe, who’s labeled extremely dangerous by our Civil Security Division,” Edones said. “We watch and measure Abram’s impact on net-think, and he’s attracted hundreds of non-tribal followers. They are the disaffected, the anarchists, and the sociopaths, because Abram’s anger against all governmental control appeals to them.”
“We don’t need to know what’s going on in Rouxe’s head. He’s now our number one suspect, but we can’t find him. He’s out of crystal.” SP Hauser used Autonomist slang for a person who couldn’t be located through ComNet: a difficult, but not impossible feat.
Floros stirred and Colonel Edones glanced severely at her. Then he turned to Hauser, who had a pleasant expression on his face.
“You need our help,” Edones said. “We know ComNet, we built ComNet, and we can find him. But we’re not moving one iota until you release the specifications on the design flaw in the Mark Fifteen arming sequence.”
Oleander heard the breath whistle through Floros’s teeth as she drew in a big breath. Hauser raised an eyebrow. Oleander realized that E
dones had leaked intelligence, like uncovering a card in a betting game. She’d originally thought intelligence games were about protecting your own information while trying to uncover the enemy’s secrets. That turned out to be too simple; it was almost more important the enemy didn’t know what you knew about them. However, you could let the enemy know you knew, if you wanted to negotiate—
“Agreed,” SP Hauser said. “You obviously already know about our design-to-test flaw. I’ll give you all the specifics, but your people need to find the weapon.”
Edones cocked his head toward Captain Floros, who leaned forward eagerly.
“Out of crystal? That’s as believable as the proverbial size of the Great Bull’s balls,” Floros said. “I’ll find this bastard, sir.”
The contractors hurried Ariane out of the large, pillared hall. They went through a corridor that never made ninety-degree turns, covered with inlaid mosaics of stone and metal. The mosaic designs swirled in organic abstract shapes, and she fought the urge to run her hands over their contours. She’d have all the time she wanted after the meeting to wander these corridors.
“This way, Ms. Kedros.” Sewick had stopped grabbing her elbow, at least, and gestured for her to proceed around a thirty-degree corner to a door. Sewick held his hand over a plate next to the door.
She nearly jumped out of her skin as a holographic four-fingered claw extended from the plate to touch Sewick’s palm.
“It’s a scanner that records everyone who goes into the room,” Sewick said. “We’ve been able to set a few to perform security filtering.”
The door slid open as Ariane felt her slate vibrate. She pulled it out of her coverall pocket, seeing a message from Muse 3. This was a bad time, but before her thumb started to set the hold, she noticed the priority. An emergency?
“I’ve got a message from the agent on my ship,” she said, frowning and pausing in the open doorway.
“The comm center can take it.” Sewick whipped out his slate and poked at it. “Funny, the center’s not responding. Perhaps they’re doing some maintenance.”
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