All Our Tomorrows

by All Our Tomorrows (epub)

  Richard took a seat opposite his friend. He’d chosen the conference room for their brainstorming session rather than his office, mostly because in his office he felt like Graham’s superior. The mere notion made him uncomfortable, and it wasn’t the vibe he wanted to create. Here in the conference room, they were equals, working a case together the way they used to do.

  Graham opened an aural and slid it across the table. “In addition to scouring public and semi-public records, I hit up my old contacts on Pandora for some information. These are the complete, I believe, holdings of Vilane Properties, going nine holding companies and ten subsidiaries deep. On Pandora, the conglomerate owns sixty-two percent of the properties in the Approach, thirty-eight percent of the Promenade and around eighteen percent of the Channel. While not as impressive percentage-wise, the company also owns eighty-six properties on Scythia, thirty-five on Pyxis, thirty-one on Romane, and a scandalous ninety-six on Krysk.”

  Richard whistled. “Damn. That’s a lot of real estate, especially for a company no one’s ever heard of.”

  “Yep. The problem is, they’re all held legally, at least so far as I’ve been able to determine. Vilane may be a real-estate shark, but he’s not a criminal one.”

  “It’s financing, then. He’s using the profits from Vilane Properties to fund the Rivinchi cartel’s activities.”

  “It’s a reasonable assumption. Unfortunately, nothing here directly ties Vilane or his companies to Rivinchi. If anything did, we’d be done here. Information on Rivinchi has been more difficult to come by—in part because it’s a new organization, and in part because it’s deliberately elusive.”

  Graham leaned forward with renewed enthusiasm. “But I have been able to learn a few things. Rivinchi has been sucking up all the resources on Pandora that formerly belonged to Zelones by way of Trieneri, so Vilane is definitely tapping into his father’s old caches. On the streets, Rivinchi is behaving the same as every cartel does: extorting money and loyalty and dishing out threats and violence until it gets it.

  “Unlike in the old days, though, Rivinchi’s thugs are all cybernetically enhanced and virtually all Prevos. The average shop owner on Pandora doesn’t stand a chance against thugs who are stronger, faster and enjoy an Artificial in their heads. As a result, there’s been almost no pushback against the cartel’s expansion. And this isn’t concrete, but there are rumors Rivinchi has a ‘refined’ branch sinking its hooks into the rarefied establishments in the Avenue as well, where there’s a great deal more money to be extorted.”

  Richard’s brow furrowed. “Does the Pandora Consortium exist any longer? If it does, they need to be told about the threat rising in their midst.”

  “I’ll try to find out. Those sort of power brokers might well have moved on to—” Graham motioned around the room “—bigger fish.”

  He meant Concord, of course. Thousands of alien worlds and millions of opportunities for the taking, if one was smart, savvy and wealthy enough to deal oneself in. “I thought most humans don’t concern themselves with alien affairs.”

  “I still say the smart ones don’t—except for you, I mean. And Will and….” Graham sighed, his shoulders drooping. “Sorry. Did I mention I was old and set in my ways?”

  “And I still say it’s all an act on your part, but moving on. I’ve obtained more evidence that Vilane Properties’ holdings are a leading indicator of Rivinchi’s expansion. Police on Scythia have recorded twenty-four mentions of the group in the last three months. Shadowy, evasive mentions, naturally.”

  “Scythia’s a well-run, upstanding place, for the most part. Not too many gutters for rats to scurry around in there.”

  “Perhaps Vilane’s making a different kind of play on Scythia. The point is, Rivinchi is following the money to expand beyond Pandora. I bet if we search, we’ll find similar indications on Pyxis, Krysk and even Romane.”

  “I think we can mark it down as a given.” Graham passed over another aural of data. “In fact, Krysk has a giant bullseye painted on it, if this data is to be believed. Almost a hundred holdings under the Vilane Properties umbrella? Plus—and this is a pure hunch on my part—a company called Tere Holdings has been scooping up old Ferre assets on Krysk. I worked like a bitch to explicitly link the company to Vilane or any of his companies. I couldn’t do it, but my gut tells me they’re related.”

  “Which would imply he’s employing an entire shadow network of organizations we have zero insight into.”

  “It also implies he’s tapping into Zelones resources, not just old Trieneri ones. He’s gathering up the bones of the old order and turning them to his purposes.”

  Richard retrieved a drink from the bar Will had set up. “We’ve got ourselves a crafty one here, no doubt. So why don’t we put aside the organizational matters for a minute and talk about the man—who is somehow more difficult to get a handle on than his businesses?”

  “I called in a favor with the Assistant Dean at Tellica and procured his student record from when he was a graduate student there. By the time he arrived at Tellica, he was a cipher. Upstanding, model student, with a plethora of influential connections and a spit-polished public persona. He excelled in his classes, was elected Vice-President of the Student League, and volunteered for a university charity program that helped the destitute start businesses of their own. He went to cocktail parties and corporate symposiums and made a variety of high-powered contacts. Then he graduated and, as you know, mysteriously vanished for two years.”

  “And we haven’t been able to uncover the first thing about what he did during those two years, so let’s keep working backward for now. He hadn’t quite perfected his persona when he started his university studies at L’Ecole Polytechnique.” Richard passed the data to Graham. “He struggled in classes his first year. Even got a reprimand in his file. Apparently, he threatened a professor after they got into an argument during class. But he gradually pulled himself together and eventually graduated with honors in accounting.”

  “Hmm.” Graham was staring at something in the file, broadcasting an intensity in his expression that Richard hadn’t seen in over a decade.

  “What is it?”

  “This image.” Graham enlarged a section of the aural.

  “It’s his entry photo taken when he enrolled at Polytechnique.”

  “Is it the earliest visual we have of him?”

  Richard searched through the file directory for a minute. “No, we have an old photo from when he won a junior wrestling competition at Kalende Preparatory. He should be around ten or eleven years old here.” He pulled the image out and positioned it above the table.

  Graham detached the Polytechnique photo and placed it next to the wrestling one, then dug around in his files and produced the man’s official visual from the Vilane Properties corporate directory. Then he leaned back in his chair and brought a hand to his chin. “Child, teenager, adult.”

  Richard joined Graham in studying the images. As a child, Vilane was thin and wiry, though he displayed strong bone structure—all knees, elbows and cheekbones. As he aged, he filled out, gaining strong shoulders and a chiseled jaw…but it looked engineered. Hormone treatments and cybernetic enhancements. Beneath it all remained the lean, almost skinny frame.

  “He’s created his own desired physical appearance to match the created persona.”

  “Yeah, but that’s not what’s bugging me.” Graham enlarged the Polytechnique photo again. “Right here, when he’s at the precipice between a boy and a man…holy fuck!” Graham literally leapt up out of his chair, sending it banging into the wall. “He looks like his mother.”

  Richard was accustomed to random, excited outbursts from his friend, though he rarely knew what provoked them going in. “We don’t know who his mother is, remember? Presumably an anonymous donor purchased from one of the DNA banks.”

  “Wrong. Aiden Trieneri would never have been so careless with his lineage as to leave its future to the unpredictability of a random donor.”
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  “The banks screen for all sorts of genetic markers, and with enough money you can buy whatever you want: affinity for science or business, physical strength, blond hair, emotional aptitude and so on.”

  “Pah.” Graham waved him off. “Why pay for it when you already have the perfect specimen within reach?”

  Richard grumbled, his patience growing thin. “Say what you’re thinking.”

  “You don’t see it. Okay. Understandable, as you’ve been too busy with Concord to spend these years obsessing over her the way I did.” He plopped back down in his chair and smirked. “Vilane’s mother is Olivia Montegreu.”

  Richard started to utter a quick retort of how it was an absurd notion. But before his eyes, the image in front of him shifted indefinably with Graham’s assertion, and now he couldn’t unsee it. The gaunt cheeks pulled over sharp bones, the pale, almost mint green irises from before he became a Prevo. The hints of blond in his light brown hair that had later turned much darker. Most of all, the piercing, coldly burning stare that suggested the young man sincerely believed he could kill you on the spot with a minimum of effort.

  Richard considered kicking himself for not seeing it before now, but in truth, he’d only glanced at the images when they came in, preferring to focus on the hard data needed to paint a picture of the man Enzio Vilane was now. So instead he clasped his hands on the table and nodded. “I concede the resemblance is there, as were plenty of opportunities for Trieneri to acquire her DNA. So let’s play this hypothesis out for a minute. Assuming it’s true, do you think she knew about him?”

  Graham snorted. “Are you kidding? If she did, she would have had him killed instantly. If there is one thing that was always true about Olivia Montegreu, it is that she did not share power. A child—especially one tied to Trieneri—would have represented a threat to her empire.”

  “Her own flesh and blood, though? After she killed Trieneri, she might have brought Vilane under her wing and groomed him in her image, the way Trieneri likely intended to do.”

  “I’ll grant you, she might have planned to do so. But then she died, too. We’ll never know for certain if she learned of him, but if she did, I don’t believe she had an opportunity to do anything about it. There’s no break in Vilane’s attendance at Kalende when he could have spent significant time elsewhere. Honestly, I doubt she never knew.

  “Here’s what I think. I think Trieneri understood perfectly well the nature of the dark, rotting heart at the core of Olivia Montegreu. He knew he was playing with fire, and he needed an ace up his sleeve for when she finally pulled the rug out from under him. So he stole a sample of her DNA—an easy enough trick to pull given the nature of their relationship—and made himself a bomb in the form of a child. Unfortunately for him, she still got the better of him, and he died before he was able to set it off.”

  Richard rubbed at his jaw. It all held the ring of truth, but that didn’t take them very far. “Without proof, this is just us jerking off about how clever we are.”

  “So let’s prove it. Let’s put an agent on Vilane and engineer an encounter where the agent can swipe enough of a skin sample to do a DNA analysis. God knows we’ve got plenty of Montegreu’s DNA lying around in secure lab vaults to compare it to. And when I say, ‘let’s,’ I mean you, because I no longer have any agents at my disposal.”

  “I started to insist it wouldn’t change anything if we did prove it, but I think I’m wrong. Objectively, from a data perspective, it won’t change anything. But Vilane snatching up old Zelones assets as well as Trieneri ones puts a new spin on the case. If it is true that Montegreu is his mother, and—this is crucial—Vilane knows it, then it changes everything about this case.”

  31

  * * *

  PANDORA

  Milky Way Galaxy

  “Sarvia, how is The Avenue initiative proceeding?”

  Enzio’s lieutenant in charge of Rivinchi outreach on Pandora cleared her throat, then took a quick sip of water. Her virtual presence in the private Noesis room was so realistic that ice could be heard clinking around as she returned her glass to the counter. “We were able to place two of our people in the local security force earlier this week. They’ll be able to identify vulnerable businesses we can target, as well as flag coworkers who might enjoy a bit of extra money in their pockets. Also, Avion Adventures and the Bologne restaurant signed on to our protection program yesterday.”

  “We’re making progress. Keep up the good work. At this rate, Rivinchi will soon control virtually all commerce on Pandora. And from there, the world awaits us. Thank you, everyone.”

  Enzio killed his visual presence, but he kept the channel open to listen in as the discussion among his lieutenants wrapped up. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust his people, as such, because he did—to the extent he trusted anyone, which was very little. It was merely that the sole way to ensure his enterprise succeeded was to control every aspect of it, from top to bottom. He’d learned this from his mother.

  But the rest of the conversation involved only details of additional outreach plans and some early planning for further expansion. Before long, his people closed up the room and headed off to execute on their duties.

  He’d need to do the same soon—he was scheduled to attend the monthly Approach Community Retailers Council gathering shortly, followed by a closing on another two blocks of property in The Approach. But this meant right now, he had a few spare minutes.

  Enzio entered a couple of notes in his eVi for later, then went to the kitchen and made some coffee. He took it out onto the penthouse patio, where his mother sat quietly amongst the blooming alyssi.

  “Here you go, mother. I brewed some coffee for you.” He set the mug on the small table beside her.

  It took her a minute to realize he was talking to her. Her gaze drifted to the table, and she picked up the mug with two hands, wrapping her long, slender fingers around it. “Thank you, son.”

  “You’re welcome. How is your day going?”

  “Nicely. I smell rain in the air, though I doubt the shields will let it reach us.”

  He spared a second to pay attention to his olfactory senses; it seemed she was correct. “Maybe next week, we can take a trip outside the city, to one of the nature preserves. Would you like to go on an outing?”

  “I would, yes.” She gave him a too-vacant smile, sipped on the coffee, and stared out at the skyline.

  There was still much work for him to do before she reached perfection. The longing of his heart screamed for him to race ahead, but he didn’t dare allow one iota of her programming to be any less impressive than the original. The complexity involved meant he needed to take great care.

  He hadn’t known his mother when she was alive, and this was a travesty for which he’d never forgive his greedy, treacherous father. But he’d spent years researching every scrap of information he could buy, borrow or steal about her. He’d used most of his father’s inheritance to buy up damaged hardware originating at her destroyed headquarters on New Babel and the debris field of Dolos Station from the scavengers who had confiscated it—storage modules, Artificial components and even scraps of neural imprints. Then he’d spent more years painstakingly restoring what he’d salvaged. Fragments and splintered pieces, all. But in time, they’d begun to take on the shape of a person.

  When he’d first awakened her, she’d been cold, hard, even callous toward him. This was obviously a consequence of the damaged algorithms he’d been working with, for a mother always loved and doted on her son. So he’d tweaked and refined her personality algorithms—just a few adjustments to bring them in line with the person she surely must have been in life.

  Objectively, when he looked at the woman with the pale blond hair and glittering mint green eyes sitting at the table on the patio, he recognized that she was scarcely more than a shell. But every day, the shell gained depth and nuance. Every day, he guided her closer to the woman she had once been and was destined to be again. The woman who had wielde
d the only true power in settled space for almost a century, and had come so close to bringing humanity to its knees before her.

  Soon, they would complete her work. Together.

  He gently touched her shoulder. “I have to head out for a couple of meetings. Don’t get too lonely while I’m gone.”

  “I will try. I believe I will read a book, then go into stasis for the evening once the sun sets.”

  “All right. Get your rest.” He kissed her forehead. “I love you, Mom.”

  “I love you, too, son.”

  32

  * * *

  CONCORD HQ

  Special Projects

  Morgan tucked razor-straight, chestnut hair behind her ear and scowled at the long, blocky contraption hanging from the ceiling in a rigged harness. “I thought you were testing it on fighters first.”

  Devon waved off her protest. “Testing happens fast around here. Spoiler: the tests went superbly, and the first three squadrons of fighters are getting retrofitted today. So now we’re moving on to Eidolons.”

  Marlee watched in fascination as various muscles in Morgan’s face twitched, as if the woman couldn’t decide whether to argue, scowl or let a hint of glee shine through. “Don’t the cruisers and frigates have priority?”

  “Certainly, but they don’t require much or really any testing—bolt the new weapon into a slot in the weapons control system and go to town. Eidolons are far trickier, though, only in part because they’re sentient, and retrofitting them is going to be a herculean task. But it’ll be worth it. The truth is, the smaller attack craft have thus far been wasted against the Rasu. They fly in, blast apart the teeny-tiny Rasu and drop off a few negative energy bombs, and they’re done for the day. Concord can deploy thousands of Eidolons and millions of fighters, but they’ve been all but useless so far. We need to make them useful.”