I turned and shut the door behind me so that we were alone, then held up my hands. “Slow down, Regina. I want your report, first. What happened to you? Are you all right?”
“Of course, I’m all right. I’m perfectly fine,” she snapped.
I looked pointedly at the lump under the cool white sheet and folded my arms.
She rolled her eyes and reached down to rap the leg with her knuckles. It made a hollow knocking sound. “It’s broken in two places,” she admitted grudgingly. “This is a walking brace, although for some silly reason there’s to be no walking for another two days. So here I sit, while Nearspace just waits for the next Chron attack. And apparently even my subordinates feel like they can take the opportunity to ignore direct orders,” she finished, mimicking me by crossing her arms over her own chest.
I crossed and sat on the side of the bed, tapping the leg brace experimentally with my knuckles. “You have to give the bones a chance to start healing before you put your weight down,” I said, “which you know very well. The trauma nanos can only do so much, so fast. I’m sure they’ll let you up as soon as it’s safe, because I’m also sure you’re making life a living hell for anyone trying to help you out here.”
Regina’s eyes widened, and I felt sure she was about to blast me, but suddenly she laughed. “Lanar Mahane, you are the most insubordinate—”
“What happened, anyway? Were you on the level where they breached?”
She shook her head wearily. “No, I was on the admin level. But when the stabilizers failed, I fell—and I did it spectacularly badly. So now this,” she added, disgust edging her voice as she knocked her knuckles against the brace again. “It will heal, but it’ll take a while.”
I wanted to lean in and kiss her forehead, but even with the door closed, this wasn’t the place for that. I contented myself with patting her hand, instead. “All right, report accepted. So, about my trip to Corvid space. It went well. The Corvid station was badly damaged and they’re still in repair mode, but willing to help us any way they can. They gave me some valuable information, which I’ll get to in a minute. But Yuskeya and the others weren’t there when we arrived. They’d been rescued by some of the friendly Chron—they call themselves Relidae—and we went into the next system, the one Luta’s crew called GV5, to collect them. The Relidae planet there is Tabalo.”
A tiny frown line had appeared on Regina’s brow. “Yes, we received the message from the Corvids. I don’t remember clearing you to go into Chron space.”
“No, ma’am. But we didn’t know it might be necessary when I left Nearspace. I made the decision myself, and I take full responsibility.”
She tapped a finger pensively on the edge of her datapad. “It might have gone badly if you’d encountered enemy Chron.”
I nodded. “I considered that. But we didn’t encounter any of them, only Relidae. I suggest we start calling them by that name, since it’s what they prefer. They’ve been spying on their aggressive cousins—the Pitromae—in hopes of countering or avoiding their attacks. But they’re a minority population against the Pitromae Chron. And they think the Pitromae want to see them wiped out. I think they’ll be an excellent source of intelligence, though.”
“What delayed you? Sheer distance?”
I shook my head. “Initially, we had to wait for the ambassador to recover—she was injured in the attack on the Corvid station. Then there was increased Pitromae activity in the system and no-one thought it was safe for us to leave. But then they heard about the attack on FarView—”
“And you forgot about caution.”
I reached out and gave her hand a little squeeze. “You can’t blame me for worrying about my sister. And the ambassador insisted, too.”
“And Professor Brindlepaw? Is she still with them?”
I nodded again. “And I left Lieutenant-Commander Summergale with her as well. With the help of the Corvids, we’re setting up a line of relay beacons to make communication easier and quicker.”
“That’s good news,” she said, then must have read something in my face. “But there’s something else, too.”
“The Chron have another way into Nearspace,” I said. “The Corvids said, when we were coming back, that none had passed through their system. But somehow they got here to attack FarView.”
Regina nodded. “We figured that out. We still have the guard posted on the known wormholes out of Nearspace, here in Delta Pavonis and in Tau Ceti. We just haven’t figured out where else they’re coming through.”
“How bad was it, here?” I asked. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer.
Regina pressed her lips together in a thin white line before she answered. “It could have been worse. Thirty-five dead, seventy injured. I got your earlier message, so although we didn’t know where the threat was coming from, or what the target might be, at least we were on the alert. We spotted them incoming and scrambled a squadron. Took out a few before they even got to the station.”
And still they’d managed to penetrate the shields and do the damage I’d glimpsed as we approached the station and when I came down in the elevator. I suppressed a shudder. If the station hadn’t been alert and watching, how much worse might it have been?
“We’ve deployed scouts to follow the drive signatures back to where they came into Nearspace, but they fade out before leading anywhere definitive. I’ve already recalled them,” she said.
I blew out a sigh. “So, what now?”
Fleet Commander Regina Holles, pale in her standard-issue med bay gown, looked past me, her eyes fixed on the daffodil-coloured wall. I knew she didn’t find it soothing in the least. She looked like she wanted to kick it in with her super-hardened leg brace. Finally, she sighed.
“The other Fleet Commanders and I are meeting here in three days’ time,” she said wearily. “And I expect we’ll fight about just that. I’m afraid more of them will share Mauronet’s view that we should take some sort of initiative against the Chron, instead of concentrating on defences.”
“Which is still your preference,” I said. It wasn’t a question.
She nodded. “Not just my preference, but what I see as the only sensible course of action, considering our numbers.” She turned a bleak look on me. “If we knew where they were coming from, it could make all the difference. I want you to tackle that, Lanar. Get help from the Corvids and the Relidae if they can offer any, but find out how the Chron are getting into Nearspace.”
Chapter 14 – Luta
No Good Deed
I HAD SO many misgivings about Sedmamin’s plan that it would have taken me longer to detail them than to make the actual visit to PrimeCorp Main. Hirin still suspected a setup, but he calmed down when I reminded him that Sedmamin would stay in his sight the entire time Jahelia and I were gone. I said if we were double-crossed in any way, Hirin could shoot him. Sedmamin’s eyes grew wide and he spluttered a bit, but he agreed to the terms.
I wouldn’t really have let Hirin shoot him—for Hirin’s own sake, since I didn’t want him spending time in prison—but it was fun to make the suggestion and watch them both react.
And I didn’t expect to have any fun on the mission itself. I would have to steel myself to walk into PrimeCorp Main again. The place didn’t inspire a warm and fuzzy feeling in me—more like stress, fear, and frustration. I’d spent most of my life assiduously avoiding doing this very thing.
The only bright spot in that trip was a new wormhole between Delta Pavonis and Lambda Saggitae. After months of observation and testing, the Council had declared it stable and opened it to general travel, which meant that it took us only five days and a few hours to reach Earth, compared to more than twice that. Considering the level of tension on the Tane Ikai with Alin Sedmamin on board, the time still dragged until we docked at Central Mass, but I could keep reminding myself that it could have been much worse.
From Central Mass, Jahelia and I rented a flitter for the morning, to take us inland to PrimeCorp’s sprawling corpo
rate headquarters. Jahelia had dressed for the occasion in dark pants, low-heeled boots, and a tailored blazer in red synthwool. A black turtleneck completed the outfit, and created an intriguing impression of casual power. She carried an oversized bag in soft black fabric studded with tiny mirrors. I wasn’t sure I’d achieved the same level of unselfconscious sophistication. Maja and Rei had both insisted on consulting with me on my wardrobe, making me wonder just how awful they thought I usually looked. With their guidance, I’d chosen navy suit pants with a pale mauve blouse of Maja’s and a tailored, asymmetrically-cut dark blue jacket belonging to Rei. They’d also insisted I wear my hair up, at which point I agreed but told them they’d have to style it themselves. I am quite aware of my own limits. The outcome had looked good to me in the mirror on the Tane Ikai, but I wasn’t sure how it stood up next to Jahelia’s cool and seemingly effortless style.
Glancing over at her in the passenger seat of the flitter, I wondered if any of that casual confidence had to do with a weapon she might have concealed somewhere, but PrimeCorp’s headquarters had sophisticated detector systems. She’d never get inside with it. I asked her about it once our flitter had lifted into the air.
“If you have a weapon, you might as well leave it here,” I said. “We’ll be thoroughly screened at PrimeCorp Main.”
She nodded, but continued to stare out the window. Light rain fell, the droplets streaming in wriggling trails across the flitter’s windows. “I’ve been there before, remember? I know all about their ‘restrictions’.”
“Oh, right.” I felt silly for having forgotten that she’d visited Sedmamin there. “But didn’t you say you were a ‘secret’? I thought maybe you weren’t used to using the front door.”
Jahelia flashed me a grin. “Well, not with this name. But no system is failsafe, either,” she said, but wouldn’t explain what she meant. I stopped trying to pry it out of her after about five minutes, and we spent the rest of the flight in relative silence.
PrimeCorp Main was built to be impressive, and I had to admit it fulfilled its mandate. It sprawled over every building on a full city block, and this was just the administrative and research arm. The corporation had offices, labs, factories, and warehouses strewn over almost every corner of Nearspace.
In the centre of the block, the previous building had been demolished and a new centrepiece constructed on the site. It stretched more than sixty floors skyward, taller than anything else in the vicinity, and glistened with green-tinted, solar-receptive glass. Although we didn’t fly over it, I knew the building’s greenroof sported a garden that supplied vegetables for the in-house cafe. PrimeCorp knew how to put its best foot forward no matter what was happening behind the scenes. Glass-walled skyview elevators, offering vistas of the surrounding city and beyond, crawled up and down both the east and west sides of the building. We left the flitter at a nearby parkade and walked the last block to the complex. The city streets bustled, as city streets tend to do, with a mix of humans, Lobors, and Vilisians that felt so natural, it was hard to believe humans had ever inhabited Earth as the only sentient species. City-dwellers, more than most, seemed to accept the blending of the three alien species as natural, inevitable, and hardly deserving of notice. They walked, talked, argued, shared food, and even held hands. It was nice to disappear into this sea of people, anonymous for a short time. It was also easy to forget the looming danger lurking just beyond the borders of Nearspace, to believe that the concerns of space stations and aliens who wished us harm was very far away. And I suppose it was, by some measurements. By others, it was far too close.
Jahelia Sord walked silently next to me, apparently lost in her own thoughts. We were in sight of the PrimeCorp Main doors when she said, suddenly businesslike, “I expect you’ll do most of the talking. I’m just along for the ride, right?”
“Sure,” I agreed. “According to Sedmamin, it’s my name that will get us inside. I hope they don’t pay too much attention to it. Find it on a list, wave us in, and forget about us.”
“And if it doesn’t go quite that smoothly,” she said, “we have each others’ backs, right?” She’d turned to look at me, brown eyes serious and dark.
I wasn’t sure what she was getting at, and felt my forehead tighten in an involuntary frown. “Well—yes. What do you mean?”
She looked away, ahead to where PrimeCorp waited, and shrugged a little. “Never mind. I know we’re good. I’m not used to doing this sort of thing with anyone else. With a partner.” She half-smiled.
“Oh, we’re partners now?” I grinned back. “I guess we are. So how often do you do ‘this sort of thing’? By which I assume you mean, gain access to a corporate building under false pretenses, with the intent to steal something from the premises.”
She mimed counting on the fingers of both hands. “Not all that often, really. Considering how old I am.”
I laughed. “Considering how old I am, I guess it’s more surprising that I haven’t done it before.”
“First time for everything,” Jahelia Sord said, and opened the glittering glass front doors of PrimeCorp Main.
WHATEVER I THOUGHT of PrimeCorp, I had to admit the lobby of their main headquarters was an impressive sight. The floor of the vast space shone, pale, polished marble with the corporation’s atom logo inset in the centre. Overhead, a huge glass dome vaulted skyward three stories. Full-grown trees stretched leafy boughs up to catch the light, lining a boulevard that channeled visitors and employees to a bank of escalators and elevators at the far end of the room. A thin stream of people moved toward and away from the elevators. A curved desk, also marble, presented visitors with no fewer than three receptionists, all bright, smiling, and ready to assist. The woman in the middle spoke to a tall Vilisian, and the Lobor on the left side of the desk was apparently in conversation with someone via a headset implant.
The young Vilisian on the right side of the desk caught my eye, and I moved toward him.
“Good morning, and welcome to PrimeCorp Main,” he said, smiling. “How may I help you?”
“Luta Paixon,” I said, hoping I sounded both confident and a bit bored. “We have an appointment.”
Sedmamin had assured us that we wouldn’t be asked who our appointment was with—that would be considered intrusive. The only information attached to my name on a visitor’s list would be the building floor or section I’d be looking for, so the receptionist could offer directions if needed.
The young man nodded and consulted a screen set into the top of the desk, tilted just slightly toward him so that he could read it easily. He typed a few commands on an input device I couldn’t see, and then nodded. “You’re on the sixtieth floor, main tower,” he said. “The last two elevators on your right at the back of the lobby will be the fastest.”
From behind the desk he pulled two badges marked “Visitor” and handed them to us. “Please keep these visible while you’re in the building, and return them to me when you’re leaving,” he said. “They alert our security staff that you’ve checked in and are cleared to be here.”
“Thanks for your help,” I said, handing one badge to Jahelia and clipping the other to my lapel. “We’ll see you in a bit.”
We rounded the desk and headed for the elevators he’d indicated.
“Well, that was easy,” Jahelia said in a low voice.
“We’re not even on the elevator yet,” I said. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
“He said sixtieth floor, but Sedmamin’s office is on sixty-one,” she said. “Do you think they’ll monitor where we stop?”
“We stop at sixty, and walk up one. Even PrimeCorp has to have stairs in case the power goes out.”
We stepped into an elevator with a bored-looking Lobor, a woman in a dark green power suit who didn’t take her eyes off her datapad, and a man who smiled noncommittally at us and then stared at the floor progress screen. They got off at the fifteenth, twenty-eighth, and fortieth floors respectively, and we were on our own for the last
twenty. We rode mainly in silence, since the elevator would undoubtedly have video and audio surveillance. Around floor fifty-two Jahelia said, “Contact” to me in a low voice to let me know that she had Sedmamin on her implant comm. I wasn’t one for implants myself, beyond the forearm ID that everyone in Nearspace had, so Jahelia was the one with a direct line to Sedmamin.
We exited at the sixtieth floor and were confronted by a massive wall-mounted screen, directing us to offices, departments, and labs. We ignored all that and found the nearest stairwell. Most offices had their doors open and people milled about in the hallways, so we just looked like we knew exactly what we were doing and where we were going, and everyone ignored us completely. I thought Sedmamin must be asking Jahelia for a progress report, because I noticed her mutter a low phrase a couple of times, and she certainly wasn’t talking to me. She caught my eye and rolled hers, so I knew my assumption must be correct.
The stairwell was deserted and we climbed easily. Once on the sixty-first floor, Jahelia led the way. I’d had the dubious pleasure of visiting Sedmamin’s office a couple of times in the past, but that had been in the old building. We followed a long, straight corridor, richly carpeted in a colour I thought of as “PrimeCorp red,” and at the very end reached a double glass door marred by patches of adhesive where a name plate had been recently removed. Jahelia raised her eyebrows at me, took a visible breath, and opened the door.
The long, angled secretary’s desk and seating area were empty, as Sedmamin had promised. We stepped in and closed the door behind us, and Jahelia dipped a hand into her bag. She brought it out and pressed something tiny next to the doorknob.
“What’s that?”
“Motion sensor. If anyone opens this door now, I’ll get a ping.”
I wished I’d thought of that. I glanced around and saw the closed door that led, I presumed, to the inner sanctum.
We crossed quickly and opened it, stepping inside and closing it behind us. I was surprised to find that we were in a small antechamber containing a single desk and three chairs. Another closed door led further inside.
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