“So they were a part of the same sick fraternity. So what?” Arden said, but they’d tensed their shoulders again. Good. They’d bought the easy lie. Now it was time for the hard one.
“Before he died, Lavaux was attempting to fly to a set of coordinates I don’t recognize. I need to figure out where they are, and I can’t do that from any system that might recognize them and flag somebody who’s keeping an eye out for them.”
Nox grunted. “So he was trying to meet up with a girlfriend, or get some damned takeout, who cares? I’m sorry he tried to kill you but—”
“He was taking Bero. The Light of Berossus. Without fleet or Protectorate approval. I interrupted. That’s why he attacked me.”
Both Arden and Nox froze, shared a long look, but said nothing.
“Where would Keeper Lavaux want to take the biggest weapon in the universe?” she asked.
Arden really, really, wanted the answer to that question. As soon as she’d said it, their eyes took on a glazed look, like they were back in the net, as their mind moved mountains to puzzle out the reason Lavaux would want to do such a thing.
They’d never find the answer, because the question itself was a lie. Sanda got the feeling that was the kind of thing that would, slowly, drive someone like Arden insane with obsession. Her stomach clenched. She hoped the turmoil in her face read as concern about their situation, and not guilt.
“All right,” Arden said. “I’ll locate your coordinates without setting off any trip wires. But I’ll do it from the deck of a gunship.”
“Agreed,” Sanda said.
CHAPTER 15
PRIME STANDARD YEAR 3543
PEACE BY ANY MEANS
Olver arranged their meeting in a small conference room near enough to the war room that they could press their discussion right up until the last second and not be late for Anford’s briefing. Compostable cups of steaming coffee sat in front of each of them, but Olver and Shun were the only ones drinking. Biran’s stomach was too busy knotting itself together for him to bother with caffeine. Nerves would keep him alert for now.
Shun said, “I was surprised you requested me here, Speaker. I understand that negotiations with Icarion are fraught, and I will do anything to help, but I hardly see how I can. I teach the academy candidates.” She smiled. “As you know.”
“There’s no finer teacher in Prime,” Biran said, “but it’s not your educational skills that I asked you here for. We have hit upon a particular sticking point with Icarion that I’m afraid can’t be massaged without real trade goods.”
“This is not a negotiation, Biran. Speak plainly.”
He took a breath. “Icarion wants for materiel. Raw resources, faster trade routes. Peace will falter if their economy cannot be bolstered. The addition of a secondary gate to the Ada system would be a boon not only for us, but for Icarion, and guarantee peace.”
“I agree with you completely,” Shun said, her warm expression growing guarded. “But as you know, my scouting team and I have not found a suitable secondary dwarf planet we could orbit a gate around. Nor are we the first team to make such a determination.”
“Yes, I know that. I’ve read all your reports”—in the thirty minutes before this meeting, but he wasn’t about to reveal that fact—“and I know that you are thorough when it comes to the usual means.”
“You would propose unusual means?”
Biran met her gaze steadily. What he was about to say might be viewed as an insult to her work. He did not think Keeper Li Shun was the type to be insulted by him merely asking questions—she was a teacher, after all—but when it came to her work outside the classroom, he had little idea of her feelings.
“I do. I propose scouting the system for an individual asteroid which may be suitable for construction.”
She pursed her lips as if she’d tasted something sour. “A tall order. One would have to have a stable orbit, correct mass, be suitably far away from the star’s gravity well, and—and here’s the trick with asteroids—be of even density. The gravitational tug-and-pull of gate and dwarf planet is akin to that of a moon on a smaller planet. Tectonics are created. Geology shifts. What was once a stable rock, after introducing a gate, could break into pieces.”
Biran hadn’t had much time to prepare for this meeting, he knew only that those things were in fact concerns—they were tested on them during Keeper training—and that Anaia, not being blind to those complications, wouldn’t have picked her mark without their consideration.
“This system’s asteroid belt is host to several remarkably cohesive masses, is it not? We are heavy on iron here in the Ada system. Maybe the death of a nearby star in our interstellar past seeded Ada with the perfect rocks for such a venture.”
Shun hmmed to herself and tapped her fingers on the side of her coffee cup. “Once again, not wrong, but a tall order. Even if I could convince the Protectorate to allocate me the resources to have our AI scour all tracked asteroids within the system—”
“You have two of the Protectorate in this room,” Olver cut in gracefully, with a wan smile. “I do not believe such resources will be a problem.”
“—Ah, yes.” Her attention shifted from the swirl of her coffee to Biran, and a real smile wrinkled the corners of her eyes. “I forget sometimes that some of my more precocious students rise beyond me.”
“Only due to your tutelage.”
“Pah. You need not flatter me, Speaker, you’ve already captured my curiosity. If I’m given the resources, I will look into this wild idea of yours, but keep in mind that not every asteroid in this system has been tagged and tracked. It will take a great deal of time to sort through those that we know of, let alone discover and assess those we don’t. I hardly think such a thing would be a timely solution to your current problem. Not quickly enough to warrant such an early, urgent meeting.” She arched a brow and looked from one man to another as if interrogating mischievous schoolchildren. “Unless…?”
Olver grinned faintly. “Unless we had a location in mind.”
Biran winced. Olver caught the movement and waved a placating hand at him. “Come now, Speaker, you didn’t think she’d be oblivious to those details, did you?”
“I had hoped…”
Shun tsked at him. “My dear boy, you are an excellent Speaker for the Keepers of Ada, but you were my student, and I know when all my students are hiding something—yes, even you, when you get up in front of those cameras. Don’t fret over it, I’ve kept the secrets of my students longer than you’ve been alive. What is this asteroid you have in mind?”
A hot flush crept up Biran’s collar, but he cleared his throat and pushed on. “I didn’t mean to deceive you, I only wanted to keep your nose clean, so to speak.”
“To create a clean point of origin for your grand idea. I see. So what poisoned tree did this fruit fall from?”
“Lionetti.”
A scuff of a boot against metal sounded outside the door. Biran was on his feet before he could think, ignoring a shout from Olver to sit back down. He yanked the door open and stepped outside, glancing up and down, wondering, belatedly, what he would do if there was a fight to deal with. Biran had hit a man only once in his life and didn’t feel like repeating the experience.
A guardcore stood partway down the hall, frozen mid-step, and glanced over their shoulder at him, head lifted slightly as if embarrassed to have been caught. Biran let out a slow, relieved breath, nodded to the GC, then moved back inside and shut the door.
“What was that?” Olver demanded.
“Guardcore,” Biran said as he took his seat, placing his hands on his knees so that the others wouldn’t see them tremble. “Nothing to worry about.”
“Not like them to make noise,” Shun mused.
“Indeed. Generally, they stay out of these halls and keep to the major entrances.”
Biran blinked. “Really? I’ve had one stationed outside my door all night. I presumed that was normal.”
“It’s not,” Olve
r said, frowning. “Their methods are their own, naturally, but when the Keepers are locked down inside the Cannery, they spend most of their resources watching all entrances and exits. They’re never far, but they don’t tend to lurk around doorways.”
“There are many of them, and we are a small Cannery. I’m sure they get bored.”
“I don’t think they can,” Shun said. “Get bored, that is. But regardless, you say this information came from Anaia?”
Biran licked his lips and explained, sparsely, how he came across the images. Shun sighed.
“I see. I never thought she… well. It doesn’t matter now. I understand your need for discretion. I will make the search for this asteroid look convincing, then we can confirm whether it is a good candidate. All the possibilities for failure haven’t changed because Lionetti took a few pictures.”
“I understand,” Biran said, “but we have to look.”
“I agree. And while I’m at it, we might come across other candidates.” She rubbed her palms together and grinned tightly. “I’m excited to get to work. Don’t let those approvals take too long, Director.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
Olver smiled to Shun, but his gaze was tracking the door.
CHAPTER 16
PRIME STANDARD YEAR 3543
TECHNICALLY A FREE WOMAN
Six days later, Graham pounded on the door to the closet Sanda was calling her room. She threw out an arm to catch herself, cursing at Graham, and the hauler, and anything else that came to mind at the moment.
“Working on my physical therapy, Dad. What is it?”
“Thought you should know the High Protectorate came through. You’ve been officially cleared of all charges in the death of Lavaux, and it’s been determined that The Light—”
“Bero.”
“—Bero escaped on his own, you didn’t set him loose.”
“Took them long enough. I wonder how Biran convinced them of the second half.”
A pause. “Ask him yourself. Lockdown has been lifted.”
Sanda’s ass hit the cot in the corner and she spun up her wristpad, glaring impatiently while the Prime logo of a dwarf planet with a Casimir Gate pirouetted around one another to indicate loading.
After the would-be bounty hunters had ruined her evening, she’d kept her wristpad powered down until she could be sure the fleet wouldn’t use it to track her down and drag her to a prison cell. Graham’s could spoof his location effectively. She’d never had to set hers up for such a thing.
Sanda scowled at the spinning logo. Everything about her was too damn straightforward, too honest and clear. Maybe Arden could set her up with some software to hide her location identifiers, change her ident, whatever was needed. But then, what was really needed?
Maybe being Major Greeve was a big enough lie.
The logo faded away and her welcome programs launched. The normalcy made her chest ache. New message notifications clogged her non-priority folder; crap people with crap motives trying to get in touch with a woman they’d seen on the news.
She hadn’t looked at her messages since she’d left Bero for the Taso. And now that she saw that number, climbing steadily into the tens of thousands, she found she couldn’t quite breathe…
She’d found Biran and Graham and Ilan, gotten her family back. But she hadn’t been the only one on that gunship, just the only one Bero had picked up out of the black. Where were the others, her colleagues, her friends? Had Raismith made it? Or Pheng?
No. Of course they hadn’t. If any of her crew had survived, they would have been paraded out at that welcome party along with her.
How many of those non-priority message requests were the families of her crew, asking what had happened? Wanting to know why Sanda had lived, when the others had not?
A priority CamCast message came in, the red ripples distracting her seconds before she dragged all of those messages into the trash. General Jessa Anford. She’d wanted to talk to Biran, to Ilan, not her boss. She accepted the call anyway.
Anford’s face filled the screen, and it took Sanda a beat to recognize her. Her tight hair was streaked with grey, the already dark skin beneath her eyes shaded to a faint rust. The wall over Anford’s shoulder was SynthWood in walnut, the very edge of a landscape painting visible in the lower right corner. Anford was at home. Sanda had never considered if the woman slept, let alone did all the other things that came with living in a home.
“Major Greeve,” Anford said, voice crisper than her eyes betrayed. “I’ve been priority casting you for a week. Kind of you to pick up.”
Sanda dragged a hand through her hair and stopped short of scratching the back of her neck. “I was in a NutriBath for… a while. Got spaced, you know. Blood leaked out of my eyeballs. After that, it seemed wise to wait until my name was cleared.”
“I do know. Your survival statistics are beginning to rival that of a cockroach.”
“Thank… you…?”
Anford grimaced. “Your brother has pulled your ass out of yet another fire, and while I usually find Biran’s plays to be useful, let me be clear: I do not think you can perform the duties of a major.”
“I…” That hurt more than it had any right to, especially considering she’d been thinking the same thing ever since that title had gotten pinned to her chest. “I’m prepared to undergo training.”
She cough-laughed. “Forgive me, Greeve. May I be perfectly frank with you?”
“Please.”
“I cannot put you into training. You are a distraction, whether or not you wish to be, and any classroom or training scenario I dropped you into would be severely disrupted in a matter of days, if not hours. Your promotion will stick, because to remove it would cause me more headaches than it’s worth, but you will not be performing the duties of a major. You are going to come back to Ada and receive medical care—you look like shit, by the way—and then you will fulfill your role in a ceremonial capacity only.”
“You want me to be a mascot?”
“You already are.”
Sanda buried her face in her hands and squeezed, rubbing the skin until it felt hot, then took her wristpad hand away and reset the alignment so that Anford could see her face again.
“No, Commander.”
One thick brow scythed up her forehead. “Interesting.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to be a major any more than you want me to be one. But I will not sit on a mantel and get dusted off for war-related press junkets, either. I’m a gunnery sergeant. Give me a gunship.”
“You lost your last one.”
“Dios, Anford, you can be a real bitch sometimes.”
Her laugh was feather-soft. “So I’ve been told. But despite the weapon’s jaunt into the unknown, Ada is still skirting active war with Icarion. I cannot give you a gunship just so you’ll have something to do, and I am not, under any circumstances, sending you into the battle with Icarion. Last fucking thing I need is you getting blown out of the void. I would lose my post.”
“The Icarion war is over, you’re just mopping up.” The crease between Anford’s brows told Sanda she’d misjudged, that Icarion remained a threat to Ada, but as much as Sanda would love the chance to blow Negassi out of the sky, she didn’t want that ship to go after Icarion. “You can spare one ship to save face. The people will love it, I’m sure. The war hero back in the fight, or whatever. Biran can spin it.”
“Why do you want this ship, if not to dog Icarion’s heels?”
“Lavaux tried to steal Bero—steal the weapon—and he wasn’t working alone,” she said, using every ounce of control she had to keep her voice even.
Anford’s gaze shifted to the side, as if she were checking to be sure the room—her own living room—was empty. “Lavaux was an asshole, but he was a Keeper. Consider carefully who he may have been working with.”
“I have. And I believe I know the location he was trying to take Bero.”
“And you want to take a gunship ther
e to check it out, see if anyone’s home.”
“Yes.”
“You’re under my command, Greeve. I could order the coordinates out of you and send a squad specifically to check out the location. It doesn’t have to be you.”
“You said yourself, you’re busy with Icarion. You can’t spare anyone, and you have nowhere useful to put me. Give me the ship, and I’ll give you the answers to Lavaux’s behavior right before he got himself killed.”
Anford’s face went hard as a stone, smooth as a still lake, betraying not a single sliver of emotion. Sanda’s stomach clenched; she held her breath. If Anford was as committed to Prime Inventive as Sanda had been before her capture, this was a stupid gambit. But if Anford saw the cracks—even suspected there may be cracks—in the ranks of the Keepers, then, maybe…
Anford sighed heavily. “You and your fucking brother. You’ll have your ship, Greeve. Do me a favor and try not to become a press incident again.”
“That’s the last thing I want to do.”
But Anford wasn’t listening, her attention had been drawn down and to the left. The video trembled with the subtle vibrations of her tapping against the wristpad that projected her image.
“There’s a gunship in Atrux fresh out of repair. Technically in the command of a local major—not you—but even from Ada a general has her pull.” Tap, tap, jab. “It was scheduled to release back into Ada for the final push against Icarion, but it’s old and I suppose I can spare it. It’s a Point ship, like you’re used to, but a decade out of date. Points are useless without Wave ships backing them up, so there’s some extra incentive for you to keep your guns tucked in. Am I understood? You fire those weapons, and I’ll space you myself.”
“I’ve no intention of engaging in combat unless I’m attacked.”
“Points evade very well, Greeve. I suggest you brush up on those maneuvers, if you’ve forgotten them. The pilot is AI, and I won’t hamstring it for you. It’s narrow type, so you won’t have a repeat of your experience with The Light.”
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