by Jenn Lyons
Rhodes to join your project. Even if you dumped him afterward, that name would buy you a lot of recognition.”
“We don’t want Nick. Nick is temperamental, egotistical. He needs his pride fluffed and pampered on a regular basis. You’ve fought on a striketeam, dirtied your hands. Everyone knows you’re the one who made sure those drives were finished in time for Larker’s Offensive, in spite of, not because of, Nick Rhodes. Szabo Ernak hasn’t forgotten.”
“Admiral Szabo? That lunatic?”
“That lunatic is powerful, becoming more so, and his good will is worth star systems, but we can play this both ways if we’re careful. President Keiler will look at us and see moderates with strong SIL loyalty who have spent time in the megacities. Szabo will look at you and see someone who understands the military considerations, who’s been there on the front lines, and who knows how to get the job done. The rest of the Council takes their cues from those two. And with the rumors flying around, no one’s going to want to touch Nicholas Rhodes.”
I frowned. “Explain that.”
The waiter refilled our drinks. Paul added several brightly colored herbs to his, stirred carefully, and gave the result a slow sip before he continued. I wanted to strangle him.
“I have no idea where it started, of course, but there’s a rumor going round that our own Gala-Rhodes Nicholas didn’t invent Rhodes’ Law, that he’s made no significant advances off his theories because he never fully understood them in the first place.”
I shook my head. “No one is going to believe that.”
“Oh, they didn’t at first.”
A dull throb started to work its way to my temples from the back of my neck. “Paul, what have you done?”
The beautiful man in black sipped his juice and unsuccessfully tried not to look smug. “Nothing much. The Council’s poured a lot of money and resources into research that has gone nowhere. More and more of them are remembering that it was never the very busy, the very important, Nick Rhodes who explained his work with such glib ease to the visiting VIPs, but his cute little assistant. What was her name again?”
“Nicholas Rhodes is going to kill you.” I leaned forward. “Scratch that. Nicholas Rhodes is going to kill me. Do you really think he’s just going to lie back and take it while you spread rumors that he’s a fraud?”
“Fuck Nick Rhodes,” Paul hissed. “It’s the least he deserves after what he did to you.”
“He didn’t do anything to me that I didn’t want,” I snapped in response.
“You were a kid. You had no idea what you wanted.”
“It’s none of your business. If I want revenge, I can get it on my own.” I gripped the edges of the table so tightly I wondered which would break first, the wood or my finger nails. “Spread rumors all you want, but everyone knows that it was Nicholas Rhodes who discovered Rhodes’ Law, and Nicholas Rhodes who invented the Janus Drive, and saying differently would be like saying Maia-Leia Shana didn’t cure the Plague!”
His dark eyes hardened until they were sharp enough to cut ice. He said nothing, but I could feel his anger, could feel how it flared even hotter when I mentioned the name of the Sarcodinay gene-priestess who had cured the Plague. He quickly wrestled his emotions under control.
“We don’t need to change the history books, just give the Council a reason to doubt their golden boy. They’re halfway there already. He’s never been a likable man. All I needed to do was give the right people a few gentle reminders. How when you came to the Janus Project you brought the working notes of your parents, noted mathematicians Heather and Jeffrey MacLain, with you. Everyone knows they were sent to the mines for illegal hyperspace research. And if those working notes provided the basis for Rhodes’ Law, who could blame the man for not wanting to share credit with two dead scientists executed by the Sarcodinay for treason?”
I sighed and leaned back against the couch. “You’re using me, Paul.”
“I’m helping you, but you’re being too much a fool to see it.”
“I’m the fool? Who told everyone I’d be part of this before you even asked?”
He scowled then. “I assumed you’d say yes.”
“Ah. Well then.”
“Mallory! Open your eyes! You have a chance to take control of your life. Intelligence Operations is a dead end, probably a literal one, even for someone with our training. I’m out. I’m leaving, and you should leave too. Seeing that brain of yours leak into a gutter somewhere would be a crime against God and man. You owe it to yourself not to waste your potential.”
“Don’t you mean my parents’ potential?”
He leaned forward, his gaze brutal and direct. “You and I both know damn well the Sarcodinay didn’t let you keep any of your parents’ notes.”
We stared at each other while the seconds crawled away to die.
I looked away first. “Why lie about it?”
“I’m protecting you.”
“Protecting me?” I raised an eyebrow. “That’s a switch.”
“Well.” He studied his hands. “Maybe I was hoping we could protect each other—watch each other’s backs—like old times.”
I looked at him. He was so damn beautiful, and it occurred to me that I’d never seen him so damn scared.
I touched his cheek, the stroke of a feather on silk. “Paul, what have you gotten into?”
He looked up at me with glistening eyes. “I’d have made you the offer anyway. You’re a genius. I knew it back in school. All your toys. I never believed Rhodes came up with that theory. Never.”
“Never mind the theory. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but I really don’t give a damn about that stupid theory. Who’s trying to hurt you?”
He clenched his fists until the knuckles stood out stark and white. “Alex is being blackmailed. I can’t do anything about it, and it’s killing me. You can. You aren’t like the rest of us. You’re special. I know you’ll be able to figure something out.”
“Blackmailed? Blackmailed about what?” I couldn’t hide the suspicion in my voice.
“Blackmailed about me,” Paul said, miserable.
Someone lowered a garrote around my throat and pulled tight. I managed a few pathetic attempts at swallowing.
“Oh. So he’s that kind of partner.”
“He makes me happy.”
“I’m glad,” I lied.
“Please help us. It’s bad. You have no idea how bad. I can’t go to anyone officially. If the wrong people find out the truth, my life won’t be worth the cost of a bullet, but you, you can use—” Paul faltered, tripped. He refocused his stare above my head. An emotion hid behind that gaze: sharp terror.
I’d missed the cues. The restaurant was too quiet.
I looked up over my shoulder and I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing: a Sarcodinay stood there.
So here’s the deal with the Sarcodinay: in the entire galaxy, they were the only race that looked anything like us—or rather, if you’d been listening to Sarcodinay propaganda at the time, we were the only race out there who looked anything like them. Even though we were built of different amino acids and had different body chemistries, we both had ten fingers, ten toes, two eyes, one mouth, one nose, all in the right places and all to the right proportions, which made it kind of hard to argue that both races hadn’t been baked in the same oven. The Sarcodinay had never tried to claim it was coincidence: they simply expanded their religious belief that they had been created whole cloth by their gods to the firm conviction that we too had been created the same makers.
Specifically, that we had been created to be their servants.
So if you’re ever extra curious why the Sarcodinay are such assholes, you don’t need to look very hard for an answer. It’s pretty much right out there in the open: they believed they were entitled, because the gods wanted it that way.
This wasn’t just any Sarcodinay. I knew this particular one. I used to see him in my nightmares. He was standing right behind me, and I felt embarrassed I hadn’t noticed h
im approach.
“Lorvan.” I left off the honorific, the caste and family name. It was an insulting breach of propriety, but better that than my other temptation, which was to go for my pistol in a public place.
The Sarcodinay smiled, although his expression was not what I would have called happy. He looked us both over, slowly. “I should have known I would find both of you together. I never could keep the two of you apart.”
“What the hell do you want?” I stood then, not out of respect but because the average Sarcodinay is a half-meter taller than an adult human, and I was going to give myself a crick in the neck if I stayed sitting. Lorvan hadn’t entered the restaurant alone: two bodyguards stood off to the side, both giant Sarcodinay bruisers armed in full kit.
“I want to talk with you, Mallory,” Education Minister Vana-Nus Lorvan said. “I need to talk to you, and it would be in your best interest to allow me. You do not wish to cause a scene.”
I glanced around without moving my head. The restaurant was full of that awkward quiet that comes from trying to ignore the presence of something terribly uncomfortable, when everyone’s pretending not to watch and in fact can do nothing else. Paul had physically cringed back on the sofa, hardly daring to breath. The whites of his eyes showed fully around his iris.
“You haven’t had the right to tell me what I want to do since I was fourteen, old man. Maybe all I really want to do right now is finish what I started all those years ago and slit your throat.” I let my fingers rest on the ceramic
