“Sit,” she said, gently, her Venus-brown eyes flicking to the chair across the desk. Keeper Lavaux sat to her left, a slender man with pale hair and a loose, trying-too-hard-to-be-relaxed style that Biran had always found sloppy. To Shun’s right, Keeper Garcia, Lavaux’s polar opposite in sartorial decisions—crisp suits and a war against all hair was his style—but rumored to be his confidant in policy. Biran had interacted with those two little over the years of his training. They were Keepers of the Protectorate, the wrinkles that should have creased their eyes smoothed away by medical intervention. Still, something aged and wise haunted both of their gazes. Neither looked happy, though they forced smiles as he nodded to them.
“We were greatly impressed by your deportment this morning,” Garcia said. Biran’s lips twitched as he stifled a smirk. Deportment seemed like such a pointless word. “You took control when chaos loomed. A thankless task, under normal circumstances. But we saw. And we thank you.”
All three bowed their heads. Where Biran would have once felt honor, he found only a void in his chest.
“What of the ships?” Biran asked. Weariness dragged him down, but he must know. The last twelve hours, hunkering under bombardment alert, knowing nothing, he’d nearly driven himself mad with speculation. He knew—he thought he knew—that in that moment, when the screens shifted, he’d lost her. His studies had taught him that instinct and truth were not always twins.
When Shun leaned forward to speak, lacing her fingers together on the desktop, all hope eroded. If Sanda had survived, the senior members would have delivered the news. That they’d deferred to Shun meant only one thing—they wanted the blow softened by the gentle delivery of his teacher.
He waited, strength fleeing him with every breath, for the truth he knew would come.
“All ships were lost. Evacuation pod signals have not come through. I’m so sorry, Biran.”
He watched them watch him as if from a great distance. Some part of him had accepted this horror the moment the newscaster’s face had darkened on the screen above the crowd. What was he supposed to say to them? What did they want to hear? What would Sanda—a flash of her eyes, topaz-brown, entered his mind’s eye—want him to say? What would she want him to be, in this moment? She’d always believed in him. Rooted for him to be a Keeper. Went into the gunships, she said, to keep her Little B safe.
“I understand,” he said. “Thank you for telling me directly, before the news went out.”
Relief washed over two faces—Shun and Garcia. Curiosity peeked from behind Lavaux’s eyes, but Biran did not know the man well enough to wonder at the emotion.
“Under the circumstances,” Shun picked up the thread, tension fleeing her shoulders. A weaver happy with what she’d wrought. “We have conferred and decided that, if you wish, you may delay the implanting of your Keeper chip. We do not want to lay undue stress upon you during your… During this time.”
Grief. They would not say the word grief.
“I want the chip,” he snapped the words out, raising eyebrows all around. “Sanda wanted this for me, above all else.”
“Then you will have it,” Lavaux spoke for the first time. Biran nodded to him, grateful.
Garcia’s expression soured. “Let us not be hasty, Lavaux. The man has suffered a great loss. He should take some time to rest and recover. There is no need to jump into things right away.”
Shun’s head bobbed agreement. Lavaux scowled.
“With all respect, Keeper Garcia,” Biran said, “there absolutely is a need to jump into things right away. Icarion’s actions have demanded a declaration of war—am I correct?”
Each Keeper shifted uncomfortably. It was Shun who finally said, “Director Olver will make an announcement to that effect later this evening.”
“Then we are in need. This is no time for anyone, at any place in our society, to sit by the wayside.”
“He’s right,” Lavaux said. “Icarion’s actions are unprecedented. We need all our great minds—senior and junior—bent to discovering their goals, their plans, and weaknesses. The defense of Ada Prime may depend upon it.”
Shun snorted. “You can’t possibility believe the rumors. Icarion is not so advanced.”
“Rumors?” Biran asked, hungry for anything to distract himself from the howl of agony building in his throat. The others exchanged wary glances, but it was Lavaux who answered.
“These two won’t tell you, fresh blood you are—and bereaved at that—but I saw you on that podium. You’re a leader, Keeper Greeve.” For just a second Biran’s ears buzzed. The reality of being called by his new title made his pulse race, but Lavaux was still talking. “And I believe you’re savvy enough to suss out the bullshit from the truth. Icarion is posturing. They claim to have built a planet-busting weapon.”
“Absolute nonsense,” Garcia said. Shun fiddled with her pen.
“That’s not what our intelligence agents are saying,” Lavaux said. “The evidence is thin, but it’s there. Before their destruction, the gunships patrolling Dralee sent back evidence of a massive construct in the area.”
“A transport ship,” Shun said.
Lavaux held both hands up in a shrug. “Or a weapon. We don’t know. We can’t know. All we know is that our people are dead. Our ships were destroyed and our evac pods wiped out—forgive my bluntness, Keeper Greeve—and we had zero warning that Icarion had anything with that kind of power in the vicinity.”
“Keepers,” Biran said as their expressions grew dark, each of them winding up for a long debate. He was tired. Too tired to watch these elders of his order bicker over the details of what had happened. Their information was in pieces. Nothing was certain. If he wanted to discover what had happened to his sister, he’d have to be the one to act. Their worries were scattered. His was singular. A lance to cut through distractions. A laser to the truth.
“I don’t know what happened out there, but I will find out.” A weakness he didn’t understand shook him, jellied his knees and his hands until his body felt limp all over, like a wrung-out towel.
Shun pushed to her feet. “Gentlemen,” she said to the elders, “Keeper Greeve is exhausted. He’s done us a great service today, and we are doing him a disservice by keeping him here when he should be resting.”
She came around the desk and extended a hand to Biran, helping him to his feet. Her hand was startlingly cold. “Eat. Shower. Rest. Your chip implantation is not scheduled until the morning.”
Food. Right. That’s what he’d forgotten—why his stomach cramped and his muscles protested. When was the last time he’d eaten? A scone and coffee before the ceremony?
“Thank you, Keepers,” he said by rote, and shook each hand before dragging himself back into the halls of the Keeper headquarters.
Those halls were silent. His were the only footsteps scuffing the floor, his shallow breath the only sound above the constant background whir of the station’s life-support systems. Part academy, part congress, and part conference center, the Keeper headquarters—jokingly named the Cannery—was never busy on the best of days. Open only to Keepers, select military personnel, and the rare visiting diplomat, silence was a way of life in the Cannery.
But this silence was different. It was a waiting silence. The silence of breath being held, of hope and fear choking each other.
The hall that led him back to his student apartment—soon he’d move out, into a home in the Keeper neighborhood on station—boasted a long, rectangular picture window. Through the plex, Keep Station held its breath just as tightly as the Cannery. The domed station had shifted into artificial night, the great shield of the sky allowing brilliant, natural, starlight to peer inside. Speckles of house lights winked back at the stars, but not so many as there usually were. The city of Keep Station was dark.
He pressed a palm against the window, wondering.
Wondering how it all went so wrong. How a people, brave and bold, could be made to hide in their burrows like frightened mice. How a milit
ary—a vast military, one so large that its logistics were incomprehensible to him—could be dealt such a sudden and heavy blow.
How on a day so charged, he could feel so empty. So numb. The cold of the glass did not even faze him.
His fathers. He needed to find his fathers. To talk to them, to make sure they were safe, to tell them… To tell them…
“Biran?”
He flinched, taking his hand from the window to shove it in his pocket. At the end of the hall, Anaia waited. Hesitant, her body half turned away, her fingers twiddling with the hem of her hip-cropped jacket. He hadn’t really looked at her since she’d blown him off years ago to get closer to Lili, the wealthiest and assumed-to-be most influential of their cohort.
The years hadn’t changed her all that much. She had the same grey-green eyes she’d always had, alight with curiosity, but a weight that had nothing to do with gravity pushed down her shoulders, pursed uncertainty into her lips. He wanted to rebuke her, to accuse her of slinking around the halls hunting for gossip to feed to Lili, but he just didn’t have it in him. The weariness around her eyes was the most real thing he’d seen in ages. She sniffed, pushing up her glasses, and he snapped back into himself.
“Anaia, it’s late. You should be resting.”
Dust streaked her dark cheeks, her tightly curled hair mussed from grime and sweat. But she stood straighter at his admonishment and lifted her chin.
“So should you.”
“I—” His voice cracked, something brittle inside him finally giving way. She was beside him in the space of a breath, strong arms wrapped around him, the hard nub of her chin pressing into the side of his head as he bent his face to her shoulder and shuddered, tears rolling.
“Shhh,” she whispered, stroking his back. “Shhh. What happened?”
A stupid question, but she hadn’t known about the evac pods. About the dead signals, failing to hail home and scream that their people were safe.
“Sanda,” he choked, then extricated himself from her, rubbing his cheeks furiously with both hands to invigorate himself. “The pods. There’re no signals.”
She took a step back and her gaze slid away, staring out into the false night. She’d always been a terrible poker player.
“What is it?” he demanded.
She bit her lip. “I’m not supposed to know this, but…”
“But what?”
She flicked her gaze from side to side and lowered her voice. “The evac pods. They aren’t dead. They’re broadcasting.”
CHAPTER 5
PRIME STANDARD YEAR 3541
PLANET: ATRUX | LOCATION: THE GROTTA
This wasn’t the biggest score of Jules’s life; this was a fucking joke. The tracker had led her to a warehouse that slouched against the ground. A radio tower stuck up through the center of the rusting pile of trash, an architectural middle finger. It took Nox thirty seconds before he laughed, hot breath fogging the front window of their hacked autocab.
“Quiet,” Harlan said.
“Are you seeing this shit?” Nox asked.
Jules’s hands tightened on the tablet she’d Velcroed to the dash of the autocab, watching her program tell her over and over again they’d arrived at the indicated destination with a blinking blue smiley face over the dump that was the warehouse.
“This is it,” she said, trying to sound like nothing at all was wrong.
“It’s garbage.”
“Are you sure?” Harlan asked.
“This is it. I slapped a tracker in that crate of wraith. It, and the rest of the shipment, have to be in there.”
“Unless the tracker fell off,” Nox said.
“It didn’t.”
“Can’t be sure.”
“If you don’t shut your flap-hole—”
“Whoa,” Harlan said. “We’re here. Let’s check it out.” He tapped the earpiece in his right ear. “Lolla, you with us?”
“I got nowhere else to be, don’t I?”
“Easy, kid. What’s it look like from your end?”
“Hard to tell. There’s not much security in the area in general—the storage company down the road has better cameras. The place is drawing power, though, there’s no doubt about that. I can’t see through the walls, obviously. I mean I could if Harlan would shell out for that new ultrasonic hand-scanner that Arden was babbling on about—”
“He wanted two thousand credits, up front, no view of a prototype.”
“Prime already has stuff like it!”
“Prime has a whole hell of a lot the likes of us will never see. Certainly not the likes of Arden. Continue.”
“Ugh. Fine. Anyway, the place is drawing more power than it looks like it should. So, generators on the inside. Probably even security systems, though judging by how much they care about the outside of this place, they’re probably just electric locks. Or, I dunno, still-frame cameras or something. Heh. You want more info, I need in.”
“No,” Harlan said.
Jules muted her comm link and lowered her voice so Harlan’s and Nox’s mics wouldn’t pick anything up. “We should bring Lolla in with us.”
Harlan swiped his own comm link mute. “Absolutely not. We’ve been through this. She’s brilliant, but she’s still a kid. She’s not ready to be on the ground for ops.”
“She’s fourteen. You had me breaking and entering at twelve.”
“You’d killed by eleven, all on your own. Lolla’s different.”
“You mean her parents left her a trust fund that actualizes at eighteen and you don’t want to risk your paycheck.”
“Don’t push me, Jules. Her parents trusted me.”
“Yeah, well, we all make mistakes. This is my op. The risks are low, the score is easy, the kid is in. Nox, you got a problem with that?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Good.” Jules swiped the comm link back open, ignoring Harlan’s bug-eyed glare. “Lolla, what’s our weakest link?”
“Cargo door on the south side of the building. Low light, bunch of junk for cover.”
“Meet us there in five.”
“Seriously?!”
“Don’t make me second-guess myself.”
“Understood. En route. Uh—over?”
Harlan shot her a look as the kid clicked off, but Jules only had eyes for the tablet display she ripped off the Velcroed dash. Lolla had pumped her the data she’d scraped from her safe perch above the area. Even Jules had to admit—in private, to herself, not to either of those two chumps in the car—that it all looked downright boring. Positively mundane.
Could be that it was all theater, that the run-down building and the stripped-down security systems were hiding something really good. Wishful thinking, when the only thing she should wish for right now was for the wraith cache to actually be in that crapsack building.
Unlikely, if the evidence of her eyes was anything to go by. People didn’t bother with misdirection anymore. Either they were black market and jacked up their security to look tougher and more important than they were, or they were Prime and their security systems were so top-notch you didn’t realize you were walking into them until the grab-walls had you. Maybe that’s what this shack was. So high-tech they couldn’t see it.
Ha-fucking-ha.
“On the ground,” Lolla said.
“Coming to you.” Jules exited the car and, by force of habit, checked the weapon holstered to her hip. It was just a stunner—an old stick modded out to look like it might be capable of killing instead of giving you a really nasty migraine—but its weight reassured her. Harlan wouldn’t let them carry killing weapons. He always said the authorities didn’t hunt after the source of a stunned body with the same passion they did a dead one.
Jules always said the dead one couldn’t hunt you down, the stunned one could—so what the fuck were they doing, letting their dicks hang out like that?
But her saying wasn’t as catchy, and even though this was her score, Harlan was the big boss. His crew, his saying, his ru
les. Someday it’d be hers, though. Just had to make scores first. Like this wraith cache.
Lolla had her hoodie pulled up, the asymmetrical zip dragging black synth fabric across the lower half of her face like a mask while the hood drooped over her forehead and hung down her shoulders. She looked like something out of a spy vid. Was only missing a few random bits of wire dangling from her pockets for flair.
Nox snickered. Jules got him in the ribs with an elbow. Either Lolla didn’t notice or didn’t care. She slunk up to them, keeping her eyes on her wristpad as she jabbed at some arcane data stream.
“No change. Everything’s clear.”
“Right. Let’s have a look then.” Harlan approached the door while Jules and Nox flanked him—stunners held out and low. He tried the handle—locked, but old-school. No hackpatches then. Super. He took a minute with a pick tool to get the bolt to turn, metal squealing against metal, and Jules found herself sympathetic for the thieves of the past. How they got away with anything making all this racket, she’d never understand.
The door swung up, grinding out an alarm that had nothing to do with tech and everything to do with disrepair and rust. They froze as a unit, waiting… waiting. But no better alarms announced their entry, so Jules and Nox went in first, painting the walls with the light from the ends of their stunners.
Uneven tiles puckered up the floor, grit and garbage crunching under their boots with every step. Water damage darkened the walls in great swathes of mold, every surface stripped bare of furniture. A few hopeful steel beams marked the middle of the floor, illustrating the spot where a mag-pallet system might have been in use back in the ancient heyday of this facility. Otherwise: broken wall panels, half-hinged doors, cracked-open utility panels. Not a single light source in the whole place, unless any of the mold was secretly phosphorescent.
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