by Liana Brooks
“If I’m right, you are the Jane Doe Sam and I found in Alabama. We buried you, and we know what the murder weapon was, and we know Emir’s machine was used to dump your body, just like the victim in the yellow shirt was dumped using Emir’s machine. We never found the killer—there wasn’t enough evidence—and we had reasons not to pursue the case.”
Jane nodded slowly. “So what do you want to do?”
“I’m going to find out who killed you.”
CHAPTER 19
“What courage it takes to leave the shore, to venture to lands unknown. In the swollen wave and stormy sky, the restless heart finds home.”
~ excerpt from A Wild Sea by Laya Zaffre I2—2036
Friday December 6, 2069
Sydney, New South Wales
Australia
Iteration 2
“Smell that, Bosco? Dead fish and rotting gull flesh.” Sam took a deep breath of briny, polluted air and smiled. “That’s the smell of an escape hatch.”
Bosco sat by her feet and watched the bustling docks with the disbelieving look of a dog whose definition of abuse prior to this moment was running out of kibble. He turned to her with a mournful expression in his big black eyes. As if to say, “We left home for this?”
Really, it was unfair. Mastiffs weren’t water dogs, and Bosco wasn’t fond of dead fish, but she wasn’t leaving him behind while she chased shadows.
She scratched his ear, rubbing the silky, short fur between her fingertips as she searched for the cargo vessel she wanted. “There we are, The Piper, pride of someone’s fleet I’m sure. Bosco, ðên ðây.”
He stood obediently and followed Sam past the forklifts and cargo containers.
They walked to the foot of the gangplank for a trans-Pacific cargo vessel already stacked high with anonymous and rusting containers in a variety of colors.
A broad-nosed man with a clipboard frowned at her. “Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for Captain Hanshi of The Piper,” Sam said. “I’m one of your passengers.”
The man sucked air through a gap between his front teeth. “You sure, lady? This isn’t our usual run. We’re headed to Los Angeles in the Commonwealth. Maybe you got the date wrong.”
“Pretty sure I didn’t,” Sam said. “Is the captain here? I’d like to sort it out with him.”
The man looked at her, then down at Bosco, before looking over his shoulder at the ship. “It’s just I’ve got thirty more containers to load before the tide changes, and . . .”
“How about I go find the captain myself. He should be up near the helm, right?”
“Up the gangplank, turn left at the green container with stars, then up the stairs,” the man said. “And don’t tell him I sent you.”
“I don’t even know your name,” Sam said with a smile she knew wasn’t as friendly as it should have been. She’d lost the skill to smile without making it threatening over the years. Mac didn’t seem to mind, though, and his opinion was the only one that mattered.
She slapped her thigh, and Bosco trotted up the gangplank beside her. He stopped once, as a wave from a passing cruise liner rocked the boat, but other than the disapproving look he gave her, he registered no further complaints.
The ship deck was a maze of containers that looked like the scene from an old dystopian movie. At any minute, she half expected a zombie or a teched-up cyborg with cables dangling from her eye to jump out. Sounds echoed oddly, distorting the voices of the crew members shouting from the depths of the stacks and amplifying the sounds of the engines churning water or dumping ballast or doing whatever it was they did in port.
Her knowledge of ships this size was limited to what she’d picked up from retired captains and crew who visited Airlie Beach on holiday. Kayaks she could handle. Sailboats weren’t bad as long as they were small, and Mac wasn’t trying to convince her to sail around the coast of Australia. This ship was something else—a behemoth, a titan, a Mt. Everest when all she’d ever climbed were rolling hills.
Bosco stopped to pee on a green container with faded yellow stars, and they continued through the maze. Up metal stairs welded to a tower, and onward to blue skies and screaming gulls.
“Ngôi.” Sam held her hand in a fist, and Bosco’s rump hit the deck with military discipline. She knocked on the rounded door in front of her. “Captain Hanshi?”
The door swung open to reveal the rounded, suntanned face of a man only slightly taller than Sam. He frowned slightly at her, then saw Bosco, and his eyes went wide in alarm. “What in the hells is that?”
“A mastiff,” Sam said. She snapped her fingers, signaling for Bosco to scoot closer to her. “He doesn’t bite anyone. Not unless I tell him to.”
The man sniffed and rubbed a finger under his nose. “Yeah? Looks like a man-eater.”
“Only when I’m too lazy to hide the bodies myself. Are you Captain Hanshi?”
“I am. Are you the mystery lady who called me up last night?”
Sam shrugged. “Probably. But that depends on how many late-night calls you get from beautiful women.”
Hanshi smiled and laughed. “Come on in. He, ah, won’t do anything . . . will he?” he asked as he watched Bosco.
“He goes toilet on command, so unless you know the Vietnamese phrase for telling him to do his business, you’re fine.”
“I know some Vietnamese,” Hanshi said, “but I’ll stick to English.”
He opened the door wider and invited them into a small cockpit lined with computers and buttons Sam didn’t even think of pushing.
“Why Vietnamese?” he asked.
Sam shook her head. “It was one of the few languages no one in the neighborhood knew. We were going to use German or French, but I didn’t want a high school kid to walk past the house and order him to jump the fence on accident.”
“Fair enough,” Hanshi said. He sighed, looked at Bosco one more time, then turned his attention to Sam. “So, you want to go to the Commonwealth.”
“That’s the plan.”
“I know I mentioned this to the broker you spoke to, but that’s impossible. For any amount of money.”
Sam smiled, she’d anticipated that response. “Not to a Commonwealth citizen.” She reached into her back pocket and pulled out the old Commonwealth passport she’d been carrying around for a lot longer than the 2068 stamp suggested.
Hanshi raised an eyebrow in doubt. “And what is a Commonwealth citizen doing in Australia? The border’s been closed for years.”
“I work for the CBI, and anything else I tell you would put you at risk of being exposed to extreme government scrutiny.” As far as she knew, that was a lie. The Commonwealth’s interest is the South Pacific was strictly commercial; fabric and trade goods were welcome, people were not.
Most of the Commonwealth’s leaders didn’t have the same obsessive intelligence-gathering drive as some of its predecessor countries, but Hanshi was a man operating on the edge of legality. He wasn’t a Commonwealth citizen, but he was doing trade with them. Theoretically operating out of Sydney, but she knew his ship was flying a flag from Greece and making undocumented runs to China.
In short, he was exactly the kind of man who couldn’t risk the Commonwealth’s attention.
Sam snapped her passport shut with a smile. “I know you take passengers sometimes.”
“On shorter trips,” Hanshi said. “A quick run between Darwin and Indonesia. Tourists who want the experience and a chance to go the places the big cruise ships don’t. From here to the Americas, it’s not a short trip.”
“You average twenty-four days, don’t you?” Sam asked. When Mac had suggested traveling by cargo ship to get back to the Commonwealth, she’d put it at the bottom of the contingency list. God had created planes for a reason, or at least inspired Joe Sutter to design the Boeing planes used worldwide.
But all the other plans had involved going back to the Commonwealth together, on their own terms, after making contact with someone in the CBI who could understand the situation.
Now she was alone, and the only person who could help her was scheduled to die in fourteen weeks. Not that she was counting. Or hoping.
She didn’t want Troom to die. Again. She rubbed her head and tried to focus. It was getting harder. Memories from the years she’d lived colliding with memories she knew were currently forming. The human mind wasn’t meant for time travel, and the English language wasn’t meant to describe it.
Hanshi tapped his foot. “My average rate for a passenger is eleven thousand. In advance.”
“I’ll give you twenty, and we can haggle over your tip in Los Angeles,” Sam said.
The captain looked at Bosco. “Is he, ah, coming with?”
“Don’t worry, we can share a cabin.”
Bosco let his tongue hang out.
“I have his kibble and my gear waiting on the dock,” Sam said. “All I need is a ride back home. I’ll stay out of your way. Bosco here will handle my security and make sure no one accidentally winds up in my bunk. With a little luck, in a month, you’ll be wealthy, and I’ll be back home, where I can give my boss the swift kick in the pants he so rightly deserves for abandoning me out here.”
The captain waggled his head back and forth with a little dithering sigh. “Half now, half at the dock. To show I’m a loyal patriot.”
“You’re not from the Commonwealth.”
“Doesn’t mean I’m not a patriot,” Hanshi said. “But the dog, he doesn’t go in the galley. The cook would have a fit.”
“Bosco will stay in my cabin except for his walks. I promise. You won’t even know we’re here.”
“Somehow I doubt that,” he said, but held his hand out to shake on it.
CHAPTER 20
“Every time we think we fully understand the mechanics of the machine, something changes. It is operating with a mathematics we do not yet comprehend.”
~ Dr. Abdul Emir, Prime—2069
Day 191/365
Year 5 of Progress
(July 10, 2069)
Central Command
Third Continent
Prime Reality
Rose pulled her hair back, stabbing pins into the severe bun with sharp, angry jabs. The woman looking at her from the mirror looked placid, but Rose could feel the turmoil roiling inside. Her breathing was even; her thoughts were not. Quickening her steps, she went to the small living area, where the kidnapped node was curled in the corner, sleeping. He looked like what he was: a vagabond from another place. She could only hope he wasn’t as useless as he appeared.
“Wake up,” she ordered, throwing light body armor and a coverall at his feet. “We have a meeting in twelve minutes.”
One eye opened with a baleful glare. “Twelve?”
“I was given short notice.” Donovan’s doing, no doubt. Last night, he’d made a formal complaint about her living arrangements. Laura Para’s death could have been ignored, swept under the rug for “morale purposes,” but now a civilian from one of the other towers had been found dead in a passage connecting the command tower to the less important living domes. Central Command was scrambling to gain control, Brost was blustering around like he owned the place, and Senturi was smiling far too much for her to be happy.
Donovan had suggested that Rose was unsafe living alone. That it would be better for her to bunk with some of the female techs. It was a logical argument, calculated to make her look weak without Donovan’s risking an outright attack.
If Emir or Donovan found out about MacKenzie on their own, it wouldn’t look good.
“Hurry!” she shouted, as he staggered to a standing position. “How do you stand being this out of shape?”
He raised an eyebrow. “I’m in shape, but I need more than forty minutes of sleep to operate effectively.”
“Just get dressed.” She paced by the door as she waited for him, burning the nervous energy now, so she could appear calm when she faced down Emir.
The odds were in her favor. Emir liked her for some inconceivable reason. He thought she agreed with his schemes, not quite realizing that her driving goal was always self-preservation and the preservation of humanity. It was a nervous tic she couldn’t suppress. She needed to protect people, even if it meant defying Emir or taking him out.
MacKenzie stepped out of the washroom, looking clean if not well-groomed.
“You need a haircut.”
He ran a hand through his short hair. “I’ll be sure to go to the barber the next time I’m out.”
Always with a little joke. She unlocked the door. “Dr. Emir is the leader of this iteration. You will speak only when spoken to. You will not question him. You will show him the respect he is due, or you will die.”
“Is he as crazy here as he is in other iterations?” MacKenzie asked, as they walked down the hallway.
Rose paused and took a deep breath. “No iteration of Emir is insane. Your inability to understand his genius reflects poorly on you, not him.”
“He’s a mass murderer with sadistic tendencies. It has nothing to do with IQ. It’s his personality that’s flawed. Maybe his genes.”
She pivoted, refusing to listen. “Don’t talk. I need to keep you alive.”
He shrugged and followed her the rest of the way in silence.
They drew curious looks from passing technicians, but no one said anything. This was her domain as much as Emir’s. People feared him, but they respected her, and that could be just as important in terms of intimidation. Everyone knew who she was. Their Paladin. Their shield against the dangerous future. Their advocate against time and human failings.
Pressing her hand against the lock pad, she opened the door to the conference room. It was cooler than the halls. The air was fresher and the fabric on the chairs a better quality. This was where the nodes met, and Emir maintained it with a sense of understated luxury the rest of Central Command was not afforded.
Emir sat at the head of the long wooden table, the king on his throne. “Commander Rose and . . . a bodyguard? Is this your answer to Donovan’s concerns? I’m surprised you acknowledged them.”
“I didn’t.” Because giving Donovan any ammunition against her would allow him to take her down, scoop her out of Central Command, and have her imprisoned like the other nodes if he didn’t have her killed outright. She couldn’t prove it yet, but Donovan was up to something. He was too calm, too focused, and spending too much time with Senturi. It was time to throw a wrench in Donovan’s plans.
“Dr. Emir, may I present Captain Linsey MacKenzie.”
Emir shook his head with a little frown. “I’m not familiar with the name. Is he important?”
“Only at home,” MacKenzie quipped.
Rose glared at him behind Emir’s back. “He was the original Soldier Node before his untimely demise in the final days of the War of Peace.” Thirteen decades of fighting had paved the way for the world government and Emir’s meteoric rise to power. Thirteen decades, and several billion lives. “I brought him here to stabilize our iteration until decoherence.”
Emir steepled his fingers in front of his chin. “A new node?”
“Donovan has been acting impulsively, even recklessly. We discussed this, and both agreed that the only way we could have lost our position as Prime was if we had lost a node. Donovan is clearly the broken link. Captain MacKenzie will allow us to regain preeminence.” Rose kept her face calm. Not a muscle moved, and her pulse didn’t leap, but inside she felt the familiar surge of joyful victory.
Emir was going to let her have this.
He looked at MacKenzie skeptically. “Where did you find him? I sincerely hope you didn’t entangle our own past to bring him here. Have you been trained as a solider?”
Rose wanted to slap him. He’d issued a blatant challenge, and only the thick layers of ego insulating Emir from reality were keeping MacKenzie’s execution from being ordered.
She rushed to retake control of the conversation. “Sir, I took him out of the iteration that was trying to take our position as Prime. You’ll notice that since his arrival, the two iterations are running parallel. The theory of Einselected Maximums seems to be holding true.”
It was a risky statement, skirting close to the possibility of insulting Emir’s theory without actually questioning it—but she had to press now; it was the only way to survive. “We’ve never been able to mature two einselected nodes of the same designation before. I know several of your students posited that such a buildup would result in a temporal instability.”
What she didn’t bring up was the fact that the ones who had posited that the iterations with the most options going forward would survive had been found dead within the hour. Directly contradicting Emir’s scientific discoveries was suicide.
“Their theory was that having several variations of the same individual gathered in the same space will cause instability and mental anguish,” Emir corrected, his goatee framing a patronizing smirk. “Very few people are able to handle the dissonance of seeing another version of themselves.”
Rose nodded. “It can be disconcerting at first, sir.” Inside, though, she was excited: He was going to say yes. She could practically see him writing MacKenzie into his plans, plotting how to turn this twist to his benefit. “MacKenzie won’t have that problem as his other-self is already dead.”
Emir stood, fingertips resting lightly on the table. “Very well, Rose. You may keep your experiment. Find him housing and a uniform. Get him into training. His nodal set never does well with forced inactivity.”
“Thank you for allowing this, sir.” She bowed her head to hide the first hint of a smug smile. She’d won.
