The fire crackled in the hearth, and they watched the flames dance. After a while, Lucien glanced back at his wife. There were tears glistening on her cheeks.
“Tyra?” he asked, surprised to see that.
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay...?”
“I’ll resign.”
Lucien blinked, not sure whether to trust his ears. He’d waited so long for her say those words that now he couldn’t be sure he’d actually heard them. “You’ll...”
Tyra turned to him, and nodded once. “I’ll resign. We’ll move to the districts, and then we’ll be a family again.”
Lucien pulled her into a fierce embrace, wrapping her up and cradling her to his chest. He breathed in the scent of her hair, reveling in the moment. His heart felt like it might explode.
“You’ve made me so happy,” he whispered.
Tyra shook in his arms, crying. “I’m sorry it took me so long.”
He withdrew to an arm’s length to look her in the eye. “What changed your mind?”
She shook her head. “All of this. You, sending your clone to join the expeditionary forces. Atara, being turned into a...” Tyra trailed off for lack of words to describe what had happened to their daughter.
A faro? Lucien thought.
“Our family is falling apart, Lucien, and suddenly me being the councilor of a city that doesn’t even exist anymore doesn’t seem so important.”
Lucien nodded. “We’ll put the pieces back together as soon as this is over. I promise.”
Tyra nodded hesitantly. “I talked to Wheeler today.”
“And?”
“She’s agreed to help us, but she doesn’t trust Coretti, Lucien. She thinks he’s got his own agenda for getting into the Resurrection Center.”
“I don’t trust him either, and he probably does have his own agenda, but we need to deal with one threat at a time.”
Tyra nodded. “That’s what I told her. Just... be careful, okay? Make sure you go into this with both eyes open.”
“I will.” Lucien pulled Tyra close and kissed the top of her head.
“I wish I were going with you.”
“We need you more at the banquet. You keep Stavos and Graves busy so Wheeler can do her part.”
Tyra pushed him away, but he didn’t have time to ask why, because she grabbed his shirt and pulled his lips down to hers for a real kiss.
With that, something snapped inside of Lucien and memories came flooding back, memories of all the good times, followed by visions of the bright future ahead. They were going to be a family again. Finally. Lucien couldn’t think of anything he wanted more.
All they had to do was reverse whatever had been done to Atara and get Astralis back from the Faros.
After that, life would be just about perfect.
* * *
Astralis
Atara sat in the dark on the landing at the bottom of the stairs. She’d been on her way up to see Theola. Poor, innocent little Theola. Atara smirked at the thought of her baby sister. One-year-olds were funny. They would put almost anything in their mouths.
Atara opened her fist, revealing a small, gleaming glass ball. She’d stolen it from a flower vase and had been on her way up to wake Theola and show her the pretty new toy.
But on her way up the stairs, Atara had overheard her parents talking in the living room, and she’d stopped to listen in. She knew they were suspicious of her, so she had to take advantage of moments like these to figure out what they were planning to do about it.
Most of their conversation was sappy and meaningless. Atara was just about to continue up the stairs when she overheard something interesting—
“I talked to Wheeler today.”
“And?”
“She’s agreed to help us, but she doesn’t trust Coretti, Lucien. She thinks he’s got his own agenda for getting into the Resurrection Center.”
“I don’t trust him either, and he probably does have his own agenda, but we need to deal with one threat at a time.”
“That’s what I told her. Just... be careful, okay? Make sure you go into this with both eyes open.”
“I will.”
“I wish I were going with you.”
“We need you more at the banquet. You keep Stavos and Graves busy so Wheeler can do her part.”
The mention of the Resurrection Center was interesting. Atara the five-year-old, knew nothing about the significance of her parents trying to get in there, but Atara the Faro knew plenty. It meant they weren’t just suspicious of her, they were suspicious of the others, too, and they were trying to get proof.
There wasn’t much Atara could do about it directly—five year-olds couldn’t alert security and expect to be taken seriously—but Atara could do something better than that. She crept down the stairs and back down the hallway to her room. She opened the door carefully, and shut it quietly behind her.
Once she was back in bed, under the covers, she activated her ARCs and composed a message, text-only, to Chief Councilor Ellis.
She attached the audio log from her ARCs and told Ellis to listen to the last five minutes of it.
Chief Ellis answered a few moments later, thanking her for the information. He also told her not to draw any more attention to herself—that meant giving Theola the glass ball would have to wait. Atara wasn’t happy about it, but she understood the importance of staying undercover, so she agreed to Ellis’s orders. For now.
After the conversation ended, Atara lay awake in bed, dreaming up other kinds of mischief she could cause. The ideas she came up with weren’t as much fun as slipping her sister a deadly new toy, but they would be amusing nonetheless.
Atara grew sleepy, and her hand relaxed. The glass ball fell from her hand and bounced noisily on the floor. Her eyes flew wide, and she watched the ball roll along the floor, gleaming in the dark. Oops.
A moment later, Atara heard footsteps in the hallway, and then the door to her room cracked open, and a bright wedge of light fanned out along the floor. She froze, listening to her parents whisper in the entryway.
“I told you she was asleep,” Tyra said.
“I thought I heard something...”
“Maybe it was Brak?”
“Look.” Lucien walked into view, and Atara shut her eyes to slits, watching him through a veil of eyelashes. He bent to pick up the glass ball and showed it to Tyra.
“What’s that?” she asked.
Lucien straightened and held the ball up to the light. Tyra walked over to see.
“It’s from my vase!” she said, her whispers suddenly sharp. “But that’s up on the bar. How did she even reach that?”
“She must have stood on something,” Lucien said.
Like a bar stool? Atara smirked.
Both her parents turned to look at her, and Atara froze, not even daring to breathe.
“Atara?” Tyra asked, not whispering anymore.
They don’t know I’m awake. They can’t!
“Her ARCs are on,” Lucien said. “She’s awake.”
Oops. Atara noticed the subtle glow bouncing back off her eyelids.
“Atara...” Tyra pressed in a warning voice. “Stop pretending to be asleep.”
She cracked her eyes open and stretched. “Mmmm?” she mumbled sleepily.
Her parents came to stand beside her bed. Tyra went down on her haunches, her brow pinched with suspicion. “Why are you pretending to be asleep? And what are your ARCs doing on at this time?”
“I was watching cartoons, and I fell asleep. I wasn’t pretending.”
“So why didn’t your ARCs turn off?”
Double oops. ARCs were designed to turn off automatically when the wearer fell asleep, unless they were specifically set to always on. “I don’t know,” Atara lied.
“Well turn them off, we’ll look at the settings together in the morning,”
Atara nodded sleepily. “Okay...”
Tyra held up the glass ball. “Where did you get this?”
&nb
sp; Atara shrugged. Her parents didn’t know her plans for that bauble. “It looked pretty,” she said.
“And you stood on a chair to reach the bar? You could have fallen and hit your head!”
You’d like that, wouldn’t you?
“Don’t do it again, do you understand me?” Tyra said.
Atara nodded. She’d do something else, instead.
“Turn off your ARCs.”
Atara did so.
“Good. Now go to bed, honey.” Tyra stood up and walked away.
“Okay...”
“Goodnight, Atty,” Lucien said from the door.
“Goodnight, Daddy. Goodnight, Mommy. I love you.”
“Love you, too,” Tyra replied.
Lucien didn’t say anything.
Still mad about the broken finger? Atara wondered, and smiled to herself. The door swung shut again, and Atara breathed out a sigh. That was close....
Chapter 42
Astralis
“You and I both know she wasn’t watching cartoons,” Lucien said.
Tyra gazed down on Theola, reticent to tear her eyes away from their youngest daughter. She and Lucien had come up to check on her right after leaving Atara’s room. Thankfully she was fine. Slowly, Tyra turned to face her husband. “Then what was she doing?”
“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.”
“How?”
Lucien smiled, then glanced around quickly, as if to make sure Atara hadn’t somehow snuck in behind them. He walked up to the door and touched the keypad. Tyra heard the deadbolt slide into place.
“Lucien?” she prompted.
He turned back to her and answered in a whisper, “Ever since Atara tripped me, I used the parental controls on her ARCs to enable monitoring. All I have to do now is check the history to see what she’s been doing.”
“What if she found out?”
Lucien shook his head. “If she knew I was monitoring her, then she wouldn’t have been using her ARCs to do whatever she was doing. She would have known to be more careful.”
“But if you use your ARCs to access hers, and someone in the Resurrection Center is monitoring you, then they’ll know we’re suspicious of her,” Tyra said.
“We’ll log in from our holoscreen,” he said, nodding to the screen at the foot of their bed. The screen was innocuously disguised as a famous painting—Passing the Torch—that depicted one sun rising over a purple sea just as another one set.
Lucien waved the screen to life and the painting disappeared, replaced by a hub of available applications. He selected the browser application and summoned a holographic keypad to type in an address. The keypad was safer than using his ARCs right now. A login screen appeared with the title, Monitoring for Atara Ortane, and Tyra watched him type in his credentials. That done, an account summary with various tabs appeared. Lucien used his finger to move a floating cursor and select the tab titled Activity Log.
“Well, well...” he said, shaking his head. “Cartoons my ass. Look at this.” He pointed to the most recent lines of the log.
Tyra walked over to look, and promptly gasped. “She sent a message to Chief Councilor Ellis?”
Lucien nodded slowly. “I guess that settles any doubts we may have had about them. Let’s see...” Lucien selected the message to see what Atara had sent.
“It’s an audio log from her ARCs,” Tyra said. “She told him to listen to it. What did she overhear?”
Lucien looked at her. “Us. Talking in the living room.”
“But we weren’t talking about anything...” Tyra trailed off, remembering.
“You mentioned Wheeler, and Coretti, and the Res Center, and I mentioned the banquet. We may as well have called Ellis and told him what we’re planning.” Lucien keyed the log for playback and dialed down the volume to make sure Atara didn’t wake up. What they heard on the log only confirmed their fears. Atara had heard everything.
“It’s over,” Tyra said. “Ellis will have security officers here to arrest us by morning.”
Lucien nodded slowly. “Probably. Or even tonight.”
“Can’t we use this to incriminate them? What would our daughter be doing talking to the Chief Councilor?”
“It’s odd, I’ll give you that, but Ellis could explain it easily enough. He could say he suspected we were planning some kind of terrorist plot and so he used our own daughter to spy on us.”
“But why Ellis? Why not get the cops involved?”
“Because I’m a cop,” Lucien said. “Ellis will say he didn’t trust the ship’s security forces to catch one of their own.”
Tyra could feel her eyes drifting out of focus. Her heart thudded in her chest, and blood rushed in her ears. “What are we going to do?”
“We’re going to break into the center now. Tonight.”
“But the banquet—”
“Is no use to us now.”
“What about the plan to get in with a maintenance worker? It’s the middle of the night!”
“You’ve never heard of 24-hour repairmen?”
“Lucien—Wheeler won’t be able to help you.”
“You don’t know that. Try and call her. If you can’t reach her, then we’ll just have to go in blind.”
“And what am I supposed to do? Sit here and pray to Etherus that you pull this off?”
Lucien nodded. “Can’t hurt.”
“Lucien, I was being serious.”
“So was I.”
Tyra frowned.
“Stay here with Theola, and whatever you do, don’t let Atara find out that Brak and I are gone.”
“What if she gets up and goes to look in on Brak?”
“I’ll lock his door before we leave, and if you lock yourself in here, too, then even if she starts wandering around in the middle of the night, she won’t figure out we’re missing until morning. Hopefully by then this will all be over.”
Tyra frowned. “There has to be something else I can do.”
“There isn’t.” Lucien went to her walk-in closet, and she followed him there. He dropped to his haunches in front of their safe and typed in the key-code. Locking bolts thunked as they slid aside, and Lucien opened the safe. He withdrew the three cloaking comm units that Coretti had provided. He fitted one over his ear and then waved a hand over it to make it disappear. Then he handed her another one, and pocketed the last for Brak. Tyra fitted hers to her ear as Lucien had done.
I’ll let you know once we’re in position, Lucien said via a text-only message. If security arrives looking for us before then... stall them.
Tyra nodded. That was the only useful thing she could do at this point. I’ll do my best. Be careful.
I will. I love you, he replied, and kissed her quickly on the lips.
Love you, too, Tyra texted back. She followed him through their room and watched as he unlocked the door and left.
After a moment of staring at the shut door in shock, Tyra walked up to it and locked it via the keypad.
That done, she composed another text message—
Commander Wheeler, come in!
She waited a few seconds, and then tried again. Wheeler, this is Councilor Ortane, I need to speak with you urgently!
But no reply came.
* * *
Astralis
Lucien and Brak went straight to the Crack of Dawn, hoping to find Joe Coretti there. They got lucky, but Joe wasn’t amused about the change of plans.
“That little brat mentioned my name?”
“Technically my wife did.”
Joe scowled. “Security will be swarming around here soon thanks to her. I wasn’t planning to join you in the Res Center, but now I have to.”
“You’re coming with?” Lucien asked.
Joe nodded. “You think I’m going to stick around here waiting to get arrested as an accomplice in your plot? Frek that.” He jumped up from his throne-shaped chair and snatched a still-smoldering glow stick from the ashtray beside him. He waved over his shoulder for the
m to follow. Bob the android waited for them to go first.
“What about the rest of the team?” Lucien asked.
“I’ll get them to meet us along the way,” Joe mumbled around his glow stick. He led them through a bedroom with rumpled sheets and holocorders sitting around on charging pads, to a big ornate walk-in closet with black, mirrored cabinets and gold trim. Joe walked straight to the back of the closet and opened one of those cabinets. Dozens of expensive suits hung inside, but Joe pushed them aside and waved his hand over the wall behind them. At that, a recessed door appeared and slid aside. Joe walked through and lights snapped on, revealing another type of closet, this one stocked with racks of weapons. Lucien and Brak followed him in, while Bob stayed to guard the entrance. The android was already wearing a pair of bulky pulse pistols.
“What’s your preference?” Joe asked, standing in front of a rack of automatic rifles.
“We’re infiltrating the center through ducts, so small is better.”
“If you say so,” Joe snorted, and grabbed one of the rifles for himself. He pointed to another rack filled with pistols, and Lucien walked over there.
Lucien was busy examining an automatic stun pistol when Joe came over and took it from him. “You planning to stun the Marine bots when they come for us?” Joe put the pistol back on the rack and removed a laser pistol and two spare charge packs.
Lucien accepted the weapon with a frown. Joe passed him a twin-holster gun harness, and Lucien belted it around his torso. “What about live personnel at the center? We can’t kill them.”
“Why not? They won’t stay dead. It’s just a longer-acting form of stun.”
Lucien eyed Joe. “We’re not killing anyone. We’ll never get out of going to the corrections center if we leave a trail of bodies behind us.”
“Fine,” Joe said, and passed the automatic stun pistol back.
Lucien slipped it into the other holster. “If we do this right, we shouldn’t have to use our guns at all.”
“Sure, you keep thinking that,” Joe said, and patted the rifle hanging off his shoulder.
Lucien turned to look for Brak and found him examining a rack of swords and knives.
“You like those?” Joe asked, strolling over to the Gor.
Dark Space Universe (Book 2): The Enemy Within Page 33
