In point of fact, she hadn’t strictly needed to travel to Seneca at all—with Annie’s help the routine examination of Commander Lekkas could have been conducted virtually. But since no one at EASC save Devon understood the intricacies of Noetica, she’d been able to wave her hands, mutter ‘Prevo details,’ and everyone had simply nodded blankly.
It was good to get away for a few days. She hadn’t dared depart the Sol system in the last month, once she and Vii’s work on Mia and Meno reached a critical juncture and Mia’s awakening neared. But the effort was a success, and the woman exhibited all the signs of a full recovery.
Yet the instant Abigail had left the Sol system, disaster struck.
She was on the way back from Seneca when Admiral Solovy’s comm came in. Details of the attack soon followed, and she’d spent the remainder of the trip working remotely with Annie to understand the mechanism of attack and the damage it had caused from the Artificial’s perspective; evaluation of the damage to Devon would have to wait for her return to EASC.
The incident was bringing back her worst memories of the Alliance bureaucracy, reminding her of several reasons she’d chosen to resign over a decade earlier and pursue more productive, fulfilling work on Sagan. Bureaucrats were so eager to pile rules, regulations and ‘safety mandates’ up into roadblocks to stop anything which even resembled progress, all in the name of increasing their power.
She remained with the Alliance for now because she was heading the most cutting-edge Artificial experiment—no, the most cutting-edge experiment, period—ever to be conducted, and because she’d become rather protective of Devon and Mia. Less so Commander Lekkas, partially due to distance and partially due to the fact the woman had not fully embraced her new nature.
But now the bureaucrats were coming for her and everything she’d created, as they always, inevitably, did.
She spotted a kiosk with no line and quickly stopped to purchase a latte, then took the central passage toward the exit.
The route was crowded, as was typically the case no matter the hour, and she scowled when a tall, sweaty man jostled her as he hurried past her at a jog. She needed a shower, and now she needed a change of clothes…but she needed to see Devon first.
She also needed to begin making contingency plans that would allow her to preserve the data and research behind the advancements Noetica had achieved. No bureaucrat was going to erase what she accomplished—
Another traveler bumped into her from behind, sending her stumbling forward. An arm reached out to steady her. She mumbled a ‘thank you’ and tried to pull away, but the man held her arm fast. Startled, she looked up at him just as she felt a sting at the base of her neck.
Injection.
Her eVi identified it as a muscle relaxant and neural inhibitor as the substance began speeding toward her motor cortex.
Emergency countermeasures.
Her veins flooded with stimulants as firewalls propagated through her cybernetics. She tried again to yank away—then a virus that had piggybacked on the injection crashed her eVi. A new wave of inhibitor coursed through her nervous system.
She blinked.
“Easy there, Dr. Canivon. You’ll be able to stand and walk—with a little help from us—but you won’t be fighting back any more.” She was vaguely cognizant of being propelled forward then to the right, into the corridor which led…to the private hangars? She couldn’t remember. She felt sleepy, dreamy, while a tiny portion of her brain screamed to fight and scrambled for some additional defense to deploy against the attack.
“Where…what…?”
The man on her left gazed down at her, fuzzy and indistinct. “We’re going to take a ride.”
19
EARTH
WASHINGTON: EARTH ALLIANCE HEADQUARTERS
* * *
IT TOOK ALL OF MIRIAM’S considerable self-restraint to refrain from barging into Brennon’s office until he was free to see her. Luckily for her and him both, it wasn’t a long wait.
She waited until the door closed behind her before leveling a sharp glare at the Prime Minster. “Let me ask you something—do I have any power at all?”
“When we are at war, Fleet Admiral, you have the most consequential of power. When we are at peace, perhaps a bit less. Is there a particular grievance you have?”
He appeared unfazed by her challenge; the man was strikingly cool, a cypher behind a statesman’s smile.
Their relations had been somewhat frosted since the end of the Metigen War, since she’d learned he was not only aware of but had approved Hervé’s implantation of the Kill Switch in the Prevos. True, he ultimately didn’t call for its use, but he’d been playing all the angles.
Objectively she acknowledged it was not merely a political choice but arguably a logical one. Subjectively it raised her hackles that he hadn’t trusted her to handle the situation, whatever the situation might become.
“There are many particular grievances I have, but the pertinent one today is that agents of the Military Oversight Committee broke into EASC Special Projects. They held Devon Reynolds against his will and blocked his connection to Annie.”
Genuine surprise flared in his eyes. So he hadn’t known? Good. “Is he alive?”
“He is. They had the slightest foresight to sedate him and take minimal safety precautions, presumably lest they be accused of murder. He is not well, however, as you can imagine. In a small blessing, security arrived and detained the intruders before they succeeded in also taking control of or destroying the Artificial, thus they were not able to irrevocably compound their error.”
She paused, but not long enough to allow him to respond. “Oh—and in what I’m sure is a completely unrelated matter, the Ways and Means Committee has decided the military will be cutting its supply of adiamene to the Federation to four percent of our production. File it away as a grievance for tomorrow.”
“I’m glad to hear Mr. Reynolds is in good health. I suspect Ways and Means is attempting a lateral exertion of pressure on the Federation to force it in the direction of reunification—if they rejoin the Alliance they can have all the adiamene they want. Tell me, Admiral…did you know our friends Chairman Vranas and Field Marshal Gianno were involved in provoking the First Crux War?”
Miriam sucked in a breath. It was a loaded and leading statement delivered out of left field. What was he playing at? “I did.”
The silence lingered for a ponderous moment; he seemed content to wait for a more fulsome response from her. She schooled her expression. “We don’t always get to choose our allies. There are times when we must take them as we find them.”
“I agree. To the extent it matters, which may turn out to be very little extent at all, I happen to like the Chairman.”
She stared out the expansive windows. Forcing herself to work with Vranas and Eleni while knowing they had played central roles in the Senecan revolution had been…difficult. At the time she’d brushed it aside as the price of their survival. Later, it had been harder—harder because as Brennon liked Vranas, so too was she discovering she rather liked Eleni. But that was months ago, and a trial she’d already faced and moved past.
“I refuse to believe it won’t matter, Prime Minister, for it matters to us, and we were and are the ones in the trenches.” She quickly pivoted to the more practical issue. “Regardless, so long as Chairman Vranas and Field Marshal Gianno are in charge, the members of the Ways and Means Committee are deluding themselves if they think there is any chance for reunification, amicable or otherwise.”
Brennon smiled, possibly in mild amusement; he was facing the windows so she couldn’t be positive. “You don’t believe people can change, Admiral? It has been twenty-three years since the war ended.”
Miriam gave the question due consideration. It had in fact been such a very, very long time. Tragic that it felt as if it were yesterday in all the ways which mattered. “I believe they can, given sufficient cause. We’ve given them no cause to change their inclinations.”<
br />
“We fought and won a war alongside them.”
She nodded. “Then immediately went back to our old ways. Individuals might be able to change, but I’m beginning to doubt institutions’ ability to do so.”
“Yes, speaking of that. I hope you recognize my position is the epitome of ‘weak executive’ in the best of circumstances, of which these are not.”
“You’re telling me you can’t stop Winslow from invading EASC territory on her whim.”
“Regrettably, I am.”
“You realize she is after your job.”
“I do. All the more reason why I am unable to prevent such incursions.”
She was silent for several seconds, genuinely at a loss for words. “I see.”
He faced her with surprising vehemence. “I’m not sure you do. If you want me in this office after the next election instead of Pamela Winslow—and I promise you, you do—then you must understand: I cannot run around imposing executive authority from above on her committee. Politics is not governance, Admiral. One wins elections while the other wins us wars and secures our freedoms. I don’t like it and neither should you, but it is the way of the world.”
“With respect, Prime Minister, that is bullshit.” There she was, cursing again. “We need to—”
“It is not ‘bullshit,’ Admiral. Here is the reality we face. Your daughter may be the savior of us all, but she is also a rebel and possibly an insurgent, certainly a loose cannon and now beyond our control. Your close friend and one of our highest-ranking intelligence officers is a cuckold to a Senecan spy—it’s not an insult, for I am assuredly a cuckold and then some to my wife, but she is not a spy for a rival government.
“My strongest political adversary has unlimited funds and the ear of both powerful anti-Artificial interests and a sizable minority of the voting public. Our supposed allies in the Federation are former revolutionaries with Alliance blood permanently staining their hands.”
He now wore a dark frown. “Suffice it to say neither one of us is in an advantaged position right now. See to your Prevo—or former Prevo, such as it is—and feel free to spar with Mrs. Winslow and the Military Oversight Committee using whatever tools you’re able to wield, but I cannot and will not help you. Not this time.”
Miriam watched the security cam footage, then returned to the beginning and studied it a second time. Two men wearing hooded tunics could be seen making physical contact with Dr. Canivon in a crowded passage at ORS, followed by an almost imperceptible stumble by the woman. The three of them took the corridor to the charter hangars. At this point the crowd thinned out enough to see the men were supporting Canivon and guiding her steps. They boarded a private transport without fanfare, and it departed minutes later.
She glanced at Major Lange’s holo. “How long ago?”
“Two hours, forty minutes. Medical staff alerted Security when she didn’t arrive for a scheduled meeting to review Mr. Reynolds’ tests. The vessel is registered to a legitimate shipping company on Romane, but the ownership chain ends at a shell corporation out of Pandora. We’re investigating, but it’s likely a dead end.”
“What about the assailants?”
Lange shook his head. “Even with the hoods partially obscuring their faces we were able to pull sixty-eight and seventy-four percent facial scans, but as is so often the case with non-citizen mercenaries, they don’t match any individuals in our databases. I filed a request for Federation authorities to run the scans through their databases. I haven’t heard back yet, but I’m not optimistic they’ll find anything.”
Satisfied she could glean no further information from the footage, she closed the aural and paced deliberately around the room. She’d still been at EA Headquarters when she received the Level V alert from Lange and had commandeered an empty meeting room on the third floor.
Careening from one crisis to the next…she needed to consider the larger implications of Brennon’s declarations, but instead she had to focus on the here and now. Triage. “Why didn’t she have a security escort?”
In a rare departure from his consummately professional demeanor, Lange’s pale blue eyes twinkled in passing amusement. “You have met the doctor? What she wants, she tends to get—and what she wanted was a private, off-the-record trip.”
“Point conceded, Major. What’s the status of the investigation?”
“Every port in settled space that recognizes EA authority has been provided the vessel’s serial number designation and description, in addition to visuals of Dr. Canivon and the two assailants. Sol sensors are sweeping for the vessel, but it’s probable they violated the Main Asteroid Belt superluminal travel ban and are well out of range. Forensics is scraping the docking bay for any trace evidence which might give us IDs on the perpetrators. As for who’s behind it? The suspect list isn’t long but it is problematic.”
“I’ve no doubt.” She briefly debated whether to ask, but if there was any possibility…. “Is there a chance this was the work of the same group who assaulted Mr. Reynolds?”
His voice lowered. “The Oversight Committee? I haven’t seen anything to suggest so as of yet.”
“If you do, inform me before pursuing it. Has anyone told Mr. Reynolds?”
“No ma’am, though he is starting to inquire as to her whereabouts.”
“Brush him off. I’ll tell him.” She wouldn’t wish that conversation on even her worst enemy. “I’ll be back on the Island in an hour.”
20
SENECA
CAVARE
* * *
INFORMANTS LIKED TO MEET on the riverfront promenade because it was always busy and often crowded, and because loitering was an acceptable pastime there. Graham was nevertheless surprised Laure Ferre was familiar enough with Cavare to request it as a meeting location, seeing as he’d resided on Krysk for the last twenty years. The man must have done his homework.
Ferre had been paranoid and edgy for several months, as he became increasingly convinced Olivia Montegreu intended to kill him for setting her up—so paranoid he refused to talk over even the most secure of comms. Graham had pointed out if Ms. Montegreu wanted the man dead he would already be so, but the observation fell on deaf ears.
As leader of the Zelones cartel, Montegreu had claimed the majority of Ferre’s ‘business’ interests for herself in the wake of the victory over the Metigens. Ferre had spent the time since then scraping what was left into the beginnings of a new enterprise. And serving as an informant. Only on matters affecting Federation security—Graham wasn’t interested in petty crime or low-level smuggling. Krysk law enforcement would be livid if they knew Division was allowing Ferre to operate unimpeded in exchange for occasional tips, but they didn’t know.
He found Ferre leaning against one of the multiple standing tables surrounding a popular eatery kiosk and overlooking the Fuori River. The darkening sky left the man in shadow just outside the nearest lights, and music wafting in from farther down the promenade ensured their conversation wasn’t overheard.
Graham walked up and casually propped his elbows on the table. “You should try the Korean barbeque at the kiosk before you leave. It’s practically authentic.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Tension radiated off Ferre like heat waves off paving; his eyes surreptitiously darted around, scanning for waiting assassins. The behavior was subtle—the man did present an outwardly calm demeanor—but unmistakable if you paid attention.
Graham chuckled under his breath. “You keep on like this and you’re going to die of a stroke long before one of Montegreu’s people gets you.”
“I’ll worry about my own health, thank you. I’ll also be brief—my sources inform me Montegreu is behind the kidnapping of Dr. Abigail Canivon on Earth. Something to do with this rumored new breed of Artificial.”
The odds of Ferre telling the truth were high, if only because Canivon’s kidnapping hadn’t yet hit the news feeds. It hadn’t hit anything, in point of fact—Graham wouldn’t know about it if it were
n’t for a directive straight from Chairman Vranas to scrupulously watch everything related to Noetica, on Earth and elsewhere.
As for the ‘new breed of Artificial,’ the fact that the truth—the new breed was humans—hadn’t leaked out was nothing short of a miracle. A miracle whose time appeared to be coming to an end, as it appeared Olivia Montegreu knew the truth. Why kidnap the doctor behind Noetica, if not to become a Prevo herself?
The notion chilled Graham to the bone. Montegreu was extremely dangerous and powerful on her own; couple her with an Artificial, even a tiny private one, and she became a far more formidable threat.
“How certain are your sources? I assume you’re referring to people on the inside, but how high? She and her organization are quite secretive.”
“High enough. She couldn’t be so secretive this time—snatching the woman off the streets of Seattle took extensive resources.”
“Where did they take the doctor?”
“Back to New Babel. That’s all I know.”
“I sincerely hope this information isn’t six hours old.” If Ferre’s paranoia had led him to waste critical time traveling to Seneca solely so he could share the news in person, it may be too late.
“No more than two hours. I was in the area.”
Time to end the meeting, then. “If it checks out, you’re good.”
Ferre scoffed. “And if it doesn’t check out?”
“You’d be wise not to send me on any additional fool’s errands, lest I decide to reconsider our arrangement.”
“As if I don’t have enough problems.” Ferre turned and vanished into the crowd.
Graham gave it five seconds, then pushed off the table and walked fifteen meters to where Richard sat at a proper table and eased into the chair across from him. “Ferre says Montegreu took Dr. Canivon. You and I both realize that doesn’t mean anything good, so you’d better tell Admiral Solovy. Offer our services if there’s any way we can assist, though I expect she’ll decline. I’ll see what I can do for corroboration.”
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