Masterminds

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  “I don’t know what to believe,” Flint said. “But we don’t have time to do much research. I can contact Space Traffic and ask them to let him in, but I needed your permission first. This is a security issue. I don’t know if he’s going to cause problems, but if he’s coming in hot, he’ll need protection, which will drain resources.”

  “God,” DeRicci said. “This could be anyone. Or anything.”

  “Yeah,” Flint said. “I’ve thought of that. I considered ignoring him. But the contact makes no sense if it is someone else. I mean, why contact me?”

  Talia raised her eyebrows. She was thinking about that.

  DeRicci crossed her arms over her chest. Her shirt bagged. Her clothes were usually too tight. Talia was right: DeRicci really had let herself go.

  Flint continued, “If someone was going to try to do something to the Moon, you’d think I’d be the last person to contact. They’d reach out to you before contacting someone like me.”

  “Or the police,” DeRicci said quietly. That was when Flint knew she agreed with him.

  Talia was still frowning. She no longer had her hand over her mouth. Instead, she chewed her thumbnail.

  “We can do a complete quarantine on the vessel, right?” DeRicci asked.

  Flint looked at her, surprised. She was head of security for the Moon. She should know that.

  And then he remembered: although he had gotten his start with Space Traffic, she hadn’t. She knew how the port worked in theory, but not in practice.

  “Yes,” Flint said.

  “And,” DeRicci said, in that musing tone she often used when thinking out loud, “Space Traffic can search it for explosives before it lands.”

  “Known explosives,” Flint said. “There are two danger points. When it enters the port from space, and when the authorities let the ship’s door open for the first time.”

  DeRicci’s mouth became a thin line. “I think I understand you, but I don’t want to assume anything here. What exactly do you think could happen at those danger points?”

  “If the ship explodes as it enters the port, particularly if it does so as it’s transitioning into the terminal, then that part of the dome will shatter. The port’s designed for accidents—some ship hitting the dome or burning on entry—but it’s not set for powerful explosions.”

  “What do you mean, ‘powerful’?” Talia asked.

  Flint looked at her. Her blue eyes were wide. He decided not to chastise her for speaking. He suspected DeRicci was wondering the same thing.

  “When I started at Space Traffic, we were all trained to worry about massive explosions. They would damage the port’s part of the dome. That was one reason Arek Soseki had argued for moving the port outside the dome, remember that?”

  He directed the last part at DeRicci. Soseki had made moving the port outside of Armstrong a pillar of his second campaign—before DeRicci had been tapped to act as Chief of Security. Soseki’s proposal had been great for a campaign that had a tinge of bigotry to it—he was implying that non-humans shouldn’t come directly into the dome, but have two points of entry: the port, and the trains to the center of the city—but everyone said that moving the port was impractical.

  It was. The port had been inside the dome for hundreds of years.

  “Massive explosions,” DeRicci repeated.

  Flint couldn’t tell if she was processing or asking him a question. He decided to treat her words as a comment, and move on. He felt the press of time here.

  “I think any explosion right now will have a terrible effect on the Moon,” he said, “even if it doesn’t damage anything but the entry to Terminal Five.”

  “Yes,” DeRicci said. “You’re right. And we can’t see if he’s carrying explosives?”

  “We can see,” Flint said, “but we don’t know all of the explosives out there. We can also shield against an explosive outside the port, and once he’s inside we can contain it. But we’re vulnerable for a short few seconds as the dome opens and the ship enters.”

  DeRicci stared at him, as if she could find the answers in Flint’s expression. He didn’t know the answer. All she was probably seeing was the conflict he was feeling.

  “And when the ship’s door opens?” DeRicci asked. “More explosions?”

  Flint shook his head. “Toxins, poisons, the stuff we usually quarantine for. Everyone will be suited up, but it could get into the system. The terminal has its own environmental system and can be isolated, but if it’s an unknown toxin—”

  “Then we’re screwed.” Apparently DeRicci knew that one. She let out a breath. “It’s a risk. Letting him in is a big risk, but not letting him in might be as well.”

  “He can’t just tell you on links?” Talia asked. Her cheeks were flushed. She knew Flint had told her not to talk, but she was disobeying him.

  Only she wasn’t doing so with information about Zagrando, which Flint appreciated. And she asked a good question.

  “He said he was coming in hot,” Flint said. “That means he’s being pursued, and there’s a chance whoever is pursuing him is monitoring his communications.”

  “So they know he contacted you,” Talia said, with a touch of fear in her voice.

  “Possibly,” Flint said.

  DeRicci was still staring at Flint. As his gaze met hers, she inclined her head slightly.

  “Do you want me to contact Space Traffic?” she asked.

  “No,” Flint said. “Let me do it. If you contact them, the contact becomes official, and they’ll want to know why we’re letting in some unidentified man on an unidentified ship. If something goes wrong, you’ll get blamed.”

  She gave him a sad smile. “I’m already getting blamed for a lot of things, Miles.”

  “You don’t need this too,” he said. “Besides, I don’t want a record of this request.”

  DeRicci’s smile widened into a real smile. “You’re sneaky, Miles.”

  He smiled in return.

  Then her smile faded. “If you were going to be that sneaky, you didn’t have to tell me. You could have just done it.”

  “I considered it,” he said. “I just want you to approve—or maybe to know—that I’m going to recommend that this ship arrive at the port. We expect a third attack. This might be the beginning of it.”

  “Oh, no,” Talia said around her thumb. Flint reached over and removed her hand from her mouth. Her thumb was bleeding near the cuticle.

  DeRicci looked at Talia’s hand, then at Flint’s face. DeRicci’s expression became calm, even though Flint could tell from her body language that she wasn’t calm at all.

  “Letting this man in might also be a way to prevent the third attack,” DeRicci said, more for Talia’s benefit than for Flint’s. “You wouldn’t come to me if you thought this was going to go badly. You think this man can help us.”

  “If he is who he says he is,” Flint said. “He contacted me using an old method and he’s said the right things so far.”

  Talia clasped her hands together. Now she was biting her lower lip. Flint couldn’t look at her any longer.

  “But you’re still worried,” DeRicci said.

  He had to be honest. “I have no idea why this man was listed as dead. If he is dead, then he could have been tortured before he died, and given up all kinds of information.”

  Flint tried not to think about that, even as he said it. Because if Zagrando was dead, and they (whoever they were) had information on Flint, then they also knew about Talia.

  Talia brought her hand to her mouth, then seemed to rethink the motion and lowered her hand again.

  “But,” Flint said, “I’m clinging to the idea that someone wouldn’t contact me over something important unless I was the only contact they had on the Moon. You wouldn’t let him in with this flimsy information without my vouching for him, right?”

  The right was also for Talia’s benefit.

  “Right,” DeRicci said. “Do what you have to.”

  “Is this smart?”
Talia asked.

  To Flint’s surprise, DeRicci smiled. “I don’t know,” she said. “But we have to take risks at some point. Or we’re just going to sit here and wait for the next attack. I’m tired of doing that. I want to take action, even if it is not the wisest plan.”

  Flint didn’t find that reassuring. But he wasn’t going to argue with DeRicci. In that kitchen, Flint had already come to the conclusion that he wanted this man who called himself Zagrando to arrive on the Moon.

  Flint wasn’t going to argue with DeRicci’s reasons for agreeing to it. Even if she was showing signs of fraying around the edges.

  So was everyone else.

  So was Flint.

  They had to figure this all out—and soon.

  SEVEN

  RAFAEL SALEHI REACHED into the closet in his suite on S3’s fastest space yacht. Even though the ship was fast, it had still taken longer than he expected to reach the Moon. The yacht was approaching Moon space now, and he was nervous.

  He wished he had more belongings to gather. He wished he had more space in this luxury cabin. He wished he had something to distract himself.

  He hated being nervous. It made him feel weak.

  Salehi never used to be nervous. He used to have balls of steel. He could go into courtrooms against impossible odds and turn a jury in his favor. He could charm a humorless judge into laughing, and that laughter would often guarantee a case went in his favor.

  He could face down some of the most vicious defendants in this corner of the universe and convince them to act reasonably so that they could beat whatever charges they faced.

  He used to be a much greater man than he was now.

  Maybe that was part of his nervousness. The death of his friend Rafik Fujita at the hands of Alliance authorities had galvanized Salehi into action, brought him back from the disillusionment that had hit several years ago.

  And now the murder of Torkild Zhu by the City of Armstrong Police reminded Salehi how much he had forgotten.

  Half of the responsibility for Zhu’s death rested on Salehi’s shoulders. Salehi hadn’t considered the atmosphere on the Moon when he hired Zhu to start S3 On The Moon. All of the Moon’s communities had been ravaged by explosion or the possibility of explosions. Almost every citizen knew someone or was related to someone who had died in the past year.

  The Moon had been a dangerous place before S3 decided—Salehi decided—to represent the Peyti clones who had tried (and mostly failed) to initiate a second bombing nearly two weeks ago.

  Salehi had known that decision would be controversial on the Moon and inside the Alliance. He just hadn’t realized the degree of anger that would come at S3. He hadn’t thought it through.

  Maybe Zhu’s death was more than half Salehi’s fault. He shouldn’t have set up the situation in the first place.

  He should have hired guards and made certain that Zhu understood security was a top priority.

  But Salehi hadn’t even thought of that, so he had had no way to counsel Zhu.

  And now it was too late.

  Zhu was dead.

  And if Salehi and his new team weren’t careful, they could die on this job as well.

  Salehi wiped his damp palms on his khaki pants. He took a deep breath, and reminded himself that he was here for the love of the law. He was going to change clone law forever.

  Those Peyti clones might be totally reprehensible, but they had once been living, breathing, functioning members of society. No one had known they were clones. And had they continued producing, being good little lawyers with strong practices and good reputations, no one would ever have known they were clones.

  Then they chose to act on some command—some plot, some plan—and tried to blow up the very people they had worked alongside for decades.

  And at that moment (actually, just a little earlier), the entire Moon figured out that these lawyers weren’t individuals under the Alliance law definition.

  They were clones, and as such, they were property.

  The very idea that someone could go from person to property in the space of a few hours upset Salehi. What no one seemed to realize was that the Peyti clones would receive more appropriate punishment if they were treated as individuals under the law rather than as property.

  They would be imprisoned forever. They would have to think about what they had tried to do each and every single day of their long remaining lives.

  And for lawyers, for individuals trained to follow the law along its jagged edge, for individuals who were once considered officers of the court, that punishment would hurt much more than non-lawyers could ever expect.

  Or maybe Salehi was being too sympathetic to them.

  He removed all five suits that he had brought with him to the Moon. He would have an assistant order more clothing for him once he settled in. Because he was going to stay here a long time.

  Now that Zhu had been murdered, Salehi wasn’t just going to get justice for some mass-murdering clones. He was going to get justice for Zhu.

  It was the least Salehi could do, since it was his carelessness that had gotten Zhu killed.

  Salehi set the suits on his clothes carrier. When he was ready, it would fold everything into a tight ball of material that he would put in a small bag, along with some personal items he always brought with him when he traveled.

  The suits and the rest of his clothing had nanofibers that pressed everything and made them look crisp, no matter what happened to them—something he had relied upon back in the days when he practically lived in the courts around Athena Base.

  He was ready for this. He was ready for all of it.

  He had spent the last week holed up in the library of this ship, preparing arguments for the clones. Technically, he was working for the government of Peyla. They wanted those clones dealt with because the Moon’s policies were interfering with all business run by the Peyti.

  Some of the Peyti lawyers he had brought with him even argued that the Moon’s actions were a de facto way of kicking the Peyti out of the Earth Alliance.

  And some bigots on the Moon probably felt that the Peyti should be tossed from the Alliance, given what those clones had done.

  He grabbed his shirts out of the closet and tossed them on the carrier. Then he opened the box that contained his shoes. He grabbed the dress shoes and some athletic shoes, but he left the sandals. The Salehi who loved Earth’s deserts and had his office on Athena Base mimic their conditions wasn’t going to the Moon.

  That Salehi was careless and thoughtless and hadn’t paid enough attention to his work. That Salehi was lazy and uninterested in most things.

  He was leaving that man behind, and going back to the lawyer he had once been. The lawyer who had taken his family’s moribund firm and rebuilt it into an Alliance powerhouse.

  The legal community in this part of the galaxy wouldn’t know what hit them.

  His links chirruped. He hadn’t realized he had set them on notify except for emergencies. That was his default link setting when he was deep in researching a case, and he apparently hadn’t reset the links as the ship’s destination approached.

  The message was from the cockpit. His tension rose.

  Yes? he sent.

  We have a problem, sir. The Moon won’t let us into their space. We’re not cleared to land on the Moon.

  What? he sent. This made no sense. Of course they should be cleared. He had never encountered this situation in his decades of work at S3.

  They’re telling us that, as a mixed-species ship, we need some kind of documentation that no one here has ever heard of. We need you here, sir.

  Damn straight they needed him in the cockpit. This wasn’t about being a mixed species ship. This was about S3.

  He set his shoes beside the bed. He would finish packing when he solved this.

  The authorities in the Port of Armstrong had no idea who they were dealing with.

  And he would show them, in a way they wouldn’t forget.

  EIGHT<
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  BERHANE MAGALHÃES SAT in the first class compartment in the train from Littrow to Armstrong, elbow on the small table in front of her, a fist over her mouth, as she stared at the passing grayness of the Moon.

  She didn’t really see it, the regolith, the rocks, the bright lights of the Growing Pits in the distance. She’d taken this route so many times since she started her work that it felt normal to her.

  After she got past those first few minutes of entering a train.

  Berhane had been on a train—Armstrong’s citywide inner-dome train, the Express—when someone had bombed the city four years before. Her mother had died in that explosion.

  Berhane thought of it every single time she stepped through a train’s doors. It didn’t matter that the Express wasn’t nearly as fancy as this train. The Express was designed for short distances, while this was a bullet train, designed for travel between domes.

  The trip from Littrow to Armstrong only took thirty minutes, but after the news she had just received, she needed privacy.

  Her ex-fiancée, Torkild Zhu, was dead. Murdered, maybe by the police.

  She’d heard from her father while she was supervising some cleanup in the devastated part of Littrow. Her father sounded shocked, something she would have thought impossible; he hadn’t even sounded like that when he found out Berhane’s mother had died.

  After hearing the news, Berhane forced herself not to think about it. She had to finish briefing the new volunteers on the things they would discover inside the ruined section of Littrow. She always started her newest volunteers in Littrow, mostly so that she could oversee their work, and so that she could make her little “this is hard but important work” speech.

  Four months ago, she had founded the Anniversary Day Victims’ Identification and Recovery Service, and immediately hired Dabir Kaspian away from Armstrong Search & Rescue to run the business. She did fundraising, mostly, and handled the bigger things, like opening branches in all nineteen affected domes.

  But one day per week, she went to Littrow and did hands-on work, donned an environmental suit, had some bots trail her, and used the equipment to scrape the DNA from the rubble, searching for the faintest traces of human DNA.