Masterminds

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  DeRicci nodded. Then she waited until Gomez let herself out.

  Popova started, “I think we should have Miles Flint investigate this possible Disappeared—”

  “He’s got enough to do,” DeRicci said curtly. She had known that was what Popova had been thinking, and she wished Popova hadn’t brought it up again. “I want to know what’s going on with Hétique City, at least as far as the Alliance is concerned.”

  “I suppose I could—”

  “No,” DeRicci said. “We’re all stretched here. I think we should see if Goudkins’ partner can help us with this.”

  “Ostaka?” Popova asked. “Goudkins said he doesn’t want to help us directly.”

  Goudkins didn’t like Ostaka. It was pretty clear that Popova didn’t either.

  “This wouldn’t be helping us directly,” DeRicci said. “It would get us all information.”

  “I think he’d say no,” Popova said.

  DeRicci sighed internally. Obviously, Popova couldn’t finesse this line of inquiry, so DeRicci was going to have to do it.

  She needed to talk to Ostaka, and she needed to do it now.

  THIRTY-SIX

  THE ENTIRE ROOM of twenty high-level Alliance Security officers were panicked—and Jhena Andre was having trouble keeping a smile off her face.

  She was tweaking them, pushing them, forcing them to think about what else could go wrong. And they were. Who knew that bureaucrats at this level had such fantastic and gruesome imaginations? She certainly hadn’t. She should have pushed these people years ago. Her attacks might not have followed the Earth Alliance Emergency Response Playbook so closely then.

  Half of the people in the room were leaning across the conference table, arguing with each other about who held jurisdiction. A quarter were staring forward, investigating on their links or with some screens that they carried with them, trying to see what kind of ships had attacked Hétique City. Another quarter was trying to find out where the next attack was going to be.

  The Moon, idiots, she thought but didn’t say. Wait a few hours. There will be an attack on the Moon.

  She listened to the arguments. It sounded like the ships were not some coordinated military power, but different vessels from different parts of the Earth Alliance, maybe even some from outside of the Alliance.

  If she were actually worried about this attack, she would have directed these nincompoops to see which ship had arrived first and from where.

  But if she had to guess based on what she already knew, and what had been happening the last few months, she would guess that these ships had come from some criminal organization, one that finally discovered where the Alliance clones that got embedded into those organizations had been made.

  Bye-bye huge long-term investment in stopping the Alliance’s great criminals. Hello, panic.

  She just loved this panic.

  Then a red light flared over her right eye. She blinked, startled. Earth Alliance alerts were sent across the left eye because some doofus had believed that most people’s dominant eye was their right.

  She frowned, then remembered: she had set up her own personal alerts along her right eye.

  Emergency alerts.

  She stood. “I have to deal with something,” she said to no one in particular, and then she stepped into the corridor.

  It took her a moment to find where the alert came from and when she did, her knees actually buckled. She reached for the wall and held herself up, silently cursing at that moment of physical weakness. It would show up on the security feeds, and someone could trace it.

  But the reason for the reaction wouldn’t be as obvious to an outsider as her conversation with Stott might have been.

  Because this alert told her that someone had found Mavis Zorn.

  Andre let herself into a darkened office. The office smelled faintly of vanilla and sweaty socks. She moved away from the window and the door, and stood near the closest wall, with her back to the wall across from her. That way her face wouldn’t be visible on security feeds.

  Andre’s heart was pounding. She hadn’t expected anyone to find Mavis Zorn. The only reason Andre had put a security alert on Zorn’s information was because Andre had put a security alert on all of the major players in her group.

  Zorn had been very important. She had been one of the few willing to work with non-humans. Her willingness to deal on a day-to-day basis with the Peyti allowed the group to create the second “event” on the Moon.

  It had been Andre’s idea to use non-human clones for that event, but she had initially thought it impossible to execute. No one in the group wanted to deal with aliens. Aliens were the root of the Alliance’s problems, after all.

  Well, aliens and the founders of the Alliance. If the Alliance had been set up properly, then none of this would have been necessary. The founders should have decided that aliens had to abide by human laws, human ethics, and human morality. There was enough variation among humans to satisfy most alien legal scholars.

  But Andre had watched the old debates and read the old documents. Even though the majority of humans had put that idea forth, it hadn’t gotten adopted into the Alliance. The aliens threatened to walk, and the corporations, already a serious force in human-alien relations, saw billions leaving with the aliens.

  So the “Earth” Alliance became a joke. It should have been called the “Alien” Alliance, because alien laws and alien morality trumped human laws and morality all the damn time.

  Andre had lost both of her parents to alien laws, and the Earth Alliance had backed those rulings up—allowed the deaths to happen as if her parents had actually done something wrong. In the decades since, she’d lost countless friends the same way, and saw even more lives destroyed by the so-called justice inside the so-called Earth Alliance.

  She had been only twenty when she realized the Alliance had to be taken apart and reconstructed. Eventually, with the help of others who had had similar upbringings, she realized that only a hard blow to the Alliance itself, one that dissolved so many of its assumptions, would allow her group (and others who believed the same way) to rebuild the Alliance according to human values and laws.

  A real Earth Alliance.

  If there were no aliens anymore, so be it.

  She had loved the way that the Moon responded to what they were calling the Peyti Crisis. Blaming the Peyti. Exactly how it should be when something went wrong inside the Alliance.

  The non-humans should have been blamed.

  Zorn had agreed with that, but somehow she could still summon the strength to put up with aliens and alien law. Maybe because she had become a lawyer when she was Andre’s age now.

  Zorn had been one of the driving forces inside their group, and had remained so until her death. She had been the wise one behind so many of their systems—limited contact, meetings in isolated places with no tech allowed, and Andre’s personal favorite: no name for the group.

  The moment you name the group, Zorn had said, it not only becomes traceable, it also becomes a legal entity. When people belong to that legal entity, their behavior becomes tainted with the association. When you say “group,” you could mean anything from a group of friends to an actual organization.

  Andre, who had become the leader early because she had more of a vision than anyone else had, took those words to heart.

  She rested her forehead against the cool wall. Zorn had died more than a decade ago. There were people inside the group who hadn’t even known her or known of her involvement. She had been dead so long that she shouldn’t have been relevant to any investigation.

  Unless one of the damn Peyti clones talked.

  Andre closed her eyes for just a moment. Those damn alien screw-ups. They should have all died in the attack, but their attack fizzled—thwarted by that security chief on the Moon. Or maybe thwarted because the Peyti were not competent to pull off something that complex, even with all of the hand-holding her group had done.

  It should have been as
simple as getting a message on the links at the exact right moment, activating the mask bomb, and dying along with everyone else in the vicinity.

  Instead, most of the damn clones had been arrested.

  Then Andre had hoped that some good people in the Moon’s various law enforcement agencies would kill the Peyti clones out of anger, but that hadn’t happened either. Some goody-two-shoes law firm decided to work with the Government of Peyla to protect the stupid clones.

  Alien and cloned. Why anyone would ever defend creatures like that was beyond her.

  And Andre hoped, if the last attack went off without a hitch, she wouldn’t have to worry about it.

  She let out a deep sigh. She didn’t like the fact that someone had found Zorn. Someone with Earth Alliance Security credentials.

  That meant the investigation was closer to Andre than she had initially thought.

  She made herself stand up, straighten her shoulders, and calm down.

  Even if they caught her—even if they killed her—the last attack would happen.

  Even if they caught her—even if they blamed her—the last attack would destroy every dome on the Moon. They would forget about her. The crisis would be too big.

  And Hétique City had helped her. The Alliance now believed the attacks were moving away from the Moon.

  The more distracted the authorities were, the greater the chance Andre had to escape.

  If she needed to escape.

  She swallowed hard, regained her composure, and decided she was done with her meeting. She would go back, let those panicked imbeciles worry about Hétique City and the end of the universe, and tell them she had to deal with a minor personal emergency.

  Then she would track whoever was tracing her.

  Maybe she could stop this new investigation in its tracks.

  All she needed to do was try.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  BERHANE THOUGHT SHE and Kaspian were going to be stuck in the lobby of the United Domes of the Moon Security Office forever. What was Noelle DeRicci thinking, having only two human guards?

  They seemed to be busy, too, ushering people to and fro, ignoring both Berhane and Kaspian as they stood inside the smaller-than-expected lobby, after they had been cleared by the first part of the system.

  When Berhane used her links to try to contact Security Chief DeRicci directly, she got a user-not-authorized message. The link Berhane had tried to use wasn’t the standard entry-level messaging system for the Security Office. It had supposedly been DeRicci’s direct link.

  But either DeRicci had shut down that link or too many people had been trying to contact her.

  Berhane had already told several avatars that she and Kaspian were here on important business, business that couldn’t wait, but those avatars didn’t seem to care.

  Which wasn’t entirely true: they had cared enough to let her into the main part of the lobby, just in time to see some mousy woman with out-of-place short orange hair be led into a back area.

  Since then, Berhane and Kaspian had waited.

  He’d paced around the lobby at least five times, touched the blank walls as if trying to see if there was some kind of entertainment screen, and peered over the guards’ station. The remaining guard, a man, studiously ignored both Kaspian and Berhane.

  When Berhane tried to talk to the guard, he’d said, I only do as I’m instructed. I have not yet received instructions concerning you.

  Well, she was thinking she’d issue some instructions concerning him. Two guards weren’t enough. This entire entry into the building was somewhat ridiculous. She and Kaspian had enough time to set off all kinds of bombs—although, to be honest, she wasn’t certain if the security that allowed them into the building had already checked them for things like weapons and explosives.

  Kaspian finally stopped pacing, and stood just a bit too close to her.

  “This is working well,” he said snidely.

  She agreed. Her father would have been making a scene by now. Her father and Torkild both.

  Maybe she should too.

  Berhane walked over to the guard.

  “Look,” she said. “We have some really important information that can’t wait. I don’t know what it’ll take to get in to see Chief DeRicci, but we need to talk to her now.”

  “I know,” the guard said. “Your friend already told me that.”

  She glanced over her shoulder at Kaspian. He had spoken to the guard briefly, but quietly. She had thought Kaspian had simply been checking to see how long they had to wait.

  Apparently, Kaspian’s method marked the difference between a loud scene and a quiet scene.

  “Do you know who I am?” Berhane asked.

  “The system says you’re Berhane Magalhães, head of the Anniversary Day Victims’ Identification and Recovery Service,” the guard said.

  She wasn’t sure how he managed to sound so very uninterested.

  “Yes, I am,” she said, “and we’ve found some information in doing the recovery work that needs to get to the chief right away.”

  The guard sighed. “I’ve already sent your information upstairs twice. They’re having a busy day.”

  So was she, and she had just wasted an hour waiting in a lobby, for no good reason.

  “I’m also the daughter of one of the richest men on the Moon,” she said, hating that she had to pull rank. “My father is putting billions into rebuilding the domes. If he were here—”

  “If he were here, he’d have some kind of hissy fit that would impress the local politicians,” the guard said. “The thing is that Chief DeRicci doesn’t care about politics, and you can’t impress her, except with information.”

  Berhane felt the frustration rise. She closed her hands into fists.

  “Well, impress her with this,” Berhane said. “We think we’ve found the next clone attackers.”

  The guard’s head snapped back. His gaze met hers directly for the very first time. “What?”

  “We believe we know who the next attackers are. We’ve found evidence that points directly to them, and we need to talk with the Chief now.”

  The guard looked momentarily confused. “We have no protocols for this,” he said. “You’ll have to give me a minute.”

  “I’ve given you sixty minutes,” she said, clipping her words just like her father would. “You get a maximum of five more. After that, my partner and I will figure out another way to attract attention, even if it means setting off some alarms.”

  The guard held out his hand in a “stop” gesture. “Oh, lady, you don’t want to do that. Believe me.”

  “I will, if—”

  “Just give me a minute. I’ll make sure someone talks to you, okay?” He looked panicked, even as his eyes glazed while he sent some message along his links.

  Berhane held her ground. She wondered if he was saying he had a crazy woman here, who was making the wrong kinds of demands.

  Then she shook off the thought. She was here on legitimate business with a legitimate concern.

  Just because she wasn’t used to standing up for herself didn’t mean that her doing so offended others.

  She glanced over her shoulder at Kaspian. His lips were turned up in a small smile.

  He approved which, for some reason, she found reassuring.

  She nodded back, then turned her attention to the guard and the elevators beyond him.

  She hadn’t been bluffing. If someone didn’t talk to her in the next few minutes, she would go past this guard station and up a flight of stairs.

  She was going to talk to Noelle DeRicci, no matter what it took.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  IT TOOK ANOTHER fifteen minutes of searching Jarvis’s finances before Flint found something really strange.

  Jarvis had requisitioned millions for an operation shortly after Anniversary Day. Alliance protocols required the requisitioning employee to list what the money was for, and when or if it would be returned. On undercover operations, like this one was suppose
d to have been, the money (which was significant) had to be returned or accounted for within a week.

  The money had been requisitioned months ago, but the operation was still marked as open.

  Flint had almost missed that, because it seemed so standard. But the money had been requisitioned shortly after Anniversary Day, and the amount was a lot.

  Flint couldn’t find exactly what kind of operation that Jarvis had requisitioned the money for. Flint wasn’t certain if he should have found it, or if the code for undercover operation was enough for the Earth Alliance.

  That might become something to investigate.

  At the moment, though, Flint was following the money. The money always told an interesting tale. And this money was no exception.

  The amount had been backed by the Earth Alliance Currency Department, something Flint had initially overlooked when he first noticed the missing funds. He had continued searching for incriminating information on Jarvis, before his brain ordered him to circle back to the Currency Department.

  The fact that the Currency Department was involved was unusual. Not the kind of unusual that a computer search would find or even flag.

  Computer logic would figure this: Jarvis worked for Earth Alliance. He had been handling a vast sum of money. That vast sum of money had to be guaranteed by someone within the Earth Alliance.

  Any search by a computer wouldn’t find the different divisions to be an anomaly. Which was probably how the transfer was designed. Nothing flagged it, except Flint’s unruly brain.

  He had seen a name—Pearl Brooks—and had done a quick check, as he always did when he was searching, to see if the name belonged to a real person or was an alias of some kind.

  Brooks was a real person who worked for the Currency Department. High up in the Currency Department, in fact.

  Flint had glanced at that, glanced away, moved deeper in his search, and that was when the information hit his brain.

  Currency Department? Why would the Currency Department be financing a Security Division op? The Security Division had an extensive budget. All operations, overt and covert, came from that budget.