Masterminds

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  They’ll send an order if ships need to leave, he sent. Listen for it.

  She hated hearing that. Dad, I can’t go without you—

  I’ll be fine, Talia, he sent. I’ll come to you. But I can’t work if I know you’re in danger.

  She glanced at the detective. He was still unconscious, even with all the noise and chaos in the halls.

  Should I bring the detective too?

  She could probably change the controls on his bed so that it would float ahead of her. Even if she had to hack it.

  If you can, her father sent. If there’s time. But if he slows you down, you have to leave him. Do you understand, Talia?

  Tears pricked at her eyes. She wouldn’t leave Detective Zagrando to die. She couldn’t have someone else’s death on her conscience.

  But she wasn’t going to tell her father that.

  I understand, she sent. Should I go now?

  We just sectioned the dome, he sent. And we’re investigating a few things. If we don’t find what we’re looking for, I’ll send you a message. It might be automated. It’ll tell you that it’s time to leave. You leave at that very moment, got that? Promise me.

  She took a deep breath. The third attack. Something was going on, and her dad didn’t want to tell her over links.

  He wanted to save her life. He couldn’t come for her this time. They needed him at the Security Office.

  Talia, he sent with even more urgency. Promise me.

  I promise, she sent. I’ll go to the ship right away, and I’ll leave the Moon if you tell me to.

  Thank you, he sent. You’re everything, Talia, you know that, right? I love you.

  Oh, Dad, she sent. I love you too.

  And then he signed off. She wanted to contact him again, but she didn’t. He was trying to save the city, trying to save the Moon.

  He could do it, she knew he could. If she didn’t bother him.

  From the hallway, more yelling. “There’s another one!” a woman screamed, and more footsteps, running swiftly.

  Talia grabbed the door and eased it closed.

  She would wait to hear from her father. And in the meantime, she was going to investigate the capabilities of that bed.

  She wasn’t going to leave Detective Zagrando behind.

  She was going to get them both out if she had to, and she was going to be prepared to do it fast.

  She just had to figure out how.

  SIXTY-SIX

  IT HADN’T TAKEN Flint long to tweak the human identification program, and he was filtering all of the information from it to others around DeRicci’s office. He was still modifying the program to accommodate the general alien population, which was turning out to be more complicated than he expected.

  He was toying with giving it to Issassi while he worked on some other aspects of the program. Plus, he had also been tracking Ostaka’s contacts, and he’d hit something that startled him.

  Just before he shut down the last of the access to the Security Office, Ostaka had sent a message to someone in the Earth Alliance Security Office, and that message had been flagged as also-read by Jhena Andre. Flint had felt a surge of excitement when he saw it.

  He would love to get his hands on that woman.

  The message was damning:

  I’ve altered everything in the system here. I’m activating the protection protocols now. It should be impossible for anything to get in or out of their system. I’ll keep my connection to you open, just in case, but I’m not anticipating problems. In fact, DeRicci just invited me to her office, so everything just got easier.

  Flint was about to tell DeRicci about it when he saw a second message. This one went over something called an alert network. But most interesting about the message was that it went directly to and had also been viewed by Jhena Andre.

  This message was even more damning:

  Found me. Can’t finish lock-out. They have the names of Andre, Starbase Human—

  And it ended there. But what was best about it, what made Flint nearly shout with joy, was that Ostaka hadn’t had time to encrypt that message. It had gone directly from the Security Office to Jhena Andre.

  He glanced at Ostaka, who had slid back to the floor. The man looked miserable, his face still swollen. Either someone had shut off his nanohealers or he hadn’t had very good ones. Not that Flint cared.

  Noelle, he sent to DeRicci. I have something.

  She looked up at him, startled. She was still trying to convince two of the dome leaders to take care of their domes. But those leaders were more concerned with the announcement that DeRicci had sent dome wide, identifying the Moon’s attackers. Apparently, that announcement was leading to violence, just like Nyquist predicted.

  Can you tell me or do you have to show me? she sent.

  I have a direct link to one of the masterminds, Flint sent. She’s not on the Moon, but we can arrest her, if we know who to contact.

  DeRicci didn’t look joyful like he expected. She looked overwhelmed. The Alliance had never been her specialty.

  You’ll have to tell Gomez, she sent. I can’t deal with it right now. When this crisis is past, yes, but not right now.

  Flint nodded. He didn’t have the time to set up an encrypted link to Gomez, one that she would accept.

  “Marshal,” he said. “I need you.”

  Gomez had been talking with the Magalhães heir. The woman had proven extremely valuable, and she wanted to do more work to find out if there was other “old DNA” as she called it.

  Flint hadn’t had a lot of time to pay attention to that conversation.

  As Gomez made her way over, Flint leaned closer to Issassi. She was working closely beside him, so they could double-check each other’s protocols. Working like that on something this important actually made him feel better.

  “Do me a favor, Kaz,” he said. “While I’m talking to the Marshal, see if our prisoner managed to contact anyone while we forgot to lock down his links.”

  Issassi shot Ostaka a quick glance. He wasn’t looking at anyone. “Okay,” she said softly.

  Gomez reached Flint’s side in a matter of seconds. She peered at the screen floating in front of him, but that wasn’t the screen he needed her to see. He was still modifying his programs even as he waited for her.

  “What’ve you got?” she asked.

  Send me a way to reach you as privately as possible, Flint sent on the system links.

  She immediately sent back a coded, encrypted message so private his system told him to reject it because he hadn’t approved any communications from her.

  He instantly approved it, and then sent her a message.

  I found one of the masterminds. I’m not telling you this verbally because I’m not sure who we can trust, even in this room. I feel a bit uncomfortable trusting you with this, but Noelle wants you to handle it.

  Gomez peered at the screen as if the code could tell her something. Is the mastermind on the Moon?

  Earth Alliance Security Division, he sent. Not the one on Earth.

  Gomez’s gaze met his, and he could tell: she was truly startled.

  We need to act fast, because this was a real-time communication, unencrypted, from Ostaka to a woman named Jhena Andre. You’re going to have to pull a lot of strings—and the correct ones—to get her arrested. They can’t kill her and they can’t let her kill herself. Am I clear?

  Absolutely, Gomez sent. I’ll take care of it immediately. I know exactly who to contact to get this done.

  Flint wished he felt reassured. He wished he knew this woman better. She seemed competent, but he would rather work with his friends.

  And then he mentally chided himself. He had worked with Luc Deshin, of all people. And Deshin had been the one who initially got him Andre’s name.

  They just hadn’t been able to tie her to anything.

  But they could now.

  I’ll send the communications to you to confirm, along with the links they traveled and the second one’s unencrypted
path.

  Gomez nodded.

  Flint added, I don’t have time to deal with this effectively right now, but I’m afraid if we don’t handle it quickly, Andre will vanish. If we find her—

  We find her associates, Gomez sent. We can shut them all down.

  Flint felt a bit of relief. Maybe DeRicci was right; maybe Gomez would be just fine.

  One step at a time, Marshal, he sent back. Let’s get Andre first.

  I’m already working on it, Mr. Flint, Gomez sent. We’re going to get these bastards. I promise.

  Good, Flint sent. I’m going to let you handle that. I’m going to make sure they don’t get a third victory. I’m going to make sure that they have the worst day of their lives. Starting right now.

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  BEFORE Ó BRÁDAIGH executed the emergency surface sweep, he contacted ten of his colleagues. Most of them were women, since it looked to him like there were no women in that list of people that the chief had sent him.

  Lombrozo had been on that list. The officers had gotten the list too, a little after Ó Brádaigh had. They apparently ordered someone to remove Lombrozo from his position or arrest him or something.

  The problem was that Ó Brádaigh recognized at least a dozen engineers and a handful of inspectors in that list of people. He told the officers, but he couldn’t do anything about it. Not right now.

  He could feel the time passing. He had a clock counting down at the very edge of his left eye, and even though it was driving him nuts, it was keeping him focused.

  He had asked the other engineers—the ones he sort of trusted—to go into the various substructures and check his work. He’d also asked that the inspectors get teams to monitor the dome.

  He couldn’t monitor the dome, even though he wanted to. He was back inside the control room, hoping to hell that Petteway hadn’t set anything up secretly and somehow disabled the notification.

  The surface sweep scared the crap out of Ó Brádaigh. Normally, they prepped for a week before running a surface sweep. Usually nearby businesses like the Growing Pits were warned that stuff might fall off the surface of the dome, and trains were rerouted or at least prevented from being anywhere near the dome while the sweep was underway.

  No one wanted debris falling on delicate machinery or people or other smaller domes, and that was always a risk with a surface sweep.

  Now, he was conducting one with no warning at all.

  He hoped everyone outside the dome would be all right.

  Ó Brádaigh activated the sweep. The system asked him three times if the sweep was necessary. All three times, he stated that the sweep was an emergency.

  His hands were shaking as he watched the program kick into gear. He stayed in the control room, and used their small screens to watch the progress of the sweep across the kilometers of dome.

  First step, shut off all the non-essential dome programming, like the daylight changes. That would upset people all by itself. At least, the people who weren’t already freaked out by the sectioning that Noelle DeRicci had ordered.

  Then the dome would darken, and anomalies would show up as light or as redness depending on what was going on along the Moon’s surface.

  If real sunlight was streaming onto the Moon, the dome sweep program would use the light to help find breaches. If this part of the Moon was in darkness, other programming would kick in.

  Ó Brádaigh let the sweep program handle this part of it. He had only initiated a dome surface sweep once in the past two years, and he didn’t remember all of the protocols.

  He had to rely on the computers, on the system, on the dome itself.

  His stomach clenched. He tried not to think about Fiona, his mother, and Berhane, but of course, they were the only things he could think about.

  He focused on the darkness covering the small replica of the dome before him. He looked at the numbers scrolling to his left, the sweep program in its most basic form. And he watched the microimages of the sweep on his right.

  He made himself concentrate on those things.

  Because the sweep was underway.

  He couldn’t stop it if he wanted to.

  And he most definitely did not want to.

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  THE REDS AND golds of dawn caressed Beihai Park. Odgerel looked at the multicolored eastern sky. It made her tired.

  Usually, she started her day at dawn with a walk from her home to the office. On this day, she’d not only been awake for hours by the time dawn lit the sky, but she’d already had more news than she could process.

  And now, word from a marshal of the Frontier, a woman with a decades-long career who, in theory, had taken a leave of absence.

  It was clear that she had not. Odgerel investigated her along one public network while listening to her on a private link.

  Marshal Judita Gomez had applied for a job at the clone factory in Hétique City before the bombings. The personnel office had thought she wasn’t serious about the interview and, instead, had been trying to investigate something.

  If Gomez’s private ship weren’t already on the Moon when the bombings of Hétique City had occurred, Odgerel would have been suspicious of Gomez’s motives. But until these past few months, Gomez hadn’t been deep inside the Alliance in years.

  And a quick search of her records showed some contact with the Frémont clones that anyone would have found disturbing.

  Besides, Gomez was the second person to alert Odgerel to possible treason by Jhena Andre, whom Odgerel had met once, and hadn’t liked—not that it mattered. Odgerel often didn’t like subordinates in her department.

  Gomez had also sent images of one hundred originals for clones known to be on the Moon. One of them, Lawrence Ostaka, also worked for the Security Department.

  Odgerel tried not to let such details disturb her, although they did.

  She had sent for Mitchell Brown. Since there were at least two traitors in her division, she wanted someone she could trust.

  And even before she sent for Brown, she compared his visage to those of the originals, and she had one of her departments rerun his DNA, searching for hidden clone tags or shortened telomeres.

  The department had found nothing.

  She heard him approach before she saw him, his shoes making a slight squeak against the path. He had barely been in Beijing for a month, and he still had not absorbed local custom.

  Although, as he came up beside her, he handed her a cup filled with her favorite lemon-lime drink. She usually had that mid-afternoon to refresh herself, but mid-afternoon seemed a long way away.

  “Did you see the information I sent you on Jhena Andre?” she asked him quietly.

  “It’s legitimate,” he said. “Once you look at her, you see a lot of irregularities in her behavior.”

  “You seem eager to believe ill of one of our more valued employees,” Odgerel said.

  “The office received another warning about Andre about two hours before you contacted me,” Brown said. “I was going to assign someone to investigate, and then we had to deal with Hétique City.”

  “Where did the other warning come from?” Odgerel asked.

  “One of our investigators, Wilma Goudkins,” he said.

  Odgerel’s hands tightened against the cup. The chill of the liquid had leached into the cup’s surface. “She partners with Lawrence Ostaka.”

  Odgerel had forwarded the images to Brown as well as other members of her team. She wanted any of those clones inside the Alliance caught and detained.

  “Ostaka filed a complaint against her,” Brown said, “claiming she was too sympathetic to the Moon and wasn’t doing her job. In light of who he actually is, that complaint now reads like a recommendation.”

  Odgerel sipped the drink, its sweet bitterness somehow refreshing, even as the sun rose above the trees.

  “We have to hope that this is not some kind of trick to get us to take her seriously,” Odgerel said.

  “I considered that. But I also r
ealize we have time,” he said.

  Odgerel turned toward him. He was ever so slightly taller than she was.

  “Time?” she asked. “Marshal Gomez said another attack on the Moon is imminent.”

  “And we have to trust those on the Moon to handle that problem,” Brown said. “My sources claim that there are only a few hours before the next attack hits, and no matter what we do, we can’t resolve anything in that time.”

  Odgerel forced herself to study the pinkish hues along the green leaves. She loved dawn. No fake dawn of a dome ever compared.

  She could not let the idea of another Moon attack upset her now. Nor could she think about the implications to the Moon, to Earth, and to the Alliance.

  Right now, she had to remain in the moment, and the sunlight, beautifully pink and golden, helped her do that.

  “What kind of time do we have?” she asked Brown.

  “Time for an apology,” he said.

  She had not expected that answer. She looked at him sideways. “Apology? To whom?”

  “Jhena Andre, if need be,” he said. “We arrest her now, isolate her, search for known associates. If we are wrong, we apologize and release her. If she sues us, we can argue the heat of the moment. After all, another attack is imminent.”

  Odgerel smiled ever so slightly. Brown was devious. She hadn’t expected that of him, and she liked it.

  “Order Andre’s arrest. Turn her life upside down. Find everything she has ever done, every person she has ever spoken to, see if we do indeed have a traitor in our midst.”

  Brown nodded. He started to move away, but Odgerel caught his arm.

  “Make certain that everyone who comes in contact with Andre is not connected to this originals list or to any of the investigations. Make sure they have never had contact with her before. And make certain they keep her from contacting anyone or harming herself.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said, in a tone that made her think he had already thought of that.

  “If she dies in this arrest,” Odgerel said, “I will hold you personally responsible.”