Skip Trace

by Jenn Burke

  “So it’s not a variable shift, then, but an imminent fault.”

  “That would be my conclusion.”

  Nodding, Felix called up the system schematic for the quadrant in question and enlarged the coil. His shoulder protested every swipe. Marnie peeked over his arm, reminding him of her presence. “I suppose you came all this way to go over the security report with us?”

  “In a way, yes. I might comment that you could use a comm upgrade. And some decent shields.”

  “Are you dissing my boat?”

  “Merely pointing out that if we wish to use the Chaos to collect the remaining members of Project Dreamweaver, we might want to consider outfitting her better for the job.”

  Grumbling, Felix turned back to his display and traced a line to the fault, through it and on to the next system. He tapped the projection, the tip of his finger poking through the emitted light. “We’ll need to check this junction as well.”

  “I concur.”

  Felix pulled his display out of Marnie’s reach. Marnie’s presence meant he was unlikely to get to that work this very moment, though, which irked. He needed to tinker, damn it. He craved the solace of fixing shit, making things work. He pushed the fingers of his good hand through his hair and growled as pain burned through his shoulder and down his arm.

  “Are you well, Fixer? Does Zander know you are here?”

  Were those two queries related?

  “‘M fine and he’s sleeping.” He shot a pointed glance at Marnie. “I suppose you had better tell me why you’re really here.”

  She smiled. “Since you asked, I’ve managed to track down a former member of Zed’s team.”

  A member of Project Dreamweaver? Felix had begun to think Zed might be the only one left.

  “No shit.” A weird pinch worked at his gut. Deactivating his wallet, he pointed back toward the auxiliary hatch. “We better wake the others. Ready to sneak past the AEF cordon around the Crystal Palace?”

  “You’re funny, Flick.”

  Right, Marnie was Military Intelligence. She could probably chart her own course though j-space.

  * * *

  Raised voices trickled through the closed door. Zed paused, recognizing one of them as Flick’s. After he’d gotten the call about an hour ago that Marnie was on Alpha and they needed to have a crew meeting, he’d thought Flick would enjoy some time to spend with his hack-swapping buddy. In retrospect, the fact that Qek, not Flick, had called him should’ve clued him in.

  “Sounds like a party,” Elias said.

  “A Fixer-style one.” Nessa offered a delicate smile.

  With a small sigh, Zed activated the door and it slid into the wall with a whisper. In the middle of the small reception room, Flick and Marnie stood nose to nose. Tension snapped between them. Before Zed could take more than a step forward, Marnie rocked back on her heels, dropping a few centimeters of height. Flick mirrored her movement, leaning away from the interrupted confrontation. Whatever they’d been fighting about, it had been intense—Zed could see it in the rigidity of Flick’s movements as he turned to face the tall windows present in every apartment of the Thessaloniki Tower.

  A wide smile broke across Marnie’s face as she made short work of the distance between her and the door. She pulled Zed down into a tight hug and he wrapped her up with equal intensity.

  “Zed, so good to see you.”

  “Likewise,” Zed wheezed. Well, Marnie hadn’t changed at all. That small frame packed a big metaphorical—and occasionally literal—punch. He partially detangled himself, leaving an arm around her as he turned to introduce her to the rest of the group. “Marnie Scott, meet Elias Idowu and Nessa O’Brien. I believe you met Qek earlier this morning.” Zed’s gaze lifted over Marnie’s head toward the man standing stubbornly apart from the group.

  By the time a round of polite handshakes and murmurs had been exchanged, Flick had drifted over to dangle in their periphery, hands shoved in his pockets, chin pointed down. Whatever he and Marnie had been arguing about clearly still had his hackles up. He flinched as Zed moved close to him. What the hell? Zed took a step back, hand raised in an “I’m not touching you” gesture, and tried not to take that flinch personally. Flick was just riled up, that was all. Uncomfortable on Alpha after the lift tube incident. Or maybe he thought Zed would jar his sore shoulder.

  Instead of pushing Flick, Zed turned to the long table and sat in one of the eight chairs. Might as well get this meeting rolling. Sprawling in one of the couches facing each other in a different part of the reception room would have been more comfortable, but this get-together wasn’t for fun. They had serious things to discuss, if the expression on Marnie’s face was any indication. Qek, Ness and Elias sat across from Zed. Marnie sat at the head of the table. He was a little surprised when Flick sat beside him, but didn’t comment. He also said nothing when Flick’s knee bumped his gently.

  Good enough.

  Marnie tapped a bracelet similar to the one Flick wore and then expanded the small display that appeared overtop. “All roads lead to Project Dreamweaver, so we’ll start there.” Her fingers flicked and a chorus of soft beeps and chimes echoed around the table. “I’ve just sent you all a list of names.”

  Flick glanced at his display, grief pinching his brow. Zed opened his own wallet to examine the list, headed Project Dreamweaver. It contained ten names, six of which were marked through with a black line, including the first: Major Zander Anatolius. Their recently deceased friend Captain Emma Katze was third.

  God, Emma. Would he ever see her name and not feel guilty?

  “You’re not dead,” Flick whispered. His hand sought out Zed’s under the table.

  “No, he’s not,” Marnie said. “Thank all the stars.”

  Zed reread the list, frowning. In the version he’d sent Marnie via secure jazer, he’d left off his name and Emma’s. Seemed pointless to include Emma’s, in particular—they’d already tracked her down and failed to get her out of the trouble she’d found herself in. “This isn’t the list I sent you when we asked for your help. Where did you get this?”

  “Ryan found it when he was looking into the lift tube incident.” Ryan Scott, Marnie’s husband, was the other half of her team. Marnie was the field agent and Ryan was the jacked-in operative, bio-implants tethering him to the military drift ship Cambridge. “It was connected to a reporter named Juston Dell, who published a series of conspiracy theories around the time of Zed’s death, meaning he might have had this list at least a month. His stories mention Emma Katze in passing, and though he could have sourced her name from Zed’s time at Shepard Academy, or specialist training, the fact he linked her to Zed feels like more than a coincidence.” Marnie tapped the top of her display. “And check out the file header.”

  The list appeared to be the page of a larger report, perhaps an interdepartmental memo. Source and destination codes were missing but Zed recognized the military format easily.

  “Are you suggesting the AEF is the source of the leak?” Zed said.

  “Ultimately, they have to be, regardless of the source.”

  Dreamweaver was an AEF project, after all.

  Zed straightened. “Do you have anything more on Juston Dell? Anything I can forward to Anatolius Legal?”

  “They’re probably already aware of him. He’s been stalking your family since the memorial service, probing inelegantly at every opportunity, looking for information regarding your death. Decorated war hero, retired and suddenly dead. You were already a story. Then you showed up, alive.”

  “He probably knows he’s being watched, then.”

  “On both sides.”

  “Perhaps Juston Dell considered Zander dead a better story, if he wanted impetus for his conspiracy theory,” Qek said.

  Flick’s brows jumped upward. “You think this Dell could ha
ve planned the lift tube accident?”

  Marnie brushed a knuckle over one of the displays. “Possibly. But I’m not sure he meant to kill Zed. He’s definitely a better story alive. Maybe he simply wanted to flush him out of the family compound. Possibly expose his capabilities?”

  “Fucker,” Flick growled. “He must have some wild ideas about the project if he thought we might survive that!”

  “We did survive it,” Zed reminded him.

  “What about Misha Volk?” Elias asked.

  “Ryan found nothing on her. I don’t know if she was working directly with Dell or for someone else.”

  Zed leaned forward. “So who’s the enemy here?”

  Marnie eyed her display. “Dell’s an annoyance but he’s not the real threat. Someone else is following up on this. Someone other than Dell has this list.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know three of the people listed here. Zed, Emma—” Marnie nodded toward the display “—and Captain Dieter Sorge.”

  The second name on the Project Dreamweaver list not blacked out.

  Dieter. He was still alive? “Dieter was my second in command,” Zed said. “You know him?”

  Marnie grimaced. “When you gave me his name...It shouldn’t have come as a shock. I lost touch with Dieter two years ago. God, Zed, I wish you’d come to me earlier. Before Ashushk Prime.” She held up a hand. “I know. I’m AEF, I’m Military Intelligence and, technically, I shouldn’t have known anything about Project Dreamweaver.”

  “But you did.”

  “Dieter was Mil-Int before he was recruited away. I knew he was involved in something experimental, but he wouldn’t give me details, not even a project name. Then he just disappeared. You were already gone, Emma too. And trying to keep tabs on Flick...” A small smile eased a little of the tension on her face.

  Flick had the grace to look embarrassed. “I told Zed we should have contacted you, when he first...when we knew he needed help.”

  Marnie arched a brow at Zed. “And you said that enough people knew too much already, right?”

  He nodded. That had been the subject of more than a few discussions when his mental capacity had started to deteriorate. Fearing for the safety of his friends and family, Zed had fought against the idea of exposing details of the project.

  Nessa broke a short but broody silence. “Is Dieter the one you found?”

  “Yes. As soon as Zed gave me his list, I pinged all the old addresses I had for Dieter. I’d been doing that on and off over the last couple of years. Yesterday I got an answer. He’s in trouble. He didn’t say much, but I got scrambled location coordinates and a warning. He used a code we developed years ago to pass private messages back and forth in Mil-Int. The AEF had eyes on him—but he ducked them before his last jump. Now he’s out of unhooked credits and stranded on Petrel Station.”

  Elias leaned forward, his fingers flying over his wallet, and Zed saw screens related to the station Marnie had mentioned. “Petrel’s not the nicest station out there, but it’s a few steps above the worst. Good place to hide without being too dangerous. Short-term, anyway.”

  Zed sucked in a tight breath. “We...fuck. We need to go pick him up.”

  “You have to stay here,” Marnie said. “The existence of Juston Dell isn’t going to be enough to put off an order for your arrest if we piss off the AEF, especially if the leak originally came from inside the ranks.”

  “What does that mean?” Elias asked.

  Marnie leaned back in her seat, her brown eyes warm with sympathy. She’d always been as good at showing her feelings as hiding them, and knowing just the right situations for either. “Given this list, the crossed-out names...it feels like someone in the AEF wants to tie up some loose ends.”

  “The participants in Project Dreamweaver aren’t dying fast enough,” Flick put in, sounding bleak.

  Nessa huffed. “So why not just kill Zed? Why play games?”

  “He’s an Anatolius,” Elias said.

  “In addition, he has returned from the grave once, already, which undoubtedly threw a snapper into the works.”

  “Spanner, Qek,” Ness corrected.

  Zed cleared his throat. “Uh, sitting right here.” Even the hand squeeze from Flick under the table couldn’t quite dissolve the discomfort of hearing his crew wonder why someone hadn’t tried to kill him.

  “How are we going to conduct this pickup?” Qek asked.

  Marnie pulled up yet another display. “I’ve entered a job into SkipNet and assigned the Chaos’s registration to it.”

  Elias’s wallet pinged. “You did what? How do you even—”

  “She’s Mil-Int, Eli, leave it at that.” Flick’s smile didn’t reach his eyes and Zed had a feeling they were tiptoeing toward the argument Flick and Marnie had been having before everyone else had arrived.

  “Isn’t it going to seem weird if we leave Alpha so shortly after we arrived?”

  Marnie gave Elias a tight smile. “Not if Zed and Flick stay here.”

  Right. That explained the fight earlier. And why Flick’s ears were turning red now.

  “Look, I know the timing sucks, but you asked me for help on this project and I’m in, one hundred percent. Even if we weren’t going after another of my friends, I’d be in. Between this crew, myself and Ryan, I believe we can save a few lives. At least, I hope we can.” She tapped the holographic list. “These men and women have sacrificed too much already.”

  Flick started sorting through the displays hovering over his bracelet, his movements jagged. “When do you leave?”

  He wasn’t going to argue?

  “I’d like to leave tomorrow. A day there, a day back. Maybe having a second member of the project here when the AEF comes calling for Zed will slow them down.”

  Zed’s gaze moved from Marnie to Flick as he identified the unpleasant feeling in his gut. A gross-feeling ball of jealousy, envy and not a little amount of resentment. “I’m supposed to be the one helping everyone out,” he muttered.

  “You were on a team. You’re still part of a team. You know how it works,” Marnie said. “You won’t be benched forever.”

  Maybe not, but that reassurance didn’t help. It stung.

  “Tomorrow, then.” Elias lifted his chin toward Flick. “Last I heard the Chaos had been grounded pending sixteen safety protocol violations.”

  “Fuckers.” Flick prodded his bracelet again, grumbling, then met Elias’s gaze. “I’ll have her ready to depart at oh-nine-hundred, Captain.”

  Departing. Without him and Flick.

  A trickle of premonition shivered through Zed, and he didn’t know if he was more worried about the Chaos being out in the black without them—or him and Flick being left behind on Alpha.

  Chapter Six

  Staring out at the media assembled in the conference room, Zed discovered that while he might have inherited his father’s eyes, his hair and a variation on his first name, he had not inherited Alexander Anatolius’s easy way with a crowd. He’d been in front of media before—when he was a kid, it had been an infrequent part of his life, but still a part of it. It hadn’t been a part of his job when he’d been in the AEF, though. He hadn’t been required to speak to the folks who translated the events of the war into snippets and bytes that the public could understand. His contribution to any media gathering usually stopped and ended at a charming smile and maybe a quick comment.

  Not today. Today he was the main attraction. The hot story. He couldn’t dwell in the shadows, as he had after the footage of his Project Dreamweaver team saving the civilians had leaked. No, despite fatigue from the early morning crew meeting, despite feeling more than a little lost at the idea that his ship had to abandon him here on Alpha, he had to face the questions head-on, manage them.

  How the fuc
k did he do that?

  Deny, deny, deny.

  Zed barely tracked Brennan’s opening statement, the words all blending together until his older brother waved a hand at him. His cue. The crowd erupted into a cacophony of questions even before he stepped forward. Unbidden and a bit frantic, Zed’s fingers sought out Flick’s, and he squeezed hard before approaching the podium.

  “Uh...” Zed grimaced as the amplification field caught his voice and carried it across the gathered members of the press. They quieted immediately, but it reminded Zed of how a storm could drop into a lull before surging forward again. He cleared his throat, then winced as the sound reverberated over the crowd. “Sorry. It’s been a lot of years since I’ve had to stand up at one of these.” A smattering of chuckles rose up from the group and he gave them a quick smile. “So...I feel as if I should make a quip about the reports of my death being exaggerated, but they weren’t.”

  He took a breath, his gaze roaming over the sea of faces and wallets pointed at him, no doubt recording his every word. The moment of truth—or, well, half-truth.

  “About a month ago, I reacted poorly to a medical treatment. My body shut down, my organ function ceased, and I was declared dead. As is standard procedure in most hospitals, my body was put into stasis at the time of death. Over the next two weeks, doctors worked at determining why I reacted the way I did and how to counteract it. Thankfully, they narrowed it down, brought me out of stasis and mitigated the reaction I’d had. There was a miscommunication between the hospital and my family, which resulted in the news of my death being announced prematurely.”

  Zed paused, and a reporter took that opportunity to speak up. “What sort of medical treatment?” she asked.

  “I fought in the Human-Stin War for eight years, in various capacities,” he said, his voice low but still loud enough that the amplification field caught it. “Like any soldier, I saw horrible things, I...I did some horrible things, and I did not handle the end of the war well.”