Pathfinder

by Laura E. Reeve

  “That’s nothing to message home about. And the sentences?” She was mildly disappointed and surprisingly overwhelmed by the relief that she wouldn’t have to testify again.

  “They haven’t an ‘accord’ yet on sentencing, according to SP Duval, who took the brunt of the Feed correspondents’ attention. Senator Stephanos is just hanging on for the ride, since he’s involved in damage control right now.” Edones went on to describe how Myron, with the help of aides for two other senators, had managed to concoct a political struggle around how AFCAW had handled “the G-145 situation.” Several senators were realizing they’d become far too dependent upon their staffs for political threat and public opinion assessments.

  “What about the bombing attempts? What have you gotten from the lieutenant?” She frowned. The TSF intelligence officer might be able to dig up an old APG-3034, but why?

  “We can’t connect anyone to the explosives—we’re having trouble proving the Terrans knew they were getting data from Myron. The lieutenant’s initial story is that she received anonymous tips for the pickups. She won’t answer, yet, any questions about her superiors, such as SP Duval.” One of Edones’s eyebrows twitched; he didn’t have to tell her that he wasn’t finished with the TSF lieutenant. “As for the explosives, we suspect the grenades were stored in the visitors’ hostel on the Pilgrimage, but only for a short period of time. Four Terrans selected for the Pytheas crew stayed in that hostel. I’ve sent you their names.”

  She’d check out those people as soon as she could. Right now, she wanted to know more about Edones’s situation. “What harm has Myron done, besides wasting time and attention on this audit? I’m worried that Overlord Six’s staff is involved—Joyce told you about my informant, right? Six may have been behind Abram’s botched attempt to sever this solar system.”

  “We won’t know the full damage until we look through everything Myron passed on. We’ve demanded they return the data, but Duval and his staff are being a tad obstructive. I’m hoping the TSF, on its own, will be willing to work with us.” Edones grimaced. “The capabilities of the Bright Crescent have been compromised, of course. I’ve ordered an entire overhaul of the ship, but we have to wait until we’re at Karthage Point or another depot- level facility. Oh, another caution—there were references to Directorate case files in the data Myron passed—your current mission might have been jeopardized.”

  “And what about Overlord Six?”

  “Hmm. Yes, all leads point to Six, don’t they? Who’s your informant?”

  “Frank Maestrale, an Autonomist who’s detained on Beta Priamos for helping Abram.” This was a secure session, so there seemed little harm in passing Frank’s name. “All he can give us is hearsay. You might want to look over Sergeant Pike’s report on the comm traffic as well.”

  Edones made a note on his slate, then asked the question she’d been dreading. “How’s our friend doing?” Even over encrypted comm, he was careful when he referred to Maria.

  “Have you seen the crew selections for the Pytheas?” After Edones nodded, meaning he knew Maria would be on the crew, she continued. “Everything’s on the back burner until we finish the first exploration mission.”

  “Just remember that we have no funds for relocation—our friend must stay in place.”

  “That may be a deal-breaker,” she said.

  Edones shrugged, his face frigid with indifference. So much for Maria’s wishes. Meanwhile, Edones said, “I suggest you find a way to delay the exploration mission.”

  “Not so easy. The Minoans are champing at the bit.”

  His blue eyes became even cooler. “I think they might listen to your cautions.”

  “The TSF security manager, Ensign Walker, has already let me look through everyone’s background investigation. All the Terrans look innocuous.” Even Maria. Knowing Maria’s TEBI background, she’d had a laugh at that harmless-looking dossier.

  Edones sighed. “You know the Terrans don’t have reliable tracking systems. Those investigations are fantasy.”

  They stared at each other in silence. A strange expression crossed Edones’s face; he looked away, and when he focused upon her again, his eyes still seemed remote. “Please, Ariane. Delay the launch. You’re risking too much. Besides the possible saboteurs, I’ve heard you’re going to use enhanced piloting drugs and Minoan tech. Is that true?”

  The shock of Edones using her first name hit her like a cold shower. She shivered, suddenly recognizing what had briefly shown on his face: worry and fear.

  “I can’t delay.” She tried to talk around the secrets, which was dangerous to do with Edones. “The Minoans have good reasons for this schedule. They’ve got a slightly better clash for me to use—” She drew a big breath to hide her hesitation. “And they’ll be adjusting my body’s drug levels through—some equipment.”

  “Equipment?” His voice was sharp.

  “They’re, sort of, inserting something under my skin. That’s privileged information, per our Minoan supervisor.” Although most of Parmet’s staff, and only Gaia knew who else, were aware of the implants.

  He blew his breath out in exasperation. “I can tell you’ve made up your mind and you’re hell-bent on doing this. You’re always so—so—”

  “Stubborn?” she said.

  “Self-contained. Closed.”

  “That’s rather ironic criticism, Owen, coming from you.”

  “Aren’t you afraid?” He looked at her searchingly. “Because you should be.”

  She couldn’t answer. Owen wasn’t exactly emoting all over his screen, but she had to wait for him to transform back into the “calculating, manipulating bastard” that she thought she knew, and who had earned Matt’s antipathy.

  Owen’s parting words had been, “Please keep yourself safe.” With those words echoing in her head, Ariane watched the Minoan implant struggle against the forceps.

  “This is a new implant that Contractor Director says is tweaked, based upon the test results we gave them.” Lee looked dubiously at the yellow and green implant, then at Ariane. “Last chance to back out.”

  Ariane sat at the lab bench, her left arm extended flat over the bench top. Specialist Dimitriou, who was now working full time for Dr. Lee, had carefully injected the chemical marker between the sheath of the brachial artery and the triceps in her upper arm. Likewise, tiny amounts of marker had been put on the input and output points of her drug implant, located on and under the skin of her inner forearm. Dimitriou held a cauterizing scalpel hovering over the anesthetized inner part of her elbow, ready to make a longitudinal cut for entry of the Minoan implant.

  Impulsively, she held out her free hand, remembering how the implant had wrapped around her thumb. “Let me hold it.”

  “I hope you know what you’re doing. We can’t chase this all around the station,” Lee muttered. She dropped the struggling fibrous thing into Ariane’s hand, where it wrapped itself around her wrist and then wove through her fingers, almost lovingly.

  “Do it.” She nodded at Dimitriou and looked away.

  She didn’t feel the scalpel cut, but she saw it well enough when she turned back. Holding the implant over the incision, she hoped it would “know” what to do. Indeed, it slid into her arm, causing a strange sensation that abruptly stopped.

  She waited several minutes. “Well. I don’t feel any different.”

  Lee and Dimitriou leaned over her arm, inspecting it. Dimitriou said, “The incision looks like it’s closing by itself.”

  The implant shifted and she felt a wave of nausea. She turned away from Dimitriou and suddenly vomited. “Sorry,” she said as she coughed. “I didn’t consider the ‘ick’ factor.”

  Then she fell backward off the stool. Dimitriou caught her, as she saw his worried face fade to gray.

  When she woke up, she found Dimitriou had put her on the patient bed in the corner of the lab and was hooking her implant—her normal Autonomist-designed one—to a monitor. She tried to sit up.

  “Hey
, be careful. Let’s see how you’re doing first,” he said, pushing her back.

  Matt came running into the lab, followed by David Ray. “Is she okay? What happened?” They circled her bed anxiously before Lee calmed them down.

  “Don’t worry, her vitals look good.” Lee turned back to the displays.

  Ariane watched David Ray watch Lee, and sympathized with the older man. He was worried, but tried not to show it as he hoped his familiar Lee would return. This was a different Lee; the spark was gone. Every once in a while, she shied away from a shadow or flinched suddenly, with no provocation. The medics said that deep emotional memories of her attack remained, even if she had no sensory or narrative memories of the event. In a sense, Lee had lost her confidence, but had no idea why.

  “If you’re ready, Ms. Kedros, we’ll do a few tests,” Dimitriou said.

  “Let’s go.”

  First, they did the standard pilot clash- resilience tests. With these tests, they’d compare her responses against the averages and assess her required dose—which would be high, because her ultra- fast metabolism processed it quicker than normal. Like any N-space pilot, she hated the standard eye response and attention tests, as well as feeling of the clash when she wasn’t in N-space.

  Clash was the name pilots gave the cognitive dissonance enhancement drug. It kept N- space terrors at bay by dulling the pilot’s emotional response and helping maintain “distance,” while keeping her reflexes sharp and thoughts clear. After transitioning to real-space, she was always hypersensitive and irritable, every sound and sight seemed to have jagged edges. Clash, however, was well worth the bother; it kept the pilot sane and had no lasting effects. The removed and distant N-space pilot who was unable to empathize was a v-play stereotype, claimed every medical trial report. Hmm. Those reports did nothing to quell the conspiracy theories about clash on net-think. No worries here; I’ve harmed my body more with alcohol and recreational drugs than with anything I’ve taken for work. After all, she was already the result of a medical experiment, that classified military rejuv—

  “We’re starting the enhanced clash, so go through it again.” Dr. Lee’s voice, small but clear in her implant, grabbed her attention. She acknowledged and performed the same tests again, under the enhanced clash designed by the Minoans. She didn’t feel the same pressured feeling behind her eyelids but otherwise, the Minoan clash felt about the same.

  Trying to rub away the sharpness in her head, she heard concerned murmurs over at the display bench. She unhooked the leads from her implant—her Autonomous one—and decided to internally call the Minoan implant a parasite to differentiate it from all the other subcutaneous Autonomous equipment in her body. “Parasite” made sense, didn’t it? At her spiteful thought, it stirred and she had momentary nausea.

  “What’s the problem?” She walked up behind everyone and looked at the graphs. All showed early and precipitous drops in drug concentration. This was more than an ultra-rapid metabolic response. Lee sat to one side, frowning and scrolling through a document. The others turned to face Ariane.

  “You need to keep higher levels of clash in your bloodstream,” Matt gestured at the graphs. “It looks like the Minoan implant will prevent you from piloting N-space.”

  “Perhaps we need the conditions of N-space to test my little parasite.”

  Matt’s face turned pasty. “Dropping into N-space, without knowing whether the clash will kick in—”

  Lee yelped, “Hah! She’s got it right.”

  Turning to survey the three men, Lee added tartly, “Those responses were what the Minoan manual said would happen. It looks like only the women in this room have got Gaia’s common sense.”

  Now that sounded like the old Lee. Ariane smiled. The others followed suit and David Ray smiled so widely, he showed teeth.

  Lee looked at them suspiciously and snapped, “Why are you all standing about and grinning? We have work to do if we’re getting this launch off the ground—metaphorically speaking.”

  Isrid looked at the forty view ports of faces on the wall in front of him, one for every member of the Pytheas crew, and sighed. Sometimes he regretted the end of the war; otherwise, he could pump everybody full of drugs and interrogate them. “Let’s go through them again, but not through their superficial background records. This time—no holds barred—we identify who knows what about whom.”

  “Yes, SP.” Maria Guillotte and Ensign Walker nodded, although Walker double-checked the secure status display on the tabletop in front of him. Isrid approved. A survivor, if he continues to pay attention to details.

  “Start with the auxiliary members who’ll be near the buoy,” Isrid added.

  Walker displayed two more view ports to the side, under a label of “Aether’s Touch.” The faces belonged to Mr. Matthew Journey and Dr. Myrna Fox Lowry, who would be controlling the bot that ended up being their exclusive interface to the buoy, as well as relaying comm through to the Builders’ solar system.

  “From the top and no holds barred,” she said with a warning glance at Walker. “Ariane Kedros, which we know isn’t her original name, is the N-space pilot chosen by the Minoans. I’m using her as the central starting point. The Minoans say she’s the key to a successful N-space drop, because she’s using their enhanced drugs and tech. I also suspect most of the security risks for this mission are related to her.”

  Maria didn’t add, because Kedros helped detonate the weapon at Ura-Guinn sixteen years ago, since Isrid had used the highest TEBI restriction he could on that information. That was part of his agreement with Kedros, for getting control of the leases on G- 145. Walker knew about the involuntary and unpleasant ride Kedros had upon Isrid’s ship, but he couldn’t know why.

  “Yes, everything connects to her.” Isrid stared at Kedros’s official portrait, with which he was so familiar. It showed a waiflike face with sharp cheekbones and loose curls framing dark eyes that held tormented knowledge. A true Destroyer of Worlds, as the Minoans had named her.

  “The entire crew has now met Ms. Kedros, but here are the people who might have had some connection to her before the Pytheas entered the system.”

  About half the view ports became highlighted, showing people who knew the civilian Kedros before G- 145 was opened, or had met her during Abram’s takeover. Ensign Walker immediately homed in on the one exception.

  “What’s the connection between Dalton Lengyel, the mission commander, and Kedros?” Walker frowned. “I don’t remember reading anything in his background that connected him to her.”

  “That’s marked TEBI- Restricted.” Maria looked at Isrid. “However, my research indicates that Lengyel himself might not be aware of the connection, so I doubt it’s relevant.”

  Walker raised his eyebrows, but said nothing.

  “We could concentrate on who knows Kedros’s history.” Maria tapped a command and three view ports became highlighted: hers, Journey’s, and Lowry’s. She made the Martian patois sign for frustration, and added, “There’s our problem. We’re looking for someone who’ll be on the Pytheas, and it looks like I’m the only suspect.”

  “Let’s try this differently.” Walker tapped for control of the displays. “Let’s assume that Kedros’s background is common knowledge. If so, who’d want her dead or harmed?”

  Maria snorted and Isrid said, “Better light up every Terran. That’s half the crew—by design. And since we don’t keep a tenth of the data the Autonomists do, all Terran backgrounds are suspect. That’s too many threats to monitor.”

  Walker held up a cautionary finger. “But let’s apply a familiarity factor. They say ‘familiarity breeds contempt,’ but it also blunts the passions. Many of you who now know Kedros—as a real human being—are less likely to fly into a vengeful rage. Am I right?”

  Maria sneered, while Isrid returned to contemplating Kedros’s face. Walker was right. Isrid had known he wouldn’t kill Kedros from the moment he saw her loyalty to her commanders, new and old, even under torture. At the time,
he couldn’t admit he admired the fact that Nathan couldn’t break her.

  “If we remove Terrans who have worked with her or might thank her for being saved from Abram’s weapon, we end up with fewer people upon whom to focus.” Walker tapped and only nine faces remained.

  Isrid stared at those faces, but he’d spent hours already going over any video and photographs, trying to see if he recognized Nathan in any of them. Unfortunately, appearance was meaningless, particularly through cam-eyes. Don’t like the texture or color of your hair or skin? Salons had both temporary and permanent fixes for that, as well as the ability to hide, change, or create birthmarks. Don’t like the color of your eyes? The possible changes ran from full-fledged transplants to injected dyes to thin, difficult-to-detect contacts. Shape of eyes? Facial features? Plastic surgery had advanced, even on Terran worlds, to perfection. Weight could be changed and height could be fudged, given the nebulous Terran records. However, one thing that wasn’t as easy to hide, even by those knowing somaural projection, was muscle memory and unconscious body language. That was why he and Maria had looked through hours of ComNet video collected though the newly installed nodes on the station, hoping to catch a glimpse of Nathan—but to no avail.

  Perhaps Nathan wasn’t here, but Isrid couldn’t prove he was anywhere else, either, after searching through Terran governmental records. Nathan had vanished. The Autonomists would say he was “out of crystal,” although they were referring to the act of avoiding ComNet records.

  “SP, Colonel Edones of the AFCAW Directorate of Intelligence wishes to speak with you, face-to-face,” Walker said.

  “Clear the displays,” Isrid said.

  Ensign Walker did so, and then let Edones’s call through by dropping the privacy shield. The wall displayed the head and shoulders of Colonel Edones, whom Isrid considered the most dangerous intelligence controller in AFCAW. Unfortunately, and perhaps by intent, the view port didn’t display Edones’s lower arms or hands, which would have given Isrid a somaural reading advantage.