by Cathy Pegau
* * *
Natalia spent the next hour scouring the feeds for everything she could find on the Reyes Corporation. Not through her CMA access, unfortunately. That would have given her detailed information related to the company’s operations. All she could find over the public net was what Reyes Corporation was required to share.
Reyes was one of several keracite buyers who traveled the South Rim pirq mining circuit, purchasing ore then reselling it to processors and manufacturing companies across Nevarro. Buy low, sell high was how they made their credits, and from what Natalia had seen of their financials, the Reyeses were doing quite well. As long as the pirqs felt they were getting a fair deal, all was good.
The half-million-square klick South Rim Reserve had been set aside for pirqs by the CMA soon after Nevarro was settled two centuries before. One hundred or so large operations sites were established, but most were individual claims or small groups who worked with hand picks and power shovels. For the most part, pirqs just wanted to live their lives the way they wanted, independent from corporations like Exeter, Blue Mountain and Alpha-Omega.
The files Caine had given Natalia led to a pirq mining town, Grand Meridian, at the southern tip of the Yuther Range, in the southeast quadrant of the Reserve. Natalia spent the rest of the evening researching the town and found it to be one of the larger sites where Reyes Corporation bought ore. Global images showed it tucked into a box canyon at the base of the range. A single road led from the site to a small train station. There was nothing else for many kilometers around.
Caine’s information strongly suggested that Reyes Corporation was shipping something from Grand Meridian off-world to the Juneau System. Reyes had other divisions, but it wasn’t known as an interplanetary source of raw keracite ore. No one was, as it was too volatile to transport farther than required to get it to a processor. No spacer worth his captain’s pips would risk his ship and crew.
Natalia’s search of other Reyes Corporation activities yielded little to explain the mine-interplanetary shipping connection. Public information didn’t require full disclosure, even if everything was legal.
What, if anything, was going on at the site?
Their best bet, she’d told Caine, would be to go into Grand Meridian as pirqs looking for work. The nomadic lifestyle lent itself to uncertain employment, but there was usually some sort of job to be had. Though she hadn’t been on a pirq site in twenty years, Natalia had experience with just about every gig available to a skilled miner.
Her father had been a cutter, one of the more difficult and higher-paying positions, before taking the challenging job of site prospector. He’d taught Natalia how to operate the monstrous machine with its whirling cutter heads, and they’d practiced on an older model against the side of the mountain where the family had lived. She and her sister had also befriended the senior hauler. The only job they weren’t permitted to play at was roofer.
That was her mother’s specialty, and Anastasia Kuzmin had refused to risk her children’s safety. She’d discuss technique, but they were never allowed to practice.
Out of respect for her mother, Natalia wouldn’t even ask about roofing positions at Grand Meridian. Not that she’d want one, even if she had the proper training. The very idea sent spidery chills along her limbs.
Chances were good Caine wouldn’t be qualified for, let alone want, a roofer position. Hell, she hadn’t been keen on the idea of going to the site at all. Too bad. Caine knew more about the Reyes operations than the CMA seemed to, and if Natalia had questions, she’d need Caine for answers.
It was also advisable to have a second pair of eyes and ears. Going into a pirq mining site could mean limited communication with the outside world, especially if it was operated by Revivalists. Pirqs didn’t bother to keep up with technology as it was, and tended to have the oldest, least reliable comm systems on the planet.
Technically, Natalia shouldn’t be doing anything remotely associated with mining. She was supposed to be preparing her defense. Before she left Pandalus, she’d give her agent rep all the information on her procedures with Hirahm. The rep already had access to her service jacket and case completion record, which spoke for themselves.
During an earlier call, the rep said she’d need at least a week to get organized, she was that far behind in her caseload. She’d advised Natalia to take a vacation and comm if she had any questions, but not to worry if she didn’t hear from the office for a bit. It was the only time Natalia appreciated the slow wheels of justice since she’d joined the CMA.
But even on administrative leave, if anything happened in Grand Meridian, she should be able to get help from the CMA. Maybe. As long as she didn’t ask Garces.
She’d just have to trust Caine wouldn’t bolt, leaving her high and dry.
Natalia ate a CompuChef-generated sandwich while she devised personas for the two of them, using a template borrowed from her CMA undercover operations. She had no idea if Genevieve Caine was used to having a different first name, so she opted to use the first names they knew each other by to make it easier. Caine must have changed her name in the past, perhaps several times, so who knew what was real or a clever fabrication with her?
Natalia had no problem being a completely different person at times, even going through the annoyance of subdermal nanos to slightly alter her appearance. Hell, some days it was difficult to remember she was Natalia Hallowell, not some ditzy arm candy for a low-level thug or the representative of a bogus Colonial acquisitions committee. The job tended to blur the lines of her existence.
She forwarded Caine’s new identity to her comm. Just a couple of women looking for honest work.
Female pirqs weren’t all that unusual, but that didn’t mean they’d be ignored. Natalia had seen plenty of unattached workers, and some who were spoken for, harassed by miners. Pirqs had as much propensity for being asses as anyone. She and Caine would just have to make sure their focus stayed on the job, not on attracting attention.
Though it would be difficult for Genevieve Caine not to attract attention.
Natalia rubbed her eyes and forced the image of the brunette out of her head.
Focus. Right.
They needed to infiltrate the site and gather enough evidence to get the CMA interested in Reyes Corporation in the next two weeks. That was the duration of the Internal Review Board’s preliminary fact-finding period, when she was required to be off the premises. Cooling her heels at home would have made her skitzie, but going into Grand Meridian was a risk.
If Caine’s accusations turned out to be nothing, or if they couldn’t find anything worth pursuing, Natalia would have to chalk it up as a life lesson. No harm done, and it would have kept her mind off her troubles with the bribery charge. If there was something to it and Natalia found legitimate reason to question the Reyeses, the CMA would likely issue her a reprimand for an unsanctioned operation but not go further than that. As long as she was on the payroll, they could justify her involvement with CMA-related violations by saying she had inadvertently come upon the situation. “Coincidences” happened. Worst-case scenario would see everything blow up in her face. Then she could probably kiss her career goodbye. Though it would certainly be yanked away from her if she was found guilty of bribery.
Let’s just hope that’s not the outcome.
The techs would determine the vid and the account were fakes. They had to.
Natalia forced her thoughts away from that scenario only to have them drift back to Caine. She was reluctant to go to Grand Meridian, to say the least, but why? Natalia could understand her not wanting to run into the Reyeses if she was trying to flee them. The woman Sterling had described to her, however, didn’t seem like one to run when threatened.
Did that explain why there was no information on Genevieve Caine? Who, or what, had she been dodging for so long that she was almost nonexistent? Th
e law or something else?
Searching the database for variations of Caine’s name came up with nothing of use. A facial recog search was just as futile; she was very careful about where she was seen. Natalia found two profile pics of a very blond woman beside Guy Christiansen at some charity event, and nothing else. She looked different as a blonde, but still incredibly beautiful.
Maybe Sterling had more. She called up his digits and stared at Caine’s image while waiting for him to pick up. The other half of the screen brightened with the vid feed when he answered.
“Yeah?” Sterling’s greeting was gruff to match the frown lining his brow.
Natalia looked at the chrono in the corner of her comm screen. It wasn’t that late. “Sorry, did I interrupt something?”
“No. What’s going on?” Despite Sasha’s influence over the last six months, he still wasn’t one for small talk.
“What can you tell me about Genevieve Caine?” she asked.
“That you should stay away from her.”
Natalia’s face warmed. Too late.
Sterling narrowed his gaze. “Why?”
She didn’t want to lie to him, but she couldn’t tell him the truth either. Sterling was her friend and had been her partner for many operations. He deserved to know some of it. “Long story. She gave me some information about the Reyes Corporation that merits further investigation. I just need to know if I can trust her.”
He snorted. “Probably not. But she surprised the hell outta me by turning on Christiansen, so maybe she’s looking to go straight.”
“Maybe.” God, Natalia hoped so.
“What sort of information did she give you?”
Skipping over the more personal details of her initial meeting with Caine, Natalia told him what was on the data stick and what she had planned.
One of his eyebrows arched. “You’re gonna traipse down to a pirq site based on sketchy intel with only the associate of a known criminal as backup. Want some help?”
“No, I think we can handle it. Should be back in a couple of weeks, at the most.” She had to be back by then to face the Internal Review Board, but she wasn’t ready to talk to him about that quite yet. His status with the CMA meant he’d catch wind of the charges against her soon enough. She should tell him herself, but couldn’t find the words. “See what you can get on Reyes too, will you?”
“I’ll send you what I have on Caine,” Sterling said, “but everything is less than four years old, like she popped into existence fully formed then. I even had Mickelson search. Nada.”
The Corrections tech was top in the field, and Natalia and Sterling had consulted him on a number of occasions. If he had been stumped, Caine had done an outstanding job of covering her tracks.
“Why don’t you look into Reyes yourself?” Sterling asked.
Natalia hesitated. Should she tell him? All she’d known for the past twelve years was how to be an agent. It took priority over everything else in her life, and she’d strived to gain the trust and respect of her superiors and coworkers—Matthews and Sterling in particular. Screwing that up was beyond embarrassing.
“I don’t have my CMA comm and won’t have access to it.”
Dodging that particular topic felt worse than skimming over her association with Caine.
Natalia didn’t want to whine about the charges, get Sterling riled up and have him confront Garces or Matthews. And he would.
“No known aliases for Caine?”
“Nothing I could find.” Sterling’s gaze bore into her through the comm. “Natalia, I don’t trust the woman. Be careful and call if you need anything, hear?”
Natalia smiled, happy to have her partner at her back, even when she couldn’t explain it all to him, like she’d been at his when he was working with Sasha a few months before.
“Hear. I’ll tell you everything when I can.” She hit the disconnect. Remembering last night’s encounter with Caine, both before and after she’d been sedated, her body heated. Well, maybe not everything.
Chapter Four
The Transcontinental Limited pulled into the Grand Meridian station at eighteen hundred hours, just as the sun dipped below the southern tip of the Yuther Mountains. Nearly one thousand kilometers from the bustling capital of Pandalus, the station was the only sign of civilization. The train had crossed to the southwestern quarter of the continent in eight hours, following a four-klick-wide valley between two rugged ranges for the last hundred kilometers.
Through the porthole of the train, Natalia guessed the “Grand” in Grand Meridian was wishful thinking. The station consisted of a wide platform in front of a single-story building, little more than a shack with metal siding and a riveted metal roof. The station name posted on the wall, in what was once flourishing gold-and-black script, had faded to the point of being barely legible.
When the train stopped, Natalia stood and stretched the kinks out of her back. Thinly padded bench seats were not designed for extended use. She gathered her two bags from the overhead bin, shouldered the pack then joined the other dozen passengers in the car as they made their way along the center aisle to the exit. Most wore the simple fashions of Revivalists or pirqs heading to a mining site—sensible clothing in somber colors that reflected their belief that practicality and hard work brought one closer to God.
She was dressed similarly in old canvas trousers, a loose shirt and a long, oiled duster. The wide-brimmed hat would keep snow off her head. Function over fancy was the way of life, a life Natalia had lived until she was sixteen. A life she would slip into once again now that she was here in Grand Meridian.
Nearly twenty years had passed since she’d called a pirq site home. Likely nothing about the pirqs had changed—that was more or less their “thing”—but she surely had. Not for better or for worse; she was just...different from the girl she’d been. If her parents hadn’t died, who’s to say she wouldn’t be cutting deep in the void right now, grimy with ore dust and happy to make quota by the end of her shift? It was the life her family had led for generations. Strong and proud people who’d worked hard. Natalia hadn’t worked the tunnels, but she’d carried that same ethic to the CMA with her.
She’d put it to use yet again and don her old persona as if it were a mask, a role she’d play like a holovid actor. She’d be Natalia Kuzmin for the next week. Someone else. Always someone else. But could she pull off an undercover role that hit so close to who she’d been? The crown of her mother’s old hard hat inside her bag thumped against Natalia’s leg. A pang of grief pinched her heart. She had to set those emotions aside and do her job, for the sake of any pirqs who might be getting hurt by the Reyeses.
Peering through the smeared portholes, Natalia didn’t see Caine—Gennie. She had to get used to calling the woman by her given name, or the pretext of two friends looking for gigs at the mining site wasn’t going to fly.
Gennie wasn’t standing on the platform among the people waiting to get on this train. She should have arrived earlier, though she hadn’t told Natalia whether she’d be coming from Pandalus or some other city. Her caution was understandable, given that the Reyeses were looking for her, but Gennie was going to have to trust Natalia if they were to work together.
You need to trust her some too.
True, but events of the other night kept her from blindly joining Gennie’s camp. The woman was manipulative and dangerous.
And sexy as hell. Unbidden memories surfaced, reminding Natalia of Gennie’s whisky-flavored mouth, the smooth softness of her skin, the flowery scent of her hair. She’d been ready to take Gennie in the elevator before they’d even reached the
hotel room. Too bad Natalia had managed to control herself.
She shook her head to dislodge the thought. She’d better control herself, or this was going to be one of her tougher investigations. Personal feelings had no place in an operation, official or otherwise.
A gust of frigid, metallic-tinged air hit Natalia just as the soles of her boots thumped onto the platform. Natalia shivered. With Nevarro weather being what it was—cold, snowy and windy—she was glad she’d worn her nano-imbued boots and gloves. The fibers generated heat or reflected her own, whichever was more efficient to keep her fingers and toes from frostbite. Memories of the drafty shack she’d shared with her parents had instilled in her the importance of warm hands and feet.
She searched for Gennie on her way toward the building. No one paid her much mind as they hurried past, shoulders hunched against the wind and snow.
“Natalia, over here.”
Gennie’s husky alto came from behind her, over the noise of the crowd and the sighs of the train engine. Natalia turned to see her peeking over the heads of people trudging past. Gennie smiled and waved, as if greeting an old friend.
Right, some friend.
To maintain the ruse, Natalia smiled and waved back. She eased between folks, like a returning coho fighting the current. Standing by the corner of the building, Gennie smoothed her wind-tangled hair, still grinning as Natalia stopped an arm’s length away. She wore the short jacket she’d had on the other night, closed tight up to her neck, a pair of dark trousers and heavy black boots. Pirq garb, like Natalia. Her cheeks were pink from the cold and her dark eyes sparkled as if she were truly glad to see Natalia there.
Hell of an actor, too.
“How was the trip?” Gennie reached forward, her gloved fingers brushing Natalia’s in an effort to take the bag. Instinct told Natalia to not let Gennie assume any sort of familiarity, but she didn’t want to struggle in the middle of the platform. They were supposed to be friendly toward each other, for the sake of their cover.
