“She can’t actually do that.”
“Want to bet?”
“Good point.” Malcolm vaulted up the steps and inside to find David half-hugging Miriam, half-feeling around her torso for wounds.
They both spun toward him as he entered, and Miriam stepped out of her husband’s embrace to place her hands on her hips. “Talk, Fleet Admiral.”
Uh-oh. She normally called him ‘Malcolm’ in informal situations. He held up a hand, pleading for clemency. “As soon as Richard arrives. Alex is retrieving him now.”
David shot him a warning look over Miriam’s head. “I’ll make some tea.”
Miriam’s jaw worked, as though she was forcibly holding at bay a righteous tirade, which she almost certainly was. “Thank you, David.”
Alex burst through the door then, Richard in tow behind her, and Malcolm smiled for the first time. “Richard, I appreciate you leaping into action. Why don’t we all have a seat and take a breath?”
Miriam scowled yet more darkly. “Where did Caleb go?”
“To investigate the crime scene.” He motioned to the table. “Please?”
Miriam’s gaze never left him as she took a seat, a sure sign he’d reached the frayed end of the rope she’d lent him. He sat opposite her; Richard took the seat at the end, and David brought the tea to the table then sat next to Miriam. Alex threw herself against the kitchen counter and crossed her arms over her chest, her eyes locking on her mother.
Richard touched Miriam’s arm. “Are you okay?”
“I remain fine. Apparently, thanks to the Fleet Admiral, though I’m at a loss of how exactly this came to be.”
Richard shifted toward him. “What happened? Why were you there—you know what? Why don’t you start at the beginning.”
Malcolm belatedly remembered to push the hood of his sweatshirt down to his shoulders. “The beginning. A week ago, I was approached in a bar by a man representing the Gardiens. Has everyone heard of the organization?”
David snorted. “Radicals trying to outlaw the best thing to happen to humanity in centuries.”
Alex shrugged, and the others nodded, so he continued. “The man—he introduced himself as ‘Philippe Beaumont,’ but I have no idea if that’s his real name—knew about the Oversight Board’s ‘recommendation’ to me regarding regenesis, which instantly set off red flags in my mind. Wait, you all don’t know about that development, either.”
Miriam’s lips pursed. “I do.”
“Oh.” Her expression didn’t give away whether she’d advocated for or against it, and now wasn’t the time to ask. “In short, the Oversight Board has been pressuring me to revoke the ‘no regenesis’ clause in my will. They’re not making mandatory regenesis an official policy for high-ranking officers yet, but they strongly implied that’s the direction they’re leaning. Anyway, Beaumont knew of it mere hours after I met with the Board.”
“So the Gardiens have someone on the inside at AEGIS Central Command.”
He tilted his head at Richard. “They have someone on the inside at a lot of places, I fear, but I’ll get to that. Beaumont smoothly delivered a set of Gardiens talking points that, frankly, in the moment, I was receptive to hearing. He invited me to one of their meetings in Seattle that evening, and…I went.”
Alex’s eyes narrowed at him, but no one spoke up to chastise him. “The meeting itself was nothing too concerning. Mostly your standard community activism, with heartstring stories and earnest, rah-rah affirmations. The Gardiens put on a good show, though. They’re not amateurs at this game.
“Because I was mildly suspicious going in, I placed a surveillance device on the wall when I left, and it recorded the organizers talking to a man via holocomm after the meeting. Based on the way they deferred to him, the man seemed to be in charge. He made references to their future plans, but didn’t share specifics. They also briefly discussed me, and it became obvious they’d specifically targeted me for recruitment. Not a surprise, I suppose.”
Miriam gripped her teacup so tightly her knuckles were turning white. “What does this have to do with me?”
“A lot, it turns out. Richard, I was planning to come discuss all this with you as soon as I got a minute. But Rasu. Battles. Meetings. Then, this morning, I received an invitation to another Gardiens meeting. I couldn’t attend thanks to the dinner in London, so I arranged to meet with my handler one-on-one. I expressed enough interest to keep Beaumont on the hook, then planted a listener on his shirt. Not long after we parted ways, it recorded…well, I’ll just play the recording for you.”
He instantiated an aural and started the audio playing. Since he’d heard it before, he instead watched the others, noting the instant each of them put together the same pieces he had. Except for Alex—she simply stared at her mother, a quiet fury bleeding out of her bright platinum eyes. It seemed she’d grown quite protective of Miriam since her mother’s death and rebirth.
When the recording ended, Miriam’s shoulders slumped a little as she set the teacup on the table and brought a hand to her chin. She didn’t say anything.
“Like all of you, I realized Miriam must be the target. Luckily, they’d detailed enough of the mission plan for me to act. I high-tailed it to London, disguised—” he flicked a finger at his hood “—and reached her seconds before the assassin took his shot. We ducked off the main thoroughfare, and Alex gave us an emergency evac.”
David leaned in, keeping one hand on Miriam’s back. “Thank you, Malcolm.”
“Of course. I could do nothing less.” He gestured to Richard. “I realize you’d welcome evidence of the assassination attempt. The sniper’s needle dart lodged in my hood, but it disintegrated the instant I touched it.”
Richard nodded. “It was likely self-dissolving on contact with skin to eliminate any sign of foul play. Perhaps Caleb will get lucky and find something we can use.”
Alex grumbled from her position braced against the counter. “Why didn’t you contact Assembly Security the instant you realized what was underway?”
Richard answered before he could. “Because there’s a security breach in the Assembly. Maybe on the Armed Forces Committee, maybe in Assembly Security itself. Like Malcolm said, it looks as if the Gardiens have someone on the inside at a lot of places.”
“What are you going to do about it?” David challenged his friend.
“I’ll quietly reach out to a man I trust at SENTRI and have them open a covert investigation. Miriam, I’m assigning two MPs to escort you every time you’re in public. I’m also putting two plain-clothes CINT agents on you around the clock.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t need babysitters. Besides, escorts wouldn’t have stopped this assassination attempt.”
“But they might be able to stop the next one.”
David leaned closer to Miriam. “Unless you want me glued to your ass every waking hour, you’ll accept the security detail.”
“David, you have work.”
“I’ll take a leave of absence.”
“No. You need to teach the next generation of officers how to fight the Rasu.”
“This is more important.”
“You are the most stubborn man!” She sighed and waved a hand toward Richard. “Fine. Do it.”
“I will.” Richard returned his attention to Malcolm. “Do you have the recording of the first meeting? The one with video?”
“I do.” He pulled up the file and instantiated a new aural above the table. Everyone watched as the man in the holo joined the meeting organizers and began discussing strategy.
Richard’s gaze fixated sharply on the aural. “Can you rewind the recording and focus on the man in the holo?”
“Sure. I imagine you’re very interested in who he is. So am I.” He started the recording again at the point where the man appeared, running it at half speed while he zoomed in on the holo image until it began to blur—
“Damn. You have got to be kidding me!”
Every head swiveled to Ric
hard. “You know him?”
“I do. His name is Enzio Vilane. He’s head of an up-and-coming criminal organization called the Rivinchi cartel. Graham and I have been investigating him, but we didn’t have him pegged as a Gardiens agent, which means his shadowy financial machinations are even more extensive than we realized. He—” Richard’s hand darted out to touch Malcolm’s arm “—Malcolm, he’s the man who ordered the attack on Mia when she was living on Pandora.”
“What? You mean this is the local gang lord she pissed off? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It gets more complicated. He has designs on…oh, shit.”
He couldn’t say as he’d ever heard Richard Navick curse twice in under a minute before. This was bad. “What is it?”
“He’s Olivia Montegreu’s son.”
Malcolm’s head spun, and the room with it. The possible implications crowded into his thoughts and jostled one another until he couldn’t make heads or tails of anything. “I don’t understand. She didn’t have a son.”
“We don’t think she knew of his existence, but an agent was able to swipe a tissue sample, and a genetic test confirmed it. Her lover, Aiden Trieneri, had him conceived using their DNA, then hid the child from her. We—Graham and I—have speculated that Trieneri intended to use the kid as a weapon against her, but she killed Trieneri before he was able to execute on his plan.”
His chest felt tight. In his mind, Olivia Montegreu’s blood soaked into his hands as he ripped open her spine to retrieve her internal storage. “Richard, if he knows I’m the one who killed her….”
“I don’t see how he can. All the details of that mission, even its existence, remain classified six layers deep. Granted, the Gardiens obviously have infiltrated the military and the government, and as a Prevo with substantial resources and funds…it’s conceivable. Not likely, though.”
“He could be setting me up.”
“I doubt it. We haven’t been able to gather a great deal of information about Vilane, but all indications are that he’s the vindictive sort. See what he tried to do to Mia after she rejected his overtures. If he knows you killed his mother, he’d have already taken his vengeance on you.”
The messy, violent scene at Mia’s shop replaced the one from Dolos Station in his mind. Vindictive and brutal sounded about right.
“No, the truth is, you’re a prize for the Gardiens. Your history with regenesis is more than enough reason for them to try to pull you in.”
Dread snaked through his chest as the disjointed pieces started assembling themselves. “He doesn’t know who Mia actually is, does he?”
“We don’t think so. There’s nothing to connect her persona when she was on Pandora with her true identity.”
“Nothing except me.”
“You think you were seen with her on Pandora?”
“No.” He deeply did not want to relive a second of that night, but his mind had other plans. “I mean now. Vilane has no reason to connect the woman he met on Pandora with Mia, but if in doing research on me, he were to seek out information about Mia—” his head jerked toward the kitchen “—Alex, ask her to change her hair. Please. She doesn’t have to change it back to the way it was, but if she ends up on a news feed because of her Expo project and he sees the footage, that silver hair will be a dead giveaway.”
Alex nodded silently.
“Thank you. Whether he’s recruiting me or targeting me, he’s definitely watching me. If he sees….” He dropped his head back, closing his eyes, as the aching, deep loneliness he’d felt these last weeks opened up into a chasm. “I can’t be seen with Mia. I can’t get anywhere near her. Alex, when you talk to her, you can’t tell her what I’m involved in here.”
“Oh, come on! Why not?”
He turned a weary gaze toward her. “Because then she’ll insist on getting involved. Maybe not for me. I don’t know if…but to prevent Vilane from hurting anyone else. She’ll take it upon herself to stop him, and he will kill her for it. He’ll kill Meno, and she won’t survive it. Please, I’m begging you.”
“Ugh.” Alex rubbed at her eyes. “You’re really pulling at my loyalties here. Fine. I’ll keep your secret while somehow convincing her to change her hair. I won’t be able to keep her off the news feeds, though, not with all the press coming up for the Expo.”
“Do what you can.” His focus snapped back to Richard, full of rekindled intensity and determination. “Tell me what I can do to bring this man down.”
42
* * *
EARTH
London
Pedestrian traffic remained heavy in the St. James neighborhood when Caleb returned. In all likelihood, it never abated much.
He walked the entire route from the restaurant to the Assembly then reversed course, his focus on the windows and rooftops of the surrounding buildings. Encroaching dusk and lengthening shadows make it difficult to scope out potential vantage points, though, and he soon increased the infrared setting on his ocular implant.
Many of the buildings in this neighborhood dated back hundreds of years, and they were crammed up against one another. Windows tended to be small but numerous. The potential staging areas were legion. He pulsed Malcolm.
Where do you think the needle dart caught you? Any way you can narrow the field will help.
On Cockspur, likely between Trafalgar Square and Warwick House.
One more block to the west. He reached the intersection with Springs Gardens and turned in a slow circle, his gaze elevated… there. An eight-story building situated on the opposite corner. On the sixth floor, a window sat open. It was a chilly, damp evening, as was typical for London this time of year, and no other windows in the building were cracked.
He jogged across the street and surveyed the main entrance briefly, then took the adjacent alley instead. Along the back of the building, an ancient metal fire escape wound up the brick façade, intersecting with an emergency exit on each floor.
The would-be assassin’s choice of exit route depended on what kind of person they were and how they’d been trained. An amateur freelancer would take the interior stairs and rush out the front door. So would a true professional assassin-for-hire, except for the rushing. A military sniper—ex-military, most likely, but this was a high-stakes game and he didn’t want to assume—would take the fire exit, to minimize contact with civilians and avoid being seen and remembered.
He grabbed the first rung of the fire escape ladder and began climbing. The clangs of the metal, loose in its frame, blended into the ambient noise of the London evening.
This location’s aromas are strange and off-putting.
He chuckled quietly. It’s an old city. Humanity’s history is embedded in every brick and cobblestone.
And Humanity’s odors.
Yes. And those.
One of his hands slipped as a loose rung broke free of the frame. He stopped and inspected the dangling rung. Barely visible in the waning light, a single charcoal thread hung off the broken metal.
If a person was headed down the ladder, it would be easy for a pants cuff to catch on the jagged edge. He didn’t exactly have forensic gloves or evidence bags, so he settled for unwinding the thread from the metal and sticking it in his pocket, then continued up.
You should know that your mystifying Khokteh friend has grown agitated.
Oh? He paused, closed his eyes, and opened himself up to what Akeso was experiencing—and immediately sensed the racing pulse and flood of adrenaline from other. He sent a message.
Pinchu, is everything all right?
Is your incomprehensible planetary companion tattling on me? I am fine. We’ve discovered some new Rasu trouble on Nengllitse is all.
Understood. Be safe.
He resumed climbing the ladder again. He thinks you odd as well.
As is appropriate.
The sixth-floor landing led to an ajar door. Two marks for this being the exit route. He stepped inside and found himself in a plain hall with yellowed w
alls and an old tile floor. The layout of the building that he’d constructed from his visual survey overlayed in his head, and he made his way through several halls to reach the last apartment in the front far-right corner. He passed two people, residents by their demeanor, and nodded polite greetings.
The doors all had modern locks on them, but they were hardly state of the art. The one on the target apartment didn’t show obvious signs of being hacked. He pulled out his multitool and affixed it to the entry pad. In less than five seconds, the door slid open.
He let it close behind him, then stood in the entrance and listened. He’d already discovered evidence that the perpetrator had vacated via the fire exit, but he needed to be sure they were gone. Especially because it had been a long time since he’d undertaken this manner of investigation. Years of training and practice returned the proper procedures to the forefront of his mind, but he nonetheless proceeded with extra caution.
Silence permeated the apartment, though it was overrun by encroaching sounds from the streets below through the open window.
He cleared every room and closet until he’d confirmed the apartment was empty. The space was devoid of furniture, save for kitchen appliances. Unrented and unoccupied. Had the perpetrator known this and chosen it for that reason, aside from the location?
Finally he moved to the front room and its open window. Surveyed the surroundings. The worn tile flooring made it almost impossible to distinguish any marks on the floor. He knelt a meter back from the open window and took a high-res visual, which could capture far more detail than his eyes could see. Then he pulled up the image in his eVi and zoomed in. Two spots were shinier than the surrounding flooring, as if a layer of dust had been displaced. Knee-width apart.
He also didn’t have a fingerprint or DNA kit with him, obviously, so he settled for taking forensic-focused visuals of the windowsill and its raised frame; perhaps a lab could get something from them. The perpetrator had almost certainly worn gloves, but never assume. He checked every surface for additional threads, debris or discarded material.
All Our Tomorrows Page 25
