“The next phase will be trying to confirm information we already have. Specifically, I’m going to ask the subject a set of simple questions about details from the research into artifacts and archaeology from several systems that she wouldn’t plausibly have had access to. If she can confirm information we already have, that will let us move forward with some confidence that what we get from her further on will be trustworthy. But since she was present in Cortázar’s private lab, and we don’t know what his information hygiene was with the subjects, I’m having to be very careful in choosing test questions.
“Neither subject seems to have been affected by the events in Gedara system. The staff here, myself included, haven’t had any blackouts or losses of consciousness since the all-systems attack months ago. Without knowing what constraints the enemy is working under, I can interpret the limited scope of the Gedara attack as an indication that it is still in an experimental phase, looking for interactions that will be effective in disabling us. Or that the new attacks required more effort, and the enemy doesn’t want to expand them. Or that we just don’t have enough information yet to know what we’re seeing and I’m just talking out my ass.”
She clicked her tongue to delete the sarcastic editorial at the end, and then finished the report. She started spooling through the text to look for errors and typos. Fayez shifted over to her side, watching the screen over her shoulder.
“You didn’t say, ‘And if we don’t get a handle on it soon, the bad guys will figure out how to snuff out all our minds like so many billions of candles, and the cockroaches will have to evolve enough to take over before we get an answer.’”
“Ants, I think, before the cockroaches,” Elvi said. “Predatory superorganisms. Cockroaches are just mobile food pods to them.”
“You’ve given this a lot of thought.”
She routed copies of the report to Dr. Ochida at the Science Directorate back on Laconia and privately to Admiral Anton Trejo, who was at the moment the closest thing Laconia had to a controlling intelligence for their own predatory superorganism. Somewhere on the Falcon, a tightbeam stuttered on and off, spilling light to the repeaters they’d dropped behind them on the assumption that they were still up and functioning. At the speed of light, it would take the information almost an hour to reach the ring gate, then across the cobbled-together, war-ravaged, unreliable communications network that laced the ring space, and then she didn’t know how long to reach Trejo.
She packaged another copy of the report, flagged for easy interception by the underground and addressed to Naomi Nagata. She sent it too.
“That’s going to get us in trouble someday,” Fayez said.
“We’re already in trouble.”
“Yeah, but it’s cosmic-forces-beyond-space-and-time-kill-us-all trouble. Feeding all our data to the underground is ship-security-shoots-us-for-treason trouble.”
Elvi laughed, but it was a tight, angry laugh. “What we’re doing here is bigger than politics.”
“I know,” he said. “I just keep hoping the politicians see it too.”
As if in response, her system chimed. A high-priority message from Laconia. Elvi’s eyes only.
“That’s fucking eerie,” Fayez said. “You want privacy?”
“No,” she said. “But I’d better take it anyway.”
The door closed behind him, and she started the playback. Kelly, Winston Duarte’s personal valet, leaned in toward the camera. His lips were thin and gray. Whatever it was, it looked like bad news.
“Dr. Okoye. I have been authorized by Admiral Trejo to brief you on a security matter that may touch on your work. There’s been a change in High Consul Duarte’s status…”
Chapter Five: Tanaka
The Laconian Mechanized Infantry Suit: Special Reconnaissance, or more affectionately the Stalker, was a marvel of design. Built for extended recon, it was lighter and faster than the standard suit, and instead of bristling with weaponry, it was covered with sensors and tracking systems. It wasn’t meant for front-line fighting. Its job was to slip in, spot the enemy and mark the targets, then slip away before the heavily armed shock troops arrived to take care of business. The small-caliber rapid-fire Gatling gun on the suit’s right arm meant a Stalker could still handle a little business of its own, should the need arise.
In her many decades of service, first in the Martian Marine Corps as a member of the elite Force Recon Battalion at Hecate Base, and later as a combat officer in the newly created Laconian Marines, Tanaka had worn just about every model of power armor made. The Stalker suit was her favorite. Long and lean, fast as a greyhound and tough as nails, she’d always fancied that the suit looked like a robotic version of herself.
The one she wore now was currently a gentle mottled green, the color-shifting surface changing to match the rolling forest and Laconian brush that the suit’s three-sixty optics were picking up. It didn’t make her invisible, but it meant the suit’s camouflage was always appropriate for the environment. Two large battery packs rode on the back, giving her a ninety-hour range. The gun was loaded with a belt of mixed armor-piercing and high explosive. She loped through the forest at an easily sustainable twenty kilometers an hour, scattering the small animals before her. There was no reason to move cautiously. Unless she actually found the high consul out there, nothing in the wilds was a threat to her.
She’d started her work by reviewing some of the files and background previously closed to her.
Actual information about the high consul’s personal life and data was thin, even with Omega status to unlock files for her. His medical records were sketchy and vague. Much of his privacy had been preserved over the years by never recording data in the first place. Everyone else on Laconia, on the other hand, was well documented. She’d taken the high consul’s laundry and locked it in a room with her suit’s sensor package while she prepped for the trip. When she put the suit on, it had identified the chemical markers of every human who’d come in contact with the fabric. All but one of them were identifiable. Process of elimination made the remaining signal the high consul. Negative space for hunting animals.
Now she had a scent.
From the security records, she could track Duarte to the edge of the State Building’s grounds, and then a little beyond it. The track after that was thin. Wind had scattered the scents, rain had washed them away.
Laconia wasn’t a huge planet, but it was still an entire planet. Duarte had left days before on foot. Best-case scenario he was still walking, and she’d be able to find him in a long afternoon. But the colony worlds had a habit of sprouting ancient transportation networks—methods the aliens who’d engineered the place had used to move shit around. If he’d tapped into one of them, he could be anywhere on Laconia or miles under it. If she could find where he’d accessed it, she’d have the next step. That was all it took: one step after another until the mission was done.
She was moving fast enough to surprise a family of bone-elk digging for food in the soil with their impressive racks of horns. They startled at her sudden appearance, then all bolted in different directions trying to get away. Her suit tracked them all, marking their threat level as low. If she overrode that and changed the threat to high, the gun on her arm would turn the entire herd into paste in seconds.
She chose not to.
At first, she followed the vague signs. A 15 percent match, hardly better than an educated guess, led down a particular animal trail lined by silver-leaved bushes. A 20 percent match went directly up a sheer rock wall, and she discarded it as a false positive. As she crisscrossed the landscape, her mind relaxed into the experience of the search, and time became less concrete. She’d heard about a similar kind of flow with artists when they fell deeply into their work. It was a lovely way to be—alone in her head with the pure focus of the task.