Ages in Oblivion Thrown: Book One of the Sleep Trilogy (30 page)

“Define oddly.”

“She referred to herself in the
third person. Sort of. Accidentally.”

“So you called me.”

“Exactly.”

“I’m missing a step
here.”

“You recall when her friends told
us that she had been, at one time, subject to some sort of
brainwashing scheme?”

“Ah, now I see the big
picture.”

“I thought you might.”

“Any idea where she
is?”

“Mrs. Han’s.”

“Shit.” How the hell were they
going to go in? He had no reason to try and take her out of
there.

“They’re planning on leaving soon
anyway. What happens if they go back to Earth and she goes on her
little mission?”

“I really have no idea.
Christensen said he didn’t even know what she’d been programmed to
do. They were only guessing. I just don’t want to see a war started
for no good reason.”

“Tark, man, one thing you may not
want to hear, but you need to; we might not have a lot of control
over that anymore.”

“Bull. If we can keep them from
going and causing trouble…I think things will quiet
down.”

“You know I love you like a
brother, but you are a dude who can live in denial like a
madman.”

“You’d rather I wasn’t such an
optimist?”

“Not really. I mean, optimism
saved my ass.” Dmitry drew in a deep breath before trying to say
what he knew he needed to say. “Maeve and her friends haven’t
exactly angered a sleeping bear. If anything, they’ve managed to
point out the fact that we’ve got an already angry bear at our back
door.”

“A bear?”

“You’re the one who likes
metaphors. My point is, maybe we ought to be supporting this. Maybe
we ought to get on the right side before things get
crazy.”

“What, you think conflict is
inevitable?”

“I do. But if we can contain it,
keep it on Earth, then it might not get as bad as it might
otherwise.”

“That’s an awful lot of vagueness.
Any reason in particular you feel this way?” Tark stared at the
comm piece, wondering where all this newfound passion had come
from. Could Maeve have had such a big impact on him in this
relatively short amount of time?

Dmitry felt in his trouser knee
pocket for his tablet. He’d held off from showing Tark the
correspondence between Hawke and whomever she’d been in touch with
back on Earth. It had seemed irrelevant at first, until things
began to happen….

“I’m sending you a
file.”

“What of?”

“Just read it. I think it’ll give
you the context you need to understand my saying that I believe we
need to act first. We ought to be on the offensive.”

“Are you in support of Maeve and
her friends leaving to be part of this?”

“Yes and no.”

“Because of how she was acting? I
don’t know. If what they said was true, she might be equipped to go
after some group like this Mithraic bunch.”

“And yet…I keep going back to a
doubt. Christensen says that they never knew who took her. They
don’t know what she was given for orders. What if she’s trying to
lead them into an ambush? I mean, not her, but whatever is in
control…I still didn’t even know this was possible.”

“Any super soldier programs we
ever heard about were complete flops. I don’t know. Maybe
everything they’ve said is true. If that’s the case, maybe the best
we can do is let them go and follow close behind.” Tark’s voice had
gone suddenly hard. He was scanning the file Dmitry had sent him on
his tablet. There were years’ worth of messages, but the important
ones Dmitry had highlighted.

These all detailed Hawke’s
feelings, certainly, but more importantly, they were the writings
of an informer. All of Tark’s courtship with Sa’andy was written in
minutiae. Many other personnel and civilians on board the station
were apparently monitored as well. They were regularly referred to
as “enemies of humankind” throughout Hawke’s messages. Tark had the
feeling he could read on for several hours.

“Am I to assume you have read the
entirety of these messages?””

“I have.”

“I apologize, then. I had her for
a garden-variety kook.”

“I think she was chosen for that
reason. She was eccentric, total crap for people skills; we all
figured she was just a nut with unpleasant opinions.”

“This explains why my requests for
her transfer were denied three times.”

“Three times?!” Dmitry was both
surprised and not. Tark shrugged into the darkness and said nothing
as he continued to read. Hawke’s words certainly lent an air of
truth to Maeve and her friends’ talk of mission. Moreover, it
seemed to point to some potentially influential people having a
vested interest in the Mithraic Alliance. They were going to have
to be a bit more cautious in their movements and communications
from now on.

“You think that this alliance is
going to try to initiate hostilities with other
species?”

“It’s difficult to say whether
that’s the primary goal, or whether they plan on sealing the
borders to the system first. It seems obvious that something big is
in the works, and the timeframe is not terribly far off at this
moment.” Dmitry paced in circles through the arboretum. The section
he stood in was the edge of the rain forest; a stream ran its
watery fingers through a mangrove stand. It was distracting, but
only just so.

“Dem, you still there?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re trying to decide what to
do.”

“I’ve always been pretty
obvious….”

“That’s a flipping understatement.
Go get some rest. We’ll find them in a couple hours and try to
settle on a common plan.”

“But….”

“No arguments. You said yourself
that she wasn’t acting herself. You can’t fix that on your own.”
Tark disconnected, leaving his words to echo painfully in Dmitry’s
head. He still wasn’t sure which was worse; knowing that she was
beyond his reach, or that she might be killed before he had a
chance to figure anything out.

Maeve had told him to leave her
alone, in so many words, in a voice that had sounded like hers. He
was assuming that she was under the thrall of preprogrammed
directive, but he couldn’t be certain.

Perhaps it actually had been her.
Then what? He shook the thought from his mind. It wasn’t any help
to allow himself to get depressed. There was no altering the
situation as it stood. He was unlikely to find sympathy from her
friends. Leif clearly wanted no part of him. And now this Wallace
person had risen up from the past…it was untenable. He had to focus
on what he could.

That thought
firmly in place, Dmitry stalked back to his quarters, trying to
sort through his conversation with Tark. It seemed as though he’d
gotten his friend to see reason. It was a bit troubling that Tark
had begun talking as though he intended to be a part of any return
to Earth.
One thing at a
time
, he told himself. While sleep might
prove elusive, he did have alternate plans.

۞

Leif sat across the room, watching
Maeve warily. Everyone else ate uneasily, silently, watching Leif.
He hadn’t uttered a word since coming back to the library with
Julieta. She had resumed her spot next to where Maeve was still
looking over intelligence and maps.

“There must be some way of
identifying Warden.”

“Boko will be that
way.”

“And what will happen if he fails
to comply with his part of the agreement? His file states that he
has only recently been turned.”

“He came back on his own. He won’t
fail.”

“And if he was sent by
Warden?”

“Are you going to do this the
entire time?”

“I do not understand.”

“Naysay? You have a problem with
every detail I have given you so far.”

“If all your information is
interpreted incompletely, then yes.” Julieta threw up her hands in
disgust and flung herself into a chair. Grace discreetly made her
way over to perch on its arm.

“You okay?” She spoke as softly as
she could. Julieta scowled. “So, no. Do you want something to eat?”
Grace smiled disarmingly, her blue eyes twinkling in flickering
candlelight. Julieta relaxed her frown as a few cheerful memories
surfaced. It hadn’t been long enough the first time around. Her
second chance sat within reach; a happy distraction from being
irritated to death.

“Sure. Let’s go closer to the
fire.” She held her hand out for Grace to take hold of. The gas
logs were across the room in the other direction. They walked past
Wallace, Julieta jabbing him in the shoulder as they did. He looked
up at her in startlement, and then smiled as genuinely as he could
muster. It was about time. Julieta followed up her action with her
trademark eye roll in Maeve’s direction. He shook his head
vigorously. She summoned up her mom face, and held up a warning
finger. He sighed and stood up to walk over to Maeve.

“How’s it going?” He looked over
all the intel she’d taken to pieces so far.

“The question is
irrelevant.”

Great
, he thought,
this ought to be loads of fun.

“What do you need?” He was a
little afraid to hear the answer.

“An alternate means of identifying
Warden. There must be an image, a recording, anything.”

“I don’t know. We can try to see
if Master Kun has anything, or whether Boko knows of something.” He
caught a look in her eye. “You distrust Boko.”

“Not him, necessarily. Just the
timing, as I previously stated. Coincidence is less frequent than
one might imagine.”

“Well, I don’t know or trust him.
But I trust Kun. And he has given his complete confidence to Boko.
Good enough for me.”

“And if this grandson is killed,
or if he simply decides to go into hiding, rather than put himself
in danger?”

“Okay, okay. I’ll see. There could
be something besides a picture, I guess. Because for that item,
we’ve hunted two years to no fruition.”

“Very well.” Maeve returned her
attention to the map of the Aegean Sea. She was trying to study it
closely, memorizing the lay of the island, and its so-called
vacation home. Slowly, she became aware that the Wallace person was
studying her in much the same fashion. “What do you
require?”

“What happens once we hit the end
of the mission?”

“I fail to follow your
meaning.”

“What happens to her?”

“To whom do you refer?” She
avoided his eyes, concentrating on marking the map with a red pen.
He leaned in to whisper; she flinched in spite of her
parameters.

“You know what the hell I’m
talking about. Maeve. What happens at the end?”

“I…have not been
briefed.”

“I won’t let you hurt
her.”

“I caution you against impulsive
behavior. My orders are only to see the mission through to its
end.”

“And you’re not surprised by the
fact that we’re several centuries removed from the time those
orders were issued?”

“Some of the existing conditions
could not have been predicted, but no.” She was utterly sincere, he
realized. It was a bit of a blindside, one whose implications he
could not completely grasp yet.

“What are you talking
about?”

“You are not read in, and I am not
authorized to say anything further.”

“I really think you’d better
reconsider that.” Moving to put his hand on her shoulder, he
watched her face turn stony. He found himself on his knee, staring
at his hand as it twisted impossibly in her grip.

“Remove yourself until you have
further information.” Maeve released his hand, while he stumbled
back, trying to recover his footing. He ran into a solid obstacle,
and turned to find Leif standing behind him. Wallace cringed,
thinking of their exchange just a few hours before.

“I wouldn’t bother. She’s on the
clock.” He continued to rub his wrist.

“I know.” Leif looked less angry
and more despairing by now. “I always wondered what it would look
like if she ever went active. Never imagined this.”

“What…she seems pretty
calm.”

“Yeah, I know. I guess I figured
it’d be a lot more on the feral side of things.”

“That’s ludicrous.”

“You didn’t see what she looked
like…it was like she’d been in a gulag. All beat to hell,
half-starved…not pretty.”

“You never said that.”

“I don’t really like you a hell of
a lot.”

“Right.”

“But I think we all have to
function as a team if we want to see daylight at the end of this
thing.”

“Okay. That doesn’t sound
completely loathsome.”

“Then are you going to try and get
something on Warden before we all turn old and gray?” Leif was
running on fumes; Wallace wisely chose not to push any
further.