Carnelians (31 page)

“Take a breath,” Laplace said. “Relax. Clear your mind.”

Dehya smiled slightly. “What, are you reading my mind?”

“Over the years, your thought processes have become more predictable.”

“I’m glad someone thinks so. Most people say I’m incomprehensible.”

“So talk to me,” Laplace said. “We’ll figure this out.”

“The kidnappers acted directly against Del,” Dehya said. “It was overt. Direct. Blunt. The other attacks happened in Kyle space. They were abstruse and convoluted.”

“More Highton,” Laplace said.

“Maybe. But Hightons are only that way with each other, not with those of us they consider slaves. Given that, Del’s kidnapping is more what I’d expect from the Traders than the Allieds. But the Kyle attacks were done by a sophisticated psion with training, which the Traders don’t have.”

Except, of course, Jaibriol Qox. Kelric didn’t think Jaibriol would attack them. Dehya was less certain, but not by much. Jaibriol was in the Triad. Her sense of him was distant and unformed, but she was aware of him at the edges of her mind. She didn’t think he had done this. Similarly, if he had died while in the Triad, she would have felt the shock as a distant loss, just as she had sensed it when Roca’s husband Eldrinson had died while he was a Triad member eleven years ago. She hadn’t experienced that for Jaibriol.

“How do you know the Eubians don’t have a provider capable of such attacks?” Laplace asked. “They have a Lock command center, and it contains consoles that a trained telop could use to access Kyle space. With enough work, ESComm could hack our Kyle networks.”

Dehya grimaced. “They would need a psion nearly as strong as a Ruby. That’s incredibly rare. The only reason more than three or four of us exist is because we’ve deliberately bred for them. Even with that, it’s hard to make more. Cloning doesn’t work. A woman who isn’t a strong psion can’t carry one of us to term. Hell, Laplace, I could barely carry my own children, and I
am
a Ruby. If the Traders have a way to make more of us or were fortunate enough to discover a psion with such power,
and
they’ve figured out how to use the Kyle at that level of sophistication,
and
they’ve cracked our highest security—” She just shook her head. She couldn’t go on.

“It does seem unlikely,” Laplace said. “I calculate the probability as tiny. But not zero.”

“What it seems is terrifying,” Dehya said. “If they can achieve all that, the only reason they haven’t destroyed us yet is because they don’t fully realize what they’re doing.”

“So far, it seems the most likely possibility,” Laplace said. “Unless you have another.”

Dehya thought for a moment. “The attack against Kelric and me damaged our neural processes. In Del’s case, it didn’t cause damage, it spurred him to release ‘Carnelians Finale.’ It looks like the same person did all three attacks, based on the path of their work that we’ve so far unraveled in web, but we don’t know that for certain.” She wanted to believe it was a one-time attack that couldn’t be repeated, but whatever had caused Del to release “Carnelians Finale” was different enough to suggest more than one source. “Laplace, bring up my analysis of the attack on Kelric. I want the models where I assumed various plans on the part of the attackers and then evolved those plans to see if they could result in what happened to him.”

“Done,” the EI said. “Do you want me to run those same models on Prince Del-Kurj?”

“That’s right. See if they predict what happened to him as well as they do for Kelric.”

A line of red glyphs suddenly flashed on Dehya’s main screen.

“Well, that’s dramatic,” she said.

“It’s a message from your protocol office,” Laplace told her.

She scanned the glyphs. Wryly she said, “It seems the Traders want to elevate us with their glorious correspondence.”

“I’m monitoring its progress through our diplomatic channels.”

“See if anything in it resembles Quis patterns.”

“Checking.” Then Laplace said, “I have the results for the analysis on Prince Del-Kurj.”

“It failed, didn’t it?”

“Yes, it did. I can’t use the same model for him that describes what happened to Imperator Skolia. Such a model fails for every scenario, then goes wonky and spews out a lot of mesh code.”

Dehya scowled at her mesh screens. “My code never goes wonky.”

“All right,” Laplace said. “I’m analyzing the non-wonky code it spewed all over. The situation with Del is too different to predict its outcome with the Kelric model.”

“It’s odd,” Dehya mused. “It’s as if whoever attacked us left behind a neural signature. The signature of whoever tampered with Del in the Kyle is different than the one for me and Kelric.”

“You think two people are involved?”

“Unfortunately, yes, even if it’s supposed to look like one,” Dehya said. “According to what we’ve dug up in Kyle space, all three of us had our brains affected at the same time. I was in a Triad Chair on the Orbiter and Kelric was in the War Room, but Del was asleep.”

“Maybe the attacks weren’t really at the same time.”

“Well, he released the song twice, the first time before we were attacked. The Kyle space paths for the two releases are tangled up together. It’s hard to separate them because events in the Kyle are related by similarity, not by time.” She thumped a panel her with frustration. “How did they get to him? None of us show any evidence of drugs, physical tampering, or anything else. The only possibility that makes sense is that they affected our neural processes through Kyle space. But he almost never goes into the Kyle.”

“A psion’s mind is more vulnerable during sleep,” Light said. “Maybe a telepath reached him on Earth while he slept, and Del went onto the Kyle web without waking up.”

“It’s possible, I suppose. But who? It would have to be an immensely powerful psion.”

“I’m running your models again,” Light said. “If you remove the assumption that the tampering came through the Kyle web, they all spew wonky code.”

She decided to let the “wonky” go this time. “So either it didn’t happen while Del was asleep or my models are drilled.”

“I don’t believe it’s anatomically possible to ‘drill’ a mesh code,” Laplace said. “According to my files on profanity, ‘drill’ refers to the act of reproduc—”

“I know what it means!” Dehya said, laughing. “You know, you evolving codes create new parts of yourselves all the time by splicing other parts together. That’s like reproduction.”

“Yes, well, I don’t have sexual relations with other codes. By the way, the message from Emperor Jaibriol has finished clearing through the protocol offices.”

“Good. Has Kelric contacted you?”

“Yes, he wishes to meet with you at his house. He says, ‘Bring your Quis dice.’ ”

A thought came to her. “Can you code my models for the Kyle attacks into Quis patterns?”

“I can do that. Do you want me to project the models as a game you can play?”

“Yes. But not now. I need to meet with Kelric.”

“He’s says he’ll be home in ten minutes.”

Dehya stood up and stretched her arms. “Upload the message from Emperor Jaibriol to my spinal node.” She headed for the archway out of her office. “Did you find Quis patterns in it?”

“In a border.” Laplace paused. “Did you know that you have a message waiting in your main queue that is labeled as urgent?”

Dehya stopped at the doorway. “No I didn’t. What is it?”

“Well, oddly enough, it appears to be a request for an analysis of blood tests.”

“Appears? Can’t you tell?”

“It’s buried in layers of security code.”

Baffled, Dehya returned her station, stepping inside the array of screens. “Why ever would someone want me to analyze blood tests?”

“I’ve no idea. It originated at a Skolian embassy on the Eubian planet called Muze’s Helios.”

How strange. “File it under ‘incoming, top priority.’ I’ll look at it after I see Kelric.”

“Pharaoh Dyhianna, I can’t file it. My security codes aren’t high enough.”

That stopped her cold. “Your codes are my codes. I can access anything.” Technically, she couldn’t access Kelric’s most secured files or those of the Assembly, but she had long ago circumvented their protections.

“It has to be you,” Laplace said. “Physically. It wants DNA, fingerprints, and retinal scans.”

“That’s truly odd.” Dehya slid her finger into a slot below the screen. A light played over her eyes while the console analyzed her fingerprint and scraped a skin sample for the DNA check.

A new voice spoke, cold and impersonal. “Identity verified. Invoking Zeta protocol.”

“What for?” Dehya asked. Her Zeta protocol involved such a high level of security, even Kelric couldn’t break it.

“I’m downloading the message,” Laplace said.

“What does it say?”

“Nothing really. It’s exactly what I thought, a request for a blood test analysis.”

This became more bizarre by the moment. Dehya brought up the message and scanned the layers of code it had accumulated. Why had they sent these tests out for a Skolian analysis? A procedure this simple could be done within the embassy.

Dehya spoke uneasily. “Laplace, analyze the blood tests.”

“I’m not a medical unit.”

“The procedure is trivial. Any EI could do it. Hell, an AI could.” Dehya slowly sat back down. “Like the AI at the medical center on Sandstorm.” Except that AI hadn’t returned any results to the embassy, it had instead forwarded this message. From Sandstorm, the message had followed an ever more complex path, ending up deep within the ISC mesh, which had sent it to her.

“Analysis finished,” Laplace said.

“Put it on the screen.”

“Projecting.”

Dehya read the glyphs—and read them again.

And again.

“Gods almighty,” she whispered.

XIX: Revelations

XIX
Revelations

Ships came into many hubs on the planet Glory. Taken altogether, the ports served billions. Some were military, others civilian, and some served both. Some were only for Aristos; others, larger and less extravagant, were for taskmakers. Commercial hubs catered to corporations, trade ports catered to the slave trade, and the cargo ports were for shipping goods other than people.

One small port was unlisted on any public, private, or commercial system. Hidden high in the Jaizire Mountains, it served only one person. The emperor.

Jaibriol stood on an upper level of the exclusive terminal and watched the ship from Muze’s Helios land. It was an ESComm transport, its main purpose to carry three members of Admiral Muze’s family, all high-ranking officers in the Eubian Fleet. As an afterthought, or so it appeared, Jaibriol had asked them to send along the three prisoners from the Skolian embassy.

You have no idea,
he thought as the ship landed.
You have no idea what you carry.

Unfortunately, neither did he.

Aliana was suffocating.

It was the Hightons. She felt claustrophobic when they were near, as if she had too little air to breathe. Three of them stood here in the shuttle, ESComm officers, tall and cold-faced, their skin as white as a precious stone. Their black hair glittered, splintering the harsh light in the shuttle. Their red eyes looked like crystals. They were beautiful in a terrible way, like heartless gods who could kill with a mere glance and would neither care nor even realize if that happened.

Now that the shuttle had landed, the Aristos stood by the hatchway and talked among themselves, ignoring everyone else. Aliana had no idea if this was normal, that they could step into this little ship, fly down to the planet from the bigger ship that had taken them here from Muze’s Helios, and just walk off the shuttle. She had some hazy idea that landing on a new world involved many procedures and long lines, but nothing like that seemed to be involved here.

Six ESComm soldiers were in the ship, including the pilot and co-pilot, who both had dull black hair and rusty-red eyes, which made them look part Aristo, like her stepfather. They were far more refined than Caul, though. No one spoke to her. They barely seemed to notice her. She stood alone at the back of the shuttle, feeling trivial.

They hadn’t let her and Red sit together on the way down. He was standing now on the other side of the craft, flanked by two soldiers. Someone had cut his hair, brushed it until it shone, and put him in clothes cut from a dark blue velvet that shimmered, both the pants and the long-sleeved shirt. His diamond wrist guards sparkled beneath his cuffs, and his shirt was cut to show his jeweled collar. His clothes, slave restraints, demeanor, everything about him was so much more exorbitant than anything Aliana had ever imagined, it was hard to believe he was real. Seeing him this way gave her a tendril of hope, though. Surely they wouldn’t go to so much trouble to make him look like a valuable provider if Admiral Muze just intended to kill him.

They had given Aliana a functional blue jumpsuit to wear, nothing at all fancy. No one paid attention to her as long as she obeyed and stayed out of their way. She wanted to spy on them with her mind, but she couldn’t risk opening her mental fortress. It was better that way; she feared the mental pressure of the Aristos would crush her and Red if she let her defenses weaken.

She still had no idea what had happened to Tide. She wanted so much to see him, to make sure he was all right. Except he wouldn’t be all right. They had probably started interrogating him. She flinched inside, wanting to find him, wanting to help, anything, but she was just a low-level taskmaker with no value, no resources, nothing.

An orb glowed on the pilot’s controls, shedding gold light. The pilot leaned over it and spoke in a low voice. Someone answered in Highton, but Aliana couldn’t make out the words. She watched Red for clues. He was closer to the front and he knew Highton well. When his face paled, she felt as if the ground had dropped out from under them.

The pilot went to the Hightons and spoke with respect. They nodded, their icy perfection never thawing. With no other warning, the hull next to them shimmered and opened to the day outside. Radiance poured into the ship, tinged with gold, purer than the sunlight of Muze’s Helios. A patch of sky showed beyond the hatchway, its color too blue, without the faded quality of the sky back home. Aliana didn’t see any other airlock, not what she expected, the kind with two solid doors. If that shimmer was an airlock, then the embassy used them even on the planet. That they needed airlocks in an embassy was a sobering comment on their lack of safety.