Endgame (17 page)

“You can pick Exterior Security's brain.” Jani crumbled crisp bread into her vegetable soup. “Scriabin said they've been working since yesterday.”

“Exterior Security couldn't find their dicks with both hands.” Niall shoveled eggs and bacon between two slices of toast, then spooned chutney over the mess. “I saw Dathim and Feyó leaving as we pulled in.” He took a bite of his sandwich, eyeing Jani as he chewed.

Jani tasted her soup, which was bland but filling. She never noticed taste at times like these, a leftover of days spent cadging meals at low-end kiosks, when food was something to quiet the rumble in her gut and keep her going. “I told her. Up until now, she thought it was a tumor.”

“You just told her
now
?” Niall covered his mouth with his napkin just in time. “How did that shake out?”

“Things are touchy. She doesn't want to help humanish. Meva helped persuade her, which surprised me.” Jani flinched when she felt a finger stroke her upper back, and
looked around to find Lucien standing behind her, tray in hand.

Niall nodded toward an empty chair. “Have a seat, Captain. Eat up. We've got a day ahead of us.”

“Thank you, sir.” Lucien remained standing for a few beats longer, which was enough time to give the hybrids at the surrounding tables a chance to admire him in all his disheveled glory. “Equipment's arriving,” he said as he finally took his seat. “Communications arrays. Data scanners. Mister Brondt is directing it be taken to the library.”

“It's the designated command center.” Jani felt the pressure of Lucien's boot against hers, and responded by pulling away her foot and tucking it behind the leg of her chair. “Neutral territory.”

“For now.” Niall looked over at the other tables. “What will happen when they find out? Or worse, when an enclave full of Dathims finds out.”

“Dathim knows.” Jani finished her soup and pushed the empty bowl aside to make room for her coffee. “He's proven remarkably steady through all this.” She grabbed a piece of pastry from the top of Niall's pile and dunked it.

“I would think he would,” said Lucien, who nursed a crush on the male that had apparently withstood time, distance, and logic.

“Dathim is different.” Niall crumpled his napkin and tossed it atop his plate. “What about when the other tilemasters and stevedores and facilities suborns find out? The ones who think with their hands and not their heads?” He glanced at his timepiece. “I need to check in with the base.” He shot a look at Lucien that almost qualified as civil. “Ten minutes, Captain.”

“Yes, sir.” Lucien waited until Niall exited the courtyard. “I had to tell him. I'm the new transfer from Sheridan, which means I have zero pull and no connections.”

“You don't have to apologize.” Jani wiped crumbs from her fingers, then cradled her cup, savoring the heat. “He
needed to know.”

“Speaking of needing to know.” Lucien tilted his head in the direction of the other Thalassans. “When are you going to tell them? They need to hear it from you before they pick up any rumors.”

Jani glanced at a neighboring table in time to catch the occupants avert their eyes. “I'll tell them.”

“When?”

Jani took a sip of coffee and pretended not to hear.

By late morning assorted underlings, uniformed and civilian, hybrid, humanish, and Haárin, populated the far side of the library, hard at work in hastily assembled office areas and communications centers, and separated from their superiors by an array of portable soundshields

Jani hunched in her corner chair and took roll. The triumvirate of John, Val, and Scriabin, sitting atop a scrollcase like the three monkeys.
Hear no truth, see no truth, speak no truth.
The unlikely pairing of Niall and Lucien, precipitated by Niall's need to stay informed and Lucien's desperate bid to breach the inner circle.

And then there's Meva.
Jani watched the female ride herd on the other side of the barrier, the gist of her words obvious from the unhappy postures of the group of Haárin comtechs who were the focus of her displeasure. Beside her stood Dathim, as silent and watchful as he had been with Feyó.

I'm not used to quiet Dathim.
Jani watched the male stare stolidly into space.
Like a lion watching flowers grow.

At last Meva finished with the beleaguered technicians and passed through the barrier. “All is as prepared as it may be.” She dragged her chair next to a display case that con
tained some of Tsecha's writings, then motioned to Dathim to set his seat next to hers.

Niall waited until the pair had settled in before speaking. “The shuttleports, both public and private, may already be a lost cause, unfortunately, given the time lag.” His voice emerged subdued. He sat by the library window, the bright sun accentuating the shadows under his eyes. “I doubt we'll have any more luck at Elyas Station for the same reason, but we have set a safety emergency in motion just in case. Lockdown of all docks while they check passengers and scan all luggage and cargo. We've also seized all passenger manifests generated since the time of Tsecha's death.” Bone and tissue crackled audibly as he worked his neck. “And we've contacted the other stations in this part of the Gateway network so they can initiate their own investigations.”

Scriabin looked to John. “Does the weapon give any clue as to where it originated?”

“The vector was an engineered variant of Sussex A, a prionic that infects facility and communications biosystems on long haul vessels.” John nodded toward Val, who took the baton.

“It's not a common infection, but it isn't rare, either. It pops up sporadically, usually in older systems that have been stressed over a period of years. In the case of boards, it's transmitted when poorly filtered system waste products are recycled and mixed with nutrient broth, which is then used to feed the system.” Val slid off the case and walked about, hands in pockets. Only the fact that he kept his back to Lucien offered the barest hint that all was not as fraternal as it seemed. “A reverse-phase filtration step was added to all ship systems a few years ago in order to extract it from the stream. If someone wanted it, all they'd have to do is infiltrate a ship during a layover and get hold of a used filter.”

“Sussex A usually takes months to incubate, spread, and destroy an array.” John sat arms folded, eyes fixed on nothing. “You see the occasional drip under a console, and
think it's a leaky nutrient cylinder. Suffer through the occasional glitchy communication. Catastrophic systems failure doesn't occur until the disease is well progressed.” His voice deadened, made lifeless by too-recent memory. “Whoever designed this variant ramped the virulence exponentially, compressed the cycle from months to minutes, and designed it to specifically target Tsecha's brain tissue. Cranial insertion via the left auditory canal, followed by the apparent formation of a neuroma, a slow-growing benign tumor. This was in fact the payload, an aliquot of Tsecha's blood infested with the rogue protein. Once it reached body temperature…well, you all witnessed the result.” He paused and glanced at Jani, but looked away when he saw that she watched him. “Ruthlessly elegant work. A weapon coded to Tsecha, indistinguishable from his own tissue until it was too late. Even if we'd realized what it was immediately, we could not have halted the cascade in time.”

“We've compiled a list of the labs capable of developing this type of entity.” Scriabin blew out a long breath. “Unfortunately, it's quite long.”

Jani suppressed a yawn. She longed for coffee. Or better yet, sleep without dreams. “Who benefits? Tsecha's death—who benefits the most?”

Scriabin knocked his heels against the side of the case. “The more radical separatists always blamed Tsecha for doing more than any idomeni to initiate and maintain human-idomeni relations.”

Jani shrugged. “Have any of them claimed responsibility?”

Niall shook his head. “The fact of assassination has not yet been made public.”

“So the group that engineered this Killing of the Century is going to sit back and wait for us to make an announcement before they pipe up?” Jani didn't wait for a reply. Instead, she wrote invisible notes on her thigh, and sorted through the questions that tumbled in her brain. “Boards are farmed from humanish or idomeni brain tissue. Wouldn't a bug that
had been altered for use on Tsecha have come from an idomeni board?”

Before John or Val could reply, Niall interjected. “If the Outer Circle is any indication…let's just say that the access to docks and ships undergoing repair isn't as well controlled as it should be. Could a human obtain material from an idomeni ship? Most certainly.”

Jani wrote another note. “Could a humanish lab have obtained a tissue sample from Tsecha sufficient to build this weapon?”

“It wouldn't take much, unfortunately.” Val frowned. “A few skin cells. A single strand of hair with the bulb attached.” He sat on the floor against the wall, a position that let him watch Lucien without Lucien seeing him. “And with access to even a lousy booster device, they'd be able to copy and manufacture sufficient genetic material within hours.” Before he could say more, one of Feyó's brown-clad security suborns crossed over to their side of the barrier.

“Ex-cuse, pl-eease.” Her voice shuddered as she passed through the soundshield, pushing one of the office chairs ahead of her like an orderly maneuvering a seated patient. “We must bring ní Galas a proper chair, ná Meva. He cannot concentrate in a soft thing such as
this
.” She kicked the chair with her booted foot, sending it careening the last few meters until it bounced off the wall. “This one.” She grabbed the sole idomeni-style chair, a rigid, twisted thing, out of a darkened corner where it had languished since its delivery, and pushed it toward the shield. “I think he is crazy, and truly, but he is the one to sit in it so what do I care?” She launched the chair through the shield with another kick, the sound-canceling field swallowing the last of her mutterings as she followed after.

Val winced. “He's really going to sit in that?” He looked to the other side of the room, where an older male took charge of the chair and sat on it, pressing against the ridged and bumpy seatback. “I guess he is.”

“The mind-focusing properties of pain.” Scriabin sniffed and stared into the distance, a professor imparting arcane knowledge. “Strange for an Haárin to persist in the habit. They usually leave that to the bornsects.”

“Ní Galas enjoys to be different.” Meva looked Scriabin in the face. “And to show off before his suborns.” She bared her teeth as the man's face flushed.

The joys of interacting with the idomeni.
Jani glanced at John and Val, who had suffered similarly over the years, and who now eyed their compatriot with a combination of pity and
better you than me.

“There will be some time lag as we let the investigators do their jobs.” Scriabin watched Meva as though fearing another embarrassing interruption, relaxing only a little when none appeared forthcoming. “But in the meantime, distasteful as it may seem, we need to consider how to handle the fallout when word gets out that ní Tsecha was assassinated.”

“Cèel will enjoy your fallout.” Meva pulled a wafer folio from a shelf near her chair and examined the leather binding. “He hated Tsecha, yes, but he hates humanish more. He would not fight for Tsecha when he lived, but he will claim a great loss now that he is dead.” She traced her finger over the gold leaf flower that adorned the binding. “You made a great mistake, and truly, when you hid the fact of Tsecha's killing. You should have announced it as soon as it was known. To hide such is to imply that there is reason to hide. Such does not appear as caution to idomeni, but as treachery.”

“We certainly esteem your point of view, ná Meva,” Scriabin said, in a tone that indicated he believed anything but.

“You should, Minister. I know the idomeni point of view most well, as I am idomeni.” Meva reached out with the binder and tapped Jani on the knee. “You knew better, priest-in-training, but you did not go far enough.” She sat forward, gripping the binder in both hands like a threat. “Think as Tsecha. Think as he trained you to think, ná Kièrshia. Toxin. The bringer of pain and change, whom your
inshah
declared his suborn for reasons known only to himself.”

Jani felt her skin tingle as all eyes focused on her. “He would not have hidden a murder.”

“Good, priest-in-training. You repeat that which I said back to me. Such is what four cycles of Academy training gave you.”

Jani heard Scriabin cough, Niall mutter a curse. Felt the anger grow, even more than it had with John. “He would declare it. He would face anyone who questioned his motives, and challenge them if they disputed him.”

“Indeed, Tsecha would do such.” Meva cocked her head. “But Tsecha is dead.” Again she bared her teeth, the idomeni's death's head rictus. “And you are his suborn.”

Jani's heart skipped. “I should…” She tried to lick her lips, to summon saliva in a mouth gone dry. “I should go to Cèel and tell him of murder.” Behind her, she could sense Niall's stillness, his held breath. “To his face. I should tell him—to his face.”

“Yes.”
Meva waved the folio at Jani edge on, like a hatchet. “You wake up eventually. This is most reassuring, and truly.”

Jani gripped the arms of her chair. She felt as though the room rocked, as though her world shifted beneath her. “I should return to Rauta Shèràa and explain Tsecha's death to Council.”

“And to Temple.” Meva sat up, then shoved the folio back into its slot. “Idiot—what else can be done?” She looked to Dathim, who embraced his role as the mummers' chorus and simply nodded. “Tsecha and I talked often of his death. We did not talk of murder, no, but simply of death. Of what should be done after.” Her voice quieted. “It is fitting that he return. He was Chief Propitiator of the Vynshàrau, and the souls of all Chief Propitiators since the first have been released on Shèrá.” She sat up straighter, in honor of the one she esteemed. “I fear for his soul. It began its journey in this damned strange place, and may not find its Way without guidance.” She glared at Jani, her shoulders rounding. “Your guidance, priest. That for which you trained.”

Jani ran a hand along the arm of her chair, imagined sand beneath her fingers. “I'm not sure I'd be particularly welcome.”

“Knevçet Shèràa—I know of it. We all know of it. Twenty-six Laumrau, killed by you.” Meva sat back. “Do you regret such? Do you wish you could return them their lives so that they could take yours?”

Jani felt the stares, and held back her answer. Sometimes, she had to remind herself. That her actions at Knevçet Shèràa, defined her. That in the minds of many, idomeni and humanish, Knevçet Shèràa was what they thought of when they heard her name. “No,” she said finally. “Given the same circumstances, I would do it again.”

“Kill idomeni at sacrament, as they prayed to their gods?”

“Yes.”

“And now you would return to Shèrá the soul of the greatest propitiator. You, the killer of Knevçet Shèràa? Tsecha's toxin.” Meva's voice emerged a little less impatient, a little more wondering. “You, who declare knowledge of idomeni, do you question that such is what idomeni would expect from you?”

Silence claimed them. For a minute. Forever. Jani glanced at Val to find him staring back at her, his face gone ten years older.

Scriabin cleared his throat. “We'd be at Cèel's mercy as soon as we crossed over into the worldskein.”

“You'll be at his mercy as soon as the news of the assassination gets out.” Jani looked back at Scriabin, at John and Niall, and saw them looking at her as Val did. Only Lucien maintained his detachment, his eyes holding curiosity rather than empathy. “If you face him, you have the chance to salvage some seemliness.”

“A funeral delegation?” Scriabin studied the ceiling. “I assume Li Cao will be sending one, out of fear if not respect for Tsecha. I assume my aunt can append herself. I'm a little low on the diplomatic totem pole to claim a right to attend in my own name, but I can possibly justify my attendance as a
male relative, an escort. Given that I'm Cao's opponent, I'll look like I'm grandstanding, but that can't be helped.” He shot an uneasy look at Meva, uncomfortable with discussing the Commonwealth's political weakness in front of her. “I can possibly meet with some of the other bornsect dominants, get the lay of the Shèráin land.”

“You may meet with Aden nìRau Wuntoi, and assure him that you will support him against Cèel.” Meva fussed with the cuffs of her overrobe. “In exchange, he may receive you in the Pathen meeting house, and his acceptance may compel Cèel to receive you whether he wishes or not. Cèel fears Wuntoi—do not think he does not. The Pathen have always offered the greatest threat to Vynshàrau. It will prove, I think, a most interesting problem for Cèel.” She studied the display case next to her chair, Tsecha's writings, one by one. Then, with obvious reluctance, she returned her attention to Scriabin. “You look at me oddly, Minister.”