Masterminds (5 page)

He had to make the decision quickly.

He had to make a lot of decisions quickly.

“Yes,” he said after a moment. “You can come with me to see Noelle, as long as you don’t say anything.”

“Why?”

He looked at her. “You’ll understand in a minute.”

Without looking at Talia, he headed into the corridor. All day he’d been concerned about Talia’s status as a clone, especially since the two crises on the Moon had been caused by clones. The hatred of clones was at an all-time high, and that made him afraid for his daughter.

Not even the chief of Moon security, his former partner Noelle DeRicci, whom he trusted, knew that Talia was a clone. Now, with everything so very different, he preferred to keep it that way.

Flint glanced over his shoulder. Talia was following him. She’d managed to set that sickly green drink down before she stepped into the corridor.

DeRicci’s assistant, Rudra Popova, stood up as Flint approached. Her long black hair glistened in the light. She was clutching a crumpled bag that had probably held her lunch.

“A few minutes ago, you said I could see Noelle,” Flint said. “Can I still?”

“No one’s in there besides her,” Popova said. “Let me find out if she wants to—”

Flint didn’t wait for Popova’s response. He shoved the doors to the office open, and as he did, he heard Popova finish softly in a tone that said she knew Flint was no longer paying attention,

“—see you….”

He waited for Talia to join him, then he closed the door.

DeRicci stood near the windows. They ran floor to ceiling. Once they’d been the focal point of her office. Now, the mess along one wall caught Flint’s attention first.

Mostly the mess was a meter-high pile of food cartons. Fortunately, they had nanocleaners inside them, or the stench in the office would be unbearable. As it was, there was a bit of an unclean funk, like the dorm room of a poor college student who couldn’t afford the university’s cleaning bot services.

He probably should remind her to clean them. She would have to go around some of them to get to the weapons cabinet on the far wall.

He wondered if she ever thought about that or if she had forgotten the cabinet was even there.

“Miles?” DeRicci said as she turned around. “Rudra hadn’t said you were here.”

Talia had been right; DeRicci looked like she hadn’t slept in months. Earlier, Flint had seen how tired and gaunt DeRicci was getting, but he hadn’t
noticed
it until Talia had pointed it out.

At some point, DeRicci might snap in just the way that Talia had.

“Talia,” DeRicci said, nodding to his daughter in greeting.

Talia raised a hand in a hello, but—true to her promise to Flint—didn’t say a word.

“I assume this is important?” DeRicci asked Flint.

“Yes,” he said. He walked deeper into the room. That funk—sweat, clothes that needed cleaning, blankets that probably hadn’t been washed since this all began—was worse the closer he got to the room’s center.

“This is going to be hard to explain,” he said. “I just received word through an old link from a police detective from Valhalla Basin.”

Talia’s head turned toward Flint so fast that she almost lost her balance. She took a step to steady herself.

“He had helped us when Talia’s mother was kidnapped,” Flint said.

Talia said, “Detective Z—?”

Flint held up a finger, silencing her, and then sent along their links,
Talia, you’re here because I asked you not to talk
.

“Let me, Talia,” he said out loud. “I have a lot of questions about this communication, but I don’t have time to deal with them.”

He didn’t wait for Talia to nod or acknowledge his correction. He kept his gaze on DeRicci. “This man says he’s in this solar system, and he’s coming in—his word, ‘hot’—with information that we need here on the Moon. He wants to land in the port, but he doesn’t have the proper identification.”

“Why not?” DeRicci asked.

“Because,” Flint said, “official records say he’s dead.”

Talia put a hand over her mouth. Her eyes teared up. He should have warned her. He mentally kicked himself.

Is he?
she sent.

I have no idea
, he sent back.
Let me deal with this now. Questions later.

She nodded.

DeRicci, who, as usual, missed nothing, saw Talia’s movement and clearly knew that Talia and Flint were communicating on their links.

“Do you have reason to believe this man is who he says he is?” DeRicci asked.

“I don’t know what to believe,” Flint said. “But we don’t have time to do much research. I can contact Space Traffic and ask them to let him in, but I needed your permission first. This is a security issue. I don’t know if he’s going to cause problems, but if he’s coming in hot, he’ll need protection, which will drain resources.”

“God,” DeRicci said. “This could be anyone. Or anything.”

“Yeah,” Flint said. “I’ve thought of that. I considered ignoring him. But the contact makes no sense if it is someone else. I mean, why contact me?”

Talia raised her eyebrows. She was thinking about that.

DeRicci crossed her arms over her chest. Her shirt bagged. Her clothes were usually too tight. Talia was right: DeRicci really had let herself go.

Flint continued, “If someone was going to try to do something to the Moon, you’d think I’d be the last person to contact. They’d reach out to you before contacting someone like me.”

“Or the police,” DeRicci said quietly. That was when Flint knew she agreed with him.

Talia was still frowning. She no longer had her hand over her mouth. Instead, she chewed her thumbnail.

“We can do a complete quarantine on the vessel, right?” DeRicci asked.

Flint looked at her, surprised. She was head of security for the Moon. She should know that.

And then he remembered: although he had gotten his start with Space Traffic, she hadn’t. She knew how the port worked in theory, but not in practice.

“Yes,” Flint said.

“And,” DeRicci said, in that musing tone she often used when thinking out loud, “Space Traffic can search it for explosives before it lands.”

“
Known
explosives,” Flint said. “There are two danger points. When it enters the port from space, and when the authorities let the ship’s door open for the first time.”

DeRicci’s mouth became a thin line. “I think I understand you, but I don’t want to assume anything here. What exactly do you think could happen at those danger points?”

“If the ship explodes as it enters the port, particularly if it does so as it’s transitioning into the terminal, then that part of the dome will shatter. The port’s designed for accidents—some ship hitting the dome or burning on entry—but it’s not set for
powerful
explosions.”

“What do you mean, ‘powerful’?” Talia asked.

Flint looked at her. Her blue eyes were wide. He decided not to chastise her for speaking. He suspected DeRicci was wondering the same thing.

“When I started at Space Traffic, we were all trained to worry about massive explosions. They would damage the port’s part of the dome. That was one reason Arek Soseki had argued for moving the port outside the dome, remember that?”

He directed the last part at DeRicci. Soseki had made moving the port outside of Armstrong a pillar of his second campaign—before DeRicci had been tapped to act as Chief of Security. Soseki’s proposal had been great for a campaign that had a tinge of bigotry to it—he was implying that non-humans shouldn’t come directly into the dome, but have two points of entry: the port, and the trains to the center of the city—but everyone said that moving the port was impractical.

It was. The port had been inside the dome for hundreds of years.

“Massive explosions,” DeRicci repeated.

Flint couldn’t tell if she was processing or asking him a question. He decided to treat her words as a comment, and move on. He felt the press of time here.

“I think any explosion right now will have a terrible effect on the Moon,” he said, “even if it doesn’t damage anything but the entry to Terminal Five.”

“Yes,” DeRicci said. “You’re right. And we can’t see if he’s carrying explosives?”

“We can see,” Flint said, “but we don’t know all of the explosives out there. We can also shield against an explosive outside the port, and once he’s inside we can contain it. But we’re vulnerable for a short few seconds as the dome opens and the ship enters.”

DeRicci stared at him, as if she could find the answers in Flint’s expression. He didn’t know the answer. All she was probably seeing was the conflict he was feeling.

“And when the ship’s door opens?” DeRicci asked. “More explosions?”

Flint shook his head. “Toxins, poisons, the stuff we usually quarantine for. Everyone will be suited up, but it could get into the system. The terminal has its own environmental system and can be isolated, but if it’s an unknown toxin—”

“Then we’re screwed.” Apparently DeRicci knew that one. She let out a breath. “It’s a risk. Letting him in is a big risk, but not letting him in might be as well.”

“He can’t just tell you on links?” Talia asked. Her cheeks were flushed. She knew Flint had told her not to talk, but she was disobeying him.

Only she wasn’t doing so with information about Zagrando, which Flint appreciated. And she asked a good question.

“He said he was coming in hot,” Flint said. “That means he’s being pursued, and there’s a chance whoever is pursuing him is monitoring his communications.”

“So they know he contacted you,” Talia said, with a touch of fear in her voice.

“Possibly,” Flint said.

DeRicci was still staring at Flint. As his gaze met hers, she inclined her head slightly.

“Do you want me to contact Space Traffic?” she asked.

“No,” Flint said. “Let me do it. If you contact them, the contact becomes official, and they’ll want to know why we’re letting in some unidentified man on an unidentified ship. If something goes wrong, you’ll get blamed.”

She gave him a sad smile. “I’m already getting blamed for a lot of things, Miles.”

“You don’t need this too,” he said. “Besides, I don’t want a record of this request.”

DeRicci’s smile widened into a real smile. “You’re sneaky, Miles.”

He smiled in return.

Then her smile faded. “If you were going to be that sneaky, you didn’t have to tell me. You could have just done it.”

“I considered it,” he said. “I just want you to approve—or maybe to know—that I’m going to recommend that this ship arrive at the port. We expect a third attack. This might be the beginning of it.”

“Oh, no,” Talia said around her thumb. Flint reached over and removed her hand from her mouth. Her thumb was bleeding near the cuticle.

DeRicci looked at Talia’s hand, then at Flint’s face. DeRicci’s expression became calm, even though Flint could tell from her body language that she wasn’t calm at all.

“Letting this man in might also be a way to prevent the third attack,” DeRicci said, more for Talia’s benefit than for Flint’s. “You wouldn’t come to me if you thought this was going to go badly. You think this man can help us.”

“If he is who he says he is,” Flint said. “He contacted me using an old method and he’s said the right things so far.”

Talia clasped her hands together. Now she was biting her lower lip. Flint couldn’t look at her any longer.

“But you’re still worried,” DeRicci said.

He had to be honest. “I have no idea why this man was listed as dead. If he is dead, then he could have been tortured before he died, and given up all kinds of information.”

Flint tried not to think about that, even as he said it. Because if Zagrando was dead, and they (whoever they were) had information on Flint, then they also knew about Talia.

Talia brought her hand to her mouth, then seemed to rethink the motion and lowered her hand again.

“But,” Flint said, “I’m clinging to the idea that someone wouldn’t contact me over something important unless I was the only contact they had on the Moon. You wouldn’t let him in with this flimsy information without my vouching for him, right?”

The
right
was also for Talia’s benefit.

“Right,” DeRicci said. “Do what you have to.”

“Is this smart?” Talia asked.

To Flint’s surprise, DeRicci smiled. “I don’t know,” she said. “But we have to take risks at some point. Or we’re just going to sit here and wait for the next attack. I’m tired of doing that. I want to take action, even if it is not the wisest plan.”

Flint didn’t find that reassuring. But he wasn’t going to argue with DeRicci. In that kitchen, Flint had already come to the conclusion that he wanted this man who called himself Zagrando to arrive on the Moon.

Flint wasn’t going to argue with DeRicci’s reasons for agreeing to it. Even if she was showing signs of fraying around the edges.