Pathfinder (22 page)

He continued. “I started a self-help group here on the station, if you’re interested. Perhaps you can stop by, before you implode.”

She shrugged off the quiver of recognition. Drinkers all had their reasons; just because Frank had seized upon her self-destructive streak, didn’t mean he understood what was going on in her head. Besides, her rejuv didn’t just give her an improved metabolism, it made her an ultra-rapid metabolizer of drugs and alcohol. She could handle her drinking without the self-help, the therapy,
or the therapist
. Major Tafani, her AFCAW-assigned addiction counselor, flashed through her mind.

“No, thank you, Frank.” She tried for dignity, but it sounded more like outrage. “I doubt I’ll have the time.”

He nodded sadly. When she glanced back before going through the hatch, he was still watching her.

 

“I’m sorry I couldn’t speak with you until now. It’s been an exhausting day.” Oleander spoke into her implanted mike while looking around at the busy cafeteria on the
Pilgrimage
.

“I sympathize, I really do. And you need to talk—things are going so well here on Priamos, I’d feel guilty about blathering on.” Matt’s voice sounded clear in her ear bug. The nodes were working well in the cafeteria, but the bandwidth charges on the
Pilgrimage
were so high that she and Matt had opted for audio calls only.

“Besides Senator Stephanos and his aides, we have to answer questions from two other senators.” She was dressed in civilian clothes. The time displayed on her cuff in aquamarine blue, and she pressed her shirt’s control to suppress the temperature readout. She had no need to monitor temperature on a ship the size of the
Pilgrimage
.

“They’re representing all three major parties?”

“Looks like it. Senator Stephanos is running himself ragged, being on the Tribunal during most of first shift and trying to cover this investigation in second shift.”

“Which parties are pushing this?”

“I don’t know. But couldn’t they have waited until we were in home port? It’s not unusual to audit an expensive mission, but right now? And some of the aides are more than surly, they’re sometimes disrespectful.” With her peripheral vision, she saw Myron enter. She was sitting sideways to the entrance of the cafeteria and she shifted so Myron couldn’t see her face. In uniform, she wore her long hair twisted into a coil at the base of her head. With her hair loose, he probably wouldn’t recognize her from the back.

“I just can’t tell you all the breakthroughs that have started, entirely due to the translator the Minoans gave us.” Contrary to his earlier comment, Matt couldn’t help gushing. “Of course, the Minoans don’t have a good grasp on our concepts, let alone the Builders’ mental processes. . . .”

Across the room, Myron again moved into her range of vision. He had a tray of food in his hands and he appeared to be searching for a place to sit. Displaying his characteristic pickiness, he turned down options of sitting with anyone and ended up at an empty table.

“And I can’t wait until the
Pytheas
arrives tomorrow from J-132. It’s supposed to be the tightest, best-equipped, third-wave exploration ship around.” Matt’s voice had joyfully babbled beyond her attention span.

“The
Pytheas
? Who’s going to pay for a third-wave exploration ship?” She’d missed something, since those ships were equipped for terrestrial examination of habitable planets, and no one had gone to the expense of sending one to G-145. Smaller second-wave prospectors, such as
Aether’s Touch
, were for remote exploration and establishing legal telepresence.

“It’s owned by Leukos Industries. I—er—suggested that Mr. Leukos get with the Minoan-owned Hellas Nautikos, since they both seemed to be willing to invest in G-145.” Matt sounded embarrassed.

“I thought Leukos Industries did defense contracting.” Across the room, a Terran woman approached Myron’s table, obviously asking to sit with him. Oleander frowned. Where had she seen that woman with short strawberry blond hair?

“Apparently, he owns a small fleet of exploration class vessels. Can you believe it?”

Her eyebrows rose at Matt’s comment; how did he know so much about the reclusive Mr. Leukos? At that moment, she realized where she’d seen the woman speaking to Myron. Not currently in uniform, she was the Terran Space Force lieutenant who had been in SP Duval’s entourage.

Oleander tried to pull herself back to Matt. “Is this new ship going to map Sophia Two? I thought they decided not to put much effort into that planet.”

Across the room, Myron played with his utensil in his right hand and made a gesture with his left that indicated he’d be leaving the table. He stood up and departed, leaving her standing. Oleander would have chalked this up to his inherent rudeness, except that the lieutenant remained standing and stared down at his tray. The lieutenant then put down her own tray, rearranged something on Myron’s tray, and began to leave the cafeteria.

“Not Sophia Two—”

Oleander stood up, barely hearing Matt’s next words. Something about getting the Builders’ buoy working. This would have been heart-skipping news if she believed it could be possible within her lifetime. She made encouraging sounds of agreement as she casually walked over to Myron’s table.

The departing TSF lieutenant didn’t notice as she strode through the exit. Oleander looked down at Myron’s plates, left for the bus-bot. There was thick sauce on one plate, where he’d scratched something in the viscous liquid. The smaller plate the lieutenant had placed on top hid most of the symbols, and the rest was disappearing as the sauce succumbed to ship gravity.

“I’m sorry, but something’s come up.” She cut through Matt’s explanation as she followed the lieutenant.

“An emergency? Not more explosions, I hope.” His voice sounded anxious. “Be careful, Diana.”

“I will.” At the cafeteria exit, Oleander looked both ways and saw the lieutenant’s back. The hallways were crowded enough for her to follow without being obvious. “I’ve got to go, Matt. Miss you.”

“I—I miss you, too.”

“Right. Bye.” She hurried after the Terran lieutenant.

Our award for having the gonads to be
politically in-
correct
goes to Reserve AFCAW Major Ariane Kedros, for testifying she
purposely
left isolationist scum to die. Bravo, darling—and isn’t she a yummy morsel?

—
Dr. Net-head Stavros
, 2106.056.14.30 UT, indexed by
Heraclitus 22
under Conflict Imperative

 

 

 

T
he
Bright Crescent
was still locked down and Colonel Edones was unavailable. When Ariane couldn’t get through, she called Joyce and reversed the charges. Even now, comm was frightfully expensive in G-145.

“I hope I can get reimbursed for this,” Joyce said dryly. He was in a private infirmary room, sitting up in his bed.

“It’s good to see you, too.” She meant it; his color was better and his profile said no more surgeries were scheduled. “Yes, this is business, so that’s why I went full video.”

“I’ve got no equipment, but I can give you a rundown.” He shrugged. “I can’t identify the person who held me down and drugged me, except he was a man and he wore a mask.
Pilgrimage
security can’t find a used diaper inside a cardboard box, so I don’t have high hopes of finding my assailant.”

The attack had happened four days earlier, but it seemed so much longer ago. She nodded when he said he had
no equipment
, meaning he couldn’t use military encryption. They were on an encrypted civilian line but according to regulations, they couldn’t exchange classified information over it. Regulations absolutely forbade the use of personal codes and keywords to pass classified data—but she and Joyce had been on missions where they had to throw that rule out, or they’d never have survived.

“Give them time, Joyce. They’re struggling with this.”

“All I can say is I’m glad you came by. Otherwise, I’d be in an urn on my way home, and the crèche-get would still be wondering what happened.” He snorted.

“Do I get points for protecting you, by sacrificing my body?”

“Nope.” He grinned. “First, I wasn’t awake to enjoy it, and second, it was really the Minoan warrior that sacrificed itself—or its gloves, I guess.”

“I’ll forgo the points, this time, since I got your package. I noticed it wasn’t finished. Nice photos, by the way. How are Sara and the kids holding up?” As she said “package,” she tapped her slate to start recording.

“Pretty good. I talked to them again today. Sara made an offer on that home, the one I told you about earlier?” He made a you- know-what-I-mean gesture. She
did
know: Joyce and his wife weren’t looking for a new home. Joyce continued, “But the owners want too much. They won’t budge unless they keep Autonomist citizenship and can raise their kids in the area. They also want a comfortable annual salary.”

“Too bad. Did they mention what salary they hoped to get?” Obviously, the “owner” was Maria and even though this conversation might sound a trifle odd, the analogy worked.

“Eighty thousand HKD per year.”

“Is the home still on the market?” She had almost everything she needed.

“I think so, but I won’t be making another offer.” He smiled wanly.

She stopped recording, because that was the end of the situation report. However, there were other particulars to address, such as what was happening on the
Bright Crescent
. “What’s with the audit? Even for an HQ inspection, I’ve never seen a ship taken offline for more than a day. For that matter, I’ve never seen this happen at a nonmilitary facility.”

“Yeah, a lot of ‘firsts,’ which make me suspicious. A team from the Headquarters Inspector General has arrived, comprised of a captain and two noncoms. When they came by to interview me, I got the scuttlebutt.” He grinned in a predatory fashion, but quickly became somber. “They’re just window dressing, to make the audit authentic. They’ve got no control in what they’re privately calling ‘the drubbing of the Directorate.’ They say it’s driven from the Senate.”

“Stephanos?” She remembered the veiled threats. “But why would he take down the Directorate, when his committee gave us special projects?”

“You got it backwards, Major.” Joyce scratched at a temporary implant in his neck. “They think this aims to discredit the senator and erode support for Pax Minoica, since he’s such a staunch supporter. Of course, the colonel goes down as collateral damage.”

Pax Minoica
. She’d intended to tell only Colonel Edones about Frank’s allegations, but the situation had changed. “Joyce, I got a lead that may be relevant, from a source who should remain anonymous.”

“Is the source reliable?”

She paused to consider, and decided. “Yes. But there’s no hard evidence.”

“Remember, Major. We work in the intelligence field.” Joyce sighed. “If we required hard evidence for following our leads, we’d be working in Justice.”

“That’s a good point. It’s also corroborated by odd circumstantial data provided by Pike.” She hesitated, thinking about the insecure comm, but her only classification guidance for this information was to protect the source. “My informant suspects Abram had funding, perhaps even direction, out of Overlord Six. Additionally, there’s a suspicious amount of comm traffic going from Priamos to District Six worlds, although Pike cautioned me that this traffic could be misleading. The third oddity: Abram’s men might have encountered Builder technology before they came to G-145.”

She watched Joyce commit her words to memory. His eyebrows went up. “What about the other Overlords? Do we have an obligation to tell the Tribunal about this?”

“Don’t know about the other Overlords. As for the ICT, we could insist SP Duval recuse himself, since he works for Six.”

“Pax Minoica is really circling the crapper if this ICT is a sham.”

“Our research push in this system might also be a joke if Six found Builder technology.” She cocked her head as a thought zipped through her mind. “But I can’t see the Minoans helping Overlord Six by handing over a translator. Maybe our alien oversight has been cooperative because they think we’ve finally got a true interstellar operation at Beta Priamos.” Thoughts cascaded and sparked others.
If the Minoans wanted Aether Exploration before they’d provide assistance, then we employees looked like impediments to progress, at least while we sat on the
Pilgrimage.
Was that justification for someone to make attempts on our lives, or our ship?
That seemed ridiculous; more likely, Aether Exploration would be seen as a bunch of alien-loving traitors to the human race—once again, enough reason to plant explosives?

“Hmm—never credit Minoans with altruistic motives,” Joyce said. “But what if the League is splintering? How will the Minoans react?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been wondering how the TSF behaves during Overlord conflict. There’s Space Force support for both SP Duval
and
SP Parmet—and which way will they jump?” She paused and Joyce waited. “At this point, let’s keep each other updated and, when you get the chance, pass this on privately to the colonel. If not the colonel, perhaps the senator?”

“The colonel’s restricted to the ship and the senator goes from the ICT hearings straight to the ship. Neither are approachable without going through some useless political straphanger,” Joyce said. “And I don’t think I can even board the
Bright Crescent
, under lockdown, without permission.”

“Can you get a message to Captain Floros?”

“They’ve got her tied up on the ship for hearings, testimony, analysis, whatever. . . . Maybe.”

“How about Lieutenant Oleander? Matt spoke with her recently, so they’re allowing her off the ship.”

“The weapons officer?” Puzzlement flitted over Joyce’s face.