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  “Oh?” The smooth ridges above Ben’s eyes flexed upward.

  She bounced on her heels.

  “And?” Ben prompted.

  “Are you going to invite me in?”

  “No. You are a known inciter of industry gossip, and a thief—”

  “I’ve never stolen anything in my life!” She hoped that the artificial servant didn’t have access to juvenile records.

  “—of information, and a destroyer of good reputations. I cannot allow such a person as yourself into the domicile of my master. You will have to conduct your interview here, though your time will be wasted. It would be best to cease your attempts to access this suite’s systems.”

  She frowned, but shut down the program. Though the trick had worked in the past, Ben was obviously a better model than she was used to. She licked her lips.

  “I suggest you investigate the Altair suite.”

  “What? Why?”

  “You will find something of note there.” Ben took a step back.

  “How do you know what I’m investigating?” She clenched her fists. “Do you know anything about the assassination of Baron Mitsugawa?”

  “Good night, Cygni Lau-Aragón.”

  The door slid shut between them.

  Cygni ignored the implied insult—she was used to it in her line of work, and Ben was a machine. The name Baroness Altair was already floating through her mind along with her memory of Baron Keltan’s face when he saw her. She had a hunch there was a connection between them, and now Baron Keltan’s personal assistant was pointing her in the Baroness’ direction.

  Interesting.

  She queried the ship’s computer for directions to the Baroness’ suite. A moment later a translucent map appeared in her field of view. Her destination was on a different level of the same habitat ring. She headed up, pondering if the door-hack trick would work on the Baroness’ staff. Minutes later she stood in front of the doors marked with AgroWorlds Corporation’s logo—a sphere comprised of green, red, and wheat colored squares.

  She took a deep breath and linked to the door computer. She uploaded the hack program while the doorbell was ringing, this time hoping that maybe, if the Baroness had an advanced artificial like Baron Keltan’s, it might not catch the program. The doorbell repeated itself several times before informing her that no one was going to answer. That suited her just fine, with nobody present her hack program had time to complete its work. She now had a channel directly into the suite’s systems. She made the doorbell cycle once more, to be certain no one was inside, then told the computer to open the doors.

  The Baroness’ suite had a small antechamber configured to be a sitting room. Cygni stood in the center of the rectangular chamber, looking about the coffee table and chairs for a good place to plant her first surveillance device. Called “spy-grains,” they were audio-visual recorders about a millimeter wide capable of transmitting a stream of data up to a kilometer away. They’d cost her most of her savings, but she figured that when spying on barons one shouldn’t skimp on the equipment. These beings ran the spur, and she was sure there would be dire consequences if one caught her spying on them.

  Trembling with excitement, she produced the first grain from her sleeve and pushed it up into the tiny crevasse between the table’s leg and top. Microscopic filaments, artificial versions of what many insects used to cling to surfaces, ensured the spy grain would stay in place. She put one more beneath a beige upholstered chair, in case the cleaning crews vacuumed up the first, then moved deeper into the suite.

  Beyond the inner doors was a spacious living area with three divans and an artificial fireplace with a steady, gas-powered flame. She was fairly certain that old-Earth fireplace fires were supposed to crackle, but such small detail had escaped the designers of this luxury ship. The divans were upholstered in tight, black leather and were held ten-centimeters off the floor by sets of small, golden claws. A portrait of the Baroness Altair in all her haggard glory rested on the faux-brick wall above the fireplace. Even in the portrait her eyes looked tired.

  “Jeez.” Cygni shook her head.

  She crossed the dark red-and-blue-Persian rug and planted a grain on the frame of the portrait. There were four more doors in this room, but before she could enter one, the hiss of the suite’s front door made her back go rigid. Without time to think, she dove behind a divan just as the inner doors slid open.

  The smell of dusty latex reached her nostrils. Her olfactory sensors got to work, and before she could take her third, shaky breath the words “organic molecules consistent with VoQuana species” scrolled across her vision.

  VoQuana? The sensors in her nostrils must be malfunctioning.

  She pressed her head against the itchy rug and gazed between the divan’s clawed feet. She could see the legs of whomever had entered the room—slender legs contained by a dark-gray body glove. They were paused, mid-stride, by the inner doors. Her cybernetic ears could hear the being breath, slow, light, and steady. She realized that the being that had entered was listening, aware of something out of place.

  Damn.

  She took a deep breath. There was nowhere else for her to hide. The moment this being moved she would be seen curled up behind the divan in an obvious and horribly stupid attempt to not be detected. Unless, by some luck, this being was the most oblivious in the spur, she was already caught. She would have to do her best to talk herself out of the room. The odds were good that, even if a search was conducted, whoever had just caught her wouldn’t find the spy grains anyway.

  With her mind made up, Cygni pressed two more to the underside of the divan and stood up. She felt a wave of dizziness, but it passed. She looked over to the doorway, her first excuses forming on her lips, and blinked. There was no one there.

  What the hell?

  She cycled through all wavelengths of light her cybernetic eyes were capable of seeing—everything from gamma-rays to ultra-violet—but there was nothing there. She couldn’t explain it.

  She shook her head. Maybe she had imagined the legs. With the grains planted, she had no reason to stay in the room and get caught for real, so she quickly headed out into the hallway. She wondered if she’d lost her nerve. Perhaps the sound of the doors and the pair of legs in the room were a manifestation of the fear of getting caught, but maybe her cerebral computer was on the fritz and interfering with her senses somehow. If so, it could be a serious problem she’d have to check out as soon as she got back to the Nyangari suite. Something in her head was telling her that was likely it, but it didn’t quite wax with what her instincts were saying.

  On a hunch, she accessed the suite’s door panel and checked its last recorded action. When she saw what it was, a chill shivered down her back. The door really had opened and shut while she was in the room.

  Keep it together, Cygni. Calmly walk out like nothing’s wrong, she told herself trying to resist the urge to sweep her eyes back and forth across the room. It would do her no good, she knew. Whoever had entered the room was using some kind of stealth technology to conceal their presence.

  It took more effort than she would have expected to get her feet moving, but somehow she did. Keeping her eyes on the doorway leading out, she took one step after another, listening to her breath rattle in her chest. She expected to feel a hand on her shoulder at any moment, or worse, hear the rapport of a gauss gun as a super-sonic bullet punched through her back. A tingling crawled across her neck and for a moment she thought the invisible being had touched her there until she realized it was her own hair standing up on end.

  She could hear her heartbeat in her ears when she reached the suite’s doorway. She ordered the doors open and shut with her implant, dodging through them as they slid one way and another too fast to allow anyone to follow her. Once in the hallway, Cygni took off at a run, and didn’t start to breathe easier until she was well away from the Altair suite and in the lift.

  Only then did the smell of latex fade from her nostrils.

  Chapter
Nineteen

  Elmorus System

  41:2:7 CST (J2400:3130)

  Elmorus II was technically the name of the planet whose blue skies now filled the small windows in the Akanda’s cockpit. It was a small, dense celestial body in a long elliptical orbit around its orange-gold sun with a breathable atmosphere and a range of environments which classified it as Earth-like. Settled late in Confederate history, it had vast tracks of untouched wilderness filled with indigenous flora and fauna speckled with modern settlements across its surface. The largest of these, and the only one with a space port, was Sanakrat City.

  “Zero-point-seven gravities made life a lot easier on the miners here when the planet was first settled. The primary exports are copper, platinum, and medicinal herbs from the planet’s vast jungles and forests.” Khepria finished rattling off Elmorus’ basic information from over Nero’s shoulder. Since they landed, she climbed up from below him and perched on the rim of his seat using her long toes to grasp its edge.

  He yawned. He was more interested in the high number of war frigates in the system. They logged at least twenty-seven when the Star Corps FTL cargo runner they had piggy-backed on dropped out of its Einstein-Rosenberg bridge. Most were local Confederate defense forces, but at least nine of them were mercenary vessels. Their presence stank of a system expecting an attack at any moment.

  “The Lokhari Forest is forty clicks from Sanakrat; local northeast from our current position,” Khepria added with a human like smile.

  “Thank you,” he said. If the Savorchan chief’s information was still current, that was where they would find the hidden facility he mentioned, and Kiertah Rega.

  A drought of apprehension filled his gut. The last time he saw the freaky child, he’d been in a nano-regeneration tube aboard the CSS Zeus’ Thunder. Even though he had killed her mother with his reckless actions, she still thanked him for saving her life. He found it strange he hadn’t thought about it much until now. It made him wonder what kind of reception he would get if they found her. There was something else, too. She mentioned something about going to some VoQuana world with her father for some reason, though he couldn’t remember why. Given what he now knew about the VoQuana, it deepened his apprehensions about their meeting.

  He opened his chair’s restraints and fidgeted, waiting for Khepria to move so he could climb out of the chair. “Prospero, pull up the last memory I have of Kiertah Rega.”

  Accessing deep memory, just a moment—Apologies, Nero, I cannot seem to find that specific memory.

  Nero felt Khepria’s long-fingers on his shoulder. He looked up to see her ears twitching and her eyes wide.

  “You can’t access a memory?” It was the first time he could remember getting this response from the artificial side of his brain.

  I’m sorry, Nero. Perhaps I was affected by the explosion while extracting the Rega family, and was not online at the time. I cannot explain it.

  Khepria looked even more alarmed, but remained silent.

  He felt a pit form in his stomach. “Do you have a log of that at least?”

  Negative, however, it is the only logical conclusion since I cannot access memories from the time frame you referenced. Perhaps we should move on to more pressing matters?

  He nodded, though the feeling of wrongness was hard to shake after Prospero’s failure. “You’re right. We should get moving before any other unwanted surprises pop up.”

  They received only one message as they were departing the Kosfanter System. No one should have been able to access their location, but somehow Sinuthros had. The VoQuana maskhim had been quite put out that Nero hadn’t included him in pursuing the new lead. It wasn’t logical, the maskhim was treaty-bound and unable to pursue them, but between his message and Irin’s warning in the biodome, Nero was eager to get moving. The faster this mission was done with, the better. He didn’t want to find out if Sinuthros could make good on his threat to find diplomatic clearance to follow them.

  “I am accessing the local port logs about the Katozi Slyn. Hopefully, they keep them long enough that the records are still there. I’ve had bad luck with small ports in the past,” Khepria said as they climbed through the Akanda’s narrow, pipe-like corridors heading for the ramp.

  Despite the ship being atmospheric-capable, the corridor leading from her bridge aft towards the cargo bay was designed more for free-fall than use as a passage in a planet’s gravity well. Its curving surface, illuminated by florescent rings around its bulkheads, offered little in the way of comfort for a human foot. It was lined by tubes and pipes carrying the ship’s air, water, and power like arteries and veins. Khepria’s hand-like feet made quick work of it, though Nero was forced to plod along mindful of the strain in his human-like ankles.

  At the end of the corridor, the hatch leading into the main cargo bay dilated open at their approach. He happily followed Khepria into the hold and flexed his feet against the flat metal grating beneath him.

  One side of the cargo bay held stacks of magnetic crates and barrels containing their foodstuffs, medical supplies, and spare parts for the ship. The other side had his air-car strapped down against the metal deck, and in the wall beyond it, a niche containing the old combat shell—powered armor that he’d used on Savorcha—he just couldn’t seem to part with despite the memories metaphysically fused into its thick skin. The ceiling was within reach of his finger tips if he stood on tip-toe, and the two halves of the bay were separated by a yellow-and-black striped area which marked the ship’s main access ramp.

  A line of bright light shaped like an open-sided rectangle, five-meters across, appeared in the center of the hold when the ramp seals hissed open. It expanded rapidly to reveal the cracked-gray surface of Sanakrat City Starport’s Landing Pad 14. His ears popped as the pressure equalized and the air filled with musty-smelling dust from the outside. He gave Khepria a sidelong glance.

  She shrugged.

  He tramped down the ramp. The brown dust swirled about the hem of his coat, layering a patina of gray-brown on his person as high as his knees before his boot heels even crunched against the shattered concrete pad. From the shadow cast by the Akanda, he looked out into the glare.

  To call this a star port was something of a bad joke. Ten hectares of weedy concrete and a few faded lines didn’t really qualify in his opinion. A dense-looking forest of black-leafed trees loomed behind the encroaching weeds on three sides of the field. The control tower at the east end was a rusty cone of riveted plating and old-style glass windows on top of a rickety scaffolding that, unless the dusty air was playing tricks on his eyes, had a switchback-style stairway as the only access. Several communications dishes made of modern materials and in obviously better repair, were strapped down one of the tower’s legs like white parasitic beetles.

  “I’m glad we landed during the day,” he said after noting the lack of guide lights.

  At least the tower was able to transmit a landing vector, Prospero stated.

  “We made it down safe.” Khepria’s eyes polarized silver when she moved up beside him. The dust was having an effect on her black-and-gray uniform as it did with Nero’s.

  He turned and spied the three floors of cracked glass and crumbling brick that made up the port’s customs house. It was just meters from the terminal end of the Akanda’s ventral-port pylon. The structure was barely longer than the ship, and was dwarfed by the breadth of the ship’s pylon struts. Black weeds grew from cracks in the tarmac around the building, and a bright-yellow vine with maroon leaves snaked up one of the building’s corners.

  “I guess they don’t take good care of their stuff here,” he said.

  “I am just happy that they have a Cyberweb, limited though it is. I’m still waiting for my query on the ‘Slyn to be resolved,” she said.

  It is customary to pay a landing fee at most ports, however, the ship has yet to be asked for one by the control computer, Prospero added.

  “Let’s check this out.” Nero’s feet made crunching soun
ds with every step he took towards the dilapidated building. A gust of wind showered his grizzled face with the same itchy dust that coated the bottom of his uniform.

  “Unpleasant,” Khepria said from behind him, covering her eyes with one hand and curling her ears up so that they looked like two rolled up fleshy leaves rising from her temples.

  Although the inside was little better than its facade, Nero was grateful to be under the port building’s moldy, flaking ceiling. The entrance, an ancient style glass and wood door, led them into the building’s reception area. A wooden desk with cracked paneling served as the centerpiece for the far wall. Four benches sat off to his right, illuminated piss-yellow by the light streaming in through the chamber’s two crusted windows. Inside, the musty smell was even worse than it was outside.

  It took him the span of three steps to reach the desk and gaze over its chest-high rim. Beyond it was a meter-tall, greenish-brown, kidney-bean shaped plant. It had a nest of roots that flowed over the stool on which it sat, gathering in a nest on the floor below it.

  “And all they can be bothered to greet us with is a plant.” He sighed. “We should’ve just landed in the forest.”

  That would have been a breach of protocol, and the possibility of environmental damage was too great to risk it.

  Khepria unfurled her ears, carefully preening them with her hands. “My query just got answered. As I suspected, this port doesn’t keep records past three years. We won’t be finding anything on the Katozi Slyn here.”

  “This port doesn’t do much right at all. I expected more. The war hasn’t come to this planet quite yet, even though we’re on the Broghite border. I would have thought they’d keep the services running,” he said.

  Look around you, Nero. They haven’t tended to this port in years. I don’t think Elmorus’ position in relation to the Broghite Commonwealth has much to do with it.