Ghosts of Empire (Book 4 of The Empire of Bones Saga) (11 page)

She pressed the accept button. “Yes?”

“Deputy Coordinator King is here to see you, ma’am. She says it’s quite urgent.”

No doubt, that diplospeak meant Abigail was pissed. She must’ve seen the preliminary report Olivia had filed with the council. Well, this fight had been inevitable. She might as well get it over with. She could use it as a pretext to leave early and get to digging for the answers she needed.

The door burst open and Abigail stormed into Olivia’s office. She didn’t even wait for it to fully close before she started.

“What the hell did you think you were doing up there?” Abigail snarled. “You gave up everything worth fighting for in less than two hours. Everything I’ve worked so hard to accomplish is ruined.”

“Come in, Abigail,” Olivia said with a false smile. “Sit down and tell me what brings you over.”

The other woman stopped in front of Olivia’s desk and glared at her. “Don’t even start that nonsense with me. I demand an explanation.”

After giving Abigail a long look, Olivia leaned back in her seat. “You’re on the wrong side of this desk to be demanding anything. You can calm down or leave. The choice is yours.”

The other woman took a deep breath, and then three more just like it. The flashing anger hadn’t left her eyes, but she was under a little more control.

“Those circumstances could change faster than you might think,” Abigail said in a low, dangerous tone. “The coalition that appointed you coordinator can choose someone else if you fail to lead the way they expect. And right now, I’m certain your actions have a number of the council members reconsidering their support. Perhaps you’d care to explain why you gave ground in the negotiations?”

Olivia supposed the woman’s threats were better than listening to her scream.

“I gave ground because they weren’t going to agree to your hardline terms. The lords hold the power to release us. We can’t continue to delude ourselves that we can force them to do that. We have to bargain in a more nuanced manner. If you think differently, you’re mistaken.”

“That’s crap. We have their people. If we hold out they’ll—”

“They’ll leave them and get more. It’s a miracle that Admiral Mertz is willing to negotiate for them at all. He told me in no uncertain terms that they couldn’t release us without the approval of the Imperial lords.”

“And you believed him?” Abigail shook her head. “I thought you were smarter than that. He wouldn’t bargain for them if they weren’t worth his time. They know some secret he doesn’t want us to have. Rather than giving in, we should be questioning the prisoners.”

That was unusually adept for Abigail, Olivia mused. The other woman was usually more of a blunt instrument.

“And if they know some secret, then what?” she asked. “Are you planning to blackmail the man in command of the bombardment stations?”

Abigail showed her teeth. “Yes, I am. They took out the system lord. That means there are events happening that we need to know about. That’s not just me speaking, Olivia. That’s the conservative leadership.

“If you don’t address their concerns, they’ll call for a vote of no confidence. They might not control an outright majority, but there are enough others who dislike what you’ve done to remove you.”

Olivia shot the other woman a predatory smile. “I’ve heard that before, yet here I sit. More than enough council members will want to see what I’m up to before they allow the conservatives back into power. After all, you rebelled against the lords. Do you really think the other council members have forgotten how their predecessors died?”

That was certain to infuriate Abigail, she knew. The conservatives had been in power since the rebellion. They couldn’t understand why any of their leadership from a decade ago would support a coup.

Yet, that’s what the system lord told them was the reason it blasted the capital and spaceports to oblivion. And every outpost that had existed in the system.

The other ruling parties had formed a coalition to strip the conservatives of their rule, but theirs wasn’t a strong majority. While Olivia was certain she could bring them around to her point of view, she couldn’t afford to appear weak.

Olivia leaned forward in her chair. “You need to go back and consult with your political masters, because I don’t think they were quite so strenuous in their instructions to you. If you push this matter now, it might be you who is out of a job.”

She let her words hang between them for a moment before she stood. “I intend to bring Admiral Mertz down to the planet’s surface and continue the negotiations in a more cordial environment. It remains to be seen exactly what we can achieve, but I assure you that I’m working tirelessly for the people of Harrison’s World. I’ll get the best deal possible for all of us.”

Abigail spun on her heel without a word and strode out of Olivia’s office.

It never ceased to amaze Olivia. If Abigail’s father hadn’t been a powerhouse in the conservative movement before his death, the woman would never have reached her current position as Olivia’s primary deputy. Abigail was a time bomb waiting for an inappropriate moment to explode.

* * * * *

After his visit into the city the previous day, Sean had decided a scouting mission to the other side of the island was in order. He’d spoken that night with Ross and Newland. They’d agreed that some discreet intelligence gathering would be helpful. They’d said they’d take care of it.

Now it was almost lunch and Sean was getting antsy. There hadn’t been any sign of trouble, but he hadn’t wanted to huddle with the others again so soon. Even though he doubted their captors were monitoring them that closely, he wasn’t willing to risk it.

When he went to get his midday meal, the server gestured for him to come around behind the counter. He did so without question and found Ross waiting for him in the kitchen.

The man was dicing something. “Sean, good to see you. I hope you’re good with a peeler. We have a pile of fresh vegetables. You must’ve made some friends yesterday.”

He snorted. “Hardly. If anything, the guy I spoke with would’ve been happy to cut off the food entirely. I can’t claim any part of this.”

His experience with a peeler was strictly limited, but he grabbed it and pitched in. The noisy kitchen would make monitoring them almost impossible.

“What happened last night?” Sean asked.

“Nothing,” Ross said. “Too much chance of someone seeing them in the dark when normal people were asleep. They went right after breakfast. Some of the boys made a scene on the other side of camp and drew the guards’ attention. A romantic entanglement gone astray. One of my best girls played her role to the hilt and beat the snot out of her ‘wandering man’. It was quite entertaining, I’m told. Gina knows how to be very convincing.”

Sean had heard something about it, but the brawl had ended by the time he’d gotten over there. “I’m sure the citation write up will be unusual. Did your people make it back safely?”

“Just did. They slipped into the docks on the far side of the island. Whoever put up the fences to keep us in didn’t check the original buildings closely enough. There are service tunnels that go under them.

“Several merchant companies receive goods on the docks and transship them into the city on big grav lifts. Our boys broke into one of the warehouses and found a few uniforms. Coveralls, really, in blue with one of the company logos. That let them blend in as they explored the place.

“The bottom line is that we might be able to get our people over there and co-opt enough vehicles to get everyone into the city.”

“Don’t the guards search the vehicles?”

The noncom shook his head. “Nope. At least they didn’t on the one ride the boys took to move cargo.”

“They went to the city? That was a little dangerous. What if someone challenged them?”

Ross smiled. “They got caught by the company supervisor and yelled at for goofing off. They had no choice but to ‘get back to work.’ On the positive side, they made some friends and now a number of people think they work there. That kind of cover is useful. Useful enough for me to send them back. They’ll go off shift with the real crew and into the city. They’ll look for places we can hole up.”

“That sounds good,” he told Ross. “I’m not sure we should make a break until we give Mertz a chance to get us loose. Knowing where the spaceport is and some things about its schedule would be good, though.”

The older man nodded. “That’s on their list of things to inquire about. They’re good people. They’ll do what needs to be done and avoid sticking out.”

Sean hoped so, because if they were caught, the outlines of the bold escape plan he’d come up with wouldn’t work. He wished Mertz could get some information to them. Knowing what was going on in the negotiations would make his job easier.

And if they needed to get moving, he’d like to know sooner rather than later.

* * * * *

Kelsey took a shower and considered the dream. No, it wasn’t a dream. It was a recording of events seen by the man in the stasis chamber. Somehow, she’d accessed his files while she slept. That
had
to be it.

Nothing like that had ever happened before and it scared her. Her implants were like a computer. They did what she told them to, with the exception of the combat protocols. They shouldn’t have been able to feed the recording into her sleeping mind like that.

She rubbed her face and checked the time. She’d gotten about four hours sleep. Well, that was it. There was no way she was going back to sleep now.

With this new anomaly, she decided she’d better go have a few words with Doctor Leonard and Carl Owlet. She needed to figure this out before something went seriously wrong.

The lab compartment on
Invincible
was huge. They’d given over a full cargo deck to the scientists and the artifacts they were bringing back from the station and graveyard. She saw a stasis unit, the damaged flip point jammer, and scores of tables covered with smaller items.

Doctor Leonard wasn’t there, but Carl Owlet sat hunched over a computer station off to the side.

She walked up behind him and cleared her throat. “With implants, do you really need the screen?”

He jumped a little and turned to face her with a smile. “It’s still very helpful. I can see things at a glance that don’t pop out in the implant feed. I suspect that will change as I get used to the new hardware. For now, I’m doing both.”

“That sounds complex. Where’s Doctor Leonard?”

“Off hunting for artifacts. Is there something I can help you with?”

Kelsey considered how to frame her problem. “I finally got to bed a few hours ago and had a dream. Unfortunately, it wasn’t mine. It was memories of the dead man from that ship. His name, by the way, is Ned Quincy. He was a Captain in the Marine Raiders and in charge of
Persephone
.”

That got the graduate student’s full attention. “That’s not possible. Files in implant storage aren’t accessed like that.”

He stood up and started setting up one of the machines near his workstation. “Let’s take a look at the files.”

She sat where he indicated and put on the headset he handed her. He frowned and focused on the screen. “There’s some unexpected activity. A large number of the smaller files are accessing one another. They’re also adding new files. Weird.”

“Are they filling up my implant storage? Do I need to delete them?”

“You still have a lot of free space. What concerns me is that the activity seems to be continuing. Are you accessing those files?”

Kelsey shook her head. “No.”

“Let me look at the logs here… The files are initiating the access requests, but only within the new material. One file in particular. Let me look at the code in the static memory of my system. There, I’ve copied it. You can get up.”

She nodded and took off the headset. “I want to look at some stuff while you figure this out. Did they bring over anything from
Persephone
?”

He gestured toward some of the tables nearby. “Since we were there, yes. A lot of personal gear and any odd equipment.”

Leaving him to his work, she walked over to the tables and started examining everything as she walked down them. It only took her ten minutes to find what she was looking for. A pair of short swords in a harness.

She drew one and looked at it closely. It was exactly like in her dream. The honed edge of the dark blade looked just like her marine knife. That made it insanely sharp and durable enough to hack through a bulkhead.

Kelsey slid the harness on and tightened it. The sword hilts projected over her shoulders. They felt oddly familiar.

Carl waved for her to come over. “The file is complex. I’m not sure I understand what it is. I’m going to keep poking around in the code, but it might take a while. Nice swords, by the way.”

“They were in my dream. Or the recording. Whatever. I’m going to step over here and see how they feel. I’ll try not to throw one by accident.”

“We’d all appreciate that.”

Kelsey walked over to a cleared area and took a deep breath. She’d never had any martial arts training, but her implants knew some things. Combat reflexes, she supposed. At the very least, she could see how they felt without chopping up anything important.

She drew the swords awkwardly and tried to have her implants guide her, but that didn’t seem to help. Apparently, her hard-coded responses didn’t include sword fighting.

Kelsey sighed and put the swords clumsily away.

The files in her memory probably had something about the swords and their use. Maybe she could find a tutorial.

She accessed the file Carl had said was doing all the work and asked for a sword tutorial. It promptly requested control of her limbs.

This was similar to when her implants took her into combat mode. She checked the limits of what she was granting and her hardware informed her that she retained override authority. If she wanted, she could stop at any moment.

What the hell. She authorized the file to proceed.

Her hands flashed up to the hilts and drew the swords smoothly. Her body then went into something very much like a choreographed dance. The blades went this way and that as she flowed across the open area attacking imaginary foes.