Masterminds (19 page)

So he was startled when something red flashed along his vision. He almost shut the entire search down, when he realized what the red flash was saying.

New update on the status of Ike Jarvis.

Flint knew better than to follow the lead directly. When he had trained new computer investigators years ago, he had showed them how following leads like that often enabled the established systems to detect the hack.

Instead, he logged out of the search, and logged back in to a different area in the government database, staying away from the intelligence database entirely. He searched for recent updates on military employees and found Jarvis almost immediately.

There was just a bit of information on Jarvis, with the promise of more information to come.

Jarvis was identified by his service number first, name second, and no listing of his position. He had been identified as part of a crew of a ship that had exploded in Earth’s Solar System hours before. Cause of the explosion was unknown.

A single sentence caught Flint’s attention.

Authorization for the ship’s mission not yet verified.

Flint stared at that for a long moment. He’d seen such things before. Often, unverified information disappeared from news updates when the mission or the job became clear to the system. Then the system could properly filter the information to the right database.

The notice of Jarvis’s death was automated, and the system had flagged an anomaly. The anomaly was that ship.

So Flint followed that trail, and paused when he understood what the ship was.

It was a vessel that looked like it was part of the Black Fleet.

The ship had belonged to Jarvis’s old mission, the one where he targeted Black Fleet ships at the edges of the Earth Alliance.

In other words, this mission hadn’t been part of his official job.

Who were you working for?
Flint had asked Zagrando
.

Zagrando had said
, Ike Jarvis, bastard. Killed him. Looks like he killed me too.

Zagrando had destroyed that ship. Zagrando hadn’t mentioned anything about his injuries except to say that what happened was “complicated.” Clearly Jarvis was part of that complication.

And it was, as Flint had hoped, a promising lead instead of some confusion on the part of Zagrando.

Another promising lead.

Flint allowed himself a brief moment of excitement before he leaned forward and started the difficult task of digging deeply into the life and history of a man whose entire career was based on secrecy.

Flint had no idea if he could do this without giving himself away, but he was going to try.

And he was going to try fast.

TWENTY-FOUR

IT’S HAPPENED AGAIN!

Odgerel woke out of a sound sleep, head pounding, klaxons echoing, voices screaming.

It took her a moment to realize all of the noise came through her emergency links.

She was alone in her bedroom, sprawled sideways on the mattress, her arm pushed up against the elmwood frame. She sat up, holding the covers tight against her chest.

“Lights,” she told the house.

Slowly, the lights came up to a level she once called drowsy. They were amber, set to comfort her when she got near the time to sleep.

She allowed no screens in her bedroom, nothing except the antique bed, so old that the last person she had brought in here had blanched when he discovered she was actually using it. The front of the frame was designed to look like the entrance to the gardens she so loved in Beijing’s Forbidden City.

Matching end tables rose from the floor as the lights came up just a bit more. Those were modern, just like the images painted on the wall. All of them were simply designed to look ancient.

The noise in her links continued. It took her another moment to realize that the noise was directed at her, and not a general emergency response.

She blinked. She was getting too old for this sort of thing; she did not wake quickly any longer, no matter what the emergency.

She sent a general query into the noise.
What is happening again?

Bombings.

The word was simple, but it echoed from a thousand sources. She tried to isolate them, and couldn’t. She then commanded her links to show her the first message to get through her sleep blocks.

It had come from Mitchell Brown, the newest employee at the Earth Alliance Security Division Human Coordination Department. Even though he had been at headquarters for a very short time, she already had a fondness for him.

He could see things that others could not.

She filtered the noise down, kept the visuals off, and set the link on audio only.

Brown, update me.

Sorry to wake you, sir,
he sent,
but Hétique City was bombed a few hours ago. An entire swath of the city has been destroyed.

Hétique City. Hétique City. She had to think about it for a moment. The name was familiar, but her brain didn’t fire as quickly as it used to.

She liked to blame that on the depth of her sleep, but she suspected it was one of the first signs of aging.

And then she remembered. Hétique. There was some kind of government facility there.

What part of the city?
She sent.

The clone factory, and some other Alliance buildings,
he sent.
That’s all we have.

Clone factory. She sighed. Now she remembered. Hétique City had housed much of the Earth Alliance’s human cloning capability for decades. Much of the cloning had moved off-site, especially some of the sensitive clone projects, but routine cloning for inside-Alliance operations still happened at the old facility.

How bad is the damage?
she sent.

We don’t know
, Brown sent back.
We’re just starting to get footage now.

Was it attacked by clones?
she asked. She was already trying to figure out if it had been attacked by the same mysterious operatives who had gone after the Moon.

We don’t know that, either,
Brown sent.
The attacks seemed to have come from orbit, and what we can see of the ships—well, they look remarkably
dis
similar.

She nodded. She wasn’t sure the different types of ships meant anything.
Loss of life?

We don’t know that, either. The attackers hit during their night, and there are some reports that some of the clones were stolen. Most of the workers were in their homes, asleep, when the attacks happened. And I don’t know if you’ve been to Hétique City, but the residential parts were several kilometers from the clone factory.

So,
she sent, trying to cut through his excitement, and the dearth of information,
minimal loss of life?

I’m not going to make that claim, sir,
he sent.

She could monitor everything from here, but that would disturb the tranquility of her home. She had set up her home as a haven, a sanctuary, since her job was so very stressful.

I’ll be at the office within the hour
, she sent him.
I’ll expect a full update when I arrive.

Yes, sir,
he sent and signed off.

The noise in her links began again, and she muted them. She probably shouldn’t have done that, given the fact that there was yet another emergency within the Alliance, but she needed the silence so that she could think.

Besides, the screaming panic from her own people was disturbing the serenity of her bedroom. She couldn’t afford to have this room in particular associated with the stress and terror of another attack inside the Alliance.

She pulled back the covers and slipped out of bed, her bare feet touching the warm wooden floor. She would get herself a bite of breakfast, since that would probably be the only food she would get for hours, and then she would go to the office.

Her head was still pounding—all that noise and worry, the klaxons, the alarms—had had an impact.

She needed to center herself before she could guide her people. They expected her to be an ocean of calm, a font of wisdom, the decisive leader who understood more than they ever could.

Sometimes, she wished all of that were true.

Especially in emergencies like this.

TWENTY-FIVE

JHENA ANDRE STEPPED
out of the meeting and into the corridor. She was shaking with fury.

She sent an encrypted message along her links.
I told you
never
to contact me. Ever
.

The moment she sent that message, she regretted it.

She hadn’t gotten this far by being careless.

It showed just how angry she was that Claudio Stott had contacted her without a good reason. Fortunately, they worked in the same division—sort of.

She could figure out a way to lie about that message if she had to.

She just hoped she wouldn’t have to.

Chances were, no one would ever know about the message. She had the best encrypted links in the entire Earth Alliance Security Division. She was always changing and updating them, but she knew that sometimes the best links were not enough. She had completed dozens of successful investigations of Security Division employees simply by monitoring their links. Security Division employees always thought they knew more than anyone else about personal security.

Those employees were always wrong.

And now she was in the middle of the same situation, all because Stott had panicked.

I’m getting out, Jhena
, he sent.
They found us
.

Now, he was simply repeating what he had said earlier, and she found that just as irritating as the fact he had contacted her.

She walked farther down the corridor before contacting him again.

The corridor was wide, and done in pale blues. The carpet was soft beneath her feet, and the walls designed to absorb sound.

She was in an unfamiliar part of the division. The meeting had been called without her permission, which was happening more and more these days.

Someone would get it in their head to investigate an important personage, and she would have to meet that someone on their turf.

She hated that. She was in charge of investigating employees of the Security Division, and therefore she should choose where the investigation happened.

At some point, she would have to reclaim her own place within the division, and that meant reclaiming her power, even on small things such as where meetings took place.

If she still cared enough when that happened.

If she cared at all.

She straightened her shoulders, trying to calm herself. She had to figure out a way to deal with Stott without drawing attention to herself.

The problem was that she didn’t know enough about this area physically, and stupid her, she hadn’t checked it out before deciding to attend the meeting. She had no idea if this section had been upgraded to include the latest technology, the kind that listened in on every single link transmission.

She had to act as if it did.

And she had to keep her expression neutral. She knew she was under surveillance. If she acted at all suspicious, some lower-level security personnel would walk past her, their investigative chips set so that they could detect elevated hormones or the presence of flop sweat.

She probably had elevated stress hormones, and she knew she was covered with flop sweat. She had never bothered to get one of those enhancements that prevented sweat, thinking them counterproductive—the human body sweated for a reason.

But sometimes that reason was complete fury tinged with a bit of panic.

Damn Stott for contacting her here and marking it as an emergency.

She opened the links again to tell him that he needed to calm down, and realized he hadn’t stopped sending.

…if they stole records, we’re screwed, Jhena. Imagine what they’ll find…

Idiot. He was breaking every single directive she had ever given the group.

She had thought him an ally once. She had also thought him smarter than he turned out to be.

By then, she had already compromised the group by involving him.

He was in the center of everything, and now he was about to destroy it all.

I have no idea why you’ve contacted me,
she sent.
Clearly, your division is having issues. Resolve it through the chain of command. You have no right to contact me directly.

And then she blocked him.

She wanted to grab the wall and close her eyes for a moment, but she didn’t dare. She had to look like she was dealing with the meltdown of an old friend, not a colleague who was going to destroy everything they had ever worked for.