Masterminds (46 page)

The marshal told Pippa that she held the key to the operation conducted by the masterminds on the Frontier.

Pippa wasn’t sure if she held a modern key or an ancient one. She knew that there was a lot of information trapped in her brain that she hadn’t thought about in years.

In the short conversation she had had with the marshal before everything went wrong two days ago, Pippa had given up details she had never spoken about, and the marshal thought they were significant.

Since then, two other people had debriefed Pippa, but none had asked questions as insightful as the marshal’s.

Pippa knew she would help dissolve this cabal that had tried to destroy the Alliance. She had a personal reason, of course. Apparently, someone in the Frontier was still searching for her. But she could return to her old life and never be found.

Instead, she wanted to stay. She had lost a lot of friends on Starbase Human, something else she had never admitted, and she had lost herself there.

She couldn’t reclaim Takara Hamasaki—she had changed too much for that—but she could revive and acknowledge her. And maybe even tell her children about Takara one day.

Once Pippa had put it all into perspective.

She got up and made herself some coffee. She still had to wait—everyone on the ship was dealing with details she wasn’t privy to—and she didn’t mind. She felt useful in a completely different way than she had when she taught or when she raised her children.

Now, she felt like she was contributing to the Alliance, not just to her small Iowa town.

Pippa had no idea if she would go back to that world. She suspected she would.

But she was going to have an adventure first, and she was going to stop hiding. She had been ashamed of her past.

She was no longer.

She only wished that Raymond was still alive so she could tell him all about this. She had no idea what he would think about it, which might have been why she wanted to talk to him.

She missed him.

She missed her children and her grandchildren.

But she was sitting on a spaceship after explosions and a major crisis. Her life had come full circle.

She loved that.

And she was looking forward to the future—for the first time in years.

SEVENTY-SEVEN

GOMEZ HADN’T EXPECTED
the job offer. Odgerel contacted her that morning; the security division—the
entire
Earth Alliance Security Division (not just the human division of the Investigative Department)—wanted Gomez to lead the task force that would bring the Anniversary Day criminals from arrest through trial to convictions.

It would take a decade at least. They wanted Gomez to steer an entire department, because they believed the criminal side of this was so vast that it would take an entire department to handle all of the details.

Ten thousand arrests and more on the way. Not counting what Gomez—or someone—would find on the Frontier. The things Pippa Landau had told Gomez about the way business used to be conducted on the original Starbase Human made Gomez think that there was an entire wing of this treasonous enterprise that never touched Alliance space at all.

The idea of handling this massive investigation with all of its moving parts intrigued her. The idea of running a bureaucracy did not.

Gomez hadn’t told Simiaar yet. Simiaar was working with Dabir Kaspian on the DNA found in the Anniversary Day sites. Simiaar was running all sorts of tests with rubble from the ruin, not just looking for old human DNA, but for alien DNA as well.

One of the labs had asked Simiaar if she wanted to open her own lab here. Kaspian was trying to talk Berhane Magalhães into starting a side organization that searched for non-human dead from the various crises.

Everyone had opportunities now, and it startled Gomez. She had thought she was throwing away her career when she left the
Stanley
. Instead, she had the chance to start a whole new one.

She was in her quarters, mulling over Odgerel’s offer. In typical fashion, Odgerel had given Gomez only a few hours to consider a massive lifestyle change.

Gomez loved the Frontier. She loved running her own ship. She could continue doing that forever—

If only she could trust that the Alliance would follow up on the information she found and properly handle the people she arrested. But she still couldn’t trust that, and it bothered her.

This department that Odgerel wanted her to lead could change the culture of the Security Division forever. They both knew it.

What Gomez had to determine was if she could handle all of the petty politics, the infighting, and the day-to-day grind.

Then she sat on the edge of her bed and laughed at herself. Of course she could handle that. She had run a large ship with no backup in the wildest parts of the known universe.

She had been a combination diplomat, soldier, investigator, and parent, and anything else that the job required.

She could do what Odgerel asked.

In fact, they both knew there was no one better, no one who would care as much.

Gomez already knew who her second in command could be. Wilma Goudkins had proven she cared in the exact same way that Gomez did. Goudkins hadn’t just lost her naiveté during Anniversary Day; she had actually lost family. She would fight as passionately as Gomez would.

Gomez stood. It turned out that she hadn’t needed hours after all.

Maybe Odgerel was as smart as everyone said she was.

Apparently, she had known exactly what Gomez needed.

Gomez smiled to herself. She was going to talk to Simiaar and the rest of her crew.

Deep down, she had no doubt they would join her.

But she would be fair, like Odgerel had been with her.

Gomez would give them a few hours to decide.

And she hoped they would all make the right choice.

SEVENTY-EIGHT

AFTER TWO VERY
long days, Ó Brádaigh finally made it home. The little house he had bought with Laraba before the very first bombing over four years ago had never looked so welcoming.

He had spoken to his mother once every day, and to Fiona even more. She had begged him to come home, but he couldn’t, not until he knew that Armstrong’s dome was completely safe.

He had caught a few hours of sleep whenever he could, and he had eaten just as haphazardly. But he hadn’t cared.

He had supervised every examination of the dome, and he had looked at each seam, each connection, personally. He had even peered at those explosives, so small and nearly clear. From a meter away, they had been invisible to the naked eye.

He knew how close the dome had come to complete disaster. He had been lucky.

Although Chief DeRicci hadn’t called it luck when she had asked him what he had been doing in the substructure that day. She had said his vigilance had saved them all. She was talking about a promotion or a medal or something.

He had been so tired he couldn’t track any more.

He staggered up the walk and let himself in the side door. His kitchen smelled of gingerbread, and his stomach growled. He loved gingerbread. Trust his mother to remember that.

But after he pulled off his shoes in the tiny entry, he peered into the kitchen and frowned. Something was wrong.

Fiona stood on her stepstool, the one his mother always let her use when she helped with the cooking. Flour was everywhere, and it had the distinctive whiteness of Earth flour, not the yellow-tinge of Moon flour. Even Fiona’s hair was coated in it.

The woman beside her was too small and trim to be his mother. And the woman’s short hair curled slightly against the nape of her neck.

She looked like Berhane.

Only he had never invited Berhane to his house. He had worried about her getting too close to Fiona, an oversight he would rectify now. In fact, he was going to ask Berhane to marry him, and he was going to keep asking her until she said yes.

Only their engagement would be short—maybe a few days or a month, none of this years-long stuff that her ex-fiancé had subjected her to.

Ó Brádaigh blinked, wishing his imagination would settle down, and turn that woman back into his mother. He would contact Berhane once he had some sleep.

The woman turned and smiled at him.

“Welcome home,” she said.

“Yeah, Daddy.” Fiona climbed off her stool and ran toward him, hitting him with such force around his knees that he had to catch himself on the wall to keep from falling over. “Where’ve you been? Berhane’s been cooking. We got tons of food, and we was going to wake up Gramma in a minute because it wouldn’t keep.”

Ó Brádaigh frowned. He was awake. He was wide awake, and that meant Berhane was in his kitchen.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Berhane said. “Your mother needed someone to help her with Fiona, and I volunteered.”

He wasn’t sure when Berhane and his mother had had a chance to talk. He wasn’t sure about anything, but he was glad for it.

“You can bake gingerbread?” he asked.

Berhane smiled. “I can do a lot of things.”

There was something suggestive in that sentence.

Ó Brádaigh put his hand on his daughter’s head, and then he bent over and picked her up. She had grown heavier in the past two days, or maybe he had just gotten so tired that holding her was an effort.

“We’re going to give you food,” Berhane said, “and then you’re going to sleep.”

“And then what?” he asked, his gaze on her. Flour touched the tip of her nose, and coated one arm.

“Then we’re going to have a talk,” Berhane said.

His breath stopped. “About what?”

“I can’t say the word right now,” Berhane said. “But it involves a future and a family.”

He smiled. “Are you asking me for a commitment without using a word that starts with
m
?”

“Yes,” she said.

“I was going to ask you for that same thing,” he said.

“Do I get some?” Fiona asked, squirming in his arms until she could see Berhane.

“I think you will,” Berhane said with a smile.

Ó Brádaigh smiled back. “I hope to God I’m not dreaming this.”

“You want me to pinch you, Daddy?” Fiona asked.

Ó Brádaigh laughed. He was awake. And his future was staring him in the face.

His gaze was still locked with Berhane’s. “No need to pinch me, baby,” he said to Fiona. “That would hurt. Just give me a kiss.”

So she did.

SEVENTY-NINE

THE HOSPITAL ROOM
looked more like a suite in a high-end spa. Flint had never seen anything quite like it. At least, he knew his money was being put to good use.

He stood beside Zagrando’s bed, arm around Talia. She leaned into him. Zagrando was propped up against a pile of pillows, his face pale. His eyes sparkled.

“So I get here in time for the crisis and sleep through it.” He had spent the last few days in what the doctors called a healing sleep, so that the nanohealers could repair the extensive damage he had suffered in his fight with Ike Jarvis.

“You didn’t sleep through all of it,” Flint said. “You brought us some crucial information.”

“Which, apparently, I gave to you in a completely garbled fashion. You could’ve used me.” Zagrando looked disappointed in himself.

“You might’ve gotten in the way,” Flint said, but he was lying. He probably could have used Zagrando. And Talia.

But she had guarded Zagrando and stayed calm during the crisis two days ago. She had closed the door to Zagrando’s room during the chaos caused by the release of images, and she hadn’t known anything about the potential destruction of the dome until the crisis was over.

Flint actually had the luxury of easing her into the news about Crater de Gerlache. Talia had mourned the loss of life, but she also understood how the loss of that city had led the rescue of the Moon.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Talia said to Zagrando. “You’re someone I can talk to besides my dad about clones.”

Zagrando gave her a penetrating look. “No one else knows?”

Flint felt her head shake, gently hitting his biceps as she did so.

Zagrando nodded a little, then his gaze met Flint’s. In that gaze was an understanding for both of them. Being a clone had just become a lot harder than it had ever been before—and it hadn’t been easy before.

“Probably best,” Zagrando said.

“I know.” Talia sounded miserable. “I don’t know what to do about it.”

“We’ll talk,” Zagrando said. “Because something happened to me after you left Valhalla Basin that helped me understand what you’re going through even more.”

“What?” Talia asked.