Pathfinder (9 page)

Dr. Rouxe’s murder [
link to my proof
] is a smokescreen to divert us from the true shocker in the Interstellar trials: How did a rogue temporal-distortion weapon get to G-145? Guess what? Our government knew all about it. Stay with us as we keep you informed of the conspira- cies unraveling behind this macabre theater.

—
Citizens for Responsible Disarmament
, 2106.053.20.00 UT, indexed by
Heraclitus 17
under Conflict Imperative

 

 

 

“A
ri, this doesn’t look good.” Matt might have been worried, but she couldn’t be sure because his voice was flattened by compression.

She was standing in the stagnant outflow of people from the amphitheater. Standing on tiptoe to look about the crowd, she realized many people leaving the arraignment had slowed to make calls and the
Pilgrimage
’s internal communications were swamped. “I know. This ship still isn’t secure.”

“You’re missing my point.” Matt’s voice sharpened.

“Sorry?” She keyed up her ear bug’s output to override the crowd’s babble.

“It looks like somebody wants to get rid of key prosecution witnesses. Whose testimony could be as damaging as
yours
,
Joyce’s
, and
Tahir’s
?”

“Oh. I didn’t think about that.” Her knee-jerk reaction had been to suspect Terran Intelligence, not someone working with the isolationists. She had immediately thought of Andre Covanni, who specialized in assassination.

“Not everything is Intelligence skullduggery, Ari.”

Matt had read her mind. She turned and froze, suddenly facing Dr. Istaga. He smiled warmly and looked the part of an unassuming, middle-aged academician, but
this was Andre
. She was sure.

“Matt? How ’bout I get back to you?” She tried to smile as she cut the call.

“No need to stop on my account, Major. Just ensuring you’re safe. Heard about your brush with danger.” Istaga spoke in his usual snippets.

“Yes, word gets around fast with the Feed correspondents here. Thank you, Doctor, for your regards.”

“Terrible turn of events, this. Poor Tahir.” With his thinning hair and stricken expression, Istaga wasn’t a likely candidate for the war’s biggest Terran super-spy.

“Didn’t you visit him this morning? I heard you were going to be his defense counsel,” she said, watching his face carefully.
Yes,
poor
Tahir, dead only hours after you arrive
.

“The fellow fired me immediately.” Istaga grimaced, his tone turning aggrieved. “Restricting visitors was for his own good. You understand, Major.”

“If there’s no one to defend, what will you be doing next?” She hoped he’d be going back into Terran territory.

“I’m off to Beta Priamos Station. Offer my services to State Prince Parmet. Need to be useful, you know.” His vague tone and demeanor sharpened as he drew himself up and made two quick bows. “Captain. Lieutenant.”

Glancing to each side, she saw she was flanked by Floros and Oleander. Their three uniforms made an unrelenting wall of black.

“A triumvirate of Directorate brawn, brains, and beauty.” Istaga’s smile weakened as he watched their responding frowns. “Ah. I mean
each
of you has those qualities. Not to insinuate . . .” He nodded toward Floros, the bulkiest of their trio, and then lapsed into silence.

“Good day, Doctor,” Ariane said.

After the red-faced Istaga pulled back into the crowd, she exchanged a smile with Oleander, who started laughing. Ariane’s chuckle stopped when she turned to see Floros still frowning, her eyebrows meeting straight across her face and dividing it into perfect squares.

“That’s your candidate for
Andre
, Major?” Captain Floros asked. “Looks like your normal bumbling professor to me.”

“It’s an act. Besides, Andre could be close to retiring by now. And no—” she stopped Floros’s response. “I don’t have any proof. Just a gut feeling.”

“Some guts are more intuitive than others, to be sure.” Floros stolidly tried to cover her doubt.

Suddenly, Ariane got a call from Sublieutenant Matthaios. “Colonel Edones wants you on the
Bright Crescent
immediately, ma’am, for a classified session with the senator.”

As she acknowledged the call, she saw the dark horns of Warrior Commander over the heads of the crowd. Those in the Minoan’s way were desperate to move, but people could only squeeze about and frantically exchange places. The corridors were still packed.

“Here comes my escort,” she said with resignation. “Just in time for a meeting with the senator.”

Oleander and Floros gave her sympathetic glances as she left, probably due more to her shadow than to the unpleasant meeting ahead.

 

Intelligence skullduggery
, Matt called it, whenever the Directorate of Intelligence became involved. Ariane used to call the Directorate’s stratagems
games
. For the first time, last year, these games affected innocents: Nestor was murdered and Matt was put in danger, all because of her mission. To be fair, neither she nor the Directorate bore
direct
blame for Nestor’s murder, but her stomach tightened every time Matt railed against the Directorate, wondering if he was transferring his anger at her to a safer, less personal target.

She wondered if she could ever make amends to Matt for Nestor.
Making amends
, however, became a fathomless task. What about the wartime comrades, murdered by her crewmate Cipher? Were they on her account also, because she didn’t discover Cipher’s deranged plan for retribution until it was too late? What about those victims she couldn’t save from Abram, such as Colonel Dokos? And their numbers were dwarfed by the casualties at Ura- Guinn, the deaths that couldn’t be counted for years, yet had happened so long ago. The ghosts in the back of her mind began to shriek that she could never,
never
make reparations; she’d always fail and fall short.

Gritting her teeth, she concentrated on the sound of her footsteps on the deck, or the faces of oncoming passersby as they quickly moved to the other side of the corridor. She glanced back over her shoulder. Warrior Commander still followed her. She turned off the ring corridor into the
Bright Crescent
’s slip.

“ID, please,” said the dockside guard, in full armor with exoskeleton.

She produced her identification and added her thumbprint for verification.

“You’re expected in the Mission Stateroom, Major.” His eyes flickered over toward Warrior Commander, who stood against the station-side wall of the docking area.

“Warrior Commander won’t be boarding,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.” The guard’s tone meant,
that goes without saying, ma’am
.

She noted his insignia: He was shipboard AFCAW security force, or SF, rather than a shock commando, an informal name for those assigned to the Special Operations, Infiltration, and Aggressor Units. The
Bright Crescent
had arrived in G-145 with a platoon of shock commandos, but the Status of Forces agreement with Pilgrimage HQ didn’t allow them to billet on the
Pilgrimage III
. To ease the crowded conditions on the
Bright Crescent
and keep the platoon within G-145, Colonel Edones had shipped them to Beta Priamos along with the three companies of Terran special forces rangers from the TLS
Percival
.

She suppressed a smile as she walked up the ramp to the AFCAW cruiser. Terran SP Parmet was probably sitting on a powder keg, with Beta Priamos holding aggressors from both the Consortium and the League. She didn’t feel sorry for him.

The tight corridors of the
Bright Crescent
were familiar by now, even though Colonel Edones had been mission commander for less than a year. Outside the Mission Stateroom, she found Sublieutenant Matthaios and the senator’s great-nephew, Myron, sitting on jump seats. Myron watched her approach with a strange sulking curiosity, but pressed his lips together and didn’t answer her greeting. Matthaios looked bored and miserable.

“Go ahead, Major. It’s a private meeting between you, the colonel, and the senator.” Matthaios confirmed her worst fears.

She gave him a nod and took a deep breath before entering.

“Major Kedros, reporting as ordered, sir.” Her salute was sharp and precise. She figured this was the time for formality, as she glanced sideways at the watchful bulk of the senator.

“Have a seat, Major.” After returning her salute, Edones pressed his thumb to his desktop. “Secure Session in Progress” traveled about the bulkheads and settled to flash above the doorframe.

She sat in an expensive seat that adjusted itself to her height, weight, and shape. Her senses ramped up with her tension, as if she sat on the treacherous edge of a pit of vipers. Owen Edones was hard to read, but she generally knew what drove him. She believed that, at his core, Edones was a soldier and fiercely loyal to the Consortium. Senator Stephanos, however, had ten times the political savvy of Edones, without the constraints of duty or discipline. Whether his word could always be trusted was under debate by net-think and a matter for history to decide.

“
Pilgrimage
security has finally admitted they’re overwhelmed. They’ve asked us for support,” Edones said. “Not only that—with the murder of a high profile witness plus the attempted assassination of a Minoan warrior, the Pilgrimage crew is so spooked they want to relocate Abram’s children to Beta Priamos for protection.”

“They think this is about the trial?”

“It’d be best if they thought that, and leave worrying about TEBI to us.” The senator’s deep voice didn’t resonate the way it usually did, perhaps because of the close quarters.

The war with the League has ended, yet we’re still caught up in intelligence and counterintelligence maneuvers
. The thought depressed her. “What about Istaga?” she asked.

“The Colonel told me of your theory, Major. Have you any proof?”

Before she could answer the senator, Edones shook his head. “Even if he’s Andre, there’s no motive for an Intelligence hit.”

“Perhaps the Terrans don’t want their security gaffes exposed. And if this is about getting rid of Terran witnesses, State Prince Parmet ends up high on the target list.” She blinked to clear the mental image of Istaga saying,
I’ll visit Beta Priamos—offer my services to State Prince Parmet
. She told them about her conversation with Istaga.

“I suppose we can’t ignore the possibility.” Senator Stephanos’s voice rumbled. He propped his chin on his clasped hands and his elbows on the arms of his chair. He looked bored, almost asleep, except his eyes were alert and sharply focused on her.

“I don’t figure Andre for the attempt on me and Joyce,” she said. “There’s a distinct difference between a crude planted grenade and Tahir’s murder, which has sophistication, flair, and intentional drama.”

“
Intentional
drama?” Edones frowned.

“It’s a classic locked-room murder, which mocks us with its audacity and dares us to think ‘out of the box,’ if you’ll excuse the pun.” She smiled wryly. “I’m guessing Tahir was killed by a two- or three-part poison, with chemical timers. It’ll take forensic experts, money, and time to nail it down.”

“You’re not a trained profiler.” Edones sounded skeptical.

“Unfortunately, we won’t find an experienced profiler inside this Gaia- forsaken solar system,” Stephanos said.

“Go on, Major.”

“The other crime sends a different message. The device planted under Joyce’s bed sure looked like a Terran covert antipersonnel grenade, specifically an APG-thirty-thirty-four.” She paused and cleared her throat. The colonel and the senator remained silent. “So we might have two different perpetrators. One uses cutting-edge poisons and daringly makes the murder a public circus. The other is old-school, using outdated grenades that were standard TEBI issue during the war, who gets more physical, even—”

“
Personal
.” The senator’s eyes glinted under his bushy salt-and-pepper eyebrows. “You’re saying this shouts TEBI and I agree. Is this about the war?
Ura-Guinn?
”

“We don’t know enough to make that connection, sir.” Already prepared, she didn’t flinch when he mentioned Ura-Guinn. “But I’m worried about someone trying to sabotage Pax Minoica. Is our peace strong enough to stand a pissing contest between TEBI and the Directorate?”

“TEBI involvement is still supposition,” Edones said. “Nobody’s throwing around accusations, or urine, yet.”

The senator ignored Edones’s cool, dry delivery. “You handily deflected the conversation away from yourself, Major. Or the possibility that you’re the target.”

“And Sergeant Joyce?”

“Collateral damage, maybe.” Stephanos shrugged. “But let’s get back to you, Major. More specific, your shadow. Why are the Minoans following you?”

“I don’t know.” She shifted uncomfortably and belatedly added, “Sir.”

“Is it possible they knew there’d be an attack on your life?” Stephanos squinted, as if in deep thought. “But why protect
you
, and not Dr. Rouxe?”

“I asked Warrior Commander why I was being followed. Rather pointedly. They never indicated they were protecting me. All I provoked was a vague insinuation the Minoans are performing triage, just like the rest of us.” She didn’t add any more, remembering her drunken belligerence.

“Maybe they’re protecting a Minoan
asset
,” Stephanos said, pressing his implant and pointing for display. “Myron—who inherited my sister’s nose for money, if nothing else—found this contract being negotiated between Aether Exploration and Hellas Nautikos, which is purely a Minoan front.”

She looked at the fragments of contract displayed on the wall. Only the public parts were available to Myron, and by the timestamps, the SEEECB had only just approved it. Bewildered, she glanced at Edones, who appeared to be scanning the information for the first time.