Search & Recovery: A Retrieval Artist Universe Novel (15 page)

They’d been sharing a link that horrible day.

Carla had been in the Top of the Dome, a resort built against the dome in Tycho Crater, when the attacks started. Carla contacted Goudkins, asked for her advice on how to deal with the crisis, and had managed to escape the resort and the madman who had taken people hostage.

Then she had gone back in to help with the rescue, to help with the victims. She was leading first responders inside when Goudkins lost contact with her.

Later, Goudkins learned she had lost contact at the exact moment the bomb destroying the resort had gone off.

Still, she hoped—there was that word again,
hope
—that her sister had maybe been lying to her or that she had misunderstood where Carla really had been. Maybe her sister was injured in one of the local hospitals or so busy with reviving her city that she hadn’t had time to get her links repaired, hadn’t had time to contact her sister, figuring Goudkins would understand.

And maybe Goudkins would have if the circumstances were different, if the incident was isolated, or if she had been closer.

Maybe she would have done the same thing in Carla’s place.

She didn’t know.

What she did know was this: her sister and best friend was missing, presumed dead, and she would never forgive herself if she didn’t investigate in person.

That’s what Goudkins was trained in—investigation. And she had investigated a thousand crimes for the Alliance. She had met thousands of victims who wanted to believe the best, even when faced with the worst.

She knew she was behaving just like them, and she knew she couldn’t stop.

As the ship was cleared to land in the Earth Alliance-only terminal of the Port of Armstrong, she took her seat. She started scanning available hotel rooms in Tycho Crater, hoping (again!) she would find something.

So far, she had been shut out. Most of the hotels in Tycho Crater had been near the Top of the Dome resort, and that meant most of them had been destroyed.

She had hoped she would find something, but she was coming up short.

Which meant that she’d have to pull rank again. Not to displace someone from a hotel room, but to get one of the apartments reserved for visiting dignitaries.

She didn’t want to contact Dominic Hanrahan, the mayor of Tycho Crater. He’d been one of the targets of assassination and had somehow survived. He would have his hands full.

Plus, he would assume that she was in Tycho Crater on Earth Alliance business, not personal business.

She wasn’t sure how to walk that fine line between using her credentials to get her way and obligating her employers to something they hadn’t yet agreed to do.

She didn’t look at the other passengers in the waiting area on the ship. She couldn’t quite face them. They’d all spent more time than they’d planned together, in the time they’d been circling the damn Moon. They’d had conversations they would probably regret someday, sharing memories, sharing fears, sharing gossip and news and rumor.

Once this ship secured its berth in the port, they’d all scatter across the Moon and would probably never see each other again.

She knew better than to wish them luck. She would have gotten angry if they had wished her luck.

So she gripped the arm rests, leaned her head back, and prayed she’d see her sister again.

SEVENTEEN

HUỲNH TOOK OFF the stupid environmental suit and used some extra nanocleaners to scrub her face. She wished she had the ability to clean the insides of her mouth and nose. She felt contaminated by the suit, or maybe by the encounter with Xyven.

The restroom near the environmental suits was cold, but then her body temperature always felt a bit off when she removed an environmental suit. It was as if her body’s regulatory system took a vacation every time she put a suit on, letting the suit regulate the comfort level rather than her body communicating what kind of comfort it needed.

She looked in the bank of mirrors that covered the only unblocked wall. If she wanted to wash her hands or splash water on her face, she had to wave her hand over a little sign in the middle of the mirror that said
Sink
in whatever language the user needed.

She needed a sink. Her hair—so nicely coiffed and purple-tinged when she left her apartment—did look like someone had spilled dye all over it and then frizzed each strand.

She waved over the sign, then with a wave of her hand over the faucet, she turned on the hot water. It smelled faintly of roses, which irritated her. That would probably clash with her perfume. So she had two choices: she could comb her hair and hope for the best; or she could use water to tame her hair.

She opted for a third choice. Comb first, water second. It kinda worked. Her face was still flushed, and her purple fingernails had turned darker than she remembered. Or maybe she had picked the wrong color after all.

She adjusted her earrings and her dress. She still looked like she had just gotten out of bed after a night of hard drinking.

She sorta felt that way too.

Damn Xyven. His lack of vision would cost him one day.

The problem was that she might not be around to revel in it.

She ran a hand over her unruly hair one last time, then commanded the sink to retract. She slung the environmental suit over her arm and let herself out of the bathroom.

“Hey, Ava!”

She started at the voice, and turned slightly. Lawrence Ostaka stood near the door. He looked even more rumpled than usual, his shirt bagging around the fat he wore around his waist like a belt.

She let out a private sigh as she put on her professional I’m-in-charge face. “Lawrence,” she said. “You need to call me Ms. Huỳnh now, remember?”

“Sorry,” he said, but she knew he didn’t mean it.

She had been promoted over him two years ago, and he always treated her like she was still the new hire. She was, compared to him. He had at least ten years more on the job than she did, but he had stalled due to his poor people skills.

He was a fantastic investigator, though, with a closure rate that rivaled Xyven’s. Having Ostaka on her team kept her closures high. She valued that.

She also sent him on a lot of jobs, ostensibly because of those high closure rates, but also because he unnerved her.

Sometimes she wondered if he was stalking her or if he just wanted her to feel uncomfortable and complain about him. She thought it might be the latter, which was why she didn’t report him. She didn’t want to get into a he-said she-said situation with Lawrence Ostaka. She had a hunch his meticulous investigation skills would carry over into any conflict he had with another employee—particularly a superior—and quite frankly, she hadn’t cared enough about him to meticulously record every single thing he had done to irritate her.

“Xyven didn’t want to do a joint investigation, huh?” Ostaka said.

She started and for a moment, wondered how Ostaka had known that. Then she smiled herself. She could be so clueless sometimes. Duh. Of course, he had known that she wanted a joint investigation. Why else would she come to this part of the base?

“What brings you here, Lawrence?” she asked, taking advantage of the fact that she didn’t have to use his last name.

She knew she was being a bit passive-aggressive. Her behavior was less about Ostaka than it was about Xyven, and she knew that too. She didn’t care at the moment.

“Honestly,” he said in a tone that put her on guard. People who said
honestly
like that often meant just the opposite, “I was here to volunteer for whatever assignment you were going for.”

She frowned at him. “You followed me?”

“Yeah,” he said.

She was surprised he had admitted it so easily, and was about to say so, but he hadn’t finished.

“I was coming to your office to see if you had something new for me. I’ve been back on the base for nearly a month. Usually you send me somewhere new before now.”

This time, she let her surprise show. He was right: she usually did try to reassign him quickly because she found him so very annoying.

She had gotten sidetracked with the entire Moon investigation thing.

She pushed past him just a little so that she could hang up the suit. As she did so, she made sure she placed it on the extra cleaning rack. She had hit the suit’s automatic cleaning cycle, but she hated leaving any DNA behind, so she always set the suits she wore on the automated cleaning rack.

“And,” he added when she still hadn’t spoken, “I’ve never done a Joint Unit investigation. I’d love to see how some of the other investigators work.”

“I wish I could help you there,” she said. “Xyven and I don’t have a joint investigation going.”

“Then why were you visiting him?”

She turned.

“Lawrence, you want to rethink that question?”

His face fell just a bit. She didn’t like it when he did the “I’m so innocent” thing. It never worked. He didn’t have the ability or the personality to pull it off.

“I’m just—is there something you can assign me to? Because this Moon bombing thing has me antsy. I’d love to go to the Moon to investigate.”

“Wouldn’t we all?” she asked. “I’ll see what’s up next on the rotation, and let you know, all right?”

“You’re not tasked with running that investigation?” he asked in such a way that let her know he already knew she was in charge of that investigation.

“Excuse me,” she said, and pushed past him. Then she headed down the corridor at her normal clip.

She turned up her hearing enhancement, listening for his footsteps in case he was following her. As far as she could tell without looking, he wasn’t.

She knew she shouldn’t be so annoyed by him, but she was.

And because she was, she wasn’t going to assign him to the Moon. She would set up her own teams
without Lawrence Ostaka.

She had an investigation in Valhalla Dome that needed a second eye. She’d send him there. He’d close that case faster than the original investigator.

She probably wasn’t making the most professional decisions regarding Ostaka, but she didn’t care.

He’d annoyed her one too many times, and she didn’t need the distraction right now.

She checked her links as she walked, trying to see just how fast she could get him off this base.

Because the sooner he was gone, the better she would feel.

EIGHTEEN

DABIR KASPIAN WOULDN’T let her work right away. Berhane understood, really she did, but she felt an underlying frustration. She
wanted
to work. She
needed
to work.

He wanted her to change her mind.

He didn’t say that in so many words—or maybe he did. After scanning the forms she had filled out, he had said,
You won’t be assigned field work until you’ve finished training, and training won’t start for two more days. If things change in those few days, please feel free to let us know.

She had almost told him in no uncertain terms that of course she would return, and no, she wouldn’t change her mind, but something stopped her. Maybe it was the realization that his words were less about her than they were about the experiences he’d had with Armstrong S&R. Or maybe she finally understood this was about not pissing off a donor, and dealing with volunteers.

She had smiled at him, asked him what time he needed her, and then thanked him. She didn’t ask him for the shorter way out of the warehouse.

She wanted to see all those supplies again, to know exactly where her donations were going.

The red lines of the map had reappeared in front of her eyes. She could tell immediately that the track back was shorter. Kaspian had updated her exit routes without her even asking.

She blinked the new route away and asked her system to let her retrace her steps.

The lines vanished, then reappeared, adding a good ten minutes onto her walk.

She added more, threading her way through the pallets of material. She was nearly to the door when she heard someone curse.

She started. “Sorry?” she said, then wondered if she should even have spoken up. Maybe she shouldn’t have brought attention to herself.

A man peered around a pallet covered with dried food packages. He held a small, ancient scanner in his right hand. His straight black hair flopped over his forehead.

She had seen him before; she knew she had. It took her a moment to place him.

The port. Fiona’s father. What was his name? Donal. Donal Ó Brádaigh, he had said, with just a bit of a lilt in his voice.

“Mr. Ó Brádaigh?” Berhane asked.

He stepped into the small aisle between pallets. The effect was startling. The narrowness of the aisle made his shoulders seem broader than she remembered, but the height of the pallets made him seem short. She had remembered him being taller than she was.

“Ms. Magalhães?” he said. “What are you doing here?”

“I could ask the same of you.” She walked toward him, even though she probably should have been leaving.

He was taller, just like she remembered.

“I’m just finishing up,” he said.

“You work here?” she asked.

He wasn’t wearing any kind of identifying clothing. What he was wearing had some black stains along the ankles and thighs, and some heavy wear on the knees. He also wore work boots that looked like they were older than he was.

“Volunteer,” he said. “When I can.”

“When your wife can watch your daughter,” Berhane said, understanding in her voice.

His cheeks turned a dusty shade of red. “No,” he said. “I’m afraid my wife is gone.”

Gone. Berhane didn’t know what that meant exactly, but he said the word with such sadness she wasn’t sure she should ask.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“No need to be sorry. It’s been four years.” Even though something in his voice made it sound like yesterday.

Berhane frowned just a little. Wasn’t little Fiona about four? But Berhane had been nosy enough.

“I didn’t mean to bother you,” she said. “I was just on my way out.”