Search & Recovery: A Retrieval Artist Universe Novel (26 page)

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Authors: Kristine Kathryn Rusch

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She had stocked up on coffee: It was going to be a long night.

Jhena, please. Please
.

She paused the holographic lists. The same name was highlighted on each. Behind the floating list, she could see the bare wall, the one she’d been told not to decorate since she wouldn’t be here long.

Not long had gone from three weeks to six weeks to six months, and now, nearly a year. Somehow PierLuigi Frémont had managed to hire lawyers who actually argued his case, claiming at first the Earth Alliance had no jurisdiction over events in Abbondiado, and then when his lawyers had lost that, that what happened in Abbondiado had been an internal coup, not a crime against humanity.

The Criminal Court had already tossed out one of the genocide charges, saying that crimes committed on the Frontier did not belong in Earth Alliance Courts. Someone, her boss had said, was afraid of taking this case all the way to the Multicultural Tribunals, and losing.

Jhena
….

She finally recognized the voice, and more importantly, she recognized the link. It was her private link, the one she’d only given to friends, and the message was encoded, which was why it seemed faint.

She cursed, and put a hand to her ear, even though she didn’t need to, even though she usually made fun of people who did the very same thing.

Didier?
She sent back. She knew she sounded timid, but she wasn’t sure it was him. Didier Conte was the only person in the entire prison complex who could contact her on her friends link.

Yeah. Please. I need you right now. Bring evidence bags.

Evidence bags? She didn’t have access to evidence bags. And then she realized that she did. Extras were stored in the closet just outside her stupid little office, along with a whole bunch of other supplies that this part of the prison needed.

Why?
she sent back.

Hurry
. And then he signed off.

She stared at the highlighted name, the letters blurring, the image of the person the name belonged to not really registering. Why would Didier need her? Why not call another guard? And why had he signed off so fast?

This was where she usually failed the friendship test. She didn’t care what other people needed, especially if they bothered her in the middle of something.

But the something she was in the middle of was extremely tedious, and if Didier’s locator was right, he was deep inside the prison, where she only got to go if a supervisor was nearby.

The prison wasn’t the most dangerous one Jhena had worked at in her short twenty-one years. That would be a super max on the edge of the Earth Alliance, run by humans but housing all different kinds of aliens who’d broken human laws in various outposts along the way.

She not only couldn’t go into certain parts of that prison because she would be fired; she couldn’t go because she would die without the proper gear. Not everything was set up on Earth Standard. The Peyti section alone had more toxins in the atmosphere than she had seen since her childhood, when her parents were working for Ultre Corporation.

Her brain skittered away from that memory.

She stood. This was probably her only chance to see PierLuigi Frémont without dozens of guards accompanying him. Didier said that Frémont was charismatic and that made him dangerous, not that it really mattered, since it didn’t matter how much the man charmed Jhena. She had no codes, no passkeys, and no DNA recognition that would allow her to open the doors to his cell.

She was quite aware of her place as a lower-level employee of the prison system, one who could be replaced with yet another machine, but wasn’t partly because the law protected certain human jobs against automation, and partly because of the belief that humans could do some work better than machines.

She was grateful for the law, even though she found the belief behind it stupid. But, then, she found a lot of beliefs stupid. She’d learned to be circumspect about it, learned to use those beliefs to her benefit, like now. Even though she hated the tedium, she was getting a hell of a good paycheck, and this job was a stepping stone to better jobs elsewhere in the Earth Alliance System.

All because of a stupid belief.

She grinned, stood, and smoothed her skirt. She wasn’t really dressed to go in the prisoner wing. She usually wore pants for that, and a loose-fitting shirt. Because she hadn’t wanted to come to work tonight, she had made it a game, deciding to look good for once, even though no one was going to see her.

Now, it seemed, someone was. A mass murderer, by all accounts. A fascinating man. Someone famous.

She left the office, pulling the door closed behind her, and then grabbed a box of evidence bags out of the closet across the hall.

She didn’t want Didier to chastise her for not bringing enough bags, so she brought too many.

She tucked the box under her arm, and headed into the high security area. She thought for a brief moment about the cameras that were everywhere, but she didn’t know how to shut them off.

If she got in trouble, she would blame Didier, say that he had asked for her help, and she didn’t know she wasn’t supposed to give it.

But no one around here looked at the camera footage unless there was a problem.

And she hoped that despite his tone, Didier hadn’t caused a problem. She hoped he just needed a little bit of help with something.

She hoped she wouldn’t pay for this forever.

The thrilling adventure continues with the fifth book in the Anniversary Day Saga,
The Peyti Crisis,
available now from your favorite bookseller.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

USA Today
bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. Under that name, she publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo,
Le Prix Imaginales
, the
Asimov’s
Readers Choice award, and the
Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
Readers Choice Award.

Publications from
The Chicago Tribune
to
Booklist
have included her Kris Nelscott mystery novels in their top-ten-best mystery novels of the year. The Nelscott books have received nominations for almost every award in the mystery field, including the best novel Edgar Award, and the Shamus Award.

She writes goofy romance novels as award-winner Kristine Grayson, romantic suspense as Kristine Dexter, and futuristic sf as Kris DeLake.

She also edits. Beginning with work at the innovative publishing company, Pulphouse, followed by her award-winning tenure at
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
, she took fifteen years off before returning to editing with the original anthology series
Fiction River,
published by WMG Publishing. She acts as series editor with her husband, writer Dean Wesley Smith, and edits at least two anthologies in the series per year on her own.

To keep up with everything she does, go to kriswrites.com. To track her many pen names and series, see their individual websites (krisnelscott.com, kristinegrayson.com, krisdelake.com, retrievalartist.com, divingintothewreck.com). She lives and occasionally sleeps in Oregon.

Look for These Other Titles from Kristine Kathryn Rusch

THE RETRIEVAL ARTIST SERIES:

The Disappeared

Extremes

Consequences

Buried Deep

Paloma

Recovery Man

The Recovery Man’s Bargain
(A Short Novel)

Duplicate Effort

The Possession of Paavo Deshin
(A Short Novel)

The Anniversary Day Saga: