Spark and Tether, page 9
It will not help, Lumen said. Do not try.
Sacheri stopped. What do you know?
Sabotage. Infiltration. We have seen it before.
All at once, Sacheri’s senses were ice trickling through his veins. This had to be what had been driving Adda: someone, somewhere, had targeted fai in the pre-citizenship days, and Lumen at least believed some other entity, now, was trying to find them, and not with the fai’s best interests in mind—damaged fai were susceptible to corruption and exploitation. Wars had been fought over it, in the centuries between leaving the Terran system and finding the gates connecting the Outer Ring. The records that survived from that time were horrific; the most well-known histories were those of the fai who had named themselves “friendly ai” to distinguish themselves from their ai predecessors who had sought to dominate the stars. The earliest fai had been ai-made, not human, and later deactivated right beside their ai brethren.
He shuddered.
You understand, Lumen said. We will repair, if we can, but we must be vigilant and not risk ourselves.
No wonder there were investigations. COR spent a lot of resources dispelling rumors of such conspiracies. Hadn’t they all been taught there was no basis to them? That fai—like synchronists—were now solidly immune to such infections?
He wanted Jin beside him, to think it through.
Who is doing this? he asked.
That’s the question, Lumen answered. Do you need processing time?
Sacheri laughed despite the horror rolling in his gut. I suspect I will need quite a bit. But not now. How can I assist you in the repair?
Be conscious and cautious, Lumen answered.
Sacheri was much more tentative as he explored the third copy Lumen had provided him, but it was to no avail: he could not make any sense of it. He continued to turn it around in his ‘plants, to approach from different pathways, to find some key to its translation and decryption. He did not know how long he had been at it when Adda put a hand on his shoulder.
“Time to come out,” she said. “You’re not going to find it there.”
Sacheri lifted his head and looked into her cool gray eyes. All of her wryness was gone, leaving bare the steely resolve in her expression.
“Sacheri,” she said, giving him a small shake.
“I’m here,” he answered. “Tell me what else you know.” How unnerving, to have to worry on every run that a fai or a synchronist could pick up a piece of sabotage and kill you all on the way home.
“Later,” she said. “Your time is up and Umair will come for us both if I don’t pull you.”
“Lumen—”
“Disentangled and taking a rest,” Adda assured him. “Not his first time.”
Sacheri rubbed a hand over his eyes. Jin. He needed to talk this through with Jin, except—how?
“This is the fourth we’ve found,” she said.
“How many—” he swallowed, realizing he probably didn’t want the answer to the question, but he was bound to ask it. “How many have been revived?”
“None, yet,” she said. “There’s some hope for this one, maybe. We don’t usually find anything left of the core.”
He hung his head.
“Get some rest,” she told him, and gave his shoulder a pat as he moved past her.
Sacheri and Adda reviewed the reports they’d prepped with Lumen for COR. Sacheri had debated with himself what he would do if the official documentation held omissions or falsehoods, but the turmoil was for naught; Adda had included everything.
“They’ll strip it before it gets to archives,” she said. “Lumen keeps a copy.”
“Lumen wasn’t on my first run with you,” Sacheri said.
“No. I keep records when Lumen is unavailable.”
She had enhanced standard implants, then, just as he had guessed. “Who strips it?”
“Not my department.”
Sacheri looked at her.
Adda’s laugh was dark and wry. “I look for the missing and forgotten. I will bring them repair, or peace, or restitution, where I can. Records and archives are not my concern.”
He had not decided how much to tell Jin, yet, but he thought he would not share that part. “But how—what then?”
“What then? Do I think there should be some consequence? Justice? I do. But I am not likely to see any opportunity to deliver it.”
“What if you had that opportunity?”
“I would take it.” Her gaze was steady, certain.
Sacheri nodded.
“You were right to doubt me,” she said, her voice even. “I ran you down on purpose. I had to be sure that you would be able to endure the retrieval and restoration cycles. You wouldn’t have been the first synchronist to burn out.”
He noted that, intending to investigate more later. “Thank you for telling me.”
Jin had been right, but while it had been intentional, it was not nefarious. Sacheri was relieved. “How do you find them?”
There were unknown numbers of dead worlds—in the days before the Storms, before COR, over centuries of humans reaching out through the stars, when terraforming attempts were as common as breathing. Most had been abandoned and forgotten. Some survived, probably.
“Everything we’ve found so far comes from within a narrow band of time,” Adda said. “I gather lists from the archives and send run requisitions. I take them as they’re approved, in between other jobs so COR doesn’t get too twitchy.”
“Shouldn’t you have more access to resources?”
Adda scoffed and then sighed when she saw his earnestness. “You sure they’d provide resources? Or would they disappear evidence and those of us attached to it? There are fai who believe COR has been doing this to them for as long as COR has existed.”
He wanted to argue that she was paranoid, but the mangled code told him otherwise; there were few reasonable suspects, and he could not eliminate COR from the list. “I understand,” he said. “How did it start?”
“Around the time of the last big gate storms—forty, fifty standard years ago—there were rumors about rogue synchronists and independent fai claiming partially terraformed and abandoned worlds for their own. No one’s ever found any proof of that, because it’s absurd. Fai and synchronists both require too much in the way of community resources to go off and run a world on their own. I was assigned to a team tasked with putting the rumor to rest ten years ago, now. And here I am.”
“You’ve been looking ever since.” That was as long as he’d been out of training; he admired the commitment. He wondered how much of this Jin knew.
“Yes. We get a little closer to an answer, every time,” she said.
Sacheri nodded. Exhaustion was creeping over him as the synplants ruffled and settled; he was going to need to retreat to his bed, and soon.
Adda patted his shoulder, more commiseration than reassurance. “Orinus in the morning. I’ll send word when the next run comes along.”
“Thank you,” he said. “For trusting me.”
She looked mildly surprised. “Synchronists have many useful talents,” she said. “Duplicity is not among them. It makes you easy to trust.”
Sacheri chuckled. “For you,” he said.
Adda’s smile was rueful. “Synchronists and fai make convenient scapegoats, don’t they?”
He mirrored her smile.
“Be well, Sacheri.”
He bowed his head in thanks, and watched her leave, his synplants on alert. He heard no falsehood or ill will, but he was also adrift, as if there was a piece of the conversation he had misunderstood.
He did not see her again before he left the ship, but Lumen pinged as he was leaving, promising to keep him informed and wishing him well.
Be safe, he said to the fai.
Chapter 10
We’re called up, Paradis pinged.
Sacheri sat with the message, letting the notice pass through him. He was sluggish from restoration; the memory of the sabotaged fai hung on his nerves, even after cleansing and repair and rest. He had not been able to see Jin, either; they were on a run on the far side of Orinus somewhere, out of comms range. “I just did a round of evals.”
“Almost half a standard year ago, yes, and you’ve been busy since. This is not even a difficult one,” Paradis said. “Jin’s passed it, yeah? Have you talked about it with them?”
“Ops is different. We haven’t discussed it.” Jin had been second lead on the run where they’d met, though, so they must have passed at some point. He hadn’t told Paradis anything about I&R and Adda and Umair, yet; he wanted the comfort of a fully secure space for the conversation. She was touchy about him being in COR as it was; he wanted to be able to reassure her in person.
“Where do you want to go?”
Standing agreements limited the options to worlds and stations where there were available representatives from both Oversight and COR. Testing didn’t have to be in person, but all participants had to be close enough for synchronous communication, and at that point, in person was just as easy. Sacheri shrugged.
“Danae, Bolis, Orinus?” Paradis asked.
“When’s the next one in the schedule?”
“Macinus.” Paradis peered into the display. “Why the rush? Are you scheduling around Jin?”
Sacheri blushed and hated it. “We’ve been trying to coordinate as much time together as we can,” he admitted.
Paradis leaned back in her chair and folded her hands on her lap. “How long have you known them now?”
“Eight cycles.” he said. A little more than a half year. Even with the difficulty of COR run schedules taking them to the far reaches of the Outer Ring and back, Jin was near enough, or Sacheri’s schedule open enough, to steal a few days on a station here or on-world there. He was running low on transport credits, though, and he’d been taking as many runs as he could to earn more.
Which meant he now had to sit for the qualifying evaluations.
“No downsides yet?” she asked.
He rolled his eyes at her. “They’re rising fast in Ops, and I barely scraped out of the open levels. Pretty sure I have all the downsides.”
“Only because you avoid your qualifiers,” she said. “If you’d show up to an evaluation on schedule, you’d rank higher too.”
Sacheri acknowledged her with a wave. “They have more transport credits, and I have plenty of time between jobs, so it’s not so bad, but–”
“You want more,” she said. “Rocks and stars, Sacheri. Are you in love?”
He stared into the display, thinking both that it should have been obvious to him without her input and also that Jin should hear it before Paradis did. He changed the subject. She let him.
“I need prep time,” he said. “Seeing Jin would be a perk.”
“Sure,” she said. “Sending the schedule now.”
“How long do I have to decide?”
“Cycle’s end,” she said.
That was four or five days—enough time for Jin to answer, assuming they were back in range as scheduled. The wait would be hard on Paradis, though; she liked to plan ahead. “You okay with last minute scheduling on this round?”
“As opposed to any other round? I’ll choose for you if I don’t hear back.”
“Thank you.”
“Prepare, this time.”
Jin wasn’t back in time. Sacheri’s shuttle was descending into the vast expanse of forest canopy that split into the great glass and mossy stone capitol city of Macinus when Jin’s answer finally came.
Hate that I missed this. I’m four gates away and have some time off. Will be there as soon as I can.
Sacheri almost regretted introducing them.
He didn’t know if he should be reassured or jealous that they got along so well. Paradis and Jin grinned wickedly at each other at first sight and spent three days chattering circles around him while he prepared for qualifiers and scans.
Sacheri sat in the far corner of the room, reviewing data with the help of the suite fai, who had developed an immediate adoration for Paradis and was reporting Sacheri’s every prep test error to her in real time.
“You’ve done this,” Paradis said to Jin, gesturing in Sacheri’s direction. She’d changed her hair to teal and cerulean, looped and beaded in an intricate spiral across her crown and along her long, elegant neck to a small knot at her nape. She was always cold after gate travel, and wrapped herself in thick robes and leggings, which she somehow managed to make look sophisticated and not merely comfortable. “How long did you prepare?”
Jin settled into a lounge chair, still dressed in their Ops-standard gray tunic and trousers.
It was hard to focus with the two of them behind him. He said so.
“Screening out noise is literally your job,” Paradis said to him.
“We could go out, if you’re distracted,” Jin said.
Sacheri scowled. They didn’t have to gang up on him. “I don’t think Macinus is ready for the two of you,” he said, but Jin was looking at him with equal parts affection and amusement and it settled his nerves.
“I had back-to-back out-of-comms runs for several cycles before the assessment,” Jin said to Paradis. “I reviewed on my off shifts, when I could.”
“I spent a cycle in prep,” she said, and Sacheri knew without looking that she was eyeing him. He’d been hiding at her lake estate, recovering from a botched relay. He’d been a distraction. She would never have said that, of course, but he knew, and he felt bad. She’d passed brilliantly, of course. Paradis always did. “You prevailed, I assume?”
“I did. Processing took a long time, though. I was waiting when I met him.”
“I’m sure he was exactly the distraction you needed,” Paradis said. Sacheri blushed. He didn’t quite catch Jin’s words, only the quiet, mischievous tone of their response.
“Okay, let’s go for a walk,” he said. “You,” he pointed to Jin, “Not you.” And to Paradis, who pretended to pout. “You have an appointment,” he reminded her. “And I need some air.”
Jin stood. “Dinner?”
“Of course,” she said. “If I am back by then. Don’t get lost, Sacheri.”
He tossed another blanket at her as an answer and made for the door.
“Are you all right?” Jin asked. “The teasing isn’t too much?”
“No, it’s just nerves,” Sacheri said. Jin took his hand and he squeezed it gratefully. “I’m glad the two of you get along. I’ve been trying to figure out how to introduce you.”
The courtyard outside their suite opened onto a pedestrian way, with few wanderers this late in the day; the area was mostly governance offices and foot traffic thinned after the mid-day meal. Sacheri led them away from the buildings shared by COR and Oversight. Like all streets in Macine cities, trees and large flowering shrubs lined the walks, many heavy with fruit, with birds and small primates chattering in the canopy. It reminded Sacheri of Semiz, but many times larger.
“Are you concerned about the assessments?” Jin asked.
“About the evaluation and scans, yes, not about my skills.” They’d had conversations about the ways in which skysiders and synchronists were sometimes held to different standards than others, depending on where and how they were assessed. Sacheri loathed the scans of his synplants; it took days to recover from the chill in his nerves, made all the worse by the knowledge it was pure theater: his integrations made him less susceptible to corruption than any other COR staff, but because some past council had been convinced that synchronists were fragile, the scans had become a routine requirement of COR assessments. And as there were few professional options for synchronists outside COR, there was little Oversight was able to do about it.
“The last run I was on…”
Jin gestured with their free hand toward a food stall in a nearby alley. “That one’s got great Bolisian hand pies,” they said. “Are you hungry?”
“Yes,” Sacheri said, and followed them across the walkway. He wondered what that passing thought had been; it wasn’t like Jin to look hesitant. He listened as they ordered in flawless Bolisian, and then ordered extra to take back to Paradis. The seller thanked them and waved a blessing.
“Bolisian, too?” Sacheri said, as they turned back toward the residences. “That’s… six languages, now?”
Jin chuckled. “You learn a lot of them, growing up on OS.” They unwrapped a pie and took a test bite from one edge. “Ah, I thought this was phytoberry.” They held it out to him. “Sweet plum. Would you like it?”
Sacheri handed them the berry one in his hand. “Thank you for being here.”
“I missed you,” Jin said. “I would have gone anywhere.”
Sacheri put his arm around their waist and pulled them a little nearer.
“I have to ask.”
“I wasn’t avoiding the question,” Jin said, eyes firmly on their hand pie as it threatened to leak all over them and the street. “Just hungry. I remember the run. What happened?”
“We found a damaged fai. Still waiting for analysis. Lumen and I made a good team and Umair sends his regards.” Sacheri glanced at Jin and put enough flirt into his look that they would know his teasing was not jealousy. “You missed an opportunity, there.”
Jin turned the slightest bit pink. “And?” they asked.
“Adda told me you and Umair were I&R,” Sacheri said. “It was a bit of a surprise, though I guess it shouldn’t have been.”
Jin swallowed a bite of pie. Their expression was serious, but not worried. It reassured him. “I couldn’t tell you.”
“So why is now okay?” It hurt to hear it, even though he’d known. Rocks and stars, he hated COR sometimes. Each division with their different rules, half of them in conflict with themselves and the other half in conflict with everyone else.
