Exodus, page 86
They found a whole web of data cables running along sculpted conduits within the livestone attaching embedded sensors in the ceilings of all the rooms to a rack of recording hardware in a room behind the office. The system was completely disconnected from the Santa Rosa network, preventing any kind of remote access. There were several small crates of storage modules, but they weren’t in any kind of order, or even labeled. Terence slotted them all into a player for his CI to review. None of them dated back more than a few years. They found a smaller batch in the manager’s desk that were all high-profile public figures captured either in high-resolution flagrante or sniffed out of their brains.
The first floor was the main club, which was split into several areas: the VIP booths, the dance floor, the restaurant, more (larger) private party rooms, a couple of small lounges with a stage, three separate bars, and restrooms. Again, everything was covered by the secret sensors and carefully recorded.
The first and second basement levels were more interesting. As well as five gambling dens, this was where Stanvar8 kept its arsenal and supplies of sniff behind false walls of wine racks. Those were definitely not under surveillance. Terence was disturbed to find a number of Remnant Era items. “Well, we knew they had good contacts with the Traveler Dynasties,” Jimena said. “This just confirms it.”
“Yeah, but we can’t see who brought in what,” Terence replied. “No sensors down here.”
“I can sample DNA traces left on the weapons,” she said. “See what matches in the civic database.”
“Do that. But just what’s on the Remnant stuff.”
“Are you thinking that’s what this Dagon person was involved in?” Vanilda asked.
“I don’t know,” Terence told her. “But even if he was, Santa Rosa has no DNA on file for him. But it wouldn’t hurt to know who brought Remnant items down the tower. There might be a trail we can work.”
“After forty years?”
He shrugged. The painstaking search was becoming dispiriting, and every day they spent in the Dark Paradise was another day Aljan flew farther away. It wouldn’t be long before the Jalgori-Tobus chartered a starship, and Gate of Heaven time dilation kicked in. Then it would be decades as well as distance that tore him away from his son. Some deep part of his brain told him he’d already said goodbye.
After three weeks, they finally started on the lowest basement level. As Jimena said, livestone slowly and surely absorbed spilled blood, leaving the floor and walls clean, but there was a disturbing amount staining the surface of furniture and storage bins. The little sensor units performed their slow, thorough crawl along the floor, and finally they got their first break.
“The floor in this room has a regrowth area,” the CI informed Terence.
They were in a big room that didn’t have much in it: some old stage equipment and obsolete drink projectors from the bars, advertising brands that had stopped being made long ago, as well as ancient furniture. The lighting was dim, and the air dry.
Terence stared down at the livestone floor. “Is that usual?”
“No,” the CI replied. “Something must have caused a break in the livestone, which subsequentially regrew.”
“Show me.”
His retina membrane displayed the floor as a simple translucent blue rectangle, woven with a standard web of nutrient capillaries. There was a narrow oval patch on one side, a couple of meters long, shaded green, where the boundary was marked by sharp zigzags in the capillaries. He stood over it, looking down. To his eyes, the livestone floor was a single featureless surface.
“So something broke the floor open, then resealed it?” Jimena said.
“Yeah,” Terence agreed cautiously.
“You’d need a uranic to sculpt the livestone back into place, wouldn’t you?”
“Presumably, but there are enough architect sculptors in the city. Not all of them work for the council development board. I bet there’s a dozen in those recordings we found upstairs.”
“So what’s underneath the patch?” Vanilda asked.
Terence and Jimena exchanged an awkward glance.
“Judging from the size,” Jimena said grimly, “I’d say probably a body.”
“Oh.”
“This is wrong,” Terence said uneasily. “Stanvar8 wouldn’t leave evidence of killings, not here of all places.”
“You want to know who it is, don’t you?” Jimena said.
“I want to eliminate them from the inquiry.”
“Inquiry? You can take the policeman out of the service, but…”
“If it’s not a body buried under here, then I really want to know what is,” he said defensively.
“Okay, well, it won’t be the first time I’ve cut through a livestone floor, but we’re going to need some heavy-duty andys for it.”
Terence sighed, knowing what their reaction would be. But then, the whole universe had changed the moment Makaio-Faraji had been assassinated. “No, we don’t.” He took the membrane glove off his right hand and looked around the room. Thanks to the Makaio-Spirit’s instinct, Terence could see there was a contact bulb on the wall: a small blister that only curved a few millimeters higher than the rest of the wall’s flat surface. He activated the induction enhancement web, and slender lines of bioluminescent violet started to shine across his skin, radiating out from a central point in the middle of his palm and disappearing up inside his sleeve.
“Dad?” Vanilda murmured uncertainly.
“It’s okay,” he said. “This is just some Celestial bioware. It allows me to use their connection bulbs.”
“Just Celestial bioware?”
“It’s really not a big deal.”
“It’s a huge fucking deal. Are you—we—uranic?”
“No. The web is usually used to enhance a Celestial’s induction ability. They need it for…certain procedures.” He shivered as if struck by a gust of icy air. “This one I’m using was modified to interface with human nerves and give me a very ordinary ability. Lidon biotechnicians produce something similar. They’re not as good, obviously.”
Jimena hadn’t stopped staring at the glowing lines. “Who modified it for humans?”
“Uh, the archon’s CI. It’s a basic template.”
“All right, then when? How long have you had this?”
“After the assassination.”
“And when were you going to tell me?”
“I, er, hadn’t really thought about that.”
“Is this what gave you those psycho nightmares?”
“No!”
“What nightmares?” Vanilda asked urgently.
“I don’t have nightmares anymore. That was just shock from the assassination.”
“Asteria’s arse! Wait, dad…what are you going to use it for?”
He gave her a sly grin. “Stand back from the regrowth area,” he told them and put his hand over the wall’s contact bulb. His perception extended into the livestone, or maybe he became aware of its nature; he wasn’t sure. The sensation was just weird, like some kind of emptiness, yet tangible, and somehow eternal. He sent an impulse into the basement room’s floor, requiring it to change, to move in a way that was never intended. It didn’t resist, but for something without a mind it came close to a feeling akin to resentment at the unnatural contortion demanded of it.
The floor produced a loud cracking sound. Vanilda let out a startled yelp and scurried back even closer to the wall. Now a slim fissure was opening above the oval area. The floor on both sides buckled slightly, rising, and the fissure kept getting wider. A whole filigree of splits multiplied their way out from the widening gap. Surface fragments splintered upward as the floor continued to distort.
For a moment Terence visualized some giant Awakened mole tunneling its way up from deep under the city.
“I can see it,” Jimena said. “That’s definitely a body.”
There was only so much a neural command could make the livestone do, so the three of them had to get down on their knees and dig chunks of broken livestone out with their hands.
The body was male, although “body” was an exaggeration, Terence thought. It had been reduced to little more than a skeleton wrapped in scraps of gray, desiccated clothing.
“How long has it been here for?” Vanilda asked.
“Hard to say,” Jimena told her. “The livestone will have distorted the decay rate.”
“Roughly, mum.”
“Several decades. I can get a better estimate when I run diagnostics on samples.”
“Cause of death?” Terence asked.
She shot him an exasperated look. “Just give me a minute, you two. I haven’t done this for a while.”
Terence waited patiently while she used a needle probe to take samples of the corpse’s tissue and hair and bone. She transferred them to the genetic sequencer and left it running, while she crouched down for a longer examination.
“He was stabbed,” she said after a minute. “It was a very clean strike; goes through the cloth and rib cage. Whoever killed him knew to go for the heart, and very precisely, too. One puncture; I’m guessing some kind of power blade by the way it’s severed the rib.”
The genetic sequencer let out a soft ping. Terence told his CI to run the DNA sequence through the civic records for a match, then bent down to study the puncture wound. Sure enough, now that he’d been told what to look for, there was a narrow slice in the creases of the corpse’s shriveled leather jacket.
“I have found a match,” the CI announced.
Terence became very still as he studied the results playing across his retina membrane. “That’s impossible,” he grunted in shock.
“What’s wrong?” Vanilda asked.
“It’s Gyvoy Enfoe.”
“From the Enfoe Traveler Dynasty?”
“Yes.”
“Why is that impossible?”
“Because he left Gondiar thirty years ago on the Diligent.”
All three of them gathered round the corpse.
“No, he didn’t,” Jimena said ruefully.
“Then who the hell is on the Diligent?”
Chapter Thirty-One
“Oh, man, that is so terrible,” Gyvoy said. “I’m really sorry for your loss, Finn. The marchioness was kind of eternal, you know; she held Santa Rosa together. Everyone knew she’d always be there for us.”
Finn barely heard the words. The grief was overwhelming. He was sitting on the couch in the owner’s quarters with Otylia next to him. Her presence alone was enough to disconcert him; this middle-aged woman simply did not correspond to his vivacious twin, no matter how much he told himself that he was experiencing time dilation for real. He wanted his Otylia back.
But that was utterly irrelevant to the horror story she and Zelinda had just told him. Mother. Father. Dead. In a missile strike?
“Did you check the rubble?” he asked, knowing just how pathetic he sounded. “Did the emergency teams confirm it?”
“Finn,” Zelinda said benevolently, “mummy and daddy are gone. I’m sorry.”
“No!” It didn’t help that his older sister now looked so much like his mother. She could have been a reincarnation. Which meant, in his head, that whatever she said was an incontrovertible fact.
Otylia took hold of his hand, her expression firmer than he’d ever known. In fact, she also looked uncannily like…mother. She allowed him into her memories: A sniper taking out the Ghosts. Terence’s warning. Flinging herself onto the ground. The missile detonating with extreme violence.
Finn found himself crying, with Otylia’s arms around him. “What are they doing to our world?” he snuffled.
“What Celestials always do to humans,” Gyvoy said in disgust. “Screw us over.”
Finn tried to get his thoughts back under control. “So it was Toše who shot the archon and got mother killed by the general’s forces?”
“Terence Wilson-Fletcher believes so. He stayed behind looking for evidence.”
“But Toše was with us when we flew to Hoa Quinzu. He fought alongside us when the Ghosts attacked. Probably saved my life.”
“What?” Otylia said, recoiling. “You know him?”
“Well, yes.” He turned to Gyvoy in bewilderment. “You hired him.”
“Yeah,” the Traveler said. “He came highly recommended. My father said he was…one of the best. Could be quite ruthless when the shit hits the fan. He’s the one you want on your side in a fight. Sorry.”
“So he’s freelance?” Zelinda asked.
“Yes. He’d already taken another contract when the Diligent left Gondiar; otherwise I’d have brought him with us. Asteria, I can’t believe this.”
“Who hired him?”
Gyvoy spread his arms wide. “I’ve no idea.”
“We have weapons,” Finn said hotly. “Good weapons. And I know what he looks like. Otylia, will the archon’s agent tell you if he tracks the bastard down?”
Both his sisters and Gyvoy seemed to recoil.
“Whoa there, Finn,” Gyvoy said. “We have a mission here, remember—one that can actually hit the Celestials where it hurts.”
“We can’t go back, Finn,” Otylia said dejectedly. “Not to Gondiar. Not ever.”
“She’s right,” Everett said. He’d barely spoken since they all came on board the Diligent. “The Jalgori-Tobus have left the planet,” he added bitterly. “And you’re not taking my children back anywhere near that fucking great ball of shit!” He dropped his head into his hands.
Finn was almost ashamed to glance at his brother. Variaka’s death hadn’t hit as hard as hearing about his mother and father, but still…His first self-pitying thought had been: I should have tried harder to get her to come on the Diligent. Now looking at the broken man sitting opposite him, all he wondered was: Did she tell him I asked her to come with us? When he glanced over at Ellie, her expression was desperately sympathetic. “Okay,” he said. “No going back. The Diligent will fly us all outsystem. We’ll find a new world. A good one. One the Celestials don’t care about.”
“Gyvoy,” Zelinda said curiously, “you said your mission is going to hurt the Celestials. How?”
Finn’s guilt deepened, but with it came resolution. Mother would disapprove, of course she would, but a Jalgori-Tobu can still help the humans in this Asteria-abandoned star system. Our swan song—one they’ll never forget. “We have the means to stop Dolod from going into orbit around the star,” he told his sisters.
“You have what?” Otylia said.
“Not we,” Gyvoy said. “Just Finn. He’s the man, as always. These two”—his finger flicked from Finn to Ellie—“they’re like warrior gods out of history. Man, can they fight! Saved my ass enough times already on this mission, it pains me to admit.”
“What are you planning, Finn?” Otylia asked urgently.
“I know—I think I know—how to control the Archimedes Engine. That’s where we’ve been, to the factory that used to build them, it’s inside Kingsnest. I accessed the Celestial network there.” He held his hand up and pointed at the neural interface patch. “This useless uranic can stop Dolod from going into any kind of orbit around Kelowan.”
“Oh, Asteria’s arse, Finn. You’re kidding?”
“No,” he said. “I am deadly fucking serious. No iron rain, no crippling Anoosha’s economy, no knock-on effect it’d have on Gondiar. It’s a win, Otylia. For once in our lives, humans can actually come out ahead.”
Otylia and Zelinda exchanged a startled look, then they both turned to Everett.
“Do it,” Everett snarled.
* * *
—
Ellie sat down beside Finn as soon as Otylia stood up to go. Like Finn, she’d found it hard reconciling this tired, middle-aged person with the bubbly young woman who constantly teased her twin. Of all the weird crap in the Centauri Cluster, the time dilation effect is without doubt the eeriest. Seeing the three aged Jalgori-Tobu siblings made her keen to know how her grandfather was, how he’d grown old. Not gracefully, I’ll bet. But that was clearly an area where she’d have to tread very carefully, given that he and Otylia seemed so definitely on the outs. And how bloody typical was it that he’d wound up being some kind of rebel leader—or had declared himself to be.
Otylia ruffled Finn’s hair before she left. “You’re so young,” she said with a teary grin. “That makes me really happy.”
When she left, Ellie could hear the not particularly soft whispers of the Gath who were filling the vestibule outside. The one word that kept getting repeated again and again was: “Saint.”
It’d been like that from the minute Otylia had come on board. The Gath were as worshipful of her now as they’d always been. And Otylia handled it with aplomb, as always.
Ellie snuggled up to Finn. “I’m sorry. This is awful for you.”
“I knew she was going to be old when we got back. But this. How could things on Gondiar get so bad?”
“You heard your sisters; it’s all part of a dominion’s Great Game. People were manipulated.” Her lips compressed into a tight line. “And Josias hasn’t helped. He rode the wave, helped make it worse.”
“Yeah.”
“They’ll catch him,” she said mournfully. “I don’t think he realizes what the Centauri Cluster is, the factions and the abilities that exist here. All he’s seen is a society that resembles a constitutional monarchy back on Old Earth, so he doesn’t get how dangerous this life actually is. Gondiar is a real haven. We need to restore it to the level it was before.”
“That’s not going to happen. Not without getting the empress to withdraw her general, then reinstating a governor and a uranic administration. And from what Otylia said, I’m not sure anyone is going to want people like my family back at the top. We let them down.”
