Angolin, p.29
Angolin, page 29
“That’s not the least bit funny! And what plan, exactly? Half of it’s just an army of energy-detecting nanites. That’s all. One suite of technology fighting another, and in prototype phase at that. And the other half . . . Well, unethical is the best descriptor even if the admiral condones it. This is no battle plan, and we’re not warriors, Yos.”
“Oh, but we are, mijn liefje.”
Brona looked beleaguered. “You realize we’re talking about breaching an alternate universe and pulling people into it.”
“Enemy combatants, Bron, not people. We won’t solve this by playing it safe or obsessing over ethics.”
“I think Theus suspects something, and maybe Dharmen does too. We should have just told them the whole truth of what we’re doing.”
“Maybe later. For now, let’s let them use their skill and brawn to fight, and we’ll use what we have to offer. And if our solution is . . . creative, then so be it.” Yos read acquiescence in Brona’s gentle gray eyes. “And to your previous point, technology fighting technology is the way of the future.”
“For our ancestors, it was the way of the past. We haven’t reached their knowledge level yet; we might not be as fortunate.”
“Perhaps. You have me there.”
“You and that nonchalance, Yos. Does the house in your head ever catch fire?”
“You were just as calm once. What ever happened to that Brona, the one who was so free of worry, though no less lovely than she is now?”
Brona reddened and shook her head. “You’re right, the tea didn’t help.” She looked upward, frowned at the sickly yellow-green hue of the Cloak racing above the day’s mix of natural and human-made beauty. “I have to go.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now. You heard the man. War’s coming. We have to get our part of the effort working. I should run more tests and I have more than a few things to tighten up. We’ve wasted all afternoon in the Gardens as it is.”
Yos grimaced. “Dharm’s just being his usual alarmist self. Our systems will work whether you test tonight, tomorrow, next week, or not at all.”
“You just don’t want me to go, do you?”
“Of course not!”
“Look, Dharmen’s right, despite anything,” Brona went on, “and as for alarmist, I’ll take his alarm over anyone else’s ease any day.”
“You like him, don’t you?”
“Well, yes. I like all three of them now that Dori has let me in and Theus has let me out. Willem’s charming too, and his cousin is fun. I think. What’s not to like about any of them?”
Yos took her thin, delicate hand in his, caressed her fingers, and gently kissed them. “Do you like Dharmen as much as you like me?”
“Certainly not.”
“Well then.” He took her other hand and savored their closeness, covering up his own fear at once. “Whatever happens, we’ll face it together. All of us and you and I, if you’ll permit it.”
Brona smiled her answer.
“Dinner later tonight then? My pod?”
“I can hardly wait.” Tears formed in Brona’s eyes.
Yos saw the joy-fear blend in them. She pulled him close, stood on her toes, and kissed him. “Goodbye, liefje. So cute and old-fashioned. I’ll see you tonight.”
She let go and headed up the way toward the AirTransit terminal.
Yos stood still in the middle of the sidewalk, oblivious to the swarms of people rushing around him. Heart fluttering, he thrust his hands into his pockets like a love-struck teenager and squeezed his narrow shoulders up to his ears in dreamful glee. Brona’s face was stamped on his mind, and her exquisite features and the soft warmth of her lips that had just touched his branded his heart. A wonderful new beginning pushed invasion fears aside and held him in arrest.
He left the fugue long enough to watch her walk up the way, across from the gardens’ fiery show. He studied every curve of her frame as she moved: graceful, beautiful, feminine, strong, and with the mood pavers glowing in soft-pink shades beneath her steps.
Brona sat at her workstation, lost in the hum of information processing around her. Data analysis, light-bending calculations, computers doing their work—nothing calmed her more during evening research. High up in the great bay’s rafters, subgenerators 275–299 whirred on, now higher, now lower as they shunted and directed power. Then came the welcomed cascade sequence racing from one end of the array to the other. The entire building shuddered at the power reduction.
The PA system double-chimed its greeting: “All departments, stand-down procedure initiated. Confirm gridwide clearance and power relay disengagement.”
About time, Brona thought, relieved. I don’t care how many primitive Carmogen satellites pass overhead or how many radio waves they bounce at us; we’ve only got two suns to draw energy from. Does the Kraal think we have endless power to keep running this thing? The Cloak is for our protection and only when needed. It’s not for scared officials keeping us scurrying round like micromice at the least bother!
She sighed, stared at her main upright. Beyond the sign-on icon, it was blank. Her trials, all of them, finished an hour ago. She had sat thinking blissfully of Yos since and wanted the eve-dream to continue. But she was too afraid for even the stand-down of Cloak to comfort her. She resettled her mind on Yos, picturing his long frame that could use a few workouts, his wispy hair that he constantly pushed out of his face rather than trim, and those calm eyes that always seemed to say, “All is good, and life is wonderful, no matter what.”
And no matter what, I’m due for a love life. Overdue for one! She realized how long it had been since she had dated . . . and promptly put past boyfriends out of her mind. No use going there! Yos was the one for her. She imagined that people might mistake them for brother and sister if they didn’t always hold hands in public. They looked alike, though they didn’t think alike. She was serious about nearly everything, had more in common with Dharmen there. But Yos’s even temperament had to be the greatest constant in the universe. It was refreshing. It got under her skin in excess, but it still brought her back from the moody, anxious states she had fallen into lately. Brilliant man! Odd and hideously intelligent, but wonderful just the same.
“Why, Brona! What the Heaveners are you still doing here?”
Ugh! And just when you think you’re safe from your resident traitor. “I’m working late, Ian.” She didn’t bother to look up. “Should be pretty obvious at this time of night.”
“Well, temper, temper,” Ian said to her back.
Brona rolled head and eyes around at him. It was less peeve than she would like to have shown, but hopefully enough to get rid of him without being too unprofessional. It didn’t work.
He rounded her desktop. She did her best to ignore him and feign attention to her long-deactivated testing and adjustments. But that uncombed yellow hair and oily pink pudge of a face kept coming nearer. Why could he never be content to bother her from the opposite side of the desk? And that breath. What on Tentim had the little cretin had for lunch? It resurrected queasy memories of bad food, binge drinking, and inevitable vomiting after party nights back at university. Funny how the man retained the stench. He was right beside her now, within kicking distance.
“The Gravitational Lensing Project’s all finished, and the Cloak just went down. Major systems are idled, so what could you possibly be still working on?” Ian said. He could see that her uprights were blank, but she didn’t care.
“Oh, this, that, the other. I’m absolutely rushed with research.” She swiveled cold, unblinking eyes up to his. “And yet, there’s nothing going on!”
Ian flattened his perpetually sneering lips. “What an effort at nothing. Have it your way, Bron.”
Brona rolled her eyes again. “I’ve told you before: no one calls me Bron but my father.” And tall, handsome physicists with a penchant for know-it-all-ism.
“Sorry. We’ve worked together for five years. I thought by now we just might be friends.”
Brona tightened her jaws to keep from laughing in his ugly face. “Don’t put yourself out on that one.” She went back to her uprights, signed back on, and opened arbitrary files, anything at all except micro-AI testing or alternate universe shift calculations. From the tops of her eyes, she could see him studying her, the way unwanted men endlessly did. Why do the wrong ones insist on that?
“Speaking of which, we should go out sometime,” he said, just like that. “Perhaps you could invite me to your pod for a quiet dinner?”
Now we come to it. Surprised it took you this long! “Perhaps not. Plumbing and electrics are working fine, Ian. I’ve no need for fix-its at the moment.”
To that, Ian really did come to it. “I guess I’m not tall and skinny enough like that Yos friend of yours, am I?”
“No, but you’re short and fat enough if that’s any help.”
“And you’ve brought him here numerous times lately. I can barely set a foot near your station, and I work here.”
“That didn’t stop you from accessing my personal files, now did it?” Brona threw back, boring her eyes into him. “It’s been a year now, and I’m still trying to locate what you lifted.”
Ian’s permanently flushed face blanched. “We’re on the same team. Our work is interdependent. I didn’t know I needed permission to access what’s rightfully the property of the entire program, frankly. I certainly wouldn’t need it from anyone else here, Bron.”
Bron. Bron! “You most certainly would. And access is one thing, appropriation is another. But you wouldn’t need an excuse if your right was as great as your sense of entitlement to everyone else’s projects that you consistently take credit for but never contribute to.” It felt so good to say it after having held it in for so long. “And while we’re on the subject, since when does your right include bringing military personnel in here to tamper with my files? Especially those who later kidnap and torture their own colleagues when theft and espionage aren’t enough for them. That was your friend Vara’s last act before she died, was it not?”
Ian snorted though his tiny nostrils. “You know a lot for a woman who spends all day aligning energy grids and scheduling power.”
“You know damned well my job involves the science of the light-bending requiring the power. I advise the engineering teams on the needs, they do the aligning and scheduling. And it’s a world away from what you’re up to of late. You’ve done a good job of stealing information but a lousy one of covering it up. Let’s see what it all gets you and how well you keep at it!”
Ian leaned forward with his sweaty palms on her desktop. “Oh, don’t worry about me. Think more about covering up whatever these spacetime disruption effects are that you and your friend have been generating lately. I’ll find out what that’s about soon enough. Though it won’t make any difference, no matter what it is you two are scheming or how many more people you have taken into custody here.”
For a few heartbeats, Brona misgave her puzzlement. Dharmen did mention a traitor sweep after his rescue, and she had noticed a few of her colleagues missing lately, but she hadn’t had time to give it any real thought.
“That’s right,” Ian continued. “Eight people from StealthOps Teams C and E were arrested last week and three from Central Engineering the week before. Don’t tell me you weren’t behind it. Well, once your witch hunt is over with, we’ll see how you handle what you only think you know.”
They stared heat at each other. If Ian wasn’t backing down, Brona absolutely refused to. He raised himself sharply from her desktop, holding his glare as he left.
Brona heaved a sigh at the sound of his footfalls fading down the metal planks of the walkway that would take him out of the area. Beyond disgust, now she was even more afraid. Fight, woman. Fight, she told herself. She returned to her main upright, called up her files, and began programming another trial sequence, this time with a few enhancements in mind. She pictured Yos’s face again during compiling and smiled, realizing her unpleasant night was about to vastly improve. But not before just one last round of simulations for the targeting scanners.
16
MESSENGER IN THE NIGHT
I need your help, Rem-E. I have one major task before the Carmis get here.
Sir, defensive operations are still days away, and deployment has yet to commence. We have already covered combat prep procedures and information made available to date.
That isn’t it.
What do you require, Lieutenant Commander?
Connect me to Great Hall administration. I need to speak with their archivist.
“Dharmen, what is it? What’s bothering you that grochlaroot stew on a second autumn night can’t fix?” Willem asked from across their dine-in table.
Dharmen’s eyes were on his plate. His thoughts were so far away that he barely heard the question.
“It’s about to start, isn’t it? The invasion, I mean.”
This broke the spell and got eye contact.
“You’ve been pushing your food around all evening, which is incredibly unusual for you,” Willem said. “So it’s either that or wedding jitters. Which is it?”
“It’s definitely not the latter. You accepted, Hanne. Don’t think for a minute that you can get out of it.”
That got a marginal smile.
“Sorry, love. I don’t mean to upset you.”
“Don’t be,” Willem said. “We both knew this was coming, and I’m getting used to the thought of it now. As much as anyone can.” His smile deepened, but Dharmen saw pain behind it. “And anyway,” Willem changed tone and quickly rose from his seat, “I have to contact my brothers about the wedding—they’ve been asking me for details, surprisingly even more than Aremel. I just haven’t had time to respond to—”
“You don’t really intend to reach out to your family right in the middle of dinner,” Dharmen said, “and you’re not getting used to the thought of invasion either. But thank you.”
“For what?”
“For trying to understand. For doing your best to in the worst possible situation . . .”
The front door chimed. Willem’s eyes edged toward the live-in.
Dharmen’s rolled to the ceiling. “Blazing suns, what now?” He threw his napkin onto the table, stood and gave Willem a quick, reassuring kiss on the forehead, and went to the door. He assumed it was the admiral’s watchers having caught yet another saboteur trying to do who knew what. “We’re nearly at marshaling, and they’re still at it. Can’t a man and his man eat supper without traitors calling in lost causes?” he muttered, checking his trouser leg pocket for his gun.
Rem-E: activate porch monitor.
“Krone in Heaven, what can this be about?”
Dharmen commanded the door open, ignored the pair of Guardsmen, and looked squarely at their captive.
“Sorry to bother you, sir,” one uniform said. “We caught him in front of the pod, staring up at your door. Says he has something to tell you.”
“We’ve scanned him, sir. He’s clean,” said uniform two.
“Good. Give us a few.”
The sentinels eyed each other but obeyed Dharmen’s sharp nod off his porch, pulse rifles out and flanking the path to the canalside way. Dharmen stepped out and let the door whiz shut behind him.
“Interesting of you to drop into the neighborhood. Can’t get enough of South C, I take it? Is this a friendly visit, Vinc, or should I go fetch my sword?”
Irzek looked ready to jump out of his skin rather than speak.
Dharmen’s glare roasted him for a new stew. “Bit late to be out while on house arrest, isn’t it?”
“My . . . my confinement’s ended, sir,” Irzek stammered. “They said I behaved well, so the sentence was reduced.”
“No surprise there. Try to kill your CO, get a comfortable stay at home, and not even a complete one at that. What would we do without the JAG’s expert decisions?”
“But I didn’t actually want to—”
“And I hear from an almost reliable source that you acted fully on your own. First thing you’ve ever done without someone else’s help.”
“Sir, I wish sorry could cover it,” Irzek said in a youthfully urgent rush of emotion through breath visibly escaping into the chilly night. “I’m not even sure now why I . . . I guess I thought—”
“You thought taking me out would impress your new boss.” Dharmen’s tone could have been paternal had he not been so incensed. “Excuse me for beating you to it. I know how Armetrian and his grand talk affects recruits—or used to.”
“I never really found it all that put on.”
“Course you didn’t, that’s how he wanted it. But a meler in diamonds is still a meler, Vinc, as you more than anybody should know.”
Irzek gave that the same flustered look Dharmen had become accustomed to from his twin sister. “I didn’t come to talk about Lieutenant Commander Armetrian, I came to talk about the others. Sir, I have some information.”
“On what?”
“On Dawn Fire’s plans to get stealthtech secrets to the Carmogen.”
Surprise escaped Dharmen’s face before he could contain it, magnified by the bright porch light that exposed every error of self-control. “Stealthtech. Really? And just how did you come by this? Don’t tell me Armetrian and Vara put that kind of trust in you.”
“Not exactly. I accessed the encryption codes in Lieutenant Vara’s file sets and managed to get past them.”
“It’s just Vara now, or it would be. She’d no longer be commissioned if she’d lived. Neither is Armetrian.” Dharmen watched Irzek’s eyes flicker. His designation was gone too in one of the Guard’s shortest enlistments ever.
“In that case, I don’t really have to call you sir anymore, do I?”
Dharmen met that unblinking and answerless.
“Look, sir, I’m telling you the truth. Honestly.”
“Honestly, Vara’s encryptions were incredibly complex and subtly constructed,” Dharmen said. “We analyzed them. They were designed specifically to keep prying eyes from access, so how did you of all people— Oh, let me guess!” He put a finger to Irzek’s bony chest. “From your duty station on Bemin. You could do more powerful decryption there than at Seventh. Well, at least you achieved something under my command! Now out with it, Vinc. What exactly do you know?” Irzek’s tongue seemed to abandon its courage. He looked timidly down at his feet. “This is a long way to roll off a farm and end up on a cold night. You didn’t airtram it across the lake and hike down here just to go silent on me now.”
