The warriors shade, p.22
The Warrior's Shade, page 22
"Yeah, I figured. Well now you need to recover. I'll spend time with you if you want me to. Otherwise, I'll be training. I'm going to be with you when you confront this problem with your toy, and it's not going to end well for someone."
Okay, now she was back to her old self, which lifted a weight off his chest. Boone wondered what it would be like if he handed over the world-breaker with Elyon at his side. No doubt many people would die. An exchange would certainly be smoother without her volatility in tow, but she would also increase his chances of survival.
He relaxed back into his seat. "I keep hearing you kept me alive."
"Yes. Of course.” Her tone was childish. “I wasn't sure you would even make it to the Makellan. And if Thergin had jumped without us you would be dead, or back on the Tazaec, where you'd also probably be dead." She crossed her arms.
He got it now. She was upset with herself, upset with him, upset with this sudden shake-up in her life, but she also thrived on the rush of danger, and she was packing a lot of emotion without exploding. It must be difficult for her. "Thank you," he said, and he watched her face squeeze back the flood.
His head was clearing. "Go train," he said. "But if you won't let me out of here, you'd better visit often."
She kissed him on the forehead and left.
Boone tapped his index finger with his thumb, which brought up a menu for a broad range of literature and linear entertainment options. He was about to choose a book on the military history of Fifth Millennium naval tactics of the then-Sol arm of the League, before the second A.I. War, when Diandro leaned in through the doorway.
"Commander Cotsern will be down to consult with you.”
When Cotsern entered, she glanced at the display above his med table and shook her head. He couldn't interpret the display, but by her reaction, it couldn't be good.
"I have been tapping your private feed,” she said. Boone winced. Having anyone groove into his private streams made him feel vulnerable. “The only change since you've been out has been small deposits in your credit account," she told him. “No other information. I'm not sure if it came from your contact or someone else. If more than one person knows you have the world-breaker, our situation may get worse. Or this whole thing might be a trap."
“Small amounts? Stakes?” Boone asked. That was odd.
“Yes, nothing big.” So not from Reia, who could have raided Ravis by now and never pay him.
Sinking back, he sighed. This was not a situation that required a quick response, and he needed more time, despite the urgency. Being incapacitated like this was as bad as a nightmare.
"The problem is I don't know who I am dealing with. Without a facer I can't gather the intel I need to decide what to do with certainty."
"I could bring you someone to do the digging," Cotsern suggested.
"Maybe. There's a bit of intel on the facer I used before Weeper. But I think it's on the Tazaec. If someone downloaded it for me—but I don't want to risk sending that information across the galaxy."
Cotsern said, "I can send someone to fetch your facer, and they can download it on their way back."
He nodded. "Send Cantara. She'll know how to find and open my files on the facer. Have her make a backup on a cargo manifest, someone we trust. She'll know what I mean."
"Anything else you need while she's over there?"
“No. But—no one but Ridder's team should go anywhere near our suites. I don't know how many people on that ship are spies for the C.N. There might even be people on Ridder's team, which would explain how the client and two marines got into my suite without being stopped."
"The C.N.?" Cotsern asked incredulously.
"Yes," said Boone. "This is far more complicated than we thought."
“And you're sure the client did this to you?” asked Cotsern. Boone had to admit it seemed unlikely, but so did an infiltration of C.N. personnel on the Tazaec. "I'll send Cantara in a trade ship. Anyone watching will assume it's one of Reia's various associates."
Boone wished he had thought of it first. "Good. She can grab any intel from Ridder as well." He had an idea. “Let me see those deposits,” he said. Cotsern opened his ledger on a palm facer and flung it to the wall in front of Boone. The data appeared in a flat holo large enough for him to read it clearly. He scrolled through the ledger until he found the small deposits. With a few checks, he confirmed that it was from the client's account. The deposits were incrementally small, some in thousandths of stakes, not just whole stakes. He furrowed his brows in thought.
His eyes widened as he recognized the patterns in the numbers. The idea was brilliant, considering the client had no way to contact Boone directly. Cotsern would not understand what this meant. "What's the date?” he asked. Cotsern gave him the date in galactic standard terms, which were relative to the cycling of the shifts rather than the old, so-called calendar date of Earth's orbit. “This is C.N. code,” he said, waving to the holo. “It indicates a date and coordinates. Three days from now. He gave me a week.”
“Generous,” said Cotsern. “Is he aware he left you for dead?”
“He knew I'd be found," said Boone. "He could have killed me if he'd wanted to. But he can't get to his weapon without me.” Although, even without Boone, if the client attacked the Tazaec, his entire fleet, complete with the relics, would rush to her aid. The client didn't need him, but this way was easier and would not expose the C.N. to war. That meant this person did not intend to start an intergalactic war. But with a weapon like the world-breaker, anything could happen.
“You're pale again,” said Cotsern.
Boone ignored her. “Warn Malaya the fleet is in danger,” he said. “Double security on Reia. And when Cantara meets with Ridder, she needs to tell him to find us the moles. There may be dozens of them.”
Cotsern frowned. "I've got this. Rest. I'll grab you if we need you."
Boone knew he wouldn't be able to rest until this was over.
31 Download
Quadrant: Fringe
System: Blue Astra
Ship: Tazaec
Armed with instructions, a tiny trade ship, and her own common sense, Cantara steeled herself for what might be the most important mission she had been asked to do since she was hired by Boone almost a rev ago. Maybe the most important ever.
The ship, almost too small to hold cargo, slipped into the traffic around the Tazaec as if it had done it a dozen times before. The pilot communicated with the control center; she was bringing in special medical equipment. The control center acknowledged and assigned her a hangar in which to land. Malaya had already confirmed the shipment, having been informed that an operation was under way. To anyone scrutinizing the communications around the ship, it would blend in with the thousands of such comms every shift.
They landed inside the designated hangar, locking the feet down and lowering the ramp. Cantara, dressed in a standard working jumpsuit, floated a platform full of empty containers through the hangar.
When she reached Reia's personal medical facility, she sought out the medic Zo, who had been one of the medics present when they had found Boone in his cabin. Zo gave Cantara the facer that she had retrieved from a pocket in Boone’s uniform. Zo then showed her to the medical supply room, which was seldom accessed, as most healing and recovery was done under the fields. The stockroom had only such necessities as would be required for the occasional surgery for a bad fracture or other severe bodily injury.
Cantara opened one of the containers, which held only a small device. She attached it to the facer and coded an encryption zipper onto the data. While it processed the download, it scrambled the stream on both versions. Offline and away from prying eyes, this was the easy part.
The transfer took over four minutes, which, at quantum speed, even with a translator, was an eternity. Whatever Boone had discovered was immense. She admired him; she considered herself an outstanding groover, but he made it clear she still had a lot to learn. While waiting, she hoped he would recover enough to be able to continue to teach them—their small team—new ways to undermine the keel grooves deep below public network access. She would love to learn how to groove in the Coalition's secure space.
She was tempted to inspect the data, but Cotsern had warned her not to. The less she knew, the better off they all were.
When it completed, she closed the container and carried it out like a bulky satchel. The empty containers remained in the stockroom.
Now was the difficult part. She had a short list of associates who were deeply embedded with Reia. If they recognized her, her identity would be revealed, and the clandestine aspect of this effort to recover Boone's data would be irrelevant. Someone might be able to trace her to Boone's fleet, which would give their location away.
After too many decks down a little-used side stair to the Security Detachment, she had avoided anyone who recognized her. Ridder greeted her and they exchanged the pleasantries of strangers. "I'm sorry to bother you," said Cantara, "but I'm afraid I have to file a complaint."
"I'm sorry to hear that," he replied. "Why don't you come into my office?" He showed her to a private room. The inner wall was transparent and the muffled sounds of voices drifted through from the main room.
When the door slid closed, Cantara handed him the facer. "Someone tapped into my data and locked me out. I want to transfer the data to my ship, and then find out who did this."
"And your ship is?"
"The Zeta," she said, and Ridder didn't need to respond. "Also, it's a lot of data on there. Will it be kept private?"
He tapped again, nodded, and started the download. "Of course. Can I offer you some water or jav while we work on this?"
"Water, please."
Ridder left the room, returned with two cylinders of water, placed one before her, and kept the other.
They worked slowly to give the appearance of a normal transaction. Ridder pretended to be monitoring the data, and Cantara pretended to be bored and in a hurry. In fact she was nervous, not because of any difficulty in this operation, but because that data was highly sensitive, highly sought after, and she had no idea how far the C.N. had penetrated into the Tazaec. They might be laughing while she and Ridder continued their pretense. Her only comfort was that it was unlikely they had many people on the city-ship. She wouldn't feel secure until she departed.
"So, Miss—remind me your name?"
"Hana Canty," she said with an apologetic tone.
"Miss Canty, what can you tell me about the circumstances around your security breach?"
Cantara launched into a tirade that she was making up on the spot, while Ridder uploaded his intel about Sin Glajure onto a code clip the size of grain. When he handed it to her, she stuck it onto the invisible adhesive on the inner seam of a jumpsuit pocket.
"Well, Miss Canty, I shouldn't have to tell you to be more careful with your personal belongings—"
"Don't make this sound like it's my fault," she countered.
"I'm sorry, Miss Canty. I would just be sure to be more careful next time. Keep it in your possession at all times."
"So are you going to be able to find out who did it and do something about it?"
"I'm collecting as much data as I can. We'll analyze it, and if we find any indication of a suspect, we will pursue it. I promise you. We can't very well have these types of people creeping about our city."
"I should hope not."
“Can we keep the facer for a while? It may help us to learn how the culprit locked you out, so we can create countermeasures.”
Cantara pretended to look thoughtful. “I suppose, but those don't come cheap, so I will need it back at some point.”
"Of course. We'll take care of it. It's good you came to us, Miss Canty." Ridder's eyes never left the vis. He seemed to be interested in something. It couldn't be the data itself because that was encrypted—unless he knew how to decrypt it. "All right, we have all we need. Can you write down your contact information so I can get in touch with you after an analysis?" He pushed a flat tablet toward her. Cantara scribbled some squiggles with a stylus and pushed it back at him. He peered at it, half smiling. "Thank you. We'll be in touch shortly."
Cantara and Ridder both stood, shaking hands over the table while he palmed her a second clip. Ridder walked her out. She left the facer with him while she attached the second clip into a seam in her cuff.
With her container shouldered, she headed back to the tradeship in the hangar. She did her best to be discreet without being obvious about it. Adrenaline was making her jittery.
The tradeship was where she left it, and while she worried that someone had tagged it with a tracker, there was little she could do about it. The pilot should have been watching, and Ridder had eyes on the hangar during her visit. Because he didn't halt her departure, she had to presume there was no danger.
She breathed a sigh of relief as the pilot jumped to their first coordinates. A colonized planet, Kepler-Cygnus, teemed with traffic in a pattern so dense she wasn't sure they would be able to squeeze in. From the outer lanes, the ship nudged closer and matched traffic speed until it was consumed by the stream of ships. No C.N. or HTP tracker would ever find her exit coordinates from there.
Quadrant: League
Ship: Makellan
With Cotsern behind him, Boone leaned over his console to examine the decrypted data that Cantara had brought back. Raulton had allowed him to return to his stateroom, as long as the medical fields were working on a portable field generator.
He scrolled back and forth through the recordings of the corridors showing a man wearing a hat and accompanied by two marines. None of the vis revealed the man's face, as if he had been told exactly where the recorders were and how to avoid them. Shaking his head, he gave up on that method and leaned back. “This is infuriating.”
In two days he would be delivering the relics to someone, but unlikely to the client himself. Whoever picked up the world-breaker might have direct contact with the client, or at least more information that could lead Boone to him. An idea was forming, but it was a dangerous idea and it meant violating Elyon's commitment to avoid violence. It was a lot to ask of someone, especially someone he cared for deeply.
Spinning around to face Cotsern, Boone said, “We're not going to deliver the real weapon. We're going to deliver Elyon, and she's going to bring us the ship that's collecting for the client.”
“You are insane,” said Cotsern. “It's too soon to let you do any planning.”
Boone said, “Trust me when I say Elyon can do this.”
She shook her head. “Two things. One, Elyon is not your weapon. You said yourself that she doesn't want to be a weapon at all.”
“True, but I can tell she's itching to let off some of her anger, and you don't want her to let it out here.”
“And two,” Cotsern went on, “it's just a terrible idea.”
Boone wanted to consider her opinion, but this plan felt like a surefire way to get what they needed. “Just make it work,” he said. “And make it work so that Elyon isn't killed.”
Cotsern frowned. “I can't control what happens on that ship.” She got up to leave. “Why don't I bring Greming in on this? I'm sure he'll agree that you're insane.”
Greming would indeed be able to help, and he would be on Boone's side. “Good idea. I need to talk to him anyway.”
When Greming arrived, he let out a curt chuckle that drew Boone's attention away from the schematics he was browsing. “You should have taken my advice about Reia.”
“It worked out all right. I even got more than I expected,” said Boone.
Standing stiffly in the doorway, Greming grinned. “I'll say you got more than you expected.”
Boone laughed.
“So what do you need from me?” asked Greming, returning to his usual stoic visage.
“Do you have any contacts on Weeper you can trust?”
Greming lifted an eyebrow. “I may. But I can't be sure they're any more trustworthy than your contact was.”
“If it comes from you, maybe they won't connect you to me. Can you find someone?”
“I can try. I haven't spoken to anyone on Weeper in three or four revs. That became your job.”
“Well, I have my first requisition request,” said Boone, grinning. “But at least we'll be able to pay for it.”
Greming looked skeptical. “And have money left over to tidy up this fleet?”
“Plenty.” Boone crossed one leg over the other. “I sold Ravis for one-fifty.”
If Greming was surprised or impressed, he made no indication. Although Boone knew Greming as a dispassionate leader, he expected at least a little reaction. Instead Greming said, “So what do you want from Weeper?”
“Something like the EM-driver.”
Greming's face remained blank. “Why?”
“I'm going to deliver the device.”
“I thought you didn't want to arm it,” said Greming.
Boone smiled. “I'm not arming it. I'm fixing it.”
Trying to hide her irritation, Elyon leaned on the door frame. Although she had offered to visit him, she had been in the middle of practicing slow Con Long, and being interrupted in Con Long was always irritating.
"Elyon, I have a mission that I'm hoping you'll consider,” said Boone as he turned in his chair to face her.
"Finally," she said. Given their situation, he would understand how she felt—frustrated, impatient, and itching for action.
“The client set a date to deliver the world-breaker,” he said, but she cut him off before he finished.
“The what?”
“It's what we’ve been calling it.”
“Sounds ominous,” she said. “Does it destroy whole worlds?”
“No, it's a terraformer. We think it disturbs small patches of ground and atmosphere. But it's powerful, and if it were functional, I’m sure it could destroy a space station or large ships.”
