“What about the ending, Exeter? He said we’d find him ‘where the solemn bird sings to the empty sphere.’ Does this sound familiar?”

  “Maybe. Yes. Sometimes, when I came for the chair, he’d sing a little song. It was more like one line over and over. ‘She sings to the brightest star, for no one will have her.’ I don’t know what it means. Amayas said it was something his mother used to hum.”

  “And the sphere?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  Joa Zaan asked what Kara knew must be on every tongue:

  “How are we supposed to find this cudfrucker?”

  Ryllen didn’t hesitate.

  “We stick to our plan. Find evidence and track him. We’ve been collecting artifacts topside. Finish the job down here.”

  Exeter pointed to the stasis tube. “What about Simone? She needs medical attention. We can stabilize her with phasics.”

  Ryllen stepped past his lover and studied the woman up close. His eyes told the story: He did not share Exeter’s optimism.

  “I’ve seen day old corpses in better shape. The controls are wrong.”

  “We have to act now.”

  “It’s the Admiral’s call.”

  Exeter pursued Ryllen to his rifter.

  “She might know the plan. Don’t you care?”

  “We laid among the dead. We walked in fields of rotting flesh. That woman is gone. You just can’t accept it. Follow orders. Do your job.”

  Ryllen flew off without another word.

  “Yes, Colonel,” he said.

  But when Exeter turned about face and stared at the tube, Kara saw a clear determination to violate a direct order.

  14

  H AM CORTEZ HEARD EVERYTHING. Per their agreement, Ryllen kept his audio channel open during the confrontation. Every point made for Exeter’s defense eliminated the immediate concern, but left open the larger question: Why would Amayas revise history? Why bury the file if it was intended to be seen after the Inventor abandoned Artemis? Did the clue to his whereabouts hold any validity? Or was Amayas mocking his pursuers?

  The questions confounded Ham almost as much as the station’s “perfect” system logs. A core shut down with ease nine days ago, as records maintained, should not have been so difficult to bring back online.

  Before the Inventor’s vid surfaced, Ham reassigned the logs for deeper study. Paul Ochoba took transport; Leto Ahmed dove into maintenance. Search for “the wrong fingerprints,” Ham ordered.

  “How are your reviews progressing?” He asked them.

  Leto sighed. “I see nothing out of the ordinary. She’s operated near optimum since the Inventor’s restart. A few power fluctuations, but nothing the auto regulators couldn’t handle.”

  “Paul?”

  “Transport shows a thriving business. Every manifest is recorded, although names have been replaced by pseudos.”

  “You don’t find this to be suspicious?”

  “I would if they weren’t consistent. Every ship, every passenger has a pseudo. Each is followed by an alphanumeric signature, maybe an internal identifier. I’ll have to go deeper to break the code.”

  “This explains how the Alliance remained hidden in plain sight for so many years. Rather than concerning yourself with code, try to filter the records by properties. I want to see patterns by arrivals and departures, cargo manifests, and client pseudos. Leto, take a similar approach to station power cycles. A traditional F-Core recycles every forty standard days. Line them up. Crosscheck for deviations.”

  “What do you expect to see?” Leto said.

  “In the best case, nothing. But I suspect we’re dealing with some very clever people. I do hope I’m wrong.”

  As he awaited results, Ham stared across the table to the Hokki, Hoshi Negani, she of jade eyes and an unsettling disposition. Other than fulfilling a roster request from Yusef Matook earlier, Hoshi had been worthless to the C&C team. She showed no desire to learn the system and claimed she joined their crew to save the world, not chase ghosts. Saving the world, Ham reminded her to no effect, required patience and an attention to detail.

  “Hoshi, provide me a status update of our topside search teams.”

  “Still searching, from best I can tell.”

  “How do you define best?”

  She shrugged. “Nobody’s reporting in. That means no trouble.”

  “Did Po Wynn and Muna Fei resume their search pattern when Colonel Jee went down below?”

  “Was I supposed to keep track?”

  “Their locations are on your window. See the blue taggers?”

  “OK. Great. I was wondering what those were.”

  Ham wanted to believe she was being sarcastic, which was preferable to the alternative.

  “Hoshi, I have an odd question. Are you good at games?”

  “Not especially. Never had the patience.”

  “When I was five, amidst my Tier 1 education, I was assigned to complete a Plexicon. Like a jigsaw but cast on a touchscreen the size of a wall. I was to generate an image, for which I did not have a reference, out of ten thousand pieces. In addition, the Plexicon program intentionally excluded one hundred critical pieces.

  “I was taught an opening strategy. Spend thirty minutes in front of the screen allowing the random pieces to wash over me. In this way, my first move made strategic sense. I quickly found several distinct patterns and built island groups. The middle five thousand pieces were the most difficult. But by then, I was so immersed, I turned frustration to motivation.”

  Hoshi wrapped her arms tight against her chest.

  “I suppose you finished, if you’re passing along this life lesson.”

  “Finished? I told you it was missing a hundred pieces.”

  “I just assumed if you finished ninety-nine hundred, the program gave you the rest. Like a reward.”

  “Ah. You mean a badge for effort? No. I didn’t require the missing pieces because I knew what they were. It’s not always necessary to complete a puzzle to see the entire picture. But you must recognize when a puzzle is waiting to be solved. Step back, allow the pieces you can see to wash over you. The rest is discipline and persistence. Neither of which I believe you have to any measurable degree.”

  “Has anyone ever called you an arrogant asshole?”

  “My closest friends.”

  “From what I hear, you don’t have many. Admiral.”

  How did this one slip onboard?

  “No, but I have many enemies. Would you like to be one, Hoshi?”

  She shaded her eyes. “No, sir.”

  “Good. Follow orders and reach out to the teams for an update.” He crossed around the light table and leaned in, towering over the girl. “This mission is dangerous. I prefer not to lose lives. You can help me, Hoshi. Find the woman hiding inside. I’ll need her.”

  Ham felt ill-equipped to play mentor. Either she took his advice, or she’d never see Hokkaido again.

  Paul waved him back with anxious eyes.

  “Take a look,” he told Ham. “When I filter for ships, I find twenty-one pseudos. When I crosscheck the manifests, it appears the station was resupplied by the same two transports. Only seven of the other nineteen had multiple visits.”

  “Interesting. I suspect those seven stopped on many worlds to gather clients. We saw a similar trend on Mangum Island.”

  “That’s nothing, Admiral. I broke down the filters by the same forty-day cycle Leto is using. As you can see, there’s an emergent pattern. Within the last two years, client arrivals increased threefold, as did resupplies. But the cycle beginning twenty days before Exeter left the station shows a thirty percent decline.”

  “This tracks. Exeter said the Inventor spoke of client complaints.”

  “See how the cycle ends twenty days after Exeter leaves?”

  “Increasing gaps between arrivals.”

  “But the decline reverses itself over the following cycle. Then we’re left with twenty-six days of the final cycle before shutdown. You see?”

  Ham had the nagging suspicion he was right, after all.

  “A hefty diet of ships, cargo, and clients until ten days ago. With business on the rebound, why the sudden departure?”

  “That was my question,” Paul said. “If you must leave fast, you don’t bother with tedious shutdown procedures. So, I overlaid the records by cycle. Guess what I found?”

  “I know what you’re about to show. Those final twenty-six days are a precise duplicate of an earlier cycle. A perfectly matched ledger.”

  “Yes.” He brought up the overlay. “Cycle Eight. Begins at one hundred ninety-four standard days ago. The pseudos, the codes, the manifests, down to the most precise inventory.”

  “Ah, you clever bastards.” He turned to Leto. “Do the same. Layer the final cycle over all others. Find an exact match.”

  “What’s happening?” Paul said.

  “This is how Special Services falsified records for off-book projects. It’s not possible to alter the native system logs, unless you have a program called Oasis. It creates a mirage by wrapping altered data on top of the native script. Very few operators can see through it. Fortunately, I’m paranoid, and the operator was sloppy.”

  Leto pointed to his window. “You’re right. It’s a perfect match for Cycle Five. Why would the Inventor do this?”

  “He wouldn’t. The records weren’t important anymore. No, I believe he left shortly after Exeter. And the station was, in fact, shut down nine days ago.”

  “Then why was the restart so complicated?”

  “Because the assholes who altered the records manipulated the F-Core before they departed. And we …”

  I should have seen this. It never felt right. I know them better than anyone.

  “We need to leave.”

  Ham laid out his bullet points with care.

  “Leto, go into the station’s long-range comm network and look for any backchannel transmissions. Outgoing.”

  “To where?”

  “Anywhere.”

  “Paul, are you a navigator?”

  “Yes, but I’m not Worm certified. Yusef and Cando know the algorithmics best. Hiro and Lucas are their seconds.”

  “We need those Scramjets off the ground. Recall Yusef and Hiro. Tell them …”

  He caught Hoshi waving for attention.

  “Not now,” he told her.

  “Yes, I think now, Admiral. I did what you asked. Checked in with the teams. I couldn’t get through to Yusef Matook. And yes, I know what I’m doing. I talked to him earlier.”

  “Do you see his tagger in the window?”

  “Yes. He’s in 16C with Chi-Qua Baek. Been there forever.”

  “What’s in 16C?”

  “It’s Exeter’s old room.”

  Ham did not want to speculate. He turned to Paul.

  “Bring up Yusef on your comm stack.”

  The double doors slid open. Ryllen, fresh off his confrontation down below, raged into C&C. Ham did not allow him to vent.

  “I heard,” Ham said. “But we have bigger problems, Colonel.”

  Leto interjected. “I found it, Admiral. The signal. It’s been going out in all directions since we completed restart.”

  “They’ll be here soon.”

  “Who?” Ryllen said.

  “The Chancellors returned to avenge the Herodotus, but they bided too much time. The Inventor had fled. So, they manipulated the F-Core and fabricated the logs then shut down the station. But they hid a backdoor program to send a signal in the event a certain someone returned. He’s not here, but I doubt they’ll care. We need to leave.”

  Ryllen motioned Ham to slow down.

  “Admiral, we’re still collecting evidence. The Chancellors could be systems away. I doubt they have Worm travel.”

  “Unless the Inventor gave it to them.”

  “We’re the Talons. They can’t beat us.”

  Ham pointed toward space. “They’ll have what I affectionately refer to as the high ground. Colonel, we need to go.”

  He turned to Paul. “Gotten through to Yusef?”

  “I’m entering his comm stack, but he’s not responding.”

  “Can you tap into his field lens?”

  Paul made quick eye contact with Ryllen, who concurred. Seconds later, he produced a static image of a ceiling. Ham ordered him to throw it open to the light table’s plate. The image expanded.

  Paul manipulated the lens, turning it downward. Ham dreaded what the lack of movement or sound portended.

  Exeter’s bed came into view. Ruffled sheets were strewn with what Ham thought were sketchpads. Judging from the angle, the lens was operating from just inside the door.

  Hoshi gasped when the first body came into view.

  The girl lay sprawled on her side in a contorted pose, her limbs appearing to work against each other. Her eyes were wide and glassy, staring nowhere and everywhere.

  Chi-Qua Baek bled from a pair of tiny holes. One on her right cheek, the other above her left eye.

  “She’s dead,” Hoshi said. “Did Yusef …?”

  Ham was beginning to work it out.

  “Colonel, send two Talons. Helmets on. Whatever this was, might still be active.”

  “What are we facing?” Ryllen said.

  “I think I’ve seen this before. Go.”

  Ryllen gave the order as the lens swung around to capture Yusef, whose head bent against the doorframe, a tiny river of blood emerging from a hole above his dimple. He stared into an abyss.

  “That won’t be the only trap,” Ham said. “My people were always poor winners. They’re worse losers. Time to leave.”

  15

  K ARA STEPPED BETWEEN the stasis tube and Exeter, who appeared hell-bent to disobey an order. Her concern had nothing to do with the chain of command.

  “What’s your plan?”

  “Save her,” he said. “She doesn’t deserve this.”

  “No. She doesn’t. But Exeter, what if we found her too late?”

  “I knew Simone. She’s strong. I don’t care what RJ said. She’s not dead.” He turned to the others. “All we have to do is load the tube onto a rifter. By the time we have her topside, no one will stop us from taking her to a ship.”

  “Your Colonel gave you an order,” Lucas Gil said. “You think he’ll give you a pass because …”

  “I don’t care what he does.”

  “You’d best care what we do.” June Serrano unsheathed her turbo pulse. “You’re not in the clear, X. Everyone else might think that vid was a setup, but I’m not so sure. You could be playing the Inventor’s long game as we speak.”

  Kara turned to the Hokkis, Rain Pai and Joa Zaan.

  “Come here. Look inside.”

  They hesitated. “Already did,” Rain said. “Got the idea.”

  “Look again.”

  Though Kara had no direct authority over the Green Sun agents, they complied. She told them to take a long look, which they did.

  “Would you vote to help transport her topside?”

  Rain shrugged. “If there’s still a chance. I mean, why not?”

  Joa appeared nauseous. “I think RJ’s right. I didn’t look close the first time, but cud … she’s fit to be buried.”

  “June?” Kara asked.

  “I follow orders. You civilians want to do it, I won’t stand in your way. And X? Well, he’ll dig himself deeper.”

  Kara studied Simone again and saw the young woman as if for the first time. No more idealism, no naivete that somehow all the answers they sought were conveniently located inside this tube. Simone was a shadow of a human being. Whatever she might have meant to the Alliance or to Ryllen was long gone.

  “Joa’s right. So was Ryllen. I’m not a doctor, but I think this machine is keeping her alive. If she’s disconnected from it, she’ll die. I think in every way that matters, she already has. I’m sorry, Exeter. We have to face it.”

  He didn’t push back. Rather, he walked away, hands to his face.

  “Simone knew everything. She was here almost as early as Mother and I. She knew what Amayas was like. She serviced him. They tried to hide it, but I saw them. He set up a room not far from here. I don’t understand why he left her behind … like this.”

  “Maybe one day, you can ask him.”

  “I’ll try to remember that before I kill him.”

  Exeter wiped away a round of tears and stiffened his shoulders.

  “Simone deserves better. If she’s really gone, I need to know. I intend to open the tube. Then I’ll give her a proper sendoff.”

  “Which would be?” Lucas asked.

  “She devoted her life to this station and the Alliance. I’ll bury her on the surface next to Mother.”

  “If the Colonel agrees. That’s a time-consuming proposition.”

  “I don’t care. I spent the last five years killing people faster than I can count. I never looked back to see who was suffering and needed the mercy of a kill shot.” He focused on his fellow Talons. “We had to. There wasn’t time to finish. But I’m not walking away from this. Help me or don’t. I’m going to do one honorable thing while I’m here.”

  “I don’t have an objection,” Kara said. “She was your friend. I’ll speak to Ryllen if needed.”

  “Thank you, Kara. And thank you for defending me against the vid. I’m not a spy or a traitor. I just want all this to end.”

  She stood back as Exeter studied the control panel.

  “These are medical readouts. The release must be along the side.”

  He surveyed the creases along the tube’s shell and opened a flap at the foot. He studied a small panel of options and tried each until the tube responded with a whoosh.

  Air escaped narrow valves as the tube cracked open. Exeter heaved the top casing up and back, leaving Simone D’Chinou exposed. Though he obstructed her view, Kara didn’t have to wait for the findings to know this tube was the woman’s coffin. She wore only a blue wrap over her waist, and her body clearly had gone without food or water for weeks. She died long ago.

  Other eyes crept closer to see the ghastly remains, to wonder what sort of monster did this. Amid her horror, Kara asked two other pertinent questions: Why hide her away? Why did the tube not display her death?