“Doesn’t matter what I think,” she said at long last. “My life’s over. My family will be dead in a few days. But if you really need to know, Trevor? Fine. You don’t have a perfect score. You made a mistake.”

  “Hmm. Just one?”

  “Yes.”

  “Which is?”

  Something new washed over Hoshi’s features. Trevor recognized it, but not in a way that excited him.

  Pride.

  She beamed with pride.

  “You’re wrong about me. I’m a soldier. I can watch.” Then, after a pregnant pause for obvious dramatic effect: “I have watched.”

  He felt an awkward chill.

  “Who else? The other four MODs? Were you the one who ...?”

  Hoshi laughed. “He’s long gone from Amity.”

  “Then who?”

  “You’ll know when you find him. The rest is for you to figure out. You’re never wrong, Trevor, so I’m sure you’ll solve the case.”

  He wanted to believe it was a bluff. Wishful thinking.

  “I’ll hand it to you, Hoshi. You had everybody in this station fooled. Your act was so well crafted. Saluting Dorrit, making him feel like a big man. Throwing me just enough complimentary bones to feed my ego. And then those strange attempts at roping me into dinner and ... well, who knows what? Was there an endgame with me, too? Was I going to turn up dead in the near future?”

  Her eyes deadened into the place where bluffers do not go.

  “Don’t assume you won’t.”

  Trevor found one consolation that others in Sec Admin might not: He didn’t know her long enough to care about her.

  Now, he wanted to beat her senseless.

  Instead, he walked away and waited for Dorrit.

  A moment later, Connor provided the heads-up.

  “On our way in.”

  He gave Dorrit a moment to absorb the breathtaking scene. The big man grabbed at his considerable chest. For a second, Trevor thought he was having a heart attack, but Dorrit waved him off.

  “I ... I don’t know what to say. Hoshi? How could you ...?”

  “Chief, no.”

  Trevor pulled Dorrit away. Much of his color had vanished. Teeing off on Hoshi wouldn’t do him any favors.

  “Stand guard, C. She might make a run for the tea.”

  Connor found the line funny.

  “She ain’t getting off that easy on my watch.”

  Trevor escorted Dorrit to the far end of the room.

  “Listen, I’ll explain everything. But right now, we need to act fast. She and Bien Thet are in this together.”

  “Headmaster Thet? I can’t believe he’d ...”

  “Thet doesn’t know what’s happened here. We have to keep it that way. We need to sneak both of them off the station as soon as possible. If we ...”

  Dorrit’s eyes ballooned to an apoplectic state.

  “Are you insane? We have three dead students. You want their killer gone?”

  “Sneak them onto a warship outside. Ship them to SI. Admiral Woolsey and Director Devonshire can make it happen. Chief, we don’t know how many agents Black Star has on Amity, or how connected they are. I guarantee they’ll be activated when word gets out. You heard what happened to the Motif inventor. If Black Star comes for these two, we’ll have a bloodbath on this station.”

  Trevor saw terror in the man so close to his gentle retirement.

  “Chief, you told me yesterday that sometimes we have to fight a quiet war. Now I understand. Those three students killed themselves. It was a ritual suicide. We can explain it that way. Yes, the school will take a hit. So will Amity. But we’ll move forward. We’ll have a chance to hunt down their agents. Amity Station will still be safe.”

  Dorrit balanced one arm on Trevor.

  “I ... dear ... I don’t know. I should speak with the other chiefs. What about the President? If she learns what we did ...”

  “She won’t say a cudfrucking word. She needs Amity cleaned. We have to act now.”

  He nodded in reluctant agreement.

  “What about the bodies? If we bring in a team of lifetechs, it will cause a stir. People will ask questions.”

  “I know. You won’t like my solution, but I think it’s our best bet.”

  Dorrit’s color drained when he heard the plan. Trevor didn’t blame him. All remaining regs had effectively been abandoned.

  “Tell me, Trevor, how could I have been so deceived for a year?”

  They glared at Hoshi, who bore no resemblance to the woman Dorrit thought he knew.

  “We all have blinders, Chief. I know that’s little comfort. They played us, and now we’re facing a hell of a fight.”

  After several dicey hours working with Dorrit to pull off a sleight of hand, the exhausted brothers sat down at home and reflected. Connor poured them both a drink.

  “It was the right move, T.”

  “Depends upon who screams first and loudest.”

  They clanked glasses.

  “You’re the smartest guy I know. Where would this station be without you?”

  “I love you, too, Connor.”

  It was a good plan. It covered the bases and bought them time.

  And it almost worked.

  32

  OVER THE NEXT EIGHT DAYS, filled with perilous maneuvers, contentious security meetings, and a few moments of earned peace with Ana in his arms, Trevor couldn’t shake what he witnessed in Spin Room AL-43.

  They were so young, walking a path toward certain prosperity. And yet, their commitment to savages who would destroy that future felt inviolate. They’d give their lives for the cause. Kill for it. And along the way, hide their true face in pursuit of ... what?

  Madness? Chaos? Anarchy?

  Hoshi said nothing else before she was sedated and boxed as cargo. Didn’t have to. Her eyes, dark and lost, spoke a language he’d never comprehend. Radicalized, SI Director Devonshire called her. A growing phenomenon among Black Star converts.

  “How do we fight it?” He asked her.

  “We can’t. Not yet.”

  “Why?”

  “We don’t have the resources. Until we take out the leadership, this disease will spread.”

  The interim solution – a painful necessity – plugged the leaks. Station personnel underwent a security reevaluation, not one vestige of their lives left uncovered. The Maynor student body came next. The general population would soon follow. President Haas quietly suspended the Amity Charter’s personal privacy clauses. She hoped their efforts would not run afoul of Constitutional diehards among the Interstellar Congress.

  They might not have resorted to such extreme measures were it not for Orval Erdogan.

  Fourteen hours after Hoshi Oda and Bien Thet quietly vanished from the station, someone reported Orval missing. Trevor took lead on the search. He knew what they’d find inside the man’s flat.

  “I can watch,” Hoshi told him. “I have watched.”

  This time, it wasn’t Motif with elevated K3. Trevor found Orval shot through the head. He lay sprawled against cabinetry beneath the kiosk, his brains splattered behind him.

  He might not have belonged to Black Star, but he knew too much about Ulbrecht’s business. Poor kid was doomed the moment his ex-business partner died.

  The radiant charge inside his wound matched the energy signature of the pistol Hoshi carried into the Spin Room. It wasn’t Sec Admin-issued; just another piece of contraband passed through Customs.

  That particular leak was closed within a day. The agent wasn’t a Black Star loyalist, just an asshole who received a huge payoff and never asked questions.

  It did not, however, erase the furor sparked by Orval’s death. A critical truth could not be whitewashed: A resident of Amity had been killed in his own home, and Sec Admin had no suspects. A murderer walked among them. Did Orval know his killer? Was it connected to the triple suicide at Raison?

  The debate lingered on how to solve the case. Reveal the killer’s true identity? If so, a false story awaited approval: Hoshi and Orval had a personal relationship. She killed him in a crime of passion.

  Trevor agreed it might work, but how to explain her absence? Was she distraught afterward? Space herself through an airlock?

  No. Her body would have been detected by station sensors or warship surveillance drones.

  Eight days gone, and still the loose threads dangled. Two parts of Trevor’s strategy did hold up, however.

  His financial requests showed huge influxes of UCVs far beyond salary into accounts belonging to the students, Hoshi, and their families. The largest, steadiest income went to Bien Thet, whose coffers swelled fifty percent in the past standard year. Linking the credits directly to Black Star would take months if not years, but that task belonged to people far above Trevor’s pay stamp.

  In the short term, his plan to deal with the triple suicide held up against scrutiny.

  That night, Dorrit called in a veteran lifetech he trusted. The man arrived in nightclub attire, as requested, along with a pair of snapdrones. He used the devices to selectively sterilize the Spin Room, leaving only the students’ fingerprints and genetic residue.

  Trevor and Connor restored Hoshi’s full birdwoman attire and carried her out the front door, pretending she was drunk. Staff did not bat an eye.

  Trevor never lied to more people about more things than he did those following days. When he visited his little girl, Effie asked leading questions; she knew something was afoot when he replied with non-answers or simply, “It’s a need-to-know basis.”

  Not the most endearing quality if he ever contemplated winning her back into his arms.

  Dorrit buckled under the pressure. Twice, he called in sick. Fatigue, he claimed. Trevor thought it was the fat man’s heart. He advised checking in with a doc. Dorrit refused; quiet time with his wife would do the trick, he insisted.

  “He might retire early,” Trevor told his brother. “Or Central will force him out. They’re looking for a scapegoat.”

  “You don’t think ...” Connor didn’t finish the sentence, but Trevor knew where he was headed.

  “No, C. They won’t come after me. I saved their asses. Plus, I’ve got Devonshire and Woolsey on my side.”

  “Maybe, bruv, but they’re not the President.”

  “She won’t move against them. Right now, Haas needs the UNF and SI firmly in her corner.”

  Connor’s instincts weren’t wrong. The political game trumped every other machination. Trevor uncovered the most serious threat to station security since Amity opened for business; yet only eight people knew. There’d be no special commendations or a public ceremony honoring his feat.

  If Grandfather Max were alive, he’d have insisted on public redemption filled with pomp and circumstance.

  Just as well, Trevor thought. He wanted his good name restored, but not in a way that might make him a target.

  “Was there an endgame with me, too?” He asked Hoshi that night. “Was I going to turn up dead in the near future?”

  “Don’t assume you won’t,” she replied.

  Hoshi never spoke to him again.

  Soon after their conversation about scapegoats, the brothers sat down for dinner, during which Connor – unusually quiet – broached a subject Trevor did not see coming.

  “Remember how I told you I was close to making a big decision about my life? About finding my purpose?”

  “Sure. You said the Loutah was helping you work it out, but you were scared.”

  Connor set his dinner plate aside.

  “I’ve made a decision, and I’m not scared anymore. I know what I’ve got to do with my life. I want to join the fight.”

  “Oh?”

  “I need your help, but I don’t think you’re going to be keen on it.”

  “Hey, you were there for me, C. Anything I can do, just ask.”

  Connor called it: Trevor wasn’t keen.

  He also refused to stand in his little brother’s way.

  The next day, Trevor spoke with Admiral Woolsey at a security conference, bypassing military bureaucracy for a quick resolution.

  Five days later, the Stallion brothers celebrated their last hours together in the company of their only family. Connor showed up at the Stallion-Labroque flat with hair cropped above his ears for the first time in twenty years. He carried one small satchel – all the possessions he’d need for his next destination.

  They celebrated with Ana’s favorite cake, Effie’s preferred wine, and Catalan-style lamb balls that Connor loved when he was a kid. Trevor tried to bear up with a smile and a hearty laugh, mostly for Ana, who didn’t seem to understand at first what was happening.

  “You’re going away, Uncle C?” She said, a tear on her cheek. “You can’t leave.”

  Connor sat her on his knee.

  “I’m going on a long trip, Annie-M. Just like your Mama sometimes. I’ll be back.”

  “When?”

  “Might be a while, but I promise to deepstream when I can. What do you think about that?”

  She wiped away the tears.

  “Mama brings me gifts when she visits the planets. You promise to do the same?”

  “I’m all over it, kiddo. What do you prefer? Candy? Furry things? Jewelry?”

  Ana looked to her parents as if asking permission.

  “Painted rocks.”

  Connor scrunched his eyes in momentary confusion before reality hit.

  “Oh, so that’s what your collection’s about.”

  “Mama brought me nine so far.”

  Effie intervened, speaking to her daughter.

  “Connor won’t have control over what planets he visits. So, if he sends you one, it might be from a place where I’ve already been. That’s OK, Ana. Right?”

  The girl beamed.

  “Oh, sure. As long as it’s from you, Uncle C, I’ll treasure it.”

  Connor kissed her on both cheeks, and she sank into his massive frame for a long hug.

  Sometimes, Trevor thought she loved Connor as much as her Papa, if not more. Uncle C brought a unique magic into her life. If she never saw him after today, her little heart would break.

  As would Trevor’s.

  He had tried to talk Connor out of leaving, but Trevor stopped when he sensed his brother’s commitment. It was a far cry from anything he’d heard in their nineteen years on Amity.

  “I’ve been drifting long enough, T. My life has to be about a higher calling. I’m strong, I’m fast, and I’m smarter than people think. I’m exactly what they’re looking for.”

  “You can see yourself as a soldier?”

  He smiled like a man truly at peace with his choice.

  “Already am. Just need the uniform and a blast rifle. The rest, they can teach me.”

  “And they will. But Connor, why not stay here and join Sec Admin? Work with me. You might have heard, but Haven needs a new Second Deputy. You’ve seen what we’re up against.”

  “I blew that chance a long time ago. This is your battleground. Those assholes in Central will see it before long: You’re the man to keep Amity safe. I need to fight the bastards wherever Central Command sends me.”

  “But why the interdiction forces? Their work is dangerous. The UNF offers so many other ways to serve.”

  Connor sipped the last of his after-dinner drink.

  “I’m sure they need folks to keep the air recycling system on their warships in top shape. No thanks, bruv. We lost Mother and Father in the last war. I won’t dishonor them anymore. Whatever I can do to stop the next war, I’m there. Please, Trevor. Speak to the Admiral.”

  The rest was easy. Woolsey’s master plan included a vast expansion to the Interdiction Fleet, which came into direct contact with Black Star forces more often than any division. Trevor offered a glowing recommendation, even as Woolsey said the UNF incurred more than half its casualties in skirmishes with Black Star.

  “I’m proud of Connor,” Effie told Trevor while they watched him play with Ana. “He’s a brave man, like his brother. She is going to miss him terribly, but she’s not the only one. If you ever need to talk, Trev, I’m here.”

  The offer sounded like it was made out of obligation rather than love. Her tender voice was a charade. Would it have made any difference if she knew the truth? What happened at Raison was officially classified. He doubted Effie had any idea about the full scope of the threat. Few on Amity did.

  Just as well. They needed distance, except when he visited Ana. The marriage seemed far less important than it did a week ago.

  Nonetheless, the Stallion-Labroque clan traveled together to Harmony Spaceport to see Connor off. Ana loved to stand at the viewing platform and watch commercial liners and transports come and go. Trevor brought her at least once a month since she was old enough to walk.

  Today, Connor did the honors, pointing out his transport and discussing everything he knew about his destination. Ten minutes before boarding, he hugged Effie then bent down.

  “I’m going to talk to your Papa for a minute, then I have to go, Annie-M. You gonna be my best girl while I’m away?”

  “Promise, Uncle C.”

  Connor hugged her as if Ana was his own child. Trevor felt a tear coming on but squelched it. Connor also visibly struggled to hold it together as he led Trevor along the platform.

  “I still think there’s hope, bruv.”

  “Hope?”

  “You and Effie. She still loves you. Don’t give up on that. You’re such a great father. Tell her other man to fuck off.”

  “Yeah. Right. The last time I told someone of importance to fuck off, as you say, I was almost kicked off Amity. Don’t worry, C. I haven’t raised a white flag. Not yet.”

  Connor wrapped an arm around Trevor and leaned in.

  “Have you heard from Central yet?”

  “No. I suspect they’ll hold hearings in a few weeks.”

  “I don’t mean about that.”

  “Oh. Yeah. There’s talk of reorganizing Sec Admin, but nothing official. Some days I think Dorrit is looking for a way out. Other days, he seems up for the fight.”

  “He needs to make the smart move. And if those jackasses don’t promote you ... I swear, bruv, I’ll come back here with a blast rifle and make them do it.”