Dark Beneath the Moon, page 35
“Yuskeya, we need to scan for the Chron artifact,” Hirin said. “I can do it if Sord still needs attention.”
Jahelia Sord waved Yuskeya away. “I’m fine,” she said, pulling herself up into the chair at the vacant console.
Yuskeya returned to the nav console, and I pulled another skimchair over to sit near Sord. “Hirin,” I said, “it’s probably overdue, but you have the chair.”
He bowed in acquiescence, and I turned to Sord. In a low voice I said, “You know a lot more about my bioscavs than I understand. Want to tell me how?”
She regarded me for a long moment, her brown eyes unreadable. “I’ve told Maja some,” she said finally. “Suffice to say, my father worked with your mother. He, and my own mother, and I, all have—or had—similar bioscavs to yours.”
“Had?”
Her eyes flicked away and then to me. “They’re both dead. My father, eight years ago, my mother, a while before that.” She leaned forward in her chair, resting her elbows on her knees. “Here’s what you need to know. My father tried to save my mother’s life when her bioscavs broke down, like it seems yours did. He filtered them out of her system, same as that Chron doctor did on the station.”
I swallowed hard. “But—it didn’t work?”
She turned her eyes to her hands, as youthful and unlined as mine, studying them as she remembered. “She got better—for a day. And died that night. Nosebleed, headache . . . convulsions. It was only a wild guess that whatever the Chron doc had injected you with would keep the symptoms at bay for a while longer, but even the first injection didn’t give you much time. You’ve got to get to your mother as fast as you damn well can.”
I nodded. “As soon as we locate the artifact here, we’ll use the activator drive and try to ghost this wormhole to Mu Cassiopeia, where she is. Should be,” I added. I knew she was scheduled to travel to the Schulyer Group’s labs on Mars sometime soon. I could only hope that she hadn’t left yet, and that the Corvid drive really had access to all our nav data. If the conversion hadn’t worked—but I wouldn’t let myself think about that.
“Found it,” Yuskeya said. “Baden, I’m feeding the data to you. We should be able to lock on with the activator drive.” She glanced over at me. “You still okay, Captain? If this works, we’ll have you to your mother in no time.”
“I’m fine,” I told her. If the injection had bought me a limited amount of time, we couldn’t waste any. I returned to Sord.
“I’m . . . not going to turn you over to the Protectorate,” I said, almost surprising myself. I really hadn’t known I was going to say that until the words were out, although the idea had been bubbling in my mind for a little while now. I didn’t understand all the reasons Jahelia Sord had become entangled in our lives, but I felt sure that whatever they were, they’d changed along the way. We’d been through things together, and I thought we’d both come out the other side feeling differently.
Her eyebrows rose. “You’re not? A bit of piloting and a filched medical injector and all’s forgiven?”
I chuckled. “Not quite. I’ll need your datapad—and all those files—in order to prove to the Protectorate what PrimeCorp has been doing.”
Her hand twitched as if to grab something, but she only shrugged and said, “Sure. I understand.”
“But whatever else is in the storage room that ‘belongs’ to you—you can keep. On one condition.”
She tilted her head. “Which is?”
“You sell it to anyone but PrimeCorp,” I told her.
She laughed. “Deal.”
We’d pulled up near an asteroid that looked like any other . . . until you magnified it on the screen, as Viss had done. Then you could tell that it had been constructed, the way the first artifact moon we’d found had been. “About to initiate the activator drive,” Viss said. “Everyone ready?”
“Go ahead,” Hirin said, after a glance at me. I smiled and nodded.
The light flashed out from the Tane Ikai and, as expected, had no obvious impact on the asteroid. On the viewscreen, however, the wormhole began to glow blue and silver, just as it had when the Chron had activated the moon near the wormhole to Delta Pavonis. The colours spun, swirling like a whirlpool, and the cone of silver-blue light pushed out from the mouth of the wormhole. I was glad we’d seen this phenomenon already, and knew it was normal. I never would have had the courage to order Rei to fly into that pointed tip of light otherwise.
I felt a sudden heaviness grip my chest and squeeze, as if I were back on that gurney on the Chron station and someone had pulled the restraints too tight.
“Some of the beam reflected,” Yuskeya said. “Doesn’t seem to have had any effect on us, though.”
“Ready for skip,” Rei said. “Viss, initiate the drive?”
I gasped, the sound abnormally loud in my ears. The icepick headache returned, stabbing into my temple and shooting all the way into my eye. I think I cried out.
All heads—except Rei’s, since she was guiding us through the terminal point, swivelled towards me. Jahelia Sord’s hand gripped my arm. It felt as hot as a Lobor’s fervid touch. I leaned forward in my chair and vomited, then slid forward off the skimchair seat. Sord’s hands grabbed me around the shoulders and lowered me to the deck, away from the spreading puddle I’d created. My legs began to jerk, kicking feebly at nothing, and cold sweat stung my brow. This time a fog seemed to be lowering over my vision, closing in from the sides, narrowing my field of view down to a hazy tunnel with no discernible light at the end.
No. No. I was suddenly so tired of this. Tired of being sick, and weak, and never knowing when my body would rebel against me again.
Hirin was there then, taking my hand, whispering to me. “Hang on, Luta. We’re almost there. One more skip. Hang on.”
And Maja, stroking my hair away from my face. My beautiful daughter. At least we’d solved our differences before—
That was my last thought before the fog rolled in to claim me.
Chapter 42 – Luta
After the War
THE NEXT FEW days were ones I don’t remember, since I was unconscious for the vast majority of them. I know, because Hirin has told me, and my continued existence makes it evident, that we found Mother as expected on Kiando, and she was able to give me—just in time—an infusion of new nanobioscavengers. They apparently went to war with the mutated ones the Chron filtration system had missed, and won, and were now hard at work repairing whatever damage had been done. I missed this internal bioscavenger war entirely, being deeply sedated so the bioscavs could do their job.
I learned that the Stillwell reported in a few days after we landed on Kiando, having mysteriously found itself once again on the Delta Pavonis side of the wormhole. I strongly suspected the Corvids might have had a hand in that, since Jahelia Sord’s ship had also been found drifting nearby. I said nothing, since the crew was intact and healthy, despite widespread confusion and a large gap in their collective memory. Maybe someday I’d get the chance to ask Fha about it.
I know that Hirin did as I’d promised, despite deeply mistrusting my judgement at that moment, and let Jahelia Sord walk off the Tane Ikai and disappear. I finally got a chance to sit up in bed and ask him some more questions about her a week after we arrived on Kiando. Gusain Buig, Duntmindi’s Chairman on the planet and Mother’s significant other, had opened his house—his mansion—to all of us. I felt quite pampered. My bedroom had been decorated in soothing, creamy tones with touches of rose and yellow striping the furniture and the window hangings. Soft rugs covered the floors, and fresh flowers scented the room every morning. I could have spent more time snuggling into the softness of the bed and enjoying the idea that I’d be back to normal soon, but I had questions and Hirin had been deflecting them, telling me to “wait until you feel better.”
“Okay, Hirin,” I said, settling comfortably against a mound of pillows and tucking the forest-green organic velvet coverlet around me, “spill. What happened with Jahelia Sord?”
He pursed his lips and I thought he might try to evade the question again, but he must have read something in my eyes. He sighed. “Well, I think there was a lot more to her than the not-so-great PrimeCorp operative we thought she was at first.”
“She proved that several times over,” I agreed. But that was an evasive answer; I could tell there was more. “What? What else?”
“There was a message on the computer in her room. For you.” He dug a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to me. “This is what it said.”
It didn’t take long to read. There were only fourteen words.
Captain Paixon,
Ask your mother about my father, Berrto Sord. I will see you both again.
I looked up at Hirin, frowning. “Did you? Ask Mother?”
He shook his head. “Thought I’d leave that for you. Jahelia Sord also,” he continued, “took the datachip from Cerevare’s quarters. The one Fha gave us, with all the Chron information on it.”
I sat forward. “What?”
“Guess we should have thought of it first,” he admitted grimly. “But she did leave copies of all the files on the computer in Cerevare’s room.”
“That little—”
“She also took her datapad with her, and left a fake one with me.”
I couldn’t suppress a gasp at that. “That was our evidence—”
He held up a hand. “Don’t get too excited. She left a full copy—as far as Baden can tell—of almost all its files.”
“The Chron dictionary? The PrimeCorp files? Everything?”
“Apparently. Everything except the AI itself. There’s also a personal log file she’d been keeping as sort of a journal. I didn’t read much of that, and put an encryption on it. Figured you should read it first, then decide who, if anyone, you want to share it with.”
I relaxed against the pillows again, letting my momentary anger drain away. Jahelia Sord was nothing if not an opportunist, and she could certainly see the value in the tech and information she’d walked away with. I could hardly blame her for protecting her own interests. She’d at least had the decency to copy the files. I carefully folded up her note, running my finger along the sharp creases. I tucked it under the covers beside me. It—and Sord herself—would take some thinking about. “Thanks. So what’s going to happen with PrimeCorp?”
Hirin settled back in the rose-and-yellow-striped wing chair and crossed his legs. “I gave Lanar the datapacket from Fha, and copies of all the PrimeCorp files from Sord’s datapad, and he delivered them to the Council. Currently there’s a huge uproar within the Nearspace Council—they’re trying to keep the story quiet, but it’s only a matter of time. Everyone in the corporation denies any knowledge of the Chron, or secret wormholes, or century-old collaboration—any of it. As they would. The files wouldn’t be admissible in court, because they were illegally obtained, but the Protectorate is launching a full investigation, and the files give them a roadmap. They’ve placed us all under temporary protection. We’ve told them everything we can, and they say heads will roll this time, but . . .”
“PrimeCorp is trying to make sure that some people might go down, but the muck won’t splash very far up the ladder,” I finished for him.
“I don’t know if they’ll be able to—not this time.”
“Is the Protectorate planning to contact the Corvids?”
Hirin nodded. “I talked to Lanar, and he says the Council feels it’s imperative—it’s nice to see them agreeing on something for once. Well, except for the ambassadors from the PrimeCorp worlds, of course. They’re still in full denial mode and trying to convince the rest of the Council that we suffered some mass hallucination or something. But I think Lanar intends to ask us to go through the Delta Pavonis wormhole again, once you’re better, with a full delegation.”
I wasn’t sure what I thought of that. “I’d love to go back and learn more about the Corvids,” I said, “but ‘full delegation’ sounds like it would entail a lot of diplomacy. Sounds like it might get old really fast.”
He half-smiled. “Agreed. But it is the Worlds Council. We might not have much of a choice.”
“And it could be war,” I said. The thought sent a shiver down my spine that had nothing to do with any inadequacy of warmth in the coverlet. I asked the question there hadn’t really been time to consider while everything was happening. “What’s PrimeCorp doing, Hirin? What do they want, working with the Chron? The—the broken ones, anyway, as my doctor friend called them.”
Hirin steepled his fingers in his characteristic thinking pose, tapping them against his lips. “I’ve been considering that, and Lanar and your mother and I had a long chat about it. If our speculation is right, and their original association with the Chron began as a business deal, maybe that deal went sour—”
“And led to the war?”
He shrugged. “It could happen. I don’t imagine PrimeCorp was necessarily very well-versed in first contact protocols. Countless things could have gone wrong.”
I pursed my lips and nodded. “And the Corvids stepped in and stopped it. But somewhere along the line, maybe tens of decades later, PrimeCorp made contact with the Chron again.”
“Maybe to try and make a new deal,” Hirin said. “If they’d discovered a common enemy, or a common goal. And could see a profit in it.”
“Or the possibility of a coup?”
He stared at me. “You think PrimeCorp wants to literally control all of Nearspace?”
It was my turn to shrug. “Could we completely discount it as a possibility?”
He drew a deep breath and blew it out in a long sigh. “Completely? No. But it’s hard to get my head around.” He fiddled with the edge of the green coverlet, flipping the scalloped edge between his fingers. “PrimeCorp has become a bit of an enigma to me,” he said finally. “I know we’ve had nothing but trouble from them, but—they’ve done a lot of good, too.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
He shrugged diffidently. “The deeper I dig into everything about them, the more of a dichotomy I find. They support considerable charitable work. They manufacture medicines and equipment that improve the lives of Nearspace citizens—and don’t sell them all at exorbitant rates. They have divisions that don’t seem to have any corruption. I know there’s a lot that’s rotten at the higher levels of the management structure—”
“You can say that again. I can smell the stink from here.” I’d crossed my arms over my chest and felt my brow furrow into a deep frown. What was Hirin saying? He’d seen and heard everything about PrimeCorp that I had. They’d been responsible for his prolonged illness and confinement in the nursing home, for heaven’s sake.
He leaned back in the chair and ran his hands over the short salt-and-pepper stubble of his hair. “I’m not saying we were wrong about PrimeCorp. But I think they’re a little like the Chron—there’s a good side and a bad side. Not everyone involved with PrimeCorp is evil. It might be important to keep that in mind as things unfold. That’s all I’m saying.”
I closed my eyes, silent as I thought about his words. I wanted to argue, but Jahelia Sord’s face rose in my mind. She’d been anything but black-and-white. I’d asked for this discussion, but maybe I wasn’t quite ready to take it all in. The enormity of PrimeCorp’s possible plans, and what Hirin was telling me, felt a bit staggering. Finally I opened my eyes. “Okej, we’re not going to think about it anymore right now.”
He smiled, the skin crinkling at the corners of his grey eyes, and took my hand. “Aye, Captain. Any more burning questions?”
“No, I guess that will do for now.” I squinted at him. “I do want you to do me a favour. Send Viss and Yuskeya in to see me, would you? Together.”
“Sure. You going to sort them out, finally?”
I grinned. “Something like that. I think I should have done it long ago. And tell Mother I want to talk to her tonight, would you?”
VISS AND YUSKEYA came in together about an hour later. I’d had a short nap, and I felt refreshed and ready to give those two a good talking-to. They didn’t look at each other when they entered the room, although Viss stood aside politely to let Yuskeya go first. She’d exchanged her Protectorate uniform for a turquoise-blue blouse and peasant-style skirt, and her face was more cheerful and relaxed than I’d seen it in a long time. She crossed to the bed to give me a warm hug.
“Well, you look better.”
“It’s not hard to improve on being slumped unconscious on the floor. But thank you. I feel better. And I wanted to thank you for helping me make it long enough to get to Mother.”
“My pleasure,” she said, grinning. “Although I did have a little help along the way.”
“Good to see you, Captain,” Viss said in a voice that was both deep and warm. He stood, almost at attention, at the foot of the bed.
“I wanted to talk to both of you,” I began, “because I’ve discovered that almost dying refines one’s perspective on life wonderfully. Now, as Captain, I’ve tried to mostly stay out of my crew’s personal lives, but I’m neither unobservant nor stupid.”
“Captain—”
“No, I want you to listen. Both of you. I know that you care about each other, but that’s been strained ever since we came here to find Mother. Viss, I know you were surprised—as we all were—that Yuskeya is Protectorate—”
He actually cut me off. “Captain, there’s no need—”
“Prisilenti! Will you please let me finish? That’s an order! Now, I don’t know how much longer Yuskeya will be with us, and I want to see an end to this coldness—”
And this time when they interrupted me, it worked. Viss strode forward, pulled Yuskeya up off the bed and into his arms, and they kissed very—decidedly. When they finally pulled apart and both smiled down at me, all I could say was, “Oh.”
“We worked things out not long after we landed here,” Yuskeya said. “Once the initial excitement of saving your life was over, of course.”
