“Given that for background, you’ll understand how confused I was when the high consul appeared to me eighty . . . eighty-five hours ago in my office in Sol system. He didn’t register on the sensors. He didn’t interact with any physical object or leave any evidence of his presence that could be verified by an outside observer. But he was here. And before you get too happy with the Anton-Trejo’shaving-a-psychotic-break theory, there is some external evidence. Just not here in Sol.
“Shortly after I experienced what I experienced, Duarte disappeared from the State Building. Not popped-out-of-reality disappeared. He put on his pants and a fresh shirt, had a cup of tea and a polite conversation with his valet, then walked off the grounds. Every planetary sensor we have has been sweeping the landscape since then. No one has seen him.
“We’ve got over a thousand colony systems that are wondering if there’s anything left of the government. We have extradimensional enemies experimenting to find ways to snuff us out wholesale. And I am convinced that the answer to both of those issues is Winston Duarte, or whatever the fuck he’s turned into. I’ve known you for a long time, and I trust you. Your mission is to find him and bring him back. You’ve heard of carte blanche, but I promise you have never seen a check this blank. I don’t care what you spend—not in money, equipment, or lives—as long as you bring Winston Duarte back from wherever he’s gone. If he doesn’t want to come, convince him nicely if you can, but this only ends with him in our custody.
“Good hunting, Colonel.”
The message ended. Tanaka leaned back on the sofa, stretching her arms to her sides like a bird unfurling its wings. Her mind was already ticking away. The strangeness of it, the shocking revelations, the threat it posed. All of those were in her. She could feel them. But there was also the calm of a job that needed doing and the pleasure, deeper than she would have guessed, at the power she had just been given.
The door opened quietly, and Admiral Milan came back in.
“Everything all right?” he asked.
Tanaka laughed. “Not even close.”
Chapter Three: Naomi
They waited until the Black Kite was far enough from the ring gate that an intercept burn would have been difficult if not impossible. Then they waited a little more so that they wouldn’t seem suspicious for starting their transit burn at the first possible moment. And then Naomi couldn’t stand waiting anymore.
Three hours after that, the Laconian frigate hit them with a tightbeam demanding in official language and harsh tones of voice who they were and where they thought they were going.
“This is the Vincent Soo, independent freighter on contract with Atmosph?re Shared Liability Corporation out of Earth. We are carrying ore samples for quality control testing. Our public contracts and permissions are attached. Message repeats.”
The voice was built from samples of ten different men, slip-mixed by the Roci’s system so that even if the Laconians realized the message was false, they wouldn’t be able to track the voice patterns back to anyone. The Vincent Soo was a real ship with a similar drive signature and silhouette to their present modified version of the Roci, though it didn’t work outside Sol system. The contracts the message included would come back as real unless someone started digging into them. It was as plausible a mask as Naomi could fashion.
“They aren’t responding,” Alex said.
They were both on the ops deck. The lighting was low, though she noticed that Alex had started keeping even the low settings a little higher than he had when they’d both had younger eyes.
“Could be good, could be bad,” Naomi said.
“Sure wish I could tell which it was.”
“If they start chasing us with their guns blazing, then it was bad.”
Alex nodded. “Yeah. That makes sense. I just wish they’d say ‘Hey, we decided not to chase you down and kill you.’ Just out of courtesy.”
“At this range, we’ll have plenty of time to watch violent death barrel down on us. You won’t miss anything.”
“Well, thank God for that.”
With every minute the Black Kite didn’t answer and didn’t turn its drives in pursuit, Naomi felt the fear of capture or destruction fade, and the fear of transit grow. It was hard to believe that there had been a time when her life hadn’t been moving from one trauma to the next like walking on stepping-stones in an ornamental garden. There had been whole decades when passing through the ring gates hadn’t been more than a passing unease. Yes, if there was too much traffic, the ship could go dutchman— quietly vanish from existence for who-knew-where or no place. But it had been the same scale of threat as anything. They could hit a micrometeor that broke their drive. The magnetic bottle could fail and spill a free fusion reaction into the body of the ship. She could have a stroke.