She checked where the others were stationed. Kris had command and was keeping a fretful eye on the boards. Trine was devoting most of their energy to the investigation, and probably wouldn’t have objected anyway. And Olli and Kittering were monopolizing the ship’s printers with some private piece of business. At first, Solace thought Olli was printing medicines. Most people who spent that much time jacked into machinery ended up with all sorts of chronic pain and neurological imbalances. To her surprise, Solace discovered a comms connection from Olli’s current station by the printers, artfully bounced off a series of satellites to obscure its origin point. Olli was definitely exchanging information with someone around Berlenhof. For a cold moment Solace’s mind was racing. Is she Hugh? Is she already ahead of me? As carefully as she could she tried to get a sense of what the pair of them were doing, without alerting them.
The electronic misdirection was nicely done but short on encryption. So, not spy work. It looked as though Olli was querying library databases for information about pharmacology and xenobiology. Solace isolated some of her search terms, but the requests seemed haphazard rather than targeted. All very mysterious, but probably not germane to Solace’s current problems. However, if she was deft herself, she could use their comms as a carrier wave to conceal her own traffic.
Solace wasn’t a tech, but you didn’t grow up on a Partheni fleet without a fair amount of cross-training. In the drone bay, given that Olli was actually out of it for once, she accessed the ship’s main systems. Then she began inserting her own callsign as a hidden layer beneath the ongoing research dialogue.
She set up her code and sent it off, flagged so that the Parthenon ships out there would pick it up. No material data yet, in case of interception, just a string of handshakes and ID. After that it was down to waiting, and flinching guiltily when Kris left her post to go use the head. I am doing my duty, she told herself. And yet she felt wretched and furtive, an absurd situation for a Partheni myrmidon.
The response came promptly, although she’d felt every dragging minute of delay as the signal tracked the long way to Berlenhof and back. Olli and Kit continued their work, alternating library queries with commands to the printer. They were trying to coax some unfamiliar concoction from it for some reason. If it was drugs they were after, they were going a long way for their next fix.
Then the next data packet from Berlenhof had a rider for her; compressed data hidden in the handshake codes that bracketed each exchange like telomeres. She read Monitor Superior Tact responding to Myrmidon Executor Solace, along with all the expected assurances to let Solace know that was who she was dealing with. Then came Do you have the Intermediary?
Tact: the superior who’d set her after Idris in the first place. On the one hand, Solace didn’t have to waste time introducing herself or dealing with some obstructive mid-rank. On the other hand it meant the fate of Idris was suddenly front and centre and that wasn’t what she was calling about.
Shift of priorities. Ship’s crew in possession of live Originator regalia, certified genuine, believed still active despite transit. Hegemonic containment in place. And send.
She put her back to the wall, cool against the thin weave of her bodysleeve. I am not betraying anybody, she insisted to herself. This is for the best. After all, what would the Colonies do with the things? Waste them, use them to prop up some planet like Magda or Berlenhof, where their rich lived? Whereas the Parthenon would take that tech and analyse it. They’d discover its secrets and save many worlds – or the universe. That was what she told herself.
Send location immediately. Team being prepped.
Solace bit her lip. Of course she must send their location and heading. Direct intervention was the only way, except . . .
Request crew not harmed; reimbursed for service to Parthenon.
Passed to Bursary Tribunal. I’m sure there will be something. Location didn’t come through. Please re-send.
That middle sentence. Monitor Superior Tact’s own words, not a clipped standard message. There will be something. Not a threat, like Uskaro or the Essiel gangster might have made, but a genuine promise of reward. Solace believed it.
Then: Also confirm Int status for simultaneous collection.
Solace stared at the line. Idris was lying like a dead man, just a room away. And Idris needed help, without doubt. Help he might get from Hugh. Help he could also get from the Parthenon, with fewer strings . . . Except . . .
Team ready. Location please.
She prepared the data, hesitated, discovering the unwelcome truth that she was going to hate herself no matter what. The mechanical back and forth of Olli’s convenient library queries continued shuttling through its network of blinds and satellites. Still, Solace could almost feel Tact’s razor-sharp attention on her, even from where Heaven’s Sword orbited Berlenhof.