Kiem seized on the change of topic with some relief. “She came about a year ago from one of the programs I worked with,” he said. “You know, bright people who don’t have the qualifications for whatever reason. I was starting to get asked to the odd event by charities and other people, but when Bel turned up, she figured out that was where I could actually be useful and packed my schedule full of it. Turns out she was right.” They were skimming near the edge of the tunnel, close enough to see the unevenness of the rock wall beside them. “The job was just supposed to be a reference while she found a more permanent place.”
Jainan frowned. “I didn’t realize that.”
“Well, she hasn’t said she wants to go yet, and I’m not bringing it up if she doesn’t.” Kiem drummed one of his feet on the flybug’s floor shell. “Hey, is that the exit?”
It was. Kiem lunged for the route indicator to bring them out of the tunnels. They shot out into the open air, the flybug slowing to a coasting speed, and both of them fell silent.
Below stretched a singly uninviting expanse of barren tundra. The spine of mountains rose up behind them like fangs splitting the landscape from beneath; Kiem hadn’t been to this area before and wasn’t regretting that choice. “Scenic, huh?”
“There,” Jainan said. “Is that it?” He pointed to a toy-sized sprawl of buildings a couple of kilometers away at the same time as a blaring siren came through the flybug’s audio.
“Hah, the good old military hello,” Kiem said. “Mother uses that as her morning alarm.” He keyed their security codes into a response burst.
Ten minutes later they were gliding into the depressing confines of a standard Iskat military base, pieced together from gray fly-and-drop sheds, rows of generators, and a training ground hacked out of the ice. Kiem parked their flybug and waved to the guards who came to meet them. They were handed over to a helpful young trooper who looked about sixteen, had a strong plains accent, and had clearly never done anything quite as exciting in her life as check in two civilian visitors.
Hvaren Base was bustling. Every desk had a soldier at it. Jainan scanned the walls, which had a firework display of different visualizations that presumably had something to do with engineering, while Kiem listened to the trooper breathlessly recite base safety procedures.
“Uh, we were supposed to meet Major Saffer,” Kiem said, when the trooper stopped to heave in a breath. “Is he around?”
“Scheduled for eleven hundred hours, sir!” the trooper said. “I will take you on a tour of the base so you’re not bored!”
“Gosh,” Kiem said. “Can’t wait.”
He hadn’t reckoned with the effect of offering an engineer a tour of an engineering operation. “I would like that very much,” Jainan said, a gleam in his eye that Kiem recognized. “May we speak to the unit responsible for the propulsion design on the screens?”
The trooper looked slightly taken aback and then doubly enthusiastic. They’d done it now. Kiem followed Jainan to the engineers’ corner. Luckily Jainan could have carried that conversation in his sleep, and at least it got them away from the unit on the other side of the room who had the intimidating look of people who wanted to talk about Trade and Export.
As Jainan got deep into the details of however mining worked—he hadn’t mentioned the Imperial College project, which was probably the best approach—Kiem started to count the people in the room. There were only a few dozen, but he saw insignia from three separate divisions, so either the army had started splitting divisions or Kingfisher had about three hundred people, and most of them weren’t in this room or at the palace. The Kingfisher emblem, a jagged silver badge that could just about be a bird midstrike if you squinted, was more prominently displayed than any of the division insignia. There was another memorial photo of Taam at the back of the room, wreathed with gray flowers.
Jainan turned from one of the screens to a holo-abacus floating above one of the desks. One of the engineers had gone to find the person who made it. “You’re having fun,” Kiem said under his breath.
Jainan looked sideways at him, startled. “No, I’m—” He stopped.
“Sirs!” the very helpful trooper said, popping up like a weather alert. “Major Saffer has arrived back at base. Please follow me!”
It was an unnecessary announcement. Just behind her, Aren was removing a heavy outdoor coat. He strode past his trooper, extending a hand. “Jainan! And Prince Kiem. Good to see you. I was hoping to catch you a bit earlier, but I got delayed, sorry about that. You had some questions about Taam and Kingfisher?”
Time to get to work. Jainan had frozen; Kiem automatically shook Aren’s hand. “Good to see you, Aren. Have you got somewhere we could talk?”
CHAPTER 15
“Embezzlement?” Aren said, stopping in his tracks. “That’s impossible.”
They stood in a snowy, windswept gravel yard outside the gray monolith of the base. Aren had taken Kiem’s suggestion they talk somewhere quiet and invited them to see the hangar, an enormous shell of a structure large enough to hold a small spaceship.
Kiem pulled his coat around himself in the cutting wind. “Yeah. I know,” he said. “But I’ve seen the evidence. We can show you.”
Aren didn’t immediately ask for proof. He took off his uniform hat and tugged at his hair, disordering the pale curls. “I would have seen—I mean, Taam dealt with the budgets, I’m only on personnel and logistics, but I can’t believe I could have missed it.”
“We should take this inside,” Jainan said quietly. “This is not something any soldiers should overhear.”
“No,” Aren said. “Fuck, no. Let’s get inside.”
He gave the hangar door his bios and ushered them in, rubbing his forehead every couple of seconds as if he’d been physically stunned. They stepped into a dim cavern.
Despite the situation, Jainan let out a low, soft breath. A scale model gleamed above them, suspended several meters above the ground and ringed with an observation catwalk. To Kiem’s eyes it looked like a space station, but he could see REFINERY MODEL 002 stenciled on the side, along with another jagged Kingfisher logo. There were other models, some in their own vacuum units: engines and odd combinations of pipes and liquids. Jainan couldn’t keep his gaze away from them.
“Our design models,” Aren said absently. “I was going to give you the tour, but that’s just become a lot less relevant.” He stopped at the foot of some catwalk stairs and turned, leaning against the railings. His face was pale and determined. “Okay. I’m listening.”
It was the wrong place to lay out Jainan’s painstaking evidence trail, so Kiem kept it short: the equipment. The obfuscated finances. The encrypted messages sent over relays that Bel had identified as fence drops used by Sefalan raiders.
“But why?” Aren said, sounding baffled. He focused on Jainan. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you’re lying. But why would Taam risk it?”
Jainan had rested a hand on the railing beside him, and his knuckles were clenched tight around it. “I don’t know,” he said. “I may—I may be wrong.”