Reformation: Chapter Forty

Notes: Only a happy reunion to go, I think. Because of course I've got to draw this out! Enjoy some political machinations and people knowing things they shouldn't. And by people, I mean Garrett.

Title: Reformation: Chapter Forty

***

Chapter Forty

“There’s fighting in the Senate.”

“What a shame.”

“Open fighting. Just fists so far, but I wouldn’t be surprised if someone pulls a weapon or sets their bodyguards on another senator before the morning is done.”

Garrett shrugged. “You can’t expect me to be bothered by any of this, Sigurd.”

Admiral Liang’s sharp, knowing gaze stayed fixed on him. “I wondered if you had any idea how far you wanted to see things fall, in the end. Political chaos is inevitable, now that Alexander’s demise is being broadcast on every holo station.”

“And evidence of his perfidity,” Garrett added. “You’re the one who helped me dig that up and make it public. Everything they’re reporting on about the dark fleet, the money laundering, the attacks on the Fringe—that’s all coming directly from your investigation. If you were really all that concerned about instability, you would have waited until someone else had consolidated power to release that information. I wouldn’t stop you either way.”

Sigurd inclined his head. “I know. And timing-wise, if we’re going to prevent another regime from springing up among the former president’s followers, it had to be now. But you can’t simply run away from the mess you helped make.”

“Watch me.”

“Settling back on the Fringe isn’t a long-term plan, Garrett, especially not now that the planets’ legal status is unclear. There will almost inevitably be power plays made out there that the fleet can’t respond to. There will be interplanetary war, every pirate or Drifter with enough people and ships making a play to increase their status, not to mention conflicts between the planetary governments themselves.”

“It’s a good thing that what’s left of the Fleet is out here already then, isn’t it?” Garrett drawled. Jonah snickered next to him, and he resisted the urge to smile. “And that they’ve got you as their commander in chief.”

“I don’t command the entire navy.”

“But you do have ultimate authority over the Academy and its cadets, who are doing the patrolling out here. The rest of the fleet might be powerful, but it’s scattered. You’ve got a nexus of power recovering at Pandora, and better yet, you’ve got the children of people in positions of power. Nobody’s going to move against you with this kind of leverage, and while Alexander’s dark fleet might have been a trial for Federation forces, no real pirates or municipal navies will be able to muster anything like that level of offense. You’re the king of the Fringe.”

“I don’t believe in monarchies.”

“Well, I hope you believe in a benevolent dictatorship, at least for a while, because that’s what I’m putting you in position for.” Admiral Liang’s gaze narrowed, and Garrett hastened to explain himself. “It’s got to be you. You already know that. There’s nobody else in the entire government who comes close to your level of trustworthiness, and your reputation is unassailable. And so are you. You have no family, no children.” And I know why. “Your work is your life. You want the best for your cadets. Well, that’s going to be whatever treaty or reconciliation you can hammer out of those hardheads in the Senate, and you need to act fast, while they’re panicked. Their fortunes are falling, their lives are chaos, and who knows if they even have any legal authority anymore? They’ll listen to you. They have to.”

“Perhaps for now. By next week I could be dodging assassins of my own.”

“You’re not that easy to kill.” It was the closest Garrett could come to being totally blunt, and he appreciated Sigurd’s simple nod of acknowledgement.

“And why should I let you fly off into the sunset and leave me to fix this mess without your help? You have a lot of influence here. You’re the architect of this dismay. You should have a hand in cleaning things up.”

“I can’t.” He couldn’t be any more honest. “I—I can’t. I almost lost everything already, I don’t even know if—” He couldn’t say it. “I’m not saying I’ll be gone forever,” Garrett said. “But I can’t stay right now. I have to be with my family, I have to make sure they’re okay and get them somewhere safe to recover.”

“Where do you have in mind?”

“Somewhere beyond the reach of the Federation, diplomatically speaking.”

Admiral Liang’s eyes widened slightly. “Perelan? Will they accept your presence?”

“They will if their ambassador has anything to say about it. They’ve already got Claudia and the girls. It won’t be permanent, but it’ll give us space to breathe and recover.”

“I suppose it will.” The admiral sighed. “Go, then. Take your well-earned rest, but I want you to maintain a channel with me. If you vanish off the face of the universe, I’ll assume the worst and come after you, even if it causes an interplanetary incident.”

“I understand.”

“Then good luck, Garrett. Tell Cody I’m disappointed he and Tiennan won’t be attending classes any longer, but that I understand.”

“Well, I’m not sure that Ten—”

“I am.” He cut the connection, and Garrett sat back in his chair with a loud exhale.

“Well. That went better than it could have.”

“A lot better,” Jonah agreed. “Wouldn’t have surprised me if he kept a few ships in reserve just to send after you and escort you back to help him deal with this clusterfuck.”

“Sigurd Liang is an expert at dealing with clusterfucks, he doesn’t need my help.” Garrett’s eyes unfocused a little bit as he thought about it. “I managed to track him. Did I tell you that? Found evidence of him throughout the centuries, new names and new jobs after his wipes, but a lot of it’s the same. He’s always a stand-up guy, and he’s always competent at whatever he puts his mind to. He’s dealt with rebellion, revolution—hell, he’s led a few of them himself. He might not remember the details, but so many years of experience will come through for him. He’s going to be all right, and whatever he hammers the Federation into after this, it’s damn sure going to be better than the mess we had before.”

“Is there anything you can’t plan for?”

“Too much.” Garrett checks his comm again—it doesn’t matter that he would have heard it going off and dropped Liang’s call in a hot second if it meant getting through to Pandora—but there was nothing. He was in his private ship, and the comm system didn’t come with the bells and whistles that would get him more immediate contact with Pandora. From his official quarters, he would have been patched straight through to Jezria. Without them, he was one of what was probably a very long queue, especially since it looked like the Fleet really was using the planet as a place to refit, and taking up most of their bandwidth at the same time.

Garrett sighed. Soon. He’d be there soon, and then all this waiting would be over and he’d know whether or not it was worthwhile for him to keep…going. He was so tired. Fuck, he was so tired of everything, and he still didn’t know what he needed to. His husband, his son, his father—were they even alive? Odds were good that at least someone had survived, but Garrett wasn’t sure that someone would be enough for him at this point. It had to be everyone. He needed everyone, or else he might as well fly his ship into the nearest star with no one but his hallucination for company.

“No, darlin’.”

“No what?”

“No, you’re not gonna do that.”

Fuck, I forgot he’s not real. He can actually read my mind. Garrett chuckled. Because he’s all in my mind. Only in my mind. “How would you stop me?”

“I’d find a way. For now, though? You need some sleep. When you wake up, you’ll be that much closer to Pandora.”

That was a good thing. So why was he dreading it so much? “Okay.”

“Good.” Invisible hands helped Garrett over to his bunk, the autopilot keeping everything on the ship running smoothly. “It’ll be all right. Promise.”

“You can’t promise.”

“How ‘bout you let me worry about what I can and can’t do?” Gentle lips pressed a kiss to his brow. “Sleep, sweetheart. Sleep.”

Garrett did.

Reformation: Chapter Twenty-One

Notes: Let's visit with a less familiar face these days, huh? It's time to do some digging.

Title: Reformation: Chapter Twenty-One

***

Chapter Twenty-One

The campus of the Academy felt disquietingly empty. Unprecedentedly empty.

It wasn’t that cadets had never been called to war before. The last time was nearly fifty years ago, but Sigurd could still remember the effects of that battle, even though he hadn’t been an admiral back then. That was the battle that Foster Alexander had truly made his name in, as a military commander and a leader. His family’s fortunes had risen ever since, continuing even after his death. Or, at least they’d risen for one member of the family.

Sigurd settled back into his chair and closed his eyes, thinking. He’d dismissed his staff—there was no sense in keeping around a host of schedulers and secretaries and professors when there was no one around to mind or corral or teach. He was alone in the central office building for the first time in…perhaps forever. Which was just as well, if he was going to be reviewing classified messages from Garrett.

“Mercury, repeat last transmission.”

The message began to play.

“I spoke to our ghost. She confirmed what I’ve suspected—narcissists with God complexes tend to keep their plans, and their resources, to themselves. I was worried we’d be dealing with a massive conspiracy, and there’s plenty of blame to go around for inaction and bad action, but when it comes to funding we’re looking at just one credit stream: Raymond’s. The ghost receives a yearly stipend from him to keep herself in style, but doesn’t have any access to the family fortune. She’s not allowed to make private investments, or make extra money off her own talents. She gets a brief financial breakdown each year of their holdings, but it’s nothing not available to the general public.” Sigh.

“I’m still working on tracking down how he’s paying for a war on the Fringe, but when it comes to who, I think you’re better equipped to go digging. Look at the specs I’ve sent you for the ships out there. We can’t get audio transmissions, but think about who could be manning this effort. This is about more than monetary policy, that’s not going to square with a lot of people. The ones he’s got playing pirate and attacking Pandora are good at what they do. Most places they’re hitting and running before we can get out there to properly investigate or counter; Pandora’s holding out because of a repulsion energy shield, but if they’re keeping at it then they’re organized.” There was another pause, this one accompanied by the sounds of Garrett’s hands in his hair, then sliding down over his face.

“Find me his captains. People who went through the Academy, people in positions of command who’ve either been dishonorably discharged, retired under suspicious circumstances, or gone rogue. I need to know who’s in charge if I’m going to know where to hit them. Tell me as soon as you find something solid.” The transmission ended.

Sigurd didn’t need to watch it again to see Garrett’s slow but inexorable decline—he could hear it in his voice. He wasn’t taking care of himself, but he wouldn’t, not yet. Not until he had taken care of Raymond Alexander, and Sigurd wasn’t in any position to step in and chide him. They didn’t know each other well enough, and he couldn’t risk estranging Garrett. The best he could do was help things along to a rapid and satisfactory finish, and get everyone back where they belonged.

“Mercury, cross-reference all Federation forces’ dishonorable discharges for the past…” He considered the timeline, when Raymond had come to power and how. “Fifteen years with notable associations, political, monetary or social, with President Alexander.”

“Processing.” Then a moment later, “Complete. Seventeen names found.”

“Remove deceased or currently imprisoned.”

“Eleven names found.”

“Remove those not working in a command capacity.”

“Six names found.”

“Read them to me.”

“Abenabad, Afi. Glazer, Domingo. Hall, Prinze. Orwell, Carver. Wellington, Fernanda. Xidao, James.”

“Known associations with each other?”

“The Hunter Massacre.”

Of course. The Hunter Massacre was the biggest black eye the Federation had sported in the past two decades, and it was entirely the result of over-eager, gun-happy officers deciding to take a nearby colony’s environmental emergency into their own hands. The Hunter expedition had been a colonizing effort that had gone wrong fast: the weather was too unpredictable, the crops were unable to grow as fast as they needed to, and those that did grow had carried pathogens that had taken weeks to manifest in the nervous system, but when they did—seizures, fainting spells, and memory loss for the mildly afflicted. Complete loss of mental and physical control for the moderately afflicted, including a predisposition to lash out at their surroundings for no reason.

Their medical staff was under-prepared to deal with the fallout, and requested Federation aid. Three ships had gone with supplies to take care of, and possibly evacuate, the colony. Less than a week later, they’d opened fire on the habitat from space, obliterating it and all its residents, as well as destroying one of their own ships, which had been the one actually spending time on the ground. Their rationale had been absolute bedlam in the colony, irreversible medical effects and the potential for spreading disease among their crews.

An investigation had proven that not only was the illness non-transferrable—you could only get sick if you ate the food—but that there had been significant disagreement among the leadership as to what course of action was best. The man in charge, Vice-Admiral Orwell, had insisted upon separation between his crews and the afflicted. One of his captains and all his medical staff had complained, and in the end, it was that captain who took her ship down to actively provide assistance. His response had been swift and deadly. Three hundred and twenty-one Federation officers were killed, and almost nine hundred colonists.

The hell with a dishonorable discharge, the man should have been court-martialed and thrown in prison for the rest of his very long life, but his trial was overshadowed by the sudden deaths of most of Raymond Alexander’s family. The news cycle churned on, and probably due in part to his long service and in part to the skeletons he could unbury if he needed to, Orwell and his officers were spared. They would never serve in a reputable navy again, but apparently they’d found a very disreputable one to lay claim to.

“Current employment records for Orwell.”

“Self-employed.”

“Bullshit. Fine. Past five years.”

“Consulting work for IslaTerra, Black Sky, Luminox.”

“A think tank that specialized in population control, a defense contractor, and a weapons manufacturer.” How unsurprising. “Correlations with any Alexander holdings?”

“None evident.”

That didn’t mean they didn’t exist. “Flag those corporations and dig deeper, using any of the extended Alexander family names.”

“Processing. Complete. Substantial investments in all three companies under the name of Evan Hardwick, Haven Alexander’s brother. Evan Hardwick has been deceased for twelve years.” Haven was Foster Alexander’s last wife, and had died at the same time he had. Her brother had passed away the following year in a shuttle accident, but before that he had run his own investment corporation. There had been a lot of dark money flowing through those channels, but it all should have ceased on Evan’s death. He had no children, and had kept a much lower profile than his sister. To use his name meant whoever was behind this—and Sigurd didn’t have to wonder too much about that—hadn’t been in a position at the time to act without it, but had been in a position to hide the illegality. Interesting.

“List all available monetary actions by Evan Hardwick in the past twelve years.”

There were over a hundred actions listed. Sigurd flagged them to be sent on to Garrett. “Correlate actions with any associations with Orwell.”

It didn’t stop at the three companies the computer had found before. If what he was looking at was true, President Alexander had been bankrolling Orwell ever since his discharge, and a lot of that money had gone into subtly-veiled construction. Some of those contracts had even gone through the military—bits and pieces of things, more little threads to pull that might lead to the revelation of an entire fleet of ships made by a thousand different hands, all of them pulling their creations into a dark void of secrecy.

Well. That couldn’t be allowed to stand. “Bundle this information and send it to Peacock. Highest level encryption. And recall my staff. I’m going to pay a surprise visit to the construction docks this afternoon. We’re going to get some records pulled.” The docks’ accounting system had a private server that he couldn’t access from here. Once he was on site, though, he should be able to get his hands on their raw data. A surprise inspection should do the trick, and if he had his staff run interference for him, a few minutes alone was all he needed.

“The docks are off-limits to all visitors without prior authorization by the Admiralty.”

“I’m an admiral, I think I qualify.”

“You will be challenged.”

“They’ll let me through if they don’t want to be court-martialed.”

“Your time there will be limited.”

“I know.” Sigurd smiled. “It’ll be a race.”

Reformation: Chapter Four

Notes: New chapter, a little longer, yay! Back to Cody. Poor kid, he's not having an easy time. This could lead to bad decisions. Hmm...

Title: Reformation: Chapter 4

***

Chapter Four

 

There was nothing as mortifying as being called out of a class at the Academy.

Being kicked out of a class was one thing; at least when that happened, you knew why. Cody hadn’t personally been kicked out of any of his classes so far, but Ten had a running tally from the year before that was getting close to three digits. It was almost a point of pride with hir, the ability to completely annoy, disrupt and otherwise harass hir instructors into throwing hir out of class, and then acing every test, quiz, and lab that came up. Ten’s attendance wasn’t an issue, because ze always showed up, even if ze didn’t end up staying long.

Being called out of a class, though…that meant something was really wrong. Either you’d been caught for something so awful Admiral Liang refused to wait until you were done with class to address it, or something had happened to someone else and informing you shouldn’t be put off. Cody hadn’t been the one to set their room on fire that morning, and so as soon as Hermes spoke through the implant in his head, it felt like the bottom dropped out of his stomach.

“Cadet Helms, please proceed immediately to Admiral Liang’s office.”

Oh, no. “What’s this about, Hermes?” After months of practice, Cody had finally gotten the hang of communicating with the Academy’s built-in AI system without speaking aloud.

“The Admiral can explain things to you. Please proceed directly to his office. Your instructor has already been informed.”

Well, that tore it. Cody fumbled his bag closed and walked down to the exit, careful not to make eye contact with any of the other students. His instructor glanced his way and nodded, then resolutely turned back to the rest of the class to continue the lecture.

Cody’s legs were shaking so hard he could barely walk. He wanted to run, he wanted to teleport to the admin building so he could get the news right now. Nothing was worse than hanging in limbo, not when there were so many things that could have gone wrong. Had Ten had an accident in the lab? Was it one of his dads? Was it one of his cousins? Shit, if something had happened to one of the girls Cody was going to lose it.

He made it to the administrative headquarters in a little under three minutes, which felt like a lifetime of hearing nothing but the frantic beat of his own heart reverberate through his ears. His legs finally picked up the pace as he entered the building, and by the time he got to Admiral Liang’s office Cody had worked himself up to a sprint.

Chief Jessup stood outside the door, and latched on to Cody’s arm before he could power his way through. “Slow down, Cadet.” The compassion in his flinty eyes was almost enough to make Cody faint.

“No, please, let me in, I have to—”

“He’s setting up a secure call. It’ll just take another minute or two.”

“A call to who?” Chief Jessup shook his head. “To who? I need to know!”

The door opened before Cody annoyed Chief Jessup so bad he threw him in the brig. “A call to your father,” Admiral Liang said as he stood aside, ushering Cody into his office. It was a big, impressive room, the walls covered with moving holos of different battles and ships, the floor sumptuously carpeted in the blue and gold of the Academy, and the furniture real, dark wood. Cody had never been less interested in his surroundings in all his life. “Your stepfather,” Admiral Liang clarified, and Cody’s breath suddenly came a bit easier. Garrett could handle anything. No matter what was going on, he’d know what to do.

“The comm is already set up at my desk, just press your finger to verify. Visual and audio, and none of this is being recorded.” He gently patted Cody’s shoulder, then turned and left as quiet as a whisper.

Cody sat down in the admiral’s chair. It felt huge, so much bigger than him, just like the desk and the office and the news he was about to get. He sat down, pressed his index finger to the ID pad and waited for it to identify his print, blood type and vitals, and then the holo sprang into existence above the desk. It was Garrett, and Cody felt himself slump with desperate relief. It only lasted a moment, though. Garrett looked…

Terrible. He looked like he’d been running wind sprints for hours, pale and exhausted, visibly ill. Cody had never seen him look this bad: not when Miles had been caught in an explosion, not even when Garrett had lost his eyes in a lab accident. His hair was a mess, his clothes were rumpled despite being made of cloth that was supposed to be impossible to wrinkle, and he wasn’t smiling. He always smiled for Cody, even if he followed it up with hard news. That could only mean one thing.

“Garrett?” Cody’s voice sounded weak to his ears, but he couldn’t make himself care. “What happened to Dad?”

“I don’t know for sure.” His voice was gravelly with fatigue and fear. “He made it to Pandora fine, but the colony has just come under attack.”

Cody shut his eyes and bit the inside of his cheek so hard it began to bleed. “Pirates?” he forced out.

Garrett scoffed. “This is no act of piracy. Pirates don’t persist in wasting energy against an ion shield. They wouldn’t have demolished the Eye, either; they’d have boarded it and taken it apart to sell or trade. This is an attack that’s supposed to make everyone think pirates, when nothing could be further from the truth.”

“How do you know?”

“Because it’s political. It keeps coming back to that, with Alexander in charge. All of the attacks on Fringe planets have been curious moves for pirates, and going after a colony as large and well-affiliated as Pandora would be suicide for a pirate ship, much less a fleet of ships numerous enough to track, which is what I’m seeing. This is President Alexander moving the focus around and hurting his opponents in the process.”

“You mean you.”

“Among other people.”

“No, you mean you specifically,” Cody bit out, his worry manifesting as anger at the only person he had to take it out on right now. “He’s going after Pandora because of you. Because it’s important to you and Dad and he knew Dad would be there, didn’t he?”

Garrett didn’t shrink away from the accusation. “Probably. But that’s not the most important thing right now.”

“What’s more important than Dad?” Cody demanded. “What could ever be more important to you than him? You should be more worried about him, what the hell is wrong with you? Do you even know if—”

Garrett actually slapped his hand down on the table in front of him, a display of temper so rare that Cody’s mouth slammed shut in shock. “Listen to me. The colony is cut off. The ship is broadcasting an SOS. Jonah was supposed to be taking Lacey for a flying lesson, so he wasn’t in the Box when the attack happened. He could have been targeted anyway, he could have run into trouble with a storm, he could be fine and seeking shelter. I don’t know, Cody. No one knows, and until I can learn more I have to deal with the rest of this fucking mess. That means making sure you’re out of the line of fire.”

“What, so I’m just a part of this fucking mess to you?”

“No. No.” Garrett rubbed a hand over his face. “You’re the most important thing to me right now, Cody. Do you understand? I need to ensure your safety. I’m sending a ship to pick you up and take you to a safe place until it blows over.”

“No, I can’t leave!” The idea was anathema. “What about Ten? What about Grennson and Darrel? I can’t leave them alone here.”

“Cody, the fleet is being mobilized to deal with this ‘pirate’ threat as a training op. Do you know what that means? It means that President Alexander is going to present this situation as an opportunity for cadets to get some experience in a real, largely secure altercation. He’s going to call people up, and I’m almost positive you and the rest of your quad will be called. And you’ll be put on a ship, maybe the ship that Miles is being reinstated on―” Garrett’s mouth twisted bitterly “―and put in the very front of the fleet, and when the firefight begins, your ship will be the only one lost. You’re going to be sent out to die, Cody, and I’m not going to let that happen to you. My people are coming to you, and I want you to leave with them. Understand?”

Cody resisted the urge to shake his head. “What about my friends?”

“I’ll talk to Admiral Liang. Together we ought to be able to come up with a plan to shield them from harm.”

“Why can’t you just do that with me? I want to be part of the fleet!” The more he thought about it, the more the idea appealed. “I want to go to Pandora and look for Dad!”

“Out of the question. You’re leaving Olympus and coming back here.”

“I won’t be any safer with you.” Cody didn’t mean for it to come out quite so harsh, but he wasn’t sorry when Garrett winced. “You already said he’s targeting us because of you. That means he’ll be looking for this, and he’ll be watching for me to leave.”

“He can’t watch everything. I can get you to safety.”

“I don’t want to be safe, I want to help!”

“And I want your father here with me and my father safe in retirement again, but it looks like neither of us is getting our way!” Garrett shut his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, he looked mostly calm. Cold, but calm. “I need you not to fight me on this. Please. I need you safe. Your dad would want you to be safe.”

Maybe that was true, but Cody didn’t feel like agreeing with Garrett right now. “My dad would want to know we cared enough about him to go after him. He’d do it for us.”

“That’s enough.”

“Garrett―”

“My ship will be to you in five hours. By tomorrow morning, this incident will be all over the newsfeeds. You need to be out of there before that happens. Do you understand me?”

Fuck you. Cody wasn’t quite furious enough to say that to Garrett’s face, though. “Yes,” he gritted.

“Good. I’ll see you soon. I love you.”

Cody didn’t want to hear it―he didn’t want to hear one of his parents talking about love when the other one might be dead. How could Garrett even be thinking of love? How could he be thinking at all? “Bye,” he said shortly, and ended the call. Cody stared at the swirling pattern of the wooden surface for a long moment before coming to his decision.

Fine. He needed to be out of here by tomorrow? He would be. And he’d be gone before Garrett’s ship ever got to him, too. There was another way to get to Pandora.

It was time to take Jack up on his offer to see the ‘verse, Drifter style.

Redstone Ch. 12, Pt. 2

Notes: A little information from a lot of different people. Starting to bring it all together, at last:)

*so much running around today, OMG. Sorry for the delay in posting*

Title: Redstone Chapter 12, Part 2.

***

“We have to go bigger.”

Stephen resisted the impulse to rub his fingers in the aching space between his eyes. It was a common urge when he dealt with Garrett. “Define ‘bigger.’”

“We won’t be able to use Kyle as a prybar to open up Redstone. It’s going to have to be the other way around if we’re going to get any sort of buy-in from the rest of the senate.”

“And why is that?”

“Because there’s absolutely no way in hell that Raymond Alexander is going to let anyone have any sort of access to Kyle before it’s too late. The charges he’s facing are too harsh.”

“He was always going to face charges of mental and emotional manipulation—”

“This is worse than that.” Garrett’s tone was iced over with bitterness. “This is genetic manipulation on a fundamental level. This is the sort of thing that hardline humanists might turn into a stick to beat not just the president, but Kyle with. Five hundred years ago people like him were burned alive on some planets when the revelation of their modifications came out, and we can’t afford to stick that kind of stigma on Kyle. He’s already being portrayed as other, and we need him to be seen as us.”

It was a bad day when Stephen couldn’t immediately think of a way to improve upon Garrett’s plans. He was, unfortunately, completely correct. There was a simmering undercurrent of xenophobia within the Federation that was being stoked by President Alexander and his cronies, and the revelation that some of Kyle’s most fundamental genetic code had been swapped out as a child could get him dubbed a revenant.

It was an ancient term for someone who had returned from death. Early in the search for gene therapies’ frontiers, large scale gene swapping had been an imprecise science that resulted in many people losing their personalities, their mental capacity and even their ability to move without prompting.

“What do you propose?” Stephen asked at last.

“A good, old fashioned exposé. My people can arrange for recordings to be made and Hummingbird can get them to you.”

“How would you publicize it? No one in the Senate cares if prisoners are being mistreated.”

Garrett smiled grimly. “We’re going to show them a lot more than that. In fact, I need to talk to Hummingbird personally about her ability with a lock pick.”

Oh, wonderful. It wasn’t that Stephen didn’t have faith in his peoples’ abilities, but he worried. So many centuries of life, so much loss and death and privation, and he still had the capacity for something as simple as worry. Perhaps there was something to be said for losing all his memories every time he went into the Regen tank; it kept him from becoming irretrievably jaded. “I see.” He steepled his fingers underneath his chin and thought for a moment. “We’re going to have to adhere to the original timeline, though. We can’t afford to leave Kyle and Magpie in there any longer than we absolutely must.”

“I know. Not to mention the shit that’s going down with Robbie and Wyl.”

Stephen frowned. “What are you referring to?”

Garrett shrugged. “Oh, just your average, everyday sexual harassment with a side of death threats. They’ll probably be all right, but it’s not safe for them either.”

Stephen sighed. “It’s not safe for anyone, it seems.”

Garrett nodded grimly. “You have no idea how right you are.”

“What does that mean?”

“Let’s just say…that Berengaria has a good reason to isolate herself, and suggested that similar measures might be a good idea for my family.”

“Your father is used to being in the line of fire. He’s taken appropriate precautions for himself and his family.”

“I’m not sure what appropriate consists of anymore,” Garrett mused. “I think even my own Death Star might not be enough at this point.” He shook his head and moved on before Stephen could ask him what a Death Star was. “Anyway, I’ll get the changes underway on my end if you do the same on yours. I think we’ll have to make sure our people are talking, so that’ll be on Hummingbird to initiate. You’ve got the security upgrades for Cody ready to go?”

“Of course.”

“Good.” That was enough to ease some of the tension from Garrett’s face. “He and his friends are looking forward to coming back.”

“I’ll meet them and Grennson’s parents at the port myself.”

“Thank you.” He closed the comm feed and Stephen took a moment to sit back and let the new information find its way into the tapestry of his mind, new threads brightening here and there as others dimmed. The overall picture was changing shape, more of a chimera now than ever before. Positively controlling for all the variables was going to be next to impossible.

He would work on rethreading some of the bigger issues later. Right now, he needed to talk to Hummingbird.

***

Wyl sat back with a satisfied sigh and inspected the glory that was his robot. In less than two days he had taken ZeeBee from an underperforming guard ‘bot to the complex protective machine that it was right now. It had been two days of mostly not sleeping and very little eating, but given that Robbie had been going non-stop since he got here thanks to “shift enhancement” by management, which was another way of saying hazing, Wyl hadn’t been neglecting him.

The best thing about ZeeBee’s modifications was that they were completely inert unless it was Wyl or Robbie giving the commands. And the commands themselves were non-standard, so no one would be the wiser if Wyl had anything to say about it.

Wyl took a sip of espresso and cleared his throat. “ZeeBee, show me your pretty eyes.” The green glowstrip brightened for a moment, indicating that the mini recording device Wyl had installed there was active. “Five second recap, project.”

“Command accepted.” A hologram of the previous five seconds of recording appeared two feet in front of Wyl, showing himself lounging back in his chair and swiveling side to side a bit.

“Well done, delete and reset.”

“Command accepted.”

Now to test his more exciting new functionalities. Wyl grinned and put his cup down. “ZeeBee, show me your pretty hands!”

ZeeBee’s arms lifted into the air, and a slot hidden in the side of each of them popped open. The right one extended a micro-laser, a spare battery and a knife that looked like an old-school scalpel. The left one had a single-use Regen injector, a tourniquet and a painkiller.

“Well done, reset.”

“Command accepted.” The tools secreted themselves away again, and the robot lowered its arms.

“ZeeBee, show me your dance moves!”

The robot’s head began to spin in a circle. “Alert, alert! Sound the alarm!” A piercing yowl began to radiate from the robot’s speaker.

“Well done, reset!” The sound stopped abruptly.

“Command accepted.”

“Good.” Now for a more nuanced directive. “ZeeBee, show me your baby.”

The robot rolled forward to Wyl’s chair, lowered its arms and gently lifted Wyl out of his seat. It cradled him close to his chest and said, “There there. There there. There there. There the—”

“Well done, reset.”

“Command accepted.” ZeeBee promptly dropped Wyl to the ground.

“Ow.” Okay, so that one would take a little fine-tuning. Wyl picked himself up and brushed off the seat of his pants. “ZeeBee, listen to the birds.” Not that Wyl expected this one to amount to anything, but just in case Isidore developed a way to get a Morse signal through the prison walls to him.

Surprisingly, ZeeBee started to click in a recognizable pattern. “Oh, shit,” Wyl muttered. That couldn’t be good. He wondered how long Isidore had been trying to get in touch. “ZeeBee, translate.”

“Check your messages, damn it. Hummingbird. Check your messages, damn it. Hummingbird. Check your messages, damn it. Hummingbird. Check—”

“Well done, stop.”

“Command accepted.”

Hummingbird? They weren’t supposed to be talking to her yet. Wyl opened his tab and checked his encrypted feed, tapping in passwords he barely remembered setting up. There wasn’t just a message, there was a vid link. An active one. He opened the channel. “Hummingbird?”

“There you are! Where have you been, I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for hours?”

“I put my room on a communication lockdown while I was…tinkering.” Only Robbie’s comm would get through the shield Wyl had put up to minimize distractions. “What’s going on?”

“You haven’t spoken to Garrett yet?” Wyl shook his head. Hummingbird—and damn it, pseudonyms were all well and good but that just sounded too weird in his head, Tamara—irritably blew a lock of blonde hair off of her forehead. “Great, then I get to be the one to pass things along. I’m going to need to do some breaking and entering, and I haven’t brought along everything I need for that.”

“Breaking and entering? Here?” Wyl knew he was gaping but it was hard to stop. “How the hell are you supposed to manage that? Who’s important enough to—oh, shit, you’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Nope.”

“You can’t get into the Warden’s office without setting off a ton of alarms, if it’s anything like Caravan was.”

“Well, I need to figure it out, and fast. We need information in his private computer.”

Of course they did. Because nothing could ever go as planned. “Soon?”

“The sooner the better. I don’t suppose there’s any way you can get out of the spouses’ quarters and lend a hand?”

With so many eyes on him every time he stepped out of his and Robbie’s door? “I doubt it.”

“Then you’ll have to help me figure out how to do it myself.”

Oh, boy. “That’s going to be difficult.”

Tamara laughed. “You’re telling me. It’s got to be done, though.”

“Well, then.” Wyl sat back. “Tell me what you’ve figured out so far.”

 

Redstone Ch. 5

Notes: So, I don't really know where this chapter came from. You can consider it bonus content if you want, because it doesn't really fit within the structure of the narrative all that well, but I was thinking about how everyone was getting their little introductions before we jump in and decided to try something with Admiral Liang. I've no idea if it worked, but hopefully you understand a little more about him now.

 

PS, the picture is from an beautiful and enormous Inari shrine in Japan that I visited last month. I just though it applied well to what's going on with Liang in this vignette.

 

 

Title: Redstone Chapter 5

 

***

 

Stephen Liang stood at the base of the four-story pagoda and looked through the open door in front of him. It was a beautiful structure, surprisingly festive with its coruscating red roofs, each one glowing in the sunshine, and the gold trim beneath them curled into watchful foxes. The walls were white, and painted with elegant black kanji that spelled out thousands of prayers for the dead. The room just beyond the threshold where he hesitated beckoned him like a lover, while the gentle breeze across his back pressed him forward.

Stephen sighed. He shouldn’t have put this off for so long, but given the way his week—no, his month—had been going, it felt like a miracle he could even take the time to be here now. He clapped his hands twice and bowed, then reached out and gripped the heavy cotton rope that hung down from an enormous bronze bell ten feet above him. He took a deep breath, then swung the bell. The thunderous hum of it was almost enough to take his breath away. He stepped forward into the vestibule of the temple, and a moment later a warm hand landed on his shoulder.

“It’s been a while since you’ve visited.”

The voice was perfectly familiar, Stephen’s constant companion in his current life and the last vestige of his furthest one. He turned and looked at the speaker, a tall, slender man with white-blond hair and a small smile on his beautiful face. “I’ve been busy.”

His companion nodded. “I can see that.” Even now the algorithm in the machine was doing its work, analyzing Stephen’s brain chemistry and physiology and spinning new threads out from his mind, adding to the tapestries that lined the walls and the frames that filled the room. After some experimentation, Stephen had found that cloth was the best representative of memory for him. It had depth and texture, two things that made resurrecting his older memories easier as the pure images faded from his perception. Plus, you could always add on to cloth, which…he stepped up to the nearest frame tapestry and watched it elongate, watched new threads appear and connect. He stared at the cluster that represented Cody and his friends, all in merry masks as they danced around a distant jewel. A planet far, far away. It was a good place for them, and Stephen was almost sorry they’d be coming back soon.

The brightest, most chaotic cluster in this particular piece of his mind was Garrett Helms, new threads drawn into his burr-like exterior, others being cut off or sloughed away. Garrett Helms was like a seed that tangled in the coat of an animal and was carried off by it, to make a new home in a distant land. Only he had many homes, and many threads. Stephen reached out and plucked one with his finger. For a moment the room melted away, replaced by the memory of his last conversation with Garrett.

“Hummingbird is already in place,” he said soothingly. “Wyl and Robbie won’t be alone.”

“We’re not going to have long,” Garrett repeated, his handsome face drawn and exhausted. “Not even the length of the trial, because Alexander is never going to take the chance of Kyle getting on the stand. No more than a few standard months, and the faster we move the more likely we are to make errors.”

“So we control for those errors,” Stephen replied, not changing his tone at all. He needed to be a bulwark for Garrett, a bastion of dependability in the wake of so much chaos and change. “We add people, we improve equipment, we innovate, we engage. We won’t be taken by surprise, Garrett. It’s going to be all right.”

“You sound like my dad,” Garrett said, but he was smiling now.

“Your father is a wise man, you should listen to him. Get some sleep. I’ll check in with my agents and give you an update in thirty-six hours.”

“I’m not going to sleep for that long.”

“I have a few things to attend to myself. None of us can go without care forever.”

Garrett chuckled wryly. “I guess not. Sleep well, then.”

“And you.” The call ended but even though Stephen was tired, he didn’t head for his bed, he headed for his…

“And here you are,” his companion said as Stephen stepped out of the memory back onto the temple floor. When Stephen looked at him again, this time he was a shorter, dark-haired man with light brown skin and a mischievous look on his face. “But you will take your own advice after this, won’t you?”

“It’s almost time for another visit to Regen,” Stephen said regrettably as he stepped around the tapestry and moved toward the back of the room. More threads were developing, expanding the tapestries that made up the Academy and his underground network of spies. He had a few new potentials in development that showed promise, glimmering like tiny golden beads. “I’ll have to get through that first.”

“I see. Everything is prepared to guide you through the reconciliation, isn’t it?” his companion asked as they ascended to the second level.

“It always is,” Stephen said absently. Ancient gods stared placidly at Stephen as he climbed the narrow stairs. The second level was a purely technical place, the cloth memories harder-edged. This level contained his hard-won skillsets, and Stephen wandered through them and watched the occasional new thread develop here or there. For the most part, though, this place was firmly established, less of a problem than any other level due to it’s static nature. Many of the tapestries had gone dark, shadowed over with age and obsolescence. Stephen tapped one thoughtfully, and a moment later he was…

“Woooohooooo!” The radio crackled with static, but a little disruption wasn’t enough to mask the thrill in Navi’s voice as the glider wings suddenly deployed, abruptly slowing their brutally fast descent toward the moon’s surface. Stephen felt his spine elongate, then snap back into place, and thanked whatever god was listening for painkillers as they leveled off several hundred meters over the icy face of the moon.

The glider wings glowed like platinum in the faint reflection of light coming from Jupiter’s surface. They were on the wrong side to get pure sunshine right now, faint as it was this far out, but the glider was a technological wonder when it came to solar power absorption. Stephen adjusted for their lift and pulled his instrument panel up on the face of his helmet. “We’re going to need to jog right in a few hundred meters, ice plume.”

“Got it.” Flying through the frozen drops of methane was like flying through a sea of stars, so much more immediate and disorienting than pure space travel. Stephen extended one thickly-gloved hand and watched the tiny droplets bounce off his fingers, and grinned to himself.

“Pretty fucking cool, huh Stevie?” Navi asked smugly.

“Yeah,” he breathed. “Yeah, pretty fucking cool.” He reached a little farther…

And stepped back onto the second level. He almost stumbled, disoriented by the sudden loss of acceleration, but his companion gripped his upper arm and steadied him. Now it was a woman, with kind almond-shaped eyes and grey hair piled high on her head. The voice was the same, though, a masculine baritone edged with warmth. “Shall we move on, my dear?”

“Is there really anything new to add up there?” Stephen asked a little bitterly, but he went. This time the stairs were lined with leering demon faces, fanged mouths gaping with glee as they plunged wrongdoers into torment. The third level was smaller, and packed with so many tapestries that it was all Stephen could do not to run into one as he slowly paced the length of the room, circling around and staring at all his emotional detritus. Many of these were dusty, and some even bore scorch marks, remnants of his less-sane times, when all he’d wanted to do was forget. Only a bare few threads wafted out from his mind, small and tentative, and Stephen ignored them in favor of approaching a long gray cloth that looked like it was draped over a box.

Stephen knew better, he did, but his mind had brought her to him, and it would be disrespectful not to face her now. He reached for the top of the cloth and pulled it back in a rush, and…

“You have to drink.”

Faying shook her head weakly. “I won’t.”

“This is ridiculous.” It felt like he’d been saying this forever, ever since he realized that she wasn’t going to do another round of Regen. “There’s no need for you to do this. There’s nothing wrong with prolonging your life! Why shouldn’t we take advantage of our own technology?”

“You…know why.”

It was about what had happened to him. Of course it was. “That was a one-off. A problem with the machine. They assured me it’ll be fine next time.”

Faying’s eyes welled with tears. “Oh, my dear. You asked me not to tell you before, but I have to now. I know I have to.”

Stephen felt his heart speed up. “Tell me what?”

“It wasn’t…wasn’t the first time.”

“What…” He shook his head. “What do you mean?”

Her breath rattled on a sigh. “It wasn’t the first time you’ve been subjected to Regen. It was the third, with me. The first time we did it together, and when you came out and you didn’t remember anything, I thought…” She paused to breathe. “I thought it had to be an accident. A terrible accident. You did another round right after, to try to fix things. It didn’t work.” Her hand tightened around his for a moment before she couldn’t maintain the pressure any longer. “You were worse. You couldn’t remember the simplest things, my darling. That’s when we moved out here. I taught you everything again, how to speak, how to read. You only remembered a few things, a few people, and none of them—” Her voice caught in her throat. “None of them were me.”

“No,” Stephen said, uncomprehendingly. “No, that’s not possible.”

“It is,” she wept. “It is. We swore it would be the last time, that we wouldn’t use Regen again. And then we aged, but not together. No matter what I did, I grew old faster than you. You knew how it bothered me, and you asked me to regenerate again with you, and I…” Faying squeezed her eyes shut around the tears. “And I did, for more time was all I wanted. But it happened again, and it will keep happening, and my darling…I can’t go through this again. I just can’t. I can’t watch you lose everything and everyone, and lose all memory of me. I just can’t.”

“That’s…how can that be possible?” He felt gutted. “Why don’t I remember this?”

Faying sighed. “We’ve been trying to figure that out for three lifetimes, my dear. I’m tired. Too tired for another one.”

“Faying—”

“You didn’t speak my name,” she said sadly, staring at their clasped hands, hers spotted with age, his…not. “You only spoke his.”

“Whose?”

She pressed her lips together and turned her face away. Stephen leaned over to ask again, to demand she tell him, to beg her not to die, but instead…

He fell onto the floor. The gray cloth lay crumpled in front of him, no box of truth beneath it, just emptiness. He stared at it but didn’t dare touch it again. He didn’t want to see her, to see the hurt in her wrinkled face, too many years of devotion and dedication to him, all subsumed by fatigue and a deep pain in the knowledge that she wasn’t the closest thing to his heart.

“Hey.” A new hand stroked over his head, cupping the back of his clammy neck. “You’re gonna be okay.”

Stephen forced himself to nod as he got to his feet. “I know.”

“You ready for the last level?”

He smiled mirthlessly. “I suppose. Although,” he added as he headed for the stairs, “I don’t know why I keep trying. It’s been so long, I don’t see how I’ll ever add something new to this room.” The walls of the stairwell were pure black, dark like the heart of a black hole, only it was Stephen’s own heart they were heading into. The closest thing he had to a representation of it, at least. The hand rested against his back, warm and supportive, and he wanted nothing more than to turn into it and look at the man it belonged to, but…it never worked. He never saw him, and when he tried to force it, his memory evaporated. He couldn’t make demands, he could only visit time and again and hope that someday, he would see the reality that time and technology had stolen from him.

Inside the room was…nothing. Emptiness, not even a dust bunny in the corner. But the walls echoed with words, words that fluttered through the nothing and made it feel welcoming. The air was filled with the voice that haunted Stephen’s dreams, that he’d programmed every machine he owned with, that belonged to the arms that wrapped around him now. Soft lips pressed gentle to the back of his neck and Stephen closed his eyes, then turned around into the embrace and laid his head against the shoulder of the man who held him.

“I don’t remember your name,” he said quietly. “I don’t remember your face or what we were to each other. But I know I must have loved you fiercely then, to love you so well now. And you must have loved me, because otherwise I wouldn’t want to keep you so badly.”

“I do,” the man said fervently. “I do love you, more than anything. More than everything, I promised you that. It’s still true.”

Stephen nodded, his throat tight with emotion. “I’ll be back soon.”

“I know you will.”

He kept his eyes closed during their kiss, a kiss so perfect he knew it could only be imagined, or perhaps it was the memory of the real thing polished by centuries of renewal and faith. At any rate, he didn’t want to go, but he knew he had to.

“I love you.” I love you, I love you, I love you… It echoed through the chamber until it surrounded him, the sound of his own love, his own heart, and when Stephen finally opened his eyes, he stared up at the ceiling of his bedroom in pure bewilderment for a moment, wondering why he was crying, before reality crashed back in.

“Admiral Liang?” Hermes asked politely in the voice of Stephen’s lover, and he made a noise somewhere between a sob and a laugh as he contemplated his own creative cruelty toward himself. “Are you well?”

“Yes, Hermes,” he said, sitting up out of the machine laid out on his bed and wiping off his face with the back of his hand. “I’m fine.”

Redstone, Chapter Two

Notes: The next chapter of Redstone, in which I start to assemble the team. This is definitely an ensemble book, you'll be getting a lot of different perspectives as we go along, but let's start with an old friend!

Redstone: Chapter Two: Avengers Assemble

***

Raymond Alexander was a tall man, with long legs and a purposeful stride that made keeping up to him difficult for someone his aide’s height. After seventeen months she was used to it, though, and trotted alongside him as he headed for his private ship, taking notes all the while.

“I want you overseeing all of his medical care until the transfer to Redstone is complete. Don’t let them be soft with his mods. I want a complete shutdown per the court order.”

“Yes, sir.”

“No private communication, everything he says to anyone is to be monitored. I want copies sent to me of all exchanges, and be sure to flag the ones that occur between him and anyone in the Central System, especially Admiral Liang.”

“Yes, sir, except…”

The president scowled at his aide. “Except what, Tamara?”

“Well, sir, your brother’s conversations with his counsel are legally mandated to be private. I can’t get you copies of those.”

“True, I suppose. For now.” Raymond stopped, shut his eyes and rolled his shoulders out, the most visible signs of tension that Tamara had ever seen in him. “Get me everything else, and put an order into the courts for a tighter level of surveillance on speech monitoring for Kyle. We might get permission for keyword containment.”

“Yes, sir.” Raymond started walking again and Tamara jogged at his side.

“The transfer to Redstone should be done within a week. I want you to stick to him and his entourage until that transfer is complete, you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I don’t want him to have any opportunity to wriggle out of his incarceration period, Tamara, so mind that you keep everything strictly above board until Kyle is safely imprisoned. After that…”

“It’s a waiting game, I suppose,” Tamara said. “Until the trial, I mean.”

“No.” Raymond shook his head. “Redstone is endgame, Tamara.”

Tamara’s rapid steps stumbled for a moment, one hand going up to smooth her pale brown hair. “Uh…sir…”

Raymond didn’t stop until he was at the port to his personal ship. When he turned back to her, his face was full of sympathy. The expression looked odd on him, a prey mask stretched over a predator’s maw. “Don’t worry about that,” he said soothingly. “Just worry about keeping my brother firmly in hand before the transfer to Redstone. Once that’s done, I’ll bring you back home. I got an update from the genetic engineers yesterday, and they’re making real progress on a cure for you, Tamara. Soon all of this will be behind you, and you’ll have a very long, very productive life to look forward to.”

Tamara shivered slightly, her eyes wide, and Raymond chuckled and touched her cheek. “I thought you’d like that,” he said. “Just one more week, my dear.”

“Yes, sir,” Tamara murmured. Raymond turned and headed into the ship, the port closing firmly after him. Five minutes later The Regency had detached from the transport ship, and Tamara headed back to her temporary quarters, hustling head-down like a good little worker. Once she got to her private quarters and enabled blackout mode, she set her tab down and wiped a hand roughly across her cheek.

“Slimy fuck,” she muttered. “Sick, slimy fuck.” She pulled her hair back into a bun, then scratched her forehead. “Fucking fashion.” Why it had become la mode in the Central System for feminine to equal having your face mostly covered by your damn hair was a mystery to Tamara, except in all the ways it wasn’t. The resurgence in sexism over the past decade was directly linked to the dismissal of a lot of the Fringe planets and their “atypical” inhabitants, people who didn’t conform and didn’t care to. The idea that gender expression could even be an issue in this day and age had mystified Tamara until she met Raymond Alexander, and then it made too much sense.

If there had ever been a man who’d worshipped at the cult of masculinity, it was the president. He was the type to cherry pick at history, to wax rhapsodic about the great men of the past, most especially Alexander the Great. Not that that was coincidental, at all. And never mind that the guy had been a conqueror intent on expanding his empire instead of contracting it, or that he’d died young of illness and/or assassination, or that he’d had male lovers. Raymond was interested in the archetype: the fiction, not the fact. It both explained some of his idiosyncrasies and made others even stranger.

The president clearly wanted to be adored, and by a large swathe of the population, he was. Personally, though, he was alone, and seemed to prefer it that way. No close friends or spouses, no lovers, not even escorts spent any time in his bed as far as Tamara could tell. Raymond had no offspring, and the closest thing to genuine affection that Tamara had ever seen in him was what he expressed toward his little brother Kyle, and even that was poisoned.

The urge to take a shower was sublimated by the need to get in touch with Sir. Tamara shrugged out of her too-tight silver jacket—why the fabric refused to adjust properly was another fashion mystery that she wanted to set on fire—and settled on the narrow divan beside the false window. Currently it sported a jungle scene, but Tamara shifted it to a rocky cliff face overlooking a blue-grey ocean, with a dark purple sky in the background. She added the sound of waves and wind, and it was almost like being home. Then she assembled her private transponder.

Private, because of course Tamara needed something that didn’t hook into the prison ship’s network and also couldn’t be connected to Raymond Alexander’s communications. Assembled, because she would never have been allowed an actual private transponder. President Alexander demanded complete subservience in his employees, and that meant giving up all semblance of independence in most aspects of their lives, from what they wore to who they spoke to. Privacy was anathema, cohesion and adherence were everything. It was a good thing that Tamara had spent the time she had at the Academy learning how to make what she needed on her own.

She pulled part of her tab and set it on the divan, then pulled the retro-but-still-allowable chip from the center of her belt and slotted it into the top of the scavenged motherboard. Her earrings, completely inert when worn, became power supplies when dipped in an acid environment, which she got from the cleaning supplies in her bathroom. A few more tweaks and a minor calculation to get to the nearest bouncer, and Tamara uploaded her code and waited.

Sir answered after fifteens seconds. He looked as imperturbable as always, agelessly handsome in his crisp Academy uniform, his thick black hair a little longer than Tamara remembered it. In the background she heard Hermes say, “Mercury protocol activated,” and breathed a little sigh of relief. They were secure.

“Hummingbird,” Sir greeted her. “What do you have for me?”

“Nothing good,” she replied, wishing it was otherwise. “The President just left. I’m staying on as his liaison until Fledgling is delivered to Redstone.”

“So it is Redstone, then.”

“Yeah.” Tamara winced. She knew just how much time and effort Sir had put into getting a safety net in place at Caravan, where Kyle really should have been sent given his criminal history and family name. “His mods are going to be deactivated, and all his private communications are being monitored except those directly related to his legal counsel. I can’t guarantee that those will stay private for much longer either.”

“I’ll let Peacock know.”

Tamara snorted a little laugh, because if there was ever a more accurate descriptor for one of Sir’s operatives she didn’t know it. Garrett was one of her favorite people, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t kind of ridiculous too. “You do that. What’s our next move, Sir?”

“For you, monitoring, just like you’re supposed to. I sincerely doubt there will be any way for you to get close enough to Fledgling to speak with him, and I don’t want you to take undue risks with regard to your position. We do need to know what happens to him, though, so keep me updated as often as you can. Mercury will let you record messages in fifteen-second increments, so use the coded sequence if you can’t get me specifically.”

“Yes, Sir.” Who’d have thought a modified Morse code would be good for anything in this modern day and age?

“When you get to Redstone, the best option we have is for you to manufacture a reason to stay on the prison. You’re incredibly useful in your current position, but our top priority is the survival of Fledgling. See what you can do.”

“Yes, Sir.” Tamara would make that happen, if she had to give herself an actual heart attack to do it. “Are there any operatives in place at Redstone?”

“Peacock had two in positions of power at Caravan, but transferring them to Redstone will take time. The human guard population is only twenty percent compared with Caravan’s fifty, so it will be harder to get both of them in. There is someone on the inside at Redstone, but communication is extremely sparse.”

“Why’s that, Sir?”

“Because he’s in the prison population, Hummingbird.”

“An inmate?” Tamara was genuinely surprised. “I didn’t think it was possible to fake getting into Redstone. I mean, it’s the supermax for a reason. The only fakes that get in are the ones that have no choice, like Fledgling.”

“He isn’t a fake. Not exactly.”

“There’s a supermax prisoner in Redstone working for you? Seriously?”

“Peacock and Puffin both vouched for him.”

“Fucking Puffin,” Tamara grunted, because there was entitled and then there was dismissive, and none of her exchanges with Puffin had been anything but both of those. “How are we going to get him in touch with Fledgling?”

“He’s going to have to do it without our help, I’m afraid. Unless you can pass Fledgling information about an operative who’s largely in the dark, which I doubt. He’s modded, though, I do know that much. And Peacock oversaw the mods himself, so they’re going to be the best quality. If things go well, Fledgling won’t be alone in there.”

“Well, that’s something at least,” Tamara agreed. “Can I have a designation for this shadow operative?”

Sir smiled faintly. “Call him Magpie.”

Tamara raised one eyebrow. “Does he like shiny things, then?”

“He’s adaptable, or so I understand.” Something beeped, and Sir frowned as he glanced at a screen on his desk. “I have another communication coming through that can’t be delayed, I’m afraid.”

“I understand, Sir. Hummingbird out.” She cut the power with a sigh. If someone had asked Tamara when she was a teenager whether or not she’d enjoy spending so much time on her own, she’d have answered with a resounding “Yes!” Now that she’d been in the game for a few years, though, she could feel it wear on her a little. She hadn’t spoken with her father for months; they’d never been very close to begin with, but her dropping out of the Academy and then going to work for President Alexander were unforgivable, as far as Dad was concerned. She wondered if he was eating right, wondered how things were on Pandora. She wondered when the President would launch his attack there.

Not that she could prove that, not even with all her time as his aide. She was careful, but he was completely paranoid. He needed to go, and to manage that they needed Fledgling.

“Magpie better be good,” Tamara said to herself as she started to disassemble her transponder.

He had better be damn good.