Dark Beneath the Moon (49 page)

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.”

Viss shrugged, grinning. “I was an idiot for a while, that’s all. Men do that, you know?”

Yuskeya put a hand over her heart and bowed. “As do women, from time to time. But we’re okay, Captain.
Okej
?”

They left then, and I promised myself again that I wouldn’t get involved in my crew’s personal affairs.

Rei was a different matter, because she was also my best friend. When she came to visit later in the afternoon, I had no trouble asking about her plans.

“What do you mean?” she asked, sounding insulted. “Aren’t I still your pilot?”

“Well, certainly—I just thought that you and Gerazan—”

She smiled. “Gerazan and I got along very well, thank you. But with everything that’s happening—I mean with the Chron, and PrimeCorp—well, who knows what his next posting will be?” A shadow fell across her face as she contemplated the possibilities. Then she brightened again. Rei rarely let things bother her for long, absconding fiancés notwithstanding. “And I’ve got the
Tane Ikai.
However, we might spend some time together in a couple of months, if things work out and he can get some leave.” She winked at me.

I pretended to be shocked. “But he’s not Erian! There couldn’t be anything long-term in that, or your mother would go crazy, remember?”

Rei stood up to go, bending to hug me first. “My mother,” she said, “is a very resilient person. But we can talk about it more later. Feel better, Luta.”

She opened the door and Mother appeared in the hallway. “How’s the patient?” Mother asked.

“Feeling better,” Rei told her. “She’s up to asking impertinent questions.”

Mother chuckled and crossed to the bed, pulled out her datamed and attached it to my implant. For the first few minutes she took readings, asked questions, and played the efficient doctor. She resembles me so strongly—well, I suppose I resemble her—that Hirin often jokes that he has a hard time telling us apart. Her nanobioscavengers have halted our aging processes a mere few years apart, so that contributes to the similarities. Today she had her auburn hair piled into a messy but elegant updo, and wore a plain, soft yellow shift dress.