The Peyti Crisis: A Retrieval Artist Novel: Book Five of the Anniversary Day Saga (Retrieval Artist series 12) (42 page)

“is that what you think is happening?” Flint asked.

“Every time I come up with a scenario,” Deshin said, “I can also come up with a dozen reasons why that scenario doesn’t work. So, what I think doesn’t matter. But we have to find whatever it is. I’ve done what I can. We now know what these clones aren’t.”

Flint let out a small laugh. “I never thought I’d be unhappy to discover that these clones
aren’t
designer criminal clones.”

Deshin nodded. “I felt the same way. I wanted to be able to buy them. That would have made our jobs so much easier.”

“Although,” Flint said, “what would we have done then?”

Deshin stared at him. Flint got the sense that Deshin had an answer which he would never admit to.

It was probably an answer that Flint did not want to know.

“We always knew this was big,” Deshin said. “I guess we just didn’t know how big.”

And then, before Flint could say anything, Deshin cut the link.

Flint stared at the empty space on his dash for a long moment. Then he sighed.

“Yeah,” he said softly. “We still don’t know how big it is. And if we have the ability to bring it down.”

But he hoped they did.

Because he didn’t want to think about what would happen if they couldn’t.

FORTY-SEVEN

DESHIN SANK INTO a chair in his private quarters. The ship was hurtling toward a nearby starbase, one that Jakande had already vetted for him.

Deshin hated all this vetting, hating being the center of this kind of attention.

But he also wanted to live through this little adventure.

Sometimes he wished he hadn’t brought this large security team. He was so used to traveling with
personnel
that he had forgotten until he got to Angu how important being stealthy could be.

He might have to trim the staff and change ships, much as he hated to give up these quarters. They were more comfortable than his bedroom at home. Everything was customized to his taste—the scent, a soft mix of Gerda’s perfume and a bit of vanilla; colors that tended toward the brown scale, and a cooler temperature than either his wife or son liked.

The chairs were standard space-yacht-issue, thick and comfortable, able to mold to his body, which this chair was doing right now.

It didn’t comfort him.

He ran a hand over his face, surprised to feel the slight oil of sweat. He had just lied to Miles Flint.

Deshin had just told Flint that he was done with this investigation, that he wasn’t going to help Flint any longer.

And that part was true: Deshin wouldn’t help Flint any longer.

Flint, and the authorities he represented, were on their own.

Deshin was now going to a place that made him exceedingly uncomfortable.

He was going to find the heart of the government’s secret cloning system. He had thought of doing this years ago, when he’d caught a designer criminal clone inside his own organization. Some investigation had shown that clone wasn’t made in the usual places.

It was government issue, and it had been put in his organization as a spy.

He closed his eyes and rested his head on the back of the chair. Didier Conte had proven to Deshin that the problem lay inside the Earth Alliance.

Something in Deshin’s gut had told him that all along. There simply weren’t other governments in known space that were big enough to attack the Alliance, nor were there governments rich enough to fund an attack of this magnitude.

Which meant that the attack was internal.

When he thought of the Alliance the way he thought about his empire, he understood traitors within. He’d found the DNA for Frémont, and it was inside the Alliance. Now he had to find where that DNA was grown into an army of clones.

He had a half-formed plan. He needed to give it more thought before implementing it. Because once the plan was underway, he couldn’t turn back.

He felt like he had so few choices. He could ignore what was going on in his home; he could face it head-on; or he could run from it.

He wasn’t going to run or ignore.

He was going to solve.

That was who he was, and who he would always be.

“Sorry, Gerda,” he whispered.

At least he knew his son was in good hands. Paavo and Gerda would have a good life if this misadventure killed him.

And he had to find comfort in that.

Somehow.

FORTY-EIGHT

FLINT SAT AT the desk in his office in Old Armstrong. He had tracked in a lot of Moon dust, but it was slowly going away. The fact that it was filtering out told him that his new environmental system was working well.

He hoped that meant his security systems were also working well. Because he had decided to do the financial research here. It was the only place where he could completely trust the security.

After he had signed off with Deshin, Flint had driven to the Security Office. He was going to go inside, and start the research.

He’d actually gotten out of the car and was halfway up the block when he realized that searching through financial records in a place with ties to the Earth Alliance probably wasn’t a good idea.

If Deshin was right, then someone inside the Earth Alliance was protecting—or causing—these attacks. Flint had hints of that before, but he was even more certain of it now. He had no idea what was being monitored or by whom. He didn’t dare trust systems attached to anything from the Alliance, no matter how much he trusted the people in the Security Office.

He had gone back to the car and sat for at least fifteen minutes, trying to figure out where to go next. His usual haunts for dicey research—the university, the Brownie Bar—might put those places in danger. Plus he would be easily traced if someone or something wanted to see who was making those inquiries.

His involvement in protecting the Moon from future attacks wasn’t well known, but more and more people knew what he was doing. In other words, it was known by enough people that he could be ferreted out if need be.

It would be easier to catch him on public networks, even with all of the noise surrounding the university and the Brownie Bar, than it would be from the security of his own office.

He needed to protect himself and Talia, but he had to be smart about it. He also needed to protect his colleagues.

He decided, as he let himself into the office, that he wouldn’t bring Talia here to work with him.

That meant he was going to need someone to stay with her, someone he could trust. He would impose on DeRicci and Popova as much as he could, but he would need someone else as well.

He just wasn’t sure who that was.

He then banished those thoughts. He needed several hours of uninterrupted work.

He started by updating his security, using procedures that even the most paranoid would think paranoid. But he had no real idea what he was up against, so he was going to think of them as all-seeing and all-knowing.

That meant he wasn’t going to ever be 100% invisible to them, but he was going to attempt 99%.

Sometimes he stopped and thought about expectations. Criminals—the Masterminds, as he’d been calling them—would expect a Moon-based investigation. They would also expect an Earth Alliance investigation, and probably one from Peyla.

He could spoof the security so that the search looked like it came from Peyla, but he wasn’t going to do that right away. He would break the research into component parts. Research into human elements would either come from the Moon or some Earth Alliance address (maybe Earth herself). Research into the Peyti connection would seem to come from Peyla and from a different Earth Alliance address.

He had to move slowly, carefully, and with great deliberation.

And he had to design his searches to meet all the elements that Deshin had set out for him.

Flint needed to find millions, maybe billions, that went to the care and feeding of clones. He needed to investigate this woman, Jhena Andre. And he needed to keep an open mind, to see patterns that he might normally ignore.

If only he were thinking clearly. He was exhausted and a bit unnerved, worried for Talia, and frightened for the Moon herself. For the Alliance itself.

He needed to focus, and he had to do it now.

FORTY-NINE

FOR ONCE, NYQUIST didn’t bring food to DeRicci’s office. He wasn’t hungry. In fact, he wasn’t sure he’d be hungry for a few days.

He had left the prison, gone home, showered, showered again, and still didn’t feel clean. He hated talking with Uzvaan, and knew he’d have to do it at least once more.

That thought made him queasy.

He had tried to banish it on the way to see DeRicci, but he hadn’t been able to. He had made a deal with the Peyti who had tried to kill him. Nyquist had made deals with killers before, but never with someone who had tried to harm him personally.

He was beginning to understand—on a very deep level—the wrath of victims who never saw their attackers come to trial, because someone felt some other crime had more importance.

He thought he had walked off the anger until he entered DeRicci’s private office.

She turned toward him, her hair mussed, her clothing as wrinkled as he’d ever seen it, and asked, “How did it go?”

It took all of his strength not to snap
How do you think it went?
After all, she had been the one to suggest he go bargain with Uzvaan.

Nyquist took a deep breath to calm himself. In the past, he would snap at employers, and he would take his frustrations out on partners. But he cared about DeRicci—okay, truth was, he probably loved her—and she was going through hell.

His little interaction with Uzvaan was mild compared to the things she did daily.

“He offered,” Nyquist said, deciding not to burden her with the ups and downs of the discussion.

“Offered what exactly?” DeRicci sat at her desk, folded her hands, and leaned forward, as if Nyquist were a supplicant. He wondered how often she had taken that position in the past six months, and whether or not it helped keep her calm.

“He offered to tell us everything he knew if we got rid of his clone status. But the catch is that we can’t just wave our hands. We have to really get rid of the clone status. He is a lawyer, after all.”

DeRicci nodded, her lips thin.

“We can just declare him legal on the Moon,” DeRicci said. “Right now, no one is going to argue with me.”

“That’s not going to be good enough. He—”

“Wants Alliance approval, I know,” DeRicci said. “Popova knows some judges. We’ll get that, but it’ll take time.”

“We don’t have time,” Nyquist said. “Right now, he doesn’t know anything about S-Three, but at some point he will, or they’ll learn about him. And then all conversation will cease, no matter what we’re discussing.”

DeRicci nodded, ran a hand through her hair, and sighed again. “I’ll make the declaration on his status tonight, but I’m only going to let the prison know. We’ll bury the documentation with the other documents we send to the courts around the Moon, so that S-Three won’t find out quickly, at least. That’ll have to do as a start. Call it good faith. Because Uzvaan has to know that going through Alliance courts will take time.”

“He’s probably counting on that,” Nyquist said. “He does seem pretty willing to work with us. He didn’t expect to live after the attacks last week, so he has no plans for his future, and is rather stunned at his treatment. It makes me wonder how many of the others would be willing to talk as well.”

“Hmmm.” DeRicci tapped her forefinger against her lips and leaned back. “I’ll see what other pretenses we can use to contact them. You might not be the only envoy of this office going to the prison this week.”

“Be careful,” Nyquist said. “We do too much and everything will come to S-Three’s attention.”

“God, we sound like they’re all-seeing and all-knowing,” DeRicci said.

“Right now, they’re hampering the investigation,” Nyquist said.

“Too bad we can’t arrest them for that,” DeRicci said in such a clear voice that Nyquist knew she had already looked into it. “Unfortunately, everything they’ve done so far has been strictly by the book.”

“Well, let’s hope they screw up,” Nyquist said. “Until then, we have to grab the information while we can. Which is why I’m going back.”

Something in his tone must have reached DeRicci because she gave him a calculating look. Then her face softened.

“I know I’m asking too much of you,” she said. “But—”

“Don’t,” Nyquist said, putting up his hand to block her words. He didn’t want to hear an apology or a rationale, even though he had been angry with her a few minutes ago about this whole thing. “You have no one else to talk to the clones.”

“Not with a good excuse,” she said. “I suppose I could send one of my people in to see Palmette’s lawyer, but that would look—”