The Peyti Crisis: A Retrieval Artist Novel: Book Five of the Anniversary Day Saga (Retrieval Artist series 12) (45 page)

Nyquist was a bit amazed that he had gone from hating his assignment to looking forward to it. Flint’s discovery made Nyquist’s job that much easier.

“I have someone who can investigate this on Peyla as well,” DeRicci said. “It’s a human woman on Peyla who deeply understands Peyti culture. She says they’re as shocked as we are by this betrayal, and they’re not sure where to look.”

DeRicci glanced at Nyquist, then at Popova, before continuing,

“Bartholomew got Uzvaan to speak Peytin to him. This woman, Jin Rastigan confirms that what Uzvaan said is something that some of the clones of Uzvekmt said on Peyla after they were arrested. It’s part of the training.”

“I knew it,” Nyquist said, then, before Flint could ask, he explained, “It’s about failure.”

He told Flint about the interaction, and then DeRicci mentioned the killings on Peyti, and their theory. Popova added her thoughts as well.

Flint was nodding by the end of it all.

“And Jin confirmed to me that the Peyti brain is similar to the human brain, even in emotional response. So if you take a child and raise him in a world where failure equals death, then he will learn not to fail. And just like humans, the Peyti child will become desensitized to murder if it’s part of his daily existence.”

“Then I don’t understand,” Flint said slowly, “how any of these Peyti could have become lawyers.”

“They were good at the law,” Nyquist said. “They found nuances in whatever was on the books. But their attitudes—Uzvaan’s at least—toward their clients was always a bit contemptuous. I didn’t like that about him.”

“And now we know why it was there,” DeRicci said. Then she looked at Flint. “I didn’t want Talia in here, because I don’t think we should discuss our progress on the Peyti clones with anyone.”

“You’re right,” he said.

“Will she be helping you track the money?” DeRicci asked.

He shook his head. “She’s not in any shape to do so.”

Nyquist frowned. So there was something going wrong with Flint’s daughter.

“I may have found her some help,” Flint said. “I’ll let you know.”

“She can come up here any time,” Popova said. “We’ll be working, but she’s welcome.”

“You can work up here,” DeRicci said.

Flint shook his head. “Remember what I said about being monitored. If there’s a Peyti mastermind as well as a human one, then the Peyti mastermind will be watching for Moon-based investigations. Better that I do it from my office.”

“You have no protection there,” DeRicci said.

Flint smiled. “I have no
human
protection there. Otherwise, I’m well fortified.”

Nyquist shifted a little. Normally, he would offer his services, but he didn’t want to. He wanted to follow the leads now. They actually had a direction. And it felt good.

“Let’s get busy on those questions,” he said. “I’ll find out how early I can get to the prison.”

DeRicci grinned—a real, happy smile. “I actually feel hopeful for the first time six months,” she said.

Popova laughed in agreement. Nyquist wasn’t sure he’d ever heard her laugh before.

Flint was smiling too. Then he put up one hand.

“Not to darken the mood,” he said, “but I want to warn you all that it’ll take me a few weeks to find anything. I have to go slow. If I blunder my way into the databases, someone will catch me.”

“That’s just prudent,” DeRicci said. “We need to be careful. But at least we have a direction now. Something to hang onto.”

Nyquist looked at her. She seemed more energized than he’d seen her since Anniversary Day. That was what she needed; she needed hope. She had been flailing in dozens of different directions.

Everyone
had been flailing. Nyquist too. But he had a purpose now. He wasn’t just trying to figure out how to manipulate a suspect into revealing something. He had one who wanted to talk, and he even had questions to ask besides the big one:
Why?

He might get to that. But he suspected not even Uzvaan knew the answer to that big question. Uzvaan’s why—he owed it to his creators—had already been answered.

Now, Nyquist and the rest of the team had to figure out what Uzvaan’s creators wanted—what their reasons for the attack were. Maybe Uzvaan knew; maybe not. But the creators themselves couldn’t hide forever. And Flint had probably just discovered how to find them.

“Every investigation has its turning point,” Nyquist said to Flint. “And sometimes it’s just that moment when everything becomes clear.”

Flint’s gaze met his, softened, and Flint smiled. “I wouldn’t have found it without Deshin. I think he knew all along that the finances were key. We just didn’t know which finances.”

“I always figured it would be the DNA,” DeRicci said.

“I thought it was the choice of mass murderers,” Popova said.

“Those are all elements,” Flint said. “But we’re not going to find our bad guys through those things. If we could, they wouldn’t have been so obvious. It’s the money.”

“It always is,” Nyquist said, wondering how he missed it. “Money finances everything from greed to hatred to wars. Follow the money, and you find who put something together.”

“Law schools,” Popova said. “It sounds so simple.”

“The masterminds expected the lawyers to get blown up with the rest of the Moon,” Flint said. “If they had succeeded, we never would have known what caused this round of explosions.”

“This was something the masterminds didn’t think they had to cover,” DeRicci said in wonder.

Nyquist grinned. “And that’s their flaw.”

Everyone looked at him.

He shrugged. “They didn’t plan for failure—because it’s not allowed. Uzvaan isn’t the only one in new territory. The masterminds are too. I wonder how they’ll react.”

The smiles faded.

This fight was only just now getting underway. They had a lot of preparation to do.

Because the masterminds would figure out how to react, and this group had to be ready. The
Moon
had to be ready.

And Nyquist would do everything in his power to make sure that it was.

The thrilling adventure continues with the
sixth book in the Anniversary Day Saga,
Vigilantes.

A shocking act of violence...

The looming threat of another attack spurs the Moon’s chief security officer, Noelle DeRicci, to uncover the identity of the masterminds behind the Anniversary Day bombings before they strike again. Armed with information uncovered by Retrieval Artist Miles Flint and Detective Bartholomew Nyquist, DeRicci lets herself hope she can put an end to the violence against the Moon.

But then a brutal murder changes everything.

DeRicci must risk everything to launch a secret investigation into the very heart of the Earth Alliance.

Can the next attack be stopped?

Turn the page for the first chapter of
Vigilantes.

FORTY YEARS AGO

ONE

THE GRAY DOOR before Claudio Stott had fifteen levels of protection on it. Stott knew because he had actually studied the manual for this part of the Forensic Wing of The Alliance’s Security Services. Most of the other candidates had downloaded the manual and used AutoLearn to figure out the massive information contained within.

The problem with that, of course, was that the other candidates gave similar answers to the verbal quiz Terri Muñoz gave them before making her final selection for this job.

Now that Stott stood in the corridor outside the most secure part of the Forensic Wing, he wasn’t certain he wanted this job at all. The door stood at the end of several long corridors. The door was buried in the center of the starbase, and the first rooms beyond the door were clean rooms. He would have to use both a sonic shower, and a shower with specialized liquid before entering and leaving the section, something not mentioned in the manual, because, apparently, it irritated everyone involved.

Muñoz told him that several employees of the section actually got enhancements to keep their skin moist and to prevent rashes from the four-to-eight-times-per-day showers. The showers themselves sounded like wasted effort. Stott wanted to know why a decontamination chamber wouldn’t work better, one calibrated for foreign DNA.

Then, even as he had the thought, he realized the problem with his question. The Forensic Wing didn’t care about foreign DNA. They cared about the DNA that every single human being sloughed off through the course of every second of every day.

The showers, in theory, would prevent the sloughing long enough for the staff to don specially made environmental suits without contaminating the exteriors of those suits.

He should have known all of that; after all, he
had
studied the manual.

He looked at Muñoz. She was slight, her skin tending toward a greenish-olive that made her seem just a little ill. He had seen a holo of her from the days when she was first hired. Then her skin was a creamy brown.

So many people looked different as they aged that he hadn’t attributed the change to anything. But now that he was contemplating half a dozen showers just to get to work, take his outside breaks, and eat his lunch, he wondered if that greenish-olive color reflected the beating her skin had taken after decades inside this facility.

This facility sounded so impressive. Special DNA Collections sounded like something positive instead of something scary.

He’d gotten past the scariness of it all by reminding himself that this was where the most interesting work in the Forensic unit occurred. Where real science got done.

He’d initially signed onto the DNA testing unit right out of university, with a newly minted degree in biological sciences. Because he’d been granted admission under the Alliance Poverty Program, he had to spend at least five years working off the cost of his degrees within the Alliance government.

He’d almost decided to move into the private sector when this opportunity came along. The salary was double what he made in the regular DNA testing section of the Forensic Unit, and he got to do actual work, rather than monitor the machines which did the testing almost automatically.

He once told one of his colleagues that he hadn’t gotten a degree to babysit computer programs and make sure they ran right. Nor had he gotten one so that he could testify in court, verifying the computer’s results.

He had gotten the degree so that he could learn the secrets of DNA, secrets that—after thousands of years of study—human beings still didn’t entirely know.

Stott worried about working for corporations. He believed they often acted in amoral ways, particularly when it came to their employees. He knew too many people who had become actual sacrifices for the corporations: sent into newly aligned alien territories, forced to work in uncharted conditions, and then punished for violating alien laws that no human had known about.

Some corporations had Disappearance services which helped employees and their families escape the long arm of alien (and Alliance) justice. But Stott knew from personal experience that the Disappearance Services often came on the scene too late and did too little to save lives.

He shuddered and made himself focus on Muñoz. She was holding a tablet close to her chest. Apparently, the tablet was part of the security system.

Her dark eyes met his. “Are you changing your mind, Mr. Stott?”

He straightened. Double the salary. He didn’t have to work with aliens. And he got to do real science. Surely several daily showers and lots of security procedures was worth all of that.

“No,” he said, then decided his voice sounded wobbly. So he made himself speak more firmly. “No. I want to work here.”

“Good,” she said. “Because once you go through those doors, you’re not going to be able to change your mind about this assignment.”

He nodded. He had heard that warning before. It had been part of the application process at every single step. This was an irrevocable assignment, particularly because he would learn things that would be dangerous in the wrong hands.

“I’m ready,” he said. “Let’s go.”