Previous Chapter

Dramatis Personae

Lin’yi

After almost a week of waiting to hear if Lloyd Carter would turn up or not it was a strange feeling to suddenly find him sitting in an office, drumming his fingers on a desk as he watched text scroll by on a computer screen. Twice as strange to realize that she’d never bothered to learn what he looked like. The beacon laying contract had been formalized via the Wayfinder’s Guild and the project assigned without her input. The news Carter was missing was delivered via a short databurst sent vial etheric. The business implications of having a burgeoning trade route undercut by a rival had seemed a lot more pressing then the details of who, exactly, had disappeared while expanding it. In short, she wasn’t prepared for what she saw.

The man was handsome. Good looking to the point of distraction, so much so that she got caught up in the angle of his jaw line and almost forgot to shake his hand. It was a strong, reassuring hand and she let go of it as fast as was humanly possible. Prolonged contact with this man was going to be dangerous. “Hello, Mr. Carter,” she said, speaking softly in an attempt to keep her voice from turning breathy. “I’m glad to see you’re doing well.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Miss Wen.” There was a rough, gravelly edge to his voice that was very pleasing. He offered her a chair then returned to where he’d been sitting before, straightening his heavy, leather jacket across his broad frame before taking his seat.

“I hear you’ve had a rough week. Unfortunately our efforts to help you didn’t pan out but I’m glad you managed to get back home one way or another.”

“That’s what we do, Miss Wen,” he said with a wry grin. “Being a Wayfinder is about finding your way, after all, and we don’t expect our employers to handle it for us. I appreciate the thought, though.”

She found herself nodding foolishly and forced herself to stop. She had no business feeling giddy because a handsome man said a few words of gratitude. “I regret that you’ve gotten caught up in some layer of subterfuge involving our company. Mr. Hammer told me about the people he found in your apartment when you met and I suspect they were working for one of our rivals. I assure you, we’ll do what we can to make sure you’re not in danger that way again.” She gestured to Malaki, eager to turn the conversation over to him and retreat to a safe distance. “This is Malaki Skorkowski, one of the best problem solvers I know. He had some questions he was hoping you could answer with an eye toward working out why they were there and whether you’re in any further danger.”

“I’m happy to answer but…” He hesitated, clearly uncertain of something, then made up his mind and said, “Well, go ahead and ask away. I don’t think I can help you much, though.”

“Not to worry,” Malaki said, slipping into the seat across from him. “The galaxy is full of people who thought they weren’t helping me when they were actually arranging for my greatest successes. Granted their intent was typically malicious. I’ll hope yours is not. However, regardless of your animating spirit, as long as you answer truthfully I am sure I can learn something.”

Carter gave him a skeptical look for a second then shrugged and said, “Sure. What do you want to know?”

“Let’s start with the basics. Why didn’t you make your daily check-in six days ago, when you initially went missing?”

“A giant tower came out of the Helium Seas and chased my partner and I around. We had to lay low.”

“A what?”

“A tower. At least, that’s the best way I can think of to describe it, Devours Clouds says the Jellies call them Liquid Teeth but I didn’t get close enough to see if it was liquid or not.” Carter made a face asking what he could do. “It was roundish and relatively straight so it wasn’t a ferrovine or anything plus it was moving under its own power.”

After three years working with the man Lin’yi had seen Malaki Skorkowski learn a lot of strange and bizarre things. The Hutchinson obsession with genetics was just one thread he’d worked to unravel for BTL. He’d accidentally discovered a Rasen Galactic plot to hijack an entire laboratory ship en route to Goeglien University while trying to figure out why shipments of spectroscopic measuring tools were going missing. When Bai’lung Wen was murdered he’d proven the man’s wife ground up the body and fed it to pigs. Then there was the time he discovered a strain of sentient fungus on Veilis Vei. It took something truly unexpected to throw him for a loop but when it happened he had a nasty tendency to freeze as he backtracked to the last thing he understood. He was doing it now.

She decided to intervene to buy him some time. “This Devours Clouds is one of the local lifeforms, correct?”

“Yes. They’re big things with five major limbs and no skeletal structure.” Carter contorted his hand and fingers into a bell shape with the fingers all loosely dangling downward. “We call them the Great Jellies although they think of themselves as drifters on the helium seas. That’s where we get the name. For the Helium Seas, not the creatures, of course.”

“Why do you call him your partner?”

“Because it is. We’re obligated to take at least one of them along with us on expeditions that cross into Jelly territory, not that I’d want to go there without one. They have a borderline supernatural understanding of the atmo. When I head down into the Seas Cloudie’s the one they send with me. I don’t think I’d be alive if it hadn’t been along for the expedition, it was the first one to realize something was wrong. I don’t suppose the big lug’s checked in with the Guild yet?”

“I haven’t heard anything.”

Malaki held up a hand, forestalling her saying anything more. “I think we need to go a little further back. Did your Jelly friend say what causes these Liquid Teeth to appear?”

“I think he said something about their cropping up when they dived too deep? I never thought to ask for details. We had other, more pressing things to think about at the time and eventually we wound up going different ways.”

“Naturally, I can see how something the size of a ferrovine chasing you could forestall questions.” He leaned forward, his earlier confusion giving way to an eager light in his eyes. “Mr. Carter, think carefully. You describe what you saw as a tower and as similar to a ferrovine but that’s contradictory, don’t you think? Towers are quite straight, following simple but serviceable rules of architecture. Ferrovines, for all their metal content, are basically organic and grow in very organic fashion. However, did this liquid tooth grow straight? Did it weave back and forth on the winding path of a vine? Or was it more of a curved trajectory?”

Carter fidgeted for a moment. “Well, now that you mention it, there was kind of an arch to it. I never found out for sure if that was an effect of the way it was moving, some kind of optical distortion caused by how dense the atmosphere is down there or something. So I can’t say for sure it curved but… maybe.”

Malaki reached into an inner jacket pocket and was in the process of pulling out a piece of flexi, probably the same ones he’d been working with on the Skybreak, when the office door chimed. He hesitated and Lin’yi pulled her attention away long enough to check the camera. Lavanya was waiting there. Lin’yi got to her feet and let her in, saying “This is my preferred courier and Malaki’s current partner. Do you mind if she joins us?”

Carter gave a helpless shrug. “If you don’t have a problem with it then I don’t, although I think five people is a little cramped for this place.”

It wasn’t a big office but it had certain things going for it. “A fair point. However this is the most secure office in terms of preventing eavesdropping and hacking. We can stand to be warm for a little while.”

Lavanya swept in, crossed the room and shook Carter’s hand as he stood to greet her. “You must be Mr. Carter. I’m Lavanya Brahman, always a pleasure to meet another member of the brotherhood of navigators.”

Carter favored her with a grin that, yes, caused Lin’yi a pang of irrational jealousy. “Charmed, Miss Brahman. Wayfinder work is almost entirely in what you’d consider planetary atmosphere so I’m sure your flight record is much more impressive than mine. That said, Wireburn’s atmo isn’t like any other settled world’s.”

“I’ve landed here a couple of times before this and I can agree with that.” The two of them straightened the front of their jackets with an eerily similar motion then sat down. There was no official organization called the brotherhood of navigators but you’d have to be blind not to notice there was some kind of shared bearing and attitude between the two. And that was before taking the tough brown flight leathers they wore into account. Lin’yi wondered if it was the similarity of their professions or if had more to do with shared personality traits as she resealed the door and returned to her own seat.

Carter glanced around at the assembled group and pulled something out of his pocket. “Miss Wen, I don’t mean to be rude, given how you brought in all these people to help look for me at your own expense. I’m grateful for it, really. But is this everyone you’ve got dedicated to this project or are we expecting anyone else?”

Caught a bit off guard, Lin’yi adjusted herself on her seat as she tried to figure out why he would suddenly ask that question and whether she should answer directly or not. However the fact was she couldn’t see a reason not to. “Honestly, Mr. Carter, there are more people here than I had originally intended to dedicate to the task but it is how many people wound up here when it was all said and done. Why? I hope you don’t feel like you have to offer us a reward or something. That’s my job.”

He turned sheepish. “No, ma’am. I just… I think it’s best if what I’m about to say doesn’t go too far, you see? I learned some strange things, down in the Helium Seas. I get that you and Mr. Skorkowski are going to try and work out something based on it but you know what they say about secrets and big groups of people. They don’t work well together.”

She nodded. “If you’re asking whether I trust these people to keep a lid on whatever you say here then yes. I’ve worked with Malaki and Lavanya for years now. Mr. Hammer is a recent addition to the operation but he’s been professional and proficient.” Hammer nodded his appreciation at that endorsement. “But if you’d rather speak to just a few of us I’ll understand.”

“No, that’s not necessary. If you trust them I’m willing to do the same.” He offered her a grin meant to reassure her but that did more to leave her breathless. “Is it okay if we turn sidereal here? I know a lot of highly secure buildings have countermeasures for that kind of thing built in but if we can it will make explaining easier.”

“We can.” Short sentences. That was the key to surviving this conversation.

“Good. I’ll need the four of you to let me make the pivot.” As she suspected the thing from his pocket was the strange etheric device Hammer had mentioned before they’d come down to talk to Carter. The Wayfinder held it by the center, clenched in his right hand. He held it out over the center of the desk.

After a moment’s hesitation Lin’yi reached out and rested her own hand on top of his. The other three exchanged glances with her then also put their hands there, beginning with Lavanya, who gave a shrug and a smile, and ending with a very suspicious looking Hammer.

There was the familiar spinning sensation as Carter turned them away from the terrestrial world. The walls of the office weren’t replaced with the distant starlight they normally would be. Nor did the tall planes of translucent light that marked the BTL office’s etheric systems and privacy measures come into view. Instead a globe of light, much like an etheric beacon, appeared just behind Carter. All around them were delicate threads that rose out of the top of the light, curved around them and entered back into the globe at the base. The threads themselves pulsed with faint light.

The mass of threads was so dense they couldn’t see anything else.

Hammer immediately moved one hand to the handle of his etheric lash. Lavanya tensed and Malaki… he tipped his head back to trace the threads up, around, down and back to the globe. He was smiling. Carter cleared his throat as he tucked the etheric device back into his pocket. With his other hand he gestured to the globe behind him. “Miss Wen, Miss Brahman, Mr. Hammer, Mr. Skorkowski, let me introduce L-93, an etheric manufacturing Artificial Intelligence and a node in the LARK network.”

Next Chapter

Previous Chapter

Dramatis Personae

Lin’yi

The biggest problem with independent contractors was the fact that you could never guess how independent they actually were. Some of them would rely on you a lot. They stayed in continuous correspondence with the home office and never took an action without a clear idea of how they were getting paid for it. Lin’yi Wen found she far preferred these kinds of contractors to the alternative. Her current problem child, Malaki Skorkowski, rarely contacted her at all and when he did insisted on using an arcane series of code phrases that barely communicated anything.

Elisha Hammer fell into a comfortable middle ground. When one of her other contractors had gone missing Hammer had let her know as soon as he turned up the Wayfinder. He’d included enough details to imply there was another interested party and convinced Carter, the formerly missing man, to lay low at the local BTL branch office. The office manager’s report said Hammer was still there, keeping an eye on things. That made it easier to sit through the short trip back to Wireburn.

She intended to tip the Thieftaker very handsomely for his work and perhaps offer to put him on longterm retainer. BTL didn’t have an information gathering department so that was the best she could offer. However if that situation ever changed Hammer having a record of achievements would make it easier for her to justify offering him a position there. If such a thing could be arranged she stood to benefit a lot.

Malaki was giving her a blithe, unimpressed look. She realized he’d been watching her mull over these ideas for the last ten minutes as Lavanya worked to land the Skybreak. He looked like he’d read all her thoughts on her face and found them wanting. He often looked like that so maybe it meant nothing. But he also had a knack for working his way into other people’s heads so he might actually have guessed what she was thinking. That was what made him valuable.

“No, I’m not going to fire you for the Wireburn detective, Malaki.”

“I appreciate the vote of confidence.” He turned his attention back to the piece of flexiplast he was folding into some kind of abstract shape. “Do you want me to listen to your talk with this Wayfinder? Or do you think it’s unrelated?”

“He’s not a geneticist on the side, if that’s what you’re asking.” Lin’yi pulled her dataveil down and started looking through the information coming up from the branch office. “There’s still no sign the Hutchinsons are engaged on this planet and we’ve been looking. But you invited yourself along so if you want to be a part of this conversation you’re more than welcome.”

“Much obliged.” Malaki’s fidgeting had produced a long tube and he stuck a finger in each end of it and pulled. Somehow the thing clung stubbornly to the digits.

She shook her head and ignored him and his toys, continuing to go through the updates until they made planetfall. It took longer than normal because they had to navigate the domes. The entirety of Wireburn’s major settlements were under some kind of flexible pressure dome made from the fibers of the giant vines they were anchored to. These were just one of the potential lines of commerce BTL was looking to exploit. It was slow going at the moment but most planets had large bodies of water that could use similar pressure domes and the gas giant had no shortage of the vines available. Lin’yi had several small labs running experiments with the dome polymers. The early results were promising.

The mechanisms for the pressure locks that separated the domes from the rest of the atmosphere were kept highly classified by the local governments. It was an understandable security concern but a frustrating one. Lin’yi found herself staring at them as they passed through, wondering what could be done to improve and miniaturize the huge constructs. There had to be a use for that, too. Possibilities bounced around in her mind as always but soon enough she had to set them aside as the Skybreak landed at the branch office’s private hanger.

Lin’yi headed down the gangway with Malaki as Lavanya locked down the ship and scheduled maintenance. The hanger’s six bays were half full and they were able to cut across several of the empty landing cradles to the entrance. As they were crossing the last empty berth she realized someone was waiting for them. Elisha Hammer was leaning against the wall beside the main door, half in the shadow of a stack of barrels containing enriched reef water and quietly smoking a cigarette. He dropped it and ground it out as they got within a half a dozen meters then came to meet them. “Miss Wen.”

“You look like you’ve had a rough time of it, Mr. Hammer.” Someone had applied a compress over the bridge of his nose and he seemed to be favoring his side a little.

“I’d like to say it’s nothing out of the ordinary but I don’t like lying to my clients.” He glanced around the hanger, his gaze slowing for a second or two as it swept over the various techs and pilots puttering around the ships in their landing cradles. “Do you think we could discuss this somewhere a little more private? Before we speak to Mr. Carter.”

“Of course. We can hijack the security room.”

Given how much cash moved through BTL’s hands on a given day there was always a need for a full security team in their offices, even if it was a branch office on a relatively backwater planet, and since most of that money was in cargo the security center wasn’t far from the hanger. It wasn’t necessary to empty the entire room, of course. Lin’yi just borrowed the shift leader’s small office. There was barely room in there for the three of them and the desk but they piled in and got comfortable. As soon as he sealed the door behind them, Hammer started talking.

“You case has two highly unusual aspects to it, Miss Wen. First, there was another player looking to locate Mr. Carter when I found him and, regretfully, I have no idea who they were or who they worked for.” Hammer leaned his back against the door and folded his arms in front of him. “I can tell you their heavy was formidable.”

“Is that what happened to…” Malaki made a meaningful gesture to his own nose.

“Yes. I’m not in the habit of loosing fistfights but the kinds of jobs I work tend to petty crime or crimes of passion so it happens now and again. This was different. Someone shelled out enough cash to bring in a made man of some sort.” Hammer flicked his long coat so it fell a bit further back and revealed the etheric lash coiled at his hip. “He wasn’t carrying one of these, I can tell you that. Graduated lethality was nowhere in his MO. He was ready to kill whoever he ran into, possibly up to and including Mr. Carter, and he wasn’t being shy about it.”

“Any idea who he was?”

Rather than answer Malaki’s question Hammer gave Lin’yi a curious look. “I assume since you didn’t leave him outside you want this guy here but… can I ask who he is?”

“He’s my chief meddler,” Lin’yi said. “I sick him on problems I can’t solve with people like you.”

“Yeah? He any good at it?”

Lin’yi made the galaxy’s universally recognized “so-so” gesture. “Did you have any idea who the person that broke your nose was?”

He rubbed the compress absently with his right thumb. “Bruised, not broke. And no, I’ve never seen him before nor does he fit the description of some of the professional back breaker’s I’ve heard about. His partner was also unfamiliar to me. I did stop to look at the car they came in but the transponder was on a rental frequency so not a whole lot to go on there. I might be able to weasel some info out of an agent I know at the spaceport but…” A helpless shrug. “That’s very hit and miss.”

“There was more than one person looking for Mr. Carter?” Malaki asked.

“Yeah. Mind you, I’m not sure they were a team but they definitely seemed coordinated and familiar with each other based on what I saw.”

Lin’yi hit a button on the desk to start recording what was said in the office. “Can you describe them?”

“He was a big guy with a pencil mustache and a strangely cut, olive colored overcoat. Very active, very capable. She was a shorter woman with short hair, wore a red coat and hat.”

“Blond hair?” Malaki asked. “Curly?”

“Yes on the color but straight hair, not curls.” Malaki clicked his tongue and Hammer snorted. “Not who you thought it was?”

“Probably not, although it’s easy to confirm,” Lin’yi said, pulling out a sheet of flexiplast and loading an image on it from the computer. She handed it to Hammer and raised an eyebrow.

He barely had to glance at it before he was shaking his head. “No, no, the face is all wrong. Besides, I’m not such a rube as to not recognize Athena Hutchinson if I met her on the street. She carried herself well from what I saw but her accent wasn’t anything I’ve heard before. It was… short. Clipped.”

“Would you know it if you heard it again?” Malaki asked.

“Probably. Hard to say for sure, since she barely said ten words, but it was a very distinctive sound.”

“Was she from off planet?”

Hammer laughed. “I don’t know who you are, pal, and until you said that I couldn’t have said with certainty whether you were or not. Wireburn’s a gas giant. It’s not exactly a small place, if you see what I mean. Ashland Prominence has a population of about a hundred million all on its own and there are about as many larger populations as there are smaller among the fifty settled Prominences. There are thousands of accents just on this planet. I don’t know them all. No one could.”

Malaki nodded, looking a bit chagrined. “My apologies. So you have no idea whether either of the people you met were from Wireburn or off planet.”

“Oh, the man wasn’t from here or, if he was born in the Helium Seas he’s spent months elsewhere recently. He had a tan.”

“You don’t get a lot of direct sunlight down here, do you?” Lin’yi murmured, her gaze instinctively flicking towards the ceiling. “Not much to go on if we wanted to know where he was from but still a thing to keep in mind. Still, I don’t think that’s why you asked me to step over here for this discussion. What’s bothering you, Mr. Hammer?”

He hesitated for a second, absently sucking on his teeth in the way some habitual smokers did while wishing for nicotine. “I crawled through Mr. Carter’s normal haunts and talked to a lot of people who know him. The most common description I heard of him was ‘normal’ followed closely by ‘regular.’ What I didn’t ever hear was ‘paranoid.’ By the time I found him I’d basically ruled out the possibility that he disappeared because he was running from something. Then I spent a day and a half here with him and now I’m not so sure.”

Malaki leaned forward over the desk. “What are you saying? That he’s a master of deception who hid away his true nature from everyone he worked with? Or that something that happened when he went missing turned him paranoid?”

“With ten years of training and a solid script to work with he might eventually qualify as a bad actor. He wasn’t lying to his friends.” Hammer pulled a flexi out of his pocket and handed it to Lin’yi. It was a picture of a strange, cylindrical object with a strange series of engravings and control surfaces on it that looked etheric in nature. She studied it for a moment then handed it to Malaki. Hammer went on. “The woman had one of those in her handbag and it turns out that Mr. Carter had one on him, too. I thought they were transmitters but I showed one to your comms people and he said it wasn’t. He’s not sure what it does do. Ever seen one before?”

“I haven’t,” she said. From the look of intense concentration on his face Malaki wasn’t that familiar with the device either although he wanted to change that. “I’ve never heard of such a small etheric transmitter either. If you could make one that small it wouldn’t carry very far, I would think. Not unless it had a direct link to a planet’s etheric reserve or some kind of power source capable of running a small town. If I had something like that I wouldn’t need to worry about my market share on Wireburn. I could patent it and live the rest of my life on a luxury planet in the Whirls.”

“That’s what your techie said, too. It’s ether powered so it’s not some kind of supertech about to make someone rich but that makes it even worse.” Hammer took the picture back from Malaki and put it back in his pocket. “Whoever was hunting Mr. Carter has the resources to tie their comms into the planet’s core. That’s a level of power and influence I wasn’t expecting. I suspect BaiTienLung isn’t ready to deal with it either.”

For a moment Lin’yi did feel a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. The laws and traditions regulating the tapping of etheric power were the bedrock of most planetary governments. Circumventing them was no easy task. “It’s daunting but not insurmountable, Mr. Hammer. Wireburn is only one planet, after all, even if it is proving more and more unusual by the day. I suppose you don’t have any idea who could accomplish something like this, do you?”

“No idea.”

She nodded and looked to Malaki. “Well. There’s a third mystery for you to try and sort out while you’re here. Think you’re up to the task?”

He rolled the point of his beard between his fingers for a moment, his gaze lost in thought. Whatever he saw there must have satisfied him because he snapped back to reality, clapped his hands together and said, “Of course. But, then, I always think that. What matters is whether I can prove it. So, let’s go talk to our Mr. Carter, shall we?”

Next Chapter

Previous Chapter

Dramatis Personae

Athena

In spite of their galactic reach the headquarters of Hutchinson Trading was a fairly small office building, only two stories high with a bullpen on the ground floor and a suite of offices on the second. At one time a hanger for hovercraft occupied the basement. When daddy took it over he remodeled it and turned it into a reinforced bunker where he lived while starting the company. Once Hutchinson was well established and he’d moved his family into the current Hutchinson Estate the bunker was remodeled again into a full service comm suite, security center and private office.

Athena didn’t have any clear memories of the time when they’d lived in the bunker. She’d only been three when mother insisted they start living like civilized people and convinced daddy to build the Estate and they’d been firmly installed in the house by the time she was five. However she’d spent a lot of time there with her parents as she got older. Mother insisted on private tutors for her and she’d done much of her own schoolwork in the room daddy called the family office.

She hadn’t gone down there much of late. A strong wave of nostalgia washed over her as the ground floor rose up around the glass walls of the lift, bringing back memories of better times when Hutchinson Trading was in progress, rather than a finished thing. Then the steel sides of the chute opened out into the basement antechamber and the feeling vanished. The antechamber was nothing like she remembered it.

The plush carpets, comfortable seating and large paintings mother had decorated it with were gone. Now it was polished marble and sculptures in alcoves. A beautiful place, to be sure, but not the place where she’d grown up. But the desk was even worse.

The gleaming wooden desk stood sentinel in front of the old family office, warding visitors away from a place that had once been open and welcoming. Worst of all, Hector was there.

Athena glanced at her father’s secretary long enough to confirm he still triggered instinctive loathing then turned away from him as she marched by saying, “Is he in?”

“Yes. I’ll let him know you’re here.”

“Not necessary,” she snapped. As she slapped her hand to the door panel a series of biometric

authenticators read her palm print, DNA and bioelectric profile then the locks popped open and let her in.

Daddy was laying on the fourposter bed staring up at the columns of data that scrolled across the canopy. Although the king size mattress left him plenty of room to spread out he kept himself to one side except for one arm that lazily sprawled across the empty pillow beside him. Whether Hector had managed to alert him to her presence or he just guessed who had come to see him, Agamemnon didn’t bother sitting up when Athena strode in. He just glanced down at her for a moment then looked back at the data. “Good morning.”

“Morning, Daddy.” She glanced around the office for a moment, wondering if she’d catch a hint of his ever increasing number of personal projects lying around in the open for once. “Do you have a moment?”

“Athena, if you need me for anything I’ll clear out the rest of the day.” He reached up and switched off the canopy’s feed then pulled himself upright and pivoted to rest his feet on the floor. A casual addition to that move pushed his long brown curls back over one shoulder. With his other hand he straightened his maroon vest and starched white shirt, brushing a stray beard hair away in the process. “I presume you wouldn’t have come here if it wasn’t important.”

She opened her mouth to say she loved coming to see him here but caught the words before they left her mouth. They both knew they weren’t true anymore. “I was just contacted by a Professor Dart from Isaacs University who said he had a proposal for you. Does either name ring a bell?”

“Dart?” Daddy paused and scratched his beard for a moment. “No, can’t say I know him. I think I’ve heard of Isaacs University, big place down in the Whirls as I recall. They’ve got a couple of campus planets, if memory serves, although none of ’em this far out the dexter arm. That means they could have a couple of hundred million faculty or more, no surprise this Dart fellow isn’t someone I’ve heard of.”

“No, he said they were relatively new signatories to the Pact and I don’t think there’s an institute of higher learning in the Whirls that hasn’t been a Pact member for five hundred years, minimum.” Athena paused a moment to think. “You must be thinking of Itzhak University, the musical college.”

Daddy got to his feet and padded over to his desk, lips pursed in thought. “That could be. What did this Dart fellow want to talk about, anyway?”

“He said he was from their historical research department and they were interested in the work you were doing with Essene University.” When he gave her a curious look she added, “He mentioned Agartha. And Shambhala.”

“By name?”

“Yes.”

Agamemnon tilted his head to one side thoughtfully as he lifted up the top of his desk and pulled a coral repository out of it. “Interesting. I never mentioned either one in my correspondence with Dr. Schuyler. You could infer the topics if you’d read it and knew the subject matter well but we never mentioned them by name. What did he want?”

“Money. What else? He’s hoping you’ll underwrite them as they pursue the research in their own way.”

The reservoir sloshed as daddy opened it, fished out a couple of pieces of coral and moved them over to the larger reef in a tank on the wall. He fed the pylops in and worked some controls. Motorized arms moved the coral into a good nesting position on the reef then carefully removed another, larger section and brought it back out to him. “At this point it feels like I’ve underwritten half the genetics and history departments in the galaxy. Any particular reason he says we should work with him?”

“He sent me a write up on the University. A brief history of the institution, write up on the faculty in the department, notable scholarly achievements of the last twenty years.” She held up a single sheet of flexiplast. “Secret message embedded in the depths of the code for the holographic building tour.”

“Typical University shenanigans.” He locked the larger coral piece into place, put the desk back together and activated the computer with the touch of a button. It hummed to life as the added power let it connect to databanks and feeds via the sidereal. “What was so important Professor Dart didn’t want it overheard?”

“A complete list of you personal side projects for the last five years.”

Daddy’s eyes narrowed and he slowly stroked his salt and pepper beard. “All of them?”

Athena glanced down at the list she’d received. “I can’t say for sure. Apparently you’ve had more of them than I thought, especially out on the sinister arm.”

Wordlessly he held his hand out for the list. After a moment’s hesitation Athena turned it over to him, resigning herself to the fact she’d never see it again. She felt a pang of regret about not reading it before coming to see him. “So he knows we’re willing to skirt the laws on some avenues of research and presumably he’s willing to do the same. I can work with that.”

“Do you have to?”

“No more than I have to do anything these days.” Daddy sat down and keyed in a search. “I suppose I could hand things over to you and go join the retired folks out on whatever the trendy recreation field is this week. I know you’d keep the place going.”

“Of course.”

“But we both know you don’t enjoy it like I did.” This wasn’t the first time he’d put his love for interstellar trade in the past tense. She wasn’t sure when or why her father’s feelings about it had changed but she could make an educated guess. On both counts. “Don’t worry, I don’t plan to play around with these sidelights forever, darling.”

She sighed and sat down in the chair beside his. She still felt a frisson of discomfort when she did, starkly aware of the fact it hadn’t been put there for her. “I wish you’d tell me what you’re working on. I can’t help you finish your projects if you won’t tell me what they are.”

Daddy shot her a sideways glance and smiled. “Thank you, darling. While I appreciate that I hope you’re not just tagging along on this. I’m not going to be hurt if you find your own projects to work on, I was able to fend for my self for a long time before you came along. It’d make me much happier to know you’ve found your own thing to invest in.”

“Daddy…”

“I know, we’ve talked about this. You enjoy what you’re doing now. Just… don’t be afraid to look for something better. I got where I am because I always was.” The computer chimed softly. Agamemnon huffed out a breath and turned his attention back to it. “Isaacs University, main campus on Treyhill, a planet way out on the dexter arm. Signed onto the Pact eighty years ago, has a total of seven campuses, all in the dexter arm, including the largest campus on the galaxy’s only habitable gas giant. Interesting. I didn’t realize there was such a thing. Well, I suppose there has to be one or two of them out there.”

“They have a campus on Wireburn?”

“That’s what it says here. Pretty normal for a local college, really, working their tendrils into all the unusual local star systems. Let’s see what we’ve got about them behind the scenes.” Daddy punched in a twenty digit authorization code that would let him into the part of Hutchinson Trading’s archives that covered the less savory side of the the galactic balance of power. “Fifty years ago they backed the Regalian Independence Armada, secretly providing them with advanced power plant and orbital facility consultants and admitting a disproportionate number of Regalians to their etheric engineering programs. A member of their political science faculty was implicated in the assassination of the Prime Minister of Tolgoth eighteen years ago. Minor smuggling charges, discreetly sidestepping the usual research and transportation laws. How very tame.”

“They’ve only been around a hundred and thirty years,” Athena said, absently thumbing through her flexiplast of reports. “And they weren’t pact members when they started. Give them a little time to devolve into total monsters.”

“Anyone who locks themselves away on a single planet and spends all their time staring in books is already diseased of the mind. The monstrous actions are just an extension of that.” He sat back and stared at the far wall, mind a thousand light years away. “Still, even monsters have their uses.”

Athena finally found what she was looking for. “Of course they do. However we’re not the only ones who can use them, daddy. Want to guess which one of our favorite people has the largest market share of imports and exports from Wireburn?”

Daddy pursed his lips and thought for a second, his finger moving slowly as if he was conducting an unseen orchestra. “It’s about halfway down the dexter arm so I’d guess it’s either Hamlin Incorporated or Sandpoint.”

“The Wen Clan.”

“Ah, yes, BaiTienLung. I should have seen that coming, the Clans have always been eager to invest in new things so long as someone else is doing most of the dirty work.” He worked the keyboard again. “Now the real question is whether the Hundred Names have the guts to use a University as a catspaw to entrap us somehow. It doesn’t look like they’ve made any secret donations to the University’s Trusts.”

“Sponsored research projects or scholarships?”

“None we know of. Doesn’t mean there aren’t any, of course, and Isaacs is small enough that we don’t have any resources specifically devoted to tracking that kind of thing on their campuses.”

Athena stood up and paced across the room. “What I don’t understand is why they would use a University when they already have all this information on you. They could wrap you up in legal trouble across a dozen planets just with the details in the file they sent.”

“Assuming that list of projects came from BTL and not the University faculty then yes, they could. However, even if BTL and Isaacs are working together in this instance there’s no saying both sides are being completely open with each other. Isaacs may be the only party who has that list.”

“Why not share it with BTL if they’re working together?”

Daddy grinned and spread his hands as if it was obvious. “Because they’re looking to see who offers them the better deal.”

“What if they’re not in bed with BTL at all? Why make this offer then?”

He shrugged and closed down the computer’s search function. “The usual reasons, then. Money, funding, prestige and the thrill of making normal people dance to their tune. Which is fine with me. Two can play that game, after all.”

“You’re going to follow up on this, aren’t you?”

Daddy gave her a sharp look. “Of course. It’s important to think over all the details but ultimately they’re offering me something I want. I’d be a fool to ignore it.”

Athena sighed. That was very like him. “And if it is some kind of BTL trap?”

“Then I’ll have to get closer to it in order to disarm it. We’ve played this game many times, Athena, this isn’t anything new. Do you want to come to Wireburn with me?”

She was too old to get away with rolling her eyes at him but the temptation had never been harder to resist. “I’ll go get packed.”

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