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.”