Lowell, to all outside appearances, was utterly engrossed in the minutely detailed report Admiral Flanigan presented. Inwardly, his mind wandered more than a little. He'd read Flanigan's report the night before when he had finally arrived back at Besht. Weeks of harried travel along the new border of the Empire were taking their toll. He kept the look of concentrated interest on his face out of habit. He was tired. Not just physically, he was tired of the constant negotiations, of the unending meetings everywhere he went. But he had his orders. He was to solidify the border and do his best to bring the straying worlds back into the Empire.
It was an impossible task. Those ensconced at Linas-Drias, the seat of the Empire, had no glimmer of understanding about the new reality. The Federation, once just a slightly better organized group of pirates, was now a force to be reckoned with. According to his information, which was admittedly sketchy, the Federation was larger than the Empire. And much stronger.
The report detailed the number of ships that had deserted from the Patrol to the Federation. It was an impressive list.
A sudden stir of activity outside the glassed walls of the room caught his eye. People in the blue of medics searched through the crowds moving purposefully through the halls. Lowell caught Paltronis' eye. She glanced through the windows and nodded then slipped out. He could trust Paltronis to find out what was happening.
"The problem, Admiral Flanigan," Lowell said, "is not that ships are leaving the Empire. They might have stayed if orders were not given for them to open fire on their own people."
Admiral Flanigan's face tightened. Lowell suspected Flanigan had given the order for the disaster at Ruritan. They'd lost most of a battlegroup there, the crews had kicked out the people who wouldn't join the mutiny before turning on the few ships still trying to enforce the Empire's control. Those three ships turned tail and ran. Ruritan joined the Federation without a shot fired. Ruritan now had its own fleet of fully armed battle ships.
"They refused to follow direct orders," Flanigan said in his own defense. "Ruritan was not to be allowed to desert."
"So you ordered them to fire," Lowell said. "Did you check where the crews of your ships came from? Ninety three percent of them were from either Ruritan or one of four systems next to it. You gave them orders to shoot their families and friends. They knew Ruritan and the other systems were leaving the Empire."
"Which makes them traitors." Flanigan slammed his hand on the table.
"They are still people, most of them unarmed."
Flanigan leaned over the table. "Where are your loyalties, Commander Lowell? Judging from your words, I begin to question your devotion."
The air in the room was electric. The others waited nervously, Lowell was High Command, answerable only to the Emperor.
"I've spent my life working to keep the Empire together. You dare to question me?" Lowell wanted a reason to pull Flanigan from his position in command of the Fleet.
Flanigan was smarter than Lowell hoped. He backed down. "Your words could be misinterpreted."
"The last thing we need is a shooting war," Lowell said. "Look at your report, Admiral. We are outgunned. Open war with the Federation would be disastrous. And the more you push your crews to shoot unarmed civilians, the more ships we are going to lose."
Lowell turned his attention to the next person on his agenda. His battle with Flanigan was far from over and he knew it. This was only the opening skirmish.
Commander Bickwell didn't bother to stand to report. He was older, his dark hair liberally streaked with gray. He looked tired and defeated.
"We've lost a good portion of our agricultural worlds," he said. "Food shortages are going to happen within a few months, unless we can do something about it."
"Why is this a military matter?" Flanigan interrupted.
"Because hungry people riot," Lowell said impatiently. "And when they get hungry enough, they kick out the people ruling them and find new ones."
"The Federation has a food surplus," Bickwell said.
"Only because they've stolen our worlds," Flanigan interrupted again.
"Admiral Flanigan," Lowell said sharply. "You will shut up or you will leave."
They locked stares across the table. Flanigan turned away first. He was spoiling for a fight. Lowell would give him one, personally, but Lowell was not going to allow him to embroil what was left of the Fleet in a war they couldn't possibly win.
"The Inner Worlds will feel the effects last," Bickwell continued as if the interruption hadn't happened. "Patrol stores will begin to run out within three months."
"Then we need to open negotiations with the Federation," Lowell said.
That got him more than a few suspicious stares. Lowell stood and leaned on the table, meeting their eyes, willing them to listen to reason.
"We've lost the Outer Worlds. Face the truth. They aren't coming back to the Empire. So we make the best of what we still have or we'll end up losing more. Possibly the whole Empire if people begin to starve. Who do we have that we can send to negotiate with the Federation?"
None of them moved. They looked away from him, refusing to answer. What he said, even if it was the truth, was still perilously close to treason. He might be able to get away with it, but if they spoke the same words, they would suffer.
"Commander Reeasht," he addressed the woman at the far end of the table. "Contact the planetary Ambassador's office and see who they can recommend."
He sat back in his chair. "Continue, Commander Bickwell."
Bickwell droned on, detailing the current state of supplies and equipment for the forces stationed at Besht and along the new border.
Paltronis slipped back into the room. She crossed silently to Lowell and bent to whisper in his ear. "They're looking for an Admiral who disappeared from the medical wing sometime this morning." She didn't need to specify which Admiral.
Lowell stood, interrupting Bickwell in mid-spiel. "A slight emergency is in progress. Please, excuse me."
"What emergency?" Flanigan asked.
"A small matter of security, nothing to be alarmed about," Lowell said. "Please, Commander Bickwell, continue with your report. I'll collect the summary later."
He left before they could drag him back into the meeting. He and Paltronis made haste for the bank of elevators. The number of people in the halls had increased significantly. Many of them wore Medical blue.
"Was it just a way to rescue me from the meeting?" Lowell asked.
Paltronis shook her head. "She's gone. Cydon, the medic assigned to her during the day, is adamant she was kidnapped."
Lowell's face was grim. He knew more than a few people who would be overjoyed to have Dace in their hands. It wouldn't be good for Dace. He opened his mouth as he punched the elevator button.
"The base is already sealed." Paltronis anticipated his question. "Security is reviewing all recordings of the entry area."
"Good," Lowell said, nodding his head.
The elevator slid upwards. They got off onto the medical floor. The knots of people were more pronounced here, black uniforms of Enforcers mixed in with the blue. Lowell tugged his own black uniform straight. He wore his real rank, High Commander of the Enforcers. Paltronis walked at his shoulder like a black ghost.
The biggest knot of people jumped to attention as he approached. At the center was a beefy medic in blue.
"He had a discharge paper," the man said. "Everything was in order."
"Except the paper was his, not hers," another man said. He wore silver, with the gold clusters of Base Commander. "Commander Lowell." He saluted.
Lowell waved off the salutes. Most of the people found something else to do, still within earshot but out of reprimand range. "I assume Admiral Dace is the one you lost."
"She isn't lost," the base commander said.
"You don't currently know where she is, therefore, she's lost. Who took her out of here? And how?"
A secretary handed a slip of a note to the base commander. He glanced at it before answering.
"The who is easy enough," he said. "We tracked the medical records requests. He's Patrol, or was until this morning. Which helps explain the how."
"Name?" Lowell prompted.
"Commander Vance Shiropi."
That was a surprise.
"She was too injured to leave on her own. You just let him carry her out of here?" Paltronis was upset, which meant being anywhere in her vicinity was dangerous.
"She shouldn't have been able to walk out," the medic answered heatedly. "But she did."
"She isn't in immediate danger," Lowell said, more for Paltronis' benefit than the others. "We still need to know where he took her. And why. Commander, may we use your office?"
"By all means," the base commander answered. "Just tell my people what you need and we'll get it for you."
They were escorted to a spacious office on the top floor that overlooked not just the port but the city beyond. The base commander left the two of them there and hurried out to collect the people and information Lowell requested.
Paltronis immediately began to pace. Lowell settled in the commander's very comfortable chair and put his feet on the desk.
"You're just going to sit there?" Paltronis demanded.
"I think better sitting." Lowell closed his eyes as he leaned back. "Vance was discharged officially this morning. Rumor is that he's with Max. I suspect he took her to Max's yacht."
"Why? What does that skunk want with her?"
"You read the report Tayvis gave about Trythia. Vance was the one who knocked him senseless and told me he was dead. I sent Dace with Vance on that mission. Why do you think he wants her?"
"To get revenge on Tayvis," Paltronis said promptly.
"That's what I was thinking. I doubt he'd hurt her. He knows her well enough to know she'd break half his bones and stomp on his face if he tried."
"If she were herself. She was still in a coma when we left. How do we know she didn't suffer brain damage? How do we know she's still Dace?"
Lowell sighed and sat up in the chair. "We can ask," he said as he tapped the com.
They waited in silence, Paltronis pacing and Lowell staring out the window, until the medic arrived.
He was older, his hair a striped mane of white and faded orange. His eyes were a strange shade of gold. Lowell blinked in surprise. The medic was not human, which made his specialty of human brain injuries especially odd. He slapped a thick folder of papers on the desk and tapped the computer interface built into the desk surface.
"You wanted her records?" he asked. A three dimensional image of a brain, color coded into bright regions of orange, blue, yellow, and red appeared above the desk.
"Summarize what you found, please."
"Preliminary work when she was first admitted showed trauma here and here," he pointed through the image at regions of the brain highlighted in orange. "Her activity scans were all over the place, the strangest readings I've ever seen. We did new scans every day or two, whenever she was transferred between units." He glanced at Lowell, gold eyes meeting silver. "Her physiology readings were skewed, too. She's outside the range for normal human tolerances. Her scans don't fit any profile on record. Gross examination showed her to be human, but—" He shrugged. His expression invited Lowell to explain.
Lowell pretended not to notice. "What injuries did you find?"
"Gross injuries? Only the blaster shot, which was worse than any I've ever seen. She was also suffering from malnutrition and stress."
"And mentally?" Lowell prodded.
"Like I said, her scans were strange. With the amount of brain trauma we found, I doubted she'd ever regain consciousness, even if we could repair the blaster wound. Complicate that by her reactions to the drugs, and I wouldn't have given her more than a ten percent chance of ever waking up. She obviously proved me wrong."
He shifted the image. The colors ran and dripped through the brain, settling in new areas.
"As you can see from the scan we took a week after the first, the physiology shifted drastically. We rechecked all the scans. There was no mistake. Her brain rewired itself during that week." The image shifted again. The oranges and reds faded. Blue and yellow dominated. "The week after, the scans were almost normal. For a human. We found no traces of trauma, no scar tissue, no residual evidence of damage. Which is impossible. Brain tissue does not regenerate or repair itself, not to that degree." He tapped the display once more. The yellow shrank. Most of the brain glowed blue. A tiny region remained red. The medic pointed at the red spot. "That's the only area that didn't heal itself. Other than that, there's nothing wrong. The scan is normal for a human. No brain damage, nothing to impede normal functioning of the brain."
"And what of the other tests?"
"We ran a full spectrum," the medic said, nudging the stuffed folder. "A few came back at the far end of the normal range, a couple were clear outside it, but most of them were normal."
"What of the psychic evals?"
The medic frowned, but he dug through the folder. "They aren't very accurate when administered to an unconscious patient. We could only get a general range reading." He pulled out a sheet and slid it across the desk to Lowell. "That summarizes what we found."
Lowell scanned the sheet. His bland expression was enough to catch Paltronis' attention. She stood behind him and read over his shoulder.
"That can't be right," she said.
"We repeated the tests four times," the medic said. "I was curious myself how her brain scans would relate, but there was no correlation. The tests all came back in that range."
"Point seven ranging to one point six for latent telepathic abilities," Lowell read. "Empathic readings range from point three to point nine. Both on the low end of the normal scale for humans."
Paltronis shook her head. "They have to be wrong. I know what I saw her do. I know what I felt."
Lowell shook his head, signaling her to silence. Paltronis backed off.
"If you have any more questions," the medic said as he stood, "the answers are in the folder." The brain disappeared. He flapped half a salute at Lowell as he left the office.
"None of this makes sense," Paltronis muttered as the door slid shut.
"It makes more sense than I hoped it would." Lowell tapped the folder. "The Hrissia'noru rewired her mind. She couldn't have survived without them."
"She couldn't have lived with them, either." Paltronis leaned one hip on the edge of the desk and folded her arms.
"So they removed the part of her that made her Hrissia'noru. They took away her powers and left her normal." He sighed. "There's nothing we can do about it, even if we wanted to."
"She wasn't happy with any of it. I wonder if she's happier now without that in her head."
"We'll ask her, as soon as we find her," Lowell said.
"I can start tracking yachts," Paltronis offered.
Lowell shook his head.
"I know that look. What are you thinking now?"
"We can use this to our advantage. What is the one group we haven't been able to infiltrate?"
"High society on Linas-Drias, Vance and his friends. You can't use her like that, Lowell. Not again."
"I don't have a choice. We have to find out who is behind the plot. We have to find out where the treason is. If we don't, what's left of the Empire won't be worth spit."
"You have to give Dace a choice. You should never have sent her to Tivor."
"Or any of the other places I sent her. It will be a request, not an order. After all," he smiled, "according to the paperwork, she isn't Patrol anymore, at least not after next week."
Paltronis still looked angry.
"Go find Scholar for me," he said. "I need someone who can send a message that won't get her in more trouble. The people she's playing with are dangerous. The least I can do is warn her."
"And tell her Tayvis is still alive?"
Lowell winced. "She doesn't know, does she?"
Paltronis shook her head. "It was a shock to me, when I finally dragged her off Tivor, to find that he was still very much alive."
"I hope that makes up for the rest of it," Lowell said.
"What is it you keep telling me? Guilt never solves anything? Stop beating yourself up. If you really want beat up, I'll be happy to oblige."
"I'm not that fond of pain. Go get Scholar. Then you can start tracking ships. I want the yacht, but I also want the Phoenix."
He didn't need to explain. She almost smiled as she hurried out of the office. Lowell turned his attention to figuring out the wording for the message. It had to be something that would explain everything to Dace without blowing her cover.