WHAT EVA HAD learned from Sefano left her in a bind. She brought her Tolex online to explore contingencies.
There’s nothing wrong with your strategy for dealing with the Red Hand. Raem interrupted her analysis. What’s wrong are your tactics.
“How so?”
It appears that simply killing Janus will not open the way to the deal you seek. You dare not assassinate him in the usual manner.
“I don’t see how else we’re supposed to get to him,” she countered. “My best assassins can set things up so it looks personal. They’re good at staging a scene. Investigators will read it as we desire.”
The Red Hand has its own investigators. Can you take the chance that no one will see through your ruse? Besides, your best assassins are in the Outlands stalking seditious lordlings. It would take months of travel time to import the kind of talent that might help you here.
“Still, that might work…” Eva mused.
It dangerously extends your timeline. Remember, this target is from a derevin with a tradition of contract killing. They are the hardest kind of target to hit, much less sell on a cover narrative of personal quarrel. Witness our earlier failures with Janus. It is no wonder his protections are exceptional.
“And thank the gods for that favor in disguise!” Eva exclaimed. “I wanted to send a message, but that would have slammed their door in our face.” She felt uneasy at the near miss. Not even the Kingmaker was infallible.
There was no way to know. That kind of subcultural code is not documented in anything we acquired from their systems on Bekavra.
“How do we move ahead, then?” She remembered dealing with Lord Wagate’s seditious and paranoid grandson. Only after half a year of household infiltration was a faux bodyguard able to remove that malcontent from the Game. Raem was right: it could very well take a long time to take Janus out. And every week that ticked by put them that much closer to the Emperor’s looming death, and the end of their window to guarantee the succession of his daughter.
“We need a faster and more certain way to get close to Janus and hit him when he returns. Suggestions?”
You may not like it, he replied in a droll tone.
She sighed. “Let’s hear it.”
Janus is close to this shigasa he sent flowers to. He is vulnerable when she dominates him. Let us, then, co-opt her. Let her be our tool. The personal factor is already present.
Eva’s brow furrowed. A roil of conflicting emotions washed through her.
Raem addressed her unspoken thoughts. Yes. Exactly. You have an in to the shigasue, if you choose to use it, but it is a galling one to employ, is it not? Those sad souls who went astray how many generations ago? Unmarried pregnant daughters turned out in righteous rage, and the Between-World where they found safe harbor. Who would have thought Ilanya’s Gen’karfa blood would take root in shigasue soil?
She stiffened. “It is an enduring stain on our clan’s honor. I don’t need to admit to any blood ties there.”
But perhaps you do. A data trace shows you have remote cousins present in Lyndir’s Enclave. One is especially well-placed to help you gain access to the shigasue.
If Raem had been present in person, she would have given him a scathing look. Instead, she walked the floor, disgruntled.
“I see your logic about using someone already inside, but it’s unlikely to work. True, Janus won’t expect a threat from his pet dominatrix. She’ll easily get close to him, and his guard will be down with her. Agreed on those points. But then we coerce this shigasa to do … what? Poison him? Stab him? And just hope she’ll carry through with it effectively? No matter how we pressure her, you know how risky it is to rely on coercion alone to effect assassination. If this fails, our hand is tipped and we lose Janus again. And with him, our chance to secure the Red Hand’s resources.”
Why not just plant someone in the house of domination, then? Janus can succumb to a quarrel with a jealous lover, say.
“Too much time involved. An Enclave is not someplace a plant just strolls into. They need to really become part of the Between-World to pass there.”
Ah, yes. Sacrosanct as they are.
“Hmph.” The Between-World operated under special dispensation from the Emperor. It followed its own rules, had its own laws and law enforcement, and was in many ways untouchable, even to such an entity as Political Division. She knew from previous efforts that infiltrating the Between-World with her own people would take months or even years, if it was possible at all. It was not a solution for short-term needs.
“I see no answers here, Raem,” she said sourly. “You’re not as helpful as you could be.”
Well, then, perhaps you should review your business-social invitations, the Taskmaster said.
The non sequitur took her off guard. “What?”
You’ve been invited to tour Naval Weapons Research Station 207. You really should scan your incomings more often.
“Is there something there I need to know about?”
Maybe. There is something that niggles. You should look at it more closely.
Ilanya Eva stopped in her tracks. Raem did not often advise her on a direct course of action. When he did, she paid attention. “What?” she prodded.
I’m not certain. But there is something about their research projects that might be of use. Another way to work the shigasa angle.
“You think so?”
Raem shrugged. Call it intuition.
She laughed out loud. Her intuition, having intuition. That was the sort of sidewinding insight she prized the Tolex for. She pulled up the classified briefing on the weapons research station, scanned it rapidly. Her files were not complete, of course—no human brain could hold a complete infosphere of a planet, nor even a significant subset of intelligence activities. But what she read was enough to start her musing. She saw why Raem had “niggles.”
“Teo,” she said after a while, “downlink the whole file on RS 207 from our archives. Sidelink to me when you have it.”
“Yes, Domna.”
Somewhere along the way, Raem slipped offline.
An hour later, she confirmed an appointment with Station Commander Olniko.
COMMANDER OLNIKO SEVARO Tai walked with a stiff limp, the result of a cyborg-quality prosthetic left leg poorly adapted to by its human host. Ramrod-straight back, short-cropped gray hair, deep-set gray eyes, he was a quiet man with an aura of authority about him. He had chosen to leave a whitened scar upon his brow and right temple: a visible reminder, if his gait was not, of what he had experienced, and why he did the work he did at Naval Weapons Research Station 207.
Ilanya Eva shook Olniko’s hand upon their introduction: an uncommon gesture of peerage from the head of PolitDiv, but one warranted by the commander’s status. She took him in with a glance, eyes lingering on the crimson and blue Gen’karfa caste mark on the back of his left hand. Her Tolex chip held his dossier in foreground storage, including caste; it was another thing, though, to get the measure of the man face-to-face. Olniko was a decorated hero of the first siege of Armajad, once a strike-force commander, and a rare survivor of that fatal naval nightmare, an engine-blasted vessel suffering catastrophic implosion of drive crystals in space.
When the gods want to preserve your life, Ilanya thought, they will preserve it against all odds. “Commander,” she said, “it’s an honor to meet you. Thank you for the invitation.”
“The honor is mine, Arcolo.” Olniko’s voice was gravelly, deep in pitch. He gestured her to the plush leather floatchairs in his debriefing lounge. They would not sit across his desk, like officer and staff, but assume the casual formalities that prevailed between Gen’karfa. They took their seats at the same time, her matasai assuming his usual place behind and one step to the left of her. Eva reached out with her psi sense—a wild talent PolitDiv had trained her to use in her early days in the field—and smiled in satisfaction. Olniko radiated respect for her, but did not hold her in awe or fear. It was the ease of association she had come to expect only from ranking Gen’karfa and Lau Sa’adani, those who imagined they had power bases of their own that were impervious to PolitDiv’s machinations.
She accepted a cup of kaf proffered by the commander’s service mecho and raised it to her host. “In health and service,” she said, invoking part of the loyalty oath taken to the Emperor. Olniko murmured the same over his cup, and the pair made small talk until the mecho had laid out a tray of pastries. As it retired back to its cubby, Eva set her cup down, leaving the food untouched.
“I’ve been over your quarterly reports,” she said. “You have one project in particular that intrigues me.”
“Yes?”
“The Splintegrate project.”
“Ah, yes.”
A moment of silence prevailed. Olniko had no doubt planned a station tour or some other routine dignitary treatment for her. She sensed him switching gears to accommodate her pointed focus.
“What exactly interests you about that project, Arcolo?”
Eva paused. “We are speaking securely here, I take it?”
“We are.”
“The strategic plan notes the uses of splintegration for weapons purposes. Loosely speaking.”
The commander nodded. Weaponry produced by the NWRS installations often took organic forms.
“I’m not clear, Commander, how clones of limited aspect can serve as weapons. Explain that to me.”
Olniko dipped his chin in acknowledgment. “One of the personalities that we separate out consists of what you might call the aggressive and sociopathic aspects of a subject—the parts that make for a killer without qualms.”
“Surely you’re not mass-producing murderers? Though obviously you’re working with them as subjects.”
Olniko quirked a dry smile. “No, Arcolo. The objective is to isolate a personality type, or collection of aspects, that make for that rare warrior personality—directed and disciplined, of course. You know of the clone banks on Corvus, where warriors are bred and shock troops are produced?”
“Of course.”
“One thing they have found in the Corvus program is that the personality traits of the clones do not stray far from those of the organic original.”
Eva dredged through related data stored in her Tolex. “Meaning, the quality of the warrior clone depends on the chance development of the original?”
“Correct. We train and breed individuals so that they can reach their fullest potential—but if that endpoint is as fierce, as determined, as bloodlusting as we desire, that has been determined by innate personality factors that we could not control. Until now.”
Eva nodded slowly. “So the Splintegrate project will let you single out aspects you wish to combine in the ideal warrior.”
“Yes. The plan is to imprint clones only in that optimal mold. One that holds the harsher attributes that we require in front-line soldiers, but do not necessarily want to see in our civilians.”
“Ah. The old ‘universal soldier’ template.” She alluded to an ancient warrior ideal, the soldier who lived only to kill, an unstoppable fighting machine perfectly biddable by his masters. It was the myth of a precision tool of destruction, not truly attainable en mass with frail human psyches—until now, perhaps.
She smiled at Olniko. “I’d like to see this project firsthand, Commander. Can we arrange a visit?”
“Certainly,” he replied. “Let me speak with my adjutant.” He pardoned himself, crossed to his desk, and summoned Ugoli into the room.
As he did, Ilanya brushed the edges of the Raem construct in her mind and congratulated herself.
You old bastard. I think you were right.
DR. METMURI JAMMED the rigger lead into his jack and engaged the AI systems with three short jabs at console controls.
“Report,” he growled into the com set. Technicians came online one after the other, their positions greening on the status board. He glanced into the laboratory bay before them, where Biancar3 lay on the rightmost med bed, the last of the clones needing engram and cortical imprinting. The bioempath raised his eyes to peer unhappily at the elevated observation gallery. There sat Olniko and Ugoli in navy black, and two figures in service grays whom he did not recognize. The simikan caught the doctor’s eye, raised an imperious hand in his direction, and brushed fingers at him as if to say Run along and get on with it.
Let the show begin, my ass, Esimir snarled mentally. Enjoy your “show.”
He spoke to his staff with the audio relayed to the gallery as well as tech headsets. “Med 1, 2, online. Condition?”
“Stable,” reported Bero from Med 2.
“AI, report.”
“Prevak online, in monitor standby,” said Ferris curtly.
“Imprint?” Esimir continued with the verbal checklist. This was all for show: the doctor at Control and Terel at Interface could see the total weave of the datasphere through their rigger jacks. Vocal check-ins were redundant and glacier-slow compared to the nanosecond pace of the AI-coordinated system. But visitors wanted a Juro-taken show, so they could imagine they were watching what was invisible to the human eye. Olniko’s bright idea.
Fine. Have some mummery.
“Inducers synched,” reported Imprint. “AI interlock in place.”
“Interface?”
“All systems in flow, streaming infoscape to Control—and gallery.” That was Terel, prioritizing the datasphere. He channeled an entertaining light show to the observers’ gallery, more set dressing for the theater they performed.
What stupidity. As if an imprint process offered anything for unrigged observers to see. Ignore the schedule, Ugoli had ordered. Give them a demo. Turn this serious work into a sideshow for some VIP’s entertainment. High-handed, ignorant sons of—
Esimir wrestled his temper down and sat for a moment, breathing deeply, slowly, bringing his adrenaline-speeded pulse back under control: a rapid adjustment, for a trained bioempath. This was no time to let emotion cloud the attention he needed to pay to this task.
No doubt these visitors would be bored with this “demo.” So be it. The successful imprinting of this last of the Biancar subpersonalities was more important. That was his real priority, as it should be for all of them. With the skill of long practice in compartmentalization, he walled off his irritation and bent his attention coldly to the task at hand.
The procedure unfolded just as he had described it earlier to Ugoli. A cortical array dropped down over the skull of the sleeping clone. One feeder thread pierced the brainstem to emerge beneath the thalamus, traced fissure paths to penetrate deep into the cerebrum, and leaked programmed limited nanoneurals into the subject’s frontal temporal lobe.
In that region with greatest control over personality and sense of self, nanites bonded with neurochemicals to build new neural pathways. Soon they would be as defined as if Biancar3 had thought that way for a lifetime.
The array came online. Through induction, it replicated a certain set of bioelectrical patterns from the original man. Synapses fired in the clone’s gray matter and pathways recently laid down by LNNs filled with the chain-reaction energy of thought.
Esimir watched the clone’s brainwave traces shift and smiled to himself. The filtered core dump continued: “playback,” as Ugoli had so crudely put it. Finally the point of critical density was reached. The bioelectrical storm of activity became self-sustaining and patterned. LNNs were extracted, the probe tendrils withdrawn, and finally, systems disengaged.
Biancar3 slept on, still comatose, his brainwaves now significantly altered. It remained for the spark of ensoulment to awaken the clone, but that was a step not even Olniko could precipitate before its time.
Esimir looked up to the gallery. “That’s it,” he said tersely. “Imprint successful.”
The visiting officers looked his way, and one stood. Lights from the med bay caught her sharp features as she walked to the end of the gallery and down the stairs, out onto the lab floor. She came directly to the doctor where he sat jacked into the command chair. He glimpsed the others trailing behind, but something about this woman drew his eyes to her face and kept them there.
“Thank you for doing this on such short notice, Dr. Metmuri.”
Her words disarmed him. He sputtered for a moment. “Um, yes. As you say.” Who was she? They had not been introduced, and he did not recognize the uniform or the rank tabs. Just that they were not Navy.
“The clone will sleep until he is enlivened, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“But you are certain that a different personality has been imprinted from that of the original.”
“Different … no.”
She raised a questioning brow.
“A subset,” he added. “All elements were present in the original.”
“I see. But it is effectively different, yes?”
“Without the other subsets to counterbalance in various ways … yes. That is our experience.”
The woman turned and looked into the med bay, the lower bay floor lighting casting her face into sharp profile. “And you control the aspects that come alive in a clone.”
It was a statement, no response required. Esimir sat silent. She turned back to him. “I met Biancar1 a few hours ago. He seems like an ordinary person to me. Surly. But not a killer.”
Esimir clenched his jaw. Met his clones, without his permission or escort? And he hadn’t been informed? He threw a stormy glance at the officers gathered behind her, saw them watching him intently for his answer. He met her eyes again.
“Antisocial personas don’t usually appear different to the casual observer. Leave him alone with some children, and we’d see his true colors come out pretty quickly, I’d say.”
The woman pursed her lips, looked Esimir over as if she’d heard something distasteful. “Are you absolutely confident that you can separate out the destructive aspects?”
The bioempath began to answer with the same line of science he used on every layperson, from the station commander on down. He opened his mouth to speak about disassociated personality traits, and shadow-side aspects that bring balance to a whole and so must stay present—when he felt the stray quest of a psychic probe.
It was subtle, so very subtle, but she was close enough that he sensed the shift in her aura as she extended energies to probe him. It caused him to shut his mouth again, nonplussed, and guard his thoughts. Yet even as he did so, he sensed it was not a deep probe, but a mere riffling of the surface. A touch that could sense his truthfulness, perhaps, or his sincerity—but so unexpected, from one who did not wear the rus of the psychically adept. He regarded her warily.
“I’m sorry?” What had she just asked him?
“You separate out the killer?”
And now just as her psychic finger lay upon him, so had he, also, a finger on the core of her interest. It was a two-way channel between them now, though his touch was so gossamer-thin that he would wager not even another bioempath would sense it. And now he understood her question. She did not care about psychological nuances. She wanted to know if fundamentally destructive elements could be separated out of a core personality. He nodded emphatically.
“That is the whole point of this work. To splinter off what causes people to harm others.” He said it in all sincerity, for that was what he and Prevak had envisioned from the start. She must have sensed his conviction, for she smiled to herself. In that moment she went somewhere with that thought that left him cold.
“And you can package that all up in another.” She nodded to herself. “I’m sure we’ll speak again, Doctor.”
She turned on her heel and walked away.
Esimir looked in her parting direction long after the door closed behind her entourage.