Chapter 14

Tensions

My ears were ringing, my vision blurred, there was blood. A shallow graze on my forehead that was bleeding profusely but wasn’t serious. Dez was lying underneath me, she looked scared but unhurt. Seventhirtyfour had taken a couple of hits, deeper than mine, but from the little I knew about Brontom anatomy, nothing life-threatening. He gave me a grimace, slumped back against the over-turned table, but he seemed to be coping.

I stood up, carefully. I didn’t think there would be any follow-up, but then I was having problems believing this serious of an attack in the first place. the Academy just wasn’t that kind of place.

The canteen was in turmoil. You have a bomb go off in a place full of people training to be heroes, you don’t get many people just running away in panic, but the reactions are still on a spectrum. Half a dozen people were running towards us, I think to offer medical help, but at least one of them was shouting about not contaminating the evidence.

They, sadly, were the sanest amongst the reactions. Everybody else seemed to be shouting at each other, the teachers were shouting for calm, some students were shouting to find out what was happening, but there were a few shouting accusations.

“It was a drone! I saw it, came right up to the Phooey table and blew up!”

“Some powered idiot not able to keep himself under control!”

Voices escalated, I couldn’t hear the details any more, just shouting and anger and fear.

There seemed to be a collective drawing of breath, and students pulled back, away from the centre of the canteen, and almost instantly I could see they’d polarised into tech and powered students. The two groups stared at each other, tension building. I hadn’t realised how close all this was to the surface. But these were well meaning, good hearted individuals here to learn to make the galaxy a better place. This wasn’t going to get out of hand. It couldn’t.

But in that split second, that drawn breath, I suddenly had a vision of a prank, even something like I’d seen Lady Psion doing to the Winged Knight... one spark, and it would set the place off. There would be regrets and recriminations, but the Academy wouldn’t be the same afterwards, even if it could continue at all.

I couldn’t let that happen. Now before the tumult erupted again, I had to do something.

“Woooooooooeeeeeeee!” I shouted. A hundred faces turned towards me. One of them meant me harm, I was sure of it, but I wasn’t going to let them take down the rest of us. “Sorry about that! I hadn’t expected that! Faulty rocket grapnel... my bad. No harm done.” I wiped blood from my eyes. “Well not much and only to me. Didn’t mean to startle everyone. Next time, I’ll remember to decant the propellant before trying to fix the firing pin!”

Tom, the Avenging Spider, appeared from somewhere in the crowd. He stomped towards me, anger dripping off him. “That you will, Mr. Gravane, and we will be finding some way to remind you of it too. Clean up that mess. No. See the medic first for that scalp wound, and then come back and clean up this mess. I’ll be speaking to Captain Hawk about this.” He drew up level with me and grabbed me roughly by the collar. He raised his voice. “Right you lot, show’s over, get back to classes, we’ll be sealing this end of the canteen until we get all this cleared, so no point staying here. Don’t dawdle Mr. Gravane!” He shoved me towards the door.

Dez and Seventhirtyfour followed, protesting my innocence, but I caught their gaze and gave a firm shake of my head, and they shut up and fell in behind.

Tom kept up the forced march all the way to the Med Centre, but as he shut the door behind us, he sagged. “That was some quick-thinking Grey, thanks,” he said. “Awesome job.”

“Thanks, but... what happened there, Tom? I knew there were factions, you see them every day, but I hadn’t realised how polarised it’s gotten, how tense. The Academy, it’s closer to exploding than I’d thought.”

He shook his head. “I’ve seen it get worse this last couple of years,” he admitted. “The Academy I joined was a laugh, nobody really took us seriously, we’re training to be superheroes! It’s ridiculous. But we had some big successes. A couple of our students went on to do some big things for some important people, and suddenly corporations moved in. Well, I don’t have to tell you that.”

“Sure,” I grimaced.

“Since then, people have been taking what we do much more seriously. Applying pressure and targets to what used to be a silly little playground.” Tom shook his head. “I’m too young to be this cynical, but money spoils stuff, no offence.”

A med tech came in, tutted at me and Seventhirtyfour, and set to work on our wounds. They looked impressive but really weren’t that deep or serious.

“That’s as may be,” said Dez, “but don’t we need to be worrying that somebody just tried to blow us up? That drone didn’t come from nowhere.”

“Ah,” said Tom, “so it was a drone? I thought I saw one. Well, that’s bad news. That means there’s physical evidence to be found, and we have a student body more than happy to CSI a real crime scene given the chance. Let me just call Prof Craft, she needs to get that place sealed up tight.”

He went off to deal with that, and I turned to Seventhirtyfour. “Thanks, man, if you hadn’t realised what was happening... those were some amazing reflexes.”

Seventhirtyfour still looked a little dazed. “Not reflexes,” he rumbled. “I saw it. Before it happened, saw what I needed to do to save you. Glad it worked.”

“Woah,” Dez said. “You can see the future, that’s fricking awesome!”

Seventhirtyfour shook his head. “It’s the first time it’s happened. Except, well... maybe it isn’t. I had a flash of something on Bantus too, put it down to coincidence and confusion.”

“We need to hit the Casinos on New Blackpool!”

“No Dez, I don’t think it’s that kind of power. So far, it’s only triggered on imminent and physical danger. I don’t think I’m going to be working casinos over.”

Dez nodded. “Sure, sure. But, something to work on? With practice, you never know. Or, well, I suppose you could know.”

But I was distracted by Seventhirtyfour’s exact words. “You saw what you had to do to save me, that’s what you said?”

“Yeah.”

“So, what you’re saying is that this was an attack aimed directly at me then?”

“Yeah,” he looked miserable.

“Well, that’s just... peachy.”

# # #

Tom told us to stay in the Med Centre while he went to meet up with Professor Craft at the scene of the crime. We stayed put. Seventhirtyfour was quiet, I wasn’t sure if it was because he was injured, shocked by the attack, or working through the implications of his new power. I couldn’t think of anything to say to help him with any of it, so I kept shut up too.

Dez’s reaction was to go hyper. She paced, practically bounced, from one side of the room to the other, tail twitching, talking nineteen to the dozen.

“Okay, okay, okay, so Grey calmed everyone down and that’s great, but we all know that wasn’t an accident, and we’re not alone, so does the bomber, and so will anyone who checks the security footage. And you just know that at least one of the techies has a camera on their suit running at all times. Well, we don’t know, but we know, you know? People are only going to stay calm so long. We need to get ahead of the game, figure this out, before things escalate, right Grey?”

I nodded, only half listening, half chasing my own thoughts around my skull.

“Right!” said Dez. “So first we need to work out who the target of the attack was. Seventhirtyfour said it was Grey, but can we be sure? I mean band rivalry can be fierce, so it could be someone trying to off me to get a singing gig, but the drone was flying too high if they wanted to get at me. So, it’s much more likely they were after you, Grey, or Seventhirtyfour. Both your families have money, right, so it could be either of you, I guess, but who could get pissed enough at Seventhirtyfour to want to blow him up? He’s the nicest guy in the galaxy, but you, Grey, you can rub people up the wrong way, no offence meant.”

“None taken, I...” I tried to stem the tide, but Dez just kept right on.

“Okay, so Seventhirtyfour was right, Grey was the target. Now we need to look at the people who might want to blow Grey up. Has he upset any groups of people with criminal tendencies and access to explosives? Of course, he has. Three whole families of alien mobsters on Bantus IV. And one of them, the Tazforj? They had the technical know-how to pull off this attack, right? That must be it, it wasn’t a student at all.”

I caught the look of relief on her face, but I wasn’t so confident. Any reprisal for Bantus should have come months ago if it was coming. And even if Dez had the right agency, it would have needed someone on the ground to direct the drone. A student was still involved. Well, or one of the staff, let’s not make too many assumptions.

Dez started up again, but this time I tuned her out, did some thinking of my own.

Assuming this attack was directed at me, and both Seventhirtyfour and Dez seemed in agreement on that front, the question remained, was the target me, or Mirabor Gravane?

The Gravanes were big business and had their share of enemies, as the abduction of their sixth child showed. I could just be catching that grief. But my life was a complicated place right now.

It could be the Bantus mob, any number of people that Gravane had annoyed, anyone that I’d stolen from (though if so, it was an over-reaction). It could be a student at the Academy that I’d annoyed. Or it could be that the people who kidnapped the real Gravane were annoyed that there was a fake one running around.

My head was spinning. Too many options, none of them good.

There was a knock at the Med Centre door. Seventhirtyfour looked up, but made no move to answer, Dez dropped into a combat stance, but I shook my head and went to open the door.

Pilvi stormed in, gave me a wordless hug, before moving on to Dez and Seventhirtyfour. Gadget Dude and Avrim trailed after her.

“So,” she said, “What are we going to do?”

“Do?” asked Avrim.

“Someone tried to blow one of us up, we aren’t just going to let that go, are we?” Pilvi replied.

Avrim gestured widely, indicating the Academy as a whole. “We are in a building where absolutely everybody is studying to solve and fight crime, why does it fall to us?”

“Why wouldn’t it?” chimed in Dez.

I held up a hand. “Avrim’s right, we can’t join the trample to investigate this, all that will happen is we’ll get in each other’s way. That won’t help anyone.”

Pilvi gave me a look. “How can you say that of all people?”

Everybody started talking at once, all except Seventhirtyfour, who looked around sadly as we argued. He hadn’t said a word since telling us about his new power, but now he stood up and spoke. “No Grey, Pilvi is right, this has to be us. I feel it. I don’t know if it’s my power, or just... it feels right. We’re going to have to deal with this. But you’re going to need to tell us how.”

They all turned to look at me.

I stared at them.

“Okay.

“Okay then.

“Fine.” I closed my eyes. Took a breath, organised my thoughts.

“If we’re going to do this, let’s do this right,” I started slowly, but as each idea sparked the next, my words tumbled over each other. “Dez is right, the security footage is our first priority. They’re not going to show it to us, I expect, so we will probably need to get it ourselves, and the time to do that is now, while people are still assembling their plans. Gadget Dude and I need to get on that. I can get him access, he needs to get us the copy.”

Gadget Dude waved a salute, then dipped into his equipment belt to gather parts.

I turned to Seventhirtyfour, he stood at parade rest ready to receive orders, like a good Brontom soldier. “Seventhirtyfour, Avrim,” I said, “I need you to talk to the Powers faction. Priority is keeping things calm, but we need information too. Anything that they saw or overheard that might give us any intelligence.

“Pilvi, that leaves the tech heroes to you.”

She nodded, jotting notes on her mini-pad. “I’ll start with Simon,” she said.

I shrugged. “Sure. Check with Gadget Dude for some other likely candidates. Smooth feathers and get the message across that we don’t blame or accuse anyone on that side. Dez mentioned that one or more of the techies might have had a camera running. See if you can find that footage if they did.

“Remember, the method means that if the culprit is a student then it’s most likely from that faction, so tread carefully and don’t oversell. But still, anything you can get for us would be good.”

“And that leaves me with the skills students?” Dez asked, she was already at the door ready to go.

“I can’t think why any of the Phooey crew would want to blow us up, but we can’t ignore them.” I ran a hand through my hair; I was missing something. What—? “Oh. Once you’ve done that, have a word with the staff at the spaceport. It’s a longshot, but if you’re right in suspecting the Bantus mob, see if any suspicious packages have come in from there.

“We’ll reconvene this evening in my dorm room and see what we have.”

I looked around. No objections. Avrim didn’t look very keen, but even he wasn’t trying to get out of it.

“Right. Let’s get on with it. Come on Gadget Dude, we better get a hustle on.”

I felt slightly guilty, Tom had asked us to stay put, but they were right, I couldn’t let this lie either.

# # #

Security at the Justice Academy was kind of feeble. Most of the things that security systems were designed to detect: energy spikes, explosive signatures, stealthy infiltrations and fisticuffs? That was just an average day at the Academy. And most of the stuff at the Academy was too cheap to be worth stealing, or already broken. Plus, who would actually try and break in here? It was the one place in the galaxy where you would definitely have to go up against superheroes if you did.

There were valuables here, of course, most of those powered suits, hot-, cold-, storm-, plasma- and onion-guns (don’t ask) were unique, priceless items and some of the gadgets on the power suits were so far into the cutting edge that even asking “What’s this button do?” could leave you bleeding (occasionally literally). But those tech heroes were also astonishingly good at supplying their own security. They were possessive of their inventions and were not characterised by their tendency to share.

Academy security basically consisted of a few cameras at strategic locations which were mostly used to harass persistent litterers or graffiti artists, assuming the perpetrators didn’t have a power to block the cameras outright.

All of which meant that gaining access to the security footage was not going to be some amazing heist with laser-webs and motion sensors to dodge, finger-print and retina scanners to spoof, or hordes of guards to bypass. It was, essentially, a dusty cupboard at the end of an often-neglected corridor. The door was locked. But I’d acquired a duplicate of the key during my second week here. Just on principle. I didn’t have powers to block cameras outright, after all.

Still, we would rather people didn’t know that we’d taken a copy of the footage, so my job was to get Gadget Dude to the door without getting spotted. There wasn’t much I could do about that last bit of corridor, but I could certainly get us to the general area unnoticed.

I led him along my second favourite unused by-ways, and the worst outcome was a fit of sneezing at the dust we kicked up. Otherwise, we made it to the fire escape closest to the security cupboard without difficulty. I eased open the door and peered into the corridor. “Okay Gadget Dude, coast is clear.”

I looked around to find that somewhere along the way, the Zalex had put on a pair of goggles and had rigged up a safety harness and winch. “Avoid pressure sensors!” he proclaimed cheerfully.

“Sorry Gadget Dude, none to avoid.”

He looked crestfallen but glumly followed me out into the corridor.

I unlocked the door and let him in, pushed the door closed enough that I could watch down the corridor without getting spotted.

Behind me, Gadget Dude chuntered away to himself while he set about his business.

“How long will this take?” I asked, kicking myself for not asking before.

“Not long,” chirped Gadget Dude, and then, a beat later. “Done.”

“Oh, right. Excellent. Let’s get...”

There was someone coming down the corridor towards us. Of course, there was. Why wouldn’t there be?

Whoever it was, they were somebody trying to be stealthy, but without any practical sense of how to do it. He was human, male, covered head to toe in black, wearing what appeared to be a balaclava and ski-mask, and he was actually creeping along the corridor. He couldn’t have been more obvious if he’d worn a sign saying “Being sneaky”.

No prizes for guessing where he was going.

I brought my mini-pad up and took a couple of photos for future reference. Fight or flight? No option really, there was nowhere to hide in the cupboard, and we couldn’t leave without being seen. So.

I opened the door, looking back over my shoulder, deliberately not looking down the corridor. “Do you have it all, Dude? Tom will want everything backed up.”

“Sure sure,” replied Gadget Dude cheerfully.

I heard a startled gasp behind me, this guy would not have cut it in infiltration class. I listened for the sound of him opening a door to hide from us, rolled my eyes when I realised he’d tried a locked door and was now having to find another.

“Don’t forget the triple-band wavelength scans,” I said, desperately trying to come up with reasons to not look down the corridor while this idiot was hiding from me.

Gadget Dude looked confused. “One band only, just one.”

“Oh, right, do we not have that... here?” Finally, I heard a door close behind me. “Quick, can you rig a camera to see who comes in here next? Keep it hidden.”

Gadget Dude caught up quick. “Sure!” He dipped a hand into one of his pockets and placed what looked to me like a centimetre of black sticky tape over the security monitor. He grinned and shooed me out.

We left with our goal intact, and I resisted the urge to open the door our mystery man was hiding behind. I was trying to stop the school exploding into random fights, and I wouldn’t do that by starting one.

# # #

We got back to my dorm room and plugged in the feed from Gadget Dude’s camera, rewinding the recording to us leaving the security room. We fast forwarded the footage, but nobody came in. The room remained steadfastly empty.

“Where is he?”

Gadget Dude shrugged. “Arrives late maybe? Knows it?”

I nodded. It made sense. If he had come to delete the footage and saw us leave with a copy, he knew that ship had already launched.

“Or maybe not sneaking to there,” Gadget Dude added.

“Maybe, but there’s nothing else on that corridor worth sneaking to.”

Annoyed, but unsure how I could have played it differently, we unplugged the camera feed, and instead uploaded the security footage we had copied.

“Oh. 2D.” Gadget Dude sounded disappointed.

I was too. All we had was a single angle from a static camera, and the resolution was poor. I could already see we weren’t going to get much from it.

Still, we found the explosion, fortunately, it was in shot, then stepped back frame by frame until we got a clear shot of the drone.

“Can we get a bigger look at it?”

Gadget Dude shrugged. “Resolution bad. Can try.”

The resulting image was blurry as hell, badly pixelated and didn’t tell us much. Academy security was shockingly antiquated. Where did it spend all its money?

Still. “It’s definitely not one of the Winged Knight’s, I can’t see anything that looks like a blurry sword or wing motif on its casing.”

“In disguise?”

“I guess it could be. But look at the propulsion system. You’re the expert, not me, but all of the drones the Knight sent after me were steered by angling the main propulsion. But look there, what are they?”

Gadget Dude nodded. “Microjets.”

“Yeah. And I can buy him not putting his logo on the damn thing, but why change your fundamental design?”

“Would not.”

“So, that confirms something we basically already knew. Which is not a huge leap forward but is something. Okay, let’s go back to full screen. Now we need to look to see if we can find anyone directing it.”

But Gadget Dude tapped the screen pointing at another blurred section of the drone.

“What, Dude... oh, that’s a camera isn’t it? It could have been flown remotely from anywhere on the campus.”

“Yes,” but Gadget Dude shrugged, “worth try though.”

We spent some time spinning backwards and forwards through the footage, looking for anyone paying undue attention to the drone, or who seemed to be controlling the device from minipads. We spotted a few likely candidates but look around any canteen at any university and you’ll find a good percentage of the students glued to their pads. Looking down at screens could hardly be taken as a sign of guilt, but we saved a few images for later reference, in case we got anything to corroborate our findings. I created a new investigation board and pinned the pictures to that.

Somewhere along the way, Avrim and Seventhirtyfour joined us. Their survey of the powered students hadn’t revealed much, except the distrust and suspicion levels were high. They were all adamant that it had been a drone that exploded, which was true, and that it was sent by one of the tech students, which was certainly our working hypothesis. But since nobody offered any fresh evidence, we couldn’t really act on what could simply be prejudice.

Seventhirtyfour was taking it badly. “Since working with my psychic abilities, I’ve developed a... sensitivity to the minds and emotions of people around me. It’s not telepathy, I can’t read minds or anything. But this many people, angry, suspicious, scared, it’s wearing.”

Pilvi appeared next, looking flustered and frustrated. “Well thanks so much for sending me to the techies,” she said. “They’ve closed ranks, nobody is talking least of all to a Skills like me.”

I nodded. “Sure, I worried they might. Never mind.”

“Oh, I still got stuff, I just had to be more creative. They may think they’re stubborn, but they’ve got nothing on Marwick farmers believe me.” She pulled out her datapad and read her notes. “I overheard two of them talking about a squawk of static at about the time of the explosion on 1.2 GHz, which Captain Turtle suspected was feedback on the control frequency when the drone’s transmitter popped.”

Gadget Dude’s eyes lit up, and he immediately started digging components out of his pockets. We let him do his thing, as Pilvi continued.

“I simpered and cooed at Dynamite Lad about the explosion itself, eventually he told me what he thought about it. For bang-for-buck, he reckoned it wasn’t a home-brew explosive. It’s not impossible that someone’s cooked up something new in the labs here, but considering the size of the payload and resulting explosion, that looked industrial grade to him, and would have been imported.”

“Interesting, why go to that level of risk, when someone here could have made something as effective, although, bigger, I guess,” asked Avrim.

“It’s suggestive that the person who wants to actually blow me up is not local, I guess, which is a little reassuring.”

“Though there are apparently people here happy to go along with it,” Avrim pointed out.

“I was trying not to notice that. That does support the theory that this is a reprisal for Bantus. Maybe that’s the story we should start telling anyway. We need to get everybody here to take a step back and a calming breath, and having it be known we’re looking outside the Academy would help a lot.”

“Would certainly help my nerves,” said Seventhirtyfour.

“Great stuff, Pilvi, anything else?”

“Depends what you were able to get from the security camera. I heard that Cyberella had her camera running during lunch today, and I managed to persuade her to send me a shot of the drone. Any use?”

“Oh yeah, send it over, it must be a better resolution than the junk the Academy cam recorded.”

She flicked the image over to my room console, and I put it up for us all to look at. It was much better resolution than the one we had, and this one we could zoom in on and still see details. The micro-jets were clear this time, it was definitely not the Winged Knight’s work. The whole thing looked a good deal more robust than any of the lashed-together stuff that I’d seen Winged Knight send my way.

“I can’t believe someone went to all that effort to make that to try and blow up Grey,” said Seventhirtyfour.

“You can’t?” asked Avrim. Pilvi punched him in the arm.

But I was staring at the photo. Something wasn’t right about what I was looking at, and I couldn’t quite... I reached forward to spin the image a little. It was only a two-dimensional image, but the console could extrapolate the basic shape... the more I turned it, the fuzzier the image got, as the extrapolation tool had less to work on. I spun it back and forth, watching it come in and out of focus as the front side presented itself... what was it that I was... wait... there.

“Is that a barcode? There on the casing of the drone?”

“I think... yeah,” said Avrim. “Wait, does that mean we can look up something about it?”

“No, no the resolution’s great, but not that good, and only part of the barcode is showing.”

“Shame,” said Pilvi “but we should copy it, in case we get a chance to cross reference.”

“No, but don’t you see? I’ve seen the students here decorate their gadgets with all sorts of logos and pictures? But a barcode? I mean we’d have to check if we have any tech students with a barcode theme... but I think this drone may be off-the-shelf bought. I don’t think we’re looking for a tech student after all.”

Avrim gave a theatrical sigh. “So, after an afternoon’s investigation, we have managed to at least triple the number of suspects.”

“Well, maybe.” I granted, slowly. “But it really does start to look like this is related to Bantus. Though I don’t know, that still feels wrong to me.”

Gadget Dude looked up from his project. “Done!” He bounced over to the console and plugged in his latest gizmo. A crude floor-plan of the Academy building popped up on screen. “Look for frequency! Find Transmitter.”

We all turned our attention to the screen and watched as a dot appeared glowing on the third floor, and then one on the second floor to the south... and then, dozens more lit up in rapid order.

“Oh,” said Gadget Dude, disappointed. “Popular frequency.”

“Never mind Gadget Dude, it was a good thought.”

We went around the information we had again, while Seventhirtyfour headed to the kitchen to make drinks and snacks. He came back in, trailed by Dez, returning from her mission at the spaceport.

“So, anything come in from Bantus?” Avrim asked.

Dez looked forlorn. “Sorry, no. There were a few packages that could have contained explosives, marked as chemicals or hazardous, but they were all above board and nothing from that end of the galaxy. I dug around a few likely suspects on the shipping manifests, but, no.

“There was one record of a drone being shipped in, the right kind of size as well, it arrived three days ago, but it didn’t come from Bantus. I double-checked.”

“Where did it come from then?”

Dez tapped her tail on the floor while she looked through her pad. “Here we go... a place called Nymanteles.”

The others looked disappointed. Pilvi shrugged.

But I recognised that name. It had come up before. Where had… my Gravane searches! One of the things I was still trying to figure out was exactly where Gravane got kidnapped, there were conflicting reports on his last known whereabouts. The rankings changed from time to time, but the last time I’d looked, the front-runner for where Gravane disappeared? Nymanteles.

# # #

It took all of my self-control not to kick everyone out, there and then. Instead, I let the conversation wind down naturally, while I fidgeted in the corner. To have both of my ongoing investigations point towards Nymanteles was too big a coincidence. There had to be a connection, and each conclusion tended to reinforce the other.

It must have seemed odd to the others that I suddenly checked out. Even when Tom arrived to tell us off for leaving the Med Centre, and then going on to conduct an unauthorised investigation of our own—Avrim and Dez hadn’t been so subtle. Still, we presented what we’d found out to him, and he listened to our thoughts and conclusions. He took it all in, then headed off to continue his own investigations.

Almost as soon as he’d gone, I began hinting it was time for people to leave. Eventually, even Seventhirtyfour got the hint and headed to his room.

Alone, at last, I fired up my Gravane searches to check if I had remembered correctly. I had of course. So, someone on the planet Nymanteles had kidnapped Gravane, possibly in the hopes of devastating the family and Corporation. Neither of these things had happened though, in no small part because of me. I guess Skull-face was pissed at me. Enough to resurrect his original plan by killing off the stand-in for his original victim?

It did make sense, except, the same problem that I had with blaming Bantus mobsters. The timing was weird. The kidnappers had known about me for ages. They could have killed me on the beach. Why wait until now to come after me?

I was missing something.

But I had a big piece for two different puzzles, and it was time to tell Mrs. Gravane. I would have hoped that her own investigators were ahead of me, but she was paying me for my help, so she was going to get it.

I was a little disappointed to find out that she had known about the Nymanteles link. Her own investigators had followed a different set of leads but had reached the same conclusion. Moreover, she admitted, she had been in contact with the kidnappers again recently.

“Yes,” she told me coldly. “They have made further demands. Which we will not meet. We are Gravane. When we make a deal, we abide by it. We do not change the deal, nor do we negotiate with those who do.”

But I could see the mother’s anguish in her eyes. The words were strong, defiant, but the body language on the comm screen was shouting her rage, frustration. A heartsick woman, with iron strength.

“I’m sorry,” I said. But... “It does explain the timing of the attack here though. While the world sees your son as safe at the Academy, they can’t apply full pressure on you, so now they need to get rid of me.”

She nodded. “I fear you are right. I apologise. I had not thought that my rejecting their demands would affect you. I will, of course, authorise hazard pay.”

I shook my head. “Not necessary.”

“Ah,” she looked down at her hands, didn’t meet my eye. “You wish to resign. Well, I understand that. You will work your notice period, I presume?”

“You misunderstand, Mrs. Gravane. I may only be a pretend Gravane, but I don’t break deals either. I’m staying on until we get your son back.”

She nodded curtly, but I think that I’d impressed her.

“But,” I continued. “I think for now I’ve stopped being useful at the Academy. Can you arrange a family mission like the Bantus one, but to Nymanteles this time?”

“Will you be wanting to take your little coterie with you?”

“I’m sure they would help, and be helpful, but I’m not sure I can drag them off into danger again. Let me think about that and get back to you.”

“As you wish. You will, of course, be taking Martin... I apologise ‘Sunbolt’.”

“He wouldn’t have been on my list.”

“Perhaps not, but he is my agent at the Academy and he will be accompanying you. You may not like him, but if you discover and face the people who took my son you will need him. I will speak to him with some very particular instructions.”

“Right. Sure.” I’m sorry, what?

“I will also broach the subject of your true identity with him. I believe it is only fair he knows that.”

“Yes. Of... course.”

I promised to call her again in the morning once I knew my travel plans and bid her good night.

I’d kind of forgotten that she must have agents, other agents, here. I had always somehow assumed they would be a student, but, okay, I can see Sunbolt being a corporate sell-out. Ahem, don’t look in the mirror. And now I thought, that was also probably why he ended up being assigned to the Bantus mission. Of course, if he was going to be briefed on who I was... I guess he’d be slightly less eager to protect a Gravane stand-in than Gravane himself. But fine, I could look after myself, I always had.

There was a knock at my door.

Odd. I checked the time, it was getting late, but not very late yet.

I opened it, without thinking, without checking, because I am a stupid idiot who deserves to be assassinated by a micro-drone. Or worse...

Seventhirtyfour and Pilvi were standing there. “Okay. Who the hell are you?”