The rest of the meeting was tiring beyond belief. We gave over rather more information than Juliyana shared. She provided the tables and charts they had built to track the movements of the mother and son but refused to give names.
Lyth had flicked the old fashioned printouts. “I could have done this for you in half the time it took you. Lyssa could have done it in a tenth of the time. You could have come to us. We would have helped.”
Juliyana shook her head. “Not on this one,” she said shortly and turned back to the screens hanging over the table. “Can I see the footage when they fired upon you again? I want to study the weapon.”
And so the remainder of the meeting went, with Juliyana dodging and weaving, while sucking up as much information as she could. Everyone seemed to fair better with food in their bellies, for some of the animosity of the first few minutes Juliyana had arrived diminished as the meals did. I drank steadily, instead.
I didn’t seem to be able to predict Juliyana’s thoughts or her responses anymore. When had she become a stranger to me? It had been just over a year since I’d last seen her or even spoken to her, but the lapse felt far greater to me than that.
Finally, Jai had sat back and scrubbed at his hair and yawned and said, “We all need to absorb and assess the new information. And then we should pick a most likely location to hang ourselves out to be plucked. I’m starting to think it should be near a planet. Right out in the middle of space here looks suspicious, for humans don’t tend to stop in the middle of nowhere. Let’s sleep on it.”
I was more than glad to get away from everyone, head to my room and think.
Only I’d drunk too much brandy. My thoughts congealed, yet I was too ramped up to relax enough for sleep.
I needed food and I needed distraction. Even watching the view on the street beyond the windows of the diner would do. I went back to the diner and slipped inside.
I wasn’t the only one with the same bright idea. Lyth sat at the family table, in his usual spot, a bottle of what was probably scotch, and a half-empty whiskey glass. The bottle had little left in it.
I moved over to the table and slid onto the bench, into my usual place.
Lyth tilted his head, examining me. “Shoulda had a steak, Colonel.” His words were clear. Too clear. He was controlling his speech with iron discipline, but he was definitely feeling the effects.
“Seems to me you should follow your own advice. How long have you been sitting here in the dark?” There were very few lights showing.
“I had th’lights turned down,” he replied. “Too bright.”
“Probably just as well.” I looked up as the waitress arrived but closed my mouth as she put a plate in front of me. Steak and mushrooms. I lifted my chin. “Are you listening in, Lyssa?”
“Watching over Lyth, Colonel,” Lyssa replied. “His judgement is impaired, and there are fools with guns who have access to me at the moment.” Disapproval was rich in her voice, either for Lyth’s inebriation, the fools with the guns, or me for allowing them the access that bothered her. Likely, all three.
“Thank you for the steak,” I said instead of berating her for listening in. I sawed off a piece and chewed. When the flavors of garlic and perfectly seared red meat hit my tongue, I realized how hungry I really was and quickly ate another three bites, while Lyth refilled his glass with the last of the bottle’s contents.
When I could speak, I said, “Do you want to tell me all of it now?”
Lyth looked at me. Then away.
“For the record, I don’t think you’re a fool. Not even when it comes to Juliyana. But I do want to understand what’s going on. Things don’t add up.”
“No,” Lyth breathed. “They don’t, do they?” He sipped.
I took another mouthful and waited. Often, silence was enough to prompt people into talking. Yet Lyth wasn’t the newt he’d once been. He was a leader of men, now. He steered policy for the Laxman Institute, while Arnold Laxman did what he loved most—he played with the science and pushed the frontier where humans and technology met.
So Lyth normally wouldn’t leap to fill a silence just because it was there, but he was drunk enough that Lyssa was on standby to catch him when he crashed, so maybe he just might.
Lyth used his thumb nail to scratch at the corner of the label on the bottle. “I’m guessing, but it’s a good guess…Juliyana hasn’t told you that she’s using her third clone, now.”
Shock slithered through me. “She’s used…killed…two clones? And her own original body? What the hell…!” The more I thought about it, the more appalled I became. How could anyone be that reckless? That cavalier? Clone bodies were not cheap. Not everyone got to have them for that fact alone. Although with Lyth as the director of the Institute who grew them, it was different for Juliyana, but still…!
Lyth nodded, even though he wasn’t looking at me. “It might have been simpler if her addiction was for alcohol or one of the weirder psychotropics out there, but that’s not what she looks for.”
“Risk,” I whispered.
“Anything that spikes adrenaline on a regular basis,” Lyth said. “I was actually relieved when Lyssa tossed her off the ship. I thought it would slow Juliyana down. Instead, it drove her further away. She didn’t have Lyssa watching out for her, after that.”
His nail scraped across the bottle, making me wince.
“You and she let me think that she was hauling freight.”
“It started that way,” Lyth said.
“It wasn’t enough,” I guessed. Hauling freight was pretty mundane, once you had a few contracts in place and didn’t have to hustle for work.
“At first it was just the odd merc contract here and there,” Lyth added. He glanced at me. “Yeong Lewis tossed her one or two.”
A name from my past. “He’s well connected.” He was more than just connected. He ran a vast mercenary outfit of his own and various grey-hat enterprises. He’d once made a great deal of money supplying arms to the two Imperial forces—the Rangers and the Shield. I wondered briefly what he was doing these days. Yeong Lewis was very good at looking out for himself, so I didn’t wonder for long. Clearly, he had enough business interests that he could still afford to hire outside mercenary outfits.
“Is that when Calpurnia started working for Juliyana?” I asked Lyth. “She’s made for action.”
Lyth’s thumb stopped scratching, although he didn’t look at me. He was trying to be urbane and understanding, but the male territorial instinct was a strong one.
“It’s okay to resent the shit out of her,” I added, just in case he was piling more guilt upon his conscience for that, too. “Anyone would, in your situation.”
His thumb started moving again, and he concentrated on chipping away at the label with fiendish focus. “She makes me want to ram the working end of an atomic probe into my gut and twist, just to get rid of the…the…”
I rested my hand on his forearm, the one that wasn’t working on the bottle.
Lyth’s jaw flexed.
“It would be just as natural to want to stick the probe into her gut,” I said gently.
“Why?” Lyth asked, surprised into looking at me directly. He was genuinely puzzled. “She didn’t do anything but take a job.”
I sat back. I had forgotten how utterly reasonable Lyth could be. “You’re still a nice man,” I concluded, letting admiration touch my voice.
He shook his head. “I might have been once. Now I’m…” He shrugged. “A realist.”
“When it’s convenient, perhaps,” I argued.
The corner of his mouth lifted. “The reason I won’t ram the probe into Calpurnia’s guts? She’s got internal armor lining. It would be a waste of time and a good atomic probe.”
I laughed. “Okay, you’re a pragmatist. But I still think it’s a veneer.”
He pushed the scraped bottle away from him and sat back. “Like the hard ass Colonel is all surface.”
“No, she’s down to the bone,” I assured him. I paused. “Actual armored lining?”
Lyth grimaced. “Armored lining, metal spine, titanium extruded tendons. They tweaked her muscle fibers, so her strength is enhanced and her reaction time increased. She’s ex-Ranger…but so is everyone on Juliyana’s ship.”
“They’re not all enhanced like Calpurnia,” I guessed.
“She’s unique,” Lyth admitted. “We’ve seen enhancements at the Institute. Had requests for them more than once, from those who don’t understand what we actually do there. But I’ve never seen anything like Calpurnia, before.”
The Institute’s aims were the exact opposite of Calpurnia’s. They put AIs into unenhanced, utterly human bodies.
“So, what are you going to do?” I asked. “About Juliyana,” I added, for Calpurnia could clearly take care of herself. Although I did wonder why Juliyana had got together with a human who was more cyborg than woman.
“I’ll do what I’ve always done,” Lyth said. “I’ll wait Juliyana out.” There was more than a dollop of wry self-awareness in his voice. “She will be back.”
Through the nanobot constructed walls of the diner, a metallic grinding sounded. I jerked upright. “Lyssa?”
“The outer hatch just opened,” Lyssa said. After a pause, she added, “It is Calpurnia.”
“She opened the outer hatch by herself? While weightless?” The outer hatch was too heavy for the average human to open without assistance from Lyssa.
“She put her boot on my hull,” Lyssa said, sounding affronted.
I glanced at Lyth, startled. “You weren’t kidding about the enhancements.”
“I didn’t think mind-reading was one of them,” he replied. “It has to be a coincidence that she arrived right now. What does she want, Lyssa?”
“She wants to speak to Danny.” Lyssa paused again, for she would be standing with Calpurnia, talking with her even as she was talking to us. “She didn’t realize that our ship time wasn’t matched to theirs. It’s just past noon on the Penthos.”
“Bring her here,” I told Lyssa, for the diner was neutral territory, and Lyth’s presence would stop me from over-reacting. “And turn the lights up, please.”
The light level rose and Lyth winced and blinked, adjusting to the brightness.
I didn’t bother warning Lyth to be nice to the woman because I knew damn well he’d be nicer than I would. I, on the other hand, wanted to rip the metal guts out of her.