The pain was back. Not as bad as before, but definitely there. A slow-burning fire between the lower halves of his ribcage, toasting his heart like a marshmallow.
Drew had just spent half an hour on Deck C-1, where the data mining detail had set up their office. True to his word, Trager had handed over the decryption key, along with a translation matrix offering both transliterated Standard and direct-to-Anglo versions (among others) of each document. The search of the Stragori memory blocs was underway.
It was already yielding results — results that had landed in his gut like a smoldering ember as they confirmed Townsend’s worst suspicions.
Earth was being gradually annexed by the Stragori. His inner cop hated to admit it, but maybe that xenophobic fringe group, Earth For Terrans, had had the right idea all along.
Drew had known since before the Corvou war about Adam Vargas and the Reorganization. The aliens had arrived on Earth at its weakest moment, a period of chaos following a pandemic, and had implemented a plan they’d brought from Stragon — a social and political system modeled on their own. According to the documents in one of the memory blocs, Earth’s space colonization program had come from Stragon as well, complete with the coordinates of about thirty already-terraformed moons or planets for Terran explorers to “discover”.
Karlov (now Trager) had kept insisting that the Directorate had only the best interests of Humanity at heart. Townsend had always been a little skeptical about that. Now, he couldn’t help wondering how deeply the alien influence might have permeated Terran society over a period of more than two hundred years. Had the Stragori infiltrators tweaked Earth’s educational system to resemble their own? Had they imperceptibly, decade by decade, aligned Human health care practices with the ones on Stragon? How about the design of fashions? The construction of home furnishings? The way a table should be set? Was any aspect of life on Earth still completely Human?
His stomach knew the answer to that.
Townsend left the tube car, crossed AdComm, and lowered himself onto the chair behind his desk. The Doc had given him a bottle of antacid tablets to keep in his desk drawer for moments like this. He shook a couple of the pills into his hand, then popped them into his mouth.
“Rough day, Chief?” Ruby had come to stand in the doorway of his office.
He motioned her inside, then activated the privacy shield.
“The data detail has been busy.”
Her eyebrows went up. “And…?”
“They think they’ve figured out why half of Stragon wants the Directorate reined in and the other half wants them gone. Which doesn’t really bear on either of our missions, but it did get me thinking.”
“Not about good things, I gather. Well, maybe this will cheer you up. We’ve got inbound traffic. It’s the Liberty, captained by our friend Gael Dedrick, and he says he’s bringing you a special passenger.”
“Did he say who it was?”
“No, but he guarantees that you will be surprised. His ETA is ten hours, give or take.”
Drew frowned. He wasn’t fond of surprises these days. Too often, all they did was exacerbate his stomach pains. But maybe this time would be different. “All right. Assign him a ring station and notify me when he docks.”
Nine and a half hours later, rested and showered and hoping for the best, Townsend was waiting in front of Portal 4 to meet this mysterious passenger. His jaw nearly grazed the deck when she stepped through the opening.
Over the years, he had seen still images and videos of Juno Vargas at various stages of her career. Even as an intern, studying to be an advocate, she had always shown the world a polished public figure, impeccably dressed and groomed and bestowing a practiced smile on the vidcams. But that woman was nowhere to be found in the person now standing in front of him. Her clothing was rumpled. Her hair was almost as short as his own, an unruly thatch beginning to gray. And her face was scrubbed of makeup, her complexion pale and blotchy, with weariness etched into every feature.
She halted just inside the portal and looked him up and down as well. “Drew?”
He stiffened, remaining where he was. “Juno?”
“Olivia,” she corrected him. “I’m Olivia Townsend again. Juno Vargas is dead.”
“I see,” was all he could bring himself to reply.
The silence stretched out between them. It had considerable mass.
“This is a lot harder than I thought it would be,” she said at last, in the voice laced with frustration that he remembered from his childhood. The picture now completed, the reality of this moment struck him with almost physical force.
He waited until he could trust his own voice before responding, “I know. Thirty-two years is a long time between hellos.”
“And for that I apologize. It wasn’t my choice, believe me.”
She apologized? Townsend felt his gorge rise. Diplomats apologized. Politicians apologized. Siblings said, ‘I’m sorry,’ and asked for forgiveness. Clearly, that wasn’t what they were to each other anymore.
He hardened his expression. “If you’re here to make excuses—”
“No excuses,” she told him, raising her chin. “I know how hard your life was at first. Forrand wouldn’t let me interfere, but I persuaded him to let me keep track of you. He put us both through some difficult tests. He was planning to hand his legacy over to us, and he needed to make sure we’d be up to the job.”
“And were we?”
“You were, and still are, little brother. But I’m afraid I may have been a disappointment to him.”
“Don’t call me ‘little brother’, Olivia. You gave up that right when I was twelve.”
Her head snapped back as though he’d slapped her. Then, dropping her gaze to the deck around his feet, she said softly, “I guess I did.”
With effort, he kept his hands relaxed. “How long will you be staying on Daisy Hub?”
“Not long,” she told him. A note of resignation had crept into her voice. “I’m on my way to Stragon. Some of us are trying to head off their civil war.”
“Well, I wish you good luck with that. Enjoy the rest of your voyage.”
As he turned away, she called out, “Wait! There’s a reason I stopped here, Drew. But I need to speak with you privately about it.”
He halted with his back to her. Urgently, she continued, “It’s really important that we talk. If you won’t let me onto the station, then meet with me aboard the Liberty. Right after that, I’ll leave. Please!”
Townsend took a moment to listen to his gut. Then he buzzed AdComm. “Control, are you seeing this?”
“I’ve been monitoring, sir,” said Jason Smith’s measured voice.
“Then you know where I’ll be for the next half hour.”
For a blue collar vessel, the Liberty was surprisingly comfortable inside. Not as well-appointed as the Shortbread, of course, but certainly homey enough to serve as living quarters for a medium-sized family or a tightly-knit group of friends. Townsend joined Olivia at a dining table large enough to seat eight on dark green, high-backed, falsahyde chairs. Dedrick was nowhere in sight, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t listening. Drew knew they were cousins. Did Dedrick? Did Olivia? Did it even matter?
“What’s this important reason that you wanted to discuss?”
“It’s about the EIS. The Corvou war hit us hard, Drew. We’ve lost most of our operatives, and our enemies are gaining ground every day. In short, the organization is falling apart back on Earth. So, we’ve decided it’s time to move our headquarters to an off-world base. As per your original assignment, that’s Daisy Hub.”
He scowled. “Then you won’t be proceeding on to Stragon?”
“Actually, I will. But they won’t.”
His gaze followed her pointing finger to a pair of suitcases placed next to a bulkhead in a corner of the cabin. A sudden wave of déjà vu made him glad he was sitting down.
“Is that what I think it is?”
“Backup copies of all the intel on the EIS servers,” she confirmed. “When Forrand stepped down in 2385, he made me Chief of Intelligence. As I said before, you’re better equipped to handle that job now than I am. So, I’m turning it over to you. Each of those cases contains a portable memory core. To decrypt the data, you’ll need this.” She reached into a pocket and extracted a datawafer. “These are the VICTOR codes. It’s an acronym: verification, identification, communication, travel, ops in progress, and retrieval of data.” As she slid the wafer across the table toward him, he searched her expression for any sign of emotion and found none. Her years in politics had either taught her how to conceal them or made her incapable of feeling them.
As he considered the second possibility, it occurred to him that Olivia might have been damaged even worse by Forrand’s manipulations than Drew himself had been. The thought sent a guerilla ripple of sympathy through him.
Quashing the impulse to pick the wafer up just to get it out of sight, he asked gruffly, “What about Novak? Is he on side with this?”
“Yes. Originally, Dennis Forrand ran the whole show himself. Then he divided the leadership, making Novak Chief of Operations and me Chief of Intelligence. All that did was create conflict at the top of the reporting structure. So we decided, for the sake of the organization’s future, that we needed to revert to Forrand’s original model and have one person in charge. Someone who was familiar and new at the same time. We agreed it should be you. There’s no one better qualified, Drew. You’ve got the experience and the training, and heaven knows you’ve got the smarts for the job.
“When I left, Novak was beginning to tie up loose ends on Earth. I have no idea how long it will take him, but he says he’s going to join me on Stragon when he’s done. I imagine he’ll be stopping here to update you first and hand over any remaining codes.”
Townsend was having trouble drawing a full breath. “You’re really making me the head of the entire organization?”
“Everyone in it will eventually be reporting to you, so, yes.”
“Eventually?”
“Until Ops is wrapped up, all the active field agents will remain under Novak’s command. We’re letting you step into your new role one foot at a time, beginning with Intelligence. There’s a lot of data on those memory cores. It will take you a while to familiarize yourself with it.”
“Who else is aware of this change of command?”
“Outside of the EIS, no one even knows for certain that we exist. Inside the organization? A handful of trusted aides who are assisting with the shut-down on Earth. For security reasons, Novak, you, and I are the only ones who know that the EIS will be continuing to operate from Daisy Hub. I’ve instructed my data sources on-world to go quiet until they’re reactivated using the established verification codes. At that point, they’ll be your data sources and you can change the codes to whatever you want.”
“And your off-world contacts?”
“Sadly, that information network got blown up in the war. Literally. Some of my people may have survived, but none of them have gotten in touch with me. That leaves just my sources on Daisy Hub. We do have operations in progress on Stragon, but those agents are reporting to Novak, not me. As far as they’re concerned, everything will be business as usual until their assignments are completed. After that, they’ll be turned over to you, to be left in place, recalled to Daisy Hub, or sent elsewhere.”
“What about the agents you’d planted on the station before I arrived? Do they know why you’ve come here?”
She shook her head. “They’ve been purposely kept out of the loop. The worse things got on Earth, the less we wanted them to know.” She paused. “Rodrigues will keep reporting to Novak for the time being. O’Malley and Singh were reporting to me. Singh’s gone. I’ll leave it up to you to read O’Malley in, whenever and however you decide it’s appropriate.”
“And Ruby McNeil?”
Olivia gave him a blank look.
All at once Townsend’s mental alarms were shrilling. Ruby was the first operative Dennis Forrand had planted on Daisy Hub, back in 2368. If she was using an EIS encryption device, then she had to be reporting to someone. Forrand had been her original handler, but Forrand was dead. So who, Drew wondered, was her handler now?
“She’s your second in command,” Olivia pointed out, breaking into his thoughts. “If she’s good at it and you trust her, then you can give her that responsibility in the organization as well. If not, I’m sure you’ll know what to do.”
Yes, he did know.
Turn her or terminate her. It was the EIS mantra.
It looked as though he and ‘Mom’ would have to have a long, heart-to-heart talk as soon as he returned to the station.
Olivia leaned across the table, earnest gray eyes fixed on his face. “You’ve spent thirty-two years hating me,” she said in a suddenly husky voice. “I get that. Maybe I even deserved it. But I want you to know something. I twisted Forrand’s arm to let me keep track of you because I needed to make sure you were all right. I may not have been in your life, Drew, but you’ve always been in my thoughts. I know how it must have felt to you. You thought you’d been abandoned. But the truth is that I’ve never stopped caring about you, and I never stopped watching your back. When I found out what Forrand was planning for you, I made sure O’Malley and Singh would be here when you arrived. Their reports to me kept me updated about your health and your state of mind, not just your activities.
“Now you’re the one who’ll be running things, and I’m the one leaving on a mission. I won’t have the resources to check up on you, so I want you to be extra careful while I’m gone. Don’t get me wrong — there’s no one I trust with this responsibility more than I do you, and I know you’ll do a stellar job. Still, there will be risks, and you may be tempted to stick your neck out. Promise me that you won’t try to be a hero.”
Funnily enough, it was the one thing that he could promise her.
He scooped up the datawafer and slipped it into his pocket. “You’ve got my word.”
When he returned to his office, he found Lydia waiting for him. She was sitting on one of the guest chairs, her expression pinched with concern. For him? Of course it was. For just a moment, he considered getting back on the tube car, maybe going to the caf for a glass of milk surrogate to douse the embers sitting in his belly.
Lydia had an uncanny knack for showing up just as he was ready to put his fist through a bulkhead and forcing him to talk about his feelings. She’d first done it when he was grieving the loss of his friend Bruni Patel. She’d done it several more times since then. Each time, she’d offered herself as a sounding board, and the emotional release had lightened his mood.
This time, he didn’t deserve to feel better. He’d just unloaded thirty-two years of resentment onto someone who’d tried to reach out to him. Then he’d sent her away. Her final words to him had been, “I never stopped caring about you.” His final words to her had been, “Goodbye, Olivia.”
“Goodbye” wasn’t going to work with Lydia, he could tell just by looking at her. Neither would hiding in the caf. Swallowing a salt-flavored sigh, Drew walked past her and sat down behind his desk.
“Jason showed me the vidclip before he wiped it from the system,” she told him. “I thought you might want to talk.”
“There’s nothing to say.”
She leaned forward, her blue eyes brimming with sadness. “Then don’t say — do!” she urged. “Call them back, Drew. It’s not too late to mend your relationship.”
“There’s nothing to mend. I’m not sure there ever was a relationship.”
“She’s your sister. You must have loved her once.”
“No. When she left, I was twelve, a selfish, arrogant brat. I didn’t love — I needed. I wanted. She’d promised to protect me. And on the one day when I needed protection the most, the day that would have made all the difference in my life, she wasn’t there. The first person to show me any kindness after that was Bruni Patel, six years later. Bruni was persistent. He broke through my walls and taught me about friendship. About trust. Eventually, we had a relationship, he and I. But Olivia? She died that day, thirty-two years ago, before I even knew what love was.”
Lydia reached out and touched his hand, and it was all he could do to keep from pulling it away.
“Maybe you didn’t know, but it sounded to me on the video as though she did. Regardless, I’m here for you if you change your mind,” she said. Then she stood up and headed for the tube car. His spine rigid, he watched the door close behind her. He counted to ten before getting up from his chair.
Townsend went to his quarters and sat on the edge of his bed, waiting for the release of tears. They never came. In his stomach, the embers continued to burn.