Dozing on the sofa, Isabela was startled wide awake by the sound of someone leaning on the buzzer outside her apartment.
Who could possibly be at her door at this relatively late hour? With a glance over her shoulder at Angeli’s bedroom, she opened the spyhole Vikram had made in the wall and peered out into the corridor.
A young man was standing there with embossed shoulder patches on his two-tone blue jacket and an expectant expression on his face. His blue and white billed cap bore the logo of the island’s delivery service. Even more curious now, Isabela thumbed the latch release and waited while the door slid aside.
“Good evening, ma’am,” he said brightly. “I have two transmissions from Earth for this address, one for a Ms. Anna Sturtevant and another for a Mrs. Isabela Bakshi.”
Her stomach dropped. Only one person on Earth would be contacting both of them, and it was sure to be something Isabela didn’t want to hear.
“From Earth?” she repeated.
“Yes, ma’am. They arrived about a week ago. Sorry about the delay. It was a massive commburst. Had to be two thousand messages, all marked ‘expedite’. It’s taking time to track everyone down.” He pulled a device resembling a compupad from a pouch at his waist. “I’ll need to record proof of delivery.”
Isabela pressed her thumb to the screen and accepted the datawafer. As she turned away from the door, Angeli came up beside her.
“I’m Anna Sturtevant,” she announced. She gave him her thumbprint. Then, slipping the datawafer into her pocket, she smiled the message-bearer on his way.
While Isabela was securing the latch, Angeli went into the living room and switched on the jammer. “Messages from Ops for both of us?” she said, her expression now grim. “This can’t be good.”
Isabela handed her a commpad. “You’re the mission coordinator. You first.”
Angeli made a face, then dug out the wafer and inserted it into the port. A second later, the screen came alive with text. On its surface, it was a chatty letter from her fictitious Uncle Henry about Aunt Matilda’s problems with her garden. Then Angeli plugged in her EIS decryption device. It activated at her touch. Isabela watched the letters on the screen rearrange themselves into a quite different message, which Angeli read aloud rapidly in a voice devoid of expression.
“To all EIS personnel in the field. Warning. Code orange. All previous intel about Stragon is confirmed unreliable and its source has been neutralized. Some or all operatives on-planet may be compromised. You are ordered to keep cover but discontinue current ops and avoid contact with other agents if possible. Instructions re extraction will follow. Authentication code…” She read this part silently, then turned to Isabela and said with audible disgust, “It’s genuine. Basically, it’s telling us we’re screwed and we’re on our own until Ops can figure out a way to get us off-world. Wonderful.”
Angeli plucked out the wafer and her decryption device, dropped them both onto the coffee table, and thrust the commpad toward Isabela. “Your turn.”
The second wafer contained sincere condolences from Isabela’s cousin Selma — another nonexistent relative — and an offer to pay her way back to Earth if remaining on Stragon was too painful. Decrypted, it transformed into the same message as Angeli’s. If Isabela was receiving it, that meant support was being pulled back. Without support in place, there could be no future missions to this world. Ops was apparently removing the EIS presence from Stragon, entirely and for good.
That would leave the colonists at the mercy of whatever war broke out here.
Worse still, it would tear Isabela away from the final resting places of her brother and her husband before she could obtain justice for them and peace for herself.
For a long moment, the two women stood staring helplessly into each other’s faces. Then Angeli flopped down onto one of the chairs.
“Damn! I sensed from the beginning that someone was surveilling us. This confirms it.”
“And now what?” Isabela exclaimed, not bothering to keep her voice steady. “You said you were getting close to finding out who ordered the inquiry into Vikram’s death. Are we supposed to just sit on our hands now and do nothing until we’re extracted?”
Angeli turned her upper body to face Isabela and said firmly, “No. You’re a teacher and I’m a data clerk. We’re going to keep our covers, abort the operation mentioned in our orders, and continue working on our other project. I’ll go on digging in dangerous places, and you’re going to turn this place upside down looking for the copy of Vikram’s proposal. If it says anything like what I suspect it will, we may be able to make our farewell to this world one that the Stragori will never forget.”
—— «» ——
Three days later, the message carrier was back.
“Special delivery from Earth for Ms. Anna Sturtevant,” he announced brightly as Isabela opened the door for him.
When the datawafer was in hand and the door was closed once more, Isabela remarked, “Not extraction coordinates, I hope.”
Angeli shook her head. “It’s probably too soon for that.” She found the commpad and slipped the wafer into the slot. “It’s a ‘fat’ message — files attached,” she said, then read aloud from the screen: “Grandma’s hands are shaky, so you may have to use your imagination when viewing the attached snaps she took of Cousin Grace’s new home. Love, from Uncle Henry.”
Angeli inserted her decrypter into the port and reread the covering message. Then she opened the attachment. Her features contracted and hardened as she scanned the text.
“What does it say?” Isabela demanded.
Lips tightly compressed, Angeli handed her the commpad.
By the time she’d reached the bottom of the third document, Isabela was thoroughly confused. “What does Novak expect you to do with this?”
“He says he wants me to spread the word,” said Angeli. “Inform the Terran public and stir up protests against the Directorate so they’ll be forced to move us all to a safer part of the planet.”
“That makes no sense,” declared Isabela. “Inform them of what? Everything in these documents is common knowledge on the island, and we are actually safer here than the Stragori are on the mainland. As for the toxins in the soil, the Directorate has not only made us aware of them, it has also gone to great lengths to protect us from them.”
“Well, I’m afraid that’s not the picture these documents painted for Novak. I can understand why he might have felt alarmed. But he and I were both on Earth during the rioting in the months before the war. We witnessed the mindless destruction that erupts when large groups of people feel trapped and in danger. That’s why Novak decided to send agents here, to protect the colony from that kind of violence by finding a way to prevent the Stragori civil war from breaking out. That was our mission.
“And now he’s aborted it and is ordering me to foment unrest among the Terran population? Organize protests and marches? Manufacture anger and frustration? That’s not right, Bela. It doesn’t sound like Novak at all.”
“Are you certain the order is authentic?”
“All the verification codes match up.”
“Then it appears that you have a decision to make, chica. What are you going to do?”
Angeli hesitated, then replied firmly, “Not a damn thing. As far as this loose cannon is concerned, I never got the message.”
—— «» ——
The man on the screen in Olivia’s bedroom had a bland face, a stocky build, and familiar-looking features, but he was definitely not Dennis Forrand.
“You’re his advocate,” Olivia declared. “I remember you from the reading of his will.”
“Indeed,” he replied. “And now I represent his interests on Stragon. I am Ira Chase, at your service. Mr. Forrand regrets that he is unable to meet with you in person at this time. However, he has empowered me to answer any urgent questions you may have about his dealings both here and on Earth.”
“Really! You can answer all my questions? Are you telling me that you know absolutely everything about him?”
“Almost everything. I watched him grow to adulthood on Earth. I’m his half-brother, making me your great-uncle, I believe. And I must say, it’s a pleasure to see you again, even if the feeling is not mutual right now.”
Olivia straightened her shoulders. “Were you one of the people he instructed to keep an eye on me after he left for Stragon?” she asked stiffly.
“No. The task of keeping Forrands out of trouble was given to others. My responsibilities on Earth began and ended with the legalities of running the Forrand business empire. And the disposition of the estates of Gilles Forrand and the members of his family, of course. Now, you indicated that you had questions?”
“My questions for him are for his ears only, but I do have two for you,” she replied. “Where is Dennis Forrand, and why is he avoiding his family?”
The advocate smiled. “He did warn me that you would be extremely direct.”
“Did he instruct you to give me direct and truthful answers? Because I’ll accept nothing less,” she informed him in Juno’s frostiest voice.
“Of course. Dennis began severing his ties to the Forrand family on Stragon in protest when he learned how the Directorate plans to use the Terran colony on the island. He knows it was Gervais’s idea, and that the older generations of Forrands support it. Dennis believes it would be disastrous for the Human population, both here and on Earth. He also was certain that you would agree with his assessment once you had been briefed by Gervais himself.”
“Just to be clear, then, you’re telling me that Dennis Forrand is against starting a revolution?” Chase nodded. “And where is he now?”
“In seclusion, attempting to plot a course of action that will counter it or, at the very least, mitigate its effects.” He paused. “Dennis spent his formative years on Earth. He has great empathy for its inhabitants and harbors no wish to see them come to harm on either of our planets.”
“That’s what he told you?”
“It’s what I personally witnessed. With rare exception, no one is born cold and cynical, Ms.Townsend. The way in which we’re treated and the examples that are set for us determine what we’ll become as we mature. Gilles may already be having regrets about the way he raised his children, but Linda had a hand in their upbringing as well. She’s a very strong, very clever woman, and I see a lot of her influence in the way Dennis turned out.”
Olivia bristled as she recalled seeing far too much of Dennis Forrand in the way Juno Vargas had been turning out.
“I knew him as a cruel and ruthless man,” she declared.
Unruffled, Chase replied, “He wasn’t always. By the time he met you, he’d learned how to be whatever the circumstances demanded. He may have appeared hard-hearted, but everything he did, whether it succeeded or not, was with the greater good in mind.”
Forrand wasn’t getting off the hook that easily. The greater good? Perhaps, but it hadn’t been her good, and it definitely hadn’t been Drew’s. They were his grandchildren. They should have mattered to him. Clearly, they hadn’t.
“Is he tracking me now?”
“Do you wish him to?”
“No.” Not that that would stop him, of course. “However, now that I know where he stands on the Terran revolution, I want to be able to contact him if I need his help.”
“Are you formulating a plan as well?”
“Beginning to. First, I’ll need more intel.”
“Set to work, then. When it’s safe, he’ll get in touch.”
As the image on the screen winked out — for a false image was all that it was — she thought, Thank you, Dennis, for helping me make up my mind. Then she went to look for Linda.
—— «» ——
The ferry to the island was part boat, part aircraft. It skimmed along the surface of the strait, sped by a wind that churned the dark water into choppy waves all around its hull. Olivia stood at the portside railing, near the bow. She watched in fascination as whitecaps were born and reborn, tumbling and whispering over the deeps, rolling and roaring as they neared the shore. Meanwhile, a constant chilly breeze whipped at her hair and burned her eyes and cheeks.
Being exposed to the elements like this reminded her of the year she had spent touring the Industrial Wilderness with Angeli and Ronny, their driver. Ronny … what? He had told her his last name, but for that entire year nobody had used it, and now she couldn’t recall what it was.
With a pang, she realized that this was the first time she’d even thought about him since that day when he’d delivered them safely back to New Chicago. She’d been seventeen years old. Ronny had been Forrand’s tool. After serving his purpose, he’d merged back into the faceless crowd, a non-person once more. And now, far from home and wearing her own identity as a disguise, Olivia was feeling like a non-person too.
On Stragon, her connection with the Forrand family afforded her some borrowed status. That helped. However, it couldn’t protect her from being used as Ronny was, to advance someone else’s agenda. Only she could do that, and only if she knew what the agenda was.
As the ferry dock came into view, Olivia caught the scent of something so utterly foul that it threatened to turn her stomach inside out.
“A waste disposal vessel must be upwind of us,” remarked the male passenger who had come to stand next to her. “Don’t worry — you’ll get used to it.”
She turned to face him, noticing for the first time that they were the only ones braving the weather on deck. Reflexively, she performed a threat assessment. He looked harmless enough. Of course, so did she. Locking eyes with him, she challenged, “Now, why would you say that?”
“Because everything about this place stinks,” he replied, giving a little shrug. “You’ll be amazed at how quickly your brain will learn to ignore it.”
“What I meant was, why assume that I’ll be staying long enough for that to happen?”
Still gazing into her face, he lowered his voice. “Because we’ve been expecting you. Mr. Chase sends his regards, along with this.” He pulled something out of a pocket, placed the object in her hand, and closed her fingers over it. “If you feel the need to contact his client, that gives you a direct, secure commlink.” Raising his voice again, he added, “I’m going below to get warm. Enjoy your visit to the island, Miss.”
Enjoy her visit? He had to be kidding.
Stepping away from the railing, she carefully uncurled her fist. Sitting on her palm was something that resembled a scaled-down EIS decryption device, a small black tube with ridges along half its length and a port connector at one end. If it was real, and if it worked the same way as the full-sized model she and Novak had given their operatives back on Earth, then it was keyed to her DNA, making it useless to anyone else if it were lost.
Then again, it could be a tracking transmitter, cleverly disguised as EIS gear and planted on her by an agent of the Directorate.
Her first impulse was to drop the device into the water. Fortunately, her common sense cut in and stopped her. Whoever had sent this to her knew she was en route to the island. Her best course of action, therefore, was to keep her suspicions to herself until she could determine who it came from and what their intentions were.
Olivia slipped the item into her pocket and joined the other passengers in the enclosed cabin. She looked for the man who had spoken to her on the upper deck. He was nowhere to be seen.
Once the ferry had docked, she adopted a pleasant, tourist-like demeanor and debarked with the others, following a fence-lined walkway to a windowless, flat-roofed hexagonal structure. Walkway, supports, and building were all apparently made of the same dark brown, non-reflective material.
It was a deception. From inside the terminal, the walls were transparent, affording 360 degrees of unhindered view while preventing anyone outside from seeing what was happening within them. Strategically, this could be important. Olivia filed the information away for possible future use.
Meanwhile, she was mentally reviewing her second audience with Gervais. It had gone well enough, she thought. Calling up Juno Vargas’s considerable powers of persuasion, she’d assured him that she was finally comfortable with the idea of killing off the Directorate, as long as he promised her a free hand in arranging the details of their demise. He had agreed to this, but only after a hesitation long enough to trigger several mental alarms.
Forced to fake his death and leave Earth before the Reformation could be implemented, Dennis had assigned a team of agents to spy on her, ensuring that she stayed on the course that he had set. If Gervais was monitoring her for the same reason, then it was doubly important that Olivia keep her business on the island a secret from him.
What, then, should she do with Chase’s “gift”?
As she gazed around the ferry terminal, Olivia’s attention was captured by a sign that said “Security Lockers” in Standard, Anglo, and (she assumed) Stragori. Beneath the sign was a counter, staffed by two uniformed officers.
Perfect.
Ten minutes later, with the suspicious device tucked away safely in a lockbox, Olivia left the building by a side door and found a row of vehicles-for-hire waiting on the pavement outside. They came in different shapes and sizes, everything from a moto with sidecar to a small MPV. She selected one that resembled a PV and fed the address Linda had found for her into the on-board navcom.
Approximately half an hour later, she was standing in front of a barracks-like, stucco-clad building. There were structures just like it aligned close together all up and down every street. Some were a dirty yellow color, but most were terra cotta orange, like this one, with different numbers appearing above their main entrances.
Olivia squared her shoulders and filled her lungs. Then she walked up to the front door and hauled it open.
—— «» ——
Peering through the spyhole, Isabela almost didn’t recognize the woman standing out in the corridor. Then the memory clicked in, and she hastened to switch on the jamming device.
“Angeli, we have company,” she called over her shoulder as she opened the door. “Juno Vargas! Please, come inside.”
“It’s Olivia Townsend now, Mrs. Bakshi.”
“Is it? Well, I am glad to see you, whoever you are. And this is not Veggieville, so you can call me Isabela.”
Angeli appeared then, her mouth forming an O as she came to a halt two meters away. “Juno? Does Novak know you’re here?”
“Yes. In fact, he’s the one who sent me. And I’m Olivia Townsend. Juno is dead.”
“And why are you on Stragon, exactly?” she asked quietly.
“It’s a long story.”
Silence.
Something was wrong. These were best friends who hadn’t seen each other in five years. They should already have fallen laughing into each other’s embrace. Instead, they both had their guards up, and the tension in the room was growing thicker by the second. Finally, Isabela couldn’t stand it any longer.
“Who would like some tea?” she broke in.
Olivia looked grateful for the interruption. “I don’t suppose you still have any Earth blends on hand?”
“I’m afraid not. But the native varieties are interesting. I will see what I can do.”
Isabela purposely made their tea the old-fashioned way. It gave her time to take her guest on a tour of the apartment, leaving Angeli to steep in the living room while their beverage steeped in the kitchen. Unfortunately, only the tea grew more flavorful as a result. Angeli just seemed to get darker and more bitter.
By the time the three women had settled together onto the sofa and chairs, Isabela was primed to break up an argument. She leaned forward to pour the tea, then remained taut and ready at the edge of her seat.
At first, the conversation was carefully polite, so innocuous and superficial that Isabela wondered why she’d even bothered to activate the jammer.
Then Angeli set her cup down deliberately on the coffee table and stared a challenge directly into their visitor’s face. “I want to hear this long story of yours,” she said. “Why are you here? And why aren’t you Juno Vargas anymore? What’s happened on Earth that we need to know about?”
Olivia paused for the space of two breaths. “Juno had to die because the High Council was about to arrest her for treason.”
“Fallout from the Reformation?” said Angeli, adding in a dubious voice, “After five Earth years?”
“The war threw every level of government into disarray. It’s taken that long for the High Council to learn the fates of its missing members and find replacements for them,” Olivia explained. “Novak and I decided that I would be safer here, helping with the mission, than if I stayed on Earth.”
Isabela and Angeli exchanged freighted looks.
“The mission?” Isabela repeated uncertainly.
“There is no more mission,” Angeli cut in. “Novak must have transmitted the abort order while you were en route. We’ve been instructed to stand down and wait for extraction coordinates.”
Olivia’s expression hardened, along with her voice. “Show me the abort order.”
An unsettling silence filled the room while Angeli found the datawafer, commpad, and decrypter, and brought them back to the sofa to assemble. After pulling up Novak’s message to all personnel, she passed the device to Olivia so she could read it for herself.
She stared at the screen for nearly a minute. Then, letting out a small sigh, she returned the commpad to Angeli’s hands.
“I guess that’s that,” said Olivia. “All right, then, since it appears the two of you are at loose ends for a while, I have a special project for you. And by no small coincidence, it happens to be the best possible way to accomplish the mission you originally came here to carry out.”
“What’s the catch?” Angeli asked her.
“Novak doesn’t know anything about it, and it was one of the Directors who gave me the idea.”
Angeli narrowed her gaze. “We’re not working for the Directorate now, are we?”
“Hardly. Their plan involved an uprising on the island that would have cost more Human lives than I care to imagine. Apparently, they’ve already laid the foundations for it. At least, that’s what Gervais told me, although he never specified how.”
“Son of a bitch,” murmured Angeli. Isabela could practically see the light going on behind her eyes. “I think I know what he was talking about. You need to see this.”
She pulled up Novak’s second transmission and opened the attached files for Olivia to read. Olivia’s hand was shaking — with anger, Isabela assumed — as she passed the commpad back to her.
“These came into Novak’s possession how, exactly?” Olivia asked, enunciating sharply.
“The cover message said they were from a trusted source with access to the Stragori archival backup servers.”
“A trusted source?” Olivia echoed. “Trusted by Novak, maybe. This has Gervais’s hand all over it. And Forrand always told me that the most effective lie is one that is wrapped inside a truth.”
Angeli stiffened. “So, you’re taking the lead on this special project?”
“I am,” said Olivia. “I have a plan to remove the Directorate and reunite the two factions. It isn’t what Gervais will be expecting, and it won’t cost Human lives. However, once I’ve read you into the op, I’ll be depending on your absolute discretion. So if you’d rather not—”
“Count me in,” Angeli interrupted her. “Idle hands, devil’s playground.”
“I suspect you will have need of my special skills as well,” said Isabela. “And I have a personal favor to ask, involving your special skills.”
Olivia raised a curious eyebrow. “Go on.”
“You remember my brother Carlos, and my husband Vikram, from Veggieville?” Olivia nodded. “They both died on this world — Vikram, at least, under questionable circumstances — and the Directorate’s staff has not been forthcoming with answers.”
“You want me to help you get closure.”
“I want justice,” Isabela corrected her. “That will give me closure.”
“They weren’t only her family,” Angeli put in. “They were also EIS agents, and I have reason to believe that something about their deaths was suspicious.” She switched the datawafers in her commpad, then passed the device back to Olivia.
After reading the text on the screen, Olivia turned and impaled her with an accusing gray stare. “Where did you get these?”
“I stole a copy of the folder while someone with authorization was downloading it. Don’t worry, I didn’t leave anything traceable behind.”
“That’s not the issue, Angeli. I know you’re good at what you do. But didn’t you find it peculiar that these two documents, completely out of context, had somehow found their way into a single folder that then happened to be downloaded at a time when you were available to co-opt it?”
Angeli’s face lost two shades of color. “You think they were bait?”
Olivia gave her a pained look. “I suspect you’ve been in the trap for a while now and someone is just playing with you. Feeding you disinformation, stringing you along, dropping you a crumb here and there to keep you going in a direction of their choosing. Or simply sending you in circles, to keep you busy. Under the circumstances, I think Novak was right to assume that the team had been compromised, and to call for an extraction.”
Isabela straightened in her chair and said, “Nonetheless, I need to know the truth about Carlos and Vikram.”
Olivia paused, her lips pressed tightly together. “No promises, Isabela, but I’ll do whatever I can.”
“If our covers are blown, then time will be short,” Angeli cut in. “Tell us about your plan.”
“All right, but first, there’s something you need to know about the Directorate.” With that, Olivia launched into an explanation that left Isabela speechlessly clutching a mug of cooling tea.
“Are they evil? The sane ones are, for sure,” Olivia concluded. “Can anything they say be trusted, including what Gervais told me earlier? No. We’re on shifting ground here, and I have no idea how Gervais will react when he learns that we’re deviating from his instructions. That’s why it’s essential that everything be kept secret for as long as possible.”
“Agreed,” said Angeli briskly. “What do you need us to do?”
“Isabela, you’re the chemist. How quickly can you produce a supply of aerosolized knockout drug?”
“Assuming that I can find a growth of the right kind of plant, a couple of weeks.”
“And Angeli, do you remember how you interfered with Novak’s op about six years ago, when he was trying to wipe Lania’s identity from Earth’s databases? Do you recall how he planned to do it?”
“Ye-es.”
“We’re going to do something similar to the Directorate’s server, only we’re going to do it better. If we can hang onto the element of surprise, and if we time everything right, we’ll be extracted along with all the other operatives immediately afterward, leaving nowhere for the Stragori to pin the blame. In the meanwhile, we’ll stay in contact using our decrypters. If anyone gets curious, we’re just three old friends from Earth who finally reconnected and have a lot of catching up to do. Understood?”
Angeli and Isabela exchanged looks and replied in unison, “Understood.”