That would have to be enough; she had already been in contact for too long. As she withdrew, Kise fell back onto her bed, eyes glazed. Nual touched her com to the girl’s, and once she had what she needed she shook Kise gently.
Kise twitched and looked up with an expression of near-comical surprise.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Nual.
‘Wh—? What happened?’ Kise shook her head.
‘I think you fainted.’ According to Nual’s com, she’d taken nearly four minutes. Hopefully Kise wouldn’t realise how long she’d been out. ‘It must be the heat. Can I get you some water?’
‘Water? Y-yes. Please.’
As she got up to fetch Kise a drink, Nual permitted herself a small grin of triumph.
Jarek had a choice: wait here on Tarset for Orzabet to finish the job, or return to Xantier, where he was closer to Kama Nui and more likely to pick up some form of lucrative cargo. The second option was the most logical, but that meant leaving the memory-core with Orzabet. Not that he thought she’d run off with it; he was pretty sure once she’d decoded the files she would want to get them to him as quickly as possible, because he was an ally in her great fight. The problem he foresaw was that she’d insist on bringing them in person, and that would mean her usual high level of security, which was likely to make things complicated. In that case, the closer he was, the better. He’d sleep on it . . .
But the next morning he awoke to find a message from Nual waiting for him:
No definite progress on the mission, and we have fallen foul of a local company in matters unrelated to our reason for being here. My companion has been captured by this organisation. I intend to do my best to rescue him. I will update you on my progress every twelve hours. If you do not hear from me for a full day, assume we are both lost.
Oh shit
. It would take him the best part of three days to get to Kama Nui from here, though he realised Nual hadn’t actually asked for his help. But if he left now, he’d be leaving the files behind. He needed to contact Orzabet to see if she’d made any progress on the decryption.
Her full-text response came back twenty minutes later: an address, still on Tarset but in a part of the station currently being refurbished, and a time, three hours from now.
The door opened as he approached to reveal a dimly lit room, empty save for a bored-looking man sitting on a paint-spattered chair. He wore station overalls and ear-defenders, but the large gun on his lap implied he wasn’t here to fix the lights. He was unsurprised to see Jarek, and simply pointed through a curtain of builders’ netting into another equally bare room where Jarek found Orzabet sitting on the floor. Her face had the blank stare of someone deeply interfaced with technology; Jarek recognised that look from his old partner, a hubber who used to fly the
Judas Kiss
on neural interface rather than what he called ‘the old-fashioned way’. He briefly experienced the theocracy-born’s unease at being in the presence of a heavily enhanced human; the Angels were odd enough, but at least their brains were their own. As he came in she blinked once, slowly, and focused on him.
Jarek nodded back at the curtain. ‘Who’s your friend?’
Her expression impassive, Orzabet said, ‘A man I hired to kill us both if we’re disturbed.’
Jarek barely suppressed his shudder. ‘You’re nothing if not thorough. So I take it we have a result?’
‘Not exactly. There’re two levels of security here. First, the management software on the memory-core was designed to interface only with the system that originally wrote the data - the files should be readable only on the computer you took it from. I’ve managed to set up a virtual reader that fools the encryption so it doesn’t just turn the data into unsalvageable gibberish when I try to access it. But then we’re onto the second level: I haven’t yet managed to work out the code-key to unlock the high-security files and turn everything back into plaintext. The good news is that the encryption isn’t QE or one-time’ - seeing Jarek’s expression she shook her head - ‘sorry, being technical. The short answer is, I’m sure I
can
unscramble the contents of the memory-core, but it’s going to take me another thirty to thirty-five hours - say two to three days’ elapsed time. Even then, all we’ll have is raw data. A
lot
of raw data. I don’t suppose you have any idea what you’ve actually got here?’
Jarek sighed. ‘Sorry, no.’
‘Well then, we might have a problem.’ Her tone and expression belied her words. Jarek had the distinct impression she was enjoying the challenge.
‘I realise it’ll take as long as it takes, but I might have to leave in a hurry.’
‘Oh, that won’t be an issue,’ she said.
‘Really?’
‘No. I’ve also been looking into your other little problem, and I think I have a solution that I can be ready to implement within a couple of hours. The only problem is that you’ll need to take me with you the next time you make a transit.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
‘Hush now, there are no demons here.’
Marua Ruanuku smiled down at her daughter. For the second time this week Taimi had woken up from a nightmare of creatures from ancient islander legend chasing her through the dark. Taimi was at that difficult age, soon to become a young woman, though for a girl in her position there were additional worries beyond the usual ones of approaching adulthood. Her oldest daughter and heir was just coming to the same realisation Marua had reached at her age: that the luxurious life she lived came at a price.
No demons here
.
What she’d told her daughter was not entirely true - but then again, what are demons except names for that which we fear and do not understand? She grasped Taimi’s hand, a quick reassurance, nothing so smothering as a hug. ‘Will you be all right? Shall I leave the light on?’
‘I don’t need the light,’ said Taimi defiantly. ‘I’m not a baby.’
‘Indeed you’re not. Sleep well, my sweet.’
Marua paused on the landing outside her daughter’s room. Taimi was as clever as she’d been designed to be, with as much empathy as could be reliably coded into a normal human child. She was probably picking up Marua’s own troubled state of mind.
Although she had suspected for some time that Doctor Grigan was hiding the full extent of his illness, his sudden death two weeks ago had been a shock. The news had introduced a sour note into the long-awaited wedding day of one of her second cousins to a scion of Tawhira-
ngai
. Though Marua had never been comfortable with her chief neuroscientist’s Ascensionist views, he’d given her
ngai
many years’ loyal service in areas both highly complex and, to her softly Salvatine upbringing, morally grey. He had almost finished the final encoding when he died, and Marua suspected that his final push to complete the process may have hastened his end. His assistant was attempting to carry on his work but Grigan’s talent had been a rare one, and even though the job was almost complete, Marua was not convinced Tikao would be able to finish it.
She’d started looking for a replacement for Grigan as soon as he’d admitted he was ill. Her spies in Tawhira-
ngai
had found a scientist in that
ngai
’s employ with compatible skills and, more importantly, the expensive interface implants and the one-in-a-million ability to fully utilise them. Professional and personal reasons had combined to put Doctor Pershalek in a position where he wanted to leave his
ngai
, but he’d come too far up the ladder for Tawhira to just let him go. Right now his loyalty was for sale, the price being a route out of his luxurious prison - straight to another one, of course, but such was life at the top. She had not been surprised to find that Makoare-
ngai
were also interested in Dr Pershalek, for projects of their own. She’d been foolish to let apprehension over their interest combine with her anxiety about the upcoming visit to panic her into acting hastily. The truth was she was afraid: nothing mattered more than convincing her visitors that she could continue to deliver the essential service her family had provided for longer than the
ngai
s had been in existence.
Sometimes Marua could almost feel her foremothers looking over her shoulder, depending on her to keep promises made millennia ago. As long as she fulfilled her obligation, then her family, her employees and her
ngai
would remain in a position of strength. Her very existence, like that of her mother’s before her and her daughter’s after her was tailored to serve her
ngai
: a bright if slightly curtailed life balanced by the promise of an eternal reward. Marua was not certain she believed in Heaven, but she believed in her own value and in her responsibilities. If she faltered now they could lose everything.
Had she been superstitious, she might have blamed the failure of the mission to extract Pershalek on her own actions: making a move against a
ngai
she had just sealed a blood alliance with was a dishonourable act. But she had recently discovered the real reason for the disaster, and she was still coming to terms with it.
She sighed. Her husband was out playing backgammon, so she might as well return to her office; there was never any shortage of work in her position. She was sat at her desk, going through the endless polite, meaningless exchanges that kept the relationships between the
ngai
s essentially cordial, when a faint rustle of cloth, barely audible over the night-sounds from the forest below, made her stiffen. When it came again, Marua raised her head, expecting to see Taimi standing in the doorway, but there was no one there.
She turned to the other door, open to the balcony, as a cloaked figure stepped into the room, carrying with it the shadows of night. Even as she was shocked at the intrusion, Marua knew she was seeing some sort of stealth technology in action. She felt a flash of anger: a family home was
tapu
, and for a rival
ngai
to break that tradition was a grave mistake. But as she raised a hand to call security the figure lifted its own hands and lowered the hood.
A dark-haired, pale-skinned young woman stood there. Her delicate, immaculate face looked drawn but Marua barely had time to register her appearance before she met the woman’s eyes and was overcome with a sudden desire to trust and co-operate. She dropped her hand to the desk. There was nothing to be concerned about. This person did not mean her any harm.
‘I need information,’ said the visitor in a gentle, compelling voice, ‘and then I will leave you in peace.’
Now her visitor was in the light, Marua felt sure she had seen that face before, and recently. ‘What do you need to know?’
‘I want to know about the mission against Tawhira-
ngai
last night. I need to know what went wrong.’
A complicated request. As Marua considered the best way to fulfil it, she recalled where she’d seen this woman before - and realised how she had been able to enter Marua’s home, set on a near-vertical slope. ‘Are you—? You’re one of the Angels, from Vellern, aren’t you? Your brother—’
‘—was captured, yes.’ The woman’s melodious voice was tinged with tension. ‘And I wish to get him back.’
Marua was fighting the desire to tell the Angel everything she could about the disastrous job. She said instead, ‘Why do you think I’ll be able to help you? Missions like this . . . they go wrong. You’re a professional, surely you know that.’
The Angel advanced on her and Marua felt the strangest sensation, as though someone else’s anger was about to eat her up and spit her out. Then it was gone, and the Angel said quietly, ‘If you are the leader you make yourself out to be, then you must know the reasons for the failure.’
‘I . . . Of course I do,’ Marua felt as though she’d been at the
kava
; her thought processes were heavy, vague. ‘There was a traitor, a man called Olias Kahani. It’s . . . it’s his fault.’ Marua was desperate that it not be her fault, because if she incurred the Angel’s wrath then something terrible would happen. She realised the other woman was still looking at her, expecting more. ‘He was a facilitator, a close advisor of mine. He was the one who talked me into attempting the extraction, and he’s the one who suggested I use you and your brother. Now I know what sort of man he really was, I suspect he must have been working for Tawhira-
ngai
for some time.’
‘Where is he?’
‘I don’t know. He disappeared, cleaning his bank account out - which was the final evidence of his guilt. He may try to leave Kama Nui, though I think he would find that quite difficult.’