Chapter 5

Chapter 5

GDAT 3235.017

O nce Katalin entered his office, he poked his head out to check the corridor for any four-footed guests that might have shown up. Seeing none, he sealed the door. He turned to find her standing, arms crossed, drilling him with a stern look.

“Okay, why did I have to wait a day and come here for you to explain why I don’t have to worry about the Okebaan Corp executive showing up for a comprehensive audit?”

“Efficiency,” he answered. “When I explain, you’re going to want to see proof, and it’s easier to show you on my displays.”

Her expression said she wasn’t particularly impressed with his answer.

Belatedly, he realized she’d been afraid he was retreating again. “Sorry. I meant to keep you in the loop but got busy.” He pointed to the two place settings on the dining table and the restaurant cart. “I humbly offer an excellent lunch from Ramnareen to make up for the delay.”

She glanced at the cart. The corners of her mouth twitched with a smile. “Well, okay. It is my favorite. But the explanation better be good.”

One of his several failings with Katalin was realizing he’d taken her quiet care of him for granted. Arranging the lunch was a small start.

She was wearing what he’d come to think of as her station manager’s formal dress uniform. Someone must have needed the reminder of her authority. He hoped it wasn’t him.

As they crossed to the table, he opened the cart’s clear dome. “Also, I didn’t want to bother you with half-baked theories. You are busy enough as it is. Plus, you have to sleep sometime.”

“Why? You don’t.” Her grin took any sting out of her words.

As she was right. When he was hyperfocused on a problem, he tended to view sleep as an annoying interruption rather than a biological imperative.

“Fair point.” He put the warm serving dishes on the table in front of her. “But when we took our jobs, I inherited a staff. You…” Too late, he realized his word choice likely brought up a painful reminder.

“Didn’t.” Her tone was matter-of-fact. “I still have trouble asking for help. But you know that, which is why you sent Luntian Jerally my way and implied I’d be helping him.”

He wondered when she’d figured that out. “Both things are true. Jerally thrives as long as he has purpose. You don’t reject help, exactly, but you do tend to try everything else first.”

She raised her hand, palm out. “Guilty as charged. And I appreciate Luntian more than you know.” Her eyes narrowed a bit as she focused on him. “Your turn. What have you learned?”

So much that he didn’t know where to begin. The constructs in his head kept rearranging because he still needed more data. But first, he owed her honesty.

“I breached CPS records.”

“Hmm. Well, that explains why Perlabeaux was squawking about lousy station security and Rikenna tried to demote her on the spot. Commander Doseki deserves a medal for shutting them both down in front of me without raising her voice. So, what did you find?”

Her calm acceptance of his unethical and illicit actions surprised him. She’d lately been displaying unexpected behavior that made him suspect didn’t know her as well as he thought, and that intrigued him. It was a bit of a struggle to drag himself back to business.

“I found strong circumstantial evidence that Okebaan Corp is a scam perpetrated by Agent-in-Charge Jensuradi. I can’t tell yet if the other agents knew.”

Her mouth gaped open in astonishment. “That’s…” She shook her head as if trying to clear it. “He was trying to steal a whole space station? To, what? Skim the profits? Sell it? And to whom? Who’s got that kind of money?”

Vellek shook his head. “I don’t think it was money. I used the access you gave me to datamine Jensuradi’s outside comms and storage, which led me to his CPS records. They make Starn’s files look like the model of simplicity. It will take the OII months to piece them together unless they bring in data-dive specialists.” He tapped the disguised controls on the table that made the holowall spring to life and display a series of records. “Taken as a whole, I think he wanted to deliver the station to the CPS.”

She paused in the middle of transferring a spoonful of glistening roasted vegetables to her plate. “He wanted to run the station for the CPS?”

“Again, I don’t think so. Based on the myriad half-finished reports and memos I found, which seemed to be his way of organizing his thoughts, he wanted respect. To be someone who mattered. He tested as a multi-talent minder. Polymaths — minders with all the cataloged talents — are exceedingly rare, so although he had telepath, sifter, and shielder skills, he was just another one of millions of CPS mid-level minders, addicted to enhancement drugs, assigned to a job by lottery instead of merit. Even if he had any patterner talents, the CPS stopped caring about them about fifty years ago unless they were top-level. He resented that others got the plum promotions, and complained that the CPS didn’t make use of his skills and cleverness. He hated being called ‘average.’”

“No kidding.” She waved her fork at him. “Sit. Eat.”

“In a minute. Here’s why I think his goal was prestige.” He selected and enlarged one file. “This is a draft of a standard commendation form, except he wrote it about himself. The justification section says, and I quote, ‘for recognizing a unique opportunity to return the Tigurini Independent Space Station to proper government control, thereby providing a strategically invaluable tool to the CPS that will enhance compliance with registration for all minders in the CGC.’ He was convinced that the legislation to make registration required again will pass this session or next.”

“If it does, the CPS will truly have a rebellion on their hands.” She shook her head. “How did he think he’d get away with it?”

Vellek winced a little. “He already very nearly did, except for his untimely death.”

“Oh.” The color drained from her face. “Oh,” she said again. Her fork dropped with a clatter. “They’ll never believe I didn’t kill him. The CPS will confiscate the station.”

The wave of terror in her expression made him come around the table corner to drop to one knee by her side and take both her hands in his. “I’m not done yet.”

Touching her was a calculated risk, but he couldn’t stand her pain. The sifter talent he’d kept strictly locked down sprung to life, triggered by her flare of patterner class talents. She had them all — filer, finder, fixer, and forecaster, but at such low levels that he wondered if she even knew they were there. Or perhaps she hid them? It had taken him years of diligent work to learn to mask his own high-level talents well enough to fool the CPS’s best interrogation teams.

“Okebaan Corp is a legitimate private business entity, but the real owner is the CPS. Jensuradi likely knew covert divisions often use a series of cutouts to hide their activities. But here’s the thing. The military, and therefore the CPS, is prohibited by about fifty different CGC laws and regulations from owning private businesses. So, even if Okebaan really did acquire Tigurini family assets, they’ll be forced to return them, or at least divest them.”

She was looking overwhelmed. Would she welcome closeness if he pulled her closer? The strict discipline he’d used to keep her at a safe distance was already in tatters. Already he was craving more contact besides just her hands in his. What was the right-

“You don’t have to answer this, but how do you know so much about the CPS?”

That he’d known the question was coming didn’t make it easier to respond. But trust was a two-way street, and he’d asked her to trust her life and freedom to his conjectures and conclusions. “In my former life, I was a CPS investigator. I’m a sifter, a shielder, and a finder. I started out working with civilian law enforcement, then got reassigned to the Office of Internal Inquiry and got stuck there. Discovering how the CPS actually treated their people, and how they used the OII as a weapon, destroyed whatever ideals I had left. I stayed too many years until I saw my chance to exit.” He sucked in a breath and let it out fast. “If the CPS figures out who I am, they’ll turn my brain inside out, or kill me if they can’t.”

“You must have felt so alone. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to completely start over from absolute zero.” She opened her arms a bit. “Can I offer you the comfort of a hug?”

Acting on intuition, he sat in his chair, then took one of her hands and gently guided her onto his lap and wrapped his arms around her. When she settled against him like a cat, her warmth filled the aching in his chest. Like she was a missing puzzle piece that he’d just found.

After a time-stopping moment of bliss, his stomach chose to growl in complaint of not being fed.

She laughed. “Oh, that’s you.” Her amused look made him smile. “I thought for a moment that Cyrene had snuck in.”

Her fingers briefly stroked the side of his face. Then she slid off his lap and back to her chair. “Back to what you said. You don’t think Okebaan acquired the Tigurini assets?”

“No.” He didn’t like the distance between them. He compromised by pulling his chair much closer to hers before touching the holowall display controls to display more files. “Jensuradi started looking for Tigurini owners the day Starn died. He might have been looking for some way to stop you from terminating the military’s lease. I think he was afraid of you, or that you might act rashly in your grief.”

She made a dismissive sound. “A couple of months after he arrived, he assumed my assistant manager title was code for ‘station owner’s bedwarmer’ and treated me accordingly. I proved I knew the lease terms far better than he did. Periodic reminders seemed to keep him in check.”

“Ah, that explains Commander Doseki’s memo from around that time. She bluntly warned Jensuradi that he was a nanometer away from being reported to the CPS Headquarters as unfit for duty if he interfered with station relations again.”

He touched the controls. In the air above the table, a slowly spinning 3D image of Starlane Crossroads appeared. “I believe that when he heard the rumors that you weren’t expecting to inherit, and even the powerful CPS couldn’t find inheritors, he conceived of the scam and set it in motion, one corporate letter at a time. And I suspect he used the station’s comms systems to forge the dates and the digital message trail so they seemed to come from the other side of the galaxy, where Okebaan’s home base supposedly is. I’m not the best at reading the station’s schematics, but don’t each of the sectors have their own comms node?”

“Yes.” She reached up to touch the holo, then used her fingers to expand it and center on the bottom-level view of the station arm where all the trouble had started. “If he wanted to access one, Yellow Sector’s would have been the quietest, except when a science team is in residence.” She highlighted the location of the comms node. “He’d need expertise and equipment to get past the regular maintenance checks. Did he have a comms background?”

Vellek shook his head. “CPS resource records might say, but they are much more secure than his personal dataspace was. I only got into his because he made an unauthorized connector between his commercial vault and his CPS dataspace. It’s a common practice.”

“Someday I’d like to hear more about your former life, if you’re willing. The comms upgrade contractor will be here next…” Her eyes narrowed. “I wonder if that’s what sent Jensuradi into the maintenance skin. He could sneak into Yellow Sector long enough to access the node and get out fast. We don’t monitor that room, and the hullbots would ignore him.” Her fingers drummed on the table. “I sent the notice out to the station two weeks ago. The science team was already occupying that whole level.” She made a frustrated sound. “We can’t wait. I do not want the CPS fucking with my station. I need to rearrange my schedule today so I can check the comms node in Yellow Sector.”

He picked up her fork and handed it to her. “Yes, but first you need to eat.”

Her pointed look toward his empty plate made him smile ruefully as he sat to serve himself from the rapidly cooling platters. The rich, spicy stew smelled delicious, but couldn’t hold a candle to the subtle scent of her.

Several rapid bites in, inspiration hit. “I have an idea on how to find out if Jensuradi had help.”

“Of course you do, because you’re brilliant.” She pushed the basket of cheesebread toward him. “Eat first.”

He was happy to follow her order. For once, his stomach, heart, and head were all in agreement. They were pleased that she’d called him brilliant. In his mind, he laughed at himself. His old life might have exploded, and he may have constructed a new identity from the ashes, but at least he still had his pride.

***

Katalin was beginning to feel like she lived in the Chief of Security’s big office. She didn’t mind, as long as it had Vellek in it. Her emotions had been on a thrill ride after the revelations about Okebaan. He’d kept her from falling apart.

He’d also dragged in a small, well-padded settee from somewhere for her to sit on, and provided a soft blank blanket and a couple of pillows. It was going to be a long night.

The settee was angled to face the giant holowall that was displaying an array of images from various security monitors in the station. To her right, Vellek sat at his security desk, communing with his various displays and occasionally subvocalizing into an earwire adhered to the side of his jaw.

The afternoon had been insanely busy. Katalin had found the extra module that had been added to the Yellow Sector comms node. She’d disabled it and left it in place. While she handled station manager business, Vellek sent Luntian and some security staffers to the occupied science section to install security monitors with camera eyes in key areas. They’d explained to the newly outraged science team director that since there were more than thirty scientists and support personnel to monitor, it was either cameras or having actual security guards patrolling the halls and common areas.

Per Vellek’s timetable, at nineteen hundred hours, she sent a notice to the station about emergency maintenance to the station’s comms nodes that would begin in five hours later, very early the next morning. Then she’d hauled herself and her cats to the security office. Vellek said he would feel better if they were all safe behind layers of protection. If someone was feeling cornered, they might believe Katalin’s death would end the threat. Considering what she now knew about his background, she trusted his judgement on what desperate people were capable of.

For the first hour of their surveillance watch, Katalin had caught up on unfinished business of the day and spent some quality time with her calendar. She also mulled over what Jensuradi had been thinking when he’d sent the notice of an impending inspection visit by an Okebaan executive. Would an accomplice show up the day after tomorrow? Or was the plan to keep her off balance by stringing her along with delays, but preventing her from taking action, such as evicting him from the station?

Assuming they could prove that Okebaan was fiction, that put her back to where she was after Starn’s death — in suspension, waiting for the Lumen Rock estate advocates to finish the due diligence and file and ownership claim with the court.

Movement caught her eye and she turned to look at Vellek as he stood and stretched.

She was hyperaware of being close to the man again. Almost as bad as when she’d been young and full of salacious thoughts while ogling perky butts or flawless brown skin at the beach. She now knew that his lean body was muscled and that she fit in his arms like a matched set. But until they cleared her name and got the estate settled, he was in suspension as much as she was. For that matter, so were all the permanent employees. She felt bad about not talking to them about it, but at least she’d soon be able to tell them that Okebaan was gone. If she wasn’t on trial for murder.

The only thing of interest in the room besides Vellek was the holowall. Unfortunately, she’d seen more automated delivery food carts than she had scientists. It amused her to imagine they were stuck in their rooms studying.

“Surveillance,” she announced to the cats on her lap and beside her, “is worse than cooking.” Paru and Froggie twitched ears at her, probably used to her pronouncements. Sky ignored her altogether. Cyrene jumped down from the settee and crossed to Norby in his bed.

Vellek laughed. “Why do you say that?”

“It’s boring, waiting for things to boil or chill or whatever. If I pick up a book or trim my plants or something, next thing I know, I have an inedible, gluey mess. If not for the thoroughly civilized inventions of restaurants and leftovers, I’d have starved decades ago.”

“Can’t argue with you there. I like eating good food, but I’m not interested in making it. Never cared for chemistry classes, either.” He glanced at the holowall where the displays showed Yellow Sector halls and common areas were quiet, then sat down again.

“I’m feeling antsy,” she admitted. “I missed exercise time this afternoon when I had to chase down who owned the birds that got loose in Crossroads Hall. How about I take a gravcart to my place to get the boxes with Starn’s paper records and bring them here to sort through?”

His mouth twitched with a momentary frown. “Okay, but take someone and use the private lifts. We don’t have eyes on anyone from the CPS except Sotanova and their admin, who just got seated at the pub.”

He was probably right about the need for security, so she didn’t mind pinging Luntian to see if he was available. It would get her up and moving instead of worrying about things she couldn’t control.

Luntian met her at the office door, then accompanied her to her apartment. Once inside, his vigilant stance relaxed a little. In fact, he seemed happy, a noticeable change from his usual stoic expression. She didn’t know him well enough to comment, and she was his boss, not his buddy, but she hoped his happiness involved Sierrho. She couldn’t think of two people who deserved it more.

After the uneventful trip back to the security office and stacking the seven crates on the table, she asked Vellek if anything interesting had happened.

A smile lit up his face. “As a matter of fact, yes.” He touched some controls on his desk, then enlarged one of the displays on the holowall. “Here’s the replay.”

In the recording, Agent Rikenna, dressed in CPS formal wear, strolled into Yellow Sector’s lobby area, where he was greeted by Hei Zhenzhu, the scientific team director. As they walked to the more private dining room in sector, Hei Zhenzhu complained about the rude station manager person who was hampering the team’s productivity by making them take safety training again. Rikenna buttered her up with sympathetic responses, then told her that when he was named permanent Agent in Charge, which would be very soon, his first act would be to waive that requirement for her.

Katalin turned to Vellek. “Bluffing, or inside information about Jensuradi’s scheme?”

He shrugged. “Here’s the next one.”

On the holoscreen, Agent Perlabeaux and one of the science team members crossed through the lobby. They were clearly gliding high on chems or feel-good alterants as they giggled like teenagers who were sneaking back home after an unauthorized party. When the scientist stopped to make a rude gesture to one of the cameras, Perlabeaux didn’t seem fazed when her companion complained about them everywhere. The pair stumbled off down the hall and into the scientist’s quarters.

“Hmm.” Katalin wanted answers, not unexplained hints. “What about the hullbots?”

Vellek shook his head. “No lights, no movement.”

It had been her idea to monitor the inhospitable maintenance skin in the Yellow Sector area where Jensuradi had died. She’d temporarily reprogrammed the hullbots that usually did repairs to be little sentries while they waited for the scheduled emergency maintenance on the comms nodes.

Vellek returned the holowall to the mosaic-style view of the camera feeds, then focused on something on his desk display.

Katalin resolutely turned to the first of the crates and retracted its lid. As she picked up the first group of sketches, she thought she heard a swell of crowd noise. Laugher, maybe? The holowall was muted.

Vellek must have heard it, too, because he looked at a display on this desk, then stood up. “Your cat is living up to his name.”

He motioned to her to follow as he quickly headed for the office doors. “Skyhunter is on the Promenade Balcony hunting birds.”

Katalin dropped the sketches to follow Vellek. Her horrible cat must have snuck out when she came in with the crates. She hurriedly pinged Sierrho and asked her to help corral the miscreant.

The laughter and shouting got louder once she and Vellek entered the Promenade. It circled Crossroads Hall, with its spectacular overhead dome of ever-changing images with recurring characters and subtle storylines. Visitors often walked along the Promenade for pleasure, watching the dome or the crowds on the main floor, fifteen meters below.

Skyhunter was easy to pinpoint because people were cheering him on as he chased one of the escaped birds as it flew from bench to railing and back again. The birds were bred to be poor flyers so their owners could keep them as pets.

Just as Katalin reached the railing, a quarter turn away from Sky, the panicked bird flew up and over the railing in an arc that took it to one edge of the antique light sculpture that hung by clear, thin suspension cables from the center of the dome.

And there was nothing to stop Sky from leaping onto the railing, crouching, and leaping up onto the sculpture, too, setting the whole thing swaying.

The crowd below laughed. Some probably thought this was part of the nightly show. Most of the residents were amused by Sky’s antics.

Katalin’s worry spiked. “We can’t let him jump from there.”

“I’ll get a freight-loader platform-”

Two of the sculpture’s suspension cables snapped, increasing the swaying. The bird flew up, then landed on the railing.

The laughter turned to shouting and running as people realized the threat.

All Katalin could do was watch, breath frozen, as Sky stumbled to his left, stepping over glowing filament spikes.

More cables broke on the opposite side, launching Sky into the air as rest of the cables gave way and the sculpture crashed onto the mosaic-patterned floor below.

Somehow, miraculously, Sky was clinging high up on the wall where the dome’s inward curve started.

Except it wasn’t the wall. He was hanging from an almost invisible scaffolding. Katalin watched as Sky climbed and clawed his way onto a skinny ledge.

She nudged Vellek and pointed, not trusting her voice just yet because her heart was still in her throat.

“I see him. Where does that door lead?”

Now that he mentioned it, she saw the outline of a very narrow door behind where Sky was sitting and licking his front toes. “No clue.”

Her earwire pinged with Sierrho’s tone. “Luntian and I are in front of the bakery. Need any help rescuing Sky? He’s pretending he meant to do that, but he was really terrified.”

Katalin looked down toward the center restaurant section. Sierrho waved.

“Me, too,” Katalin admitted. “Could you keep Sky from wandering and ask Luntian to get one of the flying freight-manager platforms from the docks? I don’t know how else to get him down.”

“Will do.” Sierra waved again, then turned to Luntian, touching his arm as she spoke to him.

Katline closed her eyes a long moment and took two slow, deep breaths. Station operations would send people and bots to clean up what was left of the light sculpture. She pinged a quick message to the manager on call to tell her if the sculpture was salvageable.

Vellek put a hand on her shoulder. “I want to look at the station schematics.” His face held the determined look that meant he was pursuing an idea.

After a quick glance at her heart-attack-inducing cat, she nodded, then followed him back to his office.

He crossed immediately to the table to bring up the interactive holographic schematic of the station. “Starn’s older records mentioned six studios, correlating with the major projects he undertook. More recently, he only mentioned five. I assumed he’d simply closed one, but now I’m not so sure.” He manipulated the holo to zoom in on the Crossroads Hall dome are. “You said he created the dome masterpiece before you arrived, but that he added to it whenever inspiration struck, like the storyline with space fairies stealing the moon.”

Katalin shoved her cold fingers into her pockets. “What are you getting at?”

Vellek turned to her. “I truly believe that Starn meant for you and Temelle to inherit the station. There are too many clues in his journals. But for some reason, he felt he had to hide them where no one but you and Temelle would find them.” He pointed a thumb toward the displayed section of the dome. “I don’t always trust my intuition, but I think that scaffolding Sky is on and door are part of the missing studio. Starn needed access to the tech, and he’d have wanted to see the full effect of any changes without having to ride the lifts up and down two floors to do it.”

Her adrenalin-fogged brain finally made the connection. “You think he hid the records in the studio?”

“Yes, but I don’t know how we get there to look.”

She closed her eyes a long moment to search her thirty years of memories of the station, including the area behind the mysterious door. Then she touched the holo and rotated it to the place she had in mind. “If it exists, it’s here, behind the cleaning bot garage and air handlers and above the backup gravity generators. It butts up against the right place in the dome.”

All she wanted right then was a hot cup of soup and time to chill, but she couldn’t resist the hopeful gleam in Vellek’s eyes. “Come on. I’ll take you there.”

A tone sounded from Vellek’s desk, followed by a synthvoice announcement. “Priority call from Dockmaster Gambala for Security Chief Altano and Station Manager Efren.”

“Accepted,” said Vellek.

“You wanted to know when the Lumen Roca law enforcements officers arrived. Well, their ship just pinged us and asked for a mid-term dock like they plan to be here for a while.”

Katalin’s stomach sank. Would this day never end?