Chapter 3

THREE

T here was a data trail. Apparently whoever had hacked them hadn't wanted to run the risk of being caught holding the goods. They'd uploaded the data to the underside of the Net disguised as a credit transfer. Ryan had discovered the transaction when checking his and Marnie's accounts.

Tracing the packets of hacked data wasn't a task Zed would have wished on his worst enemies, let alone his closest friends. For sixteen hours, Flick, Ryan and Marnie huddled at the table in the mess—or, rather, Flick did, while Marnie and Ryan hunched over their computer stations on the asteroid. For sixteen hours, Zed listened to Flick mutter and curse, then shout in triumph—only to have his enthusiasm dim as once again, the data hitched a ride to somewhere else. Eventually they tracked part of the data to Alpha Station—something Marnie and Ryan assured him was a logical step. A good hacker could hide anything in the sheer volume of data going in and out of humanity's main space station.

A quick call to his genius brother, Maddox, and the Chaos was all set for a visit to Alpha to continue hunting.

Meanwhile, throughout all of the arrangements, Zed spent some quality time with his thoughts. Okay, he brooded. But he was entitled. He'd just seen a human who hadn't been through the Project Dreamweaver training phase-shift in front of him. That wasn't possible. It shouldn't be possible.

The implications of it…

He had so many questions and no matter how many times he chased them around his brain, he couldn't come up with answers. Was it his fault, somehow? The Guardians hadn't wanted him to be a secret, but maybe he could have been more discreet, more careful about the information being shared about him and his abilities. Maybe he should have sought out the media, held a few more interviews, turned the information the way he wanted it turned…

Might as well wish for wings while he was at it.

A couple of media crews awaited them when they pulled into dock at Alpha Station—nothing like the mob that had greeted the Chaos nearly a year earlier, after news of Zed's death and imminent reappearance had spread. Brennan, Zed's oldest brother and the CEO of Anatolius Industries, also stood on the dock, a broad smile stretching his lips.

Zed marched down the gangway and embraced his brother. In the background, he caught murmurs and the sound of pictures being captured, but he didn't care. He'd denied himself contact with his family for years during the war—particularly after the experimental training that had changed him so utterly. He wouldn't let the presence of a few desperate members of the media steal the pleasure from a simple hug.

"Good to see you, Bren," he said into his brother's neck.

"Same." Brennan pulled back with a final slap on Zed's shoulder. He looked behind him, smiling. "Hey, Flick."

"Bren." Flick held out his right hand for a shake. Brennan grabbed it and pulled him into a quick hug—and Flick hardly stiffened at all. A little thing, but it made Zed proud at how far his prickly lover had come in less than a year.

Brennan greeted Elias, Ness and Qek with the same wide smile, then started for the Anatolius Industries office tower. "Mad's been working at the puzzle you gave him ever since you talked," he said as they made their way along the crowded concourse. "I think he's gone home once, to sleep for a couple of hours. Hazel's not too happy with you."

Zed winced. He hadn't intended to steal his brother away from his wife and their newly adopted twins. "I thought he'd assign someone."

"You know Mad and puzzles. He can't leave it alone."

"Don't let Hazel kill me."

Brennan chuckled. "Mom's helping out. It's all good for now." The as long as this doesn't last too much longer didn't need to be said out loud. "I'm assuming you'll want to go see him?"

Flick nodded. "I hope Maddox bathed recently."

"I wouldn't take that bet," Brennan said with a grimace.

"Do you think Marnie and Ryan are safe on Morrison?" When no one answered him, Felix glanced up.

Maddox appeared not to have heard him. He was absorbed by the display in front of him, the map of data, the puzzle. Zed, Elias and Ness were all elsewhere, keeping appointments made with various financial institutions to secure key codes to banking data and other records that might be vulnerable.

Qek had heard him and she met Felix's gaze with her wide, unblinking eyes. "The location of our asteroid is known only to our crew."

The remote location wasn't a formal secret, but none of the crew had felt inclined to share it, either. The Chaos was their home, but Morrison was their base of operations. The internal dock was well equipped for most repair and upgrade operations, and the ample warehousing space—including cold storage—allowed them to stockpile certain commodities, thereby averaging the cost of every run rather than having to always outbid their competition.

The asteroid was home to Marnie and Ryan.

Maddox cleared his throat. "Elias shared the coordinates with Bren and me, back when the AEF had Zed."

Made sense. "Is that info available to anyone?"

"It wasn't, but anyone who really wanted to know the location could trace it through this data trail."

"It took us nearly twenty hours to trace it here."

"That's less than a day, and like I said, anyone who really wanted to know…" Maddox didn't need to finish the sentence.

Qek clicked. "Should we alert Marnie and Ryan to this possibility?"

Felix dipped his chin in a nod. "Yeah, we should. I mean, they've probably already figured out as much, but extra warnings are never wasted."

"Indeed not."

Felix slumped back in his seat. Like everything Anatolius, the chair was…plush. It had the appearance of serious business, with the ergonomic design and optional mobility settings, but was as comfortable as it was functional. Blowing out a sigh, he resisted the temptation to let his fingers and thoughts roam. As always, the seams of his pants were one tug away from parting—loose threads bristling like cilia, from thigh to ankle. His curls had been tugged into chaos. His shirt felt stiff, as if the smart fiber had given up trying to clean up his messes and had simply hardened against further assault.

Damn it, Project Dreamweaver should be a phantom of the past. A nightmare best forgotten, even if Zed still needed extra time with their therapist to get over it.

Qek settled a blue hand on his crystalline arm. "We are in the business of solving problems, Fixer."

With a sideline in brooding about them.

"Get Marnie on comms. It's about time to check in, anyway. Maddox, got anything for us other than the fact every hacker with a single iota of patience now knows where we keep our goodies?"

Maddox's grimace warned he had more bad news to deliver. "I've found two divergent data trails emerging from the landing here."

"Two?"

"One could be a false trail."

"Meaning they know we've followed the data this far?"

"Or they're just hedging bets. You guys have backups of your backups. Everyone does. This—" Maddox tapped a holo "—could just be that."

"Which makes it important. People don't store their backups just anywhere." Felix leaned toward Maddox's display. "Where are we talking?"

"One trail is heading toward Bosun."

Felix swallowed a gasp. "That's?—"

"Where your asteroid is parked. I know."

"Sending the data back to its point of origin makes no sense," Qek said.

Felix flailed in Qek's direction. "Did you ping Marnie yet?"

Qek tapped the console in front of her, and a display unfolded to show Marnie and Ryan looking as if they hadn't left the room housing their precious super main since the original hack.

"Hey." Marnie offered a vague wave. Ryan didn't shift his attention from the console always hidden just out of view. "Judging by the expression on your faces, this isn't a social call."

Felix responded with something between a snort and a snicker. "Not really. Listen, Maddox thinks he's traced one of the threads back in your direction."

Marnie's eyes widened. "Shit."

No, it was really a double shit.

"Paint a map for us?" Marnie asked, glancing in Maddox's direction.

A few keystrokes later, Maddox murmured, "Done."

Ryan glanced up. "Okay, this one heading toward us has been at Petrel Station for several hours. Either they're taking a break or that's the end of the line."

Petrel Station was only a short jump from the system housing the broken moon of Bosun and their asteroid. "That's too close. I don't like it."

"The other trail is even weirder, though," Ryan said. "It goes nowhere."

"How can a path not go anywhere?" Qek asked.

"Well, it goes somewhere, but to what we humans fondly term ‘the middle of nowhere.'" Maddox swiped a finger over the corner of one of his displays, lifting the hologram until it balanced vertically. It was a star map—one Felix didn't recognize.

"Where is that?" he asked.

Maddox rattled off a series of coordinates before passing on a broader sense of location. "83 Leonis."

A collective inhale was amplified by the jazer connection.

"That's toward resonance space," Marnie said.

"Specific data on Project Dreamweaver would have no relevance to the resonance," Qek said. "Speaking as an ashushk, it would make fascinating reading. But given our physiological differences, the experiment cannot be reproduced."

Nor should it be. Yet someone had done it. Felix didn't believe the resonance responsible, though. The giant crystalline aliens had no need for super soldiers. They were a peaceful species, but had unwittingly demonstrated that they did not require conventional weapons—or soldiers—in order to devastate their enemies. A resonant signal from one unit—comprising four of the aliens—could knock out a probe. Add a second unit and they could take out the communications array aboard a starship and set off a cascade of system failures that could result in destruction.

"Triple shit," he breathed. "There's only one reason why someone would be way out there."

Maddox grimaced again, the tired lines of his face deepening into an expression of fear and concern. "To make functional super soldiers, you need a shard."

A crystal shard. A piece of the resonance.

"We need to warn them," Felix said.

Maddox held up a hand. "You really think someone is going to infiltrate resonance space to steal a shard? There are plenty in human space. Every station has a communicator." He tapped the display again. "I think it's more likely this direction is a coincidence. It's a barely mapped region of space. The perfect location for…ah, illicit doings."

Illicit doings meaning a facility set up to produce super soldiers. Felix's teeth clacked together as a shudder coursed through him. When would they officially be done with Project Dreamweaver? When could Zed safely retire from a life of cleaning up other people's messes?

Wait, had that been what the strawberries and chocolate had been all about? Zed wanting to change direction? Right now, Felix would gladly give it all up. Just thinking about confronting all the realities of the data theft wore him out.

"I'm going to need a ship."

Maddox's tired eyes widened. "Huh?"

The door swished open, interrupting them. Felix glanced up, mouth automatically curving into a smile at the sight of Zed. He reached out in an unconscious gesture that would have seemed strange four months ago. Felix didn't willingly touch anyone, not really. But since forging a mental connection with Zed, touching him to reestablish the link had become habit. It was like a greeting—a soft brush of lips or a quick shoulder bump. I'm here .

"Hey." Zed touched his fingers quickly and looked at the holo map. "What have we got?"

Qek and Maddox quickly brought him up to speed, Marnie adding the occasional comment from the jazer conference. Elias and Nessa arrived before they were done, saving them from having to repeat themselves.

"So what do we do?" Zed asked.

Elias spread his hands. "We check out Petrel and the other place—Leonis? We've got a near enough where , now we need to figure out the who and why ."

"Should we inform any authorities about this theft?" Qek asked.

Zed's lips twisted. "I'd like to see if we can contain the situation first. If we can track these hackers to their source, figure out what they're doing, then we can decide if things are dire enough to warrant an ‘intergalactic incident' stamp." He turned to Maddox. "We're going to need a ship."

"So Flick said."

Felix aimed a wink at Zed. Zed returned a half smile.

"Who's going which direction?" Elias asked.

"Flick and I'll head toward Leonis. In the unlikely event we run into any resonance, we can communicate with them. You good to head back to Petrel, Elias?"

"Absolutely," Elias said. "Which one of us is taking the Chaos ?"

Felix tapped his bracelet and a small holo flickered into being. "I love my ship, you know I do, but if Maddox can get us this one, I think Zed and I will be just fine."

Maddox looked at the holo and choked.