The door irised open. The soldiers nudged him out into a concourse, brightly lit and full of people. Legroeder was amazed to see people walking around as though conducting normal, everyday business; he felt as if he had just crossed into another universe. This place looked nothing like the raider outpost at DeNoble, where he had been imprisoned; it was more like a spartan version of a space station in the Centrist Worlds.
The soldiers led him through a maze of corridors away from the concourse. They finally stopped at an arched doorway shrouded by a glimmering, translucent privacy-screen. Through the screen, Legroeder could make out the shape of a person sitting at a desk. The leader seemed nervous. “Time to speak to the law,” he said.
The law? Legroeder wondered. At DeNoble, the law meant the autocratic rule of pirate bosses, with fear as the strongest motivator, and favoritism the next strongest. Would this be any different?
He followed the guard through the screen and found himself in a small anteroom facing—what? A receptionist? It was a woman—apparently—whose face was a chrome mask grafted onto a natural head, with tightly curled red hair. She had seemingly normal human limbs, but a torso of articulated metal. She sat on a swiveling stool, surrounded by suspended holograms of faces and incomprehensible designs. Most of the holos appeared to be rotating, or changing too quickly for Legroeder’s eye to follow. The woman was turning back and forth, touching one holo after another. Each twinkled as she touched it, and she seemed to be subvocalizing at a tremendous rate of speed. What was she doing? Legroeder wondered.
The guard made a soft, guttural sound. For a moment, there was no response, as the woman continued with her silent conversations. Then the holos winked out, and she suddenly focused her attention on the people before her. “The new arrival?” she asked, her voice metallic and high pitched.
“Yes, Ma’am,” the soldier said, and stepped back.
The woman looked at Legroeder. “State your name.”
Legroeder froze, thoughts racing. What the hell name had he been ID’d under?
// Is there a problem? //
“Legroeder,” said the woman. “Is that your name?”
(Did you ID me as Legroeder, for chrissake?)
There was a momentary hesitation in the system; he imagined the implants blinking at each other disconcertedly. // We presented the options. You didn’t specify another name. //
Legroeder tried to recall the moment, but everything had been chaos. (You didn’t include a picture with that ID, did you?)
// That is the normal procedure. // And then, with what might have been a hint of contrition, // Should we not have? //
(What picture did you use?)
// We took it from your memories. //
His heart sank as he saw his own mental image of himself. It was, of course, Legroeder as he had seen himself most of his life—as he had appeared before Com’peer and the Narseil med techs had remade his features. As he had appeared at DeNoble.
“What’s the matter?” said the half-metal woman. “Your ID says Renwald Legroeder.”
“Um—yes.”
“And you have just arrived from a mission with one of the affiliates?”
“Yes, that’s right.” His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. “Kyber affiliates.”
The woman’s two eyes pulsed in alternating waves of intensity. Her gaze flicked for a moment to a new holo, another point of attention; it flicked back. “I didn’t think you meant Narseil affiliates. You just turned in a shipful of Narseil infiltrators. Is that correct?”
Not trusting himself to speak, Legroeder nodded.
“Good. Then you will be seen for debriefing.” Her glance shifted to the lead guard. “Take him in.”
The guard gestured to Legroeder to circle around the receptionist, leaving the other two guards to wait. A whole new set of holos sprang up around the woman, who appeared to have already forgotten Legroeder.
A glowing doorway appeared behind the receptionist, and they passed through it into a darkened space. It was a room lit only by the glow of consoles—a great many consoles, lining the circumference of the room, and the ceiling, as well. Some displayed data, others holo-images. In the center of the room was a high-backed swivel chair, turned partly away from the door. Legroeder could just make out a woman in the chair, scanning a bank of consoles. A faint spatter of light seemed to flicker in the air in front of her.
The guard hesitated—and finally Legroeder himself cleared his throat. Before he could speak, a voice broke the silence. “You may leave him with me and return to your post.” It was a female voice, but electronically distorted. He thought it was the voice of the woman in the chair, but it came through speakers around the room.
The guard nodded, turned, and left the room hurriedly.
“Step forward.”
Legroeder circled around to approach her from the front.
The woman in the chair was more human looking than the receptionist, but also more startling. She seemed to have all the normal human body parts—but her face was alight, sparkling with fire. At first he thought it was all reflections from the consoles; then he realized it was coming from her face—rather like a dance-floor laser, spinning out dazzling rays faster than the eye could follow. At first he could not see her actual eyes; then she turned her head and he saw a pair of smoldering embers. He shivered, before realizing that she was wearing some kind of clear mask on her face, and that was the source of the dazzling light and glowing eyes.
Legroeder started to speak, but the woman raised a hand, pressing it against thin air. Her other hand was busy manipulating something on the left arm of her chair. “You are Renwald Legroeder?” she said after a moment.
“Yes.”
“I’m Tracy-Ace/Alfa. I’ve been expecting you.”
Expecting me?
She leaned forward, staring at him. “Correct me if I am wrong. It is my understanding that you have come to us, indirectly, from an affiliate Kyber settlement. And that you were—what was the word?—a ‘plant’ aboard the Narseil ship that encountered Flechette. Are those facts correct?”
// That is how you were ID’d, // his implants informed him.
“Yes,” Legroeder answered.
“You look different from your ID photo.” Half question, half accusation.
He stiffened. “Yes, I—” He hesitated, then decided that the truth might be as good a cover as a lie. “The Narseil made some changes to my appearance, to conceal my previous identity in case of capture. I’d… persuaded them that I’d joined their cause.”
Her eyes glowed brighter. “And had you?”
Legroeder’s face burned. “They think so.”
“Explain.”
“I was aboard a Narseil vessel, purportedly to help them defeat the Kyber in battle. I didn’t really think they would; in fact, I expected we would be captured. But once the Narseil defeated Flechette, I persuaded them to try to penetrate your facility, to gain intelligence.”
Tracy-Ace/Alfa studied him for a moment. “And did you?”
“What?”
“Penetrate our facility? Before sounding the alarm, I mean.”
Legroeder frowned, and waggled his hand noncommittally.
“I see,” said Tracy-Ace/Alfa. “Does that mean a lot, or a little?”
“A little,” Legroeder said, with a shrug. “I tried to make a good show of it—and I pretty much coerced your Rigger Deutsch into going along with me—but I really didn’t know my way around. We didn’t get anything that was very heavily guarded.”