That startled him; he’d been expecting a denial. “Usually people ask first.”
She gazed appraisingly at him. “What if I said I was letting you read my mind?”
“Uh?”
Tracy-Ace raised her chin slightly. The gems around her eyes glittered with reflected light from the ceiling. “I thought it might be helpful,” she said. “During the download yesterday, I caught a few things about you—”
He drew back.
“Nothing profound. But I sensed you didn’t quite trust me. And if we’re going to—” she paused “—work together… I thought it might help if you knew more about me.”
Legroeder felt flattered and puzzled at the same time. Why, he started to ask, would you care if I trusted you?
Before he could voice the thought, he was startled by the appearance, inside his head, of two converging arcs of ruby light signifying new information about Tracy-Ace. She was twenty-seven years old, Free Kyber standard calendar. No immediate family, but a couple of cousins who might have been real biological relatives. Parents, from one of the old Kyber worlds: came to join the Free Kyber alliance, and died in a border dispute when she was four. (Oh.) Raised by the local childcare collective. Adept in the system; rose to the ranks of node administration before most of her contemporaries had even finished school. For three years, Node Alfa.
She was peering at him, emotions unknown.
Liked the challenge and the responsibility—and the proximity to power. Socially unattached, but willing to consider unusual liaisons. Had a fondness for rebels.
He felt his blood rise, wondering if he qualified as an “unusual liaison.” Or a rebel.
// That part of the analysis is ambiguous. Shall we probe further? //
(No, thank you.) He cleared his throat. But Tracy-Ace was talking—about him—and he’d missed the first part of it. Something about his being useful to the outpost.
“…have skills we need, and knowledge. Possibly for special operations. I believe my boss will want to talk to you, soon.” Tracy-Ace was studying him again. “I see you wondering. But part of my job is to evaluate people and situations, to look for the unexpected. To make judgments for the benefit of the outpost. And the Republic.” And the colonizing fleet? At the outer corner of her left eye, a tiny red bead glowed for a moment, as though she were photographing him for a security check. A smile flashed across her face. “Besides—I rather like you.”
He felt a moment of lightheadedness. Was it the implants, fracturing away all of the normal inhibitions? Everything seemed accelerated here. A momentary vision of Greta the Enforcer flickered across his mind, giving him a shiver.
If she noticed or understood his shiver, she didn’t show it. He was still trying to think of a response to her statement that she liked him. The face of the enemy.
“Let’s get some food,” she said. “Then there’s something I want you to see.”
He followed her through the food-plaza. The choices were some kind of bread, some kind of curd, and some kind of soft cereal. He took a small serving of each, plus a cup of murk. Tracy-Ace led him to a line of tables looking out over a huge balcony. No, not a balcony—a holo.
Legroeder stared out at an enormous view of the Flux. In the foreground were sprawling structures that he hardly noticed, because behind them were swirling gas clouds that seemed vast, almost galactic in scope. They might have been a bright emission nebula, a star-birthing grounds. But this was something different. His rigger’s intuition told him: this was a boundary layer. Not the boundary between normal-space and the Flux, which would have been impressive enough for structures to be anchored against. No, this—he felt with absolute certainty—was the transition zone between the familiar layers of the Flux where starships flew, and another place deeper and more mysterious, and far more perilous.
“You know what it is?” Tracy-Ace said.
He opened his mouth, but couldn’t speak. The Deep Flux. He knew it by name only. It was an underlying region of the Flux so unstable and unpredictable that riggers avoided it, always. He had never heard of anyone flying in it and returning, though the Narseil Institute had reportedly done some experimenting along the border regions. But the Kyber—? Was this just an impression-image, a work of art?
“Is it real—this view?” he murmured.
“Oh yes,” she said, gesturing to the lower part of the image, at the indistinct structures in the foreground.
He couldn’t quite make out what they were. Man-made, certainly. A station? Docking ports? Ships? He shivered at the thought of man-made structures hovering on the edge of such cosmic instability.
“Let me change that view a little,” said Tracy-Ace.
There was a shimmer as the perspective shifted, magnifying the foreground. His breath left him in a rush. It was a fleet of a hundred or more glittering starships, gathered around what looked like a cluster of asteroids. Long, curved limbs like sea-urchin spines arched out from the central bodies to the starships.
Legroeder felt as though his heart had stopped beating. “What is it?” he whispered.
“The colony fleet,” she said.
He swallowed. “Headed toward—?” Not the Centrist Worlds, surely.
“New hunting grounds,” she said softly, watching his reaction. “What do you think?”
His voice caught. I am a Kyber, unafraid of bold Kyber initiatives. Unafraid… “It’s—” he said, trying not to stammer “—impressive. We, uh—don’t have anything like this in—Barbados.”
Tracy-Ace stared at him for a moment, then laughed out loud. “No,” she said finally. “No, I guess you don’t.”
“Don’t have what in Barbados?” asked a familiar metallic voice.
Legroeder turned.
Freem’n Deutsch was floating toward them.
Chapter 23
The Maintainers
“Freem’n!” Legroeder cried. “Are you all right?”
Deutsch floated to the table. “As all right as ever. Mind if I join you?”
“Please do,” said Tracy-Ace.
“We’ve met before, I believe. Tracy-Ace/Alfa?” Deutsch said.
“Yes. Good to see you again.” To Legroeder she explained, “I asked him to meet us here. Since you were wondering about him.”
Legroeder opened his mouth and closed it. Finally he let a smile crack through. “How did you—the last time I saw you, you were frozen in some kind of—”
Deutsch waved a cybernetic hand. “Leghold trap. I saw the damn thing coming, but not in time to get out of its way.”
Legroeder winced at the memory. “It looked painful.”
“Infuriating as hell, I can tell you that,” Deutsch said. “When they finally killed the switch, it knocked me out cold. I woke up in the infirmary. That’s where I’ve been until about an hour ago.” He nodded to Tracy-Ace. “Thank you for bringing me out. I’m looking forward to getting back to work.”
Are you? Legroeder thought. This was a danger point, when Freem’n had to make his own reentry into the Kyber world. Just how closely would his interests coincide with Legroeder’s now?
Tracy-Ace was watching them both with obvious interest. Freem’n seemed to be doing an excellent job of acting. He had to persuade his superiors, presumably including Tracy-Ace, that his actions with the Narseil had been taken either under duress or in order to sabotage the Narseil mission. Had he already been debriefed? Legroeder could read nothing from Deutsch’s face.