“So she’s ruined operations that got in the way of her own special brand of problem-solving?”
“Oh, that too, but I was thinking more about her political, er, forthrightness.”
Caine nodded. “Go on.”
“One of the reasons she never finished college or even a certificate program was because she always took the administration to task and made herself persona non grata in record time. Maintained a few vlogs — some directly, some via aliases — that are about as inflammatory as you can get before becoming a ‘person of interest’ to security agencies.”
“Whose security agencies, specifically?”
“Take your pick. She’s pretty much an equal-opportunity anarchist.”
Hwang’s eyebrows went high. “She’s a genuine anarchist?”
Rulaine waved a dismissive hand. “A figure of speech, but apt. Can’t find a single bloc or nation that she trusts or even considers acceptable. All her sympathies are with resistance movements, underground organizations, and what activists dub ‘post-national collectives.’ And you know what that means.”
Hwang looked from Bannor to Caine and back to Bannor. “Well, I don’t know what that means. So please add a caption.”
Rulaine shrugged. “The megacorporations have a long history of mining antigovernment organizations for support. They throw a lot of money at them: sometimes directly, sometimes through plausibly deniable proxies.”
Hwang screwed up his face. “And do these groups really join forces with the megacorporations? They’re far more autocratic than nation-states.”
Caine shook his head. “It’s not a direct alliance. But the megas aren’t really looking for cocombatants against ‘the tyranny of nations.’ They’re just funding grassroots resistance to national authority.” He turned back toward Bannor. “But do you really think Dora’s been a megacorporation’s agent provocateur?”
Rulaine shrugged. “No way to know. Dieter tells me that Gaspard has complained to DGSE that even her classified dossier is threadbare. Lots of gaps in her timeline. Lots of arrows pointing to sealed case files and intelligence summaries.”
Ben Hwang’s palmcomp buzzed. He glanced at it, rolled his eyes. “The Great Man has summoned the two of us. He wants that classified summary he put off.”
“And he wants it right now, I’ll bet.”
“No. He wants it an hour ago. When should I tell him we’ll be there?”
“An hour ago,” Caine sighed. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Twenty-Four. IN ORBIT GJ 1248 ONE (“ADUMBRATUS”)
Karam Tsaami, his head half into the avionics interface bay on the bridge of the TOCIO shuttle, nearly knocked off the top of his skull when a female voice murmured, “Hey,” not half a meter behind him. The resulting occipital thwack literally made his vision swim — and made his uninvited visitor chuckle.
Determined to show just how little enthusiasm he had for being a source of slapstick humor, Karam yanked his torso out of the bay, ready to tear the head off whatever damn fool had—
He discovered Dora Veriden watching him with a sardonic smile. “You always that graceful?”
“No,” Karam grumbled, rubbing the back of his head and unsuccessfully trying to remember what choice cascade of insults he had been preparing to unleash. “Sometimes I’m really clumsy.”
Veriden grinned, flopped down into the copilot’s couch, avoiding the various screens and protuberances of the half glass/half “steam” cockpit. And Tsaami realized, she knows her way around flight controls.
“Yeah,” she agreed, “you are clumsy. And sometimes you’re really stupid, too.”
Karam stared at her. “You’re welcome.”
“Huh?” she replied.
“Well, I figure that tracking me down on the shuttle so you can insult me is your own special way of saying thanks for my chasing after the monster that was trying to eat you earlier today.”
He had intended his tone to indicate that his comment was as ironic as hers. But Dora’s considerable brows met in a descending vee. “Didn’t ask for your help, and didn’t want it. Which is part of why I’m here: you were damned stupid chasing after that thing. It could’ve eviscerated you.”
“Yeah, well, it seemed like you could use a hand. Or at least a diversion. So I—”
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about: that was really stupid. If I need your help, I’ll ask for it. But your macho button got pressed and out you charged, making just that much more trouble for me. Because then I had your safety to worry about, too.”
“Hey, I was safe enough. You were its only target, and I’ve heard through the grapevine why that was. But secondly, I didn’t charge out there because of machismo,” he asserted half-truthfully. “I’ve been shuttling people back and forth to new planets and new colonies for ten years now. When they run into trouble, I go help. It’s that simple. It’s reflex: not duty, not machismo. Get it?” Karam almost believed the whole spiel himself. Damn, I’m good.
Dora Veriden frowned. “Okay, fair enough. Because you’d have been pretty disappointed if you were motivated by hopeful chivalry.”
“You mean because of the peculiar way you show gratitude?”
“No: I mean because I don’t usually walk on your side of the sexual street.”
Karam felt his eyebrows come down, then jump up. “Oh.” He shrugged: not like that was a big deal, or would have influenced his actions one bit.
“Oh,” he repeated and felt like an idiot. They sat in the pilot and copilot couches in silence for almost half a minute. It felt like half an hour.
“Look,” Dora started as suddenly as their semi-conversation had stopped, “I came here to explain something to you. And only to you.”
“Are you asking me to keep it a secret?”
She thought for a moment. “No. I just don’t feel I owe anyone else the real explanation for why I didn’t put on the marker spray.”
Karam cocked his head. “Really? Not Cai — Captain Riordan? Hell, he got in the critter’s way.”
Dora had made a face. “First, that was his job, right? And second, I’m not in the habit of thanking the people who’ve made a career out of using me.”
“Whoa, whoa: Riordan has made a career out of using you?”
Dora rolled her eyes. “Hey, figurative language alert. Not him, personally, no, but people like him.” When she saw the unrelieved perplexity in Karam’s face she threw up her hands. “Government types. Our Illustrious Leaders. Protectors of the Social Contract.”
Karam found he really didn’t want to argue with Dora — which was odd because he had a natural gift for contrarianism — so he frowned and shook his head. “I think you may want to revisit your assumptions about Caine.”
“You mean, Captain Caine Riordan? The guy who was sent by governments to find exosapients on Delta Pavonis Three? Who then made his report at the interbloc Parthenon Dialogs? Who was then appointed as the primary liaison for the international delegation to the Convocation of the Accord, and who then fought in the war we just finished? You mean that dedicated antigovernment figure?”
Karam kept his voice level. “Seems you’ve filled your own pockets with more than a few kings’ coins, over time.” Seeing Dora’s dark olive-toned skin darkening even further, he hastened to add, “All I’m saying is that what people do isn’t always a reliable indicator of their sympathies, of why they did those things.”