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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE



Defender-Prime rose from the Petal Four hangar. It cleared the Crimson Flower and continued climbing until it reached an altitude of five hundred meters. Once there, it held its position and began the process of slipping through the outer wall of the SysGov universe and entering the transverse.

Chronotons passed through the chronoport in two directions. Not physical directions, but temporal ones, with half the surrounding particles moving into the past and half rushing forward, building the future. These were particles with closed-loop histories, oscillating backward and forward through time, and they slipped through the empty space between atoms as if the ship wasn’t there at all.

Additionally, those chronotons exhibited “side-to-side” motion on axes beyond the familiar X, Y, and Z. It was this side-to-side motion the chronoport was about to tap into.

The impeller spun up to one hundred twenty cycles per second, and the twin fusion thrusters idled, ready to flood the spike with the tremendous energies required to push through the outer wall of a universe.

“Chronometric environment stable,” announced the temporal navigator. “Impeller spin stable. All systems configured for transdimensional flight. We are ready for phase-out, Captain.”

“Execute,” Elifritz ordered.

Energy from the fusion reactors flooded through the spike’s exotic matter. Pulses drove through the matter in sync with the rotational speed, and chronotons passing through the spike began to bounce off along a single transdimensional axis, generating chronometric pressure on the drive system. That pressure built until it reached a critical threshold, pushing the chronoport into the transverse.

The effect this process had on the crew was less impressive than one might expect.

Isaac’s stomach lurched into his throat before bouncing back down. He braced himself for more, but none came. They were underway and in freefall.

Nina sat next to him on the bridge, her fingers digging into the armrests.

“Was that it?” she asked.

“So it would seem.”

* * *

Defender-Prime phased through the outer wall of the Admin universe and appeared above Luna. Mild gravity replaced the free fall of transdimensional flight, and Susan found herself tugged deeper into her seat on the bridge. She released her harness and sat up.

“It’s so…gray,” Nina whispered from two seats over, watching a live feed from one of the chronoport’s external cameras.

“Of course it is,” Isaac said matter-of-factly. “It hasn’t been terraformed.”

Defender-Prime eased power into its twin fusion thrusters and hovered over an airless expanse of plains and craters dotted by domes molded out of lunar rock and the thin capillaries of shielded tunnels. The chronoport hovered near a large cluster of domes butted against a glassy, elliptical scar over half a kilometer thick and three times as long.

“We’re reaching out to the university now,” Elifritz reported from his seat near the front of the bridge. “We should have landing clearance shortly.”

Susan gazed at the mutilated landscape below and let out a slow, sad exhale.

“Something wrong?” Isaac asked quietly.

“Nothing,” she deflected. “It’s been a while, is all.”

“You’ve been to Byrgius before?”

“You could say that.” She gave him a halfhearted smile. “I went to school here before I dropped out and enlisted.”

“Oh.” Isaac took in the view. “Then this is where you decided to become a Peacekeeper?”

“That’s right. About ten years ago.” She pointed at the screen. “See the scar? This part here used to be Cushwa Dome. Over there were Moser and Williamson Domes. You can still see a few pieces of Kilcawkley Dome along the edge of the scar. Some of my classes were in those domes.” She sighed. “Now they’re all gone.”

“What happened?”

“Free Luna happened. They released a self-replicating weapon inside the Lunarian dormitory. It ate everyone and everything in its path. Almost eleven thousand people, in the end.”

“They released it in the Lunarian dorms?” Nina asked.

“Yeah. I was asleep in Lyden Dome at the time. You can still see remnants of it along the edge of the scar here and here.”

Nina shook her head. “But isn’t Free Luna—I don’t know—trying to free Lunarians?”

“You’re expecting barbarous monsters to think like rational people,” Susan said, almost clinically. “To them, Lunarians who won’t fight back or who’ve accepted the Admin are simply another enemy. Worse in some ways because they’ve ‘betrayed’ their homeland. That sort of mindless hatred is why they were targeted first, and one of the reasons why I’m still alive.”

She sat gazing into the screen, and despite her almost distant tone, her eyes were dark. Not distant at all, Isaac thought, watching her profile. She didn’t seem to notice him as she looked back into her own past.

“I learned a lot that day,” she continued. “About hate and hearts and how some problems can’t be solved with words. So many young lives were snuffed out that day, but so many more got to live on, and that was because of the Peacekeepers—and especially the STANDs. They went into that campus over and over again, despite the nanoweapon. SysGov hasn’t seen anything like that. I know that. But it was like walking into Hell itself for anyone from the Admin, and that’s exactly what they did, again and again. They lost seven of their own that day, but they saved my life. And not just mine. They pulled a lot of others—almost two hundred of us—out before they were forced to pull back. Before they were ordered to pull back, really, because they were still ready to go back in, even though they knew damned well how few of them would come out again. But Director Shigeki personally ordered them out, and nobody bucks him. So they did, and then their cruiser razed the blight with sustained laser fire.”

She paused, and silence hovered as the SysGov visitors looked at the savage scar.

“That’s one of the reasons I enlisted,” she said finally. “To protect those who can’t protect themselves.” She sighed. “And to never again be someone who can’t protect herself.”

“Well”—Isaac touched her on the shoulder—“I can safely say you ticked that box.” She looked at him, and he smiled almost gently, then squeezed her shoulder. “In fact”—his smile segued into a grin—“I’d have to say it’s possible—remotely possible—you may have overcompensated just a bit.”

“And when he says ‘just a bit,’ he means ‘quite a lot,’ actually,” Nina said, and Susan surprised herself with a snort of amusement.

“Maybe just a bit,” she said, and smiled back at them both.

“Landing clearance received,” reported the pilot. “Heading in.”

The chronoport floated sideways until it was positioned above a crater with artificially extended walls. A ring of lights blinked along the lip and more lights on the crater floor strobed in a contracting cross that repeated its animation loop every few seconds.

The end of the chronoport’s impeller almost grazed one wall as it eased into the crater, but the pilot kept the craft stable and centered, and it touched down on the landing pad without incident. Its fusion thrusters throttled back, and a boarding tunnel extended out of the crater wall.

“Thrusters off,” reported the pilot. “Docking seal secure.”

“Very good,” Elifritz said.

Noxon stood up and walked back to Isaac and the others.

“Detective, this is your show now. We’ve requested a meeting with the university’s chief archivist, a man named Ethan Tunstall. He’ll be waiting for you in his office.”

“Thank you, Captain. Agent Cantrell and I will head out. We’ll contact the ship if we need anyone else to join us.”

Susan stood up and sidestepped out of the row to let Isaac through. He slid out and put on his peaked cap.

“Which way to the exit?” Isaac asked quietly.

“Follow me.”

Susan led him down the chronoport’s central corridor, then took a twisting side passage until they reached the side docking hatch. She pressed her palm against the interface, and heavy malmetal plating shifted out of the way to reveal a long tunnel. Ribbed, retractable supports gave way to a wide view of the star-filled Lunarian sky.

They crossed the metal walkway and checked in at the security kiosk on the far end. A pair of campus security officers verified their IDs while a Wolverine sat nearby, its gun-head swinging back and forth like a metronome.

They took a ramp down from the security kiosk to the upper level of a bright, two-tiered concourse with a modest green hilltop and tree ringed by a few benches. Over a dozen tunnels connected with the concourse on both levels, leading away to Byrgius University’s many domes. Labels and simplistic symbols floated in the air above each tunnel, and a grand map of the whole university glowed in the air above the park.

Students passed them by, some glancing curiously in their direction, others intent on not looking their way. A Wolverine paced past them, tracing a slow, leisurely patrol around the concourse.

Susan set her hands on the railing and gazed at the map. She remembered passing through this space hundreds of times in what felt like another life, each time hurrying from one class to the other, but she’d never stopped to soak in the place.

Isaac leaned onto the railing next to her.

“How’s the wearable working out?” she asked.

“Seems fine.” He pulled back his cuff to reveal a wristband. “I can see and read the big campus map and the signs by each tunnel. Anything else I’m missing?”

“No. That’s about it.”

“Good.” Isaac looked up at the map. “Tunstall is in Meshel Dome. Seems like we need to get down to the bottom level first.”

“Yeah.” She gazed at the campus map, and one location along the scar caught her eye.

“You okay? You seem out of it.”

“It’s a strange homecoming. I never thought I’d be here again. I’m not even the same person anymore.” She chuckled without humor. “In more ways than one. Susan the bright-eyed, idealist student is a distant memory nowadays. Same with Susan the squishy, flesh-and-blood human.”

“Need a minute?”

“No, I’m fine. Just…contemplating.”

“Come on, then.” Isaac placed a hand on her shoulder. “Let’s go see the archivist.”

“Right…”

He pushed off the railing and headed for the nearby stairs.

“Isaac?”

“Hmm?” He turned back to her.

“Would you mind if we take a quick detour first?”

“What for?”

“It’s just a place I’d like to visit. It won’t take long, I promise.”

“Sure, Susan. Sure.”

She led them down the stairs to an exit marked with KILCAWKLEY and a symbol showing numerous concentric rings. Despite the number of students and staff passing through the concourse, they were the only people in the tunnel.

“Didn’t you say Kilcawkley Dome was destroyed during the attack?” Isaac asked.

“I did.”

The tunnel dipped down, then climbed back up, opening onto the blasted remains of Kilcawkley Dome, its skeletal supports arching high overhead. They stood in a small space at the end of the tunnel, protected behind a transparent bubble that afforded a clear view of the starry sky and the flat, glassy expanse of the blight scar.

Hundreds of narrow, identical gravestones of lunar rock stood beneath the ruins of the dome, arranged in ever widening rings. Abstract displays hovered in the air, and Susan walked up to one and skimmed through the long list of names.

“Circles,” Isaac observed.

“Yes.”

“Good follows bad?”

“That’s right.”

“Anyone you know?” he asked, watching her scroll through the listed dead.

“A few. Some of the native students. But I’m not here for them.” She pointed to one side of the field of gravestones. “That’s where I nearly died. The blight was eating a path toward me when a STAND busted through the unpowered exit door. He burned back the blight while my friends and I fled to safety. He saved my life.

“After I joined the Peacekeepers, I tried to locate the STAND who rescued me. I wanted to thank him, to let him know he’d made a difference.” She smiled sadly. “And then I found out he was already dead. He was one of the seven who died, not long after he saved me, before they were ordered to pull back. He went into Cushwa Dome to save a group of Lunarian students cut off from escape, exactly the way he’d come for me. Those students made it out…but he didn’t. His name was Malcolm Bryce, and none of these graves are for him.”

Isaac gazed across the gravesite but didn’t say anything.

“But one should be.” She let out a slow sigh. “Thanks, Isaac. I’m glad I could come here.”

“Anytime.”

* * *

The guidance arrow led them two levels below Meshel Dome to the dark basement of the building. Frosted glass walls on either side provided glimpses of racks upon racks of humming, blinking, clicking infosystem nodes, and the air overhead shimmered from waste heat.

The arrow stopped at an unmarked door and faded away.

“Is this his office?” Isaac asked.

“That’s what the map says.”

“Hmm.” He palmed the door buzzer.

“Oh!” came a bright, eager voice from the other side. “Coming! Just a moment!”

The door split open, and an elderly man peered through. He wore a dark blue jumpsuit with flared bell bottoms and the golden BU of Byrgius University stuck on the chest. An unruly curtain of white hair fell behind a narrow, sunken face, and his body appeared somewhat stretched by life in low gravity, which seemed odd considering what Susan had told him about the Admin-sanctioned enhancements used to fortify every citizen against low-grav deterioration. An abstract sigil floated above the back of his left hand, showing two connected chain links, one of ivory and the other of jade.

The man’s bright eyes flicked across the two newcomers and lit up with gleeful attentiveness.

“May I help you?” he asked with a wide, friendly smile.

“We’re looking for Ethan Tunstall,” Isaac said.

“Speaking. Are you the investigator I was told to expect?”

“That’s right. I’m”—Isaac paused ever so slightly, not yet comfortable with the title—“Investigator Cho. And this is my deputy, Agent Cantrell.”

“A pleasure to meet you both. We get so few Peacekeepers down here nowadays.” He shrugged. “Or ever, really.”

“That’s normally a good thing,” Susan commented.

“Oh, quite right you are, ma’am. Quite right.” Tunstall backed up and beckoned them inside. “Please, come in. Make yourselves at home.”

“Thank you.”

His office was bigger than Isaac had expected, given the forgotten, dead-end quality of the path leading to it. It might have been a storage room at some point in the past, but it was now furnished with an automated kitchen, two sofas, and a massive desk. A pair of large industrial printers took up most of one wall. A combination of abstract and physical portraits took up another, and a third “wall” provided a virtual view of rolling hills as a strong wind rustled through the tall grass. Smaller windows floated over Tunstall’s desk.

Do those sofas convert into beds? Isaac wondered to himself. Does he live down here?

“Can I get you anything in the way of refreshments?” Tunstall hurried over to the smaller sofa and began dragging it to the front of his desk.

“No, thank you.” Isaac reached up to remove his cap, but when he tugged on it, he discovered the inner band was stuck to his head. He frowned and tried to wiggle the bill, but the hat wouldn’t let go. Finally, he grabbed the bill with both hands and pushed up but only succeeded it straining his skin. The hat refused to release its death grip.

“Susan?” he whispered, glad Tunstall had his back turned.

“Yeah?”

“I can’t get my hat off.”

She glanced to Tunstall, saw him adjusting the position of the sofa, then reached over and tried to plunk the cap off Isaac’s head. It wouldn’t budge.

“See?” he whispered urgently.

“Did you release the headband?”

“The what?”

Tunstall busied himself with fluffing the pillows on the sofa.

“You need to release the dynamic friction band on the inside,” Susan whispered, tapping the side of her own cap. “There’s a hardwired switch underneath the bill.”

Isaac ran his thumb across the underside of the bill, found a dimple, and pressed it. The hat released its grip, and he yanked it off and smoothed out his hair.

“What’s a hat need a friction band for, anyway?”

“To keep it from coming off in zero gee, of course,” she said as if it were the most normal thing in the worlds.

Back at the sofa, Tunstall had moved on to adjusting the positions of individual pillows in an effort to…arrange them symmetrically? Isaac wasn’t sure.

“That’s quite all right, Mister Tunstall.” He urged the man away from the sofa.

“Are you sure? It still looks a bit janky to me. You two are guests here, and I want you to feel comfortable.”

“We’re fine, I promise you.”

“You sure I can’t get you something? Maybe some coffee or a light snack? I have some excellent sugar cookie patterns stored in the food printer.”

“Again, no thank you,” Isaac stressed. “We’re here for information.”

“What we need are the Weltall qualifier records,” Susan added.

“We have”—Isaac grimaced as he presented the copy-and-paste document—“a search warrant.”

“Ah, yes!” Tunstall’s eyes gleamed. “The tournament! What a treat that was! I just finished rewatching the final matches, in fact. So glad we could host it here at Byrgius. Maybe it’ll help inject some life back into the campus.” He shook his head sadly. “I hate to admit it, but the place never truly bounced back from the attack. It’s a shame, really, because we have plenty of room for more students, but applicant numbers are way down, even a decade later. No one wants to earn their degree from ‘Blight U.’” He shuddered. “Such a repulsive nickname. Wish people would stop using it.”

“Can you grant us access to the event records?” Isaac asked.

“Oh, certainly. Any specific part you’re after, or do you want it all?”

“All of it, if possible, but we’re most interested in the records for a player named Elena Sako.”

“Elly?” Tunstall’s brow narrowed with concern. “Why the interest in her? I thought she was over in SysGov for the finals? Is she back already?”

“No, she’s still over there,” Susan said. “The tournament hasn’t finished yet.”

“Oh, of course, I understand.” Tunstall paused and then frowned. “Wait a moment. You know the tournament isn’t over.”

“That’s right,” Susan said. “Sako was doing quite well, last we saw her. She’s one of only two players left.”

“Oh!” His eyes lit up again. “Then, you were there? In SysGov, I mean? You saw her in action?”

“We did.” Susan nodded.

“Oh, isn’t she just wonderful? And so humble, too. Here, take a look.”

Tunstall turned around, and his back lit up with golden abstract signatures.

“I think Elly’s is near the right shoulder blade.”

“She…signed your back?” Isaac asked.

“Oh yes! I managed to collect signatures from most of the players, but some declined to sign, and a few more were charging horrendous prices. But not Elly! Didn’t charge me so much as a centi-E, bless her sweet soul. Even gave me a little peck on the cheek.” He tapped the chain link sigil on the back of his left hand. “Don’t tell the missus, okay?”

“Your secret is safe with us,” Isaac said dryly.

“Wish she was one of our alumni, but it’s been so hard for us to attract talent for our sports program.” He turned back around. “Maybe that’ll change, though. The chief executor’s outreach has brought so much renewed interest in Luna. I voted for him, you know. Knew he was the right man for the job. I had a good feeling about Christopher First from the start. Even liked his campaign slogan. ‘Your best choice is the First choice.’ Ha ha. So catchy.”

Isaac cleared his throat in a polite effort to swing the man back on track.

“I’ll have you know I’m one of the Admin’s biggest proponents here at Byrgius. I don’t see eye-to-eye with the rest of the faculty, I’m afraid. I think that’s why they moved me down here.” He indicated the room they stood in. “But the joke’s on them, because now I have a bigger office!”

“Mister Tunstall,” Isaac cut in before he blabbered anymore. “The records of the qualifier?”

“Ah, yes. Right!” He placed a hand on his desk. Several windows opened in front of the landscape view. “There. All records for the Weltall qualifier unlocked for your inspection. Unfortunately, they’re not sorted properly. I haven’t finished cataloging them, you see.”

“Thank you. We’ll manage.”

Isaac opened a comm window.

“Yeah?” Cephalie answered.

“Come meet us in Meshel Dome. We’ve got a job for you.”

* * *

“My word!” Tunstall exclaimed, staring over Cephalie’s shoulder in disbelief as she rocketed through the maze of data. “It was going to take me hours to properly tag, categorize, and annotate all those files, but you, my dear, have done the job in minutes! I’ve met some skilled archivists in my time, but never one quite so swift.” He selected a file at random and expanded the header. “And so thorough, too! It’s like you know my filing system better than I do!”

“Thanks.” Cephalie winked at him. “I’ve always had a knack for data. You could even say I was born to it.”

Isaac cleared his throat.

“What?” Cephalie shrugged at him. “It’s all true.”

“That’s beside the point,” he warned.

“What did you say your name was?” Tunstall placed a hand on her shoulder and leaned closer to her.

“You can call me Cephalie.”

“‘Cephalie,’” he repeated, sounding out the name. “Is that short for something?”

“It is.”

Tunstall waited for her to fill in the rest, and when she didn’t, he grimaced before continuing.

“Well, if you’re ever interested in joining the fast-moving field of data archiving, please don’t hesitate to look me up. Here, let me give you my connection string…”

“Sorry, but I’m spoken for.”

“Ah, well,” he sighed. “The good ones always are.”

Susan leaned over to Isaac’s ear. “Should we tell him she’s not human?”

He shook his head emphatically no.

“Aha!” Cephalie exclaimed.

“Find something?” Isaac asked.

“I did, but let me go over what I didn’t find first. I started by working through Sako’s records during the tournament, but nothing unusual came up. Lots of match statistics. Lots of other miscellaneous files, too, like meal and lodging invoices. Nothing I wouldn’t expect to see for someone in her position. However, that changes when we take a look at her transportation record after the tournament ended, but before the Admin feel-good tour started. Or should I say records.”

She expanded two files until they filled the space in front of Tunstall’s desk.

“There are two of them,” Isaac noted.

“Exactly. Both show her leaving within an hour of each other. This one tells us she bought a train ticket from Byrgius University and her final stop was Tycho Crater City. The invoice lists the reason for the trip as visiting her parents in Tycho’s Block D2. However, the second departure has her renting a surface shuttle.”

“Where did the shuttle go?” Isaac asked.

“Don’t know. There’s no invoice listed for it, so if she actually was on that flight, she didn’t charge the Admin for it. Even so, the shuttle should have logged a flight plan with the university, but I don’t have access to those.”

“Allow me.” Tunstall leaned over Cephalie’s shoulder, and in the process managed to drape an arm around her. He splayed his fingers against the desk, and additional archives unlocked. “There. You can now access the port’s outbound flight plans.”

“Thanks, kiddo.”

“Kiddo?” Tunstall frowned in confusion.

“Hmm, what have we here?” Cephalie trawled through the data and pulled up the shuttle’s flight plan. “Looks like it also took her to Tycho Crater City, but to Block F9 instead of D2.”

“Block F9,” Isaac murmured, and looked over at Susan.

“The Niner Slums.”


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