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CHAPTER THIRTY

“Imagine you’re a Gold One visiting Nexus Six,” I said as we walked through the corridors back toward the portal. “You may know from your archives that half of one of your precious top-secret directories vanished a few millennia ago, possibly to right here. Even if you don’t know that history, you do know that this half-directory you’ve stumbled on isn’t supposed to be lying around loose, certainly not in Ammei territory. So what do you do?”

“You take it away and hide it,” Selene said.

“Right,” I agreed. “But where? Remember, the Ammei had a relationship with the Kadolians, and Kadolians can sniff out Icari metal even through a layer of dirt.”

“Hide the needle in a bathtub of other needles,” Huginn suggested. “Put it in the Center of Knowledge.”

“That’s the obvious option,” I said, keeping my voice casual. Hide the needle in a bathtub of other needles…“But in this case, that wouldn’t work. Wherever he found it, he had to assume the Ammei would miss it and launch a search. He had to put it somewhere they wouldn’t look.” I raised my eyebrows at Selene. “Or couldn’t look.”

She stiffened, and I saw sudden understanding in her pupils. “Alainn,” she breathed. “He took it to Alainn.”

“Alainn?” Huginn echoed. “No. Damn.

“Yes,” I agreed. “Ironic, isn’t it, after all the effort you went through to dig out the portal and move it off the planet to wherever we’re sitting right now.”

“Irony isn’t the word I was thinking of,” Huginn said from between clenched teeth. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“A little,” I admitted. “But don’t worry, it’s not as bad as you think. You’re right, Selene, that moving the directory to Alainn and then sabotaging the portal to cut off access was his plan. But he didn’t just have the Ammei to consider. He knew they would need to find a compliant Kadolian for their portal project, and as I said your people are great at sniffing out Icari metal. So…?”

We’d reached the portal now and I stopped beside the access hatchway. “He couldn’t just hide it on Alainn,” Selene said slowly, her pupils showing deep concentration. “Not even just bury it. With no other Icari metal around, a Kadolian could easily find it.”

“Actually, that long ago, there wasn’t even much non-Icari metal in that area,” I agreed.

“So what did he do?” Huginn asked. “Travel to whatever passed for civilization on the planet, hop a transport, and take it somewhere else?”

“He could have done that,” I agreed. “But where? The Kadolians were mostly nomadic—still are, as far as I know.” I looked at Selene, caught the confirmation in her pupils. “Anywhere he hid it, there was still a small but finite chance that one of them would eventually stumble over it.”

“He also might wish to retrieve it someday,” Nask said, an intense look on his face that was now shifting to a mix of understanding and disbelief. “Are you saying…? No. Ridiculous.”

“Not only not ridiculous, but practically inevitable.” I waved up at the sphere looming over us. “You were right, Huginn, that you hide a needle with other needles. But you don’t need to hide an Icari-metal book among other Icari-metal books.”

“You can also hide it inside more Icari metal,” Selene murmured.

“Yes.” I gestured Nask to the hatchway. “After you, Sub-Director.”

Two minutes later, we were standing together in the launch module. “The whole thing made so much logical sense on other levels that we never bothered to look any deeper,” I continued. “Shutting off the Alainn end instead of the Nexus Six one kept the Ammei from just pulling parts out of one of their other Geminis and putting the portal back in business. They presumably could go to Juniper or one of their other enclaves and travel from there to Alainn by regular ship, but only if they knew which planet was at the other end.”

“The silver-silk was right there down the path from the Alainn portal,” Selene said. “There was no need for them to go into any of the nearby towns or interact with any of the local people, so they never learned the planet’s name.”

“Right,” I said. “They knew there was silver-silk there, of course, and given how rare and valuable the stuff is that should have been a big clue in tracking it down. But the Spiral’s elites had decided to keep Alainn a deep, dark secret, which meant it was absent from every database the Ammei could have looked through.”

“Only now they know,” Selene breathed. “They know it’s Alainn, and they know where the Loporri and Vrinks are.” She looked at me, her pupils showing sudden horror.

“All the more reason for us to figure out what they’re up to and shut them down,” I said. “So, Huginn. You want to tell me where it is?”

Slowly, Huginn looked around the sphere, his eyes taking in everything. “The parts that had been removed were here,” he said, walking a quarter way around the sphere and stopping beside a group of access panels. “That was the bottommost part of the module when it was buried on Alainn with its grav field off. So…” He pointed straight up. “There.”

“Because no one is going to climb twenty meters through the middle of an empty ball without a damn good reason,” I said, nodding. “Let’s find out if you’re right.”

I walked around the sphere to the spot directly above him and knelt beside the largest of the three access panels in that vicinity. I used my combat suit’s multitool to unfasten the oddly shaped screws and pulled off the panel.

There, half hidden beneath a group of cables, was a familiar-looking book.

Nask had come around to my side of the module and was standing over me. Wordlessly, he held out his hand.

I looked at Selene, her pupils brimming with unhappy frustration. She still didn’t like this, not in the least. But like me she couldn’t see any other way that would leave us not locked in a box somewhere. Silently, I handed Nask the book.

He pulled the magnetic hasp free and opened it to the middle. Huginn came around to join us, and for a minute the two of them stood side by side, Patth senior official and his human minion, looking at a prize either of them would have killed for.

As would Kinneman, the dark thought occurred to me, if he ever found out about this.

I was drifting amid a swirl of such unpleasant thoughts when I was startled back to the present by the sharp sound of Nask closing and resealing the book. “You said you wanted to be taken to Xathru and your ship,” he said as I got to my feet. “I suggest it would be better to contact an Expediter in the area and have him bring the Ruth to a different planet for your rendezvous. That would be quicker than transporting you and Selene there directly, which would forestall any effort General Kinneman might make against you in response to Colonel McKell’s report.”

I pursed my lips, thinking it through. Nask’s plan made a lot of sense, actually. Once McKell and Ixil delivered their reports, Kinneman would absolutely be coming after us. Getting the Ruth off the table was our best chance at not getting grabbed right off the blocks.

And if Nask was planning a betrayal, he could do it just as easily taking us to Xathru as he could en route to whatever Planet X he was thinking about moving the Ruth to. There was, after all, a lot of empty space out there to dump bodies into. “Sounds good,” I said. “Let me give you the access and console codes.”

“No need,” Huginn put in with a faint but definitely smug smile. “We already have them.”

I felt my lip twist. “I guess you probably do.”

“Come,” Nask said, tucking the directory under his arm. “I have some calls to make.”



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