Crossways (51 page)

“Maybe to pirates? Wouldn't it be the duty of all the megacorporations to help eradicate piracy? It's time to take action against Crossways.”

“You want us to take down an armed station of over a million people?”

“Not alone. It might take some careful planning, but it's time Alphacorp and the Trust recognized that they had a significant overlap of objectives. If we can bring in
Arquavisa and Ramsay-Shorre so much the better. The others will follow suit. We'll need the Monitors, of course. This has to be a legally sanctioned intervention. Joint fleet and all that. A million crooks inhabiting a haven for pirates. The galaxy would be better off if Crossways disappeared completely.”

She smiled. “And an attack on Crossways would force them to pull back the fleet they have protecting Olyanda, which we do have a legitimate claim on.”

“Now you're thinking, Victoria.”

“So we use the attack on Crossways as a feint and grab Olyanda's platinum reserves?”

“Grab
our
platinum reserves,” he said. “There may be a cost in ships, but the gain would be incalculable.” He raised one eyebrow.

Tori LeBon smiled back.

“W
E GO AFTER ARI'S SECRETARY.” BEN SAT back in his new chair behind his new desk in his new office. The armchair was gone and it now looked less like a sickroom. “Secretaries always know more than the boss gives them credit for. That's why I don't have one. Besides, Wenna does all the hard work around here. She needs a flotilla of secretaries.”

Cara recalled Ari's secretaries. He'd had two in the time she'd known him. Pete Gaffney had been efficient but impersonal. She'd never really got to know him and didn't even know where he'd gone when he'd moved on. Etta Langham had been much friendlier. They'd exchanged pleasantries a few times when Cara had been in the office between assignments. Etta had to have known about the relationship between her and Ari, but she was supremely incurious, at least to all outward appearances, a good attribute for someone running Ari's office.

Kitty had been in Ari's office more recently than Cara. Perhaps it was time to ask her to step up. She said as much to Ben and he agreed.

Cara's message brought Kitty to Ben's door in less than ten minutes. “You wanted me?”

Ben waved her in and Cara stood and indicated that
Kitty should sit. Looking a little nervous, Kitty did so. “If it's about the trips to the farm . . .”

Ben shook his head. “It's not about the farm. It's about Alphacorp. We need your help.”

Something changed in Kitty's demeanor. Suddenly she was more guarded. She'd had a tough time with Ari, though . . . Hell, Cara shouldn't make excuses for her. Whatever tough time Kitty had had was nothing to what Cara herself had gone through. She'd cut the younger woman some slack because of their shared Ari experience and because of Wes. His loss had certainly hit Kitty hard, but they needed her now and there was no time to dance around her feelings.

It would have made sense for them both to sit down and compare notes, but Cara hadn't offered the details of her relationship with Ari to anyone and she didn't intend to start. She was comfortable with Ben now, and remembering Ari would only mess her up again. That was one of the reasons she'd been putting off confronting Donida McLellan. It was all part of the same tangled package.

She concentrated her Empathy on Kitty. Ronan had done a psych evaluation and cleared her, but Jussaro and Nine hadn't pinned down the leak yet. Cara had made a careless mistake when she'd dismissed her feelings about the false Mirakova before the attack in the warehouse. She needed to trust her instincts, not rationalize away her worries.

While Ben explained that they needed to get hold of Ari van Blaiden's secretary, Cara concentrated on Kitty.

“It's not Etta Langham now,” Kitty said. “Etta left months ago. Ari's current secretary is Barb Rehling.”

“Damn!” Cara said. “I remember her from the admin office. A bit of a martinet. Not Ari's type at all, but then Ari was always careful to keep his relationships with his secretaries strictly business.”

“Barb by name, barbed by nature,” Kitty said. “I think she liked me, though. She did try and warn me off Ari at first. I thought she was jealous, but then I figured that she was trying to be kind in her own way.”

“Do you think you could arrange a meeting with her?” Ben said. “Outside of work, of course.”

“We're actually going to Earth?”

“Unless you think you can get at Rehling any other way,” Cara said. “Does she have an implant?”

“A receiving implant, but she's generally wearing a damper.”

“So it would be better to talk to her face-to-face,” Ben said. “If we can get you to York, do you think you can do that?”

“Maybe. It depends on what information they have about me. It's not like I'm officially off payroll, I probably just show up on the files as missing. Officially, I'm on detached duty seconded to Ari. Now that he's dead I don't know where that leaves me. I guess they have to give me time to find my way back before they suspend me.” She flashed a rueful grin. “I wonder if they're still paying wages into my bank.”

“We're going to have to go by a roundabout route to disguise our origins, and we'll need false IDs again,” Ben said. “Let's see if Mother Ramona will oblige.”

“Who's going?” Cara asked. “Do we need muscle?”

Ben shook his head. “You, me, and Kitty. Let's keep it small.”

Cara let her attention drift back to Kitty, but whatever she'd caught before was well under control now.

Three false identities, some cosmetic facial changes (temporary), and four hub hops later, Cara, Ben, and Kitty landed at Lakenheath, England's major spaceport, and caught the shuttle train to York, dressed as tourists for an English winter.

“Expect rain,” Kitty had said, and Cara concurred. “Except in the old city, of course.”

The old city of York was protected by a massive bubble dome, itself an ancient monument, a four-hundred-year-old structure protecting a museumized city stuck forever as it was in 2120 with its Roman remains, its medieval churches, including the magnificent but fragile Minster, buildings from the 1300s, the Georgian era, some Victoriana, and two beautifully preserved twenty-first century shopping streets between the River Ouse and the market. Such was the attraction that the still-functioning city employed thousands in the tourist industry, everything from street cleaners and gardeners to shop workers, catering, and hotel staff. The
whole place was owned by the Old City of York, itself a small corporation. It advertised an authentic historical experience, which brought in tourists not only from around the world, but from all over the galaxy.

Cara's short hair was now sleek raven black and her skin color olive with almond eyes that made her look more Asian than Gen. Kitty had turned into a flaming redhead, with unruly hair framing pale skin and freckles. Ben's color had been deepened to a rich ebony from his normal mid-brown and his hair had been curled into a wild springy mass. There was yet another layer of names and backstory to memorize. Cara hoped she'd fixed it in her mind, but it would be so easy to slip into one of the previously learned personas. Luckily they slipped through immigration with no trouble, especially when they showed their reservations for one of the most expensive hotels in the country.

Mother Ramona, operating behind several layers of identity screening, had booked them two coveted rooms in the Royal York Hotel, restored to its Victorian glory, apart from the sanitary facilities and the connections to the globalweb. They changed from the shuttle to the local monorail at York's Hunslet interchange, with both Cara and Kitty keeping their heads down as an extra precaution. Anyone who knew them well might see through the cosmetic changes.

York and Old York were separated by barely twenty klicks in distance but five hundred years in time. York had been built over the ruins of what was once Leeds and had become one of Federal Europe's foremost cities. It was not only a banking and communications hub, but also a cultural marvel. It was the administrative center for Alphacorp's Special Operations and Colony Operations, separate from the main HQ in the Saharan Rainforest. It had its own shuttleport at Yeadon to the north of the city, linking it to the main intergalactic spaceport on the Moon.

Cara had once thought of the city as home. She'd lived in a small sub apartment sunk deep into the rock strata. Ari had owned an apartment in a center city high-rise as well as a garden house discreetly nestled into a gentle hillside between the old city and the new.

She wondered what had happened to Ari's homes. He had no relatives that she knew of who might inherit, but it
was likely his estate would be tied up in litigation forever with the files that they'd released into the wild. Alphacorp's investigators might be all over his office, which was an added complication when it came to seeking out his secretary.

She said as much to Ben and Kitty while green fields flashed past their pod window.

“Let Kitty make the first contact,” Ben said. “We'll worry about the rest if and when we have to.”

“Do you entirely trust Kitty?” Cara asked when Kitty had made her way down the pod to the washroom.

“I have wondered about her,” he admitted. “But her psych evaluation was clean despite her time with Ari.”

“Cleaner than mine, I expect.”

He reached for her hand. “Just for the record, I've always trusted you.”

“I know. That's sometimes been a mistake. It might still be. Just because I think I've beaten Neural Readjustment doesn't mean I have. Donida McLellan was good at her job. There might still be things planted in my subconscious that I don't know about.”

“If there are, I'm trusting that you'll let us help you deal with them.”

She subsided into quiet contemplation of the scenery as Kitty returned. The shuttle to Old York terminated outside the dome and they had a choice of entering the city by steam train, open-topped omnibus, horse-drawn carriage, or on foot.

“It's not far to the hotel,” Cara said. “Let's walk. I've been sitting on shuttles for far too long. Come on.” She tugged Ben's hand. “I'll give you the guided tour.”

And she did. They diverted to walk through the ruins of St. Mary's Abbey and its gardens, complete with mature specimen trees and the Roman remains of the Multiangular Tower, then, though it was out of their way, walked up to Bootham Bar, one of Old York's medieval gates, and from there to the magnificent Minster with its cool towering interior, fantastical stone carvings, and stained glass.

“I wish we had time to be real tourists,” Kitty said as they cut down Stonegate and worked their way toward Lendal Bridge. “I should have taken the time to come here when I was transferred to York.”

Cara looked at her sideways. There weren't many people who would ignore the opportunity to visit Old York if they lived and worked in such close proximity. Ari had been fascinated by it, even though the whole place had been turned into a giant museum. He'd brought her here on many of their early dates. Hadn't Kitty had the same treatment?

Their hotel was sumptuous, plushly decorated in keeping with its Victorian origins and offering every modern convenience neatly hidden behind a historical facade. The check-in was smooth and efficient. Yes, their reservation was in order, two rooms with garden views, all paid for.

Once in their room, at the head of an elegant sweep of staircase, Cara flopped down on the bed, so soft that she bounced, and stared at the ornate plasterwork ceiling.

“How come Kitty's never been here before?” she asked.

“At this price? Are you kidding?” Ben flicked on the entertainment center built into the wall. It was full of restored movies and TV shows from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, some of them historical even when they were made.

“No, I don't mean the hotel, I mean Old York. If she'd been dragged into Ari's orbit she would have been here. He'd have taken her to the Café Concerto near the Minster and for a cruise along the river and possibly even to the Theatre Royal, or to Evensong at the Minster to hear the choral singing. There's something not adding up about her. Don't trust her, Ben. I didn't warn you about Mirakova when I had suspicions. I didn't mention what I thought about Crowder. I might be wrong about Kitty, but . . .”

Ben sat next to her, took her hand and kissed her fingers. “I hear you. We'll trust her only as far as we must to get at Ari's secretary. So far and no further until she's proved herself.”

“Thank you.”

Then anything else she might have said was forgotten as Ben stretched out beside her and she pulled him close.

Kitty closed the hotel room door. Had she seemed so totally clueless about Old York? She should have taken time to do the tourist thing when she'd first been transferred to Ari's department, but she was too busy getting herself noticed.

Yes, he'd shown an interest in her, but it took more than being blonde and pretty to attract him. She'd had to work at it while letting him think that he was making the running. She'd only been included on the Olyanda trip at the last minute because she'd said she could fly a jumpship through the Folds. A slight exaggeration—she'd completed the theoretical training, but only on sims. Having tried to shadow Ben through the Folds she now knew that she'd have been completely overwhelmed. Ben's theft of the
Solar Wind
had done her a huge favor even before she knew of his existence.