Chapter One: On Stragon
Isabela Bakshi quickly hauled up the rope ladder, first coiling it on the ground, then kneeling to conceal it from casual view. She’d done this many times before and had no need of even the feeble light of Stragon’s distant moon. Practiced hands kneaded the pile of knotted fibre into a nondescript brown lump before shoving it to its accustomed spot in the tall grass at the rim of the bluff. Only by close inspection would anyone detect the metal spike to which the top of the rope was fastened and recognize the lump for what it was: an escape route down to the beach.
When done, Isabela got to her feet. She stood alone, staring blindly out at the vast murmuring sea as she waited for the pounding of her heart to subside.
They were gone. Extracted. Ten Earth Intelligence Service agents, whisked away to safety on Daisy Hub aboard a cloaked ship that had landed and lifted off at low tide in the darkness of night. Their mission on this world had been aborted, and hers along with it. Isabela was deactivated, free to get on with her life, such as it was.
At least her cover as a schoolteacher was still secure. She knew she ought to feel relieved about that. And yet, her mind was roiling with dread, because the danger was not over.
The Stragon those operatives had left behind was a powder keg waiting to explode. The population was dividing into moderate and radical factions, each with its own strident fringe groups. Their common target was the Directorate. The moderates, including many loyalists, believed it would be sufficient to rein in its power over their lives. The radicals wanted every Director dead and gone, and some of the more extreme groups apparently no longer shrank from blowing up public buildings and killing innocents in order to make their position clear.
There was no backing away once that line had been crossed. Security was doing its best to head off the violence (a number of bombing attempts had already been foiled), but their efforts were only delaying the inevitable—a long and bloody Stragori civil war.
The powerful Forrand family, among others, would no doubt be in the thick of it, tailoring the conflict to their own benefit. As they’d already demonstrated on Earth, they were experts at pulling profit from the misery and disaster that afflicted others. Why should things be different here on their own home world?
Isabela had just helped ten Terran agents to escape—the nine that “Gervais Forrand” intended to scapegoat and Olivia Townsend, the EIS’s Chief Intelligence Officer. According to Olivia, this impostor’s plan was to repair the fracture in Stragori society by giving the native population an “other” to hate.
Labelling the Terrans as terrorists would certainly accomplish that. It would also open the door to expelling the twenty-seven million refugees from Earth who now occupied the former gulag on “the island”, as the land mass south of the mainland was called. But sending them all back to where they’d come from would be expensive and time-consuming. Who would rescue them if the war broke out first? Or if one of the more violent radical groups decided it would be simpler to blow up the island instead, with the Terrans on it?
The restless mutter of waves on the beach had been growing steadily louder. The tide was rushing in, bringing with it a spray-laden wind that reached right through Isabela’s many layers of protective clothing and pressed clammy fingers against her skin. She shivered, only partly from the cold, and drew her outer cloak more tightly around her shoulders.
She could have been extracted as well. Olivia had begged her to climb down the ladder and join her inside the ship. But that would have meant abandoning other people Isabela cared about. Her students. Her young teaching assistant. And her brother, Carlos, and husband, Vikram. Isabela had earlier vowed not to leave this planet until she’d gotten to the bottom of both their deaths and procured justice for them.
At last, with reality accepted and her path firmly chosen, she turned her back on the water and set out for home.
Even in the dead of night, Isabela navigated unerringly through the Wilderness Zone. She had spent so much time out here that she needed no more than the glow-rod’s pale whisper of illumination to guide her footsteps through the woods to the access gate. At the edge of the treed area, with the exit from the Zone in sight, she stopped to extinguish the handheld device and adjust her clothing.
The Zone formed a natural barrier between the inhabited part of the island and the sea. Like The Flats around New Chicago back on Earth, it was an uncurated swath of dense forest, occasionally opening into large, overgrown clearings. Isabela was a xeno-biochemist, and this was where she had come to gather the native plants she’d used to fill “special orders” from EIS operatives working undercover: knock-out drug, paralyzing serum, memory inhibitor… For five years, she had gone back and forth with her baskets, finding and picking the needed greens and wildflowers without difficulty and pretty much unnoticed—because the Zone proper was untouched by the close surveillance technology that seemed to pervade every aspect of life on Stragon.
The Zone was still observed from orbit, of course, like all the other parts of the planet. However, the island’s soil was toxic—developed areas were all paved over or covered with artificial turf—and the wild flora that grew in the Zone so dangerous to Humans that the Stragori Directorate had apparently decided no further security measures were necessary there.
The tall chain link fence that separated the Zone from the various urban districts, though, and the access gates distributed along it…? Those were a different matter. The fence line fairly bristled with monitoring gear.
Isabela routinely took precautions not to be identified during her comings and goings, but tonight they were especially necessary. An explosion had taken out the below-ground level (and with it the main server) of the Directorate’s Capital City offices on the mainland the previous day. An investigation was already underway. Fingers were pointing toward the Terrans, and the authorities would soon be hunting for whoever had helped the “terrorists” to escape off-world.
So, she pinned a veil in place to conceal her features. Then she slipped through the gate in the dark, staying tight to the post in order to pass unseen by the surveillance cam mounted atop it. She did the same thing at the gated entrance to the urban district where she lived.
The streets were empty at this hour. They were also well-lit, providing nowhere for “bad actors” like herself to hide. Hunching her shoulders to make herself look as bulky as possible, she took a circuitous route to the quadplex housing her apartment. The longer she spent outside, the riskier her situation became, but it couldn’t be helped. The last thing she wanted to do was bring Planetary Security home with her.
At last, she was on the final approach to her building. It was time to make use of all that Earth Intelligence training.
She passed by the walkway to the entrance, looking straight ahead and not slowing her pace until she was nearly at the next cross-street. Then she activated the device in her pocket, temporarily jamming all the mics and vidcams on the block. In that instant, adrenaline-propelled, she spun and sprinted across three lawns, directly to the front door of the quadplex. A breathless race up the stairs, a thumb pressed to the lock… and several heartbeats later she was safely inside.
“How did she take it?”
Angeli’s voice coming at her just as the apartment door slid closed behind her nearly launched Isabela out of her skin. Exclaiming in surprise, she whipped her head around and saw the other woman emerge from the second bedroom.
It took a moment for Isabela to recognize whom she was now looking at. This was no longer the Angeli she knew, and it certainly wasn’t Angeli’s cover identity, Anna Sturtevant. Scrubbed of all makeup and framed by a tangle of short, light brown hair, with pale blue eyes fixed in a steely expression… this was her real face, the face of a Forrand fully engaged in the shady side of the family business.
Isabela’s anger flared. “How did she take it? How did you think she would take it? Olivia was devastated. She held everyone up, waiting for you to arrive at the rendezvous point, then was informed by someone with the tact and empathy of a sledgehammer that your dead body had been pulled from the rubble of a collapsed transportation tunnel. The timing could not have been worse. I wish I had never agreed to keep your secret!”
“I know. We were best friends for more than thirty Earth years, and believe me, if there had been any other option…” Angeli let out a sigh of resignation, then drew herself up, resetting her features. “If she’d thought I was alive and staying behind, she would never have left. This was the only way to get her safely off-world and untie all our hands, including yours.”
“According to Dennis Forrand,” Isabela supplied bitterly.
“You want justice for Carlos and Vikram? You’re going to need Dennis’s help.”
“And you’re certain he will keep his promise?”
“I’ll make sure of it, Bela. I can do a lot more as a ghost than I could while maintaining a cover. Dennis has a plan. He assures me it’s a good one.”
“And of course it involves me. You realize I will very shortly have a new apartment-mate…? Or has Dennis decided that I will have to die and be reborn as someone else as well?”
“No, that won’t be necessary. Dennis has arranged for your next co-tenant to be someone who’s in our camp. You already know him. It’s Dr. Quinian.”
Isabela’s eyes widened. “He wants me to trust the person who betrayed Moe to the authorities?”
“Did he? You told me yourself that Quinian’s behaviour felt ‘off’ when he questioned you about your little friend camped out in the Wilderness Zone. In any case, Dennis doesn’t care whether or how far you trust Dr. Quinian—that’s your decision to make. He just wants the two of you to work together on an assignment.”
“Which will be…?”
“…given to you in due course. I’ve already packed everything I’m taking with me and gotten rid of anything of mine that could compromise your cover. Go back to being a teacher. Don’t change anything that you were doing before, including how you interacted publicly with Quinian, and don’t try to contact me or Dennis. We’ll get in touch with you when the time is right.”
* * *
Spring on Stragon was a temperamental time of year. Blustery one day, tender the next, it was definitely not Angeli’s favourite season. Today, a chill westerly wind was sweeping across the strait, stealing the sun’s warmth from the air. It made the exposed outer deck of the ferry to the mainland an uncomfortable place to be. So, naturally, that was where Dennis had chosen to have their meeting—on a boat plying its way between the shores, rocked by choppy waves.
The situation could have been worse, she realized. There could have been Waste Management barges moored upwind of them. And she could have been prone to seasickness.
Angeli placed her go-bag on the deck beside her feet. She layered the fronts of her black woollen coat one over the other and snugged her sash, then folded her arms across her chest to hold everything in place. Unfortunately, that left her no way to stop the wind from lashing her hair around.
Dennis didn’t have that problem. Standing beside her at the railing near the port bow, he wore a grey knitted cap that covered his ears and came down his forehead all the way to his eyebrows.
Angeli and Dennis were the only two passengers on the open deck, so there was no need to worry about being overheard.
“I gather there’s been a development,” she said.
“There has. I’ve obtained a map showing the locations of all the objectors.”
“And? Have you spoken to them? Are they coming onside?”
He paused. “No one has spoken to them yet. That will be your assignment, and before you start giving me your litany of reasons against,” he added, raising his voice to pre-empt them, “just hear me out.”
Reluctantly, she swallowed the arguments that had already leaped onto her tongue.
“When I first recruited you,” he went on, “and you had to pick a new name for yourself, I told you it could be anything except Forrand. You weren’t happy about that.”
“Damn straight, I wasn’t! All I wanted back then was to be acknowledged by my biological father. You refused to do it. I was mad as hell for a while.”
“And your anger made you reckless and impulsive.”
“You did call me a ‘loose cannon’ once or twice,” she allowed.
“Yes. I was beginning to wonder whether hiring you might have been a mistake. Then you teamed up with Olivia Townsend—”
“—your granddaughter, to whom you’d also denied the family name,” she remarked dryly.
He shook his head. “Not true. Olivia rejected it. Calling herself Juno Vargas was entirely her own idea. She was making a statement.”
“Mm-hmm. Probably because you weren’t in her good books any more than you were in mine.”
“Be that as it may,” he said, impatience putting a sharp edge on each word, “as I was about to say, your long partnership with her was mutually beneficial. For you, it was calming. It gave you purpose, smoothed out most of your rough edges—”
“Only most of them?”
Dennis batted her question away. “It prepared you for the important role you would play in bringing about the Reformation on Earth, as I had always hoped it would. It also gave Juno the necessary confidence in you to step back, making you the face of that social movement. And because one of the ‘ordinary folk’ was its apparent leader, people were willing to sign onto it, and the Reformation was a success. That would not have happened if your last name had been Forrand.”
She couldn’t argue with him there. Angeli gazed expectantly into his eyes, not saying a word.
“The downtrodden have an ingrained distrust of those who wield power and privilege,” he said, “and with good reason, would you not agree?”
“And the Forrands have more power and privilege than they know what to do with. I understand that,” she replied, chilled nearly to the bone and wishing he would get to the point already. “We’ll be consolidating and weaponizing popular unrest. On Earth, revolutions have always been against the upper classes, never begun by them. That explains why it’s a bad idea to send a known member of the Forrand family to talk to them. Okay. Fine. I know the drill. But it still doesn’t answer the question: Why is this my assignment, when I’m sure you have other associates you trust just as much?” …or even more, she added silently.
“Because the Terran Reformation was a rehearsal for what we’re about to do here, and when you’ve got a winning team and a successful strategy, that’s not the time to make changes. You’re going to do for me what you did for Juno Vargas back on Earth—travel around, get disparate groups onside, and lay the foundation for an uprising that will confound and perhaps topple the highest levels of government on the planet. Meanwhile, I’ll be working behind the scenes with a handful of dependable allies, just as Juno did. And when the time comes, the role I’ve played will fade into the background, and you will take your rightful place at centre stage.”
For a moment, she was at a loss for words. Finally, she managed to ask, “You want a Terran to be the face of a Stragori Reformation?”
He chuckled. Combined with the hissing of the waves and the moaning of the wind, it was not a reassuring sound.
“You may have been born on Earth, my dear, but you are half Stragori. And when this is all over, you will be more than a face. You will be a revolutionary hero.”
Angeli bit back her first response. A revolution? The Reformation on Earth had been a bloodless coup—a con worked on the planetary High Council to force them to negotiate with representatives of the Ineligible population, to make concessions, and ultimately to avoid a revolution. But the Terran High Councillors had been flesh-and-blood Human beings, with memories, and emotions, and vulnerabilities that could be exploited. The Stragori Directorate, as she and Isabela and Olivia now knew, was little more than a collection of files on a Thryggian super-computer housed in a top-secret bunker underneath the island. (A computer that some clever radical had apparently already hacked into in order to impersonate Gervais Forrand, the Directorate’s most recent inductee.) Each Director’s memories had been translated into data and stored in a discrete organic matrix that drifted like one of more than a hundred jellyfish in a tank of hyperconductive fluid, also installed beneath the island by the Thryggians.
Could there even be negotiation and compromise when dealing with entities such as this? Or was a revolution with mass murder the only path to change?
As though sensing her reservations, Dennis continued: “According to the public records, the objectors have been nursing their grievances against the Directorate for a very long time. They’re the survivors of a decision that only a computer would have made. Now they live like prisoners, confined to gulags all over the northern land mass.”
“And we’re going to liberate them?”
He smiled. “You’re going to promise them justice. Justice for the eighteen million who reportedly died of toxic poisoning on that damned island while waiting to be transported to a world that was no longer ours to give them. Nothing less than a revolution could ever compensate them for that.
“The Directorate looked at the numbers and unilaterally handed over our entire space colonization program to the inhabitants of another planet. For a computer, it was an either-or. No compromise. No middle ground. That was when many on Stragon realized that we’d surrendered too much power over our lives to a bloodless machine.”
“…and they formed the two factions.”
“Not right away. But they protested strenuously against what was happening on the island. That’s probably the only reason an antitoxin was developed, and now there are a couple million survivors for us to recruit to our cause.”
“To incite to rebellion, you mean,” she pointed out. “Tell me, Dennis, which faction am I part of now? I thought we were moderates, but this plan of yours sounds like something a radical would cook up.”
“Since you’re the one who planted the bomb that destroyed the server and then collapsed the adjacent transit tunnel to fake your own death—”
Angeli’s nails were digging into her palms. “I died on your orders, don’t forget!” she spat. “And I may have planted an explosive device in the computer room, but that wasn’t what killed all those people. What I set was a standard EIS heat grenade, designed to fry the mainframe without harming anyone or anything else, and it was timed to go off in the middle of the night when no one would be around. A blast strong enough to bring down an office building at the height of business hours…? That wasn’t my work, and you damn well know it. I was sick to my stomach when I saw the casualty numbers crawl across the bottom of my screen. Olivia’s plan—”
“—included explosives, and that’s why you agreed to it. Even as a child, you thought blowing things up was great fun.” His shrug was an Oh, well! of acceptance. “Quite honestly, daughter, I don’t think you’re constitutionally capable of moderation. That’s what makes you perfect for something like this.”
They were coming up on the mainland shore.
Angeli had to swallow the taste of bile that had risen in her throat before asking, “The surviving objectors… How much do they know?”
“They don’t hate Terrans, if that’s what you’re worried about. They know where your people are living right now and consider them to be kindred spirits, in more ways than one. Whatever animus the objectors possess is aimed squarely at the Directorate.”
“How can you be sure of that?”
He pulled a data wafer out of his coat pocket. “I have people on the inside. They’ve proven to be reliable sources of information in the past. You’ll be wearing a shell identity I planted among the objectors years ago. Your undercover name will be Eva Moss.”
Of course. Forrands have spies everywhere, she thought bitterly, reaching for the wafer. He placed it deliberately on her palm and closed her fingers over it.
“This is old technology on the rest of Stragon, the only kind an objector will trust. Guard it with your life,” he advised her. “It’s Eva Moss’s biowafer. It will identify you to my agents at each of the gulags.”
“How many gulags are there?”
“Twenty-two. Enough to spread out two million dissidents over an entire land mass and keep them from mounting any sort of unified challenge to the Directorate’s authority. You’ll be visiting each one separately, so figure on spending about a year on the road.”
This assignment had a familiar ring to it. Angeli’s decades-long relationship with Juno Vargas had begun with just such a field trip.
“And will I have a companion on my journey?” she wanted to know.
“No.” He produced a second wafer and showed it to her. “You need to be able to make and execute quick decisions. A shadow would only complicate things. You’ve divested yourself of anything from the mainland, I trust? All traces of advanced technology are gone?”
Her EIS-issued encrypter had come with her from Earth, so as far as Angeli was concerned, it didn’t count as advanced technology from the mainland. She elevated her chin and nodded.
“Good. I shouldn’t need to tell you what will happen if you’re found up there with so much as a signal-jamming device on your person. Keep this one concealed,” he added, and finally gave her the wafer. “It contains a map and a list of the operatives you’re to seek out on the northern continent, along with as much about my plan as you need to know for now, and instructions for contacting me without tripping any security alarms. Can I assume from the size of that tote bag you carry around that you’re ready to travel at a moment’s notice?”
She nodded again.
“Good, because the moment has come. I’ve arranged for someone to meet you on the dock when we land and spirit you away to another ship, where you’ll find everything else you need for the completion of your mission. I’ll expect a brief verbal report when you leave each location,” he continued, “and a full one when you return.”
With that, he spun on his heel and went below.
Angeli was still standing at the railing, her mind aswirl with ever-darkening reflections, as the ferry bumped up gently against the mainland dock.
* * *
Isabela stepped through the front door of the school and found Dr. Reston Quinian, the island’s Supervisor of Education, pacing back and forth in the corridor. Short and slender, he was fairly emanating nervous energy. Quinian had never struck her as being particularly happy in his work—his customary expression was one of disapproval—but today his lean features were even more pinched than usual.
Instinctively, Isabela slowed her steps, envisioning another full day of inspection and criticism of her teaching practices. Or was there another reason for his visit?
He glanced up, frowning, at her approach. Isabela licked her lips and squared her shoulders before greeting him.
“Dr. Quinian, welcome. I was not expecting to see you back so soon.”
“Is there somewhere private where we can talk?” he asked. His voice was deceptively deep. It conjured the image of someone twice his size. Right now it was also taut as a drawn bowstring.
Wordlessly, she led the way into her office and closed the door behind them. When she turned back to face him, a familiar-looking device was sitting on the corner of her desk.
Angeli’s signal jammer.
Isabela’s mouth went dry. “What is that?” she inquired softly.
“I think you know what it is,” he replied, easing himself onto a guest chair. “I got that from a mutual acquaintance of ours before she left on a special assignment for another mutual acquaintance. She assured me that as long as the green light is flashing, we can speak without fear of being overheard. Truth?”
“Truth,” she told him after a pause, and crossed to the chair behind the desk. “And what is it that you’ve come to say that must remain between the two of us?”
He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “I bring you a warning from Dennis Forrand. It’s something that can’t wait. How much do you know about the history of this island?”
More than you or Dennis would even suspect, she thought. Aloud, however, she replied, “A little, based on what I’ve seen. Evidently, it used to be a prison.”
“It was a processing centre for objectors before they were sent off-world. It became a prison after that option for dealing with them expired.”
His choice of words raised red flags at the back of her mind.
“Objectors? Are you talking about dissidents? Exiles?”
“Yes, all of the above,” he confirmed. “According to the public records, there were more than twenty million of them on Stragon at one point. Throwbacks, some called them, because they clung to the old technology, refusing to upgrade when it became obsolete. They formed online communities, then built themselves a private communications network that the intellinet could not shut down or shut out.
“The Directorate saw this as subversion. It responded by enlarging and upgrading its network of spies, connecting undercover agents and civilian volunteers directly to the electronic surveillance grid. The tactic succeeded so well that the network was expanded again, this time to include as many Stragori as possible.”
Isabela stiffened in her chair. “Are you referring to optimization?”
“Yes.” His expression became positively grim. “The procedure had been originally developed for the military, then customized for other fields of work, including espionage. It wasn’t difficult to sell the general public on the advantages of being linked directly to the net—having all that information available at the speed of thought, without any external devices to carry around. Now, roughly ninety percent of us carry the implants… and a fair number of the Terrans on Stragon are optimized as well, living and working on both the island and the mainland. What no one has seen fit to tell them is that they’ve been turned into monitoring gear on legs.”
Isabela felt the colour drain from her face. She’d suspected this all along. The first time Joanne had mentioned that her parents were giving her the implants as a birthday gift, Isabela had wanted to say something to the girl, to warn her… but she’d held back, hoping she was wrong to worry. Now, if Quinian was to be believed, Isabela’s worst fears were confirmed.
Unbidden, fragments of an earlier conversation with Joanne surfaced in her memory.
“…integrated right into my nervous system… The brochure says they’ll last a lifetime… Just one downside, though—once in, they can’t be removed or I might die.”
Isabela swallowed hard. Still, anger kept rising like a scalding tide in her throat. What kind of parents would inflict such a thing on their sixteen-year-old daughter?
“You spend your days among children who are too young for the procedure, so none of them should be a source of concern,” Quinian continued evenly. “However, your teaching assistant…”
“You mean Joanne. She received her implants nearly a year ago.”
“And that’s what Dennis wanted me to warn you about. The procedure is on record. The gift card may have been signed by her parents, but the gift itself was subsidized by a government grant. Think back to when she was posted to your school. It’s a small facility, with only twenty-four students. You ran it on your own for four years without any problems.”
“Other than you, you mean.”
A smile tugged at his lips. “Other than me,” he allowed, then added, “Had you requested an assistant?”
“No. Getting her was a blessing, though. She’s a born educator, quite good with the children, and she has added invaluably to their instruction… Wait a minute. Are you suggesting the Directorate suspected me of something?” she demanded indignantly. “That they put her here purposely to spy on me?”
“If you were the object of their suspicions, you would already be under arrest. What’s more likely is that they were onto someone close to you.” He paused, visibly choosing his words.
Isabela already knew what he was about to imply. She waited silently, unwilling to make this easier for him.
At last, he braced himself and said, “Your husband. You believe his death was not an accident.”
“Correct. I have made no secret of that.”
“Well, you’re right. It wasn’t. And Dennis believes—and I happen to agree with him—that the timing of Joanne’s arrival at your school was no accident either. Be very careful around her, Mrs. Bakshi. Be mindful of your words and actions, and I’ll do the same.”
With that, he got to his feet, scooped up the jammer, and slipped it into his jacket pocket. Isabela stared him out the door, a terrible suspicion writhing at the back of her mind.
She’d been assigned her assistant shortly after Vikram had begun his analysis of the soil at various locations on the island. It was part of a feasibility study, laying the groundwork for a proposal to build hydroponic greenhouses. The concept was sound. Terrans growing their own food would have made the immigrant community more self-sufficient and less of a burden on the Stragori economy. In the course of his field work, however, Vikram had discovered the roof of the secret bunker, the one housing the Directorate… and then he had died, ostensibly while trying to break up a street fight.
Isabela had never believed that official explanation. She knew in her soul that he’d been murdered. But what if she bore part of the blame? Had something she told Joanne, some comment dropped in an unguarded moment, led to her husband’s death? If that were true, however could she live with herself?
* * *
Drew Townsend had never enjoyed waiting, even in his mother’s womb. He’d been born two weeks early, impatient to take his first breath. As a child, he’d bristled at being forced to spin his wheels while others did things for him that he was sure he could have done for himself.
Then, at the age of twelve, he’d been turfed out onto the streets of New Chicago, where the leader of the Warrior Kings gang called the shots. The next six years had been a crash course in self-control. For five years after that, patience had served him well in the confines of a detention cell. He’d also put it to good use after his release, working as a District Security field investigator.
By then, he’d come to see waiting as a necessary evil, one with a payoff at the end. He did it when he had to, but there remained a spark of resentment inside him. Drew had spent nearly his whole life hemmed in by rules he dared not break and orders he dared not disobey, and what was the payoff for all that waiting?
Apparently, it was here and now. Drew was the station manager of Daisy Hub, CEO of The Repository (formerly called the Earth Intelligence Service), and Hak’kor of House Daisy Hub (trusted ally of House Trokerk of Nandor). He was neck-deep in titles and authority, the big hat who made the rules and issued the orders. By rights, his waiting should have been over.
But it wasn’t. Ironically, each of those titles brought with it a myriad of obligations that hung about his shoulders like a heavy woollen cloak, and he seemed to be waiting more than ever these days. Waiting for news. Waiting for a reply. Waiting for a report. Waiting for an arrival, for a departure… Right now, though, he was waiting to learn the outcome of the extraction mission to Stragon, and for the near-constant burning sensation in his stomach to give up and go away.
The spark had reignited a flame. At least, that was the way it felt, like a slow fire inside his rib cage. His gastric ulcer was back. Doctor Ktumba’s diagnosis had been firm. Her instructions had been even firmer.
Just what he needed—more rules to follow. Peachy.
Unable to sit still at his desk any longer, Townsend crossed the Administration and Communications deck to Lydia’s work station. He paused behind her chair and let out a sigh.
“It’s acting up again, isn’t it?” she said.
Lydia Garfield, the Hub’s senior commtech specialist and third in command after Ruby McNeil, swivelled her seat and gazed up at him, her blue eyes brimming with sympathy. “I can order some yogourt for you from the caf,” she offered.
He shook his head. “The antacid tablets in my desk drawer will do for now. Still no word?”
“If everything’s gone according to plan, they’re on their way back and will reach the Gate in roughly a standard day and a half. The Night Cloud is a cloaked ship, Drew. Gorse isn’t going to risk transmitting a message to us from Stragori space.”
“I know. It’s just—”
“The waiting. It’s hard. I understand. She’ll be aboard it, Drew. Your sister will arrive here safe and sound, you’ll see,” Lydia assured him. “You’ll have time to set things right between you.”
He knew that too. Still, the heat inside his rib cage was intensifying.
“Maybe I’ll go down to the caf after all,” he said. “See what the daily specials are. And you’ll notify me…?”
“The second they pop through the Gate, I promise.”
© 2025 Arlene F. Marks
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