“That’s encouraging to hear.” Durant, the Chief Benefits Officer, finally broke his silence. “One final question, Doctor. Is this a weapon?”
Elsa coughed into her fist. “I’m afraid I’m not able to speak to that hypothesis, sir.”
“I can.” Tyson stepped back into the spotlight, gently crowding Elsa back to the side. “Ageless is the victim of a coordinated, sophisticated attack, Teegarden being only one prong of it. I assume you’ve all read my memo about our efforts to identify the source of the leak about the Teegarden outbreak even before I was notified. But what I haven’t had time to tell you yet is I had lunch today with Ms. Sokolov. She confirmed with me in confidentiality that the rumor about a Xre incursion on Grendel is true. We really did have a Xre warship cross the Red Line in our backyard two weeks ago.”
A pall fell over the board. Foz was the first to relocate her voice. “What were our losses?”
“Negligible. Our cruiser lost a pair of drones and a few decoys driving the enemy off. They didn’t get anywhere near our investment.”
“That’s not very comforting,” Durant said.
“You haven’t heard everything.” Tyson realigned one of his cufflinks. “I discovered later that our server during lunch wasn’t a server at all, but an operative eavesdropping on our conversation. For whom, I have no idea, but I’m almost certain she was the one to share the intel with INN. Methuselah, indeed probably Lazarus itself, is compromised until we find the source of these leaks and plug it.”
“In the plumbing sense, or the bullet sense?” Nakamura asked.
“I’m flexible.”
“I have a question,” Foz said. “If this is such a high-level conspiracy, why did they allow the genetic modification of the bacteria to be so easily uncovered?”
“It wasn’t easy,” Elsa jumped in defensively. “It was a bitch of a process that took me a week of sequencing and sample runs. I just happen to be really good at my job. Better than my salary, if we’re being honest.”
“How much better?” Tyson asked.
The question threw Elsa off-balance. “I—I don’t know,” she stammered. “Thirty percent?”
“Done.” Tyson typed a note into his wrist display. “Now, do you mind? I’m in the middle of a thing.”
“Right, sorry.”
“Should’ve said fifty.”
“What?”
Tyson held a finger up to his lips. “Anyway, now that we know these leaks and saboteurs exist, the only question is what to do about them.”
“Lock down the spaceports,” Nakamura said. “Tell air traffic control to freeze travel into or out of the system until we can do a complete sweep of the population and isolate the operatives.”
“And start rumors that containment has broken on the Preakness, start a public health panic?” Lassalle, the CFO, said, finally joining the conversation. “If you want to see our overnights drop a hundred points by morning, that’s how to do it.”
“Rene is right.” Tyson took back the initiative. “Besides, such a drastic action would tip off our foes that we’ve discovered their scheme and give them time to erase evidence and bury bodies. Time we can’t afford to give them if we’re going to make these charges stick at a full corporate tribunal.”
“What about the Xre incursion?” Foz asked.
“An instance of terribly unfortunate timing.”
“For us. Awfully convenient timing for whoever’s behind this.”
“I recognize that,” Tyson conceded. “But the Xre see humans as a monolithic block; they don’t differentiate between corporate entities. That’s why we had to create the fleet in the first place. Besides, how would you bribe a Xre? With a crate of live bugs? They don’t even have a concept of money.”
“Point taken.”
“I know it looks suspicious, but I just don’t see how it comes to pass. It took almost three years of incessant negotiation after the Intersection War just to figure out what the hell they wanted to negotiate over. Besides, if the Xre Grand Symphony really did decide to conspire against Ageless individually, there isn’t a good goddamn we could do about it. So I’d prefer to stick to the wildfires we have a hope of putting out.”
“That’s fair.”
“To that end, we have to proceed quietly to avoid the panic Rene mentioned, and to keep our quarry from realizing they’re being hunted in turn. We have three different lines of inquiry to follow: the communications leak between the Preakness and the Immortal Tower, the server-turned-spy, and now whoever engineered the bacteria. I’m already pursuing all of them as aggressively as discretion allows. We need to be patient until something turns up in our nets.”
The room fell silent while each board member considered what they’d just heard. Finally, Nakamura spoke. “Motion to approve Tyson’s approach. Is there a second?”
“Seconded,” Foz said.
“It’s to a vote, then.”
Everyone thumbed at their consoles to register their secret ballot. Three in favor, two opposed, one abstention. Good, Tyson thought. He wouldn’t have to be the official tiebreaker for his own proposal. Still, the twin “nay” votes irked him. For a moment, he considered letting Paris loose into the system to see who’d cast them, but decided against it. For the time being.
“Thank you, friends. We will continue on the course, and I will make sure to keep you all abreast of any developments. But I must reiterate the importance of confidentiality. Until we catch the perpetrators here on Lazarus, we have no idea who’s listening. That said, I won’t keep you from the evening’s pleasures any longer. Good night.”
With a goodbye wave of Tyson’s hand, the ghosts returned to the fog. Then, the room’s lights returned to normal levels to reveal Elsa leaning on Tyson’s desk.
“Are board meetings always like that?”
“No, no. Not at all. There’s usually more cursing. Are you all right? You look a little flush.”
“I just gave a presentation to the seven most powerful
