“Mage Ulla Roxana Lafrenz,” Roslyn identified the headshot. “Mars-born Mage by Blood. Graduated from Curiosity City University’s thaumaturgy program with a focus on biomagic. Proceeded to acquire a medical doctorate and become a Mage-Surgeon.”
She grimaced as the two Marines reached the next part of Lafrenz’s bio.
“At the age of thirty-two, she was identified as a member of the White Star Mage supremacy organization,” Roslyn continued. “Accused of no less than six murders, she fled Mars less than six hours ahead of a warrant for her arrest and disappeared.
“Later intelligence showed that she appeared in the Republic as a protégée of Samuel Finley eight years ago,” she concluded. “On the other hand, she vanished again from even most Republic records four years ago—around when her name started showing up in the local corporate ownership documents.”
“We might just have our lab head?” Mooren asked.
“We might. At the very least, we have a senior Prometheus Mage, a Mage-Surgeon heavily involved in the development of the original brain-extraction technology, who appears to be on this planet,” Roslyn told her subordinate. “If all we do here, Sergeant, is find Lafrenz, we will have made our efforts more than worth it.”
She gestured at the pages of ownership listings they were looking at. Corporate ownership was a matter of public record in most human space, if not necessarily easy to access—or useful, unless you knew exactly what you were looking for.
“It also gives us a second name to look for in this damn haystack,” she told the other two. Most of the Marines were just holding up walls at this point, but Knight and Mooren were helping.
Herbert had helped, but the pilot was now back at the shuttle making sure their gear was still where it was supposed to be.
“Somewhere in all of this is a pattern that explains why the man behind Project Prometheus bought up half a billion Republic pounds reliant worth of stock on the most isolated planet in the Republic of Faith and Reason.”
Roslyn shook her head
“I’m not seeing it yet,” she admitted. “But it has to be here.”
Whatever pattern was hidden in the data didn’t reveal itself after a single day of three analysts poring through it. Roslyn was able to pull out several more names of people who were involved in large percentages of the businesses and even numbered companies, but none of those appeared to lead anywhere.
She had three names of people who were definitely not in the Sorprendidas System—in one case because he’d been publicly tried and shot on Chrysanthemum during the slow dissolution of the Republic’s government.
Two more names—a pair of sisters, she guessed—didn’t seem to exist. At all.
One was a construction magnate with her fingers in practically every pie in Nueva Portugal. The woman wasn’t necessarily untouchable—Roslyn had a Warrant of the Mage-Queen’s Voice, after all—but she wasn’t going to be the first place the Mage-Lieutenant Commander started hunting.
People who owned provincial governors were generally difficult to interrogate.
As night fell over Nueva Portugal, Roslyn was starting to think that Ms. London O’Berne was their best option. If nothing else, if O’Berne was innocent, she could provide them with a lot of internal documents from the companies in question. Documents that might just give them answers MISS hadn’t been able to access.
“I do wish we had the work the MISS agents did,” Mooren said grimly. “This is enough outside my area that I’m worried about missing things, but even if we’re doing it right, we’re duplicating work they already did.”
“I know,” Roslyn agreed. “But we have to do it anyway. None of the reports I had gave us a smoking gun and Killough’s apartment was a public and wasteful bust.”
The Marine grunted.
“So, what do we do?”
“We take a break,” Roslyn decided. “Take Knight and half the team and go find a meal somewhere. I’ll keep the other half here for security until you get back, then do the same.”
She shook her head.
“There’s no point in burning ourselves dry. We’ve been on-planet for a day.”
“And we already blew up a bomb in the sky above the city,” Mooren replied. “Aren’t we making an impression.”
With the Marines providing security or gone, Roslyn was alone in the hotel room. She was still staring at the data, trying to see if she could divine which of the several hundred construction projects Finley’s people had been involved in had concealed a secret lab.
Nothing in the data was leaping out and providing exact information, and she sighed, pouring herself a glass of water as she looked at a holographic map of the city. If she had a battalion of Marines, she could send them off to inspect every site. With a squad, that wasn’t happening.
There was everything from parks to office towers to entire residential suburbs on the list. Finley and Lafrenz had run everything through numbered companies, but the MISS agents had cracked open the ownership on those.
Without that starting point, Roslyn figured she’d have been completely lost, public corporate documents be damned. With it, she was merely convinced she was looking at a massive amount of data that had to have an answer buried in it somewhere.
Enough of an answer, at least, to have justified killing four Martian agents.
She sipped her water and was considering calling the hotel desk to have something stronger sent up when her wrist-comp buzzed.
The icon was from Huntress’s general communications department, which seemed…odd.
“Mage-Lieutenant Commander Chambers,” she answered it crisply, allowing the device to scan her face for a holographic video call. An image of Lieutenant Commander Frost appeared in front of her, the blond officer looking amused.
“Commander,” he greeted her with a lazy attempt at the salute her Medal of Valor demanded. “How’s the surface?”
“Warm and cozy,” Roslyn replied carefully. She couldn’t speak about her mission or her frustrations. “What’s going on, Frost?”
“I have a message that came in without any headers or directional information,” Frost told her, his tone slightly more serious and surprisingly soft. “I managed to keep it
