She grinned. This was the best part of the job. The case laid out around her, pieces of a puzzle that had yet to be assembled.
All she needed was someone to bounce her ideas off. She had tried the Geek but he was fast asleep, exhausted by his forty-eight hour straight trawl through the archives. Elvis was always a good person to challenge her thinking, but he was down in the engine rooms recalibrating something.
Maybe she needed a fresh young mind.
“Kenzie, could you come into my office please?”
It took the young woman five minutes to arrive from the control room. She entered looking nervous, her arms clutched across her chest.
“You’re not in trouble,” Biddy said with a reassuring smile. “I just wanted you to help me walk through the case.”
Kenzie’s eyebrows shot up. “Of course. Although I’m not sure I can be much help.”
Biddy bit back a tut of irritation. “You’ve been onboard this ship for six months now. You’ve shown yourself to be an adaptable crew member. Remember when you worked out why we were listing during launch last month?”
Kenzie actually blushed. “Well, I went through the original engine schematics to find the faulty valve. But that was engineering. This is... ‘tec work.”
“It’s the same thing. Why do you think Elvis is so good at it? If you can look at a starship engine, analyze the problem and come up with a solution you are halfway to making a good detective.”
“All right, I guess I might be able to help.”
“I’m sure you will. And don’t tell Elvis I said he was good at this. He doesn’t need any more reasons to be big headed.”
“He likes you,” Kenzie said, then blushed again.
Biddy’s jaw dropped open. “And I’ll let that sort of unprofessional comment go once, okay? Just don’t say anything like that again.”
“Sure,” the kid said, although Biddy saw a twinkle of humor in her eye. Biddy was glad the girl was becoming less shy with her, even if this wasn’t exactly how she had wanted it to happen.
“Now, come and have a look at this with me.”
Kenzie looked intently at the screens. “What am I supposed to get from this?”
“We’re starting with the basics. Who is this Augment? What do we know about him?”
“What does the cloud say about him?” Kenzie asked.
“Well, that’s where we hit our first problem. We have no idea what this guy’s real name is. There is no definitive list of Augments.”
“Blessed be,” Kenzie said, then looked a little embarrassed. Biddy pretended she hadn’t spoken.
“As you might imagine, there are plenty of resources collected by the Faithful. And also by the opposition.”
Kenzie wrinkled her nose. “The Knights? I can’t believe you would believe anything they would say.”
Biddy shrugged. “I don’t like them much either, but they did challenge the Augments for power in this sector. And they won. So it would be foolish to ignore them.”
“Okay, but aren’t the Knight’s archives protected somehow?”
“Sure, but we have the Geek. And there’s no system he can’t access. Or so he tells me. And the Knights have a list of active Augments. There’s only three males on the list.”
Biddy clicked the screen and three faces replaced the lines of text on one monitor.
“Let me introduce Augment A: known as Tolly. He’s a big celebrity, as far as the Gods go. Even the Knights seem to kind of respect him. Currently working in the Earthen solar system. Brokering a peace treaty on Mars, according to about forty independent testimonies the Geek found on the cloud.”
“So not our guy.”
“No. Augment B: he’s unaccounted for, so could be the one we’re looking for. Only problem is this guy was in the radiation fallout on Saturn about fifty years ago. Even an Augment would be long dead. The Knights reckon there’s a chance he might be still alive, but he’d be pretty much a vegetable by now. I’ve seen some of the pictures of the guys who survived Saturn. They looked like they’d been in the furnaces of hell. Someone would have mentioned an Augment with a burned up face.”
“Not him?”
“Can’t rule him out, but no, I don’t think so. And here’s Augment C: This guy is a real gem. The Knights reckon he’s a smuggler, but not the kind that trades in dodgy starship fuel. A high-end smuggler, managing gangs from Mars to Alpha Centauri. Smuggling people, mainly kids for the dodgier mining colonies. Not the sort of person you’d like to cross. And a few years ago he dropped off the map. Could coincide with a spell in detainment.”
“You think Augment C is our guy?”
“Our most likely suspect, yes. If we assume the Knight’s list is definitive then he’s the only one that fits the bill. But it’s important not to go for the easiest path. Augments have been around for centuries. We could be looking for one that’s not even on the Knight’s radar.”
“All right.” Kenzie chewed at her thumbnail. “What’s next.”
“One more point before we move on,” Biddy said holding up her hand. “Interestingly, there are six listed female Augments, whereabouts unknown. I’ve put them all in a ‘possible collaborators’ column.”
“Why?”
“Our guy escaped from prison by jumping from a roof onto a drone. There’s no way he arranged all that from his cell. He had help from somewhere, and who better to help a God than a Goddess.”
“Right.”
Biddy sighed. “But just now we simply don’t have time to look into all the other Augments. We’ve got to
