3
“Everything came together very quickly,” Wallace explained. “The Shima had won an expedition through the Fountain when it next opened. Seventy-two hours ago they were informed by the Rhya that the opening was imminent and they needed to have a ship ready at Tor-Betree or they’d forfeit their position.”
“I still don’t understand how we came into the picture,” I said. “The Shima have their own ships and their own archaeologists. Why do they need us?”
“They won’t say, of course, but our people think that the Shima were either caught unaware or had some kind of internal breakdown. Our models had the Fountain re-opening in 2363 at the earliest. Maybe the Shima made the same assumption. Now they can’t get a ship there in time. That’s one hypothesis.”
“What’s the other—the internal breakdown?”
Wallace leaned back in his chair and looked out the window. “I don’t know. It’s just a rumor. Power struggles. They have a new chancellor. Qa’Ammit. He’s a hard-liner. Hates the Mayir even more than old Tanedj.”
“The Mayir? What do they have to do with this?”
“They won a slot as well. Along with the Faiurae. Stiff competition.”
I knew a fair amount about the Mayir Crusader party. They had roots going back several hundred years to the early 21st century’s neo-fascist “Greatness” movement. The Mayir had a disturbingly large number of supporters who all opposed egalitarianism and advocated the doctrine of human supremacy and the ejection of all non-human races from the Empire. For some reason that wasn’t entirely clear to me, they had singled out the Shima as their first target, claiming that they were “parasitic” and their presence within the Empire led to moral degradation.
I wondered if their presence had something to do with the fact that we were a Shima-backed expedition.
Wallace didn’t have the answers. But the Beck Salvage team had been scrambling.
“It’s between us and Allegro,” Wallace said. “We have our final presentation tomorrow morning at Tor-Betree. That’s where you come in.”
“Tomorrow morning? That’s not enough time to prep, you know that.”
“That’s what we’ve got, Jannigan. We’re leaving immediately. Piettow will run AL on the journey over. Gemma’s coming as well. She’ll make sure you look good for the meeting.”
“I can’t believe this.”
He clapped me on the shoulder. “Believe it. We get this contract, we’re set for life. It’s what your dad would have wanted.”
It was midnight before we got to Odiaatha, the spaceport orbiting Anglad. There we boarded the company’s liner and set off towards the jump point to the Endilon system. While most of the other members of the team relaxed and had a nice drink or two, I was rushed to a stateroom that had been converted into a knowledge tank. Dr. Aman Piettow was there with a few assistants who had been set up with portable AL workstations.
I looked around the crowded room. There wasn’t even a proper cradle here. “Is this going to even work?” I asked.
“We’ll be fine,” Piettow said. “Voss ran some tests already. Almost set.”
Piettow was a tall man, a bit thin and somewhat stooped. In his mid-50s, I guessed. And he looked it. No cosme for Piettow. Not his style. The doctor was strictly a behind-the-scenes type of guy. But he knew his stuff.
Wallace had lured him away from an educational think-tank shortly after I was “hired,” and within a year Piettow had created and staffed Beck Salvage’s brand-new accelerated learning department. It was mostly to support me in my new role, so Piettow and I ended up spending a fair amount of time together.
He checked a datapad. “When was the last time you were in? April? Does that sound right?”
“I think so.”
“Okay, we’ll overlap March. Just a little. We’re only going to do high-level ambience. We don’t have time for much else. We need to get into the meat of the briefing.”
What Piettow called ‘ambience’ was topical knowledge that someone like my dad would pick up on a day-to-day basis. Some of it was work related, but a lot of it was just things like sports scores, current events, and pop culture knowledge. There was a lot of overlap with what I knew anyway, but Piettow’s data was skewed towards someone of my dad’s age, social position, and history. I didn’t give a shit about cloud polo, for example, but my dad was fascinated by it.
Instead of a cradle, I had to stretch out on the stateroom’s bed. It was comfy enough, but all the bio interfaces were a hodgepodge of fiber and cable running out of portable equipment boxes.
“Hey, Jannigan.”
I turned to see Essida, Piettow’s young assistant, a redhead with a lot of attitude. One of my favorite people at Beck Salvage.
“They dragged you out on this fire drill too, Ness?”
“I heard it was a big deal,” she said.
“It is a big deal,” Piettow said. “And we need to get started. So, Jannigan, if you please…” He motioned to the bed.
I leaned over to Essida and whispered, “Any chance I could get some whiskey or something? I know Wallace must have some Aberlochy stashed around here somewhere.”
She laughed. “Yeah, I’m not sure that would go too well with the neurocrene cocktail you’re getting, but I’ll think about it.”
“You’re no fun.” I winked at her.
Ness finished hooking me up while some of the other techs completed the diagnostics. They all worked quickly without the usual banter or chit-chatting. Even Ness seemed much more serious than usual. I could feel the tension and sense of urgency.
One of the techs used some sort of imaging device to take my body measurements. Apparently, while I was getting facts stuffed in my brain Gemma’s team would be doing some final tailoring on the outfit they had for me.
“You ready?” Piettow asked. He had a weird look on his face.
“Let’s get it over with.”
Piettow nodded to Essida, who touched a few commands on her datapad.
“Sweet dreams,” she said.
Piettow’s AL drugs always made me feel cold. Physically cold, I mean. Back at the knowledge tank
