I was fascinated by the way Yuri and Callum resurrected their ancient conflict, shouting over each other, bickering with barrages of obscenities about trivial points and who was responsible for what, with neither giving ground. When the whole uncensored account was finally aired, I’d learned very little that I hadn’t already accessed in Connexion’s secure files.
From my tactical standpoint, Callum had always been a good suspect for an alien agent. I’d wondered about the whole “died in an Albanian chemical plant explosion” 2092 death certificate, along with the rest of his Emergency Detoxification crew. The Berat “disaster” was on the British government’s official births and deaths registry for all of them. Then he and Savi officially popped up again in 2108, in the Delta Pavonis system, with their kids in tow, as if nothing untoward had happened and his death had been an unfortunate bureaucratic misunderstanding. He was listed as being a senior technical manager for the Nebesa habitat construction project.
That discontinuity was precisely the kind of record-keeping mistake I was looking for. Undercover agents assuming the identity of the recently deceased had been standard practice within the intelligence community dating all the way back to the twentieth century. And Callum is well placed. Ainsley recognized his drive and ability a century ago; since then he’d worked his way up the Utopial ladder to personal technology advisor to Emilja Jurich herself, one of the original Utopial movement founders. It put him in a perfect position to feed their senior council’s growing xenophobia toward the Olyix, had he been an alien agent.
The hostile policies of the human elite toward the Olyix have been growing steadily, ever since the
The conclusion we came to is that a very different alien species—an ancient enemy of the Olyix? No one knows for sure—arrived undetected at Sol (time uncertain), and has been busy insinuating their way into positions of influence. And my real task in the Connexion Exosolar Security Division is to expose their possible agents.
And now, with his “death” explained and even confirmed by my boss, Yuri, it’s likely not Callum. Obviously, no Earth company or Sol system habitat would employ him after 2092. But the emergent Utopials with their ideological goal of a pure and decent post-scarcity society, with a correspondingly technology-heavy infrastructure, were an ideal choice. Delta Pavonis welcomed everyone who rejected the Universal culture that dominated Earth and their terraformed planets. Which, actually, made the Utopial society his only choice.
“Did Savi recover?” Loi asked. He was sitting at a table with Jessika and Eldlund, where the three of them had remained silent the whole time.
Callum stirred from his sojourn into the bitter past, and it took his heavy gray-green eyes a moment to focus on his old adversary’s assistant. “Yes, thank you. Savi recovered. We were together for over a quarter of a century, even had a couple of children. So yes, it was worth it.”
Yuri merely grunted and downed another shot of arctic-cold Tovaritch vodka. The stewards had been providing him with a steady supply of the tiny frosted glasses all evening. I was beginning to think my boss had a special peripheral to filter out alcohol toxicity. He certainly didn’t betray any signs of being drunk, apart from his ever-shortening temper.
Alik seemed to have the same resilience—or peripheral. He was sitting back in his chair, on his third glass of bourbon. His eyes were almost closed, but that didn’t fool me; he’d been deeply absorbed by the confrontation.
Kandara, by contrast, was sitting straight-backed, fearsomely attentive from start to finish. “I had no idea Zagreus was a dark rendition site to begin with,” she said.
“History,” Yuri grunted. “The Conestoga asteroid went public with the penal colony’s existence three years later. Exactly as the project’s instigators always intended. And as a registered independent government, Conestoga couldn’t be penalized in any international court the way corporations could.”
“Government, my arse!” Callum said gruffly. “Conestoga was a chunk of valueless rock a hundred meters in diameter, in a trans-Jupiter orbit, with an automated industrial base that had a dormitory module bumped on. Total population: fifty.” I watched him eyeing the three assistants in the lounge, anxious for them to understand, to take his side. “Every one of them was a corporate lawyer.”