Звезда Пандоры

Adam never did know where Bradley got half of his information. But it had always been utterly reliable. He should abandon the mission right now.

Except… it had taken eighteen months to plan and organize. Dummy companies had been established on a dozen worlds to handle the disguised machinery exports to Far Away, routing and rerouting them so that there would be no suspicion and no trail. A lot of money had been spent on preparations. And the Guardians wouldn’t receive another shipment of arms until he could set one up. Before he did that, he needed to know what had gone wrong this time.

They had been so close, too. Rachael Lancier’s last call confirmed that she had put together about two-thirds of the list. So close.

Maggie Lidsey’s car drove her into the headquarters building underground parking lot an hour before she was due on shift. She’d been working longer hours ever since the case started. It wasn’t just to curry favor with Paula Myo; she was learning a lot from the Chief Investigator. The woman’s attention to detail was incredible. Maggie was convinced she must have array inserts, along with supplementary memorycells. No aspect of the operation was too small for her to show an interest in. Urban myth certainly hadn’t exaggerated her dedication.

The elevator in the lobby scanned her to confirm her identity: only then did it descend to the fifth basement level where the operations centers were situated. The Elvin team had been codenamed Roundup, and assigned room 5A5. Maggie was scanned again before the metal slab door slid aside to admit her. The interior was gloomy, occupied by three rows of consoles with tall holographic portals curving around the operator. Each one was alive with a grid of images and data ribbons. Laser light spilled out from them in a pale iridescent haze. A quick glance at the ones closest to the door showed Maggie the familiar pictures of the buildings that Rachael Lancier used to run her car dealership from, along with shots from the team’s two shadow cars showing Adam Elvin’s taxi as they followed him through midtown.

Maggie requested an update, and quickly assimilated the overnight data. The one item that stood out was the encrypted message delivered to Elvin’s e-butler through the Westpool Hotel node. She saw Paula Myo sitting at her desk at the far end of the room. The Chief Investigator seemed to get by on a maximum of two hours’ sleep per day. She’d had a cot moved into her office, and never used it until an hour after both main targets had retired for the night. And she was always up an hour before the time they usually got out of bed. The night shift had standing orders to wake her if anything out of the ordinary happened.

Maggie went over to ask about the message.

“It came from a onetime address in the unisphere,” Paula said. “The Directorate’s software forensics have traced its load point to a public node in Dampier’s cybersphere. Tarlo is talking to the local police about running a check, but I’m not expecting miracles.”

“You can track a onetime address?” Maggie asked. She’d always thought that was impossible.

“To a limited degree. It doesn’t help. The message was sent on a delay. Whoever loaded it was well clear.”

“Can the message encryption be cracked?” Maggie asked.

“Not really, the sender used folded-geometry encryption. I logged a request with the SI, but it said it doesn’t have the resources available to decrypt it for me.”

“You talked with the SI?” Maggie asked. That was impressive. The Sentient Intelligence didn’t normally interface with individuals.

“Yes.”

There was nothing else forthcoming.

“Oh,” Maggie said. “Right.”

“It was a short message,” Paula said. “Which limits what it could contain. My guess is it was either a warning, a go authorization, or a stop.”

“We haven’t leaked,” Maggie said. “I’m sure of it. And they haven’t spotted us either.”

“I know. The origin alone seems to rule out a mistake by any of your officers.”

“The Socialist Party does have a number of quality cyberheads, they might have noticed our scrutineer programs shadowing Murphy’s e-butler.”

Paula Myo rubbed a hand over her forehead, pressing hard enough to furrow up the skin. “Possible,” she conceded. “Although I have to take other factors into consideration.”

“Yes?” Maggie prompted.

“Classified, sorry,” Paula said. Even though she was tired, she wasn’t about to confide her concerns to anybody. Although if Maggie was any kind of detective she should be able to work it out.