Masterminds Read online

  He didn’t even discuss it with his fellow dome engineers. No one else would have considered millions dead lucky. He really didn’t either. He just knew how much worse the explosions could have been.

  He also didn’t mention his opinion because he didn’t want to give anyone ideas. The entire Moon was braced for a third attack, and if it was still in the planning stages, he didn’t want to give the new attackers a blueprint in successful dome destruction.

  But, because he had been thinking of it, because he had lost Laraba to an earlier explosion, and because he had seen the damage at Tycho Crater (and transposed that damage, in his head, to Armstrong), he had become obsessive about checking Armstrong’s dome.

  He figured no one else was doing it, at least to the degree he was. He started his day early and inspected an area of the dome that he knew no one else would be looking at. He got around the main parts of the dome once every four days, and worried that it wasn’t enough.

  This morning’s inspection had been where the domes of Old Armstrong met the newer domes of the expanded city. Even though the locals referred to Armstrong’s dome as one structure, it was actually many domes that connected on one edge. The openings between domes were seamless—at least to the average resident of Armstrong.

  Ó Brádaigh looked at the edges and seams all the time. The dome sections were built into the seams of these domes, so that any endangered area could be isolated. The other sections were attached to the top of the dome, and came down within seconds.

  Whenever Ó Brádaigh traveled through a dome, he looked up and stared at the sections, stored like folded curtains inside their protective unit. As a younger engineer, he had been assigned section duty—checking the storage container for the section, and the way that the dome itself tolerated the extra weight.

  These days, he looked at all parts of the dome, making certain there were no vulnerabilities that someone could easily exploit.

  And that was what worried him the most: the exploitation of the dome. Day after day, he found himself getting more obsessive about it, not less.

  Last week, he’d started inspecting parts of the dome on his way home as well as before he started work in the morning.

  He knew he probably shouldn’t focus on all that could go wrong, but he couldn’t stop himself. So he tried to reassure himself by doing unscheduled spot checks.

  Like coming down here.

  This particular area of the substructure housed most of the controls for the entire dome system. Some of the controls were ancient, and not used—such as for the airlocks that had existed in Old Armstrong’s original dome. But many of the controls were the most important part of the dome—including the controls for the sections.

  The sections could be controlled with very little effort from above, if one had the right access code or was near an area where a dome breach was occurring. At that area, the dome controls would theoretically become visible, and a citizen could slam a hand or an appendage against them and start a section unfolding.

  Most people didn’t know that, nor did they know that in the crisis four-and-a-half years ago, those controls did not appear. Not that it mattered. On that day, the sections to that part of the dome sensed the threat and came down automatically.

  The automatic controls were programmed here.

  And so were the controls for overrides, and for any official who had access to section Armstrong’s dome. Most of the officials who had access were dead now. No one had replaced Arek Soseki yet. The deputy mayor did not have access, and no one would until the mayoral election, whenever that was going to be.

  The person with the most control was United Domes of the Moon Security Chief Noelle DeRicci. She had control of the sections in Armstrong’s dome, and she had received control of many of the sectioning mechanisms in the other domes as well during the Peyti Crisis, when the local officials didn’t want the responsibility of sectioning their domes in response to the most recent crisis.

  Ó Brádaigh didn’t like the fact that one woman had that much power, no matter how smart and brave the press made her out to be.

  But he knew she was the least his problems. One bomb with a large payload, set against the controls, might send all the sections down or make them inoperable or do something else, something he hadn’t thought of.

  The controls were housed in a reinforced building on the lowest available level of the substructure and, in theory, that building would have survived any one of the blasts that hit the domes in the past four years—the original Armstrong bombing that killed Laraba, and the Anniversary Day bombings.

  But Ó Brádaigh didn’t always believe the theory. He would rather find the bomb before it went off than hope to hell the building held when it did go off.

  All the way down the stairs, he had told himself that such bombings weren’t likely. It was almost impossible for anyone to get down here. Anyone who took the stairs had to show identification on every floor. They also had to recite a series of passwords to get down, starting with that day’s password at the top, and the password for the day before at the next floor, and so on, until they reached the bottom of the stairs.

  Then they needed a security code to get into the substructure itself—a code that changed every hour. They also needed to show a different part of the body for each scan. On some levels it was the palm, on others it was the eye, and in the substructure, it was the palm, eye, and a DNA check.

  Ó Brádaigh had been a dome engineer long enough that he could come down here on his own for no reason except to check. But anyone with less than ten years’ experience as a dome engineer in Armstrong needed permission to come down here—and needed someone like Ó Brádaigh to enter them into the system before they descended.

  The elevators had similar requirements, annoyingly stopping at every floor before reaching the substructure. It was easier on the legs to take the elevator down (and back up) but it was harder on the patience.

  Ó Brádaigh let himself through the three doors with their varying level of security that led to this layer of the substructure. He glanced at the time in the lower part of his left eye.

  He had about fifteen minutes before he had to climb the stairs. He had to pick up Fiona, and he wasn’t about to be late.

  All he had time for was a quick walk around, and to check the exterior of the control building before he had to leave.

  He wished he had more time. He realized as he stepped onto the flat gray platform that extended as far as the eye could see that it might be worthwhile to investigate the walls and floor of this large space as well.

  Someday soon, when he had a few extra hours or when Fiona was with his mother.

  On this day, though, he could only walk to the building, which was almost unnoticeable to the untrained eye. The building’s exterior was designed to look like the wall, and some trick of the design or maybe some nano feature made the building seem two-dimensional until you were standing right next to it.

  He could see the building because there were little shadows in the upper corners that wouldn’t actually be there if the wall were as flat as it seemed.

  He turned on all of his enhancements—the visual ones that saw the building in UV, night vision, heat vision, and on a nano- and chemical level. He was looking for flaws that didn’t get reported to the control room on the ground level of the dome engineering building. He figured if someone was clever enough to put a bomb down here, they would be clever enough to beat the security system that had been installed down here before Ó Brádaigh was born.

  The door to the building opened, and Ó Brádaigh just about jumped out of his skin.

  His immediate supervisor, Vato Petteway, stepped out, then started when he saw Ó Brádaigh.

  “What the hell are you doing down here?” Petteway snapped. He was a thin man, with a hooked nose and a narrow chin. His dark eyes never seemed to miss anything. “I didn’t assign you the substructure.”

  Ó Brádaigh swallowed. His heart was still pounding hard, and
he felt the adrenalin course through him.

  “No, sir, you didn’t,” Ó Brádaigh said. “I just felt the need to double-check the area down here.”

  “Because what, you had a vision of disaster?” Petteway was good at sarcasm. Ó Brádaigh was one of the few engineers who could handle the man. In fact, Ó Brádaigh had prevented dozens of them from quitting over the years, by taking on Petteway himself.

  “It’s not hard to have a vision of disaster these days,” Ó Brádaigh said.

  Petteway’s eyes narrowed. “You’re one of my best engineers, Ó Brádaigh. I’d hate to get rid of you because you’re lurking in places where you don’t belong. Most people would consider your presence down here suspicious.”

  Ó Brádaigh’s cheeks warmed. He hadn’t thought of it that way. But he knew that the best way to handle Petteway was to challenge the man.

  “Most supervisors would be glad that their employees cared enough to check on things even when off the clock.”

  Petteway snorted, shook his head, and pushed the door to the building closed. “Maybe a year ago, your point would be a good one. But right now? Everything seems suspicious.”

  “Yeah,” Ó Brádaigh said, knowing two could play this game. “What are you doing down here?”

  Petteway’s shoulders slumped, as if Ó Brádaigh’s question forced the man to examine his own motivations.

  “I don’t sleep any more, Ó Brádaigh, unless I’ve checked every vulnerable area of the dome at some point during my day.”

  Petteway ran a hand through his thinning hair. No matter how many enhancements he got, the hair thinned after a few years. Ó Brádaigh had seen Petteway go through nearly five enhancements in the time they had worked together.

  “I know,” Ó Brádaigh said. “That’s why I’m here. If I didn’t check, I’d be moving my daughter somewhere safer in the Alliance.”

  “As if there is somewhere safer in the Alliance.” Petteway sighed. “I think we’re all on such high alert here on the Moon that this is probably the safest part of the Alliance—at least at the moment.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Ó Brádaigh said. Then he glanced at the door—or what he could see of the door. It always seemed to disappear in that flat nano-illusion. “I’ve always checked the exterior of this building. What do you think could happen in there?”

  “I don’t know,” Petteway said softly. “I’m past imagining what could go wrong. I never expected clones to bomb the Moon on Anniversary Day. I certainly didn’t expect Peyti lawyers to try to do the same thing thirteen days ago. I’ve given up trying to predict. Now I just follow my instincts. If I feel like checking an area, I check all of it—inside, outside, roof, ceiling, floor, subfloor.”

  He ran a hand through his hair again, and Ó Brádaigh thought maybe he saw some strands come loose. Maybe the problem wasn’t the enhancements after all, but the fact that Petteway pulled out hairs when he was under stress.

  “Sometimes,” Petteway said even more quietly, “it feels like I’m going crazy.”

  Then he realized what he had said. His eyes widened and he added, “Don’t read too much into that.”

  Ó Brádaigh made himself smile. “I think there would be something wrong with you if you didn’t feel that way. I was just thinking as I let myself in here that I had become obsessive about security. Our entire lives are different than they were a year ago. We’re in a place that we couldn’t have imagined then. Of course we’re going to have odd reactions.”

  “Of course.” Petteway tugged at his hair again. “Do you think we should hire security to guard this place?”

  “I think we should have done that a year ago or ten years ago,” Ó Brádaigh said. “But these days, how do we know we can trust the people we hire?”

  “Maybe someone from the Security Office…” Petteway’s voice trailed off.

  “And then we prevent them from being on the surface and seeing a real crime occurring.”

  Petteway frowned at him. “You’ve already thought of this.”

  “That and a million other scenarios,” Ó Brádaigh said. “I figure it’s just safer if I check.”

  Petteway nodded. “I figure the same thing.”

  Ó Brádaigh had never seen his supervisor so vulnerable before. It was disquieting. But then, everything was disquieting nowadays.

  “Normally,” Petteway said, “I’d order you to stop checking the vulnerabilities, but I think that’s what’s keeping us safe. People like you and me, double- and triple-checking everything.”

  “I hope you’re right, sir,” Ó Brádaigh said. “I really hope you’re right.”

  SIX

  FLINT RAN A hand through his blond curls. He felt slightly breathless, as if someone had just knocked him off his feet. He knew why: the name Zagrando had brought back those days when Flint discovered that Rhonda was dead and that Talia existed.

  “What happened?” Talia asked yet again. She had stood up as if she were about to leave the kitchen of the Security Office. Only she still clutched a glass nearly full of that lime drink. “You look upset.”

  Flint shook his head. “Not upset, exactly. But I do need to talk to Noelle.”

  “Can I come with you?” Talia asked.

  That was a question, wasn’t it? Did Flint believe Talia strong enough to handle new changes or did he try to protect her?

  He had to make the decision quickly.

  He had to make a lot of decisions quickly.

  “Yes,” he said after a moment. “You can come with me to see Noelle, as long as you don’t say anything.”

  “Why?”

  He looked at her. “You’ll understand in a minute.”

  Without looking at Talia, he headed into the corridor. All day he’d been concerned about Talia’s status as a clone, especially since the two crises on the Moon had been caused by clones. The hatred of clones was at an all-time high, and that made him afraid for his daughter.

  Not even the chief of Moon security, his former partner Noelle DeRicci, whom he trusted, knew that Talia was a clone. Now, with everything so very different, he preferred to keep it that way.

  Flint glanced over his shoulder. Talia was following him. She’d managed to set that sickly green drink down before she stepped into the corridor.

  DeRicci’s assistant, Rudra Popova, stood up as Flint approached. Her long black hair glistened in the light. She was clutching a crumpled bag that had probably held her lunch.

  “A few minutes ago, you said I could see Noelle,” Flint said. “Can I still?”

  “No one’s in there besides her,” Popova said. “Let me find out if she wants to—”

  Flint didn’t wait for Popova’s response. He shoved the doors to the office open, and as he did, he heard Popova finish softly in a tone that said she knew Flint was no longer paying attention,

  “—see you….”

  He waited for Talia to join him, then he closed the door.

  DeRicci stood near the windows. They ran floor to ceiling. Once they’d been the focal point of her office. Now, the mess along one wall caught Flint’s attention first.

  Mostly the mess was a meter-high pile of food cartons. Fortunately, they had nanocleaners inside them, or the stench in the office would be unbearable. As it was, there was a bit of an unclean funk, like the dorm room of a poor college student who couldn’t afford the university’s cleaning bot services.

  He probably should remind her to clean them. She would have to go around some of them to get to the weapons cabinet on the far wall.

  He wondered if she ever thought about that or if she had forgotten the cabinet was even there.

  “Miles?” DeRicci said as she turned around. “Rudra hadn’t said you were here.”

  Talia had been right; DeRicci looked like she hadn’t slept in months. Earlier, Flint had seen how tired and gaunt DeRicci was getting, but he hadn’t noticed it until Talia had pointed it out.

  At some point, DeRicci might snap in just the way that Talia had.<
br />
  “Talia,” DeRicci said, nodding to his daughter in greeting.

  Talia raised a hand in a hello, but—true to her promise to Flint—didn’t say a word.

  “I assume this is important?” DeRicci asked Flint.

  “Yes,” he said. He walked deeper into the room. That funk—sweat, clothes that needed cleaning, blankets that probably hadn’t been washed since this all began—was worse the closer he got to the room’s center.

  “This is going to be hard to explain,” he said. “I just received word through an old link from a police detective from Valhalla Basin.”

  Talia’s head turned toward Flint so fast that she almost lost her balance. She took a step to steady herself.

  “He had helped us when Talia’s mother was kidnapped,” Flint said.

  Talia said, “Detective Z—?”

  Flint held up a finger, silencing her, and then sent along their links, Talia, you’re here because I asked you not to talk.

  “Let me, Talia,” he said out loud. “I have a lot of questions about this communication, but I don’t have time to deal with them.”

  He didn’t wait for Talia to nod or acknowledge his correction. He kept his gaze on DeRicci. “This man says he’s in this solar system, and he’s coming in—his word, ‘hot’—with information that we need here on the Moon. He wants to land in the port, but he doesn’t have the proper identification.”

  “Why not?” DeRicci asked.

  “Because,” Flint said, “official records say he’s dead.”

  Talia put a hand over her mouth. Her eyes teared up. He should have warned her. He mentally kicked himself.

  Is he? she sent.

  I have no idea, he sent back. Let me deal with this now. Questions later.

  She nodded.

  DeRicci, who, as usual, missed nothing, saw Talia’s movement and clearly knew that Talia and Flint were communicating on their links.

  “Do you have reason to believe this man is who he says he is?” DeRicci asked.