Forty-Nine
FORTY-NINE
The director of Satellite Operations is once again seated behind her heirloom wooden desk.
Cloud Sherae is standing in her usual spot to the side.
There’s no cordial chitchat between the three of them this time.
Minto and her atier stare at Isako as if she’s an apparition.
She can’t blame them; she came straight from one false paradise to another and looks terrible—bruised and disheveled, sand and gravel in her long hair, blood on her clothes, wounds hastily patched.
She recalls how carefully she dressed the first time she was summoned here, how much she looked the part of the veteran atier. That was only a few weeks ago.
The thought almost makes her smile.
Despite Isako’s appearance, Minto stands from her regal desk and comes down nearly to the red line to greet the longkniveswoman like a queen welcoming a returning hero. “I must admit,” she says in her oddly resonant voice, “I truly did believe you were bringing Sandbar Uchi to parley with me.”
Minto chuckles softly, an eerie, inhuman musical tinkling.
Gods of old Earth, that’s still so fucking creepy. Now that Isako’s been around newly recorporalized second stagers and seen what cutting-edge, eighth-generation synthtechnology is capable of, Savannah Minto’s ancient model and the ossified brain within it seem all the more inhuman.
The first time Isako stood in this penthouse garden overlooking the city, she marveled at the profusion of plant life, the warmth of the air, the living birds and fish. The pet cat , for fuck’s sake.
She can’t see the beauty anymore. Only the hypocrisy.
Savannah Minto is a reunionist standing in the way of reunification.
She conquered Astrocom and sent another director to his death to prevent his ambitions from shaking the big ship that she and her jarbrain colleagues sail on so smoothly.
She’s been on the Board of Directors for decades and conspired with her colleagues to keep their knowledge of Earth secret for generations, hidden from the wagemen who’ll never have synthtech, who will never lounge in private gardens with birds and animals, who will never live to see Aquilo as a green planet.
When you can re-create paradise for yourself, you can afford to wait.
Isako considers raging at her client the way she raged at Constance.
Flinging the truth in the jarbrain’s face: This whole time, you were desperate to keep Sandbar Uchi off the Board not because you thought he was a tyrant or a murderer or mentally unfit.
Not because he would stand in the way of ending the Great Silence.
You wanted him gone because you feared the gasblower divisions’ growing power.
You were afraid they would drive Company resources toward priorities that would push your own division to the sidelines right after you emerged victorious from swallowing up Astrocom.
Maybe, on top of all that, you were a jealous bitch.
Compared against you, Uchi was a young, rising star with decades more to spend in power and a synthbody that makes yours look like a toaster.
In the end, it was all so petty.
Forest Greves saw the truth of the reunionist agenda more clearly than she did all along.
For weeks, she’s been resenting him for choosing a final act of grandstanding over a strategic demotion.
But perhaps he simply understood there was no place in the Company for him.
Working for Savannah Minto would’ve been selling his soul.
Isako thinks of everything Ocean Constance said to her in the Agency. About the secrets that aren’t secrets, about death and power, about the cracks in the world and how life goes on.
She meets Minto’s unblinking eyes and tilts wordlessly into a deferential bow. “I apologize for misleading you, Director, but it was necessary.”
“I’m unaccustomed to your unorthodox methods,” Minto admits. “But now I understand why you had to deceive me, in order to protect my position.”
“Cityhab Security officers have already been here.” Sherae doesn’t come forward from her spot. “They determined you were at the scene of the murder and connected your contract back to SatOps.”
“They asked all sorts of questions,” Minto says, “but recordings of our recent conversations proved that I had no knowledge of the danger Uchi was in and was planning to meet with him in good faith and with a guarantee of safety that very afternoon. Brilliant foresight on your part.”
Isako doesn’t indulge her impulse to break into ironic laughter.
The director’s orange cat comes wandering by, stepping delicately along the garden wall.
Minto doesn’t spare it a glance. “Involving United Freelancers in the attack on the Elite Renewal clinic now makes perfect sense as well. You gave them an established motive and a proven recent violent history involving possession and use of firearms. Uchi’s public goading and contempt galvanized them further.
All they needed was a little push into action today, didn’t they?
The right opportunity and a bit of inside knowledge about when and where Sandbar Uchi would be alone and vulnerable. ”
It does sound brilliant. Something a truly cunning atier like the Puppetmaster might come up with.
“I am curious about one thing, however. You were able to lead Uchi away from most of his security detail and out the back door of the building. How did you convince him to go with you?”
She recognizes grief now, as a heaviness that sits in her guts like a sour, undigestible meal.
How different it tastes when it’s flavored with remorse.
“I promised I could protect him. I suggested you’d be willing to keep damaging information secret if it meant a mutual understanding could be reached about his role on the Board. ”
“So he really was hiding something, then.” Minto’s voice ticks up in curiosity.
“Uchi had Gray’s Waste. To hide his illness, he erased and tampered with his medical records. He made the synthtech surgeon at Elite Renewal perform an illegal recorporalization.”
“Remarkable.” Minto’s eyes are fixed and bright. “I was under the impression that the Process could not be performed on a person with a neurodegenerative disease. How did he even survive?”
“Uchi was taking a promising experimental drug that he hoped would be a cure. His atier helped him keep up the lie, including covering for the director’s lapses. He was terminated for his failures.”
And hers. Her client thinks she’s a strategic genius. All she’s been doing is stumbling through the dark. By some sick twist of fate, she accomplished Minto’s objective, yet in the ways that really mattered, she failed.
Savannah Minto stalks away in her marionette gait and returns to her high-backed chair as if retaking a throne.
Smug satisfaction emanates from her bloodless smile.
“Truly, Uchi was no fit candidate for the Board. The leadership of the Company must be unimpeachably sound of mind and body. It’s a shame, though; he once held such promise.
But so much power at a young age is corrupting.
I will recommend to the Executive that SoCon GasPro ought to be divided into more appropriately sized divisions. ”
How would Savannah Minto and her allies react, Isako wonders, if they knew that for the past eight weeks, the Company titan they’ve been thinking of as a tremendous and threatening adversary was a twenty-nine-year-old contractor, a young man who dared to reach for rarified heights he wasn’t supposed to touch?
Would it be, as Constance said, a crack in the foundation of the world?
She’ll never know. Martim died with nothing, but he lived by the Code. Like a true atier, he kept his mouth shut and took the fall. She won’t take that away from him. Let history and the Agency record mark him as a simple footnote in Uchi’s biography rather than a victim and an atrocity.
Let it be over for her, too. “You agree, Director, that I’ve fulfilled the terms of my contract?”
“I must admit, I was quite certain you would fail. Yet you completed your assignment and, in so doing, eliminated a serious threat to the entire Company.” Minto leans back in her chair. “Truly impressive.”
Sherae steps forward. She has the flushed look of chagrin she used to get after failing some difficult training exercise, but she’s older and more poised now, and holding it together admirably with calm, stiff-lipped acceptance.
“Director, I’m not at the level of an elite atier like Isthmus Isako.
When I asked to bid for my position earlier, I did so out of pride and self-interest, but after seeing her results, I can’t deny that her abilities outstrip mine. ”
The younger longkniveswoman winces but goes on determinedly.
“As your atier, it’s my duty to give you rational and unbiased counsel.
Given that your special dispensation from the Agency will soon expire, I have to advise you to cancel my contract and retain my mentor as your atier.
If… if you decide I still have some useful role in SatOps, perhaps I could be subcontracted under her and continue to learn. ”
Sherae drops her head, concealing her expression.
Minto turns to Isako with the jerky-headed movement of one of her colorful songbirds, her green eyes glittering.
“Well? What do you say, atier? I’m willing to offer you a new Principal contract.
A fresh start within my division. After today’s shocking events, there will be chaos and upheaval in the Company.
The balance of power will shift on the Board of Directors.
I could use an atier of your caliber to aid Satellite Operations in navigating the coming challenges. ”
The fact that Minto doesn’t even look at Sherae as she says all this makes Isako want to step across the red line and punch her client in her pixie doll face.
“I told you at the start that I wouldn’t contest your atier for her position.
I’m not taking it now, even if she offers it up like a vastblasted idiot.
I asked for one thing in exchange for fulfilling your expectations.
” She turns to Sherae. “Stand up straight, and have some fucking confidence in yourself. You’re far too young to be talking as if you’re washed up. ”
“Isa,” Sherae says quietly, “I…”
Isako cuts her off. “Don’t thank me.”
Director Minto’s lips purse in disappointment, but she moves her hand in front of the false pocket window in her garden’s brick wall.
The view of the wildflower-strewn field vanishes and is replaced by that painfully familiar document Isako’s seen and delivered more times than she would like to contemplate.
“Permission to resign with special extended bonuses. You’ve certainly earned it. I wish you’d consider my offer of retention, but I respect and applaud your decision.” With a few taps, Minto affixes her electronic seal to the end of the document and sends notice of such to the Agency.
Isako lets out an extended breath. This is it, then. The exit she’s earned from the edge life.
“Thank you for your bequest,” Sherae whispers.
Isako raises her hand to the biosignature box. Three heartbeats pass before she drops it back down to her side. She needed to know she could do it. “I appreciate the sentiment,” she says, “but I’m not quite ready to take the final walk yet.”
Minto’s unblinking green gaze turns on her in surprise before narrowing in suspicion and insult. “You’re choosing another client over me? Which division? I can match whatever offer you’ve received.”
“This was my last contract,” she says. “I’m not taking another.”
Sherae draws back, aghast. “But… you’ll be a ronin .”
“I suppose I will.”
Ronin. Badgeless. Freelancer. Detrit.
Strange, she doesn’t feel all that different.
“Goodbye, Sherae. And good luck. Think it through before you sign an Exclusive.” She can feel Minto’s and Sherae’s stunned, uncomprehending stares on her back as she turns away from them and walks through the doors of the garden.
Cloud Sherae’s two apprentices watch her get into the elevator. The older one is no longer wearing the triggersheath of a novice. A shiny, silver-rimmed black badge sits around his neck.
“Congratulations on passing the licensing exam,” she says to him.
A flicker of surprised gratitude cracks his careful mask of professionalism. “Thanks. I studied videos of you when I was preparing for the longknife proficiency test. You were a big inspiration.”
“I hear they might phase out that part of the exam and make it optional. Maybe even by the time I take it next year,” the younger trainee postulates hopefully. “Any advice on landing a Principal contract?”
“Choose carefully,” she suggests.
The glass doors shut and the elevator whisks her back down to the first floor. She lifts her gaze to the carved slogan as she passes under the massive black marble archway. All Eyes on the Future.
Maya picks up the call. Her face glows pink and she has a towel wrapped around her hair. She’s just come out of the shower by the looks of it. “Mom! I was wondering if you were going to call soon. I guess you’ve been super busy working for that new client, huh? How’s that going?”
“It’s been busy, but I think the worst part is over.” She blinks. Maya’s face blurs. “I have some things to tell you, though. Are you free for lunch tomorrow? You pick the place this time.”