Pathfinder Read Free Page B

happened to intelligence personnel after years of mindless drudgery spent slogging through data.
    While she misdirected Benjamin, she wondered why the Terran League would really send Dr. Istaga to G-145. Her suspicions screamed, because Istaga is Andre Covanni . Andre was the cover name for a shadowy legend in the intelligence field: TerraXL’s most effective wartime operative, whose penchant for causing excessive civilian casualties made him a war criminal in Autonomist eyes. Andre had also specialized in assassination, performed after covert insertion behind enemy lines.
    As Benjamin tapped to unlock the doors to the holding cells, she glanced at the cam-eye view ports. The Pilgrimage III held the isolationists who had boarded and taken it. The converts and moles who had helped them were detained instead far away on Beta Priamos Station, above the moon Priamos, orbiting the gas giant Laomedon.
    The cam-eyes showed ten men, nine of them sharing cells with open bars and only one man in a solitary room. Dr. Tahir Dominique Rouxe had asked for special protection from his tribal brethren. Because he had failed to carry his father Abram’s instructions out to completion, he claimed he would be a target for abuse, perhaps even murder.
    Whether Tahir had botched his mission was questionable; he had still armed and detonated the stolen TD weapon, intending to escape and leave the other inhabitants in the solar system cut off from civilization and frying under an enraged sun. Only Ariane’s act of pushing the detonation into N-space had minimized damage, and thwarted his father’s plan.
    For his cooperation, albeit after his crimes, Tahir had an enclosed private cell as well as controlled ComNet access. In the cam-eye view, he looked comfortable, sitting on his bed and reading his slate. It was a child’s slate: soft, flexible, and with restricted functions. Pilgrimage security filtered everything that went to it.
    “Okay.” Benjamin groaned and picked up the spit shield. “Let’s go. I’ve got the scrubbers going on maximum.”
    She nodded in sympathy. Benjamin hadn’t volunteered for this job. The G-145 takeover attempt had shocked the Pilgrimage line and reverberated through the other generational ship lines as well. No longer could they consider their ships or their newly opened solar systems to be neutral territory. Even Benjamin’s security “uniform,” light gold coveralls with a shoulder patch, was a new concept. Before the takeover attempt, there’d been no permanent security force on the generational ship.
    The crew of this generational ship hadn’t wanted to build these cells. Commander Meredith protested the Pilgrimage III had “secure quarters for self- destructive and mental-health cases,” but AFCAW advisors toured the facilities and deemed them inadequate. A new brig had to be built. It had to be managed, logically, by a new security force.
    Open barred cells lined one side of the corridor they entered. The prisoners immediately noted her uniform, and the black and blue of AFCAW’s Directorate of Intelligence provoked outright hatred. They must have learned the Directorate of Intelligence, in the form of Major Kedros and Master Sergeant Joyce, had killed Abram and stymied his plans for getting his own solar system. The clean transparent shield Benjamin carried was soon spattered with spit as they neared the end of the corridor. As Ariane ignored the shouted insults, she glanced at Benjamin, seeing his nose and lip twitch. Prisoner hygiene was adequate for her, but the faint tangs of desperation, hate, and sweat offended the crèche-get.
    The spit shield was slimy by the time they reached the safe end of the corridor. At Tahir’s cell door, Benjamin used his public password for voiceprint analysis and applied his thumbprint.
    “Rouxe hasn’t been violent, but I’ll still wait and check every half hour. For right now, the node isn’t recording. Knock when you want to leave.”
    Tahir stood as she