Home Front (Star Kingdom #7) - Lindsay Buroker Page 0,69

fight down a yawn. He’d left the party before it ended, though it had been far harder to slip away than he’d expected—he’d found himself unexpectedly well known and uncharacteristically popular. It was late, both by station time and ship time on the Dragon, but since he’d gotten that message from Qin about a possible mercenary raid on Stardust Palace, he didn’t feel he could wait for morning to get started.

“It’s that big ugly box with all the wires sticking out of it, Professor.” Faramarz waved to a station behind the trapdoor.

“Oh.” Casmir didn’t like to apply subjective adjectives about aesthetics to machinery, but the box was ungainly. And hot-wired into an existing scanner console. That answered his question about whether it was hardware or software. It would have been nice to find a program he could easily copy, but he hadn’t expected that.

The blocky housing hid its interior. Would these people allow him to open it up, take a few thousand pictures, and do his best to create a schematic?

“It’s a prototype,” Samar said. “I gather that’s why it was acceptable that it arrived looking like a ten-year-old’s science-fair project.”

“It does work,” Faramarz said, “so there’s that.”

“Mind if I take a look?” Casmir patted the tool satchel that he’d stopped by the Dragon to pick up.

“Just don’t break anything. That’s now the most expensive piece of equipment we’ve got.”

Casmir nibbled on his lip. What would she consider breaking? He would have to open up the housing and start removing parts in order to find and record everything.

“If I give you a security tip about a possible threat, would you let me unplug it for an hour?” Casmir asked.

“Uh.” Faramarz frowned at Samar.

“Would you give us the tip even if we said no?” Samar asked curiously.

“Yeah. It just came in—” Casmir waved to his chip, “—or I would have shared it earlier.”

“You’re not a very good negotiator.”

“I know. But I’m on your station currently, so I’d like for it to be as prepared as possible in the event of hostilities.”

“What hostilities?” Faramarz asked.

Casmir explained the information he’d gotten from Qin. “The source of this information is… unknown to me. This is one of those I-heard-it-from-a-friend-who-heard-it-from-a-friend instances, but perhaps if you have some intelligence analysts on the station, you could have them investigate.”

“Intelligence analysts?” Faramarz looked at Samar again. “We have spies who specialize in corporate fact-finding and espionage among our Miners’ Union competitors. I don’t think we have agents placed among any mercenary organizations.”

“A failing we shall have to remedy,” Samar said.

“Before or after you find enlightenment among the cosmos?” Faramarz asked.

“When I said we, I meant some of my father’s staff.”

“Of course.” Faramarz waved at Casmir. “Go ahead and poke around. I’m going to assume that the man who built those crushers won’t break a box.” Her mouth twisted, and Casmir wasn’t sure she was that confident in her assessment.

“I’ll be careful.” He gave her a cheerful wave, pulled out a light and some tools, and set everything on the floor next to the device.

16

Oku stayed in her room the next morning and didn’t go to the Senate meeting. She had a slight headache from having her chip replaced, but that wasn’t the reason. She didn’t want to see Senator Boehm’s empty seat, nor did she want to watch as the majority vote came down in favor of her father being given King’s Authority.

She was composing a long message to Casmir, hoping the gate to System Stymphalia would be open soon and that it could get through. The last she’d heard, fast courier ships were still running the blockade periodically and delivering communications. They’d received news from the other systems, and Oku had learned that many delegates and Miners’ Union leaders had been trapped in Stymphalia along with Casmir and the four Fleet warships. But like everyone else, she had no idea what was going on there. Nor had she been able to suss out where those delegates had been going and why. Kingdom news outlets were speculating that the rest of the systems were considering attacking System Lion while it was distracted and announcing it was a good thing that all those miscreants had been trapped.

Oku was decanting everything she knew in her message. What Casmir could do about it, she didn’t know, but she needed someone she could talk to about everything that had been going on.

Her mother was too likely to share what she said with her father. And Finn was impossible, certainly not a confidant.