Local Star, Aimee Ogden [ebook reader that looks like a book txt] 📗

Wishful thinking. Triz washed up and hit the lift. Two floors up and her fob chirped again.

Another delay. Another four hours.

The lift wall kissed Triz’s forehead coldly where she rested it. Going back down to the wrenchworks now would be a retreat. Casne would never retreat—well, no, that was stupid, with Casne’s head for strategy she’d definitely retreat if she had to. But if Nantha were in trouble, or even Triz?

No way.

Triz queried the quadparents’ fobs too for schedule updates: only Veling had time marked off for an official visit time with Casne, and while Triz was looking, that too leaped half a day into the future. This time, Triz ordered her fob not to reschedule. Standing up, she crossed her arms and tried to look like someone who could stroll into Justice and demand access to one of its prisoners.

The stern set of her face didn’t last for long. Triz scanned her fob at the entrance to Justice and ducked through the open door. She froze. The queues in front of the long semicircular counter were jam-packed with petitioners who needed fines disputed, fobs registered and recycled, and any other manner of bureaucratic nonsense. All the color of the Arcade just below Triz’s feet bled away up here, leaving nothing but clean, functional lines and serious gray and beige. But the noise was still the same.

One of the lane operators popped out at her: Belas Vivik Fithe, a Justice clerk who lived down the hall from Casne’s quadhome. Triz queued up in the line under his number and tried not to fidget like a child with her jacket or her fob.

Belas greeted her warmly despite the circumstances and nodded when Triz showed him the two appointment delays on her fob. When she asked if she could see Casne anyway, as long as she was uphab, he squinted at the screen of his deskport.

“You know I shouldn’t do that.” He glanced at the clerks on either side of him and leaned in. “I shouldn’t tell you the Fleet is trying to isolate her while they press her to confess. Fleet hero, ugly business. They don’t want a messy, noisy trial to detract from parading around all the Cyberbionautics brass they’ve brought in.” He fiddled with his fob, and his lane number flickered in the air, then vanished. The queue behind Triz groaned. “I also shouldn’t ask you to come with me while I go on my break.” Belas stood. “So. I won’t ask. Follow me.”

Triz met him at a gap in the long, semicircular counter. He ushered her to the central ring room at the top of the Hab, where Justice made its home. The only thing farther uphab was the room where Justice held hearings, and she would just as soon not think about that place right now. “I happen to know Fleet Counsel is taking their lunch,” he murmured. “I’ll pop you in to see Casne for a few minutes.”

Triz followed. She wanted to embrace the plan wholeheartedly, but she knew Justice kept eyes on the whole station, and on itself most of all. Concern overwrote desire, and she grabbed Belas’ sleeve. “But won’t you get in trouble? Belas, I don’t want you to lose your job.”

He stopped so hard Triz ran into his side. “My niece is studying the alien intelligences on Golros. She and her outpost were there when the Ceebees launched their terraformers. If the Fleet hadn’t gotten there when they did, well . . . ” He waved one hand beside his head. “Makes my skin crawl having them locked up here till Quelian’s replacement can get here.” Triz didn’t know what that meant, but Belas was still talking. “If Justice started in with the hearings this morning like they’d planned, I might’ve been clear of the lot by eighteen-hundred hours. It’s not as if there’s a lot of uncertainty at play. Rocan has shown who he is in more ways than I’d care to count.”

He leaned in conspiratorially. “Now, I know their implants are disabled, but I don’t trust that lot as far as I can throw them under five G’s. The Ceebees have plans within plans. Even when they’re sleeping, they’re cooking up new ways to get what they want.” He gently tugged her hand free of his coat. “Well! Never you mind all that. As far as my job goes? Oh, silly Belas, didn’t check the schedule for permissions when a heartbroken wife came a-crying to him.”

Triz felt a flush of red heat color her cheeks. “Oh—we’re not married.”

Belas shrugged and smiled gently. “Silly Belas.” He reached to fob a door into another, smaller ring, but it opened first.

The person who hurried through, head down, was Lanniq, ashen-faced and mouth-pinched. Were Fleet friends not getting their visits turned aside the way civilians were? Or had he been called in for his testimony?

“Lanniq,” Triz called, and he jumped. She wanted to ask him what he knew about Casne’s case but found herself blurting instead: “Are you all right?”

“Sorry, Triz. Can’t talk right now.” He gave her a tight-lipped smile, not meeting her eyes, and kept walking. He was definitely not okay. Triz swallowed a polite goodbye. An even worse theory popped into Triz’s head: maybe Lanniq was one of the ones urging Casne to confess. She watched him go until Belas tugged her forward and into the centermost part of Justice.

The cells of Justice formed the inside ring of the Hab level, each cell a pie slice that narrowed nearly to a point in the middle. Belas dropped a chair in front of one cell, which made its occupant sit up on her cot. Triz tried not to look too hard at the other cells, but found herself staring anyway. In them, people sat or slept with missing eyes or limbs, with transparent gel wraps clinging to the empty space where a section of skull or skin should have been. The Ceebee prisoners were deprived of certain enhancements, the ones with offensive