Exiles

  * * * *

  Anderson sat on the side of his bed waiting patiently, while a young nurse plugged the diagnostic equipment beside it into the small data port hidden in the nape of his neck. He’d slipped his leather skull cap off and tossed it on the bed beside him. The medical nanobots had done an exceptional job of putting his skull and scalp back together. The scar tissue was already fading away, his hair beginning to grow back.

  Suddenly there was the sound of muffled shouting and gunfire, followed by the heavy thud of something or someone hitting the floor, in the adjacent room. Moments later Tracy, the High Priestess, stormed in. Her hair flickering red and orange, shot through with flashes of purple and black. Anderson caught the nurse’s wrist and gestured to her to leave the room. She took the hint, hurriedly unplugging the equipment from Anderson’s data port before she scuttled away and left them alone.

  She stopped in front of his bed, breathed in deeply and exhaled before breathing in again, repeating it several times, until her hair ceased flickering with rage. “Fools they let Erikson escape.”

  Anderson smiled softly at her. “You know if you keep shooting the messenger, people will stop telling you the truth and only tell you what you want to hear.”

  She scowled at him. “You knew they’d fail didn’t you?”

  “I knew there was a limited probability of success, but there are no certainties in this or any other universe.”

  “So do you believe he was killed in the explosion then?”

  He clasped his hands in his lap twiddling thumbs absent-mindedly and sighed. “Extremely unlikely, the balance of probabilities suggests he is still at large with an accomplice.”

  “The rogue off-worlder? The one we were assured fell to her death in the commercial quarter.”

  He placed his hand either side of himself and pushed off the bed into a standing position. “They never found her body did they? I believe she was sent here by a third party to recruit Erikson.”

  “And that third party would be?”

  “Someone who fears Ford may become a liability and wants to insure themselves against it.”

  “That miserable bunch of idealistic renegades he helped create, the federation?”

  “Or an element within it, but it’s irrelevant, all the pieces are in play now and no one can stop what we have set in motion.”

  She smiled and shook her head, passing him a file. “Not all of them, I want you to find out all you can about this subject, we’re going to see just how good Malstrom’s resurrection technology is.”

  He took the file from her and leafed through it. “An interesting choice, do you need me to locate a DNA sample?”

  “Malstrom already have one on file, several in fact. I just need background information, historical stuff, childhood memories, that sort of thing, so they appear to be a plausible facsimile.”

  He closed his eyes briefly and activated the neural interface. “Straightforward enough it’ll take a while to pull all the data together though, but I think your chances of success are limited. He’ll know it’s a fake.”

  She laughed. “A fake he won’t be able to resist, but I want Thane to test this resurrection tech first and I have just the subject. So take all the time you need to collate the data and make it convincing.”