Dark Omega

CHAPTER 57 - ONLY THE BEGINNING

Marcus remained standing. If he sat down, he was likely to fall asleep, and he couldn't afford that. Marcus did, however, let himself lean against the wall. If he didn't, he might fall over when the inevitable spells of dizziness hit.

Balack, Imogen, and Kwame sat together around a coffee table, the Maiden hovering nearby. Their host, Amaya, had disappeared into an adjoining room, carrying some bed linen.

The apartment wasn't nearly as large as the Balack-Imogen place, but still bigger than Marcus had expected. There was no balcony, but the floor-to-ceiling holo-display could provide any view—currently, it was set to show Nuovo Venezia's landscapes from before the devastation. No mere librarian could afford a two-bedroom on the middle level of the three-tiered city. Amaya had inherited money from her great grandmother and invested in real estate.

Marcus had called Amaya after leaving the Pentacle—knowing that the mind-worm had matured sufficiently to ensure her cooperation—and the woman had promptly arrived to pick them up from the hotel balcony. All traces of her arrival and their departure had been wiped from the hotel's systems and the traffic control mainframe. Another hotel guest might have seen them leave, but without an electronic trace to follow into the overcrowded city, an eyewitness account was close to useless.

Staying at Amaya's place wasn't ideal. There was a tenuous link between her and Kwame. They both worked at the Pentacle—but so did thousands more—and they had been intimate. The affair had been passionate but brief and low-key. It was likely somebody knew they had been lovers. A dedicated opponent would be able to find the link, then learn Amaya had her own apartment and an aircar. Statistically, however, it would take quite some time and require the cooperation of both the Pentacle staff and the local police. That feat would only be possible if the Cabal still had agents in place. Otherwise, no one would ever learn what had happened.

The prearranged safehouses Marcus could not trust at all. The security surrounding his trip to Nuovo Venezia was severely compromised. Marcus had to assume the opposition knew everything he knew—and more. Prefect Eccard could be a double agent. Or one of the astral legates. Even Xerza's motivations were, to some extent, suspect.

Hotels and other public accommodations were also out of the question. It would be too easy for a tracking algorithm to find them—even the local police could manage that. Splitting up might help, but a good AI would be able to correlate disparate bookings, and dividing an already small team would weaken it further. The final alternative was braving the streets and sublevels of the floating city. That option presented a whole other set of challenges—and a large element of chance. Marcus didn't like leaving things to chance.

Amaya's place was all things considered, their best option. They could stay low there for a few days while they arranged for off-world transportation. Haides had offered to show the way to his brother's old ship, conveniently cached on Nuovo Venezia. Marcus wasn't too keen on taking him up on the offer. For one, he didn't fully trust the Gatekeeper, nor did he want to rely too much on his aid. Even if Marcus took the offer, and the ship was still there, they had no way to know if it was still operational after so many years. And who would crew it?

The logical course of action was to acquire transportation through normal channels: booking passage on commercial transports or chartering a smaller vessel. Unfortunately, that was also where the enemy was most likely to require them. Marcus had to assume they were still being hunted. He couldn't risk exposing the Maiden now. It was necessary to arrange transportation covertly.

After arriving at the apartment—in the middle of the night—Marcus had taken time to talk with his companions, underlining the importance of their shared mission. The Maiden must be kept out of enemy hands, he had stressed. All their lives meant nothing if the Cabal got to her—the Shadow would win and the universe be destroyed.