“I went back through the logs from that night.” Sirna points to a screen floating near the kitchen, a spreadsheet of numbers, and smiles at me. “You ordered me to look again. I’ve just found unmistakable traces of a Psy attack.”
Hysan looks over Sirna’s spreadsheet, then turns to me. “Rho—with this proof, plus ’Nox’s logs, the Plenum will have to believe there’s a Psy weapon out there.”
He’s right . . . even if they don’t think it’s Ophiuchus using the Dark Matter, they’ll know it’s a powerful Zodai who can manipulate Psynergy. It’s a start. “Why didn’t anyone else bother to fact-check?” I ask Sirna. “There must be more data.”
She shakes her head. “Psynergy fluctuations are easy to miss if you’re not looking specifically for them. No manmade sensors detect them permanently because their traces in the Psy disappear so quickly. We see only the faint trails they leave in the matrix of space-time.”
I steal a glance at Hysan, but he doesn’t mention his shield. He’s trusted me this far, so I stay quiet and trust his silence. Mathias is still poring over the data, combing fingers through his wavy hair.
I know this doesn’t change his stance. He already believed in the Psy attack because he saw the ship’s logs. What I can’t convince him of—or anyone else—is the perpetrator. At least revealing Charon’s deceit will convince the ambassadors not to trust him. Then maybe, like Hysan said to his jury downstairs, I can finally get my fair hearing at the Plenum.
“Who bribed Charon to lie?” asks Mathias.
“We’re still investigating,” says Sirna, tapping off a few of the holograms to make room for new ones. “We believe it may be the same conspirators who are funding the troops on Phobos. We’ve infiltrated a network of spies that stretches all across the galaxy.”
Sirna’s Wave beams out a new screen. It’s Charon’s financial records, and there are a series of anonymous lump-sum payments with date-stamps going back several weeks. “This plan has been long in the making,” she says.
My intuition stirs. “Does anyone have a galactic calendar?”
Sirna whispers, and a wheel-shaped holographic calendar joins the others hovering through the suite. I spin it with my fingertip, mentally translating local dates into galactic standard. “I knew it! The first bribe was date-stamped the same night I saw Ochus.”
Mathias double-checks my dates. “Rho’s correct.”
“Ochus foresaw my trip to the Plenum that very day,” I say, aghast at what that means.
Hysan whistles. “A first-order clairvoyant,” he says, voicing my fear. “Your boogeyman has skill.”
“He’s behind everything,” I say, thinking of all the violence in the news lately. “The army, the civil unrest, all of it!”
Mathias cuts through the wheel-shaped calendar and faces me. “Rho, you’re leaping to conclusions.”
“Then I’ll find proof—”
“Our first priority,” says Hysan, walking up to us and playing referee this time, “is debunking Charon’s lies.” He turns to Sirna. “Can you present your findings while the Guardians are still here?”
She shakes her head. “Not the details about the army, not while our agents are still undercover. We need to collect more information.”
“Agreed,” says Hysan, “but the bribes and Charon’s trickery—you can reveal that at least?”
“Yes, only . . .” Sirna folds her hands and crosses a blue hologram. “If I do it, I’ll expose our covert operations at the Plenum. Someone else will have to.”
Hysan looks to me. “I have a feeling Lord Neith will take up this cause.”
? ? ?
Sirna stays up late with us, drinking black tea and talking about the secret army on Phobos. We gather in the reading room, which is a staple of Libran homes. Holographic booktitles line every inch of wall space, dozens of mismatched plushy pillows pool in the middle of the floor, and every text—whether fiction or non—explores the theme of justice. To read one, Hysan just has to Scan the booktitle, and its holographic pages unfold before him. The rest of us can do the same thing with our Waves.
The cushions are arranged around a crystal tabletop that’s embedded into the marble floor, where Sirna set down a tea tray and some snacks. I’m relieved she and I are finally friends, but I spend the whole night watching her face, wondering if she knows anything about Dad.
Both she and Mathias insist that I take time to reconsider my plan of flying to the Thirteenth House. To convince me, Sirna shares more classified documents. It turns out Ophiuchus has been looked into before, and not that far back.