“Thank you, General,” Robbins said. “I’m not hungry anyway.”
“Good for you,” Szilard said, and ate some more of his steak. Colonel Robbins eyed the general’s meal. In fact, he was hungry, but it wouldn’t have been politic to note it. Robbins made a mental note for the next time he was summoned to a meeting in the general’s mess: Eat something first.
Szilard swallowed his steak and turned his attention back to Robbins. “Colonel, have you heard of the Esto system? Don’t look it up, just tell me if you know it.”
“I’m not aware of it,” Robbins said.
“How about Krana? Mauna Kea? Sheffield?”
“I know the Mauna Kea on Earth,” Robbin said. “But I assume that’s not the one you’re talking about.”
“It’s not.” Szilard motioned again with his fork, waving it to indicate some point past the eastern limb of Phoenix. “Mauna Kea system is that way, just short of Phoenix’s Skip Drive horizon. New colony there.”
“Hawaiians?” Robbins asked.
“Of course not,” Szilard said. “It’s mostly Tamils, from what my data tell me. They don’t name the system, they just live there.”
“What’s so interesting about this system?” Robbins said.
“The fact that less than three days ago a Special Forces cruiser disappeared in it,” Szilard said.
“It was attacked?” Robbins asked. “Destroyed?”
“No,” Szilard said. “It disappeared. No contact once it arrived in the system.”
“Did it hail the colony?” Robbins asked.
“It wouldn’t have done that,” Szilard said, in a flat tone that suggested to Robbins that he shouldn’t pursue the details.
He didn’t. “Maybe something happened to the ship when it reentered real space,” he said instead.
“We skipped in a sensor done,” Szilard said. “No ship. No black box. No debris along the projected flight path. Nothing. It’s gone.”
“That’s weird,” Robbins said.
“No,” Szilard said. “What’s weird is that it was the fourth Special Forces ship this has happened to this month.”
Robbins stared at Szilard blankly. “You’ve lost four cruisers? How?”
“Well, if we knew that, Colonel, we’d be off stomping on someone’s neck,” Szilard said. “That fact that what I’m actually doing is eating this steak in front of you should be an indication we are as in the dark as anyone.”
“But you do think someone is behind this,” Robbins said. “And it’s not just an issue with the ships or their Skip Drives.”
“Of course we do,” Szilard said. “Having one ship disappear is a random incident. Having four disappear in a month is a fucking trend. This is not a problem with the ships or the drives.”
“Who do you think is behind it?” Robbins said.
Szilard set down his utensils, irritable. “Christ, Robbins,” he said. “Do you think I’m talking to you because I don’t have friends?”
Robbins smiled wryly, in spite of himself. “The Obin, then,” he said.
“The Obin,” Szilard said. “Yes. The ones who have Charles Boutin tucked away somewhere. All the systems our ships disappeared from either are close to Obin space or are planets the Obin contested for at one point or another. That’s a slender thread, but it’s what we have at the moment. What we don’t have is the how or why, and that’s where I was hoping you might be able to shed some light.”
“You want to know where we are with Private Dirac,” Robbins said.
“If you don’t mind,” Szilard said, and picked up his utensils again.
“It’s slow going,” Robbins admitted. “We think the memory breach happened because of stress and sensory input. We can’t put the same sort of pressure on him that combat did, but we have been introducing him to parts of Boutin’s life one piece at a time.”
“His records?” Szilard asked.
“No,” Robbins said. “At least not the reports and files on Boutin that were written or recorded by other people. Those aren’t from Boutin himself, and we don’t want to introduce an outside point of view. Cainen and Lieutenant Wilson are working with primary sources—Boutin’s recordings and notes—and with Boutin’s things.”
“You mean things Boutin owned?” Szilard asked.
“Things he owned, things he liked—remember the jellybeans—or things from other people that he knew. We’ve also taken Dirac to the places where Boutin lived and grew up. He was originally from Phoenix, you know. It’s just a quick trip down by shuttle.”
“It’s nice he gets field trips,” Szilard said, only a little dismissively. “But you said it was slow going.”