Page 181 of Alien Burn

Xaul glanced at the device between them. Its field continued to hum.

“How close?”

“Closer than he was.”

“We cannot keep returning the same orders. He'll find the source.”

“Then the people who still have authority should stop using it so clumsily.”

Outside the field, a guard passed the window in the door. Wyleigh watched the shadow cross, then disappear.

“He thinks he is looking for a missing friend,” she said.

“He is looking for a missing friend.”

“And if he finds more?”

Xaul said nothing.

She could remember the first time she had been shown the restricted records. The careful explanation of what could be preserved by saying nothing. It had sounded like a duty then. She had repeated it often enough to make it one.

“He must not reach those lower surveys,” she said.

“You are in a cell.”

“You aren't.”

The visit ended with Xaul still looking at her.

Senator Vandrel

Loric waited until his staff had left before accepting his brother's call.

On the muted screen across the office, a commentator stood outside the Coalition chamber. Roemary's face appeared beside him, selected from a program portrait in which she looked young and hopeful.

Loric had chosen that image himself.

“The lawyers need more time,” he said.

“They always do.”

Gilorn sounded as though he was eating.

Loric turned away from the screen.

“She is your niece.”

“And your daughter. You have made that clear in every statement.”

“You told me she only needed to be charming. Find useful friends. Keep that waitress within reach if the charges failed.”

“She had a useful friend. She let the Gol-Vett take her away.”

“She didn't understand what choosing meant to them.”

“She understood what would happen if those accounts got out.”

“They have the extraction crew, Burk, and records we were told would never reach a Kantenan office. What would you have me do?”