Page 49 of Tears of Tungsten
Paul Welton’s personal home was located on one of the secondary asteroids around Tartarus Base, like the palace of the Chimera royal family. Getting there without being noticed would’ve been an impossibility. But I didn’t need to do that. Penelope could be very resourceful when she wanted to be.
With the excuse that we’d be visiting Aphrodite’s Boudoir, we left the academy and headed to Tartarus City. No one in the settlement questioned our presence, and we were allowed to pass with barely a glance.
The same could not be said about the shuttle we were waiting for. Most vessels that came from the outside had to go through Charon’s Barge, unless they received a special authorization of passage, like we had. The sensors around the asteroid detected every ship that approached, which meant that no one could board Tartarus Base without being spotted.
This was a problem, since Penelope had already told us the price for her help. “I’m not staying behind, at the mercy of these crazy people. I tried to be discreet, but my father will be able to tell I looked into the files. I need a way to escape.”
For obvious reasons, we couldn’t take her with us. That would just be a recipe for disaster. But there were other ways to make sure she stayed safe.
Penelope arrived in a drone-piloted shuttle that stood out like a beacon on the displays of Charon’s Barge. With August’s aid, I made sure the systems didn’t register her presence and she could land in the outskirts of the city. I didn’t like to ask August to use his secondary abilities so many times, since I knew for a fact that it wasn’t easy, but we didn’t have a choice.
I left August and Pollux to make sure there weren’t any problems with possible information leaks and took Knox with me to meet with Penelope. I didn’t feel very optimistic about this whole arrangement, but I lacked the time and resources to dig too deeply into my father’s affairs. I’d provided him with my report earlier, and he seemed to not suspect a thing, but that didn’t mean I could afford to underestimate him.
When Penelope emerged from the shuttle, I barely recognized her. She was dressed in an ill-fitting uniform and had shielded her face and hair with holographic technology. It was an imperfect method, since people who were looking for her could dissolve the illusion through localized tachyon blasts. But it was better than nothing and I was impressed she’d thought of it.
Clearly, I hadn’t given her enough credit.
“Your Highness,” she greeted me in a low voice. “You’re here… alone? Nobody saw me fly in?”
“As promised,” I replied. “It’s just me and Knox. August and Pollux are keeping an eye out. Do you have the files?”
Penelope nodded and retrieved a tablet from her large coat. The moment I saw it, I knew she’d been honest. It looked just like mine—like one of the few secrets I had left and kept hidden out in the open.
I didn’t take it immediately. Instead, I shuffled her back onto her vessel, uncomfortable with standing out in the open, where any drone could see us. As much as I trusted August and Pollux’s skills, I still had to be cautious.
Once we were on board the ship, Penelope handed me the device. It remained dormant and unresponsive. “How do you activate it?” Knox asked when he noticed the issue.
“There’s a genetic lock on the device. It didn’t occur to my father that I’d ever try to take something of his or investigate a sensitive issue.”
No, it wouldn’t have. Like me, Paul Welton had believed Penelope was just another useful tool, a weak woman who wasn’t worth much. In hindsight, that had been stupid of both of us. It had long ago become clear that she had her own ambitions, since otherwise, she’d have never dared to push me and approach me on her own so many times.
As she spoke, she produced a white glove and handed it over. It was clearly hers and it was smudged with spots of crimson. Blood.
The DNA would be embedded in the materials for days on end. I wouldn’t need the tablet for that long, since I fully intended to get rid of it as soon as I transferred the files to my own device. In the meantime, Penelope’s blood would be an excellent tool.
The moment I pressed the bloodstained part of the glove to the screen, the tablet activated. There was a secondary password, but Welton had apparently jotted down the string of letters and numbers on a different pad. “That’s how I stumbled into this, really. I saw the numbers and got curious.”
How had someone who couldn’t take the most basic of security precautions ended up as a leading figure in The Grand Judiciary? Oh, right. Through unethical human experimentation.
After we input the password, the tablet booted with no issue. The holographic files on the drive weren’t labeled following any system I could understand, but when I picked one at random, I wanted to throw up.
The image was of a child, less than five year old, if that. She was obviously an alien, as she had two extra arms and a second pair of eyes. The collar around her neck reminded me of the devices used in Tartarus City for sex slaves. That was for a good reason, because the video depicted the child being sexually abused by five men in an attempt to impregnate her.
The child didn’t look mature enough to conceive, but for all I knew, apsids didn’t follow human rules of sexual maturity. Either way, it was absolutely disgusting.
The only bright part of the situation was that, toward the end, the collar cracked and the girl burst into flames. The men were burned alive and their victim vanished without a trace.
“It’s some kind of method of transportation then,” Knox said, his voice level even if I could sense he was disturbed. “The fire.”
“It looks like it. It may be another form of advanced tachyon manipulation, something we don’t use here.”
I shut down the video file and turned toward Penelope again. She was staring at the ground, obviously having no desire to join us in watching what was on the tablet. “You mentioned another file, something that contained a list. Do you remember where it was?”
She did, and as promised, the document contained references of both Stella and August. There were other people we knew there, including, much to my surprise, some of our teachers. Commander Trevor was listed, and the notorious battle injuries that had turned him into a cyborg suddenly seemed to take on an entirely different meaning.
Under different circumstances, I would’ve investigated each person more. But right now, my interest was in a different field.
The tablet was vague on the current location of the entrance to the Apsid Quasar, because none of us knew where it actually was. It did, however, offer possible options, based on where the recently captured apsids—most of whom were scouts—had been caught.
