Casey sat down slowly, still staring at me.
“We thought you were dead.”
“I almost was. I spent eight months on that dusty rock. For the first three days, I screamed myself stupid. I shouted at the sky and the trees and the ground, wishing someone would hear. No rescue crews, not even a robotic probe to confirm whether I’d lived or died. Someone marooned me there, John, and I want to know why.”
He shrugged. “All I heard was that you’d triggered your ship’s self-destruct. Of course, that didn’t mean you were dead, but after a couple of days it was clear that they weren’t going to bother finding you two.”
I changed tack to keep him on his toes. “I did some digging. Why was there an arrest-on-sight order put on us the day after we sailed?”
“Don’t know. The wanted notice just said ‘Espionage and Conspiracy Against the CCS’, but I knew that couldn’t be true. Neither you nor Vig would do that.”
“Vig and I went separate ways, after we were stranded. I found a note from him last night, saying that the bombing wasn’t an accident, and that the ‘surveyors’ we were supposed to find were actually Socialist spies. It stinks, John, it smells very strongly of us being framed for something.”
He shrugged. “Does it? I mean, maybe it was just a coincidence.”
I flipped my lid then. This was ridiculous. I slapped my hands down on the desk, making my palms sting and making Casey flinch. “Sending us to locate and deliver food to enemy spies—out of uniform and flying in my private ship, so they could deny they sent us—and then blowing up not only my ship but our flatbed truck as well. If the bombs didn’t kill us, time would. And if we did get off the rock, we were supposed to be arrested and tried for high treason. That means life in prison if the judge is lenient! My brother and I are either going to die or going to jail, unless I find out what we’re being done for and who did it to us.”
Casey sat down and leaned back in his chair. “So? What am I supposed to do? I don’t work for CCIB anymore. I’m not your handler anymore. I can’t do anything.”
“I need a credit account, and fakes for four people.”
He sighed and pulled a notepad out of his drawer. He scribbled a note on the top sheet and tore it off, folding it in half. “Find room one-eight-six, next floor down. That’s the bean counting office. Ask for Lieutenant Clarke. Give him this and ask for whatever you want.”
I read the note.
Lt. Clarke,
The NIS agent is a CCIB asset. Give him anything he wants.
Lt.Com. Casey
I grinned and tucked the note into a pocket.
“Thanks, Case.”
He waved a hand. “Whatever. I’ve already defied a standing order by not calling security, so I might as well help you out. I figure you wouldn’t come all the way into the lion’s den if you were guilty. Do what you do best, Sam; hunt them down.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I will.”
Life on the Fringes 