Lost Era 05_ Deny thy Father - Jeff Mariotte [60]
Kyle shook his head grimly. “This is the first I’ve heard of anything like that,” he said. “He seemed like a nice enough fellow to me.”
“That’s what they always say about the worst ones,” the woman told her companion. “Thanks for your cooperation, Mr. Barrow. Sorry to disturb you. Enjoy the rest of your trip.”
They both stepped from the room, the tall one scrunching himself down again to get out, and the door closed behind them. In the wake of their visit, Kyle found himself at once astonished and terrified. He had known that Abbott was a phony name, of course, but had thought maybe the man was a smuggler or something. Certainly nothing as sinister as a killer.
As he sat back down on the bed, he realized that the other thing Abbott had been was the only other human being he had spoken with on the Morning Star. Now there was no one on the ship but the crew, mostly Kreel’n, who had shown no indication of wanting to interact with him at all.
You wanted to be left alone, he told himself. Congratulations. It doesn’t get much more alone than this.
Where is he?
He’s everywhere. He’s nowhere.
What does that mean?
No one has seen him. There have been no records of his showing up anyplace-he hasn’t been home, he hasn’t been to his office, he hasn’t been near Headquarters. But his padd’s GPS shows that he’s everyplace from Venus to Taipei to Taurus II. Every reading comes from someplace different. It’s as if he’s completely vanished.
That’s impossible!
Exactly my point. We’ve lost him, or he’s lost himself. Either way…
But… but I want him! I want to see him squirm, see him suffer. I want him crushed! There’s a high price that needs to be paid, and Kyle Riker is the one to pay it!
I’m not resting… I won’t rest, until he’s found. And punished.
Yes, punished…
Part Two
February-May
2356
Chapter 15
The sun set late on Hazimot, which was one of many reasons why Kyle liked it there. Eighteen hours of sunlight in a row reminded him of the Alaskan summer, that golden time of year when you remembered why you put up with Alaskan winters. Of course, Hazimot was hotter than Alaska, even Valdez in midsummer. It had its sun, technically a star known as Iamme IV, and then it had a secondary sun, Myetra, much farther away but still near enough to cast light and some warmth down on Hazimot’s arid surface. The conflicting gravitational fields gave all the system’s planets skewed orbits, and there were long winters on Hazimot that were much colder than Alaska’s. But the next one wouldn’t come around for about twelve earth years, and Kyle didn’t plan to stay that long.
Kyle was walking home from work through the twilight streets of Cozzen, one of the largest cities in the nation of Cyre, with Clantis, a Cyrian coworker. The day had been long and wearying and as Kyle walked he felt a heaviness of limbs and a weariness of muscle that left him at once tired, sore, and satisfied. Clantis, taller than him and broad, with a deep chest and massive shoulders that made him well suited to hard physical labor, had skin the color and texture of hammered copper. The months on Hazimot had bronzed Kyle’s as well, but he figured he’d never achieve the look that Clantis had.
When they reached the intersection where Kyle went one way and Clantis another, the Cyrian regarded Kyle with a bemused expression and shook his head slowly. “I can’t believe you still live in that hole,” he said. “You make enough, don’t you, to get a real place? In a neighborhood where you don’t have to fear for your life every day?”
Kyle shrugged. He had always had a facility for languages, and Cyrian had been easy for him to learn. “I guess it just suits me.”
“Suits the vermin who get into your food and bedding,” Clantis argued. “Not you. You’re a smart guy, a hard worker. You could do better, easy.”
Clantis’s own home was a low, domed house in a neighborhood of similar structures, all built in the shadow of one of the great walls that surrounded