Eradicate (Manipulate, Book 3)

Chapter 18

Pontifical Palace

Treasury Room

Akemi had solidified her own space in the network now, enough to really dig in and flex her elbows. Enough to accomplish the next task on her list, after dealing with Shara.

Most planets had a similar kind of orbital network system for communicating off planet and with space ships. On Selta, she'd heard Basher call it the mailroom, because messages waited there for shipbound passengers until their ship checked in after a series of jumps. When she was ready, Akemi would leave a message in this planetary mailroom for Claire and Basher. They would see it when they checked for any messages from Sam and Nat.

Akemi was placing a few more careful alerts in the mailroom when the Diarena arrived in the treasury. She looked furtively over her shoulder as she shut the massive door behind her. She even took a goblet that looked to be made of white gold and set it on the handle of the door.

"I have come to speak with you," the Diarena said. "I hope that while we are alone, we might be honest with one another."

That was what she said, but Akemi could sense her unease and suspicion. The Diarena did not expect Akemi to be honest, and she did not have the remotest intention of being honest herself.

"Do you hear me, bruck?"

"I hear you," Akemi said. "What would you like to talk about?"

The Diarena came a little closer. "I will start at the beginning. Your friends came to me on Selta and told me Faal had acquired a questionable computer." She gestured to Akemi. "They gave me the chance to use that against him and I took it. I am an excellent judge of motivation, and thus far I understood the plot."

She paused and Akemi could feel her weighing her words. She was being as truthful as possible, in order to entice Akemi to do the same. "Now I want to know why your friends brought a Rik here, and why you turned on them."

"I did not turn on my friends. I only turned on the Rik they mistakenly trust. She deserves the death chamber." She would also further Akemi's own plan by being there, but the Diarena didn't need to know that.

"Ah. You must understand that I expected to find you opposed to Faal in every respect, and yet I find you in apparent agreement with his Rik extermination. I also sensed during your telepathy, though perhaps I am wrong in this, that you know things about me that only he knows. Forgive me, but you seem more his aide than his captive."

Akemi felt a shuddering within her, and a half-open door through which she saw Shara and Nat's smiling faces... but the door slammed shut as she pictured, for the hundredth time that day, the horrible memory of Nat screaming and writhing on a tiny cot as the Rik drained their nanotechs into her spine.

"I loathe Faal," Akemi answered slowly, "but he has never injured me or the people I love as much as the Rik have."

"So you agree with him? You would have them all die?"

Once again Akemi remembered (discovered?) the reason the Diarena was so edgy. The information was in her mind, but it was completely without context as she still couldn't remember where she'd learned it.

Akemi slowly verbalized it. "One of your ancestors was a Rik who'd stolen a Merith body, weren't they? That's why Faal hates you."

The Diarena stiffened, but Akemi could tell she wasn't entirely shocked by this revelation – she'd already suspected that Akemi knew, though perhaps she hadn't expected Akemi to blurt it out like that.

"I don't deny it," the Diarena said. "It was my grandmother. During the upheaval around the time of the former Pontifex's death, the Rik decided to make a try for the Merith high families. My grandmother was not the only Rik infiltrator. On her deathbed, she confessed to my mother and gave her the names of thirty other Rik spies.