Hell—it was time to break for dinner. The guard escorted him back through the building and delivered him to Pym. It was dark outside. My head hurts.

Doggedly, Mark returned the next morning and started again. And the next. And the next. More reports arrived. In fact, they were arriving faster than he could read them. The harder he worked, the more he was falling behind. Halfway through the fifth day he leaned back in his station chair and thought, This is crazy. Illyan was burying him. From the paralysis of ignorance, he had segued with surprising speed to the paralysis of information-glut. I’ve got to triage this crap, or I’ll never get out of this repulsive building.

“Lies, lies, all lies,” he muttered wildly to his comconsole. It seemed to blink and hum back at him, sly and demure.

With a decisive punch, he turned off the comconsole with its endless babble of voices and fountains of data, and sat for a while in darkness and silence, till his ears stopped ringing.

ImpSec hasn’t. Hasn’t found Miles. He didn’t need all this data. Nobody did. He just needed one piece. Let’s cut this down to size.

Start with a few explicit assumptions. One. Miles is recoverable.

Let ImpSec look for a rotted body, unmarked grave, or disintegration record all they wanted. Such a search was no use to him, even if successful. Especially if successful.

Only cryo-chambers, whether permanent storage banks or other portables, were of interest. Or—less likely, and notably less common—cryo-revival facilities. But logic put an upper cap on his optimism. If Miles had been successfully revived by friendly hands, the first thing he would do would be to report in. He hadn’t, ergo: he was still frozen. Or, if revived, in too bad a shape to function. Or not in friendly hands. So. Where?

The Dendarii cryo-chamber had been found in the Hegen Hub. Well … so what? It had been sent there after it was emptied. Sinking down into his station chair with slitted eyes, Mark thought instead about the opposite end of the trail. Were his particular obsessions luring him into believing what he wanted to believe? No, dammit. To hell with the Hegen Hub. Miles never got off the planet. In one stroke, that eliminated over three-fourths of the trash-data clogging his view.

We look at Jackson’s Whole reports only, then. Good. Then what?

How had ImpSec checked all the remaining possible destinations? Places without known motivations or connections with House Bharaputra? For the most part, ImpSec had simply asked, concealing their own identity but offering a substantial reward. All at least four weeks after the raid. A cold trail, so to speak. Quite a lot of time for someone to think about their surprise package. Time to hide it, if they were so inclined. So that, in those cases where ImpSec did a second and more complete pass, they were even more likely to come up empty.

Miles is in a place that ImpSec has already checked off, in the hands of someone with hidden motivations to be interested in him.

There were still hundreds of possibilities.

I need a connection. There has to be a connection.

ImpSec had torn apart Norwood’s available Dendarii records down to the level of a word-by-word analysis. Nothing. But Norwood was medically trained. And he hadn’t sent his beloved Admiral’s cryo-chamber off at random. He’d sent it someplace to someone.

If there’s a hell, Norwood, I hope you’re roasting in it right now.

Mark sighed, leaned forward, and turned the comconsole back on.

A couple of hours later, Illyan stopped by Mark’s cubicle, closing the soundproof door behind him. He leaned, falsely casual, on the wall and remarked, “How is it going?”

Mark ran his hands through his hair. “Despite your amiable attempt to bury me, I think I’m actually making some progress.”

“Oh? What kind?” Illyan did not deny the charge, Mark noticed.

“I am absolutely convinced Miles never left Jackson’s Whole.”

“So how do you explain our finding the cryo-chamber in the Hegen Hub?”

“I don’t. It’s a diversion.”

“Hm,” said Illyan, non-committally.

“And it worked,” Mark added cruelly.

Illyan’s lips thinned.

Diplomacy, Mark reminded himself. Diplomacy, or he’d never get what he needed. “I accept that your resources are finite, sir. So put them to the point. Everything that you do have available for this, you ought to send to Jackson’s Whole.”

The sardonic expression on Illyan’s face said it all. The man had been running ImpSec for nearly thirty years. It was going to take a lot more than diplomacy for him to accept Mark telling him how to do his job.

“What did you find out about Captain Vorventa?” Mark tried another line.

“The link was short, and not too sinister. His younger brother was my Galactic Operations supervisor’s adjutant. These are not disloyal men, you understand.”

“So … what have you done?”

“About Captain Edwin, nothing. It’s too late. The information about Miles is now out on the Vorish net, as whispers and gossip. Beyond damage control. Young Vorventa has been transferred and demoted. Leaving an ugly hole in my staffing. He was good at his job.” Illyan did not sound very grateful to Mark.

“Oh.” Mark paused. “Vorventa thought I did something to the Count. Is that out on the gossip net too?”

“Yes.”

Mark winced. “Well … at least you know better,” he sighed. He glanced up at Illyan’s stony face, and felt a nauseated alarm. “Don’t you, sir?”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not.”

“How not?! You have the medical reports!”

“Mm. The cardiac rupture certainly appeared natural. But it could have been artificially created, using a surgical hand-tractor. The subsequent damage to the cardiac region would have masked its traces.”

Mark shuddered in helpless outrage. “Tricky work,” he choked. “Extremely precise. How did I make the Count hold still, and not notice, while I was doing this?”

“That is one problem with the scenario,” Illyan agreed.

“And what did I do with the hand tractor? And the medical scanner, I’d have needed one of those, too. Two or three kilos of equipment.”

“Ditched them in the woods. Or somewhere.”

“Have you found them?”

“No.”

“Have you looked?”

“Yes.”

Mark rubbed his face, hard, and clenched and unclenched his teeth. “So. You have all the men you need to quarter and re-quarter several square kilometers of woods looking for a hand tractor that isn’t there, but not enough to send to Jackson’s Whole to look for Miles, who is. I see.” No. He had to keep his temper, or he’d lose everything. He wanted to howl. He wanted to beat Illyan’s face in.

“A galactic operative is a highly-trained specialist with rare personal qualities,” said Illyan stiffly. “Area-searches for known objects can be conducted by low-level troopers, who are more abundant.”

“Yes. I’m sorry.” He was apologizing? Your goals. Remember your goals. He thought of the Countess, and drew a deep, calming breath. He drew several.

“I do not hold this as a conviction,” Illyan said, watching his face. “I hold it merely as a doubt.”

“Thank-you-I-think,” Mark snarled.

He sat for a full minute, trying to marshall his scattered thoughts, his best arguments. “Look,” he said at last. “You are wasting your resources, and one of the resources you are wasting is me. Send me back to Jackson’s Whole. I know more about the entire situation than any other agent you have. I have some training, an assassin’s training only maybe, but some. Enough to lose your spies three or four times on Earth! Enough to get this far. I know Jackson’s Whole, visceral stuff you can only acquire growing up there. And you wouldn’t even have to pay me!” He waited, holding his breath in the courage of his terror. Go back? Blood sprayed through his memory. Going to give the Bharaputrans a chance to correct their aim?