“Tell me what you need,” Kandara said.

“A group of Universal activists has been sabotaging our design bureaus. Some of the most promising research has been stolen and our results corrupted. They are damaging us, Kandara, quite badly—though that cannot be admitted in public. We don’t know where they came from or who sent them. They elude us. Find them. Stop them.”

Kandara nodded solemnly. “It’s what I do.”

—

“We’ve put a team together for you,” Kruse said as they walked back through the trees.

“Oh, really? What kind of team? And who’s we?”

“Our Home Security Bureau. We brought in a variety of experts and advisors. It is their task to track down the physical location where the attacks come from.”

“Okay, that’s good.” Kandara had been expecting to use some of the specialists she was familiar with, but she was prepared to give Kruse’s people a chance.

A portal door in the habitat’s endcap took them down to a hub on Akitha. Seven hubs later, they reached the central metrohub of Naima, a city of some 700,000 inhabitants sprawling across the southern side of a large island. From there it was ten hubs around a metro loop to the street where Kruse had assembled the team.

Kandara stepped out of the hub and immediately dabbed at the sweat that was starting to bead on her brow. Naima was part of an archipelago in the equatorial zone, making it considerably hotter and more humid here than it had been back in Nebesa. They’d emerged into a white stone plaza that was several hundred meters above a calm indigo ocean. Naima occupied the rugged slope on all sides, comprised of modest stone-and-glass buildings that Kandara felt were a little too similar. It put her in mind of the Tuscan villages she’d visited in her childhood, when her parents had spent several weeks in Italy on management courses at their employer’s head office. Pretty and peaceful, if bland.

They walked along the broad road with its central sentry line of tall palm trees, her bagez rattling over the authentically uneven cobbles behind her. A minute later they arrived at the villa. It squatted at the top of a small cliff, with a glass-walled living room presenting a magnificent view across the broad, curving bay below the city. In the distance, a clutter of small pillar-like rock islands stood proud from the sun-sparkled water. Beyond the open doors, a paved patio stretched out to an infinity pool. When Kandara walked over to it, she realized most of the pool must be supported on pillars; only the house itself was sitting on the terraced cliff.

“Okay, this will do,” Kandara admitted.

“The team is in the kitchen,” Kruse told her.

Naima might have been Italianate, but the kitchen clearly followed a more Nordic tradition—a minimalist spectacle of black-and-scarlet marble, with a dozen worktop recesses from which various culinary devices could slide out as required, looking more like sculptures than practical machinery. She tried not to show any envy, but it made her little kitchen seem quite tired in comparison.