He got some dartcar betting tips off a lance corporal.

The tinted base windows faded as the mountain sky turned toward dusk.

Dozens of soldiers came in and out of the room as the day shift handed over to the evening shift. Jainan showed no inclination to move from his piles of data.

Kiem eventually found two box meals and two cans of something sugary and took them in to him.

“How’s it going?” Kiem said. “It’s getting dark. Shift’s changing.”

“Is it?” Jainan said vaguely. “I hadn’t noticed.”

Kiem put the meal at Jainan’s elbow. “Found anything?”

Jainan focused on him. “A lot of confirmation,” he said, sounding tired but blank, as if Taam were just a name rather than his ex-partner. “I’ve been sending it to Aren and Colonel Lunver as I go. I hope you don’t mind.”

“No, you should,” Kiem said. “Trying to hide anything at this point would look really suspicious. Is there anything new? Like what Taam was, um, doing with the money? Or who might have…” He hesitated. Killed him sounded awful.

“You know. Who might have been upset with him? What about the raiders he was selling to?”

“That would be a neat answer,” Jainan said without emotion. “Unfortunately, I can’t break the message encryption without the keys, and I can’t find those on any Kingfisher system. Though there are some oddities in system activity.

Internal Security might be able to find out more.”

“Agent Rakal will be over the moon,” Kiem said. “What oddities?”

“I’m not sure yet.” Jainan frowned at something in front of him. “I don’t know where you’re getting these people that you keep sending over—”

“They’re right there,” Kiem said. “They all work about ten meters away.”

“—but can you find me a network engineer?”

“Probably,” Kiem said. “Systems team sits in the corner.”

“A network engineer? What for?” Aren said from the doorway. He leaned on the open door frame, apparently amused. “I come back to find you’ve flooded my messages and lured half my staff away from their jobs, Jainan. You never did that when Taam was in charge.”

Jainan tensed. “Don’t worry,” Kiem said, before Jainan could apologize. “We sent them back.”

“Oh, that’s all right, then,” Aren said, half laughing. Kiem could never figure out who the amusement in his voice was aimed at. “Sorry I’ve left you to your own devices. I was briefing Colonel Lunver. She’s going to come out to the base tomorrow. What’s this about a network engineer?”

Jainan’s focus had faded completely. He sounded more normal—diffident and circumspect—as he said, “Your system logs have been accessed from outside military networks. Someone was trying to break in. I think this has happened every few days since before Taam died.”

“Agent Rakal mentioned it when we met them,” Kiem said. Aren tilted his head to one side, quizzical. “Network intrusion. Did they tell you?”

“Oh, we get attempts like that all the time,” Aren said. “Usually it’s petty criminals or idealists who’ve bought cracking kits from Sefalan gangs. They don’t get through.”