Page 84 of Silver Elite

“When I was ten, maybe eleven, I joined him on a cod run, and our boat got caught in a storm. We drifted for days, and the next thing I know, there’s a patrol boat speeding toward us and a bunch of angry men pointing guns at us. One of them got in my dad’s face, accusing him of trying to break the treaty. But our boat was pretty banged up. Sails shredded. Engine flooded. They realized we weren’t a threat and towed us to port.” She rolls her eyes. “Wouldn’t even let us step foot on land. We had to wait on the boat until a hovercraft from the Company picked us up. I’m assuming our boat went to a wreckage yard in Tierra Fe afterward.”

“They really wouldn’t let you past the port?” Lyddie says.

“Nope. They don’t want us there. You should’ve seen how they looked at us. Like we were dirt. Like we didn’t deserve to breathe the same air as them.”

Sounds familiar.

I bite back my bitterness.

“I keep telling my father,” drawls a new voice. “Those assholes shouldn’t be allowed to have free rein down there.”

I’m startled when Roe joins our conversation. He settles at another table, long legs stretched out in front of him. Then he lifts a slender metal tube to his nose and snorts, and I realize he’s doing a stim.

I wonder how he managed to sneak recreational drugs onto the base. Stimulants aren’t illegal, but they’re wildly expensive, and I doubt the Command is allowed to use them during active duty. Doesn’t seem like the General would be super keen having his soldiers high on missions.

Kaine voices my thoughts. “How the hell did you get stims on the base?” he demands, grinning.

“My last name might not be Redden, but I’ve got the General’s blood running through my veins. They let me do whatever the fuck I want.”

He clicks the tube and does another stim.

“Have you been to Tierra Fe before?” Lyddie asks, peering at him over her shoulder.

Roe nods. “Shithole. That whole continent. They claim we’ve lost God and that’s why we don’t belong in their holy presence, but that sounds mighty convenient, yeah? Wouldn’t surprise me if they were cooking up a new toxin in some lab down there.” He shrugs. “Or working on the existing toxin.”

“The Aberrant toxin from the Last War?” Betima’s forehead wrinkles. “It’s all gone.”

“You can’t be stupid enough to believe there’s no trace of the toxin left.”

“There isn’t,” Lyddie says. “My mother is head of Biotech. She would know.”

“Maybe she does and hasn’t told you.” Roe looks amused.

Lyddie is steadfast in her refusal to believe him. She picks up her source and says, “Nexus, what happened to the biotoxin that created the Aberrant?”

The screen comes to life, a monotone voice sliding out. “All doses of the airborne biotoxin were destroyed in the Last War, more than a centuryand a half ago. The laboratory where the airborne biotoxin originated, located in the Lost Continents, was destroyed after radiation levels were deemed safe.”

“See?” Lyddie prompts, smug.

“What does that prove?” Roe challenges. “That a voice on your comm is asserting it to be true? Guarantee there’s still some of that shit floating around. I bet they’re colluding with the Aberrant, smuggling supplies to their secret base.”

Betima looks doubtful. “The Aberrant have a secret base? Where?”

“Somewhere near the Blacklands, I heard.”

“Sounds like a rumor to me,” she says. “If there was an Aberrant hideout in the wards, we would’ve found it.”

“Maybe not. They’re rats, remember? And what do rats do best?” Roe chuckles, answering his own question. “They hide in the shadows like the rats they are.”

He heaves himself off the chair. Rubs his nose. A manic glint enters his eyes, the stims clearly kicking in.

“You seen Kess?” he asks a young woman at the next table.

She shakes her head, a tad fearful. Roe has that effect on people.

“The toxinwasdestroyed,” Lyddie insists once he’s gone.

“It better have been,” says Betima, and it isn’t long before the discussion becomes political, which means Lash joins the fray. He argues that the Coup was necessary, even while relenting that the General’s iron rule over our lives veers toward extreme at times.

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