A shocked silence hung over the room for a moment. The brandy bottle was frozen halfway to her lips at the nonchalantly delivered news. Her mascara, applied by the same expert servants that had fitted her for the gown had begun to run. She swiped irritability at the make up, succeeding only in smearing dark splotches beneath her eyes. It made her look oddly like an Trivet player ready to throw a pass. The tremble in her hand steadied. Crisis was focus afterall.

“Did you just say…” Taya began but Junebug held up a hand for silence. The girls sentence stuttered out and she looked uncomfortable and confused. For a moment she said nothing, merely staring at Neil. Carefully she set the half empty brandy bottle down on the table top.

“Highlander Six to control,” she said, activating her mastoid communicator which tied into the local net and patched her to Lonney in the Highlander’s control core. Tay mouthed the words ‘not secure’ without actually vocalizing them. Any communication that was routed through a local net was, by definition, suspect. All encryptions except for extreme high end quantum units were vulnerable to decription in minutes or hours with the computing power even a modest navi-computer could provide.

“Aye Capt’n,” Lonney chirruped. 

“Run a scan of all local media sources you can access. Tell me what percentage of sources speculate on Neil being an assassin. Break.” There was a moment of silence while the AI ran his calculations.

“Twenty six percent Captain.” A sinking feeling began to settle into her stomach, a weird counterpoint to the spreading alcoholic warmth.

“Express that as a percentage of total theoretical professions.”

“Seventy two percent cap’m,” the AI came back instantly, data crunching far easier than data gathering.

“Six out,” Sayeeda said closing the link. She sighed contemplatively. Taya fished out the burger meant for Junebug and tossed it to Neil.

“I don’t like the smell of this,” Sayeeda confessed. Was it possible that Aiden was involved somehow? It didn’t seem likely, the Prince was no fool, but neither did he seem machiavellian enough to lure her away merely to deny Neil an alibi. She remembered Aiden’s sister glowring at him on the landing pad. Could it be the same woman.

“I don’t like the feel of it at all,” she reiterated.  


[@POOHEAD189]