Core Melt: A Coruscant Novel (The Coruscant Series Book 3) by FX Holden

Author:FX Holden [Holden, FX]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-03-30T16:00:00+00:00

On the floor below the reception area of the anonymous building sat a dozen empty desks, holo projectors dark, input devices not connected. The plants were synthetic. There was a thin film of dust over most of the desks and filing cabinets were full of shot discs, filed by sender and date, the correspondence from 50 worlds. They were changed out weekly. In its time this office had been Atlas Import, Cybernetic AI, Immigration Brokers, DefTech Defense Technologies, the organizing base for the short-lived New Syberia Cyber Rights Party … ether names and ether organizations that had come and gone, but the desks, discs and plants remained. As did the well-disguised owner of the lease: the Commonwealth Security Service.

Down a side corridor was a small one-bedroom apartment with kitchen and bathroom, and a sitting room with double glass doors that opened onto a sunken courtyard sitting under a heavy iron grill that let out onto the backyard of the building above. Vladimir Solskin sat with his feet propped on a dead shrub, his back against a wall, as Dmitry Yakov shifted his chair slightly to follow the afternoon’s weak sunlight. Between them were several empty cans of beer, a bowl of snacks. Yes, you could call this task ‘babysitting’, but Solskin’s employers referred to it as ‘welfaring’. He had not been able to get past the scorn he saw on Yakov’s face as Solskin persuaded him from his boat and into custody. A curious episode. His machine was in perfect order, he had managed to evade Solskin’s drones. And then apparently gave up on his elaborately planned escape effort.

The inconvenient fact remained that Solskin could not have Yakov roaming around unprotected with a Whole Truth kshatriya in the city on an as yet unknown mission. Did he believe there was a connection? No. Could he afford to be wrong? Also, no.

There had not been easy conversation between them; they had drunk their beers in an uncompanionable silence.

Yakov stirred again, spat into a pot plant. “You don’t say much, do you?”

“Perhaps not,” Solskin replied. “Shall we try some conversation?”

“Sure, why not?”

“You were fast-tracked to vipra status. But you were little more than a rather average AI coder and errand boy.”

“You say.”

“I do. They gave you multiple courses of BAE therapy. What did you really do to earn it?”

“My debrief is in my file. Maybe you should review it.”

“Oh I have, and, for the sake of conversation, I call ‘bullshit’, Dmitry Yakov.”

Yakov coughed up some beer, glowered at the CSS officer. “Sorry, what?”

“My colleagues all those decades ago may have been blinded by the fact you delivered them Coruscant’s most wanted terrorist.” He leant forward, put his empty beer glass on the table with slow deliberation. “You told them you were her lover but in all other respects you were just an ordinary Whole Truth adherent and they took you at face value…”

“Because there was nothing to show otherwise,” Yakov said, trying to play cool, but holding his beer glass so hard it was at risk of breaking.

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