Athena’s Ashes (Star Thief Chronicles #2)(7)
Author: Jamie Grey

An uncomfortable pressure built in Renna’s chest as they walked through the facility in silence. She risked a glance at the major. Worry had etched lines around his mouth she didn’t remember from the first time they’d met. She wanted to tell him the truth, more than anything, but she couldn’t risk Pallas finding out what she knew. And if Major Dallas was the traitor…

She shook her head. No sense in thinking like that until she learned more.

The major stopped in front of a thick, metal door and entered a code into the keypad. The door slid open, revealing a bank of flickering holoscreens. “You should be able to access the MYTH servers from here. I’ll be back in an hour.”

Renna took a seat in one of the high-backed chairs and used the holo keyboard glowing blue above the long, curved desk. She quickly did a cursory search on the Athena’s crew—Captain Finn, Lieutenant Li Keva, Flight Lieutenant Mark Kojima. Most of the information that came up was the dry, impersonal facts the military had gathered about each of them. She downloaded them to her tablet to skim through later, just in case.

Then she cracked her knuckles. Now that she’d created a paper trail, she could get to the real reason she’d wanted access to the system. Her fingers flew over the keyboard as she built her own temporary firewall. She needed to make sure no one would catch the hack she was about to install to disable the search tracer on the server.

When everything was in place, she grinned at the holomonitor. “Time to play, gorgeous,” she muttered. She pulled an optical disk from her pocket and slipped it into one of the drives on the machine. A few more clicks and her hack was installed.

After that, it was easy to open Level Three security information on all MYTH leadership. She might not know exactly where to start, but she did know Major Larson was up to his eyeballs in something sketchy. He was the best chance she had of finding the answers she needed.

Renna quickly skimmed through his file. Major William Larson, forty-three years old. Born on Earth. Joined the Coalition military at age eighteen. Married at twenty-four. Joined MYTH at thirty-two. Exemplary record—no blemishes or suspicious activities. The perfect soldier.

Renna tapped a finger against her chin. The man’s file was spotless. A little too spotless. She typed in another command, and her hack stripped away the next level of clearance.

That was better. With Level Two access, Major Larson’s file didn’t look quite so squeaky clean. A reprimand after a mission on Anat where three of his men had been killed suspiciously. A formal complaint lodged by another commanding officer regarding insubordination and excessive violence toward prisoners. A number of written warnings about shirking of duty. A series of tests run by Dr. Samil on his physical state after a mission three years ago.

It looked like he’d had some sort of health problem, but the medical jargon made her head ache, so she quickly copied over the records to a storage disk and backed out of his file. Nothing that pointed directly to Pallas, but if the man was unhappy with MYTH leadership, he might have been an easy mark.

One traitor down, one to go. “Pallas, where are you?” she whispered as she typed in a search command. The only thing she knew was that the name itself was a reference from one of the ancient earth myths. She’d looked it up back on the Athena. Pallas had been a Greek Titan. The God of Warcraft. Whoever had picked the name had chosen wisely.

She rubbed the back of her neck, rolling her shoulders to ease the ache that never seemed to go away now. She was running out of time; the MYTH server scanners had to be getting close to finding her hack. But there was one more level to go. Level One clearance. It was a long shot, but she was running out of options. Her fingers flew over the keyboard as she tried to code a back door into the file structure. The server beeped and the light on the front of the box flashed red.

Denied.

Renna frowned and tried again. The server squawked at her a second time. Shit. Why couldn’t she get through? She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She was too keyed up; she needed to relax and let herself feel her way into the hack.

A stab of pain shot through her head, and Renna gasped, the sound echoing through the room. Her eyes flew open, and she felt the same trickle of data seep into her implant as she had in the conference room.

What the hell?

A moment later the light on the server flashed green, and she was in. Like her freaking implant had interfaced with the server and found a workaround to the firewall without her help.

Her pulse raced as she stared at the bank of servers. Gods, the implant was moving so much faster than she’d expected. If this kept up, she’d be a robot in days, not weeks. Cold fingers scraped across her skin, and she swallowed the sudden lump in her throat. She was running out of time. Time to stop Pallas. Time to be with Finn.

With a huge effort, she pushed her panic away. More importantly, she was running out of time right now with these MYTH servers. Renna ran a quick search, and her stomach flipped as the machine brought back a hit.

MYTH had a record of a Titan Industries. Based in the Costa system. Planet Crius Beta.

She grinned at the monitor. Pallas was a Titan. They had to be connected. Someone using that name was too much of a coincidence.

A quick scan of the files proved useless. The company had been created five years ago as a front for MYTH to get a foothold on the planet to manufacture long-range communication components. Strangely, there was no other record of who’d created the business or how it was connected to MYTH now. Like someone had purposefully kept the information vague.

Beep.

Renna jumped in her chair. A red light flashed frantically in one of server banks on the wall, the shrill scream echoing through the room.

“Shit!” Renna quickly pulled her hack from the system and dismantled the firewall, backing out all traces of her presence. She ran a fast scanner through the server, deleting any searches she might have left behind, then shut down the terminal. If MYTH looked, they’d only have records of her viewing the Athena crew information and nothing more.

She pulled her data disk from the console. Another beep sounded and she dropped it. It clattered under the desk. “Dammit. Pull yourself together, woman.” She crouched to pick up the disk, then slipped it into her pocket.

Her gaze fell to the console. If she’d had more time, she could have pulled a lot of data from MYTH’s files, a lot of information she could sell to the highest bidder.

Her fingers twitched, but she twisted them together. She’d made her choice to throw in her lot with MYTH for now, and thinking like that would only get her in trouble. Betraying this organization would mean betraying Finn. Air left her lungs in a rush at the notion of forsaking his trust. Something she wasn’t ready to do. She’d made a promise after all.