Unjust Theft: Amsterdam Institute, #4

By R. Z. Held

Artist Sienna thought she and her partner, Cyperus, had escaped the war between the LSF planetary alliance and the Pax Romana empire, but now a plea from their friends might draw them back in.

 

Gentiana arrives, bringing with her the sentient AI Penstemon. They need Cyperus's help to find Pen's daughter: a non-sentient copy of Pen made without the AI's consent and stolen by LSF. Cyperus, restless in retirement, jumps at the chance to return to intelligence work and rescue her, leaving Sienna behind.

 

After months of silence, Sienna receives a distress call: Cyperus has found Pen's daughter, but they're trapped deep inside LSF territory. He needs Sienna: LSF reveres the painters of its grand propaganda murals, and would easily grant her and her party travel authorization if she goes undercover as one. Can Sienna overcome her dark history with LSF to rescue both Pen's daughter and the man she loves?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rhiannon Held
• Release date: Aug 11, 2020
• ISBN: 9781943545148

Book preview

UNJUST THEFT

By R. Z. Held

Copyright © 2020 by Rhiannon Held

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Cover design by Kate Marshall (www.katemarshalldesigns.com)

https://rhiannonheld.com/

Amsterdam Institute Series

CLEAN INSTALL

DIRTY BURNOUT

FAIR EXCHANGE

UNJUST THEFT

PURE MOTIVES

BASE INSTINCTS

Table of Contents

PART I

PART II

PART III

EPILOGUE

Part I

Prague Sienna pounded across the permeable hard surface of the Amsterdam Institute’s spacefield toward the recently landed spaceship, mind racing just as fast in trying to figure out what was going on. The ship was a small runabout, though it was large enough to allow burst travel. Its type could take half a dozen people halfway across the known universe, if they stopped to refuel often enough. This one had—apparently—not come that far in distance, but certainly that far across political divides, leaving Pax Romana territory for the independent planet of Idyll.

Penstemon said through Sienna’s implant, but it made no more sense now than when Pen had summoned her to the spacefield. Pen was an AI based in a building, days of travel from here, even by burst.

Sienna’s partner, Cyperus, contributed. She glanced back to where he was striding with slow deliberation from the truck they’d arrived in. His black hair, cut too short for it to work up the wave it clearly wanted to, was in the local style, but the close-cut line of his beard around his mouth evoked the style of someone too urban and fashionable to want to work up a sweat. Which was absolutely not the case, but mercy forbid anyone should realize he physically couldn’t run due to his bad knee. She loved the man, but he was awfully stubborn in his pride.

Pen’s call had reached them over an early breakfast, before both of them headed to work, and the spring sunrise was only now lightening the overcast skies at the horizon. They weren’t far off winter so the air had a bite against her cheeks, and she was grateful for the heavy coat she’d thrown on. She looked behind Cyperus to where the Institute’s security was gathering and cranked up the zoom along with the low-light enhancement her implant was granting her. As she’d expected, they were still hanging back to gather more information; the Institute got enough refugees that their security was trained to ask questions before shooting. They weren’t going to stop any fools who wanted to run straight up to the strange ship, though.

Gentiana said, but the channel showed to Sienna as implant-to-implant, not voice-to-implant. That wasn’t right either—Gentiana was Pax Romana infantry, and they didn’t have implants. If she was even still with the military, after everything that had happened to her, surrounding the circumstances under which she and Sienna had met.

The ship’s main ramp lowered and there was Gentiana at the top, clinging to the side of the entrance and looking like death. Literally, to Sienna’s eyes—given the delicate sharpness to the woman’s features, the sallow tinge to her light brown skin, and the way her long, black hair straggled out of a decaying tail, if Sienna had been drawing Gentiana, she would have portrayed her as a mortally wounded warrior queen.

Then Gentiana was falling and Sienna lunged up to catch her. Pulling the woman’s arm over her shoulder gave her a close-up view of the central false note in her historical imagining, the shimmery red-orange data paths that started at circles at Gentiana’s temples and continued as lines down the sides of her face, over the corners of her jaw, and down her neck. The woman had definitely had an implant installed since Sienna had seen her last, about a standard year ago; the data paths—or rave lines, Sienna still thought that was a better description when they weren’t set to color-match the skin—gave the implant its outside connections, at the temples for a piloting harness and on the pads of the first two fingers for other equipment.

At the moment, Gentiana’s natural skin around the data paths at the templates was noticeably inflamed. Cyperus pushed himself to a jog for the last fifty meters or so, apparently conquering his pride sufficiently to reveal his hitched and uneven gait. Piloting fatigue, he said, then repeated himself on a wider channel for the security forces. He shifted his position to try to catch and hold Gentiana’s gaze, bent slightly with his hands on his knees. He wasn’t that much taller than her, but she had slumped against Sienna, head hanging. Is this the first time you’ve piloted since you got the implant?

Gentiana got her head up, but seemed unable to focus properly. Pen said she would, but she couldn’t. Not when she was trying to adjust to being so small. The implant...did most of it for me. Cyperus had spoken to her in Lingua, but she answered in the version of French used by Libertad Sans Frontiers, the Pax Romana’s dire enemies, without seeming to realize it. That was a textbook sign of having used an implant to quick-learn a language very recently, which raised the urgent question of why Gentiana had thought she’d need it. Sienna only understood her because the language had been pre-loaded, as it were, on her own implant when that had been inflicted on her.

In fact, Gentiana’s situation—staggering in, trying to hold herself together—brought Sienna’s situation a year ago very much to the front of her mind. Idyll was neutral in the war between LSF and the Pax Romana, but LSF had captured Sienna by mistake, held her in a POW camp until they’d accidentally killed Isachne, a Pax Romana agent they needed for a prisoner exchange. So they’d shoved the dead woman’s implant into Sienna’s head and passed her off as Isachne, leaving Sienna to stagger into a Pax Romana facility, trying to hold herself together while scraps of a dead woman seeped into her mind from the implant.

Gentiana had even been the first person Sienna met properly at that facility, but there the strange, flipped echo of her situation ended—as Isachne’s widow, a grieving Gentiana had expected an LSF trick, and had tried to kick Sienna’s face in, not support her. Sienna had chosen not to hold it against her.

The intelligence agent Cyperus had once been engaged visibly in his expression now, tightening a muscle at the corner of his jaw as he shared a worried glance with Sienna over Gentiana’s use of French. He continued firmly in Lingua. You can guide an emergency burst with the implant’s default piloting functions without any other training, but the number of bursts you’d have needed to get here from Penstemon’s facility—fuck, Gentiana. You’re lucky you didn’t pass out in the middle of one and kill yourself. And Pen. Who’s chasing you? The foxes? A play on faux-French, referring to the fact that when LSF had adopted a dead language from the archives, they’d updated it heavily based on—of course—Lingua.

own fucking side,> Pen broke in, typically foul-mouthed, for her, but with an edge of desperation to her voice Sienna hadn’t heard before.

They copied Pen. Secretly, without her consent. Easiest way to get another last-jumped AI, I guess. Gentiana made it back to Lingua, but her choppy delivery suggested she was struggling to stay there. But it was just another non-sentient Near-AI with more swearing.

<She was. My poor daughter.> That hadn’t just been desperation she’d heard in Pen’s voice, Sienna realized. It had been pure anguish.

So they mothballed her. But LSF hit that facility and stole her with a bunch of other tech. The first Pen knew she existed was when she received a brief signal from her, deep in LSF territory. But the military brass didn’t give a shit, and wouldn’t let us go after her. So I had to go AWOL and help Pen transfer herself to the ship and come out here to get Cyperus so we can go save her daughter. We have to leave right away!

And then Sienna was suddenly supporting all of Gentiana’s weight. She barely managed to stagger them both back to the wall, where Cyperus helped lower Gentiana gently to a seat on the deck, propped against the wall.

You’re not going anywhere just yet. One of the most interesting symptoms of pilot fatigue, Cyperus growled under his breath, "is when you forget how to walk for a few days."

Universal mercy, Sienna hissed as she straightened. She could barely process it all. Pen’s daughter—clone?—what must it be like, knowing someone so nearly yourself was in the hands of the enemy? No wonder Gentiana had pushed herself to get here.

fucking databases—> Pen sounded like she was having focus problems of her own.

A couple