Chapter 19: Shifting Tides
The sisters were late.
Specifically the Sydean Lineage, who had gone off for a quick jaunt to the core and not returned. They were the only ones who were ever out of contact for any length of time, and their very purpose meant they went deep into the parts of the System where Cato had yet to gain foothold. Every time they vanished from comms it generated a little spark of anxiety.
Ever since he’d needed to intervene against the assassination squad, that spark had been just a bit brighter, and it was even worse now that they were Bismuth. He didn’t know what being fully made of System-stuff meant, in the short or long term, and whether or not they would stay on his side. Maybe not every version of him worried, as there were plenty of worlds where he was entirely busy with local affairs and would never have to deal with the matters of the frontier, but even in his multiplicity he shared priorities and memories.
So when they missed their check-in with Cato-Nesil, a few portal links outside the hazy threshold to the inner worlds, various Catos started making plans. He couldn’t really apply force outside of territories he’d already infiltrated, and with the new portal restrictions even trying to push surveillance through was extraordinarily difficult. The crusade quest was of surprising if questionable help; there was a significant movement of Golds and Platinums, which meant a given lineage could cross over portals without drawing attention, but spending too much on any one world would stand out. Various Lineages could do preliminary scouting, but actually trying to spread Cato was risky with so many eyes, and high ranking ones at that.
Nor was there any useful way to ask about the missing lineage. Golds inquiring after a Bismuth would be strange enough, but the Sydean Lineage were purposely not conspicuous. Despite their rank being enough to draw attention, if they simply passed through a world nobody would have thought twice about them. Even if they could have followed the missing pair into the core, there was no way to isolate the path the Sydean Lineage took. One day stretched into two, then five, then more, and the potential scenarios became more worrying.
They might be captured, or dead. The System was a hostile place, and the sisters had major enemies — including Muar, who was still somewhere out and about and wouldn’t be fooled by identification-obscuring artifacts. Or they may simple have abandoned their charge, as they were the only ones at Bismuth and nobody knew all the consequences of that transition. The System might simply have made them turn traitor. The little amount of data he had from interacting with them post-Ascension suggested they were acting somewhat out of character, but there were so many reasons for that he couldn’t discern the reason. Guessing wasn’t useful, so Cato was forced to go to one asset that might actually be able to help.
“Dyen,” Cato-Mishkel sent, on the world where the Sydean had bunkered down. Dyen had received much the same upgrades as the Sydean Lineage, including the communications link that let Cato track him fairly easily, though not the combat algorithms. He still didn’t trust Dyen enough to give him the same edge as Raine and Leese, and if it ever came down to it he knew who he wanted to win a fight. “I need a favor.”
“What happened?” Dyen replied immediately, sidestepping what Cato intended to say. “Something to do with this quest?”
“It might, but I don’t know,” Cato said, not needing to ask which quest. “Raine and Leese left for the core, and they haven’t returned.”