When no explanation of this odd phrase was forthcoming, Tremblay decided it was time to research this unexpected assignment. He familiarized himself with the information archive’s interface, and a few minutes later he was taking down notes from Lynch’s surprisingly—almost shockingly—detailed records. He was tempted to see what Lynch’s files said about one Raphael Tremblay, but instead decided to focus on the task at hand.
If he understood correctly, he was about to sit down for a negotiation with one of the most powerful people in the Sector—and the prospect was simultaneously terrifying and stimulating in an unfamiliar, but surprisingly welcome fashion.
“I could get used to this,” Tremblay muttered as he perused the databanks of the sleek yacht.
“You’re not coming with me?!” Tremblay repeated for the third time.
“I don’t much care for stutterers, Trembly,” Lynch quipped as he cycled open the airlock. “Learn to take the hint the first time.”
“But I still don’t understand the whole situation,” Tremblay objected, “and I don’t have any experience as a negotiator!”
“Oh?” Lynch quirked an eyebrow as the inner airlock opened with a faint hiss. “What would you call that neat trick y’all pulled with them Droids?”
Tremblay scowled as he gripped the data slates which he had loaded with notes and information in preparation to, as far as he had thought even just a few minutes earlier, act as Lynch’s second in the meeting. “That was different.”
“Nah,” Lynch shook his head as he gestured for Tremblay to enter the airlock, “ain’t nuthin’ different about it.”
“But my life was on the line,” Tremblay said as he entered the airlock, “I didn’t have a choice.”
“Like I said,” Lynch grinned as his hand moved to the airlock’s control panel, “ain’t nuthin’ different about it.”
“Why aren’t you opening the outer door?” Tremblay asked, a note of unwanted fear entering his voice.
“Gotta maintain positive air pressure,” Lynch explained, “the Eldreds ain’t exactly known for their microbial containment procedures, and the last thing I want to take away from this hookup is a case of Anduvian Flu.”
Before Tremblay could object, the inner door closed and the pressure inside the airlock increased enough to gently press against his eardrums.
“You’ll do fine,” Lynch assured him via the intercom, “just consider this OJT. We’ll be back in two hours.”
“You’re leaving?!” Tremblay blurted.
“People to be, places to see,” Lynch said, flashing a two-finger salute through the viewing port built into the inner door just as the outer door cycled open. “I’m pullin’ for you, son.”
At that, the inner screen went opaque and the intercom light turned off. Tremblay was so confused by the situation that he started to wonder if this was all some elaborate method to dispose of him. But he knew that was too self-aggrandizing; there were far simpler ways to kill him, and contemplating those possible methods had cost him a significant amount of sleep in recent days.
“Come on, Tremblay,” he muttered as he stepped into the boarding tube which connected the two vessels, “it’s not like this is the worst situation you’ve ever been in.” Recalling—with excruciating detail—the time when he had cut off his own hand under threat of death at the hands of Jean Luc Montagne, Tremblay stiffened his spine and gripped the edge of the nearest ring of the flexible boarding tube.
The tube was long and flexible, and there was no gravity within so he gently pulled his weightless body along via the notches set every few feet on the ring segments which supported the flexible, vacuum-proof skin of the tube itself.
When he reached the far end, the airlock’s outer door was already open. A quick look at the airlock itself told Tremblay that the ship was an older CR-70 Corvette, which he took as good news since it meant he was about to board a ship with dozens, rather than hundreds—or even thousands—of crew.
Once he reached the airlock, he closed the outer door and waited while the airlock re-pressurized to achieve equilibrium with the ship’s interior.
The inner door opened a few seconds later, revealing a pair of armed guards sporting identical uniforms that were literally crafted in a rainbow motif. They also wore cloaks which were clasped over their right shoulders, and Tremblay took note of the insignia etched into the clasps themselves. Seeing they were consistent with Eldred Cooperative Security iconography, he exhaled in mild relief.
“The Chairman is waiting for you, sir,” the leftward guard said, gesturing to Tremblay’s left where a long corridor stretched twenty some meters.
Schooling his features, Tremblay nodded, “Thank you.” He then proceeded down the corridor which, according to his memory of the CR-70’s schematics, would lead to a lift that would carry him to the third deck. The conference room was traditionally located on the third deck, and he knew it was unlikely that a negotiation of this type would be conducted anywhere except for that relatively secure room.
He entered the lift at the end of the corridor and, true to his expectations, one of the guards input the command to take them to the ship’s third deck.
“First time aboard a CR-70, sir?” the other guard asked as the lift ascended.
“It is,” Tremblay replied truthfully. He had almost been assigned to serve aboard a CR-70 fresh out of the academy, but he had fortunately caught the eye of a former professor and had been given the fast track to assignment aboard the Lucky Clover under Rear Admiral Arnold Janeski and then-Captain Taggart.
Of course, what he had previously considered a fortuitous turn for his career in being assigned to the Lucky Clover may well have been the worst thing that had ever happened to him.
“Blasted Montagnes,” he cursed under his breath.
“Sir?” the rightward guard asked, turning with a quizzical look on his face.
“It’s nothing,” Tremblay muttered as the lift’s doors opened. The guards led him down the corridor to precisely where he had expected the conference room to be, and gestured for him to enter once they arrived. Upon entering the room, Tremblay saw a trio of people in the room, with two women flanking the man who essentially ran the Eldred Cooperative. “Chairman Turay,” he acknowledged, fighting to calm his fraying nerves.
“And who might you be?” the Chairman asked neutrally.
Tremblay actually considered lying about his identity, but he knew that it was unlikely such a lie would hold up to any scrutiny. But he also didn’t want these people knowing his name, so he did what any Intelligence Officer would do: he replied obliquely to the query without actually providing the answer which the Chairman sought.
“My name is unimportant,” he said dismissively as he placed his data slates down on the near end of the long, wooden conference table. It was an impressive piece of furniture, measuring nearly twenty feet long and a third that wide at its bulging center, and it seemed to have been cut from a single, naturally-grown tree. “But my employer,” he continued as he seated himself, seizing upon the brief window of the Chairman’s confusion, “wishes to convey that these negotiations are of the utmost importance—“
“If they are so important,” the black-skinned woman to the Chairman’s right interrupted in a perfectly pitched, staccato accent, “why does your employer not attend them personally?”
“Mr. Lynch asked me to convey his apologies,” Tremblay continued as he called up the first set of relevant documents on the data slates, knowing that he was in way over his head but also knowing that the only way out was forward, “but—and I would appreciate some discretion on your part regarding this information—Mr. Lynch’s health was a factor in his ultimate decision not to attend these sensitive negotiations.”
“He is unwell?” an Asiatic-looking woman to the Chairman’s left asked with obviously piqued interest.
Perfect, Tremblay thought to himself, the aides are sufficiently distracted by my misleading half-truths. But a quick check of the Chairman’s f
eatures showed he was rather less than convinced by Tremblay’s quickly-constructed falsehood.
“Again, I would appreciate discretion,” he reiterated, making brief but pointed eye contact with Chairman Turay before finishing, “and I think we can all agree that the sooner these negotiations can be concluded, the better it will go for all parties involved?”
The Chairman seemed to flinch, and it was in that moment that Tremblay realized he had succeeded in clearing the first hurdle. While he held no illusions that they actually believed him, they clearly did not disbelieve him enough to shut the proceedings down right then and there.
“Of course,” Chairman Turay nodded, gesturing for his attaches to be seated alongside him at the opposite end of the table. “We are understandably eager to recover our stolen warships—and to bring the pirates who stole them to justice once and for all. The Eldred Cooperative will not be satisfied with anything less than a full admission of guilt on the part of House Raubach and its agents, along with the public executions of the officers which took part in this unthinkable crime against our Collective. But we are glad to begin the process by learning the location of our stolen hardware and the abducted crew who served aboard them.”
Tremblay winced but did his best to cover the expression. The Chairman had not-so-subtly declared his minimum terms, which ran directly counter to Lynch’s instructions for the meeting. “I’ve been instructed to negotiate in good faith on behalf of Mr. Lynch,” Tremblay said, buying time for his mind to work through the nuances of the situation, “but I’ve also been informed that it may well be impossible to secure the information you desire without certain concessions on your part regarding the light in which House Raubach is viewed regarding this…unfortunate series of incidents.”
The Chairman’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly, and Tremblay had to admit that even he shared the Eldred Cooperative’s reservations about what he had just said. Middleton’s first tour aboard the Pride of Prometheus had exposed irrefutable evidence which suggested that House Raubach had been one of the chief entities behind the destabilization of the Spineward Sectors of the old Confederation following the Imperial Withdrawal. In fact, it was all too clear that the mass piracy of military assets from throughout Sectors 23 and 24 had been planned for years, if not decades.
That he was here negotiating on their behalf was unthinkable to him, since he had only ever considered himself to be a loyal citizen of the Confederated Empire of which his home world of Capria was a central member. But Mr. Lynch had made his animosity with House Raubach perfectly clear by handing Middleton a pair of Liberator torpedoes, which were used to great effect against Commodore Raubach’s flagship. Lynch was also clearly no fool, and with the intelligence assets at his disposal he had his finger on the pulse of everything taking place across the local Sectors.
So while Tremblay disliked every part of the idea that he was here to negotiate on behalf of an Imperial Great House which had happily robbed dozens of worlds of their ships, crews, and other military infrastructure, he also knew on immutable truth:
All the hardware in the universe would be useless if it was deployed incorrectly. That meant that intelligence was the lynchpin of any effective military operation, and if for no other reason than to learn the capabilities of Lynch’s organization, Tremblay would have to play along for the time being.
After all, that was what any good Intelligence Officer would do.
“I think this can work,” Tremblay nodded after reviewing the particulars of the counter-counter-counter-counter-counter-proposal. In truth, he was stunned that he had succeeded in getting them to agree to repay the outstanding debts owed to House Raubach—which totaled over a billion credits. He had assumed at several points during the negotiation that his life was about to end, but throughout it all he maintained focus on the task at hand and now it seemed he was about to be dismissed from the meeting. “I will take your terms to Mr. Lynch.”
“This entire negotiation has been extremely irregular,” the dark-skinned woman seated beside the Chairman said with overt disapproval. Apparently she was the Attorney General for the Eldred Cooperative, and she had predictably nitpicked several of Tremblay’s statements during the back-and-forth.
“That’s just the way Mr. Lynch does business,” Tremblay said in what he hoped would be an assuring tone. It was true enough as far as he was concerned, but he hoped he kept the annoyance from his voice as he spoke. “If that will be all?” he asked, checking his wrist-link’s chronometer and finding that two hours and twenty three minutes had passed since his embarkation on the Corvette.
“It will,” Chairman Turay nodded, standing from the table and prompting everyone else to do so. “Good day, Mr. Tremblay.”
Tremblay froze mid-turn as he made for the door. How the Chairman had ascertained his identity was less important than the fact that the man had made a point of showing that he had done so. That could only mean that Chairman Turay was using it as a threat, which made Tremblay’s stomach twist.
Tremblay was sick of being pushed around by everyone in the blasted Spineward Sectors, so he neatly stacked his data slates on the table and took two steps toward the Chairman before stopping and asking, “How is Ms. Dench, Mr. Chairman?” Ms. Janice Dench was, according to Tremblay’s latest intel on the Eldred Chairman, a longtime extramarital relation with whom he had fathered no fewer than three children.
The looks of confusion on the faces of the Chairman’s associates told Tremblay that he had just turned the tables on the Eldred Cooperative’s most powerful figure—and the short-lived look of furious contempt on the Chairman’s face was just the icing on the cake.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the Chairman sniffed.
Tremblay schooled his features into a mask of faux confusion, but his eyes never left the Chairman’s as he said, “Forgive me; I must have been mistaken.” He turned his back on the three of them, collected his data slates, and made his way to the door before pausing with deliberately dramatic effect. He met the Chairman’s gaze and flashed a hollow smile as he said, “My associates will be in touch, Mr. Chairman.”
With that, he turned and left the room feeling immeasurably more confident than he had been upon entering it. The trip to the airlock and back through the docking tube went by in a blur as the image of Chairman Turay’s contemptuous sneer being replaced with genuine fear as the delicate nature of his life’s position was made abundantly clear to him.
When he got back to the yacht’s airlock, he closed the outer door and waited for the pressure to equalize. The process took significantly longer than it had taken when boarding the Chairman’s ship, but eventually the inner door opened to reveal Lynch.
Where Tremblay had anticipated seeing an expectant look on Lynch’s face—or even a condescending one—instead he saw a broad grin that seemed wholly at odds with the man he had previously interacted with.
“That’s my boy!” Lynch congratulated warmly, chucking him hard on the back before wrapping an arm around his shoulder and guiding him toward the pilot’s station. “I gotta tell you, though…you had me worried ‘til the very end there. I didn’t know if you was ever gonna stick up for yourself.”
It only took a few seconds for Tremblay to realize what Lynch was saying—or, more precisely, why he was saying it. “You bugged the data slates,” he said irritably.
“Nah, ain’t nuthin’ like that,” Lynch assured him as they came to the large, circular chamber which housed the pilot’s console. There were several curved sofas in the center of the room, and Lynch nudged Tremblay toward one while seating himself on another.
“It’s a cranial implant,” Fisher, the craft’s pilot explained as he tapped his head pointedly before gesturing at Tremblay’s, “they’re standard issue for all of us. We had it installed the last time you were asleep.”
“You put a bug in my skull?!” Tremblay demanded of Lynch, dropping the data slates and leaping angrily to his feet.
Lynch looked
fearful for a moment, but that look quickly melted into amusement as Tremblay realized he had just been played. The arms dealer began to laugh hysterically while pointing at Tremblay’s face, eventually declaring with far more mirth than Tremblay thought appropriate, “Gotcha!”
Tremblay sat back down on the sofa with the distinct impression that he had just been hazed.
“But seriously,” Lynch said laughingly after his and Fisher’s mirth at Tremblay’s expense had diminished, “we probably should get you low-jacked ASAP. Never know when it might come in handy—it’s your choice, of course,” he added with a shrug as he kicked his feet up and stretched out on his sofa.
“So you did bug the data slates?” Tremblay asked sourly.
“Of course; I wouldn’t go violatin’ a man’s skull without permission…or at least not without cause,” Lynch said dismissively. “Oh, speakin’ of slates…” he said as a look of realization came across his features. “I got a message for you,” he explained as he produced a mini-slate and tossed it precisely into Tremblay’s lap.
“A message?” Tremblay asked skeptically as he activated the playback feature. An instant later, Bethany’s face appeared and her image’s eyes immediately narrowed.
“Despite my best efforts to dissuade him, our host has decided that I should be transferred to another vessel for the time being. Since I’ll be gone until you return, I’ve got one piece of friendly advice for you, along with one warning. The advice is this: do your best to help our benefactor since his agenda perfectly complements your own—even though you can’t see it yet,” her recorded image said in a matter-of-fact tone. “As for the warning…” she leaned forward, prompting Tremblay’s eyes to wander to her image’s plunging neckline before her icy voice snapped his attention back to her hard eyes, “Don’t screw this up for me, Tremblay…or you’ll learn that my little cousin’s wrath was just an appetizer for the real thing.”
McKnight's Mission Page 22
