“Martin? And Cana?” She pictured the good-natured uncle who held some low-level position on Meridian Prime, who showed up to all the parties and functions. He’d always had a tipsy look. She’d thought he preferred to stay drunk, but now she knew his mind was half gone from a potent drug that was illegal in every civilized system.
And her half-naked cousin? The one who slinked and flirted and never took anything seriously? She collected emeralds from a world that had been strip-mined, with its entire population wiped out by thugs who only cared about profit?
Noal gave her a pitying look. “Would it make you feel better or worse that once I found out, I told our grandmother?”
“Better!” Then she stopped. “Unless…” Unless their grandmother already knew, which she probably did. And nothing had been done about it. After all, it wasn’t hurting Meridian. “But it’s so wrong.”
Now Annika gave her a pitying look, too, one Judit had seen before. “Whatever,” Judit said. “I can’t…right now.”
Spartan rubbed a hand over his eyes. “I know a guy you could talk to, but he’s not going to sell you his ship.”
“Borrow it?” Annika said. “For a price?”
Judit clamped her lips shut. Now that she knew about her family and their illegal tastes, she didn’t want to come near a smuggler. She wanted to suggest they seize his ship, seeing how the man was a criminal, but they’d give her those pitying looks again. Noal was watching, and she wondered if part of him was thinking the same thing, cavalier as he seemed to be about their family’s illegal activities. She wondered if any of the more militaristic, upright thinking her teachers had imbued her with had rubbed off on him.
Spartan thought for a moment. “I have no idea how many creds he might ask for, but he is a greedy little darker. He has a price for everything.”
“Where can we meet him?” Annika asked.
As Spartan gave options, Judit walked around her desk, trying to fight her nature, wondering how she could meet with a smuggler without shouting for his arrest. She kept seeing her vacant-eyed uncle and her flirty cousin. There had been that party on Prime for Noal’s eighteenth birthday, and Cana had worn an emerald necklace; everyone had said how beautiful it was. She’d said she got it on one of Meridian’s colony worlds, but she couldn’t admit that it was Impirion. Part of Judit hoped she didn’t know.
And maybe Uncle Martin thought slice crystals were rock candy.
Judit looked up as her door opened. Spartan was leaving. Annika and Noal stared at Judit with concern on their faces. Annika seemed as if she might say something, but Noal said, “Can you give us a minute?”
“I’ll be on the bridge,” Annika said.
When the door shut, Judit took a deep breath, ready to tell Noal she didn’t need a lecture in the way the galaxy ran, but he headed her off.
“I’m taking this one. It’s something I can do.”
Judit shook her head to move her thoughts to a different track. “You want to negotiate with the smuggler?”
“Well, I can’t fight. I barely know how to fly a shuttle, and I don’t know how to conduct a space battle, but convincing someone to do something? Play the rich house offering promises? I could do that for days.”
She gave him a look. “I thought you didn’t like lying.”
“It’s not lying, not exactly. It’s casting half-truths into a better light.” He smiled. “Besides, you shouldn’t mind lying to a smuggler. Since you can’t arrest him, it’s the next best thing.”
She was about to point out that his words sounded like something a Nocturna might say, but that wouldn’t go over well. And he seemed happy about being useful, even as his mission turned her stomach. She wondered how he’d ever planned to run a new, merged house. Maybe he would have leaned on aides and advisors and Annika.
Before all this, she would have said that Noal thought leading a house would be all parties and fine food and outrageous clothing. That was what his upbringing had led him to believe. Any time their grandmother had let him slack on lessons, Judit thought it was because he was the privileged chosen one. But they were really for her benefit, sitting in with him.
But he’d obviously been watching and listening, and he’d seen a dark of a lot more than she had. And his offer to talk to the smuggler wasn’t just him being in his element. He was also doing it so she didn’t have to.
“Thanks,” she said, giving his shoulder a squeeze. “I could talk to him, but neither one of us would enjoy it.”
“We both know you could do it, but you definitely wouldn’t look as good as me.”
“True.” But she couldn’t let that pass without some teasing of her own. “You and Spartan would make a good team. Or are you a team already?”
He looked away, rolling his eyes, but she knew he was a little embarrassed. Still, his shy smile said it all.
She gave him a gentle push. “Sly dog.”
“Shh.” He made a show of looking around as if Spartan would hear them. “We’ve been talking while everyone else has been scheming or running around derelict mining stations.”
“Have you…”
“Mind your own business!”
“You like him! I can tell. Is that one of the reasons he’s staying aboard?” She poked him in the arm. “Huh? Huh?”
“You are so juvenile!” He sighed hugely and leaned on the desk, arms crossed. “Everything is so stupid and complicated and up in the air. I’m not the chosen one, so I have to figure out what I actually am. Our family probably doesn’t even want me back.”
“Now who’s juvenile? Of course they want you back. They want us all back.” But she couldn’t help thinking of what Annika said, about how they couldn’t go home again. It might be true for Annika, but it couldn’t be true for her. No matter what Noal said, she knew the people in her house. She knew her grandmother. She would want Meridian to be whole.
“What would they want me for?” Noal asked. “Am I going to be the spare chosen one?”
She didn’t have an answer, didn’t know what her family’s ultimate plan for Noal was, but one thing was certain: He would still make a valuable hostage. Even if Meridian had no plans for him, they weren’t going to let a member of the Blood languish in some other house’s clutches. But she couldn’t tell Noal his only value in life was as kidnapping fodder.
“Sounds like you listened to all your lessons,” she said, “and Meridian always needs politicians. According to what everyone has been saying about us, we need them now more than ever, especially since you’ve been outside Meridian’s reach and have seen what the rest of the galaxy is like. You can be the realist in Meridian politics.”
He stretched his arms over his head. “Oh great! Couldn’t think of a more thankless job?”
She barked a laugh. “No one knows what’s going to happen after this dust settles. Will our families be amicable to the merge with Nocturna at all? What if they’re wiped out?” She wanted to take those words back as soon as she said them.
“Don’t say that. They may have thrown me to the dark, but we’re still related.” He gave her a sideways look. “Speaking of relations, are you really going to try to abduct your father?”
The sudden change of conversation derailed her. She hadn’t given it any thought since Annika had suggested it, but with Annika’s departure growing closer, she knew she had to think about it. Even that was better than focusing on the fact that Annika was leaving.
“I guess…I guess I should,” she said.
“Nice confidence.”
“Shut up. I need to make a plan.” She sat in her chair and pressed her hands over her eyes until she saw colored spots. “A plan to kidnap my father.”
“Maybe he’ll come willingly. It’ll be nice to see him again. I always liked Tam.”
“Me, too.” As much as she ever got to see him anyway. “Ever think about your parents?”
He snorted. “I saw mine even less than you saw yours. If they’re missing me, I’m sure it’s for the same old
‘we have to think of what’s best for the house’ reasons. If we picked them up, they’d try to sabotage the ship.”
“Your mom, maybe.” Noal’s mother Cecily was Blood, but his father was from another house, like hers. “Your dad?”
“You know he’s completely under Grandmother’s thumb. He’d do anything to keep his comfy appointment.” He crossed his arms, not looking at her.
“Could be an act.”
Now he gave her a flat look. “I know what I know. Shall we work on the plan to kidnap Tam or what?”
The idea still made her sick to her stomach. She didn’t like the notion of yanking anyone out of their lives. It was too much like the events that had pulled her out of her own life, but she tried to focus on how happy her father would be to see her. Unlike Noal’s parents, he’d never hidden the fact that he loved her. He couldn’t always show it. Grandmother used the people a person cared about as leverage against them. Judit’s father had been increasing the holdings of Meridian for years just for the reward of seeing his daughter more often.
“No,” Judit said, shaking the thought away. “We need to get ready to meet this criminal.”
“Leave the getting ready to me,” Noal said. “You do what you always do, prepare to crack heads if something goes wrong.”
With a smile, she nodded. “Always.”
As Judit suspected, they arranged to meet their unscrupulous target at an unaffiliated station deep in an unappealing section of the galaxy. It took them two days to reach it, and they received more reports about attacks, not just on outer holdings this time. Like the Munn mining station, several other stations had been raided, these deep in house territory. House Donata was reporting raids as close as two systems from their homeworld. Meridian and Nocturna were warning people away from their territory, putting out images of patrolling warships to scare everyone. Meridian and Nightingale, a Nocturna ally, had traded shots in several skirmishes when their patrols came too close to one another. Everyone had fingers on triggers.
Judit was tempted to reread reports, to watch vids of the battles and stew in her office, but as Annika pointed out, they were doing all they could. Judit eventually let herself be tempted away. Showing Annika how much she would miss her was time much better spent.
When they reached the system with their target station, Judit called for a halt at a distance, wanting to watch the traffic come and go and see if anyone was looking for a fight. From the bridge, the Scipio seemed busy, with many ships flocking around it. Roberts picked up more chatter about unrest in other systems. Many ships were putting out short-range signals requesting news. Judit didn’t want to take the Damat into the heart of that, not when people might be blaming Meridian for the recent trouble. There was no disguising who they were. Even if they changed their ship signals, even if they erased all the outside markings, the shape of the Damat would give them away.
“Are we close enough to send a private signal?” Judit asked.
Roberts nodded.
“We should ask him to meet us somewhere else,” Judit said. “If we barge in there—”
“No,” Noal said. “That’s exactly what we should do.”
Judit raised an eyebrow. Standing beside her chair, Annika and Spartan looked at him, too. “You remember all the trouble barging into a situation got us into last time?”
“You could have handled that with more finesse, but now we have to prove we have weight to throw around. Head on in there, Meridian flag flying. Trust me.”
She did, especially since he seemed to have fully recovered the old Noal swagger. “All right, Beatrice, take us in. And the cannon?”
“Let’s not heat the guns yet,” Noal said. “We just want to look capable of punching someone in the face; we don’t need to walk in with our fists raised.”
With tense shoulders, Judit watched as the Damat cruised closer to the station. She could almost feel the other ships’ scanners oozing over her. Several ships turned and exited the system quickly and quietly. All gave way. Some had impressive cannon, but their ships were cobbled together, pirate crap. Even though they’d gotten several reports of unaffiliated ships banding together against houses, these didn’t seem like those types. Most seemed determined to stay away from one another. Still, Judit let various scenarios play out in her mind, picturing their course should someone attack and determining which ships posed the greatest threat and needed to be dealt with first. She had a string of maneuvers lined up in her head, but no one moved to accost them.
“The chatter’s gone quiet,” Roberts said. Judit noted a hint of smugness in his voice. Everyone was sitting a little straighter. “I’m detecting a few signals, but everyone’s gone private, ship-to-ship.”
She bet they had. A few ships detached from the station and eased into space with all the nonchalance a ship could muster. The station itself was larger than the Xerxes, with several tall pylons jutting from the top: berths large enough for the Damat.
“An automated system has cleared us to dock at berth three,” Roberts said.
Beatrice nodded. “Got it.”
“We better ping our contact,” Spartan said. “Let him know we’re here.”
Noal chuckled. “Oh, he probably knows.”
“Nevertheless,” Spartan said, giving Noal an affectionate smile.
Judit resisted the urge to tease and led the way to her office. When Annika tried to follow, Judit leaned close. “It’s going to be a bit cramped.”
Annika frowned. “You know how I love being left out.”
“I promise I’ll tell you everything.”
With a sigh and a shrug, Annika stayed behind.
“You should make contact,” Noal said to Spartan. “Since he heard from you first.”
“You want me to speak for your house?” Spartan asked.
“Large houses sometimes use intermediaries—”
“When they don’t want to get their hands dirty,” Spartan said.
Judit nearly barked at him to just do it, but Noal touched her wrist.
“If we’re going to play a part,” Noal said sweetly, “we might as well play it all the way.”
With a sigh, Spartan nodded. Even though Judit didn’t know if she could wheedle someone like that, it worked like magic. Noal gave her a wink when Spartan wasn’t looking.
“Now,” Noal said, “Spartan, you and I will stand here where the holo can see us. Judit, back there against the wall where you can hear, but you’ll be out of the way.”
“Tell me when you’re ready,” she said.
Noal spent another moment arranging Spartan’s hair and straightening his own jacket before he said, “Ready.”
Judit clacked her jaw. “Roberts, open a channel to my office.”
“Done, Boss.”
Judit nodded to Noal. Spartan punched a few numbers into the console. “I’m pinging the personal comm he gave me.”
Judit gave them both a warning look, hoping to remind them to be careful with what they said.
They both gave her looks that said they weren’t stupid. Heads tilted, expressions disbelieving, they looked remarkably similar, and she wondered if it was from spending so much time together, or if they were just that alike. The holo blinked on, and Judit looked at the holographic projection from the back, seeing through it.
The smuggler was older than expected. All holos made people a little green, but his skin had hints of purple that meant he had roots near Munn or Flavio, not enough to be considered important, or maybe he’d run from his responsibilities in order to be unaligned.
He also had a beard, very out of fashion, and like his hair, it was dotted salt-and-pepper; his eyes were a blue so light and piercing, they seemed to shine out of the projection.
“Mr. Antiles,” Spartan said with a nod. “Spartan Roulege here. As you’ve no doubt heard, we’ve arrived.”
The holo chuckled and waved a hand. “It’s just Antiles. I never go for titles. And yes, you made quite a splashy entrance. Now that you’re here,
what can I do for House Meridian?”
“We’d like to discuss that in private on the station,” Spartan said coolly. He’d always seemed so nervous before. Maybe Noal had been giving him lessons. “Somewhere completely…discreet.” And he said it with the right amount of sneer. Definitely some lessons.
Antiles opened his arms as if to say the galaxy was theirs. “The Scipio is nothing but discreet, Mr. Roulege.”
“We were thinking of our ship.”
Antiles inclined his head. “While I do acknowledge that Meridian is a mighty house, quite used to having things its own way, I must decline. Your house, while powerful, is also one that has not hesitated to arrest individuals such as myself in the past.”
Except when they needed them, Judit thought, imagining slice crystals and Impirion emeralds.
“You understand my reluctance, of course.”
Spartan made a show of looking to Noal, who’d spent the whole interview looking bored, examining his fingernails, seemingly in a hurry to get the preliminaries out of the way. Noal waved a hand.
“There is a restaurant aboard the Scipio,” Antiles said. “All automated, no staff, sound-dampened booths, low lighting, and no weapons allowed. I’m sure whatever business you have can be conducted there?”
The thought of meeting this man anywhere made her skin crawl, but Judit had to nod. If it had been her in charge she would have demanded Antiles come to them or she’d blow his ship up, maybe even the whole station. But stealth was what they needed right then. Noal was right.
They arranged a time, then all they had to do was dock and wait. Luckily, it wasn’t long. Judit hoped Antiles wasn’t giving himself enough time to set a trap, that he was simply being cautious. Dealing in illegal goods, he would have to be. He might have had dealings with Meridian before, though it turned her stomach. She fought the image of her drunk uncle and her jewel-covered cousin. He might have been the ones to peddle those very goods. Would it be rude to ask? But she wouldn’t be doing the asking. And she wouldn’t be left behind, either.
“Annika and I are coming with you,” she said as soon as the transmission closed.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Noal said. “I’ve heard of these types of places before, soundproof and whatnot. I plan to have you with us in case anything turns nasty.”
House of Fate Page 16
