“And I delivered.”
“We both know Arriola won’t give us anything. If she even knows something. All that disappeared with the death of Captain Feyodor, who was notoriously closemouthed. She probably refused to even let her crew record where they went. No.” Norris’s smile grew wider. A real smile this time. “Let’s be honest. You’re in this for revenge. You want revenge on Another Road.”
Wickmore opened his mouth as if he was going to deny it, closed his mouth again. “Then why haven’t you delivered?”
Norris’s voice was mild. “Why, Executive, as you so rightly noted, I have Arriola, but I don’t have Another Road.”
“Fool.” Alistair was sure he saw spittle spray from Wickmore’s mouth. “They’ll follow you. They’re waiting. They’ll plan to rescue Arriola and Snowshoe.” He laughed mockingly. “If you think Snowshoe is packed up tight back in your hospital, you’ve another think coming.”
Norris’s lips tightened. “I fail to see how a ship of how many—eight, ten crew at most—can take on a merc ship with four hundred trained soldiers. And if that’s the case, then I see why you want revenge. Never fear. I won’t underestimate them the way you have.”
If Wickmore was right—and Pol—and Arriola’s ship was following them, waiting to rescue her and Snowshoe, then Alistair hadn’t lost Nika Rik Terri. The Ort would still work with Alistair’s people over the Santiagans.
Alistair had to survive today and somehow give Norris the information he needed to go to Zell as well.
“By the way,” Wickmore said, “the Justice Department wants their agent back.”
“I have no idea what you are talking about.”
Another figure leaned into the call. Slender, dark haired, arresting looks, well spoken. “Don’t lie to us, Captain. I know what you did. I was there.”
Alistair staggered back. Now he didn’t know what was real or what was imagined. Given his injuries, Cam couldn’t possibly have survived. Could he?
He was dead. Alistair had seen him die.
“We collected Snowshoe and Arriola,” Norris lied. “I don’t know what happened to anyone else.”
“You realize that kidnapping citizens is a designated offense,” Cam said.
“Snowshoe is contracted to the Boost. He has a contract to complete.”
“Arriola isn’t contracted, and even if you forced her to sign something, she’s one of the few individuals who could buy her way out of the contract. Josune Arriola is a wealthy woman, Captain Norris.”
Norris cut him off with a wave of his hand. “You sound like a lawyer.”
“I am a lawyer.” Cam smiled, and even Norris’s lips twitched in return. “I’m Laughton’s lawyer.”
Norris closed the link.
Alistair laughed. He couldn’t help it. He couldn’t stop laughing either.
Norris turned to look at him. “Take him back to the cell,” as if Alistair’s laughter left a sour taste in his mouth.
“That was fast,” Arriola said when they shoved him back into the cell. “I thought he’d kill you once he got what information he wanted.”
“Didn’t give it to him.” Now that he didn’t have to speak clearly, all he could manage was a mumble. He lay down on the floor and closed his eyes. “Am I drugged?” He ached all over.
“No idea.”
“Me either. I’m hallucinating. I saw someone who is dead.” He rolled onto his back. “He looked—” Alive and as well as Cam had ever been.
He tried to sit up, gave up. “I think they drugged me, even though I didn’t notice.”
“Maybe he didn’t die.”
“You didn’t see how bad he was. I couldn’t even stay around to help him. What sort of friend am I?”
Arriola considered. “It depends on the circumstances. And on how you justify it to yourself.”
“You’re very blunt.”
Arriola’s voice softened. “You think I’m blunt. You should have met Nika.” He heard genuine warmth in her voice. “When she’s honest, she can be blistering.” She settled back against the bars. “Why did you want Nika, anyway?”
This might be his chance. Norris would have someone listening, surely. Here, in the cell, there might even be a chance to survive.
“Apparently she’s one of the few body modders who can work with transurides properly.”
He felt, rather than saw, Arriola stiffen. “Why is that important?” Her voice was cold.
He looked at her, sitting preternaturally still over at the bars. “It’s true. My friend, the one who’s dead.” Or not. “She modded him.”
“What’s that got to do with anything? Lots of people have been modded by Nika.”
He was losing her, and he hadn’t given Norris what he wanted. “Everything and nothing. On Zell—” He stopped, looked at her. “That’s where the weapons come from. The ones Norris was torturing me to get information about.”
“Walls have ears.”
He sincerely hoped they did. “It’s a little world out near the Vortex.”
She shook her head. “I know Zell. I’ve passed there once or twice. It’s a dead-end world with nothing but a failed settlement.”
“We have a settlement there. Fifty of us.”
Arriola glanced at the bars, at the walls outside, to where Alistair could see a heat line—a wire—leading to a darker heat block, which might have been a camera. “I hope you know what you are doing.” She shrugged and muttered under her breath, “Or maybe you really are drugged.”
She understood his words were deliberate. Or maybe not understood, but she was playing along. He didn’t know why, but it was important she didn’t think he was stupid.
“Not a choice I’d make, living that close to the Vortex. Just getting supplies in would be dangerous.”
“We survived. We’re still surviving. All fifty of us.” He emphasized the fifty, realized he shouldn’t have. Norris might suspect he was being played.
If he was listening.
Please, God, let him be listening. Even better, let him act on it.
“Fifty?” Arriola was still playing along.
“Two years. Fifty people. On a world like that, you usually lose half the people before the end of the contract. We only lost one person. I’m proud of that.” Lennie, the doctor who’d thought he was invincible, with his genemod machine that could cure anything. Except a two-hundred-meter fall onto rocks.
“That is impressive,” Josune said. “I still wouldn’t be insane enough to—”
Alistair opened his eyes and tried to sit up, to see what had silenced her. Norris, and their ever-friendly two guards.
“Search her,” Norris said. “Do it properly this time.”
“Rather than have those thugs paw at me,” Arriola said, “tell me what you’re looking for. I can save you time.”
“Apparently, your friends are following us.”
Arriola reached down to her boot, prized something off the inside flap. “You’re looking for trackers. Why didn’t you say?” She handed it over.
“She’ll have two,” one of the guards said. “They always do.”
“We have one already. If you’d done your job properly the first time, we would have had this one too. We have what we want.” Norris inclined his head Josune’s way. “We’ll talk soon. I need to placate a certain executive, and that requires your friends. I want to be sure they’re following us, and I’d prefer to meet them somewhere quieter. Like Zell,” and he smiled at Alistair.
He had been listening. Alistair covered his face to hide the relief, found he was shaking.
Norris left.
Alistair put his head down to his knees, still shaking. He hadn’t really believed it would work. Still didn’t believe it would, until the nullspace warning sounded.
26
NIKA RIK TERRI
The Songyan genemod machine hadn’t changed much in the years since Giwari had purchased the first model so cheaply from Conrad Songyan. Sure, this was a single box—Nika had to call Jacques to help her lift Roystan in—squarer in shape and not as sleek, but the controls worked the same way.
Best of all, there were still fourteen inlets.
It was strange to realize that what was deemed the state-of-the-art modding machine had been designed over a hundred and fifty years prior. But then, the machines hadn’t changed that much. New versions came out, of course, all the time. But the real changes to modding were in the add-ons. Like the add-on that allowed her to change Tamati’s hair so it turned green when his hair got wet, like the mods Nika had designed for Alejandro but given to Tamati Woden to make him stand out. There hadn’t been any real innovation in body modding itself for a long time.
Not since Gino Giwari.
It was not something she had time to think about. Keeping Roystan alive was more important.
Nika checked the readings, opened one of the inlet valves to add more mutrient to the mix, marveled at the complete control. Milligrams at a time.
She laughed. She felt like she had when she’d bought her first Songyan.
She wished Snow was here to share it.
“Will he be okay?” Jacques asked.
“Josune will have a plan.” Even if she didn’t, she’d make one. All they had to do was stay close and do what they could when Josune called.
Jacques gave a look that said she was clearly out of her mind. “A plan for Roystan?”
Roystan was the least of her worries. She had the Songyan. “I’m stabilizing him.”
He’d be fine. She could feed his body the nutrients it required, in the order and the amounts he required them. They could perform miracles.
Not, she admitted to herself hours later, that it was going to be easy. She could have done with her apprentice right now. Someone else to watch the feeds with her. Someone she could trust to manage for a few minutes while she got herself a coffee, at least. She sat back wearily, saw someone had left a coffee and a plate of something that had congealed into a cream-colored mess. A stew of some kind.
The coffee was cold. She drank it anyway. Adjusted the feeds. Ate the stew. It was delicious, even cold, even as bad as it looked. Adjusted the feeds again. “See how such minute changes make differences to the body,” she said, then realized she was talking to herself.
How long had it taken her to get used to having someone to share knowledge with? Two, three months. She put her head down. No. She couldn’t do that. She’d sleep, and then they’d have to start this all over again.
She adjusted the feeds again.
“Any word from Josune or Snow?” The link was always open. They’d hear her.
“Not yet,” Carlos said. “We’re still tracking them. How’s Roystan?”
“Stable for the moment.” It was all she could promise them.
She adjusted the feeds again.
An hour later Jacques brought down a welcome hot coffee and a plateful of something that smelled so heavenly her stomach rumbled. He stood watching the genemod machine while she fell on the plate as if she hadn’t eaten in days.
“The Boost has nullspaced,” Carlos said.
Everything stopped, and they waited, long, slow, heartbreaking minutes while he fussed at the boards, until finally, “Tracker signal coming through.”
Nika finished lifting the fork to her mouth.
Jacques blinked. “I cannot take all this stress. I must cook,” and turned on his heel to go.
Carlos swore. “He can’t possibly.”
Jacques paused.
Nika pushed her empty plate away. She adjusted the feeds. “Can’t what, Carlos?”
“I think this is a trap. He’s taking us to the most dangerous part of the galaxy.”
Was it? Could they afford to follow?
Could they afford not to? When they escaped, Josune and Snow would be depending on them being there to collect them.
“I’ll need you on the calibrator, Nika,” Carlos said. “I’m not a pilot like Roystan. If I make a mistake, we’re done for. The more accurate the calibrator, the safer we’ll be.”
She looked at Roystan, adjusted the feed again. “Give me a minute.” She reprogrammed the flows quickly. This one wasn’t a cure; it was a holding pattern. He’d be fine provided she didn’t take more than half an hour.
“Watch him, Jacques. Let me know when something goes red.”
Then she ran for the common room—their new bridge—while Jacques muttered, “When, she says. Not if.” He raised his voice. “You’d better nullspace fast, Carlos. We have a life-and-death situation here.”
“It’s not that bad,” Nika said as she slid into the calibrator seat. “It will just delay him coming out.”
“I wish he was here now. Look.” Carlos gestured at the star chart up on the screen.
It looked like a normal star chart to her. Not many stars. Maybe an unknown sector of space, for half the screen was black. Unknown space was dangerous. Below the black was a small, red star, and close to that was a pulsing signal she thought might be Josune’s marker.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking at.”
“That big hole there.”
The black area.
“That’s the Vortex. It sucks you in. Kills you.”
“Oh.”
Josune had mentioned the Vortex once, when talking about Feyodor. Even Roystan had said it was dangerous.
Carlos jabbed at the black area on-screen. “Keep away from the Vortex, okay? As far away as you possibly can. You can’t fight it. Every ship. Poof. No more.”
Why would Norris take the Boost to the Vortex? According to Josune and Roystan, it was dangerous. An experienced pilot like Norris would know that.
“He’s trying to kill us,” Carlos said. “This is how he does it.”
“Isn’t he putting himself in danger too?”
“Bigger ship. Stronger engines. He can escape it. We can’t.” Carlos tapped the console. “I do not like having to make decisions on where to take the ship. Understand.” He glared at her. “Roystan had better get out of that box soon and start doing his job.”
“We can always wait until he does come out,” Nika said. What about Josune and Snow? But Carlos and Jacques were nearly at breaking point, and the only person who could fix that was Roystan himself.
Carlos sighed. “We know what Roystan would do, Nika. He is more of an idiot than you or me. Or me, anyway,” he corrected himself. “And Josune and Snow expect us to be there for them.” He took a deep breath. “I’m just scared.”
“Me too,” Nika said, although she wasn’t necessarily scared of the same things. She was scared that Roystan might still die. She was scared they may not rescue Snow and Josune in time. She was scared of what would happen when Leonard Wickmore caught up with her.
She wasn’t scared of a big, black hole, even if, from Carlos’s reaction to it, she should be. “Let’s be scared and do it, anyway.”
“Let’s,” and with an unholy scream that could have curdled blood, Carlos entered nullspace.
27
JOSUNE ARRIOLA
Laughton looked at his hands, said wonderingly, “I didn’t think it would—” He glanced toward the camera. “We have to get out of here.”
Yes, they did. “How?”
“I don’t know.” He rattled the bars. “We’ll be stuck here if we don’t.”
“Calm down.” He looked as if he was about to have a full-blown panic attack. At least he’d forgotten his injuries for the moment. Unfortunately, given those injuries, that meant that whatever he was worried about was bad.
He pulled himself together. “Sorry. Forgot myself there.”
On the whole, she preferred him panick
ing.
He looked down, lowered his voice. “I was so busy trying to—” He waved a hand. “You know. I didn’t think about the consequences. For us, I mean.”
He’d manipulated Norris into coming to Zell, of all places.
“A trap?” She kept her voice low, even though Norris wouldn’t be listening right now. No captain would, for Zell was close to the Vortex, and the only way in was through the Funnel.
Josune had been through the Funnel twice now in Captain Feyodor’s ceaseless, useless search for Roy Goberling. She hated it more each time. You came down the Funnel directly into the Zell system. Most people stopped at Zell, the system’s only human-habitable world. Humans tried to settle there every generation. None had survived.
A few prospectors went farther in, mostly with disastrous results. They ended up being caught by the Vortex.
So far as Josune knew, the Hassim had been the only ship to successfully go farther into the Vortex and come out again. They’d crept around the edge, every single one of them convinced they would die. Farther around past the Funnel there was enough room to nullspace again. They’d made tiny hops onward.
Five jumps in they’d discovered a yellow, Earth-type star with an Earth-type planet that would support humans. They’d called it Sassia. They’d returned to known space when an asteroid had hit the ship, taking out their aeroponics section.
They’d restocked and tried to nullspace back, found they couldn’t. There was something about the Vortex that stopped them. So they’d done the whole horrible trip back through the Funnel and crept around the edge of the Vortex until they knew it was safe to nullspace again.
They’d probably still have been there, moving inward and on, looking for Goberling, if Feyodor hadn’t had her epiphany and sent Josune to infiltrate Roystan’s ship while she headed to Pisces III.
Where the crew of the Hassim had been murdered by Wickmore’s people.
The Boost juddered, kept juddering.
They had entered the Funnel.
Laughton put a hand to his mouth, covering it. “I told you there were fifty people on-world.”
At least that’s what Josune thought he said. She had to strain to hear him. This part wasn’t meant for Norris’s ears, obviously.
Stars Beyond Page 27
