Bianca D'Arc

by King of Clubs

  In fact, he’d been on the verge of telling her to leave Madhatter Station a time or two as he’d gone over the conversations of the plotters in his bar. When they hinted at something catastrophic happening here, his first instinct was to get Lila clear of the danger.

  But he knew her well enough by now to know she wouldn’t go. Lila wasn’t one to run from danger or quake in fear. No, she’d been minding her own business in the bar before he’d gotten there, and when she’d heard something that alerted her to possible danger, she’d waded in to learn more instead of running away or passing the buck to someone else. Even now, while she’d turned over control of the bar to him, she was still actively investigating, even though he’d told her to lay low.

  He didn’t have to like her sticking her lovely neck out, but damn, he admired it. She had heart. And nerves of steel.

  Only yesterday, one of the plotters had been looking at her with suspicion when she got a little too close to their table. Chip hadn’t liked that at all, but so far nothing seemed to have come of it. Although…

  Maybe the securecart’s failure to show up was more than a fluke? Chip gritted his teeth and nearly growled. If anyone tried anything, he’d be there to kill them.

  No pussyfooting around. They’d be dead. Anyone who dared target Lila was already dead and didn’t know it.

  “Looks like we’re in luck.” Lila’s gentle voice drew him from his grim thoughts. “There’s a pod in the station.”

  Of course there was. But Chip wasn’t saying a word. He merely popped the hatch of the two-person pod using his credit chip and checked the pod before he let her step in. He wasn’t taking any chances with Lila. The small vehicle looked sound and his cybernetic implant confirmed it was clean of listening devices or explosives. They were safe enough once they were inside and had coasted out into the stream of traffic in the station’s zero G transport system.

  Lila slid into the cramped pod and Chip took his place beside her, crowding her. The pods were sufficient for two civilian sized people to fit comfortably, but this civ station didn’t take soldier size into account. Only the biggest and baddest from each human planet, colony, or station went into the military. Soldiers were head and shoulders above most of civ men and military stations and ships took that into account. Not so, the civ stations.

  Which suited Chip just fine in this situation. He most definitely didn’t mind getting close to Lila, even if it was just for a short hop from ring to ring ensconced in a private pod.

  Chip input her destination into the onboard computer manually.

  “You know where I live?” Lila raised one eyebrow in question when he turned to look at her. There wasn’t a lot of room in the pod for his shoulders, so he lifted one arm over her to settle along the back of the seats.

  “I know all sorts of things.” It was one of his typical noncommittal answers, but he softened it with a grin that she seemed to respond to. The charm offensive was still in full force and she’d softened toward him over the past few days.

  He told himself it was for the good of his mission, but really, he just wanted her to think well of him. Chip didn’t examine his reasons too closely.

  “I’ll bet you do,” she responded in the same teasing spirit as she sat back, appearing more than comfortable with his arm nearly around her.

  She surprised him by taking a small device out of her pocket and switching it on. It was a scrambler that would shield their conversation from any eavesdropping device, should there be one in the pod. Chip knew there wasn’t, but he couldn’t tell her how he knew, so he let her continue as she was.

  “Bjornson and Beezus met briefly tonight, just outside the entrance. I saw them through the panel in the door, but it was too fast for me to run in and focus the outside pickups on them,” she said quietly.

  The mood turned serious in a heartbeat. He didn’t bother asking her why she hadn’t alerted him. There’d been a lot of people in the bar tonight, including almost the entire group they’d identified as being involved with the conspiracy. They’d been watching him—and every patron of the bar—as hard as he’d been watching them. The conspirators were getting more edgy. That wasn’t a good sign.

  “What did you see?”

  “Bjornson passed something to Beezus when they shook hands. It couldn’t be seen from the hall, but through the door panel, I could see a slip of bright yellow between their palms. It seemed like luck that I would see it, but I’m not sure…” she trailed off.

  “You think it was a set up? Maybe they want to try to trick you into revealing yourself?”

  “It’s possible, but my other senses tell me no.” She bit one corner of her lip, looking absolutely adorable, even though her gaze was clouded with concern.

  He’d read her file—the parts that weren’t heavily redacted—and he knew enough by now to listen when she had one of her feelings.

  “Clairvoyance?” He still wasn’t sure he believed in such things, though Lila’s sister had given him information years ago that had saved his life.

  “Not exactly. No. I get feelings about truth or falsehood. I can usually tell when someone is lying or using subterfuge and whether it’s benign or malevolent. In your case, I sense whatever you’re hiding, it’s mostly benign, so I don’t make anything of it.” Her gaze challenged him but he did his best not to react. “When I first saw Bjornson, my senses screamed at me that something was very wrong about him and his motives. He was lying to everyone he talked to that first time in the bar, when I was still waiting tables close enough to hear some of their conversation with my own ears. I stumbled a few times. Dropped things. That’s another part of the reason I stopped waiting tables and set the bots to do it. I was drawing too much attention to myself.”

  Chip recalled one or two early recordings where there was a lot of crashing and cursing in the background at particular points that suddenly made sense. Could Lila’s so-called gift actually be real? And accurate to that degree?

  Chip set his implant on the problem, using a fraction of its large computational power to correlate the incidents in that recording with the words being spoken by Bjornson. It took only a split second to come back with a very high probability that Lila was reading Bjornson correctly, based on Chip’s years of experience dealing with liars, cheats, villains and saboteurs.

  Their pod had pulled out into the main ring’s transport tube and was on its way across rings to jump to the level where Lila’s rooms were. The pod swayed gently as it coasted along in zero G and all indicators were green.

  Then suddenly, they weren’t.

  “Damn.” Chip used his implant to check the traffic in the cross tube they were in. Nobody else was nearby, so he used the emergency brake to stop the pod in a highly illegal maneuver that would get him in serious trouble with station authorities if they ever discovered it. As it was, his implant would cover his tracks in the station computers while he reversed their direction and got them out of harm’s way.

  “What is it?” Lila seemed to know enough not to interfere with him while he tinkered under the panel that threatened immediate incarceration for tampering with the pod’s mechanism.

  “Problem up ahead. See the red indicator in the tube?” He didn’t bother pointing. Once her gaze was set in the right direction, he knew she’d see it.

  “Wouldn’t a red signal just stop our pod? It might not be anything bad.”

  “If your senses are as good as you claim, tell me what you feel when you think about what’s waiting for us at that station.” He challenged her, all the while pretending to manually override the pod’s direction. In reality, all he had to do was flick a thought from his implant to the receiver in the pod’s computer to get it moving backward at a fast pace. He’d already done so, in fact, and they were heading back out into the main stream. No longer cornered.

  She shuddered. He could feel it, as close as they were sitting.

  “Nothing good,” she whispered. “Nothing good is waiting for us beyond the red signal.”<
br />
  Chip breathed a sigh of relief the moment they were out of that cross tube. Nobody would mess with them in the main flow of traffic. Not without drawing way too much attention.

  He turned to Lila, only to find her white as a ghost and trembling. Chip didn’t think twice. He put his arms around her and tucked her head under his chin in a protective pose. He stroked her hair, hoping to convey safety.

  “You’re okay, sweetheart. I’ll keep you safe. Don’t worry. Now tell me…” He put a little room between them so he could see her face. “What did you sense?”

  “Beezus. He was waiting there for me. Thinking very dark thoughts. Very dark. And very strong.”

  Damn.

  “He planned to attack me, and when he got me alone.” She shuddered in his arms and Chip bit back a curse. “And with the red signal on the tube, I’d have no way out.” She bit back a sob.

  “Ssh. Don’t think about it.” Chip stroked her hair. “I won’t let anything happen to you, Lila. Believe me when I say that.”

  To her credit, her shaking reaction didn’t last long. Straightening in his arms, she met his gaze with a surprisingly steady core of steel visible in her expression. She was tough and resilient. A woman after his own heart.

  “I believe you, Charlemagne.”

  She’d called him that once before—when she’d told him about the king on the deck of cards that had supposedly foretold his coming.

  “I’m not some ancient king. I’m just plain old Chip.” Somehow, he got the unnerving feeling that she saw behind his easy mask of simple barkeeper. Nobody had challenged his identity like this in a very long time. Not since he’d perfected his covert skills. Still, there was something about Lila that saw too much.

  She blinked, smiling slightly and seemed to let it go. “There’s nothing plain about you, Charles Quartain.”

  She sat back and he let her go. His cybernetic implant had kept track of where they were while he’d taken care of her momentary distress. They were getting close to their destination.

  “We’re almost there. Are you okay to make a dash for it, just in case? I won’t be happy until you’re safely inside, under cover.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Back to the bar. Only we’re taking an alternate route.”

  “There’s a back door? I looked when I first got there, but I didn’t find anything other than the service entrance used by the bots. Doesn’t seem big enough for people. At least not you.” She smiled and tapped his arm with her little fist, emphasizing the difference in their sizes and her awareness of it. Good. He liked it when she looked at him like that. Like he was a man, not merely a co-worker or an ex-soldier she was trying to figure out.

  “There are several back doors.”

  “Really?” She seemed surprised.

  The pod pulled out of the main traffic flow and coasted to a stop in a station in the location he’d specified. It was not the same station they’d departed from. Not even close.

  “Watch and learn.” He checked with both his eyes and his cybernetic sensors before popping the hatch on the pod and stepping out. He held out one hand to her, assisting her out of the pod.

  They walked rapidly, but not fast enough to be noticed by passersby. This particular corridor had a little more traffic this time of the station night than the area near the bar. It was good cover for them, strolling together through the late night crowd. When Chip turned into a small shop run by an ex-soldier Alex had put in place, a simple and discrete hand signal was all it took to alert the man that Chip needed him to watch his back while he used the secret passage into the station’s service corridor located in the back of the establishment.

  Lila didn’t say a thing as they made their way through the store and into the back. She impressed Chip with the way she handled the change in plans and unfamiliar route back to the bar. Chip began to think she might have once been an operative herself. It made sense, given her file and the personal recommendation in it from General Winters.

  She walked with surprising stealth and kept her eyes open, he was glad to note as they made their way through the cramped service tunnels. Though when Chip stopped, Lila bumped into him. She recovered quickly when he put his arm out to steady her and he spent a split second enjoying the way she fit in his arms before he turned back to the matter at hand. She wasn’t safe until he had her inside.

  Not willing to let her go, he turned, drawing her closer while with one hand, he pressed the right pressure points to pop the hidden hatch. Whisking her inside, he made certain the hatch closed securely behind them. Seeking ahead with his internal electronics, he was relieved to find all as it should be in the secret passageway that would lead ultimately to one of the backdoors into the bar. They were nearly home free now. Just a little farther to go.

  “We’re almost there.”

  “I’m glad you know where we are,” she muttered, sticking close to his side.

  He chuckled to himself. She was holding up well, all things considered. Most civ women would probably be asking a million questions in much too loud a voice. Either that, or quaking in fear, unable to move. All in all, Lila was performing at a very high level he hadn’t quite expected.

  “When we get home, we’re going to have a long talk,” he promised. He’d decided along the way that the time had come to take her further into his confidence. Her file—or rather, the gaps in it—coupled with the way she’d handled this situation so far, led him to believe there was a lot more to Lila than met the eye.

  “About what?” She kept her voice pitched low enough not to be overheard.

  “About what you did between your first job as a magistrate and your marriage. There’s this huge gap in your file, Lila, and I begin to suspect they left the most interesting parts of your past out.”

  “You’ve read my file?” she asked quickly, following up just as quickly with a hand on his arm, squeezing gently as he helped her around a bulkhead. “What am I saying? Of course you’ve read my file. You would have been stupid not to. But you realize by telling me this, you’ve basically confirmed my suspicions about your presence here, right?”

  He sent her a pleased smile. Yeah, she was on the ball, his Lila. Sharp as a tack and sensible in a way that was very appealing to him.

  “Showing you this backdoor was already an admission of sorts.” He shrugged as if it didn’t matter that he’d extended his trust, but they both knew it was a very big deal. In this game, trusting the wrong person could easily mean not only betrayal, but death. “I figured it was time we started working together fully instead of just dancing around the edges. We both know something’s going down on this station in the near future. Tonight, you were targeted by one of the suspect group. The shit’s about to hit the fan and I think we’re the only ones aware of the problem, in a position to do something about it.”

  He stopped, turning to face her as they arrived at the final hidden hatch. Her gaze was serious, her head tilted in consideration.

  “Winters is… a friend of the family would be the best way to describe him, I guess. I worked for him in those intervening years before I got married. You work for him now, don’t you?” Admission and challenge. Parry and attack. Chip liked her style.

  “Let’s get inside before we go any further.” He knew they were safe enough in this well protected tunnel, but he wanted the security of the bar for what came next.

  Chapter Five

  He closed the hatch behind them and Lila was surprised at where the back tunnels had led them. She recognized the server bot storage area right away. The bay was mostly empty now as the bots were all out in the bar, doing their various cleaning cycles. She’d thought the entrance used by the bots would be too small for a person, but looking around she realized he hadn’t used the bot entrance at all. No, they’d come through a wall panel that looked just the same as any other, except this one opened on silent, invisible hinges.

  “Obviously, this entrance is best used when the bots are busy outside,” Ch
ip explained as he led the way out of the storage area.

  Lila didn’t comment as she followed Chip through the back area of the bar, straight into the rooms she’d only entered once before. This was Alex’s private apartment. While Alex was away, Chip had moved in and set up shop here and she could see only subtle differences from the way it had been the last time she’d seen the main living area. For one thing, all the reading material had been moved off the central table and put away neatly.

  Some loose wiring had been left out, along with a small toolkit. Perhaps Chip was making modifications of his own to the security system, she reasoned.

  He directed her to the long, well padded couch. It had been a harrowing few minutes and it was good to sit someplace safe and quiet and just… be.

  Chip puttered for a moment in the galley while she collected her thoughts. When he returned, he was holding two cups of coffee. He handed one to her and she took it gratefully.

  When he sat beside her on the couch, suddenly the large piece of furniture seemed too small, but his big, protective presence was welcome. Especially as she recalled the strong thoughts Beezus had been broadcasting about his plans after he ambushed her. What the fallout would be from her narrow escape, she had no idea.

  “Do you think all the conspirators are after me or just Beezus?” she asked in a small voice before Chip could say anything.

  He looked at her over the rim of his coffee cup. “What did you sense?”

  “Beezus was broadcasting some very, uh, lascivious thoughts about what he was going to do with me once he had me. Other than that, I didn’t pick up much.”

  “Try to put the disturbing thoughts aside and sort out the rest.”

  “That’s hard to do.” She bit her lip and cringed when she opened herself up to the memory of that short burst of filth-ridden thought directed at her.