“Fine.” A one word answer from the loquacious AI signaled trouble.
“I can ask Harry.”
Lon sighed. “I’m managing the inflow of data, which is substantial, and my predictive algorithms are working effectively. I am honestly fine. However, I am stretched in a manner I haven’t been since I administered the Collegial Ark.” The Collegial Ark was a space-mobile university originally envisaged as a means of promoting multi-species responses to philosophical and practical questions. “It’s not a bad thing to be reminded of one’s limitations.”
“You’re forestalling trouble in an entire busy frontier territory. That’s not exactly ‘limited’.”
“I’m aware. I just…I’m used to having attention to spare. Having to devote almost all of my processing power to a single job is different. Different is good, though. But it has a price. Thelma, I’m sorry that you were alone with Reynard. I imagine he was challenging.”
She smiled. If his friend’s kidnapping of her was what was troubled Lon, she could reassure him. “I missed not being able to chat with you, apart from Max’s brief comms. However, Reynard was fine, once I realized how socially awkward he is. There’s no malice in him.”
Lon perked up, energy enlivening his voice. “None at all. And Harry was checking in with him. We didn’t leave you marooned.”
“So Reynard told me.”
After a few seconds of silence, she prepared to tap open the next queued message.
Lon interrupted. “If you’re okay with Reynard, would you be willing to ask Max for permission to invite Reynard onto the Lonesome for a visit?”
The oddness of the question struck her. Why ask her to ask Max? “Lon, Max would be horrified at the thought he’d isolated you from your friends. Invite who you want. The Lonesome is your home.” The ship was Lon in many ways.
“Good grief! Total miscommunication. I’m aware Max would tell me to invite anyone I like to visit, and that’s the problem. Reynard kidnapped you, and he is a, as you said, ‘challenging’ personality. I want to be sure that Max is truly okay with Reynard visiting. If you ask him privately in your cabin then he can be unfiltered in his response. Reynard doesn’t have to come aboard. Or he can just visit with Harry and me in Harry’s quarters. Max is more stretched than I am, and he’s already dealing with having the Covert Ops agent aboard. I won’t add to his stress.”
“But you want to invite Reynard now?”
Lon whistled a sigh. “Put like that, it sounds selfish.”
“No, it sounds as if the timing is important, presumably for Reynard.”
Harry stuck his head in the door. “Clever girl. Reynard’s groping his way to understanding the concept of socializing. You’re part of that, and if you extend a hand of friendship, it’ll coax him a step further.”
She nodded. “I’ll ask Max.” As captain, who came aboard was his decision. “He won’t have a problem with it, especially if you’re both present?” Her intonation made it a question.
“We will be,” Harry promised. It was his presence that wasn’t a foregone conclusion.
Lon would be there, and Lon was relieved. “Thank you.”
Thelma finished another hour of messages. The work gave her a good overview of the extent of Max and Lon’s efforts, and she kept in mind her own suspicion that the bunyaphi were important. It was lovely, afterward, to slip into bed beside Max.
He opened one eye, wrapped an arm around her, and went back to sleep.
She fell asleep smiling.
Max wasn’t a teenager, so he didn’t roll his eyes, but he did wonder how two such sensible people as Thelma and Lon could work themselves up into imagining he’d have a problem with Reynard coming aboard. The security question didn’t even raise its head. Lon possessed a streak of naivety—he wanted to believe the best of people—that could be exploited as a vulnerability, but Harry was no one’s fool. If he consented to Reynard’s presence, then it was fine.
As to the issue of Max’s own emotional state…well, no, he wouldn’t forgive and forget that the AI had kidnapped Thelma, but he wasn’t about to have a meltdown over it. Not now that she was here with him, in their cabin, braiding her hair and watching him worriedly. “Reynard is welcome whenever Lon wants to invite him. I will be polite.”
Max opened the cabin door. Doing so meant that Lon could overhear his next words from the audio sensors in the passage. “We have a Covert Ops cyborg in a cell on the deck below. He is an unwelcome guest. Reynard is fine.”
“Thank you, Max,” Lon said.
Thelma kissed him briefly. A reward. “I’d like to meet Carl.”
Max shook his head at his own foolishness. Her kiss wasn’t a reward for his obliging answer, it was a bribe for future compliance. “No.”
“I’m a deputy!”
Lon laughed. When they’d first met, Thelma had desperately resented being a deputy out in the Saloon Sector. Since then she’d engineered her freedom from the seven years of service she’d owed Galactic Justice for her education, and now, here she was exploiting the very status she’d once shed.
“Why do you wish to meet Carl?” Max walked beside Thelma to the kitchen and breakfast.
“To see if we can trust him to keep you safe on Xlokk.”
Max hesitated, falling a step behind her. He hadn’t expected that answer. “Or you could trust me to keep myself safe.”
“You know it’s not that simple.” They reached the kitchen and she headed for the coffee machine. “Emotions are complicated. I’ve been arguing about them with Reynard. He thinks they’re useless.”
“That bad?” Lon asked, horrified.
Thelma glanced up at the ceiling, a tic of hers when she was particularly focused on the ship’s AI. Remorse colored her voice. “I exaggerated. Reynard finds emotions a hindrance to rational action. He values his friendship with you, Lon.”
“Have him visit, today, Lon, if he’s willing,” Max said.
“You’re busy planning the infiltration of the Xlokk base.”
Max grinned as he buttered toast. Without Thelma, he often ate goop from the food dispenser. Sharing meals with her made taking the time for real food worthwhile. “I’m not planning the infiltration. Carl is. My role is to poke holes in his mission brief.”
Thelma grinned.
Lon objected. “Yesterday, Carl requested pertinent information that I provided. I suspect his mission brief will be adequate.”
“We’ll see.”
“We?” Thelma asked hopefully.
He nodded. “But keep me between him and you at all times.”
Her burgeoning smile died. “You really don’t trust him.”
“I trust him more than I did.”
Chapter 7
The hatchway to the lounge area on the public deck was too narrow for Thelma to see around Max when he halted in it. That Max didn’t trust Carl to be within reach of her made her not trust allowing Carl to accompany Max to Xlokk, which made her all the more determined to meet the Covert Ops agent in person.
Trust was difficult. Her discussions on the topic with Reynard over the last few days had made her hyper-aware of the difficulties. Who did you trust? How did you protect yourself and those you loved? What did you do when someone betrayed your trust?
She’d stolen time from her morning of messages to read Carl’s mission brief for the Xlokk base infiltration. It seemed solid. It appeared that Carl envisaged Max and him operating as equal partners on the intelligence gathering mission.
“Carl.” Max’s greeting was flat, an I-see-you statement. He moved forward enough for Thelma to squeeze in. Another step let her see Carl, and Carl her.
The cyborg’s neutral expression flashed into shock before settling into anger. He glared at Max. “You’re playing me.”
“Sit down.”
“Like hell. You said she’d been kidnapped on Zephyr.”
Thelma hadn’t even considered the problem he raised. Reynard was socially awkward, but he was a socially awkward engi
neering genius. His spaceship had brought Thelma from Zephyr to the Lonesome at a speed few other spaceships occupied by an organic sentient could match.
Carl had good reason to mistrust her presence.
“Good morning, Agent Jafarov.” She remained a fraction to the side and behind Max, as she’d promised. “I am Thelma, as you recognized, and I was extracted from the Zephyr spacedock without Max’s knowledge. A friend intervened, without warning either of us.”
Building trust, as she’d discussed with Reynard, meant not lying.
However, there were ways of telling the truth. Misdirection.
“The Space Rodeo has brought a lot of experimental spaceships to the Saloon Sector. One was near enough to assist me.”
The tension in Carl’s stance eased, but there was bitterness in his tone when he spat one word. “Hwicce.”
His assumption that Max’s family’s corporation had lent a vessel to bring his girlfriend back to the safety of the Lonesome was understandable. His resentment, and the reasons for it, were less so.
Except to Max. “Carl believes I’m unfairly privileged.”
“Ah.” She rested a hand on his lower back. “Well, you are. Gorgeous, fit, intelligent, funny, and I love you.” She was teasing, trying to reduce the tension in the air. However, she’d miscalculated.
Talking about the reasons she loved Max for himself, rather than mentioning his political and financial privileges, had Carl tensing again.
Worse, Max tensed too.
She became serious, Galactic Justice academy serious. “Carl Jafarov, I’m here to assess if you’re an acceptable mission partner for Max. Or I’ll replace you.”
“No.” The men spoke with one voice, glared at her, then resumed glaring at each other.
Rude.
But interesting. Carl felt protective of her.
She leaned into Max, contemplating the recent exchange. Maybe the Covert Ops agent hadn’t objected to her defending Max as gorgeous, fit, funny or clever, but to the fact that she loved him. Max had said that candidates for augmentation, to become cyborgs, were chosen from those without families. Did anyone love Carl Jafarov? He’d been undercover as a mercenary and thief for a couple of years, and before then…what had happened to injure him to the point where augmentation was required?
“Your mission brief is acceptable,” Max said. “A combat suit will be delivered shortly. Familiarize yourself with it. While we’re on Xlokk, Thelma will maintain overwatch.”
With Lon’s assistance and with Harry lurking nearby. She nodded. “And if I tell you to return to the shuttle and back to the Lonesome, instant obedience is expected.”
“Of course.” Carl stared at her. He was searching for something.
She raised an eyebrow. “Problem?”
He shifted his attention back to Max. “The allies who brought Thelma to the Lonesome, are they available to assist us?”
Max replied with an immediate, firm negative.
Thelma had the sudden wild imagining of what Reynard might consider as “helping”.
“My question was amusing?” Carl had recovered himself. His expression was locked down in a casual smirk. He kicked out a chair at the kitchen table and sat.
She was chary of sharing information with him. “A private joke.”
“I don’t find my position here amusing. You want to know if Max can trust me. But it’s him who has given the most reason for mistrust between us. I’m imprisoned. He could dump me on Xlokk in a tragic accident.”
Max didn’t move a muscle.
Thelma smiled, without humor. “You know he wouldn’t.”
“You’re on overwatch. My life is in your hands.”
His words echoed the trust exercises run in the Galactic Justice academy. They’d been trained to understand the weight of carrying other people’s lives, altering their fate.
Thelma was sure his phrasing was on purpose.
She kissed Max’s cheek, stepped back, spun and exited through the hatch. She didn’t wait there, but continued on, up to her office and the work waiting for her. “Carl was chosen for his similarity to Max,” she said to Lon.
“I don’t see it.”
She nodded. “Intuition versus analysis. Also, I had a lot of time to think about Carl’s presence on the Lonesome and what Max said about him while Reynard brought me home.”
Lon was silent as she sat behind her desk, but interrupted before she could open her messages. “Is their similarity good or bad? Meant to help or harm Max?”
She glanced up. “Gut instinct? Carl is meant to be an ally but not a friend. If they’d wanted Max to trust his new deputy, they’d have sent a Star Marine.”
“Would a Star Marine comply with a request to spy on a fellow Marine?”
Fourteen message icons blinked at her. “I don’t think Carl will spy on Max.” She opened the first message.
Lon wasn’t willing to let the topic go, despite their workload. “Why not?”
“Because he’s like Max. Justice, not politics. And Max just gave his new bodyguard the chance to pursue bad guys.”
“You think Carl’s a bodyguard?”
Thelma smiled. “Indisputably. He resents the heck out of it, too, but he’ll keep Max safe. And Lon, we’re going to have to befriend him. We need him on Team Lonesome if he’s going to hang around bodyguarding. If I can socialize Reynard, Carl’s your problem.”
“Oh joy.”
Life as a Star Marine had left an indelible mark on Max, for good and bad. He had nightmares. He was also what a civilian would call paranoid. Fortunately, Thelma wasn’t really a civilian. As the daughter of asteroid miners and a graduate of the Galactic Justice academy, she considered suspicion and checking everything twice to be standard operating procedure. Max smiled as she double-checked his combat suit after he’d done so himself.
His comfort in inhabiting a combat suit was a legacy from his time in the Star Marines. With it on, he was mission active. That meant no more second guessing himself. When Thelma gave him the thumbs up for his suit’s status, he pointed up.
She departed without a word, respecting that in this they had mission roles to play that didn’t allow for their personal relationship.
He allowed three minutes for her to climb up to the main deck and reach the bridge. Then he opened the hatch to the public lounge.
Carl maneuvered out in the combat suit Lon had manufactured for him. It was more advanced, and more resilient, than the lifesuit the Covert Ops agent had arrived in, and which Max had ordered recycled. It wasn’t at the level of capability of Max’s suit, though.
“Good to go?” Max asked.
“Ready.”
Max led the way to the shuttle. He took the pilot’s command. Autopilot would take them down to a location two hundred and eight miles from the tunnel entrance and behind a mountain. They’d then skim in. The shuttle was stealthed, but it still paid to be cautious. He comm’d Thelma, confirming her overwatch.
Carl buckled in. Or rather, locked in his combat suit as Max had done. Entry into Xlokk’s atmosphere would be rough.
The Lonesome’s hangar doors opened. The shuttle skimmed out, and dived. Some Star Marines played music in their helmets during this part of a mission. Psych up or psych out. Max kept his mind on the mission, both the strategy—subject to change—and the objective—immutable.
Turbulence flung the shuttle around, and the autopilot stabilized it each time. They could have entered hotter and minimized the turbulence, but at a price. They’d have increased their risk of detection. So he and Carl stood and let their combat suits absorb what they could of the abrupt changes in direction before the shuttle reached the relative calm of the near surface, and there it hovered.
“Shuttle intact. Good to go,” Max reported to Thelma, aware that Lon would be monitoring them remotely anyway.
“Target unchanged. Counting down from twelve.” On overwatch, Thelma was giving the mission twelve minutes for any response to the shuttle’s entry from
the base and its two unsophisticated orbital probes.
Max and Carl waited in silence.
At the twelve minute mark, Thelma gave them clearance to proceed.
Max skimmed the shuttle to the disembarkment point.
Carl jumped out first. From here on, he took the lead. His undercover persona on Tornado was as a mercenary and thief. He had the skillset.
If they were detected and violence was the answer, lead reverted to Max. He didn’t expect they’d be detected, unless luck went against them.
A clandestine base in space had a major issue: acquiring supplies. Every extra journey out to it ferrying supplies increased the risk of detection. So resources were limited. Add to that the spacer mentality to look for risks out in space and not on the ground, and he and Carl were likely already inside the base’s security perimeter.
And if Max’s suspicions were correct, and this base was linked to Keele and Keele was responsible for the attempt to kill Thelma at Zephyr, then the group’s intelligence would be that Max was not in Xlokk’s vicinity. It was the same obvious, and misinformed, conclusion that Carl had reached: the calculation of how far from Zephyr Thelma could have traveled in the time since she’d last been seen on the Zephyr spacedock. By responding to messages soon after she’d reached the Lonesome, and telling people she was onboard it, Thelma had unwittingly misdirected people as to Max and the Lonesome’s possible whereabouts.
The base on Xlokk would not be expecting Max’s infiltration tonight, not even in their most paranoid nightmares.
The mouth of the tunnel loomed before them, angling down. Nothing on the sensor suite on Max’s combat suit indicated the presence of security precautions. A few minutes later, Carl reached the same conclusion. He signaled all clear and stay together. Max followed the route he trod, hugging the side of the tunnel, descending deeper, but gradually. The whole time, his suit was active, scanning for trouble, but also mapping the basic route and the exhaust vents a.k.a. possible escape routes. The data collection would increase once he was truly inside the base, which would be soon. The space ahead widened out and ended in a holding chamber.
Space Rodeo Page 9
