“To review,” T’kal said, “we’re looking at everything—people on the street, how they’re dressed. Do they look, happy, scared, stressed? Regs—the usual strut, or are they grim? Deims —what’s the general atmosphere, subservient or defiant? I want to take a look at Reg HQ, try to get a feel—”
“You’re what?” B’aela, peering around K’kadi, skewered her husband with a look of outrage.
“You mean inside?” Kelan asked.
“Of course inside. Can’t learn much from staring at a building.”
“I see why they call you the Hero of Psyclid.”
T’kal snorted. “I spent some very interesting moments inside Reg HQ on Psyclid. Enough to feel right at home.”
“And a miracle you made it out, each and every time,” B’aela snapped.
T’kal shrugged. “More dangerous for you than for me. K’kadi goes with me. The rest of you will have to hide in plain sight. Strolling, shopping—”
“Tal never asked you to do this. I don’t believe it.”
“I was leading the Psyclid rebellion while Tal Rigel was still following his Emperor’s orders,” T’kal growled. “This K’kadi and I will do. Quint goes with you.”
“Did you ask K’kadi if he’s willing to risk his neck?” B’aela demanded.
Not need. I know. Say yes last night.
“Four children, Wolf,” B’aela ground out. “I do not plan to raise them alone.” She fixed K’kadi with the look older sisters have perfected through the ages for little brothers. “No slip-ups, K’kadi. Don’t you dare lose him.”
Not care lose me?
B’aela threw her arms around her little brother, hugging him tight. A first between them. “Dear Goddess,” she hissed into his ear, “you know I didn’t mean it that way. I love you both. I’m terrified for you both. And for Alala, L’relia, the whole rebellion, if anything should happen to you. You are our ultimate weapon, K’kadi Amund. Which is why Tal is going to skin the two of you when he finds out you took such a risk.”
Not wise skin ultimate weapon.
With a sound very much like one of T’kal’s growls, B’aela sat upright and stared straight ahead. Silence reigned for the rest of the ride into the heart of Nuevos Angeles.
Chapter 18
Kelan drove, Josh constantly on guard beside him. But at this early hour, the road was nearly deserted, the ride into the city uneventful. Kelan parked the limm in an alley behind an office building two blocks from what had once been home to the city’s government and was now, in typical Reg fashion, headquarters of the Occupation. In the shadows of the tall buildings on either side, T’kal looked into his wife’s dark eyes, squeezed her hand, and then with a nod to K’kadi they were gone. Vanished behind a glimmer so faint no one would be aware strangers from a far-distant planet walked among them.
B’aela fought an urge to climb back into the limm and simply wait for T’kal and K’kadi to come back. Odd, when she’d been undercover before. But maybe not. Age and responsibilities could temper anyone’s spirit of adventure. At least she’d like to think that was why she hesitated. Not that the last three years—happy, privileged years—had destroyed the sharp edge that was the hallmark of her reputation.
“What now?” Kelan asked, snapping B’aela out of her reverie. “You two are the experts at this kind of thing.”
“I’m just muscle,” the former Reg sergeant returned easily. “The only time I went undercover, it was as my former self. Not much of a challenge.”
Memories slammed through B’aela. The first time she went undercover. Being gang-raped, rescued by T’kal. Walking out of his house to exact her own revenge through Rand Kamal.
“B’aela, are you all right?”
Fizzet! Kelan, she’d noticed, had an almost Psy-like empathy. An odd trait for a Reg. But then none of the Rigels were typical Regs. “Sorry. I’ve had a bit too much experience undercover.” B’aela flashed a brilliant smile. “I’m sure the skill will come back to me the moment we break out into the sunlight.”
“This is more training mission than intel, isn’t it?” Kelan asked. “For me, at least. Getting back in the game for the rest of you?”
B’aela drew a deep breath, nodded. “The intel is important—the new government will need all the allies it can get. But yes, I suspect this is Tal’s idea of a training mission.”
Kelan made a face but adjusted quickly, flashing the Rigel grin and saying, “So come on, let’s see what this town has to offer.”
The basic language on Deimos was English, closer in form to Psyclid than the language spoken by the Regs. B’aela could make out many of the signs: clothing, restaurants, pharmacies, jewelry stores, a bakery. And the people . . . Deimosians—or Deims, as Tal called them—were an astonishing mix of every shade of skin and hair, including some who appeared to be descendants of the natives the Europeans found when they colonized North America. Astonishing. Reb intel was right. The descendants of old Earth’s North Americans were a different, highly mixed breed.
The three civilians off Astarte peered in storefront windows, while surreptitiously examining the purposeful strides of those on the walkways around them. Demosians appeared to be like city dwellers everywhere—intent on getting where they were going, doing what they had to do. Then again . . .
When pedestrians passed a Reg soldier, it was as if he did not exist. They might step deftly out of his way, but their body language said they never saw him. The same for Reg military vehicles passing on the street. Ground cars, hovercars, armed escorts—all might as well have been behind an invisibility cloak. The citizens of Nuevos Angeles did not note their passing. Except for the times B’aela caught a glance from someone hidden in a doorway or looking out from behind a glass storefront. Then, she saw hatred, pure unadulterated hatred. Far stronger than any Psyclid, except perhaps T’kal and herself, had ever turned on the Regs. Exactly the kind of observation Tal needed.
Three hours later, B’aela asked, “Anyone hungry? I think it’s safe enough to go inside.”
“The Deims don’t like the Regs, that’s for sure,” Josh said.
“It’s . . . uncomfortable,” Kelan observed. “I haven’t been on an occupied planet before. I can see why Tal . . . I mean, it wasn’t just what happened to Kass, was it? He remembered Psyclid when it was free, and . . .” Kelan shook his head. “Sorry, this isn’t the right time or place for philosophizing. So, sure, I’m hungry. Time to practice our alternate egos.”
“Just three spacers off a merchant ship,” B’aela intoned. “Looks like a restaurant coming up, two doors down. Try to look like anything but a Reg,” she added on a sharper note.
Kelan snorted. “Yeah, I got that. Believe me.”
They found a table with their backs to the wall and looked around. “You know,” B’aela said, “this reminds me a bit of Psyclid. The architecture’s not as good, and it’s not as colorful or the people as well dressed, but I have to give the Regs credit—they don’t grind their captives into the dirt. They keep the countries up and running, the people pacified, if not happy.”
“What about the looks we saw on the street?” Kelan asked.
“That’s the secret core of the resistance. Like we had on Psyclid. Not the face shown to the Regs.”
“So you think there is a resistance here?”
B’aela waggled her fingers. “I’m eighty-five, ninety percent certain. If not, they’re certainly ripe for it. When word of our attack on Reg Prime reaches here, hopefully the Deimosians will keep the Regs too occupied to send help.”
Kelan grinned. “You’ve just made my brother a happy man.”
“Only eleven more systems to go,” B’aela returned, her face revealing no sign of the irony in her voice.
“Looks like we have to order from a tablet, like on Tat,” Josh said. “No servers, no bots.”
Kelan frowned at the menu tablet set into the table in front of him. At first, except for an arrow button recognizable in any language, it made no sense. And then
he found the common language translation in small letters beneath each item. Ah, the enlightened practices of a capital city . . . except the food items didn’t make sense in either language. Taco, enchilada, empanada . . . and what in the nine hells was “fry bread”?
“Better not to ask,” Josh muttered, noting Kelan’s frown. “Just choose something and pretend you like it.”
B’aela stifled a laugh. “I believe we have stumbled onto an ethnically specific restaurant. We must make the best of it.”
Twenty minutes later, they were wiping their fingers and their mouths and congratulating B’aela on her inadvertent choice of culturally themed restaurant. “Too bad we can’t ask the cook for recipes,” Kelan said. “Sure beats Astarte’s kitchen.”
“Fyddit!”
Kelan and B’aela stared. No way was Josh’s expletive a comment on the food. “Don’t look! Reg Prowler headed this way.”
“Pok!” Kelan muttered. “Are you sure he’s not a local?”
“You think I don’t know a Reg when I see one?” Josh shot back. “A sergeant in full uniform?”
“Sorry. Wishful thinking.” Kelan shrank into his seat, at least as much as a broad-shouldered man nearly two meters tall could manage.
“Smile!” B’aela hissed.
The Reg sergeant paused beside their table. A Prowler’s sole job was to walk the streets of cities and towns occupied by the Regulon Empire and inspect the papers of anyone who roused the slightest suspicion. Or even those who did not. Unremitting intimidation, the eternal threat of arrest were key elements of every Reg Occupation.
“Papers!” the Prowler snapped.
Dutifully, the three visitors to Deimos held out their carefully crafted forgeries. Neither Kelan nor Josh liked the sergeant’s look—openly speculative, and all too appreciative as he reached for B’aela’s papers. Neither did she, but from long experience manipulating Regs, she offered a pleasant, “As you can see, Sergeant, I am the ship’s inventory specialist and purser. Unlike many females,” she added with a touch of wry superiority, “I am remarkably skilled at money matters.” As intended, B’aela’s remarks quenched the lascivious look in the Prowler’s eyes. Evidently, women who boasted of their skill in math held little appeal.
The Prowler turned to Kelan who, he decided on a second inspection, looked all too much like his superior officers. Regulon upper crust to the core. He came close to snapping “Sir,” as he held out his hand for the papers of the perfect Reg specimen—tall, well-built, blond, blue-eyed; this one, aristocratically handsome.
“You are a passenger?” the Prowler questioned, his suddenly raised voice carrying across a restaurant gone silent—some openly watching, some with eyes down but ears on the prick.
“Just along for the ride,” Kelan agreed with a grin. “My father is head of a consortium that invests in merchant fleets. Every once in a while he sends me out to make certain his ships are doing what they’re supposed to be doing. The man with me”—he nodded to Josh Quint—is, as his papers will tell you, my bodyguard.” Kelan assumed the look of arrogant superiority he had frequently found useful over the years. Worked every time.
Not this time. If the Prowler had been a private, or even a corporal . . . perhaps he wouldn’t have noticed, wouldn’t have zeroed in on this table. But this was the sergeant’s third Occupation assignment, and this group was just too smooth, too something—maybe too upper class, too intelligent. Better to play it safe—let his commanding officer figure it out.
“I need you to come with me—”
“That won’t be necessary, Sergeant, I know these people.”
The sergeant snapped to attention. “Colonel, sir!”
“Thank you, Sergeant. That will be all. I will handle the situation from here.”
Astonished, Kelan stared as the sergeant snapped off a salute and made a swift exit. Conversations in the restaurant resumed, masking the Reg colonel’s words as he asked, “May I join you?” Without waiting for a response, he slipped into the empty fourth chair at the table.
“There is a quote from Old Earth,” B’aela said. “From a twentieth century film, I believe. Something about ‘Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world . . .’”
“Believe it or not,” said Colonel Alric Strang, “they still drink gin here. Seems someone brought juniper berries with them when they colonized this planet.”
“Alric,” B’aela said with groan, “that’s not the point. “How in the name of the Goddess could we be this far from home and run into someone we know?”
Straight-faced, Strang returned, “But the Reg Empire is vast, B’aela. Regs are everywhere.”
B’aela turned to Kelan. “Colonel Strang is old acquaintance. Being shorter, dark-haired, dark-eyed, and with skin far more sun-kissed than Reg norm, he has been forced to succeed on merit. Which he did so well that he was aide to three Governors-General of Psyclid: Yarian, Grigorev, and Kamal.” A significant look passed between B’aela and the man who had rapped on the door of the apartment she shared with Rand Kamal so often that she came to look on him as a member of the family. “Colonel Strang’s experiences have, I believe, made him sympathetic to the cause of those who are ‘different.’”
“Well, Strang,” Kelan asked, “is she right? Because B’aela has four children waiting for her to come home. And Quint and I are rather fond of our skins as well.”
“Four children, B’aela? My congratulations. You and the admiral—?”
She cut him off. “No. I married a man to whom I’d been attracted for a long time.”
“Even when . . . ?” Alric broke off. “Sorry.”
“Even then,” B’aela confirmed. “And, believe me, he was not happy.”
“And Kamal?”
“He has married a Psyclid. And refused to return to Reg Prime.”
“Ah . . . Strang closed his eyes, drew a deep breath before continuing. “I had heard rumors, but I’ve been away a long time. When the admiral was assigned to Andromeda, Fleet thought my administrative skills more suited elsewhere—certainly not on their latest state-of-the-art battlecruiser.”
“You’ve been here ever since?”
Alric Strang rolled his chocolate brown eyes. “Exiled for aiding the admiral when he ordered our troops off Psyclid.”
“Kamal was Darroch’s nephew, so he got Andromeda,” B’aela concluded, “while you got Deimos.”
Strang offered a wry smile. “Your analytical skills remain excellent, I see. And, B’aela,”—he caught her gaze and held it—“if I intended harm, I would have let the sergeant take you in. Better yet, I could have claimed you all for my own discovery. King Ryal’s eldest daughter, the brother of the greatest Reg traitor in history, and one of the Psyclid Sorcerer Prime’s bodyguards. They’d have made me a general on the spot.”
Kelan turned a whoosh of surprise into a cough. The colonel knew who he was? And was suspicious of Tal? Fyd!
“Sorry,” Alric Strang murmured, “but until I came to Deimos, it was always my job to be a few steps ahead. To be aware of everyone who was anyone, which a Rigel certainly is.” He shrugged. “When you’re a Reg who looks like a Psy, or maybe a refugee from Hell Nine, you have to be.”
“Alric,” B’aela said softly, “may we please walk out of here, return to our ship, as if we’d never been?”
Colonel Strang offered B’aela an infinitesimal smile, even as the depths of his eyes revealed what appeared to be sorrow. “If you take me with you.”
Kelan broke the shocked silence that followed Strang’s words with an abrupt, “Say again.”
“I want to go with you. The Governor-General here is another Grigorev. I can’t take it anymore. I want out. Truthfully”—Alric Strang ducked his head, bit his lip—“I’d like to work for the admiral again . . . if that’s possible.”
B’aela was the first to recover her voice. “We’re on comm silence, Alric. There’s no way to ask permission.”
“Take me anyway. I’ll take the chance. Prison
is better than staying here.”
B’aela realized all three men were looking at her. In T’kal’s absence she was boss. And why not? She was King Ryal’s eldest child. “Colonel Strang,” she said, addressing him formally as the moment demanded, “give your comm units, all of them, to Sergeant Quint.” She should order him to give up his Steg-9 as well, but while excuses could be found for passing over a handheld, his pistol changing hands would rouse instant suspicion. She would have to rely on her instinct to trust him. As Tal did when he told the Deimosian captains how to find the rebels.
“Have we managed the bill?” B’aela asked.
“Done,” Kelan said.
“Then we will leave—a happy group delighted to be reunited with an old friend.” Flashing a brilliant smile, she stood, the men rising with her. B’aela strode toward the exit with the innate grace and confidence of royalty—once again capturing the attention of every person in the restaurant. With jaunty step, Colonel Alric Strang and Kelan followed. Josh Quint, eyes ever watchful, brought up the rear.
Chapter 19
“Shuttle returning plus one,” the pilot intoned as they broke through Deimos’s atmosphere. “Inform the captain.”
“Plus one?” Tal repeated less a minute later. Plus one? “Mr. Khagun, you have the bridge. I’ll be in the shuttle bay.”
Although Tal had never met the Reg colonel B’aela was introducing with a nice mix of confidence and defiance—He was always a gentleman with M’lani as well as with me—Tal recognized the name at once. Colonel Alric Strang, right-hand man to all the Governors-General of Psyclid, the bad as well as the tolerable. Like Rand Kamal.
One less sharp brain for Darroch. That, at least, was a plus.
One more sharp brain loyal to Rand Kamal.
Tal stifled a sigh, welcomed the entire shore party home, then whisked Strang to his personal quarters for a one-on-one debriefing.
At the end of an hour Tal was on the verge of seconding the opinion of his sister-in-law, the empathic witch. It would appear Strang’s defection was not solely due to his admiration for Admiral Kamal. Over his years on Psyclid, Strang had seen a great many things he did not like, particularly under the rule of General Anton Grigorev. Most particularly, the shocking treatment of M’lani, Princess Royal, and the rebel witch, B’aela Flammia. And no, he had no idea at the time that she, too, was a king’s daughter. How could he, when she herself hadn’t known?
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