“Lord Buddha, I think even my bruises have bruises. At least I’m not coughing any more.” She stretched in her chair. “What I wouldn’t give for a long, hot bath. Preferably with several hard-bodied attendants to help me relax.” Haberville winked, then rolled her eyes when Mairwen didn’t respond.
Mairwen checked the location of the two merc ships, which were distant and moving slowly on a vector that took them away from the icy chunk below. “I can pilot long enough for you to take a shower.”
Haberville gave her a startled look, then narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “Where’d you get your training?”
Mairwen kept her face bland. “I can keep us near the asteroid. I’ll ping if something changes.”
Haberville was patently torn between displeasure at Mairwen’s non-answer and the strong desire to get clean. She gave Mairwen a long, assessing look, then agreed. She spent the next few minutes providing instructions on the ship’s systems, the telltales she’d set up, and how to recognize changes in the passive scan results. Then she left, and the nav pod fell pleasantly quiet.
Mairwen spent a few moments closing drawers and cabinets in the nav pod that Haberville had left open and in disarray. The smelly borrowed overcoat felt awkward and heavy, reminding her to increase the ambient temperature in the living areas to a more comfortable level. Fortunately, the ringing in her ears had finally started to fade. She rather liked using her extraordinary hearing instead of suppressing it as she had for so long.
She heard Luka’s footsteps as he approached the nav pod a few minutes later. As always, he smiled when he saw her, and as always, it made her heart skip. She was relieved to see he wasn’t limping. The anesthetic in the dermaknit and the painkiller he took must be working.
He leaned against the doorway. “I don’t know how long it will take for help to arrive, so we need to talk about pilot shifts. Eve says her limit is twelve hours before she needs rest or stims, assuming the med kit has the right kind. What about you?”
“My ‘jack crew’ experience doesn’t include big ships. I can keep us out of trouble, but we need Haberville if trouble comes looking for us.”
“How about I tell Eve to sleep for a couple of hours now? Assuming our pursuit hasn’t changed.”
“It hasn't changed. You can give her four hours if you bring me socks.” She’d been sitting cross-legged in the chair to keep her feet warm.
He smiled more broadly that time. “I can do better than that. Our clothes are done.”
* * * * *
Luka looked at a wall display to see it had been three hours since he’d delivered Mairwen’s clothes and armor. It felt longer, maybe because his body clock said it was close to midnight and he was running out of energy, despite the nap he’d managed to squeeze in earlier. He thought he would have slept better if Mairwen had been with him, remembering their two nights together on a suspended tarp. Sleeping with her just felt right.
Having finished staging the thermolytic packages in the launch bays, he and Jerzi were investigating the biological samples in the cold unit. Jerzi was wearing nothing but a T-shirt and pants as he crouched on the threshold of the cold unit’s door, examining trays of tiny boxes.
“Assuming the first two numbers indicate the base of origin, then we’ve got the samples from five of them,” said Jerzi.
Luka stood to the side, reading from a portable display that showed the inventory he’d found in the shipcomp. He tried not to shiver. “Should be six. Maybe the last set was still in the building when it blew.”
“I’ll count the boxes from the zero-five group and see if that matches.” Jerzi may as well have been part polar bear for all the cold bothered him.
“Okay, I’ll see if I can find better records.” Luka moved to get away from the blasts of frigid air. It was warmer in the rest of the ship, finally. His flexin armor wasn’t designed to be warm, the electrical tape holding his shredded pant leg together felt cold, and his feet felt clammy. He and Jerzi had found a way to clean out the worst of the blood and dirt in their boots as well as Mairwen’s, so at least they weren’t gory, but they were unpleasantly damp.
He heard a lift door open and was surprised but pleased when Mairwen appeared. He went to meet her. Under her burned and beat-up armor, she was wearing her black pants and long-sleeved knit shirt, both of which she’d patched with blue fibret tape. She probably thought it slightly odd that he was always smiling at her, but he couldn’t help it. He was in love with her, and she was gorgeous. Even though she still looked like she’d recently been in a war. They all did.
She handed him an earwire and took one to Jerzi. “Now we’ll all hear alerts from the nav and shipcomps. In case something happens to Haberville. She relieved me early.”
Jerzi accepted his and absently pressed it into place along his jawline, still engrossed in counting.
Luka put his on, but gave Mairwen a speculative look. His intuition and his talent, which had been dormant while he’d been fighting for his life, flared.
“I’m going with Mairwen to the kitchen,” he told Jerzi, then headed for the lifts, and Mairwen obligingly followed. Instead of stepping into one, however, he walked farther to a shallow alcove just beyond. He drew her into the corner and brushed his lips over hers, for the benefit of any nosy pilots with access to monitoring cameras.
“Why don’t you trust Eve?” he asked quietly.
He reveled in the feel of her arms sliding around his neck. He needed her touch like he needed oxygen.
“The merc pilot wasn’t a tweaker.” She explained the term, then said she’d found no evidence of it in the navcomp. “I think Haberville wants to stay in-system.”
“Why?” He skimmed his hands down her back and lower to her hips, subtly pulling her toward him. The feel of her chest and pelvis against his was derailing his thought processes, overwhelming them with memories of her beautifully sleek, wet, and naked body in the shower, her velvety moon-pale skin a sensuous contrast to his own light brown.
“No idea. I follow brilliant men, I don’t lead them.” Her breathing was irregular, and her raspy voice was like a caress.
“You’ll have to introduce me to those other men you keep mentioning. I’d like to know who my competition is.” He kissed her again, this time with open, raw passion, to let her know how badly he wanted her. She arched into him with a low moan.
“Luka, we can’t...” she entreated, her breath shallow.
She was right, of course. He gave himself a mental shake to throw off the drugging effects of her and took a deep breath. “Which alerts will we hear?” His voice sounded as husky as hers.
“Launches, significant movements, ship system changes, outgoing comms, anything I could think of.”
“Can’t she just delete them?”
“Yes, if she can find them. I learned from whoever hid the air-mix virus in the Berjalan’s shipcomp.” She stroked the side of his face where he’d attached the earwire. “I customized these. If you subvocalize, only I will hear it. I can make Jerzi’s do same, if you trust him enough to tell him.”
“You don’t?”
“I trust your talent. I trust you.”
Given her life experience and what had been done to her, he considered it a gift from the universe that she did.
Over the earwires, they both heard a synth-voice alert.
“Attention. Infrared signature on Insche 255C planet surface.”
A moment later, Eve’s voice came over the shipcomm. “In case you care, fems and gents, the mercs on the planet just blew another installation.”
He cupped Mairwen’s face in his hands and kissed her one final time. “I’m a very lucky man,” he whispered, then reluctantly pulled away.
He captured her hand in his and led her toward the lifts. If they ever made it back to Etonver, he was never going to let her go again. He wanted to tell her he loved her, but he was afraid it would throw her into turmoil worrying about how to respond, and he couldn’t do that to her while they were still in
danger. Her CPS handlers had drummed into her that she wasn’t capable of normal human emotions.
He knew better, but he didn’t think she did.
They’d no sooner arrived in the kitchen when another alert, and then Eve, told them a new ship had launched from the planet surface to join in the hunt.
“Another corvette is coming… and damn, it looks like the adults have come to see what the commotion is.” A tone sounded, and suddenly they could all hear playback of the new ship’s commander yelling at the others about open communication and ordering immediate encryption. The signal flatlined.
“Sorry to say, but the new guest at the party is organizing a better search pattern. It’s going to be less likely we’ll stay hidden behind our iron-core asteroid. Morganthur, I need you in the nav pod for the lasers. Jerzi, Luka, get to the launch bays. Be ready to set the timers on the thermolytic packs you made.”
Luka helped Mairwen find a protein bar and fruit cube to take with her, then reluctantly left her and went to meet Jerzi at the launch bay crossover to coordinate their efforts.
Jerzi took the initiative to locate and distribute exosuits for everyone and to take their xeno sampling kit up to the engine pod, which was well protected because it doubled as one of the ship’s escape pods. Eve used the shipcomm to publicly express her irritation that Jerzi wasn’t following her orders. Jerzi used the shipcomm himself and said he’d be damned if he’d be caught in hard vacuum again. Luka found the shipcomm in his launch bay and announced his support of Jerzi’s actions. He felt like he was supervising preteens.
As he waited in the bay, he decided he disliked being in an exosuit, but would dislike being dead even more. He made a point of sealing it a couple of times to get the hang of the various controls, remembering how he’d fumbled with them on the Berjalan. At least this was a new, clean suit from the Beehive, instead of the filthy, malodorous one he’d hauled through the hybrid rainforest. He found that even while wearing an exosuit, he could still pace and think, and he took advantage of it.
He kept coming back to Korisni Genetika’s involvement. If, as Zheer suspected, they’d hired the dead telepath to interrogate him, it implied they already knew the eight-hundred-kilo secret, the existence of a viable hybrid planet. Maybe their real goal had been to hijack it out from under the company exploiting it now, whether that was Loyduk or one of their partners. Based on what Dr. Tewisham had said, it wouldn’t surprise him if Korisni Genetika found out about it because they had a spy in the research operation. Was it too Machiavellian to think that Korisni Genetika dangled a cheap merc company in Loyduk’s path, meaning they’d be easy to beat? Or maybe they’d simply suborned the merc company.
He wished he had Mairwen around so he could bounce ideas off her and get her unconventional take on things. He thought better when she was nearby. Or maybe he was just rationalizing his selfish desire to be with her.
CHAPTER 22
* Interstellar: “Beehive” Ship Day 02 * GDAT 3237.045 *
“Shoot,” said Haberville. “I was hoping they’d take the idiots’ word for it that they’d searched our little corner of the system.” She seemed much calmer now that she’d showered and rested. Unfortunately, she’d used the floral shampoo and lotion, making the whole nav pod smell like a cheap perfumery.
Mairwen had already analyzed the new and improved search pattern and estimated they had at least another thirty minutes before their pursuers would come anywhere close. One of her private alerts told her there was an incoming transit. The alert was followed directly by one Haberville had set.
“Oh, hello there,” said Haberville, checking out the newly arrived ship. She looked at Mairwen. “Have they come to help or hurt, do you suppose?” Mairwen shrugged.
Haberville keyed the shipcomm. “We have another new player, just in from transit. Look sharp.”
Through Mairwen’s earwire, Luka asked her if it was possible to give him ship commander’s rights. She turned away from Haberville briefly to subvocalize a “yes,” then updated the command module under the guise of checking flux and laser status. Mairwen kicked herself for not having thought of it earlier when she’d had all the ship’s systems to herself for three hours.
The merc ship Haberville had designated as Blue Three sent a broadbeam but encrypted ping at the newcomer. The Beehive only detected it from the fringes because the beam wave passed nearby. The newcomer didn’t respond, at least via broadbeam. After several minutes, the original Blue Two corvette sent a long and wide active-scan, which strongly suggested the new ship wasn’t expected.
Haberville slapped her thigh. “Thank you, Great Spirit, for sending idiots to do me favors.” She manipulated the nav interface with rapid fingers and called up comparative signatures. “Bounceback says the new ship is an exploration-class deep spacer. Bigger than us, smaller than the corvettes. Spacer is tagged as Purple One.”
On Mairwen’s holo display, the newcomer’s purple icon appeared and started to move in-system. She rotated the perspective to make it easier to see the relationships. The transit exit point was outside the asteroid belt, and to get to Insche 255C, most ships would angle over the elliptic to avoid the cosmic debris, just as the Berjalan had done. So far, the spacer was behaving predictably for that destination. Mairwen remembered that Zheer had been planning to contract a freelance exploration spacer for an expedition to the second hybrid planet candidate. She wondered if La Plata had diverted it to Insche instead.
“Shit,” said Haberville. “Ship number four just cleared from the surface. Looks like another corvette. Fuck. Tagged as Blue Four.”
Instead of joining the search pattern, Blue Four appeared to be on an intercept course for the spacer. At present velocities, Mairwen estimated fifteen minutes to firing solution, and twenty minutes to intercept. The spacer seemed oblivious.
Haberville announced to Jerzi and Luka what was happening.
Mairwen tried to put herself in the mind of the exploration spacer’s commander for various scenarios. None of them had the spacer expecting to be up against three armed merc corvettes. Unless the spacer had vastly superior weapons and heavy armor, it was in trouble.
Haberville proved to be thinking along the same lines. “That spacer will be dead meat if the mercs shoot first and ask questions later.”
“Can we get the mercs to show themselves, or warn the spacer?” asked Mairwen. Any other approach would light up the Beehive and get it slagged in short order.
“Maybe.” Haberville looked thoughtful, then smiled and snapped her fingers. “Emergency comm relay. Change the message, delay the broadcast, boost the output. It’ll fry quicker, but who cares? We’ll launch it toward an area the idiots already cleared.”
Her fingers flew in the interface. “Shipcomp says the relay is in cargo six, near the airlock. Go get it. I’ll do the message and plot the vector while you're doing that.”
Mairwen was already halfway through the doorway by the time Haberville had finished speaking. In the lift, she heard Haberville using the shipcomm to tell Luka and Jerzi.
So far, Haberville had done everything aboveboard, and Mairwen was having doubts about her suspicions, as well as doubts about her own ability to detect the tweaker’s adjustments.
She quickly located the relay unit in the cargo hold, but it was too heavy for her to handle. She found a grav lift and wrestled the unit onto it. She followed Haberville’s announced direction to take it to the number two launch bay. Jerzi helped prepare the payload and get it into the launch claws.
They stepped back to the safety zone for Haberville’s five-second countdown. Despite his stint in the autodoc, Jerzi’s eye and nose were still swollen, making him look like a competition fighter. She made a brief search for hearing protectors and handed the rigid cups to him before putting on a set for herself. The launcher’s noise was hard on her, despite blocking her senses, and Jerzi winced in pain.
She could have used the earwire to tell Luka he’d need them, too, but she chose to visit his la
unch bay in person and give him her hearing protectors, since she wouldn’t need them in the nav pod. She didn’t pretend the reason for her visit was anything but her own need. Despite knowing it was irrational, she worried about his well-being when she couldn’t see him.
“I… evaluated Jerzi. He knows about these,” he said, pointing to his earwire.
She grinned, knowing it meant he’d once again successfully used and controlled his talent. For once, she initiated the kissing senseless activity, leaving them both breathless.
“I’ll fix it so you and he can talk.” She gave him one final kiss, then returned to the nav pod.
Her body stayed heated from the encounter for quite a few minutes afterward, despite her exosuit’s environmental controls. When Haberville was momentarily distracted, Mairwen surreptitiously adjusted the comm system to connect Luka and Jerzi.
The combination of the launch energy and the comm relay’s own tiny engine propelled the relay surprisingly close to the merc transport ship before it began broadcasting. Whatever Haberville’s repeating warning message was, it definitely got the spacer to change trajectory. It also stirred up a hornet’s nest of active-scans and movement from the hunters, and demonstrated that two of the four corvette commanders knew what they were doing.
The Blue Four corvette anticipated the spacer’s actions and started serious pursuit, while Blue Three followed back along the relay’s path. Although Haberville had craftily bent the relay’s angle with the launch spin, Blue Three was looking for the origin a lot closer to the Beehive than they had been.
Blue Two’s commander demonstrated continued stupidity by destroying the relay with a missile, which also set off the thermolytic package that Mairwen and Jerzi had thoughtfully included with it. The Blue One transport responded to the detonation as if it was under attack and retreated to put Insche 255C between it and any combat.
Mairwen used the shipcomm to briefly describe the action to Luka and Jerzi. Haberville gave her an annoyed look, then announced, “Everything but critical systems going low tech.”
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