She was guilty as hell, but Raena finally understood what Ariel wanted her to do. “I demand a trial,” she said.
“Very well,” the magistrate said. “I’ll leave it to the clerk to put it on the schedule. Next case.”
*
Haoun had never been inside a jail before. He assumed that Raena would be brought down to meet him in some common area, but instead, after he was passed through a screening machine, guards escorted him up to her cell.
The bare black stone room had nothing to brighten it except the small black-haired woman in her short blue dress. Haoun rushed over to take her in his arms. Raena grinned as if genuinely relieved to see him. He buried his nose in her throat. She smelled of sweat and worry, absolutely intoxicating.
She twisted to slip her tongue between his lips. He shuddered happily and clutched her closer.
“I missed you,” she whispered.
“Are you okay?” He set her feet back on the floor. “Are they treating you all right?”
“Yes,” Raena said. “It’s a constant party in here.”
She led him over to the stone bench that protruded from the wall. Once they’d settled, he noticed she was barefoot.
“No boots allowed?” he wondered.
“They confiscated them on Lautan and no one’s bothered to find me a replacement.”
“Shameful,” Haoun said. “I’ll get on that.” He took one of her little feet into his hands and massaged it. It was filthy with black dust and cold to his touch.
His hand wandered up her thigh.
Raena dropped her hand on his and nodded toward the camera above the door. “I’m not opposed to an audience,” she said, “but they have a creepy desire to broadcast the things they record. You have a family to think about.”
He stared at the camera. “Have they been watching you all the time?”
“As far as I know.”
“Even when you shower?”
She shrugged, not particularly upset by it. Maybe it was one of those things she had gotten used to, having spent so much time imprisoned.
“I’m so sorry this happened to you,” he told her.
“Thank you. At least I finally got arraigned today.”
“Finally?”
“They haven’t seemed in any great hurry to start my trial. Do you have any idea when I’m getting out of here?”
“No. Ariel’s supposed to arrive tonight. She says she’ll take care of everything. Oh, and while I’m thinking of it, Mykah says you must insist on having your trial broadcast.”
“No.”
“It’s imperative, he says. And it’s your right.”
“I don’t want my life on the intragalactic news,” Raena insisted. “That’s what got me into this mess in the first place.”
“What got you into this is a pleasure planet’s greed,” Haoun argued. “Kai has been looking to shake someone down to make up for the downturn in tourism. They could find you. They couldn’t find Mellix.”
“Mellix’s documentary is what led them to me.”
“Mellix’s documentary isn’t connected in any way to your arrest. It’s just a coincidence.”
“I wonder.” She offered Haoun a little smile and slipped her other foot into his lap. He rubbed it as well.
“How did Kai know where to look for me?” she asked. “We hadn’t been on Lautan for long.”
“Apparently your defense of Mykah at the beach triggered Planetary Security to find your warrant from Kai. It just took them a little while to negotiate the price of your extradition. And it led to them seizing the Veracity. They seem to have mistaken it for some other ship.” His eyes darted meaningfully at the camera. “We got here as quickly as we could.”
Raena sighed. “No good deed goes unpunished.”
Haoun changed the subject. “Have you been able to sleep in here?”
She nodded. “The dreams have been bad, but nothing unusual has happened in them.”
“That’s a relief, isn’t it?” Haoun asked.
“Yes. If I have to be locked up, at least I’m not under attack.”
A guard tapped on the door.
Haoun sighed. “I wish I could stay longer.”
“No, go,” Raena said. “Plan my defense. I want to get out of here in the worst way.”
*
“We’re on Kai finally,” Ariel commed. “Come to Kavanaugh’s docking slip. We need to talk.”
So Mykah and the rest of the Veracity’s crew traced the coordinates she gave them to the battered retro-futurist Earth-made hauler. Kavanaugh’s Sundog looked, as always, as if it had seen better days.
“I thought Kavanaugh always did his business in a bar,” Coni said.
Mykah shrugged. “Guess they don’t want to discuss the trial in public.”
Kavanaugh waited for them at the hatch. He shook everyone’s hand—even Vezali’s tentacle—and ushered them onto his ship. He drew Mykah aside at the back of the group to ask, “How did you heal up?”
“Good as new, thanks to you. I kept the scar, though.”
“Thought you might.” Kavanaugh looked past Mykah after the Veracity’s crew. “How are the kids holding up?”
“It’s been hard for everyone to have all our stuff stolen out from under us.”
“How’d they get onto your ship?”
“The dockmaster on Lautan let them in. Never occurred to me to booby-trap it.”
“I can show you how to set a password on the external lock,” Kavanaugh offered.
“I’d appreciate it.”
Once again, Kavanaugh’s manner impressed Mykah. Tarik offered his expertise without making Mykah feel selfconscious or stupid. He hoped to grow up to be as cool as Tarik someday.
In the Sundog’s lounge, Ariel was holding court at the card table, glasses of green poured for everyone. It always startled Mykah that Ariel’s skin was the shade of sunlight on the water, a lovely gold that looked like leisure, like money. Until you compared her with Eilif, Ariel looked perfect. Eilif, though, was so symmetrical she had obviously been engineered.
“Nice to see you again,” he said gently.
Eilif dropped her gaze, rather than meet Mykah’s eyes. “And you as well, Captain Chen.”
“Sit down and have a drink, Mykah,” Ariel ordered. “I want to hear what you know about the charges Raena is facing.”
*
When Mykah finished telling her everything the Veracity crew had learned so far, Ariel asked, “So you’re sure we can refute the theft charge?”
Mykah looked to Coni, who nodded. “The Veracity’s provenance is seamless.”
“Good. Then it’s just a matter of making the court think that the dockmaster’s office scrambled the recordings of two very similar Imperial transports. Can you do that?”
“Already have,” Coni said.
Relieved, Ariel sipped her green. She wasn’t sure how Raena had befriended these kids, but she’d done well for herself. They were first-class.
“What about the kidnapping charge?” Haoun asked.
“Since no one reported the boy missing,” Ariel said, “Kai is simply hoping to make that charge stick. On Kai, Raena will be considered guilty until she demonstrates she’s not, so it’s all on her to prove she didn’t capture the boy. Luckily, I have the solution to that,” she promised.
“Are you going to defend her?” Vezali asked.
“No. One of my attorneys should arrive tomorrow. Corvas is on retainer to the Foundation to protect our kids when needed. Since Raena’s new identity kicked in, she’s under the Foundation’s aegis. Corvas is scary smart. He’ll know how to game Kai’s legal system.” Ariel topped off their glasses of green and said, “The only thing that worries me is the murder charge.”
“When did they charge her with murder?” Haoun asked.
“They haven’t yet, but they will.” Ariel sipped her drink. “Have you ever watched the courtroom show from Kai?”
Only Mykah had.
“I’ve been stu
dying up,” Ariel said. “The Business Council broadcasts their trials, as a way to shame anyone who acts up on Kai. If they bring charges that can be proven to be unfounded—and the judges rule against them—the Business Council pays out to the defendant. So once they get you in the system, they keep throwing charges at you until you can’t rebut something. They can prove Raena killed Revan Thallian and some of his guards the day you all lit off in the Veracity.”
“We’ve seen the fight,” Coni said. “It was broadcast everywhere afterward. All that talk about how weapons-free worlds didn’t keep people safe made Raena laugh.”
“But you and Sloane,” Mykah argued, “clearly you were attacked. Raena simply defended you.”
“If she’d merely gotten us out of the fight,” Ariel answered, “Kai might not be able to make the charge stick. But she moved on from the guys who grabbed us to subdue the whole party of Thallian’s soldiers.”
The Veracity crew protested, all voices raised at once. Ariel smiled. The ruckus reminded her of home.
“You’re right,” she said over them. “There wasn’t anything else she could have done. If we’d run, the Thallians would have followed. They weren’t going to let her go just because she cracked a couple of skulls. I know that—and you know that—because we know whom those soldiers belonged to. Kai still hasn’t officially identified them.”
Silence followed that announcement.
“If we name Revan,” Mykah asked, “are we going to have to explain why he was after Raena?”
“Raena’s daughter,” Ariel reminded. “Since Raena’s posing as her own daughter, we’ll have to explain why the Thallians wanted my sister’s daughter.”
“They’d tracked Raena and Sloane to Brunzell,” Coni said. “Raena left a dress behind in Sloane’s apartment there. The Thallians found it and brought it onboard the Raptor. Raena found it in Revan’s closet.”
“There are probably Security recordings of the Thallians on Brunzell, then,” Ariel said. “With those, we could prove they were hunting her before they came to Kai.”
“I’ll find them,” Coni promised.
Mykah asked, “Are you going to connect Jain with murdering the guy who helped get Raena out of her tomb?”
Kavanaugh interrupted quietly, “His name was Tom Zhao Lim.”
Mykah had forgotten Kavanaugh had been the boss of the grave-robbing crew. “I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I never knew his name.”
Ariel shook her head. “I’m sorry, too, Tarik. As much as I would like to solve Lim’s murder for the galaxy, I don’t think we need to bring it up in this court at this time. The galaxy hasn’t connected the murder to the Thallians or to humanity at all. I don’t want to add any fuel to the ‘humans are violent and dangerous’ debate. Jain was punished for his crime.”
Haoun interrupted. “Raena said he hung himself.”
“That is true,” Eilif said quietly.
Ariel touched Eilif’s hand in sympathy. “We should keep Jain’s crimes separate from Raena’s. If she’d killed him on camera, we might need to justify her, but since she only took him home—where his father meted out the punishment—that’s beyond the scope of Kai’s justice.”
Mykah slid a surreptitious look at Eilif. What would it be like, he wondered, to know someone you considered your son was a savage murderer? To watch him die, condemned by your husband—whose crimes were even more monstrous and extensive? Eilif was so guarded that the depth of her pain might never be known.
“All right,” Ariel said. “Kai allows one visitor per prisoner per day to their jail.”
“I’ll go back,” Haoun said. “I want to make sure she’s okay.”
“You’ve seen her already?”
“I went this afternoon. She looked better than I expected. The sun comes in her cell, so it’s warm in there, but they’re feeding her well. She’s sleeping and able to exercise. She’s still wearing the dress she had on when she was arrested, though. And she’s barefoot. They confiscated her boots on Lautan and she hasn’t gotten anything to replace them.”
“I don’t think Kai has jail uniforms,” Ariel said. “I’ll get her some clothing, so you can deliver it tomorrow morning. Where are you staying?”
“There’s a boarding house near the delivery docks,” Mykah said. He pulled the coordinates up on his handheld and sent them to Ariel’s comm bracelet. “Haoun and I have stayed there before.”
“Is it rough?” Ariel asked.
Mykah met her eyes. “Not if we’re together.”
She nodded, understanding what exactly he meant by that: humans were tolerated in mixed company. “I would be glad to put you up someplace more centrally located,” Ariel said.
“Let us talk it over,” Mykah said. “We’re okay where we are, but if the trial drags on …”
“I’ll do what I can to get things expedited,” Ariel promised, “but not until Corvas gets here.”
*
The advantage of being confined alone was that she had her own shower. Kai rationed water, so Raena couldn’t stand in it all day long, but she treated herself to killing time under the water as often as she could.
Today the shower cut off before she was done luxuriating in it. “You have a visitor coming up,” a guard said over the comm.
Raena rubbed her head dry and wrapped the towel around her body. The blue dress she’d been wearing when she was arrested on Lautan was getting threadbare from being worn so often, but she shouldered into it anyway.
When Haoun strode across her threshold, Raena melted gratefully into his arms. “How long can you stay?”
“I’m just making a delivery,” he said. “They’re going to call you for your trial today, but Ariel wanted you to have something decent to wear.”
He handed her a clear plastic shopping bag. It held a shimmering metallic blue dress. Raena tugged off her old dress to slip into the new one. Haoun stood back out of her way, but watched her avidly.
The dress wrapped around her in such a way that it implied more curves than Raena actually possessed. The loose skirt fell past her knees. She spun around to make it swirl. Ariel always did have nice taste in clothes.
“No boots?” Raena asked.
“Apparently, boots are proscribed. Or maybe only for you, I’m not clear. It feels like they change the rules whenever they choose to.” He handed her a pair of soft black slippers.
Can’t kill anyone with these, Raena thought, but didn’t say anything aloud. She looked up to see Haoun was probably thinking the same thing. He laughed at her.
“Brush your hair?” he asked. “Or is it meant to look like that?”
“Don’t you like it?” she teased, petting it upward.
“I like it, but you’re not dressing for me.”
“Pity.”
*
After she’d groomed herself, Raena came to sit in his lap. Haoun petted her back gently, careful not to snag his claws in the fabric of her new dress. “Nervous?” he asked.
“Not really,” she said, but he felt the flutter of her heart beneath her thin, soft skin. He wished he could do something to make the waiting easier.
“Have you ever been in jail?” Raena asked.
Haoun was surprised they hadn’t had this conversation before. “Never.”
“Never been caught?” she teased.
“You know how cautious I am.” Caution had cost him his mate and children, but he hadn’t really thought caution was a bad thing. He’d always been cautious, up until he asked Raena if she’d play the jet scooter game with him on Lautan.
She rested her head against his chest. “Regretting anything?”
“Only that I should’ve taken up with you sooner.”
“My bunk’s too small,” she pointed out.
“Vezali could fix it.” After the words left his translator, he wished he could call them back. What if she didn’t want to be with him on the Veracity? What if this didn’t mean anything to her, if she was only glad of his company because she’d been
trapped in solitary confinement and she was lonely, bored, and frightened?
“I’d rather come sleep in your nest,” she said. “Much more comfortable.”
“Really?” he asked hopefully.
Raena said decisively, “Really.”
He wove his long fingers between her short ones. “No regrets,” he promised.
Their moment was ruined by a voice announcing over the comm, “Prisoner Zacari, the court is preparing for you now.”
Raena stood up and shimmied the dress down into place. “Do I look scary?”
“You look nice,” Haoun said. “Good luck today.”
“Thank you. Will you be there?”
“Coni is saving me a seat in the courtroom.”
“I haven’t met my defender yet,” she said abruptly.
“Ariel said he is on Kai,” Haoun soothed. “He’ll be there for you today.”
“What if he is attacked by those soldiers in gray? What if someone prevents him from getting to me on time? What if—”
He cut her off. “You aren’t alone. Ariel is here. If the defender gets held up, we will think of something. We are all in this.”
Raena’s breathing grew choppy. Haoun thought back over the time he’d known her. Before she went alone down to the Thallian homeworld to wipe them out, before she’d gone to Capital City to protect Mellix, before she led the assault on the Outrider androids: before any of the attacks, she had been calm, relaxed, in her element. Only when she’d fled the New Bar after seeing herself in Mellix’s documentary had she seemed anxious. This was even worse.
“This will be over soon,” he promised. “Then I owe you a bubble bath.”
A voice said over the comm, “Prisoner Zacari, stand away from the door.”
Raena snatched up Haoun’s wrist and pulled him with her to the opposite side of the cell. She turned around to face the wall and put her hands up on it at shoulder height.
“Do I need to turn around, too?” he asked, as nervous as she had been.
“No, you’re fine.” She seemed calmer suddenly. “Just keep your hands where they can see them, step out of their way politely, and don’t make any twitchy moves.”
Four guards came into the cell. Three carried stun staves. One of them moved to cover Haoun as another advanced on Raena with an old-fashioned set of shackles. She submitted docilely as he bound her wrists and ankles, then attached the leads that prevented her from taking a long step or raising her hands above her waist—or would have done, if she hadn’t been so tiny.
No More Heroes: In the Wake of the Templars Book Three Page 14
