by Jaleta Clegg
"And?" I asked when he didn't say anything else.
He smiled. "Will you?"
"Fly you to Perlion? Is Vance going?"
"As Second Speaker, yes. But you will be chaperoned at all times." His smile held a hint of amusement. "My yacht is a bigger than Max's."
I wanted to grab the chance. I'd learned a few things over the last few years, though. I hid all trace of excitement. "How much bigger?"
"Then you accept? It's still well within your ratings."
"You did read my files," I said.
He stood. "No barrel rolls," he said in my ear.
He was gone before I could think of a decent reply.
"Barrel rolls?" Olin asked as the door swung silently shut.
"And a few other maneuvers."
He shook his head and turned back to his dusting. "Sometimes I wonder if he really knows what he's asking." He glanced over his shoulder. "You'd better pack. He's leaving in about an hour."
I smiled and thanked Olin for the warning instead of saying what I really felt. I was definitely learning. I went back to my room and tried to figure out what to pack. Hester came to my rescue as I sat in a hopelessly huge pile of clothing. She did her usual efficient thing and I was packed and ready to leave within the hour. I still had five times the luggage I wanted to take.
Iniuri met me at the flitter. Olin and Hester were staying behind and Vance was meeting us at the spaceport with the rest of the crew. Iniuri politely opened the door for me. I got in and settled into the seat. He started the flitter then sat back in his own seat. The flitter rose into the early morning sky, turning south toward the distant glitter of ships.
"I have other reasons for asking you to come," Iniuri said when we were well on our way. He handed me a small package.
I didn't know whether to be curious or nervous or both. I opened it and stared at the contents. He'd given me a small blaster and two extra charges, each good for maybe a dozen shots. The blaster fit too easily into my hand. It felt like an old friend. I didn't realize how naked I'd felt without a weapon. It was with great reluctance I put the blaster back into the package.
"I can't," I said, holding it out to Iniuri.
He made no move to take it.
"I don't know who you want me to assassinate, but I can't do it."
"You misunderstand my intentions. I want you at my side for my protection. In case someone tries to assassinate me."
"Oh," I said in a small voice. I put the package back in my lap. It was small enough to hide even under the evening dress I had packed. No one would suspect me of having it.
"You won't be searched," he said. "I've seen to that."
"Don't you have other people for this?"
He didn't answer.
I only hesitated for a moment before tucking the blaster into my pocket.
We parked right next to the boarding ramp of his ship. I stared up at it. I couldn't help the grin on my face.
The yacht was an Archer, a real beauty. It was handmade, custom tooled and fitted, and one of the sweetest ships to ever fly. They were beyond expensive. Iniuri Shiropi had asked me to pilot his. I was tempted to kiss him, but I didn't think he'd appreciate the gesture. I followed him up the boarding ramp in a daze.
The inside was luxurious. It was detailed with real wood and carpeted in a deep burgundy plush that hushed everything. The walls were muted gold. Every touch spoke of rich elegance. There was a reception area at the airlock. A hallway led into the ship, curving as it rose.
"You'll have the forward cabin," Iniuri told me. "It is a bit small, but it is also near the control room."
I didn't care if it was a closet. Just to be on an Archer ship was beyond my wildest dreams. It was a greater honor than being named to the Thousand. I barely noted which cabin was mine on my way to the cockpit.
It was at the nose of the ship, a spacious semicircular room fitted with beautifully crafted controls and comfortable seats. I sat in the pilots chair, right at the front, and ran my hands reverently along the controls.
"Can you fly it?" Iniuri asked. He sounded as if he'd already asked me several times.
"Of course I can fly it." I couldn't wipe the grin off my face. Me, flying an Archer ship.
"Lucius is the com officer," Iniuri said, pointing at a slender man seated to my left. "I would like to leave as soon as possible," he told Lucius.
Lucius nodded. "Your son is on his way. He should arrive within the hour." Lucius had an earpiece discreetly tucked in one ear. "Everything else is ready."
"Good." Iniuri left, with a last amused smile for me.
Lucius studied me out of the corner of his eyes as he busied himself with the com. I watched him back, between running my hands over the controls. Lucius had sleek, black hair and a matching mustache across his upper lip. He finished his call and turned to face me fully. He gave me an appraising look. He turned away, muttering something about rich, pampered, spoiled brats pretending to be pilots.
"Pardon? I didn't quite catch that comment," I said. The other three heads in the room, the rest of the crew that I hadn't been introduced to, turned our direction.
"I said that rich women with no skills shouldn't be allowed to fly," Lucius said clearly.
"I agree completely."
That caught him off guard. He stared openly at me, a hint of reappraisal in his eyes.
"Do we have a liftoff window?" I asked, turning my attention back to my controls.
"One hour." He leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. He waited to see what I'd do.
"Do you have a procedure for preflight?"
"On your left," the navigator, a stocky blond man, informed me.
"And your name is?"
"Alan," he said and grinned. "And that is Klyn," he nodded at a woman seated at the scanning controls.
I smiled at her. She remained aloof, measuring me with her gaze.
"And that's the engineer, Surrey," Alan said, nodding at the last member of the crew.
Surrey was busy, both hands working over his controls. He barely nodded. He was tall, skeletally thin, and almost totally bald.
"Nice to meet you," I said, nodding to them all. "I'm Dace." They nodded back, except for Lucius.
I found the preflight checklist and read through it.
"Are all passengers accounted for?" I asked Lucius. I would have been happy to leave Vance behind, but that was personal feelings getting in the way. I liked Vance, more than I wanted to. I respected him, which made him doubly dangerous, but I didn't trust him.
Lucius gave me an insolent stare before turning back to his controls.
"I asked you a question, Lucius," I said.
"And I'll repeat myself," he said. "Rich women who have no experience should not be allowed to fly."
There were several ways I could handle this. I could ignore him, but he would most likely keep getting worse. I chose to force the issue. The pilot made the judgment calls during a flight. If I couldn't count on Lucius to give me the information I needed, things could get ugly in a hurry. I moved before he finished smiling cockily at me. I had him on his belly, one arm twisted up behind his back, his face smashed into the burgundy carpet, before he knew what hit him.
"You want me to tell the Speaker he needs a new com officer or are you going to behave?" I asked him calmly as I dug my knee into his back. The rest of the crew stared.
Lucius gave a strangled grunt and tried to squirm away. I pinned him harder.
"And for your information," I said as I leaned close over him, "I'm a fully trained, certified pilot. I graduated at the top of my class in the Academy. I've logged more than a thousand flights. You have a problem with my qualifications?"
"No," came the muffled answer.
"Good." I let him up, offering him my hand to pull him to his feet. He stared at it, his face twisted with humiliation. He reached to take my hand. I saw his legs tense, he was planning to throw me.
I shook my head. "Don't even think it, Lucius."
The sullen look on Lucius's face morphed into a wide grin. "Welcome aboard, Admiral." He took my hand, letting me help him back to his feet. He pointed at Alan. "You owe me fifty credits."
"You let her throw you," Alan grumbled.
"Should I be flattered or offended?" I asked.
"You should be getting ready to lift," Klyn said. "Silly male games." Her look told me she thought I was stupid to be drawn into the middle.
"Go back to your scans,"Alan told her.
Klyn made a rude gesture at him and turned her back deliberately on us. They had obviously worked together for a long time and knew each other well. I missed that camaraderie.
"Well? What do you think?" Lucius asked me, still grinning.
"I've missed flying," I said. And grinned back.
Chapter 26
Lowell's breath frosted the air. He looked around the dome. The whole base was empty except for the basic equipment, old but serviceable. There were no furnishings. Kluger Outpost was unmanned. It had been built on a rocky, barren, airless moon as a place to plant astronomical equipment for monitoring nearby stars. The research had ended and the base was closed and forgotten. Even the Patrol monitoring station installed after the scientists left was shut down and abandoned.
"Perfect," Lowell said.
"The basic equipment is online," Everett said as he came through a far hatch into the main dome. "There's still some problems with the water recycler. The rest of the life support system is working. It will take a few hours to warm things up, though."
"And the greenhouse won't be producing for a month at least. I'm hoping we won't be here quite that long." Lowell rubbed frozen hands together.
"We couldn't get the monitoring equipment to even boot up," Everett said. "I've got Siy and his team working on it."
"Good," Lowell said. "I've got master override codes to get us into the system. What about the messages?"
"Averill and his crew are taking them to Besht. His ship is one we can afford to lose. I doubt the Patrol will confiscate it, though. He wasn't sure the main engine core would last more than another week."
Everett turned away, talking on his com. Lowell pretended not to listen. He stayed in the main dome, out of the way of the people working on getting the station running again. He walked over to one of the few windows and glanced out.
There were three ships on the moon and another six in orbit. People in vacuum suits worked on the docking pits. Everett's ship, the Windrigger, was the only one currently connected. With the station's life support online, the other ships could connect now. Cargo would be interesting to shift. None of the airlock tubes were big enough to cover the cargo bay doors on the ships. They needed to get the oxygen reserve tanks filled again so they could use the pressurized hangars. To position the ships in the hangars they needed to get the haulers running again. With their fuel lines frozen and no lubricants, that was going to be a major undertaking.
Lowell sighed, turning his gaze up to the planet they orbited. He never wanted station logistics to be such a part of his life. He preferred the logistics of undercover operations. He just had to think of this as his biggest undercover operation. He had literally thousands of agents working for him, untrained and definitely not Patrol. That was a frightening thought.
He turned around as Everett crossed the dome to join him at the window.
"They've got a temporary airlock rigged so we can move cargo," Everett informed him. "Not that we have much that will be useful here. There are some odds and ends of furnishings and enough food for a week as long as we keep the personnel here to less than twenty."
"Good work," Lowell said and meant it. He was impressed. Maybe he should have been working with merchants instead of Patrol all these years. He'd never seen the military work so well at dealing with the simple problems of supplies. But then, these men and women moved cargo for a living.
"The station should be livable in a few hours," Everett said. "It won't be much for comfort."
"If I wanted comfort, I would have stayed on Linas-Drias," Lowell said. "Speaking of which, how soon until we can send someone out with the message?"
"Xylo will be ready to leave in a couple of hours. She had little in her holds that would help us here. Are you sure she won't be caught?"
Lowell shook his head. "If they got the module installed properly, all they have to do is downshift and make contact with the planet's datanet. The message will spread itself from there. Any ship making contact will pick up the message. It should reach Linas-Drias within a week."
Everett looked skeptical. "And how many people will read it?"
"None, except for Scholar," Lowell said with a smile. "It's brilliant. The message is buried inside the identifier coding sent by each ship and to each ship. A few extra numbers is all."
"And you're sure Scholar will get the message?" Everett was not convinced.
"His data pad is programmed to scan constantly. He'll get the message." Lowell rubbed his hands again. Already his breath wasn't quite so noticeable in the cold air. "Meanwhile, we need to get the monitoring equipment working again."
"I'll stay here to coordinate the supplies," Everett said.
Lowell nodded and headed into the tunnels of the station.
Paltronis stood in the middle of the equipment room, hands on hips and a frown on her face.
"Trouble?" Lowell asked. She glared at him. The techs in the room scurried out, carrying bits and pieces with wires trailing behind them. Everett's engineer, a man named Siy, was partially hidden behind a console.
"Wiring's shot," Siy said. "Take us a week to rewire everything and get it working again."
"We don't have a week," Paltronis said sharply.
"How fast can we get the basic equipment working?" Lowell asked.
"A week," Siy said, crawling out from behind the equipment. "There's not much wrong with the equipment itself, it's the power cables. Half of them are shorting because the insulation went brittle in the cold. We have to run new cables from the generators. Take us a week to get someone to bring in cabling for us."
"There aren't any spare parts in any of the storage bins," Paltronis said before he could ask. "We've been through the whole base. There is nothing here. We had to raid the algae tanks on the Windrigger to get the air recycler working. It's going to be marginal for at least five days."
"Surely someone out there is carrying a load of cables," Lowell said. "We just need to divert them here."
"We could try pulling the backup generator and running it in here," Siy said, tugging at his lip as he eyed the dead equipment. "We might have enough cabling to reach that far."
"You do that," Lowell said. "That equipment needs to be up and running as soon as possible."
Siy nodded, already scribbling on a message pad. Lowell signaled Paltronis, the one that said he wanted to talk to her privately. She followed him to the door. Siy argued with someone over the com, probably Everett, about stripping the backup systems from the ship.
"What?" Paltronis asked when they were in the tunnel outside the monitoring room. She was tired and irritable. She'd been working overtime trying to keep the others convinced to follow Lowell's plan.
"How are things going, really?" Lowell asked.
"Most of them think you are absolutely insane. And Everett isn't far behind on the madness scale."
"Good. No one will suspect a thing until it's too late."
"It isn't going to work, Lowell. Not without the Federation on our side."
"That's why I want to talk to you. I have to stay here. I need you to go."
"No, Lowell. You send me away and they will quit listening to you. Do you have any idea how hard I've been working to convince them?"
"Yes, I do. You deserve a commendation for it."
"Did you see the latest news sheets?" she asked.
"I haven't had time. Is there something I should know?"
"Dace was named to the Thousand."
Lowell's grin faded. "That co
mplicates things. We're running out of time."
"What do you know that you haven't told me?" She eyed him suspiciously.
"Someone wants her targeted. They suspect she's working for me. She's been marked."
"Marked for what, Lowell?"
"That's what I couldn't figure out. I don't have enough information, Paltronis. Which is why Scholar is on Linas-Drias with her. Our message about Theodys is on its way to him. I just hope it isn't too late. I need you to go to Tebros and make contact with the Federation."
"You can't send me, Lowell. You need me here this time."
"I don't have anyone else I can send."
"Yes, you do. Send Everett."
"I need him here."
She shook her head. "You need him out there, spreading the word. The Gypsy ships will listen to him, not me."
"You're right," he admitted. "I wish I had Tayvis. He knows the Federation leaders. I was stupid, Paltronis. In many ways."
She very carefully kept her mouth shut. He was still her commanding officer, though their relationship had grown far beyond that. He didn't need her rubbing his face in his mistakes.
"You think Everett will do it for me?"
"You trust him, Lowell. He's Gypsy. And he's got clout. Send him to Tebros."
"His ship is the one currently powering the station." Lowell tugged at his ear. "Until we get the generators up to speed, at least. Half his people and equipment are in the base."
"Let him deal with that, Lowell. He's good at it."
"You're right. I'm starting to feel a bit useless."
"When did you last eat anything?" she asked.
"Are you trying to mother me?"
"You need it. The mess hall is that way." She pointed down the tunnel to the left. "Linzy and Furril were hauling in some of the frozen dinners from the ship last time I saw them. Go eat something, Lowell. And then find a corner and get some sleep."
"After I talk to Everett. I need to explain to him."
"I'll do it. I know as much as you do about the situation."
"Tell him to pass the message to Roland that if he starts confiscating ships our deal is completely off. I'll personally throttle him over it. The real threat isn't the Empire, it's the crime syndicates."
