Three . . .
Ledaya made a barely perceptible move with his finger.
Two . . .
Damn it.
One . . .
Someone yelled, “Action!”
Thayu took in a sharp breath.
Four blinding white spots appeared in the projection: the ship’s engines flared with a brief burst of fire. And then another one, longer this time.
Ledaya yelled, “Hold fire!”
More and more people were staring at the projection.
Slowly, the path diverged from the projected trajectory. The ship broke orbit and moved away from the planet.
The captain said behind me, “We’ll speak briefly.”
Chapter 29
* * *
KANDO LUCZON looked stressed. Hell, everyone looked stressed, with the exception of Tayron, who I had never seen display any emotion whatsoever.
Even Ledaya who was doing his best to hide it, but I spotted him wiping his face and closing his eyes.
“Holy crap,” Thayu said. “Can anyone confirm what just happened? Did they just back away?”
“They did,” Veyada said.
The Aghyrian ship was still gathering speed, climbing to a higher orbit. The station had come over the curve of the planet and was moving a good distance underneath the ship.
I blew out a heavy breath. “They sure did, but I don’t know that I had anything to do with it.”
Ledaya in the command chair gestured me over.
I threw the tether magnet and pulled myself to the command module.
Ezhya was on the screen again. “You have the captain still there in one piece?”
“Yes, although I would have loved to have taken a few pieces off him. He says he wants to talk. Briefly.”
Ezhya snorted. “Guess who decides the duration of our conversation. Bring him.”
A crewmember went to the cargo platform, undid the ties that secured Kando Luczon to the platform. He pulled the captain to the command module by using his tether. He then pushed the captain into the chair and tied his arms and legs. Another crewmember brought a sticky sheet which went over the controls of the bench in front, I guessed so that the captain couldn’t see or interfere with them. A third crewmember brought a bigger sheet of flexible material which he bent around the chair, making a little closed-off cubicle. Only when this was all secured did they remove Kando Luczon’s blindfold.
He squinted against the light.
On the screen, Ezhya studied him. He said nothing and his face remained blank, but I didn’t miss that small jerk of his head, jutting out his chin, a gesture of superiority and utter disdain.
“Why am I here?” Kando Luczon liked to keep people waiting, but sure as hell didn’t like to be kept waiting by others.
“I think your all-purpose colonising race is doing pretty well, don’t you?” Ezhya’s pronouns were absolutely diabolical.
Kando Luczon’s nostrils flared. I didn’t think he understood the nuances of Coldi pronouns, but the tone of the remark alone was insulting enough.
Ezhya went on. “I think we are doing just fine without help from anyone, least of all you.” Coldi: how to utterly demolish someone using nothing other than a choice of pronouns. Ezhya was a master at this. “So. You want a brief meeting. Let’s keep it brief: you will piss off.” He actually used a rather crude Coldi word, popular in the armed forces. “You will leave and keep out of all space ruled by gamra. You will agree to this, or we will shoot you to bits. If you turn up somewhere against this agreement, we will shoot you to bits without warning.”
“We don’t get much of a choice, do we?”
“Nope.”
“Well, we better get back to our ship, then.”
“There will be transport shortly. No need to slow the ship down. We will match speed and drop you at your ship while you’re getting out of here.”
I couldn’t believe that he was letting them go back to their ship
“If I may make a suggestion,” I said.
Ezhya raised his eyebrows.
“We could use a ship’s representative in Barresh,” I said. I had no idea if gamra would be warm to such an idea, but if necessary, I’d find funds myself.
Kando Luczon gave me a cold look. “Do you think any of us would like to live with you?”
“I think so.” I glanced sideways at the platform, where the remaining three hostages sat quietly.
“I think it’s important that you have a representative with us, so that we can continue to communicate on the subject of cooperation.”
“My advisor is right, as usual. An observer to gamra would be good. One only.” Ezhya said. He continued to me, “Choose one and return the rest to that floating coffin of theirs. I guess we’ll see them turn up somewhere else sooner or later. They need us a lot more than we need them. We can talk when they play by our rules.”
I wanted to talk to Ezhya about ideas I had, but there was no opportunity to speak in private. It would have to wait until later, by which time he might well have guessed about the nature of my ideas.
We accompanied the Aghyrians out of the command room back to the shuttle. A couple of uniformed soldiers made sure that we all went in.
Tayron stopped at the door. “Are we all going? I thought someone was going to stay here.”
“We will go back via the ship. No one stays on board a military vessel.” And certainly he would be going back to the ship.
We entered the shuttle and went through the routine of getting into the couches. A few crewmembers helped us. Deyu was also getting deft in zero-g and helped Federza into his couch when both of them had strapped Lilona in.
I let myself be handled by Thayu who was much more handy in zero-g than I was. She clicked the cover shut. Through the little window I could see her climbing into her own couch.
The screens were on and only went dark for the brief period that we left the ship. Then the feed came back on and there was no further blackout, not even when we made a small jump to where the large ship was heading outbound.
The shuttle matched velocity with the ship and let itself be pulled into the dock.
Once again we were in the huge hall and landed on one of the floating pads. Knowing what I knew now, it seemed empty, disused and run-down. Did the Aghyrians have small craft for surface missions? Did they have any people who could fly them?
“So this is where we leave you,” I said when we stood at the open door looking into the dark hall.
Kando Luczon never spoke much in any situation, but he had said nothing since leaving the military ship. To be honest, he looked like a walking statue, a robot.
He barely acknowledged us.
So much for a thank you for taking you home.
“The conditions to your peaceful departure will be binding,” I said, because I had to say something. “Ezhya Palayi is known for carrying out his threats.”
“I shall remember that.” Not in a good way, I thought. He held his back straight and his chin in the air.
“Let’s go,” Tayron said. He turned around to the ship.
Thayu stopped him at the door.
“What?” he said. “You agreed one representative could come back with you.”
“Not you.” I nodded at Lilona. “We want her.”
Lilona burst into tears. “I can’t. I’m bound to the ship.” She showed us the inside of her arm which had turned into a red welt.
“Can you turn that off or disable it?”
“Can’t. Only the captain can do that.”
“Then the captain will release you so that you can come with us.”
Kando Luczon put his chin in the air. “Being bound to the ship is an honour that many would kill for.”
A sudden surge of anger took hold of me. “An honour to expose yourself to danger while the ship jumps, an honour to be treated as a slave? Release her!”
“I selected her as ship’s crew.”
Sheydu sprang forward, grabbing him by the front of
his robe. “He says release her, so you will release her.”
“You do not touch the captain!” Tayron pulled her arm, but Sheydu hit him aside. He stumbled backwards. He fell and almost slid over the edge of the platform but managed to hold onto Veyada’s leg. “Watch out what you’re doing!”
The captain shouted and Sheydu shouted, while Deyu ran forward to offer Tayron her hand. She pulled him up easily, despite being much shorter and half his age. Then Tayron shouted at Sheydu and Sheydu shouted back at him and the captain told them all to stop.
A piercing scream stopped all the shouting.
While we were watching Tayron, Lilona had gotten hold of Federza’s gun. She had figured how to put it on the narrow beam, low-intensity setting—the one that could be used to cut through things. She had traced a deep cut across her arm. She now pulled a string of nodules from the length of her forearm, covered in blood and tissue. Blood spurted onto the ground. For a moment, she stood still as if she couldn’t believe what she had done, and then she crumpled to the ground.
Veyada dropped to his knees, rummaging in his pockets. Finding nothing, he yanked off his shirt and pressed it against Lilona’s arm. “Quick. Get the medkit.”
Sheydu ran inside the shuttle and came back a moment later with a box which she dumped on the ground and opened it. Veyada rummaged through it, throwing bandages and other items around. Blood was going everywhere.
Federza had also dropped to his knees. He was unwrapping several lengths of bandage, bundling them all into one thick strand.
He lifted up Lilona’s arm. He quickly wound the bandage around the upper part of the arm. The blood flow reduced, but not before Federza’s trousers and arms had become covered in it.
Veyada opened another package which contained a clear sleeve which he slipped over her arm. “That should keep it stable until we can get her to a hospital.” He wiped his face with the bottom of his right arm. “This will need some heavy surgery.”
“She’ll be all right, won’t she?” Federza was gathering the empty wrappers of the bandages. His face was pale and hands trembled. He had blood all over his hands and the left leg of his suit.
“I think so,” Veyada said. “No, don’t shut the medkit yet. I think I might give her a sedative. We don’t want her panicking inside the pod and ripping off the bandages.” He rummaged in the kit, finally finding an injector armband which he put around the top of her good arm. He clicked in an ampoule. “There. That should do it. Let’s get out of here quickly.”
Sheydu and Marin Federza carried Lilona inside, leaving a trail of bloodied footsteps on the ground and the gangplank. The thing Lilona had pulled out still lay there, glistening wetly with blood.
While all this was going on, Tayron and Kando Luczon watched impassively.
“I hope you’re happy,” I told him. “She would rather kill herself than stay with you.”
He said nothing. I met his cold eyes with a sense of disappointment, wanting to shake him out of his stupor, getting him to become angry with me. Or something, anything. I didn’t even know what I had expected. He had shown himself to be utterly incapable of feeling or understanding emotions.
Thayu gently pulled me up the gangplank.
“It’s a waste of time trying to talk to the arsehole and his understudy,” she said when we were inside the craft. “He’s nothing but a reason for you to get angry. Don’t. He’s not worth it. There are much better things to get angry about.”
I was still feeling shaky when the craft went through the dock back into space. Sheydu and Federza had put Lilona into one of the antigrav couches and helped me strap in. There was blood everywhere, even on my clothes.
When the lid shut with a click, I leaned back into the soft material, dizzy with fatigue. After spending the past few days on high adrenalin and very little sleep, it was catching up with me big time. No sooner had the craft pulled away than I’d fallen asleep.
Chapter 30
* * *
WE RETURNED to Barresh where people from the hospital waited on the tarmac with a van to take Lilona to the hospital. I knew the woman who leaned against the side of the van. She had once fixed my infected hands. I’d forgotten her name, but remembered that she was good. And she was Aghyrian.
Federza was going with Lilona. I held him back before he got into the van. “Come back to the apartment when you’re done at the hospital. You’re welcome to stay until you have other accommodation. You left some of your things there, and there is something I’d like to discuss with you.”
He promised he’d be there as soon as he could. Raising curiosity was always the best way to secure someone’s cooperation.
Ezhya taught me that.
We took the train home. Dirty and smelly as we were, we caught some odd glances from the genteel citizens of the gamra island.
I guessed saving civilisation as we knew it was dirty work.
Nicha had heard that we were back and came running down the stairs as soon as we entered the building.
I was the recipient of a very un-Coldi hug, which came with a squeal from the sling at his back.
“How’s the little brat been behaving?”
“We’ve got the night feeds all sorted, and he’s starting to like the girls. He likes Reida, too, but don’t tell Reida that.”
The familiar smell of Eirani’s cooking wafted out of the apartment. Evi and Telaris stood at the door. I would have hugged them, too, had that been appropriate.
While we had been away, life had gone on as normal, and most people in Barresh had been oblivious to the battle that had been fought over our section of space. Quite how things were meant to be—because why get people worried about things they could do nothing about?—although it was a little disturbing.
As it turned out, Devlin told me, Delegate Namion had survived the explosion with some moderate, but not life-threatening injuries. He was still in the hospital, his displeasure with the state of affairs evident through hundreds of messages which, according to Devlin, were in my account. At least he had returned control of that account back to me.
The gamra court was going to hold a bedside hearing in the hospital, where he would be presented with a full account of evidence that my staff had collected about his strange practices. He would be forced to resign.
We had a late lunch where every member of my staff came into the room, and sat or stood around the table, because there weren’t enough chairs to include all the office and domestic staff, Nicha’s babysitter and Evi and Telaris. We talked and laughed, and ate cakes and bread and drank tea.
Marin Federza came to the apartment and after having supplied him with a plate of food, we went to my office.
Lilona would be fine, he said. She was going to need surgery and might need bionics to retain full use of her arm, but she was out of danger. An Aghyrian doctor was going to work on her mental state.
He said, “You know what she did to her arm? That’s what happened to her mind earlier, when we were in the tunnels and we managed to break her.”
He looked exhausted and dirty, his trousers still flecked with Lilona’s blood. A wave of nausea washed over me when thinking about how Lilona had pulled that thing out of her arm. That would probably join the gallery of unspeakable memories in my life.
He said he was tired and was about to go to his room when I said, “Having a chat wasn’t why I asked you to come here.”
“Oh?” He stopped getting up and sat back down.
“Delegate Namion will be deposed because of the material you were able to secure from the Exchange wake and other sources.”
Federza nodded. “I guess he was always a placeholder, so that some other people could jostle into the right position.”
“Yes, but a placeholder for whom?”
“Well, word goes that it was for you.”
“Me?” Seriously, who started all these rumours?
“Yes, since you were absent from that meeting where he was elected.”
I snorted. “
As I have said to the members of my association, I’m not standing. I would never pass the assembly’s scrutiny. I’m not neutral enough. I live in Asto’s pockets, they say.”
He nodded, glancing at my Domiri earrings. “You’re a very curious case. Sometimes you’re more Coldi than the Coldi. I don’t think I’ve ever met a non-Coldi person who has such an utter understanding of the Coldi as you do.”
“Well . . .” What to say to that? “I could be made to disagree with that.”
“Don’t bother. No one would believe you.”
True. “To get back to our subject, I don’t know that Delegate Namion was deliberately set up as interim by anyone in particular. I think he accepted the job knowing that it might be a short tenure. If I were him and I knew what he knew when accepting the position, I would probably have felt the same. The situation remains that we need someone else.”
He nodded, deep in thought.
“I wanted to let you know that I am going to nominate you.”
His eyes widened. Then he laughed. “I’m the most hated ex-Delegate ever.”
“I think you overestimate people’s reactions. Especially when court documents start getting released to the public and people can see for themselves how corruption got hold of many in the assembly under the reign of Joyelin Akhtari. When there will be daily reports about what these people did and how they managed to get away with it, your name will come up quite a bit.”
“It will. I don’t even know if I’d be eligible to stand.”
“There is nothing wrong with being called as witness.”
He nodded.
“People will feel sympathetic to you.”
“I don’t want to be given a position out of sympathy.”
“No. I’m not going to mention sympathy at all. I think you’ll do an evenhanded job.”
“Well,” he said, and said nothing else for a long time. Didn’t reject the offer. He added, “I guess we can only let the assembly decide.”
“That, we can. But making sure that our candidates are competent and fair is the first and most important step.”
Ambassador 4: Coming Home Page 29
