by Jaleta Clegg
"You're too tense, Jasyn."
"I have good reason to be."
She spotted a man walking leisurely, looking like he had no worries, no cares. His hands were deep in his pockets. She grabbed Clark's arm. He patted her hand, loosening her grip. He'd already spotted the man. Jasyn studied him as he walked. He was keeping to the shadows. She wasn't certain, but she thought it was Everett.
"It's him," Clark said quietly in her ear.
"How can you be sure?"
"Watch the way he walks." Clark stood and slid through shadows to one side of the exhaust port. "Just in case," he whispered.
She nodded and stood, shifting forward into a slightly brighter spot. The man showed no sign of noticing her. He moved her direction though, taking a meandering course to the cargo doors of the Phoenix. He stepped into a pool of light. Jasyn relaxed. It was Everett. She just had to believe his loyalty to Family was stronger than his loyalty to the Empire. He might turn them in, but she doubted it. That thought was enough to make her nervous again. She clenched her fist around the data cubes. This had to work.
Everett sauntered up to the ship, looking like he was only out for a stroll. He slipped into the shadows and approached her.
"What do you need, Jasyn?" he asked quietly. "It's only a matter of time before someone recognizes your ship. The Patrol wants you pretty badly. The only two names higher on their most wanted list right now are Dace and Grant Lowell. What have you been doing?"
"Hiding, mostly."
He cocked his head to one side. "Dace promised me the full story."
"She isn't here. I don't know where she is."
"You want me to help look for her?"
Jasyn shook her head. She held out the data cubes. "These are copies of Lowell's files. And what we've guessed based on what's in there. I need you to get these to the people who can do something with them."
He kept his hands in his pockets. "Answer one question, Jasyn. You're charged with treason. Is it true?"
"No, Everett, it isn't true. We're being framed." She was starting to believe this had been a bad idea. Everett hesitated too much.
"Treason isn't a small charge. I've heard rumors of a coup attempt against the Emperor. And rumors of planets seceding, breaking away to join the Federation. How much trouble will I be in if I take those cubes?"
"None, if you get them quietly to the right people."
"And who are the right people?" He sounded skeptical.
She wished he were standing in better light. She couldn't see his face. "I'm not sure who you can trust. Scholar says Lowell's on the run, hiding somewhere."
"Who is Scholar?"
"One of Lowell's people. Are you going to help us or not, Everett?" She couldn't help but feel that time was running out.
"You're asking me to risk my reputation, my ship, my life, and my crew. Just tell me truthfully if it's worth it."
"Read it yourself and decide." She held the cubes out to him again as inspiration struck. "Get it to the Council."
"What does the Family Council have to do with a rebellion?"
"The Council of Worlds, Everett."
He whistled, long and low. "You don't play for small stakes anymore, do you?"
"Call in all of Lady Rina's favors to get it there if you have to. You wanted the full story from Dace, it's here."
He finally accepted the cubes, folding his fingers around them gingerly, as if they were about to explode. "I only asked her for the story of your new engineer."
"He's with Dace." She was suddenly tired. She backed away from Everett. "Just do this for us, please."
"Be careful, Jasyn," he said, tucking the cubes into a pocket. "I'd hate to have anything happen to Ghost."
"Thank you, Everett." Some of the tension loosened. "We owe you."
"Big time," he said, but he was smiling.
He strolled away from her, walking slowly with his hands in his pockets.
"He's going to do it?" Clark asked, stepping back out of the shadows.
"I hope so."
"You still don't quite trust him?"
"As he said, I'm asking him to risk everything for us."
"You're shaking," Clark said as he slid his arm around her. She turned toward him and buried her face in his shoulder.
"I just want it to end," she whispered.
Clark wrapped his arms around her. "We need to get back inside, before someone recognizes us."
"I know," she said, muffled against him.
Neither of them made any move to leave until the maintenance cranes began rumbling around the ship. Fitch and Senshi met them at the bottom of the boarding ramp.
"All done, no problem," Senshi said. "We even talked them into giving us good prices." She beamed, proud of herself. Even Fitch grinned.
Jasyn made an effort to smile back. "Good. Now all we need is to know where we're going next."
"I hope Scholar has that figured out," Clark said.
Jerimon opened the hatch. "We've got it," he announced.
"Where?" Jasyn asked as she hurried into the ship. The others were right behind her.
"Calloway," Scholar answered without looking up from his dataflow.
"Where?"
"I sent the coordinates and everything else I could grab from Tebros to your nav comp," Scholar answered.
"What else?" Clark asked, picking up on the deadly serious look on Scholar's face.
"After we're moving," Scholar said. "No time right now."
"We've got until the cranes finish," Clark said, leaning over the table.
"You won't like it," Scholar said.
"Bad stuff," Doggo agreed. "Sent Reeco puking."
"Lowell knows where they took the people from Jericho. To Calloway. And he knows why. That's the nasty part." Scholar tweaked his pad, the colored lights flickered and faded. "He only sent the bare facts, not time or room for the rest."
"What?" Jasyn demanded. They were all waiting for Scholar's explanation.
"They want their genes. We have to get there and help save them."
"Then we'd better get moving, hadn't we?" Clark answered.
Chapter 36
I woke, stiff and cramped and cold, to find the others still asleep. I leaned against Mart. Lowell was on my other side. If the air seeping through the foundation hadn't been so cold, I might have been warm.
Beryn was the only one awake. He bent over the heater, fiddling with the controls. He glanced up and saw I was awake. "You're an engineer, you come fix this thing."
"So are you. I don't know anything about heaters," I grumbled, but I crawled away from the wall. Mart woke when I moved, he watched me without speaking.
I poked at the heater while Beryn shivered next to me.
"You're in the light."
"You're a grouch when you wake up," he answered, shifting back.
I tapped the controls. "The battery's dead."
"You think they're just going to leave us out here to freeze?" Beryn asked.
"I doubt it," Lowell said through a yawn. "They bothered to feed us and bring the heater out here in the first place."
I sat back from the heater and rubbed my arms.
"What time is it?" Lydia asked, rubbing her eyes. She definitely looked worse for the wear. Her hair stuck up on one side of her head.
I hated to think what my hair looked like. I ran a hand through it. That was how I usually combed it until I was more awake.
"It's almost noon," Beryn said, squinting at his watch. "I wonder where they are." He walked over to the door and rattled it. "You sure you can't pick this, Dace?"
"I've got a couple of ration bars," Marshal offered.
"I'll pass." I joined Beryn at the door.
The lock was a big heavy bolt that I couldn't have budged with anything less than a sledgehammer. I squashed my eye to the tiny crack and tried to peer out. All I saw was white swirling past.
"It's still snowing." I moved back from the door.
"They brought us dinner, why miss
breakfast?" Lydia wondered.
"Because they decided to turn us in and don't care if we're corpses or not," Paltronis grumbled.
"Someone as grouchy as Dace in the morning," Beryn said. "I never thought I'd see it."
"Shut up," Paltronis and I said in unison.
Marshal broke his ration bars into small crumbs. Not that they would be any more edible. Ration bars taste like sawdust. I'd have to be a lot hungrier before I wanted to eat one.
I kicked the door in frustration. It didn't even budge.
"You want help breaking it down?" Beryn offered.
I ignored him.
"Fighting with each other isn't going to help anything," Lowell said. "If we're still in here tonight, then we can break the door down and leave."
"With what, Lowell?" I asked. "You've got explosives hidden in your pants?"
"That's not a bad idea," he said and grinned. "But, no. With all of the expertise we have here, we should be able to work something out." He stuck a finger in his ear and wiggled it.
"Do you know how stupid you look when you do that?" I said.
He just grinned. I should have known it was all an act. I should never have trusted anything about Lowell. Ever. But I did.
"Someone's coming," Mart said. He had his eyes closed as he leaned against the wall. I could feel it, too, now that I was listening to him. I could almost make out the emotional aura of whoever it was.
"Stop it, Dace," Beryn said, nudging me.
"Stop what?" I lost the thread of feeling.
"Your eyes went all weird." Beryn shot a glance at Mart and deliberately moved across the shed to the far wall. He pretended it was to share Marshal's crumbled ration bars, but I knew better.
"You remembered more?" I asked Mart.
"I know what I should be able to do. That doesn't mean I can do it anymore." He spread his hands in front of him, studying them as if they belonged to someone else.
The lock rattled and the door opened. A gust of very cold wind blew in, swirling snow with it. A woman, bundled up so thickly she looked like a ball with arms and legs, stomped into the shed.
"Poor excuse for hospitality," she said in her booming voice. "I told them that heater wouldn't last the storm. Fools wouldn't listen. They're still arguing about you. Don't matter what they say right now, you can't leave until the storm clears. They better have a decision by then." She turned ponderously and went back out through the open door. "You coming or you want to freeze in there?"
I didn't wait for a second invitation. Wherever they took us, it had to be warmer and more comfortable. And possibly easier to escape from. I tucked my hands in my armpits and followed her into the snowstorm. I knew Mart was right behind me.
The wind was like a knife, the snowflakes stung as they scraped over my face. I bent my head and kept my feet in the woman's footprints. I couldn't see more than a few feet through the blowing snow. She was right, we weren't going to find our ship again until the snow stopped, and then we'd probably have to dig it out. I'd only been in a blizzard like that once before in my life. It was on Nevira, right before I met Jasyn. How different would my life be if I hadn't made that decision? A lot lonelier, I decided. And then decided I didn't want to think about it. Nothing was going to change what had happened. I just had to live with the consequences of my choices.
The woman led us up to the back door of the only store in town. She banged it open and stomped inside. She shed layers as she led us up a steep set of stairs. By the time we reached the second floor balcony, she looked a lot thinner. She dumped her pile of assorted scarves and wraps and other outerwear on a chair then pushed open a door.
"You stay in here," she said firmly. "Prove I can trust you to stay put or you go back in the shed."
"It's warm and there's food," I said. "I'm not going anywhere." For a while, I added to myself. I went in the room, Mart and the others at my heels.
It was a wide room with six bunks stacked on the wall to my left. A long heater filled the wall to the right with chairs and couches pulled up around it. Straight across were two windows with thick drapes pulled across them. The room looked comfortable. It was warm. The one low table in front of a couch held three books.
"I'll send someone up with lunch," the woman said. "Don't think about leaving," she warned as she shut the door.
"No lock," Beryn whispered.
"And at least a dozen guards outside and downstairs," Lowell said as he picked up one of the books. "Anyone interested in livestock diseases?" He put the book down on the table and went to peek out the window.
I sat in a low chair next to the heater. The cushions had been worn until they were soft and shaped to fit someone about my size.
Paltronis checked every corner and closet and cubby. I'm not sure what she was looking for. It was probably habit with her. Beryn followed her, talking quietly and fingering his deck of cards. Marshal and Lydia were flushed with excitement and cold. They joined Lowell at the window and pulled back the drapes. Cold air slithered into the room.
"Still snowing," Lydia said.
Mart sat on the couch next to my chair. He fingered the books on the table.
"You decided something last night," I said quietly to him. "What?"
"You're right, Dace, this isn't about just me. It's about Jericho. It's about all of the Hrissia'noru. It's about everyone else that's been dragged into this."
"And it isn't your fault," I insisted.
"How do you know that? Maybe it is, and I just can't remember."
"It's your fault the Emperor's cousin is framing us for treason?" I put all the skepticism I felt into that statement.
"Not that," Mart conceded. "But Jericho is my fault. I have to do what I can to fix it. When we get to Babylon."
"If we get there," I added.
The door banged open. Two burly men brought in trays they put on the table. "Last meal," one of them said and guffawed at his own wit.
"Does that mean you're going to execute us?" Paltronis asked, confronting the man near the door.
The man backed away from her.
"I'd like to see you try," Paltronis said. Her voice was low, an invitation to danger. The man was too smart to take it. He backed out through the door and shut it in her face.
"You enjoy doing that, don't you? Making people think you're scary." Beryn said to her.
"It's what she's paid to do," Lowell said, pulling the drapes shut on the window. "Although I don't think you should ever dismiss one of her threats. She doesn't threaten people lightly. I'd hate to see her hurt you just to prove it. What's for lunch, Dace?"
"You really could take out both of them?" Beryn asked Paltronis.
"Kill them or just disable them? Permanently or temporarily?" Paltronis took a step towards Beryn. He edged away from her. "Any or all of the above?"
"Sandwiches and soup," I said to Lowell.
"Don't hurt him too badly," Lowell called over his shoulder to Paltronis. "We might need him in one piece later."
"What for?" She advanced another step on Beryn. He backed up.
Lowell paused with a sandwich halfway to his mouth. "You know, I really can't think of a reason." He shrugged.
Beryn backed up another step. His face was pale. "Dace, stop her," he begged.
"Why?" I sipped a mug of soup. It was hot and felt good going down.
"Because—" Beryn fished frantically for a reason that he thought I'd believe.
"You aren't seriously going to hurt him, are you?" Lydia said, coming to Beryn's rescue.
"It might do him some good, teach him to respect something," Paltronis said.
"I respect you," Beryn said desperately.
"Prove it," Paltronis said, her voice low and full of the promise of sharp things, like knives.
"Cici, please," he begged.
"Cici?" I said, startled enough to sputter soup over the chair.
Lowell smiled deviously. "She won't hurt him. Much. She likes him."
Paltronis backed Beryn against
the bunks at the far wall. She said something very quietly. He stopped backing up. He answered her.
"You people are just too odd," Marshal said as he helped himself to the sandwiches.
"Look out the window later," Lowell said quietly to me. "If we have to, we can slip out that way. I just want to know which direction to run to get to the ship."
"I can't see through a blizzard," I protested, but softly.
"But you've been here before," Lowell said. "Think of the town layout and tell me which way to go. We have to lift by morning. We're running out of time."
"You think I don't know that?"
"I think you know it better than the rest," Lowell said. "Snow or not, we have to leave by morning."
"I'm sorry I suggested Onipas, I really thought it would be safe."
"I know. No one's blaming you. No one that matters." He grinned and took a big bite of his sandwich.
"I think Beryn's going to be occupied for a while," Lydia smirked.
"Save them some lunch," Lowell said around his mouthful of sandwich. He sat on the couch and leafed through the animal book. "Did you know that chickens can get rashes on their hackles?"
"I don't want to hear this," I said.
"We're eating," Marshal protested at the same time.
Lowell read the rest silently. He kept eating.
The other two books were almost as bad. One was a catalog of farming equipment. The other was an extremely boring treatise on farming techniques. We finished lunch.
Paltronis and Beryn talked intently, heads almost touching as they sat on a bunk. None of us dared interrupt long enough to get Beryn's cards. Marshal pulled two data cubes out of his pocket.
"You have a pen?" he asked Lowell.
Lowell did. I watched curiously. What good were data cubes without a reader? And why a pen? I didn't have to wait long. Marshal used the pen to mark the sides of the cubes.
"Dice," he said with a smile.
He taught us a convoluted game. I'd learned it once, back at the Academy. But dice were pure chance, they couldn't be counted and tracked like cards. I only played the game a few times. It was something to do. We even got Lowell and Mart to play.
The door opened. The game was immediately forgotten. It wasn't the woman. It was Omar. Paltronis and Beryn quit talking. We watched him warily, waiting to hear the result of their council decision.
