by Jaleta Clegg
"You were never here," he said after a long pause that had me itching with impatience. "It's the best we can do. We can't help you."
"It's help enough," Lowell said. "We won't forget."
"Unlike the Empire?" Omar said. "I'm surprised they remembered us. I'm surprised they sent a ship. They never have before. Not even when we asked for help. We had to wait until our regular shipping contact came. And they refused to do more than their contract specified."
"What happened, Omar?" I asked.
"Raiders. Three months ago. So when the Patrol courier showed up, we hoped they were coming to tell us that a cruiser would be here. They said we were on our own. We're too far away to worry about. So we worked out our own deal with the raiders."
"They don't want us, do they?" I asked.
Omar cracked a smile. "You ought to do something about your paranoia. They wanted to trade with us. They wanted a place to land sometimes. Since the Patrol didn't care, we decided we didn't either."
"So why arrest us?" Lowell asked.
"So we could force a vote," Omar said. "The snow should let up soon. We'll escort you to your ship."
"A vote about what?" I asked.
"Leaving the Empire," Omar said. "So I guess that makes us all traitors now."
Lowell cocked his head to one side, studying Omar's face. "Why?"
"Why leave?" Omar asked. "Because the Federation sent ships. Unlike the Empire. Dace's ship is the only one to bring more than the minimum in the last five years. The company that sponsored this colony dumped us ten years ago. Said we were unprofitable. If they'd sent us the seeds and plants we asked for, it would have been different."
"The Federation? Not the Sidyatha?" Lowell asked.
"No one wants to deal with the Sidyatha now," Omar said. "Are you going to report me?"
"To myself? That would be silly," Lowell said. "Just don't close off all communication with the Empire. There might be something I can do."
"Who are you?" Omar asked.
"Grant Lowell," Lowell answered with a smile.
"You aren't really an investor," Omar said, shooting a suspicious look at me.
"No, but I do know some," Lowell said. "Does that change your decision about what to do with us?"
"Not if you leave fast enough," Omar said and laughed. "If you ever come back, we'll show you what real hospitality is."
Chapter 37
The wind had scoured most of the snow away from the ship, at least on the side with the hatch and the engines. The nose was buried. We didn't bother digging it out. I took us into the blowing wind and snow, using a bit of extra thrust to break us out of the snowdrift.
Marshal set the course for Calloway. We would have barely enough fuel to make it there. It made me nervous, but there was nothing I could do except trust my luck would hold and the reserves would be enough.
"Three more days," Marshal announced after we made the jump.
"What's your plan, Lowell?" I asked as I shut down the engine.
"It's not mine now," Lowell answered. "It's Querran's."
"And that told me nothing," I objected.
He didn't answer. He fiddled with the scans.
I reached past him and shut the boards down. "Those don't work in hyperspace."
"Why not?" Lowell asked. He gave me an innocent look. "Have you ever tried them to see?"
"It burns them out." I wasn't about to admit that my curiosity had driven me to do just that on my first jump. I'd almost been thrown out of the Academy.
Lowell grinned. "You should know."
I should have known Lowell knew everything about me.
"I don't have to take this," I said, shoving myself out of my chair.
"Querran's plan," Lowell said. I stopped and sat back down. "She is staging a ground training exercise on Calloway. Hopefully, she'll have pinpointed the location of the lab by the time we get there."
"You don't know where it is?" I asked.
"I know the planet, I don't have the coordinates," he said.
A memory tugged at me. Coordinates that didn't match anything. A scrap of paper. The word rowan. I closed my eyes, trying to remember the numbers. I'd stared at them long enough, I should remember them. Lowell breathed down my neck as he leaned in closer.
I snapped my eyes open. "Give me something to write with."
Marshal handed me a pen and paper. I tore a strip from the bottom and tried to recreate the paper I left behind on the Phoenix. Lowell watched me intently. I frowned, the numbers didn't look quite right. I crossed out a seven and made it a four, and changed an eight to a three. That looked better. I handed the strip to Lowell.
"You want to explain?" Lowell asked as he read the numbers.
"I found a paper in the bottom of one of the boxes of necklaces," I said. "We couldn't figure out what the numbers matched."
"This could be it," Lowell said. He turned to the scan boards and turned them back on. He pulled up one of the simulation exercises and typed the numbers in.
"What was the combination to the locker on Shamustel?" I asked. "You said I already had it."
"You picked it?" Lowell said, intent on the screen in front of him. A globe covered with grid lines slowly rotated on it. "The combination was your ship's registration code. I thought you'd think of it. The same number of digits."
"It never occurred to me to try that," I admitted.
"I think you're right," Lowell said, sitting back. "These could be the coordinates. What is the rest of this? Rowan?"
"It was in my notes on the courier. Lady Rina said it was an ancient symbol of safety and protection."
"Probably nothing to do with this, but we can't be sure." Lowell saved the coordinates. "When we reach Calloway, we'll have Querran scan these coordinates."
"And then what?" I asked.
Lowell glanced at Marshal, who hung on every word. "Marshal and Lydia take the ship away, before Suella skins me alive. You know, Dace, I never did figure out how to score a triple comet or that double nova Mart always seems to manage. You said you'd explain it."
He wasn't going to say anything more about his plans. I was going to have to wait. Only until I had him alone, I promised myself.
Mart and I spent most of the trip showing Lowell how to score in Comets. Lowell made certain I never managed to corner him.
I was asleep when the reentry alarm sounded. The beeping blended with my dream about fish and horsemen with no heads and flowers that bloomed into bombs. Or maybe it was Mart's dream and mine blending together. It took me a minute to wake up enough to realize it wasn't part of my dream. I staggered into the cockpit and hit the right buttons. The beeping stopped.
It was the middle of the night, ship time. I yawned and ran my hand through my hair. I was barefoot, and I hadn't noticed until I sat down. Too late to go back for my boots.
Beryn muttered something and rolled over on the bench in the common area. Lowell was the one who came to join me in the cockpit.
"Do you want help?" he asked.
"Do you know how to check our position?"
"No, but I'm sure you'll tell me."
"That board," I pointed behind me. "These three buttons, in sequence. And if there isn't a good reading, it gets a lot more complicated."
The ship slid through reentry. A bit rough, but I blamed that on the low fuel levels and not servicing the ship for the last three jumps. It would hold. It would have to.
I was busy for a frantic five minutes, getting the sublights up and running, shutting down the hyperdrive, dumping speed, and getting the ship stabilized. It was a two pilot ship, but no one else had seen fit to wake up, no one that knew what to do anyway. Mart woke when I did, he stayed on the bench, pretending to still be asleep.
Lowell politely waited until I stopped to breathe. "What does the blinking light mean?" he asked.
"It gets complicated," I said. "You have to triangulate with three known stars."
I talked him through it while the sun ahead of us grew bigger. The
planet was in view before Lowell had finished finding his target stars. It wouldn't matter where we were, we had to land. The fuel light was steady red. I might be able to squeeze enough out to land, but not if I had to do a lot of maneuvering.
"Forget it, Lowell," I said, glancing at the scanning screen. "We're probably in the right place." I counted six Patrol ships lurking around the planet. Two of them were huge troop transports with oversize shuttles zipping back and forth from the planet. The com beeped.
Lowell answered it. "Yes?" He listened to the headset for a moment. "That's us," he said cheerfully. "Run a scan of these coordinates." He read off the coordinates I'd written down. "Call when you have results," Lowell added and hung up the headset. "It's a lot more fun than I thought it would be," he said to me.
"What?" I asked as I nudged us onto a better course.
"Running a ship, instead of just commanding one. I may take up piloting some day."
"Where am I supposed to land?" I asked. I heard the others finally stirring. I yawned, my jaw cracking as I tried to keep my eyes focused on the controls.
"Wherever their main base is set up," Lowell said. He leaned over my shoulder to look at the viewscreen. "I'd guess here," he said, pointing at the planet. "Where the troop shuttles are landing. That looks like the right place."
"That was completely useless, Lowell," I said. I flipped the headset off the hook and pulled it on one handed. I hit the call button and waited for an answer.
"Louie Bree, this is the Avenger," a crisp voice said. "What do you need?"
"Landing coordinates," I said.
There was a long pause. "You are unauthorized to land. This is a restricted zone. We're conducting ground training exercises. Civilians are not—"
"Authorized. I know. Check with Sector Chief Querran. But hurry, we're low on fuel."
I listened to static while the planet got closer. I got Lowell to run scans to get a fix on the landing spot they were already using.
"Louie Bree?" The crisp voice was not so crisp now.
"We're still here," I answered.
"You have permission to land." She read off a set of coordinates. I tapped the keyboard and got Lowell to enter them. "And that scan you requested? Chief Querran wants to know where you got the information."
"From a box of jewelry," I answered. It was the truth, even if it didn't sound like it.
"Chief Querran would like you to report to her immediately upon landing," the crisp voice informed me before she signed off.
"Read off the coordinates," I told Lowell. I entered them into the nav comp while he read. It was an easy course calculation. The computer beeped and produced an approach vector for me. I nudged the ship onto the new course.
The landing spot was near one of the poles, on the shore of a wide shallow ocean. Both poles of the planet were covered with continents. The one at the other end of the planet was solid white. The one we were headed for was green. The planet was a miserable one, I remembered from the information Lowell had given us. Calloway was unsettled because it would require almost constant migration to stay in a livable zone. I wondered how the biology lab, Babylon, managed to survive.
The atmosphere was calm, which was very good. We were on fumes in the thrusters. I had barely enough to slow us so the maglev drive could drop us the last fifty feet. We landed in a clearing hacked out of a thick jungle. There were three other shuttles there. And lots of people in silver and black uniforms.
By the time I had the ship shut down, the rest of them were awake and ready to go. Lowell opened the hatch letting in a wave of hot, humid air that reeked of jungle. I felt Mart stiffen as the scent filled the ship.
"I've been here." His mouth was tight, his eyes full of fear that only I could see. I could taste it, it was so strong.
Lowell gave Mart an unreadable look, his silver eyes flat, giving nothing away. "Then what's here?"
"Pain," Mart said shortly.
"Stop it, Lowell," I said, coming up behind Mart. I put one hand on his arm, trying to quiet the panic that threatened both of us.
"Suella's waiting for us." Lowell's look promised me that he was not going to let it go. He was going to find out what answers were in Mart's head.
"Your boots," Mart said stiffly. He handed them to me. His brown eyes sought mine, holding me with his look. He needed my support this time. "I know how much you hate being barefoot." He glanced at my feet. "I felt your unease and knew." His voice trailed away.
"Thanks," I said. He was there for me after I'd shot Tayvis, now it was my turn. I squeezed his arm before I took my boots from his limp hand. I didn't need to say anything, he felt me doing what I could to ease the memory of panic.
I put one boot on, making sure my lockpicks were tucked in their pocket.
"Are you ready yet?" Lowell asked.
I glanced up as I pulled my foot into the second boot. Lowell waited in the open hatch, Paltronis like a dangerous shadow at his shoulder. Beryn stood beside her, looking pale and nervous. Marshal and Lydia were grinning and looking like kids out for their first flight, excited and scared and nervous all at once.
"Let's go save the Empire," I said, straightening.
"Just Jericho is enough," Mart said solemnly.
"They're here?" Lowell probed.
Mart shook his head, looking down, unable to meet the accusation in Lowell's eyes.
"He didn't do it, Lowell," I said, as sure of that as I had ever been.
"You've read his mind? What's left of it?" Lowell crossed his arms, daring me to prove my statement.
"I'm not the telepath," I shot back. "You read his mind, you tell me what's in it."
"Lots of holes," Lowell said. "This place feels wrong," he muttered as he turned away.
"Spiky and purple?" I asked as I followed them out of the hatch.
Beryn chuckled.
Lowell gave me a puzzled look. "What does your hair have to do with this?"
"It isn't spiky anymore and it's almost not purple," I said. "I was talking about the aura."
"What?" Lowell asked. "Are you deliberately trying to confuse me?"
"Am I succeeding?" I grinned, trying to pretend I was having fun teasing him. I finally had Lowell on the defensive. It would have been a lot more enjoyable if we were anyplace else in the Empire. The planet was definitely wrong. The humidity had us all sweating. My clothes clung to me.
The glare on Querran's face as we crossed the clearing didn't help. She flicked one glance at Marshal and Lydia. The creases at the sides of her mouth deepened. She settled her glare on Lowell.
"Suella," Lowell greeted her with a big smile, as if they were two old friends meeting at a resort someplace. "I see you managed it."
"Do you have any idea how far my neck is out right now? I went to your office on Typoll. The only records there involved mating rituals on some planet I've never heard of. Very funny, Grant."
I saw the unease flicker in Lowell's silver eyes. "There were no records on Roderick Medallis or his people?"
"Nothing," she said. "I looked like an idiot, an incompetent one. They actually called me senile. The only thing that saved me was the fact that it was your office and you're still number one on the wanted list. Tell me why I shouldn't arrest you and turn you in right now."
"Because I'm right about this and you know it," Lowell said. "I gave you my record files on Zanius."
"And none of them are verifiable," Querran countered. "I need proof, solid proof. All I have are your suspicions, Grant. Give me something I can show."
"Did you find the lab?"
"The coordinates you gave us to scan were right," Querran said. She flicked a glance at me. "How did you know where to look?"
"A box of jewelry," Lowell said. "A little insect told me where to look."
"There isn't time for games," Querran said sharply.
"It was on a paper in a box of jewelry," I said. "It's the truth."
"What is this place? We found evidence of an extensive underground network.
The scientists in the living compound are in custody, but we can't hold them long. None of them have any sort of record. They say it's only a research facility, located out here because the organisms they are researching could be dangerous. They say it's legitimate. They say it's registered with the company. And it is, Grant. All of it is substantiated."
"Not the real research, Suella," Lowell said. "It's a cover, and a very good one. I've been outmaneuvered every way I turn. Did you read the papers I gave you?"
"Pure research, no way to make it work," Querran countered. "Am I going to look like an idiot again?"
"Give us one day," Lowell said. "Look the other way for that long. We'll bring back evidence of what they're really doing in that lab."
"Genetic research? It's perfectly legal, Grant."
"Not on unwilling subjects, not the way they're doing it."
"Prove it to me, Grant."
"One day and we'll have proof."
"You have twelve hours, no more. After that, I have to release them. Don't let them catch you inside or I will have to arrest you." Querran looked at the sky overhead. "Since the sun doesn't set during the summer, daylight won't be a problem. All of you have to be clear of the facility within twelve hours. Get moving." She turned to her grandchildren. "Except the two of you. You are to refuel the ship and go home. And stay there. Consider yourselves under house arrest."
Marshal and Lydia visibly deflated. They turned away, heading back for their ship.
"I'm sending two of my people with you to make sure you get there," Querran called after them. "You had no right to drag them into this, Grant," she said, turning back to us.
"They volunteered. And I had no intention of including them in the actual raid." He tugged one ear. "Do you have a recorder or two I might borrow? I seem to have misplaced mine."
"Anything else? How about a blaster or two? How about several dozen infiltration squads?" Querran said bitingly.
"That would be splendid," Lowell said with a bright smile.
"Proof, Grant," Querran said.
"That's what the recorders are for," Lowell answered.
