Orion's Price (Loralynn Kennakris Book 6)

by Owen R. O’Neill

  “But if there is a copy . . .”

  “Then you’ve just made more of them. You can’t control the past, Sonja. Don’t add more risk for the future by trying to.”

  “I . . . understand.”

  Gwen took her hands from around Sonja’s and settled back. “Do you think she kept a copy?”

  Sonja stared fixedly into her palms. “I don’t . . . think . . . she’d lie to me.”

  “Sonja, she did lie to you.” Crossing the space between them, Gwen’s voice was soft.

  “No . . .”

  “She used you.”

  “She didn’t . . . didn’t mean to.”

  “She used you. She betrayed you”—gentle, steely insistence.

  “No! She—” Sonja’s hand tightened around the chip. “She loves her! She wouldn’t . . . She told me. I wouldn’t listen . . .” Curling over her knees, the long fine hair falling in a curtain across her wracked expression. “I . . . I was so scared. She wouldn’t have done it if I’d listened.”

  Resisting the strong urge to hug her friend, Gwen kept her hands firmly in her lap and her body still. The was no doubting Sonja’s conviction. But wasn’t the same thing as being right. Deciding the right here was not her place. Only Sonja could do that.

  “Sonja, what do you want?”

  The blond head shook; her breath hitched as she choked back a sob.

  “At this moment, you’re holding Mariwen’s life in your hands,” Gwen coaxed. And your own, she added inwardly. “What do you want to do with it?”

  “I don’t want her . . . harmed.”

  “Then we destroy the chip and that’s the end of it. It’s finished. Understand?”

  “Yes”—wet eyes blinking.

  Gwen rose, and going to a cabinet, brought back a small ceramic bowl, a vial of clear fluid and an old-style flame lighter that they used for votive offerings at the new year. Placing them on a side table, she reached out and touched the hand clenched around the chip. Sonja opened her fist and offered it again.

  “No.” Gwen shook her head. “This is for you to do.”

  With a jerky nod, Sonja placed the chip in the bowl, Gwen poured the clear liquid over it and handed Sonja the lighter.

  “Go on.”

  Biting her lip, Sonja activated the flame and held it over the bowl. The fluid caught, a pure blue fire, and the chip within began to sizzle. Within a minute, nothing remained but a tiny heap of fine light-gray ash. Moving with infinite caution, Gwen transferred the ash to a small envelope, sealed it, and handed it to Sonja.

  Accepting it, Sonja took a deep breath. “What do you think will happen to her?”

  “Mariwen?”

  A shallow nod this time, and her teeth trapped her lower lip again.

  “That’s no longer your concern. This part of your life is over. Understand?”

  “Yes.” A strained whisper.

  “Good. Now, there’s one last thing.” At the new flash of anxiety in Sonja’s eyes, Gwen put a hand on her knee. “It’s about that message Nigel received. I think we should put his mind at rest there.” The knee under her hand jumped. “What I mean is, I can speak to someone—with your permission. He deals with such things. I don’t need to give him details, just enough to allow him to reassure Nigel there is no longer any threat. Do you want me to do that?”

  “Can you tell me who?” The halting question did not hold much hope of an answer.

  “I’m afraid not”—a gentle confirmation of Sonja’s expectation. “It wouldn’t be safe for you to know,” Gwen added. “But I trust him. He’s been of great help to me with my uncle.”

  Sonja’s throat moved in a rapid swallow as she nodded. “Yes. Thank you. Please do that, then.”

  “All right. I’ll see to it.” Standing, Gwen helped her up. Within the circle of her arms, she could feel Sonja tottering. “You can’t go home, I think. Stay with me tonight. I’ll draw you a hot bath and bring you something to help you relax. All right?”

  “Thank you.”

  “My pleasure.” Gwen kissed the averted cheek, still damp with tears. “Let’s get you upstairs.”

  A quarter of an hour later, with Sonja dozing comfortably in a large tub carved from a single piece of banded onyx, Gwen reentered the parlor, and tapping a complex code into the entry pad, took the calling card that appeared from a hidden slot. Checking her surveillance sensors, she activated it and waited a few brief seconds for the owner to answer.

  “Lady Gwen,” he said with an amiable smile.

  “Marcus.” Gwen returned the greeting, precisely matching his expression. “Lady Geris is here with me.”

  “I suspected as much. May I ask how the lady fares?”

  “Resting comfortably. Now, regarding those puzzling events you inquired about. I have some new information . . .”

  Chapter 30

  Somewhere outside Halevirdon

  Halith Evandor, Orion Spur

  By the time Mariwen had finished her bald account of her second meeting with Lady Sonja Geris, Paavo Kirkunummi was slumped in his chair, his body deflated and his face as hard as a slammed gate. The contradiction between the lax posture and inflexible expression registered only in his black eyes, which glittered with throttled emotion.

  “Idiocy.” He ground the word between his molars. “Stark idiocy. You have been played by a spoiled overpriced halfwit.”

  Mariwen, who’d been on the verge of reflexively apologizing for demolishing their carefully orchestrated plans, stood up.

  Paavo looked her up and down, took her measure, and said, “My apologies. I spoke in anger.” His eyes dropped. “Unforgivable of me.”

  Mariwen slowly resumed her seat. “Oh, I could forgive you, Paavo.”

  “No doubt you could. It is a flaw in this business.” He leaned forward, resting his arms on the top of the narrow desk between them and interlocking his thin white hands that did not seem capable of all killing they had done. He left unsaid her other, more critical flaw: she’d told him—and Trin—and herself—she would do anything to save Kris. And she wouldn’t. And that probably was worth apologizing for. Or something . . .

  She bent her head. “Perhaps I’m not cut out for this business.”

  “Perhaps not,” he agreed without meeting her eyes.

  “Paavo—” She stopped and looked up at his face, but his eyes remained fixed on nothing in particular in a remote corner. “Paavo, if in trying to save Kris, I could turn my back so completely on who I am, then what I feel for her isn’t the love I think it is. And I wouldn’t deserve her loving me.”

  He leaned back and slid his hands flat on the desktop. “Meaning?”

  “I cannot be true to her if I’m not to true myself.”

  “Elegantly put. I applaud the sentiment.” His jaw moved restlessly. “Perhaps when we are more evolved it will even have a place in warfare. At present, this is not the case.” He brought his hands together and slowly rubbed the palms in a tight circle. “Happily, the probability that the chip you surrendered”—he could not avoid a slight emphasis on the word—“will lead to any compromise is small. Small, but not zero. I must attend to that. I shall arrange transport home for you. Zorya will contact you with the details. She will give you a new protocol as you leave.”

  “Thank you,” Mariwen inclined her head politely. “But I was hoping you’d do me a last favor first.”

  Paavo Kirkunummi removed his finger from the intercom button he was about to push. “Which is?”

  “I’d like to know how to get a message to General Heydrich.”

  The black eyes narrowed. “For what purpose?”

  “To arrange a personal meeting with him.”

  “You cannot be serious.” When Mariwen did not choose to respond, Paavo shook his head impatiently—or at least that’s what she thought it was. “Then I must infer that my pointing out this is beyond idiocy—it is suicide—would not affect your conviction. Am I correct?”

  “You are correct.” She favored him with a preci
sely calibrated smile. “I’m not giving up, Paavo. I’m just not going to risk anything that isn’t mine.”

  “That would follow,” he said with that curious expression which seemed to be a near as he ever came to smiling. “I believe I should thank you, Ms. Rathor, for revealing to me that I retain the capacity to feel surprise.” So it wasn’t impatience after all. “How would you expect to conduct this meeting and what do you think you can accomplish, should he agree?”

  “I’m still working out the details.”

  “I see.” He pressed the intercom. Zorya answered, crisp as always. “Zorya, be so good as to bring me file—” He recited a string to letters and numbers. Then he sat back with that curious expression unchanged as they waited. She’d identified at least part of it: a dry satisfaction, bordering on an overcontrolled sort of triumph, as if triumph were an especially treacherous drug that could only be sampled in the minutest amounts.

  Zorya entered within a very few minutes and laid a folder with a striped gold cover on Paavo’s desk. It must have been a good five centimeters thick. Paavo patted it almost lovingly. “This is our file on General Heydrich.”

  “Hardcopy?” Mariwen asked, wonderingly.

  “Paper.” Paavo opened the cover and plowed his hand through the pages. “Excellent stuff, paper. It cannot be hacked or read remotely, nor even easily traced. You see, no one really believes enough data can be stored on paper for it to be a much of a threat. A useful prejudice. And the restricted storage capacity does enforce a laudable concision.” He flipped the cover shut and pushed the thick file across to her.

  At first, Mariwen just stared at it. “That much paper must a cost a small fortune.” It was a silly bit of small talk and she uttered it without thinking, her mind being seized with the potential implications of that file.

  “Paper is still commercially manufactured here,” he explained in an easier tone than she was accustomed to, “so the cost is not prohibitive—or noticeable. I believe in your worlds paper is largely handmade by artisans?”

  “Yes,” she answered with the same feeling of detachment, oddly lightheaded. “Almost entirely. Besides art and certain special notices, using paper is considered a bit”—she hunted for a word—“eccentric.”

  “Xels,” Paavo remarked knowingly. This topic seemed to hold some fascination for him. “But enough.” He sounded annoyed at having given in to even so minor a distraction. “Accept this as my parting gift”—he waved a curved forefinger at the file—“in return for the insight you just gave to me. In my experience, such insights are often dearly bought and my sense is that yours did not come cheap. In any event, may it profit you.”

  “Thank you, Paavo,” Mariwen said softly, opening the cover and leafing through the contents.

  He checked the time and rose. “I must go. Zorya will collect it from you when you are finished. You may take what time you need. Do not be concerned for her—she is accustomed to my hours. She is also familiar with much of that information, should you require clarification. If you decide you wish transport after all, I must know by 3100—say an even ninety minutes from now. After that, I’m afraid there must be new arrangements. Which would take time. And cannot be guaranteed.”

  “How would I reach you?”

  “Directly, you cannot. Tell Zorya and she will inform me. Good night, Ms. Rathor.”

  “Good night, Paavo.” She did not look up from the reports, her eyes being too busy devouring the closely printed pages. But she heard him pivot and walk to the door, and there pause. He cleared his throat, a trifle louder than necessary. She lifted her head. He sounded almost apologetic as he spoke. “Zorya is excellent in almost all respects, but I cannot say she excels at making coffee. You may prefer to brew your own. She can direct you to the supplies.”

  “Coffee?”

  “Yes. We do not much drink coffee here, instead favoring tea. But I have always understood Terrans to be extremely fond of coffee, preferring it to almost every other beverage.”

  “That’s true,” Mariwen said with the first genuinely warm smile she’d worn in days. “But personally, I prefer tea.”

  “Ah. Very well then.” He gave her a stiff little nod, opened the door, and left without another word.

  * * *

  Mariwen set down her fifth—or was it her sixth?—cup of tea, closed the file and scrubbed at the gritty feeling in her eyes. Along with a burgeoning headache, she had the strangest unclean feeling, as if in spite the dry and clinical prose, she’d been peeping on someone who made the Marquis de Sade look like a naughty schoolboy. No, that was hyperbole. She was familiar with the Marquis’ works and stripped to their essentials and reported in the same way, they might come across nearly as bad. It was the thick lacquer of time and legend—and the never-ending debates about their veracity—that lent a quasi-palatable gloss to the marquis’ record of depravity. But there could be no question about the veracity of this record and she shivered in spite of herself.

  Considered objectively however, the trove of data was a veritable goldmine and some important conclusions were immediately apparent to her. First, that General Heydrich was indeed quite similar to his late brother and the similarity was the result of deliberate emulation, almost a sort of hero worship. A good part of the file’s bulk concerned the late Admiral—it appeared that much of his info had been merged into it upon his death—and the comparison clearly showed Tristan Heydrich to be a cruder piece of work altogether. There were good reasons why Admiral Heydrich was chief of Halith military intelligence while his brother ran the POW system.

  Admiral Heydrich had been both viciously creative and deviously subtle in his entertainments and Mariwen had not been able to force herself to read much about them. What she could read gave her entirely too clear an idea of what Kris must have gone through at his hands before she killed him. She hadn’t thrown up, but that was mostly because she hadn’t eaten since early yesterday.

  Ironically, those qualities had made the Admiral vulnerable, especially in combination with his arrogant faith in his own facile intelligence. If Kris hadn’t been a slave, and above all if she hadn’t been the kind of slave she was—a slaver captain’s prized bitch—she never would have survived. But Admiral Heydrich was ignorant of these things, and he simply could not conceive that anyone might successfully manipulate him, which she was confident Kris had done. While she still didn’t know most of the details, she could now fill in quite a bit from what Kris had said—and not said—and she hoped with a white-hot passion that Admiral Heydrich had died wondering just how he’d fucked up.

  General Heydrich was not much like his brother in this, and that was a problem. She got the sense he could be—often was—manipulated, but by his allies. He didn’t pay enough attention to his enemies to notice if they were trying to play him or not. His tastes were simpler and more direct. His older brother clearly liked a challenge: he would play a game and fence with his victim. His younger brother adopted the polished veneer but when it came down to it, he liked to get his hands dirty.

  Fencing gave one time to get a feel for your opponent; to map out his strengths and weaknesses. She was afraid General Heydrich wouldn’t give her that time. On the other hand, when in pursuit of something he wanted, he’d liked to play the debonair aristocrat, maybe even with a touch of ennui thrown in by way a ruse de guerre. But it was just play acting, done out of a misplaced sense of the dramatic, and while he looked the part—he was quite good looking, handsomer than his brother—she thought he didn’t much care how convincing he was. That wasn’t the point. The point was to properly open the play, and once these formalities were done away with; once he’d satisfied his vanity by taking his actor’s turn, the strong-arming would start.

  Yet, he was unpredictable. From time to time, he enjoyed the making a grand gesture: the file recorded examples of almost absurd largesse and even acts of mercy. He seemed to feel his station required occasional extravagances, whether cruel or kind, and sometimes to be erratically frivolous.
That also marked him out from his brother, who appeared to do everything with a purpose in mind and to calculate his every move for effect. That unpredictability made the general dangerous, even as it opened up possibilities. After putting her head together with Zorya, she had the idea that the rumors she’d heard had an element of posturing in them. He undoubtedly wanted to ‘avenge’ his brother, but he might also decide to make a grand gesture of ‘mercy’ if it fit his sense of the dramatic and especially if he thought he was going to get something better in exchange.

  There was just no telling. It would not do to underestimate him, as several political adversaries had done. He’d inherited his brother’s private assets and showed considerable skill in using them. He knew the effect of his unpredictability on both his allies and his enemies and clearly saw its value. While he owed his leadership position among the militarists to his brother, he maintained it by appearing to be an acceptably pliable figurehead while not, in fact, being one. This ambiguity caused a good deal of useful fear, and if it was not yet accompanied by the same degree of respect his brother had enjoyed, continued success would take care of that in due course. Compared to the fear, respect was a luxury.

  The key, Mariwen concluded after conferring with Zorya, was that once he selected his intended victim and engaged (as Kris would think of it), he no longer bothered to keep evaluating them. And if he was just going through the motions and thinking ahead to fun he was going to have, that might give her an opening.

  The most important thing was that whatever she came up with, it would have to happen fast. Once it started, there would be very little room to maneuver. And none at all for a second chance.

  Chapter 31

  Supreme Staff HQ, Halevirdon

  Halith Evandor, Orion Spur

  The man waiting for him in the small interrogation room looked so much like his ONI flat-file images that Huron would've been inclined to feel sorry for him, had it been anyone else. Under medium height, stooped and sallow, with rounded shoulders seemingly bowed beneath the weight of a habitually sour disposition and a long face that called a dead carp to the impartial observer’s mind, he seemed a particularly unpleasant customer—all the more so because that same impartial observer would also have to admit that he radiated greater than usual self-possession and a keen, searching intelligence.