gaian consortium 03 - the gaia gambit

by Pope, Christine

  “The thing is,” she went on, “Rast and I are almost certain the whole thing was engineered, which means that Admiral sen Trannick and possibly Admiral Horner conspired to make sure that Chlorae II was left undefended. I don’t know why, or how, but I figured you would be the best person to get to the bottom of it.”

  “I’m flattered,” Jackson replied, but his eyes narrowed slightly. “‘Rast,’ eh? So you two are on a first-name basis now?”

  “We’re working together, if that’s what you mean.”

  “And what does he get out of all this?”

  She blinked. “The truth.”

  “Ah.”

  Which could have meant anything at all. After a pause of a second or two, which she guessed he did deliberately to put her somewhat off balance, he went to the computer console at the far end of the room. Like everything else in the place, it was state-of-the-art, with an array of flat screens, heads-up displays, and even holographic projectors. God knows what multi-terabyte monsters those sleek displays and graphite keyboards were hooked up to. At the moment, though, all she cared about was that they would be powerful enough to cut through whatever layers of obfuscation Admiral sen Trannick and Admiral Horner might have put in their way.

  “Let’s start with the easy part,” Jackson said, cracking his fingers. Lira tried not to wince. He’d done that back in the academy, too. It hadn’t gotten any more tolerable over the intervening years.

  “Easy part?”

  “We’ll start with Horner. I haven’t had as much experience hacking into Stacian systems, but I could probably crack the GDF’s algorithms in my sleep. Here we go.”

  And he began typing away in a brisk staccato, as the screens around him flashed with numbers and symbols, only to fade away into more complex arrangements of numerals, information ebbing and flowing as he drove down into fleet manifests and appointment calendars and financial records, not so much hacking as gently unwinding one bit of data from another, swirling down to a place where he could find the pertinent pieces. Lira watched as he worked, and sipped at her mineral water, and tried not to compare Jackson’s pale, soft-looking fingers with Rast sen Drenthan’s capable golden-skinned ones.

  “Hmm,” Jackson said finally, and pushed his chair away from the keyboard. Although he hadn’t drunk anything the entire time he’d been working, at this point he did reach out to retrieve his neglected glass of mineral water, which he drained in one gulp.

  “So what does ‘hmm’ mean?”

  “It means I can’t find anything. Not one frigging thing. The admiral has even paid all his energy bills on time. Not even a demerit from his time at the academy.”

  “So…”

  “So, nothing. The guy’s so clean I’m surprised he doesn’t squeak when he walks.”

  “Well, hell,” Lira said, trying not to let the disappointment show too clearly in her tone. It would have been so easy if Horner were the dirty one. Well, maybe not easy, precisely, but at least this all would have started to make a little sense.

  “Not to worry, dear Lira.” Jackson cracked his fingers again. “This just gives me a chance to test my mettle. I’m not sure how long it’s going to take, though…”

  “That’s fine,” she replied automatically. This was what they’d come to New Chicago for, after all. She’d wait as long as necessary.

  “Then you might want to amuse yourself with the local broadcasts. I don’t do well with an audience when I have to really go at it with a hacksaw.”

  She found that difficult to believe, considering Jackson’s appetite for attention, but only shrugged and wandered back out into the living room, where she found the remote for a vidscreen that covered most of one wall, and turned the receiver on. Quickly she brought the sound down to barely above a whisper, so it wouldn’t disturb Jackson at his work.

  And although she really didn’t care about the local elections in Michende, or the new plan to upgrade the city’s airbuses, she made herself focus on the screen and not the rapid-fire typing she heard emanating from the alcove where Jackson was working. Even so, her thoughts wandered, back to the Mistral/Chinook, and the man who waited for her there.

  She wondered what he was up to.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  While he understood the logic of staying behind, Rast didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all.

  Small as it was, the ship seemed to echo with Lira’s absence. He wandered out into the main passenger compartment, lip curled a little at the overstuffed couches and their accompanying tables, the whole setup designed to look like some rich man’s living quarters and not the interior of a spaceship. Then he had to shake his head at himself. Wasn’t that exactly what Stacians did with their own ships? To be fair, that was only with their personal quarters. The common areas were utilitarian enough, though still probably indulgent by Gaian standards, with their warm-toned floor coverings and wall panels.

  Driven by some impulse, he moved through the passenger compartment and on down the small corridor that separated the ship’s two sleeping chambers. One was bigger than the other, taking up the rest of that side of the ship, while the other was half its size, the other half occupied by the bathroom — which actually had a real shower stall and not just a chemical scrub unit.

  The smaller bedroom looked as if it had never been used, and contained only a narrow cot and an equally narrow table with a mean little chair that was bolted to the floor. The main bedroom, though…

  Rast’s eyes narrowed as he looked on what had obviously been Gared Tomas’s own sleeping quarters. Here was luxury to rival a Stacian captain’s cabin, with a large bed covered in quilts and sheets of Iradian moon-moth silk, a fur rug on the floor, hangings of more silk on the walls. A cozy table and two chairs somehow fit into one corner. Just the sort of place for Tomas to indulge his legendary tastes, even while traveling on business.

  And were you to his taste, Lira? Rast wondered, then tried to tell himself that was ridiculous. After all, she would have to be truly desperate to slide into bed with a man such as Gared Tomas…

  How desperate was she when she slept with you?

  Good question. That was different, though. She had been trying to ensure the safety of the scientists on Chlorae II, whereas with Tomas it would have been a simple matter of self-preservation. Although, come to think of it, that was a far stronger drive than altruism…

  No. He wouldn’t let himself think of that. Best to get out of here, so he could avoid any further mental images of her wrapped in the crime lord’s arms, and nightmarish visions of him pounding into her, taking her here on the silk-covered bed.

  Rast drove a fist into the doorframe and swore, then turned and headed back to the cockpit. He needed to stop being such a fool. For one thing, he had absolutely zero evidence that Lira’s relationship with Gared Tomas had been anything but professional. This jealousy was stupid. Yes, Rast had spent a night with her that made him want nothing else save her flesh, her taste, but that gave him no claim on her. She had made no promises, spoken no words of love. She had done what she thought she had to do, and left.

  And now…well, now she was all business again. He flattered himself to think that perhaps he had seen something in her eyes from time to time, just a hint of attraction, or interest. But that could all very well be fancies born of his need for her. Until he had far more concrete encouragement, he would have to hold himself back. Somehow he knew that an ardent pursuit would only drive her away, perhaps forever. And that would make this whole crazy venture a supreme waste of time.

  Speaking of which…

  He glanced down at the chronometer on the instrument panel and realized she’d been gone for almost two hours. True, she’d said she had no idea how long any of this would take, but waiting was not a Stacian’s strong point. His people were more action-oriented.

  And this man she was reaching out to, this Jackson Wyler. How reliable was he? An ex-lover, and possibly one who might wish to rekindle that relationship, or at the very least ask fo
r certain favors in return for his assistance.

  No, Rast told himself. You are letting this woman drive you to distraction. Soon you will think every humanoid male between twenty and fifty standard is a potential mate for her, and then you will be fit for nothing. Think like a warrior, not a lovesick resinth.

  Very well, then — a planet rich with a mineral every government in the galaxy needed. A captain removed from duty, leaving that planet unprotected and ripe for the taking. His people had come out on top in this scenario, but why? Chlorae would not have fallen to the Stacians if Captain Lira Jannholm had remained in position above the planet. Rast put very little past Admiral sen Trannick; his hatred of the Gaians was well known. But what was in it for Horner? How much would he have to be paid to allow his government’s enemies to take control of a world his own people needed so badly?

  Rast didn’t know…he could only hope that when Lira returned, she might have the answers to at least some of these questions.

  * * *

  “Shit-fuck-damn,” Jackson said distinctly, and Lira sat upright on the couch, then pushed the “mute” button on the remote.

  “What is it?”

  “Come here.”

  So she stood and went over to where he was working, but the screens all around him showed nothing that looked remotely recognizable to her. Strings of numbers ebbed and flowed, twisting in and around themselves like some sort of brain-bending light sculpture.

  “What is it?” she asked, after staring at the displays for a few seconds. “Remember, I’m but a lowly ex-ship’s captain. This sort of thing is kind of above my pay grade.”

  Jackson settled back in his leather-upholstered office chair and let out an exasperated breath. Clearly, whatever he’d been working on had had some sort of effect — his carefully arranged hair was now standing on end in various spots, as if he’d run irritated fingers through it while hacking away at Admiral sen Trannick’s records.

  Suddenly, he jabbed an index finger at his keyboard, and all the screens went black. “Didn’t want to look at that anymore,” he said, in cheerful tones that belied the expression of supreme annoyance on his face. “I don’t know what your Stacian admiral is up to, but it’s obvious that it’s something he really doesn’t want anyone to discover. Everything to do with his financial records is guarded by a hydra.”

  “A what?”

  “A hydra. A mythical beast with multiple heads. In hacker parlance, though, it means continually shifting code. Every time I try to penetrate it, hack into a section, it generates new code using a different algorithm altogether. I can’t pin it down. It’s like trying to wrestle a greased Iradian sand-snake.”

  That didn’t sound good at all. No wonder Jackson had resorted to invective, which he rarely used, saying that swearing was a sign of an unoriginal mind. “So what now?”

  A frown creased his brow for a moment. “I can’t help you.”

  “You can’t?” She felt almost as she had back in Admiral Horner’s office, when he’d coolly told her that everything she’d worked for was about to be taken from her. Jackson Wyler, encountering code he couldn’t crack? She couldn’t conceive of such a thing. “Maybe — that is, if you had more time…”

  “Lira, I could sit here and hack at this thing until our children were old enough to drink, and I still don’t know if I could get past it.”

  A faint heat touched her cheeks when he said “our children,” but she only shook her head and replied, “I don’t believe that. I’ve never seen you encounter code you couldn’t break.”

  “Well, you’re seeing it now.” Abruptly he stood and moved past her to the other side of the room, touched a button on the sleek black cabinet there. The countertop split apart, and a tray bearing a couple of glasses and a bottle of what looked like very old brandy rose up from beneath it. He grasped the bottle and poured approximately two fingers’ worth of spirits into one of the glasses. “Interested? It’s hundred-year-old Armagnac.”

  “No, thanks.” She didn’t even know what Armagnac was. At the moment all she could think was that she had failed. She’d brought a stolen ship with a Stacian naval officer on board it into the heart of one of Gaia’s oldest colonies, and she had nothing to show for the risks she’d taken. “Really, Jackson, I just think — ”

  “You think what?” He turned back toward her, bowl-shaped glass in one hand. “You think if I sit back down there and keep working away like a good little elf, I’ll just magically figure out how to hack that code? It doesn’t work that way.”

  “I don’t believe you,” she said firmly. Firm, because the other way lay panic. “I don’t believe any code is truly unbreakable. There has to someone who can hack it.”

  Another large swallow of Armagnac, and he gave her a mirthless grin. “Oh, there’s someone.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Oh, this was classic Jackson Wyler. “You know there’s someone, but you don’t know who he is.”

  “She,” he corrected. “Don’t know her name, don’t know anything about her except where she is.”

  “And where’s that?”

  The grin widened, taking on truly shark-like qualities. “Gaia.”

  For some reason Lira had to quell the impulse to burst out laughing. Gaia. Of course. Couldn’t be somewhere out in the hinterlands, some barely patrolled outpost at the edge of Consortium territories. No, this mystery woman had to be on Gaia itself, at the heart of the Gaian government, in some of the most heavily guarded space in the galaxy. She took a breath.

  “So how do I find her?”

  “You don’t.”

  Lira crossed her arms and stared levelly at Jackson. “So why bother to tell me about her if I can’t even find her?”

  “You don’t find her. She finds you. Give me your handheld.”

  Mystified, she withdrew the device from her pocket and gave it to Jackson. He tapped something into it, then gave it back to her.

  “Send out that code from the subspace radio on board your ship. She’ll pick it up, and decide whether or not to help you out any further after you’ve spoken with her.”

  “That’s it?”

  He shrugged. “Take it or leave it. She’s the only chance you’ve got, as far as I’m concerned. You might want to mention that your cause is just. She seems to be a sucker for that sort of thing.”

  Her cause was just. Was it? Or was she manufacturing plots where there were none, simply to avoid the fact that she’d made a spectacular error in judgment and now didn’t want to acknowledge her mistake?

  Too late to turn back, though, not with a ship stolen from one of the Iradian sector’s worst crime lords, not with an AWOL Stacian officer riding in the copilot’s seat. And now she had nothing to go on except a code that might or might not summon some mystery woman who might or might not be willing or able to help her.

  Put like that, the whole thing sounded worse than ever. Maybe she should just point that stolen Sirocco-class ship out to the farthest frontiers, to some world where no one would be able to find her — after dropping Captain sen Drenthan off somewhere along the way.

  Somehow that felt wrong, though. All right, maybe he could stick around a while longer…just in case. If nothing else, he’d proved to be very handy in a fight.

  “Well, thanks, Jackson,” she said finally. “I’m sorry I dragged you into all this.”

  “No worries. It brightened up what would otherwise have been a dull day — although I would have preferred not to get my ass kicked by that hydra.”

  She gave a philosophical shrug. “I suppose it helps us accept our place in the universe if we come up against something we can’t beat every once in a while.”

  “That doesn’t sound like you, Lira. As I recall, you never were the accepting sort.” He was watching her carefully, as if trying to gauge how disappointed she really was.

  “The universe has taught me a few things over the past decade.”

  “Has it?” After taking another
drink — the fumes of which she could smell from where she stood — he set down the glass and moved a little closer to her. “As in, maybe dumping me wasn’t such a great idea after all?”

  Belatedly she realized that Jackson had never been very good at holding his liquor. Tone light, she replied, “You dumped me, Jackson. Remember? And I quote, ‘I’m not going to waste any more time on an uptight by-the-book bitch like you’…end quote.”

  He blinked. “I said that?”

  “You did.”

  Another blink. “I was an asshole.”

  She gave a philosophical shrug. “I probably was, too. Anyway, Jackson, I’m grateful for the help you were able to give, but I really should be getting out of here. God knows what trouble Rast has gotten into while I’ve been gone.”

  “Rast.” Jackson shook his head. “You and a Stacian. That’s something I thought I’d never see.”

  “You’re not seeing it now. We’re just trying to get to the bottom of this thing. That’s all.”

  “If you say so.”

  It wasn’t worth arguing over any further. “Thanks, Jackson,” Lira said, her tone final, and went back to the living room and out the door, trying to ignore his stare on the back of her neck, the speculative look that seemed to say he knew far more about her relationship with the Stacian captain than she did.

  She certainly hoped not.

  * * *

  The ship was equipped with state-of-the-art surveillance equipment that scanned through all 360 degrees of the rented landing pad on which it sat. Since he had nothing better to do, Rast seated himself in the copilot’s chair and watched the images on the display in front of him cycle through the cameras. Dull enough, since the landing pad was empty, and nothing in those images changed except the angle of the light overhead.