She seemed to be about Lira’s age, with long dark red hair. Striking, with her high cheekbones and full mouth. When she spoke, Lira recognized her voice at once. “Anyone follow you?”
“No. I think the authorities were more interested in making sure we reported any purchases to customs before we left the planet than trying to find out if we were up to something nefarious.”
“Typical.” Her gaze moved past Lira to Rast, and her mouth tightened. “A Stacian. I wasn’t sure if you were joking or not.”
“Is that a problem?” Something in the woman’s voice belied a tension that seemed to go beyond a simple mistrust of strangers, and Lira began to wonder if they’d done the right thing in coming here.
Another penetrating stare, and then the woman shook her head. “No. We’re fine. Why don’t you two come inside, and we’ll start getting this worked out?”
And she led them into the house, the dark, silent man in the rear, his eyes seeming to bore into the back of Lira’s neck. That quiet stare seemed to tell her that he’d happily smoke both her and Rast if either of them caused the slightest amount of trouble.
Although she’d never been in a house like this, she recognized its type from images she’d seen in her history books. What they used to call a clapboard farmhouse, sprawling and two-storied, with real wood floors that creaked underneath. They passed through what looked to be the laundry area, and then through a kitchen that was an odd blend of old and new, with a brick fireplace and gleaming polished metal appliances. From there they emerged into what was clearly the dining room, with a long table of some dark wood, scarred and marked by probably centuries of use, accompanied by a set of equally battered chairs.
“Take a seat,” the woman said. “Eryk, some water for our guests. It’s a little early for beer,” she added with a grin. The dark man nodded, eyes narrowed, and then went back into the kitchen.
Behind her, Rast shifted slightly. Lira guessed he didn’t think it was too early for a drink. What he said, though, was, “I don’t want to break one of your chairs — ”
“You won’t. They’re solid oak, sturdier than they look. And if they can stand up to Jerem, they can stand up to anything.”
Who Jerem was, Lira had no idea. Maybe they’d find out at some point. At any rate, she pulled out a chair for herself, and after a pause Rast did so as well. The aged wood did creak as he deposited himself on the seat, but it seemed to hold…for the moment, anyway.
The strange woman sat down at the head of the table, waiting until the man — her bodyguard? lover? husband? Lira couldn’t guess for sure — returned with a pitcher of water and a set of glasses that looked as old as the house. He sat down as well, at the table’s foot. Probably not a bodyguard, then, although Lira thought he performed those duties for her…as well as any others that might be required.
“Thank you,” the woman said, and waited until both Rast and Lira had helped themselves to some of the water. “Might as well get formally acquainted. I’m Miala Thorn, and this is my husband, Eryk.”
Finally Lira put two and two together. She’d heard of Eryk Thorn, the mercenary. His face and name had been attached to scores of “Wanted” communiqués spanning the galaxy. He’d gone quiet the past eighteen standard months, though. Now she knew why. He’d been living here on Gaia in apparent domestic bliss. Who knew?
Still, how the mercenary had ended up here wasn’t her business. She said, “I’m Lira Jannholm. And this is — ”
“Captain Rast sen Drenthan,” Rast supplied, copper eyes wary.
Again Miala’s lips compressed. For all her outward friendliness, it was clear enough to Lira that the other woman had no love lost for Stacians.
Rast was no fool. Lira could see that he noticed, too, although he said nothing else after that first introduction, but only sat stiffly in the too-fragile chair, chin out, masses of hair at odds with the clean-lined civilian clothing he wore.
Into this tense little scene came the unexpected sound of a baby wailing somewhere upstairs. At once Miala broke eye contact with Rast and stood.
“My apologies. She just went down for a nap, but she’s teething — ”
“Take all the time you need,” Rast said, nodding a little, as if he knew all too well the travails of mothers with teething infants.
Lira stared at him, once again startled by the revelation of a heretofore unknown facet of his personality. Vaguely she knew that infants had a period when their teeth came in and were therefore fussy and even more demanding than usual, but her knowledge stopped there. The last infant she’d been around was her youngest sister, and that had been almost twenty-five years ago. Janna might have been a fussy baby, but if she was, Lira had blocked that particular datum from her memory banks.
After another murmured apology, Miala hurried out of the dining room, her boots clattering on the wooden steps as she rushed upstairs. Her departure left Rast, Lira, and Eryk Thorn clustered uncomfortably around the dining table.
Without preamble, Rast said, “She doesn’t like Stacians. Why?”
Thorn turned cool dark eyes on both of them. “Why should she? Gaians and Stacians weren’t exactly allies, last time I checked.”
“It’s more than that. And yet she still agreed to help us.”
“If she wants to tell you, she’ll tell you. And if she agreed to help you, then you’d do better not to question her motivations too closely.”
His tone didn’t leave much room for argument. Lira tried to cast about for something else to say, finally settling on, “This is quite a house. How old is it?”
A shrug. “About five hundred years, give or take. It was abandoned during the time of the Cloud. But it suits us.”
She supposed it would, stuck out in the middle of nowhere like this. A good place for a wanted man like Eryk Thorn to settle down, and equally suitable for a hacker who wanted to make sure the authorities would have a difficult time finding her. How exactly two such disparate individuals had ended up together, she had no idea, but she had the feeling that Miala’s and Thorn’s story might rival hers and Rast’s for improbability.
Just then Miala came back into the dining room, a yellow-wrapped bundle held up against one shoulder. “Eryk, can you take her for a while? Every time I try to put her down, she gets fussy, and I’ve got work to do.”
Silently Thorn reached out to take the baby from his wife, and Lira was treated to the sight of one of the galaxy’s most notorious mercenaries cuddling his infant daughter. She had to repress a grin. As she glanced over at Rast, wanting to share the joke, she saw he didn’t look amused at all, but was staring at Eryk Thorn with an odd expression on his face, something she almost would have classified as wistfulness…if she didn’t think Rast sen Drenthan was incapable of such an emotion.
“All right,” Miala went on, her gaze clearly focused on Lira, and not Rast, “why don’t you tell me what I’m looking for, and why the great Jackson Wyler wasn’t able to help you?”
As much as she hated to go through the whole thing all over again, Lira forced herself to recount the story, although quickly, skimming over what had passed between herself and Rast, and focusing on the importance of the mines on Chlorae II. “And Jackson said there was no way he could beat this hydra code, and that you were the only person he knew of who could. So here we are.”
The other woman was silent for a moment, forehead puckered in an abstracted little frown. “Well, we’ll just have to see what I can dig up. Why don’t you come with me to my office, and we’ll start taking a crack at it? We’ll leave the boys here to babysit.” And she winked at Eryk Thorn, who gazed up at her stoically, the baby gurgling into his dark shirt.
Lira was fairly certain Rast was less than thrilled about being left out like this, but she didn’t dare protest, and instead got up from her chair to follow Miala out of the room. As she went, she sent the Stacian an apologetic little glance over her shoulder. He might have shrugged, just barely, but it was hard to tell.
Although
she wouldn’t allow herself to shake her head, she couldn’t help wondering exactly what it was this Miala had against Stacians…
* * *
Left alone with Eryk Thorn, Rast found himself pinned by the mercenary’s flat black stare. At length Thorn said, “You still active in the Stacian navy?”
This might have sounded slightly more menacing if the baby hadn’t chosen that precise instant to start making little cooing noises, burying her face into her father’s chest.
You’re not going to find what you’re looking for there, little one. I think your meal ticket just left the room.
Still, Rast managed to keep his tone an impassive match to Thorn’s as he replied, “For now. I have a feeling a dishonorable discharge is looming if I don’t return to active duty soon.”
“Doesn’t sound like you care much one way or another.”
“I don’t.”
Thorn appeared to absorb this, nodding to himself as he stood and got a bottle for the baby out of the refrigeration unit. A flip of the tab on the bottle’s self-heating coil, and then he expertly maneuvered the bottle into the baby’s open rosebud lips. At once she began suckling, eyes squeezed tight, dark lashes of astonishing length fanned against her plump little cheeks.
Somehow Rast knew that any comments on the mercenary’s domestic abilities would meet with a poor reception. Instead, he inquired, “How long do you think this will take?”
“Hard to say. If it’s as tough as Jannholm says it is, days, probably.”
Days? He didn’t like the sound of that very much. The gods only knew what might be going on out there in the galaxy as they hid here in this secret corner of New Zealand, so far away from anything that seemed important. Then again, they didn’t have much choice. If they couldn’t find out who Admiral Sen Trannick was working with, and what his true motivations were, they might as well just pack up and go home. Not that Lira had much of a home to go to, apparently.
And neither would he, if this venture stretched out too long. He’d been granted a leave, true, but the chronometer was ticking down even now. Besides, if they had irrefutable evidence the admiral was dirty, discrediting the man wouldn’t make Rast much of a hero on his home world. Not that he cared about that. He cared about getting at the truth, no matter the cost.
“Well, then,” Rast said, and stood, glad to be out of that rickety little chair. He didn’t care what Miala might have said regarding its sturdiness; it felt to him as if it was about to collapse at any moment. “Guess I’d better go check on my ship.”
Thorn’s expression was unreadable. “You do that.”
It felt good to get out again, actually, to feel the cool air on his face. Such delicious-tasting air didn’t exist on his home world, dry and dusty place that it was. Perhaps long ago Stacia had been like this, green and cool and welcoming, but no more. Glancing around at the cloud-topped hills to all sides, he thought there were worse places he and Lira could have been forced to stay.
The Chinook was fine, of course, silvery hull gleaming almost a pale blue as it reflected the cerulean skies overhead. Still, Rast made his customary inspection of its exterior, walking all the way around, looking for any pits from meteorites or other bits of cosmic dust that might have taken their toll. As he came back around to the gangplank, he heard a boy’s voice.
“Is this your ship?”
“It is.” It seemed simpler to reply that way, even though technically the ship belonged to Gared Tomas. Possession trumped law, anyway…and who was to say Tomas himself hadn’t stolen the Sirocco-class vessel?
The boy came into view then, a tall lad of probably ten standard or so, although Rast was not completely familiar with human growth stages. His dark hair and eyes and olive skin, as well as the firm chin and straight, rather broad nose, marked him as Eryk Thorn’s blood. Interesting. So was the boy Thorn’s from an earlier liaison, or was Miala his mother as well? The child didn’t look much like her.
He paused, staring up at Rast. “You’re a Stacian.”
“Yes.” Since the boy’s gaze hadn’t wavered, was still fixed on Rast’s face, he asked, “Have you ever seen a Stacian before?”
“Oh, yeah,” Jerem answered. “I was kidnapped by one.”
“You — what?”
The boy actually grinned. “Yeah, he wanted my mother to give him the money, since he thought he had a right to it since it was in his brother’s compound or something, only it really wasn’t, because my mom had taken it years before. Anyway, he wanted to ransom me for it, except not really, because he planned to kill me anyway once he had the money, but the joke was on him because he didn’t know who my father was, and he came along and killed him. So it was okay.” Finally a pause for breath, and then, “So anyway, that’s how I’ve already seen a Stacian.”
Rast tried to find something in this narrative he could latch onto, failed, and instead inquired, “What’s your name?”
“Jerem. Jerem Thorn. For a long time I thought it was Jerem Felaris, but it turns out that wasn’t really my name…or hers.”
“Hello, Jerem. I’m Rast sen Drenthan…but you can just call me Rast.”
Jerem squinted up at him. “I guess it’s okay for you to be here, or my father would have already done something about it, wouldn’t he?”
Of that Rast had no doubt. “It’s fine. Your mother is helping my — Lira Jannholm, my traveling companion.”
“Oh. That makes sense. She’s good with computers. You’re getting something done with a computer?”
“Something like that, yes.”
The boy seemed to consider Rast for a moment, staring up at him with wide brown eyes. “You don’t seem to mind.”
“Mind what?”
“That my dad killed a Stacian.”
I have a feeling your father has killed a whole lot of people, kid. Of course Rast made no such remark out loud, but said only, “It sounds as if that particular Stacian was a criminal. So I don’t mind. I believe your father probably did the galaxy a favor by taking someone like that out of commission.”
Jerem nodded solemnly, seeming to take Rast’s words to heart. “That’s good.” He paused, then added, “You don’t seem like him at all — the dead Stacian, I mean. You seem pretty nice.”
“Well, thank you, Jerem,” Rast replied, trying to keep the amusement he felt from seeping into his tone. He didn’t want the boy to think he was being condescending toward him. Children that age were sensitive creatures, whether human or Stacian.
“I’ve never seen a ship like this,” the boy continued, moving toward the Chinook and staring up at her sleek outlines with some envy. “What is it?”
“It’s a Sirocco-class private transport, very new. Only a handful have been built so far. It’s the smallest ship to have a Gupta drive.”
“It’s got a Gupta drive? Seriously? How fast is it?”
Jerem continued to pepper Rast with questions, asking enough that he could tell the boy had a working knowledge of ships and their various functions. Perhaps Thorn had even begun teaching his son how to pilot the old Vector-class ship that sat only a few meters away from the Chinook.
“Are you going to take her up soon?” Jerem’s eyes were shining, and Rast had the feeling the kid would probably try to wrangle a ride if that were the case.
“I doubt it. We need to lie low while we’re here. No point in attracting attention by flying around in her.”
Jerem’s face fell. “Oh.” But then he perked up again. “So are you guys on the run? Are you, like, intergalactic assassins or something cool like that?”
Somehow Rast managed to keep from grinning. “No, nothing like that. I’m a captain in the Stacian navy, and Ms. Jannholm is — well, until recently she had her own starship in the GDF. We’re both honest, upstanding citizens.”
“Oh, that’s too bad.” Even as the words left his mouth, Jerem seemed to realize his mistake. He rushed to add, “I mean, it’s probably good that you’re not assassins, I suppose, but it would have been coo
l. Nothing ever happens around here.”
You say that like it’s a bad thing. “Sometimes it’s all right for things not to happen, you know.”
“I guess.”
Looking at the boy’s crestfallen face, Rast could only hope he might be blessed with Jerem’s version of boredom for a few days. Some peace and quiet would be nice for once.
* * *
“All right,” Miala said, after she’d sat down in front of her keyboard and indicated that Lira should take the other unoccupied seat in the cramped space that served as her office, “let’s see what we’re dealing with here.”
And she began typing away, her fingernails making a slight clatter on the touch pad of her keyboard, as the screens around her began to flash with strings of numbers and pieces of code that Lira knew she wouldn’t be able to decipher, no matter how long she stared at them. Instead she looked away to inspect the workspace, which looked as if it might have been a spare bedroom at one time. Now it was filled with desks, and all of those desks were occupied by flat screens and head’s-up displays, although she didn’t have any of Jackson Wyler’s pricey 3D generators.
And she was pretty sure Jackson Wyler didn’t have miniature holo-portraits of his children stuck next to said displays. Roughly half those portraits showed a dark-haired boy of about ten who had to have been Eryk Thorn’s son, even though Lira hadn’t actually seen the boy yet.
“Well, this is something,” Miala said, and Lira startled a little.
“What’s something?”
“Jackson was right. This thing is a beast.”
“So you can’t do anything with it?”
Miala sent her an amused glance. “I said it was a beast. I didn’t say I couldn’t break it. The problem with Jackson is that he lets himself get flummoxed too quickly. I may have to round my estimate up by a couple of days, but I’ll unwind it eventually.”
It was probably too soon to feel so relieved, but Lira did allow herself to let out a small, thankful breath. So the situation wasn’t completely hopeless after all.
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