gaian consortium 03 - the gaia gambit

by Pope, Christine

  No, that couldn’t be possible. Far more likely that one of Gared Tomas’s numerous enemies had finally discovered the location of his residence and had come here to settle one of a hundred scores. And if that were the case, the last thing she wanted was for the victor — whoever he might turn out to be — to find her tied up here like a gift just waiting to be unwrapped.

  With that thought in mind, she began pulling at the binding on her left wrist, which felt infinitesimally looser than the one on her right. Whatever happened, she wanted to be long gone by the time Tomas came back…or his enemies began to lay claim to everything in his compound.

  Including her.

  * * *

  Wyler had been right — the outpost of Pathi was hardly a blink in the darkness of the planet’s night side, a small cluster of lights in an enormous well of black. The instruments on board his fighter told him barely a hundred souls called the hamlet home, but at least he knew he was more or less going in the correct direction. A few more minutes, and he’d be pulling up on Tomas’s compound.

  Once there, he’d have to be careful. Another scan would indicate how much muscle the crime lord kept around the place. The problem was that the scanner couldn’t differentiate between species, let alone sex, so he would have no way of knowing where Lira was being held. That meant the buildings themselves would be off-limits. He figured the best thing would be to shoot up the gate — a place like that most likely had a wall, and that indicated the presence of a gate. Anyway, something on the periphery would be the target, to draw attention and hopefully cluster as many henchmen in one place as possible. Such an attack would have to be quite a surprise anyway, if Lira’s analysis had been correct and no one save a trusted few even knew of the compound’s location.

  The scanner beeped, showing lifeforms two kilometers ahead. He slowed the ship, reading the scans. Fifteen altogether, with eight of them clustered near what appeared to be a gate and with the others spaced out at regular intervals along the wall. Perfect. A couple of strategically placed shots at the gate, and he could take out more than half of them all at once. One against seven — six, he reminded himself, since of course Lira wouldn’t be a combatant — wasn’t great odds under normal circumstances, but if these men were anything like the two he’d shot down while stealing the Mistral, then six shouldn’t be that much trouble, even if one of them was the dreaded Gared Tomas himself.

  Rast readied the pulse bombs, flicking the controls over to standby. One touch of his finger, and the bombs would be on their way, bringing a friendly little wake-up call to the crime lord and his lackeys.

  With stealth mode engaged, he made one pass of the compound, just to get a visual to supplement what the ship’s readouts were already telling him. All around was pitch-black night, and Iradia’s moon was on the other side of the planet, but his eyes were far more dark-tuned than any human’s, and so he could pick out the outline of a rectangular compound, with a low sprawling structure in the center and several outbuildings off to either side. There was some illumination, faint downturned lights that might provide enough of a guide for foot traffic but weren’t strong enough to be seen from very far away.

  Time to make the place a whole lot brighter.

  He ran a finger over the touch pad, and first one, then a second bomb sped away from the fighter, dropping with deadly speed toward the gate and the cluster of men who stood guard there. Too bad they were looking out to the desert for any incoming enemies, and not to the skies above.

  One explosion, and then another painted the night with garish hues of yellow and orange. Even from this height Rast could see the dark shapes of human forms being hurled outward by the force of the blasts. Most lay still, but one appeared to have been far enough outside the radius of the explosion that it hadn’t killed him. Ah, well, one more he’d have to pick off at closer range.

  Judging it safe enough to land a dozen meters or so outside the periphery of the compound, Rast brought the little fighter down to rest in the desert sand. All such ships were outfitted with several sidearms and spare battery packs, in the unlikely event that a pilot should get shot down and need to defend himself. Even so, Rast wished he had something heavier than a pair of pulse pistols. A self-guided shoulder missile launcher would have been nice.

  No time to worry about that, however. A gun in each hand and the spare battery packs shoved into his pants pockets, he climbed out of the fighter and dropped lightly to the sand, then moved quickly to the shelter of the wall, edging along it until he came to the gaping hole that used to be the compound’s gate. He heard shouts and a confusion of running feet. Good. As he’d hoped, the attack had taken them by surprise, and it seemed they were still trying to figure out who had hit them, and what to do next.

  That worked. Using a swirl of smoke as cover, Rast strode into the gap and shot the man who stood there, shouting for reinforcements into his handheld. He dropped at once, and Rast stepped over him, keying on the sound of another man calling to a compatriot somewhere deeper in the compound, then shooting him in the back of the head. Amateurs. Obviously Gared Tomas cared more about hiring bulk than brains. His loss. It didn’t seem as if there was anyone here capable of mounting a coordinated defense.

  Five left, one of them the crime lord himself. A pulse bolt flared over Rast’s shoulder, and immediately he went into a crouch, eyes narrowing in the darkness as he searched for his attacker’s position. Up there, on the roof of one of the outbuildings. Rast raised his pistol and shot the man, whose darker outline against the night sky was visible enough. The silhouette slumped over and then fell to the ground with a thud.

  Four to go.

  Several bolts hit the wall above Rast’s head, indicating that they knew he was somewhere in the vicinity, even if they hadn’t quite narrowed it down. Time to move. Halfway bent over — since this was one situation where his height was more a liability than an asset — he scuttled farther into the complex, keeping the wall of the main building at his back. He needed to find an entrance, but the place was built like a fortress. The windows were narrow slits covered with metal shutters, and he’d yet to locate a doorway.

  Pausing in a blind spot created by the structure turning at right angles to the wall he’d been following, Rast held his breath and listened. No more shouting, as if the men who’d survived thus far had realized all that did was give away their positions. So they weren’t quite as dumb as they looked.

  Waiting was excruciating, since he guessed Lira had to be somewhere in the building behind him, but he knew he couldn’t be hasty in his actions. He’d done a good job of reducing the number of men he’d have to face, but there were still four left, among them their leader.

  A murmur of voices, and the unmistakable hiss of a door opening on hydraulic hinges. A human probably wouldn’t have even detected those sounds, but Rast’s hearing — Stacian hearing — had been sharpened by millennia of hunting beasts far fiercer than humans, of relying on those senses to keep them alive from day to day. The door was up ahead, approximately fifteen yards away.

  Target now selected, he inched along the wall, slowing as he came closer to the doorway and noted the shapes of two men flanking it, obviously providing cover.

  Cover for what?

  A new sound came to his ears, the unmistakable whine of a ship’s engine powering on. It emanated from the opposite side of the compound, near one of the outbuildings, which must serve as a hangar for whatever transport Gared Tomas used to get in and out of this remote location.

  Transport. Shit.

  Not worrying about stealth any longer, Rast turned and bolted toward the source of the sound.

  * * *

  Her skin was scraped and red, but Lira finally managed to wriggle her hand loose from the cuff that held her to the bed. It was the sort of thing designed for sex play, and not a true binder, or she would never have been able to free herself. Following those two explosions, things had gone oddly quiet, but she guessed that was because the attackers were now trading
small arms fire with Tomas’s men. The compound was probably large enough that she was too far away to hear anything.

  Fine. She really didn’t care who or what they were — she just wanted to get away before they found her.

  Once the one hand was free, it took less than thirty seconds for her to extricate herself completely from the cuffs and push herself off the bed. She looked down at the flimsy gown she wore in disgust, and wasted a few precious seconds trying to find a more suitable garment in the chamber’s large wardrobe, but it was empty except for some spare sheets and blankets, and a rather impressive collection of sexual aids.

  Do you really need all that to get it up, Tomas? she thought, but wouldn’t waste any more time on the assortment of sex toys than that. Instead, she went to the door and touched the controls to open it, then looked back and forth down the corridor. It seemed empty enough, although she thought now she could hear a few distant shouts and the sharp crack of pulse bolts being fired.

  Since they were coming from her left, she decided to head right. Of course she had no clear idea of where she was going, but anywhere had to be better than tied up to that bed, just waiting for someone to find her.

  The stone floors were cool underfoot as she hurried along, wishing she had on a proper pair of shoes, some real clothing. Jogging like this only made her breasts bounce under the thin silk gown, and she reached up with one arm to more or less hold them in place as she went.

  Then she heard the sound of heavy boot steps, and she pulled up short, looking from side to side for someplace where she could conceal herself. But this stretch of corridor was empty and blank, not even a doorway to provide some shelter or a place to duck into. And as she hesitated, Gared Tomas came around the corner, accompanied by a large, brutish-looking Bathshevan merc.

  “Going somewhere?” Tomas asked.

  Damn. Damn, damn, damn. Lira stared back at him as levelly as she could and replied, “I might ask the same about you.”

  “As a matter of fact, I am. And now I don’t have to go looking for you, so thank you for that.” He reached out and grabbed her by the arm, pulled her toward him. “Barlek, cover us.”

  The merc nodded and moved ahead, running point as they hurried down the corridor. Toward what, she didn’t know, although it seemed clear enough that Tomas had some sort of destination in mind, wasn’t simply fleeing whoever had invaded the compound.

  They emerged into the warm night air and went toward a small building that seemed to serve as a hangar, since Lira could see the nose of the Mistral sticking out of it. Of course it made sense that he would use the fast little ship as his getaway vehicle, but she wished it had been something else, something not quite so hard to catch.

  Gared’s grip was like a band of iron around her bicep as he dragged her toward the small snub-nosed ship. She didn’t even bother to try to wrench her arm away. He was far too strong.

  But then a flash of orange-red went sailing over her head, almost grazing Tomas, but hitting the Bathshevan even as he turned at the sound of the pulse pistol being shot. He slumped to the ground, blood pouring out of his seared and blackened eye socket. Gared cursed and spun both of them toward their attacker.

  Lira’s eyes widened, and she couldn’t help letting out a small murmured word of thanks.

  Rast had come for her after all.

  * * *

  He’d found her. Too bad at the moment she was being held by that bastard Tomas like a living shield, the crime lord’s own pistol held at her temple. Even so, she looked at Rast across the few yards that separated them, and her full mouth curved in a smile.

  “Don’t do anything stupid, Stacian,” Tomas said.

  “Don’t plan to,” Rast replied, staring at the other man in contempt. How like a Gaian to use a woman as a shield, another person’s living flesh as a barrier between him and his enemy’s weapon. No Stacian would ever do something so cowardly. Then he caught a flicker of movement near the nose of the atmospheric craft behind Tomas, and saw another man, probably the pilot, trying to use the ship as cover as he crept toward the little group, his pistol in hand.

  That cover wasn’t quite good enough, though. Rast narrowed his eyes and loosed a single shot. The man dropped like a stone, and Tomas cursed.

  “Looks like you’re out of a pilot, Tomas,” Rast said, and couldn’t help grinning.

  The man’s hand tightened on Lira’s arm. She didn’t precisely wince, but some of her smile faded. For the first time Rast noticed she was wearing a gown of wispy silk that was fluttering in the warm night breeze. It left nothing to the imagination, and despite everything, he could feel his loins tighten at the sight of her.

  He had a good idea where that gown had come from, and she looked mightily displeased at wearing it.

  “Actually, I’ve got one right here with me,” Tomas replied easily. Rast would say that much for the man; he was no coward. “And she’s a much better pilot than the one you just shot, so I’m not all that worried about it.”

  Stalemate? Rast held the gun steady, not dropping it, but not keeping it pointed at Tomas, either. “You might want to ask how she feels about that.”

  Surprisingly, the crime lord chuckled, and bent his bald head toward Lira, touching his mouth to her cheek. “What do you think, darling?”

  Rast must have learned some control from her, or else he surely would have lunged forward in that moment. She didn’t react to Tomas’s foul caress, but stared straight at Rast instead, blue eyes intent on him. Some sort of unspoken message seemed to leap from those eyes to his brain, telling him what she planned to do next.

  “I think I’m sick of you touching me,” she said, and then wrenched her arm from his grasp and dropped to the ground, giving Rast the shot he needed.

  The pulse bolt hit the crime lord right between the eyes. They stared forward for a second, blazing green, and then he fell backward, sand spraying everywhere as he landed.

  Lira scrambled to her feet and ran to Rast, her arms going around him, body pressing closely to his as if she wanted to make sure they would never be separated again. He held her tightly, marveling at the scent of her hair and the feel of her breasts as they ground into the thick fabric of his uniform. Again his body responded, needing her, wanting her.

  Now was not the time, though.

  Gently, he took her by the arms and held her far enough away that he could look down into her face. “Are you all right? He didn’t — ”

  “No,” she said at once. “He wanted to, was going to — but I think he was dragging it out. To torture me, I suppose.”

  That sounded about right. Well, he wouldn’t argue with the man’s perversions, if they’d kept him from laying hands on Lira. Rast ran one finger along her cheek, down to her chin, reassuring himself with that touch that she was safe, that she really was standing here in front of him, untouched and unhurt. Relatively, anyway. Even now he could see a ring a bruises forming around her upper arm where Gared Tomas had held her. Too bad the man was dead, because Rast wanted to kill him all over again.

  Shaking away those thoughts, he asked, “So what now?”

  She lifted her shoulders, nearly bare except for the wind-whipped strands of her loose hair, and the whisper-thin straps that held up her gown. “First thing you do is give me your jacket.”

  “My jacket?”

  “If you think I enjoy parading around looking like this, you don’t know me very well.”

  He laughed, loving the fire in her eyes, the challenging lift to her chin as she stared up at him. “Well, I’m enjoying it.”

  “Rast — ”

  “Very well.” With feigned reluctance he reached up and began to undo the line of buttons down the front of the garment. Once he was finished with that, he pulled it off and handed it to her, smothering a grin as he watched her shrug into it and attempt to push up the sleeves so they wouldn’t hang halfway down to her knees. “Oh, yes, that’s much better.”

  “I’m not attempting to be stylish, just not naked.�
�� She paused then, and squinted up at the night sky, at something behind his head. “Oh, hell — is that some of Tomas’s reinforcements?”

  Rast turned to look as well, gaze sharpening as he took in the sleek outlines of a Gaian atmospheric hopper, followed by the narrow shape of an Eridani planetary transport. For a second or two, he scowled, puzzled, and then remembered Jackson Wyler’s comment about a team coming in to take care of things.

  “No,” Rast said, and held her close. “I think it’s our rescue.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Rast tried to explain things as best he could while they were shuttled up from Iradia’s surface to the Consortium ship orbiting the planet, but somehow Lira couldn’t quite begin to process it all. Jackson Wyler, a Consortium operative? All this part of a plan to track down the dissidents on Eridani?

  It began to make more sense after she was given a chance to change into a set of simple clothes — tunic, narrow pants, low shoes — and have one or three cups of coffee to clear her head. She and Rast were sat down in a cold, spartan conference room and questioned by an equally cold and spartan woman somewhere in her forties or fifties who recorded everything they said and took copious notes on her handheld. At length she thanked them both for their service to Gaia, and got up and went out, leaving them alone.

  Rast was scowling. “Nothing I did was in service to Gaia,” he muttered.

  Lira almost wanted to laugh. “Oh, that’s just how they talk. Don’t let it bother you.”

  “Hmm.” He crossed his arms over his chest and looked around the gray little room with distaste. “How long are they going to hold us here? I suppose if they’re thanking us for our ‘service,’ then they don’t intend to charge us with anything. So why can’t we go?”

  Those were questions she would have liked answered as well, but she didn’t know for sure. “Maybe they’re just double-checking our story with Jackson. I don’t know.” She shifted in her seat so she faced him better. He still wore his captain’s uniform, the jacket having been returned to him after she’d gotten some proper clothes. Seeing him that way made her think of the first time she’d ever laid eyes on him, when even then he’d impressed her with his barbarian glory, although at the time she hadn’t known anything of the wonderful, courageous heart that beat under the carved buttons and the ochre-dyed wool.