**
As the work night progressed, Fiana and Jillian found themselves under more and more pressure.
Jillian discovered that Ry Marcues had decided to wall himself into his office, accepting no incoming calls. Frustrated, she contacted Roland Harmiss who promised to do what he could, but he was not hopeful about influencing Marcues.
“He's just lost it, as far as I can tell,” Harmiss said. “Lindy Cass contacted me after she had talked with this Janis person from Paxic IV. Lindy's furious with Marcues, of course, and she thinks that her ex, Graeme Forshie, has undue influence over our Head's doings. She could be right. In any case, I'd suggest that you people organize a rescue plan out of your office, with the help of the Kordeans. I'll sound out which Agents, here, are willing to join you—Lindy, by the way, is chomping at the bit. She hasn't had work equal to her abilities for some time, and is prepared to risk her position as a clerk in the front office for the cause.”
“Is that what Marcues still has her doing?” Jillian asked. “What a waste of talent! I'll put her on my list of possibilities.”
Fiana's Diplomatic Corps contact told her flatly to not allow Graeme Forshie into the Kordean-Confederation Liaison Office. There were reasons to believe that the man might be traitorously unreliable—his family on Mallora was known for decades of double-dealing.
“Shit,” said Fiana; then heaved a sigh of relief as Madelyn relayed a text telling her that Port Security had decided to detain Forshie and Monroe after all.
She Informed her Diplomatic Corps contact of this, and sent a thumbs-up to Madelyn. Her contact told her that she, or someone superior to her would be in touch with the Liaison Office soon. Then she cut the connection, and Fiana, with a sigh of relief, relief which she knew would not last, directed her console to make voice and eye contact with Ferhil Stones.
“Coryn's been what?” Marlyss sputtered from Ferhil Stones.
“He's been kidnapped,” Fiana repeated, keeping her voice steady with an effort.
“How—how could that happen?” Marlyss stammered. “I thought everyone was on high alert.”
“It wasn't enough, apparently,” Fiana sighed. “I was afraid that we might be missing something, after that ridiculous scene at the Port with the three Neotsarian Elites. What we were missing, it seems to me, is how badly those people wanted to capture Coryn. They went to an awful lot of trouble to make the kidnapping happen, and the truth is, I'm not quite sure why.”
She explained to Marlyss, as best she could, what had happened, where, and when.
“The Paxic IV Law Enforcers have offered to help with any mission we put together to get him back,” she finished. “They're quite upset that the kidnapping took place on their soil, and that they were unable to stop the perpetrators from fleeing. Although it's hardly surprising that they were totally unprepared for the Hounds' tactics. This is the first time their world has had anything to do with The Organization.”
“That, I suppose, is a part of what you mean when you say that the Neotsarians went to a lot of trouble,” Marlyss said. “They strayed a long distance from where they usually travel among the Confederation planets.”
“That's right,” Fiana agreed.
“Well, then, what they are expecting to get out of this exercise is Sarah, and perhaps the amartos which are still keyed to her,” Marlyss stated. “Nothing else could possibly be worth the trouble, and the expense. They are counting on Sarah going to look for Coryn, and are planning to snatch her for themselves when she does.”
**
Fiana got hold of her pilot husband, Steph Clennan, who tested vehicles for the Experimental Craft Division of the Confederation Armed Forces on Mallora. He had been the Space Ship pilot who had collaborated with Coryn to keep Sarah from falling into the hands of The Organization Hounds on the Planet of the Amartos, where she had inadvertently keyed a cache of the Stones.
“I'm going to Carovan with this,” Steph said as soon as he heard the news. Carovan was the Head of the Experimental Craft Division. “He can inform whoever in the Armed Forces might be helpful, and he knows what Marcues is like. I know that it would do more harm than good to zoom into Organization space with armed Forces ships—that'd be the way to get the bastards to kill Coryn—but we need the back-up. What's with these Neotsarians, lately, anyway; they're really getting into our faces?”
“They're tempted by the power that the amartos represent, and I suspect that they have come to believe that there's a lot more support, within the Confederation, for their way of life than there really is,” Fiana said. “They think that everything will fall into their hands, if only they can manage a display of force big enough to scare the ordinary citizens.”
“There are always a few idiots around who like their sort of a thing. Or think that they do—wonder how long it would be before they'd start whining, if they actually had to live under an arbitrary regime, which is what The Organization system amounts to,” said Steph.
“What you say makes me wonder about the ordinary citizens on the Neotsarian side,” Fiana said. “There are likely a lot of people there who are not happy with the rule that they're under.”
Steph grinned.
“And now you're wondering if there isn't a way you can make use of that as you and Jillian, and whoever else is involved, plan a rescue mission,” he said. “That's my wife. Always using her brain.”
Fiana was smiling as she cut the connection. It was good to talk to her man. He could lift her spirits, even under the tensest of circumstances.
However, before she did anything further, she was going to have to eat lunch. Her intestines were a spasming mess of hunger pains.
“Have to feed the babe,” she muttered to herself. “Wonder if anyone else is up for going to eat—or for ordering in food?”
When she emerged from her—Coryn's, normally—inner office into the hubbub of the general work area, it was clear that others had taken it upon themselves to resolve the matter of food. Texi and Nance were coming in with two large baskets which smelled delicious.
“Can you believe the way word travels around this Port?” Nance said as she set the baskets on a table which one of the junior employees was hastily clearing of paper and electronic paraphernalia. “I commed our order to Candy's Catering less than an hour ago, and when Texi and I got there for the pick-up, the proprietress had doubled it, and refused to take payment! She said that it was her contribution to the effort to bring Coryn back! And she told me to tell you, Fiana, that she put in some special pregnant-lady dishes, for you. 'She's not allowed to starve the baby, no matter how hard she has to work,' she said!”
“Somebody thank her for me!” Fiana said, sitting down at the table, and allowing Nance to serve her. “Truth is, I'm starved!”
**
When Coryn awakened, he found that he had been locked into a sleeping cubicle aboard a space ship. A small space ship by the looks of things. The cubicle was the type which included its own toilet and mist-shower facilities, meaning that he was going to be kept confined until the ship reached its destination. He groaned at that; it was going to take all his ingenuity just to keep his musculature from atrophying, but then, perhaps sapping his physical strength was the idea. Did that mean that he was going to be stinted on food, too?
He was not keen on arriving wherever the ship was heading, but a long trip in space was hardly desirable either.
There was nothing for it but to devise an exercise routine which he could perform in the cramped space. He was going to have to be ready whenever an opportunity to get away from his captors might come. If it ever came. He drew a deep breath of the recycled air and made an effort to cast off the lassitude caused by the drug that had been used on him. He could not afford to sink into a depression, whether drug-induced, or brought on by the hopelessness of his situation. Physical exercise would serve to combat that, too. He would begin with simple stretches, immediately.
**
Coryn's captors had ensured that he had no
way of measuring time inside his ship board prison cell. They had even taken the trouble to feed him at irregular intervals, so that he could not, at all accurately, use meal-times as way to estimate the day count. Thus, he had only an approximate idea of how long an interval had passed when the door banged open, and a couple of large Hounds grabbed and pulled him out from his prison.
An Elite and another Hound were waiting in the ship corridor. The Elite handed metal restraints to the Hound with him, and while the other two Hounds held Coryn still, he snapped them on to the prisoner's wrists. Coryn noted that they were a common type of electronic handcuffs which could be programmed via any com, computer, or remote to give the prisoner painful jolts. They were also attached to one another with a thin, but (Coryn knew) strong chain, restricting his hand and arm movements.
Once the handcuffs were in place, the Elite gave to his helper ankle-restrainers, commonly known as leg-irons, which worked the same way as their wrist counterparts did. Apparently the Neotsarians were not about to give him a chance to try to break away. Certainly not this early in the game. He would have to bide his time, conserving his strength. Surely, sooner or later, his prison guards would make a mistake which he could exploit!
What he would do once he had broken free he refused to think about. For the present he would simply assume that, like anywhere else in the Galaxy, there were hiding places on whatever Neotsarian world he was on. The people were of Terran stock; their ancestors came originally from Old Earth, even as most of his own did. They couldn't be that different from the rest of the Galaxy's humanity, no matter how badly brainwashed by the top Elites they were!
However, what he met outside the ship failed to confirm his faith in the universal goodness of human nature. Geof and Evella Copoz, together with the man known as John Mogron were waiting for him. Evil Evella was smirking, and the men looked inordinately pleased with themselves.
The men were wearing their Elite insignia, circles attached to the front left shoulders of their suit jackets; marks of status which they never displayed during their forays into Confederation space (probably because the democrats of the Confederation would have laughed at them). Coryn, nevertheless, having worked for The Agency for as long as he had, easily deciphered them. Silver and red: he was looking at Elites of the Second Tier. A lot closer to the top of the Neotsarian pecking order than was the fellow who was handing him off; he had a tricoloured circle on his shoulder, with no metallic hues.
“Well done, Elite Kenney,” Elite Mogron said to the one who had brought Coryn. “Your next responsibility is to make certain that the Witches of Kordea know that we hold him. I trust you to work out how to do so, and how much to reveal about his present whereabouts. Remember, we want the Mackenzie girl to come looking for him, but, until we have the rebuilt version of the reflector-refractor in hand, we're not ready to take on all the seven covens of Kordea.”
He turned to Geof and Evella.
“You two wanted to safe-keep this specimen?”
Evella licked her lips.
“Oh yes,” she said. “I'll take care of him.”
“Geof, don't let her destroy him,” Mogron said. “Keep a leash on her worst tendencies. He's bait, and bait has to stay alive until the desired fish has been reeled in. Don't let her maul him too much.”
**
Peter and Cameron Mackenzie, Sarah's father and brother arrived in the Trahea Port the same day that Mel Jourda of the Diplomatic Corps did. The Mackenzie men who had been visiting Peter's parents on Earth, and had returned via a mega-transport, were ignorant of Coryn's mishap, when the shuttle landed them at the Port. A voluble Customs clerk took it upon herself to tell them the latest gossip.
“Coryn kidnapped?” Peter said, shocked. “How is that possible?”
“It didn't happen here on Kordea,” the clerk assured him. “Paxic IV, I think they said. You see, Agency Head Marcues demoted him from the Chief Liaison Officer's job, and sent him on some goose chase or another, to some god-awful Space Station, is what I heard. He was returning to Station ASC from there, using a round-about route which included a transfer at the Paxic Prime City Port. He had gone into the city to have lunch with some musician that he had met enroute, and on his way back to the Port the Hounds had picked him up, bold as brass, from a city street. Paxic IV had never seen any Organization activity, so they weren't prepared for the Neotsarians' tricks.”
“Shit,” said Cameron. “This is really bad, worse than people here can imagine! He's a good-looking man! I know something about how the bored Elite women treat handsome, low-ranking guys, and captured slaves are the lowest rank of all! I was just damn glad to be a mere average Joe who didn't rate a second glance from any of them!”
The young clerk who had just decided that the black-haired, wiry Cameron was rather attractive in his own way, and certainly worth flirting with, rolled her eyes. But neither of the Mackenzie men were really paying attention to her.
“Wonder how Sarah's taking this?” Peter said to Cameron, a sinking feeling in his stomach.
“If I know my sister at all, she's plotting to go and find him, and bring him back,” replied Cameron.
“Oh, the word is that she can't possibly be allowed to go,” protested the clerk, obviously privy to every rumour floating around the Port. “Those sickos will grab her, and force her to work her Stone-talent for them.”
Peter blanched.
“That sounds about right,” he said. “This is a disaster!”
“Talk to the people at Liaison Office,” the clerk encouraged them, as she gestured that their bags had been passed. “They'll tell you what a mess it is. Fiana Marsh and Jillian Ashton are still in charge there; Marcues couldn't push his choices there, though he tried. They can fill you in on what's been going on.”
“What did she mean by that last statement?” Peter asked his son as they walked out into the Kordean night. “What the hell has been going on?”
His son shrugged.
“I guess we'll have to go to the Liaison Office to find out.”
They had expected to find a ride at the earliest, to the Institute of Kordean Studies, to begin the work which Jaime Morrow had organized. But, it seemed that the Institute would have to wait, at least until they knew what was going on with this brand new crisis.
**
Peter had entertained some faint hope that he and Cameron would find Sarah at the Liaison Office, but that, of course, was not so.
“She's being kept safe at Ferhil Stones,” Jillian told him, when he asked her about it, after she had tersely explained what had happened to Coryn, and Ry Marcues' part in the events. “Fiana and I are trying to arrange a big meeting to decide what our next step should be, considering the lack of cooperation from the Agency Head.”
Just then Fiana entered the outer Office from her inner sanctum.
“Peter!” she exclaimed. “And Cameron! You're back! Are you both in a hurry to return to the Institute? You've heard what's happened, no?”
“Jillian just filled us in on the main details,” Peter replied. “And Sarah, I hear, is at Ferhil Stones—which, no doubt, is the best place for her, considering. I suppose that she'll be coming for the big meeting that is being arranged?”
“I'm sure that she'll insist on coming,” Fiana said with a nod. “But I was going to ask you, Peter, if you'd be willing to stay here, at the Liaison Office, until the meeting, and help with the preparations, and other work—we're completely swamped. Jaime will snarl at me, but he'll still have Jerold and Cameron—assuming you'll go off to the Institute, Cam—and his work is not quite as urgent at the moment, as are things here.”
Peter raised an eyebrow, but smiled at Fiana at the same time.
“If you think that I can be useful to you, I'm certainly willing,” he told her. “I suppose that any talk I want to have with Sarah can wait until the day of the meeting. I doubt that Marlyss would invite me to Ferhil Stones for a tete-a-tete with my daughter, in any case.”
“I'll try t
o get some word on how she's handling this when I get to the Institute, Dad,” Cameron promised. “Dian will be in and out; she will talk about Sarah. She's good that way, I've noticed.”
Perhaps this was for the best, Peter told himself, as he took his bags to the Official Residence of the Liaison Office, before rolling up his sleeves to tackle whatever work Fiana wanted to give him. He had been a prisoner of the Neotsarians for a dozen years, or so. Possibly he could not keep his emotions in check while dealing with a daughter who had just lost the man she loved to The Organization. Having to remain busy for a few days would give him time to clamp down on his worst misgivings before trying to offer support to Sarah.
**
People connected to the Liaison Office and Coryn began to trickle in to the Trahea Port.
The Diplomatic Corps Official, Mel Jourda, was the first to arrive. He travelled on an Official Corps Ship, a fast Cruiser, and he told Fiana that his purpose in coming was twofold. First of all, he was to help with the organizing of the rescue mission to retrieve the Corps employee Coryn Leigh from The Organization planet to which he had been taken against his will. Coryn was an excellent diplomat, he explained, and if he was not going to be working in the Trahea Liaison Office, there were other places in the Confederation where his considerable talents could be put to good use. Secondly, he had been informed that Kordea was sending an Ambassador to the Space Station where the Seat of the Confederation Government was, and he had been asked to convey her there, and use the transit time to help her understand some of the tasks which she was taking on.
Fiana and Jillian immediately invited him to the planned strategy meeting. It was to take place as soon as all the people involved were present and available. In the meantime she introduced him to Witch Anya who was to take on the Ambassadorial post for Kordea, and to Peter, who was Coryn's choice to replace her if he did not return before her child was due.
Then Lindy Cass showed up.
Revenge of the Catspaw Page 15
