Sean nodded. “That’s right, Allysha Marten.”
She afforded him the briefest of smiles.
“Curtis here will take you to the boss.” He jerked his head at his companion, who sat down on a chair in the conventional way, next to her. She twitched her arm away from him and knocked her glass, which clattered to the floor. The little umbrella slid under the table in a pool of blue liquid.
“I’m so sorry,” she twittered as she bent to pick up the container. “I hope nothing spilt on you.” She brushed at his arm, wiping away invisible droplets.
Curtis looked down his nose at her. She could almost hear the unspoken words. This is her? This is what Tepich has been chasing? For good measure she added an apologetic smile. Best not to be too clever. This man was a professional.
“Do you have the contract?” Sean asked.
“Same terms as before,” Horlitz said.
Sean shook his head. “No. I never saw a contract for this. And Ally hasn’t seen it. Have you, Ally?”
Curtis and Horlitz exchanged a look. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the third man—what? Nod?
His lips moved; he seemed to be talking to himself. The voice spoke in her brain.
Let them see the general contract. No details until later. Do whatever you need to get them to agree.
The hair stood up on the back of her neck. She didn’t like the sound of that. Not the words, the tone, as if it didn’t matter, anyway.Think, Allysha, think . They needed her. But they didn’t need Sean anymore.
He’d served his purpose. Was she sure? Of course she wasn’t. What could she do? Keep him alive until the work, whatever it was, was done. But he’d be a burden to her; she’d have to look after him.
Curtis pulled out a data sheet. “This is our general working contract. You’ll see it’s time and materials based. It’s for one month but it will be automatically extended.”
Sean took the datasheet from his hands and glanced through the clauses. He looked up. “You’ve not provided any specific information about the job.”
Horlitz shook his head. “Security. We won’t give that information until you’re at the site.”
“What if I can’t do it?” she asked.
Horlitz’s lips curved into a humorless smile. “Mister Tepich is quite certain you are capable.”
Sean leaned over the table. “What about payment?”
Curtis mentioned a figure.
“You can’t be serious? For somebody like her?” Sean snorted. “Try again.”
“Okay, we’ll add ten percent.”
Sean pursed his lips, considering. “That’s—”
“Could I discuss this in private with my husband, Mister Curtis?” Allysha stood. “We’ll just be over there.”
Sean followed her over to the opposite wall. She flicked on her privacy shield and leaned toward him as if trying to persuade him, a hand laid on his chest as she gazed into his eyes. “You’ve got to clear off.
They’ve got me, they don’t need you. Take yourself to the men’s or something and disappear.”
Panic flared in his eyes. “Are you sure?”
“No. You want to risk it?”
She took a step closer to him and slung an arm around his neck. “Just for show. Forget about the money. You won’t get it anyway. I’ll be fine. Keep yourself alive.”
Sean nodded, Allysha smiled as if in triumph and they returned to the two waiting men.
“Okay. We’ll sign,” Sean said as he sat down.
Curtis grinned and handed over the document. Sean applied his ID and she followed suit. They both watched as Curtis counter-signed.
“I’d like a copy,” Sean said.
Curtis shrugged. “Sure.”
While Sean copied the data onto his comlink, Allysha watched Curtis’s eyes, his body language. Sure, because it doesn’t matter anyway. It had all been too fast, too easy. Sean had better be on his toes.
Sean put his comlink away and stood. “Right, that’s done. D’you fellows know where the toilet is? I’m busting.”
Horlitz and Curtis exchanged another glance. In her brain Allysha heard the third voice.Let him go. Not here. It’s too public.
Sean went off, following the signs to the nearest toilet, down a service corridor off the passenger lounge.
As soon as Sean left the lounge his personal shield clicked on. Allysha wished him luck.
And hoped there would be a bit left over for her.
ChapterTwenty-Nine
Sean must have been gone for two minutes before a frown shadowed Curtis’s face. “Seems to have been gone a long time.”
Allysha shrugged. “He’s had some tummy troubles. Foreign food, you know? Sometimes these things take a little longer. He’ll be back.” But she fidgeted just a little. The last thing she wanted was for them to
infer any collusion.
Horlitz stood. “I’d better go and check.”
Curtis drummed his fingers, staring after Horlitz’s retreating figure. She hoped Sean was gone when the big man arrived. Because if he wasn’t he’d be dead.
Curtis’s comlink chirped.
“Take her and get out of here. Horlitz and I can see about him.” Allysha kept her face blank despite the rush of relief. Sean must have disappeared.
Curtis stood. “Come along, Miss. That was Horlitz. Seems your husband’s not well. He’ll have to come along later.”
“Not well?” she asked, projecting concern. She turned toward the lounge as if to find Sean. “Perhaps I should—”
“No time,” Curtis said, raising a hand. “We have a ship waiting.”
She’d done enough. Sean would have to fend for himself. And she could hardly continue to pretend she cared. She picked up her gear. “Oh, well. He’s a big boy.”
The warning flashed on her implant. She stared around casually and found Miss Taylor at a dispenser, buying sweets. Good. At least somebody would know where she was going. And maybe she’d do a little
more than that.
“Just a sec. I wouldn’t mind some sweets. It’s been a long time since I last ate.” She swerved, almost ran to the dispenser and bumped into the woman who was turning away, a chocolate bar in hand. “Oh, so sorry.” She placed a placatory hand on Miss Taylor’s arm. The agent smiled and walked away while Allysha bought her confectionery.
Curtis waited, glowering.
“Let’s go.” Chewing on the bar, she strode along beside Curtis to a transit that took them to the outermost slot of one of the station’s arms. A couple of guards lounged at the onstation entry gate to the
docking area. They straightened when Curtis approached and opened the gate for him. He swept past with barely a nod, through the airlock and into the ship.
The passenger area looked comfortable enough, with well upholstered seats fitted with view screens. No talking information system on this vessel. She hadn’t expected one. Curtis waved her along the central passage through to the passenger cabins. “Put your belongings there,” he said, gesturing to the first open door. “You can sort things out when we’re underway.”
She flung her pack onto the bed and scampered back to the seat just before the pilots started the departure sequence.
“Where are we going?” she asked as the seat harness clicked into place around her body.
“A laboratory.”
“But where? What system?”
“You don’t need to know.”
She lay back in the seat. Her heart thundered inside her chest and she was certain every nerve in her body tingled with tension. The familiar bands of a harness felt heavy, constraining. What was the old saying? Out of the frying pan, into the fire. That was her. Too late now for regrets. She had to calm herself, find her center. What would they want her to do? She’d stewed on that very question, every waking hour. Her best guess was a weapon or some sort of guidance system; something that could be used against the ptorix. If they followed form, they’d try to induce the ptorix to attack the humans. From what she
’d seen, the GPR had nothing like the capacity to defeat the Confederacy Fleet.Breathe, Allysha, slow, deep . Whatever they asked her to do, she could alter the code to fail over time or something. And Vlad’s people would be following, out there somewhere. Which was just as well, because she was starting to think these people weren’t going to say ‘thanks so much’ and let her go.
As soon as the harness retracted Allysha stood.
Curtis looked up from the sheet he was reading. “We’ll be traveling for the best part of a day. You might want to get some sleep.”
She smiled and thanked him. The cabin was little more than a cupboard with a bunk. That was okay.
With the door closed behind her, she pulled out her techpack and connected with the ship’s navigation system. Well, she hardly needed to be a computer specialist to work this one out. They were headed for El Dorado, capital planet of the Galactic People’s Republic.
El Dorado. The Planet of Gold in some arcane language. The founders had split from the Confederacy over the use of technology to improve the human genome. Amazing. Why would anybody object to efforts to lengthen life, remove disease? But that was how it was. No implants in any GPR heads. Or so they said. What did they call Confederacy people? Machine men, that was it. As if an implant made you some sort of cyborg.
She flicked through the selection of music she carried on her implant and selected Endeni’s Adagio. She lay down on the bunk and let the music wash over her, taking her away to drift on a placid ocean gazing up at a canopy of starlight.
****
El Dorado’s space station looked more than a little the worse for wear. Allysha stepped out of the docking bay, Curtis at her side. Dust had accumulated in corners, scratches and scuff marks defaced the walls. Grubby chairs stood in untidy groups in the lounge and the air conditioners rattled, a wheezy, old man’s breathing. That was probably a good analogy; the place looked and felt and smelled old and shabby.
Two uniformed men who’d been sitting in the nearest seats rose to their feet. The welcoming committee.
“Where to now?” she asked, looking up at Curtis.
“This way.” He strode off without a backward glance.
She hefted her bag and followed him and the two uniformed men followed her. The further they walked down echoing corridors, the more she felt a big bucket of warm, soapy water would be a valuable resource. That and a bit of regular maintenance. This obviously wasn’t the busiest space station in the galaxy. Most of the few people in evidence wore uniforms, the same drab brown as her new companions, and the others, both men and women, were dressed in shapeless robes, almost like ptorix but without that fluid, gliding grace. The women hid their hair and neck completely under a kind of headdress that shaped around their faces.
Curtis led her to another docking bay and onto a small ship. “A few more hours.”
Hours? “Is that how long it takes to get through your atmosphere?”
“We’re not going planet-side.”
“Where, then?”
“You’ll know soon enough.”
She glared at him. Smug bastard. This was just a stupid power game; ‘I know and you don’t.’ Her biggest concern was that Vlad’s people wouldn’t know. They’d expect she would be taken to the planet itself. But she couldn’t do much about that. She’d have to hope Vlad’s contact would recognize the pin she’d left on her arm for what it was. She pulled out her techpack. Curtis glanced at her, and turned back
to the news sheet he was reading.
The navigation system gave up its secrets in a second. They were headed for Isabella, the system’s fifth planet, a gas giant. Like all such planets this one had its fair share of moons; twenty satellites of a reasonable size. It had a ring, too. The set destination was one of the larger moonlets in the ring. Another mining settlement? Maybe. She wondered if Vlad’s people would realize, if they knew about this place?
She certainly hoped so.
Her pulse sped up a little and she concentrated on her breathing while all the while she fed the data from the view screens to her implant. You never could tell when the information might come in handy.
Isabella grew, filling the view screen with red and orange, swirling bands.
The asteroid appeared, a misshapen rock, dwarfed by the bulk of its primary. She checked the stats.
With a one hundred klick diameter, this was a very small rock. It wouldn’t have an atmosphere and no gravity, either. The ship slowed down, firing retro blasts and then smaller, directional bursts to match the moonlet’s rotation. Its pock-marked surface lay in stark relief, the craters sharp-edged in the light of the distant sun. The only man-made objects on the surface seemed to be a communications tower. So where
was the base itself?
An opening appeared, a widening dark slit. An entrance to an air lock; it had to be.
The ship descended. If that was what you could call it. The maneuver would be a little bit trickier than docking with a space station, but not much. The ship eased forward, drifting into darkness. A jolt and it stopped moving.
Curtis shifted in his seat. “It’ll be a few minutes yet. We’re in an airlock.”
“Are we? Thanks so much for telling me.” She gave him her best smile. She’d rather he didn’t notice the sarcasm.
At last the hatch slid open, echoing in the emptiness of the airlock. She climbed down onto a smooth floor. This place was built for bigger ships than this little shuttle. Or maybe they gave the pilots lots of room for error.
“Come this way. Mister Tepich is waiting to meet you.”
Even the name was enough to make her nerves shiver.Steady, Allysha. They need you. It was some consolation.
The doorway out of the airlock soughed open into an antiseptic, white-walled corridor; no right-angles so cleaning was easy, the lighting harsh. They certainly maintained this place properly; no scuff marks here. It smelled clean and dry and faintly… she sniffed, uncertain. No matter. Curtis urged her along the passage. At length he stopped at a door and pressed the pad to open it. She licked her lips. Sure, she was nervous. But this time, she was in control.
A vast man sitting in one of a pair of comfortable chairs heaved himself to his feet as she stepped inside.
“Ah, Miss Marten. I am delighted to meet you at last. And enchanted that you’ve come of your own volition.” His voice was surprisingly high pitched.
He wore a robe, no doubt a comfortable garment for such a big man. Judging by the fat fingers, the bulging neck, the flabby cheeks, the body under that tent wouldn’t bear thinking about. He smiled, showing his teeth, but his eyes didn’t match. Sharp eyes, an unusual pale blue, half-hidden in folds. Not a man to underestimate.
“I’m happy to be here. You’ll forgive my behavior on Tisyphor. I’d had little experience with the GPR.
Or the Confederacy. And my husband’s behavior was a little unsettling.”
He extended a podgy, be-ringed hand at a chair. “Please sit.”
He subsided into his own chair as she sat down. Not much here for her to work with. But she had detected a surveillance system, fairly primitive by her standards. Still, a camera and a microphone were probably all they needed here.
“Yes, your husband. I regret that we did not understand how… ah… unreliable he was.”
“Well, as it is now, my dear husband has left me effectively destitute.”
Calculating eyes like chips of ice weighed her every word. “You work for the Confederacy Fleet.”
“Not anymore. I have a living to earn. The Fleet offered me a great deal of money for a short term contract. It’s finished.” She cocked an eyebrow at him, head on one side. “As a matter of fact, considering the amount of angst your people have caused me, you should be offering me a lot more money than you have. Don’t you think?”
It worked. He chuckled, sending his fat into spasm. “I think we will be able to do business.” The smile vanished. “But what about your lover? Grand Admiral Saahren?”
“My love
r? I think, Mister Tepich, that you’ve been listening to ill-founded gossip. I have my own grudge against,” she curled her lip, “Grand Admiral Saahren.” He couldn’t know the truth; he couldn’t.
There wasn’t any truth to know.
“Ah, yes. Your father.”
So he knew that. Well, she’d said it often enough over the years. Sean could have told him.
“Well now, Mister Tepich. What do you need my services for?” She leaned back in the chair. “And how much are you prepared to pay?”
“We want you to train our people, Miss Marten. Just as you have trained the Fleet personnel. You have skills to share. Especially on ptorix systems but perhaps also on some aspects of human systems.”
She nodded. Was that all? Was that really all they wanted? Training? She could understand, in a way. It was always better to be self-sufficient. She couldn’t see any evidence of a lie. No fingers to the nose or the mouth.
“Money…. I thought you’d agreed a figure with Horlitz?”
“One hundred thousand of your credits isn’t much, Mister Tepich. Make it five hundred thousand Confederacy credits and we may be able to do business.”
Tepich blinked. The material of his robe rustled as he shifted his bulk. “That’s an awful lot of money for some training.”
She shrugged and folded her arms. “Find someone else to do it.”
“Your point is made, Miss. Make it three hundred thousand and I shall see that the money is found.”
She shook her head.
Tepich sighed. “Four hundred. It’s as high as I can go.”
“I’ll want the contract amended.”
He retrieved an old-fashioned comlink from a pocket and pressed a button. A young woman, also dressed in a robe, her hair covered with a headdress, appeared in the doorway. She had her hands folded in front of her.
“I shall want a contract drawn up for Miss Marten, Agnita. The sum of four hundred thousand Confederacy credits. And please inform Mister Galen that we will be visiting.”
Agnita bowed and departed. Tepich struggled to his feet, pushing his bulk up with hands rigid on the arms of the chair. “I hope you’ll trust me enough to deliver the contract. I shall show you to your room and then with your permission I’d like you to meet your trainee.”
The Iron Admiral: Deception Page 20
