The new account had access to certain files that had accumulated, files that were only readable on his personal datapad. He frowned as he read. The information was two weeks old, which was very recent if it came from Earth. The suspicions of Fleet Intelligence involvement had been confirmed. The officer in question had been located and an operative in place to bring him in for investigation. They were sending Anders an assistant.
He compressed his lips. That was clumsy work. A missing intelligence officer was bound to attract notice. Toren felt they were powerful enough to avoid the consequences, but Kolpe preferred to leave as few traces as possible. And why burden him with an assistant, when speed had been given top priority?
He smiled thinly. He wasn't going to wait for this assistant. If they could find him the way he moved, they would have to be good.
Kolpe removed the files from the main system, and returned the security switch to its original setting. He left the office silently. Hearing faint voices, he stopped and looked about.
No one was in the hallway. He took out his earboost and activated it. His implant picked up the signal, and the faint voices became louder and more clear.
How did they find out so fast? We only knew for sure six days ago.
He could be here for something else. We've been inspected before.
You want to take that chance? They have to blame someone. A whole damn station in small bits? And that one in particular? I tell you, it's time to fade out and not come back.
Maybe we can make it look like the delivery ship caused it. It's missing too.
Kolpe left the office, wondering what they had been talking about. It wasn’t connected to his task, but he was always looking for information Toren didn’t want him to know. It could be useful later on.
¤ ¤ ¤
Moire squinted at the display on the control bracelet for the captain’s earring as she walked down the corridor to Medical. The display was supposed to give her readouts from the captain’s earring, but it was getting harder and harder to read. She’d have to get a new one soon. No, she hadn’t imagined it. That was Gren’s code, and he had asked her to come to Medical immediately. He would have told her if one of the crew was hurt, so it couldn’t be that. But what else would require her to go to Medical?
He was waiting for her in the corridor outside, glowering at high intensity. “The Created got out!” Gren yelled. “I found them wandering around outside!”
“Uh–oh. How far did they get?” she asked, feeling a spike of fear. “I just had station control asking if any of my crew were near the second/third–level dropdowns. Seems there was a fatal accident and they are looking for witnesses.”
Gren muttered something profane. “Who can tell with them? They were terrified, though, I’ll say that. I’ll believe they stayed right there once they realized they were lost. You can’t leave the docking area without going past a staffed security office. They wouldn’t do that.”
That was good news. The last thing they needed was more fallout from the kids’ little adventure.
“Anything could have happened to them!” Gren moaned, pulling his long hair. “Why couldn’t we have just left them on the planet?”
Moire winced and made quieting motions with her hands. “Careful, Gren. We’ve got strangers showing up soon, remember? No mentioning you–know–what.”
“Oh. Sorry.” He lowered his voice one notch. “Er, actually, that’s the other problem. They found somebody and insisted on bringing him back, and…I think you’d better take a look.”
She rounded the corner to the medical station. The area was crowded and noisy; Alan and the other Created were arguing with each other while Madele Fortin was doing something to someone lying on the exam table.
As far as she could tell none of the kids were hurt. Gren was grumbling to himself again, and the Created glanced at him nervously. They were both fascinated and terrified by Gren, whose irritability was frequently interrupted by flashes of guilt when he dealt with them. It sounded like they’d managed to persuade him into letting someone on the ship.
The stranger on the exam table was ragged, dirty, and bruised. Lank brown hair obscured his face. He appeared to be unconscious.
“Look, kids. I know he looks bad but we can’t help everybody—”
“See?” Alan glared at George. “I told you she’d be mad. You shouldn’t have gone Outside.”
“Why didn’t you stop them?” Moire asked.
“I wasn’t there,” Alan said. “I told them to stay.”
She sighed, feeling suddenly tired. “Next time you stay with them, OK?”
“Why can’t we rescue someone?” George asked, sticking his chin out at Alan. “You got to go back to the Place and do that, and it wasn’t wrong. We want to help too. We rescued him so you could take this off, like you did for us,” he continued, looking up at Moire pleadingly. He had pulled back the stranger’s sleeve to show the same green plastic cuff the Created had worn.
Moire stared at it, momentarily stunned. What had George gotten into?
“Madele. Have you tried to remove it?”
Fortin turned away from the medical diagnostic equipment stiffly and raised her eyebrows when she saw the cuff. “What, another?” She bent with a grunt to reach a low cabinet and brought out the kit they’d stolen from the Toren site. She took out a slim metal rod tipped with tiny, jewel–like datachip inserts, and gently threaded it into the access hole near the cuff hinge.
The cuff popped open.
“Huh. Guess we have confirmation,” Moire said glumly. More problems. “OK, kids, where did you find this guy?”
“He was behind the thing with wheels,” Hideo said with enthusiasm. “He was hiding too!”
“What’s wrong with him?” Moire asked Madele.
The medic shook her head, looking puzzled. “No broken bones or internal bleeding, but the physical stress markers are what I’d expect for major trauma. Some traces of drugs, but I can’t tell what they are.” She scowled at the medical scanner, then said slowly, “and this thing says he’s sprained every major joint in his body.” She made a humphing noise. “I’ll set it for a longer scan.”
Madele took a disinfectant pad and started cleaning the cuts on the stranger’s face as Moire wondered what to do. If Toren had put a cuff on the guy…they’d taken it off, but from what Fortin was saying it sounded like he needed medical attention. They couldn’t just dump him out the hatch and leave.
There was a small duffel bag on the floor next to the exam table. “That bag is his?” Gren nodded.
Moire rummaged through the contents. There wasn’t much. A small case had a space for a medical injector, which was missing. It also had several injector cartridges.
Remembering some of Yolanda’s tricks for contraband, she patted the sides of the bag between her hands. The fabric of the bag was thicker than it should have been in one place. With a little searching, she found the seal for the opening. Reaching inside, she pulled out a handful of fabric. It was purple–blue. The color of a Fleet uniform.
“We’re in trouble,” she said grimly, and held it up.
Gren snatched it from her, staring at it and then at the stranger.
Moire stood up, a horrible sinking feeling in her gut. It couldn’t be. This man had long brown hair. She looked more closely. Madele had cleaned up some of the grime, and a cut near his hairline. Near where Madele had been cleaning the color of the man’s hair had changed from mottled brown to black. Moire took another disinfectant pad and rubbed hard. A long strand pulled loose, leaving short black hair behind.
It took a moment for her to see past the bruises and the dried blood. Then she took a sudden deep breath, her heart hammering.
“I know who he is.” Had Ennis been looking for her? What had happened to him? She didn’t think this had been part of any plan of his. More importantly, what was she going to do about it?
They all looked at her. “He’s one of us. Right?” George as
ked.
Moire shook her head. “He’s a Fleet officer. We need to get him off this ship.”
“Not the….” Fortin stopped. The horrified look in her eyes told Moire she had recognized Ennis too. Now if they could just get him away before Alan figured it out. “He’s in bad shape. I don’t know if he can even walk.”
“Can’t he stay? We just found him!” George said plaintively.
“You did a good job,” Moire assured him, and he cheered up a little. Hideo looked confused. “He, uh, doesn’t want to stay. In fact—”
A signal from the captain’s earring chimed in her ear, and Moire tapped a control on the bracelet to respond. “Madele. Do what you can for him. Keep the door to medical closed, and don’t mention him to anybody. Alan, you and the others go back to your room and stay there until I say you can come out, OK? Our guests just arrived.” Maybe she could get Ennis out somewhere safe when the contractors left. Why was everything happening at once?
The discussions were agonizingly slow. The contractors were conscientious and thorough, and she had to fight to pay close attention. She kept wondering about Ennis. There were a few difficult moments when she had to deflect their questions about location by invoking security. Their contract matrix had an option for confidentiality protection, so perhaps it wasn’t that uncommon.
After they left, Gren picked up the reader with the contract and looked it over again.
“Their estimate assumes a vacuum site,” he pointed out. “When they find out it’s atmosphere, and a planet, it will be cheaper just from the fittings alone. Building leakproof is expensive.”
“Yeah, but shipping to a gravity well isn’t going to be cheap, either.” Moire sighed. “We’re gonna have to salvage some more ships. We still need to figure out where we want them to build. We’ll need a lunar station eventually, even if it’s tiny.”
Gren got up from the table stiffly. “Got what, six weeks to figure it out? That’s not very long to wait. Usually contractors are booked up more.”
Moire frowned. “Yeah. Notice they weren’t asking any hard questions? Something going on there?”
“They must need the work.” Gren shrugged and left.
Moire picked up her datapad and the contract tab and left for the bridge. The contract should go in the safe, and she wanted to find a way to get Ennis off the ship. Without damaging or endangering him any further.
Kilberton was already there when she reached the bridge. “Got a job for you on station,” she said, and he looked up expectantly. “Need passage for one to the nearest Fleet station, the sooner the better. Don’t use the kiosk.”
He raised his eyebrows, but only said, “You are being cautious, Captain?”
“The traveler has already attracted the wrong kind of attention.” Somebody had it in for Ennis, and she wondered who. Why had he been by himself? How had he known where she would be?
“Ah. Our unexpected guest.” Kilberton inclined his head in acknowledgment. “I will be most careful.”
He left, and it occurred to Moire she should check with Madele. Maybe he had regained consciousness. If he was too sick to travel immediately they would have to make other plans, perhaps find a safe place for him on station.
“He’s still out,” reported Fortin on the comm. “The residual drug levels are going down, though. I can’t really tell how much damage he has until he wakes up.”
Moire grimaced. This was going to be awkward. Maybe they would have to keep him, just for a while. They could probably stay a few more days at Jessack. She could keep out of sight. Ennis wouldn’t have recognized the other kids, or Gren. He might remember Madele, though.
A comm signal broke in suddenly, with a priority code. “They’re all over the docking level,” Kilberton’s voice came in, breathing in short, quick gasps. “Guns. They’re all armed.”
“Who? Cops?” Nope, wrong century. “I mean, police?”
“I don’t know who they are. No uniforms.”
This was not good. “Where are you?”
“In the ship. They shot at me just as I was leaving the hatch.”
Sounds like a declaration of war to me. Moire changed the broadcast setting of the captain’s earring to shipwide. “Attention! Ship is under attack. Anybody on station?”
After a few confused moments it became clear all the crew were present, meaning one less thing to worry about. Then Kilberton came back on line. “Captain, I think they are trying to force the hatch.”
Moire spun the chair she was sitting in and launched herself at the docking controls. She slapped the undock sequence, yelling into the comm. “Kilberton, get back on deck!”
The undock wasn’t working. The indicators for all the mechanicals showed them still engaged. Moire swore. Somebody wasn’t playing nice. “Time for a bigger hammer,” she muttered, and reached for the trim engine controls. The mechanicals were all exterior, so when she pulled the ship free the damage wouldn’t endanger the people on the station.
Alarms flashed and bleeped; she ignored them. As soon as the ship separated she called up an external line to the station police. It took longer since they were no longer hooked up to the dock, but even when she got the connection the response was slow.
“What is it?”
Moire blinked, wondering if she’d gotten the wrong comm code. The voice sounded harassed and very unpolicelike.
“This is Ren Roberts, of Raven. Somebody’s trying to shoot up our dock hatch. Can we get some help down here?”
“Look, I’m just the desk clerk, OK? ” the voice said, ragged and losing control. “Everybody’s out already. I’ll tell 'em when someone calls in free but that’s all I can do.” He cut the connection, and Moire stared at the commlink blankly. What the hell?
She heard pounding feet in the corridor, and Kilberton burst in. “Station has gone insane,” she said in response to his inquiring look. “I don’t know what’s going on but we need to get away from it. Take us out a bit, so we don’t have to worry about traffic.”
He moved to the realspace controls and got to work. Moire went to the scanner and turned it on. What had gone wrong? Had Toren figured out she was on the ship, or had the kids managed to blow something up without telling her? No, the cops weren’t calling them. This was unofficial—organized crime, or Toren.
Another ship undocked from the station, and she watched with a growing coldness as it matched their trajectory. “We’ve got company,” she said grimly. “Change in plans. Get us to drive point as quick as you can.”
“Where?” Kilberton started entering data in the web console.
“Doesn’t matter! Anywhere but here!” She started running for the gun controls. They were up a ladder from the bridge, and she flipped the guns live before she had even landed in the chair. “Talk to me, Kilberton! Where are they?”
“Port aft high, closing fast. Santé! They are firing!” Now her instruments were on line, and she could see it was a deliberate warning shot. A tiny bleep sounded insistently in her ear—an outside comm signal. I don’t think they want to sell me life insurance. She took aim and fired, once, twice. The oncoming ship was quick, and dodged. They fired back, and Moire felt the ship shake.
“Are we there yet?” she yelled. “What got hit?”
“Almost ready,” Kilberton said faintly. “Cargo three has lost pressure. Close, close…got it!”
Moire felt the itchy ripple of the gravity transition and sagged against the gun chair with relief.
CHAPTER 7
OLD FAMILIAR ADVERSARIES
Reality faded in slowly, and in pieces. Ennis stared, puzzled, at the empty bunk on the opposite wall. He ought to be worried, but a heavy, warm tingling pervaded his body and made it hard for him to be concerned about anything. The pain was gone.
What had happened? He’d gotten away from Oberst and tried to get help. He frowned, struggling to remember. It was all confused and blurred in his mind. Had he found the security station?
The memory came
back, sharp and clear. Someone was already at the security station. He watched from hiding, trying to decide if he should risk contact. Then he had discovered he couldn’t move. His muscles simply wouldn’t obey him anymore. What had happened after that?
Had Toren found him? He struggled to look around the room, but he had no energy. He caught a glimpse of a display sheet on one wall showing an image of some trid star, and tacked to the underside of the bunk above him was a string of red and gold plasglas beads.
He sighed, feeling slightly relieved. He doubted this was Toren’s idea of prisoner accommodations.
A small sound of surprise, and then a young woman was leaning over him with open–eyed concern. She looked vaguely familiar. Before he could speak she had darted away, calling “Madele! Madele!”
He was so tired…Ennis drifted back into unconsciousness again. Voices filtered through the darkness.
His eyes are shut now.
That’s all right, Ash. He’ll wake up again.
There was something he had to tell them; something he had to do. What was it? He struggled to open his eyes. What was he forgetting?
There were two people in the room now. The pale, grey–eyed young woman he’d seen before, and a huge older woman who was looking at him with friendly concern.
“I’m Madele Fortin, ship’s medtech,” she said. “Are you feeling better?” Ennis managed a nod. “This is Ash.”
Now he remembered where he had seen her. “You…found me,” he grated.
Ash tilted her head, brow furrowed with thought. “George found you first. I was there, too, though.” She peered at him. “You slept a long time.”
He tried to ask how long, but it was too much effort. He was vaguely aware that Madele Fortin was doing something with a portable diagnostic, and then he felt the cool weight of a fluid pack being attached to one arm. Even though she moved his arm, it didn’t hurt.
They left, and he fell asleep again wondering where he was.
He slept a lot. Once, he woke to find Ash with the two others that had found him on the station, watching him with the same look as an eager new recruit. As soon as they saw his eyes open they began peppering him with questions. Why was he hurt? Did he have a name yet? Had he been lost like them? Why had he made his hair look funny?
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