Love and Intrigue Under the Seven Moons of Kordea

by Helena Puumala

  “This is a very special laboratory,” the Neotsarian said, apparently keen to converse with an attractive woman.

  “Oh?” Nance looked back at him and raised her eyebrows. “How so?”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” the fellow said loftily, drawing a tiny guffaw from Jeb.

  The Neotsarian threw a disapproving glance in his direction, and Nance smiled sweetly to redirect his attention to her.

  “Why do you say that?” she asked. “Is the science done here of such high level that a normal person couldn’t grasp it?”

  “Something like that. I’d try to explain it to you, but I don’t really get it myself. But it does have to do with something incredibly powerful; something that will turn our people into the most powerful force in the galaxy.”

  So this is the amarto-lab, Nance thought to herself. Now she just had to vamp Morri into giving them a tour of the place, and, if luck was with them, Jeb could gather enough information that Dian and Sarah would not have to go in blind, when they came to wreak the havoc they were on this world to do.

  *****

  Morri’s office was not much bigger than a cubby hole with a desk and a bank of screens which filled two of the walls. When the group of five arrived, the screens were all active, showing images of rooms, some of which had people working in them, of empty corridors, and of the outside gate. Morri pressed a switch on a panel on the corner of his desk, and they all went blank. Apparently the man Texi was to deal with was in charge of Security . And he did not care to give strangers the opportunity to study his surveillance capabilities.

  “You’re the person in charge of this, what—laboratory building?” Texi asked, right away, unwilling to give his guide a chance to spin things.

  “Yeah, at the moment, I am the highest ranking individual in this Facility, and, therefore, have the responsibility for it.”

  “You do store equipment on the premises? It was suggested to me at the Settlement that you do. Ship, flyer, and flit parts; that’s what I’m interested in.”

  “Of course we have spare parts for vehicles,” Morri answered. “We’d be idiots to not keep such things on hand. Sounds to me like you newcomers to the Settlement are idiots to need such things.”

  “When we plopped ourselves here, we had no idea that we’d be fixing other people’s vehicles,” Texi responded, keeping his testiness to the minimum possible.

  Morri shrugged.

  “You could have refused,” he said.

  “We’re not in the habit of refusing to help people. Especially when they have invited us to live among them, and to share their land, food, and housing. Are you saying that you people would?”

  “The way we see it, everyone in the universe has his place, and he’s to make the best of it, without making demands on those who are superior to him. So, no whining, or begging—and that goes for outsiders, like yourself, too.”

  “I’m not here to beg or whine.” Texi could hear for himself that his voice had grown sharper. Well, that was fine by him. “I’m here to make a deal.”

  “So you say. But I don’t see you carrying anything, except that piece of paper in your pocket, which must be the list that Rolf and Sevi nattered about.”

  “Can your computer read these discs?”

  Texi pulled the button which contained Jaime’s schematics from his inner pocket, and displayed it on his palm. Jaime had told him that the disc was of a very common type; it would have been strange if The Organization’s equipment could not handle it.

  “Yeah. Unless it’s got some kind of security encryption on it.”

  Morri was eyeing the disc curiously.

  “Shouldn’t have. I was told that all that sort of stuff had been stripped from the information before this copy was made.”

  Morri grasped the button, and fed it into a side port of the sleek machine on his desk. He pressed a couple of keys, and one of the wall screens came alive. The program Jaime had created began to run: first came a picture of three frighteningly efficient-looking battle ships, each one slightly different from the others, then the plans for the same, and after that detailed specs with what looked to Texi like confusing diagrams, filled the screen. All three Neotsarians stood staring at the images as they rolled by.

  “Where did you get this?” Morri demanded of Texi.

  He shrugged.

  “It was given to me for trading for the parts we need. I was told that it was easily worth what we want, and then some.”

  “Who gave it to you?” Morri demanded.

  “One of our group. A woman handed it to me, and said that it was what we had to trade for the equipment.” He was telling the truth.

  Morri sneered at him.

  “A woman handed it to you,” he snarled. “And where did this woman get it from?”

  Texi shrugged again.

  “You expect me to know everything, do you? Why would I?”

  “Somebody in the Settlement must have realized that you would get questioned about something like this,” Morri said, his face darkening. “Do you take me for an idiot?”

  Jeb spoke up.

  “What is it?” he asked, peering at the screen as if he did not know what he was looking at.

  “Schematics for Confederation battle cruisers. A new type, obviously, in three different variations. Gol-darn you religious people; talk about being out of touch! Do you realize what the Confederation law enforcers will do to you if they find out that you’ve stolen these things and are peddling them to us? For spare parts for your own machines, for crying out loud! You’re a bunch of sad idiots!”

  “Do these insults you’re directing at us mean that you’ll trade us the parts we need, for that disc?” Texi asked.

  Morri gave his body a shake.

  “Sure, why not? When the Confederation Armed Forces discover that we, the Neotsarians, know about their latest battleship models, they’re not going to come after me. They’ll go after whoever stole these schematics for you, and maybe they’ll follow the trail to your sect. Your funeral, not mine.”

  “Are you saying that we should take the disc back?” Nance asked, putting just the right amount of puzzlement into her tone.

  Morri’s grin was almost feral.

  “No, cutie. It’s too late for that. I’ll keep it, and give you people the equipment you want. Can I see that list, whatever your name is?”

  Texi handed him the piece of paper he had prepared.

  “I marked the items we need most urgently; we’ll take them with us in the flit,” he said. “The rest, we’ll come for them in a flyer, now that we know that you’ll give them to us. You can keep the list; I’ve got a copy. I’ll check the items against the copy, when we receive them.”

  “Since what we’re trading for the parts is so valuable, could you throw in a guided tour of this Facility for us, too?” asked Nance. “I doubt that Texi’s really interested, but I’d like to look around, since I’ve never seen a laboratory like this before. And Jeb is always keen on everything new, though you wouldn’t think so, would you, to look at him?”

  She gifted Morri with a coy smile, and gave her long lashes a flutter. The gesture had the desired effect; Morri looked charmed.

  “It would be hard to say no to such a pretty girl,” he said, pleasantly enough, “and yes, I’d have to admit that you three have bought yourself a tour. What was your name again?”

  “Nance,” Nance replied. “Will you come along, Texi, or are you going to go with whoever is fetching the parts that we’re taking now?”

  “I’m really more interested in getting our vehicles into shape, than in wandering around some laboratory,” Texi replied with a shrug. “So, if your guide agrees to behave in a gentlemanly fashion towards you, I won’t bother tagging along. But you and Jeb, go ahead, gaze upon the wonders of this place to your heart’s content.”

  “Okay then,” Morri said. “My name is Morri, by the way, although, I suppose you already heard it from Rolf or Sevi.

  “Lenni, go wit
h Texi to Storage. Here, take his list with you. Carne, Security’s in your hands until I return.

  “I’ll give Nance and Jeb the grand tour, and see them to the gate afterwards, where we’ll meet with Texi and Lenni.

  “Come on. Let’s go.”

  *****

  “Why are you bringing outsiders in here?” the man behind the desk asked.

  Morri, Nance and Jeb had entered a large room filled with long laboratory counters covered with equipment which was destined to remain a mystery to Nance.

  “Ooh,” she exclaimed, looking around. “Is this your main laboratory? It looks fascinating, though, I must admit I don’t understand anything about laboratories! Scientific stuff, is it?”

  “Oh, don’t worry about these hicks, Les,” Morri said to the man at the desk. “They’re religious nuts from the Settlement. But I agreed to show the pretty woman around the Facility; these people sort of earned the tour.”

  “That sounds like friggin’ crap,” Les objected sourly.

  “Well, I outrank you, Les, so just put a cork in it,” Morri said loftily.

  Turning to Nance he added: “Yeah, it is scientific stuff. Don’t worry your pretty head about it.”

  Les glared at Morri, and Jeb’s sharp eyes noted that he pressed a button on a panel on his desk, next to the computer. His implants sensed the electronic feed that was the result; Les was most likely sending the images from the cameras that were monitoring the laboratory somewhere other than the bank of screens in Morri’s little office. There would have been no need to send them there, since they were going there automatically.

  He touched Nance’s arm in the warning sign that they had agreed to, earlier in the flit. It was the one that asked her to wrap things up reasonably quickly, but not to panic, yet.

  Nance was checking out the other people in the lab. There were five, four of them black-haired like she herself was, while one of the three men looked like an academic type, much like Jaime, only shorter and stockier. One of the other two men was middle-aged, while the last one did not look much older than she herself was—maybe in his mid-twenties. The women varied more in age: the older one was of the vintage of an aged Witch, hard to pin down exactly, which Nance had heard was true of the Circle Witches as they grew older. Unless you were amarto-sensitive yourself.... The younger one was still a slip of a girl, in her teens, a sullen teen at that.

  Nance’s neck hairs were shuddering into a standing position. Sarah and Dian had told her what to look for, and she was looking at it, so precisely that it frightened her! The older woman must be the renegade Witch Anya, the teen the girl who had been seduced from Trahea, and had been mentally screaming for months afterwards! No wonder she looked unhappy! What had these Neotsarians put her through? At least she was still alive, looking reasonably healthy! The black-haired men must be Anya’s son and grandson, Sarah’s father and brother! And the remaining, brown-haired man had to be a captured brain, someone like Jaime, forced to use his intellect for The Organization!

  Nance felt a sharp pinch on the arm which Jeb had brushed earlier. She glanced at Les; he was talking into a detached mike he had picked up. It was time to make tracks, but she had to seem very calm, and nonchalant while doing so, that was a certainty.

  Accordingly, she took one more look around her, then made a face.

  “Oh, Morri, I don’t understand anything about this place; too scientific for me! And I doubt that your underling at the desk, that Les, will let me talk to any of these people! We might as well go. Texi’s probably finished with his equipment retrieval and waiting for us at the gate, anyway! And they’ll be waiting for us at the Settlement, wondering where the heck we’ve got to!”

  “You’ve got it right, cutie,” Morri agreed. “I think Les, the officious jerk that he is, is just reporting my ill behaviour to someone who outranks me. Let’s go.”

  He gave Les an angry glare, and led his guests back out the door. Nance sighed with relief as they started walking down the hallway at a quick pace. The place had begun to creep her out, big time.

  *****

  Inside the laboratory, Peter walked over to Anya for a very low-voiced chat. Les was still conversing with someone through his absurd mike and earbud combination, so he took the chance. The security microphones did not differentiate very low talk from the ambient noises without some serious filtering by the listener; that he had learned in his years as a prisoner of the Neotsarians. With the higher level personnel gone, whoever was monitoring the lab would not be filtering, he was sure.

  “This visit must have been in response to our SOS,” he murmured. “The fellow accompanying the attractive woman struck me as very interesting, just because he was so nondescript.”

  “The Circles must have been aroused,” Anya responded in just as low a voice. “Someone must have studied the detectors for the Witches to have foiled the Lina-trap, and someone else must have figured out where this installation is. My former colleagues must have decided that it is wise to work with the Terrans who are trying to keep these Neotsarians bottled up.

  “That woman, by the way, is completely amarto-insensitive. I probed just enough to make certain. She’s a Kordean, but not sensitive in the least.”

  “Good. She’s in less danger that way.”

  “But of no use to us, either. I was hoping for someone, like your Sarah, who has it in her to blast through a lot of defences—with my help, of course.”

  “I want Sarah to stay safe,” Peter protested. “She’s my little girl, don’t forget. Your grandchild. I didn’t spend a dozen years refusing to even think about her, for nothing.”

  “They outed her in the end, anyway,” Anya said.

  “Yes. But by the time they did, she had learned to defend herself—at least a little.”

  “And had gained herself some defenders,” Anya agreed.

  *****

  “That was a hair-raising adventure,” was the first thing Nance said in the Hera’s Hope’s lounge, where everyone who could possibly make it, had gathered to listen to the returning trio’s report.

  They had headed there immediately, once the flit was on the ground at the Settlement Space Port; Texi did not even bother to remove the stuff he had so assiduously obtained, from the flit; much less interested in the parts than in hugging his shivering wife.

  “How so?” Jillian asked.

  It was late, and Roland had thought that it was better if he and Elli were behaving normally—in so far as the Settlement Elders were concerned. In their absence Jillian had taken on the role of “The Chief Agent”, freeing Sarah from feeling like she had to take charge.

  “Nance did a fantastic job,” Jeb threw in, before Nance had a chance to respond to Jillian’s question. “She had that Morri eating out of her hand.”

  “I think that Jaime’s sleight-of-hand battle cruiser specs helped,” Nance laughed, a little nervously. “Morri obviously believes that he has something pretty fantastic to hand over to his bosses when they return.”

  Jaime, sitting beside Dian as was his habit these days, grinned broadly.

  “Glad to hear that the deception worked. Did he put you people through the wringer before he fell for it?”

  “Nah.” This was Texi. “He tossed a few insults at me, that was about it. Apparently it’s useful to be considered a cultish know-nothing. I got the feeling that he figured that he’d really landed a plum, and since we behaved the way he expected us to behave, he couldn’t be bothered to dig any deeper.”

  “Besides, he was looking at a pretty woman who was asking him to give her a tour of the place, with only the invisible man coming along to object to his strutting,” added Jeb.

  There was laughter all around.

  “You sure you didn’t take lessons from Coryn in how to turn good looks into a tool of espionage?” Jillian asked Nance.

  “Nah. Learned it on the streets of Trahea. And being of the servant class, I always knew better than to let it go to my head.” Now Nance too was laughing, her tensi
on apparently eased somewhat.

  “But what was it that freaked you out?” Sarah asked. She knew that she would have to brave the place—assuming that it was what they were supposing that it was.

  “The laboratory,” Nance replied, sighing. “It sure as hell looked like we’ve zeroed in on the right place. Those people that were there—not the Les guy, but the others—wouldn’t you say, Jeb, that four of the five fit the description of what we were to look for? And the fifth reminded me of you, Jaime—he’ll be the one to figure out your deception, if anyone in the place does.”

  “She’s right on,” agreed Jeb. “And the fellow in charge of the lab, the Les guy, he was suspicious as anything of us. He was communicating with his bosses off-planet; I’m one hundred percent sure of that. We’ll have to act fast.”

  “Tomorrow,” said Jillian. “I don’t care what Roland thinks. We have to go in tomorrow. Before their ships can get back, if that Les character succeeded in recalling them.

  “When did you tell them that we’d come for the rest of the parts, Texi?”

  “I didn’t give a definite day or time,” Texi replied. “I told the guy who took me to their storage that we’d be back for the rest of the things as soon as we could get there, but that I’d have to see who would be available to help with the heavy lifting.”

  “Excellent.” Jillian grinned at him. “I love it when the people around me can think on their feet.”

  “There’s going to have to be a lot of thinking on one’s feet, tomorrow,” Joe said. “Even if we get Jeb and Nance to describe the place in detail.”

  “I can download what my hidden cam recorded while we did our tour,” said Jeb. “The ship’s computer is the place to dump it, I suppose?”

  “Let me give you a hand with that mechanical beast, Jeb,” Jaime offered getting up. “It’ll be good to have something to do. I don’t know how much sleep anyone’s going to get tonight.”

  “Nobody’s going to get any until we’ve formulated a plan of attack,” said Jillian. “And for that we’ll have to have Sarah and Dian take a look at the images Jeb has of the laboratory. And you’ll have to help them Jaime, to figure out what it is, and where, that they have to take out.”