“Could we compromise?” Thelma asked. “I’ll rest on the sofa in the lounge.”
Lon deemed that acceptable, although he had a robot accompany her down the passage and into the lounge, just in case she needed support.
She did feel a little wobbly; not physically off-balance, but adjusting to a new view of the universe and her place in it.
Last night, Corporal Naomi Milligan had fought Thelma as a favor to her brother Joe. Thelma knew that. It had been a way of giving Thelma a chance to prove herself and establish herself in the eyes of the Star Marines and Tornado mercenaries as something more than Max’s deputy. Fortunately, Thelma hadn’t disgraced herself in the fight.
But what Naomi had said after the fight counted for even more, because it had been advice Thelma had earned; not kindness given on her brother’s account.
I’m not in the academy any more.
She’d spent so many years as a student, and that time had shaped her view of herself. She was setting up as an information broker, but she’d been treating it as a student exercise, as if she had to prove herself rather than simply be a player in frontier games. As if someone would grade her on her efforts! She’d been thinking as a dudette. She’d been giving people power over her by affording them expert status in her mind—as Naomi said, she’d been trying to learn from them when she should have been trusting her own skills and instincts, and acting on them.
It hadn’t been her academy lessons that had kept her in the ring with Naomi for seven minutes. It had been Harry’s training. She should have trusted it, and not tried to turn her fight with Naomi into a learning opportunity. Although…
Harry let her finish her bowl of cereal and a mug of hot tea before he sat down in his recliner, switched on the viewscreen, and went through the video of her fight with her, critiquing every movement.
By the end of his critique session, she’d reached an important conclusion. If she compared herself to him or the other two intense personalities on the Lonesome, then she’d never “graduate” in her own mind. Max and Harry would always be able to kick her butt. Lon would always know more about the operation of spaceships and of the Saloon Sector than her. But none of that mattered unless she let it.
“Is your knee better?” Lon asked. “You stretched it and you’re smiling.”
She ran her hands through her hair, which she hadn’t bothered to tie back. “My knee is better, thank you. And thank you, Harry, for making me a better fighter.”
“And you’re smiling like a Cheshire leopard because…?” Harry drawled, regarding her with a crooked smile of his own.
“I have a puzzle to solve. Why did Agent Aubree Tennyson want Max to know that Senator Gua was arriving in the Saloon Sector on a secret Galactic Justice spaceship?”
Chapter 12
The asteroid miners hosted an open bar to celebrate the Lonesome’s arrival at Thelma and Max’s next port of call. The party was unashamedly for Thelma, not Max, who got abandoned in a corner, left to talk to the site manager and production foreman while Thelma flirted judiciously with a two-deep circle of mostly men. When the miners discovered that she could listen intelligently to their mining stories and appreciate the finer details of upgrades to an ore churn, three of them asked her to marry them.
“Only for tonight,” one of them added honestly.
Thelma choked on her Delightful Deputy cocktail. Still, she was a Rock Sector girl who’d kept up with her family’s asteroid mining ventures, and she enjoyed the atmosphere and the sense of being accepted. Out in the Saloon Sector, this was a rougher version of the life that she’d chosen to leave behind.
At his corner table, Max stood.
Breathing in the once familiar scent of dust and sweat with an overlay of pine freshener that was characteristic of a new air scrubber filter, Thelma didn’t regret her decision to join the Galactic Justice service. A miner’s life wouldn’t have been enough for her. But she could mourn the loss of socializing with blunt-speaking miners. Life was simpler, though not easier, when you chewed rock for a living.
The miners began shuffling sideways, opening a path for Max to her. He didn’t take it, but strode purposefully to the door.
Thelma obeyed the silent summons. She swallowed the last of the cocktail she’d been nursing, thanked her hosts, and walked with Max back through the colony dome and the lock tunnel to the Lonesome.
“Lucky bastard,” one of the miners said as they exited.
Max didn’t react.
Thelma was glad that she didn’t blush, either, at the innuendo. Despite everything she said and did, people insisted on assuming that she and Max were sexually involved. That was how gossip worked.
The truth was, since Tornado, she and Max hadn’t spoken about anything outside of work, and “please, pass the salt” style conversation at dinner. She guessed from Max’s frowns in her direction, and an outright question from Lon if something was wrong with her, that her silence confused her shipmates. But silence seemed her best option. She was trying to define the professional boundaries of her relationship with Max and with the two AIs.
Entering the Lonesome, she returned her comms unit to its normal settings. She’d had it locked to only share emergency alerts while she was at the miners’ party. Immediately a two note chime sounded, signaling that she had a message from someone in her family.
Joe’s name popped up. He’d sent a quick text message with a video recording attached. The message read, “Have Max watch, too.”
“Max?”
He’d strode off in the direction of his cabin, while she’d slowed down to read the message. He paused and looked back.
She waved her comms unit at him. “I have a video from Joe. He says you’ll want to watch it, too.” As he walked back to her, she added. “Lon, if I send you the file, can you play it on the viewscreen in the lounge, please?” Which meant that Lon and Harry, if he was around, could watch it as well.
Harry was already in the lounge, relaxing in his recliner.
Thelma unlaced her boots and curled up on the sofa. To her surprise, Max sat beside her. She was a tiny bit tipsy, just enough to acknowledge to herself that she’d like to slide closer to him.
Joe’s video started. Her brother and his wife, Rachel, faced the camera together. “We’re pregnant!”
Thelma jumped up, clapping. “Congratulations!” They couldn’t hear her, but over two years ago, Rachel had confided how much they wanted children. Thelma was ecstatic for them.
“Son of a gun,” Max exclaimed. “Way to go, man.”
Joe and Rachel rambled on about dates and possible names and simply shared their happiness.
“We have to send them a congratulations message.” Thelma was smiling so widely her mouth hurt.
Then Joe wound up the video. “Life with the right person is the space-ace. You two need to try it.”
Rachel slapped his arm in silent, wifely chastisement.
Comprehension of what her brother meant shocked Thelma into awkward stillness.
“Bye. Love you, sis. See ya, man.” The video ended.
Thelma stared at the blank screen. Max remained on the sofa behind her. If she turned around, she’d have to see his face and read his expression.
Her high-on-happiness, idiotic, meddlesome brother had suggested that she and Max become romantically involved. That was the point of his final message. She could handle strangers gossiping about her and her mysterious, gorgeous boss, but not her brother’s heavy-handed match-making.
Ignore, ignore, ignore. Pretend you don’t understand. Of course, her standing here like a dummy wasn’t exactly faking nonchalance.
She took a deep breath, putting a smile back on her face, and spun to face Max. “Should we record our congratulations together—” Oops! “Now?”
He showed no expression at all, but his eyes searched hers before he nodded. “I’m going to vote for the name Tuesday for Joe’s favorite day of the week.”
“Don’t you dare!” She was so tha
nkful for his teasing. They could edge away from Joe’s busybody bossiness and never speak of it. “Friday is a much better day.”
He grinned.
Her heart gave an odd jolt. Joe and Rachel had looked so happy together. “Lon, can we record the message in here?”
“Any time you’re ready.”
Thelma leaned back in the comfortable armchair in her cabin and gazed idly at the space window newly installed on the opposite wall. It showed a scene of waves lapping on a white sandy beach and a seagull paddling near the waterline. The sight should have calmed her, but her brain refused to chill.
There were secrets aboard the Lonesome: Lon’s presence embedded in it, Harry’s private quarters, the mysterious upper deck (or decks), and Max’s personal history that had enabled him to end up with such an expensive spaceship, two AI friends, and a completely uninformative entry in the Galactic Justice database.
And Thelma had no right to those secrets. Nor did she have any secrets of her own that she could trade for them. Her relationship with Max, Harry and Lon was already unbalanced enough. She couldn’t force them to confide in her.
Which left her with only one avenue to explore to solve the puzzle of why Aubree Tennyson had wanted Max to know, off the record, of Senator Gua’s imminent arrival in the Saloon Sector. If Max wouldn’t answer the question—and Thelma had asked, and his response had been a shrug and “professional courtesy”—then she had to approach the problem from a different angle and discover the purpose of the senator’s visit.
It would be beyond foolish to try and find the answer in the Galactic Justice database. Not only would the senator’s plans be classified above Thelma’s security level, but the mere act of searching the database would raise flags. The very last thing Thelma wanted was for Galactic Justice to pay attention to her in her exile.
She grabbed her comms unit and trawled the media sites.
The Federation generated a lot of media. Finding the gems amid the babble, and the connections that turned those gems into something useful, was the key. There was a whole division in Galactic Justice that did just that. Thelma had a head start on her search because she knew what she was looking for and that it would be in the public domain.
In fact, it was headline news.
Senator Gua, along with the other six serving members of the Senate Worlds Development Committee, was officially en route to the remote Boldire Sector, primarily inhabited by the Federation’s newest member species, the Bunyaphi.
Diplomacy had been Thelma’s goal throughout her years at the Galactic Justice academy. In particular, she’d been fascinated by the challenges of cross-species negotiation. The Federation might be primarily human, but other sentient species played vital roles.
The Bunyaphi had yet to find theirs.
They were a monotreme, humanoid people. They laid eggs, but nursed their babies. They also had wings. For one of the physically smallest sentient species, they were remarkably belligerent. They’d had to argue for admittance to the Federation for three centuries after Federation surveyors first made contact with them in the Boldire. Their entrance applications kept getting torpedoed by their internal wars. The Bunyaphi had legendary feuds. Their clan system provided an enviable social welfare net, but it also bolstered their aggressive attacks on one another.
Finally, just over a century ago, the Bunyaphi had been admitted into the Federation. They didn’t officially celebrate by starting a three-way, all-in clan war, but it seemed that way to exhausted, cynical outsiders. That war had limped on for a century, with the latest flare up occurring a year ago.
The Senate Worlds Development Committee was scheduled to spend the next six months on active duty analyzing, negotiating and, if things succeeded beyond everyone’s wildest dreams, bringing peace to the Boldire Sector.
The sector took even longer to reach than the Saloon Sector thanks to a paucity of safe wormholes to cut down on travel time. The committee would be two months traveling before they reached the Boldire Sector, two months negotiating, then two months travelling back so that they could be on Alpha Hub for the start of the new parliamentary year.
Thelma sat in her office on the Lonesome and called up a star map of the Saloon Sector. Off beyond Braw, in Sheriff Cayor’s territory, there was a wormhole that no one used. It was marked perilous. But perilous didn't mean non-survivable. Drones had made it through. They had to have because the other end of the wormhole was known. It disgorged into the Boldire Sector.
Travelling aboard a Galactic Justice cruiser, Senator Gua, and presumably the other Senate Committee members and their staff, could reach the Saloon Sector in under four weeks. That gave them a month of unaccounted for time within the sector before they jumped the perilous wormhole to the Boldire Sector.
An ordinary spaceship couldn’t risk a perilous wormhole, but it was open knowledge that the Navy used them, and if the Navy had those sort of re-enforced spaceships, then Galactic Justice would, too.
Thelma tapped a finger on the star map where it showed the wormhole. Senator Gua’s business could be anywhere in the sector.
The question was, how could the Senate Worlds Development Committee have a role to play in the Saloon Sector? The committee’s purpose was to guide and aid the development of member species’ planets of origin so that all enjoyed a Federation level of prosperity. In the case of the Bunyaphi, that meant ending their civil war and building toward a secure future. Planets of origin were defined as those planets a species occupied at the time they joined the Federation.
The Saloon Sector had no planets of origin. The member settlements that existed, ranging from asteroid mining stations to wholly colonized planets such as Mistral and Sumatra, were composed of migrants and their descendants.
Thelma called up the rules under which the committee had been established a millennium ago. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same. The language was convoluted. She wasn’t an executive lawyer, but she grasped the gist of the rules laid out in pettifogging legal language and matched it against her hazy memory of the committee’s history.
She leaned back in her chair, staring at nothing.
The Senate Worlds Development Committee had been renamed after intensive lobbying by newer member species roughly three centuries following its inception. Originally, it had been called the Senate Committee for Subsidiary Worlds and Foreign Affairs.
Foreign Affairs.
The Federation monitored only one species, that Thelma knew about it, who were approaching space travel, the point at which the Federation would introduce itself to those sentients and invite them to begin the long process of joining the union. But there were no species currently capable of space travel who hadn’t already been brought into the Federation. As a result, there was no cause for the “foreign affairs” aspect of the Senate Worlds Development Committee’s to be invoked.
Unless there was an undeclared, unfederated sentient species in the Saloon Sector.
Thelma dismissed the tree-people on Forest as soon as she thought of them. Their very biology precluded the technological ability to achieve space travel. Simply put, they lacked the hands, or equivalent appendages, necessary to build things.
Could there be other aliens lurking in the Saloon Sector? Perhaps in the Badstars?
She went back to the star map. It ended at the Badstars, but there were survey maps that went further. She recalled Lon showing her one weeks ago.
She found it and whistled under her breath.
A wormhole existed on the far side of the Badstars. Since the Sheriff’s Department dealt with mining claim jumpers and similar disputes, she had access to the Survey database. Consulting it regarding the wormhole marked “closed” on the star map revealed that for twenty years surveyors had sent probes into it, and all were lost. Since none of the probes survived to return, no one knew where the wormhole led.
What if it led to an alien civilization, aliens who’d been destroying the Federation probes and hadn’t been curious e
nough about the human-dominated civilization to make contact, until now?
It sounded like a plot from a science fiction novel.
That didn’t mean it couldn’t be true.
Thelma connected to her comms unit. On the journey out to the Saloon Sector, she’d set up her own database and automated programs to populate it with data, one of the fields within it being space myths. The legend of the Eldorado Cache was far from the only story that lonely, bored spacers told one another.
An ever-popular space myth was that the rocks on the planet Moonshine were psy-infused and could stimulate either telepathy or clairvoyance. Some people claimed that the rocks’ properties filtered into the ethanol oceans of the planet, and so, into the alcohol suctioned from it in limited quantities and under strict Customs supervision.
Thelma had disregarded those stories. She didn’t believe in extrasensory perception. She’d also disregarded the space myths that mentioned grubs.
Now, she found the links to reports of those stories in her database and read or watched them.
Max interrupted.
She blinked at the knock on her office door. It was open. Given that Lon monitored everything she did in the office, it wasn’t as if shutting the door and pretending she had privacy made any sense.
Max’s hands were in his pockets, but despite the studied casualness of his posture, tension held his shoulders rigid. “Lon says you’ve been joining dots with impressive speed.”
Unconsciously, she glanced back at the grubs story on her screen. She closed it. “Yes?”
He took his hands out of his pockets. “We need to talk.”
“Damn,” she said softly as she followed him into his office. The setting spoke for itself. This was a boss-to-subordinate discussion.
Chapter 13
Max sat at his desk in the brown and blue office. Everything was clean and in its place, including the two humans.
Thelma took “her” chair, the second chair pulled up to the long table. She put her comms unit on the desk.
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