“Thelma, what are you planning?” His eyes narrowed and his expression was Star Marine fierce.
She reminded herself that he didn’t intimidate her. “It’s good. It’ll work. Harry, you have to stay clear, too. Senator Gua mustn’t see you. But can you send me your best photo of me with the two Kampia? Thanks.” She closed the door to the bridge in their faces. “Lon, it’s just you and me, and you need to pretend you’re not here.”
“Senator Gua can do a lot of damage, and she’ll be feeling thwarted,” Lon warned.
“Or worse.” Thelma tapped her fingers impatiently against the edge of the desk. “The Kampia surveyors fooled her. Add in their abrupt departure and she’s politically exposed. The expense of naval exercises plus the behind the scenes maneuverings of Galactic Justice mean this was a risky gamble. But I’m going to pull a rabbit out of the hat for her. It’s all about the timing. We have to apply pressure now.”
“Your call,” Lon conceded. “Connecting in three, two, one. Live.”
With the Senate Worlds Development Committee present in the Saloon Sector, and with transmissions to its spaceship likely boosted by one of the navy’s portable relay stations, communication lagged by only a few seconds.
The Senator’s image appeared onscreen. She was an attractive woman with sharp features, her hair cut in a sleek, angled black bob, and her suit probably costing the equivalent of a shuttle. That might have been a slight exaggeration, but her image did scream wealth and power.
And I’m going to blackmail her.
“Senator Gua, you don’t know me, but I—”
“You are Deputy Thelma Bach.” Vicious scorn laded the title “deputy”. “The nonentity who ruined my son’s time at the Galactic Justice academy.”
Out of sight of the camera, beneath the desk, Thelma pinched the soft skin at the base of her left thumb. The pain cleared her mind of the shock that Senator Gua recognized her and of the temptation to respond to the ridiculous claim that Thelma had ruined anything for Rudy Gua. If he’d wanted to fulfill his mother’s ambitions for him and be valedictorian, he should have worked harder.
Thelma kept to the script she’d sketched in her mind. “I am also the woman who just met with two Kampia and who can rescue you from the embarrassment of the con they ran on you.”
“You’re at the refueling station near Boreas.”
Thelma had expected that those who’d witnessed Tangles-in-Dreams’ and Chases Auroras’ appearance at the Deadstar Diner and their departure with her and Max would have shared the news with the galaxy. “Near there,” was all she said, and that in as neutral a tone as she could manage.
Evidently her tone, aimed at letting Senator Gua know that this deputy wouldn’t be pushed around or over-awed, got through.
The senator’s mouth compressed. “Put me through to Sheriff Smith,” she demanded.
“Sheriff Smith is a limited man.” Thelma chose her words carefully, and just as carefully kept all emotion from her face and voice. Lon would be sharing the communication live with Max and Harry, but she couldn’t allow herself to worry that they might misunderstand her. She hadn’t had a chance to brief them. In the game she was playing, timing was critical. If she granted Senator Gua even an hour’s grace in which to consider and decide her options, this opportunity vanished.
Thelma had to dangle some bait and coax the senator into believing that Thelma could be manipulated in predictable ways. “The sheriff is content with his place in the Saloon Sector.”
The tightness at the corners of Senator Gua’s mouth relaxed a fraction. “Is exile not agreeing with you, deputy?”
“I want to bargain with you,” Thelma said, inwardly exulting that the senator had taken the misdirect. If she thought she had Thelma’s motivation nailed, Senator Gua wouldn’t go looking for other considerations. For her political survival she needed to take the deal Thelma was offering and run with it.
Now it was up to Thelma to make the trade believable. She stated her terms. “I require the cancellation of my seven year contract with Galactic Justice.”
Senator Gua’s arched eyebrows rose in an expression of confusion; possibly genuine, possibly not. “I thought you’d want a transfer to somewhere more interesting. Alpha Hub, perhaps, such as Rudy enjoys? But then, he is among his peers. Your inadequacies would be obvious.”
She was still trying to rub Thelma’s nose in the supposed shame of her out-worlder status.
“A transfer anywhere would still leave me working for Galactic Justice, and therefore, potentially subject to your whims. You do seem to be able to get them to do your bidding.”
Senator Gua’s lips pursed in a moue of self-congratulation.
Thelma hardened her tone. “I want out.”
“What is your freedom worth to you?”
Thelma shook her head. “Whether I’m stuck here working for Galactic Justice or not means little to you beyond, apparently, some petty revenge for Rudy’s second place status.”
“My son is not second to anyone.”
Thelma didn’t debate the issue. She merely wanted Senator Gua rattled, and Rudy’s failure to make valedictorian appeared to be one of the few things to disturb the woman. “Actually, Rudy and I being classmates supports the story I can give you.”
“I’m not interested in stories.”
“How about the one in which I’m your secret envoy, inserted into the Saloon Sector ahead of your official meeting with the Kampia to act as a back-up plan in case the Kampia were overwhelmed by the impressive war games of the Federation navy and wanted to share some information in a quieter context?”
Senator Gua considered the idea. “It would depend on what information they shared with you.”
Sweat prickled along Thelma’s spine in sheer relief. She’d hooked her politician. Now to reel the woman in. “The Kampia encoded a security sequence to open the wormhole to their sector of space. They’re not willing to risk organic life traveling through the wormhole and into their galaxy, but they are willing to host a visit from an AI. An artificial intelligence would be capable of accessing the security sequence the Kampia left with me.”
Spin, spin, spin. Not so much lying, Thelma told herself. As presenting things in a different light. “Sheriff Smith’s interest in the Kampia begins and ends with keeping the peace in his frontier territory.”
“He’d have passed on the Kampia’s message as part of his duties, wouldn’t he?” Senator Gua deduced sharply.
“Except that the Kampia didn’t leave the invitation—and the sequence—with him.” All true. Tangles-in-Dreams and Chasing-Auroras had left the sequence with Harry and Lon, not Max or Thelma.
Thelma borrowed some of the senator’s own arrogance. “I am the Galactic Justice graduate, here. I had the xenodiplomacy training to converse with the Kampia. Sheriff Smith merely wanted them gone.”
“Ignorant out-world male,” Senator Gua muttered.
Thelma could have cheered to hear the senator dismissing Max. Instead, she maintained her focus. Part of this con was ensuring that Senator Gua believed Thelma to be motivated by self-interest. “Do we have a deal? Or I can go direct to the media, sell my story to them and become a hero.”
Lon guessed where she was headed. The screen adjacent to the one showing Senator Gua suddenly displayed a photo of Thelma between Tangles-in-Dreams and Chases-Auroras. By the angle, Harry had taken it. The image was nova-effective. The media would love it. There she stood, dressed up for her date in red high heels, tight red skirt, lacy blouse and crimson mouth, while the two blue and gray Kampia loomed either side of her. Sex and aliens. Click-bait heaven.
Thelma sent the image to the senator.
Senator Gua swore. Who would have thought such a ladylike personage knew gutter curses?
“Good photo, isn’t it?” Thelma asked. “I could probably buy my way out of my Galactic Justice contract for what the media would pay me for this story.”
“You can’t,” Senator Gua snapped. “You serve G
alactic Justice. We own you. The story, the sequence, all of it is ours.”
Thelma tilted her head, examining her crimson fingernails. “Interesting fact about working in the Saloon Sector. Out here, deputies are permitted a second job, and as you can see from my appearance in the photo, I was off-duty when I was talking with the Kampia.”
“Argue that with our lawyers,” the senator snarled.
Thelma smiled. “That’ll make a great addition to the story. ‘Galactic Justice attempts to silence young deputy’. Do you think I could push it further? Present it as a continuation of your attempt to punish me for doing better than Rudy?” She let the implications of her threat settle in. Mommy smoothing Rudy’s path could well end his political career before it started.
“Or, Senator Gua, you can simply guarantee me my freedom from serving Galactic Justice.”
Senator Gua capitulated. “…and photos of you with the two Kampia don’t surface, ever.”
“You keep your end of the deal and I’ll keep mine.” Thelma’s promise was a threat.
Senator Gua knew that. “Your contract with Galactic Justice will be marked completed due to exceptional service once the AI I send to you receives the sequence to the wormhole. If the sequence doesn’t work, you’ll be in for hellfire trouble.”
“It’ll work. I won’t say it was a pleasure doing business with you, Senator. But I am pleased that you and Galactic Justice will be out of my life.”
Senator Gua ended their communication.
Thelma blinked at the blank screen, then slumped in the navigator’s chair.
The door to the bridge opened and Max strode in.
She spun the chair to face him. She was relieved the deal had been negotiated, happy his privacy would be safe, glad, and yet, running beneath it all, exhausted. “Why do I feel as if I’ve bargained with the devil?”
“I said you had good instincts,” Harry said from behind Max.
Max had other concerns. “How much of that was real? Once you’re free of your Galactic Justice contract, are you going to leave the Saloon Sector?” Leave me? went unsaid, but was implied.
She grabbed his hands and had him pull her up from the chair and into his arms. “Getting free of Galactic Justice would be a bonus, but the point was to distract Senator Gua from looking closer at why the Kampia chose to talk to us. She’ll forget about us and we can continue with our lives.” She smiled around Max’s shoulder at Harry. “All of us.”
“It’s never that simple with politicians,” Max said.
Harry reached over and patted Thelma’s head. “This time, we’ll hope it is.”
Chapter 18
The Deadstar Diner receded into the distance. Thelma and Max had changed into their utility suits, donning their “official” headgear of beret and Western hat respectively, and spent a couple of hours reassuring the diner’s owner, staff and customers that the Kampia were gone, and that they hadn’t meant their visit to cause any trouble.
“They were just curious,” Thelma had said.
She’d been met by Darlene’s most skeptical expression. “Su-ure. The aliens travelled here to dig on the asteroid for a coupon to try my coffee.”
“You do make good coffee, snookums,” Wild Blaster Bill contributed.
Everyone in hearing distance—and that meant everyone in the diner since everyone’s ears were flapping—stared at him in disbelief. His focus on trivialities in the wake of a genuine grubs encounter was dumbfounding.
Only Max took the comment in his stride. “Speaking of coffee, can I have a refill to go? Thelma and I have places to be.”
Darlene waved at a waitress to grab the order. “I’ve heard of first dates crashing and burning, but being crashed by aliens is a new one.”
“Life with Max is certainly interesting,” Thelma said.
The waitress zoomed up on her sky-blades with Max’s coffee. “I’d be willing to risk it.” She batted her outrageously long eyelashes at him.
Stoic, heroic Max took a step behind Thelma, who giggled.
They departed.
She gave him a fond pat on the butt as they exited through the door. Laughter and catcalls rang out behind them.
“You’re reducing me to a sex object.” But Max wasn’t protesting. He was amused.
“A good distraction,” she whispered against his ear, before nipping the lobe. “You can punish me later.” The spacedock had effective surveillance technology, all working again after Lon had undone his hacked control of it. She and Max were aware that they had an avid audience.
He waited till they were aboard the Lonesome with the hatch closed before he kissed her thoroughly. When they finally reached the lounge, the viewscreen showed the refueling station disappearing into the distance.
Lon piloted the spaceship in the direction of Forest.
Checking that the beacons around the forbidden planet still functioned and that the protected space hadn’t been violated gave them a justifiable excuse for not immediately returning to Zephyr. Max wanted to meet up with the AI Senator Gua sent them in space, where there were less (that is, no) witnesses, and where if the senator attempted to double-cross Thelma, the Lonesome and its crew would have room to maneuver.
“What can the senator do?” Thelma demanded. “It’s not like an AI would agree to destroy the Lonesome once they have the sequence, not with Lon and Harry aboard.”
“We just need to be ready,” was all Max would say.
Harry might have been more forthcoming, but Thelma didn’t want to push the AI on the issue. She had a different question for him, one she was desperate to have answered. “The Eldorado Cache is real, isn’t it?”
Harry stood near the kitchen island as the spaceship’s maintenance robots, under Lon’s command, returned the lounge to its usual appearance.
Max sat on a bar stool and Thelma leaned against him.
The AI mech watched his recliner swing back into place. “The cache of raphus geodes exists. But all AIs agreed that the Federation isn’t ready for an influx of us. So I’m guarding it.” His mech face set in stern lines. “I’m trusting you not to repeat any of that knowledge to anyone.”
Max nodded.
“I promise,” Thelma said.
The Kampia had revealed profound truths about the nature of the raphus geodes that powered the Federation’s AIs. In calling the geodes “eggs”, Tangles-in-Dreams had redefined how Thelma thought of them. They were no longer inert crystals that mysteriously sparked sentient life when joined with exceptional computer processing units. Instead, they were raw life. Somehow the Kampia could trigger the geodes into life inside their eggs; presumably merging organic and inorganic sentient potential.
AIs were far more alien than Thelma had ever dreamed. Possibly they were the descendants of the legendary specters who’d vanished eons ago. Or was the flow of time different for whatever species Harry and Lon belonged to and the specters weren’t gone, but returning at some distant point? So many mysteries, and she had no right to inquire into any of them. Just as with Max, whom she loved, she believed that people had the right to privacy and to have their autonomy respected.
Perhaps her seven years of contracted service to Galactic Justice had weighed on her more than she’d consciously acknowledged. She felt deeply that everyone deserved freedom—unless, as with the bandits in the Badstars, people used their freedom to break fundamental laws and hurt others.
On the frontier, people lived the credo of individual autonomy.
Lon plotted a meandering route from the Deadstar Diner to Forest. Reaching their destination mattered less than having time for Harry and him to discuss the grenade the Kampia had unwittingly tossed into Federation AI matters. How did the thousand or so AIs want to proceed with this opportunity to make contact with organic variants of their own kind? While Harry and Lon led that discussion, Thelma and Max spent a lot of their free time either on the garden deck or in his cabin, which was larger than hers.
The future the Federation AIs chos
e for themselves would have an impact on trillions of lives. Thelma’s exile to the Saloon Sector had changed things far more profoundly than she could ever have imagined.
It had changed her.
The ambition that had driven her through college and the academy had burst like a soap bubble. One moment it had been shiny and demanding. Then, suddenly, it was irrelevant.
She’d signed up to serve Galactic Justice not because she wanted to serve the Federation, but for what she could get out of it. For years, she’d been driven by the need to force core worlders to see out-worlders as their equal, beginning with her. Even after she’d been exiled to the Saloon Sector, that motivation hadn’t changed. She’d reinvented herself as an information broker, but still with the intent of proving her value.
However, at some point, loving Max and protecting him, Harry and Lon became more important. She couldn’t recapture who she’d been before meeting them. She could barely understand her. That woman had been driven by an aspiration for power. She’d been on the path to becoming like Senator Gua, consumed by the need to gain more influence and to flaunt it.
Thelma no longer needed the affirmation of how others viewed her. She wasn’t a student any more, or a dudette, to require outside validation of herself or her abilities.
Star Marine Corporal Naomi Milligan had tried to open her eyes to that truth.
Thelma didn’t need to prove herself. She just needed to be. Trusting her own skills and abilities was enough. Having Max to love, and Harry and Lon as friends, with the love of her family only a transmission away was a blessing from fate.
Lying beside Max among the wildflowers on the garden deck, she raised up on one elbow and kissed him.
He made a tiny sound of approval without opening his eyes.
She rested her hand over his heart, utterly content in their perfect moment.
Harry and Lon didn’t share the AI community’s discussion or conclusions with Thelma and Max, but Lon did inform them of the AI employed by Galactic Justice who’d rendezvous with them in Saloon Sector space.
Space Deputy Page 17
