But that wasn’t a mitigating circumstance; a fact Max’s glare made clear.
Before disembarking her crew and entering the wormhole to Kampia space, Nefertiti shared what information she had on Elliot Keele, Senator Gua’s past dealings with him, and details of everything except the smoking gun that proved that the Lonesome had been attacked because Senator Gua was a vindictive woman and a politician who survived by never leaving loose ends. Nefertiti added a postscript to the information that Lon shared with Max and Thelma.
“The evidence suggests that Senator Gua is unaware of Sheriff Smith’s relationship to President Smith. In this instance, ignorance will not be considered a defense. Covert Ops will be looking into the senator’s ties to organized crime. There should be no further trouble from Senator Gua’s direction, and if there is, Covert Ops will warn you.”
That was the background against which the crew of the Lonesome considered the news that Rudy Gua had tried, in a limited and unconvincing manner, to save Thelma’s life.
She crossed the training ring and clasped Max’s hand. “It’s like you said, everyone deserves a chance. I think Rudy’s earned one.” And I think Senator Gua deserves payback. But Thelma kept that thought to herself, for now. She had an idea that needed to percolate.
The Planetary Congress on Zephyr was debating the future of the unsettled island continent of Lemur. Some wanted it to be given to agricultural production, others to urban settlement, and still others argued to develop it as a planetary park. Its remote island status would allow quite unusual park uses. Saurelle tail-wavers wanted it to be developed as a reserve for flora and fauna from their home planet. A multi-species band of scientists wanted to use the island as a test site for resurrecting extinct species and rewilding them.
Thelma wandered among the discussions inside the congressional building, picking up hints on her quarry’s whereabouts. Those hints led her outside, to stand a moment on the grand front steps and look across the square to the Justice Court, and appreciate the courage and determination that built and maintained the Federation all the way to this frontier world.
Then the aroma of barbecue ribs reached her and she forgot deep thoughts for more immediate concerns.
“Gotcha,” Thelma murmured.
She’d dressed to fit in with the congressional crowd, and her moderate heels click-clacked as she sped down the steps. Her light gray suit with a crisp white blouse meant she wouldn’t be risking dripping barbeque sauce, but she could see a woman who wasn’t worried about stains.
Agent Aubree Tennyson had learned that all stains washed out, sooner or later.
Two lines of bollards completed the large square between the Congress and the Justice Court buildings. On the far side of the bollards, food carts were lined up, competing for workers’ and tourists’ lunch dollars. In between, benches, stools, tables and chairs encouraged people to sit and talk beneath parasol shelters or under the pale sunshine.
Aubree had chosen a table for two in the open. It was more removed than most, but near enough to the barbecue food cart for the janitor who’d advised Thelma that she’d find Aubree there to have more than earned the bribe Thelma had paid him.
He’d probably earned a second payment by alerting Aubree to Thelma’s interest in finding her because the agent didn’t as much as raise an eyebrow when Thelma dropped into the empty seat at the table.
Aubree saluted her uninvited guest with a half-eaten rib. “Congratulations.”
“For…?” Thelma prompted.
Aubree grinned. Her teeth looked white and sharp with a disconcerting smear of barbecue sauce clinging to one incisor. “On an early release from your Galactic Justice contract. I guess there’s no chance of my recruiting you, now?”
“Nope. But I have an idea for who you could recruit in my place.”
For a second, the agent stopped chewing. It was the most tiny of tells, but it was sufficient.
Thelma had surprised her. Good. She needed Aubree a little off-balance so that she’d actually meditate on Thelma’s odd suggestion, and not dismiss it out of hand. “Rudy Gua.”
Aubree dropped the rib. Sauce splashed. “Damn.” She grabbed a wipe and attacked first her fingers, then her chambray shirt. All the time, she stared at Thelma. “Why do you care what happens to him?” Stripped of the pretense that this was a casual meeting and that she was just soaking up the sun and enjoying good food, she was keen-eyed and severe. This was the agent who survived and flourished on the frontier. She wasn’t going to listen to any exhaust fumes.
Thelma nodded acknowledgement of the validity of Aubree’s question. “Rudy’s well-being isn’t my primary motivation. I do think he’s the perfect fit for Covert Ops, though. He excelled at hacking and subterfuge at the academy. He probably honed the skills to survive his mother. You could mention him to Nefertiti’s crew. I believe they’re on Zephyr.”
“Just how much do you know, and how?” Aubree abandoned her meal and leaned back in the hard metal chair. “It makes me curious. The Kampia negotiate with you. You’re comfortable mentioning a covert AI. You were a good student at the academy, but this is the real world. No one would have trusted a dudette with the level of security clearance required for what you’ve done. Are you involved with Sheriff Smith or are you running, now that your Galactic Justice contract is done?” Her voice didn’t change. Her eyes didn’t flicker. “Or am I being naïve and the completed contract is a sham and your assignment continues?”
“Wow.” The level of paranoia Aubree exhibited alerted Thelma to the dangers of an agent’s lifestyle. If Galactic Justice had allowed Thelma the career path she’d originally planned, she might have ended up as mistrustful as Aubree, unsure where she could find solid ground on which to make her stand. “I’m free of Galactic Justice, but I will be staying in the Saloon Sector. I’ve found it suits me.”
“And Max?” Aubree asked, jettisoning his professional title. It was a personal question, but she also probed just who he was and where he stood in events. The agent was curious as to how much he’d contributed behind the scenes to the contact with the Kampia and everything else.
She doesn’t know he’s the President’s son, Thelma thought. She stood. “Max is staying, too,” she answered, choosing to be deliberately obtuse.
Aubree considered her while a school group ran past, weaving between tables and ignoring their teacher’s shout to “stop behaving like monster weevils and come back here”.
“If I murmur Rudy’s name into a receptive ear, will he take the job?”
Thelma didn’t hesitate. “I don’t know, but there’s a spark in him. Given a chance he could choose to become his own man.”
“Bucking off his momma’s plans for him?” Aubree asked shrewdly.
“That would give me what I wanted,” Thelma agreed.
The older woman nodded. “Not so altruistic. You’d skewer Senator Gua where she’s vulnerable—her ambition for her son.”
“Justice,” Thelma said succinctly.
Abruptly, Aubree nodded. “Nice to know you have teeth. I’ll do it, and no matter what Rudolf Gua decides, you owe me.”
“Understood.”
Trying not to grin too hard now that she’d achieved her goal for the day and was free, Thelma farewelled Aubree and crossed the square to duck around the corner to the hover rail stop. She caught the HRev back to the spacedock and took the elevator up, striding into the Sheriff’s Office as if she belonged, although it was no longer her place of work.
Owen, the receptionist, was fully occupied with two saurelles arguing their speeding tickets with him, but he managed a quick jerk of his silver bewigged head toward Max’s door. “The Sheriff’s expecting you, Ms. Bach.”
The two annoyed and noisy saurelle couriers ignored his comment and her, a mere human female.
Thelma sauntered into Max’s office.
He was out of uniform. Not undressed, unfortunately, but in casual shorts and a t-shirt and wearing a baseball cap rather than his tra
demark Western hat. “The aircar’s waiting and our luggage is loaded.” The gleam in his eyes was equal parts sexy excitement and a little boy’s joy.
“How long is it since you’ve had a vacation? A real one, not just not working or visiting family.”
He frowned.
She kissed his cheek, and stole the aircar’s key. “Never mind.” He probably hadn’t had a vacation in years—much like her. “The lake will be perfect.” She’d traded two weeks at the lake cabin for an idea and opportunity that she’d passed on to a yprr spaceship builder whose yard was here at the Zephyr spacedock. The yprr had purred in appreciation.
Thelma’s inspiration had been a thousand individual lifepods being removed from a starliner at Zephyr. The starliner had upgraded to two shuttles with lifepod capability, due to the starliner’s owner and captain winning them in a poker game. The old lifepods were so much scrap, in the captain’s eyes.
The yprr had been overseeing the upgrade, and ditching the individual lifepods, when Thelma intervened. “Just a thought, but you could sell these back to the captain,” she’d murmured, before continuing with the encouragement of the yprr’s sudden alertness. “Outside of the Saloon Sector people are focused on maintaining status and reputation, but around here, we’re practical. An urself on a journey of over a week prefers to enter hibernation. They don’t really need a cabin for that, but they would pay for a secure space that they could lock themselves into.”
They’d both stared at the lifepods being removed from the starliner.
Thelma had smiled. “You could fit a hundred to this spaceship and have nine hundred ‘urself transportation modules’ available for other Saloon Sector starliners wanting to upgrade.”
The yprr had purred so loudly it had sounded like distant thunder.
Four days later, with the original starliner’s captain outraged yet amused at being sold back the lifepods he’d scrapped, the yprr agreed to Thelma’s request to borrow his vacation home for two weeks.
The flight in the aircar from the capital city to the lake cabin took just over three hours. Thelma had plenty of time to wriggle out of her gray suit and into shorts and a halter top, adopting vacation mode. The autopilot guided the aircar, Max studied fishing techniques on his comms unit, and she napped.
Lake Quairading shone a deep tranquil blue in the late afternoon sunshine. The cabin sat on poles at the water’s edge with a dock jutting out.
“Perfect for fishing.” Max stretched as he studied their surroundings. A mix of cool temperate trees formed the forest behind the cabin. There were other cabins in the far, far distance around the curve of the lake. But to all intents and purposes, they were alone. Dinner wasn’t fresh-caught fish, although he promised that for tomorrow. Instead, they ate steak and potatoes, and drank beer. Later, they lay on a blanket on the dock. The hard bed left a lot to be desired, but the sound of the water and the stars overhead were perfect.
It was for this, for life on a planet, that Earle and the others on the Scarab crossed the galaxy to Levanter.
“I’m going to invite my family to visit,” Thelma said.
“And we can visit them. I have some vacation time saved up.” Max’s smiled was lopsided in the moonlight.
They’d told her family that she and Max were in a relationship. The family hadn’t seemed surprised, although confiding the truth of Max’s identity to them had shocked them.
“No way, man. No way.” It had taken her brother Joe a couple of conversations to accept that his fellow Star Marine was also the President’s youngest son.
Max wasn’t worried that the Bach family would tell anyone his secret. Independent asteroid miners were the definition of secret-keepers. His own family was more troublesome. They all wanted to meet Thelma; not because they didn’t approve of her, but from what they said they didn’t want Max to stuff things up with her. To prevent the secret of his identity being exposed by a procession of presidential and Hwicce Corporation family members parading out to the Saloon Sector and him, he and Thelma had agreed to meet everyone at Hwicce headquarters in the Reclamation Sector in three months’ time.
Harry and Lon were undecided whether they’d also introduce themselves to Max’s family, but they had met Thelma’s via video. Thelma’s mother was particularly grateful to learn that two AI, as well as a former Star Marine, kept her daughter safe on the frontier. Thelma’s brothers pointed out that only Thelma could find enough trouble to justify that sort of protection, but they were teasing. They didn’t know about the Kampia or Senator Gua, who’d recently retired from politics after details of her links to organized crime were leaked to the media.
Checks and balances.
“Which direction is the wormhole to Kampia space?” Thelma asked Max.
He peered at the sky, and pointed vaguely.
She wasn’t sure he had the direction right. “What information do you think Nefertiti will return with?”
Max had a more immediately pertinent question. “Do you think the bed is softer than this dock?”
Their eyes met.
She laughed and scrambled up. Work and the galaxy could wait. They were on vacation, together. “Let’s test it.”
Want More?
If you’d like more space adventures, check out my Shamans and Shifters Space Opera series:
Her Robot Wolf
Cosmic Catalyst
Shattered Earth
Jingle Stars
The Ceph Sector
Jenny
P.S. You can catch up with me at my website, on Facebook or on Twitter.
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