Juliyana did not wear dull spacer gear. I couldn’t say for sure what she was wearing, only that it was layered and detailed, it included fur trim and flourishes of embroidery and she looked…regal. Her hair was golden white and gleaming, and piled upon the back of her head and secured there with a glittering clip. She even wore makeup.
A stranger looking at the people walking into the room would have no trouble picking out who the leader was. Juliyana was no taller than the woman in front of her, but she looked half-a-head higher.
A shriver was strapped to her hip, a knife was tucked into her boot. They were the only weapons I could see, but I knew there would be more hidden about her outfit. Perhaps that was why it was so elaborate—it would distract the observer, so they would fail to notice what was hidden beneath the layers.
Behind Juliyana came two men, both in spacer gear and both heavily armed. The dark haired one had scars on his face, still red and healing. The grey haired one was overdue for regeneration therapy, but his gaze was alert enough as he sized up the room.
Behind the four armed people, Jai and Sauli and the others from the Omia filed into the room. They looked just as puzzled by the entourage before them.
Juliyana glanced around the room herself. When she saw Lyth, she smiled and went to him and kissed his cheek.
Dalton caught my gaze and lifted his brow. I knew how he felt.
Lyth didn’t quite reach for Juliyana, although I saw his hands shift and come back to his sides. He was making himself stay still.
Juliyana stepped back, still smiling. “I didn’t know you were on board, too.”
“I didn’t know you were even in this quadrant,” Lyth said. “What are you doing out here, Juliyana?” As he spoke, his gaze shifted to the woman standing just behind Juliyana, her arms on her hips.
The stance wasn’t a casual one, I decided. It was the ready position for her. She fought freehand. No weapons. She could leap in any direction, standing this way.
So why did she feel she needed to maintain a ready posture, in this room?
She sized up the room as I watched, then her gaze swung back to Lyth and her fists tightened.
Lyth was the key. Hmmm.
Juliyana glanced at me. “Danny.” She turned a little. “Dalton.” Quickly, she moved around the room. When she reached Yoan, she frowned.
“Yoan Saillins,” he said, his tone stiff.
“Sauli’s son, yes.” Juliyana gave him a great smile, turned around the room once more and said to me, “The gang’s all here. Only, why?”
“You go first,” I said. “Make it good, please.”
She frowned. “I know we startled you, but there is no need to be angry. We’re only doing our job.”
“Your job?” Lyth’s voice was strained.
Juliyana rolled her eyes. “And that tone, there, is why I didn’t tell you about my work, Lyth. Yes, this is my job. We took a contract, a very high paying contract, to find a missing ship. Actually, to find the people on that missing ship. A mother and son. Their family want to know what happened to them.”
“They went missing out here?” Jai asked, his tone reasonable.
“The nearest system to here, we think,” Juliyana told him. “It has taken me months to track them this far and I’m guessing that they dropped out of their wormhole somewhere near here for some reason. The ship was on its way to Rinaldi, and if wormholes curve the way physicists are starting to suspect they do, then the curve would have brought them to around here, right on the edge of the arm.” She looked around the room. “We’ve spent weeks on Blinni, where they left from, and more weeks on Rinaldi, where they failed to show up. There were stories on Blinni and Rinaldi about other ships gone missing out here, too.”
“That’s why we’re here,” I told Juliyana. “For those other ships, and a passenger on one of them.”
Juliyana turned to me. “You took a contract, too?”
“It is my son who is missing.” It sounded to me as though Dalton was holding his teeth together. He clearly didn’t like the changes in Juliyana either.
Juliyana’s lips parted. Then her expression softened. “I’m sorry, Dalton. Fiori.”
Fiori nodded stiffly.
“You brought a lot of firepower with you, to find a single woman and her son,” I observed.
Juliyana looked amused. “I’m not here to recover them,” she said. “Her family want vengeance. It’s been a year. They know she and the boy are dead. I’m here to shoot the fuckers who took her out of the sky.”
“Good luck with that,” Lyth said flatly, while Dalton breathed heavily, trying to contain himself.
Juliyana looked back at Lyth. “Luck isn’t required.”
“Normally, I would agree with you.” His tone was cool. His gaze flicked toward the woman with the gold streak in her hair. “I would put my money on you and your…team,” he told Juliyana, “no matter what enemy you took on, but you’ve dealt yourself into a game with different rules.”
Juliyana’s confidence showed the first hairline crack. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” I said, taking the pressure off Lyth, “that the enemy we are all facing isn’t human, doesn’t give a shit about humans, and has the firepower to swat us all like flies—even your prettied-up ship.”
The woman with the muscles laughed. It was a harsh, braying sound, a mix of humor and hysteria.
Juliyana didn’t look amused, though. She studied me, then swiveled to look at Lyth. “Is this true?”
The woman’s laughter tailed off, and she gave little hiccups and sighs and wiped her eyes.
Lyth didn’t look away from Juliyana. “I have never lied to you,” he said softly. “I’m not lying to you now. You’re dealing with something you’ve never seen before, and it will overwhelm you, if you don’t prepare for it.”
Juliyana’s eyes narrowed as she studied Lyth. He held her gaze, his own unwavering.
“Calpurnia, shut up!” Juliyana snapped.
The woman’s little hiccups and giggles shut off as if a switch had been thrown. She looked from Juliyana to Lyth, then scowled. Her hands came back to her hips.
Dalton stepped forward. “You can’t just shoot them out of the sky, even if you want to. Our son might be on their ship.”
“Or he might be dead,” Juliyana replied. Her tone was gentle. “Especially if these…are they really aliens?”
“They really are,” Dalton said grimly.
“Then Danny is right. They have no need for humans.” She gave Dalton a small smile.
Fiori shook her head. “You don’t know that.”
“You don’t know either, Fiori,” Juliyana told her.
Jai stepped forward. “We quite possibly know more than you about the blue ones. You seem to know more about the ships that went missing. We should pool our data.”
Juliyana considered for a good long heartbeat or two before she nodded, which raised the question in my mind—what if she had said no?
I was suddenly glad we wouldn’t have to learn the answer to that. There were too many unexpectedly angry channels flowing about the room. Clearly, there was information I was missing that would explain the odd conflicting notes I was detecting, including Juliyana hesitating over sharing her information with us.
Jai said something about sitting around the table, and actually going over the data each could supply and suddenly, everyone was moving, most of them over to the table to sit.
I beckoned Lyssa closer. “We’ll need a longer table.”
“Already extending it,” Lyssa murmured back. “I thought food might help…soothe tempers.”
“Only if it has a sedative in it,” I replied grimly. “But perhaps…yes, something to do with our hands. Juliyana’s favorites, Dalton’s favorites and Lyth’s, too, if you know them.” They were the ones most in need of calming. “Has Fiori repeated any meals?”
“Green curry,” Lyssa said instantly.
“Then a cup of your best for her, and some bread
to go with it.”
“And you, Danny? Shall I print a steak?”
“I’ll have another brandy,” I replied. Over Lyssa’s shoulder, I saw Juliyana pull the enhanced woman, Calpurnia, aside. Most likely, she was asking the woman to fetch her research and bring it to the table.
They stood very close together, speaking so quietly one would have to push up right beside them to hear it. I watched Calpurnia’s face, for she was not good at hiding her feelings and would give me the most information.
She seemed upset. Juliyana shook her head and spoke again. Reinforcing the order, I suspected. It wasn’t good if a subordinate had to be given an order twice to obey it.
Calpurnia gave in and nodded. Juliyana relaxed—I could see the tension leave her shoulders even from behind. Then Calpurnia said something else and this time, she rested her fingers against Juliyana’s silk covered arm.
It was a light touch. Barely there. Then Calpurnia whirled and moved out of the room with that powerful stride of hers.
I barely saw her go. My heart was zooming as I put together Calpurnia’s intimate touch—that of a lover—and the odd conflicts I’d detected in the room. I whirled to see if Lyth had been watching the pair and seen it.
He stood at the end of the long picnic table, his face expressionless.
He wasn’t surprised.
—25—
The rest of the meeting was tiring beyond belief. We gave over rather more information than Juliyana shared. She provided the tables and charts they had built to track the movements of the mother and son but refused to give names.
Lyth had flicked the old fashioned printouts. “I could have done this for you in half the time it took you. Lyssa could have done it in a tenth of the time. You could have come to us. We would have helped.”
Juliyana shook her head. “Not on this one,” she said shortly and turned back to the screens hanging over the table. “Can I see the footage when they fired upon you again? I want to study the weapon.”
And so the remainder of the meeting went, with Juliyana dodging and weaving, while sucking up as much information as she could. Everyone seemed to fair better with food in their bellies, for some of the animosity of the first few minutes Juliyana had arrived diminished as the meals did. I drank steadily, instead.
I didn’t seem to be able to predict Juliyana’s thoughts or her responses anymore. When had she become a stranger to me? It had been just over a year since I’d last seen her or even spoken to her, but the lapse felt far greater to me than that.
Finally, Jai had sat back and scrubbed at his hair and yawned and said, “We all need to absorb and assess the new information. And then we should pick a most likely location to hang ourselves out to be plucked. I’m starting to think it should be near a planet. Right out in the middle of space here looks suspicious, for humans don’t tend to stop in the middle of nowhere. Let’s sleep on it.”
I was more than glad to get away from everyone, head to my room and think.
Only I’d drunk too much brandy. My thoughts congealed, yet I was too ramped up to relax enough for sleep.
I needed food and I needed distraction. Even watching the view on the street beyond the windows of the diner would do. I went back to the diner and slipped inside.
I wasn’t the only one with the same bright idea. Lyth sat at the family table, in his usual spot, a bottle of what was probably scotch, and a half-empty whiskey glass. The bottle had little left in it.
I moved over to the table and slid onto the bench, into my usual place.
Lyth tilted his head, examining me. “Shoulda had a steak, Colonel.” His words were clear. Too clear. He was controlling his speech with iron discipline, but he was definitely feeling the effects.
“Seems to me you should follow your own advice. How long have you been sitting here in the dark?” There were very few lights showing.
“I had th’lights turned down,” he replied. “Too bright.”
“Probably just as well.” I looked up as the waitress arrived but closed my mouth as she put a plate in front of me. Steak and mushrooms. I lifted my chin. “Are you listening in, Lyssa?”
“Watching over Lyth, Colonel,” Lyssa replied. “His judgement is impaired, and there are fools with guns who have access to me at the moment.” Disapproval was rich in her voice, either for Lyth’s inebriation, the fools with the guns, or me for allowing them the access that bothered her. Likely, all three.
“Thank you for the steak,” I said instead of berating her for listening in. I sawed off a piece and chewed. When the flavors of garlic and perfectly seared red meat hit my tongue, I realized how hungry I really was and quickly ate another three bites, while Lyth refilled his glass with the last of the bottle’s contents.
When I could speak, I said, “Do you want to tell me all of it now?”
Lyth looked at me. Then away.
“For the record, I don’t think you’re a fool. Not even when it comes to Juliyana. But I do want to understand what’s going on. Things don’t add up.”
“No,” Lyth breathed. “They don’t, do they?” He sipped.
I took another mouthful and waited. Often, silence was enough to prompt people into talking. Yet Lyth wasn’t the newt he’d once been. He was a leader of men, now. He steered policy for the Laxman Institute, while Arnold Laxman did what he loved most—he played with the science and pushed the frontier where humans and technology met.
So Lyth normally wouldn’t leap to fill a silence just because it was there, but he was drunk enough that Lyssa was on standby to catch him when he crashed, so maybe he just might.
Lyth used his thumb nail to scratch at the corner of the label on the bottle. “I’m guessing, but it’s a good guess…Juliyana hasn’t told you that she’s using her third clone, now.”
Shock slithered through me. “She’s used…killed…two clones? And her own original body? What the hell…!” The more I thought about it, the more appalled I became. How could anyone be that reckless? That cavalier? Clone bodies were not cheap. Not everyone got to have them for that fact alone. Although with Lyth as the director of the Institute who grew them, it was different for Juliyana, but still…!
Lyth nodded, even though he wasn’t looking at me. “It might have been simpler if her addiction was for alcohol or one of the weirder psychotropics out there, but that’s not what she looks for.”
“Risk,” I whispered.
“Anything that spikes adrenaline on a regular basis,” Lyth said. “I was actually relieved when Lyssa tossed her off the ship. I thought it would slow Juliyana down. Instead, it drove her further away. She didn’t have Lyssa watching out for her, after that.”
His nail scraped across the bottle, making me wince.
“You and she let me think that she was hauling freight.”
“It started that way,” Lyth said.
“It wasn’t enough,” I guessed. Hauling freight was pretty mundane, once you had a few contracts in place and didn’t have to hustle for work.
“At first it was just the odd merc contract here and there,” Lyth added. He glanced at me. “Yeong Lewis tossed her one or two.”
A name from my past. “He’s well connected.” He was more than just connected. He ran a vast mercenary outfit of his own and various grey-hat enterprises. He’d once made a great deal of money supplying arms to the two Imperial forces—the Rangers and the Shield. I wondered briefly what he was doing these days. Yeong Lewis was very good at looking out for himself, so I didn’t wonder for long. Clearly, he had enough business interests that he could still afford to hire outside mercenary outfits.
“Is that when Calpurnia started working for Juliyana?” I asked Lyth. “She’s made for action.”
Lyth’s thumb stopped scratching, although he didn’t look at me. He was trying to be urbane and understanding, but the male territorial instinct was a strong one.
“It’s okay to resent the shit out of her,” I added, just in case he was piling more guilt upon his conscien
ce for that, too. “Anyone would, in your situation.”
His thumb started moving again, and he concentrated on chipping away at the label with fiendish focus. “She makes me want to ram the working end of an atomic probe into my gut and twist, just to get rid of the…the…”
I rested my hand on his forearm, the one that wasn’t working on the bottle.
Lyth’s jaw flexed.
“It would be just as natural to want to stick the probe into her gut,” I said gently.
“Why?” Lyth asked, surprised into looking at me directly. He was genuinely puzzled. “She didn’t do anything but take a job.”
I sat back. I had forgotten how utterly reasonable Lyth could be. “You’re still a nice man,” I concluded, letting admiration touch my voice.
He shook his head. “I might have been once. Now I’m…” He shrugged. “A realist.”
“When it’s convenient, perhaps,” I argued.
The corner of his mouth lifted. “The reason I won’t ram the probe into Calpurnia’s guts? She’s got internal armor lining. It would be a waste of time and a good atomic probe.”
I laughed. “Okay, you’re a pragmatist. But I still think it’s a veneer.”
He pushed the scraped bottle away from him and sat back. “Like the hard ass Colonel is all surface.”
“No, she’s down to the bone,” I assured him. I paused. “Actual armored lining?”
Lyth grimaced. “Armored lining, metal spine, titanium extruded tendons. They tweaked her muscle fibers, so her strength is enhanced and her reaction time increased. She’s ex-Ranger…but so is everyone on Juliyana’s ship.”
“They’re not all enhanced like Calpurnia,” I guessed.
“She’s unique,” Lyth admitted. “We’ve seen enhancements at the Institute. Had requests for them more than once, from those who don’t understand what we actually do there. But I’ve never seen anything like Calpurnia, before.”
The Institute’s aims were the exact opposite of Calpurnia’s. They put AIs into unenhanced, utterly human bodies.
“So, what are you going to do?” I asked. “About Juliyana,” I added, for Calpurnia could clearly take care of herself. Although I did wonder why Juliyana had got together with a human who was more cyborg than woman.
Galactic Thunder Page 14
