Amber gave him a stricken look. “I didn’t do it, Jack, honest to God,” she cried, just as the WP caught up with them.
Chapter Eleven
If he had not been behind Scott in that alley in under-Malthen, he might have wondered. It was clear though that the journalist had had enemies, and this was but one of the outcomes. But he did not even blink as Amber stared at him with anguish in her face. Scott, he knew, had been living on borrowed time.
All he said was, “I know.”
Colin’s mouth dropped open slightly, then the saint clamped his lips tightly shut and put an arm about Amber, drawing her close for support. His expression met Jack’s just before the Knight turned to meet the WP. The look of approval jolted him slightly.
The WP man saluted and then spent the rest of his detail to cordon off the murder scene. “Captain Storm, welcome back.”
“Thank you,” Jack answered, with a blank expression. Drefford was working late tonight, he thought, as he looked past the man. He was not supposed to recognize the WP officer. “I have two here who escaped harm. How is the emperor?”
“Fine. His inner portals closed as soon as the alarm went off. Although,” and Drefford turned on his heel, “the embarrassment of having a guest killed is bad enough. St. Colin, I’m Captain Drefford. Do you know the victim?”
“Yes, indeed. That’s Scott Randolph, the broadcast journalist. He was here for dinner last night, taping an interview with Pepys.”
Drefford nodded briskly. “I thought as much. But, the physical evidence, it’s helpful getting ID from someone who saw him get hit. We’ll have forensics verify it.”
Jack watched as a plastisheet was laid over the amorphous crimson blob in the corridor beyond. “Has the assassin been found?”
“No,” said Drefford after a pause. “We have evidence he went out over the roof, however. If we’re lucky, he’s on camera.”
“And if you’re not?” asked Colin harshly.
“Then Pepys will have to be very careful for a while.” Drefford rubbed the bridge of his nose. “We’ll get word of who it was soon enough. Then the Sweepers will pick him up for us, never fear, your reverence. Why don’t you take the young lady and go downstairs to the lounge? We’ve some unpleasant work to do here.” He paused, then looked at Jack, Farrel and Davidis. “The bodyguard isn’t needed any more either. I suggest you report to your commander and tell him we have the situation under control.”
“Good idea,” Jack said, as if the WP officer hadn’t rudely brushed them off. “I’ll escort the remaining guests down just in case your information is incorrect and the assassin is still in the wing.”
Colin gave him a sidelong, amused glance as the two fell into step with them and moved down the corridor, past the assassination scene. Jack saw Amber tighten her lips as they walked past the walls still running with blood. She put her chin up and tossed back her tawny hair and Jack was glad that the saint had his arm about her.
Once out of earshot, Jack signaled for Farrel and Davidis to run on ahead and report back to the Purple.
Colin chuckled. “Well, Jack. It appears that court and power intrigue agree with you.”
“Never.”
“Jack,” said Amber softly. “I swear to you—”
“I know. Don’t worry about him.”
Colin tightened his arm about her shoulders. “She has to, Jack. That’s one reason she’s with me tonight. I came here hoping to lay some demons down and ran right into one.”
They stopped as one just before the elevator shaft, and heard the smooth hum as it approached.
“What do you mean?”
She pulled herself away from Colin’s secure hold and held herself tautly. “I mean that I don’t know that I didn’t do it.”
“But you told me…”
“I know! I meant that I didn’t do it on purpose…” Amber’s voice trailed off, like that of an exhausted child.
But she wasn’t a child any more. She was no longer the street smart teenager he’d taken away from Rolf, he reminded himself, and desire for her was almost as much a part of him as his concern for her.
“We can’t talk about it here.”
Colin nodded wisely. The door to the elevator slid open and he drew Amber in with him. Jack followed.
She faced him. “Where then? When then?”
Jack looked at Colin over her head. “Perhaps you should go to church,” he said, with a slight quirk of his lips, and saw the saint return the smile in agreement.
Jack never got that far, however. Word was waiting for him in the lounge that Emperor Pepys desired his presence in the audience room immediately. Colin gave Jack that unperturbed look of his.
“I’ll look after her,” he said. “She’s been scared enough.”
Jack half-bowed and watched the saint guide Amber away into the early morning light of what promised to be a blistering day. He wondered just what she had told Colin.
“Jack! It’s good to have you off leave. I trust it was a successful one.”
Jack frowned slightly, then nodded. “I seem to have things resolved,” he said, knowing he could not answer any other way without arousing the suspicion of the WP. He looked to his commander, the Owner of the Purple, who stood elegantly at attention and patterned his own stance after that of his friend.
Pepys’ red hair moved on end with its own static electricity, as he swiveled in his chair to look at the face of first one and then the other. The emperor looked wan and tired this morning.
The wiry man said carefully, “I called you both here this morning to tell you that you failed.”
The Purple inclined his head slightly. “I am sorry, Emperor.”
Pepys waved a freckled hand. “Don’t interrupt! But, nonetheless, that’s not why I called you here. The fault is mine. I sent the bodyguard detail away last night.”
Purple’s head snapped up. Jack watched him closely. This was news to both of them. “Why,” the commander said carefully, his right hand pulling slightly at his jacket flap, “did you do that, sir?”
“I did not wish to be spied upon for dinner.” Pepys shuffled his feet. He’d dressed casually for the morning, but already looked rumpled. “Scott was a friend as well as an enemy, and we wished to dine alone. Without the WP or the Knights taking in our conversation. Unfortunately, it was the death of Scott.” Pepys sighed. “I hope he can forgive me someday.”
“Scott was like you, your highness,” Jack said. “He thrived on the challenge of being powerful.”
“Yes. Well. Possibly.” Pepys ran his hand through his hair, attempting to pull it flat, but only increasing the static electricity. Individual strands rose and wavered about. “He had a story he wanted to tell me that he did not get a chance to finish. It began with a name. The name of John Wesley Kavin.”
The Purple blanched, his space-tanned face becoming incredibly pale.
The emperor sat down heavily. “No,” he said, looking in the other direction, far away. “I didn’t think he was lying to me. This leaves me with a dilemma. Suddenly, you have a name and a history, Commander Kavin. Do we announce it? Celebrate it? Or do we ask you to resign and fade away anonymously? What of your history? Do I have the right to ask for it, or must I fear a traitor within these walls?”
The Purple cleared his throat. Jack could feel the tension in his body even though he was standing two feet away from the Purple.
“I suggest, your highness, that you give me a name, if you wish. But as to my history—it is unrecorded. No one but you will ever know that I fought in the Sand Wars and survived Dorman’s Stand. I was not enrolled in the guard, then. I was a stowaway on a staging freighter and when my brother died, I stole his armor. No one has ever heard that story before today. And I don’t think either of you,” the Purple looked at his emperor slowly and then at Jack, “I don’t think either of you will betray me.”
Jack had no words, his mind reeling. This man had seen his homeworld fall to the Thraks.
Pepys ha
d placed his hands on the arms of his chair, and now they trembled. “My god,” he said. “You must have been little more than a boy.”
“Yes,” Kavin answered.
The emperor rubbed his brow. “So be it,” he said. “I will announce that, because of your meritorious service to me, whatever transgressions you have in your mercenary past have been pardoned, and your anonymity is no longer required. Nothing else need be revealed. Captain Storm, will you be my witness?”
“Yes, your highness.”
“Good. Then it’s done. I’ll have it put in the morning releases. You’re both dismissed. And, commander—”
Kavin turned back.
“Yes, your highness?”
“Don’t let me have made a mistake.”
“No, your highness.” The commander bowed smoothly and upon straightening took Jack out of the audience room with him.
They faced each other on the landing outside the palace. Purple smoothed back a wing of his silver hair.
Jack found himself saying, “I don’t know if I can get used to calling you John Wesley.”
“That’s Kavin to you,” returned his friend. “I haven’t been called J.W. in… oh… twenty-five years or so.”
They stood, nearly toe to toe, and the tension between them was undeniable. Jack ached to be able to tell him that he had been a Knight and to ask of his colony’s last days, but he couldn’t.
“It’s good to have you back,” the Purple said, finally.
“Thank you. Did you know St. Colin and Amber were in the building?”
“Of course. I didn’t know that it was Pepys who called off the detail, but I kept a watch, anyway. I saw them go in. I sent you to North-Six because that seemed to be the most likely exit, and I knew you’d want to be there if Amber had been taken hostage.” Kavin smiled, and this time his eyes reflected his usual humor. “I’m told, however, that the WP let him escape over the roof.”
“Let?”
“Shoddy defense up there. I’ll be talking to Pepys about it soon, but not right away. I don’t want the WP to think I’m stepping on their toes.”
“Of course not.”
Kavin hesitated. “You’re back on duty, then?”
Jack nodded. “I seemed to have gotten whatever it was out of my system.” He paused. There was a time when he might have confided further in his friend, but now… Kavin was clearly the emperor’s man, and Jack could not forget what other of the emperor’s men had done to him last night.
“Good. I’ll have the duty roster posted in about an hour.” Kavin clapped him on the shoulder. “It’ll be nice having a name again,” he said, before he pivoted and marched off.
Jack watched him go. He thought of K’rok, spared by the Thraks because of his fighting prowess and, although he wore the yoke of their command, he’d made it clear to Jack that his first objective was the revival of his race.
Dorman’s Stand had been even more of a massacre than Rikor or Milos. How then, did John Wesley Kavin, little more than a boy, live to talk about the day? By what good fortune had he lived long enough to become a mercenary with a suit of armor considered antique?
He shook his head and struck off across the grounds to his quarters. If he was lucky, he had a few hours of sleep left to help him work off the travel fatigue. But there was nothing that would help him work off the uneasiness of the past two weeks’ events.
Chapter Twelve
Jack ignored Amber who sat cross-legged in the middle of the floor, critically eying the sable colored armor hanging on a second rack in the corner of the room. Jack had Bogie opened along the seams, turned almost inside out, and was probing the circuitry to make sure everything was in order. He could do it at the shop, but liked his privacy when working on the white armor. “I didn’t think it was any of your business,” he replied briefly, frowning over a power line. He looked to see if the fiber optic cable was attached properly and, sure enough, the chip wiggled a little. He tapped it into place delicately.
“Not any of my business?” Her voice seemed high and a little strained. “Or is it because you don’t trust me any more?”
“You told me you didn’t kill Scott. I trust you.” Jack looked toward her. “The WP comes in and wipes my mental slate. What I’m not supposed to remember, it’s better you don’t know.”
She gritted out, “How can anybody treat his men that way?”
Jack looked up. “I don’t know that the order came from Pepys.”
“Who from, then?” She sucked in her breath suddenly. “Winton has that much influence with the WP?”
“Maybe. We don’t know he doesn’t. I haven’t been able to locate him.”
“The implications boggle the mind. What about Scott? Why do you think he was eliminated?”
“He could have been in the wrong place at the right time. Or, he could have been the target. I don’t know.”
Amber stared at Bogie’s replacement hanging in the corner. “Going to replace Bogie?”
“No. No, I’m not. I thought about it, but he’s probably the only chance I’ve got to regain what I was.”
“What do you mean?”
Jack paused, searching for the words. He had had little chance to talk with Amber since he’d gotten back. “I was never meant to be brought out of cold sleep alive. I was found by accident. They took me out and hid me, and they tampered with what was left of my memories. I don’t know if the snatches I do remember are mine, or what they tried to implant in me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that no one was meant to survive Milos.”
“Who found you, then?”
“I don’t know. But my records weren’t at the hospital. They’ve been wiped clean. My doctors had assumed identities. Why me? Because I’m a Knight who survived—or because I’m someone I can’t even remember anymore.”
“But you dream, and you remember when you dream.”
“That’s right, and that means whoever revived me botched the job. If I’m no good to them, I’m a liability.”
“Winton?”
“Maybe. Or maybe someone else. God knows the Triad Throne has enough enemies.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“Nothing yet. I haven’t got enough information.” Jack straightened up the suit. “But I do know that Bogie was with me on Milos. Living then, even though we didn’t interface yet. It’s possible—just possible—he was alive enough to have contact with me and I just never realized it. He may even know who I really am, what my name was, where I came from.”
She sucked her breath in. “You’re not even Jack Storm?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Some things feel so right to me that I don’t think anyone could have changed them… I know I was a farmer’s son from Dorman’s Stand.” He grinned ruthlessly. “They couldn’t take that from me, although now I think they might have tried!”
“And all this time you thought it was the debriefing loop from cold sleep that wiped out your memories.”
“And it may have taken many of them, and the rehab center took advantage of the damage to implant a new persona.”
“But why? Who did it?”
He met her expression now, and this time her eyes did not look away. “I don’t know why. Possibly to protect them, or me, or maybe I’ve even been programmed the way you have.”
“But your dreams—”
“I’ve been in contact with Bogie, remember? He may be feeding back into me what he remembers me feeling from Milos. Anyway, I won’t be trading him in. I can’t. God help me, but I’ve got to keep using him.”
She tucked a strand of hair behind a delicate ear. Jack felt a feeling wash over him then, an irresistible urge to kiss her, and was glad there was a room and an assortment of tools between them. He cleared his throat.
“You’ve got to help me, Amber. You’ve got to help me wake him and then control him.”
Her lower lip trembled a little. “I—”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I’ll do whatever I can. After what happened at Huan’s lab and then here with the WP, I don’t know who’s the enemy anymore.” She stood up again. “I’ve got to go. Colin is waiting for me.”
“You’re with him a lot, lately. Going to convert?”
She wrinkled her nose, her somber mood fleeing. “Street scum like me? Not likely. But his secretary, Biggie, is doing a lot of lobbying in the palace, getting on Pepys’ nerves. I’m sort of filling in. I’m good with computers, remember?”
“What you can do with computers can get both of you nailed by the Sweepers, saint or not. Maybe I should warn him.”
“Really.” She paused at the doorway. “Jack…”
He was already peering back into the suit. “Mmmm?”
“Oh, nothing. Forget it. Start working on your meditation again, if we get Bogie awake.”
“I am. And I want you to start working on yours. I’m altering the gauntlet weaponry system a little… putting a stun in. I’m thinking that we need that option of my knocking them down and you probing them, if you can.”
She turned a little and, or was it his imagination, whitened. “You know I can’t—”
“You can try.”
“And what if I fry their brains?”
“I don’t think you could, if you worked on refining your talent.”
She shook her head vigorously. “Forget it! I’ve already told you, it’s all or nothing.”
Jack flexed his shoulders to ease a muscle that threatened to cramp as he leaned back into the armor. “Nothing,” he said, “is all or nothing, whether we like it or not.”
But she didn’t hear him. She’d already fled the apartment.
Colin looked at the com screen impatiently. The oval, good-natured face of Biggie looked back at him, eyes wide in an ingenuous expression. “Biggie, for god’s sake, that’s why I have you there. To make a continuous impression on Pepys. We’ve got to get permission to go into Bythia. There’s no reason why the Walker religion should continue to be denied access. I have a memo right here that states a rabbi was assigned to the embassy last month. If a priest and a rabbi can be there, a Walker can go in. I don’t want you to drop the subject just because you think it’s a sore spot with the emperor.”
Celestial Hit List Page 8
