gaian consortium 06 - zhore deception

by Pope, Christine

  That question was answered soon enough, because just as Zhandar stepped inside and Lirzhan closed the door, a human woman approached them, smiling. Her dark gold hair gleamed in the light, and she was quite beautiful.

  And also, he realized as she came closer, extremely pregnant. Her draped dark blue robe couldn’t conceal the rounded swell of her belly, and she moved with care. But her expression was serene for all that.

  “Good evening, Zhandar. I’m Alexa, Lirzhan’s wife.”

  He bowed to her.

  “Come into the dining room,” she went on. “I know it’s a little late for dinner, but if you’ve been traveling all this time, you’ll probably want something to eat.”

  “Thank you,” he murmured, wondering if he had driven all the way out here for a dinner party.

  She gestured for him to follow her, and so he did, going down a long hallway decorated with sconces of trailing plants and small delicate abstracts done in soft metallic paints. The effect should have been soothing, but Zhandar felt too on edge to truly appreciate his surroundings. He wanted to know why he was here. Something to do with this Gaian woman — who was also a former ambassador, he recalled — but how she could possibly help Trinity, he couldn’t begin to guess.

  Nalzhir and Rinzha already were seated in the dining room, which had the feeling of a lush grotto, with its grouping of indoor trees around a fountain set in the floor at one end of the chamber, and the vining plants that had been trained to grow up the walls and even across the ceiling. There was an open space next to Rinzha, and so Zhandar took that one, while Lirzhan helped his wife into her chair before seating himself beside her.

  The ambassador lifted a pitcher of water and poured some into the footed glass that sat in front of Zhandar, then handed him a plate filled with the sorts of things that would be easy to consume during a meeting — pieces of fruit, and bits of cheese and bread, and his favorite, mushroom turnovers. It all looked quite good, but his appetite seemed to have deserted him in the midst of his anxiety.

  “Forgive the secrecy,” Lirzhan said, “but after hearing of how our planet’s security was breached by agents of the Consortium, we thought it better to have this discussion in private.”

  “Exactly how private?” Zhandar inquired. It seemed as if Lirzhan was implying their own government was not involved, but Zhandar didn’t see how that could be so, not with Nalzhir and Rinzha in attendance. He needed a clearer idea of where they all stood.

  “Private enough,” Nalzhir said then. “To put it this way, while our government recognizes the need to take action and do what we can to rescue Ms. Knox, officially, it is attempting to stay neutral. Ms. Kreg here of course has a good deal of knowledge of the Consortium’s various agencies, because of the post she formerly held, and Lirzhan also has far more experience of Consortium practices than most of our people.”

  Although he desperately wanted to believe that they could help, Zhandar had no idea how they could be of any real assistance. While he didn’t pretend to understand the twisted workings of the darker parts of the Consortium’s government, he did know that the Gaians were excessively good at hiding what they didn’t want to be found. And he had a feeling that Trinity was someone they really didn’t want found.

  “Is it all right if I speak in Galactic Standard?” Alexa Kreg asked. “I’m slowly mastering Zhoraani, but this could get complicated, and it would be easier if I stuck with GS, since I know all the Zhore have to learn it as a second language.”

  “Of course,” he replied. He understood the language better than he spoke it, but he could manage.

  “We all understand your distress, Zhandar,” Alexa said. Her voice was smooth, controlled; he could see that she was used to speaking in front of others, and knowing that they would listen to her. “And from what I’ve heard so far of this Gabriel Brant and the people he’s working for, you have every reason to be concerned. However, Trinity is also valuable to them, or they wouldn’t have risked so much to retrieve her. The task at hand is to narrow down where they might have taken her.”

  She paused. But the others just nodded, clearly wanting her to continue. And since Zhandar had nothing to contribute yet, either, he inclined his head slightly and picked up his glass of water.

  “They’ll want some distance between here and wherever they’ve gone to ground,” she said, ticking off the options on her fingers. “But at the same time, they wouldn’t take her anywhere near the Gaian system. If she’s right in their backyard, so to speak, their deniability goes out the window. Someplace like Iradia might work, except it’s just a bit too lawless, and so risky. True, there are lots of inhabitable planets that could work as a base of operations, since they haven’t been settled, and so no one’s paying any attention to them.”

  For some reason, she paused there, her gaze flickering toward Lirzhan as she smiled slightly. He didn’t seem to react, although Zhandar got the impression that he might also be smiling within his hood.

  “However, based on the statements that Trinity made to Nalzhir, it sounded as if it was roughly a nine-hour subspace jump from wherever they performed the surgery on her to this system. That doesn’t narrow it down much, but according to the charts Lirzhan and I looked at, there are no Gaia-class worlds within that range. So….”

  “So,” Lirzhan continued, “we are guessing that this Gabriel Brant’s base of operations is not on a planet, uninhabited or otherwise, but on a space station of some sort. That sort of structure is relatively easy to hide, especially if it’s located in a system that has been catalogued but not settled.”

  “That is something,” Zhandar agreed. “However — and correct me if I am wrong, as I am only a simple horticultural architect — wouldn’t the odds of finding a space station in so vast an area be, well, astronomical?”

  To his surprise, it was Nalzhir who answered him. “That is true, but there are still ways to narrow it down. A space station is never completely self-sustaining. It must have ships to bring it supplies, changes of personnel, that sort of thing. That kind of traffic can only be hidden up to a point, even as good as the Consortium is at concealing its tracks.”

  Zhandar set down his glass of water. “That may be, but who would be tracking it? I understand that on Gaia and some other worlds, there are people who are specialists in this sort of thing, but on Zhoraan we have no need of…hackers.” He said the last word with some distaste, glad that no equivalent existed in his own language.

  Alexa’s lips pursed in amusement. “Perhaps, but they can be useful, especially when they decide to use their skills for good.”

  At that remark, Zhandar could only tilt his head to one side. “I fear I don’t understand.”

  “I know someone. He was in and out of Eridani when I was with the Consortium consulate there. At the time he was also working for the government, but in the last few months he’s gone dark, so to speak.”

  “‘Gone dark’?” Zhandar repeated, mystified. Perhaps his grasp of Galactic Standard wasn’t as good as he thought.

  “He decided that working for the Consortium wasn’t such a good deal after all. When the stories about Hunan Province leaked….” Alexa let the words trail off, and she shook her head.

  That name sounded vaguely familiar. Zhandar wasn’t one to pay much attention to any sort of news, let alone anything involving the Consortium, but it seemed there had been some sort of scandal that the Gaians had desperately tried to hush up. He just couldn’t recall the particulars of the incident. Now probably wasn’t the time to ask for an in-depth explanation, however.

  “Anyway,” she went on briskly, once she seemed to realize that neither Zhandar nor any of the others were going to require more clarification, “that sort of soured him on the whole thing. He left the Consortium service and went undercover. I have no idea why he got in contact with me, but I received a message from him a few months ago.”

  “What was the message?”

  This time she didn’t just smile. She grinned, and somethin
g about the expression softened her features immeasurably. Yes, she was a lovely woman, but Zhandar had thought her rather cold. If he hadn’t known she shared the sayara bond with Lirzhan, he probably would have never believed it.

  “The message said, ‘I like what you did, or what you tried to do. Anytime you want to give the Consortium hell, you just let me know.’”

  Lirzhan chuckled, but once again Zhandar found himself mystified. Judging by the faintly puzzled aura surrounding Nalzhir and Rinzha, it appeared they felt the same way.

  Seeming to take pity on them all, Alexa said, “The Consortium didn’t much appreciate one of its ambassadors defecting to marry an alien. I compounded the transgression by trying to call them on some very underhanded research they were conducting. So Jackson was commending me on that. How he knew, I can’t say for sure, but he’s a very good hacker, so he must have caught a whiff of what was really going on and decided to investigate for himself.”

  “Jackson?” Rinzha said.

  “His name is Jackson Wyler. I’m sure if I contact him and tell him what we’re looking for, he’ll do the rest.”

  “How quickly?” Zhandar asked, hoping he didn’t sound too anxious. It was obvious that Alexa and Lirzhan were offering any help they could, but at the same time, he couldn’t prevent himself from thinking about how the moments were slowly ticking past. Anything at all could be happening to Trinity while they sat here talking.

  “I don’t know,” Alexa replied. Her voice softened as she spoke; clearly, she understood his concern, but there was only so much she could do. “I’ll contact Jackson and give him our parameters, then see what he has to say. He’s spent the last fifteen years hacking systems that couldn’t be hacked and analyzing data at a level I doubt any of us could fully comprehend, so if there’s anyone who can find a solution for us quickly, it’s him.”

  That sounded a bit better. Zhandar knew he was very good in his own specialized field, but he used computers as helpful tools, not as weapons…or as scalpels. If this Jackson Wyler was a skilled as Alexa seemed to think he was, then they might have a fighting chance.

  “In the meantime,” Lirzhan said, “let us all eat our fill, and do our best to keep up our spirits. Zhandar, do you think it is feasible to take a short leave of absence? We have ample space for you to stay here, and that way we’d be able to act quickly if Jackson does find something for us.”

  Zhandar couldn’t help sending a dubious glance at Alexa’s swollen belly. While he wasn’t overly familiar with the various stages of pregnancy, it looked as if that baby was about to make an appearance any day now.

  “It’s quite all right,” she said, sounding amused. “I’m not due for another two weeks. I’m sure we’ll have all this worked out by then.”

  He hoped so. Because he didn’t want to contemplate what might happen to Trinity if she ended up being held by Gabriel Brant for such a horrendous stretch of time.

  Not that he, Zhandar, would even still be alive by then to find out.

  * * *

  The chronometer on the wall couldn’t make a ticking noise like the antique clocks she’d seen in historical vids, and yet in her mind, Trinity thought she could hear every second going by with excruciating slowness. Gabriel had left her alone after making that last threat. At first she was relieved that he’d found something else to occupy his time, but she realized he hadn’t done so out of the goodness of his heart. No, this was just another one of his petty little tortures.

  Meals were left for her at regular intervals, and she forced herself to eat. Not because she was experiencing anything close to hunger, but because of the life growing inside her. The life Gabriel wanted to take away.

  If they’d been on a base on some uninhabited world, she might have contemplated thoughts of escape. Surely trying to survive on an alien planet would be better than simply waiting around until Gabriel’s minions found an acceptable surrogate. But on a space station, her options were a little more limited. Even if by some miracle she managed to get out of her rooms and to the station’s shuttle bay, she didn’t know any more about piloting a starship than she did solving a differential equation.

  She didn’t have anything to bribe anyone with, and even if she did, the only person she’d been allowed to see besides Gabriel was Blake Chu. And the odds of subverting Blake to her cause were probably…well, math had never been her strong suit, but she had a feeling those odds were awfully high.

  What if she threatened to hurt herself, hurt the baby? No, she doubted she could bring herself to even pretend to do that. Anyway, merely by agreeing to the original mission in the first place, she’d proven to Gabriel that she had a fairly healthy sense of self-preservation. She doubted he’d buy any martyr acts from her now.

  The door chimed, and she stiffened. Had Gabriel finally decided he’d had enough of leaving her alone and thought it was time to come in and torture her a bit more?

  If he had, there wasn’t much she could do about it.

  “Come,” she said, glad that her voice was steady, even though her heart had begun to beat faster the second the door chime sounded.

  It wasn’t Gabriel who entered, however, but Blake Chu. The smirk he wore looked positively Gabriel-inspired, however.

  “How are we doing today?” he inquired.

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  He squinted, as if attempting to look at her more closely. “Hmm. You’re looking a little tired, actually. All this sitting around getting to you?”

  “Are you kidding?” she shot back. “After having to play secretary for the past few months, this is being in the lap of luxury. It was very thoughtful of Gabriel to make sure that all the latest entertainment feeds were sent to my console.”

  Well, not all, actually. There was a conspicuous absence of anything resembling news. Just fluffy entertainment in various forms. It was better than nothing — watching the melodramas the vid writers cooked up helped to divert her thoughts, if only in short bursts — but she had to wonder what was going on in the larger galaxy.

  Blake shrugged. “Well, good, I guess.” He paused then, and she could almost feel him poking at her mind, trying to find a chink in the mental armor she’d erected.

  Good luck with that, she reflected. After spending a month among the Zhore and having to keep those barriers up at all time, dealing with Blake’s blunt-force approach was almost laughably easy.

  “What did you want, Blake?”

  He smirked. “Oh, right. Gabriel sent me along to let you know that they’ve found an acceptable surrogate. She should be here sometime within the next thirty-six standard hours.”

  Trinity’s stomach clenched. But she knew her barriers were still in place, so Blake shouldn’t be able to sense any of the roiling dread that had overtaken her. A standard day and a half before Zhandar’s child was stolen from her forever.

  Yes, she’d known the surrogate might appear at any time. And really, considering Gabriel’s ruthless efficiency when it came to making something he wanted happen, thirty-six hours was almost glacially slow.

  The question was, could she come up with a plan to thwart him within the next thirty-six hours?

  “Great,” she said carelessly, hoping that her hesitation hadn’t lasted long enough for Blake to notice. “The sooner they get this thing out of me, the better.”

  I’m so sorry, Zhandar…I didn’t really mean it.

  Blake gave her a nod of grudging approval. “Yeah, I can’t say as I blame you. Bad enough that you had to…you know. But then to have to carry it for nine months? Nasty.”

  She wanted to tell him that the really nasty thing was his VR girlfriends and the various apparatus he used to get off while engaging in those virtual encounters. But since it seemed as if she almost had him on her side right now, the last thing she wanted to do was antagonize him.

  “I know,” she replied, then gave a mock shudder. “You’d think Gabriel might have thought of that from the beginning. Then we could have performed the transfer as
soon as I got back here.”

  “Well, I don’t think he was counting on….” Blake seemed to stop himself then, as if he’d been about to reveal something he shouldn’t.

  Gabriel wasn’t counting on…what? Being “slightly in lust” with the woman he’d chosen to be his secret weapon? Well, that made sense. If he hadn’t want to sleep with her, Trinity doubted he’d be worrying too much about letting her carry the child to term, no matter what he might say about risking her talents. It was the child who couldn’t be risked. Neither he nor the doctors and scientists he was working with really knew enough about Zhore physiology to say whether sex during pregnancy was safe.

  She wasn’t going to admit to Blake that she knew all about Gabriel’s plans for her. It was clear enough that the two men must have shared a few confidences…or maybe Blake was a little better at getting into Gabriel’s head than her handler wanted to acknowledge. Either way, this was one time when it was probably better to play dumb. Especially since she’d just begun to have an inkling of a plan.

  “Oh, yes, I got the feeling that he wasn’t expecting me to get knocked up that quickly,” she confessed, giving Blake what she hoped was a half-sly, half-embarrassed look, as if they were sharing a confidence.

  “Yeah, that,” he responded at once.

  There. Relief. He was relieved that she hadn’t pressed the issue or asked any awkward questions. She remembered how she’d gotten in all the way during their training sessions, by letting her thoughts become an invisible mist, one that slipped quietly through all the defenses he’d so carefully created.

  “So,” she said, “how do you even find a surrogate? Put an ad on the local e-board?”

  “Of course not,” Blake replied. “I don’t know the details. But obviously it’s something we needed to be discreet about.”

  “Oh, right.” Good. Now he was thinking of her as stupid and silly. And if he considered her to be a foolish young woman who didn’t know what she’d gotten herself into, then he wouldn’t believe her to be any kind of threat. Certainly not the sort of opponent who could take him on, let alone best him. Being Blake, he was so confident of his own superiority that he’d conveniently erased that one instance where she’d slipped into his thoughts without his even realizing what she was doing.