Asbarthi smiled when Jones sucked in breath. “You are a living example of what we Bunyada believe—that the Mirka have usurped their power, that they have no mandate to rule the rest of us. There is no reason why men of wealth and substance should not participate in ruling their own planets—or, indeed, why non-Mirka officers should not command the Fleet’s ships.”
“I agree,” Jones did his best to project good will and honest determination. Lakshman had mentioned payment but how to steer the conversation? “I agree completely. But how can I help you?”
It was a moment before Asbarthi answered. First, he locked the broken fragment away with care and reverence, as though it was a religious icon—which, Jones acknowledged, it probably was. A pottery fragment. Where did it come from? What did it really mean? Was it real? Easy enough to create a fragment to support a legend. Maybe even an illustration of the legend.
“That piece comes from an archaeological dig,” Asbarthi said as he returned to his seat. “Some believe it merely illustrates a story.” His eyes narrowed and it seemed to Jones they almost glowed as he continued, “But I believe it’s true. And now we have you.” He smiled and the glow faded. “You are a legend come to life. You can help us to persuade the nay sayers. Of course, you will be well compensated.”
This was sounding better. “What sort of compensation?”
Asbarthi waved a hand. “Property, money, women. We are wealthy, Sur Jones.”
Wow. And an hour or two ago he was watching dust motes in a cell. “On that basis I’m happy to assist.”
“Excellent,” Asbarthi said, clapping his hands together.
Lakshman leaned forward in his chair. “We would also like to discuss with you your companion, Suri Selwood. Before she died, Indra Sayvu told her father the woman could actually run a battle cruiser by herself.”
“Yes, that’s true.” Jones hoped. He’d told Sayvu that, but he couldn’t be certain. But then, he knew Selwood could pilot small ships. A battle cruiser was just a larger ship, after all. And she had a military background.
“Could she also destroy a ship?”
“Oh, yes.” No doubt about that, he was sure. Jones smiled his winning smile. “But she’d have to be persuaded. She’s not the easiest person in the universe.”
Asbarthi gave that sharp ‘yes’ nod. “We have heard that also. But you were able to persuade her to accompany Sayvu in your escape attempt.”
“You want me to persuade her to help you? Well, yes, I’m sure I can do that. After all, I already did. But… she’s still on the warship, isn’t she?” They’d better not expect him to go back there. Never.
“She is. But we have arrangements in place,” Lakshman said.
“What sort of arrangements?” Jones said.
“You need not know,” Asbarthi said, rising to his feet. “Come. It is time to eat.”
Chapter Thirteen
“Oh, wow. You have vision of the mother ship?” Selwood could barely contain her excitement, her silver eyes gleaming against her golden skin.
Ravindra smiled. He’d come to look forward to his evening chats with her, even when she came close to unseemly behavior, as she was now, when her gaze met his for far too long. Maybe he was mellowing, understanding that for her it wasn’t rudeness. “You wish to see?”
“Wish to see? Do the stars burn?”
“It is not a pretty sight, Suri.” He switched on the HV and selected a channel. “This is classified, of course.”
“Have you collected some of the signals?” she said, her gaze on the screen.
“Yes, SenComm Hanestran already has the data. He’ll have it analyzed for tomorrow.” He decided to overlook her omission of a respectful reference to his title.
She nodded her head several times, a gesture he had come to learn meant ‘yes’, not ‘yes no’.
The mother ship appeared, a vast menace spewing its spawn into space. Selwood leant forward, all her concentration on the screen. When the mother ship attacked Ajagara, she stopped the picture and replayed the scene several times.
When the vid finished she sighed. “He tried to ram the mother ship.”
“Yes.”
She turned to him, her eyes glistening even more than usual. “Did anyone survive?”
“Not on the frigate. A very few on the planet. We have sent warnings to planetary administrations and placed warships where we have guessed the greatest danger may be. Some people escaped to shelters.”
She looked away as if remembering her manners and a gleam of red shimmered as she ran a hand through her hair. “I’m hoping we can analyze the signals from the mother ship and reactivate the Yogina fighter. But that won’t help you combat the mother ship. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was as though the ship absorbed the energy from what was fired at it.”
“Yes, that is also what we thought. Have you encountered such a device?”
“No.” She shook her head. “I’ll need to think on that.”
She sat opposite him, demure in the red gown, which revealed nothing. Not like the dress she’d tried to wear to the mess. He’d thought about that dress often, lately. Or rather, the body inside it. He dashed the thought away.
Ravindra picked up the glass at his elbow and stared at the liquor, red and smooth as the dress. The scooped neckline, the hint of breast, the way it clung to her waist and hips. The room felt hot. Or maybe he did. “A drink, Suri?”
“Thank you, no.”
Tullamarran finished clearing the plates. Ravindra dismissed him with a gesture and turned his gaze back to Selwood. Even in the shapeless dress she wore she enticed him.
She met his eyes, a momentary flash of silver. “If we’ve finished talking, Admiral, I will—”
“Are you bound? To a man?” He blurted the words.
Her eyebrows arched but she relaxed back onto the couch. “It hardly matters, does it?”
“Indulge me.”
She shrugged. “No, I’m not bound.”
How to put this? “Tell me, in your society, the world you come from, are you considered beautiful?”
She laughed and her mercury eyes gleamed. “Me? I don’t think so.”
“Why not?” He rummaged around for words. “What I mean is that if your skin was the color of mine and your eyes like ours you would be considered a beautiful woman.”
“So not beautiful at all. Not here, not there. I’m as much an alien in my own society as I am in yours, Admiral. It’s these eyes, you know. And the hardware here.” She tapped her forehead. “I frighten people.” Her shoulders jerked in a barely perceptible shrug.
“But surely your father would consider an offer for you?”
She laughed again. “It doesn’t work like that, not on the world I come from. We make our own choices. But I expect my father would have accepted just about any offer he could get for me, right from when I was a little girl. Then again, I suppose you could say I was offered to the military, when I was born.”
He detected an old sadness, quickly covered up. “So. How does it work on your world?”
“You meet somebody, you fall in love, you… get bound. Me, I met a man I worked with. A pilot. We were both young and silly, fell into bed and screwed each other senseless.” She cleared her throat, brought her hand up to her mouth. “What I mean is we mistook lust for love, so we bound ourselves together.”
Screwed each other senseless. Noted. “When did he die?”
She stared at him for a moment too long but he would forgive her that.
“He’s not dead. We just agreed to terminate the arrangement. He got himself bound to someone else and last I heard they had three children.”
Bound to someone else? Break an arrangement?
She grinned. “I take it you don’t do that? Terminate an arrangement?”
“No. When a couple is bound, it is for life.”
“I like our version better. People make mistakes. You didn’t choose your partner?”
“No. The choice was made by our
fathers. My father offered for her.”
“Military families?”
“Of course. Darya families.”
“Are you happy together?”
He hadn’t seen her much. She’d kept his house, his lands; borne his children. Now, two years on, he found it difficult to dredge up a memory of her face. “We were happy enough. She died.”
“I’m sorry.” A small, contrite smile twitched her mouth.
“She had a dangerous hobby, taming Vulsaurs. They are flying beasts native to my planet. Two years ago, one killed her.”
“Do you have children?”
“A son and a daughter, as is usual. Soon enough, grand children.”
“You did the same thing? Made an offer on behalf of your children?”
“My son’s behalf. And I have accepted an offer for my daughter, when she is of age.”
“Did your children have any say?”
She smiled a lot, this woman. “Of course not. And you? Do you have children?”
“Supertechs don’t have children. It doesn’t go with the rigors of the job.”
“Are you able to have children? Perhaps with a male Supertech?” This was close to the mark. He squirmed, hard and uncomfortable.
She tapped her fingers absently on her knee. “No. I can’t have children. Look, I don’t mind. I never had any ambition to be a mother, I’d do a terrible job.” She tilted her head to one side. “Why are you asking me these things?”
Because I want to take you to my bed. He swallowed. “Curiosity.”
The material of the dress rustled as she stood. The knowing look on her face made him feel like a lusting boy. Not far wrong.
“It’s late. Time for me to go, Srimana.” She smiled, an impish, knowing grin. “I wish you…” she chuckled, “…pleasant dreams.”
“Goodnight, Suri.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say.
She hesitated for a fraction of a second. The sidelong look she gave him as she stepped to the door was unreadable. One raised eyebrow, eyes slightly narrowed, her lips curved and then she was gone. The scent of her lingered, filled his nostrils, sweet and soft. And perhaps a little more. The image of the man with the pale-skinned woman filled his mind. Oh, Selwood, I want you.
His dreams might be pleasant but he suspected they would be uncomfortable. Stupid. He’d been in space too long. A long night with a couple of whores and he’d be fine.
****
Morgan crossed the passage to her own suite. Curiosity, huh? She’d noticed the bulge in his pants. Admirals. They imagined rank could get them anywhere they wanted to be, including between her legs. A few had tried but she wasn’t anybody’s addition to the trophy cabinet. She picked her own boyfriends; hot-shot pilots like Coreb, mid-ranked marines, men with great bodies who didn’t care about mental hardware, who wanted a good time, no strings attached. Not for her that romance nonsense. Keep them at arm’s length; emotionally, anyway. She’d learnt how to do that years ago, how to keep her heart locked away in a vault.
Roy was watching a holovid. She glanced up as Morgan passed with a muttered ‘I’m going to bed’.
She shucked off the hated dress and hung it away before she went to the washroom.
Still, Ravindra wasn’t like the men who just wanted to score with the latest female. Her relationship with him had developed over time, over the many nights they had sat together over dinner, talking about everything under hundreds of suns. He was good company, even had a sense of humor now and then. She might even be beginning to quite like him.
He had a great body, no doubt about it; wide shoulders, long legs, muscles. Ravindra in his dress whites. Oh, yes. Yum. She sniggered to herself. A pity he wasn’t a mid-ranked marine or a hot-shot pilot. Then she might have been tempted.
Don’t kid yourself, Morgan. You are tempted. Right now. You can feel it, right through your body.
She shook her head sharply. Enough of this. Tomorrow, Hanestran would have that mother ship signal data analyzed. And she had to think on something that absorbed energy and then, it seemed, spat it back out.
Chapter Fourteen
Another burst of signal. Nothing. The alien ship lay on its wingtip, as silent, as unmoving, as ever.
Hanestran made that flinging gesture with his right arm that indicated frustration. “We’ve tried everything. Every single burst of transmission. It isn’t going to work.”
“It’s missing something,” Morgan said.
“Maybe the fighter has to be in space, Srimana,” one of Hanestran’s underlings suggested.
In space. Maybe. But wouldn’t the processor at least react? What else? A missing connection, something broken? “What about the black round thing? Can we put that in the cockpit?”
Hanestran shot her a look. “Gupta.” He flicked his head at a female tech standing close by.
The tech rushed off and returned with the box. Morgan took it from her, opened the lid and placed the black ball on the pilot’s seat. “Try them all again.”
The signals had been stored into a processor. A flick of a switch and a stream of vibrations were fired at the fighter, while recorders monitored any reactions. Morgan recorded, too, analyzing with her own capability. She’d bet herself against Hanestran’s equipment any day.
There.
The ball had gleamed for a fraction of a second. Morgan grabbed Hanestran’s arm. “Stop it. Replay… stop. See that?”
He sucked in a breath. And deflated. “But then it’s gone. Something else is missing.”
“Yes. I think I know what it is. The interface. The eyes.” She pointed at her own eyes.
“But the thing’s dead.”
“I guess it is with its brain excised.” Damnation. Maybe they could put the ball back, sow the Yogin up.
“With respect, Suri, what about your eyes?”
Morgan stared at Gupta, a keen young tech bursting with curiosity and enthusiasm. The girl flushed and bowed her head, looking straight down at the deck.
“A good thought, an excellent thought,” Morgan said, patting her on the shoulder. It probably wouldn’t work but it might be worth a try. “I’ll see if I can get in the cockpit and you can try that signal again.”
The look Hanestran turned on her expressed his opinion, but he jerked his head.
She scrambled up the wing, took the ball off the seat and squeezed herself into the cockpit. The alien pilot would have sat with its knees under the dash. The best she could manage was to bring her knees into her body, her breasts her shins pressed against the dash. It was bloody uncomfortable. Gupta handed her the artifact.
“Okay, try it again. Just that piece of transmission.” Morgan concentrated on the black ball, shutting out everything else.
A gleam flickered deep in the ball’s depths. It lasted a little longer but not enough. Had she detected an echo from the console?
“Try it again when I say. And keep that signal coming.”
She reached out mentally to the black ball and into the ship. “Now.”
She pounced on the tiny pulse coming from the console, enhanced it, fed it to the black ball.
The fighter came alive. Screens glowed, hatches opened, muzzles emerged, the engines waited for ignition. Cheers broke out, jubilant cries. Morgan withdrew. And the ship shut down again. Fuck. She stirred in the seat, barking her legs on the dash.
“What happened?” Hanestran asked, looking up at her through the helmet.
“I let go and it shut down. Looks like it’ll stay operational if I keep that signal flowing through me to the black ball.”
“If you can keep the connection going, Morgan, we will record at all angles, open what we can,” Hanestran said.
“Somebody’s going to owe me, SenComm. My knees are killing me already.”
She wriggled a bit, settled her back and resumed her concentration. Base code binary, word size… word size 128… not large… repeating codes…on?..., off?... record… save. The crick in her back edged through her concentration, nudging h
er nerves and she withdrew, sighing. The fighter shut down again. She blinked her eyes to clear her head. Something in the room had changed. A certain tension? She looked around her, searching for Hanestran.
Ravindra. No wonder everybody else had shut up. Even in an isolation suit he radiated an aura. She could swear he was trying not to laugh. She must look pretty silly with her knees up around her ears. If I was at home… so, what do you think you’re laughing at? Something funny, Your Admiralship? She bowed her head. “Srimana.”
“You don’t look comfortable, Suri Selwood.”
She dared not look at him. If she did, she’d sneer. “I’m not. And I need a break.”
She struggled out, heaving her weight onto the edge of the cockpit so she could straighten one leg, then the other. An arch of the back to ease the crick and she tottered down the angle of the wing and jumped onto the deck. Shit. She hadn’t said Admiral, or Srimana or anything. He wouldn’t be impressed. Oh, well. Too late now.
“After a break, will you return to the cockpit?” Ravindra said.
He’d asked. Good grief, he’d asked. “If you wish it, Admiral.”
That curt nod for yes. And a hint of approval. “I had hardly arrived when you withdrew. And although I can view the images I would also like to see the ship with my own eyes.”
Wow. He’d even explained. “If you’ll give me a few moments to recover…”
“Of course. Are you able to access the system as well?”
“I’m trying to collect what I can. But I don’t have enough data to go on. I’m carrying out some analysis now, basically guessing what might have been sent. My first guess was an order to resume normal configuration from hibernation or whatever it was. But that’s wrong. This signal was sent after the fighters had been launched. So maybe a deploy order.”
“Which makes sense.” He swiveled, looked the ship over again. “You’ve proved your worth, Suri, and I thank you.”
A warm glow of pleasure stole through her. “I need to walk around.” She afforded him a swift bow and strode off, lifting her legs up behind her. A warm glow. How fucking pathetic. An alien admiral, for pity’s sake. So he’s got a nice butt. Too long without a man, that’s what it was. And not likely to have too many options here.
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