Alex considered the problem as dispassionately as he could. "Can we stay below their horizon until we're out of range?"
Tia threw up a map as an answer. If the pirate chose to pursue them, there was no way that she could stay out of range of medium guns, and they had to assume that was what the pirate had.
"There has to be a way to keep them on the ground, somehow," Alex muttered, chewing a hangnail, aware that with every second that passed their window of opportunity was closing. "What's going on Upstairs?"
"The first ship is heavily damaged. If I'm reading the tactics right, the CenSec ship is going to move in for the kill, provided the other pirate gives him a chance."
Alex turned his attention back to their own problem. "If we could just cripple them, throw enough rocks down on them or, wait a minute. Bring up the views of the building they're hiding in, the ones you got from my camera."
Tia obeyed, and Alex studied the situation carefully, matching pictures with memory. "Interesting thing about those hills. See how some of them look broken off, as if those tips get too heavy to support after a while? I bet that's because the winds come in from different directions and scour out under the crests once in a while. Can you give me a better shot of the hills overhanging those buildings?"
"No problem." The viewpoint pulled back, displaying one of those wave-crest hills overshadowing the building with the partial roof. "Alex!" she exclaimed.
"You see it too," he said with satisfaction. "All right girl, think we can pull this off?"
For answer, she revved her engines. "Be a nice change to hit back, for once!"
"Then let's lift!"
The engines built from a quiet purr to a bone-deep, bass rumble, more felt than heard. Tia pulled in her landing gear, then began rocking herself by engaging null-grav, first on the starboard, then on the port side, each time rolling a little more. Alex did what he could, playing with the attitude jets, trying to undercut some of the ice.
Her nose rose, until Alex tilted back in his chair at about a forty-five degree angle. That was when Tia cut loose with the full power of her rear thrusters.
"We're moving!" she shouted over the roar of her own engines, engines normally reserved only for in-atmosphere flight. There was no sensation of movement, but Alex clearly heard the scrape of ice along her hull, and winced, knowing that without a long stint in dry dock, Tia would look worse than Hank's old trampfreighter.
Suddenly, they were free.
Tia killed the engines and engaged full null-gee drive, hovering just above the surface of the snow in eerie silence.
"CenSec got the first ship; the other one jumped them. It looks pretty even," Tia said shortly, as Alex heard the whine of the landing gear being dropped again. "So far, no one has noticed us. Are you braced?"
"Go for it," he replied. "Is there anything I can do?"
"Hold on," she said shortly.
She shot skyward, going for altitude. She knew the capabilities of her hull better than Alex did; he was going to leave this in her hands. The hill they wanted was less than a kilometer away, when they'd gotten high enough, Tia nosed over and dove for it. She aimed straight for the crest, as if it were a target and she a projectile.
Sudden fear clutched at his throat, his heart going a million beats per second. She can't mean to ram. Alex froze, his hands clutching the armrests.
At the last minute, Tia rolled her nose up, hitting the crest of the hill with her landing gear instead of her nose.
The shriek and crunch of agonized metal told Alex that they were not going to make port anywhere but a space station now. The impact rammed him back into his chair, the lights flickered and went out, and crash systems deployed, cushioning him from worse shock. Even so, he blacked out for a moment.
When he came to again, the lights were back on, and Tia hovered, tilted slightly askew, above the alien city.
Below and to their right was what was left of the roofless building, now buried beneath a pile of ice, earth, and rock.
"Are you all right?" he managed, though it hurt to move his jaw.
"Space-worthy," she said, and there was no mistaking the shakiness in her voice. "Barely. I'll be as leaky as a sieve in anything but the main cabin and the passenger section, though. And I don't know about my drives, hang on, we're being hailed."
The screen flickered and filled with the image of Neil, with Chria Chance in the background. "AH One-Oh-Three-Three, is that you? I assume you had a good reason for playing 'chicken' with a mountain?"
"It's us," Alex replied, feeling all of his energy drain out as his adrenaline level dropped. "There's another one of your playmates under that rockpile."
"Ah." Neil said nothing more, simply nodded. "All's well then. Can you come up to us?"
"We aren't going to be making any landings," Tia pointed out. "But I don't know about the state of our drives."
Chria leaned over her partner's shoulder. "I wouldn't trust them if I were you," she said. "But if you get up here, we can take you in tow and hold you in orbit until one of the transports shows up. Then you ride home in their bay."
"It's a deal," Alex told her, then, with a lift of an eyebrow, "I didn't know you could do that"
"There's a lot you don't know," she told him. "Is that all right with you, Tia?"
"At this point, just about anything would be all right with me," she replied. "We're on the way."
Tia was still a little dizzy from the call she'd gotten from the Institute. When you're refitted, we'd like you to take the first Team into what we think is the EsKay homeworld. You and Alexander have the most experience, in situations where plague is a possibility, of any other courier on contract to us. It had only made sense; to this day no one knew what had paralyzed her. She had a vested interest in making sure the team stayed healthy, and an even bigger one in helping to find the bug.
Of course, they knew that. And they knew she would never buy out her contract until this assignment was over. Blackmail? Assuredly. But it was a form of blackmail she could live with.
Besides, if her plan worked, she would soon be digging with the Prime Team, not just watching them. It might take a while, but sooner or later, she'd have enough money made from her investments.
Once she paid for the repairs, that is. From the remarks of the techs working on her hull, they would not be cheap.
Then Stirling stunned her again, presenting her with the figures in her account.
"So, my dear lady," said Stirling, "between an unspecified reward from the Drug Enforcement Arm, the bonus for decoding the purpose of the EsKay navbook, the fine return from your last investment, and the finders' fee for that impressive treasure trove, you are quite a wealthy shell-person."
"So I see," Tia replied, more than a little dazed. "But what about the bill for repairs?"
"Covered by CenSec." Stirling wasn't precisely gloating, but he was certainly enjoying himself. "And if you don't mind my saying so, that was my work. I merely repeated what you had told me about the situation, pointed out that your damages were due entirely to a civilian aiding in the apprehension of dangerous criminals, and CenSec seemed positively eager to have the bills transferred over. When I mentioned how you had kept their ship from ambush from the ground, they decided you needed that Singularity Drive you've always wanted."
She suspected he had done more than merely mention it... perhaps she ought to see if she could get Lee Stirling as her Advocate, instead of the softperson she had, who had done nothing about the repairs or the drive! So, she would not have to spend a single penny of all those bonuses on her own repairs! "What about my investments in the prosthetics firm? And what if I take my bonus money and plow it back into Moto-Prosthetics?"
"Doing brilliantly. And if you do that, hmm, do you realize you'll have a controlling interest?" Stirling sounded quite amazed. "Is this something you wanted? You could buy out your contract with all this. Or get yourself an entire new refit internally and externally."
"Yes," she replied firmly. S
he was glad that Alex wasn't aboard at the moment, even though she felt achingly lonely without the sounds of his footsteps or his tuneless whistling. This was something she needed absolute privacy for." In fact, I am going to need a softperson proxy to go to the Board of Directors for me."
"Now?" Stirling asked.
"As soon as I have controlling interest," she replied. "The sooner the better." And it can't be soon enough to suit me.
Alex looked deeply into the bottom of his glass and decided that this one was going to be his last. He had achieved the state of floating that passed for euphoria; any more and he would pass it, and become disgustingly drunk. Probably a weepy drunk, too, all things considered. That would be a bad thing; despite his civilian clothing, someone might recognize him as a CS brawn, and that would be trouble. Besides, this was a high-class bar as spaceport bars went; human bartender, subdued, restful lighting, comfortable booths and stools, good music that was not too loud. They didn't need a maudlin drunk; they really didn't need any drunk. No point in ruining other people's evening just because his life was a mess.
He felt the lump in his throat and knew one more drink would make it spill over into an outpouring of emotion. The bartender leaned over and said, confidingly, "Buddy, if I were you, I'd cut off about now."
Alex nodded, a little surprised, and swallowed back the lump. Had liability laws gotten to the point where bartenders were watching their customers for risky behavior? "Yeah. What I figured." He sniffed a bit and told himself to straighten up before he became an annoyance.
The bartender, a human, which was why Alex had chosen to drink away his troubles here, if such a thing was possible, did not leave. Instead, he polished the slick pseudo-wooden bar beside Alex with a spotless cloth, and said, casually, "If you don't mind my saying so, buddy, you look like a man with a problem or two."
Alex laughed, mirthlessly. The man had no idea. "Yeah. Guess so."
"You want to talk about it?" the bartender persisted. "That's what they hire me for. That's why you're paying so much for the drinks."
Alex squinted up at the man, who was perfectly ordinary in a way that seemed very familiar. Conservative haircut, conservative, casual clothing. Nothing about the face or the expression to mark him except a certain air of friendly concern. It was that 'air' that tipped him off. It was very polished, very professional. "Counselor?" he asked, finally.
The bartender nodded to a framed certificate over the three shelves of antique and exotic bottles behind the bar. "Licensed. Confidential. Freelance. Been in the business for five years. You probably can't tell me anything I haven't heard a hundred times before."
Freelance and confidential meant that whatever Alex told him would stay with him, and would not be reported back to his superiors. Alex was both surprised and unsurprised. The Counselor-attended bars had been gaining in popularity when he had graduated. He just hadn't known they'd gotten that popular. He certainly hadn't expected to find one out here, at a refit station. People tended to pour out their problems when they'd been drinking; someone back on old Terra had figured out that it might be a good idea to give them someone to talk to who might be able to tender some reasonable advice. Now, so he'd heard, there were more Counselors behind bars than there were in offices, and a large number of bartenders were (going back to school to get Counselor's licenses.
Suddenly the need to unburden himself to someone was too much to withstand. "Ever been in love?" he asked, staring back down at the empty glass and shoving it back and forth a little between his index fingers.
The bartender took the glass away and replaced it with a cup of coffee. "Not personally, but I've seen a lot of people who are, or think they are."
"Ah." Alex transferred his gaze to the cup, which steamed very nicely. "I wouldn't advise it."
"Yeah. A lot of them say that. Personal troubles with your significant?" the bartender-cum-Counselor prompted. "Maybe it's something I can help out with."
Alex sighed. "Only that I'm in love with someone that, isn't exactly reachable." He scratched his head for a moment, trying to think of a way to phrase it without giving too much away. "Our, uh, professions are going to keep us apart, no matter what, and there's some physical problems, too."
The habit of caution was ingrained too deeply. Freelance Counselor or no, he couldn't bring himself to tell the whole truth to this man. Not when telling it could lose him access to Tia altogether, if the wrong people heard all this.
"Can't you change jobs?" the Counselor asked, reasonably. "Surely a job isn't worth putting yourself through misery. From everything I've ever seen or heard, it's better to have a low-paying job that makes you happy than a high-paying one that's driving you into bars."
Alex shook his head, sorrowfully. "That won't help," he sighed hopelessly. "It's not just the job, and changing it will only make things worse. Think of us as as a Delphin and an Avithran. She can't swim, I can't fly. Completely incompatible lives." And that puts it mildly.
The Counselor shook his head, "That doesn't sound promising, my friend. Romeo and Juliet romances are all very well for the holos, but they're hell on your insides. I'd see if I couldn't shake my emotional attachment, if I was you. No matter how much you think you love someone, you can always turn the heat down if you decide that's what you want to do about it"
"I'm trying," Alex told him, moving the focus of his concentration from the coffee cup to the bartender's face. "Believe me, I'm trying. I've got a couple of weeks extended leave coming, and I'm going to use every minute of it in trying. I've got dates lined up; I've got parties I'm hitting, and a friend from CenSec is planning on taking me on an extended shore leave crawl."
The bartender nodded, slowly. "I understand, and seeing a lot of attractive new people is one way to try and shake an emotional attachment. But friend, you are not going to find your answer in the bottom of a bottle."
"Maybe not," Alex replied sadly. "But at least I can find a little forgetfulness there."
And as the bartender shook his head, he pushed away from his seat, turned, took a tight grip on his dubious equilibrium, and walked out the door, looking for a little more of that forgetfulness.
Angelica Guon-Stirling bint Chad slid into her leather-upholstered seat and smiled politely at the man seated next to her at the foot of the huge, black marble table. He nodded back and returned his attention to the stock market report he was reading on the screen of his datalink. Other men and women, dressed in conservative suits and the subdued hues of management, filed in and took the remaining places around the table. She refrained from chuckling. In a few more moments, he might well be more interested in her than in anything that datalink could supply. She'd gotten entry to the meeting on the pretext of representing her uncle's firm on some unspecified business. They represented enough fluid wealth that the secretary had added her to the agenda and granted her entry to the sacred boardroom. It was a very well-appointed sacred boardroom; rich with the scent of expensive leather and hushed as only a room ringed with high-priced anti-surveillance equipment could be. The lights were set at exactly the perfect psychological hue and intensity for the maximum amount of alertness, the chair cradled her with unobtrusive comfort. The colors of warm white, cool black, and gray created an air of efficiency and importance, without being sterile.
None of this intimidated Angelica in the least. She had seen a hundred such boardrooms in the past, and would probably see a thousand more before her career had advanced to the point that she was too busy to be sent out on such missions. Her uncle had not only chosen her to be Ms. Cade's proxy because they were related; he had chosen her because she was the best proxy in the firm. And this particular venture was going to need a very delicate touch, for what Ms. Cade wanted was not anything the board of directors of Moto-Prosthetics was going to be ready for. They thought in terms of hostile takeovers, poison pills, golden parachutes. Ms. Cade had an entirely different agenda. If this were not handled well and professionally, the board might well fight, and that would
waste precious time.
Though it might seem archaic, board meetings still took place in person. It was too easy to fake holos, to create a computer-generated simulacrum of someone who was dead or in cold sleep. That was why she was here now, with proxy papers in order and properly filed with all the appropriate authorities. Not that she minded. This was exciting work, and every once in a while there was a client like Hypatia Cade, who wanted something so different that it made everything else she had done up to now seem like a training exercise.
The meeting was called to order, and Angelica stood up before the chairman of the board could bring up normal business. Now was the time. If she waited until her scheduled turn, she could be lost or buried in nonsense, and as of this moment, the board's business was no longer what had been scheduled anyway. It was hers, Angelica's, to dictate. It was a heady brew, power, and Angelica drank it to the dregs as all eyes centered on her, most affronted that she had 'barged in' on their business.
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