A friend of Hayden’s or a friend of Lazlo’s? Or neither, just another female trolling for a good time that night?
I dismissed her. I’d located Lazlo again, on my own. That’s all that mattered.
Sully came in, followed by Ren. Ren’s hair was still wet—a final soak that would have to hold him until Gregor came back in. Both men were in black. I wore a black shirt but dark green pants. But no holsters, no weapons. We couldn’t get those through the gate scanner. They were hidden in our luggage, shielded in a special compartment.
“Everything set with Gregor and Marsh?”
Sully nodded. “He’s cooled off a bit, probably because he’s in command again and has the codes.”
“And because neither Ren nor I will be on board.”
Sully tugged on my braid as he walked by, his gaze on the screen. I had the news running again.
“Another?” he asked. Then before I could answer, “Verno’s leaving to go with Sister Berri.”
I glanced at Ren, then back at Sully. “Why?”
“He belongs back in the monastery,” Ren said. “It’s where he feels most comfortable. Plus he wants to work with his people, teach them that murder isn’t the answer. He’ll still be a good contact for us if there are any other reports of gen-labs using Takas.”
“You’ll miss him.” With Verno gone, and Dorsie distancing herself from him, Ren now had only Sully and myself.
“I never expected him to stay. This is not his path, as it is mine.”
Gentle acceptance and understanding. Just like my brother Thad. Ha!
Sully clicked off the screen. “We’ll be docking in fifteen minutes. Go put on your robes, my friends, and try like hell to look pious.”
Sister Berri Solaria reached up and adjusted my hood before I could back away from her touch. “There, that’s better. We must at all times be aware that our outward appearance mirrors our humbleness and our mission to serve selflessly.” She yanked on my robe. “It would help if you’d at least try, Captain Bergren.”
Supercilious bitch. I heard Sully’s voice clearly in my mind as he brushed by me, his hand briefly clasping my shoulder. I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. I caught his half smile when he stopped by the airlock with Ren and Verno. He felt my laughter just as clearly as I heard his words. Could hear them, ever since we’d made love and I willingly granted him entry into my thoughts.
It still startled me slightly when his thoughts accompanied his touch. Though the few thoughts he’d sent to me since then, like the one just now, were all light in tone. Gentle. Teasing. Still testing. I could feel that. Still cautious. Still making sure, as he’d asked me outside Trel’s bar, that I wasn’t angry. Afraid.
I wasn’t. I knew him. No gill slits, no webbings, and, as I’d told Dorsie, no wings framed in unholy light. Terribly human, terribly male, wonderfully—
The Karn jerked. Marker Terminal’s gateway impacted against us, locking on to our hull.
I took a deep breath, patted my ID secured at the belt at my waist, and, when I caught his dark gaze, nodded to Sully.
Showtime.
Verno handed his ID to the Taka guard at the bottom of the gateway. “Blessings of the hour, Brother.”
“Blessings to you. Brother Verno?” Their conversation was a gravelly, growly exchange of voices.
I still had trouble reading nuances of tone when Takas spoke. They always sounded angry, annoyed. But then, Ren and Sully were probably scanning, reading. If there were troubles brewing, I’d know.
Verno extended his hand toward Berri. “Sister Berri Solaria. We’re here to open the new temple.”
“Missed Peyhar’s. Would have liked that.” The guard took Berri’s ID, scanned it through. Took mine, Sully’s, Ren’s. Studied Ren for a few seconds more than I liked. But he let us pass.
“Next Peyhar’s!” he called after us. “Good celebration then.”
“Praise the stars.” Verno waved back.
We walked into Marker Terminal’s main corridor. My heart started beating again.
Fleet personnel were everywhere. I kept my head tilted down. The chance I’d run into someone from Thad’s office was slim, but it existed. We followed Berri and Verno to the luggage and cargo ramps. Berri moved confidently through the corridors and cross-corridors, heading for a bank of lifts. She’d been here before.
We threaded through the crowds down one level to baggage. I worked on calming myself. They’d let us through. Our luggage was tagged as church property. No reason to expect it contained weapons. Explosives. Poison gas.
Everything was shielded in special compartments. Sully knew what he was doing. He couldn’t have worked as a smuggler for all those years if he didn’t.
We passed through a second set of security gates before we entered the luggage ramp area. About a half dozen people milled about, all human, except for two tall forms I was startled to realize were Stolorths. The only Stolorths I remembered seeing on Marker belonged to a diplomatic delegation. They’d been well-guarded, and I’d seen them only from a distance. These wore freighter uniforms, their ship’s patch unfamiliar to me. They were deep in conversation, didn’t look our way, didn’t seem to notice the humans staring nervously, purposely giving them a wide berth. Ren had turned and kept his back to them. Berri glared at them openly, her lips pursed, but said nothing.
The Stolorths wandered off with an antigrav pallet wobbling behind them.
I took a deep breath.
Berri became cheerful again, blessing everyone left and right as she headed for a stack of boxes and duffel cases. The small electronic sign underneath read GLNT EXPLR.
Verno grabbed a pallet, activated it, and began to load the boxes stenciled with the arch-and-stave on all sides. Supplies for the new temple. Sully loaded a second pallet, smaller, with our duffels, arch-and-stave tags dangling.
A Takan guard glanced at our IDs again, waved us through.
Praise the stars.
A shuttle would take us to M-2, Berri and Verno to M-3. There’d be no further security checks. We were cleared, as safe as if we’d been through Berri’s purity process. She and Verno stepped into line for the M-3 shuttle. I realized maybe I didn’t dislike her as much as I thought. She was, if nothing else, true to what she believed. Even Sully said he sensed no duplicity in her. She was deeply fervent—perhaps misguidedly so in my opinion—and committed to her work with the Takas. Maybe someday she’d revise her opinions on Stolorths and Ragkirils. She and the rest of the Empire.
I extended my hand to her. “Blessings of the hour, Sister Berri. And thank you.” I meant it.
Her smile was angel-soft. “I see the holy sword of the abbot behind you as you proceed.” She nodded to Sully.
Verno hugged Ren, one of the odder sights I’d ever seen. An eight-foot-tall Taka embracing a six-and-a-half-foot-tall Stolorth.
Praise the stars.
We passed a news-bank holovid on our way to the M-2 shuttle. The ’caster’s bronze-skinned face turned, as if following us, as we walked by. “And in sports news, zero-g racquetball competitions heated up in Port January yesterday when …”
“I’ll take the pallet to the baggage ramp,” Sully said as the gate came into view. “You stay with Ren. Watch for unfriendlies.”
That meant anything from other Stolorths to Marker stripers to Lazlo. I requested three tickets from the ’droid attendant. Next shuttle was due in fifteen minutes, a second five minutes after that. M-2 was a popular destination. If we didn’t make the first shuttle, we’d be first in line for the next.
Sully came back and we retreated into a quiet corner not far from the gate, blessing anyone who looked our way but not deliberately making eye contact. Most didn’t. This was Marker. Everyone was in too much of a hurry, with projects and duty schedules on their minds.
I leaned back against the wall. Eleven minutes. Sully snugged his hand against the small of my back. His fingers made small circles, sent warmth. He and Ren talked zero-g racquetball. Port Janua
ry had a good team, but there was no way they could beat out Garno’s.
“Would you be willing to place a wager on that?” Ren asked softly.
I fought an urge to roll my eyes and focused instead on two young men and a woman in Fleet dress uniforms taking shuttle tickets from the ’droid attendant. They were laughing, relaxed. Just back from liberty, I guessed. The man ruffled the woman’s curls and she turned around.
My heart stopped, my breath caught in my throat. I recognized her.
Tessa. Looking straight at me. Twenty, maybe twenty-five feet separated us. I could see her clearly and knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she could see me. Her laughter faded to be replaced by a soft, knowing smile.
Shit.
Chasidah. Nothing to fear.
Nothing to fear? She and one of the men walked toward us, toward me. I fought the urge to run, knowing that would only make things worse.
Sully pulled his hand away from me and bowed slightly as she approached. “How may we assist you?”
“I don’t mean to trouble you, Brothers. Sister.” She nodded to me and didn’t appear to be the least bit disturbed by my heart hammering loudly in my chest. “But Dylan and I just got married. Would you mind blessing our rings?”
She and her husband held out their hands, their matching rings glistening in the bright overhead lights.
Sully took their hands in his. “Guardian of love, Guardian of wisdom and mercy, hear now my plea …”
I bowed my head, trembling, listened to the deep, soothing tones of his voice. The absolute sincerity in his voice. He meant every word. He asked for blessings upon the love and peace Tessa had found. And because she had, so, finally, could Gabriel Ross Sullivan. Poet, monk, mercenary, Ragkiril.
I prayed a prayer of my own, one that had no words. And realized that maybe, sometimes, miracles do happen.
“… for the love that resides now in your hearts, forever. Praise the stars.”
“Praise the stars,” Tessa repeated softly. Sully raised his head, smiled.
“Blessings, thank you,” Dylan said as he hooked his arm through Tessa’s. He led her back to their friend waiting near the gate.
Sully met my gaze, still smiling.
“Thank you,” I whispered. The words caught in my throat. Tears prickled gently at the back of my eyes.
Chasidah. My angel. Nothing to fear.
29
It was a half hour to M-2 on a crowded shuttle, though Tessa and her new husband weren’t with us. We exited quickly upon docking and retrieved our pallet five minutes later. I walked purposefully, knowing exactly where I was going.
This was Marker-2. I’d lived here with my mother for fifteen years, until she’d died. Then stayed three years after that, until I’d entered the academy.
M-2, like M-1, was a cylinder but more squat, with three wide access rings splitting it irregularly and two series of smaller gate rings on Level 2 and Level 8. Access rings and gate rings served as landing pads for small shuttles and cargo tenders. Fleet offices filled Levels 1 through 11. We’d docked on 13, in the middle of the commercial levels. Shops, pubs, private offices flanked both sides of the curved corridor. I found the bank of lifts I wanted, crowded the three of us and the pallet into the narrow lift. No room for anyone else. We headed down.
Below the commercial levels was residential, both Fleet and private, though private was kept separate in a small section of Level 17.
We descended past that, heading for Level 27. Storage, auxiliary offices, maintenance. And, if we were correct, one level from a fully operating gen-lab.
But we couldn’t head there yet. Not dressed as Englarians, in full view of everyone scurrying through M-2’s corridors. No one must be able to connect the destruction of the gen-labs with the church. Not simply out of concern for Englarians, but because we still needed our identities in order to get back to the Karn, unquestioned and alive.
Our request under a fictitious name for rental of storage space on M-2 had provided us with knowledge of bays and offices that were empty. We chose one down a side corridor that on the schematics would be out of the way of most pedestrian traffic. I remembered it being so as well.
There isn’t much else to do when you’re sixteen, an orphan—unless you count the father you never see—and the only respite you get from the overbearing guardian the court appointed to watch over you is a game of hide and seek. I’d easily slip the lock on my mother’s apartment after Proctor Fernanda would leave. As far as she was concerned, after dinner her duties for the day were concluded. Then I’d just as easily slip into the throngs of stationers going somewhere, going anywhere, for the night.
There were six of us—Fleet orphans and castoffs, like me—the year I turned seventeen. We’d steal bottles of ale from unsuspecting ’droid waiters’ carts and head downlevel, savoring our freedom as we sipped our ale. Sooner or later someone would break out a deck of cards. We’d drink, laugh, and gamble. Sometimes there was even a little kiss and grope. And sometimes there was a flask of honeylace, a pipe of rafthkra. Not for me. Amaris was dead but she wasn’t gone. She’d made me promise her. Always have fun in life. But never, ever be stupid. Only fools have no fears or refuse to see the danger in front of them.
I had a friend die from an overdose of rafthkra. And I’d heard stories of people who drank too much honeylace and thought they’d grown wings, like soul-stealing shape-shifters, and tried to fly.
I had fears, well-grounded fears. I was no fool.
I walked down Level 27’s corridor with Sully, Ren, and all these memories by my side. Knowing exactly when the groups of stationers would thin, as they did. Knowing exactly when more offices were closed, or vacant, which they were. I saw the signs of decay, of neglect. And now and then an empty ale bottle tucked between the handrail and the corridor’s inner wall.
If the neck pointed up, tonight’s party was on. Down, party was off.
“Really?” Sully seemed impressed when I pointed it out. Ren laughed softly, a bubbling stream, as frothy as ale.
Green 8. A short corridor, dead-ending at station core. A core that was a large maintenance shaft, holding lifts and pipes and clusters of cables. Crisscrossed with scaffolding, thin metal ladders. Emergency exits. Narrow tool bays.
I knew all that too. Another world, when you’re seventeen. Behind the scenes, behind the walls and bulkheadings. Private, dark, mysterious, dangerous.
I knew that the moment I stepped into it, two words would sound in my mind: welcome home.
Ren and I stood together, heads bowed, our bodies shielding Sully as he played with the lock pad by the door. Our pallet was skewed, one end resting on the decking, the other wobbling in midair. To anyone passing by, we were two luckless monks, praying while waiting for a repair tech.
Three people did. We nodded, smiled, blessed them. Yes, unfortunate how no one made a reliable pallet anymore. Blessings of the hour.
“Got it!” A hushed, gleeful exclamation sounded behind us.
We stepped quickly into the dark, windowless room. The door slid closed, relocking with a muted click. The next click was the lights. One overhead. The others were burned out.
“They wanted three hundred twenty-five credits a month for this dump?” Sully put his hands on his hips, surveyed the room.
“Bathroom works. Shower, no tub,” I announced.
Ren nodded. “That’s sufficient, if we’re delayed.”
I hoped we wouldn’t be. We had eight hours until our first meetpoint with the Karn, arriving as the Iron Sun, back at Marker Terminal. If we weren’t there, Gregor had instructions to return at the twelve-hour mark, under another ship name. Our third and final meetpoint at the terminal was at twenty-four hours from when we disembarked.
There was no fourth meetpoint. After that, we’d be on our own. Or dead.
We pulled off the robes, opened the duffels, pulled out weapons and explosives. I sat on the floor and began assembling the small charges laced with poison gases.
&nbs
p; “Let that wait.” Sully knelt next to me, a dark and powerful figure in black fatigue pants and black high-necked thermal shirt. Black holster straps hugged his shoulders; the Carver snugged against his left side. “Our first priority’s to confirm location.”
He found the small datapad, flipped it on, and brought up M-2’s schematics. We were in Green 8, Level 27. The gen-labs were on Level 28, M-2’s lowest level, with a small access ring running around its perimeter. The labs were in a converted storage area either on Level 28-Blue, directly across from Green, or Level 28-Yellow, between Green and Blue.
Sully snatched his jacket from where he’d dropped it on the floor. “I want to find that lab, make that first meetpoint, and get the hell out of here.”
I put down the casing and arched an eyebrow. “Late for a hot date?”
“No. A wedding.” He winked, then pulled me to my feet. “What’s your guess, Ren? Level 28-Blue or -Yellow?”
“Blue,” Ren said, without hesitation.
“Fine. I’ll take Yellow. Double or nothing?”
“Agreed. Double or nothing.”
“You’re witness to this, Chaz.”
“I’m witness to this, Sully.”
I looked at Ren. “How much does he—No. Forget it. I don’t want to know.”
Sully slapped me affectionately on my rump. He handed me my dark green jacket. “Let’s go.”
He unlocked the door to the corridor. There was an access panel a few feet away at the corridor’s end. I had it unlatched, sliding sideways in a matter of seconds, feeling sixteen years old again. Slightly giddy. And more than a bit frightened.
I squatted down, squeezed through with Sully immediately behind me, sliding the panel closed.
Abrupt darkness closed around me. I crouched, unmoving, aware of the open grating under my boots, aware of the low railing at my side. Aware of the open core beyond, a drop of hundreds of feet to the bottom filled with the hard, jutting forms of generators and recycs and other machinery that kept M-2 alive.
Aware of Sully behind me, one hand on my shoulder. I waited for my eyes to adjust to the red-tinged dimness.
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