Star Crossed

by C. Gockel

  The computer beeped, indicating that it had completed its search, and Creel swiveled back around to check out the results.

  “Captain Galen Marr,” he read. “Shows he’s got a light cargo ship registered on Monteverde…looks as if he landed here on Nova Angeles two days ago. The vessel is right here at the Rilsport spaceport. Landing pad eighteen-twenty. Paid for a week of docking privileges in advance.”

  “So they didn’t take his ship to New Chicago?”

  “Doesn’t look like it. Must have traveled by regular shuttle.”

  Jessa frowned. “Why would they do that if they had a private ship at their disposal?”

  “Maybe it needed repairs or something.”

  At that comment she shot him an unbelieving look, and Creel lifted his shoulders.

  “All right, that doesn’t seem likely.”

  “To put it mildly.” She glanced at the computer screen, as if trying to commit Captain Marr’s hard features to memory. Then she gave Creel a slow smile, a smile most men in the department would have lined up to be on the receiving end of. “Guess we’d better get going, then.”

  “Going?”

  In answer she reached forward and typed in the command that put his computer into locked-down sleep mode. “Landing pad eighteen-twenty. I figure this Captain Marr’s got to come back to his ship some time...”

  After hours of careful scrutiny—well, what felt like it, anyway—Jerem was convinced that the cameras watching his quarters were simple video units, no infrared or anything fancy like that. Of course he couldn’t just walk up to the cameras and inspect them without the kidnappers guessing he was up to something, but he’d gone back to the hand-walking, cartwheels, and anything else he could think of that would look as if he were simply an active kid who was going out of his mind with boredom. Who would ever notice that the cartwheels and somersaults usually brought him close to one of the cameras, or that the time he spent lying on his back, staring blankly at the ceiling, he was actually trying to focus on the compact pieces of photographic equipment, attempting to remember what his mother had told him about cameras and video surveillance.

  Jerem knew that his grandfather—who had died before Jerem was even born—taught his mother everything he’d known about hacking into computers and writing security programs. When she’d started her own company on Nova Angeles, she’d taken that one step further, enhancing the practically hacker-proof programs she wrote with sophisticated surveillance equipment for those customers who needed it. She always had catalogues for the latest stuff lying around, and since Jerem had seemed interested in it (because although he would never have admitted it to her, he thought what she did was actually kind of cool), she’d explained some of the basics to him.

  So he knew to look for the telltale film on the lens of a camera that had infrared capabilities, and how to tell if it could see into other spectrums—ultraviolet, for instance. Not that they’d need something that sophisticated to keep watch on a regular human boy. It wasn’t as if he could just turn invisible like one of those Specter creatures he’d seen featured on a particularly exciting episode of Moon of Syrinara. Too bad, because right now invisibility would have come in pretty handy.

  But the second best thing to turning invisible was just disappearing, and now that he was almost certain the cameras wouldn’t be able to register his body heat, Jerem figured he could probably sneak out without anyone noticing. Or at least he hoped. He just had to wait for night to fall.

  The same pointy-faced kidnapper came in around dinnertime—not that Jerem knew the hour, of course, but the hollow feeling in his stomach told him it had been at least four or five hours since lunch—and brought him a tray of some gluey-looking noodles with a heavy sauce. It looked pretty gross, but Jerem knew if he was going to make a break for it, he’d need to have eaten something. So he picked up the fork and plowed in, trying to ignore the nasty aftertaste the food left in his mouth and making a mental note to ask his mother for a big, juicy burger the second he got out of this hellhole.

  The kidnapper apparently was ready to find fault in anything Jerem did. After a few minutes of watching him eat in silence, he demanded, “What’s up with you, kid? You seem awfully quiet.”

  Jerem forced another glutinous mass of food down his throat and replied, “That’s because this food is so rank that I have to concentrate on not throwing up.”

  “You’re lucky you’re getting anything,” the skinny man said, but he looked satisfied. Obviously Jerem’s rudeness had convinced him it was business as usual in the prison quarters.

  “Yeah, tell my stomach that,” Jerem muttered, but he finished the food in grim silence, drank the glass of water that had come with it, and then pushed the tray away...but not before slipping the fork up the sleeve of his sleep shirt just as the man watching him glanced down at the chrono on his wrist.

  The kidnapper picked up the tray, gave Jerem one last squinty-eyed glare, and then paused at the doorway. “Just behave yourself. Stay out of trouble, and if everything goes according to plan, you just might see your mama tomorrow.”

  Even though he knew the kidnapper was probably just messing with him, Jerem couldn’t help feeling a stab of hope at those words. At least it sounded as if his mother had been in contact with them—probably to pay off the ransom. He wondered how much they were asking for, and whether his mother would be able to come up with it. Sure, they lived well, and there always seemed to be enough money for trips over the summer holidays and the latest toys and electronic gizmos for the house, but he got the feeling these guys probably were asking for a lot more than a couple thousand units. Otherwise, what would be the point of hiding him off someplace like this and feeding him and all the other stuff they’d probably spent money on?

  The kidnapper was looking at him with suspicion in his close-set dark eyes, so Jerem said, “Okay,” and settled himself back on the bed, crossing his arms and trying to make it look as if he was so tired he couldn’t keep his eyelids propped open any longer. He wasn’t sure how convincing the act was, but after a “Hmpf” and a final once-over of the room, the kidnapper went out, letting in a brief glimpse of a dusky purple sky before the door shut behind him. Probably it wouldn’t be time to go to sleep for a few more hours, unfortunately, and he would have to wait until they dimmed the lights before he could move on to the next step of his plan.

  Of course the kidnappers hadn’t turned out the lights completely the night before—they weren’t that stupid—but they had dimmed the illumination in the room to the point where you could at least go to sleep. Jerem knew he couldn’t do anything too obvious, but since his bed was in a corner, and the blankets were dark, he figured he could do a good bit of wriggling underneath them without anyone noticing.

  Jerem shut his eyes, but he wasn’t about to fall asleep. For one thing, it was way too early, and sleep was about the last thing on his mind anyway. Instead, he lay there as quietly as he could, mind running over his plan and finding about a million holes—but, as his mother sometimes said, sometimes you just had to bite the power-pack casing and go for it. For a while he worried that his escape attempt might bung up the whole thing. After all, the kidnappers had made it sound as if his mother was cooperating, but of course they wouldn’t tell Jerem if something was going wrong anyway. Obviously they’d want him to sit quiet and not cause any trouble, no matter whether they were getting the ransom or not.

  Best he could figure, if he were out of this room at least he would have options. Stuck in here, he couldn’t do much except sit and wait for them to free him or come in and kill him. And there was always a chance they’d kill him anyway even if they got the ransom, because Jerem had seen a few shows like that on the vid when his mother wasn’t paying attention. Not even vid shows always had happy endings, after all.

  But if he got out, even though he had no idea where he was, he’d be doing a lot better than he was now, stuck in this stupid room like a rat in a cage. Besides, he’d bet money that his dad wouldn’
t sit around doing nothing, waiting for a bunch of simps like these kidnappers to come in and do away with him.

  That decided it. Jerem opened one eye and saw that the lights in the room had already been dimmed. It was time to show them they should have known better than to mess with Eryk Thorn’s son.

  He made a show of pulling back the covers and wriggling under them. All he could do was hope that the kidnappers hadn’t noticed he’d kept his shoes on; he’d contemplated taking them off, but decided against it. After all, he didn’t know what lay behind that wall, and he’d seen too many shows where the hero had to run on broken glass or burning rock or whatever unpleasant item the writers could come up with for Jerem to think that going barefoot was a very good idea.

  Once he was under the covers, he began inching toward the back wall. After he felt it touch his back, he began pushing the bed slightly outward. Slowly, of course—he’d found that it didn’t make so much of a scraping noise if it got pushed just a fraction of a centimeter at a time. It seemed excruciating, but somehow Jerem didn’t think about how long it was taking. Instead he just concentrated on making as little noise as possible.

  Finally the gap between the wall and the bed felt big enough for him to slip down into. He grasped the pillow, wadded it up as best he could, and pushed it into the center of the bed, hoping it would make a reasonably boy-sized lump for the surveillance cameras to pick up.

  Jerem slid down into the gap, feeling the cool roughness of the mud board scrape against his cheek. Once he had touched the floor, he reached out and felt around on the wall, trying to locate the edges of the rectangle he had spotted the previous day. His fingers found the crack, and he traced back along the outline of the opening, stopping finally at the bottom. Then he slid the fork out of his sleeve and pushed it into the crack, trying to lift up and outward at the same time.

  At first it didn’t seem as if it wanted to budge. The fork made a horrible scraping noise, and Jerem froze, waiting for the inevitable angry hand to reach over the side of the bed and haul him out of his hiding place. But no one came, and he continued to work at it until he finally felt the edge of the thin mud board slip just a bit. With shaking fingers he reached under it and lifted it out, flattening himself against the ground as he did so in order to give the board enough clearance.

  A black hole now gaped in the wall, a square of darkness that revealed nothing of what lay beyond. Taking a breath, Jerem squeezed in, noting how his shoulders touched the edges of the opening. At least he knew that none of the kidnappers would ever be able to fit in here.

  He pushed himself along the metal-lined tunnel, and hoped he’d be far away before his captors realized that he’d disappeared right out from under their noses. With any luck, he could be long gone by the time day returned and revealed that their precious prize had evaporated with the night.

  25

  A wave of cool, damp air greeted Miala and Thorn as they disembarked from the shuttle at Rilsport’s main spaceport terminal. The last traces of sunset smoldered off to the west, leaving a bloody trail across the thin strip of ocean barely visible beyond the peninsula where the ’port was situated. They’d been gone barely eight standard hours, although still she was conscious of time ticking inexorably away. The kidnappers had given her two standard days, but she’d just used up one of them. Tomorrow, they would be expecting payment.

  She continued to clutch the satchel that held the ten million units; Thorn had offered to hold it for her, but she’d declined. Somehow it seemed important to keep it close to her, as if its proximity would somehow increase their chances of success. He’d taken one look at her face and hadn’t argued.

  From the spaceport they went to the outskirts of Rilsport, to a smaller branch of her bank where she wasn’t as well-known. From what Risa had said, it sounded as if the authorities were still looking for her, and Miala and Thorn had agreed that it would be better to handle the remaining withdrawal in a location that was less likely to be watched.

  The bank manager gave her a sour look when she made her request to withdraw five million units. “We don’t keep that much on hand here,” he said, his light eyes narrow with disapproval. “We’ll have to send out to another branch.”

  Miala shot a questioning glance at Thorn. The mercenary nodded slowly. “That’s fine,” she replied. “We can wait.”

  So they stepped off to one side and watched as the manager got on the comm and began making the necessary arrangements, all with that same pinched, disapproving expression on his face. Miala supposed she really couldn’t blame him—it wasn’t as if she looked forward to saying goodbye to those units, either.

  Of course, if Eryk Thorn were to be believed, the units were just going to be a short-term loan at best for the kidnappers. Despite the worry that knotted her stomach, she couldn’t help smiling at the thought of what sort of interest Thorn might charge for such a loan.

  She looked over at him. He seemed unperturbed, and had reached into one of his suit pockets and pulled out what looked like a tiny video monitor.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Babysitting device.”

  Miala raised an eyebrow and waited.

  “It monitors my ship. Just want to make sure she’s ready and waiting for whenever we might need her.” For a second the lines around Thorn’s eyes seemed to deepen.

  It wasn’t much of an alteration of his expression, but she liked to think she’d gotten better at reading him from those small tells. “What is it?”

  “Looks like the Fury’s got company.”

  “What?” Miala shifted a little closer to him and peered down at the tiny screen. It showed a flat video image of the Fury, still resting securely in its docking bay at the spaceport. But even as she watched the video feed she saw two small figures—apparently a man and a woman, though it was difficult to make out much detail at that resolution—approaching the ship. They stopped a few meters away and appeared to enter some sort of discussion.

  “More of the kidnappers’ goons?” she asked.

  Thorn shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.” He watched for a few more seconds, face impassive. “I’d say it was the cops.”

  “The police?” The last syllable came out in a sort of undignified squeak.

  The right corner of Thorn’s mouth lifted ever so slightly. “That’s right.”

  Miala scowled down the tiny image. “How can you tell?”

  “The way they stand, the way they’re talking to each other.”

  “But you can’t even hear what they’re saying!”

  “Don’t need to,” he replied.

  Sometimes he was impossible. Actually, most of the time he was impossible. Miala crossed her arms and stared at him, waiting.

  “With cops, it’s all about the procedure,” he said, appearing to relent after gauging exactly how much she was willing to put up with at that moment. “They’re standing back, comparing notes. Observing. That means they probably don’t have a warrant. They’re just gathering information.”

  “And you got all that from watching a couple of tiny images a centimeter high?”

  “Yeah.”

  Still dubious, Miala glanced back down at the minuscule video screen. As Thorn had said, the two...whoever they were...didn’t seem to be doing much besides standing there and looking at the ship. The man had pulled out a tablet and was apparently entering something into it, while the woman walked a few paces away and stopped to stare up at the closed hatchway to the ship. She had very pale blonde hair that caught a sudden gleam of light from the harsh artificial lighting overhead. True, she didn’t much look like a member of Rilsport’s underworld—if the planet even had one—but then again, she didn’t look much like a cop, either.

  What happened next, Miala would never know, because of course at that inopportune moment the bank manager decided to materialize at her shoulder.

  “Ms. Felaris.”

  She jumped, then shot him an accusing stare, even though he really was jus
t carrying out his duties. In her peripheral vision she caught a glimpse of Thorn flipping shut the video unit and sliding it into his pocket once more. The movement was so quick and unobtrusive that she doubted the bank manager even noticed.

  “What?” she snapped.

  “We’re ready to complete the transaction,” he replied, somehow managing to look even more pained. “If you’ll step this way—”

  So she followed him over to his private office, where she signed forms and submitted her thumbprint and retinal scan, knowing as she did so that she was probably setting off alarms all over Rilsport. Oh, well. With any luck, this would all be handled by the time anyone figured out what she was really up to.

  After the minutiae were taken care of, the bank manager slid a heavy plastene folder of units toward her.

  “Thank you for choosing Rilsport Mutual,” he said, although his tone indicated that he wanted nothing more than to rip the folder of money out of her hands and take it back to the vault where it belonged.

  “You’re welcome,” she replied sweetly, gathering up the folder and sliding it into the satchel of units she already carried. The damn thing was getting heavy, and she wondered whether she should entrust it to Thorn after all.

  She did notice that he stood even closer to her as they exited the bank and went out to the street to hail a taxi. Now it would be back to the Rilsport Plaza, she supposed, as the kidnappers expected to be able to contact her at the comm number she had registered there.

  A mech jitney stopped soon enough to gather them up. Once they were safely inside, Miala felt just the slightest easing of the tension that had knotted her shoulder and neck muscles. At least they had gotten the cash together. One step at a time.

  Thorn gave the mechanoid driver a destination—one of Rilsport’s large shopping and entertainment centers. She shot the mercenary a puzzled look, and he replied, after he’d closed the scratched plastic privacy barrier separating them from the driver, “That’s not really where we’re going. I just wanted him to head someplace that would take some time.”