Her voice made it to the pickup, because Fralick’s concerned face relaxed. But he said softly, as if to himself, “I should have left her on Kesra, nothing’s going the way I expected. Damn! But it’s too late for me to rethink that now.”
“Much as I’ve wanted to have her with me, for the past thirteen years—I have to agree with you this time, George.” Katy nodded sadly. “Now, dammit, tell me what’s going on. I know you have Linc up there in your brig. And don’t try to tell me you’re a civilian passenger and you had nothing to do with it, because I’m not going to believe you!”
“Got your recall order yet, Katy? If so, you’re going to have to refuse it.” Fralick had hesitated only a moment before he decided to plunge ahead, and not worry about what a sleepy little girl just barely within hearing might pick up of the conversation. He didn’t want to wait while his ex-wife corrected that situation; in fact, he really did not want Maddy out of her mother’s sight.
He had misjudged the situation, misjudged it badly. And George Fralick hated it when that happened, even when the stakes were far lower—personally and officially—than they were right now. He went on, “The idea of taking your—husband—along to Terra with us, was to make sure you wouldn’t agree to help the Rebs. But I wasn’t expecting the Star Service to recall you to duty, I only just found out about that when we got back here and I picked up the latest dispatches; and I’m telling you right now you’d better not accept that recall. Back in command of the Fleet is the last place I want to see you, I want you to stay right where you are.”
“I have no intention of going back to the Fleet, George.” She hadn’t been sure until this moment how she would finally answer that order. Her father had bought her time that she needed to get Linc back safely, but once that most pressing of concerns was answered she would still have to face the moral implications of that order—and now she knew how she was going to respond.
She wasn’t going to return meekly to Terra and let the Star Service put her out to some kind of pasture there, nor was she going to lead that Service to victory over her own native world. If George had thought he needed to hold someone she loved hostage to keep her from doing that, or to keep her from providing the so-called Rebs with her services, then George knew less about his own former wife than he did about anyone else in the universe.
Now, that was entirely possible. After all, George looked at her through a film of assumptions; while he looked at other people clear-eyed, for the most part anyway.
At least he had caught himself before he had called Linc by that dreadful vernacular term that was often substituted for “Morthan.” Probably just in case Maddy could hear him, because Katy could not imagine that her ex-husband had denied himself the pleasure of using that word in order to spare her feelings.
“That’s good,” Fralick said, and nodded his head thoughtfully. “I’ll see that you aren’t penalized, Katy, if we do succeed in fending off a war. And I still think that’s possible, if hotheads like the ex-scramblers can be neutralized in time.”
“So why did the Archangel turn back, after she’d sailed for Terra?” Romanova sensed a diversion in progress, and she moved swiftly to flank her former husband before he could escape.
Whether he could or could not protect her from being charged with treason if war didn’t come, so that the Star Service continued to have a legal claim on her—or if war did come, but the Outworlds lost it—wasn’t a matter she could address right now, so she chose to put it out of her mind. At worst, she thought, she might wind up permanently stuck on Narsai. There was no way her native world would allow one of its citizens to be extradited to Terra, especially not for a “crime” that was almost administrative in its nature. At best the recall order would be rescinded when the current crisis was over, and her failure to respond in time for her to be of any use could be blamed on the lost message that hadn’t been relayed to her by the Narsatian Council.
“Pursuing a fugitive, of all the stupid reasons.” Fralick scowled. “I can’t believe that has priority over getting a diplomatic envoy to a negotiating table, but that’s why we were turned back!”
“A fugitive? What kind of a fugitive?” Katy schooled her face into perfectly normal puzzlement.
“The kind that makes a bio-engineering company send a Corporate Marshal all the way from Terra to Narsai,” Fralick answered. “A long-range shuttle carrying one hailed us, and he insisted that we come about and follow him in. He intended to catch up with us here anyway, but you know how tricky it is to match schedules when you’re operating over interstellar distances.”
Romanova nodded. She thought of Rachel Kane coming into this room starved and frightened and shivering, and she suppressed a shudder. But she said with apparent innocence, “I don’t see why any company would send a Marshal all the way to Narsai, George. Gengineering of sentient life forms is illegal here. Hell, we don’t even gen our cattle!”
Fralick turned away from the comm pickup he was using, and he spoke loudly to someone Romanova hadn’t suspected was in the same compartment with him. “Giandrea!” he said, not rudely but with the kind of informality that sometimes passed for friendliness with people of his social standing. “Would you please explain the situation to Admiral Romanova? Since one of the people Marshal Vargas is looking for lists her home as his permanent residence, she and I are both concerned about our daughter’s safety there.”
Katy Romanova had bluffed a lot of enemies during the years of her service career, but it had never been harder for her to keep up an act than it was right now. They were seeking not just Rachel Kane—that she’d expected, from the instant she’d heard that a corporate marshal had become involved—but the marshal also knew about Dan Archer’s part in this? She had accepted the possibility, but hearing it confirmed still jolted her.
Dan. Bound to her first by shared sorrow when her own boys had died; and since then, by many years of love. She and Linc desperately needing an adult child in their lives, Dan needing somewhere to call home and someone to be his family.
There were only two people in the universe whose safety mattered to her more than Dan’s did. One of them was in the brig aboard the starship from which her former husband had just been speaking to her, and she had no idea what his state of health was although she was certain he was still living. The other was the little girl whom Johnnie Romanov had just resettled on the sofa across the room from her.
She hoped she would never have to choose between Linc and Maddy, because for the life of her she didn’t know how a choice like that one could be made. Protecting Dan if she could still do that was a high priority; but if she had to decide during the next few moments, she knew she would let him go. Right along with Rachel Kane and the three unborn babies that belonged to both of them, if that was what it took for her to keep Linc and Maddy safe.
A person she did not recognize, dark-skinned and slim and of indeterminate age, appeared on the comm’s viewscreen as George Fralick moved away from its pickup. A deep voice said, “Paolo Giandrea, Admiral. I apologize for what’s happened to your husband, but I’m sure you know there are some orders an officer obeys even though he hates them.”
“I understand that, Captain.” He wore the four stripes which said that was his rank, not simply his title as commanding officer of a ship. But anything in Archangel’s class did rate a full captain, the three stripes of a commander usually were considered sufficient only for vessels up to and including light cruisers. “Can you tell me if he’s well? I can’t imagine that he went willingly when he was taken away from here, and until just now no one had told me where he was.”
If no one up there was bright enough to realize that a Morthan hybrid’s wife could hear him when he called out to her telepathically, then she certainly wasn’t going to remind them of that fact. Yet she really did want Giandrea’s answer to her question, she was not simply trying to rattle him—although that would be a perfectly good strategic move, too.
“Our chief medical officer is monitoring Captain Ca
sey’s health, Admiral. I haven’t had any adverse reports about him, that’s as much as I can tell you.” Giandrea’s tone was guarded, as if he wanted very much to say more but knew he could not.
That was all right. Unless the Archangel was a very unusual ship, its CMO would be a Morthan hybrid. Like Linc. Better than Linc, much as Katy hated to think of her husband in those terms; but the fact was that most Morthan hybrids could do much more with their telepathic abilities than Linc could, and hopefully the one who was caring for him now would feel some sense of duty toward another member of his species. Or at least a physician’s compassion and decency toward a person who was being imprisoned only to gain control over the actions of someone who loved him.
Romanova nodded. She said, “Thank you, Captain Giandrea. Continue, if you please.”
“Well.” The man swallowed, as if that gave him time to collect his thoughts. “About eighteen months ago, just before the general order that discharged all officers who weren’t Academy graduates, something completely unprecedented happened aboard my ship. My executive officer stole a lifeboat and tried to desert in it. Or at the time we believed she only ‘tried’ to desert, because of course we fired on her when she refused to come back aboard; and the readings we got afterward indicated that we’d destroyed her. But since then the lifeboat she stole has been found, a trader picked it up as salvage and sold it back to the Service at Narsai.”
“What does that have to do with the Corporate Marshal who met you and made you come back here? He must have started out weeks ago, and I still don’t understand why a Marshal would be involved in a Service officer’s desertion.” The block of ice in Katy’s chest was getting larger and colder. Oh, Dan, why couldn’t you have just blasted that lifeboat after you got Rachel off it, instead of selling the damnable thing?
But she knew the answer to that, his partners. In order to keep Rachel’s existence secret from them, of course Dan had been obliged to do what they expected him to do with that valuable piece of salvage. And he would have thought he’d done an adequate job of erasing its identification codes; and he should have been able to, after all the man was a fully qualified computer science engineer.
But so were other people, and some of them were right here on Narsai. Damn!
“Oh, he was sent out to investigate as soon as my report on what had happened got back to the right people. You see, my executive officer was a gengineered human—the first gen that the HR Solutions Company ever designed especially for command-level military service. We’ve been using gens as ordinaries for years now, and they’ve worked out so well that we’re getting close to no longer needing to impress crew members at all. But Rachel Kane was the first gen who was ever created with the abilities it takes to command a ship, to lead people who aren’t other gens.” Giandrea swallowed again, clearly that was a mannerism he used unconsciously when he was unhappy or nervous—or both, as he was right now.
He continued, “She was good, too. So damn good, I sometimes forgot she wasn’t just another human officer! I thought of her as a friend. I wish I could be glad to know she didn’t die when I had to fire on that lifeboat.”
“So where does the Marshal think she is now?” Might as well ask that straight out, Romanova thought. Giandrea was hurting so much that she did not want to make him draw this out any longer, and she’d let him tell her enough of what she already knew so that she was not likely to slip up and accidentally reveal knowledge that she could not have gained from him.
“He knows where she is. She’s dead now, after all. But not aboard the lifeboat, that survived to be picked up by the trade-ship I mentioned. It was called the Triad.” Giandrea’s gulps were fast becoming annoying.
“That was my foster son Dan Archer’s ship,” Romanova said, still trying to speed the younger officer up. “I was informed earlier today of his death, when the ship exploded in orbit. No one seemed to know why that happened, but positive DNA identifications were made of Dan and of the others who owned Triad with him.”
“They also found Rachel Kane’s DNA, and I wish that was the end of the trail.” Giandrea suddenly squared his shoulders, firmed his jaw, and stopped that nervous gulping. He said in a starship commander’s steady tones, “But it wasn’t. There was something peculiar about the debris, and although Narsai Control told us they couldn’t possibly scan the surface of your world for the Triad if she still existed—if the debris was false—we could do that, and we did. And we found her.”
“Where?” Ivan Romanov had come to stand at his cousin’s side, and now he bent over her shoulder toward the pickup. His big farm-hardened hands gripped the back of her chair, and Katy found herself thinking that she was glad he wasn’t squeezing her that way. She suspected he could have broken bones with that clasp.
“Who are you?” Giandrea wanted to know, quite reasonably since no doubt he had thought he was giving all this information to a person who still possessed high-level clearances.
“This is my cousin, Ivan Romanov,” Katy interposed swiftly. “Proprietor of the Romanov Farmstead on the Upper North Continent.”
“Oh. Then I have to give you my condolences, Mr. Romanov.” Giandrea’s face relaxed from tension into sadness. “The Triad was detected inside a structure on your land, just a little more than an hour ago. We attempted to bring her out using a tractor beam, but whoever was in command put up a fight. And I’m afraid whoever that was didn’t just destroy the ship, and the people aboard her, and the building where she’d been hidden; there’s not much left standing at all in that area now. Just a small out-building or two, and those pretty badly smashed up. I am sorry, Mr. Romanov. I hope you and your family were away, and that’s how the fugitives happened to choose your property as a place to conceal themselves?”
CHAPTER 12
“I can’t believe I ran away like that,” Daniel Archer said softly.
“What?” Lorena Romanova sounded distracted, and she had good reason. She was working on a piece of technology that she understood and he did not, for all his starship engineer’s certification. It had been around since Narsatian colonial days; and if she could get it operating, then the three of them—Reen, Dan, and Rachel Kane—would be able to get to the next farmstead without having to walk there via the underground passage that had (as far as they knew, at least) remained open in spite of the havoc that the Triad’s death throes had caused on the surface above them.
Moving away from the Romanov Farmstead via any kind of surface travel right now was a certain way to wind up in the hands of the Star Service. The mop-up squad wouldn’t hang around forever, but even after they returned to the ship the monitoring from orbit was sure to continue; and Archer had an uncomfortable feeling that whoever was directing the search for Rachel Kane (Captain Giandrea, under orders he hated but had to obey? or someone else?) was not going to be fooled this time into assuming she was dead.
Dan himself would be the target of a formal order to apprehend, as well, since by now the authorities had to know who had given shelter to the fugitive gen. Whether or not they knew more than that about his ties to her, he had no way to guess.
But in any case, by seeing to it that Rachel got off the trade-ship without waiting to take care of the rest of his people Dan Archer had done a thing he never could have imagined himself doing. He looked at her now in the dim light of the underground passage’s ancient lumipanels, and he repeated dully, “I ran away. I left my people behind, and saved myself.”
“You couldn’t have saved them, Dan. All you could have done was die, too.” Rachel’s physical stamina was superior to that of a randomly conceived human, but she was still less than a day away from her lifeboat ordeal’s end and she was also burdened with three unborn babies. She had curled up in the tiny cabin of the ancient railcar while Reen worked on its propulsion system, and she was half asleep when she realized her lover was addressing her and not the universe in general.
“But I still shouldn’t have left them like that.” Archer sat down beside the wo
man who was carrying his children, and slid an arm around her—whether to give comfort or to gain it, he could not have said right then. The temperature this far underground was constant, but that unvarying temperature felt cool to a human being at rest. So she nestled against him for warmth, not only in an effort to give consolation; and soon she was asleep.
Reen Romanova went on working. And at length she said softly, “Shove over, Dan. Let’s give it a try.”
There was just room enough for the three of them inside the little railcar. It moved forward silently, glided along a course that was a scant meter wide and that lit up the darkness just before them and just behind them in a world that otherwise was utterly black.
The air that had been trapped here unused for generations was stale, but breathable. How fast they were moving, Dan could not estimate; but at least the woman beside him did not wake.
The shame of leaving his partners, his crew, dead behind him was something he would have to put away for later reflection. Right now he was selfishly thankful that Rachel had survived—and that since she was still living, he was alive too.
“We’re not fugitives, we don’t have to hide. Not yet, anyway.”
So Katy had said, as she and Johnnie had gathered up the sleeping Maddy and had bundled her into a second aircar. The one they had used earlier in the day had been returned to its garage.
Johnnie was piloting, and when she would have a chance to rest again Katy could not guess. So she reclined the co-pilot’s seat, curled her body as best she could within the safety harness’s confines, and willed herself to fall asleep.
It was a skill she had mastered long ago, in cadet days; and it was just as useful now as it had been back then. Not only did it give her the edge of being rested for whatever she had to do next, it also kept her from having to endure a season of helplessly anticipating a future she dreaded and could not control.
She had been dreaming, and it was hard to come to the surface when she knew that consciousness was going to bring her a reality far less pleasant than the inner world of memory to which her dream had taken her. But she had to wake up, it was Johnnie’s voice and not Linc’s voice that she was hearing from close beside her…and although the seat that cradled her body was comfortable enough, it was definitely not the captain’s berth back on the old Firestorm.
Matushka Page 11