On Narsai almost all “criminal” behavior was nonviolent. The constabulary saw far more cases of economic fraud and electronic eavesdropping than it did of assault, and the murder rate here was the lowest of any human-inhabited world where such statistics were kept. That was why a professional warrior like Katy Romanova was just as much an aberration among her people and on her native world as Lincoln Casey was among Morthans, and on Mortha.
And that was why the two of them would now have to decide what needed to be done, and would then most likely have to do it, in order to free Kane and Archer from the corporate marshal’s custody (since a direct request from Narsatian officials had a comet’s chance in a supernova of accomplishing that end). In the meantime there was also Maddy Fralick to think about—Maddy who Linc’s mind assured his wife was still aboard the marshal’s shuttle, and still safe; but no longer happy about being with her father, and worried that when the marshal left Narsai she was sure to be taken along. There was Paolo Giandrea on the Archangel, who might or might not be under orders to get Katy Romanova back so that she could be arrested for treason (or perhaps for desertion, or both). And then there was the very personal matter of what Katy’s mind had inadvertently let Linc view at last, after keeping that memory secret through all their years of otherwise full intimacy.
One thing at a time, Katy told herself and also told Linc, as they faced the Harbormaster and the Chief Constable (more familiarly known to their fellow citizens as “Harbie” and “Mara”), and tried to determine the fastest way to get that pair out of their way without giving offense.
CHAPTER 19
The Terran Embassy on Narsai was a place Daniel Archer had never visited, because he was a citizen of Sestus 4 although for him that citizenship was meaningless. Meaningless, because on Sestus 4 humans were beasts.
Maybe that was why he had had no trouble at all seeing a gen as a person when he had the chance to know one, he thought now as he sat beside Rachel Kane and watched the wintry Narsatian plains sweep past and tried not to imagine what awaited them once Marshal Vargas got them inside that embassy. They were being taken there, and not up to the orbiting long-range shuttle, because the Marshal of course needed proper facilities to contain and interrogate his prizes; and for some reason it wasn’t possible to take them aboard the Archangel.
Maybe that was a blessing, and maybe it was a disaster. Dan Archer wasn’t sure which to call it, he only knew that it surprised him. Even though he had made eye contact with several members of the Archangel’s landing party, and had realized they loathed having to capture their ship’s former chief engineer and its former executive officer and then turn them over to the despised Marshal Service (otherwise known, popularly, as the “Jackal Service” although few would use that phrase openly); still they had done it. And he knew that once he would have done the same thing, and would have thought of it as just one more unpleasant duty.
A gen was property, a person who helped living property to escape was a thief, and thieves deserved their punishment when they were caught. Dan Archer had believed those things completely, and he was sure the people in that landing party believed them too.
“I wonder why we’re not being taken to the ship?” Rachel had finally started to wake up, now, after having slept so much during their time underground that she had frightened him. She couldn’t scrub at her eyes with her hands, as she clearly wanted to do; but she was blinking in the winter sunlight that streamed into the vehicle’s cabin, and she was turning her head to look at Dan.
“Good question,” was all he got out, before the Marshal turned from where he was occupying a co-pilot’s seat—he had someone from the Embassy piloting for him, and that was it for other occupants of this vehicle. Marshals worked alone, and that was why although his shuttle probably had some kind of accommodation for a passenger or two he hadn’t brought a teammate along on this venture. He didn’t have such a thing.
Didn’t deserve one, Archer thought as he stared at the stunner that was now pointed in his direction. Vargas said in his resonant voice, “Shut up, thief.”
He made it sound like a good idea.
Paolo Giandrea stared at the holo-image of Fleet Admiral Willard Tanaka. He was not used to interacting directly with that level of authority, his boss was a commodore (as Catherine Romanova had so bluntly reminded him) who ran New Orient and who sent ships out to this sector when there was call for it. Routine patrol was how this mess had begun. A side trip to Kesra to pick up Ambassador Fralick and his child, another side trip to Narsai to drop off that child there…Giandrea had chafed at both errands, the latter one in particular because it so clearly demonstrated personal “pull” operating at its most petty level; but now he was glad he had come here.
“The regulations for dealing with locals are clear, Captain,” Tanaka was saying, as he thoughtfully steepled his long-fingered hands before his chest. The holo was showing him from the waist up, so that gesture was plainly visible. “Is Daniel Archer an officer in the Star Service?”
“No, Admiral. He was discharged eighteen months ago.” Giandrea had made damned sure this conversation was being logged. He wanted no confusion later on about whose authority had backed him in the actions he suspected he would soon be taking.
“What’s the legal status of Rachel Kane?”
That was more difficult. “Sir, I logged her as killed while attempting to desert. Now she’s clearly alive, after all; and I suppose that since she’s alive, she’s still the property of HR Solutions.”
“Also correct. And they want her back, badly. They want to study her, they want to know whether it was in her genetic mapping or in her training that they went wrong. They can’t figure out why allowing her—hell, requiring her—to learn to think creatively and make independent judgments in her work, caused her to do the same thing in other areas.” Tanaka smiled a crooked, sardonic little smile. “Damn fools in their lab coats! They let one of their gens develop into a complete person, and then it surprised them when she had the gall to claim a sentient being’s right to live.”
“But she’s still property from a legal standpoint, sir.” Giandrea concurred fully with what Tanaka had just said, yet he was astounded that a superior officer had said it. And the objection he was raising was a genuine one, legally Rachel Kane had no more “personhood” than did the chair in which he was sitting.
“Yes. And if she were not property, she’d be a deserter. That makes it damned difficult to deal with Admiral Romanova today.”
“What?” Giandrea shut his mouth to cut off that undignified exclamation.
“I just got through talking with her, Captain. She had me on conference with the office of the Senior Councilor, or whatever in hell Narsai’s excuse for a government calls its chief executive. That just happens to be her father, isn’t that convenient for her right now? And she was claiming Daniel Archer, and Rachel Kane, and if you can believe this—because I damn near can’t believe it—their three unborn children, as civilian citizens of Narsai who are entitled to immunity from Terran law and from Star Service regulations. She made the same claim for her husband, the former Captain Casey; and with him it’s going to be easy enough. Unless the Defense Minister wants to countermand me and recall a ‘mindfucker’ from retirement to active duty, Romanova gets upheld where he’s concerned. With Archer, too, since he was discharged. If Narsai wants to claim him no one has the right to contest them, except the authorities on Sestus 4.” Tanaka allowed himself another grin at that, because it was a ridiculous notion.
“I’m glad, sir.” Giandrea sighed, and then spoke from his heart. “Dan Archer was a good officer, I hated to lose him when the scramblers were pushed out. And Captain Casey may be Morthan, but he gave the Service one hell of an impressive career.”
“Not to mention that Katy Romanova did the same, and she gave three sons too.” Tanaka was of Romanova’s own generation, Giandrea recalled. He wasn’t sure whether Tanaka had personally experienced Mistworld, a battle that took place bac
k while Giandrea himself was still a cadet. But there wasn’t an officer in today’s service who didn’t know the story of the Matushka, the fleet captain who had lost all three of her adult children in a single blazing moment—and who instead of crumpling and having to be replaced, had pulled herself stoically together and had gone on to win what was technically considered to be a victory.
The “little mother.” Romanova was not tall, but neither was she “little.” She was a solidly built woman, almost plump now that she had retired and no longer trained regularly in military gyms. But mother she certainly was, and at Mistworld she’d also been visibly pregnant.
That women could command, that women could fight, that women could take physical and psychological punishment and dish it out, were all givens and had been for centuries now. But that anyone could do what Romanova had done at Mistworld and come out of it sane, was incredible. The nickname she’d been given there had not only stuck to her, it had become a proud symbol for those who served under her command through the rest of her career.
Just a few months ago that had been the entire Star Service. If Romanova wanted a favor from the Defense Ministry, she was probably still going to be able to get it. And even though Lincoln Casey was a Morthan hybrid, a despised “mindfucker” as the vernacular more and more often expressed it these days, the Service now included many officers who had been trained while he commanded the Academy. George Fralick had realized that, and had been canny enough to keep Casey out of sight as much as was possible while he’d been imprisoned aboard the Archangel—and Giandrea had been given special instructions in making up the landing party that had snatched Casey from his home on Narsai, that anyone who might feel personal loyalty to the man must be excluded from that chore.
“Sir, what am I supposed to do?” Giandrea realized he sounded like one of his own young children, but he felt exactly that bewildered. He knew what the right thing to do, the moral thing, was in this situation; and he was certain, now, that the commanding officer of his entire Service concurred. But how to do it legally? That was the question, and it mattered because he could not sacrifice his career over the fate of a gen and he did not expect Tanaka would do that either.
He thought about the other gens he had on board, and wondered if any of them had the potential to do what Rachel Kane had done; and he shuddered. It would almost serve his society right, if those modern-day slaves revolted just as their ancient counterparts had been known to do; but he could not help hoping it wouldn’t happen on his watch.
“The Defense Minister is disgusted with this whole business, Captain.” Tanaka was speaking again, and he was looking that way himself. “She’s instructed me to give the Narsatian government whoever and whatever it claims as its property, she doesn’t want to create an incident where Star Service personnel have to back up the Corporate Marshal Service to get ‘one lousy gen’—and I quote Ms. Fothingill exactly!—off Narsai. Those people are peaceable to a fault, but seeing that happen in their capital city would just beg them to shift their sympathies from us to the Rebs.”
“That makes a lot of sense, sir.” And it did. And it sounded like Romanova’s reasoning, not that of Minister Fothingill; but after all Fothingill had been in office during Romanova’s final months as Fleet Admiral, so no doubt the old working relationship had reasserted itself as soon as Tanaka had put the two women in touch.
Which he wasn’t admitting he had done, but Giandrea could read a viewscreen. And the writing on this one was plain for any literate being to see.
“So, then, Captain! Even if Marshal Vargas has already moved his prisoners inside the Terran Embassy, you have authority there and you’re instructed to use it. Archer is to be released immediately, as a free citizen of Narsai. The gen called Rachel Kane is to be turned over to Admiral Romanova or her designee, and since we can’t ignore the property rights involved her family has agreed to pay HR Solutions the gen’s fair value. Which is considered to be somewhat less than the value of the Romanov property that the Marshal Service had your people destroy, on that company’s behalf, in locating Kane and taking possession of her.”
It was perfect. Hell, it was poetic. It was pure Matushka, with a distinct flavor of Lincoln Casey aiding and abetting…and it was making one tired, disgusted starship captain smile at last.
“Aye, aye, sir,” Giandrea said to his fleet admiral.
I understand your order, and I will obey it. That was what the ancient nautical expression actually meant, and Giandrea had never used it with greater sincerity.
“What the hell?” In spite of himself, Dan Archer muttered the question under his breath. The vehicle that carried them was turning around, was heading away from MinTar just moments before it should have touched down inside the Terran Embassy’s compound there.
Marshal Vargas didn’t have time to deal with his prisoner, even if he had heard that forbidden murmur. He was busy with a comm that he was taking in hush mode, and then he was talking to the pilot—the woman the Embassy had sent as its representative, to the Romanov Farmstead where Archer and Kane had been captured.
Kane was sitting up straight, now, beside her lover. She was a valuable commodity, she had been fed after their capture and that seemed to have revived her just as much as the rest she’d had during their time underground. Archer hadn’t been, and his stomach had been protesting about its emptiness until now.
Now that was the least of his concerns, and even his body knew it. Turning back before entering the Embassy meant that something had changed. That could be a good thing—but the chances were that it was quite the reverse.
George Fralick hadn’t personally piloted a ship for many years, but this was only a shuttle and he felt confident about bringing it safely down to Narsai’s surface. It was a warp-capable shuttle, one that was large enough to accommodate the needs of up to four persons (human persons, specifically) for months at a time, but it still responded sweetly to his touch. And he remembered how much he had once loved piloting a starship, and he smiled even though right now the situation in general was not something to smile about.
Maddy sat beside him in the co-pilot’s chair, not because she could operate the ship’s controls but because he was damned if he was letting the child out of his sight. Even here, where nothing and no one ought to be able to get at her, he wanted to be able to glance over at her and see that she was unharmed. And if, Powers Beneath the Waves forbid it, something else managed to go wrong—as things so often seemed to when he locked horns with that blasted ex-wife of his!—he wanted Maddy where he could be sure of taking her with him, if he had to get out of this ship without warning.
She knew enough not to touch anything, that was one advantage to having a thirteen-year-old instead of a smaller child. Maybe that was one compensation for having to deal with an adolescent now, with a separate person who was capable of questioning his actions and who was starting to demonstrate her mother’s aggravating tendency to challenge him.
He hadn’t viewed her assertiveness in that negative way when it had been a two-year-old’s “no!” or a four-year-old’s “I can do it myself, Papa.” And her curiosity he had encouraged, of course, because he was proud to have such an intelligent daughter and because he wanted her someday to succeed him as the intermediary between Kesra and Terra. She was the only child he was ever going to have, since making a second family didn’t tempt him one bit after everything Katy had put him through. So his whole future was invested in her, and that was the only reason he had been willing to risk bringing her here to Narsai and giving her mother’s people access to her at last.
It had been the worst tactical error of his life, but now all he could do was try to mitigate the damage. There was no point in thinking that if he could make the decision over again, he would place young Madeleine with another human family on Kesra during his absence even though he knew that if war was declared every human on that world would be told to leave it immediately.
It had always been shaky, the relationship betw
een the few human residents of Kesra and the native species of that world. Sometimes Fralick had honestly considered taking his family and starting over with them somewhere else, although certainly not on Narsai where grown men bedded little girls and their parents applauded (and where Katy’s family had political and social and economic clout that secretly awed him)—and not on Terra, where if he no longer represented Kesra he would be without status or connections except for those remaining from his long-ago Service days….
And that was why he hadn’t done it. As Kesra’s ambassador, for as long as peace lasted, he had power and dignity and economic security. As much of those things in his way as Katy had in hers, on Narsai; and he wasn’t going to give them up, not unless and until he had to do that.
Not until someone wrested them out of his dead hands, actually. Yet he had not been willing to risk sacrificing Maddy while he held onto his status on Kesra, because Maddy was the one person left in his life whom George Fralick genuinely loved.
His little girl, who was fast turning into a woman. His little girl, not that mindfucker Casey’s.
The shuttle settled down onto the Narsatian plain, and he was proud of that landing. Light and smooth, he hadn’t lost his touch.
The in-atmosphere vehicle was waiting. Fralick had set down at precisely the correct coordinates.
He would get the Marshal and his prisoners aboard, and they would lift off again and head out-system. From there they would make a straight run toward Terra, and there wasn’t a captain alive who would dare to interfere with a Corporate Marshal Service shuttle.
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