“Might have been cheaper to just hire a therapist instead of a mistress. They’ll listen to you talk too,” Tracy said.
“You don’t understand. It was all part of the plan.” Han slammed the flat of his hand on the table. The glasses jumped and liquor spilled. The drunk looked horrified as he stared at the puddle of bourbon.
Tracy put that together with the earlier statement about the mysterious theys. His lip curled. “Ah, so there’s a secret cabal and shadowy plots to this story too.”
“You mock, but it’s true. Once they had what they wanted they put their plan into effect.”
The man waved his glass at Tracy. Tracy filled it. Filled his own. Han gulped down his drink and snatched the bottle before Tracy could prevent him. Filled his glass yet again. Tracy grabbed the neck of the bottle and there was a brief tug of war. Han finally released it and pouted.
“I’m not sure I want to talk to you any longer,” the fat man huffed. Tracy sloshed the liquid in the bottle. Tongue again touched lips and Han nodded. “Anyway, they put the plan into effect the night of the first grand ball of the season. I wanted to be with Sammy but had to escort my wife and daughter to the Palanis’ house. My wife and I had a fight. She had learned about my alien lover and there was a scene. I left and ran to my kitten girl. Told her what had happened, told her I didn’t care. I would cast away everything for her. She took me back to her apartment and drugged me.
“I remember waking once. I was naked and cold, lying on metal. She told me she was sorry.” His brow wrinkled. “Well, I think she did. Then blackness. When I awoke I was laying on the metal bed frame. Everything was gone, mattress, linens. I staggered through the apartment. It had been stripped bare. My ScoopRing, signet ring, everything was gone.”
“So she was just a thieving whore,” Tracy suggested.
“No, no. This was far more. I finally went into the bathroom to relieve myself and get a drink and a stranger was looking out of the mirror at me. They had altered my appearance. All my life I had skin almost as pale as yours and red hair. But suddenly…” He gestured at his dark hair and skin. “And I was fatter so my clothes barely fit. I managed to get decent enough to go outside and discovered that months had passed. I had gone to the ball in early fall. It was now high summer.”
“I went to the police and reported that I had been robbed and violated. My very appearance changed. Told them who I was. They didn’t believe me. I went to my office and the young men who’d taken me to that bachelor party all those long months before ejected me from the building. I went to my home and forced myself past the butler and up the stairs searching for my wife.”
Han’s delivery had become rushed, the words staccato punctuated by panting breaths. Tracy began to fear the man would have a coronary right in front of him.
“I found her in the bedroom being enthusiastically rogered by a man with pale skin and red hair. Juliana screamed. The man looked around. And it was me.”
“The authorities arrived and took me away. I tried to make them understand that the Cara’ot had placed an agent at the very heart of the government. Replaced me with an alien who could stand at the Emperor’s right hand.”
“Let me guess. Nobody believed you.”
Han nodded. “Then I began to fear that the aliens might decide that silencing me was the safer course. Once I was released from the sanitarium I fled Ouranos. Made my way to distant worlds trying to stay ahead of my hunters. I tell my tale to people like you. To people who might listen.”
“And who’ll buy you a drink,” Tracy snapped.
Han staggered to his feet and stood swaying as he intoned, “I am Rohan Danilo Marcus Aubrey, Conde de Vargas, and I adjure you to act! Inform your superiors! Alert them to the danger.” Exhausted the drunk collapsed back into his chair, his chin resting on his chest.
Disgusted by his gullibility and the waste of his money, Tracy kicked back his chair and stood. “Nice. Sweet scam you’ve got going. You and your buddy Loren.” Tracy jerked his chin toward the bartender.
“Wha…?”
“I’ve met the Conde de Vargas. Been a guest in his home. Done a service for him. Saw him at my graduation. Peddle your bullshit somewhere else!”
Tracy started for the door. “Wait!” The desperate cry stopped him. Han was hugging the almost empty bottle to his chest. “Your duties take you throughout League space. If you see her tell her… tell her…” His voice was thick with tears. “I never saw Sammy again and I need to… I need to… I love her so much.”
Broken words from a shattered man. Pity stirred and Tracy brutally quashed the feeling. Applauding slowly he said, “Nice touch.”
He walked out into the darkness and found his swaying steps carrying him back toward the spaceport. If he deserted he would end up like that pathetic drunk. Skipping from world to world, hunted (though in his case it would be true), broke, searching for an easy mark. And what tale would he spin? That once I knew the Infanta. That we shared a secret love.
Was that any more fantastic than the tale he’d been told?
What if there was a plot against the humans? Aliens were integrated into every facet of their lives. Second class, overlooked, taken for granted. Would the human masters even notice? Tracy shook his head. The motion sent him staggering and nausea washed through his gut. He was drunker than he’d realized. That was fueling these paranoid thoughts.
He looked toward the port. A ship was lifting on a pillar of fire. His heart lifted with it. He would return to the Triunfo. He would win glory and acclaim. He would change the equation.
* * *
Commander Sukarno was waiting for him when he got off the shuttle. Tracy snapped to attention and saluted. The vigorous gesture sent him tottering sideways. The executive officer grabbed his shoulder and steadied him.
“You came back, Belmanor,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
“I wasn’t sure you would.”
“Wasn’t gonna let the assholes beat me… sir,” he added when he realized several heartbeats had passed without the honorific.
Sukarno gave his pirate’s grin. “I thought you were tough enough, but you never can tell.”
“Glad I met your expectations,” Tracy said dully.
“I’m not sure you will, but I’m going to find out. Get sober and report to my office. You’re my new adjutant.”
The room seemed to be ballooning and Sukarno looked like he was standing at the end of a very long, very bright tunnel. “S… sir?”
“If your batBEM is anything like mine he’ll have a remedy that will put you back on your feet. Well, snap to it!”
15
BY LUCKY CHANCE
“Pilots to your ships,” Lewis’s voice boomed over the intercom. What the hell? Mercedes wondered as she jogged toward an elevator. Tension snapped at her nerve endings. They didn’t usually deploy fighters when they entered a new system.
Boho had beaten her to the flight deck and had almost finished donning his armor. He assisted her, and before they locked their helmets they exchanged a quick kiss. His lips were dry and cold.
“Must be something out there,” he muttered.
“Probably just Vink being paranoid,” she soothed. She closed her helmet, took a running start, climbed up the side of her Infierno and slid into the couch. An hombre, belly down on the skin of the fighter, jacked her in, and patted the top of her helmet. As he slid off she closed the canopy.
The warning light strobed. The warning siren was muffled. Hombres streamed toward the doors that slid shut behind them. The bay doors began to cycle open. She gave a gentle boost of her trim jets and her fighter lifted a few inches off the deck. She glanced to either side. The rest of second squadron were following her example. The year they had spent flying together had given them all a good sense of each other so that she rarely needed to give mundane commands.
Lewis’s voice rang in her helmet. “Infiernos launch.”
First squadron led off with their leader, Captain-Li
eutenant Lord Novek snapping out multiple orders as the fighters went spinning off the deck. Mercedes gave a mental sigh and once they were clear she said only, “Second squadron, launch.” The edges of the bay flashed by briefly in her peripheral vision and then they were out.
As always, for a fleeting moment the backdrop of eternity held wonder, then she was back to work. After the experience in the proto-system, Navigation had decided to bring them out of Fold closer to this new system’s star in the hope they would avoid gas giants and debris fields. The ships were outfitted with highly sensitive scanners so if they were about to appear in the path of something large they would automatically shift back into the Fold. That was not a happy occurrence because during those abrupt translations was when ships got lost. The advantage they had was that space was big. The chance of actually running into something was vanishingly small.
Mercedes checked her instrument panel. There was an object at a Lagrange point, a place where gravitational forces allowed an object to remain stationary, and it was hot, emitting signals that were being beamed to the icy planet below. Novek had noticed it at the same moment. “Arango, take Turner and Fellon and investigate.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Mercedes sent her fighter looping toward the object. Turner and Fellon orbited her in an intricate dance in case unfriendlies decided to toss something their way. The object resolved into a long cigar-shaped asteroid. Solar panels flared on all sides. At one end there was the corroded nozzle of a thruster. It was a ship, a long view ship built from a hollowed out asteroid. The three fighters explored the length and breadth of the ship sending back pictures to the flagship.
“Clearly human,” Admiral Kartirci said. She realized he was probably talking to Vink.
Gelb’s voice came into her helmet. “Picking up signals. The ship is beaming to the planet.”
Curious, Mercedes dipped into the stream. It was a series of numbers. She was still puzzling it out when Gelb provided the answer.
“It’s sending our coordinates and our physical specs down to the planet.”
“There’s going to be some soiled underwear down there,” Vink remarked. “Novek, Arango, take the squadrons into near orbit. Scan for population centers. We’ll hold at perigee.”
“Aye, sir,” they said in chorus and gave the order to their squads.
It was going to take a while to close on the planet. Mercedes allowed herself to sink into the couch and tried to ignore the catheter. She was beginning to wonder if a diaper might be a better choice. Boho sent her a private message.
“There may be defensive platforms in orbit.”
“Even if there are I don’t think they’ll offer much of a threat to us. That ship was pretty low tech.”
“Poor suckers,” Boho said with a hint of a laugh in his voice. “They probably headed out just a few years before we discovered the Fold technology. While they were crawling through the galaxy we were lapping them several times over.”
“I doubt they’re going to find that as funny as you, but I’m sure they’ll be glad to see us,” Mercedes replied.
Hours passed. Mercedes sipped at the nutrient mix built into her helmet. Eventually the planet began to loom. It wasn’t a very welcoming sight. High mountains, clouds whipped by high winds, ice and snow over much of the surface. Only at the equator was bare ground visible.
“Doesn’t look very hospitable.” Jace’s voice over the radio.
“Judging from the corrosion on the nozzle my guess is they had limped as far as they could go,” Mercedes answered.
“Can you imagine? Hundreds of years inside that ball of rock,” another pilot offered.
“No,” Boho answered.
There were a few crude satellites in various orbits around the planet. Mercedes dipped into the signals from them. Cell phone conversations, women’s voices.
“…pick up the children…”
“…have to go…?”
“…Where’s Gabbi?”
There were other messages that had been encrypted. Undoubtedly from whatever government agencies ruled the planet. She boosted them back to the Concepción. She figured the computers and SEGU officers on board would make short work of the code.
The two squadrons swept around the planet, and on the night side they spotted the lights of several small cities sprinkled around the equator.
Vink radioed to her and Novek. “Send down recon drones. We need to estimate the population so we know how to proceed. Then return to the Concepción.”
It was done and the Infiernos turned for home. Mercedes was glad. This was the longest she had been in the armor and she was desperate to be free of the catheter and take a shower.
* * *
The top officers of the Triunfo were gathered at the table in the captain’s conference room. Tracy sat behind Sukarno and slightly to his left. His counterpart, Captain-Lieutenant Conde Tyler Vebrant, sat behind de Vilbiss, also taking notes on the meeting. Occasionally Tracy reached up and touched the first lieutenant bars on his collar. It had taken almost a year, but Sukarno had finally succeeded in getting Tracy promoted. As an added bonus Tracy also wore the ribbon signifying he was a captain-lieutenant. The bunkmates had not been pleased, but the overt harassment had stopped because at this point Tracy technically outranked them.
“We’ve received a call from Admiral Kartirci on the Nuestra Señora de la Concepción requesting support,” Captain de Vilbiss said.
A thrill of excitement swept through Tracy. Mercedes was aboard the Concepción. Perhaps he would have a chance to see her, perhaps even speak to her. You’re not getting within two feet of her, you fool. The voice of his intitulado self tried to remind him that he was and would always be “lowborn scum”. He could almost hear Boho’s hated voice. Uncomfortable thoughts. Tracy pushed them aside.
“They’ve found a Hidden World,” de Vilbiss continued. “Based on surveillance it’s a rather small population so they feel two ships will be sufficient to effect annexation and incorporation.”
Eichenbrenner said, “You’ll have need of the fusileros.”
“One hopes not,” de Vilbiss countered. “According to the admiral the planet is hardly a garden spot. We can help with terraforming. Also their technology is primitive; we can improve their lives. The capital is sending a team of diplomats to undertake the negotiations.”
“We’re just there to back up their statecraft,” Sukarno said dryly and a chuckle swept through the room.
“Hopefully they won’t be as tough as those bastards on Reichart’s World,” de Vilbiss said, and a few of the older officers nodded in agreement.
Reichart’s World. There had been two worlds found relatively recently—Dullahan and Reichart’s World. Reichart’s had a particularly unpleasant resonance for Tracy. It had been opened for League citizens to immigrate a year after its discovery and Tracy’s family had been among the émigrés. His father and grandfather had taken the family’s savings, borrowed heavily and bought into the lottery to obtain a business on Reichart’s World. They had succeeded, winning ownership of a textile mill, and moved to the planet when Tracy was four.
But the new life and the riches that were supposed to follow had proved to be a chimera. A member of the FFH had wanted the Belmanors’ mill and suddenly they were beset with unanticipated expenses and lawsuits. Tracy’s mother had died, and Tracy knew his father believed that the stress was what had ultimately killed Viola. How he had managed to keep working for the members of the FFH Tracy had never understood, but his father had never lost his esteem for and deference to the FFH.
Forced into bankruptcy they sold the mill to the nobleman. Broke and deeply in debt the two men and the boy returned to the tailor shop in Hissilek and spent the next seven years working to pay off their debts. Tracy’s grandfather, a bitter and angry old man who had never recovered from his daughter’s death, died just as they succeeded.
“Well, we know what we have to do.” De Vilbiss stood and all the officers followed suit. H
e turned to Xiang-Loredo. “Set a course for…” The captain turned to his adjutant. “What do the locals call the damn place?”
“Sinope. The Concepción grabbed a few city names too— Pygela, Latoreria and Amastris.”
They all headed toward the door. Sukarno glanced over at Tracy. “Research those names. See if they give us any idea what ax these folks were grinding when they left Earth.”
It was a good question because most of the people who were willing to risk their lives in long view ships tended to be nuts who wanted to try bizarre social experiments. Since the Triunfo would be three days in Fold there would be plenty of time for Tracy to find the answer.
“Yes, sir.”
* * *
Sukarno waved him into a seat. Tracy unbraced and sat down. Sukarno’s office contained not a single personal item. Tracy had wondered if that was due to a secretive nature on the part of the XO or just an intitulado’s sense that anything could be taken away without a moment’s notice so you didn’t want to have a lot to pack.
“Uh… Commander, are those diplomats already on their way? Because if they’re not the government might want to include at least one woman,” Tracy said.
“They are and they are all men. Apart from a few human secretaries there are no women who are… well you know, real secretaries as in secretaries of state.”
“Did the folks on the flagship report if they intercepted any men talking?”
“No.”
“We should ask about that when we arrive.”
“Why?”
“Because Sinope, Pygela, Latoreria and Amastris are all names associated with the Amazons.” Sukarno frowned and Tracy hastened to add, “Not the FFH family, sir. The myth. A society of women warriors.”
In Evil Times Page 15