by Webb, Nick
“Mr. Tang only wants to—”
“Tell him I’m busy,” Pike said. He did not add, And when I’m done being busy, I’m going to be gone.
“Sir, I think you will find Mr. Tang’s meeting … very relevant to your present endeavors.”
“Who talks like that?” Rychenkov muttered. He looked up from his list of prospective crew members and raised an eyebrow at Pike.
If Parees heard, he said nothing. The man waited, endlessly patient. Had Pike not known better, he would have suspected the man of being an exceedingly lifelike automaton.
Pike looked at Parees. He looked at Rychenkov. He looked back to Parees. “Fine. I’ll go.”
“What?” Rychenkov looked up from his packing. He frowned. “What if we….”
“Somehow acquire a ship in the next hour before I get back?” Pike raised his eyebrows. “You should be able to send me a message if that happens, right? Hell, even send one at the start of the ship-buying process. Ganymede is just a shuttle ride away.”
Rychenkov sighed, but he waved a hand. “Go, go.”
It was an awkward journey to the Ganymede City penthouse Nhean was currently occupying. Parees seemed to feel no compunction to make conversation, and Pike had no idea what to say to the man. He considered asking why Nhean wanted to see him, but knew what the steward’s answer would be: Mr. Tang will want to discuss that with you himself. Probably more flowery than that, with words like … whatever other ten syllable words Parees tended to use. When they arrived, Parees practically melted out of the room after announcing Pike.
“This place is nice.” Pike looked around himself. It wasn’t Venus, not by a long shot, but the stark lines of Nhean’s spaceships looked somehow more purposeful in the penthouses. Someone had taken the time to paint the walls in clean colors, and someone else had spent the money to buy floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out onto Ganymede’s grey lunar landscape. Jupiter was just coming into view, blackened clouds still a jarring sight.
Nhean followed Pike’s gaze to the planet. “It makes you think,” the man said, uncharacteristically somber. “About what we’re up against.”
Pike, who had been taking a seat on one of the leather chairs, paused. “Did she ask you to talk to me?”
“As a matter of fact, yes, the admiral did.” Nhean took a seat as well. “I cannot say my purposes are entirely aligned with hers, however, and so I thought I would make you a slightly altered proposition than the one she asked me to make.” He waited. His smile was as composed as ever, despite the shadows under his eyes.
He wanted to stand up and walk out. Pike shook with how much he wanted that. He’d long ago learned to be practical, though, and he knew exactly what was waiting for him when he got back: a crew, perhaps, but no ship. Just a tiny apartment in the cramped residential district of Perseverance Station, and no money. He sighed. “Okay.”
If Nhean thought this was an inauspicious beginning, he did not say so. He nodded and pressed his fingertips together. “I want to give you a ship.” He waited a moment, courteously, in case Pike wanted to say anything.
Pike blinked.
“Simply put, I need to find more information about the drones.”
Pike raised an eyebrow. Something was off about that sentence.
“You need to, or the Rebellion needs to?”
Nhean’s gaze flickered. “We both need to. That is all I’m willing to say at this juncture. I am sending Parees to Carina Station above Mars. I would … hire … you to take him there, and then … you would be free to do what you wished.”
Pike felt his face settle into a scowl. “So what’s the catch?”
“There is no catch.” Nhean smiled. “I can see you do not believe me, so let me explain.” He could still hear Delany’s voice after he and Pike had returned from the battle on the Telestine flagship: There’s a price on your head now. You, specifically. He supposed it should have frightened him more, but money and information had a way of dulling such fear. And the threat lent legitimacy in the eyes of others. A useful, if unanticipated, side effect.
“I am presently a wanted man, but I still have both more money and more ships than I could possibly use at the moment. Therefore, what seems an excessively generous gift to you, is a somewhat lesser matter to me. To be honest with you….” He looked away. “I feel somewhat guilty about the events of the past weeks.”
Pike stared him down silently.
“I used you,” Nhean said simply. “I see no moral problems with what I did—my actions averted bloodshed and allowed us to mostly save the Exile Fleet’s shipyards at Mercury. However, on a personal level….” He gestured, as if the rest of the sentence should be self-explanatory.
Pike looked away.
“I have seen your face when you speak of Earth.” Nhean’s voice was soft. “You are a man who wants freedom. You want to chart your own path, and you have done more than we could have asked. I cannot give you Earth—not yet, anyway.” He smiled. “But I can give you this much.”
“And that’s all you want from me in return?” Pike narrowed his eyes at the man. “Drop Parees at Mars?”
“I would occasionally ask for your help in … certain matters. But those contracts would be voluntary, and I assure you they would pay well.” Nhean gave a small smile. When Pike said nothing, he added delicately, “Have you considered that the best way to keep the girl out of Walker’s hands is to find her yourself?”
“Unless there’s a tracking beacon on my ship,” Pike said acidly.
Nhean smiled, not at all offended by the accusation. “There isn’t.”
The lure hung, tantalizing. That it was a trap, Pike had no doubt. But as soon as Parees was gone….
Then, they could disable the tracking beacon—Pike did not trust that open, honest smile for a moment—and be on their way. And until they disabled it, he simply would not look for the girl.
And yet, all the same, something in him chafed at the idea of taking this offer. Nhean had known he would. He knew that Pike, eager to leave, could not afford not to take the offer. He knew that as soon as war broke out, a good ship would go for hundreds of millions of UN credits. The very fact that Nhean was so certain of Pike’s compliance, that he’d made an offer like this—
“Fine.” Best to accept it before his pride got the better of him. Galling or not, his other options were to stay trapped and helpless on Perseverance Station, or to move with the Rebellion. He had no intention of doing either.
“Good.” Nhean nodded. “You’ll find Captain Rychenkov and your crew mates in Docking Bay 87 on Perseverance Station.”
“I’m sorry?”
“You can be outraged that I guessed your answer in advance, or we can skip that and you can leave now, quietly, before the admiral is made aware.” Nhean pushed himself up and offered a hand to pull Pike to his feet. “I suggest the latter.”
“Right.” Asshole.
Pike shook his head at himself. He had no proof that Nhean was doing anything nefarious at all … beyond the fact that he’d known the man for a few weeks and had never once seen him do something without having at least three motives, at least one of which was hidden.
He just wouldn’t be an idiot. And if they couldn’t find a tracking beacon on the ship, they’d do whatever they could to stay away from the girl. Because Pike didn’t much care whether he smuggled or traded legally. The one thing he did care about was keeping the girl out of Walker’s hands.
And Nhean’s.
Chapter Six
Ganymede
Ganymede City
Tang penthouse
“So.” Nhean watched Pike go, and then settled into his chair, leaning on the unfamiliar desk. This room, although undoubtedly luxurious, was not his own. He was endlessly frustrated by the faulty signals and the slow data streams. He missed the array of monitors on the wall of his office on Venus, giving him a window into the state of humanity at a single glance. He missed Venus’s gravity—Ganymede’s was slight in comparison.
Everything was different and unfamiliar. And soon, even Parees would be gone. “Are you prepared?”
“I am prepared.” Parees smiled.
“Good.” Nhean nodded decisively.
“What am I to do?”
“You will be finding the drones. I have reason to believe the bulk of them settled there.” Mars, having the ground already in place—not to mention gravity—was easier to expand upon than a space station in the early years of humanity’s diaspora. It, along with its attendant stations—Carina Station chief among them—and lunar outposts on Phobos and Deimos, was one of the most heavily settled areas of the Exodus, requiring technical help and labor almost constantly—perfect for the thousands of rescued drones. “Send me the names of every one of them you can find. Should be several hundred there, at least, if not thousands.”
“What if they aren’t the same names they were given after their rescue?”
“We should be able to trace them back.” Few people were clever enough to confuse the trail by continuing to use their old name for a while after the new identity was created.
On the other hand, if Tel’rabim was anything, it was clever.
“And follow them,” Nhean instructed. “As many as you can. Find out what mechanism he’s using to feed them instructions. I want to know how they receive signals.”
Parees considered this. “If I encounter UN or Rebellion members….”
“Easy enough.” Nhean frowned. “For the Rebellion, send them to me. For the UN, tell them you’re a civilian. That you’re following your brother, and looking for him. It explains enough.”
Parees nodded silently. He considered.
Nhean took a moment to examine the other man. Parees had shaved his hair in anticipation of the journey, the better to fit in with the civilians on Carina Station, and his usual sleeveless shirt had been replaced with the grey coveralls so many humans wore. Parees’s skin almost glowed against the grey. With his quiet equanimity and Venetian good health, would he ever manage to pass for a normal citizen?
They had no other choice.
Nhean sighed. “There is a second mission I would have you undertake when you have completed the survey.”
Parees raised his eyebrows. “Oh?”
“You remember the transmission you intercepted after the Rebellion’s first encounter on Earth? During the insertion of Pike?”
Parees nodded, frowning.
Nhean shared his discomfort. The transmission had been strange, unencrypted, broadcasted to the new Telestine cities on Earth almost crudely, breaking onto the main channels by pure force. Nhean had assumed it was a distress signal designed to rouse the Telestines to repel the humans—and the military engagement had seemed to support it.
He assumed that his paltry efforts at translation had missed subtleties within the Telestine language, and yet, the words still seemed strange to him. Dark and grim, dripping with bloody imagery, they flowed, almost like poetry….
It was enough to make him wonder: were there religious groups within the Telestines, as there had been in Europe’s colonial era, who welcomed the chance to die standing between their own people and the enslaved humans? Were they trying to recruit more to their group?
“I want you to go anywhere there are Telestine aid missionaries. It looks as if the Daughters of Ascension have absorbed some of the smaller groups, so they might be a good place to start. Or perhaps the Warriors of Mercy. Or … any of them. Find them. Speak to them, say whatever you need to say in order to allay their suspicions … and speak, then, to the ones they tend. Do what you can to find any communications they have stored.”
“Have you told Walker you’re looking for this?”
“No. She’s instructed me to look into the matter of the drones, at least. This dovetails nicely. I can always say that the Telestine aid groups might know best where there had been sudden infusions of new engineers and so on.” He smiled humorlessly.
“And Mr. Pike?” Parees asked delicately.
“I highly doubt Pike will do anything noteworthy for some time.” Now Nhean’s smile was genuine. “He’s clever enough to know that Walker will have him watched. The girl….” He sighed. He sank back into the chair, resting his mouth on his bridged fingers. “She’ll want to keep him safe. There’s a reason she didn’t take him with her when she left. If you find her—drop everything else. Keep her in sight. If necessary, you should be able to direct her by telling her where Pike will be. See if you can drive her at least into our surveillance.”
“I will do what I can.” Parees lifted his shoulders. “But it seems that the more she learns about us and our technology, she evades it naturally.”
“Yes.” Nhean considered. “Watch for my signal. I will find out if she received any sort of communication before she left, and if so.…”
“You think she’ll be on Mars?”
“I don’t know.” Nhean tried not to snap. He was not accustomed to not knowing such things. He had watched the surveillance tapes a dozen times or more, the girl walking back to the med bay almost ostentatiously, flaunting her presence to the cameras. How she had left … now that was the question. Not a single camera had seen her come out, and no amount of checking passenger manifests or security cameras had revealed her whereabouts. For all he knew, Nhean thought bitterly, she was still on Perseverance Station.
No. There was a shuttle gone, and it was clear she was looking for something. The question was simply what that was.
“Go. Be safe. And, Parees….”
“Yes, sir?” Parees looked at him with the same guileless honesty Nhean had become accustomed to over the years. Where others saw reserve, he saw simply a quiet, focused mind.
Nhean shook his head. Now was not the time for doubts and fears. Parees had never run a mission alone, but he had never been one to falter in the face of duty, either.
“Nothing,” Nhean said simply. “Just be safe.”
Chapter Seven
Ganymede
Perseverance Station
Admiral’s quarters
“I hope you know I’m taking a risk with this.” Walker looked over at Nhean, arms folded over her chest. She sighed. “I don’t like it.”
“Hasn’t Pike always been this way?” Nhean suggested. He sat at the war table, dressed once more in a clean suit and looking somewhat better rested—altogether, more composed by far than she was. While the grimy halls and rusted furniture were natural to her, with bare, flickering bulbs and unadorned metal walls, Nhean looked not only out of place, but above his surroundings.
She resented it, just as she resented the attempt at familiarity. “You aren’t an expert on my history, Mr. Tang.”
His smile suggested that he just might be, but his tone was mild when he answered. “Of course not. However, I have had some experience with Pike over the past weeks—enough to understand that he sees the world fairly simply … and thus, in a complex world, is wildly unpredictable.”
“Which is why it might well have been better not to give him such a fast ship.” She tried to keep her voice from sharpness.
“The ship can be tracked,” Nhean repeated patiently.
“He knows that.”
“Probably.” His gaze moved past her as he considered. “The question is whether he’ll have the discipline to keep believing I can watch him—particularly if he runs across whispers of the girl.”
“And you think he will?” Walker watched him carefully. The question was a test. She might not have Nhean’s network, or his skill at sifting through data, but she had learned to watch people, and she had been forming her own opinions about his knowledge. The suppressed grimace confirmed it. “After all, you have no idea where she might be.”
“Not unusual.” His voice was clipped. “I have found several places she is not.”
“Have you? Because as far as I know, she hasn’t been found either here, or on any of the shuttles leaving the station. That would mean she’s nowhere, and as we can be reasonably sure she is in fact
somewhere, I find no reason to expect that our information is correct.” She paused. “Unless she threw herself out an airlock, and I find myself doubting that. I rather think that she will try to use her abilities somehow. I don’t know her well … but I think maybe she believes she can outsmart Tel’rabim’s programming.”
Nhean winced. It was fleeting, but it was there.
“Is there a problem?” She kept her voice light, almost a mocking his own refined speech.
“No. It’s nothing.” He looked down at the table. “I wish you had let me continue to study the databases in the captured Telestine fleet at Mercury.”
“We couldn’t extract them quickly, we couldn’t stay, and we couldn’t take the chance of him having those ships to use again.” She listed the reasons without raising her voice. The argument was so exhausted, even after a few weeks, that she did not even feel a flicker of anger.
Silence. For now, it seemed, he would let the matter drop.
“The question is, which skills will the girl use, and how? That should give us some clue to where she is.”
“I’ll begin rerunning the passenger manifests,” Nhean murmured.
“What good will that do?”
“Before they leave dock, the passenger freighters’ computers sync with the station. That should tell us their mass, and we might be able to find which ships are carrying marginally more than expected.” He held up a finger at her look. “Might. It depends on how well they keep records of their supplies. And whether or not they’re smuggling.”
“Everyone’s smuggling,” Walker said absently. One could live within the strictures of the Exodus Treaty … but barely. People were packed into space stations so full that there was little hope of air, let alone enough space. Being alive, humanity knew well, was not living. And so they smuggled, all of them. “If you think you can find her, well enough. If not, we need to come at this another way.”