by K S Augustin
Moon glared at him in indignation. “I did not,” she began, then paused. She remembered her time at the lab. How she willingly sacrificed teaching assignments to concentrate on her work. The impatience with which she’d treated every research partner until Kad had come along. Her burning envy when she thought someone at a rival institute had made a breakthrough that should have rightfully been hers.
“Maybe I did,” she finally conceded.
Kad lifted an eyebrow at the conciliatory tone in her voice. “Then you can understand my reluctance to share anything of my personal life, much less my anti-Republic sentiments.”
“How did you get away from the Phyllis Centre?” Moon asked. “They had the entire place locked down before they even barged into the lab. I thought you’d be detained within minutes.”
“Just as you thought that I was the only ‘terrorist’ working at the Centre, no doubt.” At her nod, he continued. “There were other sympathisers who helped me, black spots in the surveillance net that you can slip through, if you know what you’re doing.”
“You could have told me about them,” Moon muttered.
“No, I couldn’t have, Moon.” For a moment, Kad looked at her in sorrow. “That would have been forcing you to make a choice you weren’t prepared for. And yet, you appear to be prepared to make it now. Thanks to Mr. Flerovs.”
“When I saw what they were doing to him….”
“Moon was the first person who ever offered to help me,” Srin added. His hand still enfolded hers. “In two decades, she was the first human being who showed compassion, instead of treating me like a machine.”
“So you worked on her research together. Tell me, how far did you get?”
“It didn’t work, Kad,” Moon answered. “I’m sure you must have broken and read the classified reports in depth by now.”
Kad looked at her evenly. “They can’t say much when the research they were based on got scramble-bombed.”
The atmosphere in the room suddenly became more tense. Even though they all looked relaxed, Moon knew that Srin and Kad were each as keyed up as she was. This was the moment of truth…the moment she’d been dreading.
“I thought I had calculated everything correctly,” Moon said carefully. “Primed the missile. Sent it on its way. I even used the entry protocols you and I had set up together, Kad. Sensors picked up the start of a fusion reaction within the stellar core, but it never reached critical mass. Cascade threshold was never reached.”
Kad crossed his legs. His expression was reflective. “If you’d told me this a few years ago, Moon, I would have believed you. Something wrong with the transfer technology, insufficient accommodation for gravity fluctuations, too small a seed mass…all of those were problems we grappled with.”
She felt shivers brush against her cheeks, tightening them, and had to restrain the urge to scratch her skin, to loosen the tension in her facial muscles.
Kad’s voice was as inexorable as an advancing glacier. “But you forget that I know you, and at what stage I left the research. The Republic would never have put a battleship – even a small one – at your disposal if you hadn’t progressed far beyond what you did at the Centre. Knowing how you operate, and how the Republic operates, triangulates the problem for me. It tells me more than you think it does.”
“And that is?” Moon tried to sound blandly curious, prompting a smile from the man sitting opposite her.
“If the missile failed, it failed by only a breath. A failure that can easily be rectified, in my opinion.”
“To what purpose, Kad? The Republic wanted to use my research to destroy living solar systems. What do you and your bunch of freedom-fighters want to do with it?”
“A conscience, Moon, this late in the game?”
The comment should have stung, but it didn’t. With a jerk, Moon lifted her head higher. “Maybe I’m a late developer,” she ground out. “But regardless of when I grew an ethical brain stem, my question – as the creator of the technology you wish to exploit – still stands. What do you want to do with it?”
Kad lifted a hand and let it drop back to his knee. “That, I can’t tell you. Not exactly. I’m not the mastermind behind this operation, you know, merely one of the senior lackeys.”
She frowned. “Senior lackeys? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I’m not the boss of my net of contacts. I am merely her second-in-command.”
“And who is she, this leader of your group?”
“Well, for a start, she’s not a human. She’s an alien, and a very determined one at that.”
“Well you can tell this alien leader of yours that my research is not for sale.”
“Isn’t it?”
The two words hung between them, thrown into prominence by the significant glance Kad shot in Srin’s direction.
Moon’s eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t….”
“I told you on Slater’s End that the deal was a trade – your information for your safety. Or don’t you remember?”
“What happened to you, Kad? What happened to the ethical researcher I worked next to? Did your alien leader succeed in spinning you a line of propaganda?”
“Propaganda?” He frowned. “How can you talk to me about propaganda? You were imprisoned by the Republic, monitored by them, yet you still went straight back to your research like a loyal servant the moment they opened the cage door.”
“That wasn’t propaganda,” Moon answered. The conversation was becoming too heated and she needed a way to ease the room’s tension. She swallowed. “That was arrogance.”
She could see how her admission stopped Kad in his tracks. He hadn’t expected her to admit to her failings.
He took a deep breath and quirked an eyebrow. “And now?” he asked. The bite had left his voice.
“Now, you’ll find me a lot more sceptical…regardless of who is spinning the news.”
Kad grinned. “All right, you win this round. Let’s wait until we get to our destination, then you can discuss it face to face with Needann. In the meantime, why don’t we catch up on old stories? Maybe amuse Srin with some of our anecdotes.”
Moon watched his face for a long moment. “All right,” she conceded, but her voice was still cautious. “Happy times, till we see Needann.”
Chapter Nineteen
“So tell me about Kad Minslok.”
Srin opened his arms and let Moon snuggle closer to him. Their bunk aboard the Unfinished Tale was wider than the one they sometimes shared on the Perdition – almost wide enough for two – but somehow it didn’t feel so comfortable. Maybe it was a question of psychological ease as much as physical.
“Mmmm,” Moon turned sideways, resting a hand on his chest and flinging a leg over his groin. “We met at the Phyllis Centre. He’d been transferred from another institute in one of the outer sectors – as you know, the closer you are to the Tor system, the more prestige you have – and I got the impression he was working his way up the research ladder.”
Srin felt the heat of her body against him and his libido began stirring. Damn, but that wasn’t what he wanted to concentrate on at the moment. “Why pick him as your partner?”
Her fingers idly circled the hair on his chest, an insistent tickle that relaxed and excited him at the same time. “He was…different. He didn’t strike me as a political player, and the fact that he’d come from the outer reaches of the Republic showed me that he had done some solid work. After all, who was he going to impress all the way out there?”
“How about the person who approved his transfer?”
Moon chuckled and Srin felt it as a series of light tremors against his ribs. His grip tightened.
“If Kad had wanted to impress someone, then he went about it the wrong way. Instead of pursuing research avenues that were popular, he went for areas that were more esoteric.”
“Stellar re-ignition?”
“Not at that time, but he had experience in nano-electronics, gravimetric dynamics,
stellar calculus. Basically, all the fields that turned off a serious political player but got a physicist like me very interested.”
“How interested?”
Srin tried to phrase the question as blandly as he could, but there must have been something in his voice because Moon used her tickling hand to press against his chest, levering her torso up.
“Are you jealous, Mr. Flerovs?” she teased, watching him with a wicked glint in her eye.
“Who wouldn’t be?” he countered. “I hear about our saviour, Kad Minslok, and how both of you worked side by side for years on your research. All alone. In your lab. Then, when I finally meet the man, he’s not old and decrepit but young – certainly younger than me – and way too good-looking for my peace of mind.”
She reached up and kissed the side of his mouth. “Would it be,” kiss, “any consolation if I told you,” kiss kiss, “that I only ever saw him as a brain on legs?”
“But that’s the thing, Dr. Thadin,” he remarked, holding her away from him with both arms, “you’re the type of woman who thinks a brain on legs is sexy.”
She wriggled free of his grasp. “Only your brain.”
She moved so that her toes could stroke the inside of his thighs. “Only your legs.”
As her foot reached further up, Srin felt himself get hard. In his more reflective moments, he still couldn’t believe the effect Moon had on him. He hadn’t felt this much lust since his teenage years and, instead of going away, all he wanted to do when he spotted Moon was grab her, hold her and screw the living daylights out of her.
He looked down at the rich chocolate of her skin and groaned. “We’re safe here, aren’t we?” he asked. “We don’t have to get our clothes on and rush to some escape pod, or steal goods from a market to disguise ourselves, or outrun a squad of goons intent on our personal destruction?”
She grinned. “I don’t think so. For the moment, this is as safe as it gets.”
“Good. Then I can do this to you….”
He grabbed her around the waist and flipped himself up. With a squeal, Moon landed on the mattress.
“What are you—”
He captured her lips before she had time to complete her sentence. She tasted of tenderness, of glowing warmth…of home. Srin drugged himself on Moon, on the silky globes of her breasts, the soft vigour of her exhalations, and the siren call of her sex. She moved against him hungrily and he met her, thrust for thrust, sigh for sigh. The universe opened up to him, hot and wondrous, and he fell into its grasp, spinning through nebulae and exhausting himself within the rays of glowing suns.
“It’s unusual to see you here by yourself, Moon.”
Moon cast a quick glance at the man who joined her at the food counter, took her plate from the programmer’s slot and moved to a spare table.
“What do you mean by that, Kad?” she asked, seating herself. The question held no bite and Kad flicked a wry eyebrow upwards as he joined her.
“It’s just that, ever since you came on board, I haven’t seen you and Flerovs apart very much.”
“Is that such a surprise?”
“From you, yes. Dr. Moon Thadin, the Ice Queen of Phyllis…with a man? That kind of rumour could have cost someone some serious money a few years ago.”
“Serious…?” She paused in the middle of lifting a piece of food to her mouth. “Money? People were betting on me?”
Kad grinned. “You didn’t know? You had quite a reputation, Moon. ‘The Ultimate Untouchable’, ‘The Stellar Iceberg’. You were never seen with anyone approximating a romantic interest. ”
She put down her fork with a snap. “I was concentrating on my work!”
“It didn’t look like concentration to us. It looked like you were consuming work, enveloping yourself in it, like a cocoon. And now, I see a completely different Moon. I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t have the evidence in front of me. Srin Flerovs must be someone very special.”
“He is.” Moon hesitated. “The reason he’s not here is that he’s…he’s in a drug crash at the moment.”
Kad frowned. “Drug?”
She flicked her hand upwards. “It’s not what you think. I remember what you said in Wessness. You took one look at Srin, shivering and suffering from withdrawal, and declared him a drug addict. But things aren’t always that simple, Kad.”
What exactly was she trying to do? Convince him that there wasn’t always a black and white answer to every problem? That there were complexities in any given situation? And was she doing this to explain Srin to her old partner…or to convince him that her research shouldn’t be used as a weapon by anybody, Republic or rebel?
“He was addicted, but it was the Republic who did that to him.”
“I remember reading what Leen had to say,” Kad remarked. “It was unconscionable what was done to him.”
Leen Vazueb was the sympathetic doctor, part of Kad’s network of rebels, who had helped Moon and Srin escape the Republic dragnet on Slater’s End. She had also crafted part of the makeshift drug regime that kept Srin conscious and his body at a normal temperature. Although there had been a couple of clashes between them, the longer Moon thought of the acerbic doctor, the more affection she had for the woman.
“Yes it was. I’d even call it torture.”
“And he’s suffering the after-effects now?”
Moon chose her words carefully. “Leen helped us a lot by designing a medicine that stops Srin’s hyperpyrexia. He appears to be reacting well to it because I now only need to give him a shot maybe once a week. However…however, he still suffers from convulsive attacks. I didn’t notice it at the time but, while we were aboard the Velvet Storm, it started getting more obvious. When we reached Marentim, I knew I had to do something, so I concocted my own hare-brained mix of muscle relaxants, mixed with anti-convulsive treatments. Later, I added a cognitive enhancer and, for now, that seems to be doing the trick…for about three days. Then he goes into a crash for twenty-four hours.” She smiled. “At least it’s better than forgetting me every two days.”
“This whole situation hasn’t been easy for you, has it Moon?”
“It hasn’t been easy for anyone.” She lifted her gaze and looked Kad squarely in the face. “That’s why I don’t want any part of your leader’s plan, Kad.”
“We had a bit of this conversation on Wessness, remember?”
“Screw Wessness,” Moon replied hotly.
With her hunger gone, she pushed her plate of food away and glared at him. “I would have done anything, said anything, to stop Srin and I being recaptured. And I don’t think consent given under duress is true consent at all.”
“Are you playing word games with me, Moon?”
“I’m telling you the truth.” Her voice was strong with conviction. “He’s been exploited enough, and I’m certainly getting sick of it, even if he isn’t. Kad, all I want is some quiet corner of the galaxy where we can live our lives in peace, not be used as retribution for perceived wrongs.”
“Perceived? Surely you know more about how the Republic operates than that?”
“Just as I know that all my research can accomplish is unleashing a war on the entire galaxy.”
Kad sat back. “From anyone else, that statement would sound arrogant.”
“Guilty, as charged,” she answered calmly.
He watched her for several long moments. “A few days ago, you asked me how I became an anti-Republic sympathiser. I never gave you an answer, did I?”
“No.” Moon’s voice was soft.
“Would you like to hear it?”
“Yes.”
Kad flicked a glance to the far wall, gathering his thoughts. “As far as I’m concerned, I had the kind of upbringing most people would envy. My parents weren’t scientists or engineers but, on my university entrance exams, I scored exceptionally well in the hard sciences. Our entire world changed then. I was accepted into one of the most prestigious institutes on the planet. But, of course, that wasn’t good
enough. We got moved to new quarters, more befitting a star pupil. My parents even got promotions. Looking back at it, you could call it a type of bribery, but we thought of it as an overdue stroke of luck.”
He grimaced. “You could say it went to our heads, but I didn’t realise how much so until a neighbour was labelled as a ‘subversive’. I don’t even know what the poor man did. Maybe he signed a petition, maybe he donated some money to a banned charity. In any case, for a year – until I got my first academic posting – he was under official investigation and, well, I’m sure you know what that means, Moon.”
She nodded. She remembered how quickly her friends had fallen away from her when the Republic had had her ‘under investigation’.
“My parents who, up till that time, had been fairly good friends of his, suddenly turned their backs on him. They’d meet on the street, or in front of our building, and they’d pretend they couldn’t see him. I’ll never forget the look on his face when he realised what was going on.” Kad paused for a moment, obviously lost in recollection. “Maybe if he’d lost his temper, that would have provided some rationalisation for me. But he looked so crushed, so withered, that I started wondering what it was that could do that to an otherwise intelligent and personable man. That’s when I started observing…and thinking. And I’m sure you can fill in the rest.”
“So your anti-Republic sympathies began even before your first posting?”
He shrugged. “You could say that.”
“And what about this Needann, the leader of your group?”
“We prefer to call it a cell,” Kad interjected softly.
“Okay, the leader of your cell. Where does she fit in? Where did you meet her?”
“We first met when I was attending a conference.” He gazed unseeing at the far wall. “I’m not sure I even remember what planet it was on. There was a group of us from our institute and Needann was a member of the hotel staff. That’s when it started to go from something internal – my own thoughts and observations – to something external, like passing along information on sensitive projects I knew about or Republic installations I occasionally visited.”