“And you’re . . . what, thirty-five? Forty?”
“A bit older than that.”
He had to be older, for old Jed Brown had been dead forty years and Roystan had known him.
How old was Roystan really? He’d had the Atalante run a long time, and here he was implying he was older than forty. He couldn’t be much older. Modding certainly extended your life, kept you fit and active and your mind healthy far longer than a nonmodded body. But eventually your body showed age, regardless of the mod.
Snow said, “Sometimes Nika imagines things, that’s all.”
“I like the way her mind works. She keeps herself open to possibilities.” Roystan smiled gently at the younger man. “That makes her very receptive to ideas other people wouldn’t countenance.”
“Some people might call her gullible.”
She was Nika Rik Terri. Snow seemed to have forgotten that for the moment.
“You shouldn’t encourage her,” Snow told Roystan. “When she asks questions like that, be honest. Don’t lie to her.”
Questions like what? Was he protecting Nika now?
“I wouldn’t lie to her.”
“How could you know what Giwari was like?”
“Don’t you think he would be like Nika? Confident, knowing he was a good modder.”
Josune recognized evasion when she heard it.
What had Snow said earlier? A miracle, but no ghost, no Giwari. No old men.
What was she missing?
Realization hammered through her. Goberling was eighty years missing. If Roystan was old enough to have been modded by Giwari—which was what Nika implied, although he certainly didn’t look it—he was old enough to have met Goberling.
What had Feyodor known, or suspected, that was important enough to send Josune to Roystan before she’d even found proof of what it was she’d been looking for on to Pisces III?
Giwari’s studio had been on Pisces III.
Unbidden, the memory rose, of Roystan and the Hassim’s memory, when it had been asking for identification. Of him leaning across to thumb off the request. He never used his thumb to close a link. He flicked off.
Roystan hadn’t bypassed the security that day. He’d provided it. His thumbprint.
Taki Feyodor had owned the Hassim for twenty years. She’d bought it new, and Josune knew every single person who had access to it, and the access they had.
The crew had access to general ship functions, and to their own specialty areas. Josune had more access than others. She could access everything except Feyodor’s own special files.
One other person had the same access she did. The name in the security logs showed as Roy King. Avid Goberlingophile that Josune was, she’d recognized it as the name Goberling had adopted when he’d first tried to disappear.
“Isn’t it pointless to give access to Goberling?” she’d asked Feyodor at the time. “He is dead, after all.”
“He’s our whole reason for being here,” Feyodor had said. “We owe him some form of recognition, surely.”
They were the most sentimental words Josune had ever heard from her captain, so she hadn’t said anything further about it. King had remained on the security manifest, and he’d been granted the same access Josune had on any new systems they’d added.
What if the access hadn’t stopped with the ship systems? What if Feyodor had coded King into her private systems as well?
If Roystan could access Feyodor’s files, when only Feyodor and King had access, that meant Hammond Roystan was Roy King. Which meant Hammond Roystan was Roy Goberling.
It wasn’t possible.
Was it?
She realized her mouth was open. She closed it with a snap and looked over at Roystan. He was watching her.
Josune had spent her life chasing after Goberling’s lost lode of precious metals. She’d carried a model of his ship, the Determination, everywhere with her since she was six years old. The dream had sustained her through the long years earning her engineering degree without company backing. It had been inevitable she would eventually meet Feyodor, and the older woman would convince her to share her knowledge by offering her a berth on the Hassim.
She’d been chasing a dream.
She hadn’t been chasing a man.
They’d been chased on the Hassim. It hadn’t been fun, watching their backs all the time.
Roystan couldn’t be Goberling.
What would they have done when Feyodor finally arrived? No matter what Roystan wanted—and it was clear that all he wanted was to continue his cargo run and live a peaceful life—she’d have forced him to come with them. At weaponpoint, if necessary.
Josune gripped the fingers of her sparker so tightly her fingers cramped. Pol could never be allowed to learn who Roystan was. Nor Leonard Wickmore’s people. They would hound him until they killed him, or got what they wanted.
Roystan leaned toward her. “Are you all right?”
“All my life I’ve been making someone else’s life a misery.”
His mouth twisted into the crooked smile she was so familiar with. He kept his voice low, so only Josune could hear. “If I’d met you earlier, maybe I’d have let myself be caught.”
Pol scowled at them both. “If you must talk, say it aloud so we can all hear.”
“Please, no,” Jacques said. “We don’t want to hear their sweet nothings turning the air blue.”
“What do you mean?” Carlos asked.
“Carlos, you haven’t noticed they’ve a thing going? Sometimes I despair of you.”
Roystan rubbed the back of his neck.
Josune hid a smile. Roystan had been flirting a little. At least, she hoped he had. And admitting who he was.
Pol gaped at him. “With Josune?”
Jacques and Carlos moved closer to Josune and Roystan. Even Snow, staring at nothing in the bunk above them, raised himself to look down on her.
Jacques bristled. “Why not Josune?”
Pol looked at them both, looked at Roystan, then at Josune. Shrugged. “We should get some sleep,” she said to Josune, as if the atmosphere weren’t tense.
Josune settled back against the wall. “I’m staying here.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“I’ve seen how you look at me. I’ve seen how you look at your weapon.” Josune could beat Pol in a firefight, but she didn’t want to have to watch her back all the time.
“I don’t know—”
“We’re not stupid, Pol,” Roystan said. “And we’re not leaving Josune alone with you.”
Pol stayed in the cabin with them, and they endured her presence until Roystan stood up. “I don’t know about anyone else, but I need food. Vending machine time.”
He tapped Snow—who’d spent the hours staring into nothing. “Even you, Snow. If you don’t move, you’ll seize up.”
What Snow needed more than anything, was sleep. They all did.
Jacques and Carlos dragged themselves up.
“You’re stupid,” Pol said. “Someone will recognize you.”
“So you’ll buy it for us, then,” Roystan said.
“You know what I hate most about you. How manipulative you are.”
“So you’ll buy the food?”
“Feed yourself,” Pol said. “Get caught. I don’t care. I’m staying here.”
“I’m hungry,” Roystan said.
“You’re always hungry.”
“He needs food,” Jacques said. “You know he does.”
“He’s sucked you in, Jacques, and you pander to him.”
Josune helped Snow off the bunk. She wasn’t going to leave him here with Pol.
“She should have told me who she was.”
“I know,” Josune said, soothingly. “But she was running, remember.”
“You’re all cra
zy,” Pol said.
They followed Roystan out.
“Vending machine food,” Carlos said. “To think it has come to this, after what we’ve eaten.”
“I’m hungry enough to eat it, too,” Roystan said, but he led them straight past the vending machines, down to the shuttle bays. “Sorry, Josune, we have to spend more of your credits.”
“My pleasure.” Even if she didn’t know what it was for yet.
Roystan said something quiet to the cargo master on duty.
“Hundred credits each.”
Josune put up the money.
The cargo master nodded at the front shuttle. “Leaving in two,” she said.
They boarded the shuttle to the chimes of a public announcement. “Passengers who wish to disembark at Lesser Sirius, please ensure you have purchased a boarding pass.”
Inside, Josune was unsurprised to see the contractor Roystan had spoken to earlier.
“You found it.”
“Yes, thank you.” Roystan smiled at his crew. “It’s always good to beat the crowd.”
Especially when you had someone with a blaster waiting back in your cabin to force you to stay. “It certainly is,” Josune said, fervently.
39
NIKA RIK TERRI
Nika moved slowly, careful not to show how much she hurt. She needed time in her own Songyan.
Her studio was much as she’d left it, except that for the first time in its existence, the big Songyan hadn’t been cleaned. The broken link had been repaired and two extra cameras were fixed to the wall. Subtly placed, but breaking the symmetry. Tamati would be along soon.
She forced her hands away from the laser pendant. No hint of what she planned to do, or Alejandro would take it from her.
“Don’t think you can dupe me. I know how the exchanger works. I know what’s supposed to happen.”
Was Tamati watching? Should she wait until he arrived and try to kill them both? No. She couldn’t even handle Alejandro on his own. Josune had reminded her that victory was half in the mind. If you already thought your enemy could beat you, then he would.
Don’t think, act. That’s what Josune would do. Think instead about what would happen next. Anticipate.
After she killed Alejandro she’d run. Before Tamati arrived.
If she could kill Alejandro.
She raised the laser. Please let her have understood Snow’s instructions.
Alejandro turned. “Give me the codes.”
She pressed the firing button and flinched as he raised his hand. The laser passed a centimeter by Alejandro’s face and cut a line down the wall.
Nika shook as she repositioned the laser. Too late. Alejandro smashed it out of her hand. She felt the bone crack.
Alejandro’s fist smashed into her face. Again. And again.
Then he stopped.
Waiting to be hit was almost worse than being hit. After what seemed forever, Nika chanced a peek through the protection of her elbow.
Alejandro had picked up the laser. “Nice little toy.” He swung around, finger on the button, and sliced a wide circle around her. “This could be fun.” He sliced another circle two centimeters inside the other.
Nika didn’t move.
“Give me the codes.”
The burned wall smelled of hot sand and burned plastic.
The numbers came out. No matter that she tried to hold them back. Her body controlled her actions now, and her body had declared, Enough. Though she knew enough would never be enough. Alejandro would always win.
“4334-3444-” A whisper, whistling through the damaged mouth.
“I can’t hear you.”
She raised her voice, though it hurt. “1221-2221-2224.” It was part of her own DNA, the A’s, C’s, G’s, and T’s converted to numbers.
“4334-3444-1221-2221-2224.” Alejandro had always had a phenomenal memory. “Only you, Nika, would think up a code that complicated.”
Only she would need to, to keep it from someone like him.
Alejandro loomed close. “I don’t trust you, Nika. I don’t believe you.”
He never had. Not even when she’d given him everything he wanted. In a way, it was power. Her power over him, rather than his over her.
“There’s only one way you’ll prove it.”
He knew that as well as she did, and he didn’t like it.
Nika didn’t laugh. Didn’t even smile. She wanted to.
“If this is one of your tricks.”
The knowledge grew in her, stiffened her resolve. It didn’t matter what Alejandro did now. He had to trust her enough to use those codes on himself.
“You should have thought before you hit me,” Nika said. “My body is weak.” She finally permitted herself that smile. “You never know what I might do.”
An alarm on the back door chimed softly.
There was only one person it could be.
Tamati Woden.
Alejandro ignored the alarm, probably didn’t realize it was an alarm, for it didn’t sound like one.
Nika kept her eyes on Alejandro, forcing herself not to look at the laser he’d put on the bench beside him, not to look toward the door.
“Try anything and I kill your body. I go back into my own body then, and you die. That’s how it works, doesn’t it?”
“That’s how it works.” Except that she wouldn’t die immediately, because of the modifications she’d made to her own body to increase oxygen capacity. She would remain alive for thirty minutes, even though her brain would start to die after fifteen.
Nika, in Alejandro’s body, would have time to put her—Nika’s—body into the Songyan. She could set it so he didn’t come out until after the twenty-four hours. Meantime, she could take Alejandro’s body away from the studio.
Like Tamati all over again, except this time when their bodies swapped back, she’d be in the studio, and Alejandro would be as far away as she could physically get him.
“Good. If you try anything, that’s what I’ll do.”
She watched him remove his jacket and place it between them. Watched as he set up the head nets. She didn’t offer to help. He knew the routine as well as she did. He placed the tiny nodes on her first. One either side of her forehead, one behind each ear, one at the top of her spine.
Then he put the nodes around his own head.
Where was Tamati? Why hadn’t he come into the studio?
Alejandro hesitated at the controls. Then typed in the codes.
Nika watched the blue field form across his head, felt it doing the same to her. It tickled a little to start with. Watched as the color faded from blue, to white, to gold, then disappeared. The cap across Alejandro’s head was invisible now, as was the cap above her own.
Suddenly, she was in Alejandro’s body. Fit, and healthy, and feeling so much better.
Alejandro made a garbled sound that might have been a groan. He winced, fumbled for the jacket on the chair, and pulled his blaster out of a pocket. He pointed it at her. “Don’t try anything.”
Tamati’s shadow moved in the doorway.
She held up her hands, mutely.
“Good.”
Could she get to the laser?
Would it help if she could?
Alejandro used the studio link to call Leonard Wickmore.
“Alejandro here,” he said, through Nika’s mouth. “I’ve got the codes.”
If Wickmore thought there was anything strange about Alejandro doing it in Nika’s body, he didn’t comment. “I’ll be around to collect the genemod machine.”
Alejandro nodded, and switched off. “I might keep you alive until—” He—Nika’s body—jerked back. A knife protruded from her chest.
The body crashed to the floor.
Tamati stepped into the studio. “Kill the body an
d your brain reverts back to your own. What a tidy way to kill someone. Hello, Alejandro.”
Nika stared at her broken body on the floor. Their bodies hadn’t switched back. She was still alive. She pulled herself together, channeled her best Alejandro. “I wanted her alive until we’d moved the Songyan.”
Alejandro wouldn’t have said Songyan, he’d have said machine, but Tamati didn’t seem to notice. She moved over to the bench where Alejandro had left the laser, and tried to make it look natural.
“She was a dead woman,” Tamati said. “Be grateful I waited until you made your call. I nearly didn’t.”
Nika picked up the laser. “Tamati.” Aimed. Pressed the fire button. The first shot sliced off his arm. “I forgot to mention.” The second was a diagonal cut from shoulder to torso. If she’d been trying for symmetry, it almost matched the angle of the scar that he no longer had. “It doesn’t switch back immediately anymore.”
Was he dead? She didn’t want to check, but she couldn’t turn her back on him. She picked up Alejandro’s blaster and used it on Tamati, until he had a black hole in his chest and had stopped moving.
Then she dropped the blaster and turned to the other body on the floor.
Fifteen minutes. She’d used two? Five? The net kept the brain alive for fifteen minutes after death. The machine would fix the rest. She had to get her body into the machine. Now.
She scooped up her body. Grunted at the weight. Alejandro was strong, but not strong enough to lift an adult human easily.
“Hold it right there,” Josune said.
She hadn’t heard the second alarm, could hear its chime now. Adrenaline rushed through Nika, froze her to the spot. Josune, Roystan, and Snow. They’d entered via the front door.
They all held weapons. Josune could kill her from here.
Carlos and Jacques pushed in behind them. They, too, held weapons. Nika nearly dropped her body, realized it was probably the only thing keeping her alive at the moment, and clutched it tight.
“Don’t.” Her voice came out in a shrill, un-Alejandro-like squeak.
“Move away from the body.” Josune’s blaster was pointed directly at Nika’s—Alejandro’s—head.
The other four blasters were pointed at her, too.
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