by Robyn Bachar
“We could let Ryder kill him.”
“No, Tomas.”
“At least take Ryder with you when you go.”
“Fuck that, I’m taking Jiang,” Lindana said. “She’s our secret weapon. And she could use time off the ship.”
Tomas grinned. “Make him meet you at the strip club.”
“That’s just evil.”
“I prefer devious, thank you.” Tomas elbowed her, and she laughed. Tomas had been an expert at getting under her skin since they were children, but he was also the best at making her smile. “It’s a great idea. You and Jiang can enjoy the view, and it shows him that you don’t give a rat’s ass about your past with him. You’re an independent woman.”
Lindana sighed. “It would be easier if I didn’t care.”
Tomas wrapped an arm around her in a brotherly hug. “That’s my little sister, worried about everyone, all the time.”
“Especially you. Stay out of the engine room.”
“They love me in there! I’m charming,” he insisted.
“You are very charming,” Lindana agreed, “but the engine rats have voted, and you’re persona non grata until further notice.”
“I’d like a recount, because it’s really just Her Highness who can’t stand me. But all right, I get it.” His smile faded as he studied her, his arm still around her. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when you were going through things with Gabriel.”
Lindana blinked. “You were on your first assignment. It’s not like you could’ve caught a shuttle home to punch him in the nose then.”
“No, but you needed me, and I wasn’t there. It bothered me. You’ve always been there for me, and I’m grateful for that. You’d still be in the navy if not for me. Probably have your own warship.”
“And miss all of this?” Lindana waved a hand at her quarters. She’d plastered the walls of her cabin with images of scenic landscapes and tourist attractions—places she had been, and places she wanted to visit one day. “Not a chance. You’re stuck with me.”
“Good. Now go put some fear into our new intel officer so we can get off this station.”
* * *
Lindana pitched the idea of meeting in a strip club to Jiang, who then asked if the club served noodles. Lindana had no idea if the club had any food whatsoever, and so they had chosen a small ramen stall instead. Jiang calmly slurped noodles while Lindana’s stomach rolled in nauseous waves. This was a terrible idea. No good would come from this.
A soft snort from Jiang warned Lindana that Gabriel was approaching. Lindana wondered what was funny, but then she spotted the mirrored sunglasses failing to conceal the fading bruise that Tomas’s fist had left. Even without the glasses, Gabriel Steele stuck out from the crowd like a sore thumb. Again his fashionable outfit broadcast money and privilege; money traveled through Tortue, but it never stayed for long.
Gabriel Steele was the worst intel officer she had ever seen.
He took the seat across from them. “Lindy,” he began, but Jiang interrupted.
“Captain Nyota. And I’m Lieutenant Chen.”
“Of course, my apologies. I’m Lieutenant Steele.”
Lindana was fairly certain that Jiang muttered “Of course you are” in Cantonese as she returned to her noodles. It was hard to tell, however, because Lindana’s libido was purring over Gabriel’s silken voice. Maybe they should have opted for the strip club. She could have distracted herself with the scenery, and her fingers wouldn’t be itching to inspect the tailoring of Gabriel’s tight pants. Her instant lust irritated her; she never reacted like this with anyone else, and that was part of the problem. No one affected her as madly and deeply as Gabriel Steele. Damn him.
“Command says we have to take you or they’ll pull our marque, so we’re taking you,” Lindana said. “That doesn’t mean we’re happy about it, or that I won’t space your sorry ass out an airlock if you do anything irritating.”
“What are your qualifications?” Jiang asked.
“Yes, I...pardon?”
“Have you served on a privateer ship before?” Jiang wound an impossibly long length of noodles around her chopsticks. “Do you have contacts in our sector? Fences? Brokers?”
“I—well, no. I have extensive field experience, but nothing that I can discuss. It’s classified.”
Lindana and Jiang exchanged a dry look. “Do you have a mission for us?” Lindana asked. “A paying mission?”
“Yes. I have intel on a Soviet cargo ship carrying atmosphere generators, though the timeline is a bit tight due to our delay.”
A vein twitched in Lindana’s jaw. “How much is the down payment?” Gabriel named a decent number—enough to cover one power coupling and enough fuel to get them off this godforsaken station. “It’ll do. Grab your gear. Ryder is waiting for you at the ship. He’ll give you the grand tour and get you settled in.”
He nodded politely and left, and Lindana and Jiang sat in contemplative silence as they watched him walk away. Lindana scowled; that damned jacket concealed the view of his butt.
“Atmo generators? With our recent record? Sounds too good to be true. You think he’s setting us up?” Jiang speared more noodles.
“Maybe. Command could be using him to stick it to me, but I have no idea why. We haven’t pissed off anyone important lately, and you’d think that they’d be sympathetic since we lost a crew member.”
“Well, we haven’t pissed anyone off that we know of. If someone’s trying to take us out it would explain why our last few runs went bad.”
Lindana smiled dryly. “Some days I feel like everyone is out to get us.” There had been some grumbling among the crew about the ship being cursed. Lindana didn’t believe in curses, but there was no denying that something had turned their luck for the worse. It was possible they’d accidentally pissed off someone in UADN Command, someone who didn’t care that the Mombasa was in mourning. “Well, if we don’t get that down payment we’ll be going nowhere fast.”
“We should sell Steele’s suit. That would probably cover a power coupling.”
Lindana chuckled. “Don’t tempt me.”
“You sure you’re going to be good with him on board?”
“Good, no, but I’ll manage. Why?”
Jiang poked at her noodles. “Because if you oozed any more sexual tension just now your ovaries would’ve exploded. Are you sure this is about him, and not about Raiya?”
The question doused Lindana’s lingering interest with ice water. She drummed her fingers on the metal tabletop. “I don’t see what she has to do with it.”
“Yes, you do.” Jiang stabbed the chopsticks in her direction. “It gets in your head when you lose someone like that. Someone who was important to you, close to you. Someone who was just like you, and could’ve been you on a bad day. We’ve had enough runs go south lately that it makes you think. And then there’s Erik—”
“Erik definitely has nothing to do with this.”
“Of course he does. He was your mentor. He was our mentor, and he was almost out of the game. Another few missions and we would’ve thrown him a going away party, and he’d be sending us virtual postcards from someplace warm and tropical. But we lost him, and we didn’t get to say goodbye, and that...” Jiang trailed off and tossed her chopsticks into her bowl.
Lindana swallowed hard. Shit. Jiang had never said goodbye to the family she lost on New Hong Kong, and Lindana knew that ate at her. She reached over and squeezed Jiang’s hand.
“I know. Hey, we don’t have time to ponder life’s what ifs,” Lindana said gently.
“True, but losing a loved one makes you ponder the roads not taken, and we don’t have time for romance, either. We’re on the clock.” Jiang downed the broth from her bowl in one long guzzle, and then she set it aside. “Just think on it, Captain
. Don’t let ghosts push you into something you’ll regret.”
“Noted, Lieutenant. Let’s move out.”
* * *
The airlock doors opened to reveal the Mombasa’s scowling chief of security. Gabriel recognized the giant from the brief scene in the UADN office.
“Lieutenant Steele. Welcome aboard the Mombasa.”
“Thank you, Chief Kalani.”
“Step forward and I’ll add your comm to our system.” He waved Gabriel closer and raised a scanner to Gabriel’s earpiece. The gadget beeped and flashed, and then the chief nodded. “You’re online now. The lifts and lights are keyed to your cuff. Lights are programmed to illuminate twenty meters around your current location. Most of us carry handlamps for extra light. Get used to climbing ladders between levels. We conserve as much power as possible.” He peered at the rolling equipment case behind Gabriel. “Would you prefer to store your weapons in the armory or in your quarters?”
“Which do you recommend?” Gabriel asked. The chief’s bushy eyebrows rose at the question, as if surprised Gabriel had bothered with his opinion.
Kalani straightened. “Heavy weapons and armor in the armory, light equipment in your quarters. I advise wearing a sidearm and a blade while on duty. We haven’t been boarded in a long time, but it can happen.”
“Very well. After you.”
“This way.”
Gabriel followed Chief Kalani through the cramped corridors, marveling that the man fit at all. Gabriel had spent most of his adult life in space on ships and stations, and he was well used to ducking under low-hanging conduits and through small doorframes, but the chief had about two inches more of height and far more breadth than Gabriel.
“Crew quarters are up, engine room is down. Stay out of the engine room. The queen doesn’t take kindly to invaders.”
“The queen?” Gabriel asked.
“The Rat Queen. Chief Watson. She and the rest of the engine room rats only answer to the captain, and she usually sides with them.” Kalani drew to a halt and punched a button to summon a lift. “We’ll take the easy route to the armory so we don’t have to haul your gear up and down the ladders.”
Gabriel’s brow furrowed as he puzzled over the idea of a “rat queen,” and Chief Kalani snorted.
“You never served on a ship before?” Kalani asked.
“Not as such.” Gabriel had traveled on a variety of ships, everything from luxurious civilian transports to stripped-down military troop carriers so dilapidated that he feared the ships would rattle apart at any moment, but had never served aboard one. Space travel had always been a means to an end.
“Figured. Your file is locked up tighter than a virgin’s ass.” The lift doors opened, but Chief Kalani barred Gabriel from entering by jamming one burly arm across the entrance. The man’s muscles were so well defined he could practically be used to teach an anatomy lesson. “I don’t like mysteries aboard my ship. Leads to drama. I don’t like drama either. It’s bad for business, and we’re here to do business. I know you have history with the captain. I’m not going to give you a ‘don’t hurt her’ speech, because her personal life is not my business and she can take care of herself. But I will tell you that I always follow orders, and if she tells me to shove your pasty ass out an airlock, I’m not gonna lose sleep over it.”
Gabriel tensed. “Is threatening new crew members standard operating procedure on your ship?”
“It’s not a threat. A threat would include me rebreaking your pretty nose to punctuate how seriously I take my orders.” He grinned, though the expression was less like a smile and more like a wolf baring its teeth. “This is a polite warning.”
“Understood, Chief.”
Kalani inclined his head and then stepped aside to allow Gabriel inside the lift.
“Pretty?” Gabriel said after the doors closed.
The security chief turned and gave Gabriel’s form a lingering look. “Yeah. But you’re obviously high maintenance. I don’t like high maintenance.”
Gabriel barked a quick laugh. “So noted.”
The remainder of the tour was quick and quiet, culminating in Chief Kalani leaving Gabriel alone in his new quarters. Gabriel set his equipment case on his bunk and surveyed the dull gray confines. The segmented walls were made of matte steel and the floor was comprised of rough grates that could be pulled up to access the conduits beneath. Pipes of varying widths crisscrossed the ceiling—part of the coolant system for the engines, judging by the cabin’s position. One crack and the space would be filled with toxic chemicals. Maybe Lindy hoped to “accidentally” gas him to death.
It could be worse. Some ships had no space to spare and assigned their personnel to sleeper units stacked side by side like peas in a pod. At least these quarters provided him a place to escape from the glares and whispers that were doubtless to happen whenever he entered a room.
“Home, sweet home,” Gabriel murmured.
He hadn’t had quarters to himself in some time. His recent missions had been short—jobs that would have been in-and-outs had they gone as planned, which of course they hadn’t. Gabriel’s last few missions had failed spectacularly, so much so that he had nearly died on his last job. His brush with mortality had resulted in one new scar and two important realizations: first, that he needed to right his wrongs, starting with Lindana, and second, there was likely a mole in Alliance Intelligence, and that mole wanted him dead. Though it was possible that the mole’s grudge wasn’t personal, for three other core colonist agents had been killed within the past six months. It’s a dangerous job, his handler had shrugged as he tsked in disapproval. Gabriel wasn’t so willing to blithely brush the deaths aside. One lost agent could be blamed on bad luck or poor intel, but three? Command could be purging agents like himself from the Intelligence ranks by sending them on missions that were certain death...
Or perhaps he was simply becoming paranoid in his old age. Espionage was a young man’s game, for spies rarely lived to retirement. The walls of Command headquarters were filled with memorials to fallen agents, and the names and dates reached back to the twentieth century. When Gabriel had been recruited, his mentor had dazzled him with tales of agents who had made the ultimate sacrifice to protect the Alliance, but now those stories seemed more tragic than heroic. Gabriel smiled grimly as he retrieved his data tablet from his bag. It was an odd thing to be past your prime before the age of forty.
Gabriel pressed his palm against the cold black tablet screen to initiate logging into Intel’s data network. The gadget’s security features were too complicated in some ways and not sophisticated enough in others; a blood sample and DNA scan were necessary to access classified files, but there was no method to ensure that the donor was living at the moment of blood donation. The transmission was encrypted but it bounced through several relays on its journey from Command to Gabriel’s tablet; given time and skill, anyone could decrypt it.
Perhaps the KGB had cracked the encryption again, and that was the source of the recent deaths. KGB agents had been breaking into their files for over two hundred years, before the UADN was even formed. The core colonist rebellion had shifted the Soviet focus to the C3 instead of concentrating solely on the Alliance. Perhaps—
SYSTEM READY. INITIATE FILE TRANSFER, Y/N?
Gabriel flinched at sudden appearance of the bright green text, then he tapped in his reply—text commands were considered more secure than voice commands, considering that anywhere could be bugged with listening devices. There was likely more than one bug already online in his new quarters. Anxiety twisted his stomach and he drummed his fingers as he glanced at the closed door. Would Lindy learn to trust him? Would she welcome him aboard with her own polite warning? Preferably hers would also be issued without bloodshed, but he would not begrudge her a few good hits after the way he had treated her.
Before arriving at Tortu
e, Gabriel had familiarized himself with the personnel records of the Mombasa’s crew—or at least with what little unclassified information that had been available to him then. His handler must have unearthed new information since. Lindana and her brother Tomas had extensive military records, but less data on file after they entered “civilian” life. Ryder Kalani’s file had been filled with impressive military achievements until his injury, and his career ended with a dishonorable discharge after punching his commanding officer in the face. At the moment it seemed far more likely that the man would punch Gabriel than he would his captain.
There was little data on Jiang Chen and Maria Watson other than names and dates of birth. Like most of those who had survived the razing of New Hong Kong, Lieutenant Chen’s files had been destroyed along with her home and family. The colony had suffered some of the worst devastation during the rebellion, and that had spurred the other core colonies into greater action. It turned the tide of the war in their favor, though Gabriel doubted that the survivors of New Hong Kong found much comfort in that knowledge. A few pieces of Lieutenant Chen’s financial data that had been stored off-world had been recovered, and that information supported her claims of a quiet life lived as a cargo pilot.
Maria Watson, on the other hand, was hiding something. The records Gabriel had been unable to locate before now showed as having been deleted. Notes on the file indicated that Intel’s data recovery detail had found traces of a computer worm that had chewed through Alliance and C3 files with impressive proficiency. Not surprising for an engineer of Watson’s skill, Gabriel mused as he attempted to decipher the excited notes of an eager programmer. But why delete the records? What was Watson trying to hide?