“Stevin.” Her voice quavered. “I don’t understand.”
The noise Jack had noticed grew louder. Someone banged on the door with a closed fist. Jack looked at Ardra in time to see Stevin force a kiss on her, and then the other man opened the door. Out in the hallway, a pair of armed men was waiting. Ardra gasped, and Jack felt her fear.
“There she is,” Stevin told them. “Be careful with her.”
Ardra started screaming as they surged forward and grabbed her. One of the men jabbed her with a syringe.
Jack felt a sharp pain as Ardra broke free from his control and struck his nose with the heel of her hand. They both crashed back to the immediacy of his house, where she punched and kicked in every direction as she fought a residual image of her attackers. Grabbing her around the waist, he squeezed her against his body despite her struggles and screaming.
“It’s all right,” he told her.
The coppery taste of his own blood seeped into his mouth, but he had to calm her down. He could deal with his bleeding nose later.
“It’s all right,” he repeated with a mental push. “You’re safe.”
She stopped fighting, and a groan escaped her lips.
When he was sure she was sedated, he loosened his grip. “Arrius!”
Arrius Grus was currently the guard on duty. He was a coarse sort of man who prided himself on doing his job efficiently.
“Arrius!” Jack called again.
The guard jogged through the door. As soon as he saw Jack’s bloodied nose, he rushed to pin Ardra’s legs.
“No, it’s all right,” Jack told him. “She’s not fighting anymore, but I need you to take her back to her holding cell.”
Arrius grabbed Ardra by the arm and forced her forward with a hard yank. Jack was in no condition to protest the rough handling, but he knew he’d have to talk with the man later. Right now, he had to get himself cleaned up.
“Jeez, Jack,” Nash exclaimed when he stopped by later that evening. “I thought you could read minds. Ever think of ducking?”
Jack removed the icy glass he held against his face and hesitated before taking another sip. “She didn’t really think it over before doing it.”
Nash continued to stare.
“Is there something you wanted to tell me,” Jack asked, “or did you just come to see how I got beat up by a girl?”
Nash laughed. “Sorry. Yes, I do have something for you. It wasn’t easy, but I think I found her. Ardra Amara Pierce from Earth.”
“Pierce?” Jack asked.
“Yes.” Nash didn’t lose his momentum. “Ardra Pierce was born on the mother planet. Her father died when she was a child, and her mom passed away three years ago. Last year, she married Stevin Corvus and took his name.”
Jack recognized her married name from the memory he’d accessed. He listened as his friend continued.
“There’s a record of Ardra Corvus and her husband boarding the A-Star, a long-range ship destined for Tabanar. Whatever happened after that, she never arrived at Tabanar. She up and disappeared. There’s no sign of her until a couple of months later, when a woman named Ardra Kelly pops up on Nintu V as a Tetch citizen and local botanist.”
“It has to be her,” Jack said, “but what’s the connection? How does she get from newlywed to intel carrier?” He thought about it even as he said it. In her memory, Stevin had let those men into the room. “Corvus. It was her husband, wasn’t it?”
“You got it,” Nash told him. “Stevin Corvus, working under more than a few aliases, was not just any black-market intel dealer, but one of the high rollers in underground trafficking. Our best guess is that he met Ardra on one of his annual vacations to the mother planet and decided to mix business with pleasure. He convinced her to go off-world with him, had his fun and then traded her to some of his buddies for big interstellar credits.”
“But who was buying?” Jack asked. “If the information they programmed into her is so valuable, why wait all this time to deliver it?”
Nash rolled his eyes. “Typical Tetch intrigue. I couldn’t find out who the programmer was, but I do know who was supplying the currency. Chancellor Cygnus Phryne was the wealthy heir to a legacy of Tetch bureaucrats and a contender for Tetch rulership. He was the original buyer, and he was willing to pay big credits to get that intel. I don’t know if Corvus tried to hold out for a higher price or betrayed his partners, but it looks like he was killed.
“Next thing you know, there was a coup. Large-scale political turmoil broke out, and Chancellor Phryne vanished—presumably killed, though nobody knows for sure—before he could finish the deal for Ardra. Apparently, he wasn’t the sharing type, so when the government changed hands, she got lost in the system. There were bigger issues to deal with, and it’s not like the Tetch didn’t have other intel to collect.
“My guess is that Corvus’s old partners lay low until they saw how everything shook out. Once the dust settled, they then took the opportunity for another payout. They let it be known that they had information on one of our major bases and held an auction. This was about the time we saw a change in the number of ships around Algoron. I guess they wanted to be ready to move as soon as they knew where to aim.
“Several parties were trying to get their hands on that intel, but one man was a step ahead—Sirius Mirach, the former Chief Assistant to the missing Chancellor. Mirach was the one who bought Ardra, along with Slade and the others. He pulled some strings and arranged for them to fly to Algoron once he had an extraction facility set up.
“The only thing is, the greedy bastard decided to go on the cheap, so he chose the Oberon. Maybe he thought a small ship like that was more likely to go unnoticed, but he kept too close an eye on it. One of our operatives caught wind of what was going on.” Nash sat back and laced his fingers behind his head. “So there you have it. How’s that for the shadowy depths of the black-market people trade?”
Jack couldn’t stop thinking about Ardra’s husband. “Has humanity really sunk so low?”
“For centuries.” Nash took a deep breath. “The thing I don’t get is the name. I mean, it proved really hard anyhow, but it could have been impossible. Why change Ardra’s last name but keep her first?”
“Because the first name is the most familiar,” Jack told him. “Too many changes and she would have rejected the programming. As for the last name, they had no choice. Her name connects her to Earth, and Corvus’s name leads to him.” That made Jack pause. “But why marry her at all? Why give her his name in the first place?”
Could it be Corvus really had loved her? At least, as much as a man like him had known how?
Jack didn’t have the answers.
Chapter Nine
With a loud crack, Ardra pried the last bit of wires loose. She looked around in case someone had heard, but all was quiet. The frame swung freely from the connecting filaments at the top once the other three sides were severed. She pushed the window open and looked out. Although it was dark outside, there was enough light from the other buildings for her to see the road.
She tried to hook her right leg over the window sill. It was high, and she had to give it three more tries before she succeeded. She pulled herself sideways onto the ledge on her belly. Her breath whooshed out as she slowly turned to hang her legs outside so she could lower herself feet first. She prayed no one would hear her.
The broken wires caught at her shirt as she wriggled farther out of the aperture. Just when she thought her bruised ribs and squished breasts couldn’t take anymore, she got stuck. Her shirt folded and bunched up where it snagged, and gravity worked against her. She certainly wasn’t getting off to a good start.
Very carefully, she let go of the detached window frame and set it against the back of her shoulders. With most of her body draped against the outside wall, she had to support her weight with her left hand as she used her right to untangle herself. She struggled for a few minutes before she finally got free. Then she slid over the ledge and slowly exte
nded her arms until she was hanging by her fingertips.
The jagged window frame that she had kept open against her back closed as she moved her body out of the way. It scraped across her neck and over her head, cutting her left temple before it rapped painfully against her knuckles. She could feel the warm blood well up from what was probably a minor scalp wound. With a glance below her, she released her grip and fell quietly to the ground. The impact was jarring, but she landed on her feet.
Pausing only long enough to think of Jack, she tried to sense whether he knew what she was doing. An image of him sitting on his porch crept into her mind, and she was sure he was unaware of her escape. It was time to run.
Ardra took off sprinting and flew until she could hear her pulse in her ears. The road that wound its way north from the compound consisted of compressed dirt with bits of loose gravel. It made a lot of noise—at least to the frightened ears of a fugitive—but it was the quickest route. Although she knew it was dangerous to stay on the road, she figured the darkness that half blinded her would also lend her concealment. Her strategy for the moment was simple. Run fast, run far.
Adrenalin fueled her flight, keeping her legs pumping long after they began to ache. The pain and fear she had experienced since leaving Nintu V urged her on. As hard as she tried, though, her body couldn’t support perpetual motion. Gradually, her sprint slowed to a run, then to a heavy jog, and at last to a dogged walk.
She had no idea how far she had traveled, but only a distance of solar systems was going to make her feel safe. Her sense of finally being free commingled with her dread of recapture. Ardra moved to the grassy, uneven roadside on her right and kept glancing over her shoulder as she pushed herself onward.
“Where are you going, Ardra?” Jack seemed to ask directly behind her.
She nearly lost her balance when she spun around. Even before she peered into the empty air, though, she realized he was speaking inside her head. That should have terrified her, but she actually found his voice comforting.
“You left me no choice,” she whispered aloud. “You didn’t let me go, so I had to escape.”
She picked up her pace, forcing her legs to do a quick trot again. Her chest felt tight.
“Please don’t run,” Jack said. “You can’t get off the planet, and you’re putting yourself in danger.”
“Maybe,” she muttered, “but I can still signal for help from your communications building.”
As she said this, she pictured that long rectangular building. She felt Jack tense for a moment, but then he delved more deeply into her thoughts.
“Nice try,” he told her. “You’re not going for the communications building. You decided that was too risky. You also wouldn’t risk the innocent people on this planet by giving away our position.”
Under different circumstances, she might have smiled. He knew her too well. Although she would do almost anything to get free, she would never have brought a Tetch assault raining down on Ryso. She wanted nothing to do with the war.
Ardra tried to keep her mind blank to prevent Jack from locating her, but she wasn’t exactly sure where she was anyway. A thin forest crowded both sides of the road, and a lazy breeze scudded across the open pathway. She could just make out the route ahead when the moon peeked through the clouds. Other than that, it was as if she had run off the planet into open space.
“Ardra,” Jack said, “please stop this. Come back to me.”
Now she did smirk. “It’s not going to be that easy. You want me? Come and get me.”
She pushed herself harder.
Jack sighed. “Well,” he told the others, “you can forget about her returning peacefully.”
He had been sitting on his patio trying to unwind when he’d felt Ardra brush his mind. Curious about why she had been checking up on him, he had touched her thoughts. A little song had floated into his head, and all he could see was darkness. He had also heard heavy breathing. At first, his mind had gone in an inappropriate direction, but then he had felt the sensation of wind against his skin and realized she had escaped.
Now every light in the compound had been thrown on, and people were beginning to gather. Across from him, Gabriella nodded in understanding, and Falk wore his usual serene expression. After Jack had spread the news about Ardra’s escape, Arrius had woken Walter. The two had finished organizing the search and had gone to communications to send word ahead to the next compound.
Although Jack had done exactly what he was supposed to do, he was sorry to see how the current state of affairs was escalating. The locals joining this fiasco knew what kind of intel Ardra was carrying, and they were edgy. Most of them visualized their loved ones living on another planet, perhaps the one that was scheduled for the next attack. This was an explosive situation, and Jack didn’t want Ardra to feel hunted.
He concentrated harder on finding her. As soon as he connected with her, he could feel her pounding heart as if it were his own. He even found himself breathing with her. She was pushing herself with everything she had. He tried to look through her eyes, but he couldn’t make out any landmarks in the dark.
“Getting anything?” Gabriella asked.
He shook his head. “This is hopeless. She’s lost. Even she doesn’t know where she is.”
“Can you at least tell us which direction she’s heading?”
He turned in place and rubbed his eyes. “When I first realized what was happening, I sensed she was running in the open. She started out on the road, but she may have since left it. There are plenty of side avenues she could use to hide, but I think she’ll stick to the main route as long as she can. She doesn’t want to risk getting stuck down some dead-end farm path.
Ardra belly flopped into the dirt in time to dodge a searchlight. The illumination up ahead had been growing steadily brighter as she closed the distance, but this one beam crept along the highway to find her. Did they know she was here?
Jack was already looking for her, but she wasn’t sure whether or not he had told anybody else that she had escaped. This was a different compound, and the lights might be part of their routine security. Routine or not, though, they would spot her if she wasn’t careful.
Flattening herself to the ground, she crawled farther from the roadside. She slid through some thick mud that burned every one of her cuts and scratches, and then she wove through a patch of weedy grass. Despite her discomfort, she continued forward. After what seemed like ages, she reached the side of the first outlying building. Her joints creaked as she slid herself up to her feet. With her back pressed against the wall, she eased around the corner.
Up ahead, there was nearly an exact duplicate of the compound she had left behind, only this one was about half the size. The lights were on in the buildings at the southern end, but the streets remained empty. Everything might have looked peaceful if she hadn’t seen the commotion higher up. They had constructed a scaffold on the roof of the tall building across the road, turning it into a search tower. Three people stood up there and swept broad rays of light in every direction.
Ardra stayed where she was and looked for a pattern to their movements. They had fallen into a sort of one-two-three routine that left her side of the road shadowed for several seconds at a time. With this knowledge, she moved farther back into the brush. There was a jagged wire fence, and she could see farmhouses not far off.
She prayed for stealth and darted along the fence through the tall, prickly grass. A search beam cut toward her, and she was no more than halfway to the other side when it caught her. It was like being nicked by a shaft of lightning. She slammed her chest to the ground before the spotlight fully framed her and mentally begged the man holding the light not to notice her. After a few agonizing seconds, the light moved on.
With no time for relief, she pushed up and took off sprinting again. She dashed the remaining length of the compound until she was once again enveloped by the wild womb of darkness beyond. It took a while for her vision to adjust, but then she picke
d up speed.
“She’s past the northern compound,” Jack announced.
He looked at Falk and Gabriella next to him in the ground cruiser, but they showed little reaction to the news. Walter had stayed behind so he could maintain contact with the other compounds, but everyone else fanned out along the road behind them. The short-range ground cruiser was slowing as its solar cells grew low on power, and he could barely see anything in the dark.
“It’s no use,” Jack said. “Pull up when we get to the next compound. We’ll have to wait until daylight to find her.”
“Are you sure?” Gabriella asked. “The farther away she gets, the harder it’s going to be to overtake her.”
He shook his head. “She can’t get too far on foot. I don’t want to risk losing her in the dark. I also don’t want her to know how close behind her we are.”
Gabriella still looked uncertain. “There’s no way you can figure out where she is right now?”
“I’m not global tracking,” he told her.
“And you can’t convince her to come back?”
“No.” Jack stifled a yawn and froze with his mouth still half open. He had an idea. “I might be able to slow her down, though.”
Despite her willpower, Ardra began to weave as her energy flagged. She couldn’t run anymore, and she let loose with a yawn. Deep on the right shoulder of the road, the ground sloped downward. She ducked into the ditch for the night. Even after she got off her feet, her soles continued to throb, and her mouth was dry. She could smell water somewhere nearby, but she doubted it would be safe to drink. The blood that had dribbled from her scalp encrusted her left eye and held the outer corner closed. She touched a finger to the wound and found it was sore but no longer bleeding.
Curling into the grass, she was overwhelmed by the sheer weight of her fatigue. She couldn’t understand how she could rest with people chasing after her, but she quickly fell asleep. Once she did, she dreamed of Earth.
A Stellar Affair Page 10