Lucca Brezhnaya.
Wallace’s eyes flew wide.
As Pavel’s aunt stepped inside the house, Jessamyn saw the Chancellor wasn’t alone. Someone wearing physician’s garb stood behind her in the narrow entrance.
“This is the girl?” asked Lucca, directing the question to the doctor accompanying her.
He stepped from behind her so that Jessamyn was able to see his face.
Pavel.
Chapter Thirty
A STORM
Avoiding eye contact with Jessamyn, Pavel murmured, “It’s her.”
What have you done, Pavel? Had he told his aunt everything? And if he had, would that save her planet or damn it?
Lucca Brezhnaya spoke to Jessamyn. “Do you know who I am?”
Jess, seeing no benefit in pretending otherwise, nodded.
“Is that a bandage covering her mouth?” asked Lucca, incredulous. “Oh, for the love of …” She broke off and turned to her nephew. “Remove that.”
While Lucca berated the security officer standing beside her for overzealousness, Pavel crossed to Jess.
“I need a hot, moist cloth,” Pavel said to the other secure.
“Go on,” said Lucca to the officer. “You heard my nephew.”
The man strode briskly to Wallace’s kitchen.
“Who are you?” Lucca asked Brian Wallace who had been nodding and bowing at her since she crossed the threshold.
“Such an honor,” said Wallace, smiling at the Chancellor. “Welcome to me humble dwelling. I’m afraid the weather’s none too pleasant for the honor of yer visit.” Thunder rumbled far off, punctuating the oily greeting.
Jess hadn’t known he could sound so … unctuous.
“Now, then,” said Pavel, “Let’s see how that seal’s been applied.” After saying this, he leaned in close and whispered, so softly Jess almost missed it, “I’ve got Ethan. Lucca thinks you’re an inciter. Don’t tell her about Mars.”
The secure, returning with a cloth, handed it to Pavel. Wallace continued his tale (of nukes in his garden and no one paying any heed) to an increasingly irritated Lucca Brezhnaya.
“This is filthy,” said Pavel, refusing to take the damp towel. He dug through his med kit, found a clean cloth, and handed it to the security officer. “Run this one under hot water and bring it back to me at once.”
Pavel sounded like Lucca, thought Jessamyn. The thought wasn’t a pleasant one. But he was keeping the truth from his aunt, exactly as Jess had asked. Pavel caught her eye briefly and she saw the boy she trusted.
Outside, rain began to spatter the windows.
Before the security officer returned with the cloth, Pavel leaned in closely as though examining Jessamyn’s eyes with a small bright light. “I’ll help however I can. Stall. And don’t try anything while security’s here. ” Then, taking the steaming cloth from the secure, Pavel gently dabbed at the piece of skin-seal and pulled it away. “You can question her now,” said Pavel to his aunt.
Lucca ordered the junior officer to stand guard outside.
As soon as the secure had stepped out of the cottage, Pavel’s aunt took two slow steps toward Jessamyn. Jess drew herself tall, noting she had a few centimeters on the Chancellor.
“I know all about your pathetic attempt to destroy New Kelen Hospital,” said Lucca as she stared at Jessamyn. “I know you bargained with my nephew, exchanging your release for a promise not to destroy the hospital. Which means I know two important things about you. First, I know you stick to your bargains.” Lucca stepped so close that Jess could see a small stain of lipstick on one of her lower teeth. “And second, I know you’re not the type to throw your life away for the so-called greater good.”
“Or maybe I wasn’t in the mood to die yesterday,” replied Jessamyn.
“Oh, I’m certain I could put you in the mood to beg for death,” said Lucca, red lips pulling back from white teeth in a false smile.
“Perhaps,” agreed Jessamyn. Keep stalling, she told herself. “This woman is your aunt?” asked Jess, addressing Pavel.
“Yes.” Pavel replied warily, his eyes narrowing.
Jessamyn spoke to Lucca. “You should be proud of him. He is incorruptible.”
“He let you go,” said Lucca.
Jessamyn shrugged. “He made a deal for the benefit of others rather than for his own benefit. Did he tell you what he turned down?”
Lucca laughed harshly. “Let me guess: you?”
“Aunt Lucca, please,” muttered Pavel.
“As a matter of fact, yes,” said Jessamyn. “But that’s not all.”
“Pray, continue,” said Lucca, seeming amused by Pavel’s discomfort.
“Your nephew turned down butter as well,” Jess said, landing on the first thing she could think of.
“Butter?” repeated the Chancellor, turning to the security officer. “What do we know about butter?”
He shrugged as he dug through Jessamyn’s bag. “Might be the street name of those potent narcotics coming out of Greenland.”
“You offered narcotics to a physician?” Lucca asked Jess. “You’re bluffing.” Her clear eyes piercing Jessamyn’s. “And you’re wasting my time.”
“He also turned down a double-kilo bar of pressed tellurium,” said Jessamyn.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” snapped Lucca. “Where would you get tellurium?”
“Excuse me, Madam Chancellor,” interrupted one of the security officers. In one hand he held Jessamyn’s sling pack. In his other, the thin bar of pressed tellurium from her emergency supplies.
Lucca’s mouth fell slightly open. Then she spoke in clear tones to the security officer. “You never saw this.” She seized the tellurium from him. “Do I make myself clear?”
“Absolutely, Madam Chancellor,” replied the officer.
“Where did you get this much tellurium?” Lucca asked Jessamyn.
Jess shrugged. “There’s more where that came from.”
“Hmm,” said Lucca. “Somehow I doubt that. Also, unfortunately for you, incorruptibility runs in the family.” Saying this, she tucked the bar into a case she carried and barked an order to the remaining officer. “Search her transport for tellurium. And butter or any other valuables.”
“With all due respect, Madam Chancellor,” replied the officer, “Perhaps you might not wish to remain alone with the prisoner?” He glanced at a window as lightning sparked outside.
“You will not question my orders if you value your … position,” said Lucca, her voice a soft purr.
Noting the officer glancing at the window again and seeming to hesitate, Lucca raised her voice. “I want you outside! Your armor’s not going to rust, imbecile.”
As the remaining security officer exited, Jessamyn’s heart beat faster.
“Everyone has a price, Madam Chancellor,” she said, trying to match Brian Wallace’s oily tone. “What would yours be, measured in tellurium? Perhaps we can come to an agreement.”
Jess saw Lucca’s pupils dilate, watched her nostrils flare. The Chancellor wanted tellurium.
Lucca walked to Jessamyn’s side. Placed her mouth beside Jess’s ear. “Whatever my price might be, you couldn’t have enough,” whispered the Chancellor. “You couldn’t possibly.” Lucca walked back to the other side of the room, crossed her arms, and gazed out the window at the darkening sky. “Now, let’s discuss your disarmament of the weapon sitting out there.”
“Oh, aye,” said Wallace. “Please can we discuss that.”
Without even turning to him, the Chancellor uttered an order. “Silence this man.”
With no one there to act upon her order, Wallace continued speaking. “I’m sure I’m honored to have ye at me own humble dwelling, Ma’am,” he said. “Can I offer ye something? Goat cheese griddle cakes, perhaps? Or a lovely bit of goat steak?”
Jessamyn’s heart did a sort of hop as Wallace slipped free of the “restraint” that had attached him to the desk.
“This is your dwelling?” asked L
ucca.
“Aye,” said Wallace, grinning proudly. “Me own castle in miniature.”
“I’ll take a coffee. Black. Make it strong.” The Chancellor turned her back to Wallace, dismissing him.
Jessamyn, finding herself with two allies and only one enemy, grasped her head and groaned, as if in pain.
“Aunt Lucca?” called Pavel. “The prisoner seems to be in pain.”
Jessamyn moaned again, swaying her head and collapsing to her knees. “My head,” she cried.
“Go on,” said Pavel’s aunt. “Examine her. Who knows what those idiots in armor did to her before we got here.” She lowered her voice. “I want that body kept whole.”
From across the room, Pavel spoke to his aunt. “This cast was inexpertly applied,” he said. “She has untreated burns and a wound to her left arm as well.”
“Fix her,” said Lucca. “I need her alert for questioning.”
Wallace shuffled back from the kitchen, coffee in hand, murmuring about there being a proper storm brewing.
“My hands,” whispered Jessamyn to Pavel.
Pavel cut them free with a small scalpel.
“Let me take you hostage,” she said.
And then things began to happen very quickly. Wallace presented the Chancellor with a mug of coffee. As soon as Lucca’s hands were occupied and her eyes turned from her nephew, Pavel passed something small into Jessamyn’s hand, tipping his head toward his aunt. Only after this did he give Jess the requested scalpel. She placed the bright instrument at his throat, using the opposite forearm to lock Pavel’s head into her shoulder, which left a hand free to grip the unknown item he’d passed to her. In the moment before Lucca looked up, Jess glanced at the object: a med-patch. What did she need a med-patch for, she wondered? She kept it hidden in her hand.
“Order your guards to set their weapons aside and to lie face-down with their hands clasped over their heads,” Jessamyn said. Thunder rattled the windows.
Lucca, her eyes now upon Jess and Pavel, uttered two short words: “Or what?”
Jessamyn blinked in confusion. Could Lucca really be that stupid? “Or I slit your nephew’s throat, obviously.”
“Oh, that,” said Lucca, waving a hand to indicate disregard. She took a slow sip of coffee. “Yes, well, by all means …”
Jess stood, dumbfounded. “I’ll do it,” she said.
“Will you really?” asked Lucca, lazily, taking a moment to stare as the rain pelted the windows, a sudden tattoo.
“Call off your guards,” said Jess. “Now!”
Wallace made a whimpering kind of sound.
“And you, goat-herder,” said Jess to Wallace, “Stay out of this unless you want the boy’s death on your head.”
Brian Wallace covered his eyes with both hands as if terrified. Another flash of lightning, the snap of thunder close behind.
The Chancellor took a couple of slow steps toward Jessamyn.
“I mean it,” said Jess. She felt Pavel’s breath, warm and rapid upon the hand gripping the blade.
“Do what the terrorist asks,” Pavel said to his aunt.
“No, my dear boy, I don’t think I will,” said Lucca, advancing slowly upon the two. “You see, if she intended to kill you, I think she would have done it already.”
Jessamyn swelled with anger at this woman— at Lucca’s seeming disregard for her nephew’s life, at the skill with which Lucca read the situation, at how Lucca stood between life and slow starvation for her world. Something in Jess pulled taut and she said, her tone venomous, “Or maybe I’m just waiting for you to come close so I can kill you instead!”
“Give me the knife,” said Lucca Brezhnaya. Her voice, cutting like the wind of a Marsian winter, sent a chill along Jessamyn’s spine.
Jess shook her head. “Come closer,” she whispered. “I dare you.”
The Chancellor did. “The knife,” said Lucca, holding her hand out.
Straining against a fury boiling inside, Jess held her position, the knife at Pavel’s throat becoming the center of her world, the core about which the universe revolved.
“You’re a child,” whispered the Chancellor. Lightning revealed for a brief moment her face, white with anger.
Jess saw again the smear of red lipstick upon white tooth. She felt the knife dropping away from Pavel’s throat as if by the sheer force of Lucca’s desire. And then the rage inside Jessamyn exploded outward and she struck at the Chancellor’s outstretched palm with the bright blade.
The windows shook in their casements, and Lucca howled in fury, and Jessamyn, suddenly understanding the power Pavel had placed within her hand, slapped the med-patch hard against the Chancellor’s throat. Gasping in surprise, the Chancellor’s eyes flew wide and then, just as quickly, fluttered closed as Lucca Brezhnaya slumped unconscious to the floor. Jessamyn dropped the bloodied scalpel from her hand.
“It’s a very short acting sedative,” said Pavel as Jess released him.
Wallace shouted, “Go!” to Jessamyn as he aimed a small gun at Pavel.
“Don’t shoot him!” Jess cried. “He’s with me.”
“Right,” said Wallace, lowering the weapon. “Lucky I held off firing then, isn’t it? I contacted Crusty while I was making that creature’s coffee. The ship launches in four minutes and thirty seconds. I suggest ye move quickly.” A coolly efficient Wallace had replaced the whimpering, blustering one. “Can ye bluff past those two outside?” he asked Pavel. “Because this gun will be worthless against their armor.”
“I’ll say my aunt wants Jess aboard the shuttle,” he replied, “And you can carry her, like she’s unconscious.”
Wallace nodded. “That lad’s a good one to have on yer side. Four minutes, ten seconds.”
Wallace scooped Jess up as if she weighed nothing and the three moved outside and into the storm.
Chapter Thirty-One
FOLLOWING ORDERS
“Where are you going with the prisoner?” asked the soldier guarding the door.
The other secure looked up from his inspection of Jessamyn’s stolen vehicle.
“My aunt has ordered me to transport her to the nearest hospital,” said Pavel.
“I’m going to have to confirm that before I let you escort the prisoner any farther,” said the soldier.
“Suit yourself,” said Pavel. “But I should probably warn you, Aunt Lucca’s orders are that no one goes inside until she opens the door. She’s on a private call with the viceroy.”
The secure hesitated. His commander shrugged.
“The Chancellor’s a real pain when her orders are disobeyed,” said Pavel, blinking at the rain striking his face. He smiled sympathetically at both officers. “But you interrupt her call. I’ll wait.”
“Don’t look at me,” said the man guarding the door. “It’s more than my life is worth, disobeying the Chancellor’s orders.”
The commanding officer apparently agreed, motioning Pavel and Wallace forward to Lucca’s ship.
“Three minutes, forty-five seconds,” Wallace mumbled.
Pavel released the hatch on the near side of the vehicle and Wallace carried Jessamyn inside. As soon as he closed the door, she dashed for the controls, firing the engines.
“Shizer, shizer, shizer!” groaned Pavel.
“Let’s move it!” Brian Wallace shouted to Jess.
“Where’s my brother?” Jess called as she swung the transport up, aiming it toward the Galleon. She threw a glance back at Pavel, who was staring at what looked like a hard-sided travel case, opened and empty. They cleared a slight rise and Jess could see the Galleon, bits of cloaking camouflage on one side, its hover boosters ready to fire.
“Jess,” said Pavel, his voice hollow. “Ethan’s gone.”
“What do you mean ‘gone’?” Jess felt her heart contract. “You said you had him.”
“I hid your brother in this travel case and he’s gone.”
The transport landed in a muck of grass, mud, and ash beside the Red Galleon.
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“He must have made a run for your spacecraft,” suggested Wallace. “Smart move, really.”
“He’s got no chance of making it. Jess—aw, shizer!” Pavel’s voice had a defeated accent that made Jess’s skin clammy.
“What?” she demanded as she opened the transport’s door.
“Your brother’s in an amputee’s body now. Getting out of that suitcase and off my aunt’s hover-ship? I don’t know how he managed that, but there’s no way he dragged himself five kilometers to this ship. One of his arms is useless, Jess.”
Two minutes forty-five seconds.
Jessamyn’s stomach wrenched and she felt as if her own legs had turned to jelly. “An amputee?” she wheezed. A gust of wind shuddered the Chancellor’s craft.
“His new body has no legs,” said Pavel. “Jess, two minutes to go. What are we doing? My aunt will be awakening any second.”
“You can’t ask me that,” she said, her voice a whisper. “I have to … I’ve got to …” She looked at Pavel, every muscle in her face straining against the horror of the choice before her.
“Tell me what we’re doing,” said Wallace, a hard edge to his voice.
Jessamyn stumbled out of the shuttle. She reached for the Galleon’s hatch, but the door flew wide before she reached it.
“Jess?” It was Crusty. “Ares, you’re a welcome sight. I hear it’s just you, then. Ship’s set to lift off in two minutes. Gonna need a pilot for that.”
“Let me go in your place,” said Pavel. “I can fly an old M-class like this …” His voice trailed off as he ran his eyes along the ship’s curving surface, evaluating it.
For the space of ten agonizing seconds Jessamyn considered her friend’s offer. You could stay and find Ethan. Your brother needs you. And then she remembered her words to Mei Lo—I won’t fail you. Remembered the golden light sweeping across the gentle rise of Mount Cha Su Bao. Remembered the people who would perish and see that light no more if she failed them. And she spoke the hardest words she’d ever uttered.
“I made a promise.” Turning to Pavel, she murmured quietly, so quietly, a simple request. “Will you find Ethan?”
Saving Mars Page 24