by Jucha, S. H.
“How generous of you, Ser,” Miranda said, rising. “I’ll be sure to do that.” After shaking hands once again, Miranda made sure her stroll from the office was the best show she could give Toyo.
Jameson, the head of security, escorted Miranda back to the main dome. On the way, she digested her conversation with Peto Toto. His naked ambition marked him as the type who would not hesitate to open an illegal drug distribution club in Espero, without ever considering the risks.
The conversation aside, Miranda gained one piece of hard evidence. Someone had sat in her chair before her, and that someone had minute traces of the hallucinogenic compound on their hands or clothes when they touched the arms. Sensors in her hands signaled the presence of a dangerous compound, and Miranda took the opportunity to wipe a finger gently across her bottom lip, enticing Toyo further and testing the compound internally. It was an exact match to the drug sample Terese gave her.
* * *
Christie, Amelia, and Eloise tried several times to escape their suite, but they remained locked inside. Their last ploy involved sliding a towel over the restroom door’s inner handle and closing the door, trapping the towel across the lock. Unfortunately, the boy’s voice over the room’s comm announced that the lock was not signaling closed.
“Sorry,” Christie said, pressing the comm button in the bathroom. “A towel got caught in the door.”
It was in the night, following the evening Miranda met with Toyo, when the girls were fast asleep that the lock on the suite’s door was triggered, and they came instantly awake at the unscheduled and uncharacteristic entrance.
Their concern transformed into fear when the lights snapped on and Scar walked into the room.
“Well, well, together again, fems. Always a pleasure,” said Boker, a nasty grin on his face.
The girls jumped out of bed and gathered together, hearts racing.
“You know the drill, fems,” Boker said, tapping his weapon against his thigh. “Nice and quiet and no one gets a taste of this. Now, strip and put these on.” He threw a set of ship suits on the floor at their feet.
The girls changed as rapidly as they could, wondering what had happened to their young man and what was about to happen to them.
“All right,” Boker said, when the girls finished changing, a process he thoroughly enjoyed, especially now that he knew home girl was someone important. “Over here, face me, and cross your arms at the wrists.”
Boker pulled restraints from his kit, secured the girls’ hands, and then dropped comm-isolation bags over their heads. He turned Christie sideways, placed Amelia’s hands on her shoulder, and repeated the motion for Eloise. “Not a word,” he warned the girls, and then led them out of the suite.
To the girls, their journey was punctuated by stops and starts as Scar bodily blocked Christie, and the girls ran into each other. Christie worked to keep her tongue still, and her friends hoped she did. At one point, Scar grabbed Christie by the arm and whirled her in reverse and shoved all of them into a small utility room. Christie ran into a supply rack, smacking her head, and Scar shushed her.
Possessing much the same temperament as her brother, Christie knew she would have attacked Scar by now, weapon or no weapon, not caring about the outcome as long as she could fight for her freedom. But she was attempting to keep her wits about her. Amelia and Eloise were depending on her, and she knew it.
Eventually, they boarded a shuttle, and after liftoff their restraints and metal-mesh bags were removed. A man in dapper clothes was sitting across from them, examining his fingernails.
“Good evening, young ladies. My name is Azul Kadmir, and I’m your rescuer.”
* * *
“Do you have them?” Roz O’Brien asked over the comm.
“Yeah, Craze fell for it. He even bargained for a piece of your action,” Kadmir replied.
O’Brien leaned back in his chair, swirling his brandy. “I hope you were generous with Craze.”
“Gave him 30 percent,” Kadmir replied. “He’ll be dwelling on that, making big plans, while the adz wraps him and his business up … or maybe it will be the Harakens.” Both men shared hearty laughs over Toyo’s impending demise.
“You’re going to be able to stretch your people to cover half of Toyo’s operations when the domes are empty, right?” Kadmir asked.
“I’ll be ready. I know we can’t let them sit empty and not expect someone else to move in, legit or otherwise. I have recruitment going on at home. I should have two travelers full of new employees arriving in a week or so. This is all providing that Racine doesn’t blow Toyo’s domes into space debris.”
“He won’t,” Kadmir said.
“You sound confident of that.”
“Racine might break Toyo’s neck with his bare hands for kidnapping his sister, but if there’s one patron in the dome who might be hurt, he won’t touch it. He’s messed up altruistically like that.”
“So where do you have the girls now?” O’Brien asked.
“They’re sitting in one of my best suites with all the comforts of home.”
“Tell me they’re all right … not hurt in any way.”
“They’re fine. A little shaken by the ordeal, but even Toyo and his men knew to be careful with these packages.”
“Did you show your face, and do they know what’s happening?”
“Yeah, I met them on the shuttle and introduced myself.”
“Brazen,” O’Brien commented.
“Figured it was the best approach. The tricky part was that I had to use Boker, Toyo’s defector, as the one to escort them out of Toyo’s domes, and the girls know he was part of their abduction.”
“So, how did you explain that?”
“Told them Boker was working undercover for me. That we were aware of certain nefarious actions on the part of Peto Toyo.”
“Certain nefarious actions … I like that,” O’Brien said, chuckling.
“Roz, you should have seen this little act play out on the shuttle. I had to practice Boker for so long I was ready to shoot the idiot myself. Anyway, on the shuttle, I get to the part where I tell the girls it was our plan all along to rescue them, and that Boker was forced to stay true to his character. That’s when Boker comes out of his slouch and gives this sincere apology we practiced. He did pretty damn well.”
“Do you think the girls bought it?”
“Don’t know. They aren’t dummies, and Christie, Racine’s sister, has a mouth on her. After Boker’s apology, she thought she had permission to ask a thousand and one questions, and I could see her fact checking what we knew with what had happened to them. I had to cut her off, telling her that I had arrangements to make.”
“So, they’re suspicious,” O’Brien concluded.
“Looks like it,” Kadmir acknowledged.
“There’s always plan B, if we don’t think the original idea is going to work.”
“You mean get rid of them instead of playing the rescuers and blaming it on Toyo?”
“It could be safer.”
“I don’t think so. If Racine gets his sister and her friends back, even with some discrepancies in the stories, I think he’ll go home … unsatisfied perhaps, but he’ll go home. On the other hand, if he never gets his girls back, I think this entire system is in trouble, and it will descend on our heads first.”
* * *
Christie added.
Christie said, exasperated. She plopped down on one of the sumptuous beds.
Eloise said quickly.
Christie sent to her friends, but the look she threw Amelia behind Eloise’s back said she didn’t believe that.
-19-
That the Harakens were obliged to continue the charade of touring and demonstrating the Tanaka’s capabilities for President Drake and Minister Jaya irked Alex to no end. If he had his preference, he would be tearing Toyo’s domes apart, searching for the girls. But logic said that even though the girls’ freighter, the Bountiful, was docked above Jolares, the fact was that it had been there for days before the Rêveur made system. There had been too much time during which Christie and her friends might have been dropped off at an alternate location, or they might have been relocated from the Jolares domes.
Renée watched Alex carefully. She had exhausted her gamut of techniques to relax her partner, and seeing him sitting stoically in the traveler, communicating with no one, told her that sooner, rather than later, Alex would choose action over diplomacy and politics. In fact, Alex’s entire circle recognized the imminent signs.
Eric, Reiko, and Franz prepared an appropriate welcome for President Drake, as he descended the traveler’s steps into the Tanaka’s bays. Alex provided introductions for Drake and Jaya to Reiko and Franz, and, immediately afterwards, Drake and Jaya chatted amiably with Eric, who had spent years as Haraken’s ambassador to New Terra. Theirs was a cordial relationship borne of mutual respect.
When Jaya began to ask Eric about the Tanaka, Eric astutely passed the question to Reiko. “No one knows more about this class of ship than Captain Reiko Shimada, who assisted in its design. In many ways, it acts in the same manner as an Earther destroyer, but with our technology.”
“A UE commodore before you joined the Harakens,” Drake commented.
“That’s correct, Mr. President.”
“I can imagine that was quite a challenging position to maintain.”
“It was easier than you think, Mr. President, especially if you were raised your entire life in the UE, like I was. The rules of behavior and operations for naval officers and anyone else, for that matter, were strict, simple, and allowed no deviation,” Reiko replied. She eyed Drake for a moment, and then added, “Never underestimate how greatly humans can cripple their society in pursuit of unrealistic ideals.”
“Captain, why don’t you enlighten our visitors about the Tanaka’s capabilities,” Eric said, diplomatically.
Reiko took the hint and launched into the reasons for the ship’s design, the efforts to build an interstellar ship, which was also capable of grav-drive within a system, and Mickey’s successful techniques to model a new Swei-Swee shell.
Drake was listening with half an ear, while Jaya was all ears, often derailing Reiko’s spiel to get more details.
The group was on the bridge when Franz Cohen’s voice announced over the bridge speakers that he was in position. It was a reminder of the sophistication of Haraken technology that the warship’s movement had been undetectable either by engine vibration or acceleration.
Willem stepped onto the bridge and was introduced to Drake and Jaya. The SADE was slightly confused by the enthusiastic double-hand clasp by the minister until Julien sent to Willem that Jaya was a great admirer of Haraken technology, which included them.
“The asteroid is inbound, Captain,” Willem said, activating the holo-vid to display the celestial body, Franz’s traveler, and the Tanaka. “I will have our ships track it at the distances you requested as it passes.”
“Thank you, Willem,” Reiko said.
“I thought a demonstration of the power of our ship would serve us much better than a sales pitch,” Reiko said graciously, all evidence of her earlier reactions over President Drake’s comments gone. “The traveler is maintaining a distance from the asteroid at its maximum beam range. You can see on the holo-vid that we are twenty times that distance from the asteroid.”
Willem pushed the holo-vid display until the asteroid filled the screen. Gases billowed gently off the Oistos side of the asteroid as it was warmed.
“Commander Cohen, fire when ready,” Reiko called over the comm.
On the holo-vid, the group on the bridge saw a chunk of the asteroid’s frozen gases blast into space, exposing a small part of the body’s rocky core.
“Now, it’s our turn. Willem, when you’re ready,” Reiko said.
One moment there was an asteroid, and the next moment there was an expanding sphere of rock and ice.
“Our test trials have revealed this new class of vessel has a beam power 12.27 times that of a traveler and a reach 22.39 times greater. The reach keeps it much farther away from its adversaries, human or alien, and still delivers over twelve times the punch. We carry sufficient drive power reserves to fire our beam twenty-four times in rapid succession before we must wait for recharge.”
“How long is that?” Jaya asked.
Reiko looked to Willem.
“To enable another single beam discharge, the energy would be available within a matter of moments, but then a second discharge would require the same time to wait,” Willem explained. Being imprecise was difficult for the SADE, whose prime focus was interstellar investigation.
“However, considering a conflict usually takes place at upper velocities,” Reiko said, “we would be fortunate to have time to deliver two or three beam shots at an enemy ship before we would be past them, which would mean we would rarely drain our power banks.”
Whereas Drake’s mind was elsewhere during Reiko’s tour and pitch, he paid close to the attention to the demonstration and had been suitably impressed. It gave him a second reason for wanting to speak to the ex-UE commodore. That opportunity came after the recovery of Commander Cohen’s traveler, while the Tanaka returned to Ganymede’s orbit.
Tatia glanced at Alex when Drake asked to speak with Reiko alone, and, with Jaya in their wake, they headed for the captain’s cabin.
Alex sent.
Tatia knew that many criminals exemplified less than stellar reasoning, but kidnapping Alex Racine’s young sister had to rank as one of the most foolish criminal moves in New Terran history. In her opinion, it would have been smarter for Toyo just to have admitted to a grievous er
ror and returned the girls or, short of that, find an airlock to nowhere and cycle through it.
* * *
Miranda reached out via her traveler’s comm to the Rêveur to connect with Cordelia and learned of the transfer of Haraken and New Terran principals to the Tanaka for the tour and test.