by Chris Reher
Vincent chuckled. “She’s a sharp one, the little minx.”
“Well, he didn’t say not to read it,” she said to him.
“You can read that?” Tychon asked. “After just looking at it now?”
“No, but I see the pattern. I could probably figure it out.”
He regarded her thoughtfully, taking in the dirty coveralls, the deeply red skin smudged with grime and the mess of white braids springing up from her head. “You’re that smart?”
“She can handle any physical science and mathematics you can throw at her,” Vincent attested, as proudly as if she were his daughter. “I’ve always said she was wasted on Magra, patching up wounded rebels and repairing lasers. Don’t be fooled by this slip of a girl. Brightest mind this side of Targon, if easily distracted.”
“A GenMod?”
“Natural!” she exclaimed. “My people don’t hold with that. GenMods are loopy.”
Tychon had to smile. “You’re wasted on a military base. I can get you some work on Delphi if you’re serious about giving up the rebel business. Xenobiology. There’s an expedition leaving for Shaddallam soon. They can always use more experts. And you’d be out of sight for a while.”
“I’ve not been to that place yet,” she said, considering. “Xenos, eh? Sounds interesting.” She looked up at Vincent, a question on her face.
He shrugged. “Where you go, so shall I, child.”
Tychon finished his message. “Let it fly, Kada.”
Seth transmitted Tychon’s coded message at light speed to a relay station near a charted jumpsite not far ahead of them now where it was forwarded through sub-space to Targon. There another relay would send it along to Colonel Carras on Odar.
“This will be so very much easier once we get those new interfaces in use,” Seth said. “Now let’s hope the colonel is home.” He tapped another screen for information. “Kinda late there now.”
They did not have to wait long. An incoming message announced itself before Seth had fished handing around strong cups of tea. Acie had cleaned up a little and was returning from the ship’s tiny comfort station when the missive from Odar appeared on Tychon’s screen.
He read it silently and his brow grew increasingly furrowed with every block of code deciphered. The others exchanged worried glances when he muttered a colorful oath.
“What’s he saying?” Acie tried to peer over his shoulder.
“He knows nothing more about Nova or what went on at the Dannakor labs. It’s actually worse now. The ship she took away from Dannakor was traced to a rebel hangout on Magra Torley before they stripped it. So now they think she’s there, on Magra.”
“Surely the colonel will report that she’s keyholed God knows to where with the others!” Vincent said.
“Yes. But when he tells them how he knows that they won’t believe she was able to reach me here. He’d have to find a Shantir to declare that it might be possible but I don’t know if any of them would consider it. I don’t even know how she did it!”
“They wouldn’t accuse you of lying. Of covering for her.”
“Carras wouldn’t. Everett would. He barely knows us and he’s bent on protocol.”
“Vanguard doesn’t exactly operate within protocol.”
“He’d prefer if we did.” Tychon’s attention returned to the display in his hands. “More survivors have returned from Dannakor but no one knows what went on there. Sounds like sheer mayhem. There is a team there now, investigating. They assume that rebels were disguised as Air Command personnel but they didn’t leave any bodies. At least not rebel bodies.”
“Well, that’s something,” Vincent said. He sipped his tea and lifted his eyebrows in appreciation of it. “Makes her appear less guilty of shooting officers, at least.”
“Perhaps, but they aren’t spending energy looking for the missing. Seems that Nova is correct about the Shri-Lan having captured one of the other test subjects. There’s been a lot of chatter about an impending attack and now Air Command has recalled all of our spanners. Something massive is brewing.”
“Where?” Seth asked.
“No clear target. Just a lot of very recent noise about rebel mobilization and plans to attack. Until they figure this out the entire Air Command fleet is on alert. Including the Vanguard wing. Every last one of them is being called in.”
“What about you?”
“Still not wanted on the payroll.”
“Well, that’s good, then,” Seth said.
Tychon frowned. “I was hoping to get my Eagle back. And a few of the Vanguard teams to back me up, at least.”
“Yes, but if they give you back your plane then you’ll also be put on standby. How are you going to find Nova if you’re babysitting UCB Targon?” Seth grinned and tipped his head toward the cockpit. “I say we go to Dannakor. We’ll take the brain with us.”
Acie threw him a playful punch. “Be respectful, Kada!”
He hooked his elbow around her neck and kissed her face wherever his lips happened to land. “I have every respect for your brain.”
Tychon looked from one to the other. How had he ended up here, on this pirate’s ship, with a Human elder, a flighty Bellac, all of them with rebel leanings, and only a very distant, retired colonel to back him up? It seemed that, once again, Nova’s ventures had catapulted him out of the ordered, disciplined military routines he valued so much. A slow smile appeared on his face. If nothing else, these people were more committed to her than Air Command would ever be.
“Let’s jump,” he said.
Chapter Seven
Nova jolted out of some endless, tedious, unpleasant dream that seemed to have little purpose but to make her glad that she was no longer asleep. She stared up at the metal ceiling, aware of a dull headache and a gnawing emptiness in her stomach. There had been little water and even less food allocated to the captives and the only reason they were not also freezing was that the cargo ship had now been cast adrift and everyone, rebel and hostage alike, were crammed aboard the Shri-Lan’s battle cruiser.
She turned to look over at Jovan lying on the other bunk. He seemed to be still deep in whatever khamal allowed him to escape the pain in his head and the horror of their situation. He was too young, she thought, too sheltered by his well-padded life among the Shantirs of Delphi, to be dealing with any of this. At least they had been given this tiny cabin apart from the others, where they were allowed to rest between their attempts to penetrate the keyhole and find a way back to Trans-Targon.
She sat up and leaned over to him to touch his forehead. His skin was cool and he breathed evenly. “Are you awake?”
“Don’t want to be.”
“How’s the head?”
“Attached.”
She scrubbed her face with both hands and sat in silence for a while. Tychon would come, she knew. He would mobilize the entire Air Command fleet and every Level Three spanner. By now he’d have half the Vanguard fleet on its way to that keyhole outside Dannakor. They would be found.
Jovan sat up. The pale blue of his eyes meant that he was either ill or still terribly exhausted. Mechanically, slowly, he untied his braid and then retied it neatly, perhaps not even aware of the fussiness of his task. “I’ve never done that before,” he said after a while.
“Done what?”
“Touched someone like that. The way Shan Tychon touched you.”
She smiled. “You got some of that, did you?”
He nodded. “I’ve joined with many people before. My people, anyway. But not like that. It was so... I mean, I should not have been...”
“Yeah, I love it when he does that.”
“You don’t understand. This is Shan Tychon! To feel him touch you like that was like... like...” He looked at his hands. “I should not have been part of that.”
“Was nice though, wasn’t it?” she teased.
“Captain!”
“He knew you were there! If it didn’t matter to him, why should it matter to you?”
“Easy!” Nova said. “Are you all right?”
“No, I’m not. I have never been locked up in my life. This is intolerable. My head pain is intolerable.”
She reached across the small space and took his hand. “I need you to hold it together, Jovie,” she whispered. “He’ll come. I know he will. Now they know we’re alive and they will send help. They won’t leave us out here like this.”
He pulled his hand away. “And your very Human and excessive optimism is also intolerable.” He stretched out on his cot again and closed his eyes. “Don’t wake me until they drag us back to the bridge.”
The door opened. “Why the noise?”
Nova looked up at the Centauri and wondered why it was the thuggish-looking ones that were either drawn to or recruited by the Shri-Lan. This one kept his hair shaved, exposing a large burn scar covering most of the side of his head. His nose had been smashed long ago and never repaired. “We need food. I can’t think when I’m hungry. And we need to think. Your boss wants us to think.”
“Stop your babbling, Human.”
“I wouldn’t babble if my brain was working right.”
He grimaced. “There is food where the others are. This way. No, leave him here. Just you,” he added when she turned to Jovan to rouse him.
Nova followed the rebel a short distance to another locked room where he fumbled for a moment with the key plate. The door finally opened onto a cabin crowded with the escapees from Dannakor, most of them trying to be as comfortable as they could on the bare floor. There were only a few cots and some chairs here, all of them occupied. The air had been breathed too many times and Nova felt an urge to escape back into the hall. An armed rebel seemed a less daunting opponent than the accusation and mistrust she saw in these people’s faces. “Good luck getting them to give up their grub.” The Centauri laughed and shut the door behind Nova.
There was a brief silence before one of the women at the rear of the room spoke up. “You’re the officer that got us into this,” she said.
Some of the others looked uncertainly from her to Nova.
“Well, technically, I suppose so,” Nova said and looked around for any of the ANI team she might recognize. “So it’s all right if you need to blame someone.” She moved to one of the cots where a young woman lay curled up in the comforting lap of an older Feydan female. She made no response when Nova gently moved her hair to look at the bruises on her face. “Just this girl?” Nova said.
“One other taken by a Centauri,” the Feydan said. “She’s been gone hours now. I see they’ve not been kind to you, either.”
“None of them are. Don’t try to fight them. We’re only alive because of the ANI. Pretend you know more than you do, that you have value. Is this all that’s left? Are there any other hostages?”
“No. They’ve killed everybody else,” someone nearby said. Nova did not recognize him. “You’re not in charge here. So don’t start giving orders.”
“Fine,” Nova replied. She spotted Leon Rhys, one of the tech team, sharing another cot with a colleague. She smiled encouragingly at the Feydan woman and then stepped around the others to reach Rhys. He looked up at her with far less hostility and moved to let her sit with them. The other technician even offered her an almost full foil wrap containing a gritty nutrient paste that was probably designed to be eaten hot. She ate silently, waiting for the rest of the group to return to their desultory conversation.
When the noise level had risen sufficiently, she leaned closer to Rhys. “I’ve been able to make contact with Trans-Targon,” she murmured and raised her hands when he started to reply. “Say nothing. Let’s not get anyone excited. I’m hoping to stall a while until they’ve figured out a way to track us down.”
Rhys nodded. “Like you said just now, they’ll keep us alive for a while, anyway. They want us to duplicate the interface hardware once we get back to Trans-Targon.”
“What about the program that goes with it? Don’t they need that?”
“Not really. It’s not much different from what we have now. It’s just designed to access communications systems as well as navigation.”
“They have Captain Luce’s interface,” Nova said. “But I don’t know if it’s the Shri-Lan or the Arawaj that have it.”
“Won’t be enough. They’ll need the schematics of where the taps go in your brain. That alone took years to figure out. Without contact with a brain the device itself can’t be activated. They’ll want to scan your head for that. Luce’s will be too deteriorated by now, even if they didn’t dislodge the nanowires during the removal. These are prototypes. We haven’t even started to modify them for the sort of field conditions you pilots encounter.”
“Do they know that?”
He grinned. “Not likely. At least not Rakh and his band of rats. Sao Lok is another matter. He sounds like he knows what he’s talking about.”
“He obviously knows enough to fool the neuro team and get himself a job on Dannakor! Who knows how long he’s been there.” She folded the remainder of her small ration and tucked it into her thigh pocket for Jovan. “I don’t know what he’s up to but the Shri-Lan probably want the ANI to give them access to keyholes.”
“Our biggest tactical advantage over them.”
“Yeah. I think the Shri-Lan were able to grab Lieutenant Betl on Dannakor. To use as navigator. Right now they only have a few spanners and those can’t visit grandma without us knowing about it. Having a working ANI could change all that.”
He shook his head. “You saw what happened to Luce. Turning a chartjumper into a Level Three is just fanciful thinking right now. We thought there might be a chance but the latest tests just came up empty. You still need a certain brain to handle all that and the sad fact is that most of us don’t have one of those.”
“Really? This is never going to work?”
“I won’t say never, but we’ll have to find a whole new way to work with the capacities we have among non-Delphians. I don’t see that happening any time soon. So let’s not piss off any Delphians in the foreseeable future.”
She scowled. “That’s disappointing. Really really disappointing!”
“Yeah, but you still get to be a telepath. With the right equipment.”
Nova nodded. “So what did happen to Luce, exactly?”
“He was being an idiot, exactly,” the engineer said. “Should never have done that. Azon Corp will have to create a failsafe to prevent hotshot navigators from going into places they shouldn’t. We’ve got our bets on a total neuron overload. Would have happened even if he had found the right exit. Heed my words, Captain. Do not attempt to jump us back. And let’s hope that Betl, wherever he is, won’t try it, either.”
“So if they’re planning an attack somewhere, using the ANI to jump there isn’t going to work for them?”
“Oh, it will. But just once.”
“They probably envision jumping Betl through one keyhole after another to open the way to multiple attack sites. Without the sort of toll that usually takes on a spanner.”
“Not going to happen. Still, even a single jump will land them without warning some place where they can do a whole lot of damage before any sort of defense can be launched. They could pick Targon, even.”
“They’ll be on alert there. Listen, don’t tell Rakh about the ANI not working. Just say that Luce didn’t have enough training, which is true enough. I’ve convinced them that I need the Delphian to help me with it. We’re just trying to buy time.”
“You got it.” Rhys pulled apart the edges of his remaining rations bag and carefully licked what little was left in it. “You think you can get out of this,
Captain?”
“Vanguard, remember?” she said with confidence that sounded almost convincing to herself. “I’m not trained to give up. Just make sure these people here hold together. Is anyone hurt badly?”
“We’ve got some medics here,” he said, but his eyes were on the devastated woman on the other bunk.
“They’ll find us, Leon,” Nova said. “You’ve got to hang on to that thought.”
Both of them, along with a number of the other hostages, turned when the door opened again. Nova rose, assuming this to be her guard, here to return her to her cabin. But it was another and not one she had seen before. He looked around the room and then carelessly gestured at a few of the civilians. “You, come with me. And you two over there. Going to put you to work while you’re enjoying the fine free room and board here.”
Nova grinned and winked at Leon when she sidled her way into the group of hostages now slowly and uncertainly coming to their feet. They shuffled ahead of the rebel who periodically jabbed one of them with his gun. Nova kept her head down and tried to look as tired and dejected as the other five in her group.
They arrived at a narrowed junction of the rebel ship. A corridor to the left was lined with doors to what appeared to be crew cabins. An airlock portal opened to their right to allow them to enter a cargo pod. “We’re going to cut this one loose,” the rebel said. “You people are going to clear out those bins there. Take the stuff across the hallway.”
The others looked vacantly about themselves before approaching the bins. The weakly pulsating light from above revealed the ship’s supply of food containers and stacked bins of unmarked packages.
Nova fell into step with the others and made a few trips carrying the heavy boxes from the pod to a nearby cabin until the chore had become monotonous, more so for their guard than the prisoners. He barely watched them and only cursed now and again when one of them complained or slowed down. She dropped out of the line and waited in the new storage area to see if he’d notice that she had not returned. One of the Azon Corp technicians frowned at her quizzically but didn’t care enough to question her.