“Fleet Commander,” I said with a nod, stopping just inside the door as it closed behind me.
“Never mind that silliness, Lanar,” she said, smiling. “There’s another glass for you, and you should have changed out of the uniform. This meeting, as far as I’m concerned, is not happening and never happened.”
I shrugged out of my jacket and hung it over the high back of an oversized pale green armchair standing at right angles to the sofa. “What about those security cameras you warned me about? I’m sure there’s a record of me, stepping in through that door thirty seconds ago.” I picked up the second wineglass from the table and held it out. She poured from the bottle, and I sat in the armchair.
“Yes, but remember who reviews all the security recordings.”
I sipped and smiled. “Your one vice,” I said, saluting her with the glass. The fruit-sweet scent of the wine drifted in the air, reminding me of the expanses of vine trellises on Kiando.
“I wish,” she said dryly, “but at least I’m consistent.”
“How’d it go with Mauronet today? I wondered if you’d have to put him out an airlock.”
“Don’t sound so enchanted by the idea. No, in the end we agreed to disagree.”
“Meaning you told him to shut up and take orders.”
She grinned over the lip of her wineglass. “Something like that.” Her grin faded quickly, though.
I leaned forward and rested my elbows on my knees, holding my glass in both hands and swirling the deep purplish liquid inside. “You’re worried. More worried even than you’re letting on.”
“Aren’t you? What did he say to you this afternoon?”
“Accused me of going off on a secret mission to fight Chron. Apparently, I’m taking a force of other ships along, and Harle Southwind is coming with me. Which doesn’t even make sense, since Harle’s Investigative and doesn’t even have his own ship at the moment!” I ran a hand over my face. “Obviously, he’s angry at being excluded from this imaginary mission.”
Regina closed her eyes. “I told him flat out that no-one in the Protectorate was taking the fight to the Chron. Why is he so hung up on this?”
I shrugged. “People are scared and angry. The Chron War wasn’t so long ago that we’ve forgotten about it. I guess Mauronet would rather see us taking action than waiting around for the hammer to fall.”
“Is that how you see it?” she asked sharply.
“No. I think you’re handling it the right way. But we’re a military force. There are bound to be more than just Mauronet sharing his opinion.”
“Mmmm,” she said, neither confirming my suspicions nor dispelling them. I didn’t like that, but she continued before I could press her. “Harle Southwind told you what we suspect PrimeCorp is up to?”
“Yes, but I still don’t see how PrimeCorp thinks it’s going to control interactions with the Chron. They’re putting all of Nearspace at risk, if it’s true.”
She sipped from her glass, holding the rim between the fingertips of both hands. “It’s treason, if it’s all true. This is top priority, Lanar. You must find out everything you can from the Corvids or anyone else while you’re on this mission.”
I nodded. “I already asked Mother if she still had any connections inside PrimeCorp. She didn’t think there was anyone who’d be useful, but she didn’t dismiss it out of hand.”
Regina looked at me sharply. “Did you tell your Mother everything about our suspicions?”
“Pretty much, but I thought that’s what you wanted. Harle said it was your idea.”
She blew out a long breath. “Well, it was. I just get antsy when I think about too many people knowing what we suspect, and it somehow getting back to PrimeCorp.”
I chuckled. “I think if there’s anyone you can trust to not leak anything to PrimeCorp, it’s my mother.”
Regina smiled then and seemed to relax. She set her empty wineglass on the table with a soft clink, and made no move to refill it. “Are you seeing anyone, Lanar?” she asked softly.
I quirked a half-smile. “You know me, Regina. Too old for the young ones, too young for the ones my age.”
“Nice problem to have,” she said, then she quickly shook her head. “No, I don’t mean that. It hasn’t actually been a nice problem to have, has it?”
I considered the dregs of wine in my glass. “It has its moments,” I said, “but on the whole . . . I’m not sure it’s all it’s cracked up to be.”
She rested her chin in her hand. “I do wonder, though. What would have happened if we’d stayed together. Your sister and her husband seem to have made it work. But I wonder if it’s different for a man to be with an ‘older’ woman.”
I shrugged. “If two people want to be together, it’s no-one else’s business.”
She smiled. “We did get that part figured out a long time ago,” she said. “At least we think we did. People still talk.”
I got up and sat beside her on the sofa, putting an arm around her shoulders. She leaned back and against my side with a sigh, dropping her head to my shoulder.
“Remember that time on Vele, when we flew the training recon mission for Admiral Walamar?” I asked.
She nodded. “And you got us lost trying to fly by ‘instinct’ and not the coordinates? I’m not losing my memory yet. At least not that one.”
“And you,” I argued, “got us lost. We landed on the beach to get our bearings. That little lagoon with the giant blue seahorse things. And you tried to catch one.”
“You tried to catch one,” she laughed, her body shaking against mine.
“Oh no.” I squeezed her shoulders. “I’ll take responsibility for getting us lost, but you were the one in the water.”
“They were so amazing, but I didn’t catch one.” She reached up and rested her hand against my cheek. “But you warmed me up afterward.”
“It’s probably just as well you didn’t catch one. We would have had a hard time explaining that one to the admiral.”
“We caught hell as it was,” she said. “But it was worth it.”
“Well, that’s who you are to me,” I said. “And always will be. The woman from that day.”
She reached up a hand and touched the pure white streak in her hair. “Right,” she said, “and this is just a fashion statement.”
I shrugged. “It might as well be. I’ve lost a lot of people in my lifetime—some to death, some to my particular . . . situation. You’re a constant, one of the few. And that’s why I think for me, you don’t age. Not really. And maybe that’s the way it is with Luta and Hirin.”
She was quiet for so long I thought I’d said something wrong, and then she reached up and brushed away a tear. “You’re damned good for the ego, Lanar Mahane,” she said, “I’ll give you that.”
Then she sat forward and turned her face towards mine. “But will you put your money where your mouth is?”
I smiled at her, meeting those brown eyes; the eyes of a woman who’d never grown out of my heart, even if she passed me in years. “I will, if my mouth is here,” I said, and put my lips firmly on hers.
Chapter 6 – Luta
Old Friends and Enemies
FOUR DAYS AFTER my meeting with Lanar, we made our first cargo dropdown on the planet Cengare. The Protectorate shipyard had been extremely efficient, and the repairs to the Tane Ikai completed right on time. I wondered if they would have been so quick if Viss hadn’t gone off with Lanar; likely he would have practically camped out at the repair site, sticking his nose in everywhere and questioning everything they did. The thought made me miss my absent crew members even more keenly, and I pushed it firmly to the back of my mind.
The population of Cengare was smaller than that of its sister planet, Kiando. Kiando was a busy mining colony, but it seemed like Cengare had been colonized just because someone could do it. It was a nice enough planet, in the cooler end of the habitable zone but still pleasant. The relatively small colonized area offered several ocean-side cities with
spectacular surfing waters, so tourism was a mainstay of the fledgling planetary economy.
The Protectorate may have been keeping rumours about the Chron quiet, but security was on edge. Docking officials double-checked every ID sig and document, and an air of watchfulness hung over the docking station like a pall of smoke.
Baden rolled his eyes. “What are they expecting? That we might be Chron in disguise? Kind of hard to cover up those bone crests, I would have thought.”
“They’re just nervous,” Maja said. “Rumours get everyone stirred up, but they don’t know what to do about it.”
“Well, maybe they could find something a little more sensible to do with all that nervous energy,” Baden grumbled. “If they get the docks all tied up in red tape, they’ll have more than just the Chron to worry about.”
There was another message from Taso waiting for Maja when we downloaded the deliverable-in-proximities. I saw it on the list, but decided I’d wait this time before mentioning it to her, let her come to me about it if she wanted. I didn’t want her to feel I was prying.
And Rei had a message from Gerazan Soto, whom we’d just left back on FarView after our Corvid-space foray. I couldn’t resist teasing her a little.
“He couldn’t wait to talk to you again, apparently,” I said. “But have you told your mother about him yet?” Rei had confided to me a while back that her mother would be horrified if Rei ended up in a long-term relationship with someone other than an Erian, or in a marriage that hadn’t been arranged according to Erian custom.
“What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her,” Rei replied with a careless shrug. “I’ll tell her, when and if it becomes necessary. I hear there’s a shopping complex near the docking station. Maja and I were going to go and check it out while they’re unloading the cargo. Want to come?”
I shook my head. “No, thanks, you two go on. I’ve got some things to do here.”
While we’d been talking, I’d noticed the yellow message light on my datapad begin to blink. That meant I had a message of my own waiting, and I thought it might be from Lanar or Mother. I was doomed to be disappointed. It was from Alin Sedmamin, the Chairman of PrimeCorp himself and my old nemesis. But it wasn’t a DIP, it was realtime, which meant he had to be here in the Mu Cassiopeia system, too. That was strange. I’d never encountered him anywhere but on Earth. It was also marked high priority. I had no love for Sedmamin after everything he’d put me and my family through in the past, but I had to admit I was curious. I hadn’t heard a word from him since he’d sent Jahelia Sord to cause trouble for me, and she’d ended up on my side—at least, sort of. I wondered if he was calling to chew me out for ruining his operative. I took a moment to compose myself and then opened the comm link.
“Saluton, Chairman,” I said politely. “How can I help you today?”
Sedmamin didn’t look good; even worse than the last time I’d seen him. He’d lost weight, but not in a good way. His skin hung in loose folds around his face, a pale greyish colour that looked anything but healthy. Deep, dark bags sagged under his eyes, and his washed-out blond hair was unkempt. Perhaps the rumours that he’d been taking heat for PrimeCorp’s current troubles were true.
“Captain Paixon, I need to speak with you,” he said without preamble. There was none of his usual insincere heartiness. I almost thought he looked—frightened.
“We’re speaking. About what?”
He licked his lips. “Can we meet? I’d like to ensure this is a private conversation.” He glanced away from the screen, to one side and then over his shoulder, like a character in a holovid. I’d never seen Sedmamin like this, unsure and almost paranoid. It made me uneasy.
“Where are you?” I asked. “You must be in Mu Cass system somewhere since we’re realtime.”
He nodded. “I’m on Cengare, same as you. Please, Captain—Luta—I’ll meet you anywhere you want.”
Of the many attempts Alin Sedmamin had made to cajole me into meeting him, it had always been on his terms, on his turf, and, even when he wouldn’t admit it, for his gain. Now he just sounded desperate. I didn’t think it was any kind of a ploy. Sedmamin had never been a good actor.
I still hesitated to invite him onto my ship, though.
“We’re docked at Havernough, and I hear there’s a shopping complex nearby. I could meet you there sometime today or tomorrow, but I can’t stay longer—”
“I know it,” he said eagerly. “An hour from now?”
Dio! He had to be right here in the same city, or just outside it.
“Okej.” The absurdity of the situation hit me. “Chairman, are you sure you can’t just tell me what this is about?”
He looked directly into the screen then, intense and worried. “It’s about things that have gotten out of my control,” he hissed. Suddenly he flashed a grim smile, one I thought was genuine. “I know we’ve had our differences, but strangely enough, you’re currently about the only person I trust.”
If that was true, he must be in even worse shape than he looked. “All right then, an hour, at the main entrance,” I said.
He nodded and closed the connection. I spent a minute wondering what the hell was happening, then got up to go and find out.
I FOUND HIRIN on the bridge, playing around with configurations for some of the new weapons systems he’d installed. When I told him I was going to meet Alin Sedmamin at the shopping centre, he just stared at me.
“I know what all those words mean,” he said slowly, “but not when you use them together like that. You’re going where? To meet who?”
“Very funny.” I sat down in a skimchair beside him and quickly sketched my conversation with the PrimeCorp chairman. “I don’t know details yet, but Sedmamin’s in some kind of trouble.”
“Good,” Hirin said with a snort. “That actually makes me very happy. I want Sedmamin to be in trouble. The more, the better, as far as I’m concerned. He’s caused you—caused us—enough of it.”
I sighed. “I know. But I’m awfully curious to know what it’s about.”
“This could be a trick. I don’t trust that man as far as I could jettison him out an airlock.”
I ran a hand through my hair. “I know, I know. I don’t trust him, either. But I honestly think he’s scared of something. And I want to know what.” I leaned back in my chair, letting the servos massage my back. The hum of the tiny motors was soothing. “I can’t think of any reason he’d try to trick me into meeting him now. Mother’s released her data onto the public nets. If it’s about what we saw in Otherspace—”
“Are we really calling it ‘Otherspace’?”
I stuck out my tongue at him. “Until someone comes up with something better, yes. If it’s about what we saw there, our statements are already on record with the Protectorate.”
“Maybe they want to bully or threaten us into recanting.”
“It’s a little late for that. And why would they take a chance on making things worse?”
“Maybe they think we’re not telling everything, and they want to torture you to find out.”
I rolled my eyes. “Slightly melodramatic, even for PrimeCorp, don’t you think?”
Hirin fixed a very husbandly eye on me. “Well, you’re not going alone.”
“I had no intention of it, don’t worry. It’s only a matter of deciding who to take with me. Rei and Maja have already gone over there, although it’s just to shop.”
“Don’t spoil their fun. I can go,” he volunteered, but I shook my head.
“You’re busy here already. And I’m not altogether sure I can trust you not to come barging in if you imagine something’s going wrong.”
“You wound me,” he said mildly.
“I’ll ask Baden. He’s good at being inconspicuous. Not that you aren’t,” I added, holding up a hand to forestall the protest I knew would follow. Hirin likes to think he’s at least competent at just about anything. Honestly, he’s probably right.
He grinned. “I’m okay with you taki
ng Baden. I know he’ll look out for you. Just remember I’ll be waiting with bated breath to find out what Sedmamin wants with you.”
I kissed him. “I can’t wait to find that out myself,” I told him, and went to collect my communications officer.
Baden and I walked to the shopping centre, since it was near the spaceport and Sedmamin had given me lots of time to get there. In this sun-drenched city, I’d left my jacket on the ship, and the heat felt lovely on my bare arms. I wished I’d changed out of long pants, as well. The locals and visitors on the tree-lined boulevard appeared to be in full vacation mode, strolling and chatting in brightly-coloured beachwear. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt that relaxed. Hirin and I would have to get that vacation soon.
Baden walked in silence beside me, which was unlike him. He tended more to the chatty side than the strong, silent type.
“How’s everything with Maja?” I asked him, since we rarely had a chance to talk one-on-one lately. Mainly because he was always with my daughter, so I suspected I knew the answer, but I like my crew to feel that I’m interested in their lives. And honestly, I wondered if she’d told him about the message from Taso. I wanted to ask, but if she hadn’t, that would be disastrous.
He kept his eyes ahead, strangely impassive, but said, “Perfect, from my perspective. Unless you know something I don’t.”
I glanced at him, willing him to turn and meet my eyes. He did, after a moment, and I asked, “What is it?”
He shrugged. “I know she got a message from Taso.”
I took his arm and leaned close to his ear. “She’s not in love with him anymore, you know.”
He flashed me a grin then, although it didn’t touch his eyes. “Marriage—it’s a pretty strong bond. All that shared history? Wouldn’t do to discount one too easily.”
Nearspace Trilogy Page 75