“Captain, you have a comm from Kai Wentworth,” Marti said, interrupting his contemplation of trying to get a better answer from his broker.
“Let her know I’m busy at the moment and I’ll get back to her when I can.”
“She says it is urgent that she talk to you.”
He bit down on his lip but decided the problem he was having with Ammo would still be there regardless, so talking to the client first wouldn’t change anything. “Put her through.”
Her face appeared on the forward window in front of him. “Captain Walker, I’m afraid my situation has changed, and I need you to pick up my cargo at Ceres Alpha Transfer immediately.” She didn’t wait for him to acknowledge she was on the comm.
“Excuse me?” he said. “We’re having some issues of our own here at Phrygian Center. I’ll need to take care of something first.”
“The harbormaster at CA Transfer has given us twelve hours to get our gear loaded and hauled,” she said, her voice revealing that she was more than a little worried about something.
He shook his head. “I think maybe you owe me some answers first. What is going on?”
“What do you mean?”
“Somebody just tried to blow up my ships and now you’re on a deadline to get your gear moved? Do you have someone dogging us that I should know about before we go any further?
“Someone tried to blow up your ship?” Her eyes flashed for a brief instant to the side like she was looking at someone off-screen.
“Yah. Both of them,” he confirmed. “A terrorist group called the Red Wall almost killed one of my handlers and they got me the riffrush to the nearest airlock. Security damn near blew me out without a suit.”
She nodded and looked again to the side. She was definitely not alone. It was also obvious she knew more than she was saying, and that didn’t make Ethan comfortable. “Were your ships damaged?”
“I don’t know yet. I’ve just spent several uncomfortable hours with my new security buddies in the interrogation section of Phrygian security and haven’t made it back aboard.” He glanced over at Ammo, but she was intent on watching the scenery and pretending not to listen. “What bothers me is that you’re not answering my question.”
“I will explain everything once we’re underway.” She looked down at something in front of her. “I’ll be meeting you at Ceres before you have the train hooked up.”
He muted the comm. “I didn’t know she was on the passenger list.”
“Don’t you ever read the manifest?” Ammo asked.
“I did. Every word. And I don’t remember her name being on it.”
“It’s there,” she said, holding up a hand like she was swearing an oath.
“Fine. Apparently, I don’t read well enough.”
He unmuted the comm. “I thought we were onloading your people at the twin cities after we get the habitat container.”
“We chartered transport, and if everything goes according to schedule, will leave Phobos Landing within the hour.”
“I don’t know if both my ships will be ready to leave that soon.”
Marti flashed a message on the screen. “Some work is incomplete but both ships are flight ready.”
“Nevermind. I’ve just been informed that we are good.” He sighed.
“Then would it be possible to have your second ship proceed to Transfer Hub Four?” she asked.
“Possibly. Why?” He liked this less with every word she spoke, but he wasn’t over the walk-off threshold. At least not yet.
“They’ve given us eighty hours to clear our cargo out of there too.”
“I’ll discuss it with my other captain and let you know,” he said. Something was swinging out of spec and that confirmed it. For her to have gotten word from X-04 would have taken over eighteen hours. Even assuming they made the decision at the same time that the Red Wall did its dirty, there was no way this connected up square, temporally speaking.
“Thank you, Captain. I will see you in a few hours.”
Her face dissolved, and he stared out at his ships as they maneuvered into position to make their approach to the hangar bay.
“I know you aren’t telling me everything you know about this job,” he said into the near silence. “I expect some answers.”
“Please talk to her first,” she said, never looking at him.
“You admit you know what’s going on then?”
She shook her head and tapped the icon on the panel to hand the shuttle over to the Automatic Landing Control. “I don’t know much more than you do. I just know that I trust Kai.”
“Tell me this. Is she why the One Earthers are after us?”
The hangar deck doors opened, and she turned her seat to face him. “I don’t know. I do know she was in Robinson when they took out the medical center.”
He studied her face for several seconds. “So were a lot of other people.”
“That’s true. I don’t know how much she was involved, but she got the investigator’s report released and sent to Erin Zaslow. It’s why you got out of there without more stink.”
He leaned back in his seat, locking his hands together to steeple his fingers. He rested his chin on them and chewed that revelation. “If she knew about the attack on the stanchion, why did she seem surprised about the ships?”
“Because I didn’t tell her what blew up, just that you and Quinn were being blamed.”
“You contacted her first?”
She nodded. “Like I said, I trust her.”
“There’s a lot here I’m not scanning. I’m not sure that lack of data is engendering a similar feeling of trust on my part.”
“Just talk to her. That’s all I ask.”
Chapter Fourteen
It took three hours for Kaycee to get Quinn checked out and for Ethan to talk it out with Nuko and decide she should take the Elysium Sun to X-04, before he knew more about what was going on. What finally convinced him was Ammo pointing out that that if they kept both ships together in Zone One, it only made them a bigger target.
He knew that if the deal went out the airlock, he could always call her off, and send her to ground somewhere safe long before she got there to pick up the load. It was almost seventy hours to the Hub, and at least if she was on cruise and out of the system, she could get away from almost anything that might come after her. The Elysium Sun was fast for a freighter and she knew Rene’s trick of coupling the DSL coils to the mains to get an extra speed boost that would leave almost anything trying to come after them sucking vacuum wake.
What convinced him to meet with the client before he backed out of the deal was when Nuko pointed out that their load broker deserved their trust after the Ut’aran rescue. She put a lot of weight in Ammo’s trust of Kai Wentworth, and Ethan had to acknowledge that he did, too.
It was still a damned scary thing to realize they were dancing this far over the abyss, while they were tooling up for the longest run in human history.
Because their new medtech hadn’t arrived yet, he sent Kaycee on the Sun with Nuko for the first leg. He had the doctor send the medtech a comm, letting him know that he’d ride from Ceres Alpha Transfer to X-04 on the Dawn. For some reason it also made him feel better that if there were terrorists in the field, he had their doctor on Nuko’s ship. Maybe it was pointless and old fashioned, but he felt better that way.
Sitting on the ConDeck alone as they made their approach to Ceres Alpha Transfer, he realized the real reason behind sending her on was that he intended to vent some of his frustration on Kai Wentworth. He was hoping he’d get some answers, but if not, then he didn’t want a lot of witnesses when he pissed the deal sidewise.
It made him feel a lot less constrained to play nice, when the two who held the most sway over him weren’t around to second-guess his decisions.
“I have located our storage node, Captain,” Marti said, interrupting his mental rehearsal of what he wanted to say to the client. “There are four container units in place. Should I n
otify control that we want to make approach?”
“Not yet. Stand by outside their traffic exclusion zone,” he said. “Do we have Wentworth’s transport online?”
“Yes, there are six fast shuttles and a commercial medical transport waiting at the node.”
They hadn’t wasted any time crossing the asteroids with the Dawn, so Mars must have been in a much better position to get to Ceres than they were from the Cybele cluster.
“Let’s have a chat before we make the commitment to pick up anything,” he said
“Opening a channel,” Marti said.
Kai Wentworth’s face appeared on his console. “Captain Walker, I’m glad you’re here. We want to load our sleeper passengers so we can get the medical transport released and back to the Twin Cities. Unfortunately, Ceres Control won’t authorize us to access the load until you take possession.”
He nodded. “You can’t load the sleepers until after that container is attached to the Dawn, anyway. Because of our premature departure from Phrygian Center, Ammo didn’t get to finish her DSL pilot certifications. As a result, she can’t carry human livery. We have to anchor the container to the ship before you can start.”
“How long will that take?”
“That depends on you,” he said. “I need some answers first. Otherwise I’m not inclined to take legal possession of the load.”
She leaned back and frowned. Her cheek appliance twitching as she clenched her teeth. It was distracting, but he stared into her eyes and tried to ignore it. Finally, she nodded. “If I give you the answers you want, we’ll need to proceed as quickly as possible.”
“Why is that?”
“Can I come aboard, Captain? I’d prefer not to have this conversation over an open comm,” she said.
Now it was his turn to clench his teeth. He watched as she nodded to someone beside her.
“One of the shuttles is moving in our direction,” Marti announced.
“You are used to getting your way, aren’t you?” he asked.
“I have no choice, Captain Walker.” Her eyes looked sad, but she would not give ground and he could see it. “Please understand that there’s only one way this plays out. I’ll give you whatever you need to make this happen.”
This is getting more twisty by the minute. He glared but nodded. “Your shuttle is too big for our hangar. Have your pilot tie off to our upper airlock. I’ll meet you there.” He slapped his hand down to disconnect the comm.
“Marti handle the approach. I don’t want anything unexpected.”
“Her pilot already handed off to me,” it said.
Pushing himself up, he tapped into the internal commlink. “Ammo to the ConDeck.”
“Are we there? Don’t you want me in the DSL?”
“I’m tired of people assuming what I want done,” he growled. “Get your ass up here. You’re holding the deck while I talk to her majesty, Queen Wentworth.”
“Oh. I’m on my way.” The link clicked off, and he knew she understood he wasn’t in the mood for it.
They passed each other in the command deck corridor, and she jumped to the side to avoid being run over. “She’s obviously not making you feel fuzzy.”
He spun and shot her dead with a laser level evil eye. She flinched. “Just watch the deck.”
He got to the upper airlock just as her shuttle locked off. The green light flickered and then lit as the pressure equalized and the outer hatch unlocked. He hadn’t opened the inner door, and she stepped into the lock. When the inner one didn’t open as she approached, she stood staring at him through the small viewport with a curious expression. “Is there a problem with me coming aboard, Captain?”
There was a problem, and he knew it. He also knew that he had no choice but to hear her out. He watched her for several seconds before he sighed and palmed the lock plate. The inner door swung in.
A second later it hit him once again how overwhelmingly stunning she was. She wore an ice blue thinskin with silver accents and a knee length vest with a tight belt that held it bunched just below her breasts. He shook his head and cleared his throat.
“Miss Wentworth. I’ll hear you out and you’ll answer my questions, but if it doesn’t swing to spec, I’m reasonably sure we are walking away from this deal.”
“I understand you’re upset—”
“Damned straight I am. We haven’t even loaded yet, and you’ve already gotten both my ships nearly blown to shit, plus one of my crewmen almost blinded. Not to mention, me bound, and almost labeled a terrorist.”
“That’s unfortunate.” She smiled sadly. “Can we sit somewhere and talk this out? I understand your ship has a large lounge on the middeck. That would be ideal.”
“I have an office on the Command Deck.”
“I know, but the lounge would be better.”
“Whatever you want,” he said, spinning and heading back to the lift cage. He felt dizzy and realized he was almost holding his breath. It felt like a defensive mechanism.
When she stepped into the cage beside him, her presence washed over him in a wave again. She was distracting, even just standing beside him and doing nothing. His mind clouded as he let his eyes scan her.
What the frak is wrong with me? He jerked himself back to the moment and shook his head.
“I’m sorry, Captain Walker. I can’t help it.”
“Help what?” The lift gate opened on the middeck and he stepped out, almost stumbling.
“Sit there,” she said, nodding toward the table they used for meetings. It was all the way across the room. She waited for him to walk over and sit before she perched on the edge of a different table five meters from where he’d landed.
“I don’t understand what the hell is going on, but I need an explanation,” he said. “First, I need to know that this Red Wall attack on my ship is not because of you and your cargo.”
She nodded. “I don’t know why the Red Wall would be interested in you. They are a splinter group of a much larger fundamentalist movement that resists humanity being an interstellar civilization.”
“Right, I got that already from Zaslow,” he said trying to build anger as a defense against… something… she was using to sway him. He recognized it even if didn’t understand it. “Why would they be after me? Or after you?”
“If our mission succeeds, we’ll be expanding humanity well beyond the edge of its current exploration. Perhaps that’s it?”
He shook his head and looked down at the deck. Anywhere but at her.
“You know that doesn’t get enough traction for me to buy in.” He wanted to bellow in irrational rage, but he just cleared his throat and held his voice as steady as he could. “Tell me why you know so much about them?”
“What gives you the idea that I know anything else?”
He looked up into her eyes and frowned. “Ammo told me she contacted you, and that you supplied the info that got Zaslow to cut us loose.”
Nodding, her eyes flashed with something that resembled pain. Or anger. “That’s true,” she admitted, sliding off the table and into the seat. “I was in Robinson when they destroyed the medical center there. Because of my position with Starcorp Development, they called me in to help investigate the attack. My intent was to give Phrygian Security a nudge in the right direction to get them off you.”
“That’s quite a coincidence.” He shook his head, still fighting the overwhelming urge to take her word for it. Something made it hard to resist anything she said, and it left him wanting to rollover. Or scream. “I need the truth, or you need to find someone else to haul your cargo. From my seat, it looks like you might be the target these fanatics are after. If so, we’ve gotten caught too close to ground zero for me to feel fuzzy over this run.”
She leaned back and laced her fingers behind her head. He watched as she uncoiled, and his gaze lingered over the more interesting pieces of fleshly real estate that she proudly displayed.
Stop it! he thought, squeezing his eyes closed and waiting until
the wave of distraction passed. This was insane. There was no way she should be so distracting, and he knew it was unnatural to be lusting after her this hard.
“You’re right.” She unlocked her fingers and put her hands on her thighs. “There’s something going on. And it’s a lot bigger than anyone sees right now.”
He leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees hanging his head down and trying to focus on the deck plating in front of him. “Alright I’m listening.”
She took in a deep breath and let it out. “Do you know what a plusser is?”
“From the tri-vids?” he snorted. “A genetically engineered superhuman?”
“Not superhuman, but yes, a genetically engineered person.”
He fought down an urge to laugh, but when he glanced up, she wasn’t smiling. She was serious.
“Robinson Medical Center was a crèche facility for plussers,” she said. “The Red Wall blew it up because they believe that augmented humans are dangerous.”
“Wouldn’t they be?” He shook his head.
“They aren’t,” she said, with that expression of anger flashing across her face again. “But facts don’t hold much water with fundamentalist thinking.”
“You want me to believe that these One Earthers attacked Robinson because of an imagined threat, from fictional engineered people? I’m not ready to go there.”
“That is why they did it.” She stood up and paced around the table she had occupied.
“Let’s start with the idea that they think plussers are real.” He watched her until his brain couldn’t take it anymore and he tore his eyes away. “And somehow that’s what got us attacked.”
She believes what she’s saying?
The implications clicked into place in his mind.
He launched himself up and over to the window along the front of the lounge. He stared out at the stars for almost a minute before he turned back and looked at the far wall above her with intent, keeping her only in his peripheral vision while he struggled to sort out his thoughts. “I’m not sure I like what I’m thinking at the moment.”
Wings of Earth- Season One Page 70