Then was some shuffling around as these orders were obeyed. Alexander took a moment to inspect the dead technician before the others picked up the body. It looked to him as if Gobeh had cracked his skull on the bulkhead. A glance at the wall showed a thin red smear of blood on the pale green surface.
Thad groaned.
“You’re hurt, Thad!” Alexander said, feeling guilty that he hadn’t noticed before. “Sit down and let me look at you.”
“I’m okay,” Thad said, blinking. He tried to reach one hand behind him to touch his back. “Not hurt bad.”
Alexander pushed him into a chair and inspected the shallow, burn-like wound across Thad’s shoulder blades. His friend’s shirt was charred in places.
“Napier,” Madeline said, “get him down to sick bay and see that Doc looks at him right away.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Madeline started for the door. She paused before she went through it and looked back at them. “I almost forgot. Thank you both. You probably saved my life.”
“It was no problem,” Alexander said. “I’m just sorry the Corps never taught me less a lethal way to take someone out.”
She shrugged. “Don’t sweat it this time. He would have gone out an airlock anyway. You just saved us the bother.”
She left without a backward glance.
Alexander waited while Thad got to his feet. He walked behind the older man as they headed for the sick bay. Thad walked without speaking until they turned the corner into an empty corridor. He stopped abruptly, spun around, and caught Alexander by the front of his shirt. “What the hell were you trying to do? You could have gotten her killed!”
Alexander just grinned down at him. “Would you rather I had walked out and left her alone with him?”
Thad let go of him. “No.”
Alexander eyed him critically. “You’ve got it bad for her, don’t you?”
“Shut up!” Thad said. He started for the sick bay.
Alexander laughed softly as he followed behind him. “Don’t worry about what I think. Worry about what happens when the skipper has time to mull this over.”
• • •
Thaddeus winced when Doc applied the anesthetic patch to his back, but it took effect quickly.
“Feeling better?” Doc Sandoz asked.
“Yes.” Thaddeus kept his answer short, partly to maintain his usual persona and partly to give himself time to think. While Doc flipped through a medical manual and then filled a hypo with healing accelerant, Thaddeus pondered Alex’s comment and decided his roommate was very likely right. He might well have given himself away. Maddy was no fool.
“There you go,” Doc said, his voice encouraging, as if Thaddeus were a child. “It shouldn’t bother you.”
Thaddeus thanked him briefly and stepped out of the sick bay. He would go back to his cubby. If Alex wasn’t around, he would file a quick report on what had happened. It was a few days before his scheduled check-in with Command, but it wouldn’t hurt to be cautious.
The sight of Juan Mahler and Luong Khan standing in the corridor with stun guns on their belts brought him up short.
“Sorry, Thad,” Juan said, in the same kindly tone most of the crew used toward him. “The skipper wants to see you in her cabin right away.”
Thaddeus walked in front of them figuring that the game was up. As soon he walked into Madeline’s cabin he was sure.
She held up the tiny weapon Gobeh had pointed at her and aimed it straight at Thaddeus. “Now,” she said, ice in her voice, “we’re going to have a little chat. Sit down, Thaddeus Jenner, or whatever your name is.”
Juan and Luong stared at her open-mouthed as Thaddeus sat down in a chair. The captain’s cabin was the only place besides the common room that had free standing chairs.
“Start talking,” Maddy said. “Whatever you are, you’re no simple-minded idiot. You were as sharp as a laser and moving at light speed back in the common room. Why are you on my ship passing yourself off as an imbecile?”
Thaddeus tried giving her a vacant-eyed, confused stare.
“That’s no good,” she said. “You can’t go back and forth, Thad. I’ve seen the real you now, and there’s no going back.
Thaddeus had known this moment would come sooner or later. In a way he was relieved to have his cover broken. Acting mentally slow had gotten very old. And after all, his primary mission had already been accomplished. “I’d prefer to talk to you alone.”
After two seconds Maddy jerked her head toward the door. “Wait outside. If I need you, I’ll call you.”
The two crewmen left without argument, and Maddy raised the energy pistol suggestively. “Talk!”
“All right,” Thaddeus said. “Where should I start?”
She drew in her breath sharply, as if she hadn’t quite believed it was possible that he had been deceiving her. “Start at the beginning. When Lu Fien got herself thrown in the clink back on Decos, and we needed an astrogator all of a sudden, that was a setup, wasn’t it?”
No point in denying the obvious. “Yes.”
“Next question,” Maddy said with a grim smile. “Who are you working for’?”
Thaddeus smiled back, just as grimly. He hadn’t actually cleared this step with Command, but he had mentioned the possibility. And the regs were fuzzy on what had to be cleared and what was left to his discretion. “Who do you think?”
Her smile changed to a frown. “The Empire?”
He snorted. “What have I ever done to make you think I’m that low?”
Her eyes opened wider as she considered the range of possibilities. “ThreeCon? You’ve been spying on me for ThreeCon?”
Thaddeus suffered one last second of hesitation, and then he nodded.
She advanced on him and stopped when she was only a meter away. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t fry your brain right now?”
He looked up at her and met her angry gaze without flinching. “How about I just saved your life, and you’re not a murderer?”
She glared at him. “Maybe both things are true. What’s to stop me from turning around and heading for Tegallos? I could get a good price for a nice looking hunk of flesh like you.”
“If you did that, you’d miss your rendezvous in the Degollado system—plus, you’d have a hard time getting to Tegallos without me.”
She shut her mouth in a tight, anxious line. “So, you know what’s in the hold?”
“I know.”
She gave him a grim smile, annoyance warring with doubt. “And what happens when we show up for the drop? Will ThreeCon be waiting for us with open arms?”
“No. Hopefully, the rebel ship will be waiting.”
“Are you saying it’s not a trap?”
Thaddeus snorted with disgust. “Use the brains I know you have, will you? Who do you think sold you the weapons in the first place?”
Her eyes widened at that. “You’re saying ThreeCon is backing the rebels?”
Thaddeus sighed. How to explain interstellar politics to someone who saw the universe in black and white? “No. Backing is too strong a word. Let’s just say ThreeCon chooses to make it a little easier for anyone who wants to dump the du Plessis dynasty to get their hands on the means to do it.”
“What about the Non-Interference Accord?”
This made him smile. Who would have thought she could be so naive? “When you’re talking about intelligent native species on their own planets, the Non-Interference Accord is strictly enforced. When you’re talking about colony worlds that simply choose not to be in ThreeCon, the Accord is a polite fiction. It just means ThreeCon can’t act openly.”
She still seemed skeptical. “So who are you, really?”
He stretched in his chair. It felt almost as if he had been liberated after a long time in restraints. This was even better than talking freely with Alex. “My name is actually Thaddeus Jenner. I was a lieutenant in the defense forces until a few years ago, when the Intelligence division sucked me into th
e Degollado situation and then into this mission. It seemed best to stick with my own name so I could answer to it with no problem. It’s not like you or anyone on Gaulle had any reason to know it.”
This caveat seemed to surprise her. “You’re not a regular spy?”
He smiled at her wording. “I suppose it depends on your definition of ‘regular.’ In ThreeCon, you don’t get to pick and choose your assignments. Besides, we don’t call ourselves spies. My official title is Agent Jenner.”
“And who was that in the bar on Decos—the man who was crying into his beer because he had to let you go and you were such a crackerjack astrogator?”
“Another agent. I don’t really think you need to know his name.”
Her lips formed a sort of half smile, half grimace, the kind of expression she usually used to convey bad news. “Seems to me you made things hard on yourself. You signed on as an astrogator, but you pretended to be dim.”
He nodded. “We had tried a couple of times to get someone on board the Bee. The problem was, you had your special employment program going. Anytime a vacancy came up, you waited until you got to Lubar or one of the space stations, and put the word out that a spot was open if anyone was thinking of deserting. That made it damned hard. We finally had to set up your astrogator while you were on Decos. You only had one fully qualified astrogator, so you had to replace her at once.”
Her expression shifted to reluctant admiration. “It worked, too. So why did they go to all that trouble to get someone on my ship?”
This was the heart of the matter. “ThreeCon knew you were running on the shady side of the law as far as the Gaullian Empire was concerned. They suspected you were up to other nefarious activities in the Rim. I was supposed to check you out, make sure you were someone we could assist with a clean conscience. ThreeCon’s pretty picky about whom they use for covert ops. They don’t like funding someone and finding out later they’re scum.”
“And what did you report on me?”
Thaddeus paused before he answered and then spoke very deliberately. “I told them you had very loose ideas about tax laws and you enforced your brand of shipboard justice pretty strictly, but you weren’t a murderer or a scum bucket.”
No expression at all now. Her face could have been carved in stone. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. And of course, I also told them about the incident with the Emperor Lothar.”
Her forehead creased in a frown of annoyance. “That was before you came aboard.”
“I know. But I did a little snooping. I wanted to know why you had ship-mounted weapons on board, and a second identification transponder—one that put out a false signal.”
“You have been busy.” Her voice was as sour as her expression.
“So were you. Stealing’s a big jump up from smuggling, Maddy.”
“Stealing?” Maddy said sharply. “I don’t call it stealing to take something from the du Plessis.”
“I don’t know that I disagree with that. But you fired on another ship; you could have killed a lot of people.”
“We were careful.” Her tone was defensive. “No one was hurt—not badly hurt, anyway. And it meant that the Emperor was short one shipment of very valuable metals. We all felt pretty good about that.”
“You weren’t afraid of getting caught?”
She smiled with faint condescension. “Nissan class is the most common type of freighter around. Any time we put in at Lubar or one of the space stations, there are always ships that look just like us. We all kept our helmets on during the raid, and as you pointed out, we were giving out a false ID signal.”
“What about markings?”
Her smile took on overtones of a smirk. “By the time we got to Decos, believe me, our markings were different.”
“It was still a risk.”
“Why you?” she said, changing the subject abruptly. “Why did they haul you out of the defense forces—or wherever—to come on board the Bee and spy on us?”
He shrugged. “I was their best match. I really was an astrogator and a damn good one for several years. I also did some amateur acting, which is why I got fingered for intelligence in the first place.”
She nodded as if acknowledging his acting ability. “That brings up my original question. Why did you pretend to be an idiot?”
He smiled as he remembered how they had arrived at the plan. “Well, it helped in a lot of ways. We reasoned that if you and your crew thought I was stupid, you’d all be less careful around me, and that proved to be quite true. Remember, too, that I didn’t know you back then. I didn’t want to sign on board and find myself ordered to kill someone, or anything like that. The obvious solution was to pretend to be so dim that no one would trust me with anything risky. It kept me out of the labor pool as far as law-breaking was concerned, and,” he looked up at her again, “it kept me off the list.”
She twisted her lips in an angry grimace. “That was, of course, an important consideration.”
“Yes.”
She tightened the grimace into something that approximated a smile—if you didn’t look at her eyes. “Lucky for you I’ve got scruples.”
“Yes,” he said again, and he stood up.
She backed up a pace. “Just what do you think you’re doing?”
He moved toward her, heedless of the energy pistol in her hand. He was glad it was a lethal weapon and not a stunner. If she had held a stunner, he’d be on the floor in seconds and miss this chance forever. But she would never shoot him with an energy pistol. “Something I’ve wanted to do for the last year and a half.”
She backed up another step and encountered the bunk. When Thaddeus kept coming, she raised the weapon threateningly. “Stop right there!”
He ignored the command. “Put that damn thing away, will you?”
She hesitated, and he was on her. He caught her up in an enthusiastic embrace and kissed her fiercely.
Maddy was breathing hard; it was difficult to tell if she was angry or merely excited. She hadn’t hit him; that was a good sign.
“Just who do you think you are?” she demanded as soon as he let her loose.
Thaddeus gave her a level stare. In the back of his mind he knew this action was questionable as far as regs went, but he was beyond caring. “Someone who wants you just as much as you want me.”
She took two deep, angry breaths and then she seemed to change her mind. She tossed the energy pistol across the room and threw her arms around his neck. Thaddeus leaned over, and the two of them fell onto Maddy’s bunk.
Frantic with eagerness, she ripped his clothes off in seconds. He managed to return the compliment almost as expeditiously. Some time later, he looked down at her. Her eyes were closed as she nestled against him, to all appearances, fully satisfied from the encounter.
Thaddeus had found it equally gratifying. He stroked her arm delicately, then kissed her shoulder, her ear, and finally her mouth.
She opened her eyes and looked up at him. “Was that part of ThreeCon’s plan?”
“No!” he said. “That wasn’t planned at all. I just couldn’t stand it anymore.”
She smiled a little at his tone. “I know what you mean. A couple of times it was all I could do not to ask you to put your name on the list.”
Thaddeus’ felt his face flush red. “I don’t want to hear another goddamn word about your damn fucking list!”
She let out a small laugh. “Sorry,” she said at his grim frown. “It’s just that it really is a fucking list—literally, I mean.”
Thaddeus didn’t laugh with her. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t see the humor in it. Besides, the damn list almost got you killed.”
She got her stubborn look. “No, it didn’t. Gobeh was skunked out of his skull. He would have gone around the bend no matter what.”
He looked down at her in disgust. “You don’t think it’s a bad idea for the captain to screw sixty-eight percent of the crew?”
She lifted her brows. “Are
you approximating or have you actually calculated the percentage?”
He snorted with disgust. “I couldn’t help calculating it. Why did you ever start the list, Maddy?”
She propped her head up on one hand, clearly unrepentant. “It seemed like a good idea. After my first three months as captain of my own ship, I was a wreck. I knew it was bad practice for a captain to sleep with selected crew members, so I decided I’d have to sleep with all of them—all the straight men, anyway—or none of them. None of them wasn’t an option I was willing to consider.”
He gave her a hard stare. No matter how much of a relief it was to be able to talk about this with her, her ideas still made him angry. “I don’t hold with that kind of list. I’d never have one and I’d never be on one, either.”
She studied him overtly, as if she liked what she saw, but there was some other consideration she was weighing in her mind. “I see.” She sat up abruptly, got out of bed, and padded across the floor to snatch up the energy pistol.
“Put your clothes on, Thad,” she said, pointing the weapon at him.
He lay on her bed and looked at her glumly. They were back where they had started. “So this didn’t mean anything to you?”
She lifted her chin. “I didn’t say that. It was very nice. I enjoyed it quite a lot. But this is my ship, and I need some time to think. You’re spending the night in the brig. I should think you’d want to have your clothes on when you go there.”
He sat up and reached for his underclothes. “You going to open the door to Khan and Mahler like that?”
Her smile was wicked. “You’re forgetting they’ve both seen me naked already.”
He frowned again. “I wish I could forget.” He waved a hand at her in an annoyed gesture. “Put that down and get dressed. If you shoot me, we’re all in trouble. I’m your only astrogator, remember?”
“I suppose you are. Although Niels has some time on older systems. All right,” she went on, waving the pistol at the door to the tiny private bathroom that was her greatest luxury. “Take your clothes in there. I’ll get dressed while you do.”
He sighed and got to his feet, collected his clothes, and headed for the bathroom.
Shades of Empire (ThreeCon) Page 8