Fortunes of the Imperium (24 page)
Read Fortunes of the Imperium Online
Authors: Jody Lynn Nye
Tags: #Fiction, #science fiction, #General, #Action & Adventure, #Space Opera
“Not on recording. Time codes unchangeable. Mistaken.”
“Mistaken? Then what about that orange thing? The one he was trying to hit me with?”
“What orange thing?” the guard captain asked.
“I’ll show you!” M’Kenna sprang to her feet.
She and Rafe went back to the cell accompanied by the captain and an escort of two Geckos. The children were awake now, with wide, concerned eyes. M’Kenna hugged each one tightly. Rafe gathered them all into one huge hug.
“We were worried about you,” Nona said. M’Kenna felt terrible. Who knew what they thought when they woke up to find their parents missing?
“We’re fine, honey,” M’Kenna assured her. She scanned the floor. “Have you seen a flat orange plastic thing? It’d be about the size of your palm. It’s important.”
“No. I can look.”
“Me, too,” Lerin declared.
M’Kenna got on her hands and knees near the place where she and the Gecko had scuffled. The children scrambled around on the floor to help her hunt.
“Dere, mama!” Akela announced triumphantly, pointing a chubby little finger. M’Kenna followed his glance. There it was! M’Kenna just managed to head him off before he picked it up.
Clear liquid pooled on the floor around the device. She handed over the orange object to the guards, then sopped up the liquid with a disposer cloth. Holding it gingerly between thumb and forefinger, she delivered it to the captain.
“There, I told you. Where would we get anything like that? You know every single thing we have in here.”
The guards ignored her scolding. One of them ran a sensor over the cloth, then muttered at the reading. M’Kenna vibrated with impatience.
“Well? What is it?”
“Only water. Must have dreamed.”
“I was not dreaming! I’ll let you scope me to prove I’m not lying.”
The captain shook his head. “You believe. No proof.”
M’Kenna folded her arms.
“Then I want to make a complaint! I want our lawyer here right now! I want to see the Imperium ambassador.”
The Gecko let out a burbling noise, their way of sighing. He picked up her tablet from the bunk, tapped in a command, and handed it to her.
“Fill out forms,” he said, his face a study in dejected resignation. M’Kenna knew what that meant: pages and pages and pages of questions, all designed to make her doubt herself and her story. She had to remind herself that he and the guards weren’t unreasonable people. They were doing a job that she would never have taken, not if street-sweeper, medical test subject or live-fire target were still open. She dropped onto the bunk, clutching the pad in her hands.
The guards locked them in again.
Rafe sat down gently beside her and draped his arm over her shoulders.
“Don’t be upset, honey,” he said. “It sounds like they don’t know everything about this building. We’ll catch the sneak. We’ll just have to stand watches, just like we did when the power plant on the ship started that weird brownout cycle a couple of years ago.”
M’Kenna nodded.
“I’m not upset, I’m angry! They made me feel like they were tearing my sanity away, and it’s the only thing I have left! I need it to protect all of you.” She looked up at Rafe, her eyes taking in every angle of his features. She loved the way his eyes crinkled at the corners, making the thick black lashes bunch up. She loved the rich, brown color of those eyes. She loved his strong chin and cheekbones, and even the fleshy lobes of his ears. She could hardly bear to think that at any moment he could be taken away, and they would never see each other again. She slipped her arm around his back and squeezed with all her strength. He leaned over to kiss her on the temple. For a moment she felt loved and comforted, but the sensation only made her more frustrated. They were in danger, and she couldn’t get anyone in authority to believe her.
The Wichus did, though.
“Hey, smoothskins!” Nuro bellowed, his voice booming out into the corridor. “Are you people all right?”
M’Kenna sighed.
“Yes, we’re fine. They didn’t believe me.”
“Figures. Sorry they’re such
felimfets
,” Nuro said.
“Huh. I know a lot of Wichu slang, but not that one. Whatever that means, I hope it’s nasty,” M’Kenna said. Her eyes met Rafe’s. His were brimming with amusement. She couldn’t help it. She smiled back.
“Lowest of the low scum,” Nuro said. “You wouldn’t even scrape your shoes. You’d just burn them instead of trying to get it off.”
“That’s about right,” she said. With a sigh she ran a finger over the tablet screen. “Well, these forms won’t fill themselves.”
“I’ll help you, honey,” Rafe said. “If you do the first hundred pages, I’ll do the next.”
“Deal.”
The humming of a hovercart grew in the hallway. M’Kenna looked up from the screen of blanks. The serene female doctor appeared at the door with her collection of vials and tubes.
“Ready?” she asked.
“For what?” M’Kenna asked, blankly. Then she remembered: the habilitation treatment. “No!”
“You’ve got to, honey,” Rafe said. “I already feel a million times better.”
“Process painless,” the doctor assured her. M’Kenna shook her head firmly.
“I can’t do it,” she said. “I can’t let my family be alone, not now.” She waved a finger in the direction of the office. “They think I’m lying about an intruder, but I’m not. We’re in danger!” She scanned the equipment on the hovercart. “Wait, you have a truth scope. Do a reading on me. That’ll prove to them I’m not lying!”
“Told already,” the doctor said, her mild face sympathetic. “If you like. But they think hallucination. In your situation, possible.”
M’Kenna felt her face growing hot with fury.
“Well, I can’t let myself go into a coma for four days. I want to see the Imperium ambassador. I’ll wait until she gets here to take the treatment.”
“Sicker!” the doctor warned.
“I know that! I’ll wait.”
Shaking her head, the doctor rolled her cart away.
The kids were fine once the habilitation treatment was back in their systems. Just fine. All of them had lost the dullness in their skins. They began to put on weight even on the limited prison food. Dorna grew a couple of centimeters in time for her third birthday. M’Kenna felt outrage. Her baby’s childhood should not be happening in a prison!
It took them a few days to get the application finished. M’Kenna sent it in with a personal letter in the Notes section begging for the ambassador to come visit them and the others as soon as possible. She followed it up with a message to the ambassador’s Infogrid file. When there was no more she could reasonably accomplish, she handed the tablet over to Rafe and curled up for a nap.
When she woke up, she felt eyes on her. She looked up. Rafe was staring down at her. He was almost shimmering with excitement.
“I was reading our messages. Why didn’t you tell me we got an official interested in our case?”
It all came back to M’Kenna. She sat up.
“I’m so sorry, honey. I forgot all about it.”
She sat up, and he settled in beside her.
“It’s from someone in the navy,” he said. “Isn’t that weird?”
“I don’t care, as long as someone listens to us!”
Over his arm, M’Kenna scanned the beginning of the message, then read through the rest of the message. She had to go over it a few times more just to absorb the contents. “I can’t believe it.”
In too many words, it expressed regret that citizens of the Imperium were put into such a perilous situation. Their situation, as those of their fellow pilots and their crews, had been noted.
A diplomat with ties to the Imperial family and the hierarchy of the navy was coming to Dilawe to negotiate with the Autocrat on several important issues. Among those was the severity of the penalties indicated for the crimes of which they had been accused. Over the last several years, several attempts had been made to equalize the punishments on both sides of the frontier. If the Coppers were indeed not guilty as they insisted, the Imperium would stand behind them throughout the trial and thereafter. If they were guilty, the matter for the courts to decide, the representative would do his best to intercede on their behalf regarding sentencing.
“Do their best,” M’Kenna scoffed. “I really hoped for better.”
“It’s not perfect,” Rafe said, “but what did we expect? It’s better than anyone else has offered us.” He held the pad in both hands. “It finishes with, ‘We recommend you put your confidence in the envoy. He will be coming to interview you as soon as he reaches Nacer.’ I can’t wait!” he said.
“What’s the diplomat’s name?” M’Kenna asked.
Rafe scrolled down to the end of the letter.
“He’s called Lord Thomas Innes Kinago. According to this, he’s the son of the First Space Lord. Pretty cool, huh?” He threw an arm around her shoulders and squeezed hard. M’Kenna felt such a rush of relief she wished she could throw herself at him and show her joy, but the kids, and the Geckos, and a dozen hidden video pickups, were watching. Instead, she was ready to call for the doctor to start her habilitation therapy. She could use four days’ uninterrupted sleep, and now her conscience would be clear.
“Lord Thomas Kinago!” M’Kenna crowed. “Let’s look at his Infogrid file. I want to send him a personal message.”
Rafe brought it up.
The image in a little frame at the top showed a portrait of a handsome young man with sandy brown hair, a golden complexion and bright blue-green eyes. His jaw and nose were strong but friendly. M’Kenna trusted him at once. She knew she could put her faith in those eyes and that nose. She put a finger on the screen to scroll down.
A digitavid was the next thing visible. Whoever had captured the recording was standing just on the edge of a large crowd of people surrounding a huge, ugly sculpture. A section near the center was blackened, as if it had just been sheared off.
The focus of the crowd’s attention was at the base of the sculpture, where a flitter lay on its side. Even in the small image, M’Kenna could see that it was wrecked beyond repair. Anyone could put two and two together and assume that the flitter was what had caused the damage to the sculpture. As the recording rolled on, a man crawled out of the cockpit of the ruined craft. He had a bruise on his temple, one sleeve torn half off his arm and a big, silly grin on his face. With the help of a well-dressed onlooker, he struggled to his feet and gazed at the statue in dazed confusion. Suddenly, the local constabulary zipped down, bustled him into a skimmer, and roped off the area.
The recorder moved back then to show that several flitters were involved in the wreck, but his was clearly the first to have come to grief. At that moment, the video went black, as if security had disabled it by remote control.
Without a doubt, the man who had just been arrested was Lord Thomas Kinago. M’Kenna and Rafe looked at one another.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “Maybe it’s not him. Couldn’t there be another man with the same name?”
M’Kenna took the tablet and started an advanced search. Not only were there no names similar, there were no overlaps at all. Every entry, and there were lots of them, were about the same man, a very tall, very young aristocrat with tawny skin, sea-blue eyes, and waves of sandy brown hair. He was seen cavorting at parties, dancing with attractive women, competing in sports and attending functions at the Imperium palace. There was no doubt about it. This was Lord Thomas Kinago.
M’Kenna felt as though what remained of the floor had been pulled away from underneath her, sending her falling through the void.
“This is our rescuer?” Rafe asked, in disbelief. “We’re doomed. I almost wish they’d ignored us.”
“I’ll start messaging again,” M’Kenna said grimly, hauling her heart up from her toes. “There has to be someone
competent
out there who will listen to us.”
CHAPTER 21
“Please,” one of Nile’s girls begged as the
Pelican
floated in to dock in Way Station 46, “can we just walk around for a while? Just by ourselves? We won’t talk to anyone.”
“Please?” added the other, sounding even more desperate than the first.
“No!” Nile’s voice barked. “You stay with us. Understand? We won’t be here that long.”
Skana looked up at the ceiling from her crash couch and sighed.
“Nile, it won’t do them any harm. Where can they go?”
“Plenty of places!”
Skana started to wave her hand. The movement was stopped by the webbed straps. She let her arm fall to her chest. He couldn’t see her, anyhow.
“Let them go, Nile. They can do a little shopping, get a pedicure or a facial in a salon, or whatever. It’ll do them good. Ladies, you can take a couple of hours, but you keep your pocket secretaries on hand, and you answer when I call. That’s when, not if. Right?”
“Yes, ma’am! Thank you, Ms. Bertu.”
“And if you have a problem, I am your first call,
then
the station authorities.”
“Yes, ma’am!” they chorused.
“Oh, all right,” Nile growled.
Within a few moments, Captain Sigismund rang the all-clear. Gratefully, Skana freed herself from the enveloping harness. Tuk’s long face appeared above her, and a scaly paw reached down to assist her out of the couch.
“Thanks,” she said, and gestured toward the other side of the room. “Give Nile’s friends a hand.”
“Yes, madam.”
But there was no need. Skana was barely in time to see both of their scantily-clad posteriors disappearing out of the door of the lounge toward the cabins.
“What did you do to them?” Skana demanded, as Nile’s red face appeared from the depths of his couch.
“Nothing!” Nile said. He vaulted over the deep side and onto the lounge floor. His clothes were slightly askew, but he was fully clad. Skana found that surprising, considering that she knew he liked a little action among the netting. She put her hands on her hips.
“All right, what’s the problem?”
Nile brushed himself down.
“Nothing.”
“That wasn’t nothing. That was a plea for help. Both of them couldn’t wait to get away from you. What is wrong with them?”
Nile couldn’t meet her eyes.
“They’re not her.”
“You knew that when we hired them.”
“I know!” He finally turned to look at her. His nose was red. Usually, that meant frustration.
“You’re not going to punish them for that.” Nile seemed about to speak, then paused. Skana glared at him. “Say it!”
The words came unwillingly, but they came.
“I’m not going to punish them for not being her. It’s not their fault. I know that! But they look so much like her!” The last sentence was almost a wail. Nile started pacing up and back between the couches. Skana watched him go back and forth.
“That is why you chose them. Do you want to send them home?”
“No. Yes.”
“Which is it? This is the last chance. We can get one of the ships coming back from the Autocracy to take them into the Core Worlds. That was the deal we made with them. After that, you’ll have to commission a ship, which will run into real money. We’ve got it, but is that how you want to spend it?”
Nile gathered a deep breath and let it out. His barrel chest deflated.
“They can stay,” he said, with a sour face. “I just need a break.”
Skana thought that the girls could probably use one from him, too. Fortunately, the
Pelican
had plenty of cabins. Not anywhere near as nice as their customized suites, but not austerity bunks, either. She sent a ’bot to make up beds in the two farthest away from Nile’s quarters and make sure the toiletries were topped up in the heads. When the girls checked in with her, she would tell them they could stay out until the
Pelican
was ready to launch again. She was under no illusions as to how petulant her brother could be when he really decided to revert to emotional infancy. She hoped he hadn’t actually hurt one of them. The odds were against it. His self control was usually pretty good with employees. Guests, maybe not. Enemies, of course not. But these women had been hired by the Bertu Corporation, and even Nile’s personal quirks got overridden by pride in their business.
She had kept a pretty close eye on his Infogrid file, to make sure he wasn’t complaining about the women in his messages. All his problems were internal. He had behaved himself pretty much. If the women didn’t deserve fallout, she would see to it that they didn’t get any. They had been no trouble at all during the trip so far. She saw no reason not to make sure they got home, with a bonus.
The girls were long gone by the time Skana and Nile emerged into the landing bay. Tuk and two bodyguards followed them.
The metal floors were still chilly underfoot from their exposure to deep space. Skana could see hot spots surrounded by rings of frost as the local systems warmed the chamber to station ambient temperature. She surveyed the gunmetal gray bulkheads. The walls displayed framed regulations in swift rotation with big, colorful, tacky advertising for the local merchants, with moving tri-dee images that left nothing to the imagination.
“Recharge with Bee-no Fuels!” “Don’t believe what you hear—come and taste our food! No reconstituted ingredients!” “Too long in the pilot’s chair? Sore muscles are our specialty. MX-435 Massage.” “Special requests? No problem. Bring them to our willing . . . therapists.”
“I’ve seen worse,” she said, with a shrug. “Pretty offputting, though.”
“No one would want to stay here who didn’t have to,” Nile said. “You know, they ought to make this place a destination in itself. Target the advertising and make it sound more welcoming. I could do it. It would drag in the money in the first year.”
“I’m sure you could,” Skana said, with a cautious look around. She couldn’t see security video or audio pickups, but they had to be there. “Maybe later. Things are going to change a lot over there really soon.”
“Yeah,” Nile said. He glanced up toward the ceiling. “Hey, service! You want to get the inspection over with? I want to get out of here in my lifetime!”
His voice echoed off the lofty ceiling. Clicks and whirs from the engines aft told them that Captain Sigismund and her crew of three were doing final checks before debarking to stretch their legs. After a long few minutes, a door slid open in the wall of the landing bay. A bronze-colored securitybot about Tuk’s height and girth emerged and rolled toward them. Its uppermost fifth was molded into a pleasant-looking mask that was not meant to look like any species in particular. Its electronically generated eyes met Skana’s.
“Captain Sigismund?”
“She’s still on board.”
“Passengers?”
“No. We’re the owners of the
Pelican
. Skana and Nile Bertu.”
“Good. I am Customs Inspector IN-332. Please present your documentation. What cargo do you have in the hold? A full and truthful accounting is required.”
“Five fighter scouts,” Skana said. Nile snickered. The ’bot, however, lit up with red chase lights and white flashers. Two metal hands shot out from the body and clamped around their wrists.
“Confession noted. Your identities have been noted. Please surrender immediately and prepare for prosecution. You are permitted legal representation from the moment of this arrest. If you cannot afford legal rep—”
Skana pried at the manacle with her free hand.
“I didn’t confess to anything! That was a joke. Can’t you take a joke?”
The inspectorbot swiveled its body toward her, and inclined its head closer.
“You realize that I am not permitted by law to have a sense of humor?” it asked.
Skana waved in its “face.”
“You customs officials never do. I’m just joking! You don’t have to get all excited about it.”
The ’bot almost appeared to sigh.
“Asking again. Second time irrevocable indictment. Cargo in hold? Identify quantity and use.”
Skana got herself under control and slowed down her breathing.
“Metals for industrial use,” she said.
“Let me have the manifests and the licenses for the goods.”
“I don’t have them.”
“I must examine the goods now. Documentation may follow.”
It wheeled its “face” toward the rear of the ship and began rolling in that direction. With the clamps on their arms, Skana and Nile had to run along behind it.
Skana strained over her shoulder at Tuk. The Croctoid and the two Human guards stood at the bottom of the ramp looking like idiots.
“Do something!” At her shout, the guards broke into a trot. They caught up with the inspectorbot and jogged alongside.
“What do you want us to do, madam?” the taller one asked.
Tuk didn’t move. He lifted his tablet and tapped at it with a claw.
At the rear of the ship, the inspectorbot halted before the cargo hatch.
“Open the hold, please.”
Skana reached for her pocket secretary, but before she could activate it, the featureless door swung open and down. The ramp unfolded and rolled to their feet. Inside, Captain Sigismund peered out.
“Are you all right, sir and madam?”
“Yeah, we’re fine.”
“Captain Sigismund?” the inspectorbot inquired.
“Yes, sir,” the pilot said, coming down with a tablet cradled in her arm. “We’re ready for you, sir.”
A piece of the ’bot near the floor detached and dropped with a
thud
. The inspector reversed and rolled away from them. Skana found that she and Nile were anchored by a flexible rod to a dome-shaped piece of metal. The two of them strained at it, but they couldn’t lift it. Neither of them could walk more than a meter from the base.
“Damn it, you had to make a joke,” Nile said rubbing his wrist inside the steel loop.
“You laughed at it!”
“I know. I might have done the same thing. These robots have no imagination.”
Skana heard murmurs, clanks and thuds inside the ship. It seemed like forever until the ’bot rolled down the ramp toward them. Sigismund trailed in its wake, the ship’s half-license, a virtually indestructible piece of metal that normally rested in a bracket near the main hatch with its other half, in her hand. Skana found she was holding her breath.
The ’bot’s front torso lit up with images of skids filled with metal bars and a score of heavy barrels it had just taken inside the ship.
“Industrial supplies?” it inquired. “Ingots and powdered metal?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Licenses were presented.” The briefest of whirring came from within the ’bot’s body.
“Oh, come on,” Skana said, impatient for all of the protocol to be over. “They’re all good!”
“Registration from point of origin unclear. These must be supplied or you will be unable to import them into the Autocracy.”
“Wait a minute, you’re an Imperium citizen,” Skana said. “Why aren’t you on my side?”
“My job is to ease customs shipments, madam. I inspect goods and documentation accompanying them.”
“Otherwise, what happens? What do you do if I don’t have the registrations?”
“Confiscation. Fines.”
“What? Couldn’t we just go home?”
“I’m sorry, madam, but you would be attempting to cross a border without adequate documentation.”
Skana snorted.
“What if I never stopped in this ridiculous station to start with? Why couldn’t I just cross by myself?”
The LAI was accustomed to answering questions even from increasingly hysterical patrons. Its metal face assumed an expression of patience. The tone of its voice never rose or increased in speed.
“The wormhole device would be closed to you, madam. Colliding with it would be fatal to your ship and all on board her, including the ships, if any, in your wake. You would be liable for fines, plus damages, plus penalties for failure to yield. It is true, you could resort to ultradrive all the way in to the Autocracy central systems, but it would take you two hundred years, Imperium standard. We do not calibrate you for the more distant links in the system. You understand.”
Skana peered at the ’bot.
“You’re really skunks, you know that?”
The LAI was unmoved.
“I am purely mechanical, madam. Very little organic origin at all.”