gaian consortium 03 - the gaia gambit (10 page)

“Hold,” came Morain’s voice, and she paused just outside the doorway.

Then the door slid open, and Mingus came out, looming over her as he always did, watching her with a leering expression that seemed to tell her exactly what he would like to do to her, if she weren’t Tomas’s pilot. And as always she stared ahead, not allowing him to see how he disturbed her.

Morain followed, elegant and spare. She found herself wondering how a man like him had ended up here on Iradia in the first place. Not that it mattered how he got here.

What mattered was that he was going to die here.

“All clear,” said Mingus, and Istafa Morain nodded.

“Go on,” the lavender-skinned man told Lira. “She’s all yours.”

“Got it,” she replied, about the only response she would allow herself in that moment.
All right, Rast…now or never.

The thought had barely crossed her mind before an orange-red pulse bolt flashed from somewhere above them, striking Mingus directly in the chest. He crumpled to his feet as Lira let out what she hoped was a convincing little yelp and darted forward past Morain, into the interior of the warehouse where the
Mistral
waited. The half-Eridani already had his own gun out, but he ignored Lira, obviously thinking she was only trying to get to the safety of the ship and away from their unseen attackers.

An exchange of pulse shots echoed behind her, but she didn’t dare look back, only pounded forward to the ship, which awaited its passengers with the door open and the narrow little gangplank extended to the shabby floor of the warehouse. Everything depended on getting the
Mistral
ready for immediate takeoff, as there was no guarantee Morain wouldn’t call for reinforcements before Rast took him out.

The ship was approximately thirty meters long, with the entrance located in the center of the passenger compartment. Lira hurried past the heavily padded seats and their matching low tables, and on into the cockpit. Even though she was its sole pilot, the
Mistral
had been designed to accommodate a copilot as well. She ignored that seat and slid into the one that had become her home for the past few weeks. First to reach under the copilot’s seat, locating the device Tomas didn’t think she knew about, and yank the wire that connected it to the ship’s propulsion system. Then it was on to flipping switches, tapping the commands into the nav-computer that would send them out of the Iradian system altogether, into a neutral location a few parsecs outside the uninhabited Corael system where they could stop to catch their breaths and figure out what they were going to do next.

If, of course, Rast managed to kill Istafa Morain. The man was cagey, no matter what sen Drenthan might feel about the relative battle prowess of Gaians, or half-Gaians, in Morain’s case. And if the Stacian had somehow met his match…well, she’d just have to do some damn quick reprogramming before anyone noticed the nav-computer wasn’t set for a quick jaunt to one of Iradia’s moons.

Heavy footsteps sounded behind her, and she forced herself not to look back, to keep working away as if she fully expected Morain to come in and tell her everything was fine and that Tomas would be along in a few minutes.

Rast fell into the seat next to her, dropped a satchel made of some unfamiliar hide on the floor, and flashed her a ferocious grin. “Ready? Because I believe a quick getaway is our best option right now.”

She had to ignore the relief that flooded through her, concentrate instead on getting the last of the coordinates programmed in. “Just about. So Morain didn’t give you any trouble?”

“The half-breed?” He gave a snort of contempt. “Hardly. You’d think someone like Gared Tomas would choose a better shot for his right-hand man. But I’m guessing our little firefight drew some attention…and the dead bodies will draw rather more.”

“Around here?” she scoffed, then amended, “Well, if it were anyone except a couple of Tomas’s goons, no one would bat an eye, but…”

“That’s what worries me.”

“No need to worry.” The nav-computer let out a chime, informing her that its calculations were complete. “We’re out of here.”

And she pulled back on the ignition lever, feeling the atmospheric propulsion system kick in, the ship vibrating ever so slightly beneath them. She pushed it further, and they shot straight up, through the shattered roof of the warehouse, lifting away from Aldis Nova, its dusty streets and shabby buildings spreading out beneath them, all painted orange and red with the colors of sunset. Farther still, and the city shrank to nothing, swallowed up by miles of ochre desert, until the desert itself became the color of the planet’s flat disc, and black space surrounded them on every side.

Still without speaking, she urged the
Mistral
forward, hurrying them away from the gravity well of the planet and its accompanying moons, sending them into open space where she could safely engage the subspace drive. Only after the odd flickering colors of subspace had surrounded them, and she knew they were safe from pursuit, did she turn to Rast.

“Well, you’ve got your ship,” she said. “What next?”

He enjoyed watching her fly, watching her slender fingers work the controls, her fine profile to him as she stared out the viewscreen and into the onrushing heavens. “Where are we headed?”

“Next system over, but I figured we had to go somewhere before I could plot our final destination. Tomas would never suspect us of stopping so close to Iradia, and anyway, it’s pretty dead space around there. We can hang for a while and decide on our next course of action.”

“And Tomas doesn’t have any way of tracking us?” Rast found this a little difficult to believe; if he’d owned a fine ship like this, he would have made sure it had some sort of tracking device secreted away on it.

“He did,” she admitted. “You’re sitting on it.”

“I’m what?” he demanded, halfway lifting himself off the seat before he realized the harness would keep him from getting very far. In exasperation, he began to undo the buckles.

“Relax.” Her voice held some of the first amusement he’d yet heard from her. “He had a tracker installed there, but I located it early on. It’s deactivated. But I also need to hack into the computer and change the
Mistral
’s I.D. signature and registry. Otherwise, they’ll still be able to find us eventually.”

Now free of the harness, Rast shifted in his seat so he could see her better. A small smile was playing about her full lips. “You can do that? Fine upstanding GDF captain that you are?”

“
Former
captain,” she reminded him, with only a faint edge to her voice. “No, it’s not something they exactly taught us at the academy, but a friend of mine showed me a few tricks back in the day.”

“A friend,” Rast said. He wasn’t sure he liked the sound of that. Generally, those sorts of friends turned out to be a bit more than friends.

“All right, a former boyfriend. From my brief rebellious stage.”

Rast crossed his arms, waiting to hear the rest. At least, he assumed there was a rest.

“In fact, he might be the best person to help us now,” Lira continued. She didn’t give any indication of noticing that her words had sparked a reaction in Rast, but perhaps she didn’t much care. “Jackson Wyler. I met him my first year at the academy, but he didn’t last long. Not much of one for rules, Jackson.”

“Indeed.”

“Indeed,” she repeated, and this time she had a distinct glint in her blue eyes. “He decided that hacking computers was much more fun than taking orders, so he dropped out. But we kept in touch…that is, he kept in touch with me. He seemed to genuinely enjoy tracking me down wherever I ended up, sending me little notes, that sort of thing. It was more a game for him than anything else.”

“Hmm,” said Rast. He’d meant it to come out as a more or less noncommittal grunt, but what emerged from his throat sounded a bit too much like a growl.

“At any rate,” she continued, “since I have a pretty short list of questionable people who might be able to help us down the road to discovering who’s maneuvering behind the scenes, I can’t think of anyone better than Jackson to provide some assistance. Unless you’ve got some hacker contacts you haven’t told me about.”

Of course Rast didn’t. While he knew the Stacian military employed its own versions of what the Gaians referred to as “hackers,” his people did not find the same perverse joy in those sorts of activities as some Gaians seemed to. Sneaking around, searching for vulnerabilities in code, devising underhanded ways to suborn computer networks…none of that was anything close to what a Stacian would regard as honorable behavior.

However, he also knew that in their current situation, he and Lira would have to enlist the help of someone with that sort of background, or their investigation would be effectively ended before it had even begun. So he said, with a good deal of reluctance, “And where can we find this Jackson Wyler?”

“He likes to play at being respectable,” she replied.

That didn’t sound terribly promising. “Yes?”

“So right now he’s living on New Chicago.”

Rast tried not to groan. New Chicago. Only one of Gaia’s oldest and most settled colonies. Short of flying the
Mistral
straight through to Gaia itself, he couldn’t think of a worse place for a Stacian to be headed. He would stick out there like that strange aquatic creature known as a whale might if it were dropped in the middle of a Stacian desert. But there was no help for it. To New Chicago they must go.

And the gods help him if the GDF discovered an enemy combatant right in their midst…

Stacians couldn’t exactly go green, given the ruddy-gold hues of their complexions, but Lira could tell from Rast’s reaction that he was less than thrilled about heading to New Chicago. He’d probably be even less thrilled after she told him he’d have to remain aboard the ship while she went to go see Jackson, but really, they didn’t have many options. Maybe someone in MI7 might have been able to come up with a way to effectively disguise Rast sen Drenthan so he’d blend in with a population that was mostly Gaian, but short of cutting off all his hair, covering him in body makeup, and hoping no one would notice the ridges on his brows, Lira couldn’t quite think how. And she had a feeling that anyone who made a move to cut off those luxurious falls of dreadlocked hair would find their own throat cut in short order.

After a brief stop in the Corael system, just long enough to program in the new route, the
Mistral
continued on to New Chicago, which would take the better part of a standard day. Just as well, because she had work to do.

First a hack into the ship’s computer, following the logic path that led her to the subroutine that stored the transponder codes and the registry information. Once inside, she changed the starship’s name to
Chinook
and gave her registry as Jordarian. That was far enough off the beaten track that no one was probably going to investigate too closely; on the other hand, Jordares was known for its rich mineral deposits, and so no one would question an expensive ship like the
Mistral
…that is, the
Chinook
…coming from such a home base.

As she worked, she was conscious of Rast’s gaze on her, copper eyes keen, blinking just slightly less often than a Gaian would. His physical presence was more than a little distracting, but she couldn’t allow herself to get sidetracked.

And maybe at some point she’d have time to really stop and think about what she’d done, about how she’d allowed herself to become a fugitive, trapped in this ship with a man who should have been her enemy…and yet, strangely, was not.

Crazy as it might sound, she thought she trusted Rast sen Drenthan. He’d said very little of how he’d managed to track her down, but she knew he must have walked away from a prestigious post in order to come on an insane mission that might never yield any useful fruit. He’d told her he wanted to know the truth about his superior officer’s actions, and she believed him.

However, one reason didn’t necessarily preclude another, more personal motivation. He didn’t try to hide the fact that he was watching her. From time to time, their eyes would meet, and a small shiver would go through her. Memories of him had been overwhelming enough. His physical presence, in the tight confines of the Sirocco-class ship, was something else altogether.

Time enough to worry about that later. In a few hours they’d be in New Chicago, and she’d be facing Jackson Wyler, a man she hadn’t seen in person for more than ten years. She’d never flattered herself that his occasional notes and vids meant anything except proving his cleverness, his ability to find her wherever she was posted, even if said posting was classified. Even when she had been orbiting Chlorae II, a planet few people even knew existed, those cheery little notes would surface from time to time, inquiring as to her health, inviting her to pop in for a drink if she were ever in the neighborhood.

Well, she was in the neighborhood now…

“So you expect me to sit here and cool my heels like some underage
trenth
, some useless appendage?”

Part of Rast’s outrage probably stemmed from the realization that he should have guessed she would propose such a thing. A Stacian could not walk down the streets of New Chicago’s largest city and not expect to attract some attention. Whereas Lira, though of course lovely enough to draw notice wherever she went, was typically Gaian in appearance, and her slim dark gray pants and short blue jacket were plain enough that they would not have stood out on any of the Gaian Consortium worlds.

She appeared coolly unconcerned by his apparent anger. “Actually, yes, I do. Jackson knows me, not you. He’s not going to let some unknown Stacian march into his house — if we could even get you there without drawing down every police officer within a kilometer’s radius. Or have you forgotten that the Gaian Consortium and the Stacian Federation are at war?”

“Not technically,” he replied, and wished he didn’t sound quite so much like a sulky adolescent.

“Technically, no, but for all intents and purposes…”