Chapter 9 Penny
PENNY
Things weren’t going according to plan. Some of the interview subjects Varok had kindly arranged for me liked the sound of their own voices too much for me to get the interviews done quickly.
At least my tormentor didn’t get to escape early, either. A smile pulled at my lips as I caught his exasperation, and I wondered if he’d worked out what I’d told them.
I kept fighting the urge to break into laughter. Secret prince of a planet that’s invented cheap matter-antimatter conversion. Rich beyond anyone’s ability to match. Here to forge a marriage alliance that will remake the Reach!
It sounded ridiculous, but he had a ridiculous amount of antimatter in his sculpture.
Or rather, everyone thought he did. The opportunity to catch Varok—rich, powerful, muscular Varok, attractive and looking for a long-term alliance—was impossible to ignore.
All it took was one heiress making a move, and they’d swarmed him.
Admittedly, that wasn’t the distraction I’d intended. I’d expected him to pick someone he found palatable right away and vanish with her for a few hours. Given the number of attractive women in the room, he’d be faster taking one to bed than refusing each in turn without causing offense.
A question scratched at the edge of my mind: maybe he was genuinely interested in me? I shoved it out with ruthless force. Nope, not possible. He’s playing me.
I refused to consider the alternative—it would mess up everything I’d planned. Nevermind that my heart fluttered every time he threw a disgruntled look my way, or another beautiful alien turned away in defeat.
There has to be someone here he wants, I told myself. Somehow, though, he was still working on escaping my trap when I got out of his. With the last interview finished, I slipped out.
I’d lost a lot of time, but I was ahead of my rival. The cold, crystal corridors seemed endless, twisting back on themselves in meaningless patterns. The layout might make sense to a Collector, but it seemed irrational to me.
But I didn’t have to find my way, thanks to Debbie’s clever auto-mapping and echolocation systems. They didn’t show everything, not even close, but Driin’s collection was ready to display.
The gallery needed space and convenient access for the guests.
Debbie found just one option, so I followed my eager little drone through the maze.
Once off the assigned route to my quarters, I took off my kit bag and pulled at its lining. The cloth came away easily, unfolding into a long, shimmering sheet of ultrafine silver fabric, which I pulled on like a cloak.
The Mona Lisa looked up at me from the revealed space. Or rather, as good a forgery of Leonardo’s masterpiece as the Terran Hegemony’s experts could find.
Created using the same materials as the original, painted on poplar wood, no simple scan would reveal the fake. Hopefully, it wouldn’t have to survive a detailed inspection before I was off this dying planet. If my plan worked, the Collectors might never realize what I’d done.
A piece of whisperlight mesh large enough to wear had taken me years to track down.
I didn’t begrudge a single second, because the secret of its manufacture was long lost. Scanners refused to see whisperlight, or anything wrapped in it, which made it impossible to investigate.
More usefully, while I wore it, no scanners saw me.
That didn’t make me invisible, of course.
It blocked, deflected, and redirected scanners, but it did nothing to keep me from being seen or heard.
I slipped out of my shoes, carrying them in one hand as I padded as quietly as possible toward my target.
The bag with the forgery seemed heavier, and I tried not to worry about getting caught.
If the Collectors spotted me, I was done. Not just for this job—the blood-soaked sands of the arena had advertised my fate if I got caught today. As a deterrent, it served better than the Welsh penal colonies back on Earth.
Good job not thinking about it, Penny. Okay, so the deterrent was a partial success—it wouldn’t keep me from committing the crime, but I’d worry every step of the way.
The Hive’s corridors weren’t empty. Muted click-click-clicks announced Collectors going about their incomprehensible business, and every time one got close, my heart pounded loud enough I worried it would give me away.
The sounds always faded again as the labyrinth turned them away from my position.
I relaxed as I got closer to my goal, and the place fell silent.
Fuck yeah, I made it, I thought with a savage grin, turning a corner and almost walking into a Collector.
Standing still and silent, there’d been nothing for me to notice.
I’m an experienced thief, and I wouldn’t have gotten this far if I’d panicked at the first sign of trouble. Still, it took a monumental effort of will to overcome my urge to scream or run. The crystal insect loomed over me like death incarnate.
Each Collector’s body was unique, and this one looked uniquely dangerous.
Two upper arms ended in vicious blades as long as my torso.
Two lower arms with long, clawed hands were ready to grab and tear.
Enormous eyes, like emerald domes, glowed with an inner light, and its four long legs came to points sharp enough to stab straight through me.
It didn’t move. I watched it, not daring to breathe, hoping that my guess was right. The damned things were obsessed with beauty and art, and they built their own bodies. It stood to reason that they didn’t limit eyes to visible light.
Which meant whisperlight would fool them as well as it did any other scanner. Right?
After what felt like a million years, I dared to believe it. Quiet as a mouse, I circled the crystal alien and made my way through the doorway it guarded.
Chambers on either side of the passage opened up, showing displays of art from across the galaxy and its history.
I tiptoed past, peeking into each room as I went.
I couldn’t afford to get distracted, but I had to check.
Any of them might hold Driin’s gallery of loot.
Plus, I’d never have another chance to look inside a Collector vault.
My curiosity almost finished me. I caught myself staring at ancient art gathered from species humans had never even heard of. The art thief in me itched to get my hands on some of it. Just one piece, one of those beautiful wire-sculptures, or the mosaic portrait of some alien dragon-emperor.
No. Idiot. Fool. No getting greedy, I scolded myself. The plan only works if they don’t know they’ve been robbed. I’m here for one painting, and nothing else.
This close to my goal, I refused to fuck things up. Past this point, the plan was simple: find the Mona Lisa, swap in the forgery and get the original back to my luggage, safely wrapped and shielded. From that point, it would be plain sailing.
Ah, there! Ironically, spotting Varok’s fake stasis-sarcophagus told me I was in the right place.
It stood near the center of a room, beside a strange sculpture that gave off an aura of dread that I couldn’t explain.
Dull gray that seemed to drink in the surrounding light, its geometry pulled the eye in along strange loops and whorls to a single point of darkness at the center.
I recognized The End, of course. The Hive’s most precious treasure, held by them for millennia, unthinkably old.
That the Collectors put Varok’s sculpture in the same gallery was one hell of a big compliment.
And since they were offering Attrobi the opportunity to join their hive, his collection had to be here too.
Pulling my gaze away from The End, I looked around.
Attrobi’s collection filled the gallery across the hall, and I had to admit, it was impressive.
General Attrobi amassed his collection from a dozen planets and curated it beautifully.
I skimmed past, looking for human artifacts, glad that he’d arranged most of the gallery by origin.
His loot from Earth wasn’t prominent, and it irked me to see that he’d stolen our cultural treasures and didn’t even value them highly.
I found them in a side chamber, the door flanked by ancient Chinese terracotta warriors.
Most of it was artifacts, from sculpture to historic weapons.
No truly great works among them, but I still wished I could rescue everything.
I was here for the centerpiece of General Attrobi’s Terran collection, though, and it was unmissable.
Hung in pride of place, illuminated to show the details, one of Earth’s greatest paintings loomed over me. I looked up at it with a mixture of awe and horror.
“What the fuck?”
The painting was beautiful, uncannily so, and undoubtedly a work of genius.
Unfortunately, the work of the wrong genius.
What looked down at me from the wall was emphatically not the Mona Lisa, and I cursed the Bauran looter’s lack of care.
Aside from being painted by a human, the two paintings had nothing in common.
For starters, the Mona Lisa is thirty inches along its longest side.
The painting on display was twelve feet tall, and over fourteen wide.
Beautiful, inspiring, and a masterpiece well worth recovering for humanity, The Night Watch was a treasure I’d had no reason to expect here.
Or anywhere, for that matter—the Rijksmuseum burned when the Bauran navy bombed Amsterdam early in the Uplink War.
I’d only ever seen Rembrandt’s masterpiece in photographs, and my heart hammered in my chest as I stared at the lost treasure.
Perhaps the most famous painting from the Dutch Golden Age, it stood bathed in a warm glow that brought out the play of light and shadow in the stunning portrait of a militia company.
The characters looked ready to walk off the canvas.
Part of me wondered what a seventeenth-century militia would make of the Hive.
The rest of me struggled with a tide of conflicting emotions.
“Fuck. Damn.” Neither word seemed strong enough, but I couldn’t think of anything stronger. “Fuckdamn.”
It would have to do.
This mission’s a bust. I looked down at the forgery I’d brought all this way. What a waste of time and effort. Best get back to my room and hope no one noticed my nighttime excursion.
That was the most sensible plan. The smartest plan. But still I stared up at the dark magnificence of The Night Watch. In a few short days, everything here would vanish into deep space. Predicting the Collectors’ next emergence was impossible—it might be centuries from now, half a galaxy away.
Unless I stole it now, The Night Watch would be out of reach for decades, maybe centuries. I had to rescue it. Walking away empty-handed wasn’t an option. Neither was taking the painting—aside from its unwieldy size, the damned thing weighed over seven hundred pounds.
The deciding factor had nothing to do with the painting.
I refused to give Varok the satisfaction of succeeding where I failed.
The thought of his smug smile made my body tense up, the cool air prickling on my skin.
I bit my lip, trying to stay focused on the impossible task of stealing a painting as vast as The Night Watch, rather than on my arrogant, aggravating rival.
Somehow, that seemed like the tougher challenge.