Chapter 3
Hal Vakeri left his office feeling like things were spiraling out of control.
Chel had waved to him from the door and then disappeared back to the bridge, and that could only mean one thing—that they finally had a visual sighting of the massive ships their scanners had picked up earlier.
He joined his team, his gaze going straight to the screen in front of him, but it was the same view of space it had been before.
“What happened?” he asked.
“A huge spike from the scanners, as if even more vessels appeared up ahead, and then they all disappeared, within seconds of each other.” Gerbardi, his comms officer, turned in his seat to look at him.
“They light jumped away?” Hal guessed.
“Must have,” Voa, his explorations officer said. She stood, leaning both hands on the desk in front of her as she stretched out. “Except it’s the fastest light jump sequence I’ve ever seen. I didn’t think it was possible for such large ships to light jump so fast in such close proximity.”
Watching Voa stretch and bend, Hal realized they’d been sitting, hunched over their equipment, for almost a full day. Everyone was reaching their limit.
“Unless they light jump into our airspace, there isn’t much we can do about it.” He stared out at the spacescape before him, and felt the frustration rise. “So let’s get in a change of crew and get some rest.”
“And just keep doing the patrol?” Chel, his second-in-command, asked.
“Nothing else we can do.” Hal shrugged. “Everyone take a break. We’ve done everything we can.”
He turned to leave, and Chel fell into step with him as he walked out into the passageway.
“Gerbardi said you had Hoke on the line.” Chel glanced at him as they walked.
“I had to discuss something with her.” Hal didn’t say what. Chel didn’t need to know what Fee was up to.
“Nothing to do with this?” Chel seemed surprised.
“No. We touched on what’s going on here briefly, but it was about something else.” He made it sound like Hoke had needed to talk to him, not the other way around.
“And Fiona is well?” Chel asked, slowing now that he realized there wasn’t a new directive from the admiral. “I’m sorry I interrupted your comms with her.”
Hal lifted his brows. “She’s fine.”
Chel grimaced. “No need to look like that.”
“Chel, you kicked her off this ship. You alienated her from the crew. She’s never set foot back on the Illium since.” He was able to keep calm as he said it. Chel had thought he was protecting his captain, and he had apologized, but the facts remained the facts.
“Over time, I’ve come to see how truly misguided those actions were, and I’m happy to apologize again, if you think it will help.” Chel stopped, and Hal realized they were close to his quarters.
“I think that might just open the wound again,” he admitted. “I’ll invite Fee up when this nonsense with the Garmman is over, and we can let actions speak louder than words.”
“I can do that,” Chel said, and there was more than a thread of relief in his voice.
Hal watched him walk away, and decided he should have had Fiona up on the Illium before now.
He had compartmentalized his life into time with Fiona on Larga Ways, and time with his crew on the Illium.
He realized he would like to integrate them a little better, but only if his crew could treat Fiona with the respect she deserved.
He turned back in the direction of his quarters and wished he had had more time to talk with her earlier.
She would be making plans to go down to Balco.
The last time she had done that, he’d been with her, and they had barely gotten out with their lives.
This time, he hoped her trip would be a lot less eventful.
Fiona watched Larga Ways disappear behind her, and realized this was the first time she’d left her new home since she’d saved it from destruction.
“My first trip away.” She leaned closer to the screen to catch a glimpse of Balco on the right. She wasn’t piloting this craft, and she was quite happy to sightsee.
“You would have thought Jaden Tris was expecting to never see you again, the way he carried on.” Eazi’s tone was dry.
She thought about her administrative assistant, and the fuss he’d made about her trip.
“Yes, I suspect he was happy to be rid of me, the way he practically ran to carry my bags.”
“You think he’s planning something?” Eazi’s voice took on a sharp edge.
“No. He’s a bit of a control freak, that’s all. If I’m not here, he’s got more power.” She smiled up at the lens. “He just wants to be the best aide he can possibly be, and I can’t object to him wanting to do a good job.”
“I’ll keep an eye on him while you’re gone, anyway” Eazi said.
“Thanks.” The runner had headed out to space at a fast pace, away from the way station, away from Balco, and suddenly they were behind one of Balco’s moons.
Fiona studied the pock-marked surface with interest as they came to a stop and then drifted gently.
“I’m changing all the markers on this runner, so it looks like a tourist class vessel from Larga Ways.
” She and Eazi had decided the best way for her to go down was to have a way off of Balco whenever she wanted, which meant she needed her own transportation.
Fortunately, Balco was close enough to the way station that Eazi could pilot and control the runner himself, no matter where on Balco it was.
“And I’m about to become Feenra Planer, a Grih from Xal.” That was the Grihan planet Hal was from. He had described it to her so many times, it almost felt like she’d been there herself.
Feenra was a deliberate name choice. Most people knew her as Fiona Russell, but her close friends called her Fee, and she wanted to have a good excuse for the Grihan spies who were going to babysit her to call her by a familiar name.
She stood and picked up the small case Eazi had had delivered to her earlier, and went into the tiny bathroom in the runner to open it up.
Inside was a wig and two ear molds designed to fit over her ears perfectly, indistinguishable from her own skin tone. They had pointy tips.
She fitted them on, and tilted her head one way and then the other. “These are good, Eazi. If anyone grabs me by the ear, they might realize they aren’t real, but other than that, I won’t even have to walk around with the hood of my cape up.”
Eazi had made them for her in the small workshop he had set up just off the docks. He used it to store and play with the equipment and other interesting things that came through Larga Ways that he thought would be useful.
Given the money they generated for themselves, he could have whatever he liked, and last time she was in there, she had commented that he would soon need a bigger space.
“Why would someone grab you by the ear?” Eazi asked, and she could hear a faint thread of shock in his voice.
“They shouldn’t. I’m just saying the only way these will be revealed as fakes is if someone tries to remove them.” She wound her hair up and piled it on top of her head, and then pulled on the wig.
It was the same color as her own hair, but short.
It stood up on end and was tipped with blonde.
“There used to be toys on Earth based on mythical creatures called trolls. A cute version of the myth, not the darker interpretation, and they had hair a bit like this.” She studied herself in the mirror, amazed at how much the ears and the wig transformed her.
“Trolls and elves? Is that what the Grih look like?” Eazi sounded amused.
“Well, more elf than troll. The troll part only applies to the cute version’s hair style. That, or punk rockers from the 1980s.” She grinned at the irony, because the Grih did not like punk rock, as she and her friends had discovered. Too discordant for their delicate elf ears.
When she walked out of the bathroom, she headed for one of the larger bags Jaden Tris had helped her load onboard and opened it up.
She stared down into it at the array of weapons Eazi had provided for her.
“I didn’t get the chance to see what you’d packed for me before, but I don’t recognize half of these.
” More than half, if she was being honest. “This I know.” She lifted out the familiar dark metallic bracelet and hung it over her wrist, then touched the emblem on one of the links so it would adjust its size to fit her.
“Hello, old friend.” She smiled down at the reflector as it mapped her body with thin blue lines of light before winking off. It had served her very well in the past.
She found the reflective silk clothing Eazi had given her back then, too, but she couldn’t wear it this time, or not while she was out and about in the city. She was supposed to look like a tourist, not slink around like an invisible spy.
She was wearing a thin Cargassey cloth t-shirt and what she thought of as short cycling pants under her clothing.
She would attract too much attention if her outerwear was Cargassey cloth, given how rare and expensive it was, but it was cold enough on Balco right now for layers, and it made her feel better about the possibility of a shockgun strike.
Not that there should be a lot of people running around below with shockguns, but neither she nor Eazi wanted to take the chance, and Cargassey cloth was a good way to protect against shockgun fire.
She rifled through the bag and pulled out a light gun. Hal had been very unhappy when Eazi had tried to give her one before, as they’d been outlawed in the UC, but that obviously hadn’t stopped him putting it in her bag this time.
She grinned. Lifted it up to the lens. Clicked her tongue.
“What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” Eazi said.
She laughed. “True, but if I’m caught with one, it would cause political issues, and like it or not, we’re a quasi-governmental department now, aren’t we?” She had felt a little queasy the first time she’d come to that realization.
“I hadn’t thought of it that way.” Eazi sounded surprised.
Theoretically the two of them ran the arrivals and departures, the docking, the trade, and the administration and security of the way station. But that sounded very much like government to her.
And they had taken it in a bloodless coup.
Go, her. She was queen of all she reigned.
“We’re coming through Balco’s atmosphere,” Eazi told her.
Fiona stepped back from the bag so she could look out of the screen again, and she felt the slight vibration of entry.
There was a wink of light on water below.
“Last time we landed in the desert,” she said, moving closer to look. “I never caught even a glimpse of the sea.”
“It’s not as big as any of Earth’s oceans,” Eazi said. “And very little in the sea is edible. So there’s not a lot of activity on the water, other than for pleasure.”
“Is Distani near the sea?” She should probably know that, but she had never heard it mentioned.
“Not really. The sea’s about thirty minutes from the city, but it is built on the banks of the river that flows to the ocean. The Hintah. It’s over a thou wide in most places.”
“I’m getting excited to see it.” She hadn’t had a true break since she’d been abducted, she realized. And even though this technically wasn’t a holiday, she didn’t have much to do until Eazi sent a message to Hi-Lan Baruke that she would like an in-person meeting with him.
The plan was to make him think she was contacting him from the Illium, and would come down with a Grihan escort when he could fit her in.
Admiral Hoke would provide Grihan embassy staff to her when the meeting was confirmed and they would accompany her in. The spies that were going to keep her company until then would step back and let the diplomats take over.
“We’ll be landing in twenty minutes,” Eazi told her. “You’ll have to pretend to have piloted the runner yourself. The identification chip will withstand all scrutiny.”
“Okay. Let me find a weapon that’s a bit more active than the reflector before we set down.
” Fiona studied the contents of the weapons bag again, and took out a necklace with a silver pendant that was a slim, four-sided rod around the length of her forefinger.
When she held it, it jutted out a little way above and below her closed fist.
“That’s good,” Eazi said. “No one will realize it’s a weapon.”
“How does it work?” Fee put the necklace on and held the rod again.
“Jerk the rod downward,” Eazi told her.
She did, and it came away from the necklace with a faint click.
“Now flick it away from yourself.”
She did as he said, and it telescoped out. She slashed it in front of her, and heard the whip of sound it made.
“That’ll sting.” She made a figure of eight in front of her. “I like it.”
“It’s flexible but extremely strong. If you hit someone hard enough, it will draw blood and break bones.” Eazi sounded quietly satisfied.
“Cool. I’ll leave the rest here, locked away, but hopefully I won’t even need what I’ve taken.” She didn’t want some of the more exotic items to fall into the wrong hands, and she didn’t have the same control over her environment where she was going that she had on Larga Ways.
She clipped the rod back into its holder on the necklace and Eazi opened a drawer in the console in front of her to hide the bag of weapons away. When he closed it, she couldn’t see even the faintest outline of where the drawer was.
The runner landed gently, and she stepped back to the screen to look out.
They had come down onto a curved landing area and numerous small runners were parked on either side.
“They’re saying you need to meet them at the pilot’s door,” Eazi told her.
Fee gathered her luggage together and strode to the door. She opened it to the customs official and blinked in surprise as a waft of unprocessed air blew over her, carrying the scent of water.
The smile she sent the officer was blinding.