Chapter 16
Baruke lay in a slightly elevated position on his hospital bed, with a young woman seated to the side.
Fiona recognized her as Baruke’s daughter, Kivisha da Pirro, although they’d never met. She had come to Larga Ways a few times since Fiona and Eazi had taken control of the way station, and Eazi had sent her a short clip of Kivisha’s arrival each time.
As usual, she was in the height of current fashion, with streaks of silver in her hair that matched the silver gray of her eyes.
“Fiona Russell.” Baruke’s eyes widened as she stepped into the room.
The guards on the door had been Grihan military, and they stepped neatly aside when they saw Lenato approaching.
“How are you feeling, Hi-Lan? I understand you ingested more of the poison than I did.” Fiona nodded to Kivisha, who’d slowly risen to her feet as she, Hal, and Lenato had come in.
Hi-Lan Baruke ran his fingertips down his throat. “Better,” he said. “I honestly thought . . .”
Kivisha made a sound and sat again, taking her father’s hand.
“I did, too, and apparently I had a much lower dose, so I can only imagine how it was for you.” She stepped closer.
Baruke’s gaze went past her, to Lenato and Hal, and cleared his throat. “I appreciate you enquiring as to my condition.”
“I obviously did want to do that,” Fiona said. “But I also thought that we could do something a little more concrete to ensure we don’t need to have everything that passes our lips tested.”
Kivisha looked up sharply at that. “What do you propose?”
Her father frowned at her, then at Fiona. “Yes, what can we do?”
“Talk to each other.” Fiona lifted a shoulder.
“It was surely to stop us doing so that someone tried to kill us both. There were plenty of dignitaries at the dinner, and we were the only two targeted. I asked you for a meeting earlier this week, and you couldn’t fit me in, but as we were sitting together at the dinner table, whoever didn’t want that conversation to happen must have decided extreme measures were required. ”
“You’re saying if you do talk, and it becomes known, they will have no need to try to kill you again, because the damage would already be done?” Kivisha asked.
“Exactly.”
Kivisha looked over at her father. “So even this visit, with nothing of substance discussed, would be enough?”
“I don’t know.” Fiona pulled out the chair that was placed up against the wall near the head of the bed and sat down on it, getting to Baruke’s eye level. “It may be that our talks would have sparked some action on our part, but even just the news that we have talked would help, I think.”
“I’ll leave you for a little bit.” Kivisha stood. “I need something to drink and to stretch my legs. I’ve had a few messages from your staff, Dad, and I’ll get back to them, let them know that you’re fine and that you and Fiona Russell are speaking with each other.”
She looked a little less stressed, Fiona thought. As if having a way to help, a path out of constant worry about another attack, had lifted a weight off her.
She squeezed Baruke’s hand, and then left.
For a moment, the room was quiet.
“This frightened her.” Baruke broke the silence. “My first instinct was to tell you I didn’t want to talk to you, but seeing Kivisha’s reaction has forced me to accept that it is what I am going to do.”
“Why did you want to refuse?” Hal asked.
Baruke glanced at Lenato, and the doctor gave a quick smile and began backing out of the room.
“I have patients to see to,” he said as he reached the door. “If you need anything, ring for the med techs,” he said to Baruke. “I will be sleeping just down the hall when I’m finished with my rounds, so I’ll be nearby the whole night.”
When he was gone, Baruke rubbed at his forehead. “I was told not to talk to you,” he said at last.
“Threatened?” Fiona asked.
He raised his head sharply, looking at her, then shook his head. “No. It was phrased as them helping me. Doing me a favor by letting me know to avoid a conversation with you because you were going to make demands I couldn’t comply with and that was going to make things awkward between us.”
“Two questions,” Fiona said. “Who is ‘they’, and what demands did they tell you I was going to make?”
Baruke sighed. “They are a committee of Balcoan manufacturers. The person who spoke to me on their behalf is the head of the committee, Halarian Bost. And the demands he warned me you would make are for the parts that have been delayed for Paxe’s Class 5.”
“I’m looking into this committee and Halarian Bost specifically.” Eazi’s voice was a murmur in her earpiece. “I haven’t heard his name before.”
“I’ve never heard of Bost,” Fiona said. “But he was right. I was going to ask why we haven’t received the parts for Paxe’s Class 5.”
“I cannot compel the private companies on Balco to produce parts.” Baruke flopped back onto his pillows. “And they told me it was killing them financially to work on custom parts for Paxe rather than more mass-produced items they could sell to the general public.”
“So why not say that, why keep pretending the parts were going to be delivered any day?” Fiona crossed her arms over her stomach.
“I . . .” Baruke frowned. “I don’t know. I didn’t know what they were saying to you, what excuses they were giving, but Bost gave me the impression you weren’t taking no for an answer.”
“We kept giving them chance after chance, but we’ve already started looking at sourcing parts from the Grih, and once that gets rolling, the Balcoans will be cut off completely.
” Fiona noticed Baruke’s eyes widen at that statement.
“We’ve worked out we can’t depend on Balco, and the meeting I asked for was a last ditch attempt to see whether we could still deal on good terms together, or whether we needed to cut our losses. ”
“Did Bost give you any other reason for their reneging on their contracts?” Hal spoke for the first time.
Baruke shook his head. “I did tell him that they hadn’t been forced into the contracts, but he made it sound as if the expectations on them were so heavy, they’d signed against their better judgement.
I know I pushed for Balco to be fully involved in Paxe’s rebuild, and Bost used that to make me feel guilty about their struggles to meet their obligations. ”
“That almost sounds plausible,” Fiona said.
“Almost?” Baruke tilted his head in question.
“I arrived in Distani two days ago, hoping to meet with you. Yesterday, I went to the market out in the industrial area, and bought several of the custom parts Paxe had ordered, off a table of spares in an open warehouse.” Fiona found the chair she was sitting on too uncomfortable, all of a sudden, and stood, walking around the bed to look out of the window.
It was still dark outside, and she could feel that she needed sleep soon. If she were to guess, it was already way past midnight.
“You’re not joking?” Baruke asked.
She turned. “I’m not. I bought numerous items, and Eazi organized to have them taken straight to the space port and up to Larga Ways. They’re already there, I think, and exactly what was ordered.” She studied Baruke’s face and decided he really didn’t know anything about it.
“Did you find out where they came from?” Baruke was starting to look pissed off.
“We think they came from a company called Grimwell Materials. Its head office was destroyed a couple of months ago, and its manufacturing arm on the outskirts of the city seems to have disappeared into thin air.”
“I was informed about the destruction of a large building in the city, obviously.” Baruke slowly lifted himself higher on the pillows. “I was told Security and the building commission were going to look into the cause, but I don’t recall ever seeing the report.”
“I’m only guessing, but if they were ordered to stop supplying us, and they continued, that might be why they were destroyed.” Fiona wondered what had happened to the business owners.
“You’re sure those were Paxe’s parts you bought?” Baruke asked. “And they were from Grimwell?”
“I’m positive they were his parts. Whether they were from Grimwell or not, I can’t say.” She paused. “But there’s more to this.”
“More?” Baruke closed his eyes. “The explosion yesterday?”
“Yes.” Fiona leaned back against the window. “What do you know about it?”
“I was informed there was an explosion in a warehouse, and that’s all. I didn’t have time for a more thorough debrief before the dinner.”
“It wasn’t an explosion.” Fiona glanced at Hal, and they exchanged a quick look.
“Well, what was it?” Baruke was starting to sound testy.
“Someone shot at me with a laser cannon. As it turns out, the laser cannon designed and commissioned by Paxe for his Class 5.”
Baruke’s jaw went slack. “Obviously, you’re fine.”
“The cannon malfunctioned, and instead of killing me, killed the person trying to operate it.” She wasn’t going to talk about her deflector. That was something Baruke didn’t need to know about.
“Why did they shoot at you? Was this the same warehouse where you bought the parts?”
“No. Eazi arranged for a courier to collect the parts we’d bought at the market, and have them sent to the space port.
Just after the courier had sent the items off, while I was walking toward him, a runner pulled up, grabbed him off the street, and took him away.
” Fiona realized she was walking a fine line, not mentioning Natta and Trayla, but she would keep them out of it as long as she could.
“You are saying he was kidnapped?” Baruke looked up with narrowed eyes.
“I could see he was kidnapped, I watched it happen.” Fiona held his gaze. “Fortunately my runner was close, and I was able to follow the runner that had taken him to a warehouse about five minutes away.”
“And they shot at you with the laser cannon?” Baruke sounded like he thought the story very unlikely.
“I went in through the front office,” Fiona kept her patience as she spoke.
“I was shot at initially with a standard shockgun, but fortunately, I was wearing shockgun protection. I was able to get into the warehouse itself, and it was then that someone tried to shoot me with the laser cannon. When I realized they had harmed themselves, I found the courier, injured and tied up in another room, and got out of there. But not before I noted several other parts that should have been delivered to Paxe, and which I was told were not available.”
“What are you suggesting?” Baruke asked.
“I’m not suggesting anything.” Fiona’s lips twisted. “I’m saying what it looks like is that someone is going around buying the parts meant for Paxe. Stopping anyone who’s continuing to supply parts to Paxe, and storing what they can get in a warehouse.”
“For what purpose?” Baruke looked between her and Hal.
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Fiona asked. “Someone is trying to build their own Class 5.”