Death World (Undying Mercenaries Series Book 5) (8 page)

Internally I was shocked, but I didn’t show it. Equestrian Nagata had charged me with feeding him information on Turov. He wanted her taken out of the upper brass—presumably because she was after his job.

“I’m not making any threats,” I said carefully. “I’m asking for a favor.”

“A favor? What gives you the right to ask for such a thing?”

“We—we owe each other a great deal. All I’m asking for this time around is a break. If you’re going to stop searching after one more star anyway, make it the one we’re passing by now. You said yourself the probability they’ll switch course on us is growing every day. This binary system is inside the cone where they might make that move. Let’s not skip it.”

“That would make you happy?”

“I wouldn’t say that. I’m only going to be happy if we find them.”

“That I believe,” she said, looking up at me thoughtfully. “What’s in this arrangement for me?”

I tried hard to think of something, but initially I drew a blank.

“You mentioned Nagata,” I said at last. “Maybe I could keep you informed on his actions instead of the other way around.”

This made her eyebrows rise high. She nodded appreciatively, taking her butt off her desk and approaching me.

“I like the sound of that,” she said. “The best agents are double-agents. You’d do that for me? Risk everything to feed me information about the witch hunt my enemies are engaged in back at Central?”

“If it will make you stop this ship—then yes.”

She turned away, as if considering her options. My eyes wandered, as I was sure she knew they would. They fixated upon her hindquarters almost immediately, which were tightly packed into her thin jumper.

She glanced over her shoulder and caught me looking. She smiled.

“I accept your offer, James. You will make regular visits to my office. You’ll report three times a week—every other day. Do you understand?”

“Uh…” I said, looking down at her face and trying not to look even farther down. “Not entirely. What am I going to report on? Nagata is back on Earth.”

She rolled her eyes and sighed. She reached back, grabbed my hand and put it on her rump.

“Are we clear now?” she asked.

“Oh…yes sir.”

I was surprised, but I got over that very quickly. I stepped forward and began pawing at her. She leaned over her desk, and I removed what she had on, which didn’t amount to much more than an ounce of sheer smart-cloth anyway.

We made love then, right on her desk. I really hoped she’d had good sound-proofing installed in her office walls, because she wasn’t quiet about it.

“One more thing, sir,” I said when we were finished. “Can I call you Galina?”

She thought about it for a moment, frowning. “No. I’d prefer that you didn’t.”

“Very well, sir.”

I left after that, and I have to confess, I was smiling.

One could say I’d been abused by my superior. Sexually coerced, even. But then again, one could say that I didn’t mind the abuse. Not one bit.

-8-

We stopped at the binary star system the next day. For some reason, I wasn’t as keyed-up this time around as I’d been the on the first stop. Whether that was because I’d given up on finding the raiders or because I’d had a chance to blow off some steam, it was hard to say.

Leeson came to check up on me while I donned my battle armor. He put his hands on his hips and put a crooked grin on his face. When he spoke, his voice was low, rumbly and amused.

“You sly
dog
you!” he exclaimed. “I heard about Turov. What I can’t believe is you managed to halt an entire expedition in deep space with a single office-visit.”

I glanced at him and fooled with my helmet straps.

“Whatever you heard, sir, was exaggerated gossip. I will admit that the imperator has seen the light and reconsidered her options. I presented my case, and she made the call. Rumors that I went farther than that to change her mind…well, that’s sheer speculation.”

“You just marched up there to Gold Deck and did a little persuading, eh?” Leeson said, chuckling and leering at me. “What do I have to do to get a ticket to a lady’s office on Gold Deck?”

Snorting, I shook my head. “I’d recommend taking up that question with her personal staff. She has one adjunct that’s particularly accommodating. Her name is Bachchan.”

Leeson nodded thoughtfully. “Adjunct Bachchan, huh? I might just look her up. Thanks for the steer, McGill.”

“No charge, sir.”

I watched him leave with a hint of a smile on my face. I truly hoped he did approach and proposition Adjunct Bachchan. She’d probably tear him up.

The target system didn’t have a lot of planets, but there were some that were worth investigating. We came out of warp near the M-class star and cruised by her handful of dimly lit planets in the first hours. Then we turned the bow around and pointed it toward the K-class and glided in that direction.

More waiting followed. I felt stressed and ordered my squad to stand down. It would be nearly a full day’s cycle before we reached sensor range for the bigger star.

I was anticipating failure. My mind was churning. I’d sold my soul to Turov already. How could I get her to continue the hunt when this system proved fruitless? In retrospect, I was wishing I’d held something back to bargain with. I needed to keep this search going, and I was running out of both options and time.

That night, I lay in my bunk stewing over my situation. I couldn’t sleep. In the morning, we’d arrive at the K-class and either discover the enemy raiders, or more likely, nothing at all. Then I’d be right back where I started. How could I get Turov to fly to the next star?

And if I managed that, what if the third one was as empty as the first two? What was I willing to do to get the imperator to press on?

At about one a. m., I finally sprang out of bed, wide awake. I paced for a time like a caged tiger then threw on some clothes and headed out into the passages.

The ship was quiet but not dark. The night shift of Skrull crewmen were pacing the halls and keeping everything running. They glanced at me as I passed by, but said nothing. It wasn’t their job to question the humans, who they thought were crazy anyway. They flew the ship—that’s all. Sometimes I envied the spidery little aliens.

Adjunct Bachchan intercepted me as she’d done the day before. To my surprise, she was still on duty in the middle of the night. Maybe intercepting people who were coming to see Turov was all she did.

This time, however, she didn’t sneer at me. She frowned and looked suspicious, but there was no more sneering.

“This way, Veteran,” she said in an almost mechanical voice.

I followed her, not bothering to ask questions. She’d clearly been briefed and ordered to let me pass. She didn’t seem happy about that, but she wasn’t openly complaining.

When the door to Turov’s office opened, I found the imperator to be absent.

“Wait here,” Bachchan said.

I nodded and did as she instructed. A few minutes later, Turov arrived.

Again, I was surprised. She wasn’t yawning and wearing a nightie. Quite the opposite, she was fully dressed and seemed stressed.

“What do you want now?” she snapped. “Haven’t you done enough?”

“What are you talking about, sir?”

“The K-class—” she said, but then she broke off. Her eyes narrowed. She walked up to me and stabbed a finger into my chest. “You knew, didn’t you?”

“Uh…knew what, sir?”

“Again with the dumb act? It won’t work McGill—not this time. And to think I believed I was manipulating
you
…what I don’t understand, is how you could have known…but you must have! You were emphatic about stopping here, suggesting we skip the last system in the line. Did you imagine I wouldn’t remember the details?”

As often happened when conversing with officers—particularly Turov and Winslade—I felt I was being imbued with powers I simply didn’t have. The question in my mind now was how to deal with this situation.

My first instinct was to play dumb, because that’s exactly what I was. I had no idea what she was talking about, including why she was claiming I’d managed to trick her somehow. But I didn’t want to play dumb. I was desperate, and I needed leverage. She could stop this mission at any time, but I knew that if she thought I was some kind of wizard, my odds of keeping things going improved. Therefore, I chose to pretend I had the upper hand.

“I’m often underestimated, sir,” I said, giving her a confident smile.

Her lips pouted, and she made a hissing sound as she brushed past me. She moved to her desk and swept her arm across it, casting a dozen scrolls and a monitor onto the floor. The desk turned into a screen and displayed local space.

“There,” she said, stabbing near the center of the system. “This K-class star has only a single inner planet. Mysteriously, life has been detected on its surface.”

She looked back at me accusingly as if daring me to confess to a crime. I looked back in bewilderment.

“Okay,” I said. “There’s life—but there’s plenty of life on different worlds. What’s the big deal?”

“We checked the catalogs, and this system was scanned and deemed empty centuries ago by the Galactics. How do you explain this discrepancy?”

“Hmm…” I said thoughtfully, stepping closer to the display. “Looking at the planet, it doesn’t seem remarkable. It’s in the goldilocks zone circling a stable star. It’s rocky, and although it’s a little smaller than Earth, it appears to have an atmosphere and liquid water.”

“I know all that,” she snapped. “The point is it was listed as uninhabited and uninhabitable. Why? There are life readings down there! And that’s why you led me here, isn’t it? To find a world that shouldn’t be? A secret living planet?”

I shrugged because I was pretty close to being out of ideas. Sometimes it’s best to let imaginative people run with the ball for you.

She stared at me and made growling sounds. I could tell she was thinking hard. “You’ve given me provocative hints,” she said. “I’m putting the pieces together. The only way this planet could be here is if someone altered the data. Someone must have hidden this world by deleting or changing the records. That means one of two things: involvement by the Galactics or some kind of criminal element.”

“I find it highly unlikely that the Galactics would bother to do this to themselves. The Nairbs would have a fit if they found out.”

“Right,” she replied intensely. “It can only be a conspiracy. A purposeful error in the local star surveys. In any case, it doesn’t matter. The criminals we seek must be here, waiting for us.”

“Well then, let’s go nail them!” I boomed.

She stared at me with hooded eyes. “Are you leading me into some kind of trap? This smells like Claver to me.”

“Claver was back on Earth the last I knew, sir.”

She made a dismissive gesture, erasing my words with her hand.

“I know you and Claver are working for Nagata,” she said. “Don’t bother to deny it. Claver could be anywhere by now.”

“Imperator, let me assure you on one point: for the duration of this mission, I’m working for
you
.”

She bit her lower lip. She looked worried, and I could tell she wasn’t sure who to believe in.

“Let’s go over recent events,” she said at last. “First, mysterious pirates show up over Earth and brazenly attack. Second, I’m sent out here to catch these pirates—but then third, when I deviate from the course recommended by Central, you do your best to dissuade me. Fourth, as if by divine intervention, the second star system you specified as the target turns out to be the correct one.”

I watched the wheels turning in her head. I figured I had to say
something
. Heck, if I let her keep thinking on her own, she’d have me drawn and quartered by sunrise.

Taking a half-step toward her, I placed a hand on her elbow. “I couldn’t sleep,” I said. “That’s why I’m really here.”

She shook off my touch. “Don’t. Seduction won’t work this time, McGill. You’ll have to do better than that.”

My mind was in a state of confusion. By my way of thinking, she’d seduced
me
the first time around—actually, it had been that way every time around, if my memory served… But a man doesn’t get far with the ladies if he doesn’t back off when signaled to do so.

“Sorry sir,” I said. “Should I be returning to my squad? Should I prepare for action?”

Her slitted, suspicious eyes studied me. “I wish I knew what was really going on inside your brain, McGill.”

“Sometimes,” I said, “I’m uncertain myself.”

“Dismissed. Get some sleep. We’ll probably be in action within twenty hours. I’ll make sure you’re given a frontline seat when the fighting begins.”

“Thank you sir, I’m looking forward to a shot at revenge.”

She watched me leave, and I could tell she wasn’t sure how to take my reference to revenge.

I’d hoped she’d feel that way. I knew it was always best to keep your opponent guessing.