gaian consortium 03 - the gaia gambit (21 page)

“That I can do.” He was starting to sound happier than a kid who’d gotten a pony for Christmas. “Bathshevan security is notoriously sloppy. They’re great at killing. Computers? Not so much.” A pause, and then Jackson went on, “So that must be some information you’re sitting on, if you’re using it to bargain for all this other stuff.”

“It is.” Now it was her turn to hesitate. She knew the channel was secure, that Jackson had myriad ways of safeguarding all his transmissions, locking them down so hard he could give lessons to the GDF’s security people. Even so, saying such a thing to a person light-years away felt odd, as if somehow, despite all Jackson’s protocols and defenses, someone might manage to overhear what she was about to say. Her voice lowered, although she knew that was silly. It wasn’t as if anyone was in the next room, eavesdropping on her. She pushed her loose hair back over her shoulder, drew in a breath, and said, “The money behind sen Trannick? We traced it to Eridani.”

Dead silence, for one second, two, three… In fact, it stretched on so long that Lira began to wonder if the transmission had been cut off somehow.

Then Jackson said, “You’re serious.”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

Another silence. “Shit.”

That about sums it up
. “Yes, Jackson, it’s big. So big that frankly, I don’t know what to do about it.” Her head throbbed again, and she reached up to rub her brow, wondering if she was going to have to dig a pain-tab out of the first aid cabinet. “Right now I’m trying to do this one step at a time. If I stop to think about the big picture, I’m just going to freak myself out.”

“You don’t freak out over anything.”

“Then this may be a first.”

“Okay,” he said, after another one of those pauses. “That’s some serious information you handed over. I may have to think up more things to do for you just to even the score.”

“That’s not necessary. Just your contact on Miris Prime is enough for starters, and we’ll worry about the Bathshevans after that.”

“Sending it over now.” Even across the light-years that separated them, Lira could practically feel the excitement coming off Jackson in waves. “I can’t wait to start digging into this. Now that I have an origin point — ”

“Sounds great,” she said wearily. “If you have something new to pass on, let me know. We’re going to head for Miris Prime immediately.”

“Coordinates have been beamed over.” He let out a small sigh, one that sounded almost concerned…for Jackson. “Be careful, all right?”

“I always am,” she told him, and flipped the switch, ending the transmission.

Movement behind her made her turn around, and she saw Rast standing there, looking far grimmer than a man should who’d just had spectacular sex less than five hours ago. For a few seconds she wondered if he was angry at her for speaking to Jackson, but dismissed that notion as foolish. Then she realized that he held her toiletry bag in one hand, and she frowned.

“Do you want to tell me what that’s about?” she inquired, with a jerk of her chin toward the bag. Somehow she doubted he was looking to borrow her deodorant.

Rast’s mouth thinned. “I think I just discovered how the Bathshevans found us on Gaia.”

He’d slept afterward, of course, drowned in a satisfied slumber, content, the woman he loved curled in his arms. But sometime later he’d awakened and discovered she wasn’t there. At first he was concerned, although almost at once he reassured himself, realizing that she probably wanted to check on the ship, and so had slipped out without disturbing him. He’d lain there for a while, staring up at the ceiling, feeling the almost imperceptible motion of the ship beneath him, wondering if perhaps he should try to fall asleep again. For some reason that idea did not sound wise, so he’d begun picking over the day in his head, wondering how it was that the Bathshevans had tracked them down on Gaia, when Eryk Thorn himself said that he’d double-checked the
Chinook
for any trackers. The ship was clean.

So it had to have been something else that drew down the mercenaries. Somehow he and Lira had been tracked there, even though the ship had been swept. That meant it had to be something they carried on their persons. He’d pawed through the satchel that held his meager belongings, but found nothing suspicious.

Perhaps it would have been wiser to wait and take his suspicions to Lira, but surely she couldn’t be upset by a quick check of her things. There wasn’t much to see, anyway — one change of clothes, several changes of underthings, a bag that held small containers of cleansers and lotions, a tube of what he thought was lip color, another tube of some liquid apparently meant to darken her eyelashes, although they always looked dark and lush to him.

The lip color tube had an odd little dent at one end, possibly from being thrown carelessly into a bag or a pocket, but even so he thought it merited a second look. He tugged on the casing, finding it to be wedged on there more tightly than he had initially thought. In the end, though, the little metal tube was no match for a Stacian’s strength, and he yanked it off — only to have small chip fall out, a chip that he knew had no business being hidden in a tube of cosmetics.

He picked it up, eyeing it narrowly, but he was no expert in electronics, let alone the minuscule devices employed by the less trustworthy of the galaxy’s citizens. Best to show it to Lira, and see what she thought. He took the chip and the tube of lip color and dropped them back into the cosmetics bag, then went forward to the bridge.

She was speaking to someone as he approached. Jackson Wyler, from the sound of it, and although Rast would have been more than happy if she never had contact with her former lover again, he knew that Wyler possessed skills and talents that could help them along their road to discovering why the Eridanis were in bed with Admiral sen Trannick. The transmission ended as he approached, and so he only had the impression that she’d gotten Wyler to help them out once again.

When she turned to look back at him, Rast could see at once how weary she was, how shadows stained the fine skin beneath the clear blue eyes. But her back was straight enough as she turned around in her seat to more or less face him, then inquired as to why he was holding her bag of toiletries.

He told her, and added, “I don’t recognize that chip, but maybe you do?”

She took the bag from him and pushed past the ruin of her lipstick without comment. The chip she brought up, held between one slender forefinger and her thumb. “Well, goddamn,” she said after staring at it for a moment.

“Do you recognize it?”

“Miniaturized subspace tracker. Pretty sophisticated one, too, from the looks of it.” An expression of disgust crossed her delicate features, and before he could say or do anything to stop her, she dropped it to the floor of the bridge and ground it to dust beneath the heel of her boot.

Frowning, Rast inquired, “Was that wise? We might have been able to discover who planted it on you if we’d inspected it more closely.”

Her eyebrow lifted. “Are you an expert in that sort of thing?”

“Well, no, but — ”

“Neither am I. And that goddamned thing was transmitting our coordinates as we sat here. Thank God I know where we’re going next, so we can get out of here before anyone else shows up.” She turned away from him and began entering commands into the shipboard computer, obviously lining them up for their next subspace hop.

Knowing it was useless to protest, Rast instead eased himself into the copilot’s chair, waited for the moment when the ship shot forward and realspace melted around them, to be replaced by the shifting colors and patterns of subspace. It came within the minute; Lira hadn’t been exaggerating when she said she knew where they were going.

“So what is our destination?” he asked.

“Miris Prime. Jackson has a contact there who can give us new identities. I’m not saying we won’t still be a little conspicuous, but at least that way there’s less chance of being tracked quickly.”

Given this information, Rast could only nod. Miris Prime was a Gaian world, a planet that had been heavily industrialized because of its rich deposits of various useful ores. By all accounts it was a grim, gray place, but he had to remind himself that he and Lira were not going there to vacation, but for the all-important purpose of masking their identities.

She settled back in her seat, not exactly relaxed, but freed of some of her piloting responsibilities now that the ship was set on its course. Rast thought perhaps she was now ready for more questions.

“Who do you think put that tracking device in your belongings?”

A sigh, as she pushed her hair back behind her shoulders. Another good thing about her being freed of military service — those glorious silken locks were now allowed to fall loose, instead of being bound up in the tight little knot that the Gaian Defense Force’s dress code apparently required.

Quietly, she said, “I can’t know for sure, of course, but I suspect it was Gared Tomas.”

The answer startled him, but on closer examination, Rast supposed the idea wasn’t that far-fetched. “Keeping tabs on you, eh?”

“Most likely. Gared Tomas didn’t trust his own mother, let alone some woman one of his lackeys picked up in a bar when he was trolling for a pilot.” She gave a self-deprecating laugh and added, “I probably wouldn’t have trusted me under those circumstances, either. Now that I think of it, I was being a little too trusting. I never considered that Tomas might put a tracker on me — after all, when I was on Iradia, I was easy enough to keep an eye on, and of course I spent a good deal of time directly in his company, flying him between his various bases.”

Rast wasn’t aware of any particular shift in his expression, but she must have seen something, because she shot him a sideways glance and said,

“And no, there was nothing personal between us.”

“Did I say there was?”

“No, but you were thinking it.” Something approaching a smile touched her mouth, and she stood, going to him and wrapping her arms around his waist, pushing herself close against him.

It was one of the first voluntary gestures of affection he’d seen from her, and his arms tightened around her, even as he noted the enticing musky scent of their lovemaking, along with a whiff of something that smelled like smoke, probably from the mercenaries’ attack on the Thorn homestead. She felt right there, nestled in his embrace, even though she was such a tiny thing, really, her head not even reaching his chin. For all that, though, he could feel the steel-sharp strength of her, the force of will that had made her a captain at such a young age.

With her cheek still pressed against him, she said quietly, “He wanted me, but I said no, that I was his pilot and only that. There wasn’t anything between us.”

So those unpleasant visions of her sharing that cabin with Gared Tomas were only that — visions, foolish fancies, far from the truth. “I won’t lie and say I’m not relieved.”

A muffled laugh. “I’ll have to watch out for that jealous streak of yours. No, Rast, there hasn’t been anyone for quite a while. I was always focused on my career. What was the point in trying to make a connection with someone? The GDF frowns on its captains — especially the female ones — marrying and having families. That wasn’t for me.”

“And now?” he asked.

“Now?” She pulled away slightly and looked up at him, one eyebrow quirked. “I don’t even know what tomorrow is going to bring, so I’m not going to start thinking about the long term for a while yet.”

It would have been too much to expect her to say she would run off with him, start their own version of the Thorns’ domestic bliss. Not that he even knew whether Stacians and Gaians could interbreed. Such a notion verged on blasphemy for one of his race, since they had been focused on preserving the purity of their bloodlines for millennia. It was the only way to ensure the future of the Stacian people, as their world made short work of those who were weak or genetically inferior. And now, for him to be considering mixing his blood with that of a Gaian woman? He did not want to think how his family members might react to such a proposition.

“At the moment, it’s probably wise to not think too far ahead,” he said, laying aside for the moment visions of having this woman by his side for the rest of his life. “But will you come back to bed now?”

She hesitated, and again he noted the weariness etched in her face.

“Only to sleep,” he promised, although his body flickered with heat at the thought of taking her again. But he could tell she’d had enough for now. “As you said, we don’t know what tomorrow will bring. How long until we reach Miris Prime?”

“Ten standard.”

“Well, then,” he said, and drew her away from the bridge, back to the cabin that had become theirs over the last few days. “Come and sleep, and leave tomorrow’s worries for tomorrow.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

She hadn’t thought it would feel so good to sleep curled up against Rast’s warm, solid body, to have his calm, regular breaths soothe her into a slumber so deep that she didn’t dream, didn’t do anything except lie there, as her weary muscles healed themselves and her mind sought its own healing. And when she woke, some seven standard hours later, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to turn to him, to run her fingers along the heavy muscles of his chest and arms, to reach down and take him into her hand, finding him hard and ready. They made love slowly, silently, and afterward took turns using the shower, scrubbing off the last traces of their encounter with the mercenaries and the doubt and worry that had come along with it, and making jokes about one day soon being able to climb into the shower together.

Some of her good humor evaporated when they came out of subspace and into the Miris system. Like Gaia itself, the system was located far out on one of the galaxy’s spiral arms, and the stars here were even more widely scattered than they were in the Gaian system. Miris itself was equally unprepossessing from orbit — dull gray in appearance due to the bands of perpetual cloud cover that wrapped themselves around the planet.

As with most approaches to Gaian Consortium worlds, she was contacted only a few seconds after beginning her approach to the coordinates Jackson had given her.