No More Heroes: In the Wake of the Templars Book Three (18 page)

He nodded unhappily. “As I told you, it’s your choice about whether to broadcast or not. Sometimes they will offer you a bribe to reconsider.”

They hadn’t. Maybe that should surprise her more, but she was merely relieved.

She realized that the Deputy Consul might not get many chances to have his image broadcast across the galaxy. He’d dressed up for his big moment, just in case. She consoled him by saying, “Maybe they’re waiting to see if I give them a good enough show today.”

A bribe wouldn’t change her mind, but he didn’t need to know that.

Finally the bailiff summoned them into the courtroom. The guards seated her in a defendant’s chair surrounded on three sides by a low wooden box to hold it separate from the rest of the courtroom. It faced a single magistrate in a shining white robe. The creature was an Eske, a little curry-colored rodent with big membranous ears. Raena had run across a shipful of them before, when the
Veracity
transported food to Capital City. Those Eskes hadn’t liked humans very much.

“Raena Zacari,” the black-feathered court clerk read, “you were welcomed as a visitor to Kai City six standard months ago, correct?”

The Deputy Consul looked to her to answer, so Raena said, “Yes.”

“You were traveling with two other humans, Ariel Shaad of the Shaad Family Foundation and Gavin Sloane of Sloane Incorporated, a dealer in Templar artifacts.”

They had been staying on Kai under aliases, but clearly someone had blown their cover. Raena considered briefly whether to deny it, but the Deputy Consul already knew about Ariel. As long as she needed his help, she wouldn’t get him into trouble. “Yes,” she admitted.

She expected the avian clerk to bring up the fight with Thallian’s merry band of kidnappers, but instead it skipped straight ahead to, “When you left Kai City Spaceport, you kidnapped a young human and stole the Imperial-era transport on which he had been traveling.”

“No,” Raena said emphatically. It was a lie, but she committed to it wholeheartedly.

The magistrate came alert in his chair. “You deny the charges?” he squeaked over his translator.

“I do,” Raena said.

“Consul?” the magistrate prompted.

The Deputy Consul stood up. The camera zoomed over to him. He posed to show off his good side. “Ms. Zacari, you understand that if this case goes to trial, your friends may be subpoenaed to testify.”

Ariel was counting on that, Raena suspected. She always liked a good fight.

The consul added, “They may be subjected to charges of their own.”

“Sloane is already dead,” Raena said. “His corpse was broadcast around the galaxy on Mellix’s last documentary.”

At the mention of Mellix’s name, the magistrate jumped back into the conversation. “If you plead guilty now, the fine is very reasonable. If we proceed to trial, the fine increases exponentially every day you are in court.”

So this was all about money. “What happens if we go to trial and the Business Council can’t prove their case against me?” she asked.

“They pay you,” the Deputy Consul explained. “They reimburse you for the time you’ve been inconvenienced.”

“Does that include the time I was locked up on Lautan, hauled across space by bounty hunters hired by Kai’s Business Council, and traveling alone through Kai’s desert?”

The Consul had a slight twinkle in his eye, but he turned to face the court clerk.

It said, “Yes. If the Business Council is found to have brought frivolous charges, you will be reimbursed for the sum of your inconveniences.”

She was guilty as hell, but Raena finally understood what Ariel wanted her to do. “I demand a trial,” she said.

“Very well,” the magistrate said. “I’ll leave it to the clerk to put it on the schedule. Next case.”

*   *   *

Haoun had never been inside a jail before. He assumed that Raena would be brought down to meet him in some common area, but instead, after he was passed through a screening machine, guards escorted him up to her cell.

The bare black stone room had nothing to brighten it except the small black-haired woman in her short blue dress. Haoun rushed over to take her in his arms. Raena grinned as if genuinely relieved to see him. He buried his nose in her throat. She smelled of sweat and worry, absolutely intoxicating.

She twisted to slip her tongue between his lips. He shuddered happily and clutched her closer.

“I missed you,” she whispered.

“Are you okay?” He set her feet back on the floor. “Are they treating you all right?”

“Yes,” Raena said. “It’s a constant party in here.”

She led him over to the stone bench that protruded from the wall. Once they’d settled, he noticed she was barefoot.

“No boots allowed?” he wondered.

“They confiscated them on Lautan and no one’s bothered to find me a replacement.”

“Shameful,” Haoun said. “I’ll get on that.” He took one of her little feet into his hands and massaged it. It was filthy with black dust and cold to his touch.

His hand wandered up her thigh.

Raena dropped her hand on his and nodded toward the camera above the door. “I’m not opposed to an audience,” she said, “but they have a creepy desire to broadcast the things they record. You have a family to think about.”

He stared at the camera. “Have they been watching you all the time?”

“As far as I know.”

“Even when you shower?”

She shrugged, not particularly upset by it. Maybe it was one of those things she had gotten used to, having spent so much time imprisoned.

“I’m so sorry this happened to you,” he told her.

“Thank you. At least I finally got arraigned today.”

“Finally?”

“They haven’t seemed in any great hurry to start my trial. Do you have any idea when I’m getting out of here?”

“No. Ariel’s supposed to arrive tonight. She says she’ll take care of everything. Oh, and while I’m thinking of it, Mykah says you must insist on having your trial broadcast.”

“No.”

“It’s imperative, he says. And it’s your right.”

“I don’t want my life on the intragalactic news,” Raena insisted. “That’s what got me into this mess in the first place.”

“What got you into this is a pleasure planet’s greed,” Haoun argued. “Kai has been looking to shake someone down to make up for the downturn in tourism. They could find you. They couldn’t find Mellix.”

“Mellix’s documentary is what led them to me.”

“Mellix’s documentary isn’t connected in any way to your arrest. It’s just a coincidence.”

“I wonder.” She offered Haoun a little smile and slipped her other foot into his lap. He rubbed it as well.

“How did Kai know where to look for me?” she asked. “We hadn’t been on Lautan for long.”

“Apparently your defense of Mykah at the beach triggered Planetary Security to find your warrant from Kai. It just took them a little while to negotiate the price of your extradition. And it led to them seizing the
Veracity
. They seem to have mistaken it for some other ship.” His eyes darted meaningfully at the camera. “We got here as quickly as we could.”

Raena sighed. “No good deed goes unpunished.”

Haoun changed the subject. “Have you been able to sleep in here?”

She nodded. “The dreams have been bad, but nothing unusual has happened in them.”

“That’s a relief, isn’t it?” Haoun asked.

“Yes. If I have to be locked up, at least I’m not under attack.”

A guard tapped on the door.

Haoun sighed. “I wish I could stay longer.”

“No, go,” Raena said. “Plan my defense. I want to get out of here in the worst way.”

*   *   *

“We’re on Kai finally,” Ariel commed. “Come to Kavanaugh’s docking slip. We need to talk.”

So Mykah and the rest of the
Veracity
’s crew traced the coordinates she gave them to the battered retro-futurist Earth-made hauler. Kavanaugh’s
Sundog
looked, as always, as if it had seen better days.

“I thought Kavanaugh always did his business in a bar,” Coni said.

Mykah shrugged. “Guess they don’t want to discuss the trial in public.”

Kavanaugh waited for them at the hatch. He shook everyone’s hand—even Vezali’s tentacle—and ushered them onto his ship. He drew Mykah aside at the back of the group to ask, “How did you heal up?”

“Good as new, thanks to you. I kept the scar, though.”

“Thought you might.” Kavanaugh looked past Mykah after the
Veracity
’s crew. “How are the kids holding up?”

“It’s been hard for everyone to have all our stuff stolen out from under us.”

“How’d they get onto your ship?”

“The dockmaster on Lautan let them in. Never occurred to me to booby-trap it.”

“I can show you how to set a password on the external lock,” Kavanaugh offered.

“I’d appreciate it.”

Once again, Kavanaugh’s manner impressed Mykah. Tarik offered his expertise without making Mykah feel self-conscious or stupid. He hoped to grow up to be as cool as Tarik someday.

In the
Sundog
’s lounge, Ariel was holding court at the card table, glasses of green poured for everyone. It always startled Mykah that Ariel’s skin was the shade of sunlight on the water, a lovely gold that looked like leisure, like money. Until you compared her with Eilif, Ariel looked perfect. Eilif, though, was so symmetrical she had obviously been engineered.

“Nice to see you again,” he said gently.

Eilif dropped her gaze, rather than meet Mykah’s eyes. “And you as well, Captain Chen.”

“Sit down and have a drink, Mykah,” Ariel ordered. “I want to hear what you know about the charges Raena is facing.”

*   *   *

When Mykah finished telling her everything the
Veracity
crew had learned so far, Ariel asked, “So you’re sure we can refute the theft charge?”

Mykah looked to Coni, who nodded. “The
Veracity
’s provenance is seamless.”

“Good. Then it’s just a matter of making the court think that the dockmaster’s office scrambled the recordings of two very similar Imperial transports. Can you do that?”

“Already have,” Coni said.

Relieved, Ariel sipped her green. She wasn’t sure how Raena had befriended these kids, but she’d done well for herself. They were first-class.

“What about the kidnapping charge?” Haoun asked.

“Since no one reported the boy missing,” Ariel said, “Kai is simply hoping to make that charge stick. On Kai, Raena will be considered guilty until she demonstrates she’s not, so it’s all on her to prove she didn’t capture the boy. Luckily, I have the solution to that,” she promised.

“Are you going to defend her?” Vezali asked.

“No. One of my attorneys should arrive tomorrow. Corvas is on retainer to the Foundation to protect our kids when needed. Since Raena’s new identity kicked in, she’s under the Foundation’s aegis. Corvas is scary smart. He’ll know how to game Kai’s legal system.” Ariel topped off their glasses of green and said, “The only thing that worries me is the murder charge.”

“When did they charge her with murder?” Haoun asked.

“They haven’t yet, but they will.” Ariel sipped her drink. “Have you ever watched the courtroom show from Kai?”

Only Mykah had.

“I’ve been studying up,” Ariel said. “The Business Council broadcasts their trials, as a way to shame anyone who acts up on Kai. If they bring charges that can be proven to be unfounded—and the judges rule against them—the Business Council pays out to the defendant. So once they get you in the system, they keep throwing charges at you until you can’t rebut something. They can prove Raena killed Revan Thallian and some of his guards the day you all lit off in the
Veracity
.”

“We’ve seen the fight,” Coni said. “It was broadcast everywhere afterward. All that talk about how weapons-free worlds didn’t keep people safe made Raena laugh.”

“But you and Sloane,” Mykah argued, “clearly you were attacked. Raena simply defended you.”

“If she’d merely gotten us out of the fight,” Ariel answered, “Kai might not be able to make the charge stick. But she moved on from the guys who grabbed us to subdue the whole party of Thallian’s soldiers.”

The
Veracity
crew protested, all voices raised at once. Ariel smiled. The ruckus reminded her of home.

“You’re right,” she said over them. “There wasn’t anything else she could have done. If we’d run, the Thallians would have followed. They weren’t going to let her go just because she cracked a couple of skulls. I know that—and you know that—because we know whom those soldiers belonged to. Kai still hasn’t officially identified them.”

Silence followed that announcement.

“If we name Revan,” Mykah asked, “are we going to have to explain why he was after Raena?”

“Raena’s daughter,” Ariel reminded. “Since Raena’s posing as her own daughter, we’ll have to explain why the Thallians wanted my sister’s daughter.”

“They’d tracked Raena and Sloane to Brunzell,” Coni said. “Raena left a dress behind in Sloane’s apartment there. The Thallians found it and brought it onboard the
Raptor
. Raena found it in Revan’s closet.”

“There are probably Security recordings of the Thallians on Brunzell, then,” Ariel said. “With those, we could prove they were hunting her before they came to Kai.”

“I’ll find them,” Coni promised.

Mykah asked, “Are you going to connect Jain with murdering the guy who helped get Raena out of her tomb?”

Kavanaugh interrupted quietly, “His name was Tom Zhao Lim.”

Mykah had forgotten Kavanaugh had been the boss of the grave-robbing crew. “I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I never knew his name.”

Ariel shook her head. “I’m sorry, too, Tarik. As much as I would like to solve Lim’s murder for the galaxy, I don’t think we need to bring it up in this court at this time. The galaxy hasn’t connected the murder to the Thallians or to humanity at all. I don’t want to add any fuel to the ‘humans are violent and dangerous’ debate. Jain was punished for his crime.”

Haoun interrupted. “Raena said he hung himself.”

“That is true,” Eilif said quietly.

Ariel touched Eilif’s hand in sympathy. “We should keep Jain’s crimes separate from Raena’s. If she’d killed him on camera, we might need to justify her, but since she only took him home—where his father meted out the punishment—that’s beyond the scope of Kai’s justice.”