Balance of Terror (19 page)

Tamlan frowned. “Thadin? Moon Thadin?”

Moon quirked an eyebrow. “At your service.”

“But you disappeared months ago. There were rumours that you had died on Slater’s End. You and…,” his gaze dropped to Srin’s sleeping figure.

“My god,” he whispered. Then hardness crept into his amber eyes. “You can’t be.”

Moon put on the best tone she used with recalcitrant undergraduates, so dry it would have made the deserts of Marentim appear as lush oases. “Would you like to run a DNA scan?”

“You didn’t die on Slater’s End?”

“Obviously not.” One of her eyebrows quirked. “Not for lack of trying.”

And she was back there again, in the chill of the mid-morning, trying not to sneeze as she breathed in the dust within the ramshackle hut where she and Srin had been hiding. A Space Fleet patrol had landed on the edge of a mining town before Moon had time to jack a shuttle and they had to keep as quiet as rodents if they were going to evade the dragnet.

“It was close,” she said softly.

It was more than close. They were dead…if it hadn’t been the
Differential’s
captain himself who had found them. Drue Jeen’s pale blue gaze had seen them, swapped a message with Moon’s look of desperation, before he closed the door quietly behind him and ordered the patrol onward.

“How did you get off-planet?” A hint of respect crept into Tamlan’s voice.

“We found a contact. A doctor. She did what she could and smuggled us to Lunar Fifteen, a mining colony within the same system. My—a colleague arranged for transport to Marentim with the Fodox Rebels cartel.”

“Pirates.”

And that’s when Moon knew that Tamlan wasn’t one. He said that one word with such loathing that she wondered what story lay behind it. Had a pirate cartel been responsible for what had happened to his face? For the starkness of his ship?

“That’s right,” she agreed. “Pirates. To give them their due, they kept their end of the bargain. We landed on Marentim and were travelling across it with a guide when we…changed our minds.”

Tamlan’s eyes narrowed. “Which is how my engineer managed to capture you at Kushin Meet. It’s strange that you tried to jack a shuttle. Especially when you have more than enough cash to buy one.”

They found the money! Moon’s eyes widened before she could think to school her reactions and she saw a savage grin flash across Tamlan’s face.

“We were in a hurry,” she conceded, her voice hesitant. “Someone was following us.”

“Your guide?”

“Yes. We didn’t have time to find a vehicle, barter for it, complete the formalities.”

“And why was that? It would have only taken a few more hours to do things legitimately. Or, from what I hear, as legitimately as things can get on a place like Marentim.”

“I told you, we couldn’t wait.” She glanced down at Srin. He was looking much better, the angry redness further receding from his forehead and cheeks.

She looked back up at Tamlan. “If you know who I am then, from your reaction, you must already know who
he
is.”

Tamlan looked unsure. “I heard rumours. I didn’t believe them but then, you just called him a super-computer on legs, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did.”

“So the rumours are true.”

“His name is Srin Flerovs,” Moon said. The time for deception was past. Tamlan
had
to know exactly who Srin was, and how important he was. Srin’s life depended on it. “He was once a scientist working for the Republic, until they found out about his prodigious mental abilities. Once they realised what they had on their hands, they kept him in captivity for almost twenty years, feeding him a regime of drugs that erased his memory every two days.”

She leant down and smoothed an errant strand of hair from Srin’s forehead. Mercifully, his skin was cool to her touch.

“But he’s a very clever man,” she said softly, still looking down on her lover’s face. “Too clever for them. All he needed was an ally to help him escape.”

“You?”

She looked over at Tamlan. “Me.” Her voice held pride. “We escaped from the Republic ship, the
Differential,
and have been on the run ever since.”

“So what happened on Marentim? It looks like you had a plan. You were on your way to a rendezvous point, you said. You had a guide, you said. What did that have to do with jacking my shuttle?”

Moon sighed and turned to lean against the bunk. “Our guide decided that he wanted to play the Republic for a while – exploit Srin’s abilities to make money for himself, much as the Science Directorate had done.”

“So you ran away again?”

“Yes.”

Silence dropped between them. Had she been too trusting? Moon wondered. What was to stop Tamlan behaving in the same way as Gauder? In the same way as the Republic? Was there an alternative she could tempt him with?

“We’ll pay you,” she said suddenly.

His eyes narrowed. “What did you say?”

“Take one of our cash discs. It has almost sixteen kilo-credits on it. That’s more than fair compensation for whatever aborted theft we attempted. In return, we request that you take us to 3 Enkil IV.”

“What’s on 3 Enkil IV?”

Another cryptic comms chip, no doubt. Another half-reliable contact. Another month of running.

“That’s where we find our next contact,” Moon told him.

Although, as she said the words, Moon wondered how they were going to do that. She didn’t have any information on who would be meeting them or what they were supposed to do once they reached their destination. If getting to Marentim was like spinning a wheel with dozens of options, their current trip to Enkil IV was like throwing every credit they owned into the abyss, hoping for a miraculous return.

“We’re not mercenaries.” Tamlan sounded affronted, but it would have been a lot more genuine if she hadn’t seen the speculative gleam in his eye.

She made a show of looking around.

“Sixteen kilo-credits can do a lot for a ship like this. Maybe buy some military-grade systems. Hire some crewmembers.”

“I select the crew for the
Perdition
. And they aren’t mercenaries.”

Moon remained unfazed by his brusque comments. “Still, sixteen kilo-credits,” she said enticingly. “We’ll need the rest for Srin’s medical treatment and to start a new life, but sixteen is yours if you agree to ferry us to 3 Enkil.”

Tamlan shifted. “I need to find it first. I’ve never heard of the system.”

Moon took a breath. “Full payment up front. You can’t ask for fairer than that.”

Tamlan looked at her. “Considering I already have all your money, that’s not much of a show of trust. Then again, it
sounds
like a fair deal. Let me find this system first. Then we’ll talk.”

Chapter Fifteen

The conversation was alarming and Moon’s hands tightened on the back of a chair. The cockpit of the
Perdition
– Moon still couldn’t get over the cheery name Tamlan had given his ship – was small but well-equipped. Besides herself, Tamlan and the young man whose shuttle they tried to jack, Toy Cenredi, were also there. Tamlan’s expression was grim but Cenredi didn’t appear worried by it.

“And I keep telling you, grandpa, it ain’t there!”

“You searched for Enkil?”

“Do I look stupid to you? Of course I searched for ‘Enkil’. That was the first term I fed into the nav-comp. It came up blank. So I tried ‘3 Enkil’. Blank as well. Same with ‘Enkil 3’.” Cenredi’s gaze skittered in her direction then darted away. “Maybe there’s a mistake with the name.”

Tamlan didn’t look happy. “Can you check the name?” he asked, looking down and to the side. The question, Moon knew, was directed to her.

“The, er, chip that the information came on was destroyed,” she said, then hurriedly added, “but I’m sure I heard right. Kad said ‘3 Enkil IV’.”

Cenredi exhaled noisily and threw his hands in the air. “What do you expect me to do, grandpa? Conjure this system out of skeevin’ vacuum?”

“Is the system classified in any way?” Tamlan asked, ignoring the youth. “Does it have a secret base? Is it used for special projects? Anything like that.”

“Kad wouldn’t send me someplace like that. We were supposed to be running
away
from the Republic, not towards them.”

Tamlan rubbed his eyes with his fingers. “3 Enkil IV. Sounds like it should be an easy place to find.”

“Maybe Saff can find it,” Cenredi suggested. “She’s good with that kind of stuff.”

“Maybe. Okay, Dr. Thadin, let me get my second-in-command on this. As my engineer intimates, she can triangulate a spy probe in a sector of space as big as the Stellar Barrens.”

He gestured for them to exit the cramped command centre, no doubt leaving the relieved Cenredi to whatever duties were assigned to him.

“Your second-in command,” Moon prompted, after the cockpit door slid shut behind them. “That’s Saff, the pale-skinned woman?” If she was wary of Tamlan’s grimness, the edge of ridicule that always seemed to dance around Cenredi’s lips was even more off-putting, and she was glad they had left him behind.

“Yes.”

“Is she,” Moon hesitated, “human?”

Tamlan looked down at her. “What do you think? We don’t discriminate on the basis of species here on the
Perdition
. Only on the basis of ideology.”

Was he…accusing her of being speciesist? Moon’s back straightened.

“It was nothing more than scientific curiosity,” she remarked stiffly. “Your crewmember looked like a possible hybrid to me, and that means money and a lot of technical expertise. I just found it, interesting, that someone worth so much is here.”

“Aboard a barren ship, you mean?”

Tamlan’s tone was barbed, making Moon want to stamp her foot with frustration. Was the man deliberately misinterpreting every word she was saying?

They stopped at the door of the medical bay.

“You better go in and see to your, friend. If you’re feeling hungry, the canteen is back towards the stern, about ten metres along to your left.”

And don’t disturb me.

He didn’t say it, but the words were implicit in his voice. Knowing she was being ill-mannered, but thinking that he deserved no less, Moon turned her back on him and wordlessly entered the bay. She thought she might have heard a chuckle but it could have been the sound of the bay doors sliding shut.

“So you palm the second card then deal it to the fourth person?”

Cenredi’s voice didn’t contain its usual hint of mockery. Moon heard concentration and, as she turned into the small alcove that led to the canteen, saw Srin and the young engineer hunkered over a table, a deck of cards half-dealt between them.

“Or to whoever your accomplice is,” Srin added, deftly flicking cards over and spinning them in his fingers.

They had been on the
Perdition
for a week and Moon felt herself relaxing into the rhythm of ship life. It had indeed been the ship’s second-in-command who’d solved the problem of the missing destination. She had checked the charts and noted that they were out-of-date. After pulling recent updates off the military nets, she’d identified 3 Enkil IV as a new mining operation and a chastised Cenredi had set the route to take them there. After seven days, they were still more than a day away from the nearest hyperspace crease that would start them on their journey proper.

Moon felt, rather than heard, someone approach and turned to see the white-skinned woman hesitate at the doorway.

“Srin’s teaching him to gamble,” Moon commented, her tone wry.

“He needs an occupation,” was all Saff said. She walked over to a dispenser and programmed herself a plate of food and a drink.

Maybe it was boredom, or it might have been curiosity, that made Moon ask, “May I sit with you?”

Large obsidian eyes regarded her for a second before the woman nodded. Moon pulled out a chair and sat opposite the
Perdition
’s second-in-command.

“It must be lonely for you on this ship,” Moon began, not sure of what else to say.

“Lonely?” Saff repeated. “In what way?”

“No friends.”

“That is correct,” Saff said, forking some food into her mouth. She chewed carefully then swallowed. “The people on this ship aren’t my friends.” Her voice was deliberate. “They are my family.”

As if struck, Moon was overcome with a wave of embarrassment. “I’m sorry,” she apologised in haste, “I didn’t mean to imply anything. It’s just—”

“You see me as a being who is different, because of the colour of my skin. Moreover, a being who is only comfortable among her own kind.”

They were statements behaving as questions and Moon, after hesitating, was forced to nod.

“Yet you are even more different.” Saff leisurely ate some more food and took a delicate sip from her drink bulb.

“I don’t see—”

“I accessed the files the Republic has on you. Dr. Moon Thadin of the Phyllis Science Centre. Developer of the Solar Missile.”

Moon felt a hot flush begin at her neck and move up to her cheeks.

“It was never meant to be a missile,” she objected.

“What else could it be?” Saff countered. “What else but a weapon to destroy entire star systems?”