Contact Imminent (13 page)

“There are currently three shooters trained on them.” He spoke Sìah Haárin, stripped of gesture and barely audible above the noise. “If you try to get away, we will force the situation. But I don't want that to happen. Please.” He shook his head. “The ones helping me—they're rather excitable. They don't understand half measures, and we were told to do whatever was necessary to bring you in.” He pointed down a narrow chase that ran between two storefronts. “This way.”

Jani rebalanced her weight so he couldn't pull her forward. “Call off your dogs and I'll go with you.”

“Not until we have you secured.”

“Call them off.”

“
I
.
Can't
.” Brondt pulled her toward the chase. “Your friends are trying to force their way back here—we have five seconds, probably less—please, Kièrshia,
now
!”

Jani looked ahead. Saw Niall shoulder Hamil aside and push back through the crowd toward her. Saw John reach into his pocket, where he'd no doubt stashed his S-40.
No,
John—they'll think you know what you're doing!
“I'm going. I'm going.”

“Hurry.” Brondt pulled her after him through the gap.

Jani felt her head clear as the noise damped to nothing, the only sounds her boots and Brondt's tietops striking the bare flooring. She tried to loosen his hold on her wrist, but he just gripped tighter, glancing back at her as though he sensed her trying to make her move. “I'll remember this.”

“We—” Brondt lifted his free hand in pleading. “We have our reasons.”

“You don't have any that are good enough.” Jani tried to drag back as sounds reached her from behind. Shouts. Running.

Then Brondt pushed against what looked like bare wall. A panel slid open, and he yanked Jani after him into the dark. “Cooperation is the best move now, really.” He let her momentum carry her ahead of him, stripping her duffel from her shoulder and tossing it aside, grabbing her free wrist from behind so he trapped them both. Then he moved in close, shoving one of his feet between hers and kicking them wider apart so she couldn't gain the leverage to kick back or pull forward. Then he raised her hand to her own mouth and clapped it over so she couldn't cry out, and held her for the few vital seconds it took for the footsteps pounding down the chase to reach the panel then pass it by.

Jani took in the tight, dusty space lined with array boxes and exposed conduit, inset safety lighting barely sufficient to cut through the gloom.

“The woman who designed this place, bless her, loved her cubbyholes. The shopkeepers here lost merchandise like water until we mapped them all out.” Brondt pulled Jani's hand from her mouth. “I'm going to step back and release you. Now.”

As soon as Jani felt Brondt's grip loosen, she turned, swinging out her arm and kicking her leg out and around. Unfortunately, she struck empty air—Brondt had leaped clear and stood against the far wall, breathing heavily.

“Your reputation precedes you, Kièrshia. I will admit to feeling concern when ná Gisa told me that I needed to subdue you by myself.” He ran a hand over his rumpled shirtfront, then pushed away from the wall. “Now, if you would follow me, please.”

Jani freed her shooter from her pocket. “One thing you can say for Service docks—they never scan for weapons because most everyone is armed.” She aimed at Brondt and sighted down. “We're going back out to the concourse. Un-fasten the top two closures of your shirt and turn around, arms at your sides.”

“Ná Kièrshia,
please
.” Brondt sighed heavily, then did as she asked. “You don't understand the situation.”

“In my experience, no one who took me hostage ever had my best interests at heart. That's the only aspect of the situation I've ever needed to understand.” Jani edged close enough to Brondt to grab his shirt by the collar and yank down, dragging it around his elbows and effectively pinning his arms to his sides. “You walk out ahead of me,” she said as she patted him down. “Try to strike me, I'll shoot you. Try to run, I'll shoot you.”

“I'm not armed,” Brondt said.

“You should've been. Kidnapping isn't a gentleman's game.” Jani backed off and waved him ahead of her. “We'll wait in the concourse for John and Niall. Then we'll return to your office and have a nice long talk.”

“Aren't you even going to ask?” Brondt moved toward the panel while trying to look at her over his shoulder. “I must be the first hybrid you've ever met. I must be. Don't you care?”

“No, she doesn't, boyo,” a familiar voice rasped through the murk. “She's too busy thinking about how best to drop you if you try to run.” A wet chuckle sounded. “I know where Johnny and the colonel are. They're still under our guns, so to speak. Drop your weapon.”

“Doctor DeVries.” Jani let her shooter hand fall. “It hasn't been long enough.”

“Tell me, Kilian, tell me.” Footsteps crunched. A figure
cut through the dimness, as short and stocky as Brondt, but bent, with the plod of the terminally desk-bound. “With rings on her fingers and blood on her clothes, she shall sow chaos wherever she goes.” Eamon DeVries moved beneath one of the inset lights, which cast a sickly green light across a slack face, a wattled neck. “I take it back. No blood. Only because I got here in time.” He raised a shooter, a sister to John's S-40. “As you can see, I'm no gentleman. But we've both always known that, haven't we? Brondt, you damned fool, button yourself up and take her shooter.” He jerked his head toward the rear of the space. “There's an opening back there that leads to the shuttle docks. Let's go.”

The rear opening of the cubbyhole led to a series of short corridors, the drift in design of doors, the rise in temperature, and the language on identity plates indicating the transition to the Haárin wing of the station. Humanish seldom did business there in person—both Brondt in his Service uniform and Eamon in his Elyan-style overshirt and loose trousers drew attention from the passengers and crew members who walked the concourse. Jani, however, managed to trump them both by virtue of her propitiator's overrobe. The clash between the traditional bornsect garb and her distinctly humanish hairstyle attracted puzzled postures, and more.

“We're being followed.” Eamon glanced over his shoulder at the scattered groups that shadowed them. “You should have stripped that damned shirt off her first thing, boyo.”

“I couldn't do that,” Brondt muttered under his breath. “She's ní Tsecha's suborn. She's Kièrshia.”

“She's a gutter-bred git named Jani Moragh Kilian, and she'd have shot you without a second thought.” Eamon glared at her sidelong. “You knew this would happen, didn't you?”

“Didn't occur to me, no. Just a happy accident.” Jani made a show of sniffing the air. “That's one thing you al
ways notice on the Haárin side of a station—no food odors. Scents as fresh as recycled air can be.”

“Belt it.” Eamon steered her down a half-lit walkway. “Thank bloody God,” he said as they approached a shuttle boarding ramp.

“You're sure it's the right one?” Jani looked around in mock anxiety. “You're sure you didn't pick the wrong ramp in a panic?”

Eamon grabbed her arm above the elbow and yanked her to a stop, then shoved his shooter in her face.
“I should just shoot you now!”

Jani looked down at him over the barrel—she stood a full head taller, and could tell from the way his glare flickered that it bothered him. “John would kill you,” she said softly, “and I would save you a seat in hell.”

Eamon's eyes narrowed at the mention of John, his finger twitching above the shooter charge-through.

“We have to go.” Brondt pushed Jani aside until he stood in the shooter's path. “
Now
, Doctor. This is not the place.” He stared Eamon down until the man turned away with a huff. Then he prodded them both down the ramp toward the shuttle entry as a crowd of curious Haárin watched from the concourse.

The shuttle appeared half filled by the time they entered the main cabin. “They saved you the throne of honor in the back of the craft.” Eamon pointed to an empty seat in the middle of the rearmost row, located at the end of the aisle. “Go there and sit tight and shut up.”

Jani headed down the aisle toward her seat, mindful of the rapt gazes that followed her. She tried to study them without seeming to, curiosity warring with anger at her predicament.
One…ten…seventeen
…Seventeen faces, hybrid all, yet…
Some of them look humanish. Some look Haárin. And some…I can't tell
. Humanish who looked much as Haárin, who wore flowing trousers and overrobes and had arranged their hair in braided fringes and napeknots. Haárin
who wore trousers and tunics, shirts with neckpieces, long skirts and wrapdresses, their hair worn long and loose or trimmed close to their heads.
Dathim would howl
. His sheared head, which he thought so daring, wouldn't have earned him a guest pass into this club.

She reached her seat and lowered into it, gripping the arms for support as her knees went wobbly. As one, the hybrids turned back to watch her, their expressions ranging from expectant to eager to, in a few cases, fearful. One of those belonged to the helpful Major Hamil, who sat by a window and seemed intent on ducking behind his seatback whenever Jani looked in his direction.

“Let's get going!” Eamon called out from his seat in the middle of the cabin. “Half the Haárin in the station saw us. Someone must have reported us by now.”

“We can't.” Brondt paced the aisle and checked his timepiece. “Torin's not—”

A commotion in the front of the shuttle claimed everyone's attention. At first Jani thought that John and Niall had tracked her down, but the disturbance turned out to be a late arrival, a young hybrid who shot through the cabin door as though someone tossed him. He careened off the wall opposite the opening, then staggered down the aisle as he tried to regain his balance.

“Sorry! Sorry!” He righted himself, all elbows and long legs, and leaned against Brondt for support. “The stationmaster just closed down the connections between the humanish and Haárin sections. If we don't break away in the next five minutes, we'll get caught in a sweep. They've already called out—” His eyes met Jani's and he fell silent.

The face from the image, the hair a little lighter than she recalled, the skin a little darker.
It's summertime in Karistos
. She tried to calibrate her knowledge of the place's seasons against the Commonwealth calendar.
Late summer, edging into autumn
. He must have spent a great deal of time outside.
Torin
.

“They've already called out station security.” Torin started toward the rear of the cabin again, his step slower and steadier, eyes still on Jani. “The Haárin are always slow to respond to any alarms from the humanish side. If we're in the breakaway queue, they should let us leave.”

“We'll be in the queue as soon as you sit yourself down and strap in.” Eamon reached out and pushed Torin toward an empty aisle seat. “Now get to it!”

Jani saw Torin make a sour face at Brondt as he fell into the seat and secured himself, saw Brondt clench his fist close to his body, out of sight of Eamon, and pump it once in encouragement.
The two of them are allies—they sent Torin's image to John
. She adjusted her own safety straps as she pondered what she sensed so far.
Torin and Brondt don't like Eamon, and I'm guessing Eamon doesn't like them either. This would mean that Eamon doesn't know about the image. Assuming he's working closely with Gisa, that means she doesn't know, either
. The cabin lights fluttered, and she felt the telltale vibration of the shuttle engines rattle up through the bottom of her seat.
Threats, kidnappings, hurried exits, and dissension in the ranks
. She sat back. “Chicago, it's as if I never left you.”

“Did you say something, ná Kièrshia?”

Jani looked up to find Brondt standing over her, her duffel in his hand. “I prayed, Colonel. Spacecraft make me nervous.”

“I can't see much of anything making you nervous.” Brondt lowered Jani's bag to the floor at her feet, then bent low to grapple it to the seat support. “I've returned everything but your shooter,” he said as he straightened back up.

“Trusting of you.” Jani drew in her legs so he could maneuver into the open seat in the row in front of her.

“Personally, I think I could have returned it to you. If you were going to try something, you'd have done so by now. Your history is one of a woman who doesn't hesitate.” Brondt sat down and strapped in just as the shuttle acceler
ated, pushing them both back against their seatbacks. “You're angry, yes, but I also think that you're as struck by us as we are by you. If I'd released you at any time during our gauntlet run here, I'd have bet a year's paychit you wouldn't have made a move to flee. And I'd have won.”

“You're sure about that?” Jani stared at the back of Brondt's head, but he didn't turn around or respond, and deep down she knew it was just as well.

 

Jani eased out of her seat and scooted down to the observation port at the end of her empty row as soon as the shuttle had punched through the Elyan stratosphere. She knew the other hybrids watched her and that they would probably report her interest to Gisa.
I just want to see where I'm going
, she told herself, and almost believed it.

“Have you been to Elyas before, ná Kièrshia?”

Jani turned from the port to find Torin at her elbow. Like Brondt, he'd settled upon a humanish look, filming his eyes the same dead green he wore in the image and dressing in trousers and a short-sleeve pullover in shades of brown. Up close, the gold tone of his skin was more easily defined, the slight elongation of his facial bones more readily discerned. He had a mobile, expressive face and restless hands, the corners of his mouth twitching as he plucked at the seatback in front of him.

“Only the station. Not the surface.” Jani looked out the port again as the shuttle banked over a midnight-blue sea, then coursed along a line of steep cliffs.

“The largest settlements are built around the Bay of Siros.” Torin pushed an empty seat forward and wedged into the row beside her. “Karistos is on the opposite side. So's the fort. We're on this side.”

“The hybrid enclave.” Jani repeated the phrase to herself once, then again, wondering at its sound, its meaning. Reminded herself that she had come here for a purpose, and that she was being held against her will. That John and Niall
searched for her. That she was a hostage among captors, one of whom would cheerfully shoot her if she gave him any reason at all.

“We've called it Thalassa,” Torin said, his eyes fixed on the view outside the port. “We're coming up on it…
now
.”

The shuttle rounded a cliff bend, and Thalassa appeared. Narrow streets crawled along the cliff edges and partway down the slopes, lined with boxy white and cream structures, single and multistoried, some topped with colored domes of pale blue or yellow, others with flat roofs patched with small gardens. In the center of it all loomed a larger building, four stories of white and cream stone, edges rounded and polished, which seemed to emerge from the layered rock like the nose of a star liner that had crashed into the far side of the mountain and tunneled through to rest near the cliff's edge.

“That's the main house.” Brondt had worked his way into the gap behind Torin. “Doctor DeVries lives there, and our dominants. Our meeting rooms are there, and the library, and the clinic.” He glanced at Jani, gauging her reaction. “It's quite a settlement.”

Paid for with Neoclona money, in direct violation of a Neoclona contract
. Jani felt a tingle between her shoulder blades, and turned to find Eamon staring at the three of them.
As soon as John reaches Fort Karistos, he's going to track you down
. She turned back to the port.
And when he sees all this
…

“We have to strap in,” Brondt said. “We'll be landing soon.”

After another bank and turn, the shuttle touched down on a well-maintained runway about 250 meters from the settlement. Everyone stood as the door opened and the exit ramp lowered, except for Brondt, who remained in his seat in front of Jani.

“You'll leave last, of course.” He held back as the others streamed out, row after row. “What do you think so far?”

“I think I've seen performances at the Lyric Opera that
were less rehearsed.” Jani reached down to unstrap her duffel so she wouldn't have to witness the way the color flooded Brondt's face. “I'm not here by choice, but by threat. I'm your prisoner. I'd advise you to not forget that fact, Colonel, because I certainly won't.”

“I understand your anger.” Brondt smoothed a hand over the arm of his seat, a back and forth action that seemed to calm him. “All we ask is that you watch, and listen, and keep an open mind.”

Jani rose. “You're asking a lot.”

“I don't think so.” He offered a half-smile, then rose and started down the aisle.

Jani waited until he had gone halfway down the aisle before she shouldered her bag and followed. When she reached the ramp, she stood at the top of the stair for a time and let the Elyan sun beat through her clothes and pummel her bones, and watched the other hybrids hurry up the path. Some were met by those who had stayed behind, while some remained alone. Torin, she noticed, hooked up with an older female and another young male and disappeared down one of the winding lanes that led to the smaller houses.

What sort of place is this?
Jani stepped down the ramp stair, mindful of the salt-scented breeze that whipped her trouser cuffs around her ankles and floated her overrobe behind her like a cape.
Thalassa was a goddess, a personification of the sea
. She raked through the scant remains of her classical education for anything else concerning sea deities or legends.
I remember lots of monsters, and drownings
. Her boots crunched on the runway.
Ships dashed upon the rocks
. From her vantage point she could see only the top of a few of the domes, the main house jutting above it all like the prow of an ancient watercraft.

It was a stark, desolate landscape. What trees there were grew gnarled and stunted, with silvery-green leaves and thorns as long and thick as fingers. A scattering of knee-high tufts of reddish grass formed the only ground cover; Jani caught sight of tiny rodents darting from beneath them to the
more reliable shelter of the rocks as she walked up the path that led to the settlement.

Brondt waited for her at the point where the path graded up toward the house. He had appointed himself her escort—that much was obvious—but whether he did so in his name or Gisa's had yet to be determined. “We had some rain last night,” he said, holding up his hand as though waiting for more drops to strike. “That floods the smaller animals out of their holes. Insects come out at dusk that burrow under your skin to lay their eggs. If you have any cuts or sores, better bandage them. You saw some of the rodents. They like to get into the closets and build nests in your shoes—the scent repellents don't seem to work. And you'll hear howling. Those are the feral dogs. Walking alone in the dark isn't advised—the sound fences don't seem to work very well to keep them away. No one's ever been attacked, but a pair of them did follow Torin right up to the entry of the main house once.” He'd switched out his tietops for hiking boots on the shuttle, and handled the rocky path as easily as if he walked on pavement. “That remark you made about the opera, and performances.” He sighed. “You have a reputation for seeing things as they are. All I'm asking is that you reserve judgment until you see the rest of the play.”