Final Protocol (5 page)

And I’d jettison myself into the surreal, endless blue of space. Sans protective gear. Dead in moments.

Painful. Quick. Done.

He always told us to avoid getting caught at all costs.

I couldn’t tell if I felt regret or relief once I hit clear airspace.

The clenched muscles in my neck slowly relaxed and I made myself pull up what little data I had for this so-called delegation. Gold had given me precious little, but I’d take that and see what I could unearth on my own.

A two-week jaunt in a transpo as small as mine was akin to hell.

It had just the basics, enough to get you from one system to the next, provided the systems weren’t on opposite ends of the galaxy.

These two weren’t. Ver was the next system over and my transpo was a dark-speeder, relying on dark matter, the energy behind the ever-expanding universe. Every species had a new word for it and some still struggled to manipulate it. Fortunately, I had friends—or rather,
acquaintances
—who were artists when it came to manipulating all forms of energy. My transpo could cut through space like a blade.

Going into animation sleep wasn’t necessary in a dark-speeder, but I’d do it for short periods of time just to avoid space sickness. I didn’t need to touch down on Hsain without a scratch only to have to spend three days recovering.

Once I hit free airspace, I had little to do except that hated sleep and study up on the current events on Hsain and see if I couldn’t figure out what had happened to draw the attention of the so-called delegation.

There was…plenty.

An ambassador had been traveling through with his wife and daughter. They registered their passage, as safety, sanity and courtesy required. Their transpo had maintenance problems, and rather than try to make it to the next system over—mine—they’d touched down on Hsain. The daughter had been on the balcony of the inn, reading.

Not acceptable in the eyes of security personal on Hsain. They arrested her on sight, dragging her off even as her father went after them, threatening to kill every last one of them.

It had taken the threats of an interstellar incident—
war
—to convince them they didn’t want to
infringe
upon that seventeen-year-old child any longer.

The girl was still in seclusion, struggling to deal with the trauma. There were few scans of her from the days immediately after her release, but what little I unearthed showed a girl with pale, bruised skin and a shaved head.

Monsters.

A second family had been reported missing in the airspace near there.

Hsain reported there was no family by that name who had registered a flight path, so naturally they couldn’t help.

But the final comms had been traced to an area just two hundred miles outside their airspace.

When interplanetary personnel landed to search for them, they’d visited the prisons, despite the protests from the governments. The reports from those visits were enough to turn my stomach.

I’d settled into my sleep pod after going through the reports—a stupid thing to do.

I had neither the sweet, peaceful dreams that sometimes found me, nor the blank slate that greeted me all too often.

No. I found myself in a nightmare, in one of those miniscule holes on Hsain, barely large enough to hold two or three bodies, begging for help.

A shadow appeared in that orb of light.

I’ll take this one,
a voice said from over me. I knew that voice.

It was Gold.

He’d led me into a trap.

He’d take me again. He’d bought me from the slavers who slid into the Hsain prisons. Bought me. Owned me. Outright.

I’d never be free—

The alarm blared a warning in my ear, ripping me from the nightmare. The med-system began to pump the stims into my system, clearing the fog caused by suspension.

I didn’t give myself the standard twenty minutes before I moved. I barely waited two before I was upright and mobile, my limbs awkward, stiff, my vision somewhat blurry. It would pass. The more I moved, the quicker it would happen too. I knew it from experience.

Stumbling to the comm panels, I rubbed my eyes and forced my brain into action.

The alarm wasn’t the urgent one, but it wasn’t the
you just need to watch
one, either.

So there was a problem.

My eyes watered, my head throbbed.

My vision slowly cleared enough that I could make out the code. Aw, no. Not this.

Hitting the tron system I rarely used, I said, “Clarify the outlying vessel.”

A polite, computer-generated voice said, “
Interplanetary sec. Governing personnel likely onboard, considering the number of escorts. Within our flight plan within three stan-hours. Within scanning range in one hour. Please advise
.”

Please advise?

“Get me the fuck out of here.”

Chapter Five

They knew I was there.

Sons of bitches.

I don’t know anything about my lineage, but to my knowledge, I was just the everyday, average human assassin. For all I knew, though, I had something else in my bloodline—either the weaker psychic skill common to some humans or the very diluted blood of one of the psy races, possibly a few generations back.

I wasn’t psychic in the purest sense of the word, but I was sensitive. If there was a psychic probe going on, I’d feel it. It was how I’d managed to avoid capture more than once.

As I cut through space, my dark-speeder tearing up the distance between me and Hsain, the starship stayed far too close.

Starships didn’t sustain those speeds unless absolutely necessary. This one had been built for it, but maintaining it took a massive amount of energy. Why would they follow?

My body felt too tired and my head ached, the precursors to space sickness, and if I didn’t get some rest, some nutrition in my body, it was only going to get worse. It would just have to get worse and I’d have to deal with it, because I couldn’t risk sleep with a starship so close on my backtrail.

I checked the shields around me once more.

They were holding.

I checked the distance to Hsain.

I’d land within a day.

My gut twisted in a big, hard knot.
Keep this pace for another day?

I spent hours poring over reports, only surfacing to check the systems, look in on the starship. I’d altered my flight path slightly, choosing one that would take me through a meteor belt as I neared the planet. I’d have to slow down and handle the controls myself, but no starship pilot was going to fly a ship full of bureaucrats through a pile of rocks. It was too risky. One or two bad hits and that starship would be stuck on Hsain until their mechanics had the vessel cleared for takeoff.

This way, at least, I’d be able to land without them being around.

As I drew nearer and nearer to the point where our flight paths would diverge, I finally managed to find just who might be on that starship, and it was enough to make me want to pound my head.

It wasn’t easy to access the information. Accessing government rosters was never particularly simple, but a contact of mine had shown me a few back doors in exchange for a favor. I’d had to kill the man who held control over the man’s gambling debts. Normally, I let others find their own way out of that kind of mess. People dig their holes, they had to find a way out.

But instead of going after my contact, he’d gone after the man’s family, sending home pieces of his mate’s body to taunt him. First her left ear, then the tip of her finger.

I didn’t believe in using others to settle debts.

I’d done the job, happily.

The first thing I’d done was take the target’s ear. Then every last finger—actually, he had claws, but it was still the same premise. He was crying and begging for mercy by the time I slid my knife between his ribs. I would have taken his penis, but his kind had a protective sheath and there was no way it would emerge and I didn’t want to waste the time carving him up.

It had been a rewarding job, and it had left me with useful information. Now as I studied the schematics for the flight plan, I tapped my lip with my finger and brooded. No names were listed. Passengers were identified by number. I couldn’t tell the species, the age, the gender, anything. But the Galactic Embassy had sent a convoy out, and unless somebody was very, very good at creating ships that were identical to the ones the Embassy used, that was the one on my backtrail.

The comm panel made a soft, low hum, followed by the melodic voice.

“Adjustments were made to flight plan. Shall I continue?”

“No. I’ll take over from here.”

“Be advised, there is a meteor belt. It is recommended you continue on your current flight plan
.
”

“I recommend you kiss my ass.”

“Recommendation received…cannot comply
.
Please advise again.”

Tron systems had no sense of humor. It was sad, really. Moving away from the table, I paused at the nutrition station, grabbing a prefilled packet of the nutrigel that served as my meal for the duration of the flight. Protein, calories, vitamins and nutrition, tailored to my metabolism and taste, it filled the hole in my belly and provided me with everything I needed until the next mealtime. But it wasn’t like sitting at a table with a bowl of stew, a hunk of fresh bread and a chilly server of ani cider.

Of course, if I finished this job and made it back to face Gold again, I wouldn’t be tasting ani cider again. It was unique to the planet, made from the fruit of the ani tree, grown only in the warm, wet rainforests of the planet’s southeastern region. That was acceptable. If I killed Gold and made it offplanet, I’d settle for never having that cold, tart taste glide down my throat.

With the cool tang of the gel lingering on the back of my tongue, I settled behind the controls and shifted from auto to manual. Already the false bump of energy was vibrating through me and my own senses were rocketing into high gear. I slid my hand across the panel and adjusted the trajectory a few minute degrees. As I did so, I watched the path of the starship. How long would they continue to follow?

I made it through the meteor belt without my enigmatic escort. They’d given up a long time ago. Now I was dealing with entering a hostile atmosphere without being detected, in a compromised speeder.

The deflectors had taken most of the damage caused by traveling through a bunch of space rocks, but one of my engines had been hit. I had the supplies to fix it and get me to one of the lunar layover stations in the next systems, assuming I made it off Hsain,
if
I could land.

Gritty-eyed from too much time awake, jumpy from the adrenaline rush, I took the dark-speeder in on not much more than a wish and prayer, gliding in with a convoy of scout ships and separating once we’d cleared the security sweepers.

I didn’t feel like I even breathed until I’d cleared the city.

I didn’t let myself relax until I touched down, miles away from anything that looked remotely populated.

Then, as the adrenaline drained out of me, I went to stand.

That was when the space sickness that had been hovering around me hit.

It hit hard.

Somehow, guided by instinct and self-preservation, I activated the cloaking mechanisms that protected the speeder. I had vague memories of trying to rise, trying to make it to the lone bed. The floor came rushing up. There was a bright, vivid pain. Then—darkness.

“We can’t run. He’ll find us. I know too much about him. He’ll find us and he’ll take his anger out on you.”

Gentle hands cupped her face and she found herself staring into warm, jade-green eyes. She had to tilt her head back to keep the connection. She wasn’t a small woman, but he dwarfed her. He almost made her feel delicate.

He didn’t treat her as something delicate though.

His thumb stroked across her lower lip. “We run, and maybe die, or stay here as his toys. He’ll use me,
me estril
. He’ll do to others what he did to us. I cannot bear it. Can you?”

My star.
She closed her eyes at the sound of the name he used for her. Not the name she’d been given by her keeper, but a name he’d chosen for her.

She was his star and he was her heart.

Laying a hand on his chest, she leaned in.

“I cannot. But…” She swallowed. “I’m afraid.”

“Yes. So I am.” Warm arms came around her.

Sinking into his embrace, she closed her eyes. She was afraid, yes.

But in that moment, she was warm and happy and loved.

If only it could last
.

I was roasting alive.

I could all but feel my skin cooking, yet I clung to the dream with desperation.

“Warning
…
”

The polite, electronic voice prodded me and the dream fell around me in shatters. Already, the memory of it was gone, although the odd twist in my chest remained. It had been…a good dream.

Behind my eyes, a weird, reddish light glowed. I panted, while my lungs screamed for air and sweat bloomed along my skin.

It was hot. Too hot.

A warning buzz sounded in the air.

“Warning. Cabin temperature is dangerously high. Regulating systems were damaged in landing. Please advise.”

A moment of silence and then the beeping started again, followed by that low, melodic voice.

“Cabin temperature is dangerously high. Regulating systems were damaged in landing. Please advise.”

If I’d had a blaster at my hip, I might have just laid that entire system to ruin.

Instead, I opened my mouth, managed to croak, “Silence alarm. I’ll deal with it in a minute.”

Or maybe a thousand of them.

It took at least ten to roll onto my belly, another four or five to get my hands and knees under me. Once I managed that, I huddled there, shivering, shaking, while nausea rolled through me, having its merry way. Eventually, I got the upper hand, if you can call it that. I wasn’t going to puke. That was a victory.

On the other hand, a lingering headache pulsed behind my eyes and I thought maybe, just maybe, I’d be willing to claw my eyes out to make it stop.

“Activate emergency medical,” I said, my mouth feeling like it had been stuffed with cotton.

“Should I send out for assistance?”

“No.” Fuck, no. That was why I’d put the medical system on standby before we’d even come close to this system. I’d rather die than reach out to them for help. Some things really were worse than death. “Medical droid. Activate.”

There was a faint hum, and then not even a few heartbeats passed before a miniature, nearly humanoid form was in front of me. It looked closed to human with its old, wizened face and its small, delicate hands. I’d always thought they were creepy, but others thought they were comforting.

Others were crazy.

It cocked its face in a mimicry of human expression. “How may I be of assistance?”

“Diagnose. Treat. Stabilize. I think it’s space sickness.”

It nodded and I felt the warmth of a laser as it scanned me. A few seconds later, I hissed as a pressure syringe injected me with some concoction of hormones, vitamins, mood stabilizers and other shit. As the headache eased, I decided there was a painkiller in the mix too.

The droid started to rattle off the ingredients and I grimaced when it went on to list all of the ones I’d suspected, plus a few others, including a nutrient booster, an anti-emetic and antibiotics. It made sense—the travel depressed the immune system, and going into an unfamiliar environment made you easy prey for any number of diseases. Normally, I didn’t get quite such a cocktail though.

“What’s the deal?” I asked as it went to lean forward and check my eyes.

It ignored me as it focused on my eyes. The tron eye flashed as it scanned me, the backs of my retinas. I couldn’t deny the sensation that it saw deeper in me than anything—living or animated—had a right to.

“You are overheated and your body temperature is abnormally high. You suffer from nightmares. Phobias. Lack of sleep,” it said, detailing a list of things I already knew. I didn’t need others to know. Even something that wasn’t alive.

Curling my lip, I said, “Be sure to erase that information from your memory bank.”

“All medical information is confidential.” It paused, cocking its head. “DNA structure is—”

The alarm blared once more.

“Life-forms detected.”

Shoving to my feet, I nudged the droid. “That’s enough. Delete all medical data now.”

“The medical workup isn’t complete. You should take sleep enhancers. You will start to suffer effects of sleep deprivation without proper rest. You are undernourished.”

“I’ll take that under consideration. Abort program. Delete all medical data and shut down.”

Its face went blank as it complied.

My head no longer pulsed and throbbed and I didn’t feel like I was going to hurl my guts up with every passing second. It took an effort, though, to turn away and walk to the view port. Even more of an effort to concentrate on the data feed coming at me. “Identify life-forms,” I said.

“Two males. DNA scans show them to be indigenous to Hsain. They are moving on a route to intercept a caravan that is traveling east. The caravan appears to carry spices and fabrics. Further scans show bodies hidden within transport vehicles.”

My gut twisted.

“Rebels,” I murmured.

Any planet where slavery was the norm had those who’d fight for freedom.

Hsain was likely no different.

Sadly, the oppressors here had the upper hand, and they’d had it for a very long time.

“Probability of 93.1 percent that the caravan belongs to the rebel movement. Odds of survival slim if they are discovered. Concealed bodies are female, DNA scans show them to be from Nir.”

Scowling, I reached up and pinched the bridge of my nose.

“If I leave now, can I get there before the Hsainiens do?”

There was a brief pause.
“Probability that you will arrive before the Hsainiens is 98.7 percent
.
”

I slicked my tongue across my lips. That was…acceptable. “Doable. Can I intervene and survive?”

This time there was a lengthier pause and I almost started to explain. A computer, no matter how advanced, would never be able to be human. But finally, it processed what I was asking.
“A rescue attempt is unadvised. Chance of survival 84.1 percent, but the chance of success 42.6 percent.”

I made a face. “So the odds aren’t in my favor.”

“A rescue attempt is unadvised—”

“I got that, thanks.”

I turned away and headed to the storage, hoping the gear had come through intact. I’d never been one to make safe wagers anyway.

“Activate the repair drones,” I said over my shoulder. “Lock all travel logs and any other incriminating material to my voice print and my security codes alone. If there is any attempt to crack them, destroy all data.”