gaian consortium 03 - the gaia gambit (11 page)

“I know.” He wished he could reach out to her, take her hands in his, but he guessed from her brisk no-nonsense manner that this was not the time for such things. Later, perhaps. He had no idea where their quest would take them, but he hoped the journey might be a lengthy one, so he would have plenty of time to soften that flinty exterior. Hardening his own voice, he said, “And you trust this Jackson Wyler?”

“‘Trust’?” she repeated, and lifted her shoulders. “Trust is a strong word. I wouldn’t say he’s a particularly trustworthy person. On the other hand, I think he’ll find it amusing to provide some assistance, especially since the parties involved are high-ranking members of the Stacian and Gaian militaries. Those are the sorts of people Jackson would just love to see brought low. So I think he’ll help me…and I don’t think he’ll tell anyone else.”

“But you don’t know for sure.”

A smile then, brittle as the ice crystals that sometimes formed on a ship’s viewscreen as it re-entered atmosphere. “If I’ve learned anything so far, Rast, it’s that nothing in this life is for sure.”

And with that she walked out of the cockpit, heading for her assignation with this Jackson Wyler.

It felt strange to be walking the streets of a large city again. The Gaian Defense Fleet Academy she’d attended had been on the outskirts of Rilsin, the biggest city on New Chicago’s sister planet of Nova Angeles, but after she’d graduated, Lira hadn’t spent much time in population centers. Aldis Nova was big enough in its own way, but Michende here on New Chicago could have swallowed the Iradian town in one of its suburbs.

Of course Jackson hadn’t responded to the news that she was here with anything more than an expression of simple pleasure and eagerness to see her again. With that he’d transmitted his home’s coordinates to her handheld, which automatically plotted the best route from the spaceport to her journey’s endpoint, providing helpful suggestions for which airbuses to take and offering to subtract the cost of the fares from her credit balance.

She knew better than to do that, of course; such transactions would immediately alert anyone who was looking for her as to her current whereabouts. No, she always carried some cash with her, mainly because it had turned into a habit during her academy days, and partly because most people on Aldis Nova didn’t want to engage in any commerce that didn’t involve hard currency.

All around her were people involved in their own affairs, heading to work, heading home from work, taking a break for the midday meal. A place as big as Michende never stopped, its streets filled twenty-two hours a day. At first Lira felt self-conscious as she moved among them, certain that something about her dress or her person proclaimed that she shouldn’t be here. Soon enough, though, she realized that none of these intent, hurrying people cared the slightest bit about who she was or why she was here. In that she found something strangely reassuring.

A little more than a standard half-hour after she left the spaceport, she arrived at Jackson’s building. It was located in a well-kept, high-end part of town, with skyscrapers of permaglass towering on all sides and carefully tended planters of both native and alien flora growing in the medians of the streets and in boxes along the sidewalks. Typical of Jackson to carry on his dubious business in such a respectable neighborhood.

The door opened as she approached it, and a mech stepped aside, saying, “He awaits you in the penthouse, Ms. Jannholm.”

How ostentatious, to have a mech playing doorman. But she only nodded and went on to the lifts, noting that one waited for her. Once she was inside, it shot upward immediately, without her having to voice her destination or press any buttons.

Trying to impress me, Jackson?

Making sure she wore her best poker face, she exited the lift on the fifteenth floor and found herself in an expansive foyer, decked out in expensive Menari travertine and with orchids she thought might have come all the way from Gaia blooming in spare black glass pots set on carefully arranged low columns of more travertine. Directly ahead of her was a door. It opened as she stepped forward, and Jackson Wyler came out to greet her.

“My dear Lira,” he said, spreading one hand back toward the apartment from which he’d just emerged. “Come in. So glad to see you!”

“It’s nice to see you, too,” she said, wondering what exactly his game was. Not that they’d split up under exactly acrimonious circumstances, but still, this sort of effusiveness wasn’t the sort of thing she expected from an ex-boyfriend. Yes, that seemed the proper term. They’d been physically intimate, of course, but neither one of them had had much idea what they were doing. Unlike Rast sen Drenthan.

A mental head shake then, even as she almost found herself wishing she’d brought a sidearm, but that was just foolish. You couldn’t go two steps on New Chicago carrying a gun without the scanners picking up on it and sending out the alarm to every law enforcement officer in the immediate vicinity. If a frontier world like Iradia let you walk around the streets with a pistol strapped to your belt, fine — after all, what else could you expect from places like that? — but they did things differently on New Chicago.

“Looks like you’re doing pretty well for yourself,” she commented, after taking a brief glance around the room and noting the expensive low couches of real leather, the floor of some kind of pale wood, the vertigo-inducing views of Michende from the floor-to-ceiling windows.

“I do all right,” he allowed, moving toward a table that held a pitcher of some pale green fizzy liquid and a couple of glasses. “Mileni mineral water?”

“Sure.” At least he wasn’t trying to get her drunk. That was a good sign…wasn’t it?

Lira approached him after he’d poured the water and took the proffered glass from his hand. Even though ten years had passed since she’d last seen him in person, he didn’t seem all that changed. Maybe a little broader through the shoulders and midsection, the even features more defined. A man now, definitely not a boy. But the piercing green eyes were the same, and the shock of blond air, artfully styled to fall into his face in a calculatedly careless manner.

In her mind’s eye she saw Rast, black hair pulled severely back from his face, bound in its barbaric rings of copper and gold. It was a style that did not forgive, but his features needed no softening, no tricks of the stylist to make them more attractive. She wondered then what he would think of Jackson Wyler and decided she really didn’t want to know.

“So…” Jackson began, and then paused, studying her. “Your message was customarily oblique, but I gather you’re in need of some assistance?”

“You could say that.” She swallowed some of the mineral water, feeling it fizz against her tongue and throat, leaving behind a mild aftertaste of lemon and mint. “I suppose you heard what happened.”

The green eyes had an amused glint. “I did. I have to say I was a little surprised.”

“Only a little?”

“All right, more than a little.” He drank from his own glass of water, then set it down. “A Stacian, Lira? I had no idea your tastes were that…exotic. No wonder you dumped me like a ship dropping its wastewater before it enters orbit.”

“As I recall, you were the one who did the dumping. Anyway, it’s…complicated.”

“I figured it must be. So what’s the real story?”

Although she didn’t much care to go over the whole sordid thing again, she knew she’d have to give Jackson enough details that he’d know she wasn’t holding out on him. His main love was information, so information she’d give him. In cool, terse sentences she outlined what had happened in the Chlorae system, and how she’d been summarily discharged for her actions.

“The thing is,” she went on, “Rast and I are almost certain the whole thing was engineered, which means that Admiral sen Trannick and possibly Admiral Horner conspired to make sure that Chlorae II was left undefended. I don’t know why, or how, but I figured you would be the best person to get to the bottom of it.”

“I’m flattered,” Jackson replied, but his eyes narrowed slightly. “‘Rast,’ eh? So you two are on a first-name basis now?”

“We’re working together, if that’s what you mean.”

“And what does he get out of all this?”

She blinked. “The truth.”

“Ah.”

Which could have meant anything at all. After a pause of a second or two, which she guessed he did deliberately to put her somewhat off balance, he went to the computer console at the far end of the room. Like everything else in the place, it was state-of-the-art, with an array of flat screens, heads-up displays, and even holographic projectors. God knows what multi-terabyte monsters those sleek displays and graphite keyboards were hooked up to. At the moment, though, all she cared about was that they would be powerful enough to cut through whatever layers of obfuscation Admiral sen Trannick and Admiral Horner might have put in their way.

“Let’s start with the easy part,” Jackson said, cracking his fingers. Lira tried not to wince. He’d done that back in the academy, too. It hadn’t gotten any more tolerable over the intervening years.

“Easy part?”

“We’ll start with Horner. I haven’t had as much experience hacking into Stacian systems, but I could probably crack the GDF’s algorithms in my sleep. Here we go.”

And he began typing away in a brisk staccato, as the screens around him flashed with numbers and symbols, only to fade away into more complex arrangements of numerals, information ebbing and flowing as he drove down into fleet manifests and appointment calendars and financial records, not so much hacking as gently unwinding one bit of data from another, swirling down to a place where he could find the pertinent pieces. Lira watched as he worked, and sipped at her mineral water, and tried not to compare Jackson’s pale, soft-looking fingers with Rast sen Drenthan’s capable golden-skinned ones.

“Hmm,” Jackson said finally, and pushed his chair away from the keyboard. Although he hadn’t drunk anything the entire time he’d been working, at this point he did reach out to retrieve his neglected glass of mineral water, which he drained in one gulp.

“So what does ‘hmm’ mean?”

“It means I can’t find anything. Not one frigging thing. The admiral has even paid all his energy bills on time. Not even a demerit from his time at the academy.”

“So…”

“So, nothing. The guy’s so clean I’m surprised he doesn’t squeak when he walks.”

“Well, hell,” Lira said, trying not to let the disappointment show too clearly in her tone. It would have been so easy if Horner were the dirty one. Well, maybe not easy, precisely, but at least this all would have started to make a little sense.

“Not to worry, dear Lira.” Jackson cracked his fingers again. “This just gives me a chance to test my mettle. I’m not sure how long it’s going to take, though…”

“That’s fine,” she replied automatically. This was what they’d come to New Chicago for, after all. She’d wait as long as necessary.

“Then you might want to amuse yourself with the local broadcasts. I don’t do well with an audience when I have to really go at it with a hacksaw.”

She found that difficult to believe, considering Jackson’s appetite for attention, but only shrugged and wandered back out into the living room, where she found the remote for a vidscreen that covered most of one wall, and turned the receiver on. Quickly she brought the sound down to barely above a whisper, so it wouldn’t disturb Jackson at his work.

And although she really didn’t care about the local elections in Michende, or the new plan to upgrade the city’s airbuses, she made herself focus on the screen and not the rapid-fire typing she heard emanating from the alcove where Jackson was working. Even so, her thoughts wandered, back to the
Mistral
/
Chinook
, and the man who waited for her there.

She wondered what he was up to.

CHAPTER SEVEN

While he understood the logic of staying behind, Rast didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all.

Small as it was, the ship seemed to echo with Lira’s absence. He wandered out into the main passenger compartment, lip curled a little at the overstuffed couches and their accompanying tables, the whole setup designed to look like some rich man’s living quarters and not the interior of a spaceship. Then he had to shake his head at himself. Wasn’t that exactly what Stacians did with their own ships? To be fair, that was only with their personal quarters. The common areas were utilitarian enough, though still probably indulgent by Gaian standards, with their warm-toned floor coverings and wall panels.

Driven by some impulse, he moved through the passenger compartment and on down the small corridor that separated the ship’s two sleeping chambers. One was bigger than the other, taking up the rest of that side of the ship, while the other was half its size, the other half occupied by the bathroom — which actually had a real shower stall and not just a chemical scrub unit.

The smaller bedroom looked as if it had never been used, and contained only a narrow cot and an equally narrow table with a mean little chair that was bolted to the floor. The main bedroom, though…

Rast’s eyes narrowed as he looked on what had obviously been Gared Tomas’s own sleeping quarters. Here was luxury to rival a Stacian captain’s cabin, with a large bed covered in quilts and sheets of Iradian moon-moth silk, a fur rug on the floor, hangings of more silk on the walls. A cozy table and two chairs somehow fit into one corner. Just the sort of place for Tomas to indulge his legendary tastes, even while traveling on business.

And were you to his taste, Lira?
Rast wondered, then tried to tell himself that was ridiculous. After all, she would have to be truly desperate to slide into bed with a man such as Gared Tomas…

How desperate was she when she slept with you?

Good question. That was different, though. She had been trying to ensure the safety of the scientists on Chlorae II, whereas with Tomas it would have been a simple matter of self-preservation. Although, come to think of it, that was a far stronger drive than altruism…

No. He wouldn’t let himself think of that. Best to get out of here, so he could avoid any further mental images of her wrapped in the crime lord’s arms, and nightmarish visions of him pounding into her, taking her here on the silk-covered bed.