Home: Interstellar: Merchant Princess (23 page)

“I’m guessing the former,” Elizabeth said. “Nothing personal, M, but we’re nobodies. They must need us for something.”

“I’m thinking the latter,” Meriel said. “Killing us would spark some attention where they don’t want it.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “We don’t exist, remember? Court orders. Who’d put the puzzle together?”

“I would,” Meriel said. “I did.”

Elizabeth nodded. “They should take you out first.”

“They would want to know what we know before that,” Meriel said. “Then they’ll kill us quietly—all of us, every last one.”

“Again,” Elizabeth said. She went to the cooler for some juice, and Meriel poured some alcohol into it. “OK, so ten years ago, some very powerful interests got together to divvy up John’s planet, thinking it was easy pickings. They wanted help from some top-secret military equipment—equipment that rode on our boat. Pirates found out about it, stole it, and sold it to them. To do that they would need to know what it was and that we carried it.”

“Cookie thinks that someone who knew about the R & D told the thieves.”

“Then it wasn’t contraband.”

Meriel shook her head. “Confidential—secret, maybe—but not contraband.”

“Someone set us up, not pirates but contractors, privateers?”

Meriel nodded again. “Maybe someone shipped the cargo on our boat legitimately, and he was sold out, too. From what Teddy says they’d still need to coordinate the jumps to find us.

“No one on the crew would do that.”

Meriel nodded. “I’m thinking a nav virus. Like the one on the manifest that Nick tripped on.”

“This is nasty business, M. Who would benefit?”

“Those named in the treaty, I guess,” Meriel said. “Who ran the UNE/IS back then?” She searched in the
Galactipedia
, and her mouth fell open when she saw the name. She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes to stop the tears.

“What is it?” Elizabeth asked, taking a closer look at the display. “Crap. Alan Biadez headed the UNE/IS until four years ago.”

Meriel nodded. “And he’s the current president of the UNE. Damn.” She shook her head. “He’s one of the good guys, Liz. How could he be involved in all this? His foundation helped us after…after…” She looked down, unable to continue.

Elizabeth gritted her teeth and put her hand on Meriel’s shoulder.

Meriel did not want to believe the inference. “Maybe he was just trying to keep track of us,” Meriel said.

“Maybe you, in particular,” Elizabeth said with a sneer.

“Wow. That shatters an image.”

“We don’t know for sure that he’s part of this.”

“And we don’t know that he’s not. Regardless, these people are much too powerful for us to approach or oppose. I need to see John about this,” Meriel said. Then she removed the chip to transfer the files to her link and console and slipped it into her pocket.

“Whoa, Sis,” Elizabeth said. “Stop by the galley and get some snacks for me on the way back. I’m starving.”

***

Meriel took Moira’s message chip to John’s cabin.

“Meriel, I’m so glad you came by. I wanted to talk to you. Did you hear the XO’s message?”

“Yeah, yeah, soon,” she said. “Take a look at this first.” She synched the chip with John’s console, and the Treaty of Haven appeared,

“Interim Treaty of…,” he began and then read silently. “Where did you get this?”

“Widow of a BioLuna fixer. He died about the time the
Princess
was hit.”

“Fixer?”

“A corporate lawyer type who does ‘special projects.’”

“Legal?”

“I’m sure that’s what they would say if the press found out.”

After reading the whole treaty, John leaned back, sighed, and nodded. “Damn,” he said finally. “I thought this was just between us and BioLuna.” He went to his console, converted it to anonymous with a proxy at the communications beacon, and then did a search for Alan Biadez. “Alan Biadez was also a member of the UNE/MAC, the military appropriations committee.”

Meriel put her hand to her mouth and read the rest of the article. There it was. Biadez would have known about the mil-tech devices and the logistics—he would have known that the
Princess
carried it. He might have set up some other committee member to send it, but he’d know where and how.

“The client behind the client,” John said.

Space just got a whole lot colder for Meriel. She stared at the wall and clenched her fists. “We thought he was looking out for us.”
What would the kids think if their hero was brought down to size
?
What will they think of me if I am the one doing the downsizing?
She thought of Liz and came back to the present.

“Can you pull up the other MAC members?”

John pulled up the list, and the connection was obvious to both of them: General Adam Miyamoto, the MAC chairman at the time, died in a plane crash of mysterious cause the same day that the
Princess
was attacked.

“He found out, and they killed him before he could talk,” Meriel said.

“It’s not proof. None of this is proof,” John said, and Meriel nodded.

“So why all this fuss over Haven?” she asked.

John smiled. “You remember. You just didn’t believe me.”

“Go on.”

“It’s gorgeous. The most Earthlike colony anyone has settled so far.”

Compared to Mars, that was not saying much,
she thought. “How many moons?”

“Two,” he said.

Meriel stopped. In her mother’s song, Home had two moons, and so did TTL-5B3. Then again, so did Mars and Celesta, and she had already excluded Haven as a possibility for Home.
He’ll think I’m crazy
.

John noticed her thinking. “Any connection?”

“No. Just an old fairy tale,” she said, but now she had doubts. “You said that BioLuna wants to keep Haven hidden?”

John nodded but stared at the wall. “So that’s what was going on. We suspected something, but nothing so elaborate, so well connected.” His attention drifted away.

“John?”

“My wife, Annie, my kids’ mom, died at Kilgore when the mercenaries attacked.”

“They used the Blackout-Box?”

John nodded. “They tried. Annie died deactivating it. After that, we offered the mercs land to settle on. They said BioLuna violated their contract and joined us. They’re loyal to Haven now.”

“What about the box?” she asked.

“Still broken. We tried to fix it and couldn’t. No one knows how.”

“How many of your people died?”

“About one in ten. We’re scientists and engineers, M, not fighters.”

“But clever,” she said.

John went back to his console and pulled up a video of the BioLuna CEO.

CEO of BioLuna, Cecil Rhodes, is the largest shareholder of a conglomerate with diverse interests that span the galaxy…named chairman and CEO after consolidation of rivals to monopolize lunar manufacturing…

“Wait,” Meriel said. “Zoom in on that vid. See the guy behind the CEO to his right?” John nodded. Meriel went back to graphics file on Moira’s message chip and placed the image next the man near the CEO. The photos matched.

“That’s the fixer, Leo V. Apparently he worked for the CEO, Cecil Rhodes. Leo sent a copy of the Treaty of Haven to his wife just before he died, and she sent that copy to me.” She looked closer at the vid, and another man seemed familiar, but she could not place him.

John leaned back. “So BioLuna and Alan Biadez planned to put us on a reservation and divvy up the rest of Haven. And they had someone steal mil-tech from the
Princess
to help them do it.”

“That leaves the archtrope. I don’t know much about him, except that they say his people run the drug trade on Etna. I think some of his followers attacked my sister.”

John sat up and returned to his console. “A religious fanatic. His envoy visited and told us—
told
us, mind you—that he was our savior and that we should prepare for his spiritual leadership or prepare for the apocalypse.”

“And one of his followers is General Khanag,” she said. “Sounds like a threat to me.”

John nodded. “We only needed to provide the appropriate space for his millions of followers to pilgrimage.”

“Let me guess,” she said. “You said no.”

“Right. And he did not like it,” John said. “The emissary swore that we would submit to the archtrope’s vision in time.” He pulled up a video.

“When was this?”

“Right after BioLuna made its first demands—about eleven years ago,” he said and played the recent vid.

…the Archtrope of Calliope, seen in this clip being escorted from tau Ceti-4 after the failed coup attempt when the elections on Stevenson colony went against his follower, Fredric Allen. The Supreme Court has agreed to bring an indictment against his followers on charges of treason and conspiracy following an attempt to suspend the Constitution…

“Drugs, sex trafficking, and terrorism,” John said. “Not a good neighbor. They profess piety and abstain from all vice, but they feel no remorse about selling vice to their neighbors.” The video continued.

The archtrope is seen here boarding a ship with General Khanag, a former colonel in the UNE Space Marines, to return to his theocracy on Calliope. The Calliope Foundation is listed as a nongovernmental organization by the UNE and is currently nominated for a seat in the UNE General Assembly, a first for an NGO…

At the ship’s portal, Meriel noted the handsome young captain again, this time bowing to the archtrope

“It’s a cult and a criminal conspiracy,” John said. “Somehow, violence always shows up when they want something. It’s never directly linked to the archtrope, but people know that if you oppose the theocracy, you risk your life.”

“OK, then what did the archtrope do to earn his place at the trough?” Meriel asked.

John and Meriel thought about it for a few moments, and it came to both of them—piracy.

“Oh, no,” Meriel gasped.
Whose core business was smuggling contraband and contract executions? Pirates and terrorists. Who had the resources? Drug smugglers with a galaxy-wide network of ships and contacts
.

Meriel teared up and couldn’t talk.
Everyone was killed and the kids were still suffering just for a piece of junk that got blown up on some stupid little colony. And Biadez was mixed up with them.

John moved to sit next to her and put his arm around her shoulder. She melted into his chest and sobbed.

“We were just in the way.” When her tears stopped, she said, “This is the last piece in the puzzle, John. This could clear the
Princess
and my family.”

“This isn’t proof, M.”

“No, but it’s pretty strong inference. If this is made public, President Biadez, the archtrope, and the BioLuna executives would have big problems trying to explain it. The treaty puts their fingerprints all over this.”

John nodded. “This is too big for us.”

Meriel remembered what her sister said about the Biadez Foundation tracking the kids—“Maybe just you.” And she remembered the nondescript men she had seen at the Pink Palace on Etna and on Enterprise. She pulled up the two vids she’d recorded and played them side by side, vids that both showed the same man.

“Oh God,” she said.

“Who is this guy?” John asked.

Meriel did not answer. She pulled up the vid with the CEO of BioLuna.

“Objects,” she said and numbered flags appeared to annotate each object. “Focus object eighteen. Full screen.” Her subject filled the display but appeared fuzzy and was looking away. “Reflection,” she said, and the console searched nearby objects for a reflection that might clarify the man’s face. A number appeared in the lower corner and approached 25 but then stopped at 28 percent and beeped. “Reconstruct full frontal,” she said. “Compare.” The fuzzy image clarified and appeared side by side with the two other photos. They were the same.

“Oh, no. I’ve been followed,” she said. “Here. To the
Tiger
.”

“Who is he?”

“I don’t know, but he was there with Leo just before he died. I gotta tell Molly,” she said and pushed John away from the console.

“About the conspiracy?”

Meriel did not hear him. “If he’s part of this, they’ll be coming back in force.” She pulled up the cargo manifest to check the contents for viruses and quarantined anything that might trigger one. John opened his mouth to speak, but Meriel raised her hand to silence him. The manifest was free of viruses, but something could still be sleeping. She needed to talk to Cookie, and that meant warning Molly first.

“I’ve got to go,” Meriel said while dashing out the door.