The Iron Admiral: Deception (14 page)

They rose with him and waited until he walked through the door. He’d hardly need to guess what the topic of conversation would be in his absence. His eyes felt heavy. Maybe he’d sleep well tonight, if he could get her out of his mind, lying in her bed in a stateroom a few decks away. So near and so far away.

Women; life was so much easier without them.

****

“Look at this.” Pyndrees pointed at the screen.

 

Sean leaned over his shoulder. “Where’s this coming from?”

“One of our contacts onArcturus . Seems your wife is on the flagship.”

Sure enough. A grainy image, but there was no doubt. Allysha, talking to a Fleet officer. Well, that was it. No way of getting to her now. In a way, he was pleased she’d be safe. Maybe it was time to make himself scarce. The very thought of Tepich was enough to turn his legs to jelly.

“Let’s see where the Fleet’s headed,” Pyndrees muttered. He opened a second screen and searched.

“Hmm. They’re just cruising. Showing the flag, by the looks.” Suddenly he grabbed Sean’s arm. “Look at this. They’ll be stopping over at Gueri Nestor in a little over two weeks. That might just give us a chance. Looks like you’re off on a space trip, friend.”

ChapterSixteen

“Morning, team,” Allysha said, walking into the lab. “And before you ask, it was soup with herb bread or sautéd pretans followed by crumbed schnitzel or roasted smoked hakafish served with vegetables or salad. I had the pretans and the smoked hakafish with salad and it was lovely.”

“Who’d you sit next to?” asked Anna.

“Captain Pedder one side, Admiral Valperez the other. Have you finished your homework?”

Anna, in particular, would have loved to question her but Allysha wasn’t going to give any of them a chance. She worked through the schematic with them, correcting here, adding there. They had managed to find four ways of getting into the InfoDroid. She was impressed and said so and then showed the other

two, much more obscure, entry points.

“Let’s have some breakfast, guys, then we’ll start work on the IS on this ship, starting with understanding the architecture.”

Time passed quickly. It seemed to Allysha that they’d barely started when it was time for lunch and they’d barely resumed from the lunch break when dinner time approached.

 

“Okay guys, that’s enough for the day.” She stood hands on hips and straightened her back. “You’ve done well. I’ll meet you in the mess.”

Allysha hesitated at the entrance to the junior officers’ mess, looking around for a familiar face. Most of the tables were already full and the room buzzed with conversation. Todd caught her eye and waved from somewhere in the middle of the room. She set off down the aisles to the table they had been allocated. Everyone except Anna was there, and she appeared, breathless, just as Allysha slid into her seat.

Todd flashed Anna a glance. “Just as well you made it. Arriving late at mess would not go down well.”

He looked stern.

“Took a wrong turn, is all,” Anna said. “How come you’re the boss all of a sudden?”

Allysha raised a hand to stop Todd’s retort. This was obviously the sort of thing Saahren had meant when he spoke about obeying orders. “On the ship, you conform to the rules. It was made very clear to me and I’m making it very clear to you. Got that?” She glared at the pair of them and they subsided.

When dinner was over and the tables were cleared it was time for socializing. Men and women changed tables, chatting. Anna and Siri flicked through images of the Fleet Ball in a news sheet, admiring dresses, sniggering at some of the less flattering ensembles and identifying friends. Allysha listened with half an ear.

How was she going to find out about these weapons? She already had the results from Leonov’s investigation but where should she start?

Anna’s giggle jolted Allysha out of her reverie. She stared into dancing eyes. “What?”

“Look what we found.” She read the words. “‘Has the Iron Admiral Met His Match?’”

She turned on the audio. “Many of I Spy’s agents sent in accounts of an intimate dance between Grand Admiral Chaka Saahren and lovely civilian technical specialist Allysha Marten at the Fleet Ball,” read the announcer. “The grand admiral has previously been noted for his ability to avoid any romantic entanglements, but it looks like that might be at an end. The pair met during the Carnessa Crisis several months ago and I Spy is not the only one wondering how well they really know each other.”

Anna pressed the button under the illustration. She danced with Saahren, up close and personal, He bent over her, seeming to whisper. She flushed. He chuckled. Allysha cringed. The heat rose up her neck and she was sure her ears were going red.Please, can I wake up and find I’ve had a nightmare?

“Tell us again Lysha, this was just to arrange a meeting the next day, right?” said Anna, a gleam in her dark eyes.

“Look, it was just a dance. I danced with a number of senior officers, not just him. You’re making something out of nothing. Just leave it, will you?” She glared around at them. Maybe she should just go; off to her quarters where nobody could follow.

“Welcome to the mess, people. May I join you?”

She raised her head. The owner of the unfamiliar voice gazed down at her, waiting for an answer, a slight smile on his face. He was very good looking with a mass of wavy hair that seemed to be a bit long for regulation and blue eyes framed by long eyelashes. Anna and Sirikit exchanged an appraising look.

 

Well, she could use a diversion. “Sure.”

“Thanks.” He sat down, smiling. “My name’s Andries Jorgsen.” He held out a hand and Allysha took it, intending to shake it, but he lifted her fingers to his lips instead. “Delighted to meet you, Allysha.”

She almost snatched her hand away and quickly introduced the others. He didn’t kiss anybody else’s hand but then, they were all military officers. As a commander, he out-ranked them all, too. She participated in the small talk for a little while, then stood up, pleading things to do. Which was true. How to get Saahren his data.

Jorgsen stood when she did. “Perhaps we can chat more on another occasion?”

“I’m rather busy.” As she walked away, she reflected that she’d seen that sort of winning smile before.

On Sean.

****

“What in space would he see in her?” Allysha heard a woman hiss to her companion as they passed by her table one morning during breakfast. The companion nodded in vigorous agreement.

 

Oh, buckrats, it was just getting worse. The stories became more and more incredible every day. The dance deteriorated into a public kiss and cuddle; she was supposed to have left early to join him at his hotel, they were seen having a prolonged kissing session in the garden; Sirikit even said someone suggested she was pregnant with his child.

Allysha ate in silence and tuned out.

“Have you heard the latest?” Tensan said, thumping down his breakfast bowl in front of him so hard the contents sloshed around. “The payroll people have started a book so that people can bet on when you succumb.”

Her shoulders slumped. Oh, good grief. Tensan jammed a spoon into his bowl, jaw clenched. “It’s disgraceful.”

“What are the odds?”

He swallowed the spoonful of cereal he’d scooped up. “Never is at one hundred to one. Then it goes on time lines; within a week, two weeks, three weeks etc; or you can appoint a particular day and time.”

Good grief, it was ridiculous. She grinned. “How would they know I’d… surrendered? Are they going to ask him? Please, Sir, did you get a leg over last night?”

Tensan wrinkled his nose in disgust. “They would accept a date if it was proved that you stayed with the grand admiral overnight, in his quarters.”

She laughed. “Start and finish times?”

 

“The guards would know when you went in and when you left.”

“So if I go in for a quickie and leave after, oh, ten minutes, that doesn’t count?”

He frowned at her over his raised spoon.

“Sorry, Tensan.” She wished they could find something else to amuse them. But then, isn’t that what somebody had told her? Warships are boring, gossip helps. “The only way I can cope with all this rubbish is to laugh at it. I just wish they’d leave me alone so I can do my job.”

She caught the eye of a passing steward and asked for kaff. Another gaggle of women sitting at a nearby table looked away a little too quickly when they noticed her looking. Maybe the whole junior mess thing had been a mistake? Then again, if she went to the SOM,he’d be there and that would be even worse.

“Your kaff, ma’am.”

She stared up at the speaker. Commander Jorgsen again, smiling politely down at her as he deposited a cup in front of her. “I was passing this way, so I saved the steward the trouble.”

He sat himself down beside her. Damn the man. He just wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. First it was the kino, then drinks. He’d even tried to chat her up in the gym. All very polite, of course. He always smiled when she said no.

“You seem to be awfully busy,” Jorgsen said. “I hear you’re working on the bridge, too?”

“It gives the team practice working with the scan techs.” She sipped at her cup, directing a desperate glance at Tensan.

He was up to the task. “We find the bridge rotation particularly useful. It’s interesting to see the assumptions made about what we can and cannot see, especially when accessing ptorix data.”

Thank you thank you thank you. Tensan was a gem, the quietest, most studious and most understanding of them. She liked them all but he was the one she could rely on. She slurped down her kaff while Tensan

blinded Jorgsen with science.

Her cup emptied, she stood. Jorgsen did, too. “How about a drink tonight, Allysha?”

“Thanks. I’ll be washing my hair. Have a nice day, Commander. Come along, Tensan; we’re busy today.”

“It seems you have an admirer,” Tensan said as they waited for the transit.

“He’s persistent,” she said. “His type can’t believe anyone would say no. I’ve been fobbing him off for days now. If he’s not careful—” Oops. She’d nearly said she’d tell the GA. As a joke.

Tensan’s eyebrows puckered.

“Nothing. Just being silly.”

The transit car arrived; they waited for three people to exit then stepped inside and headed for the bridge.

****

Allysha gazed around the battle cruiser’s main computer room, more to give her eyes a rest than anything else. A few bored techs checked systems, a couple drank kaff in the break-out room.

 

Two weeks she’d been here, twenty days and no closer to an answer. She had checked the ship’s IS

for any signals that should not have been there; any anomaly which would betray the work of an informer.

As Leonov had said, there was no direct evidence to support the theory that any tampering had taken place, but Allysha checked all his team’s work, repeating it and testing it and then repeating it without using InfoDroids. Over a couple of days she built on Leonov’s pattern of where each attack had taken place and where the fleet was at the time. She looked at the weapons used, the techniques employed, the

statements made when the perpetrators claimed responsibility. She searched for patterns, links, overlaps;

anything that would give a clue for where to look. Every few days she reported to Ernshaw her lack of success. At least she didn’t have to report to Saahren. She hardly saw him, except twice at the SOM

mess and there, she ignored him.

What next? She was running out of ideas.

“Should you be up so late?”

She jumped. SenComm Ernshaw stood beside her, a slight smile on his face.

“Hello.” He was a nice man. He’d been tolerant and interested, giving her space and supporting her when required and making sure his own staff respected her privacy. “I was thinking maybe I’d get some kaff. But that stuff in the break-out room is horrible.”

He grinned. “It is. I’ll buy you one. The junior mess is closest.”

They took the transit out of the bowels of the ship back to more civilized levels, then walked companionably along a corridor together to the mess entrance. Ernshaw stood back to let her precede him into the bar.

She recognized Hassan’s voice as soon as she stepped inside. He stood talking to a group of seated officers, among them Jorgsen. “Well, I’m telling you Allysha’s a glass mountain.”

One of his audience jerked his eyes at Allysha, that sort of glance that signaled ‘warning - incoming’.

Hassan swung around to face her. He almost flushed. “Oh. Er, Hi, ‘Lysha, SenComm. I’m just off. See you tomorrow.” He scuttled off.

A few of his companions murmured greetings. Andries Jorgsen beamed and winked. Winked. Good grief. What did he think this was? A high school canteen? Ernshaw waved her to a table and summoned a steward with a glance. “Kaff for the lady and I’ll have Dromaigh.”

“What was that about?” Allysha said.

“What?”

 

“That glass mountain thing.”

Ernshaw rubbed his nose. “Nothing that needs to concern you. How’s the search going?”

“Don’t give me that. You might as well tell me. Then I won’t have to dig it out of Hassan tomorrow. And I will.”

Ernshaw cleared his throat.

“Or do I have to ask God?”

He chuckled. “All right. The men of the Fleet have developed a very sexist classification system they use when assessing women. They’re classed on a scale of difficulty.”

“How hard it will be to seduce them, is that the idea?” How absolutely typical. Trust Hassan to be involved with that. A bit like the betting ring Tensan had told her about.

“Yes. It’s described in terms of mountain climbing. The easiest is a slope—that’s if you don’t include the paddock, which means she’s anyone’s for the taking. Then there’s a peak—the first parts are not that hard but reaching the summit is a lot more work. Then there’s the ice mountain—very difficult but ice melts. Then there’s the glass mountain—unclimbable.”

“So Hassan says I’m unattainable?”

“Yes. But it’s more complicated than that.”

Allysha wasn’t sure if she was disgusted or fascinated. Or maybe a bit of both. “How?”