Ambasadora (Book 1 of Ambasadora) (35 page)

He climbed down the side of the
building and headed back toward Lindenn.

A small boy waited for him at a
blind corner. “Don’t go back there.”

Sean looked around while he
questioned the boy. “What are you talking about?”

“Back to the gate with the
claw box.”

Sean grabbed the kid’s wrist.

The boy’s eyes opened wide and he
talked fast. “A contractor gave me six blocks to tell him where you took
the bleeding girl from that transport.”

“Why are you telling me
now?”

“So you’ll give me more to
tell him you left the Underground.”

Sean hesitated putting his trust
in someone who could be bought so easily by so little, but he needed to get
Sara out of there while Yul still held sway with the other fraggers. He
couldn’t do that with Chen trailing him.

He let the kid go. “I don’t
have any blocks.”

“They said you
wouldn’t.” The kid ran.

Something hard hit Sean in the
back of the head. Pain streaked through his mind and blurred his vision. He
heard his assailant step onto the street behind him. Even as his consciousness
spiraled away, Sean’s training took over. His right leg kicked backward like a
piston. The move rewarded him with the satisfying crack of a knee joint
splintering in the wrong direction followed by a suppressed scream.

He turned around and stepped
forward in a basic fighting stance. His eyes wouldn’t focus. A dark figure lay
on the ground, grasping its damaged leg. Sean went for his stolen cender when
he caught movement to his right.

Smooth, hard muscles propelled
him into the battle. A blur of black topped in pink flashed past him on the
left. The hair on the back of his neck rose.

Cender.

The shot sizzled into his brain.
Burning pain spread through him, but the level wasn’t high enough to kill him.
He collapsed to his knees.

A female voice buzzed in his
ears. “Where’s Sara?”

“I got rid of her,” he
said and threw his forehead into the woman’s.

Another set of hands secured his
arms behind him. The pink-haired contractor pushed herself up with one arm, the
other secured in a bone mender. With her free hand she stuffed a rag in Sean’s
mouth. It smelled of strawberries. Or maybe the scent was hers. With a raised
boot, she kicked him onto his side. His shoulder took the brunt, but his head
still hit the ground with a crack.

“We need you alive, not
necessarily in one piece. I’ve been wanting to get my hands on you for a
while.”

Sean knew they were after the
data. If he didn’t make it, Sara would need it to make a deal for her life. He
opened his subvocal link to Yul. Since others would be eavesdropping like Sean
had earlier, he said what they would consider jibberish, but what Yul would
figure out later.

“Compromised. Take Sara
to my initiation. Check the lights—”

The female contractor kicked Sean
in the jaw, breaking his subvocal link and nearly stealing his consciousness.
She slid Ariel’s plundered triton from a sheath under Sean’s pant leg. The cold
steel burned as she worked it into the skin of his wrist. Warm blood leaked
down his arm. Feeling the point of the knife probing under the skin and slicing
through nerves kept Sean from passing out. With a final, violent rip and a
blast of searing pain, the woman tore the reporter and jack from his arm.

FORTY–SIX

Rainer stared at the white walls
of Sara’s suite. The mirrors at the far corner only reflected more of the
alabaster nothingness. His fingers kneaded the Deleinean silk gown on the bed
where he sat. Her soft scent hung on the turquoise fabric.

No more roses.
Instead,
there lingered a light smell he didn’t recognize. The mech tech fragger had taken
that scent memory from him.

He tossed the dress aside. His
relief that she lived through the Tredificio destruction twisted into
suspicion. He now accepted that she wasn’t with Sean Cryer against her will,
that maybe she had run off with him. Perhaps she was playing an angle to get at
Prollixer. The theory rested on shaky ground. He despised the fact that he even
cared what happened to her at this point. At one time he imagined her as his
amour. Her elevated status as an ambasadora would make her more acceptable to
his family circle. Then the good Sovereign ruined her.

The disappointment he felt
troubled him. That’s why he’d rebounded with Dahlia when she’d asked, and why
he’d agreed to a child with her immediately. Yet, here he was, chasing Sara for
the Sovereign, at least that was his official story.

Her resilience fascinated him.
Though Simon would never admit it, Sara had a certain power. When the Embassy
thought they could use her for their own purposes, she surprised them, turned
on them, even Rainer.

His shoulders rolled back as he
tried to dismiss thoughts of her, not the images of her from after her
modification sessions, times when she needed him most. He wanted to be rid of those
thoughts, instead focusing on Sara after Prollixer had
changed
her, when
she became defiant. He remembered pressing against her in the communications
kiosk, of the harsh words they had spoken to one another. When he called her a
liar, it was because he recognized an attraction she still held for him, one
she’d fiercely deny by the time they could finally act upon it.

She blamed him for not helping
her sooner. He figured if anybody could’ve gotten her out it would’ve been him.
But it would’ve cost him his position, his family. No reasonable man would
take those kinds of risk, no matter the intensity of the attraction, yet guilt
stirred inside him. And desire. All he wanted to do was feel her, taste her,
have her. Like the way she once wanted him.

Rainer picked up a chair by the
bed and threw it into the corner mirror. He looked at his reddened visage,
mimicked over a thousand small shards, and hated her for introducing this
weakness, this emotional fallacy, to a life he’d built on strength and careful
analysis.

He needed to talk to Dahlia. She
allowed him to remain focused because he would never burn for her like he did
for Sara. Dahlia needed him for a breeding relationship, nothing so personal
and complicated as what he had with Sara.

He opened an air screen and
punched in Dahlia’s code.

Her surprised face appeared in
the space in front of him. She was prettier than Sara, but the observation
didn’t make him feel any different. Sometimes she reminded him too much of her
sister, Faya.

“Rainer?”
Dahlia’s voice betrayed a nervous pitch.

“Were you expecting someone
else?”

“You shouldn’t be
contacting me.”

His brow knitted. “What’s
happening, Dahlia? Is it something with Sara?”

The mention of Sara’s name turned
the nervousness into irritation.
“She’d be smart to hide. The Sovereign
wants her brought in, and Faya’s pushing for a Writ of Execution.”

So she could collect on Sara’s
death.

“What is Faya using as her
argument?” Rainer imagined it stemmed from her own miserable failings
during the modification. Maybe it was just to get to him.

“Under the auspices of
treason. Because of the Palomin data cache. Faya has help. From Chen Starrie.
He was the rogue who used Sara to siphon that data in the first place,”
Dahlia said.

“What does he get out of
it?”

“Faya promised Chen a
full pardon and re-instatement as a guild contractor once all this is
over.”

“She’s making some big
promises for a mid-level contractor.”

“A mid-level contractor
who has the Sovereign’s ear.”

Apparently the confidence did not
go both ways, otherwise Faya would have known that Prollixer hijacked Sara’s
lineage. Rainer was certain that seeing Sara disgraced, in pain, and forced to
take her own life would have been more appealing to Faya, even if she wouldn’t
receive any remuneration for it. Still, Rainer worried because Faya’s power
play couldn’t have come at a worse time.

“Rainer, she’s pushing
for collusion with a known fragger operative and a rogue contractor.”

The mention of Sara with Cryer
made Rainer’s jaw clench and his chest tighten. “If Prollixer’s pardoning
Starrie, can he really make a case for Sara’s collusion?”

“Chen’s not the rogue
he’s talking about.”

Rainer’s mind ran through lists
of names and faces of contractors who could be involved. Nobody else was in any
kind of position to do the kinds of things Simon…. The hairs on the back of
Rainer’s neck stiffened. There were no other players except the original ones.

“Prollixer put the writ out
on me, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”
Dahlia’s
bottom lip twitched, but otherwise she showed no emotion.

Reality slammed into him like a
runaway monorail. The Sovereign knew how Rainer had helped Sara during Faya’s
modification sessions, why he’d taken on the responsibility of being Sara’s
bodyguard. Maybe he even knew about Rainer’s fallacy for the woman.

“Tell me everything,
Dahlia.”

Her gaze met his through the
viewer.
“We have Cryer, but Sara’s still somewhere on Tampa Quad.”

Dahlia blinked one too many times
when she spoke about Sara. Rainer balled his hand into a fist. Even his amours
were lying to him now.

“Is she hurt?” Rainer’s
voice remained steady, his gaze fixed. He never gave up tells.

“Probably. But it will be
worse when Faya finds her.”
Dahlia’s half-smile dared Rainer to reveal
something.

“If your sister’s smart,
she’ll control her homicidal tendencies. Sara’s too valuable. She may be the
only one who can get us out of this mess.”

“What do you mean?”
Dahlia’s eyes widened a bit too much, pretending innocence.

“Stop it, Dahlia. You don’t
have it in you to bluff. I need exact locations.”

“Do you plan to save
Cryer, too?”

“He can rot. But knowing
where he’s being held could be good leverage.” Rainer wasn’t sure if Sara
cared, but David Anlow wasn’t about to let another person under his watch
disappear.

“Sara’s in the Latulip
Underground.”

That’s why he couldn’t find her
through the minstrels and voyeurs. He would never have thought Cryer would risk
taking Sara into fragger territory and a dead zone. “Where’s Cryer?”

“I don’t know.”
Dahlia swallowed after she spoke.

“Stop lying to me, Dahlia.
Writ or not, I am still your amour and the father of your child. I can make
life very difficult for you once this is all cleared up.”

The cock of her head showed
defiance, so he added, “Don’t underestimate me or you’ll end up on the
losing side.”

Rainer’s heart raced with news of
how badly the odds had become stacked against him, and his mind flooded with
options, including running. But, none of that showed on his icy exterior, he
made sure of it. A Writ of Execution was just paperwork—showing weakness was
the real death sentence.

Dahlia’s tanned face became pale
and splotchy. He was slightly relieved that she still feared his power.

“They took the fragger to
Palomin. Don’t contact me again until this is over. I have a child to think
about.”
Dahlia’s image dissipated.

Rainer ignored her last jab. He
was already planning his next move. If he played all his options well, there
wouldn’t be a need to go back to Palomin. Once Sara was safe, Sean Cryer’s
bones could crumble to dust in the desert sun.

This had better work.

David watched the night side of
Tampa Quad come into view. He’d already been concocting a reason to land at
Shiraz Dock and find a way to get to Sean and Sara without anyone knowing.

His response to the question, as
it surfaced every few minutes in his head, was always,
because I have to
.
It wasn’t duty. It was emancipation from guilt.

Most citizens only saw the
military in action during major rescue operations, like the recent destruction
of the Tredificio; yet, they were in combat situations often enough: quelling
uprisings when specialized contractors would be wasted on the effort, closing
off borders near the unstable Giovani Territory, even breaking up siphoning
stations along the Kimberly River.

The Embassy had always kept them
away from fragger activity, however. David never knew why until his last
official mission, when Lyra and some of the others began
to turn
, when
he had to leave some of the mutineers behind.

Because of David’s relationship
with Lyra, he had kept her secret safe. So what did the military do? They
promoted her. That’s when David left both Lyra and his commission. If the
Sovereign knew how the Armadans were working more for themselves than the
Embassy, he’d have the whole military disbanded. He preferred his mercenary
contractors anyway.

A tell-tale clump of rubber soles
preceded Rainer’s appearance in front of David’s holo-controls. The
contractor’s black boots nearly blended into the dark floor. “Land at the
Hub. I need to pick up Ambasadora Mendoza at Latulip.”

“You heard from her?”
David feared Rainer had been listening to his conversation with Sean.

“Sara was seen there, and
she may be injured.”

David didn’t miss the fact Rainer
had called her by her given name. “You know this for certain?” David
tapped his reporter and stood over Rainer in the fading control icons.

“Yes. We’re wasting time. My
only objective is to bring her back. Shouldn’t that be your objective as
well?”

“What about Sean? Is he with
her?”

“No mention of the mech
tech. He’s not my concern. Now get me there.”

“I can go with you and help
you bring them back.”

David expected a sarcastic remark
or an argument, but Rainer looked to be considering the idea. Maybe he was
getting desperate. David sweetened the deal. “I’m weapons trained and
discreet.” David knew the only way Sean might get back alive was with his
help. He waited for Rainer’s reaction.