Ambasadora (Book 1 of Ambasadora) (41 page)

To David’s surprise, tears poured
from Giselle’s closed eyes. He always assumed Kenon’s emotional fallacy for his
prime was one-sided. She held her arm out over Kenon’s body. A silver chain and
black pendant swung in her hand. She let it fall back to Kenon in the funerary
niche.

Hailey followed her mother’s
lead. “Good-bye, Daddy.” Her sapphire ring fell short of the pit. She
ran forward to pick it up. This time it fell from her little fingers onto her
father’s chest.

Mikail held the younger Sasha
near the niche. Together they offered a small green stone. “You live on
through your children, Kenon. And through your family,” he said. “We
are strong because of you. You live on because of us.”

As Kenon’s other amours and
children stepped forward to say their final words, David understood why Kenon
followed tradition so closely, why having his own circle was so important to
him. He
lived
the History. And, like his mother said, he would live
forever through that History, through generations of an extended family and
their genes.

When the last of the offerings
were made, Kenon’s birth father proudly held a flickering torch over the niche.

Mari buried her head in David’s
shoulder. He held her for a long time before taking her hand and leading her
away from the ceremony. He touched her cheek with the back of his hand.
“There could have been a better time for this, but….” He slipped a
ring from his pocket and slid it onto her middle finger. The shine of three
obsidian spheres set atop the silver band made up for its loose fit. The stones
dwarfed her tiny finger, but the ostentacous nature suited her.

“I want you to be my prime,
Mari, so we can laugh, and dock, and fight every day for the rest of our lives.”

A small smile shone through her
tear-streaked face. “You’re leaving, aren’t you?” she whispered.

It wasn’t the response he had
expected, but she was intuitive, another quality he admired. He felt guilty for
his answer. “Just to help bring them back.” David wasn’t sure if he
meant Sean and Sara or the crew he walked out on so many months ago. Maybe in a
way it was for all of them. “Then I’m yours for good.”

“I’m holding you to all
three of these.” Mari wiggled the ring on her finger and stared up at him
with a twinkle in those gorgeous eyes.

“That’s why I chose that
one.” He kissed her like it was their first kiss at Shiraz Dock all over
again.

“I can’t believe I’m going
back there.” Sara studied the purpled contours of the slot canyon below.
The wavy edges of eroded rock snaked away for kilometers, eventually emptying
into Palomin Canyon Reserve in the southeast. Lyra and a group of nineteen
Armadans she had managed to gather stood watching with Sara and Rainer.

“It would have been easier
if Simon hadn’t installed rim scanners after that first fragger attack,”
Rainer said. “Approaching from this far out leaves us exposed too many
times along the way.”

It amused Sara that Rainer now
freely referred to Simon by his given name. He was either picking up her habits
or had decided there was no point in keeping formality with a man who had
ordered his death.

“It doesn’t bother you to
come back to Palomin?” she asked.

“I’m not proud of what
happened, Sara.”

The near-apology caught her
off-guard, and she didn’t like how her feelings toward him softened.

“Is that why you’re doing this,
some type of redemption?” she asked.

Lightning speared the desert sky
behind them. Thunder clubbed the black clouds in the distance. Sara’s skin
tingled, a mix of anxiety and inevitability. A sudden pinch in her side
heightened her apprehension. She pressed a hand to the pain.

“What’s wrong?” Rainer
asked.

His alarmed look mirrored her thoughts—that
the irradicae had begun their assault.

Whether in denial or because she
didn’t want Rainer to know, she lied. “I’m fine. Just need to adjust this
grappler belt.” She loosened the nylon, hoping that would bring some
relief. It didn’t.

“It’s more awkward than the
thigh holsters, but you should be able to get rid of it once we deploy the
grapplers.” He pulled out one of the cenders holstered around her legs and
checked the energy level, even though he’d seen her do it a few minutes before.

“You never answered my
question,” Sara said.

Rainer replaced the cender and
inspected her harness. “These leg straps are too loose.” He grabbed
the strap on the inside of Sara’s right thigh and pulled it snug.

She reached for the other strap
and grabbed Rainer’s hand by mistake. He caught her fingers with his. “I’m
here because our situation could have been different.” He tested her other
cender.

His words sounded tragic to her.
“You could have made it different.”

He handed the gun back to her
this time, instead of replacing it himself. “It’s too late now, huh?”

She wondered if he wanted a
response from her. She didn’t have one.

“The truth is,” he
said. “We probably both would have ended up dead.”

That last statement put her on
guard. As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t believe Rainer would have changed
that much. If he wasn’t willing to risk his life for her so many months ago, he
certainly wouldn’t be putting himself in peril now simply to save Sean. Rainer
had his own agenda. It just so happened that his and Sara’s goals overlapped
presently. At least that’s what he thought since she lied to him about not
finding the data.

Yul had played along when she
came out of the V-side and said the data was still in Sean’s head. It was the
only way to insure his safety. If Rainer were playing both sides, he still
would have to get Sean out alive in order to obtain his prize. Yul had the cure
now, and even Sara didn’t know where he went after fleeing Rushow. She was a
quick study of contractor ways after being around so many for so long, and the
first lesson she learned was deceit. The second was manipulation. A part of her
felt guilty for it, but the larger part of her just wanted Sean back.

A swirl of sand appeared over
Rainer’s shoulder.

“What’s that?” Sara
asked.

Lyra squinted through one eye in
the dust cloud’s direction. “Incoming rover.”

“Nice optical implants.
They’re illegal, you know,” Rainer said.

“You can turn me in when we
break into the Sovereign’s estate.”

“They’ve found us.”
Anger and fear flooded Sara’s system at giving up the advantage of their
surprise entrance.

The Armadans readied static
rifles simultaneously. Sara aimed a paired of cenders. Rainer stood there with
his arms folded. “We’re out of range for weapons that small.”

“I know,” she said.
“It just feels better to have a weapon between me and whoever’s headed our
way.”

Lyra squinted again. “Calm
down.” She lowered her rifle. “It’s the rest of our team.”

“I didn’t know there were
others joining us,” Sara said.

“I wasn’t sure they would
until just now,” Lyra said.

An open-air desert rover rambled
into view ahead of the whirling cloud from the west. Sara counted a full load
of six Armadans, three of whom were women, sitting on bench seats under the
roll bars in the transport’s bed, plus a male driver and passenger.

A force of thirty against a
hundred or more. And that was if they did it the easy way.

When the rover lumbered to a
stop, David was the first to hop over the side. Sara wondered how a former
fleet captain felt about sitting in the back. Not sure if he were still angry
with her, she greeted him formally by placing her palm against his chest.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Duty calls. Can’t let one
of my crew down, even if he is a cocky, dosed up mech tech who’s too smart for
his own good.” He gave her a small kiss on the forehead.

Sara knew David cared about Sean,
otherwise he would never risk his life to bring him back. She handed him a
harness.

“You’ve been hanging around
Socialites too long. Picking up their posturing,” Lyra said.

“It’s a sign of affection,
Lyra. Something you wouldn’t understand,” David said.

A light breeze blew among them,
making Sara shiver. Thunder banged off the rock walls. The storm to the north
had begun.

“It won’t be long now,”
Rainer said.

Sara snapped into the boot
restraints on her swivel board the way Rainer had showed her. She shouldn’t
have been surprised that board training was now mandatory for contractors after
they were introduced by the fraggers at the last battle here. Any seven year old
could master the gyroscopic maneuvers of the hovering plank, but the
unsteadiness still made Sara’s insides churn. The pinching in her abdomen
didn’t help. It was constant now, intensifying a little with each breath.

The wind picked up, stirring from
the slot canyon below. It smelled of fresh clay and reminded her of the first
notes of Sean’s scent. A rumbling shook the ground. Lightning filled the air
with the smell of ozone. The temperature dropped suddenly.

“Ready?” Rainer moved
the small force into position at the canyon’s lip. He turned a slow
semi-circle on his board, watching for signs of confirmation from every man and
woman.

A deafening roar belched up from
the slot canyon. Purple brown water raged below them, shaking the ground with
its passing.

Rainer dropped his board into the
churning waves, followed by Lyra. One after the other Armadans disappeared over
the rim.

David motioned Sara in front of
him. With a twist of her body, she moved her board to the edge. She didn’t
hesitate, afraid her legs would lock up out of fear, just dropped into the
flash flood. The sound was deafening, and the narrow canyon eclipsed the sun
except in patches. Out of instinct, she braced for impact. But the board’s
absorption field ate her momentum and left her bouncing just above the gnashing
water. Splashes drenched her boots and pants, and the spray soaked the rest of
her. While the muddy water painted the canyon walls a dark charcoal, it
splatted her black shirt and pants with a greyish purple scum.

She shifted the weight to her
back foot slightly to make the board climb a little higher. The front end
angled too high. She threw her weight forward, but overcorrected. She swung her
arm to the opposite side to regain her balance. A startled cry echoed below
her. One of the Armadans had dropped into the flash flood. Sara saw his head,
then only an arm and a foot pass under her before the body disappeared
completely. Her heart thundered nearly as loud as the rushing river. She looked
up in time to see the canyon wall jutting in front of her. Taking the brunt of
the hit with her shoulder, her center of gravity shifted. The board spun ninety
degrees.

She adjusted right before
smashing into a ledge on the opposite side. David nearly missed her and surfed
past just over her head. She held her breath and found her balance. One lean
too far to the right or left and she’d end up grated against the sandstone.
Adrenaline masked the pain in her shoulder and belly.

The side entrance to Palomin
approached rapidly. All the force in the universe wouldn’t stop her now. Sara
tried to guess how far she was from the ever-widening sliver of light that
floated just above the flood. She hoped the water contained enough force to
blind the entry sensors, otherwise the harrowing trip through the slot canyon
would have been as ineffective as driving right up to Palomin’s rim and jumping
into direct contractor fire.

Three troopers and David surfed
and bounced out of the slot canyon in front of her and into the main expanse of
Palomin. Sara followed their route, though the waves were unpredictable as they
jostled for release at the mouth of the slot canyon. One rose high. Sara had
nowhere to go. She burst through the wall of water and surfed into Palomin. The
cluster of white buildings appeared ahead. Their white towers rose three hundred
meters high, capped by the rounded remnants of a worldship hull.

As the canyon widened, the water
level dropped significantly. The boarders fell into formation, five abreast.
David dropped in beside her. “That was close back there. You look pretty
shaken.”

Actually, the adrenaline was
wearing off, leaving a roiling pain in her abdomen in its wake. David didn’t
need to know this, though. “I’m worried about what we’ll find inside.
Whether Sean’s….”

“Sean’s going to hang on
just to keep pissing them all off.” Despite the joke, David’s tone
indicated that he worried, too.

Sara’s board jerked. The bottom
skipped off a rock, exposed by the dwindling flood waters. She compensated and
climbed a bit higher with the board. David gracefully swerved and maneuvered on
the board like he’d done it all his life. His agility surprised her, and made
her feel a little clumsy. Apparently, her few weeks training as a contractor
wasn’t enough to erase eighteen years as a coddled Socialite.

They pulled up to the others at
the nearest tower. Sara dismounted from her board into the shin-deep water. Her
legs wobbled as she settled into a thin layer of mud on the canyon floor. No alarms,
no sign of contractors.

She walked up to where Rainer and
Lyra looked to be in a heated discussion.

“You’d better be
right,” Lyra said. “Because we only have one shot at this.”

“I’ve scoured every inch of
this compound on security detail,” Rainer said.

“I don’t believe the
Sovereign’s Head Contractor performed his own security detail,” Lyra said.

“Rainer doesn’t leave
anything to chance,” Sara said. “He’s Head Contractor because he does
the job the best.”

“
Was
Head
Contractor,” Lyra corrected.

“You either trust me or turn
back now,” Rainer said.

Sara held her breath at the
bluff. Rainer was gambling with Sean’s life by making the ultimatum. He knew as
well as she did that they needed the Armadans’ skills and numbers if this plan
were to work.