Contact (26 page)

More confident now, they headed in that direction. Jordan wondered what Kào would say—or do—when she showed up at his doorstep, unexpected. The vulnerable feminine side of her that was starting to like him a little too much hoped he was alone.

As they neared the crew quarters, they heard noise and voices coming from around a bend in the corridor. There was music, too, faint with an undertone of a pulsing beat. “Someone’s stereo?” Jordan wondered aloud. “Or do these people even have stereos as we know them?”

“Whatever it is, it must be an incredible sound system.”

“It is even better up close,” a husky feminine voice said. In accented English.

Jordan spun around. Standing behind them was a woman whose flesh was so pale that Jordan imagined she could see right through it. The sleeveless, short, skin-tight black dress she wore on her slender body only emphasized the lack of pigment in her hair and skin. But the amused red eyes were what Jordan remembered and wouldn’t forget. The officer smiling at them was none other than Trist.

Automatically Jordan’s eyes focused on Ensign Pren’s small nose. It gave no hint that it had been broken, which would have marred what was really a very pretty face. Trist owed her exotic, elfin look to eyes that tipped up at the outer ends. All the Talagars had that appearance, but Trist’s was more pronounced.

“You need an escort, yes?” She sounded breathless, as if she’d run hard to catch them. Her English was accented but fluent enough to make Jordan wish she could speak Key this well. “I am glad I heard of your departure. I did not know if I would intercept you in time, but here you are.” Her lavender lips curved into a smug, self-congratulatory smile.

Jordan shot Ben an irritated glance. They’d been caught less than fifteen minutes after setting out. And Trist sounded positively gleeful about it.

“Good to think of wearing protectors,” Trist went on. “It
makes you look not like a refugee, but eager to clean the ship.” Her red eyes settled on Ben. “Ah. Ben Kathwari.
He
will not clean ship.” With that, she laughed, husky and deep. “I have heard of you.”

“So the rumors have gotten around,” Ben said with an arrogance Jordan wasn’t sure he intended.

“Not ‘around.’ But I hear.” She winked at them. “Trist hears all. And I must see all, too.” She waved a hand at them. “Because I find you, yes?”

Jordan’s chin edged up. “Let’s not prolong the suffering. If you have to take us back, just do it already.”

“Do you want to go back?”

That was not the response Jordan had expected. “No.”

“Then I won’t.”

The conversation was going every which way other than what Jordan expected. But she’d been given the chance to flee, and she was going to take it. “We’re late for an appointment. Places to go, people to see, you know the drill. Goodbye, Trist.”

“Not goodbye yet.” Trist reached behind Jordan’s neck and fumbled with the collar of her orange jumpsuit. Her smooth, warm skin was a shock; she’d expected corpselike cold. There was a sharp tug, and Trist pulled back her hand. In her palm was a tiny square silver-colored rectangle. It resembled a computer chip. “Your locator. If you wear this, everyone will know where you go.”

“We have homing devices in our clothes?” Jordan asked.

“Yes.” Trist acted as if tracking devices in clothing were just another functional accessory, like belts or gloves. Next, Trist reached for Ben’s collar and jerked the locator loose. “It is how I found you.”

The aliens had sedative gas that killed unborn babies, showers that eradicated bacteria, so why not clothes that told everyone who wanted to know where you were going?
Thank God she hadn’t worn a jumpsuit on her excursions with Kào.

Trist took the locators to an elevator station. Nonchalantly she tossed the chips down the empty shaft. “There,” she said, wiping her delicate hands. “Now we can go.”

“We?” Jordan asked. She still hadn’t decided if this was a good-twin-bad-twin mixup, and she didn’t want the evil twin tagging along. “Kào Vantaar-Moray summoned us to his quarters,” she lied, and badly, too.

“I don’t think so. He is not there. But I will bring you to where you can await him. Come. I am your official escort. You will follow, yes?”

Trist took the lead, her pointed black shoes click-clacking purposefully over the floor. The fabric of her dress was encrusted with beads or tiny pieces of glass that glowed—literally glowed—some coming on as others winked off, giving a mesmerizing three-dimensional effect. And her dress was so short that it barely covered her buttocks. Jordan hated to think of what would happen if the woman bent over to pick something up. Ben must have been contemplating the same thing, but with a different attitude, if the male interest she saw in his face was any indication. Apparently, his aversion to the Talagars extended only to the males of the species.

Jordan lifted her hands. “I have no idea what’s going on. Do you?”

“No.” Ben took her by the elbow and urged her along, his eyes fixed on Trist’s rear end. “But if we’d walked around with those locators, security would have found us and brought us right back. She helped us.”

“Did she? Or is this just the part where the cat plays with the mouse? What does your hunch meter say?”

“That the cat definitely wants to play,” he acknowledged. “But we’re not the mouse.”

“Who is? Kào?”

He shook his head. “Don’t know.”

Trist stopped in front of a doorway. From inside, Jordan could hear music throbbing, the same music she’d noticed earlier. “Welcome to The Black Hole,” Trist said and waved at the open door.

At second glance, the entrance wasn’t open exactly, but covered with a film. It wavered, transparent and rainbow-colored, like a soap bubble.

Trist answered Jordan’s unspoken question. “Nano-computers in liquid.” She put her thumb and index finger close together to indicate something tiny. “Computers too small to see. They talk to our personal computers.” Trist pointed to her wrist and the belt around her waist. “And read the data. Then it is recorded how many times we come and how long we stay.”

Ben grimaced. “Orwellian to the max.”

His comment bewildered Trist. Still, her grasp of English was amazing. But she was a linguist, after all.

“Do not worry,” Trist said. “By the time they notice you come through with no computers, you will be gone. Ready to go inside? Good.” She lowered her voice. “Say nothing and look at nothing. Keep head down and follow me.”

She pressed through the film. It molded around her body like a sheet of lamination. Then, with a barely audible pop, the membrane snapped closed behind her.

“After you?” Ben asked.

Jordan gave him a thanks-a-lot frown. Then she took a breath, held it, and pushed through the film. It clung damply to her skin for a fraction of a second. On the other side, she felt as if nothing had touched her at all.

Ben walked through next. “Pretty cool,” he said.

The Black Hole was a bar, a luxurious bar. The crew was a small one, and only a few people sat in plush floating chairs and couches. Music played, sounding Indian to her ears, with a pulsing, sexual beat. But no one danced. Maybe
it was due to a difference between Alliance culture and hers, or ship’s rules, she didn’t know. But fun wasn’t lacking. Some were engaged in conversation; others watched walls that showed scenes—a beach with two suns, a forest like the one in the holo-arena. As her eyes adjusted, she noticed that the wall-watchers were wearing soft helmets and gloves that were attached to computers. Virtual reality suits?

As she and Ben followed Trist deeper into the bar, from under the lip of her hood Jordan searched the crowd for Kào. According to Trist, he came here, but she’d have never guessed it. Warm and sensual—somewhere he’d learned to kiss that way. Maybe it was here. It hit her how much she didn’t know about him, whom he hung out with after hours, whom he saw, or slept with. . . .

She clenched her jaw. That wasn’t important now. Getting home to Boo was. Kào had told her to look to the future and not the past, but if there was a chance her past still existed, then she wanted it back.

Trist took them to a table surrounded by six buoyant chairs. Ben’s hand closed around her bicep and squeezed. Jordan’s gaze flew in the direction that Ben jerked his chin. Talagars!

There weren’t many crew members of Talagar descent on the
Savior
, but of the ones that were, it seemed to Jordan that all except Trist were in attendance at a drink-and-food-laden table for six. Her heart beat harder. She saw their red eyes, thought of the atrocities she’d read about, and what their kin had done to Kào. Not kin, she reminded herself; these men were Alliance citizens. Yet the prejudice remained. She hated it in herself; she’d never before judged people by their race. Yet something about these men made her skin crawl. Maybe it wasn’t their race at all, but the evil she sensed within them as individuals. Curiously, she didn’t exactly feel that way with Trist.

Jordan dipped her head as she passed them so that her hood covered her face. But the men saw her, recognized her. They had to. Why else would they be watching like a pack of jackals, their eyes glittering with speculation, making her feel as if she were an exotic and expensive item for sale?

Maybe it was genetics at work. Eons of slave ownership made them appear that way. But if not, then something else was at work on this immense starship, and it was time to get worried.

“The refugees are to be settled in the Rim?” Kào thrust his hands in the air. “Why, there’s nothing there.”

“There will be, my boy,” Moray said. “The Alliance plans a mass transfer of population to the Rim with military support. As it stands now, with a sparse population, it remains vulnerable to settlement by fugitives of the Talagar Empire.”

The Talagars—or what was left of them—were on the run. Settling and fortifying the Rim would keep them from gaining a foothold in an isolated area and rebuilding their empire. The strategy made sense. But the idea of the refugees, of Jordan, as experimental and possibly expendable colonists in the most desolate area of the galaxy pricked every protective instinct he had. “Why wasn’t I told of these plans?”

“I have only today received the orders.”

Kào put down his utensil. He’d lost his appetite. “It infuriates me that the Alliance would make such a decision about a band of homeless people. It borders on inhumane.” His fist balled on the tabletop. He dared not say more, as he didn’t trust his temper to remain in check.

“These are unstable times, Kào. Unstable times require bold measures.”

“I understand. But why these people?”
Why Jordan?

“I wondered that myself. Clearly, it was our proximity to the Perimeter that drove the decision. And that the refugees have no home and are in need of being resettled.”

Kào couldn’t argue the need for the measures the Alliance had taken. Nor could he refuse to participate in the mission, for he’d vowed to help strengthen his father’s name, and that meant ensuring that the refugees got to the Rim in the name of galactic peace.

Go with her
.

How? By blood and patriotism, he was morally obligated to help his father carry out his orders. His personal feelings on the refugees’ unwitting role in the plan had little bearing.

His gut clenched. Hated images flashed behind his eyes: the tall fence in his dreams over which he could never jump; his treatment at the hands of the Talagars, drug-induced confessions that spilled from him at their whim. In neither situation had he the ability to exert control over his destiny. It was no different now.

A call came in on Kào’s comm. He opened his wrist computer and read the message that flashed there. “Security, sir,” said the man in the tiny screen.

“Go,” Kào prompted him.

“There’s been a breach in the refugee area. Two of them left without clearance. We tracked them to the shuttle. They de-boarded on the central axis, Level One, where they headed toward the officers’ living area.” The man frowned. “But then they very rapidly descended in a vertical transport to Sublevel Five. We lost them.”

“Sublevel Five. That’s the cargo bay.” Where their aircraft was stored.

“Yes, sir. But they’re not there. We sent a team down and came up with nothing.”

“I’m on my way.” Kào closed the comm. He draped his
hand cloth over his unfinished meal and pushed away from the table. “I’ve got refugees on the loose.”

“Find them,” Moray said.

“Yes, sir. I’ll report back when I do.”

Trist had ordered the drinks because of the trouble Jordan and Ben had reading the menu.
Zakuu
it was called. Colorless and carbonated, the liquid filled three glittering flutes that were a foot tall and only about a half-inch in diameter.

Trist was totally at ease, while Jordan sat tensely. Her goal tonight was to find Kào and see what she could find out about Earth’s destruction . . . or lack thereof. But worry made it tough to sit still. Her eyes kept flicking back and forth between the Talagarian men, Trist, and the main entrance to the bar. She liked it better when she and Ben had been proactive, hunting for Kào rather than sitting, waiting for him to come to them.

“Try the drink,” Trist said. She took a delicate sip. Jordan and Ben barely touched their lips to the tart beverage. Trist folded her slender arms on the table and leaned forward. “You are nervous, yes?”

“We have a lot on our minds.”

“I can see why. You have developed some interesting extracurricular activities.”

Had Trist somehow found out about her trip to the holo-arena with Kào? She’d die if their kiss was common knowledge. But she gathered her wits and replied with equal aplomb. “And which extracurricular activities might those be?”

Trist’s fingertip rapped her data-input panel. “Your spying.”

“Spying?” Jordan threw a startled glance in Ben’s direction.

“Well, snooping,” Trist hedged. “I think that is your
word for the lesser form of spying. Spying on the computer.”

She meant hacking—Dillon’s hacking. Her heart in her mouth, Jordan tried to get a fix on Trist’s purpose. But she didn’t sense animosity or anger. Nothing in the woman’s body language indicated that she was tense, while she and Ben were wound up tight enough to shatter. “The computer was given to us. We’re using the educational program to educate ourselves.”