Desert World Rebirth (30 page)

Temar had expected something grand, but the reality of the bridge was less than impressive. A dozen tiny, boxlike stations were lined up in the middle of the room, each with a man or woman inside the low walls, typing away on a computer. There weren’t any windows out into space. One wall was covered with huge screens, and three people sat at a long, narrow table facing the scrolling displays and vid feeds and images of space. Temar tried to find some image of Shan, but the elevator was on the side of the room, and the angle was wrong for him to see the pictures.

Eyeing the remaining guard, Temar wondered if he should risk trying to walk past the man to find some vid feed from the negotiations room. However, he really didn’t like the idea of getting shot. The guard’s partner stopped at the skinny table, talking to the man in the middle. So that was the captain.

The man stood up and turned to face Temar. His body was angled oddly, and it took Temar a second to realize that one of his legs was damaged. The man headed over toward them, the soldier following. With every step, he swung his right leg out wide, and his right hand had burn-slick skin across the backs of the fingers.

“Ambassador,” he said wearily, “go to your quarters, or I will have to order you there.”

Temar might have said something inappropriate, except Natalie stepped forward. “Captain, we have a problem.”

“We have a lot of them, Officer,” the captain retorted with a dry sort of humor. “Unless you have a report, clear the bridge.”

“I want to know what you’re doing to find out if Shan Polli is safe,” Temar demanded.

The captain gave him a look while he blew out a long breath. “Look, I understand that you’re worried, but right now, you’re in the way. Clear the bridge, Ambassador.”

“No.”

The captain’s expression darkened. “Excuse me?”

“Would you ask Ambassador Polli to leave the bridge?” Temar demanded. From the momentary blankness on the captain’s face, the answer was clear. “I’m certainly wealthier and better known than Ambassador Polli. My vote carries just as much weight, and if he finds out that you shut me out of decision-making, you’re unlikely to get either of our votes for any sort of deal.” Temar wanted to go on, to beg, to plead, to give all the reasons why they should let him stay. However, begging didn’t project strength, so he clamped his mouth shut and swallowed all the arguments and fears and anger until he was afraid he might throw it all up again.

Eventually, the captain sighed. “Officer Aral, would you like to provide some introductions?”

“Yes, sir. Ambassador, this is Captain Miles Helgen. Captain, this is Ambassador Temar Gazer.”

The captain gave a curt nod and started right in. “Ambassador, you are a guest, not part of our rank structure. As a guest, I will include you in any discussions regarding your colleague, but in the end, the decision will be mine as to how we proceed. Understood?”

Despite the fact that his first instinct was to agree, Temar pursed his lips and considered the captain for some time. “I understand that you would prefer that, yes,” he finally offered.

The sour look on the captain’s face suggested that this wouldn’t be a happy friendship. “Ambassador, we had a major explosion in the jump engine. We ejected the combustible material before the fire could breach security, which is why the detonation didn’t rip through half my ship. However, we have catastrophic failures on sixteen decks, with damage isolated to areas on the opposite end of the ship from diplomatic quarters.” The captain turned his back and strode across the room of narrow aisles and cramped workers in their little spaces until he got back to his table overlooking the displays. Temar followed, his eyes searching the images for any sign of Shan. He’d only understood about 60 percent of the captain’s speech, but none of it had sounded particularly good.

“Life support?” Rula asked.

“Security Officer Lish, this is not a tactical debriefing,” the captain snapped, and Rula stiffened as she stood at Natalie’s side.

“Are we in danger?” Temar asked.

The captain spared an unhappy look toward Rula before answering. “Ambassador, if there were significant threat to your life, I would order you evacuated, and quite frankly, I wouldn’t care if you threw your weight around.”

“Then you’d better get Ambassador Polli back in one piece, because if you do that before securing him, you will not have a treaty with Livre.”

“Not my first concern, Ambassador.”

Natalie had moved closer to the screens, and she was focused on one, her head tilted as she looked at it. Temar frowned. “Is that the conference room?”

The captain looked over at the screen. “It’s the footage right before the attack. One of the techs is running a loop to identify enemies and technology.”

“It’s Pentalia. He’s out of position and blocking Ambassador Polli from returning to the outer office,” Natalie commented.

“We think he’s the point man. He waited until he had the two ambassadors in the room with as few additional personnel as possible before somehow triggering a coordinated attack. We’re tracking down his history and accounting for all personnel.”

Natalie turned around. “Officer Lish and I were in the outer office with no access to sensitive equipment.”

“I know.” Captain Helgen sat down in his chair, and Temar could see a single screen display inset in the table light up. “I checked you two first.”

Temar would have been offended, but Natalie simply nodded, as if it were normal for her own people to investigate her. Temar seriously hated this alliance. “Do you know anything about Ambassador Polli?” he asked, focusing on his need to save Shan and not his general disgust for the entire situation.

The captain tapped his screen and one of the images grew larger, pushing the others to the side. It gave Temar a headache to look at a wall with so many images—readouts and text and vid and diagrams with squiggle lines all flashing at once. However, he focused on the center image. In it, Shan was clearly angry, although without sound, Temar couldn’t tell what he was angry about. He moved toward the door, and a tall man with no hair stepped between him and the exit, leaving Shan to stumble back.

“Pentalia,” Natalie said softly.

Shan got his finger up in the man’s face, and Ambassador Melton was on his feet now, his normal entourage of assistants looking either alarmed or confused. Shan turned his back on Pentalia, and then the whole screen shook. Temar watched as Shan hit the table and then rolled off to the floor, but that might have been for the best, because Pentalia had a gun, and Temar watched as he shot two men and a woman, their bodies flying back and slamming into the ground. Without sound, it was a surreal image, seemingly less real than the vids Temar had watched in school—except that was his lover with his arm thrown over his head. The ambassador and one man were left. The man threw his hands up, moving behind Ambassador Melton, who stared with open mouth.

Temar could see Shan reach up for the edge of the table, and the expression on his face would have made Naite take a step back. He was furious. Pentalia pointed the gun in Shan’s direction, but Shan was saying something, his mouth moving and his hand flying up in a wild gesture. The second shock must have hit, because Shan stumbled to the side and Ambassador Melton sat in his chair, grabbing the edge of the table. The third explosion came close on the heels of the second. Temar realized that, by this time, he’d been in the third office with Rula holding him down as he pointlessly struggled to get to Shan.

Sure enough, Temar watched the silent figures in the silent image float up into the air as gravity failed. Two of the bodies trailed little dotted lines of blood drops that followed them as they drifted up and to the right. One didn’t. His head was half gone, and larger red globs escaped at less regular intervals.

“One confirmed kill, two seriously injured, assumed dead. Three hostages,” the captain said, and then Pentalia turned to the camera, smiling into it before raising his weapon. The screen turned to static. “That’s the entire stream.” With a click, the captain made the images shrink down again as they restarted with Shan walking into the room, that hopeful smile on his face.

Temar turned away, not willing to watch that horror twice. Shan was alive. Shan wasn’t hurt. He had to hold onto that, because if he didn’t, his sanity was going to slip out from under him like loose sand. Either that or it would explode like glass cooled too quickly, and everyone in the room would be showered with hot shrapnel. Temar wasn’t actually sure how he was going to react. He only knew that the anger growing in his chest was too much for him to carry. He wanted to reach through that vid screen, take Pentalia by the neck, and squeeze the life out of him. His feelings for Ben had been a poor, sunbleached imitation of hatred compared to how he felt about Pentalia.

A new explosion rocked the bridge, and Temar might have fallen except Rula grabbed him and hauled him close. It was hard to fall down when someone that muscled had hold of your arms.

“Report!”

“Epsilon seven through eleven, catastrophic failure. Epsilon twelve through fourteen, critical damage. Epsilon six, fifteen, nineteen suffered serious damage. Trivial damage shipwide.” With all the technicians all in their little boxes, Temar couldn’t even tell who had called out the report, but he watched as everyone’s expression turned somber.

“Rula?” he whispered.

“Shuttle bays,” Rula whispered back. She let go of his arms, and Temar rubbed them, the flesh already bruised from her harsh hold.

“All teams, I want sections cleared. Nonessential personal to emergency areas. Possible ship fragmentation imminent,” Captain Helgen snapped out, and Temar watched as a good half of the screens on the big wall suddenly shifted to new figures and new images.

Temar inched closer to Rula, waiting until she leaned close to whisper an explanation. “Last stage emergency in case of sabotage—all sections seal themselves off with emergency rations. Internal, controlled explosions blow the sections apart, turning the
Brazica
into sixty-five separate life pods. Each one can support two hundred people for three days.”

“But Shan?” Temar looked at the screen, but whoever had been looping the image of the negotiation room had turned to other work. Temar’s breath caught in his chest. He had an irrational need to see Shan, even if it was a recorded image.

“Sir, incoming message—one-point-one-three Hertz.”

Captain Helgen touched his ear and nodded. Radios. They had radio communicators in their ears. Temar had noticed the tiny disks, but the idea of making a communicator smaller than a fingernail made no sense. How did they control it? Why would they even bother with technology like that?

“Targeting, report all active weapons, visual only, display seven-three-alpha,” he barked.

“Captain,” Temar stepped forward, ignoring the way Rula had tried to catch his arm to stop him, “what’s going on?”

“Not now, Ambassador.”

“Yes, now. You’re getting messages. Are they from Pentalia?”

“Ambassador, I would dislike the amount of paper I would have to fill out if I ordered Officer Lish to tie you up and throw you in a closet. Don’t assume I won’t do it anyway,” Captain Helgen warned.

“I don’t assume that. I do assume that you would intentionally leave me ignorant because you don’t think I have the rank or you don’t want to listen to my opinion.”

“I really don’t want to listen to your opinion,” Helgen agreed, “but I know you have rank. Melton didn’t see it, but I’ve been watching these screens since you came onboard. Ambassador Polli never made a final decision without looking to you for confirmation, and one unhappy look would send him trying to change the deal. I had hoped you would keep up the ruse so that I could order you off my bridge, so no, I don’t have a problem seeing you as the commanding officer, Ambassador Gazer. I won’t, however, let you command my ship. Stay out of this.”

“Is it Pentalia?” Temar demanded, ignoring the rest of the argument and even his own shock at the thought that someone watching them could come to that kind of conclusion about his relationship with Shan.

“No.” Helgen was passing aggravated and moving into being angry, but Temar didn’t trust him. He didn’t trust any of these people, and having them not mention the terrorism problem hadn’t helped.

“Who is it?” Temar asked as calmly as he could, but he could feel his face flush and his heart pound faster as his control over his overheated temper weakened.

Reaching over, Helgen flipped a control switch so a voice came over the speaker. “AFP Cruiser
Brazica
, do you need assistance?” the voice asked.

Helgen pinned Temar with a smug look. “It’s the Planetary Alliance, Ambassador Gazer.”

Temar’s mouth fell open as the other side of this war appeared on one of the screens, a sleek ship with a blunt nose and short wings. “Perhaps you should allow me to handle this,” Helgen suggested.

Temar had been rather successfully channeling Lilian and Naite and even Ben in order to bully everyone on the ship, but he suspected that not a one of them would have any idea how to react to this. He sure as hell didn’t.

“Get me that weapons report,” Helgen shouted to his men, and Temar took a step backward, too confused to really have an opinion on the whole mess.

Chapter 27