Dragonfly (8 page)

Damn it. I needed to call Nikita, report on what had happened before we got too far apart to have a real-time conversation. I glared at the slot on the console where the hyperchip would fit. It was shrouded in crawling green bugs and inaccessible, at least to me. The biochem would make me dangerously sick, but it also meant the controls wouldn’t respond to anyone but Dragonfly.

Thanks to his paranoia, I didn’t have much to tell, but there was a strong chance that he’d figure out we were on to him and shoot me dead. I needed to send as much information as I could before that happened. A harsh assessment, maybe. But I worked for Axis, not for someone who gave a shit about me. My own safety wasn’t important.

I slipped my finger into my shorts’ seam for my sub-ether transmitter—a shiny clear oblong the size of a fingernail—and swiftly quartered the saloon, snapping pictures from four angles. I walked my fingers through the gadgetry on his worktable: tools, silicon-flecked components, ragged stealthplate filings, a couple of synapses still in wet plastic wrapping, the remains of a mocha in a black plastic flask. Stuffed down the back of the black sunken lounge I found a handful of Esperanza casino chips and an old digital proton decay meter. I imagined him crouched here late into the night, enthralled, his deft fingers twining wire and arcing plasma contacts. It looked like a mad scientist’s laboratory, but if he’d built something that had left these scraps behind I couldn’t figure what. Maybe he was just tinkering.

Above, the shower stopped running. His footsteps crossed the corridor, and after a moment all was quiet. In bed, then. Warm, fragrant, relaxed after his shower, sleepy …

Nope. Not going there.

Beneath the sick green glow, the console operated in power-down mode, everything shut off but the basics. He was clever enough to hide that much from me. The slipspace field showed voltage, and the navset diodes glimmered red and yellow. We were moving, on some course. Big deal. I photographed the console anyway. Better too much information than missing that all-important detail.

His grey suit jacket hung over the command chair. I checked the pockets and seams. Nothing. He’d strolled into the neurospace with nothing but a loaded hyperchip, a shielded virtual display and a plasma pistol. Gutsy.

My fingers tingled in the soft fabric. I put the jacket back, trying not to notice that it smelled of him, subtle but human. Dragonfly had always been just a name to despise for me, never a person. I wouldn’t let him become one now.

I crept up the flimsy spiral stairs, white plastic creaking under my boots. The upper deck was long and narrow, split down the middle by a passageway barely wide enough to walk front on. On the left, past the shower, hid a galley, similar to
RapidFire
’s with a shallow stainless sink, a tiny electromag cooker and plastic storage bins. Spotless, meaning he was fastidious, or more likely didn’t eat here much.

On the right, a tiny room was taken up almost entirely by his bed, and there he slept, wet dark hair spilling onto his pillow, the white sheet crumpled over his hip, his hand curled next to his cheek. A broad, shallow atomflash scar striped his lean shoulder. Interesting. Scars were easy to fix these days, if you had the cash. Which made him either poor—um, that’s a no—or sentimental—hardly—or stubbornly making a point.

His chest shifted slowly as he breathed, and for a moment I imagined slipping into bed beside him, his body warm on mine.

I fidgeted, my guts twisting. As far as my mission went, sleeping with him wasn’t out of the question as a way of mining information. Never mind that I hated him, that he was an Imperial enemy. I should consider this rationally. Weigh up the pros and cons, disregard my personal inclinations.

Yeah. Because it wasn’t like I wanted him or anything.

I watched him, compelled and disgusted at the same time. He looked weary, troubled, isolated. I wanted to stroke that soft hair away from his forehead, feel his skin again under my fingers, soothe his trouble into peace.

I turned away, injustice burning in my soul. Why should he sleep when Mishka and my murdered friends no longer breathed? I wouldn’t even need to make a mess with the shatterjay. I could press my finger into that lethal place in his throat and he’d be gone without a sound, back to the soulless realm of names and myth.

And I’d be stuck in slipspace in a ship full of gut-rotting biochem, flitting from navpoint to arbitrary navpoint until I dehydrated to death or the air scrubbers backed up. That ignobility was enough to give me pause, but another more pressing itch nagged at my insides, and I realized it was professional jealousy. I wanted to see him crack the vault. There was so much about his plan I still didn’t understand, and it riled me that he might be cleverer than I was. I needed to know exactly how he’d do it before he died.

Dragonfly stirred, twitching as if he dreamed something unpleasant, and I crept down the stairs before he could wake.

I plopped onto the sunken sofa, flicked on my virtual interface to slipspace comms mode and pinged the sub-ether frequency Nikita had given me. Slipspace comms aren’t instantaneous, but they’re pretty damn fast, and the beacons boost the signal so it won’t degrade over the vast distance. So long as you’re close enough, you can talk back and forth like regular etherwave comms. Normally I’d have to worry about the ship’s active sensors detecting my transmission, but
Ladrona
’s console wouldn’t pick this up. No one can detect sub-ether, in slipspace or out. It’s too new.

For a moment Nikita didn’t pick up, and I felt only cold cosmic hash, but then his voice slipped into my head, smooth and warm but tinged with icy calculation that prickled my spine.

“Wasn’t expecting you so soon. Finished with him already?”

“He’s sleeping.” I kept my voice low and flicked him the image bundle.

I tried not to sound irritated, but normal lying techniques are useless over sub-ether, which breathes your emotions down the line as easily as it sends your voice. Axis developed it last year from some experimental prototype interrogation kit. You hear a lot of rumors about the latest techgasm from our hardware people—everything from personal teleporters to space folding and anti-gravity—but this one, they actually came through with. It’s still classified, and it’s the latest craze at Axis.

“I bet he is.” Nikita laughed, and bumps broke out on my skin. People who say emotive sub-ether is a technological marvel obviously never had to use it to talk to a sociopath.

I swallowed, sweating. “It’s not like that, okay? I’m on the ship, I’ve got his chip. What more do you want? Any clues to what he downloaded?”

“None. His algorithm sidestepped the neurospace access log. Last record is you looking at some pictures.” Dark amusement, like a warm whisper on my cheek. “Any luck with the encryption?”

I scrubbed my hand over my face. “Not yet. The console’s still germed up, and the chip looks like a special hybrid, I can’t jack it. But he got awful bashful when I mentioned faking deposit crypto—”

A shuffle from upstairs. Was he waking up?

I lowered my voice even further. “Look, I’ve gotta go. Renko wanted a sitrep—”

“Taken care of. Forget it.”

Fine with me. Nikita was the expert at telling directors what they wanted to hear, and I didn’t have time to spin this up. “Thanks. Anything new from your end?”

“Just this.” A tiny data package drifted down the line and slotted into my interface, with a twinge of Nikita’s careless malice that made my pulse skip. “I thought you might be interested. Seems you’ve still got friends in high places.”

“What is it?” I asked, but empty hash flowed in like fresh air.

I felt cleaner already.

Nikita’s data popped up on my display, and I peered at it with a hint of trepidation. A military action message, classification violet, time a few days ago. Addressed to a bunch of inscrutable Imperial acronyms, heading GCQ-A: ANNEXATION COLONY SANTA MARIA.

The personnel authorization for the Empire’s negotiation team.

I scanned the list, and stopped short. The first line read: OIC O9 SHADRIN VY K47757D9E.

I’d worked for Lieutenant General Valodyi Shadrin when I was military. He’d chosen me as his aide when I’d only just been promoted to major, and I’d served a full tour with him in Expansion directorate, organizing his diary and making his arrangements and fielding ideas as he bounced them off me. He’d inspired me to transfer to Axis, back when my idealism still burned fresh and his words about honor and pride still meant something. He was that rare beast: a hard man with a conscience. A good man. People like him made the Empire worth fighting for, even if I now knew that to beat dirty rebels we had to play dirty ourselves, and honor wasn’t exactly an Axis buzzword. If Shadrin was officer in charge of the negotiations, these ex-rebel Santa Marians might even escape with their self-respect.

An uneasy ripple made me swallow. First Malachite and Dragonfly, now Shadrin. So much of my past resurfacing, so many familiar faces. Something strange was going on here. If I wasn’t such a trusting girl, I’d suspect someone was setting me up.

Why did Nikita want me to see this? An ugly thought struck me cold. Did he think I needed extra motivation? Everything in Axis is a test of some sort. Maybe he was warning me I was risking a flunk. Maybe he knew about my meeting with Surov the cat-man, and this was a threat to keep me on edge.

Maybe he was just screwing with my mind.

I slipped the ESE back into my shorts and stretched, vertebras popping. My skin felt grimy with sweat after the neurospace. My hair stuck to my neck, and salt flecks ringed my black top. I could use a shower and a night’s sleep. But the idea of stripping off weaponless to shower with Dragonfly right there made my stomach tighten. And the only decent place to sleep was his bed. Which had him in it. Naked.

This train of thought was getting me nowhere.

I stretched out on the sofa with a sigh, but my nerves twinged, tense. When I finally slept, I dreamed of Mishka and me at the infra-red range in that ultra-green forest, white rabbits scampering in the snow between black tree trunks.

It’s the first time we kiss, and frigid pine-scented air sparkles fresh in my nose. Frost crusts his black hair as he folds me in his massive arms, gentle, ever holding back, afraid of his own strength. We’re the same height, Mishka and I, and our pistol holsters clunk together as we embrace. He tastes of snowmelt water, pristine, and I can feel his heartbeat.

In my dream, I slide my hand inside his shirt, caressing tight scarred muscle, and fire shatterglass into his warm body over and over until the clip empties.

9

When I woke, Dragonfly was sitting at the console, studying a stream of equations on the projected display, the blackness of slipspace stark in the clearview window beyond. He was dressed casually, a loose grey shirt over black combat trousers.

He heard me get up and tossed a smile over his shoulder. “Sleep well?”

I nearly didn’t hear him. My shatterjay was missing, and jacked into the glass console by his left hand sat his golden hyperchip.

An angry flush crept up my body, and I risked a quick glance down at my clothes. Everything was still there. “How did you get that?”

He shrugged, watching the display. “It’s what I do. You didn’t even move. You should be more careful.”

Light fingers, then. Impressive. I imagined those fingers slipping down the front of my shorts, searching …

My skin tingled, and my fist clenched in fury. “Don’t ever do that again.”

“If you behave, I won’t have to, will I?”

I whirled and stomped up the stairs before I could punch him. I clipped the plastic bathroom door shut, still swallowing my rage, and swiftly examined the turned-up seam at my thigh. Relief cooled me. At least he hadn’t found my ESE.

I stripped off and endured a two-minute cold shower, washing off sweat and indignation. I had no clean clothes to put on, but it was better than nothing. I studied myself in the mirror, grey circles showing under my eyes, and took a few deep breaths to focus. He got under my skin, this Dragonfly, I could admit that. But if I wanted to play his game and win, I’d have to do better. I couldn’t let my temper—or my hormones—jeopardize the mission. I had to make him trust Lazuli, respect her. Not think her foolish, hot-headed, intemperate.

I watched him from the bottom of the stairs while he studied the display, entering decryption parameters on the console by touch, reflected equations glimmering in his dark eyes. He was cracking crypto, no doubt the data he’d stolen from the neurospace.

I wandered over, casual. “What’s that, a Zykovski space?”

He flicked me a cool glance. “Want to try?”

“Me?”

He shrugged and stood, swinging the chair toward me. “You said you wanted in. It’s Zykovski six-gen, or maybe four. Recalcitrant son of a bitch.”

Excitement clinched, and I sat down, the padded seat warm from his body. I studied the math he’d done so far, and unease glimmered inside. There were abbreviations, incomplete fractal sketches, leaps of deduction I couldn’t follow, and the first half of it baffled me completely, but the whole thing fit together perfectly. Elegant, efficient, intuitive.

Exceptional
, Surov the cat-man had said of Dragonfly. He hadn’t exaggerated. I was impressed, and I didn’t want to be. Damn it. Did the scumbag have to be clever as well?

I bit my lip and concentrated. He’d stopped partway through a rapid factoring construct, the kind of thing that etherwave hackers would wet their pants over, and that sent cold sparks of terror down the biotech-riddled spines of the infosec creeps at intelligence division. Since Petrova and Solitsin at New Moskva Tech discovered the new math, even neural circuits couldn’t codebreak as quickly as a human brain. Cryptosystems are based on one-way functions—arithmetic that’s simple to do, but impossible (or at least violently impractical) to undo. For instance, it’s much easier for a computer to multiply two numbers together than it is to figure out from the answer what those numbers were.