Dragonfly (9 page)

Even neural computers still factorize by brute force, starting at one and trying every prime number on the way up. When you’re talking million-digit numbers, that takes a lifetime, unless you can take a short cut by eliminating sets of options.

That’s the sort of thing hyperalgebra is for, and when you consider that everything we do is based on information security, it’s the scariest mathematical discovery of the millennium. The upside is that almost no one understands it. But coupled with black-art intuition, it can wreck a cryptosystem in record time, so long as you’ve got a genius on hand.

Luckily for me, my new pet genius had already done most of the work. It took me twenty clumsy minutes of guesswork to complete his construct and execute. Error. I transformed a variable and ran it again. Still an error.

Dragonfly watched, tapping the console’s glass edge softly. “So what’s your name?”

“I told you already.” I added an imaginary constant and tried again.

“No, I mean really.
Lazuli
sounds like an Imperial codename.” He watched me for a reaction. “But it wouldn’t be yours, would it?”

I kept my face blank. “What do you mean?”

He reached over me to point, pressing against my shoulder. “Try seven alpha
i
there.”

I couldn’t see the connection. I shifted my thighs, warmth creeping over me. His damn smell was all over the place, along with my concentration. “Sorry, what?”

“I said, your left-hand side there reduces to an isomorphic field. Try seven alpha
i
.”

He glanced at me, his gaze flicking downward, then he flushed faintly and glanced away. Now I was getting somewhere. I wasn’t above dirty tactics—why should I be, if he and his rebels weren’t?—and if he wanted me, we might as well get it over with. I could take it. I’d just pretend he was someone else. And then he’d tell me what I wanted to know. They always did.

I licked my lips and leaned closer. “You can’t run seven alpha without transforming the whole thing.”

He swallowed and shifted away, his gaze returning to the display. “So transform it.”

I sighed. “Can I have the matrix calculator, then?”

“Do you need it?”

“What is this, a test?” Frustration hacked at my nerves. I didn’t understand his game. He had nothing to gain by teasing me.

“Just seeing if you’re who you say you are. Lazuli’s an awfully noble name for a thief, Lady Curious. Axis names criminals after vermin. What’s your name really?”

I picked my way through the difficult Qiao transform, and for a moment I considered actually telling him. But it was too intimate, too close. If I told him mine, he’d tell me his, and I didn’t want to know.

“So I thought it’d be funny to steal one of their precious codenames,” I said. “They can call me whatever they want. It’s what I go by. It goes with the reputation. Surely you understand that.”

There. Done. I entered seven alpha
i
as the last term. The construct calculated for a second or two, and started spitting out sets of potential prime factors, page by page.

Dragonfly stared at the screen. “I’m impressed.”

“Really?” I played the bashful acolyte, dropping my head as if I was blushing.

“Don’t give me ‘really’. I don’t meet many people who can run a four-variable field transform in their heads. Especially not a woman as delicious as you. I’m practically in love.”

He reached across me to re-seat the hyperchip, his hair almost brushing my cheek. To my chagrin, a real blush burned my skin. Was this an invitation or a tease? Did I win by accepting or rebuffing? And how had that smell become so familiar so soon?

I didn’t wriggle away, though the warmth swelling inside made me want to. “Guess you don’t get out much.”

He glanced up at me, his smile flickering. “You’d be surprised.”

I held my breath as he straightened, not wanting to inhale any more. I couldn’t figure what he was playing at. Too inscrutable, this Dragonfly.

The display switched to a larger aspect ratio, and at last the decrypted data flashed up. I stared. Schematic diagrams, all right. But for the station, not the neurospace. I bit my lip, confused. They looked the same as the ones Nikita had given me on
RapidFire
. What was Dragonfly up to, if it wasn’t stealing circuit diagrams so he could hack the neurospace later?

He laughed, and saved the plaintext version to his console. “Nice work. Well done. Take the rest of the day off.”

“But those plans are practically public domain,” I retorted, his casual attitude riling me. “You can get them anywhere.”

He arched his eyebrows. “Really? You don’t say? Guess I’ve wasted my time, then.”

I squinted, zooming in on the display for a closer look. He was right. They weren’t the same. Stress lines were marked along diagrams of station components, with relativity field equations and geodesics in the margin.

The artificial gravity schematic. Most definitely not public domain.

Because it showed how, theoretically, you could take Casa de Esperanza apart.

My mouth dried. He wanted to break the station open to steal the money?

He scraped his hair back, mischief twinkling in his eyes. “Intrigued yet, Lady Curious?”

All right, so I was. “You’re going to weaken the vault integrity somehow? How does that help with the crypto?”

He chewed his lip. “Is that what you’d do?”

“Excuse me?”

“With top-secret grav schematics for a strategically vital space station. Weaken the vault integrity?” His brow creased as he flicked the display off.

My heart skipped. “What?”

He leaned close. “Maybe you should use a little imagination.”

I remembered the feel of him between my thighs in the docking ring, his lips hot and sure on mine, his hand sliding up my thigh. My blood heated. I was using my imagination, all right, and it made me shiver. “And what would I see?”

“What’s right in front of you.” He traced the corner of my mouth, his dark gaze following his finger.

My mouth watered, pleasant tension twisting in my abdomen. “I don’t think I’m missing much right now.”

He smiled, wicked, and caressed my bottom lip with his fingertip. “You know your algebra’s a real turn-on?”

“You’re not so dumb yourself.”

I parted my lips, inviting, and his taste flooded my mouth. My skin hummed with anticipation, my thighs tingling. Damn it. I actually wanted to kiss him.

He leaned even closer, and his whisper burned my ear, delicious. “Then it’s too bad you think so small. Now get off my console. I’m bored.”

10

After that, the journey stretched interminably. Dragonfly sat there in silence, tinkering with his half-built gammaspace link or flicking through reams of data on his console, making occasional adjustments on the navspace. I had nothing to do but huddle on the sofa and stare at the walls. He avoided looking at me, which was just as well, because I was so furious that if he said another word to me I’d rip his presumptuous throat out.

My mission wasn’t going well, no matter what I’d told Nikita. I’d come no closer to finding out what Dragonfly was really doing. I’d merely achieved a juicy bruise to my pride.

I’d imagined this for years—finally getting close to the man who’d murdered my friends—and in my vision I was cool, focused, deliberate as I tore him apart mentally and morally.

But the reality was different. He wasn’t the stupid, callous, mechanical killer I’d expected, even if he was a terrorist and a criminal. He hadn’t killed those docking trolls to escape from Esperanza, though that would have been the easiest thing to do. He’d used his imagination instead, even if it resided somewhere other than his brain. He was the sweet, quiet, clever kid from algebra class, and I liked him. Fuck.

Time crawled, and I fidgeted and paced, more irritable by the minute. Dragonfly fetched crackers and fruit juice, and I ate sullenly. I climbed upstairs to use the bathroom. I came back down. I sat. I paced. I stretched. It must have been nearly midnight by ship’s reckoning before the drives buzzed and eased off, and we dropped out of slipspace with a swift, inertial jerk.

I jumped up from a bored doze, my muscles creaking. The clearview shimmered blue for a moment as the visible wavelengths compressed, then star clusters shone red and gold like scattered jewels. A fresh supernova swelled bright, blotting the starfield around it black.

I blinked sleepy eyes and walked up to the console, where he sat fiddling with a crystal datacube. I retied my hair, smoothing loosened curls. “Where are we?”

“The place we’re going.” He flicked up the micronav controls and finessed the arc rockets fore and aft, and
Ladrona
began a graceful lateral turn.

I peered out the clearview, but I couldn’t see anything except shifting space—and then above us, a corroded space station drifted into view, its battered radshields ragged like rust. Not a shining pleasure palace like Esperanza. This was a working dockyard.

Long arms of flashburned septurium scaffolding stretched in nine directions from a central dodecahedral hub, and spacecraft in varying stages of repair hung from the docking ports, ranging from bare metal skeletons to shiny corrosion-stripped vessels awaiting new stealthplate. I saw fighters, small freighters, an Imperial cruiser, a couple of passenger transports, a scattering of private runabouts and commerce ships. Junk fragments littered the surrounding space, twisted waste metal coated in fractal ice crystals that splintered the station’s spotlights to tiny rainbows. Snatches of control comms crackled on the etherwave as ships darted back and forth, docking and departing.

Dragonfly flipped open the datacube and held it out to me, circuitry flickering green and blue inside. “Put your finger here.”

“Why?”

He sighed and grabbed my hand, pressed my finger to the contact. Static zinged.

“Ouch! What was that?” I yanked back, sucking at a bloodspot on my fingertip.

“You’re welcome. It’s a security ident.”

He snapped the cube closed and tossed it to me. I fumbled the catch, the crystal warm in my cold fingers.

“I realize that. What’s it for?”

“Did you really think I’d leave you on my ship by yourself?”

He flicked a switch and a pink-tinted gammaspace filter snapped over the clearview. The station’s approach grid sprang into view, sharp red lines from outside the visible light spectrum slicing the space into corridors, approach vectors, holding patterns.

I peered closer at the station. It didn’t look familiar, but Imperial space was littered with repair-and-refuel outposts like this. “So what are we doing here? Slipdrive refuel? Your arc rockets sound a bit corroded too. And we could do with some real food.”

“You’ll see.” Red gamma-lasers reflected in Dragonfly’s eyes as he tilted the ship closer by touch. “Your name’s Ekaterin, and you’re my co-pilot. A fine upstanding Imperial citizen. Ever worked in short-range freight?”

“No.”

“You do now. Just think trash-hauling and keep your pretty mouth shut.” He thumbed the etherwave comms. “Vyachesgrad, this is Red Sunday, Nebula on zero-one-three arc four. I have clearance sigma one omicron, confirm.” He drawled his vowels like a backlane freight shyster and it made me smile.

The comms crackled, some distant arcweld fighting for bandwidth. “Affirm, Red Sunday, cleared dock nine as you find it, all vectors open on visual.”

Typical lazy R&R control:
everything’s on visual, park where you like, and if you have a collision, don’t come whining to us
.

“Dock nine, Vyachesgrad, thanks so much.” He flicked off the comms and kicked the arc rockets, sending the ship hurtling on a showy sweeping curve up toward the vertical docking arm.

I eyed him archly. “Red Sunday? What are we, Imperial ass-lickers?”

Red Sunday is an Imperial holiday from eight-hundred-odd years ago, when the first Imperial Court ratified the Charter of Cultural Expansion. The soldiers still hold parades and fly-bys. Even at Axis, we sink an ironic vodka or two.

Dragonfly shrugged. “Flattery never hurts.”

“And pre-approved clearance? Did you hack the traffic database?”

“In all that spare time I’ve got? No. I filed a flight plan.”

“What?” I laughed, uneasy. “Are you trying to get caught? What kind of thief files a flight plan?”

That gentle smile. “You watch too many movies. Be practical. This is a borderlands outpost, not New Moskva spaceport. The ship is
ordinaria
… sorry, what’s the word? Nondescript. We’re nondescript. We could be anyone. No one here cares so long as we pay. Don’t sweat it.”

I bristled that he’d think me afraid. “So what are the false idents for, if you’re so cocky?”

“I said practical, not stupid.”

He glided the ship into place at the dock, his fingers sliding confidently over the console. Heavy magclamps clunked hard against the external airlock at starboard and we jolted to a halt, the drives spinning down to silence. He closed the clearview shutters, flat strips of blackmetal radshield folding tight, and shut down his console. The diodes flickered dark, and luminous green biochem crawled across the glass like fungus.

“Besides, I still don’t know your name,” he said. “What was I supposed to do?”

I opened my mouth, and shut it again.

He grinned at me. “Speechless. There’s a first.”

Obviously he was pretending he’d forgotten I’d been speechless all afternoon, thanks to his smart-ass tricks. Prick. “Hope you enjoyed it while it lasted.”

“Best fun I’ve had all day.” He filled his pockets, selecting another couple of data crystals, the golden hyperchip, his newly-built gammaspace link. He holstered his plasma pistol and slipped on a dusty grey jacket. Suddenly he looked ordinary, harmless, just a guy about his business like everyone else. The perfect monster.

I smoothed my tight black top, wishing I had something to collect, something to prepare. Without weapons, information, all the trappings of my Axis identity, I felt naked. But I wasn’t me right now, I reminded myself. I was Lazuli, cool, competent, ready for anything.