gaian consortium 03 - the gaia gambit (15 page)

Lira answered that they were headed toward Adelaide, which he guessed was a lie, but not one that would arouse a good deal of suspicion. And that turned out to be the case, because the official only said, “We have you recorded,
Chinook
. Enjoy your stay on Gaia, and remember to declare any goods purchased here when you leave the planet.”

“Will do.” Lira turned slightly and even smiled, possibly noting his mystified expression. “Oh, come on, Rast — I know you Stacians just love to mock us mercenary Gaians. So why should you be surprised at the planetary government making sure it squeezes every unit it can out of us unsuspecting tourists?”

“I suppose I shouldn’t,” he admitted, watching as they dropped out of the black of space and into wreaths of moisture-laden air, flowing over and around the viewscreen. Although he’d been on Gaian-class worlds before, breathed the heavy richness of their atmospheres, something about this one felt different. Perhaps it was only because he was now in the heart of enemy territory, spawning ground of the hated humans.

Not that he hated all of them. He would not allow himself to stare, but he was intensely aware of Lira’s presence, of the way her loose hair slipped over the dark fabric of her jacket as she worked the controls, the delicate perfection of her profile as cool white light bathed the ship once they pierced the cloud cover.

But then he found his gaze drawn away from her, on to a shimmering expanse of blue water as they flew low over the ocean, approaching a green island that seemed to rise up from nowhere, somehow insubstantial as a dream, with the clouds that crowned its mountaintops and the mist that hugged its dark forests. The ship banked, dropping even lower, barely skimming the treetops, negotiating a narrow canyon that opened up into a sheltered valley, with lowering mountains on either side.

In the center of this valley stood a sprawling white structure Rast belatedly realized must be a residence of some sort, although it bore no resemblance to the high-rise buildings he’d seen on New Chicago and many other worlds of the Consortium, or the graceful villas of stucco and stone his own people favored when imitating the Eridani style. Incongruously, he noted the outline of an arrowhead-shaped Eridani Vector-class ship parked behind the house.

And then they were dropping straight down, Lira guiding the
Chinook
so that it landed approximately ten meters away from the other spaceship. A minute or so more, as she finalized the landing sequence and put the ship in standby mode, and then she unbuckled her safety harness and stood, gazing down at him with an unreadable expression on her face.

“Let’s go meet our hosts, shall we?”

CHAPTER NINE

Rast did not seem particularly over-eager to follow her, but after a brief hesitation he undid his own seatbelts and stood, trailing a few feet behind her as she cycled the door lock and extended the gangplank. And then the door opened, and a fresh cool breeze, smelling of water and something else, something green and growing, flooded in over them.

At least she didn’t have to leave Rast behind this time; the mystery woman already knew that one of the people seeking her help was a Stacian. And really, you couldn’t get much more remote than this, unless you set down in the middle of the Gobi Desert somewhere. The mountains created an effective barrier, and all around the valley tall trees reached up to the sky. The house did not appear occupied, although that didn’t mean much. Its residents could just be waiting for their off-world visitors to make the first move.

“Stop there,” said a harsh male voice.

She couldn’t even tell where he had come from, because her quick scan of the surroundings had shown no other signs of life. Maybe from the other ship, then passing under the still-steaming belly of the
Chinook
.

Hands held in the air, she said, “We’re unarmed.”

He moved in front of her then, a swarthy Gaian man of average height. Something about the way he moved, though, the way he scanned her quickly without having to pat her down for weapons, told her he knew exactly what he was doing…and that he was very, very dangerous.

Next he moved to Rast, and although the Stacian towered over him by almost a foot, Lira wasn’t sure whether or not her travel companion would be able to best the stranger in a confrontation. She decided she really didn’t want to find out.

“They’re clean,” the man said, and a door on the back of the house opened, and a woman stepped out.

She seemed to be about Lira’s age, with long dark red hair. Striking, with her high cheekbones and full mouth. When she spoke, Lira recognized her voice at once. “Anyone follow you?”

“No. I think the authorities were more interested in making sure we reported any purchases to customs before we left the planet than trying to find out if we were up to something nefarious.”

“Typical.” Her gaze moved past Lira to Rast, and her mouth tightened. “A Stacian. I wasn’t sure if you were joking or not.”

“Is that a problem?” Something in the woman’s voice belied a tension that seemed to go beyond a simple mistrust of strangers, and Lira began to wonder if they’d done the right thing in coming here.

Another penetrating stare, and then the woman shook her head. “No. We’re fine. Why don’t you two come inside, and we’ll start getting this worked out?”

And she led them into the house, the dark, silent man in the rear, his eyes seeming to bore into the back of Lira’s neck. That quiet stare seemed to tell her that he’d happily smoke both her and Rast if either of them caused the slightest amount of trouble.

Although she’d never been in a house like this, she recognized its type from images she’d seen in her history books. What they used to call a clapboard farmhouse, sprawling and two-storied, with real wood floors that creaked underneath. They passed through what looked to be the laundry area, and then through a kitchen that was an odd blend of old and new, with a brick fireplace and gleaming polished metal appliances. From there they emerged into what was clearly the dining room, with a long table of some dark wood, scarred and marked by probably centuries of use, accompanied by a set of equally battered chairs.

“Take a seat,” the woman said. “Eryk, some water for our guests. It’s a little early for beer,” she added with a grin. The dark man nodded, eyes narrowed, and then went back into the kitchen.

Behind her, Rast shifted slightly. Lira guessed he didn’t think it was too early for a drink. What he said, though, was, “I don’t want to break one of your chairs — ”

“You won’t. They’re solid oak, sturdier than they look. And if they can stand up to Jerem, they can stand up to anything.”

Who Jerem was, Lira had no idea. Maybe they’d find out at some point. At any rate, she pulled out a chair for herself, and after a pause Rast did so as well. The aged wood did creak as he deposited himself on the seat, but it seemed to hold…for the moment, anyway.

The strange woman sat down at the head of the table, waiting until the man — her bodyguard? lover? husband? Lira couldn’t guess for sure — returned with a pitcher of water and a set of glasses that looked as old as the house. He sat down as well, at the table’s foot. Probably not a bodyguard, then, although Lira thought he performed those duties for her…as well as any others that might be required.

“Thank you,” the woman said, and waited until both Rast and Lira had helped themselves to some of the water. “Might as well get formally acquainted. I’m Miala Thorn, and this is my husband, Eryk.”

Finally Lira put two and two together. She’d heard of Eryk Thorn, the mercenary. His face and name had been attached to scores of “Wanted” communiqués spanning the galaxy. He’d gone quiet the past eighteen standard months, though. Now she knew why. He’d been living here on Gaia in apparent domestic bliss. Who knew?

Still, how the mercenary had ended up here wasn’t her business. She said, “I’m Lira Jannholm. And this is — ”

“Captain Rast sen Drenthan,” Rast supplied, copper eyes wary.

Again Miala’s lips compressed. For all her outward friendliness, it was clear enough to Lira that the other woman had no love lost for Stacians.

Rast was no fool. Lira could see that he noticed, too, although he said nothing else after that first introduction, but only sat stiffly in the too-fragile chair, chin out, masses of hair at odds with the clean-lined civilian clothing he wore.

Into this tense little scene came the unexpected sound of a baby wailing somewhere upstairs. At once Miala broke eye contact with Rast and stood.

“My apologies. She just went down for a nap, but she’s teething — ”

“Take all the time you need,” Rast said, nodding a little, as if he knew all too well the travails of mothers with teething infants.

Lira stared at him, once again startled by the revelation of a heretofore unknown facet of his personality. Vaguely she knew that infants had a period when their teeth came in and were therefore fussy and even more demanding than usual, but her knowledge stopped there. The last infant she’d been around was her youngest sister, and that had been almost twenty-five years ago. Janna might have been a fussy baby, but if she was, Lira had blocked that particular datum from her memory banks.

After another murmured apology, Miala hurried out of the dining room, her boots clattering on the wooden steps as she rushed upstairs. Her departure left Rast, Lira, and Eryk Thorn clustered uncomfortably around the dining table.

Without preamble, Rast said, “She doesn’t like Stacians. Why?”

Thorn turned cool dark eyes on both of them. “Why should she? Gaians and Stacians weren’t exactly allies, last time I checked.”

“It’s more than that. And yet she still agreed to help us.”

“If she wants to tell you, she’ll tell you. And if she agreed to help you, then you’d do better not to question her motivations too closely.”

His tone didn’t leave much room for argument. Lira tried to cast about for something else to say, finally settling on, “This is quite a house. How old is it?”

A shrug. “About five hundred years, give or take. It was abandoned during the time of the Cloud. But it suits us.”

She supposed it would, stuck out in the middle of nowhere like this. A good place for a wanted man like Eryk Thorn to settle down, and equally suitable for a hacker who wanted to make sure the authorities would have a difficult time finding her. How exactly two such disparate individuals had ended up together, she had no idea, but she had the feeling that Miala’s and Thorn’s story might rival hers and Rast’s for improbability.

Just then Miala came back into the dining room, a yellow-wrapped bundle held up against one shoulder. “Eryk, can you take her for a while? Every time I try to put her down, she gets fussy, and I’ve got work to do.”

Silently Thorn reached out to take the baby from his wife, and Lira was treated to the sight of one of the galaxy’s most notorious mercenaries cuddling his infant daughter. She had to repress a grin. As she glanced over at Rast, wanting to share the joke, she saw he didn’t look amused at all, but was staring at Eryk Thorn with an odd expression on his face, something she almost would have classified as wistfulness…if she didn’t think Rast sen Drenthan was incapable of such an emotion.

“All right,” Miala went on, her gaze clearly focused on Lira, and not Rast, “why don’t you tell me what I’m looking for, and why the great Jackson Wyler wasn’t able to help you?”

As much as she hated to go through the whole thing all over again, Lira forced herself to recount the story, although quickly, skimming over what had passed between herself and Rast, and focusing on the importance of the mines on Chlorae II. “And Jackson said there was no way he could beat this hydra code, and that you were the only person he knew of who could. So here we are.”

The other woman was silent for a moment, forehead puckered in an abstracted little frown. “Well, we’ll just have to see what I can dig up. Why don’t you come with me to my office, and we’ll start taking a crack at it? We’ll leave the boys here to babysit.” And she winked at Eryk Thorn, who gazed up at her stoically, the baby gurgling into his dark shirt.

Lira was fairly certain Rast was less than thrilled about being left out like this, but she didn’t dare protest, and instead got up from her chair to follow Miala out of the room. As she went, she sent the Stacian an apologetic little glance over her shoulder. He might have shrugged, just barely, but it was hard to tell.

Although she wouldn’t allow herself to shake her head, she couldn’t help wondering exactly what it was this Miala had against Stacians…

Left alone with Eryk Thorn, Rast found himself pinned by the mercenary’s flat black stare. At length Thorn said, “You still active in the Stacian navy?”

This might have sounded slightly more menacing if the baby hadn’t chosen that precise instant to start making little cooing noises, burying her face into her father’s chest.

You’re not going to find what you’re looking for there, little one. I think your meal ticket just left the room.

Still, Rast managed to keep his tone an impassive match to Thorn’s as he replied, “For now. I have a feeling a dishonorable discharge is looming if I don’t return to active duty soon.”

“Doesn’t sound like you care much one way or another.”

“I don’t.”

Thorn appeared to absorb this, nodding to himself as he stood and got a bottle for the baby out of the refrigeration unit. A flip of the tab on the bottle’s self-heating coil, and then he expertly maneuvered the bottle into the baby’s open rosebud lips. At once she began suckling, eyes squeezed tight, dark lashes of astonishing length fanned against her plump little cheeks.

Somehow Rast knew that any comments on the mercenary’s domestic abilities would meet with a poor reception. Instead, he inquired, “How long do you think this will take?”

“Hard to say. If it’s as tough as Jannholm says it is, days, probably.”

Days
? He didn’t like the sound of that very much. The gods only knew what might be going on out there in the galaxy as they hid here in this secret corner of New Zealand, so far away from anything that seemed important. Then again, they didn’t have much choice. If they couldn’t find out who Admiral Sen Trannick was working with, and what his true motivations were, they might as well just pack up and go home. Not that Lira had much of a home to go to, apparently.