Slip Point (11 page)

The soldiers looked awkwardly understanding. The one who had made the suggestion earlier cleared his throat. “Of course, sir,” he said. “This way.”

A military ship was nothing like a private medical facility. Shayalin knew better than to think they could take these men down with the same ease. She hobbled and cursed her way along gleaming metal corridors to the infirmary, but there were always uniformed people passing who had trim builds and alert attitudes. The soldiers were fussy about procedure, waiting for each door to slide securely closed behind them. Shayalin had jimmied the
Adannaya
’s public doors to stay open out of convenience, and there weren’t even half as many as she passed through now.

They finally went through a final door and reached a room arrayed with the telltale examination table of a medical bay. The area was empty except for a woman rapidly tapping a tablet.

“Doctor,” the soldier called to her.

“I’m not on general duty for bandaging your scrapes,” she said irritably then looked up and paled.

It was Keaton.

She didn’t seem to know whether to trust the tableau before her, with Shayalin in restraints but Jayce free. “Pilot Dietrich?” she said uncertainly.

The soldiers exchanged glances.

Jayce’s smile was a little dangerous. “It’s good to see you again, Doctor Rossi.”

“We should go,” one of the soldiers said, clearly sensing tension. “We’ll just take her with us.” He reached for Shayalin, who tried to judge the best place to kick him.

“She stays with me,” Jayce said without looking at them.

They deflated. “We’ll be right outside,” one offered.

“Don’t want to intrude.”

“Didn’t realize you’d know each other—I mean, of course, you’re both Atian—”

As the soldier backed out of the room still babbling, the other punched him in the shoulder. “That’s an entire spoke, man!” he hissed before the door closed all the way.

“They’ll come right back if they hear me yell,” Keaton said, which halted Shayalin in her tracks. She thought she could take her even with her hands tied, but not before she’d have the chance to raise an outcry. The doctor had a high-strung look Shayalin recognized—she’d been running too long on nothing but adrenaline. It wouldn’t take much to set her off.

“But we’re just going to talk, aren’t we?” Jayce said.

“Right,” Keaton said. “I suppose I should explain what happened.”

“We’ve got a good guess,” Shayalin said. “You’re a Purist.”

“I’m a scientist,” Keaton said. “A medical researcher. You can’t tell me the premier arranged for a human clone to be born in secret and expect me to sit by.”

Shayalin took a step toward her, wishing her hands were free so she could threaten to wrap them around Keaton’s neck. “You didn’t kill the baby, did you?”

“No! But it needs to be studied. People have a right to know about this.”

“What did you tell the people on this ship?” Jayce asked, quiet and intense in contrast to Shayalin’s menacing stance.

“I didn’t tell them who she is,” Keaton said.

“You think they won’t find out eventually?” Shayalin demanded. “They’ll want to know whose clone she is. You’ve just neatly created the whole hostage scenario we were trying to stop. Who knows if Quynh will ever see her wife again. And you think there aren’t Purists on board who won’t murder that child and her mother?”

Keaton said, “I thought—” and stumbled to a halt. “It’s a medical breakthrough.” Her voice sank.

“It’s a
baby
.”

“Ease up, Shay.”

Shayalin turned on Jayce. “She’s an idiot!”

“You panicked once too,” Jayce said. “When you learned about something that didn’t really affect anyone but yourself.”

Shayalin flinched, recalling the revelation about her father and how she’d reacted. “I didn’t abduct anyone when I ran off, though.”

“No,” he agreed, but unspoken was the fact that she’d inflicted her share of hurt anyway.

The door opened and one of the soldiers leaned in. “Pilot,” he began to say to Jayce then saw Shayalin standing easily on her uninjured ankle. His hand dropped to his holster. “What’s going on here?”

Shayalin rammed her shoulder into his gut, cursing the restraints that kept her from doing anything more effective.

Jayce caught her shoulder and pulled her back. “Get Quynh,” he said as he delivered a hard blow to the soldier’s jaw.

“I don’t know where she is!”

And to her amazement, Keaton caught Shayalin’s eye and jerked her head toward a door.

Shayalin ran through, more because she knew she’d be useless in a real fight than because she trusted Keaton.

Quynh was in a room with a glass wall, lying on a berth. They were keeping her under observation even while she slept, Shayalin noted with distaste. Perhaps she was considered an experimental subject and not a human being entitled to privacy. Or maybe it was thought that whatever was in Quynh’s womb was something better placed behind a barrier. There’d never been an image of Nala Zakiyah in the newsfeeds, and they’d never said exactly what mutation she had that allowed her to produce alien speech.

But Quynh loved Zakiyah as a partner. That made the Speaker human enough. And Jayce had met the Speaker, and hadn’t seemed horrified by the experience.

She tapped the panel for the door and it slid aside. “Quynh,” she said softly, shaking the woman’s shoulder.

Quynh’s eyes opened, then widened. “Lin!” She sat up.

The name disoriented her for a moment. She’d gotten used to Jayce’s nickname for her.

“Are you all right?” She made her expression exaggeratedly concerned.

Quynh nodded.

But there was a slight hesitation that made Shayalin pause. The other woman was holding herself very still, as though trying avoid drawing attention, or tensing to bolt. No, she wasn’t imagining it. Quynh was wary of her.

“Come on,” she said, gesturing, almost as much to test her theory, only to have it confirmed when the other woman didn’t move.

Quynh shook her head and held out one hand as though to ward her off. She said a few words, none of which Shayalin understood.

“Well, this is awkward,” Shayalin said in exasperation.

A small smile flickered across Quynh’s face. She suppressed it quickly, but Shayalin was caught by a sudden suspicion.

“There’s a spider on your shoulder,” Shayalin said.

Quynh began to lift her hand, but then she laughed and pressed it to her mouth instead of brushing off the imaginary spider.

Shayalin supposed the ruse had been too obvious, but it had still gotten a reaction. She raised her eyebrows. “Sure, we can pretend you laughed for no good reason.”

Quynh faced Shayalin squarely, apparently knowing better than to keep up the act any longer.

“So you can understand me, at least.”

The other woman nodded slowly.

“And you don’t want to go with me.”

Another nod.

Shayalin sighed and perched on the edge of the bed, ignoring Quynh’s flinch. “All right, what did Keaton tell you?”

Quynh gave her an exasperated look and let loose a torrent of words Shayalin couldn’t make any sense of. All right, so it had been a bit thoughtless to ask when there wasn’t any graceful way for Quynh to answer.

“I’ll try guessing,” Shayalin said. “Is it something medical? About the premier? Me?”

Quynh pointed at her accusingly.

“Me. Did she tell you I’m a Purist?”

The other woman shook her head and sliced the edge of her hand across her throat.

Shayalin let out a sigh. “She told you I’m a pirate.” For all she knew, Quynh’s family had been killed by pirates the same way Shayalin had once thought her father had been. Or the supplies her colony had needed had been on a hijacked ship. But they didn’t have time for this. “Listen,” she said, “do you know anything about the Steaders?”

The other woman nodded and pointed to the console on the wall, then made a wiping motion.

“We don’t avoid all technology, just the advanced forms,” Shayalin said, having encountered this misconception before.

Quynh looked stunned.

“Yeah, I used to be one. I grew up in a Steader colony. That’s actually where I met Jayce, and as far as I know he has no black marks on his record besides trying to escape waste duty as a kid.”

That surprised a laugh out of Quynh.

Encouraged, Shayalin went on. “I wanted to go offworld. And the only reason I became a pirate was because I flunked the other way to do it.” She grimaced, the memory still like a burr. “The Corps wouldn’t take me. But that’s why the premier chose me, I think. They still have records of all my tests, and they think they know me even now. They chose me despite my background. Keaton, I think, they must have chosen mostly because she was a doctor with the right specialization and language skills who wasn’t caught in the quarantine.”

Quynh chewed her lip.

“Look, do you trust Jayce?”

The other woman nodded slowly.

“I do too,” Shayalin said simply. “He’s the guy who took you to Cuoramin so you could have your daughter. And he went back to get you when it wasn’t safe for you to stay there any longer. And I left my ship—” her voice hitched, and she steadied it. “I left my ship to help him come get you again.”

The small room was quiet. Quynh’s gaze had softened and grown more thoughtful.

“I promised to get you back to your wife,” Shayalin said. “It was just a job at first, but some of us should get to be with the ones we love.”

Quynh reached over to squeeze her shoulder briefly. At the touch, Shayalin knew she’d convinced the other woman.

“Come on,” Shayalin said. “Next stop is Albarz, I promise. No more running around.”

An alarm started blaring. One of the soldiers must have broken away long enough to trigger it.

“Okay, maybe a very fast walk,” Shayalin said, but then the commander’s voice came on the ship’s speakers.

“Battle alert. All pilots to their ships.”

That seemed like overkill for Jayce and Shayalin, especially since they were still aboard the
Paradigm
. Perhaps the Atian fleet was trying to break through the barricade. Could straits be so dire?

The door opened, and Jayce staggered in. Between her earlier head-slam and whatever those soldiers had done to him, his face was mottled and bloodied.

She didn’t waste time asking if he was all right. He was alive and moving, and that was all they needed. But Quynh gasped, hand flying to her mouth. Jayce said something to her rapidly but in comforting tones, and Shayalin felt relieved by the words of reassurance she couldn’t even understand.

“What held you up?” he demanded of her.

“We were just leaving,” she said.

“Then let’s go.”

“Get these off of me first,” she said, turning around to present her restraints to him. The ruse was useless now, and her wrists itched abominably.

Jayce keyed in the release code, and she flung them to the floor before they hurried out.

The other room had been upended, its contents flung about. One of the soldiers was lying still on the ground. Keaton was sitting near him, back propped against a table leg and hand pressed to her side. Blood welled between her fingers.

“Keaton—” Shayalin didn’t know what to offer. She wasn’t sure she wanted to take the doctor with her, nor leave her behind.

Keaton shook her head. “Go.”

She and Jayce must have already exchanged words, for he didn’t say anything as he led the way out. Quynh paused for a moment to hear the doctor say something in her language, but she only bent her head in acknowledgement before following Jayce.

Shayalin would have been lost within moments—the largest ships she had been on devoted most of their space to cargo holds, not infinite identical passages—but Jayce was clearly more familiar with carriers than she. He took them through the maze of corridors to the ship’s hangar.

Pilots were pulling on helmets and scrambling into their
Katana
- and
Needle
-class ships, getting waved on through to the launch tunnels as soon as their hatches closed. The thin whine of so many engines revving made for a ghostly background hum.

“What’s going on?” Shayalin breathed.

Jayce, heedless of his appearance, grabbed the nearest pilot and repeated the question. The man looked at Jayce but didn’t really seem to see him.

“Aliens, I heard—a ship right on this side of the barricade!”

Quynh gasped and put out a hand. Shayalin steadied her, feeling off-balance herself.

“Attacking us?” Jayce asked.

“Not yet, but we’ve got to be ready for them.
I
need to get ready!”

The man spun off, leaving them as the only unmoving people in the chaos of pilots running to their ships.

Jayce turned woodenly back to them. “Come on. They’ll never miss us in all this.”

He was right—most people were too busy to notice them. One woman did snap at them to get back to their quarters, but Jayce gestured to Quynh and said, “Her husband’s a pilot and she needs to wish him luck,” and the woman looked at Quynh’s belly and relented.

They made it to the Swallow and took off without further challenge. They were just another ship launching, after all.

Once they were clear of the
Paradigm
, Shayalin checked the sensors and saw the alien ship. It hung on the screen, out of place and oddly quiescent for such a threat.

“So much for the quarantine,” Jayce said after a moment. His voice was not quite as flippant as she suspected he was trying for. “They don’t seem to be attacking. At least, not yet.”

“The premier told me they stated their intentions were peaceful. But they must have gotten tired of waiting,” Shayalin said. “I don’t blame them—the Senate takes forever to decide anything—but people are going to panic.”

“They’d better get the Speaker out of her bunker in Albarz,” he said grimly. “Every spoke’s military will be mustering, and without any communication, who knows how the Bellers will interpret that.”

“Will the Albarzi even know what’s happening, with the data quarantine?” Shayalin asked. “Can we just go get her?”

They stared at each other.