Under Cover of Darkness (6 page)

“Well, it
is
the last ship in from the jump point and they did say they would be coming on this needle.”
Kyri shook her head and thanked fate once again that Nlyx could only interface directly with the speech centers of human minds, although the empathic abilities of her gen gineered companion could complicate things at times. She hoped that he would write off her doubts about their possible “alliance” to her overall worry.

“You need a bit of skepticism, Eperr,” she suggested gently as she rolled onto her hip to watch the freighter's final approach to the ring. “You're too trusting at times.” The lessons of Escaflow had been burned into the soul of the Coven, if not the childlike Nlyx.

Eperr's empathy colored his next thought-words with a tinge of righteous indignation.
“I'm not a child anymore. I know not to blab about the gauntlet to them.”

A brilliant red light flashed to life above the
Merlin's
air lock, accompanied by an intermittent siren. Between the claxon calls, a vaguely feminine synthesized voice called out, “Ship arriving, stand clear.” Stevedores three levels down from the duct shook themselves from their waiting positions, to man a bewildering array of loaders and haulers. Kyri watched the choreography of commerce swing into action as the main cargo hold opened up to the dock. Beyond the transplast, a slender gangway swung through the vacuum to align itself with the passenger hatch.

“I'm not worried about ‘blab,' Eperr,” she told the Nlyx as she extended a finger to scratch the feather-soft fur of his head. “There are just far too many ways this charade could go wrong. The last thing we need right now is to expose ourselves to people like them.” She lifted her finger from his head and gestured through the grate toward a pair of “special” customs officers in their new black-and-silver uniforms. The two swaggered up the loading ramp to meet the hand-wringing master of the
Merlin's Pride
. She did not envy the ship owner the bribes he was going to have to pay.

“But this was
your
idea!”
protested Eperr. Kyri sighed. That was the problem bonding with Nlyx: they lost all objectivity where their “partners” were concerned.

“Yes, I know,” she whispered as passengers began moving down the gangway and into the station, “but it seems a lot more dangerous in the doing.”

The Coven had survived by being “dead” and staying invisible to the internal security bureaus that the Oligarchy had corrupted prior to seizing power in the Senate. Their home had burned so that they could survive. No matter how clear their course seemed, she still could not help but question if what she was doing would prove to be the right thing in the end.

Kyri had a clear view of customs desk and old Thanus' bald pate. Although the Oligarchy had moved quickly after their coup to replace key people in the bureaucracy, they certainly did not have enough resources to take all the grunt positions as well. So, not only had Thanus kept his job and his faded uniform of gray with its dark blue seams, but Kyri and her friends had kept their gateway on and off the station. That relationship, along with a couple of carefully placed bribes, made sure her “guests” would be assured of getting through customs without undue “New” Senatorial scrutiny.

She leaned back against the wall and watched idly as the inevitable queue built up in front of Thanus' station. The first couple through the turnstiles carried a baby wrapped in a partially opened enviro-cradle. As well, they were lugging more carryon items than a small infantry platoon. Kyri almost laughed at Thanus' rigid posture of dismay as they began setting parcels on his rickety inspection table. Next in line was a man wearing a black pinstripe jumpsuit, carrying nothing more than a handheld data assistant. Thanus waved him through perfunc torily. After that, a portly woman with a massive bleached hairdo and a bright red synth-silk dress two sizes too small for any single dimension on her body swayed up to the table. Kyri laughed as the woman twisted and swayed in an apparent effort to get Thanus to look down the front of her dress. The old man was not having any of that, though, and made her empty the contents of every bag she carried.

As the now-disheveled woman stomped away from the table, Kyri's “guests” appeared at the turnstile. Legionnaires. There was no mistaking the pair, a man and a woman, despite their civilian clothing and discreet clothes and hairstyles. Although the angle was poor, she still estimated that they towered over Thanus by at least twelve centimeters each.

“Eperr? Can you give me a read on Thanus? I think he may be losing his grip.”

Tiny, tickling movements stirred beneath her shirt as Eperr readjusted the aim of his nose.

“Hm,”
said Eperr noncommittally.
“Yeah. Okay. He's . . . he's confused. Little off where he expected to be. Nervous. No panic yet, though.”

Kyri let out a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness for that, at least. What about the Legionnaires?”

“Oh, rapture. Let's hope nothing sets them off.”

She and Eperr watched as the two soldiers presented their papers to Thanus, who took them with only the slightest nervous shake of his hand. They placed their small bags on the table and opened them while the clerk checked and stamped their documents. A few words were exchanged back and forth, broken by a pause to allow Thanus to clear his throat, after which the old man waved them through with one hand while beckoning to the next person in line with the other.

“Time to move, then,” Kyri whispered to Eperr as she shifted back away from the grate to scurry down the duct. The first step was complete. How had one of her friends put it in their planning sessions? Something about how to eat a vat of bovine protein . . .
one bite at a time
. . . that was it. She grabbed the side rails of an access ladder and slid down to the maintenance hatch at the base of the feeder duct. With a twist of the dogging lever, she pushed open the reinforced door just a crack. The Legionnaires walked by the open end of the service corridor, sticking out in the general flow of humanity along the main causeway. She slipped out of the side passage and into the crowd, trailing the pair while doing her best to remain anonymous in the human herd.

Eperr's empathy proved instrumental in tracking the two once he had their mental “flavor.” Their charges proved quite adept at ghosting down random corridors and between various bits and pieces of dock equipment and detritus. Without the Nlyx, Kyri certainly would have given herself away trying to keep them in sight. Even so, by the end of the hour, she was forced to think beyond tracking the pair into anticipating their actions.

“These two have had some training,” she muttered as she threaded her way between two scuffed fork-walkers. This tertiary corridor would allow her to arrive at the designated hostel ahead of her charges.

“You would know,”
Eperr agreed enthusiastically.

“Hush,” she said as she squeezed the loop of her shirt closed in front of the Nlyx as she peered around a corner. “I never completed the courses. I know just enough to understand how stupid I am.” A muffled feeling of sulking floated across her consciousness as she stepped out from an access hatch that offered an excellent view of the hostel entrance. Kyri leaned back into the shadows left by a strategically inoperable light fixture and considered her insight.

She let out a sigh of resignation. She had expected military intelligence and had even planned for it. Still, after seeing how well they practiced their craft, she felt another twinge of panic. The threads of the plan started to feel slippery in her mind.

“Quit worrying,”
Eperr chided her.
“You'll give me an ulcer.”

“You? What about me?”

“What the hell does that have to do with it?”

“Your mother tried to eat you when you were ten days old.”

A haughty psychic sniff filled her mind.
“I bonded more in ten days than you did in ten years. Anyway, she said . . .”

“Hsst!” Kyri warned him, thankfully breaking off his trip down memory lane, which was a shorter walk for the two-year-old Nlyx than it was for Kyri. “They're here.”

The two Legionnaires appeared from the left of the opening, glanced at the entrance of the hostel, then back at each other. With a nod, the man walked into the portal. The woman slipped to the left out of Kyri's sight.

“What are they doing?”
the Nlyx pleaded, squirming in his pocket and climbing up to his “porthole” in Kyri's blouse.

Kyri shifted down the corridor a bit to hide behind some empty foam crates. “I think they're being careful.”

The two coconspirators sat in nervous silence, watching the far door of the hostel. After five tense minutes, the male Legionnaire left the building and turned right, the same direction his female companion had gone.

“Do you want to follow them?”
Eperr suggested eagerly. His enthusiasm for playing spy was starting to get on Kyri's nerves. So, rather than answer him immediately, she squashed herself against the wall.

“Can you still feel them?”

“Then we'll just stay here for a bit.”

The gray color of disappointment floated across her link with Eperr, but she was not about to give in to his sulking.

“Take it easy,” she muttered as she stretched out her legs. “This isn't about having fun, you know.” She became aware of Eperr's faint rodent smell mixed with the lingering aroma of partially rotten cabbage coming from a crate, which did not go well with the scent of burned rubber coming across her link with the Nlyx.

“Let's relax a bit and see what they do,” she temporized as she pulled her dock hat out of her pants pocket and set it over her eyes. “We've until mid-third watch before the meeting.”

In the end, what the Legionnaires “did” was “nothing.” Kyri actually managed to get some sleep between the watch chimes right up to the appointed rendezvous time. Her chrono buzzed her wrist five minutes before the appointment, warning enough to wipe the sleep from her eyes, clear her throat, and wake the Nlyx.

“Can't a guy get more than ten minutes of shut-eye in a row around here?”
he griped as she gently rubbed him awake.

“Try three hours, you lump,” she chuckled. “Besides, if you need to go, I'd like you to do it now rather than in my bra.” By the time the one-minute warning buzzed silently against her left wrist, they were both awake and ready to face the next “bite” of the mission. Kyri straightened up from behind the crates, stretched out her kinks, and walked into the main corridor.

She spotted the male Legionnaire sitting in the bistro next to the hostel almost immediately. His business clothes and height set him apart from the normal station-side professional crowd that frequented the place. As Kyri followed an indirect path toward him, she subvocalized a request to Eperr.

“Where's the woman?”
she asked.

Kyri risked a glance upward and saw the outline of a face in one of the second-floor windows, slightly distorted by a boxy shape that rested next to one cheek. She felt a shudder as she realized that the woman no doubt had a sniper weapon of some kind trained in the direction of the table that Kyri was about to approach.

“You're worrying again,”
Eperr observed in an acid tone.

“She's got a gun.”

“Of course she's got a gun,”
the Nlyx replied with an empathic eye roll.
“Spies tend to be rather cautious when plotting treason.”

Kyri felt a flush bloom on her cheeks. “If it was simply treason,” she snapped, “you and I wouldn't be involved.” She felt Eperr cringe from the venom in her words and felt guilty.

“I'm sorry,”
she said in the best “soothing” voice she could manage subvocally while trying to put her worry out of her mind.
“I shouldn't let the past get to me.”
A feeling of acceptance flowed from her tiny companion, and Kyri felt her confidence swell as she stepped into the tiny shop, her fretting left behind now that the wait was over.

The busy mid-shift dinner hour had filled the small dining room. Kyri first moved to the corner bar and ordered her favorite pineapple-kiwi mixer, which allowed her to scan the people sitting in the room. None of them appeared to be paying either the Legionnaire or her much mind. Sipping at the juice, she strolled to the soldier's table and slipped into the opposite seat. If her appearance surprised the man, he gave no sign.