Bianca D'Arc (3 page)

“Can you read what I’m thinking?”

“One doesn’t need to be psychic to know you
don’t believe a word of what I’m saying,” she scoffed. “Frankly, I
don’t care. I just want you to listen and then make your own
observations. That man,” she pointed to the wall screen once more.
“Jim Beezus. He’s a born and bred mech tech. He transferred to this
station about a month ago and fell in quickly with this little
group, plus a few others. The most notable member of their clique
is this man,” she shifted the angle of the camera so they could see
the man who sat on the far side of the table. He was taller than
the others and his clothes were of better quality. “He’s an
engineer who took a post in the mech section here about two months
ago. His name is Bill Bjornson. Their group is planning something.
Something bad.” She shivered and rubbed her arms as if cold.

“Have you heard them say anything
outright?”

“Nothing actionable,” she replied.

He was surprised by her use of the term and
let it show in his expression.

“I was a magistrate on
Last Spiral
Station
for a while after I got out of school,” she explained
with a graceful nod of her head.

That news set him back on his heels. She
wasn’t just a civ, but a civ with judicial experience on the most
notorious of the rim stations. This woman just kept getting more
and more interesting.

“What exactly did you hear them say?” He
listened even more closely to her words. This wasn’t just some
loony tunes pretend psychic talking, but an officer of the court.
She had to have something on the ball to have been given that kind
of responsibility at such a young age.

“They’re planning an event. On the surface,
they make it sound like a party but when I offered catering
services, they claimed they were using someone else. I’ve made
discrete inquiries at the Station Business Owner’s Association and
they haven’t employed any of the catering firms anywhere on the
station. They also stopped talking about the supposed party except
in the most general of terms.”

“Did they indicate a time or place? Any
details at all?”

“No specific time or date, but it sounded
imminent and it’s going to be somewhere in the mech section. I
suspect they’re planning some kind of sabotage of station
systems.”

Chip didn’t like the sound of this at
all.

“To what end?”

“That’s where the creepy feelings from Beezus
come in. He hates someone enough to want to kill them. And he’s got
greed shouting out at me every time I get near him. And he’s
thinking about the jit’suku empire and the wealth someone has
promised him.”

“You believe the jit’suku have promised him
wealth in return for turning traitor?”

“No. I can’t go that far.” She seemed to
think through her words carefully. “He’s thinking about jit’suku
wealth, but not any specific jit’suku contact he’s had. I think
it’s more likely that someone has promised him wealth and he
suspects it’s coming from the jit’suku. Which it may well be, for
all I know. My point is that he doesn’t know who he’s working for.
Only that they’re going to make him rich and his greed overrides
almost all his other basic personality traits.”

“You can tell all this just from observing
him?” Chip still didn’t buy it. He’d seen only one true clairvoyant
in his life.

Della, Lila’s sister, had warned him about a
danger to a mission he’d been on years ago. She’d seen him in
passing, just once, at a station bar on the other side of the
galaxy. Della had stopped him with a hand on his arm and urgent
words, telling him not to trust the rear stabilizers on the Falcon
he appropriated.

There was no way she could have known he
would steal a Falcon to get off the planet he’d been on weeks
later. Hell, he hadn’t even known his pickup would get blown and
he’d have to find alternate transport off-planet. And there was
absolutely no way she could know—out of all the ships he could have
stolen—that the Falcon he chose would have a wonky rear
stabilizer.

The damn thing had almost gotten him killed.
It would have—if he hadn’t remembered weird Della’s words and been
watching the gauges as the thing crapped out. Only lightning fast
reflexes had saved him—and Della’s urgent warning. At that point,
Chip had to admit, Della had truly seen the future. He’d come to
believe that clairvoyance did exist, in very rare circumstances.
But he’d never seen anyone claiming to be telepathic or empathic
that was for real, in his opinion.

“Beezus…,” Lila said haltingly, as if pained
by the words and the memories they evoked. “He grabbed me a couple
of times when I first started here. It’s part of the reason why I
started using the server bots for the outer tables.” She seemed
hesitant to talk about it, but forced herself to say the words.

Chip saw red. That big oaf had put his paws
on Lila and it pissed Chip off big time. Perhaps more than it
should, given their short acquaintance, but Chip couldn’t control
the visceral reaction.

“Did he hurt you?” His voice was gruff with
anger, barely suppressed.

“He didn’t hurt me.” She was quick to relieve
his mind. “It was just… very unpleasant. When his hand touched
mine… That’s when I received the impressions from his mind. A quick
blast that ended as soon as I got free of his hold. It was a jumble
at first, but as I puzzled it out, and pieced it together with
their conversation, I realized something bad was going on over at
that table. They had to be plotting something.” She moved back
around the desk and brought up a list on the display that overlaid
the continuing live feed. It was a list of dates and times, all
over the last two weeks. “As a precaution, I began recording their
table whenever I saw one of that group come in. I think you should
review the files. Maybe then you’ll begin to believe me.”

She moved around the desk and headed for the
door, clearly a little upset with his skepticism, but Chip didn’t
quite know how to play this out yet. He needed time to check his
sources. And she was right about one thing—he did need to review
those recordings as soon as possible.

“I’ll watch the bar while you acquaint
yourself with the systems.” She paused by the portal on her way
out. “Where we go from there is up to you.”

She left without another word being spoken.
Chip sat motionless for a moment as he processed through everything
he’d just learned.

At length, he sighed and rubbed one hand over
his face. It had been a long day of travel to get here, followed by
a perplexing encounter with the most intriguing woman he’d ever
met. Intriguing, sexy and downright smoking hot. One glance and he
wanted to be inside her. One word and he wanted to know her better.
One touch and he wanted to feel her warmth next to him for the rest
of his life.

Whoa. Where did that come from?

Chip figured he must be more tired than he
thought.

Setting his highly classified internal
electronics to do an external scan, he made sure the small office
was truly secure before he set to work. He could scan the
recordings the old fashioned way, but with the use of his top of
the line cybernetic implants, he could check all the data for the
past few months in less time than it would take him to listen to
half those conversations Lila had segregated for him the old
way.

Chip jacked in to the system wirelessly,
initializing the scan and download of selected files. It took only
a few minutes to wade into the data stream and learn the normal
patterns of the bar. A few minutes more and he noted the
disturbances in the natural patterns. Most coincided with the men
Lila had pointed out.

Interesting. She might really be on to
something.

The next thing he had to do was check her
out. He sent a request for data to the top secret portal only he
and a few, select others in the galaxy could access. The return
ping was a download of the information he’d requested. He noted
with some surprise that Lila’s file was tagged. In fact, there were
additional files attached to hers that all had that same tag. It
was one he’d never seen in actual use before.

They were tagged with a seldom-used
designation. It seemed all the ladies of the Senna family were
tagged as psychic. Reliable psychics, the files stated, with
unswerving loyalty to the human cause. Each of them had been tested
at the highest levels and Chip noted that even he wasn’t given the
full data set on all of them. The files on Adele Senna and her
aunt, Della Senna—Lila’s daughter and sister, respectively—were
short and contained only the bare bones of their profile
information. Lila’s file was a bit meatier, but still had obvious
sections that had been redacted.

Chip wondered idly what those blank sections
might have told him.

What intrigued him even more was the personal
recommendation from the head of the intelligence service.
Lila—short for Delilah—Senna was given the full faith and trust of
the commanding general and the file indicated he knew her
personally.

Now wasn’t that interesting? Even Chip had
only met old man Winters a handful of times and he was one of the
old man’s most active operatives. Could there be some personal
connection between the Senna family and General Winters?

Chip put that interesting thought aside and
used the top secret cybernetic tech implanted in his brain to do a
quick scan of station logs. Alex’s computer had backdoors into all
station systems and more than a few galactic comm centers. Chip was
interested in patterns that may have initiated or changed since the
men Lila had pointed out had joined the station crew.

Sure enough, after only a few minutes of
digesting the information, Chip began to see a disturbing pattern.
What it told him was if they were going to make a move on the
station, it would be very soon indeed.

Little things had started to go wrong since
the men had initiated employment. Things that escalated ever so
slightly with each passing day. So far, none of the incidents had
raised suspicion in those who should have been overseeing this
operation, but it would soon enter into the realm where the group
would have to act more overtly.

Lila was right. They were definitely up to
something. Chip retracted his implant connection from the computer
interface and stood decisively. If he had anything to say about it,
the luscious Lila would not be leaving the bar for long. He’d let
her go home to her sister’s quarters tonight, but he was going to
try to convince her to stay in the private rooms behind the bar,
once he got to know her a little better. Just until this situation
had been dealt with. The safest place for her was here. Now he just
had to convince her of that.

Perhaps it was time for a charm
offensive.

Lila did her best to cool off out at the bar,
switching off the bot and taking over serving the handful of
retirees who sat, talking quietly. She’d known the King of Clubs
was coming. She just didn’t know how disturbing to her equilibrium
he’d be.

Handsome as sin, and secretive. It wasn’t a
promising combination, but she could work with it. She was good at
divining secrets that remained hidden to others. Perhaps she would
learn Chip’s secrets while they worked together at
The Rabbit
Hole
. Stranger things had happened.

She just hadn’t expected to be so attracted
to him.

Though her sister Della had the strongest
gift of foresight in the family—along with a few other interesting
talents—for some reason, none of the Senna family clairvoyants ever
had a lot of luck foreseeing their own futures. Oh, they could put
themselves in the right places at the right times for whatever the
universe wanted them to do, but knowing exactly what would happen,
or how it would turn out, was definitely not in the picture.

She’d known the King of Clubs would change
her life but she hadn’t counted on this incredible attraction to
him. She’d thought he’d be instrumental in bringing her back into
the game she’d left behind when she’d had her daughter. Her baby
girl was grown now and had flown the nest long since.

Lila had wanted a change, but she hadn’t
known what form it might take until she’d started seeing the King
of Clubs. As soon as she’d followed her instincts and come to the
station, she’d realized her skills might be needed again to help
keep the station—and the top secret operatives she knew worked out
of it—safe. Keeping them safe would ultimately help keep the rest
of humanity, and her home galaxy, safe from the alien threat.

It was a cause to which she’d dedicated her
early years. She’d been an intel operative when she’d met a gentle
man with whom she wanted to share her life. She’d retired from the
spy game and settled down to married life, until that lovely man
had died and she was left with an empty nest and an even emptier
heart.

Was loneliness the reason she found Chip
Quartain so darned attractive? She thought about it and threw out
that idea. If any handsome man would do, she’d have found half the
retirees at the bar suitable candidates. But her heart didn’t skip
a beat when any of those guys looked into her eyes.

Only the King of Clubs had that
distinction.

It was near closing time when he finally
emerged from the private office. He had no discernible expression
on his face, but Lila thought she sensed heavy thoughts on his
mind. Or maybe that was just her imagination. She hoped he would
see the patterns she had in the surveillance vids she’d left him.
He probably hadn’t gotten through too many of them yet, but he’d
had enough time to at least see some of what she’d observed. Still,
his expression showed none of his inner thoughts.

She’d have been surprised if it had. After
all, he was a professional. He’d probably been at this longer than
she had. And she was admittedly rusty after her long hiatus.