gaian consortium 03 - the gaia gambit (29 page)

Then all she could see was the planet’s orange-red sands whipping past, along with a dark beige blur that might have been Aldis Nova, but it was here and gone so quickly that if she’d blinked, she would have missed it. They were following the shadow of Iradia’s terminus, moving over to the night side.

That made sense. Whatever was about to happen, she had a feeling it was better suited to the darker watches of the night.

It was black as pitch out there. Lira got up from the cot and went to the viewport, stared out as they coasted lower and lower, through darkness unrelieved by a single light. She knew Iradia was like that — miles and miles of emptiness with only a few population centers clustered around the planet’s oases — but she had never made an approach like this before, and it was unnerving. Of course the pilot was flying on all instruments; there were no visuals here to key on.

But they were headed somewhere specific, that was certain. And finally she saw a faint glow of reddish lights marking a landing area, just sufficient to show its outlines but certainly not enough for anyone more than a hundred meters or so away to see. The
Mistral
finished its descent there, landing with barely a thump. Whoever was piloting the ship, they knew what they were doing.

She turned away from the viewport, trying to still the sudden beating of her heart, to will herself to calm. Whatever happened, she would not plead and cry. She would not beg. They might have stripped her rank from her, but she was still a captain of the fleet.

The door opened. Two men she didn’t recognize, both Gaian and both outweighing her by about fifty kilos, stood there with pistols trained on her. “Out,” one of them said as they both stepped aside to give her room to exit the cabin.

Nothing for it. Perversely, she was glad of the expensive suit she wore, the heels that clicked on the metal floor as she moved past them. She might be a little rumpled, but she certainly didn’t look like a whore, even if that was what Tomas intended to make of her. What had Rast called her?

Intimidatingly beautiful
. She doubted she could intimidate Gared Tomas. Still, perhaps her appearance might give him pause, might make him re-evaluate his plans for her.

Well, she could hope so, anyway.

Once she was in the corridor, the man who had spoken said, “Move,” and pointed his pistol toward the open hatch and the gangplank beyond it.

Obviously he was a man of few words. She did as he had instructed, walking calmly out of the
Mistral
and into the dry night air, which still seemed to shimmer with the heat of the day. Sweat began to drip down the high collar of her suit jacket, although Lira would have been hard-pressed to say whether the the stifling atmosphere of Iradia was really to blame for that.

They guided her into a low, sprawling building. As soon as they were inside, highly cooled air blasted in from all sides, and she had to keep herself from shivering at the sudden shift in temperature. The floor below was polished red rock, native to Iradia, and the walls on either side were decorated with sconces of intricate dark bronze and stained glass. Very elegant, and not what she would have expected of a structure so clearly out in the middle of nowhere.

Then she realized where she must be, even though this was the one place of Tomas’s he had never brought her.

His home.

She swallowed. Gared Tomas kept the location of his actual residence a secret from almost everyone. Of course she’d heard rumors — that it was a near-impregnable fortress located in one of Iradia’s most remote deserts, that those of his employees who were trusted with its whereabouts knew that death would be their reward if they breathed even a hint of its location.

If she had been brought to his home now…well, it was a fairly good indication that Tomas intended to keep her here. Permanently.

The two enforcers with her continued to direct her from corridor to corridor, all of which were well-appointed without being garish. Funny that the crime lord appeared to possess some actual taste. Then again, his cabin on the
Mistral
, while luxurious, hadn’t bordered on the garish, either.

Well, that’s just wonderful
, she thought.
Maybe he can chat with you about interior decoration before he rapes and murders you
.

At last they stopped in front of a door that was flanked by more hired muscle, this time a pair of Bathshevan mercs, heads shaved and tattooed according to their custom. Without a word they opened the door and stepped aside.

“He’s waiting,” said the chatty enforcer, and pushed Lira through the open door before hitting the controls so it closed immediately, barring the pathway to escape — not that she would have been able to get past even one of those men, let alone four.

She stumbled over a thick rug, Menari weave by the look of it, and cursed her heels. Immediately a strong hand was on her elbow, steadying her, and she looked up into Gared Tomas’s bottle-green eyes. At once she recoiled, yanking her arm from his grasp, but he only smiled.

“So good to see you, Lira,” he said, and pointed to a low table that fronted a divan of soft brown leather. Sitting on the table were a pair of glasses filled with dark red liquid. “Drink?”

Getting hit twice in a twenty-four-hour period with a stun bolt must have done something to her hearing. That was the only explanation she could think of. No way Tomas was smiling at her pleasantly and offering her a drink.

But here he was, bending and lifting one of the glasses from the table, then extending it to her.

“Is this a joke?” she asked finally.

“‘Joke’?” he echoed, and seemed to consider her question for a few seconds. “No, I don’t believe so. You’ve had a long journey. I thought you might want something to take the edge off.”

Because she didn’t know what else to do, she took the glass from him but didn’t drink. Instead, she held it under her nose and sniffed, then looked at it sideways to see if she could see anything odd about it, a film along the top, a graininess — any indication to show that it had been tampered with.

“Suspicious, aren’t you?” Tomas let out a chuckle and reached for the glass. He brought it to his lips and took a large swallow before handing it back to her. “You see?”

At the moment she really didn’t. Up was down, night was day, Gared Tomas wasn’t trying to kill her. When she put it that way, a drink sounded eminently sensible. So she allowed herself a sip, and realized it was only wine, something heady and dark and complex…although, considering that she hadn’t eaten in hours, even the lightest of white wines probably would have felt heady to her at this point.

“Better,” he said. “Now, why don’t we discuss the situation like civilized people?”

“All right,” she managed. “I truly am sorry about the
Mistral
, but — ”

“My people have inspected it and found no damage. It could have been much worse. The important thing is that I have it back.”

“A-and your men — ”

For the first time a shadow passed over Gared Tomas’s face. “Morain was a loss. But you were not the one doing the shooting, were you?”

“No,” Lira replied, although she said no more than that. The last thing she wanted to do was attempt to improve her own situation by implicating Rast more than she already had. She took a slightly larger sip of the wine, and wondered if Tomas was going to offer her some food to go along with it. Already she was beginning to feel a little light-headed, the wine clearly going directly into her sustenance-deprived bloodstream.

In fact, she was beginning to feel a lot more than merely light-headed. The room seemed to dip and sway around her, beginning to swirl. Tomas’s eyes were like emeralds, boring into hers. He set down his own glass and smiled.

“Wha — ” she began, stumbling over the syllable. “But you drank some — ”

“I did. I also drank the antidote first.”

Antidote
…

Her knees buckled, and she slumped to the carpet. Or rather, she began to collapse onto it, only to have Tomas catch her, lower her to the floor, his arms going around her. Those glittering green eyes came closer and closer.

“That’s better,” he said, his voice a silken threat. “That’s how I wanted you.”

And the world slipped into a merciful darkness.

Rast glared at the readouts on the console before him and swore under his breath. Still three standard hours to go. This was a good little ship, the best fighter craft he’d ever seen, but it was no
Mistral
.

And being stuck like this, in a single seat for the greater part of eighteen standard hours, was almost more than he could bear. He’d been trained to endure longer than that with no food and no sanitary breaks, so the physical discomfort wasn’t the worst of it. No, it was wondering what was happening to Lira while he chased after her, the limitations of the little ship’s drive preventing him from crossing the distance between Eridani and Iradia with the same lightning speed the Sirocco-class
Mistral
possessed.

Still, at least he’d gotten away, had managed to give sen Trannick the slip. That was something. As long as Rast was alive and free, there was a chance. He wouldn’t let himself believe anything else. He’d fought too hard for her and given up too much in that fight to abandon hope now.

And so he kept telling himself as those last few hours trickled away, and finally his stolen fighter craft emerged into realspace on the edge of the Iradian system. Anyplace else, and he might have had a difficult time making planetfall in such a vessel, so clearly designed for aggression. But because this was Iradia, he wasn’t challenged at all, only told there were docking pads available in Aldis Nova, for the right fee.

Typical. He transferred the specified units to the ’port authority, or what passed for it in that rough frontier town, and didn’t even quibble at the amount required. He had more important things to worry about.

As he guided the ship down to one of the pads at the ’port on the settlement’s outskirts, Rast wanted to slap himself. True, Iradia’s population was far lower than that of many planets, even his own arid and hostile home world. Even so, there were roughly three or four million people living down there, and approximately thirty settlements scattered across Iradia’s surface. He’d come to Aldis Nova because that was where he’d found Lira the first time, but there was no guarantee she’d be here. Tomas was rumored to have hideouts and safe houses everywhere, including on Iradia’s moon. Lira could be anywhere.

But since he didn’t know what else to do, Rast set down the ship anyway and gratefully pried himself out of the cockpit. At the very least he needed to eat and attend to some other pressing bodily functions. He could go days without sleep if necessary, and might have to, but those other matters could wait no longer.

After locking down the ship and double-checking balance on the credit voucher Hunter Chao had given him, Rast headed out into Aldis Nova. Luckily, he had set down in the late afternoon, and so there was still enough light remaining that the true dregs hadn’t yet oozed out of their hiding places. Not too far from the ’port he found an eating establishment, ordered a meal, and used its rest facilities — none too clean, unfortunately — while waiting for the food to be prepared.

When his meal did arrive, however, he found himself picking at it, and not only because he was uncertain of the overall hygiene of the establishment. No, he couldn’t help berating himself for having no clear plan as to what to do when he arrived here, even though he knew deep down that he’d done the best he could. After all, stealing a fighter craft from the admiral’s flagship was no mean feat. But that feat would count for very little if he couldn’t discover where on Iradia Lira had been taken.

His handheld buzzed, and Rast scowled. Who could possibly be calling him here? After all, this was the handheld Hunter Chao had provided, and so the only people who had its code were Hunter, Lira, and — possibly — Jackson Wyler.

Rast pulled it out of his pocket at once and looked down into Wyler’s grinning face. Surely he never would have said he’d actually be happy to see that smug-faced Gaian, but right now the only visage that would have been more welcome was Lira’s. Calmly, though, he said, “Wyler.”

“Afternoon, Master sen Lhannick,” Wyler replied, using the alias Chao had given him. “At least, I’m assuming from the time/date stamp that it’s afternoon where you are.”

“More or less. Listen, Wyler, we don’t have a lot of time — ”

“I know that. But I’m guessing you’re probably a little stuck. Typical Stacian, going charging in without any real plan.”

Good thing roughly a hundred parsecs separated Rast from Wyler at that moment. But since getting into a war of words wouldn’t help Lira, Rast bit back the fifty or so insults that rose to his lips and instead gritted, “Is this your oblique way of offering some help?”

“You could say that. Just understand that this is for Lira, not for you.”

“Understood.”

Wyler’s image on the handheld looked pleased. “First off, she’s not in Aldis Nova. She’s halfway around the planet from you.”

Naturally. Rast swallowed a few more curses and waited for the other man to continue. When no more information seemed to be forthcoming, he growled, “So where is she?”

“At Tomas’s main compound, about a hundred clicks west of a crummy outpost called Pathi.”

That was all Rast needed. “Thanks, Wyler.” He moved to cut off the transmission, but the hacker quickly said,

“Hold up there, cowboy. Even you should think twice about going in there, guns blazing. Just wait — we’ve got a team on the way.”

Rast didn’t know what a cowboy was and didn’t much care. It was Wyler’s other remark that gave him pause, and made him move his finger away from the “end” button on the handheld. “‘We’ve got a team on the way’? Care to clarify.”

Wyler’s miniature face looked almost abashed. “Well, I might not have been completely truthful with you.”

“About?” Rast growled.

“I might not have been working quite as outside the lines as I led Lira to believe.”