Girl Gone Nova (24 page)

“Bastards.”

“The enemies of my allies usually are.” Hel considered the man. “If you’ve got anything interesting on the other matter, I’ll pay you half of what they weren’t going to pay you.”

Hilber’s eyes gleamed with sudden avarice. “You got it on you?”

Hel gave him a look. “If it’s interesting you’ll get paid. I may be a bastard, but I honor my word. You know this about me.”

Hilber rubbed his face. “Fair enough.” He kept his hands in sight as he moved to his desk. He pulled out an information tube and tossed it to Hel. “You aren’t the only one who’s curious about these people. One of the girl’s father’s is paying big money for information.”

“Bigger than I am?”

“He’s spreading it around more than you.” Hilber grinned, one that reached his eyes this time. “Any problem if I resell it to him?”

He’d do it, whether Hel had problems or not, but he shook his head. No way was some land tiller going to beat him to the prize.

Hel grabbed the tube and pocketed it. “I’ll check this out. If it’s good, you’ll get your payment before I break orbit.”

* * * * *

Vidor paced the central corridor, circling his ship as his thoughts circled the woman. He didn’t, he couldn’t think of his larger purpose in the galaxy. The only way to deal with raging impatience, the only way to deal with his roaring desire to go home, was to not think about it at all.

He took the steps and each one took him, took them all closer to what he wanted, what they needed to do.

Until the woman.

Seeing her, dealing with her was a battle he had not expected. Fighting was not a problem. He liked a fight, a good fight was a bonus. But this…this was different.

His pace slowed as he reached a view port where he could see the planet below and the moons she’d talked about. A planet with three moons. He’d seen many wondrous things since he left his home, since he’d embarked on this quest to restore to his people what they’d lost.

His father had given him many reasons to do this thing. His mind had supplied others. Most revolved around duty and honor. He rubbed his chest. His heart was an organ, like the other parts of his body. It served his body by circulating his blood. Hearts, he had always believed, did not feel. They were. If what he believed was so, then why did the sight of the woman make his ache in way that was new to him? Why did he feel linked to her like the three moons were linked to this planet? Why did he feel?

He tried to push the thoughts away, wanted to shove these
feelings
back into the dark place they belonged. He knew how to control himself, how to hold the reins of his own nature and direct his energy to what must be done. Step by careful step.

Even now, he had to fight the need to return to the planet, to be where he could see her.

He turned with a jerk and resumed his pacing. Had he always known he would come here? He rubbed his face. It felt—he didn’t
feel
, he was not a man who felt, but he had
known
. Knowledge had lived inside him, the knowledge that he would come here. And did this knowledge include the woman? No, his mind said. His heart disagreed, even though he had not given it a vote. He’d come with the knowledge of what he needed to see, but not knowing when he would see it. The wife hunt had kept his men happy while he watched and waited. Neither he nor Bana had expected it to take so long, but now the signs were there. The time of acting was close. The pieces were in place. It was a bad time to be distracted by anything, but—he paused again and felt a new knowledge rise up, not from his heart, but from lower and deeper, from his instincts.

He would claim the woman.

As soon as he made the choice, the decision to act, his insides eased. This was right. And with this right came a new knowledge: the woman was part of the whole in a way that would become clear. Bana feared she was a distraction, but now he knew better.

She was as much a part of what had drawn him here as the other.

* * * * *

When Halliwell’s intercom buzzed, he slammed his hand down on the button to activate it. His day had been long and discouraging, and it looked like his night would be more of the same.

“General Halliwell, sir?”

Who the hell did he think would answer his intercom?

“This is Dr. James.”

The geek with a clue. “Yes?” He tried not to sound as impatient as he felt.

“I’ve made some progress on that matter we discussed.” The tone dropped to secret-sharing level.

“Your office or mine?”

“Better if you came here, sir.”

“I’ll be there ASAP.” Halliwell pushed back from his desk and headed out into the corridor, turning in the direction of the lift. Maybe it was exhaustion that sent him back to the first time he’d boarded the
Doolittle.
It was an amazing achievement and a heavy responsibility. He’d felt equal parts awe and overwhelmed then and he felt it now. Just like him, his ship didn’t carry any scars from the battle with the Dusan, though he’d had to limp her home after the battle. He flexed the arm that should have given him trouble, but didn’t. The Key had healed him and many others of his men. Still made his brain twitch to think about how. His ship had needed the yard to put the pieces back together. It had emerged from refit better than before, too.

In the past, when he stalked his corridors, he’d felt connected to the people who served with him. This was a joint enterprise, a shared adventure. It should have brought them together, not spawned a stinking traitor. When the Doc got snatched, he’d brought his senior staff into the hunt for the bastard. They were working the problem, but they also had to brainstorm damage control plans and do it without knowing all the damage that had been done. He did know that the Gadi had the Doc’s code name. That was bad. He didn’t know if the traitor knew the Doc or if he or she had passed that information on, too. Right now, only a handful of people knew she was missing. His prime suspects, the diplomats, thought she was still helping out in the infirmary. Since she had no defined job with them, no one needed face time with her. And as predicted, the infirmary staff thought she’d returned to her primary job.

It added to his frustration that the Doc had been his best hope for sussing out the traitor and getting his people back. And he’d sent her out there alone. The fact that it was women being targeted didn’t help his anxious thoughts settle. She was a tough cookie, but even though it was old-fashioned, he didn’t like a woman being at risk. And this one was at risk in a damn, different galaxy.

He swiped his card to open the door and strode into geek central. Smith and his team were huddled over their stuff like a bunch of women over a chocolate dessert. For them, maybe it was dessert.

“Doc?”

James looked up, pushed up glasses still sliding down his long, straight nose. “We managed to hack into the Gadi scanning system.” He sounded a bit surprised and maybe a touch impressed with himself.

Damn, he missed the Doc and her matter-of-fact delivery.

“They know you’re there?”

He blinked a couple of times as his glasses did a slow slide down his nose again. “Doubtful.”

Halliwell arched his brows.

“They’d shut us out if they knew, sir. Much of what they have technologically speaking, they can use and fix, but I don’t sense they understand it.”

“Okay, so we’re in. Learn anything?”

“They are scanning for two specific energy signatures. If they find them, then we will, too.”

“You could have told me that over the intercom.”

“Yes, sir, but I wanted to show you this.” He tapped some keys and pulled something up on the geek’s version of a HUD. It looked like one of the Gadi ships. “What am I looking at?”

“It’s the Leader’s flagship, sir. The one heading here.”

Halliwell’s gut tightened at the thought of Giddioni going dirt side on Kikk. Doc said it had to be done and on some level, he believed her. But he also believed that Giddioni was hoping that the Key would return to this galaxy. He didn’t know that would never, ever happen. If the right people knew about the Key, she would already be here. They wouldn’t have risked an asset like the Chameleon if they’d had another, more likely option.

A ship launched from the Gadi ship. The general frowned. Looked like it emerged from an area that wasn’t a launch bay. Ships with phase cloaks could do that, but why bother?

“See that ship?” James paused, his voice going thin with excitement. “It’s cloaked.”

“It’s not that unusual to see a cloaked ship, doctor.” Halliwell kept his voice calm, but it took effort.

“Yes, sir but this one’s cloak has been modified to hide from our sensors. I modified our cloaking settings to see if I could track one and this popped up.” He pushed his glasses up. “We’re the only ones seeing this. This ship is invisible to the outposts and our ship’s sensors.”

Halliwell straightened. He could think of one person who’d be leaving the flagship using a modified cloak that they weren’t supposed to see: Helfron Giddioni.

He could think of only one reason Giddioni would leave his flagship in the middle of a crisis, but it still surprised him. Did he consider the Doc that much of a threat to his eventual control of the outpost? It couldn’t be personal, because the Leader didn’t
do
personal unless it fit in with his non-personal goals. He’d liked the Key, maybe even wanted her, but he wouldn’t have tried to grab her if she hadn’t been the Key. Too bad he hadn’t heard the Doc outline her chances of unlocking the rest of the outpost. He knew too much and too little. And, like always, he knew just enough to be a pain in the ass.

“Keep tracking it, but only you and I know about this.” He hesitated. “Where do you think he’s going?”

“His course took him here.” A geek finger touched a spot on the galactic map. “It’s the Mos Eisley of this galaxy.”

“What?”

“The place Obi Wan called a den of thieves and pirates? Where he and Luke went to meet Han Solo?”

“Oh.” A place where information would be exchanged for money. “Right.” So the Leader was tapping into his information resources. Well, as long as they could keep tracking him, then he could use the Leader to lead them to the Doc. “What about back tracking the bogey using the scan holes? Any progress there?”

James beckoned one of the geeks over. “Tell the General what you found.”

The man looked nervous, but Halliwell wasn’t sure if it was him, the fact they were in another galaxy, or his normal state of being.

This geek pulled up a different screen, though it was the same galaxy. Halliwell wasn’t sure he’d ever get used to how different it was from the Milky Way. It always gave him a jolt seeing where they were—and where they weren’t.

“I was able to find several holes in our scanning in the region where the crewman disappeared and I was also able to connect some dots. We can narrow our search grid to three zones, sir.”

Three areas lit up on the screen. Halliwell studied the three areas.

“Habitable planets?”

“Again, each one has a planet or planets within the parameters you specified.”

“Have you scanned these areas using the patterns the Gadi are using?” Halliwell wasn’t expecting the blank looks he got for that question. These guys couldn’t seem to climb out of their box, let alone think outside it. The Doc had ruined him for dealing with ordinary smart people. The two men exchanged sheepish looks. Halliwell ruminated while the two men bent over a single laptop, their elbows bumping. He might not know the geek stuff, but he did know strategy. Before he could voice his request, another geek at another laptop jumped.

“I got something here.” He had glasses, too. His had tape over the bridge of his nose. He co-opted the HUD. “We got a match on that energy signature.”

“Where is this?”

James did something with his laptop. “It’s known as Feldstar. Uninhabited because it was too close to Dusan territory and it has a crappy climate. It’s one of the areas we identified from connecting the scan holes.”

It would be a good hiding place. Halliwell rubbed his chin, but before he could decide on a next step, the scanner pinged again.

“Got more of that signature in some other places, sir.”

The HUD changed, reflecting the new locations.

“Any of these in the three zones you identified?”

James frowned. “One, in addition to Feldstar.”

Made things more challenging, but that wasn’t new.

“You see anything in either place again, I want to know immediately.” James nodded agreement. “And I need you to adjust the cloak settings on some of our ships, so they can’t be tracked.”

The three men’s jaws identically dropped. Before they could ask him why, he quelled questions with his signature Look.

“Anything else I need to know?” he asked and got three slow shakes in answer. He turned and left, his thoughts still sifting through all he’d learned, trying to integrate it with what he already knew. Did the Leader think he could turn the Doc if he got to her first? He remembered her matter-of-fact assessment of the Leader. And the Doc saying she liked the Leader. Maybe in the world she operated in it was possible to distrust and like a person at the same time. He’d worked with people he didn’t like. He’d even worked with people he didn’t trust. Had a bunch of them onboard the
Doolittle
right now. One thing he’d never been able to do was like someone he didn’t trust.

Were they tracking the Leader or was he using an agent, perhaps an Ojemba? A surrogate made sense, but the Leader’s trust issues were as deep as Halliwell’s. Logic said the Leader wasn’t in that ship, but his gut said he was. Logic had let him down, but his gut never did.

On his scanning screen, Hel studied the three-dimensional image of the energy anomaly from the frontier planet known as Feldstar. The
Doolittle
would have seen it, too, but since he’d had a couple of his Ojemba standing by to transmit the same signature in two different places, he wasn’t surprised when the
Doolittle
failed to respond. The General would wait for more definitive data before committing resources to investigate.