Slip Point (5 page)

She made herself shrug it off. “I understand that secrecy’s important to you.”

“My name is Nat Perra.” He bowed in formal greeting. “I was appointed Senior Deputy of the Atian Premier.”

So this was why her father had been so mysterious about this meeting. Atia was one of the most technologically advanced spokes. Albarz, the Hub world of Atia, had encountered the aliens.

The Atian Premier’s second was indeed someone who would command attention, especially when dealing with a pirate. She believed his claim just from the shadows under his eyes and the strain in his voice from too many long, important talks. The toll of bureaucracy, she reckoned. But his gaze was shrewd and level upon her, his bow fluid.

She bowed hastily in return. He gestured to the armchair across from his, and she sat. Courtesies dispensed with, she asked, “So what is it that you want?”

He countered with another question. “You came in a merchant ship?”

A little irritated at the way he’d wrenched the conversation around, she nonetheless answered. “Yes.
Aequitus
-class.”

“With cargo?”

“Four gross gamma—”

He dismissed her inventory with a wave of his hand. “Whatever you have, I’ll buy it.”

Shayalin grinned. “In that case, I’ve got some nice lunar property too.”

He didn’t let her distract him. “You’ll make a pick-up and delivery for me.”

She nodded, thoughtful now. “So you want to empty my hold for your own cargo.”

He gave her a thin smile. “I wouldn’t want you to be…encumbered. You’ll have to carry a Swallow.”

Swallow
-class ships were swift and nimble and, most of all, expensive, reserved for the use of the elite. Shayalin wasn’t sure it would make it to its destination. She was a pirate, after all, and Swallows were said to be sweet to fly.

As though reading her thoughts, Perra said, “It’ll have a pilot and a passenger.”

Her thoughts of the Swallow evaporated. “I don’t deal in human trafficking,” she said flatly.

“Neither do I,” Perra said in exasperation. “I’m on the Senate. You really think I’d engage in the slave trade?”

She shied away from the mention of the Senate, the ambassadorial organization of the Hub worlds and the Rim colonies. She’d assumed this man had come to her precisely because pirates operated outside of the law. “Tough luck. I don’t deal in politics either.”

He made an impatient gesture. “But surely you’ll deal with politicians.”

There were plenty of corrupt government officials, and she supposed this extended to the senators as well. It was a little disappointing, but not really all that surprising. “Depends on the deal,” she said. “What exactly do you want me to do with these people, then?”

“I need you to go to Cuoramin, where you’ll pick up a third person, then take them all through the blockade to Albarz.”

She laughed and leaned back in her chair, crossing her legs. “That’s impossible. You’d need an entire fleet to punch your way through there.” And Albarz’s military was on the other side of the blockade, while the Corps was swarming around the planet’s slip point to keep the alien ship in check.

“You’ve smuggled supplies through.”

“Cargo,” she said. “Not people. If something goes wrong, you can always abandon the goods.”

“But you wouldn’t abandon people entrusted to your care,” he said.

“No,” she said shortly.

“A principled pirate. Precisely what I need.”

“Glad to match your specifications. It means worlds to me, truly. But I can’t help you.”

“I know about the compass,” he said.

She jerked upright and cursed herself for reacting. It was her father’s most closely guarded secret. But if anyone could have inferred its existence from her father’s activity, it would be Albarz.

“Its inventor was from Albarz,” the deputy premier said. “After he disappeared and the escapades of Kennick Bailey began to take over the newsfeeds, we knew what conclusion to draw.”

He seemed amused. These were not the tones of a man brandishing a threat—at least, not at the moment.

“You already told my father that you knew,” she said. “That’s why he agreed to this meeting in the first place.”

“Very good.”

“And the compass could manage getting past the blockade.”

“I wouldn’t have contacted you if you weren’t able to accomplish what I need.”

Something about the way he said “I”…

“You’re not just the deputy of the premier,” she said. “You
are
the premier.”

That careful smile again. “Perhaps we should redo our introductions then, Captain Shayalin Cho.”

She started, but no soldiers burst into the room at his pronouncement. And his use of her title reassured her. Her identity wasn’t exactly a secret—after all, it had been a Corps officer who’d informed her about her father—but she hadn’t thought of her past as having anything to do with who she was now.

The premier, on the other hand, had been an older woman, at least in the newsfeed she’d caught a week ago.

“What happened to the last premier?” she asked. Had there been some kind of coup? Albarz’s quarantine extended to data, which meant news from there was sparse and intermittent.

“She’s dead.” There was a new tightness in his voice. Regret or grief, something of that breed.

The last premier had looked hale in the most recent newsfeeds, and had doubtlessly had access to the best medical care. That, and Perra’s tone— “So the previous premier was assassinated,” she said. Despite the highest level security. “How did you manage to keep it quiet?”

“The data quarantine threw our communication loops into disrepair,” he said. “It lets us get away with pre-recorded speeches. We’re pretending she’s keeping safe in a bunker somewhere during this state of emergency. The Purists are already on the brink of causing wide-scale riots, and this announcement would be the spark they need.”

She’d heard of the Purists. “The assassin was one of them?”

He nodded. He’d clearly managed to circumvent the data quarantine, at least.

“So why aren’t I taking you in?” she asked. “Don’t you need to go back and take control of the situation?”

“I can’t afford to return to Albarz right now. I’d be trapped there and unable to confer with the rest of the Senate, and I must fight to get this quarantine lifted. But I have limited resources here.” He turned his ironic gaze on her. “Are you sufficiently acquainted with the situation now?”

“All right,” she said after a moment to digest it all. “I can see why you’d want an independent agent handling things for you.”

“Particularly since the passenger I want you to pick up is the daughter of Speaker Zakiyah.”

Her eyes widened. Nala Zakiyah was, as the newsfeeds touted, the ambassador of the human race. Shayalin had no intention of drawing attention by kidnapping her daughter, and said as much. “Do you have any other absurd proposals while I’m here?”

“It’s with the Speaker’s full knowledge,” the premier said patiently. “As a matter of fact, it’s her idea. She doesn’t like being separated from her daughter right now, and she’s insisting upon her return.”

“From Cuoramin, you said?” The station was renowned for its cutting-edge medical facilities and, as pirates well knew, it sometimes performed quasi-legal services—whether because the patients were criminals or the procedures weren’t yet sanctioned by bioethicists. Naturally the Speaker could demand the best, whether above-board or not. The girl must’ve needed something special indeed to find it offered at Cuoramin. “So am I fetching the girl because you don’t want to dirty your hands dealing with them?”

“We’ve already tried through discreet channels. Cuoramin refuses to release her.” He cast a sharp glance at her. “There’s a chance the girl shares her mother’s mutation. It makes her valuable.”

Shayalin blew out her breath. She could see why. Right now, Albarz controlled all talks with the aliens. A second person able to speak with them opened up the possibility of competing negotiations, perhaps by an unsavory faction. Albarz wanted trade and peace. Someone else might ask for weapons or even incite war. “A gene scan can’t tell you for sure?”

“She has the gene, but the ability hasn’t been expressed so far,” the premier said. “It may in the future. We don’t know the trigger yet.”

Still, a potentially valuable hostage. So her retrieval wouldn’t be official, then, and she would need to steal the girl out of there. Trumpeting the government’s concerns would only invite other people to try and grab her. “You never should have let her leave Albarz in the first place.”

“There were compelling reasons,” he said. “And what’s done is done. Now we have to get her back. That’s your job.”

She nodded grimly. There wasn’t any way she could turn this mission down now, knowing what she did. But she still wanted more details. “You said there was another passenger,” she reminded the premier.

“So I did,” he said. “There’s the pilot, whom you’ll be taking in, as well as an…attendant.”

Not only the girl, but her driver and maid as well? “The more people, the harder you make it.”

“The pilot will be able to take the girl in the Sparrow once you breach the barricade. The Speaker insists on the attendant.”

“I suppose the Speaker has a lot of leverage,” she said.

“She’s desperate to see her child, as any mother would be. And she can’t leave Albarz, not when she’s in the middle of talks with the aliens. Naturally, I’m interested in keeping her happy so that a treaty will be possible.”

“You’re still holding talks?” she asked, startled.

He sighed. “Wouldn’t you, if your planet were hostage to them? They haven’t threatened us, but they’re unimpressed by us so far, and they’re sure to have superior technology.” There was an envious note to his voice. Albarz was supposed to be the seat of the hottest tech companies, but apparently it didn’t compare to what the aliens had. “And the girl will become critical if something happens to Speaker Zakiyah.”

“You’re not worried about bringing her into a quarantine zone?”

“There’s been no opportunity for biological contamination. I promise you that.”

“If you’re so sure of it, why the quarantine? Just prove to the Senate that there’s no alien disease.”

He smiled grimly. “It’s not a quarantine against contagion. They’re worried about cultural contamination. Technological. Anything that threatens their control. We’d nearly given up ever finding other sentients. And then they appear to Albarz, where we happen to have a mutant who can communicate with them? It promises an imbalance of power.”

“In your favor.”

He nodded.

She hadn’t intended to become embroiled in an interstellar dispute. But she could easily see some greedy bastards on the Senate declaring the quarantine for exactly the reasons the premier had described. Certainly the aliens’ arrival hadn’t been hailed as a great scientific and diplomatic leap, as once dreamed of.

“So back to the job,” Shayalin said, focusing on the elements she could control. “Take a Swallow and its pilot to Cuoramin, grab the girl, then take them past the barricade to Albarz and let them find the Speaker on their own?”

He nodded. “Bringing the pilot along will let you leave as quickly as possible once your part is no longer necessary. And I don’t trust you with the Speaker’s location. The Purists are trying too hard to find out.”

She quirked a brow. “What makes you think I’m not one?”

“We have a full psych profile on you from ten years ago,” he said. “We had our best people build a new one based on all the recorded encounters with you since. You’re a xenophile. You love new places, new people, new experiences. The Bellers can only bring more of that. And you avoid violence when possible. You don’t want war.”

“You can’t be basing your trust on a ten-year-old profile.”

“It’s a confluence of factors,” he said. “And you’re the best of a bad lot.”

That certainly was a vote of confidence. “All right,” she said with a sigh, “I’ll do it.”

“Good,” he said briskly. “We’ll pay you handsomely. Both before and after.”

She held up a hand, thinking. “I don’t want anything special now.”

“But after?”

She hoped her father wouldn’t kill her. “Pardons. For me and my father and our crews.”

The premier didn’t blink. “You’ll have to give up your ships.”

Shayalin glowered. “No.”

“We’ll settle you on whatever planet or station in our spoke you desire, with generous stipends. But do you realize how nervous you’d make all our captains by openly roaming the shipping lanes?”

“What’s the point of getting a pardon if we’re only going to take up piracy again? We’ll even give you the slipspace compass. But we want trading rights with the aliens.”

“No direct trading rights. Distribution rights to the Rim colonies for three years.”

“With a perpetual option to renew.”

“For one-year increments.”

“Done.”

They smiled at each other.

“And shall we say thrice market price on my current cargo?” she added.

To her surprise, he nodded. “You’ll need funds,” he said. “The transaction’s a good way for you to get them legitimately.”

She grinned.

“I didn’t say ‘legally,’” he said irritably. “I don’t even want to know what I’m buying.”

She smothered her grin. “All right. Your pilot knows what to do once we get to Albarz?”

He nodded.

“Tell me where to find him, and I’ll go fetch my crew—”

“I assume your crew isn’t necessary for operating the compass.”

She frowned. “It takes a crew to run a ship.”

“The pilot will be able to assist you. The fewer people involved, the better. What details could you trust them with?”

That was true enough. An
Aequitus
-class could survive with two crewmembers. “I’ll need to notify them, then.”

He gestured to the room’s comm. “One call. You know what not to say.”

She had no doubt he would listen in. She went to the console, impatiently tapping it awake when it failed to rouse from sleep mode at her first touch, and slipped in a crypto-key. It was good for a single use. Beyond that, the encryption codes could potentially be broken. It automatically set up a web of connections that eventually reached her father, hopefully too complicated to follow.