Slip Point (7 page)

“Now let’s get you to your cabin,” Shayalin said. She tried not to bristle at the relieved expression that passed over Keaton’s face. Not everyone was as enamored of her ship as she was. She took the doctor to Apris’s room, since he was the neatest of the crew. “We’re not exactly a luxury cruiser, so you’ll have to borrow someone else’s cabin.”

Keaton winced as she took in the small space but managed a smile and thanked her anyway.

When the door slid closed, Shayalin looked around the
Adannaya
’s less-than-gleaming surfaces and fought the urge to engage in some last-minute cleaning before Jayce showed up. He already thought the worst of her. Why make it any easier on him?

And yet even this brief absence from him felt strange, her nerves jangling as though expectant of something.

When her comm channel chirped and she opened it to hear his crisp, “On approach,” she went from pacing to hitting the dock ramp control and dashing back to the enclosed deck above the hangar.

Jayce taxied the Swallow in slowly and carefully, without any of the flourishes most Swallow pilots were prone to. Its tail stopped just short of the far wall. She hit the panel to pull in the ramp. It slid upward to close the hangar.

The Swallow barely fit. Jayce watched the ramp shut with a handspan to spare and climbed out to meet Shayalin with a look of visible relief.

She pulled out the cables that would hold the Swallow in place, and Jayce helped her set the magnetic clamps. “She’s a beauty,” she said, admiring the sleek lines.

“Don’t know what I’d do if you scratched it,” he said. “A year of my salary probably wouldn’t cover repairs.”

“Whether it got scratched depended on how well you fit in it,” she pointed out. “I’m sure the premier did his research on what type of ship I had before he pulled me into this.”

He looked about the
Adannaya
a bit bemusedly. “You don’t strike me as an Aequitus type,” he said.

“I’m rather fond of them. They hold up better than you think.” She’d gone through a phase where she wanted the newest ship model, or anything she hadn’t flown before, but she bored of them quickly. She’d never forgotten how the
Alioqui
had taken her away from Centuris for good, though. It was why she chose an Aequitus as her first ship to steal, and never sold or traded it throughout her subsequent infidelities. In the end, she’d settled upon it as her final choice. “It doesn’t surprise me you went for something fast. You were always a speed demon.”

“Everyone becomes a speed demon once they’ve tried flying a Swallow. They’re so responsive to the lightest touch, and nothing else in space can catch you.”

“Sure, rub it in when I’m about to launch this clunky lady,” she said, leading him to the bridge.

But she settled herself into the pilot’s chair with the usual easy affection she felt for her ship. The
Adannaya
couldn’t sing through space like a Swallow, but she knew exactly how far she could push her. She signaled her intent to vacate the dock, received an acknowledgment and pulled out smoothly. It was a pleasure to be handling her own ship again. She occasionally took her turn at it, but more often than not it was one of her crew who piloted.

Conscious of Jayce—a career military pilot—watching her, she keyed in the nearest slip point and leaned back. “Should take us three days.”

“You can’t push it?”

She reached for the controls then hesitated. There was an even faster way than pouring on speed, but they’d kept it secret for so long.

“What is it?” Jayce asked.

He’d have to find out anyway. He was a starship pilot, and there was no way to hide this from him. “I’ve got a slipspace compass.”

He stared at her. “Is that exactly what it sounds like?”

“Yes.”

He let out a low whistle. “No wonder you were never caught.” He started to laugh. “All that careful guarding of slip points and mapping out which planets you might have fled to, completely useless.”

“And now of vital use on this mission,” she pointed out.

“How did you get it?” His amusement was fading now.

“You know my father was a cargo ship captain.”

Jayce nodded. She was glad he didn’t demand to know what this had to do with his question.

“His ship, the
Burricus
, was carrying an experimental prototype and its inventor.”

“So your father stole this compass?”

“The story’s fuzzy here,” she said. “It sounded like the inventor stole it from the lab where he’d developed it and decided to test it out during the trip. He didn’t bother telling my father about it until after they successfully slipped. My father was furious. He took the compass for his own.”

“What happened to the inventor?”

“I don’t know,” she said, glancing down at the controls. When she looked back up, his mouth was tight.

“The man was brilliant enough to invent new slipspace technology, and you don’t know what happened to him?”

“It happened before I joined my father. He never would say.”

Jayce pressed on his temples. “Do you know what this compass could do for interstellar travel?”

Her temper was fraying under this unrelenting interrogation. “Of all people, don’t you think I do?”

His nostrils flared and he leaned away as though disgusted by her. “Dammit, Shay, I can’t believe you’ve been keeping this secret all this time.”

She was, in fact, intending to turn over the compass to the premier once this was all over, even if her father objected. But she refused to let Jayce rebuke her for it. “You should feel lucky I’m telling you at all!”

“Who cares about whether I know? What about getting emergency medical supplies to where they’re needed faster? What about people desperate to see their ailing family members? What about—”

“I get it,” she snarled. “It wasn’t mine to share, all right? It was my father’s. I wasn’t about to rat him out.”

“He left you and your mother—”

“He didn’t know I existed. When he found out, he took me in.” She took a breath. “He taught me how to fly.”

That stilled him. Jayce knew the power of that dream. In a soft voice he said, “That’s the only thing that’s ever been important to you, isn’t it?”

She shook her head. “Not the only thing.” But her voice lacked conviction.

After a long pause, he said almost diffidently, “Did I ever matter?”

That wasn’t a fair question. “Jayce…”

“Did I?”

She closed her eyes and swallowed. “Yes.”

Even without seeing him she knew he was drawing near. His breath warmed her face. Then his lips touched hers, slowly, tenderly, whisper-light at first. It was more a promise of a kiss than anything else.

Then he made a lost noise and fulfilled that promise, slanting their mouths so they fit more perfectly, parting her lips, curling his tongue against hers. She drank in the taste of him, rich and intoxicating.

When he finally drew away, she felt bereft of more than just a kiss. She opened her eyes.

Seeing Jayce with his regulation haircut restored her equilibrium. He was in the Corps. It’d never work out between them. And he had no right to that soft, hopeful expression suffusing his face, one that told her he’d felt that kiss just as deeply as she had. They’d both moved on, she reminded herself fiercely.

“I suppose you were entitled to a farewell kiss,” she said, and although she couldn’t make her voice as steady as she wanted, the words still had an effect. His brows snapped down, and something in his bearing changed that made it unmistakable that he was a soldier.

“I was entitled to a hell of a lot more than that. Never mind the kiss, what about just a farewell?” He took a steadying breath, visibly calming himself, and shook his head to forestall argument. “All right,” he said grimly. “Let’s see how this slipspace compass of yours works.”

Ignoring the way her lips still tingled and her heart ached, she nodded. They were far enough away from the
Ionia
that they could use it now.

Calling it a compass was a bit of a misnomer, since its function was more like a sextant and calculator. Occasionally she wondered whether her father’s decision to add her to his crew had been cemented by her deftness with slipspace mathematics.

She pivoted a slate out of the ship’s control board and angled it so she could scribble notes on it. Painstakingly, she began constructing a set of coordinates. Jayce seemed to know to keep quiet even after she finished, only to start her process again to double-check her results.

A match. She keyed the ship’s speakers. “Prepare for slip,” she said and shut down all systems except life support. A few ships could generate enough power to slip while running on more than bare minimum juice, but Aequiti weren’t among them.

In the pale glow of the emergency lights, Jayce said, “That’s it?”

She turned to glare at him. She could still see afterimages of the figures she’d stared so hard at and her hand ached from operating the compass, since it had been made to fit a man’s larger hands.

He hastily held up his hands. “I mean, I know it took work. But scientists have been trying to figure this out for decades and sending out hundreds of drones to find new slipspace routes, and you just… It’s amazing.” He eyed the compass speculatively.

“I’ve had practice,” she said. “And it’s calibrated to this ship. Don’t think you can just snatch the compass and use it yourself.”

“And leave you stranded to face justice? Why would you think I’d do that?” She didn’t like his ironic tone, but when she gave him a long look, he added irritably, “Relax, Shay. You know I wouldn’t.”

She hadn’t known, but when he said it she believed him. Sometimes you had to give yourself up to blind trust and fall against the buttress of someone’s word, or into the unforgiving yawn of space. She turned back to the ship’s controls and activated the engine.

They slipped.

Shayalin had been to the Cuoramin Independent Medical Facilities only once before, when one of her crew had been injured in a senseless cargo loading accident. It had been her father’s advice to come here, and Ramiruz had been admitted without question and received excellent care, down to groundbreaking cybernetic prosthetics. Shayalin mostly remembered the bill, although it hadn’t been quite as expensive as she’d expected—apparently her father had an account with them. She never asked what he’d done to leave Cuoramin in debt to him.

She didn’t announce her identity on this occasion, but they were still pleased to receive her—at least, once they cleared a thorough security scan involving no less than three sets of detectors. A male receptionist immediately greeted them from behind a sleek, suspended console and inquired as to which services were they seeking on this visit.

Keaton stepped forward, her shoes clicking on the spotless floor. “I’d like to apply for a research position.”

They had worked out their cover during their approach to the station. Shayalin, studiously avoiding Jayce as much as possible when there were only three people aboard, had found Keaton to be better company than she’d expected once the doctor had relaxed a little.

“The others accompanying you?” the receptionist asked politely.

“My experimental subjects.”

The receptionist looked them over. Keaton had told them, “Try to look like you have exotic genes,” and Shayalin did her best.

“Your C.V., please.”

Keaton passed him a data chip.

A console descended from a ceiling panel, and he scanned the chip in then nodded. “We would like to speak with you further.” A door to their left opened in origami-like folds as the console retreated back upward. “Please step through. One of our administrators will meet you shortly.”

They ran into a dark-haired man with a diffident manner at the end of the corridor. “Rossi-shi? I am most pleased to meet you. My name is Runov Morenama.”

They bowed to each other.

He glanced at Jayce and Shayalin, who did her best to keep her face blank. “May I suggest that these ones be left somewhere safe while we continue our discussions in private?”

Keaton hesitated. Their plan depended on their separation, so Runov’s suggestion was exactly what they wanted. But a medical researcher seeking employment at a shady facility with her prize experiments in tow was unlikely to part from them that easily. “They won’t interfere,” Keaton said in the same tones someone might use to assure another that her dogs were housetrained.

Runov looked embarrassed. “A brief assessment will allow us to better judge what you could bring to Cuoramin, Rossi-shi. We promise your specimens will be returned to you fully intact and without having been subjected to any deep diagnostics that might endanger the exclusivity of your research. We are prepared to make a notarized statement to such effect.”

Keaton finally assented and accompanied him away as an orderly came up to them. She pointed Shayalin and Jayce down a hall. “This way, please.” Her mild manner was belied by her toned arms. Shayalin wasn’t impressed, but she pretended meekness and followed her obediently to a lift, Jayce trailing behind. The dented door looked distinctly more plebeian than the rest of the facility they’d seen so far. It even made clanking noises as it opened.

The orderly ushered them in first. Shayalin let her gaze sweep upward. No visible sensors. She caught Jayce’s gaze, and he gave her a tiny nod, tensing in readiness.

When the door closed and the orderly keyed in their destination floor, Shayalin kicked in the back of the other woman’s knee and whipped her forearm across the other woman’s throat, pressing hard to choke any outcry. The orderly made strangled noises as her leg buckled, and she staggered. Shayalin allowed their combined weight to carry them backward a couple of steps. Then she twisted around and slammed the woman’s head into the back wall.

The orderly slid to the floor. Shayalin stood over her, panting hard. The woman didn’t move. No, there—her chest rose in a shallow breath, and Shayalin felt a rush of relief. Besides, she reminded herself, they were in a top-class medical facility. Cuoramin would patch her up.

Jayce said after a moment, “Can I kick her? Just to feel like I was part of the fight.” Beneath the attempt at humor, she could tell he really was taken aback.

“You nodded!”

“To let you know
I
was ready to move.”

Shayalin shook her head and knelt. “Help me search her.”

Jayce found a stunner inside her jacket, which he took—“Clearly you don’t need any weapon besides your bare hands”—and a little more searching revealed an access chip fitted over one of her thumbnails. Shayalin peeled it off and did her best to slide the woman’s body to one side so it wouldn’t be immediately obvious when the elevator doors opened.

Jayce re-keyed the elevator to go to a different floor. “How will we find her?” Shayalin had asked when they’d hatched this plan.

He had said, “I brought her here. They have a special wing for high-profile patients, and I don’t think they’ll have moved her out of there.”

“You’ve met the Speaker?” Shayalin had demanded.

“Of course. She came too.”

“Did she tell you anything about the aliens?”

“No, but I didn’t ask.”

“You
didn’t ask
?” Shayalin had flung out her hand, taking a brisk walk to the engine room and back to cool her envy and disgust.

When she’d returned and sat down with a semblance of calm, Jayce had said brightly, “We were too busy talking about the nature of her mutation—”

“Oh, shut up.”

The only worry then had been that he would be recognized, but the hasty adjustments they’d made to his hair color and facial hair seemed to have worked. As Jayce had said dryly, no one looked at a mere pilot when the ambassador of the human race was present.

They got off at the fifteenth floor without anyone seeing them. They’d decided not to head directly for the premium wing because of the increased security likely to be present. There had to be some sort of maintenance shaft that could take them down a level.

She wasn’t sure what this floor held. The corridor was stark and empty, the overhead lights harsh and bright. Thick-windowed doors punctuated either side, and she and Jayce ducked while passing each one to avoid being seen. Her heart was hammering, and she was glad she hadn’t claimed the stunner, as it would’ve slipped right out of her sweaty palms.

She told herself this was just like hijacking a ship. Only with her objective living and breathing instead of the usual inanimate loot, and with Jayce as her crew. She didn’t know how she felt about that. He wasn’t as reassuring a presence as Creeds always had been.

“So how much hand-to-hand combat experience do you have?” she asked him, keeping her voice low.

“Not much in covert situations like this,” Jayce said frankly. “I mostly ferried around diplomats and special envoys, and I served as an additional bodyguard for them, but they had their own security details. I helped take down a couple lunatics who insisted on meeting them personally and got too close for comfort.”

“And that’s it?”

“Besides plenty of drills and training. For some reason pirates always avoided the ships I was on. And the way you fight, I’m glad,” he said with a wry twist of his lips.

That made sense. Sparrows were hard to catch and rarely had valuable physical cargo, and most pirates weren’t the sort to try to blackmail governments for hostage information or otherwise play political games. Except her father, with this little commission from the Atian Premier.

“Are you worried about how I’ll handle myself when we run into trouble?” he asked, an edge to his voice.

She owed him better than that, especially given the way he’d caught her off-guard back on the
Ionia
. “Just nervous in general,” she admitted. “I’ve never pulled off anything like this.”

“Pretend your mother figured out where rustlers took one of your sheep, and you’re trying to get it back discreetly.”

She muffled a laugh. The thought of her mother dealing with a rustler in a quiet manner was patently ridiculous. “I’ll tell the Speaker’s daughter that you compared her to a sheep.”

He made a soft bleating sound.

His joking helped with her nerves, but it meant she wasn’t paying as much attention to their surroundings. So when they rounded a corner to yet another corridor lined with windowed doors, they almost ran into a tall woman in a lab coat, her hair pulled back in an austere bun. She lifted her gaze from the tablet she’d been reading and gave them a level stare with blue-tinged eyes. “What are you doing here?” She blinked rapidly, and her eyes turned brown as her lenses shifted from reading mode.

Jayce slid an arm around Shayalin’s waist and flashed a grin at the researcher. “We’re hoping to become parents. There’s been some trouble, but everyone said Cuoramin could help.”

He had the earnest air down perfectly. Shayalin found it far too easy to lean into him. Even this light hold let her feel the muscles that had developed in his arms. She wrenched her mind to where it belonged and managed a wan smile for her role.

“This area is closed to non-employees,” the woman said flatly. “You’ve wandered pretty far. You’d better come with me.”

Jayce said, “My turn?”

Shayalin made a gesture of assent, and Jayce shot the woman with the stunner before she could puzzle out this exchange.

“Cheater,” Shayalin muttered as they dragged the body back around the corner.

“I’ll show off for you sometime when there isn’t a chance alarms will go off,” he said.

“Excuses, excuses.”

They stashed the woman in what looked to be a supply closet. Shayalin took her lab coat and shrugged it on, pausing to take the tablet as well. It would help cement her disguise and keep the researcher from using it to call for help once she regained consciousness.

It was fingerprint-sensitive, so she used the woman’s limp hand to key through its screens and set the zoom level to where it didn’t require special lenses. She didn’t even try to understand the complex chemical diagrams that were displaying and exited to a menu of general applications. “Ha!” A map of the facility appeared, helpfully pinpointing their location.

“Can you look up patients?” Jayce asked, leaning over her shoulder.

She batted him and his distracting warmth away. “Trying it.” But a search for “Zakiyah” yielded no results.

“Look up ‘Besud,’” Jayce said.

“Is that the father’s surname?” She tried it. Someone was listed in a private suite upstairs. Shayalin noted the location and added a schematics layer.

“Here.” Jayce pointed to a symbol for a service lift. “The orderly’s chip would work on that, and with your coat we can probably bluster past any guards in the halls. Act like you’re escorting me in and that I’m someone important.”

“I’ll try hard on that last part,” she said.

He gave her a hard look. “I know it doesn’t mean much to you, but being a top-rated pilot in the Corps actually does give me some standing.”

She bit her lip, wishing she could take back her careless words and return them to the camaraderie they’d been enjoying thus far. “Hey,” she said, grabbing at him. She wanted to take his hand and spread the warmth of his palm over her cheek so he’d brush his thumb along her cheekbone the way he used to, but he held his arm stiffly in her grasp.

“Yeah?”

But she stood there mutely. There was too much to say, and she didn’t know how to start. “I…”

He turned away, clearly uninterested in watching her stammer. “Let’s go.”

Miserable, she followed.

Their plan worked perfectly. They reached the door of the suite, and Shayalin was about to key the chime that would announce visitors when she saw the doorpad had a red light. It meant the occupant was locked in and wouldn’t be able to let them in anyway.

She tried the orderly’s thumbnail chip and was relieved to see the door slide open. Careless. Cuoramin must not have expected anyone unauthorized to get this far. Not that she was complaining.

They slipped inside. The outer room was plain, holding only some basic furnishings and no luxuries. That was a good sign. Shayalin had half-feared having to deal with some pampered brat. She strode to the inner door across the room and keyed it open.

The bedroom’s only occupant looked up from where she was sitting. Shayalin had been expecting a skinny little girl. This was an adult woman, although on the younger side, and she was anything but slender.

“You’re the Speaker’s daughter?” Shayalin asked, mentally cursing the premier. She hadn’t signed on to transport a pregnant woman. They were wretchedly hard to hide and had to be coddled, especially when they were this far along—which was, of course, why he hadn’t told her.

The woman looked uncomprehending and glanced over at Jayce, who had come to stand beside Shayalin in the doorway. She seemed to recognize him, but her smile was tentative and she was clearly dubious about Shayalin’s presence. Jayce smiled reassuringly and spoke to her with the liquid syllables of another language.

The woman relaxed and replied in the same tongue. Her hand came to rest on the curve of her belly.

“No,” Jayce said to Shayalin, pointing at the woman’s stomach. “That is. This woman is the Speaker’s wife.”

Shayalin hadn’t even known the Speaker was married. She almost laughed at the extent of the premier’s duplicity. He’d never mentioned the daughter’s age, simply letting her assume. Her father would be ashamed of how careless she’d been. “I can see how they’re inseparable,” she said. And what kind of doctor Keaton must be. She touched her chest. “I’m Lin Bailey.”

After listening to Jayce translate, the woman said, “Quynh Besud.”

They bowed politely to each other.

“She’s picked up a little Espretin,” Jayce said. “But if you want to talk fast or say anything complicated, you’ll have to have me or Keaton translate. She grew up on an isolated colony without much contact with offworlders.” His expression was rueful, as he knew very well Shayalin would recognize the type. Even the Steaders had used Espretin, though.