Starbase Human (36 page)

The wall panel slid open to reveal three laser pistols and a laser rifle. He wrapped the belts for two of the pistols around his waist, and then strapped the rifle over his chest. He disarmed the last pistol’s safety, switched the pistol into
ready
mode, which kept it charged up, and left it inside the panel.

Then he activated the panel’s self-destruct system. It wouldn’t blow unless his life signs vanished from the yacht’s controls. If his heat signature vanished, if it was clear he stopped breathing, if someone took him off the yacht, this panel would explode, and the explosion would be compounded by the pistol.

An image sent by the yacht herself floated across his vision. Invaders crowded into the airlock.

As he suspected, they were human. If he had access to the cockpit controls, he would be able to do some kind of identification. But he couldn’t. Not here.

At the moment, he didn’t recognize any faces, but he saw movement from the other ship. Only four people had entered the airlock—which was all it held.

More waited on the other side.

Waiting to board.

He had no idea how many would come for him. He only knew that there would be more than he could handle on his own.

His heart rate increased. He had never felt quite this alone before.

He had never
been
this alone before. No partner, no back-up, no government behind him.

He was on his own.

He let himself out of this cockpit and hoped to hell that the masking program he’d set up would hide his life signs from the invaders.

He had three stops to make before he could get to the second cockpit—and maybe, just maybe—an escape.

FORTY-SEVEN

“
THEY STOLE MY SON
,” Deshin murmured.

He stared at the image floating above the entertainment room floor. The image was a bit see-through, allowing the paneled wall to create a ghostly backdrop to the two cloned faces of three-year-old boys who looked exactly like Paavo had looked five years before.

“They’re not Paavo,” Jakande said.

Deshin looked at Jakande. Jakande hadn’t been working for him when the clone had been his son’s nanny. Did Jakande ever know the details of the clone infiltration?

Deshin wasn’t certain.

“I know,” he said flatly. “I worried that they had stolen Paavo’s DNA. Now I know that they have.”

“We can figure out a way to make sure they’ll never use those clones or others like them to infiltrate—”

“I know,” Deshin said. Strangely enough, he wasn’t thinking about someone looking like Paavo infiltrating his organization. That was years in the future. No one would mistake these young boys for his son.

Besides, he could set up an identification system that would immediately rule out any clone. Not through DNA, but through the old links that Paavo’s biological parents had illegally installed in his brain when he was an infant. The scarred-over links were unique to his boy, and always would be.

Deshin walked around the image. The children had put him off before he had put an actual, beloved face on them. But now that Jakande had shown him clones of Paavo, Deshin knew he couldn’t be part of anything that would result in the death of children who were biologically the same as his son.

He wouldn’t be able to live with himself.

He
had
softened up.

Once he had been able to live with anything.

“Who do we have in the vicinity?” he asked Jakande.

“I checked before this,” Jakande said. “Otto Koos was nearby. I figured you’d want him to run our part of the op, so I sent him and a team in that direction.”

“Good,” Deshin said.

Koos, Deshin’s former head of security, had redeemed himself by taking care of the person who had sent the clones who had infiltrated Deshin Enterprises, as well as the clones themselves.

Ever since, Deshin had used Koos for secret ops inside the Alliance. Koos was discrete, talented, and ruthless.

“We need a lot of cargo ships,” Deshin said. “This operation has changed.”

“Excuse me?” Jakande frowned, clearly surprised.

“We’re not going to destroy the clone factory,” Deshin said.

“But you said we can’t stop the others,” Jakande said.

“We can’t,” Deshin said. “I also said a bunch of my colleagues would try to steal what they could before the attacks hit.”

“Yeah,” Jakande said. “You said they’d take the DNA.”

“And other valuables,” Deshin said. “But they’re not going to steal what we will.”

Jakande’s frown grew deeper. “The Paavo clones?”

“Too specific for a quick in and out,” Deshin said. Besides, doing that didn’t satisfy the sense of horror he felt at those schools, those dormitories. “We’re going to take every clone we can, starting with the youngest, and working our way to the young adults.”

“And do what with them?” Jakande asked.

“Make them legit,” Deshin said. “We’re going to make them legit.”

FORTY-EIGHT

THE NARROW CORRIDOR’S
lights dimmed as Zagrando moved, the opposite from the way the lights in a standard space yacht functioned. In standard Alliance configurations, lights dimmed or went out after people left a corridor, not as they entered it.

He had gotten used to crouching through the low-ceilinged corridors as he went from section to section. His thighs had become a lot stronger than they had been, and his back had become accustomed to the angle.

Just this one change alone would tire his pursuers.

He hoped it would slow them down as well.

He opened a person-sized side panel, and went down one deck. The panels in the corridors were built for bots and for actual living servants because this truly was a luxury yacht, just not one of the yachts for rich Alliance teenagers.

Zagrando made it to the cargo level. He moved quickly. This was one of the most dangerous parts of his trip to the second cockpit, but he absolutely had to do this.

He could feel the time ticking away. Right now, a group had either huddled near the airlock door
inside
the yacht, or they were already going through the lower deck corridors, searching for him.

He was only two decks up.

His mouth had gone dry.

He slipped into the armory. The armory, like most places on the yacht, was coded to his DNA, and his DNA only. No one could get in, not even if they had copies of his DNA. Even a clone couldn’t open anything, because it would have either shortened telomeres and/or a marker inside its DNA, differentiating that DNA from his.

He loved that about this yacht.

The armory was tiny, little bigger than the average crew cabin on an average human-designed Alliance ship. He opened the tiny weapons bay, and saw all six torpedoes. That wasn’t a lot, but it might be enough to help him escape. He had to touch them as he gave them the command that would let them know that any launch sequence had to come from the second cockpit.

He slipped his middle finger into the groove on each of the six torpedoes, felt them heat in response to his touch, and then he closed the panel.

He half expected to turn around and find someone staring at him, but he hadn’t so far.

He ignored the other weapons. Some were truly terrifying—an actual crossbow and some vicious looking swords—but most were standard Alliance-grade guns. He set all the laser pistols and laser rifles to the
ready
mode, but left them behind, just as he had in the main cockpit.

Then the yacht sent him a map with heat signatures. Eight invaders so far, all crowded in the corridor near the main entrance.

It wouldn’t take them long to fan out.

He set up this armory to blow, just like he had set up the control panel in the cockpit one deck up. It was to do so after the torpedoes launched.

Not before.

He eased out of the armory, and headed to the cargo bay, half expecting the door to slide open and reveal even more invaders.

But the bay was empty.

It took one minute to set the explosives he had rigged weeks ago near the cargo bay door.

Twelve invaders now, and they had fanned out. He studied the map, saw that if he hurried, he might be able to make it to the second cockpit. He would have to forgo setting the explosives he had placed in the yacht’s galley and entertainment areas.

He slipped into another side panel, went up three decks, emerged—

—to find Ike Jarvis standing directly in front of him, laser pistol pointed right at him.

FORTY-NINE

JAKANDE CLEARLY DIDN’T
understand what Deshin intended to do with the clones once he had them. Deshin already had a plan. It would take a lot of setup on his part, but he didn’t have to do it until he got the clones away from Hétique—and that would be a trick in and of itself.

“We can’t kidnap hundreds of children,” Jakande said.

“We’re not,” Deshin said. “We’re stealing hundreds of slow-grow clones.”

“Still,” Jakande said. “That’s a major operation and it’ll take planning, and even if we succeed, what’ll we do with them?”

All good questions. Deshin hadn’t had much time to think about this, but one reason he had become head of Deshin Enterprises was because he could think so well on his feet.

“There are a couple of places we can take them,” he said. “I’ll worry about that for the moment. But we need to execute this plan fast.”

“What plan?” Jakande asked. “I don’t see a plan.”

He actually sounded panicked.

“I’ll work with Koos,” Deshin said. “He’s been around a long time. He can remember when we’ve done similar operations—”

“Sir, I don’t think you’re thinking this through,” Jakande said, then went gray as he realized exactly how critical he sounded. “I mean—”

“I know what you mean,” Deshin said.

“I don’t think so, sir.” Jakande spoke fast as if he wanted to get the thought out before he made another verbal error. “These are
children
, which means that if they’re under ten, they’ll need supervision, and if they’re under five, they’ll need a lot of supervision. You’ll have mercenaries do that?”

Deshin looked at Jakande over the images. Another good point, and one Deshin hadn’t completely realized. Especially with the infants.

“I guess we take caretakers out of the schools and dormitories as well as the children,” Deshin said. “We’ll figure out what to do with the adults later.”

“Sir—”

“Just find me Koos,” Deshin said. “I’ll talk to him. We did something similar in the past. If I remind him about it, he’ll know what to do.”

Jakande shook his head slightly. “If this doesn’t work—”

“I’ll know we tried,” Deshin said.

Jakande stared at him, as if he wasn’t sure who Deshin actually was any longer. “Do you want to talk to him here?”

“No,” Deshin said. “I’ll go to my office in the conference center.”

“The others might track your communications,” Jakande said.

“That’s all right,” Deshin said. “They expect me to go in early. They’ll be doing the same thing. We just have a different target. Go. I’ll join you in a minute.”

Jakande snapped his fingers together and the image vanished. Then he opened the door to the entertainment room and let himself out. After a moment, the apartment let Deshin know that Jakande was gone.

Deshin sank into one of the nearby chairs. Children. Whom he probably couldn’t rescue.

But he would try.

Timing would be everything. He would need to get those children onto those cargo ships just as the attack forces showed up. The ships would have to leave
before
the bombs hit, so that no one would associate his cargo vessels with the attacks.

Then he frowned. He would need more ships, waiting nearby. He would have to dump the initial ships.

And he would have to participate in the attacks as well, maybe even lead them, just to keep the timing under his own control.

He cursed again. It had seemed like such a good idea a short time ago. Go in, attack the clone factory wherever it was, get some revenge.

He had learned at the beginning of his career that revenge was often one of the most costly things a man could indulge in.

Apparently, the lesson hadn’t taken.

But it would now.

FIFTY

“
YOU’RE DONE, INIKO
.” Jarvis’s voice was deep and growly, the sign of an enhancement gone wrong.

Zagrando’s heart pounded. They were in a narrow corridor, neither of them standing upright. Zagrando had just come out of the armory after setting everything to blow.