The New Space Opera 2 (25 page)

She programmed them back to the start of the shooting. She wanted to know if she had met the man who had killed Yuri and nearly killed her son.

The programming was already set up, again courtesy of the base's security team, and the playback began on a see-through screen right in front of her. She changed the backing to opaque so that she could see the action instead of the cockpit.

Then she watched as the passengers finished a lavish dinner. She recognized Misha by the back of his head and that twist of a curl right near his crown. She assumed the man beside him was Yuri, although that man looked decades older than the man in her memory.

She would never have predicted that Yuri would end up like that—too thin, balding, obviously stressed. But he had. He was concentrating on his after-dinner cognac, not on the man standing just across from them.

That man raised his laser rifle and shot Misha in the chest. Misha fell backward as the entire dining room erupted into chaos.

She went back until she found a good image of the killer, then enlarged it.

He had a rounded face and a bulbous nose, eyes that bulged just a little,
and an overhanging forehead. His head was shaved. The last time she had seen him, he had a full head of curly black hair.

His name wasn't Geninka. It was Piatnitsky. Victor Piatnitsky.

Her hands paused over the controls.

Odd that she would remember him better than Yuri. Anyone else would have remembered the man she had supposedly loved.

But she remembered the man she had trained with, because their professor had told them to do so.

Look right
, the professor had said.
Now look left. One of you will serve your people with honor. One of you will sell secrets. And one of you will hire your services to the highest bidder, who may, in fact, pay you to assassinate the other two. Remember each other's faces, but never ever assume that you are on the same side. I can guarantee that you are not
.

Her hands were shaking but the rest of her was not. Her mouth had tightened, but she felt nothing else. No anger, no sorrow, no regret.

She had confirmation now that these deaths had come because her family had been on board this cruise ship. Some would even say that the deaths were her fault.

But she hadn't pulled the trigger. She hadn't ordered the op.

She hadn't even contacted her family—not since Lysvista. She had only made certain that she had arrived in the NetherRealm before they had.

She made certain that she would meet them here, offer them the opportunity to join her, and should that fail, the opportunity to escape.

She hadn't thought that Intelligence would get to them before she would. She hadn't thought they would see this cruise as anything other than what it had initially been—a vacation, long-planned and long-deserved.

They had no way of knowing she would be here.

But it hadn't mattered. They knew the information would reach her.

Bile rose in her throat. She swallowed hard. Her stomach was queasy, but that had to be the smell.

She was calm in the face of all of this.

Except for those trembling hands.

Which programmed the massacre to proceed as fast as the equipment would let it, and then stopped when she saw that only one man remained standing.

Victor. He braced the back of the rifle against his shoulder as if he were hunting for game, then headed down the corridor outside the cockpit. He opened doors, searching for something.

Then he came into the cockpit and shut off all of the monitors.

This time, she cursed.

She would get nothing else from this console.

She moved over to ship's systems, wiped her hands on her shirt, and continued. He had to have gotten off the ship. He couldn't have brought his own vehicle because this was a commercial enterprise. He had to stay on the cruise company's property until the end of the trip.

But their property included skips and runabouts that went into the atmosphere of the approved planets, so that the tourists could visit pre-approved (and carefully maintained) sites. Those ships would have been useless in the blackness of space. They had limited capacity, deliberately, making everyone on board dependent on the cruise ship itself.

However, this ship was licensed to fly between sectors. It had to follow the regulations of all the nearby governments, one of which required the ship to have three stages of escape pods: those for near-planet accidents and other obvious quick-rescue scenarios; those for a few days of drifting; and those for deep space.

The deep-space escape pods had enough food, water, and power to drift for four to five weeks. They also had full communications capacity, even though they couldn't fly on their own.

She ran her hands over the equipment manifest and nodded as her suspicion was confirmed.

One of the deep-space pods was gone.

 

Now she knew exactly how the op went: Victor had to follow very precise instructions. He probably had his own navigation device, implanted either in his eye or in the palm of his hand.

When the coordinates flashed, letting him know that the ship was about to move into that government-less region between sectors, he took the rifle into the dining room, probably with the help of a staff member who did not survive long enough to realize the extent of his betrayal. Then, at a precise set of coordinates, Victor started firing.

He was on a time line. He had to complete his work before he reached another set of coordinates, because that was where he would abandon ship.

Then he would wait in the deep-space escape pod for retrieval. He would activate a beacon of his own. He would make sure that the call was weak, so that only ships passing close by would even notice the signal at all.

If his services were still valuable, he would be rescued. If they weren't, he would die there, alone, waiting, hoping that someone would find him in time.

She did know her government, however.

They would make him sweat.

They would wait until the last possible moment before finding him.

They would let him think he was going to die, then use his profound gratitude at his continued survival to ensure his loyalty for a few years to come.

She had been in that situation so many times that the gratitude had faded. On the last three rescues, she'd been surprised. On the very last, she'd almost been disappointed.

Not that she wanted to die.

But she had been disappointed that the cycle was about to start again.

 

She almost didn't tell him. Misha had disappeared into his room off the living area in the suite she had moved them to, going through what remained of his and his father's possessions as if they were a valuable treasure.

The boy needed to mourn, and then he needed to move on. He needed to accept that his life would be forever different.

She figured she would give him time to do that. Then when he finally thought of the killer, she would offer to take Misha to the site where the escape pod should have been.

Enough time would have passed that Victor would be either dead inside that pod or long-rescued.

But within the hour, Misha came out of his room.

“Well?” he asked. “Can we find him?”

And she found herself telling him the truth.

 

She planned to buy a ship anyway, something small and utilitarian. The ship she bought was larger than the one she'd planned on, more comfortable, but still relatively compact, with only a commons area, a small galley, and two small cabins. This ship had defenses, however, and she was beginning to think she needed them.

The ship was used, abandoned on the base when someone murdered its owner in one of the NetherRealm bars. She made sure everything worked, then she packed her gear and Misha's.

They left the following morning, without saying good-bye to anyone.

Within five hours, she found the escape pod exactly where she expected it to be. She had calibrated the ship's comm system to pick up the signal that Victor was sending.

The fact that he hadn't gone to a more common rescue beacon told her he was still alive, and still waiting.

He hadn't given up yet.

But she didn't tell Misha that. What she did tell Misha was the possibility that Victor was dead. She explained her reasoning, told Misha how ops worked without telling him that the “bitch” Victor had spoken of was her.

Although she suspected that Misha had worked that out for himself.

She used her ship's grappler to capture the escape pod, knowing that she was notifying Victor of her presence. Then she attached a small enclosed walkway to the ship. The walkway was built into her airlock system; she could lock out any undesirable. Since the airlock was so well reinforced (she thanked whatever god she could think of for the paranoia of the previous owner), she didn't have to worry about anyone blasting his way in.

Then she holstered her favorite weapon, a highly accurate laser pistol, on her hip, added a second pistol—tiny and not as effective at long range—to her ankle, and slid a knife up her sleeve.

Finally she turned to Misha, who had watched her preparations without saying a word.

“If I don't come back, you head back to the starbase. I have the automatic pilot programmed to take you there. All you have to do is engage it, and you can do that with voice commands.” She squared her shoulders. “I wouldn't worry about that though. I suspect he's dead.”

She didn't think Victor was dead, but she figured that was the best way to keep Misha from coming with her.

He followed her to the airlock. When she went inside, he slipped in with her.

She slammed her hand on the door controls, but he reset them.

“I'm coming with you.” He would have sounded adult, but his voice broke halfway through, soaring into the soprano range before settling into a low alto.

“No,” she said. “You don't need to see this.”

“Yes,” he said. “I do.”

Something in his face made her pause. Pain—or was it loss? grief? or an anger so deep that she didn't quite understand it?—steadied his features and let her know what he would look like as a full-grown man.

He had power in that gaze. She hadn't expected it.

Nor had she expected his determination. If she sent him back, she knew he would wait until she was inside the pod, then he would come after her.

She didn't need the interruption. If he was going to come along, he was going to come on her terms.

“All right,” she said. “You stay behind me. If I tell you to do something, you do it.”

He took a deep breath. She got the impression that he hadn't expected her acquiescence.

“Okay,” he said.

She stepped into the makeshift airlock on the other side of the walkway. She didn't like this part. If Victor suspected an enemy outside his escape pod's hatch, he would attack.

She pulled her pistol, made sure Misha was behind her as he promised, and then she opened the hatch.

A waft of hot, stale air covered her. It stank of sweat and unwashed human flesh. Her eyes watered, but she said nothing.

“Jeez,” Misha muttered.

She waved a hand to keep him quiet, then stepped inside.

The pod had been built to hold ten. It had two areas. Neither were real rooms, but they allowed larger groups a bit of privacy.

No one was in the front area.

Her breath caught. Maybe he had died, after all.

The main area had some controls, open containers of food, and a few blankets crumpled against one wall. She kicked the blankets, then stepped deeper into the pod.

He came at her from the side, fast and hard.

She stepped back and hit his belly with her elbow, knocking him sideways. The breath left his body with an audible “oof.”

He fell against a pile of food packages. His face was covered with dirt.

Someone hadn't packed enough water into this pod, or he would have cleaned himself before now.

She held the pistol over him.

“This bitch wants to know if the message you sent came from our mutual friends in Intelligence or if you're working for someone else.”

Victor's eyes narrowed. “What makes you think the message was for you?”

“Me.” Misha stepped forward. She bit back annoyance. She wanted him to stay behind. “You used me as a message.”

She hadn't told Misha that. He had figured it out on his own.

“You angered a lot of people by leaving that bioweapons facility intact,” Victor said.

“I presume it's gone now,” she said.

“It would have been if you hadn't warned them. There's a protracted war going on at Lysvista, and the good guys might just lose.”

She didn't believe in good or bad guys. She didn't believe in much of anything anymore.

If she ever had.

“Are you the only contract on me?”

He smiled. “If I told, that would take all the fun out of it.”

“Fun?” Misha's voice broke again. “You called killing my dad fun?”

Victor turned that smile on Misha. “Why do it if it's not fun?”

Misha screamed and launched himself at Victor. Victor put up his arms—elementary defensive posture—but he'd been trapped in here for too long. He was weak.

Misha grabbed his throat and shoved him backward, tumbling with him over the food piles. The food fell on top of them, obscuring her view.

“Misha!” she said.

Victor's legs were visible, kicking, pushing, struggling. Misha's were near his, but not moving.

She was breathing shallowly, almost light-headed. Her heart was pounding. It took her a second to realize what was happening.

She was frightened.

Not for herself, but for Misha.

She grabbed the food packages with one hand, shoving them away. Some slid out of her fingers, and she realized they were slick. She looked at her hand.

Blood.

She dug quicker, then stopped when she reached Misha. His face and neck were covered in blood.