Wings of Retribution (47 page)

Athenais cursed.

Rabbit glanced at her.  “You know it?”

“No, but with a name like ‘
New Divinity
,’ I’ve got a pretty good idea.”

“Who?”

“Juno.”

Rabbit’s face darkened and he turned back to their path.  “That would be bad.”

“Indeed,” Athenais said.  “Hey Rabbit.”

Rabbit turned.  “Wha—”

Athenais blasted him with the Phoenix.

…except the skinny little bastard dodged.  A flesh-seeking missile.  At point blank.  Athenais stared at the barrel of her gun, utterly betrayed.

Eying the liquefied stone where the shot had hit, Rabbit said, “New Divinity…  Wasn’t that the name of her project in Psy-Ops?”

“
Proposed
name,” Athenais muttered, holstering her weapon.  “The admiral didn’t think The New Divine Path of Humankind was politically correct.  They ended up calling it the Ultra-Sensory Communications Task Force.  USCTF.”

“Oh lord,” Rabbit muttered, rolling his eyes.  “All right, let’s go see if we can talk some sense into her.”

“How
did
you dodge that?” Athenais growled.  “It was aimed right at your face.”

Rabbit smirked at her.  “I’m just that good, baby.”

“Where’s Tommy?” Dallas demanded when Rabbit and Athenais returned.

Wow,
Stuart said. 
Athenais looks like she ran into a freighter at light-six.

Indeed, the space pirate’s face was a mass of healing bruises, with one of her eyes black and her bottom lip split and puffy.

“Never mind that prick,” Athenais said.  “Get Port Authority on the line.  We need the flightplan of a ship called
New Divinity.
  Was here three weeks ago, don’t know the exact dates.  Probably from out-system.  Doubt it’s registered.”

“Actually,
you
do that,” Dallas said.  “They see all those bruises, they’ll feel sorry for you.  Maybe think your pimp is after you.  Who beat you up, anyway?  Thought you were a big badass with that gun of yours.”

Can we please try not to provoke the lunatic with the gun?
Stuart asked.

“I’ll do it,” Rabbit interrupted.  “Attie, go see if you can find anyone in the hub who knows where the
Divinity
was headed.  I’ll bet you Juno never logged a flightplan, and if she did, it was a fake.”

Athenais fisted her hands.  “Let Fairy screw around with the natives.  I’ll bet you anything that ship was bound for the Black.”

“Why?”

“Last I heard of her, she was gonna start a mission for Psy-Ops out on some newly-discovered planet.  Whenever they start something like that, Utopi bigwigs wipe experiment planets off the map, make it look like they were never there.  So wherever she is, it’s probably in the Black.”

“What did you say Psy-Ops was, again?” Dallas asked.

“It’s a secret military group dedicated to psychological warfare,” Rabbit said.  “Boosting Utopi morale, destroying their enemy’s.  That kind of stuff.”  Then he cocked his head.  “Well, it was.  Got shut down millennia ago.”

Athenais grunted.  “Bet that pissed Juno off.”

Leaning back in the plush leather navigator’s seat, Rabbit let out a long sigh between his teeth.  “So, if we’re right, she could be on any one of those planets Psy-Ops blacked out during the wars.  If that was even her ship.”

“It was.”

“Who the hell’s Juno?” Dallas demanded.  “I thought we were looking for shifters.”

“Juno’s our business,” Athenais said.  “Go comb your hair or something, twit.”

Dallas’s mouth dropped open as she searched for something to say.

You could always tell her that her pimp called,
Stuart suggested,
and told her to throw on some makeup, ‘cause he didn’t want her scaring off any customers.

Delighted, Dallas repeated it.

“Juno’s the last original,” Rabbit said hastily, glancing between them.  “Attie, me, Marceau, Angus and Juno.”

“
Another
one?”  Dallas squinted.  “If she’s anything like
her
, count me out.”

“Great,” Athenais said.  “Stay here and fly shuttles.  You’d probably be good at it.”

“I took out Erriat’s entire
fleet
saving your
life
, you stupid bitch.”

In her head, she felt Stuart suck in his breath.

“Get off my ship.”  Athenais’s face was like wrought iron.

“It’s
my
ship.”

In the silence that followed, Dallas and Athenais locked gazes, the air between them becoming thick.  Then Athenais strode toward her and grabbed Dallas by the hair.

“You won’t get out,” the pirate snarled, “I’ll
throw
you out.”

“Attie, it’s her ship.”

“Shut up, Rabbit,” Athenais snarled, fist in Dallas’s scalp.  “I’ve had enough of this little tart.”

The woman was strong.  She pulled Dallas off balance, yanking her hair from the roots.  As Dallas struggled, the space pirate maneuvered her to the door and punched the button for the airlock.  She was about to shove her outside when Rabbit stepped forward and jammed his fist into Athenais’s solar plexus.  As the space-pirate stumbled, he rammed his knuckles under her jaw and into her throat.  The woman’s grip on Dallas went limp as she collapsed on the floor, wide-eyed, mouth open, wheezing.

“Go open the door to her room,” Rabbit said, his face grim.  He bent down, dragging Athenais up over his back.

Dallas complied.  Rabbit followed, the unconscious space-pirate slung over his wiry shoulder.  He threw her inside her room without care to what she hit.  Dallas winced as she heard the thud of metal.

Outside, Rabbit shut the door and entered a code.

“Override’s 8Q579K.”

Dallas nodded, stunned.  Not only had Rabbit given her the captain’s codes to the ship, but he had locked Athenais in her room.

Well, on the plus side,
Stuart said,
You just officially became captain.  …On the other hand, I’m pretty sure she’s gonna kill you, first chance she gets.

Rubbing her stinging scalp, still a bit cowed from the violence, Dallas just nodded.  

She meekly followed Rabbit to the helm, where he sat down in the pilot’s chair and queried Port Authority.  It took all of two minutes to find out that
New Divinity’s
flightplan was missing—an embarrassing situation, since ships were not allowed to leave port without filing some sort of documentation.  The confused clerk came to the conclusion that
New Divinity
must never have docked at Odan.

Rabbit put the comset down in frustration.  “Bribed,” he said, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

“She sounded pretty sincere,” Dallas noted.

“Not her,” Rabbit said, making a dismissive wave of his hand.  “Someone else.  Got rid of the file.”

“Why not just file a fake flightplan?”

“I’m sure they did, but whoever was piloting that ship wanted to be extra sure they could not be traced.  Port Authority didn’t have the registration numbers, the ship’s origin or class, the cargo, the crew roster…  I’m surprised they even had the name.”

“That’s a big bribe,” Dallas said, frowning.  “They’re usually pretty strict about that stuff.”

“Probably had to pay off most of the Authority,” Rabbit agreed.

“So why are we looking for the
New Divinity?”
Dallas asked.  “They got the shifters onboard?”

“As far as I can tell, yes.”  He sounded tired.  “Gods.  I think it will be the Jimbai Mountains, after this.  A nice hillside.  Hire a masonry crew.  Maybe raise some goats.”

“Huh?” Dallas said.

Rabbit waved his hand.  “Ignore me.  Just thinking out loud.”

“Okaaaay,” Dallas said.  “So we don’t have a flightplan and Athenais thinks the ship’s headed somewhere in the Black.”

“Yes.”

“So that’s it, then?” Dallas demanded.  “We have nothing else?”

“No.”  Sighing, Rabbit leaned forward and reached into the pocket of his slacks.  He pulled out his wallet and extracted a memchip.  “Ever since I had to leave Millennium, I’ve had to keep detailed maps of each Quad, paying special attention to systems that might have colonizable planets.”

“You had to leave Millennium?  Why?”

“I stole some money.”

“How long ago?”

“Seven thousand years, approximately.”

Dallas stared.  “Nobody cares anymore.”

“The man I stole it from does.”

“Who?  Angus?”  Then Dallas’s eyes widened.  “
Marceau?
!”

Rabbit shrugged.  “It was a corrupt company, anyway, but he owned most of the shares.  Millennium Biomedical.  They made tissue and organ replacements for fractions of a credit and sold them for thousands.”

“You stole from
Marceau?!”

“From the
company,”
Rabbit said irritably.  “I bankrupted the
company.
  Marceau just lost some of his net worth, that’s all.  Had to live in an apartment for a few years.  Postponed his governorship awhile.  No big deal.”

“No wonder you’re in hiding,” Dallas said.

“Like you said, it was a long time ago,” Rabbit muttered.

“Yeah, but rumor has it Marceau remembers
everything.
  Has he made any attempts to find you?”

“Yes.”

“Recently?”

“Yes.”

Dallas stared.  “You’re a dead man.”

Rabbit scowled at her.  “What I was saying before you interrupted me was that I have maps dating all the way back to the time I was planning my escape from Millennium, updated every ten years.  I’m going to plug them all into the computer and see which inconsistencies it can find.  It’s going to take a lot of concentration, so perhaps you should go find a good vidtext to read.”

Dallas winced at the thought of staring at two different maps, trying to find stars that didn’t exist.  “Tommy would probably be good at that.  He’s pretty anal.”