Ledan Resort, Kachmar Sodality, The Karassian Homogeny.
Xenia appreciated Dana’s suggestion that she take a day off from her training to lie in the sun and relax. She really did feel tired. There was an ache in her back and her arms that nagged. Even her neck was stiff.
She found a lounger already on the sandy beach rimming the little cove and pulled it into the sun. She laid on it and closed her eyes.
“Xenia, wake up.”
“I’m not asleep.” She opened her eyes. There were two people standing next to her. A tall woman with short, copper-blonde hair and a wash of freckles over her cheeks and nose. A man… “Ari,” Xenia said, delighted. “You’ve been gone for such a long time!”
Ari nodded. “I have.” He glanced over his shoulder. “I have something to show you. Come with me.” He held out his hand.
Xenia frowned. “Where did you go?”
“Hurry,” the woman said, her voice low.
Ari leaned down and picked up Xenia’s hand. “It won’t take long. It’s not far away. Come and see.”
Xenia resisted his light and steady pull on her arm. “I really shouldn’t. Dana says I have to rest.”
“You can rest afterward,” Ari told her. He hauled, forcing Xenia to swing her feet over the sides of the lounger and stand, instead of falling into the sand at his feet.
Ari smiled at her. She had always liked his eyes, she remembered now. They were a pale color and flecked. “Good,” he told her, tugging her forward. “Now, just a little bit farther.”
“Ready,” the copper-headed woman said.
Ari looked past the woman. “Damn,” he muttered.
“Pick her up if she won’t go with you,” the woman said. “We have about thirty seconds before they see us.”
Xenia frowned. There was worry in their voices. She hadn’t heard worry in anyone’s voice or expression for a long time. She had almost forgotten what it was, until just now. She didn’t like the way it made her feel. Her heart was thudding uneasily. “I don’t want to go,” she told the two of them.
Ari’s smile was all wrong. “You really do need to see this. I promise, it won’t hurt you.”
Xenia hesitated. “This isn’t right.” She didn’t know what was wrong, precisely, but her uneasiness was building.
The woman made a vexed sound and stepped up close.
“No, wait!” Ari said sharply, his voice still soft.
The woman raised her arm. Something slammed into the side of Xenia’s neck, just under her ear, then blackness dropped over her.
* * * * *
Ledan Resort, Kachmar Sodality, The Karassian Homogeny.
Ready bent and let Bellona’s unconscious body fold over his shoulder, then straightened again. He glared at Sang. “Now we have to carry her, just when we need to sprint.”
“She wasn’t going to cooperate,” Sang pointed out, rubbing her elbow. The blow had worked far more effectively than she had thought it might when delivered by someone who had never performed the motion before. “The memory inhibitors must also limit free will. You heard her. She was doing what her coach told her to do. The Bellona I knew would have done the complete opposite.” She glanced over her shoulder.
The towheaded guards in casual clothing were coming closer, a tight knot of three of them, chatting easily. They had nothing to fear from the inmates. They were relaxed.
Ready hurried across the sand, heading for the little service corridor that ran beside the holographic wall. Sang followed. Rocks and tropical trees were arranged in front of the entrance in a way to discourage anyone from finding the corridor. They clambered over the rocks, Ready breathing hard.
“Shall I take her?” Sang asked.
He didn’t answer.
Sang glanced over her shoulder as they turned into the corridor. The guards had reached the path that surrounded that side of the artificial cove, still talking. They had not been seen, although that would not last for long. Inside this most secure of Karassian facilities, there would be lenses everywhere. The only reason no alarm had been raised so far was because they had moved around the enclosure as if they were residents. Neither of them carried any weapons that might alert observers or scanners.
Now they had taken Bellona, someone would react. How long before that happened depended upon how closely the feeds were being monitored. From the casual, lazy air of the three guards, Sang judged that minutes might yet pass before anyone noticed that one of their apps was missing.
The walls of the corridor were covered in the mossy growth that permeated the enclosure, encouraged by the humid air. The humidity was uncomfortable, for Sang was used to the dry heat of Cardenas. She pushed ahead of Ready and eased open the door into the greater compound and looked around.
Still no alarm.
“Too easy,” she whispered.
“It is beyond their imaginations that someone might do what we are doing,” Ready said. “Back to the skiff, as fast as we can.”
The air outside the enclosure was cooler, yet still damp, for it had rained only a short while ago. Puddles still lingered on the compressed and fused earth surface of the working areas. There were administration buildings on the far side, closer to the real beach.
The skiff they had stolen from the marina in Kachmarain City lay keel-up on a stony shore on the other side of the island. It had taken them all night to navigate through the swampy interior. It would take them longer to return, but as long as they stayed lower than two meters above ground at all times, they would not register on the passive scans covering the island. The same lack of imagination had presumed that no one would attempt to approach the island other than by air and had set the scanners accordingly.
“Their complacency will be their ruin,” Sang murmured as they moved into the scrubby land beyond the compound.
“It’s a human thing, complacency,” Ready said, his voice muffled as he kept his head down, watching where he put his feet. Bellona still hung unmoving over his shoulder. The long straight locks of disturbingly blonde hair hung from her head, waving softly with each step Ready took.
“Eriumans are not complacent,” Sang said, annoyed.
“They’re arrogant,” Ready said. “Same thing.” He was sounding breathless again.
“I would have checked the monitors constantly,” Sang pointed out. “I would have questioned why two new people were there.”
“You’re not Eriuman, though. Not really.”
Sang pressed her lips together to hold back her angry retort. She would need the energy for walking before this day was done.
* * * * *
Bellona woke shortly after that and struggled. Ready held her down, while Sang administered the sedative she had tucked away in her pouch. “Are you pleased, now, that I insisted upon contingency planning?” she asked.
Ready scowled and waved away an insect that was trying to lodge on Bellona’s face, with its odd, fair skin. “It’s one thing to anticipate. It’s another to act on every suspicion as if it is fact.”
“Now who is refusing to admit they are wrong?”
Ready lifted Bellona up. He didn’t speak again until they reached the skiff.
When the skiff was heading for the mainland once more, Sang gave Ready the coordinates for the northern shoreline of the landing field.
He plugged it in and grunted in surprise. “That’s the private spaceport.”
“Very good.”
“That’s how you got onto Kachmar? A private ship?”
“How else?”
“Public buses, liners, tourist cruisers, freighters, haulers, day shuttles…” He shrugged, then clutched the side of the skiff as it turned toward the new coordinates. “Did you steal the ship, too?”
“I bought it.”
Ready just looked at her.
“I thought it prudent to arrange transport that would allow a second, unregistered person to leave the planet.”
Ready look at her, his gaze steady. “So you bought a ship.”
“I was provided sufficient funds to cover any possibility.”
“Throwing money at a problem to erase guilt.” Ready looked away. “The more I hear about Reynard Cardenas, the more I admire him.” His tone was withering.
Sang didn’t respond. Any response would be a reflection upon the head of her family.
Ready looked down at Bellona, where she lay on the bench between them. “You bought a ship to take her back. Tell me, Sang, was there a single moment anywhere in this where you considered the possibility that you might not get Bellona back?”
“Failure was not a parameter of my assignment.”
Ready rolled his eyes. “You thought she was dead.”
“Irrelevant.”
“So did he.”
“Also irrelevant.”
“Did anyone truly think she might be alive, that this wasn’t a magnificent and expensive gesture?”
“Yes.”
Surprise skittered across his face. “That’s who is driving you?”
“Iulia Cardenas Scordina de Carosa is not my employer.”
“Just following orders, huh?”
“That is my function.”
“Right.” Ready turned away, watching the nose of the skiff slice through the black water. “Maybe you should start calling yourself ‘we’ again.”
“I will have to, soon enough,” Sang said complacently, looking ahead to where the mainland was a dark bruise on the horizon.
* * * * *
Kachmarain City, Kachmar Sodality, The Karassian Homogeny.
Security around the spaceport was nominal, another reason why Sang had chosen to use a private craft. The spaceport administrators considered security to be the responsibility of the ship owners who used the port. Most of the luxury craft did have posted sentries and passive shields, some of them lethal, but the perimeter of the landing field had a simple, sedentary fence. The sea side of the port had nothing at all barring entry, for the coast there was rocky and the seas high.
They wrecked the skiff upon the higher rocks, grounding it more surely than any anchor, then picked their way over to flat ground. Sang carried Bellona until they reached the sleek leisure vehicle, when she handed Bellona back to Ready and disengaged the shielding.
“You bought a Karassian yacht?” Ready asked.
“My registration says I am unenhanced Karassian. I could not arrive in an Eriuman jig.”
“This is the Slipstream model. They’ve been advertising it on almost every stream since I woke up here.”
“It is.” Sang lowered the ramp and they climbed into the ship.
“Only the best will do, hm?”
“Used vehicles are unreliable, have inquisitive owners and they are, above all, slow.” Sang closed up the craft.
The silence inside the ship seemed thick and heavy, after a day at sea with the wind in her ears and nearly three weeks of Karassian screens screaming at her from every angle. Sang pointed. “There is a small medical bay there. Third door.”
While Ready laid Bellona on the examination table, Sang connected with the ship’s AI and requested a DNA check.
The bed took a sample.
“Confirmed,” the computer reported. “Bellona Cardenas Scordina de Deluca.”
“You didn’t believe me,” Ready said, not sounding surprised.
“I am being thorough,” Sang told him. She silently asked the computer to prep for departure. The decking shivered under their feet as the engines rumbled to life. The shielding and insulation kept the sound down to a barely heard murmur. Once they were in vacuum, they wouldn’t hear it at all.
Sang looked down at the woman lying on the table. It was difficult to equate this very Karassian-looking woman with Max’s sister, yet now she was here in front of her, Sang could see even more familiar lines and angles.
“We can’t take her back to the family looking this way,” Sang said. “They will be horrified.”
“Won’t they just be happy to have her back?” Ready asked.
Sang discussed it with the computer. “I will take her to Maggar. There is a therapy group there that can reverse the gene expression and return her original appearance.”
“You figure it is that easy to go back?” Ready asked.
Sang thought of the days ahead. “It’s a start,” she admitted. She ordered the bed to secure Bellona’s body and keep her sedated, then headed for the door. “I thank you for your assistance, Khalil Ready. You have been of service to the Scordinii and have earned their favor.”
“You think I’m leaving?”
She looked back. Ready stood by the table, unmoving. He crossed his arms.
“My next stop is deep inside the Republic,” Sang pointed out.
“So?”
“You do not fear crossing that border?” For the first time she wondered where Khalil Ready had come from, before he had been sucked into the Appurtenance Services project.
He ran his fingers down his dark beard. “Do I look as if I care?”
Sang hesitated.
“I know. Taking a third person back isn’t part of your assignment,” Ready said dryly. “Think of it this way. If you don’t take me back, you don’t get to take Bellona back either. Where I go, she goes.”
Sang nodded. “Very well, then. I would advise you to strap in. The inertial filters on this vehicle are sub-standard.” She headed for the control deck.