"Fifteen points for that round," Everett announced. "That makes five hundred seventy three for me and two thousand nine hundred and sixty for you." He frowned at the paper. "I don't know why I keep playing this with you."
"Because there isn't anything else to do and no one else will play," Leon answered.
"No one else is dumb enough to play with you. I'd say you were cheating except I can't figure out how you're doing it."
Leon grinned. "I learned from the best." He shuffled the cards.
"How long are we going to wait here?"
"As long as we need to."
"It better be less than five more days, or we'll be out of food."
Leon shuffled again. The cards snapped together.
"What other choice do we have but to wait?" Leon looked at Everett. "If I knew where she was, I wouldn't hesitate to find her. But something here is screwy. Where did they get the empaths from? I've never felt that much raw power in one place before. Something is wrong here. Really wrong."
"With Dace involved, you think it would be right?"
Leon flipped a card to Everett's side of the table. "High card deals." He snapped a card to the table in front of himself then set the deck aside.
"Sir?" Dyva stuck her head around the doorway. She was just as bored as they were. Only she didn't look bored now. Both men looked up from their card game. "You're going to have to see this to believe it."
"After the last weeks you tell me that?" Everett answered skeptically. But he was rising from his seat, leaving his card untouched.
He left his cabin on Dyva's heels. Leon stayed long enough to peek at the cards.
"I'm slipping," he muttered as he stuck Everett's card back in the deck. "That should have been a six, not a ten."
"You have got to be kidding me!" Everett's comment echoed down from the control room.
Leon hurried to join the others. All of them, including the Patrol refugees, crowded in the small room. The big overhead screen showed a low resolution scan of a ship out in far orbit.
"Where did that come from?" Leon asked.
"Your guess is as good as anyone's," Everett answered.
Commander Harouk had his face up almost against the screen, trying to identify the ship. He shook his head. "It isn't like anything I've seen. But the resolution's so low it could be almost anything. It reminds me most of an old intersystem colony ship."
"Whatever it is," Linzy said, "it's huge."
The blob of light that was the ship wavered through a haze of atmosphere.
"It isn't showing a beacon," Siy put in from where he sat by the com station.
"The big question, at least as I see it," Leon put in, "is what is that thing doing here? And who's flying it? And why?"
"That's three questions," Everett answered as he bent over Siy at the scan controls.
"Answer any one of the three and I can deduce the others," Leon said.
"No communications that I can pick up," Siy said. "And no sign that they recently entered the system."
"So, either they've been hiding for a while," Harouk said, "or they have some way to cloak their engine signatures."
"Or they just came in much farther out than usual," Russell, another of Everett's crew, said. "If they came in on a different vector and came in slow, they could sneak up on us. A ship that size would take a lot of slowing, we would have seen it if they came in at the usual distance range."
"The old colony ships used to do that," Harouk said. "Come in far out and spend a week or more slowing. It was easier on the settlers aboard."
"How come you know so much about them?" Leon asked the Patrol base commander.
"My dad's hobby," Harouk answered. "His grandfather used to fly one of those ships."
"But what if it isn't a colony ship?" Britneir, his assistant, asked. "And if it is a colony ship where did it come from?"
"We can stand here all day asking questions," Everett said. "Without doing anyone any good. Keep tracking it, Siy. If anything changes, let me know."
"You want to lose at cards some more?" Leon asked with a grin.
"I was going to invite Commander Harouk to a high level strategy session," Everett answered.
"The three of us?" Leon's grin widened and grew teeth. "Ah, yes, lots of high level strategy to plan."
"You're just looking for another victim," Harouk objected. "If you really had any planning to do you'd do it in front of your crew. You have before."
"I admit it, it was a ruse to get you into our game," Everett said. "I'm tired of being the only one losing to Leon. But we do need to discuss our options. That ship won't change them."
He turned to his crew and the Patrol officers crowded in the control room. "We've got five days left before we have to leave. If we push it longer than that, we'll be on tight rations all the way to Tebros." He glanced at Harouk.
"We haven't heard anything since that garbled message a week past," Harouk said. "No messages, nothing. Something's wrong in this sector."
The mood in the room sobered immediately. They knew there was trouble, but none of them knew how deep it ran.
"Lowell said something about pulling out, he gave the order," Harouk continued. "He knew something was coming. I told him I wasn't about to desert my post."
"You may not have much of a choice now," Everett said. He looked around the room at his crew and the Patrol officers. "We came here with one objective. We came to get Dace out, regardless of what Lowell may or may not have ordered."
"And we were here to protect Tivor," Harouk said, "although I never did figure out what we were protecting it from. Lowell ordered an evacuation. It's time we followed his orders."
Everett nodded, accepting Harouk's willingness to follow his lead. "There has been no sign that Dace is still alive, despite Leon's assurances that she must be. I recommend we wait three more days. After that, we leave."
Leon flapped his hands. "We just sit here longer? What if she's right out there, waiting? We need to go out there and find out what's happening. There hasn't been any fighting since this morning. Things have been quiet. I say we send someone out tonight."
"Are you volunteering?" Everett asked Leon.
"If you'll let me," Leon answered.
"Not in that jacket," Harouk said. "Let us do it. It's what they're trained for." He indicated the three Patrol ground troops still watching the screen.
"What is that?" one of them said, almost as if cued.
Everyone's attention snapped back to the main screen. A flickering swarm of objects separated from the big ship. Three of them fell towards the planet, burning through the atmosphere.
"Landing shuttles," Siy said. "They're on a trajectory that will bring them right here. Still no communications," he added.
"No weapons, either," Linzy added.
"Whoever they are, I doubt they have anything to do with us," Everett said. "It doesn't change our plans. Are you leading your men?" he asked, turning to Harouk.
Harouk shook his head. "I'm not trained for recon."
"There's someone on the field," Dyva broke in. "She's going to get fried if she's caught in their landing blast."
"Open the hatch, let her in, we can deal with her in the airlock if we have to," Everett said. It was his ship, he was in command.
Leon leaned over Dyva's shoulder, squinting at the camera view that showed a figure running towards their ship.
"I know her," he muttered. "Lowell's guard dog, I think."
Everett leaned over the equipment to stare at the tiny screen. Dyva wriggled out from between them.
"Paltronis? Here?" Everett said as he slid into her vacated seat.
"Paltronis?" Harouk joined them, leaning in.
"Is that her name?" Leon asked.
"She was here with Lowell," Harouk said. "He sent her off on some errand. She didn't come back through the port. I don't know how she got downside. If that is her."
The landing shuttles were closing in. Heat was beginning to shimmer across the landing field. The woman ran faster, headed for their ship and its promise of safety.
"Faster," Everett urged her.
They watched, glued to the screen, as the woman ran for her life.
"Open the hatch, now," Everett said over his shoulder as the woman passed out of view under the camera. He shoved himself out of the seat and ran for the airlock. Leon and Harouk were both on his heels.
Dyva opened the airlock as fast as she could, slapping the manual override button and jabbing in the code with her other hand. The door slid open. Paltronis stumbled into the ship, plastered with sweat and gasping. Heat poured through the airlock until Harouk slapped the emergency switch.
Leon and Everett caught Paltronis as she tripped over her own feet. She shoved them away, pushing herself upright with an effort.
"Everett?" she asked, astonishment on her face. "What are you doing here?"
"He hired me," Everett said, pointing at Leon.
Paltronis turned to face Leon. She was taller by a scant inch. She stared at him blankly.
"I'm hurt you don't remember me," Leon said, "although I'm not sure if we ever were formally introduced. Leon Gravis," he stuck out his hand, "Dace's lawyer."
"You're here for her? Jasyn sent you?" Paltronis reached for him. He wasn't fast enough. She wrapped her muscular arms around his neck.
He only hoped she'd kill him quickly and painlessly. He rolled his eyes at Harouk, hoping for rescue. Neither Harouk or Everett moved to help him.
"I never believed in the Spirit of Space before," Paltronis said, hugging Leon to her, "but I do now. There's no other explanation."
"What do you mean?" Leon squawked. He pried at her arms until she let him go.
She turned to Everett and Harouk. "We need a miracle to get Dace out of here. We didn't know who you were. Rian's not letting any information out. Not even Scholar could figure out who you were."
Harouk and Everett traded glances. Paltronis was not the reserved woman who had come with Lowell several weeks earlier. She was disheveled and babbling.
"What happened?" Harouk asked her.
"That would take hours to explain," Paltronis said. "I have to go back. We have to get Dace and Scholar out of there."
"You've got at least an hour before the landing jets out there cool enough to let us walk across the landing field," Everett said. "Tell us what you can. You can start by explaining where they got high level empaths to back up their rebellion."
Paltronis went still, as if she'd been shot. She suddenly sagged, all her energy draining away. "That was Dace," she said barely above a whisper, as if the words hurt.
"Dace isn't empathic, telepathic, or anything pathic," Leon objected.
Paltronis shook her head. "Lowell and Scholar both figured she was strong, very strong. She blocked it away to protect herself. She managed to break the block. With a little help from some of the Hrissia'noru's lost people."
Leon sucked in a breath. Harouk and Everett only looked puzzled.
"That explains a whole lot," Leon muttered. "Curse them all. Can't they leave her alone?"
"She went looking for them this time," Paltronis answered. "At least that's the story they gave me when they dumped her on me. She was drugged out of her mind at the time."
Leon started to bristle. Everett put a dampening hand on his shoulder.
"You want to start at the beginning?" Everett asked Paltronis.
"How about we start with what you want from us?" Harouk suggested instead.
Paltronis nodded. "Dace is in the government building, locked in a room near the top floor. Rian is using her and her power to keep the people under control. We have to break her out before Rian decides she's too dangerous to keep any longer."
"Sounds simple," Leon said.
Paltronis shook her head. "Nothing is ever simple, not when Dace is involved."
"Spoken truly," Everett said. "We've got an hour. Let's see what plans we can come up with."
It was more than an hour. It was the next morning before they were ready to move.
All through that night, while they revised plans with the crew and made makeshift weapons, the strange ships sat silently waiting. There were no signals, no communications, no answers to their hails. Paltronis and the others tried to ignore the creeping feeling they got whenever they caught sight of the ships on the viewscreen.
Whoever and whatever they were, they weren't going to interfere with the planned rescue. One way or another, Dace and Scholar were going to be on the ship when it lifted at noon. Paltronis and Leon both made the promise to themselves.