Dragoon's Honor, page 16
“‘At Shangdu, did Kublai Khan a stately pleasure dome decree,’” she quoted. “In order to join Javier, I had to be prepared to be completely, naturally, unreservedly nude much of the time. And whatever else the mission might have called for. I won’t say that this is easy, comparatively, but it will be. Especially if there is a strong chance that I won’t have to consummate such a thing. More likely that I’d want to puke at the thought of letting that man touch me, but I can rest easy, knowing that he will get what he has coming. One way or the other.”
“You will not execute terminal sanction on this mission, sailor,” Bethany snapped in a hard voice that almost sounded like Zakhar. Or even Javier on a strong day.
Concord Naval Officer. This was what they sounded like. The ones who considered themselves the protectors of the galaxy today.
The Good Guys, but Djamila understood that to be a relative thing.
Still, she automatically snapped to before she turned a hard eye on the woman.
“Surveillance only, am I clear?” Bethany followed up, hard orders from a suddenly hard woman. “If we need terminal sanction, it will be done later, under controlled circumstances that do not allow them to trace it to you or us. It will be done. On my honor, Dragoon. But you will not do it now. Am. I. Clear?”
Djamila nodded.
She’d always wondered why Javier had so fixated on adding this woman to the crew. There were many librarians that could have been hired. Most would have worked out well as pirates, even.
Few could have done that. Especially to her.
“You are clear, sir,” Djamila said aloud, wondering at Bethany, but utterly proud of her at the same time.
Afia had blinked almost as much as Djamila. It was good.
“Very good,” Bethany said, adjusting her tone, though still retaining that command authority. “Afia, let’s walk her through the expected plan of attack tomorrow night.”
Djamila relaxed and focused on the combat-certified engineer speaking, wondering what rating she should assign Bethany.
If anything greater than Officer was even necessary.
PART 4
Javier would have loved to sleep in. Especially with the kinds of hours and kilometers he’d been keeping over the last few days.
He wasn’t twenty-two anymore. No more waking up from a party in a different jurisdiction, wearing somebody else’s pants.
He was management now. It came with even greater prices.
Like sitting in the back corner of the great suite, listening to Afia, Bethany, and Djamila explain their mission plan to him.
Sounded like overkill as he processed it, but Javier understood that this was one of those few times where you really did get bonus points for neatness.
Not like when you were using high explosives.
“And at the end of all that, we’re in a crapshoot that it will be worth anything at all?” he asked, eyeballing Afia primarily.
Bethany was into information, but Afia was the criminal mastermind here.
There was a reason he had her handle cargo and resupply, after all.
“Correct,” Bethany replied. “Excessive risk, for potentially minimal payoff, except that there is possibility of tremendous upside.”
“If he’s up to no good,” Javier added.
Djamila shrugged.
“It allows us to possibly place the imprimatur of legality on the actions,” she replied. “I’ve been ordered not to just kill the fucker outright, because I can’t easily get away later.”
He wondered who the hell could do that. Zakhar wasn’t all that involved in this mess. Then he caught Bethany’s eye.
Really? My little librarian is getting the hang of piracy? Bravo.
“Okay, so you are in his room and he’s out of the picture,” Javier nodded to all three. “How do you determine the value of the data, or anything else?”
“That’s my job,” Suvi called.
He watched Afia pull the shard from her pocket and turn the woman around to face him.
“The Dragoon will have me with her when the mission goes down,” Suvi continued. “The narcotic should make him helpful enough to give us passwords and codes. I can access the data and help her determine the relative value, either to copy it or destroy it, depending.”
“I’m hearing a lot of maybe in all this,” Javier offered. He focused his intentions on Djamila. “And your target was exceedingly interested in you. Seemed sad that I hadn’t had you with me on Excalibur last night, so I presume you’ll be high on his list tonight after dinner. I understand that he’s probably who you think he is. Is that enough to destroy him?”
“The stuff I gave her isn’t truth serum, per se,” Afia replied before Djamila could. “At the same time, it will make him exceedingly talkative, according to Ship-Suvi, so we can confirm that as well. Doubt that the locals give a shit, but it will put us entirely on the side of righteousness. And if he turns out to be a pure lookalike, she can back out more easily. Maybe leave a note on his pillow in the morning or something, then we can depart. You got what you needed?”
“For the most part,” Javier said. “I’ve got Rainier and Dr. Pešek going back and forth almost constantly. And Del hauling seed packets and cuttings either way. Nothing bad so far, and we could cut and run whenever. Hell, leaving sooner means that Amina has a reason to eventually end up around Altai, if only to trade more plants.”
“Yeah, definitely all about the pollination,” Afia nodded sagely.
Javier didn’t think he could blush with these women, but discovered that he was wrong. All of the women laughed at him. It was good.
“Should I go ahead and decide in my mercurialness that maybe I’ve been here long enough and that it’s time to go somewhere?” he asked. “Give all of you the out? Or play it by ear?”
“By ear,” Bethany said. “My planning branches several ways at the moment of discovery, and most of those plans are medium rare at best right now.”
Javier nodded, then studied Djamila.
The Dragoon.
“I understand that you’ll do whatever the mission calls for,” he said to her quietly. “Just make sure you don’t lose your soul in the process, okay?”
She blinked once, rocked back on her heels, then settled and nodded back to him.
“Okay,” he continued, rising. “Five minutes for a bio break then you are on duty.”
Time to go mess up some bad guys.
THE STING
PART 1
Djamila had spent the day focused, looking around the usual big-group dinner table.
Hyped up to a level beyond the bodyguard paranoia she’d been maintaining, even as the station folks maintained their own security around her. Javier would have been fine, all by himself, but she understood that he was presenting an image, and they had to keep it up at this point, rather than slide off that fine edge.
Appearances were everything in this game.
Javier was a spoiled prince who’d stumbled into the brass ring. Not all that far from the truth, but severely shaded in his case.
Nyseth/Qadir presented as a businessman in the upper middle range of things, interesting because he was into the sorts of shipping and such that Excalibur might have been available for hire, even if the man himself wasn’t a criminal she was hunting.
Even Djamila had to give the appearance of being merely one of Prince Javier’s lady killers. She did, however, allow herself to smile back at Nyseth when he caught her eye with a faint invitation to…something.
Several of the folks were caught eyeballing her when she paid attention. Ogling her, even, which still astounded her, though Djamila gave no hint of noticing.
Sascha and Hajna were both more attractive women. She was tall.
And, she supposed, lean and deadly, which might be its own kink to some folks.
She didn’t get it, but didn’t have to, because this was part of the mission.
Taliesin Berrett was with this group. As were a few of the others who had gone to Excalibur last night.
Javier had filled her in on some of the details, and it seemed like this collection had all more or less come together around the concept of building a winter wonderland in space.
To Djamila, it sounded like a recipe for disaster, but that might be all her hostile-climate training speaking. Tropical paradises were usually safe, except for dangerous animals. Winter cold meant frostbite. It meant passing out drunk in a snowbank and freezing before someone caught you.
Avalanches, presumably, would not be on the list of options, but broken legs and mangled bodies seemed to be a regular recurrence for skiers.
However, money would flow to the lowest point available, and Javier had seemingly breached a dyke somewhere.
He was good at that.
They were talking as if someone had already done the homework to start assembling a fund to back construction.
In a day and a half from when Javier and Berrett had first stumbled onto the topic? Did money move like that?
Except that these people weren’t money. They were MONEY!
Big players. Berrett had impressed Javier with his background and ability to grow his resources by tacking zeroes on the end. The others were about half self-made and half inheritors of vast industrial resources.
All of them seemed to think that it could be done, and wanted to do it first.
Because, first.
Thus, dinner went well. Amina Anargul showing off, after experiencing what Chay and Burdine had been able to do last night to show off.
Always pushing the envelope. Either bigger, or better, or faster, or something.
And Chay was amazing as a chef on his worst days.
They were down to drinks now, coffee or port as stewards cleared dessert trays. It was a good thing Javier exercised as much as he did, or all this rich food would bloat him quickly into a corpulent mass.
She didn’t see that in his future.
Too busy saving the galaxy. No time to be a homebody. Maybe for any of them.
Maybe ever.
Was she ready for that?
Were any of them?
Djamila filed that thought for later and focused on the men and women creating a new corporate entity intended to design a kind of resort never before done, at least as far as any of them had been able to research with local records.
Always competing.
However, that allowed her to understand each and every one of them, because that described her as well.
Except that Djamila Sykora was only competing against herself. And Death.
Death would win eventually.
Only eventually.
“So obviously, I can’t sign contracts for that amount of money without clearing it with my boss first,” Javier’s voice perked her right back into the present tense.
The crowd laughed, but it was a friendly laugh. A man willing to make self-deprecating jokes was a relaxed man. The kind of guy you wanted to enjoy a meal with.
Javier excelled.
“That being said, I do know for a fact that Altai has the kinds of yards necessary to do that work,” he continued. “Shangdu, after all, was built locally, and she maintains a fleet of naval vessels sufficient to protect her interests.”
Not quite Concord Navy by size or firepower, but enough to keep pirates at bay, if they chose to make that long sail over to bother her. Djamila had been surprised to discover how prepared Altai was for the future wars. Even before Javier and Dorn had crystalized things into dates and directions.
“While I’m not remaining in the immediate vicinity for long, Altai isn’t that far away,” he said. “And I think the Khatum would be quite interested in building such a thing. Or serving as a partner and backing this group, should you go forward. And she had expertise comparable to Amina here, so all manner of things could be done.”
He held them in the palm of his hand in ways that Djamila found herself occasionally jealous over, but it was Javier. That was one of his super powers. Certainly, he held them spellbound now.
“With that, however, I’ve had a heavy several days, and I plan to retire to my cabin and sleep for about twelve hours,” he said. “I’ll likely be down by the pool after a late brunch. Thank you everyone for a lovely night—several nights—and I will see you tomorrow.”
He rose abruptly and the others did as well.
Stepping away from the table, he gave her a look nobody else would see, indicating that all was moving forward exactly as planned.
He hadn’t needed to be involved, but had walked right down the path Afia and Bethany had laid out for him, like a good trooper.
Because the mission demanded it.
Even the Science Officer could follow orders.
When he felt like it.
Djamila caught Nyseth/Qadir’s interested glance as she followed Javier to the door, nodding discreetly back and then out into the hallway.
A promise of an assignation later.
Or assassination.
PART 2
Suvi hated being stupid, but at least she’d found a way to carve off some memory inside Sovereign Nakhimov’s systems to store some uptime.
As long as nobody actually needed to restore anything from those backup files she’d gone all digger wasp on. Then there might be a problem, since the backups contained about three percent of the original data at each end, and she’d stolen all the middles for her things.
Javier wouldn’t be around for more than a week, so she could crash the files when she was done with them, if it didn’t end up possible to offload herself to Bethany’s clamshell or somewhere.
She’d been bereft of context too much, but being able to talk to Bethany and Afia, and store all that, had helped.
Now, she almost felt like a real person again. Or whatever the electronic equivalent was.
Nobody had a useful thesaurus for crap like this. Most of her cousins weren’t even the sharpest spoons in the drawer, after all.
But she was doing that whole moray eel thing, down in the rocks and watching interesting things swim by overhead. As one does.
And a note had just arrived that got her attention.
Addressed to Gustavus Nyseth. From one Choe Ku-Hou, newly arrived on the station.
Hmmm.
Male.
Asian genotype. Possibly Chinese Diaspora, mixed in with a few other things. Businessman, which on this ship was the equivalent of Carbon Based Lifeform, it seemed.
Customs records, because those were WAY less secured than banking stuff. Pictures and basic bio information, because all departments might need that. Like the Room Service system she’d slithered her way into to hide.
It was amazing, what you could learn about people from their eating habits. Ship-Suvi would love some of these insights, if she could off-load them to herself later.
The lies you could tell with simple things like that, multiplied across a few hundred thousand visitors over the last several years, until Suvi figured she had a sample size sufficient to draw conclusions.
Fun stuff.
She didn’t try to read the message. Afia and Bethany had been firm on that one. Comms Security was a few steps down from banks and casino floors, but still way more than Room Service.
At the same time, it was the first time anybody had sent Nyseth any message that didn’t originate with staff doing official things. Bills, Room Service, or Housekeeping, for most of them.
This one stood out.
Worse, his customs report showed a datastore of a similar size and model to what Nyseth had brought aboard. Normally, luck and strangeness, but Suvi was assuming enemy action today, so all coincidences weren’t.
She dug in on the stranger.
Middle-aged guy. Well dressed in the image she had. Not bad looking, but she supposed her tastes were a little flawed, considering the guys she had to compare him against.
Still, business was for folks who didn’t have the looks to go into entertainment and were too short for anything but politics.
And he wanted to talk to Nyseth.
She checked her clock. Later in the day. Choe had arrived on station with one of the latest cargo and tourist runs from Yu’Urid. Presumably had gotten a ride there from somewhere else and then caught the tour bus out here.
Excalibur didn’t count, because Ship-Suvi stayed parked far enough away that Del had to run across a significant distance on his deliveries, but not a Jump.
Could she tell the Dragoon?
Nope. She’d gone off duty after dinner and was currently sitting in the same quiet bar as before, being all bait and stuff. And she had a Shard-Suvi with her, but hacking the comm system to send Djamila a message didn’t rise to the threat level Afia had established.
Plus, either Nyseth hadn’t seen the message at all, or hadn’t gotten around to replying, because Suvi was watching for that now, little birdies on nearby wires watching both men’s front doors. At least metaphorically. Or something.
Good enough.
And she could let Bethany know.
Suvi pulled up another episode of Paragon Grieving, charged Javier’s account, and dropped it into Bethany’s video library with a mental thunk like you got returning physical books through the slot.
Hopefully, Bethany would know what to do next.
PART 3
Bethany looked up when she got the ping announcement of a new delivery. And the bill.
That couldn’t be good.
Not right now.
She closed the file she was reading and opened the latest video.
“Hiya,” Suvi announced as she appeared like a newscaster bearing breaking news. “Got a thing that might be an emergency, but dunno. Our target just got a comm email from one Choe Ku-Hou, nation of origin listed as Da Xing. Newly arrived stranger. No response from our subject as yet. Details to follow.”
Then Suvi faded out and Bethany noted that the video file broke down into a whole series of photo stills and image scans of paperwork. She paused the video to review each step, then looked up at a horizon about a thousand light-years away.
