The handlers gambit, p.27
The Handler's Gambit, page 27
“I know Reia never liked it, but raiding shipyards is a possibility—especially if we have his brains,” said Oke, nodding toward Boone.
“We are not raiding anything,” snapped Ementine.
“We could only take on Vindik if we got him alone,” said Argrov.
“We could not take him on if we had ten times the warships we have now,” said Marwud.
Boone interrupted. “It’s unlikely you would ever get him out from under the protection of General Greming.”
They stared at him for a moment, as if having forgotten he was there.
“This is pointless,” said Ementine to Krezen. “A brief discussion with no data, no real thinking behind it—we can’t act without a plan, and proper plans aren’t made over dinner.”
“Need I remind you that ‘proper plans’ are made on the fly all the time,” said Krezen, nodding to Boone, “or we’d be dead now.”
“She is right,” said Boone. “But we’re not making plans here. We are not deciding on a course of action to plan for. If you have done what you needed to do this evening—hired a strategist with a plan rolling around in his head for nearly two years—you can continue enjoying your dinner.”
Marwud shook his head. “How long would it take to prepare this plan? Vindik is still searching for us.”
“It’s simple, short-term, and we can begin tomorrow.”
“And?” said Ementine.
“As Captain Krezen said, Vindik moves his fleet around in flotillas,” said Boone. “He rarely keeps all the warships amassed in one place, and they’re never fully manned. To Captain Ementine’s chagrin, we will have to do some raiding, but what better shipyard to raid than one of Vindik’s dormant ones? Build your fleet and cut his down by using his own ships.”
“I suppose you know the location of these flotillas and their resource specifications?” asked Ementine.
“Of course.”
“How can you be sure Greming hasn’t changed things now that you are here?”
“I can’t, but they likely believe me to be a prisoner or dead, and they certainly don’t consider you a threat.”
“When you raid a flotilla, won’t he activate the others, or at least put them on alert?”
“They may be on alert, but not to incoming ships from their own fleet.” Krezen and Oke were nodding as the idea settled in their minds. “I’ll need to confirm a few things that I am assuming about your resources before we initiate this plan,” he added.
“Ah, see?” said Argrov. “Here comes the false sense of security. Any thought of taking Vindik on in any way is preposterous, especially from a child. The wine has gone to your head.” He stood and collected his jacket. “It will be particularly difficult for you to pull this off without the Canthayne to back you, and you know the Kiyodan will back out if I do.” He glared at Oke.
Oke glanced between Argrov and Krezen but did not move.
Ementine stood, leaning in to Argrov. “Are you threatening us? Or do you plan to abandon everything we’ve worked toward?”
“I do not condone this course of action.”
“There is no course of action yet,” Ementine reminded him.
“Well, you’ll have only the Morta Lesa behind you and your suicide mission led by a captive child. Good luck.” Argrov stormed out.
For a moment they stared at the door as if he would change his mind and return. Krezen wasn’t particularly sad to see him go—Argrov was always a sharp tongue and an emotional leader—but to break up the fleet now, after all they had been through, seemed faithless.
“I’ll talk to him,” said Oke.
“It’s all right,” said Boone, as calm as Krezen had ever seen him. He had matured a lot since his teen years under Baisen. “Your three ships will be good enough for starters, and whatever else you’ve got. If you’re willing to hear my plan.”
Skeptical, Marwud and Ementine looked to Krezen. Ementine said, “You’ve already heard this plan?”
Krezen replied, “Not a word of it. But I like it already.”
45 Reckless
Elyon pivoted on the ball of her foot in a slow movement that a bystander might have taken for a dance. In the days after the captains hired Boone to militarize their fleet, Elyon spent most of her time in one of the recreation rooms to practice her forms. She was irked when Boone entered the studio, but she did not let it distract her from the glacial movements of balance and strength.
He waited. She finished her form. “Where’ve you been?” she asked once she was firmly on two feet again.
“You look tired,” he said. “Are you ready to come over to the new ship?”
“Of course,” she lied.
“I chose a stateroom with a lot of empty space so that you can practice your forms. It’s not the kind of ship with the luxury of recreation centers.”
“If it’s not the Lupis, it’ll be fine.”
“Don’t forget the firen,” he said.
“Seriously?” She turned and started the next form. She didn’t need a handler, especially after he had abandoned her for more important operations. Boone took the hint and left her to her work.
After returning to her room and cleansing, she dressed in her black combat suit and dark, drapey, feminine clothes that would not restrict her movement. The attire was amenable to her mood. She had her own operation to attend to.
The Tazaec’s hangars were no longer on lockdown, at least for the transports. She climbed into the single seat of a solo and activated its start-up sequence. Once the mag-locks released the feet, she flew the solo out the massive hangar portal and away from the ship. She did not look back at either the Tazaec or the new ship as she jumped through higgspace to Reklar Titus.
* * *
Quadrant: Coalition
Station: Reklar Titus
The station was a behemoth compared to the Tazaec. Its three parallel habitation rings encircled a central column. The middle ring, larger than the other two and bulging at its equator, extended a platform outward like a flat skirt. Larger ships like freighters and yachts docked on either side of this platform and connected to the station through gangways. The smaller craft were directed into the hangars between the slips.
Elyon was early for her meeting. She waited for hours, flying at the edge of the traffic zone around the station and listening to the control center’s chatter with the other vessels. From this she learned how to approach without attracting attention to herself. When the meeting time neared, she slipped into the traffic pattern that angled toward the hangars, called in her intent to enter, and was assigned a portal for docking.
Feet locked, she slid the canopy back and hopped out. At the entrance to the station proper, she found a visitor’s map, which she used to mentally mark her path through the station to the meeting place. She took the extra time to get a sense of the layout of the station for when she needed to find her way back to the hangar—or escape—after her visit.
The interior mall was not busy with people. An off-white glow emanated from hidden lighting sources, bright enough to see well but dim enough to enhance the dust-coated signage clinging above each doorway and along the upper-level walkways. The floor was grimy, worn down by thousands of boots and shoes over the millennia. Someone on a small hovering vehicle zoomed by overhead, shrinking and disappearing around the distant curve of the ring.
She made her way to the designated meeting site according to the map, about a quarter of the way around the ring. The sign above the doorway read “T.G.O.” Elyon had no idea what it stood for, but the light illuminating the O was muted. A ramp led downward into a derelict portal leading to an eatery. The dark room, similar in size to her suite on the Tazaec, was unoccupied except for a man and a woman conversing at the bar, and two men in workman’s coveralls at a table in the back. They spied Elyon across the room, their eyes fixed on her as she approached. Elyon stared back at them. They each took a drag from a small, cylindrical tube, and one of the men stuffed it into his breast pocket.
“Dega?” she asked.
“Sit,” the man across the table said. Elyon saw the darkened rims around their eyes and shifted her weight onto one hip. “All right, don’t sit,” he said. “You don’t look like a jeweler.”
“You don’t look like a jeweler,” she replied. “Where’s the device?”
He scrutinized her, then stood up. “You have the stakes?” She nodded once. She did not have any money. Despite Reia’s wealth, Elyon had no idea how to access it.
Dega lightly tapped a ring on his finger against the table. He motioned for her to follow him. The two men led her to a vertical tube lift that sped them upward into the upper ring. There were fewer people here, and no commerce, only a broad corridor with walls and doors on either side. The ceiling was not as high, and there were no walkways above. The floor was as grimy as below, despite twin cleaning drones that skittered against the wall. The men walked for a short way and then stopped at a double-wide door, which split open from the middle as Dega neared it.
Inside was a storeroom with rows of shelving stacked with boxes and crates. They stepped inside, Elyon following warily. The doors slid closed behind her. She remained inside the door with the other man as Dega went to retrieve the device. Looking down the aisle between shelving, Elyon saw a workbench at the back of the room. She turned to the man who had stayed with her. “Are you jewelers?”
“We trade in rare gems,” said the man, but something in his tone didn’t sound right, and Elyon felt an uncomfortable squeeze in her gut.
Dega returned, carrying a small box. He held open the top to show her the device. It was flat and forked, with tiny micro-mechanical components clinging to each prong. “I have two,” he said. “But I only need one.”
“Show me how it works,” said Elyon.
Both men shifted on their feet and glanced at each other. The other man moved behind Elyon, who instinctively tracked him. Dega said, “What if I told you I’d give it to you for free?”
“I wouldn’t believe you,” she replied.
Dega smiled, but not with humor. With the hand that had been holding the lid of the box open, he reached toward Elyon’s face. Elyon deflected it with her right hand, grabbed the device out of the box with her left hand, and spun around toward the door. The other man closed in, grappling her, while Dega, now behind her, tossed the box and wrapped his arms around her legs at the knee. As they attempted to lift and turn her sideways, Elyon exploded a gravity blast outward. Dega crashed into a shelving unit, and the boxes on the top shelf cascaded onto him. The impact of the second man against the door dazed him. Elyon landed awkwardly but bounced back to her feet. Before Dega recovered, she grabbed him by the front of his coveralls and tried to drag him to the door so that it would open. He struggled and pulled on her arm, which enabled him to get to his feet.
Infuriated, Elyon switched her grip to his throat, shoved him against the next row of shelves, and ignited his neck with white-hot flames. He screamed, clinging to her arm to try to push her away. While she held him there, choking and burning, she stuffed the resonator into a back pocket with her other hand.
As Dega’s life slowly snuffed out under Elyon’s searing grip, the other man recovered. He saw Elyon killing Dega, opened the door, and sprinted out. Dropping Dega, Elyon chased after him. She caught him at the tube lift, but not before he triggered a security alarm. Elyon swept his leg, and as he teetered, she grabbed his head and rammed his face into her knee. Wrapping her arms around his neck and jaw, she jerked his whole body sideways, snapping his neck.
A blue light flashed silently above them.
The lift doors opened. Three women stepped out, saw Elyon stand up from the man’s limp body, and shrieked. Elyon slipped past them into the lift before the doors closed.
Concerned that she would meet armed forces at the middle ring, she prepared to spring as soon as the doors opened. When the split was wide enough for her slim body to fit through, she dove out onto the unready guards. They were dead or unconscious before they knew what hit them. Elyon continued running along the ground floor toward the hangar. Security was running toward her from both ends of the mall. She leapt onto a girder, bounced upward with her right foot at an angle, kicked off a merchant’s sign with her left, and propelled herself high enough to reach the railing of the second level walkway. She pulled herself over as the energy pulses flew past, frying the underside of the walkway above.
She had to decide: continue toward her own solo, or reverse direction in the hope they would be misled. Ducking below the railing, she chose to reverse. She could always steal a solo at another hangar…
“Station lockdown.” A calm, static voice echoed throughout the mall from an unseen audio system. Alternating white and blue lights replaced the yellow glow. On her right was a passage to another corridor that ran parallel to the walkway. Elyon ran through and continued away from the hangar in this new hallway. People ducked into doorways, locking them before she arrived. The lights continued to flash. The voice continued to repeat “station lockdown.”
Overhead, Elyon saw a shaft. Less than a meter in diameter, it was laced with pipes. Deep inside, it was dark. However, it was too high to reach, and too far from the walls to bound up. Taking a deep breath, she jumped upward, pushing the station’s gravity down with her hands. She was able to reach the shaft, but with her hands down, she was not able to grab on to the pipes in time. She tried again, timing it so that one hand shot up in time to grab hold. Then she hauled herself up into the shaft.
The smell in the shaft was dank and sour, and the pipes were coated in a thick, greasy grime. More than once she slipped as she climbed into the darkness. Below, guards ran past in the corridor, first in one direction, then in the other. Someone glanced up into the shaft, and Elyon hoped she was high enough not to be seen. When it was quiet below, she climbed farther. At some point they would figure out where she had disappeared and search more closely into the shaft.
She crawled for a while, until the noxious air was unbreathable. Activating the field harness in her suit, she was able to surround herself with a bubble of recycled air. The shift in pressure made her ears ache. Yawning, she wondered if anyone had ever used the vacuum field for a situation like this one.
A little further along, the shaft widened. Elyon removed the luxrod from her suit, held it up, and immediately regretted it. This vile underbelly of the station oozed with black slime coating a web of pipes, structural supports, and grating covers. Her hands were coated in it, her clothes were soaked in it. The combat suit kept it off her skin, except where it didn’t cover her skin. It was disgusting.
The light showed that the shaft branched out in four directions. Each of the shafts curved slightly, and she realized she had not been going “up” the whole time but curving along with the contour of the station. Where the shafts converged, she found a grating with a faint light below. Putting away the luxrod, she crawled toward the grating through the sludgy web, spelunking between and around the pipes, and trying not to let her face touch any of it.
Elyon peered through the grating. Below, the blue light continued to pulse faintly over the yellow-tinted ambiance. She was high above the mall, probably at the top of the ring between the inner and outer hulls. The floor level was at least fifteen meters below and vacant, except for the occasional patrol that floated by in groups on small platforms. They were still hunting her, and the station was still on lockdown.
As gross as it was, Elyon had to bide her time, and this was as good a place to hide as any.
46 A Worthy Fleet
Quadrant: Penumbra-Coalition Transition
Ship: Makellan
“Are you ready?” asked Krezen.
“Are you?” Boone watched the shell of the Tazaec slowly shrink in the star field through the viewport. He was sure the old captain had to be feeling something. Now Krezen captained the Makellan, a dreadnought their benefactors had sacrificed a lot of liens to purchase from Weeper. With it came an experimental weapon. It took little convincing of one of Reia’s most connected families to help them acquire it, in exchange for a future defense fleet of its own. If he survived and his plan held, Boone would gladly take that commission.
With his back to the viewport, Krezen stared at the display screen. “The drones are in place,” he said. “The civilians are safely away. We’re ready.”
Boone couldn’t help but feel slightly nervous about the campaign they were about to undertake. He had planned it for years—or the idea of it—and now it was about to come to life. It was both exciting and terrifying, like any appote game he had ever played against a master. An entire dominion was counting on this plan to work, and time was precious.
Drones had been dispatched to strip any valuables from the Tazaec. That included the art, and many personal effects that had belonged to Reia. Elyon had the firen stone, the only personal effect that she valued. Reia had taken the chargen. Once scuttled, the drones would rendezvous with one of the lienholders, and the Tazaec’s original signature would be restored. In essence, they were handing it back to the Coalition. And that meant Vindik would be in for a surprise, should his fleet eventually catch up to it.
The higgs jump sensation passed, and they were in another part of the galaxy. The Tazaec was on its own.
Now to other plans.
“Here’s something,” Krezen said, looking at a few messages clustered on his display. “There’s been a disturbance on Reklar Titus. Suspect has no known identity but is described from vis as a red-haired woman in black.”
Boone whirled around and scanned the screen for the message. Krezen enlarged the article. The image in the vis was clearly Elyon. Anger welled up in him. “How—why?” he said to the vis, as if to Elyon. “Why can’t you stay put for one minute?”
