Shadow captain star mast.., p.11
Shadow Captain (Star Master Book 1), page 11
Finally, Shenti said: "So, what brings you to my establishment?"
"There's someone I need to talk to," Lanati said, "Colonel Rahat."
Shenti's face hardened.
"That isn't as easy as it used to be, even for me," she said. "Bhakarat's always been paranoid, but he's gotten worse lately, and right now, he is particularly distrustful of Rahat and his interest in off-world politics."
"Meaning his support for my cause?"
"Yes." Shenti nodded towards a doorway that led into the back of the shop. "In the third changing room from the left, you'll find a hidden communications console with a special frequency. You know how such things are disguised, so I assume you'll recognize it when you see it. Given the friction between Bhakarat and Rahat, there will almost certainly be...undesirable parties eavesdropping on the other end."
Lanati seemed to stare into the distance for a moment.
"I'll risk it, even if someone is listening in," she said. "While I'm talking to Rahat, I will remind any listeners that Sekdaa Shipyards is an ally of the cause I am working for."
It's alright to say you're with the Partisans, Jetay thought. Everyone on the Vanner already knows that, me included.
"Unfortunately, Bhakarat is trying to cut his ties with the Shipyards," Shenti said. "He resents them for telling him what to do, and they're already looking for more trustworthy suppliers elsewhere. That's another reason why Rahat is unpopular right now; he has ties to the Shipyards."
"I suppose I'd better move quickly then," Lanati said.
"Is Bianub really the only place you can find what you're looking for?" Menevis said, inserting himself into the conversation for the first time.
This got him cold looks from both Lanati and Shenti, and Jetay was glad he hadn't been the one to say it.
"There are other places I could find what I'm looking for, given time," Lanati said. "Time is what I don't have. We need to get to Wajar before the Loyalists do, and we need to do it with someone Wajar and his employer will listen to. Unless you or Shenti have a better idea, I have to make contact with Rahat."
Menevis hung his head in silence, and Shenti looked grim.
"I might have a better idea eventually," she said, "But since you don't have time enough to go around, all I can do is let you use my equipment, and be prepared for things to go wrong."
"Third changing room from the left you said?" Lanati asked. Shenti nodded, and Lanati went into the back.
The silence that descended on the room felt awkward to Jetay but Shenti didn't seem bothered by their presence. She checked the fabric she had been dyeing, and then moved over to a large, cylindrical device that stood up as tall as she was. She opened a tray at the bottom, pulled out some scraps of fabric, and put them in a box.
Then she opened up the main compartment, which held a partially completed garment and checked it with some kind of handheld device. The handheld projected a laser dot onto the garment, and Jetay thought it might be some kind of measuring tool. Shenti closed the machine again, and pushed a few buttons, apparently to program it.
"Is that a fabrication device?" Jetay asked. "My brother saw one at a technology show when he was a boy and thought it was kind of cool."
Shenti showed him another smile, a bit warmer and less ironic than her first. "I don't tend to think of the tools of my trade as 'cool,' but this one does speed up the process nicely. Creating bespoke clothing the old-fashioned way can be tiresome. Did your brother become a tailor?"
Jetay shook his head. "He's a ship's mechanic. All kinds of machines interest him."
"He'd be wise not to take an interest in this machine," Menevis said. "Shenti used to work for the Star Navy, Intelligence Division. The machine probably cooks brainwashing chemicals on the side, or embeds tracking devices in the clothes it makes."
"You must forgive Lord Menevis," Shenti said, somehow managing to make the title sound like an insult. "He has such a naive view of the universe that he thinks everyone who worked for the people I did was a master spy with access to all sorts of dangerous technology."
"Are you claiming you weren't a master spy with that kind of access?" Menevis sneered.
"Of course I wasn't," Shenti said. "I was in Uniform Tailoring Services, Intelligence Division."
Menevis barked out a harsh laugh. "Do you really expect us to believe that?"
"I don't actually care very much what you gentlemen believe," Shenti said coolly. "But I believe in courtesy in all situations. I would prefer that you keep a civil tongue in your heads while you're in my store, or else remain silent."
Menevis glanced at Annut, and the jhamool stepped forward, his keen yellow eyes fixed on Shenti. He made a low, menacing hoot in the back of his throat and snapped his beak at Shenti.
If Lanati's plan doesn't work out, we're going to need this woman on our side, Jetay thought.
Annut's snarl widened. Shenti's jaw clinched, and she clutched the tiny laser device like a weapon.
If she panics and uses that thing on Annut's eyes, Menevis won't be able to control him, Jetay thought. Annut will run crazy, maybe kill all three of us.
Jetay really did not want to take two steps closer to the jhamool, but he did it anyway. Annut dropped into a sitting position leaning back on his haunches as if he were about to rise up on his hind legs in a full threat display.
"Stop that!" Jetay lunged forward and grabbed the creature's beak. "No!" he said holding the beak shut. He tried to talk to the creature the way he talked to Khed mind to mind. He broadcast the thoughts: No! Leave her alone!
Just for a moment he thought he might have reached the jhamool's mind. But Annut snorted and shook him off, knocking him to the floor. Then Annut turned and sauntered away, sitting down behind Menevis. The beast held its beak in the air, trying to look disinterested in what was going on.
Menevis stared down at Jetay with a sardonic gaze.
"You must have a death wish," he said. "Luckily for you, I want to get off this planet when our business is done, and we need you to pilot the ship."
It took Jetay a moment to realize that he had just made himself a hostage to keep Annut from attacking Shenti. She pocketed her laser device and offered him a hand up.
"Thank you," she said as he struggled to his feet.
He shrugged. "You were going to try and blind Annut and he was going to be very unhappy about that. Menevis and I were liable to get hurt as well as you if things got out of control."
Shenti's smile broadened, and so did the irony in it. "What an enlightened display of self-interest! But give me some credit," she said. "I would only try to blind him if he tried to attack me."
"I don't know how well that would have worked out," Jetay said dubiously. "Annut can move awfully fast when he wants to."
"So can I," Shenti said.
Lanati emerged from the back of the store.
"Menevis, I heard the commotion," she said.
He looked sullen. "And what part of that was my fault?"
"Whatever part involved Annut making threatening noises. You need to stop abusing your authority over Annut."
That seemed to make Menevis genuinely angry. "I would never abuse Annut. I'm his handler," Menevis answered. "It's my job to tell him what to do."
"It's not your job to make him think that everyone you don't like is a threat," Lanati retorted. "You're stressing the poor animal out, and interfering with my mission."
There was a long silence. Jetay thought he could see Menevis's better and worse impulses warring in the man's face. Finally, Menevis said: "I'm sorry, Lady Lanati, I didn't mean to cause trouble."
"I know you didn't," Lanati said softening a little. "That's why I spoke to you about these things. Because I knew that a word was all you needed."
"Thank you," Menevis said a little stiffly. "I shall endeavor to be a help and not a hindrance on this mission, cousin."
"You two are related?" Jetay asked. "I didn't realize that."
"Impressive," Shenti said. "In some ways, you're almost as naïve as Menevis."
"Don't pick on him," Lanati said. "He is not from my home planet, so of course he doesn't know about our aristocracy, about how virtually all of us are related to each other."
"Oh, I knew that the aristocrats all married among themselves," Jetay said. "It's just that you two don't really look alike."
"What did Rahat tell you?" Menevis asked Lanati, pointedly ignoring Jetay.
"Rahat was nervy, for all the reasons Shenti mentioned earlier. He said he was sending some people to meet us and take us to him," Lanati said.
Just then, a squad of men burst into the shop. They wore body armor and carried kinetic rifles and long transparent shields.
"Police! Freeze! Hands up!" The leader of the squad snarled.
Jetay did as he was told, and watched as they tried to muzzle Annut. Annut snapped and hooted, until one policeman held a gun to Lanati's head and said to Menevis: "Call him off." Menevis looked grim for a moment, and after that, Annut let the officers muzzle him and harness him.
"You should have just shot that beast," one of the men grumbled, as another officer, apparently an animal handler like Menevis, took Annut's leash.
The animal handler glared at him. "These creatures are expensive," he said. "Might as well retrain this one for our own department. I can tell this one what to do just fine, now that his own handler isn't interfering."
The police carried off Lanati's sidearm and that baton thing she had somehow turned into a dagger when she threatened Jetay. Searching Menevis turned up another baton and sidearm. They even took Shenti's little laser device away from her. The officer in charge of bagging and carrying the confiscated weapons handled the laser device much more carefully than anything he had taken off of Menevis or Lanati.
"This is an outrage!" Lanati snapped, as they put manacles on her. "I will definitely want to talk to your superiors after this. I was in touch with Colonel Rahat just now. We're supposed to meet his people here. He won't like it if you arrest us."
The lead police officer laughed in her face.
"I'm sure he wouldn't, but Colonel Rahat is dead," he said. "My commanding officer called me when I was on the way over here, saying that he'd shot the Colonel the moment he finished his treasonous communications with you."
"We didn't say anything treasonous!" Lanati insisted.
"Tell it to General Bhakarat," the man told her. "He wants to witness your execution personally, at his palace. He doesn't like precogs, and he'd love to watch one die. He wasn't there when we executed the precog from the Planetary Council, the one who almost prevented Bhakarat from taking charge."
"What makes Bhakarat think any of us is a precog?" Lanati asked.
"You are Lady Lanati, deputy-Nomarch of Hedjet," the officer replied. "Your planet takes that whole idea about the Nomarch being able to see the future very seriously, and if you are one of the Nomarch's potential heirs, then you are a precog."
Jetay blinked. This explains her staring off into the distance when she was trying to decide what to do, he thought. And why she was so confident that taking me as a hostage was going to work out for her. But why didn't she see this coming?
Because foresight is an unpredictable gift, one that never shows you the whole future, said a voice inside his head. It felt like an echo of a lesson or a lecture. He tried to remember where he'd heard that, but the memory would not come to him.
"Get moving!" The leader snapped, as the rest of his squad surrounded Jetay and the others.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I have to do something, Jetay thought. Otherwise all of us will die, and Khed will have to explain all of this to Ularti and she will be angry and take it out on him. He didn't like the idea of anyone dying, especially Lanati, but the idea of his brother being tortured loomed larger in his mind.
The police hurried them into a large hovertruck, of the same make and model as the armored transport that had chased them on Dahar. The police seemed afraid of what Lanati's group could do working together, because the seating arrangement alternated police officers and prisoners.
Lanati sat on the right-hand bench inside the prisoner compartment. She was closest to the door leading into the cab at the front of the hovertruck. There was an officer sitting next to her who carried everyone's personal effects in a briefcase. Opposite Lanati sat another policeman on the left-hand bench, with Menevis next to him.
On the other side of Lanati's policeman sat Shenti, followed by another policeman, who held Annut's harness and seemed to be able to talk to the jhamool telepathically even inside the hovertruck. Jetay noted this with interest because it meant that they weren't using a psi-dampening field in the truck. Supposedly the technology to generate a field which would interfere with any psychic activity was out there, although Jetay had never seen it in action. He was relieved that he wasn't dealing with it now.
On the other side of Menevis sat another policeman, followed by Jetay. He sat on the left-hand bench, next to the rear tailgate of the hovertruck, opposite the jhamool handler, whose attention was on Annut. The policeman sitting to Jetay's right stared at Shenti intently, as if she were a magician and he had laid a wager that he could spot how she pulled off her tricks. They didn't seem to think Jetay was a major threat, which suited him just fine.
I could use my mindblade, Jetay thought, but everyone would see it...or would they? His hands were manacled at the wrist, which would make what he was about to do less obvious to the policeman next to him.
He cupped his hands, and visualized a mindblade forming, but not the way he usually did, with him gripping the hilt and the blade extending from a position between his thumb and index finger.
Instead he imagined a small knifelike weapon, hovering between his hands, the end of the hilt just touching his fingertips and the blade pointing back towards him. He had to keep this very short, or he would end up stabbing himself in the belly with it. There was a faint sparkle between his hands, and then he willed the mindblade to be invisible.
This was only going to make the task more difficult because he couldn't see with his eyes what he was doing. But he willed himself to focus on the image in his mind's eye, where the mindblade was a drab gray shape extending backwards towards the palms of his hands.
He extended the blade gradually, a fraction of an inch at a time, until it reached the manacles at his wrists. He felt the slight release of tension as the mindblade cut through his restraints, but he carefully kept his hands in the same position as before, while he dismissed the mindblade.
He glanced over at the policeman to his left, noticing the crossbody position that the man wore his sidearm in.
I can't reach across him to grab that gun on his left hip, Jetay thought. I'm not going to be fast enough to keep him from drawing first. Could I knock him out first, with my fists? Not with that body armor. I'm going to have to kill him with a mindblade. The thought came to him with a feeling of horror.
He reached upward with his mind. Akh, forgive me, he thought, but I'm going to have to break the Kindler's laws.
Distant voices seemed to sound in his head, as far away and yet as clear as starlight in the night sky. Forgiveness is not ours to give, they said, nor does killing to protect yourself and others require forgiveness.
That gave him courage.
He began to visualize another mindblade: still invisible, still very short, but this time sitting in his left hand with the blade pointing downward in a reverse grip, of the kind used for conventional knife fighting.
The next time they lurched around a corner, Jetay made it a point to jostle against the policeman next to him. Jetay drove the invisible knife in his left hand into the police officer's belly. Everything after that seemed to happen at lightning speed. He dismissed the mindblade, snatched at the dead man's gun and shot the policeman sitting in between Lanati and Shenti. He caught a glimpse of Shenti jabbing a tiny sliver of metal into the thigh of the jhamool handler and the man spasmed and went rigid, foaming at the mouth.
Meanwhile, Menevis was wrestling with the man next to him for control of his gun. Jetay lunged past him, towards the door separating the back of the transport from the cab. He shot the lock and the door slid back.
He lunged through it and shot the driver and his companions, then bolted back to the prisoner compartment. Annut hooted and snarled, but it was a tribute to his training that he didn't jump into the fray without a command. Menevis was still struggling with the one policeman, hampered by the restraints on his hands.
Jetay raised his stolen gun again, but he couldn't get a clear shot with Menevis in the way. By instinct, he grabbed Menevis, shoved him away and shot the policeman in the face. Then time seemed to slow down to a normal speed. Jetay realized that the hovertruck was still moving, and darted up front to brake it to a stop and put it in park.
When he returned to the back to check on everyone else, he saw Lanati, still manacled, take the gun off of one of the dead policemen and shoot open the briefcase holding their belongings. She pulled out her baton and pushed a button on it that extended a triangular blade. Jetay watched with fascination as she cut her own restraints with it. This was the weapon she had used to hold him hostage a couple of hours before. Lanati turned to Shenti and Menevis, and cut their manacles in turn.
Menevis didn't even watch her while she was cutting his. Instead, he stared pointedly at Jetay's hands. Jetay still wore the wristlets from his broken manacles, but the thin steel strip connecting the two wrist pieces had been cut neatly through. Jetay hoped Menevis couldn't tell how neatly.
"How did you managed to break yours?" Menevis asked.
Jetay shrugged and tried to look innocent.
"I think mine were defective or something," he said.
Menevis frowned and opened his mouth to say something, but Shenti got there first.
"We all have our secrets, Lord Menevis. You should be thanking Jetay for using his secrets to our advantage, not interrogating him about them. Or are you going to interrogate me next?"
