Fortunes of the Imperium - eARC Read online

  A thick, scaly hand appeared over the edge of her couch and hit the release on her safety straps. Tuk’s long snout peered down at her.

  “May I help you up, madam?”

  “Thanks,” Skana said. “What’s for lunch?”

  Tuk took her by both shoulders and lifted her out of the silkskin cradle as though she weighed no more than a doll.

  Good thing he works for me, she thought.

  “Omelets, madam. Champagne grapes and fresh strawberries. A light fruity white wine to accompany.”

  “Nice choice.” She smoothed her travel garments. You couldn’t go wrong with a silk jersey tunic and an ankle-length skirt over ship boots. She peered at Nile’s companions. They each had on a version of the outfit that Nile’s crush had been wearing when they saw her on Sparrow Island: a midriff-revealing bandeau top and a petal skirt with an irregular hem that brushed the knees. And ship boots. Not so romantic, but practical.

  “Thank you, madam,” Tuk said. “I hope you will enjoy it. The cookbot was trained in the very finest Taino hotels.”

  “I suppose you’re having something different.”

  Tuk closed one small eye.

  “I will be dining with the crew so my meal will not distress the guests.”

  Skana had seen him eat. It didn’t bother her, but she appreciated his delicacy.

  “Stay in touch,” she said.

  After lunch, Skana settled down with a bookfile on a silk-upholstered couch in the corner of the common room. The crash cradles had been stored away. They were really comfortable, but too hard to get in and out of in the course of a normal day.

  Nile took his companions on a full tour of the Pelican. Skana only hoped that he would remember not to show them the hidden cargo holds. The fewer people who knew they were there, the better. You never knew when you had to hide something vital.

  An hour or so later, he came in alone, to flop on the matching couch against the adjoining wall to hers.

  “Where are they?” she asked.

  “Taking some Infogrid time,” he said. “I think they were impressed.”

  “They’d have to be morons not to be impressed,” she said, “and we don’t hire morons.”

  “They know what they can post and what they can’t, right?” Nile asked, concern giving him a more pugnacious expression than usual. “They can’t talk about me.”

  “Yes, they can, Nile,” Skana said, with a patient sigh. She put her book on standby. “You’re a private citizen, going on a trip in your private vessel. Anyone who reads their postings is going to think ‘lucky you.’ The girls can’t anticipate anything, like saying that we’re going to the Autocracy until we actually get there, but they will get in trouble, and we will get in trouble, if they don’t put up accurate posts about location.”

  “I know . . .” Nile looked up at the coffered ceilings. Skana was proud of those. They were patterned after an ancient Earth palace in which every side of every panel, beam, lintel, and wall throughout the building featured a different and intricate painting. When traveling between star systems, you needed plenty of new things to look at. “Nice, Skana.”

  “Like it?”

  “I do. Almost like we were royalty ourselves. I wish . . . I wish she could see it.”

  Skana eyed him seriously.

  “She’s not your ladylove. In fact, she’s back on Keinolt. With any luck, you’ll never see her again.”

  “I couldn’t stand that,” Nile said, glancing away.

  Something in the way he spoke made Skana suspicious.

  “You tried to see her.” It was not a question. “When?”

  “Um. The other night.”

  Skana sat bolt upright on her couch.

  “Are you out of your mind? Where? Did you try to arrange a date? Did you use any of our communications circuits? Her Infogrid public file?”

  “No!” Nile protested. He waved a hand. “Never mind. I used some of the merchandise. I thought if she saw me, she would come with me and we could talk.”

  Skana groaned.

  “You tried to meet with her in person? There was a big party in the compound last night. The Edouardo V garden.”

  “I know,” Nile said sulkily. “I tried to get in.”

  “And that worked out how?” Skana demanded. “Not good, is my guess.” She reactivated her tablet and ran over the Infogrid for the night before. “You were spotted. An intruder was seen just inside one of the entrances.”

  “That wasn’t me! I never got in. I was waiting for her just outside the garden. Then there was an explosion, and I took off.”

  Skana knew all about the explosion. She had sent a few employees in to see if they could X out the lady so Nile would stop being obsessed by her. The bomb had been intended to flush guests out of the garden so the lady could be picked off by a sharpshooter. Too bad she had been hustled to safety in the middle of a horde of friends and security guards. Looked like neither of them had been successful at their nocturnal endeavors.

  “Good thing we left town,” Skana said, reading down the entries. “Ah. And so is she. She’s going traveling with one of her crazy cousins. Good. That’ll take her mind off you.”

  Nile grunted.

  “She’d understand if I only got the chance to explain,” he said.

  “Forget about her,” Skana advised. “I hear they’re all as dumb as stones anyhow.”

  A wail burst from the hidden speakers, interrupting Nile’s retort. They glanced at each other.

  The ship lurched to the right and upwards, pressing them into the cushions of their sofas.

  “What was that?” Skana asked. She reached for the in-ship communications panel in the table beside her couch. “Captain Sigismund, what’s going on up there?”

  “My apologies, madam!” came the bell-like voice of their pilot. “The shields detected an incoming energy blast!”

  “Who’s attacking us?” Nile demanded, springing to his feet. The next evasive maneuver sent him flying. He scrambled to his knees and pulled himself into one of the big chairs in the middle of the floor. “Captain, is it an Imperium ship?”

  “Attempting to read the signal, sir,” she said.

  Loud shrieks from the corridor heralded the arrival of Nile’s two girlfriends. One was barefoot. They tottered in, tossed from side to side as the Pelican’s defense system observed the discharges from the enemy’s guns and anticipated where they would pass. The sharp turns indicated the Pelican was being bracketed. Tuk appeared in the opposite doorway. He strode to the women and gathered them up under his short, muscular arms. Nile beckoned to him. Tuk dumped them onto his lap.

  “What’s happening, sir?” the receptionist pleaded.

  “It’ll be okay,” Nile said, gathering them into the oversized chair with him. It was a tight fit for three.

  “Prepare for possible impact,” Tuk said. Skana swung her legs up onto the sofa and palmed the wall for the emergency harnesses. Tuk seized them when they appeared and fastened her into place.

  Just as he did, the ship leaped again.

  Boom!

  “That was a direct hit,” Nile said, his voice hoarse. The girls let out little fearful noises, but didn’t scream.

  “Are they nuts?” Skana asked. “Tuk, go tell them who we are.”

  “The pilot is telling them right now,” Tuk said, touching the side of his head. Croctoids had no visible ears, so hearing devices were hidden from view, too. His brow ridges went up, and all his teeth showed. He normally sounded mild-mannered, but Skana knew that the cardiac system in his body belonged to a cold-blooded killer. “They challenge us.”

  “That’s it,” she said. “Gut them.”

  Tuk nodded.

  “They’re Paskals, ma’am! Get into the secure cabin!” He unfastened her straps again and helped her to her feet. She glared at her brother.

  “Nile, Paskals attacking! Buckle down!”

  Brother and sister hurried into the forward corridor. The concealed door of the safety c
hamber slid open just long enough for them to enter, then slid shut with a fierce hiss. Two platforms snapped out of the walls.

  The crash couches in there were not so fancy, but they were of the most impact-resistant foam known to science. Skana abandoned dignity as she clambered over the deep side of the bathtub-sized recess. The harness sprang over her body like a spiderweb.

  A loud grunt and the sound of fibers resonating told her Nile was safe. Then she heard pounding on the door.

  “Let us in, Mr. Bertu! Please!”

  “What about them?” Nile asked.

  “What about them?” Skana echoed. “The Paskals must have found out we were traveling this week. Coming out of the jump point, we were an easy target.”

  “Damn them!” he bellowed. “I told you it was a bad idea to leave home.”

  Whirring noises drowned out the sounds from outside. Bracing struts inside the door frame turned and locked into place. Intruders could not now penetrate it any more than they could break through the hull plates beside it. The dedicated air supply that was fed by a power source embedded in the walls kicked on. The unit could be jettisoned from a ship under siege. If it wasn’t detected and blown up, it and the live contents could survive for weeks until rescued. If she and Nile didn’t kill each other first.

  “If we just stay put on Keinolt all the time, we’re just as vulnerable,” Skana said. “You know that as well as I do.”

  “Paskals! Those scum!”

  Skana reached behind the padding near her right shoulder. A projection of what the captain was seeing beamed onto the flat gray ceiling. She spotted the blips of more than one ship, all with Paskal markings.

  The Paskals were a rival organization, and fierce competitors with the Bertus and other family-held corporations. Skana admired their tenacity and intelligent application of business practices, but they had resisted a merger on the grounds that anyone who had done that in the past two thousand years had ended up having their businesses picked off one at a time and subsumed. What happened to the other family members involved could never be proved, but they disappeared off the Infogrid.

  “Tuk, I must have missed it in the reports,” Skana said. “Have we seen somewhere the Paskals are pushing into our territory?”

  “They have a new recreational drug on the market in the Leonines,” Tuk replied. “PS4. No doubt Blute is cutting into their profits. Limuel Paskal probably hopes that by removing you he can profit in the entire system.”

  “That is never going to happen,” Nile said fiercely. “I want to tear them apart myself!”

  “Tuk will see to it you have a survivor to kill,” Skana said, calmly, although inside her senses were in turmoil. A fourth ship joined the three she could already see. In spite of Sigismund’s expert handling, they didn’t stand a chance of outrunning all of them to the next jump point. One ship hovered between the Pelican and the return point. There was no escape that way. It looked as if the Pelican was outnumbered.

  “They’re going to attempt boarding,” Tuk announced through the speaker system. Skana could hear the girls somewhere near him begging to be put in safe quarters. No time for that.

  “Slow down. Let them catch up.”

  The Pelican lurched. Skana was thrown from side to side in her safety couch. The blips grew larger and larger. One of them took the lead. The others surrounded it like the fletching on an arrow.

  “Magnetic beams grappling on.”

  Skana smiled fiercely. “Is the programming ready?”

  I have activated it.

  “Excellent.” Skana relaxed in the cradle and let her head fall back against the enveloping cushion. “Open the hatches.”

  Their secret weapon was about to claim its first victim.

  CHAPTER 9

  M’Kenna Copper concentrated on the small tablet that was all the technology she or her family was allowed in their dim prison suite. Who knew they had family cells on Partwe?

  She never thought in a million years she would have been arrested for any reason, let alone smuggling. They had always had good relationships with the merchants in the Autocracy. She and Rafe were law-abiding to a fault. They would never, never, never have risked their children’s lives, let alone their own, on contraband.

  Yet, a prison suite was their current home, and had been since their arrest. Two rooms were all they had. Temperature and lighting were out of their control. To her it always felt a little too warm and dry. The glare of the lights from the corridor drew attention to the fact that the lighting in the cells was dimmer than she liked. She felt as though she was hiding in a cupboard away from a threat. That was true enough.

  The bunks the Uctu constabulary provided were comfortable enough. Their padding was made so it couldn’t be pried away from the platform. It was raised at one end to make a pillow. The blanket fabric was too air-permeable to allow one to suffocate oneself, and too stiff to use as a noose. The walls were metal with a thick resinous coating on them that not only dampened the sounds from the corridor, but prevented the occupants from bashing their skulls in hopes of escape—or death. M’Kenna could see why suicide might be an alternative some might choose instead of official execution. She had looked up the methods the Uctu used. One glance was enough to make sure she code-locked the sites so the kids couldn’t open them.

  The children slept in one room, she and Rafe in the other. Sanitary facilities were behind an unmovable privacy barrier that prevented others from seeing what was going on behind it, although anyone could hear. They wore bright green prison coveralls day and night. They were taken from their cell for showers once every couple of days, at the same time their coveralls were replaced with clean ones, although some leeway was possible for small children not yet toilet trained. Being able to leave the confines of the cage-fronted cell with Dorna a few times a day helped M’Kenna cope, but it wasn’t enough. There was no privacy at all.

  Small as the living quarters in their ship were in comparison to a space station or the surface of a planet, at least they were able to stake out parts of that space for themselves, no-go areas that allowed them a morsel of alone-time. That was what kept M’Kenna in particular from committing mariticide or filicide. It was the little things, like the kids bumping into them or each other while playing, or her husband reaching out to touch her when she was thinking. Or M’Kenna stretching out her legs and kicking Rafe by accident. All of them were driving each other crazy. She needed time alone to work back through her memory of where the disaster might have happened. She had a gift for concentration, but it worked only in peace and quiet. There was little of either in the ward. She had to think. She had to!

  The truth was, she was baffled. How in the explosive core of Alpha Centauri Five had that war skimmer gotten into their ship? It was impossible! The family had never been away from the ship long enough for anyone to unbolt all those hull plates, penetrate the insulation and protective bladders around that usually stinky tank, drain it, stick the flyer inside, refasten all of the layers around it and rebolt the hull, all without making a sound or setting off any of their alarms. It certainly couldn’t have been done with them aboard. Anywhere they had docked ought to have detected interference on that scale.

  “It could’ve been when we went to the circus on Vijay 9,” Rafe said, breaking into her reverie. “We were gone all afternoon and half the evening.”

  “You are not helping,” M’Kenna snapped. “In fact, you are unhelping.” Her fierce look told him to back off. He did. So did all the kids. They knew when they heard ‘Mommy’s thinking voice,’ there was no appeal. They retreated into their chamber and played together quietly. For a while.

  “Let me out of here or I will tear you apart!” bellowed Nuro. He and the rest of the Wichu crew from Sword Snacks IV were just up the corridor. So were about half the ships that had left Way Station 46 with the Entertainer. They were all in the same boat, so to speak. A death ship.

  At least they had been transferred planetside. The air was fresher on Partwe
3, although the chlorine-heavy atmosphere friendly to Uctus was getting to all the outworlders. M’Kenna had complained repeatedly until the warden had increased filtration in the cells. The trouble was, every time an Uctu warder or guard opened a door to the outside, they got another lungful of chlorine. It wasn’t enough to kill anyone, but it made the prison smell like a swimming pool. Lerin had developed a worrisome sounding cough from it.

  M’Kenna’s inner noises were getting the better of her, too. Very few offenses in any nation called for the death penalty. Their court-appointed attorney, a Wichu named Allisjonil Derinket, assured them that most of the laws recited over the in-system relay were overturned on appeal. The trouble was that the crime of which she and the others stood accused was of carrying weapons of war over the borders without government license or permission. They had been caught red-handed. They had no way to prove their innocence. How long before the courts decided if they deserved an appeal? They were waiting to hear that and whether the children could be detached from the responsibility for the crime, leaving only their parents under indictment. M’Kenna would let herself be tortured to death slowly and agonizingly before a live audience if it would save her babies.

  The thought of never seeing her children again made her sob out loud. She stifled the noise in the horrid green fabric of her sleeve, but Dorna, always sensitive to M’Kenna’s moods, came toddling out of the other room and threw herself into her mother’s arms. M’Kenna cuddled the toddler, kissing her wealth of dark curls over and over again. Something had to be done to get the Coppers out of there. Somebody knew what had happened. She needed evidence. She needed a witness. Somebody had seen something that wasn’t right. A file somewhere had the data that proved that skimmer had gone into her ship when she wasn’t looking.

  Rafe kept the maintenance records. They showed nothing out of the ordinary. He swore up and down that every detail was correct. M’Kenna trusted him. He was the best husband and partner she could have imagined, not to mention efficient, hard-working, shrewd and patient. When he talked her out of her job as a saleswoman for modular domiciles fifteen years before, it had sounded so outrageous to her to spend her life as an interstellar merchant, but his family had done it for centuries, millennia, even. She had been right to trust in him, to tie her life to his among the stars. At his fingertips, he had the experience to know when a ship part was starting to go. Every little wobble in the ship meant something to him, even if they all sounded alike to M’Kenna. If Rafe said there was nothing out of place on his scopes or database, he meant it. That brought her back to an exterior threat. Somebody had targeted her and some of the others.