Ambasadora (Book 1 of Ambasadora) (20 page)

“Yes, I have evidence to
prove that fragger operatives plotted the attempt on Ambasadora Mendoza’s
life.”

The lie never showed on the
Sovereign’s gaunt face.

“Why would fraggers go after
an ambasadora?” Phoebe Llewellyn’s tone was more critical than
questioning.

Rainer hadn’t seen Phoebe since
that day in the underground corridors, on his way to see Sara’s new body. The
archivist avoided his gaze now.

“They did it as an affront to
the Embassy,” the Sovereign said.

“There are more worthy
adversaries in this system than a newly entitled Socialite and her pilot,”
Llewellyn said.

Rainer silently agreed. The three
other council members also remained quiet.

“Do you suppose they did it
to humiliate
me
, then?” Prollixer asked.

“It would seem from their
previous protests that humiliating you would only be a bonus to fulfilling some
higher ideology.” Llewellyn’s pitch raised enough on that last word to
strengthen Rainer’s suspicion that she was sympathetic to the fraggers. Yet,
the Sovereign had never seen the signs. Rainer attributed the man’s distraction
to his failing health. Or perhaps he just hadn’t shared his thoughts with Rainer.
He’d kept quite a bit from him ever since Sara’s time at Palomin, not that he
was ever really open with Rainer or anyone else. As the years went by, there
was coincidentally less and less history available concerning the Sovereign.

“Let’s ask Contractor Varden.”

Prollixer had never asked for
Rainer’s opinion before during a council meeting.

“Do you believe the attack
on Ambasadora Mendoza is the result of fragger dissidence?”

“I don’t think we have
enough intel to say for certain.”

The warning in Prollixer’s stare
reminded Rainer of the power the man still wielded, making him rethink his
assumption of the man’s frailty. Rather than subduing Prollixer, desperation
energized his deviousness. Rainer would need to take more care in the future if
he was to outlive his Sovereign.

“The most intelligent
comment I’ve heard thus far,” Andravo said.

Before either Prollixer or
Llewellyn could respond, a contractor with lime and black hair ridging down the
middle of his head strolled into the chamber. A synth-flesh bandage covered his
forehead above his right eye.

“I’m afraid the meeting is adjourned,”
the Sovereign said.

Phoebe balked. “But, we’ve
not—”

“Contractor Varden, perhaps
you should escort the council out as they seem to have forgotten where the door
is.”

Retaining all the dignity they
could, the archivists filed out of the chamber in silence…and without escort.
They all understood that Sovereign Prollixer kept the council alive as a faux
check to his unmitigated governing; only, he’d never made the point so blatantly
until now.

Simon waved a hand and the
windows tinted further, throwing the room into complete darkness. Airscreens
popped on in front of each of the empty council chairs.

“Since you don’t believe we
have enough intel on the matter, I would like your perspective on this.”
The Sovereign motioned to his own viewer. “This is a feed from several
cameras secreted in one of the Nanga Ki guest suites.”

Magenta flame sconces accented
grey stone walls. In the middle stood an elevated square bed with an open canopy,
curtained at the posts in gauzy silver sheets.

The pilot from Sara’s ship
pounded on the suite’s door. Rainer’s chest tightened each time David Anlow’s
fist made contact with the metal. He was certain the door would eventually give
under the Armadan’s blows.

“Just think if we hadn’t
switched off their aggressor genes,” the Sovereign said. “We’d likely
be governed by our own military.”

Since when did Simon Prollixer
worry about losing power? His unnatural longevity and lack of interest in
breeding separated him from the other citizens. Now he was cursed with
mortality. That brought him just a little closer to his own kind and made him a
little more dangerous; he finally had something to lose.

The shot switched to Sara. Rainer
forced his fists not to ball as Sara touched the Armadan. He held his
composure, knowing the Sovereign’s gaze was as much on him as the people on the
screen. It was an exercise in self-control for Rainer as Sara smoothed one of
David’s eyebrows while they chatted. He rested his hand on her knee, then moved
it the entire way up her body. When they kissed, Rainer wanted to smash the
viewing console.

His six amours engaged in this
type of intimacy with other men on a regular basis, but Sara wasn’t his amour
and could never be if he wanted to maintain a pure line. She was never to be
had by him. Yet he couldn’t stop others from being with her. He had no control
over her, nor his emotions concerning her, and that enraged him.

The screen showed Sara pull away
from the kiss and look around wildly. Her behavior changed to that of a crazed
person, stumbling to the floor, crawling around. The Armadan struggled as well.

“You drugged them,”
Rainer said.

Sara punched at the stone wall,
and Rainer flinched, feeling her pain.

“She obviously had a bad
reaction. The drug affects every person differently.” Prollixer’s
matter-of-fact tone almost pushed Rainer too far. He gripped a handle on his
cender, then forced his fingers away from the pistol.

On the screen, David Anlow sprung
at the green-haired contractor standing in the room with them now. The Armadan lifted
him off his feet, then hurled him at two other contractors. Rainer was unnerved
by the larger man’s strength, but not as much as seeing Sara fight off her
attacker.

Prollixer had hoped to get his
information, then dispose of them both. Drugged out of their minds, they would
make easy prey, only the Sovereign hadn’t counted on Sara’s resistance to the
dosing. Rainer knew how Faya had used more drugs than she had license to and
what that did to Sara. He tried to forget he never stepped in to stop it.

The image switched to a voyeur
view of a large hall decorated in the same grey stone and hot pink flames. Sara
grabbed a woman who resembled Faya, but even at this distance, Rainer could
tell it wasn’t her.

From another angle, David argued
with a guard until he opened the airlock doors, allowing Sara and him to
escape. The viewer went blank and a dim light returned to the chamber.

“Why not finish it, even
with a voyeur present?” Rainer asked. “You’ve already suppressed this
from the Media with your delay protocol.” No one else in the entire system
could stop a live feed to the Media. And, no one knew the Sovereign could
either.

“Because the ambasadoras
represent the smiling, gentle aspect of the Embassy. I gave them to the masses
so they could ignore the ugly resentments the fraggers have stirred up about my
government. I can’t take that away right now.” He coughed, a rattling from
down deep in his chest.

Recovering, he continued, “I
need to release edited bits of this recording when it is most advantageous.
It’ll accompany an official response saying that fraggers attempted an assault
while the ambasadora was coupling with her new pilot. David Anlow’s fragger
colleagues will see him compromised by an agent of the Embassy, putting his own
carnal entertainment above the security of his organization. His loyalty will
be questioned. Some of his constituents may even turn on him. That will make
him reactive, prone to mistakes.”

Even with the intel suggesting that
an Armadan aboard the
Bard
was the fragger operative, Rainer could see
that David Anlow was not the man Prollixer wanted. Nothing about his
personality, his actions, his background pointed to involvement. Rainer knew it
because he didn’t have a hunch about the Armadan like he did about Phoebe
Llewellyn.

“Don’t you think it will
make good viewing for the citizenry? This drama will get massive air time; such
predictable Upper Caste behavior. Physical cues are so deeply ingrained in this
society that actions and reactions are automatic, like androids programmed for
coupling.”

Rainer disagreed. Prollixer was
the one becoming an automaton, single-minded in his obsession for a longer
life.

“It’s all those classes to
make them aware of every signal, every gesture, both conscious and
subconscious. But isn’t that what everyone wanted, better gene stock?”

He noted how the Sovereign spoke
of
them
, separating himself from society and its tenets. Maybe he needed
to brush up on his History, remember what happened on the worldships and why
all citizens, both Uppers and Lowers upheld the tradition of selective
marriage. Or, maybe once the fragger threat was quelled, the Sovereign just
needed to be dethroned.

The small stream of water
whooshing
from the faucet thundered into the drain like a flash flood through Palomin
Canyon. Somehow in last night’s confusion, Sean had left the bathroom faucet
on. He hadn’t noticed it until about an hour ago when his full bladder forced
him in and out of sleep.

He should have just gotten up,
but Sara was lying on his arm.

Her shallow breath brushed
against his hand. He barely felt it as his arm’s circulation dwindled, but he
couldn’t bear to disturb her. Most of the night she’d slid in and out of the
real, until he lay down with her. She whimpered a few times after that, but
settled back down with a few coaxing words. For Sean, it was the best sleep he
had had in years. He hated for it to end.

Sara shifted. He tried to slide
his arm out, dreading the inevitable discomfort of blood flowing back into his
limb. The action woke her. She rolled over and looked at him, her sleepy gaze
not quite focusing as she touched hesitant fingers to his cheek.

He eased his arm from under her,
feeling a bit awkward. She looked confused, as though searching her memory to
find out how she ended up here. He held up a finger for her to wait a minute
and sprinted to the bathroom. Once again he scanned her vitals with his
reporter as he had done several times last night. Her heart rate and
respiration were normal, but large amounts of chemical dosers still lingered in
her system. He wanted to study the compounds to see if it was an Embassy brew
or something designer.

Catching a glimpse of himself in
the mirror above the sink made him self-conscious. Dark blonde tufts of his
short hair stuck out at odd angles, and he hadn’t shaved in weeks. A bruise hid
near his lip, but the one blossoming above his right eye had nowhere to hide.
He splashed water over his face and hair, but it did little good. He told himself
it didn’t matter anyway, that he’d let an emotional fallacy get the best of him
last night. It was time he really woke up. She was here to spy on him, maybe
kill him, whether she knew it yet or not.

He returned, a healthy chip on
his shoulder.

Sara sat on the edge of the bed
and smoothed her wrinkled dress and fingered the strap that had broken during
one of her fits. She looked at him, her pupils still a little too large. Sean
kept a safe distance. So she couldn’t launch another attack, he told himself.

She ran her fingers through her
hair. He could still feel the softness of it on his own fingertips. He shook
off the memory. “How are you feeling?” he asked.

She didn’t respond, just stared.
It was taking her a while to come out of this.

“Sara?”

“I don’t know,” she
finally said.

“Fair enough.” What did
he expect her to say?

“I’m going to make some tea.
It will help.” The stronger, the better. “The bathroom’s right there
if you need it.” He looked around for a minute, wondering if there was
anything else he should say, decided there wasn’t and left.

As he rounded the hallway toward
the kitchen, a fragger transmission whirred into his mind—mandatory briefing in
three minutes. Standard invite was at least thirty. Something was up.

He grabbed a glass container of
tea and added boiling water from the spigot. He’d have to get rid of Sara if he
were going to respond to the invite. She would probably need a little time to
recover this morning, though, so he shouldn’t push her out if she wasn’t ready
to leave yet. He’d just say he wasn’t near an insertion point. This was
dangerous thinking. It wasn’t so much that he was skipping out on the fragger
invite, it was that he’d never done it before.

Sara walked into the kitchen, her
hair falling over her shoulder in a long ponytail and her arms wrapped around
her. She looked lucid, but her skin tone was a little paler, closer to Sean’s.

He poured the tea into his last
two clean mugs and handed her one.

She took a sip without looking at
him. “Thank you for helping me last night…though I’m not sure I wanted
anyone to see me like that.”

“It was no problem. No one
else needs to know.” He took a drink and hit the mug against his busted
lip. He pulled his head back in reflex.

Sara caught the movement. She
studied his face for the first time. Self-conscious, he stepped away, but her
hand on his forearm stopped him. “Did I do that to you?”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ve
had worse, though you are surprisingly strong.” He attempted a smile, but
it became a wince as his lip split open a little further.

She brushed her thumb over it as
though she could heal it with her touch, and Sean almost swore she could. Her
hand caressed his cheek, moving to his brow line. He closed his eyes as she
traced the bruise there and trailed her light touch to the little cut near his
hairline. He would have let her beat him senseless last night just to have her
touch him like this a little longer.

“I’m so sorry.” Her
voice broke. “After everything you did for me.”

Another whirring reminder entered
Sean’s mind. He ignored it.