Cat and Company (32 page)

“
What
battle?”

“He tried to take us out in Mehtap. He’ll know by now he’s failed. This is the next step. Discrediting me before I point at him and speak his real name. It’s war,” Bedivere said, “just not a war that anyone can see yet.”

“
We
can see it,” Connell pointed out.

“Which puts you in the same danger.”

“Wonderful,” Brant breathed.

Connell was watching his feet again. “Most of the other city feeds are running pro-Devlin stuff. That biography of his, right after the Varkan bill of rights was signed.”

“Of course,” Brant said. “Bedivere is bad. Devlin is good. And everyone who was airlifted out of Varnham or Sunita or Kashya will remember that Devlin knocked himself out saving them and swallow it whole.”

“So did Bedivere. So did we all,” Connell said stiffly.

“Besides, Cat did most of the work,” Bedivere added. “That’s not the way he’s spinning it, though.”

Connell kicked at the floor as he walked. “What can we do? The guy is massively popular and you sound like a crazed delinquent, Bedivere. They’re calling for inquiries, wondering what the real reasons were for the decisions you made. They’re second guessing everything you’ve ever done.”

“Wait until we get to the suite. I’ll feel happy discussing strategy behind a closed door,” Bedivere said.

He didn’t say it aloud, but he also wanted to be behind a shielded and armor-proof wall, too. Suddenly, even these familiar and dear surroundings felt threatening.

* * * * *

Charlton Space City, New Cathay (Ji Xiu Prime), Ji Xiu System, Perseus Arm. FY 10.187

Lilly gripped Brant’s arm as soon as they stepped into the suite. Her eyes were wide. Behind her, Zoey stood stiffly at attention, waiting for orders.

“Glave above, Brant! Someone beat Nichol August into a coma!”

“What?” Brant said blankly.

Connell gasped. He looked around the room. “Where is Yennifer?”

“She left the moment the news came through.” Lilly hurried along beside them as they moved into the room proper. “Bedivere, they’re saying you did it!”

Bedivere halted. “Me?”

“There’s video,” Lilly said. “And you disappeared, all of you. I can’t prove you didn’t do it because you
weren’t here
!”

“We don’t even know where August is,” Brant said calmly. “You and Connell have been searching for days. Do
you
know where he is?”

Lilly shook her head. Her eyes were large and frightened. “There’s footage,” she repeated.

“It’s fake,” Brant assured her flatly.

“But it makes sense,” Bedivere said. “I’m crazy, remember? Unreliable and delusional. Finding Nichol August and beating him up sounds reasonable. It sounds like something I might do.”

“You wouldn’t do that,” Brant said quickly. “None of us would.”

“No one else knows that. They can only see what Devlin is waving in front of them and what he’s showing them fits with what they already know, so they’ll believe it.”

“
Devlin
did this?” Lilly cried. She looked more than shocked now. She looked wan and weak.

Brant settled her on the sofa. “We’ve got a lot to tell you,” he said. He looked up at Zoey. “I’d like you to leave, Zoey, and I want the suite sealed once you’re gone. Nothing in. Nothing out.”

Zoey nodded and winked out.

* * * * *

“He was found on Tordis,” Lilly said, rubbing her hand over her eyes wearily. She was holding a cup in the other hand and steam rose from it. “He had been beaten until he was unconscious and they’re not sure they will be able to bring him out. They might have to euthanize and regenerate. They found him naked, lying in a ditch. His DNA didn’t match the public records there and that was when they tried a wider search for a match. That’s how it became public knowledge.”

“The footage?” Brant asked her gently, rubbing the back of her neck.

“The quarters he was living in. Security feed.”

“The beating took place in his apartment?” Connell asked.

“It doesn’t matter. They can make it look like anything they want,” Bedivere said. “What are they saying my reasons are for doing it?”

Lilly sipped from the cup. “They’re not, really. They don’t have to. You’re unhinged. You were seen entering and leaving the building. And everyone knows you’re inclined to disappear without warning these days, because you’re unstable. Ergo, you did it, for whatever reasons only your delusional mind understands.” She shook her head. “This is just horrible.”

“All Varkan disappear without warning,” Bedivere said calmly. “Because we can. Most of the time, we’re jumping humans to wherever they want to go, only that will be overlooked. So will the fact that Devlin and August were drinking buddies.”

“They
were
,” Connell breathed. “August sponsored Devlin when he first asked to live here.”

“They go back a long way,” Bedivere said. “I think that what really happened was that August reached out to Devlin for help from his bolt hole on Tordis. So Devlin sent someone, but it wasn’t to help him.”

“
Why
?” Lilly said. “Why is he so set on making you look so bad?”

“Because Devlin Woodward is really Kare Sarkisian,” Bedivere told her.

Lilly stared at him, as the coffee ran out of her cup and onto the floor, unheeded.

* * * * *

Once they had cleaned up the mess around the sofa, they moved to the dining table by unspoken accord.

Brant put the brandy decanter and glasses on the table between them as Bedivere told Lilly about Akira Sala and the formation of Devlin Woodward. She sat with her hands folded on the table in front of her, her lips pressed together and her eyes very large and listened without interruption.

It took a long while to explain it all, because he found he had to back up and explain everything that had led to him Akira in the first place. That explanation led to a dissecting of the last one hundred years, along with everything Bedivere could remember and that Connell had been able to put together about the miserable years he had spent in dark space.

“I
knew
you couldn’t have dived so deep without help,” Lilly said at last. “I just never, for a single moment, ever considered that Kare Sarkisian might be still alive and at the root of it. It’s…fantastic.”

“It sounds fantastic at first,” Connell said. “Once you get used to the idea, it explains so much that hasn’t made sense for a long time.”

“It does,” she agreed and smiled at Bedivere. “You must be relieved to know you’re not the wreck you thought you were.”

“I
was
a wreck and I’ll carry those scars forever,” Bedivere told her gently. “Sarkisian only pushed me there. He didn’t force me the sign the contracts or take the Darzi. I did that.”

“Only because he’d already convinced you over the last eighty years that you were that person,” Brant said sharply. “Don’t ever forget that.”

Bedivere shook his head. “Everyone has the capacity for darkness and deeds beyond ken. Even sweet Yennifer. He knows that. He just pushed me to the place where that darkness could emerge. I don’t like knowing that. I don’t like that he broke me. I just don’t have to stay broken.” He gave Lilly a small smile back. “That’s where our advantage lies. He still thinks I’m weak, that I can’t fight him. This August thing is just his way of making sure I stay down.”

The alarm in his mind made him jerk with the unexpectedness of it.

Connell swore, scrambling to his feet.

“What’s happening?” Lilly cried.

“Varkan.
Under fire!
” Bedivere cried, leaping from the chair into a dead run for the door.

* * * * *

Catherine scrambled the ship as soon as Mael alerted her. Devlin wasn’t aboard and that was unfortunate, yet the Varkan were just as happy to take her direction and there wasn’t time.

It really was a scramble. Everyone had relaxed in the last few days, with the last of the Sunita people relocated, finally. There were no emergencies to take care of and Devlin had declared that the
Hana
wasn’t going to move from the docking pad for a month at least, while they all recovered and rested from the marathon of the last two months.

More than half of the permanent Varkan crew were scattered across the city. There were enough on board to run the ship and she really only needed one Varkan pilot to make the jump, anyway.

Catherine strapped herself into the empty navigator’s chair next to Mael as the
Hana
moved out of the bay at a speed that had her drawing in slow, calming breaths as the walls and doors streaked past them. “Where are the Periglus?” she asked, trying to tally up the known systems that were closest to the three the Periglus had claimed. “And how did they get there so fast?” she added. “We destroyed all the gates.”

“Kashya,” Mael said quietly, staring ahead.

“
Kashya
?”

“They pursued one of the routine Varkan patrols,” he said. “Then opened fire on them.”

“Tell the stupid Varkan to jump away!” she cried.

“They can’t. We need engines to physically move the ship. The first volley took out their engines.” He glanced at her. “They knew exactly where to hit.”

Catherine shut up. Instead, she brought up the common feeds where the news would first appear and read the streams as they revolved. There was nothing there. This was too new and there were no humans and therefore no feeds in the Canum system where Kashya was. The alarm had been passed among the Varkan only.

Mael jumped the ship as soon as it was a few lengths beyond the city superstructure. Catherine just had time to see the hundreds of ships pouring out of the city into the space around it and winking out of sight as they jumped, then the ship shivered and the star field reformed in front of them.

Kashya lay ahead. The planet was green, where once it had been mottled brown and white. There was cloud cover.

“They’ve developed weather already,” she breathed, stunned.

“There,” Mael said, pointing.

She looked.

The
Hana
was streaking toward a dark shadow, moving so fast that the details of the cloud could be seen. There were dozens…hundreds of Periglus ships, possibly most of the parked fleet that had been orbiting above Kashya. Now they had all reassembled in local space.

“They’re arranged in a sphere,” she said.

“It’s hollow. The three skivvers are inside,” Mael said. “They have them trapped in the middle.” He bent his head, listening to something she couldn’t hear. Then he tapped the communications console on the dash and Bedivere’s voice emerged.

“…no circumstances should
anyone
open fire! I repeat again.
Do not fire
! Surround them, come as close as you dare, but do not fire. Acknowledge!”

Her heart leapt. “He’s trying to prevent open battle,” she breathed.

“Isn’t that why we’re here?” Mael asked her, sounding puzzled. “They fired upon us without provocation.”

“They’re observing,” she said, pointing to the cluster of ships hanging in space. “This is the first time they’ve become aware of us. You can’t greet an alien species with gunfire!”

“Everyone move up closer,” Bedivere said. “Let them see us.”

Catherine gripped the arms of the chair with damp hands, watching as the fleet of Varkan ships circled the Periglus. There were not nearly as many Varkan as there were alien ships, yet there were enough that they could fully enclose the Periglus in a loose net of ships.

For the first time, she got to see the Periglus ships up close. They were an odd mixture of sensuous, curve-hulled vessels and the spiky ships that had made Yuudai Grigorov speak of dragons with red eyes. What no one had mentioned until now was how
large
they all were.

The
Hana
Stareach
was a large ship in human terms but small in comparison to the smallest Periglus ship she could see.

The skivvers they had trapped must look almost microscopic to the Periglus, she realized. No wonder they had not bothered to pay any attention to the insects buzzing around their outer atmosphere until now.

“Movement,” Mael said sharply.

“They’re breaking up. It’s working,” she breathed.

“No, they’re turning to face us,” Mael said.

They were. Every Periglus ship that had been facing inward, studying the skivvers in their trap was now turning on its axis, to face out toward the Varkan net surrounding them.

“They’re still only observing!” Bedivere warned. “If
anyone
fires, we’re all dead. Take a deep breath and
wait
.”

It was easier said than done. Now the Periglus ships were facing them, they felt threatening, for all of them bristled with elongated superstructures that looked a lot like weapons. Some of the fixtures were glowing at the ends.

“Those look like guns to me,” she breathed.

“They’re not firing,” Mael pointed out calmly.

“Screw this.” It was Connell’s voice. “I’m going in between them. There’s room. I can pick up the skivvers and back out the same way.”

No
. The protest shaped her lips. She didn’t speak it. If Bedivere was right, if they were only observing, then Connell would be able to slide between them without provoking them.
If
they didn’t see the approach of his bus as a threat.

“Very slow and easy,” Bedivere replied. “They don’t have speed themselves. They’ll see it as a threat.”

“Dead slow,” Connell confirmed.

Far below her, just at the edge of the window, she saw movement and leaned over the dashboard to look. It was Connell’s big, roomy bus gliding across the space between the Varkan net and the Periglus armada.

“Here,” Mael murmured. A heads-up screen formed and she sat back to look at it. It was a much closer focus than her naked eye could manage.

Connell did not accelerate once the bus was moving forward. She saw the maneuvering jets fire in short spurts as he drifted across, lining the bus up so it could pass between the alien craft, into the center of the sphere they had formed.

The feed changed, showing the view from Connell’s bridge. The Periglus ships weren’t just big. They were
huge
, massively dwarfing Connell’s lumbering bus. Connell would have been able to see the scale of the craft with a more measured gaze than she, a mere human, had. He had seen how truly large the ships were and therefore, how large the space between each craft really was. That was why he had known he could slip between them.