Desert World Rebirth (33 page)

Temar took his hand and shook it. “Ambassador Temar Gazer of Livre.”

Black wasn’t quite as muscled as Naite, but his shoulders were wider than Shan’s and he was taller than both brothers. Considering that Temar tended to use Naite as a measure of how large a person could get, Black was large.

“If you’ll follow me, Ambassador, I’ll set you up with the current feeds.”

“Temar.”

“Excuse me?”

Temar sighed and considered Black. They’d tried the quiet approach with the AFP and it hadn’t gone well. Besides, Temar’s nerves were frayed from too much verbal dancing and too little truth. “My people don’t care about titles the way yours seem to. I’m Temar. If on any given day I’m an ambassador or a landowner or a glassblower, I’m still Temar.”

“Yes, sir,” Black offered. He gave Temar an odd look, but he headed into his ship and Temar followed. “I have the feeds tied into the copilot’s chair. I can redirect them to private quarters if you prefer.”

“I don’t.”

“I didn’t figure you would,” Black said with some amusement.

“Should I call you Lieutenant or Black or Verly?” Temar asked as Black started climbing a ladder. He looked down at Temar.

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t call me Lieutenant. That’s a little more of a drop in rank than I’d prefer. If you want to call me by my rank, it’s Lieutenant Commander. If there’s more than one Lieutenant Commander around, you can add Black to the end of that. No one calls me Black, but if you want to call me Verly, it’d make me a little more comfortable about calling you Temar.” With that, he started climbing.

Temar followed. This ship clearly wasn’t designed for many people to share it, with narrow passages and ladders instead of elevators, but everything was clean and sleek. Verly headed down a narrow hall into a room that Temar immediately recognized. Dropping down into one seat, Verly gestured toward the second one. “Ambassador,” he said, inviting Temar to sit.

“Have there been more signals?” Temar asked as he settled down into the chair. It had high sides, and even Temar’s head was caught between two winglike structures that meant he could only look straight ahead without leaning forward in his chair. He shifted around until he got one leg under him and he could lean toward the control panel. One screen showed the greenish shadow forms that Temar had seen from the
Brazica
.

“No. But if there’s a snooper in the area, they’ll be transmitting on a tight beam, and the terrorists won’t move to the next step until they have confirmation that the vid successfully reached its destination.”

“Which is?”

Verly glanced over and then turned his whole chair to face Temar. “How much do you know about local politics?”

“Local as in who on Livre is most likely to file a council complaint about a neighbor’s boar, a lot. Local as in all this?” Temar gestured toward the controls and vid screens. “Nothing. This is my first time up here.”

Verly sighed and gave a nod. “Here’s the short of it. The PA gets accused of being micromanaging warmongers who try to force everyone to follow their rules. The AFP is a repressive government that claims to offer freedom while anyone who disagrees with their definition of free disappears. There are at least four major terrorist groups—two are associated with trying to put pressure on the AFP in order to get planets to break away from them. One attacks the PA, pretty much to annoy us, since our allies aren’t likely to change sides.”

“And the fourth?”

Verly made a face. “They’re just sort of nuts. They think God has told them that humanity is a disease corrupting his perfect planets. And then you have any number of homegrown terrorists with less elaborate plots. This looks like an FFA operation,
Freedom for All
. They’re the most vocal about condemning the AFP’s sins, and they have a hit list of diplomats and officers they want to kill.”

Temar closed his eyes and silently cursed the fact that he hadn’t known any of this.

“I have the broadcast vid ready,” Verly said after a moment.

Temar nodded. “Okay. Put it on.” Temar watched the screen as Pentalia appeared on the screen. Shan knelt on the floor next to one of Ambassador Melton’s aides, who had blood all over his shirt and face. Shan had his hands bound behind his back, while Melton sat in his chair with Pentalia’s gun to the side of his head. Temar watched while Melton made a long confession to ordering the executions of workers who had disrupted the mining on some moon Temar didn’t know. The ambassador was white-faced, with a bruised cheek that had a lazy trickle of blood sliding over it. The transmission ended with Pentalia making a grandiose claim that his group wouldn’t stop until freedom meant free.

“Nothing more?” Temar asked.

Verly shook his head. “The snooper will wait for confirmation that the message made it through. Then he’ll either torture Melton or simply execute him on vid.”

“And Shan?”

“Have you done anything they might not like?”

“We’ve only been here two days.”

“What did you trade to the AFP?”

Temar narrowed his eyes, wondering how much of this related to Shan and how much was Verly trying to get information for his own side. “A few pounds each of antimony trioxide, zirconium, and lanthanum oxide, samples of optic-quality glass, artwork, and a whole lot of broken computers we wanted fixed or replaced.”

Verly grimaced. “Did that guy know the details of the deal?”

Temar nodded.

“Those are critical supplies. He’ll probably force Shan to apologize and then he’ll do the same thing—torture and/or execute him on screen.”

A cold chill went through Temar. “That can’t happen.”

“Do you have rescue close enough to intervene?”

“We are the rescue,” Temar said. Verly didn’t look convinced of that. “We need to find a way to get in that room. Captain Helgen is focusing on his ship, so he isn’t even trying to rescue the hostages.”

“The FFA does like to blow themselves up with the ship.” Verly sounded like he sympathized with the captain’s position, but that wasn’t not what Temar wanted to hear.

“We have to find a way in there, either in person or through communication. Would Pentalia want to talk to you, since you’re Planetary Alliance instead of AFP?”

“Unlikely.” Verly shook his head. “They know we condemn their actions, even if we sympathize with their position.”

“And encourage it?” Temar asked, the words slipping out even though he knew it was stupid to antagonize the only person offering any help. Rushing on, Temar asked, “How many people do we have on this ship? Could we rush the corridor if we could get the door open?”

“The crew is you and I,” Verly said. “This is a long-range scout, designed to monitor from the deep.”

Temar looked around, as if some hero would miraculously appear from the air. That had happened before, when Naite had saved them from Ben’s schemes. Right now, no one could follow any clues to them.

“Verly,” Temar said, weighing every word before letting it escape, “I warned the AFP already that my people are stubborn. Your alliance left us to die of thirst, so we thrived, with farms and towns still running. The desert sends sandstorms to wipe us out, and we pull on sand veils and pull closer until it passes. If a terrorist group supporting your side murders Shan, it’s not going to end well for your side.”

“Meaning?” Verly asked.

Temar looked at him. “Meaning, I don’t know. I don’t know if the councils would vote to send tons of materials up on the condition it be used to hunt these terrorists down and deliver them to Livre or if my people would demand training and ships to track these people down themselves. On Livre, we expect justice.”

“That’s not how the universe works.”

Temar nodded. He understood that. “Yes, but are you going to convince a planet full of people of that when their whole life has been about fixing whatever broke, even if it meant doing the impossible? If this is broken, I don’t think anyone will like the consequences, so I’m telling you, you need to find a way to get me in that room. If Shan and I both die trying to fix this, that actually wouldn’t go over nearly as bad as me going home and telling everyone that I watched two ships sit and do nothing while Shan was murdered in cold blood. You have no idea how badly that will go over.”

“I don’t have authorization to take action here,” Verly said carefully.

“I don’t care. Good people don’t sit still while someone dies. Get me on that ship.”

Verly fingered one of the controls on his panel. “You do know you’re being unreasonable, correct?”

“Yes,” Temar agreed.

“Just making sure you knew it.” Verly turned his chair to face his control panel. “I’m not promising anything, but let me get a full set of scans before I tell you that you’re going to have to accept that sometimes people die.”

“Oh, I know people die, Verly. I’ve seen death. However, I won’t sit here while Shan dies.”

Verly didn’t answer, and for some time Temar watched the green shadows on the vid. The angle was odd, as if they were several feet higher and looking in on the room. The two standing people had to be Shan and Pentalia, since the one on the floor was the injured assistant and Melton sat in the chair where Temar had last seen him. The two people who were standing slowly circled, and Temar imagined Shan trying to edge closer, talking about God and forgiveness and moral right. Normally Temar had a lot of faith in Shan’s ability to talk. However, Shan had had his share of failures in that department, and Temar had to think that anyone who could blow up a ship of crewmates he’d lived with wouldn’t care about Shan’s God. Pentalia was more like Ben—convinced he was right while being utterly wrong.

“New message,” Verly said before his fingers went back to their steady work on the control board. Temar watched as Pentalia appeared on the screen again. This time Shan was on his feet, standing to the side of the screen.

“Those who attack the people have to expect the people to attack back,” Pentalia announced, his voice carrying a cold fury that frightened Temar.

“Gary, don’t do this,” Shan begged, taking a step forward. Melton was utterly white, and Pentalia pointed his weapon at Shan. Temar clutched the edge of the panel and leaned forward.
Shut up, Shan. Shut up. Don’t get yourself killed,
he silently begged.

“And those that align themselves with evil can expect the same fate,” Pentalia said. In a flash, he lowered the gun and pulled the trigger. Melton’s head exploded, a spray of red spreading across the room. Shan flinched back, but Temar could see the red freckles of blood across the pale blue shirt Hannal had made especially for this trip. “People will die until freedom means free for everyone,” Pentalia announced before the image vanished.

Temar stared at the blank screen, not realizing that he’d stopped breathing until the world wobbled uneasily. Sucking in air, Temar turned to Verly. “What now?”

“Now he tortures Shan until he can get an apology for supporting evil. He’ll want that on a vid before….”

“Before he kills Shan,” Temar finished when the silence continued too long. “Tell me you have a way into that ship. I don’t care what kind of risk I have to take or what I have to promise him, but I want Shan back now.”

“There is a plan. It’s a bad one, but it’s a plan,” Verly offered carefully.

“Bad? How bad?”

“Compared to a bullet to the brain, it’s a great plan. Compared to anything else, it’s stupid, dangerous, and utterly unthinkable.” Verly used the controls to bring up an image of the damaged ship. Temar could see where large chunks were missing, blown into space, leaving only ragged metal and floating garbage. “He’s blockaded them here.” A section of the undamaged ship glowed red. “Diplomatic quarters.”

“There’s only one way in there.” Temar said. “It’s a series of rooms that opens one into another.”

“Security, which is great unless the terrorist is an inside man, and then all your security gets turned against you. The doors have manual locks from the inside that would require hours to cut through.”

“By which time Shan would be dead.” Temar’s chest hurt.

“Exactly.” Verly clicked the computer and the corridor connecting the sections the terrorists controlled glowed in red. “So, when you’re cut off at the pass, go around.” An animation of a stick figure floated into the picture. “I plant explosives here, and blow out the side of the chamber.” The small stick figure touched the station and then floated away. Almost immediately, an explosion made little animated bits of station fly out. Tiny animated bodies flew out through the hole in the bulwark. “The sudden loss of pressure would pull them all out into space before they can detonate the explosives.”

“But… that would kill him.” Temar could feel his chest grow too tight for his pounding heart.

“Not if we move fast. I would grab him, and then you would winch us both back into my ship.” The animation image withdrew like a camera pulling back to show more of the picture, and now Temar could see a small, animated version of Verly’s ship, and the small Verly stick figure and Shan were speeding toward it. “I could use the computer’s scanner to identify which of the people in the hull is Shan, based on unique mineral compositions in your body created by living on Livre. Then I would detonate when Shan was closest to the blast point, minimizing the amount of time it would take me to get to him. The human body can last fifteen to twenty seconds before passing out, another thirty before suffering significant swelling, and up to two or three minutes before there’s any dangerous damage.”

“So, it’s safe?” Temar asked. If this was Verly’s definition of safe, Temar didn’t trust the man as far as he could throw him.

“Not even. I could miss catching him, and any lengthy maneuvering to try and secure him could leave us outside the three-minute window. At that point, anything from brain damage to death is possible. The explosion could send debris into him, leading to any number of injuries. Pentalia could detonate any explosives the captain hasn’t cleared from his decks, and Shan and I would both be killed.”

Temar nodded, oddly reassured by the honesty. The plan was dangerous, but it was a plan, and the way Verly explained it, it might actually work. “What odds do you give it?” Temar asked, fighting to keep his voice even.