gaian consortium 03 - the gaia gambit (30 page)

“Speak plainly, Wyler — I don’t need your Gaian double-talk.”

A sigh. “I’d forgotten how literal you Stacians can be. All right, then — I’ve been working with the Gaian authorities for some time in various capacities. Some of sen Trannick’s behavior has been under suspicion for some time, but no one could put a finger on what he was up to until he used you to get at Lira so she could be removed from her post in the Chlorae system.”

“That was all a setup?” Rast demanded. Good thing that Wyler was so many light-years away, or the Gaian would have run a strong risk of being throttled. “I thought you said Admiral Horner was clean.”

“He was — is, I mean. It was one of Lira’s crew who reported her, um, activities with you to the admiral’s office. He had no choice but to remove her. Turns out that crew member was being paid well by sen Trannick’s agents to report anything suspicious about his captain’s behavior. He was going to make sure she was removed one way or another…although I’m guessing he came up with that particular scheme because it was the most amusing. But we also knew that Lira wouldn’t leave it alone forever, and counted on her getting in contact with me for assistance.” Wyler hesitated, and a rueful smile touched his mouth. “What I didn’t count on was her detour to Iradia, but that’s worked out to our advantage anyway. The Gaian authorities have been trying to nail down Gared Tomas for years, so that’s a nice little bonus.”

“Wonderful for you. And so you had no idea of the Eridani connection until your hacker friend unearthed it for you?”

“None. As soon as Lira relayed that information to me, I sent it on to the Eridanis. They’re working things on their end, but unfortunately weren’t fast enough to catch up with Daos Senn before he handed Lira off to Gared Tomas’s agents.”

Typical. No doubt the Eridani agents involved had to waste precious time to send politely worded communiques back and forth before they decided on a plan of action. While he couldn’t deny how much his home world had been helped by the Eridanis, he also knew that having any sort of extended dealings with them made him want to tear his hair out.

He’d heard enough. “Speaking of wasting time, I’ve already done enough of that. Lira’s been here on Iradia in Tomas’s hands for almost twelve standard hours. I’m going in to get her.”

“But the team — ”

“ — can mop things up when they get here. I’m out.” Rast cut off the transmission and shoved the handheld back in his pocket, then got up from the table and swiped his voucher at the kiosk on his way out of the restaurant before hurrying back to the ’port to retrieve his ship.

Wyler might not have provided exact coordinates, but the information he’d provided should be enough. The stolen fighter craft had fairly powerful scanning equipment and should be able to zero in on Tomas’s compound once the ship got within twenty kilometers. After that, well, Rast would just have to see. He hadn’t been that impressed by the crime lord’s defenses the last time he’d encountered them. True, this time he would be confronting Tomas on his home territory.

On the other hand, he’d also be coming in while flying one of the Stacian navy’s most advanced starfighters…

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Lira dreamed that Rast was kissing her, mouth insistent, his tongue touching hers, tasting hers. But something about the shape of his mouth was wrong, and the feel of his lips was wrong, and his very scent was wrong. So her dream self pulled away, and she opened her eyes, and that was when she realized she hadn’t been dreaming at all, that it was not Rast pressing his lips against hers, that when she opened her eyes and saw bright green meeting them rather than shining copper, she realized it was Gared Tomas violating her with his mouth.

Gasping, she pulled away — at least as far as she was able. Because then she saw that she lay on a bed in an unfamiliar room, and her wrists were bound to the head posts of shining carved stone. The suit she’d purchased on Eridani was gone, and in its place was a thin-strapped gown of moon-moth silk so sheer she might as well not have been wearing anything at all.

“Bastard!” she spat. “I knew you were low, Tomas, but I didn’t realized you’d stoop so low as to take a woman when she’s unconscious and can’t fight back.” Even as she spoke, though, she began to think things hadn’t gone quite that far. Her body had none of the usual post-coital tells. Still…

He didn’t appear offended, but only grinned and pushed a few strands of her hair away from her neck. The touch of his fingers trailing across her skin made shivers run down her back, and not in a good way. “I didn’t ‘take you,’ Lira, although I was sorely tempted.” His hand moved from her neck to the swell of her breasts, its heat penetrating the flimsy silk as if it weren’t there.

She forced herself not to react. That was what he wanted, she knew — to see her try to squirm away from his touch. Or maybe his ego was so massive that he thought she would actually enjoy it. Instead, she remained still, glaring up at him. “So why the whole bondage setup? I have to warn you that I’m not really into that sort of thing.”

“Oh? Pity.” He lifted his hand from her breast and smiled, a smug smirk that made her wish her hands were free so she could wipe it off his face. “I wanted to make sure you wouldn’t try to get away.”

“And you thought there was a greater likelihood of that if I’d stayed in my own clothes?” As soon as she asked the question, she regretted it, because his gaze flicked downward, toward the obvious outline of her aureolas through the thin silk. She swallowed, trying not to breathe too deeply, to do anything else to draw his attention to places where she really didn’t want it.

The grin broadened. “That suit looked very uncomfortable.” To her relief, he sat up and moved a few inches away from her.

She would have preferred a few light-years, but any additional distance was welcome at this point.

“No, Lira,” he went on, “I made you an offer some weeks ago, and you turned it down. A blow to my ego, but one I got over soon enough.”

No real surprise there; only a day after she’d told him she’d be a pilot or a mistress but not both, he’d had her take him and an overly painted local girl to his hideout on Iradia’s moon. At the time she’d wondered if he’d done it to let her know that she was certainly replaceable and definitely hadn’t broken his heart. If he even had one.

Lira said nothing, though, and only arched an eyebrow at him, trying to show that he might have her bound and all but naked before him, but she wasn’t about to let him intimidate her.

“That was some initiative you showed, stealing my ship and running off with that Stacian.” Tomas paused, and ran a contemplative hand over his chin. “I have to say that surprised me a little. I hadn’t thought your tastes were quite that exotic. That’s…promising.”

She tilted her head to one side. “Is there a point to all this?”

The amused expression faded somewhat. “The
point
, Lira, is that I thought you were just a down-on-her-luck former GDF captain. I didn’t think you had any flair, so to speak. But I still need a pilot, and now that Morain got himself blasted into the next world, I need a second-in-command. And I want someone in my bed I can rely on. I know if you give me your word to execute your…duties…faithfully, then I can trust you.”

There could be only one explanation for such a proposition. He had to have gone completely insane. “Gared, I stole your ship. I was accessory to the deaths of two of your men. And now you want me to be your — your — ” She broke off, unable to find a reasonable analogue for the concept of pilot/mistress/majordomo.

“I know,” he replied calmly. “You’ve proven that you’re not nearly as by-the-book as you first led me to believe. As for the rest?” He bent down toward her, and she forced herself not to flinch, not to give any indication how much she loathed the idea of his mouth touching her again.

Then a distant rumble seemed to echo through the room, and Tomas straightened immediately, eyes narrowing. “What the hell — ”

Another rumble, closer, and more obviously an explosion. Across the chamber, a piece of local pottery tipped off a shelf and shattered on the stone floor.

At once the crime lord was on his feet, any thoughts of wooing Lira abandoned for the moment. As he headed for the door, he called over his shoulder, “Don’t go anywhere.” Then he was gone, and she was left alone.

Her solitude wasn’t exactly as welcome as she’d thought it might be, considering that she was still tied to the bed and that the compound was clearly under some kind of attack. A little rush of joy went through her as she thought of Rast. Maybe he really had come to save her, improbable as that might be.

No, that couldn’t be possible. Far more likely that one of Gared Tomas’s numerous enemies had finally discovered the location of his residence and had come here to settle one of a hundred scores. And if that were the case, the last thing she wanted was for the victor — whoever he might turn out to be — to find her tied up here like a gift just waiting to be unwrapped.

With that thought in mind, she began pulling at the binding on her left wrist, which felt infinitesimally looser than the one on her right. Whatever happened, she wanted to be long gone by the time Tomas came back…or his enemies began to lay claim to everything in his compound.

Including her.

Wyler had been right — the outpost of Pathi was hardly a blink in the darkness of the planet’s night side, a small cluster of lights in an enormous well of black. The instruments on board his fighter told him barely a hundred souls called the hamlet home, but at least he knew he was more or less going in the correct direction. A few more minutes, and he’d be pulling up on Tomas’s compound.

Once there, he’d have to be careful. Another scan would indicate how much muscle the crime lord kept around the place. The problem was that the scanner couldn’t differentiate between species, let alone sex, so he would have no way of knowing where Lira was being held. That meant the buildings themselves would be off-limits. He figured the best thing would be to shoot up the gate — a place like that most likely had a wall, and that indicated the presence of a gate. Anyway, something on the periphery would be the target, to draw attention and hopefully cluster as many henchmen in one place as possible. Such an attack would have to be quite a surprise anyway, if Lira’s analysis had been correct and no one save a trusted few even knew of the compound’s location.

The scanner beeped, showing lifeforms two kilometers ahead. He slowed the ship, reading the scans. Fifteen altogether, with eight of them clustered near what appeared to be a gate and with the others spaced out at regular intervals along the wall. Perfect. A couple of strategically placed shots at the gate, and he could take out more than half of them all at once. One against seven —
six
, he reminded himself, since of course Lira wouldn’t be a combatant — wasn’t great odds under normal circumstances, but if these men were anything like the two he’d shot down while stealing the
Mistral
, then six shouldn’t be that much trouble, even if one of them was the dreaded Gared Tomas himself.

Rast readied the pulse bombs, flicking the controls over to standby. One touch of his finger, and the bombs would be on their way, bringing a friendly little wake-up call to the crime lord and his lackeys.

With stealth mode engaged, he made one pass of the compound, just to get a visual to supplement what the ship’s readouts were already telling him. All around was pitch-black night, and Iradia’s moon was on the other side of the planet, but his eyes were far more dark-tuned than any human’s, and so he could pick out the outline of a rectangular compound, with a low sprawling structure in the center and several outbuildings off to either side. There was some illumination, faint downturned lights that might provide enough of a guide for foot traffic but weren’t strong enough to be seen from very far away.

Time to make the place a whole lot brighter.

He ran a finger over the touch pad, and first one, then a second bomb sped away from the fighter, dropping with deadly speed toward the gate and the cluster of men who stood guard there. Too bad they were looking out to the desert for any incoming enemies, and not to the skies above.

One explosion, and then another painted the night with garish hues of yellow and orange. Even from this height Rast could see the dark shapes of human forms being hurled outward by the force of the blasts. Most lay still, but one appeared to have been far enough outside the radius of the explosion that it hadn’t killed him. Ah, well, one more he’d have to pick off at closer range.

Judging it safe enough to land a dozen meters or so outside the periphery of the compound, Rast brought the little fighter down to rest in the desert sand. All such ships were outfitted with several sidearms and spare battery packs, in the unlikely event that a pilot should get shot down and need to defend himself. Even so, Rast wished he had something heavier than a pair of pulse pistols. A self-guided shoulder missile launcher would have been nice.

No time to worry about that, however. A gun in each hand and the spare battery packs shoved into his pants pockets, he climbed out of the fighter and dropped lightly to the sand, then moved quickly to the shelter of the wall, edging along it until he came to the gaping hole that used to be the compound’s gate. He heard shouts and a confusion of running feet. Good. As he’d hoped, the attack had taken them by surprise, and it seemed they were still trying to figure out who had hit them, and what to do next.

That worked. Using a swirl of smoke as cover, Rast strode into the gap and shot the man who stood there, shouting for reinforcements into his handheld. He dropped at once, and Rast stepped over him, keying on the sound of another man calling to a compatriot somewhere deeper in the compound, then shooting him in the back of the head. Amateurs. Obviously Gared Tomas cared more about hiring bulk than brains. His loss. It didn’t seem as if there was anyone here capable of mounting a coordinated defense.

Five left, one of them the crime lord himself. A pulse bolt flared over Rast’s shoulder, and immediately he went into a crouch, eyes narrowing in the darkness as he searched for his attacker’s position. Up there, on the roof of one of the outbuildings. Rast raised his pistol and shot the man, whose darker outline against the night sky was visible enough. The silhouette slumped over and then fell to the ground with a thud.