Kidnapped (16 page)

She glanced up at him, suddenly terrified. "You think they're looking for us?"

His eyes were already darting around, looking for something, anything. "I don't know. They shouldn't be, but it could happen. Come on."

There was a ventilation shaft at the end of the corridor, and Travis pushed his mechanical fingers through the grating and pulled hard. It came loose without making much noise. "It's probably nothing, but hide in here, just to be on the safe side."

Patricia didn't want to. It was dark in there, and her imagination painted out spiders as big as kittens, and besides, she wanted to stay with him. She obeyed anyway. She had long since figured out that he was usually right, and if she didn't do as he said, odds were he'd just toss her in anyway. He tucked his hand into a pocket and pulled out a wad of money, pressing it into her hand before kissing her quickly. "I love you."

She didn't have time to answer; he put the cover back in place before she could even blink. When she peeked through the grating, she could only see his back, effectively hiding the corridor from her as well as her from anyone else.

*****

Travis didn't have to wait for long. The approaching footsteps came closer, and within a couple of seconds, four uniformed and heavily armed men came into view. They walked in a formation, perfectly synched, and when they approached him, they spread out in a row, keeping their guns fixed on him, as if he was a dangerous animal. He supposed that to them, he probably was. He did have quite a reputation.

The man who spoke first sounded like he was reading from a script. "Commander Travis 152, you are under arrest for treason. Your ship has been confiscated, and you will come with us to Central where you will be duly processed."

Running would be useless; anyone that wanted to could track him easily. They didn't even have to try. His only goal for now was to get these men as far away from the woman hiding in the vent behind him as possible. He shrugged and answered in a friendly tone, as if both surprised and interested in what they had to say. "Treason? Really? Well, you seem to have been looking for me, and you found me. Let's go."

He wished that if this had to happen, it would have happened in a better place, somewhere it would be easier for Patricia to survive, but he told himself she was tougher than he usually gave her credit for, and she would be just fine. She had money, she had a weapon, Samuel would probably help her, and she would be fine.

*****

In the vent, Patricia felt like her heart had stopped; this just could not be. She squeezed her hands tightly against her mouth, trying to prevent any sound from escaping. She expected Travis to have a plan, to do something, but he just followed the others. They were out of sight in seconds, and she could only hear their footsteps disappearing in the distance.

She sank down on the cold metal floor, afraid to try to leave, and afraid to stay. It felt like her heart was about to break, and she wanted to cry hysterically, to scream even, but this time, she was too afraid to.

Chapter Sixteen

Travis got to spend the long journey back to Central locked in one of his own cells in his own ship. When they arrived, he was led through the large complex with his hands cuffed on his back with a force field. He tried to keep a non-committal expression, but he smirked when noticing that no one even raised an eyebrow at seeing him like this. It had happened several times before.

As soon as he entered Veronica's office, flanked by his guards, she flew up from her chair and slapped him. He was careful not to flinch. She was dangerous at the best of times, and this was more emotion than he'd ever seen her show. She hit him again, and burst out, "How
dare
you do this to me?"

He tried to appear interested, and asked calmly, "How dare I do what to you? You have to be a little more specific."

He was reluctant to reveal anything she didn't already know, and speculating in exactly what of all the things he'd done might have upset the Supreme Commander like this was at least a little interesting.

His superior was a tall and slender woman, with penetrating eyes and short fair hair that made him think of a helmet, and she had earned her position, sort of. Travis knew; he had been with her from the beginning, and during the years, he'd killed a considerable amount of her competitors to even out her way to power.

To be fair, she had a talent for strategy. She was very intelligent, and together with a perfectly unscrupulous conscience, she was perfect for her job. Her competitors often accused her of being too hard, of resorting to violence too easily, and thus far her solution had been simply to blame anything going wrong on him. He had never cared about it. He had been the perfect little soldier, ready to be sacrificed.

Veronica returned to her plush chair behind the large desk and sank down in it, regaining her usual serene expression and cool voice, but he could tell it took an effort. "There was something off with you the last time you were here. You've always been defiant, but not like this."

He said helpfully, "Well, I was pretty high you know, all those meds can really screw a person up," and she glared at him.

"Cute Travis, real cute. You know what I'm talking about."

It was difficult to penetrate the fog that surrounded his last visit to the station, but he was making an honest attempt to think back, and finally a shadow of recognition flew over his face. "Oh, you're referring to the prisoners."

That was not a matter he wished to talk about, and he made a dismissive gesture to brush it away. "I just didn't see the need to."

She'd had a family imprisoned for treason. The father had allegedly assisted the rebels, and she wished to set an example, something that would break the man forever, so he could be released and help spread the rumors of what happened to conspirators. When Veronica told Travis to torture and rape the children and wife in front of the man, and to make sure they died slowly, he had felt sick.

Before meeting Patricia, he might have obeyed. He probably would have, partly because he wouldn't have cared, and partly because the price for disobedience was too high. Now he just couldn't do it, not even in the sorry state he was in at the time.

Veronica stared at him, incredulously, and her voice was cold as ice. "Do you dare question my orders?"

He shrugged and stared back, asking flatly, "What do you want? I have a job to do. I don't have time for this."

She leaned back in the chair and replied with a wicked little smile, "Oh, but it seems like you have all the time in the world. I put surveillance on you, and at first, I thought I might be wrong; you actually appeared to work. You even went to the station where the Redeemer was, but while William and his friends were robbing it, you had a drink, found a girl and let him get away."

Grabbing a pen, she played with it for a second, and then tossed it back on the otherwise meticulously clean desk. She had probably put it there as a prop for this little speech.

"When you were done with enjoying yourself, you reported that you were going to look for them, but you went in the opposite direction."

Travis shrugged. These things were all true, and as long as she didn't know about Patricia, he could probably talk himself out of it.

Her communicator beeped, and she even lifted the receiver to hear what the person on the other end had to say in private. She said, "I see," and the tone of voice sent a chill down his spine. It sounded exactly like the time she had decided to personally cut his arm off. He didn't think he'd get away that easily this time.

Putting the earpiece back, Veronica stared at him, completely expressionless now. "That was a report from one of my engineers. He has been going through the memory banks of your computer. It wasn't very cooperative; he had to extract the data manually. Is there something else you would like to tell me, Travis?"

He kept his face carefully neutral and answered simply, "No."

She got out of her chair and approached him, and he knew he was in real trouble when she walked around him, pulling her hand over his back, nearly caressing him.

 Her voice was low and sensual, almost purring, when she asked, "What really did happen to the prisoner William liberated from you? What was her name again? Patricia Risden? And how did you say he did it again?"

She was standing in front of him now, cradling his face in her hands, and  it was a good thing his wrists were carefully restrained. If he'd had his hands free, he would have strangled her. She stared into his eyes and asked in the same deceivingly soft voice, "What were you thinking, Travis? And how did you do it? All the money, all the time and effort that has been put into you, and you still manage to rebel. How did you keep it hidden from me for all this time?"

There was nothing to say. He'd just dig the hole under his feet deeper, so he stared back in silence, and she eventually shrugged and returned to her desk, issuing an order to the guards, "Make sure the prisoner is properly secured while awaiting execution. And send me Travis 151. I need someone to go on a manhunt."

*****

Veronica didn't want to give him the pleasure of seeing how angry she really was; she was fuming. Travis had really fooled her, betrayed her even, and what did he think he was anyway, behaving like that?

Watching him leave between two guards, she wondered what he might have done with the girl if she hadn't been with him on that godforsaken station where they'd caught him. On the other hand, maybe she had been. Travis wasn't stupid, that's what had made him so useful during all those years. He'd been an intelligent and ruthless tool, always ready to do what she asked of him.

She tapped a finger against her lips as she thought about it. He would have stashed the girl away somewhere as soon as he sensed danger coming. A woman from a primitive and backwards planet, still unused to the workings of this world, lost and frightened without her protector --  as unlikely as the thought of Travis protecting someone might be, shouldn't be too difficult to find if she was still alive.

Leaning back in her chair she frowned. Patricia Risden must be an interesting person indeed to inspire such a rebellion in a well-conditioned officer.

Grabbing her pen again, she knocked it impatiently against the desk, thinking aloud, "What were you doing there anyway?"

He wouldn't risk going that far out of his way on some random quest. There had been some purpose to the visit. Something important enough to openly defy his mission for...

Alliance officers frequently ended up there for various reasons, and Central usually pretended not to notice, but he hadn't had any drugs in his system when he got arrested, not even the legal ones, and as bizarre as it seemed, he apparently already had a woman.

Wrinkling her forehead, she leaned over towards the computer console and started to pull out blueprints for the station, carefully going through the level where they'd found him, and just a couple of seconds later she yelled, loud enough for her secretary to hear it outside the door, "You incompetent, fumbling idiots!"

Chapter Seventeen

Back on the station, Patricia stayed hidden in the vent for a long time after Travis and his guards disappeared out of sight, trying to fight down the hysteria that wanted to rise up in her. She sat rocking a little from side to side, mumbling, "They took him, they really took him, they took him..."

She was on the verge of hyperventilating, and she kept telling herself she had to get a grip. He wasn't coming back, and she couldn't allow herself to give up. It wasn't just about her anymore.

Eventually, she forced herself to take deep and long breaths, to really exhale and try to calm down, and she said aloud, "Focus Patricia, you can cry later, but now you'll have to be strong for a while."

She knew that she could. She had always taken care of herself, at least until Travis came along and did it for her, but at the moment it felt like she wouldn't even be able to tie her own shoes without messing it up.

After climbing out of the vent, she tried to brush herself off a little, but it somehow just made the dust stick worse, and when she entered through Samuel's door, he just had to throw one look at the dirty, messy and upset girl to know what happened. He mumbled, "Oh no," and she looked at him and confessed, "I have no idea of what to do."

Her new friend sighed and shook his head. "You can stay at my place tonight, and then we'll try to figure something out."

He led the way upstairs to a little apartment above the clinic, where he sent her into the shower together with some of the fluffiest towels she'd ever seen. That little detail surprised her. So much of the station was filth she didn't expect to find anything nice there. When she came out a while later, clean and with a towel swept tightly around her, he was going through some frilly women's clothes, carefully spreading them out on the couch.

Samuel made a face, "I called a friend and had her bring something over, but I don't think much of this will do you any good."