Price of Ransom (23 page)

“Trey, can you get him some water?”

“Water!” Windsor looked aghast. “Don’t you have anything stronger?”

“Something alcoholic or addictive? I suppose we must, but I don’t think it will make you feel better.”

Windsor squinted at her as if the dim light in the room was nevertheless too bright. “How would you know?” he growled.

Lily laughed. “I probably wouldn’t. I never did drink much. I always figured it would interfere with my training.”

Trey returned from the washing cubicle bearing a glass of water. Windsor favored it with a look of deep suspicion, but he let her lift it to his lips and he drained it, making a face as if it tasted of some unpalatable substance. “Yeah,” he said when he’d finished. “How
did
you get the jump on me?”

“You wouldn’t believe me,” said Lily. Trey had stopped and was looking at Lily as if she, too, would like this question answered.

“You’d be surprised what I’d believe,” said Windsor, sounding tired. “Could I have some more—water?”

Lily nodded to Trey. “One more glass. Then go down to Medical and have Flower prescribe something mild to put him to sleep for the duration. You look like you need it,” she added for Windsor’s benefit.

“Thank you. Your concern touches me deeply. How did you get the jump on me?”

“Trade secret,” she replied, although the thought of what she had done promoted an involuntary shiver. “How did Fred get on the casualty list?”

Windsor grinned. He waited until Trey had helped him to a second glass of water. “Common trade knowledge. I found someone who could be bribed. Don’t bother to try to trace them.”

“I won’t. I was just curious.” She coded in to the door and Trey left. “But I’ll bet Deucalion would be shocked.”

“Deucalion—?” Unexpectedly, he sighed. “Gwyn had a boy named Deucalion,” he added, his voice uncharacteristically subdued. “Nice kid, but a little wild.” Then, abruptly, he tested his bonds again and frowned over at Bach. “Don’t see many of those around these days.”

“How did you know Gwyn?” Lily asked.

“None of your damn business. How did you know him? And how come you’re wearing that medallion?”

“More trade secrets.” Lily leaned against the wall beside the com-panel and surveyed him dispiritedly. “That leaves us at a stalemate.”

“For now.” Windsor grinned again. “You’re not bad, for being so young, but you’ll find out that experience counts.”

“How did you know Gwyn?” she repeated.

His grin vanished. “We’ll leave it at a stalemate for now, Captain. I’m patient.”

He lapsed into silence punctuated only by his efforts to disengage his bonds. Lily kept her arms relaxed at her side, confident of Jenny’s ability to tie a lasting bond, but she remained carefully watchful and whistled a brief instruction to Bach to monitor him as well. When Trey returned, Windsor did not bother to struggle as Trey gave him an injection. It took effect moments later, and Lily, holding onto his shoulders, lowered him to the floor and arranged him in what she guessed was a comfortable position.

Then she waited. Had Jenny put a complement of four crew in the corridor around the com-tac door. Got a progress report from Bach and the two je’jiri: they had identified two anomalies and were now investigating them. Sometime later Bach reported that one of the anomalies had vanished, and soon afterward, Stanford came over com and curtly told her that the vector engines were now safe.

Yehoshua immediately began the countdown to the next window. Lily called Rainbow in, armed, to guard while she slept.

She had strange, elongated dreams. Waking abruptly, she sat bolt upright, startling Rainbow.

“When’s the window?” she asked, gasping. She put a hand to her forehead and discovered that it was damp.

“You be all right, min?” Rainbow’s obvious concern did not move her to relax her attentive guard on the still unconscious Windsor. “We went through ya window ya time past. Ya two hours or more. I reckon it be ya good fourteen hours before ya next one. Be you wanting me to check with Yehoshua on ya bridge?”

“No. Thank you. I’ll check myself.”

Rainbow’s estimate proved close enough. Lily devised a careful strategy with Jenny and Yehoshua for making sure the two Ardakians got off ship without incident. Bach and the two je’jiri isolated the remaining anomaly but could not discover Stanford’s point of entry. Fred and Stanford made no further attempt to communicate.

As the last window to Turfan Link approached, Lily tried to sleep, hoping to avoid it as she had the one before. But Windsor had begun to mutter and toss, and she had to send Rainbow to get a second injection for him. The warning chime sang across com. Her muscles tensed, however she tried to relax them. Rainbow had not yet returned.

They went through.

Kyosti’s essence left a trail across time, across the textures still, and eternally, impressed by his passage. If she could only move fast enough on his path, she could catch him—

And came out.

She was shaking. A moment later, she had to get up to let Rainbow in.

“Captain!” Slipping inside, Rainbow stared at her. “Mayhap you should go to Medical.”

“No. Help me with this injection.”

“I kin get it, min. You sit down.”

“Captain.” Yehoshua, over com. “Nine hours to preliminary orbit, twelve to docking.”

“Let Trey take over, Yehoshua.” Lily turned gratefully to this distraction. “You and Jenny start cordoning off all routes from com-tac to docking. Send Paisley and the Mule to my cabin. Ransome out.” She turned back and watched as Rainbow efficiently applied a second dose to the restless Windsor.

“Rainbow, when the others get here, you’re relieved until we dock.”

“Yes, min. And ya one?”

“We’ll carry him off, once the two Ardakians have disembarked.”

But once they came in to Turfan Link it proved easy enough to shepherd Fred and Stanford off the ship. Lily refused to move Windsor until the casualties were all off, and once Deucalion was relieved of that responsibility he surprisingly insisted on reminding Stanford—who with his cousin had refused to venture farther than fifty yards from the link bubble—that it was a crime in League space to tamper with the operating system of a vessel no matter what the circumstances, unless, Deucalion added with grim officiousness, it was to save lives.

Jenny reported this conversation with great glee back to Lily. With it came a thin slate containing Stanford’s calculations, and as Bach put them through the system they corresponded with one of the two solutions the je’jiri had suggested. It took less than an hour to clean out Stanford’s tampering. Meanwhile, Yehoshua reported, the two Ardakians waited patiently in the broad expanse of the docking corridor for the return of their employer.

“Send out the je’jiri,” said Lily, now on the bridge. “When we’ve got a trail to follow and are ready to leave, I’ll hand him over. Not until then.”

She did not go below to watch the Dai marshaling her forces, preferring to let the Mule act as her liaison. The presence of a je’jiri female on comp on the bridge—one of the pair who had cracked Stanford’s code—was unsettling enough. She kept glancing at her, catching her blue hair in the corner of her eye and beginning to turn, thinking that it must be Kyosti. The female’s slender frame was just androgynous enough that for that spare instant one could mistake them—

“Finch.” Her voice came out sharper than she intended. “Patch me a line through to Administration. I want to see what Deucalion is up to.”

“Yes, Captain.” His voice was flatly neutral, and he busied himself with his controls. Examining his back, she thought he seemed out of sorts, less and less the cheerful, easygoing Finch she had once known on Unruli, and she wondered if it was her fault for bringing him so far, to change him so much. “I have Hospital Administration,” he said, breaking into her thoughts. “They say that min Belsonn has gone into a meeting with the local Concord representative and a visiting Intelligence official. They expect him back in two hours. Do you want to leave a message?”

“No.” It was impossible not to speculate about the content of his meeting. Lily took advantage of the lull to personally inspect the com-tac room on gold deck with Bach to make sure that Fred and Stanford had left no surprises. By the time she finished, the Dai had returned.

Flanked by Jenny and one of the females, the Dai was waiting for her in her cabin. She inclined her head respectfully as Lily entered.

“We have traced your mate to his last point of contact with this station. With this information taken to the registry, we have ascertained that he must have gotten on the freighter
Helvise
destined for Karkara Link. Is this acceptable?”

This swift resolution to Kyosti’s disappearance from Turfan Hospital took Lily a moment to assimilate. If they could actually catch him—but she forced herself not to fan the flames of hope too high. “How did you pinpoint that freighter?” she asked instead.

The two je’jiri females looked at each other as if the question was inexplicable to them. Jenny spoke up instead.

“The whole pack of them roamed around Hospital, and pretty soon one of the males—” She hesitated.

“It was Middle Brother whose scent proved keenest on this trail,” interposed the Dai.

“Middle Brother—came up with something. I just followed after, and eventually they ended up in front of a berth. They knew to the day and the hour, and the
minute
, when he was there. So we just went to Portmaster’s—they call it Registry here—and found out what ship had been berthed there at the right time. It was pretty damn fast.” She looked as if she wanted to add something else but found it politic, in the presence of the two je’jiri, to refrain.

“Excellent,” said Lily. “Get everyone back on board. We’ll leave as soon as we’re ready. Jenny. You’re in charge of the prisoner. Hand him over
just
before we close the link bubble and break docking.”

Jenny saluted and left.

Lily regarded the two je’jiri. However much they resembled Kyosti, there was always about them that essence of foreignness, of utter difference from herself and all things human. They regarded her in turn without any expression she knew how to read. “Thank you,” she said.

“We have not found him yet,” replied the Dai, “only established his trail. Now, if we may go to prepare our quarters?”

“Of course.”

After they left, she checked in her inner room, but Rainbow and the two other Ridanis assigned there had nothing to report: Windsor was still unconscious. Lily returned to the bridge.

“Message from Deucalion,” Finch reported as she entered. “He’ll be back on board in twenty minutes, and he wants to talk with you.” He swiveled in his chair to face Lily. “Why’s he coming with us, anyway?”

“Because I can’t stop him, short of physical force. And I think he can help us.”

“You
think
—?”

“I hope.”

Finch turned back to his console. “Hope is a terrible thing,” he muttered, but the comment, however uncomfortable, did not seem to warrant a reply, and only Trey, sitting at scan, seemed to have heard it as well. She glanced at Lily, surprised, but went back to her work. The two techs, at weapons and life support, remained engrossed in their work. Pinto and the Mule were still off duty.

From iron deck, Yehoshua reported all crew on board. A few minutes later, Deucalion reported in. Lily met Jenny in the captain’s suite and watched as a large contingent of armed crew escorted the two Ridanis carrying Windsor out. Then she sat and waited.

“Captain.” It was Yehoshua. “Windsor is safely on Turfan Link grounds and we have sealed the link bubble.”

Lily stood up. “Good. Commence detach. Then meet me on the bridge. We’re setting a course for Karkara Link.”

The hunt was on.

The bartender had the same youthfully mature face that most residents of League space seemed to have, but his was marred by a look about the eyes of one too many forays into mind-altering substances. In the half-gloom of the bar, he peered at Lily with the disinterest of a man who has grown apathetic through mental inactivity.

“Nay,” he said, handing the thin slate on which Kyosti’s photo was superimposed back to Lily, “I’ve never seen this man, nor any human with blue hair, not since it was fashionable twenty years back. But I did see—it was strange enough—” He paused and looked up and down the dark counter. The murmur of conversation from the customers in the cramped space accompanied his searching, though most were hidden by huge growths of a dull, thick-leafed plant that spread from a line of pots set along one wall. Jenny, stationed a careful four paces to one side of Lily, shifted position. At the door, the Mule nodded briefly. In a far corner, Rainbow had lost herself in the shadow of leaves. The bartender glanced for perhaps the fifth time at the two je’jiri flanking Lily and then turned to call into the dark room behind the bar.

“Kam! How long ago was it that rogue come in here?”

There was a moment of silence. Finally, a woman, unseen in the gloom, replied. “Five days ago.”

“That’ll be it.” He turned back to Lily. “We don’t see them often, je’jiri, that is.” His gaze shifted involuntarily to the two je’jiri again, before he forced it back to Lily. “But sometimes they come through in packs, which isn’t so bad, begging your pardon, honorables.” This time, addressing them, he did not look at the two je’jiri. “But no one trusts a rogue.”

“A rogue?” Lily glanced at the Dai for elucidation.

“A je’jiri adult, male or female, who travels without benefit of family, is considered with sufficient reason to be of aberrant status,” replied the Dai softly.

“It were a rogue male, all right,” repeated the bartender, either not hearing or ignoring this exchange.

“You’re
sure
it wasn’t this man?” Lily asked.

He shook his head. “He weren’t human. Sure, and maybe there were some resemblance of face and such. I got a good look, since they’re rare to see, and dangerous enough. Begging pardon again, honorables.”

“No offense taken,” replied the Dai smoothly.

For some reason the clear, crisp sound of her voice startled him. “It were no offense because he was je’jiri,” he said quickly, “but just because he was solo, and acting strangely.”