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  “You already told my father that you knew,” she said. “That’s why he agreed to this meeting in the first place.”

  “Very good.”

  “And the compass could manage getting past the blockade.”

  “I wouldn’t have contacted you if you weren’t able to accomplish what I need.”

  Something about the way he said “I”…

  “You’re not just the deputy of the premier,” she said. “You are the premier.”

  That careful smile again. “Perhaps we should redo our introductions then, Captain Shayalin Cho.”

  She started, but no soldiers burst into the room at his pronouncement. And his use of her title reassured her. Her identity wasn’t exactly a secret—after all, it had been a Corps officer who’d informed her about her father—but she hadn’t thought of her past as having anything to do with who she was now.

  The premier, on the other hand, had been an older woman, at least in the newsfeed she’d caught a week ago.

  “What happened to the last premier?” she asked. Had there been some kind of coup? Albarz’s quarantine extended to data, which meant news from there was sparse and intermittent.

  “She’s dead.” There was a new tightness in his voice. Regret or grief, something of that breed.

  The last premier had looked hale in the most recent newsfeeds, and had doubtlessly had access to the best medical care. That, and Perra’s tone— “So the previous premier was assassinated,” she said. Despite the highest level security. “How did you manage to keep it quiet?”

  “The data quarantine threw our communication loops into disrepair,” he said. “It lets us get away with pre-recorded speeches. We’re pretending she’s keeping safe in a bunker somewhere during this state of emergency. The Purists are already on the brink of causing wide-scale riots, and this announcement would be the spark they need.”

  She’d heard of the Purists. “The assassin was one of them?”

  He nodded. He’d clearly managed to circumvent the data quarantine, at least.

  “So why aren’t I taking you in?” she asked. “Don’t you need to go back and take control of the situation?”

  “I can’t afford to return to Albarz right now. I’d be trapped there and unable to confer with the rest of the Senate, and I must fight to get this quarantine lifted. But I have limited resources here.” He turned his ironic gaze on her. “Are you sufficiently acquainted with the situation now?”

  “All right,” she said after a moment to digest it all. “I can see why you’d want an independent agent handling things for you.”

  “Particularly since the passenger I want you to pick up is the daughter of Speaker Zakiyah.”

  Her eyes widened. Nala Zakiyah was, as the newsfeeds touted, the ambassador of the human race. Shayalin had no intention of drawing attention by kidnapping her daughter, and said as much. “Do you have any other absurd proposals while I’m here?”

  “It’s with the Speaker’s full knowledge,” the premier said patiently. “As a matter of fact, it’s her idea. She doesn’t like being separated from her daughter right now, and she’s insisting upon her return.”

  “From Cuoramin, you said?” The station was renowned for its cutting-edge medical facilities and, as pirates well knew, it sometimes performed quasi-legal services—whether because the patients were criminals or the procedures weren’t yet sanctioned by bioethicists. Naturally the Speaker could demand the best, whether above-board or not. The girl must’ve needed something special indeed to find it offered at Cuoramin. “So am I fetching the girl because you don’t want to dirty your hands dealing with them?”

  “We’ve already tried through discreet channels. Cuoramin refuses to release her.” He cast a sharp glance at her. “There’s a chance the girl shares her mother’s mutation. It makes her valuable.”

  Shayalin blew out her breath. She could see why. Right now, Albarz controlled all talks with the aliens. A second person able to speak with them opened up the possibility of competing negotiations, perhaps by an unsavory faction. Albarz wanted trade and peace. Someone else might ask for weapons or even incite war. “A gene scan can’t tell you for sure?”

  “She has the gene, but the ability hasn’t been expressed so far,” the premier said. “It may in the future. We don’t know the trigger yet.”

  Still, a potentially valuable hostage. So her retrieval wouldn’t be official, then, and she would need to steal the girl out of there. Trumpeting the government’s concerns would only invite other people to try and grab her. “You never should have let her leave Albarz in the first place.”

  “There were compelling reasons,” he said. “And what’s done is done. Now we have to get her back. That’s your job.”

  She nodded grimly. There wasn’t any way she could turn this mission down now, knowing what she did. But she still wanted more details. “You said there was another passenger,” she reminded the premier.

  “So I did,” he said. “There’s the pilot, whom you’ll be taking in, as well as an…attendant.”

  Not only the girl, but her driver and maid as well? “The more people, the harder you make it.”

  “The pilot will be able to take the girl in the Sparrow once you breach the barricade. The Speaker insists on the attendant.”

  “I suppose the Speaker has a lot of leverage,” she said.

  “She’s desperate to see her child, as any mother would be. And she can’t leave Albarz, not when she’s in the middle of talks with the aliens. Naturally, I’m interested in keeping her happy so that a treaty will be possible.”

  “You’re still holding talks?” she asked, startled.

  He sighed. “Wouldn’t you, if your planet were hostage to them? They haven’t threatened us, but they’re unimpressed by us so far, and they’re sure to have superior technology.” There was an envious note to his voice. Albarz was supposed to be the seat of the hottest tech companies, but apparently it didn’t compare to what the aliens had. “And the girl will become critical if something happens to Speaker Zakiyah.”

  “You’re not worried about bringing her into a quarantine zone?”

  “There’s been no opportunity for biological contamination. I promise you that.”

  “If you’re so sure of it, why the quarantine? Just prove to the Senate that there’s no alien disease.”

  He smiled grimly. “It’s not a quarantine against contagion. They’re worried about cultural contamination. Technological. Anything that threatens their control. We’d nearly given up ever finding other sentients. And then they appear to Albarz, where we happen to have a mutant who can communicate with them? It promises an imbalance of power.”

  “In your favor.”

  He nodded.

  She hadn’t intended to become embroiled in an interstellar dispute. But she could easily see some greedy bastards on the Senate declaring the quarantine for exactly the reasons the premier had described. Certainly the aliens’ arrival hadn’t been hailed as a great scientific and diplomatic leap, as once dreamed of.

  “So back to the job,” Shayalin said, focusing on the elements she could control. “Take a Swallow and its pilot to Cuoramin, grab the girl, then take them past the barricade to Albarz and let them find the Speaker on their own?”

  He nodded. “Bringing the pilot along will let you leave as quickly as possible once your part is no longer necessary. And I don’t trust you with the Speaker’s location. The Purists are trying too hard to find out.”

  She quirked a brow. “What makes you think I’m not one?”

  “We have a full psych profile on you from ten years ago,” he said. “We had our best people build a new one based on all the recorded encounters with you since. You’re a xenophile. You love new places, new people, new experiences. The Bellers can only bring more of that. And you avoid violence when possible. You don’t want war.”

  “You can’t be basing your trust on a ten-year-old profile.”

  “It’s a confluence of factors,” he
said. “And you’re the best of a bad lot.”

  That certainly was a vote of confidence. “All right,” she said with a sigh, “I’ll do it.”

  “Good,” he said briskly. “We’ll pay you handsomely. Both before and after.”

  She held up a hand, thinking. “I don’t want anything special now.”

  “But after?”

  She hoped her father wouldn’t kill her. “Pardons. For me and my father and our crews.”

  The premier didn’t blink. “You’ll have to give up your ships.”

  Shayalin glowered. “No.”

  “We’ll settle you on whatever planet or station in our spoke you desire, with generous stipends. But do you realize how nervous you’d make all our captains by openly roaming the shipping lanes?”

  “What’s the point of getting a pardon if we’re only going to take up piracy again? We’ll even give you the slipspace compass. But we want trading rights with the aliens.”

  “No direct trading rights. Distribution rights to the Rim colonies for three years.”

  “With a perpetual option to renew.”

  “For one-year increments.”

  “Done.”

  They smiled at each other.

  “And shall we say thrice market price on my current cargo?” she added.

  To her surprise, he nodded. “You’ll need funds,” he said. “The transaction’s a good way for you to get them legitimately.”

  She grinned.

  “I didn’t say ‘legally,’” he said irritably. “I don’t even want to know what I’m buying.”

  She smothered her grin. “All right. Your pilot knows what to do once we get to Albarz?”

  He nodded.

  “Tell me where to find him, and I’ll go fetch my crew—”

  “I assume your crew isn’t necessary for operating the compass.”

  She frowned. “It takes a crew to run a ship.”

  “The pilot will be able to assist you. The fewer people involved, the better. What details could you trust them with?”

  That was true enough. An Aequitus-class could survive with two crewmembers. “I’ll need to notify them, then.”

  He gestured to the room’s comm. “One call. You know what not to say.”

  She had no doubt he would listen in. She went to the console, impatiently tapping it awake when it failed to rouse from sleep mode at her first touch, and slipped in a crypto-key. It was good for a single use. Beyond that, the encryption codes could potentially be broken. It automatically set up a web of connections that eventually reached her father, hopefully too complicated to follow.

  “Well?” his voice asked. There was no visual—the less data sent between them, the less the risk.

  “I can’t tell you what I’m doing, but it’s solo, and it may take a while. Let Creeds and the rest of them know.”

  “So you took the commission.” He sounded satisfied. “What are we getting out of it?”

  She swallowed. “Exclusive distribution rights to the Rim colonies of any alien goods, and pardons.” She put them in the order she thought would best please him.

  There was a startled pause, and then he said mildly, “I would’ve asked him to throw in a Swallow.”

  She glared at the console. “And a mighty cargo hold it has for trade goods.”

  He laughed. “You’re right, we won’t have any time for joy rides when we’ve got distribution rights to the Rim. Well done, Daughter.”

  “Yes, about that,” she said, shaking off the glow of his approval. “You and your ‘dearest daughter’ routine. This wasn’t a favor for you, was it? The premier asked specifically for me.”

  He didn’t deny it. “I couldn’t resist his offer.”

  “You sold your own daughter?” She was only half-joking.

  He grew serious. “I got assurances of your safety, ones I checked on. But I also got a good price.”

  “I want a cut when I get back,” she said, pushing aside any indignation. This was her father, after all.

  He sighed. “This is the problem with dealing with someone who’s learned from the best. I’ll give you a sixth, and if you didn’t bargain something sweet for yourself out of the premier, that was your oversight.”

  The key started blinking. “The encryption’s expiring. Take care of my crew.”

  “Take care of yourself, Lin,” he said, somber again, and the key’s indicator light winked out.

  He’d never said that before, even before her first space battle. Her father wasn’t a particularly paternal type, preferring to treat her as an adult. It made her wonder what had drawn him and her mother together, when they were such stark contrasts, but she never dared ask. Take care of yourself was the sort of sentiment her mother had expressed back on Centuris, and it worried her to hear it from her father.

  Well, she was committed now. And pirates might break laws with impunity, but as her father would remind her—when he was acting like his normal self—merchants had to build up credit, in terms of both money and reputation.

  She turned to the premier. “All right,” she said. “Where should I go to pick up my new cargo?”

  He gave her an entry key, designed to be layered over the pad of one finger. “You’ll find them in the moonside wing on the nineteenth level, room K-three.”

  “Why didn’t you just have them here for this meeting?”

  “We arrived separately and under false identities,” he said. “We took what precautions we could when we came in so we wouldn’t be associated.”

  “Thanks for taking the same precautions for me,” she said dryly.

  “It’s your job to stay out of reach.”

  It was clear it would be dangerous to be caught dealing with the premier. And to actually be him…

  “Good luck, sir,” she said.

  “And to you, Captain.” Courteously, he rose to see her out.

  Grayson had the audacity to smile at her when she entered the outer room. She stalked past him to the door, but he stopped her.

  “You look too composed.” He leaned in and ran his fingers through her hair, mussing it slightly. Then he kissed her hard enough to bruise her lips. Which was the point, she supposed. She decided she might as well enjoy it, and gave as good as she got.

  He looked a bit unfocussed once she was done with him. “Not bad. Another bar, sometime off-duty…who knows?” He shot her a half-smile.

  She returned it in equal measure. “Some of us have more refined tastes.”

  He sighed theatrically. “It’s so hard to meet women on the job.”

  It was hard to resent someone who made her laugh. That was probably his intention. Or the premier’s.

  An in-person meeting with the premier. He must have wanted to assess her personally, despite his fine words about psych evaluations. She remembered the Corps officer telling her that her entry exams had been iffy. What did it mean that she had passed now, with higher stakes at hand?

  She decided it reflected poorly on the Corps. In any case, she was done wondering about that fork in her life.

  Chapter Four

  The station’s monorail-lift took her to the moonside wing and she found the K corridor easily enough. The first door was marked K1, of course. She glanced at her key on her finger to check the room number, only to collide with someone.

  “Shay!”

  For a moment she didn’t recognize the man who seized her arm. She was already twisting out of his hold, about to kick the side of his knee, when the nickname registered more than anything else. Her jaw dropped. She stared at him, resistance forgotten. “Jayce? Is that you?” Her voice rose incredulously. Of all times and places, she encountered him here and now?

  He hadn’t changed much after all, still with the same reddish brown hair and unfair advantage in height. But his bearing was utterly unfamiliar. He moved with meaning and none of the restiveness that had once marked him on Centuris. It was hard to believe this was the same person she’d grown up with.

  She wondered wh
at he, in turn, saw in her.

  His smile grew uncertain as he released her. “What are you doing here?”

  Over the years, she had occasionally indulged in dreams of bumping into him just like this. They would fall into each other’s arms, he would forgive her for leaving him, and she would impress him with her worldliness. But this wasn’t like that at all. She had work to do and had to get rid of him. “I have business.”

  “On the Ionia?”

  “My business,” she said, “not yours.”

  She moved to go around him, thinking that would end it, but to her mixed chagrin and relief, he sidestepped to block her way, undeterred. “Your mother’s been writing me.”

  “What?” She halted, taken aback. The two had been mortal enemies.

  His mouth quirked. “Hard to believe, isn’t it? But she was worried sick after you disappeared. So was I, for that matter.”

  She shrugged, deliberately casual despite her pounding heart. “You must not have looked hard enough.”

  His eyes narrowed in a ripple of anger beneath that calm of his. Good. She didn’t trust this new, steady Jayce. Especially when everything about him spoke of the military.

  Besides, there was a girl worth planets that she needed to get aboard her ship. This was not the time for a reunion. For once in her life she was going to do something worthwhile, and no one, not even Jayce, was going to keep her from it.

  But he only drawled, “I’ve found you now, haven’t I?” The gleam in his eye was disturbingly familiar. He was answering a challenge, like during those times back on Centuris when they’d raced.

  Shayalin seized upon the first tactic she could think of to quash him: mockery. “So you’ve spent a decade mooning after the first girl you had? I wish you’d moved on. What good are you to me without more experience?”

  He bared his teeth, not quelled at all. “Oh, there have been other experiences. I thought I was looking for a friend. But I suppose some people grow uglier with time.”

  That hurt. She’d heard far worse from her fellow pirates, but this was Jayce, who had accepted her as she was from the moment he made room for her on his picnic blanket.

  “Guess we’re both better off without each other then,” she said, fighting to keep her voice flippant to the end, and made to shoulder past him.