Slip Point Read online

  “Now we need to get out,” she said, keeping her voice brisk. They’d all agreed this was the trickiest part of the mission, especially with Keaton separated from them. And having seen that Quynh was in the third trimester of her pregnancy, Shayalin definitely wanted the doctor with them. “Did you explain everything to her?”

  “Give me a minute.” They exchanged a brief flurry of words. Quynh’s expression changed rapidly through concern, surprise and then determination. She nodded.

  “And once we’re back on the Adannaya,” Shayalin said, “I want an explanation too.” If Jayce had originally brought Quynh here with the Speaker, he had known that their daughter wasn’t even born yet.

  He nodded. He must have known she would demand this. She hoped he appreciated her restraint in waiting until they were safe.

  Shayalin pulled a small case out of her boot. She’d taken her inspiration from Albarz’s own situation. The four of them would be safest leaving if everyone else was leaving too—that is, during a general evacuation. What was a threat so powerful it could shut down traffic to an entire spoke and wasn’t all that unlikely to find in a medical facility?

  They couldn’t actually introduce dangerous biological contamination—she didn’t think any of them would have stood for that, and Keaton had declared she couldn’t countenance causing anyone’s death—but apparently they could fool the automated biohazard detection system into thinking otherwise.

  Inside the case were some sample virus capsids Keaton had brought back from her conference, intended for some medical use Shayalin hadn’t understood. Right now they were empty, but simply the shape of them would be recognizable as an engineered virus, and only manual analysis would reveal they didn’t actually contain viral DNA. Even better, each was micro-branded by a corporate pharmaceutical manufacturer, which might help misdirect blame.

  Shayalin headed back to the service lift and released them inside after setting the lift to stop and open at every floor. The key, Keaton had told them, was for the filter monitors to realize that the source of the contamination was on the move. She stepped out before the lift began to move and rejoined the others.

  After a few minutes, pale blue emergency lights switched on and a pleasant androgynous voice began announcing from hallway speakers, “The following areas are being isolated as a safety precaution. Floor thirteen, sections B and C. Floor twelve, section B. Floor eleven…”

  Doors hissed open, and people moved purposefully through the hall. Shayalin and Jayce, with Quynh between them, merged into the current.

  They were counting on the fact that their floor was occupied by important people who wouldn’t want to stay near a hazard. A couple of orderlies were respectfully arguing with patients, but sure enough, they weren’t having much effect on stopping the exodus. It was the most Shayalin could do to keep her expression nervous instead of grinning like she wanted.

  They had to move slowly because of Quynh but eventually reached the lobby, where Keaton was gamely trying to keep Runov engaged in conversation.

  “—unacceptable coverage, considering that this is a medical facility—” Keaton broke off as she saw Shayalin and Jayce. “There they are. I’ll be leaving now, then. I appreciate your time.”

  Runov’s eyes narrowed, probably noting the orderly’s absence. But when he opened his mouth to speak, an alarm went off in a series of high-pitched beeps.

  One of the people they had knocked unconscious must have woken or been discovered. Thankfully, the sound only spurred the other patients to move more urgently toward the exit, so their haste helped them blend in.

  Keaton introduced herself to Quynh on the way to Adannaya. “Joen Keaton Rossi,” she said, then began speaking rapidly and incomprehensively.

  “Does everyone know how to speak this language except me?” Shayalin asked a little plaintively.

  “Doctor Rossi did her rural residency on the planet where Quynh was raised,” Jayce said, apparently back to practicing civility with her. “She’s a little rusty—it was a while ago—but she can manage to communicate. I just have a natural knack.”

  Quynh hesitated before responding to Keaton. Jayce told Shayalin, “The doctor asked whether there was anything she should know about her condition, and Quynh said the pregnancy is progressing normally, according to the doctors here.”

  “I’ll still want to do a routine examination first thing,” Keaton said, then apparently repeated herself in the other language to Quynh’s agreement. Once they boarded, the two headed for the infirmary, while Shayalin and Jayce went to the bridge to take off.

  “So?” Shayalin said once she’d set her ship in motion.

  Jayce said, “The premier wasn’t sure if you’d be willing to ferry a pregnant woman. Especially in her third trimester.”

  “I know what this baby’s worth,” Shayalin said. “And it would’ve been nice to know so I could plan for it.”

  He sighed. “The premier’s a cagey sort. I bet he knew about your compass—that’s why he picked you, isn’t it? But he didn’t bother to tell me.”

  She did feel a little better at that. She hated being left in the dark. And to be honest, she might have balked upon hearing the truth. Rescuing a child was one thing, but adults should be able to take care of themselves, especially when it was their own choices that landed them in distant, foreign places for prenatal care. She’d been imagining exotic diseases or an inherited mutation gone wrong in order to justify care at Cuoramin.

  Most of the other ships leaving the facility were aimed for the nearest slip point. She had taken the same course so as to lose her ship among them, but as the faster ships moved quickly ahead and their numbers thinned, she veered away.

  “What’s that?” Jayce asked sharply. He was looking at the traces of other ships on the Adannaya’s sensors.

  She saw a Pangur-class detach itself from the pack in pursuit of them.

  “Someone’s following us,” she said, pouring on the acceleration. She’d been worried about this, as not heading for the slip point made them suspicious.

  “Following us, or following you?”

  Jayce had a valid point—there were people likely to be interested in either of them. But she said with exaggerated patience, “If you’ll notice, Jayce, the question is rather like asking if someone’s going after Quynh or the baby she’s carrying. Right now, there’s no difference.”

  “Not if we’d do better without the Adannaya. The quarantine’s meant to keep people in, not out. We might be able to make our way through on the Swallow without the compass.”

  Shayalin forced herself not to bristle. So what if he was like every other brash, ignorant soldier in the Corps? “If you take off in the Swallow right now, our pursuer is bound to notice. He’ll go right after you.”

  He looked thoughtful now. “You think we can count on that?”

  “You can’t rig a Swallow as a decoy,” she said, horrified. It was a criminal waste, and that was even from a pirate’s perspective. “Besides, it’ll be obvious it doesn’t have a pilot.” Swallows were known for the intricacy of their flight and their manual handling.

  “But what if it does? I could lead them a merry chase, long enough for you to get away.”

  She spared a glance to see how serious he looked. He couldn’t possibly mean to abandon his mission and sacrifice himself. But she still snapped, “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  He grinned. “Why, Shay, you do care.”

  This time she swung full around. “I care about getting this done and collecting my pay. I’m assuming you learned a few things in the Corps to make you useful with the first part of that. Now, can you focus?”

  There was a tense moment. He studied her as though measuring her anger. Then he said in a level voice, “How do you think we should lose them, then?”

  She was relieved he let her overblown retort pass. “I need time and a predictable course in order to calculate a slip. Ideally, we’d also do it out of sensor range of the Pangur so they don’t catch on
about the compass.”

  He gave a slow nod of appreciation. “It would’ve been a tight fit for four in the Swallow anyway, especially with Quynh.”

  Four? He must have meant for her to participate in his escape-by-Swallow plan. She wasn’t sure whether to feel pleased at her inclusion or indignant that he thought she would abandon her ship.

  He went on before she could decide on a reaction. “But aren’t Pangurs faster than Aequiti?”

  She patted the console. “I’ve had some modifications done.”

  “What if they have too?”

  It was a fair point. “Well, we’ll find out soon enough if they close in on us.”

  “We don’t even know what their weapons range is, if they’ve replaced the standard arsenal,” he said in frustration.

  “They wouldn’t fire if they want to take Quynh as a live hostage, would they?” she said.

  “We might be able to tell something useful from what they say.” He keyed the console in front of him before she could warn him. A half-dozen alerts immediately chimed for his attention. “What the hell is this?” He swiped them closed.

  “It’s an old ship,” she said. “It gets insecure sometimes about superfluous maintenance protocols I don’t have time for.”

  He muttered something about unreliable ancient machines, hunted through the options then opened the comm channel just before she was about to tell him off for speaking of her ship that way. Her mouth snapped closed before her words could transmit.

  “Bailey,” a man growled. “Time to repay with interest, don’t you think? I hear you have some juicy loot aboard. We can save you the trouble of having to unload it, and collect that fat bounty on your head while we’re at it.”

  She reached over and flipped the channel closed. She had to brush by Jayce’s arm to do it, and her skin prickled with sudden awareness.

  “They knew you,” Jayce said, looking at her searchingly, and she hastily pulled back.

  “They’re pirates,” she said in disgust.

  He looked amused now. “So are you.”

  “Yes. We’re rivals, of a sort.”

  He only grew more interested, leaning toward her. He was only breaths away. “What, you go after the same ships?”

  “In a manner of speaking.” From his raised eyebrows, she could tell he wasn’t going to drop it. She said irritably, “I stole this ship from them.”

  He looked about the bridge in fresh appreciation. “Not bad at all,” he said. “And stealing from pirates seems justified somehow. But of course, you didn’t return it to its original owner.”

  “Oh? Should we maybe do that right now?” She let her fingers spread over the nav controls, as if to reroute their course. A part of her hoped he’d reach for the controls himself and let their hands collide.

  “Sure, as long as they’re not in the wrong direction.” He smiled lazily, calling her bluff. There were things she could do to get that smug look off his face, but she dragged her mind away from such distractions.

  “For all we know, those pirates actually bought this ship legally,” she said.

  They both chuckled at that notion.

  Jayce glanced at the sensors. The Adannaya had pulled ahead a bit, but the other ship wasn’t lagging far behind. “How much trouble will they be?” he asked.

  “In the past I’ve always managed to lose them,” she said, both thinking and speaking rapidly. “But it depends how much they know about my ‘loot’ and if it’ll motivate them more than usual. Maybe Cuoramin figured out what happened and sent these guys after us. Or it could be someone else entirely. The premier seemed worried about the Purists.”

  “Can we find out which it is?”

  “Not by asking,” she said. “It’d be a clear giveaway that something’s different if I start chatting with them now. Just see how far they chase us, I suppose.”

  “That’s a terrible plan.”

  “I don’t think combat’s an option, not with our passengers.”

  “No.” He sighed. “What was your last job?”

  “Jayce!”

  “Your last job, Shay.”

  It was unfair of him to ask, but his tone brooked no argument. “Smuggling vaccinations to Rajasted.” It was a station in the Atian spoke.

  He blinked. “Vaccinations? The sort that prevent disease?”

  “We supply where there’s demand,” she said blithely, not mentioning the fact that the payment had been in goods so hard to move the premier had had to buy them. Pirates couldn’t afford to gain a reputation for taking charity cases.

  Even so, he was looking at her with actual approval. “You used the compass to get those vaccinations past the barricade.”

  She nodded.

  “So probably not goods that other pirates would be interested in, since they wouldn’t be able to deliver and collect,” he said. “I think they know about Quynh.”

  She knew he was right. This was persistent beyond what a seven-year-old grudge could explain.

  “Assuming the best—or worst—in weaponry upgrades, we’ll be within their range in twenty minutes,” he said heavily. “They’ll probably fire on us.”

  “Why do you think that? They want to take her, remember?”

  “They said they would save you the trouble of delivering her,” he said. “Killing her would manage that.”

  “Why would they want to kill her?” Shayalin asked, frustrated by his insistence. “Quynh would be more effective alive as leverage against the Speaker, and if the baby’s got the mutation, it’d be worth a hell of a lot.”

  He blew out his breath and didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then he stood abruptly. “I’m going to get Quynh. She should be here.”

  “We can’t even talk to each other.” But she keyed the speakers. “Keaton, can you bring Quynh to the bridge?”

  While they waited, Jayce said, “The Purists have a number of stances about the human race, besides not wanting to interact with the Bellers. They find the Speaker’s mutation offensive. Some claim it makes her non-human.”

  Quynh and the doctor arrived as Shayalin thought over how the idea of a human woman married to a mutant would strike them. Enough to want that wife dead?

  Jayce and Quynh immediately fell into a terse conversation.

  “What’s happening?” Keaton asked Shayalin quietly.

  “Pirates are chasing us.” She grimaced at the irony. “Jayce is about to explain why they’re going to fire on us once they’re close enough.”

  Keaton’s eyes widened, but her reply was cut off by Jayce.

  “It’s not Quynh that some Purist factions want to kill,” he said. Quynh, standing beside him with her hands resting on her abdomen, looked remarkably tense for someone who wasn’t a target for murder. “It’s the child.”

  “Because the child might have a chance of speaking the aliens’ language?” Shayalin asked. “Because she shares the mutation?”

  “She shares more than the mutation. She’s the Speaker’s clone.”

  Keaton gasped. Shayalin’s surprise pushed her to her feet. She couldn’t help staring at Quynh, who nodded unhappily. Human cloning was illegal, mostly for the protection of the clones, who would otherwise be cut up for spare parts. But the Senate almost needn’t have bothered—it was notoriously difficult to manage a viable clone. Clearly an exception had been made for the Speaker, whose mutation was too precious to risk losing.

  “So she’s the insurance policy for a treaty with the aliens.”

  Quynh glanced at Jayce, who translated, then looked at Shayalin directly as she spoke.

  “So the Senate sees it, yes,” Jayce relayed for Quynh. “But Nala and I see it as protecting our daughter. We hope she’ll be part of the long-term cooperation between our people and the Bellers. But perhaps by then we’ll have learned how to speak freely with each other.”

  “You’re not worried about…” Shayalin gestured helplessly, trying to encompass all the potential consequences stemming from this child’s origins.<
br />
  Quynh seemed to understand even without a translation of that unfinished sentence. “We’ll treat her as her own person,” she said firmly, with Jayce translating. “As much as I love Nala, one of her is enough. We just wanted a child, and the premier was persuasive about going this route. She promised full support. She didn’t mention any of this happening, but I suppose she couldn’t have known the quarantine would declared.”

  So this had been the previous premier’s scheme. And no wonder Quynh had gone to Cuoramin, which would have been able—in terms of both medical technology and ethics—to arrange the conception.

  “All right.” Shayalin scrubbed at her face. “So you might be seen as an abomination—sorry, Quynh—and we really should avoid that ship that’s closing in on us, since it might just attack us within a few minutes.”

  Keaton finally spoke, her face pale. “We’ll get out of your way.”

  Shayalin didn’t spare them any more thought as they left the bridge.

  “There’s an asteroid belt in this system,” Jayce said, perusing his console. “We should be able to use it for cover.”

  “The belt isn’t all that dense, and by the time we reach it they’ll be pretty close. I don’t think we’ll be able to hide.”

  “But we can duck out of sight long enough for a slip.”

  “I can’t manage the calculations while steering behind an asteroid,” she objected.

  He smiled. “I’ll pilot. Your math has always been better anyway.”

  “You think I’ll let you fly my ship?”

  “Be reasonable, Shay.” He put a hand on hers, warm and callused. None of her crew would have dared touch her so, but none of her crew would have caused an answering heat to shoot up her entire arm. She let herself linger momentarily in that warmth before drawing away.

  “I know, I’m being irrational.” There were pilots on her crew who usually handled the Adannaya. But this was Jayce. Giving up her ship to him meant something different. “Fine. One tiny scratch, though, and I’ll repair it with your own hide.”

  “It’ll give your ship a motley look,” Jayce said.

  Good thing she’d already transferred navigational controls over to him, or that comment might have made her change her mind.