Current drift, p.8
Current Drift, page 8
“Because nepotism?”
He winced. “Only a little.”
It was funny, but as far as Sloane knew, the wider galaxy hadn’t much cared who his father was. Sloane vaguely remembered when he’d been appointed, the trip her father had taken to Fane for the party Gareth was talking about now—Dad hated leaving Ilya, but it was a big deal to be invited to the Fleet Tower, so he’d gone—and even though she’d been off refusing to realize her potential, it’d been impossible to ignore the whole new-Fleet-Commander news cycle.
No one had actually thought the Fleet Advisory Commission would grant command without good reason. Gareth Fortune was respected, and deemed a worthy candidate, no matter who his father had been.
He’d proven himself long before taking command, in other words. Did it help that he’d grown up in the Fleet? Sure. But he’d earned his place. She hadn’t heard whispers to the contrary. Though admittedly, she hadn’t been much interested in the workings of the Fleet, either.
“I was finishing a rotation of duty at the Fleet Tower,” he continued, “and I was in charge of security.”
“Tightest security in the galaxy.” Even Damian had needed to actually join up with the Fleet for three years to infiltrate the Fleet Tower. That was a long con.
“Supposedly, yes. I finished my checks in the lobby, then went outside to scan the gardens. Only to find your father, standing there in his tuxedo and facing down a security bot. It didn’t recognize him, because he’d grown a mustache since taking his security photos.”
Sloane snorted a laugh. “Ugh, the mustache days. Mom hated that thing.”
And for good reason, too. It had been the opposite of flattering.
“Before I could get to him, he made a run for the bot. Which, of course, rolled straight for him, lights flashing and all. Ready to mow him over. Only Zander expected that, and he zigzagged out of the way at the last second to make a run for the doors. Like he was running from a damn alligator.”
“Did he make it?” she asked.
“He would have.” Gareth wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her close to his side as Elter drew ever nearer. “But I intervened, anyway. Didn’t think my father would want me keeping the dignitaries out.”
“Probably not. Ugh, that sounds like my dad. Had to make a run, instead of a phone call.”
“He was smiling the whole time.”
The tears that sprang to her eyes were not welcome. At all. “I bet he was.”
“He’s tough,” Gareth said, “and he’s smart. He knows his way around a dangerous situation. So do your mom and Lissie.”
She leaned against him, still watching out the window, afraid to look away. As if the planet might vanish, or explode, if she let it out of her sight for even a moment. “Thank you.”
“They’ll be all right,” he said. “I know it.”
She only hoped it was the truth.
CHAPTER 12
Moneymaker’s scans confirmed what Gareth had already known: that Elter wasn’t the only object in Ilya System that was now encased in a metallic shell. They hadn’t passed directly by Tronan, but readings showed it was similarly restrained. And as the ship drew nearer to Sloane’s home planet, it became clear that its moons had received the same treatment.
All but one.
Even without the bots to guide them, Darrow would have stood out as Vin’s obvious destination. His only possible destination, truth be told, as it was the single inhabited object in the galaxy that hadn’t been captured behind a wall of metal.
Of course, there would have been no way to determine that from a distance—the moons were far too small—so Gareth was grateful for the bots’ ability to lead them straight to Darrow. Not least because now that they’d reached it, he suspected they might need some help with their planned infiltration.
Moneymaker descended toward Darrow, where clear domes gave the moon a swollen, bumpy kind of look. From here, the domes reflected Ilya’s light—and Elter’s golden gleam—so that it was impossible to see inside. If he remembered correctly, there were fifty-three interconnected domes covering the surface, each one housing a different college, university, or academic laboratory.
Gareth had never visited Darrow, but the moon’s reputation for scholarship was unparalleled. Experts from across disciplines took up residence at the universities here, where they trained new generations of scientists, technicians, biologists, musicians, historians, artists, and writers. Many of the Parse Galaxy’s brightest minds got their start right here, going on to head up study expeditions, conduct high-profile orchestras, and publish notable works that ran the gamut from scholarly research presentations to adventure novels.
Sloane broke away from him as Hilda followed the bots, easing the ship toward one of the tunnels that jutted out from the nearest dome’s center. An entrance to the port, unless he was mistaken.
“Let’s get going,” she said, heading for the galley and the staircase. “Again.”
He knew she was worried about her family, and that their nearness only seemed to increase her anxiety. They were within reach—and yet so far out of it that she might as well have remained halfway across the galaxy.
But the story he’d told about her father had been true. Zander shared his daughter’s aptitude for squeezing out of desperate situations, and Gareth believed he was surviving, perhaps even thriving, under the CTF-imposed shield.
Brighton joined Gareth and Sloane as they disembarked, weapons at the ready. Moneymaker had landed in one of three available berths at this particular port—the other two stood empty—and the exterior doors opened directly onto one of the campus pathways. As if its builders hadn’t wanted anyone to endure even a slight delay in beginning their studies.
As Gareth and Sloane exited the port with Brighton, a pair of bots zoomed in front of their party, practically skidding on their tracks in their hurry to take the lead. Hunters, indeed. One of them was the copper bot he’d chatted with briefly in the cargo hold; the other was more triangular, without a head so much as a… crowning angle, he supposed. They were roughly the same size, standing roughly at the height of his shoulders, and they rumbled along the path with bulky determination.
He wasn’t sure exactly what he’d expected to find on the single unshielded surface in the System. CTF guards roaming around, perhaps, as they’d been on their own planet. Or perhaps something like the Resistance had set on up on Lostelle—a Federation base of sorts.
Gareth didn’t know when he’d decided that Vin had run to the Federation. Perhaps it’d been after the attempted murder. Or perhaps it was merely the fact that he’d arrived on the one ‘free’ planet in an otherwise occupied System.
Either way, there was no doubt in his mind that they were in CTF territory. Either Vin had been lured here, or it was a trap he’d been involved in setting.
Gareth gripped his weapon, hoping he wouldn’t need it while simultaneously certain that danger lurked just ahead. Sloane held her own shooter half raised, and Brighton frightened everyone who passed by shouldering his plasma rifle without regard to anyone’s comfort.
But the campus felt strangely normal as they made their way along the path. Stone buildings rose to either side, stately, with vines crawling up to eat at the cracks. Stained glass windows graced more than one doorway. A highway of delivery drones buzzed overhead, and Sloane kept throwing glances at them as if expecting an attack. As far as Gareth could see, it was much more likely that one of them would hand over a pizza.
Through the dome, which reached much higher than he’d imagined when descending from the other side, Elter shone prominently in the sky. Like a coin someone had tossed into a very dark well, it sent strange reflections bouncing through the domes, splashing bands of metallic light across the buildings and down the paths. In some spots, it was bright enough that Gareth half feared the grass might catch fire.
Also, and somewhat to Gareth’s surprise, there were other people on the paths. Not many, and those he did see were hurrying with their heads bent low, books and fliptabs clutched to their chests, but they were here. As if someone had assured them that it was perfectly fine to continue their studies while the building burned to the ground. Even with no guards in sight, their postures reminded Gareth uncomfortably of the people on Federation, where guards had stolen their food at will.
Even with the people and the drones, though, it felt too quiet. Like the place ought to be bubbling with lively discourse, but someone had cut the conversation short. There should be students reading on the grass beneath the trees. There should be carts selling pastries and tea, music clattering out of windows.
But most of the movement here came from the whisper of the wind through the trees. The background was scented with the barest hint of ozone, a jarring note that paired badly with less ominous smells of cut grass and freshly pumped dome air.
While Gareth was contemplating the aroma of the place, Brighton was taking scans with his fliptab. Now, he gestured to a nearby structure. “The bell towers,” he said. “There’s an insane amount of energy pulsing out of them.”
Gareth followed Brighton’s gaze to where a green-tinted bell hung silently beneath the domed roof of the tower. It might have been the power of suggestion, but he could practically feel his hair standing on end.
“Leave it to Darrow to build bell towers under their domes,” Sloane muttered. “Pretentious nutjobs.”
She was partial to Elter’s party moon, Falta, if he remembered correctly. Not that she wouldn’t have done perfectly well on Darrow, had she followed her instinct to study art rather than medicine. Even if there were fewer drinking establishments here than she might have preferred.
Of course, he very likely wouldn’t have met her in that case.
The bots, which had paused to allow Brighton to inspect the towers, now resumed their determined roll along the walkway, tracks rumbling across the rough stones. They appeared to be heading for a blocky building at the end of the walkway; it did look like the centerpiece of this particular campus, with a dignified spire rising above a dome of frosted glass.
Gareth cringed, his feet smarting lightly with each step. Perhaps it would be best not to enter another glass building.
But the bots led them straight there, zigzagging up the ramp to the entrance while Sloane, Gareth, and Brighton made their way up a long set of shallow steps. The bots joined them at the doors, where Sloane paused to rest a hand on one of the copper bot’s shoulder-like protrusions.
“Thank you,” she said. “You should stay out here. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
The bots’ eyes blinked yellow and orange, which Gareth was beginning to understand as a sign that they were speaking to one another. “You care if we get hurt,” the copper bot said. “You… care? If we get hurt?”
“I told you!” BRO put in. “I told you!”
Gareth glanced back out toward the campus, unease creeping up his spine. Was it his imagination, or were there even fewer people moving about now?
Sloane placed a hand on the door. “This could be a trap.”
“Obviously it’s a trap,” Brighton said. “We should bring the bots in with us.”
Not a bad thought. Sloane might be concerned for the bots’ wellbeing, but they could certainly take more fire than a human body.
“We need them as lookouts,” Sloane said firmly. “Come inside if we call you though, okay?”
The bots’ eyes blinked yellow and then orange, which Gareth supposed could be interpreted as an affirmative response. Surely they could enter quickly in the event of an ambush. Surely.
Brighton just sighed and lifted his weapon, resigned, as they pushed the door open and stepped inside.
Gareth’s first breath was one of dust and old paper. Motes drifted in the air, suspended between the marble floor and the frosty glass of the dome above. Fat pillars bordered the rotunda, their shadows bending to hide the recessed walls in pools of darkness. He thought he caught a glimpse of shelves back there, though the contents were hidden in darkness.
But Gareth didn’t need to see what was on the shelves to know they’d walked into a library. An old library, one with actual paper books on the shelves, if his nose was any guide. It smelled not just of paper and dust, but of leather, cloth, and glue as well. He almost imagined he could hear the pages rustling.
A book sat abandoned in the middle of the floor, the mosaic design of the tiles cascading out around it as if it’d been deliberately placed there for aesthetic purposes. It probably had.
Sloane stepped toward the book, and Gareth wanted to scream for her to stop, but the words caught in his throat. He gripped his weapon as she crouched beside the book, bending over to read what it said.
“It’s a copy of the Fleet Accords,” she said, her voice echoing into the space, bouncing off the stone floors, the pillars. “I didn’t know they’d printed this.”
Gareth swallowed. “There are copies in every office on Fane.” He’d paged through them at length, though his official study copies had been in digital form.
A pointed hint, to leave a copy of the Fleet Accords. A very pointed hint. Suddenly, Gareth wished he had all the bots here as backup. Every last one.
Something twitched between the pillars, and Gareth raised his gun in time to train it on Vin Tarnish as he stepped out of the shadows, surrounded by CTF guards.
CHAPTER 13
Sloane’s hand was still extended toward the book, her knees yelling at her that she’d been crouching for a little longer than was comfortable, but she found it impossible to move when her uncle was standing before her, free and unhindered, with CTF thugs flanking him to either side like loyal protectors.
Vin held a shooter in his own hand, and though he hadn’t raised it in her direction, he was allowing his Federation friends to raise their weapons at her. In her book, it amounted to the same thing.
Vin might have gone running from Lostelle in a panic, but he looked perfectly calm now, with his mouth set in a determined line. Like he was merely doing what needed to be done, distasteful as it might be. In his mind, he’d found her in bed with the enemy—literally this time—and, as he’d lost the ability to heed any kind of sense, he’d fallen in with an even worse enemy. Far, far worse.
Striker himself slipped out of the shadows now, stealthy as the wolf he truly was, teeth bared in what might have been loosely interpreted as a smile. Ever the hero, he hovered a step behind Vin, as if ready to throw himself behind her uncle in case of sudden violence. He’d added a trio of patches to the upper right corner of his vest, which made him look more like a mountaineer than a conquering general, but then, fashion could be a subjective thing. Perhaps they were badges to commend him for his kills.
Sloane rose slowly and backed toward Gareth, keeping her body as fully between him and the weapons as she could. He could yell at her about it later, if he wanted; he was the one who’d almost been murdered on Lostelle. There, Vin had escaped rather than coming after her, which he could easily have done. She could use the fact that he would hesitate to hurt her.
As she moved, though, a chorus of clicks and energy-boosting whines echoed from every direction, rendering her position rather a moot point. They were surrounded.
This would be a good time for the lookout bots to come crashing in. Silently, she sent a message to BRO on her eye screen. Can you send the bots to back us up? They’re right outside.
There was no response.
“Nice work, Vincent,” Striker said. “You succeeded where I failed. Multiple times, I don’t mind admitting.”
It was one thing to know that Vin was here to turn her in—had lured her here, in fact—and another to have it confirmed.
“Do not tell me you turned me in for that bounty,” she said, though if there was another explanation, she couldn’t imagine what it might be. Her throat was dry, each swallow stabbing her throat with new intensity. The dust in here was unbearable.
Striker had been throwing that bounty all over the galaxy, and it’d been chasing her from the Fringe to Torrent and all the way to Obsidian City. She’d fought off eight-limbed bounty hunters and thrown mud roaches in pursuers’ faces to escape it. She’d been aided by citizens of Federation itself. The planet, not the asshole organization that ran it.
She hadn’t expected her own uncle to be the one to bring her in. So much for Vin hesitating to hurt her.
Part of her was reeling, screaming that this couldn’t be happening. The other part of her was already scheming for an escape.
BRO? she tried again. Are you there?
Nothing.
“Not you,” Vin said. “The Commander.”
Right. That probably should have been obvious.
Apparently secure in his own safety, Striker strode forward, with the swagger of a leading man taking center stage. Only the spotlight was missing. “A trade you ought to have made yourself,” he said to her, “for Elter’s freedom.”
Vin was nodding along with him. Vigorously. “And for your own. The bounty can be removed as easily as it was placed.”
“Oh, good,” she said. “They’re finishing each other’s sentences. How cute.”
Gareth let out a breath that might have been a laugh. Or a plea for her to shut the hell up. Either would’ve been warranted.
Vin moved to stand near Striker, seemingly unaware that he was competing for center stage. His eyes were bloodshot with fatigue, his expression pleading. A hair short of desperate. “Can’t you see that he’s got you locked in a web of lies? Taking you to his bed, convincing you to trust him? He will use you, Sloane, and then he’ll leave you. You have to believe it.”
The ironic thing was that if Vin had appeared with this information just a few weeks earlier, she might’ve believed him. She might’ve bought in.
Except… except that she’d seen the massacre on Cappel, the way Striker’s expert trap had closed around Gareth and the entire Fleet Advisory Commission. She’d seen him framed, with her own eyes. The only thing she could truthfully accuse him of after that was an excess of naivety.
