But that night the whole thing was taken out of Anneke"s hands.
Three things happened.
One. They slid into orbit around Kanto Kantoris, though officially the crew was still in the dark about the ident.i.ty of the planet they now swung about in geosynchronous...o...b..t.
Two. Anneke"s exfoliation accelerated. If she hadn"t been on extreme pain inhibitors and the neuronosis she would not have been able to sleep or to move at all.
Three. At two in the morning, a body slid into bed beside Anneke and cuddled up to her. Anneke woke, dimly aware something was wrong.
Then the light went on.
Anneke blinked, and reacted too slowly. The blanket was pulled back, exposing her bare chest. She"d also shed several kilos and almost returned to her normal height.
Sitting up in bed beside her, naked to the waist, was Yosira, her mouth hanging open. *You"re a girl."
*So it seems," Anneke said. For wont of nothing better to do, she got up, dressed quickly in full combat gear, including body armour and the tiny portable field generator they all wore when going into action. While she dressed, she explained who she was. She didn"t see any point trying to deceive Yosira. She hoped the girl understood the necessity of her masquerade and appreciated there was nothing personal in her deceit.
Yosira said, *So you"re a spy? For RIM?"
*Something like that, though I"m not flavour of the month at RIM either right now."
*What"s your name?"
Anneke told her. Yosira gasped softly.
*I"ve heard of you. People say you"re the reincarnation of Arial Naproxa. That raid you pulled on Arcadia. Everybody, I mean everybody, was talking about that for months afterwards. Those you didn"t alienate, that is. You definitely got the biggest bra.s.siest pair of - okay, well, you don"t. But you know what I mean."
*Thanks. I think."
*So you know where we are going?"
*I believe it"s Kanto Kantoris."
Yosira frowned. *The h.e.l.l we"re going there for? That is one ugly place from what I hear."
Anneke sat down on the edge of the bed and regarded Yosira steadily. The girl was sitting there, still half-dressed.
*Yosira, I have to get off this ship. I"ve timed the internal sensor sweeps. In about twenty minutes the ship"s AI is going to detect that, not only has it lost one male crewmember, it"s also gained a stowaway. A female one."
Yosira nodded. She understood this. *And you want to know what I"m going to do?"
*It would help."
Yosira said nothing for a few seconds, then she got up, dressed, and turned to Anneke. *Guess I"m going to help you."
*You don"t have to do that. You can just go back to your quarters, say I turned you down. If anyone checks, they"ll know you came in here."
*They"ll know I was here after you reverted."
*I could have been dressed, I could have kept the lights off"
Yosira shook her head. *I"ve been here too long." That was true. The girl was implicated either way.
And when Brown discovered Anneke Longshadow had been on board his vessel all along and had fooled him, like some neophyte agent, he would be looking to roll not a few heads.
*Okay. We don"t have long."
*What happened to the realjinks h.e.l.ler?"
*He"s safer now than he would have been here right now. We just had him mothballed for a bit. He won"t remember a thing."
*I"m glad. I like him."
*I know."
They both laughed quietly.
As Anneke readied to leave, she asked, *Why are you doing this?"
*You saved my life. Along with everybody who counts with me. So I owe you."
*I saved my own life, too."
Suddenly, the internal ship alarms blared. Anneke glanced at her watch. *Spiffie. That"s early."
*Must be a random sweep," said Yosira. *They do that sometimes."
*Yeah, but I was counting on it not happening right now. Let"s move."
They left at a run, needing to put distance between themselves and the cabin. Anneke had activated sensor neutralisers, which meant the ship"s AI couldn"t track them inside the vessel, but it could, if requested to do so, perform a minute three-dimensional grid sweep, looking for blind spots.
It would take three quarters of an hour, but it would locate them, unless they were near ann-s.p.a.ce generator. Or no longer on the ship.
*We need to get to an escape pod. Fast."
*Follow me." Despite having been on the ship for several weeks, Anneke still did not know the vessel like the crew who habitually manned her. She just hoped they didn"t run into anybody, especially anybody she knew and liked.
Which they did.
Corporal Coign stumbled round a corner, still doing up his zipper. He never did get it fully done up, freezing as he ran straight into Anneke and Yosira, and Anneke"s blaster zeroed him.
*Hands up, Coign," said Anneke. Coign complied.
His trousers slid down around his ankles. *Nice shorts. I see you took me up on the pink. Cute."
Coign frowned, then looked at Yosira. *Who is this?"
*It"s h.e.l.ler. He was renovated."
Coign"s eyebrows crawled up his skull. *You kiddin" me?"
*No, she"s not kidding you. Listen, Coign, nothing personal, but you gotta go sleepy-bye. I apologise for the headache you"ll have when you wake."
Coign grinned weakly. *Hey, lady, I owe you. You do what you have to. And hey, take care, okay?"
*Thanks, Coign. Listen, do up your trousers first, huh?"
Coign did so, and then Anneke hit him with a stun blast. He slid to the floor. She checked his breathing and pulse, saw he was okay, then hurried on to the nearest bank of escape pods.
Here they ran into a three-man search squad, a group neither Yosira nor Anneke knew well, as Brown had brought them on board.
That suited Anneke perfectly.
She got off one blast, saw their deflector fields were handling the overload, and launched herself at the two nearest. From the corner of her eye she saw Yosira take on the third.
They were well trained, Anneke gave them that, but her Normanskian musculature gave her a natural advantage. And her determination to get out of there certainly helped. She feinted in fast on the nearest, ducked, slammed a fist in the solar plexus of the second, and dropped, hooking out with a sweeping kick that took her opponent"s feet from under him. She then rolled onto her back and pistoned up her leg, catching the guy wheezing from the plexus jab full in the jaw. The kick lifted him off his feet and slammed him into the nearest wall. He slid down, not out, but too groggy and too neurally short-circuited to do anything except moan.
Meanwhile, the guy she"d knocked on his backside rolled out of the range of her legs, having a.s.sessed her superior strength. Which meant he was good. She made a testing move in his direction and out flashed a lethal vibroblade. She nearly lost a finger then and there. She didn"t need the nail.
Suddenly, the man lunged. Anneke met blade with blade. The energy discharge as the blades connected made Anneke and her attacker blink.
Then Anneke was locked in a whirling deadly frenzy of slashing thrusting blades and tight visceral grunts as each combatant forced their body to respond to lightning fast moves. Behind her, she heard Yosira finish off her opponent and knew it was time to get going.
She feinted again, then double-feinted and went with the first move, having deliberately shifted her own balance point in the direction of the second, real feint. Her opponent bought it, and she caught his knife arm and thrust the vibroblade into his ribs. It wasn"t a serious wound, but enough to disable him. She then s.n.a.t.c.hed away his blade.
At that point, as she raised her blaster, he expected to be finished off. It would be a nice surprise for him when he later woke. She hit him with the stun pulse and he collapsed like jelly.
Two minutes later Anneke and Yosira reached the bank escape pods. Anneke quickly reprogrammed one of the pods and set the destination coordinates. Within seconds, it was jetting away from the main ship and dropping them towards Kanto Kantoris.
Everything was going well.
Until an energy beam lanced out from the ship, hitting the escape pod square. The brief blinding flare of the explosion could be seen from the planet"s surface.
BLACK tasted the bitterness of his defeat. By anyone else"s estimate, the strike against Dyson"s Drop had been a resounding success. They had ousted Myoto from direct control, frozen their a.s.sets, and enjoined Dyson"s Enterprises to accept a nominal *garrison" force solely to provide protection against future takeover bids, which made their raid appear altruistic.
Black was probably the only person - not counting the Envoy - to suspect that Dyson Enterprises did not need protecting, not from anyone in this galaxy. The problem was that Black was not the only combatant *picked up" by the unanch.o.r.ed teleportation web Dyson had developed.
Indeed, two thirds of his troops on Dyson"s Drop had been tampered with. Aware of the implications that the Mqjoris Corporata might never trust him and his troops again, he had had each captured trooper selectively brain-wiped. Although each still remembered being teleported and winding up in a holding camp, none recalled anything else, certainly no unusual surgical procedures.
All of which left Black with just two problems. One, could he afford to trust these troops again? And two, could he trust himself again?
*They knew who you were, Envoy," Black said two days after he returned to the ship. He had just interviewed h.e.l.ler, thanking him for his excellent work down on the planet and complimenting him on his audacious recovery from certain death. When h.e.l.ler had left, Black steepled his fingers and peered over them at the silent Envoy.
*There"s something about that young man," he said.
*Something?"
*I think we can expect big things from him."
*He is bold and brave."
Black frowned. *There"s something else, something I can"t put my finger on. I like him."
*Yet you like no one."
*Maybe I"m mellowing."
*This seems unlikely."
*Fine. Have it your way. In that case, I admire him. He might almost -"
*Be you. If you had never been captured by slavers."
Black"s eyes narrowed. *That"s cla.s.sified informa tion, Envoy."
The Envoy stared back, his expression Impen etrable, enigmatic. *You have the marks of the ex-slave. I can read things. Mannerisms. Expressions. Personality traits. All printed indelibly on your being." Black got himself under control. *Can you teach me how?"
*Yes. We begin tomorrow."
Black accepted that, then decided to score a point by repet.i.tion. *They knew who you were."
*The surgeons?"
*Yes. They said you were a caretaker species, concerned with time."
As always, the Envoy seemed unperturbed. *They are correct. Interesting they should know this, but more interesting they should tell you. This will add to my data. Perhaps they see the path as I do."
*The path?"
*The way ahead. A storm is gathering. Many paths are closed to it, channelling it to its final destination."
*So you"ve said. And I am that path?"
*One of several."
Black eyed the Envoy. This was the first time the creature had alluded to an alternative. Was there someone else the Envoy was grooming? The thought unsettled Black. As unlikely as it might be, imagine if it were Anneke Longshadow .. .
As promised, Black began training with the Envoy the next day. This kept him in his cabin for much of the trip to Kanto Kantoris but, given his mood, that was a plus. In any case, s.p.a.ce travel bored him.
That changed the night they reached Kanto.
The first sign was the blare of the ship"s alarms. Black woke, instantly alert, and slapped the comm panel next to his bed.
*What"s happening?"
*Intruder alarm, sir," came the nervous voice of the night duty officer.
*Intruders have boarded the ship?"