She didn’t need to interpret that. As a member of one of the Great Families, he’d have gotten off.
“She couldn’t get it to trial, so she tried to kill him. She tried a couple of times. She nearly succeeded, so Yves asked me to stand in for him at a function he had to attend. I needed the money. Except… the girl’s mother was as insane as Yves was. She booby-trapped the hotel where we were to change places. Killed herself and Yves and fifty other people as well.”
“So you pretended to be him?” She hadn’t known Han long, but he didn’t seem the sort.
“The hospital got the records mixed. They thought I was Yves. I spent six months in hospital having my body rebuilt.”
DNA was linked to one’s identity at birth. There was no way the hospital could have mixed the records.
Han finally looked at her. “It sounds like an excuse, I know, but I lost my memory for a while. Or not so much lost it, but I got really confused because everyone was treating me like Yves, and I knew these people. I remembered them. I remembered having dinner with them. When I finally realized what had happened, I tried to tell them. A number of times, but something always came up, and we never got to the important part. Then I… stopped telling them.”
His comms vibrated again. Han cut the call off.
“Sometimes I get a guilty conscience, but… I don’t know. They get distressed when I talk about it.”
Twelve years, he’d said. It was a long time to get away with pretending to be someone else. A long time to do it without being caught. The notes on Radko’s comms said Han had joined the Lancian fleet eleven and a half years prior.
“So you joined the fleet.”
“I thought that would solve things. It made it worse. And every time I go home—”
“But you do go home?”
Han shrugged.
“How often?”
“I’m at the barracks. We do three tendays, then ten days off.”
Every break, in other words.
“I know. But I couldn’t up and leave, and Annie is going through a stage right now, and Mother gets worried if I don’t.” Han shrugged again. “It’s hard to cut off.”
Even if the hospital had mistaken his identity, the fleet had rigorous security checks. The Great Families protected their progeny carefully. The DNA check for entry to the fleet should have exposed Han as an imposter. Yet it hadn’t.
“Radko, court-martial me, do whatever you need to, but don’t tell my parents. Please. They don’t deserve it.”
What if his parents already knew? Someone like Renaud Han had the contacts to change DNA records.
She didn’t promise. She couldn’t, for after this, she planned on visiting Amina and Renaud to see what they did know.
If she was allowed back on Lancia.
“I have to tell my boss,” she said. “I’m here to test out a particular ability Yves had that you don’t.”
“That he could torture people better than me?”
Who knew what Han might do now that she knew his secret? Maybe it was time to share some secrets of her own. “He spent ten years at House of Sandhurst training to be a linesman.”
“The doctors in the hospital explained that, before I regained my memory. It was the shock, they said. I might never regain my line abilities.”
Radko laughed. “That won’t gel with my boss. She’ll observe you for five minutes, then she’ll turn around and shoot you, for she’ll know you never were a linesman, and therefore, aren’t Yves Han. I’d rather tell her first. The Han family have influence.” She stood up and stretched. “She’s not a bad boss. A bit crusty, but okay for all that.” Better than anyone had expected, but they should have trusted Abram Galenos to pick the right person. Even if, like everyone else, Radko would have preferred that Abram had stayed.
“That good, huh?”
“She’s good, but everyone on ship will know. If—” She remembered in time not to mention Vega’s name. Han had worked for Vega for two years. He’d have noted her promotion, would know for whom she worked now. “If my boss doesn’t kill you, the rest of my team certainly will.” In their job, someone pretending to be a linesman would be trying to get onto one of the alien ships.
“All in five minutes?”
“All in five minutes,” Radko confirmed.
“What? They walk around with portable Havortian test kits?”
“Nothing so overt as that.” She tapped the comms he was turning over in his hands. “They will see that you are naturally right-handed. They will ask what you see and hear.” If he was near an alien ship. “And they will hear you sing.”
“I’m doing the singing in five minutes?”
“Most definitely.”
“So I walk on ship. You said it was a ship?”
She nodded.
“Singing, and holding something.”
“Han, you holster your blaster right-handed.”
“Oh.” Han was quiet a moment. “And the singing?”
“Maybe ten minutes.” More like an hour, given Vega would want to talk to him first.
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.” She hoped her trust wasn’t misplaced. “Han. It’s a simple test, but it’s classified. If you mention it to anyone, I’ll bring up the secrecy act. And maybe I’ll shoot you.”
He’d been smiling. He stopped. “And you tell me this secret just after I tell you I’m not the person I’m pretending to be. Very funny. Even I got taken in.”
He’d come around. Radko made her voice hard. “Don’t mention what we talked about to anyone but me, Spacer Han. That’s an order.”
Van Heel found an old, out-of-the way shuttle field halfway across the continent. It was busier than the one on Barth, but busy meant twenty ships a week, and it was cargo only. Radko used van Heel’s comms—for her own was the contact for Tiana Chen in Callista OneLane’s files—to order a box of fresh shellfish to be delivered there. The shuttle pilot was to collect a package from the same shuttleport. This parcel was then to be delivered, along with another box of shellfish, to the Factor of the Lesser Gods as congratulations on his forthcoming nuptials. The pickup from Redmond was to ensure that the same ship carried both orders.
Both orders were coded for urgent delivery.
“I hope that’s not coming out of my credit,” van Heel said, as Radko handed the comms back.
“It’s coming out of our operations budget.”
“You can always put in a chit for it if it does,” Chaudry said. “We get that all the time in Stores. People charging things to the wrong account. It’s form 55735.”
“Wait,” Han said. “You’re telling me we have more than fifty-five thousand forms?”
“I’ve filled out about fifty thousand of them,” van Heel said. “Intelligence likes to track where their money goes.”
Radko had filled out the occasional order, but not many. “You should go onto a battleship. Not as many forms there.”
“Are you kidding? That’s worst of all.”
Chaudry nodded glum agreement. “All the time. And we have to audit 5 percent of them.”
“Audit?”
“What ship do you come from?”
Definitely not a ship where you filled out forms for everything. But then, no doubt Captain Helmo had that in hand. Radko would have to find out. “If anyone has to fill out a form for it, I’ll do it.”
She turned to van Heel. “Can you disable the tracker in the aircar?”
She nodded.
“Good. Not in the city,” for in a populous area an aircar without a tracker was guaranteed to draw the attention of the police. “We’ll stop somewhere along the way and take it out.”
It was crazy to realize that it would take almost a full day for them to get to the cargo field. Around the same amount of time it would take a spaceship to get to Lancia, load some shellfish, jump, and send a shuttle to land on Redmond.