"I hope he hangs you," Neverlin said bitterly. "Whoever you really stole that tracer for, I hope he well and truly hangs you."
"He does seem to want you pretty badly," Jack warned.
"Yes, I suppose he does," Alison agreed. She smiled at Neverlin. "But then, grandfathers are like that."
CHAPTER 31
"That's it," Alison announced, dropping one last folded shirt into the carry bag laid out on her bunk in the Essenay's second cabin. "You know, I'm really going to miss this place."
"Not that you ever spent much time in here," Jack pointed out.
"Oh, I don't mean the room," she said, looking around the cabin. "Not even the ship, really."
"The company, then?" Draycos asked from the corner where he and Taneem had stretched out on the deck to watch Alison's packing.
"Yes," Alison said. She gave Jack a wry look. "Strange though that may sound."
"That's okay—it's been a day for strangeness," Jack assured her. Oddly enough, he thought, he was going to miss her, too. "You're really Mr. Braxton's granddaughter?"
She nodded. "On my mother's side," she said. "My dad, on the other hand, is an Internos Intelligence agent."
"Must have made for an interesting childhood," Jack said. "So you're an Internos agent. And I thought the Whinyard's Edge recruited them young."
A shadow seemed to pass across Alison's face. "I'm a special case," she said quietly. "Do you remember, after you got back from Semaline, when you asked if I knew what it felt like to have people die because of me?"
"Yes," Jack said, wincing at the memory of that day. He'd been full of anger and pain and guilt, and had lashed out completely unfairly at her.
"I was nine at the time," Alison went on, her eyes staring into infinity. "My best friend's brother told me in secret that he was going to run away from home and join a mercenary group."
"How old was he?" Draycos asked.
"He'd just turned twelve," Alison said. "Two years too young to legally join. But he was tall for his age, and he really wanted to go." She closed her eyes briefly. "Three months later, he was dead. Killed in combat."
"I'm sorry," Jack said quietly. "But it was his decision, not yours. What happened wasn't your fault."
"Yes, it was," Alison said. Her voice was calm, but Jack could hear old pain still lurking beneath it. "I could have told someone. I should have told someone. But I thought the whole thing was terribly grown-up and too glamorous for words."
Jack nodded as he suddenly understood. "So that's what you were doing in the Whinyard's Edge. You were looking for evidence of underage recruitment."
She gave him a wry half smile. "You are pretty good at this, aren't you? Yes, that was my mission in life. I'd already infiltrated Weber's Hellions and the Malison Ring and pulled data on them. This time, it was the Whinyard's Edge's turn."
"The whole thing your dad's idea, I suppose?"
"Actually, Dad was dead-set against it," she said, her smile vanishing into memory again. "As were Mom, Grandfather, Grandmother, and pretty much everyone else. But I had righteousness on my side. And guilt."
"And you wore them down."
"More or less," Alison said. "Dad finally agreed, on the condition that I go through a full five years of training first. He probably figured I'd get tired of it and drop out."
"Only you didn't," Jack said.
"Like I said, righteousness and guilt." She cocked her head "And then I met you, and a whole lot of really interesting questions came tumbling out into the light. After we escaped from Sunright I contacted Dad. We put two and two together, and figured out that you were the same Jack who'd saved Grandfather's life on the Star of Wonder. After a little discussion, we agreed I should change missions and concentrate on you for a while."
She snapped her fingers. "Which reminds me, I've got the footlocker you left at the Whinyard's Edge camp."
"With my leather jacket inside?" Jack asked. "Great! I thought that was gone forever."
"No, Dad's got it, all safe and sound," Alison assured him. "We'll pick it up after we get out of here. Anyway, we lost you for a bit while you were on Brum-a-dum, then picked up your trail again after you freed all those Chookoock slaves. I followed you to Bigelow, where you promptly got yourself captured trying to sneak into the Malison Ring HQ there."
"Which Draycos and I could have gotten out of on our own," Jack said, his face warming at the memory. "So that was why I spotted Harper hanging around your ship. He was your excuse to talk me into giving you a ride?"
"Yes." Alison lowered her eyes. "He was also . . . bodyguards aren't supposed to be your friends, you know. But he was anyway."
"Sometimes it's a bodyguard's duty to die for those he protects," Draycos said. "Just as it is a warrior's."
"I know," Alison said. "And we'd probably all be dead if he hadn't sacrificed himself to set off the Advocatus Diaboli's emergency beacon that way. But it still hurts."
"He wouldn't want you to hold on to the pain, Alison," Draycos said gently. "But you may always honor him in your memory. As I will."
"As we all will," Jack promised, searching for a way to get Alison off this subject. "So that whole thing about meeting friends on Rho Scorvi was just a bucket of soap bubbles?"
Alison's eyes and mind seemed to come back. "Basically," she said. "Though someone would have come eventually to check if I hadn't surfaced. Grandfather's scientists had analyzed the scratch mark Draycos made on the bottom of his rejuvenation cylinder, and they'd somehow deduced that it was a Phooka claw mark. So I maneuvered you into going there, just to see how you'd react."
She smiled at Taneem. "Little did I know. Anyway, once we got off-planet again, I called my contact on your InterWorld transmitter. I told him about the Phookas and had Dad go in with a team and spirit them away. I didn't want Neverlin killing them or, worse, using them to scam the refugee fleet when it arrived."
Jack looked over at the computer module. Uncle Virge was being awfully quiet about all this. "How did you bribe Uncle Virge into not telling me about the call?"
"No bribery needed," Alison said. "I'd already figured the Essenay was either a diplomatic or governmental ship, and their computers always come with a privacy lock-out. I just said the magic words, and Uncle Virge basically went to sleep."
Jack nodded. "Is that also how Harper got you on Bentre, Uncle Virge?"
"Yes," Uncle Virge said, a strangely thoughtful tone to his voice. "He shut me off, got out of his cuffs, unwired the sopor mist canisters you'd hooked up, flew us to the Braxton Universis office on Keeleywine, and dropped Chiggers off with the security people there. Then he woke me up again, explained the situation, and gave me a take-it-or-leave-it offer to help out."
"And so the two of you came to Point Two to masquerade as Uncle Virgil and infiltrate Neverlin's group," Jack said, shaking his head. There was nothing like suddenly getting an entirely new angle on a situation you'd thought you understood.
"And to bring me some emergency equipment," Alison said. "He was also there on Brum-a-dum, by the way, the night I locked myself in Neverlin's safe."
"I remember," Jack said, an odd memory suddenly kicking in. "When Frost and Neverlin came charging into the hangar, you said both of us weren't supposed to rescue you."
"Right," Alison said. "I'd given him a comm clip with your frequency and pattern so he could keep track of what we were up to." She grimaced. "Of course, if I'd realized that Frost and Neverlin were still on Brum-a-dum, I'd have called in a full Braxton Security force to grab them as they left the Chookoock estate. We could have ended the whole plot right there."