She gripped Martin’s hand, squeezing out a message in a private code rusty from disuse: “Rumbled.”
“Ack. Go?”
“Yes.” She pulled him forward, pushing between a yakking family group and a self-important fellow in the robe of an Umbrian merchant banker. “You want to talk?” she asked, staring at the woman.
“No, I want you both to come with me,” she said casually. “Someone else wants to talk to you.”
“Then we’ll be happy to comply,” Rachel said, forcing a smile. All this, and not even a briefing beforehand? For a moment she wished she was back in the claustrophobic tenement off the Place du Molard, waiting for the bomb squad. She tried not to notice Martin, whose nervousness was transparently obvious. “Where do you want us to go?”
“Follow me.” The woman opened the side door and motioned them through. She had a friend waiting on the other side, a big guy who held his gun openly and watched them with incurious eyes. “This way.”
She led them up a short staircase and out into a wide cargo tunnel. The air became increasingly chilly as they walked along it. Rachel shivered. She wasn’t dressed for an excursion into a freezer hold. “Where are we?”
“Keep it for the boss.”
“If you say so.” Rachel tried to keep her voice light, as if this was a mystery excursion managed by the crew to keep bored passengers amused. They turned a corner onto a wider docking tunnel, then up a ramp that led into a vast twilight space. Floods glittered high above as the gravity did an alarmingly abrupt fade, dropping to less than a tenth of normal in the space of a few meters. We’re outside the ship, she squeezed. Martin nodded. Not for the first time she wished she dared use her implants to text him, but the risk of interception in the absence of a secured quantum channel was too great. If only I knew how complete their surveillance capability was, she told herself. If. She shivered violently and watched her breath steam before her face. “Far to go?”
The blond woman motioned her toward a doorway at the far side of the docking hub. Warm light shone from it. “Shit, it’s cold out here,” Martin muttered. They hurried forward without any urging on the part of their guards.
“Stop.” The one with the gun held up a hand as they neared the door. “Mathilde?”
“Yah.” The blond woman produced a bulky comm and spoke into it. “Mathilde here. The two — diplomats. Outside control. I’m sending them in.” She turned and glared at Rachel and Martin, waving at the door. “That way.”
“Where else?” Rachel looked around as she entered the room. It was brightly lit, and a whine from overhead suggested that a local aircon unit was fighting a losing battle against the chill. The man with the gun was behind them, and for a sickening moment as she saw the largely empty room, she wondered if he was meant to kill them and leave their bodies there. Then a door slid open in the wall opposite.
“Go in.” Gun-boy waved them forward. “It’s a lift.”
“Okay, I’m going, I’m going.” Rachel stepped forward. Martin followed her, with Gun-boy trailing to the rear. The doors closed and the lift began to move, sinking toward the high-gee levels of the station. It squealed as it went, long-idle wheels protesting as they clawed along toothed rails that had chilled below normal operating temperatures. They descended in silence, Rachel leaning against Martin in the far corner of the cargo lift from the guard. The guard kept his weapon on them the whole time, seemingly immune to distraction.
The lift juddered to a halt, and its door slid open on a well-lit corridor. There were more fans, humming and grating at overload. The chill was less extreme, and when the guard waved them toward an open door at the other end of the passage, Rachel couldn’t see her breath. “Where are we?” she asked.
“Waiting for the boss. Go right in.” Gun-boy looked bored and annoyed, but not inclined toward immediate violence. Rachel tensed, then nodded and went right in. There was a sign on the open door she read as she passed it: DIRECTOR’S SUITE. Well, what a surprise, she thought tiredly, mentally kicking herself for not having seen this coming. Then her implant twitched. She had to suppress a start as she blinked, rapidly: new mail here, of all places? How …
She read it quickly, almost trancing out — almost missing the deep pile carpet, the withered brown trees in their pots to either side of the big wood-topped desk, and the door leading into the inner office. Then more mail came in — this time, a reply from Martin. She glanced at him sharply, then turned round to stare at Gun-boy. The goon leaned against the wall just inside the doorway. “Who is this boss of yours?” she asked. “Do we have to wait long?”
“You wait until she gets here.” The fan in the office rattled slightly, pumping tepid air in to dilute the chill. A thin layer of dust covered the desk, the visitor’s chairs, an empty watercooler.
“Mind if I sit down?” asked Martin.
“Be my guest.” Gun-boy raised an ironic eyebrow, and Martin sat down hastily before he changed his mind. Rachel stepped sideways in front of him, and he slipped an arm protectively around her waist, under the hem of her jacket.
“Can you tell us anything?” Rachel asked quietly as Martin slipped something into her waistband. “Like what this is all about?”
“No.”
“Okay.” Rachel sighed. “If that’s how you want it.” She sat down on the chair to Martin’s right and leaned against him, putting her left arm behind his shoulder. So they’re not monitoring the station protocols for traffic yet, she thought, hungry for hope. If they were, that mail from Wednesday would have set them off. She let her arm drop behind Martin’s back, then twisted her wrist round and fumbled with the object in her waistband until it went up her sleeve to mate with its companion.
Click. She felt, rather than heard, the noise. The gadget made handshake with her implants, and a countdown timer appeared in her vision: the number of seconds it would take for the gel-phase fuel cell to power up and the gadget to begin assembling itself. She’d seldom felt so naked in her life. If they’d extended the surface-piercing radar surveillance network from the ship into this room seven shades of alarm would be going off right now, and Gun-boy would put a bullet through her face long before the gadget was ready. Otherwise -
A creaking whine from the corridor announced the arrival of another lift car. A few seconds later Mathilde appeared, this time leading Frank. Frank was in a bad way, his skin ashen and his hands taped together in front of him. He looked around, eyes unreadable, wearing the same clothes he’d been in when Martin had interviewed him. They were the worse for wear. “Sit,” Mathilde told him, pointing to the chair next to Rachel. She produced a box cutter: “Hold out your hands. We’ve got the girl. Piss us off, and you’ll never see her again.”
Frank cleared his throat. “I understand,” he grunted, rubbing his wrists. He glared at her resentfully. “What now?”
“You wait.” Mathilde took a step back to stand beside Gun-boy.
“Lining up all your targets, huh?”
She cast Martin a very ugly look. “Wait for the boss. She won’t be long now.”
“You’re Frank, aren’t you? What happened?” Rachel whispered to him.
Frank grunted, and rubbed at his wrists again. “Got me early. In my room. You’re his partner?” He jerked his chin at Martin. “Thought I was the only one at first. Where are we?”
“Old Newfie. Wednesday’s station. Listen, we hid her but they — had you. She went with them.”
“Shit!” He met her eyes with an expression of terrible resignation. “You know what this means.”
Rachel gave a slight nod in the direction of the guards. “Don’t say it.”
“You can say anything you like,” Mathilde called, grinning maliciously at him. “We have complete freedom of speech — anything you want to say we will listen to.”