“So our safety right now depends on Narsatians being polite to each other?” Kane cocked her head, and the humor she’d learned from her classmates during her Academy days curved her mouth for a moment.
“You could put it that way, I suppose, but it wouldn’t be quite accurate. It’s not just a question of courtesy, Ms. Kane; it’s a question of respect for custom that has the force of law. And if a visiting ship is detected making intrusive scans, its owners are invited to take their trade elsewhere.” The voice that answered her wasn’t Dan’s voice, it was that of Reen Romanova. The silver-haired farm woman had come into the barn quietly, but not quietly enough to startle the two former military officers. If she had done that, one of them might have hurt her before realizing who she was—and Reen knew that. She wasn’t familiar with many such people, but her cousin Katy was also her close friend.
“I can’t imagine how you make policies like that one work here,” Kane said. “But then, I can’t imagine being a civilian.”
“Well, you are one now!” Dan patted her shoulder, in a gesture that might have been a lover’s caress or a comrade’s reassurance but that he probably intended as both. “So, Reen. Narsai Control thinks they found us?”
“I believe so,” Reen answered. “Katy just got condolences on your death from official sources, anyway. And the caller wanted to know why they found an extra person’s DNA traces in the wreckage.”
“Let me guess,” Archer said, and he grinned. “An extra human female? Age about 30, which made her younger than any of the three human females who were supposed to be aboard the Triad?”
“Yes.” Reen looked directly at Rachel Kane. “Odd DNA, too. If they didn’t know better, they would have thought that trader had a gen aboard. But that would be impossible, of course, because gens are too valuable to be sold as slaves or as indentured servants.”
Archer laughed aloud. Kane looked as if she couldn’t decide whether to give him a hug, or hit him. After a moment she inquired dryly, “What did you use, Dan? To give them a nice clean sample of my DNA without making them realize you planted it?”
“Oh, that was easy. I just kept the stasis capsule from your lifeboat when I sold the boat itself back to the Star Service as salvage.” Archer was still amused, although less ebulliently so now. “Had to get it off there anyway. We could sterilize the rest of the boat to conceal that you were ever aboard, but that capsule we’d have had to destroy. And that seemed like a hell of a waste, since I knew the time might come when we’d want to convince someone you weren’t just missing but good and dead.”
“When can we get off Narsai? And who was it that set us up, anyway?” Kane’s sense of humor was stiff, even after years of practicing its use. On one level she admired and enjoyed her lover’s mirth, but on another level she found it unsettling. Even downright annoying, sometimes.
“While I was off the ship getting you hooked up with the Matushka, the Archangel showed up in orbit and they sent over an inspection party. Triad’s a Commonwealth trader, not registered out of a particular port of origin, so unfortunately they had a perfect right. They went everywhere—and if Hansie and the others hadn’t gone right along behind them, she tells me, that surprise package would have gone up without us having any warning at all. When I found out Fralick was aboard the old Angel, when Maddy showed up, it started to fall into place. I already had the politics right—he’s the Isolationists’ main standard bearer, and one of the things they need most right now is to prevent ex-Service officers like us scramblers from joining up with the Rebs to provide them with trained leadership.” Dan passed a hand over his jaw.
He continued, “I wouldn’t expect Captain Giandrea to order assassinations, but probably all he actually did was go along with the inspection to humor Fralick. That bastard’s slippery as hell, there’s not much I’d put past him—and he hates me almost as much as he hates Linc. He blames Linc for the Matushka leaving him, me for not having the decency to die when Ewan did, and both of us because we’re in her life and he’s out of it. So maybe I overshot when I made sure you got reported dead along with the rest of us, Rachel, but we didn’t know Fralick was anywhere near Narsai when Hansie and I had to make that judgment call. And we did think it might be connected to you, at the time that was an assumption we had to make.”
“So how long are we stuck here for?”
That some hosts might have thought her speech a rude one, did not enter Kane’s mind. Fortunately Reen Romanova understood her real meaning, and notified Archer with a quick glance that she wasn’t taking offense. The Narsatian farm woman said, “You’re welcome to stay with us as long as you like, Ms. Kane. Dan knows that, he’s been here many times. But since Narsatian laws and customs don’t protect out-worlders in any way, I suggest that you may be safer if you do leave as soon as you can. Hiding you is the only way we have of protecting you. If you are located here, there’ll be nothing I can do to help you afterward.”
Dan nodded and said, “Reen’s right, you know. Now that the Archangel’s left orbit I’m only going to wait until I’ve touched bases with the Matushka again. After that we’re getting out of here. I thought letting you lie low on Narsai was a good idea, Rachel, but things are a hell of a lot different now than they were when I set this up.”
Trabe Kourdakov looked again at the hard copy communication on his desk, and then he looked out the window of his office. He could see the northern parklands from here, and to the city’s south lay one of Narsai’s very few mountain ranges.
He loved MinTar, he always had. His own parents had been professors at this university, and he had hoped that if his daughter could not reconcile herself to living full-time on the Romanov Farmstead that maybe spending part of her time on faculty here might solve the problem. But Katy had done what it pleased her to do, first as a girl of eighteen by entering the Star Service; then as a young woman, by marrying a man who called Kesra instead of Narsai home.
Still, Kourdakov had been fond of the grandsons Katy and her husband had brought here so long ago as babies. And it had been fun having three of them instead of the usual one, or at most (to great social disapproval) two children that Narsatian families were allowed to produce. He had been glad for Katy that on Kesra she hadn’t been pressured to abort one of her twins when she found out she was carrying not a second singleton, but both a second child and a third child simultaneously. That pressure would not be as great here on Narsai nowadays, of course; but Katy’s boys had been born a generation ago, when traditions were stronger.
And then those boys had died in battle, under their mother’s command. Little though he knew about warfare, Trabe Kourdakov was a descendant of people who had crossed light years of space to get here from Earth in an era when that had not been a safe and routine journey. He realized that in space people still died sometimes, and that in war they died often. He and his wife had grieved for their grandsons; he and Cabbie had been ready to welcome Katy home and comfort her, as much as any parent could be comforted, because they knew what it felt like to lose a child. They had lost Katy’s sister, after all; and while Katy had filled the dynastic gap in the Romanov line and had blessed their home with childish sounds and activities once more, neither Cabanne Romanova nor Trabe Kourdakov had pretended—even to each other—that Katy replaced their lost Madeleine.
Katy had gone directly back to Kesra after the battle and subsequent negotiations at Mistworld, though, so her parents had had no chance to console her. They had waited, expecting that in due time she would come to see them with the new daughter she named for her sister whom she hadn’t known. For them to go to Kesra did not enter either of their heads, and that he could have done that did not cross Kourdakov’s mind now.