“Pursuing a fugitive, of all the stupid reasons.” Fralick scowled. “I can’t believe that has priority over getting a diplomatic envoy to a negotiating table, but that’s why we were turned back!”
“A fugitive? What kind of a fugitive?” Katy schooled her face into perfectly normal puzzlement.
“The kind that makes a bio-engineering company send a Corporate Marshal all the way from Terra to Narsai,” Fralick answered. “A long-range shuttle carrying one hailed us, and he insisted that we come about and follow him in. He intended to catch up with us here anyway, but you know how tricky it is to match schedules when you’re operating over interstellar distances.”
Romanova nodded. She thought of Rachel Kane coming into this room starved and frightened and shivering, and she suppressed a shudder. But she said with apparent innocence, “I don’t see why any company would send a Marshal all the way to Narsai, George. Gengineering of sentient life forms is illegal here. Hell, we don’t even gen our cattle!”
Fralick turned away from the comm pickup he was using, and he spoke loudly to someone Romanova hadn’t suspected was in the same compartment with him. “Giandrea!” he said, not rudely but with the kind of informality that sometimes passed for friendliness with people of his social standing. “Would you please explain the situation to Admiral Romanova? Since one of the people Marshal Vargas is looking for lists her home as his permanent residence, she and I are both concerned about our daughter’s safety there.”
Katy Romanova had bluffed a lot of enemies during the years of her service career, but it had never been harder for her to keep up an act than it was right now. They were seeking not just Rachel Kane—that she’d expected, from the instant she’d heard that a corporate marshal had become involved—but the marshal also knew about Dan Archer’s part in this? She had accepted the possibility, but hearing it confirmed still jolted her.
Dan. Bound to her first by shared sorrow when her own boys had died; and since then, by many years of love. She and Linc desperately needing an adult child in their lives, Dan needing somewhere to call home and someone to be his family.
There were only two people in the universe whose safety mattered to her more than Dan’s did. One of them was in the brig aboard the starship from which her former husband had just been speaking to her, and she had no idea what his state of health was although she was certain he was still living. The other was the little girl whom Johnnie Romanov had just resettled on the sofa across the room from her.
She hoped she would never have to choose between Linc and Maddy, because for the life of her she didn’t know how a choice like that one could be made. Protecting Dan if she could still do that was a high priority; but if she had to decide during the next few moments, she knew she would let him go. Right along with Rachel Kane and the three unborn babies that belonged to both of them, if that was what it took for her to keep Linc and Maddy safe.
A person she did not recognize, dark-skinned and slim and of indeterminate age, appeared on the comm’s viewscreen as George Fralick moved away from its pickup. A deep voice said, “Paolo Giandrea, Admiral. I apologize for what’s happened to your husband, but I’m sure you know there are some orders an officer obeys even though he hates them.”
“I understand that, Captain.” He wore the four stripes which said that was his rank, not simply his title as commanding officer of a ship. But anything in Archangel’s class did rate a full captain, the three stripes of a commander usually were considered sufficient only for vessels up to and including light cruisers. “Can you tell me if he’s well? I can’t imagine that he went willingly when he was taken away from here, and until just now no one had told me where he was.”
If no one up there was bright enough to realize that a Morthan hybrid’s wife could hear him when he called out to her telepathically, then she certainly wasn’t going to remind them of that fact. Yet she really did want Giandrea’s answer to her question, she was not simply trying to rattle him—although that would be a perfectly good strategic move, too.
“Our chief medical officer is monitoring Captain Casey’s health, Admiral. I haven’t had any adverse reports about him, that’s as much as I can tell you.” Giandrea’s tone was guarded, as if he wanted very much to say more but knew he could not.
That was all right. Unless the Archangel was a very unusual ship, its CMO would be a Morthan hybrid. Like Linc. Better than Linc, much as Katy hated to think of her husband in those terms; but the fact was that most Morthan hybrids could do much more with their telepathic abilities than Linc could, and hopefully the one who was caring for him now would feel some sense of duty toward another member of his species. Or at least a physician’s compassion and decency toward a person who was being imprisoned only to gain control over the actions of someone who loved him.
Romanova nodded. She said, “Thank you, Captain Giandrea. Continue, if you please.”
“Well.” The man swallowed, as if that gave him time to collect his thoughts. “About eighteen months ago, just before the general order that discharged all officers who weren’t Academy graduates, something completely unprecedented happened aboard my ship. My executive officer stole a lifeboat and tried to desert in it. Or at the time we believed she only ‘tried’ to desert, because of course we fired on her when she refused to come back aboard; and the readings we got afterward indicated that we’d destroyed her. But since then the lifeboat she stole has been found, a trader picked it up as salvage and sold it back to the Service at Narsai.”
“What does that have to do with the Corporate Marshal who met you and made you come back here? He must have started out weeks ago, and I still don’t understand why a Marshal would be involved in a Service officer’s desertion.” The block of ice in Katy’s chest was getting larger and colder. Oh, Dan, why couldn’t you have just blasted that lifeboat after you got Rachel off it, instead of selling the damnable thing?
But she knew the answer to that, his partners. In order to keep Rachel’s existence secret from them, of course Dan had been obliged to do what they expected him to do with that valuable piece of salvage. And he would have thought he’d done an adequate job of erasing its identification codes; and he should have been able to, after all the man was a fully qualified computer science engineer.
But so were other people, and some of them were right here on Narsai. Damn!
“Oh, he was sent out to investigate as soon as my report on what had happened got back to the right people. You see, my executive officer was a gengineered human—the first gen that the HR Solutions Company ever designed especially for command-level military service. We’ve been using gens as ordinaries for years now, and they’ve worked out so well that we’re getting close to no longer needing to impress crew members at all. But Rachel Kane was the first gen who was ever created with the abilities it takes to command a ship, to lead people who aren’t other gens.” Giandrea swallowed again, clearly that was a mannerism he used unconsciously when he was unhappy or nervous—or both, as he was right now.
He continued, “She was good, too. So damn good, I sometimes forgot she wasn’t just another human officer! I thought of her as a friend. I wish I could be glad to know she didn’t die when I had to fire on that lifeboat.”