“So where does the Marshal think she is now?” Might as well ask that straight out, Romanova thought. Giandrea was hurting so much that she did not want to make him draw this out any longer, and she’d let him tell her enough of what she already knew so that she was not likely to slip up and accidentally reveal knowledge that she could not have gained from him.
“He knows where she is. She’s dead now, after all. But not aboard the lifeboat, that survived to be picked up by the trade-ship I mentioned. It was called the Triad.” Giandrea’s gulps were fast becoming annoying.
“That was my foster son Dan Archer’s ship,” Romanova said, still trying to speed the younger officer up. “I was informed earlier today of his death, when the ship exploded in orbit. No one seemed to know why that happened, but positive DNA identifications were made of Dan and of the others who owned Triad with him.”
“They also found Rachel Kane’s DNA, and I wish that was the end of the trail.” Giandrea suddenly squared his shoulders, firmed his jaw, and stopped that nervous gulping. He said in a starship commander’s steady tones, “But it wasn’t. There was something peculiar about the debris, and although Narsai Control told us they couldn’t possibly scan the surface of your world for the Triad if she still existed—if the debris was false—we could do that, and we did. And we found her.”
“Where?” Ivan Romanov had come to stand at his cousin’s side, and now he bent over her shoulder toward the pickup. His big farm-hardened hands gripped the back of her chair, and Katy found herself thinking that she was glad he wasn’t squeezing her that way. She suspected he could have broken bones with that clasp.
“Who are you?” Giandrea wanted to know, quite reasonably since no doubt he had thought he was giving all this information to a person who still possessed high-level clearances.
“This is my cousin, Ivan Romanov,” Katy interposed swiftly. “Proprietor of the Romanov Farmstead on the Upper North Continent.”
“Oh. Then I have to give you my condolences, Mr. Romanov.” Giandrea’s face relaxed from tension into sadness. “The Triad was detected inside a structure on your land, just a little more than an hour ago. We attempted to bring her out using a tractor beam, but whoever was in command put up a fight. And I’m afraid whoever that was didn’t just destroy the ship, and the people aboard her, and the building where she’d been hidden; there’s not much left standing at all in that area now. Just a small out-building or two, and those pretty badly smashed up. I am sorry, Mr. Romanov. I hope you and your family were away, and that’s how the fugitives happened to choose your property as a place to conceal themselves?”
CHAPTER 12
“I can’t believe I ran away like that,” Daniel Archer said softly.
“What?” Lorena Romanova sounded distracted, and she had good reason. She was working on a piece of technology that she understood and he did not, for all his starship engineer’s certification. It had been around since Narsatian colonial days; and if she could get it operating, then the three of them—Reen, Dan, and Rachel Kane—would be able to get to the next farmstead without having to walk there via the underground passage that had (as far as they knew, at least) remained open in spite of the havoc that the Triad’s death throes had caused on the surface above them.
Moving away from the Romanov Farmstead via any kind of surface travel right now was a certain way to wind up in the hands of the Star Service. The mop-up squad wouldn’t hang around forever, but even after they returned to the ship the monitoring from orbit was sure to continue; and Archer had an uncomfortable feeling that whoever was directing the search for Rachel Kane (Captain Giandrea, under orders he hated but had to obey? or someone else?) was not going to be fooled this time into assuming she was dead.
Dan himself would be the target of a formal order to apprehend, as well, since by now the authorities had to know who had given shelter to the fugitive gen. Whether or not they knew more than that about his ties to her, he had no way to guess.
But in any case, by seeing to it that Rachel got off the trade-ship without waiting to take care of the rest of his people Dan Archer had done a thing he never could have imagined himself doing. He looked at her now in the dim light of the underground passage’s ancient lumipanels, and he repeated dully, “I ran away. I left my people behind, and saved myself.”
“You couldn’t have saved them, Dan. All you could have done was die, too.” Rachel’s physical stamina was superior to that of a randomly conceived human, but she was still less than a day away from her lifeboat ordeal’s end and she was also burdened with three unborn babies. She had curled up in the tiny cabin of the ancient railcar while Reen worked on its propulsion system, and she was half asleep when she realized her lover was addressing her and not the universe in general.
“But I still shouldn’t have left them like that.” Archer sat down beside the woman who was carrying his children, and slid an arm around her—whether to give comfort or to gain it, he could not have said right then. The temperature this far underground was constant, but that unvarying temperature felt cool to a human being at rest. So she nestled against him for warmth, not only in an effort to give consolation; and soon she was asleep.
Reen Romanova went on working. And at length she said softly, “Shove over, Dan. Let’s give it a try.”
There was just room enough for the three of them inside the little railcar. It moved forward silently, glided along a course that was a scant meter wide and that lit up the darkness just before them and just behind them in a world that otherwise was utterly black.
The air that had been trapped here unused for generations was stale, but breathable. How fast they were moving, Dan could not estimate; but at least the woman beside him did not wake.
The shame of leaving his partners, his crew, dead behind him was something he would have to put away for later reflection. Right now he was selfishly thankful that Rachel had survived—and that since she was still living, he was alive too.
“We’re not fugitives, we don’t have to hide. Not yet, anyway.”
So Katy had said, as she and Johnnie had gathered up the sleeping Maddy and had bundled her into a second aircar. The one they had used earlier in the day had been returned to its garage.
Johnnie was piloting, and when she would have a chance to rest again Katy could not guess. So she reclined the co-pilot’s seat, curled her body as best she could within the safety harness’s confines, and willed herself to fall asleep.
It was a skill she had mastered long ago, in cadet days; and it was just as useful now as it had been back then. Not only did it give her the edge of being rested for whatever she had to do next, it also kept her from having to endure a season of helplessly anticipating a future she dreaded and could not control.
She had been dreaming, and it was hard to come to the surface when she knew that consciousness was going to bring her a reality far less pleasant than the inner world of memory to which her dream had taken her. But she had to wake up, it was Johnnie’s voice and not Linc’s voice that she was hearing from close beside her…and although the seat that cradled her body was comfortable enough, it was definitely not the captain’s berth back on the old Firestorm.
That had been her last night aboard the ship which was her final command as a captain, before she moved up to flag rank. She had waited for that night before she extended an invitation to her long-time executive officer, to the man who was her closest friend and dearest love, to share that berth with her.
Just why it had seemed so important to consummate the change in their relationship before they left their old lives behind them forever, she could not have said then and was no better able to say now. Linc had been nervous about that night, terribly and understandably so; maybe it had been for his sake that she’d wanted their first lovemaking to happen in familiar surroundings, but telling herself that was the only reason felt very much like an excuse.