“Did he?” Maddy remembered not to say specifically, “Did he find her?” Because that would have revealed that she knew the missing gen’s sex, and that would have been disastrous.
She felt no guilt at all about this deceit. She had seen her father in action at enough parties to realize that he would have done the same thing, and would have regarded it as a neat bit of verbal footwork rather than as even the most innocuous of lies.
And although she already knew enough about Mum to realize that Mum did not like lies in any way, shape, or manner, she also knew that Mum would want her to protect that woman who had three babies inside her belly and who had looked so tired and thin and scared. And she knew what a marshal was, her Kesran caregivers P’tara and K’lor had told her often enough when she was small that if she misbehaved the marshals would come and take her away.
“He just did,” Fralick told his daughter, with a satisfied grin. “He needs to get instructions from her owners now, whether they want her returned to their gen labs or just what they do want done with her; and he needs to determine whether the man who was with her when she was caught is the only person who should be charged, or if she had other help. So it’ll be awhile before he heads this shuttle back toward New Orient, and then on to Terra; but he’ll have to take us, because I’m not putting you back aboard the Archangel while your mother’s aboard it. And you’re certainly not going back down to Narsai, or anywhere else where you might get within Casey’s reach again. I’m lucky I got you back alive once. I can’t risk letting him near you again.”
CHAPTER 17
“Vargas to Archangel.” The voice that Paolo Giandrea had been dreading to hear again was the first thing the captain did hear, as he dragged himself into wakefulness from much-needed sleep.
He rolled out of his berth, and sat on its edge to palm the comm. And he mentally damned the ops officer who had put the corporate marshal through to his quarters without asking, and as he did so knew that he was being unreasonable. Corporate marshals were people to whom even starship officers were conditioned from childhood to give deference, at least starship officers who weren’t Outworld-reared humans or aliens.
He had one Kesran neuter among his juniors, one who should have become male if his family’s breeding requirements hadn’t caused him to have that development halted just before puberty began. The fellow could breathe nearly as well with gills as with lungs, and was a decided asset at times for that reason alone; but he was going to leave the ship as soon as his term was up, unless war came and everyone’s commitments were extended indefinitely, because he found being the only one of his kind here a very lonely business. (Or, of course, unless he and every other nonhuman officer in the Service got walking papers at the conflict’s declaration.) There was also one Sestus 4 native aboard right now, a female whose several rows of sharp teeth were even more frightening for being the crimson hue of human blood.
The young woman’s own blood was an almost colorless fluid, and she was a usually gentle creature whose lavender eyes became the maroon of anger only when someone who was supposed to obey her did not do so quickly enough. That was the nature of Sestians, as Dan Archer had explained to his captain when he had been the Archangel’s chief engineer and that first Sestian officer had arrived on board. They saw themselves as superior to every other species, as the natural rulers of the universe; and they had a great deal of difficulty coping in situations where they could not enforce their perceived mastery by corporal means.
Archer knew about that, his people were among the humans who mined under Sestian supervision and who were the sorriest group of Homo Sapiens in the whole galaxy. But they were supposed to be living on Sestus 4 voluntarily, and that made them subject to its laws; so unless they left as Archer had done in his adolescence, there wasn’t a thing other humans could do to help them.
Still, Giandrea was hoping that this one Sestian officer would also depart from his ship very soon now. Ejecting all aliens, not just Morthan hybrid healers, from the Star Service was something he was hoping for with pleasure.
Actually he was going to miss the Morthans. They were the only nonhumans he had ever liked or trusted. He much preferred Marin, for example, to this creature named Vargas whose voice was ruining his rest now.
“Captain Giandrea, are you there?” Calm and almost courtly, but with the steel of absolute demand underneath its surface, the voice spoke again.
“Here,” Giandrea said, and swallowed the “dammit” that wanted to follow.
“I have the gen, Captain. And the trader who gave her aid. I’m electing not to prosecute the Narsatian family on whose property, and in the company of whose matriarch, she was found; because unfortunately the local laws are most protective of Narsatian citizens, and because requesting over-ride of those laws would hardly be feasible when the family in question includes the head of the current government. However—” Vargas changed his tone, suddenly allowing a predatory note to creep into it —“there are two accessories to this crime aboard your ship who can be prosecuted, and I intend to take them into custody as soon as possible.”
“Who do you mean, Marshal?” Giandrea felt cold. He knew already, of course, but asking the question at least made Vargas tell him baldly.
“Admiral Catherine Romanova, who although she is a citizen of Narsai is now on active duty with the Star Service and therefore subject to the laws of Terra. And her spouse, one Lincoln Casey, who holds dual Terran and Morthan citizenship.”
“Let me get this straight. You want to arrest my superior officer?” Withholding Casey from this vulture wasn’t going to be possible, but if anything could be done to keep the Matushka out of his hands then Giandrea planned to do it.
He wished he could bring the admiral into this conversation now, but knew that if he did so Vargas would realize where his loyalty lay. And that would be pure folly.
“No. But I’m telling you I intend to do that, and I expect you and your people to give me full cooperation.” With that, the corporate marshal cut off the transmission.
Giandrea was wide awake now. And even though he knew he was doing exactly what Vargas expected him to do, it was no crime and it was necessary. He tapped his comm again and said, “Giandrea to Romanova.”
Silence. Then ops, inquiring in puzzlement, “Captain? Were you trying to contact Admiral Romanova?”
“Yes. Where the hell is she?” That commlink should have found her, anywhere on board the Archangel.
Which meant she was not on board any longer. Giandrea’s fierce relief was mixed with a rush of fear, because he could not guess at the consequences of whatever action the Matushka had taken—but if she had smelled the proverbial coffee and had put herself out of the corporate marshal’s reach, he only hoped she’d taken her spouse along with her. Even though he suspected things might get unpleasant as a result, he was still glad when ops answered just as he had hoped.
“She and Mr. Casey ported down to MinTar, Captain. She said something about a meeting with an official of the Narsatian government.”
Right. As Vargas had just so helpfully pointed out, Catherine Romanova’s father held the senior position on the Narsatian Council and her mother held one of its other chairs.
She had taken herself and her husband to safety, and in this case there was nothing cowardly about that action. It was nothing else but smart.