***
“Doc, I’m sorry for putting you through that, but we had no choice.” The man lowered his Shelby cannon—a powerful pulse weapon, no doubt the one he’d used to dispatch three of the mercenaries at the lake—and with a wave of his hand invited Jan to sit on a collapsed log he’d made into a seat, using spongy fronds from bushes a short way up the river. “Our fight isn’t with you.”
“Then who is it with?” Jan guided Stopper by the collar, her pink whistle at the ready. He’d snarled savagely on his release from the upturned vicar, but he hadn’t attacked the fugitives; he’d been preoccupied with something behind them, through the trees. The dog was surprisingly placid now, obedient to Jan’s whistle, but he kept looking into the forest, toward a camouflaged vehicle—a hoverbike, if Vaughn wasn’t mistaken.
“First, why are you traveling alone?” the man asked Vaughn as he rifled through the contents of his baldric. Christ, these Omicron magno-cuffs were tight—too tight—Vaughn had never tried them on himself before, and he wondered how the hell the butch Chinese woman had slipped hers a couple of days ago in the Hopper. “I know Omicrons travel solo, but it’s not like you don’t have backup. We counted four ships landing, at least. Well?”
Vaughn was silent.
“Who do you think you’re chasing, and why?”
“Two murder witnesses,” Jan answered for him—a half-truth, but one he was glad of.
“Witnesses?” The man eyed them both carefully, wriggled out of his beige duster and revealed a clingy, dirty maroon T-shirt, heavy with sweat. He was around forty-five, well-built, considerably over six feet despite his slouch. His eyes were piercing star points in the roots of an old, dusky frown. A few hot summers past his prime, perhaps, but the man called Finnegan was an unyielding customer. If Vaughn didn’t play this exactly right, he was in trouble.
“You’re Finnegan, right?” Ever since a self-defence maneuver had backfired in Omicron training, twisting his knees out of joint, Vaughn hadn’t been able to kneel for long, so he switched to a sideways sitting position. It made him feel even more vulnerable in the big man’s presence. “And that’s Lindsay Polotovsky you’re with?”
The woman’s brown headscarf bobbed up from behind the camouflaged hoverbike, and she made her way over, carrying a plastic container full of squared-away pork pies. Early thirties, pale, harshly attractive in a demure-but-wait-for-it kind of way, she had an athletic, bordering on voluptuous figure that fit snugly into an expensive one-piece survival suit peeled down to the waist, and a black tank top. Her skin was clean, her hair damp; had she recently bathed in the river?
Jan gratefully accepted a pork pie, then snatched another two. She fed one to an even more grateful Stopper, then brought one over to the most grateful of all, Vaughn. He held his breath while she removed his mask. Expecting her to hold the pie while he bit half off, he was shocked when she stuffed it, whole, into his open mouth—her way of saying, Thanks for getting me into this mess, jerk.
The two fugitives shared a quick laugh, then enjoyed a pie each. When everyone had finished, Finnegan resumed the interrogation. “Something’s telling me you’re not working for Malesseur. What’s your name?”
“Vaughn.”
“Ferrix Vaughn?” Polotovsky wiped her hands on the hips of her suit. “The Ferrix Vaughn?” She whispered something to Finnegan.
Vaughn was silent.
“And you were called in to investigate a downed ship, plus five murders at the lakeside, yes?”
“That’s correct.”
“Who called you in?” asked Finnegan.
“The bureau.”
“And that’s all you know? That we witnessed those deaths at the lake?”
Vaughn considered his answer, whether or not to play his reputation. His incorruptibility might have made him a pariah in the bureau, but here, now, ironically, his criminal opponents needed someone honest, someone they could trust. “I know everything. And I can help.” An all-in gamble on a weak hand, but his captors weren’t behaving the way Malesseur and Lewartow had described them. And that augured well for their survival...and his own.
“What do you know?” Polotovsky clasped her partner’s hand.
“That you both worked for Lori Malesseur,” replied Vaughn. “That Finnegan was part of a team of mercenaries hired to steal the Golden Fleece from Iolchis Core. That he was the only one who made it out of the installation alive, and that you both double-crossed Lori at the border, which led to her arrest and your escape from the planet.”
“Wrong,” she cut in. “Lori double-crossed us. It’s a long story, but the bitch used us both to get her hands on the Fleece. So we left her there, where she’d have left us. We never had any intention of keeping the Fleece for ourselves until Lori showed her claws. That’s the story you won’t hear on Iolchis, or anywhere else, not with Malesseur pulling the strings.”
“I believe you,” said Vaughn. “I’ve seen firsthand what Malesseur is capable of. He’s even corrupted my old boss, an Omega diplomat.”
“Don’t tell me there’s an Omega here too—whatever planet this is,” she said, looking wistfully around.
“He’s here, and he’s brought a Phi team to bring you in.”
Finnegan scoffed. “To bring us in? Sure, feet first. We all know why they’re here, what they’re after.”
“You’ve seen it in action?” Jan cut in, excited.
“Up close and personal,” replied Polotovsky with a twinkle in her hazel eyes. “It brought me back from death’s...what was that word you used, hon’?”
“Vestibule.”
“Yeah, death’s vestibule. I was a goner, my leg black with infection, seconds away from clocking out. Finnegan wrapped me in the Fleece. A few minutes later I was on my feet and high-kicking like a twelve-year-old. No sign of the bullet wounds or the infection. No scars. Nothing. That thing is a miracle. And there’s no way we’re letting the authorities get hold of it. We figure it’s a gift for the people of the colonies, not just those who can afford to pay whatever bullshit price ISPA slaps on it.”
Jan leaned forward. “What do you plan to do with it? You say it’s a gift for the people. How will you give it to them?”
“One sick child at a time. A young mother struck down by an incurable. Anyone who needs life-saving treatment but can’t afford it.” In Polotovsky’s grim expression was a new kind of grit. A controlled, smoldering fire Vaughn hadn’t seen in a suspect before. This woman had a purpose beyond evading capture, beyond staying alive; she metamorphosed before his eyes into someone he couldn’t really describe, still the same woman but, somehow, no longer in his jurisdiction? Using the law to stop her suddenly seemed like closing one’s fist to trap a purifying breeze.
Finnegan hung his duster on her shoulders as a cloak, held her close to him. “We’re not those people on Iolchis anymore, Vaughn. Solzhik 3, we healed four victims of a zero-g fire. Check the local podnet if you don’t believe us.”
Vaughn was silent.
“And that’s only the beginning,” added Polotovsky. “It wasn’t just luck watching over us on Iolchis; it was a series of inexplicable events, natural and unnatural, that conspired to let us escape with the Fleece. Read into that what you will. We’ve decided it means something more than getting rich. We’ve decided this is what we have to do from now on—to heal people, to give people hope. No one ever need know how we do it. And maybe one day, when the war’s over, when the Malesseurs of this galaxy no longer influence so many lives, when ISPA’s ready to treat everyone equally, who knows, maybe we’ll go public. But until then, we have to be invisible. The Fleece needs to be lost. And you, detective, need to help us off this rock.”
Vaughn looked at Jan. She gave another of her patented grave nods, this one especially grim and especially telling. The fugitives’ solution was one that hadn’t occurred to him or Jan; it was risky, maybe even reckless, but his intuition told him it was preferable to destroying the Fleece altogether, to extinguishing that healin
g light for mankind.
In theory, if they were genuine, if this wasn’t some sly ruse to trick him into letting them go, maybe he should help them get offworld undiscovered. DeSanto would not expect it. Vaughn could cover for them, say he’d seen them taken and eaten by deadly predators, and that the Fleece was nowhere to be found. In his official statement, he would lie. Break the laws he’d spent his life upholding. He would betray the legacy of Ferrix Vaughn. Only he wouldn’t. Not really. Not in the ways that mattered most.
Laws were only attempts to distinguish right from wrong, he figured. There were gestures far nobler than all the words in a heavy tome. Morally, an Omega diplomat could be shamed by an outlaw killer, an interstellar business mogul by a secretary of no repute. If Finnegan and Polotovsky were as good as their promise, well, it changed everything. Humanitarians could come from anywhere, and they should be helped at a time like this.
Yes, if it came to that, Vaughn would see it done.
To hell with DeSanto.