“You were,” I agreed. “But I haven’t spent twelve years in Intelligence work without knowing what a surreptitious grab for a weapon looks like. Give me some credit.”
“Personally, I give you a great deal of credit,” Cameron commented around a mouthful of food. Alone of the four of us, he was already on his second helping. “You had me fooled all the way down the line, from Meima to our little chat at the other end of the starbunny trail, right up to the moment those Kalixiri commandos popped in and nearly gave me a heart attack.”
“Sorry about that,” I apologized. “Though I did wonder after our talk at the edge of forever whether you’d finally figured me out.”
“I knew you weren’t as simple as you seemed,” he said, shaking his head. “But beyond that I didn’t have a clue.”
“You might have told him,” Tera said, a touch of reflexive accusation in her voice. “He certainly wasn’t going to tell anyone in there.”
“But he would be coming out sometime,” I reminded her. “And I didn’t yet know what the circumstances of that homecoming were going to be.”
“And it’s infinitely safer in this sort of game if no one has had even a peek at your cards,” Cameron said, rising to my defense. “Sir Arthur explained all of that in his message.”
“What message?” Tera asked.
“A note from my boss,” I explained. “Retired—sort of—General Arthur Sir Graym-Barker, former Intelligence Level Two Overseer and the Earthside director of this quiet little combined-services unit Ixil and I have been involved with all these years. The commando team brought it through the stargate with them so that your father would know what was going on.”
“Unlike the rest of us,” Nicabar said pointedly. “So what was that fluff you spun to Tera about having been kicked out of EarthGuard?”
“Not a single bit of fluff to it,” I assured him. “The court-martial was completely and totally official. It had to be—I was trying to worm my way into the center of the Spiral’s underworld, and everything in my record had to stand up to the kind of scrutiny we knew it would be getting someday. The time I spent with Customs and Rolvaag Brothers Shipping was more of the same window dressing, with the added value of giving me practical training in the sorts of things a soon-to-be smuggler needs to know. When I was finally ready, they gave me the Stormy Banks and instructions to pile up a mountain of debts and turned me loose.”
“And that was when you met Ixil?” Nicabar asked.
“Actually, Ixil and I go back all the way to my EarthGuard days,” I said. “In fact, he was the one who spotted me while trolling for prospective recruits and suggested to Uncl—I mean, Sir Arthur—that I be invited in. He spent my training years building up his own sordid background, so that when we publicly linked up we were about as sorry a pair of misfits as you could ever hope to meet.”
“And you already knew this General Graym-Barker?” Tera asked, looking at her father.
“I met him about fifteen years ago, when we were developing an advanced targeting-system countermeasure for military stealthers,” Cameron said. He made a face at me. “Of course, I thought he really was retired now or I never would have contacted him in the first place. The last thing I wanted was for the leaky bureaucratic sieve at Geneva to get hold of any of this.”
“So that’s why you were on Meima when this whole thing started,” Tera said, turning back to me. “You never did answer that question.”
I nodded. “Sir Arthur told us your father was in some kind of trouble on Meima during one of my check-ins and asked us to swing over and assess the situation. I’d been wandering around the local tavernos for nearly four hours looking for him when we finally ran into each other.”
I looked at Cameron. “Interestingly enough, he even said that, depending on how serious the danger you were in, I was authorized to do whatever was necessary to protect you, up to and including blowing my cover if there was no other way. Shows you just how highly you’re considered up there in the corridors of power.”
“I’m honored,” Cameron murmured. “That’s rather amusing, really, considering that I was prepared in turn to tell whoever he sent everything about the Icarus if there was no other way to secure his help.”
“Just as well you didn’t,” I said. “You start showing your cards to someone and you never know if someone else is looking over your shoulder.”
“As opposed to just dropping the cards faceup on the table,” Nicabar commented dryly. “I thought Tera was going to have a stroke when you announced in front of everyone who she really was.”
“I presume you’ve figured out why I did that?” I asked.
He nodded. “It took me a while, but eventually I got it.”
“Well, I haven’t,” Tera said, frowning at me. “I assumed you were just tired. Or suddenly gone senile.”
“Tired, yes; senile, possibly,” I said. “But not on that account. Remember, I’d already checked the Icarus and knew the Kalixiri were aboard and the trap there was set. What I didn’t know was what kind of contingency plan they had for anyone left behind in the lodge, whether they’d be able to move quickly enough to get you out. I made sure that Everett knew who you were so that you’d be brought back to the ship with us. You were in no danger from Antoniewicz—as he’d already explained, you were far too valuable to simply shoot out of hand. Whether or not the commandos arrived in time to save me, they would certainly be in time to save you.”
There was a flicker of movement across the room, and I looked up to see Ixil step in through the wooden archway. “Ah, there you are,” he said as he came toward our table. “Not sitting with your back to the door this time, I see.”
“Don’t be snide,” I reproved him with an air of injured pride. “You know perfectly well I just didn’t want my gun pointed anywhere near Brother John and his goons when they burst in on us. Any news?”
“All sorts of news,” he said, pulling up a chair and sniffing appreciatively at the food. Pix and Pax weren’t nearly so reticent; they bounded straight off his shoulders and headed for the serving plate. “The pilot tried to scramble the preliminary helm setting he’d been coding in, but we were able to reconstruct it. The combined force landed twenty minutes ago inside Antoniewicz’s estate. They report it’s been secured.”
“Combined, eh?” I commented approvingly as Nicabar spooned some of the Kalixiri food onto his plate for the two ferrets. “I take it that means Sir Arthur was able to get Geneva to loosen up and send some human troops to assist.”
“I believe he convinced them this operation had nothing to do with the Icarus and the Patth ultimatum,” Ixil said. “Which is not entirely untrue.”
“Not entirely at all,” I agreed. “I hope they’re being careful—Antoniewicz is bound to have a few booby traps set up for unexpected visitors.”
“I’m sure they are.” Ixil looked over at Cameron. “The other news you may be interested in is that there was a bit of confusion off Trondariok about two hours ago. A ship identified as the renegade freighter Icarus barely escaped from a group of three customs cruisers.”
Cameron threw a startled look at Tera. “The Icarus? Was seen where?”
“Trondariok,” Ixil repeated. “It’s a Dariok colony world about ten light-years from Rachna.”
For a moment Cameron still didn’t get it. I watched his face, wondering idly how long it was going to take. And then, his face suddenly cleared. “Of course,” he said, nodding. “Rachna. It’s the duplicate Icarus we were building at the construction plant there. The one I was going to have flown to Meima.”
“That’s the one,” I confirmed. “One of my other suggestions to Sir Arthur. A second Kalixiri commando team got in and commandeered it, with instructions to fly around that area for a week or so and make sure they’re seen and identified.”
“By then, if we’re lucky,” Ixil added, “the group we’ve got at Hinsenato will have finished making their copy off the blueprints the Kalixiri sent them from Rachna.”
<
br /> “Wait a minute,” Nicabar said, his forehead wrinkled in thought. “Rachna. That’s way over in the Eta Sindron region, isn’t it?”
“That’s right,” I said.
“Well, hell, that’s no good,” he objected. “The Patth know we were on Palmary less than a week ago. We couldn’t possibly have made it all the way to—”
He broke off, his face changing as he suddenly got it. “Oh,” he said. “Right. Of course we couldn’t make it with a standard stardrive. But the Icarus isn’t supposed to be running with just a standard stardrive.”
“And as far as the Patth are concerned, this little incident should solidly clinch that theory for them,” I said, nodding. “So now we just have to lead them on. A couple of days after the Icarus disappears from the Trondariok area, it’ll be spotted near Hinsenato, then somewhere else, and so on. The idea is to draw the chase far enough away from here that we’ll be able to quietly move the real Icarus somewhere secure where we can start studying it.”
“And what happens to us?” Nicabar asked. “The same gilded cage the Patth were offering?”
“For Shawn and Chort, some kind of protective custody will be required,” I conceded. “At least until the Icarus has been tucked away someplace safe. That’ll also give us some time to get their testimonies against Everett.”
“So that was why you maneuvered him into admitting Jones’s murder in front of all of us,” Tera murmured. “So you’d have witnesses to his confession.”
“Right,” I said. “Just one more lever we can use against him if he decides to be stubborn about helping us dismantle Antoniewicz’s organization. As for you and your father, power and influence being what it is, you’re pretty much exempt from any threats Geneva can throw at you. Though I suspect Sir Arthur will strongly suggest you both stay with the project, wherever it finally gets set up.”
“Don’t worry on that count,” Cameron said firmly. “The Icarus is my discovery and my property. Wild Yavanni couldn’t drag me away from it now.”
“Likewise,” Tera seconded.
“We sort of figured you’d see things that way,” I said. “And Ixil and I are accounted for, too.” I turned to Nicabar. “Which just leaves you.”
“What are my options?” he asked calmly.
“The Kalixiri want to toss you into the gilded cage with Shawn and Chort,” I told him. “Frankly, I think that would be a waste of talent and ability.
“So here are your choices, or at least the ones I’m going to recommend to Sir Arthur. You can stay with Cameron and the research group, using your commando training and experience to help protect the project; or we can take you to meet Sir Arthur and see if he thinks you’ve got it in you to be a down-and-out smuggler type. We may have gotten Antoniewicz, but there are a lot of other fish in the cesspool that we’d like to see flopping around the bottom of our boat.”
“I appreciate the offer,” he said, looking at Cameron and Tera. “But this one’s no contest. Here with the Icarus is where the future is going to be created. If we can figure out how that stargate works, the Spiral is going to change, almost overnight. The Spiral, hell—we’ll be able to get to places in the rest of the galaxy we could never reach before.”
He looked back at me. “And the one thing sure as hell is that the Patth will fight like demons every step of the way to keep us from pulling their little gold-weave rug out from under them. No, I think I’d like to stay here.”
“Okay,” I said, catching Ixil’s eye and getting to my feet. “I’ll go give Sir Arthur a call, and we’ll see what we can work out. I’ll let you know what he says.” Nodding to Cameron and Tera, I headed across the room, leaving Ixil to the task of prying his ferrets away from their impromptu snack.
There in the archway, though, I paused and looked back. Nicabar was deep in quiet conversation with the Camerons; but as he leaned across the table it seemed to me that his eyes were lingering more on Tera than they were on her father, an attention that seemed to be reasonably mutual. And it occurred to me that after all the time the two of them had spent aboard the Icarus, surrounded by loathsome smugglers and potential murderers, having only each other to trust, they might have become a bit more than just shipmates. It would be interesting to drop back by the project in, say, six months and see if Cameron was now working under the protection of a future son-in-law.
Ixil was coming toward me now, Pix and Pax still munching away as they rode his shoulders. I made a mental note to offer him a small wager.
By Timothy Zahn
STAR WARS: THE HAND OF THRAWN
Specter of the Past
Vision of the Future
STAR WARS: THE THRAWN TRILOGY
Heir to the Empire
Dark Force Rising
The Last Command
The Blackcollar
Cobra
Blackcollar: The Backlash Mission
Deadman Switch
Cascade Point
Cobra Bargain
Cobra Strike
A Coming of Age
Spinneret
Time Bomb & Zahndry Others
Triplet
Warhorse
Distant Friends
CONQUERORS’ TRILOGY
Conquerors’ Pride
Conquerors’ Heritage
Conquerors’ Legacy
The Icarus Hunt
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
TIMOTHY ZAHN is one of science fiction’s most popular voices, known for his ability to tell very human stories against a well-researched background of future science and technology. He won the Hugo Award for his novella Cascade Point and is the author of nineteen science fiction novels, including the bestselling Star Wars trilogy: Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, and The Last Command; the novels Conquerors’ Pride, Conquerors’ Heritage, and Conquerors’ Legacy; and three collections of short fiction. Timothy Zahn lives in Oregon.
Timothy Zahn, The Icarus Hunt
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