'When the Starry Shore sailed for the drifts,' she continued, 'every available agent, including expendable ones were rushed to the drift worlds that the intelligence department considered likely planets of call. I was shipped off to Ravin, being the only agent close enough to arrive in the expected time frame.'
'That had to be Shantien.'
He/she gave me a sharp look. 'Perhaps. I climbed into the sleeper-pod on Despar and was revived on Ravin, so I couldn't say for certain. I didn't need to know and wasn't told. What do you know of Shantien?'
'Nothing much, except that we called on it with boxes several times a year for five or six years. I hadn't realized what it was when I took on the cargo the first time. After that, well, we needed the cargo, and if they ever caught on who we were, we'd know...'
'Which they did.'
'So it seems,' I said, deciding it was best to say nothing more. 'But only after seven or eight years. But go on, it's your yarn.'
'I was discharged from active service on Despar, but as you guessed, I was offered an honor mission to salvage my reputation. I was very tempted to decline and return to Tienterra to live as an outcast. With my father dead, I'd no close relatives on Tienterra, and no friends to lose, for I hadn't grow up there and had been operating solo in the Unity for years. And well, the Cin family's reputation has decayed to the point where I'd not be regarded much worse even if I had retired with honor, so I thought I could live just as well as a failure - what did I care?'
'But you accepted their offer in the end.'
'In the end, it came down to family. My father had been determined to revive its reputation. He was an exceptional stealth, but died young, and I, well, until I crossed orbits with you. Still, I thought that if I could survive my honor mission I could not only restore my standing in the Order, but might have the chance to restore the fortunes of my family as well. And then, too, I found I had no intention of letting the Masters of the Order bury their mistakes with me and my family.' And turning a fierce glare at me, added, 'And I have scores to settle.'
'Ah, yes,' I muttered, and hurried on to deflect her anger, 'I believe you were made the scapegoat. The Order had plenty of opportunities to kill Min and me, both on Zilantre and Despar, if they cared to. And you could hardly be blamed for Nun's decision to follow me into the reef.'
'You survived it.'
'We were very lucky. I've always been lucky. As you know.' And thinking it best not to dwell on that either, added. 'But go on.'
He/she gave me a long hard look, and then shrugged, 'I was revived on Ravin and given a list of a dozen firms to investigate to see if I could turn up some connection with the Tallith Min. No explanation given or hint of what I was to look for. The Ravin Cloud-Yacht Company was second on my list and it quickly became clear that it had to be what I was looking for, since its security systems were far, far too sophisticated for an innocent zep manufacturer. It would've taken me a week to fully penetrate it. Clearly someone was hiding something very secret. I managed to get a few cautious peeks into its security system before the Starry Shore showed up in orbit. Only then was I given the full brief?'
He/she paused to give me a quick glance.
'Until that briefing I had believed the Lost Star, with you and Min aboard, had been destroyed in the Despar Reef along with Sister Sinister. It was only then that I was told that you and your ship had escaped the reef and had been recently discovered trading in the Aticor system as the Starry Shore. However, since Min, the main target was not aboard the Starry Shore, nothing had been done pending her eventual arrival. So once again you were being used as the tethered goat...'
'Baa! Still, better a tethered goat than a target. Speaking of which, was I named as a target in your honor mission?' I asked with forced casualness. I knew the tethered goat was Grandmama's cover story for St Bleyth, but she was a hard boiled woman, so I couldn't quite be sure it wasn't a cover story for me as well...
'Not specifically, but the initial plan involved smuggling a bomb on board the Starry Shore and blowing it to atoms in passage.'
That was murky. I was warned to steer clear of Min, but if I wasn't listed as a target, did that mean that Grandmama and Grandfather had gotten me removed from the elimination list?
'But that wasn't the final plan, was it?'
'No. Getting bombs on both ships, and one not taking on cargo, would have needed a team. And while we could guarantee destroying the Starry Shore, we could not guarantee that Min and Vinden would be on that ship, and thus could not guarantee success.
'Just to be clear. The assassination of Min and Vinden were mentioned in the final plans, but not mine?' I asked, which annoyed her.
'You're a separate issue, Litang,' he/she snapped, and continued. 'I wasn't directly involved with the client, but I gather discovering Vinden, who was thought dead, together with Min and the preliminary information we supplied about the ships Vinden had built was quite a coup for the Order. It went a long way in restoring our reputation with the client. The client wanted the matter closed once and for all, and felt the best way was to let them arrive and destroy them in one final battle. So the bomb plan was shelved.'
The more I heard, the more it sounded like Vinden had been dreaming if he thought the Empress could be toppled from power with the small force he was leading.
'It sounds like your mission was successful even before you stowed away.'
'Exactly. And yet, that hardly counted as an Honor Mission. I wasn't dead and out of the way. So I was ordered to accompany the expedition to report on its progress to our client once it arrived. That would get me out of the way, and prove to our client we were pulling out all the stops in our effort to serve their interests. If possible, I was to accompany and report on Vinden's forces in the home world right up to their fatal encounter with the forces of our client and if possible, eliminate Min and Vinden in order to short-circuit the counter-revolution and save the lives of the many people who'd die in a hopeless cause.
'Did they tell you where you were going? Or how to get out?'
'I was given vague instructions on what to expect - a hollow world with a shell that would have to be penetrated before I could report, and given radio beacons to attach to the rebel ships. As for getting out, well, that was left to my own devices, once I had completed all that was required of me. It was an honor mission, after all. Getting out was not expected. The dead tell no tale, eh, Litang?'
'Remember that, Cin. No matter what you do, you'll never be allowed to live even if you can make it back to St Bleyth. No doubt that's part of the deal with the client. We died to our old lives on Redoubt Island.'
'I'll worry about that after I succeed.'
I let that lift. 'Right. So, given all the security, how did you get aboard my ship?'
'Spaceport security was less stringent, so I stowed away in the cargo hold of the heavy-lift lighter and transferred over to the Triumphant after it was loaded into the lighter. I had with me a hybrid spacesuit/sleeper-pod which allowed me to not only survive the passage up in the lighter and make the transfer, but also to survive the long passage in hard vacuum in stasis as well. During the lift to orbit, I managed to slit and slip through the D-matter fabric that was used to shroud the vessel's crate during passage, and found a hiding place within the detached after-wing of the vessel. I then went into sleeper-mode for a week before transferring to the vessel itself. There I set up the tracking transmitters, created a hiding place in a store room, and programed my stasis suit to wake me when the cargo hatches were opened. I was a bit unlucky in picking the last vessel to be transferred, but by listening in on the radio conversations of your crew during the offloading procedures, I had a pretty good idea what I could expect and was able to make contact with the Empress's forces and provide them with our course until we entered the Pela proper. My primary mission was accomplished.'
'And after that? How did you manage to stay undetected? From the way you were dressed on the flagship, I'm guessing that you wanted to appea
r as a member of the other group no matter who you ran into. Still, that would've been rather risky for an extended period of time.'
'Oh, I just stayed aboard the Triumphant until there were enough people going in and out to simply walk off with my gear without attracting any notice. I then hung out on the fringe of the main base for a while getting my bearings. Finding that my targets were on a cruise, I stowed my gear and spent a lot of time in my hideout behind Siss's nest until they returned.'
'Still, you had to eat. How did you get by? It had to be pretty iffy without speaking Cimmadarian or knowing the customs.'
'I made a point, early on, to find out. I shadowed one of Vinden's crew, and paid a visit to her when she was sleeping. She decided not to get her throat cut, and synced her com link to mine, so that I was up and running with the language and all the information every other outsider had. I then gave her a little jab so that she'd forget our little conversation and gave her a dart to put her to sleep again.'
'Ah Ha!' I exclaimed.
'Ah ha, what? What are you grinning about?'
'Our night together on Lontria. Now I know why I don't remember it! A little jab and the blackness.'
He/she gave me a sidelong grin (that was rather disconcerting with the mask) and said, 'The reason you can't remember anything, as I've told you before, is that there wasn't anything to remember. Those two darts I put in you had you out until my outraged cuckolded husband arrived.'
'That doesn't account for all the facts, Cin.'
'What facts?'
'The fact that I like you, even though you keep trying to kill me. That doesn't make sense unless it's some artifact of our night together in Prusza.' I stopped short of adding that it also explained her fondness for me - not caring to push her too far and force her to prove me wrong.
'You're either foolishly romantic, Litang, or just terminal Union Standard. Terminal being the operative word. In any event, after I had the info-dump on my com link, I could go about the base, pretending to be one of the outsiders off the ship. All I had to do was to be careful not to be caught in company of the other outsiders. I'd eat alone or help myself in the galley - I found that outsiders were treated like mythical beings, never questioned and best left alone if it could be helped...'
'They were friendly enough.'
'If you invited them to be. I didn't. And as I said, I set up my base behind Siss's nest, so that I could easily stay out of the way while I awaited the return of my targets.'
'And you would've succeeded too, if you'd have chosen your time half an hour one way or the other,' I said brightly. 'You're not a lucky assassin, Cin.'
'I prefer to think that it was you who should have chosen your time differently. And perhaps you'll come to see that before you die,' he/she replied darkly, only half kidding. At best.
'Moving on, how did you survive the kidnapping?'
'They must've revived me and then immediately darted me, since the first thing I clearly remember after the darter fight on the flagship deck was awakening in darkness with my hands and feet tied. As you guessed, I do have implanted capacitors so I may've come to less than 10 minutes after being darted. I found I was enclosed in a large cargo bag, no doubt to hide what it was they were carrying off your ship. From the way I was bouncing about, it seemed like they were just hauling the bag behind them as they walked, no doubt expecting me to be unconscious for at least an hour. And from their conversation, I gathered they were taking me to an old weapons bunker on the far side of the island for an interrogation to be followed, eventually, by an execution. Being hidden in the cargo bag was a fortunate break, since it allowed me to work my hands free without them becoming aware of it.' She shook her head, 'You were very careless with your knots, Wil. I had myself free within a minute. Plus, I not only had my glass knife, but a sissy as well. Little did they know they were walking to their death. Only the fact that they expected Vinden to join them shortly kept them alive, as I was content to await Vinden.
'On reaching the bunker, they pried the door open and shoved the cargo bag in. They then waited outside for Vinden. I cut a long slit in the bag so I could act when the time came and watched them beyond the door as we waited for Vinden. The talon-hawk horde alarm was sounded shortly after Vinden set out, so he turned back to the base. I heard him tell the boys to take cover in the bunker over their com links, and decided that I needed to act. I quickly slipped out of the bag and closed and locked the bunker door with my would-be killers still outside,' she shrugged, 'I gather they didn't make it back in time...'
'The talon-hawks got to them.'
'They were not very Unity Standard people.'
'I didn't shed a tear for Crain and Zervic. While I'd no solid reason to believe that you weren't being torn apart in the frenzied circus of talon-hawks I found, I knew that given the slightest chance, you could deal with them. It was the question, then, of had they given you that slightest of chances? I landed on the island in the hope that they had.'
'Their mistake was keeping me alive so that Vinden could have his fun, and then theirs,' he/she said grimly. 'It was a shame Vinden didn't arrive before the Talon-hawks.'
'Indeed. I was out and over the island in a boat to collect some of my crew on the far side of the island and spied him racing back to base, pursued by a talon-hawk. Unfortunately he saw the talon-hawk and killed it before it could kill him. If I didn't have a witness aboard, I may've finished the talon-hawk's work myself then and there...'
'Right,' he/she said, with a leer.
'I was very angry with Vinden and myself. I might've, but go on.'
'Not much more to tell. I stayed in the bunker until most of the talon-hawks had left. I needed to get clear before Vinden came back with his crew, so I didn't wait until the all clear sounded. I carefully made my way back to my hideout and within hours, you, the Indomitable, and Rift Raven had departed, leaving DarQue behind to get the rest of the fleet ready to sail. Luckily, a couple of the outsiders remained so I could still get about, but I needed to be someone very different than who showed up on the flagship, hence my new look. The work went on non-stop for, what? Two weeks? And I got by without incident. DarQue had more pressing tasks at hand to spare personnel to look for hypothetical spies. I considered stowing away aboard one of the two hybrid space ships, but decided I'd never be able to maintain the deception in such close quarters. I also considered stowing away on one of the unmanned supply vessels they'd be towing, using my hybrid space suit /sleeper pod, but in the end, decided just to put radio tracers on the ships instead, since asleep I couldn't provide more data than the automatic tracers.
'And that's about it. After some two weeks of hanging about but staying out of the way, Siss and I watched the fleet sail away. And then, before we even had time to consider what we'd do with the rest of our lives, a ship's boat arrives and on landing, who should step out, but my old nemesis, Captain Litang? The rest you know.'
'More or less...' I found myself yawning. 'Do you want me to show you how to use the printer, or shall we wait until I wake up?' I had no expectations of completing the work before any boat from the Starry Shore arrived, so it wasn't a high priority with me.
'I've nothing better to do.'
'Right,' I said. We stepped into the control compartment, where I gave her a quick tour of gig's printer. I then folded the med-unit table up into the bulkhead, slung a hammock in its place, and slipping on a small sleep machine, climbed into the hammock.
'And if you have the time, I'd really appreciate it if you'd take that mask off. It's just eerie,' I said as I settled in.
'You know, Litang, I've worn it now for several weeks and I'm beginning to get really comfortable in it. I rather like being an old spaceer engineer. And seeing how much it annoys you, I might keep it on several more.'
'Right. Well, if you happen to see Naylea, tell her that I brought along her elegantly equipped darter on the off chance of finding her alive. I'm sure it has great sentimental value, so I'd not want to turn it over
to just any old spaceer. Of course if she's taken a shine to that big, heavy, six shot, Cimmadarian sidearm, I suppose I'll just keep it as a keepsake.'
'You're a dear, sometimes, Litang. Can I have it on a promise? Or do I have to make you hand it over?'
'It's in my gear bag. On a promise of the old Naylea when I awake.'
Chapter 04 The Castaway Life