Ambasadora (Book 1 of Ambasadora) (12 page)

Sara counted three faces, besides
that of the supposedly exhausted archivist, waiting for them inside. No doubt
Solimar apprised the other passengers of the magno incident before she even
left the Hub. The sweeping glances at Sara’s concealing hemline confirmed the
call ahead. The breech of privacy unnerved Sara, but she knew it was just the
woman’s social nature. She was an archivist; it was her job to record and
inform.

Maybe it was Simon’s inference
that Solimar could have been a friend, or maybe it was the fake sentiment in
the greeting gesture which made Solimar’s actions disappointing. More likely,
it was Sara’s own need to reach out to someone. When would she learn?

David put his hand on the small
of Sara’s back in presentation. The action drew a sharp glare from a young
woman about Sara’s age with golden streaks in her hair and amazing irises the
color of the sunrise. She offered nothing but clinically dissecting looks in
greeting.

The two men were all smiles. The
larger, darker skinned man’s was good-natured, but the smaller man seemed
calculating. His appearance screamed Socialite, from his delicate stature to
his high cheek bones and full lips. He was the first to come forward.

“Ambasadora Mendoza, I am
privileged to make your acquaintance.” The man’s shoulder-length black
hair was tipped in deep blue and brushed her arm as he pulled the inner part of
her wrist to his lips for a kiss.

To her dismay the lavender dots
involuntarily stirred. She gave no other indication of interest, however.

“This is Scientist Kenon
Brudger,” David said.

“Hello Scientist Brudger.
What type of science do you study?” Not that she really cared.

“I’m a geological observer.
I make sure these terraformed worlds don’t break apart at the core.”

“Huh. I didn’t realize your
job was that important,” David said, drawing an irritated look from the
other man.

“And
Kenon
will do.
I always thought making
scientist
a title was a little pretentious
anyway. Everyone on board goes by their first name. May we include you in this
little custom, Sara?” Then as smooth as Deleinean silk, he stroked his
thumb over the back of her hand.

This time the bio-lights barely
flickered.

“Of course. It’s odd how all
Socialites claim titles are so gauche, yet we continue to invent new ones. I
think we should just drop them entirely.”

She gently pulled her hand away.

“You can call me Geir.”
The jovial man surprised Sara with a big hug. Judging by his mass, she guessed
he had Armadan genes as well.

“That’s some pretty intense
body art. It complements your hair,” he said with a wink.

Sara smiled at the genuine
affinity she already felt for Geir. Her bio-lights seconded the feeling.

A draft blew in then and
introduced herself as Boston Maribu, Mari to her friends. Sara was sure she
hadn’t made it into that circle just yet. A broad smile showed on Mari’s lips,
but it didn’t extend to those unusual eyes, proving that golden orange wasn’t
necessarily a
warm
color.

Mari’s delicate features, round
eyes, and thin nose mirrored Sara’s own, until Faya had butchered her. Now she
resembled a contractor more than a Socialite, not that she cared. In the past
month she had learned how little one’s appearance truly meant.

Kenon moved in on Sara again,
this time feigning interest in her purpose aboard their ship.

Her gaze drifted past him to the
interior of the ship’s rotunda lobby as she recited practiced responses;
“…using the
Bard
as a transport and temporary home…honor of being a
Face of the Embassy…spreading cheer…liaisons….”

It was Solimar who saved her.
“Would you like to see our crystal trees?” Without waiting for a
reply, she took Sara by the arm and led her away from the others.

“Thank you,” Sara
whispered.

A light melody played upon their
approach to the rotunda. Meandering past the rounded grey chaises which circled
the intimate three-story space, Sara stopped just before reaching the rotunda’s
center. Here the circle of clear Celestite floor reflected powder blue puddles
from the overhead chandeliers. The fixtures’ stained-glass surfaces bore
butterflies, dragonflies, and blooming flowers, all in varying shades of blue.

The three crystal trees branched
up from the floor, not quite reaching the swirled, white ceiling, but passing
over the third-floor balcony. A thin line of cerulean glowed within each trunk
and naked branch, giving them the appearance of iced-over electrical arcs. They
even gave off a distinctive scent that reminded her of the half-frozen lake
which flowed through her family’s estate on Tampa Deux.

She missed her family, but the
burden of lying to her mother and pretending how happy she was with her new
honor had Sara finding excuses not to contact her home. Plus, Simon’s warnings
remained fresh in her mind.

Sara breathed deeply. Everything
would be okay now. She was away from Simon and she had time to plan. Without
his grating voice in her ear, she would find a way out of this mess. She clung
to that thought in reassurance.

“Pardon me, Sara.”
David stood beside her. “There’s an important call waiting for you in your
suite.”

“Is everything in here
white?” Sara looked around her new sitting room. The marbled floors, the
fabric-coated walls, the bulging lines of the furnishings were all bright and
shining and completely devoid of color. What wasn’t white, like the table lamps
and a row of empty vases lining three tiers of shelves on one wall, was made of
crystal or clear glass. She had been given a lifetime’s worth of white from her
incarceration at Palomin.

She stared at the controls which
would activate the viewer. So long as she didn’t answer the call she could
pretend it was her envious cousins or her mother sending her congratulations on
becoming a Face of the Embassy.

Mother. A title she might never
attain. The constricting feel of her corset amplified her anger and shock.

Sara worked another fastener free
as she sought out the bedrooms. Bearing left and rounding the short curving
hallway brought her to another door, also white. Her irritation grew and she
fumbled with another hook.

Upon releasing the last of them,
she ripped the piece off and exhaled. She willed herself not to take another
breath, just let it all slip away with the tears rolling down her face. But she
wasn’t ready to go out gently just yet, so she took a deep breath and tapped
the door controls.

The bedroom lights illuminated to
reveal an alabaster twin of her sitting room. Only an addition of a large
canopied bed covered in shiny white linens set this room apart from the other.
She dropped onto the bed and closed her eyes.

Her mind fired with shifting
thoughts and images. Thankfully there were no hallucinations in the mix at the
moment. With a clear head, Sara focused on strategy. She had been working out
several plans, some to carry out Simon’s orders, some to muck them up. She
devoted great care deciding which of the paths to follow.

A tone sounded from the sitting
room’s viewer. She tried ignoring it. She already knew who it was, but walked
out to answer it anyway. A tap to the manual control prompted the screen to illuminate.

She needed one of those wrist
reporters. David had mentioned she should see the ship’s mech tech for one.
Maybe she could even gather some information about the irradicae if she was
discreet about it.

Simon’s visage peered at her from
the viewer’s airscreen.

“How are things
progressing with the pilot?”
he asked.

“What, no ‘how are you
settling in?’ or ‘do the other passengers like you?’”

“Your social standing on
board the
Bard
is irrelevant. Retrieving my data from the fragger should
be your only focus. Your escape attempt may have worked in our favor. He will
trust you if he sees you also loathe the Embassy.”

“I just got here. I need
some time to finesse the information from him.”

“I warn you not to take
too much time. I’ve sent your itinerary ahead and will be monitoring it
closely, just in case you had plans of escaping again. One unscheduled stop,
and everyone on that ship will pay for your betrayal.”

Sara remained silent.

“If you can’t get
results, I will be forced to intervene. I’m giving you the opportunity to repay
your life debt, Ambasadora Mendoza. Isn’t that what you want? To please
me?”

She’d like to cut off Simon’s
testicles and make him choke on them. That would please her. Instead she said,
“Of course that’s what I want. You’ll have your information.”

“And once you obtain what
I need, be sure to kill the fragger. It will be one less to worry about.”

Simon’s image and the screen
blinked out.

For once, she and the Sovereign
agreed. After what happened at Palomin, she would have no problem killing every
fragger who crossed her path.

The head-splitting sound of fast
drums and shouted lyrics filled Sean’s suite.

He unfastened his pants. Brushing
his fingers along his left hip bone, he felt for the doser patch. It took a few
passes to distinguish between his real skin and the piece of synth-flesh. He
removed the fingernail-sized doser and its tri-needle backing. The prick of
each millimeter-long tip comforted him with its time-released concentration of
stims.

Sean threw the old one into the
toilet and picked up the one he had just prepared, ready to apply it on his
right side this time. He alternated just to keep track of how many times a week
he was dosing. Usually he limited it to three, but this was already number six
in half as many days.

Bullseye’s death weighed on him.
It was more than guilt over killing an anonymous operative—the bosses had
passed him bad intel. Now distrust ran rampant among the organization, and the
fraggers were splintering. That could be catastrophic.

The surprise in all this tossing
of blame was that the only one who blamed Sean was Sean. The rest of the
fraggers, including those within his own contingency, knew he was just carrying
out orders.
Blindly carrying out orders, putting his faith in unseen entities.

The music muted, a wispy tone
sounding in its place. Someone was at his door. The music blared on again.
Whenever his door chimed, which wasn’t often, he made a note to change it or
deactivate it completely. Just another left-over from the
Bard
’s time as
a pleasure cruiser, as was his suite’s décor. The others had theirs customized,
but Sean was too apathetic to change anything. Heavy swags and worn drapery
still covered some of the walls, while decorative cornices sprouted from each
corner of the dulled white ceiling.

He applied the doser and zipped
up his pants before answering the repeated tone with a shout of impatience.
“Yeah. I’m coming.”

It was probably David with a tech
problem or Soli to tell him all he missed with the arrival of the ambasadora.

Sean called up the music control,
the blue prompt glowing across his palm. With a tap from his middle finger, he
turned down the cacophony and followed with the entry code for his lock.

He came out of the bathroom and
stopped.

The first thing he noticed about
the woman who stood inside his messy sitting area was her face. Pouty lips.
High cheekbones. Big, sad eyes. Or maybe he mistook weariness for sadness.
Either way, she carried a burden that her rigid posture and elegant clothes
couldn’t quite hide. Sean knew about burdens. He also knew about weariness and
sadness.

The next thing he noticed about
her was an armful of swirling purple lights. They may have been one of the most
beautiful things he had seen in this world, or a virtual one. But maybe not as beautiful
as her face.

“Scientist Cryer?”

He snapped his focus away from
the little dots. “Sorry. They’re distracting.”

She looked down at the tops of
her breasts which were piled high behind some black netting.

“Your tat,” he said,
though now that his attention had been drawn to the rest of her body, he liked
what he saw there as well.

“The bio-lights certainly
get me noticed.”

That’s not what
he
noticed
first, but admitted her intra-tat was more mesmerizing in person than the ones
he’d seen on the Media. “I’m Sean, by the way. No need for a title.”
His responses sounded clipped and rude, even to him.

“I’ve been hearing that a
lot. Nice to meet you, Sean. I’d like to be one of your clients.” Her gaze
moved subtly from his eyes to the rest of him as she spoke.

He resisted the urge to scratch
at the dark blonde stubble on his neck and pat down his disheveled hair or
smooth the wrinkled shirt he wore, maybe even rub the dark circles from under
his eyes. Unlike the rest of his colleagues, he hadn’t cared about his
appearance for a long time. It bothered him that she made him care now.

“Why would you need to hire
me?” He made his tone less severe, but still businesslike.

“David said you could
reprogram my scentbots.”

“You don’t like roses?”
He enjoyed her soft scent, or maybe the pheromones attached to it.

“Not so much,” she
said.

When her gaze lingered on his
face, Sean felt a twinge in his chest.
Just the new doser kicking in.

“Oh, and a reporter,”
she added with a small smile.

He relaxed a little. “Have a
seat.”

“Thank you.” She
dropped down on his couch near a pile of shirts that had recently come back
from the cleaners. Like everything else, he had just never bothered to put them
away.

Sean scanned the rest of the
room. Empty alcohol and drop bottles rested on the glass and stainless tables.
Clothes hung from every available piece of furniture. A blanket and pillows
splayed from the other couch onto the floor. A little embarrassed, he walked
into the extra bedroom, the one he had converted into a tech lab. He grabbed a
reporter and tried not to worry about her impression of him.
She came
uninvited. What did she expect?