Ambasadora (Book 1 of Ambasadora) (15 page)

“She is not.”

“Then
would
have been
your amour had you not discovered the truth of her condition.”

Rainer shouldered next to the
doctor and grabbed his wrist. A finger-sized portable transmitter slipped from
his grasp and fell to the floor with a clang of metal on tile.

“How are you going to explain
this?” the doctor asked.

“One of my duties as Head
Contractor is to apprehend those who might want to blackmail the Sovereign and
further their own interests.”

Shock washed over Sean. He’d been
tailing Prollixer’s Head Contractor. Suspicion trickled through his mind as he
wondered just how involved Sara was with this man. He should have expected a
woman like her would have a powerful man somewhere in her background.

“Blackmail?” The doctor
looked confused, then paled.

Before Sean could blink, Rainer fired
his cender into the doctor’s head. The body slumped to the ground. Rainer
stooped down to grab the transmitter.

Sean had just enough time to set
up a siphon. As the data was erased, he collected it. Rainer called for a
clean-up team from his reporter. Soon the place would be swarming with
contractors. Sean headed out the way he came and made for the nearest
descending magno. He never looked back until he boarded a transport for the
Bard
.

In transit, he scrolled through
the siphoned data. His heart almost stopped when he read the contents streaming
across his palm.

Prollixer had given Sara a slow
death sentence.

It was a tragedy in Upper Caste
society to be naturally sterile. Like Lowers, fraggers didn’t share this
attitude. Sean never cared about his own breeding capabilities precisely
because his society thought he should. And maybe because he had the option to
father a child any time he chose. What if that option were taken away, like it
was with Sara? Anger boiled inside him. If the Sovereign would do this to one
of his ambasadoras, who else could be or had been a victim? Just another reason
to hate and fear the Embassy. And another reason to bring them down.

“Not now,” Sara
muttered.

Solimar practically pounced when
Sara emerged from her room. Back only a few hours and already someone wanted a
piece of her. Without stopping, Sara moved down the hallway toward the grand
staircase.

“Have a nice meeting?”
the archivist asked. Her short tunic revealed the bottoms of her mocha cheeks
and opened to more than a little cleavage.

“Nothing special,” Sara
scurried down the stairs, her shorter heels giving her more leverage than
Solimar’s platformed monstrosities. At the bottom of the grand atrium, she
hesitated, not wanting to head into the dining room, but needing to escape
Solimar. Too late. The woman was quite adept in her crazy footwear. Sara moved
to get past, but Solimar clasped her hands and stopped her.

“I saw that you and Sean
were getting on well.”

“Sean? When?”

“On the Docks.”

That’s right. As an archivist,
Solimar Robbins probably watched the Media non-stop, had several feeds
transmitted directly into her brain, if they could really do that.

“How can you know what you
saw is what’s real?” Sara pulled her hands away.

“I’m sorry, ambasadora. Did
I do something to offend you?” Solimar’s voice held true dismay.

Sean walked in just then. Sara
felt foolish thinking she’d never see him again after her appointment at the
doctor’s. But, she was truly a fool to believe Simon upheld the society’s mores
and to think Rainer could help her this time. As far as she was concerned,
Rainer had never
really
helped her, even on Palomin. Her survival was
her own. It still would be. Somehow.

Solimar greeted Sean, and Sara
took the opportunity to meander further into the circle of glass trees. Without
their thin arc of blue electricity spreading through their branches, the trees
would be empty shells, beautiful, but without function and purpose. She
understood that sentiment.

Sean’s smell drifted through the
airy foyer. It was clean and masculine and probably loaded with pheromones,
judging by how she always felt that little flutter around him. “Solimar
assumes everyone enjoys time on the Media, even if the stories about them are
false,” he said.

“I know she didn’t mean
anything. I’ll apologize later.” Sara followed one azure branch, stopping
when she reached the spot where it split into two because she couldn’t decide
which to choose. So many choices had been made for her since Palomin that she
no longer trusted herself to decide anything.

“You hurting?” Sean
asked.

She looked at him and noticed his
gaze rested on her belly. She had unconsciously placed her hands over her womb.
She immediately dropped them.

“Something I ate.”

“I had food poisoning once
when I was six.” He sat down on one of the white benches and patted the
empty space beside him.

She stayed where she was.

He continued anyway. “My
family took us on a holiday to a beach on Archenzon, way before the embargo. I
remember seeing lights like yours in the trees at night.”

She wandered over next to him and
sat down, but pointed her knees away from him and didn’t make direct eye
contact.

“I decided I should try some
of the local seafood, straight from the surf. Puked for the rest of the trip.
Ended up in a med facility while my brother played around in the sand. Worst
holiday I can remember.”

She faced him. “Sorry. I
just can’t imagine why you thought that story would make me feel better right
now.”

“I don’t know either.”
He smiled, and it was just like she thought it would be, shy and true.

A shrill alarm startled her out
of the moment.

Sean consulted the messages
scrolling across his palm.

“Some spacer’s going to ram
us. I have to get to the engine room. You should go to the bridge, just in
case.”

“Ram us?”

He pulled her to her feet.
“That way.”

Sara ran down the commonway and
burst onto the bridge. It was empty.

David squeezed past behind her.
He was bare-chested and muttering over the alarm, “…could have interfaced
immediately on the
Protector
. Told Sean I needed an updated cerebro
implant.”

He called up a nav chair from the
middle of the black floor. An orb of holo-controls immediately sphered around
his large frame.

“You’ll want to strap in.
Mari should be here soon if you need help.”

Sara looked behind her to find a
crash couch. The harnesses were the same type as on Chen’s ship. And in their
line of work, she’d had plenty of practice using them.

“Sean was heading to the
engine room,” Sara said.

“Did someone just get out of
the shower?” Mari’s tone implied she knew the answer firsthand. She swept
in and called up a nav chair of her own.

David killed the alarm without
acknowledging Mari’s comment, then opened a visual feed to the engine room.
Sean and Geir stood before several airscreens, manipulating data on the holographic
panel with their fingertips, much in the same way David and Mari controlled the
manual flight of the ship. Only, Sean’s and Geir’s screens were stationary
while the nav chairs and orbed controls of the bridge were gyroscopic.

“Sean, who’s in our
lane?”

“Some ship called
Aracenzo
.”

“Opening com on all
lines,” David said. “Attention
Aracenzo
. Change your heading.
Repeat, change your heading. We have right of way in this docking lane.”

David stared at the readings on
his screen. The alarm blared anew.

“
Aracenzo
, change
your heading!”

“They won’t move
off,”
Geir said.

“I’m going to pull us out
and punch through the atmosphere.”

“Not enough juice for
that kind of maneuvering,”
Sean said.

“There’ll be enough. Add
another fuel cylinder to the engine.”

Sara didn’t know anything about
the
Bard
‘s propulsion system, but suspected adding a cylinder wasn’t
normally recommended, nor was zipping into the air on a vertical trajectory. A
rash of curses from Sean confirmed her thoughts.

“Loading sixth cylinder
now. And strapping in,”
he said.

No protests. Were they that
desperate?

Sara was accustomed to jostling
and pulling soft gees in the many small craft necessary for Chen’s work, but
hadn’t felt a truly strong g-force during space travel since a trip years ago when
the private transport she and some girlfriends were on lost partial power to
its gravity suppressors. The current force pushing her chest through her back
and into the soft couch behind her was infinitely worse.

Seconds passed slowly. Ringing in
her ears overcame the alarm’s shriek. She could no longer suck in air. Her
heart pounded and her vision tunneled. Small purple explosions dotted her right
arm. She wanted to tear at her restraints, but her hands remained pinned to the
armrests.

The alarm’s pitch reached a
crescendo, accompanied by the squeal of the metal hull.

The pressure released.

Silence.

Sara gasped for breath and closed
her eyes to the dizziness.

“Clear of the
atmosphere,” David said. “How are things in the engine room?”

Bellicose laughter erupted from
Geir, who seemed to be having the time of his life.

Sean was less celebratory.
“Blew
a couple of cylinders. Easy to fix, but time consuming.”

“Well, you have about three
minutes until we land at Nanga Ki, so I guess you better get started.” David
flicked off the feed from the engine room, but not before Sean got out a few
choice words.

David pivoted in his eggshell of
holo-controls to face Sara. “You okay?”

“Never better,” she
said. Her arms twitched a little, and she had to focus on not bouncing her
knees, but otherwise she was intact. “You’re a good pilot, but I suppose
that goes without saying considering you were a captain in the fleet.”

“The best,” Mari said.
The way she looked at David spoke volumes. Sara recognized that same look
returned. If these two were in a relationship, that could complicate Sara’s
plans. It shouldn’t. She should just use her
improved assets
and make
David forget about his co-pilot/biological observer, at least until Sara could
get some information from him. The thought sickened her. She judged Mari’s age
to be around her own, but Mari had a wonderful trusting innocence that Sara
would never get back. Mari saw only the best of her life ahead of her—Sara saw
nothing. Could she really take that from another person?

“So, how are you liking the
Bard
?”
Mari’s question startled Sara out of her thoughts. It was the most the other
woman had spoken to her since she boarded. Then she noticed David giving her an
encouraging look, as though he had prompted her to talk to Sara. Still, the
effort was sweet on both their parts.

“It’s been fun so far,”
Sara said.

Before she knew it, Mari launched
into a one-way conversation about a concert she wanted to see next month on
Tampa Deux and segued into a gossip session about three different Socialites
that Sara didn’t even know. David seemed pleased as he flew the ship, occasionally
glancing at Mari to nod or laugh at something she said. His obvious affection
toward the young botanist was not exactly the kind of behavior Sara expected
from a fragger.

“Incoming transmission from
Nanga Ki,” Mari said in between dueling lectures on the variety of
begonias on Tampa One and the quality of silk from her home world of Deleine. Sara
was sorry for their
discussion
to end. She knew Mari was just feeling
her out, but enjoyed having the distraction of system gossip and another woman
to talk to, one who wasn’t training to be a killer. That’s why Sara had stayed on
the bridge after their scare. In another life she and Mari would have been best
friends.

“Already?” David asked.
“They must be excited about your visit. Let’s hear it.”

“Welcome Navigational
Leader Anlow, Ambasadora Mendoza, and those aboard the
Bard
. Supervisor
Bakkin Venture would like to welcome you to Nanga Ki and extend your and the ambasadora’s
dinner invitations to all of the passengers this evening. An escort will meet
your transport at the hangar.”

The com clicked off.

“Hmm, free dinner,”
David said.

Sara couldn’t muster his
enthusiasm. Was this what she could expect as a Face of the Embassy? Many
inconveniently cordial get-togethers where she could chat about nothing and
pretend to be fascinated by everything. Refusal came to mind, but Simon needed
to believe she was more biddable than ever; otherwise, her next escape attempt
would end like the first. Or much worse. No matter how desperate Simon might be
to lift his curse, he wouldn’t give her another chance. So, instead of steaming
in a bath and going to bed early, she would have dinner with a local nobody.
Before she changed her mind, she asked, “So, who’s up for some Nanga Ki
fare?”

“I can always eat,”
David said. “And, it sounded like they expected me. I guess civvy pilots
do get a little respect sometimes.”

“Mari? You coming with us?”
Sara asked.

“I can’t. Thanks.” Mari
stood to leave.

Sara felt a little dismayed that
perhaps Mari’s earlier niceties were false, or maybe Sara was nervous that she
would finally be alone with David and have to put into action what Simon had
asked.

“You’re always wanting to
get off the ship,” he said.

“I have extra work to do
since my schedule was set back a few weeks due to so many unexpected stops.
I’ll just see you later.” She leaned toward David as though she were going
to kiss him, but thought better of it. David looked like he wanted her to
change her mind—both about joining them and the kiss.