“Trouble,’ I said. “Five armed flyers….”
“Drop us and let me out, now!” Captain O’Flaherty shouted, opening the flyer lid as we dropped. “Stay where you are. I will take care of this.”
She disappeared around the edge of the cote. No sign of the flyers, yet.
“Basto, report?”
“Eluding pursuers, Hare. Kli’s been confusing them. We’ll head for number three when….”
“Hold, Basto. I’ll get back to you.”
We could see the flyers now, coming in fast but not bringing in any fire. Then without warning, they stopped, as if they had met an invisible wall. They hovered about half a klick toward the sea, as though waiting for something.
“I’ve been scanning channels, Hare,” Kli said, “and there’s no chatter about those flyers, unless it’s happening in places I’ve never seen. Jones gave me universal access.”
The Captain came around the corner. “I told you my implant’s good. The Royal Guards of Chance don’t like to leave much to…chance.”
“The flyers…?”
“Are immobile, without communication or weapons. They’ll stay like that until we release them.”
“I’ve seen something like that before,” I said. “Can you do the same thing to a group of craft? They’re pursuing….”
“Already done,” she said.
“Hare, we should move,” Bael said. “I still can’t raise Louis.”
“Basto, change of plan. Come here as fast as you can. I wish I had passthrough for these boats, but we don’t. When you’re close, we’ll move.”
“I can construct something like passthrough, Hare,” Kli said. “It will take a little work, essentially confusing every sensor that catches us, so that we become effectively undetectable.”
“How long?”
“A while. I’ll work on it.”
We waited in silence, Johnny and Melissa still out. Soon Basto’s craft showed up, hovering above. We lifted and headed toward the peak.
“I’m thinking we forget rendezvous three,” I said to Bael on our channel.
“So where?’”
“Down. Into the night markets. The storm has let up, and you can see, the streets have begun to fill. We’ll hide in plain sight.”
“Any suggestions as to a good landing spot?”
“We’re not landing. Go down by those big image screens and pull behind them.”
The screens loomed huge ahead of us. A pair of enhanced pigs, gigantic on the screen, were waltzing on a beach, waves breaking in the background, the sky pale yellow. Bael deftly swung around the endmost screen; Basto was right behind us. The screens stood out from a big wall that rose above one of the markets, and the space between was dark and empty. We hovered, tethered to the frame of one of the screens. Basto was behind us.
“Kral, can you carry Johnny and Melissa and climb down the screen?”
“Yea.Justiketakingmycubsintothepitoffire.”
I didn’t ask why one would take one’s cubs into a pit of fire.
“Kli, how’s that rough-made passthrough?”
“Not enough time, Hare. But as long as we keep the flyers back here, I can confuse any passing sensors. They’d have to fall over us before they knew we were here.”
“All right. Everyone, I admit that I don’t have much of a plan, but I’m thinking that our rendezvous spots are probably compromised. We don’t know where Louis is, and I don’t know if we can expect that he’ll be back. I’m wondering….”
“He’ll be back,” Elibel said. “I may hate him with every bit of my soul, but he’s an honorable guy. He’ll be back.”
“Maybe. We need to talk, Elibel.
“Anyway, my basic plan is to get out in the crowd below and find a place where we can set up a base so we can bring these two around and get on with this.”
“Can’t we just stay here?” Basto asked.
“The moment they wake, they’ll know we’re on the run, even if Kli jams their plants. We need a good, secluded spot. Bael and Elibel will come with me. We’ll be back soon. And for now, don’t use any comm, even your plants.”
Kral stood quietly in the open flyer, Johnny and Melissa flouncing like cloth dolls around them. Basto and Rosalind were in the other. Her hand was tight on his shoulder.
“I’d better come along.”
“Captain….”
“I have a few talents, Trieste. I think you may need them. I’m coming.”
“Suit yourself.”
The streets and squares below were packed, mostly with humans wandering across wet pavement, filtering through the narrow alleys between the market stalls. Lanterns at each stall created little islands of warmth in the dark damp night, with the stalls hustling everything from fraestian jewelry to the hairy snakes of Burgin’s Star.
We made our way through the crowds, moving quickly but seemingly without purpose. I’d pulled up some of the hotels in the neighborhood, but none met our needs.
“What?” Bael had stopped. She was staring at a small building. She began to walk toward it.
“Bael?”
“It’s Trinn. The sign above the door, it’s the crest one of the oldest families on Trinn. They’re my father’s cousins. I didn’t know any of them were here.”
“Should we be…?”
“Come on. I need to find out who this is.”
We mounted a steep stair, and Bael pressed the call panel.
“Yes?” A well-dressed holo figure, an older, self-assured man, appeared in front of the door.
“Hello, Kindness,” Bael said.
“Baelyae?”
“Yea, Kindness, it’s me. Can we come in?”
“Of course.”
Inside we found a lush green field of wildflowers, with a waterfall cascading over lichen-covered rocks into a small pond. Bright sunlight bathed the scene. A four-legged equine animal, a bit like a horse but with a mottled blue and red hide and a long spiked neck, drank from the pond. A Trinn male came from around the rocks. It was Kindness. He was smaller than his holo, and rather than the elaborate embroidered red jacket he’d had in the door holo, he wore an old white robe and a wide brown hat. A long staff completed his outfit. His face was darker than hers, but with similarly huge gold eyes. A small but obviously powerful receptor was affixed to his temple, just above his left ear, worn like a jewel.
He came over to us and enthusiastically hugged Bael. The two of them exchanged Trinn hand signals and each touched the other’s face. Bael explained our need for a refuge.
“Of course,” he said. “I’ve just been having a stroll. I miss Trinn, and I like to spend as much time in this replica as I can. Come with me.”
He waved a hand and a door appeared before us. On the other side, a hallway led to a stair. Down the stair another passage led to a suite, with three sleeping rooms, a comfort room, and a washing room and a small kitchen.
“This should meet your needs, I hope.”
We agreed that it would.
“It is, of course, shielded and obfuscated in every way possible.” He showed us a back entrance that led to a small alley behind the house.
“Bring your companions in this way. It will be more discreet. And the alley is not monitored. I make sure of that.” Bael spoke with him for a moment. A sad look crossed his face, then he went up the stairs, with an assurance that we should let him know if we needed anything.
I took Bael aside. “He has no word of your father?”
“No,” she said. “Nothing at all.”
“Can you get the others?” I asked. “I want to keep the captain with me, and I think it’s time for me to talk with Elibel.”
“Yea. I won’t use the plant to talk unless absolutely necessary.”
“Understood. I’d guess that our channels are secure, but no use in taking chances.”
I cupped her cheek in my hand.
“Be careful,” I said. “We have no idea who knows what at this point, or how close the enforcers are.”
She took my face in her hand and kissed my cheek, and then she was gone.
“Elibel,” I said. “Let’s talk. What did you find?”
She had wearily sat in one of the big chairs. She’s been upping her adrenalin and pressing her reflexes, and it showed. She reached into her pouch and pulled out an old-fashioned book, Moby Dick. There were no notes, but words throughout were underlined, and many had numbers marked above them.
“I didn’t know what this was,” Elibel said, “but it looked important.”
“I don’t know, either. Maybe Kli….”
“It’s an ancient book code, a way of communicating secretly,” the Captain said. “Both people in the communication have the book, and one communicates the location of specific words to the other. A fast AI can break the code by analyzing the texts and editions of millions of books to find the right one, but that requires that a third party knows the code exists in the first place. That can be easily disguised. I’ll work with your Kli when he comes to see if we can figure this out.”
“What else, Elibel?’”
“I have a data dump that I can give you in a moment. There’s one other thing. When I was in Johnny’s back room, I found this.”
She pulled a small figure out of her bag. It was little doll, with drooping eyes and long ears. It was the same doll Enrique had been holding in his image. And it was exactly like the figure that Louis had put in the snow on Paradox, except that the chest featured a crescent, rather than a star. This was, Linda had said, a talisman of power among what she called the ringmasters. With all that had happened, I’d not found a chance to ask Louis what he was doing with one, or why he’d put it in the snow.
“Was there…?”
“Hare, they’re gone,” Bael said. “There’s no one here.”
To Be Continued
