Chapter Three

Tessa stepped into the corridor outside the canteen and glanced both ways. She saw herself inside that old Ganraen freighter on Nidaros, looking at Deilani as she’d been then. They’d been at odds. Deilani had wanted to be suspicious of the Admiral, and while that had been justified, Tessa had felt that it would be more prudent to get off the planet first and worry about him later. It had helped that she’d been such an ardent fan of Prince Dalton that she easily recognized his face without cosmetics and after a haircut. She’d been wrong that day, too. She’d believed he was the real Dalton, seeking asylum. The joke had been on her.

Tessa and Deilani had not seen eye to eye that day, but there hadn’t been time to fight. Air had been the problem on Nidaros. Here, things were a little more complicated.

The Golden hadn’t been able to come out and say it because he had to suspect that they were being monitored in the Canteen, which made sense; these negotiations were a rigged game. That wasn’t the problem.

Tessa took a left and made for the washroom, hearing the telltale footstep of an armored boot in the hallway behind her. The emphasis in this facility was on discretion. Security wasn’t an afterthought, but it was far from airtight. Two guards were assigned to the guests, who couldn’t be unchaperoned in this place.

Only two. And with Tessa making for the washroom and Drexler hopefully doing as he was told, those guards would be splitting up.

A woman in the costume of a professional at the less formal end of the spectrum was at the viewer, inspecting her appearance with some cosmetics in her hand. Tessa was there in two steps. She struck once to the kidney, then locked her arm around the woman’s throat and wrestled her to the floor, holding her fast until she was limp. Leaving her sprawled unconscious, Tessa went back into the corridor and waved urgently at the guard.

“We have a situation here,” she said, pointing in. There were times when being short and less conventionally pretty was a disadvantage. And there were times like this. The guard absently braced his scattergun on his harness and strode over quickly. Tessa complied as he sensibly gestured for her to remain in his field of view as he entered the washroom.

He saw the woman on the floor, and for that moment, his attention was on her. In that armor, only his head was vulnerable. A single blow to his temple from Tessa’s elbow with all of her weight behind it was sufficient. He and his armor were heavier than expected, and Tessa’s efforts to ease them to the floor didn’t work out. She spilled to the tiles with him on top. Grappling with his limp form to get out wasn’t particularly dignified. Neither was stripping the armor off him or stuffing two unconscious people into stalls.

The armor was better to look at than to wear. It was heavy and much too large. Unlike a properly modern suit, it did not automatically adjust to size, and Tessa had to use the built-in straps to compensate for the poor fit. That did her no good with the boots, which were almost comically huge. There was nothing comical about what this was going to do to her mobility.

She scooped up the scattergun and detached the hefty box magazine, finding blue shells inside. These were ship rounds that were soft enough not to put holes in things that needed to stay intact. That did not include people, but it confirmed that the air outside wasn’t welcome inside the facility.

Without knowing exactly where Deilani was being held, Tessa had no choice but to go straight to the lift and call it. She stood stationary, knowing that the clock was ticking if she wasn’t already too late. The heads-up display inside the helmet was painfully primitive.

The doors opened and she stepped inside and hit the command. She was on camera. Was anyone watching closely enough to realize that she did not belong in this suit? Did these guards do radio checks? Were the biometrics hooked up? No. If they had been, the spike in that guard’s vitals when Tessa hit him would’ve set off an alarm somewhere.

But the facility was as quiet and sedate as it had been when she arrived. No one was coming after her yet, but she wasn’t the one in danger.

Tessa stepped out of the lift and hurried down the corridor, passing a woman who stopped to look but said nothing.

Jane’s door was locked. She wasn’t in there with that Golden. Were there other suitors here? Was she taking a call?

Tessa pounded her gloved hand on the door several times. That woman was still staring, possibly because none of the other guards had their helmets deployed. Tessa turned the helmet’s intimidating visor on the woman, who wisely chose to get moving.

The door opened, and Jane took Tessa’s punch full in the face. She crashed to the floor only to have the breath driven out of her body as Tessa planted her boot on her chest and put her full weight behind it.

Jane’s eyes popped open wide as the cold metal of the scattergun pressed against her forehead. Tessa deactivated her helmet.

“Where is she?” she asked.

“First level,” Jane wheezed. “At the end of this wing. In medical.”

There was enough signage that Tessa wasn’t worried about finding that. A certain experience after Nidaros had, however, given her a certain rational fear of locked doors.

“Let’s have that holo,” she said brusquely, and Jane took it off with shaking hands and held it out. Tessa made sure that Jane hadn’t logged out of her access credentials and tucked it into a pouch. She yanked the other woman to her feet and gave her a spin as though to push her toward her chair, then dealt a swift tap to the base of her skull with the stock of the scattergun. Tessa was halfway to the door before Jane’s limp form thudded to the floor.

It was difficult to keep a tactical appraisal separate from wishful thinking under the circumstances. The place seemed all but empty with only two guards for the guests. These people were PMCs, but this wasn’t a barracks. How much of a garrison did it have? People like Jane and the other clerical types weren’t the problem. And what kind of firepower was Tessa up against? Just small arms? Guessing was not best practice, but it was all she had.

She ran back to the lift, tearing past an open doorway through which workstations and people were visible. Behavior like this attracted attention, but there was no helping it. Subtlety was for planned occasions. This was impromptu.

Jane’s holo was able to open every door. The medical section wasn’t particularly robust, without even a reception area of any kind. The door simply opened into a spacious exam room, which Tessa suspected was unremarkable by Galactic standards: everything was white polymer and appropriately spotless, with numerous safety notices and a nurse robot anchored to the ceiling. It appeared to be powered down.

Only one person was present: the man from the shuttle. His travel clothes were gone, replaced by black scrubs. He stood at the workstation. As the door opened, he finished entering something from his holo on the projected typescreen.

A medicine cabinet beside him unlocked with a chime.

Tessa’s stomach did a somersault. That Golden spy had cut it fine. If she was reading this correctly, she had arrived with literal seconds to spare.

The man looked up, only the tension in his face betraying his surprise.

He saw Tessa in the doorway in her ill-fitting armor. That reaction, or lack of reaction, was all she needed.

Evagard hadn’t sent her here, directly or otherwise, to save Deilani.

Evagard had sent this man, posing as a doctor, and he was not here to help. Tessa’s guess was that he was unlocking these medicine cabinets to make Deilani’s death look like a medical mishap.

She snapped up the scattergun as the man threw out his hand with his fingers spread, as though to stop her. Tessa pulled her trigger.

Nothing happened. She didn’t bother to check the weapon; there was nothing wrong with it. Her eye twitched. She’d had the privilege of seeing men like this in action before, so she’d already known that some of the things they did in the stories and the dramas were based on reality. Those things included using their nanomachines to interfere with strikers and primers, rendering small arms useless if it suited them.

There hadn’t been a lot of time to wonder what she was up against. An operative from Evagardian Intelligence? An Imperial Security field agent like Hopper?

No. This was an Acolyte.

Chapter Four