gaian consortium 05 - the titan trap Read online

  Maybe not the sort of thing that parenting experts would advise a father to tell his daughter, but she couldn’t deny that Owen Evans had been right about that one thing at least.

  Derek Tagawa sighed. It wasn’t an exaggerated thing, heaved to garner pity, but a quiet exhalation of his breath, as if he needed clean air in his lungs to tell her what was coming next. “We got caught. Or rather, someone noticed Karras poking around. He figured it out, too, realized things were getting hot and that he needed to get out of there. His husband Liam was on the team as well, and I think they were both planning to leave, although I’m pretty sure Liam didn’t know exactly why Theo wanted to get out of there. Not that it got that far. A GDF security detail showed up, and they shot Theo.”

  “Just like that?” she asked, appalled.

  “Basically. I was standing there in shock, waiting for them to kill me next, and then the commander shoved the gun in my hand, made sure my prints were all over it. After that, I was hauled away and charged with Theo’s murder. It was publicized as a lover’s quarrel.” He grimaced, running a hand through his short-cropped dark hair. “Theo and Liam were both very good men, and I admired them, but I don’t play for that team. Not that anyone cared much about the truth by then. They just needed a scapegoat.”

  Cassidy had already gotten the impression that Derek was thoroughly hetero, but she still experienced an odd flicker of relief at his words. Then she wanted to shake her head at herself. What the hell difference did it make whether Derek Tagawa was gay, straight, or somewhere in between?

  “What happened to Liam?”

  “Nothing. That is, he’d never been involved with or had known anything about the hacking Theo was doing — Theo made sure of that, to keep him safe — so although Liam was questioned, he was never held for anything. Anyway, I had the impression that Liam’s parents are pretty far up the food chain in the local government on Ganymede, and I think his younger sister just married an exec with MonAg. So Liam had some pretty highly placed people to speak for him. Also, swearing that he was going to kill me himself probably didn’t hurt his cause, either.”

  “So he really thought you killed Theo?” That seemed difficult to believe. After all, what would’ve been Derek’s motive, if Liam knew his husband wasn’t actually having an affair?

  Derek’s face went blank. “He did…I mean, he does. And nobody’s bothered to disabuse him of that notion.”

  She wasn’t sure how to react to that. Something didn’t feel as if it was adding up, but she wasn’t sure which questions to ask. “So they shipped you off to MaxSec.”

  “Two years, five months, and eight days ago. Yes.”

  “Why not kill you, too?”

  “They probably thought about it. But they wanted to cover up Theo’s death more, and they probably figured I wasn’t going to be much of a threat locked up on Titan. After all, everyone in there is innocent, or claims to be. I could tell everyone within earshot that I didn’t do kill Theo Karras, and it wouldn’t matter a damn bit. The ironic thing is, I know for a fact that a couple of us prisoners actually are innocent.”

  He got up from the copilot’s seat and gave a quick glance around. “What kind of food do you have on this boat? Escaping from MaxSec works up a hell of an appetite, and it’s a long way to Europa.”

  For a second or two, she only stared at him, jarred by the sudden change in topic. She got the feeling, though, that he was done talking for the moment. So she stood up as well, then said, “I’ll show you.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  He couldn’t be positive, but Derek thought Cassidy Evans believed him, or at least she was beginning to. In the grand scheme of things, it really didn’t matter whether she thought he was telling the truth or lying his ass off…but something in him wanted her to believe his story, to understand that he was no criminal. The criminals were the people desecrating those bodies in Hunan Province, the man who had shot Theo point-blank between the eyes.

  All other considerations put aside, Derek was pretty sure he couldn’t have hit any kind of target with that sort of accuracy, let alone a human skull. He’d had some basic firearms training before being sent into the field, but he knew he was no marksman. The soldier who’d leveled his gun at Theo?

  It was pretty clear that he knew what he was doing.

  “It’s not exactly gourmet,” Cassidy was saying, going to the refrigeration unit and pulling out a few packets of food.

  “It’ll be better than what I got in MaxSec,” he told her, and the tight set of her features relaxed into a reluctant smile. It seemed to light up her face, give a glow to those hazel eyes, and he hoped he’d get to see that smile a few more times before he had to leave her. There had never been much time in his life for women, and right now he was beginning to regret all those busy, barren years.

  “You’re probably right about that.” She set the food packets in the infrared heating unit, then turned back toward him. “So…Europa. You want to explain that to me, now that we’re being all cozy? Because I still don’t get it.”

  He knew that, on the surface, the plan seemed crazy. But everything up until this point had been planned with mathematical precision, and he knew the Europa element was a calculated risk. Telling Cassidy was not necessary, and in fact might hurt her. The less she knew, the better.

  “I’m not at liberty to discuss that,” he replied. “I told you about what happened to me in China because I wanted you to know that I wasn’t a murderer, and have no intention of harming you. But if you don’t know anything, then the GDF security personnel won’t be able to get it out of you. They’ll question you, sure, and inspect your ship. They won’t find anything, though, so they should let you go with a minimum of fuss.” He added, since her expression was more than a little dubious, “You can tell them I held you at gunpoint the whole time.”

  At that remark, she let out a short, humorless laugh. “You really think that’s going to make a difference? If by some miracle you do manage to get away, they’re still going to impound this ship while they question me. They’ll go over every inch of the Avalon, looking for anything that’ll help to track you down. And when they’re done, you think they’re going to let me have her back? If I’m really lucky, they’ll charge me some ridiculous impound fee that I can’t afford. But more likely they’ll claim the ship as seized assets and leave me out in the cold on my ass.”

  Derek almost replied, They wouldn’t do that, and then he realized that yes, they would. Not because Cassidy Evans was guilty of anything except some extreme bad luck, but because they’d want to make an example of her. They’d say she should’ve fought back or resisted somehow, done something to keep him from getting off Titan. And their words would make her guilty, and then they’d take her ship, just because they could.

  “I’m sorry,” he said at length. “I wasn’t thinking of the consequences to you, and I apologize for that.”

  Surprise flickered in those hazel eyes. “I’d say it was all right, but it really isn’t.” She pulled the heated food packets out of the infrared, and busied herself with opening them and dumping their contents on a couple of plates that she’d gotten from the minuscule cupboard. Despite her warnings to the contrary, the food did smell good. After picking up the plates, she went over to the equally cramped table and set them down, then pulled two pouches of water out of the refrigeration unit and put them by the plates. “So I think the least you can do is tell me why we’re headed toward Europa instead of out to Triton, where we might be able to trade in this boat and get passage out of the system.”

  Her casual reference to the smugglers’ paradise on Neptune’s moon startled him somewhat, but not as much as the comment that they’d be able to sell her ship in return for safe passage on a vessel traveling far away from Gaia. “‘We’?” he said delicately.

  A look of irritation passed over her features, although it seemed more directed at herself than at him. “Oh, well, I just told you that I’ve basically got no future here in the Gai
an system, thanks to your little escape plan. Right now the only asset I have is this ship, but it’s not going to do me any good if the authorities get their hands on it. So heading to Triton seems a lot smarter than running to Europa, when you know a GDF squadron is going to intercept us sooner rather than later if we maintain this course.”

  He’d spent so much time dealing with abstracts, with the cool precision of numbers and formulas, that her hard-headed practicality startled him somewhat. To cover his confusion, he sat down on one of the built-in benches at the table. After a brief hesitation, she did so as well, seating herself with a thump he felt rather than heard, her gaze still fixed on him.

  “I have…contacts…in the GDF squadron stationed on Europa,” he told her, after guessing she would keep staring at him like that until he provided some answers to her questions. “Or rather, my contacts have contacts. The story’s starting to get around, and those who’ve been working secretly against the government are stepping up their efforts, knowing this may be the impetus they need to sway public opinion.”

  “You mean the underground is real?” she asked. Her tone sounded skeptical, to say the least.

  “Yes. Real, and growing. The Consortium’s policies have won them a lot of enemies. They’re still operating from a position of strength, but how long will that last when the general public realizes its own government is processing the Cloud’s dead, the people who were supposed to be given proper burials, looting their bodies and grinding the rest into fertilizer?”

  She winced, then glanced down at the food on her plate as if the very sight of it made her sick.

  “Sorry,” Derek said, although he wasn’t. Not really. “I’d never had any contact with any of the underground until my trial…such as it was. My state-appointed attorney was a joke, but that didn’t matter, because the clerk handling my case had a direct pipeline to underground personnel who’d taken an interest in me. Their network is larger than you can imagine.” Finally, he picked up his fork and took a mouthful of what looked like ramen and chicken, although he guessed the “chicken” was some sort of soy substitute. Even so, it tasted worlds better than the slop he’d been given at MaxSec.

  “So big it reaches all the way to Titan?” she inquired, not sounding terribly convinced.

  He couldn’t blame her. The personnel at the prison facility were vetted back and forth and up and down and sideways from Sunday, but even the most rigorous filtering process wasn’t infallible. Slip in one or two agents whose motivations weren’t exactly in line with Consortium policy, and it became easier to escape than one would think. He knew he could never have done it without their help, and he could only hope that the people who’d assisted him would manage to escape detection. If their treachery was ever discovered, he knew they wouldn’t survive long enough to be imprisoned. The Eridanis couldn’t protest violence they never found out about.

  “Yes,” he replied shortly, before eating another mouthful of ramen. It was salty, so he reached out and picked up the water pouch Cassidy had set out for him.

  “If it’s so big, how come everyone thinks it’s a myth?” At last she picked up her own fork and ate a bite of her food, although he could tell she wasn’t too interested in it.

  “Who controls the media?” he asked in return.

  She wasn’t stupid. A nod, and she said, “So of course the underground is a myth, and nothing for all us good citizens to worry our pretty little heads about.”

  “Exactly.”

  Another silence as she seemed to chew that concept at the same time she chewed her food. Derek continued to eat, partly to give her time to think, and partly because he really was hungry; they never fed the prisoners quite enough at the MaxSec, and besides, breaking out of a maximum-security prison did tend to work up an appetite.

  “So…your ‘friends’ in the squadron,” she said after a long pause. “Are they going to fire on their comrades, or do they have some other plan in mind?”

  “I don’t know,” Derek admitted. “They didn’t give me all the details. I was told to secure the freighter that was currently making its supply run, then rendezvous at Europa. Or at least, en route to Europa. As you said, the squadron is a lot faster than this ship. They should intercept us in another eighteen standard hours or so.”

  With her free hand, she was tracing circles on the scratched plastic of the tabletop. A nervous gesture? Maybe, although she didn’t seem the nervous type. Possibly it was something she did while pondering a particularly difficult problem.

  “Well, the proximity sensors will give us some warning, although of course they’re not as good as what you’d find on a newer ship. Maybe twenty minutes if we’re lucky.” She set down her fork and seemed to contemplate him, head tilting to one side in a gesture he was already beginning to recognize. “Do your friends have any way of contacting you?”

  “They have the comm code for this ship.”

  “The comm you smashed,” she corrected him, brows drawing together, as if she’d just remembered the damage he caused when he first came on board.

  “But that’s not your only comm unit, is it?” he asked, and her frown deepened.

  “How did you know about that?”

  “My contacts know a lot of things.”

  The look of consternation that crossed her delicate features might have been amusing under different circumstances. “All right, you caught me. I guess it’s a good thing you knew that particular tidbit, but the authorities on Titan somehow didn’t.”

  “Well, to be fair, they weren’t hanging out in dive bars trying to get intel on the people who manned the supply shuttle. From the sound of it, my contacts had to do some digging to get that much.” He paused, wondering if she was going to probe any more deeply as to the sources who’d provided that “tidbit.” Funny how the mechanics who worked on starships were only too willing to offer up all kinds of information, if the price offered was right.

  But she only appeared resigned, instead saying, “So, okay, so your people have the access code to the secondary comm. I assume they’ll contact us in advance?”

  “Probably not by much. Those channels are monitored closely, so if they send a transmission too early, they’re going to end up tipping their hand.” Only one bite of ramen remained on his plate, so he scooped it up with his fork and chewed the noodles slowly, wishing there had been more. Actually, it looked as if Cassidy didn’t intend to finish her dinner, but he knew better than to ask if he could have it. After wiping his mouth with the rough recycled paper napkin that was sitting next to his plate, he asked, “So where’s this comm unit?”

  Her expression of resignation only deepened. “In my quarters.”

  * * *

  It felt so very odd to have a strange man in the tiny chamber where she slept. No, scratch that. It felt odd to have a man in there, period, whether he was a stranger or not. Her last encounter with a member of the male species had been so long ago that she actually had to stop and do a quick calculation in her head. Sixteen standard months. Some slick talker in Luna City on business. He’d had an expense account and a fancy suite at the Selene Towers. A misnomer, since the whole thing was built underground, but it was fairly lavish. Way above her pay grade, but it had been nice to spend an evening drinking champagne and eating huge strawberries grown in the hydroponics farms just outside Luna City.

  Her rule had always been: Never bring men back to the ship. They weren’t so thick on the ground that she had to enforce that rule very often, but she’d stuck to it. This place was her only sanctuary, and she’d never had a relationship so serious that she wanted the man in question to come with her to the Avalon, and that was even after her father died and she had the freighter to herself.

  Now, though, Derek Tagawa seemed to fill the cramped little chamber, his head almost touching the ceiling. Strange, because he hadn’t seemed that tall before. And thank God she actually had tidied up this morning, a little ritual she practiced whenever she made planetfall, like actually putting on
makeup before she ventured out into Luna City during her layovers there.

  “The comm’s here,” she said, pointing at the small console, which — thank God again — was set into the wall opposite the bed, instead of above it. Her father had never adequately explained why he had a second comm system, although she guessed it was because he’d been involved in a few shady dealings before he’d somehow managed to secure the Titan contract.

  That had been a long time ago, back when her mother was still around. Actually, although Owen had never given Cassidy the particulars, she had the impression that it was the very Titan contract which had broken up their marriage, that her mother had walked because she didn’t want to be an absentee wife to a man who was only around ten days out of every thirty.

  Of course, that didn’t explain why she hadn’t taken Cassidy with her.

  Shaking her thoughts loose from the unpleasant past, she went on, “I suppose you’ll need to be back here to monitor the comm, so I’ll just stay up in the cockpit.”

  That suggestion made Derek frown. “You have to sleep sometime, don’t you?”

  “Oh, I sleep in the pilot’s chair all the time,” she replied with a casual wave of one hand. “It’s no trouble.” And I doubt I’ll sleep a wink while you’re on board my ship anyway, so it doesn’t really matter where I am, whether it’s back here or up in the cockpit.

  “Even so — ”

  “It’s fine. And really, it’s going to be a while before we meet up with them, so you might as well get some rest. I’ll just need to change the bedclothes for you.”

  The thought of him sleeping in her bed disturbed her, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. She couldn’t move the comm, and it was no use to put him in the smaller sleeping chamber across the hall, the one that had been hers until she inherited the ship and the larger captain’s quarters — not that they were anything to write home about, being three meters square and mostly filled by the bed and the console that contained the comm.