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  Her appetite disappeared. Knowing she could do little about the cause of his anger, whatever it was, she left what remained of her meal and headed for the family wing library. Kyza would be waiting for her there.

  Sometime later, she’d almost managed to forget the roiling irritation emanating from the Sural and was working Kyza’s vocabulary with word games in Mandarin, when a servant approached.

  “Yes?” Marianne said.

  “High one,” he said, addressing Marianne, “the Sural requests your presence in the head guard’s office.”

  “Show me where that is.”

  The servant nodded and led the way. Marianne shrugged an apology to Kyza and followed. The head guard’s office would be in his quarters, and those would be on the main floor for practical reasons, but that was all she knew. When the servant showed her in, the head guard was at his console speaking with a human. Marianne drew a sharp breath. It was Laura Howard. Crying.

  The Sural silently handed her a tablet. She read it, frowning.

  Two tiny trans-light scouts were orbiting Tolar. The first, with three humans aboard, was directly over the stronghold in synchronous orbit. That one was cloaked. Marianne snorted. Central Command had no idea that the cloaks on military ships were useless here.

  The second ship, bearing two humans, was broadcasting a distress signal and maneuvering into a standard orbit.

  “Which one is Laura on?” she asked, lowering her voice, though she knew the stronghold communications would filter it out.

  “The ship transmitting a call for help,” the Sural answered. He signaled the guard with a gesture.

  The guard interrupted Laura. “The – Marianne is here now, Mrs. Howard,” he said, in English. “Do you wish to speak with her?”

  Laura’s hazel eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, her cheeks running with tears, her grey hair disheveled and falling down from a widow’s knot. “Please,” she whispered.

  Marianne went over to the console and paused while the guard switched the focus to her. Then she said, “Laura, what’s going on?”

  “I’m here, Marianne. In orbit around Tolar.” She sniffed into a handkerchief. “Please, please don’t let anyone shoot us down.”

  Marianne shook her head. “No one’s going to hurt you. What’s this about? What are you doing here?”

  “I managed to get away from them, from Central Command. Please, let me land. I don’t have anywhere else to go. You have to take me in!” Laura’s image on the monitor seemed to stare right through Marianne, a silent plea on her face.

  “Of course I’ll take you in. Let me talk to the Sural, all right? I need to silence the comms for a minute.”

  Laura looked off-screen and back and nodded, giving a wan smile. Marianne muted the channel.

  “She is lying,” the Sural said.

  She turned to look up at him. “She’s also terrified.”

  He rubbed his chin. “This is likely another abduction attempt.”

  “But what’s their plan?” She frowned. “Can that ship harm us?”

  “No. We can disable its weapons before the pilot can complete the process of bringing them online.”

  “Why would Earth send Laura to a place where she’d be safe from them?” She pondered the possibilities and found them more limited than she liked. The only way to find out what Central Command was up to was to let them make their next move.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  “Let them think they’re getting away with it, whatever it is, until they fail.”

  “Devious. You propose we allow them to land?”

  “Laura’s in fear of her life, beloved. You can protect her if we can get her down here.”

  He rubbed his chin again, nodding.

  She turned back to the console and unmuted the line. “Laura, the Sural says you can land,” she said. “How are you flying that thing? Do you have a pilot?”

  Laura nodded and looked off-screen. “He might need sanctuary too.”

  It was another lie. Marianne suppressed a wince. “We’ll talk about that when you get here, all right? There’s a field the size of a soccer pitch about halfway down the cliff below the stronghold. You can land there. Is your pilot hearing this?”

  She nodded again. “Thank you,” she said. “You just saved my life.”

  The connection cut out.

  “She believes her last statement was a lie,” the Sural said in a dark voice.

  Marianne grimaced. His outrage churned in her gut, fading as he clamped down on it. “Central Command is using Laura to get to me,” she said, “and given their reputation, I don’t think they’re going to let her survive it.”

  A tone chimed from the head guard’s desk. He examined the displays. “High one,” he said to the Sural. “Mrs. Howard’s ship is entering the atmosphere. It is heading for the plateau.”

  “Disable its weapons.”

  The guard’s hands flew over the displays. “Done.”

  “Are there weapons on the ship in orbit?” Marianne asked.

  “No, high one.”

  “No weapons? On a long-range scout?” She turned to face the guard. “Scouts always have weapons. At least, they used to – that’s why the overflights of Far India during the Sugar Rebellion caused such a panic.” Her eyes narrowed as a chilling thought struck her. “Does it have a phase platform?”

  The guard checked his console. “Yes, high one. The ship in orbit carries a phase platform.”

  Her stomach twisted. “I’ll bet they’re going to try to use her to get a phase lock on me. The ship coming in for a landing isn’t the one that will try to grab me – the one above us is.”

  The Sural nodded. “Plausible. Would she have a locater chip?”

  “Oh yes, absolutely. She’d have been on any number of planets with the Admiral, and anyone who sets foot on one that isn’t under Central Command’s heel gets a locater chip.”

  He turned when the guard’s console chimed again. The ship carrying Laura was arcing through the atmosphere, sonic booms shaking the city in its wake as it headed straight for the stronghold plateau. Decelerating quickly to a hover, it landed on the same field where the shuttle carrying Marianne had landed eight years before.

  “Two humans in the ship,” the guard said. “The larger one carries a distance weapon.”

  “Send guards out ahead of us,” the Sural ordered. “And disable communications in Mrs. Howard’s ship, as well as the phase platform and engines in the ship overhead.”

  “Yes, high one.”

  “What now?” Marianne asked.

  “We greet our uninvited guests,” the Sural said, offering her his arm. He took her to an inconspicuous door just inside the stronghold entrance. Opening it revealed a set of stairs.

  “These have been here all along? You made me walk all the way up the cliff path the day I arrived!”

  His eyes sparkled. “I wished to observe you.” He turned and started down the steps.

  Marianne snorted, following him into the dim stairwell, through a heavy door that opened at his touch, and out onto the field, which was, as she’d told Laura, about the size of a soccer pitch. Shaped like a fat crescent and covered with the ferny vegetation she liked to call grass, it sat a bit more than halfway up the cliff below the stronghold.

  The scout ship was larger than the tiny shuttle in which Marianne had arrived on Tolar. Four camouflaged guards were already stationed near its hatch, and another four, also camouflaged, arranged themselves around the Sural and Marianne. As they crossed the field, the ship’s hatch opened.

  Laura Howard emerged, blinking in the bright sunlight, a distraught expression on her patrician face. Her clothing, a loose blouse and ankle-length skirt in unrelieved black, was wrinkled as if she’d been sleeping in it, and her feet were bare.

  “Laura,” Marianne called.

  Laura went to Marianne and threw her arms around her, shaking and crying. A chemical smell from her clothing enveloped them, strong and stinging, making
Marianne’s eyes and throat burn.

  “Please forgive me!” Laura sobbed.

  Marianne blinked away the stinging and hugged her back. “For what?”

  “For what they’re making me do.”

  A scuffle broke out just inside the ship, and two guards dragged the struggling and cursing pilot out the hatch. A third guard followed, carrying the man’s weapon as if it were about to come alive and bite him. The Sural went over to Laura and put a hand on her shoulder.

  “What are you hiding?” he asked in English.

  The pilot laughed. “You’ll find out any second.” He was relaxed now – too relaxed. It began to feel to Marianne as if his resistance had been a pretext of some kind.

  Laura pulled away. “I don’t understand,” she said.

  Marianne peered at her. “Is there something you want to tell us?”

  “There’s another ship—”

  “Citizen Howard,” the pilot interrupted, his voice sharp. “Remember your grandchildren.”

  Laura bit her lip, fresh tears welling in her eyes.

  “It’ll be all right,” Marianne whispered, and put an arm around her. “You’re safe now.”

  The Sural smiled. “We know about the ship overhead.” He left Laura and closed the space between himself and the pilot. “We have disabled its phase platform and engines.”

  The man frowned. “Impossible. You don’t have that kind of technology. You still live in stone fortresses.”

  “Stone is durable,” the Sural said as he reached him. “What is your name?”

  The pilot ignored the question. “You must be the Sural.”

  “Even so.” The Sural gave a slight bow.

  The human started to fall to the ground, his knees buckling, then spun free of the guards and launched himself – at Marianne. The Sural, moving so fast his hands were a blur, grabbed him by the throat with one hand and brought the other down at the base of the man’s skull with a snap.

  A brilliant flash of pain tore through Marianne as the man fell to the ground, motionless, his light – the empathic glow she saw when she closed her eyes – dimming to darkness. Laura uttered a cry and sank to the soft vegetation, sobbing. Marianne lowered herself to the ground and wrapped her arms around her friend.

  The Sural stood staring at the dead pilot. “You should not have done that,” he said in a low, hard voice, still speaking English.

  Marianne looked up. “Beloved, you—”

  “I executed him,” he said in his own language. “He meant to capture you.”

  Marianne swallowed. “Did you have to kill him?”

  His eyes flashed. “Yes.” He turned toward the scout ship and snapped orders to his guards. “Destroy this vessel.” He glanced at Laura, and his face softened. “Take Mrs. Howard to the apothecaries.”

  * * *

  Hours later, Marianne sat with Laura at one of the small tables in the refectory. The poor woman had been horrified to realize that she and her clothing reeked to the Tolari’s exquisite sense of smell, and she had been happy to bathe and change before the apothecaries examined her. Then, after the healers pronounced her unharmed but for a need to drink extra fluids, Marianne led her, clean and wearing a Tolari robe, trousers, and slippers in Suralia blue, to the refectory.

  “It was like a bad novel about the corporate wars,” Laura said, huddled over a mug of tea, taking long, thirsty pulls. Storaas sat in a chair on her other side, one hand on her shoulder, as the Sural paced slowly back and forth, hands clasped behind his back.

  “They came for me in the middle of the night.” She took another long drink from the mug. “That’s really good tea,” she whispered, with a shaky breath.

  Marianne rubbed her back. “Go on,” she urged.

  Laura took another trembling breath. “They were masked and dressed in black like thugs from the Restored Triads, but I’m,” her voice caught, “I was an admiral’s wife. I know how things are. The mob doesn’t tangle with Earth Fleet. Those men had to be from Central Command.” She sipped a little more slowly from the mug. “They broke into my quarters and tied me up with some kind of tape and put me in a transit trunk. I thought I was going to die in there.”

  A shudder ran through her. “It must have had an oxygen supply though,” she continued, “or I think I would have suffocated. When that horrid man let me out, I was on the scout ship and we were almost all the way here. It had to be more than a day I was in there.” She swallowed. “He told me if I didn’t do exactly as he ordered, my grandchildren,” her voice dropped to a whisper again, “my grandchildren would pay for it.”

  The Sural stopped pacing, his deep-seated outrage blending into her own. When his faded, controlled, he continued his slow pacing near the table.

  “I don’t know his name. He never told me who he was. But he said if I did everything he told me to do, I’d make it back to Tau Ceti in one piece.” She shook her head. “I could see my death in his eyes. He was lying. But he was going to kill me right there if I didn’t do what he said, and I thought if I could stay alive long enough, I could talk him out of killing me. So I told him I’d do whatever he told me.”

  Marianne blinked, impressed. Approval was running through the Sural, too. The woman had grit.

  “He told me to lie to whoever it took, say whatever it took, to get the ship on the ground.” She uttered a humorless laugh. “Everyone knows Tolari can tell if you’re lying, especially if they can see your face. Even I know that. Maybe it didn’t matter to Central Command if the lying got me killed. I was ... inconvenient ... after John died.” Her eyes reddened, and she swallowed. “Anyway, he told me to hug you and he’d signal the other ship to phase me up, and they’d get you with me. But – thank God – things didn’t work out like he planned.”

  “I’m so sorry they involved you in this,” Marianne said. “Do you have anywhere else to go?”

  Laura shook her head. “I have children and grandchildren, but Central Command will be watching them. My friends won’t risk their families or their husbands’ careers to take me in. I’m not sure I could call myself a friend if I asked them to.”

  Marianne shook her head and sighed, continuing to rub Laura’s back. Storaas removed his hand. “She is innocent,” he said in Tolari. “She hides nothing.”

  The Sural nodded. “You honor me with your gift, old friend.”

  “What are they saying?” Laura asked.

  “That they know you’re telling the truth,” Marianne said, with a pat on the shoulder. “It’s all right. No one’s going to hurt you.”

  Laura nodded and extended a tentative hand to touch Marianne’s pregnant belly. “Look at you,” she whispered.

  Marianne took Laura’s hand and smiled. “It’s a girl,” she said. “I’m going to have a little girl.”

  “The Sural?”

  “Yes.”

  Laura looked away. “He killed John.”

  So she does know. “Laura, if you want to blame anyone, blame Central Command. They sent him back here.”

  “John was just following orders,” she said defensively, her eyes reddening.

  “I know. The Sural knows. He gave the Admiral every chance.”

  Laura’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I was there, but I couldn’t understand what they were saying. They weren’t speaking English. Marianne,” she took a sip of tea, “you were right about one thing. If you’d gone back, Central Command would have sued you for breach of contract and harassed your friends, leaving you penniless and with nowhere to go.”

  She stopped to take a breath and began to shake. “After you kicked the Alexander out of Tolari space, Addie convinced John that you lied when you said the Tolari were protected by a more advanced technology than Earth’s. He had a gut feeling you were telling the truth, and his people ran analyses on the recordings that proved you believed what you were saying, but she kept working on him. She wore him down.” She shook her head. “He should have listened to his own instincts.”

  Her eyes wandere
d over to Marianne’s tall bond-partner, who still paced near the table, a grim expression on his face. “That’s the Sural, isn’t it?” she asked, her hazel eyes darkening.

  He stopped pacing and gave Laura a slight bow.

  “You killed my husband.”

  The Sural was silent for a moment. Softly, in English, he replied, “It was necessary.”

  Seething anger began to radiate out of her. “Of course it wasn’t necessary!”

  Guards around the refectory flickered into sight. Laura started.

  “Please calm down,” Marianne murmured, rubbing her back. “They’re empaths. They can sense your anger.”

  Laura blanched and took a deep breath. The anger banked but didn’t disappear.

  At a signal from the Sural, the guards vanished. He rubbed his chin, his face softening as he studied her. He made another gesture. “What would you have had me do?”

  “You didn’t have to kill him!”

  “He would not leave.”

  “He was following orders!”

  “And I ordered him to depart. Your husband was a man of authority. He knew the risk he took when he defied me.”

  Kyza appeared in the doorway. She walked over to her father and took his hand, his impressive height making her look even younger than she was.

  “This is Kyza.” He didn’t bother to keep the pride out of his voice.

  Laura glanced at her and swallowed. “Your daughter.”

  “If I fail to protect my people from the humans, my daughter will pay the price for my negligence,” he continued. “Tell me, Mrs. Howard, what do you think I should do to protect her?”

  Laura took a deep breath and gazed down at her hands. “Take out the enemy leadership,” she said in a quiet voice.

  He nodded again, though with her head down, Marianne didn’t think Laura could see it. To Marianne’s eye, he looked sympathetic, but she knew what he was feeling. She wasn’t sure what the other woman would see, perceptive though she was for a human.