Radko rolled out of bed and went to see what was happening.
Markan looked calm, but Radko had seen enough of him to know that underneath he was ready to blow.
“It is only one ship,” Markan said. “It can’t be everywhere at once.”
“But there are another 130 ships in orbit around Haladea III. And one of those is larger than the Eleven.”
“Half those ships are damaged too badly to use. The rest have no crew. Including the Confluence. It will be months before they can use them. The war will be over by then.”
“Even one ship can do massive damage, as we’ve seen.”
The reporter had a Roscracian accent. It was the first time Radko had seen Markan put on the spot by his own people.
“Of course it can,” Markan said. “But as I mentioned, it is only one ship. If it arrives at a battle, we know how to counteract it. We can simply jump away until the ship leaves, then come back. The New Alliance cannot get the jumps. Everything is under control.”
“There is a rumor the alien ships don’t need jumps. That they can jump cold. What do you say to that?”
Markan stared straight at the camera. “I say that is an absolute lie. Furthermore, if the New Alliance is jumping cold, they risk the lives of billions of people every time they do so. These are the monsters we are fighting.”
“Sometimes I admire that man,” Radko said.
Han gave her a strange look.
She ignored it. “What happened?” but the screen had already changed.
Filming a battle was difficult, for the distances were huge and ships relatively small. News crews deployed drones to a battle and used them to create composites, with the distances compressed. Hundreds of drones, tiny little mechanized cameras that clogged up the spaceways and could be more dangerous than incoming fire.
“They deployed one of the alien ships,” Han said.
She could see that. The Eleven loomed closer and closer, then suddenly it wasn’t the Eleven anymore.
“They swapped with the Wendell.” That was the kind of thing Ean would do. Kari Wang would never switch ships like that, and Radko bet it had been a cold jump.
“They swapped with the enemy,” Chaudry said. He looked as pleased as if he’d arranged it himself. “They planned that ship would be destroyed in place of them.”
“I bet the captain’s having kittens,” Han said.
Not Piers Wendell. He got calmer the stronger the action. There was nothing around the Wendell that posed a danger to the ship. That meant the fighting was elsewhere. “Can we see what the Eleven is doing?”
“It’s hiding, waiting for someone to destroy the Wallacian ship,” Chaudry said.
“You need to learn which ships are on our side.”
“It’s the Wendell,” Chaudry said. “He is a spy.”
Radko looked at her team of three. Even van Heel was nodding. “The Wendell and its crew are part of the New Alliance fleet. They have no love for Gate Union, or for Wallacia. No one calls them spies. Understand.”
She didn’t miss the look that passed between them. She didn’t comment either.
On-screen, the Eleven switched places with the Wendell again.
Radko watched the rest of the battle. The alarm on her comms sounded as the first of the Gate Union ships disappeared, making them all jump.
“I need to get ready,” she said. “The rest of you, do what you can to disguise yourselves, but not obviously. Makeup or clothes, nothing more. I want you to look different.” If they got into trouble, they could quickly change clothes and remove their makeup. It might be enough to get past any blocks set up to stop them.
She made for the fresher.
Ean had been on board the Eleven. They couldn’t have done a ship flip like that without him. He’d probably made for his own fresher afterward. He wouldn’t have liked the battle.
The sooner this job was over, the happier Radko would be.
Except they still had the problem of Sattur Dow. Until that was sorted, she couldn’t go home.
She dressed carefully in the classic-cut business clothes fashionable across the galaxy right now and added a black wig with a heavy, coiled braid. She’d thought about dyeing her own hair black, but Chen had long hair, and it would be difficult to explain a sudden haircut. Not only that, if they needed to escape, she could get rid of the wig, and no one would recognize her.
She hoped.
As she applied careful makeup to broaden her chin and flatten her cheeks, she thought about what she knew of Tiana Chen. Most of it came from Galenos’s intelligence gathering, but she had seen her around the palace occasionally. And at her mother’s house. Yesterday now.
She’d once heard Chen put a highly placed palace official in his place. At the time, Radko had wondered how she dared, for the man outranked her. It was only after she started working on the Lancastrian Princess that she discovered Chen was blackmailing half the people in the palace. Not badly enough for them to do away with her but enough for her to enjoy some role reversal when she could get it.
And now she had an in with Sattur Dow. Had Chen blackmailed Dow, and if so, with what? Or maybe Dow had simply offered her patronage in return for her knowledge.
The shuttle down to Redmond was a classy, six-passenger vehicle. The sort a wealthy woman would hire. What was Tiana Chen doing right now? How long had Vega been able to delay her?
It was a silent trip. Radko used the time to check her comms, which was what Chen would do. Had done, in fact, on that earlier trip with Radko and her mother. She’d talked then as well, but that was to equals. She wouldn’t talk to her bodyguards.
Chaudry—almost unrecognizable with a cleverly applied makeup that looked as if he’d recently come out of regen—pulled at the knuckles of his right hand. It was his only sign of nervousness, but she suspected if she could hear lines, there’d be a note of distress in there somewhere. It was a pity it was out of character to try to calm him.
Once on the ground, she hired an aircar. A luxury model. Again, what Chen would hire.
“I could get used to this,” van Heel said again. “None of my jobs to date have been like this. Usually, we’re mechanics or service people.”
“Not much fun being the servant,” Han said. “I never realized how boring being a servant would be.”
“It has to be better than a military policeman.”
“Clearly, you’ve never been a military policeman.”
Radko routed the aircar halfway across the city from where they planned to go. Call her paranoid, but she didn’t want to go straight to her destination.
“I’ve been meaning to say, Chaudry, your disguise is brilliant.” If anyone came looking for them, they would look for someone with regenerated skin.
It calmed him, which it was meant to, but it was honest, too.
“As children, we played doctors and symptoms.”
It wasn’t a game Radko had ever heard of. “And you were the doctor?”
“I preferred to be the symptoms.”
“Strange games where you came from,” Han said.
“It was fun. You had to do the symptoms right.”
Radko thought it might have been. A combination of art and medicine. She’d like to hear more, but right now they had other things to worry about. “Pick the smaller blasters. Use a back holster. Make sure it can’t be seen under your jacket.” It would take vital seconds to get at them, but OneLane would ask two armed bodyguards to remove their weapons.