Tracy-Ace grunted noncommittally and set the food cartons on the counter.
On the pillow directly under the console was a brown plush animal. Teddy bear? Legroeder turned, refraining from comment. On the wall were two pieces of framed holoart: one an alien landscape, orange and smoky-looking with a huge, luminous red sun; the other a terrestrial farmhouse standing beside a woods. He peered at the two pictures. Some intuition told him that the farmhouse had some meaning to her, and something else told him not to ask just now. Below the farmhouse holo, her lounge chair was festooned with even more cyber-attachments than the bed; it was a smaller version of the command seat in which he’d first met her. “Is all this stuff for business or pleasure?” he asked, keeping his voice neutral.
Her eyebrows went up halfway, and for the first time in a while, she allowed herself half a grin. “Both, I suppose.” Her expression darkened again. “We can talk here,” she said. “It’s private. It’s safe.” She hesitated a moment. “That’s why I brought you here.”
Not an attempted seduction, then. Probably just as well. Greta the Enforcer was not so far in his past. But then, Tracy-Ace didn’t seem anything like Greta, or so his instincts told him. And wasn’t he, as a rigger, supposed to trust his instincts? And weren’t his instincts telling him…
Jesus, get a grip. He exhaled tightly. It had been a long time since he’d been with a woman, and just being in this room with her made his groin ache. Even tense, she was surprisingly attractive. “Would this be a good time to tell me what’s wrong?” he said suddenly, to take his mind off the subject. “Something is, isn’t it?”
She looked at him sharply for a moment, and he had a sudden terrifying vision of her hissing, Yes, we’ve just figured out that you’re a spy. And you know what we do with spies…
Then her gaze shifted, and she seemed to study the blank wall over his shoulder for a while. “Correct me if I’m wrong,” she said finally, in a voice that was metered and precise. “I get the impression that you don’t exactly approve of everything we do here at Ivan. Is that true?”
His throat constricted, until it was all he could do to manage a husky rasp. “Well, I—”
Her gaze shifted to probe his. “In addition, you seem to have a highly developed sympathy for the Narseil—and Rings knows who else, on the outside.”
He swallowed. His vision was turning out to be frighteningly accurate.
Tracy-Ace pressed a finger to her lips, as one of those infuriating expressions that he couldn’t identify flashed across her face. “Furthermore—when you first made your presence known here at Ivan, you were seen following a data-thread that indicated a connection to—”
He could hear nothing now except blood rushing in his ears. To the underground. Admit it. The knot in his stomach tightened. He tried not to let it show on his face. But hadn’t she hinted earlier—?
Tracy-Ace seemed to be reading his thoughts. She nodded and completed her sentence: “—a connection to some of us who are dissatisfied with certain practices of this outpost, and of the Kyber Republic.”
Huh? Legroeder started. “Dis… satisfied—?”
“With the treatment of certain groups of people, for example. And with the way we… pursue some of our goals.”
Legroeder tried to swallow.
There was a catch in Tracy-Ace’s voice as her expression softened. “As it happens, Legroeder, I am one of those people. One of those… hoping to change things.”
His pulse was pounding now. He felt as if he might fall over in a faint. Was this a trap? It was, wasn’t it? Tell me it’s not a trap.
“You probably think I’m trying to trap you,” she said. “I’m not. Really. It’s no coincidence, you know, that you were brought to my attention when you explored that particular thread. And if you are looking to be put in touch with others…” She paused. “I can do that for you.”
He tried to draw a breath, but someone was sitting on his chest. “I—”
“It will have to be set up carefully, of course.”
“Uh—”
“Which I will do. But in the meantime—”
For all the speed of their direct connection, he felt as if he could barely keep up here. He hadn’t been expecting anything at all like this. And that expression on her face—he was blinking at her, trying to understand; it looked like something he’d never seen on her face before. Vulnerability. She was taking a risk. She was afraid. But of what?
“You must speak of this to no one outside this room,” she continued. “Not your friends. Not even me, unless I tell you it’s safe.” She rubbed one of her now-darkened implants. Meaning… others might be privy to what her implants heard?
“Do you understand?” she asked, and he nodded slowly.
“Good.” She sighed, her breath a long, slow whisper, and the tension seemed to drain out of her. She glanced at him with a hint of a smile, then looked away, as though embarrassed.
It seemed impossible. Legroeder frowned, caught for an instant between impulses. If she’s another Greta, you are in deep, deep trouble. Without allowing himself another thought, he reached out. She met his hand halfway, took it with surprising strength. His implants came to life, and he felt a shock of surprise at the intensity of the connection. Understanding flowed through the link and blossomed in his mind; and suddenly he realized why she felt vulnerable. Tracy-Ace, the dreaded node-commander, was appalled by the Kyber methods. But any attempt to change the system could backfire at once. For an instant, he glimpsed Tracy-Ace as a troubled young woman, caught in a maelstrom of shifting currents of power. Then the glimpse was gone, replaced by the confidence of Tracy-Ace/Alfa, the node-commander. But he had seen it; it was there.
If he could believe it. If she was telling the truth.
What would she gain by lying? She already had him as a prisoner, if that was what she wanted.
He squeezed her hand; she squeezed back, hard. Then she was up, padding across the room in her bare feet. When had she taken her shoes off? “Are you hungry?” she asked. Without waiting for an answer, she opened a cabinet door and took out bowls and a pair of slender glasses. Legroeder watched silently as she served the noodles; his head was still ringing like a bell from that contact. What had it touched in him?
“Glass of wino?” Tracy-Ace asked.
He barked a laugh. “Glass of what?”
She brandished a semiclear carton of red liquid. “Wino. It’s synthetic, but it’s not too bad. What’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” he said, suppressing a chuckle. “Sure, I’d love some.”
She opened the carton and poured. Legroeder accepted a glass and held it up to the light. Clear burgundy color. He sniffed at the liquid. Could it be worse than what he’d drunk at DeNoble? He held his glass up to hers. “Clink them together,” he said. Tracy-Ace looked puzzled, but clinked. It felt satisfying. He took a sip, hoping it would taste as good as the gesture had felt. It didn’t, not even remotely; but somehow that didn’t seem to matter. Tracy-Ace was watching him for a reaction, and when he smiled, it felt genuine.
She handed him a bowl and fork and gestured to the only place for them both to sit. They perched together on the edge of the bed—not too close together, but close enough to make him wonder what he was doing here. What he was doing about his mission. Quite a lot, dammit, he snarled to himself. The Narseil are getting a bath, and we’ve met the underground. That’s not too bad. And it wasn’t, really. But it didn’t answer the question of what he was doing sitting on a bed with Tracy-Ace/Alfa. What did it mean that he liked sitting on the bed with her—liked it quite a lot, now that he thought about it?