Abby closed the trunk and latched down the lid.
Now Kris did discover the meaning of claustrophobia. She felt her panic rising, her pulse quickening. A need for light, space, freedom welled within her.
FOR CHRIST’S SAKE, KRIS, TAKE THE DAMN PILL! Nelly growled in Kris’s skull.
Kris took one of the pills, even as she wondered where Nelly was getting these latest additions to her vocabulary.
In a couple of heartbeats, she felt calmer.
Then sleepy.
The thought crossed her mind that she might never wake up. That she might find out real soon what awaited people after life . . . if anything. She wondered if Tommy would be there, his wide, lopsided grin welcoming her as he said, “I told you so.”
Even as the steamer trunk began to bump along on its way to who-knew-where, Kris was nodding off to sleep.
6
Kris felt the bright light even with her eyes closed.
So she opened her eyes. And blinked immediately. That light was really bright. Several blinks later, she started to make out a face.
It was smiling, and familiar.
It wasn’t Tommy.
“You’re dead,” Kris said. “Am I?”
“The reports of my death are much exaggerated,” came in a familiar drawl.
“Captain Elizabeth Luna, what do you mean you’re not dead? I saw your ship blown out of space,” Kris’s eyes were getting used to the light. That, and someone had finally quit shining it right in her eyes.
“Those bad actors did indeed do severe bodily harm to the old Archie,” Captain Luna agreed. “They also left a few vacancies in my crew, but, I will point out, not one for a captain.”
“I see,” Kris said, blinking rapidly.
“My owner had been complaining that the Archimedes III wasn’t nearly as palatial as his other corporate buddies’ yachts, so he wasn’t heartbroken to send the insurers a bill for a new boat. They howled, but by the time I got my old bones out of the fancy body-and-fender shop he put me up in on Wardhaven, the new Archimedes IV was ready for business. It’s never too hard to locate the right scoundrels for a ship like this, and I’ve been plying the space ways for several months while you were getting into all kinds of troubles.”
“That I have,” Kris admitted. “Say, is there a head anywhere handy? I threw up most of what I drank yesterday, but there are still a few drops that wants to exit the old-fashioned way.”
“Sailor, show this woman to our least-fancy head,” Captain Luna ordered. So it was that Kris found herself doing her business in facilities that made the master suite at Nuu House look downright poorly. Quickly done, Kris rejoined her hostess.
“Would you mind telling me how you managed to pull this off? You and Nelly and, oh, hi Penny. I see you made it as well.”
“Ms. Pasley has been my right-hand man for oh these last five years,” Captain Luna assured Kris.
“Gosh,” Kris said, falling into the down-home cadence of the captain. “And I thought she’d been my death-defying sidekick for all those five years.”
The topic of the debate joined them in a walk down a curving hallway whose decor would not have been out of place in a royal palace on Earth.
“I got the paperwork to prove my claim,” Luna assured Kris.
“So where is Lieutenant Pasley?” Kris asked.
“She never left High Chance,” Penny said. “Admiral Santiago found a place for me on her staff. But I was pretty run-down, after all the running around a certain damn Longknife put me through,” Penny said with a sly sideways glance at Kris.
“There was this place, Itsahfine, not much of a planet, but the ancient aliens who built the jump points had left a lot of dusty ruins on it. Once upon a time, Penny and a guy she’d just met thought it would be great to spend a long leave bouncing around the place.” Penny’s voice took on a faraway quality at the recollection of what she and Tommy had never done because he’d gotten too close to a damn Longknife.
“Anyway, Mimzy spotted a lone woman tourist who had booked passage and rooms on Itsahfine and was my spitting image. Mimzy did a bit of this and that, and suddenly Lieutenant Pasley is taking sixty days of leave there and Third Officer Pasley is Captain Luna’s long-serving hand.”
“Will it hold up?” Kris asked.
“Itsahfine is pretty backward. Not much of a grid there to walk off of. It’s held up so far. Mimzy swears that she’s put in place a subroutine on the woman’s credit chit. Whatever she pays for: Hotel, food, what have you will show up on my credit report. Sixty days from now, it will all vanish, and the charges will go back to whom they belong. As I see it, we’ve got six more of my eight weeks’ leave to save humanity. That’s not usually too tight a schedule for a Longknife I know to pull off a miracle or twelve.”
Luna enjoyed a hearty belly laugh at that.
Kris nodded soberly, tasting the risk her friend was taking. “What about Abby and Cara? And how did you get me on this ship?”
“Getting you on wasn’t all that hard,” Luna insisted, and opened the door into quarters that made palatial look shabby. “This is the CEO’s suite. If you promise not to trash it, it’s yours for the trip.”
Kris took the measure of the place, as much as she could see from the door. “I’m more worried about me finding my way out of here when the time comes. You got a GPS or something?”
“I’ll make sure you don’t get lost,” Nelly said dryly.
“I figured Nelly would help,” Captain Luna quipped. “Otherwise, I would have dumped you in something smaller. I really want you to hide out here for this voyage. Nobody’s supposed to be in here. None of the crew will be coming in, and I don’t want to wave you around too much.”
“Are you afraid someone will turn us in?” Penny asked.
“Not bleeding likely. Several of my crew served with the princess here during that little dustup and all its fun around Wardhaven. Them that weren’t there all wish they’d had the honor . . . and survived it in one piece. It’s just that what’s out of sight is out of mind, and the less said, the better. Come, take a load off your feet. By my reckoning, I’m four or five answers behind your questions.”
Kris settled into a chair that would have fit right into any of the sitting rooms of Nuu House. Thick, rich, brocade upholstering didn’t keep it from conforming itself to her body. A low hum went through Kris as it gently began massaging her.
“So, Abby and Cara,” Kris said. “How are they not getting the short end of this stick?”
“I think I can answer that best,” Nelly said. “It’s good to be able to put all of me back to work again. Kris, I won’t apologize for giving you the silent treatment this last month. You were a pig and all that, but I really had to do it. They had sensors trained on us the whole time. Officially, I was just your average, run-of-the-mill, souped-up personal assistant. That’s what I made the records say. But if I started using a lot more electricity, or communicating with your brain and all, the jig would be up. So I lay low, did my planning slowly and in out-of-the-way places, then brought things together when Penny showed up with Mimzy.”
“Okay, nonapology not accepted,” Kris said with a grin, “but what about Abby and Cara?”
“You, Kris, are locked in your room,” Nelly said. “There is a small electronic device that is programmed to call in sick tomorrow and shout through the door at Abby and Cara that you don’t want to be disturbed anytime they try to disturb you. With any luck, we’ll be on the other side of this jump before anyone decides to knock down the door and see what’s really going on in that room.”
“And when they do?” Kris said.
“Abby and Cara will have, what do you call it, plausible deniability. The powers that be can think whatever they want, but your maid and niece have a story, and they will stick to it. You’ve vanished into thin air. By the way, Kris, I’ve checked into your family history. Vanishing into thin air is something no damn Longknife has ever done before. Congratulations,” Nelly finished.