“Obviously, this would normally be a minor annoyance and profit loss,” she continued. “The Epetar ship would simply skip its next stop and jump directly to its third scheduled port of call. This is where the human plan against Epetar would ordinarily fail. Because of Epetar’s gross lack of wisdom, we will help the plan to succeed. The Epetar ship will also be late for its third port of call. This is the reason for your assignment.
“Remember, for purposes of the station’s employment log, you have just debarked from the ship High Margins. With your orders from me, neither the ship’s real crew nor the station’s crew will gossip or pry. The station master is Aem Beilil. You will convey my message to him to expedite the loading of Gistar shipping and delay the loading of Epetar shipping, and to do so unobtrusively. He is to discreetly facilitate the operations of humans with the replacement cargo, who will stall the loading of the Epetar ship after it is irrevocably committed. The humans will most likely seem sincere but incompetent. This is not to put him off dealing with them. They are neither. Do you have any questions about your assignment?” The question was rhetorical. The instructions were clear.
“Mentat O’Neal,” the young Indowy asked tentatively, “isn’t the Epetar Group the one that holds your contract for—”
“This decision comes from those far wiser than myself,” she said, holding the little green Galactic’s eyes until his ears narrowed in embarrassment at his own presumption. The only people who would ordinarily be considered wiser than a mentat — any mentat — would be major clan heads or Tchpth policy planners. Michelle would never have involved herself in large-scale Galactic politics without the sanction of higher authority. Wxlcht’s seemingly casual comments over a game of aethal would, in the military, have amounted to a direct order. In the hierarchy of established Galactic wisdom, almost everyone took the “suggestions” of Tchpth planners of any rank very seriously indeed. She did not like to think that personal friendship might have colored such a major decision, but was not about to let minor misgivings divert her from following the considered advice of someone whose wisdom was as far above her own as hers was above — well, above her sister’s, for example.
“We will be going now.” She took his hand, then released it as they appeared in a purplish-brown maintenance closet. The intense crowding in the destination space was unremarkable to him, but he did startle slightly at the abruptness of the transition. He only had an instant to blink before she was gone, leaving him alone with his new job.
Cally was on the last leg of her morning five-mile run. With the buckley clipped to one hip and a supplemental speaker clipped to the other side, she had music that projected to her own ears in stereo with little leakage. The sound was a bit scratchy. The speaker was older than the girls, having been part of her shopping splurge on the moon after the escape from Titan Base. That is, before she found out Stewart was alive. After he’d tracked her down in a bar, valiantly trying to drown her sorrows, her stay had been a frenzy of activity as they found a priest, put him under seal of the confessional before enlisting his cooperation, got married secretly, and stole precious private moments. All of this had had to be managed as she gave the performance of her life for Granpa and Tommy, moping around and pretending to be heartbroken and bereaved, slipping away here and there for a few hours on the pretext of shopping and long walks alone through the endless, anonymous corridors of Heinlein Base. The corridor she’d seen the most was a rent by the hour strip in the red light district where she and Stewart had snatched a furtive, rushed, passionate, and pitifully brief honeymoon.
On returning to Earth, she had found through experimentation that a heavy-duty workout schedule would keep about twenty pounds of Sinda fat off without her having to constantly starve herself. Twenty pounds less helped. A lot. So she ran, she lifted weights, she swam, and she danced. While the girls were at school, she fit as much general training in as she could around the normal martial drills — unarmed combat, shooting, climbing. She hated the climbing. Her morning run was the workout she enjoyed most, next to her dancing.
The morning was cold, doubly so with the wind blowing off the ocean. She wore longjohns under her jeans. Without them, she would have frozen in just the worn denim, the wind biting right through the holes in one knee and around her back pockets and belt loops. Her breath frosted in a small puff that trailed away as she ran through it.
The next moment she was on her ass on the ground, having crashed into her sister.
“Ouch.” Michelle said, rubbing the back of her neck. “Are you usually unaware of your surroundings?”
“Unaware? You weren’t there, and then you were. I was watching the dunes and the shoreline, okay?” The blonde grimaced, brushing sand off her jeans. “What do you need?”
“That is the right question. I will use the vernacular to make sure you understand me the first time. I need to know about your husband. Spill it.”
“What husband?” Cally asked, too quickly.
“I do not have time for this. I have more than enough to do on my end. Your former lover, now husband, James Stewart, is alive and getting himself involved in high level Galactic politics. You know it, and I need the details. Tell them to me,” she said.
“I’d love to know how you found that out. Not that it’s any of your business. And I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about with the Galactic politics line. You know talking about this could get us both killed, right?”
“No, it is failing to talk about it that could get us killed,” the mentat said solemnly.
“I meant him and me ‘us,’ ” Cally grumbled.
“Oh. Why would you tolerate association with humans that would — nevermind. I need you to tell me the details of his plotting.”
“Not that I’m not doing everything I can to keep you alive, but to help you I need more information about what you want to know and why,” the assassin said, breath frosting the air as she panted.
“Keeping secrets is more difficult than you imagine. Are you telling me that you do not know about his economic plots against the Epetar Group? Plots that coincide with your theft of a large amount of value from them,” Michelle accused.
“What?” Cally was beginning to feel like a broken record. “He wouldn’t. He couldn’t have. I didn’t tell him…” She thought for a moment. “If he knew how big my commission was for selling the code keys to you, you don’t think he could have figured out where it came from? How?”
“You have almost no experience of business, do you?” Her sister sighed. “It does not matter if you knew about this or not. I need you to find out exactly what he is doing and his timetable.”
“I’m not going to do anything that might get him killed,” his wife said.
“That is an ironic statement. I know you can keep a secret — usually. You can tell Grandfather not to worry. I do not intend to hurt your husband’s plans. Presently, they are likely to fail. I find myself in the unenviable position of having to ensure their success.”