“A psychotropic drink? That’s all the Danzur trade with the Nyctus?” Damien asked.
Kira offered him a small shrug. “That’s what they say. This drink, krol, is—” She stopped and read the screen. “Eagerly sought for acquisition by the Nyctus, to use their words. They generally receive certain agricultural products and types of ore in exchange.” She looked back at Damien. “Again, that’s what they say.”
Damien shifted in his seat, trying to find a more comfortable position. They were aboard the Venture, the one place where they knew they could speak without worry of someone eavesdropping. “So do you have any reason to think they’re lying?”
Kira sniffed. “Of course they’re lying. Isn’t that all diplomacy is? Telling lies and hoping they’re better lies than your opposition’s?”
“Wow. You’ve been doing this for, what, a few weeks? It took me at least a year or two to become that cynical about it all,” Damien said, grinning.
Kira grinned back. She had to grudgingly admit that, for a civilian and a diplomat, Damien was affable—which was necessary for him to be a successful diplomat. She’d expected to be working with some hidebound bureaucrat—a human version of a Danzur, basically—but he was nothing like that.
He reminded her of Thorn in many ways—if Thorn was less mercurial and more tactful, that is.
“I’ve been in the ON long enough to recognize bullshit when I see it,” she said.
Damien laughed, but it trailed off and he turned serious again. “So, this belief they’re lying—is that based on your, uh, unique talents?”
“It’s okay, you can use the word Starcaster. Anyway, to answer your question—yes, or kind of, at least. When I was speaking to him, I could tell there were things there that I wasn’t seeing. It’s like”—Kira paused, thinking of analogy— “you see a hole. All you can tell is that it’s a hole. You aren’t close enough to see how deep it is, but somehow you know it’s deep, even without checking it out.”
Damien considered that for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, I get it. And of course, in negotiations like this, there are always wheels within wheels.”
“Wheels within wheels?”
“An old diplomatic corps saying. Plans within plans. Agendas hidden inside other agendas.”
Kira leaned back, stretching minor aches from too much sitting. “Okay, yeah. That’s another of those cynical things I’ve learned about all of this. Anyway, without probing more vigorously into Tadrup’s mind, I can’t really say much more. And he puts up such a rigid façade that it even closes around his thoughts. I can almost certainly penetrate it, but it takes some effort and might be evident if I do it to his face. Bottom line—I probably could dig into what’s going on, but the Danzur might detect it.”
“Yeah, we don’t want to show that card—your abilities. At least not yet. There might come a time when it will be advantageous, but right now it would just set us back,” Damien replied.
Kira stood and glanced around the compartment, with its surprisingly plush furnishings. The Venture was, by ON standards, almost luxurious. This compartment was actually a common room, a block of space given over to nothing but the leisure of the crew. Of course, she was a courier sloop, not a warship. She’d been built to be nimble and fast, while fulfilling a range of missions, including diplomatic envoys. That meant she was also barely armed, equipped with only a single missile tube and a pair of point-defense turrets.
She took a moment to collect her thoughts. Damien’s comment about showing her abilities had tweaked her. Why?
“Kira? Is something—?”
She held up a hand. “Just give me a second.”
Her hole analogy had been apt, but it also made her realize she’d been concentrating on the hole—and ignoring the area around it.
She made herself reconsider her brief encounter with Tadrup’s thoughts, but she ignored all the implied hidden motives and focused instead on the surrounding thoughts.
Tadrup had been annoyed about . . . something. Something specific—
“He lost something,” Kira said.
Damien gave her a puzzled look. “Who lost something?”
Kira turned back. “Tadrup. He lost . . . whatever the Danzur use for currency, he lost a bunch of it. A business deal gone bad.” She gave a slow nod. “It was right there in front of me, and I was too busy focusing on the hidden, scheming stuff.”
Damien’s look didn’t change. “Okay. That’s too bad, I guess, but what does that have to do with these negotiations?”
“Whatever that deal was, he blames us for it falling apart.”
3
Thorn found himself immersed in the dream again.
It started the same way it always did. He was sitting in the co-pilot’s slot aboard the Gyrfalcon. Trixie was there, thanking him for bringing her back from oblivion. The virus Brid and Dart had injected into her had effectively scrubbed her identity away, but she was restored—almost. He rolled his eyes at the effusive, bubbly praise which, with dream logic, now had Trixie’s voice coming out of Mol’s mouth.
Thorn shook his head. “It was nothing, really.”
Mol’s face immediately darkened, and Trixie’s tone changed to her new, melancholy dreariness. “You’re right. It was nothing. Prove yourself, Thorn. Prove how good you really are. Bring your daughter back. Do that and prove you really are as good as you think you are, Mister Hero.”
Thorn gaped at the abrupt change, adulation giving way to suspicious contempt. He started to think, isn’t this what I wanted? To not be a hero anymore?
He opened his mouth to agree, or to protest that he really was as good as people thought he was? He’d moved a whole fleet, after all. He’d saved Code Gauntlet from the enormous Nyctus impactor. Who else could have done that?
He just didn’t want to be lauded for it. It was enough for him to know—
Before he could say anything, Mol and the Gyrfalcon vanished. Thorn found himself drifting through space—hard vacuum and no-g. He felt no discomfort, though, aside from a mild, pervasive chill. It wasn’t too different from an open witchport. But this time, there was no witchport, because there was no ship. It was just him, Thorn Stellers, drifting between the stars.
For a while, he was content. But there was something important. Something he needed to do.
Thorn had his talisman in hand, the battered old storybook that gave him an anchor, a link back to a time when there’d been no war, no ships, no Starcasting. It gave him a baseline against which to measure everything else he did. And now he remembered what he needed to do. It was, measured against his talisman, something massive. It was the thing Trixie had coldly challenged him to do.
Thorn would bring his daughter back.
She’d died, of course, on Nebo, when the squids bombarded the planet with KEWs. Every Starcaster had experienced her death, and vividly, through a massed psychic event still referred to as the Vision. But Trixie had been dead, and he’d brought her back. He’d even told Kira that he could bring their daughter back to them.
Now here, among the stars, it was time.