Balance of Terror (24 page)

Moon and Srin looked at each other.

“What did Gauder say?” Moon finally asked, a frown pleating her brow.

Kad shook his head. “That’s the thing. It made so little sense. He wanted to thank you both for the adventure and the ‘bonus’ – that was how he put it – and said that, assuming he was sufficiently armed, he looked forward to meeting both of you again.” Kad shifted position. “Now, what the hell did that mean, Moon?”

For now, she deflected the question. “Have you used him for any other journeys across Marentim?”

“Gauder? Yes. I’ve used his services off and on for the past six years. He
usually
makes sense.”

Six years? That meant that Kad already knew the trader when he was still working by her side at the Phyllis Science Centre. With that one casual comment, Moon was starting to realise the enormity of the secret her partner had kept from her.

“We found him a very interesting person,” Moon remarked, “and I think we’d both enjoy the opportunity to see him again.”

She looked enquiringly at Srin who, after a moment’s consideration, also appeared to concede the point. “He was certainly an interesting character,” he added.

“As are you, Mr. Flerovs,” Kad commented, settling back in his chair. “I had some of my specialists see what they could find on you, and what they told me was very interesting. You began your career as a physicist – so please consider yourself among friends here – but got waylaid by the Republic while you were presenting a proposal on behalf of one of your planet’s scientific establishments. The official story is that the transport you were on, heading back to Tonia III, was jacked by a band of pirates, and that all the passengers were killed.”

Moon took in a sharp breath. She hadn’t been aware of the specifics of whatever excuse the Republic had concocted. In fact, the fate of Srin’s bonded partner, Yalona, kept surfacing in her mind from time to time, as she wondered what the woman had done with her life. Now she knew. She had been told that Srin had been murdered.

A quick glance in Srin’s direction showed him to be his usual serene self.

“Unofficially, of course,” Kad continued, “they kept you confined and drugged, and hired out to promising research projects throughout Republic space as the ultimate in computing power. And everything seemed to go according to plan…until you ran into Moon here.”

Srin didn’t change his position or the angle of his gaze, but Moon felt a nudge as his fingers enfolded hers. Silently, she squeezed his hand.

“And what about you, Kad?” she asked, deflecting the line of conversation. “At least you were able to dig up some information on Srin, but I have almost no information on you. How long were you an anti-Republic sympathiser? What made you start? And the most burning question of all – why didn’t you tell me?”

Kad laughed. “Tell you? My dear Moon, if you can ask me that, it means you never saw yourself as you truly were.” His gaze softened. “You’re a smart woman, Moon Thadin, but if that intelligence is matched by anything, it’s your ambition. You were so determined to make your stellar re-ignition project a success that I feared you would jettison me in a heartbeat if you thought it would bring you closer to your objective.”

Moon glared at him in indignation. “I did not,” she began, then paused. She remembered her time at the lab. How she willingly sacrificed teaching assignments to concentrate on her work. The impatience with which she’d treated every research partner until Kad had come along. Her burning envy when she thought someone at a rival institute had made a breakthrough that should have rightfully been hers.

“Maybe I did,” she finally conceded.

Kad lifted an eyebrow at the conciliatory tone in her voice. “Then you can understand my reluctance to share anything of my personal life, much less my anti-Republic sentiments.”

“How
did
you get away from the Phyllis Centre?” Moon asked. “They had the entire place locked down before they even barged into the lab. I thought you’d be detained within minutes.”

“Just as you thought that I was the only ‘terrorist’ working at the Centre, no doubt.” At her nod, he continued. “There were other sympathisers who helped me, black spots in the surveillance net that you can slip through, if you know what you’re doing.”

“You could have told me about them,” Moon muttered.

“No, I couldn’t have, Moon.” For a moment, Kad looked at her in sorrow. “That would have been forcing you to make a choice you weren’t prepared for. And yet, you appear to be prepared to make it now. Thanks to Mr. Flerovs.”

“When I saw what they were doing to him….”

“Moon was the first person who ever offered to help me,” Srin added. His hand still enfolded hers. “In two decades, she was the first human being who showed compassion, instead of treating me like a machine.”

“So you worked on her research together. Tell me, how far did you get?”

“It didn’t work, Kad,” Moon answered. “I’m sure you must have broken and read the classified reports in depth by now.”

Kad looked at her evenly. “They can’t say much when the research they were based on got scramble-bombed.”

The atmosphere in the room suddenly became more tense. Even though they all looked relaxed, Moon knew that Srin and Kad were each as keyed up as she was. This was the moment of truth…the moment she’d been dreading.

“I thought I had calculated everything correctly,” Moon said carefully. “Primed the missile. Sent it on its way. I even used the entry protocols you and I had set up together, Kad. Sensors picked up the start of a fusion reaction within the stellar core, but it never reached critical mass. Cascade threshold was never reached.”

Kad crossed his legs. His expression was reflective. “If you’d told me this a few years ago, Moon, I would have believed you. Something wrong with the transfer technology, insufficient accommodation for gravity fluctuations, too small a seed mass…all of those were problems we grappled with.”

She felt shivers brush against her cheeks, tightening them, and had to restrain the urge to scratch her skin, to loosen the tension in her facial muscles.

Kad’s voice was as inexorable as an advancing glacier. “But you forget that I know you, and at what stage I left the research. The Republic would never have put a battleship – even a small one – at your disposal if you hadn’t progressed far beyond what you did at the Centre. Knowing how you operate, and how the Republic operates, triangulates the problem for me. It tells me more than you think it does.”

“And that is?” Moon tried to sound blandly curious, prompting a smile from the man sitting opposite her.

“If the missile failed, it failed by only a breath. A failure that can easily be rectified, in my opinion.”

“To what purpose, Kad? The Republic wanted to use my research to destroy living solar systems. What do you and your bunch of freedom-fighters want to do with it?”

“A conscience, Moon, this late in the game?”

The comment should have stung, but it didn’t. With a jerk, Moon lifted her head higher. “Maybe I’m a late developer,” she ground out. “But regardless of when I grew an ethical brain stem, my question – as the creator of the technology you wish to exploit – still stands. What do you want to do with it?”

Kad lifted a hand and let it drop back to his knee. “That, I can’t tell you. Not exactly. I’m not the mastermind behind this operation, you know, merely one of the senior lackeys.”

She frowned. “Senior lackeys? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I’m not the boss of my net of contacts. I am merely her second-in-command.”

“And who is she, this leader of your group?”

“Well, for a start, she’s not a human. She’s an alien, and a very determined one at that.”

“Well you can tell this alien leader of yours that my research is not for sale.”

“Isn’t it?”

The two words hung between them, thrown into prominence by the significant glance Kad shot in Srin’s direction.

Moon’s eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t….”

“I told you on Slater’s End that the deal was a trade – your information for your safety. Or don’t you remember?”

“What happened to you, Kad? What happened to the ethical researcher I worked next to? Did your alien leader succeed in spinning you a line of propaganda?”

“Propaganda?” He frowned. “How can you talk to me about propaganda? You were imprisoned by the Republic, monitored by them, yet you still went straight back to your research like a loyal servant the moment they opened the cage door.”

“That wasn’t propaganda,” Moon answered. The conversation was becoming too heated and she needed a way to ease the room’s tension. She swallowed. “That was arrogance.”

She could see how her admission stopped Kad in his tracks. He hadn’t expected her to admit to her failings.

He took a deep breath and quirked an eyebrow. “And now?” he asked. The bite had left his voice.

“Now, you’ll find me a lot more sceptical…regardless of who is spinning the news.”

Kad grinned. “All right, you win this round. Let’s wait until we get to our destination, then you can discuss it face to face with Needann. In the meantime, why don’t we catch up on old stories? Maybe amuse Srin with some of our anecdotes.”

Moon watched his face for a long moment. “All right,” she conceded, but her voice was still cautious. “Happy times, till we see Needann.”

Chapter Nineteen

“So tell me about Kad Minslok.”

Srin opened his arms and let Moon snuggle closer to him. Their bunk aboard the
Unfinished Tale
was wider than the one they sometimes shared on the
Perdition
– almost wide enough for two – but somehow it didn’t feel so comfortable. Maybe it was a question of psychological ease as much as physical.

“Mmmm,” Moon turned sideways, resting a hand on his chest and flinging a leg over his groin. “We met at the Phyllis Centre. He’d been transferred from another institute in one of the outer sectors – as you know, the closer you are to the Tor system, the more prestige you have – and I got the impression he was working his way up the research ladder.”

Srin felt the heat of her body against him and his libido began stirring. Damn, but that wasn’t what he wanted to concentrate on at the moment. “Why pick him as your partner?”

Her fingers idly circled the hair on his chest, an insistent tickle that relaxed and excited him at the same time. “He was…different. He didn’t strike me as a political player, and the fact that he’d come from the outer reaches of the Republic showed me that he had done some solid work. After all, who was he going to impress all the way out there?”

“How about the person who approved his transfer?”

Moon chuckled and Srin felt it as a series of light tremors against his ribs. His grip tightened.

“If Kad had wanted to impress someone, then he went about it the wrong way. Instead of pursuing research avenues that were popular, he went for areas that were more esoteric.”

“Stellar re-ignition?”

“Not at that time, but he had experience in nano-electronics, gravimetric dynamics, stellar calculus. Basically, all the fields that turned off a serious political player but got a physicist like me very interested.”

“How interested?”

Srin tried to phrase the question as blandly as he could, but there must have been something in his voice because Moon used her tickling hand to press against his chest, levering her torso up.

“Are you jealous, Mr. Flerovs?” she teased, watching him with a wicked glint in her eye.

“Who wouldn’t be?” he countered. “I hear about our saviour, Kad Minslok, and how both of you worked side by side for years on your research. All alone. In your lab. Then, when I finally meet the man, he’s not old and decrepit but young – certainly younger than me – and way too good-looking for my peace of mind.”

She reached up and kissed the side of his mouth. “Would it be,” kiss, “any consolation if I told you,” kiss kiss, “that I only ever saw him as a brain on legs?”

“But that’s the thing, Dr. Thadin,” he remarked, holding her away from him with both arms, “you’re the type of woman who thinks a brain on legs is
sexy
.”

She wriggled free of his grasp. “Only
your
brain.”

She moved so that her toes could stroke the inside of his thighs. “Only
your
legs.”

As her foot reached further up, Srin felt himself get hard. In his more reflective moments, he still couldn’t believe the effect Moon had on him. He hadn’t felt this much lust since his teenage years and, instead of going away, all he wanted to do when he spotted Moon was grab her, hold her and screw the living daylights out of her.

He looked down at the rich chocolate of her skin and groaned. “We’re safe here, aren’t we?” he asked. “We don’t have to get our clothes on and rush to some escape pod, or steal goods from a market to disguise ourselves, or outrun a squad of goons intent on our personal destruction?”

She grinned. “I don’t think so. For the moment, this is as safe as it gets.”

“Good. Then I can do this to you….”

He grabbed her around the waist and flipped himself up. With a squeal, Moon landed on the mattress.

“What are you—”

He captured her lips before she had time to complete her sentence. She tasted of tenderness, of glowing warmth…of home. Srin drugged himself on Moon, on the silky globes of her breasts, the soft vigour of her exhalations, and the siren call of her sex. She moved against him hungrily and he met her, thrust for thrust, sigh for sigh. The universe opened up to him, hot and wondrous, and he fell into its grasp, spinning through nebulae and exhausting himself within the rays of glowing suns.