The Dragon Never Sleeps

— 74 —

It was the first time the Barbican and House Horigawa had seen Guardship soldiers. Everyone dockside stopped to stare. One of the soldiers feigned a charge.

Jo snapped, "Hoke!"

"Aw, Lieutenant, I was just..."

"Working on getting the shit details. As usual." She spotted AnyKaat up the curve, with a small, brownish man who should be the purser of the chartered Horigawa Traveller. AnyKaat waved.

The purser spoke first. "Is this the lot, Lieutenant?"

Trying to be cool. Like having his Traveler rebuilt and taken over was nothing new. "All the personnel. There's still cargo in the system. Where are the others?"

"The two Colonels are on the bridge, putting in black boxes. The other one is snooping."

AnyKaat smiled. "Degas being Degas."

"Where is the alien?"

"In his quarters."

AnyKaat asked, "Want me to show your people where to go?"

"That's my job," the purser snapped. "Come along, you people."

Jo dismissed the soldiers, asked AnyKaat, "Are they all like that?"

"All of them. Working real hard to show us they aren't impressed. Wait till you meet the Chief. You'll wax nostalgic for Timmerbach. Though Colonel Haget has his number."

"That's TDA brevet-Colonel Haget." Jo grinned.

"Be like him to insist we use all that luggage, too. Wouldn't it?"

"What the hell. You can't have everything. He's good in bed."

"Wouldn't he love to hear you tell me that."

"He'd shrivel up and die. How's Seeker?"

"Settled in and eager to go. Except he don't know where. I gather his Lost Child has to have a seizure before he can sense her."

AnyKaat guided Jo to her cabin. This time there would be separate quarters for whoever wanted them.

"He's awfully evasive."

"Wouldn't you be?"

"Damned right. I don't say I don't understand, only that I don't like it." She began removing her combat suit. "I'll drag this back to the armory later. This cabin is huge."

"Want a ball of string?"

"Wise ass." She had room but the appointments were not plush. The Horigawas were a spartan crowd. "Guess I better report."

As they approached the bridge, Jo asked, "Why did you guys volunteer?"

AnyKaat grinned. "Great pay. Short hours. Nothing else to do but wait around till WarAvocat sent us home."

"Really?"

"No. We weren't ready to go home."

"Uhm?"

"We were all born on P. Jaksonica 3B. Era is the only one who's been off. A year for Staff College. My mother was STASIS, too, till she moved to Admin. She always wanted to travel. Fixing it so I could was the next best thing. Degas's mother is a dock worker. She'd throttle him if he didn't work this for all he could."

Jo stopped. This was all news. After months in AnyKaat's company. She'd never wondered about the woman's background. Soldiers did not think about anyone having antecedents.

"What's the matter?" AnyKaat asked.

"Just being awestruck. You probably see your mother sometimes."

"Every day. Another good reason for going away."

"Mine died while VII Gemina was being built. I was in storage." She resumed walking, shaken. "What about children?"

"We have a son. Tobias. Be turning four soon. He's staying with Degas's mother. I miss him." Just like that. And that was all. "What about you?"

Jo shivered. "We're all sterile." Without knowing why, she was sorry she had opened the subject. She increased her pace, arrived on the bridge briskly. "Combat team is aboard, Colonel."

"Ah. Lieutenant." Haget smiled. "I rehearsed. I'll probably call you Sergeant the next ten times. We're almost set. What about cargo?"

"Last of it shoud be loading now."

"Vadja's in Operations running test routines. When he's ready, tap station data and see if you can get a line on our aliens."

"You're pretty calm. Considering."

"Of course. The Deified will be along in an advisory capacity only."

"And if you don't follow his advice, there goes your career."

"Only if he's right and I'm not."

"Are they ever wrong?" Jo did not want the Deified along. There were a lot of angles to this mission she did not like.

"Your soldiers good for anything besides kicking ass?"

"Tell them what you need, they'll try to do it. I'll see what Vadja's got."

Haget pretended to notice AnyKaat for the first time. He beckoned her over and asked how he might best utilize her and Degas. Another angle Jo did not like. The thing was being thrown together, without formal manning for the systems being jammed into the Traveler. She left the bridge, stepping between stonefaced Horigawas pretending they did not mind having their ship rebuilt around them.

What had been crew's quarters and mess decks had had the partitions removed so the space could be made an operations center. The entrance lay only a few steps from the bridge hatch. Once the cargo bays were filled and passageways were cluttered with cables and everything was connected and integrated with the Traveler's systems, the ship would have many of the espionage and data-processing capabilities of a Guardship. There would be nothing like it on the Web.

"Can I get into the system yet, Era?"

"Jo. Hi. Sure. Funny. You don't look any different."

"What?"

"I thought you might have a mystic glow now that you're an officer."

"Shit. You're all going to get cute, aren't you?"

"Sure. Want to watch something you'll never see again?"

"What?"

"XXVIII Fretensis heading out."

She joined Vadja at a viewscreen. XXVIII Fretensis was just leaving the Barbican. It was impressive.

"Good hunting, guys," Vadja said. He had worked up a definite dislike for Messenger's species.

"There you are." Jo dropped a sheet of hard copy in front of Haget. "You said the ten most likely departures so I got you ten, but if they didn't go out on one of the first three you can have my comet."

"Why so sure?"

"All three were docked in the same section. The ship from Starbase docked in the next section. They all left within ten hours. And the Barbican had false alarms on its intruder watch there at the right time. STASIS decided there was a self-correcting glitch or a rodent off one of the Horigawas."

"All Haulers. What do you think, Smokey?" The Traveler's Chief's name was Hide Yoreyoshi but he insisted on Smokey.

"Ore carriers, Colonel. They bring in metal billets."

"Why the intermediate stops?"

"Picking up special order stuff."

"If you were the fugitives which Hauler would you have taken?"

"They were flying blind, Colonel. Probably whichever had the sloppiest dockside security."

Haget grunted, stared at the sheet. "Anybody think of a reason the Ku wouldn't get off the Hauler first chance he got?"

Nobody offered one.

Haget circled each of the first three stops. "There's our itinerary, Smokey. If we don't find anything, I'll spank the Lieutenant and we'll think of something else."

Jo snorted. She knew she had this step of the search in a lock.