"K'kadi, how long can you keep us disappeared?"
Anxious blue-green eyes stared back at him from a face framed in long white-blond hair. K'kadi shrugged.
"Helmsman, continue sixty degrees down, commence evasive maneuvers." Tal turned to Kass's sorcerer. "Anything you can do for us, Mondragon, would be greatly appreciated."
"Captain," Dorn Jorkan interjected, "they're not following. Just sitting there trying to figure it out. Love to hear their comms about now. Fyd! There's another one. Where did that come from? A huntership, Captain, eight marks out from the wormhole-ID . . . Astarte! Moving away fast . . . in the opposite direction from ours . . ." Dorn's voice faded away. He turned to stare at Jagan Mondragon.
"I must confess," the sorcerer drawled, bracing his feet against the ship's steep down angle, "that, like K'kadi, I am unsure how long I can draw them off. This is my first experience as a warrior, so I suggest best possible speed to wherever it is you wish to go. And if I may add a note of caution, I doubt that's the last we've seen of them. That wasn't exactly a chance encounter, now was it?"
"Find the man a seat," Tal snapped. A junior engineering officer swiftly gave up his place.
So Kass was right, Tal thought. Mondragon was an asset beyond price. The Fleet ships were turning to pursue the supposedly escaping Astarte, in reality an illusion created by the Sorcerer Prime. An illusion so realistic its icon swam through the hologlobe as brilliantly clear as the three Fleet ships in hot pursuit.
Omni be praised!
"That," Tal agreed when Jagan was settled, "was a well-laid trap. And it's likely you were the bait. But our long side-trip to Bender's Folly wasn't exactly a secret. Anyone who overheard the Pybbite's conversation with Kass, Captain Tegge and her officers-probably her whole batani crew-knew. Plus anyone outbound from 33 while we were there. The list of people who might have succumbed to the Empire's bounty on rebel ships is as long as our last wormhole."
Captain Tegge. I told you so!
Blast his link with Kiolani. At the moment he didn't need the little Psyclid in his head. Tal turned toward Tac, directing his words to his First Officer, not to Kass who was sitting next to him. "If they know we're headed for Tat," Tal said, "they'll be waiting for us. If not at the next jumpgate, then just shy of Tat's neutral zone."
And just how would they know we're going back to Tat?
Shut up, Kiolani, I need to think! Pok! It wouldn't be so bad having her in his head if he also had her in his bed.
Fyd, but Mondragon was smiling. He'd caught every word of that. Tal turned back to studying his personal hologlobe, now expanded to a range of fifty marks. The faux Astarte was still clearly visible, with the Fleet ships seemingly unable to close the gap. "Impressive, Mondragon. A perfect false trail. I wouldn't have believed it possible."
The sorcerer offered a wry smile. "I suggest you get this plasticrate up to light speed as fast as possible. For all my ego, I have to admit I've surprised myself, but I fear we may be closing in on my outer limits."
"Adjust down angle to thirty degrees." Gradually, Astarte pulled out of its steep dive. "Damage report," Tal snapped. "Engineering, let me know when we're safe for light speed. Kiolani, do you need to be replaced?"
"No, sir."
"K'kadi, you all right?"
The boy nodded, but he was sweating. If the Sorcerer Prime admitted to feeling the strain, what was keeping Astarte cloaked doing to K'kadi? How long could his Psyclids hold out?
Ten minutes, twenty . . . . Sweat poured off Mondragon's aquiline features, his normally pale face gone white. "Losing illusion," he intoned. His head snapped forward, dropping into his hands.
"We're good for lightspeed, Captain," the engineering officer announced.
"Helm, level off. Abort evasive. K'kadi, Mondragon, you've gone above and beyond. I thank you, the entire crew thanks you."
"Not over," Jagan ground out as the faux Astarte-which had led the three Fleet ships far astray while staying out of range of lasers, cannons, and missiles-winked off the hologlobe just past the hundred-mark range.
"I know," Tal said, "but you've granted us a second chance. Mr. Jorkan, get crew up here to help these men to their quarters. Helmsman, take us out of here."
Chapter 24
"Sleeping like a baby," Zee-Zee whispered in Kass's ear as they peeked in on K'kadi. "Love to know how you do that lock thing," she added as the two roommates entered their own room next door. "More Psyclid magic, huh?"
"Simple telekinesis," Kass mumbled as she dropped like a stone onto her bed. Dear goddess, may she never see another bridge shift like that as long as she lived! In the end, at Tal's orders med techs had carried Jagan off the bridge on a pallet. But he hadn't been too weak to quip as he passed her station, You didn't tell me joining the rebellion was a suicide mission.
Well aware of the debilitating but not lethal effects of using Psyclid talent to the max, Kass stopped worrying about Jagan. But K'kadi . . . what did he know of life and death situations? And she'd gotten him into this. It was all her fault.
Yet without the two of them, they'd all be dead. Obviously, the goddess had plans she didn't share with mere mortals.
"Whew!" Zee-Zee breathed as she too flopped onto her bed after a quick trip to their minuscule bathing room. "Not that I've never been in a firefight before," she qualified, "but never as a bull's-eye for three Fleet warships. If I failed to say thank you to you and your Psyclid wizards, believe me it's only because I swallowed my tongue when I saw that first salvo coming straight at us."
"I've only been in one firefight before," Kass admitted. One real one, that is, and that was just two Tau-15s. But, believe me, I understand. I've never been so scared in my life."
"But you held together, got K'kadi to disappear us. Mallick, but that was amazing. Who'd have thought that strange little kid had it in him? I mean, demos are one thing, but to do it under fire? Now your sorcerer guy, he wasn't such a surprise. Just one look at him, and you know he's got tricks nobody ever even heard of. But sending Fleet chasing off in the opposite direction? Wow, girl, that was hot!"
"It's not that I'm not glad to be alive," Kass returned slowly, "but I suspect this is only the first skirmish. By now they've figured out they were conned, and they'll hound us all the way home-no, that's wrong," Kass corrected. "They'll go around us and be waiting at the next jumpgate . . . or the one after that."
"How will they know our route?"
"If Tegge betrayed us, they'll know we're headed back to Tat, and it's not like we have a wide choice of wormholes to take us there. And even if it isn't Tegge, how many people on X-33 might have guessed we plan to rendezvous with Scorpio on Tat? We know we were watched. Those weren't street thugs who shot at us on X-33. That was an assassination attempt, pure and simple. Neutral territory or not, it's not difficult to guess a captain commanding the firepower of Astarte might be S'sorrokan. So somewhere along our route they'll be waiting. Not just three ships, but a whole armada."
"Fyd, Kass. You never said you were that kind of psychic."
"Not psychic. Just logical."
Zee-Zee snorted her disgust. "Well, that's a relief," she pronounced. "How cheering to know Fate hasn't guaranteed an armada looking down our throat. You know," she added on a less sarcastic note, "what we need is a back door."
Back door, back door. "Ss-sh." Kass flicked an imperative palm in Zee-Zee's direction. No more talk. She needed to think. So much had happened since the Archives, but . . . Kass squeezed her eyes shut, picturing the old trader routes she had memorized from some of the Archive's extensive quadrant maps. Maybe, just maybe . . .
Re-energized, Kass scrambled off the bed. "I have to see the captain." She straightened her clothes, made a quick detour into their closet-size bathing room, where she removed the combs and ties from her hair, allowing it to tumble free over her shoulders. Swiftly, she added eye enhancements, brushed her cheeks with a dash of color, and refurbished her lip gloss.
"You talking escape plans with the captain," Zee-Zee drawled as Kass reentered the bedroom, "or planning a seduction?"
"Maybe both," Kass tossed over her shoulder as she waved her fingers at the autosensor. The door to her quarters slid open.
Tal Rigel, here I come.
"If we can sustain this speed," Dorn Jorkan said, "we can make Gate 828 in three days. Impossible for them to catch up in time." Astarte's three top officers were seated in Tal's quarters, bottles of ripka scattered across the small table between them.