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"You don't need to ask him," Kulasawa said. "You're the one who holds the key
to these people's freedom, not him."
"It's not our decision to make, Jimmy," I said quietly, knowing even as I
said it how futile my words were. If there was one button guaranteed to start
Jimmy's juices running it was the whole question of personal freedom versus
authority.
Stupid rules, restrictive rules, unnecessary impositions of power I seemed to
go around that track with him at least once per trip. Kulasawa couldn't have
come up with a better way to trip him to her side if she'd tried.
And then, to my eternal amazement, Jimmy squared his shoulders, turned to face
her, and shook his head. "No," he said. "I can't do it."
From the look on her face, Kulasawa was as stunned by his answer as I was.
"What did you say?" she demanded.
"I said no," Jimmy said. His voice quavered slightly under the blazing heat of
her glare, but his words were as solid as a sealant weld. "Captain Smith says
it's wrong."
"And I say it's right," Kulasawa snapped. "Why listen to him instead of me?"
"Because he's my boss." Jimmy looked at me. "And because I trust him."
He turned back to Kulasawa. "And because he's never needed a gun to tell me
what to do."
Kulasawa's face darkened like an approaching storm. "Why, you stupid little "
"Leave him alone," Rhonda cut her off. "Face it: you've lost."
"Sit down, Chamala," Kulasawa growled, gesturing Jimmy toward the couch. "And
if
I were you, Blankenship, I'd keep my mouth shut," she added to Rhonda, all her
heat turned to crushed ice now. "Of all the people in this room, you're the
one
I need the least."
She looked back at Peter, her face under control again. "Fine; so our lapdog
of a musicmaster is afraid to make decisions like a man. I'm sure one of your
musicians out there will see things differently. Where's the room's
public-address system?"
Peter shook his head. "No," he said.
Kulasawa shifted her gun slightly to point at Suzenne. "I don't need her,
either," she said.
Peter's lips compressed briefly. "In the throne. Controls are along the side
of the left armrest."
"Thank you." Standing up, Kulasawa started to circle around the table.
I cleared my throat. "Excuse me, but there's just one little thing you seem to
have forgotten."
Kulasawa stopped, her gun settling in to point at my chest. "And that is?"
"One of their musicians might be able to whistle up some flapblacks for you,"
I
said. "But none of them can tell you how to get back to the Expansion."
The gun lifted a little. "I'm disappointed, Smith I would have thought you
could come up with something better. I've got the Freedom's Peace's
coordinates, remember? All I have to do is work backward from those and we'll
wind up back at
Angorki."
"We would," I agreed, "if we were anywhere near your coordinates. But we're
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not."
Her eyes narrowed. "Explain."
"Your coordinates didn't take into account the time-delay for the light," I
explained. "Or the fact that the Freedom's Peace is no longer on a Sol-direct
vector. You try a straight backtrack and you'll miss Angorki by about sixty
A.U.
That's about twice the distance from Earth to Neptune, in case you need help
with the numbers."
For a long moment she studied my face. Then, her lips tilted in a slight
smile.
"And of course you're the only one who knows how to plot a course back,
right?"
"Right," I said, folding my arms across my chest. "And I'm not going to."
"I suggest you reconsider," she said. "There's a little matter of two hundred
thousand neumarks you owe the TransShipMint corporation."
The bottom seemed to fall out of my stomach. "How do you know about that?"
She snorted. "Oh, come now you didn't really think I pulled your name out of a
lotto ball, did you? You were one of a dozen transports I knew I could bring
enough pressure on to get what I wanted. You just happened to be in the right
place and the right time when the data finally came through."
I shrugged as casually as I could. "So fine. Renege on the seventy thousand if
you want. What do I care Peter says we're staying here anyway."
"Wrong," Kulasawa bit out. "One way or another, we're getting back." She
arched her eyebrows. "And when we do, you're going to prison... because you
don't owe just seventy thousand any more. You owe the full two hundred."
I stared at her. "What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about the hundred thirty thousand you thought you had stashed
away in the Star Meridian Bank," she said, openly gloating now. "The hundred
thirty thousand that isn't there any more."
"You're bluffing," Rhonda said sharply. "How could you possibly get that kind
of access to Jake's account?"
"For the same reason these people can't keep me here for long." Kulasawa
straightened up slightly and looked around
And as she did so, her face and posture and entire demeanor abruptly changed.
Suddenly the upper-class scholar was gone; and in its place was someone or
something that seemed far more regal even than the king seated at the end of
the couch. "My name isn't Andrula Kulasawa," she said her voice rich and
commanding.
"It's Andrula Chen."
She turned hard, arrogant eyes on me. "Second cousin of the Chen-Mellis
family."
I stared at her, my blood seeming to freeze in my heart. "Oh, my God," I
whispered.
"Captain Smith?" Peter asked, his voice low. "What does she mean?"
With an effort, I turned away from her gaze. "Chen-Mellis is one of the Ten
Families," I said, the words coming out with difficulty. "The people who
effectively rule Earth and most of the Expansion."
"I prefer to think of it as one of the Six Families, actually,"
Kulasawa Chen, rather put in. "The other four survive solely at our pleasure."
"You told us there were other groups looking for the Freedom's Peace," Rhonda
said, her voice low. "The other families?"
"You don't think I would have picked the Sergei Rock to hide from some
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