Empire's Legacy

Chapter 20: Welcome (Back) to Peleteth

Two men and a woman, looking uncomfortable in dress uniforms, stood waiting on the other side of the access port. The moment Amy appeared, all three came to attention. The older man and the woman hid their unease and uncertainty well; the younger man was blatantly nervous. Amy paused just inside the port and surveyed them silently.

"Captain Ellis?" said the older man, stepping forward. "Commander Kirkwood. Welcome to Peleteth."

She inclined her head a fraction, keeping her eyes on Kirkwood's face. Her continued silence clearly further unnerved him; eyes darting rapidly from Amy to his companions, he gestured to the woman at his side and said,

"This is Lieutenant—"

Cutting him off with a sharp motion, Amy said, "Your companions' names are not why I am here, Commander."

Kirkwood laughed nervously, his façade of composure rapidly dissolving. "No. No, of course not." He hesitated. "You will forgive me, Captain Ellis, but before your ship sent to form us of your arrival, we had not been apprised of your visit."

She lifted her eyebrows, fixing him with a condescending stare. "Are you always kept apprised of the movements of Unit 11, Commander?" she inquired, her voice cool.

"No, of course not—"

"I should imagine that pre-knowledge of an assessment would somewhat negate its value," she continued, clasping her hands behind her back. "Would you not agree?"

Kirkwood shook his head hurriedly. "No, of course, Captain. I certainly didn't mean to imply—" He stopped. Swallowed. "My apologies if it seemed as though I implied the Commission's—Unit 11's—method of conducting business was not well done."

"Indeed." She listed her gaze from his face to the promenade behind him. "You may dismiss your flunkies, and then we will walk."

He exchanged glances with his nameless subordinates. Inwardly, Amy felt sorry for him; clearly he hadn't expected to be run over quite so thoroughly at first encounter, and quite aside from the formalities of bringing along an escort to greet a Unit 11 agent, Kirkwood had obviously intended his lieutenants to act as a buffer—and most likely as extra eyes and ears—between himself and Captain Ellis. Amy, however, had no intention of dealing with more people at once than she needed to. While perfectly capable of stringing three people or more along at once, it would be far easier to manipulate Kirkwood on his own.

"Commander," she said, feeling it was taking too long for him to dismiss the others. She began to walk, forcing Kirkwood to either remain standing or move quickly to catch her up. Behind her, she heard him murmur something, and then rapid footsteps sounded. "Good," she said, not bothering to look around. "I assume you are familiar with the manner in which assessments are carried out."

"It's been years," he hedged. She glanced sideways at him, and he added, "That is—of course I'm familiar, but I haven't ever been present during one, ma'am." When she remained silent, he continued, "I've only been commander of the spaceport a year, and, well, you know, the commander before me had an agreement with the Unit 11 agent..."

Amy stopped walking and looked down at him. "Are you suggesting that I may be bribed, Commader?" she asked icily. "Allow me to dissuade you of that notion, whatever the...agreement—" the word dripped with distaste "—between your predecessor and mine may have been." She turned on her heel and began walking again.

Kirkwood nearly fell over himself and his words as he ran after her, protesting that this was not at all what he had meant, that he had simply been explaining his predecessor's method of doing things, that of course he could see that Captain Ellis was as honest and impossible to bribe as—

Amy stopped listening halfway through his long-winded protestations and instead focused on the spaceport. The Sophia had come in on Level Five this time, despite the fact she was a small ship; her status as a temporary government transport had given her clearance to dock on the largest ring. Unfortunately for Amy's departure purposes, Level Five wasn't going to do her any good. Annieka Brenner needed to steal a small ship, a high-powered pleasure cruiser. Something like an Obvera or a Sfera 21, neither of which she was going to find on Level Five.

Discovering that Kirkwood was still talking, she turned to him and cut him short, saying, "As you clearly will be of little use to me while I am here, perhaps it would be best if you give me full access to all facilities on Peleteth. Do you have any objections?"

It was a risky move. Technically, even Unit 11 was bound by certain restrictions, and while the anxiety generated by the appearance of a Unit 11 agent usually sufficed to achieve whatever that agent wanted, there were things that legally even Unit 11 wasn't allowed to do. It was Unit 8 that had the carte blanche to do anything and everything, but then again, no one ever asked if someone worked out of Unit 8, and it wasn't like Unit 8 operatives ever revealed that information.

As far as Unit 11 went... Legally, it was a little fuzzy to what point Unit 11's authority extended, so most people tended to acquiesce with no questions asked. Commanders of spaceports, however, presumably had a better idea of where those boundaries lay, and Amy knew she was probably pushing her luck asking for full access. But Kirkwood was so rabbitty that it seemed worth the risk.

Sure enough...

"It shouldn't be a problem," he said, anxiously rubbing his hands together. "But please, let me know at once if you have any questions—"

"I sincerely doubt that will be the case," she said, turning away and gazing up the center of the station. "Should the occasion arise, however, I will be certain to let you know."

With that, she nodded curtly to him and strode off across the promenade. 

Three days on Peleteth and Amy was ready to hijack the next ship she saw, whether she heard from Grey or not. Playing the role of Captain Ellis was easy enough, but she rather felt that the three months she'd spent pretending to be a member of an obscure religious sect and slogging through endless eel marshes, often with a high fever, in order to track down the remains of what might have been an Empire crash site, was preferable to dealing with Kirkwood and his obsequiousness. She was more than ready to get off the damn spaceport.

Grey's call came through in the middle of the night. The channel was unsecure, though Taz had rerouted it to disguise its point of origin, and so the message read like an update from home, delivered in Kate's most upbeat and chipper voice: "Darling! Reeny, when are you coming home? You know we all miss you when you're way out there! Your baby sister's just dying to see you! Give us a buzz whenever you're next in the area and we'll all come for you! Loves!"

The message confirmed that the Sophia was in position, waiting for Amy's distraction to activate the signal deflector and move past the quarantine line. Piggy-backed onto the message was a set of coordinates, cleverly hidden amidst masses of junk data where no one would notice it unless they were specifically looking.

That was half of the plan sorted, then.

Checking that the internal sensors were still disabled—she'd deactivated them as soon as she'd moved into her room—Amy pulled off her right boot and popped the heel free. Cam's signal box tumbled into her hand, the metal cool against her skin. Unlike Grey's call, anything she sent from the signal box to Cam's matching one was virtually undetectable and untraceable—and illegal—and thus little caution was needed aside from ensuring the box remained hidden at all times.

The box twitched in her hands, alerting her to a return message. She read it and nodded before returning it to her heel and pulling her boot back on. Cam's ship would arrive in dock on Level Five in the next hour. She had until then to put the last details into effect for the next stage of her plan.