“Dammit, Fiske, I told you we should have moved in on him earlier, right after that all-night binge the natives had.”
“But I thought that was too good a chance for my undercover operative to miss,” Torkel said, leaning against the wall. Just where Scan had leaned, Yana thought, the first day they had met. “Is that where everyone got their orders, Yana? Is that where you switched sides?”
“I haven’t switched sides, Captain Fiske. I’m still a company woman, trying to help the company all I can.”
Giancarlo raised both fists, and she stared back, daring him to carry through his threat.
“You both wanted me to see what I could find out. I did just that,” Yana went on. “Not my fault I can’t tell you what you want to hear. No one’s told me what that is.”
“Terce said you’d sold out,” Giancarlo shouted. “He saw you go with the others, to plot treason.”
“Where’d he see us go?” she asked, hoping her hunch was correct. “We were in the hall until daybreak and then most of ui went to the hot spring to clean up.”
“That fat woman, the one with all the cats, is the ringleader.”
“Clodagh?” Yana allowed her incredulity and astonishment full rein and laughed. “If that’s what Terce told you, Colonel, you must be the only one on Petaybee who doesn’t know that he isn’t playing with a full deck.”
Just then the comm unit bleeped, and Torkel toggled it on. He listened, and in the next moment, disbelief, consternation, and finally horror swept across his face.
“Back! Back to the copter!” His arm swept them before him with great urgency. “Shuttle’s crashed!”
Yana wondered from Torkel’s reaction if his father, old Whittaker Fiske, had been due to arrive in that particular shuttle. Briefly she considered departing in the confusion. Ornery was up ahead of her in the corridor: she could slip away very easily right now. But she was certain she had weakened Giancarlo’s accusation. She could do more if she hung about. Maybe, with a little luck, she might get Torkel to listen to what she was saying. And, if his father wasn’t dead, maybe she could beat some sense in that old man’s head. She would certainly prejudice the case she had been making by doing a flit right now. Petaybee ought to have one advocate in the company’s court. Sauntering, she caught up with Ornery just as he realized she wasn’t nearby.
“Miss me, big boy?” she asked, and walked past him, out to the waiting copter, where she slid in next to Giancarlo, leaving Ornery to compress his mass into the space between her and the copter’s bulkhead. Ignoring the commotion and Torkel’s demand for more information on the accident from the copter pilot, she was perhaps the only one looking out past Ornery toward the river, newly freed from ice thrall. She sat up straight, unable to believe her eyes, as a dark object that she first thought was a boulder turned into a seal and suddenly moved with astonishing speed and grace to slip into the water.
Now, how long had that been there? Had it actually been watching the house? Or was her imagination working overtime?
The regeneration is all the more remarkable as it’s so totally improbable,” the medic was saying to his companion as they preceded Diego down the hospital corridor. “Never saw anything like this. And in such a short time. Woman was hacking her lungs out and not likely to live the year out.”
The man beside him asked a question that Diego could not hear, but he figured they had to be talking about Yana.
“No, no, can’t be a transplant. I’d believe that more than a natural remission but there’re no scars: not even a ‘scope hole.”
They turned to the right at the next corridor and he went on, thinking hard. Bunny had mentioned that Yana’s health had improved since her arrival on Petaybee. He snorted. His father’s sure hadn’t. What if … And he halted in his tracks for a long moment. Then he was jolted out of his reverie by tremors underfoot-which reminded Diego of other half-understood remarks by Bunny. Why wasn’t she around when she was needed? Why had she skitted out of the base as if something was after her?