Dragon and Judge

The stateroom they took her to was an easy match for the rest of the ship. It had a raised platform for the surprisingly large bed, with matching nightstands and a complete wraparound music system. To one side of the sleeping area was a fair-sized conversation/ entertainment area with two couches, several small tables, three soft-looking armchairs, and a complete entertainment center. The whole thing was separated from the sleeping area by a waist-high wall with a built-in soothe-scent and the glossy raised edge of a holographic light show system.

In one corner of the conversation area was an ornate wooden computer desk, facing outward into the room, with polished brass trim and a high-backed wooden chair. The part of the chair she could see over the desktop looked at first glance to be something stiff and old-fashioned, but beneath the desk's shin-high modesty panel she could see the chair's modern rollers and the control bars of a fully adjustable pneuma system. The front of the desk included another light show system setup.

Off the conversation area, convenient to both it and the sleeping section, was a bathroom with separate shower and swirl tub enclosures.

Alison spent the first half hour wandering around the suite, the bug detector from her lip liner pencil humming in one hand, the other hand resting casually on her shoulder in silent warning for Taneem to stay put. The Advocatus Diaboli's original builders would hardly have included surveillance equipment, but she thought Frost might have tried to throw something together in the four hours he'd had to play with.

He had. He'd installed two microphones, though so amateurishly that she hardly even needed her detector to find them. One was behind the desk's privacy panel, the other by the bed behind the intercom speaker. She got rid of both, then swept the suite again just to make sure.

And when she was finished, she kicked off her shoes and socks and climbed into the squishy-soft bed. Pulling the comforter all the way up to her chin, she settled down for a quiet conversation. "Taneem?" she murmured. "How you doing, girl?"

"I'm frightened," Taneem murmured back. Her voice was shaking, her two-dimensional body sliding restlessly along Alison's skin. "I'm sorry."

"That's okay," Alison said, trying to hide her own growing fears about this whole thing. "You've been very brave."

"This is the same human who tried to kill us on Rho Scorvi, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is," Alison confirmed. "But that's all right, because he doesn't know who we are. Or rather, who I am. We absolutely have to make sure that he never finds out about you at all."

"Because he wants to kill Draycos and all others of our kind?"

"Wants is the key word," Alison agreed. "But he's not going to, because you and I and Jack and Draycos aren't going to let him. That's why we're here."

"Is it?" Taneem asked. "Or is it the money he promised you?"

"No reason I can't have both, is there?" Alison asked, keeping her voice light.

For a moment Taneem didn't answer, but there was a definite sense of discomfort to her silence. Alison waited her out, wondering if all K'da were like this or whether Draycos had been pounding his warriors' ethic into her during their language lessons. "Perhaps we should have run," Taneem said at last.

"Unfortunately, there was never any safe time when we could have done that," Alison said. "From the moment Mustache grabbed my arm, we were stuck."

"I could have helped you," Taneem said, a bit hesitantly.

Alison's mind flashed back to Taneem's reaction the first time she'd been forced to kill. "Even with your help, it would have been dangerous," she told the K'da. "The two men on Semaline were never close enough together that we could have been sure of taking both out before they could fight back."

"What then is our plan?" Taneem asked. "Or do we even have a plan?"

"Of course we do," Alison assured her, trying to sound more confident than she felt. "We do what Frost wants and open his safe for him."

"Because of the money?"

Alison pursed her lips, mindful of Taneem's still limited intelligence and understanding. "Taneem, do you remember Jack and Draycos talking about the upcoming meeting that's supposed to take place between the K'da advance team and the full refugee fleet?"

"Yes, of course," Taneem said, sounding a little insulted by the question.

"And you also remember that we don't know where that meeting's supposed to take place?"

"Of course," Taneem said again. "That's why we went to Nikrapapo, to see if we could learn the location from the Malison Ring computer there."

"Right," Alison said. "Only it's starting to look like Frost and his friends don't actually have that information. Not yet. I think it's in this safe they want me to open."

"Why haven't they opened it themselves?"

"Maybe they tried and couldn't," Alison said. "I think that's why they've been chasing so hard after Jack these past couple of months. His Uncle Virgil used to be one of the very best at this sort of thing."