Page 95 of Enthraller

But maybe one of her colleagues had since discovered it, and moved ahead with the plan without Linao.

That wasn’t a good thought.

“Pontia surely couldn’t be the only one who knew where it was,” Wren said.

“You’d think so, but Linao definitely doesn’t know. She must have worked out Pontia lied to her while we were still unconscious after Fenton and Navar hit us at the hover port. That’s why she was hoping I’d find it for her.” Ed braced as Wren turned the freighter toward Aponi. It was a bright globe ahead of them, and she accelerated to the highest speed the freighter was capable of as they headed for home.

“Can you get hold of Bartam?” Wren asked.

Ed moved to the comms unit, sent out a call. It was connecting, but they’d have to wait for a reply, as there was always a long delay on in-space comms from small, private spacecraft.

The unit signaled an incoming call by the time Aponi was clearly visible in the viewport.

“Ed.” Bartam’s voice was faintly distorted.

“The soldiers you sent to the hover port shot us, released our prisoner, and took us to Ytla, Lieutenant,” Ed said.

Whatever Bartam responded was garbled. Then: “Fenton and Navar?”

“Didn’t catch the first part, but yes, Fenton and Navar are compromised.”

There was a faint screech from the unit and then nothing. Dead air.

Ed had a bad feeling about it.

He stepped up to the viewport, but Aponi looked as serene and beautiful as ever, green and blue and brown.

To the left, he saw a strangely-shaped vessel moving through the debris field that surrounded the half-destroyed observatory. It took him a moment to recognize it as a magnetic scooper, distorted by all the pieces of debris that had latched on to its sides.

“Our comms unit is working,” Wren said, her fingertips touching it. “Whatever cut Bartam off is coming from below.”

“I figured.” Ed turned his attention back to Aponi. “They’ve taken out Department of Defense comms, is my guess.”

That’s what he would do as a first step to take over Aponi.

And whatever they’d done to lure the battleships away had worked, but those battleships would only be useful against the Caruso attack. They could do nothing about what was happening below.

And the genius of taking both Ethan Hyt and Velda Shanïha out of the equation became apparent. Because if the head of the SF in Nanganya was compromised, as they thought he was, Hyt and Shanïha were two of the most senior heads of defense on Aponi who were not involved in this plot.

There must be senior military officers who were clean, too—probably most of them were—but it only took a few.

Ed thought about the military base beside the hoverport, the five floors of the Gate that the military occupied. And wondered if any of it was still standing.

From the corner of his eye he saw a flash of movement, and then Wren leaned over the controls, and the freighter began to drop straight down.

“What was that?”

“I think it was a Razor.” Wren spiraled them toward Aponi.

Ed tried to look, to get a better idea of where the threat lay, but the freighter was moving too fast now, and pointing down.

“We have a good bargaining chip, at least.” He struggled over to the small room off the bridge, and saw Linao was awake and watching him from the floor where he’d attached her to a bolted down table with restraints.

The whole freighter was angled down and he had to work to get himself into a chair in front of the comms unit. “We have Evette Linao in our custody.” He spoke using the open channel. “Shoot us down, and she dies with us.”

Wren let them fall for a moment or two more, and then pulled up. “They’ve backed off.” She looked over at him. “I’m guessing they’ll want to make a deal for her.”

“Head straight down to Aponi. We’ve got nowhere to go up here. Once we land, there are possibilities.”

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