“Didn't you do this with Nyha Bartali on Cepi?” Tila asked Dun as he led her back down the passageway. “Force her to make an announcement?”

He stopped so suddenly, she ran in to the back of him.

“I'd forgotten that.” The look he sent her over his shoulder was considering. “But you're right.”

They had reached a door, and he turned back to open it, then stepped back so she could precede him.

Something in the expression on his face told her he was . . . not excited, but somehow gleeful about the fact that what was about to happen was similar to what happened on Cepi.

Was it because, like her, others might remember that, and link the two incidents?

That would presumably be bad for Jirmain, something she had come to realize was one of the few things that would make Dun happy.

On that, she was in agreement with him.

“Welcome.” Jirmain rose up from a chair, his eyes on her, taking in the clothes Dun had given her. They were clean but worn, a thin shirt and comfortable pants, and a threadbare jacket. He'd also found her comfortable shoes with worn soles.

The chair Jirmain had been sitting in was behind a bank of screens set in a sleek, expensive looking comms station. They must have cost serious money, and some of the equipment was unfamiliar to her. It looked military in origin.

Whoever was giving Jirmain money wasn't being stingy with it.

“Sit.”

She walked to the chair he pushed out and sat, turning to face him.

He was still standing, looming over her. “I hope I don't have to threaten you, or tell you not to say anything that would give our position away. This is being recorded, so we'll do it again and again until I'm happy with it. And I don't like having my time wasted.” He kept his a smile on his face and his tone pleasant as he spoke.

She wanted to hit him. She looked down in surprise to find her hands in fists.

Huh.

She'd never in her life wanted to commit violence so badly.

It wouldn't do her any good. But outthinking them?

That was something she could definitely try.

“What do you want me to say?” she asked, keeping her tone friendly.

“Tell them the councillors who made the decision to delay rescue during the Halatian Incident are the link between the targets, and tell them the fact my team couldn't blow up the company in Freya's Puzzle means that you will never be returned. You're the consolation prize.”

She was watching him as he spoke, and she snorted out a derisive laugh as he said the last sentence. “Right, because that shows how much you believe in Halatian freedom from abduction and imprisonment.”

Jirmain frowned at her. Considered her words. “Maybe that is better not spoken aloud,” he conceded. “Just leave it at pointing out they are the link. I'm after their reputations, now that it would seem too difficult to return and finish the job.”

She nodded, flicking a quick glance at Dun. His face was carefully neutral again, but she could only imagine that Jirmain's casual dismissal of a plan that had put Dun, not Jirmain, in the crosshairs, was just another nail in Jirmain's coffin.

”The public in Var, on the whole of Parn, I imagine, is waiting, Tila.” Jirmain gestured to a screen. “Speak.”

“My name is Tila Dor Rio. I was abducted from my place of work earlier today by the men responsible for the explosions in Var. They tell me that the reason behind the explosions is revenge. Their leader is a Halatian who was held in the Caliope fifteen years ago, and was taken away by smugglers who escaped when Commander Drake and his team infiltrated the ship to rescue the prisoners. He was brought up as a slave, and has worked his way into a position of power among them. He's targeted the men and women who sat on the Parnian Council during the Halatian Incident for their delay in making hard decisions while Halatians died or survived in misery. I was on the Caliope myself, although I was lucky enough to be rescued by Commander Drake, and I now find myself in the same place, all over again.”

Jirmain shot her a dark look and signaled to someone behind her, presumably to cut the recording.

“What was that last part?” he asked her. There was a tremor in his voice that had the whole room go silent.

“You want to evoke the feelings of the Halatian Incident, don't you?” Dun asked, his voice cutting through the quiet. “Remind everyone how it was, how they felt?” He shrugged. “Her saying that she's back in the same place again is going to do just that.”

Jirmain kept looking at her, his eyes curiously blank and dead. After a long moment, he drew in a deep breath through his nose and nodded. “Although you're hardly back on the Caliope, are you, Tila?”

She leaned back in her chair, trying to slow her runaway heart without making it obvious. “No. I'm also not ten years old anymore. And the accommodations may be better, but the confinement still feels the same.”

Again, the room was silent, and Jirmain's fists bunched. He wanted to hit her almost as much as she wanted to hit him, she saw with what was almost detached interest.

She was playing with fire, and she was frightened enough to wonder at her own recklessness.

“I don't know where we are, I don't even know what your ship looks like. Let me go, or this excuse of revenge is proven to be so much bullshit.”

He didn't like being called out in front of his crew, and he didn't want to admit that he was no longer the downtrodden boy he'd been. He had choices now, and he was making them with open eyes.

“Take the recording and send it,” he said to the thin woman who sat at a station a little way from Tila. She'd been giving Tila filthy looks since she'd come in.

She wanted to lean over and tell the woman she didn't want Jirmain, he was all hers, but she didn't know if it was sexual jealousy motivating the dislike, or whether, like Dun, she saw Tila as the embodiment of the pure Halatian Jirmain was trying to avenge, risking the lives and livelihoods of his crew to do it.

“Sure.” The woman picked up a screen, spun in her chair and stood up. She walked out the room without a backward glance.

“I'm looking forward to seeing what the reaction will be.” Jirmain chuckled, behaving as if the tension in the room had dissipated, when Tila thought it had only increased.

Her and Jirmain's little argument had made it clear to the smugglers in the room what Jirmain had just done.

Put a target on their backs once more.

* * *

“Someone is trying to reach you, Commander Drake. One of the victims from Freya's Puzzle. She won't say what it's about.” Intoh leaned into the room again, and Nick tore his gaze from the screen and Tila's face, her announcement almost on continual repeat as shocked reaction to her statement reverberated around Parn.

Drake's face was almost gray, and Nick remembered Drake's conversation with Tila when they'd found her on the balcony at Freya's Puzzle and later, Drake's reaction when he heard about Nick's friendship with Tila.

Drake and Tila knew each other, not just because they would have heard each other's names before in connection to the taking of the Caliope, but in a deeper way.

Looking at Drake, Nick wondered what Tila was to him, that he would look so sick at the sight of her giving an announcement under duress.

“Commander?” Intoh repeated.

Drake seemed to come back to himself. He stood. “Thanks. I'll take it.”

Nick stood with him, walking behind him to the comm station in the pilot's cabin. Intoh gestured to the correct screen.

A woman looked out at them, and Nick recognized her as the person the hostage-takers had thrown to the ground before they'd raced off with Tila. She bit her lip in agitation, and he could see she'd been crying.

“This is Commander Drake.”

“Commander, I'm Sarta Danubi. You might remember me as the person lying in the street earlier today. I told you which way they'd taken Tila. I know you're looking for her, and I just wanted to say that I think she was trying to give us a clue to where she is in her message.”

Nick's attention was suddenly focused completely on Sarta's face.

“What do you think she's trying to say?” Drake kept his voice calm, but Nick heard the tension in his tone.

“She often stared up at the Mother and Child for minutes at a time, and I asked her just a couple of weeks ago about it. She said that the smugglers flew around Parn during the Halatian Incident, but they also used to hide in the canyons and gorges on the Mother. When she said she's back in the place she was before, I think that's what she meant. She's somewhere on the Mother.”

Drake blinked. “Thank you, Sarta. That's helpful. Please don't discuss this with anyone else.” His voice seemed to gain strength as he spoke.

Sarta nodded, and Intoh cut her off.

“It's been fifteen years. We took the Caliope when they were just outside the upper atmosphere, doing one of their orbits of Parn, and I'd forgotten about the Mother.” Drake snapped his fingers, pointed at Intoh. “There were Special Forces maps that we made at the time, plotting where we thought they were going to ground on the Mother. We had strict orders not to engage, so we couldn't get in closer, and we never actually hunted for them on the Mother, but we knew they were bedding down there more often than they were circling Parn. We definitely plotted our best guess as to their movements. I want those maps.”

Intoh considered him for a moment. “I'll ask.” She didn't move though, standing beside the comm station as if waiting, and Nick finally got it.

“You want us to go.”

“If you don't mind. I'll need to speak to my commanding officer.”

Drake drew himself up. “I can get those maps through other channels, Lieutenant. Especially now. From the Minister of Defense through to the president, I'm pretty sure I'll have their ear. If Special Forces makes me take the slower route, I will be very vocal in my criticism.” He turned on his heel, and walked out.

Intoh watched him go with undisguised shock on her face. She turned to Nick. “I'm sure General Tarr will give him everything, no problem. It's protocol for me to speak to him privately, though. Why would he threaten Special Forces? He's a legend to most of us.”

“Maybe he's considered the best because the lives of the people he pledged to protect were more important than Special Forces orders when it came down to it.” Nick held her gaze. “He defied his superiors to save the Halatians on the Caliope fifteen years ago. Superiors no other captain questioned. It could have gone wrong for him, but instead, he made Parn the face of action and compassion in the Verdant String, when we all know it was just one man's action and passion.”

“Don't forget Darline Xan.” The pilot up front swiveled her seat toward them.

Nick nodded. “Darline Xan is a hero, but her job was to investigate what was going on, and she managed to find a way to do it despite overwhelming odds. Commander Drake's job was to observe only. He didn't do his job. He did his duty. He cared more for the lives on the Caliope than his orders, and we continue to bask in the glory of his heroism. Now one of the people he risked his life and his career to save is in the same position again. Of course he's going to threaten Special Forces if they don't cooperate. He's been down this road before.”

“I always wondered why he left Special Forces after the Halatian Incident,” Intoh said softly. “I thought it might be because he lost two of his team. I never thought it was disgust at SF itself.”

“I'm pretty sure General Tarr knows the real reason,” Nick said. “And it's never comfortable knowing someone thinks you're a moral failure. Tarr was also a captain in the SF during the Halatian Incident, wasn't he?”

Intoh gave a tight nod.

“There you go.” Nick gave a shrug. “Drake knows Tarr might block him, given the history between them. Personally, I hope not. I hope General Tarr can see a woman's life is on the line, and act accordingly.”

Intoh stepped out of his way, so he had a clear path to the door. As he passed her, she murmured, “I hope so, too.”