The Wilding by C.S. Friedman

Author:C.S. Friedman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US

In the darkness of the control room, Raija sat alone. Listening to the ship’s recorder as it played back words spoken in darkness, elsewhere.

They’re out there.

The woman’s voice resonated in the stillness, eerie, hollow.

Behind the sun. Behind the sun. They’re coming from behind the sun.

So many of them. Taking no chances.

So . . .

She knew there was an attack coming.

She trusted Tathas enough to warn him.

He digested those two thoughts as the rest of the recording played out. Thank the gods he’d told the ship to keep recording what happened in her room, even between interrogations. No. Thank Tali’l. She had alerted him to the Braxin’s possible treachery, and now here it was, laid out before him.

The Braxin and the woman knew each other. That much was obvious even from this tape. The manner in which she spoke to him was worlds apart from how she dealt with the others.

She’d never have warned Fatu, that was certain.

Or Kesh.

Only the Braxin.

Only the strange, mysterious Braxin, whose true origins were unknown, whose motives were guessed at from news vids and whispered rumors, launched from planets light-years away. . . .

With a sudden curse he hurled his drink across the chamber. Sticky Sallongian liquor splashed across a starchart.

He had trusted.

Trusted his intincts.

Wrong this time. Wrong!

What was the connection between the two of them? What agenda did they serve?

I dream these things, the woman had said.

Memories of something she’d been programmed to forget? Whispers overheard, and not understood? Or a warning deliberately implanted, meant to be triggered in the freedom of open space, not here in the storage closet of a freelancer ship?

Didn’t much matter, did it? Any way you looked at it, the warning was a real one. Trouble was coming. From behind the sun, the woman had said. That implied an assault in normal space, where suns could be seen. Probably inside a planetary system, with heavenly bodies close enough to make a difference.

The rendezvous.

His blood ran cold in an instant; a soft hiss escaped his lips. Of course. That had to be it. A trap was planned at the rendezvous point, where his client was supposed to receive the stolen goods. Maybe the client had betrayed him . . . maybe another had overheard something said in carelessness, and made the arrangements independently. It didn’t matter. They’d sent the woman to foil him in the kidnapping, and now that she’d failed in that, the instructions originally implanted in her were starting to leak out. That’s why his crew hadn’t been able to force the knowledge out of her, no matter how hard they tried; she didn’t have access to it consciously. Doubtless she was intended as a courier to some other conspirator, who would know the keys to unlocking the information she carried.

Information she had offered to Tathas.

With a growl of profound irritation, he shut off the speaker. So much for an easy transfer of the goods. He should have known things wouldn’t go that smoothly.

They were going to have to deal with the Braxin.

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