Once the Rebellion had been locked into the side of one of the Fickle Finger’s many sprawling docking complexes, Lilliana returned to the command deck. It was empty, except for the pilot. Leo was either overseeing the preparations to clear out the avalanches in the cargo hold, or sleeping. Regan would be getting ready to accompany Lilliana into the proverbial lion’s den. Galatea… well, Lilliana didn’t give a good God damn what Galatea was doing, so long as it was a long way away from her.
“Any word?” she asked Dick, though she’d been monitoring communications from her room during the vertigo-inducing docking sequence.
“None,” Dick said. “I would have bet money on Fortunato hailing us by now. He has to know we’re here.”
“Oh, he knows,” Lilliana said. “Trust me, one blip from our FLAG is enough to make this place’s security panel light up like an Easter tree. But, Fortunato isn’t in the habit of doing the things people bet on, you know?”
“Do you think he’s trying to lull us into a false sense of security, then?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Lilliana said. “The way to do that is to send out the welcome wagon… and that wouldn’t work so well, under the circumstances. No, he wants us jittery… he wants to keep us guessing. He kept silent during our approach. He let our docking request be processed without challenge. Now that we’re on the inside, now that we’re fully committed, he’ll pipe up with an invitation or a carefully couched threat of some kind. He won’t let us make first contact. His pride will dictate that he move.”
As if on cue, there was a tone and the communication console lit up. Lilliana’s momentary look of triumph vanished when she realized it was an internal call.
“Go ahead, Daniel,” she said.
“Is there a good reason why this little screen thingy on my desk telling me we’ve docked at the Fickle Finger?”
“A pretty good one, I think,” Lilliana said.
“I breathlessly await the chance to hear it.”
“Because we have, Daniel.”
“Do we have a delivery to make here?”
“Not as such, no.”
“A pick-up?”
“No.”
“What why are we visiting your ex-boyfriend?”
“We aren’t. We’re just ducking into protected space to avoid a vengeful dark wizard and forestalling a mutiny,” Lilliana said. “I’m ordering a disbursement of one thousand credits to each crewman from the profits of our Rylean deliveries. We can spend a couple of days here straightening out the cargo hold, let the crew gamble or see a few shows… and incidentally let the necromancer lose interest in following us any further.”
“Two days,” Shays said. “Fifty-six hours. Not a minute more.”
“That’s exactly what I had in mind,” Lilliana said. She closed the channel without signing off.
“Didn’t we already split the proceeds from most of the Rylean deliveries?” Dick asked when the console went dim.
“We’ll just borrow a little against future profits,” Lilliana said. “It won’t be the first time we’ve been in the red for a while.”
“Do you think that’s exactly wise, given that we have yet to assess our losses in the cargo hold?”
“Maybe it is a bit of a gamble,” Lilliana admitted, “but if so, then at least we’re in the right place for it.” She punched up the ship’s intercom to announce the payout and layover to the tense and tired crew, reminding the cargo handlers that they would be required to work in shifts to put the hold back in order.
“So, are you going to wait up here until Fortunato makes the inevitable contact?” Dick asked her.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I realized I was wrong… he’s going to wait until we step out of our little world and into his before he makes his move, because at that point all the power is his.”
“Do you want me to stay on the comm?” Dick asked.
Lilliana shook her head.
“I don’t know where exactly this will take me,” she said. “Too many parts of the complex are shielded against everything but quantum communicators, and those are scanned and banned. Standard communicators get re-routed through Fortunato’s own network… to prevent cheating, of course… and I really don’t want to give him an ‘in’ like that.”
“Of course,” Dick said.
“Just stay with the ship until I get back… or until I don’t,” she said. “In the unlikely event that everything goes well, I’ll try to let you know so that you can have a little downtime.”
“I appreciate it,” he said.
She left him and headed back into the forward tower, then down to the lowest level. Regan was already suited up in her chain shirt and cape and gold torc, with her greatsword slung across her back.
“Ahoy, the Gypsy!” Regan said.
“Hey there, Bard. Did you read the list of prohibited weapons and devices?” Lilliana asked.
“I looked over it, like,” Regan said.
“Good,” Lilliana said. “I honestly expect we’ll run into trouble before we even get to the entry scanners, but it wouldn’t do to give anybody any excuses.”
“Well, trouble is me middle designation,” Regan said. “Back on Nova Hibernia, I used to eat trouble for breakfast. I mean, it was either trouble or boiled oats, an believe you me, the oats just weren’t worth it when the jam ran out.”
“We should be ready for anything,” Lilliana said. She tapped a few commands on the console by the internal airlock door. “Scans aren’t showing any heavy armament or any lingering presences near our ship… external cameras just show normal foot traffic through the docking bay. But Fortunato’s got more resources to spend on cloaking than we have to spend on scanning, and he could easily have a welcoming committee stationed within line of sight of our ship. We have to be ready to react as soon as the external door opens… got it?”
“Got it, Gypsy Rose,” Regan said, saluting smartly.
The internal door whooshed open and they stepped into the airlock. It stayed open behind them.
“I want to be able to duck back into the ship proper if we have to,” Lilliana said. “I’m almost positive Fortunato wouldn’t have us fired upon while we’re still within our ship, but I don’t want to bet my life on it. Okay… the moment of truth.”
“Never been me strong point,” Regan said.
The outer door clicked and then slid open, revealing nothing more remarkable than the cavernously huge docking bay. The walls and ceiling of it consisted of huge metal ribs with crysteel panels in between, vaulted high enough for large spacecraft to fly over the ones docked on the ground. The one end of it appeared open to space, though it was actually enclosed in a triple set of forcefields on separate power systems. They held the air in but let authorized spacecraft pass through. If all three of them managed to fail at the same time, the results would be unpleasant.
“Well, obviously, the reception wouldn’t be in clear view when we open our doors,” Lilliana said, when no jackbooted thugs or security drones came rushing up. “He couldn’t do anything to us until we actually stepped off the ship.”
“Like this?” Regan asked, stepping out onto the hangar deck. After a moment, Lilliana followed suit.
“Hmm,” she said. “I guess he expects us to come to him. That just might suit his ego.”
“Well, if we got to go lookin’ for him, I suggest we start with either the mall or the zoo, like,” Regan said.
“We aren’t going to the mall or the zoo,” Lilliana said. “But I suspect it won’t matter where we go…”
“So, we might as well go to the zoo, then,” Regan said.
“What I mean is, as soon as we set foot on a casino floor, he’ll make his presence felt,” Lilliana said.
“Now, would that be in the same way as he made his presence felt as soon as we left the ship, like?”
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