“Well, maybe you should have known.” She hadn’t meant to talk about it, but the words were out before she could stop them.
“Maybe you’re right. But do you know how many things I have to deal with every day?”
“No.”
“A lot. I don’t have time to do everything. So I delegate.”
“Big deal. But I really don’t care.”
“Yes, you do.”
“No, I freaking don’t.”
“I’m not making excuses. The truth is I should have known. But I didn’t.”
Tannis sighed. Suddenly, she felt weary. She waved a hand in his general direction. “Forget it. And you can tell your girlfriend it’s safe to come out. No one will harm her while she’s on El Cazador. Or you either.”
“She’s not my girlfriend. And later?”
“Who knows? Let’s go find out what other good news you have for me.” Without waiting for him to say anything further, she walked away.
…
Rico was already in the conference room when Tannis arrived, sitting at one of the small tables, a bottle and a bunch of glasses in front of him. She took the seat next to him.
Callum came in behind her and collapsed into a chair opposite, leaning back his head, and closing his eyes.
Rico grinned. “You look like shit.”
He peered through one half-open eye. “I feel like shit.”
“Good.”
Rico sounded amazingly cheerful, considering he’d suffered in that place as well. He’d once told her it was the closest he’d ever come to dying. But then one of the first lessons he’d tried to teach her was not to bear a grudge. He poured the golden liquid into the glasses and pushed a couple toward her. “Here, and maybe you’d better give your boyfriend one of these?”
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
“Really? Looks like someone gave him a love bite.”
Callum’s lower lip was swollen where she’d bitten him. It looked nasty. She told herself she hoped it hurt, but couldn’t get up any conviction. Instead, she picked up one of the glasses and held it out to him.
His brows drew together as though surprised, but he took the glass and swallowed the whiskey in one gulp, wincing as it stung his cut lip. He held out the glass, and Rico reached across and refilled it.
The others entered the room, grabbed a glass, and took up seats around them. The Trog came in last. He didn’t bother with a drink. While he was happy to make the stuff down in his engine rooms, Tannis had never seen him actually consume it.
She presumed he didn’t want the loss of control. The Trog was hiding something, she’d known that when they took him on, but he was also the best engineer she’d ever come across, and if he wanted to keep his secrets, that was fine by her.
“Okay,” she said when everyone was seated. “How are we going to do this? Janey?”
“Actually, maybe I’d better go first,” Callum said. “As what I have to say effects what we do next. If we do anything.”
Tannis didn’t like the sound of that. As far as she was concerned there was only one course of action right now. They go to Trakis Seven, she took the treatment, they get the hell out of there, and she would live forever. She really didn’t want to hear about anything that would interfere with that plan.
“What do you mean, if anything? You’d better not try and weasel out of our deal, or I might kill you after all.”
“I just heard that the Church don’t plan on just destroying the meridian stocks. They’re sending a force to destroy Trakis Seven.”
Stunned, Tannis sat back in her chair. “Is that even possible? To destroy a whole planet?”
“With enough firepower, you can blow up anything.”
“Why?”
“Presumably, to cut off our power base. People support us in the hope of one day getting the Meridian treatment. If the source was destroyed, why follow us?”
“Why exactly?” Tannis muttered. “Great…just great.” She swallowed her drink and slammed the glass onto the table, jumped to her feet, and paced the room, unable to sit still any longer. “So do you actually know anything useful?”
“The colonel promised to forward the intel here. It should be in your systems by now.”
“I’ll check,” Janey said. She opened a palm screen and her fingers fluttered over the keys. “It’s here,” she murmured, “and it doesn’t look good. Wait, I’ll put it up on the main screen.”
She rose to her feet and crossed the room to the console, pressed a few keys, and a screen emerged on the far wall.
Tannis stopped her pacing, stood in front of the screen, and read the information with increasing dismay. It was a frigging army. “Where the hell has the Church gotten an army from?”
“Does it matter?”
She turned to Rico. “Can we stop them?”
“Not a chance in hell. There’s too many of them.”
“What are your lot doing?” she asked Callum.
“Nothing.”