The Outback Stars

CHAPTER


THIRTY-TWO





J

odenny paced the VIP cabin, stir-crazy with boredom and angry with herself. She should have given Myell more of an opportunity to explain. Whatever had happened with that inventory, he had still saved her life in T18. When she remembered how she had treated him in front of Gallivan and Timrin, she felt sick. Cheddie visited at dinnertime and brought news that only made her feel worse.



“Myell’s AWOL. He probably got off the ship somehow. My guess is he’s down on Waipata chasing Chiba.”



“Jesus,” she said, and rocked back in her chair.



“Still think you should have joint counsel? He’s not exactly proving your innocence, here.”



“What I need is a gib. There’s not even a desk unit here!”



Cheddie said, “Commander Picariello considers it in everyone’s best interest if you don’t have one right now.”



“He can’t refuse me.”



“Sure he can,” Cheddie said. “Gibs aren’t guaranteed. I think you proved that in your own division.”



Jodenny fumed. “I want to see the captain.”



“I’ll put in a request, but don’t expect any quick response.”



“Is this protective custody or house arrest?”




“Don’t worry. I’m guarding your rights. They can’t take any state-ments from you without my presence. There are no bugs or elec-tronic surveillance devices in these quarters, or so I’ve been told. Be patient. Things will settle down in a few days.”



“A few days might be too late.” Myell was barely well enough to be out of bed—how could he go traipsing around Warramala? If he ran up against Chiba, he’d be in no condition to defend himself.



“Can you ask Ensign Strayborn to stop by?” she said. “Assuming I can have visitors.”



Strayborn came by after dinner wearing a wary expression. “Glad to see you’re up and around, Lieutenant. They treating you okay?”



“Well enough. What happened with the April inventory?”



“I’ve been advised by my lawyer not to say anything. I don’t want them to take my commission away, Lieutenant.”



“Tell me what happened. If it’s not too awful, maybe I can help.”



Strayborn shook his head.



“I need to know, Ensign,” she said. “I need to know if I can trust Myell.”



“Why is it so important to trust Myell?”



Jodenny dropped her gaze. “Because I’m in love with him.”



“Christ.” Strayborn sat and rubbed his hands over his face. Glumly he continued. “You’ll find out anyway. We only wanted to get the rec-onciliation done. It was late, you’d called in an inspection for the morning, we knew the dingoes had been acting up—Terry didn’t want to. The rest of us persuaded him. I told him I’d square it with you and the chief but honestly, I didn’t think it would make much of a difference. It’s not the first time I’ve seen large-scale glitches hap-pen, and you never questioned us about it.”



“Who else was involved?”



“Ishikawa, Hosaka, Su, and Lange. But I was the one in charge.”



“Will the others back your account up?”



“They don’t have to. Myell recorded the whole thing, the bastard. I don’t know if he thought there would be a problem later, or if he was nervous about being in the observation module with Ishikawa by himself, but Security uncovered it this morning when they were go-ing through the tower logs.”



Jodenny fought a sigh of relief. Myell’s name would be cleared, mostly, in that regard. But Strayborn’s career was in jeopardy.



“I’ll do what I can,” she said. “Maybe they’ll settle for a letter of reprimand.”



After Strayborn left, Jodenny was left with only her grim imagina-tion and the idea of Myell down on Warramala getting into god knew what trouble. She spent a sleepless night envisioning the worst and heard nothing until Cheddie brought more bad news.



“Fleet has ordered you down to headquarters,” Cheddie said.

‘Admi-ral Nilsen wants to see you. Commander Senga will take you down.”



“What does the admiral want?” Jodenny asked.



“I don’t know. But she’s got appointments all day and then a box seat for the quarterfinals tonight, so you have to hurry.”



Jodenny had time to grab a fresh uniform but nothing else. Fifteen minutes later she was strapping herself into the CO’s launch across the aisle from Senga, who poured himself a drink and grabbed some peanuts. The pilot popped his head in to say they were being bumped up the priority line for departure.



Jodenny asked, “Are we coming back up tonight?”



Senga smirked. “I am. You’re not. Didn’t they tell you? You’re be-ing reassigned to Fleet until this is all straightened out.”



“Reassigned?” Jodenny squeaked. F*cking Cheddie, he was her lawyer, he should have told her. But what if no one had told him?



“I thought you knew.” Senga didn’t sound apologetic at all. “The Master-at-Arms will pack up your cabin and send your stuff down.”



The birdie launched. Jodenny turned to the vid so Senga couldn’t see her eyes. Goddamn them all. The Aral Sea’s mammoth shape be-gan to fall away, the sun glinting off the hull, shifting and changing its silhouette like a living thing. She didn’t expect she’d miss the ship it-self but already the loss of her people and her fellow officers was a hollow place in her chest. The descent into Warramala’s atmosphere went smoothly as the launch, with no delays in orbit. Waipata, the capital, had been built on the southern continent along the Motuponui River. The port was a mammoth series of transportation domes glittering green in the sunlight. Jodenny and Senga were ush-ered through a private Customs lounge and their cards scanned in by a polite young woman who tried to give them strings of Corroboree beads.



“Maybe later,” Senga said.



Jodenny took some beads and twirled them between her fingers. She had been to the Warramala Corroboree before, she and Jem and Dyanne, all of them caught up in the riot of dance, drink, and song. When she followed Senga outside, Warramala’s humid air slapped her in the face like a hot, wet towel. She didn’t need a mirror to see her hair spring into curls. They quickly located the admiral’s flit and slid inside to cold air and tinted windows.



“Beer?” Senga asked, leaning forward to the small refrigerator.

“Compliments of Fleet.”



“No.” Jodenny stared out past the green and brown landscape to-ward the Team Space buildings in the distance. They’d stick her in some shit job again, something no one else wanted to do, and it was so much like being on Kookaburra that she didn’t know how she was go-ing to stand it. When something crashed against the nose of the flit it took her a few seconds to turn that way. The tourist who had lost con-trol of his luggage cart began to argue with the Team Space chauffeur.



“Christ,” Senga said. “Stupid dill.”



The argument grew more heated. Senga stepped out to intervene. Jodenny squeezed the bridge of her nose, imagining the upcoming months of boredom, scandal, and innuendo. Meanwhile Myell was out there somewhere, maybe still ill from the radiation, maybe need-ing her help, and what was she doing? Sitting on her ass while others determined the course of her destiny.



Screw that, she decided, and slid out the side door.



She threw herself into the crowds and circled back into the termi-nal. Somehow she had to get some yuros, find out where Quenger and Ishikawa had gone, and stop whatever plans they had. No wor-ries. She had barely gone five steps when she heard someone call, “Kay!” and Myell grasped her arm. He was dressed like a tourist and had dyed his hair blond.



“What are you doing here?” he asked.



“Looking for Osherman and Chiba.” Jodenny peered at him earnestly.

“Hoping to find you.”



Myell didn’t immediately reply. She saw that he didn’t know whether or not to trust her. Well, she’d certainly given him ample cause for doubt. She wanted to throw her arms around him and beg for forgiveness.



“Terry—”



“Come this way.” Myell hustled her down a concourse of tourist stalls and fast-food restaurants. Jodenny looked up for overhead cam-eras, sure they could be tracked by security forces, but Warramala was one of the least monitored places in the Seven Sisters: they val-ued privacy and liberty here more than anywhere else.



“Give me your gib,” Myell said, and when she did he tossed it into a trash can.




“Hey—” Jodenny protested.



“Fleet can track it.”



He hustled her into a rent-a-room, told her to stay there while he got her something to wear, and returned five minutes later with a yel-low sundress, a wide-brimmed hat, and a pair of sandals. She changed quickly while he waited outside. When she emerged she said, “I know that fixing the inventory was Strayborn’s idea.”



Myell’s expression gave her nothing to work with. “We can talk later. We’ve got a boat to catch.”



“What boat? To where?”



With one hand holding a duffel bag and another on her arm, Myell walked her along the people-movers. “Port Douglas. It’s where Quenger and Chiba went.”



“Why don’t we fly up there?” Jodenny asked.



“Security there is too tight. The gates probably already have your picture.”



“Don’t we need ID for the boat?” she asked as he stopped by a ticket kiosk.



“It’s taken care of.” Myell punched in data and waited for plastic tickets to spit out. “I’m Alan Foster and you’re my wife, Noreen.”



So they had gotten married. Too bad Jodenny didn’t remember the details. She followed Myell down a ramp to the waiting passenger ferry. Four decks high and a hundred meters long, it was the largest ship at the piers. Rust and tan-colored Corroboree banners hung from several railings, and a throng of pilgrims stood at the stern re-ceiving blessings from the river. Do-wops danced and sang on the open deck above them.



The purser who took the tickets from Myell asked, “You and the missus going all the way to Port Douglas?”



“Yes,” Myell said, with a fairly good Kiwi accent. “How long until we get there?”



“We’ll be there Friday, sir. Just in time for the solstice and World Cup.”



After walking through a weapons scan they crossed the gangway. The ferry was old but clean, and Jodenny smelled fresh paint as Myell led her through a crowded lounge filled with passengers. Their cabin was small but decently furnished in various shades of blue. No deskgib, though, and no vids. A tiny balcony offered an obstructed view of the river.



“Lie down,” Myell said. “You don’t look so good.”



“I’m fine,” Jodenny said, but her knees had gone weak and she sat in the armchair near the balcony. She grabbed a pillow to hide her shaking hands. Maybe she hadn’t fully recovered from the radiation yet. Maybe the sheer audacity of what she had done, gone AWOL, was catching up to her.



“I’ll have some lunch sent down once the galley opens,” he said.



“Where are you going?”



“Casino. We need more money.”



He left. Jodenny rubbed her eyes and watched the landscape glide past the window. The mighty Motuponui was the largest river on the continent, a wide torrent of freshwater that drained from mammoth lakes in the mountainous north. The river then crossed thousands of kilometers of dense rain forest. The ferry would carry them along the last leg of the river’s journey through a set of timeworn hills, but for now the countryside was flat, the riverbanks in full, heavy bloom.



A steward sent by Myell brought her lunch a few minutes later. Af-ter devouring soup and sandwiches she went to examine herself in the mirror. If her picture wasn’t all over the news yet, it soon would be. She rang the porter and borrowed a pair of scissors. Good-bye, hair, she thought as the locks fell into the washbasin. After sunset she ventured up to the lounge deck. A group of do-wops had started an impromptu concert with their guitars and drums while soccer fans clustered around the vids for the semifinals. The casino was already crowded, players jammed around tables and playing slot machines that shouted encouragement to bet even larger sums of money. Myell was slouched at a card table with a depressingly small pile of chips.



“Hi, honey.” Jodenny gave him a warm peck on the cheek. “Are you winning big?”



Myell blinked at her, his gaze fixing on her short hair. “About to, darling.”



“Your husband’s a lousy player,” the man to Myell’s left said.



“My husband is a great player.” Jodenny peeked at his cards and saw he was going to lose the hand. “Sweetie, I’m all out. Lend me some?”



Myell pushed her some yuros. Jodenny gave him another kiss and a squeeze of the thigh for good measure. At a crazy-seven table she took a stool between two immensely large women wearing Kook-aburra T-shirts. Jodenny’s cards totaled eighteen. She held and won fifty yuros. She bet half of it again, lost it when the dealer flashed a lightning card, doubled the second half on a wild hand, doubled it again by trumping the player next to her. At a farca table across the room she got into a game with more tourists and a man too casual to be anything other than a card shark plying his trade up and down the river. She let him win the first hand but came back to phase him in the second. Myell had lost most of his money and was morosely feeding the last of it to a slot machine.



“Come on,” she said. “I’ve got enough for us.”



Myell gave her a sideways look. “I want to finish.”



Jodenny went down to the shops. Although she cringed at the prices, she bought herself sturdier travel clothes and a pair of shoes. At a public gib she checked the headline news from Waipata and saw nothing about her or Myell. She returned to their cabin and indulged in a hot shower. Myell showed up after midnight with beer on his breath.



Jodenny said, “You can take the bed. I’ll sleep on the floor.”



“No, ma’am.” Myell kicked off his shoes but didn’t undress any further. He stood in the darkness, swaying a little. “That wouldn’t be right. Floor’s fine.”



He dropped a pillow on the floor and disappeared into the bath-room. Jodenny pulled the blanket from the bed and added it to his nest. After a moment’s deliberation she scooped up both pillow and blanket and put them back in place.



He scowled when he came out. “I told you I’ll take the floor.”



“You can take that side of the bed.”



Myell went to his side and sat with his back to her. She held off from touching his shoulders. His stomach growled in the quiet cabin.



“Did you eat?” she asked.



“I’m not hungry.” Myell lay down, resolutely facing away from her.



Jodenny curled up on her side. Let him sulk. He still had some apologizing to do for that fudged inventory, and leaving the ship without telling her, and making her worry so badly. She stared at his back in the darkness and made the magnanimous decision to apolo-gize first.



“I’m sorry for doubting you,” she said.



His shoulder hitched up fractionally. For a moment she hoped they might discuss it, but he apparently wasn’t in a conversational mood. “Good night, Lieutenant.”



“Good night, Sergeant,” she said.



* * * *