your bosses be able to do anything with the start point and time of the Black Pulsar Race?”
The call was silent.
“Maybe,” Theodore conceded. “You got that from your friend, did you?”
“It can’t have come from either of us,” he insisted. “We’re already high on somebody’s shit list.”
“Believe me, Ivan, I can bury my sources,” the former military intelligence officer said. “Might be better to transfer the data in person. You have time for that dinner?”
Ivan chuckled. It was a weak thing, undermined by his fear, but she got it out of him regardless.
“Not unless you’re on orbital four,” he told her. “I’m attaching it under encryption. Jessie…he needs the race purse. I don’t know if that matters to your bosses, but…”
“I get it,” she said. “We’ll cover our tracks; don’t worry. Are you okay?” she repeated.
“I…” Ivan trailed off. Somehow, he suspected Jessie Theodore wouldn’t be nearly as insistent on dinner if she knew he was selling Charpentier out to Aquila. He knew he was a coward. He didn’t think she’d realized that yet.
“It’s my problem, not anyone else’s,” he finally told her. “We can talk when I get back.”
“If you’re jumping Charpentier into a mob race, you know your odds of getting back aren’t great, right?” she asked.
“I know,” he conceded. “But everyone around me seems to have a plan. I think we’ll be fine.”
Ivan had his own plan, too. He just didn’t like it.
“I’m warning you now, Ivan, we’ve had the start coordinates before,” Theodore said. “It won’t break open the local scum. The end coordinates, that’s where they have the big party. Get me those before everyone leaves and, well…”
“I doubt the party lasts long enough for me to jump a courier here and for the Navy to get back there,” he told her. “This is what I’ve got.”
“It’s not worthless,” she said. “I’ll obfuscate and put it in the hands of the right people.”
She was silent for a few seconds.
“These are dangerous people you’re playing with, Ivan,” she reminded him. “Be careful.”
“Always,” he promised. “I’ll be fine, Jessie.”
The question was how much he’d sacrifice to stay that way.
7
“Are you ready?”
Karl Charpentier’s words hung in the silence of Restoya’s simulacrum chamber as Ivan studied the calculations on the screen below him. A screen to his right, attached to the acceleration chair, showed Charpentier’s face in the cockpit of the bridge.
Eleven jumps had brought them to the middle of nowhere, a little under two light-years away from one of the nastier-looking astronomical formations Ivan had ever seen. Even the starting point, a full light-year way from the binary pulsar they were about to race through, was going to be unsafe.
“How long after everyone arrives does the race start?” Ivan asked.
“Twelve hours is the plan,” Charpentier told him. “We’re about that early, so it’ll be a full day for us.”
“A full day hanging out next to a binary pulsar,” Ivan replied. “Sounds like fun.”
“Where’s your sense of adventure, my friend?” Charpentier said. “Radiation should only be sweeping this direction every seventy-five hours or so, according to the charts.”
“Nobody gets this close to one pulsar, let alone two,” Ivan said. “What the hell have you got us into?”
“I knew it was through the binary,” his friend admitted. “I assumed you did. There aren’t that many pulsars in the Protectorate, let alone near Xanth.”
“Every so often, I feel like I should have asked a lot more questions before I promised to help you,” Ivan said. He was understating it by a lot, too. He never should have promised to help Charpentier. His friend would have been better off if he hadn’t, even.
There was no backing out now, though.
“I’m ready,” he finally told Charpentier. “Coordinates are confirmed. Any complications they told you about?”
“We should be jumping in about a light-second clear of everyone, and we’ll maneuver to rendezvous from there,” the pilot said. “And then we wait for them to send us the jump coordinates and the position of the first beacon.”
Ivan nodded slowly.
“How many beacons?”
“Sixteen. The last gives us new jump coordinates for the exit position. They’re supposedly set up to require about an hour to navigate between each beacon.”
“Sixteen hours,” Ivan replied. “And how long do you plan on taking?”
“Well, you said it would take you six hours to rest before jumping, so that gives me a minimum, doesn’t it?” Charpentier asked. “Shall we, my friend?”
“All right.”
Ivan reached out for the simulacrum. The silver model was almost semiliquid, though it was nowhere near hot enough to actually be molten. The