Charlie waited for a lull in the bridge chatter, then asked Matula, “How far to the rendezvous point?”
“We’re about five hours out, Your Grace.”
Charlie hadn’t eaten anything for hours, and he badly needed a shower and a shave. He decided to take a break. He could monitor the situation through his implants and be back on the bridge in seconds if something developed.
As Charlie headed for his cabin, a little piece of him missed having Add and Ell dogging his heels, and constantly commenting on everything from his stature to his manhood. But in the tight confines of a man-of-war, and with internal security systems monitoring everything, personal bodyguards were considered an inappropriate extravagance, and a sign that the duke lacked confidence in the ship’s discipline. Keeping them close at hand would be an open insult to the crew.
He’d gotten his orders—his target—from Goutain several days ago, but he wasn’t close enough to the de Lunis to get to him easily, not with those damnable Kinathin twins always hovering close by. But this might be his opportunity. He had no responsibilities that would justify his presence on the destroyer’s bridge; after all he was just another Syndonese refugee. But he’d managed to get an assignment in the ship’s galley, had been working there when the duke called down and asked them to bring a light meal to his cabin. He’d made sure he was the one delivering the meal.
No power weapons; they’d register too easily on the ship’s internal security systems. A simple plast knife will do the job quite nicely, he thought as he knocked on the duke’s cabin door.
Charlie felt the ship up-transit as he toweled his hair dry; they had a short transition run of a couple of hours to get to the rendezvous point with the tramp freighter. The shower had felt good, even though it was the usual one-minute rush job dictated by shipboard rationing. With his rank he could have ignored rationing, but he’d spent too many years adhering to shipboard regulations to casually violate them now.
At the knock on his cabin door he quickly pulled on a pair of pants, then opened the door. He didn’t recognize the man carrying the tray of food—one of the Syndonese refugees—and while he’d seen him about he certainly couldn’t recall his name. “Come in. Come in.” He waved at the small retractable desk against one bulkhead. “Just put it there, and thanks for bringing it. I’m starved.”
“Your Grace,” the man said in a thick Syndonese accent. He crossed the small cabin to the desk, placed the tray on it, and began arranging the meal.
Charlie turned to his grav bunk and the fresh clothing he’d laid out. He could hear the man behind him laying out utensils, removing lids from containers, and arranging the meal. He got a whiff of fresh food . . . and then his implants crashed.
It wasn’t a dramatic thing, but when not deactivated or placed in standby during sleep, there was always a constant background of data chatter like someone else carrying on a quiet conversation on the other side of a large room: easy to ignore, to forget it wasn’t there, until it suddenly stopped. His implants shouldn’t crash like that, cutting him completely out of shipnet, isolating him. That just didn’t happen, unless someone nearby had intentionally jammed the signal—
He dropped, spun, and lurched to one side, grunted as a knife sliced a searing line of pain across his shoulder. He hit the floor, rolled, and came to his feet just as the man charged into him. Charlie managed to get a grip on the wrist of the man’s knife hand. They stood face-to-face, so Charlie head butted him in the nose, sending a spray of blood flying over them both. The man’s face screwed up into an ugly grimace as he and Charlie spun across the small cabin like two dancers enjoying a waltz. Charlie’s thigh caught on the edge of the small desk and they both went down in a cascade of dishes, food, and utensils. Somewhere in the tumble Charlie felt a sharp, intense pain in his right side. His hand closed on the hilt of a dinner knife and he came to his feet, clutching his side and facing the assassin in a crouch.
The man was a pro, no question about it. He knew how to handle a knife and how to fight. But perhaps he saw the same thing in Charlie and that