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.Kipper replied.“Lucca Brezhnaya wants me for interrogation.” Kipper laughed dryly.“But she forgot to provide my physician with an adequate incentive to follow her orders.”“Oh, that,” said Jessamyn, shrugging.She supposed this would be a good time to explain her own status on the Most Wanted list.She was about to speak when Kipper continued.“So the problem is, the Chancellor might show up looking for me some day.If Cameron feels I can avoid detection by the Chancellor while staying with you, I will do so.If Cameron believes the Chancellor is likely to discover me, I’ll … do something else.”The stolen ship hovered over a hillside covered in trees.Jess found a space suitable for landing and brought the craft to rest.“Listen, Kipper,” began Jessamyn.“About Chancellor Brezhnaya—”“No,” said Kipper.“I won’t be talked out of this.We ask Cameron first.She knows this world.She knows the Chancellor.”“I’m not disagreeing.But there are a few important things I haven’t told you yet,” said Jessamyn.Like, if Lucca wants you for interrogation, she wants my head on a platter.She swallowed and was preparing for a fuller confession when the ship began to shudder.“What on Ares?” muttered Kipper, glancing at the navigation panel.“Kip—it’s not the ship!” cried Jessamyn.“It’s them!”Upon the rear and side view screens could be seen multiple crafts.Small.Maneuverable.And armed.One set down directly before their stolen vehicle and disclosed four figures carrying weapons.Wearing red armor.“I thought you said Madeira was a Wallace stronghold,” said Jessamyn.“What are Lucca’s best friends doing here?”Kipper, disregarding Jessamyn’s rising panic, was zooming in on images of the soldiers outside.“Come out, unarmed, hands on your heads,” called the leader of the squadron.“Kip, what are we doing?” demanded Jess.“Does this thing have weaponry?”“I don’t think these are Red Squadron Forces,” replied Kip.“Kipper, they’re wearing red armor!”“I’m brain-injured, not color-blind,” snapped Jess’s former captain.“But look at those helmets.They’re using an older version that was linked to brain trauma.Dr.Ruchenko filed a patent for an improved seal which went into production a year ago.No one wears the old-style helmets.I don’t think, anyway.”Jessamyn shook her head as a blast shook the ship’s exterior.“We’re going out,” said Kipper.“We’re surrendering.”Jess shook her head and ran her hands across the helm.“Oh, no we’re not!”There was another loud blast outside.“Hades and Aphrodite!” cursed Jess.They’ve disabled the—”One final blast blew the hatch door off its hinges.Cursing, Jess raised her hands above her head as Kipper sank to the ground, moaning.“She’s not armed!” Jess shouted.“Neither am I—don’t shoot her! She’s in pain.”Two soldiers in red appeared to consult with one another while another two examined the interior, looking, perhaps, for stowaways.“It’s just the two of us,” said Jess.Kip moaned and placed her hands on her head, attempted to rise.Two weapons were instantly trained on her.“Hades!” Jess called out.“She’s in no state to harm anyone.”“Silence,” called the leader in red.“You will come with us.You will not speak.”“Who are you?” demanded Kipper, now somewhat recovered.“The detainees will remain silent,” shouted a deep-voiced woman.Jess and Kipper had their hands bound—in front—and were marched silently down a steep, wooded hillside.Several missteps made it clear why their hands hadn’t been bound from behind—they need their arms for balance.Jess caught a glimpse of the ocean at one point, white breakers crashing into dark rock far, far below.She smelled something pungent and medicinal as her feet crunched through the detritus of leaves and twigs upon the forest floor.“Eucalyptus,” murmured Kipper, inhaling deeply.“Silence!” ordered a secure.At last they came to a paved drive and a brief hike toward what appeared to be, of all things, a castle.Jess shot a wondering look at Kipper and then frowned, noticing her captain’s unhealthy color.“She’s going to need help,” Jess called out, receiving a weapon in her face for her efforts.“Aphrodite’s hair curlers,” she mumbled to herself.But as Kipper slumped forward in pain once more, the low-voiced woman asked one of the soldiers in red to pick her up.The captain was carried up a set of stairs, Jessamyn following.They arrived at a forecourt, the castle towering above them.At the entrance, the secure in front removed his helmet for a retinal scan and passed his wrist along another scanner.A portcullis-like gate swung forward to admit the group.“You’ve got to be kidding,” muttered Jessamyn, eyeing the gate.It was like something out of another age.She took one last glimpse in the open air, noticing a yellow flag flapping on a turret, a red lion emblazoned upon the background hanging beside a blue flag crossed diagonally with white.If either was supposed to signify something, the meanings were lost on her.The pair were marched down a narrow, circular staircase and enclosed in what Jess supposed was meant to be a dungeon cell.The whole setting made her feel as though she’d left Earth and stepped into the pages of one of the stories she used to read.As Kip recovered from her latest attack, Jessamyn spoke softly.“I told them you needed medical care.Do you always get those attacks so often?”“It depends,” replied Kipper.“Strenuous activity or stress can bring them on more than once an hour.Otherwise, about every hour or two.”“So we’re locked in a … dungeon on an island in the middle of the Atlantic,” said Jessamyn.“Great.Just great.”“I wouldn’t call it the middle of the Atlantic,” said Kipper.“Africa’s less than a thousand kilometers to the east.”“Oh, good.Nice to know which way to swim once we gnaw our way out of here.” Jess hurled a kick at the rough, dark stone of the cell wall.“Volcanic,” remarked Kipper.Jess sighed and sunk down upon a sort of bench carved from the same kind of rock.It had been somewhat polished, though, such that sitting on it didn’t tear at the fabric of her clothing.Considerate, she thought.“You were about to tell me something,” said Kipper.Jess looked at her former captain blankly.“I was?”“Yes.Just before our ship was surrounded.”“Oh.That.” Jess frowned and balled her hands into fists.“Okay, so you know how you said Lucca wants you for questioning? Well, she wants me for a whole lot more.”Kipper raised one eyebrow.Jess recalled the look, so familiar from the time the two had spent aboard the Galleon.Jess sighed.There was the other secret as well, but she didn’t feel up to revealing the loss of Mars’s last great raiding ship
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