Free By Honor Betray'd: Mageworlds #3 by Debra Doyle, James D. MacDonald Page B

really did .
    He remembered something else she’d told him about that first visit to Suivi. “Is there anybody else named in the original complaint?”
    “An off-worlder named LeSoit,” the clerk said. “Listed as a crew member on the Sidh , no home of record given.”
    “Is he in custody as well?”
    “He wasn’t on the invoice when we got her,” the clerk said. “You’ll have to take it up with Contract Security.”
    Jessan laid another couple of ten-chits on the counter. “Thanks anyway. Do you have a date-of-release or a price-to-match on Captain Rosselin-Metadi? I have the authority to release funds if necessary.”
    “Sorry, this contract is coded Non-Negotiable.”
    Jessan raised an eyebrow. “For a simple murder complaint? On Suivi Point?”
    “Yes … well. The contractor has filed new charges since turning over the subject.”
    Jessan laid down several more credit chits, and watched them slide across the counter. “May I ask for an enumeration?”
    “Sure.” The clerk punched up another screen on the desk comp. “Let’s see … ‘endangering the defense of Suivi Point, trafficking with the Mageworlds, and impersonating a planetary ruler’ … plus assorted minor charges for concealed weapons, resisting arrest, and indecent exposure.”
    “Indecent exposure?” Jessan shook his head. “I’ll never understand some people.” He put another ten-chit on the counter. “I need to speak with Captain Rosselin-Metadi before I leave.”
    “Sorry,” the clerk said. “The subject’s being held incommunicado right now, with a transfer scheduled to max-pri.”
    “Isn’t that a bit extreme, even for the new charges?”
    The clerk shrugged. “It’s not my fault that the Mageworlds situation has everybody nervous. The max-pri, though … that’s customary whenever a contractor asks the committee for a summary termination order.”
    “I see,” Jessan said. He took out the last of his credit chits and slid it under the barrier. “And who is the contractor that wants a summary termination on Beka Rosselin-Metadi?”
    “A corporation called Tri-Worlds Holding,” the clerk said. “From Pleyver.”
    “Ah,” said Jessan. “I see.”
     
    Brigadier General Perrin Ochemet—Space Force Planetary Infantry, formerly commander of Prime Base on Galcen—lay awake in his darkened cell. He wasn’t certain how long he had been a prisoner of the Mageworlders; food and water came to the cell at regular intervals, and enough dim light to eat and drink by, but he had no idea how many meals a day his captors thought fit to give him.
    They weren’t starving him; the meals were adequate though not lavish. He had been questioned, of course—it would have surprised him not to be—but the interrogation had been cursory enough to be insulting, as if the CO of Prime Base had nothing of importance to tell them. The one question in which they displayed genuine interest was the one for which he didn’t have an answer:
    “Where is General Metadi ?”
    He hadn’t even bothered lying. “I don’t know.”
    They hadn’t believed him at first—had asked him the same questions several times over, with varying degrees of emphasis. In the end they’d brought in one of their Mages, a masked figure in a black cloak who’d listened to him saying “ I don’t know ” yet another time.
    The Mage had done nothing except look at Ochemet from behind the black plastic mask. Then he—or she; Ochemet couldn’t tell which—had said something in the Mageworlds tongue, and the questioners had left him alone ever since.
    Now, however, the faint noise of his cell door sliding open told Ochemet that his period of grace had ended. I should have known they wouldn’t forget about me for very long . He closed his eyes and prepared himself for renewed questioning.
    “Get up and come with me.”
    The voice didn’t belong to any of the Mageworlders. The tone was all wrong—low—pitched and urgent, almost ragged, and without a