Free The Iron Admiral: Deception by Greta van Der Rol

timetable.
    ****
Somewhere in Malmos
     
    “We have to do something,” Sean said. “The clock’s ticking.”
    “She never goes out on her own,” Pyndrees said. “And we’ve got no chance of getting to her in the Fleet complex.”
    Sean frowned at the screen. Allysha’s icon rested on the middle Fleet tower. Tepich had said three months. Three weeks had already passed with no end in sight.
     
    At least with this new identity Sean was able to get rid of the stupid little beard. Liam McNeill was no more, of course. Jak Constaz had replaced him; younger, fitter with more hair. His eyes were green and his hair was dark red. The shape changers had done a good job.
    Pyndrees, too, had undergone a change. Elric Hudson was still a buyer for a large firm but his appearance was quite different from that of Kris Hybent.
    Sean dropped into a chair and put his feet up on the kaff table. “We should’ve tried when she was in the city with Leonov’s wife.”
    Pyndrees swung around. “I told you then, and I’ll tell you again. I saw two obvious guards and I’d wager a week’s takings that the tall blonde was an agent, as well. There were probably others. If we’d tried a snatch, we’d be finished.”
    Sean raised a lip in a snarl. “I’ll be finished anyway if I don’t deliver her.”
    Pyndrees sat down and started to clean his fingernails with the tip of a knife. “You’ll just have to be patient. Be ready to take a chance when it arrives.”
    ****
ProserpineandIntrepid , thought Allysha as she closed her apartment’s door. But first, maybe a bit of Fleet tradition.
     
    “Brew me some kaff, Albert, then tell me what you know about love lilies.”
    Allysha took her cup over to a chair while Albert talked.
    “It’s something of a Fleet legend, Allysha. It harks to the times when space travel took months or years and even moving from a planet’s orbit to a point where a ship could transfer to shift space could take days. Captain Isaac Ishkar finally found the woman of his dreams. But he was called to war before they could marry. He knew months would pass before his return and, having very little time to do much else, he organized with a florist to send his lady one of these flowers every week to remind her of him until he could return.”
    “Hm. And did he?”
    “Yes. He was captured and imprisoned so he wasn’t able to return for two years, but then, at last, they were married. And now it has become something of a tradition for male Fleet officers to declare their intent by giving their lady one of these flowers.”
    One. He’d sent her ten. “Are they expensive?”
    “It depends on the time of the year. Perhaps I should say, they are always expensive. When supply is low, they are extremely expensive.”
    “Why is that? Surely they’re cultivated?”
     
    “They are. But the cultivated blossoms are not of the same quality.They lack the fragrance and glowing color of the wild stock.”
    He’d sent her the wild ones, of course. Never mind. For now, Allysha had more important things to do.
    She went to her study and set up her techpack. All she needed now was access to the maintenance logs forProserpine andIntrepid .
    ****
Hours later, Allysha rubbed her face with her hands. The security was tight, with passwords that changed over time. Even then, the encryption algorithms were complex. But if an InfoDroid could get in, so could she; if an InfoDroid could unencrypt, so could she. And she’d found out, working with her team, which subsystems to look at for her own investigation.
     
    First, she found footage of Jossur before the battle of Forenisi. The planet had two space stations; the military station was in the outer orbit, a gleaming oval dotted with nodules. Allysha supposed they were the retracted service connections. Several smaller ships were docked. She searched forward in time.
    The
    station was still in place, in stationary orbit but the ships docked to it changed. In the last image, a massive