Page 9 of Salvation
Chapter Four
Why did morning have to come so damn early? Nick staggered like an inebriate after a binge marathon as he trailed after Dante along the front path to Ambassador K’nil’s cube. Sakura must be feeling the same pain, but she carried herself with a composed air. Could she actually be looking forward to this meeting?
Dante stopped and Nick stared up at the massive front door. Everything about the ambassador’s place was huge. It was the largest residence in all of New Damon Beach…it had to be. ’Ferths averaged between nine to twelve feet in height.
Nick rubbed his temples to ease the dull throb in his head.Physician, heal thyself.A soft, humorous sound slipped out. Next to him, Sakura jerked like he’d just woken her up. Apparently she felt more pain than she was showing, which meant he wasn’t the only one dead on his feet. A case of misery loved company, that was for sure.
The over-sized front door opened to reveal a disproportionately tiny, white-haired Terrian woman.
“Good morning, Mrs. Beck,” Dante greeted the ambassador’s housekeeper jauntily. Nick gave the back of Dante’s head a slit-eyed glare. Nice to know someone got a decent night’s sleep.
“And good morning to you too, Doctor Dacian.” For a woman pushing seventy, Adah Beck was still full of youth and vigor. A little sass too from time to time. At Camp One she’d been adopted by all the kids as the camp grandmother. Not a surprise, really. She was that easy to love. And now this little bit of a woman was the housekeeper for the Anferthian ambassador.
“Nicholaus Bock, you look like you got hit by a train.” Mrs. Beck reached up, her smooth, cool hand patting his cheek.
Nick gave her a lop-sided grin. “Nah, just sleep deprivation, Mrs. B.” The real fun would happen later when thecapuluscrash-and-burn hit like a Mack truck without brakes. By then he should be holed up somewhere quiet and alone. Probably not at Alex’s, though. He wasn’t sure if he was ready for that level of discomfort. Besides, Alex might not know he was in town, or have room for an unexpected house guest.
“Ah.” Mrs. Beck nodded, understanding shining in her brown eyes. “That will do it, dear. Come in; Ambassador K’nil is waiting for you in his private office.”
She led them down a hallway and through a huge set of double doors. Beyond lay a comfortable room lined with bookshelves. They passed between a super-sized key-hole desk and several cushy chairs of various sizes arranged in a semi-circle. At the farthest end of the room, in front of a tightly shuttered window were a couple of matching loveseats. And—Nick’s heartrate sped up—a long sofa that silently begged him to come take a nap.
Mrs. Beck led them straight toward that sofa. The elderly woman stopped in front of the wall on their left and four rectangles appeared in the wall, each sliding diagonal to reveal yet another hallway. Nick’s jaw went slack. Where was the crystalline ID reader? What kind of new technology was this? The invisible wall-door concept wasn’t new to him, but he’d only seen them aboard Fleet ships, at the Collegium, and in that damned slave cell he’d been incarcerated in. Every last one of those doors had had an ID reader.
The rest of the group proceeded through the doorway. He cast a last, longing look at the sofa. So close to a nap, but it was not meant to be. What a shame.
Mrs. Beck led them to the end of a short passage toward a blank wall, which also opened on its own accord, no ID reader in sight.
“Shielded room,” Dante murmured as they entered the smaller room beyond. “For privacy.”
There wasn’t much furniture in this room; just a narrow table against the wall and a bunch of tufted, straight-backed chairs in various sizes, similar to the set up they’d just passed in the library. And muffins. A platter piled with assorted muffins—Mrs. B’s delicious, made-from-scratch muffins, no doubt. Nick swallowed the sudden excess of saliva in his mouth as his stomach emitted a long, low growl.
“Master Healer Dacian, Healer Bock.” An older Anferthian man rose from one of the chairs and inclined his grey head. “Mine is the pleasure to see you both again.”
The Anferthian ambassador couldn’t be any older than Mrs. Beck, but what she lacked in height, he had in spades. At least eleven feet tall, maybe slightly more. His demeanor always seemed calm and in control, even during the potentially explosive negotiations of the reclamation. The man had handled the criminal offenses of his fellow Coalition member Supreme Warden T’lik without breaking a sweat. Despite his reputation as a tenacious leader for his people, it was his black eyes that had always struck Nick as kindly.
“Ambassador K’nil,” Dante replied as Nick inclined his head in acknowledgement. “It pleases me to introduce my disipula, Sakura Yamata.”
“Great is my pleasure, Sakura of Terr.” K’nil extended his left hand, palm facing up, in the traditional Anferthian manner of greeting a new acquaintance.
Sakura stepped forward and placed her right hand in his. “Mine is the pleasure, Ambassador K’nil.”
Someone must have drilled her in Anferthian protocol at some point. How else would she know this?
K’nil then swept his hand toward the 3-D hologram of a Matiran woman who appeared to be in her mid-forties, by the Terrian calendar. Curls of short, dark hair framed her square face. “Mine is the pleasure to introduce Administer Venta Corvus of Matir, and I am not sure…ah, good. Here is Captain Ora Solaris, representing the Unified Fleet.”
“My apologies for being late,” a familiar voice said from behind Nick.
Ora strode through the doorway in her usual no-nonsense manner. Familiar tawny eyes twinkled with the sparkle of someone who’d just played a practical joke. What the heck was Gryf’s cousin doing here?
“Close your mouth, Nick, before something flies in,” she murmured as she passed on the other side of Dante. “And, welcome to the inner sanctum.”
He snapped his mouth closed as she continued on to an empty chair next to the Matiran Administer’s 3-D hologram. Well, it seemed like some things never changed. “Seriously?” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Next time maybe we can just meet up for coffee,sobin.”
He called her cousin because to him, she was. The juvenile crush he’d had on her when he was eighteen had faded quickly after she fell in love with Bodie. Even after Bodie’s death, Nick’s youthful infatuation had never returned. Ora was part of his family, like another older sister, God help him, and he couldn’t imagine her as anything else.
“Master Healer Dacian, Disipula Yamata,” the 3-D hologram of Administer Corvusgreeted Dante and Sakura, then she turned and bowed deeply to Nick. “Brother of our esteemed Profeta, it pleases me to finally meet you.”
Nick resisted rolling his eyes. He should be used to this by now. Alex’s role in fulfilling an ancient Matiran prophecy had earned her a place of honor in Matiran society. As her younger brother, he’d found himself with the status of minor celebrity, which apparently out-weighed his status as a healer in the eyes of the new Matiran Administer. Another reason New L.A. had been preferable. If anyone there knew about this part of his life, they’d never said anything. But Corvus’s station was akin to a planetary president, and one didn’t argue with a galactic leader over titles. Not in public, at least.
