Chapter 86: Trust

Chloe sat beneath vaulted white ceilings lit by alternating streams of red and blue light. Every few minutes, the colors slowly faded into one another and emerged in the opposite streams, lending the massive dining room a purplish cast. A carpet made of individual tufts of reactive gel conformed to her feet. If she hadn't been wearing a flight suit, she suspected they would have literally tickled her toes. She sat in a round blue chair, facing an almost identical red one on the opposite side of a table where a tiny, almost imperceptible graviton field prevented alcohol globes from rolling to the floor. The Algreil Aerospace logo adorned the table.

The Algreil Aerospace oligarch adorned the red chair.

Chloe looked around very deliberately and very slowly. She didn't look directly at Rudy, and he didn't speak to her.

Which was good, because she had half a mind to lunge across the table and strangle him.

Finally, Chloe allowed her gaze to return to Rudy, met his eyes – he didn't quite flinch – and said, “What. The. Hell?”

Chloe didn't curse often, and her voice broke a little, but it didn't take away from the force the word lent her question.

“I can explain everything,” Rudy said.

“This, I've got to hear.”

“Then sit back, babe, and listen to a story of rare and startling brilliance. Mine, specifically.”

Chloe sighed. “Rudy. Don't kid around. I want to know why you decided to expose us.”

“We're hiding in plain sight again,” Rudy said.

“Because that worked so well on Wellach?”

“Heh.” Rudy paused, licked his lips. “Well, it didn't exactly get the job done then. But this time is different.”

Chloe waited expectantly, hands folded in her lap, head slightly cocked.

“You have to admit,” he said. “We're way more in plain sight.”

She groaned. “Did you think about this at all? For even a minute?”

“Actually, I sort of sketched it out last night,” Rudy said.

“And didn't tell me.”

“I am not walking into your bedroom in the middle of the night,” he said. “Not if I'm expected to walk out again before the sun rises.”

“Rudy!” Chloe looked away and told herself it was because she didn’t want him to see her blush. Not because she hadn’t, much.

“Isn't that propriety or something? Avoiding the occasions of sin? Or in this case, of depowering?”

“I wouldn't have let you do anything,” Chloe said.

“Tired and worn out and worried people let a lot of things go they otherwise wouldn't,” Rudy said. “Anyway, that's not the point. If I'd told you my plan, you'd have said no.”

“So you decided not to ask?”

He nodded, as if that was the most natural thing in the world.

“And Georg Marchess thought you were rude to him?” Chloe stood up, the chair practically sliding off her as she did, and stalked to one of the windows. She wasn't sure if they were real windows or just screens displaying a feed from a camera somewhere else on the Algreils’ Etemenos estate. “He didn't know the half of it.”

“Chloe...”

“You're still joking around. And you're still trying to protect me.”

“Pretty much, yeah.” She felt the erinyes stir and turned to see Rudy only a couple of meters away. “I'm gonna ride in like a knight in shining armor – even if you've got the armor part better covered for now – save your dad and save the day. You can call that protecting you. I call it me bringing the awesome.”

Chloe shook her head. “You really think that's going to work?”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Can't hurt to try, can it? I just put a huge amount of political pressure on President Ferrill and her rivals. I'm not a criminal, and neither are you. The only thing they can accuse you of being is an unlimited psychic, and you can fix that any time you want by getting close to me for however long it takes to wear away your mojo. That would sure leave egg on all their faces. As for me? I haven't done a damn thing except climb into a shuttle with the oh-so-patriotic Mr. Marchess.”

Chloe was about to snap a response, but he'd just laid out a whole lot she'd never even thought of. She gulped. “But... how does that help my dad?”

“If some no-name mechaneer in a possible nob mecha wins the Etemenos Cup and then asks for Jack Hughes's release, it's going to be pretty easy for the Senate to say, 'sorry, pal, but he's too dangerous.” Rudy grinned. “If the Crimson Phoenix, now oligarch and chairman of Algreil Aerospace and one of the most powerful and richest men in the galaxy – not to mention devastatingly handsome, and so modest! – asks, while very definitely not asking for Otto Algreil to be pardoned? Any senator who objects is going to look crazy.”

“But if they say I'm an Imperial, people would get scared. They'd go along with a lot to keep me under the senate's thumb.”

“That's why you, who will be up there with me when I make the request, will hug me and kiss me and cling to me like you're nervous as hell – and kill that stupid erinyes and your powers. They'll check you out and look like idiots.”

“If you're wrong,” Chloe said, “I'll be powerless and captive.”

“If I'm right, we walk away with nobody getting hurt.”

“Except your brother,” Chloe said. “And everybody else who's going to be executed over his rebellion.”

Rudy opened his mouth to answer. Shut it. Bravado gone, he said, “Yeah.”

Chloe hung her head. “What about my mom? We still don't know where she is.”

“Algreil Aerospace is a lot more likely to find her than you and me wandering around Etemenos. Hell, if she's free, she'll find us.”

Which was all true.

Chloe only had one problem with Rudy's plan. “It sounds great. Perfect, even.”

“That's why they've suddenly started paying me the big bucks.”

“But Rudy,” she said, “you could have told me. You could have convinced me.”

“I knew you'd handle it fine,” Rudy said. “And you did. I thought old Georgy was gonna choke when you threatened him.”

“It's not about whether or not I could 'handle' it. It's about whether or not you trust me to decide! You hung me out to dry and you didn't so much as warn me.” Chloe shook her head. “That's fine if it happens in a battle or something. I know you can't always tell me everything you see in a fight because you've got a lot more understanding of how combat works. But you could have told me, Rudy, and you didn't. Not that night. Not the next morning. Not even on the public shuttle we took to the core.”

“I wasn't sure I was gonna do it, but when we got separated in the crowd and I couldn't see you, it just... it's a good plan, and it seemed like the best way to find you.” He strode back to the table and snatched a handful of globes from it, then collapsed into his red reactive gel chair. He practically hurled one globe into his mouth and washed it down with the rest. “I'm sorry, Chloe. It was stupid, impulsive, and you're right, it was damned rude.”

“But not wrong,” Chloe said quietly.

He glanced up. “Huh?”

“But it wasn't wrong. You really do have a shot at this, don't you? Don't we?”

Rudy nodded. “I think so. Before, we probably had a one in a billion chance. Now it's one in a million at worst.”

Chloe glanced at the window. It reflected her tired smile. “With odds like that, how can we lose?”

Rudy wore a matching expression. “Obviously.”

Chloe couldn't stay angry with him. Not now that she understood, maybe even agreed with, what he meant to do. Not when she could see how much acting his brother's part had exhausted him.

Not when he'd actually apologized.

Without prompting.

Well, without explicit prompting, at least.

It was something, and she took it. “Rudy... you made the right call. And if I hadn't seen you pull it off, maybe I wouldn't have understood how it was the right call. But last time you planned to 'surprise' me, Stephan nearly tore us apart with it.”

Rudy looked away.

“So promise me, Rudy,” Chloe said. “Promise you won't keep me in the dark anymore.”

“I won't, Clo.” He swallowed hard. “If I'm, uh, supposed to come clean, then... there's something else you need to know.”

Chloe frowned. Rudy sounded genuinely nervous. that was something she didn't hear very often. Was he more tired than she'd thought?

“I, uh.” He stuck his hands into the pockets his flight suit formed. One bunched up like he was grabbing something. “Crap. I should be closer for this.”

“You know that can't happen.”

“Even with the plan we've got now?”

“No plan survives contact with the enemy,” Chloe reminded him. “I may still need my power.”

“Yeah. Dammit.” He removed the non-grabbing hand from his pocket and rubbed his temple. “But this kind of loses something from a distance.”

“What does?”

“Maybe I should wait.” Rudy started to relax the hand still in his pocket. Left it in. Grabbed again. Pulled out whatever was in there. He looked at it. Chloe saw a faint glint as the blue and red lights reflected off curved metal. He started to put the object back. “I think I should. I should wait. Because, you know. Closer. After we're done, you'll be over your erinyes hangup and I can say this properly.”

Chloe put her hands on her hips and skewered him with a mostly mock glare. “Rudy Kaine Algreil,” she said, “stop stalling and ask me to marry you.”