Chapter 3

"Are you tracking her?" Jake Hedron, the Chairman of Tomlin Security asked.

The tinny voice in his headphones assured him they knew exactly where Tanya was. She was presently about a hundred and fifty miles north of the Hawaiian Islands, and a hundred and thirty miles high, traveling East at six-thousand kph.

"Have you decrypted their flight plan yet?" he asked.

There were several major terminals capable of handling a strato-carrier, but unless it made a radical course correction, there were only three where it would probably land: Taipei, Hong Kong or Beijing. He had a capable team of Tomlin agents assembling at each of the three possible touchdown points.

"No, sir," the tinny voice on the other end told him. "Wait! There's data coming in now. Their landing coordinates indicate ... Hong Kong. ETA is forty minutes."

'Hong Kong?' Jake thought to himself. "Thanks for the data. Keep me updated."

'Okay, Grams, we're coming to get you!' Jake thought. He grabbed his coat on the way out of his office. 'A short hop to the strato-port, and then ninety minutes to Hong Kong. We're gonna get those white slaver bastards who kidnapped you!'

By the time he would arrive in Hong Kong, Tanya would have been delivered to whoever had purchased her, with his agents close behind arresting everyone involved and closing down another pipeline to the slavers who took advantage of helpless young girls that fell into their evil web.

Fifteen minutes later, he was strapped into the private Tomlin Corporation Strato-jet racing down the runway toward the tall, fragile-looking ramp that would launch the tiny craft skyward, despite a five minute delay to replace a steward who suddenly had a family emergency. By the time it was airborne, the craft was already bursting through the sound barrier.

Jake was glued to his contour seat by the heavy G-forces as the craft shot skyward, then was thrown forward against his restraining harness as the engines cut out. He was surrounded by total silence. There wasn't even the sound of air whooshing by outside. 'There isn't any air outside to whoosh, you dummy! You're in space!'

Curious, he unfastened his harness and floated upward. He always assumed that he would be airsick in one of these things, but his fascination with what was happening made him forget his queasy stomach. As he floated toward the ceiling of the craft, he noticed ladder rings running along its center. 'I bet I know what these are for... '

Jake pulled himself along the ceiling toward the steward's galley, traveling from one link to the next, excited by the ease with which he could move. Then he panicked as he approached the front bulkhead. Waving his arms wildly and yelling didn't seem to help him avert the headlong crash. As he floated backward from the impact, the steward's arm reached out and grabbed him, pulling him forward into the tiny galley.

"Whoa there, mate!" the steward said. Jake looked down at her and was suddenly lost in a pair of beautiful azul eyes.

"How did you do that?" he asked, referring to her easy catch of his seventy-kilo frame. "I'm not all that light, you know."

"Well, mate, if you must know," she said in a clipped accent, "I let the bulkhead stop you, then I just reeled you in, real friendly like!" She grinned up at him, cocking an eyebrow.

'Can everybody do that but me?' thought Jake. He looked away, stunned by her impact against his mind.

"Coffee?" she asked, offering up what looked like an old-fashioned ketchup dispenser.

He took it, noticing that it was cool to the touch, then put the pointed end in his mouth and gently squeezed. The coffee was warm, not too hot and made just the way he liked it, right down to the piece of cinnamon that now clogged the nozzle.

"Thanks," Jake said, looking oddly down into the nozzle.

"Just blow into it an' it'll clear," Tabatha, her nametag read, told him. She smiled up at him. "Business or pleasure?"

"What?" Jake asked, surprised by the question. "Oh, um, business, I'm afraid. Typical security nonsense." He sucked in another mouthful of coffee.

"Wanna look at the stars?" Tabatha asked, pretending to be coy.

Jake smiled. "Sure."

Tabatha reached up and pressed a button on the side of a cabinet. The sound of a panel sliding made him look upward, and then he was looking at thousands of stars! Tabatha dimmed the galley lights so that their reflections didn't obstruct the view. 'They're all different colors!' he thought to himself, awed by the panoramic view.

He heard Tabatha chuckle. It was an odd sound for a girl to make; usually, girls giggled. "Mostly only the white light reaches all the way to the ground," she said quietly.

The sound of her voice soothed his hectic mind, allowing him to relax for a moment. 'It's almost like she can tell what I'm thinking... '

He watched her as she looked out at the stars, noticing the reflected starlight in her eyes. She caught him looking at her. Then they both looked back up.

"Do you ever get tired of looking at them?" he asked her.

He could see her bouncy red hair move as she shook her head.