It took me over an hour to return to the house. I could’ve covered the distance in ten minutes if I took a direct path, but after the scare with Richard I wanted to be absolutely sure I didn’t have a tagalong.
Entering a potentially compromised building with only a knife was stupid. But I’d checked the perimeter twice and no one else lurked in the shadows. Stationing your entire team in the compromised house was equally stupid. We’d see whose stupid won.
The back door was unlocked. I slipped inside. “Loch?” I called. It gave me away, but it also meant I wasn’t sneaking up on the Devil of Fornax Zero in the dark. And if it wasn’t Loch waiting for me, I’d rather know that while I still had an easy exit at my back.
“In here.”
“We really should’ve had a secret ‘I promise there isn’t a roomful of mercs in here’ keyword,” I muttered to myself.
“I promise there isn’t a roomful of mercs in here,” Loch called back. I could hear the grin in his voice.
I locked the back door and approached the room we’d used before. The door was open and the light was on. Loch sat on a barstool that hadn’t been in the room before. He clutched a bloody rag to his upper left arm.
“Holy hell, are you okay?”
“Energy bolt grazed me,” he said. “Just deep enough that it didn’t cauterize. It looks worse than it is.”
“That’s good because it looks terrible,” I said. “Why didn’t you get the first aid kit?”
“Didn’t know we had one,” Loch said. “I’ll be fine by tomorrow. Can’t say the same for the bastard who shot me.”
“What happened?” I asked. I pulled out my com and checked him for trackers and bugs. He was clean, as was the room, and our packs from the ship. The two trackers I’d attached to his cloak didn’t set off the alarm since they were mine now. Assuming neither of us had been tracked the old-fashioned way, we wouldn’t have to leave tonight.
I rummaged around in my pack from the ship until I dug out the first aid kit. Loch grimaced but didn’t object. He was right, the wound looked worse than it was. It was shallow, but as wide and long as my finger. I bet it stung like nobody’s business. I cleaned the wound and put a healing bandage on it.
“I went to look for heat only to realize the heater was missing. I’d been feeling twitchy, so I went outside to check the perimeter. Rockhurst’s men are sneaky fuckers, I’ll give them that. They moved in before I could warn you, so I did what I could to draw them away.” He shrugged his bad shoulder. “It worked a little too well.”
“If the crew is from the Santa Celestia—and I don’t know why they wouldn’t be—they are some of the most highly trained troops in House Rockhurst. I can’t believe they didn’t hit you worse than that if they had time to get a shot off.”
“He was preoccupied with the direction of my blade,” Loch said.
I’d seen Loch in action. I knew he had to have been military at one point because he was part of the team suppressing the Fornax Rebellion. But to know he’d gone toe-to-toe with one or more of Rockhurst’s elite soldiers and come out relatively unscathed . . . well, that was just plain scary.
“So who sold us out?” I asked. I shrugged off the extra cloak and untied the bag of clothes from around my waist. I should’ve grabbed some real food while I was out. Another energy bar held the appeal of eating dirt, but I needed the calories. And I needed to drink more water. I could feel the first signs of dehydration creeping in.
“The punk who tried to shake us down. I found his rat right before Rockhurst closed on us. Said he heard a new crew was looking for a big guy and thought he’d take care of the problem for his boss. He didn’t mention you to Rockhurst because he was afraid they wouldn’t come if there were two of us.”
“I got tagged on my way out. Managed to lose him in the central district. Did you know Richard is on-planet?”
Loch’s gaze sharpened and he sat straighter. “How do you know?”
That was a clever dodge of the question. “I nearly ran into him on the street. How did you know?”
“I doubled back on the soldiers. Heard them talking about how Richard was going to have their asses if they didn’t find me.”
Plausible, but not entirely true. I’d been reading people for a long time. Loch lied better than most, but I’d bet anything that he was lying now. So what did he gain by lying? Was he trying to work a double-cross with Richard?
“Did Rockhurst see you?” Loch asked. His own suspicion was obvious now. Clearly our road to trust was progressing not-at-all.
“I don’t think so. He didn’t stop me and no one followed me. But we’re going to need to move fast or they’ll catch us again. How many do you think are guarding the ship?”
“At least two. Even with the ship’s security they’ll leave a couple men behind. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a six-man team, to give them rotating shifts and backup.”
I sat on the bed and dug out an energy bar. This one was blueberry flavored. At least it was less objectionable than the mango one from this morning. I drank the last of the water from the ship. “Any idea if the tap water is drinkable?”
“Should be. These houses are still on the main water system. I’d let it run for a while first.”
That was a project for tomorrow, along with a laundry solution and a shower. Tonight I needed to contact one of my siblings and sweet-talk them into giving up prized family intel over only moderately secure channels.
We were all close, as if making up for our parents’ distance, but I was closest to my sisters. I could ask them for the moon and they’d do their damnedest to deliver. Just as I would do anything for them. So they were the most likely candidates for a huge, dangerous favor.
It would have to be Bianca. She had moved back to House von Hasenberg after her husband’s death, and she always seemed to have information that no one else could find. Plus, I was closest to her. Even among family we all played the game, though not as ruthlessly.
I activated my true identity chip and held the new com up to it.
“Verify,” a computer voice demanded.
“Ada von Hasenberg, smartest of all the von Hasenbergs.” Yeah, we got to pick our own verification phrases. I held the camera up to my eye for a retina scan. The com beeped.
“What are you doing?” Loch asked.
“I’m setting up this com to be able to send and receive on the secure House channels. Then I’m going to ask my sister for a huge favor and hope she comes through. Then I’m stealing a ship and leaving this freezing rock behind. What are you doing?”
“Trying not to bleed to death.” I glanced up sharply to find him staring at his com and not bleeding at all. He looked up and laughed. “I’m kidding. But if you don’t let me in on the plan, that might as well be what I’m doing.”
“I just told you the plan. When and if you need to know more, I’ll let you know. If you have a better plan, I’d love to hear it.” It was somewhat gratifying to see that Loch liked giving up control just about as much as I had when we were landing—that is, not at all.
I quickly typed a message to Bianca letting her know in as much detail as I dared what was happening and what I needed. I didn’t think she’d rat me out to Father, but if she thought my plan was too dangerous, she would send our brother Benedict in to save the day. And Benedict was exactly what this situation did not need.
I sent it priority, but even so, I didn’t expect a response until tomorrow morning at the earliest. I checked the rest of the family chatter. There were a few rumbles of trouble with Rockhurst over some planet in the distant Antlia sector.
Nothing overt in the family chatter indicated that Rockhurst was on the brink of war, but the very lack of such information and speculation was telling. Any posts about Rockhurst were carefully neutral. What was going on?
It would be so much easier if I could just call Richard up and ask. But he’d track the signal before the first word was spoken. If I could just get him alone for two minutes, I could ask him in person.