Larvut gave me the first gap-toothed smile of his that I’d seen. “Need another drink, hey?”
What I needed was the impossible. A miracle. I needed Qole.
Before I could even consider my next move, the hidden comm in my wrist feed pulsed. My hack to the QUIN had finished transmitting, and my uncle was sending me a message back through it, and not the first one, apparently. I hadn’t had much time to check while nearly getting worked and shouted to death.
Her brother is a strong candidate, but not necessary. I hope you can get data on the girl. And then: She is the one. No matter what, bring her. Immediately. There’s the usual deadline, but you may well have company if you linger. And finally: Why aren’t you responding? Nevarian? If you don’t move now, the damage could be irreparable.
My stomach dropped. I was out of time. Company. Failing was the worst possible outcome for me and mine, but it would be bad for everyone, including Qole, if anyone caught up to me. How Rubion could guess this possibility from across the system was beyond me. Of course there were others who would be interested in my whereabouts, but I’d been careful to shake anyone following me.
I’d have to ask him when I saw him again. For now, I was left with a few unsavory options and a bad taste in my mouth. Because, however I managed it, Qole still had to come with me…as soon as possible, and whether she wanted to or not.
Telu’s voice jolted me awake, piped in over the comm speaker positioned right over my bunk. “Cap, you’re going to want to be here for this.”
Decontamination had taken no time at all, because the containers weren’t actually leaking, only malfunctioning. Since the Kaitan had lifted off again—with Nev on board, surprisingly enough—we’d all been napping on the border of the Alaxak Asteroid Sea, waiting for drone traffic to clear. It felt like I’d barely closed my eyes, but a glance at my infopad resting on its charger proved several hours had slunk by.
Someone else had been doing some slinking, I found, after I flew out of bed and ran to the bridge in my fur slippers, a robe hastily thrown over my tank top and leather leggings. I wished I’d at least put my boots on, because as soon as I arrived and saw what was going on, I wanted to kick something.
Telu was seated in my captain’s chair, typing both at control screens and on a couple of her own infopads, hastily relocated from her station. She was wearing only an undershirt and thermal bottoms, even though I could see her breath in the glow of the console. Basra leaned against the wall, looking more feminine than usual in his own fur-lined robe, sharp eyes surveying the situation. Arjan hovered above Eton, ready to assist him, both of them in equal states of speed-fueled undress.
Only Nev was fully clothed in his too-fine garb. Eton had him pinned against the ground, the muscles in his huge arms and bare shoulders bunched like massive dock ropes. Nev’s cheek was mashed into the metal grating. The long bag he’d brought with him lay near my chair at Telu’s feet, packed and seemingly ready to go.
Nev didn’t so much smile up at me as grimace.
Telu confirmed my guess at what had happened—and worse. “He hacked the system, the bastard,” she snarled, still bent over the control panel and her infopads. “A damned good hack, too. He got around the security cameras and alarms—all except one that I’d hidden extra deep in code—and tried to induce stasis oxygen levels.”
“To put us to sleep,” Eton grunted unnecessarily, grinding his elbow deeper between Nev’s shoulder blades. Oddly, Nev didn’t wince at that. Only when I looked at him again.
“If you’ll let me explain—” he began.
“Oh, I see,” I interrupted. “You want to explain. Like you tried to explain in the bar with lies. Like you were going to explain later, after we were unconscious and you’d robbed us blind.” My words were deceptively calm. A run-up to something far worse.
“No, I don’t want your Shadow, or your money—”
“So you want the ship, is it? I saw you admiring it on the dock.” I crouched near his head and grabbed a handful of his hair, dragging his eyes up to meet mine. “This is my family’s ship. You’ll have to pry the controls out of my cold, dead fingers.”
He met my stare with a level one of his own.
“Um,” Telu said. “Actually, I don’t think he wanted the ship. He’d engaged the autopilot, but on a course to intercept a passenger cruiser that took off from Alaxak ten minutes ago. It looks like he was planning on boarding the ship from the Kaitan. He used an encrypted channel to arrange for the pickup.” She turned to look at me for the first time. “He also reserved two spots.”
“What?” My eyes went wide as I looked down at Nev again. “Who were you planning on taking with you?” I glanced at the crew; they were all faces I trusted. None of them were about to betray me. Only him. “If you thought you could buy one of my crew, think again.”
His lips pressed together in a firm line.
“Yeah, you really want to explain,” I hissed.
“I’m not in the most advantageous position to do so,” he said, flicking his eyes up at Eton. The brown of his irises once again seemed to flash brighter than most eyes did. “Anything I say with his elbow in my spine won’t have the requisite care put into the telling. Not to mention I won’t be able to finish explaining once he snaps my spine.”
As if proving him right, Eton leaned into him, extracting a short, muffled groan.
“Maybe we don’t want to hear what he has to say then, if it’s that bad,” Arjan said in a low voice.
“Or perhaps you let me up,” Nev gasped. Even flattened on the ground and in obvious pain, he still had the nerve to sound like he had a say in the matter. It was a miracle Eton hadn’t yet broken his jaw, because it took all my self-restraint not to rub his smug little face against the floor’s serrated grating.
I didn’t need to tell Eton not to let him up. “Someone else is in on this,” I said, the thought dawning on me. “Is the second ticket on that passenger cruiser for them, hey, Nev?” Something about him being out here had seemed suspicious. He was probably the type to have henchmen with him. “You’re trying to rob us with some help?”
Nev tried to shake his head, but he couldn’t move with my fist still in his hair. “Trust me, I’m not working with lowlifes like that.”
“Trust you,” I said with disgust. “You’re the lowlife, however you’re trying to fool us. Telu, does it say if the second passenger would already be aboard the cruiser?”
Telu narrowed her eyes as she scanned the screens. “In this case, the bastard seems to be telling the truth. He cited a medical emergency as the reason for the unusual pickup, which would require appropriate transportation for someone inert.” She snarled the word.
Inert. Unmoving. Unconscious. Stasis oxygen levels had that effect on a human body.