Voices sounded over the intercom again. “Thank you for your cooperation, Captain SooSenk.”
“Not a problem,” Divana said. The voices stopped again, and the silence went on for so long I started to get worried.
“Can I speak now?” Samson asked me.
I shifted some of the containers. “Yes.”
“Did we win?”
“Yes, we won.” I climbed out.
“That was very enjoyable.”
“Whatever you say.”
Lainie burst through the door. “That was close! Samson, shut down right now.” The hologram disappeared.
“You’re going to have to do something about that,” I said. “The bot claims to only take orders from you, except when it decides for itself.”
She picked up the sphere and put it back in the bag. “That’s an easy enough fix, but we are going to have to be careful. I told Divana I was the one who got into the system to erase your name off the manifest, but I don’t think she believes me. She’s been interrogating me in the Z room since the CF officer left.”
I hadn’t thought about that. “As long as you keep Samson out of sight, she can’t prove otherwise.” I turned to Javen and Decker. “Do you think they were looking for me?”
“I’m not sure,” Javen said. “They seemed more interested in the male crew members than any of us as soon as they realized neither Decker nor I was old enough to be Ansun.”
“I suppose it makes sense. They must be on the lookout for ships heading in the direction of Fosaan. Ansun would need a number of them to transport all his people.”
Lainie smiled. “It helped that Mags was here. That played into our story of moving to another planet. And now that they’ve stopped us, we should be on a cleared list, so if we run into any more patrols, it won’t be a problem. And now, I really am going to sleep.”
We all went to sleep. It’s tough to keep to a reasonable sleep schedule on a ship, though people function better if they do. But I was so tired, I didn’t care how long I slept.
When I woke up, Lainie and Javen were still crashed out, but Decker was awake and sitting on a stack of containers. I sat up. He motioned for me to go out into the passageway. His eyes were so bleary he looked as if he hadn’t slept much.
“I was just about to wake you up. I think we have a problem.”
Chapter Eight
Decker rubbed his eyes and ran a hand through his hair.
“Not another problem. Don’t keep me in suspense,” I said.
“Woab is in the opposite direction of Fosaan. Why would the CF patrol ship believe that we were headed there if we were on course for Fosaan?”
I went cold. He was absolutely right.
“We need to wake Lainie up and see if she can figure out our heading,” I said.
Lainie was so groggy, it took some time to get her to understand the problem. By that time, Javen was awake too.
Lainie went over to the slip. After a moment she said, “They have some blocks set up. I can’t get into the nav system to check our course or our destination. At least, not without some sort of access code.”
“We can get Samson to try.” Decker suggested.
“No, I’m just going to go ask,” I said. “If we are on a different course, we’re not going to hide that we know it.”
I didn’t meet anyone on the way to the cockpit, though I did catch a lingering whiff of Creak down one passage, which I assumed meant he’d passed that way recently.
Wren and the MI bot were the only ones in the cockpit.
“Hello,” Wren said. “Do you need anything?”
“Probably,” I replied. The MI had a star map up on the slip. I went over to look at it. The bot ignored me. It obviously didn’t talk as much as Samson. From the blip on the screen, I could tell it was set to show our progress. As I studied it, I realized it confirmed Decker’s suspicions.
“This heading won’t take us to Fosaan. We’re going in the opposite direction. What is our destination?” I asked the MI.
The MI continued to ignore me. I looked over at Wren, who was busy examining the butterflies on her hands. “Wren, where are we going?”
“Well … you see … ” She stopped, and a look of relief crossed her face. “Here’s Divana. She’ll explain things.”
Divana strolled in. “What am I going to explain?”
“We aren’t on course for Fosaan.” I pointed at the slip.
She raised an eyebrow. “Who figured that out?”
“It doesn’t matter. Where are we going?” My throat felt tight with anger. Anger not only at Divana, but at myself for assuming the raider would do what she had agreed.
“We have to make a stop.” She went over and sat down in her seat. “I need to pick up supplies Ansun ordered for Fosaan. It won’t take long. I know you are eager to do your hero act, but I need a valid reason to be in Fosaan airspace.”
I felt some of the anger draining away. What she said sounded reasonable. “You were going to Fosaan anyway? You acted like you were doing Fade a big favor agreeing to take us there.”
“Kid, you are so naïve. You never know when things are going to go bad, so always have a way out. And a way out usually means money. We can’t just show up on Fosaan as if we’ve been invited for a visit. There are standing orders for supplies they want. I’m going to bring them. Ansun ordered a dozen air scrubbers, and they’ve been paid for.”
“That means you are getting paid a lot of money to go where you were going anyway. And you knew Ansun was there all along?”
“I don’t know for sure. Your friend Fade didn’t ask where I was planning to go. He offered to pay me, and I accepted. Did you have some other plan for how I was supposed to explain bringing my ship to Fosaan? What was your plan?”
I didn’t want to admit I didn’t have a plan. I’d been so determined to get to Fosaan, I hadn’t thought about explaining the ship’s presence. I’d been thinking more about how to hide my own presence.
I sighed. “Okay, I suppose I should thank you. I didn’t have a plan for the ship.”
“You’re welcome,” she said. “Though I have to say, even with my efforts, I still think you are doomed to failure. At least I’ve been paid in advance.” She grinned, the silver on her teeth gleaming like she’d just polished them.
I looked at the heading and tried to remember the region between Reyet and Woab. I couldn’t think of too many planets close to either, except an uninhabitable gas giant, Yenipel.
“We’re going to Yenipel to pick up supplies? What kind of supplies can we get there?”
“We’re going to one of Yenipel’s moons.”
“Why are there air scrubbers there?”
“Just wait and see. We’re almost there.”
The others joined us. “Better explain to your group,” Divana said to me. “I’m not going to answer questions twice. But be quiet doing it.”
I knew they’d been listening in on the slip, but I explained what was happening as if they hadn’t. I didn’t want Divana to know we had the ability to hear the conversations in the cockpit.
Pixie came in, too. She ignored us and wandered around the cockpit before settling into her seat. Yenipel came into view, a gray-green monster that grew as we drew closer. The moon was just a speck next to it. As we approached it, I saw it was basically a giant rock. There were no signs of life, just craters and mountains, all in various shades of gray.
The ship took a sudden dive down into a large crater. I grabbed the edge of the console to keep my balance.
“Uh, do you have a death wish?” Decker asked Pixie.
She cackled. Instead of responding to Decker, she said, “This will be fun.”
“You’d better hold onto something,” Wren warned, grabbing her armrests.
There were some dim lights in the crater, enough so I could make out a circular landing pad below us. It was the same dull gray color as the planet but clearly human-made.
If Pixie didn’t slow down soon, we were going to land with a tremendous jolt.
A man’s voice came over the comm. “Uh, coming in a little fast there, Miss Pixie.”
She cackled again. “Just adding a little excitement to our lives. Yours too.” Our speed increased. I took hold of the back of Wren’s chair. Divana and Wren appeared totally unconcerned that we were likely to be jolted off our feet.
Just before we reached it, I realized it wasn’t a landing pad at all. It slid apart, each half retracting into the crater walls. We continued our descent, dropping into an access cylinder so narrow I thought we were going to scrape the sides of the ship.
The same voice came back over the comm. It had a sharp edge to it. “Will you stop doing that? I don’t care if you damage Divana’s ship, but if you damage our doors, you’ll have to pay in more ways than one.”
“How many times have you told me that? Have I ever touched your precious doors?” Pixie bounced up and down in her seat with delight, her beads jiggling.
“Someday you might,” the voice grumbled.
“Trust me, you old scobberling,” she said. “I know what I’m doing.”
“Are you ever going to tell me what ‘scobberling’ means?” the man asked.
“You’re smart enough to figure it out.”
“Actually, I’m not, but I’m glad you think so. When are you going to let me win back what you took off me last time we played cut throat?”
“Not enough time this visit, but you’re not going to win when we do play.” She chuckled and made some adjustments to our descent. We touched down so gently I hardly knew we had landed.
At first I didn’t see anything. A warning blast sounded as my eyes adjusted to the dim light. A few seconds later the floor began to rotate. It stopped when the Paradox was shifted over enough to allow another ship to land. The space was big enough for maybe five more ships besides ours in addition to the two others already parked.
“What is this place?” I asked. I could see the walls were covered in swirling abstract shapes in all different colors. It made me dizzy to stare at any one spot too long.
“At the moment it’s the home of the followers of the Way of the Radiant Arts as well as a raider base, but it’s been a lot of things over the years,” Wren said. “It was originally a mining operation, and then when the minerals got mined out, it was abandoned.”
“I’ve never heard of the Way … the Way of what?” Lainie asked.
“The Way of the Radiant Arts. It’s a religious sect that took over after the mining company left.” Wren smiled. “They believed in creating art as a way to knowing whatever god they worshiped. Such a nice belief. Some of them are still here.”
“They just hang out here and make art?” Decker asked. “How do they earn money so they can eat? I didn’t think raiders ran a charitable organization.”
“We do help them out,” Pixie said. “They run some of the cafés and lodgings. They don’t care who comes or goes. And Earth doesn’t bother with this moon because they still have it listed as a religious community. They don’t know we use it. It works out for all of us.”
“How do people live here?” Javen asked. “It’s like living in the middle of a hallucination.”
Pixie chuckled. “We don’t care how something looks as long as we can get what we need. Our bit of dogoodery is organizing the supply shipments into here. They would actually starve without us. They wander about praying and doing their art, covering up what’s been done before with new work that looks mostly like the old work. It keeps them occupied.” She shook her head. “I suppose it takes all kinds.”
“They think the process of making art is a way to a better understanding of their souls. I think it’s pretty,” Wren said in a dreamy voice. “Better than looking out at space all the time. I like all the colors.”
“I’d like to look around,” I said.
“No, this isn’t a tourist destination,” Divana snapped. “You’ll end up dead within the hour. There are raiders here who won’t like the look of you. That’s why all of you are confined to the ship. Wren here is going to make sure you stay put. She’s got the door controls.”
“Message for you,” the MI told Divana.
“Put it through to my gabber.” Divana tapped the band on her arm and then touched her ear pin. “I don’t think that’s …” She said and then stopped talking. Whoever was on the other end must have cut her off.
We watched her, listening. Whoever was talking to her had a lot to say. “All right,” Divana said finally. “We’ll be there in a few minutes.” She tapped the gabber to cut the communication. “Quinn, you need to come with me.”
That was not what I had expected to hear. “Why?” I tensed up. Ronti couldn’t have tracked me already, and I didn’t think he could track me here.
“Don’t ask questions. We won’t be gone long. Pixie, don’t wander off. Be ready to leave as soon as I get back. The air scrubbers should be loaded by then. Come on, Quinn.”
I followed Divana down the ramp. A few people nodded at her and then stared at me.
“You couldn’t be convinced to tell me what we are doing, could you?” I said as I followed her out of the landing bay. “I don’t react well to surprises.”
She gave a loud exasperated sigh. “All right, fine. I’ll tell you. It’s a sad fact of life that we all answer to someone, and I need to pay a visit to the person I answer to. In this case, it’s the person who funded the purchase of the Paradox. As long as I’m still paying for it, I have to report on profits.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“Because she knows I’m carrying passengers, and that’s very, very unusual. Bringing passengers here endangers everything.”
“How does she, whoever she is, know you have passengers?”
“Because Tineg registered you on our approach. It could go very badly if someone found out I had been concealing the fact I had passengers.”
“We’re registered?” My mouth went dry. “How do you know our names to register us?” She knew our first names, but as far as I knew, she didn’t know our last names. Divana also knew our parents were scientists, but nothing beyond that. Fade had never asked for details about our identity. I’d been warned that he traded in information, but I’d hoped he didn’t consider us important enough to inquire beyond what everyone thought they knew.
She threw up her hands. “I don’t know your names. I made some up. And she knows I wouldn’t have used your real names. As far as I can tell, she’s mainly just bored. She sits in her space like a spider in the middle of a web, and when one of the threads vibrates, she wants to see the cause. She’ll check you out, and she’ll ask questions. I also listed your ages, or what I assumed were your ages, and that was a mistake. It sparked her interest. It’s odd enough for me to be transporting passengers, but it’s even odder that I’ve got what appears to be a school field trip aboard.”
“So, does this she you keep referring to have a name?” Whoever it was didn’t need my real name to figure out who I was. All she’d have to do is run a visual image of me through the ident base and I’d pop up. Having Admiral Neen as a grandfather meant there were plenty of images of me in the ident registry.
“Her name is Vire, though don’t call her that. She likes underlings to call her Ma’am. Actually, don’t talk if you can avoid it. That way you won’t accidentally insult her.”
“I usually have enough manners so that I can be taken places and manage not to insult people.” I was getting irritated at Divana’s tone.
“That would be reassuring in normal circumstances. This isn’t normal. At least she doesn’t want to see all of you. It’s better she just asked to see one of you.”
“So why did you pick me?” It couldn’t be totally random.
“Vire won’t find you very interesting. Javen is too pretty. Decker might overreact to some of her questions, and Lainie is too … too lively. Vire takes an i
nstant dislike to people who outshine her.”
“Oh.” I felt a tiny arrow puncture my ego.
She squinted slightly at me. “Your eyepatch is a bit of a problem though. That sticks in people’s memories. What does your eye look like underneath?”
“It looks the same as the other, except I can’t see out of it, so it doesn’t move well. I’m not taking off the patch. Any light is bad for my eye.” I was still thinking about what she’d said about the others. “Good to know being uninteresting is a plus.”
“It is a plus. There are places where you don’t want to call attention to yourselves. This is one of them. Anything out of the ordinary, and certain people pick up on that. It’s how some survive for so long. Anyone ever tell you that you talk a lot?”
“Only when I have questions. I’m curious about things.” I realized I sounded like Samson. That was kind of embarrassing.
“Well, now is the time to quit talking.”
I did. We walked through a maze of passageways, all decorated in the same bright swirling colors of the landing bay. I could tell we were going up but otherwise couldn’t make sense of the layout. Most of the people I saw were obviously raiders, and it was easy to tell the ones who weren’t. They all wore white robes, a strange contrast to the colorful world they lived in, and wore smiles on their faces. Every time they walked by us, they would bow their heads and say, “The colors are with you.”
I didn’t know if I was supposed to thank them or repeat the phrase back at them. Divana just ignored them.
We turned down a stark white corridor. It was a real contrast to the rest of the station. The place had the same strong floral smell of the Paradox. I hadn’t known all raiders had such a thing about cleanliness.
Divana opened a door into a small room. “We have to go through the disinfectant spray. Stop here.”
The mist sprayed down on us, and then the inner door opened to reveal a completely white room. The only person in the room had her back to us. I thought it was a girl, one who wasn’t very tall. She had long, wavy red hair and wore a dress my little sister Piper would have liked. It looked as if it was made of woven ribbons in a multitude of colors. The girl stood looking at dozens of slips covering an entire wall. Each showed a different part of the station.
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