“When we pinch to the black, we go faster, don't we?” Dee asked.
Lucia shook her head. “When we pinch, we bend space time, so while theoretically we may go faster than this, it's only for milliseconds. This kind of sustained pressure will take its toll.” As she spoke, the cruiser gave a groan, and Dee felt the floor beneath her vibrate a little.
She tensed up, and beside her, Sebastian did the same.
“Come strap in.” Lucia held out her hand to Sebastian.
She sensed him hesitate before he grasped it and let Lucia help him to his feet.
He turned to her, extended his hand, and she gripped it.
As he hauled her up, she realized for the first time since she'd been forced to take shelter in the cruiser that she felt as if she had an ally.
Another long, creaking groan sounded, and they all looked up at the ceiling.
“How long until we get to Lassa?” Dee asked.
Lucia kept her gaze upward, her brow wrinkled in worry. “At least five more hours, going at this speed.”
Dee hoped they made it.
“So, what's your problem with Rina Fattal's father?”
Sebastian looked over at Dee as she spoke, and realized for the first time she had no idea who they were.
The way she'd almost run from the room earlier began to make sense.
“He and the other Cores execs are killing us.” Vavi turned to her as she answered, her straps forcing her to twist in her seat.
“Who is 'us'?” Dee asked. “And killing you how?” Her questions were genuine, but Sebastian saw Karr's head come up in outrage, and he cut in before his team mate could alienate her further.
“We're part of the Lassian resistance. The Cores have taken back all the wells and refineries run by independents. Taken over every business that they didn't already own. They've taken control of every means of production on the whole planet. They're starving us to death.”
She had looked over at him when he jumped in to answer, and she leaned back in her chair, her expression thoughtful. “The Cores were trying to do that on Garmen as well. Leo thwarted them at every turn, and they started playing dirty.” She rubbed her forehead, and he thought she'd gone somewhere dark in her head. “They killed some of my colleagues. Killed them in as ugly a way as they could and left their bodies as a warning. It was the first shot across the bow, and we knew we'd have to fight back. We were getting ready for it when the Caruso attacked.”
“Getting ready, how?” Lucia asked.
“We made contact with Arkhor Special Forces. We started getting the independent miners ready to attack, and we'd made deep connections to the gen-pop in Tether Town, so they'd follow us if we asked them to. We also made an alliance with the resistance.”
“Why should we believe you?” Karr asked.
She looked over at him, and while Sebastian thought she was taken aback at his hostility, she certainly didn't shrink away from him.
She was quite comfortable holding her own.
“Why should I believe you?” she asked him. “For instance, I know there was a member of the resistance working on this cruiser, and that he was in regular contact with the Garmen resistance leader, Zyr. So I have to ask myself why the resistance would need to send a team to take Rina Fattal when they had the means to do it all along.”
There was silence.
“How did you know we had someone onboard?” Sebastian knew his voice was thick with shock.
“Because I just told you, we'd formed an alliance with Zyr, the head of the Garmen resistance. He told me he was meeting someone from the Lassian resistance this morning to pass on the word that the Caruso were planning to take Lassa, and I saw him talking to a member of this cruiser's crew myself.”
“Harvey.” Lucia spoke up. “His name was Harvey. He was killed by the Caruso just before we boarded.”
“He was more an informant than a full member of the resistance.” Vavi's voice was quiet. “He was afraid they had too much information on him for him to show his hand. He thought they'd go after his family.”
“He was right. They would have.” Lucia rubbed her palms along the tops of her thighs. “But without him, we wouldn't have known about Rina or how to find her.”
Except, Sebastian never knew he was a liaison between the Garmen and Lassian resistance. And he most definitely should have.
Koan should have told him when he passed on Harvey's details and helped set this whole operation up.
“What did he look like, this person Zyr met with?” Sebastian was aware his tone was harsh.
“Medium height, dark hair with silver at the temples.” She folded her arms over her chest, and her gaze was cooler when she met his gaze.
He'd lost some of her trust with the harshness of his questioning, and he was sorry for it. But he was even sorrier that she was right, because she had just described Harvey.
And that meant people were keeping secrets.
Lucia looked over at him, a quick, shocked glance, and Karr risked a look too, scowling deeply.
“You didn't know he was a contact for the Garmen resistance?”
Sebastian turned, noted the interest in Dee's eyes. She was sharp, smart, and saw way more than he was comfortable with.
“The Lassian resistance has been through some upheaval recently.” He raised his shoulders as if it didn't matter, but it did. He had a sick feeling in his gut it mattered a lot.
He let the silence between them stretch out.
“What's happened to all the people on Lassa, if the Cores have taken everything?” She changed topic without any sign of annoyance.
“Everyone's doing whatever they can to survive, but things are desperate.”
“And desperate people do desperate things.” Dee's gaze rested on him, and for the first time he didn't meet it, because he could hear the softer tone in her voice. “Like kidnap silly women in pleasure cruisers.”
“There's starving kids in the streets,” Vavi said. “Small groups stealing what they can, sometimes from people in worse straights than they are. It's turning people into animals.”
“And dying.” Lucia's voice was almost toneless. “A lot of people are dying--from starvation, but also because the Cores guards are shooting them. They've been driven to risk everything, and more often than not, they lose. It's an extermination.”
Dee drew her feet up on her chair, rested her chin on her knees. “Garmen's better off, and that's because Leo had the power to push back, to give us time to organize. But the Garmen Cores would have done exactly what the Lassian Cores have done if they could have.”
“What are you saying?” Sebastian had the sense she was deciding something as she spoke.
“I'm saying, if I can help you when we get to Lassa, I will.”
Chapter 7
Her heartbeat spiked as they came through Lassa's atmosphere.
She stood on the bridge and looked out through the big screen, and was sorry she was arriving under such strained circumstances.
She caught glimpses of tall, tall trees and the flash of color as birds dived between branches--all so different to the open plains and snow-capped mountains of Garmen.
The other glaring difference here was there was no Felicitos. The tethered way station was a wonder, and Garmen was rightly proud of it because it was one of a kind. On Lassa, they had to make do with an orbital way station and hover ports at key positions on the surface.
As they came in, she caught sight of a massive transport hover lumbering up, wide and bulky and graceless as it blasted up above the cloud line.
“The buildings are so spread out.” She was astonished to see rough dwellings set below the curve of an elevated hover track that rose above the trees, glinting white in the afternoon sun.
On Garmen there were only two towns, the buildings tightly packed together. Tether Town, which lay at Felicitos's feet, and Phansi, the mining town on top of the escarpment.
“Not too spread out.” She'd known the moment Sebastian came to stand bes
ide her, a hard, inconvenient little thrill chasing through her as she remembered the scent of him as she lay with her face buried in the crook of his shoulder.
He pointed at the wide, empty swathes of green. “The houses are usually clustered around a rail stop or along the track. Inbetween there's no way to buy or sell goods because the hover only stops at certain points.”
“Did they build the rail for the hover because the forest is too dense?” She couldn't see the ground, even though they were flying low.
He nodded. “They started to clear it, then realized it was going to be quicker and cheaper to build a high-level track.”
She leaned against the window and let herself delight in the lush beauty below her, glad that the Cores hadn't cleared it for their transport hovers.
Sebastian lapsed into silence and she glanced up at him. He was watching her with an intense look, one that said he didn't know whether he could trust her.
Unfortunately for him, right now he didn't have a choice.
She and everyone else on the bridge knew she was going to have to pull off the impossible in the next hour or so, and continue to convince the Caruso she was Rina Fattal, and they were her crew.
She felt the tension thrum through her body again, and steadied herself. She'd had to stare down the barrel of a laz many times over the years working as security for Leo, and she'd always come out the winner--but this time, she had no laz to fire back, and nowhere to run if she needed to.
Sebastian tapped lightly on the window with his knuckles. “I've always been glad they chose an elevated track, rather than ground level road, because having a thick undergrowth has given the resistance more places to hide.”
On Garmen, she'd liked being out of town, on the open plains between Tether Town and Phansi, but she didn't know if she'd be as thrilled being surrounded by thick vegetation, unable to see very far ahead.
“You don't look convinced.”
She heard the amusement in his voice as she glanced over at him.
She smiled. “I'm used to the escarpment, and low, scrubby bushes. I'm not sure about jungle conditions.”
“Most likely you won't have to experience them.” His voice turned grim. “The Cores hover base is where we flew out from, chasing after Rina. It's hard to get in, and it's very hard to get out.”
“My thoughts are that Rina Fattal will have no trouble getting out.”
He gave a nod of agreement. “If you can convince them you are her, that will most likely be our only chance.”
“So, no pressure.” She said it to lighten the atmosphere, but the look he gave her was without any humor.
She didn't know if he intended to respond, but before he could, a warning bell chimed.
“Strap in, we're landing in five minutes.” Lucia waved a hand at them.
Sebastian turned on his heel and walked away and Dee followed behind and buckled up.
Sebastian was high in the resistance hierarchy, she decided. Very high. It was in the way his team responded to him, and how much their failure seemed to weigh him down.
He took full responsibility for this, and she hadn't heard a word from him about reporting to a boss.
Which meant this trip must truly have been their last ditch chance.
If Sebastian was here, it was because he thought he could negotiate something meaningful with Rina Fattal's father.
The fact that Rina was no longer available as a bargaining chip told her she was likely walking into a situation on the losing side.
It didn't matter.
When it came to the Cores, whichever side was against them was the right side to be on.
Win or lose.
Dee Vanuka was a puzzle.
Sebastian didn't like that he found it difficult to look away from her, that his gaze seemed to drift toward her even though he needed to think, to work out what to do as every plan he'd made was shot to hell.
Or maybe he couldn't help himself because of that.
There was nothing left in the tank.
They'd spent every last credit they had left for him, Lucia, Karr and Vavi to take the small freighter they'd used to track Rina and her pleasure cruiser. They had no more backup plans, nothing to fall back on.
This had been it, and it had been an abject failure.
“What's the plan?” Karr seemed to be reading his mind.
“Just getting off this cruiser alive would be a good start.” He looked over at Dee. “If you can continue to convince them you're Rina Fattal and we're your crew, we may be able to just walk out of there.”
“We'll need to make it realistic, then.” She jerked in surprise, and then stroked a hand over thin air, and Sebastian guessed her invisible pet had finally rejoined her. “When we land I'll go pack some bags with clothes to bring along with me. Maybe you can carry them out, Karr?” She smiled sweetly, and Lucia choked back a laugh.
“Agreed.” Sebastian nodded. “They think I'm the head of your security, so Lucia and I will play bodyguard. Karr, you and Vavi carry bags and generally look useful.”
Karr looked over at him in disbelief, but Sebastian was tired of his shit. Dee had done nothing but save their asses so far. He shot Karr a hard stare, and then looked away.
Vavi walked past him and looked out as the hover port loomed closer. “The Caruso are obviously already in some kind of alliance with the Cores--they seemed to know Rina and they certainly seem to know her father, but do you think this is the first time they're flying down to this base?”
“Has to be their first time.” Lucia was concentrating on the controls in front of her. “Or, if not, it only started since we left to follow Rina's pleasure cruiser from Lassa to Garmen.”
“Otherwise one of your informants would have told you about it, right?” Dee's hand was raised, and her finger seemed to be scratching under her pet's chin.
“Yes.” Vavi looked over her shoulder at her. “I hadn't even heard they were involved with the Cores until they started shooting everyone on the Felicitos Deck, and then I thought it was just a Garmen problem. Now we know it isn't, and that means they must have kept things very quiet before.”
“Except, now they're flying into the Cores hover base in broad daylight. That's the opposite of quiet,” Dee pointed out.
“Yes.” Vavi pointed a finger at her. “Why? What's changed?”
“They've had to step things up because their attack on Garmen failed?” Karr asked.
“You'd have thought that would have made them even more secretive, not more blatant.” Lucia frowned as she lowered them down onto a landing pad. “Especially as they've just been smacked down by the Verdant String on Garmen. They won't want the VSC looking this way, too.”
Sebastian heard the clamps engaging and rose from his seat.
“What do you think, Seb?” Vavi asked. “What's going on?”
He paused. He didn't like what he thought. He didn't want to even consider it, but he hadn't survived this long by ignoring things he didn't like. “I think we have a mole in the resistance, and they've been actively hiding the Caruso's alliance with the Cores.”
Lucia looked up, and he saw there wasn't any surprise in her eyes. She'd worked it out, too.
Karr shoved out of his chair. “I won't believe it until I have solid proof.”
Sebastian shrugged. Karr was a die-hard loyalist.
Sebastian didn't have that luxury.
“You were going to pack,” he reminded Dee, and she nodded and slid out of her seat, disappearing down the passageway.
“Don't trust her,” Karr said, not even trying to lower his voice.
“We don't have a choice,” Lucia told him, and Sebastian thought he detected the same irritation in her voice he was feeling himself.
“No, we don't. So we'll play her lackeys.” He reached out a hand and clamped it over Karr's shoulder. “And we'll smile while doing it.”
Chapter 8
Dee tugged on the complex filigree ear jewelry that hung almost to her shoulders, and
waited for the door to lower into a ramp.
Behind her lay a pile of bags, and she could feel Karr's irritation gathering like a dark cloud at her back.
She smiled at the thought, and at that moment the door slid open.
With a toss of her hair, she strode down the ramp, the fluttering fabric of her shirt a strange feeling against her skin.
She had chosen low heels, in case she had to run, and tight pants that were made of a fabric that shifted color as she walked.
Probably not the best choice if she wanted to be unobtrusive, but there had been nothing in Rina Fattal's wardrobe that seemed understated, so she ended up going with choices that would catch the eye, and take it off her face.
Because the less people looked at her, personally, the safer they would all be.
It would only take one person to claim she was an imposter, and the whole illusion would be ripped away.
Halfway down the ramp, Sebastian and Lucia caught up with her, sliding into place on either side.
She sensed Lucia's amusement at her wardrobe choices, while Sebastian seemed stunned into silence.
He looked at the deep V of cleavage revealed by the frilly shirt and then jerked his gaze away.
She couldn't be sure, but she thought she heard Lucia chuckle at that.
As long as eyes landed on her breasts, they weren't on her face, and that suited her fine.
She hitched her bag strap higher on her shoulder, and made sure it was still open enough that Fluffy could poke her head out if she wanted to.
The docking bay they'd landed on was in the open, on the massive raised disc that was the hover base landing pad.
Above, the sky was a deep blue and warm air brushed her, stirring her hair. Three moons ranged across the sky, one very close, the other two staggered behind each other to the right of it.
She tipped up her face, and let the sun touch her closed eyelids.
It was never this warm on Garmen. It was cold and wet, and when it wasn't, it was cold and dry.
“Looks like we might be free and clear,” Lucia murmured beside her, and she opened her eyes again and saw there was no one coming to meet them, no guards or any barrier to them simply walking away.
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