by Debra Jess
While the idea of transforming the Queen's bulkheads to hide the ship had been his, it had taken some subterfuge on Naz's part to bribe engineering students at his university to create the plans and then Johza's contacts to find the right manufacturers who made it happen for a hefty bribe to buy their continued silence.
"If you're through…" He signaled Ezick to shut down the holo, not waiting for her to respond.
Even with the holo shut down, Shade didn't return to her seat. Instead, she turned to him. "This…this is so much more than I could have hoped for. I figured it would take nearly an act of war to get us close to the hub, but this…this shaves at least six months off my plans."
"We're happy to exceed your expectations."
Johza cleared his throat again. Though Darvik wanted to swim in Shade's praise, the ugly sound from Johza that was meant to get everyone's attention turned into a cough. Was that blood he saw on the 'fresher his friend used?
Once the cough fit died, Johza continued as if nothing had happened. "We still have a lot of planning to do. Shifting the Queen of Hearts means nothing if we can't get the slipstream to open."
"Agreed," he said to spare Johza from having to talk any more. Before he could segue their conference toward the next step in their plan, Rusa spoke up.
"We have a bigger problem. There's a ship tailing us. We need to shake it before we do anything else."
"Show me." Darvik sat down in case immediate action was needed. He could see the others also prepping for a battle as the radar image flashed above them.
He looked at empty space. "Where is it?"
"Wait for it." Rusa said nothing else for a long minute. "There."
He saw what she did, a quick blip just outside their radar's reach. "Are you sure it's tailing us?"
"I wasn't at first, but its appearance is too regular. Always at the same coordinates, always at the same rate of speed, venturing no closer. It's too precise to be space debris."
"Whoever they are, how did they find us?" Mirin grumbled. "We've been operating on stealth ever since we left Ruintalos."
Ezick snorted. "It's Manitac. It has to be. Obviously, someone tipped them off. Someone who knew our heading and would know all Manitac's frequencies." He looked directly at Shade, along with everyone else in the room. "I told you she would betray us. We should've interrogated her and shot her out the exhaust port."
Shade turned to look at him, not denying the charges, but there was a challenge in her eyes. Did he believe Ezick, or did he believe her after her confession only a few hours ago? Had he been wrong about her the entire time? Moments ago, he'd been thinking of all the times he thought he had outwitted her, but instead, she’d been the one manipulating him. If she had discovered their current trajectory and transmitted that information back to Manitac, his crew would pay the price for his arrogance.
And it was a price that required repayment in the worst way possible.
Chapter Thirteen
Cold calmness gave Kelra the outward appearance of someone who had nothing to worry about. Inwardly, she reviewed everything she’d seen since she stepped on the bridge. Not just where every member of the senior crew sat, but every object that she could possibly use as a weapon if necessary. Loosening her grip on the chair, she made ready to spring into action if she had to.
What worried her the most was the look in Hart’s eye. Evidently, fucking the captain twice didn’t guarantee his trust, especially if someone like Ezick could instill that level of doubt.
What about sharing your darkest secret with him?
Okay, that one stung—a lot—but she ignored the pain. Looking at him, she could see the struggle. Good. He wanted to believe her, but he couldn’t ignore any evidence of betrayal, especially if that betrayal would put his crew in jeopardy.
On any other pirate ship, the captain would have had her in chains by this point, locked in whatever they called their interrogation cells. On the Queen of Hearts, they called it the black room. Maybe it was meant to instill fear, but for Kelra, it made her tired.
The Queen of Hearts, however, wasn't just another pirate ship. She was a generational ship, carrying the last two survivors of the Iron Heart. Both of those survivors carried on despite the murder of their families. While reports on the Iron Heart's destruction maintained that sending no less than five Manitac cruisers after the Iron Heart was necessary, Kelra was aware that none of the cruisers had offered the Iron Heart a civilized opportunity to surrender.
Maybe all her research on Hart made her more sensitive to his own pain, the loss of his family and his home?
She'd been right, though. From the moment he'd taken her hand and she felt that electric shock, no matter if it were static electricity, she'd known they shared more in common than a love for challenges and adventure. When he looked at her, their connection veritably sang with joy at her finding someone who understood her suppressed pain.
Sleeping with Hart wasn't necessarily a part of her plan, but she'd thought that if it happened, it would make things easier for her, and it didn’t hurt that he was hotter than four suns. Instead, it landed her in bigger trouble, because no matter how many secrets she spilled, no matter her honesty, she would always be seen as a Manitac officer, and by the Stars, Manitac could not be trusted. On that last part, she agreed with the pirates.
Mirin, to her right, advanced half a step, a gun already in her hand. Firing a weapon inside a ship had its hazards. Even if not set to kill, there was a risk to the ship itself. The last thing she wanted was to antagonize Hart by being responsible for damaging the Queen of Hearts. Time to throw everyone off their guard and take back control.
"You're right. I betrayed you. After you put me in decon, I activated the supersecret all-powerful radar encoder, which is embedded in my left eye, and sent a message to the board of directors—the same board of directors who refused to let me go after the Majesty of Stars and then convicted me of treason and left me to die on one of the universe’s most deadly prison planets. In this message, I bragged about how I had tricked the infamous captain of Queen of Hearts into pulling me off said prison planet. Then I used brute-force statistical analysis of the probable trajectory of the Queen of Hearts to figure out our general location. Looks like my calculations were correct."
Hart stopped his advance, his logic catching up to his suspicions. "You don't know what our heading is."
"Of course I don't know what our heading is," she said, keeping her sarcasm in place. Maybe his distrust hurt her more than she realized. She might have to get a grip on that problem as well, but later. "You never gave me a jack, so all my requests have had to be routed through the ship's 'cast net, which would have tripped every alert you have. The only other way for me to know was to ask. The only people I've spoken to without anyone else in the room are you and Mayla, and she had no idea of what our current heading is and, like me, doesn't care."
Her words hit their mark. Hart at least had the graciousness to look apologetic. Ezick just swore before planting his ass back in his seat. Around her, everyone else relaxed, slightly, yet without looking, she could tell Mirin would be keeping a closer eye on her.
A third problem she'd have to solve later, after they got to the nebula.
"Now that we've established that I have no intention of betraying you to Manitac, can we get back to the problem at hand?"
Hart nodded, his eyes saying they would have a talk before all of this was over. Which was fine. Talking had never been her problem.
"What are the chances it's the Silt?" Johza asked, his voice sounding even more raw. Of all the senior crew, he was the only one who didn't bother advancing on her when everyone assumed she was a traitor.
Readjusting herself in her seat now that the threat was over, she answered. "It would have to be the Silt. Whoever the new captain is, they would have access to all my records, including my detailed analysis of every pirate ship in the Calypso arm. If the Silt was alerted to my prison break on Ruintalos, they would scan this sec
tor using mass detectors and optical imaging. Since you haven't used a gravitational acceleration jump to leave the system, it wouldn't be difficult to track you once the Silt knew your general location."
"How would you know if we used a gravitational acceleration jump?" Rusa kept her hands on the navigation controls, but Kelra didn't mistake the tension in her hands. All her motion was for show because she too was ready for battle.
Kelra didn't stare at her, instead looking over at Ezick, who kept this head down. Continued public embarrassment would either teach him to think before he spoke, or it would just piss him off more. From his pout, he could still go either way. "I would have felt the vibration, shallow though it may be."
Hart motioned Mirin out of her seat, which he replaced, putting him close enough to see her rapid heartbeat through the thick vest she wore. "And I thought I was the only one who would notice something like that."
"It's a talent we share," she agreed, keeping her gaze forward, staring at the bulkhead instead of him.
A long moment passed, but she still refused to give him the satisfaction of her attention. She waited for him to move on, which was what everyone wanted by this point.
"All right," he said, remaining in Mirin's seat. Mirin took the one he'd vacated. "What are the chances the Silt would have called in other ships? If we're going to warp out at sublight without crashing into anyone beyond our radar, we need to confirm that the Silt is exactly where the radar says she is and it's not a decoy signal. It would also help if we knew if she's brought friends."
Rusa broadcasted the map again. "I'm adjusting our optics. It'll be fuzzy at best, but it's passive so they won't know we're looking."
Kelra took a chance and asked a question. "Do we know who the captain is?" Being out of the Manitac loop had made her rescue all the more perilous. Not only had all her security codes changed, hampering her ability to collect information, but it also restricted her from manipulating whoever had replaced her in the captain's chair of the Silt.
"Yes." Hart finally turned his attention away from her and back to the overhead holo. "Hyeph Silt. Son of Horgath Silt, who the ship was named after. The son took command the day after your arrest."
Ouch. "I don't know him, but I saw his father at the academy a few times. He was observing our training exercises. He pulled me aside once and said I had the leadership qualities he was looking for, but didn’t elaborate at the time. I didn’t know he had a son."
"Oh, really?" Hart gave her a side-eye. “I’m surprised you don’t know him.”
"Why?"
A slight shrug was all he gave her in response. "He knows you."
"Well, I'm a bit famous you know—pirate hunter, traitor to the corporation that runs the entire universe." All true. Like her or hate her, every Manitac fleet commander knew who she was.
"Lover." He'd also turned his eye to the holo when he said it.
"Excuse me?"
Hart still wouldn't look at her. "He said you two had an affair."
Rattus bastard. This Hyeph might have been a legacy recruit to the naval academy, but sleeping with him and having no memory of the encounter sounded a little suspicious. But she’d graduated twenty years ago. There had been a few parties that were still hazy. "If we did, he couldn't have been that good because I sure don't remember him." A small flutter of laughter rippled through the bridge. "So he's the one who provided you with all the information about me? Favorite foods, drinks, etcetera?"
"One of our contacts, yes," Hart admitted, but he kept his expression guarded.
There was nothing she could do about his digging into her personal life now, and it wouldn't be the first time someone lied about her. At least two liars had testified at her trial.
Retribution, however, would be implemented later. If there was a later. Time to get back to her mission, their mission, until the opportunity to make it her own arose. "My concern is that we shouldn't even be seeing this blip at all. I know Manitac doesn't usually send its brightest to guard prison planets, but they're more careful with their fleet, even this far out in Calypso. Any officer with only half the ambition that I had would have angled themselves for a cruiser closer to the Homeport. That's where you get noticed for promotions, by protecting more valuable property. Even if this Hyeph Silt traded on his family name to get this assignment, this cruiser wasn’t going to get him promoted any time soon."
"Manitac's expansion into Callisto and Calypso though has made their outposts more valuable out here," Rusa said, even as the tension in her hands released, her gaze on the holo overhead waiting for the next blip.
Ezick poked at his own holo. Even Mirin had stopped glaring at her. A token truce, until such time as they decided stronger action against her was needed. She'd have to be very careful from here on out.
"True," she agreed, "but promotions are still difficult to come by unless you do something eye-catching."
"Like subdue a dozen pirate ships in under a year?" Hart's snark sounded more like his usual self.
"Something like that. Hyeph Silt wants something out here. The question is—what's out here that he wants?"
"It would have to be something valuable," Hart said.
Kelra didn't agree. "Ummm, that's what a pirate would think, but I suppose it's possible. There were plenty of chances for me to filch some of the captured booty from the pirate ships I caught."
"But you didn't."
"No. I had…other plans."
"Captain, I have the image." Rusa projected the fuzzy picture.
Even with the edges blurred, Kelra recognized her ship. "That's the Silt. I'd know her anywhere."
"Any other ships nearby?" Hart asked.
"Not that I can detect," Rusa said.
"All right. Let's lose them. Mirin, fire the thrusters. Rusa lock in the coordinates for 1701.9000.”
Those coordinates sounded familiar. "Why Torensia sector? Last I heard, there's a new terraforming project breaking ground. We won't get near it without tripping over security."
"I know, but new projects mean a lot of traffic to hide our activity. Torensia has their own small slipstream to Jarvis station in the Dawn system, which has a larger slipstream to the Vaynix hub. Assuming the Silt will track us, we can lose them by decelerating close to the system's star. The corona will distort their scans. If we time it right, by the time the Silt decelerates, local security will already be on alert. The colony will demand an explanation from the Silt, keeping the captain's eyes on the colony, not on us. While they're talking, we slip around the far side of the sun, shift, and then jump far enough away to keep us off their radar. By the time the Silt starts looking for us again, we'll reenter the system as a harmless cargo carrier requesting access to the slipstream."
This was the Hart she knew, and by the Stars, the entire plan made him look sexier by the second. "Sneaky. You've done this before?"
Hart grinned. "What we have going for us this time is that you know the Silt's crew. Whatever weak spots they have, now is the time to tell me."
"Weak spots? On my ship? Not likely."
Hart sat back in the captain's chair. "Don't worry. I know you wouldn't fall for such a trick."
Nice of him to say so. Still, she had to choose; insist on not giving up any weak spots and risk raising more suspicion against her, or give Hart something to chew on while she figured out how to mitigate any damage.
"If I had to guess, and if there hasn't been a major shake-up, then their weakness would be on the port side. I requested three newer recruits to train as gunners. They would be more seasoned now, but they still won't have the years or experience for a one-shot, one-kill preciseness. At least, not against the Queen of Hearts."
Hart nodded his thanks. "We'll aim for the port side then, if we have to."
Those three recruits had trusted her when they came on board, fresh-faced and eager for action. She just signed their death warrant if this Hyeph Silt didn't care enough to protect the port side like she had. For a moment, she prayed to th
e Stars that Hart would not have a reason to fire the Queen's cannons before he raised those shields. Speaking of which…
"How will our shields hold up to the sun's radiation?" she asked to distract herself from pesky guilt she couldn't afford.
"Better than the Manitac's on the Silt. Rusa and Ezick implemented a design of mine, a system that doubles the shielding: two layers, the second of which we'll deploy after we break but before we hit the corona."
"I can't imagine your cannons will operate behind two layers of shielding."
"Correct. We'll have no offensive weapons while we're shifted."
Kelra leaned back in her chair, square under Hart's scrutiny—a dare. Not for a second did she doubt he could pull off this stunt, but he was waiting to see if she was along for the ride, or if she would protest or suggest another way.
Looking around the bridge, the other crew had returned to their duties, except Mirin, who, instead of putting her sidearm away, had decided to clean it.
"All right then," she said. "Let's do this."
His tight smile said everything.
"Of course," she added, as he turned away from her. "I'll expect full debriefing afterward."
He turned back, his brown eyes heavy with the implication. "I'm sure I'll find time in my schedule."
If the rest of the crew overheard, so what? Hart was the captain, and captains had privileges. So long as she was in his bed, he was where she needed him to be.
Was it really betrayal if they both got what they wanted?
Chapter Fourteen
If looks could kill, Hyeph would have impaled the heads of half his bridge crew. It had taken two days before his second-in-command reported the identity of the ship that had rescued Shade off Ruintalos and another day to track down the pirate ship. He glared at the holo screen, which showed the Queen of Hearts gliding through empty space at the same slow pace as a punctoid.
"Sir, they're changing course."