Devin grabbed the keycard. “Thanks.”
“My pleasure, cutie. I’m here for the next six hours, if you need me.” She winked, her smile showing off broken teeth.
The Lashto brandy in Devin’s stomach threatened to rise again.
The room was smaller than the previous one, and its cleanliness was definitely in question. It held one narrow bed with a red coverlet, a wooden nightstand with a lamp bolted to the top, and a low two-drawer black metal chest. The lav was closet-size. The only positive, as far as Devin could see, was that in here no one was trying to grab Trip or shoot at them.
“It’s arguably one of the safest places on dock,” Barty explained, pulling one of the duffels out of Trip’s grasp. “This level of the hotel has three hidden exits. All connect to old service tunnels. Two go down to Orange. One goes up to Green. Pirates love this place. And if it was good enough for the likes of the infamous Captain Nathaniel Milo, or Screech and her band of merry thieves, then it will serve us well.”
Fighting pain, weariness, and, he realized with an odd start, hunger, Devin sagged down on the bed. The decking was probably softer. “You call that safe?”
“I call it ‘nice to have options.’” Barty retrieved a small data cradle from the duffel and plopped his microcomp into the slotted stand. “Let’s see if one of my former colleagues recognizes a face.”
“Any chance these guys after Trip are ImpSec? Tage’s people?”
“ImpSec doesn’t—or didn’t—bother kidnapping people. Plus, there’s a sloppiness here, a desperation that doesn’t smell like the Empire to me.” Barty grimaced at his screen. “The Farosians are easily excitable. I just don’t know why they’d target Trip.”
Devin didn’t either. But he did know that the suppositions J.M. and Jonathan had made about Trip’s uncovering some politically sensitive material were wrong. “What if it’s not political but financial? Corporate?”
“It still comes back to the question of your nephew as the target. If someone’s after GGS, it would make more sense if they’d try to take out your father or Jonathan. Or you.”
“Want me to unpack, Uncle Devin?” Trip asked while craning his neck at Barty’s screen.
“Leave it. I doubt we’re staying long.” Though Devin felt as if he could sleep for a year in spite of the stim.
“We’ll move to a new hotel tomorrow. But right now we need food, and we need rest.” Barty echoed Devin’s concerns without looking up from his handheld. “Especially you, Mr. Devin. I need to check that knife wound—”
“Later.” Devin was already pulling his own microcomp from the duffel. You can sleep when you’re dead, he remembered Grandmother Guthrie saying. “Since this place comes highly recommended by your pirate friends—”
“I never said they were my friends.”
“—can I also assume I can get a secure data connection here?”
“You can. Use this code.”
A series of numbers and letters flashed on Devin’s screen. He grabbed the data, shunted it into his security strings, brought up the holographic display, and went information-hunting to see who else was still looking for Trip Guthrie. And anything he could quickly find on Kiler and Makaiden Griggs.
He wanted only the basics. He didn’t have a lot of time to waste. Regardless of who was looking for Trip, his nephew was now ostensibly safe. Barty would make sure they were on one of the Compass Spacelines flights back to Aldan in two days. He included that information in the brief message to his father about Trip’s recovery and remembered to ask about Baris–Agri. It even was possible that GGS security could meet them at an intercept point. Compass Spacelines had stopovers at Marker.
Makaiden was another matter, but he wasn’t about to go charging into her life without knowing what he was up against. He didn’t have ImpSec training like Barty or military training like Philip. This was pure corporate strategy, where information created leverage. And when it came to Makaiden Griggs, Devin Jonathan Guthrie knew he needed all the leverage he could get.
Fifteen minutes later he was frowning at the data on his display, wishing he had Guthrie Global’s powerful high-tech systems to work with and not this small, albeit top-notch, microcomp. He found no more traces of anyone poking into Trip’s financials, which could be good news. Or it could mean they were stealthier and craftier than he was.
Slim chance, but he couldn’t discount it.
What troubled him more was the information he was able to unravel on Kiler Griggs’s livelihood post-GGS. There was something odd about an apparently lucrative and well-funded—and it was well-funded—cargo and transport business suddenly spiraling toward financial ruin. The Void Rider’s client list showed more than twenty excellent firms, including Mapper–Corden out of Marker. Hauling cargo for Mapper–Corden alone could have kept Kiler and Makaiden comfortable. Yet mechanics’ liens filed even before Kiler’s death indicated that funds were going out faster than they were coming in. The Rider, according to specs on file with Dock Five, was a Blackfire 225 and wasn’t old enough to incur those kinds of repair costs.
Illegal upgrades, as in pirate? He didn’t discount that. Nor did he discount the possibility that Kiler gambled to excess.
But those things didn’t explain it either.
He also couldn’t explain the inordinate amount of activity the Rider handled for a firm called Nahteg Galactic. Devin had never heard of Nahteg, but given its stated volume in Dock Five’s records, he should have. Nahteg, it appeared, was almost single-handedly keeping Kiler Griggs in business.
A silent partner? A front for a pirate operation?
On its surface, Nahteg looked completely legitimate. Its headquarters were in Port Chalo on Talgarrath. All the proper corporate legal papers were on file. But Devin quickly pierced the surface and superficial. And found himself going in circles.
Familiar circles. If I wanted to set up an illegal operation, this is almost how I would have done it. Nahteg was a front, and a damned good one. He just didn’t know what it was a front for, or why Kiler Griggs was chosen as its main transporter. And with only Dock Five data as his resource, Devin was having a damned difficult time finding out.
“Nahteg Galactic.” He looked at Barty. Trip had seated himself on the decking, back against the wall, with his head resting against his folded arms. Dozing or sleeping, probably. Devin felt a commiserating wave of exhaustion wash over him.
“Hmm?” Barty glanced up from his microcomp.
“Ever heard of them?”
The older man’s brow furrowed. “No.”
“Can you ask your, um, friends?”
“Send me the data.”
Devin tapped his screen. “Sending. Anything yet on Fuzz-face’s thugs?”
“Dock Five’s databases hold nothing. My queries to Aldan and Calth could have an answer back in as little as three to four hours. Or it could be days. We might well be back on Sylvadae before we know.”
Devin would have preferred an answer now, but he knew the vagaries of intersector communication, especially in an area as remote as Dock Five. But the delay gave him more time to concentrate on what he really wanted: Makaiden Griggs. Too bad he couldn’t just buy a ship and hire her to fly it for him.
Then again …
“Captain Griggs.”
Kaidee heard the now-familiar voice call her name as she reached the top of the Rider’s rampway. She let her hand rest on her L7 but didn’t draw it as she turned, arguing with herself that only desperate people took desperate actions. And she wasn’t yet ready to be perceived as desperate—even if she was.
“What do you want, Frinks?” She forced a bored tone into her voice.
The thin-faced man rocked back on his heels, grinning. “Just a friendly reminder. You have two days left to repay that debt.”
“Two days as of tomorrow.”
“It’s damned near that now.”
It was, and she felt every goddamned minute of it. She was tired. She was hungry. And, as much as she didn
’t want to admit it, she was scared. “As soon as the lanes open, I’ll have work. You know that. Orvis—”
“Wants payment. Two days.”
She watched him leave the bay, the hard soles of his pointed-toe boots slapping crisply against the metal decking, the sound fading along with her racing heart. Two days or … what? She’d be dead like Gudrin Vere?
She had a feeling that would be too easy. Orvis had other ways of “working off a debt.” It was rumored he owned casino operations and several high-class nighthouses, though she doubted she was pretty enough to service the kinds of wealthy clients his places attracted. Not that she wanted to, but at least in the nighthouses, the perversions and brutality would be—if not halted—discouraged.
But there were other establishments Orvis was rumored to own—places where nothing was discouraged and no one cared what a prosti looked like.
She sealed the Rider’s airlock behind her and headed for her ship’s small bridge. Maybe she should talk to Pops again about any spare parts she could sell. Trouble was, she didn’t have thirteen thousand worth. But then … every freighter hand knew ways to break dock and leave a berth without permission, without filing a flight plan. Though often not without some damage to the ship.
She slumped down in the pilot’s seat and wondered just how far her ship would get before the Imperial warships guarding the lanes opened fire.
At least a hull breach would be a quick death.
And if nothing else it would give her a chance to see Kiler again and beat the crap out of him in hell.
Kaidee woke, the dim light of her cabin turning shadows into familiar shapes, the hushed wheeze of her ship’s enviro the only sound.
She opened her eyes and, with a groan, rolled over. Her bare feet hit the decking. She padded to the lav across the narrow hallway from her equally narrow bedroom, stripping out of her well-worn gray sweatpants as she did. She pulled her baggy thermal nightshirt over her head, the cabin’s perpetual chill wrapping around her body. A long hot shower would be wasteful, given the cost of water. But she wanted one.
She had only two days left to live anyway.
Melodrama doesn’t suit you, Kaid.
The shower sluiced off the last remnants of sleep. A mug of hot tea from the built-in beverage and food dispenser—the standard “slurp-and-snack”—in her main room’s galley unit quieted her rumbling stomach. Clad again in her usual freighter grays, she headed down the corridor past the small Deck 1 cargo hold, past her ship’s sole lift, for the bridge. As in all Blackfires, with their distinctive V-shaped bow, the Rider’s bridge was almost triangular, with piloting and screens that monitored all ship’s systems at the front U-shaped console, navigation on the right, and communications on the left. She settled into the black swivel chair in front of the Rider’s comm panel to check transmits, dock news, and to see if her name appeared on any arrest warrants yet.
If my ass is in jail, will Orvis still expect payment? She toyed with that thought for a few moments, then realized that someone like Orvis probably had both corrections officers and inmates on his payroll. There was nowhere she was safe from him.
Except that Devin offered …
She shoved the thought away. She couldn’t risk seeing him again. Couldn’t risk that he might ask about Kiler being fired from GGS for misuse of corporate property—he’d used the Prosperity and a GGS vacation villa to entertain his gambling “friends”—and why she’d willingly given up her position. Part of her wanted to tell him that Kiler had blackmailed her, that he’d threatened to tell J.M. who her father was if she didn’t leave with him. But that would mean admitting who her father was, and she couldn’t risk seeing that disillusionment in Devin’s smoky-blue eyes when he found out.
She wasn’t even sure how much he knew about Kiler’s firing. Jonathan had handled it. She knew Kiler’s official personnel record said only dereliction of duties—not that he’d hosted drunken orgies at the villa. Something she didn’t find out until weeks later.
It was almost an omen that the sweater she’d helped Devin pick out that day at the spaceport mall was now in shreds.
Her comm screen flashed with the CFTC logo. Updates were in. She wanted nothing more than to read the headline EMBARGO LIFTED! But she knew that hadn’t happened, or freighter crew and captains she shared pints of ale with—like Mikey, Corrina, or Rae—would have contacted her. And she would have skipped the shower, thrown on her grays, and been long gone.
She scanned the updates, then dock news, then trade stats and reports. Passenger transport reservations were clogged. Trade was at a standstill. Five more bar fights during the night shift. Nothing had changed.
At least there was nothing about problems at The Celestian Hotel. That omission didn’t surprise her. Even murders didn’t always make headlines. A lot of residents on Dock Five preferred anonymity or, as in that striper’s case, wouldn’t want such a lucrative scam exposed.
She still had options, she reminded herself as she grabbed her empty tea mug, needing a second cup. Pops might find a buyer for her Welcran data-booster system. Or the Gartol regulator. She had other feelers out as well, but then, so did a lot of other haulers. The list of stuff she could buy—cheap—was bordering on astounding. But even cheap was too much money.
She refilled her tea mug at the slurp-and-snack, then, breaking her own promise not to leave her ship, headed for the Rider’s main airlock just forward of the Deck 1 cargo hold. The freighter bay that housed the Rider, the bay that Kiler had so thoughtfully paid advance rent on, had to have emergency overrides to open the external bay doors.
Now all she had to do was find them, figure out how to operate them while firing up the Rider’s engines at the same time, and do so without setting off any alarms. Such a move would probably land her on the dockmaster’s shit list for a long time—and make her liable for any damages.
As for the warships, she’d figure something out. Later.
It took her fifteen minutes to find the emergency panel inside a dark maintenance tunnel at the back of the bay. Of course. That made sense. In an emergency, crews couldn’t count on getting directly into the bay through the main airlock. But the maintenance tunnels—like the one she’d used to go from Trouble’s Brewing to The Celestian—created a maze of access points all over Dock Five. This tunnel led to the bay next to hers and to ones above and below hers. All would have code-locked doors. The codes she knew might work, but that wasn’t her problem. She didn’t want to go to another bay. She wanted access to the manual controls for the external doors. She played her handbeam over the interior bulkheads. The controls should be somewhere near these for the enviro—
“Having a problem, Captain Griggs?”
Shit! She spun, heart pounding, her right hand flying to where her L7 should be. And wasn’t. She stared at Frinks and, hulking behind him, his Takan muscle, clad in stained coveralls with all sorts of metal objects hanging from his utility belt. And damned herself for leaving her ship unarmed with only her tool belt.
Where in hell was her mind?
She knew where it was: on a certain smoky-eyed business magnate, heading back to Sylvadae with nineteen-year-old Trip Guthrie in tow.
She considered stabbing Frinks with her screwdriver or hitting him on the head with her handbeam. But by the time she did that, the Taka would have her in a stranglehold.
“Routine maintenance,” she answered Frinks blandly as she stepped out of the tunnel entrance, flicking the handbeam off. But she didn’t slip it back into its strap on her utility belt.
“As in the exterior-door manual release?” Frinks made a tsking sound with his tongue. “Don’t you worry your pretty head over that, Captain. We’ve already taken care of that for you. We wouldn’t want them to accidentally open and you to accidentally leave before you had a chance to pay Orvis what you owe him.”
What Kiler owed him. “I’ll have a nice payment for you within a shipweek of the embargo being lifted. You know that. If you’ll tell Orvis—”
“I did tell Orvis.” Frinks stepped closer, and she could smell something sour and oily coming from his skin and his cheap flashy suit. Her stomach tightened. “And being the sincere gentleman he is, he said to tell you he fully understands your predicament. You being a widow and all alone.”
Here it comes. You can work off your debt on your back or on your knees. You don’t mind a little rough play, do you, Captain Griggs?
“That’s why Orvis, being a gentleman and all,” Frinks continued, “wants you to know there is one thing you could do for him, one special favor, and he’d wipe that debt clean. You’d be free and clear. He’ll even pay to fill your ship’s tanks with water and fuel.”
The whole debt? And fill her tanks? Hell, Kiler never complained about her bedroom skills, but she wasn’t that good. And there were certainly far prettier women around. Warning bells sounded in her mind, but she knew Frinks expected her to ask. So she did.
“What does Orvis want me to do?”
Frinks made a sharp move with his left hand. The Taka stepped forward, and she suddenly noticed a small vidcam in his large hand. Her heart hammered against her ribs as she closed her fingers around her handbeam. She knew there were certain types of slime who paid for vids both sexual and brutally violent. And that the women in those vids generally ended up dead. Then the Rider would be—according to Orvis’s promise—a well-stocked ship but with a dead captain.
But the Taka tapped the vidcam’s screen and an image flashed to life. Her breath caught. The image was of her, Devin, and Trip, right before they ducked into the maintenance tunnel at Trouble’s Brewing. The cleaning ’droids could have recorded it.
“There were two very important people here on Dock Five yesterday,” Frinks was saying. “People Orvis wants to … meet. Sadly, they’re no longer at The Celestian. Orvis thinks you know where they are.”
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