“No! No. Not a chance. I don’t want anything inserted into me. Maybe I’m a little old fashioned, but I like my body the way it is. I’ll stick to getting myself out of any jams I get into.”
Sal just shrugged. They’d discussed Elizabeth getting inserts of some kind on several occasions, but the older woman had remained staunchly opposed.
Soon they were back to the main docking bay access corridors, and were once again hemmed in by a chaotic mix of people. While quieter than the market Elizabeth made certain she had hold of Sal until they stepped into the station airlock leading to the Wanderer. They cycled through and walked the short distance to the Wanderer’s airlock.
“This is where I leave you,” Elizabeth said. “I still need to make more enquiries, and to learn the lay of the land a bit better. You go on board. Relax, speak to the others and above all else make certain no one leaves till I get back!”
“How long will you be?”
“No more than three hours. If I’m not back in four assume that something has happened, or that I’m happening to someone handsome.” A dirty smirk crossed her face. “Seriously, don’t come looking for me unless I’m not back by tomorrow morning. I know what I’m doing, and I’m armed — though you would be hard pressed to find where I have it concealed.
We need to know the answer to questions that I can’t ask openly without inviting all sorts of trouble. Piecing together those answers could take some time.”
Sal didn’t look happy, but she clearly couldn’t think of a good reason to argue. Finally she spoke.
“Elizabeth… be careful. Please.”
Elizabeth was touched by the concern in Sal’s voice. She had always felt slightly apart from the rest of the Wanderer’s crew, first because she arrived later then because the others had all hooked themselves into the ship via implants. She pulled Sal into a hug.
“Thanks, but really… don’t worry about me. I’ve been doing this since you were a little girl. I know what I’m doing. Now get in that airlock. I’m not leaving till I see that it’s cycled and you’re safely on the Wanderer!”
Sal smiled and stepped in to the airlock. Raising a hand in farewell she triggered the outer door which quickly slid down, blocking her from Elizabeth’s sight.
Elizabeth turned away, relaxing now she was the only one outside the ship. She hurried back towards the station. She had a lot of work to do in a short space of time.
Chapter Eighteen
Dash noted the airlock Sal and Elizabeth had turned into, then triggered the self destruct for the tracer. Most ships would detect and report the tracer’s signal, low strength though it was, and he had the information he needed now anyway.
Personal comms worked fine in the docking area. They were essential to manage the flow of people and goods from and to each of the ships. Dash activated his.
“Hackett, you there?”
Dash had come with as small a crew as he could manage, or more to the point get away with. He’d managed to keep the numbers down to twenty, including himself, but only because he’d flown out on Shadow Beam — a cutter that couldn’t carry any more people.
“Yes Captain, I’m here.”
“Great. I want you to find out everything you can about the ship in docking bay CZK2903. You need to be thorough but don’t leave a trail.”
“Aye Captain. I’ll get straight on it.”
Dash smiled at the enthusiasm in Hackett’s voice.
“Also see if you can find anything on these two…” Dash sent over a picture he’d managed to surreptitiously grab of Sal and Elizabeth. “In particular find out who they’ve been meeting and what they’ve been up to. Cross reference it with everything you have on Sovon.”
“Are they linked to him?”
“I don’t know. If they are it looks like an old link, but one that doesn’t match his history. One of them, the younger, confronted Sovon earlier, thinking he was someone else. Or so she claimed. I want to know if Sovon has had any dealings with either of them other than what I saw.”
“Right sir. I’m on it.”
“Great. Call me if… shit…”
Dash had walked past the docking bay Sal and Elizabeth disappeared into then turned and retraced his steps. As he drew near the airlock doors opened again and Elizabeth stepped out, only a handful of metres from Dash.
Dash fought the urge to duck, turn, shield his face or do anything else which would actually be sure to draw her attention. Elizabeth glanced left and right but didn’t seem to notice him. She set off, only a few yards in front. He slowed his pace to allow her to pull away.
“Sir! Sir! Captain, are you all right?” Hackett’s voice was insistent in his ear.
“Sorry. Yes, I’m fine. Just had a close call, nearly got spotted. Get to work finding me that info. Dash out.”
Should he follow Elizabeth? No. Without a tracker he would have to be almost on top of her and would probably be spotted quickly. He decided to return to the Shadow Beam. As Hackett tracked down information he could be following it up.
*****
Sal lay on her bed, eyes raw from crying. When she had entered the Wanderer Jess and Ali had been desperate to know what happened. All they knew was that she and Elizabeth had gotten split up. Elizabeth had called the ship and asked Jess to ping Sal’s locator, then had to leave the comms booth to go find Sal.
Sal had told the story again, raking over the painful memories once more. Neither Jess nor Ali had known what to say to her. Truth be told, she didn’t know what would have been right for them to say. After a couple of minutes she had made her excuses and gone to her room.
There, finally, she had been able to give in fully to the tears. Memories of her time with Markus, and how that time ended, seemed far more intense than they had before. Added to them was a sense of rejection. She knew now that Sovon wasn’t Markus, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that it was Markus who had rejected her — not Sovon. He had seemed indistinguishable from Markus.
Last of the things upsetting her, but far from least, was that the true size of the task to track down Markus was finally hitting home. If there were people out there that looked so much like him then any matches they did get would almost certainly be false leads. She'd imagined the search as one long, painful wait but it would most likely be a constantly changing mix of painful hope and crushing disappointment.
The tears had stopped now, but not the heartache. She longed to slip into sleep, to dream of Markus once more, but at the same time she was worried she would dream of Markus rejecting her, turning away from her.
Both longing and fear were set to be disappointed, as sleep refused to come.
*****
Outwardly Sovon appeared calm. He knew he might be under surveillance. Inwardly he was seething. What the hell was that slave doing on Free Rock? For that matter, what was she doing free? And what were the odds of running into her like that? Sovon thought he had hidden his shock but couldn’t be certain. It had been like having a ghost rear up in front of him.
His stint as a slave seemed like a lifetime ago now. The memories were particularly unpleasant so he kept them pushed down deep, rarely thinking about that time at all. He certainly hadn’t thought of the girl since leaving his life as a slave behind. Clearly the same wasn’t true of her.
Sovon desperately wanted to find out more about her, to find out how she had gotten free and what she was doing on Free Rock, but doing so would look suspicious if he was being watched.
Damn it, what was going on? Could the girl have been a plant? Could someone know enough of his past to have planted her, hoping to trip him up? But then, if anyone knew that much of his past, or even suspected it, then they could just confront him with the accusations. Why go to the difficulty of staging the meeting? And Sovon was pretty much convinced that the girl was on the level. She had seemed so excited to begin with, then so crushed when he denied knowing her.
Should he abort? No. It had taken far too much time to reach where he was, time
spent smuggling and building contacts. Finally he was on the verge of being accepted by one of the largest and most organised pirate operations. He couldn’t blow that now. Yes there was some risk if he continued, but it was worth it. He wasn’t going to give up when he was so close. Not that giving up was an option. If he did then those he worked for would definitely feel he had failed them. That was something that sent a cold shiver down even his hardened spine.
Chapter Nineteen
Elizabeth returned to the Wanderer exhausted and not a little drunk. She’d managed to find out at least some of the information she wanted. She’d tracked down several contacts, and had got the message across that the Wanderer was in the market for work. In particular work that wasn’t quite the right side of the law.
It was a dangerous game to play. There was the risk of being caught up in a sting operation by the authorities. If she did manage to reach a more criminally leaning group there were still significant dangers.
There wasn’t much choice though. If the others wanted to cross the Quarantine Zone then they needed contacts, and the only way to get those contacts was to take risks.
Jess was sitting on a sofa when she cycled through the airlock. Teeko, the strange creature that she still struggled to accept as an alien, was eating something near the table.
“Hey,” Jess said. “Ali went to bed a couple of hours ago. I thought I should stay up to make sure you got back OK.”
“Thanks dad,” Elizabeth said jokingly.
Jess was actually young enough to be her son, a reminder of all the years that had drifted past. Jess smiled back.
“Where’s Sal?” Elizabeth asked.
The smile quickly faded from Jess’s face.
“In her room. She went there not long after coming on board. She told us what happened, so I didn’t want to intrude.”
Elizabeth sighed. She was tired, exhausted, but shouldn’t she check on Sal? No, she decided. Sal was most probably sleeping. Best to speak to her in the morning.
“That’s probably for the best. I’ll speak to her tomorrow.”
“Anything I need to know?”
“Nothing urgent. I managed to work out some of the right ears to drop information into, then dropped them the news that we are looking for work. If you get pinged about any jobs they may not be all they seem, so wake me up before responding to them.”
“Will do. I’m going to turn in now.”
“Give Ali a kiss from me,” Elizabeth said, with a leer.
Jess just blushed and quickly left, heading towards the room he and Ali now shared.
“Elizabeth friend,” Teeko said. “Safely back good to see you. Concerned growing was I.”
“Thanks Teeko,” she replied, surprised by his words. “I’m OK though, you don’t need to worry about me.”
“Many things Teeko did see, slave when. People strong, people brave, hurt being. Killed being. Safe no one is. Danger everywhere is.”
Elizabeth found herself once again reminded that Teeko was far from the slow-witted creature its speech often resembled.
“Yes, you’re right. Thank you for the reminder Teeko.”
“Welcome most are. Sleep now will.”
Teeko moved off towards its own cabin, most likely to soak in the bath — something it never grew tired of. Elizabeth wondered whether its kind were naturally so obsessed with cleanliness, or if it was just a hangover from being a prisoner with almost no chances to get clean for so long. Unless they ever found another of its kind they would never know.
With Teeko himself unable to suggest where to start looking it was a task even more hopeless than finding Markus. Teeko had no memories before being rescued from a damaged ship and enslaved. It had no memories of any others of its kind. Now it was free it had chosen to travel with Jess and the others in the hope of finding others like itself.
The fact it must be some form of alien was still hard for Elizabeth to take in. The Empire taught that there were no intelligent creatures other than humans. There were always rumours of course, but she had never seen or heard anything that suggested they held even a grain of truth. Until now.
She hadn’t trusted Teeko at first. Even now she had some doubts about its motivations, but it had fought hard to protect Jess — risking its own life in the process.
Elizabeth sighed, she was tired enough without starting to worry about Teeko too. Moving to the food machine she ordered a strong coffee to counter the alcohol she’d drunk then headed to her room to drink it before grabbing some sleep.
*****
Dash sat nursing a beer, considering what he had learnt so far. He missed Dozer. This was the sort of thing he would normally have discussed with his friend. Having to think things through on his own made him feel the loss even more strongly.
The ship he had tracked Elizabeth and Sal back to, the Wanderer, wasn’t one his organisation had any records on. That wasn’t particularly unusual, but it did suggest the ship had travelled some distance. Hackett had tried image matching as well as using the ships name, but he still found nothing.
Something of interest came up a while later though. Someone in the network of agents Dash’s organisation had at the station had been approached to produce false imperial documents for the Wanderer. Not a particularly unusual request, but it did suggest that the Wanderer had either been stolen or involved in something the Empire was particularly upset about.
Later on they’d heard, again via the network of agents, that the crew of the Wanderer were looking for work. In fact they were looking for the type of high reward work that might mean stepping slightly outside the law.
It all felt a little too convenient to Dash — his meeting Sal, the fact they were looking for this type of work. Yet his instincts all told him that Sal was on the level. That didn’t mean the rest of the crew weren’t up to something though.
And then there was Sovon’s reaction. It had been too genuine, and too quickly hidden, to have been an attempt to fool any watchers. Had Dash been slightly further way, or looking from a slightly different angle, he would have missed it.
Further checks on Sovon had failed to turn up anything unusual, so either he was on the level or an exceptional amount of effort had been put into his background.
The easiest choice was still to walk away. To shut down all links with Sovon, cut him off from any future work, and ignore the Wanderer and her crew. It was tempting to do so, but if Sovon was some form of undercover agent then whoever sent him was likely to send in another. At least Dash knew that Sovon needed to be watched. He might get no warning with the next. Frustrating as it was, the best option was to wait and see. For the moment at least.
Dash took a long swig of beer. While his head told him this was the best option, he still felt the urge to grab Sovon and shake the information out of him. If only life were that simple.
Part Three
Chapter Twenty
“You can’t go Jess, you need to stay on the ship,” Elizabeth insisted.
Anger surged across Jess’s face, though he seemed to be trying to bite it back.
“Why not? You can’t go alone. Sal doesn’t feel up to it. If Ali goes with you then you’ll be out of touch with the ship. It’s too far into the station for her implants to work.”
“But yours will?”
“Yes! The Wanderer changed them when the pirates captured me… well, the implants in me changed themselves. It couldn’t, or I think wouldn’t, make the same changes to the implants Sal and Ali got. Another control to prevent the Wanderer becoming scarily powerful.”
“Fine. You still shouldn’t go. You’re the one hooked into the ship. If something happens to you who knows what it will do. It might go catatonic, or fly off. Where would that leave the rest of us?”
“I’ll be fine. My implants give me much better defences than Sal and Ali have, and I can control the ship just as well with you as I can from here.”
“Ali, can’t you talk some sense into him,” Elizabeth asked.
“Sorry, I agree with Jess. He can’t be cooped up in this ship all the time. I’d rather he gets out in places like this where it’s at least relatively safe. When it gets dangerous out I’ll nail his feet to the floor of the flight deck if necessary to keep him safe.”
“Hey,” Jess looked like the ground had shifted beneath his feet. “That isn’t what I meant…”
Ali subjected him to a brilliant smile.
“No, but it’s what is going to happen,” she said.
“This won’t be a walk in the park,” Elizabeth insisted. “It could get dangerous. Very dangerous. You’ve already seen how far some people will go to get their hands on a ship. Everything I managed to find out suggests this deal is on the level, but I could easily be wrong.”
“I know,” Jess said. “And I’m not taking it lightly. The main reason I want to go is so that we can all view what is happening and make suggestions. The only way that can happen is if I’m there.”
Elizabeth went to answer then paused, studying Jess. Despite his flash of anger he was back in control of himself. She considered his reasoning and realised that he had a good point, if she accepted they all needed to be involved in the discussions.
She also realised that much of the reluctance was selfish. She had been a captain, calling all the shots, for too many years to easily switch to a less dominant role.
“I still don’t like it,” she insisted.
“Is there an alternative?” Jess asked.
“Damn it. No, I suppose not.”
She looked at Jess again, impressed by what she saw. There was a firmness to him, a certainty, but it wasn’t the stubbornness of a teenager that she had seen in him before. He had worked through the possibilities, decided on the best course of action and then argued it firmly.
Then he grinned and once again she was struck by how young he was.
“All right,” she said. “But we leave at the first sign of trouble.”
Wanderer - Echoes of the Past Page 10