Roystan stood. “Let’s change our own path, Nika.”
Josune followed them.
“How can you see them, if they can’t see you?” Nika asked.
“This ship belonged to smugglers when I bought it. It has some of the best long-range surveillance equipment money could buy back then. Old now, but still effective.” Roystan turned to Josune. “How long before the nullspacer is ready?”
“Nineteen hours.”
Nika had seen the number of parts left to cure. They needed all of that nineteen hours.
“Can we do anything in the next two that will allow us to nullspace, even if we break things coming out the other side?”
“No.”
“I was afraid of that.” Roystan settled into the pilot’s seat. “One degree,” he said to Nika. “That way, if they’re only watching us, they’ll think we’re still coming.”
“Shouldn’t we head the other way?” It would take them longer to catch up.
“If they know we’ve seen them, they’ll nullspace in. This way, they’ll think we’re making a minor course adjustment. Ready?”
“Ready.” She wished he sounded more hopeful.
The adjustment was so gentle she didn’t feel it.
They watched the boards in silence.
Three minutes later, the other ship adjusted its course, too.
Roystan sat back in the pilot’s seat. “They’re too far away to respond that fast to a visual, even if they noticed a one-degree change. Which means they know where we are.” He bounced to his feet. “If we don’t find that marker, we’ll never escape from them.”
He opened a link. “Jacques, I need you to watch the ship while we go through everything we’ve brought on board. Everything.” He looked at Josune. “Do you need to help Carlos?”
“Snow’s with him.”
Josune rubbed at her flaking skin. “If you didn’t find it earlier . . . The food maybe?”
“Jacques has already checked that.”
“The only things I brought on were the havoc bombs and the cannon. And some plasma. They wouldn’t have markers. I know them inside out. I don’t think they could be tracked. Feyodor was—”
The color drained from her face. “The black pins.” She turned and ran. Roystan and Nika followed.
Snow and Carlos looked up as they burst into engineering.
“Don’t come back here until you’ve found what’s tracking us,” Carlos said.
Josune yanked open a drawer and pulled out some pins.
Nika put out a hand to take one. A black, polished metal bird of prey. Her hand shook. No matter how far you ran, they always got you in the end. “Eaglehawk.”
“Eaglehawk?” Josune’s voice was sharp. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.” She’d been sure back when they’d purchased the Dekker. She just hadn’t known for certain whether they were after The Road or her.
Nika held the pin up to the light. Alejandro had never let her touch his. The metal had an oily sheen, typical of a substance that contained trace amounts of transurides.
“I never knew it contained a marker.” So that was how Leonard Wickmore always turned up at strategic—and inconvenient—moments. He didn’t trust his people. Not even his elite thugs. How many of them knew the pins were trackable?
“Eaglehawk. Now I know the company.” Josune closed her fist around the pins she held, her face grim. “They can start counting their days.”
“The people who wear these pins beat up or assassinate other people. How long do you think you’ll last?” How had Josune and Roystan collected so many?
“I’m still going to destroy them.”
“Where did you get these?” Nika asked, to stop herself from saying any more about how stupid that was.
“The Hassim.”
The Hassim had been destroyed. “So they’ve been following you since then. They never give up, you know.”
Josune took the pin out of her hand. “Neither do I.”
* * *
• • •
Josune sent the pins off in a drone—in the same direction the ship was currently traveling—then took over from Carlos. Nika went back to the bridge, where she and Roystan carefully turned the ship 62.7 degrees from its current course. After that they retired to the crew room, where Jacques was cooking honest-to-goodness Reta-potato chips from Reta. There was no mistaking the spicy smell of them.
Carlos hovered. “Even my saliva’s got saliva. How long?”
“Less if you sat at the table and waited.”
Carlos gave a long, overly dramatic sigh and came over to sit beside Nika.
Roystan took Carlos’s place in the galley entry. “How’s it going, Jacques?” Jacques didn’t order him away.
“So-so,” Jacques replied.
Checking on his crew to see that they were okay. He’d take time for a quiet chat with Carlos later, if he hadn’t already done so.
“How long have you been with Roystan?” Nika asked Carlos.
“Twenty years.”
Carlos wasn’t much older than she was. “You must have been quite young.”
“I was on the run.”
Jacques said something soft to Roystan, who said something equally soft back, then moved to the table so Jacques could bring out an enormous bowl of retchips.
Carlos dived on them. “I haven’t thought about that in years, you know. I was apprenticed to an old prospector out in the Pleiades. He was a weird man. Believed in rituals for everything. He had this ancient pen-and-ink set that he used to burn symbols onto flesh.” Carlos glanced at his inked arms. “There was literally no uncovered skin on him. I think that’s why he took on apprentices.” Carlos shrugged. “And why he decided to sell me off. He needed a new body to ink. Wouldn’t sign the qualification papers unless I signed on to a merc ship. He got more by selling a geologist’s contract and I knew that I wouldn’t get qualified if I didn’t sign.”
Geologist. She’d thought he was an engineer.
“So I signed. Then I took my bag and tried to lose myself between the two ships. There’s been a bounty on my head ever since, for breaking contract. Roystan found me trying to break into his cargo. He was taking Earth chocolate to one of the Colcannon worlds.”
Roystan smiled reminiscently. “He was skinny, half starved. He threatened to brain me with my own chocolate, although to be honest he’d crammed so much in his mouth it was hard to understand the threat at all. And he stank. He hadn’t bathed for months. We cut his clothes off him in the end, left them in a bin near the vending machine where we bought him new coveralls.”
“We?” Nika asked. If Carlos had been there twenty years, maybe Pol or one of the others had, as well.
Carlos winced.
“Barr and me,” Roystan said, and the conversation shut down.
A warning sounded. Then another. Nika was almost glad for the interruption.
“Two more ships,” Roystan said. “Busy little sector of space, all of a sudden.” Another signal. “The original ship has jumped closer.” He shook his head. “The pins are still too close. Any ship intercepting the pins will see us on visual. We should have destroyed them.”
He brought up the paths of the three ships on-screen. A red line, a green line, a yellow line. Then he added a blue line for the path of The Road, and a paler blue for the marker. All five lines converged. He called up engineering. “Are you seeing this, Josune?”
“Unfortunately. And they’re close enough to see us without the marker.”
Roystan rubbed his eyes. “Which do we think is the weakest ship?”
“The first one,” Nika guessed.
“Agreed,” Josune said. “After all, it waited until the other two ships arrived before it jumped in.”
“Let’s move away from the two new ships,” Roysta
n said. “Head toward the original ship. Nika, I need you on the calibrator.”
She went with him to the bridge, where he fired the rockets gently to change their course, making away from the other two ships, more on an angle to the first.
In less than five minutes, all three ships had adjusted their own courses to meet up at Roystan’s ship again.
Roystan sighed, and linked into engineering. “All of you drop what you’re doing and come up to the crew room. We’re out of time.”
29
JOSUNE ARRIOLA
“We’ve two and a half hours before the first ship reaches us,” Roystan said, when they were all assembled in the crew room. “Josune, Carlos, you say we won’t have a nullspacer ready before then?”
“Nowhere near then,” Carlos said.
Josune nodded agreement.
“We can’t take on three ships,” Roystan said. “I propose we make a bargain to get us out of here.”
Josune shook her head. “They might agree, but they’ll double-cross you.”
“Credit me with some brains. We still have a bargaining tool.”
If he meant the Hassim’s memory, that wouldn’t work. “The Pierre had the memory, remember.” These ships had come back for Roystan, for the same information Feyodor had wanted from him. He’d better not offer them that. It was the only thing keeping them from being blasted out of the sky.
“That company isn’t the only one who’ll pay for the memory,” Roystan said.
“No one will take the memory and leave us alive.”
“Jerome Brown might.”
“Jerome Brown might kill us, too. We’re vulnerable, and he’ll know it.” But Roystan’s idea was a good one. Brown, so far, had been fair in his dealings. He might agree to the bargain to get his hands on the Hassim memory.
“I trust him,” Roystan said. “His grandfather was a good man, and had a lot of influence on young Jerome. Jed practically brought him up.”
His grandfather. Josune kept forgetting that Roystan—no matter how much he claimed to hate exploring—was a Goberlingophile, too. Jed Brown had been a friend of Goberling’s. They’d grown up together. Of course Roystan would know of him. Would know that Jed’s influence was one of the reasons Jerome hunted Goberling’s lode himself.
Brown was almost as obsessed as the crew of the Hassim had been, although he was more discreet about it. Feyodor had sold him information once. She’d wanted fast credits, and it was quicker than setting up an auction to sell the information.
“Maybe,” Josune agreed. “But he’ll need to do it in the next two hours. Otherwise he’ll get caught in the fighting.”
“I’ll set it up,” Roystan said.
He was forgetting one thing. Josune caught his arm as he turned to go. “Qiang came back.”
“I know that.”
Nika looked at them, as if trying to work out what she wasn’t saying. Josune wasn’t sure Roystan had worked it out either.
“They must have cracked the Hassim code.” They would have the best hackers in the universe working on it, although it was fast, even for them. “They learned something on that feed. They learned what Feyodor knew. They learned why she wanted to talk to you.”
Roystan nodded.
“Brown will learn that, too.”
“I know, Josune. But at least we’ll be alive.”
* * *
• • •
Roystan left to contact Brown. Josune considered their options. They had two havoc bombs, but she’d pulled the filaments out. Did she have time to set them up? Was it worth it, given that the enemy ships would be expecting havocs now? Might even be able to send them back.
Better to concentrate on checking over the Pierre’s weapons.
“I want something that makes me feel safe,” Nika said.
So did Josune, although her safety was in knowing she had a crew who could fight and the weapons to back it up.
“We have the out-of-date mutrient, but I’d give anything for some naolic acid, right now.”
Snow shuddered. “No way.”
Given Snow’s reaction, it sounded dangerous. Something they could use?
“What does it do?”
Nika didn’t answer immediately. She stared into space, then said, “Naolic acid isn’t the only—”
Snow stepped back. “No.”
Josune said, “If it helps us, Snow.”
“You’re not going to like this.”
“Mutrient and acid. Burns the skin,” Nika said. “Spray it on them as they come through. They’ll be so busy trying to get it off, we can stun them while they’re doing it.”
“You’re right,” Josune said to Snow. “I don’t like it.”
“If they get hold of us, they’ll do worse,” Nika said. “Believe me.”
A link opened. Two images, Roystan and Jerome Brown. Sound came with it. They stopped to listen and watch.
If Roystan had planned to make his call public, why hadn’t he called from the crew room instead of going down to his cabin?
Maybe he didn’t want Brown to know it was public.
“Atypical droop on the left eye,” Nika murmured. “He’s got bioware. Unusual they put it in the left eye. Most people put it in the right.”
Josune’s had been in the right. She touched her own eye, then closed her left eye to reassure herself she could see just as well with the other one. “Did I ever say thank you for saving my eye before you fixed the rest of me?”
“It’s the logical way to do it when you can’t do a full mod. Fix the worst damage first.”
On-screen, Roystan said to Brown, “Last time we dealt, there was one thing we couldn’t supply you with. That’s back in our possession now. We’re wondering if you’re interested.”
Brown’s eyes narrowed. “I might be.”
His left eyelid glowed momentarily. Checking up on them?
“Subvocal transmission of commands to his link,” Nika said. “He didn’t buy that from his modder. That’s a specialist tech firm there.”
“We have that item back.” Roystan ran his hands through his hair. Josune thought he might be worried, but it didn’t show on the screen. “But we’ll only have it for the next two hours.”
Brown’s eyes narrowed farther.
They had closer to two and a half hours, but there was sense in making it earlier, to avoid the company ships.
“We’ll sell it to you. Provided you collect it within the hour.”
“The price?”
“Take us with you.”
Brown twitched. The first reaction they’d gotten out of him. “Take you where?”
“To a central hub. Somewhere we can re-equip.”
“And your ship?”
“It’s a write-off.”
“So I can wait until the ship dies, and come in and take it.”
“It won’t be here in two hours.”
“I . . . see.” And Josune saw that he did. “Captain Roystan. You are asking me to rescue you and your crew. Put my own ship in danger.”
“Yes, Executive, I am. But the prize is worth it. The backup memory from the Hassim. I will give you coordinates that will bring your ship in close to us. If you get here within the hour, you should be safe.”
It was the first time he’d mentioned the memory by name. Josune thought that was deliberate.
Brown shook his head, and almost smiled. “I admire your effrontery, Roystan.”
“Thank you.”
Brown’s eyelid glowed again, in silent communication they weren’t party to. “What are your coordinates?”
“Do we have a deal?”
More silent communication. “How many of you?”
“Six.”
“We have a deal, but I can’t do an hour. It will be ninety-five minutes.”
<
br /> That was cutting it closer than Josune liked. Closer than Roystan liked too, by the way he blew out his breath. But he pushed the coordinates through without saying anything. “We’ll expect you in ninety-five minutes, then.”
“Ninety-five minutes,” Brown agreed, and closed the link.
Roystan called the crew room. “You all heard that.”
“Every single word,” Carlos said.
Ninety-five minutes of sitting around, waiting to be collected. Hoping nothing would go wrong. On the Hassim Josune would be checking the cannons, checking the blasters, doing what she could to protect her ship.
Here? She was doing nothing.
She stood abruptly. “I’m going to look over the Pierre’s weapons.” She looked at Nika. “Do you want to try out that mutrient mix of yours?” Every extra weapon they had to hand was a bonus.
* * *
• • •
“You really should tell Snow who you are,” Josune said, as they walked down to the storeroom together. “He’ll never forgive you when he does find out.”
“I know. But I need to disappear.”
“What are you running from?”
Nika looked around the storeroom. “Can you unlock that?”
The dangerous-goods cupboard. Josune silently unlocked it. She didn’t press for more detail. Nika would tell her if she wanted to. Otherwise, it wasn’t Josune’s business.
She piled the weapons from the Pierre onto a trolley, while Nika picked out the container of phosphoric acid that Josune and Carlos used to clean the rust and grease off the ship panels.
“This should do.”
Josune helped her lift it onto the trolley, along with the out-of-date mutrient from the Dekker.
“It’s simple, really,” Nika said, long after Josune had thought she wouldn’t. “And rather stupid. My ex, Alejandro. He was—”
Josune saw the way she flinched. Didn’t ask what.
Nika looked around the store. “I need salts, and something that works like Arrat crystals.”
Salts were easy. “I don’t know what Arrat crystals are.”
Stars Uncharted Page 27