Skip Trace

by Jenn Burke

  Har har.

  God, he was exhausted. He sighed, wincing as the motion jarred his tender ribs. “So what happened?”

  Brennan scrubbed a hand through the hair at the top of his head, tugging slightly. “Software malfunction. Some line of code got corrupted and—”

  “Bullshit,” Flick spat, shifting beside Zed to face Brennan. He cradled his arm to his side. “Station code doesn’t get corrupted on its own. There are fail-safes and redundancies built in to make sure shit like this doesn’t happen. Same with ships. Fuck, even the Chaos has redundancies out the wazoo.”

  “The Chaos once had such redundancies,” Qek corrected. “I believe you overrode most of them to increase responsiveness of the engine systems.”

  Flick waved a hand. “Yeah, because it’s my ship and I know which redundancies are stupid. No one’s going to do the same to a station, especially not an Anatolius station. You guys have so many rules and regulations, checklists to follow, forms to fill out in triplicate. It’s a pain in the ass but it pays well, which is why your techs aren’t screaming every time they have to do maintenance.”

  Zed raised a brow.

  “What? I briefly—very briefly—thought about station work before I realized your family would probably end up hating me when I tried to ‘fix’ things that they didn’t figure were broken.”

  “Mistakes happen, though,” Brennan said, folding his arms. “The corruption obviously occurred during the last maintenance and took until now to trigger.”

  “Just as we step into the lift?” Elias snorted. “I mean, our luck is bad, but it’s not that bad. And what happened to Ms. Volk?”

  “Who?” Brennan asked.

  “The security officer you assigned to us.”

  “I didn’t...” Brennan brought up a display on his wallet. “Describe her.”

  Brennan soon established that neither Anatolius Industries, nor their security division, employed a Misha Volk.

  Zed eyed his crew. “So, who do you figure she was with?”

  “Agrius?” Elias sounded almost hopeful and Zed understood why. The Agrius cartel was a known element. An easy answer. Fighting a private war with them had sucked, but at least it was familiar.

  Qek clicked in thought. “It does not fit. There is no financial gain for them to attack us now that we have agreed to their terms. They do not operate in Sol system and this is not one of the stations we were requested to avoid.”

  Elias sighed. “Yeah, I know.”

  “AEF?” Flick suggested softly.

  Zed opened his mouth but the no never emerged. He wanted to believe the military wouldn’t stoop to such measures. But wanting to believe it and actually believing it were two separate things. He couldn’t see Bradley agreeing to this sort of action, but the AEF? Yeah, he’d discovered just how inhumane they could be.

  Still...attempted murder...

  “Give Marnie and Ryan a call,” he said. If anyone could find out if the AEF wanted to cross them out, their old Academy friends in Military Intelligence could.

  “So you guys just have an ongoing list of people who might want to kill you, huh?” Brennan shook his head. “Christ.”

  “In all fairness, the Agrius cartel no longer wishes to kill us,” Qek said.

  They spent another ten minutes going over their latest jobs, but nothing stood out. There’d been no threats, and none of their cargo had been dangerous or even remotely questionable. Since they’d left Ashie Prime—without Zed—the Chaos hadn’t taken on much, and certainly nothing risky.

  “Could it be that we’re going at this from the wrong angle?” Nessa said.

  “How so?” Zed asked.

  “Maybe it’s not what you are—sorry,” she added with a grimace. “But who.”

  Elias nodded. “Anatolius.”

  Zed turned to his brother. “Do you or Dad have a ‘who wants to kill me’ list?”

  “No,” Brennan said with a half chuckle, before sobering. “Not that I know of, anyway. And even if we did, why would they go after you? You’re not connected to the company, and of all of us, you’re the most likely to survive anything thrown at you. O war hero.”

  Zed closed his eyes and leaned against Flick. “Whatever. Can I be done thinking now?”

  “You okay?” Flick asked, his voice low with worry.

  “Tired.” Then, because he’d promised himself to be truthful with Flick, he admitted, “I’ve got a headache, too.”

  Flick stiffened. “How bad?”

  Zed opened his eyes again and sought out Flick’s hand. “It’s not bad. Just enough to be annoying and make me more tired, that’s all. Promise,” he added, bringing Flick’s knuckles to his lips for a kiss. “Can we get an escort back to our quarters, Bren?”

  Flick grimaced. “The Chaos—”

  “The Chaos might be compromised,” Zed said. “Since the malfunction wasn’t a malfunction, I mean. Messing with the Chaos would be simple for someone who’d figured out how to fuck with Anatolius systems.”

  Brennan pulled out his wallet again. “Good point. I’ll get some people on it.”

  “Thorough sweep. Only your most trusted, okay? Eli, can you send Bren the command codes?”

  “Should I salute you, too?”

  Zed shot his captain an apologetic smile. “Sorry.”

  “Nah, you’re the security officer. You can call the shots here.” Elias struggled to work his wallet with his immobilized hand until Nessa leaned over and held it for him. “Done.”

  Brennan’s wallet pinged. “Got it. Oh...shit.”

  What now? Zed barely bit back a groan.

  “There’s footage. How they got it, I don’t know, but it’s all over the networks. Crap, you’re flickering in and out—we might be able to play it off as lighting, maybe—” His brother blew out a breath. “Look, Zed...you’re not going to be able to avoid the attention this incident is going to garner. You need to manage it.”

  Manage it. Deny, deny, deny. It had been a long time since he’d had to deal with the fame of being an Anatolius. He hoped managing it was sort of like driving—a skill that never left you once you learned it. But...”Not today.”

  “I can work with that. You up for rescheduling the press conference for tomorrow?”

  No. Hell no. Never would be better.

  “Sure,” he said, lips twisting into a parody of a smile. “That would be just peachy.”

  Chapter Five

  Felix jerked upright, breath caught in his throat. Clutching the blanket, he waited for his muscles to relax, aware of the painful irony of his tense fingers. His head spun and his gut rolled. Blanket fibers twitched beneath his grip. Fixing his gaze, he worked to pull his fingers free. Pain lanced through his shoulder, forcing more breath the wrong direction—out instead of in. The lazy whirl of shadows picked up speed, sending the galaxy into a quick tumble. Felix let go of the blanket and gasped for air.

  The nightmare continued to tease the corners of his mind, but he was awake and aware now. Control of his body slowly returned. Without glancing at Zed—he could sleep through a hull breach now that he’d left the AEF and covert ops behind—Felix pushed aside the blankets and slipped out of the bed. Slack footsteps pulled him across the room where he caught his reflection in the darkened windows.

  Nope, not doing that.

  He paced back again. Then forward, then back. A phantom itch crawled across his skin, similar to the ache in his shoulder, but needier. The scrape of stin claws across his memory could only be silenced in two ways—sleeping pills and activity. He watched Zed sleep for a while, then chose activity. He craved the scent of compressed drive matter, dried oil particles, dust and tank water.

  Fifteen minutes later, Felix reclined into a shadow on the concourse outside the docks. He had pressed Brennan for a
report after arriving at their quarters. A team could scope his ship, sure. But he needed to follow up afterward, make sure they hadn’t scuffed the Chaos’s shiny bits. Or reinstalled safety protocols he had disabled—for everyone’s safety.

  He waited for the security to move farther down the docks before approaching his ship, not wanting to bother with the hassle of producing his credentials and/or having some obsequious asswipe wake the Anatolius family at oh-five-hundred hours. After waiting another minute, Felix paced quickly across the docks, ducked through a loading bay and sprinted to his ship. The Chaos bobbed against her mooring, looking all neglected and forlorn, shiny bits sandblasted by numerous trips through j-space, hull pocked with small incidence scars. She resembled a misshapen crab, with no legs. Her maneuvering thrusters were bulbous rather than sleek and her nose was blunt.

  The tail end of the ship, visible from this angle only as a wide flare of dirty ceramix plates, was more impressive. Any engineer worth his grease could tell the make of the drive just from the flare. A closer inspection of the exhaust housing—with retractable fuel scoops—would narrow the model. The Chaos might be ugly, but she carried an ashushk star drive, meaning she could outfly just about any other hauler in the dock. She would lose a race to the end of the system, but she could thread the eye of the needle in jump-space.

  A shadow flickered by the ass-end of the ship, catching Felix’s eye. Reaching for the stunner at his belt, he leaned into the side of the Chaos and advanced down the scuffed ceramix skin. He ducked under the starboard thruster array and crawled forward on his hands and knees, shoulder protesting every movement. The joint had been popped back in, but his whole arm still ached. Half a person—shoulder and one arm, a hip and leg—edged around the flare. Felix raised his stunner. A head followed and Felix pressed down on the trigger and watched, stupefied, as his target rolled beneath the short arc of electricity.

  From any distance, a stunner was a fairly useless weapon. It could be jiggered to deliver a good sting, but worked best when in contact with someone you wanted to stun. That someone was now in his face and still rolling, taking him backward so that his only weapon flew out of his hand. A short cry jolted out of his throat. Fingers pressed his mouth closed, and a small, sharp face appeared over his, features obscured by shadow.

  “Shh.”

  Fatigue and panic were not comfortable fellows. The pain in his shoulder distracted him enough that he couldn’t gain any sort of purchase on the slim figure atop him, or the ground beneath. Add in that he hated to be pinned—and several accompanying memories—and his best recourse seemed to be making as much noise as possible. The hand pressed across his mouth dampened his yells.

  Felix tried rolling side to side, hoping to gather enough momentum to throw his opponent. It was a woman—or a fucking slim man. Felix had a second to wonder if it was the mysterious Misha Volk come to finish him off before he realized his captor was speaking to him, her words all but lost beneath his grunts and muffled curses.

  “For fuck’s sake, Flick, stop.”

  How did she know his nickname—the old one, the one from school?

  Felix stopped struggling, telling himself that he was gathering energy for his next escape attempt from the smallest person to ever have taken him down. “Who are you?”

  “It’s Marnie.”

  His pretend stop became a real stop as disbelief locked him down. “Marnie?” He’d just called her that afternoon...

  “Are you okay?”

  “No, I’m not okay.” He pushed at the legs trapping his hips. “Can you get off me?” His fingers were trembling. He hoped his voice was steady.

  “Oh, right, sorry.”

  She eased off of him and stood, her movements as graceful as Zed’s might have been. Ignoring the hand she extended back toward him, Felix rolled onto his side and swore as pain slammed into his shoulder.

  “Did I hurt you?’

  “What do you think? Why the fuck did you have to take me down so hard?”

  “You shot at me.” Though he still couldn’t make out her face, he could hear wry humor in her tone.

  “Yeah, well, what are you doing skulking around my ship?”

  “Same as you, I suspect.”

  Felix shook his head, setting it to ringing. “How did you get here? I thought you were on the Cambridge?”

  “Not exactly.” She cocked her head toward the ship hovering over them. “Can we go inside?”

  Felix used the side of the Chaos to pull himself up, fingers slipping on the ceramix plates until he caught a seam. Marnie stood quietly by. She hadn’t offered him a hand this time, probably knowing he’d reject it. Either way, he felt...exposed. Uncomfortable and irritated. Resisting the urge to roll his sore shoulder, he limped to the auxiliary access and keyed in his passcode. The hatch opened on the dim interior of Cargo Two. Felix ducked inside, Marnie on his heels.

  He had his hand raised to the panel that would access the rest of the ship, when it slid open to reveal a backlit figure holding a laser carbine. Felix grabbed Marnie and ducked to the side. She met the wall with a startled yelp...and started laughing.

  What the ever loving fuck?

  He glanced over at their assailant. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

  Qek’s eyes rounded. “I detected activity on the external sensors.”

  “And so you thought you’d grab the biggest gun in the weapon locker and confront the intruders yourself?”

  “Yes. Had I not recognized you and Mrs. Scott, I would still have had the advantage.” The ashushk hefted the large rifle.

  Felix didn’t want to think about the number of things that might have gone wrong with Qek’s plan. Someone hiding beside the hatch, someone with a shoot first, ask questions later attitude, someone...Yeah, no, he wasn’t going to think about it. Huffing out a choked breath, he hauled himself to his feet for the second time that night. Or was it the third? And it wasn’t night anymore, was it, and—

  “How do you know Marnie?”

  “Qekelough and I have exchanged a number of messages over the last year or so.” Marnie smiled at the little blue alien with the big black gun. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

  “The feeling is mutual. I have enjoyed our exchange of code, and I look forward to the opportunity to discuss theory with you.”

  Enough light spilled in from the corridor that Felix could see Marnie properly. She looked about the same as she had the last time he’d seen her, some ten years ago when he’d toured the Military Intelligence drift Cambridge. Civilian drifts cruised in slow arcs from somewhere to somewhere else. Military drifts were stations with thrusters. The Cambridge was in a class of its own. Cybernetics and bio-implants broke in j-space, but they were still the fastest way of interfacing with the vast Mil-Int computers. So the military confined its jacked-in operatives to a drift ship. Having that much brain power in one location made Military Intelligence a logical target, therefore the Cambridge was more maneuverable than most drifts, and equipped with the latest advances in defensive technology. And that was just in engineering. The technology the Intelligence officers got to play with was mostly science fiction. Felix hadn’t been invited to tour those decks.

  Marnie was studying him in return. “Jesus, Flick, you look rough.”

  She looked anything but rough. About five centimeters shorter than Felix, she was slender and lithe—and they were two different things entirely when it came to Marnie. Beneath her skin, she would be lean muscle. She still wore her black hair cut sensibly short, bangs forming a severe line over dark brows and almond-shaped chocolate-colored eyes. She wore neat but unremarkable business attire. Her dark gray suit didn’t scream success, which would allow her to slip under the radar of station thugs. But to Felix’s practiced eye, her clothing was specially fitted to her needs. The good cut allowed quick and decisive action, and the material woul
d be durable and quite possibly chemical-proof. She might even have a personal shield.

  She strode soundlessly toward him, her economy of movement reminding Felix of her skillset. He braced for impact—she’d already decked him outside the Chaos and he had a feeling he wouldn’t enjoy this next assault any better. He stiffened as her arms snaked around him.

  “Hugging you is like hugging a post.”

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t ask for a hug and we’ve already been uncomfortably intimate in the last five minutes.”

  “Prickly as ever too.”

  Grunting, Felix extracted himself from her embrace. “Okay, okay.” Then he saw the chalk-marks alongside the door panel. A quick glance into the corridor outside the cargo bay showed several more. “What the fuck!” He pushed through the open hatch. “They marked up our ship, Qek.”

  No matter that many of the marks covered a pattern of greasy old thumbprints, gouges and grooves. Those were theirs, not some Anatolius interloper’s.

  “The numbers coincide with the report,” Qek pointed out, lowering the laser carbine with a practiced ease that shouldn’t worry him so much, and pulling a wallet out of a utility pocket.

  “Don’t care.” Felix reached over to the closest mark and smudged it. “My ship.”

  “You received the security report, yes?”

  “Yeah.” Felix tapped his left wrist, activating his bracelet. He swiped at the display, selecting one of six active screens to magnify. “It all looked good...” Except for the highlighted paragraph at the end where the Anatolius team mechanic had recommended sixteen systems for safety evaluations. Fuckwit. “But I didn’t like the reading they took from the d-quadrant coil.”

  “I noted that too. I have just checked the exhaust release from the same quadrant. I also scanned the reports of our last three diagnostics. The numbers have been slightly off each time, with an incremental increase.”