Blood Money: A Galactic Empire Space Opera Series (Mercenary Warfare Book 2)

by Zen DiPietro

  She turned her full attention on him, and it occurred to him that she had rarely ever done so. Had he said the wrong thing?

  Her face softened, though, turning from stone to a mere hard-baked clay. “It could. That’s why it’s a rare thing we don’t have outside of us four. We’ve spent our lives earning it and reinforcing it.”

  “There’s no one else you trust?” he asked, hoping he wasn’t pushing too far, but he was genuinely interested in her and how she thought.

  “There are others I trust, to a certain degree. It’s not the same.” She still hadn’t looked away. She gave him her undivided attention, and an earnestness that almost unnerved him.

  “I’m trying to imagine it,” he said, with as much honesty as she was giving him. “But I don’t think I can.”

  It was a strange feeling, all this being genuine and talking about real things with someone who wouldn’t lie to him. He almost wished he could be cooped up with Nagali again, telling each other half-truths they each saw through.

  “I guess what matters is having someone who understands you,” he added.

  Her mouth eased, losing its nearly perpetual frown, and he had the sensation she was understanding something about him.

  It felt weird.

  “I think you’re right,” she said.

  Was he getting space sick, or was that a tiny smile on her face? Before he could decide, she was frowning again. “I hope your friend Doony will be okay. It’s not a great time for him to be outside the PAC zone.”

  Cabot had his own misgivings about Doony going his own way. “Unfortunately, it’s not a great time to be in the PAC zone, either, and a trader has to make a living.”

  The old man had a cargo hold of root vegetables he’d intended to sell on Cerberon, and recent events had convinced him to donate them to Atalus rather than find a new buyer. It didn’t hurt that finding a buyer before the vegetables rotted would have been unlikely, but Cabot wasn’t as inclined to discount gestures of kindness that also happened to be convenient as he might have been in recent days.

  Inconveniently, his enlightenment painted Nagali in a slightly different light as well.

  A silence fell between them, and it seemed like the time to excuse himself. “Thank you for the talk,” he said sincerely.

  “Likewise.” She didn’t look at him, but her tone was softer than her usual drill-sergeant bark.

  He smiled on his way back to his quarters.

  CABOT LEFT it to Peregrine to send an update to Fallon. Until they got further into the PAC zone, the communication delay made it difficult to have a productive conversation. Even if the delay were only ten or fifteen minutes, a useful back-and-forth proved difficult.

  He used the time it took to get closer to a reliable network of communications relays to reflect.

  Who had he become, and who did he wish to be? Since he’d set up his shop at Dragonfire, he’d increasingly become entangled. Rooted into a community as well as relationships. Even a sense of loyalty. Sure, he’d outwardly maintained his persona of a cutthroat businessperson, but he’d surreptitiously seen to the needs of the people around him.

  It wasn’t always about business.

  This admission to himself stung a little, like clipping a fingernail a little too far. Most of all because he suspected others, like Nix, Fallon, and now Peregrine, saw through his veneer.

  But was it bad to be liked for being genuine? The confidences Peregrine had shared suggested that having people who knew and understood her meant more than anything else.

  Was he so different? Or had he taken a much longer route to the same destination?

  Or was he just being too bloody precious about himself? Maybe, under the current circumstances, it didn’t matter how he defined himself. Maybe all that mattered was what he was capable of doing.

  The pressure eased off him. Yes, of course. What he could get done was far more important than his opinion of himself. So he didn’t need to think about it.

  He felt better. Good. Great, actually. Letting himself off the hook of self-judgment felt…well, fantastic.

  He clapped his hands together once, making a rather loud sound that slapped back against him in the small space. He stood, feeling energized.

  Refusing to check his impulse, he strode down the corridor and knocked—yes, on purpose—on the door of one Nagali Freeborn.

  The doors whisked open and she stood there with a puzzled frown between her eyebrows. “Yes?”

  “I’ve realized it’s time for dinner. Would you like to join me?”

  Her expression went from puzzled to surprised to pleased to cautious. Quite a kaleidoscope of emotions for a three-second span of time.

  He enjoyed having her off-balance, for once. Usually, it was the other way around.

  “For dinner?” she repeated.

  “Or breakfast, I suppose, if your days are upside down. Or maybe you’ve eaten already.” He turned to go.

  “I haven’t,” she said quickly. When he turned back, she wore the look a person had when presented with a too-good-to-be-true deal.

  He knew that look well.

  “I’m serious,” he assured her. “That last dinner I owed you, and you let me off the hook for. I still owe you that one, even though you were only trying to make me miss you.”

  She laughed and her suspicion eased. “You know me too well.”

  That was the thing about Nagali. She was as likely to be honest as she was to lie. As likely to be vulnerable as she was to cut your throat out. It was what he’d always found so enticing about her.

  So he’d repay her with raw truth that rivaled her own brutal honesty. “As a matter of fact, I did miss that dinner. Why not make up for that now?”

  Her face softened, and he saw a rare glimpse into the heart of Nagali.

  And what a fabulous place that was.

  He bent his arm at the elbow and offered it to her. “If you aren’t busy, we could go right now.”

  She put her hand on his arm without hesitation. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  The doors to her quarters closed behind them and they proceeded down the corridor.

  “Which world?” he prompted. “There are so many.”

  “Any world. Except maybe Caravon, and only because it’s so rich.” She smiled up at him. “This is like old times.”

  “It is,” he agreed.

  “Let’s not screw it up,” she suggested.

  “I’m open to advice on how to avoid doing so.”

  She gave him a rueful look. “No talking about anything unpleasant, from the past or otherwise.”

  “Hm. Reasonable. And what if we don’t talk about Omar at all?”

  “What does he have to do with it?” she asked, surprised.

  “Nothing. I’m just tired of his ugly mug.”

  They laughed the rest of the way to the mess hall.

  AFTER A THOROUGHLY PLEASANT and enjoyable meal, Cabot refused to second guess the experience or rerun the conversation in his mind to scan for subtext or anything else. He simply saw Nagali to her door and left her just the way he’d found her. Or maybe she was happier. He liked to think so.

  But that was it. He was done equating the past to the present, and beating himself up about his previous choices. All that had happened in a different world, and present circumstances were entirely different.

  He would dedicate himself to the present, for the benefit of the near-future. He banished any other time periods from his reckoning.

  Everything was about right now.

  It felt good to think about it that way, despite all the crappy things going on in the galaxy. Perspective was everything.

  Even as he thought that, he knew he was compartmentalizing. But so what? If that’s what it took to make sense of his present reality, then so be it.

  A tiny voice in the back of his mind whispered that he was doing exactly what Peregrine, Fallon, and the others like them did in order to do their jobs.

  He told the little v
oice to buzz off. He wasn’t like them in the ways that mattered. The pragmatism appealed to him, that was all.

  Back in his quarters, he was preparing for bed when the voicecom alerted him.

  It was Peregrine, and Fallon, too.

  He saw them on his screen, side-by-side, looking serious.

  Peregrine spoke first. “Cabot, I thought it would be efficient for Fallon to speak to us both about what comes next. She’s already fully versed in what’s happened.”

  Cabot inclined his head in greeting. “Good to see you, Chief. I hope all is well on Dragonfire.”

  Her expression didn’t change. “Dragonfire is fine. I’m dealing with a different situation, though, so I’m not able to give you additional support right now. My team has been reaching out to see if we can dig up info on this guy Taffer, and Hawk has told me that Arcy suggested Ardino. Its proximity to Atalus makes it a popular drop-off, pick-up, and rendezvous site for people who service Atalus. Or exploit it. Arcy told Hawk that a lot of the players in the slave game appear there at regular intervals.”

  Cabot knew what she said to be true about Ardino in general. “Are you sure about Arcy’s take on this? He didn’t seem that forthcoming before. It’s a lot of effort to put forth on just a vague inclination.”

  He saw Fallon and Peregrine exchange a glance. Something passed between them, but he had no way of knowing what. He felt like the odd man out.

  “Arcy comes from a place that has given him a true hatred of slaving. That’s why he was working, to no benefit of his own, to bring down the operation on Terceron.”

  Cabot tried to read between the lines. “And something in his undercover work points toward Ardino, right? But you aren’t going to tell me what.”

  Fallon pursed her lips, then gave him a more open look. “We protect our assets, Cabot. Just like I protect you. Even among my teammates, I work on a need-to-know basis. I don’t even know where Arcy’s from, or what his last name is. That’s because I’ve never needed to know. While it might be annoying to you not being able to connect the dots, you can take comfort in the fact that others will not connect any other dots to you.”

  “Right. Good point. I’ll have to see if Omar or Nagali have any connections on Ardino. I don’t, and that leaves me in a weak position.”

  Fallon smiled. “Are you the great Cabot Layne or not? I’d heard you could get things done, regardless of the who or the where. But if you’re not…” She tilted her head and slanted him a taunting look.

  He laughed. “My vanity is not what it once was. On the other hand, I’ve recently decided that the past isn’t worth thinking about. Which means I’m up for checking it out, if you think it’s worth checking out.”

  Peregrine and Fallon both looked at him with thoughtful expressions.

  Scrap, he might have said too much. He hadn’t intended to clue them in to his recent epiphanies.

  “Any chance Arcy could meet us on Ardino?” Peregrine asked. “Since it seems he’s familiar with it.”

  Fallon shook her head. “No. He said he had to handle things that had gone too long without his attention while he was on Terceron. But I’ll send reinforcements your way as soon as they’re available. Until then, this matter is up to you.”

  This time, Cabot exchanged a look with Peregrine. How did she feel about working with this group? Her expression showed nothing.

  “I guess we’ll keep doing what we’re doing, then.” He felt awkward because he wanted to make some clever joke, but the situation didn’t feel right for that.

  “Good. Stay in touch.”

  Then she was gone, leaving Peregrine and Cabot looking at each other, one on one.

  “Abrupt, isn’t she?” Cabot said.

  “Sometimes.” Without another word, Peregrine killed her connection and his screen went black.

  Alone in his quarters, Cabot laughed.

  THE NEXT NINE days passed so pleasantly it felt odd. When he wasn’t sitting at the helm, arranging transactions on the ISO or LTS lists, or interacting with his crewmates, he dug around in the current commercial happenings. He’d identified several refugee relief organizations, including some specifically designed to keep people out of the hands of slavers.

  Something he’d learned long ago was that if someone was a true lynchpin of a criminal enterprise, they were likely tied to some legitimate enterprises within the same realm. It was just good business to have fingers in the infrastructure. To know who mattered, what current practices were, and how they could exploit those things.

  He researched the people behind the relief organizations, compiling a list of anyone who might have a network for such double-dealing. In his spare time, he worked through the list.

  Fallon’s people probably would do better at such an endeavor. They’d have access to private files and information never released to the public. But they didn’t have the nose for business, or decades’ worth of experience working with people who did. There were details that didn’t stand out as blatantly as balance sheets that didn’t match the other financial statements. There were more subtle details that didn’t adhere to standard practices when they absolutely should. It took a trader’s eye to see those things and know when something unusual was going on.

  He was hoping to find something like that among these self-avowed crusaders for the downtrodden.

  On the evening before their arrival at Ardino, he had dinner with Nagali in her quarters. He’d suggested the mess hall, but she had insisted that she wanted privacy.

  He didn’t want to have the conversation he knew she was about to initiate. With Nagali, though, there would be no dissuading her if it was what she truly wanted.

  He tucked his bottle of Alturian brandy under his arm before marching to her quarters. The brandy might be a pleasant distraction from the conversation ahead.

  THEY EYED each other like a pair of prizefighters. Never mind that they’d observed all the pleasantries and had both been on their best behavior.

  Nagali had served them a chicken and pasta dish. Cabot didn’t hate it. They ate and exchanged pleasant chitchat, both waiting for the other to wade into the deep water between them.

  He was tired of waiting for the hammer to fall. He sighed. “Let’s just talk about it, shall we?”

  She looked up at him from taking a bite of food, put her chopsticks down, and sat chewing. She chewed for a long time, then lifted her chin. “You know I’m not much for sentimentality, but our going to Ardino seems like it might bring up old wounds. Does it?”

  “I don’t know. Does it?”

  “Don’t be difficult.”

  He wasn’t trying to be. He approached it another way. “Does it bring up old wounds for you?”

  “No, not so far. But I was concerned that revisiting the place where it all went wrong for us might undo the progress we’ve made lately.”

  He leaned back in his chair, forgetting about his half-eaten meal, for the moment. “So far, I feel fairly ambivalent about it. That might change when I see that rocky landscape. I mean, if it brings back a lot of old memories of you leaving me for dead with a group of angry thugs…” he shrugged.

  Her eyes narrowed. “You’re teasing me.”

  “I’m perfectly serious. I might have some sort of abandonment flashbacks that make me cry or something. What will we all do then?”

  She sighed dramatically. “I’m serious. You are definitely not being serious.”

  He leaned forward now, tenting his fingers and resting his chin on them. “Okay, then. What I’ve decided is that I’m focused on the future. I’m not interested in revisiting the past, just moving ahead. How’s that?”

  She regarded him shrewdly, sizing him up. “I’ll take it. Especially if it means that when we get on Ardino, you don’t start wailing at me with a lot of ‘Oh, Nagali, why did you forsake me…whyyyy?’” She made fists in the air, her force rising to a pitch. Then she froze, her faux hysteria disappearing. “So we’re good?”

  He couldn’t help it. He laug
hed. She was too good at acting. Too good at compartmentalizing.

  Although. On second thought, maybe that was perfect, given his recent decision to deal with one thing at a time.

  Maybe it was too good of a thing. Too many things lining up simultaneously. His inner trader whispered that she could be setting him up.

  He ignored the voice.

  He picked up his chopsticks and resumed eating. “You know, this stuff isn’t bad. I might try it again sometime.”

  LANDING on Ardino was not the easy process most planets offered. It was a mercenary planet with no government of its own, and had developed accordingly. Only amenities someone would pay money for had been implemented.

  The docking station above the planet was bare bones. It had only one active docking bay. Airlocks were expensive, and the owner of the station had decided not to build more. That meant a wait upon arrival, and maintaining a position until it was their turn.

  After two hours of waiting, finally, the Outlaw moved in for docking. Cabot wasn’t enthusiastic about allowing a tow vehicle to valet the ship from the airlock down to a storage slip, but that was the only way to make this happen, unless he wanted to make an atmospheric landing.

  While the Outlaw was capable of it, such a landing required tremendously more fuel and, therefore, cost. Not to mention Cabot wasn’t a fan of atmospheric landings and takeoffs. Even with inertial dampeners, they were not a delightful experience.

  The docking fee for Ardino was steep, as was the fee for the tow vehicle.

  There was a reason only dedicated people landed on Ardino.

  It wasn’t a terrible planet, for being a little too warm and entirely too rocky. It had fantastic mazes of underground caverns, some of which had been cleared, streamlined, and put to use.

  Cabot rather liked the natural geology of the caves. Being underground created a stark contrast in temperature compared to the surface. The air in the caverns naturally recirculated itself every twenty-six hours, so it was always clean, fresh, and cool.