by Zen DiPietro
She stopped studying the glassware and turned to face him. “No.” She glanced toward the door then stepped closer. “Strictly confidential, but two PAC outposts have gone dark. No distress calls, nothing. We’ve dispatched ships to check it out, but they’re still days from arriving. We think Barony picked those outposts off to prevent us from observing the passing of their warships.”
Cabot blew out a thin breath, like a soundless whistle. “That’s very disturbing to hear. Any idea where they would be sending ships?”
“Not as of yet.” Fallon looked grim.
He hated to ask in the wake of such serious news, but he had to know about the other events going on in the PAC. “What about the slave trade and Ditnya?”
“I have little involvement with that, at present. It’s a need-to-know operation, and I haven’t been deemed as needing to know. I’ve been assured that they’re investigating your lead and working with Caine.”
He was unsatisfied with so little information, but there was nothing to do for it. “Is it always like that? You put your neck out there, then others take over and you don’t know what happens next?”
“Sometimes,” she admitted. “But that’s just part of the job for me. In my early days as an officer, I never had the big picture. I just did as I was ordered. But be glad. If you don’t need to know, it means you aren’t being tapped to help out with it.”
“True,” he admitted. “I have to admit that, from time to time, I marvel at how different our lives are.”
She grinned at him. “Wish you’d gone to the PAC academy, so you could join in on the really fun missions?”
He shook his head firmly. “You and I have very different ideas of fun. Though I sometimes wish I had your access to information, I never wish I had your job.”
She chuckled. “Duly noted. Keep me posted if you notice anything out of the usual, okay?”
“As always. Stay safe out there, chief.”
She smiled, though more faintly than before. “I’ll do my best. You stay on the lookout for yourself, too.”
He frowned. “Are you concerned Barony might attack Dragonfire?”
“No. I was thinking more about your friends.” She threw him a teasing look, then disappeared out the door, leaving him chuckling.
Sometimes, she showed a lot more humor than he would have expected from someone in her line of work. But then, maybe when you did the kind of stuff she did, a sense of humor became even more important.
“ONE DRINK. COME ON.” Omar gave Cabot a pleading look.
“Late-night drinking just isn't my thing,” Cabot said. “Why do you even want me to go to the pub with you? From what I hear, you’ve got a whole crowd of people you hang out with.”
Indeed, Omar had quickly become quite popular. Dragonfire rarely got such an easygoing, colorful character, and residents of the station had taken to him right away.
“Memories, man!” Omar insisted. “Who knows how long I’ll be here? I can’t stay forever, and Nagali’s likely to contact me any minute and say she’s ready to go someplace terrible and do something that’s a really bad idea. And it would be a real shame if we didn’t go out at least one of the nights I was here.”
He had a point, though Cabot hated to admit it.
“We’ve had some great dinners, enjoyed the gym, and taken some great walks in the arboretum,” Cabot argued. “Isn’t that enough?”
“Prelin’s ass!” Omar exclaimed. “When did you get to be such an old man?”
Though Cabot bristled at the sentiment, he wasn’t entirely sure Omar was wrong. “What’s wrong with being an old man? It happens to every guy, provided he lives long enough.”
“It’s dull.” Omar grimaced.
“For you. Pleasure is relative. For example, you enjoy drinking yourself stupid, vomiting copiously, and suffering the ill effects of it all the next day. I most certainly do not.”
“That’s only on special occasions,” Omar grumbled. “I hardly do that anymore.”
“I can think of few things I’d like less. I actually enjoy quiet evenings, pleasant conversation, and intellectual challenge.”
Omar sighed. “Fine, whatever. Will you come to the pub or not?”
“I will. For old times' sake. Just don’t expect me to get drunk and act stupid, and I’d rather you didn’t either.”
“Fine. But you’re buying.”
“Agreed. My treat.” Cabot didn’t mind picking up the tab for dinner and drinks.
Omar brightened. “Now we’re talking.”
CABOT LAUGHED at another of Omar’s unbelievable stories. The guy could really tell a tale. If past experience was any indicator, at least a few of the story details were even true.
He was having a better time than he’d expected. A few tables away, Captain Nevitt sat, looking cozy with Ross Whelkin. Rumor had it they were something of an item. The captain even chatted with people who dropped by her table.
Hesta Nevitt had changed a great deal over the past year. She no longer had a reputation for being an automaton who lived only to be an officer.
Oh, she was still what many called a “hardass,” but she was now more than just that to the people on the station. He hoped he got the chance to know her better in the near future. Her duties and his ensured that their paths almost never crossed. He’d have to engineer a way around that.
She seemed like someone worth knowing these days.
Omar had moved on to another story, telling about the time he’d fooled someone into selling him an entire shipment of power converters under the mistaken belief that it was an equal measure of tango fruit.
Cabot spotted Fallon, Raptor, Peregrine, and Hawk sitting in a back corner, looking by turns serious and amused.
He felt better knowing they were aboard, looking out for everyone.
As Omar’s story rose into the big delivery part, Cabot realized that he recognized almost all of the people at the tables surrounding them. Every now and then, he’d see an unfamiliar face, but usually it was opposite or next to someone he knew.
It was nice, being surrounded by friends and acquaintances.
Omar went for the big finish. “And I told him, hey, you should have checked the manifest, and don’t worry about where my clothes are!”
Cabot chuckled, shaking his head. Instead of replying, he raised his brandy glass to Omar in tribute.
Omar drained his mug of whatever rotgut he’d chosen in the manner of a conquering hero.
“What do you think?” Omar prompted.
“About what? Your story?”
“No, the crowd.” Omar nodded toward the rest of the room. “I saw you casing it the whole time I was talking.”
“It’s a good group. Good people. No angle.”
“Not looking for someone in particular,” Omar pressed.
“Who would I look for?”
“That’s what I was wondering.”
“No one,” Cabot insisted. “Just taking stock.”
“All right.” Omar sounded like he wasn’t entirely convinced but didn’t mind if Cabot was lying.
Their food arrived, with Cabot having ordered a reasonable meal for one person and Omar having ordered enough to feed four. He’d have thought that Omar was just taking advantage of the fact that Cabot was buying, but Omar ate like that all the time. How he managed to stay fit, Cabot could not fathom.
“I see why you like it here,” Omar said between bites. “It’s relaxing, yeah? None of these people even want to knife you in the back.”
“That’s part of it.” Sort of. Cabot wasn’t sure he could describe it in a way Omar would really understand, so he was fine with Omar understanding it in his own way.
“The food here is as good as on Dauntless, though I prefer the teriyaki chicken there. And don’t tell Ditnya I said that, because she insists Dauntless is the pinnacle of quality food. Likewise, the services here are all top-notch. And prices are all market rate, no gouging. I could definitely learn to like life here.”
Cabot strai
ghtened. “You’re not thinking of moving here permanently, are you? I think you’d find that detrimental to your business interests.”
“Eh.” Omar shrugged. “Not full time. But I could see traveling between here and Dauntless. Could be a nice balance.”
Cabot hadn’t expected that, and wasn’t sure how he felt about Omar being on Dragonfire for more than an extended visit. He’d say nothing until he had time to think it over. Maybe he wouldn’t say anything then, either.
It wasn’t like he had any proprietary rights to Dragonfire. Any law-abiding person could stay there. He just hoped this wouldn’t be a little too much together time for him and Omar.
Oh no, and Nagali. If Omar would be around, chances were, Nagali would occasionally be, as well. The two of them tended to orbit one another. They liked to pretend to barely tolerate one another, but the siblings were deeply devoted to watching out for each other.
This could get messy, in the long term.
For now, though, it was pleasant enough, and Cabot decided he’d focus on that. With all that was going on within the PAC zone, there was no telling what the future held.
Live in the moment and enjoy life, he reminded himself. That was what he intended to do.
“You should try the brownie sundae,” Cabot said. “They make really good ones here.”
TWO WEEKS after his return to Dragonfire, Cabot was still doing his best to enjoy life to the utmost. Omar and Nagali still weren’t cramping his style, and life on Dragonfire remained on an even keel.
He’d arranged several point-to-point transfers, meaning he took brief ownership of a load of cargo before a buyer arrived to pick it up. Those were always a tidy profit, and they pleased him because he was making money from nothing but being conveniently located.
One day, during a lull in his shop—too early in the day for anyone to be there alongside him—the voicecom alerted him of an incoming call. Unusual. Most of his business was done via recorded message rather than a real-time conversation.
He sat down behind the counter and activated the display.
Doony Kirk’s weathered old face peered at him. “Cabot. Glad I was able to catch you.”
“Me too. How are you?”
Doony shrugged. “Can’t complain. Cargo hauling is good business these days. I can barely get goods offloaded and another load takes the place of the last one.”
“Good to hear. What can I do for you? Did you find some inventory I might be interested in?”
“Nothing like that.” Doony frowned. “You said to let you know if I got wind of any more of that kind of business we saw on Terceron.”
Cabot tensed. Peregrine had led a team to rescue some Atalans that had been tricked into a slavery scam on Terceron. He remembered the place well. “I’m guessing you heard something?”
“Not so much heard something, as…” Doony shifted restlessly. “Well, you know. You get a sense of something that doesn’t feel quite right.”
“I know exactly what you mean. What’s going on, then?”
“I’ve been following a circuit, more or less. Zerellus, Kanar, Bennaris and the stations and outposts in between. A lot of goods are shifting around those planets, which produce a great deal of specialized consumer products. The other day, I heard someone suggest that they knew someone who was looking for some no-questions-asked delivery.”
“That could be any kind of smuggling, or even a few legit things,” Cabot said.
“It could,” Doony agreed, “but it just didn’t smell right to me. The guy talking about it was a nobody, and the people who should have been interested in that kind of thing weren’t. No one wanted any part of it. That makes me think they suspect something that would get them in a lot more trouble than some bootlegged technology or untreated grain.”
“You said the guy was a nobody. It could be a trap,” Cabot said. “Maybe it’s the PAC trying to get some smugglers out of circulation.”
“I thought about that.” Doony shifted again. The man had a hard time sitting still. “I figured if it was, you should probably let your contact know they’re being too obvious. And if it wasn’t a PAC agent, then maybe they want to check into that.”
“That’s some pretty sound thinking. What can you give me on the guy?
Doony touched his voicecom. “I took an image. Maybe your contact could use a facial recognition program to identify him.”
Cabot received the file and opened it, superimposed over Doony at the bottom right corner. A young Rescan’s image seemed to squint at some point behind Cabot’s left shoulder.
“Anything else?” he asked.
“The date, time, and location are all in the file. That might help narrow things down. I do know he was hanging out with some guys in Markoban’s crew.”
“Markoban? What’s he doing in the cargo hauling business?” Cabot had met the guy on several occasions. He was a little too quick to take offense and put up his fists, but overall, he wasn’t a bad trader. He didn’t do grunt work, though. His talent lay in brokering massive trade agreements, usually between governments.
“Hard times, I guess.” Doony sniffed, like his sinuses were bothering him. “Or maybe just too good of an opportunity to pass up.”
“All right. I’ll talk to people, try to track Markoban down, and see if it all leads to anything.” Cabot had doubts, and if it were anyone but Doony, he’d brush off this feeling of his. But Doony had good instincts, and that was why Cabot worked with him.
“Good. Now I can stop thinking about it, since there’s nothing else I’m equipped to do with it.” Doony’s weathered old lips drew up in a smirk. “It’s the luxury of being a nobody.”
“Nice work if you can get it,” Cabot said. “I hardly even know how I got caught up in all that stuff that’s bigger than me.”
Doony’s face screwed up in a thoughtful grimace. “Can’t say I’m not glad it’s you instead of me. But sometimes it’s got to be someone, so why not you?”
“I guess that’s one way of looking at it.” Cabot couldn’t be quite as blasé about the position he was in.
“Don’t whine,” Doony snorted. “At least you know you’ve got people in high places who will look out for you if the PAC really goes to shit. You won’t be forgotten and left to burn like the rest of us rabble.”
“As always, your interpretation is interesting. That’s why I’ve always liked you.”
“Cut the shit and get to work.” Doony’s image disappeared.
Cabot shook his head, smiling. Doony might think of himself as one of the rabble, but to Cabot, he stood out as a rare and interesting person.
Even if he was a cranky old coot. But the universe needed those, too.
FALLON STOOD over Cabot’s shoulder in his quarters, peering at the screen. “It’s not much to go on.”
“Even for you fancy-pants spy types? I would have thought this would be easy,” he joked.
“The PAC zone is a big place. He may not even be a citizen of Rescissitan anymore, so your planet might not have recent photos of him.”
“True, my people have a tendency to defect if there’s a profit in it.”
“Right. I’ll get my people working on this, and you see if you can find that Markoban guy,” she said. “This might not be anything, but it only takes one break to crack something like this wide open.”
“No luck on Ditnya’s side of things?” As soon as he asked, he regretted it. He didn’t want to be more involved in this than he already was.
Why did he keep wading out into the muck after he’d gotten his feet dry?
He really needed to quit that.
“Some progress, as I understand it,” Fallon said vaguely. “But it’s need to know.”
“Right.”
“All we can do is work on what’s in front of us,” she said. “Sometimes it’s up to others to put the pieces together. But let me know if you come up with something else worth looking into.”
“Will do.”
She paused before lea
ving. “Is everything going okay for you, since being back?”
He took a moment to consider. Not because things hadn’t been okay, but because she’d asked the question. “Is there a reason they shouldn’t be?”
“Not that I know of, at this point. But you have to know that dealing with Caine is a devil’s box just waiting to pop open.”
“A devil’s box?” He prided himself on knowing a great many phrases, many translated from other languages, but this one stumped him.
“An old saying. Sorry. It means a package full of bad things. They’re hard to contain, and once they’re open, it’s a whole bunch of ugly.”
“I see,” he said. “Well, let’s not do that, then.”
She laughed, but quickly sobered. “With Caine, something’s going to pop out, sooner or later. Just keep your eyes open, okay?”
“Always.”
She gave him a tight smile and a nod before striding out.
He sighed into the pleasant quietness of his quarters. “Why do I feel like I’m getting sucked back into all this again?”
6
Cabot straightened his tunic, pulled his hair back into its low ponytail, and let out a breath.
“No news is good news. If I don’t know anything, it means I don’t need to know.” He nodded at himself in the mirror and headed to work.
When the doors opened, Fallon was standing on the other side. He stopped in midstride and stumbled back.
“Ack!”
Fallon wore a look of surprise. “Are you okay?”
He smoothed his just-smoothed tunic, pretending he hadn’t just yelled “Ack!” in her face. “Yes, it was delightful to be surprised that way. Thank you.”
She smirked at him and stepped into his quarters, letting the doors close behind her. “We’ve got a hit on that guy.”
“Already? You made it sound like it could take weeks, if he even could be identified at all.”
She shrugged. “Intelligence is like that. A whole bunch of nothing and waiting and then all of a sudden, bam, exactly what you needed.”