Vahn was sitting up when his bondarmin let her enter, looking far less exhausted than when she’d seen him last. She resented him for that, almost as much as for the abruptness of his summons, before dismissing her annoyance as pointless. There was no sign of Sherin and she wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or unhappy.
She bowed respectfully. What can I do for you, Ser?
I find myself concerned that others may be interested in our journey, interested enough to be tracking us now. Did anyone contact you or your crew before we left Kyrin, perhaps asking about Electra 12? Or me? He steepled his fingers together and studied her over them, an antique card player’s gesture.
TiCara tilted her head to one side and studied him in turn. What was he really after? And why now? If she had betrayed him to another corporation, she would hardly tell him about it. And if he needed reassurance this early in the trip, then he should have taken one of his own trusted ships and used one of his own corp’s pilots.
She opted to break the silence before it could become too oppressive, letting her resentment show just a bit in her tone as she answered, "The Astra is a good ship, Ser. And my crew is loyal. As per your request, even if they
were not, they do not know our destination yet. They have had no opportunity to tell the Ears or anyone else. Do you have any reason to believe otherwise?" She bit her lip as the last phrase rolled out. That sounded angry, not cool and confident. Not reassuring.
Vahn smiled in response, the kindly expression failing to reach his eyes. Those remained deep space cold. But his voice was mild and calm when he answered with a placating gesture, Of course, Pilot-Captain. Your loyalty is unquestioned and I’m certain it is true of your crew as well. I merely wonder about accidents, slips of the tongue, to use an Old Earth expression. You have checked the ship for tracking devices yourself?
TiCara started to insist that her ship was clean, that she had checked it thoroughly before they left Kyrin, every compartment and storage bay. It was tru tell, as far as it went. Except that she hadn’t checked the ship with a full sweep since Vahn’s party came on board. Not since Sherin boarded and she saw that glitch on the bay’s display while she was looking for the rep. But he didn't need to know about that yet and she recovered quickly. Yes, Ser. All has been confirmed clear. She bowed, her expression a formal mask.
Thank you. I can rest more easily now, Vahn relaxed back into the cushions on the bed with a sigh of his own. This time, his eyes looked warmer when he smiled. He accepted a container of something from his bondarmin and asked the man about his medication, before complimenting TiCara on her preparations and the quality of the Astra’s nutrient meals.
A polite dismissal followed and TiCara found herself out in the hallway with the door sliding shut behind her. She grimaced, her face turned away from the door and the external camera feed. This was exactly as she had imagined a trip with passengers would be: far more trouble than it was worth.
She walked quietly away down the corridor, as if everything was as it should be. She didn’t increase her speed until she was around the corner from Vahn’s room, and then she nearly flew in the ship’s lowgrav, bound for Engineering and its more complex security scanners.
Chapter 10
Vahn watched the door close behind her, then gestured to his bondarmin. She is lying, perhaps without meaning to. Go. Check the bays and the smuggling holds. I want to be certain.
The large man nodded, and slipped out the door, his movements panther-quick and equally silent. A schematic of the ship rose in front of his left eye, circling as he turned his head. He followed it down into the depths of the ship’s storage.
The image hovered, its lines a shining blue as it led him on through all the main bays. He checked each bay, seeking and finding as many of the smuggling holds as he could locate. Some were so cleverly hidden that it took him longer than he liked to find them. He had been a corporate ship inspector before he trained in medical tech; Vahn had hired him for both skills. These should have been much easier for him to locate.
He began to feel a grudging respect for TiCara, medusa-freak that she was. These were some of the best-designed smuggling caches he’d ever seen. In fact, he suspected that he was still missing a few. His doubt rested in his belly like a stone. He didn’t miss things. Or, at least, he never had before, as far as he knew. Life as Vahn’s bondarmin must be making him soft, careless.
He growled at his twisted reflection in the shiny metal side of a shipping container, and that was when he saw what he’d been looking for. The tracker was a good one, new and sophisticated enough to look as if it was supposed to be attached to the container, had always been there. It might be a sealing latch. Or a climate control sensor.
But he knew better. He had seen tech like this before. It came off easily when he pulled on it, tugging its tiny magnetic base free from the metal it clung to. The tiny greenish light told him that the device was active and it blinked out when he deactivated it. For a moment, he thought about smashing it. That was what Vahn would want him to do to be certain that it couldn’t be reactivated.
He looked it over carefully, then reached into it and snapped one of the wires with his broad, flat fingers. That should be enough to disable it permanently. He put it back where he found it, tucking the broken wire up under the casing so that a casual observer couldn’t see that it was no longer transmitting. A smile warmed his face as he walked away. Let them wonder who had found it and why they’d left it there. Carelessness should cause doubt.
He continued to check the other bays, but found nothing else. It was time to give his report. He clicked on the band at his wrist and the schematic disappeared. He climbed slowly upward, once even seeing TiCara turn down a corridor ahead of him. Any thought of telling her about the tracker vanished as soon as it appeared: the Captain didn’t seem foolish enough to have placed a tracker on her own ship, but then, she hadn’t seemed foolish enough to have missed one either.
Vahn could tell her if he wanted to. He shrugged as he walked down the corridor to his employer’s quarters. The old man was not going to be happy about this.
Chapter 11
TiCara paused outside the hidden alcove in the tiny Engineering room that concealed the master security console, suddenly strangely reluctant to plug in her medusas and do yet another ship’s scan. She probably wouldn’t find anything this time either. She should just go and get a status from Erol, then get ready for her next shift.
Her lips twisted into a wry smile as she caught the direction her thoughts were going. She knew better than to sabotage herself for a pretty face. Or even a beautiful voice. Unbidden, she remembered Sherin’s singing, the rich tones echoing off the distant metal walls of one of the spacer bars. She rubbed a hand across her forehead, her movements jerky and abrupt. Her medusas swirled, trying to deal with the tide of emotions that she was feeling. She forced herself to reach for the catch to turn off the alcove’s shielding.
Before she could open the sensor controls, Erol slid down the ladder from the passageway above and dropped to the floor behind her with as heavy a thud as he could manage in the ship’s lowgrav. She spun around, startled, and unconsciously dropped into a fighting stance.
He was scowling and holding a small metal object in one large hand. Even from a meter away, TiCara could see that his knuckles were white with tension.
She straightened cautiously before she spoke, trepidation making her voice thick and deep, What is it? What’s that? Please, no...her thoughts spun in a prayer to something, though about what she wasn’t sure. Even before he opened his hand, her medusas were writhing around her head, reflecting her thoughts as she frantically calculated everything that could have gone wrong, had gone wrong, might yet go wrong.
Tracker, Captain, Erol spoke just as she recognized the thing for what it was. She reached for it, instinctively, as if holding it in her hand would make it more real. How could she have missed this when she checked the ship over before they left? Unless it had been placed af
ter they launched? She wondered what else she might have missed and a sick dread filled her.
It was disabled when I found it, Erol continued, flipping it over so she could see the broken wires, before dropping it into her outstretched hand. He crossed his arms and glared at the wall just past her shoulder. His mouth was set in a rigid line and she suspected from his frown that he was working through his own list of suspects.
Where? TiCara turned the thing over in her hands, keeping the touch of her fingers light, as if it might poison her if she wasn’t careful. She wondered where Ji-min and Vijay were, then moved on to wondering the same thing about Vahn’s bondarmin and Vahn himself. Not that it was any use. Sherin’s face filled her mind, nudging the other ones out, no matter how hard she tried to avoid the thought.
It was in the aft cargo bay, clipped onto a crate. It was just fortune’s grace that I saw it on the scanner. It must have been destroyed or malfunctioned before I could get it.
TiCara snorted a little. She never trusted to fortune any more than she trusted to luck if she could help it. Someone had managed to plant a tracker on her ship and they avoided her vigilance to do it. Then someone else had found it and disabled it. Or destroyed it after it had done what it was supposed to do. The wires hadn’t parted on their own, from what she could see; they had been cut or broken by external pressure. How did they find it? Or did they already know it was there?
The feeling of dread switched to a fiery, barely contained rage. She would find out who planted this on her ship. And nothing like this would happen again.
She spun on her heel and turned to the security console, putting the tracker down while she keyed in the codes to open it with a jerky motion, then wrenching open the cover on the sensor sockets. Her medusas were plugged in almost before she got it turned on, pulling up the cameras and the sensors in the aft bay as fast as she could think about it.
But nothing stirred now under the pale green running lights, no movement disturbed the cargo crates. She reset the ship’s computer timestamp with an override code to see who had been there a few machrons earlier. Still nothing. With a disgusted noise, she reset it again: still nothing.
Erol stirred restlessly next to her, his emotions expending themselves in fidgeting. She ignored him with an effort, resetting the clock back to shortly after they left Kyrin. When she finally found what she was looking for, it happened so fast that she might have missed it if she had blinked. There was a haze over the camera’s lens for an instant, perhaps for three humanoid breaths, obscuring the view just long enough for someone to get from the
door to the crate and out again.
Someone knew the best angle for a shadow trade crew to view their hold. Someone knowledgeable. TiCara found herself thinking of Zig. She hoped she was right, hoped that he come aboard somehow and planted it. Anybody but Sherin. It was as close to a prayer as she had voiced since she was a child. She froze the obstructed screen, and stepped sideways so that Erol could see what she was looking at.
He swore, then squinted at the screen, Looks like Haze. They sell it as a spray in the shadow markets in Kyrin and the other ports, say to use it on the Eyes to blind them. I thought it was just sales speak but it must be tru tell after all. At least it works on something, since it sure don’t work on most Eyes. He grimaced and stepped away from the screen. He paced until TiCara finished setting up a scan that would check for more blocked and obscured cameras elsewhere on the ship.
Then she moved the clock forward to a machron before Erol found the tracker. Vahn’s bondarmin appeared briefly, checking the bay. She saw him reach over and pick up the tracker, and turn so his shoulders blocked her view of his hands. Then, he disappeared from view.
One mystery solved. If he hadn’t disconnected the tracker, she couldn’t imagine who else would have. Which meant that Vahn now knew that the ship had been tracked, that her captain had failed to make it secure, and that her crew might be compromised. She froze the screen on the bondarmin and frowned at Erol.
One mystery solved. But I doubt he planted it. His tone was firm, convincing. It made sense: why plant it, then pretend to find it if you didn’t know you were being watched?
TiCara’s medusas clicked free of the console and she rubbed her scalp hard. She scowled down at the screen, then back up at her Second So who did?
Erol rubbed one hand over his shaved head and looked at his feet. Got the old man, the bondarmin, the crew, you, me. And the rep. Unless there’s someone else hiding on board.
TiCara gave that a moment of consideration. No, she said, at last. "I checked the whole life support system the last time I plugged in. Can hide from the crew, but can’t hide breathing from the Astra. Where’d we source the crate?"
Erol shrugged and named one of their usual shadow trade partners. It might have been them, but it was unlikely that they would endanger a profitable trade relationship by placing the tracker. They both silently dismissed that possibility, at least for the moment. TiCara found herself thinking about Zig again. What if he had compelled someone else to plant it?
Not the crew, unless someone got to them.
TiCara glanced at him. Everybody’s got a price. It’s just that some are higher than others.
Erol looked away, his shoulders caught in an uncomfortable hunch. No reason for the old man or you to do it, he said at last. Ji-min would have had them load the crates, Vijay might have checked the bay. But I think it’s the rep, Pilot-Captain.
It was TiCara’s turn to look away, body tensed as if she had received a blow. Or expected a new one. He had to be wrong, he had to! But she asked anyway. Why her?
The Ear. Who else would want to know where the old man is going, where you’re going. The wire-fried Ears, they want to know everything. His eyes glinted with an sudden rage and he bared his teeth at the console wall as if his mind traveled far away from the Astra. TiCara gave him a startled look, wondering what the Ears had done to him. He spoke so little of his past; now she wondered if they had more in common than she had realized.
He plucked the tracker out of her hand before she could react. She hadn't realized that she had picked it up again. This is corp-tech. He flipped it open and wrenched the cover back.
They both stared down at the little device, the symmetry of its mechanical interior making it clear that it was no shadow trade knockoff. I talked to an Ear in Kyrin, too, she said at last. But I didn’t plant a tracker on my own ship. Her voice shook a little, looking for doubt, for denial.
But her Second was implacable. You’re not going to let a starshine-pretty like that one spin a nebula past you, are you, Captain?
TiCara scowled and fidgeted with the edge of the shielding. She couldn’t make herself look at Erol, seeing instead Sherin’s face superimposed on every surface she glared at. She wanted to believe that Erol was wrong, and the longer she didn’t look at him, the longer she could go on hoping.
Then he cleared his throat, shattering her fantasies, and her shoulders sagged. She scowled at him and
muttered, I’ll talk to her.
Is that best, Captain? I could— He cut himself off at her gesture and stood, tense and poised, waiting for whatever she was going to say next.
Something about his tone felt wrong, as if he had some kind of personal need to encourage her distrust of the rep. TiCara sensed something out of place, but didn’t recognize its source. It couldn’t be Erol; he been loyal to her since he came on board. She had to be imagining the wrongness. He was right: it had to be one of the crew, the bondarmin or Sherin. And only one of them had been seen talking to an Ear right before they left port.
But even if he was right, what was she going to do with the other woman? The Astra was too small to have prison quarters. Of course, if her Second was right and they could convince Vahn of it, there might be another possibility. If you’re right, we need somewhere safe to put her while we’re moving. Then we’ll need to convince her employer that she planted the tracker so we can drop her off somewhere planet or s
tationside. Check the computer for the locking codes for her room?
Erol nodded. I’ll get it set up. He nodded and climbed up the ladder to the next level.
TiCara watched him go, then sealed up the security console. Even her medusas couldn’t sooth the sinking pit in her stomach, though they made a valiant effort and sent a soothing wave of heat through the tense muscles of her neck. Once she accused the rep of corp espionage and locked her up, that was it. She’d never find out if the other woman still sang, or what she was upset about in the crew lounge, or what she tasted like. All of those things struck her as equally painful.
It was the Astra’s hum around her that decided things: this was her ship, her home, her everything. Whatever she had to do to keep it, she would do. She picked up the tracker from the console where Erol had left it and tucked it into her suit. The small object sent a cold chill through her, made her remember who she was and how she’d gotten here. No one was going to take that away from her, not even the most beautiful woman she’d ever met.
TiCara left Engineering, headed for Sherin’s quarters. This time, the rep was where she expected to find her when she checked the cameras. TiCara imagined that she could feel her breathing through the room’s door before she even tapped on the chime to let the other woman know that she was outside. She made herself override her hesitation and doubts and hit the chime hard.
The sound was enough to make her wince. She needed to be more subtle than this, make sure that Erol was right, before she did anything that she couldn’t take back. Closing her eyes, she wrapped herself in shreds of doubt and hope.
Then the door slid open and Sherin stood just inside, as if she’d been waiting for her. The sight of her made TiCara’s pulse race, her breath catch. They stared at each other, each one seemingly waiting for the other to make the next move.
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