Azad
“It will be fine,” Terrak insisted. “I’ve used this method to transport various items before.” Azad started to object, and he held up his hands. “Don’t worry, no one local knows about the arrangement, not Lonrah, or the Facilitator, or my importer/exporter friend. It’s all arranged remotely with a dispatcher I have a deal with. Even she doesn’t know when I’m putting contraband into a given shipment.”
They were in the belly of a mostly automated cargo ship, inside a pressurized container that was half-filled with live plants housed in transparent cubes with their own inbuilt light sources and water systems. They hadn’t talked to anyone on the way here, just crept to the spaceport, where Terrak had used various codes to get them through the security gates and onto the ship. That part was good. The part Azad didn’t like was the idea of traveling as cargo.
Terrak kept trying to convince her. “This vessel is going in the right direction, and in six days it’s stopping near the correct wormhole to drop off a delivery. We’ll need to pick up another ship to traverse the wormhole and reach Entelegyne, but by then we won’t have such… fervent pursuit… and will have more options.” Terrak pulled the container doors shut, and they sealed with a hiss.
“This is a wonderful plan that won’t work at all,” Azad said. “We’ve got no supplies, or access to any. We don’t have water, so a few days into this six-day journey, we’ll be dead. We also don’t have any food, unless these plants are edible, but hey, starving takes longer than dying of thirst, so I’m less worried about that.”
“Humans die after a few days without water?” Terrak said. “My people evolved on a desert world; we can do rather better. But that’s not an issue. Why do you think I looked in three other containers before choosing this one?” He knelt by one of the plants and used one of his fingernails – rather stronger than a human’s – to pry off a back panel of the containment cube. He twisted something, then removed a bulb-shaped reservoir with a tube sticking out of it. “Pure water, for the plant’s internal irrigation system. There are gallons and gallons in here.” He slurped on the tube and grinned, pleased with himself.
Azad wasn’t so pleased. “Fine, so we won’t die of thirst. We have bigger problems.”
“As for food–”
“I’m sure you have some solution,” she interrupted. “Maybe one of the five hundred other containers in here is crammed full of raw seafood. I don’t care . Being alive and well is actually our problem. There’s only supposed to be one living person on a ship like this! The backup redundancy pilot, and he’s only along for the ride in case the automated systems have a catastrophic failure. If Duval’s crew or anybody else is in orbit looking for us, they’re going to scan for life signs and compare the findings to crew manifests, and then flag any anomalies for investigation. We’re anomalies. Even if we get past them, we’re still going to hit a couple of customs checkpoints on this route, and the authorities there will scan for life signs, because ships like this get used for smuggling.”
Terrak looked at her patiently, and Azad suddenly found herself wondering about him and his capabilities. She’d determined early on that Terrak was in over his head and unwilling to admit it to himself. She’d pegged him as a reasonably canny merchant and diplomat who foolishly thought his social and negotiating skills had equipped him for life on the run. Among people of all species, there was a tendency for older, successful people to believe that, because they were experts in a given field, that made them experts in every field. Such people tended to blunder around in clouds of hubris. Maybe Terrak was doing that, and his confidence was totally unfounded, but he was certainly looking at her like he had a handle on this situation. How could that be? Someone like him shouldn’t be comfortable in circumstances like this.
“If you’re done assuming I’m a fool,” Terrak said mildly. “no one is going to detect our life signs.” He reached into a pocket and removed two capped auto-syringes. “I had Lonrah mix these up for us. I’ve used this technique when I’ve needed to… help people reach distant places without being noticed.”
Azad groaned. “Are those stasis drugs?”
“They’ll drop our body temperature and slow our heartbeats and other electrical activity enough for standard life sign scans to miss us, and we won’t need to eat or drink while we’re in hibernation. These doses are calibrated to keep us down for five days, which will give us a day of consciousness to rehydrate before we need to do anything too active. The ship is stopping to make a delivery at a small station where they won’t care about anomalous life signs, or anything else, as long as you pay your fees, so we can get off there and find our next mode of transport.”
“I apologize for misjudging your competence,” Azad said. Apologies were the kind of thing diplomats cared about, right? It didn’t cost her anything to say some words. But then, Terrak was proving he wasn’t an average diplomat. Her intel said he was a little shady, but she was beginning to wonder if he wasn’t downright criminal. The skillsets of professional thieves and smugglers often overlapped meaningfully with her own, after all. She hated any plan that involved loss of control, but they weren’t exactly swimming in options. “I don’t know about being unconscious here, though. It’s a perfectly good plan, assuming nothing goes wrong. If somebody does board this ship looking for us, we won’t be able to run or fight.”
Terrak spread his hands. “I am open to alternative suggestions. But decide soon – this ship is scheduled to depart shortly.”
Azad sighed. “Fine. Hibernation it is. I can’t believe I’m injecting myself with mystery juice some squid gave to a guy I barely know. But I’ve done stupider things for a mission. Let me call my bosses and tell them I’m going to be out of contact for a few days.”
She pushed her way through the plants until she reached the far end of the compartment and sat with her back against the wall. She closed her eyes and waited for the connection to click into place. “Hey, boss,” she said into the expectant silence. “I’m going to be out of contact for a little while…”