Twenty-eight

 

It took only a few hours to reach the resort that Zagrando had programmed into the navigation system. H’Jith stood for half of that, but then its complaints got to Zagrando. He didn’t want to listen to the whining for the rest of the trip. So he expanded the bars on H’Jith’s little prison to allow H’Jith to sit down.

Then H’Jith complained about sitting on the floor instead of a chair. Zagrando didn’t give in any further, and, by the end of the journey, had added a sound barrier in addition to a light barrier on H’Jith’s private prison.

He probably should have listened to H’Jith. H’Jith had been in and out of the resort dozens of times. But Zagrando had had enough.

Besides, he wanted this little detour to end. He needed to contact his handler. He needed a ship. He needed to control his own destiny again.

He hadn’t given the resort much thought, so when he arrived, it surprised him. It was much more upscale than he had expected. If he had gone in as a civil servant, he wouldn’t have been able to afford the docking fees alone. Fortunately, paying to dock was the first test of the account that H’Jith had given him. The fee got paid with no problem.

If Zagrando hadn’t received the reminder to pay the docking fee, he would have forgotten to turn on the sound in H’Jith’s little prison. As it was, he had to make sure the account had enough money to handle all the expenses of the resort plus a ship purchase.

“How much money is in this account?” Zagrando asked.

“It’s not my fault you chose to go to Goldene Zuflucht,” H’Jith said.

That was the name of the resort, which apparently should have been some kind of clue. Zagrando hadn’t heard of it, but then, he hadn’t heard of most places in this part of the sector.

“Answer the question,” Zagrando said.

“Take me with you,” H’Jith said. “We can forget that our little misunderstanding ever happened. I can broker the ship purchase—”

“Answer my question,” Zagrando said.

H’Jith had sighed heavily, then said, “There’s more than enough.”

“To handle the fees and a ship purchase?” Zagrando asked.

“And bribes if need be,” H’Jith said.

Zagrando glared it. “There better be.”

Then he left the cockpit. The door closed to sound of H’Jith cursing him. Zagrando had smiled, hoping he would never have to see H’Jith again.

His backup plan was simple: If he couldn’t get a ship in a short period of time, he would take H’Jith’s space yacht to another port and make his decisions from there.

Of course, H’Jith would have to tag along, until Zagrando abandoned the ship completely.

The interior of Goldene Zuflucht was as golden as the name implied. The walls looked like they were made of gold leaf, even though Zagrando knew they couldn’t be or the place wouldn’t still be standing.

He had gone through a significant amount of security to enter, and his arms’ dealer identity had held up. The identity had some dicey entries on purpose, to make him more palatable to the Black Fleet, but it also made him unwelcome at more law-abiding places.

Either Goldene Zuflucht was not law-abiding or it didn’t care about anyone who broke Earth Alliance laws.

More likely, the security had checked his fake identity’s bank accounts and determined that Zagrando had more than enough money to purchase anything he needed on this resort.

Resorts like this, which were starbases with a limited clientele, catered to the very rich. Most everyone that rich had some kind of shady background, whether it was obvious or not. The most important thing at a place like this wasn’t how someone looked or his species, but how much money he could spend—and whether or not he would interfere with the other “guests.”

Since Zagrando’s alias’s past had shady business practices, but had no murders or violent crimes on his record, he was one of the criminal class that places like this liked.

At least, he hoped that was the case.

He also hoped they wouldn’t discover that he had stolen the space yacht he’d brought to Goldene Zuflucht, and that the owner (or at least the purported owner) was being held prisoner inside.

The interior of the station couldn’t have been more different than the interior of Hellhole. From the moment he entered the resort proper, he felt wrapped in luxury. The air smelled like mint. The lighting was soft. Well-dressed humans went from place to place, moving with purpose. His public links activated, filling with ads that he could delete if he wanted to. He shut off the audio—he preferred to hear what was going on around him rather than ads inside his own head—but he kept the visuals running as a tiny image on the upper left of his left eye. He purposely made the image hard to see, but he could see its movements, and he tracked it as if it were a suspect he was trying to ignore. He wanted to see what the resort offered him. It provided yet another clue as to the amount of money in his accounts.

The corridor into this part of the resort looked like a path in a park on Earth. The path, made of multicolored stone, had flowering plants growing on either side. The ceiling above was a pale blue that clearly changed color with the time of day. At the moment, some wispy clouds drifted overhead.

Restaurants and shops had windows that overlooked this part of the resort, and each door bore the name of the establishment in a florid gold script. In fact, everything in the interior had a faint gold tinge, which was, in Zagrando’s opinion, the only tacky thing about the place.

He didn’t have to ask for directions this time. Instead, he linked into the information network that the station provided and searched for shops that specialized in ships.

He thought he would have to settle for shops that specialized in ship design, but he didn’t. At least three stores near the dock sold ships, most of them focusing on Earth Alliance luxury brands. One shop specialized in racing vessels, and Zagrando toyed with that. He would need speed.

But he would probably have to dump this ship as well, and he was tired. He really wanted some place he could sleep before he had his big meeting.

If he had his big meeting. He hadn’t even had time to think about it.

He selected the largest of the luxury ship stores, and followed the lights that appeared on the path. He was the only one who could see those lights, of course, but he appreciated them all the same.

In fact, he appreciated this place more than he wanted to. Given his druthers, he would stay here for a few days, get the rest he needed, and move on.

He was burning out. Not that long ago, he would have loved this entire mission, Emzada Lair and all. He would have seen it as a challenge. He would have enjoyed the survival aspects of the game he played now, and he would have taken real pleasure in beating H’Jith, not to mention managing to outrun the Black Fleet (at least so far) and he would have done his best to figure out as much as he could about the people he was meeting before he met them.

Now he hadn’t even given them a single thought.

He wanted to quit, move on, become someone else for real.

He wondered if Earth Alliance Intelligence would let him do that, or if they’d threaten to kill him again, like they had done on Valhalla Basin.

It didn’t take him long to find the storefront for the luxury ships. The store’s name was in German, just like the resort’s was, and it meant—surprise, surprise—best luxury ships. (Why didn’t every place just default to Standard, so he didn’t have to use a translation program?)

The door stood open, and he stepped inside.

The place smelled of fresh-cut wood. The interior had polished wood walls with brass trim. Even the sales counter matched. Windows along the sides looked like portholes. It took Zagrando a moment to realize the place had been designed to look like a sailing ship—the kind that traversed seas, instead of ships that flew between planets.

He was about to leave when a woman came through a side door he hadn’t even noticed.

“Good afternoon,” she said. “May I help you?”

“I think I’m in the wrong place,” he said. “Sorry to bother you.”

“You’re looking for a spaceship, right?” she asked. She had reddish brown hair and dark eyes.

“Yes,” he said.

She smiled, and he realized she was older than he had initially thought. “The design here was my father’s. He loved old sailing ships and probably would have been happier selling them. I used to hate the way this place looked, but since he passed on, I can’t bear to change it.”

Zagrando nodded, uncertain what to say.

“As if that matters to you,” she said, her smile changing slightly. It was sadder. “I’m Ruth.”

“Zag,” he said, using his alias’s nickname. “I’m sorry about your father.”

She shrugged. “People who knew him really aren’t. All except me. And again, I’m sharing much more than you need to hear. He’s only been gone a month. So it’s still new to me.”

“I understand,” Zagrando said, even though he didn’t. His parents had passed away long ago and he hadn’t had a close relationship since he started with Earth Alliance Intelligence. No one would miss him when he was gone.

She squared her shoulders as if donning her salesperson identity. “What brings you here today?”

“I lost my ship just outside Hellhole,” he said. “A friend brought me here. I’m supposed to be on the other side of the sector right now, and I need a way to get there.”

It wasn’t all a lie. He had lost his ship, and he’d left Whiteley’s ship behind. H’Jith wasn’t a friend, but anyone checking on Zagrando would see that he had come in one of H’Jith’s ships. Besides, the friend story only had to hold until he got away from this resort. Then he’d set H’Jith free, and H’Jith could say whatever it wanted about him.

“Sounds like a dilemma,” Ruth said. She didn’t seem as eager to sell him anything as H’Jith had been.

Zagrando didn’t know if that was her sales style or if she really didn’t care if she sold another ship. Or maybe she was just muted because she was still in mourning.

He thought that both odd and admirable. Usually people with money got mood enhancements so that the unpleasant emotions, like grief, passed by with barely a notice.

“Are you looking for a long-term vessel or a short-term one?” she asked.

He was just looking for a quick way off Goldene Zuflucht, but he didn’t want to say that. “Long-term.”

“Luxury with or without defensive capabilities?”

Since he had already said long-term, he needed to go all the way with the ruse. “With.”

She smiled again, but this time the smile was businesslike. She moved to a podium near the center of the room, and tapped the surface. Holograms of ships surrounded him.

Large ships, small ships, mostly black with a few that were as rich a brown as the walls of the store. None of them had prices, but all of them looked expensive.

“I’m going to some dicey parts of the sector,” he said. “I’m not sure something that luxurious would—”

“They all have masking capabilities,” she said, and by that she meant that the ships could appear less than they were. The size was always impossible to hide, but the exterior could change just enough to look like a ship that was a cheap imitation of something like this.

“Good.” He knew better than to ask about price. Someone who could buy ships like this cared less about price than about features. “I don’t need a large ship. I will never carry many passengers and not all that much cargo.”

Five of the ships faded away.

“And I’d prefer ships with a bit of speed,” he said.

Six more ships vanished.

That left seven ships, all of which looked just fine to him.

“Which do you prefer?” he asked.

She made one of the images grow. “This one has the best captain’s quarters I’ve ever seen. You’d be traveling in luxury. Plus, it has a secondary cockpit. Not just the ability to pull the controls to a different part of the ship, but a whole secondary unit so that you can shut off one cockpit and use the other. It’s especially nice if the ship gets boarded, and since we do have a pirate problem in this part of the sector, you can lock them off and save yourself all at the same time.”

He had to repress a smile. He’d already locked someone out of a cockpit today, but, he had to admit, capturing H’Jith was unbelievably easy, especially when compared with taking on the Black Fleet.

“Let me see that one, then,” he said.

“My pleasure,” she said. “Follow me.”

She tapped the podium and all of the ship images disappeared. Then she walked to the back of the shop, and pushed open a door he hadn’t even seen. He followed her as she requested, and saw that the door led to another docking bay.

This one was probably part of Goldene Zuflucht’s docking ring, but the bay had been walled off. It looked private. It didn’t extend forever like H’Jith’s seemed to. Instead, it only had two dozen or so ships, which was still more than the eye could take in at one time.

She led him around a corner and up a small flight of stairs. The ship he had expressed interest in was on the same level as the other ships, but its entrance was in a non-standard location.

“This ship was built outside the Earth Alliance,” he said.

She smiled at him over her shoulder. “We’re standing outside of the Earth Alliance.”

He smiled back, feeling like she had put him gently in his place. “So many ships are built to Earth Alliance specs that I’m not used to seeing one built on a different model.”

She nodded. “Earth Alliance specs make ships easier to board. Out here, we prefer non-standard luxury ships. They’re safer.”

That made a lot of sense. If the layout of a ship was unusual, then it would be harder to attack. She led him into the ship, showed him the dual cockpits as well as the captain’s quarters, which were, indeed, luxurious. He wanted to fall on the bed and sleep now.

He wasn’t sure when he’d last had a good sleep; it had probably been years.

As he walked through, he had his links ping for any obvious tracking devices. He didn’t get any. He knew the ship had some tracking material built in, but he could deal with that when he purchased it.

“So,” he said, “can I buy the ship and take it off Goldene Zuflucht today?”

They had just gone through the corridor to the large cargo area. Ruth stopped, a little frown of concern on her forehead.

“It’s irregular,” she said.

He shrugged. “I have business away from Goldene Zuflucht, and I need to leave as soon as I can.”

“I didn’t say it couldn’t be done,” she said. “The problem is not with payment—we have systems for that—but with registration. The ship won’t receive your registration for at least two days. You won’t be able to take it to any Earth Alliance venues until that registration comes in.”

“That’s not a problem,” he said. In fact, it benefitted him. He didn’t say that. “I can even return to Goldene Zuflucht if I need to after my meetings to make sure all of the registration happens.”

“Oh, no,” she said. “You won’t have to do that. We run into this a lot. We’re far away from anything, and often if someone has a problem with a ship, they leave it here in trade for a new ship. So we have dealt with this situation before.”

He nodded. “All right, then,” he said. “I like the ship, and I’ll take it.”

She smiled. “Then let’s finalize everything and get you to your business as quickly as possible.”

He smiled, too. Finally, something had gone his way. He hoped the trend continued as the day progressed.