I’ll be the first person to admit I’m not Leef’s biggest fan. It started with his flirty attention directed toward Talie and only increased with the emergence of his many annoying qualities. Arrogance, ill-timed humor, an insistence on calling me Master or Sir or Lord Cartha, and did I mention how often he flirts with Talie?
But I will say this. For all of his utterly infuriating habits, he is a stars-fine pilot.
“That’s the spirit,” Leef shouts, the glee evident not only in his voice but his posture. He’s leaning forward, hands on an actual control yoke, grinning from ear to ear.
“Stars help us. Are we going to make it out of this alive?” I say it more to goad him, but a part of me wonders.
Talie gasps at a particularly sharp turn.
“Never fear.” He lets out a whoop, and we dip down, my stomach ramming itself into my throat. “We’ll come out of this as good as, if not better than, before, mate.”
We jerk to the left before evening out. Shouldn’t there be stabilizers for this?
My screen flashes, and I see that I now have access to sensor information. I follow the movement of the ship behind us. It’s much larger than we are. Rather than maneuvering around the asteroids, it’s simply blasting its way through. Sure, the hits will slow it, but there’s no other way it would make it.
Makes the idea of hiding somewhere in here the wrong idea, but I don’t think that’s what Leef is up to. Still, I wonder—who’s following us? And why?
Leef said Galaxy-class, which means allegiance with Xerus. Can’t be Jas then, or at least I don’t think so.
Do we have it wrong, and it’s someone out to settle a grudge with Leef?
That’s when I notice the access port. If Leef can work on fancy flying, I can work on some fancy hacking. He’s way better at that than me—something I won’t admit out loud—but I comfort myself with the thought that I could take him in hand-to-hand combat. Probably.
I plug my data cord into the port and begin piggybacking off a signal Dot has already established. The bot is more focused on the analysis of the data of flight trajectory than information, so I leap into that world and start decoding information packets.
All well and good, but it’s nothing that truly affects us. I turn to more innocuous data. The handshake information all ships offer at ports and to other ships. It’s usually less secure and easy to trace.
My jaw drops. “No Versing way.”
“What?” Talie turns in her seat.
“He’s being the hero-hacker.” Leef’s attention is on the flying—something I appreciate—but he’s right. I wonder, not for the first time, if he’s got an implant. It would make sense if that’s how he communicates with his ship or other tech, but now isn’t the time for this conversation.
“It’s Brownus in a stolen Galaxy ship.” At least I assume it’s stolen by the added-on ORA assignment—Outlier Rim Association—to the galaxy classification.
I look up to see Talie watching me. I don’t miss how pale she is. We haven’t had a chance to talk about what happened, not really, but I’m sure what she’d share would only make me want to blow up his ship more.
“He’s not going to get to us, Talie.” I send a resigned look at the back of Leef’s head. “Right, Captain?”
“Right-o, Master Car—”
“For the love of the Verse, will you please call me Renner?”
“I…” Leef halts. “All right. Renner.”
It’s a small victory, but it’s something.
“How did they find us?” Talie asks.
It’s a good question. I’ve been thinking about it. “It wouldn’t be hard to track. You may have avoided being scanned while getting off The Slayer, but it’s possible shops soft-scanned your chip. It’s an advertising thing. It wouldn’t be hard to know that you landed there and then left.”
“But they shouldn’t know which ship.”
“As much as I covered our tracks, you can’t erase a human’s memory,” Leef adds. “Believe me, I’ve tried.” He whispers the last part, and I can’t help but wonder again what he’s hiding. He’s got stories for every occasion, but they feel rehearsed.
The asteroid field is a sufficient distraction from all other questions, and we fall silent. I observe his incredible maneuvering with a touch of jealousy. I need to learn to fly a ship properly.
He takes us into a calculated dive, and I clutch the back of his seat. The flight dampeners kick in to control the forces on us, but we still feel the effects of the G-forces. Dot makes a trilling sound and then falls silent.
“Almost,” Leef mutters. “Almost…”
The ship bursts into free space and makes an immediate curve following the outline of the asteroid field. “Good job, Dot.”
He must be using the bot for calculations or some type of trajectory scenario to get us out of here. And that’s when I see it. A massive spaceport with plenty of inbound traffic to hide in. And the truth hits me. I’m fairly certain we just careened through the Navara Belt, and we’re at Navara Port.
We’re close to Meloran.
“Ready to initialize stealth on my command,” Leef says.
“Stealth?” I can’t help the question—it sounds both insanely awesome and completely impossible. “What’s that?”
“Just—” Leef throws up a staying hand.
I fall quiet. As much as I don’t want to admit it, this is his field of expertise. Get me on land—or on a station—and I’d be better equipped. All that matters at this point is escaping Brownus and getting to Meloran.
“Stealth engaged.” Dot’s computerized voice echoes across the too-quiet cockpit.
“Docking sequence initiated.” Leef seems to speak out of habit.
The station looms before us, and I feel small looking at what must be thousands of docking bays, more than half of them filled.
“Won’t they know we’ve come here?” Talie asks. Her voice is weak, tense.
“Hence stealth mode.” Leef reaches across and flips a switch.
“And you couldn’t have used this before?” I’m actually curious.
“It’s not visual, Mast—Renner. It’s a type of computerized stealth.”
“Like masking a chip?”
He grunts and shrugs. “It scrambles our port-issued sequence code and, on this large of a station, it’d be like trying to find a star in the night sky. Without instruments, of course.”
“Of course.” Talie flashes an amused look at me, though she’s still not fully relaxed.
I return it, and my feelings for her surface as quickly as entering a portal jump and rocketing to FTL. I promised her my distance, but I’m beginning to think she’ll always have my heart.
“Okay, folks,” Leef says as the port automation takes over. “This is the end of the line.”
My gaze shoots to Leef and hardens to space rock. “What do you mean ‘end of the line,’ Debray? You agreed to take us to Meloran.”
“The thing is, I didn’t sign up for this. That back there is lightcycles beyond the purview of our arrangement. You want me to take you to Meloran, I’m going to need a good reason.”
“We made a deal.” I emphasize my words with a pointed finger. He agreed, and the agreement should stand.
“And the deal is off.” He looks between us, his expression clearly stating that he knows we’ll keep our secrets, and it’ll let him off the hook.
“Please, Leef.” Talie looks at him, her gaze pleading.
“Don’t ‘please Leef’ me. We were almost crater dust on an asteroid, and as much as I enjoy a good chase now and then, I usually like to know the reason I’m being chased.” There’s something in his gaze.
“It doesn’t matter. You out-maneuvered them.”
“But you do know who’s following us. Right, mate?”
“In a way,” I hedge.
“It’s a man who kidnapped me,” Talie blurts. “To sell me.”
Leef’s eyebrows rise as if he wasn’t expecting that. “Go on.”
“That’s it.” She betrays her bold statement with a hesitant look at me.
Look away!
“Not good enough.” Leef shakes his head.
She looks back at him, and I know what he sees. Two people telling him a story they’re peddling as the whole truth, but which falls incredibly short of that.
It takes a liar to know one.
“Answers or you get the boot, mates.”
“What if we get you more money?” Talie licks her lips nervously, and I know why. She only has her personal, very traceable, cred chip.
“I said answers, not creds.” Leef’s quiet tone is undermined by his annoyance.
“You have to trust us.” It’s Talie’s last feeble attempt, and I admire her for trying, but I’ve known guys like the captain here. He may talk a big game and flirt like no one’s business, but when it comes down to it, he won’t put himself on the line to help a stranger.
“Sorry, love, but I don’t risk my life—or the lives of my crewmates—for nothing.”
“You don’t have a crew,” I mutter.
“Dot. Mabel. They’re my crew.”
I am so close to reminding him that he is, in fact, human, and those are computers—but it’s not worth it.
I stare him down instead, our eyes locking. The outcomes weigh back and forth in my mind. Tell him more and risk Talie’s life. Don’t tell him anything and risk Talie’s life. There are no good alternatives.
I take in the port where we’re docking. He’s turned off our chips, so we’re invisible. Maybe we can find alternative transport the rest of the way. My mind starts shuffling options into a line-up of most to least likely, and I’m half convinced we won’t need Leef when Talie speaks up.
“Would you help us if it meant,” she sends me an apologetic look, “committing treason?”