Kriikisiii sent out a summons to the helm as soon as she'd interpreted the blink data. Cadan beat Sophi there, and was standing glaring at everything with her arms folded and her hands slowly clenching and unclenching. She was enough in control of herself that she wasn't making her fists spark, but there was still a healthy margin of space around her.
"What have you got?" Sophi asked Kriikisiii, taking the space beside Cadan.
Kriikisiii rumbled her satisfaction in her work and placed her big, clawed hands on her control console to show what she had. Her interpretation of the blatta's information filled the screens, visual language easier for everyone to use and understand than spoken. From the blink the blatta had experienced, she had pulled out the approximate size and shape of the ship ve had been in. Raaa had taken that and further refined it to the most likely makes. Raaa worked quickly over his own small control panel, bringing up visuals for them. Big ships, cargo eggs far larger than the Rhyssa was when she was fully loaded with all her segments. They were common, everywhere.
Kriikisiii brought up her estimations of the route their target ship was taking. They had only two points to work with—the place the royal children had been taken from and the place the blatta had blinked itself home from—but that, along with the capabilities of the ship, gave them something to work with. Kriikisiii showed all their possible routes, and then highlighted the most likely. Anything else would have been an inefficient route.
Sophi nodded. "They're going to Glesyn Asteroid." It made sense. "Almost makes me wish we had some cargo on us to trade." Glesyn was a hub of activity. It was in that awkward space between the Imperium and the king's control, so there were plenty of people making a living without caring about the finer details of legality. It was a great place to make a deal.
Gamal and Farah nodded in agreement, still sticking close to the door.
The look Cadan gave Sophi could have frosted over an entire moon—any camaraderie they'd shared was gone in an instant. "You are making plenty for finding the royal children," Cadan snapped, as though that were a bad thing. "Why aren't we already en route?" she demanded.
Kriikisiii rumbled warning at Cadan's tone as she drew up the route she'd calculated.
"No time to waste!" Sophi agreed, stepping up to the pilot's chair to get the Rhyssa into position for the blink. The new blatta pod had found all the scent marks and instructions left behind by the former blattas and had settled themselves in comfortably where they were needed. The ship was ready to go.
"I hate Glesyn," Cadan grumbled, eyes still cold on Sophi. She was actually complaining about Sophi's work again, more than the destination. She hated Sophi for it, even if she wasn't smuggling anything besides Cadan right this moment.
"Awful place, full of thieves and smugglers like me, but don't forget you're the one who called for me," Sophi snapped back. She fired the thrusters to push the Rhyssa away from the pod mother's nest. "You're not too good to come begging for my help, knowing exactly who I am and what I do, so don't get snobby. You're no better than I am."
Cadan dropped her arms, fists clenching at her sides with faint sparks, and Kriikisii reared up with a warning rumble so low it only registered in Sophi's bones. The blattas all hid under anything they could and froze. Cadan spun without another word and slammed her way out of the helm, Farah and Gamal pressing themselves against the wall to keep out of her way. They huffed twin sighs of relief when she was gone.
"I didn't choose Glesyn," Sophi said, quietly. They didn't usually fight so soon—but usually they were much more well-laid and relaxed. Raaa abandoned his post, unneeded for the moment, and scampered over to climb into Sophi's lap. She lifted him to squeeze tight, and he draped himself over her shoulder to hum comfort as she worked.
How she and Cadan were going to work together long enough to find the royal children, Sophi did not know.
*~*~*
There was a buzz in the wall. A tiny hum, something sliding just slightly out of alignment. Cadan noticed it every time she made a lap down the long, dimly lit hallways that laced the cylinder of the Rhyssa. The hallways split at the helm and stern of the ship on the dorsal side, spiraling in opposite directions, and crossed at the midpoint, where the engine room was located on the ventral.
Cadan turned around at the engine room and marched back toward the helm, leaving the even warmer stern of the ship to the blattas and anoloids who actually enjoyed the heat.
They had a lead on the children, tentative as it was, and the first thing that came to Sophi's mind was still money. Glesyn had made Cadan's skin crawl the few times she'd had to make a stop there. The thought of the children in that immoral pit, the things that could happen to them there, was near enough to break her. Glesyn was widely unregulated. Its irregular orbit took it through Nidum-controlled space and Imperium-controlled space, dancing between the two and accepting the laws of neither. The Imperium would not meet any reasonable compromise for its governance, so it sailed on untended. It was the kind of place people went for the shadiest deals—the kind of place where everything had a price and life sold cheap.
The royal children had been taken there, and the first thing on Sophi's mind was how she could have made more money off it. Devin and Erica and Kofi, sweet innocent children, were in Glesyn. There was no way to know what might happen to them there, or where they might be taken after. They could be split up and disappeared and how would Cadan find them then?
And there was a damn buzz in the wall. Cadan had her tools out and was tearing paneling off to get at it before she thought it through. This was a concrete task, something she could do. Something she was very good at doing. She could fix the alignment of whatever was buzzing. She had dismantled and repaired enough bits of the Rhyssa to know the basics of the ship.
There were power tools to make this kind of work easier, and most people would have turned the gravity down in a section to make moving the heavy wall panels easier as they worked. Cadan did not. She had simple hand tools and her body, and that was enough.
At least for this.
She traced wiring and the bones of the ship as they charged for the blink—then through the blink and recharging. It was easier to break something than to fix it, but Cadan was good with both. The buzz was a chain reaction, something shifted, something else tugging, and all traced up to loose bolts in the ceiling. A few blattas were easily recruited to help once the ship was through blinking for the moment: one who preferred the call name "tt" and another who had no call name. They cleaned everything and kept screws and bolts and paneling in order as Cadan tore the wall and ceiling apart. The Rhyssa was too warm, always, and Cadan was soon sticky with sweat. Her shower was already undone—she shouldn't have bothered. She shrugged out of the top part of her jumpsuit and continued working.
She was peripherally aware of various crew members as they started down the hallway, saw it disassembled, and turned to take a different route. Gamal and Farah, the pair of them almost always together, and then the anoloid Siiki, slightly lower-slung and a more pale, sandy gray than Klirii who had accompanied Sophi and Cadan into the pod mother's nest. With so few people on the ship, Cadan could not have avoided coming to know who they were, but she paid them no mind. She focused on her work and could not have said how long Sophi had been watching when she finally called attention to herself.
"What are you doing?" Sophi demanded.
"Fixing a buzz in the wall," Cadan answered shortly.
"A buzz." Sophi's eyebrows spoke disbelief. "All this for a buzz?" She gestured at the several meters of partially disassembled hallway, at the worn metal panels removed to bare the beams and wires of the ship.
"No passengers on your ship. That's part of your price, isn't it?"
Sophi's lips thinned as she folded her arms, glaring up at Cadan where she was suspended from the ceiling by one hand and a knee to reach the core problem. "I demand adequate compensation for my services," Sophi answered, voice hard. "How is that so offensive to you?"
"Offensive..." Cadan growled, focusing intensely on the bolt she was tightening, her hand steady as it held her aloft. "I do not find compensation to be offensive. No." She double-checked all the bolts one last time. "What I find offensive—" Cadan swung herself down to stand on the deck, facing Sophi "—is that with the royal children in danger, the only thing you are considering is still your own profit."
"Some of us have to work to live. You bounce from ship to ship to ship with no idea what it takes to keep a crew starside," Sophi snapped back. "Some of us have to think of profit, or else we could not afford to breathe, eat, or fly. Not all of us have the luxury of being a king's kept plaything—a toy soldier, always provisioned, so long as you follow orders."
She dared insult Cadan's loyalty to her family. Cadan's vision narrowed to Sophi's face and she forced herself to breathe through her clenched teeth.
"I choose to serve Magnus. I choose to serve my king, but you will never understand that, will you?" Cadan demanded. "You will never understand service, or loyalty, or love. The only thing in the galaxy you are even capable of caring about is your money!"
Sophi was tiny, no physical threat to Cadan, but the rage that burned in her heavy-lidded eyes—deadly as the dark pull of empty space—had Cadan taking an instinctive step back.
"Do not tell me what I am capable of!" Sophi hissed, deadly quiet. "I look after my people and my ship, no matter what it takes, but I still came for you when you called. I took the job when you asked me to, even though this entire chase is a loss to me. My cargo and crew are abandoned, my contacts awaiting their shipments, my reputation threatened by proximity to your king. I dropped everything for this, because you asked me to. Whatever benefit I hoped for was never monetary." She spun on her heel, long braid swinging out in an arc behind her, and marched out of sight. The blattas skittered after her, chittering in distress with their antennas waving, and Cadan was left alone with her tools and a disassembled hallway.
She stared after Sophi for long heartbeats before she pulled herself back up to the ceiling and got to work putting everything together again.
*~*~*
Sophi grabbed every last thing of Cadan's that was in her quarters and tossed it back into Cadan's bag. It would have been much more satisfying if there had been more than one or two things lying around. Cadan kept her bag neat; she never spread out and got comfortable. No matter how much time she spent in Sophi's quarters, there was only ever the one worn bag sitting smugly at the foot of Sophi's bed, practically screaming that it was never going to stay.
Sophi threw it out into the hallway, locked her door, and went to the ship's basking range to be surrounded and loved by her anoloid family. She was held cradled between huge, pebbled bodies, surrounded by the little squirming males, and all of them hummed contentment until she felt more like herself.
Cadan's bag was gone when Sophi went back to her rooms to sleep, and Sophi figured that was the end of it. Cadan would stay in the bunk assigned to her, and they would avoid each other as much as possible the rest of this trip. It would not be easy with the ship so empty, but Sophi wouldn't be searching Cadan out, that was certain. Her accusations still stung. After everything Sophi had done for her, Cadan thought she was completely mercenary?
Sophi was deep in her off hours, hugging a pillow and nearly sleeping, when her door chimed. She was not expecting it to be Cadan when she asked who it was.
This didn't fit their pattern. They met, they fucked, they fought, they parted ways—rinse and repeat. That was how it always went. This time was different. They weren't having sex, and they were stuck working together. They couldn't split up to cool down.
Sophi hugged her pillow tighter. "How much can you pay for my time?" she spat back at the door. Bitter poison in her teeth with her heart still raw.
There was a long pause on the other side of the door before Cadan answered. "I came to apologize," she said. Her voice was quiet and calm, and this was new too. They did not apologize to each other. They were not usually anywhere near each other to do so, after they'd argued. Sophi rubbed her face against her pillow and sighed. If Cadan was trying so they could work together, then Sophi could try too. She padded across the room and opened the door, prepared to slam it right back in her face if Cadan was not polite.
Cadan had obviously showered again since tearing parts of the ship apart, but she looked tired with her eyes a little red. Sophi was probably not much better herself. Cadan's eyebrows lifted in surprise at the door opening, before she put her hands behind her back and looked down—shoulders squared and feet placed evenly. Sophi wondered if she realized she looked like a soldier receiving a reprimand.
"Captain, I apologize for what I accused you of," Cadan opened. "Your loyalty to your crew is obvious, and I should not have questioned that. I appreciate everything you are doing to help find the royal children." It sounded rehearsed. It probably was, but there was no one on the crew who would have told her to apologize, or helped her come up with the words for it. Sophi encouraged them in keeping a strictly hands-off approach to her relationships, just as she did to theirs. Cadan must be here of her own volition, and Sophi should not be feeling her bottom lip tremble.
"I'm sorry, Sophi," Cadan said into the long silence following her pronouncement. She nodded briefly to herself and turned to leave.
Sophi caught the edge of Cadan's sleeve with her fingertips, and Cadan turned back. "Thank you." The words came out more tentative than Sophi meant, almost a question. "It did hurt—does hurt, when you think so little of me."
"I am sorry," Cadan repeated. "I'm just—" She broke herself off with a huff through her crooked nose, shaking her head. "I promised myself I wouldn't make excuses." Cadan's eyes were sad when she finally meet Sophi's gaze. Just sad and tired, and as full of fear as they'd been since Sophi met her at the Royal Palace and found out the royal children were missing. Even in her anger, Cadan had still been afraid.
Sophi was still tender, still hurting. She wanted to pull Cadan close, be wrapped up in her arms and hide until everything felt better, but she didn't know if that would be welcome. She let go of Cadan's sleeve, ran her fingertips down the side of Cadan's hand. Cadan's hand twitched, and then twisted to catch Sophi's fingers with her own. She squeezed Sophi's hand, warm and close, and Sophi stepped back to tug her slightly toward the room.
"Will you come in?" Sophi invited.
"I don't think I'll be able to sleep," Cadan warned, even as she ducked carefully through the doorway. "And definitely not any..." She gestured vaguely toward her lower body.
"Just lie with me?" Sophi asked. She tossed her slightly tear-dampened pillow away and Cadan followed her easily onto the bed. Their bodies fit, spooning together in the blankets.
There was comfort to share with her anoloid family—but in her core Sophi was still human. There was something primally satisfying in hearing the even, heavy breaths of another human, in the shared warmth and the double-beat of a heart that matched her own. Cadan fitted herself to Sophi's back, lips briefly pressed to the nape of her neck, and Sophi held Cadan's big hand tight to her heart as if she could keep her.
The pair of them were fire and oxygen, explosive, but they'd never quite been this before. They had never had something gentle afterward to soothe the burn.
Sophi held Cadan warm and solid against her back, and slept.
*~*~*
Cadan returned to the helm when they reached Glesyn. Sophi sat in the pilot's seat, carefully aligning the ship to dock, while Farah was already going through Glesyn's ship lists. Cadan stepped up behind Sophi and carefully rested a hand on her back. Cadan had surprised herself by managing to sleep for a few hours, holding Sophi, before she'd gone back to nervously pacing the hallways. Sophi glanced back at her with a slight smile before focusing on piloting. Everything felt tentative between them, fragile. Cadan did not usually stay around following an argument. She knew the sharp side of Sophi's tongue well enough, but she had never seen the pain beyond it. Cadan had never seen Sophi with her eyes red-rimmed and puffy from crying.
Cadan slowly rubbed a circle between Sophi's shoulder blades. The responsibility of being able to hurt people was learning to only do it intentionally. Whether Cadan did it with her fists or her words didn't matter. Everything felt uncertain, with both of them thrown out of their usual patterns together. They were sharing intimacy without sex, and still working together after arguing. Sophi was going out of her way to help find the royal children, despite their differences, and Cadan could appreciate her for that. She could try to be kind to Sophi with what small part of herself was not locked up in terror for the children.
One of the little anoloid males arrived and flipped down a control panel for himself. Farah sent him information from her station and he began sorting through the ships listed. From what Cadan could tell, he was looking for any mismatch between stated cargo and actual weight for the type of cargo egg that had taken the children. Looking for one that was too light.
Sophi docked the Rhyssa with the faintest jolt, and its artificial gravity adjusted to the station's. She stood and leaned back against Cadan, watching the anoloid male sorting ships. Cadan circled an arm around her to hold her close, hand resting on Sophi's belly to feel the rise and fall of her breath and the beat of her heart. Cadan was careful not to accidentally squeeze too hard, not to hurt Sophi. She felt so fragile in Cadan's arms today—or maybe it was actually Cadan who was fragile. She looked at the lists of all the cargo eggs registered in Glesyn since the children had been taken. One of these had taken them. One of the ships on this list would have her children.
There was only so much the names and numbers could tell Cadan, though. She reached around Sophi, keying up the external cameras onto a small unoccupied viewscreen. The lumpy gray shape of Glesyn Asteroid was visible in one corner of the screen, and the docks full of ships filled the rest of it. There were ships of all makes: quick little cutters and passenger yachts, small and sleek to move-fast, medium-class cargo vessels like the Rhyssa, perfectly round until they split their wedge-shaped cargo segments off to unload or exchange them.
There even appeared to be a small colony of roving sailors visiting Glesyn in their tiny blink-incapable ships with their massive solar sails. How a human could choose to give up modern technology to navigate by the stars and Nidum's winds that way, Cadan didn't know.
She dismissed them all, focusing instead on the cargo eggs. They were huge, ovoid ships too delicate to ever withstand a planet's gravity. A small node on one end housed bridge, crew quarters, and the massive engines required the charge them for blink, the rest empty for cargo. One of these ships, now docked in Glesyn's shipyard, had engulfed her niblings' shuttle and stolen them away. Cadan was going to tear her way into one of these cargo eggs, and destroy anything and everything in her way to get her children back.
Just as soon as someone told her which one. Cadan breathed deep, heartbeat thudding loud in her ears, her body more than ready for a fight.
Farah looked away from her console, biting her bottom lip briefly before turning to face Sophi. "If they paid Parks off…" She let herself trail off.
Sophi stiffened, pulling out of Cadan's arms. "Of course they would. Shit!" She put her hands on her controls, typing out a summons for the anoloids.
"What?" Cadan demanded, looking back and forth between Sophi and Farah. They knew something they weren't saying aloud, and it set the little hairs prickling on the back of Cadan's neck, made her hands clench into fists.
"Keeping off-record is just a matter of money and connections, here," Sophi answered, jaw tight. "For kidnapping the royal children, they'll be more than paranoid enough to pay off the master of the docks. They'll be unlisted."
"Parks?" Cadan asked, lip curling at the name. She'd heard of him, and had heard nothing good. He was the one supposed to make sure illegal goods didn't come and go from Glesyn's docks. There was no way his office would be all that difficult to find. If all else failed, she'd start punching people until someone told her how to get to him. Cadan headed for the airlock, snarling
"Wait!" Sophi grabbed Cadan's arm and was dragged a few steps before Cadan stopped. If she thought Cadan wasn't going after Parks, she was going to have to think again. "You're not going alone. Let me gather a team. We're with you," Sophi begged.
Cadan's first instinct was to shake Sophi off and go. She almost always worked alone, but she was not so angry she couldn't see the benefit of Sophi's team. Cadan was more than formidable on her own, but having an anoloid or two backing her up, and someone who already knew how to find Parks, only made sense. She bit back the adrenaline and rage, folded her arms, and nodded.
Sophi's crew was quick, at least. Kriikisiii and Siiki were already arriving, shedding little males and rumbling to each other. The male who'd been sorting ships on the list was replaced by two others; he climbed onto Kriikisiii's back along with the few who'd stayed on her, while Sophi instructed two blattas to follow them. It only took a few minutes, but Cadan chafed at every second. Sophi smiled at her, threading her hand through Cadan's elbow.
"Siiki, Farah, you have the ship. We might come in hot, so be ready," Sophi instructed, then turned to Cadan as she set a leisurely pace toward the airlock. "It'll look best if you don't seem like you're on a mission. We'll wander around a few minutes, then hit without warning."
Straightforward usually worked well enough for Cadan, but Sophi was the one who knew how to do this particular kind of work. She nodded. "I'll approach him your way, but he's mine once I've got him cornered," Cadan warned.
"Sounds good." Sophi smiled, and the airlock opened to Glesyn.
Cadan breathed deep, taking in the particular acrid scent of the station's air. The sulfurs were always too high here. The material of the asteroid it was built on, yellow-gray and gritty under Cadan's boots, tainted everything. People swarmed everywhere, excited or hunted but mostly very tired and suspicious. In that, Cadan fit right in. She and Sophi and Kriikisiii were swept immediately into the mob.
Businesses flashed garish signs at human visitors, advertising services and goods for sale, anything anyone could want to lose themselves in. A barker tried to sell them tickets to a fighting ring, and then changed tactics and attempted to convince Cadan to sign up as a fighter when she snarled in his face in answer. Kriikisiii, large even for an anoloid, was given enough space by the crowd to keep the blattas from being jostled or lost in the confusion. Cadan was not above shoving to get the kind of personal space she preferred as they walked. Nothing seemed to phase Sophi as she led them on a twisting path through the station
They passed stalls purporting to sell "only the best" or "only the freshest." Powdered pod mother's exoskeleton, only the freshest shedding, to cure baldness, bad eyesight, night terrors, and smelly feet—as though there was not perfectly good medical care that could actually cure those things. Tritea skin venom, to add a spark to your love life—or, more likely, a nasty rash to your sensitive bits. Rare plant extracts to soothe that rash in your sensitive bits.
Freshest anoloid liver, for energy and revitalization. That one was new, and it chilled Cadan to see the bright-blue organs hanging in the stall, ready to be carved up and sold. Glesyn was awful, but she'd never imagined they would sell anything that required the death of a sentient person. Kriikisiii saw it too. She let out a low warning rumble that vibrated through Cadan's ribcage, and the little males all flattened themselves on her back to hide. Kriikisiii turned to the blattas who'd been following close at her tail and let out a precise—if slow—series of clicks. The blattas' antennas fluttered through the air for a long moment before they answered, and Kriikisiii continued on unbothered.
"Is. Not," she said, pronunciation careful. "Beef. Meat. Dyed."
At least there was that, but it was still in poor taste. That was perfectly good food—expensive food—being ruined and sold at a higher price. It should not have been allowed. It would only create demand for the actual thing, wouldn't it, and where would all the species who'd settled around Nidum be if they began slaughtering each other for parts?
The stall was thankfully lost to sight as Sophi turned the group down a different street. This one was no less busy, but it had fewer stalls attempting to sell to humans, at least. Tempting scents and signs that glowed warm assaulted them here.
Sophi checked her communicator and nodded to herself. "Looks like we were right. Siiki and Farah aren't finding it in the list," she commented quietly.
Cadan held Sophi's hand tucked through her elbow and just walked. All she wanted was to find Parks and demand answers. "This is a waste of time," she muttered.
"Patience," Sophi murmured back. "If he's involved, don't you think he'd run if he saw you coming?"
Cadan huffed and continued on, trying to look as though she were interested in anything they walked past. They passed a basking range, heat radiating out of it to tempt the anoloids. There were anoloids lined up in front of it, not little arm-length males, but not full-grown, either. They were somewhere in the middle, from smaller ones about Cadan's size to maybe twice that. The males on Kriikisiii's back all sat up to take notice, and Kriikisiii was watching them too.
Several of the anoloids in the range began tussling, and the males on Kriikisiii's back began bobbing and flicking their bright dewflaps in display—until one of the largest anoloids in the range arched back and flashed a huge dewflap just as bright as the males', but larger than their whole bodies. The males nearly fell over themselves at that, and Kriikisiii was suddenly arched up higher at the shoulder, stalking along with a far more muscular swaying movement.
Cadan was surprised; she'd been almost sure dewflaps were one of the first things absorbed when an anoloid began to grow, just as their upper eyes being covered over with scales was one of the last. The displaying anoloids seemed to have every possible combination of traits.
"I've never understood these." Cadan tipped her head slightly toward the displaying midsized anoloids in front of the basking range. Most basking ranges did not have groups of them, but it was not the first time she'd seen one that did. She'd never walked past while accompanied by a family of anoloids before. Their response suggested they felt something about it, but Cadan didn't know what.
"The mixes," Sophi named, giving Cadan's arm a squeeze. "I think any sexual species has kinks. For anoloids, it's those between. They used to be even more rare, a transient state," she explained. "Now, of course, anoloid medical science lets them keep the bodies they prefer. There are a few places in the system where the mixes are known to gather, so interested partners can find them." Sophi waggled her eyebrows a bit and grinned.
"So... we just walked past an anoloid cruise spot?" Cadan asked, glancing back toward the displaying mixes.
"A kinky cruise spot," Sophi corrected, laughing. "I get all that right, Kriikisiii?"
Kriikisiii rumbled agreement, nudging up closer behind Sophi. "Rare. Pleasures," she said carefully, and followed it up with a few harmonies too complex for Cadan to understand.
Sophi smiled and reached out to scratch around the back of Kriikisiii's head, where her second set of eyes would have been. "I will share pleasure with you again very soon," Sophi promised, and Kriikisiii let out a hum of contentment. One of the males, the darker, greenish-tinted one who'd been sorting through the officially listed ships, darted over and climbed up Sophi's arm to lie across her shoulders instead. He kept one eye on Cadan, one behind them, and the other two on where they were walking.
"Riding with me, Raaa?" Sophi asked, and he hummed in answer. "Probably best," she decided. "Game time. Guard the door, Kriikisiii." Sophi let go of Cadan's arm, and nodded her toward an office door labeled Dock Overseer.
Finally.
Cadan flexed her fists from the pinkies inward, deliberately priming her combat and defense tech, and shoved the door to Parks's office open. He was a small man with a sour face, and he was alone. Cadan had placed herself between his desk and the back door before he realized he was in trouble. His sharp eyes darted between her and Sophi blocking the front door—Kriikisiii visibly guarding the outside—and a gleam of sweat broke out on his ashy-brown face. There was a faint, repeated clicking sound, and on the far edge of Cadan's hearing, an alarm began to sound. He had a panic button under his desk. Time was limited, then.
"Tell me about a cargo egg that came out from the inner systems with an empty hold," Cadan suggested.
"Check the s-station lists yourself, there has been no—" Parks stuttered.
Cadan leaned closer over his desk. "Try again. A midline cargo egg, unlisted, arriving some time in the last four days."
"There has been nothing of the sort!" he protested. He was protecting his bribes, but it was Cadan's job to protect the royal children, and he was in her way. No one stood in her way.
Parks very firmly did not look behind her shoulder as he began to babble something about being unfairly targeted, but Cadan didn't need him to give his backup away with his eyes. She was already aware of the door behind her swinging open. Cadan waited, let them think they were catching her unawares, before she spun into the attack.
Parks had two thugs, untrained but vicious, and one of them was swinging a stun rod at her head. Cadan caught the rod on her forearm, her hard-light shield flicking into place at the last instant. Power crackled across Cadan's knuckles, and the unarmed thug went down with a single passing punch. The one with the rod crumpled with a knee in the stomach, dropping his weapon. He collapsed to twitch on top of his colleague after a matching punch, and Cadan powered down her tech. It had been active briefly enough that it would be hard for anyone to tell exactly what hardware she was packing. Cadan jumped over the unconscious thugs to grab Parks, who'd begun fleeing toward the back door. She lifted him up onto his toes, her left fist tight in the collar of his jacket and her right fist cocked back in warning.
"I am losing my patience," Cadan snarled, giving him a shake. "Tell me about the ship."
"There is no ship! You've got the wrong man, I don't have it!" he babbled. From the corner of her eye, Cadan saw Sophi stepping closer, keeping an eye on the opened door. The male, Raaa, jumped off her and scampered across the desk to pounce on Cadan instead. He swarmed up her back, sharp little claws pricking through her jumpsuit, to hang over her shoulder.
On instinct, Cadan stopped growling, stopped moving, froze deadly still with her fist up in threat and her eyes drilling into Parks's. Raaa, on her shoulder, froze too, a tiny threat to back her up and add to the illusion of anoloid danger, and Parks squirmed.
"I don't have what you want! I swear I haven't unlisted a cargo egg in weeks!" he begged, eyes rolling as he struggled.
Sophi rested a small hand on Cadan's straining biceps. "He's telling the truth," she said softly. Cadan nearly dropped Parks in surprise. Sophi gestured down to the blatta workers; their antennas were waving through the air and one of them was holding a translation panel. They were able to read hormones and emotions, and they said Parks was telling the truth.
Cadan shoved him away. He stumbled to catch himself on the wall and backed away to place the desk between them.
"Then where are they?" she demanded. "Where did they go?" She hated the idea of them in Glesyn, but if the children had not been brought here, then where were they? She needed to find Devin and Erica and Kofi more than anything. She needed to protect them like she needed to breathe, and they were not here. They had to be here, or she had no leads at all.
Sophi shook her head, looking as lost as Cadan felt. "I don't know." She reached for Raaa, but he wrapped himself tighter around Cadan's shoulder, purring. "We'll have to regroup and recalculate." Sophi took Cadan's hand instead and Cadan followed, dazed.
"Watch your backs," Parks snarled, all cocky now that they were leaving. He was still sweaty and shaking, but his face was more sour than ever and his eyes were pure poison as they swept over Cadan's jumpsuit with its royal-teal details. "I see the king really has gone mad, and his dogs are running rabid. The trading and governance treaties are all collapsing. War is coming. Be careful who you make an enemy of."
Cadan turned back, more than willing to teach Parks a lesson in respect for the king, but Sophi tugged her along. Raaa's sharp claws scratched her as he hummed a warning note.
"We need to regroup," Sophi hissed. "He isn't important!" And Cadan allowed herself to be led back to Kriikisiii.
"We were wrong," Sophi informed Kriikisiii, setting a quick pace back toward the ship. "We chose wrong, they didn't come here." Kriikisiii hummed distress and pushed past her to take point, breaking a path through the crowds as they beat a retreat back to the Rhyssa. Cadan took up sweep, keeping an eye behind them. She was glad of Raaa's four eyes on her shoulder keeping watch with her. It was possible Parks had more thugs, and that they were in the crowd, ununiformed. Cadan's group was definitely being shadowed by unfriendly looking people. With Kriikisiii and Cadan together, they wouldn't dare attack directly, but Cadan was more than glad when they closed the airlock behind them and were back on the Rhyssa.
Sophi ran directly to the helm with Cadan right behind her. Kriikisiii had beaten them there. She had already pulled up her control panel, bringing back up the data they'd gotten from the blatta, the paths they'd guessed. Sophi threw herself into the pilot's chair, launching them away from Glesyn with a sharp jolt.
"They didn't come here," Sophi explained to Farah, jaw tense. "Kriikisiii, do you have anything for me?"
Kriikisiii rumbled negative. Raaa jumped off Cadan's shoulder and ran to take over a control panel along with a few other males, all of them working with the same numbers.
They had nothing. They had nothing. Cadan had come all the way to Glesyn, and who knew where the children actually were? She stepped back against the wall, bile in her throat now that she had nothing to occupy her immediate thoughts. This had been nothing but a waste of time, a sidetrack giving the kidnappers more time to get away—letting them slip further from her grasp. Cadan was failing the royal children, her family, the children she loved. They were out there somewhere, afraid, hurt, lost, and she could not find them.
She slumped down to the floor, closing her eyes to block out the sight of her scarred fists. She could punch her way out of any fight, she could destroy any target she was aimed at, but she wasn't capable of this. She was so useless here. She was not able to protect the most important three children in the galaxy, the gleaming stars of her heart.
"...try that next." Sophi's sharp voice broke into Cadan's awareness "Farah, contact Commander Li at Prospectus Station. Kriikisiii, get me our route!"
Prospectus? That was an Imperial station. Cadan looked toward Kriikisiii's screen. The tree of possible routes the children could have been taken now had two highlighted heading directly into space controlled by the Imperium.
"The Imperium does have them?" Cadan demanded. "And you're contacting an Imperial officer? You work with them?"
"Or whoever took your children is trying to set it up so it seems like the Imperium has them," Sophi contradicted. "And yes, I'm contacting Commander Li. We need help, and she's one of the very few Imperial officers I know I can trust."
Cadan opened her mouth, rage at Sophi and the Imperium right on the tip of her tongue… and closed it again. If it was for the children, then she could bear to ask an Imperial officer's help. If Sophi said that was what had to happen, she knew more than Cadan did.
She wouldn't trust anyone in the Imperium so far as she could spit, but she'd do it.