CHAPTER 25

Eli spent a brief moment wondering why the room was upside down before it spun vertiginously back into the correct orientation, almost taking his lunch with it. I bet that reuben is not nearly as good coming up as it was going down.

The disorientation didn’t stop there. I’m definitely not on the Cav. He knew every inch of that ship, unless he’d been unconscious so long that they’d redecorated to a – he glanced around at the small room woozily – really utilitarian look.

Slowly he levered himself up on his elbows, his head still on a carousel, and did a quick survey. It was a small bunk room, with six berths stacked in two sets of three. He was retroactively glad he’d moved slowly, because the top of this bunk was only a couple inches from his head; any higher and he’d have had another reason to be discombobulated.

Carefully, he swung his legs out, glad to see that he was still wearing all the same clothes with the exception of his shoes, which were sitting on the floor – deck, he corrected himself; he could feel the telltale hum of an engine. Someone had even knocked most of the caked mud off them, which was oddly kind. Or maybe just self-serving if they were also the ones who had to keep the place clean.

Pulling the shoes on, he got to his feet, keeping one hand braced against the frame until he felt steady enough. Aside from the bunks, the room was almost featureless, with the exception of a half dozen lockers embedded in one bulkhead and a doorway opposite.

All expenses spared. He tried the door release, but unsurprisingly the panel blinked red at his touch. Memories started assembling in his head: Xi’s goon – Andres? – seeing to him in the medbay, then knocking him out with a hypo. He pressed a hand against his abdomen where Patel had shot him, preemptively wincing. But it didn’t actually hurt, even when he prodded it experimentally. Lifting his shirt, he craned his neck and saw that there were fresh dressings in place since the ones Andres had applied back on the Cav.

Which meant he’d been out for a while.

So, a ship, but not our ship. Probably one of Xi’s, then – I’m guessing that fast courier. It fit with the compact nature of the room and the pitch of the engine; this thing was tuned for speed, and he could hear it.

But it didn’t make him feel any better. Maybe I can override the door panel. Mal had started teaching him some tricks for circumventing systems, which he’d taken to like a fish to air. It just wasn’t his thing. Plus he didn’t even have anything he could use to lever the panel off, much less strip wires–

There was a click from the hatch and it slid open.

Holy shit, did I just do that with my mind?

Andres filled the doorway, looking him up and down as if assessing his condition, then grunted and nodded at Eli to follow him down the corridor.

Oh good, trapped on a tiny ship with a master conversationalist.

Then again, it wasn’t like he had a lot of options, and being locked in a windowless bunk was surely the worse of the two.

Andres had gone toward what Eli sensed was the ship’s fore, not that there was much else. He glanced in the other direction; the corridor terminated in an airlock hatch, and he saw only one other door on the opposite wall – the head, he presumed, unless this ship was really bare bones. Walking forward, he passed a compact engineering station, beyond which was a second hatchway that Andres palmed open.

Eli’s assessment that it was the ship’s cockpit proved correct. It was cramped, with just two stations; the pilot’s seat, front and center, and behind it, a second station that handled seemingly everything else: communications, navigation, co-piloting, and so on. Only the pilot’s station was currently occupied, by a woman so pale and blonde that it looked like all the color had been leached out of her.

Beyond them, through the canopy, was a broad canvas of stars, in the midst of which hung a single planet: a wash of brown continents and blue oceans.

As though they’d started a sudden plummeting descent, his stomach dropped out from under him. Oh no. It can’t be.

He steadied himself on the back of the co-pilot’s seat, but it swiveled away from him and he almost stumbled to the deck.

Andres shot him a look, and even the blonde woman glanced over her shoulder with a sneer. “I thought this guy was a pilot. Barely got his space legs.”

No no no no. Maybe I’m still sedated and this is all a dream. He pinched a big chunk of his forearm between two fingers. Ow!

His throat was dry and creaky when he finally managed to get the words out. “Why the fuck are we going to Caledonia?”

“We go where the boss tells us to,” said Andres. His voice sounded like what a mountain’s would if it could talk. “Sit down.” He punctuated the command with a hand on Eli’s shoulder, pressing him down into the co-pilot seat, leaving Eli little option but to stare out of the canopy in dismay.

Caledonia, his homeworld. The one that he’d abandoned at age eighteen to join the Illyrican navy, over the objections of, well, everybody in his life. The one he’d come back to almost two years ago on his first mission with Kovalic and the team, to track down his brother, who had turned out to be the leader of a terrorist group.

There were a lot of emotions to process.

“Soooo, this is just a flyby, right?” said Eli hopefully. “We’re not actually landing or anything?”

Andres and the pilot shared a look that said they were wondering whether or not Eli had all his brain cells. Neither of them bothered to respond, but as the pilot turned back Eli could see her locking in an approach vector. He glanced down at the station in front of him but the controls had all been preemptively locked out, leaving only one sensor display showing local traffic.

One blip jumped out at him, marked as a friendly green, and his heartbeat quickened. The transponder – a light freighter out of Jericho – was the same he’d set before they’d landed on Juarez 7A. Even if it hadn’t been, the ship’s drive profile was a fingerprint that he’d recognize anywhere: the Cavalier, on the same vector as them.

His shoulders slumped in relief. Part of him had worried that Xi had figured out who he was and dispatched him back to Caledonia to sell him to the Imperium. Or, maybe worse, to whatever remained of his brother’s cadre of self-styled freedom fighters. But presumably the rest of the team was still on the Cav with Xi and more of her goons. So, whatever they were doing here, it wasn’t about Eli.

Which made him… what? Insurance? Christ am I sick of being taken captive.

But at least he was all still alive, so he had that going for him.

Andres leaned against the bulkhead until it was time for them to strap in for descent, at which point he disappeared back to the engineering station, though he left the hatch open to keep one eye on Eli.

The pilot’s landing was aggressively fine – Eli noticed she wasn’t quite ready for Caledonia’s hot air pockets, which generated some bumps and shimmies on the descent. He was surprised to notice that they hadn’t headed towards the capital, Raleigh City, but rather toward the less populated southern continent and the large mining settlement of Stranraer.

A memory floated to the surface of his mind, from just before he’d been dragged off to the medbay on the Cavalier: Xi had wanted them to do a job for her. But what the hell down here is worth stealing? Even by the time he’d left to join the Illyrican navy, Stranraer’s heyday had been long past.

After the courier settled down on the tarmac and the pilot powered down the engines, it was eerily quiet in the cockpit. The only sound came from the faint hum of the ship’s electronics and the wind whistling outside.

It was a bright mid-day here, with the hot Caledonian sun blaring down on the flat expanse that was the spaceport. In the distance rose brown hills covered with scrub vegetation, but the landscape was otherwise unbroken.

Oh good. Home.

At the rear of the ship, the hatch slid open and a small ramp descended to the tarmac. A wave of hot air writhed inside, its dry heat ruffling Eli’s hair.

And the smell. Even here, thousands of miles from where he’d grown up, he got the same tang of metallic dirt in his nose and mouth. He hacked a cough, earning a look from Andres and the pilot – Prentiss, he’d heard Andres call her – though neither of them spared him a word as they walked down the ramp.

Terminal security here was tighter than what he’d seen in Raleigh City two years ago. A flash of fear ran down his spine as they queued: these weren’t local customs officials but the crimson-clad members of Imperial Fleet Security.

Xi’s people had, at least, let him retain the Ezekiel Bryce identity that he’d been using on Juarez 7A, so there was no risk that he’d pop up as Elijah Brody, deserter from the Illyrican Navy. Thank god for small favors.

Which made it an unpleasant surprise when the Illyrican officer at the gate lazily waved him aside into a separate line from Andres and Prentiss. Both of them cast him suspicious looks as Eli, befuddled, found himself being patted down by a security officer.

“Something the matter?” he asked, under the officer’s businesslike ministrations.

“Random check,” he said brusquely. “Need to swab you for explosives. Where’s your luggage?”

“Uhh, I’m traveling light.” All he had was what was on him, which wasn’t much. Andres had given him a new sleeve, because not having one looked even more suspicious, but it had been locked down to prevent him contacting anybody that wasn’t pre-approved.

The officer gave him a hard look, then touched his own sleeve and murmured something into it.

Eli offered a hapless shrug in the direction of Andres and Prentiss, who had lingered as long as they could in the main security line without looking conspicuous.

“Come with me,” said the officer abruptly.

Sweat beaded on Eli’s forehead, his heart starting to pound in his chest as he followed the security officer to a small windowless room with a metal table and two chairs. Shit. He tried to tell himself there was nothing to worry about: as far as the Imperial Navy was concerned, Eli Brody had died in the invasion on Sabaea seven years ago and the SPT had previously hacked his Illyrican records to replace his biometric data.

So I guess I’m just lucky?

The officer closed the door behind him, leaving him to stew in the spartan room, under the watchful eyes of security cameras. Was it just his imagination, or had they cranked up the heat too? He plucked at his collar.

This is just what they want. Calm down. Nothing you haven’t dealt with before. Plus, was he really in such a hurry to get back to Xi’s goons?

He’d started to regain his equilibrium when a few minutes later the door opened to admit a woman in a dark suit, her hair pulled back into a severe bun. The chair legs scraped against the floor as she sat down, consulting a tablet without looking up at Eli’s face.

She placed a small black ovoid on the table and pressed a control on it, and Eli felt his ears pop as though the pressure in the room had changed. A baffle? His eyebrows went up and he resisted the powerful urge to back into a corner and take up a defensive posture. An anti-eavesdropping device sure felt like the kind of thing the authorities used when they didn’t want anybody to know what they were going to do to you.

“Now,” said the woman, looking up. “That’s better. I’m Special Agent Liang, and I’ve got something for you.”

Eli blinked. “Huh?”

She reached into a pocket and pulled out an object the size of a tiny pebble, then slid it across the table to him.

He stared at it for a moment before his brain caught up: it was an earbud. Hesitantly, he glanced back up at the woman, but she seemed to be absorbed in whatever she was looking at on the tablet and paid him no mind.

With a shrug, he reached out and took it: it was a standard issue model with adaptive chromatics and, as he touched it, it mimicked his skin tone; when he put it in his ear, it’d be all but invisible. He could tell from the rustling as he inserted it that there was already a live connection. His throat dry, he swallowed down the lump there.

“Uh…hello?”

“Hello yourself, Eli Brody,” said a familiar voice with a thick Caledonian brogue. “About time you took me up on that dinner offer.”