CHAPTER 28

By the time Eli walked out into the spaceport baggage claim, he was starting to wonder if maybe he should have just taken the opportunity to disappear. But going missing would have set off alarm bells for Xi and her goons, and maybe even put the rest of the team in danger.

They’re probably OK for the moment.

And now they had Gwen.

His heart had skipped a beat when Gwendolyn Rhys’s voice had come over the earbud. He’d met the Caledonian Security Agency officer – at the time deep undercover with the Black Watch – when Kovalic had first recruited him almost two years ago to help locate his brother, Eamon. She’d proved tenacious and resourceful and Eli had thought they’d also had… a connection? Maybe? It hadn’t turned into anything, though, probably in large part because Eli hadn’t been back to Caledonia since.

A fact that Gwen hadn’t let him forget.

“At least Tapper writes,” she’d needled him after he’d gotten over the shock of hearing her voice. “What’s the matter, Brody, can’t send a girl a message?”

“Uh, well, that is, I meant to, but life’s been… complicated.”

“And here I’ve been, sitting by the comm unit just pining away waiting for your call.”

“I’m… sorry?”

He could picture her eyes rolling. “I’m kidding, dummy. Anyway, we’re not here to discuss missed dinners. Though, to clarify, you will definitely owe me an entire bottle of whisky for this. Ofeibia Xi? How the devil did you get mixed up with her?”

“Long story,” said Eli. “But she’s almost as pissed at me as you are.”

Gwen laughed. “I’m not even going to ask what you forgot to do for her. I did a little digging and found where your mates are holed up; I’m on my way there now.”

“Any idea why we’re here?”

“If she’s in Stranraer then I’d bet my last mark that it’s something to do with the Coire Ansic.”

Eli blinked. The name was in the old tongue, but that was about all he knew. “The who?”

“These are the things you’d know if you bothered to write. Local muscle; they’ve gone big time since the Black Watch shut down. Control pretty much every illicit operation around these parts. CalSec’s been trying to get inside, but our undercover agents keep getting caught.” Her voice turned hard. “The results haven’t been pretty.”

“Oh. Sorry,” said Eli awkwardly. “I did overhear Xi saying something about a job. Any ideas?”

“Hm,” said Gwen, and Eli could picture her twisting a strand of red hair around one finger in thought. “Could be a turf war… or a strategic partnership. Even odds. I’ll give the situation a recce and be in touch. For the moment, you just stay on course. Keep the earbud on receive but don’t transmit unless it’s an emergency – we don’t know if they’ll be scanning. Copy?”

“Copy that… and Gwen?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s good to hear your voice.”

There was a snort on the other end of the line, but her tone softened. “You too, Eli. Take care of yourself.” And with that, she’d signed off, leaving Eli alone with Agent Liang, who had been studiously poring over her tablet and doing her best to ignore the one-sided conversation.

Liang had cut him loose, giving him a line to feed Xi’s people about random search and bureaucratic paperwork, and within fifteen minutes of being dragged in, he was walking out into the cavernous interior to find a stolid, if slightly more displeased looking Andres, and an antsy, pacing Prentiss.

“Where the fuck have you been?” snapped the blonde pilot. “What did they want with you?”

Eli gave his best long-suffering sigh. “Nothing, far as I can tell. Just asked me questions about where I was from, where I was going, what my business was on Caledonia – the usual.”

Andres eyed him. “What’d you tell them?”

“Nothing! Well, I mean, I had to tell them something, so I gave them the most boring story I could think of. We came in from Jericho, we’re doing a consulting gig, and we’ll only be here a few days. I think they were a little sketched out by the lack of baggage, but I told them it was a sudden trip.”

The two goons exchanged glances, and Eli could almost read the thoughts passing between them. Xi might have once boasted that her people loved her, but it was impossible to deny that they were also scared of her – and it was clear that neither Andres or Prentiss wanted to call this one in, especially since their charge was here, standing right in front of them. He resisted the powerful urge to tap at his ear and make sure the earbud was still in place.

“So,” he said, “should we get going, or what?”

Grudgingly, Andres led them out of the baggage claim and across an open-air breezeway to the adjacent garage. The hot Caledonian wind ruffled Eli’s hair as they stepped outside, and he couldn’t help his thoughts drifting north to his hometown of Raleigh City.

Guilt clenched his gut; his younger sister Meghann lived a few hours south of there, in a care home; he hadn’t seen her since his last trip to Caledonia either. He did his best to keep in touch, sending messages every week; as a Commonwealth military officer, traveling to an Illyrican-controlled world was a complex process. Not to mention the concern that her connections to both Eli and their late brother Eamon might have encouraged the Imperial Intelligence Service to keep an eye on her. Still, he owed her a visit – and more, probably. Maybe when we get clear of the crime lord who wants to use us as her personal marionettes.

Andres acquired a big black hovercar from the rental agency and they piled into its lush air-conditioned interior, rife with the smell of whatever industrial cleaning products they used to wipe it down between drivers. Then it was off, down the highway, into Stranraer proper.

If Raleigh City were a vertical city, tall buildings and reaching spires, Stranraer was like somebody had repeatedly mashed it with a tenderizer: flat sprawl that went on for kilometer after kilometer. It was almost hard for Eli to believe this was the same planet he’d grown up on; it seemed almost alien to him now. There had been a time – the first eighteen years of his life – that he’d literally been nowhere else. But over just the last few years, he’d been to a slew of worlds; if not more than he could count, then at least enough that he sometimes had trouble remembering them all. And when he thought of home, he realized that it was no longer his family’s dusty apartment in the dry heat of a Caledonian summer, or his bunk in the Illyrican naval academy, or the cramped bedroom on a Sabaean arctic base that he pictured.

It was his little loft in a Novan suburb, with Addy curled up in the bed, dozing.

He flushed even in the cool of the car, though his chaperones weren’t paying close enough attention to him to notice. Or care.

Glad Tapper isn’t here. He’d never let me hear the end of it. Even as the thought passed through his mind, he felt a pang in his stomach that wasn’t from his healing gunshot wound. No, strike that, he wished Tapper was here. And Addy. And Taylor. Mal. Kovalic. Somehow, not for the first or even third time, he’d found himself on his own, separated from the rest of his team.

Guess I’m just going to have to save the rest of them. Again. The laughter bubbled up inside of him and escaped in the form of an undignified snort, earning him a sharp look from Prentiss in the front seat.

After twenty minutes of driving, the car pulled off the highway and meandered through a warren-like maze of city streets – no sensible grid here, like in Raleigh City – and pulled up to a squat two-story building. Andres parked and he and Prentiss ushered Eli out and up a short staircase into a tiny one-room apartment that made his berth on an Illyrican carrier look well-appointed: a compact galley kitchen with a single burner, a sofa that looked like it folded out into a bed, and a bathroom that was just big enough to hold a toilet and sink.

“What,” said Eli, looking around, “no mini bar?”

That earned a grunt from Andres and a sour look from Prentiss, neither of whom bothered to actually voice a response.

Great, what the hell am I supposed to do now? Gwen’s instructions had been to play this out, but the idea of sitting on his hands while the rest of the team was in the thick of it made him antsy. Downtime had never been his specialty.

What would Kovalic do? It had been a while since he’d summoned that particular mantra, but it had served him… OK, maybe not well in the past, but at least it had usually gotten him somewhere.

Find a small task to accomplish.

He glanced around again, taking in his surroundings. One thing was clear: wherever Xi had taken the rest of the team, it wasn’t here. He still didn’t know exactly what the syndicate boss wanted from them, beyond doing a job for her. But evidently he wasn’t needed for whatever the gig was – or at least, this part of it.

Xi was holding him as leverage over the rest of the team, but, as he’d already decided, running for it wasn’t an option. Which meant his main job was trusting the team and waiting for the right moment.

In the meantime, maybe he could turn to more pressing matters, like food. His stomach had started rumbling and he tried to remember when he’d last eaten. It might have been that reuben back on Juarez 7A, which was way too long ago. His watchers didn’t seem too concerned, so he wandered over to the compact kitchen and poked around the refrigerator, which contained a half empty bottle of mayonnaise, some sriracha, and a can of beer.

Clearly some bachelor’s apartment. All too familiar. As tempting as a meal consisting purely of a spicy aioli was, he was going to need something more than that.

“Soooo,” he said, turning back to the room, where Andres and Prentiss had taken up spots on the sofa. Prentiss was eyeing something on her sleeve, while Andres had brought up the wall screen and was watching sports highlights on mute. “Lunch anyone? Or… an early dinner?” Wormhole lag was real; he had to glance at his sleeve to see that it was late afternoon local time.

Both of the goons looked at him, then at each other. Silently they held out fists and quickly shook them; Andres put out two fingers, while Prentiss held her hand flat.

“Damn it,” said the blonde pilot. “Two out of three?”

“Nah,” said Andres. “This one’s yours.”

With a sigh, Prentiss rocked forward on the couch and leveled Eli with a glare. “I think there’s a noodle place around the corner.”

Eli gave a helpful shrug. “I mean, I could go, if you want…”

“Right,” she said. “And why don’t you just take my sleeve too? Charge it to the boss, I’m sure she’ll understand.” She glanced over at Andres. “What do you want?”

“Don’t care,” said the big man. “Tonkotsu if they got it, but I’m easy.”

“Fine,” said Prentiss. “Three ramens. I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”

“Make mine spicy!” Eli called after her as she headed out the door, but got only a single raised finger in response. Politeness apparently was not his captors’ strong suit.

He plopped down onto the couch in Prentiss’s recently vacated seat; it was still warm. “Just us guys, eh? Anything good on vids?” He looked up at the silent highlights reel cycling through the various results of last night’s matches. “How are the Griffins doing this season, anyway?”

Not that he’d expected Andres to open up to him; the man had all the personality of a sidewalk, except if you tried to draw on him with chalk he’d probably break your hand. But if Eli had learned anything from his prior captivities, it was that you could wear people down with good old-fashioned friendliness and charm. Eventually, either they’d open up to you or they’d stick a bag over your head. It was about fifty-fifty.

Andres didn’t have a bag handy, so Eli at least had that going for him. But neither did the man seem like he was open to bonding over gravball highlights. Just as well. I think the last time I knew the Griffins’ starting lineup I was fourteen.

Eli sat quietly, watching the sports highlights, for as short a time as he reasonably could without looking weird, then got up, went into the refresher, and sat on the closed toilet, mulling.

He rubbed at his face. I really am on my own here. Not even a weapon he could stash about himself for later; he’d considered rifling the drawers in the kitchenette for a knife or even a frying pan – he’d proved handy with one of those – but that would be conspicuous as hell.

He flushed the toilet without using it, washed his hands anyway, and stepped out of the bathroom. Andres barely spared him a glance from the sofa.

So, what, I’m going to just sit around here with this brick wall all day? Part of him wondered if he should make a run for it, just for believability’s sake. Trying to escape was logical, right? Wasn’t it more suspicious if he didn’t? They probably wouldn’t kill him outright, especially if he really was insurance for the rest of the team doing this job.

Then again, there were a lot of things that weren’t “being killed outright” that would still hurt a whole lot.

A chime broke the silence, the suddenness startling Eli so that he almost tripped over his own feet without even moving. He managed to catch himself, though he still earned a strange look from Andres.

The big man shook his head, then turned to his sleeve, reading a message there. After a moment, he grunted. “Looks like we’re on for tomorrow. The boss wants us on your ship.”

“Our ship?” Eli repeated dumbly.

“That’s what it says.” Andres didn’t offer any more than that, just turned back to watching the holoscreen, leaving Eli to process the news.

Down below, there was a click and a creak as Prentiss climbed back up the stairs, returning with the food.

Even the sour disposition of his babysitters couldn’t dent the relief he’d felt from Xi’s message. They were going to put him on the Cavalier. If there was any chance at all that he’d be able to help the rest of the team, then it would be from behind the stick.

Buoyed by the news, he didn’t even balk at the idea of spending the next few hours in the company of two of the least charismatic people he’d ever met.

And at least there was ramen.