CHAPTER 5

Raena never imagined the crew would abandon her. Coni and Haoun had watched her get arrested. After the Messiah revelation, the ship had plenty of money. It should have been easy for them to come bail her out. When hours passed and no one came—and no charges were pressed—she began to feel anxious.

She would have thought twice about submitting so meekly in the spaceport, if she’d known she would have to sit in a holding cell for any length of time. She hoped she hadn’t inspired the kids to be so paranoid that they just ran away without her. The other creatures in the cell stayed out of her way as she paced.

Eventually a squad of ten Planetary Security agents came to retrieve her. Raena looked her escort over. That strength of numbers seemed entirely unnecessary for delivering her to a hearing. It looked surprisingly like a firing squad.

“What’s going on, Commander?” she asked.

“You’re being extradited.”

“I haven’t been charged yet,” she protested.

“Doesn’t matter to me.”

His agents took their places around the edges of the forcefield’s aperture, guns drawn. Raena looked them over, picking the one to take down first, planning angles of attack. The dispirited creatures in the cell huddled together, as far from her as they could get. Once the firing started, it would be a slaughter.

She couldn’t do it. These were innocents in the holding cell, pickpockets and grifters at worst. In the past, she wouldn’t have cared if they died during her escape attempt. In the past, she would have been running from Thallian. Now, she realized with a shock, she didn’t want their deaths on her conscience.

As soon as Raena stepped past the barrier, the smallest agent raised the manacles. “Please turn around,” she said.

Raena couldn’t see the person’s face behind the smoked faceplate, even to judge her species, but the agent sounded like little more than a kid. With a sigh, Raena complied and clasped her hands behind her back.

She noted that the Chameleon girls had taken control of the bench again.

“I haven’t seen the consul either,” Raena complained as the manacles locked into place.

“There isn’t any human consul on Lautan,” the squad commander said.

Someone nudged her with the butt of a gun. As they marched her out of the cellblock, Raena kept her head up, face forward, but her eyes scanned relentlessly. Too many jail guards lounged around for her to try anything, even to test the slack in the restraints, which—like everything else on Lautan—had been made for a larger creature than her. Without knowing where she was headed or what charge she had to face, it was stupid to consider any escape that might get her killed.

Oh, but she wanted to run. Adrenaline flooded her blood. Raena struggled to remember that, wherever they were taking her, it was not back to Thallian.

*   *   *

Ariel jolted awake, her heart hammering in her chest. She listened, but her room remained entirely silent. The lockdown telltales flashed from the monitor, but none of the alarms had been tripped. Everyone was still safe.

She crawled across her oversized bed to check messages. No word from Raena, not even an acknowledgement from the Veracity. The message had been opened, but no one had bothered to respond.

That meant trouble.

The sweat that slicked Ariel’s body turned icy. Raena would understand what Ariel was going through here. Even if she decided that Ariel was a big girl who could take care of herself, Raena would want to protect Eilif. If Raena hadn’t answered, it was because she couldn’t.

Ariel threw off her covers and went to shower.

Raena had to be okay. Ariel wouldn’t trust anyone else to spy on the Thallian world and survive.

*   *   *

The Planetary Security detail hustled Raena down a hallway and straight into the back of a patrol wagon. The truck had lights inset into its ceiling behind a heavy-duty screen. Built-in benches lined its walls. Raena didn’t see any sort of crash webbing, so this was a simple planetary vehicle. Hopefully, she’d get her chance to run on the other end, before they rushed her onto a ship.

The security corps didn’t remove the restraints that pinned her wrists, which made it uncomfortable to sit on the bench against the truck’s cab. Raena braced her bare feet against the agents’ boots to keep from being bounced around.

The agents regarded her through their smoked faceplates, but didn’t move their feet out of her reach. They also didn’t holster their sidearms. Someone must have studied the recording of her defense of Mykah on the beach. They weren’t taking any chances that she’d attempt to escape.

She remained confident in the identity that Coni built for her, but she wished she knew where they were going. She couldn’t think of anything illegal she’d done recently that deserved this level of security. Since her escape from the tomb, Raena had been to Brunzell with Sloane, where she never stepped outside after the night he’d taken her to dinner. From there, they’d gone to Kai to meet Ariel. She’d joined Mykah and Coni disrupting the jetpack race, but since those two hadn’t been arrested alongside her, she doubted that was what this was about. She’d never been linked to the bombing of Mellix’s apartment on Capitol City. He’d gotten her cleared of the fire on Verwoest. What could this possibly be about?

Something exploded softly in front of the truck. The whole vehicle shuddered as its engine made a weird stutter. The patrol wagon drifted to the left and continued around at a speed that felt ill advised.

The commander shouted, “Jhen, what are you doing up there?” He got no response.

As the truck toppled over, Raena scrambled to brace her bare feet against something more solid than the Security agents. A pistol barely missed striking her in the head. It lay there, just centimeters from her face, taunting her.

The soldiers hadn’t been fastened down either. The writhing mass of them ended up in a pile against the lowest wall of the truck.

The vehicle slid, grinding and bouncing, over the roadway. It finally crashed to a halt. The lights went out.

Raena sat up. The restraints on her arms were loose enough that she could easily slip her legs through and get her arms around in front of her. There was plenty of groaning and cursing in the darkened truck as the agents picked themselves up. Even disoriented and injured, they remained between Raena and the still-locked door. She decided to bide her time. She curled up as small as she could, trying to look harmless.

One of the Security agents folded open the lower door. As the agents duckwalked out of the truck, someone outside shot them down in the street.

Raena hoped that the Veracity’s crew hadn’t mounted a rescue attempt. If they were identified fighting Planetary Security, that would put an end to their ability to travel freely around the galaxy right quick.

Whoever was outside, though, was too efficient for her crew. The street filled with fallen Security agents, but Raena hadn’t even glimpsed the attackers yet. She also didn’t see any bolts. Whatever the attackers were using, they weren’t energy weapons. Who would risk killing Security forces?

The Security agent left to guard her yelled into his comm, “No, I need backup now! The prisoner is still restrained. Don’t worry about her. Everyone else is down. I need help!”

She could help. Raena waited until he’d turned the comm off and took his stance with his rifle before she went into action. She swept his legs out from under him and somersaulted backward, getting her arms in front of her body finally. As he flopped on his back, struggling to aim the rifle at her—she was too close, he would have done better to drop it—Raena sprang to her feet. She kicked him hard in the chest and snatched up his rifle.

While he was trying to gasp in a breath, Raena braced her back against the truck’s wall, balanced the rifle on her hip. Whenever the attackers came through the door, she was ready.

They didn’t make her wait long.

As they flung the topmost door back upward, the streetlights finally revealed them. They wore the same featureless gray uniforms as the soldiers who had attacked Mellix’s apartment on Capital City.

Raena was small and it was dark inside the truck, but she had no sort of cover. Her only hope was to shoot enough of the gray attackers to block the doorway with their bodies.

She didn’t bother shooting to stun. Whoever these guys were, they hadn’t come to her rescue.

“Drop!” someone ordered. Raena flung herself down on her face. Only then did she realize that the voice had spoken Imperial Standard.

The grays split in half. Some pivoted to deal with the threat outside. The others started toward Raena.

She recognized an EMP grenade as it spun into the truck. Someone outside was trying to disable the grays’ combat helmets.

The grenade had been pitched to strike the upper wall. Everyone standing caught the blast wave in the head. They collapsed like unstrung marionettes.

That was unexpected. The EMP should have just messed up their displays. The gray soldiers didn’t even seem to be breathing.

“Come on out, Raena,” the voice outside called.

“I’m afraid to,” she answered. She looked down at her stolen rifle, but the EMP had disabled it, too. She dropped it and crept forward to grab one of the gray soldiers’ sidearms. It was a surprising weapon, sinuous and bulbous. She’d never seen anything like it, couldn’t imagine what it was supposed to do. It didn’t even seem to have a trigger.

“You want us to come in and get you?” His voice held a hint of threat.

“No, I’m coming,” Raena promised. “Tell me you want me alive.”

The person outside laughed. “If we wanted you dead, that truck would be full of corpses right now. The bounty’s only good if you’re alive.”

Ah. Bounty hunters. That was familiar territory. Raena put the unusual weapon gently back on the bottom wall of the truck. She stepped over the fallen bodies, alert for one of them to grab her. No one moved.

The bounty hunters stood outside in the street, no doubt in full view of any security cameras. One was a grizzled human man with long, wild hair. The second male was something large and humanoid with mechanical arms. The last was a twitchy white-furred creature with a black face. All of them trained weapons on her.

“You all right?” the man asked.

“Not shot,” Raena said.

“That’s good. Let’s get out of here before these gray ghosts get re-inforced. Those boys are nothing but trouble.”

Raena kept coming toward the bounty hunters, trying to work out the angles. The three of them were staggered, far enough apart that there was no taking out two of them before the third brought her down. If she’d had time to get out of the manacles or if she’d had a working rifle or if she had boots or if the nighttime air wasn’t like breathing through a wet blanket . . .

The man slung his rifle and came to loop a cable through her restraints. “We’ll get those off you once we’re underway. All right?”

Raena nodded. The other two took positions to flank her.

“Just a hop, a skip, and a jump,” he promised.

Since he seemed in a chatty mood, Raena asked, “Who put the bounty on me?”

“Kai’s Business Council. I love these mercantile gigs.”

Raena couldn’t puzzle that out. What could Kai be charging her with? Her end of the fight against the Thallians had clearly been self-defense. Kai couldn’t be charging her with that, could they?

The bounty hunters’ car waited in the next street over. Raena climbed in docilely, to be sandwiched knee to knee with the man and his giant friend. The monkey creature drove. The car took them through town and right up onto their ship. She never had another chance to run.

*   *   *

Kavanaugh found Eilif sitting by herself in the farthest corner of the garden. She jumped guiltily when he stopped in front of her.

“How are you?” he asked gently.

She bit her lip as she glanced up at him, then immediately dropped her gaze. “It’s all too much,” she whispered. “I know they want to help, but there are so many of them. And they’re loud. And . . .” She started to cry.

“And it’s scary to defend yourself,” Kavanaugh guessed. “He hurt you every time you protested.”

She shivered like a frightened mouse.

Kavanaugh went down on one knee to make himself smaller. “I’ve seen Raena’s scars,” he said. “I don’t know if you knew that we were friends when she was running from him. I saw what he’d done to her when she was young.”

“He trained her to fight,” Eilif said, “so he could beat her when she fought him. He trained our sons to fight, then he broke their bodies. He . . .” She faltered, unable to name the things that Thallian did to her.

“It’s all right,” Kavanaugh promised. “Ariel didn’t ask if you wanted to learn to fight, but you don’t need to. There are other ways to escape.” He didn’t list them, because surely she understood. “Just know,” he said, “that all of the Shaads, Ariel included, will put themselves between danger and you.”

“How is she so brave?” Eilif asked hopelessly.

Kavanaugh had his own theories on that, but he said, “Some people fight for the love of it. Some because they have to. Ariel has come a long way, but she’s still an arms dealer at heart. She still wants to die with a gun in her hand. Raena is a warrior. She wants to die on her feet, fighting a worthy enemy.” He put his hand on the small, broken woman’s. “How do you want to die, Eilif?”

She stared at Kavanaugh, but her tears had stopped. He could practically see the thoughts spinning through her head.

“I don’t want to be afraid,” she said at last.

“What would give you courage?”

“Knowing that he can’t hurt me any more.”

“He’s dead,” Kavanaugh reminded. “You watched him burn.”

“Yes.”

That wasn’t enough, he saw. He tried another argument. “All the clones were different, weren’t they? Some were cruel and some were cunning and some were . . .”

“Clever,” she said. “Gentle. Wise.”

“Even though they were genetically similar, none of them grew up to be exactly like your husband. Even if the robot is cloning more Thallians somehow, none of them will be him.”

She nodded, thinking hard. “Even with Jonan to train them, none of the boys was as vicious as he was.”

“How long did it take, from beginning the cloning process until they were born? How long until they were grown? Until they would be dangerous?”

“It would take years,” she said.

He could see that he had given her some comfort finally.

She surprised him by asking, “How do you want to die, Mr. Kavanaugh?”

“In my bed, in my sleep, after a long and satisfying life.”

She smiled at him. For a moment, he saw Raena echoed in her face. His blood chilled. Then her green eyes caught the sunlight behind him and the illusion dissolved.

Kavanaugh smiled back at her. He wasn’t sure how old Eilif was, except that she had been born after the War ended. She could not be more than twenty, but worry lined her face and her hair had gone entirely white. Ariel believed that Eilif had been artificially matured, so she could serve as Thallian’s wife and the mother of his children. Worst of all, Eilif didn’t even know she was a clone. But even if her growth had been accelerated, they were not in imminent danger of a Thallian attack. It would still take time to get new Thallians up to speed.

*   *   *

The cabin the bounty hunters put Raena in was only slightly more spartan than her own cabin on the Veracity. Smaller, and likely the comm was disabled, but she wouldn’t be uncomfortable there.

The guy with the mechanical arms came in, followed by the grizzled human. He asked, “You want the restraints off?”

“Yes, please.”

“Here’s how we’re gonna do it: Chale is gonna hold you still for me while I do the cutting. You’re gonna relax and pretend you’re at the spa. Anything happens to me or Chale or you make a grab for the cutting torch, Skip is going to gas the lot of us and you’ll wake up in the crash web. Got it?”

“I don’t want trouble,” Raena said. “You don’t have wandering hands, do you?”

“Chale is the jealous type,” he promised. “So don’t get all wily on me.”

“Stellar.”

They settled on the bunk. Chale wrapped one mechanical arm across Raena’s shoulders and pulled her back against his chest. She didn’t give him any reason to tighten his hold.

The man sparked the torch and began to cut the left restraint.

“Why’d you speak Imperial Standard to me?” she asked.

“Because I knew your mother.” He didn’t look up from his cutting.

“Did you serve together?”

He laughed. “No, I was a hunter during the War. Ran with a crew that chased her. Money was too good to resist. I’m the only one who survived it.”

Raena didn’t remember him at all. Into the silence, she had to say something. “What was she like?”

“Your mother was crazy,” he said decisively. “We thought she had a death wish, that she would be easy pickings. It wasn’t a death wish so much as she didn’t care what happened to her, as long as she didn’t go back to him.”

“Thallian?”

“Yeah. Between the two of them, my crew never stood a chance.”

“I’m sorry,” Raena said. “I’ve heard those were bad times.”

He glanced up at her, then went back to work. “It’s amazing how much you look like her.”

“I’ve been told that.” Raena wondered if he would know who Ariel was, if he’d care that she might be able to match any bounty offered by Kai. She didn’t suppose you lasted twenty-five years as a bounty hunter if you sold your captives to the highest bidder.

“How long am I going to be your guest?” she asked.

“That depends. You hear about the problems with the tesseract drives?”

“Yeah.”

“We haven’t been able to afford to replace ours yet. Still paying off its installation, in fact. So as long as we don’t have any statistical hiccups, this’ll be a fast trip.”

Otherwise, Raena understood, they were going to vanish into tesseract space and never been seen again. She shivered.

Chale chuckled behind her. “C’mon, Bihn. No need to frighten her. She’s being a model prisoner, so far.”

Raena changed the subject. “Thank you for getting me away from those guys in gray.”

“You run into them before?”

“Yeah. They seem like soldiers, not hunters. Pretty risky, taking down the Lautan Planetary Security like that.”

“Yeah. PS was supposed to deliver you to us at the spaceport, but once we saw the ghosts creeping around, we thought we’d better come make sure we got you onboard safely.”

“Why do you call them ghosts?”

“No insignia,” he said. “Never see them without their helmets. Never see them, actually, unless they’re on a mission. Then it’s best to make sure they don’t see you.”

“Have you been seeing them a lot?”

“More and more. Where’d you see them?”

“Capital City.”

“I didn’t hear about that one. The news is keeping their existence really quiet.”

“Are they government?”

“Don’t think so. Private militia, which limits who they could belong to. Who’d you piss off?”

“Other than businesses on Kai? I’ve got no idea.”

He finally got the second restraint cuff off her arm and switched the cutting torch off. “Thank you for being sensible about all of this.”

Sensible, Raena wondered, or overly cautious? In the past, she would’ve made her move hours ago. Now she kept finding reasons not to risk her life. Was that a change for the better, if it garnered her thanks from bounty hunters?

*   *   *

Haoun got down to the jailhouse early in the morning, to try to beat the heat of the day. Unfortunately, everyone else had the same brilliant idea. The thick air had already heated up when the line advanced enough that he could get into the building.

After he cleared the security checkpoint, he lined up again with the other visitors. An officious little Pityuka came by with a handheld, asking each visitor the name of the prisoner they wanted to see.

“Raena Zacari is no longer in custody,” she told Haoun.

“When was she released?”

“She was remanded to transporters for extradition to Kai during the night.”

“What?” He hadn’t meant the question to come out so loud. The poor little Pityuka quivered, ruffling her yellow feathers.

“I’m sorry,” Haoun said, although he wasn’t, really. “She just got arrested yesterday.”

“Yes, well, Kai seems eager to have her back.” The Pityuka consulted her handheld again. “Looks like her effects were unclaimed. You can retrieve those from Property.”

So he wandered off in search of that office. He would have liked to comm Mykah and arrange transportation to Kai, but the jailhouse was dampened so that his comm wouldn’t connect.

It took Haoun a while to locate the Property office. Of course, once he found it, he didn’t have any ID to connect himself to Raena. Haoun sighed. Mykah would have to come back with the crew manifest.

*   *   *

Mykah checked his handheld against the number on the docking slip. The Veracity really was gone.

Anger overrode his paranoia. He marched down to the dockmaster’s office.

“Where’s my ship?” he demanded.

“According to Planetary Security, it wasn’t yours,” the clerk said, after consulting the computer. “They said it was the Raptor, stolen on Kai six months ago. It’s in the process of being towed back to Kai, where it will be auctioned off to pay back fees. If you hurry, you can probably get there in time to buy it back.”

Mykah noticed the dock’s security team moving into place behind him. Raena was nowhere around to get him out of this fight. Besides, even she wouldn’t take on Planetary Security face to face. He sucked in a shaky breath. “Did you even look at the Veracity before you let them take it? Did anyone compare the ID numbers?”

The clerk did that for herself. “Hm.”

“Yeah,” Mykah said. “Hm. Somebody was in a hurry to steal my ship and you just let it go.”

“I wasn’t on duty when it was—”

Mykah cut her off. He kept his voice low, calmer than he felt. “I want the name of the clerk on duty at the time the ship was released. I want a copy of the records, complete with signatures. I want to know who took the bribe that bought my ship. Then I’m going to calculate lost revenue as well as travel expenses. I will bill Lautan for not preventing the theft of my ship from their spaceport.”

And he was tempted to call Mellix. This incident was so much smaller in scale than the journalist usually looked into, but maybe it indicated a larger issue, if Kai—or pleasure planets as a rule—were impounding and selling independent spaceships at will on any sort of trumped-up charges. Because of the tesseract flaw, big cruise liners were already not traveling to the pleasure planets. If the pleasure planets tried to make up the revenue on the back of independent travelers, they would put themselves straight out of business.

Maybe he didn’t even need Mellix’s name behind this exposé. He just needed to find out if the Veracity was the only ship to be stolen like this. Was it targeted—or was this a trend?

*   *   *

The bounty hunters were as good as their word. They left her alone.

Raena spent her time searching every crevice of the room. She wasn’t sure why they didn’t come in to stop her. Perhaps the room didn’t have a working surveillance system. She considered doing something lewd to see if they were paying attention, but decided it wasn’t worth the fallout.

Maybe they were all asleep. Or maybe Chale and the human had something better to do than watch a girl. It didn’t matter to Raena. After she discovered a jagged wedge of metal jammed in the top of the doorframe, she was ready to take the room apart.

Her stomach grumbled. She’d lost track of time, but she couldn’t remember eating anything since breakfast with Coni on Lautan. She missed Mykah’s cooking. That boy could turn the blandest vegetable protein into a feast.

The lights in her cabin went out. Raena wasn’t sure if she’d tripped something or if her captors simply decided it was time for her to sleep. The sounds of the engine did not change, so she got to work reconfiguring the ventilation system. She was almost more comfortable in the dark than in the daylight—and she didn’t want them to be able to gas her when they made planetfall on Kai.

*   *   *

Haoun discovered there wasn’t any human consul on Lautan. He went to the Shtrell Embassy instead. In general, the Shtrell were fussy enough that bureaucracy suited them. They were also nosy enough that it should be easy to enlist their aid, if he piqued their curiosity.

As he’d hoped, the ambassador had time to see him, now that travel had fallen off on the planet. Haoun brought a bribe. He set a bag of mixed dry roasted insects on the desk as he sat in front of it. The ambassador hooted, pleased. “How can I help you?” she asked.

“My girlfriend got arrested yesterday,” Haoun said. “Before she’d even been charged with anything, she was transported to Kai in the night. I’d like to get a message to her, make sure she’s all right, but the jail wasn’t any help. And since there’s no human embassy here—”

The Shtrell clicked her beak. “Your girlfriend is human.”

Even though their translators both spoke Galactic Standard, Haoun’s still decoded the words for him. It didn’t give any context for the emotion behind the Shtrell’s words, but Haoun didn’t entirely like the bureaucrat’s tone.

“Yes,” Haoun said. “Could you help me find her? You know how humans are mistreated in the galaxy. I’m worried about her.”

The Shtrell ruffled her feathers, but merely asked, “What is her name?”

After Haoun told her, the ambassador poked around on the computer. She fluffed and resettled her feathers again.

“She was taken from a holding cell around midnight,” the Shtrell said. “By Planetary Security.”

“That seems a strange time to transfer someone who hadn’t even had a hearing yet,” Haoun said.

“It gets stranger. On the way to the spaceport, the truck crashed. Apparently, the entire contingent of Planetary Security agents were injured in the wreck. Your friend was removed from the wreckage by a trio of bounty hunters.”

“What?” Haoun leaned forward. “How bad was the crash? Was Raena hurt?”

“There’s a video.” The Shtrell turned the monitor so that Haoun could see. The truck lay on its side, but didn’t look particularly damaged. Raena walked out of it with her hands fettered in front of her. One of the bounty hunters—a human—clipped a lead to her restraints and led her away from the camera.

Raena appeared unharmed. She walked upright, straight and proud as ever, despite being barefoot. Haoun could see no obvious bruises or blood on her—even though fallen Planetary Security agents lay all over the street. It didn’t look like a vehicular accident so much as the site of an attack. While Haoun had never seen an attack in real life, he had played enough games to recognize one.

“Who are those guys?” he wondered aloud. “How did three of them take out a truck full of Planetary Security?”

“They haven’t been identified officially,” the ambassador said.

“Is there any indication where they might take her?”

The Shtrell pecked at the keys, then sat back and cocked an eye at her screen. “There’s a bounty put on her by the Business Council of Kai.”

“Nothing else?”

The Shtrell stared at Haoun, unhappy that Haoun already knew about Kai’s bounty. “I don’t see anything else.”

By tesseract drive, Kai was only a day’s flight away. Since the bounty hunters were likely to have a slower ship, no telling how long the trip would take. The only way Haoun would know if she got to Kai would be if the bounty was claimed. Otherwise, Raena was lost in the galaxy.

It wasn’t the Shtrell’s fault. Haoun struggled to remember that. He flexed his hands, wanting desperately to shred something. “Thanks for your help,” he ground out as he got up to leave.

*   *   *

Haoun met his crewmates on the beach for lunch. Coni had never seen him angry before, but the way the muscles bunched alongside his jaw was ominous. She knew that whatever he was about to say would be bad news.

“Raena was extradited to Kai last night,” he announced. “As local Planetary Security escorted her to the spaceport, their transport truck was attacked. In the end, a crew of bounty hunters took her off Lautan.”

“Is she all right?” Vezali asked.

“Lautan does not seem to care. Apparently, their responsibility for visitors to their planet ends when anyone else accuses those visitors of a crime. I mean, she’s only human. Who’s going to protest if she’s hurt?”

Coni was surprised to see just how much Haoun cared for Raena.

Haoun continued, “If they could blame her kidnapping on her—or on us—they would. They’re just relieved that she’s gone.”

“Strangely enough,” Mykah said, “they feel the same about the Veracity. It was also kidnapped in the night.”

Coni watched the others react to the news that their home had been stolen away. She knew the fury and bewilderment they felt.

“Is this happening because we stole the Veracity from the Thallians?” Vezali asked.

“The Raptor was never reported stolen,” Coni answered. “Anyone who might claim it is dead. It’s registered in Mykah’s name. The loan was refinanced and paid off. We own the ship free and clear. Even the ID numbers don’t correspond to the Raptor’s. The only connection between the ships is that they are both Imperial diplomatic transports and both were on Kai.”

“Can you make them believe that?” Haoun asked.

“There’s no evidence to contradict it,” Coni said. “Kai’s dockmaster obviously confused the two ships. Everything else follows that mistake.”

“Stellar,” Vezali cheered.

“What do we do about the charge for kidnapping the Thallian boy?” Haoun asked.

“Again, no one reported Jain missing,” Coni said. “All Kai has is the video of Raena following him onto the Veracity. Once she gets to trial, it should be easy to refute.”

“What can we do now?” Vezali asked.

“Some of us are going to have to go to Kai to get the Veracity back,” Mykah said. “It would be cheapest to find a working passage, if there’s a delivery ship going from here to Kai. But that might take a while to arrange.”

“Or we could all get on the first transport out,” Haoun insisted.

“It’s too costly,” Coni protested. “We’ll need to save enough money that we can afford a place to stay when we get there.”

“And pay the docking fees to get the ship back,” Mykah said.

“And whatever Raena’s fine is going to be,” Coni added.

“She has some money of her own,” Haoun pointed out. “Didn’t her friend Ariel set her up with a trust fund?”

“It won’t do us any good,” Coni said. “We can’t access it for her.”

“Have you told Ariel that Raena was arrested yet?” Vezali asked. “Maybe she can arrange to pay Raena’s fine from Callixtos.”

“If Raena’s been taken to Kai,” Haoun pointed out. “Since the bounty hunters captured her, they could be taking her anywhere.”

“All the more reason to get the Veracity back first,” Mykah argued. “Once we have the ship, we can go after her.”

“Call Ariel,” Coni soothed. “She deserves to know what’s going on.”

*   *   *

Ariel expected a call back from Raena, but she wasn’t expecting to hear from the former waiter from Kai. “Captain Chen,” she acknowledged. He looked like he was calling her from a bar.

“Hi, Ms. Shaad. We got the message you forwarded to us, but there’s a problem.”

Before he could tell her what the delay might be, Ariel asked, “Is Raena all right?”

“She was arrested on Lautan yesterday.”

“On what charges?”

“Kidnapping the Thallian boy and stealing an Imperial transport on Kai.”

The Veracity, Ariel understood. Ariel had told her sister that prank would bite her in the ass. Anger prickled over Ariel’s skin. She couldn’t believe Raena had been stupid enough not to obscure the ship’s origins.

Mykah interrupted her thoughts. “The officials on Lautan mistook the Veracity for the Raptor and impounded it. An honest mistake,” he said, rolling his eyes, “since they’re the same class of ship, but if they’d just compared the ID numbers . . .”

Ariel drew a deep breath, relieved the kids had that taken care of. “Sounds as if you ought to sue for wrongful seizure.”

“We’re trying to figure out how to get to Kai to file now.”

“What do you mean, trying?” Ariel stared at him, but Mykah wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Is it a matter of money?”

“Well, there are four of us and we can’t all afford to go anywhere until we get our ship back . . .”

Ariel cut him off. “Captain Chen, you know I consider Raena family. If you need to get to Kai to bail her out and get her chosen home out of hock, then arrange it and let me know how much it’s going to cost. Don’t waste time being too proud to take a handout. I would do anything to help Raena.”

“Thank you,” he said, awed. “We’re pretty confident we can get the ship back. But there’s still the kidnapping charge . . .”

Ariel suspected that particular Thallian clone was dead. She would have to ask Eilif. In the meantime, she said, “I’ll have the Foundation investigate. Since Raena’s one of my wards—and it was my idea to take her to Kai in the first place—I am responsible for her. Can you send me a copy of the charges?”

The boy looked to someone offscreen, then nodded. “They’re on the way to you.”

“We’ll get this handled,” Ariel promised. “I have an advocate on retainer to protect my family in court. But the shadows on Drusingyi . . . Don’t go without Raena. I met him—” she paused, unwilling to say Thallian’s name. “I was his prisoner during the War. If we can’t get Raena to explore this, I will turn it over to the galaxy to handle. I want them all erased.”

Mykah nodded. A string of numbers came across her screen. “This is my comm code. Let us know if there’s anything we can do to help with Raena’s defense.”

“Thanks.” But as Ariel signed out, she was tempted to go to Kai herself and straighten everything our firsthand. The sooner this was cleared up for Raena, the sooner Ariel would know what was going on in the Thallians’ undersea city.