Chapter 17

Ryon

One minute, I was trying to get onto the roof of the building beside the one Natasha had gone into, the next, I was on the ship. She was beside me, and lying on the floor. Was she dead? As soon as I found my balance, I rushed over to her. Crouched at her side.

“He said my cover was blown,” she gasped. “Someone knew.”

Her eyes fluttered closed. Fuck.

“Help! We need help!” I shouted.

Other people rushed into the room. Doctor Kavat scanned her with one of his medical devices.

“She’s been shot in the leg at point blank range with a disruptor blaster, and has fainted from shock. If we act quickly, I can save the leg.”

People moved her. I followed them. I couldn’t think of what to say, so I just observed as the doctor worked to save Natasha’s leg.

“The damage internally is too great, I’m going to have to do this surgically. Nurse, anesthetize the patient.”

A nurse took some silver circular discs about an inch in diameter and put them on Natasha’s chest.

“Clear the room of all non-medical personnel. I need a sterile operating environment.”

People left. Weresh put a hand on my shoulder.

“C’mon, Ry. We need to leave her in the Doctor’s capable hands.”

Reluctantly, feeling like this might be my last chance to see her, I turned and left.

“Oh, shit,” Weresh groaned.

Urgoth strode down the corridor. He was the last person I wanted to see right now. And he was making a beeline for me.

“My office. I want a full report. Now.”

“You can wait.” I wasn’t interested in talking to him when I could be here for Natasha, instead.

“You can’t help her, right now,” Weresh told me.

I sighed. “Fine.” I accompanied Urgoth back to his office.

I wasn’t sure what I expected to see, but the evidence of his minor breakdown yesterday had been totally erased, now. It wasn’t uncommon for alphas to have a temper, but Urgoth’s explosion had been unusually intense, even for an alpha.

“You tidied up,” I remarked.

“Take a seat.”

Was that embarrassment? He was definitely refusing to talk about yesterday. I sat down opposite him.

“What happened down there?” he demanded.

“She was given an address to go to in a sector I was unfamiliar with. She went inside the building and I didn’t have time to get a vantage point or find where in the building she had gone. The next thing I knew, we were on the ship and she was hurt.”

“Any idea who she was meeting?”

I shook my head. “She hadn’t been given a contact name. Only an address. She sent me all the info she had before she went there. Sir, she said her cover got blown. Someone in Beta Liberation knew she was a spy.”

“And how might that have happened?”

I racked my brain trying to think of all the people she’d encountered on this mission. Who could have betrayed her?

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

Urgoth fixed me with a hard stare. “That’s because you betrayed her. You sold her out. Someone offered you something you couldn’t refuse. What was it? Money? No, that’s not your style, is it? The chance to be free of Imperial Command. And you took it.”

“What? Where the fuck is this shit coming from?”

“A beta double agent sent me an interesting recording of a conversation between you and Regin from a couple of days ago. You’ve been suspected of being a traitor for a while.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “I’m not a traitor.”

“You’re a gun for hire. You kill people with no compunction. Of course you have no loyalties. Right now, security are on their way here to imprison you. You’re nothing but a dirty criminal.”

Alphas entered the room. There were at least half a dozen of them, all built like enforcers. I fought them off but they kept coming. The first couple got thrown across the room easily, but as the fight went on, I started to get tired. Six-on-one wasn’t fair odds. Not when we were all alphas.

“This is a set up! Someone’s stitching me up!” It was all I managed to say before one of them landed a haymaker and I went down like a demolished skyscraper, hitting the deck with an astonishing thud that reverberated through the air. I think I dented the floor. At least, that’s what it felt like to my shoulder.

I was overpowered. Defeated. Game over.

Fuck.

They dragged me out of the room. I struggled all the way to the brig but there were just too many of them.

***

Natasha

I was in the medical bay on the ship. Doctor Kavat was working at his desk. A huge alpha nurse I’d never seen before was at another desk.

“Where’s Ryon?” I asked, looking around the otherwise empty room.

Kavat got up from his desk and came over. His expression was somber.

“Has something happened to him?” I was starting to get worried. They pulled him out... didn’t they? I could’ve sworn I saw him on the ship.

“I’m sorry, Natasha. Ryon was the one who betrayed you.”

I shook my head. “No. I don’t believe you. Everyone on this ship just wants to keep us apart. Where is he?”

“In the brig. Facing sentencing for his crime.”

The world seemed to fall away around me. I didn’t know what to do. I’d never really understood the Scottish legal system and I’d lived all my life there. What chance did I have of helping Ryon here, where I didn’t even know what the laws were, never mind how they treated suspects or sentenced criminals. All I knew was there was a prison planet out there, and Ryon had been sent there before.

“I don’t think he did it.”

Kavat gave me a pitying look, like I’d just told him Santa was real or Elvis lived. “He’s an undercover agent and a convict. He’s trained to lie to people far more suspicious than you. Urgoth has proof of his betrayal.”

I folded my arms. “Evidence isn’t proof. I know that much.”

“Yes. Well, in this case, Urgoth says the evidence is incontrovertible.”

So Kavat hadn’t even seen it for himself? He was just accepting Urgoth’s word for it? Urgoth had lied about so much already to further his own agenda. “I want to see it.”

Kavat sighed. “I appreciate this must be difficult for you to take in, given the close nature of your relationship with Ryon, but you are only going to upset yourself if you see proof of this.”

“Evidence,” I corrected him. “And fuck off with your patronizing mansplaining attitude.”

Kavat held his hands up. “I really don’t think you should get involved in this.”

“So you know it’s bullshit and you’re going along with it anyway. Why? Where are your bollocks? I thought alphas were supposed to be strong and brave.”

“Alphas are. Don’t you think it’s brave and strong to take action when we find a traitor? Don’t you think it takes strength and courage to accept that criminals—whoever they are and however much we care for them—must face justice?”

“Yes, but surely that starts with finding the right person who actually committed the crime, you dolly?”

Kavat shook his head. “I’m not having anything to do with this.”

“Fine. Go bugger yourself with a broken bottle, because I won’t rest until I know what really happened down there.”

“Actually, given that you’ve just had major thigh surgery, the only thing you will be doing for the foreseeable is resting. Nurse, don’t let this patient leave her bed.”

With that, Kavat left the medical bay.

The nurse stood up and came to my bedside. She was enormous. I’d never seen such a big woman, not even wrestlers or female bodybuilders. Her uniform barely contained her biceps. Her ID badge said she was called Falal.

“Why do some people have two names and others only have one?” I wondered.

“Depends which region they’re from. Or, more specifically, where their parents were from.” She gave me a wink. Was she trying to tell me something? “You must be very bored, since you’re not allowed to leave your bed. Let me go find something to keep you occupied.”

“Don’t trouble yourself. I can do without making papier mâché out of puke bowls, thanks.”

She left the medical bay. Was she giving me a chance to escape? I tried to get up but my head felt weird and my vision was obscured by black dots that got bigger, while a roaring sound deafened my ears.

The nurse returned holding a tablet. When she saw me perched on the edge of the bed she tutted and shook her head.

“Back in bed, young lady. Doctor’s orders. And here’s a film to watch. I think you’ll find it fascinating.”

I sighed. “I don’t want to watch a film. I want to find out how Urgoth has stitched up Ryon.”

“Press play. No arguments. And use the headphones. I don’t want to get a theme tune stuck in my head for the rest of the day.”

She pressed a pair of small spherical things into my hands. Wireless earphones? Having nothing else to do, I put them in my ears and picked up the tablet. Looked at the film she’d gotten ready to play. The preview was very grainy and had obviously been shot in bad lighting.

Not feeling hopeful this was going to be even slightly interesting, I hit play.

All I could see was the shadowy form of an alpha from behind. He held a tablet, and the man on the screen was visible to the camera. It was Oriel.

“Grand Vizier Oriel? We have a problem. The new beta who is working her way into Beta Liberation is a spy. Sent by U-branch.”

I recognized the voice but I couldn’t quite place it.

“I see. Let her come anyway. I have a job for her with a very high accident rate. And don’t use my name in communications.”

“Sorry, sir.”

The tablet’s screen went dark and the lighting levels in the image re-adjusted, brightening everything else in the picture although the colors still weren’t great.

The hand holding the tablet had a bandage on it. And this alpha had light-colored hair, not dark like Ryon’s. He walked out of the camera’s range and the video clip ended.

I played it again a couple more times. I was convinced this wasn’t Ryon. It was Urgoth.

I looked over to the nurse and saw she was busy working on something.

“How do I use this to prove Ryon’s innocence?” I asked her.

She looked over her shoulder and frowned in confusion. “I don’t understand, dear. It should have been People Falling off Things IV. What would that have to do with Ryon?”

Okay. I could take a hint. This whole thing was so weird. Maybe she really hadn’t known what I’d just seen. But I doubted that. My best guess was some faceless bunch of people had decided Ryon was getting away with this. That happened a lot with drug dealers. It was rare for the top geezer to show his hand. It seemed the same here.

“Are there cameras everywhere across the ship?”

“Yes.” Including in here. And she didn’t want someone to know what she’d found.

“I see.” I fell into silence again as I tried to work out what to do next. I had the evidence, here, that Ryon was innocent. Now I needed to use it to stop them prosecuting him. From my medical bed. Hmm...

“Is this tablet networked?” I asked her.

“Of course.”

I wondered if there was a space equivalent of YouTube or TikTok.

“Where can I find a place to watch lots of videos of people falling off things? Like, a place where they’ve posted them online, maybe?”

Falal frowned and looked thoughtful. “My daughter uses this app. Let me add it to your tablet.”

She took my tablet and did something to it. When she handed it back, an app was open which had previews of home-made videos. Some of them had billions of views.

“Thanks.” I looked around the app to learn how to get this video on there. Not being a fast learner, this took a while. Eventually, I had a screen open ready to upload the video. I gave it a catchy title. Grand Vizier Oriel falls flat on his face while talking to Urgoth. Obviously, he didn’t, but I guessed he was famous enough that everyone would click on that. In the description, I explained that it was Urgoth and Oriel in the video.

Once the video was uploaded, I hit publish and waited for the shit to hit the fan.

It took thirty minutes before the video had twelve million hits. Forty-five before Urgoth stormed into the medical bay. At which point the video was approaching fifty million views.

“You! What did you do?”

I laughed, even though I knew I was probably about to get killed. It didn’t matter. Whatever happened in court, the whole world would know Ryon didn’t do it. And that Oriel was in charge of Beta Liberation. I’d like to see them wriggle out of that one.

For the first time in my life, I decided not to speak. It was more amusing watching Urgoth getting more and more purple.

“You ruined everything!” he growled, lunging at me.

Falal grabbed Urgoth’s shoulder, spun him to face her, and punched him hard in the face. It descended into a violent fistfight, and medical beds got overturned as they beat the shit out of each other.

When my bed got knocked over, I landed on the hard floor and stayed behind the fallen bed. Pain surged through my hip where I’d crashed into metal. I heard the doors to the medical bay opening again.

“What is going on here?” Kavat’s voice shouted. “Security to medical bay. Urgently.”

A minute later, footsteps ran into the room and then all the smashing and crashing stopped.

I popped my head over the parapet. The medical bay was completely trashed.

“He attacked my patient, sir,” Falal explained, catching her breath. She had blood running down her face and her nose looked broken.

“Security Chief Eran, that omega has betrayed U-branch! Lock her up with Ryon!” Urgoth demanded.

Chief Eran looked at me, smirked and shook her head. “I saw the video, Urgoth. Give it up. You’re done. Take him to the brig, boys. And release Ryon.”

I smirked at him. “Ye’re nicked, pal!”

Urgoth’s expression of shock was hilarious.

“What about nurse Falal?” Kavat demanded. “She is equally to blame for this altercation.”

Eran shook her head and fixed Kavat with a hard look. She was scary. I wouldn’t want to cross her.

“I see no evidence to suggest that she was acting out of malice. She was protecting her patient. Commendable. Unless you’re siding with Urgoth, Kavat? Pick quickly.”

Kavat held his hands up and shook his head. “No. No. I trust the legal system.”

“Good. And nice work, young lady,” Eran said to me. “We’ve been gathering evidence to find the mole in U-branch for months. Although, it would have been better if it had come to me instead of being made public. Political toes have been trodden on. Waves made.”

“I didn’t even know you existed,” I told her. “And anyway, I was confined to bed rest. I just couldn’t lie here and let Ryon go back to the prison planet for something he never did.”

“You would make a fantastic full-time agent, if you wanted a career,” she told me.

I smiled. “Thanks. I’ll think about it.”

I probably wouldn’t. It was a bit too close to being law enforcement and I didn’t think I could betray everyone I’d ever known by becoming a bizzy.