Chapter 15
They had been taken back to their cell, and Velda could see Ethan had withdrawn into his own thoughts.
Not surprising—the revelations had come thick and fast in the med bay. Another Verdant String planet? A whole new population like them? A planet with a social structure that included enhanced super soldiers whose abilities were the result of nanotech?
Nanotech that she suspected had just been dropped into her and Ethan three times.
There was a lot on her mind, too.
She showered again—it was something to do and she liked being clean—but when she came out, Ethan was lying over on his own bunk for the first time.
She lay down on hers, rolling onto her side to face him, and he turned to her, flicked a look at the lens in the corner, but said nothing until the lights dimmed and then shut off.
Their captors had done that last night, too, turning off the lights after she and Ethan had already closed their eyes.
Ethan had been waiting for it, she realized, because the moment they were off, he slid down his bench to the bottom, then wedged himself into the corner under the lens and somehow leveraged himself up, using elbows and feet, until he was directly underneath it.
Then he touched it with a finger and she saw the tiny light on one side of it blink off.
He slid back down the wall, and she turned onto her back as he climbed onto her bed, then held himself above her, hands on either side of her head.
“Do you think it was vision and sound?” she whispered into his ear. She gave a shiver at his proximity.
“It was. It’s neither, anymore.” He seemed certain.
“They’ll probably notice,” she said. “But how did you do it?”
He settled down, not on top of her, as she thought he would, but angling to the side again, so she scooted closer to the wall to give him room.
“They probably will.” He sounded resigned, and she guessed he didn’t want anyone bursting into the room to find them in a compromising position. “I had the sense that if I touched it, I could break it.”
His words lay between them, and they both understood what he was saying.
“So, Garmen has an ancestral wreck, there’s a whole undiscovered-by-us Verdant String planet, and the Cores found both of them.” Her tone was deliberately dry, and not exactly a change of topic.
“Just a few mildly interesting nuggets,” he agreed, sounding relieved she hadn’t pursued how he’d known he could break a lens by touching it with the tip of his finger. “Shit, how the hell didn’t we know any of this?”
“They obviously never let any part of the Garmen find leak, or the VSC would have been far less accommodating when the Cores declared they owned Garmen because they’d found it.
” She still couldn’t believe the Verdant String Coalition had allowed Garmen to be run by the Cores, although what it was supposed to be at the start and what it turned into had been vastly different.
“As for this new planet, Fjern, they must have found it recently.”
“But still . . .” Ethan shook his head. “Linao said she was there six months ago. And no one in the crew that went there—mining the planet’s ore, she said—has leaked a word about it?
Even if they took as few people as possible, that’s still a sizable number.
They’re either dead or too scared they will be if they talk. ”
“Dead, as in, killed specifically so they couldn’t talk?” Velda didn’t want to think about that, but then Linao hadn’t been subtle about her clear threat to kill them when they were no longer useful. Maybe that’s how they operated.
“Linao certainly seems to know a lot about everything,” Ethan said. “She’s got top-level intel.”
“She does, doesn’t she? She was obviously told to help Ritter by sharing insider details, but she enjoyed letting him know how much she’s done and how much she knows.” Velda wondered if she wasn’t able to talk freely to her peers.
If, as Ritter speculated with Brink earlier, she was not as she seemed, if she were someone pretending to be a grunt when she actually sat far higher on the hierarchy, then that made sense.
“I wonder what she was doing on Ytla,” Ethan said.
“Looking for the wreck Wren found, is my guess,” Velda answered. “And she didn’t let on to her new bestie, Ritter, anything about it.”
“No.” Ethan sounded thoughtful. “She didn’t. And that’s interesting.”
“It’s all interesting,” Velda admitted. “The Cores are way ahead of us on this. I can’t believe an organization that’s been playing hide and seek with the VSC military for a year has managed to do as much as it has.”
“They’ve obviously planted moles throughout the Verdant String, not to mention cozying up to the Caruso.” Ethan suddenly went stiff. “They’re coming.”
Velda listened, heard footsteps outside. She closed her eyes, allowing herself to relax as the door opened and the light came on.
She lifted her head, blinking, and Ritter, with a guard on either side of him, frowned at the sight of them, then looked up at the lens.
“False alarm,” he said to someone out of sight in the passageway. “Just a short-circuit.”
They switched it out, and she and Ethan lay back down.
“At least you know you can, now,” she whispered to him. “And we had a conversation without anyone listening in.”
“It’s a start,” he agreed.
And for the first time in two days, she felt hopeful.
There was something happening.
Ethan was dozing, lying with Velda in his arms, when he heard the distinct thunk of an intership connection.
“We’ve got visitors,” Velda murmured, and his eyes opened to see her gazing up to the left, in the direction the thunk had come from.
“The Caruso?” he wondered. “Brink said they were heading off to meet them and hand over the ore from the mine.”
“I can’t believe they’re this stupid,” Velda whispered.
Ethan could only agree. What he’d received in terms of intelligence over the last couple of years all showed a clear pattern.
The Caruso were pushing into the Verdant String, eyeing the resources of their planets, and chafing under the assumption that the VSC was the powerhouse of the galaxy.
The Caruso wanted to be the leaders.
They’d made loose connections with the Hathr to try and mimic the Coalition, but that was never going to work between two such aggressive, war-like groups.
The Caruso and the Hathr also didn’t have the common ancestry of the Verdant String, the one thread that kept all seven planets together.
And with every encounter in recent times, the Caruso had shown again and again they’d go back on their word, lie, and steal, in every dealing with the VSC. Even with their supposed allies, the Cores, they’d reneged on their deals.
The Cores had plotted with the Caruso on Garmen and Lassa, and the Caruso had turned around and betrayed them.
And yet, here the Cores were—about to deal with the Caruso again.
Someone in the Cores still thought they’d come out the winner, and Ethan couldn’t understand why.
He got off the bench, stretching, and Velda put a hand in the middle of his back. He didn’t move for a moment, his heart hammering in his chest at just the thought of what he’d be doing to her if they weren’t being watched.
She must have gotten up on her knees, because she slid her hand upward, to rest at the top of his spine, and then her lips brushed his shoulder before she got off the bed herself and went to shower.
She liked to shower, he’d noticed. He had refused to watch her, because there was only so much torture he could put himself through, but he was aware of her splashing around in there.
When she stepped out, damp and flushed, he went in himself, gave himself a nice cold blast to keep himself sharp and his mind on the Caruso, rather than on Velda.
He was just finished when Velda leaned in, and her expression was grim.
“I think there may have been a hostile takeover.”
He switched off the tap and dressed without bothering to dry himself down.
When he joined Velda, he heard the thumps and the high whine of laz fire, and moved in front of her, facing the door.
She made a sound behind him. “You keep doing that. It’s my turn.”
He looked over at her, frowning.
“My turn. Come on.” She made a come here gesture with her fingers. “I get to stand in front, protecting you this time.”
“Velda.” He shook his head, amused despite the situation.
“Fine. We’ll share.” She nudged him over, standing shoulder to shoulder with him.
Heavy footsteps sounded from the passageway outside, but they didn’t stop, and eventually they both sat down, eyes still on the door, until at least a half hour had passed.
Things had quietened down by then, which Ethan found ominous. Whatever had happened, someone had won. He resented the Caruso for making him hope it was the Cores, rather than them.
The footsteps came back, more than one set, and the door opened.
It was disappointing, but not surprising, to be faced with two Caruson soldiers, both pointing their massive laz weapons at them. They each had a long bladed weapon strapped to their back, as well.
Neither one of them had moved, they were still seated, one on each bench, and one of the soldiers shouted to someone down the passage.
A third Caruson arrived, but his weapon was slung over his back, and it was the blade that was in his hand. “Get up.” He gestured with his hand. “Who’re you?”
His standard Verdant String was stilted, but Ethan was just vastly relieved to have someone who could communicate.
They both rose to their feet.
“Velda and Ethan,” Velda said, indicating between them.
“Why’re you here?”
Ethan guessed he wanted to know why they were prisoners.
“We were hiking in the mountains, and we came across their illegal mine,” he said. “So they took us prisoner.”
The Caruson pulled a screen out of a bag Ethan had only just noticed was hanging at his side, and studied it. He made a sound, and lifted his gaze. “Why didn’t they kill you? You take up space.”
“They needed someone to experiment on.” Velda lifted her shoulders.