Chapter 5 #2
And she was carrying a fugitive, which made her an accomplice whether she liked it or not. She turned to face him with a precision that had nothing soft in it. She wasn’t scared. In the little time he’d known her, he hadn’t once seen her scared. This wasn’t it either.
This was fury, and he’d been on the wrong end of enough post-match tribunals to recognize the look of someone deciding who to destroy first.
“The pickup.” Her voice was quiet and controlled, which was worse than yelling. “The contract. The return leg. All of it, gone.”
She took a step toward him, her hands fisted at her sides. “My registration on a fucking security broadcast. My company’s name attached to a stolen vessel report from a penal colony.”
“He said I couldn’t handle the run.” Another step as she shook her head. “He said the ship was garbage, and I was worse. Now I’m the idiot who got her license pulled because she let a stray dog on board. Congratulations. He was right.”
He took it. He stood there with his arms crossed over his chest and let the words land. Because she was right, he had come onto her ship, used her as his way out, and torched her life behind him.
“I needed a ship,” he said. “You were there. I didn’t ask what it would cost you.”
“Great. So you knew, and you did it anyway.”
“Yes.” He pushed off the frame and stepped into the cockpit, stopping by the co-pilot’s chair with his arms folded. “I can’t fix that. What I can fix is what happens next. The garrison won’t stop looking. It’s not about a stolen ship. They don’t care about the freight. They care about me.”
“I don’t care about you. I care about my ship.”
“They’re looking for a fugitive with a genetic defect,” he said. “If I can prove I’m not that, the flag on the ship goes away.”
She just stared at him. “What?”
“The diagnosis. It was faked.” Saying it aloud felt like forcing a broken bone back into place. “I’m not Izaean. The healer who ran the tests cooked the results.”
She crossed her arms. “And I’m supposed to believe that? You kidnapped me. You threatened me. You look like a nightmare, but sure. You say you’re innocent, and I’m supposed to believe that?”
“I didn’t say I was innocent,” he argued. “I said the diagnosis was faked. There’s a difference.”
He gestured toward the nav console.
“The healer was transferred. Last I heard, he was stationed on Venrexx Prime. If I can find him and get the original data, I can clear the warrant.”
She let out a short, rough laugh. “Venrexx Prime? That’s three sectors away. And you want me to taxi you there? Why in the hell should I do that? Especially for some asshole whose name I don’t even know!”
“Because you’re already dead in the water. And it’s Raaze.”
She went very still.
“You can’t make your pickup,” he pointed out. “You can’t go home. If you go back now, you go back with nothing. He wins. The company takes the hit. You lose the ship.”
Her jaw locked hard enough that he saw the muscle jump.
“Or,” he carried on, his voice lower. “We go to Venrexx. I find the healer. I clear the warrant. The garrison rescinds the report of the stolen vessel, and you go home with a clean ship and a story about a navigational error.”
It was a long shot. Worse than that. It was the long shot to end all long shots.
It was still a chance, though, and right now she didn’t have many.
She leaned back against the console, her gaze distant, and her jaw working like she was chewing on something that tasted bad.
“He bet the fee,” Fred said. The speakers made his voice louder than necessary. Which, he realized, was the machine’s version of being a prick.
She looked up. “What?”
“On Parac’Norr, before he boarded. He bet your lost docking fees that you wouldn’t shoot him. I checked the records. He currently has zero credits. He is a penniless exile. He cannot pay for the fuel, let alone the diversion.”
The drive core hummed through the deck under his boots. Loud all of a sudden.
Her gaze cut to him, sharp as a blade. “You bet money you don’t have.”
He met her stare and shrugged. It was the only answer. He’d stood on that slabcrete with nothing in his pocket and made the only play available. He’d known exactly what he was doing, and he’d done it anyway.
She looked at him for a long moment, at his empty hands and the frayed bandage wrapped around his arm, and her shoulders dropped a fraction.
“Fred.” She turned back to the console. “Plot a course for Venrexx Prime.”
“Objection,” Fred said at once. “Venrexx Prime is outside our flight plan. Fuel reserves are insufficient for a direct burn. We will need to slingshot around the mining colony at Sector 437 to conserve reaction mass. This will add three days to the journey. Also, I would like to note that transporting a fugitive across sector lines is a felony.”
“Noted,” she said, fingers already moving over the keys. “Do the math on the slingshot. Keep us out of the patrol lanes.”
“I am always doing the math,” Fred grumbled. “It is my primary function. Unlike some people, who appear to function entirely on testosterone and bad decisions.”
She ignored him. A star chart bloomed across the display, all lines and light and spinning markers. She didn’t look at him. Her eyes stayed on the nav readout, hands moving through route parameters with quick, economical taps.
“If we get there, and this healer isn’t there.
Or if he won’t talk. Or if you’re lying…
” She hit the final key and locked the trajectory.
The ship gave a slight shudder as the nav-comp adjusted their heading.
“Then I’m dumping you at the nearest station and filing a report that you hijacked me, forced me to fly to Venrexx, and I escaped.
I will burn you to save this ship. Are we clear? ”
He nodded. “Clear as glass.”
He looked at the new heading on the display, the healer’s last known station on a rock in the middle of nowhere…
She wasn’t the only one betting on a long shot.