by Kris Delake
She had initially toyed with the idea of buying Jack his own ship and getting him out of here. She didn’t want to be separated from him which, she knew, was more the lust and loneliness talking than anything else. She had helped him a great deal, and if he would take her money (with the promise of paying her back; she already knew him well enough to know he wouldn’t want anything else), then they could go their separate ways.
She had initially planned to stay here to find some trace of her mother.
But the whole Rover thing was bothering her, as was the involvement of Liora Olliver. Something was up, and Skye wasn’t sure she could spend time here without losing what little lead she had.
She also knew that her reaction to all of this might simply be a rationalization so that she could stay with Jack.
She didn’t want to examine that.
There had to be fifty shops purporting to sell spaceships ahead of her. If she logged into Zaeen’s network this close to the shops, she would find positive information on all of them, with the most positive on the shop that could afford the most advertising.
She should have researched ships before abandoning theirs.
As if she had had time.
She knew what she wanted, though, so she pulled Jack toward a kiosk that had lots of information on it.
“Is that wise?” he said when he saw what she was about to do.
“You have links that can access the public networks?” she asked. “Because I have nothing internal.”
He smiled at her. “Me, either. And if I did, I certainly wouldn’t do so here.”
He was right: credit rip-offs, identity theft, tracer software, everything she worried about and more would come into a person’s internal links through the Zaeen network.
If she had initially wondered where the money came from to run this place, she wondered no longer. Just ripping off the careless would bring in millions. Maybe tens of millions.
And since Zaeen was in the Brezev Sector, there was no recourse for the average citizen who suffered a catastrophic financial loss.
The kiosk stood a foot higher than she did, and blocked her view of that part of the Pavilion. She didn’t like that, but she saw no way around it.
She plugged in information on fast ships with some weaponry and great shields. She also needed a ship with a registration that was valid in several sectors so that no one would arrest them for flying an unregistered ship in the wrong sector. A valid registration wouldn’t guarantee that the ship wasn’t stolen, but it would make the theft harder to prove.
Not that she cared. She didn’t plan to use the ship long and she knew that Jack was smart enough to understand how dangerous buying a ship in this area actually was.
She also needed a ship that was fly-ready. She couldn’t wait weeks for the ship to be delivered and/or repaired.
Only five shops met all her needs, and only one was close by. Its information displayed in purple. All she had to do was follow the purple arrows, and she would get there.
“Got it,” she said.
Jack kept his back to the search, protecting her, making sure no one else got close enough to see what she was doing. It was probably a futile effort—some bot somewhere probably tracked all of the information displayed in the kiosk—but she appreciated the gesture anyway.
She tapped his back. He turned and encircled her with his arm. She liked that more than she wanted to admit.
She put her arm around his waist like she had before, and they walked toward the shop she had chosen.
It wasn’t the biggest, the brightest, or the loudest shop in this ship-oriented part of the Pavilion. That distinction belonged to the store that had floated the ship above them. Tethers of yellow light connected that ship to the outside of the store.
Instead, she led Jack to the store down a narrow passageway from that one. The exterior had purple lighting, but strangely, it was tasteful. It blended with the shiny black door. Only a small purple ship, glowing in the center of that door, advertised what the shop sold.
“Nice,” Jack said, and she could actually hear him without lip-reading. The noise factor in this part of the passageway was down significantly.
It made her relax just a bit. She wondered if that was intention of the shop owners, then decided it didn’t matter.
When she pushed open the door to the shop, a light flared in the back. The shop itself was silent, startlingly so. Tiny replicas of ships sat on top of displays. More images of ships floated across the walls. The map of the interior of One of Our Best Models covered the floor. A star field covered the ceiling, and she had a hunch it hid all kinds of surveillance equipment.
The most startling thing of all, though, was that Jack could stand upright. He didn’t even have to duck as he went through the door, although he did. Force of habit, she assumed.
His gaze met hers. “I’m not comfortable with you paying—”
“We’ll talk about it later,” she said. She didn’t add the word “again” because that wasn’t fair. She would have been uncomfortable too. “Let’s just get out of here. Then we can work out the details.”
She knew how that would sound to anyone watching the surveillance, and she didn’t care. She wasn’t trying to hide the fact that they wanted out, and she wasn’t all that interested in saving money.
“Let me handle the negotiation at least,” he said.
She shook her head. She didn’t want to waste time bickering over price. “It’s just better if we get it done.”
He looked like he was about to say something, when a wizened little man walked out of the back door.
“Welcome,” he said in accented Standard. “Let me help you find the perfect ship.”
Chapter 32
Jack felt jittery. Some of it was the lack of sound in the shop, but most of it came from Skye’s determination to handle the entire ship purchase. She did it in a way that he never would have, fast without much negotiation.
In fact, most of the discussion she had with the wrinkled little man who ran the shop was about the type of ship, its specs and its registrations, not its pricing. She also asked some technical questions that Jack didn’t understand because he wasn’t a pilot.
He paced, looking at the images of the various ships, feeling out of his depth. He and Skye hadn’t discussed what was coming next, and that made him uncomfortable too. She hadn’t asked about the complexity of the automatic pilot. He started to, but she held up a hand, silencing him.
He let her. He was used to being with Rikki, who often took a commanding lead with things. But it made him even more uncomfortable.
Then Skye whipped out a payment chip, and walked to a payment kiosk with the little man. She didn’t consult Jack at all—and that was when he decided the ship was hers, no matter what she said. She would help him get out of this place, he’d figure out where to go and what to do next, and then she could have the damn ship back.
No matter what it did, how easy it was to fly, or whose name she registered it in.
That thought made him walk over to the kiosk. Skye glanced at him, as if he didn’t belong.
He had to ask the question without acting suspicious. “I was going to make sure you had all the information for the registration,” he said.
“I do, thanks,” she said as the little man added, “We always register in the name of the account where payment comes from.”
Jack held back an oh of surprise, but just barely. He hadn’t thought of that. Of course. Zaeen was in one of the most lawless sectors of the galaxy. No one wanted to admit who they were, no one wanted their account information on record anywhere, no one wanted to be traced. So businesses had to adapt.
It was like Krell times a million.
“All right then,” he said, feeling stupid and useless. He walked back to the front of the shop.
He hadn’t even seen what they purchased. What she purchased. He hoped it would work.
She came over to him and slipped her left hand through his a
rm. In her right hand, she held all kinds of chips and swipe meters.
“It’s going to take two hours to prepare the ship,” she said.
“I thought we were going to have one—”
“That’s fast,” she said softly. “They have to change parts of the registration, and I paid to have it fully stocked with food and water.”
He wanted to ask her if she trusted the little man to do that, but apparently she had.
Then she leaned her head against him, as if they were some kind of loving couple.
“I’m hungry,” she said. “Let’s get lunch.”
He had lost track. Was lunch the next meal? He had thought the next meal was dinner. He thought for a moment. It was dinner, but he didn’t correct her, because she might have been trying to conform to local time. Here, on Zaeen, it might actually be midday. There was no way to tell without linking up to the network or simply asking someone, neither of which he wanted to do.
She eased him out the door. The noise returned, not nearly as egregious as it had been. Voices, music, all of it had become a blur to him. He didn’t even try to pick out distinct sounds.
Instead of heading toward the overwhelming wall of noise, she turned away, going farther down the passageway.
The lack of people made him as uncomfortable as all of the people had in the center of the pavilion. He had to be honest with himself: he didn’t like it here. It was too big, too noisy, and too unfamiliar.
Usually he researched a place to death before arriving in it. He hadn’t researched anything before coming here. He was trusting Skye and trust did not come easy for him.
Small restaurants dotted the passageway, usually crammed up against the entrances to various ship shops. Most of the restaurants promised exotic meals, but one offered sandwiches. Skye was about to walk past it, when Jack pulled her toward it.
“Let’s just stop,” he said.
She glanced inside, then smiled at him. She agreed, apparently. She pushed the door open, and they stepped into the interior.
A waiting bot floated in front of them. Dozens of patrons sat inside, eating everything from sandwiches to tortillas to some kind of egg dish. Jack’s stomach growled. He wasn’t sure how long he had been hungry, but he remembered his stomach making the same protest shortly after they arrived on Zaeen.
The bot was trying to decide which face it should float in front of—his or Skye’s. It had apparently not been programmed for this kind of height disparity. It floated up to him, then down to her. As it hovered near her, she said, “Have you a private room?”
It showed her a menu with costs on it, suggesting a variety of private rooms—some large and a few very small.
She tapped the small one just as Jack was about to recommend the small one. He was thinking practically: he didn’t want to have any space for a sexual moment; he needed time to focus on the future, not on Skye’s lovely body. And she was too tempting for him to ignore in the right circumstance.
The bot threaded its way through the throng of patrons, and a narrow door opened. For a moment, Jack thought he might not be able to fit inside. Then he realized he could do so if he ducked and went in sideways.
Just when he was getting used to everything being at his height, the station threw something like this at him.
A table with two chairs pushed up against it filled most of the room. The walls were close. Jack wasn’t sure he could sit, but the table apparently read his size and adjusted slightly inward, so that there was room for him and the wall. He hoped there would be room for his knees as well.
Skye closed the door and took the far chair. As she sat, a see-through menu rose before her.
Jack sighed and went to his chair, expecting to hit his knees against the extra part of the table. But he didn’t. It was as if the entire table could mold itself to accommodate him without having to adjust its own mass. A menu rose in front of him as well, listing nearly six hundred items.
That overwhelmed him. He just pressed the word “sandwiches” and his choices narrowed by five hundred.
“I have a couple of questions for you,” he said to Skye.
She tapped something on the screen and her menu disappeared. Apparently she had ordered.
He tapped the first sandwich that had ingredients he recognized, then his menu disappeared as well.
Her gaze met his. “We’re lucky to get the ship in two hours,” she said, anticipating one of his questions.
“We’re getting it sight unseen,” Jack said. “Aren’t you worried about that?”
“Most places like this don’t allow you to test drive,” she said. “The theft rate would be too high. They don’t have a police force to go after everyone who blows out of the port in a stolen ship.”
Good point, and one he hadn’t thought of. He rarely dealt in thefts before the fact, and even then, not thefts as small as the theft of a ship. The thieves he had always vetted for the Rovers had been the guys with vision, the ones who stole millions or billions and destroyed lives. Jack had never even investigated someone who stole one or two things, even if those one or two things were ship-sized.
“What about the food?” he asked. “Do you trust that it’s not tainted?”
“Yes,” she said. “We can test when we get on board, but I think it’ll be fine. It won’t matter, though, if we aren’t planning to be on the ship long.”
He recognized the question in the form of a statement. What was happening next?
He wished he knew.
“We have choices,” he said. “You don’t have to travel with me if you don’t want to. Traveling with me has clearly proven itself unsafe.”
She smiled as if she’d thought of that. “How will you pilot your way back to the NetherRealm?”
“The ship should have an autopilot,” he said. “Right? And then you can give me an account so that I can pay you back.”
Her smile faded. “Is that what you want to do?”
“What I want and what’s best are two different things,” he said.
“What do you want?” she asked.
He wanted to find a room somewhere and spend the next week in it alone with her, having food delivered, and investigating all the things their bodies could do together. He wanted to turn back his entire relationship with the Rovers. He wanted to take back that last conversation he’d had with Heller.
He wanted a lot of things, but he couldn’t have them.
“I want things to be easier for both of us,” he said. “I’m getting in your way.”
She raised her eyebrows, then smiled. “I can’t deny that,” she said. “I accompanied you here. But I’m not on any schedule.”
“You’re working, right?” he asked. He still didn’t know a lot about her.
“Not here.” Her face clouded.
“So you need to get back,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said. “But I’ve finished most of my pressing work. I’m tracking something else entirely, and I’m not sure if it’s on a timeline.”
He waited. He didn’t want to ask her what that something was. He didn’t want to pry.
Then she shrugged. “Let’s figure out what you need first. I understand if you want to stay here.”
“I definitely do not what to stay here,” he said so quickly that he surprised himself. Zaeen was too crowded, too uncomfortable, too strange for him. And he thought he could get along anywhere.
“You go back to the NetherRealm and you have to contend with the Rovers,” she said.
He nodded.
“Have you thought of what you’d do?” she asked.
“Maybe I should hire someone from the Assassins Guild to take out Heller,” Jack said. He was mostly joking, but the joke didn’t feel funny to him.
“Well, that would bring everything full circle,” she said.
His breath caught. He looked up at her.
“It would?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “Remember that woman I saw Heller with?”
He let out a small breath. He had forgotten all about her. “The assassin from the Guild. Hiring a Rover.”
“Yeah,” Skye said. “It bothers me, and not just for the obvious reason.”
“Looks like we have time,” Jack said. “Tell me what this is all about.”
Chapter 33
Their drinks rose out of a side pocket of the table, startling Skye. She glanced around the room, wishing she had a more sophisticated way to check for surveillance equipment. She would have to assume that their conversation was being recorded, but she would also have to assume that no one would care about it, that every conversation was recorded here on Zaeen. With that much information being stored somewhere, only bots could search through it, and if she avoided trigger words, then no one would ever hear this conversation.
Of course, she had no idea what the trigger words were, so she could only hope she would avoid them.
Jack grabbed the cups and handed her hers. He sipped his. He looked a bit nervous, as if something she had said unnerved him.
Although he’d been nervous since they arrived. Even before he loudly stated that he didn’t want to stay here, she had the sense that he hated Zaeen.
She didn’t feel much better about it.
“This morning,” she said, then paused. “I think it was this morning. All of the travel has my time sense confused.”
“Our morning,” he said.
“When I saw one of the most proficient members of the Guild talking to Heller, I started worrying. She had to have a reason to hire someone like him.” She decided to skip the word “assassin,” figuring that might trigger something. She hoped Jack would be as cautious.
“Someone proficient?” he asked, and it took her a moment to understand. He had clearly taken her cue and was also avoiding trigger words. He sipped his beverage again. He seemed to have relaxed since she started into this.
She took a sip of her beverage too. She’d only asked for lemon-flavored water, and that was what she got. She was thirsty, and she hadn’t even realized it until now.
At some point, both of them would have to stop and actually sleep. Not do anything else. Just sleep.
