by Kate Rudolph
“Don’t you think we should question him?” he asked, leaning against the wall and blocking her from moving towards the cockpit.
“He confirmed he’s Ygreen, what more do we need to know?” Time was of the essence and she didn’t want to waste it.
“Maybe we should make sure he’s not another mistake? Like me? Make sure he really knows Roski and owes him? I don’t want to think of what happens if you bring back another wrong person.” He said it gently, but Vita saw his point. She pulled her blaster out. “Do you know how to shoot one of these?”
Brax’s eyes got wide and he took the weapon from her with great care and held it gingerly. “Point and push the trigger?”
She had to pause for a second. “You haven’t shot a blaster before?” Hers had basically become a third hand in the last decade.
“Not much need. But I can cover you and shoot from two meters away.” He shifted his grip and held it more confidently, but Vita was tempted to snatch the weapon back. She didn’t. Nothing in Ygreen’s profile suggested he was much of a fighter, and she could handle the Oscavian in close quarter combat.
She opened the door to the cell back up and found Ygreen sitting where she’d left him. “What’s your name?” she asked her captive.
His eyes bulged and he swallowed hard as his skin shifted from purple to an unhealthy plum. “Co—” he coughed and clamped his mouth shut, and then it burst out of him. “Coyl Ygreen.” He heaved breaths in and out.
“It’s almost impossible to think with the cuff on,” Brax spoke quietly behind her. “Let’s take it off and give him a chance.”
Whose side was her man on? “He can lie if I take the cuff off.”
“He looks ready to kill himself if you don’t.”
And Brax had a point. Ygreen didn’t look too good, and she’d heard stories of heart attacks induced by panic from wearing the cuff and trying to resist. It had never happened with one of her bounties, and she didn’t want to change that record. She looked at Ygreen. “Calm down. I’m going to take the cuff off of you. My partner here has a blaster, so don’t try anything. Now hold out your hand so I can remove it.”
His hand shot out towards her and Vita removed the cuff and placed it in one of her pockets. Ygreen looked at her with haunted blue eyes, but he didn’t try to fight. Nor did he thank her for taking away that burden, but she couldn’t exactly expect that.
“Do you know why we caught you?” she asked.
His chest still heaved and he sank back against the wall as if he could dissolve into the walls of her ship. Vita hoped that wasn’t an unknown Oscavian power. It sounded... gooey, and she didn’t want to imagine how hard that would be to clean.
“No,” Ygreen finally replied. “I didn’t do anything.”
Of course he claimed innocence. They all did. “The name Roski ring any bells?”
And now Ygreen looked even more confused. “Yeah. I paid him off a year ago. Borrowed a few credits, returned them as agreed. Plus interest.”
“Don’t lie to me, Coyl, you won’t like what happens.” Though usually at this point her bounties decried all knowledge of Roski and said they’d never borrowed in their lives.
“I’m not lying!” Ygreen shot up from where he’d slumped down, but he didn’t try and strike. Not a fighter, as she’d suspected.
“If you paid your debt, why does Roski still want you? And why did you mess with his systems? Why send me after someone else?” She didn’t believe him for a second, but she wanted to see where this went.
Coyl took several seconds to think, tilting his head from side to side as he tried to come up with the right story. And then he cursed. “That bastard. I heard a rumor he wanted me back, and I wasn’t going to risk it. When my name got flagged it set into motion a certain... failsafe. I didn’t even realize it had been activated.”
She’d heard Roski called worse; that’s what came from collecting on the people who owed him. “What?”
“The interest. That fu—” he took a deep breath and settled onto the floor.
“What about the interest?” She was not interested in mind games, and she wasn’t going to spend all day asking about how or why he’d messed with Roski’s system. “Talk or the cuff goes back on.”
And that opened his mouth. “I paid back the money I owed, but Roski wanted interest. And the extra cash was tied up in another... investment.”
Yeah, he meant a bet, but Vita didn’t interrupt.
“So I asked if there was a way I could work it off. I’m good with computers, with AI systems. There was cargo being moved between two systems. He didn’t say it, but he lost out on an auction, had to be. And Roski wanted the shipment diverted. That’s child’s play. So I diverted it, he got his merchandise, and we called it good. And I figured I shouldn’t come back to him anymore. Your boss is scary.” He shuddered.
That wasn’t the Roski Vita knew. Sure he could be a hard ass, but he was no thief.
“What merchandise?” Brax asked and Vita shot a glance at him, but it was a good question.
Coyl shrugged. “He didn’t specify, exactly. But it was coming from the slave markets, and the ships were equipped for live storage.”
For a moment Vita didn’t understand the implication. And when she did, her mind went blank. Live storage. Auction. Slave markets. Roski was against slavery, but if Ygreen was telling the truth...
He couldn’t be. Absolutely not. And if she stood in that cell for one more minute she wasn’t going to be able to return him in one piece.
She turned on her heel and left, bumping Brax out of the way as she moved. Roski wasn’t a slaver. He couldn’t be.
Chapter Thirteen
BRAX LOOKED BETWEEN Coyl and Vita’s retreating back. His denya might not have believed their prisoner, but he didn’t have as much trouble. Roski was completely fine with sending out bounty hunters and picking up innocent people, why would he care about their freedom? There were a lot of people in the galaxy more than happy to make their money in the flesh trade, and Brax had met more than a few during his years on Honora Station. But he didn’t know how he could get Vita to consider the possibility. If he pushed too hard, he feared that she’d do something drastic to Coyl.
“Barton Gulch,” Coyl said before he could leave.
“What?” asked Brax.
“That was the name of the ship he had me reroute. Out of Market Three to the Regek Quadrant. You can see if they’re registered to carry slaves, it’s not like it’s illegal there. Just look up the ship. Slave transports make too much money to bother moving anything else on a regular basis. Please,” his voice trembled and his purple skin looked even paler. “I paid Roski off. Whatever he wants now, I don’t owe him. And if he gets me, I don’t think he’ll let me go.”
“What makes you so special?” It was a lot of expense to find one guy in the entire galaxy.
“I told you, I’m good with computers.” There was more to it, there had to be, but Brax didn’t have time to unpack that. He left the room and locked the door behind him. Even if he thought that Coyl might be right, he wasn’t about to risk the guy having run of the ship, especially if he was as good with computers as he claimed. There was no telling the trouble he’d get into if he could hack into the ship’s system.
Vita sat in the pilot’s seat when he found her, a broken look on her face. For a second Brax was frozen. Did his mate need space? Or a hug? He couldn’t read her mind, but in two steps he passed by his normal seat and knelt in front of her, holding her hands and saying nothing.
She stared off at the view screen for several seconds, not acknowledging him, but not pulling away either, until she finally looked down, her eyes gleaming with unshed tears. “He saved me from slavery.”
“You saved yourself,” Brax said quietly, pressing kisses to her knuckles. “But he did show you a path.”
“He’s not a slaver.” Her hands flexed, but she let him hold on.
“Do you think Ygreen is lying? Or that Roski hired him to free a batch of pris
oners for some reason?” Even Ygreen hadn’t technically said that Roski had captured the slaves for his personal use, but nothing so far had made Roski seem like someone who did anything out of the goodness of his heart. Even training Vita had given him a loyal soldier who had trouble questioning him, even after he’d thrown her away like garbage.
“I can’t think about this right now.” Then she did pull away and turn to face her control panel.
Brax stood. He could push. He could tell her about Barton Gulch and what Ygreen had said. Or he could give her a little time, let her sort through the information on her own. Was it a guarantee that she’d question her mentor? No, of course not, but she was on the verge of breaking at the moment and Brax wouldn’t do that to her.
He leaned in and kissed her forehead, and relief shot through him when she tilted her head up for a deeper kiss. She reached up and clutched him close, as if she was afraid to let go, and devoured his mouth with her tongue. Finally Brax had to break the kiss before he scooped her up and had his way with her against the control panel behind him. It was only the thought that they might break something by accident that kept him in check. The instruments in the cockpit were too fragile to play games with.
So he stepped back, even as he leaned his head in for one final kiss. “I have some work to do,” he said.
Vita looked at him for a long moment and then let go. “Come find me when you’re done.”
As if there was any force in the universe that would keep him away.
But when Brax climbed out of the cockpit, he didn’t head for the auxiliary engine room where he’d been getting some work done, but instead headed for his own quarters and to the information tablet that was waiting for him there. He’d found it buried under a pile of old wires, the screen cracked and on the fritz. A little love had repaired the screen and a bit of work let the machine boot. And now he logged onto a directory of ships registered in the Regek Quadrant and looked up “Barton Gulch.”
The ship didn’t exist.
Brax’s brow furrowed. He’d been ready to believe that Ygreen was telling the truth. The man had seemed completely dedicated to his story. And so Brax gave him the benefit of the doubt and widened the search radius. It was difficult to look up ship registrations across the entire galaxy, especially since some places like the slave markets didn’t publish who flew into and out of their territory. But as the search expanded, there was still no record of the Barton Gulch.
On a hunch, Brax changed the parameters again, looking for ships that had been registered but no longer were.
And he got a hit.
The Barton Gulch was registered for legal slave transport and banned from the Oscavian Empire, as were all slave transport ships. Its registration had lapsed sixteen months previously and as far as Brax could tell, it had disappeared from anyone’s sight.
Brax searched for more, looking for any information about Coyl Ygreen or Roski, but unsurprisingly there was nothing.
So what did the existence and disappearance of the Barton Gulch tell him? There was nothing that directly connected it to Roski. All he knew was what Ygreen said. Brax needed more.
He found flight manifests on a different server, one that techs used to track the ships they worked on. The information wasn’t available to the public, but after so many years working at Honora Station, Brax knew a few hidden places to look. He found the Barton Gulch’s identification numbers and followed a trail. The ship routinely shipped in and out of Slave Market Three, arriving at the market roughly every two Earth months. It would then depart four days later, make rounds of several slave friendly planets, and swing through pirate ports on its way back to the markets, presumably picking up bodies to sell.
Seventeen months ago it had begun its normal round, but it disappeared between Slave Market Three and wherever it had meant to stop. Maybe if Brax had access to more information or knew how to create some sort of algorithm he could have calculated where the ship would have most likely been heading, but he didn’t.
Still, he needed to tell Vita. Even though the evidence wasn’t strong, she needed to know, needed to be able to make the decision for herself. He couldn’t let his mate deliver an innocent man into slavery or death.
When he got back to the cockpit, Vita seemed to have calmed down. She sat quietly and presided over her controls, looking out into space with a thoughtful look on her face. She smiled when he joined her and Brax wished that the two of them could just sit in a peaceful moment forever. But it wasn’t to be.
He held his tablet out to her and she took it, studying the screen. “What am I looking at?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” Brax admitted. “But Ygreen gave me the name of the ship that he supposedly diverted for Roski. The Barton Gulch. From what I can see, it regularly moved out of the markets, delivering cargo to and from all over the galaxy. Frequent stops in Finart, Tegga Proxima, Wefrare, and Virn. Able to pass through pirate territory on a regular basis. It was definitely a slave ship. And it disappeared around the time Ygreen says he did work for your boss. It’s not proof of anything, but I thought you should know.”
Vita’s fingers tightened around the edges of the tablet and Brax thought she might somehow find the power to snap it in half. “Wefrare?”
“Does that mean something to you?”
“Fuck every god in the heavens and leave them out to die.” She shot up from her seat. “Ygreen’s not lying.”
WEFRARE. IF VITA NEVER heard of that godsforsaken planet again it wouldn’t be soon enough. If she closed her eyes she could still smell the blood. How did everything come back to that mess?
And did it mean that she hadn’t been wrong?
She paced back and forth in the tiny space available, keeping half an armlength between her and Brax. She didn’t know if she’d kiss him or hit him, and she didn’t want to find out.
“What’s the significance of Wefrare?” Brax said, pronouncing it all wrong.
“It rhymes with air, not are. And about a year and a half ago Roski sent me there to recover someone for him. Several someones, actually. It’s one of the few times since I started working on my own that Roski said I needed a team. And he assigned me one. We all had similar training, and I even knew one of the guys I was working with. It shouldn’t have been an issue.” If she closed her eyes she could still taste the smoke in the air and feel the sting of blood on her brow. “But the ship our marks were on was heavily fortified. XV783 was its ID. I knew something was wrong the minute we rolled up. The intel just felt off.” At the time no one else on the team had agreed when she wanted to hold back, and now they were all dead. “We still went through with it. Roski doesn’t take kindly to failure and we all needed the money. We had to neutralize the ship security before anything else could happen. Then we split up. I was after the navigator, my partners were after the captain and first mate. The three of them owned the ship collectively and Roski said they’d borrowed money for repairs. And they didn’t pay. But when I got to the navigator’s station...” her mind got kind of fuzzy there and Vita shook her head to clear it. “There was blood, but no body. Then there was a blast from somewhere deeper in the ship. I tried to run, but someone got the drop on me. I woke up a week later in a med tent with one of Roski’s lieutenants breathing down my neck. My partners were dead, the ship we’d been using was gone, as were the men we’d been after. I had no reason to question it.”
When she trailed off, Brax prompted, “And now?”
Vita swallowed hard. “And now I think you’re about to tell me that the ship ident of the Barton Gulch is XV783. Roski didn’t care about the crew. He just wanted the cargo. And he was willing to sacrifice a few of his operatives to get it.” She felt sick. Her hands were shaking and she wanted to wring Roski’s neck for all the lies. “Now would be a great time to tell me that I’ve got it all wrong.” She looked at Brax hopefully. And her heart cracked in two when he gave her a sad smile and a shake of his head.
“The ident matches the Barton G
ulch. The ship disappeared seventeen months ago. I can’t say why your employer sent you there or if what he told you was the truth, but it doesn’t look good.” There was care in his eyes, but not pity. Vita couldn’t stand pity.
“Come on,” she said, brushing against him to descend the elevator and making her way to where she’d left Coyl. He was waiting for them, sitting against the wall as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
“That was fast,” he muttered as Brax showed up behind her.
“Tell me everything you know about Wefrare.”
“It’s a small trading post. Lots of slaves get moved through there. Otherwise it’s not particularly important. And your boss had me redirect a ship to that planet as payment. I’ve never been, and I still don’t definitely know what was on the ship. Or who.” He looked up at her expectantly.
Did he want thanks? He was rocking Vita’s existence down to the roots and he was lucky she wasn’t going to throw him out the airlock. “You suspect it was slaves?” She swallowed hard around the bile in her throat. “What kind?”
“Does it matter?” he sneered.
“It matters,” Vita bit out. Her hands curled into fists and she wanted to hit her prisoner, wanted to make him feel all the roiling pain she was feeling inside. But he didn’t deserve that, not when he was only telling the truth. It wasn’t his fault that Roski was a piece of shit slave trader who had lied to her for the last ten years. Brax’s heat was a comforting presence behind her, and she didn’t know what she would do if he weren’t there.
Well, she wouldn’t be in this position because she would have never trusted the intel that Ygreen had given her. Maybe he was good for her. No, he was definitely good for her.
“I don’t know,” said Ygreen. “All aspects of the trade touch that planet, and I didn’t spend that much attention on what the ship was carrying. Or who.”
Some of the color had drained from the Oscavian’s face and Vita was willing to believe him for now. “Stop shaking, I’m not going to deliver an innocent man to his death. We’re not far from where you we picked you up. I can drop you back there, but now that I found you I’m sure someone else will be able to do the same. You want to risk it? Or do you want me to drop you somewhere else? Within reason,” she added before he could ask to be taken to the other end of the galaxy. She still didn’t have a lot of fuel, but she didn’t want to take on this compulsive gambler like she had taken on Brax.
