Kressa remained in the bed for several minutes after the colonel left, seething. How dare he accuse her of being a United Galaxy aristocrat, of living off other people’s misery! He had no idea who she was and no appreciation for what she’d done for him and the Guard. She’d brought him his guns, hadn’t she? And she’d come damn close to being executed as a gunrunner for her trouble. Sure, he’d rescued her from the Pattys, but he did that with no interest in her personal welfare—he only wanted to know what happened to Thorne. And just what did he think he could do with the Conquest? He’d admitted the Guard had no extra money, yet it would cost hundreds of thousands of credits to refit the ship with systems anyone could use.

  Thinking of the Conquest without Connie sent a chill down Kressa’s spine, and she promised herself she would order Connie to add one of the Guard soldiers to her list of authorized operators before she let anyone go in and disconnect (kill?) her. But first she would try to get the ship back for herself.

  The muffled sound of one of the hotel suite’s doors opening drew her attention. She pulled a blanket from the bed, wrapped it around herself, and crept to the bedroom door. Only an unintelligible mumble of voices made it through the barrier. She listened for several minutes, straining to make sense of the conversation, but it was no use.

  She began a careful inspection of the bedchamber and washroom, hoping to find some way out. Fifteen minutes later, she abandoned the search. The room was an inner chamber with no windows and only two doors—one to the washroom and one to the main room of the suite. She found no vent, pipe, or delivery chute large enough for her to crawl through. And even if she had located a way out, she would need to be truly desperate to use it, for she found no clothing either. Escaping into the streets of Varen wearing only a blanket did not sound appealing. Not until she ran out of other options, anyway.

  She stifled a yawn and returned to the bed to consider those options.

  The sound of the bedroom door opening awoke her sometime later. She kept her eyes closed and her breathing slow and regular as someone crept up beside the bed. Her visitor remained for a moment, then turned and started out of the room.

  She cracked her eyelids. It was the medic, Calin. He switched off the lights and closed the door behind him.

  Kressa’s stomach rumbled, and she realized her appetite had returned. She knew that was a good sign, her body’s way of letting her know it was recovering. Her slumber, however long it had lasted, had obviously done some good. But apparently it was not good enough, for the darkness of the room, the warmth of the bed, and the incessant urgings of her still-healing body soon called her back to sleep.

  The next time she awoke, the bedroom door stood open a few centimeters. It showed only a narrow strip of dim gray, and she realized it must be night again. She scowled, disgusted with herself. She had slept away an entire day and had nothing to show for it, not so much as the beginnings of a workable plan to get away from her captors and reclaim the Conquest. On the plus side, however, her day-long sleep seemed to have restored her health; except for the hunger, which her rest had served only to increase, she felt just about back to normal.

  She ignored her empty stomach for the moment, wrapped the blanket around herself, and crept to the door to peer through the narrow opening.

  At first she thought there was no one in the dark room beyond the bedroom door, but by leaning hard against the wall and craning her neck, she could just see Calin seated at a window. The lights of the city illuminated his youthful features as he stared out through the glass. A gunbelt hung from the back of his chair, a pulse gun nestled in the holster.

  Kressa smiled at the sight of the weapon. She called up a weary expression, pushed open the door, and let the blanket she wore draped over her shoulders fall open.

  Calin glanced back, and his eyes widened. “Oh. Uh— Bryant.” He switched on a light and gave her a professionally appraising look. “How do you feel?”

  She smiled enticingly. She knew that Calin’s role as a medic had left her body no secret to him, but there was a tremendous difference between seeing a young woman in bed as a patient and seeing her up and moving, using her body for what nature intended. She halted beside him and pulled the blanket around herself. Best not carry it too far lest he suspect she was up to something. All she wanted to achieve was a little distraction; she trusted she had done that already.

  “I’m all right,” she told him, careful to put a hint of weariness and lingering pain in her voice. “I have a headache, though. Do you have anything for it?”

  “Uh… yeah.” He crossed the room to where his medkit sat on the floor beside the suite’s main door.

  Kressa slipped his gun from its holster and swallowed a pleased smile. This was far too easy.

  “Besides the headache, how—?” Calin froze for an instant when he saw his patient holding a gun on him, then he grabbed something from the medkit, rolled to the side, came up on one knee, and fired the needler he now held.

  Kressa whipped the blanket from around her body and flung it forward to intercept the needler dart, then she swung the pulse gun and pulled the trigger.

  The needler exploded in Calin’s grasp. He jerked his hand up to examine his burnt fingers, then looked at Kressa standing stark naked across the room, the gun pointed down at him. His expression held a mixture of outrage and cautious respect.

  “Take off your clothes,” Kressa ordered.

  He stared at her, his mouth working silently in disbelief.

  “Do it!” She thrust the gun at him. “Or I’ll burn more than your fingers.”

  He hesitated an instant longer and then, still on his knees, he began to remove his shirt.

  “Where’s the colonel and the rest of your friends?” Kressa asked as he laid aside the shirt and sat down to take off his boots.

  He gestured toward the window behind her. “Taking back our guns.”

  She resisted the urge to follow his gesture. “When will they be back?”

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “Anytime now.” He stood up and began to unfasten his pants.

  “Liar,” Kressa said, hoping he was. “They just left,” she guessed.

  He shrugged, giving her no clue how good her guess was.

  “Why are you here?” she asked.

  He looked at her despondently. “I’m supposed to keep an eye on you.”

  She knew that wasn’t a lie. “Well, you can tell the colonel you gave it a hell of an effort.”

  He glared and stepped out of his pants.

  “That’s enough,” she said. “Sit down there.” She gestured to an overstuffed chair across the room, then went to the medkit. Keeping the gun trained on Calin, she examined the kit’s contents, removed a sedative drug pad, and tossed it to him. “Use it.”

  He checked the label on the package, then cast a forlorn glance in her direction and pressed the pad to the inside of his elbow. Seconds later, he slumped bonelessly in the chair, unconscious.

  Kressa administered another dose of the sedative from a second pad, donned his discarded shirt and pants, and draped his gunbelt bandoleer-style across her chest. She considered putting on his boots, as well, but decided she would be much more nimble without them. She slid the gun into her makeshift shoulder holster, located a leather jacket in a closet, and put it on to help conceal the weapon.

  A long, door-lined hallway stretched beyond the suite’s main door. She peered down it to make sure it was empty, and then stepped through the doorway to freedom.

  * * *

  Kressa left the hotel through a side door. Once away from the building, she traversed several alleys before merging with one of Varen’s omnipresent streams of pedestrian traffic. Among the dozens of styles of offworld dress, no one gave her dark, ill-fitting clothing and bare feet a second glance.

  She weaved through the crowds, relieving passersby of a credit here, a credit there, until she had enough to pay for tram fare to the spaceport. She debarked at the terminal closest to where she’d docked the Conquest and hurried out onto the landing pad.

  Following a circuitous route intended to conceal her final destination from prying eyes, Kressa reached a point close enough to the rear of the Conquest to determine that a nearby groundcar held two men, presumably the Patrolmen the colonel said were watching the ship. She pulled back from the landing gear of the small passenger liner behind which she hid and mapped out a route that would bring her in near the front of the Conquest while hopefully keeping her hidden from the Pattys in the car. She concealed her approach using the patterns of dark shadow and bright light created by the spaceport beacons. After several minutes, she reached the starboard set of the Conquest’s forward landing gear.

  She clung to the heavy structure for a moment, willing her heart to slow its nervous pounding, and then she started to climb. Working by touch, she located foot and hand holds among the complex series of struts and bars. In less than a minute she sat tucked up inside the total darkness of the gear housing. The odors of grease, ship exhaust, and scorched metal filled the air.

  She took a deep, relieved breath, barely able to believe she’d made it this far.

  “Connie,” she called quietly, “it’s Kressa. I’m in the starboard nose-gear housing. Open the maintenance hatch.”

  A dull clump shook the air above her. She reached into the darkness over her head, found the hatch, and pushed. The door moved, and she followed it up into the body of the freighter. She sealed the hatch, made her way through the dim, dusty maintenance crawlway beyond, and headed straight for the galley, eager for something to eat.

  “Connie, how are you?”

  “I am completely operational.”

  The sound of the computer’s voice lifted a heavy load of anxiety off her shoulders.

  “What did the Patrolmen do while they were in here?” She grabbed three biscuits from the food processor and hurried toward the control room.

  “They searched for crew members. I recorded their conversations and movement. Shall I play the recording?”

  “Not right now.” She munched on one of the biscuits as she began to preflight the ship. “Why didn’t you tell me about the storage areas in the bay doors? And the guns?”

  “Previous orders requested censorship of all information pertaining to additional cargo and location.”

  “Thorne’s orders?” Kressa asked around a mouthful of dry protein and other nutrients.

  “Yes.”

  “I figured as much.” She took several minutes to complete the preflight tests, then settled into the pilot’s chair. “We need to get out of here. Do you think you can blast us out like you did on Terra?”

  “Yes. However, without the cover of a hangar, the port officials will detect the engines coming on line and may question our failure to call for clearance.”

  “That’s a chance we’ll have to take. At least there aren’t any Patty warships around to get after us. Go ahead and power up the engines.”

  A moment later, the throb of the ship’s drive began to pulse through the Conquest.

  “Freighter Conquest, this is Varen control,” a friendly voice said over the comm. “Come in, please.”

  Kressa ignored the call and watched the main viewscreen to see how the Patrolmen would react when the supposedly unmanned ship started to lift off.

  “Freighter CXJ-14217, Conquest, come in, please,” the voice said again, less friendly this time and tinged with concern. “This is Varen control. Please reply, Conquest.”

  The Patrolmen leaped from their car, brandishing their pulse guns as if they could use them to prevent the freighter from taking off. Kressa chuckled at their antics.

  “Conquest, this is Varen control!” The voice held a decidedly threatening edge. “We have orders to keep you on the ground.”

  Orders from who? Kressa wondered. The Patrol? No, it must be the Guard. She scoffed. Fine, Colonel, let’s see you try to stop me.

  The ship began to lift off.

  “Conquest, set down immediately or we will fire!” the voice on the comm said. “This is your only warning.”

  “We have been targeted,” Connie said.

  “Targeted?” Kressa asked in bewilderment. “By what? The port doesn’t have any weapons, does it?”

  “No, but a nearby commercial freighter has all available batteries trained on us.”

  Kressa fought to control her rising concern. A commercial freighter? How—? She scanned the viewers and located the ship. It bore the insignia of an Arecian shipping company. Clearly, the colonel had anticipated she might try something and arranged for a way to stop her.

  She snarled and slammed a fist against the control board in front of her. “Set us back down, Connie. Engines off.”