[D]Christy shivered in his grip, her feathers slicked down with fear.
He did his best to run his cws through them, trying to get her to calm down and rex.
‘I knew she didn’t have the personality for this kind of life.’
“It was never real before. I know you said it would be dangerous, that we would always have to keep our eyes open, but this is different. This… it’s more impactful.”
If he had any other choice, he would have denied the woman when she asked to join him. He nearly denied her despite that ck of choice. He had already burned through all the contacts that might be able to handle the situation, or that he trusted to not turn him in, at the very least. It had even been pure coincidence that had found him on the same station as the Crova. She was one of the few people he had stayed as far away from as possible for this very reason.
He couldn’t put her in harm’s way like that.
It didn’t matter in the end it seemed. She had found him skulking around the outskirts of that station, out of resources and paths forward. He did what he could to pass it off. Dismiss it as a strange necessity that he couldn’t talk about. He had thought himself a better actor than he was though, the woman seeing right through him. It didn’t take her long to get a bit of the truth out of him.
Didn’t take her long to set them both on the path they now found themselves on.
‘She always did seem incredibly stubborn when she set her mind to it.’
“It wasn’t real because I kept them away. This wasn’t the first time. I doubt we will ever truly disappear, the specialists are simply too good. Our only goal was to lose the heat long enough to pass on the mission. Get someone more suited to the task involved.
“Though it does seem we have made more noise than we should have. The frequency has risen tely.”
It was every couple of weeks that he would catch a whiff of a new pursuer. A little longer than that to have someone get the drop on him. Before now, the two of them had always moved in different areas, trying to not be seen together often. It was likely even this time had seen Christy as colteral damage rather than an actual target.
‘That will change soon enough. She needs to be away from me as much as possible.’
“What do you mean this isn’t the first time!? You need to tell me these things! What is so important that you need to keep me, your partner, in the dark?!”
He sighed. He had been avoiding it, but if the talk calmed her down a bit, it looked like he was stuck.
“I told you why. The more you know, the higher chance you will just be silenced when they finish with me. If you’re just an ignorant ‘patsy’, I’m the only on that will end up tossed into space.”
“Don’t give me that self-sacrificing non-sense! I didn’t join you on a whim. If you end up dead for reasons I don’t understand and I have to deal with your corpse, I will find a way to bring you back so I can kill you myself! Get it through that thick head of yours. I. Am. A. Part. Of. Your. Life. Deal with it.”
He was a little taken aback by the anger and conviction he had directed at him. At least he managed to get her feathers back to normal.
He could forgive a lot if it helped her feel better.
“I’m not going to tell you everything.”
He held up his hands to head off the, probably heated, response he could see forming.
“You don’t need to know and it won’t change anything if you did know. I guess I will tell you that my st mission wasn’t a standard terror suppression.
“There was… Data there. Evidence of something. Evidence that someone with a lot of power wanted buried. I wasn’t involved at first. Didn’t know how bad it was. It wasn’t until people started to disappear that I got a sniff of trouble. I tried to retire when I did. I think that probably got me roped in more than if I had just stayed on, doing the day-to-day.”
He let his story drop as he thought of all the buddies he had turned to at first. People more skilled than him at combat or whatever discipline they trained in. The good ones had stalled to let him get away. The rest had told him they hadn’t seen him but that was all. They all had let him get his feet under him, let him adjust. If his retirement hadn’t been frozen before he could get all of it out, he might have gotten a lot farther. That would have been great.
The assets he had managed to keep had brought him straight to Christy after all.
“The data disk is that evidence then? Why not tell me sooner, we could have pstered that all over every station we stopped at. A mess like that would have seen us safe and away a long time ago!”
Had he not connected the disk to his mission he probably would have thought the same way. Put the data on the open net in every station and let the firestorm handicap whoever was chasing them.
“I’m not that incompetent, I can put data on an open network. No, the data is encrypted. It has been that way since I got it. Even if someone somewhere could crack that encryption on the open net, I am not vengeful enough to spread data I can’t verify. If it had something pirates or others of their ilk could use to sughter people, that blood would be on me. We need to find someone who can break the encryption first.”
He could see that wasn’t a good enough reason.
“And I could have been looking for that someone for a long time had you told me that! This is what I’m talking about, I can’t help you if I don’t know how. Let me in, we can be so much more effective that way!”
He shook his head and grabbed her shoulders again.
“You’re not listening Chisty. You know I wasn’t just some grunt. High level military officers have disappeared because of this. We aren’t just looking for some random that thinks they can do tricks on a computer, we are trying to find someone capable of cracking the defenses of the gactic council. Someone we can fully trust, that won’t just grab a copy and sell to the highest bidder. You won’t find them if you just randomly ask around a station.”
She shrunk back at the rebuke. He wanted to kick himself as he saw the fear come back to her eyes. That tracker in the station may not have been able to physically hurt anyone, though that was purely due to the War-beast.
‘No, that girl calls her Kitty, right? Maybe this ship has more to offer than I thought.’
He had gotten so used to the reports and his own experience, thinking that War-beasts were nothing but rage and destruction. Seeing the two giants traipse around without clothing had been an established fact in his head. He hadn’t even thought of any feature outside their different heights to tell them apart. The run in at this station had made him pay much more attention.
‘The reports always mentioned an intense curiosity when their rage was spent or there was nothing to be angry at. How long were we being followed and why didn’t I notice that fact, both here and the st station?’
How badly had the gaxy at rge underestimated the War-beasts?
‘No wonder they are so expensive.’
“I don’t know how much power the people after us have. I do know that after today my priorities have changed. No one, not even the gactic council, has obedient War-beasts. That is part of why they are so dangerous. We might not either, but so long as they aren’t hostile to us, the dynamic of power has shifted. You need to stay on this ship. You can be safe here.”
He took out the data card and pressed it into her hand. He doubted anyone would get it on this ship.
“Wait, I don’t like the sound of this. What are you going to do?!”
He looked at her panicked features for a bit and sighed.
“I don’t know.”
[?]As he made his way to the deck after feeling the jump end, he noticed the station filling up the view screen.
‘These new engines are certainly fast, but the unpleasant ride makes up for it.’
Needs must though. The ping had been pure shock, a line tossed because it didn’t cost much at all but with almost no hope of catching anything.
What a twist that had been.
“Handshake finished already? High hopes?”
He looked at the pilot, the hope of a quick mission dying as they shook their head.
“’Fraid not. Nothing that fits the description on the sensors. Could be wrong of course. It might be a big deal but never seen it myself. Lotta blips around a station like this one. Engines are nice though. Both FTl and sub-light are incredible. If you don’t mind the bumpy ride.”
He doubted those blips meant anything, both there and not.
They were lucky. More than lucky. With these experimental engines, no one would bat an eye at them for coming screaming into the system like they had. Just bme it on the testing phase and move on. No one had to know why they were really here.
He kept his mouth shut.
He didn’t even know what the pilot had been told.
“Guess we’ll find out once I get on station. As fast as we got out here, we can’t be that far behind.”
“True enough. Take your time chatting. I’ll have to do a lot of maintenance to make sure these babies don’t scatter us across the void. We pushed them to their limit.”
He grimaced. That wasn’t exactly a good thing, any way you put it. If what they were after wasn’t here, they needed to get back on the trail quickly.
‘I suppose ‘scattered across the void’ is technically on the trail, but I would prefer to follow it in more or less one piece.’
“I’ll leave our ride to you then. I’m off to gaslight people. Doctors’ orders.”
He left the bridge to a light chuckle and made his way back to his quarters. By the time he changed and made it to the air lock, they had docked and he had clearance to disembark.
‘I suppose the industrial hub is my best bet. Dock workers love to gossip. That and bribes.’
He made his way to the security checkpoint, pstering on a bored smile and taking an unhurried pace.
“Just checking in. Permits here.”
He handed over his weapons permit and identification. Best to stay legal until he couldn’t. It opened more doors.
“Seems pretty empty. Not a spot for heavy shuttle traffic, huh? Figured with a pnet they would be back and forth at all hours.”
The guard snorted as they processed the permits.
“Heh, I hope not. This is a nice post. Not a lot of traffic on this side and the ones that do come in are all easy. Pnets not got much on it. Some kind of sanctuary. Keeps things quiet.”
“That’s good then. Not a lot happening around here, sounds like. Guess you’d expect that for a sanctuary pnet though.”
He took the paperwork back as the guard handed it over.
“That’s the best way to be. Poor shmucks on internal had to clean up that mess earlier, but I got it easy out here. So long as the flotil doesn’t let a pirate dock at least.”
He nearly broke his casual pace as he perked up internally. Odd things happening were a good sign.
For him at least.
“Mess? Not something I need to worry about I hope?”
“Nah, someone left a body. Not a big deal, gotta deal with bodies now and again. People don’t live forever. The mess was the fact said body had a lotta expensive tech on it. Started a frenzy. Should be cleared out now though.”
He nearly salivated at such a juicy rumor. He needed to find out what tech was there.
And retrieve it if required.
‘I hope we aren’t te to the party.’
“That’s good to hear. I won’t worry about it then. Have a nice day friend.”
He nodded as he walked away. It seemed that the industrial section wasn’t his best bet after all.
He hastily made his way back onto the ship and pinged the sensor net.
“That seems too much of a hurry to be a good thing. Engines aren’t at a spot I would call ‘optimal’ yet, just so you don’t ask.”
The ck of a ping at the far edge dampened his haste a bit.
“How ‘not optimal’ is that spot, exactly?”
“We won’t be doing any ludicrous speed in the near future. She can fly though, if we need to go somewhere. You got a pn?”
He knew what to look for now. Knew he had been this close.
“Can you continue making repairs on the fly? Not in FTL, but in sub-light around the star?”
He didn’t get an exact location from the rumors, but he could get close enough to not search the entire sky.
“Sure. I can do a lot if we aren’t in FTL. Finished the outer repairs while you were out, it’s just tweaking and inside stuff now. I won’t be able to fly and do that all at the same time though.”
“It’s fine, I can take the ship around at sub-light. There’s a reason they picked us specifically.”
“I’m off to the back then. You got the bridge.”
As his partner of chance made his way back towards the engine compartment, he started the procedures to leave the station.
In reality, it didn’t take that much time, no more than a few hours to get out to the rim, but every second felt like it was grinding. The longer he took here, the farther his quarry ran. It was too much to bear just sitting still, so he made sure the cockpit was locked and pulled the device from his jacket.
Attaching it to the special comms unit, he activated them and waited.
“If you are using this thing it must mean you have something worth reporting. Don’t disappoint me.”
The deep feminine voice tinkled out of the comms. Still the most commanding thing he had ever heard, even distorted as it was by the distance and electronics.
“Of course, Mistress. We have their trail. The ping wasn’t a false positive and I should have a heading within the next few days, depending on luck. We are less than a week behind them.”
He felt like bowing, even though he was sitting. His excitement was clearly infectious as well.
“Mmm, yes, that is worth a report indeed. Have you discovered any news about our errant friends?”
The delighted tinkle in the voice raised his spirits, before the question itself brought him back down.
“Nothing worth taking your time for madam. I couldn’t verify anything. Only the presence and the rough direction of travel. The rumors ranged anywhere from a young family to monsters.”
It had been a headache filtering out verifiable facts. The guard hadn’t been kidding about a mess.
“A shame. I will have him in my presence as early as possible, yes? I find I very much dislike the ck of my peer.”
“With all haste possible Mistress.”
He would make sure of it.
