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  She slipped out through the sliding door once more, approaching the cockpit to watch Caden input their new course. Kita, nosy as ever, made her way over to peer at the monitor from behind the pilot’s seat, tossing the hat to the couch behind her.

  “Makemake?” she asked in stark confusion. “What the hell are we going there for? Last I heard, it’s just some boring-ass station with a bunch of kooky old scientists and some miners.”

  Riordan stood and joined them. “No, that’s good. Scientists are what we want.”

  “How is that good?” Kita stared at him like he’d grown another head.

  “Makemake used to be a scientific outpost, remember? They studied the gases on its surface.”

  “Gas?” Kita demanded. “Fantastic. Another deep-space iceberg of a planet that’ll smell like the devil’s asshole.”

  Even Aralyn had to smile at that. “The orbital stations aren’t that bad, from what I’ve heard,” she offered. “But it’s close by, and like Riordan said, it was a scientific station once upon a time.”

  “Which means discovering what this really is.” Riordan shoved his glasses up on his nose with a single slender finger and gestured to the box of mysterious vials.

  “This could be a small victory, but only if we can actually glean some useful information,” Caden added, standing from the pilot’s seat. “And if we can figure out Eladia’s angle, maybe we can find out where she might be hiding.”

  “Or where she keeps her slaves,” Aralyn said.

  “Well by all means,” Kita said, spinning around to throw herself on the small sofa near the ephemeris table. “Let’s head out to this fart-sicle station.”

  ****

  Makemake’s frigid, gassy surface glowed a soft reddish-brown in their window, and it was easy to spot the smattering of three of the six floating domes orbiting around it. On the other side, Aralyn could just make out the dark edge of Vakai, the moon that accompanied the dwarf planet on its lengthy journey through space.

  “I don’t know which pod we’ll need to get to,” Aralyn said as she put in the protocols to direct the ship on a path into orbit, “but according to the ‘net, they have interstation skiffs, so we won’t need to request clearance individually to each one.”

  “I just want a bath and an actual hot meal,” Kita said with a wistful sigh. “I don’t think I’ve ever stopped here before. Have you guys?”

  Aralyn shook her head, but Caden said, “Once. I had to help with a situation out here. Synthesized enigma.”

  “Enigma?” asked Riordan. “What’s that?”

  Kita goggled at her. “Are you kidding? That stuff was cut with orachal all the time. It’s ten times more addictive than heroin. And a little went a long way, too―except that slavers kept fucking up the dosages.” She grew quiet and looked down at the floor. “Killed a lot of people, actually.”

  “The UDA fought hard to keep reports out of the news so that people didn’t get scared,” Caden added. “And when I was on that call, I understood why. There were some, ah, bad reactions when the buyer realized his ‘premium’ enigma had been cut with some industrial cleaners, and the resulting massacre was not pretty.”

  “Really?” Riordan asked. “I’m surprised the UDA was on a drug bust. I would have thought those were more the Interplanetary Alliance’s territory. And Makemake is definitely still in the Alliance, according to these charts, so UDA wouldn’t have business there, I’d think.” He threw his hands up. “But when has that stopped the UDA?”

  “They are IA,” Caden agreed, his voice toneless, “and vehemently opposed to UDA. But I was training with my father and he was the assigned Spector on the case when the body count reached twenty-five and they realized some of the drugs they recovered were also orachal crystals.”

  “So they must have been slavers like Kita said,” Aralyn frowned.

  Twenty-five was no small amount of dead people. She wondered briefly how many of them were orachal slaves. No slaver on a drug run would have taken that many of their own men along. Those would have been left to wait at the ship and prepare to be getaway drivers. Orachal slaves were capable of performing simple or easy repetitive tasks. Like holding a gun and being told to shoot it. Aralyn couldn’t help but think about whether Kragg was safer with his gunsmithing skills, or in just as precarious a situation to be used as a body in a drug war.

  Guess it depends on how much Eladia likes his guns.

  In the pilot seat beside her, Caden nodded. “Once there was orachal involved, that meant it was out of the IA’s hands and straight into the UDA’s―and my father’s.” He gripped the tiller hard.

  Aralyn covered one of his white-knuckled hands with her own until she felt the tension in his body lessen.

  “So…” Kita hesitantly began. “Where should we start?”

  “Riordan?” Aralyn called over her shoulder. She pressed a finger onto the liquid crystal display on the dashboard and sent the information on Makemake’s orbital station map back to the ephemeris table. “You familiar with their protocols at all?”

  Riordan looked up from his computer screen and studied the 3D display a moment before shaking his head. “My best guess is that we just get in there and find out. I know this place hasn’t been set up as a science lab for decades now, but they’ve gotta have something helpful lying around, right?”

  “Let’s hope they do,” Caden said.

  On the screen in front of them, the hail signal blinked.

  “Attention, Inspector Madigan,” began the ship’s female AI, “Station Lavoisier I is attempting to contact you. Should I open the channel?”

  Caden peered over anxiously at Aralyn before answering, “Yes. Audio transmission only from my ship.”

  “Opening channel; video incoming.”

  A dour-faced woman with thin brown hair pulled back in a severe bun glared through the display in front of them.

  “This is UDA Chief Officer Grenlan, hailing from Lavoisier I. I am requesting confirmation as to the identity of the Inspector aboard this vessel.” She blinked in irritation, pressed several buttons on the board in front of her and was rewarded with angry beeping noises. “Inspector, why have you denied video access?”

  Aralyn felt her spine go rigid. UDA officers? On Makemake? She tapped Caden’s shoulder furiously and signaled for him to cut the transmission. He chewed his lip, considering their options, but seemed stuck in place, either unable or unwilling to move.

  Aralyn slammed her hand down on the mute button and turned to face him. “Caden, I thought you said this was only IA―”

  “Oh shit,” Kita panted, running anxious hands through her tangled blonde hair and staring back at Riordan, whose mouth hung open slackly. “Since when was this a UDA station? They’re gonna know. Aww crap, they’re gonna know. What do we do?”

  Riordan practically flew across the room to get back to his computer set up, mumbling frantically to himself as he went.

  Kita pointed to him, pushing her cowboy hat back up onto her head. “That is not a good sign.”

  Aralyn turned back to Caden. “We have to go. Now,” she demanded. “She’s UDA. She’ll recognize your name in a heartbeat.”

  Caden shook his head. “If we try to escape, they’ll come after us. Maybe I can pretend to be another Spector―”

  Riordan cut in, “Hate to remind you of this, but we have a huge shipment of what is possibly orachal―”

  “Attention occupant,” interrupted CO Grenlan. “You are traveling aboard a UDA vessel and ignoring a hail from an officer, which will result in immediate hostile action. Identify yourself or I will be forced to react as though the ship was compromised.”

  “Caden,” Aralyn said, forcing her voice to remain level, “I’m almost one hundred percent certain that they’ve run the ship’s ID and know you’re not another Spector. The computer has no reason to lie about its identity―unlike the people inside of this ship―and Grenlan’s probably stalling for time while they scramble their Inspectors or any officers a
round. We have to go now.”

  “Occupant or occupants, open the visual channel and identify yourselves immediately―”

  Caden ended the transmission and reset the course in the control panel. “We’re going back to Charon,” he said. “Ari, pilot us into the shadow of Vakai to break visual while I set in our course.”

  Kita walked over to where Riordan was and looked over his shoulder. “This isn’t good. There’s nothing about the UDA being stationed here,” she said, voice heavy with disbelief.

  Beside her, Riordan worked frantically, typing into his keyboard and shaking his head. “Guys… she’s right. This place isn’t officially UDA.”

  “What do you mean?” Aralyn asked, fingers shaking as the AI began declaring that another urgent hail was incoming.

  “Ignore incoming hails from Lavoisier I!” Caden demanded.

  Riordan practically shook as he spoke, glasses slipping down to the end of his nose. “I mean it’s not UDA. I’m looking in the employee list right now, and there are no UDA Inspectors or chief officers assigned to any of the six orbital stations. There isn’t even anyone with the last name Grenlan currently on the roster.”

  “They’re here for us,” Kita said.

  “Oh stars,” Aralyn sputtered. “Get us into FTL, Caden.” Her voice was pleading, but she didn’t care.

  Beads of sweat dotted Caden’s brow as he scanned the control panel, sitting eerily still. “I can’t.”

  “What do you mean you can’t?” Kita leapt to her feet and crossed to the back of his seat, hands digging into the plush padded chair. “Why can’t you?”

  “Because someone’s in the back end,” Riordan offered. “They’ve managed to disable the FTL drive.”

  “So we’re dead in the water?” Aralyn rasped, turning around to face the back of the cabin. “Riordan―can you do anything to fix it?”

  “’Fraid not. It’s taking everything I have to keep the main drives online. Whoever’s in the CPU knows what they’re doing.” The hacker’s eyes never left his screen, but it was easy to see fear emblazoned on his face.

  Aralyn spun back around, working every possible combination into the control panel to override the FTL drive that she could think of, but the display blinked an angry red every time. She slammed her fists against it with a curse.

  Kita wrung her hands and paced in the small space behind the cockpit. “It’s her, isn’t it? It’s Eladia.”

  “Probably,” Aralyn muttered. “Or”―she chanced a quick look over to Caden―“it’s Proctor.”

  The ship lurched a moment and the power flickered, and Aralyn nearly face-planted into the readouts.

  “Son of a bitch,” Caden spat through grit teeth. “I’ve lost the main thrusters. Riordan!”

  “I’m trying!” he snapped, fingers flying over his keyboard as his head wagged side to side in disbelief. “There’s more than one hacker. They’re overriding everything as soon I get safety protocols in place―I can’t keep up!”

  Aralyn watched, heart pounding out an unnatural rhythm like a broken metronome. On the ephemeris radar, three blips were crossing the screen, heading straight for them. An ambush, she realized. If she hadn’t been perplexed as to how it even happened, she might have appreciated how well they’d been bamboozled. Confusing and alarming them with the incoming hail had certainly bought the UDA agents time; precious moments that the small crew had wasted by stalling to come up with a response. The hackers had probably been in the system already when they’d cut the transmission and tucked tail to run. She could have slapped herself. It was simple. Brilliant.

  And it would be the death of them.

  The blips on the map grew steadily closer now that they vessel was essentially dead in the water, listlessly hurtling through space.

  “They’re trying to get into the navigation controls!” Riordan shouted. “If they get in, we’re done. We won’t be able to even turn this bloody heap.”

  The three specks came ever closer, and hails pinged silently across the screens as the ship’s alerts went into overdrive and an alarm began screaming overhead. Caden slammed the tiller hard into the console and cursed softly under his breath.

  “Reaction controls are gone,” Riordan said from his computer. “They’ve shut off all access to the ship apart from our environmental panels.” He looked up and shook his head. “I’ve managed to disable the video for outgoing transmissions, so all we’ve got going is that they don’t know how many of us there are.”

  Kita gripped her rifle hard in her hands, loading the ammunition. Beside her were several other modded handguns and even Aralyn’s short barrel shotgun next to several boxes of ammo. “Then we are, in fact, dead in the proverbial water. Pick a weapon.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Caden spat, standing and heading for the map table, watching as the three approaching dots came to rest within meters of their vessel. “What are you going to do, shoot at them and hope they don’t return fire? One energy bolt goes through this ship and we’re spaced, you know?”

  “It might be a sight better than Tartarys,” Riordan said, his voice glum.

  “Or whatever torture Proctor and Eladia have in mind for us,” added Aralyn.

  “Well it’s definitely better than being a slave,” Kita snapped, glaring at all of them with fury. A slight tremor of her lower lip belayed the fearsome look, and her voice softened. “You don’t want to know the things they’ll make you do.” She cocked the rifle, a mask of determination on her face.

  Caden took a deep breath and nodded. “You’re right.” He picked up a modded assault rifle with a digital target tracer and crystalline scope, handling it as though it might bite him.

  Though the computer had done its best to ignore the incoming hails, another video popped up along the windshield. This image came from inside a ship similar to Caden’s. The design was definitely UDA, but the size of the cabin was much larger. A big man stood center screen and behind him, four other UDA officers in blue uniforms and gold shield emblems worked busily at consoles, eyes scanning their screens. The man who was obviously in charge by his front and center seat sniffed and rubbed at his cybernetic right eye as though in contemplation. The bright silver and red of the lens contrasted sharply against his onyx-colored skin. The eye made little whirring noises as it searched for an image to focus on. Around it was a thick layer of pale scar tissue that edged backward toward his ear. It spoke volumes about how he’d earned the mechanical orb to begin with.

  No doubt those are a few of the hackers in our system, Aralyn mused with a scowl directed at the officers stationed at computers in the background.

  “I see you’ve disabled your video feed, Inspector Madigan… or should I just call you Mr. Madigan, since you’ve been stripped of your title and holdings, that is?” He leaned forward, as though trying to peer through the screen into the ship.

  “That was a neat trick with the software,” Caden said, gripping his weapon tightly to his chest. “How long have you been looking for me?”

  “A rogue UDA agent?” the Inspector said, flashing a smile that revealed brilliant white teeth. “Everyone has been hunting you. For a while now, actually. I had the great fortune to find you first, however, because we’ve been following you since Mars.”

  “Mars, huh? Then where were you when the orachal slave trade’s leader fled Mercury? Why why didn’t you stop her?” Caden demanded.

  Beside him, Kita and Riordan remained silent, staring in abject fear at the screen in front of them. Aralyn hardly dared to breathe. If the Spector had been following them since Mars, he likely knew about their run in with Eladia’s goons at Kragg’s “gardening” shop; Geiss’s murder, Pris’s subsequent abduction, and their arrival on the Mercury base.

  But why didn’t they stop Eladia then?

  The orachal trade was just as strong as ever, judging by the men they’d been tracking from the partial list they’d recovered. They’d managed to stop a couple of shipments, but there had been literally no slowdown in
the distribution of orachal, which meant Eladia was alive and well somewhere, and not, in fact, resting uncomfortably in a UDA jail cell. Aralyn scowled at the Spector. It was obvious he was more interested in capturing the former agent giving his group a bad name than he was in arresting the leader of the orachal ring…

  Even when she’d been right under his nose, hurt, scared, and alone.

  “We didn’t stop her because we weren’t after her,” the Inspector said, his tone bored. With a slight flicker of the screen, he broke into a smile. “Ah! There you are!”

  Aralyn’s breath caught as Riordan hissed, “They’re through the feed!”

  “It’s good to finally see you, Caden Madigan.” The UDA agent nodded at the screen, white teeth gleaming. “And you, Aralyn Solari”―another slight head nod in each turn―“Kita Shinkai, and Riordan Dewan. I am Senior Inspector Amos Taav of the Universal Decisions Assembly, and you are all under arrest.”

  ****

  Once they’d been placed into tractor and dragged back to Lavoisier I, the ship was impounded by station officials and armed UDA guards met them at the dock.

  Aralyn stepped out of the doorway, hands in the air as she’d been instructed, and walked behind Caden down the ramp to the stark metal interior. Lavoisier I was, as the name suggested, the first of the six orbital stations around Makemake’s gravitational field. Though small, it was neat, tidy, and despite being almost all metal and glass, polished to a pristine shine.

  Aralyn noted with begrudging respect that there weren’t even scuffs on the metal catwalks that led from the docks into the glass-domed main station. Operational drones of various shapes and sizes scuttled about, cleaning, organizing, and assisting new arrivals with their luggage. Some were bipedal and approached various ships to scan their registration IDs into the system so the pilots wouldn’t have to. Apart from the round holo-field above and below that encased the station in an artificial atmosphere, there was nothing else standing between them and the reddish-brown glow of Makemake or the frigid black maw of outer space.

  “So much for putting up a fight,” Kita muttered as they went down the gangplank, tugging her cowboy hat into place.