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  Aralyn watched the red blips of several cameras in the corners as they followed the prisoners’ progress through the hall, but couldn’t think of anything else to do. If Taav’s deal had in fact been a ruse to get them to go along without a fight, it had worked wonders. They were calmly allowing themselves to be escorted through the ship without so much as a single escape attempt.

  If that was his plan, Aralyn groused internally, then it was brilliant.

  Even Kita seemed confused enough to keep quiet for once―an occurrence only slightly rarer than a solar eclipse on Earth. Once they’d reached the very back, Hooper pressed a key code into the panel at the doors and they slid open to reveal a round room with several sitting chairs, a large vid panel on the far wall, and a smaller version of the 3D map table, which was currently displaying popular ezines and books across its digital surface next to advertisements for online video games. There were four doors on either side, and one at the back, below the vid panel.

  “These doors”―Hooper pointed to the four on either side of them―“are regular bunk rooms. There are two beds in each, along with some storage space; a small closet, under the bed trunks, etc. That door”―he pointed to the one directly at the rear of the room―“leads to the captain’s quarters. Bathrooms are communal, out in the hall―”

  “Why are you showing us all of this?” Kita blurted out, eyes full of suspicion. “Shouldn’t we just be in the brig or whatever it is you people call it while you take us wherever the big guy said we’re supposed to go…?”

  Hooper blinked, as though the question was so audacious that he couldn’t perceive of someone asking it. “So that you can acquaint yourselves with it, of course.”

  “Yeah, we got that,” said Caden, exasperation dripping from his voice, “but why do we need to be acquainted with it? Aren’t we under arrest?”

  Hooper continued to stare at them with confusion. “Taav did explain what was happening to you, right?”

  “Well, uh… sort of?” Aralyn volunteered when everyone just stared blankly at each other in response.

  Hooper gave a knowing smile. “I’m not taking you anywhere.”

  “Uhm…” Kita said, her eyebrow lifted in puzzlement. “So, just to clarify, we’re… not, being babysit by the UDA while we try and hunt down Proctor?”

  “No,” said Hooper with a shit-eating grin. “As a matter of fact, you’re about to take both Stevens and I hostage and commandeer this vessel.”

  Chapter Four

  “I know, it’s a lot to take in,” Hooper told them, a sardonic look on his face. “Needless to say, I will willingly go along with the proposed ‘hostage’ situation, but trust that there’s a reason when I say this whole charade is for the best.”

  “Oh, I can’t wait to hear this,” Riordan muttered, crossing his arms across his chest in a scowl.

  “You think Stevens is another one of Eladia’s pawns,” Aralyn said. When Kita and Caden eyed her in confusion, she continued. “Taav obviously trusted the guys we were with―enough to let them in on the secret deal he made with us―but when we got to the docking bay, everyone had to ‘put on a show,’ remember? We were performing―all of us―for someone who could have been watching to see what happened.” When no one responded right away, she shrugged, face aflame. “What? I paid attention, all right?”

  “Teacher’s pet,” Kita said, rolling her eyes.

  “Very good,” Hooper mocked. “Someone gets a gold star.”

  Aralyn quailed at the mention of “gold star.” She recoiled as images of Proctor stealing her life away inside Tartarys flashed before her eyes, the gold star on his lapel still bright in her memory.

  Hooper seemed not to notice her distress as he walked over to the captain’s room and pressed the button to slide the doors open. He dipped inside and pulled up Aralyn’s short barrel shotgun―a gift from Kragg many years prior―and tossed it to her. Beyond, just past the entrance, were boxes of their things from Caden’s ship.

  “You’re going to have to make this look good.” He motioned to the gun and his face. “Don’t mention the deal you had with Taav, and whatever ‘plans’ you make have to involve dropping us off at the nearest habitable, accessible station. In this room are IDs and hard drives with several fake accounts.” Hooper stared at each one of them in turn. “Don’t say anything truthful in front of Stevens.”

  “You want me to… hit… you?” Aralyn asked, staring at the shotgun.

  Hooper nodded and closed his eyes. “Have to. Quickly. Stevens will get suspicious.”

  “You want to get hit?” Kita gawped.

  Hooper glared at them, his patience clearly nearing its end. “I was ordered to orchestrate this without raising Stevens’ awareness of our involvement. Now just do it!”

  Caden asked, “How do we know that this isn’t just all some messed up way to screw with our heads before chasing us right into Eladia or Proctor’s waiting arms?”

  “Look,” Hooper spat. “You don’t have a choice in the matter. And as much as I love sitting here helping a lowlife piece of shit defector like you, I’m going to need you to get on with this because some of us still have jobs to do.”

  “But how do we know you aren’t Eladia and Proctor’s rat?” Aralyn asked.

  Hooper shrugged, a casual smirk on his face. “I guess you’ll just have to find out.”

  Caden took the gun from Aralyn’s hands. “I’ll do it,” he said with a scowl.

  Hooper’s smug grin fell from his face.

  ****

  Aralyn jammed the barrel into her captive’s back and watched with the slightest of unrepressed satisfaction as his arms lifted a bit higher and he took in a sudden gasp of air. Hooper’s ardent swagger was gone, and he instead cowered beneath both Caden’s glare and the gun in Aralyn’s grip. After the shiner that Caden had gifted him, Aralyn would have been surprised to find out that the fear wasn’t real. She shoved him out of the hallway and into the cockpit and map area.

  “Move,” she said.

  Hooper moved, his eyes downcast and uncertain.

  “What the… No. No!” At the pilot’s seat, Stevens stood, shock and dismay on his face. “What the hell just happened?”

  “Shut the fuck up just happened,” said Kita, her Remington resting comfortably in her hands. “Sit down, over here, away from the controls.” She gestured to the row of seats against the wall.

  Stevens ran his fingers through his hair, his face distraught. “Oh hell, I told them… I… I told them you were escape risks, I―”

  Kita marched over and grabbed him by the collar and dragged him to one of the seats behind the ephemeris table. She tossed him down and then pointed to Hooper’s bruised face. “Do you see what happened to him?” she demanded. “Another word and you guys will be twinsies, got it?”

  Stevens nodded, his head threatening to snap off at the neck. Aralyn directed Hooper over next to him as Caden went for the controls and Riordan headed for one of the computers set up in the far corner.

  He sat down, pressed his glasses back onto his nose and said, “Now let’s see what we have here.”

  “You look like someone jonesing for a fix,” Aralyn said to him with a wry smile. She kept her shotgun trained on the two UDA agents and Kita leaned against the wall, idly picking at her fingernails.

  “What now?” Caden said from the console. “Where do we go?”

  “I say we ditch these knobs as soon as we can,” Kita said. “Or we could just space them. Does this thing have a cargo airlock?”

  “There’s gotta be some kind remote station out here, right?” Aralyn called over to Caden. “We drop them down with a couple hours’ walk to the nearest outpost and get the hell outta there.”

  “It’s the Kuiper belt,” Riordan said. “There’s got to be at least one or two within spitting distance.”

  “I’ll get us started in the right direction,” Caden replied. He scanned through several images on the screen in front of him before selecting one and inputting the c
ourse.

  Aralyn looked around the ship. The Phantom, they’d called it when she’d arrived. She wondered if there were any surprises to be found within, or if its military secrets had been expunged before it had been given over for their purpose. That it was an upgrade from their previous ship was no doubt―but what did it matter? A better ship would only get them so far. Still, she supposed it was better than nothing. It was more than a bit alarming though that Taav hadn’t hinted yet at their mystery task and Hooper seemed to be purposefully ignorant of anything it might entail. An ignorance she was only slightly certain he was faking.

  After a few moments of contemplative silence, Riordan said, rubbing his hands together. “I’m in. Checking for tracers now.”

  “Kita,” said Aralyn, “get me one of the black bags from medical, will you?”

  The girl rolled her eyes and shoved off from her position on the wall with a sigh, scraping her feet as she walked past her and down the hallway to the medical room. She returned a few moments later with a small black zippered satchel that she tossed on the map table with a lazy throw.

  “Cover them for a second,” Aralyn told her, putting her gun down and opening the pouch. Inside were a few empty syringes on one side and some glass vials in the other. She lifted the syringe and poked it into one of the stoppered tubes that came standard in med bay kits like this. The tech was barbaric, but the UDA didn’t seem to care there were better ways to inject meds.

  “Ugh, do I have to do everything around here?” Kita groused, but dutifully lifted her gun and kept it pointed at their prisoners.

  Over his shoulder, Caden announced their closing distance to a dome station that was largely abandoned and suitable to their needs.

  “Landing in approximately two minutes,” he called.

  Aralyn walked over to the imprisoned men, needle poised and ready, dripping fluid like a snake’s fang.

  “Wh… what are you going to do with that?” said Stevens, wide eyes locked on the syringe. His chin quivered and he shrank into his seat as far away from her as he could get.

  “Be a man about this, would you?” barked Hooper, tentatively touching his blackened eye and wincing with the reminder. “You don’t see me bitching.”

  “Hey!” Kita demanded, hefting the Remington toward him. “Men have feelings, too. No shame in that”―she turned to Stevens―“you go ahead and be as scared as you need to be.”

  Stevens eyed the rifle dubiously and then looked back to Kita. “Uh… thanks?”

  She gave him a knowing nod before sweeping the gun between the two of them in a slow arc. “Now everyone shut up. We’re almost there.”

  The ship vibrated roughly as it entered the as of yet unnamed planet’s atmosphere, a sensation that Aralyn had almost forgotten the feeling of. So many of the stations she’d had access to since she’d lost her ID were in stations out in the fringes of deep space that held cycled atmosphere via holo-fields or glass domes. In fact, the last place she could recall landing planet-side on―actually planet-side―was when they’d arrived on Mars, too late to save Kragg. She turned her attention back to the men in front of her, shoving aside the guilt trying to drag her down.

  “To answer your question,” Aralyn said, hoisting the syringe calmly, her voice forcefully chipper, “I’m going to do the same thing you guys were going to do to us, right? We’ve all taken a run like this before”―she gestured at the others―“and it’s no mystery that prisoners are stuck with these as soon as they set foot on the ship.”

  “Sleepy-time makes for much easier transports,” Kita added with a wink.

  Steven’s eyes widened. “We weren’t, it was just supposed to be a standard prisoner transport―”

  “Can anyone tell me,” Aralyn said, keeping her eyes on their prisoners while shouting over her shoulder, “the last time they were in a ‘standard prisoner transport’ and didn’t get stuck with the knockout juice?”

  The room was heavy with silence.

  “Didn’t think so,” she said. “But don’t worry, boys! It’s a fine idea; one that I won’t mind stealing from you for a little while. Blame it on our criminal natures, I guess.”

  Stevens paled beneath his thin mustache. “No, please… we weren’t going to do that to you, honest―”

  “Time to get a taste of your own medicine,” Aralyn said. “Quite literally.”

  She jabbed the syringe into his shoulder and pressed the plunger down. After a startled gasp, his eyes lost focus and he slipped sideways against the chair.

  Hooper’s bruised face lost the mask of fear he’d cultivated as he studied Stevens’ slouched-over body and nodded, attitude shifting almost instantaneously. “Not bad,” he remarked, standing and moving to a cargo box by the door as Caden set the ship down on the ground.

  Hooper lifted the lid on the box and pulled out a green duffel bag which he threw down to his feet, unzipped, rifled through, and then nodded in affirmation. He stood. “This is where we say our goodbyes.” He went over to the table and picked up the pack of syringes, sealing them back inside the zippered pouch. “I’ll take these with and keep him out for a couple days. That’ll be all the time I can buy you, so be quick with whatever you plan to do,” he said, dropping the syringes into the bag and re-sealing it.

  “But, where to next?” Kita asked. “Taav mentioned that he had an ‘in,’ but hasn’t been too forthcoming with any names or info, don’cha think?”

  Hooper pulled a manila envelope out of his jacket and dropped it on the map table. “The information to get you started is in here. The informant, the drop off point, and what identities you can use. I strongly recommend you memorize and incinerate this file”―Hooper glared at Caden where he stood by the console―“since that’s standard UDA policy. You know―just in case you’ve forgotten by now.”

  Caden’s fist tightened at his side, but he made no attempt to offer a response.

  Hooper lifted his passed-out partner over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and returned to the door to press the button and release the ramp down to the landing pad, which was stark gray against the distant station’s dusty brown soil. Not too far away, a control tower glared out over them. A few lights were on, but it didn’t seem to be an overly-populated area.

  “Has electricity,” said Hooper, walking down the ramp and laying Stevens on the ground. “Which means I should be able to get an emergency signal out here, or just walk to the base.” He returned inside, picked up the duffel, and turned to leave.

  “Wait.” Aralyn stepped forward and he spun back around to face her. “What about that serum we got from Eladia’s man? Do we even get to know what that stuff was?”

  Apart from being our only lead on what Eladia’s been up to for the last several months?

  Hooper shrugged. “Not my department. Is that all?”

  Aralyn frowned. “We have no way of knowing if you’re actually one of Eladia’s or Proctor’s agents,” she said.

  Hooper drew in a deep sigh and rolled his eyes. “I don’t give a damn if you believe me or not―” His eyes drew wide as Aralyn pressed the needle into his arm and pressed down the plunger. His gaze wavered as he collapsed in a heap.

  “Don’t worry.” Aralyn gave his body a gentle shove with her boot and Hooper rolled down the ramp to join Stevens’ limp form at the bottom. “I had half a dose ready for you, too. Those size and weight charts in the bag were really helpful.”

  She tossed the used syringes down and they, too, rolled until they veered toward the side and fell harmlessly off to the left of the ramp. If Hooper was smart―or feeling forgiving despite the slight double-cross―he’d go ahead with his plan to use the remaining doses to keep Stevens knocked out for a few days longer. Aralyn had given him a much lesser dosage, guaranteeing he would wake well before his potentially traitorous counterpart did.

  “Damn, Ari,” Kita exclaimed with a soft whistle. “That was cold.”

  Pissing off the one man that might be able to buy them some time didn’t reall
y seem like their best plan of action, but Aralyn wasn’t certain there was anyone they could trust anymore. Hooper was Taav’s man, sure―maybe even Proctor’s; there was no telling. It was a gamble one way or the other, and she was through taking unknown chances if she didn’t need to.

  She pressed the button to dock the ramp and turned to face the others, shrugging off the clinging guilt. “Let’s get back into the sky.”

  ****

  “So this is kind of awesome,” said Kita, lounging against the ephemeris table, leaning on her elbows. “We get out of prison, we get a ship―a nice ship, I might add―and we get to keep hunting down those orachal-smuggling fucks. It’s a win-win-win, I’d say! Too bad about my hat though.”

  Caden frowned. “I wouldn’t be so sure. I’m certain Eladia has more than one Spector on the payroll, so it’s just a matter of time before they hunt us down. I don’t like that Hooper knows… I wish we could have just tossed them both in the brig.”

  “You’re just mad ‘cause he didn’t like you,” Kita answered, sticking her tongue out.

  Caden grit his teeth. “Kita, I swear to Helios―”

  “They’re confident because they’re tracking us,” Riordan interrupted, bringing an abrupt end to the almost-fight. “I’ve found numerous programs in here so far. They really wanted some assurances we wouldn’t go off grid.”

  “Sheesh, stalkers,” Kita muttered.

  “As if the fuckin’ tracking chips in our arms weren’t enough.” Aralyn leapt from the sofa and went to stand by Riordan’s shoulder, though the tiny scribbling lines of code meant practically nothing to her. She scowled and rubbed tentatively at her forehead. “Can you get rid of them? If Taav and his men can track us, that means Proctor can, too.”

  “Working on it,” the hacker said, his brow furrowed.

  “Guess Taav didn’t think that through very well,” Caden said. Aralyn suspected he was rolling his eyes as he stared out of the window while they sluiced through space.

  “It could be someone else, couldn’t it?” Kita asked, staring nervously at Riordan’s busy fingers. “The big guy injected us”―she tapped her elbow where the small bruise from the needle lingered―“so that means it might be someone else in the system watching. Do you think it’s Eladia?”