And if he had had all the proper information, he would have seen my father as a threat.
We pass a small area of space that I have secretly designated as the point of no return. My fingers don’t even hover over the navigation system. I pilot us forward as if I have no qualms at all.
We are not turning back.
The mission is about to begin.
We have set up the mission in three parts. We designed the first part to separate the military ships from the Dignity Vessel. The second part sends me and my team into the Dignity Vessel, and the third part gets us out of the area before the explosion.
Oddly enough, it’s the first part that makes me the most nervous.
Perhaps because I have no control over it at all.
When we reach the designated coordinates just past the point of no return, the Space King breaks away from our convoy. The Space King speeds away on a perpendicular course from us, its modern stealth mode still on.
When it reaches another designated set of coordinates, it will modulate its speed and shut off its stealth mode. It will also create an echo in its sensors. The echo will show a different route for the Space King, a leisurely one that comes from a resort-heavy area some distance from here.
As we were researching vehicles to rent, I learned that the Space King is a high-end luxury rental. In addition to all its amenities—cabins the size of apartments on Hector Prime and a galley stocked with the most expensive (and best) food from areas around Longbow—the Space King has one of the fastest engines ever designed as well as an array of defensive weapons.
Apparently, a ship like that attracts space pirates, and the owners of the Space King—a high-end luxury rental firm which caters to the wealthiest among us—want to make sure they don’t get sued by renters who get ambushed and can’t defend themselves.
We rented the Space King for its speed. The weapons are a luxury that we hope we won’t have to use.
The Space King zooms away from us, and I silently hope they’ll be all right. We’re basing our actions on Hurst’s memory of military tactics and Squishy’s occasional sarcastic opinion about things the military will and will not tolerate.
We travel for another hour before The Seeker breaks away. It will find the path it used a few weeks before, when it first investigated the Dignity Vessel. Mikk and Jennifer have loaded The Seeker with alcohol and sex aids. They’ve also added some broken rental diving equipment (which the dive shop gave us at no extra cost), and have scattered it through the cargo space so that it looks like there was a fight.
They are going to come back, pretending to be drunken adventurers. If asked, they will claim they got into a fight with Hurst—ostensibly about coming back to the Dignity Vessel, but really over relationships. Then just to prove him wrong, they’re going to ask the military to let them dive the old ship or at least inspect its exterior.
We actually made a security recording of part of the so-called fight that they had. Hurst, the ex-military member of their team, argues that the military won’t let them close. Mikk claims they will. He says they want the ship nearby because they need something to do, and he will provide that something.
We’re hoping that one military ship will approach The Seeker and the other will investigate the Space King. The Space King’s speed and ability to maneuver should draw the command vessel as well, when it becomes clear that it can outrun the smaller military ship.
We figure we need to keep all three ships busy for a few hours. We’re going to monitor the Dignity Vessel. When the first two ships leave, Odette, Hurst, and I will get into the skip. We’re going to fly in close and wait, in stealth mode, until the third ship leaves.
Then we’re going in.
THIRTY-SIX
We stay just outside of sensor range for two hours after the other ships have left us. Hurst worries that the military’s scans have improved since he left the service. Squishy says no one thinks about improving scans, but I rely on Hurst’s caution.
When our planned two-hour window is up, we move to the very edge of sensor range. We stay in stealth mode, and we scan the area around the Dignity Vessel.
And get a surprise.
There are only two military vessels, both small. We find no evidence of the command ship.
“They’re doing that to fool us,” Hurst says. “Like they’re doing with the false Dignity Vessel radiation information.”
I concur, but I have no way to prove it without going closer. I don’t want to draw attention to ourselves, not while our friends are drawing the smaller ships away.
We’re going to have to wait until we think it’s safe to go in, and then we’re going to have to do another scan.
An hour after we arrive, one of the military vessels flies off in the direction of the Space King. We’re huddled in the cockpit, staring at our sensor information as if it is a lifeline—which, for all we know, it is.
“Let’s hope they can give those bastards a run,” Roderick says, with uncharacteristic force.
I look at him. He still seems too young and green to me to have the experience he claims, but I’ve seen him pilot ships and I trust him.
Tamaz stands behind Squishy, watching the monitors, but also keeping an eye on her. I get the sense that he trusts her less than Odette does, and I wonder if someone (Odette herself?) has talked with him about Squishy.
Squishy radiates calm. She’s watching the proceedings as if she already knows the outcome. I wonder if this is how she doctors in Vallevu, pretending calm in a crisis, just to keep the others from panicking.
Odette sits in the copilot’s chair, even though I don’t let her touch the controls. Odette has never piloted anything larger than a skip, although she’s navigated ships the size of the Business on occasion. She has threaded her fingers together. She keeps looking at all the sensors, checking them one against the other as if they’re lying to her.
We all suppose that they are.
“I think you should run the readings again, Boss,” Hurst says. He’s standing just behind me, hovering the way I usually hate my crew members to hover. He clearly wants to handle the controls himself, and I won’t let him.
“I don’t want to do too many scans,” I say.
“I know,” he says, “but we registered that first ship leaving, and if we’re looking at a false scan of military vessels, we shouldn’t have gotten that reading.”
He has a point. We might be looking at things in real time after all.
I’m tempted to run the scan, but I’m not going to. I don’t want to give the second military vessel any excuse to stay in the area.
Of course, if there are only two, will they both leave their posts to go after stray ships?
I can only hope so.
“Boss,” he says, urging me.
I shake my head. “We’re going to wait,” I say. “I know it’s hard.”
I resist the urge to tell him to be patient. He knows he has to be patient. We all know it. And that’s the most difficult part of this early section of the mission.
Forty-five minutes after the first ship left, the second ship moves out of its little orbit of the Dignity Vessel. It comes toward us, making my heart skip a beat.