“I’m not worried about being kicked off. I don’t think.” Yumi closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths, her lips moving as she muttered some mantra or prayer.
Surprised, Alisa looked toward Mica, hoping for more of a clue. She had never considered herself unapproachable and threatening. Even if she was dressed in her combat armor, it was sexy blue armor, not scary red cyborg armor. Though perhaps she should look into cartoon decals for her butt, just in case.
“I don’t want to be trouble,” Yumi said, opening her eyes. “I got a message from… an old acquaintance.”
“The one with the palace and the yacht?” Mica asked.
“Seven yachts,” Yumi said.
“Yumi,” Alisa said, “I had no idea you made drugs for the rich and famous.”
She meant it as a joke, but Yumi’s expression grew bleaker.
“Do you make drugs for the rich and famous?” Alisa asked more seriously.
“That wasn’t my intent. In fact, my hobby started more out of curiosity. As I told you, I used to hope there might be a way to awaken my Starseer genes so I would develop their powers. As a result of that interest, I grew quite educated on a number of topics related to nootropics and started doing freelance research for a pharmaceutical company. That paid the bills, but my first love is teaching. I truly am a science teacher.”
“I believe you.”
“About four years ago, I got a tutoring job. For this acquaintance. He was clearly someone who could afford tutors for his three children—they already had four other tutors for various subjects—and since I was between jobs, I thought it would be a pleasant adventure. He said he was a real estate developer and had earned his fortune that way.” Her lips thinned. “I later learned he was the son of a mafia lord.”
“Oh?” Alisa was more interested than horrified in the revelation. Was it possible this mafia prince had sent Yumi a message because he was in the area? Perhaps in the area for a certain meeting? “I do seem to remember you looking over your shoulder and flinching a bit when you first came on the Nomad,” Alisa added.
“Er, you noticed that?”
“Pilots have keen observation skills.”
Mica snorted.
“Was this fellow the reason?” Alisa asked. “For your hasty addition to my passenger manifest?”
“Can you call it a passenger manifest when you only had two people on it at the time?” Mica asked.
“Absolutely. And I had three. Leonidas wasn’t working for me then.”
“He wasn’t your passenger either. He came with the ship.”
Alisa waved away the unimportant distinction. She wanted to hear more about the mafia prince and if he’d been invited to Henneberry’s meeting.
“I was fleeing from him,” Yumi admitted. “From his people. Who were looking for me. As I said, he hired me to tutor his children, but over the course of that first year, we became somewhat close, and he learned of my freelancing and my esoteric knowledge of mushrooms, plants, and the like. He grew interested, and asked me to make some compounds. I did, including a couple of originals. He passed them around to a few colleagues—at the time, I didn’t know anything about his mafia connections, as he presented the image of a responsible businessman. All of the public data about him, at least under the name I knew him by, verified what he’d told me.”
“Yumi, I’m not going to condemn you for working for the mafia.”
“No, but I condemn myself,” she said sadly. “For being naive. For not figuring it out and getting out of there sooner. But I was fond of the children, and…” She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter now. When I finally did leave, he’d made quite a bit of money and some new connections by peddling and sharing my drugs around. I never told him how to make it or left any records. So when he ran out, he came after me. I fled to Dustor, figuring nobody would think to look for anyone there, but as it turns out, that’s a popular hiding spot, and all the bounty hunters know it.”
“I can imagine.” Alisa remembered the unwashed miscreants living in the junk cave where she’d reacquired the Nomad.
“When I saw that your ship was leaving and heading to imperial territory, I thought my odds of getting lost might be good there, and that the mafia probably didn’t have a huge presence on Perun. En route, it occurred to me that an old freighter flying around the system and never staying in one place for long might be a better place to live than on a planet. And after a while, when nobody caught up with me, I thought he might have forgotten about me.”
“Until now?”
Yumi nodded. “I just received a personal message from him, sent locally. His yacht, the Meritorious, is in orbit around Cleon Moon. He said he’s here on business, but he’ll be coming for me too.”
“If he tries, he’ll get pecked to death by forty crabby chickens,” Mica growled. “And a crabby engineer.”
Yumi smiled slightly, but did not appear reassured.
“I’d point out that kidnapping people is against the law,” Alisa said, “but it probably isn’t here.”
“No police will stand with me against him,” Yumi said.
“Well, we will.”
“Thank you, Captain, but I don’t wish to get the ship in trouble. I’ll start packing and look for transport—”
“The hells you will,” Mica said. “You’re staying right here.”
Alisa nodded. “Besides, it’s not as if this ship isn’t already in trouble. Your mafia man and the Alliance can compete with each other to see who comes knocking on our door first.”
“Captain?” Beck poked his head through the hatchway. “We’ve got a problem.”
“The mafia or the Alliance?” Alisa asked, wondering if someone was already knocking at the door.
“It’s the catering gig.”
“Good news?”
“We’re hired.”
Alisa clenched a fist. “Excellent news.”
“But we don’t have long to pull everything together. The meeting is in less than three days. I don’t know…” Looking daunted, Beck pushed a hand through his dyed hair.
“We can do it,” Alisa said. “We’ll just get started right away.”
“Such optimism,” Mica said, shaking her head in a pitying manner.
“I know you love it. Beck? Just tell me what needs to be done, and I’ll get you the people you need to make it happen.”
“Including Leonidas?” Beck asked.
“Of course.”
Beck looked faintly horrified. “The one time I asked him to chop nuts for me, he turned them into nut flour.”
“Someone needs to carry trays, right? He would be excellent at porting things for you.”
“So would a hover board.”
“I promise, he’ll be an excellent assistant,” Alisa said, “and so will I.”
“Just so long as he keeps his charms to himself,” Beck muttered as he walked out, still wearing that daunted expression.
Alisa swatted Yumi on the arm. “Did you truly think you would be the one to bring trouble to this ship?”
“I didn’t,” Mica said.
Chapter 7
Alisa stood at the counter in the kitchen, a knife in hand and several stalks of celery on the cutting board in front of her. Leonidas, similarly equipped, held the position beside her, and six Starseers were lined up to the left, including Young-hee, Abelardus, and the adults not involved in tutoring the children. Alisa was fairly certain the cranky, white-haired one at the end was the research scientist who had berated Bravo Six. Now, he could do something useful.
“This is called the rolling chop,” Beck said, demonstrating from the end of the counter. “Hold the knife like you’re shaking someone’s hand, not like you’re going to kill them.” He shot Leonidas a pointed look.
“How come he mentions not killing people every time he instructs us on a knife technique?” Leonidas murmured to Alisa.
“It’s a mystery.” She nudged him with an elbow. Surely, he must have noticed all those addenda ha
d been directed toward him.
“Beck?” came Yumi’s voice over the comm.
He set down his knife and headed for the panel. “Here.”
“It’s official: the Personal Touch Catering Company has been retained. Henneberry’s chef wants to look over a prospective menu for the approximately three hundred and fifty people.”
“I’ll be right there to talk to him,” Beck said, and jogged out of the kitchen.
“Hope Yumi’s routing that call through a few nodes, so it can’t be traced to the Nomad,” Alisa said.
“Yumi knows what she’s doing on the sys-net,” Young-hee said as she worked on some carrots Beck had given her.
“I know,” Alisa said, though she felt nervous. “She’s the one who made it look like Beck’s business had been around longer than a day. Somehow, she added a bunch of reviews on different sites, appearing to date back for several years.”
“I didn’t know her experience as a science teacher had taught her how to commit fraud,” Leonidas said.
“She has a wide and varied background,” Alisa said. “Beck was also able to get a testimonial for the company from his buddy Chef Leblanc. He was kind of wistful when he told me about it, like he wouldn’t mind if his catering outfit truly existed. Are you supposed to be pulverizing that celery?”
“It’s not pulverized. He said to slice it thin. It’s thin.”
“And flat.” Alisa looked in the direction Beck had gone. “I hope this works out and that they’re not pulling a ruse on us even as we’re pulling a ruse on them.”
“If it helps, we believe we’ve located Henneberry’s ship in orbit,” Young-hee said. “Martya and Nyarai and I have been looking. They have good range when it comes to sensing everything from artifacts to what people are thinking.”
“Would any of you be able to sense the thoughts of someone chatting with Beck on the comm?” Alisa asked.
“Not generally, but if that person happened to be on the ship we were monitoring…”
Alisa waved toward the exit. “Why don’t you go hover nearby while Beck talks to that chef, then?”
Young-hee and two of the Starseer women hustled out of the kitchen.
“I think they just wanted to get out of cutting things,” Abelardus said, waving a knife. “Do any of us truly need to do this? Won’t all the chopping be done before we take the food to its destination? And then we just set up a buffet and some plates?”
“Probably, but I’m sure Beck will need help with the preparations before we go. We have to look and perform like a legitimate catering company while we’re there. The last thing we want is for them to figure out who we are before we get to snoop around.”
“Or after,” Leonidas murmured.
“If Tymoteusz is there for the meeting, maybe even aboard Henneberry’s ship, we might find a way to get Thorian right there. Then the after won’t matter as much.”
“I don’t think we’ll be that lucky.”
“You’re such a supportive cheerleader.”
“I’m practical,” Leonidas said.
“Was it your practicality that convinced Solstice to chat to Henneberry about catering needs?”
“More my wheedling. She wasn’t as certain that she owed me a favor as you were.”
“Did you point out how you could have killed her and didn’t?” Alisa asked.
“That didn’t seem like a tactful thing to mention.”
“Tactful? Leonidas, I’ve never heard anyone say imperial cyborgs are known for tact. They’re known for making living things dead and flattening buildings and spaceships with their bare hands. Also celery.” She poked one of his limp slices with her knife.
“Glad to know I have such a flattering reputation.”
Alisa grinned and squeezed his arm. “Just be glad some women are drawn to men with such reputations.”
Abelardus coughed. “I’m certain Beck didn’t mention that there would be cooing and canoodling in his class.”
“Yes, but while the teacher’s gone, the students will rebel,” Alisa said.
“I begin to see why Durant has been lamenting the recalcitrance of your daughter.”
Beck jogged into the kitchen before Alisa could respond to that.
“Everything’s finalized,” he announced, lifting his arms in the air. “They’ve accepted my menu and sent us a deposit to buy food for the gig.”
“Were the Starseers able to tell if it’s the right gig?” Alisa asked.
“Everything seems legitimate, and Beatrice Henneberry herself sent the deposit.”
Alisa grinned at Leonidas. “And you had doubts.”
“Who, me?”
“There is one obstacle,” Beck said. “Henneberry’s ship will be flying out of orbit for the meeting, so we’ll need to deliver the food on our private catering shuttle.”
“Do we have a shuttle?” one of the Starseers asked.
“That’s the obstacle.”
• • • • •
Alisa stopped pacing in the cargo hold long enough to check the camera turned toward the docks for the sixth time. As soon as Beck’s food order arrived, she could take off. They had been in Terra Jhero for three days, long enough for enemies to have pinned down the Nomad’s location. And that made her nervous.
Once they had their catering supplies, they could prepare the food in space. They could later transfer the finished dishes to the shuttle she hoped Leonidas, Mica, and Bravo Six were even now locating—Six was along to fly the craft back if they found something. The team had left early that morning, stopping at an electronics boutique to buy a tracking device along the way. Leonidas had mentioned using his dinosaur money to rent a shuttle, and Mica had mentioned using his brawn to forcibly acquire a shuttle. Alisa didn’t know which method to vote for. Renting anything on this moon would likely cost a fortune, and two-thirds of the shuttles had probably been illegally acquired anyway. She well remembered the tax collectors that had accosted her ship on its first approach.
A cargo van trundled down the promenade with vegetables painted on the side. Alisa reached for the cargo door hatch, assuming that was their delivery.
Actually, Abelardus spoke into her mind, that’s trouble.
How so?
Footsteps clanged on the walkway above, Abelardus walking out with his staff and a frown. They were alone in the cargo hold, since the Starseers had taken their lessons up to the rec room that morning. Jelena was with them, as usual.
“There are twenty people in the back of that truck,” Abelardus said.
“And no vegetables?” Alisa frowned at the monitor. The truck was still coming, trundling slowly along since crowds of people thronged the promenade.
“Oh, there’s a bunch of food back there, too, but I don’t think the armed men and women are there to keep the produce fresh.”
Alisa clenched a fist. “We need that produce.” They had exactly thirty-six hours before their catering shuttle was supposed to dock with Henneberry’s yacht, and it would take time to fly out of orbit to the meeting spot—they were still waiting for coordinates on that.
“The produce is there for the taking,” Abelardus said. “I just think you might have to do more than sign for it to get it.”
“Can you tell whose people those are?” Alisa asked, imagining a kidnapping team here to collect Yumi.
“They’re not wearing uniforms, but I think they’re soldiers.”
“Soldiers? Not mercenaries?”
“I don’t know. Nothing about the way they’re straddling those piles of cabbage heads tells me the difference. Some of them are in combat armor though. Maybe all of them.”
“Twenty people in combat armor?”
“At least.”
Alisa groaned. She had a feeling they would be better off keeping the hatch shut and ordering food from another grocery service, but if those men had come prepared for a kidnapping, they might not find a closed hatch much of a deterrent.
“Round up any of your people who think t
hey can convince a bunch of soldiers to unload groceries instead of guns,” Alisa said, jogging for the stairs. “I’ll grab my armor and comm Leonidas.” She glanced toward engineering, wishing she hadn’t sent Mica away on the shuttle errand. She could have come up with some nice explosives to thwart intruders.
“And to think,” Abelardus said, “I didn’t believe there had been enough excitement of late.”
As Alisa dug her comm unit out of her pocket, he added, “I have more good news for you.”
“What?” She passed him on the walkway without slowing.
“Ostberg’s parents arrived, so he’s in good hands now. Do you want me to call Durant back to the ship?”
“Absolutely not,” she said, running into the corridor. “Leonidas?” she spoke into her comm as she went. “We need you back at the ship as soon as possible.”
“What’s wrong? We’re across town, making a deal on a shuttle.”
“Is it really a deal,” came Mica’s voice in the background, “when the current owner is on the ground under your foot?”
“That’s the current possessor,” Leonidas said, “not the current owner. This is an imperial shuttle—look at the markings.”
“I’m sure this poor fellow stole it fair and square.”
“Get that shuttle and come over here as quickly as possible,” Alisa said, running through the mess hall and toward her cabin. “Beck’s grocery delivery came with armed men.”
“Be there shortly,” Leonidas said and closed the channel.
Alisa ran into her cabin and threw open her armor case. She was halfway dressed when Jelena poked her head in.
“Is there going to be a battle?” she asked, her eyes round as she looked at the pieces of armor going on.
Alisa’s gut clenched at the idea. Being boarded and having to fight had been alarming before, but now that her daughter was onboard, she had so much more to lose.
“I hope not,” Alisa said. “I’m hoping the Starseers can convince the men who want to ambush us that they prefer peace to war.”
“I can help.”
“Yes, you can. From inside the rec room with the other children. I’m sure Lady Westfall can direct you on how to help.” While staying in the back corner with the lights off and the hatch locked, Alisa amended silently.