“Why do you say that?” Zoya asked.
“Because that’s gotta be how Downs has been hiding the profits on his various operations. It’s been going on for decades,” Natalya said. “We’ve heard of at least three or four big projects. How many more haven’t we heard of?”
Zoya looked at Panko, who shrugged. “Makes sense. More sense than counterfeit chips,” he said.
“Why so many, though?” Zoya asked.
“Easier to break a hundred-credit chip than a million-credit chip,” Panko said. “A big deposit like that would raise flags.”
“Even in Toe-Hold space?” Zoya asked.
“When you’ve stolen the money from High Tortuga?” Panko asked.
Zoya’s eyebrows rose. “I see your point.”
“But do they even know they’ve been robbed?” Natalya asked.
Panko chewed his lower lip for a moment. “That part I’m not so sure of.”
He hung his softsuit in the locker and headed for the cockpit.
“Well, we figured it was something on the ship instead of the ship itself,” Zoya said. “I wonder how far behind us they are?”
Natalya grinned and gave Zoya a friendly poke in the arm. “They’ve been ahead of us the whole time. We just need to watch to see who comes to claim the ship.”
“Claim the ship?” Zoya asked.
“Bet you a steak dinner that somebody sends out a tug to take the ship off our hands before we get back to the yards.”
Zoya pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes. “No bet.” She started down the passageway. “We should let Ernst know.”
They stepped into the cockpit just as the comms came online with an incoming message. “Serendipity, Pulaski Towing. Over.”
Ernst gave them a cheesy grin and held up one finger. “Pulaski Towing, Serendipity. Go ahead.”
“Serendipity, Pulaski Towing. I’ve got orders to haul that ship back to the yards. Over.”
“Roger that, Pulaski Towing. I can probably have it back in the dock before we can achieve a pass over. We’ll be docked in just over eighteen stans. Over.”
“Understood, Serendipity.”
A brief pause gave Panko time to mutter, “Just following orders.”
“Just following orders. I have your track on short-range. We can be alongside in four stans. Free you up. Over.”
Panko grinned again and looked at the overhead, obviously waiting.
“Did you copy, Serendipity?”
“Pulaski Towing, Serendipity. I copy. One tick. Stand by.” He keyed the mic off and turned in his seat. “Would you two get back into your softsuits? We’ve got a little chore that needs to be taken care of before we hand the ship over.”
They looked at each other with mirroring shrugs. “Sure thing,” Natalya said. “What have you got in mind?”
Chapter 41
Ravaine
2366, May 31
WHEN THE TUG HAD Echo One in tow, Panko adjusted his course and kicked in a short burn to change his vector. “It’s safe. You can come out now,” he said.
Natalya and Zoya came out of his office and settled around the galley table.
“I still don’t understand why all the sleight of hand,” Zoya said.
“Give it a few ticks,” Panko said.
“Do you know?” Zoya asked Natalya.
“I think so.” She shrugged. “Somebody’s in for a hell of a surprise and they’re not going to be happy about it.”
“Yeah,” Zoya said. “That part I get, but what about—”
“Serendipity, Tortuga Control. Over.”
Panko’s eyebrows rose. “That was fast.” He keyed the mic. “Tortuga Control, Serendipity. Over.”
“Serendipity, Tortuga Control. You are directed to dock soonest at High Tortuga. Over.”
His eyebrows seemed to climb higher on his forehead. “Tortuga Control, Serendipity. That’s not exactly on my way home. Can I ask what this is about? Over.”
“Serendipity, Tortuga Control. Your presence is requested as a witness in the inquiry into the aborted space trial of the ship designated Echo One. Over.”
Panko’s eyebrows finally came down as he frowned. “Tortuga Control, Serendipity. Shouldn’t the inquiry be held on Pulaski? Over.”
When the reply came, Natalya could almost hear the suppressed sigh on the other end. “Serendipity, Tortuga Control. You’ll need to take that up with the directors. I’m just the messenger. Over.”
Panko scratched his cheek, the sound of his nails on the scruff of beard clearly audible in the nearly silent cockpit. He shrugged. “Roger that, Tortuga Control. Soonest is probably thirty-something stans. Over.”
The pause ran long enough for the three of them to share puzzled shrugs before the answer came back.
“Serendipity, Tortuga Control. We’re sending an updated vector. It’ll put you here in just over twelve stans. Over.”
Panko’s console pinged as the message registered with the ship. He scowled at the screen and sighed. “Somebody high up the food chain has a rock up his nozzle.” He keyed the mic. “Roger, Tortuga Control. You’re paying for the fuel for this burn. Over.”
“Serendipity, Tortuga Control. I’m just the messenger. Contact Tortuga Local when you reach the outer markers. Control, out.”
“Serendipity, out.”
Natalya raised an eyebrow. “What’s that all about?”
“That’s going to be somebody who wants his chips back,” he said. “I thought they’d come for them at the yard.”
“If Downs is on Tortuga, it makes a certain amount of sense,” Zoya said.
“It does,” he said. “But Tony Downs doesn’t have the kind of leverage to get us rerouted on such short notice.”
“Who does?” Zoya asked.
Panko’s eyes focused somewhere else. “One of the vice directors might have that kind of pull.”
“Control said you’d have to take it up with the directors,” Natalya said.
“It’s a loose collection. Everybody from assistant through vice to full director gets lumped under the title.” He grinned. “Unless you’re in the room with a full director, and then things get real.”
“How many are there?” Zoya asked.
“Seventeen full directors, including the chairman of the board,” Panko said. “There are seven or eight divisions and each has a vice-director at the top.”
“Depends on the division. Alison is—technically—a vice-director and has full control as CEO. The yard is pretty small as divisions go. Brian Dorion is CEO of the Communications Division with a vice-director over him. I don’t know which one, offhand.”
“And assistant directors?” Zoya asked.
“Go-fers.” Panko shrugged. “I think they’re just jumped-up errand runners. They’re like directors-in-training, I think. Just along for the experience with the hope that someday they too will carry the title of director.”
“Now what do we do?” Zoya asked.
Panko didn’t look up from his console. “Now we try to get some sleep, get cleaned up, and eat. You two will have to take turns on the bunk. I can nap in the couch. Won’t be the first time.”
“Makes sense,” Natalya said. “Too bad I didn’t bring a change of shipsuit.”
“We can pick up a couple when we dock. I’ll order ahead and have them delivered.”
“Won’t somebody ask why you need two women’s shipsuits?” asked Zoya.
“That cat is going to be out of the bag as soon as we open the lock,” Panko said.
“How do you figure?” Zoya asked.
He glanced at her over his shoulder. “Station security will be waiting to escort me to the inquiry. Your presence will—undoubtedly—be discovered when they sweep the ship for evidence. You may as well come to the inquiry with me.” His mouth twisted in a sideways grin. “Nothing like having the ‘lost crew’ there to cut through the hash they’re going to sling at us.” He turned back to the console and hit a couple more keys. The stars outside the armor
glass appeared to corkscrew around as the ship adjusted attitude before the heavy thrusters in the stern began a deep rumble.
“What aren’t you saying, Ernst?” Natalya asked.
He swiveled his couch around to face them. “The inquiry is just an excuse to separate me and—by extension, you—from the ship. They’ll need to have access to the whole ship without witnesses so they can find the missing chips.”
Zoya’s head tilted sideways and she frowned. “But the chips—” She stopped in mid-sentence and her eyes widened.
Panko grinned at her. “Now you know. I didn’t expect we’d be called to the principal’s office. I thought they’d do this on Pulaski.” He shrugged. “Either way, they won’t find anything here.”
Natalya looked at Zoya. “How far behind us do you think that ship might be?”
“The one that should have picked us up back there in the Dark?”
Natalya nodded.
“Hard to say. They couldn’t have expected us to jump out,” Zoya said. “And they probably expected us to jump back to Ravaine, given our vector.”
“Too bad they spotted you. Not finding you would have delayed them more than that,” Panko said. “They couldn’t be sure you weren’t in the system and just couldn’t find you.”
“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,” Natalya said.
Panko laughed. “Rudenski still hammering that at the academy?”
“It was a few stanyers ago but she didn’t look like she was planning to retire,” Zoya said.
Panko shook his head. “She seemed ancient when I was there.” He looked back and forth between them. “You don’t seem surprised.”
“What? That you were at the academy? Or that you remembered the lessons?” Natalya asked with a grin.
“The academy.”
“Your class ring,” Zoya said. “I noticed it when you gave us the tour with Alison.”
Panko frowned and held out his hand to look at the ring. “It’s so nondescript. What gave it away?”
“I wanted that model for myself,” Zoya said. “Class of ’49 was the last year the company made them with gold. After that they used a silver inlay.”
He barked a short laugh. “I had no idea.”
“It’s the little things,” Zoya said.
“Thanks for the tip,” he said. “Now one of you should probably sack out. The next eleven and something stans are going to get used up fast.” He turned back to his console. “Clean bedding in the middle drawer under the bunk. Help yourselves.”
Zoya led the way back to Panko’s stateroom and Natalya helped her change the bed.
“Think this is overkill?” Natalya asked, shaking out the top sheet with a snap of her wrists.
“What, changing the sheets?”
“Yeah.”
Zoya shrugged. “Just being polite. Honestly, I probably wouldn’t have noticed. I’m about ready to drop.”
Panko’s voice echoed down the passageway, barely audible over the roar of the kickers. “Feel free to use the clothes ’fresher while you’re sleeping.”
Natalya spotted it tucked into a corner by the door to the head. “I’ll toss these sheets in. Wanna give me your shipsuit?”
Zoya finished tucking in the blanket and shrugged. She pulled everything out of the pockets and stripped down completely, tossing her clothes to Natalya before slipping between the sheets. “May as well do all the laundry,” she said.
Natalya grinned, fed the clothing and sheets into the cleaning unit and clicked off the lights on her way out. “Sleep well. See you in six.”
Chapter 42
Ravaine
2366, June 1
ZOYA STARED AT THE station as they closed on High Tortuga. Fat towers projected above and below a plane. The immense scale of it made understanding the perspective difficult. As they made their final approach to the docking gallery, she asked, “How big is that thing?”
“The basic structure is a three-story sandwich with engineering and life support in the middle,” Panko said. “The towers hold the work spaces for administration, data, and finance.”
“They’re not really gold, are they?” Zoya asked.
Panko chuckled. “No. It’s an alloy mostly made of copper, iron, and steel. They mined it all out of the Viceroy systems. It was plentiful and cheap.”
“How many people live there?”
“Don’t know,” Panko said. “I’m sure the administration there knows, but nobody else does.”
“Estimate?” Zoya asked.
“Something over a hundred million,” Panko said. “Not sure how much over but I’ve seen speculation that it’s closer to a billion.” He snorted. “Dark-channel conspiracy stuff.”
“Serendipity, High Tortuga Local. Divert to dock four-seven-three. Hold at ten meters.”
“Roger, Local. Four-seven-three. Hold at ten meters.”
“What’s that about?” Zoya asked.
“It’s just two doors down,” Natalya said. “Maybe they overloaded four-seven-five.”
“Probably somebody botched a landing or takeoff,” Panko said. “With that much traffic, they have at least one docking emergency a day.”
“That’s comforting,” Zoya said.
“It’s seldom anything serious,” Panko said. “Landing too close to the doors. Trying to take off before the bay is ready. Just enough to screw up schedules.” Panko adjusted their course to line up with the new dock and eased it in, coming to zero delta-v at precisely ten meters. Keying the mic, he said, “High Tortuga Local, Serendipity on station. Over.”
“Roger, Serendipity. Proceed on green. High Tortuga Local, out.”
“Not exactly chatty,” Zoya said.
“Look at short-range,” Panko said, nodding at the window on his console. “With that many contacts, there’s not a lot of time to be chatty.”
Zoya’s eyes practically bulged from her face. “They’re not all on our channel, I take it.”
Panko laughed. “Hardly. Nobody would be able to hear anything. I have no idea how many operators work in Local, but it’s more than a dozen per watch around the clock.”
The flashing red light above the lock turned green as the doors opened. Panko gave the thrusters a little goose to get them moving and the ship slid into the lock. In a matter of a few ticks, the cycle completed. The docking bay held a dozen or more landing pads, three or four of them empty—one had flashing green arrows. Panko scooted the small ship over the pad and followed the guide signal down. As soon as he secured the engines, a short squad of armed and uniformed personnel entered the bay and lined up beside the ship.
“Welcoming committee?” Natalya asked.
“Not exactly,” Panko said. “Are you ready to do some derailing?”
“Derailing?” Zoya asked.
“You two are missing, presumed dead. Having you show up at the inquiry should derail whatever plans they have for me.”
A light cargo hauler scooted into the bay, stopping behind the line of security guards. The operator jumped down and started an animated conversation with a frowning man who didn’t appear to be interested in whatever he was selling.
After a few moments of the operator’s pointing to the ship being answered by head shakes, Panko said, “We should go bail him out.” He climbed out of the couch and headed aft toward the lock.
Natalya and Zoya followed along and waited out of sight in the passageway until the lock doors opened, flooding the interior with station air that smelled of hot metal and hydraulic fluid.
The squad leader met him at the lock. “Mr. Panko?”
“Yeah. Reporting as ordered.”
“We’ll escort you to your destination. If you’d follow me?”
“Of course, but could you allow that guy through your line? He’s got some things we need.”
“Everything you need will be provided,” the man said.
“I’m sure, but my passengers need fresh clothing.”
“Passengers?”
Natalya followed Zoya out to the boarding ramp and stood behind Panko.
The squad leader stared at them with raised eyebrows and a smirking leer. “We weren’t told you had any passengers.”
“I’m not surprised,” Panko said.
The squad leader waved the delivery guy in. “What’s in the package?” he asked.
“Shipsuits. Skivvies,” the guy said.
“You have any objection if I look?”
The guy shrugged and handed it over. “No skin off my back.”
“What do you think?” Panko asked. “We’re having booze delivered or something?”
“Can’t be too careful,” the squad leader said, weighing the compact bundle in his hands before giving it to him.
“I need a thumb,” the guy said. He held up a tablet and Panko pressed his thumb to it. The guy nodded. “Thanks and—uh—good luck.” He looked around at the gathered security detail. He opened his mouth as if to say something else but apparently thought better of it and scooted back down the ramp and onto his carry-all.
“I assume you’ll want them to come along?” Panko asked with a nod toward Natalya and Zoya.
“Do they know anything about the ship and the pilot who died?”
Panko looked at Zoya. “She looks pretty lively to me.”
The man looked at Zoya and back at Panko. “What are you saying? She’s the pilot?”
“Well, to be honest,” Zoya said. “Natalya and I were both on the ship when things started going wrong.”
The squad leader shook his head. “I need to check in.”
“Thought you might,” Panko said. “Gives them time to put on the fresh clothing before we’re hauled into a room full of big shots.”
The security officer raised his eyebrows at that but shrugged and turned away, keying his communicator and stepping off the ramp.
Panko waved his passengers back into the ship and followed on their heels. He keyed the inner door closed and grinned. “You can use my stateroom to get changed. Or the head if you’d prefer.”
“Think our coming back from the dead is going to make a difference?” Natalya asked.
Panko shrugged. “It’s grit in the gears, if nothing else. Whoever set this up is not expecting a counter-narrative. You’re firsthand witnesses to what happened to the ship. It’s going to be hard to argue with your testimony.”