Kimo and the other seconds in command were not invited to this meeting, and even though I have every right to be here as a captain, I feel out of place. I know these people are supposed to be on my side, but we’re here because of trouble with my ship and everyone knows it. Like Alana said, I’m kind of ruining the party. I hold up a finger. “Sorry about being a party pooper.”
Several heads turn to look at me, but Alana’s expression is blank and no one says a word. My finger slowly fades down, and I sit farther back in my seat, trying to square my shoulders and appear as unaffected as she does. It’s pretty much impossible since I feel like a complete gloob right now.
Alana clears her throat. “It has been brought to our attention that your ship, Captain Cass, has some devices onboard that might be a problem for the rest of us. Would you care to elucidate?”
I nod at her awesome vocabulary. “I’d be happy to elucidate.” I tried really hard not to mess that word up, but I’m afraid my drunk tongue had a problem with it. Not that I heard anything wrong with my performance, but Beltz and the guy who must be Romulus, head of the Arcadia clan, are trying to hide smiles.
Ignoring them, I continue. “I probably should have done a sweep while I was still at the Centurion 4 Station where I took ownership, but I was in a hurry to get out of there, and then I ran into these guys … ” I gesture at Beltz. “Anyway, long story short, I did a sweep and found all kinds of crap on my ship that shouldn’t be there.”
Someone starts to laugh and then stops immediately, but I can’t pinpoint who it was.
“Care to clarify what you mean by ‘crap’?” Alana says with exaggerated patience.
I’m both embarrassed and pissed. She’s acting like she’s my parent or trainer or something. I know I’m young, but that doesn’t make me stupid. Okay, so I am a little drunk, but still. I deserve some respect. I’m flying a DS, aren’t I?
“Crap? Hmmm, let’s see.” I put my finger to my lip and look up at the corner of the room. “Two bombs, three listening devices, and one tracker.” I look back down at the group, no longer messing around. “That’s what I call crap. And for the record, at least two of those devices were planted by that guy.” I point at Beltz. “And his little cousin, who, by the way, is going to get jacked up by yours truly after this party is over.”
“Ssssshh … daaaamn,” mumbles Kaiholo. “Somebody put a bee in somebody’s flightsuit today.”
He’s not wrong about that, so I don’t respond. I just wait for Queen Bossy Pants Alana to pass judgment on me. I’m trying really hard not to scowl too, because captains should play their emotions closer to the chest. I think I read that somewhere.
Alana looks at Beltz, her brows drawn together in anger. “Is this true? Did you put devices on her ship?”
My eyes go wide at this new development. Here I thought she was going to tell me I deserved it, but no; she’s pissed, and it’s not at me. Hooray! Girl power!
“Maybe,” Beltz says.
“There’s no ‘maybe’ about it,” Romulus says. “Either you did or you didn’t.”
That’s two on my side! Booyah!
Beltz shrugs. “So, I did. Kill me for it. I was looking out for the Alliance. It was all under control.”
Alana shakes her head. “No. Not acceptable.” She turns her attention to me. “As a member of the Alliance, you are entitled to your privacy at all times. It’s key to our relationship being one of trust and open-mindedness.” She gestures at the people around the table. “We are free to be who we are without fear of oversight or reprisal from our friends, an ideal which can only be secured by the privacy afforded one another.” She’s back to glaring at Beltz. “So what Beltz has done is a direct violation of our tenets.”
Beltz stands, a vein in his neck starting to bulge out. My jaw just kind of falls open and stays that way as I take in his power. He is pretty damn big and amazing when viewed from this angle, I have to say. He’d probably squash me in bed, though. That wouldn’t be good.
I have to blink several times and look away to get my brain back to the meeting and out of his pants. This is so not like me to imagine myself with men I work with. It’s got to be that fruity stuff I drank.
“Now, you listen to me, Alana. And you people here too.” Beltz points around the room before his finger lands on me. “This girl was not yet a part of the Alliance when we began to surveil her. It was the smart thing to do, to watch her and make sure she was not sent here as a spy.” He pauses, but he’s not done yet. The sweat has just started to bead up on his forehead. “As you know, we had a device stolen from us not long ago. Who took it exactly, we did not know. We had our suspicions, but until we found it and the person possessing it, we did not know who to blame or who to trust. I do not apologize for doing what we did, because it was necessary for the safety of our people and our group. For the Alliance. So you try to float me now.” He folds his arms across his chest and lifts his chin at us. “I would like to see you try, anyway.”
I stand and hold out my arms, partially to silence the shouting I suspect is coming and partially to keep myself from falling over, because getting on my feet and staying there is a lot more challenging than I expected it to be. That drink is really doing a number on me. “Hey!”
All the heads swivel in my direction.
“Hey! Everyone! Hello!” Now that I’m steady and have everyone’s attention, I’m not sure why I even called out. But when I see Beltz standing there looking all badass, and then that worried tic at the corner of his eye, I remember. I have to save my big, scary-hot friend — the dumbass who was thinking about maybe blowing me up. Ha, ha! Ain’t life grand?
Chapter Nineteen
“I’M HERE TO … UH … VOUCH for Beltz.” I wait for a response, but get none, so I continue. “He’s right about a lot of things.” I point at him and glare. “Not everything! But some things.”
A tiny smile comes out on his face and his arms drop to his sides, his fingers loosening from the fists they were in.
I look at the others. “I showed up out of nowhere with the OSG on my ass. Romulus probably told you I was trying to get water and they were demanding that I pay some stupid tax, which no way in the Dark is that ever going to happen.” I snort, just thinking about their utter gall. “Anyway,” I jerk myself back to the present, “we got to talking, Beltz and me, and he figured out that the missing slaphammer …”
“Schlafhammer!” Beltz roars. “Why can’t any of you remember that? It is not for slapping, it is for sleeping. That is why we call it the schlafhammer.” He falls into his seat, disgusted with all of us for some stupid reason.
I point at him and frown, looking at the others for answers. “Did he, or did he not, just say schlaf and not sleep?”
Kaiholo nods. “He did.”
I shrug because Beltz is the dummy, not me. “Should’ve called it the sleephammer if you wanted people to remember it.” I wave my hand in front of my face to move that subject away. “Whatever. Who cares. We’ll call it the chicken guts. Since people like listening to me without my knowledge, it’s probably better if we use a code word anyway.” I huff out some air and try again. I’m feeling a little sick to my stomach, but I have to ignore it and get this stuff out before I explode with frustration. “Anyway, we had a conversation about the chicken guts, which I didn’t even realize I had, seeing as how I told my lieutenant to throw the chicken itself into the incinerator, and … blah! I’m sure you know the rest.” I wave my hand around again, trying to clear my head and the conversation up a little. “So, anyway, we have the … guts. He gave us another chicken to cover its effects, and it’s in the freezer.”
I sigh loudly before continuing. “I later learned from my stowaway and this fat fuck pirate, Captain Boob, he was working with, that it was Tremblay who was hiding the chicken guts, who’d somehow stolen it from one of you …” I pause to give them the somebody-fucked-up look. “… And he was trying to get it back from me because he’d left it in his bunk. But we lost h
im in a wormhole, and Captain Boob failed to steal it from me later when he caught up with us, so here we are.”
I look around at all the faces at the table, moving on because I’m on a roll, and I know if I quit now I’ll never get this out tonight again. So much booze, so little time … “It’s true that I’m former OSG. I was born into it, so I can’t help where I came from, but I’m never going back there again, I can promise you that.” I put my hand on my forehead as a headache threatens to join the party. “I had other things to say too, but I can’t remember what they were.”
“You mentioned other devices,” Alana says helpfully. Her voice carries pity with it now, if I’m not mistaken. It’s kind of hard to see her from here, because my eyes have gotten all watery. I try to wipe the wetness away, but more tears come. Dammit. Tears from drinking? How inconvenient is that? I’ll never get a date now. A flash of Beltz runs across my mind as I entertain these thoughts. What craziness is this?
“Yeah. Right.” I hold up a finger, the light orb going off in my head and thankfully clearing out naughty thoughts of the man down the table from me. “I have no idea what those other devices were put there for. I mean, I know what they’re for, but I don’t know who put them there. OSG was on my ship for a water inspection, so it could have been them, although I doubt they had the time to get it done, and I don’t think any of them were left unsupervised or given access to the flightdeck. The ship was owned by Langlade before, so the bomb under the chair was probably meant for him, not me. No one had the time or the opportunity to put one under there for me.”
“There’re probably plenty of people who’d love to put a bomb under Langlade’s butt,” Romulus says.
Everyone around the table laughs a little.
“Not me! He anted up his ship, and I won. He can stay alive forever as far as I’m concerned. He’s got two other ships … ” I grin, imagining a whole fleet of DSes at my beck and call.
“Is there any truth to the rumor that your givit game was fixed?” Alana asks me.
My happy mood dissipates like a fart let loose behind a thruster. “Who said that? Who told you that?” I’m so pissed that I keep hearing this. I won that ship fair and square, dammit!
She shrugs. “One of my girls mentioned it. She picked it up somewhere.”
Whore spies. Awesome. Maybe later I’m going to love that about them, but right now, it just ticks me off. “I heard that rumor too, but I can tell you that Langlade was angry and surprised that I won, so I don’t think he was in on any plan to give me his ship. And he tried to come back less than an hour later while I was still docked, to claim the ship as his. I had to prove ownership to the local authority before I was allowed to leave.”
The captains are nodding, frowning, looking at each other. All of us, including me, are trying to make sense of this nonsense.
“Maybe he was desperate to get back on the ship to retrieve the … chicken guts,” offers Kaiholo, winking at me.
I shrug. “Maybe. But it was Tremblay who had the chicken in his bunk, which was a terrible place to store it considering he had the deep freeze available, and that the thing stunk bad. That tells me he wanted to keep his eye on it and didn’t trust putting it where other crew or the captain could get to it. And he’s the one who went ballistic when I tried to leave without letting him onboard one last time to get his things.” I lean in closer. “The only thing he had in that room was the damn chicken. I think he’d cleared out everything else before the day I came onboard.” I nod, wondering for the first time if Tremblay was the one who fixed the game between Langlade and me and was ready to abandon ship before Langlade had even entered the bar.
“You said both of them were trying to get back onto the ship, right?” Romulus asks.
“Yes. But Tremblay was the most vocal and most aggressive. And I learned from my stowaway that Tremblay said in a bar one night that he had this device that was going to bring people to their knees.”
“So he definitely knew about the device and what it was capable of, but that doesn’t mean Langlade knew,” Alana says.
“Ach, we know you are in love with the man, Alana, but you cannot defend him if he meant to play dirty tricks with us.”
Beltz is clearly calling her out, and if her responding glare is any indicator, she’s none too happy about it. I sit down to watch the thrusters flare, just glad they’re not aimed at me.
She slams her fist down on the table. “Stop bringing my love life into the conversation, Beltz! It’s irrelevant. If you want into my bed so badly, just ask!”
He laughs as he leans way back in his chair and swivels it slowly left and right. “Alana, the day I am in your bed is the day you have clubbed me over the head and dragged me there unconscious.”
She opens her mouth to let him have it, but Kaiholo has different ideas. He stands and roars loud enough that I have to cover my ears to stop the pain.
“Arrrrr! Enough!” He’s done but the echoes aren’t. When I drop my hands away, I hear them pinging off the few surfaces that aren’t covered in silk.
“Do we really need to go over this again?” He glares at Alana first and then at Beltz. “We get it, okay? You’re both sexually frustrated. Get over it. We have more important things to deal with today.” He’s sweating with the effort of making peace. He points at me. “This young lady has some housecleaning to do. We are going to help her do it. And tonight, before we go back into that party, we are going to make a plan for our next moves.” He rubs his hands together. “I don’t know about you, but I want some of that delicious food that her green goddess has provided, so we need to get this business taken care of without any more drama to slow us down.”
He spares a quick smile for me before continuing on a serious note. “We should not bicker like small children. Time is short, and we are all marked. Let us not be merely smart; let us be wise. Place the needs of the whole over the needs of the individual.” He looks to Beltz and Alana, bending over as if he’s going to sit. “Are we agreed?”
Beltz shrugs, and looks away from Alana. “I am agreed. I am always agreed. I prefer to talk business than pleasure. Always.”
Alana sits back in her chair. She’s still fuming, but she’s playing it cool. “Fine.” She makes a graceful gesture. “By all means, continue.”
I clap my hands. “So! Housecleaning. I’m down with that. Up with it, too. Great idea. When can we start?”
Everyone chuckles and all the bodies around me loosen up. Elbows move to the table or arms of chairs, and legs cross. The mood gets instantly lighter, and I suffer another craving for a cold drink from the punch bowl that’s outside this meeting room.
“Ah, young blood,” Romulus says, looking at his friends. “I think this is something we needed in here.”
When everyone nods and looks in my direction, I realize he means me. I’m the young blood. It’s the first time in a group of important people that I’ve felt entirely welcome.
I grin and give them a thumbs up. “Excellent. Young blood. Let’s get started.” I look around. “Is there any more of that punch in here?”
Chapter Twenty
THE IDEA OF MAKING PLANS and going back to the party is a real draw, but as these people around me start talking about coming onto my ship and doing a cleanup and a tour of the biogrid, I start getting antsy. I feel like I’m selling them a bill of goods that’s been mislabeled.
I clear my throat once, twice, and then a third time. I can’t seem to get it working properly. Romulus notices my distress and leans over to tap me on the back.
“You okay?”
The group stops talking and focuses on my answer.
I nod. “Yeah.” My first attempt at speaking doesn’t work well, so I clear my throat one more time and try again. “Yeah!” Placing my hand on my throat, I keep going, hoping I won’t sound like a strangled goat for too much longer.
“There’s just a couple things I need to get out in the open before we really get rolling here.”
Bel
tz swivels his chair toward me. “More secrets?”
I shake my head. “No, not more secrets. Not exactly. Maybe.” I hate being so confused. “They were secrets from me until recently, and in the interest of full disclosure, I think you should know what they are. They might change your ideas about what should be done on my ship.” Please don’t say we need to float Tam.
“Speak your mind,” Alana says. “We’re not sitting here in judgment.” She looks at her friends. “And I think we will all agree that we’re better armed to make the right decision when we have all the information at hand.”
Heads nod around the table.
“Okay, then. Here it goes …” I huff out a sigh and stare at the table as I deliver my bad news. “I found out today that one of my engineers is a shadow. I also found out that the stowaway formerly known as Rollo is actually an old friend of mine from the OSG named Macon.”
“Did you say OSG?” Beltz asks. His tone is deceptively calm.
I look at him as I answer. “Formerly OSG. Big difference. He and I were matched during Level Ten. In the pit. I didn’t kill him in the end, but I nearly did. I never saw him again after that day. Turns out, he somehow made it out of there like I did, and he’s been hitchhiking around the galaxy for three years.”
“And he just showed up on your ship randomly, or did he have a plan to be there?” Romulus asks, his eyebrows up near his hairline.
“I believe he had a plan, but I’m not sure how much of it was aimed at me personally. He heard about the chicken guts at a bar one night and worked out a plan with this pirate Captain Bob to come onto the Anarchy to get it. I honestly don’t know if he made the plan before or after I was captain, or if me being captain figured into his plans at all.”
“You didn’t ask him?” Alana says, her tone mocking.
“Of course I asked him.” Duh. “But he’s not telling me everything right now. He will, though.” I wish I believed that completely, but the doubt I have comes through in my voice.