The Complete Razia Series, page 39
"Harman," Lizbeth said, sitting back. "But I had so much more, on my laptop that was stolen. I mean, Contestant's pirates have been hijacking government ships for months now, I had all of the case reports where pirates had specifically hit ships owned by certain companies—"
"Salazar," Lyssa said, looking back at Lizbeth suddenly. "Back in your office, I read a case report from a few months ago where Relleck hijacked a ship owned by Salazar. It was the same company that owned the ship he stole the other day." She unhooked her mini-computer and tossed it to Lizbeth. "Go look it up. Guy's name was Angelino Moses."
"Thank Leveman's Vortex for that steel-trap mind of yours," Lizbeth grinned to Vel who was shaking his head.
"So what's next for you two?"
"You're wrong, Lyss," Lizbeth said, cutting Vel off with a puzzled tone.
"What?" Lyssa said, turning around on her chair. "Wrong about what?"
"It says here the company he worked for is called Gabi—not Salazar."
"That's not right," Lyssa said, getting up and walking over to take her mini-computer.
Angelino, Moses
Time of Transaction
Location
Amount
UT20015-04—10-90:45
Transport Station
G-279
15C
UT20015-04-10-90:40
Transport Station
G-279
100000C
UT20015-04-01-50:47
Universal Savings Grocery
W-346267
4000C
UT20015-04-01-00:00
PAYCHECK
GABI SHIPPING
10000C
"That's not the same company that I saw," Lyssa said, her brows furrowed. "I remember specifically it was Salazar, because I saw the same one on your desk."
"Can't be," Lizbeth said. "Universal Bank transactions are always right."
"No, I'm always right," Lyssa said, sitting back down at the computer, perplexed.
Her thoughts were interrupted by impatient rapping on her glass lab door. Dorst stood outside with his usual frown. Lyssa pushed aside her thoughts and walked over to the door, cracking it only a hair.
"Can I help you?" she drawled with an overly dramatic look on her face.
"Let him in, Lyssa," Vel snapped from behind her. "Don't be rude."
She made a huge show of rolling her eyes and opened the sliding glass door all the way, allowing Dorst to walk into the laboratory. She slumped back into her chair and made her best attempt to ignore him.
"Yes, well, thank you, Vel," Dorst said, pausing to look at Lizbeth curiously. "Who are you?"
"None of your business," Lyssa replied, adding more data points to her presentation. "Did you stick me in the planet line up today or what?"
"No, I didn't," Dorst said sternly. "You still haven't completed any of your license renewals, nor had your booster shots, and you've missed five scheduled career appointments with me."
"And I still don't care," Lyssa replied. "Put me in the line-up."
"Not until you at least get your booster shots," Dorst growled back. "You are in danger of infecting this entire station."
"Ew, really?" Lizbeth said, making a face.
"I'm sorry, who are you?" Dorst asked.
"Person I'm working on a side project with," Lyssa said, cutting of Lizbeth before she could say anything. "Lizbeth, this is my idiot supervisor, Dorst."
"And your older brother," Dorst insisted.
"Oh, really? Admitting that now?" Lyssa drawled sarcastically. "Here I thought I was disowned. That's what Jukin said anyways."
"When did you go see Jukin?" Dorst asked.
"When I found out he stole my inheritance." Lyssa was angry at Jukin on so many levels. Stealing her inheritance was a pittance compared to the burning hatred she felt when she thought about Tauron. Even that paled in comparison to how she felt when Jukin didn't even recognize her. Even after seeing Lyssa in his office, and then Razia a few weeks later, he failed to make the connection.
And yet, her anger turned to curiosity as she pondered how he was uninterested in hearing Lizbeth's evidence on the conspiracy. When they saw him on S-864, he seemed almost smug, and he had mentioned that pirates wouldn't have their protections for much longer. Hope sprung eternal, she supposed, but it was odd how confident he felt that whatever stupid plan he was concocting was going to work.
"He…he stole your inheritance?" Dorst gaped, bringing her thoughts back into the room. "But how? That money was earmarked for you only."
"Being Captain of the Special Forces has its perks, I guess," Lyssa said, purposefully typing more in her presentation.
"I'm sorry," Dorst whispered. "Do you need money? I can transfer some of mine—"
"I wouldn't if you'd just put me in the damned planet line up today!" Lyssa scowled, completely ignoring his overture.
"Fine," Dorst said, pulling his own mini-computer own of his pocket and typing into it. "You're in for today. Now when can I expect you to complete your professional development plan?"
"When I feel like it," Lyssa said with an overabundance of sass. "I've got more important things to worry about right now."
"I'll try to convince her," Vel spoke up.
Dorst looked appreciative. "Thanks, Vel. How's your girlfriend doing?"
Lyssa's hand thunked on the desk and she spun around in her chair. "So he knows?"
"Well, I mean, he's here and…"
"God in Leveman's Vortex, does everyone know but me?"
"Well, he did bring her home last weekend to meet the family," Dorst said, ignoring Vel's frantic movements to stop talking.
"Oh," Lyssa said, looking at Vel. "You went back to the Manor last weekend?"
Vel sighed loudly. "Yes, but I promise you, I—"
"You know what? We're fighting," Lyssa sneered at Vel before turning back around to furiously type at her computer.
"What does that mean?" Dorst asked, glancing between Vel and Lizbeth.
"Normally it means that she's not going to talk to me for two or three days," Vel said, sounding annoyed. "Then she'll pout for a while, throwing me mean glances and finally forgive me by the fourth or fifth day. Usually by the sixth she'll have forgotten—"
He wasn't able to finish that thought as a dusty old microscope went whizzing by his head.
***
"You know, if I didn't know any better, I'd say you were a real scientist and not a spoiled three-year-old," Lizbeth said, meeting Lyssa on the side of the stage after her presentation.
"Would you like to see my degree?" Lyssa replied, giving her a look as they walked into the buyers' room together. The linoleum was peeling in the corners of the room, and there were marks where chairs had been scraped across the floor. It had that same funny musty smell of too much air conditioning in a small space.
"So this is where the magic happens, huh?" Lizbeth asked, eyeing the walls. "Geez, you'd think they would spring some money to update the decor in here."
"Why would they do that when there's pollination pattern studies to fund?" Lyssa replied as planet buyers came trickling into the room.
"So how much do you think you'll get?"
"This planet should net me enough credits to cover my expenses for a few weeks," Lyssa said, before adding with a smirk, "as long as I don't leave my ship in an expensive dock for three days again."
Lyssa intended for that barb to go to Lizbeth, but the latter had her eyes set on a prospector who had just walked into the room. The devilishly handsome planet buyer from Antica's old company took a seat in the back of the room, his dark grey suit clinging to his frame, his hair lazily falling into his eyes.
"Yummy," Lizbeth purred. "I'd go to school to study that attractive specimen right there…"
Lyssa looked away, hoping that he wouldn't notice her fawning again. However, the handsome man was ignoring Lyssa in favor of Lizbeth, eyeing her with the same type of appraising look that Lizbeth was giving him. Lyssa shoved down the jealous feelings; who wouldn't choose Lizbeth over her anyway?
"Oh what, him?"
"Yeah him," Lizbeth said, nudging her and noticing the flush on her cheeks. "You like him, don't you?"
"I mean, he's whatever."
"Whatever to me means you are interested in getting in his pants, because that's how you described the one sexual encounter—"
Lyssa cut her off with a wave of her hand. "Why are you so interested in my sex life?"
"Or lack thereof?" Lizbeth taunted. "Because you need to have more fun in your life."
"I have plenty of fun," Lyssa replied. "And why do you care?"
"Excavating planets and hunting pirates? That's not fun; it's work. Leveman's, even when you went to Eamon's, you were working!"
"Yes, and that's fun enough for me."
"I think you're just lonely."
"I'm not lonely," Lyssa gasped and stared at Lizbeth as if she had two heads. Two of the planet prospectors looked at her curiously. "I'm happy being alone."
"If you were happy being alone, you would have been happy for Vel that he had a new girlfriend instead of being jealous," Lizbeth said. "Ergo: lonely."
"No, I'm angry because the little shit lied to me."
"I have a feeling that you would have reacted the same way if he'd told you the truth immediately," Lizbeth said. "He obviously cares a lot about you, and I don't think he'd ever do anything to intentionally hurt you."
"I'm not…having this conversation with you right now," Lyssa said, annoyed that the planet buyers weren't sitting down so she could start the auction.
"Seriously," Lizbeth said, leaning over her shoulder. "If you were to go over to that guy right now and tell him to take you out tonight, he would do it."
"No, he wouldn't, because he's married."
"Aha!" Lizbeth exclaimed loud enough for the planet buyers to glance over again. "Thank you for proving my point. You're interested."
"How does me noticing he's married prove that I'm interested?" Lyssa asked uncomfortably.
"Because if you weren't interested, you wouldn't have noticed he was married."
"I'm gonna sell this planet now," Lyssa said, standing up so she could get away from Lizbeth's prying questions.
"Suit yourself," Lizbeth winked flirtatiously at the handsome man.
Lyssa cleared her throat loudly. "Let's start the bidding at one hundred…"
"One hundred five."
"One hundred ten!"
"One hundred twenty!"
***
The planet sold for two hundred thousand credits to a young buyer who clearly had no idea what he was doing, as the planet was barely worth fifteen thousand. Still, he happily handed over his C-card to pay for his purchase, and Lyssa was happy to receive two hundred thousand credits. The handsome prospector had stopped bidding at one hundred fifty and promptly left the moment the planet was sold.
Lyssa thought about the handsome man on the way back to her ship, mulling over what Lizbeth had said about her being lonely. Sure, he was gorgeous and smelled like she wanted to go somewhere private with him, but he seemed to be a real asshole from the ten minutes they'd spent in the same room together. Besides, he was married, and he was probably too handsome for her anyway. Everyone in that company seemed to come from the same well-dressed, planet snatching stock like Antica Mikaelsson.
She thought about the stern, heel-clacking, pearl-wearing woman who had been such a formidable foe the year before. From their limited interactions, Lyssa was sure that Antica wouldn't be happy unless she were in the thick of things, barking orders at subordinates. So why would she—knowingly and seemingly happily—take a job out on a desolate planet where the only person she could bark orders to was a sweet secretary? Even if the money were good, there seemed to be no good reason why she would willingly give up such a fast-paced lifestyle.
Along that same thought, why would a company, Wedekind Planetary Services, construct only one building on a planet? Antica had said they were in contracts for fifteen more, but there were no cranes, no building materials left on the planet. It was as if they finished the one tower and decided that was enough. If they were planning to build more, wouldn't they have at least left the equipment? Moving that number of cranes, tools—it would have been less expensive to just leave it there, even if they never returned.
She slowed her walking, pondering this idea for a moment as another popped into her head.
What if the one tower was all they intended to build?
After all, Delmur had been delivering cargo to S-6642 for months when she caught up with him. She had assumed she spooked him enough to create new aliases, explaining why the four she had discovered when hunting him the first time now lay dormant. Thinking back on the actual encounter, he seemed relatively unconcerned with her, definitely not worried enough to go through the trouble of creating new aliases.
"What are you thinking about?" Lizbeth asked.
"Delmur," Lyssa said slowly. "What if he stopped delivering cargo to S-6642 because his job was done?"
"But we didn't see any cargo there?" Lizbeth replied. "It was just an empty building?"
"What if the building was it?"
"Okay, yes, but…why? Why go through all that trouble to build a single tower on an uninhabited planet? And if you're going to do that, why go through the trouble of hiring a new executive vice president for operations to leave her all by herself?"
"All good questions, and I think I know someone who can answer them for us."
"Who? Delmur? You said you couldn't find him again. You said all of his accounts were dormant since you captured him?"
"Yeah, but I know someone who knows exactly where Delmur is," Lyssa said. "Because he knows everything."
CHAPTER TWELVE
"Hi Harms!" Razia chirped as she and Lizbeth slid into Harms' booth.
"Leveman's Vortex, Razia, you scared me!" Harms said, one hand over his heart. He quickly turned off the tablet that he had been looking at. She thought she saw the pirate intraweb, but couldn't get a good look at it before the screen went blank.
Harms, however, had taken notice of the second woman in the booth.
"I'd heard you were running around with a new friend." Harms reached across the table to shake Lizbeth's hand. "The name's John Harms, pleasure to meet you."
"Lizbeth Carter." She shook his hand firmly.
"And you, little missy, are in a lot of trouble," Harms said, suddenly pointing his finger at Razia. "Dissident is not pleased that you're poking your nose into all of this stuff. Said it was much easier when you were just bounty hunting."
"Yeah, well he's never happy with me anyways, so what does it matter?" Razia shrugged.
"It matters because you've pissed off some very wealthy benefactors," Harms said, "who have threatened to cut everyone off from the millions of credits they were promised."
"What can you tell us about them?" Lizbeth asked.
"Oh no. No way. I'm not helping you dig your own grave. These men are serious and you could get hurt," Harms said, looking at Razia. "And by hurt, I mean killed."
"We know," Razia said. "Trust me, I've already been threatened with a gun more than once during this little fiasco."
"Then why are you still digging?" Harms asked incredulously.
"Because I have a job to do," Lizbeth said.
"And I can't find any pirates anyways. They've all created new aliases," Razia said. "That, or they've completely disappeared."
"What with nosy bounty hunters breaking into their supposedly secret pirate meetings, perhaps they don't want you two showing up," Harms said.
"Can you tell us what they've been contracted to do?" Lizbeth asked.
"You didn't hear in the meeting?" Harms asked, a smile twitching at his mouth. "Or did that happen after you were thrown out in your mini-skirts?"
"Oh, get sucked," Razia huffed. "We know they're hijacking government ships, we just don't know where."
"All over really," Harms said. "N-42653, S-4296, and N-38324 are the three main ones though. The guys are intercepting the cargo nearby and dropping it off on the planet. Once the insurance company completes their investigation and the company gets paid for their supposedly missing cargo, they'll pay the pirates."
"Has anyone been paid yet?" Lizbeth asked.
"Conboy Conrad said he got paid, but I think he's bluffing, I didn't see any money in his accounts," Harms said.
"Do you know of any of the aliases they're using?" Razia asked. To Harms' curious face, she replied, "I only want to talk to them."
"Unfortunately, no," Harms said. "Everybody has been so wrapped up in this thing that nobody's had time to stop by and talk to me about what's going on. So your guess is as good as mine. I can't even figure out why the runners aren't announcing the hijackings in the pirate intraweb."
"Do you think they're just pulling the records or…" Razia trailed off. "Do you think the insurance companies aren't getting notified?"
Harms cocked his head. "What makes you say that?"
"If no one's getting paid for the jobs, maybe it's because the insurance companies haven't been notified."
"I'm sure they are," Harms said. "Otherwise, why else would they have asked the pirates to go through all this trouble?"
"That's what we're trying to figure out," Lizbeth said. "Did you know about Relleck?"
"Relleck?" Harms shook his head. "What's he got to do with this?"
"He's got his own special deal," Razia said. "Transporting guns from G-279 to S-864."
"What?" Harms said, sounding genuinely surprised. "I haven't heard anything about anyone transporting guns!"
"And we saw one of the two guys from the secret pirate meeting in Relleck's gun hideout," Razia said. "Which means that the rest of the pirates might also be transporting guns."
Harms' brows furrowed. "Did Relleck know what he was transporting?"
"He didn't seem too surprised when a box of them cracked open," Razia said.
"Contestant's pirates have been hitting a specific set of government ships for months," Lizbeth said with a nod. "It's how I originally got involved. Cree Hardrict was another one acting strangely."
