Ghost Pirate Gambit, page 9
“I almost died in the Battle of Tannis,” Lasadi says. “Our ship was hit, and Jay was able to get a distress call out. Some of Nico Garnet’s mercenaries picked us up and took us back to Ironfall. I woke up there after a few weeks in a regen tank.”
“So that’s how you got started working for Nico?”
Lasadi lifts her left shoulder, feels the tight stretch of scar tissue. “Basically, yeah.” She clears her throat. “When I could finally stay awake for more than a few minutes, I made them bring me a terminal. I found out I was presumed dead. I should have reached out to my family, but the first person I messaged was Anton. We were — I thought he would be worried about me. I thought we were . . .”
No way in hell is she going to say in love. She finishes the shot of jienja instead.
“What did he say?” Ruby asks.
“Nothing, at first. But I saw the press conference he’d held during peace negotiations with the Alliance and the Coruscan government, where he’d claimed my squadron was responsible for that medical transport being destroyed. He blamed it on an inexperienced captain, and took responsibility for promoting someone who obviously wasn’t ready.”
“It wasn’t your people,” Ruby points out. “And he can fuck off.”
Lasadi’s hand is shaking as she takes another drink. Ruby lifts the empty bottle to the bartender for another round of tiny beers.
“He was doing what was best for the cause,” Lasadi says. “But when he finally did respond, he said I should never come back to Corusca. That my family had held banishing.” And at Ruby’s puzzled expression, “It’s basically disowning a dead relative — you’re not allowed to speak their name, there’s no place for them at the family shrine.”
“And did they?”
“I — ” Anton had told her they had; would he be mistaken? “I don’t actually know.”
“They’d be only delighted to find out you’re alive, I’d think.”
“Maybe.” Anton gains allies fast. Her own grandmother supports him in the Senate now, Lasadi has seen them smiling together at press conferences. If her grandmother believes Anton’s version of events, she may not be happy to have Lasadi back in her life.
“I’d give anything to find out I had family alive,” Ruby says. “Listen. I told Raj if you need help with Anton you’ll ask for it. To me it seems you’ve got him handled, but I’m here if you need anything.”
“Why would I need help with Anton?”
“Because he’s an abusive bastard,” Ruby says.
Lasadi shakes her head, caught off guard. “He never laid a hand on me.”
“Doesn’t mean he didn’t leave scars.” Ruby reaches a long brown finger to tap over Lasadi’s heart; warmth rushes through her body, radiating out from that spot on her sternum. “Right there. He’s our client,” Ruby continues, voice low. “We’re all professionals. We can pretend nice if it’s part of the job. But every single one of us has got your back if you need us.”
“Thank you.” The words feel wrong; Lasadi isn’t entirely sure whether it’s because she doesn’t mean them, or she doesn’t know how to believe Ruby. But before she can parse that, Ruby winks and throws her arm around Lasadi’s shoulder, squeezing her in for a hug. It’s brief, Ruby must notice how she tenses.
No one touches her any more. Jay gives her the occasional hug, but Lasadi grew up tumbling in a pile with her siblings and cousins to watch vids; she remembers walking arm in arm with her sister through a mall, talking with girlfriends with their legs thrown over each other. Even in the CLA there had been a level of fraternal touch: sleeping in close quarters, throwing arms over one another’s shoulders, finding oneself at the middle of a group hug when celebrating those little victories.
“Lotta testosterone around here.” Ruby’s tone is teasing once more; Las is back on firm ground. “We’ve got to stick together.”
“There’s Qacha. Though she’s probably a lost cause, fooling around with your little brother.”
Ruby sighs. “We’re going to have some broken hearts on our hands, aren’t we.”
“Should we try to stop them?”
Ruby laughs and lifts her beer. “You think either of them would listen?”
“Not in the slightest.” Lasadi clinks. “To making stupid decisions in love.”
“And to coming out stronger on the other side.”
Lasadi’s shoulder still tingles where the other woman’s arm had rested, and she almost reaches out for a real hug — Ruby would let her, she thinks — but a familiar voice from the entrance to the restaurant stops her.
Francis Edan has entered the restaurant, in pointed argument with a young woman with flame-red hair. She’s wearing a green silk jacket over a smart black pantsuit, her lips and fingernails the same deep maroon. She’s dressed to be memorable — and it works. Lasadi spotted her during the pilot’s orientation, pressing in on the more popular racers with her camera drone in tow.
“I’m not going to comment on any rumors,” Edan says to her, polite yet firm. “As I’ve told you repeatedly today, Ms. Sainz.”
“Is that your reporter?” Lasadi asks, and Ruby turns to look. She breaks into a grin.
“So she is — Joli Sainz took our tip and ran with it.”
“I have something more than a rumor,” Sainz says to Edan. “Can I get a comment on how your pilot, Bryant, met this evening with one of the race organizers to ask for the coordinates?”
“I’m not going to — ” Edan frowns at her. “He did what?”
Sainz swipes up a vid from her cuff; Lasadi can’t make out the image, but she can hear the murmur of Bryant’s voice. From the stiff set of Edan’s jaw, the way he smooths a hand over his neat-trimmed black beard, Joli Sainz has the evidence to back up her claim.
“This is the story I’m running as soon as I leave this hotel,” Sainz says. “So, Mr. Edan. Do you have any comment?”
“I’m appalled, and will immediately investigate these allegations,” Edan says.
“Will you be firing Bryant?”
“I obviously won’t tolerate any attempts to cheat.” Edan straightens his shoulders. “But I also don’t make decisions on camera. Good night, Ms. Sainz.”
Ruby grins at Lasadi as Joli Sainz finally takes her leave. “Sounds like my cue,” she murmurs. Then, bright and bubbly as she slips off the barstool: “It was such an honor to meet you, Tita! Good luck in the race!”
She’s not over loud, but the restaurant is quiet, and Ruby’s voice catches Francis Edan’s attention. He seems to notice Lasadi sitting at the bar for the first time. Lasadi waves after Ruby, ignoring Edan as he straightens the cuffs of his suit and makes his way towards her. She does surprised when he clears his throat over her shoulder.
“Excuse me,” he says, holding out a trim brown hand encrusted with rings. “I’ve been meaning to introduce myself. Francis Edan.”
“Of course,” Lasadi says. “I’m Tita James.”
“I know who you are. I’ve heard quite a bit about you today.”
“You have?”
The bartender’s hovering, but Edan waves him politely away. He makes no move to sit, leaving Lasadi a comfortable amount of space.
“You made quite the impressive entrance.” Edan smooths the snow-white patches in the corners of his mouth, clearly thinking through his words. “Your sponsor, on the other hand, is . . . less impressive. I wonder. Are you happy in your current arrangement?”
Lasadi presses her lips together, pretending to think it over. “I used to be,” she says. “But lately I’m not really getting the resources I need, you know?”
Edan smiles. “I do know. Ms. James, it turns out I might need to hire a new pilot to fly the Figment of the North in this race. Are you interested?”
“My contract with Colman — ”
“I’ll speak with your sponsor. I would be honored if you agreed to race for me.”
Lasadi’s been trying to play the part of a young, new racer to the best of her ability, but she doesn’t have to fake the grin spreading across her face.
“Absolutely,” she says. A shiver of excitement runs down her spine.
The Figment of the North is theirs.
CHAPTER 12
RAJ
Raj has lost him.
Somewhere in Moie’s tumble of alleys and stairways and promenades and miniature pedestrian plazas, Raj lost track of Anton Kato.
Anton left the Golden Macaw before breakfast like a man on a mission, and on a whim, Raj decided to tail him. He’s not sure what he was expecting to find. A clandestine rendezvous with the NMLF? A romantic tryst? A secret meeting with Francis Edan? All Raj knows is that while the rest of them have been working their parts of the plan to get the coordinates they need for this job for the NMLF, Anton has been sequestered in his room, alternating between silence and calls he takes in low tones.
It’s unsettling, but Raj prefers it when the man stays in his room — especially since Anton’s other hobby seems to be seeking out hairline cracks in other people’s psyches and putting surgical pressure on them until they fracture.
Raj melts into the shadow of a doorway, trying to suss out any clue as to where Anton might have gone. Either Anton took a sharp left to double back down another alley, a soft left to take the steep stairs through a community vegetable garden, or he veered lightly right and downhill past a row of expensive-looking townhouses.
Raj opens up a connection request.
“He’s gone,” he says when Ruby answers; she curses. “Unless you can give me any help.”
“I don’t have a tracker on him, love.”
“Maybe he’s meeting with more campaign donors,” Raj says. “Were you ever able to trace that deposit to his account?”
“Working on it. You missed the most epic temper tantrum this morning. Bryant stormed into the restaurant at breakfast to confront Edan about rumors he’d hired Las, and threw a fit when Edan fired him for cheating. Coffee and shattered plates everywhere, it was stunningly juvenile.” She sounds delighted.
“You loved it,” Raj says with a smile.
“I did. Sorry you missed it.”
“Thanks, Ruby. Keep me updated — I’m heading down to the docks to give Jay a hand with the Lightning.”
And, honestly, to make sure he and Jay are still okay after the tense dinner last night. Lasadi’s certainly still pissed at him, and rightly so. Maybe Raj shouldn’t have confronted Anton — he knows she can fight her own battles. But what kind of friend would he have been to watch the bullshit Anton was pulling with her and not say something?
He’s not just worried about Lasadi, though. Anton’s clearly a master when it comes to manipulation — most leaders with his levels of charisma are. Anton’s trying to keep Lasadi unbalanced so he can control her, but he can multitask. He’s also been making subtle digs at Raj, constant reminders to the others that he’s Arquellian and an outsider. The enemy.
Which Raj gets. He had gone to war thinking he was protecting innocent people from radicals like Lasadi and Jay and Qacha. He’d believed the Alliance was a good thing, and couldn’t understand why the CLA would fight against collectively raising the bar for everyone.
He’d been sold that dream since he was a child. Arquelle had eradicated poverty, he’d been told. Instead of barring people from jobs because they couldn’t pay for the education, they’d made education free. Of course, the teachers weren’t going to work for free — so an indenture system made sense. Employers could foot the bill, and workers could be trained based on the demand. If Sulila forecasted a need for an increase in doctors in the next five years, they could fund the education of a corresponding number of students. If Francis Edan’s logistics company was going to open a new shipping route to Bixia Yuanjin, he could fund the right number of students from engineers to pilots.
Yes, you’d be contracted to work a certain number of years to pay off your indenture, but then you could do whatever you wanted.
From the indenture system to the mandatory military and volunteer service, Raj had believed Arquelle’s system created a cohesive fabric, everyone working together to make their society a better place. So why wouldn’t Arquellians want that for everyone else in the system? Why would other countries resist being part of the Alliance?
He sees the cracks now, though.
His comm chimes: Jay.
Where are you? Am at the Lightning with the two most adorable young lovebirds in the system. Save me.
Raj laughs. Almost there.
There are a few more planes in the dockyard than when they landed with the Green Lightning yesterday afternoon, and the yard seems to be at capacity. Raj finds the Lightning parked where they left it, the door folded down and voices drifting out over the rhythmic beat of Coruscan kafusa. Mostly Alex’s voice. Raj grins as he gets closer and can start making out the words.
“So then the captain and Tora got kidnapped by pirates,” Alex says. “And I said, ‘What if we sneak in and grab a couple of the pirates, and then take their suits and pretend to be them?’”
“Seriously?” Qacha asks.
“It was a great idea, Alex,” Raj calls as he climbs aboard. The kid shoots him a slightly guilty look, but Qacha doesn’t notice and Raj doesn’t care. Let the kid take the credit and enjoy his few days with his guerrilla girlfriend. Maybe some of Qacha’s levelheaded calm will rub off on him.
Qacha and Alex are in the cockpit — she’s wedged under the dash sorting through a tangle of wires while Alex helps, or at least entertains her. Jay is messing with the starboard thruster, an array of tools set within easy reach.
“Thank the old ones,” Jay says, reaching over to turn down his music. “Hand me that spanner.”
Raj grabs the spanner the other man is pointing at. “I didn’t expect to find the plane in pieces.”
“A little faith,” Jay answers. “I’m just smoothing out the rotation on this guy — he’s a little sticky. And Qacha’s sorting out a glitch in the landing lights. Might as well keep our hands busy while we wait to get on the Figment. Never know when you need a backup plane.”
“Never hurts,” Raj agrees.
“Plans get moxed in the best of times,” Jay says, returning his attention to his work. “Hold this. Perfect.”
“Question for you. Do you know where Anton went this morning? I thought I heard you talking to him before he took off.”
“He said he was going for a walk.”
“You don’t think that’s suspicious?”
Jay grunts, tightening a bolt. “Walking?”
“All his behavior.”
Jay frowns at Raj, thinking carefully before he speaks. “Anton’s hard to work with, but his heart is for the cause.”
“You think I’m being paranoid.”
“You don’t know him like I do. He always keeps his plans close, unless you need to know them.”
Raj sighs. “Maybe you’re right. His leadership style, it reminds me too much of my father, I think. And my father did try to have me murdered.”
Jay works silently a minute. Then, “You and your father. Did you ever get along?”
Raj shakes his head. “You know how parents are, they decide ahead of time who they want you to be, and nothing you do can get them to change their minds.”
“Doesn’t have to be,” Jay says. “My parents always dreamed of having a little girl, but that didn’t stop them from loving and supporting me when I told them I was their son.” He hands the spanner back to Raj. “If they didn’t believe you when you showed them who you were, that’s on them. What you do now is on you. But real family loves you for who you are. Hand me that bolt.”
Raj hands over the bolt, Jay’s words running over in his mind. He’s spent his entire life trying to conform to someone else’s expectations of himself. Even once he washed up on Ironfall, he’d had to hide his identity. He’d lived every day with the fear that as soon as someone realized the truth about his past, the desertion, the fact that he’d been court-martialled for supposedly destroying the medical transport, they’d turn on him. He’d never have believed someone would trust him.
But then the AI on Rashida Auburn’s haunted station had accessed Ruby’s records and torn open the truth to the entire crew. Raj had figured they were done, except that apparently Ruby had always known and still believed in him. And Jay and Lasadi and Alex had accepted his version of events.
Raj isn’t sure what to make of it all, still. But he’s going to work like hell to make sure he doesn’t destroy the chance he’s been given.
“You ever gonna make a pass at her?” Jay asks, and Raj blinks at the change of subject.
“What?”
“At Las.”
“You don’t think she’d murder me?”
“I can’t read her mind.”
Jay knows Lasadi better than anyone, though, and a hint of a dimple ghosts Jay’s cheek. The other man would warn Raj off if he thought Lasadi wasn’t interested.
A tentative thrill blooms beneath Raj’s ribcage. In their first meeting — their tussle in Sumilang’s museum — he’d felt an instant flicker of fire between them. But then she hired him for the Auburn Station job, and she’s been nothing but professional ever since. Aside from his initial subtle inquiries with Jay at the beginning, Raj thinks he’s been carefully neutral, too. The way she reacted when she caught him staring last night, though, maybe it wasn’t all in Raj’s imagination.
“If you do,” Jay says, “do us all a favor. I’m starting to like this crew we’ve got going, and I’d hate to have to kill you if you screwed it up.”
Raj laughs. “Understood.” It’s a joke, but underneath is a reality: Crews get torn apart by romance gone bad, and Raj misreading the situation and propositioning his uninterested captain is a good definition of gone bad.
“You’ve got a girl back in Ironfall, right?”
Jay’s lips purse as he tightens the final bolt. “Probably not at this point.”
“No?”
“No.” He holds out his hand for help back to his feet. “Her name’s Chiara. Ironfall born and raised, from a big family who’ve also never left the Pearls. We were going to move in together, before the Auburn Station job, but she hated I was gone so much. For a while I thought maybe it sounded nice to stop flying. And then . . .” Jay shrugs.
