Drifters' Alliance, Book 3 (13 page)

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 him 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.”

Beltz 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.

“Is it your former relationship that is keeping you from getting your answers?” Beltz asks.

“No. We didn’t have a
relationship
. Not like you’re suggesting.”

“I was not suggesting anything. You said you knew him before. If you were matched, I assume that means you were in training together. It is the nature of that training to form bonds of loyalty, at least.”

“Fine. We had a
friendship
. And I violated that friendship when I agreed to fight him. So we have some bad blood between us, but I don’t think he wants to kill me.” As I say this, I realize this is why I haven’t pushed him for answers; I don’t feel like I have the right. I want him to come to me of his own free will and tell me what I need to know. Maybe that’s naive, but it’s how it needs to be right now.

“How is he even alive?” Kaiholo asks. “Losers in the pit are killed. That’s well known, even out here among the Havenots.”

I shrug. “I don’t exactly know. He said something about MI and having friends. I assume someone smuggled him out and fixed him up.” I frown as I remember something someone said to me. “Maybe there’s a place where all the losers or rejects go, I don’t know.”

Everyone around the table starts exchanging glances with one another. I assume they’ll explain themselves, but then nothing happens. Everyone just looks at me, like I’m supposed to say something.

“What?” I look at Romulus first. He seems like the nicest guy here. “Why is everyone staring at me?” I glance down at my chest really quickly, praying my boobs aren’t hanging out or something. It would be just my luck to have my zipper malfunctioning right now.

“Alana?” He faces our hostess. “Would you care to elucidate?”

I grin at his use of her fancy word. We’ll see how much she likes being in the hotseat.

She rests both arms casually on the edges of her chair. Any trace of humor she might have been harboring is gone now.

“We have reason to believe that there is a group out here in the galaxy somewhere who is systematically taking individuals who have been ejected from the OSG and … recruiting them.”

My eyes bug out. “Recruiting them? For what?”

She shrugs. “We don’t know. We’re not even sure we are correct. We’ve seen signs …” She glances at her friends before continuing. “Your story about your engineer is not a surprise to us.”

“You
knew
about him?”
I can’t believe it! Am I the only one stumbling in the dark or what?

“Not about him specifically, but that there are many shadows walking among us.”

I rub my stomach as it rolls over. “That’s not good.”

“Why do you say that?” Kaiholo asks.

I frown at him, wondering if he’s just messing with me. But he seems genuinely curious and serious.

“Because,” I explain, “it’s not natural.”

He glances at my arms, visible now because I’ve rolled my sleeves up to try and air my skin out.

“Just because you choose to eschew MI for your scars, it doesn’t mean others must do the same.”

I laugh at that. “Are you suggesting that covering up some superficial scars is the same thing as uploading your consciousness into another body? Because … ,“ I laugh again, “damn. That’s just crazy talk right there.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” He looks to our temporary leader. “What say you, Alana?”

She shrugs. “I don’t judge the lengths to which others will go to survive. I’ve never been faced with certain death, with the extinguishing of my life force. I can’t be sure what I would choose to do if I were given a choice at the moment of my passing.”

“I am happy to live forever,” Beltz says. “And could you imagine?” He’s becoming more animated by the second. “Having a brain that carries the knowledge of a person who has survived for centuries? What a mind!”