have some black streaks on the side of his face.
She probably did too, which made her shudder. Those passageways had been nasty.
She inclined her head toward a nearby sink. Jack looked at her with gratitude, then cautiously made his way over there. She followed. They needed to clean off as best they could and quickly.
Jack finished up, then stepped aside so she could rinse off as well. That hadn’t cleaned up the smell. But she headed toward the door, hoping he remembered her admonition.
It slid silently sideways instead of opening outward. Three employees stood near their stations, theoretically monitoring any ship that wanted to land on Krell. Automation didn’t work here; there were too many variables, most of them with shady reputations.
The employee that Skye had talked with, a man still so young that his enhancements couldn’t cope with all of his bad skin, winked at her. She winked back.
Then she slipped right toward the part of the ring where the high-end space yachts got stored. Most of them had security too tight for her to breach, but two models built for speed rather than comfort didn’t. Apparently a lot of the comfort items on a space yacht slowed it down, or at least ruined the sleeker designs that enhanced swiftness.
She could feel Jack behind her. He was going to have to duck again as they walked into the ring. This part had been upgraded most recently. The walls actually gleamed here, and the ring itself, while still plain, had a bounce to it that suggested custom-made materials.
The ships she wanted were farther down the ring, in their own hangers. She made it to the first. Fortunately, it was also her first choice, primarily because it was newer, and because a cursory search didn’t show any affiliations with known crime rings. She’d learned that one from her parents as well.
She slipped into the airlock and beckoned Jack to follow. The ships docked half in and half out of the ring. When they wanted to leave, they unclamped and backed out before they took off.
This allowed someone to flee even if no employees were working and even if someone else tried to shut down the automated docking system.
Jack slipped in with her. The space was narrow, partly because the nose of the ship pushed up in here as well. Earlier, it had taken her a minute to find the door. It blended into the ship’s blackness with no obvious lines around it.
His body pressed against hers, but he remained hunched. Still, he grinned.
None of the airlocks had security cameras, and apparently he knew that because he said, “You know how to get into this thing?”
Those were the first words he’d spoken in nearly an hour. But instead of answering him, she tapped the side of the ship. The round door opened inward, leading them directly into the cockpit.
“That’s not very efficient.” Jack pushed past her and stepped in first, almost as if he thought he could protect her from someone inside.
“Actually, I think it’s really efficient,” she said as she followed him. “We’re in the cockpit and ready to go.”
The cockpit was large. It took up a third of the ship. That was the other way she knew this ship was built for speed. Another third was cargo, and the remaining third were bedrooms, the kitchen, a bathroom, and oddly, some kind of guarded space which could probably be used to hold prisoners.
She didn’t want to think about that. This ship was probably used for smuggling illegal items, and that space meant some of those items might not be things but people.
At least, that was what she told herself to feel better about all of this.
“Strap yourself in,” she said. “We’re getting out of here fast and I have no idea how good the environmental controls are.”
Mostly, she was worried about the gravity. Some ship owners had the ships set to zero-G after takeoff. She didn’t have the time to find the specific gravity controls before they left.
She had to get the ship to follow her commands, and that would take a few minutes. It was a relatively simple procedure that many yacht owners knew nothing about. With the help of that employee, she’d registered herself as an emergency repair engineer on Krell. Now she uploaded that code into the ship’s systems.
Theoretically, the ship would contact Krell’s automated docking bay system and find her.
Not that it mattered. Even if the Rovers who were after Jack figured out he’d left by ship, they wouldn’t know which ship for some time.
At least that was what she hoped.
She strapped herself into the pilot’s seat, and clicked on the controls, and prayed her plan would work.
Chapter 19
Jack watched Skye’s nimble fingers dance along the navigation board. He couldn’t tell what she was doing, but piloting a ship had never been his strong suit. The ship he was leaving behind here had simple controls, designed for idiots with minimal piloting experience.
He had flown a lot, but he didn’t care about mastering the skill, so he just set everything to automatic and hoped that nothing would break down.
Usually he used flight time to research the latest possible client or target for the Rovers. Or lately, to research some of the things the Rovers had been into.
He would miss his ship. He’d had it for years. Maybe, when this was all over, he could come back for it.
Fortunately, Skye seemed to know what she was doing. She frowned in concentration, and she bit her lower lip ever so slightly as she worked. He liked that quirk.
He liked everything about her.
Then the ship lurched backward. Ships weren’t supposed to lurch.
“Ooops,” Skye muttered.
Jack gave her a sharp glance, but Skye wasn’t looking at him. She was staring at a holographic screen that had just appeared in front of her, showing the docking ring and the ships on it in three dimensions.
It took a moment for Jack to find their ship, a sleek model the shape of a pilsner glass. It was slowly separating from the dock.
Now he couldn’t feel the movement of the ship, which was how it should be. He gripped the seat’s arms, feeling the smooth leatherlike fabric beneath his fingers, and kept his gaze on that 3-D representation of the ship moving away from Krell.
So far, he saw no other ships leaving, but that didn’t mean anything. All someone had to do was contact a ship nearby, and he’d get followed.
“Where are we going?” he asked. “Centaar?”
Centaar was the nearest planet, not too far out of the NetherRealm where Krell was. Centaar’s main city, Oyal, had its own laws, most of which ignored laws from other regions.
If Jack and Skye arrived in a stolen ship, no one from Oyal would care.
“I figure they’d look for us there first,” she said. “I’m thinking we head to the Brezev Sector, and see what we can find there.”
“The Brezev Sector?” he said. “That’s not part of any affiliated group.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Filled with criminals, pirates, roving bands of mischief makers. You know, like the Rovers.”
“Not even Rovers go there,” he said. She shrugged. He felt his heart sink. “You’re serious.”
“I am,” she said. “It’s not as dangerous as it’s made out to be.”
“And you know that how?” he asked.
She grinned at him. “I grew up there.”
Just the fact that she came from the Brezev Sector made him rethink everything she had told him. Even after she had left to find this ship, he hadn’t looked up anything about her. He felt it wasn’t necessary. He had gone with his instincts, something he rarely did.
What a perfect setup. He had given her his name the night before. Then, after he left in the morning, she
