Spy to Die For

If she had initially wondered where the money came from to run this place, she wondered no longer. Just ripping off the careless would bring in millions. Maybe tens of millions.

And since Zaeen was in the Brezev Sector, there was no recourse for the average citizen who suffered a catastrophic financial loss.

The kiosk stood a foot higher than she did, and blocked her view of that part of the Pavilion. She didn’t like that, but she saw no way around it.

She plugged in information on fast ships with some weaponry and great shields. She also needed a ship with a registration that was valid in several sectors so that no one would arrest them for flying an unregistered ship in the wrong sector. A valid registration wouldn’t guarantee that the ship wasn’t stolen, but it would make the theft harder to prove.

Not that she cared. She didn’t plan to use the ship long and she knew that Jack was smart enough to understand how dangerous buying a ship in this area actually was.

She also needed a ship that was fly-ready. She couldn’t wait weeks for the ship to be delivered and/or repaired.

Only five shops met all her needs, and only one was close by. Its information displayed in purple. All she had to do was follow the purple arrows, and she would get there.

“Got it,” she said.

Jack kept his back to the search, protecting her, making sure no one else got close enough to see what she was doing. It was probably a futile effort—some bot somewhere probably tracked all of the information displayed in the kiosk—but she appreciated the gesture anyway.

She tapped his back. He turned and encircled her with his arm. She liked that more than she wanted to admit.

She put her arm around his waist like she had before, and they walked toward the shop she had chosen.

It wasn’t the biggest, the brightest, or the loudest shop in this ship-oriented part of the Pavilion. That distinction belonged to the store that had floated the ship above them. Tethers of yellow light connected that ship to the outside of the store.

Instead, she led Jack to the store down a narrow passageway from that one. The exterior had purple lighting, but strangely, it was tasteful. It blended with the shiny black door. Only a small purple ship, glowing in the center of that door, advertised what the shop sold.

“Nice,” Jack said, and she could actually hear him without lip-reading. The noise factor in this part of the passageway was down significantly.

It made her relax just a bit. She wondered if that was intention of the shop owners, then decided it didn’t matter.

When she pushed open the door to the shop, a light flared in the back. The shop itself was silent, startlingly so. Tiny replicas of ships sat on top of displays. More images of ships floated across the walls. The map of the interior of One of Our Best Models covered the floor. A star field covered the ceiling, and she had a hunch it hid all kinds of surveillance equipment.

The most startling thing of all, though, was that Jack could stand upright. He didn’t even have to duck as he went through the door, although he did. Force of habit, she assumed.

His gaze met hers. “I’m not comfortable with you paying—”

“We’ll talk about it later,” she said. She didn’t add the word “again” because that wasn’t fair. She would have been uncomfortable too. “Let’s just get out of here. Then we can work out the details.”

She knew how that would sound to anyone watching the surveillance, and she didn’t care. She wasn’t trying to hide the fact that they wanted out, and she wasn’t all that interested in saving money.

“Let me handle the negotiation at least,” he said.

She shook her head. She didn’t want to waste time bickering over price. “It’s just better if we get it done.”

He looked like he was about to say something, when a wizened little man walked out of the back door.

“Welcome,” he said in accented Standard. “Let me help you find the perfect ship.”

Chapter 32

Jack felt jittery. Some of it was the lack of sound in the shop, but most of it came from Skye’s determination to handle the entire ship purchase. She did it in a way that he never would have, fast without much negotiation.

In fact, most of the discussion she had with the wrinkled little man who ran the shop was about the type of ship, its specs and its registrations, not its pricing. She also asked some technical questions that Jack didn’t understand because he wasn’t a pilot.

He paced, looking at the images of the various ships, feeling out of his depth. He and Skye hadn’t discussed what was coming next, and that made him uncomfortable too. She hadn’t asked about the complexity of the automatic pilot. He started to, but she held up a hand, silencing him.

He let her. He was used to being with Rikki, who often took a commanding lead with things. But it made him even more uncomfortable.

Then Skye whipped out a payment chip, and walked to a payment kiosk with the little man. She didn’t consult Jack at all—and that was when he decided the ship was hers, no matter what she said. She would help him get out of this place, he’d figure out where to go and what to do next, and then she could have the damn ship back.

No matter what it did, how easy it was to fly, or whose name she registered it in.

That thought made him walk over to the kiosk. Skye glanced at him, as if he didn’t belong.

He had to ask the question without acting suspicious. “I was going to make sure you had all the information for the registration,” he said.

“I do, thanks,” she said as the little man added, “We always register in the name of the account where payment comes from.”

Jack held back an oh of surprise, but just barely. He hadn’t thought of that. Of course. Zaeen was in one of the most lawless sectors of the galaxy. No one wanted to admit who they were, no one wanted their account information on record anywhere, no one wanted to be traced. So businesses had to adapt.

It was like Krell times a million.

“All right then,” he said, feeling stupid and useless. He walked back to the front of the shop.

He hadn’t even seen what they purchased. What she purchased. He hoped it would work.

She came over to him and slipped her left hand through his arm. In her right hand, she held all kinds of chips and swipe meters.

“It’s going to take two hours to prepare the ship,” she said.

“I thought we were going to have one—”

“That’s fast,” she said softly. “They have to change parts of the registration, and I paid to have it fully stocked with food and water.”

He wanted to ask her if she trusted the little man to do that, but apparently she had.

Then she leaned her head against him, as if they were some kind of loving couple.

“I’m hungry,” she said. “Let’s get lunch.”

He had lost track. Was lunch the next meal? He had thought the next meal was dinner. He thought for a moment. It was dinner, but he didn’t correct her, because she might have been trying to conform to local time. Here, on Zaeen, it might actually be midday. There was no way to tell without linking up to the network or simply asking someone, neither of which he wanted to do.

She eased him out the door. The noise returned, not nearly as egregious as it had been. Voices, music, all of it had become a blur to him. He didn’t even try to pick out distinct sounds.