“As much as my animal instinct urges me to take up the offer, I’ll pass.”
“Oh, Vrean, such a gentleman! Charming one too. Didn’t anyone tell you a woman hates to be turned down?”
Yul shrugged, struggling to get inside her head. “So what’s your story, Cloye? Daddy lean on you a little too heavily when you were a schoolgirl?”
“Father? No,” said Cloye sullenly. “Uncle. Introduced me to the spy world too early on. Recognized in me the manipulative streak I had. Plus, I was a hot piece of ass.” She chuckled. “Used me.” Her lip downturned in a moody scowl.
Yul said nothing.
“Irony is, I used him in the end—to get big contracts.”
Yul ignored the remark and pointed ahead. “Look over here, smart ass, by those bulkheads, some storage areas. Maybe I should lock you in there while I go ahead and scout out the terrain?”
She sighed in irritation. “Why don’t we just storm the bridge and take over this ship? Rather than being a bunch of pansies begging to be plucked?”
Yul laughed at her brazenness. “Bad idea, think harder, Cloye. Let’s say we take the bridge. You want Sybcore security after us? They’ll send attack ships out to intercept us. I’ve already been in this situation and not about to do it again. If Hresh is half as ruthless as Mathias, we’re dead.”
“Meaning, if they catch us creeping about like rats, that’s better? The result seems about the same.”
Cloye had a point. Yul did not want to give her the benefit of a doubt. Neither did he want to give in to her manipulations nor reveal his admiration for her cleverness. More voices echoed down the hall. They looked at each other. “Shit,” they said simultaneously and jumped into an ungrated service duct at ankle level. Still as mice they lay, listening to the footfalls tramp by inches from their breathless bodies.
Inching their way along the cramped, dusty space, Yul stifled the urge to sneeze.
A metallic odour lingered in the air, probably of past cargoes. Almost as if this had been an ore ship a lifetime ago. Silver-Ferro-Umex mix? Used in lightship manufacture? Terraformers were known to bring back copious raw materials on the return trip after dropping off their planetary terraforming payload. The duct widened with Cloye not far ahead. Yul prodded her toward what looked like a forward hatch, his mind a whirl. When they reached a dead end, he forced open the access grate above their heads. They remained crouched there for a few seconds, peering down the hall for signs of danger. Finally they crawled out of the shaft and Yul wondered if Lorde and his brigade had come to chastise Rourke yet or had discovered his limp body.
He suddenly doubled over in pain. Cloye watched in curiosity. “Get a grip, Vrean,” she said. “They’re going to hear you whimpering like a baby.”
“Screw it...you should know, it’s because I turned off their bloody circle-vision that you’re still in the game. Otherwise, you’d have been made. Mathias would have seen how you failed to take me out and bungled your cover and reputation.”
She blinked, licking her lower lip thoughtfully. “Really? You did that for me? Why?”
Yul grunted, suppressing an involuntary groan. He hated to seem like a pushover. “Let’s just say I’m not immune to the wiles of an alluring woman.”
“Humph. So you say. So many would have thrown me to the dogs. But you didn’t. Then again, maybe you had an ulterior motive for some sex later on.” She bent down and kissed him lightly on the cheek.
“There’s that, but I wouldn’t have given Mathias the satisfaction of torturing another human being.”
“At least you’re honest.” It seemed to be something she could understand and she let down her guard with a shake of her shiny hair.
Although he sensed a change, he had more pressing matters to attend to. Like why would Hresh need these supplies going out to the Dim Zone? Seemed odd, a weird place to transport them. Easy prey to Zikri pirates. Especially in a rustbucket like this. Definitely an old terraforming ship of the last century. This ship didn’t appear it could defend herself from an attack. Whole fleets of them, he recalled, were made to haul metals, soil, water, liquids, anything useful to seed new worlds.
Yul had smelled the rank, musty odour in the ship’s air: of soil and decay. It still lingered in his olfactory glands. His boots crunched on some old gravel still left from the ages as he made woozy steps forward. Cracked tiled bins arrayed on the corridors’ sides were laden with dust and fine dark loam, a testament to their age and disuse. Hresh, probably on a low budget, had bought the vessel cheap to service his outlets elsewhere. But the Dim Zone? What market was there to be had out there?
Finally they came to a main hatch. Probably one that granted entrance to the heart of the ship. The ship was so big, he doubted if they had made it past the cargo bay section yet. The double-doors to the main were sealed and he did not know how to work the mechanism. “I don’t want to risk failure, or try this key card and be flagged on their security screens. Nowhere else to go. So we head back.”
They made their way back to the cargo bay. Rourke’s body was gone, as he expected. No one else was present. The ship would be landing before long and Yul’s mind was formulating a plan of action, as he stared at
