“So, what did you think about him?” I asked.
“Honestly?”
“Sure.”
“He was a horse’s ass.”
I burst out laughing. That wasn’t the response I expected. Most people—especially Beck Salvage employees—viewed my father as some sort of god.
Ana-Zhi continued. “He was arrogant, stuck-up, and thought he knew everything.”
“That sounds about right.”
“He was also the best damn captain I ever flew with.”
That was also unexpected. I took a deep breath. “Were you there when he, um, died…?”
She turned and looked right at me with her steely eyes. “Are you sure you want to be having this conversation?”
“I want to know. I want to hear about it from someone who was there.”
“Then talk to Yates. He was the last one to see your father alive. I was pretty messed up. Half dead and barely conscious in the infirmary for the whole time.”
“Yates has always been pretty vague about the whole thing,” I said.
“I don’t blame him. Why are you even asking about this?”
“Because I never got a straight answer. From Yates. From my uncle. From anyone.”
Ana-Zhi rubbed her eyes. I really noticed her lack of cosme in the bridge’s harsh lights.
“It wasn’t here on Yueld,” she said. “You don’t have to worry about that.”
“Yeah, I know. It was on Bandala, right where you found the Tabarroh Crystal.”
“Where your father found the Tabarroh Crystal. He figured out where it was hidden. He braved the scrubbers and a million other things. That place was a deathtrap and we had no business in there. Not for the biggest bounty in the universe. It just wasn’t worth it.”
“What…?” I trailed off. It was hard to get the words out.
Ana-Zhi looked down. “Sometimes you just run out of luck. That’s what happened with Sean. He didn’t do anything wrong. He just couldn’t outrun the security bots. In the end, he sacrificed himself to save Yates. And the Tabarroh Crystal.” She looked away, out into the darkness. “Story time’s over. Okay?”
Chiraine’s analysis took longer than she thought. Way longer. By the time I went to bed for the night, she was still at it.
I found her, early the next morning, asleep at her workstation.
“Hey.” I touched her shoulder lightly, but she jumped anyway.
“What the hell!” She squinted at me through sleep-swollen eyes.
“You fell asleep.”
“I know.”
“You want some moxa?”
“I’d kill for some.”
“Coming right up.”
Apparently the Rhya didn’t have any problem with limiting hospitality technology. The Freya’s galley was state-of-the-art and fully stocked. With the good stuff. No powdered moxa for us.
I returned to Chiraine bearing a hot, steaming mug—which I placed down before her. “Here you go.”
She took a sip, inhaling the rich aroma. “Where’d you get that?”
“Tastes like Ardovan, doesn’t it?”
“Sure does.”
“Courtesy of Beck Salvage.”
“I’m impressed.” She took another sip. “Doubly impressed.”
“So, it looks like you pulled an all-nighter.”
“I did.”
“And you found the Kryrk?” I asked.
Chiraine leaned back in her seat, cupping the moxa mug for warmth.
“Yes and no.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that, technically, there were no records of it in A782.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. That was the entire foundation of our mission. “Technically?”
“No records at all,” she said. “But, I was able to trace back another broken node. One we had never been able to locate before. A419.”
She seemed pleased with herself, but I felt like we had hit a dead end.
“So we have to go back into Roan Andessa? Galish is not going to be happy about that.”
“No. A419 isn’t on Yueld.”
“What?”
“It’s on Taullae.”
Taullae was one of Yueld’s moons. The larger one. And unlike the swamp planet, Taullae had hardly any water on it. It was a dusty wasteland. At least on the surface. Underground were vast vertical mine shafts. They were all dead now, but at one time they held huge veins of tagax. At least that’s what Piettow had implanted in my brain.
The moon was inhabited by Batalarians, an extremely long-lived race of non-humans who had been enslaved by the Yueldians and forced to work the mines. I had thought that most of them died out over the years, but when we arrived, some six hours after leaving Yueld, we discovered an active settlement near one of the poles.
“This is Maridu,” Yates said. “Old mining town. Didn’t think anyone was still living here.”
Ana-Zhi took us low, past the grid of mine heads, over the settlement. It was a sparse-looking town made up of a few dozen small blocky buildings the same rust-red color as the dirt. None of the buildings were taller than two stories and they appeared to be fairly low-tech, with only a few solar arrays and some rudimentary communication antennae. We saw a few Batalarians out and about, but they didn’t seem too concerned about us. And luckily, they didn’t shoot at us.
“Are they friendly?” I asked.
“Hard to tell without landing and looking in their eyes,” Ana-Zhi said. “Right, Hap?”
“I’d like them to get a good look at a frag popper,” Galish grunted.
Beyond the town was a landing strip with some rusty-red outbuildings and a scattered collection of wheeled land-vehicles. Lots of tracks ran from the landing strip out to the land beyond, connecting the town, the landing strip, and all the mine heads.
I didn’t see any sign of the Rhya wardens up here, so I wondered if the locals were being monitored in any way. I asked Ana-Zhi about it and she thought it was odd as well.
“They should have at least one wardship up here. Or a supply vessel.”
“Unless they were here and left already,” Galish said.
“Someone’s been trying their hand at some mining recently, it looks like,” Ana-Zhi said.
“Good luck with that,” Yates said. “These mines have been tapped out for centuries.”
“There’s always scraps left,” Ana-Zhi said. She banked the Freya around and flew over Maridu again.
“We might as well put down and save the fuel.” She turned to me and said, “Why don’t you check with Chiraine so we can figure out where we’re supposed to be going?”
I bristled at being an errand boy, but I was curious about Chiraine’s progress.
