Page 20 of Stars in Mist

Never. Not when he’d come so far to locate her.

He appeared to concede. ‘I’ll do it. For a few million schills and your intel on the man I seek and where I can encounter him.’

She crossed her arms on her chest, her expression shifting to relief. This journey, wherever it ended, meant much to her. ‘You’ll receive enough gold to overload your coffers. Plus, the exact location of this man you seek.’

He served her a mock salute. ‘We have a deal.’

Her gaze drifted to the door like she was impatient to leave. ‘Does your cruiser have an A.I.? Can you contact it?’

‘I can use my wrist comm if you raise the comms block you’ve placed on me.’ He didn’t want to deny that he was already in neural contact with Mirage. Or that she’d blitzed past Élisa’s ship’s firewalls with relative ease.

She leaned in, her voice lowering into urgency. ‘Please ask it to come here and tractor my boat into your bay. I believe it’s large enough to host my small skiff.’

‘Why?’

Fear tightened her face for the first time since he’d laid eyes on her. ‘Devils come after me.’

He made a few deductions based on what he learned on Neron N13. ‘Would they happen to be tall, beaked creatures?’

Her eyes widened, and she leaned forward, a fierce angst lacing her husky cry. ‘You know of thekhora? Do you work for them or Noab?’

He lifted her hands to slow her roll of vitriol. ‘Woman, I know nothing of who or what you speak of. I only spotted them roaming the markets of the asteroid.’

She stared for a few minutes, chest heaving with emotion, flicking her eyes over his face, searching for the truth. ‘I sense you’re not lying. Those beasts are my worst enemy. And your ship is my best chance of evading them.’

A wave of concern rolled over him. ‘Are you in danger from them?’

‘What do you think?’ she shot back, then lifted a hand in apology. ‘Sorry, stranger. My problems are not your own.’

But they are my love. They always were,he thought, infused with a violent urge to exterminate her pursuers right there and then, if only to see her smile once more.

‘I can help you. But I first ought to know where we are going.’

She hesitated. ‘I’ll provide you with coordinates in due time. In the meantime, I need your vessel to cloak mine so my stalkers do not know my intended destination. This is imperative.’

A wild desperation ricocheted in her lilac eyes, and he wondered how terrifying thekhorawere.

He spoke fast, keen to minimize her distress. ‘I can ask my A.I. to approach your vessel, and we can tractor you into our hold, using our stealth cloak to conceal movement. My A.I. can also play with Neron N13’s station feed and use your holo image to replace the real thing. Which will fool your pursuers, making them think you’re still at your parked position when, in fact, you’ll be thousands of klicks away.’

Her eyes lit up. ‘I’ll appreciate that.’

‘You’ll need to free me to pilot us.’

That’s when she gave a low laugh. ‘I’m not a fool, you know. What if you overpower me the second you’re out of that holding cell?Nada, the deal is that you summon your A.I. and have them track in my craft. So I can move from here onto your bridge unseen and pilot us to where I need us to go.’

He raised a brow. ‘You drive a hard bargain.’

‘I need to survive, Galician. Will you play?’

He shared a long, cold glare, masking his need for her and the answers he longed for. ‘Fine. I’ll comm my A.I. and give them your instructions.’

‘Also, let them know that I’ll need to take over and pilot your ship when we reach a challenging section of our excursion.’

He bucked. ‘What in the actual?’

‘Naam. We have a nebula to traverse, which is a nary hop. We need to force through it. I barely make it myself in a toothless old aircraft with a sketchy model 0.2 hyperdrive that makes it a certified clunker. Without my piloting, you will fry like an egg or impact with the thousands of skeletons inside it.’

‘You jest?’

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