Page 108 of Auctioned to the Convicts
“Come on,” he said, grabbing her hand. “Got to get you back. You’ll never find your way, and I won’t let you walk out there alone. Too many animals around.”
“I haven’t seen anything larger than a durgis.” The monkey-like creatures with green slimy skin liked to curl up into balls and rest among the paddadou clumps at the tops of the trees.
“I’m talking about the men. Until I take off, you’re still my responsibility.”
She liked the sound of that a lot, the part about being his responsibility. It was a shame he wouldn’t have that role much longer.
Chapter Twenty-One
HANNAH
Hannah tried to focus on the monitor in front of her. The tension at the house had been mounting over the last three weeks since Ren showed her his ship and told her about his plans. No one had a clue what he was planning, and he’d sworn her to secrecy. She hated keeping a secret from the others. It felt like a betrayal. Here she had been spouting about working together and she was the one hiding a secret.
More than one secret. She’d arrived with a huge secret after all. They still didn’t know she was a Level 5, not that it mattered here. In some ways being a Level 5 offered a freedom the others didn’t have. Dresden could never lower her rank.
The secret that worried her was Dresden’s. She had done some calculations on the job outside the parameters of her duties. In time, she’d know the exact nature of what the colony manager was up to. Then, she would have to decide if and how she should use it. Blackmail was a dangerous game.
The door to the control room creaked open. Hannah hit a switch, changing the display on her terminal.
“Just me,” Ivan said as he leaned over his terminal, pounded on some keys and then headed out again. “Logging out and heading over to Receiving Bay 6 for the rest of my shift.”
“I thought they were fully staffed over there.”
“Conway sent two more home. See you tomorrow, Raines.”
The port was short on staff after a pilot with Palthony Flu arrived and managed to contaminate practically every surface in the bay before he finally collapsed and was sent to the med-center. Most of the workers on shift yesterday contracted the flu before Conway finally ordered the place to be scrubbed. Being short-handed meant longer shifter and doubling up on duties.
Hannah re-opened the file where she’d been assembling the documentation and changed the password on the file, adding stronger encryption. Based on her calculations, the shipments marked as containing paddadou did not contain any fruit.
After her third failed attempt to access Conway’s account, Hannah shut down her terminal. Her focus was shot. She couldn’t get Ren out of her head. And something was going on with Vaughn. He’d become withdrawn, taking meals at the commissary, only returning home to sleep and shower. Vaughn barely looked at her anymore. She’d lost him as a friend—if she’d ever had him.
The Inventory in Motion alarm blared, drowning out all thoughts of her unit. Hannah jumped to her feet and ran to the loading floor. Quinn was supposed to call her down before moving any pods!
Hannah raced down to Loading Bay 4, the only one in use at the moment.
The pod was swinging out of control. Hannah plastered herself to the wall to avoid getting hit by the two-ton container.
She could see Quinn up there in the control tower, struggling to stabilize the loading arm. The container spun counter-clockwise, putting too much torque on the arm.
“Just set it down!” she yelled into the intercom.
He couldn’t hear her. She grabbed a headset off the wall. “Quinn, lower it slowly. You’ll never get it into the pod the way it’s swinging.”
No response. The damn fool didn’t have his headset turned on!
The pod dropped from twenty feet in the air, bursting open and sending hundreds of containers flying in all directions. Hannah raced behind a bulkhead just in time, narrowly missing getting hit by a large metal container the size of a sofa.
“Fuck!” Quinn yelled as he raced down to the loading zone. “Are you okay, Hannah? I didn’t know you were down here.”
“I’m okay. Why didn’t you call me? This is a two-person job. You’re supposed to have a spotter on the floor.”
Hannah shook her head, taking in the scene before her. The spilled inventory covered more than a third of the bay. This mess was going to take hours to clean up and given the weight and bulk of some of the containers, they’d need one of the cargo lifts. The lifts were currently on loan to one of the mines, which meant a delay of several hours.
“I don’t even know where to start,” she said as she walked through the mess. There was fruit everywhere, most still whole, but some smashed, causing a slick residue on the floor in one area while there was a dark red powder in another section from glass containers that had shattered.
“What is this stuff?” she said as she swiped a hand through the red powder and brought it her nose. “Smells like flowers.”
“The latest medicine they’re shipping off-world, probably. They’re supposed to ship them in metal containers, but we never check inside the crates the lab delivers, so I guess someone on quality control at their end is going to get in trouble. Maybe more than me.” He dragged his hand through his hair. “What a mess.”
