Page 30 of Rescued By the Convicts
Ivan relaxed, though it took him several heartbeats to sheathe his knife. Zev still made him uneasy. Or maybe it was recent events that left Ivan extra suspicious. Zev had no choice; he needed Ivan’s help.
“Obray thinks I’ve been causing the fights for the past two months.”
“Actually, that would be me,” Zev confessed.
Ivan returned to shoveling slag into the lava. “A distraction from what you’ve been doing here, no doubt.”
“Correct.”
“You could have chosen a different mine. One I didn’t work in.”
“I didn’t choose it randomly.”
“Of course not. Just like you didn’t happen to be hiding in those rocks for the past hour, watching me dump slag into the lava. Having a good laugh over there?”
Zev should have known Ivan would spot him. For as good as Zev was at his profession, Ivan was equally good at his.
“I need your help,” Zev cut to the point.
Ivan resumed shoveling, turning his back to Zev.
“I started the fights in your mine to loosen tongues, nothing more. The fact that it was your mine was nothing more than bad luck.”
“You’re not endearing me to you, Zev. Why are you here?”
“Mad at me again or still?”
“I don’t want to delay getting back to the bunker.”
Zev envied Ivan. Though the soldier was condemned to Veenith, after each shift he returned to Melina’s loving arms, unlike Zev who would never know her touch again. Zev needed to focus on his job. Having a woman to return to—having Melina—was no longer his reality. . . It never had been.
“Have you noticed all the prisoners that have disappeared over the last few months?” Zev asked.
Ivan said nothing.
“Are you listening to me?”
“Heard every word. Fights. Loose tongues. Prisoners disappearing. And yes, I know all about them. Whoever you’re looking for will turn up, usually with a knife wound, once the snow and ice melt. Or at the bottom of a shaft, though that’s not as common a method for disposing of a body here. And I suspect some poor bastards find a one-way trip into the serilium pits. But neither disposal method made the same statement as dumping a body in the snow and letting the prisoners see the ice melt around a body.”
“Not all the prisoners who disappear will be found.”
“That’s true on any prison world.” Ivan turned and leaned on his shovel, breathing heavily. “But this isn’t any world, is it, Zev? We’re a bunch of murders and rapists with too much anger and time on our hands. Does The Company really care about a few prisoners who never turn up? Hogath and casp need to eat, you know.”
“As disturbing as that last statement is, most of those prisoners who never turn up don’t simply go missing, Ivan. They make it off Veenith.”
Ivan shoved the shovel into the cart. “What are you talking about?”
“Prisoners from Veenith, have been found on other planets. Caught committing crimes. Except they no longer bear their serilium tattoos. Their identities were confirmed through DNA matches. Someone’s been freeing prisoners from Veenith, and I’m tasked with finding out who.”
“Who do you work for, Zev?”
“Still can’t say. But I can tell you this. The person we’re after isn’t going to all this trouble to free criminals out of the goodness of his heart. He’s using them, building an army of the system’s most dangerous cut-throats.”
“To what end?”
“Not sure yet. Civil unrest, corporate takeover maybe. There are a lot of possibilities. My job is to flush out who’s supplying the prisoners and—”
“Hawke,” Ivan said without any doubt.
