Drifters' Alliance, Book 3 (7 page)

The idea of Tremblay and his intersection into my life tweaks at my brain. That guy was up to a lot of things on this ship that I’d bet Langlade knew nothing about. First of all, that chicken. I don’t think the captain knew about it or the prize inside it, but Tremblay sure did. I’m going to assume he knew about this biogrid too. Hell, he probably enjoyed keeping the knowledge of its existence from Langlade. Guys like him don’t hold a lot of respect for people like Langlade — men who can’t even pilot their own ships.

I’m looking up at the tops of the hydroponic towers and wondering just what Tremblay’s end game is when I trip on something at my feet. My world blurs as the gravity field beneath my boots pulls me to the floor, and I’m suddenly tangled in what feels like several ropes.
A net! I’m caught in a net!

My body finally stops its descent when it makes contact with something soft, but my head is not so lucky; it hits a steeloid pipe, stunning me for a few seconds. I lay there as my head spins, my swirling brain trying to make sense of what just happened and where I am.

As I experiment with moving, I find that bits of the net that took me down are wrapped around my arms and legs. A couple of them have found my neck, too, but when I struggle even the slightest bit, they fall away.
Not a very good net.

It’s dark down here, darker than I would have expected.
Did I fall into a hole?
I look up and see light weaving through whatever ceiling is above, but as I pull my right foot back toward my butt, my boots bump along the uneven, grated surface of the deck.
Guess I didn’t fall into a hole.
I wait a few seconds, breathing in and out in an effort to calm myself.
No need to panic; you just tripped into a giant pile of roots or something.

My respirations slow and my head finally stops spinning, making it possible for me to look around calmly and without that edge of panic that was threatening to take over. There’s just enough light to pick things out, and I’m able to see that I’m under a group of grow towers whose bases start about a meter above me. Behind me and on either end of the space I’m in are full-sized grow towers with their bases on the deck, creating a three-sided niche.

My mouth drops open as I realize that this space has been purposely cut out of the grid, and it’s being shielded by a curtain of thick, hanging roots.
What is it for? Equipment storage?
As I’m trying to figure out why this thing is even here, something intrudes on my consciousness, making it hard to concentrate. It’s a smell, and not a good one either.
Oh, hell, what is that?
Gone is the fresh scent of growing things, and in its place is the not-so-fresh scent of a person who seriously needs to take a shower.

Is that me I’m smelling?
My hands suddenly register the fact that they’re grabbing onto material, not roots or metalloid. I look down, noticing for the first time that I’m sitting on a pallet of sorts. A frame of bars interwoven with plant fibers creates a bunk ten centimeters off the deck, and several bits of wool or cotton material make up the mattress.
This can’t be for equipment storage. This is more like … a bed.

Through the root curtain I can see most of the walkway where I was just standing and admiring the view of my very own biogrid. My legs are sticking partway out of the roots and would trip anyone walking by. There are several root strands out there too, solving the mystery of how I fell and busted my ass.
I’m going to have to tell Lucinda she needs to keep the roots trimmed back. I can’t afford to get hurt right now.

I grit my teeth as I try to figure out what Lucinda’s game is. This can’t be where she sleeps. She’s too prim and proper to sleep in a stink like this. Plus, I’d smell it on her if she were bunking here. This has to be where some of her workers were staying when they were here. I’m surprised, though, that she hasn’t bothered to clean the place up. Macon would have found this spot eventually, helping her out the way he was assigned to.

Voices come faintly at first and then grow louder, cutting off my inner sleuthing. I feel guilty, as though I’ve been sneaking around where I shouldn’t have been, so I yank my feet toward me and curl them under my legs. The beating of my heart echoes in my ears.

The first voice I hear is Lucinda’s. The second, I don’t recognize.

Chapter Eleven

“NO, I’M NOT GOING TO do that. I can’t.” Lucinda sounds annoyed and worried.

A male voice responds. “Okay.”

“Don’t say ‘okay’. I know what you mean when you do that. You’re saying okay but you mean it’s
not
okay.”

“I said okay. Okay means okay.”

“No, okay means you disapprove of my decision and think I should do something differently.”

“If you say so.”

Her boots stop just outside the curtain of roots that hides me. “I don’t say so, Papa,
you
say so!”

My throat closes up in excitement.
Papa? What the … Is this her father? Has he been hiding here all along?! I knew it!
Holy shit, Lucinda is in so much trouble. I almost giggle with the idea of how much leverage this gives me. With a girl like her, leverage is a very,
very
good thing. This is the first bit of positive news I’ve had all day. I’m going to put aside the fact that this guy’s basically a stowaway on my ship.

They stand in front of me, toe to toe, wearing almost the same size shoe, although his footwear is more soft-soled than hers, like animal hides that have been barely treated.
Weird
. I guess that explains how he’s been sneaking around in here without anyone hearing him. Adelle must be cut off from the biogrid or something, because when I did roll call before, she didn’t mention anyone but the crew I already knew about. She should have told me about this guy being in here. Hell, she should have told me about all the frigging bombs on my ship too.
Dammit. I’m calling her a she again.
Adelle and I are going to have a little conversation when I’m done busting Lucinda for hiding her father in here.

“What I said was that it might be better to reveal our plans for the biogrid to your new captain before she makes decisions that will create problems for those plans.”

“You think she should be a part of this.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Well, she will be a part of it if I tell her what you want me to.”

“Not necessarily.”

It’s taking everything I have in me to keep from jumping out and knocking their heads together. They have plans for my biogrid? They think they’re going to make the decisions about what I’m going to do with it? They must be under the influence of one of their herbs or darksick or something.

“Tell me how she could know everything and not be involved.” Lucinda’s toe starts tapping impatiently.

“I overheard her conversation with you earlier. She seems to understand our people. Perhaps if you just told her …”

“Told her what? That this biogrid is ours? That it’s the prototype for biogrids we plan for eight other ships around the galaxy? That she has to allow our people on here to manage it at every station where we stop and compensate them for that work? Ha! She doesn’t have two credits to rub together. How is she going to compensate anyone?”

“Surely she has a plan to compensate you.”

“Maybe. We’ll see.”

My face is burning red with embarrassment. It sucks that Lucinda is not only speaking the truth, but she’s being realistic when she doubts my ability to follow through. My plan is kind of baseless.

“I think it’s best if you have a conversation with her, reveal a few things, see what you can do to judge her opinion. Then we’ll make other decisions.”

“Assuming she doesn’t find out about you here and blow a hole in the middle of our plans.”

I freeze like a statue. While a part of me wants to reveal I heard their whole plan and bust it wide open, the smarter part of me realizes I’ll be in a much better position with them if I can continue to play stupid. At least in the future it’ll be an act and not genuine idiocy that keeps me completely in the dark about what’s happening right under my nose. If he comes in here, though, I’m busted. I’ll lose the upper hand.
What to do? What to do?

“I have a meeting I have to go to on another ship,” Lucinda says. She sounds grouchy.
Nothing new there.

“How many are in this alliance?” Papa asks.

“Five, I think. That’s the rumor anyway. We’re supposed to go on one of the ships and meet everyone face to face.”

“What will you bring?”

“Whatever the captain tells me to bring.”

“You will be expected to share our bounty.”

“Of course. I hope you’re not telling me to try not to, because that won’t fly with her at the helm. She’s very pushy. She claims the biogrid as her own.”

I so badly want to slap her right now. I grab a root instead and squeeze it to release my anger in a way that keeps my cover in place.

“She will learn soon enough,” he says with a sigh. “Come. Let’s go check the feeds in section three. I noticed some build-up that needs to be flushed.”

Their voices grow fainter as they recede down the aisle, but not so much that I don’t hear her last comment.

“We had a bomb onboard, you know. Under the captain’s chair. I half wished it would go off.”

“Don’t say that,” he chides. “We’re better off with her than we were with Tremblay.”

That’s all I hear before the sounds of water being pumped into towers drowns them out.

I crawl out of the roots and beat a hasty retreat from their hideaway. When I get to the front of the biogrid, I yell, acting like I just got there from the antechamber. “Lucindaaaaa! Where are yoouuuu?!” I pause before continuing. “I need a gift basket for the meeting!” I act like I’m really interested in the leaves on the nearest plant and wait there for her to arrive. Less than a minute later she’s there, flustered.

“I didn’t hear you come in.”

“Yeah,” I say, staring her down, “I’m sneaky like that.”
You have no idea how sneaky, you greedy bitch.

Her chin comes out, but she doesn’t say anything.

“I need some things to bring our Alliance friends. One gift basket each.”

“So … four?”

I nod, confirming for her that the rumors are correct.

“Anything special?” she asks.

I put on my most innocent voice. “Oh, I don’t know. Don’t share all your best things. We want to keep those for special occasions, right? Family gatherings and such?” I wait for my words to sink in, but see no sign that she’s picking up on my double meaning. It’s kind of deflating not to be able to share my knowledge with her, that I know she’s planning all kinds of bullshit behind my back and that she kind of wished I’d been blown to bits on the flightdeck.

She shrugs. “Whatever you say. How much should I pack?”

“Enough for their crew to have a meal of it.”

Lucinda nods. “Fine. I could use some help.”

I turn around to head out. “I’ll send Macon.”

“Am I safe with him?” Lucinda asks.

I hesitate in the doorway, not bothering to look back. “Safer than I would be.”

Leaving the biogrid, I’m seized by a melancholy that makes me want to turn my ship around and blast us out into the Dark where no one will ever see us again. We won’t need water again for a few months. We could disappear and hang out nowhere. Somewhere I could lick my wounds.

As I make my way back to my bunk, I consider all that I’ve figured out about my life today. I may or may not have actually won this ship; it’s possible the whole scenario is a high-stakes con designed by someone who wants to see me go down in flames. There are Romanii living onboard who think they own the most valuable part of the ship. My long-lost friend who I almost killed and who I thought was long gone snuck on here maybe to kill me, or maybe just to screw me over, who knows. There’s a shadow in my brig, and I have the entire crew of the WS Baltimore waking up to the fact that they were all zapped by some technology they didn’t know existed before —at least I think they didn’t know it existed— and I’m the one responsible.

So, yeah. I don’t need Adelle to do an analysis of this shit storm for me. My odds of survival are painfully clear: five out of a million. I’m totally screwed. Perfect.

If it had been just Overshine who took a sleep-dive courtesy of the schlafhammer, I might not have had too much to worry about; at the very least, his ego might have stopped him from seeking me out, because then he would’ve had to admit I got the drop on him. But he wasn’t alone. His entire crew and Drake were there, and there’s no way in the universe that Drake will let that slide. He planned to watch Macon and me fight to the death, and we took that event from him. He’s going to be determined to find us and force a rematch, and I won’t delude myself into thinking the winner will be allowed to live after. Not to mention the fact that he’s going to want to straight-up punish me for getting away by taking him down to snoozetown. How embarrassing that’ll be, when he calls the event in to his superiors. Drake doesn’t do embarrassment well. No, Drake is going to be a big problem for me, unless I can come up with one hell of a story that he’ll believe as to how he was knocked out and I was left to disappear into the Dark. Nothing is coming to mind.

On top of all this, I have bombs planted all over the place, listening devices, trackers … the list of headaches I have to deal with goes on and on. And I don’t even know what the Alliance is going to want from me. Food for one thing, but what else? The idea behind our group is to protect one another, to help each other survive out here, but I still don’t really know what that means in a practical sense.

I stop at the door next to my bunk and hit the comm button outside it. “Macon. Open up.”

“I’m sleeping.”

I find myself smiling in spite of all the shit on my plate. “Yeah, you sound like it.” I pass my hand over the screen to open up the door. Macon is lying on the floor staring up at the ceiling.

I walk down the stairs and point at his bunk. “There’s a perfectly good bed there, you know.”

“It’s too soft. I prefer the ground.”

This makes me sad. I know what he means; if you’ve spent enough nights sleeping on steeloid, it starts to feel normal. I hate that this is what Macon’s life became after we parted ways.