Page 25 of Enthraller

“What will you do?” Wren asked Velda.

“I’ll have him brought in for questioning.” Velda tapped her lips. “I’ll have to ask the head of the Nanganya Protection Unit to do it. That will be a difficult duty for Pamela Ingot. She and Ferris are friends, or at least cordial, as far as I’m aware.”

Ethan shrugged, as if to say too bad for her, and because it was exactly how he was feeling himself, Ed found himself liking the captain more.

“What about the Lassian thugs?” Velda asked. “Will they talk?”

“They were only just coming out of whatever Ed and Wren here did to them this morning.” Hyt eyed them both. “What exactly did you do?”

“Ed knocked his one out the usual way. I know a trick on how to pinch a neck nerve. My one grabbed me, and unfortunately for him, I was able to reach his neck. It renders the person unconscious,” Wren said, with a shrug. “Some people take longer to come round than others.”

Ethan looked at her as if he was offended at the level of shit she was shoveling his way, but Velda simply looked surprised and a little impressed.

“Better than killing them,” Ed said to Ethan with a grin. “They were armed, we weren’t. We didn’t have much choice.”

“You didn’t stick around to explain, either,” Ethan grumbled.

“You can’t blame us for that,” Wren said. “We had no idea how many friends they’d brought with them.”

“Good point.” Velda looked over at Ethan. “Do you think there could be more of them, Ethan?”

Ethan nodded. “Possible. If those two got in, more could have. We’ll need to try and find out where they were staying, see if there’s evidence of more of them.”

“Who were they after, do you think?” Velda asked. “Ed or Wren?”

Ed glanced at Wren, and she lifted a shoulder. “Both?”

“Yes.” He didn’t know if it were true or not, but if it was both of them, the chances were higher they’d stay together. And he wanted to stay together.

He hadn’t had this much fun in a long time.

“But you don’t know each other?” Velda sounded skeptical.

“Never laid eyes on each other before yesterday morning,” Ed said, cheerfully. “Thanks for that, Ethan.”

Ethan Hyt watched him with narrowed eyes. Ed could see he was wary of his answer.

“Getting back to the ancestral wreck.” If Velda Shanïha was aware of the undercurrents, she obviously decided to ignore them. “Who did you tell about it?”

“I didn’t report it as an ancestral wreck, just a wreck.” Wren lifted a hand, checked off the names. “Captain Harden, Lieutenant Trent, the head of the SF team with me on Ytla, and my boss, Demilla Garrett, the head of support services in the teams.”

“And?” Ethan asked. “What happened?”

“Harden called me into his office and told me the wreck was a research runner that had gone down on Ytla twenty years before.” Wren leaned back in her chair. “He said everyone on the runner had made it out alive, so there was no incentive to spend the time and effort going back to find it, especially with the Har Met Vent nearby.”

“Maybe what you sawwasthis research runner,” Ethan suggested.

Wren shook her head. “I didn’t believe him, so I looked it up. There was no research runner that wrecked on Ytla twenty years ago, or any time, for that matter.” She hesitated. “And then, there was also what the Har Met Vent members said while they were looking through the wreckage for me.”

Ed turned to her, surprised that there was even more to this than she’d already admitted. “What was that?”

“It was hard to hear everything. There was a massive storm raging. But it sounded like they had found another part of the wreck somewhere else on Ytla, and I’d led them to exactly what they’d been looking for for months. It sounded like the cult was a front for a group specifically hunting for the wreckage.”

“Just like on Cepi,” Ed murmured.

Velda pressed both palms down on her desk. “This is getting bigger with every revelation. Ethan, this is another question Pamela Ingot must put to Ferris Harden.”

“I’d like to fly to Nanganya, be with Ingot when she questions Harden. And it wouldn’t hurt to talk to Lieutenant Trent, either. He’s either the most useless teams leader I’ve ever heard of, or he’s in this up to his neck.” Ethan looked offended at the thought of Trent and his actions.

---