Page 54 of Relyn
“We found a motherload of information,” Relyn said. “We might have even found Alana’s location.”
“Might?” Rutra asked.
“Space travel does make one mighty thirsty,” Relyn said. It was a cue that he wanted to talk business, away from so many eyes and ears. Whether Rutra knew or not, he still had a number of crew members that were still loyal to Alana.
“Where’s that female of yours?” Rutra asked.
Relyn shrugged. “I dumped her at a space station. She didn’t have much imagination, and there’s only so much begging a man can take,” he said. A Mahdfel would never abandon his mate, but a Sangrin would.
“Too bad. I bet she would have fetched a good price,” Rutra said.
“Oh, I got a good price for her,” Relyn said with a sly smile.
“What about Gale?”
“Gale’s got a lot of imagination, but I don’t trust her as far as I can fuckin’ throw her. She’s locked up onboard, until I get, well, an itch.”
Rutra seemed to take that comment as truth. “Come, let’s go talk some business,” he said, completely ignoring Grom.
The crew dispersed and Rutra and Relyn headed to the captain’s quarters with Grom tagging along.
“So you have some information?” Rutra prodded before they entered.
“Yes. We found a Melian information dealer that tried to shake us down, except he got more than he bargained for,” Relyn said as he watched Rutra type in the code. It was the same code he’d used on the force fence that kept Wendy and Bright contained. Did he really use the same passcode for everything?
“We stuffed him in a suitcase,” Grom said.
“Melians might be tall but they condense down pretty well,” Relyn said as they entered Rutra’s quarters. The crate was still sitting just inside the door, as if waiting for someone to move it. It was bait. The question was, where was the trap?
“We got a list of contacts and dealers,” Relyn began as they sat down at the table which seemed perpetually spread with food and liquor. “And we think Alana might be using them to continue her trading operations.”
“What is she trading in?” Rutra asked.
Relyn smiled, not wanting to seem too eager or too knowledgeable. “A little bit of this, and a little bit of that, but what I found curious was some of the aliases that were floating around on the list.”
“Nobody uses their real name. You don’t use yours,” Rutra said, echoing back their previous conversation.
“No, but there were some communications with these aliases that, well, revealed that you’ve got a problem.”
“It was a clear account of my fight with Ketle, and who went on the mission and killed the Adrastians. Unfortunately, I don’t think it was Ketle, because, well, certain facts of the mission didn’t quite happen as reported, and he would have known the difference between what was reported and what actually happened. And he definitely wouldn’t have given Grom the credit for those kills.”
“What are you saying?” Rutra asked.
“You’ve got spies, traitors on board that are reporting everything you do to Alana. Now you can see why I didn’t want to send you this information on a channel, because it’s clear that’s how she’s stayed ahead of you at every turn.”
Rutra stared at Relyn in silence for a long moment and then poured himself a drink.
“So you expect me to turn my crew inside out, just based on your word?” Rutra said.
“No. You can do what the hell you want with your crew. I just thought that this information would be valuable to you, perhaps even more valuable than the list of safehouses I found. Because the minute you start trying to track them down, your traitor is going to start singing like a bird, and you’ll never get close enough. She’ll find out you got a list and burn through everything and still stay hidden.”
“You don’t know who the traitor is?”
“If I did, then I would be selling that to you, but like I said, it was all in code, and I don’t know them well enough to know who is who around here,” Relyn said.
“What do you propose I do?”
“Well, I’ll give you the list of safehouses, for a small fee, of course,” Relyn said.
