Page 62 of Relyn
“Okay, you got me. She’s here,” Alana said.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Nora’s voice said over the coms. Relyn had no doubt it was her. Her voice sent a shiver of longing through his entire frame.
“But the docking clamps are broken. We’ll put her in an EV suit and send her over,” Alana said.
Bright muted the console. “Two things,” she said.
“The docking clamps are not broken, and that was a recording. Nora is not on the ship,” Relyn supplied.
“But you’ve successfully sold being a sucker and we may now space the crate with less suspicion and follow it and Grom to Nora’s location.”
Relyn nodded and headed back to the cargo area.
“Cargo is shortly on its way,” Bright said on the com.
Two eyeball stalks protruded from the crate. As Relyn came into the hold, they pivoted from Wendy to him.
“Time to go. We’re spacing the crate. Grom, this might get dicey. We’re going to have to follow them to Nora.”
“I’ve encapsulated the trackers and am ready to go. You can count on me,” Grom said from a mouth somewhere inside the crate. The eyes shrunk back and Wendy put on a reassuring smile as she closed the lid. The second the seals locked, her face fell into a grimace.
“This is a horrible idea,” she said again.
“I know, but I still don’t see any alternatives,” Relyn said as he shifted the crate into the airlock. “Seriously.” Relyn would go himself… if he trusted Bright farther than he could throw her. His shapeshifting ability was still his ace in the hole.
He closed the forcefield, opened the hull door, and watched the crate get sucked out into space.
Back to the cockpit, this time with Wendy hot on his heels, Relyn watched the crate drift further into space. Alana’s craft maneuvered itself into the crate’s path and easily hooked it with a mag hook.
“Now for Nora,” Relyn said into the com. Sure enough, a moment later, they spaced an EV suit. The visor was dark, so one couldn’t identify the person inside it. They weren’t moving either.
Alana’s ship was already putting some distance between them, probably wanting to be far away from them before Relyn discovered the motionless suit was indeed empty.
Bright stared at the EV suit. “Do we even bother?”
The console dinged, but that was the only warning they got before laser fire filled the viewscreen followed by a large flash of an explosion. Something had blown the EV suit to smithereens.
“That didn’t come from Alana’s ship,” Wendy said.
“An empty EV suit would not explode like that. They must have filled it with explosives,” Bright said, backing them away from the wreckage. Alana’s ship was already speeding off. The other ship fired after it but missed.
Relyn finally got a good look at the other ship, and it didn’t take much to realize that it wasn’t the Alana’s Misery, but Grom’s ship that Rutra had pursued them in.
“They wanted us to take the suit in and then set off the explosives. Alana just tried to kill me,” Bright said. The offense was clear in her voice.
Perhaps it was finally sinking in what it felt like when someone betrayed you.
“Maybe you should be wondering if Rutra wants to kill us too, because I’m pretty sure this ship isn’t a match for that one,” Wendy said.
She was absolutely right. Bright kicked it into high gear and sped off in a different direction than Alana. Now Rutra would have to pick a target. Would he choose the easier prey or follow the woman he was really after? Relyn couldn’t afford to have either ship destroyed.
He hailed Rutra, hoping that he would listen. His only play now was to stall for time.
“Now before you go and ruin the plan, Grom is on that ship,” Relyn said, slipping back into the even keeled tones of Rel, mercenary for hire.
“Plan? Plan? Your plan included stealing from me?”
“Your ship is full of Alana’s spies. If I hadn’t stolen it from you, then she would have known and secondly, I wouldn’t have any bait to track her back to her hiding place,” Relyn said.
