Page 51 of Her Alien Cyborgs
Hezza opened her mouth, but for several seconds she didn’t say anything.
“Huh. That is a damn good question. And it gives me an idea about how I can pay him back for the favors I currently owe him.”
“What favors?” Kalan asked.
“While you two were getting the tracker off the hull of my ship, I sent him another message. I’ve got no doubt he’ll come through for us, but it won’t be easy.”
“What did you ask him to do?” Fyr’enth asked. This wasn’t something they’d had time to discuss before they had to enact their part of the plan.
“I asked him to add more messages.” Her expression turned serious. “We can’t fend these assholes off forever. If we have to face them, I want to stack the odds in our favor as much as I can.”
“Makes sense,” Kalan agreed.
Fyr’enth placed the tracker on the table between them. “Before we talk about the future, we need to deal with this.”
Hezza nodded and then spoke in the tone she used when addressing the AI. “Hey, ship. Is the item I asked you to fabricate ready yet?”
“It is.”
“Good. Have a bot bring it to the galley.”
“Request confirmed. It will arrive in thirty-seven seconds.”
“Is this the shielded container you mentioned earlier?” Kalan asked around another mouthful of sugary bliss.
“Yeah. Now that the AI has had a chance to scan it, it can detect the signal. I’m not an expert on this kind of thing, butfrom what I understand, the signal it gave off blended with the ambient noise generated by the ship. Very sneaky.” She tapped the tracker with a finger. “Now we know about it, I think we should keep it muted until we can use it to our advantage.”
Kalan immediately saw her intent. “You want to reactive it once we’re on our way to the colony on Liberty. We can turn their own trap against them.”
“If everyone gets my message and follows through? Then, yeah, that’s the plan. Do either of you have any objections?”
“None,” Kalan said.
“Me either,” Fyr’enth said.
“Then that’s the plan. When we get to Haven, we’ll find out if anyone accepted my invitation.” She smiled at them. “That’s what I asked Flek to do. I sent an open invitation to every being I consider a friend. We’re going to Liberty, and if we’re lucky, we’ll have allies waiting when we get there.”
“How long will they need to get there?”
“Some of them could be there in a few days. Others will need two weeks. Until then, we’re going to have to keep moving. Without the tracker, theFalconmight give up the chase, but we can’t know for certain without letting them catch up. I don’t want to do that.”
“Neither do we,” Kalan agreed. Today they’d been lucky. If they were caught a second time? No, it was best they didn’t take that risk.
Fyr’enth stood. “It’s a good plan. But there’s something we can do to make it better.”
Kalan got to his feet, too. “Come with us, Alyssa.”
“But we still have cinnamon bites,” she complained.
Kalan scooped the bag off the floor. “They can wait a little while. Or don’t you want to know what’s in here?”
“I think I’m getting hustled.”
“We learned from the best,” Kalan said without bothering to hide his smug grin.
They led her to her cabin, though it was reallytheircabin now. They’d only spent one long, lonely night sleeping in their own quarters.
Once inside, Kalan pulled out the three items contained in the bag, though he held them in one hand and hid it behind his back.
