“Hello, little one.”
Betta grit her teeth. “Mister Jenkins.”
“I was sorry to hear about your father. My condolences. I find it oddly coincidental such a tragedy should befall him a week after you complete your time with Pilo. Again, they are taking full liability. Hmm. If it were me, and I say this as a friend, and there was some way for me to get off-planet, I would encourage you to take it… immediately.”
Betta slapped her hand across the console. “Call Jenkins!”
The screen appeared with his answering service. “Executive Jenkins is not answering calls at this time. Please leave a message or select a time when he is free. Thank you.”
She ended the call. Mister Jenkins had rarely contacted her since their first meeting. He’d never reached out to her personally in the past. Did he also know about Jalys? Had Mister Jenkins worked this out with her father? Was more of the fed compromised than she realized?
Betta groaned, clutching her head in both hands only to yelp at the pain in her left wrist.
That voice in her head, the one that looped in the background with all the useless knowledge, whispered, “Fall back. This is an opportunity. Take it.”
Jalys warned her that she had 48 hours. She’d nearly lost two. That gave her 46 hours or less and then…
Betta worked as quickly as she could with one hand, using the console to its fullest. By now, she knew that the glider was headed for Green Sector, the only way off this planet. Clenching her teeth against her pain, her sorrow, and the growing anger in her gut, Betta made more lists than she had ever in all her life and linked them in order to reach the best outcome. A space station. She could work with that.
Three hours later, Betta sat alone in the Transport Clinic. Her wrist was healed and there was no sign of a concussion. The final examination for interstellar travel was in the green, which meant there was little risk that she’d never wake up, or that stasis would kill her. At some point, during the testing, she hoped she failed. Sadly, she was healthy. Not only healthy, she was stamped safe for multiple trips.
Now, sitting before the open pod, she considered running. She could just run out of the clinic all the way to her chamber and be protected by the feds forever. She could probably sell the space station for a good price and live comfortably on Arys-27.
Betta shook her head. How long before they came for her? How long before the entire fed network was completely hacked and she was being used by the black-market? Not only that, she’d be wasting the opportunity her father worked so hard to deliver.
“Are you ready, Miss?”
The tech was tall and lanky. Her dark hair was longer than most, but it was thick and luxurious. Betta touched her own short-cropped hair. Perhaps she would get extensions in her new role. But first… first she had to get in the box.
“I bet you get all types, huh?” Betta asked softly, looking from the pod to the tech.
The tech placed her tablet on a nearby table. “Nervous, huh?”
“Yeah. I had a bad experience when I was a kid,” Betta said.
The tech put a hand on her shoulder and Betta felt a pinch.
“Happens all the time,” the tech said.
There was a swirl of color, and then nothing.
Chapter Three
Hesitation
“Promise me, you won’t look in the package, fam,” Olly said, his eyes skeptical, though his look pleading.
“Look, I can’t promise anything, Ol,” Jadis replied
“But that’s one of the main conditions. You want the marks, right? This deal will net you millions. All you have to do is drop the crates in dock 27, look the other way, and poof it’s all handled. You got millions, I got millions, and we don’t know shit.”
In his dealings over the years on the power station, Jadis found himself more and more entrenched with people like Olly. He didn’t care for it, but he needed high marks if he wanted to get the surgery to become completely reptilian. In the twelve cycles he’d spent in this sector, he could find no surgeon willing or knowledgeable enough. The consensus was there was only one, and he was in Alpha, and Alpha meant high marks for the trip. Once Jadis arrived, he’d also need marks to survive, and who knew how much it would take to pay a mad scientist to do mad scientist stuff?
As such, he had to deal with questionable characters like Olly and the occasional dodgy deal. At least, that was true before the news hit about the new colony. Now all types of machinations were entering his mind that could get him free of off-the-board deals.
News was slow in space. On Tagmus, he’d merely had to hit the SpaceNet and he’d have an update for the entire sector with their repeater satellites in deep space. Now, he waited for tight beams that would come at intervals that were calculated, but seemed random. Especially when the news was months old.
Jadis had already made a bid for the derelict station in the path of the new colony only to learn that it was already bought, already had a name. That was an inconvenience, but one he hoped to remedy soon. He didn’t know what a Betta was, but he was sure he could wrangle it out of their hands with the right deal. Then he’d have all the profits from the colony traffic, sell the station, and make his way to Alpha.
“Look, fam. Just send one of your lackeys to collect, right? The less you know the better,” Olly said.
“And if I send any of my employees, they report back to the royal court and in a few years we deal with the consequences,” Jadis said.
“Right. I keep forgetting your princess girlfriend is always keeping tabs.”
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
“Lover?” Olly raised dark eyebrows against platinum blond locks. It was an obvious affectation with his brown skin.
“Friend. Just like you, Olly.”
“Not what I heard. Or did you want to share a pool with me and swap—”
“Anyway, Olly. I’ll be doing the transport, no matter. I won’t look in the crates if I don’t have to. I need this deal, right?” Jadis raised his own brows.
“Right. That’s the spirit. Get in it, Jadis Ter!” Olly yelped.
The holographic image of Olly vanished and Jadis was left with a blank wall to greet him. Stuffing down his frustration with how trapped he felt doing business this way, he sent the command for his personal vessel to ready. He then delegated most of his obligations to one of the many mangers under his command. He liked to select them randomly when he left the station. He knew they considered it a test of their abilities. This, and many other facts, he learned from hacking their communications. Since he’d made the cybernetic upgrade he’d reveled in the opportunities that arrived.
Not only could he monitor each and every one of his managers by hacking their chambers, he could create simple copies of his consciousness to monitor their actions. When he was ready, he could easily reabsorb the memories of the separate consciousness and experiences into himself.
The implants had their downside. He needed to sleep very little, and yet his mind raced. It wanted to be challenged, and, as of yet, he was constantly bored.
In the end, it meant that he was most definitely going to be looking to see what was in those crates. It also meant he was going to do it in the most discrete way he could imagine. Why would anyone pay millions to send a bunch of crates to Alpha off-the-record? Something sweet had to be in those crates and if he could get even a tiny piece of that action he might be that much closer to Alpha.
The notification came that his vessel was ready and in pre-flight. He wasn’t surprised to see more than a few of the managers lining the corridor as he walked to his ship.