Slip Point Read online

  “Thanks for the advice,” Shayalin said. “There’s so much I don’t know.”

  Thana chuckled. “That’s what datalinks are for.” But she proved a fount of information herself. She’d traveled to a fair number of planets and had her share of stories about them. Whenever a crewmember wandered in for a quick cup of coffee, he ended up listening to the current anecdote, which flowed seamlessly into the next.

  Mohit finally found them all there, gathered around Thana. He shook his head, smiling. “We’ll be taking off soon, if anyone cares to tend to his duties.”

  The crew dispersed, although some lingered to exchange a few last words with Thana. Shayalin was in awe of the woman’s breadth of experience. The travel agent had been to all the Hub worlds and along the spokes of half of them.

  “We’ll be reaching the slip point shortly after take-off,” Mohit said, catching Shayalin before she headed off to her cabin. “Can you handle it all right, or do you need to be sedated?”

  “I’ll be fine,” she said. Some people had adverse reactions to entering slipspace, but she had been untroubled on the way to this station. She and Jayce had joked it was a sign they were meant to lead spacefarers’ lives. And here she was, already on her second space flight. She wished she could share it with him.

  He might be on a ship, too, only his destination would be a Corps training camp. She told herself she was happy for him, even as she fiercely blinked back tears.

  Thana excused herself to her cabin, and Shayalin retreated as well. She curled up on the berth under the safety webbing and tried desperately not to miss Jayce, despite the hollow in her heart.

  The ship hummed as it undocked. She spread her fingers on the wall, letting the vibrations thrum their way down her arm as though setting into her bones a reminder of what she wanted. Jayce was lost to her, and so was her chance at the Corps. She had to find something else to drive toward. Silently, she willed the Alioqui to move faster. And as though on cue, she felt the blurring sensation that was the slip point entry. It felt like being forced through a needle’s eye, although with an impossible fluidity.

  They reached the station without incident, as promised by the ship’s record. Shayalin knew the names of each crewmember by the time she disembarked, as well as the stories of two passengers besides Thana. They led lives that would have thrilled her back on Centuris, but only two slip points out, she was already looking for something grander.

  Although she was tempted to wander the station, she went straight to a public console, pulled up a directory and looked up travel agents. This time she wasn’t looking for the lowest fare or safest route. Remembering what Thana had said, she passed over ones that looked too upscale and found some smaller operations. She messaged them about the possibility of booking a trip to Urioq.

  Most of them warned her of the danger, but a couple took an optimistic tone, saying that since their shipping lane had just been hit by pirates, they were likely safe now. Shayalin wasn’t counting on it, and in fact was hoping the dread pirate would strike twice in the same place. She just had to present too tempting a target for him to pass up.

  One simply replied that there were many options she’d be happy to discuss. Shayalin noted the location of that one, navigated the station’s levels and subsectors and found the office. She stepped in.

  A woman with a shock of close-cropped hair and elegantly arched brows looked up. She smiled saucily at Shayalin. “Looking for a ride?”

  What had the bartender called it? Swagger. This woman had it in spades.

  “Yes. To Urioq.”

  “You messaged me earlier, didn’t you? Didn’t provide much detail, though.” The agent tapped something into her console. “Were you looking for luxury, speed, price?”

  “It has to be a secure route,” Shayalin said. She tightened her grip on her pack strap, self-conscious about the gesture.

  The woman looked at her with new interest. “You a courier?”

  She nodded, relieved she’d succeeded in giving that impression.

  “What happened to your ship?”

  “The pilot was…compromised. Besides, something that flashy would’ve drawn too much attention.” She’d discarded half a dozen lines before settling on this one as suitably vague but within the realm of possibility.

  The woman pursed her lips. “I think I know just the ship for you. The Palinuros will get there the soonest—no slip, but it’s leaving within the hour on a direct route.”

  “How much?”

  “I can get you a special deal.” The price she named was special indeed, but not for its bargain nature.

  “I didn’t expect to have to pay for another passage,” Shayalin said, her sheep-bargaining instincts rising. “And it’s almost a shuttle hop from Balba. I’ll give you half that.”

  The woman grimaced. “Can’t you expense it? Leave me some commission!”

  Shayalin hoped the agent would be collecting an extra commission elsewhere by reporting this activity to pirates. Hopefully her father. When pressed, the woman did accept a lower figure. Shayalin paid and noted which dock she had to hurry to.

  She made one stop along the way, at a high-end importer’s shop. There, she took a deep breath before spending the very last of her credit buying a crate of fresh fruit. The price was outrageous, considering she could’ve picked the equivalent amount from her mother’s orchard in a half hour—and for free, at that—but it reassured her that it was considered exotic on this station. She arranged for it to be delivered on an urgent basis to the Palinuros—it would get loaded just in time. A sudden last-minute shipment marked as fragile and having biological contents should hopefully arouse interest.

  She wished there was more time to explore the station but made her way directly to the dock and boarded, since it would be taking off soon.

  The ship felt different from the Alioqui as soon as she stepped aboard. The crew was brisk and efficient, their smiles polite. She preferred Mohit’s easy familiarity.

  Shayalin made her way to her cabin—more spacious than the last one—and stowed her pack. She was tempted to seek out the other passengers, but that could prove awkward when she later tried to deal with the pirates. Instead she settled in front of the comm unit and began looking up anything she could think of.

  It was addictive, following reference after reference until she was as far from her original lookup as possible. She paused her reading for departure, caught as always by the thrill of the ship easing into movement, but once she was sure they were gliding free of the station she bent over the console again. This time she focused her queries on Urioq, since she’d have to figure out what to do there if the ship arrived safely and she had nothing but her clothes and a crate of fruit.

  She hoped her mother was right, and pirates were as lazy as rustlers when it came to picking targets.

  Her reading wasn’t reassuring. Urioq was a mining planet of less than sterling repute. Some criminals lived out their sentence in hard labor there. A few of her fellow passengers would likely be visitors, while others would be administrators or guards. There might even be a convict aboard. Not that she could afford delicate sensibilities, she reminded herself, given that she was trying to contact pirates.

  The speakers chimed. “This is the captain of the Palinuros. We have been boarded by pirates,” a voice said calmly. “They may approach you and make demands. Please cooperate fully to minimize the risk of getting hurt.”

  Shayalin hadn’t felt the jolt of another ship locking on to them, and there had been no evasive maneuvers, no alarms to alert crewmembers. How had they been boarded? Were they truly that subtle?

  They must have sneaked aboard as passengers, made their way to the bridge and overpowered the pilot. It spoke of familiarity with the layout and the crew’s patterns. Could the agent have told them all that? Surely not.

  Wait. They weren’t under attack by a pirate ship—the Palinuros was the pirate ship. Shayalin’s breath caught at the audacity of the scheme. This ship must
’ve been stolen, but somehow its registration hadn’t been flagged yet. And passengers with potentially valuable cargo would board, unsuspecting…

  She snatched up her pack and headed out of her cabin. She had to talk to one of the crew and convince him of who she was. But before she could take more than a couple of steps down the hall, the woman who had booked the trip for Shayalin turned the corner.

  “Ah, there you are. And all ready for me.” She aimed a gun at Shayalin and divested her of her pack.

  “That’s—”

  The muzzle of the gun moved to point directly at her head. Shayalin shut up.

  The woman deftly unfastened the pack with one hand and pulled out its contents onto the floor. Shayalin’s clothes were shaken out for anything that might be tucked within their careful folds, even her undergarments. The gun never wavered, and Shayalin swallowed all of her protests.

  When the pack was finally emptied, turned inside out and its seams thoroughly inspected, the woman let it drop. “There’s nothing in there,” she said, turning an accusing look on Shayalin.

  That pack had held everything from Centuris she had decided to keep, now strewn about for anyone to see. Certainly more than nothing to her. “What were you expecting?” Shayalin snapped.

  “Oh, maybe a special item to be delivered to Urioq. I seem to have heard of it from someone.” Her smile promised unpleasant things.

  Shayalin hadn’t really planned this through. She parried with, “Who said it was tangible?”

  To her surprise, a thoughtful look crossed the woman’s face. Her eyes narrowed. “Speak plainly, girl. Why were you so worried about a pirate attack if what you have is in your head? Who would know about it—and what is it?”

  Shayalin retreated to the truth. “I wasn’t worried about the attack. I was worried it wouldn’t happen.”

  This time the woman’s eyes widened. Then she laughed—not in derision, but with the full-throated amusement of someone appreciating a good joke. “And so you fed me that tale. I didn’t think to look past the surface with a Rim girl. You could hustle a few bets with that act.”

  “Thank you,” Shayalin said dryly.

  “Most people would call you stupid instead of clever for arranging this. So now the question is, why?”

  Shayalin took a deep breath. “I’m looking for Kennick Bailey,” she said. If this was some other pirate entirely, she’d just walked neatly into a trap of her own devising with no way out.

  The woman eyed her with suspicion but not, Shayalin was relieved to see, confusion. “You look young to be a bounty hunter.”

  “I’m not a bounty hunter,” she said. “I have…a business proposal.”

  “Something in your head after all,” she mused. “Careful, little girl. Admitting to business with a pirate is as good as being one, as far as the law’s concerned.”

  Shayalin bristled at the condescension. “But you’re not the law, are you?”

  The woman grinned. “We all have our vices. All right.”

  “You’ll take me to him?” Shayalin hadn’t actually believed she would.

  “Not if you stand there gawping all day. Come on.”

  The woman didn’t wait for Shayalin’s reply but grasped her shoulder and gave her a good shove. They made their way through the ship, the woman staying behind Shayalin the whole way. They passed other people, both pirates ransacking rooms and the passengers they had cowed.

  “Here he is,” the woman finally said as they entered the bridge. She pushed Shayalin in front of a large man with a shaved head and a scowl.

  “Hmm?” He was frowning at a console.

  “Says she’s got business to talk about,” the woman reported laconically.

  The man transferred his glare to her. “That so?”

  He didn’t look anything like her. The shape of his face was all wrong. “You’re not Kennick Bailey.”

  He crossed his arms. They were thickly muscled, and words in a language she didn’t know were inked along them, like lines of poetry. She shrank back a little as he said, “And how would a Rim girl know that?”

  Her timidity fled. She was tired of being labeled a Rim hick. “I’m sure he’d want to know that too.”

  He snorted, but looked her over a little more sharply. “And if you told me, I could tell him.”

  “He’ll want to speak with me.” She hoped that was the case. “There’s a blood-debt.” She tried to imply she was the one who owed it.

  He turned to the woman. “Well? You brought her to me for a reason.”

  “She arranged for us to raid this ship. I think she’s gone to enough trouble that her reason may actually be worthwhile.”

  They both looked at her, while Shayalin tried to look like someone with important things to say.

  The man finally jerked his head to one side, indicating she should go that way. She turned, and he stepped forward and pressed a hypo against her neck before she could protest. Vertigo suddenly overcame her. She put out a hand to try to catch her balance and accidentally elbowed someone—the woman, from the sound of the cursing. She stumbled forward, her vision still lurching.

  “Creeds! Get ahold of her.”

  “Don’t tell me this little wisp managed to hurt you,” the man said, amused.

  “Just shut up and carry her.”

  A blur of color approached her, and then he took hold of her waist and smoothly hoisted her over his shoulder. The world kept tumbling. She tried kicking out, but the motion rocked her and nearly set her to retching. She couldn’t keep track of where they went; sound swung between a roar and a low hum.

  Shayalin gritted her teeth and endured.

  After a quarter of an hour, she was finally set down. Someone took hold of her wrists, and there was a pinch of pressure against her neck and a hiss. The world swung back into balance.

  She was cuffed to a chair, as she quickly found out when she tried to push her hair away from her face. She tried to shake her head instead but subsided when she discovered there were aftereffects to whatever drug they’d given her, making her stomach churn.

  “And who’s this chit?” asked a baritone from behind her. It was the same voice that had come from the speakers earlier.

  The man who’d carried her here answered, “Girl said you’d want to talk to her.”

  “What about?” the other asked irritably. With the way Creeds deferred to him, he had to be the captain.

  “She mentioned a blood-debt.”

  “What, are we in medieval times?” Footsteps, and through the curtain of her hair, someone’s boots stopping in front of her. He swept her hair back. “You look familiar…”

  She lifted her head. “So I should.”

  And so did he. She’d seen that nose in her mirror and the shape of those eyes. He must have passed on his wiry build to her, if not the paleness of his hair or the square jaw.

  “Mara!” He caught her chin and turned her face this way and that to study it. “How old are you?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “You’re the right age, then.” He let go of her and leaned back. “So. What is Mara Cho’s daughter doing away from Centuris?”

  “I want a ship.” The raw hunger in her voice startled even herself.

  His brows flicked up. “And I should just hand you one?”

  “No. I’ll earn one.”

  “You think piracy works on a merit-based system? Why don’t you run off to the Corps? They like hard workers like you.”

  She finally looked away. “I tried.”

  His hand was on her face again, bringing it back. “Why didn’t they take you?” His voice was mild but his eyes sharp.

  “Because of you.” She felt the prick of tears and fiercely wished them away.

  Her father stepped back at last. The mockery had left his face. “It seems I may owe you something, though I didn’t know you existed 'til now,” he said. “What did she name you?”

  “Shayalin.”

  “So, Lin, you would enter a life of crime,
of constant flight from the Corps, of highest bids from unsavory bidders for goods taken from those who need them?”

  She swallowed. She couldn’t back out now. “I’ll do what I have to.”

  “Fair enough.” He bent down to release her from her bonds. “You’ll have to get rid of that accent.”

  “It’s gone,” Shayalin promised. She stood, gratefully stretching her limbs.

  The mate stirred uneasily. “You’re going to take her on?”

  “Think of it, Creeds, a pirate dynasty!” Her father gestured expansively, as though an entire line of descendants stretched out before him. “There’s always the one patrol ship too quick to be outsmarted. When that one gets me, I’ll have a living legacy.”

  “But she—”

  “And it’ll be nice to have an apprentice who will actually listen to me, since there seem to be those on this ship who don’t.” Her father smiled lazily.

  Creeds fell silent with a resigned air.

  Her father pivoted to look at the rest of his crew. “Lay a hand on her,” he said in a pleasant voice, “and you’ll answer to me.”

  Though people nodded, their gazes flickered to her. She knew they were wondering if she truly merited special attention from the captain. But she’d prove herself his daughter in spirit as well as in blood, now that he’d let her join his crew.

  It was almost as good as having him acknowledge her as his own.

  He did not call her his daughter until a year and a half later, when she stole her first ship.

  Chapter Three

  10 years later

  “Dearest daughter—”

  Shayalin turned away from the newsfeeds and cut him off. “What do you want?” Her father only called her that when he wanted a favor. She was convinced he was the most notorious pirate in the Wheel not because he stole things, but because he talked people out of them.

  “We have a commission.”

  Her father usually liked to pick out their targets himself, but he occasionally undertook special requests for the wealthy and unscrupulous. He rarely involved her though, knowing she preferred corrupt targets, or clever schemes with little damage. Squeamish, he called it. Discriminating, she liked to say, although she suspected the Steader principles her mother had instilled in her had as much to do with it. But she’d impressed him by how much she’d accomplished with her stubborn rules in place, and so he let her keep them.