Slip Point (3 page)

Shayalin was tempted to send her mother a message, to confront her with the truth and ask a tangle of questions, but she’d lied to Shayalin for eighteen years. Why would she do differently now?

Instead of keying in her mother’s address, she looked up the
Alioqui
. The ship had served proudly for a good number of years, all under the same captain. Mohit was listed in the crew manifests from the start, as well. The routes the ship ran were unremarkable, but it had a good record of completed runs on time. She started reading about
Aequitus
-class specs. Jayce had always wanted a sleek fighter, but she hadn’t seen anything wrong with a trader ship, not when that was what her father had supposedly flown.

She couldn’t think about Jayce now. She stabbed at a random word on the screen, and it pulled up the corresponding entry on the vulnerability of trade routes to piracy.

She only thought to check her data limit after flipping through a hundred different screens, following link after link. To her delight, there was none for newsfeeds. Access on Centuris terminals had always been throttled after a stingy allowance was exhausted.

She could have stayed there forever. Terminals on Centuris contained only approved texts, not this infinite bounty of information. But her stomach growled, and she realized she’d been reading through articles for at least a couple hours. Meals were included in standard fare, weren’t they? She squeezed her way out of her cabin and wandered through the ship, hoping she’d come across a kitchen.

A crewmember nodded in a friendly way as he passed her in a corridor. “
Hal beemkani mosa’adatuk
?”

“Hi,” she said, embarrassed. She’d done poorly in her language studies.

He grinned. “Sorry, bad guess on my part. Can I help you? You look a bit lost.”

“I’m hoping to find food,” she confessed.

“You almost made it on your own! The mess is just farther down this way and hook a left.”

“Thanks,” she said, and followed his directions.

There were various snacks set out on a table, almost none of which Shayalin recognized. Seated there was a woman with a long, dark braid and flowing garb, sipping a beverage. She glanced up and smiled a welcome at Shayalin, crow’s feet crinkling at the corners of her eyes. “Looks like Mohit’s charming aboard all the ladies.”

Shayalin sat on the bolted-down bench across from her. “You’re a passenger too?”

“Mmm-hmm. Thana Akbari. I’m a travel agent on vacation, so you know you’re on a reputable ship.”

“I’m Shayalin Cho. If I’d met you earlier, you could’ve saved me a lot of talking in bars,” Shayalin said ruefully. She reached for the most exotic-looking food—something like a starfruit crossed with an eel—and took an exploratory bite. It was both tart and sweet, and chewier than she’d been expecting.

“That’s what we do,” Thana said. “We save people the time and trouble of asking around.” She cocked her head. “I flatter myself that I’m one of the best here, but there are a few on the station you could’ve used even though I fled my office early.”

“I didn’t know about travel agents,” Shayalin said. When the woman’s eyes widened, she added defensively, “I’ve lived in a Steader colony all my life.”

“No, I can’t say I’ve had many Steader clients,” the woman said slowly. “They usually don’t leave their hearths, do they? Well, good for you, getting away. That couldn’t have been easy.” She laughed suddenly. “You can tell I’m not in vacation mode yet, because I just had to stop myself from telling you about all the glorious places you should visit.” She raised a hand to forestall Shayalin. “And I won’t, because I really do want to get away from work. You’ve done fine so far, and you can look up a good agent in Balba. I don’t think anyone would turn down the chance to work with a Steader—we usually have to deal with the jaded travelers who’ve been to every spoke of the Wheel. It’s nice to get a client who wants something different.”

Shayalin couldn’t imagine walking up to a travel agent and asking for the swiftest route to her father. On second thought, why not, if she just asked the right way?

“So they know the safest ways to travel?” she asked. “Away from unstable routes and pirates?” To avoid pirates, you’d have to know their haunts.

Thana hesitated. “The reputable ones will steer you right,” she said. “Just be careful. Some of the shadier agents forward their information on to pirates, I’ve heard. It’s how they find their targets. Don’t get aboard anything that looks like it has important people or cargo.”

“How can I tell?”

“The station master’s a good resource. He has all the cargo manifests, so he can tell who’s carrying goods that need special handling or rushed delivery. That’s like honey to pirates. And couriers are usually carrying something valuable, but then again, they tend to know the most reliable routes, so that’s a mixed signal.”

The seed of an idea took root in Shayalin’s mind. “Is there a way to check which agents are reputable?”

“Honestly, the best way’s to get a recommendation from a satisfied customer. I get most of my business from referrals. Failing that…” She shrugged. “If you’re not sure of an independent, then go to a big chain. They won’t get you the cheapest prices or offer the most original ideas, but they’re dependable.”

“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.