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The competing fields would easily hide her own signature if she could somehow loop it in. It would act like a firewall, protecting her from Gheewala’s abilities. Renna found a chink in the field and slipped her own signature inside, hiding it in the code. Her mind raced with numbers and images. She could freaking see everything like a glowing monitor in her head. It made her whole body ache with exhaustion.
“Renna?”
Viktis’s voice yanked her out of the connection with the hub, and she blinked.
“Are you all right?” he asked, peering at her with concern.
She nodded. Luckily, she’d already closed the door in the code. She should be hidden for now. “Sorry. Took longer than I expected. I should be safe while we’re on the station.”
“Good. Then go find your contact and I’ll meet you at my safehouse in two hours. Try to stay out of trouble.”
The elevator dinged as it stopped on Viktis’s floor, but Renna stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Thanks. I know you didn’t need to help me.”
“Yeah, yeah, knight in shining armor and all that. This is what happens when I let you out of my sight. You need me around just to make sure you don’t get into trouble.”
Renna smirked back at him. “You know I can’t resist you.”
Viktis shook his head as he left the elevators. “Get in line, love. You’ve got competition now.”
TWENTY-SIX
Renna stepped off the elevator in the Phoenix sector, the political hub of the station. Amber Ileth and violet Delfine mingled with humans and the four-armed Trezians. Humanity had taken their place with the other species on the station two hundred years ago, when they’d first joined the Coalition. But they’d quickly taken charge of the political scene and now had the biggest embassy on the station. It took up a whole block, the shiny white facade towering over the other buildings. The entrance was an ornate, golden gate that opened into a fountained courtyard filled with apple trees from old Earth. It was quite a sight when they were in bloom.
She’d spent one memorable summer there with an ambassador’s aide. He’d been a fantastic tour guide. Among other things. Renna had gotten to know all the secret access ways and hidden rooms in the facility. Her job had gone off without a hitch.
But the embassy wasn’t her destination today. She headed toward the Bank of Conyara at the far side of the sector. She had a safe deposit box there with a little nest egg, in case of emergencies.
This certainly qualified as an emergency.
She pushed pashed a group of chattering Delfine dressed in their traditional loose-fitting gowns. Right now, it felt like she was drifting through space in a disabled lifepod, alone and without power. Which was stupid since, until a month ago, she’d done everything on her own.
Bitterness seeped through her. Everything was going to be different. Right. She should have known better.
Renna ducked out of the stream of aliens and accents and headed down a narrow alley between two squat buildings. Her bank wasn’t one of the fancy ones—the Conyara kept to themselves for the most part—but that made it an excellent hiding place. And the manager owed her a few favors after she’d taken down a con man who’d stolen millions from them in a scam.
Renna pressed a finger to the cool metal pad beside the door. It slid open silently into a dark, shadowy lobby that stunk of sweat and money.
“Well, if it isn’t Mae Carson. It’s been too long, my girl. Welcome back.” The Conyara alien’s ridged skull had a several tufts of dark hair that bobbed as he smiled up at her.
Renna stooped slightly to shake his hand. “Nice to see you, Syd. Just passing through to take care of some business.”
“Of course. Go on back.” He gestured to an arch at the back of the lobby, and Renna ducked through to a long, narrow hallway. Doors led off both sides to small storage rooms, and Renna counted down to the fourth door on the left.
The room’s walls were lined with small boxes, each stamped with a number and boasting another fingerprint scanner. Syd had pretty good security for a second-rate storage operation. And since she never visited more than once a year, there was little chance that anyone knew who she really was.
She pulled out the drawer and set it on the small table in the middle of the space. Inside was a credit chip with a hundred thousand on it, a stack of forged IDs, and a shiny new blaster. Renna took the money and the pistol, then shuffled through the IDs until she found one that would work.
Juley Talley, human engineer working for Taylor Corp, would have to do. She didn’t think MYTH would broadcast that they were looking for her by name, but it didn’t hurt to be cautious. And if she needed to hire a transport ship, she didn’t want her real identity pinging on anyone’s radar.
She carefully locked the safe behind her and waved to Syd on the way out. “See you next year,” she called.
“Always a pleasure, Mae.”
Outside the bank, she carefully blended back in to the mass of people. The Phoenix district cleared out at the end of the day, but right now, it was full of people on their way to their various destinations.
She hadn’t been to Forever Station in, well, forever, and she’d forgotten how full of life it was. The Trezians had built it as a monitoring station almost seven hundred years ago, but it had grown until it was some kind of technological monstrosity, expanding outward and upward every few years until it looked more like a floating mountain than a space station.
She’d spent plenty of time here when she was younger. It was easy to lose yourself amongst all the people, a must in her line of work. And since it was both a trading hub and a political hub, she’d found plenty of work stealing secrets as well as credits.
Her stomach growled, and Renna wandered toward the center of the district, a circular hub where vendors set up food carts and people hawked cheap souvenirs. Forever Station was like a carnival, with visitors coming in and out to play, buy, or sell. But the backbone residents never changed—the maintenance people who kept the station running, the security guards, the merchants.
She inhaled a lungful of recycled air and the scent of the food from a hundred different cultures. It smelled like home. She loved the confusion and energy, and hiding in plain sight was the best way to stay off MYTH’s radar. Unfortunately, it wasn’t going to help her find Samil.
She needed someone else for that.
Carrying a cup of strong coffee and a bowl of noodles, Renna found a table at the edge of the chaos. She sipped the bitter drink, letting it slide down her throat in a burning rush. Real coffee was hard to come by, but this would do the trick. At least it was full of caffeine.
