She crossed the room before he could stop her, crouching to pull the object free. It was a storage unit of some kind. Latharian design, compact, with a cracked casing and exposed circuitry. A data drive, maybe. Or what was left of one.
“What is that?”
“I don’t know.” She turned it over in her hands. The housing was split along one seam, internal components visible through the gap. It was definitely broken and probably useless.
She took it anyway.
“Cait—”
“If there’s anything left on here, Fred might be able to pull it.” She shoved the drive into her jacket. “It’s better than leaving empty-handed.”
He stared at her for a beat. His eyes widened a fraction, the hard line of his mouth softening for half a second before the mask slammed back into place.
“Fine. But we move. Now.”
They moved fast through the station corridors, Raaze keeping Cait close enough that their shoulders nearly touched. Not running—running drew attention—but not strolling either. They moved with the purposeful stride of people who had somewhere to be and no interest in conversation whatsoever.
Nothing to see here, people, don’t draanthing talk to us.
His mind kept circling back to the ransacked room and the convenient shuttle malfunction that had killed the one male who could have cleared his name.
Three weeks. V’Teth had been dead for three weeks. Which meant someone had moved fast after Raaze’s diagnosis.
Way too fast for coincidence, don’t you think?
The docking ring came into view through the observation window, and he let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. The H4-RPY sat in her berth beyond the reinforced glass, airlock sealed and running lights dim exactly as they’d left her.
They took the stairs down to the docking level two at a time. The corridor at the bottom was quieter than the concourse above, lined with numbered berths and the low hum of life support.
Berth seventeen sat halfway down on the left. He scanned the walkway in both directions as they approached. Empty. A single maintenance drone rolled past them on its magnetic track without slowing.
Cait keyed the access code. The outer door cycled open with a hiss that set his teeth on edge. Too loud. Too slow.
They were through it the second the gap was wide enough, Cait slapping the close sequence the moment they were through. The inner door sealed behind them with a soft clunk.
“Fred.” Her voice was tight. “Tell me we’re clear.”
“Scanning.” There was a pause that stretched too long. “No active surveillance detected on the ship or the immediate approach. However, I should note that station bulkheads play merry hell with my sensors. I can tell you nothing is wired to our hull. I cannot tell you who might be sitting three berths down with a receiver.”
“So someone could be watching, and you’d miss it.”
“Correct. I am an AI, not a god. My capabilities have limits.”
Raaze moved back to the airlock and checked the viewport. The docking ring looked normal. Other ships in their berths. The maintenance drone making its return journey. But no one seemed to be loitering or watching.
That he could see anyway.
“We need to leave,” he said. “Now. Before whoever did over that room figures out we were there.”
She was already heading for the cockpit. “Fred, prep for departure. Emergency clearance if you can get it.”
Raaze caught up with her in the cockpit doorway, close enough to hear the tail end of Cait’s conversation with station control.
“—yeah, we have a confirmed case of yellow spotted rhino-hedgehogitis on board,” she was saying, her voice pitched somewhere between professional concern and barely contained panic. “It’s highly contagious and potentially fatal to non-human species. We need immediate departure clearance for quarantine purposes.”
Static crackled through the comm.
“Understood, H4-RPY. Emergency clearance granted. Proceed to departure vector seven. Do not—repeat, do not—open any external hatches until you are clear of station proximity.”
