When she glanced over, he was still looking at her with that half-smile.
“So,” she said, trying to sound casual. “About last night?—”
“Cait,” Fred cut in again, his voice serious. “I need your attention.”
Cait swallowed her bite. “What is it?”
“I’ve intercepted a security inquiry routed through official Imperial channels. Someone is looking for a specific freighter registration.”
Her stomach dropped. “Which registration?”
“Ours.”
The wrap turned to lead in her stomach. She set it down on the console. “Show me.”
“I tracked the request back,” Fred said as he displayed the inquiry on the main console screen. “It’s not from Parac’Norr. Seems to be a private security inquiry routed through Latharian Imperial channels.”
She frowned. “Define private security? I didn’t think civilians were allowed to access the Imperial net?”
“They’re not,” Raaze rumbled, leaning forward to look. “Which means someone has serious backing and someone imperial in their back pocket.”
“It’s my fault,” she said, her voice tight. “I must have tripped something.”
“No, the work was clean,” Fred countered. “The system must have been monitored remotely. There was no way for us to know that.”
She looked over at Raaze. His expression was level and unsurprised.
“You knew.” The words came out flat. “When we lifted your file. You knew they’d come after us.”
He met her eyes and inclined his head. “I suspected. Accessing those files would have triggered an alert. The R'Tev has too much at stake not to monitor their tracks.”
She hissed between her teeth. “And you didn’t think to mention this before we broke in?”
“One, we didn’t know it was the R’Tev back then. When I saw the name…” He shrugged. “I didn’t tell you because?—”
“Because you didn’t trust me with it.” She cut him off. The words were bitter, but she filed the hurt away. They didn’t have time for this conversation right now. They had bigger fish to fry.
“Shit. We’re sitting ducks.”
“Language, Cait,” Fred chided.
“Stow it,” she ordered, her voice clipped. “We have the might of the fucking Latharian Empire looking for us. So I don’t think a bit of cursing is going to matter here!”
Fred went silent.
“Okay. They know what we look like,” she said, thinking fast. “Which means we need to not look like what we look like. Fred, what’s our transponder status?”
“You’re suggesting an illegal transponder swap, Captain.”
Uh-oh. When he called her captain, he was pissed. Tough.
“I’m aware.”
“I must register my objection to this course of action.”
“Noted.” She moved to the maintenance panel beneath the nav console and popped it open, revealing the ship’s transponder array. She’d never actually performed a swap before, but she knew the theory. “Fred, pull the diagnostic overlay. And log your official disapproval so you can yell at me properly when this is over. And now help me do it.”
“Disapproval logged,” Fred said. “This is illegal in seventeen sectors. Also, you’re about to commit a felony that carries a minimum ten-year sentence in an Imperial labor camp. Just so we’re clear.”
