Breaking into bay four was easier said than done. Though Inrit had granted access to herself, she had too many duties to see to as they sailed away from Vrinli II to take the time to do any spying. Max was similarly busy, and by the time they fell asleep in each other’s arms late that night, they barely had time to discuss their plans before exhaustion overtook them.
Though both Inrit and Max were rested and ready in the morning, with the guard rotation in the storage area, they had to wait until it was Max’s shift to make their move. Inrit snatched two compact oxygen suits from the emergency store near her quarters and met Max outside of bay four.
“You know that Morvellan will realize it was us if he bothers to check the logs,” she pointed out as she slipped the thin suit over her outfit. A small regulator kept oxygen flowing for up to six hours in case of an emergency, but Inrit doubted that she and Max would be in the bay long enough for any depletion of the tanks to register.
“He’s not the log checking type,” Max replied as he slid on the helmet and sealed himself in.
Inrit did the same and triggered the lock. Air rushed by, rustling her suit as it tried to equalize with the unoxygenated room. She clenched her teeth against the cold. The suit wasn’t meant to keep her warm, just breathing. Max didn’t seem to care about the drop in temperature.
She flicked on her light and shined a beam through the near pitch dark of the room. That dark descended completely as Max let the door close behind them. Bay four was small and each of the storage units within it had a blue or yellow sensor glowing to indicate if it was empty or full. Even better, only two containers were lit blue.
Inrit stooped to the blue lit sensor near the ground while Max took the one at shoulder level. It took a generous tug to pull out the sealed crate, but Max lifted his like it was made of feathers. Cyborg strength must be nice at a time like this, she almost muttered.
They placed the boxes next to one another and Inrit opened hers first. It was closed by a simple clasping mechanism rather than a lock. Sloppy, she thought. If she were smuggling goods, at the very least she’d put a number lock on the container. Unease wiggled within her as she pried open the top of the container and shined her light on the contents.
Max moved around to take a look beside her. “Could the captain have had another reason for sealing this room off?” Max asked, clearly having as much trouble reconciling what they were seeing with what had happened on the ground.
“If his reasons were legitimate, he wouldn’t have been so quiet about them,” she said, half to convince herself. She reached in and picked up one of the dark teal canisters. On the outside was the symbol for a common medicine used by several species to fight off minor infections. It could be produced on most planets with very few supplies and was only valuable to ships on long haul missions.
Max dug around, setting aside several canisters of medication after opening one up to confirm the contents. Under the canisters of medicine were several bottles of an expensive liquor. As far as Inrit could see, it was nothing worth smuggling. That unease curdled and climbed up her throat as her mind tried to piece together the puzzle before them.
A look into Max’s crate showed similar items. Nothing incredibly valuable, nothing that needed to be smuggled across systems. “The levy on this couldn’t be more than a thousand credits, even in the most harshly taxed system,” Max observed. He shut the lid of both containers and Inrit shut off her light.
They sat there in complete silence, the cold dark soaking into Inrit’s bones as the thought she’d been trying to avoid finally knocked its way into her. “How many people are on the ship?” she asked as she remembered the informant in that seedy little establishment telling her that Vrinli II didn’t have a pirate problem.
“A hundred or so,” said Max, voice echoing in the darkness.
“A hundred adults,” Inrit said. “A hundred adults from all over the galaxy, all expected to be on a long journey, with no single government or corporation caring about them.”
“We’re flying in the direction of the Slave Markets, aren’t we?” Max asked, referencing the system of planets that served as a hub for the intergalactic slave trade. Any person could be bought or sold there, and the only law was money and might.
Inrit had killed her first man at the Slave Markets.
“We’re closer than I’d like to be,” she confirmed. “More importantly, we’re flying out of the way of any transport lines. If I were to ambush a ship, I’d lure them to a place like this.” Vrinli II was the only inhabited planet within lightyears. And Vrinli II wasn’t about to send help. “Do you think the captain is in on it?” she asked. Without meaning to, her hand reached out until it rested against Max’s arm. The room seemed to warm by degrees, but Inrit knew it was only illusion. Right now, she didn’t care.
Somehow, even in the total darkness, she knew Max was shaking his head before he spoke. “He’s not the type to give up his ship,” said Max. “And while he’s been callous and a bit of an asshole, I haven’t seen anything to indicate that he’d sacrifice ninety-nine people to slavery to save himself. What’s more, he wouldn’t sacrifice ninety-nine people on the hope that a pirate would keep his word.”
As if by some unseen, unheard sign, they both stood and placed their crates back in the proper positions. After exiting the room, they stripped off the safety suits and folded them back up. Max followed silently as Inrit made her way back to the hallway outside their room and stored the suits back in the proper place. Once that was done, Inrit had nothing else to keep her from taking the next step.
“I’m telling the captain.”
Resolve settled over her, recognition of the fact that this had to be done, no matter the personal consequences. Max seemed to realize that he didn’t need to tell her that the captain might retaliate because they’d disobeyed his command. But no matter what he did to her, the lives of all the people on this ship depended on her warning.
When Max followed behind her, Inrit threw a glance over her shoulder. Determination was written in his drawn down brows and the set of his jaw. The silver sheen of his eyes might have been scary to her once, but nothing about Max would ever scare her, so long as he was healthy and hers. “You don’t need to go with me to tell Morvellan,” she said. “In fact, it might…”
He raised one eyebrow and it was enough to cut off the rest of her warning. Their eyes locked, his flaring silver while hers burned red, and it was enough. Inrit nodded and he nodded back. “Together then,” she said.
“All the way.”
Silence reigned on the ship, except for the droning of the engines and the echoes of footsteps in the distance. It was a strange and loud quiet, and every hint of noise pushed Inrit closer and closer to the edge of something. None of the crew were in the crew quarters, and when they passed through the canteen, it was similarly empty.
If she hadn’t known better, she might have thought they’d been snatched by slavers already. But there had been no fight, nothing to hint that they were in danger. When the attack came, they’d know it.
The entrance to the bridge appeared out of nowhere and Inrit didn’t give herself time to stop and think about this decision. She placed her palm on the door sensor and waited for it to slide open before stepping into the room.
Morvellan stood at the helm, looking out over the dark field in front of them, his face a blank wash of contemplation. A few members of the bridge crew eyed them warily, but no one told them to leave. Only the captain had the authority to kick out his head of security.
When it became clear that Morvellan wasn’t going to turn around, Max cleared his throat, trying to draw his attention.
“Captain,” said Inrit. “We need to talk.”
***
It wasn’t the best idea.
As the door to their quarters slammed shut and the outer lock engaged, Max tried to remember if he’d ever seen a man get that angry that fast. One moment Morvellan had been ready to listen, despite the insubordination. The next he had Inrit pinned against a wall, her knife at his throat, spittle flecking out as accusations of piracy and mutiny rang around them.
Max had been on the verge of total annihilation. He thought pirates were the problem? One enraged cyborg and an endangered mate could bring the ship down in minutes.
And then Inrit had the temerity to wink at him. Wink! Like she was having fun being hurt by the man charged with keeping them all safe.
“I think that went relatively well,” she said, rubbing at the almost black bruise on her neck. She bounced from foot to foot and played with the same stiletto she’d somehow hidden away between the moments of the scuffle and their detainment.
“We clearly have different ideas of relativity,” Max responded. He wanted to hit something, but the walls were too hard and his pillow too soft. He tried to convince himself that he was satisfied with clenching the soft fabric of his pillow between his fingers. It was about as convincing as the argument they’d just made to Captain Morvellan.
“Sir, we have reason to believe that this is a trap,” said Inrit.
“Oh?”
“I think we’re being lured towards the Slave Markets as a payoff to keep pirates away from Vrinli II.”
“There wasn’t a better way to say it.” Inrit kept pacing. She shook her head as she thought out loud at him. “Any moment now we’re bound to fall under attack, I had no time to coddle his feelings.” She stopped moving and looked at him, one eyebrow quirked up, waiting for a response.
“That is quite the prognostication, engineer,” the captain replied evenly. He didn’t even move from his post at the console. “Please tell me how you came to that conclusion.”
No one in the room had breathed. With the same plain words, Inrit explained how she’d broken into bay four and examined the containers. Max was certain she’d barely held back the accusation of smuggling.
“And how did you circumvent the guard?”
“I went with her,” Max answered.
“Maybe we should’ve tried to speak to him privately,” said Max. He tried to imagine how that scene would have played out on Nina Station, tried to imagine if he would have done anything differently than Captain Morvellan.
“Not many know the location of the Slave Markets. Can’t think of a public map that lists them. So who are you to know that?” Finally, the captain pushed off the console and stalked towards Inrit, a heretofore unseen predatory glint in his eyes.
“I know because I’ve been there.”
A dropped paper would have echoed in the room like a laser blast. The captain moved almost as fast as Max could and ripped at the collar of Inrit’s top, exposing the smooth red flesh of her neck, unmarred by any scar or sigil.
Between one second and the next, the captain backed her up until she was flush against a wall and Inrit had somehow pulled her knife. The green blade flashed in the bright light, a threat at Morvellan’s throat.
“Pirate scum!” He screamed right in her face, spittle hitting her nose. “Mutinous traitor. I’ll see you spaced for this.”
“If we’d spoken to him privately, you’d have killed him.” She sat down beside him and nuzzled into his side with easy affection he would have never expected after their first meeting. But she didn’t put the knife away.
Max looped his arm around her shoulders and let the heat of her sink into him, the bond between them humming with contentment.
“Do you think he’ll think twice about this detour?” Max asked. He wasn’t confident, but Inrit seemed to be in an upbeat mood.
She just laughed. “We’re going to be fighting pirates within the next two days if I’m right. There’s no way Morvellan backs down now.”
“Confine them to quarters! Now! I want a constant guard on that door. I will not tolerate pirates on my ship and mutiny will be punished.”
Max sensed the guard coming behind him, but the wink that Inrit shot him kept him still. He didn’t fight back.
“So we wait,” said Max.
“We wait,” she agreed. “Fair warning, I’ll hijack a ship before I take an arrest for piracy at Honora. Just in case we’re wrong about this.” She spoke lightly about the crime, but tension corded through her muscles.
“I won’t let anyone take you,” Max replied. A week ago, he would have never considered fighting the authorities of a stand up station like Honora. But for Inrit? He’d fight anyone.