“I guess.” He sounds grumpy. “I just had a few more questions—”
“They can wait. Ruthann and Dora aren’t going anywhere.” I glance up at him. “Why did you make that noise about the tunnel thing?”
“That? Oh.” Matty looks thoughtful. “Just that they didn’t dock to the station like one normally would. They used a crossing tunnel, like we do in ship-to-ship transfers in space. That means whatever ship was used to bring them to the station, it’s not being recorded in logbooks. Might be something we can use, might be nothing. Just more of the mystery, I suppose.” He sighs heavily. “I can’t believe they like Bethiah more than me.”
I just giggle at that.
CHAPTER 80
MATHIRAS
I’m in my bunk, curled around Helen’s sleeping form, when Adiron comms in the middle of the night. “Psst. Matty.”
I groan, burying my face against the curve of Helen’s neck. “Go away.”
“I hate to interrupt—and I really, really do because the visuals are making me want to scrub my eyes with a laser—but you wanted me to tell you when we found the ship we’ve been tracking, remember?”
That gets my attention. “I’m up. I’m up. I’m up.”
Helen murmurs and wriggles deeper under the blankets. I kiss her shoulder and decide she can sleep a little longer. We’ll need a few hours to prepare anyhow.
I climb over her, getting out of bed, and pull on a pair of trou and head for the bridge. It’s the middle of the night—standard Homeworld time—and all is quiet on the ship. When I get to the bridge, I’m not surprised to see wrappers and empty cups by Adiron’s station. He’s had to spend a lot more time on the bridge lately and he likes to snack to keep his mind focused. I’m filled with gratitude that my brother has been on this trip with me. If it was just myself and Helen with Bethiah and Zebah, I might have gone mad at this point.
Heading to Adi’s side, I give his shoulder a brotherly pat. “Show me what you’ve got.”
“You’re not gonna believe this shit,” Adiron jokes. He taps the controls and zooms in, and then pops the entire thing on the main screen above. “Did they scour the known universe looking for the oldest ship they could find? Take a look at that trash heap!”
His gleeful tone isn’t wrong. I stare, amazed, at the decrepit mineral hauler that fills the screen. It looks like something out of a historical learning vid, right down to the stripe on one of the triangular shaped ‘wings’ that declares it to be a neutral party in the Threshian Wars. The Threshian Wars that have been long over. The entire thing is gray and dull, the shape of it blocky and crude. It looks like a long rectangular beam, as big as a city block, with two pairs of triangular sails that pull in solar energy. The hull is pitted all over, as if she’s seen one too many asteroid fields, and the name of the ship is lettered on the side and conveniently faded enough that it can’t be read. I lean over Adi’s chair, gaping. “That really is something.”
“I know, right? I’ve never seen one myself. It’s a piece of history.” He shakes his head, amazed. “But that’s right where our tracker is going.”
Which doesn’t make much sense. “A ship that size—and that age—would absolutely get noticed at any sort of station.”
“Yeah, but she’s got solar sails,” Adiron points out, amusement in his voice. “So she’ll plod right along, moving nowhere fast.”
I rub my chin, thinking. Solar sails for that big of a ship won’t draw in enough power. It’s probably just enough to keep the systems running, but not enough to make her surge anywhere. “So she’s acting as a station out here? You think our friend took a smaller, faster ship to this one?”
“That’s exactly what I think.” Adiron points at the nav charts. “Look where we are. Private territory, sandwiched between a few family-owned systems. The closest fueling station is over here.” He skims his finger across the screen, a distance that would take days to travel at hyper speed. “By this moon. And you’ll never guess who owns this particular moon.”
“No,” I breathe. It’s too easy.
“Ancestral holding of the sa’Rin family,” Adiron says smugly. “I had to look up a few archived nav charts, because it didn’t show up on current ones. Turns out that it’s been declared ‘unfit for dwelling’ and ‘bankrupt’ as of twenty years prior, but I’ve seen a lot of space traffic heading in this direction.”
“You think it’s the casino?”
“If it’s not, I don’t know what else it could be. I’ve literally had to keep us hidden on the dark side of three different planets to avoid oncoming ships that came a little too close for comfort.” He shrugs his shoulders. “I’m thinking our Lady sa’Rin runs the casino and bribes everyone to look the other way on her ‘bankrupt’ moon, and keeps the human cargo on our slag-heap of a ship here.” He points a finger at the screen. “And of course, she claims neither if anyone sniffs around.”