Page 23 of Reformation
“And what makes you so sure we’re still headed that way, eh?” she taunted him. “Why not find an easier drop for our goods?”
“Because the price on Pandora’s the best for five systems, and you know it,” Jack replied. “You ain’t gonna give up that kind of profit without a fight.”
“Don’t mean we need useless people on board, taking our resources without giving anything back.”
“They’re mechanics. Engineers. They can work on the ship, get some of the dark parts lit up again.” Cody had to admit that Jack was incredibly persuasive when he wanted to be. “And they’ve got credits to pay their way.”
“Credits only spend on Central planets, and we don’t deal in places like this for long.” She glared over Jack’s shoulder at the two of them. “Or with people like them.”
“Corva. I gave ’em my word.”
She glared at Jack. “Keep this up and your word won’t be worth the price of space junk.” She turned to shout at the watching crowd. “Get back to your stations! I want the stench of Olympus out of my nose before another hour passes! Get us up to speed toward Pandora.” She turned back to Jack. “As for them? They’re your problem. Put them to work. Feed them from your share. I don’t want to see them. I don’t want anything to do with them.” She turned and stalked off down the hall.
“Bye, Grandma,” Cody muttered.
Yep, this was going to be fun.
Chapter twelve
Miles
“What do you mean, he’smissing?”
“I mean exactly that.”
Miles wasn’t sure what it meant that his son could look so calm, talking about Cody’s disappearance, but given the way his kid tended to repress, it couldn’t mean anything good.
“He’s gone missing. Or rather, I know where he is at this point, but there’s no way I’m going to get him back, short of dragging him out of a very precarious situation by abusing my authority, and I’m not going to compromise him or Ten like that.”
“I wondered where Ten was when I went to get the boys,” Miles mused.
Garrett laughed. It wasn’t a good sound. “Those two are inseparable. It could have broken a thousand regulations and laws, and Ten still would have found a way to stick to Cody. That’s literally the only bright spot I’m seeing right now, apartfrom the fact that at least you got Darrel and Grennson. How are they?”
Miles leaned back in his ready-room chair and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Confused. Unwillingly excited. Afraid. Curious. You name it, they’ve probably felt it.” He was leading three thousand cadets so green they’d barely even sprouted, into a battle he had nothing but bad intel for, and their youthful, endearing, and stupidly optimistic outlooks were the only thing keeping Miles from giving his personal sense of foreboding more room to flourish.
“Not surprising. And your officers?”
Miles shrugged. “No one I’ve worked with before. They look good on the screen, but not many of them have active combat experience. I’m going to be doing a lot of live drills and handholding on the way to the Fringe.”
“When do you estimate you’ll get there?”
“As soon as we reasonably can while keeping everyone together. We have an eighteen-ship armada, ranging from several hundred and fifty-crew Quicksilvers to the two-thousand-crew Annihilator-class flagship. Normally, I’d send some of the fleet ahead to scout, but something about this …” He tapped his fingers on the console.
“It bothers me beyond the extreme circumstances that brought it about. We have fluctuating data on the pirate fleet that makes anything we think we know suspect, and so little of it that it’s virtually useless regardless of numeric values. They could have anywhere from five to fifteen to fifty ships, and all I’m sure of with regards to weaponry is that it’s more intense than anything most Fringe planets are able to handle.” Which, speaking of … “Has there been any communication yet from Pandora?”
“None,” Garrett said. He sounded like he was gritting his teeth. “I know their shield is holding, and I know if it’s still up, thenthey’re still experiencing problems. Also, I can tell you that there are twenty-nine vessels in orbit above Pandora that have no recognizable Alliance digital insignia.”
Miles frowned. “How do you know that?”
“I have my ways.”
Of course, he did.
“I’m going to set up a link between my live data stream and your personal implant,” Garrett continued. “It’s heavily encrypted and should only be accessible by you. If it goes dead suddenly, you’ll know I either had to shut it down to prevent us being spied on, or I’ve lost the mechanism for getting the data in the first place.” He tapped a few things on his console, and a moment later, Miles’ implant let him know he was receiving data.
He opened it up to project in front of his eyes and inhaled sharply.
“Satellites? I didn’t think there were any Alliance ones that close to the planet that had survived the initial attack.”
