Page 47 of Smuggler's Beauty

“So, how long did it take you all to decide to come along and play?” She found a cup in the cabinet and offered him one. He shook his head. She found a jug of water in the fridge and filled her cup.

“Give or take? About an hour. And then we figured out what we’d all want to make things work. Corrie was actually pretty in line. Woman’s been planning for fifty years off and on, though, so I’m not sure who’s more impressive here. I suppose having to wait for such a stellar crew to be born put a hitch in her giddy up.” He buffed his nails on his shirt.

Evelyn choked on her water.An hour?

“Lunatics,” she sputtered. “You’re all lunatics.”

Veselko smiled. “Yeah, but we’re fun lunatics. And we have an espresso machine.”

Evelyn considered this. “I’m going to need some help packing my media. Your selection of classics is abysmal.”

“We have boxes in the car.”

Of course they did.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Corvinia enteredher ship and headed straight for the bottle of single malt she’d cracked open the night before. She poured herself two fingers before sitting down at her communications center to think. Decades of plans were coming together. Threads from across the galaxy she’d woven into her web of lies were finally displaying the tapestry of rebellion.

She would save Tanalia if it was the last thing she did.

She hoped she’d live long enough to see its return to freedom.

The crew of theRising Dawnhad been more amenable to her plan than she’d expected. She would have to give Mathias more credit. Corvinia had been skeptical that a precognitive would have the accuracy that Tanalian legends accredited to them, but so far, everything Mathias had shared with her was shaking out.

She had to believe the delay had been worth it. That every disappearance of a dissenting voice, every abrupt termination of a scientific project, every seized crop yield redirected to military mouths, every moment her family spent unconscious and feeding Emil’s Amplification tanks with their energy was worth waiting for this once in a century talent to emerge and guide their path to freedom.

Her belief was the only thing that kept her moving forward when the news broadcasted another report of Tanalian rights being restricted or removed.

She took a sip of her scotch and swished it around her mouth, the woody flavor flowing along her taste buds.

Corvinia had spent decades living in the shadows, scheming alone, carrying out her own plans with precision. Relying on others, even trusted assets, was never her strong suit. Still, the time was coming to let go of the reins, and she hated ceding the control.

Does that make me as bad as Emil?

The point of all her plotting was to return freedom to the people of her planet. Agency. Choices.

Even if she had to manipulate the hell out of everyone involved to get those things back.

The irony was not lost on her.

Most people made spectacularly bad decisions when given the chance, but they still deserved the chance to make them.

Can’t learn unless you have the chance to fuck up.

She opened the communications display and dialed Mathias Ariti’s encrypted line. While she waited for the connection to ping through the wormhole, she swirled her glass, smiling to herself as she remembered the first time Evelyn had seen the technology being explained in an episode ofStar Trek.

“I can’t imagine the fine whoever was tipping off Roddenberry had to pay. This is way too close to reality for a pre-travel society to be informed of.”

“I think their defense was that they also gave him the idea for the prime directive. There’s a docu-series.”

The communications center pinged, and Corvinia wiped the smile off her face before activating her camera feed. Mathias’s finely sculpted face filled the screen, barely visible in dim light. He scrubbed a hand over his tousled dark hair and eyes, and themovement brought attention to the deep creases his sheets had imprinted on his skin. She realized she’d caught him sleeping.

“Apologies for the time. We’re a go for phase two.”

“I knew they’d go for it,” he said with a yawn. “The physical conditioning is going well. Stunt training is going to be a natural segue. There’s already plenty of anti-Bauder sentiment on the ground. Shit-stirring won’t be a difficult phase. How long should we string this out?”

She had inserted Mathias as a stunt coordinator working on films that attempted to glorify the might of the Bauder military forces. With his looks, he could’ve been leading man material, but a stunt coordinator enabled better access for their purposes. He’d managed to make connections with multiple enlisted sources and had been invaluable to her efforts to subvert Emil’s own men on the ground — at least the Tanalian ones. Now Mathias was focusing on the civilian population, spreading dissent, providing basic combative training to the willing under the guise of running a “train like a stunt man” class. With how hard he was working toward their cause, Corvinia would have been lucky to have him as an asset even without his precognitive abilities.