Chapter Fifteen
Allie felt human thistime as she walked the ship. Shank was next to her, and they had an escort with Cetan in front of them, and a middle-aged man with short black hair named Wi Sapa behind. She wished she had clean clothes to change into. The idea of going into a meeting with Shank’s mother in a dirty and wrinkled Command uniform hadn’t made her happy. She was trusting Shank was right that his mother would be more impressed with a refusal to ask for charity than she would by clean clothes.
Personally, Allie would rather meet with someone in clean clothes.
They reached a door, and Cetan stopped next to it. “Good luck,” he offered. He didn’t say they needed luck, but the implication seemed to be there.
“Thanks,” Allie said. Her stomach really hurt, and she was starting to wonder how fast ulcers could develop. When she stepped into the room, Anpaytoo sat behind a captain’s desk, several data pads and even a print journal in front of her. She looked at Allie as if spotting horseshit on the bottom of her boots.
Shank passed Allie and walked over to his mother. “You look great. So, Cetan is captain now? Are you keeping him out of trouble?” Shank kissed her on the cheek and then retreated back to Allie’s side. “I can’t believe how much Chet has grown. I still think of him as the annoying baby brother chasing after me when I wanted privacy.”
Allie looked at Shank. He sounded a little desperate.
“Please, sit,” Anpaytoo suggested, her voice carefully pleasant.
Allie chose the seat farthest from the desk. She would give anything for something to stare at other than Anpaytoo, but the only art was behind her, and this office was buried in the center of the ship, so definitely no windows. That meant she could stare at Anpaytoo or her desk. Allie stared at Anpaytoo.
“You really are looking good, Mom,” Shank said. Instead of taking a seat, he hovered near the wall.
“And you look stressed and drawn out,” his mother answered.
“Well, you know. The war.” Shank shrugged.
Oh, yes, this was going wonderfully. And here Allie thought she would be the awkward one in the room. She frowned as it occurred to her that Shank might be acting like an idiot intentionally to take the heat off her.
Allie leaned forward and rested her hand on the front of the desk. “You said there’s a ship at Crooks’ Station that we can steal.”
Anpaytoo looked almost amused by the statement. “That was before I realized you were all so famous now. Crooks’ Station has as many SC ships as pirates.”
Allie felt the blood drain from her face. Security Central. They were the boogeymen of government work—spies who pulled off the impossible on a regular basis. Hell, their own lives had started the spiral to hell when they’d answered a distress call only to find out they had landed in the middle of an SC mission to escort a bat ambassador back to Earth. They’d nearly died.
Shank reached out and took her hand, but he spoke to his mother. “Is the SC showing any interest in us?”
She looked at them. “I don’t know,” she finally admitted. “Command is sending patrols to sweep the area, and a dozen different ships have registered complaints about hyperspace threads lying counter to shipping lanes. We think they’re doing it on purpose.”
“That could kill someone,” Allie said, not mentioning it had very nearly killed her already.
“Most commercial ships have stopped running in this part of space. It gives Command the advantage because it’s harder to move around freely without a crowd to move around in.”
“God.” Allie rubbed her hand over her face. Her headache was making a reappearance. “So, is the ship at Crooks’ Station still a possibility?” There were SC there, and Allie figured their odds of succeeding were dropping by the minute as more government troops came into the area, but she couldn’t figure any way out of this mess.
“You want to go up against the entire Command fleet of ships in order to save two people?” Anpaytoo demanded.
Allie looked right at her. “Yes.”
“It’s foolish.”
Allie considered her answer more carefully than usual. “We can’t change course now. We won’t gain anything. Command won’t stop looking for us if we decide to give up the mission. However we will lose our one chance of saving Zeke and Jacqs. So maybe this is foolish, but once you start riding a hyperspace thread, you can’t stop and change direction halfway there.”
“It’s also the right thing to do,” Shank added. “I didn’t think danger stopped us from that.”
His mother looked at him for so long that Allie felt the need to squirm, but Shank sat still, raising his chin as he stared right back. “I thought you were letting Ms. Grah speak for you,” Anpaytoo said. Her expression wasn’t even a little nice.
