Shank cut him off. “Yes, I can, because I’m the one who has talked to bats.”
The SC man pressed his lips together and tilted his head to the side, his gaze wandering for a moment. That was the first point at which Allie realized he had on a comm. She debated demanding that he hand it over, but she wasn’t sure if he would be more or less dangerous if he was cut off from the others. After several long minutes, he looked at Shank again. “You’re risking a lot on the theory that you’re right.”
“No, I’m not,” Shank said. “Bats already know the families are different from the Earth governments. They consider us a separate alliance, just like they have different alliances. They don’t assume that all humans are the same or willing to follow the same leaders.”
“And if you get caught, will you blame the families?”
Shank nodded. “I can. It won’t make any difference to them because the bats will see it as a reasonable action. We’ll be trying to steal two people, or possibly steal more than two depending on how many miners there are and how many we can fit in the ship. After all, my family has been stealing from bats and wealthy traders alike ever since you people drove us away from the home world.”
“You people?” The SC soldier sounded amused. “I wasn’t actually around two hundred years ago when that happened.”
“No, but you’d arrest us just the same.”
“Me?” The SC guy shook his head. “Nah. You’re small potatoes. I don’t bother getting out of bed for smuggling and pirating. Now if you started in with assassinations, then I might be bothered to arrest your ass.”
Allie wondered if the SC would extend that to eugenics, or if they’d consider Anpaytoo’s attempts to save her people’s genetic heritage one more atrocity they would stop.
“We don’t want to kill anyone,” Shank said.
“Yeah, but trying to disrupt this treaty constitutes a fairly large threat, and we need to know you aren’t going to cause an interspecies incident.”
Allie spoke up. “How do we reassure you?”
The guy smiled. “I might have a plan or two.”
“Allie, Shank, be careful,” Ben warned. He shifted, and from the way he twitched his shoulders, it seemed like he was fighting the cuffs.
“Us? Always,” Shank said with a grin.
Ben gave him a weary look. “That’s not reassuring.”
“What’s the plan?” Allie demanded. The SC had people outside the hatch, so it was safe to assume their cruisers were ready to blast one little ship. Of course, that was assuming the SC wouldn’t do something to stop the emergency disengagement protocols. A ship this small couldn’t physically rip free of the station without ending up in barn-sized chucks that floated dead in space.
“I go with you.”
The SC guy dropped that verbal nuclear bomb, and they all went silent.
Ben craned his neck to look at his captor, and then he turned back around to face forward and gave them a shrug. “The marines were the bodyguards, so we were never asked to, but more than one SC officer surrendered to the enemy. Commander Jasper from thePaine’s Pridehad been on a bat ship a couple of months before the ambassador came on board,” Ben said.
“That’s classified,” his captor said, and he gave Ben a hard shake.
“Bite me,” Ben suggested.
“Don’t tempt me,” the man answered.
Allie cut off the impending fight with a hard whistle, the one that would make the horses bring their heads up even when they were on the far side of the field. Ben and the SC guy both looked at her. “What advantage do you get out of coming with us? And do keep in mind you’re going to be locked in a room the whole flight, assuming we can’t find a brig.”
“If I’m with you, I can make sure that I explain things to the bats if you encounter them.” He smiled, his teeth white against his dark skin. “After all, if you’ve taken me prisoner, then we’re clearly not on the same side.”
“So you’ll help us get our crew?” Call Allie paranoid, but that didn’t actually make sense.
“My only mission here is to make sure you don’t start another war. I don’t give a shit about your crew members. If you pull this off, fine. If you get in trouble, I plan to offer you up as the sacrificial lambs in order to protect that treaty and prevent millions of deaths.”
That sounded more honest.
“If he needs to help us or blow us up, it doesn’t matter—he’ll do either to get his mission done,” Ben warned.
“Don’t talk like you know me, Aluino.”
