“What if we didn’t cross the belt?” he tossed. “I’d think he’d focus his efforts around Jupiter, which gives us a better chance here.”
“I agree,” Darren pitched in. “I think he’d expect us to pass over and hide where he has less control.”
“That’s a valid point, Darren,”Bea voiced her agreement.“I don’t think we should hang around Mars or Earth, but maybe the Moon…”
Draping his arm over the backrest, Darren stroked the back of Aiden’s neck. “Okay. We’ll stay on this side. Bea, set course for the Moon.”
“Roger that.”
“That leaves the question of supplies and how we’ll get those.”
“I might be able to help.” Kristen tapped his fingers on the table, a few lines appearing on his forehead. “I have…acquaintances who are discreet and don’t ask questions given the right incentive…”
A chill raced down Aiden’s spine. He dug his fingers into Darren’s forearm. “The data from Sara’s chip…”
Darren’s thumb moved to the side of Aiden’s neck and rubbed gently as a sad smile settled on his face. “Yes, Marcus will find it. Probably already has. And Rick will tell him about the rest.”
Aiden’s stomach dropped, worry flooding it. It was only a matter of time before Marcus did something with the knowledge locked inside Sara’s ring. They’d been planning to steal the ring before that happened, but it was already too late. There was no stopping Marcus now.
“We have to try—”
Darren shushed Aiden with a finger. “We can’t. I tried to set off the self-destruction sequence when we left the hideout, but it didn’t trigger. Rick must’ve warned them about it before they attacked.”
Still. They couldn’t just give up, no matter how bad things looked. They had to try. If they turned back now, they could try to shoot the asteroid down with the Maine.
Aiden opened his mouth, but Darren didn’t let him speak. “The place will be swarming with Marcus’ ships by now. We can’t risk going back. Nyle, Kristen. How long do you think it will take to get past our security systems?”
Nyle shook his head, worrying his lips. “With the resources he has and if Rick is helping him… a day or two at most. If…” He glanced at Kristen and reached across the table, grasping the man’s hand. “If there is a silver lining, Marcus attacked us before we cracked the earring. He has my decryption device and he’ll know there is a second part to the Legacy, but he won’t know what it is.”
Darren squeezed Aiden’s hand at the same time Aiden did it, too. His racing mind calmed down somewhat, and he felt his body slump against Darren’s as a fraction of the tension left him. Even if Marcus went on the same treasure hunt as they had, even if he located the secret sublevel and tracked down Raj Leven, he’d hit a dead end. Dr. Batbayar’s findings were safe for now, and Nyle could build another device to crack the data, though even as Aiden reassured himself that they wouldn’t let Marcus surprise them again, he couldn’t help but wonder if they even stood a chance anymore.
He held no doubt that the first thing Marcus was going to do when he found out about the evolutionary sequence would be to replicate and study it so he could use it to further his own agenda.
“I’m so sorry,” Aiden said, pinning his gaze on the table. “I brought him here. I trusted the wrong person and now Marcus wi—”
“It’s not your fault, Kesley,”Bea jumped in, her voice stern but also gentle.“We did our own checks, and he fooled us, too. This one is not on you. It’s on all of us.”
“Bea is right, you know. He just…” Nyle sighed. “He tricked us all. But we’ll get back at him one day, because if there is one thing I’m as good in as hacking, it’s holding a grudge.”
Aiden chuckled along with the rest. Silence settled in the mess hall after that until a notification pinged from Nyle’s tablet. Aiden shifted his attention from Darren’s hand to Nyle’s face, watching the blond’s eyebrows narrow and then lift up in confusion.
“Uh, guys… I just re-enabled the external comms, like five minutes ago,” he said, suddenly perking up. He leaned forward on the table and turned his tablet over, showing them the screen. “George, Liu’s potential associate, responded to my last message.”
Aiden squinted at the gibberish Nyle had received. He couldn’t read it, not even the title field, though he found something familiar about it, like he’d seen a similar pattern of letters, numbers and symbols somewhere before.
“What is this?” Kristen asked, wrinkling his nose. “Some weird hacker lingo?”
“No. It’s encoded. But my program can’t find a match, so I can’t crack the cypher. I’m about to try some of the old-school methods.”
Darren leaned forward, narrowing his eyes. “You won’t find a match there either,” he said and gestured for Nyle to give him the tablet. “This is the cypher Liu and I used. We didn’t share it with anyone, and if this George knows about it… then he must be someone Liu trusted.”
“Shit, really?” Nyle handed Darren the tablet.
Aiden studied the gibberish again, his heartbeat kicking up a notch. Darren was right. The patterns looked familiar to Aiden because he’d seen them before, tried to find logic in them only to fail until Sara had given him the key. He didn’t remember the formula behind it as he’d been too agitated and sleep-deprived at the time to focus on details like that, but the elegance of the patterns was there, creating an underlying flow to the way symbols and numbers and letters combined.
Aiden gave up trying to read the message and just watched Darren’s indigo eyes skim through it. Gradually, his frown eased and a spark of excitement displaced the concern in his features.
“So, what does it say?” Nyle piped up, jogging around the table until he was behind the sofa next to Kristen, who’d moved over so he could also look at the message.
