The Flight of the Tombaugh 3/5
J2 RPS AU
PG-13
Part 3 of 5
Master post
Art
Misha pinged them a couple of hours later to see how it was going. Jensen had won two games of holo-chess, lost one by making a spectacularly stupid move, talked Jared out of trying some really weird snack combinations, and had a thought.
“Why are we doing this in the middle of the day?” he asked Misha. “They'll see us coming.”
“No, they won't,” Misha said. “This time of year, you only get a couple hours of full dark anyway.”
“Do I really want to know how Adrianne's planning to get that woman out?”
“Probably not.”
“You have any idea how long this is going to take?”
“Nope. Less than six hours, hopefully.” Misha didn't want Kim coming after Jensen and Jared any more than they did.
“We should've taken Lupita up on her offer of something hot,” Jared said. “How cold is it outside?”
That was probably a rhetorical question but Misha answered anyway. “You'll get frostbite in ten seconds flat and your nose will fall off.”
That explained the black atmo suits.
“Ouch.”
“That's why you're down there and we're up here.” Now he sounded smug. He sounded like Chad.
“I thought we were down here because I have the fastest ship in settled space,” Jensen said.
“That too. No sign--”
The comms crackled and spat, and through them Adrianne yelled “Open the fucking hatch! We're almost there!” Jensen thought he could hear something that sounded suspiciously like a laser gun behind her words.
“Gotta go,” he told Misha, cutting off the comms.
This time he and Jared both put on heavy coats before opening the hatch, so when Adrianne and Winston brought the CEO's daughter inside the Tombaugh, they were prepared. Alona had apparently been zipped into what looked like a space-safe sleeping bag slung over Winston's shoulder. Jared directed them into the spare cabin while Adrianne struggled out of the borrowed atmo suit and Jensen got ready to go.
As soon as Winston had collected the suit and was clear of the ship, they took off. Jensen wanted to be free of this place and its brilliant white, dead nothingness as soon as possible.
Besides, if Lupita was right and the cultists did have a cannon, he wasn't sticking around to meet it. He guessed they had something, because that sound behind Adrianne was definitely a weapon.
Bernon fell away behind them as they ascended through the layers of atmosphere, closer and closer to the familiar blackness of space and its millions upon millions of stars. Jensen had never minded staying on the surface - the showers were better, for one thing, and sometimes the beds were bigger, and he liked being able to breathe fresh air and spend time with his friends in person - but there was something to be said for the weightlessness of space, the freedom of it, the great empty uninhabited dimensions of it. On land you could only travel along a flat plane, but in space you could go in any direction you could point, with no more effort than what it took to nudge your steering gear of choice.
And you could vanish quicker, if you had to.
“Blues coming up on starboard,” Jared said, leaning forward to try and look around the windshield.
“What?” No cult would call the law on them. It went against their nature.
“Could be just a standard patrol.”
Cluny Sector was on the edge of settled space, and while ships could - and did - travel the vast unsettled distances of the rest of the universe, the fringes were especially attractive to criminals, and patrol ships out for a routine look-see were not uncommon. Jensen and Jared had actually expected this, although they'd expected it coming into the sector, not leaving.
“Hailing the Tombaugh,” came the unmistakably clear, no-nonsense voice of a law enforcement officer over the comms, “Colony Cluster regis--”
It wasn't a routine patrol, not if an officer was going to call them by name and announce their registration.
“Adjust for sublight,” Jensen interrupted, leaning towards the comm on the dashboard so Adrianne could hear him as well. He entered the first coordinates he could think of into the navigation system. He could be panicking, but considering he and Jared had only recently gotten in trouble with the law, he wasn't sticking around long enough for it to happen again.
“Are we wanted in this sector?” Jared demanded. Adrianne's voice over the internal comms asked the same thing.
“You want to ask them and find out?” Jensen answered.
Three law enforcement ships came around from the Tombaugh's starboard side. They were small, fast cruisers, the kind you sent out when you were trying to catch someone. “You are in violation of--” the officer went on.
“Didn't think so. Punch it.”
The stars stretched and snapped around them as the Tombaugh jumped to sublight speed, not as fast as light - not yet - but still faster than any human had the right to travel, seeming to vanish from the sight of Cluny Sector law enforcement and reappearing in another sector at least a week's hard flying away.
“Where are we?” Jared asked, a little breathless. Traveling at sublight speed felt like very nearly leaving gravity, like every single organ in your body, every bone in your skeleton, was on the verge of being rearranged. It felt like being a second away from your very self scrambling into something unrecognizable. The very first time Jensen had ever traveled that fast, he threw up. Sometimes people passed out.
Oh shit. Their passenger.
“Stay here,” he said, unbuckling himself so he could check on her.
“Are we wanted there?” Jared repeated, unbuckling himself as well. He didn't move, just tried to catch his breath.
“The hell was that?” Adrianne demanded over the comms. She sounded a little breathless too.
“Kim didn't call them,” Jared went on. “The cult wouldn't. Misha wouldn't. The woman we, uh, Alona Tal, she didn't. Is there a warrant out for us?”
“I didn't think so,” Jensen said. “You'd think Misha and Chad would have found out, what with all the other looking they did into our records.”
“We'd know.”
“Obviously we didn't. Stay here and keep an eye out. Let Misha know we got the woman but don't tell him what just happened.” Jensen pushed himself out of his seat and went to check on their passenger.
They'd left the comm open in the spare cabin, just in case she woke up, and he was mentally composing what he was going to say when he came around a bend in the corridor and saw Adrianne had beaten him to it.
“Did you do this?” Jensen hissed at her, waving in a random direction to indicate the blues they'd just escaped.
“Am I stupid?” she hissed back, then held a finger to her lips as a shaky female voice demanded “Where am I? What's going on? What do you want?” over the comms. Adrianne hit the button in the wall and the door to the cabin slid open.
She was sitting on the bottom bunk, gripping the edge of the mattress with both hands. Adrianne's stuff was everywhere. Alona was wearing a shapeless black shift and slippers. They must have grabbed her while she was asleep. She didn't look anything like the picture on the contract - she looked older, for one thing, and she had brown hair coming out of a long braid, and she was pale and breathless and looked both scared and determined.
“What's he offering you?” she asked Jensen and Adrianne, her voice still shaking a little. “I can pay you more to let me go.”
“You're not being kidnapped,” Jensen said. “We're rescuing you. Your dad put up a reward.”
“He hired me to find you,” Adrianne added.
Alona stared at them for a second, then pushed herself off the bunk and shoved past them. “He's my stepfather,” she called from the corridor, then “You're not taking me back. If you do, he'll kill me.”
“You know where we are?” Jared's voice came over the internal comms. “We're near your mining colony! Why'd you bring us here?”
Jensen hadn't even been thinking when he gave the navigation system a set of coordinates to get them away from Cluny Sector, but he'd flown for Badger Mining for a third of his life, and the coordinates for the mine that served as his crew's base were burned into his brain. He could get there from anywhere in settled space without thinking, more than he could get to the planet where he'd been born and where his parents raised him. The only other place he could find with his eyes closed was Port Wombat. But he wouldn't have gone back there, not with the law on his tail.
They were out of range of the mining colony and the moon on which it sat, and he was amazed and amused that this was where he came in a panic. But he'd have to dissect it later. Right now he had a runaway to catch.
She'd found the cockpit and seemed to be letting Jared calm her down.
“We're not going to hurt you, promise,” Jared was saying when Jensen and Adrianne caught up. The cockpit was just big enough for the four of them. “We saved you from the death cult.”
“You're sending me back to my death,” she said. She sounded calmer, much firmer, and no longer scared. “What did my stepfather offer you? I can offer you more. I have--” She cut herself off mid-sentence. “Never mind. I can offer you more.”
“Do you know why the blues came after us?” Jensen asked her. He looked at Adrianne. “Do you?”
“It got a little messy at the ruins,” Adrianne said, “but the cult wouldn't call the blues. You're more likely to be wanted in that sector than me.”
“What did you do?” Alona asked.
“Oh, there's the matter of a gun-runner....”
“That's not what she means,” Jared interrupted.
“You don't--” Alona started to say, but Jared interrupted her too.
“We came to get you. It's legal, we have a contract. Well, Adrianne does.”
“We should have this talk in the lounge,” Jensen said, starting to herd the women out of the cockpit.
Jared got out of the co-pilot's seat and followed them into the lounge. The external comms pinged and they heard Misha demanding to know where they were. Jensen brought him up on the wall screen and explained that blues found them in Cluny Sector and they'd had to jump.
“Alona's safe,” he added, gesturing for her to move in front of the lens on the wall so Misha could see.
“I don't care what my stepfather is paying you,” she repeated. “I can offer more.”
“I won't break the contract,” Adrianne said.
“Tell him you found me and I was dead. I vanished once, I can do it again.”
“Why?” Misha asked. “You don't want to go home? We saved you from a death cult.”
“I went there on purpose. You don't know what I did. You don't know what I know.”
“What do you know?”
“We kind of do know what you did,” Jared added.
“We can discuss this further on La Spina. How soon can you get there?”
“If you take me back to my stepfather,” Alona said again, “he'll have me killed. You have to believe me.”
“Three weeks,” Jensen said to Misha. “Three weeks from tomorrow. We'll meet you at your favorite bar.”
“That's too--” Misha started to say, but Jensen cut him off. The wall went blank.
“Now,” he said, turning to Alona, “first things first. I'm Jensen, this is Jared and Adrianne, that was Misha, my ship is called the Tombaugh, and is it okay if we call you Alona?”
“I want to know how you found me,” was her answer. He was going to take that as a yes.
“We didn't,” Jared said. “Misha did.”
“I did,” Adrianne said. “I have friends in low places. Your father offered me a contract to find you, I got Misha to help me, he enlisted these two clowns because he thinks they have the fastest ship in settled space, and here we are.”
“She is the fastest ship in settled space.” Jared grinned, as proud of the Tombaugh as if she were his.
“Now why do you think your dad wants you dead?” Jensen asked.
“I don't think,” Alona said, “I know. Stop calling him my father. He's my stepfather. He married my mother when I was twelve.”
Well, Jensen thought, that explains the last names.
“You know what happened on Bernon,” Alona went on. It wasn't a question. “It wasn't an accident. Green Worlds - directed by my stepfather - destroyed the moon on purpose.”
“That doesn't make sense,” Jared said. “Why would they do that?”
“Do you know how wealthy people stay wealthy, and how wealthy corporations continue to offer high returns to their shareholders? They cut every corner they can. When they're caught out, they claim it was simple human error, offer up a scapegoat, and wipe their hands of the whole thing. And because they have lawmakers in their pockets, they get away with it.”
“What does this have to do with Bernon?”
“Green Worlds wanted to determine how cheaply they could terraform. Bernon was their proof of concept. My stepfather knew the climate would likely collapse - I told him, as did others on the sci-tech team - but he and the other shareholders considered the settlement and everyone on it an 'acceptable loss'. Because what are the lives of a thousand people, compared to the vast profits he could make? Even having to make restitution was nothing in comparison.”
“Shit,” Jared said.
“Exactly.” Alona tucked her feet underneath her on the couch. “Sahar has that tech now. Some of it is my tech, my patents. They used Bernon to figure out where they went wrong, so now they can terraform on the cheap, but still charge the same.”
“And you can prove all this?” Jensen asked. “That's what you can offer us - proof that Green Worlds destroyed Bernon intentionally? What's the point?” Green Worlds was a dead end for anyone who wanted restitution, and Jensen was pretty sure no one who'd been exonerated at the trial could be tried again.
“And how much is it worth?” Adrianne asked.
“They used my research,”Alona said, “my patents, and my team - they used me - to deliberately obliterate a settlement full of people and render an entire moon uninhabitable. They always intended to write off the loss in service of future profits. I hid on Bernon out of guilt, and to get away from my stepfather.”
“If Adrianne hadn't gotten that contract, you'd still be there,” Jared said, “waiting to die.” He and Jensen both remembered what Misha had said - It's a doomsday cult, and if she stays there, it will kill her.
“A doomsday cult seems like a risky place to hide,” Jensen added.
“My work unintentionally helped kill a thousand people,” Alona said, more anger in her voice than Jensen would have expected for such a confession. “I had to atone for that in the place it happened.” She took a deep breath and went on. “Besides, there's no doom in that cult. It's people living in the most inhospitable place they could find, suffering to purify themselves before they die, whenever that happens.”
Either Misha was misinformed, Jensen thought, or he lied to us when he said it was a doomsday cult, just to convince us to do this.
“My stepfather hired you to find me,”Alona went on, “because he knows that I know the truth about Bernon, he thinks I can prove it, and he doesn't trust me to keep my mouth shut. He must be planning something for Sahar, and I'm a liability.”
“That explains why he offered so much. Missing person contracts that large are usually so big because someone wants something that's not entirely legal.”
“Like, a mob boss will offer a lot to catch a rat who's gone on the run,” Jared said.
“Sounds like my stepfather,” Alona said. “But that's why you can't turn me over to him. You're not bounty hunters, are you?”
“No,” Jensen said. “Not officially. Neither is Misha.”
“I'm going to guess that whatever you are, it isn't legal. If you had the law on your side, you'd have come to the door with a warrant to compel the cult to turn me over. You wouldn't have drugged me and smuggled me out of Purmort.”
“You drugged her?” Jared demanded of Adrianne, who shrugged. “We know some good forgers. We could've mocked up a warrant.”
“That wouldn't have worked,” Jensen told him. “The cult would just ignore it. Besides, a warrant doesn't make sense for a missing person.”
“We'd pretend it was for a bounty.”
“In any case,” Alona said, “my stepfather's right. I can prove the truth of what he did. I can offer you enough blackmail material to make breaking your contract with him worthwhile. Tell your friend - Misha - tell him that too.”
“You don't think he'll still come after you?” Jared asked.
“My stepfather? I know he will. That's why you're going to help me fake my death.” She was very matter-of-fact, for planning to die.
“How do we know you have proof of what Green Worlds did?” Adrianne asked. “How do we know it's any good?”
“I can show you. I hid it,” Alona added, apparently reading the next question on Jensen's face. “I knew they'd destroy all the evidence, so I gathered everything I could and buried it.”
“You're sure no one knew you were on Bernon?” Jared asked.
“Absolutely.”
“Then why did the blues come after us? They knew we were there and they said we were in violation of something, but that's when we jumped so we don't know what they were after us for.”
“We'll look on the feeds,” Jensen said. “We could be wanted for the guns.”
“Taking bets now that you are,” Adrianne said.
“You're not wanted where we are now, are you?” Alona asked.
“No,” Jensen said. “Where did you hide all your evidence?”
“Some of it was in Purmort, as insurance. I don't want you go to back there, don't worry. I need a secure terminal and I'll get everything for you. Then you can think over my offer.” Jensen and Jared looked at each other, then at Adrianne. They weren't a party to the contract between her and Alona's stepfather, so they could technically do what they wanted. But they'd made a deal with Misha, who'd made a deal with Adrianne. It was her contract to break, and it would be hard to plot against her while she was on their ship.
“Think about it,” Alona said. She unfolded herself and stood up. “I need a shower. Where's the bathroom?”
Jensen waited with Adrianne in the lounge while Jared found a towel and some soap and left Alona to wash.
“Her dad won't come after us,” Jared said, coming back with a bag of spicy dried soybeans. He offered the bag to Jensen. They were going to have to restock the galley now that they had a fourth passenger. “I mean stepdad. Could he go after Misha? Misha could take us down with him.”
“No, he'd go after me,” Adrianne said. She took the bag from Jared, dug out a handful of soybeans, and gave the bag back. “It's my contract.”
“You think Misha will put up a fight?”
“Who cares? The deal is with me, and you may find this hard to believe, but I don't plan to break it. I still expect to deliver Alona to her stepfather. Misha will probably weigh the reward for the bounty with the potential payoff for the blackmail, assuming that's what Alona really has, and if it's worth what she says. But it doesn't matter what Misha wants, because, again, my contract. Besides, we have Alona and he doesn't.”
“What are you thinking?” Jensen asked Jared. “We should listen to her?”
“I don't know.” Jared popped a handful of soybeans in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “I think she's telling the truth. I mean, I think she has evidence on Green Worlds that's bad enough to bring her stepdad down. I don't know if it's worth more than the reward for her, though, or if we'll end up in jail again. I don't want to go back to jail.” He licked spicy soybean dust off his fingers. “They'll take the ship.”
“I know. They'll probably have to fight Chris for her. Shit. He's going to be expecting his next installment.”
“You know my contract is a sure thing, right?” Adrianne said. “And you know blackmail isn't, right?”
“The contract's not worth it if Alona's stepdad is going to kill her,” Jared said. “And the blackmail could be worth more. Tell Misha we have something bigger.” He nodded in the direction of the head, where Alona was presumably washing punishment cult off herself.
“Okay,” Jensen said, bringing up the screen on the wall again. This time he also launched a notes program, to list the pros and cons of Alona's proposal. He tapped out ideas on the display embedded in the table. “Taking Alona at her word. Pros: more money. Pay off Chris all at once. Save a woman from certain death.” He glanced between the display, now showing a keyboard, and the words appearing on the wall. He could hear Jared crunching through his snack. “Cons: break a contract.”
“We're not a party to it,” Jared interrupted. “That doesn't matter.”
“It matters to me,” Adrianne said. “Am I just shouting into the void here? Do you boys understand that I hold the contract, so whatever happens to Alona is ultimately my call?”
Jensen erased and retyped. “Adrianne breaks the contract. Alona's stepdad comes after us. He goes after her. We don't get paid. Jail. A warrant for kidnapping.” He paused to look at Jared. “That's what he's gonna do if we don't bring her back. He'll charge us with kidnapping. That carries a big bounty.”
“Huh.” Jared pointed at the wall. “Look where it says 'Pay off Chris all at once'.”
“Oh, for--” Adrianne shoved Jensen out of the way and typed “ADRIANNE IS NOT BREAKING THE CONTRACT” under “Cons”. She looked from Jared to Jensen and said “For the last time, you dribbling morons, Alona is my contract, what happens to her is my call, and however this shakes out hits my future prospects. I know what Harris is telling people about me. She's not wrong about one thing - if she can't keep her hands on her own jobs she doesn't deserve to have them. But I care about my reputation outside her cliqueish little bounty hunter circle. I don't give the first fuck what bounty hunters think of me, as long as they don't get in my way when I'm trying to earn my credits. And you know how I do that? You know how I make my money? I don't break my fucking contracts.”
“You're on my ship,” Jensen said, as calmly as he could manage.
“So what? I know you well enough to know you're not going to space me, and you're not stopping anywhere between here and La Spina to boot me off. We all know you're stuck with me. As long as you have Alona, you have me, and for the very last damn time, I am not breaking my contract with her stepfather.”
“What would it take?” Jared asked.
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit,” Jensen said.
“I don't believe her.”
“What if you're wrong?” Jared asked.
“It's not my problem.”
“We'll tell Alona's stepdad there was an accident, she was killed, the contract's void. It won't be your fault, so your reputation will be intact.”
“And how are you going to make that work? Do you have any idea how to fake someone's death?”
They didn't.
Jared crumpled up the now-empty snack bag and stretched. “I hate sublight. My skeleton's all out of true. Look, Adrianne, if we take her back to her stepdad he'll space her. That's what she said. He deliberately let a thousand people die - you don't think he'd do the same to his stepdaughter? I don't want that on my conscience and I bet you don't either. You're not a monster.”
Adrianne looked at the two lists on the wall. Jensen followed her gaze. There was good money to be made there, and a lot of risks to take. But he knew what men like Alona's stepfather were like. He knew how little they cared about regular working people. He knew from his own experiences as a regular working person. He had heard nothing to suggest Stepdad had changed - he didn't expect to hear it either - everything suggested Stepdad was fully capable of spacing his stepdaughter to protect his own interests.
“When I was flying freight,” Jensen told Adrianne, “the mining conglomerate did some work with Green Worlds, and we were offered a bunch of contracts to fly seeding ships. They were all shit contracts, and Green Worlds was a shit company to work for. That attitude comes from the top.”
“And that means what?” Adrianne said. “It's a big corp. They're all shit. I don't care as long as my contract pays out.”
“I'm just saying Alona could be right, because I know the kind of guy her stepfather is.”
“Oh my god, Jensen, you talk like you know the man personally. He's a CEO. They're all psychopaths. So are a lot of bounty hunters. So are a lot of sector blues. So fucking what? You're taking Alona at her word. She basically wiped herself off every official record to hide on that moon, and she did it for a reason. She'll keep making shit up to stay hidden. I don't care if either of you believe her, I need to see what she has before I make any kind of decision.”
Well, it was progress from “I'm taking her to her stepdad no matter what.” At least Adrianne was considering an alternative.
“And right now?” she went on. “That decision is 'I'm turning her in to her stepfather to get my credits'.”
Okay, so it wasn't progress.
“We're not turning her over to her stepfather if he's gonna space her,” Jared said.
“Her evidence might not be as good as she says.”
“What if it is?”
Adrianne shrugged. She swiped at the display, wiping the pro/con list off the wall, and said “Blackmail has never been a sure thing, not when you're dealing with someone with that kind of power. But signed contracts? Even rich men pay those.” She got up and stalked out of the lounge.
“At least you and I are on the same screen,” Jared said to Jensen. He got up to throw out the soybean bag.
“I'm not sure we are,” Jensen said.
“What? You just told Adrianne--”
“I know what I said. My instinct is to trust Alona but Adrianne's right - we need to see what she has first. We have no security in this thing, you know that. We're trusting Adrianne to cut us in on her missing persons contract, but if she has no contract, we have no guarantee. And if we have no guarantee, we have no credits, and if we have no credits, I lose my ship.”
Jared sighed. “We should probably find out why blues came after us in Cluny Sector, too. Do you really think there's a warrant out for us?”
The console in the table pinged and when Jensen accepted the message, Danneel came up on the wall. She looked entirely unconvinced about something.
“Genevieve told me you've got Adrianne Palicki onboard,” she said. “How did that happen? Do you ever listen to anything I tell you?”
“It's because we're going after her missing person,” Jensen said. “Either she came with us or there was no deal, and we really need the credits. But there's a problem.”
“Two problems,” Jared corrected.
“Did you get her?” Danneel asked. “The missing person?”
“Yeah. She's cleaning up right now.”
“How'd it go?”
“Blues came after us,” Jensen said, “but not because of her. They hailed the ship by name and registry and we jumped to sublight.”
“Shit.” Danneel sat back in her chair. “Why?”
“We don't know. There must be a warrant out for us that no one knew about. That's one of our problems.”
“You didn't check as soon as you were free of them? Where are you now, anyway?”
“Itoh Sector. Over Yezhovo.” Danneel raised an eyebrow. She knew what that meant. “Shut up. It was the first place I thought of.”
“You're so funny. You hated that place and yet that's where you go in a panic. Let me look you up.” She pulled out a handheld, swiped, tapped, squinted. “Well, fuck. Guess what, boys, you're wanted in Cluny Sector.”
“The thing with the guns?” Jared hazarded.
“Looks like.” The display on her handheld popped up in a corner of the wall screen so Jensen and Jared could read it too. “Tell Misha his due diligence needs some work. He should've found that out before he sent you there. You should know it, too. How can you not know where you're wanted?”
“The law didn't even know we were there when we went to Katahdin. Maybe someone gave us up?”
“It's for weapons smuggling. There has to be evidence, otherwise it would just be for suspicion of.”
“Kim?”
Danneel shrugged. “Could be. It's a good way to get the law off your back, or to keep them friendly to you.”
“Well, we can't go back now,” Jensen said, “but we've got another problem. I'm going to tell you this in strict confidence, okay? Tell no one.”
“Ooh, Jensen. Now I'm all tingly.” Danneel shivered in what she no doubt thought was a sexy way.
“I'm serious. The missing person, her name's Alona Tal, her stepfather was the CEO of Green Worlds. Now the CEO of Sahar Tech. You know about the terraforming on Bernon. Alona says Green Worlds fucked Bernon up on purpose, to see how many corners they could cut in the terraforming. They knew everyone in the settlement would die, and they did it anyway. She says she has enough proof to bring her stepdad down, and I assume Sahar with him, since Green Worlds is defunct.”
“Shit.” Danneel sounded almost impressed.
“There's more. She wants us to break the contract and use this information as blackmail against her stepdad. She says if we take her back to him, he'll space her.”
“She wants to fake her death,” Jared interrupted. “To get away from him.”
“He sounds like a prize asshole,” Danneel said.
“Because Adrianne holds the contract,” Jensen continued doggedly, “it's her decision, not ours, and she wants to take Alona back to Stepdad and fulfill the contract. She was really insistent about not breaking it.”
“Do you believe everything this woman is telling you? If she doesn't want to go home, that's a great incentive to lie. She was on that rock for a reason.”
“That's what Adrianne said,” Jared commented.
“Alona said it was to atone,” Jensen added. “She was a head scientist for Green Worlds and they used her work and her team to destroy Bernon, so she feels responsible for all those deaths.”
“Okay,” Danneel said, sounding like she was gearing up for a lecture. “First of all, you never break a private contract. You know how I feel about Adrianne, but I have to agree with her there. I can't believe I'm saying that.” She rolled her eyes, presumably at herself. “If you take a private contract, you follow through. If you think it's a bad deal, you turn it down. You don't decide after you've found the target that you want to renegotiate.”
“From the way you talk about Adrianne,” Jared said, “I thought she might be mercenary enough to take Alona's deal, if the blackmail was worth more than the contract. Alona says it is. But so far, Adrianne's not biting.”
“So she has a code, at least as far as clients are concerned. Surprise. The people who go private are not people you want to fuck with, and Adrianne's a lot of things, but she's not that kind of stupid.”
Onward!
PG-13
Part 3 of 5
Master post
Art
Misha pinged them a couple of hours later to see how it was going. Jensen had won two games of holo-chess, lost one by making a spectacularly stupid move, talked Jared out of trying some really weird snack combinations, and had a thought.
“Why are we doing this in the middle of the day?” he asked Misha. “They'll see us coming.”
“No, they won't,” Misha said. “This time of year, you only get a couple hours of full dark anyway.”
“Do I really want to know how Adrianne's planning to get that woman out?”
“Probably not.”
“You have any idea how long this is going to take?”
“Nope. Less than six hours, hopefully.” Misha didn't want Kim coming after Jensen and Jared any more than they did.
“We should've taken Lupita up on her offer of something hot,” Jared said. “How cold is it outside?”
That was probably a rhetorical question but Misha answered anyway. “You'll get frostbite in ten seconds flat and your nose will fall off.”
That explained the black atmo suits.
“Ouch.”
“That's why you're down there and we're up here.” Now he sounded smug. He sounded like Chad.
“I thought we were down here because I have the fastest ship in settled space,” Jensen said.
“That too. No sign--”
The comms crackled and spat, and through them Adrianne yelled “Open the fucking hatch! We're almost there!” Jensen thought he could hear something that sounded suspiciously like a laser gun behind her words.
“Gotta go,” he told Misha, cutting off the comms.
This time he and Jared both put on heavy coats before opening the hatch, so when Adrianne and Winston brought the CEO's daughter inside the Tombaugh, they were prepared. Alona had apparently been zipped into what looked like a space-safe sleeping bag slung over Winston's shoulder. Jared directed them into the spare cabin while Adrianne struggled out of the borrowed atmo suit and Jensen got ready to go.
As soon as Winston had collected the suit and was clear of the ship, they took off. Jensen wanted to be free of this place and its brilliant white, dead nothingness as soon as possible.
Besides, if Lupita was right and the cultists did have a cannon, he wasn't sticking around to meet it. He guessed they had something, because that sound behind Adrianne was definitely a weapon.
Bernon fell away behind them as they ascended through the layers of atmosphere, closer and closer to the familiar blackness of space and its millions upon millions of stars. Jensen had never minded staying on the surface - the showers were better, for one thing, and sometimes the beds were bigger, and he liked being able to breathe fresh air and spend time with his friends in person - but there was something to be said for the weightlessness of space, the freedom of it, the great empty uninhabited dimensions of it. On land you could only travel along a flat plane, but in space you could go in any direction you could point, with no more effort than what it took to nudge your steering gear of choice.
And you could vanish quicker, if you had to.
“Blues coming up on starboard,” Jared said, leaning forward to try and look around the windshield.
“What?” No cult would call the law on them. It went against their nature.
“Could be just a standard patrol.”
Cluny Sector was on the edge of settled space, and while ships could - and did - travel the vast unsettled distances of the rest of the universe, the fringes were especially attractive to criminals, and patrol ships out for a routine look-see were not uncommon. Jensen and Jared had actually expected this, although they'd expected it coming into the sector, not leaving.
“Hailing the Tombaugh,” came the unmistakably clear, no-nonsense voice of a law enforcement officer over the comms, “Colony Cluster regis--”
It wasn't a routine patrol, not if an officer was going to call them by name and announce their registration.
“Adjust for sublight,” Jensen interrupted, leaning towards the comm on the dashboard so Adrianne could hear him as well. He entered the first coordinates he could think of into the navigation system. He could be panicking, but considering he and Jared had only recently gotten in trouble with the law, he wasn't sticking around long enough for it to happen again.
“Are we wanted in this sector?” Jared demanded. Adrianne's voice over the internal comms asked the same thing.
“You want to ask them and find out?” Jensen answered.
Three law enforcement ships came around from the Tombaugh's starboard side. They were small, fast cruisers, the kind you sent out when you were trying to catch someone. “You are in violation of--” the officer went on.
“Didn't think so. Punch it.”
The stars stretched and snapped around them as the Tombaugh jumped to sublight speed, not as fast as light - not yet - but still faster than any human had the right to travel, seeming to vanish from the sight of Cluny Sector law enforcement and reappearing in another sector at least a week's hard flying away.
“Where are we?” Jared asked, a little breathless. Traveling at sublight speed felt like very nearly leaving gravity, like every single organ in your body, every bone in your skeleton, was on the verge of being rearranged. It felt like being a second away from your very self scrambling into something unrecognizable. The very first time Jensen had ever traveled that fast, he threw up. Sometimes people passed out.
Oh shit. Their passenger.
“Stay here,” he said, unbuckling himself so he could check on her.
“Are we wanted there?” Jared repeated, unbuckling himself as well. He didn't move, just tried to catch his breath.
“The hell was that?” Adrianne demanded over the comms. She sounded a little breathless too.
“Kim didn't call them,” Jared went on. “The cult wouldn't. Misha wouldn't. The woman we, uh, Alona Tal, she didn't. Is there a warrant out for us?”
“I didn't think so,” Jensen said. “You'd think Misha and Chad would have found out, what with all the other looking they did into our records.”
“We'd know.”
“Obviously we didn't. Stay here and keep an eye out. Let Misha know we got the woman but don't tell him what just happened.” Jensen pushed himself out of his seat and went to check on their passenger.
They'd left the comm open in the spare cabin, just in case she woke up, and he was mentally composing what he was going to say when he came around a bend in the corridor and saw Adrianne had beaten him to it.
“Did you do this?” Jensen hissed at her, waving in a random direction to indicate the blues they'd just escaped.
“Am I stupid?” she hissed back, then held a finger to her lips as a shaky female voice demanded “Where am I? What's going on? What do you want?” over the comms. Adrianne hit the button in the wall and the door to the cabin slid open.
She was sitting on the bottom bunk, gripping the edge of the mattress with both hands. Adrianne's stuff was everywhere. Alona was wearing a shapeless black shift and slippers. They must have grabbed her while she was asleep. She didn't look anything like the picture on the contract - she looked older, for one thing, and she had brown hair coming out of a long braid, and she was pale and breathless and looked both scared and determined.
“What's he offering you?” she asked Jensen and Adrianne, her voice still shaking a little. “I can pay you more to let me go.”
“You're not being kidnapped,” Jensen said. “We're rescuing you. Your dad put up a reward.”
“He hired me to find you,” Adrianne added.
Alona stared at them for a second, then pushed herself off the bunk and shoved past them. “He's my stepfather,” she called from the corridor, then “You're not taking me back. If you do, he'll kill me.”
“You know where we are?” Jared's voice came over the internal comms. “We're near your mining colony! Why'd you bring us here?”
Jensen hadn't even been thinking when he gave the navigation system a set of coordinates to get them away from Cluny Sector, but he'd flown for Badger Mining for a third of his life, and the coordinates for the mine that served as his crew's base were burned into his brain. He could get there from anywhere in settled space without thinking, more than he could get to the planet where he'd been born and where his parents raised him. The only other place he could find with his eyes closed was Port Wombat. But he wouldn't have gone back there, not with the law on his tail.
They were out of range of the mining colony and the moon on which it sat, and he was amazed and amused that this was where he came in a panic. But he'd have to dissect it later. Right now he had a runaway to catch.
She'd found the cockpit and seemed to be letting Jared calm her down.
“We're not going to hurt you, promise,” Jared was saying when Jensen and Adrianne caught up. The cockpit was just big enough for the four of them. “We saved you from the death cult.”
“You're sending me back to my death,” she said. She sounded calmer, much firmer, and no longer scared. “What did my stepfather offer you? I can offer you more. I have--” She cut herself off mid-sentence. “Never mind. I can offer you more.”
“Do you know why the blues came after us?” Jensen asked her. He looked at Adrianne. “Do you?”
“It got a little messy at the ruins,” Adrianne said, “but the cult wouldn't call the blues. You're more likely to be wanted in that sector than me.”
“What did you do?” Alona asked.
“Oh, there's the matter of a gun-runner....”
“That's not what she means,” Jared interrupted.
“You don't--” Alona started to say, but Jared interrupted her too.
“We came to get you. It's legal, we have a contract. Well, Adrianne does.”
“We should have this talk in the lounge,” Jensen said, starting to herd the women out of the cockpit.
Jared got out of the co-pilot's seat and followed them into the lounge. The external comms pinged and they heard Misha demanding to know where they were. Jensen brought him up on the wall screen and explained that blues found them in Cluny Sector and they'd had to jump.
“Alona's safe,” he added, gesturing for her to move in front of the lens on the wall so Misha could see.
“I don't care what my stepfather is paying you,” she repeated. “I can offer more.”
“I won't break the contract,” Adrianne said.
“Tell him you found me and I was dead. I vanished once, I can do it again.”
“Why?” Misha asked. “You don't want to go home? We saved you from a death cult.”
“I went there on purpose. You don't know what I did. You don't know what I know.”
“What do you know?”
“We kind of do know what you did,” Jared added.
“We can discuss this further on La Spina. How soon can you get there?”
“If you take me back to my stepfather,” Alona said again, “he'll have me killed. You have to believe me.”
“Three weeks,” Jensen said to Misha. “Three weeks from tomorrow. We'll meet you at your favorite bar.”
“That's too--” Misha started to say, but Jensen cut him off. The wall went blank.
“Now,” he said, turning to Alona, “first things first. I'm Jensen, this is Jared and Adrianne, that was Misha, my ship is called the Tombaugh, and is it okay if we call you Alona?”
“I want to know how you found me,” was her answer. He was going to take that as a yes.
“We didn't,” Jared said. “Misha did.”
“I did,” Adrianne said. “I have friends in low places. Your father offered me a contract to find you, I got Misha to help me, he enlisted these two clowns because he thinks they have the fastest ship in settled space, and here we are.”
“She is the fastest ship in settled space.” Jared grinned, as proud of the Tombaugh as if she were his.
“Now why do you think your dad wants you dead?” Jensen asked.
“I don't think,” Alona said, “I know. Stop calling him my father. He's my stepfather. He married my mother when I was twelve.”
Well, Jensen thought, that explains the last names.
“You know what happened on Bernon,” Alona went on. It wasn't a question. “It wasn't an accident. Green Worlds - directed by my stepfather - destroyed the moon on purpose.”
“That doesn't make sense,” Jared said. “Why would they do that?”
“Do you know how wealthy people stay wealthy, and how wealthy corporations continue to offer high returns to their shareholders? They cut every corner they can. When they're caught out, they claim it was simple human error, offer up a scapegoat, and wipe their hands of the whole thing. And because they have lawmakers in their pockets, they get away with it.”
“What does this have to do with Bernon?”
“Green Worlds wanted to determine how cheaply they could terraform. Bernon was their proof of concept. My stepfather knew the climate would likely collapse - I told him, as did others on the sci-tech team - but he and the other shareholders considered the settlement and everyone on it an 'acceptable loss'. Because what are the lives of a thousand people, compared to the vast profits he could make? Even having to make restitution was nothing in comparison.”
“Shit,” Jared said.
“Exactly.” Alona tucked her feet underneath her on the couch. “Sahar has that tech now. Some of it is my tech, my patents. They used Bernon to figure out where they went wrong, so now they can terraform on the cheap, but still charge the same.”
“And you can prove all this?” Jensen asked. “That's what you can offer us - proof that Green Worlds destroyed Bernon intentionally? What's the point?” Green Worlds was a dead end for anyone who wanted restitution, and Jensen was pretty sure no one who'd been exonerated at the trial could be tried again.
“And how much is it worth?” Adrianne asked.
“They used my research,”Alona said, “my patents, and my team - they used me - to deliberately obliterate a settlement full of people and render an entire moon uninhabitable. They always intended to write off the loss in service of future profits. I hid on Bernon out of guilt, and to get away from my stepfather.”
“If Adrianne hadn't gotten that contract, you'd still be there,” Jared said, “waiting to die.” He and Jensen both remembered what Misha had said - It's a doomsday cult, and if she stays there, it will kill her.
“A doomsday cult seems like a risky place to hide,” Jensen added.
“My work unintentionally helped kill a thousand people,” Alona said, more anger in her voice than Jensen would have expected for such a confession. “I had to atone for that in the place it happened.” She took a deep breath and went on. “Besides, there's no doom in that cult. It's people living in the most inhospitable place they could find, suffering to purify themselves before they die, whenever that happens.”
Either Misha was misinformed, Jensen thought, or he lied to us when he said it was a doomsday cult, just to convince us to do this.
“My stepfather hired you to find me,”Alona went on, “because he knows that I know the truth about Bernon, he thinks I can prove it, and he doesn't trust me to keep my mouth shut. He must be planning something for Sahar, and I'm a liability.”
“That explains why he offered so much. Missing person contracts that large are usually so big because someone wants something that's not entirely legal.”
“Like, a mob boss will offer a lot to catch a rat who's gone on the run,” Jared said.
“Sounds like my stepfather,” Alona said. “But that's why you can't turn me over to him. You're not bounty hunters, are you?”
“No,” Jensen said. “Not officially. Neither is Misha.”
“I'm going to guess that whatever you are, it isn't legal. If you had the law on your side, you'd have come to the door with a warrant to compel the cult to turn me over. You wouldn't have drugged me and smuggled me out of Purmort.”
“You drugged her?” Jared demanded of Adrianne, who shrugged. “We know some good forgers. We could've mocked up a warrant.”
“That wouldn't have worked,” Jensen told him. “The cult would just ignore it. Besides, a warrant doesn't make sense for a missing person.”
“We'd pretend it was for a bounty.”
“In any case,” Alona said, “my stepfather's right. I can prove the truth of what he did. I can offer you enough blackmail material to make breaking your contract with him worthwhile. Tell your friend - Misha - tell him that too.”
“You don't think he'll still come after you?” Jared asked.
“My stepfather? I know he will. That's why you're going to help me fake my death.” She was very matter-of-fact, for planning to die.
“How do we know you have proof of what Green Worlds did?” Adrianne asked. “How do we know it's any good?”
“I can show you. I hid it,” Alona added, apparently reading the next question on Jensen's face. “I knew they'd destroy all the evidence, so I gathered everything I could and buried it.”
“You're sure no one knew you were on Bernon?” Jared asked.
“Absolutely.”
“Then why did the blues come after us? They knew we were there and they said we were in violation of something, but that's when we jumped so we don't know what they were after us for.”
“We'll look on the feeds,” Jensen said. “We could be wanted for the guns.”
“Taking bets now that you are,” Adrianne said.
“You're not wanted where we are now, are you?” Alona asked.
“No,” Jensen said. “Where did you hide all your evidence?”
“Some of it was in Purmort, as insurance. I don't want you go to back there, don't worry. I need a secure terminal and I'll get everything for you. Then you can think over my offer.” Jensen and Jared looked at each other, then at Adrianne. They weren't a party to the contract between her and Alona's stepfather, so they could technically do what they wanted. But they'd made a deal with Misha, who'd made a deal with Adrianne. It was her contract to break, and it would be hard to plot against her while she was on their ship.
“Think about it,” Alona said. She unfolded herself and stood up. “I need a shower. Where's the bathroom?”
Jensen waited with Adrianne in the lounge while Jared found a towel and some soap and left Alona to wash.
“Her dad won't come after us,” Jared said, coming back with a bag of spicy dried soybeans. He offered the bag to Jensen. They were going to have to restock the galley now that they had a fourth passenger. “I mean stepdad. Could he go after Misha? Misha could take us down with him.”
“No, he'd go after me,” Adrianne said. She took the bag from Jared, dug out a handful of soybeans, and gave the bag back. “It's my contract.”
“You think Misha will put up a fight?”
“Who cares? The deal is with me, and you may find this hard to believe, but I don't plan to break it. I still expect to deliver Alona to her stepfather. Misha will probably weigh the reward for the bounty with the potential payoff for the blackmail, assuming that's what Alona really has, and if it's worth what she says. But it doesn't matter what Misha wants, because, again, my contract. Besides, we have Alona and he doesn't.”
“What are you thinking?” Jensen asked Jared. “We should listen to her?”
“I don't know.” Jared popped a handful of soybeans in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “I think she's telling the truth. I mean, I think she has evidence on Green Worlds that's bad enough to bring her stepdad down. I don't know if it's worth more than the reward for her, though, or if we'll end up in jail again. I don't want to go back to jail.” He licked spicy soybean dust off his fingers. “They'll take the ship.”
“I know. They'll probably have to fight Chris for her. Shit. He's going to be expecting his next installment.”
“You know my contract is a sure thing, right?” Adrianne said. “And you know blackmail isn't, right?”
“The contract's not worth it if Alona's stepdad is going to kill her,” Jared said. “And the blackmail could be worth more. Tell Misha we have something bigger.” He nodded in the direction of the head, where Alona was presumably washing punishment cult off herself.
“Okay,” Jensen said, bringing up the screen on the wall again. This time he also launched a notes program, to list the pros and cons of Alona's proposal. He tapped out ideas on the display embedded in the table. “Taking Alona at her word. Pros: more money. Pay off Chris all at once. Save a woman from certain death.” He glanced between the display, now showing a keyboard, and the words appearing on the wall. He could hear Jared crunching through his snack. “Cons: break a contract.”
“We're not a party to it,” Jared interrupted. “That doesn't matter.”
“It matters to me,” Adrianne said. “Am I just shouting into the void here? Do you boys understand that I hold the contract, so whatever happens to Alona is ultimately my call?”
Jensen erased and retyped. “Adrianne breaks the contract. Alona's stepdad comes after us. He goes after her. We don't get paid. Jail. A warrant for kidnapping.” He paused to look at Jared. “That's what he's gonna do if we don't bring her back. He'll charge us with kidnapping. That carries a big bounty.”
“Huh.” Jared pointed at the wall. “Look where it says 'Pay off Chris all at once'.”
“Oh, for--” Adrianne shoved Jensen out of the way and typed “ADRIANNE IS NOT BREAKING THE CONTRACT” under “Cons”. She looked from Jared to Jensen and said “For the last time, you dribbling morons, Alona is my contract, what happens to her is my call, and however this shakes out hits my future prospects. I know what Harris is telling people about me. She's not wrong about one thing - if she can't keep her hands on her own jobs she doesn't deserve to have them. But I care about my reputation outside her cliqueish little bounty hunter circle. I don't give the first fuck what bounty hunters think of me, as long as they don't get in my way when I'm trying to earn my credits. And you know how I do that? You know how I make my money? I don't break my fucking contracts.”
“You're on my ship,” Jensen said, as calmly as he could manage.
“So what? I know you well enough to know you're not going to space me, and you're not stopping anywhere between here and La Spina to boot me off. We all know you're stuck with me. As long as you have Alona, you have me, and for the very last damn time, I am not breaking my contract with her stepfather.”
“What would it take?” Jared asked.
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit,” Jensen said.
“I don't believe her.”
“What if you're wrong?” Jared asked.
“It's not my problem.”
“We'll tell Alona's stepdad there was an accident, she was killed, the contract's void. It won't be your fault, so your reputation will be intact.”
“And how are you going to make that work? Do you have any idea how to fake someone's death?”
They didn't.
Jared crumpled up the now-empty snack bag and stretched. “I hate sublight. My skeleton's all out of true. Look, Adrianne, if we take her back to her stepdad he'll space her. That's what she said. He deliberately let a thousand people die - you don't think he'd do the same to his stepdaughter? I don't want that on my conscience and I bet you don't either. You're not a monster.”
Adrianne looked at the two lists on the wall. Jensen followed her gaze. There was good money to be made there, and a lot of risks to take. But he knew what men like Alona's stepfather were like. He knew how little they cared about regular working people. He knew from his own experiences as a regular working person. He had heard nothing to suggest Stepdad had changed - he didn't expect to hear it either - everything suggested Stepdad was fully capable of spacing his stepdaughter to protect his own interests.
“When I was flying freight,” Jensen told Adrianne, “the mining conglomerate did some work with Green Worlds, and we were offered a bunch of contracts to fly seeding ships. They were all shit contracts, and Green Worlds was a shit company to work for. That attitude comes from the top.”
“And that means what?” Adrianne said. “It's a big corp. They're all shit. I don't care as long as my contract pays out.”
“I'm just saying Alona could be right, because I know the kind of guy her stepfather is.”
“Oh my god, Jensen, you talk like you know the man personally. He's a CEO. They're all psychopaths. So are a lot of bounty hunters. So are a lot of sector blues. So fucking what? You're taking Alona at her word. She basically wiped herself off every official record to hide on that moon, and she did it for a reason. She'll keep making shit up to stay hidden. I don't care if either of you believe her, I need to see what she has before I make any kind of decision.”
Well, it was progress from “I'm taking her to her stepdad no matter what.” At least Adrianne was considering an alternative.
“And right now?” she went on. “That decision is 'I'm turning her in to her stepfather to get my credits'.”
Okay, so it wasn't progress.
“We're not turning her over to her stepfather if he's gonna space her,” Jared said.
“Her evidence might not be as good as she says.”
“What if it is?”
Adrianne shrugged. She swiped at the display, wiping the pro/con list off the wall, and said “Blackmail has never been a sure thing, not when you're dealing with someone with that kind of power. But signed contracts? Even rich men pay those.” She got up and stalked out of the lounge.
“At least you and I are on the same screen,” Jared said to Jensen. He got up to throw out the soybean bag.
“I'm not sure we are,” Jensen said.
“What? You just told Adrianne--”
“I know what I said. My instinct is to trust Alona but Adrianne's right - we need to see what she has first. We have no security in this thing, you know that. We're trusting Adrianne to cut us in on her missing persons contract, but if she has no contract, we have no guarantee. And if we have no guarantee, we have no credits, and if we have no credits, I lose my ship.”
Jared sighed. “We should probably find out why blues came after us in Cluny Sector, too. Do you really think there's a warrant out for us?”
The console in the table pinged and when Jensen accepted the message, Danneel came up on the wall. She looked entirely unconvinced about something.
“Genevieve told me you've got Adrianne Palicki onboard,” she said. “How did that happen? Do you ever listen to anything I tell you?”
“It's because we're going after her missing person,” Jensen said. “Either she came with us or there was no deal, and we really need the credits. But there's a problem.”
“Two problems,” Jared corrected.
“Did you get her?” Danneel asked. “The missing person?”
“Yeah. She's cleaning up right now.”
“How'd it go?”
“Blues came after us,” Jensen said, “but not because of her. They hailed the ship by name and registry and we jumped to sublight.”
“Shit.” Danneel sat back in her chair. “Why?”
“We don't know. There must be a warrant out for us that no one knew about. That's one of our problems.”
“You didn't check as soon as you were free of them? Where are you now, anyway?”
“Itoh Sector. Over Yezhovo.” Danneel raised an eyebrow. She knew what that meant. “Shut up. It was the first place I thought of.”
“You're so funny. You hated that place and yet that's where you go in a panic. Let me look you up.” She pulled out a handheld, swiped, tapped, squinted. “Well, fuck. Guess what, boys, you're wanted in Cluny Sector.”
“The thing with the guns?” Jared hazarded.
“Looks like.” The display on her handheld popped up in a corner of the wall screen so Jensen and Jared could read it too. “Tell Misha his due diligence needs some work. He should've found that out before he sent you there. You should know it, too. How can you not know where you're wanted?”
“The law didn't even know we were there when we went to Katahdin. Maybe someone gave us up?”
“It's for weapons smuggling. There has to be evidence, otherwise it would just be for suspicion of.”
“Kim?”
Danneel shrugged. “Could be. It's a good way to get the law off your back, or to keep them friendly to you.”
“Well, we can't go back now,” Jensen said, “but we've got another problem. I'm going to tell you this in strict confidence, okay? Tell no one.”
“Ooh, Jensen. Now I'm all tingly.” Danneel shivered in what she no doubt thought was a sexy way.
“I'm serious. The missing person, her name's Alona Tal, her stepfather was the CEO of Green Worlds. Now the CEO of Sahar Tech. You know about the terraforming on Bernon. Alona says Green Worlds fucked Bernon up on purpose, to see how many corners they could cut in the terraforming. They knew everyone in the settlement would die, and they did it anyway. She says she has enough proof to bring her stepdad down, and I assume Sahar with him, since Green Worlds is defunct.”
“Shit.” Danneel sounded almost impressed.
“There's more. She wants us to break the contract and use this information as blackmail against her stepdad. She says if we take her back to him, he'll space her.”
“She wants to fake her death,” Jared interrupted. “To get away from him.”
“He sounds like a prize asshole,” Danneel said.
“Because Adrianne holds the contract,” Jensen continued doggedly, “it's her decision, not ours, and she wants to take Alona back to Stepdad and fulfill the contract. She was really insistent about not breaking it.”
“Do you believe everything this woman is telling you? If she doesn't want to go home, that's a great incentive to lie. She was on that rock for a reason.”
“That's what Adrianne said,” Jared commented.
“Alona said it was to atone,” Jensen added. “She was a head scientist for Green Worlds and they used her work and her team to destroy Bernon, so she feels responsible for all those deaths.”
“Okay,” Danneel said, sounding like she was gearing up for a lecture. “First of all, you never break a private contract. You know how I feel about Adrianne, but I have to agree with her there. I can't believe I'm saying that.” She rolled her eyes, presumably at herself. “If you take a private contract, you follow through. If you think it's a bad deal, you turn it down. You don't decide after you've found the target that you want to renegotiate.”
“From the way you talk about Adrianne,” Jared said, “I thought she might be mercenary enough to take Alona's deal, if the blackmail was worth more than the contract. Alona says it is. But so far, Adrianne's not biting.”
“So she has a code, at least as far as clients are concerned. Surprise. The people who go private are not people you want to fuck with, and Adrianne's a lot of things, but she's not that kind of stupid.”
Onward!